Slayers: Dragonne Balle
Chapter 3: From A New Lead to...A New World?
"Ah! Ow! N-no! AHHHH!"
"Mono Volt! Digger Volt! DRAGON--!!"
"Ms. Lina! Don't!"
Amelia and Gourry desparately tackled the furious sorceress down, the Dragon Slave dissipated as Gourry held onto her arms and Amelia covered Lina's mouth.
"You'll blow the whole town up, Lina!"
They did not want Lina to be the one responsible for destroying Zelgadis' hometown. After the incident that had occured with Lina deep frying Diol in the forest, they brought the unconscious old man back to Neirwei, Lina wanted to "question" him.
Diol, frizzled and bruised, a bump here, a bump there, cowered in the farthest corner possible. "P-please stop her! Please don't let her kill me!!"
Lina swatted Gourry and Amelia, not so gently, to the sides and into the wall. "For what you did to me, old man! Yer lucky to be alive right now!!"
"B-bu-but I DIDN'T do anything!!" Diol defended and proceeded to roll up into a ball.
"That doesn't matter! The point is: YOU WERE GONNA DO IT!" Lina's fang shot out dangerously as she loomed over the old man. If it weren't for Gourry and Amelia holding her back, L-sama only knew what beatings Diol would have taken already.
Zelgadis grunted. "Just let him go, Lina. I don't see the point in beating him to a bloody pulp."
Lina turned her evil glares at Zel. "Yeah well, YOU don't see the point, I do! He was gonna kill me with his stupid golem!"
"Which didn't appear," Zel pointed out.
"But it COULD have! Geez, Zel! Who's side are you on, anyway?" Lina sneered and cross her arms.
"Oh, are you saying you are weak enough to have lost to his whatever he called it golem?" Zel asked.
"It's called the Super Ultra Mega Golem..." Diol said from his corner, sulking. "The least you can do is remember the name..."
"You shut up, old man!" Lina turned to Zel. "And no, I'm not sayin' I'm weak enough to loose to his golem! All I'm tryin' to say is that he's a mad scientist, who's cooped up all day and night in his creepy lab that has L-sama knows what information about the world...doing L-sama knows...what"
Lina suddenly trialed off and looked at Diol then back to Zel. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Zel nodded, unperturbed at Lina's dawning realization.
An odd, cold shiver ran down Diol's spine. "Wh-what are you two thinking?"
Gourry and Amelia looked at each other with a confused question mark over their heads.
"What ARE you two thinking, Ms. Lina?" Amelia asked.
"A scientist, even if he's a lunatic," Zelgadis said.
"Hey! I resent that!" Diol complained.
Ignoring him, Zel continued, "...has a labratory of some sort."
"And if he has a lab, he has information," Lina supplied. She then turned to Diol. "Information that we might want."
Everyone turned to look at Diol. With Zel's glower, Lina's glare, Amelia's wondering look, and Gourry's still questioning look...well, maybe it was just Zel's glower and Lina's glare that did it, but Diol cowered some more in his corner.
"I-I-I don't have anything for you people!" Diol said.
"Oh, we won't know until we've checked it out for ourselves, right guys?" Lina said, with an evil smile on her lips.
"I-I know what you people are thinking," Diol said, lifting a shaky finger towards Zelgadis. "That man is part golem and you think I have the cure for it, right? I don't have anything like that. He's turned into what he is now by magic, not science. I don't deal with magic."
Somewhat cooled down, Lina said, "Hoh, seems like you know your stuff, old man. Good guess, but that's not what we're after."
"Yea! What we're after is information leading to another world," Amelia said.
Diol's eyes opened wider. "Another world..." It wasn't a question, but no one seemed to notice.
"So, we'd just like to look around in your lab, old man," Lina said cooly then changed her looks to pure evil. "I hope that's not a problem."
Diol's face ran pale and only shook his head as his only response.
With a slight nod and a satisfied look on her face, Lina said, "Alright! New destination: Diol's lab!"
"But...where is it, Ms. Lina?" Amelia asked with a wondering look.
Lina had a look of thought on her face then turned to Diol. "Where IS your lab, old man? Wasn't your lab destroyed some time ago?"
Diol dared to grunt and said, "Of course it was! Those good for nothing copies! I move around in several places. I've got a mini lab in a little cave between Sairaag and Neirwei. That's where I built the Super Ultra Mega Golem." He looked up in thought. "Come to think of it, I didn't program the Golem to 'think', I wonder if it failed to avoid a river between the forests? Ohh...maybe that was it..."
"That's enough! Where is your main lab?!"
Diol was startled out of his revelation and cleared his throat. "Oh, uh, my main lab is City of Miork." He let out a sigh. "Granted it's not as big as the one I had at the castle. That took my whole youthful life to build. Those good for nothing copies..."
Lina grunted. "Serves you right for making them in the first place."
"What are you guys talking about?" Gourry asked curiously.
"Uh, nothing..." Lina and Diol half pale, half sweatdropped.
"The City of Miork huh?" Zel said in thought. "Isn't that the City where all the scientists all band together?"
"Band together?" Amelia repeated.
"Because scientifical theories often clash with religion, it's the most popular city where you can find all the new technologies built and tested there," Zel clarified.
"Oh."
Diol nodded. "Yeah, that's the one."
"Well, how far away is it from here?" Lina asked.
"Um...about six days?" Diol replied.
"Seven days to be exact," Zel said. "Miork is four days south of Atlas City and we're three days north of Atlas City."
Lina groaned. "Ugh, more traveling as usual..."
Amelia smiled enthusiastically and said, "C'mon, Ms. Lina! It won't be so bad!"
"For someone with a sugar high like you, of course it won't be so bad," Lina mumbled.
"Hey, wait a minute." Everybody turned to look at Gourry, who was holding up nine fingers. "How did you figure seven days to that Moink City?"
Everybody facefaulted.
-----
Seven days later...with much complaining and stomach growling due to the lack of nourishment in hurrying to get to their destination, the gang arrived in Miork.
Upon arriving, everyone except Diol was a little disappointed that the city of Miork was no different than other cities.
"Well, what did you expect? Big metal golems doing humans' work?" Diol asked as the group walked across Miork.
"Well, to tell the truth," Lina replied, "yea, I expected SOMETHING different from other cities."
Miork, like a rather heavily populated kingdom, rustled and bustled with workers of all sorts: merchants, dockers, fisherman, sellsmen and women, the smithies, the innkeepers...etc. etc.
"We can't exactly practice our scientifical theories in public, you know," Diol said. "The church men highly opposes such things, thus making most of the villagers opposing it."
"Well, isn't that WHY Miork is full of scientists?" Amelia asked, looking around in the crowd.
Diol shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We're just here together to share theories and opinions. In truth though, we keep to ourselves most of the time..." Diol scratched his white beard. "Why DO we come here if we can't test out our theories in public?"
Lina sighed. "Look, we can care less about scientists' rights, much less scientists like YOU that wanted to use humans as their subjects."
"Hey! I resent that!"
"Yeah?! Well, what are you gonna do about it?!"
"Enough!" Zelgadis silenced the sorceress and the scientist. He turned to Diol and asked, "Where is your lab?"
"It's this way," Diol replied quickly and walked towards a direction that led to the heart of Miork.
Zelgadis followed silently.
Lina snorted, crossed her arms and followed Zel.
Gourry and Amelia looked at each other, shrugged, and followed the scientist, the chimera, and the sorceress.
-----
Again, the group was somewhat disappointed to stand in front of a quiant, white-bodied and red-roofed, house that is the supposed mad scientist's mini-lab.
"What DO you people EXPECT?!" Diol asked indignantly. "It's supposed to be a MINI-lab! I don't exactly have that castle anymore, yknow!"
He huffed and walked up the cement steps.
The group looked at each other and shrugged. They followed Diol into his little home. The inside was pretty much empty, except for a small couch in front of a fireplace, much like the couch in Rezo's house was set up. Diol walked to a small book shelf placed next to the fireplace and seemed to be looking for a book.
"Hey, old man! We're not here so you can look for some book!" Lina said, an eyebrow twitching.
Diol pulled out a green covered book and rolled his eyes at Lina. "Will you PLEASE calm down for a minute, my dear Miss Inverse?"
All of a sudden, the fireplace budged and swung around, revealing a passage way through the walls.
"A hidden passage," Zel commented, "instead of a magical ward. Nice."
Diol puffed up. "Of course! I'm a scientist, not a sorcerer."
Lina grunted. "Yeah, yeah, let's hurry up to your mini-lab, already!"
With that said, she pushed pass Diol and into the passage way.
Diol snorted. "I have never met a girl so impatient!" He followed her in with the rest of the group in tow.
Within a few minutes, they arrived in Diol's small lab. Although a small, evenly squared room, it was filled with scientifical gadgets, beakers, samples, odd chemicals, preserve jars, etc. etc. Paper filled with scribbles scattered all over the floor. Three shelves occupied the small room, two filled with book of all sorts, the other occupied by what seems like samples. Lina examined the third shelf and found that the shelves were full of jars of all shapes and sizes of samples. She noticed that they were labeled.
Ana...Anita...Beatrice...Bernard...Catherine...
Lina blinked. She looked a little closer to see what were in the jars and realized that these jars contained samples from HUMANS, not animals or plants like she'd seen in other scientists' labs. She scanned the other jars.
Lala...Lily...Lina...
Lina choked back a holler and snatched the jar of a strand of red-hair from the shelf. She turned to give Diol, who wasn't paying much attention, a cold glare.
Diol felt a sudden shiver down his spine but did not pay much attention to it and kept on reading his notes.
Lina looked back at the at the shelf.
Loren...Lulu?
She picked up the small bottle of blonde hair and said, "Hey, old man. Where'd you get this from?"
"Huh?" Diol looked at the bottle. "Oh, a man gave it to me. Name Balloon, something or other. Said that's from the love of his life. He wanted me to make a clone out of that." He sighed. "But as you can see, I don't have the proper equipment to do that so I told him to leave the sample with me so that when I do get the machinese built again, I can clone it for him...for a price of course."
Gourry choked on air. "Give me that!!" He snatched the bottle from Lina's hands. "Whatta sicko!!"
Lina and Amelia laughed.
"Isn't that sweet, Mr. Gourry?" Amelia said. "After all these years! Mr. Balloon is still in love with you!"
Gourry's face turned red with annoyance. "That's not funny!" He stomped away from the two laughing girls.
Zelgadis and Diol had question marks on their faces and shrugged, going back to sorting through scribbles and notes.
------
After a few hours, it was evident to the group that Diol's mini-lab held fruitless clues to their new quest.
Amelia, bored, looked around the lab. Lina was flipping through a book; Zel and Diol looked through what seemed like tons of papers; Gourry was trying to burn the bottle holding this hair. Amelia sighed and walked around the lab, looking here and there.
She noticed a mirror at the opposite wall of the entrance way. Wires and weird looking gadgets were hooked on the mirror, a long crack ran along from the upper right corner to the bottom left of the mirror.
"Mr. Diol," Amelia called out as she examined the mirror closely. "Why do you have a mirror in your lab?"
Diol looked up from his scribbles. "Oh, that thing?" He stood up from his seat and stretched, walking to wear Amelia stood.
"It was an old project I tried out," he replied and sighed. "I hate to admit it but it was beyond my scientifical comprehension how the project was to work."
Zel also looked up. "What was the project about?"
"I wanted to create a warp portal," Diol replied. He looked behind the mirror, a machine stuck out where the frame would have been. "Nothing completed. Just to get you from point A to point B. However, no matter what I try, it won't work."
"I see..." Amelia said and looked at the mirror. "A warp portal huh?"
"Gourry! Give that back!" Lina shouted and tried to snatch Gourry's long blonde hair.
Gourry avoided her attack and ran away with the bottle with the long blonde hair. "NO! What are you trying to do?!"
"I just wanted to make Balloon happy! C'mon, Gourry! It won't be too bad!" Lina said and chased after him.
"NO WAY!" Gourry dodged Lina's kicks and punches.
"WAY!" Lina said. "Digger Volt!!" A shot of electricity blew across the lab.
"Nooooo!!" Diol cried out. "MY LAB!!!"
"AH! Ms. Lina! Watch where you aim it!!" Amelia exclaimed as she barely dodged the bolt.
Fortunately, Lina's attack hit nothing but the mirror. It hissed, as if complaining, and smoked rose from the machines.
"My project!" Diol cried out.
Lina sweatdropped. "Well...it's not as though you were gonna finish it...heh heh." She rubbed the back of her head.
"What do you mean 'heh heh'?! You destroyed my project, you monkey of a girl!!" Diol shouted.
"MONKEY?!"
"I've had it up to here with your playing around, you half pint girl!"
As arguments and flames ensued, Amelia stood up from her place on the floor and noticed the mirror. It was smoking still from Lina's attack but Amelia also noticed that the crack was no longer there. Taking a closer look, the face of the mirror suddenly rippled like water.
Startled, Amelia took a step back but still leaned close to it. She ran her index finger along the mirror where the crack had been and found half her finger swallowed.
"EEEIIIII!!!" she shrieked and attempted to pull back. But along with her finger came some kind of substance that seemed to stick.
"M-Ms. Lina!!! Help!!!" she cried out.
The others quickly went to the girl's aid.
"What the hell is that?!" Lina shouted. No one had time to answer her as they all tried to pull Amelia away from the swallowing substance.
"I-it's not coming off!" Amelia panicked as the mirror started to pull her closer to it.
"Hold on, Amelia!" Zel said and gripped her waist.
Gourry pulled onto Zel's waist as Lina held onto Gourry's neck and tried to Ray Wing it with force.
They all lost their balance as the substance pulled forcedfully at Amelia, making them all fly into it.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" They all shouted and disappeared into the mirror, leaving only the old scientist blinking and panting rapidly.
------
Through the darkness, they all held on together, and noticed that they were falling down, fast.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" They all shouted as they noticed they can't stop no matter what magic they tried.
What seems like an eternity of yelling, shouting, praying, spell-casting, etc. They fell with a thud on dirted ground.
"Owwwww" Lina groaned with pain as she held her head.
"Wh-what was that?" Amelia asked.
"Help..." Gourry whimpered, his eyes swirling.
Zel grunted as he rubbed his rocked beck. He looked around. "Where....are we?"
The other three looked around, trying to answer his question. They were outside, that much was clear. In some sort of a forest near a mountain side.
They were startled as three figures appeared from the bushes.
A man and two younger boys.
"Where'd you guys come from?" The man asked.
The man walked towards them. The four was on their alert.
One of the two boys, with dark hair, stopped the man. "Dad, I think you're scaring them."
"Huh?" The man looked at his son and turned to look at the group. He gave an apologetic laugh and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Goku. Who are you guys?"
The four looked at each other.
"I'm Lina," the red-haired sorceress replied. "Um...where are we?"
The man, Goku, gave her a confused look. "Huh? Well, we're near my home."
The blue chimera shook his head in frustration. "No, no. Where is HERE? What is this land called?"
Goku's look grew more confused. "Um...well, we're on Peko Island. Are you guys from the city? You guys don't really know your way around, do you?"
The four looked at each other. They wore similiar distressed expressions.
"What...world are we on?" Lina hesitantly asked, reflecting on how stupid the question sounded.
"What are you guys talking about?" Goku asked in return. "We're on Earth."
Author's notes: Yes, yes! I know it was lame how I got them there! Horribly described with the mirror incident! D; but it was the best I can doooo!!!! I kept my promise didn't i? I got them there! :D Yaayyy! Again sorry for the delay! My net connection was cut off for a month or something!!! D; Hmm ok ok, on to my confessions of sins: 1) I have no idea where Goku and Chichi's house is so i made that up! Ok ok, ya peoples aren't here to read my comments! pls read the next chapter!!! :D
Chapter 3: From A New Lead to...A New World?
"Ah! Ow! N-no! AHHHH!"
"Mono Volt! Digger Volt! DRAGON--!!"
"Ms. Lina! Don't!"
Amelia and Gourry desparately tackled the furious sorceress down, the Dragon Slave dissipated as Gourry held onto her arms and Amelia covered Lina's mouth.
"You'll blow the whole town up, Lina!"
They did not want Lina to be the one responsible for destroying Zelgadis' hometown. After the incident that had occured with Lina deep frying Diol in the forest, they brought the unconscious old man back to Neirwei, Lina wanted to "question" him.
Diol, frizzled and bruised, a bump here, a bump there, cowered in the farthest corner possible. "P-please stop her! Please don't let her kill me!!"
Lina swatted Gourry and Amelia, not so gently, to the sides and into the wall. "For what you did to me, old man! Yer lucky to be alive right now!!"
"B-bu-but I DIDN'T do anything!!" Diol defended and proceeded to roll up into a ball.
"That doesn't matter! The point is: YOU WERE GONNA DO IT!" Lina's fang shot out dangerously as she loomed over the old man. If it weren't for Gourry and Amelia holding her back, L-sama only knew what beatings Diol would have taken already.
Zelgadis grunted. "Just let him go, Lina. I don't see the point in beating him to a bloody pulp."
Lina turned her evil glares at Zel. "Yeah well, YOU don't see the point, I do! He was gonna kill me with his stupid golem!"
"Which didn't appear," Zel pointed out.
"But it COULD have! Geez, Zel! Who's side are you on, anyway?" Lina sneered and cross her arms.
"Oh, are you saying you are weak enough to have lost to his whatever he called it golem?" Zel asked.
"It's called the Super Ultra Mega Golem..." Diol said from his corner, sulking. "The least you can do is remember the name..."
"You shut up, old man!" Lina turned to Zel. "And no, I'm not sayin' I'm weak enough to loose to his golem! All I'm tryin' to say is that he's a mad scientist, who's cooped up all day and night in his creepy lab that has L-sama knows what information about the world...doing L-sama knows...what"
Lina suddenly trialed off and looked at Diol then back to Zel. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Zel nodded, unperturbed at Lina's dawning realization.
An odd, cold shiver ran down Diol's spine. "Wh-what are you two thinking?"
Gourry and Amelia looked at each other with a confused question mark over their heads.
"What ARE you two thinking, Ms. Lina?" Amelia asked.
"A scientist, even if he's a lunatic," Zelgadis said.
"Hey! I resent that!" Diol complained.
Ignoring him, Zel continued, "...has a labratory of some sort."
"And if he has a lab, he has information," Lina supplied. She then turned to Diol. "Information that we might want."
Everyone turned to look at Diol. With Zel's glower, Lina's glare, Amelia's wondering look, and Gourry's still questioning look...well, maybe it was just Zel's glower and Lina's glare that did it, but Diol cowered some more in his corner.
"I-I-I don't have anything for you people!" Diol said.
"Oh, we won't know until we've checked it out for ourselves, right guys?" Lina said, with an evil smile on her lips.
"I-I know what you people are thinking," Diol said, lifting a shaky finger towards Zelgadis. "That man is part golem and you think I have the cure for it, right? I don't have anything like that. He's turned into what he is now by magic, not science. I don't deal with magic."
Somewhat cooled down, Lina said, "Hoh, seems like you know your stuff, old man. Good guess, but that's not what we're after."
"Yea! What we're after is information leading to another world," Amelia said.
Diol's eyes opened wider. "Another world..." It wasn't a question, but no one seemed to notice.
"So, we'd just like to look around in your lab, old man," Lina said cooly then changed her looks to pure evil. "I hope that's not a problem."
Diol's face ran pale and only shook his head as his only response.
With a slight nod and a satisfied look on her face, Lina said, "Alright! New destination: Diol's lab!"
"But...where is it, Ms. Lina?" Amelia asked with a wondering look.
Lina had a look of thought on her face then turned to Diol. "Where IS your lab, old man? Wasn't your lab destroyed some time ago?"
Diol dared to grunt and said, "Of course it was! Those good for nothing copies! I move around in several places. I've got a mini lab in a little cave between Sairaag and Neirwei. That's where I built the Super Ultra Mega Golem." He looked up in thought. "Come to think of it, I didn't program the Golem to 'think', I wonder if it failed to avoid a river between the forests? Ohh...maybe that was it..."
"That's enough! Where is your main lab?!"
Diol was startled out of his revelation and cleared his throat. "Oh, uh, my main lab is City of Miork." He let out a sigh. "Granted it's not as big as the one I had at the castle. That took my whole youthful life to build. Those good for nothing copies..."
Lina grunted. "Serves you right for making them in the first place."
"What are you guys talking about?" Gourry asked curiously.
"Uh, nothing..." Lina and Diol half pale, half sweatdropped.
"The City of Miork huh?" Zel said in thought. "Isn't that the City where all the scientists all band together?"
"Band together?" Amelia repeated.
"Because scientifical theories often clash with religion, it's the most popular city where you can find all the new technologies built and tested there," Zel clarified.
"Oh."
Diol nodded. "Yeah, that's the one."
"Well, how far away is it from here?" Lina asked.
"Um...about six days?" Diol replied.
"Seven days to be exact," Zel said. "Miork is four days south of Atlas City and we're three days north of Atlas City."
Lina groaned. "Ugh, more traveling as usual..."
Amelia smiled enthusiastically and said, "C'mon, Ms. Lina! It won't be so bad!"
"For someone with a sugar high like you, of course it won't be so bad," Lina mumbled.
"Hey, wait a minute." Everybody turned to look at Gourry, who was holding up nine fingers. "How did you figure seven days to that Moink City?"
Everybody facefaulted.
-----
Seven days later...with much complaining and stomach growling due to the lack of nourishment in hurrying to get to their destination, the gang arrived in Miork.
Upon arriving, everyone except Diol was a little disappointed that the city of Miork was no different than other cities.
"Well, what did you expect? Big metal golems doing humans' work?" Diol asked as the group walked across Miork.
"Well, to tell the truth," Lina replied, "yea, I expected SOMETHING different from other cities."
Miork, like a rather heavily populated kingdom, rustled and bustled with workers of all sorts: merchants, dockers, fisherman, sellsmen and women, the smithies, the innkeepers...etc. etc.
"We can't exactly practice our scientifical theories in public, you know," Diol said. "The church men highly opposes such things, thus making most of the villagers opposing it."
"Well, isn't that WHY Miork is full of scientists?" Amelia asked, looking around in the crowd.
Diol shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We're just here together to share theories and opinions. In truth though, we keep to ourselves most of the time..." Diol scratched his white beard. "Why DO we come here if we can't test out our theories in public?"
Lina sighed. "Look, we can care less about scientists' rights, much less scientists like YOU that wanted to use humans as their subjects."
"Hey! I resent that!"
"Yeah?! Well, what are you gonna do about it?!"
"Enough!" Zelgadis silenced the sorceress and the scientist. He turned to Diol and asked, "Where is your lab?"
"It's this way," Diol replied quickly and walked towards a direction that led to the heart of Miork.
Zelgadis followed silently.
Lina snorted, crossed her arms and followed Zel.
Gourry and Amelia looked at each other, shrugged, and followed the scientist, the chimera, and the sorceress.
-----
Again, the group was somewhat disappointed to stand in front of a quiant, white-bodied and red-roofed, house that is the supposed mad scientist's mini-lab.
"What DO you people EXPECT?!" Diol asked indignantly. "It's supposed to be a MINI-lab! I don't exactly have that castle anymore, yknow!"
He huffed and walked up the cement steps.
The group looked at each other and shrugged. They followed Diol into his little home. The inside was pretty much empty, except for a small couch in front of a fireplace, much like the couch in Rezo's house was set up. Diol walked to a small book shelf placed next to the fireplace and seemed to be looking for a book.
"Hey, old man! We're not here so you can look for some book!" Lina said, an eyebrow twitching.
Diol pulled out a green covered book and rolled his eyes at Lina. "Will you PLEASE calm down for a minute, my dear Miss Inverse?"
All of a sudden, the fireplace budged and swung around, revealing a passage way through the walls.
"A hidden passage," Zel commented, "instead of a magical ward. Nice."
Diol puffed up. "Of course! I'm a scientist, not a sorcerer."
Lina grunted. "Yeah, yeah, let's hurry up to your mini-lab, already!"
With that said, she pushed pass Diol and into the passage way.
Diol snorted. "I have never met a girl so impatient!" He followed her in with the rest of the group in tow.
Within a few minutes, they arrived in Diol's small lab. Although a small, evenly squared room, it was filled with scientifical gadgets, beakers, samples, odd chemicals, preserve jars, etc. etc. Paper filled with scribbles scattered all over the floor. Three shelves occupied the small room, two filled with book of all sorts, the other occupied by what seems like samples. Lina examined the third shelf and found that the shelves were full of jars of all shapes and sizes of samples. She noticed that they were labeled.
Ana...Anita...Beatrice...Bernard...Catherine...
Lina blinked. She looked a little closer to see what were in the jars and realized that these jars contained samples from HUMANS, not animals or plants like she'd seen in other scientists' labs. She scanned the other jars.
Lala...Lily...Lina...
Lina choked back a holler and snatched the jar of a strand of red-hair from the shelf. She turned to give Diol, who wasn't paying much attention, a cold glare.
Diol felt a sudden shiver down his spine but did not pay much attention to it and kept on reading his notes.
Lina looked back at the at the shelf.
Loren...Lulu?
She picked up the small bottle of blonde hair and said, "Hey, old man. Where'd you get this from?"
"Huh?" Diol looked at the bottle. "Oh, a man gave it to me. Name Balloon, something or other. Said that's from the love of his life. He wanted me to make a clone out of that." He sighed. "But as you can see, I don't have the proper equipment to do that so I told him to leave the sample with me so that when I do get the machinese built again, I can clone it for him...for a price of course."
Gourry choked on air. "Give me that!!" He snatched the bottle from Lina's hands. "Whatta sicko!!"
Lina and Amelia laughed.
"Isn't that sweet, Mr. Gourry?" Amelia said. "After all these years! Mr. Balloon is still in love with you!"
Gourry's face turned red with annoyance. "That's not funny!" He stomped away from the two laughing girls.
Zelgadis and Diol had question marks on their faces and shrugged, going back to sorting through scribbles and notes.
------
After a few hours, it was evident to the group that Diol's mini-lab held fruitless clues to their new quest.
Amelia, bored, looked around the lab. Lina was flipping through a book; Zel and Diol looked through what seemed like tons of papers; Gourry was trying to burn the bottle holding this hair. Amelia sighed and walked around the lab, looking here and there.
She noticed a mirror at the opposite wall of the entrance way. Wires and weird looking gadgets were hooked on the mirror, a long crack ran along from the upper right corner to the bottom left of the mirror.
"Mr. Diol," Amelia called out as she examined the mirror closely. "Why do you have a mirror in your lab?"
Diol looked up from his scribbles. "Oh, that thing?" He stood up from his seat and stretched, walking to wear Amelia stood.
"It was an old project I tried out," he replied and sighed. "I hate to admit it but it was beyond my scientifical comprehension how the project was to work."
Zel also looked up. "What was the project about?"
"I wanted to create a warp portal," Diol replied. He looked behind the mirror, a machine stuck out where the frame would have been. "Nothing completed. Just to get you from point A to point B. However, no matter what I try, it won't work."
"I see..." Amelia said and looked at the mirror. "A warp portal huh?"
"Gourry! Give that back!" Lina shouted and tried to snatch Gourry's long blonde hair.
Gourry avoided her attack and ran away with the bottle with the long blonde hair. "NO! What are you trying to do?!"
"I just wanted to make Balloon happy! C'mon, Gourry! It won't be too bad!" Lina said and chased after him.
"NO WAY!" Gourry dodged Lina's kicks and punches.
"WAY!" Lina said. "Digger Volt!!" A shot of electricity blew across the lab.
"Nooooo!!" Diol cried out. "MY LAB!!!"
"AH! Ms. Lina! Watch where you aim it!!" Amelia exclaimed as she barely dodged the bolt.
Fortunately, Lina's attack hit nothing but the mirror. It hissed, as if complaining, and smoked rose from the machines.
"My project!" Diol cried out.
Lina sweatdropped. "Well...it's not as though you were gonna finish it...heh heh." She rubbed the back of her head.
"What do you mean 'heh heh'?! You destroyed my project, you monkey of a girl!!" Diol shouted.
"MONKEY?!"
"I've had it up to here with your playing around, you half pint girl!"
As arguments and flames ensued, Amelia stood up from her place on the floor and noticed the mirror. It was smoking still from Lina's attack but Amelia also noticed that the crack was no longer there. Taking a closer look, the face of the mirror suddenly rippled like water.
Startled, Amelia took a step back but still leaned close to it. She ran her index finger along the mirror where the crack had been and found half her finger swallowed.
"EEEIIIII!!!" she shrieked and attempted to pull back. But along with her finger came some kind of substance that seemed to stick.
"M-Ms. Lina!!! Help!!!" she cried out.
The others quickly went to the girl's aid.
"What the hell is that?!" Lina shouted. No one had time to answer her as they all tried to pull Amelia away from the swallowing substance.
"I-it's not coming off!" Amelia panicked as the mirror started to pull her closer to it.
"Hold on, Amelia!" Zel said and gripped her waist.
Gourry pulled onto Zel's waist as Lina held onto Gourry's neck and tried to Ray Wing it with force.
They all lost their balance as the substance pulled forcedfully at Amelia, making them all fly into it.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" They all shouted and disappeared into the mirror, leaving only the old scientist blinking and panting rapidly.
------
Through the darkness, they all held on together, and noticed that they were falling down, fast.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" They all shouted as they noticed they can't stop no matter what magic they tried.
What seems like an eternity of yelling, shouting, praying, spell-casting, etc. They fell with a thud on dirted ground.
"Owwwww" Lina groaned with pain as she held her head.
"Wh-what was that?" Amelia asked.
"Help..." Gourry whimpered, his eyes swirling.
Zel grunted as he rubbed his rocked beck. He looked around. "Where....are we?"
The other three looked around, trying to answer his question. They were outside, that much was clear. In some sort of a forest near a mountain side.
They were startled as three figures appeared from the bushes.
A man and two younger boys.
"Where'd you guys come from?" The man asked.
The man walked towards them. The four was on their alert.
One of the two boys, with dark hair, stopped the man. "Dad, I think you're scaring them."
"Huh?" The man looked at his son and turned to look at the group. He gave an apologetic laugh and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Goku. Who are you guys?"
The four looked at each other.
"I'm Lina," the red-haired sorceress replied. "Um...where are we?"
The man, Goku, gave her a confused look. "Huh? Well, we're near my home."
The blue chimera shook his head in frustration. "No, no. Where is HERE? What is this land called?"
Goku's look grew more confused. "Um...well, we're on Peko Island. Are you guys from the city? You guys don't really know your way around, do you?"
The four looked at each other. They wore similiar distressed expressions.
"What...world are we on?" Lina hesitantly asked, reflecting on how stupid the question sounded.
"What are you guys talking about?" Goku asked in return. "We're on Earth."
Author's notes: Yes, yes! I know it was lame how I got them there! Horribly described with the mirror incident! D; but it was the best I can doooo!!!! I kept my promise didn't i? I got them there! :D Yaayyy! Again sorry for the delay! My net connection was cut off for a month or something!!! D; Hmm ok ok, on to my confessions of sins: 1) I have no idea where Goku and Chichi's house is so i made that up! Ok ok, ya peoples aren't here to read my comments! pls read the next chapter!!! :D