He was brooding again. It wasn't very hard to tell with Zelgadiss. He had a kind of aura that seemed to suck the life and colour from anything around him. Unfortunately for him Lina would -not- tolerate any of her friends being gloomy.

She loomed over the table then slammed her hands down onto it to get his attention and, sure enough, his head jerked up and his hand went to his sword hilt – automatic reflex.

"Stop it!"

"Stop what?"

"You're being all gloomy and depressive again! Its bad enough we all have to split up later without you being moody as well. So cheer up!"

"What, you just expect me to suddenly switch to being happy?"

"Yes!"

Zel's head hit the table as he facefaulted the only way he could while sitting down. He sighed and straightened back up again, thankfully none of his hair got stuck in the table this time.

"What do you care if I'm depressed anyway?"

"Because It's like there's a black hole sitting in the corner over here leeching the joy out of everything else." She leant forward slightly and winked "I know you're going to miss me desperately Zel, but you really don't need to worry about it."

"Miss you?"

"Of course! Without a beautiful, young, talented sorcery genius around to lighten your day you'll probably go insane. But you'll just have to accept that I have to spend time with other people too!" She gave a dramatic sigh and clutched a hand over her heart "It's so hard to be as popular as I am."

"Sure."

"It takes a lot of work to be so caring, smart, funny, skilled, beautiful, modest, generous-" Lina rambled on listing all her good qualities and a lot of good qualities she didn't have but claimed to anyway.

"Greedy, self-centred and with atrocious table manners?" Zel muttered quietly to himself while she was speaking, but didn't count on her excellent hearing.

"WHAT WAS THAT?"

Zelgadiss had a vision of his impeding death as Lina glared at him, eyes on fire, fangs showing and a fireball already formed in hand.

"N-nothing! Nothing at all!"

"That's what I thought." She said it menacingly, but to his relief the fireball disappeared. "So, why don't you just admit you're gonna miss me and stop being gloomy?"

"Alright, I'll miss you Lina."

"Jeez, I come here, nothing in it for me at all, just trying to cheer a guy up, and what do I- wait a minute what did you say!"

"I'll miss you Lina." He repeated.

Lina stopped and stared at him, blinked, blinked again and then sunk down into a chair.

"Well whaddya know" she mused aloud "miracles do happen."

A/N: Rabid AZ fan that I am, I thought that was going to be a lot harder to write than it was... Mind, it's not exactly fluffy per-se. So I appologise to any LZ fans who were dissapointed by this.

By the way, does anyone know how to get asterix's and squiggles and percentage signs and so on display in fics? Just out of curiosity.

Hitteh Pitteh: Very sorry, but we've got to get through AF, GX, FL, GZ and FX before the AZ chapter. And Gourry chapters are very hard to write so it may be some time. If it makes you feel better though, I've got a multi-chapter AZ fic in the works. encyser: I have to admit I was particuarly proud of that line myself, great minds think alike huh? Ichiban Victory: That 'as always' at the end of your last review absolutely made my day. Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! Hehe, I'm gonna be bouncing around for the rest of the day now as well.