Well, this piece of utter insanity was originally written as a "creative essay" for English. (I got A+ for it!) Goodness knows what inspired me to write it when I've hardly seen any of Slayers – I've decided it was my muse getting revenge on me for taking so long to realise that I do have a muse…
Nijiko: Who, me?
*glares* I'll deal with you later. So anyway, my characterisation is probably dodgy. My apologies in advance. I'm too proud of this lot of weirdness to not put it up.
Oh, and this isn't set inside the show, so to speak. They're inbetween series, and they're kind of all staying somewhere together. Not sure where.
Disclaimer: Slayers doesn't belong to me. Which is a pity, because I can't seem to find videos anywhere…
THE BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO SLAYERS
Sylphiel studied the device carefully.
"But how does it work, Miss Lina?" she asked.
The red-haired girl shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, Sylphiel. It's got no magical aura at all. All I know is that it's called a 'video-camera' and it works when you press the red button, and we're supposed to be presenting 'The Beginner's Guide to Slayers'."
"It looks like a badly-made telescope." Sylphiel commented.
"Just press the button and get on with it."
"Okay... go!"
Lina looked into the camera and grinned. "Hello, everybody! Welcome to 'The Beginner's Guide to Slayers'! I am Lina Inverse–"
"…the short and flat-chested!" someone suggested from behind them, before laughing loudly. Sylphiel stopped filming, and Lina turned around to face the speaker – a young, dark-haired woman wearing a cape and a bikini, and not much else.
Lina was furious. Short? Flat-chested? She wasn't short, she was… petite. And most people were flat-chested compared with Naga.
"Actually, Naga," Lina replied, trying to stop her frustration from showing, "I was thinking somewhere more along the lines of 'sorceress extraordinaire'."
Naga had been Lina's first travelling companion, although that had been years ago. She considered herself Lina's greatest rival – yeah, right, thought Lina: Naga had never been that skilled as a sorceress, whatever she claimed. And that laugh of hers…
That thought reminded Lina of something else…
"Naga," she asked, "How did you get out of the cupboard?"
There had been an almost-unanimous vote last night to lock Naga in the cupboard, after her laughing had sent everybody else almost to the point of migraine. And as far as Lina knew, nobody had decided to let her out yet.
Naga considered her answer for a minute, before announcing: "It's a secret."
"Don't tell me you've started saying tha–" Lina paused, as she realised the real reason Naga was using Xellos' catchphrase. "oh, damn Xellos!"
"Well, Miss Lina, the cupboard is right next to his room…" Sylphiel pointed out.
In the meanwhile, Naga had spotted Amelia's manga collection and settled down with a copy of Ranma ½. Lina groaned. That was what Naga had been reading last night.
"Hey everyone, mail's here!"
The three girls looked over to the new arrival – a tall man with long blonde hair.
"Hi Gourry!" Lina called. "Anything for me?"
"I don't think so…" he said, shuffling through the letters. "Is Amelia here?"
"She went for a walk with Zel." Sylphiel told him.
"Oh. She's got another one of those funny ones with all the letters cut from newspapers."
"That'd be another death-threat from one of Zel's crazy fangirls. Throw it out." Lina instructed. Goodness knows how a nice guy like Zelgadis managed to get such a scary bunch of fans.
Gourry sat down on the couch next to Lina. She smiled. She had met Gourry not long after she and Naga had parted ways. He certainly wasn't the brightest of people, but he was nice enough. And he just happened to own the Sword of Light, and – at first, anyway – Lina was determined to get her hands on the legendary weapon. But that had become more of a joke between the two of them than anything else, and they had become very close. Very close, Lina mused, playing with the ring he'd given her. They were engaged now – whether that would be allowed on the show was another matter altogether, though.
"Do you want to try doing that 'Beginner's Guide' again, Miss Lina?" Sylphiel asked.
"Okay." Lina agreed. She looked into the camera and grinned. "Hello, everybody! Welcome to 'The Beginner's Guide to Slayers'! I am Lina Inverse, sorceress extraodinaire," – she glared at Naga as she said this – "and I will be your guide! Me and my friends have travelled the world, righting wrongs, slaying demons, saving villages from rampaging dragons–"
"But Lina, what about that time–" Gourry started.
"Okay, so the village usually survives intact, anyway. But as I was saying–"
But nobody ever found out just what Lina was saying, because Xellos decided to enter just then.
Xellos was one of the strangest people Lina knew – if person was the right word for him. He appeared to be human, but he was a Mazoku – a demon – and depending on what he felt like doing he might help you, or leave you to almost-certain death just when you really needed him. And of course, nearly everything was "a secret".
Right at the moment he seemed to be in a rather cheerful mood, and was sitting mid-air, grinning like a Cheshire cat, holding his staff in one hand and a thick wad of paper in the other.
"You wouldn't believe what I've got!" he exclaimed.
"What?" Lina asked, rather annoyed.
"Oh, just the scripts for next season." He waved the wad of paper at her, before flipping through it. "It says here that Luna–"
"LUNA? What about Luna?" Lina exclaimed. If there was one thing Lina Inverse was scared of, it was her older sister, Luna. (If there were two things Lina Inverse was scared of, it was Luna Inverse and slugs – but that's beside the point.)
"It's a–"
"Don't say it's a secret!" Lina yelled.
"Oh, alright…" he paused, before grinning even wider. "Sore wa himitsu desu."
Lina sighed, and was seriously contemplating whether it was worth reducing the house to rubble for the sheer pleasure of blowing Xellos sky-high. She was distracted from her thoughts when Naga burst out laughing over something-or-other in Ranma.
"Hey Lina, how'd Naga get out of the cupboard?" Gourry asked.
"He let her out." She pointed to Xellos.
The purple-haired demon-priest shrugged. "Well, you did lock her into the cupboard outside my room–"
"Alright, we'll lock her in a different cupboard this time." Lina walked over and opened the broom cupboard. Naga got up to try and make a run for it.
"Gourry?" Lina asked.
Gourry nodded, before grabbing Naga's arm. Lina grabbed the other, and the two of them shoved her into the cupboard. Gourry struggled to hold it shut while Lina cast a lock-spell on the door. Naga tried to fight her way out, but eventually gave up, cast a lighting-spell and continued reading Ranma.
Just then a scream came from the other side of the room:
"Namagomi!"
Nobody had to look over to see who it was or who they were screaming at. Filia stood in the doorway, holding her mace and glaring at Xellos, her dragon-tail sticking out from underneath her skirt.
"I'll be going now." Xellos commented, before vanishing into thin air, narrowly missing being hit by Filia's mace.
Like Xellos, Filia was not human despite her appearance. Unlike Xellos, the blonde girl was a Ryuzoku – a holy dragon – and had a strong dislike of Mazoku, Xellos in particular. She couldn't keep her human form perfectly either – her tail tended to pop out when she was angry.
"I am going to kill him if he dares come in here again." she announced.
Just then the door slammed open and a very excited girl came rushing in.
"Miss Lina! Mister Gourry! Miss Sylphiel! Miss Filia!" Amelia exclaimed, "I have the most wonderful news!"
"What, did you bring about the end of injustice?" Lina asked, grinning. Amelia had a huge obsession with justice – not as much as she used to, though; she'd matured and – for the most part, anyway – quietened down in the several years they had known each other. She was Naga's sister, and the resemblance showed. Even so, Lina had been pretty surprised when she finally found that out.
"Oh, this is even better, Miss Lina!" Amelia exclaimed. "Zelgadis and I are getting married!"
"You are? Congratulations!" Lina could hardly believe it. She'd known for ages that Zelgadis and Amelia liked each other, but she'd been wondering if Zel would ever get up the courage to admit it. Apparently he had.
In the meantime, Zelgadis himself had arrived. If you weren't used to Zel, he looked like a monster. He'd been human once, but had been cursed – now he was part golem and part demon, with blue, rocky skin and pointed ears. But if you were used to him, he was perfectly normal – as normal as people around here got, anyway.
"Hi Zel," Lina said. "Amelia just told us the news. That's wonderful!"
Zel smiled shyly – he never did like being the centre of attention – and put his arm around Amelia.
Just as Lina was wondering that things were taking a turn for the better and today might not be so bad after all, several things happened. The first was that Naga – having finished with Ranma and returned her attentions to the magically-locked cupboard door – cast the Flow Break, a spell that cancelled out other spells in the area. The second was that Xellos, who had been floating there the whole time, invisible, was no longer invisible and no longer floating – resulting in him falling several feet to the floor. The third was that, in the process of falling several feet to the floor, Xellos accidentally hit Amelia on the head with his staff, knocking her out. The fourth was that, having struggled into a sitting position, Xellos found himself face-to-face with a very angry Filia, mace in hand, dragon-tail lashing furiously. The fifth was that Sylphiel dropped the camera in fright. And the last, of course, was that Naga came bursting out of the cupboard, laughing maniacally.
"Namagomi!" Filia shrieked.
"Amelia!" Zelgadis cried, kneeling on the floor next to her. "Speak to me!"
"Miss Lina?" Sylphiel asked nervously. "I think the camera's broken."
Lina groaned, and wondered what in the four worlds she had done to offend the gods so much as to deserve this.
~~~
Well, I certainly hope that made some kind of sense. The story kind of wrote itself – I could swear the characters were acting beyond my control! The essay topic originally instructed to have a character give their opinions on the other characters, which was what Lina was going to do – but as I was feeling that pure monologue would be rather boring, Gourry kinda wandered in at the end and started talking. And then Amelia burst in. And then Xellos let Naga out of the cupboard and everything went on from there…