Chapter 6
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"Ooh..." Lina groaned painfully as she struggled to sit up. "What happened?"
"My best guess is that we were knocked out with some sort of drug," Zelgadis replied from beneath Gourry. "Uh...Gourry...if it wouldn't be too much trouble..."
"Oh, sorry, Zelgadis," Gourry laughed, hauling himself to his feet.
Zelgadis suppressed an irritated and pained groan as the swordsman's foot connected with his head.
"Ouch!" Gourry shouted, clutching his foot as pain from kicking a rock radiated through it.
"Foul fiend who preys on the innocent! Prepare to taste the wrath of the Pacifist Crush!"
This ill-timed shout drew the attention of the other three. Lina sighed, half in irritation, half in dismay, and half in fondness, as Lina had never claimed to be a mathematician, at the sight of Amelia sitting bolt upright briefly to deliver her speech, before flopping back down and cuddling the end of her cape, her nap never disturbed for a moment.
"Great," she sighed. "So, what do we do?"
"It seems to me that this 'Erik' must be out of practice with this whole villain thing," Zelgadis said with a wry smile. "All we have to do is leave the basement the way we came, and go for the law."
Gourry, who had been taking a moment to walk around, just to see if such a thing could be done, now came to a rest next to Zelgadis, Lina, and the still-asleep Amelia.
"Uh, Zelgadis?" he ventured, quite relieved that someone, at least, seemed to have a plan of action, and hoping that the rather odd thing he had noticed about their surroundings wouldn't hinder what seemed to him to be a good plan indeed.
Zelgadis turned to the taller man.
"Yes, Gourry?"
"Was the basement on a roof before?"
"What?!" Lina exclaimed, leaping to her feet and deciding that Amelia could just wake herself up. She stared about her helplessly, noticing for the first time that there was a lot more wind, and a far better view of the stars and the full moon – she shivered slightly, wondering if this were some sort of omen, as if they didn't have enough to worry about – than the basement had held. "Oh, great. Does anyone know the way off of the roof?"
"The roof?" Amelia repeated, rubbing her forehead as she sat up dizzily. "Weren't we in the basement a minute ago?"
Lina gritted her teeth, managing with some effort to be patient with her friend, who had missed the last few minutes by being asleep.
"Yes, Amelia, we were in the basement before."
Amelia nodded, accepting this easily, possibly as a result of still being half asleep.
"Okay. I thought so." Then she blinked. "So, how did we get up to the roof?"
"I'm guessing that Phantom guy brought us up here," Gourry replied casually.
Lina, Zelgadis, and Amelia nodded in agreement, and then Lina came to a dead halt.
"Hey, hold on just a minute here! How do I know what a crazy old man like that did with my innocent young body on the way up?! Oh, he's gonna die!"
"Don't worry, Lina," Zelgadis said with a slight smirk. "As I recall from the story, our Phantom seems to believe that gentlemen prefer blondes. And gentle, sweet, ladylike ones at that. So you certainly have nothing to worry about."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lina demanded, her eye twitching slightly. "And before you answer, remember that we're on a roof right now."
"Yeah, speaking of that," Gourry interjected, whether with the simple good timing that dumb luck achieves every now and again, or deliberately trying to head off the untimely death of Zelgadis, "how are we gonna get off this roof?"
"Why don't we just use the door?" Amelia asked, reaching for the doorknob of a little door set into the brick wall at one end of the roof.
Lina watched in horror, and then leapt at the smaller girl.
"No! Don't touch that!"
"Oof!" Amelia intoned sadly as the two went sprawling over the hard, rough concrete of the roof. "Miss Lina! What was that for?"
"Hey, you go and do a crazy thing like that, and I've got no choice," Lina replied angrily. "Seriously, Amelia, what were you thinking?"
"Um…really, I was just thinking that we might be able to used the door to go into another room," Amelia replied with no thought of being sarcastic.
"It seems reasonable enough to me," Gourry interjected with a shrug.
Lina shook her head impatiently.
"No way! Amelia, haven't you ever read those novels?"
"What novels?"
"Oh, you know the kind," Lina replied, waving a hand exasperatedly. "The ones where the brave heroes wake up somewhere weird and it looks like the door is the way out. But the door is always trapped, and it's how the first victim always dies! Seems like your kind of book to me!"
"If you mean those Gothic horror novels, Miss, Lina, I never read those," Amelia said airily. "Daddy thought they would make me weak-minded and melodramatic and give me nightmares, so he gave me a book of fairytales instead."
"Suddenly, a lot of things make sense," Lina muttered, rubbing her forehead wearily. "Because, of course, a girl getting turned into sea-foam because the guy she likes doesn't like her back and she can't bring herself to stab him in the heart is a lot better."
"Oh, The Little Mermaid! Wasn't that story beautiful and romantic?" Amelia sighed, hands clasped and eyes shiny.
"Uh…right. You're sounding like Martina again," Lina informed her, sweatdropping hugely. "Oh, well. At least she didn't say that about the one where the queen ate her stepchildren's flesh to stay young forever."
"Never mind that," Zelgadis said, suppressing a grumble. "If we aren't using the door, Lina, what do you suggest we do instead?"
"Look for another way out!"
Zelgadis looked at Gourry. Gourry looked at Amelia. Amelia looked at Zelgadis.
"Sure," Amelia finally sighed. "It sounds so easy when she says it…"
Four hours of searching later proved substantially that the task of finding another way off a roof several stories from a deserted city street, when the door was off-limits, magic was useless, and nothing even remotely ladder-like was presenting itself for use, was easy only in theory.
For the weary four had indeed discovered magic to be essentially useless the hard way, when Lina had climbed up onto a certain rather hideous statue, several feet high, and leapt off. The point of this was to see whether or not a levitation spell would work. The fact that she hadn't thought of just trying from where she stood may be seen as a testament to the strength of the drug that this mysterious Phantom character had used on the unfortunate group.
Either way, this made Lina a very miserable girl for a while after, given that healing magic didn't seem to work any better than a levitation spell.
"Look on the bright side, Miss Lina," Amelia had suggested. "At least you didn't try to jump off the roof."
Lina had shot Amelia a poisonous glare, crouched, and leapt, and soon after, Amelia had found herself every bit as miserable as Lina was.
By this point, though, everyone was more or less healthy again and still combing the roof inch by inch in hopes of discovering its secret.
"Zel, would you stop punching the ground?" Lina pleaded, exasperated noticing the signs of a sizeable headache returning. "You sound like a kid in a temper tantrum."
"I'm looking for a trap-door," he informed her coolly, not altogether liking this comparison. "One of these tiles has to be concealing something."
"You've already checked all the tiles!"
"Do you have any better ideas?"
"Maybe Mr. Erik didn't leave us a way off," Amelia suggested, turning from her careful examination of the hideous statue that had earlier caused Lina so much pain.
"Don't be silly, Amelia. What's the fun in that?"
"I don't think this "Phantom" is worrying himself about whether we have fun or not," Zelgadis pointed out, rubbing his fist and pouting slightly. It didn't break the skin, but repeatedly punching concrete for half an hour did sting a little.
"Not us, Zel. Him. It's no fun for him if he leaves us no way to get any farther than the roof. He seems to me like he's got a mad scientist type of mind."
"Well, he's certainly mad, if nothing else," Amelia agreed.
"Hey, maybe he's just a little annoyed," Gourry suggested.
After shooting him three incredulous looks, the rest of the group ignored this idea, leaving him to the task of leaning casually against different points of the wall. It seemed to Gourry that he had once before gotten them out of a somewhat similar situation of looking for a trapdoor using this method.
"Anyway, the whole point of this is to see how far we get. We know he's got traps set up all through this building, right down to the basement we were in before. What would the point be of setting up all those traps, if we couldn't possibly get any farther than this?"
"I suppose you're right, Miss Lina. But maybe he just forgot to add the way out? Really smart people can be really absent-minded about the weirdest things, you know."
"Well, before we go complaining to the customer service board of the United Villains of Everywhere, we should probably check out every possibility," Lina said dryly.
"I still think we should try the door," Gourry informed everyone.
"We know what you think, Gourry," Lina said through gritted teeth. "And if you want to risk your neck when there's probably a trap waiting for it, go ahead. Just don't get the rest of us involved."
Gourry shrugged.
"Okay," he agreed, walking over to the door and tugging it open.
Lina, Zelgadis, and Amelia waited with bated breath.
Nothing happened.
Gourry closed the door and opened it again, thinking that perhaps he had caught the trap off-guard after four hours and it might be nice to give it another chance.
Nothing happened.
"I don't believe it!" Lina blustered, storming over to the door as Gourry started down the staircase that lay beyond, followed by Zelgadis. "We've been looking through ever speck of dirt on this roof for the way off, and the whole time, it was staring us in the face! Whose bright idea was it to leave the door alone anyway?" she demanded of no one in particular.
"Yours," Amelia replied immediately, despite the fact that the question had not been addressed to her, as she was indeed someone in particular.
"Shut up!" Lina shot back. "Now, let's get outta here!"
"You mean, 'let's go to save Meg,'" Amelia corrected.
Lina shrugged.
"Sure, whatever."
Amelia had just begun to launch into a speech concerning the necessity for greater loyalty to friends, even friends that one had just met, when an urgent shout drifted from the stairs.
"Guys!"
"What's up, Gourry?" Lina called back as the two girls started down slowly and carefully down the darkened staircase.
Both came instinctively to a halt as two eerily glowing eyes peered up at them from the bottom of the stairs, their glow outlining the silhouettes of the two men, swords already drawn.
"Greetings, visitors," a deep voice, obviously that of a very old man, half-boomed and half-wheezed as he took a torch from his belt, struck it on the stone wall, and then next moment held the flaming object up. "It's been a long time since I've met anyone in these parts of the opera house."
"Whoo, this gets a high creep-factor," Lina noted, eyeing the shadows that the torch cast over the man's leathery face.
"Where are we, anyway?" Amelia asked hesitantly, glancing about the narrow, musty smelling hallway, its thin wooden floorboards covered by a rather threadbare old rug extending down to the door at the other end.
"Ah, a good question," the old man chuckled, brandishing a mop. "But a better question might be, 'shall you get out of here alive?'"
"Yeah, that would be a good question, too," Gourry agreed, nodding thoughtfully.
Lina gave a groan of irritation.
"Gourry! Never mind that," she commanded, pushing past the swordsman and glaring at the mop-wielding maniac. "FIREBALL!"
The sense of relief and odd disappointment that filled the janitor must only be imagined when nothing happened.
"Uh…Miss Lina…magic sealed," Amelia reminded her delicately.
Lina ground her teeth. Why was life so filled of this little annoyances?
"Okay, Plan B. Gourry, you know what to do."
"Right," Gourry agreed, that odd gleam flashing into his eye as he withdrew the Sword of Light.
[Five rather bloody seconds, deleted for reader protection, later…]
"You know, Gourry," Zelgadis began, eyeing the bits of old man littering the hallway, "he might have just been a janitor working the night shift."
"That's impossible," Amelia declared. "What innocent janitor has such evil, menacing dialogue?"
"That was evil and menacing?" Gourry muttered to Lina.
"Never mind," Lina said, rubbing her forehead. "Let's just get out of here. I'm sure the fun's just beginning."
Nodding their agreement, the group set off down the hallway and, upon reaching the door at the end, entered and started down the staircase that lay beyond with perhaps slightly less discretion than was strictly advisable.
"Ah, so you're finally here," the tall masked, caped man called smoothly from a shadowy corner of a large, grand room replete with gleaming black marble floors, tapestry-covered walls, and mirrored ceilings, as the four reached the bottom of the winding staircase. "How wonderful."
"Yeah," Lina agreed. "Once we got the hang of opening a door and climbing down some stairs, your first test was no sweat."
"There are little bits of that first guy everywhere up there!" Gourry added.
Erik blinked.
"Er…'that guy'? I must ask, my friend, which 'guy' do you speak of?"
"W-well, the old guy, waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs!" Gourry replied, beginning to get a little nervous.
"Oh, no," Amelia murmured. "I knew that poor old man was just a custodian!"
Zelgadis cleared his throat.
"Actually, didn't I know that? Didn't you say that-"
"Hey, you didn't see his teeth," Lina told him angrily, regardless of who had indeed been the one to 'say it'. "They must have been at least four inches long!"
"Yes, poor Gustav does have something of a deformity," Erik sighed, emerging from the corner and approaching the group slowly. "It gives him – or rather, gave him, I assume – some understanding of what it is I go through. Ah, well. Since you have caused me great mental anguish by killing Gustav, I will redouble my efforts to see to it that you never leave this opera house!"
"Yeah, he sure seems broken up about it," Lina noted dryly as Erik once again exploded into an evil laugh with just the right amount of insanity in it to make Gourry, Zelgadis, and Amelia exchange first alarmed, then impatient, and finally downright annoyed glances.
"Yes, we get your point," Zelgadis finally broke in. "You don't need to go on for ten minutes for people to understand that you're evil!"
"And how would you know that, young man?" Erik asked lightly. "Have you ever been evil?"
"Suffice it to say, we've dealt with the breed."
"Ah. I see. Well, hopefully your 'dealings' have taught you something, my friends, because the night is just beginning. After all, I would hate for you to give up so quickly, just when I was beginning to enjoy myself."
With that, he swirled his cape grandly about him, and the next moment, a burst of colourful smoke filled the air, along with the coughing and sputtering of four very miserable adventurers over the foul-smelling blue, pink, and purple billows.
"Don't tell me," Lina said flatly when the smoke had cleared to reveal only blank space where Erik had been standing. "You were raised by gypsies, right?"
"I believe that my past is irrelevant, my dear," the disembodied voice called, seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "Think no more on that which is not your business, and enjoy the masquerade! If you can find the correct door, you may progress. If not…I do hope you feel in the mood to dance, for you shall spend the rest of your lives at it!"
"Now, I'm pretty sure none of this was here before," Gourry noted, gazing curiously around the room, which had been filled suddenly with light, music, and laughter, as well as crowds of people, all in finely tailored, gaily coloured suits, dresses, and costumes of all sorts, chattering merrily to one another over the general chaos of a party.
"This…feels way too familiar," Lina noted, turning slightly green as she looked slowly about the room. "And I've got this feeling that it's gonna end even worse than last time."
"How could it possibly be worse than you Dragon-Slaving down the building, finding out we've been in a theme park the whole time, and taking off in a leaky boat?" Zelgadis demanded, inching away from a large, middle-aged man who was eyeing him interestedly.
Lina blinked.
"Zel, what are you talking about?"
"Mr. Zelgadis!" Amelia murmured. "You're doing it again! That doesn't happen until next season!"
"Sorry."
"Oh, look, guys, we don't have time for these weird side-conversations right now! We've got to find our way out of this room before someone puts me in a dress and makes me dance!" Lina exclaimed frantically.
"Excellent!" Erik's voice proclaimed, quite pleased. "Let the ball begin, then!"
"Wow," Gourry noted, looking about him curiously. "Is it just me, or did the music get a whole lot more ominous?"
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End Notes: Okay, I'm not terribly thrilled with this chapter, but it was kind of a "had-to-get-it-out-of-the-way" chapter, so I hope you can bear with me.
Also, having re-read this story since improving my writing a wee bit and finding that I was not at all happy with it (bad and/or clichéd characterization, minimal detail, no real plot to speak of, no compensating ridiculous humour), I feel that a complete rewrite of the first four chapters is in order. I think I'll be making that my Christmas holiday project.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Bye! [Waves cheerfully, then bounces away to do something productive…like write another fan fiction]