Disclaimer: Slayers doesn't belong to me, it belongs to its copyrighted and rightful owners. Duh.
Author's Notes: Well, if you noticed, I never really disclosed where the high school of the Slayers gang really is, but it's somewhere in the States (because Japan doesn't have lockers! . Yeah, lame reasoning). I won't specify though, because honestly, that would make the story lose its "magic", if it had any in the first place. Besides, it's fun guessing. Hehe.
***
"See, I told you the Jackie Chan movie was cool!"
"You did?"
"Yeah, I did, you jellyfish!"
"That jellyfish that we ate was great!"
"We didn't eat any jellyfish…"
"Wait, didn't we eat Chinese?"
"Does Chinese food have any jellyfish?"
"What?! Jellyfish in Chinese food?!"
"But you just said that the jellyfish we ate last night was great!"
"We ate jellyfish last night?!"
Lina Inverse sighed. "I'm getting nowhere talking with you, Gourry." She had a smile on her face though. Sure, Gourry Gabriev might not be the best guy to talk about Shakespeare with, but he's a good friend and his goofiness makes him fun to be around with. Well, Lina's not really sure if she should describe his stupidity as goofiness, but hey, one shouldn't judge someone by the size of his brain.
"Where are you getting to?" Gourry asked, perplexed.
Lina sighed again. "Never mind, Gourry, let's just get to class, or Mr. Fire will bite my head off again," she said, slamming her (dented) locker as hard as she can, causing several people around them to jump slightly. Lina, in turn, glared at them. They looked at her (dented) locker and decided that they didn't want to know what happened to it. "What's he got against me anyway?"
"Who's Mr. Fire?"
"Our Social Studies teacher, you weirdo."
"Oh!" Gourry said, slamming his fist into the palm of his hand, thus letting go of the books he was holding, and thus making the books fall down on the floor.
Lina rolled her eyes. "You're such a jellyfish." She stooped down to help Gourry pick his textbooks up. When she picked up one of the textbooks from the floor, however, she found something else beneath it. "Huh? What's this?"
Lina picked the thing up and eyed it. It's a Statue of Liberty mini-figure that was obviously bought from a souvenir stand somewhere in Staten Island, where the real Statue of Liberty was at. Lina flipped the figure over and saw that there was something written at the bottom of the figure. "What does it say here?" she muttered to herself. "'Property of Rezo. Return if found. Please call 1-800-I-found-this-figure-and-I-want-to-return-it-to-Rezo to return. Black magic somewhere in here. Steal this and die. Or cursed. Look, just return it alright?!' Huh? What kind of a stupid mini-figure is this?"
Lina showed the figure to Gourry. "Is that a type of food?" Gourry asked her instead.
Lina palmfaced her face and sighed. "No, Gourry, it's a souvenir. Apparently someone dropped it or something. Why the heck would anyone bring it to school?"
"So they could eat it?" Gourry suggested.
"No, Gourry!" Lina shouted, exasperated. "It's not edible, okay?"
"Does that mean I can't eat it?" Gourry asked, still perplexed.
"I don't know how you passed your middle school tests, Gourry, I really don't," Lina said, shaking her head. "Well, we better return this or we'll get cursed too. Whatever that means. Do these people still believe in magic or something? Idiots."
The bell rang.
"Well, we better go or Mr. Fire will have my hide."
"Mr. Fire?"
"Social Studies?"
"Oh!"
***
Social Studies was horrid; Mr. Fire picked on Lina on account of her messing up his class yesterday. Well, it wasn't Lina's fault that the guy can't even take a joke! Okay, so maybe she wasn't joking, she was making fun of the boring class, but hey, the truth hurts. He just has to learn to deal with it. Jeez, some people, Lina mused to herself, shaking her head.
Her next class, gym, wasn't too bad. After all, Lina's an athletic girl. Well, she's most likely to beat up people, anyway, so that kind of makes her athletic in the long run. They didn't exactly do anything yesterday, but today they're preparing to play volleyball. Lina was ecstatic that she got to hit a ball around the court, never mind the rules of the game itself.
As gym is co-ed, and Lina shares every single one of her classes with Gourry, this means that Lina will either be playing against Gourry or playing with Gourry. As it is, she's playing on the same team with Gourry. They actually made a good pair, what with Lina being really aggressive and Gourry being pretty much passive. Gourry, for all his stupidity, actually had a knack for sports. He seemed perfectly poised for battles (Lina remembered the seniors—she saw them today and ran away when they saw her, apparently thinking that Gourry was with her) and for sport games like these. While Lina injured everyone in the court, Gourry played almost professionally.
"Wow, Gourry, you're pretty good!" Lina exclaimed when she saw Gourry scored another point against the team they're playing against.
Gourry grinned sheepishly. He almost looked cute doing so. Not that Lina thinks so or anything. Other girls on the sidelines seemed to think so though. Every time Gourry scored another point for Lina's team, they would giggle and cheer for him. And every time they did so, Lina rolled her eyes and made rude motions towards the girls. For some reason, they giggled at that too. What's wrong with girls these days?
Unfortunately for Lina, the girls had actually thought she was a guy, and some of them actually thought that Lina was cute for a short guy with long red hair. Had Lina known this, the girls would have been pulverized, of course.
"Gourry, over your head!" Lina shouted unnecessarily as the volleyball sailed over Gourry's head.
Gourry hit it effortlessly and scored another point, gaining another round of giggling from the giggly girls. Lina shot the girls an annoyed look. She was even more annoyed when they giggled even harder. "Would you girls stop giggling already?!" she shouted.
The girls had stopped giggling immediately, their eyes widened. They began whispering to each other, but their whisperings were loud enough to be heard by everyone in the gym.
"Did you hear his voice?" a blond whispered to a brunette melodramatically.
"Like, it's so high-pitched!"
"It sounded like a girl's!"
"Oh, I know!"
"I am a girl dammit!" Lina shouted, her face red from anger. She flashed her (nonexistent [the author was thwacked by Lina]) breasts to the girls. "See?!"
The silence that followed was deafening. Then all hell broke loose. Several guys fell on the floor laughing, while the rest didn't even bother trying to close their wide-open jaw. The girls, meanwhile, squealed, giggled, shrieked and some even dared to point to Lina and laugh at the same time. The teacher just gawked at Lina, apparently too disgusted to even bother to tell her off for flashing everyone with her (nonexistent [*thwack*]) breasts.
"Oh my God! She's a transvestite!"
"Hahaha, would you look at how small those are?!"
"For the love of God, pull your shirt down!"
"My eyes! I'm blinded!!!"
"Lina!" a shocked Gourry shouted. "You're a girl!"
Lina went over to her backpack (which she insisted that she didn't want to put in her designated gym locker) and took out the first thing she grabbed and threw it in the general direction of the boys. She took out a lot more and threw it in the direction of the girls afterwards. Several students were seen unconscious, while some screamed and ran away at Lina's show of aggressiveness.
Lina had apparently saved the best thing to throw for last. She took out the Statue of Liberty mini-figure that she had found this morning and prepared to throw it to Gourry when a voice shouted to her.
"WAIIIITTT!!!"
Everyone paused in mid-action and turned to the voice. It was a boy with a weird illness of some sort. His face was clear, but from the looks of it (since he's only wearing his gym shorts and a baggy T-shirt), his whole body was covered by some sort of skin illness. His skin is filled with blue-coloured patches everywhere, making him look as if he's a stone figure, when he's clearly moving. His hair was also a weird lavender colour.
"What's that you got in your hand?!" the boy shouted at Lina, making his way towards her.
"Oh, this?" Lina said, looking at the mini-figure she was holding. "It's just a figure." Then she got back into the act of throwing it to Gourry again before the boy held the wrist that was not in the act of throwing anything.
"Give it to me!" the boy said roughly, glaring at her.
"Ouch, you're hurting me you big buffoon!" Lina shouted, snatching back the figure so that the boy wouldn't be able to get it from her outstretched grasp. "Let me go! Are you made of stone or something?"
The boy gritted his teeth and frowned. "No, I'm not," he said. "It just looks like stone, you don't need to say it feels like stone too, you insensitive, flat-chested, second-rate girl."
"Aww, that does it! Why does everyone call me flat-chested?!" she said, preparing to launch her flying kick towards the boy.
"Because you are!" the boy said before dodging her flying kick. He appeared to have calmed down. "Now hand me over the figure."
"Not until you tell me your name and until you state your business with the figure, you dimwit," Lina said, fire in her eyes, her eyes narrowed. The guy really does look like a stone, what was she supposed to say?
"Oh, your insult is oh so wounding," the boy said, rolling his eyes. "I'm Zelgadis Greywords, and the figure is mine, so hand it back or suffer from the consequences, you flat-chested middle-schooler."
"Would you stop saying that?!" Lina said, stomping her foot on the ground. Gourry chose that time to come by Lina's side and try to "protect her", apparently still in his hero mode from yesterday's "rescue". He was rewarded with a thwack on the head as he came near Lina, though, for his "Lina, you're a girl!" remark. "How would I know you're the owner? It said here that I should return it to Rezo. Your name's not exactly Rezo is it? Oh, wait, don't tell me, Rezo's your nickname?"
Zelgadis' eyes narrowed. "No, Rezo's not my name or my nickname, thank God. But it is my figure, and Rezo is my—"
"Father? Uncle? Great great grandfather?" Lina guessed.
"Oh, shut up and give me the damned figure already!" Zelgadis shouted, losing his temper with Lina, as everyone else always does.
"Well, it certainly sounded like you wrote the inscription on the bottom," Lina said, smirking.
"Look," Zelgadis said, calming down again, "just hand me back the darned thing, and you won't have anyone after you, okay? Do you want to get cursed with this stupid blue spots too? Do you?!"
"Damn," Lina said, looking at the blue spots on Zelgadis' arms and shaking her head. "It takes a lot more to convince me that it comes from this stupid curse. What the heck? This is the new millennium, you know? There's no such thing as magic, or a curse or whatever else that's associated with it."
Zelgadis sighed. "Look," he said. "I'm going to make you an offer then, so that we could trade that figure with something else. Just… name your price."
"Heh, that's more like it," Lina said, grinning. "Okay, I want—"
"Miss Inverse! Mr. Greywords! Mr. Gabriev! You will all be serving detention this evening after school!" the gym teacher, Mrs. George, said, fuming as she looked around at the unconscious students around her. Those who weren't unconscious already ran out of the class. (They would've run out of the class even if Lina didn't start rampaging anyway. Dude, it's gym.)
"No, not again!" Lina shouted.
"Didn't we already have a detention yesterday?" Gourry asked Lina, his confused face on again.
"What?! Zelgadis Greywords do not get detentions, it is absolutely unheard of!" Zelgadis said to Mrs. George, glaring at her. "Undo the detention!"
Mrs. George ignored them all and went into her office, slamming the door and muttering something along the lines of "Why did I even become a teacher? For gym? Why is the sky blue? Why is this fic so stupid?" ["Hey!"]
"This is terrible! I've actually gotten myself into detention!" Zelgadis shouted dramatically as the crowd in the gym dispersed, changing into their usual clothes again. Zelgadis turned to Lina, glaring at her instead, now that Mrs. George is gone. "You were the reason I had to serve detention! Give me back my innocence!"
"Zelly boy, you never had any innocence," Lina said wryly.
"I'm made up of innocence," Zelgadis said airily. [Yes, I know, pretty uncharacteristic of him…]
"Of course you are, that's why you almost hit me when you tried to grab the mini-figure?" Lina questioned, grinning. "Look, we'll work out the details of this 'deal' you want to make with me at detention, since we're all going to be there anyway."
"What's the blond got to do with it?" Zelgadis asked, rolling his eyes towards Gourry, who's picking up the astray volleyballs and putting it back where it belonged.
Lina scoffed. "If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have found the mini-figure," she said. "So you should be grateful. And he's my friend. So he's going to be there, whether you like it or not."
Zelgadis blinked. "I didn't know a tough girl like you have boyfriends, too."
"What?!" Lina exclaimed. "He's not my boyfriend!" she shouted at him. "He's my friend, are you deaf or did the blue spots grow in your ears too?"
Zelgadis just grimly stare at her, and Lina was taken aback by his stare. "We don't need to discuss it at detention," he said after a while. "We have biology together. With the blondie too."
"What?" Lina raised an eyebrow. "We do? I never noticed you."
"Yeah, well," Zelgadis said, shrugging. "I try to get all the back seats in all of my classes."
Lina nodded. "Well, we still need to talk in detention," she said. "Unless you want to get another detention by Mr. Hawke for talking in bio."
"Fine," Zelgadis said. With that, he walked away into the guys' changing room.
"Hey, Gourry, let's go, we have math after this," Lina shouted to Gourry, who was still picking up the leftover volleyballs. "Ms. Wallen is going to freak if we're late for her class, even though she's always late herself."
"Wait up!"
***
Sure enough, in biology, Zelgadis and Lina never got to talk about their deal with each other since Mr. Hawke's watchful eye roved over the students as usual. By the time detention arrived, Lina had pretty much thought of what she wanted if she could ever get to trade it with the mini-figure. What the heck is so special about this thing anyway? she wondered. It's just an old figurine, looks like it's from 5 years ago or something… And who's this Rezo guy? Lina's curiosity reached its peak when she decided that Zelgadis has to pay up a lot for him to get this figure back.
"Lina, over here!" Gourry called from the detention room after school that day.
"I know Gourry, we were in there yesterday," Lina said, rolling her eyes.
"Oh, yeah," Gourry said, grinning. "Zelgadis is in here already."
"Oh?" Lina smirked. Looks like he wants the thing as badly as she wants to know why this thing is so important to him. Well, he's going to have a tough time.
Zelgadis was wearing his trademarked frown and glared when he saw Lina coming in. "Okay, let's get this over with, and then we'll deal with detention, and I'll never have to deal with you ever again," he said all in one breath, sighing when he was done.
"Err, okay," Lina said, sitting down next to Zelgadis, ignoring the teacher who's glaring at them. Bet the teacher's mad he had to take care of detention. Most of the time he ended up sleeping on his desk, anyway. Lina found that out just by being in detention for 5 minutes yesterday with Gourry. "Okay, first of all, I want to know why this thing is so important. And who's Rezo? Is this thing really cursed?"
"You asked too many questions," Zelgadis growled, but he sighed and slumped back in his chair. "First, tell me what the deal is."
Lina grins. "Well, let's see," she said, rubbing her hands together. "Okay, I want you to supply our lunch for the entire year, I want you to stop picking the seats at the back of every classrooms you go into, and I want you to tell me all the details about this thing, why it's important yada yada yada. And no skipping any information!"
Zelgadis blinks. "Hey!" he shouted. "That's too much demands! That thing's only a mini-figure!"
"Oh, really?" Lina grinned viciously. "Apparently it's not just a mini-figure to you, or you wouldn't be so enraged about it. It's either you agree with the deal or the deal's off altogether and I'll smash the thing so that you'll never be able to revive it ever again."
Zelgadis groaned. "Why did you guys have to pick it up? Why can't it be some other nice kids?" he muttered, mostly to himself. Then he straightened up. "Okay, I'm willing to divulge some information about the figure, but that's it!" Lina started to protest, but Zelgadis interrupted her. "There are loads of things to tell you about it, and I'm not even sure I should tell you about it but I need that thing back, or else."
Lina frowns and settled back in her chair, Gourry sitting beside her and snoring. (He slept in detention yesterday too. Other than that, there are only two other seniors in detention, and it was the same seniors as yesterday too.) "Okay, fine," she said. "But you can't leave any details out. And I'll be able to tell!"
"Oh, sure you can," Zelgadis said dryly. Lina's stare only made him sweat. "Fine, no details left out. Okay, about that stupid mini-figure—"
"Stacy," Lina stated.
"What?"
"Stacy," she repeated firmly. "That's the figure's name so that we won't have to say mini-figure all the damned time."
"What's up with Stacy?"
"What's wrong with Stacy?"
Zelgadis sighed. He knew that it's a bit pointless to argue about the name, so he continued. "About Stacy. Yes, it's cursed, by my grandfather, and my grandfather is, of course, Rezo. He's a wizard. I'm serious, don't laugh!"
For Lina was actually laughing at the remark of Rezo being a wizard. "Oh, you can't expect me to believe that?"
Zelgadis held out his arm firmly and showed her the blue spots all over it. "Dammit, this is the proof," he growled under his breath. "It'll never go away until I return the figure—"
"Stacy."
"Stacy!" Zelgadis strangled out, exasperated. "I stole it from him a few years ago, okay? And ever since then, the curse took effect and now I'm cursed with these bloody spots! And I can't get rid of it. The doctors have racked their brains trying to figure out how Rezo did this to me. I finally found Stacy somewhere in my boxes, so now I'm going to return Stacy to him, okay?"
"What? That's it?" Lina frowns.
"Yes," Zelgadis said, smirking.
"But you said it was a long story!"
"I didn't; I just said it was personal, and I don't think I would've told anyone else if it wasn't for the fact that you have it now," Zelgadis muttered. "And now you know the story, so please, for the love of God, would you just give Stacy back to me?"
Lina giggled. "You just called the figure Stacy."
"Well, that's the name you gave it!" Zelgadis said, feeling harassed.
"Who's Rezo, honestly? Is he really a wizard?"
Zelgadis sighed. "Yes, he is, I'm serious about it. I'm sort of a wizard too," he said quietly. "I'm a shaman, you can say."
"Huh, interesting," Lina said, smiling. "You know, I kind of have the feelings that I could do a bit of magic myself too."
"Yeah, you'd probably be the crazy sorceress," Zelgadis said tiredly. "Anymore questions?"
"How come I didn't get cursed by the same thing?"
"Because I was the one who stole it from Rezo," he answered. "If you had stolen it from Rezo, instead of stealing it from me—"
"Excuse me!" Lina said, enraged. "I found it for you! I saved your sorry butt!"
"Okay, okay," Zelgadis said, holding up both of his hands to pacify things a bit. "I get it. Anyway, if you had stolen it from Rezo, you would've gotten the curse too. So the only way to reverse the curse is to, of course, return it back to Rezo. It took me years to figure that out, when I suddenly remembered about stealing the beloved Statue of Liberty mini-figure that you called Stacy from Grandpa Rezo. I didn't think that the curse thing was serious, like you, so I never paid any mind to it. A few days later, I look like this. My face is strangely unaffected, but the rest of my body isn't."
"I see," Lina said, nodding. "Interesting. So is this like real magic and stuff instead of the card tricks or whatever?"
"Good God, yes, it is," Zelgadis said, shuddering. "To think that people would stoop so low as to doing card tricks… That's not even magic!"
"Okay, I get the point," Lina said. "So. You want it back?"
"Do you have any other questions?"
"Well, no not really," she said, beginning to hand Stacy back to Zelgadis. But she pulled it back towards her and grinned. "But I might have some questions that I haven't thought of later on. I bet that you're going to stay away from me from now on, so how am I supposed to ask the questions?"
"That's not fair, the deal doesn't state that—"
"Hey, I make the rules around here!" Some things never change.
Zelgadis harrumphed. "Fine," he said grumpily, folding his arms. "You just have to give me Stacy back, and if you ever have any burning questions on your mind regarding Stacy or whatever"—at this he rolled his eyes—"I will be available for questioning. Are you happy? I'll be in your bio and bio lab anyways. Not to mention theatre and French."
"What?!" Lina sputtered. "How come I never noticed you?"
"One—we've only been in school for two days," Zelgadis said dryly. "Two—I chose the seats at the back, remember? Three—in theatre, we didn't do anything yesterday 'cause it was the first day and we didn't do anything today because Mrs. Fraser was absent. Are you done throwing me the 20 questions yet?"
"No, I'm not," Lina said, curling her lips. "But I will come back to you once I can think of any questions." And with that, she handed back Zelgadis the mini-figure, Stacy. She slapped Gourry on the back. "Hey, Gourry, let's go!"
Gourry snorted and woke up, drool on his chin. "Huh? What? Pizzas to deliver?"
Lina grinned. "Yeah, that's right, let's stop by your pizza place, huh?"
"Wait, detention's not over yet," Zelgadis said, his forehead creases.
Lina snorted. She jabbed her thumb in the teacher's general direction. The teacher who is supposed to watch over detention has already fallen asleep. The two seniors that were in detention with them before, too, had already gotten out of there. "Do you really want to stay in here, Zel?"
Zel? Zelgadis thought, crinkling his nose. What the hell? Where does she get off to, giving me nicknames and everything? "Well, no, but—"
"Funny, you don't struck me as a goody-goody two shoes," Lina said, smirking. She got up from her seat and motioned for Gourry to follow her. "You want to follow us to the pizza place or what?"
Zelgadis curled his lips up and followed the dynamic duo out of the classroom silently.