One thing Filia was sure of: The mazoku priest who sat opposite her at a small table outside a grand-looking and sumptuous café in what was considered a fairly average town in the Slayers world was the most annoying creature in existence.
He was like trying to kill a fly, fast and sneaky. You strike at this fly and think you've got him. You lift up your flyswatter, you open your hand, you remove a heavy object from the wall at which you threw it, whatever means you enacted to catch him, and by all mysteries of the universe that fly is not there. Makes you wonder if flies are in fact the superior race and they've just been leading us on for the past millennia into thinking they're simply frustratingly hard to kill. Xelloss was like that. Whether you're trying to pin him down physically or merely attempting to extort him for information, he was as devious as the fly. No matter what strategy you took to trap him, he was always one step ahead.
The dragoness sighed into her tea and addressed the issue of her pursuit once more.
"Don't you think it is time you shared with me your thoughts on who was behind Lina's kidnaping, Xelloss?"
Xelloss was admiring the surroundings from his seat. The town was clean, neat, orderly. A perfect target for creating disturbance if that is your goal. Eye candy if you've tamed your destructive ways for the time being.
He glanced at Filia. "What makes you so certain the kidnapper was under someone's direction?"
The mocking query would have had more effect on a rock. "Somehow, I doubt a slug, however massive, has that capacity of brain power. Surely you must have some suspicion as to who might have organized it?"
"While I do have a few people in mind, none seem to fit this particular picture, so I shall speak no evil of any person as of now." His reply was amiable, but spoken to end the matter.
Filia, however, persisted. "However minor or premature your thoughts, don't you think it proper to discuss them with me?" She smiled as though this was trivial matter, both knowing the actual importance of it. "After all, I am your partner, of sorts, in this unfortunate placement."
He laughed, feigning politeness. "No, no, I shall make none of my suspicions known until I have sufficient reason to do so." He continued in a lower tone. "And I consider this 'unfortunate placement' to be more of me helping you than us being partners, Filia."
"You mean if I wasn't around for you to guide me, you would have made no sort of action to come to Miss Lina's aid?" Filia laughed, knowing this was exactly the case.
"..It all depends on the circumstances, of course."
The priestess's smile was well placed, but she betrayed her tact by speaking rather sardonically. "Ah, you mean, if Miss Lina and her consorts are of no use to you at the time, you would leave them to struggle their own way out of captivity or possibly die?"
Xelloss's smile was also fooling, though his voice began to hold malice. "No more than you would, Filia, should Miss Lina lose her usefulness to fulfilling your prophecy to avert destruction to the world."
"You flatter yourself too much, Xelloss. I am not a manipulating mazoku such as yourself."
The mazoku priest's grip tightened on his cup, breaking it. On the other side of the table, Filia miserably failed at trying not to look smug.
Xelloss, however, regained his composure too quick for her to savor her small success, crossing his arms now that he had nothing to hold. "You flatter your race too much, Filia. As you know, the dragon race is also well-noted for always being very manipulative in obtaining their goals." He smiled for a moment. "This, of course, you are still learning."
Filia's facade shattered simultaneously as her cup of tea. She jumped to her feet, leaning over the table and gripping it at both ends, unconsciously preparing to lift and throw it.
"Why so evasive, Namagomi, unless you had something to hide?" Her voice was low fury.
Xelloss quickly stood as well, bringing their faces even closer together.
"If you didn't always typically mistrust generosity for an ulterior motive, Filia, perhaps I wouldn't appear so evasive! As though you also weren't hiding something!" His eyes were open, but narrowed.
"I don't know what you mean," she growled, her own eyes slitted.
He smirked. "I notice you haven't pressured me about why you can't transform."
A blush of scarlet touched her cheeks. "Perhaps because I've deemed a matter not of your concern any longer, Namagomi."
Xelloss's smirk transmuted into a simple baring of his teeth. "Or perhaps–"
He was cut off by loud commentary from a member of the audience the two had drawn unknowingly.
"Yes, I've seen it a hundred times before. They quarrel, they rage, and then they get into that position there, with their eyes locked, only inches from each other's face, see that there?" A tall analytical-looking man who easily could have been a local psychologist, though out of his time, was explaining the situation to an frail old woman by his side. "Any second now, they'll start slobbering all over each, apologizing, and pledging their devotion anew. They probably have the type of marriage based on the physical attraction that comes from hating a person. Typical marital row, nevertheless."
Even Xelloss blushed a vibrant bright red. He struggled to correct the man's interpretation as the whole crowd began nodding their heads and noisily agreeing with him. "I–her–we're not–we're completely–incompatible–wrong–"
Filia, though thoroughly embarrassed, saw the opportunity to work the situation to her advantage for once. "Well, Xelloss, I see any hope of us being able to work responsibly together–"Her color flared again at the accidental choice of word. "I mean, for us to work maturely as a team is an impossible feat that I am utterly wasting my time upon, so..." She paused and pushed out a rather tense, "Goodbye."
She vanished.
"Ahh, one of the rare turns of a relationship of this type!" proclaimed the narrator for what was easily half the town now. "See, instead of the woman's anger abruptly changing into affection.."
The man's voice was muted in the recesses of Xelloss's mind. He was dumbstruck. For the first time, he tasted the bitter poison of his own medicine. And as those who have tasted their own medicine know, it is a thing not easy to swallow. Cyanide would have been a more welcoming. Tar. Foot stench.
The self-proclaimed narrator of his and Filia's little row droned on for more than 10 minutes before the mazoku found his facial muscles working once more, actually forming a smile. He felt his genius for creating chaos or destroying order, whatever you preferred, stirring inside him, his mind already concocting a plan.
Unfortunately, the narrator would have to get what would come to him later.
...ooooooooooooooooooo...
Filia had disappeared from the fight on the verge of being one of the happiest people alive. She experienced a feeling not unlike when one quickly undergoes some miracle in their life. Say, winning a million dollars in a hour or discovering a cure for boredom. That sort of thing. Only, this emotion had not so altruistic basis. It was the kind of feeling experienced when you've peeled off a scab you've loathed to look at for much too long and flicked it off, far far away.
She laughed out load in happiness, dancing a little around the clearing of forest she had transported to. She stopped, hugged herself warmly, and proclaimed, "VICTORY!"
To right the un-rightable wrong. To defeat the undefeatable. To conquer and claim a span of earth that has never been claimed and conquered before. She had finally bested Xelloss. True, she did it in a manner reminiscent of Xelloss himself, stealthy manipulation at precisely the moment, however, concerns of that nature had no place in utter ecstasy.
The world spun around her in delight, but her common sense brought her rapidly down to earth. Xelloss was the only one who knew the way to the lair of the giant slugs (if that even was the true story - though a doubtful one, she could not afford to ignore it, should a shred of it be true and Lina Inverse, who was to avert the great doom that was upon her home, be in danger). If he wasn't there to guide her, it would take so much longer to find Miss Lina and perhaps lead to her..
No, she mustn't think like that, Filia quickly reprimanded herself. Pessimism never got anyone anywhere. Start from square one as she must, she would find Miss Lina and the others and rescue them, if that be the need. No matter how long it took (or how dead she hoped they wouldn't be), she would fulfill that duty, as she said she would.
The only difference, now, was that the journey was going to be so much more pleasant.
...ooooooooooooooooooo...
Filia decided on a plan of action. Or rather, a plan of inaction, as she opted to stay in the town her and Xelloss had reached their breaking point in, gathering more need supplies for the journey and also supplies of another necessary kind..
She soon learned that her stay would be anything but a repose.
After enjoying a libation in one of the many coffeehouses of the town, she found herself on the receiving end of a rather distasteful joke, getting tripped by every customer in the building at the time as she was leaving.
She thought it an unusual occurrence at the time and dismissed it from her mind, but as the day soon proved, the grudge against her was persistent.
Two little boys with the most innocent of faces begged her for some money and told her she was a kind sweet lady..and that she didn't look 46 in human years at all.
A snake somehow managed its way into her basket, ending up in a rather interesting scenario once she retired to the room she was renting for the night and emptied her vessel.
An already half-drunk man asked to buy her a drink.
These incidents, while perhaps coincidental, had a slight touch of a sense of humor she knew well. It was possible she pointed the finger at an entirely guiltless entity, but she had the uncanny intuition that this was a known perpetrator to her. Adding to the argument was that she had felt a familiar presence at all these encounters. To her knowledge, this person might have been still in the town. In the past, this person had demonstrated their knack for arranging mishaps similar to these.
And a name that she had uttered not too long ago burned upon her lips.
...ooooooooooooooooooo...
A quasi-cliff hanger. Yea, yea, sue me..
Insert standard author apology for not writing and editing this sooner here.
Noticing any difference in the prose of this chapter compared to what I've written previously? Yep, finally starting to experiment a little. I admit, I'm really having a hard time writing this fic. I'm a skit writer by default, plot development and literary talent aren't my agents.
And now my faults have taken up knives and are trying to kill me.
Sigh. A dozen thanks to Mistress DragonFlame. The fact that someone's reading this really does help it go along.