Chapter 9

Traveling's Fun!

(As long as you have morphine and a bag of Prozac)

Lina whirled around in surprise, she hadn't known he was there, but Rezo nodded, "I thought you were there."

"WAIT! You knew he was there?!" Lina's expression was indignant.

"Of course, didn't you?" Rezo's small humor was lost on her.

"I help you, and this man ... Gourry, take down Shabranigdo?" Zelgadis didn't have nearly enough worry on his face for having just been told he'd be face to face with Shabranigdo one day. Than again, Zelgadis never really knew too much about those higher demons as well as she had.

"Uh... yeah." She answered for Rezo.

"Well if I'm going to be some kind of fighter in the future I should probably start learning more. So I'm coming with, I'll do my best not to be an obligation."

"But- if you- - Fine." She sighed and slumped into her chair.

Rezo stood, "Well I for one wish to get this fixed as soon as humanly possible, the longer you stay here, the more your future will change. Be ready at seven o' clock tomorrow morning Miss Inv-" he stopped, then changed his mind on what he would address her as, "Miss Lina." He than departed.

Lina flopped onto the big cushiony purple chair and her dress puffed upwards as her hands reached out to keep it from showing anything. "Agh! Damn skirt!" she pushed the light fluffy layers down and brushed back her hair from her face, when she looked up to Zelgadis he was looking at her strangely, "What?"

"Nothing." He sat down.

"Zel, I have to know, how MUCH did you hear?"

"Well I had been walking by and I normally don't eavesdrop but I heard, 'Lina Inverse the destroyer of Shabranigdo'. And seeing as that was a very curious statement in itself... To hear my name be said afterwards... I couldn't help but listen."

"Damn... " She let out a breath, "Maybe I shouldn't have come back Zel, I'm gonna mess up everything."

"Maybe you shouldn't, but you did. And if you really shouldn't have, something would have stopped you from doing so. If you honestly believe you should have stayed there and died, than you would have. But you didn't. So be appreciative for a gift possibly only you, have ever been given."

"Always the level headed thinker." She smiled lightly, "But not the only one."

"I wouldn't know if you were. I was merely guessing."

"So I figured... Well I'm willing to go to bed, even if it is only five o' clock. Night Zelga-bunny." She smiled at his confused look.

"Pardon?"

"Oh nothing... inside joke. G'night!" she then went off for her fifteen hour nap.

"One hundred sixty-one, one hundred sixty-two, one hundred sixty-three, one hundred sixty-four, one hundred sixty-five, one hundred sixty-six, one hundred sixty-seven, one hundred sixty-eight, one hundred sixty-nine-"

"Lina, what on earth are you doing?" Zelgadis' weary, annoyed voice finally questioned what she had been doing for the past ten minutes.

"Counting trees... don't make me lose count. One hundred seventy-" Zelgadis' hand covered her mouth.

"Do me a favor, if your going to go mad, do so quietly and let US at least keep what little we have left by now."

"I agree." Rezo's voice sounded amused. The two of them (Zelgadis and Lina) so far had clashed, but not so far that it led into fights. Just enough that it irritated them somewhat. It helped keep things interesting for him on the plus side (Rezo that is), if he wasn't mistaken though, he could have sworn that his grandson might have liked her somewhat...

"You were never this cheery when you were twenty..." she muttered.

"I heard that. Maybe there's a reason for it." He commented back at her.

"So? You need to get over it!" she than realized how stupid she was being by reacting that way. He wasn't even suffering depression yet.

"Get over what?! Your counting trees, or something I haven't even done yet?!" he rolled his eyes as they walked down the beaten path.

"Both!"

There was a silence that fell between them.

"You are so irritable at times ya know that?" both snapped at each other simultaneously. They then stared at each other. "Weird." Again in tandem.

"You know they say only soul mates can-"

"Don't you dare finish that!" Lina yelled, blushing.

"As if I would want to be the soul mate of someone so annoying."

"As if I would want to be the soul mate of someone so depressing. Besides I know for a fact he likes someone else later on."

"What?"

"It's none of your business." She stuck out her tongue.

"It's my future!"

"Well it's my present!"

Rezo sighed, ok, maybe it wasn't so amusing anymore. "You two are just like children."

After that, blessed silence fell. For exactly two minutes.

"FIREBALL!" the powerful blast flew at them and only Rezo was quick enough to defend from it as he threw a shield up.

"What in the-" Lina was cut off as bandits stepped out from all around them. But not those thin, easily killed off, stupider than rock ones. These ones were pretty well to do. Some even had armor and some pretty nasty weapons.

"All right, fork over your valuables and the pretty cargo and you two gentleman can leave." The one with the most armor spoke out to them in a commanding and deep voice, not like the nasally stuck up idiots she used to run into.

"What cargo? We don't have any-" Lina looked to Zel who was giving her a 'don't - be - stupid' look and she blinked. "They mean me?!" she looked to them and blinked, "I'm pretty?" she seemed stunned, wow, this was a first, Zelgadis sweat dropped at her question. Wow! Someone actually wanted to have HER as part of the booty... Hey! "I'm not cargo! I'm Lina Inverse! Explosion Array!!!!" A circular blast seven feet around enveloped the head leader and three other men, and as the spell went off they flew upwards towards the sky and a mili-second later they collapsed as charcoal heaps on the ground.

"Attack!" the cry went out as the rest of the voices soared in their battle call and people from all around them started coming in.

"Shit!" Lina pulled out her sword and met one of the taller, dark haired men with it, no time to cast spells, her mind told her as she blocked another swing. Zelgadis had pulled out his own sword and was having trouble keeping his own with the bandit who had chosen to fight him. Rezo from what her peripheral vision had shown her, was an advanced fighter. His staff swung lethally and hit all intended targets in fluent graceful motions as the spell's finishing words parted from his lips, "Sleeping!" ten bandits on one side collapsed and another seven took their place.

"How many do they have?" Lina back flipped away from her opponent only to land within swords reach of another one, who, taking the chance while she was off guard, brought his sword down to slice her in the side, angered she threw a fireball directly at him which hurled him into one of the many trees surrounding them. She then saw Zelgadis go flying. Uh – oh, just how bad a fighter was he?

She turned around to face the man he had been facing to find it was a tall longhaired blonde man with dark amethyst eyes. Extremely handsome, too bad he was a bandit, otherwise she might have cared. "That was my friend asshole."

"For someone as pretty as you, you should watch your language." He leapt forward and just as he was about to attack-

"Bom di wind!" Rezo's spell hit the man and sent him flying. Lina looked to him gratefully and saw that the remaining attackers, a total of four, were fleeing back into the woods, one of the more cowardly screaming; "Run! The dramata will kill us all!"

Lina blinked, "Ohhhh so THAT'S how I got that name!" her joke lasted a mere moment before the pain in her side caught up with her and she sat down clutching her side, "Ow, that stings."

"I'm sure." Rezo said, "But I need to see if my grandson is still alive." He walked over to Zelgadis who was just gaining consciousness.

"Pain..." he groaned.

"You're lucky you aren't dead, especially since you're only a beginner fighter." White-hot magic shone from Rezo's fingertips and soon Zelgadis' pain dwindled leaving him on his own. Meanwhile, Lina was wincing at the blood.

"I didn't think he had cut me that bad." The cut hurt like all hell, but for what it was, it was pretty deep. "Oh great, blood." She went to casting a healing spell. Which was taking its bloody time, literally and figuratively.

"That's not healing very fast, is it." Zelgadis' comment wasn't a question.

"The first thing I do after all this is over, is I'm making Amelia teach me how to cast higher levels of healing." The ends of the wound were closing leaving only pink scar tissue.

"Miss Lina, let me." Rezo's spell went off again, "If you were to heal it like that you would have a scar, and we don't need to mar something flawless now do we?" he smiled lightly and it was done within a moment. "There. Now we really should continue."

Lina was too busy gaping to stand up, 'Mar something flawless???' Strange music played in her head (the twilight zone....) and she decided to pick up her jaw and walk with them both.

After five days of traveling, sleeping outside, and one night on a damp wooden floor, Lina was feeling cranky. Her stomach knotted up in disagreement at the thought. Check that, cranky and in pain and in absolutely no shape to deal with blood.

"Someone please kill me." She muttered.

Rezo's sharp ears caught her comment, "Is something the matter?"

"Oh NO not at all!" she said sarcastically. "Ok where's the nearest town and bathing area?!"

"Two days away if we follow this road." Zelgadis answered.

"How 'bout a river or spring? Or even better; hot spring?"

"Oh, that's a day a way, we'll have to veer off though-"

"I don't care!" she snapped.

"All right! I get the message!" Zel grumbled.

"You two would make a cute couple." Rezo said, purposely trying to annoy them, in the same manner rubbing a cat's fur the wrong way could possibly annoy the cat.

Both turned crimson, "SHUT UP!"

Author Notes: Faithful readers, looks to the empty room No this isn't L/Z....... That I know of.

In the beginning it was A/Z but things... well, I mold relationships to what I need them to be.

I'm not asking who you think who should go with, but I'm asking what you would like to see in the next chapters? Xellos being ordered into the past to confront her, Rezo, and Zel? Or should there be as little interfearance as possible and get her back home?

Happy ending?

Unhappy?

Or twisted?