SLAYERS: WARPED

Chapter 3: Where Once Was Light

Nayru: Okay, fan service here. A reviewer gave me a lot of ideas for what to put in this chapter. I left a few holes and mistakes here and there, so I'm just going to fix them. Thank you!

"Where once was light, now darkness falls, where once was love, love is no more..." Dawn was coming through the windows of the abandoned house. Abandoned, except for Rei and Zelgadis. She stared from dulled eyes at the coming sun. The past three days had been living hell for her. Zelgadis had completely changed from when Amelia was alive, but Rei didn't know this. Rei had been sparsely fed, and when Zelgadis came to speak to her, it was more to yell at her and hit her. Silently, she wondered exactly what she had done wrong. She was scared, more scared than she'd ever been in her entire lifetime. She continued to sing mournfully, desperate for the sleep song could bring. "These tears we cry are falling rain, for all the lies you told us, the hurt, the blame, and you will weep to be so alone, we are lost, we can never go home..." The door banged open. Zelgadis stood before her.
"Wake up, wench. It's time you learned to defend yourself." He growled angrily, untying the ropes around her wrists. He slapped her once. "And quit that damn singing." He tossed a set of tunic and slacks, both faded red, to her. She shoved them on. They were too loose on her, hand-me- downs, most likely. "If you inherited any of your mother's powers, I reckon you'll at least have some good magic in you. Some that won't kill the innocent. You'll learn that today." He glared at her. She didn't look up. She knew she'd crumble under his gaze. He dragged her out the second she tied her boots into a different room.
Zelgadis gave Rei a dulled sword at arm's length. Zelgadis faced her and drew his sharp, tempered sword. "Simply parry me backwards, use the thrusting I taught you yesterday." He glared at her around his weapon. "Unless you can't do something that simple." Rei sighed deeply, and walked towards him, sword in the defense position. Zelgadis quickly caught her sword with his fully sharpened one, and quickly knocked her to the ground, pointing the sword at her. He marked an X on her bare arm with the tip of his sword. "You're dead. Get up and try again." Rei stood again, and rushed towards him, parrying back. Zelgadis was taken by surprise at her outburst of anger, and she knocked him into the wall. Smirking cleverly, she scratched an X into his arm.
"Now who's dead?" Zelgadis knocked her off her feet, and stormed into a different room to get more equipment to teach/attack Rei with.

The roads were rough, but there was no rain, so conditions were favorable. Xelloss had taught Kinsei a nice trick; how to use the light- dark pendant to switch control of her Ryuzoku/Mazoku sides. He'd taught her how she can control her Ryuzoku side, and how to tap into her Mazoku powers. She could fly as a dragon, and float as a human, but couldn't do any other magic. Her current preference was the dark side of herself, and she was happily floating above the rest. Alin and Elijah were peeved that they couldn't fly, and silently hoped there was a way they could fly too. Chocolate was floating beside Kinsei, harrassing her.
"Onee-sama, onee-sama, hara-hetta yo! I wanna candy bar! So hungry! We've been living on fish for two days, wai, wai!" Kinsei pushed Chocolate away, irritated with her already.
"We certainly are a weird group." Lina looked back at the assembled. "We've got two princesses, two chimeras, some cross between a Ryuzoku and a Mazoku, a Mazoku, and three humans. Not to mention Gourry's 1/4th elf. I like the fan club, but do they have to cosplay as us all the time?" Lina sighed, as Martina smiled.
"But it's so cute!" Martina looked around. "The littler of the Mazokus is right, I'm tired of fish."
"Too bad." Lina growled.
Just then, Alin pointed. "Look, a house!" There was a large, ruined house a few hundred yards off the path. It hadn't been occupied for years. "Maybe we should stop there for today."
"No, not there." Lina shook her head. "It's only evening. We can travel a few more hours yet! There's a forest ahead." Just then, a huge explosion was heard from the house. "Plus, it sounds like it's going to fall." The group ran. They didn't want to get caught in the obviously imminent explosion. Zel looked back briefly, frowning.
"I wonder..." After a moment of thought, he shrugged, and caught up with the rest.

Zelgadis glared at Rei through his scorched hair. Rei simply giggled. "Ah-ha... fireball?" She laughed. Zelgadis had been charbroiled just a few seconds ago.
"That's NOT funny."
"Then why am I laughing?!" Rei rolled on the ground, laughing.
"YOU IDIOT! YOU JUST CAUSED AN EXPLOSION! YOU COULD HAVE ATTRACTED ATTENTION!" Zelgadis breathed heavily. "Luckily, this road is rarely travelled." He cracked her across the head. "Now do it again, and AIM this time." Rei stood up, her humor leaving her. She stared at the target he'd set up, and blasted it with every spell Zelgadis had taught her. Fireball, dark claw, blast bomb, burst flare, flare arrow, demona crystal, vice freeze, aero bomb, right down to a visfarank. He'd taught her almost every basic shamanist and dark spell, forcing her to memorize them. Her arm was covered with the Xs, and there were a few thumps on her chest. "Perfect." Rei's blue eyes glowed with tears; the target was made to look like herself. "Do it again." He set up a fresh target, and she did it again. Over and over, until she dropped in a dead faint from loss of energy.

Late in the evening, the Slayers stopped to make camp. Alin, Elijah, and Kinsei stepped aside.
"Why are we doing this?" Alin growled the second they were out of earshot. "It seemed to make good sense earlier, but now I look in retrospect, this all seems like BULLSHIT! How does this work?! How did Rei suddenly start speaking another voice, why didn't anyone seem to care that I had freaking BLUE skin, why weren't we locked up YEARS ago if ANYONE knew ANYTHING about this- You two, do you have ANY memory of what that purple haired guy was chattering about? Some fire, some bullshit like that?"
"Alin, we're as clueless as you are. I don't know why we accepted, we were practically kidnapped. That guy, the one who claims to be my father, he got us worked up about finding Rei, and since she's our friend, naturally we got into it, but now what have we gotten ourselves into?" Kinsei snorted.
"Instinct." Elijah replied calmly. "He mentioned, that guy, you know, he mentioned our parents. The one thing we've lacked. Every child longs for a parent figure. And so you know, I do believe him. There's not much there, but I do recall this much: there was fire. I remember the screams. After that, it's all in the orphanage where we grew up. The chance that my home burned in a fire is always there, but it seems strange that whoever that freak is looking for had parents that died in a fire too."
"I don't believe this bullshit. Not a bit. As far as we know, Rei is back in our homeworld, that asswipe that grabbed her just had a few special effects and took her off somewhere else. Or maybe she WANTED to get away and set this all up."
"Admit it, Alin. In your stoicness, you're a lot like Zelgadis, and in your obsession with right and wrong, you're like Amelia-"
"Yeah, so explain his irritability, Elijah. Explain his overemotionalness, explain the rest of him off-"
"Children aren't clones of their parents." Elijah snarled. "Besides, I don't see any of either of your parents in you, with the exception of the skills Xelloss taught you and your love of tea," she simpered mockingly.
"At least I'm not boy-obsessed!" The trio broke into loud arguement, none of them knew what they were saying or what anyone else was saying. Finally, they stared.
"This is pointless."Alin sighed. "Let's straighten this out: This is all bullshit. I don't believe a word of it. I want to leave as soon as possible. I want to go home. I don't want to save this world, or any world."
"Fine." Elijah sighed. "As soon as we find a way home, we'll take it. We're probably asleep, dreaming, because, well, magic doesn't exist. Not in the real world at least."
"I don't know." Kinsei sighed. "I think we should stay. What if... what if magic is real, what if we've got some talent, skills to develop, something?"
"I don't know, but we don't have time to develop them. Take it as it comes, we're talking to Xelloss later. I want to wake up from this nightmare."
A strange, soothing, ethereal voice from nowhere spoke into the teenagers: "If you're asleep, then slap yourselves. You'll wake up, won't you?"
"Who's there?!" Kinsei yelped. There was no answer. Nobody was there to answer.

"Why are we doing this?" Lina snarled to the others. She nodded at the trio, who were obviously arguing. "I mean, we see an obvious fanclub of us, we instinctively think it's cool. But we just accept them, no questions asked. They're weird, either they're advanced cosplayers, in mimicking parts of us, or just plain freaks. I'm not sure we should trust them easily."
"When the time is right, we'll learn more about them. Ask no questions, hear no lies." Zelgadis shrugged. "We should have asked them more, it seemed strange that they had similarities to us..."
"I think they're trustworthy." Gourry shrugged.
"Gourry, you're an idiot."

"Why am I doing this?" Xelloss sighed to himself from his perch high above. "I mean, Zelas made a good point in saying that the world would be miserable if what's coming to pass comes to pass, but why am I even cooperating? Why did I set up that mask that made Alin's skin look normal to anyone but those four? Why did a future of myself save them?"
"I don't know, father. Perhaps it's the human emotion they call love." Chocolate grinned. "Love is both a positive and negative emotion."
"Huh. So that's why tricking people hasn't been so much fun recently. Maybe it explains why I'm taking everything seriously, do I love these people?" Xelloss and Chocolate stared at each other for a minute...
"NAH!" They laughed simultaneously.

The next morning, the trio approached Xelloss. He stared up at them.
"I know what you want to ask- and I don't know why you should trust me myself. In fact, I'm the last person anyone would ever be able to trust. But... I know this much." He smiled slowly. "I AM on your side for now. I also know this: to release the part of your parents' souls that inhabits each of you-"
"That explains it!" Alin cried, slamming one fist into his other palm. "Part of Lina is in Rei, so she was speaking through her!"
"Yes, precisely." Xelloss smiled proudly. "But in order to release those parts of their souls, you need to be here. The Slayers could easily do this without you. We need to release those pieces to properly straighten the timefield. And in addition to that, when I brought the pieces within you close to their masters, they created an intersoul bond... one that can't be broken... "
"We're stuck here, aren't we?!" Elijah yelled.
"As a matter of fact-" Xelloss paused to grin nastily. "You are, in effect, unable to be separated by a great distance from your parents in this era without tearing your souls from the places they sit in your heart." The trio stared at Xelloss, horrified. Elijah was the first to recover from the shock.
"YOU KNEW, YOU GODDAMN /KNEW/ ABOUT THIS, DIDN'T YOU?!" Xelloss nodded, still grinning. "WHY YOU-" Elijah swung a fist at Xelloss. He caught it easily.
"Tsk tsk." Xelloss blasted her back by her fist. Kinsei and Alin ran to Elijah's side. "Very simple spell, but I would expect you not to know how to block it. After all, I have conveniently not taught you any magic, aside from Kinsei's ability to float and turn into a dragon. Oh, and even though you can effectively switch between light and dark, you have no spells to use for either of them. Sad thing that you can't ask the Slayers for help. They'd wonder why you weren't taught before. Then they'd get curious about you, and try to learn the secrets they need not know. You'll find Lina a convincing interrogator, I believe." Xelloss continued to smirk cruelly. The trio shivered nervously. "It's for your own good. If I were to teach you any magic, our enemy would track you down by the pieces of soul emanating power within you. Until the enemy finds you on their own, you can't learn any magic."
"Oi! Fankids! Breakfast!" Lina yelled from the fire. The trio stared at Xelloss. Finally, Kinsei nudged the other two away from Xelloss. She turned to him.
"Father..." She whispered, beggingly. "Please... Don't hurt us any more than we hurt already." She walked away. Xelloss continued to smile.
"You must understand; no pain, no gain. For now, you must suffer. Soon enough, you will gain all you seek." Kinsei thought about this, and walked away. Xelloss started laughing. All of this seemed ludicrous to him. He looked the the instructions Zelas had given him.
"What bull... don't let them use magic until they find you, don't let the Slayers find out about them until they need to, HAHA! Why am I doing this? Why do I even listen to her?" Xelloss rolled on the ground, tickled pink by his own anger and frustration.

"You lot don't look like you slept easy." Alin remarked, as he looked around at the five adults. They were all messy, tired looking, and slightly bruised.
"We didn't." Lina yawned. "A gang of wandering thugs tried to raid us in the middle of the night."
"What're wandering thugs?" Kinsei asked instinctively.
"How can you not know?" Lina rose an eyebrow.
"I didn't grow up around here." She babbled.
"I see." She gave the trio a quizzical look. "Well, there's a town about ten miles away from here. I hope you all are ready to hustle, because I wanna be there by dinner time." She handed them each a plate of fried fish and some tough venison. "We're out of supplies."
"Thank you, Lina." They all bowed, simultaneously. Alin, Kinsei, and Elijah looked around. Lina joined Amelia, Zel, and Filia in a deep conversation. Gourry was sitting alone. They sat around him. Gourry blinked, and smiled.
"Hi guys!" He chirped, only too cheerfully for someone with blood in his hair.
"Hi." They all mumbled.
"Ya know, you three look familiar somehow... I can't place how." He continued to smile. He divided his fish into three piles, and gave each teen a pile. "I hate the stuff, so you can take it." He whispered, still smiling. "You guys gotta eat." The trio looked at each other. Finally, Alin and Elijah nodded at Kinsei.
"Here, take this." Kinsei gave Gourry her venison. "It's too tough for me." She smiled politely at him.
"I like you three." He chomped down half the venison piece. "Those four... they don't trust you." He continued to smile. "I trust you, though, but watch what you say around them." Gourry paused thoughtfully, as he chewed. He swallowed, finishing. "They don't call me a scholar, but I know this much." The trio politely nodded.
"Thank you." Elijah whispered.
"You three ready? Let's go!"

TO BE CONTINUED...