Cloak*and*Dagger: Hey all! Sorry this chapter took longer then the rest,
but the weekend was hectic (We moved my other sister into collage) and I
really didn't have time 'til now. I just thought that I should let you
know, school is starting back up on Wednesday (Sept. 4) so updates will
become slower, but I promise you I will not stop! Now on with the story!!!
Thanks To:
Saki: I'm glad you like my story it makes me all warm and fuzzy to know that I have at least one fan! I'm kinda sad though, you were the only person to review my last chapter. Oh well, I'm just glad you did, I look forward to reviews. Oh yeah and thank you for reviewing my Original Novel, I do plan on continuing that sooner or later. Well happy reading!
Disclaimer: I own Lakota, (That's probably the only original creation of mine that you'll actually be seeing now) that's it! I do not own Slayers, but I'm still waiting for my manga to come.
Chapter4: Personal Space Issues. (On Both Our Parts I'm Guessing)
*Re-cap* So let's see, last we left off I was sleeping, no? Ah yes, I suppose you want to know what it is I saw when I woke up. Zelgadis. That's all I could see. I was quite disoriented when I woke up, and I had every right to be. When I had fallen asleep I had been leaning on one of the couches armrests, but now I was leaning on Zel! Now don't get me wrong, it's not as if he isn't comfortable or anything, but this was just weird. He had his arm around my waist, and I was snuggled up against his chest, and his other arm was resting on my shoulder. He was still asleep from what I could tell, so if I could just move then I could have saved the both of us from ample embarrassment, but as luck would have it Zel turned out to be much stronger than me (even in his sleep, go figure, guess this means I have to start working out again.)
As there was absolutely *no* hope of me getting out of that position without waking anybody up, I decided to figure out how this could have happened without me realizing it. I couldn't come up with a single answer. The couch has four seats on it, and when I had fallen asleep Zel and I had been on opposite ends. There just wasn't any logical explanation! Now for you to understand what I am about to do you must know this: It bothers me when I don't know something, and this was starting to become unbearable. Mustering all of the courage I had I decided that I would wake Zel up so we could sort though what had happened.
How did I wake him up? I poked him. Repeatedly. 'Oh yeah this is gonna be great,' I thought sarcastically, 'I'll poke to death, and when he finally wakes up the first thing he'll see is me in his arms. I can tell this is going to result in one of those personal space issues, where we won't even *look* at each other for a month, and even after that we'll never be able to look each other in the eyes. Yeah I can see it now, Zel and I having conversation, while we're both looking at the ground.' That had to be one of my weirder mental rants. Well hey, everybody has their quirks, mine just happens to be neurotic.
Anyway, my poking never did wake Zelgadis up. Well really it never had a chance to, you see Lina and Gourry chose that very moment to walk in, and well it was Lina's surprised shout that woke him up, as well as Gourry yanking the two of us apart. Have you ever seen a tie-dye shirt? You know how it goes from bright orange to that deep fire-blood red? Well that was the color that our faces had chosen to adopt (I'm still not clear why *I* blushed, I mean I was totally innocent in this entire matter!) The next few minutes was devoted entirely to Gourry asking question after question, without actually waiting for the answer, and Lina looking at me (of all people it had to be me!) and giving me one of those evil smiles that makes you shiver (I was pretty sure at that point that her eyes were saying 'Once Bozo stops yakking, you and I are going to have a nice *long* chat.' It was rather disconcerting, really.
It took about ten minutes but Gourry finally ran out of hot air, and Zel seized this chance to explain himself, while blushing madly. I'll spare you from what was actually said, but it went along the lines of that once I was asleep I started sleep walking, so he had to hold on to me so I wouldn't go anywhere. That all took quite a bit of time, and even *I'm* not sure if it was true (and I can almost always tell when people tell the truth!), though Zel didn't seem like the type of person to lie. Anyway after he was done explaining, Lina turned her gaze to me for verification. I laughed a little (to break the tension) and said, "I dunno," with a Gourry type grin across my face. Breakfast (we had picked up some food up at the mall) was eaten in a very strained silence, and after that dishes were cleaned and put away Lina pulled me up to my room, while Gourry dragged Zel into the family room. Whatever was coming up next was obviously a joint effort between the two to get the truth out of us.
"So?" asked Lina.
"So what?" I asked confused.
"So what happened??" she asked impatiently.
"Nothing," I knew she wasn't going to settle for that by the way she 'hrmph'-ed at me. "Well what do you want me to say Lina? I fell asleep, and when I woke Zelgadis was doing his impression of a human blanket, ok? I have no clue what happened, hell, I'm just as confused as you are!"
"Oh come on, there has to be more to it than that!" She said, almost sounding like she was pleading with me.
"'Fraid not."
"Darn it," she sighed. "I was hoping for something remotely interesting. I mean we just met Zel, but still sometimes his personality seems twice as hard as his skin." We continued to talk after that, while I changed my clothes, and made a mental note never to wear that shirt again (next time I buy a shirt with a symbol for luck on it I'm going to make sure it has the symbol for good right in front of it!) **************************************************************************** ***
The rest of the day passed by without much happening, until the night. That was when my parents decided to call. At the time I had been introducing the three to pizza and DragonballZ, when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi honey, how are you?" it was my mom, and sounding a bit took perky at that.
"Oh, *hi mom*," I said stressing the words so that the gang would be sure to shut up, "I'm fine. So what shakin' up by your lot?" I only talk like this when I'm nervous, (My parents still haven't figured it out) and I almost laughed when the three of them each pulled a face that clearly said they had no clue as to what that was supposed to mean.
"Everything's fine, dear. We're probably going to start making our way back tomorrow," my eyes widened at this, and I started to go into total panic, "though there's some construction on route 70 so it may take a bit longer than usual."
"So, like two to three days, right?" I asked. I was praying to god with all of my might that within that time I'd be able to find a place for Lina, Gourry, and Zel, because once my family was back they sure as hell wouldn't be able to stay at my house.
"Probably closer to two day, honey, you know how your father travels." Yeah no stops, and always the most direct route possible.
"Ok then." The rest of the conversation was pointless mother to daughter chat.
As soon as I hung up the phone Lina was on me like a hawk, "What happened? What did she say?"
I sat down on the floor, and bit into my slice of pizza. "My family's gonna be back in two days," I said through a mouthful of meatballs and black olives.
The reaction was rather laid back for the situation. We all sat back down and started eating, talking between bites about what we could do. "How about you stay at one of my friends houses?"
"Nah, we don't really know them," Lina argued.
"You didn't really know me either," I pointed out.
"Well, that was different, we were transported here after fighting Shabranigdu."
"So you've fought him already, then?" I asked, not realizing the consequence of those words. Sure I had told them that they were a cartoon show, but I had never mentioned that I might have possibly known their future. I just wish that I would think before I speak, because that look that I was getting from Lina was creepy.
"How much do you know?" Zel finally asked.
"Unfortunately, probably more than you, at this point," I said measuring my words as carefully as I could.
"WELL WHAT HAPPENS?!?" Lina had grabbed the front of my shirt, and was shaking me violently. Both Gourry and Zel were trying to get her to let go of me.
"I...can..show...you...the .. tape...I...have!" I choked out between shakes. Now you see this was a bit of con work on my part. I still had the DVD box set, but I had stowed that away before our little mall adventure, and I wasn't too keen on letting them see their future. So I decided that I would just roll that tape I had rented, it only had the first four episodes, and that wasn't enough to endanger the plot line. If they ever got back, that was. Lina let go of me, looking triumphant while I popped the video into the player. I sat down on the floor next to Gourry who, for the first time since he had arrived, didn't ask me a barrage of questions.
We watched in silence, though for different reasons. They were busy reminiscing on how their journey had begun, but I was using this time to think. Would they ever be able to get back to their world? I mean they didn't even know how they got to mine, so obviously whatever happened couldn't be repeated. I just didn't know what to do. By the time I finally started to pay attention it was the end of the fourth episode, when Lina and Zelgadis went through the chase scene. It was always one of my favorite parts, so I just sorta stopped my train of thought and watched the whole thing through. When it finally ended, the screen went blank, but the credits didn't roll like they were supposed to. Instead the black screen seemed to be sucking all the light out of the room.
From where the TV had been (or where I think it had been) came a funny crackling sound (like when the cable goes out) and suddenly there was this large silver vortex in front of me (it kind of looked like a vertical whirlpool.) Inside the vortex, at the very back, was what looked like a memory of mine. It was of when I was really little, like 7 or 8, and it was Christmas time. It was quickly replaced by another memory, and then another, until my whole life was flashing by in a blur. I looked around me to see if the guys were seeing what I was, but they weren't there. Turning back around and looking at the vortex I felt this inexplicable desire to be back in those memories, to feel those feelings again.
Slowly I walked towards the silver whirlpool, but once I reached the edge the images changed, and it was no longer my past, but instead it was flashing episodes of the Slayers. I tried to back away, but by then it was too late, a wind from within the vortex blew out, and then sucked me in, (If you've ever seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, it was kinda like when Jack was sucked into Christmas town.) and for the third time in less than a week I blacked out. **************************************************************************** ***
When I came to I was lying on my back on a dirt path, and Lina was standing over me with an odd smile on her face.
"What are you grinnin' pyro?" I asked while lifting myself off the ground.
"You," her smile, if possible, widened.
"My aren't we blunt. Ok then, exactly *why* are you smiling?" She didn't say anything, just handed me a mirror from inside one of her cloak pockets (yes they got their clothes back.) What I saw in the mirror made my jaw drop, because it certainly wasn't me that I was seeing! It just couldn't be! But there staring back at me was an impish face, with the eyes and ears of Zelgadis. The skin color was still the same, maybe a bit lighter, but the hair threw me totally off track! It was bright aqua that was a little more blue than green, and was pulled into a high ponytail that went down to my knees. Really the only thing about me that looked the same was my eye color, and the way my bangs framed my face. "No.. y-you have to be joking me. That isn't me, it-it looks like something out of Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings!"
"I have no clue what you're talking about, but this look definitely suits you!" Lina said excitedly.
I didn't respond, instead I took a deep breath and looked down. Once again my jaw dropped at what I saw (I was thinking about letting it stay in that position.) What I was wearing was similar to Lina's outfit. My body suit was black, and I had a dark purple tube-top looking thing on top of that, as well a purple skirt. Now the body suit I had only went down to about my knees, so I had black leather lace up boots that came up to about mid calf. My gloves were black, but fingerless like Zel's, and I had a cloak that was black on both sides with some sort of foreign language sewn on the bottom hem in silver thread. It was almost like Lina's cloak, except that I didn't have those shoulder guards, and mine had this elaborately designed fastening chain on it. I was armed with a sword fastened at my hip, and on the inside of my cloak (against my back) I could feel the sheaths of two daggers.
"Well, this is... different," I said feeling confused.
"It looks like you'll have to travel with, you haven't got anywhere else to go," Gourry said in a sympathetic way.
It was the only option I had at the time, so obviously I couldn't refuse. I was still in denial anyway. Less than ten minutes ago I had been a normal teenager, and now I was an elf or sprite or whatever you call them. This sure was going to be interesting. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Cloak*and*Dagger: So, whaddya think????? PLEASE LET ME KNOW, AND REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway I'll see ya all next chapter, which'll be who knows when!
Thanks To:
Saki: I'm glad you like my story it makes me all warm and fuzzy to know that I have at least one fan! I'm kinda sad though, you were the only person to review my last chapter. Oh well, I'm just glad you did, I look forward to reviews. Oh yeah and thank you for reviewing my Original Novel, I do plan on continuing that sooner or later. Well happy reading!
Disclaimer: I own Lakota, (That's probably the only original creation of mine that you'll actually be seeing now) that's it! I do not own Slayers, but I'm still waiting for my manga to come.
Chapter4: Personal Space Issues. (On Both Our Parts I'm Guessing)
*Re-cap* So let's see, last we left off I was sleeping, no? Ah yes, I suppose you want to know what it is I saw when I woke up. Zelgadis. That's all I could see. I was quite disoriented when I woke up, and I had every right to be. When I had fallen asleep I had been leaning on one of the couches armrests, but now I was leaning on Zel! Now don't get me wrong, it's not as if he isn't comfortable or anything, but this was just weird. He had his arm around my waist, and I was snuggled up against his chest, and his other arm was resting on my shoulder. He was still asleep from what I could tell, so if I could just move then I could have saved the both of us from ample embarrassment, but as luck would have it Zel turned out to be much stronger than me (even in his sleep, go figure, guess this means I have to start working out again.)
As there was absolutely *no* hope of me getting out of that position without waking anybody up, I decided to figure out how this could have happened without me realizing it. I couldn't come up with a single answer. The couch has four seats on it, and when I had fallen asleep Zel and I had been on opposite ends. There just wasn't any logical explanation! Now for you to understand what I am about to do you must know this: It bothers me when I don't know something, and this was starting to become unbearable. Mustering all of the courage I had I decided that I would wake Zel up so we could sort though what had happened.
How did I wake him up? I poked him. Repeatedly. 'Oh yeah this is gonna be great,' I thought sarcastically, 'I'll poke to death, and when he finally wakes up the first thing he'll see is me in his arms. I can tell this is going to result in one of those personal space issues, where we won't even *look* at each other for a month, and even after that we'll never be able to look each other in the eyes. Yeah I can see it now, Zel and I having conversation, while we're both looking at the ground.' That had to be one of my weirder mental rants. Well hey, everybody has their quirks, mine just happens to be neurotic.
Anyway, my poking never did wake Zelgadis up. Well really it never had a chance to, you see Lina and Gourry chose that very moment to walk in, and well it was Lina's surprised shout that woke him up, as well as Gourry yanking the two of us apart. Have you ever seen a tie-dye shirt? You know how it goes from bright orange to that deep fire-blood red? Well that was the color that our faces had chosen to adopt (I'm still not clear why *I* blushed, I mean I was totally innocent in this entire matter!) The next few minutes was devoted entirely to Gourry asking question after question, without actually waiting for the answer, and Lina looking at me (of all people it had to be me!) and giving me one of those evil smiles that makes you shiver (I was pretty sure at that point that her eyes were saying 'Once Bozo stops yakking, you and I are going to have a nice *long* chat.' It was rather disconcerting, really.
It took about ten minutes but Gourry finally ran out of hot air, and Zel seized this chance to explain himself, while blushing madly. I'll spare you from what was actually said, but it went along the lines of that once I was asleep I started sleep walking, so he had to hold on to me so I wouldn't go anywhere. That all took quite a bit of time, and even *I'm* not sure if it was true (and I can almost always tell when people tell the truth!), though Zel didn't seem like the type of person to lie. Anyway after he was done explaining, Lina turned her gaze to me for verification. I laughed a little (to break the tension) and said, "I dunno," with a Gourry type grin across my face. Breakfast (we had picked up some food up at the mall) was eaten in a very strained silence, and after that dishes were cleaned and put away Lina pulled me up to my room, while Gourry dragged Zel into the family room. Whatever was coming up next was obviously a joint effort between the two to get the truth out of us.
"So?" asked Lina.
"So what?" I asked confused.
"So what happened??" she asked impatiently.
"Nothing," I knew she wasn't going to settle for that by the way she 'hrmph'-ed at me. "Well what do you want me to say Lina? I fell asleep, and when I woke Zelgadis was doing his impression of a human blanket, ok? I have no clue what happened, hell, I'm just as confused as you are!"
"Oh come on, there has to be more to it than that!" She said, almost sounding like she was pleading with me.
"'Fraid not."
"Darn it," she sighed. "I was hoping for something remotely interesting. I mean we just met Zel, but still sometimes his personality seems twice as hard as his skin." We continued to talk after that, while I changed my clothes, and made a mental note never to wear that shirt again (next time I buy a shirt with a symbol for luck on it I'm going to make sure it has the symbol for good right in front of it!) **************************************************************************** ***
The rest of the day passed by without much happening, until the night. That was when my parents decided to call. At the time I had been introducing the three to pizza and DragonballZ, when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi honey, how are you?" it was my mom, and sounding a bit took perky at that.
"Oh, *hi mom*," I said stressing the words so that the gang would be sure to shut up, "I'm fine. So what shakin' up by your lot?" I only talk like this when I'm nervous, (My parents still haven't figured it out) and I almost laughed when the three of them each pulled a face that clearly said they had no clue as to what that was supposed to mean.
"Everything's fine, dear. We're probably going to start making our way back tomorrow," my eyes widened at this, and I started to go into total panic, "though there's some construction on route 70 so it may take a bit longer than usual."
"So, like two to three days, right?" I asked. I was praying to god with all of my might that within that time I'd be able to find a place for Lina, Gourry, and Zel, because once my family was back they sure as hell wouldn't be able to stay at my house.
"Probably closer to two day, honey, you know how your father travels." Yeah no stops, and always the most direct route possible.
"Ok then." The rest of the conversation was pointless mother to daughter chat.
As soon as I hung up the phone Lina was on me like a hawk, "What happened? What did she say?"
I sat down on the floor, and bit into my slice of pizza. "My family's gonna be back in two days," I said through a mouthful of meatballs and black olives.
The reaction was rather laid back for the situation. We all sat back down and started eating, talking between bites about what we could do. "How about you stay at one of my friends houses?"
"Nah, we don't really know them," Lina argued.
"You didn't really know me either," I pointed out.
"Well, that was different, we were transported here after fighting Shabranigdu."
"So you've fought him already, then?" I asked, not realizing the consequence of those words. Sure I had told them that they were a cartoon show, but I had never mentioned that I might have possibly known their future. I just wish that I would think before I speak, because that look that I was getting from Lina was creepy.
"How much do you know?" Zel finally asked.
"Unfortunately, probably more than you, at this point," I said measuring my words as carefully as I could.
"WELL WHAT HAPPENS?!?" Lina had grabbed the front of my shirt, and was shaking me violently. Both Gourry and Zel were trying to get her to let go of me.
"I...can..show...you...the .. tape...I...have!" I choked out between shakes. Now you see this was a bit of con work on my part. I still had the DVD box set, but I had stowed that away before our little mall adventure, and I wasn't too keen on letting them see their future. So I decided that I would just roll that tape I had rented, it only had the first four episodes, and that wasn't enough to endanger the plot line. If they ever got back, that was. Lina let go of me, looking triumphant while I popped the video into the player. I sat down on the floor next to Gourry who, for the first time since he had arrived, didn't ask me a barrage of questions.
We watched in silence, though for different reasons. They were busy reminiscing on how their journey had begun, but I was using this time to think. Would they ever be able to get back to their world? I mean they didn't even know how they got to mine, so obviously whatever happened couldn't be repeated. I just didn't know what to do. By the time I finally started to pay attention it was the end of the fourth episode, when Lina and Zelgadis went through the chase scene. It was always one of my favorite parts, so I just sorta stopped my train of thought and watched the whole thing through. When it finally ended, the screen went blank, but the credits didn't roll like they were supposed to. Instead the black screen seemed to be sucking all the light out of the room.
From where the TV had been (or where I think it had been) came a funny crackling sound (like when the cable goes out) and suddenly there was this large silver vortex in front of me (it kind of looked like a vertical whirlpool.) Inside the vortex, at the very back, was what looked like a memory of mine. It was of when I was really little, like 7 or 8, and it was Christmas time. It was quickly replaced by another memory, and then another, until my whole life was flashing by in a blur. I looked around me to see if the guys were seeing what I was, but they weren't there. Turning back around and looking at the vortex I felt this inexplicable desire to be back in those memories, to feel those feelings again.
Slowly I walked towards the silver whirlpool, but once I reached the edge the images changed, and it was no longer my past, but instead it was flashing episodes of the Slayers. I tried to back away, but by then it was too late, a wind from within the vortex blew out, and then sucked me in, (If you've ever seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, it was kinda like when Jack was sucked into Christmas town.) and for the third time in less than a week I blacked out. **************************************************************************** ***
When I came to I was lying on my back on a dirt path, and Lina was standing over me with an odd smile on her face.
"What are you grinnin' pyro?" I asked while lifting myself off the ground.
"You," her smile, if possible, widened.
"My aren't we blunt. Ok then, exactly *why* are you smiling?" She didn't say anything, just handed me a mirror from inside one of her cloak pockets (yes they got their clothes back.) What I saw in the mirror made my jaw drop, because it certainly wasn't me that I was seeing! It just couldn't be! But there staring back at me was an impish face, with the eyes and ears of Zelgadis. The skin color was still the same, maybe a bit lighter, but the hair threw me totally off track! It was bright aqua that was a little more blue than green, and was pulled into a high ponytail that went down to my knees. Really the only thing about me that looked the same was my eye color, and the way my bangs framed my face. "No.. y-you have to be joking me. That isn't me, it-it looks like something out of Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings!"
"I have no clue what you're talking about, but this look definitely suits you!" Lina said excitedly.
I didn't respond, instead I took a deep breath and looked down. Once again my jaw dropped at what I saw (I was thinking about letting it stay in that position.) What I was wearing was similar to Lina's outfit. My body suit was black, and I had a dark purple tube-top looking thing on top of that, as well a purple skirt. Now the body suit I had only went down to about my knees, so I had black leather lace up boots that came up to about mid calf. My gloves were black, but fingerless like Zel's, and I had a cloak that was black on both sides with some sort of foreign language sewn on the bottom hem in silver thread. It was almost like Lina's cloak, except that I didn't have those shoulder guards, and mine had this elaborately designed fastening chain on it. I was armed with a sword fastened at my hip, and on the inside of my cloak (against my back) I could feel the sheaths of two daggers.
"Well, this is... different," I said feeling confused.
"It looks like you'll have to travel with, you haven't got anywhere else to go," Gourry said in a sympathetic way.
It was the only option I had at the time, so obviously I couldn't refuse. I was still in denial anyway. Less than ten minutes ago I had been a normal teenager, and now I was an elf or sprite or whatever you call them. This sure was going to be interesting. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Cloak*and*Dagger: So, whaddya think????? PLEASE LET ME KNOW, AND REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway I'll see ya all next chapter, which'll be who knows when!