Consequences! Preparing for What May Come
Sonjia surveyed her surroundings and blinked in confusion. Jadarin had teleported away with her, and they seemed to have reappeared... all of a half mile away. Some kidnapping.
"What the heck kind of teleport was that?" Sonjia wondered aloud, almost sounding disappointed at her captor's tactical abilities. He didn't seem that stupid before. Or weak, as she noted his expression. Jadarin was visibly drained from this maneuver. Come on, teleportation wasn't that big a deal for Mazoku or Gods. Unless...
"You've lost you divine abilities, haven't you?" Sonjia concluded. As she'd explained to Lina before, all higher beings had the natural abilities of teleportation, levitation, and form shifts. And this short distance seemed the limit of what Jadarin could handle in terms of teleportation. He also seemed to rely quite heavily on his wings for flight. And she'd never seen him change forms.
Jadarin clutched her arm more tightly and smirked. "Hmph. You put it so negatively. I simply exist outside the constraints that bind the higher beings. I've found that it doesn't seem possible to completely convert a God to a Mazoku, or vice versa. In fact, the farthest you can get is halfway."
"Halfway between a God and Mazoku is a human," Sonjia clarified. "What a way to be."
"It's not that bad," Jadarin reasoned. "I mean, sure, I don't have any power of my own, but I still exist as an astral body. That's mine for keeps now."
"Yeah," said Sonjia, trying to wrench free of his grasp, "But that body is now massively corrupted I'd assume. It probably has no defined place to exist."
Jadarin smirked and threw her to the ground. "Precisely." Sonjia rolled over to look up at him, as he continued, "And since I have no place, I can decide my own purpose."
Sonjia let out a disgusted sigh and looked away. "So, you've decided that your 'purpose' is to use the most terrible spell in creation to wipe out all of existence, huh? That's real productive."
"It's a lesson," explained Jadarin. "To show the Gods and Mazoku first hand that they want no business with this spell. For you see, the Magic Lock has the ability to turn the world to Emptiness, not Chaos. You can't have Chaos if there's nothing there to be Chaotic. Simply a frozen, unmoving void of nothing. It's been my experience that neither God nor Mazoku want this."
Sonjia stood up and looked incredulously at him. "So, you're going to destroy the world with that spell to show the higher-ups that it would be stupid if they did it themselves that way?"
"Oh, heavens no!" countered Jadarin, holding up his hand. "Although I have no place here, I also have no desire for the world to end as such. However," he continued, looking down at her, "I will continue making as many examples as necessary for my point to get across."
Sonjia backed away from him, shocked that he seemed to care nothing for the souls he would destroy and the balance he would disrupt. "You're... insane," she whispered. "And even though you have been revealed to be my older brother, I still don't want any part of this!"
Jadarin smirked and pulled out a chopstick, "My dear, you have no choice."
"I can say 'no', plain and simple."
"True," said Jadarin, snapping his fingers and producing a thread. "But no matter how much you say 'no', you can't prevent me from doing this."
Sonjia crossed her arms. "With my sister dead, you shouldn't be able to do that, anyway."
"And still you refuse to see the obvious," stated Jadarin, looking up and shaking his head in frustration. "I heard you and your little human friends chatting. You think the Gold Dragons stole the spell from her, don't you? Thing is, you can't exactly be picky-choosey when you do that. You get all or nothing. In this case, they got nothing, leading to the collapse of the wards on the lab, and..." he pointed to his head, "on my mind."
"And yet the Magic Lock still exists," said Sonjia, although she had a nagging feeling she already knew where this was headed.
"An astounding observation!" commented Jadarin. "When you steal a God's power, you can't be selective about what power you get. However, if the God gives the power voluntarily, the God can decide what you are given." He scratched his chin and smiled. "Quite a useful technique if you've got a power you don't want anyone to get ahold of. You can just put it somewhere else and hide it away."
Sonjia backed away a few more steps. "You mean me, don't you?"
Jadarin grinned. "Don't you feel special? Your entire purpose is that of temporary storage."
Sonjia looked at her hands in shock. "So, I've got the source power? That must be why the spell doesn't work on me."
"A drop of water will not dampen the river, but merely rejoin it."
Sonjia gave Jadarin a flat look. "Don't ever speak profoundly again. It's scary." She shrugged. "So I've got the source power. I still don't understand why you need me. You should be able to draw power from me no matter where I am."
"This is true. But you have an annoying habit of coming in contact with certain things that prevent you from using magic, and thus prevent anyone from drawing power from you." He pulled out his chopstick. "Which is quite the inconvenience. Looks like the power will have to change hands again if I'm to control it fully."
Sonjia backed up a ways more. "If you're going to ask me to give it to you, you can forget it. For one thing, I don't even know how to do it. And for another, I still refuse to help you."
"Such a shame," said Jadarin, advancing forward. "Looks like I'll just have to take it by force."
A blast of dark energy collided with his back and evaporated. Jadarin whirled around and snarled at the newcomer. "Xellos…" he growled. "I have no time for this!"
"Nor do I," said Xellos. "I tire of chasing you down. Really, I have much more important and entertaining things to be doing than hunting down a rogue Mazoku."
"And I tire of you chasing me," Jadarin replied. "Shoo," he commanded, snapping his fingers and flicking a silver thread in Xellos's direction.
"No! Don't kill him with that!" yelled Sonjia, grabbing onto Jadarin's chopstick, hoping that canceling her power would cancel the spell.
"Too late, my dear," said Jadarin. "The spell has already been cast, and your power no longer controls it. You are simply the spark which lights the fire, you could say." He grabbed her by the throat. "And I would love to add a little spark to my life."
Xellos raised an eyebrow at Jadarin's display. He'd seen him snap his fingers in that manner before, but it never seemed to do anything. Xellos didn't sense any sort of power build-up, or strange energy around him. Sonjia had yelled something about not killing him. Perhaps she had stopped Jadarin from casting whatever he was trying to cast. Rather foolish of her to give up the first move. Although Sonjia was no longer high on his priorities to subdue, if she got in the way of this... unpleasant things were bound to happen to her. Xellos smirked and readied another attack.
Something that felt no heavier nor more substantial than a strand of hair lightly landed on his nose. It slightly glinted silver as it came to rest on his skin. Xellos was so focused on his present task, he didn't even notice such a trifling thing.
Which was just as well, since he didn't have the time to even register that he noticed something before his entire body went numb.
Lina limped along, holding herself up with a thick branch. "I should have seen it sooner than this," she muttered to herself. "He was playing with us, dropping hints all along…"
Zelgadis sighed at Lina's incessant need to keep them in suspense. "So, what's this all about, then? Why so suddenly worried about what happened to Sonjia?"
"It's because Sonjia's the one with the source power of the Magic Lock," Lina explained.
"How come you think that?" wondered Amelia.
"First of all," said Lina, "Jadarin kept on saying that she was working for him; that he couldn't have done anything without her. He was telling the truth, in a way, because he was drawing the power for the spell from Sonjia. And secondly, you said that Sonjia got that spell cast on her but it didn't do anything. It's my understanding that no matter what a spell does, it absolutely won't work on the being from which the spell is drawn."
"Ohh," said Amelia, slightly understanding. "So, how come Jadarin is still trying to catch Sonjia-san? You don't need to catch Shabranigdo to cast the Dragon Slave."
Lina sweatdropped and grinned sheepishly. "Well, Shabranigdo's sort of everywhere in the world, and his power is there for the exploiting. However," she continued, looking ahead, "Sonjia is one, small, independent mind. Jadarin can't control her actions. Many of which, like using her ribbon, would prevent him from drawing power from her. That's probably why his spell didn't work half the times he tried to use it."
Zelgadis shook his head at the ridiculousness of it all. "So what's got you all worked up? We know that Sonjia's far too stubborn to actually work alongside anyone. And he can't kill her if he wants to use her power."
"Actually, to get her power, that's exactly what he'd have to do," countered Lina, looking back at Zelgadis. "Remember when we discussed the transference of power? He could just kill her and take it. And if Jadarin gets full control of the spell, he could use it on a much wider scale than he has been. And he won't have any more limitations." Lina rubbed her chin in thought, then added quietly to herself, "Plus, we'd lose the one ace we have against him."
"Which would be...?" asked Zelgadis, having picked up Lina's silent musing. "If you think that Sonjia has some sort of secret super power that she can conveniently sprout for no particular reason to save the universe just to show us up, I'm going to kill myself."
Lina's mouth twitched. "Save room for me, Zel. Although, thankfully, that's not what I was thinking of." And, unfortunately for her two curious companions, Lina just left it at that.
Suddenly, ahead of them, they heard a rather loud *clank*. The group stopped defensively, simply on instinct. However, logic caught up a second later when they remembered that Mazoku don't tend to fight with swords.
Then, a strange scuffling sound was heard. There was definitely some sort of struggle going on just ahead of them. Which seemed odd, because everyone in town was supposedly dead, and Sonjia and Jadarin certainly wouldn't produce a "clank". But then... what was it?
Lina cautiously peeked around the corner, and lo and behold, there was Gourry, with his sword nicely embedded in a wall. He was currently trying to pry it out, without much luck.
"Gourry!" exclaimed Lina, trying to hide her excitement that he hadn't in fact found the Mazoku and experienced the wrath of Magic Lock.
"Oh, hi, Lina!" said Gourry, looking up and waving. "Good to see you're kinda okay!"
"Gourry-san..." said Amelia, sweatdropping. "What exactly were you doing?" She indicated his sword sticking into the wall.
Gourry grinned. "My sword's been telling me where to go! See, I just hold it in front of me and walk, and it takes me to what I'm trying to find! Except I guess things keep getting in the way, since I just keep walking into buildings." He gave his sword one more good yank and finally dislodged it from the wall. "So, what happened to you that you got all beat up like that?"
"Long story," said Lina, waving him off. "At least we're still in one piece. But besides that," said Lina, looking ahead down the road, "now we just need to figure out where Jadarin is so we can kick his butt."
Gourry sheathed his sword and tilted his head in the direction of the building he had just run into. "He's over there."
Lina's head dropped, as did the sweat. She grabbed Gourry by the collar and explained nicely, "Now, look! You can't track down a Mazoku with such a simple method! There's no easy way to predict where he went! He could be hundreds of miles away by now, or even on the Astral Plane! I sincerely doubt he is simply 'over there'."
"But that's where my sword was telling me to go," said Gourry. "It's never done me wrong before."
Lina sighed and tromped around behind the house, which happened to be right on the edge of town. Behind the house was a tree that had miraculously avoided the initial onslaught of Magic Lock, and still stood green and alive. Granted, this was something impressive to see given all the killing that had been done in recent times. But it still wasn't exactly what Lina was looking for.
"See?" she said, indicating the tree. "They're not there."
"Maybe a little farther that way...?" suggested Gourry, indicating the rise beyond the town.
"They're not there, Gourry!" retorted Lina, slumping against the tree. "That's what I really hate about Mazoku. You never know where they are, or where they're going to show up."
"Lina... san?" started Amelia, hesitantly. She had hardly ever seen Lina's confidence waver like this. It certainly wasn't like her. She knew that Jadarin's spell was a very evil thing, but Lina seemed to have started taking it even more seriously as time went on. Perhaps the full implications of what it could do were finally hitting home.
"It's funny," said Lina, not really to anyone in particular. "I've never really been this afraid of a spell before. Not even the Giga Slave. Because the Giga Slave is under my power, and I know when I'm using it. But this... this isn't something that'll just return the world to nothingness. This'll swipe the souls of everything it touches. Just completely out of nowhere. You can't see it. You can't sense it. You don't even know it's hit you until it kills you. If you even realize it's hit you." She looked up and tried to grin, despite it all. "I'd hate to die like that. Just keeling over without even knowing what killed you. Without even the capability of reminiscing over your death, since your soul's been destroyed." She pushed herself forward off the tree. "And something that does that... shouldn't be allowed to exist."
The others were silent. They hadn't really though about what it would mean for them and the rest of the world if Jadarin was able to get away. But it looked like he had done just that. They had no way of tracking him. And even if they could find him and he turned out to be hundreds of miles away, they'd never reach him in time.
It looked like all they could do... was wait.
Sonjia had managed to wrestle one chopstick away from Jadarin. At least her contact with it would keep him from casting the spell again, but it didn't really help Xellos, or anyone else he had cast the spell on, now.
"Why did you do it? Why do you keep doing this? Why can't you see how terrible this spell really is?!"
Jadarin sneered and tucked the remaining chopstick into his belt. "I understand perfectly well how terrible it is. Unfortunately, not everyone does. That's why I must show them the terror they would bring upon themselves by using it!"
"If you'd stop using it, they wouldn't have anything to be afraid of!" Sonjia reasoned. This strategy had seemed like a good idea right up to the point that she realized that she carried the spell's power. Her death, or the death of the rest of existence? That was a really tough choice.
"Even so, are you really willing to sacrifice yourself for that purpose?" Sonjia hesitated to answer, to which Jadarin smirked and concluded, "Didn't think so."
"Well, even if I do die to ensure the total eradication of the Magic Lock, I can't be certain that you won't swipe it from me upon the time of my death," she replied.
Jadarin shrugged in defeat. "You've got me there. However," he continued, lowering himself like a cat ready to pounce. "Exactly how long can you resist me?"
He charged and swiped his claws across her belly. But they just passed right through without doing any damage. He looked up and noticed that Sonjia had placed her chopstick in her vest pocket, her hand hovering over it.
"You can't hurt me like that," she said. "And as soon as you start up a spell, I grab for this." She tapped it a few times. "I think I can handle you well enough."
Jadarin tapped his chin with his chopstick in a mock thinking position. "I'd say…. No."
Sonjia was just about to wonder what he was plotting now, when she felt a sharp pain in her side. It took her a moment to realize what it was. His chopstick. He had stabbed her with his chopstick. She almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Absurd, yet effective.
"You know, I believe that you could possibly kill a Mazoku if you impaled it on a pike with this spell cast on it," he commented absently. "Don't you find that interesting? There are so many ways you could kill someone with this." He retrieved his other chopstick from her vest pocket and let her fall to the ground, clutching her bleeding side; the second chopstick still impaled in it.
"I'm sorry, my dear, but I believe you will be dying, whether you wish to or not." With that, he brought his claws down on her chest, intending to rip right though.
Well, they did go through, but there wasn't any ripping. His claws just passed through her chest as they had before. He looked and noted that the chopstick was still planted in her side. Her contact with it should be enough to make her vulnerable to physical attacks, shouldn't it?
"That hurt, you know," said Sonjia, firing up a recovery spell. She placed her hand on her injury and pulled the chopstick out without leaving a mark. "Pretty low of you to go backstabbing people like that."
"Impossible!" said Jadarin. "That spell should work on you indirectly! It has before!"
Sonjia held up the stick. "It would work on me if the spell was still on this thing. It came off again, just like with my ribbon." She looked it over. "But I was always under the impression that nothing could counter this spell. Yet this is the second time I've seen it come off."
Her train of thought was interrupted by a fireball to the face. Without any protection from a shield, it actually hurt.
"Even if the spell is ineffective against you, there's more than one way to skin a cat," Jadarin said, forming another fireball. "Taking you out should be easy, considering your specialty is healing, rather than shields or attacks."
"Well, your attacks aren't anything to get excited about either," Sonjia retorted. "Magic Lock is the only spell you have that really makes you a threat to anything."
"True," Jadarin admitted. "But you see, my dear, unlike most other Mazoku, I can draw energy from sources other than myself. Meaning I am not limited to using my own spells. In fact, let's try out a personal favorite of mine."
Sonjia wondered if he even had any spells of his own to use anymore, now that he had taken on the energy signature equivalent to that of a human's. Granted, this DID allow him to cast Black, Shamanist, and perhaps even White magic spells. So, even though he insisted on calling himself a Mazoku, that wasn't really what he was. He wasn't really a God either, but he of course wasn't exactly human. Why was he so adverse to still considering himself a God, anyway?
"…. Buried in the flow of time. In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness…" Sonjia snapped out of her thought process. Why did that incantation seem so familiar?
"Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed…" Jadarin continued.
Sonjia pounded her fist into her palm. "Oh, now I know what spell that is! …. Oh crud!" No ribbon, no chopstick, no nothing to protect her this time. And she highly doubted that she was powerful enough to withstand a Dragon Slave at nearly point blank range. So, she did the only logical thing she could think of. She ran like hell.
"…By the power you and I possess! Dragon Slave!" Jadarin shouted. He saw Sonjia retreating. Oh, there was no running from this one. He let loose the giant stream of energy at his target.
Sonjia knew she wasn't going to make it anywhere safe. She could feel the air heating up behind her as the Dragon Slave bore down upon her. If only there was…
Thud. Perfect timing. She tripped. Looking behind her, she noticed that she had tripped over Xellos, who was lying on the ground and emitting a silver aura from his full dose of Magic Lock. Without even thinking, Sonjia grabbed him by the shirt collar and crouched behind him, using Xellos as a human(?) shield.
"So you are useful for something," she muttered as the spell impacted. The Dragon Slave seemed to split and stream around them as soon as it hit the Locked Xellos. However, the ground around them was unaffected by Magic Lock, so the Dragon Slave had no trouble ripping it apart. The ground heaved, throwing Sonjia and Xellos backwards. She hit the ground on her back, and was bombarded with flying debris. Even though the spell itself couldn't hurt her, the flying rocks sure hurt like heck.
She peeked over Xellos's shoulder to try and look through the dust, fire, and glowing aftermath of the spell. Sonjia couldn't look very long, though, as a rather large and sharp rock hit her in the forehead, knocking her back.
"Well, this is great cover to make an escape, if I really had anywhere to escape to." She shrugged. "Eh, I'm game for a little delaying the inevitable. Maybe my luck will look up."
She dropped Xellos and got up. And immediately regretted doing so as the Black magic energy seared around her. She clutched her arms in pain and immediately grabbed Xellos again to block herself from the effects of the magic.
"Man, that's no good." She still needed to get away. But she couldn't use magic to escape unless she felt like being reduced to a writhing cinder.
Sonjia slung one of Xellos's arms over her shoulder. "Good for you, you get to be the temporary replacement for my ribbon," she explained to him. With that, she attempted to stand up.
And promptly fell over. She hadn't realized until now just how injured she was from the flying debris. So, running away was out of the question. So was teleporting, since her magic was disabled from touching Xellos. Which also meant she couldn't levitate or teleport. That killed off two of the three basic abilities.
Thankfully, the third was a physical property of a God or Mazoku's body, rather than a magical one.
"I learn from observation, you flightless fool," she said, letting go of Xellos with one hand for a moment to take off her vest, but left her blouse on. The effects of the Dragon Slave were beginning to subside, and the smoke and dust were beginning to clear. Not much time to escape now.
"Let's just hope that a form that hasn't seen use in a few thousand years still works," she hoped, crossing her free arm across her chest and concentrating. There was a moment of silence as she probed around the power inside her, trying to pull her goddess form out of hiding. She couldn't find it. She'd been in human form so long, it was locked away somewhere that she had trouble reaching. And she only had about a minute of cover left before Jadarin would spot her. Sonjia concentrated all her energy on finding…
There it is.
She almost gasped as a large pair of black, feathered wings ripped through the back of her blouse and protruded from her back, as she was unused to having them there. The rest of her body followed the color change, until her skin was coal black, nearly the color of her hair.
Without even stopping to get used to her appearance again, she scooped Xellos up and spread her wings. Since her wings hadn't been present when she was barraged by rocks, they were undamaged. But hopefully she could still remember how to use them to fly.
Sonjia lifted unsteadily off the ground, just as the smoke and dust began to clear. Too late, Jadarin had spotted her. But at least she already had a running start.
"Cheater!" Jadarin shouted up to her as she made her escape. He followed her suit and took to the air, but with the use of levitation spell rather than his wings, allowing him to fly much faster. Although he wouldn't be able to keep that up for long, he should be able to catch her in that short amount of time.
Sonjia, on the other hand, was not faring very well. She hurt all over and was bleeding from various injuries. And since she was unused to flying, she wasn't going very fast. And Jadarin was about to overtake her. "A little help right now would be nice," she said to herself, although she hated to admit it.
"Elmekia Lance!" came a shout from the ground. How's that for help? Sonjia looked down to see Amelia shoot a lance of white energy that hit Jadarin right in the chest. And since he was using magic to fly, his shield wasn't up, so he went crashing to the ground. Score one for the Lina team.
Sonjia sighed a hidden sigh of relief and sailed to the ground. However, instead of landing, she rather ungracefully crashed into the tree. She hung upside-down, her legs tangled in the branches. "I meant to do that," she explained, dropping Xellos to the ground a short ways below.
"I'm always one to notice a Dragon Slave," said Lina, making a little "victory" sign with her fingers. "And it looks like Gourry was right after all. I guess weird stuff happens."
"You can always trust my sword," said Gourry, proudly.
"Xellos-san!" Amelia shouted, running to him and putting her hand to his neck. "Oh no! Lina-san! He doesn't have a pulse!"
Lina limped over to have a look. "Well, that doesn't say much. Xellos is literally a heartless Mazoku, so he wouldn't have a pulse no matter what. Still," said Lina, examining him, "he's got a silver tint. Hmm, that Jadarin used Magic Lock on him, didn't he, Son….. Yaaaaaahh!" Lina fell over, not expecting to see Sonjia in her true form. Sonjia was, in the simplest description, a black, winged, humanoid cat.
"Great," said Zelgadis, rolling his eyes. "Instead of spontaneously developing stupendous powers, she turns out to be a cat girl."
"Hey!" shouted Sonjia, still hanging upside-down from the tree. "I'm not just any cat girl!"
Lina knew where this was headed. She smirked as she prepared a few choice comebacks for whatever sort of boast Sonjia had this time. The goddess was becoming far too predictable.
Sonjia grinned proudly and continued, "I'm the most conservatively-dressed cat girl you will ever hope to see!"
"Oh yeah? Well, you... have a point," Lina finished lamely, realizing that this observation was in fact true. Jeez, and she had a really good one, too. Stupid Sonjia for wearing full-length pants and a completely opaque blouse, leaving no skin exposed but her face and lower arms.
Amelia looked up at the goddess hanging upside-down from the tree, then back down at Xellos. "Sonjia-san, is Xellos….?"
Sonjia finally managed to untangle her feet and fell to the ground on her head with a thud. She sat up, rubbing her head, and sighed. "Well, he's probably not completely dead yet. The Magic Lock only affects his physical form, so he's still got his body on the Astral Plane. But since his physical body can no longer absorb the negative energy it needs, his astral body will probably wither away in about a day's time. So, if you could remove the spell before then, he'd actually be more or less okay, but there's no way to do that."
"But it came off your ribbon," Amelia reasoned.
"Doesn't really help much if I don't know why it happened," said Sonjia, wiping her face off with the end of Xellos's cape. "It came off one of Jadarin's chopsticks, too."
Amelia grabbed Xellos's cape away from Sonjia. "Don't you have any respect for the dead?"
"Not really," she replied flatly.
"I could try a Flow Break to break the spell," said Amelia, charging up a ball of white energy.
Sonjia put her hand to her forehead and shook her head. "Oh, Amelia, haven't you learned anything? There's no way to break Magic Lock because it absorbs all spells, regardless of what the spell does." Amelia tried the spell anyway, and, predictably, it fizzled out as soon as she put her hand near Xellos's body.
Sonjia had started healing her own various injuries. "See?" she said, matter-of-factly, not looking up from her work.
Amelia's lower lip trembled, until she started spouting a large flow of tears. "Waaaahhh!! Poor Xellos-san got killed by the Mazoku, and there's nothing we could do!" With that, she sniffed and blew her nose into Xellos's cape, which she was still holding.
Sonjia looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Who has no respect for the dead here?" She finished healing herself and got up to stretch.
Gourry finally spoke up. "Hey, Sonjia, since you're a goddess and have healing magic and everything, maybe you could heal Lina and Zelgadis up a bit more. They got attacked by that Mazoku, too."
"Whatever," said Sonjia, beginning to wander away. "I'm not in the service of humanity, you know. It really bugs me how people say things like, 'Oh, you are a goddess, so you should be kind and heal some total invalid out of the goodness of you heart' and other such rubbish. I'm not going to follow people around and fix up every scrape and bruise just because I can. I've had enough of my abilities being exploited."
"But Lina's hurt really bad," Gourry retorted. "And she needs to be all healed up so she can fight that Mazoku so he can't hurt anyone else. Isn't that a good enough cause?"
"Why do you need her to do it? Why can't you just go and fight yourself?" Sonjia asked.
Lina rose unsteadily and slowly began walking towards Sonjia. Gourry tried to protest, but she silenced him. "There's strength in numbers," Lina explained. "Even though I'm confident in my companions' abilities, I want to put the odds as much in our favor as possible." She put a hand on Sonjia's shoulder. "And maybe this time, your power will come of some good for everyone."
Sonjia looked down and put her nose about an inch from Lina's and squinted at her. Lina fidgeted a little under the cat-like stare, but stood firm. Sonjia then unceremoniously brought her hand up and tapped Lina on the nose.
"There. You're healed. Now leave me alone." Lina fell over. "Don't go falling over like that, or you'll hurt yourself again."
Lina got up and rubbed her head. "You mean that's it?!" She flexed her arm, realizing that her body was indeed fully healed and functional again. "Then what was the big deal about it if that's all there was to it?"
Sonjia shook a finger. "It's the principle, silly. I healed you, so you are now obligated to shower me with praise and gifts."
"Why you!" shouted Lina, grabbing Sonjia by her blouse collar.
"Why are you so mad, Lina?" asked Gourry. "That's what you would have said if you were the one who healed someone like that."
Lina was about to yell at him about not asking for his opinion when Amelia interjected, "Sonjia-san! You healed Xellos-san!"
Lina let go of Sonjia's collar, and both she and Sonjia looked over to Amelia. "Uh, no I didn't…"
"Well, someone did something," said Amelia. "I just realized that while I was casting that Flow Break, I was still holding Xellos-san's cape. And didn't you say that if you were touching something that had that Magic Lock spell on it, you can't use magic?" Amelia cowered at the surprised looks she got. "Or did I mess that up again?"
Sonjia knelt down to have a look. "No, actually, you're right." She examined Xellos's cape and ran her hand along it. "Only this one corner is unaffected," she observed, pointing out the part that was rather soiled from its use as a makeshift handkerchief. "But that doesn't make any sense. The spell should directly affect whatever is in the area in which it is used."
"Maybe it's weak against dirt," said Gourry.
Lina was about to say something, but was interrupted by the ground blowing up.
"Well, looks like ol' bro' is back," said Sonjia, rolling her eyes. She looked up at Lina. "I healed you on the condition that you'd beat that jerk into the ground. Don't disappoint me, now."
Lina crossed her arms. "So what are you going to do, o great goddess?"
"First of all, I'm going to get to the bottom of why the spell keeps coming off." Sonjia motioned back to Xellos. "Xel here can be my guinea pig. He won't mind. That useful enough for you?"
"You know… you sicken me sometimes," said Lina, shaking her head. "If you figure out anything useful, don't be afraid to help out a little!" she called as she ran off to get the battle underway.
Sonjia glanced over at Zelgadis, who had stayed behind to continue healing himself. "If you wanna get on you knees and beg, I might be able to help you out there," she offered.
Zelgadis didn't even acknowledge the offer and simply stood up to walk back into town. He would rather heal himself in peace than have Sonjia berating him the entire time. He took one last look at Xellos's prone form and smirked, before walking back into one of the alleys.
"You know, a coroner for Mazoku is a job that seems to suit you well," he commented just before he disappeared into town.
Sonjia poked at Xellos with a stick. "Hmph. Yeah, whatever…"