A/N: -__________________________________________________-  Getting near the end now.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that isn't mine to own.

Disguises?  We Don't Want No Stinkin' Disguises!

            "What," Lina furrowed her eyebrows.  "What are you talking about?"

            Angelina turned to avert her gaze from everyone else's.  "I shouldn't be the one to tell you – I don't want to give you the wrong idea."

            Everything was quiet for a period afterwards.  Gourry repeated Lina's question, "So, where's Liona?"

            Surprisingly, Luna answered, "She's not far from here, but she's in another dimension."

            Now everyone's eyes turned to her.  Lina immediately demanded, "Where?  Where is she?"

            No one could tell, but Luna closed her eyes briefly to concentrate before informing them of her answer.  "Angelina is correct.  Her presence is very weak indeed; even with my powers, I can barely sense her.  If she is referring to Liona's mind as another dimension, then that is undeniably where I sense her spirit."

            Zel contemplated this and asked to the roomful of people, "Is there any way we can get there?"

            Angelina spoke up again.  "I know a spell, but Liona has to be ready to accept us."

            Lina, Gourry, and Zel immediately asked, "Can you cast it for us now?"

            Angelina nodded.  "I can do the first step to it.  From there, we will be transported whenever Liona's subconscious awakens."

            Luna was starting to get irritable.  "Stop talking nonsense already and do it."

            Angelina smiled wanly at Luna, and shakily stood up again.  Before starting, she asked, "Just so I know, is there anyone in this room that /doesn't/ want to go?"

            As the room was dead silent, Angelina took that as a negative.  She took a deep breath and began.  As she started to make intricate hand gestures, a white magical circle immediately appeared.  The details of the blinding design were not that of the traditional white magic circle, but something else entirely.  It appeared to be a long white dragon symbol coiled up like a snake in the center of a ying-yang sign.  For five full minutes, all Angelina did were her hand gestures as sweat started to glisten down the side of her face.  About halfway in, she started mumbling a long spell in an ancient dialect.  Near the end, they heard all of their names listed aloud, ending with the name of the spell, and it was done.  Angelina flopped to the ground as the circle dispersed.  When their names had been called, they had each been surrounded by a holy white aura that faded away at the same time as the circle.

            Baffled, Lina gazed at her hands as the light faded.  She looked up to see Angelina completely exhausted, leaning against the wall.  Blake chose this time to speak up.  "Hey…what did you do?"

            Instantaneously, five pairs of eyes were on him.  Like a reflex, sweat formed and dripped down the back of Blake's head.  Angelina's eyes were closed with weariness.

            Zel suspiciously questioned, "Who are you?  And how did you get in here?"

            Blake answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "I came at the same time as them."

            He jerked a thumb in Val and Angelina's direction.  The dragon duo nodded in affirmation, though they appeared too tired to do much else.

            Luna walked towards him and loomed over his sitting form.  She looked more forbidding then ever, especially to Blake.  "I sense a great evil in your aura.  From what clan do you originate?"

            Blake blinked slowly a few times.  Suddenly his face lit up, slightly.  "Oh!  You mean where did my family come from?  Well, I never really paid attention, so I really couldn't tell you."

            Luna suddenly grabbed him by the front of his collar and growled menacingly, "Listen, mister.  I don't care much for your attitude.  You should know to respect your elders.  /Now/…  What do your mother and father do for a living?"

            Okay, now Blake was scared.  He started to stutter, but before he could get one word of his actual answer out, they all started to shift.  At first, they didn't exactly move, but their bodies phased slightly in and out like holograms with glitches.  Before long, all seven of them phased out completely, leaving the room as empty as a ghost town on one of its lowest tourist days.

            Lina-tachi appeared in a strange dome area.  The curved walls were swirling shades of purple, pink, red, and a tint of black.  The apparently marble floor matched the walls.  As they looked around, they noticed that other than them, the only things in sight were a slightly raised platform to their right, and a strange box straight ahead.  I say it was strange because it looked like one of those mystery boxes magicians use to have their assistants disappear from one box and appear in the other.  The only differences were, it was twice as big, and there /was/ no other box.

            Gourry turned to ask Lina a question, but immediately forgot it when he saw Lina.

            "Lina!"  His sudden shout made everybody jump.  Lina warily turned to him and asked back, "What?"

            "Y-you're young again!"

            Lina's reflexive response was to hit him upside the head.  However, she found that she couldn't, for Gourry's head was high above hers.  They all looked over to see Gourry on a white horse, dressed as a knight in shining armor, so to speak.  Lina, as well as everyone else, was baffled by this.

When Zel remarked and reminded her that Gourry's statement was true, Lina looked down on herself and saw her reflection playing back to her on the shiny floor.  It was true!  Lina looked as she did at the time just before Liona was conceived, so approximately 17 going on to 18.  By then, Lina had matured much more since her days of regular travel, and she was all for her "new look".

            Moments later, Lina looked up to agree to Zel; she couldn't help but let out a laugh.  As Lina continued to giggle, Zel looked down at himself and was saddened to see… his chimera self…IN A BUNNY COSTUME! (^_^ You know, the one he wore when they went to the haunted doll mansion place)  A stressmark immediately appeared on his cute little white head.

            They looked around to see how the others had fared.

            Angelina had simply grown two large feathery, white wings out of her shoulder blades, and a bright golden halo was hovering over her silvery-white head.  She had already been wearing a flowing white gown, L-sama only knows why.

            Val looked nothing like what he usually was.  For one thing, he was in complete dragon form, from his flaring nostrils to his flailing tail.  The only thing was…he looked like a version of the supreme elder – complete with a long beard, bushy eyebrows, and wrinkles all over his black scales.

            As for Luna, she was exactly the same as before albeit slightly younger if anything.  The differences were minimal.  Luna was wearing her purple waitress uniform, and it fit as well as ever.  To the well trained eye, one would notice that her hair was 1/8 of an inch shorter than it was a mere five minutes ago.

            Lastly, Blake was, to be put bluntly, dressed as the common bandit, dirt and all.  He wore a torn red bandana around his forehead.  His hair was black at the roots and changed gradually to gray and then white at the very tips of his bangs.  Blake's vest was black with gold trim and had a dragon stitched into the back of it.  He wore nothing underneath the vest but a dragon head tattoo on his left arm.  He had on black drawstring pants with a tear at the kneecaps, and a ragged design at the bottom cuffs.  To finish it off, his black traveler boots were worn and covered in a layer of dirt.  Oh, I had never described him in detail before, have I?  Well then, let me finish by saying that Blake always had this ensemble on, but you didn't notice it because he wore a black tunic over his vest that covered his whole torso.  Also, his bandana was used to fasten the tunic around his waist.  To top it off, he always wore a long, tattered cape as well, complete with rusty shoulder guards.  So wouldn't he look completely harmless to the untrained eye?

            Lina counted off her fingers as she shortly described them all, "Let me get this straight.  We have here, the beautiful, genius sorceress, Lina Inverse," She paused to look at Gourry, "Um… A knight in shining armor…I guess," Lina grinned with glee when she turned to Zel, "Zelga-bunny-chan!"  The blush already present on his cheeks burned ten shades darker.  Lina ticked off her fingers as she continued with a slight sweatdrop, "Where was I?  Oh, an undeniable angel, an ancient dragon, a waitress, and um…a bandit?"

            Luna looked around and said in a rather bored way, "That appears to be the case.  But who would have such a strange sense of humor as to do this to us?"

            Zel blurted out, "What are you talking about?!  You look the same as you did before.  Why do I have to wear this stupid getup again?"

            Luna frowned back.  "If you must know, my hair was cut 1/8 of an inch more than it's supposed to."

            While Zel actually dared to argue back and forth with /Luna/, Lina contemplated a theory before turning to Angelina and asking, "Hey, could this be part of your spell?"

            Angelina was the very image of peace.  Her hands were placed palm-to-palm in front of her chest, and her eyes were closed in a relaxed manner, as a light smile played at her lips.  Moving only her lips, but never losing her smile, Angelina answered, "I could not tell you with complete accuracy, for I have never performed this particular spell before."

            There was a collective facefault.  Lina voiced everyone's thoughts.  "So where the heck are we?!"

            The calm answer soon came.  "I was not finished.  Although I have never recited this spell before, there is no doubt in my mind that these new appearances have nothing to do with my spell.  However, I know that we are /indeed/ at our correct destination."

            Gourry thought hard before asking, "Where are we?"

            Angelina answered, "The 'lounge' so to speak of Liona's mind."

            Gourry held up a finger and asked, "If this is supposed to be Liona's mind, where's Liona?"

            Lina blinked.  "Hey, good point.  Where is she, anyway?"

            Suddenly, a voice from the shadows declared, "Intruders are not allowed."

            To which Lina immediately replied, "Who's there?!  Show yourself!"

            The voice, the same female voice, let out a laugh that reverberated all around the dome encasement.  As the figure stepped forward from the shadows, she seemed to giggle to herself as she replied, "Who?  Who, /indeed/.  I should be asking you the same thing."

             There was no other way to put it; when the figure came into the light, they were stunned.  She had a body like Luna's, but her looks definitely resembled Lina's.  Her hair was a fiery red, fiercer in color than that of Lina's.  Her eyes were the same red color, if not a bit darker.  She wore a low-cut, sleeveless, flowing gown of sparkling red that went down to her perfectly proportionate ankles.  On her feet was a pair of stylish red dress shoes that seemed to be a cross between platforms and high heels.

            Again, the lady repeated, "I must say, you certainly are persistent, but I stand by my previous statement: You are not allowed here."

            Gourry pointed out, "That's not what you said before.  You said 'Intruders are not allowed.'"

            She raised an eyebrow.  "Oh?  So we have a /listener/ in the midst.  How /intriguing/."

            She put a finger to her lips in thought, and as an afterthought, gave a wide grin.  In an instant, she phased out of sight.  While the group was looking left and right to see where she went, there was only a moments pause before she appeared before Gourry.  Before anyone knew what was happening, she leaned against his chest in a sort of sideways manner.  Stealthily, she snaked a hand up his arm to his face, lifted the helmet visor up, and touched his skin.  Immediately, the helmet dispersed like a hallucination.  Still grinning, she raised herself slightly, and with her whole hand in contact with his face, gave him a soul-searching kiss, on the lips.

            Lina immediately boiled up with rage, so much so that steam started to come out of her ears.  As quick as if it were reflex, Lina summoned and hurled an emotion-induced fireball.  In the few milliseconds that it took for the fireball to get from Lina to the mysterious woman, she broke the kiss and gave Gourry a quick wink.  The instant the fireball hit her, something very surprising happened; she crumbled to a pile of ash.

            Gourry's legs suddenly let up from under him; he fell down on his bottom.  His eyes were glazed over, he was shivering, and he was a few shades paler than he was before.  Lina bent down to check if he was okay.  The others gathered around them.  After receiving a shaky nod, they all looked at the pile of ash.  Gourry wondered if she had died.

            The instant he said that, the newcomer made like a phoenix and was reborn from ashes.  Reflexively, everyone backed up at least a foot or two.  Then, right before their eyes, the image of the woman split into two figures, so that two identical women were now in the center of the circle.  One of them shifted and disappeared, while the other sat down next to Gourry.

            Lina gave her a death glare that would have made lower-ranked mazoku fear her.  She only smiled happily with her eyes closed, in response.  Gourry glanced from the girl to Lina back and forth, before finally opting to back up as to not stand in their way.  Lina didn't notice this until the other girl made a point of it.

            She opened her eyes and pouted towards Gourry and said in a cutesy voice, "What's wrong, Gourry /dear/?  Has mean old Lina been bad to you?"

            Gourry nervously shook his head.  "You're both scary.  Like Fire and Ice."

            The girl added a puppy dog face to her look, complete with puppy eyes.  "Are you implying that in a battle, Lina would win?"

            Lina broke in, "Of course I would!  I'm the beautiful, sorcery genius after all!"

            Giving her a prolonged wink, the girl asked, "Are you confident about that?"

            "Of course!"

            She purred in response, "How confident?"

            Ever so slightly, Lina twitched a few times before answering, "I'd stake the life of my family on it."

            Immediately, Luna bonked her hard on the head with the broad blade of her sword, while it was still in the scabbard.  Lina immediately clutched her head and whimpered as she felt the prompt pain.  A dark smile suddenly appeared on the girl's face at that moment, just before she disappeared.  Her voice echoed, "You said it; prepare to test your luck."

            At that moment, the box began to shake…violently.

A/N: So what do you think?  I'm going against my original plans, but I still like it.  Maybe this will have to be a little longer after all.  Please review!