Quantum Scrambled Eggs

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Chapter 5

After outrunning the villagers Gourry and Lina took a break for their stomachs to settle; it never feels good to run like that on a full stomach, especially after eating so much. After the urge to empty his stomach had passed, Gourry asked Lina if she was alright.

"Do I look alright?" Lina replied, lifting her head out of a hole beside the road, possibly a rabbit-hole, and tried to glare at him. It didn't work too well, however, because the effect was ruined by the sudden ballooning of her cheeks and the rush to vomit in the hole.

"How did you manage it?" Lina asked, eyeing him and wiping her mouth.

"Manage what?" Gourry asked, scratching his head.

"Not throwing up."

"Oh…" Gourry shrugged, "I don't know."

Lina grumbled something in reply and, a few minutes later, was ready to get continue on to the next town.

• • • • • • • • • • •

When Lina and Gourry reached the next town there was an hour and a half or two hours of daylight left, just enough time to visit some of the town's shops, which Lina was excited about. She really wanted to get to a magic shop, but just before entering she ran off, leaving Gourry alone for a while.

Gourry stretched sore muscles as he walked about, until seeing a doctor/white-mage establishment, and after spending a little more than he would have liked, he exited the establishment feeling much better without the sores, bruises and other injuries form being caught in the periphery of Lina's Dragon Slave earlier.

After waiting outside the magic shop for a while he decided to look inside and see if maybe Lina had entered while he was away, but a quick reconnoitering of the shop revealed that she had yet to return.

Whistling an aimless tune Gourry removed his armor and began inspecting it. Its blue lacquer had been chipped and there was significant carbon scoring, but it was still quite serviceable, so Gourry shrugged it back on and continued to wait.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Lina burst in the shop some indeterminate time later, just as Gourry was about to fall asleep. Wiping the sleep from his eyes he joined Lina at the counter where she was trying to sell various items to the shopkeeper.

"Ah, I see…" The shopkeeper muttered examining a large jewel-like item that Lina was offering, "You made this yourself, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah!" Lina replied.

The shopkeeper gave a chuckle, probably at her enthusiasm, and complemented her work. "You're a good sorceress, making something of this quality… I can give you a decent price."

"Great! I knew I could count on you pops!" Lina said with another smile as the shopkeeper moved on to some of Lina's other items.

"Ah, I see this has a spell cast on it." The shopkeeper muttered to himself as he examined a knife. "I think I can take it, if you sell me something else too."

"Oh?" Lina asked, surprised by the sudden change in mannerisms that he displayed, "Like what?"

"YOUR LIFE!" The older man yelled as he leapt over the counter and thrust the knife at Lina, who somehow blocked it with a metal statuette as she dodged to the side.

Gourry sprang into action grabbing the man in a double-nelson, but it didn't do any good as he was thrown off and into Lina, knocking them both down, which was particularly lucky for both of them because the old man followed up by ripping out the counter and throwing it at the two, or rather where they had been.

"Get off!" Lina yelled in Gourry's ear.

"That wasn't normal strength…" Gourry observed out loud as he rolled onto his feet and into a defensive pose. He had height, weight, and leverage advantages when he'd put the shopkeeper in that hold, but he'd been flung easily… that, and the whole ripping-out-a-counter-and-throwing-it thing. There was someone here who might know the answer, after all she had the knife that seemed to be the cause of all this, "What happened to him?" Gourry asked Lina.

"It's the knife!" Lina screamed, to which Gourry was about to make a rather rude noise, "It had some kind of weird spell on it! I thought it was just to keep it sharp!"

"So, you were just going to sell it even though it could be dangerous?" Gourry retorted, amazed at the irresponsibility… but then, he shouldn't expect so much from Lin… the kid.

"Okay, so maybe it's my fault… a little." Lina admitted in a deceptively demure tone.

Gourry was about to scold her some more when more urgent matters presented themselves, that is the matter of survival. The shopkeeper was advancing slowly, and laughing softly under his breath, it could have been a friendly chuckle, except for the malevolent glint in his eyes.

"Come on!" Lina said grabbing Gourry and starting out for the exit, which he already knew to be blocked by the remains of the counter. "It's blocked!"

"Sure is," Gourry said dryly, and with a calmness that wasn't quite appropriate, then added "kid."

"Gourry!" Lina responded to the slight goad, as if it were the most important thing and there wasn't a knife-wielding madman about to slice-and-dice their bodies.

Gourry ignored her and, keeping his eyes on the shopkeeper, said "On my mark run around him and out the back."

Gourry waited until the old man was in a lunge, he didn't have enhanced speed, and his moves were easy to see coming. So, Gourry grabbed the mans arm while he was lunging and pulled him off his feet, over extending and unbalancing the old man long enough for the two to dash out the back.

Now, out of the cramped confines of the store Gourry could get some power behind his swings and have room to maneuver… he was drawing his sword when Lina put her hand over his and begged him not to hurt the older man, 'He's under the knife's control.' she said.

"Well, can't you cast a spell to make him go to sleep or something?" Gourry asked.

"No!" Lina said vehemently, almost yelling, then fiddled with her fingers as she said in a soft tone, "I-I can't…"

Lina wouldn't admit it to Gourry, but she had nearly exhausted her supply of magical power for the day. It was the 'day-before' warning that signaled when a sorceress or priestess's powers would be… limited, due to certain… cycles.

"So, I've got to get the knife away without hurting him?" Gourry asked, guessing about cause-and-effect concerning the knife's magic, just as the man stepped out of the door.

"Right!" Lina nodded enthusiastically.

"Can I do it without hurting him?" Gourry asked, hand ready at the hilt of his sword, as he and the possessed man circled each other. Gourry critically examined his skills, he might be good at tournaments, or in skirmishes, but he didn't have the skills necessary for disarming him without some form of maiming. For example, he could draw his sword and disembowel him, behead him, cut his arm or hand off, he could even cut his fingers off… but he couldn't simply disarm him safely.

The situation had illuminated a weak part in the Gabriev style, which was that as a blade there were no real ways of disarming an opponent. The sword of Light however, was more versatile and, could easily disarm someone in several ways… but he didn't have time to unlatch the blade right now, so that option was out.

"Run for it!" Gourry yelled back at Lina as he broke from circling the old man and ran along the inside perimeter of the fenced-in back yard.

"What, wait!" Lina said grabbing on to Gourry as he ran past, his hair being the only thing she could grab, though all it did was cause her to get dragged along with him as he ran.

"You started this mess, you clean it up!" Gourry said, trying to ignore that he was pulling Lina around by his hair.

"We can't just leave him here like this!" Lina yelled back at Gourry, which wasn't all that necessary considering she was facing towards him.

"Raaaawha!" The man yelled as he leaped at the two, and he would have gotten one of them if he'd made up his mind on who to attack. As it was he jumped in and cut Gourry's hair, causing Gourry to stumble forward and Lina to fall backward.

"Heh, heh, heh…" The man chuckled as he licked the blade and looked from Lina to Gourry as if deciding between two deserts, and when he looked back at Lina Gourry knew which he had chose.

Gourry scrambled to his feet drawing his sword in a desperate attempt to save Lina, but even as he leapt he could see that he wouldn't make it in time… Gourry braced for the inevitable scream from Lina, in her death throes, which would be shortly followed my the man's own… a foot of steel through the his chest, piercing his heart. That moment never came.

Just when he pulled back to strike, the old man's wife burst out of the back door of the shop, grabbed his ear, coincidentally causing him to drop the knife, and pulled him back into the trashed shop while giving him an earful.

"Wow, I guess a wife is stronger than a cursed knife." Lina observed.

"Apparently." Gourry replied, somewhat shocked at not having to kill the old man… oh, and that Lina was alive.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Gourry and Lina decided to continue on, hightailing it out of town, mostly at Lina's insistence. Gourry didn't think too much of it, nobody had been hurt, and the physical damage was really only a counter and several items, but still Lina insisted that they should be going. Gourry guessed that it was some superstition on her part that trouble was following her, or something like that. Fortunately for him, he kept his mouth shut.

It was a little while later, maybe twenty minutes out of town, that Lina and Gourry settled down to camp for the night, which they did away from the road near a stream. Lina volunteered to catch the fish if Gourry would build the fire, so, after gathering dry wood and preparing everything, Gourry got a nice, small, cook-fire going.

While Gourry had been starting the fire, Lina had already caught several fish and was already cooking them. That was unusual, most of the time it took more than some time and patience to catch fish… maybe there was some sort of fish-catching spell or something, Gourry shrugged mentally as he asked, "So, how'd you manage to catch so many so quickly?"

"Well…" Lina began, trailing off and turned a fish on its spit, "it's my own original magic spell!" she exclaimed.

"Oh… so then you can do little things besides that excessive Dragon Slave…" Gourry observed.

"Well, even an idiot can learn one trick." Lina replied, "You can't be the best without knowing the big and the small spells."

"Oh, I see…" Gourry replied, it was true of swordsmanship as well. As he'd learned earlier there were times where killing and maiming were neither necessary nor desirable… that would have to be something he would need to correct. He decided then and there that he would learn nonlethal and disarming moves as well.

After a while Lina declared that the fish were done and tore into several devouring them whole while Gourry was careful not to eat certain things, bones mostly and some of the internal organs, which he seemed to have heard or read about sometime.

When Gourry threw those things Lina burst out with indignation. "Hey, you're supposed to eat all of it! See!" She demonstrated by eating another whole fish.

"But I can't eat the guts…" Gourry complained.

"Why not?" Lina asked, the obvious question, adding her opinion, "The guts are the best part."

Unfortunately for Gourry, what he thought he'd read somewhere suddenly fled his mental grasp, leaving him grasping for anything to answer with. Just then, Gourry's eye fell on some of the little caterpillar-worm things Lina had used for bait.

"Well, the stomach's part of the guts, right?" Gourry asked, suppressing a smile at the joke he was going to play.

"Yeah, what about it?" Lina asked, uncertain of what the big blonde was getting at.

"Well, you used these for bait, right?" Gourry held up one of the squirming green creatures, "That means it's in the stomach too."

Lina blinked once then spat out the food in her mouth… "I don't want fish any more." She whined.

"Well, there was the inn and tavern back in town." Gourry suggested, it didn't matter too much to him, he'd gotten used to sleeping out of doors, but a nice soft bed might be a good change.

"Yes, lets!" Lina exclaimed, bursting with energy suddenly, as she preceded to break camp.

Gourry sighed, "But what about avoiding rumors?" he asked, sighting one of the reasons Lina insisted that they continue on earlier in the day.

"Gourry! I'm surprised at you!" Lina snapped, "Why should you care what others are saying about you? You know the truth, so it shouldn't bother you, right?"

"Uh…" Gourry said, not sure where to pick up the argument…then he decided that arguing about it simply wasn't worth it, sighed, and agreed with Lina that he shouldn't worry about possible rumors.

• • • • • • • • • • •

It was no surprise that a half-hour Gourry found himself in a tavern/inn eating dinner about thirty minutes later. What did surprise him though, was spotting several trolls walk passed a front window towards the door.

"Say, Lina…" Gourry interrupted, earning a scowl from the diminutive red-headed sorceress.

"What Gourry?" Lina growled through a ham leg.

"Can you handle yourself in a fight?" Gourry asked, nonchalantly, so as to not alert her to the imminent entrance of the trolls.

"Yeah, I'm pretty good… if I do say so myself." Lina praised herself.

"Good." Gourry replied, earning a questioning look from Lina, "Then I'll leave them up to you." Gourry pointed at the front door just as the lead troll broke through it.

Author's Notes:

Alright! I did it. I finished the chapter in time to post it on my birthday, granted it's a little shorter than I would have hoped, but here's a nice cliffhanger. Next time, we'll meet Zelgadiss, my favorite character! Yay!

Now, if you, dear reader, would like to do something special for me (this being my birthday), then please take some time to critically review this story so far. Thank you.