Quantum Scrambled Eggs
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Chapter 6
"Eh?" Lina was genuinely surprised when a troll, the apparent lead of a group, kicked the door in.
Several trolls poured in the tavern, interrupted only by a man wrapped in bandages from head to toe wearing a cape similar to Lina's. "There she is!" He pointed directly at Lina, "Get her!"
"What? Oh my!" Lina exclaimed, then in her best acting style said, "What, I'm Sophia! The girl you're looking for isn't…"
"ENOUGH! I don't care!" The bandaged, mummy-like man bellowed making a swipe to the air before commanding his trolls forward. "Get her I said!"
The trolls began their charge and the bandaged man continued, almost as if on a monologue. "I don't care what your name is! All I care about is that you're the twerp that stole that bandit treasure."
"So…" Gourry muttered as he played with his drink, "That's what you did to get those guys after you…"
"Shut up!" Lina whispered back, still hoping to misdirect this group until she could make a good getaway, though looking at the trolls charging that quickly became an impossibility. Lina, improvising as she often did, jumped on the table in a fighting pose and yelled "all right!" at the trolls.
"Let's take this outside!" She continued yelling, pointing back out the door.
The mummy took a step back at the unexpected response from Lina, then gathered himself and responded with a yell, still a bit unbalanced - mentally - by Lina's tell, "No! I don't want to!" Sure, it was a childish, immature yell, and didn't lend him any 'intimidation-points', but nobody's perfect.
Gourry saw the effect that the unexpected responses were having on the group's leader and sprang into action, slamming his hands down on the table as he abruptly stood and yelled, "DIDN'T YOUR MOTHER EVER TELL YOU NOT TO FIGHT IN THE HOUSE?"
The mummy-man actually stumbled back a few steps, before he opened his mouth. "Well.. yes…" he said sheepishly before throwing his finger again at Lina, yelling, "But she started it!"
And with that yell the fighting broke out in earnest. Luckily the interplay between Lina and the bandaged man had allowed the majority of the room to take cover, although admittedly a wooden table isn't much cover from either a violent maniac or a troll, especially wen said maniac was quite powerful magically speaking.
Lina bounded over a charging troll's head and rolled under another's legs, before bouncing off a wall and completing a spell she'd been muttering and touching every troll she could with her now-glowing white gloves. Then she landed nest to where Gourry was standing, leaning against the wall, arms crossed watching the fight.
"Welcome back." Gourry said dryly, he'd been expecting something to happen, but she'd instead just bounced around like a rubber ball, impressive acrobatics, but useless when fighting trolls.
Lina looked a bit deflated at the tone Gourry gave her, but then brightened as she asked, "Can you wound those trolls?"
Gourry nodded, not taking his eyes off the trolls, "It wouldn't do any good though, they regenerate." Gourry kept his mind on the here-now, instead of letting it wander back to dwell on Yeal and that unfortunate incident.
"Oh, come on! Anything'll do, even a little scratch." Lina encouraged him… and tried pushing him along.
"Alright, alright." Gourry said, "Any little scratch, huh?"
Gourry reached down to their table and grabbed a handful of nuts from the bowl that was lying there, the interesting thing about these nuts were that they were fairly heavy while most nuts were fairly light, they also had fairly sharp edges and came to an almond-like point.
Ammunition in hand, Gourry flung the nuts into the advancing trolls. The nuts, predictably, did negligible damage… until a few seconds had elapsed and the trolls suddenly broke out into massive gouges starting from the little scratches from the nuts, and fell into writhing mounds of flesh on the floor for an instant before dissolving into nothingness.
It was a gruesome sight, one that would give almost everyone in the room nightmares tonight, but it had the advantage of eliminating all the danger from the trolls. Well, all except the three that were acting as the bandaged man's bodyguard.
"Wha-what the hell?" the aforementioned man said in an unsteady voice, perfectly understandable given that his trolls were supposed to have advanced healing abilities.
"What's going on?" Gourry asked, more than a little disturbed by the whole thing, it was more like a dream than real, especially considering his previous experience with trolls.
"I cast a spell on them!" Lina said, explaining in a confidant, almost laid-back manner, "It turns their healing powers back on itself. In other words, since the troll's healing power is so great, when it gets turned around it's enormous. So a small wound destroy's the whole body."
"It works really well." Gourry said, still starring at the scene. "But he still has some trolls!"
Gourry nodded toward the mummy who was trying to persuade his bodyguard to attack, but due to a little intelligence and an instinct for self-preservation, they were understandably reluctant to join the fight as the rest of their group had.
Finally one of the trolls had decided that he'd had enough, and that he could take on the little one, so he lunged at the spot where Gourry and Lina were standing, smashing the wall an instant after they'd dodged his attack.
The troll rebounded spinning around to face Lina and took another swing with his club which she dodged, pulling out her sword to try to counter. Gourry, who had been tripped by a leg sticking out from under a table, looked on as the troll let Lina thrust her sword into its belly, then grabbed it and pulled the sword deeper, dragging Lina along.
'So, that's what it was trying to do…' Gourry thought, helpless to get to Lina in time, as he watched the troll bring up his sword. It was obvious, to him at least, that a troll could take an enemy weapon into its body and immobilize it long enough to get a good telling hit in, or perhaps let one of it's companions take care of it. Simply put, their healing power could be used in tactics, allowing 'sacrifice' tactics that weren't.
Knowing it would be too late, Gourry still grabbed the hilt of his sword and sprang forward even as he drew it from his sheath. He needn't have bothered, as he landed Lina let forth a magical lightning-bolt that traveled through her sword and directly into the troll, frying its central nervous system rather nicely… though it was, unfortunately, still alive enough for it to regenerate.
"Now to take care of you!" Lina said with a somewhat malicious smile as she turned to the bandaged man and began to loudly recite a spell.
"Ah, ah!" The mummy took a step back seeing a glow start to form above the girl's hand, reminiscent of the glow he'd seen the instant before he'd been burned so badly. "It's a fireball! Run, run!" he yelled as he bolted out the door.
Lina watched as he exited, quickly, and his few remaining trolls ran right behind him.
"Whew!" Lina sighed in relief, she wasn't up to her full capacity, but that was something she wanted nobody to know, especially someone who was obviously an enemy.
Gourry went wide-eyed, "Don't just go 'whew', what about that fireball?" Gourry was near panic, after all, a ball of magical energy that would explode on contact wasn't something to 'toss around'.
Lina just giggled and tossed it in the air; Gourry did the only thing he could duck and cover, duck-and-cover. "It's just a lighting spell!" Lina said, giggling even more with Gourry's reaction.
Gourry partially uncovered his head and peeked up, seeing no immanent destruction he breathed a sigh of relief, stood up, and dusted himself off, saying "That's not funny Lina, not funny at all."
At about this time the innkeeper was surveying the damages done, "What have you done?" he almost screeched, obviously he wasn't 'cooly surveying the damage'. He continued with a growled "Just look at this place! I-I-I'm ruined!"
"Gee, I'm sorry for all this trouble…" Lina said it in a tone that would have been a whine if it wasn't for the contrite undertones.
Lina had switched her displayed emotions, from happy-at-a-prank to oh-man-I'm-so-so-so-sorry, so quickly that Gourry was thrown off balance. He made a mental note to not fully trust her open displays of emotion.
"Maybe… this could make it up to you?" Lina half-asked/half-begged, offering a palm-sized jewel.
"Well, uh…" The innkeeper was thrown off balance by the generous offer, such a gem would cover all the repair expenses, their meal, their stay for the night, and just maybe a bit more.
"I-it's the best I can do for you." Lina said in that half-pleading tone again.
"Well… I guess, this'll cover it, so never mind." The innkeeper said, happy that he wasn't ruined after all, "I'll go see to it that your rooms are promptly prepared." The innkeeper said, excusing himself from the conversation.
"Lucky!" Lina hopped up happily, she wouldn't have to sleep outside tonight… that and she had convinced the innkeeper to accept one of her lowest-value gems.
Gourry looked at the little girl and shivered at the sheer manipulation and deception of people the kid had just shown… for some reason thought that she would make a good used-car salesman… which was odd, because when he thought about it he couldn't tell you what a car was.
• • • • • • • • • • •
Later, in Lina's room, she was explaining everything that had happened to Gourry, though he'd already deduced all the main points. It was obvious that Lina had something that someone wanted. And, according to Gourry's analysis, they had more resources than your average person, after all most people don't have the clout to bring in a large group of trolls to do their bidding. So, that narrowed it down to either the rich, or the powerful, too bad Gourry knew virtually no one in either of those categories, and even if he did chances were still slim that he'd know who was behind the whole thing. So, it really came back to square one. Lina had something, quite probably stolen from the bandits, that someone else wanted.
"But to find me…" Lina continued her explanation, drawing Gourry's attention a bit, "They would have to use magic."
"Well, can you do that?" Gourry asked, it was quite simply that he'd never seen magic that wasn't used for destruction or healing… except just recently with Lina's fish spell and the light spell.
"Whatever it is that Mummy Man wants is probably allowing him to track me as well." Lina replied nodding.
"Oh, I see…" Gourry said, wondering what other things that could be done with magic… then getting the feeling that he really didn't want to find out.
"Well…" Gourry said as he got up, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door.
"Who's there?" Lina asked.
"Someone wishing to conduct business with you." The voice came from the other side, soft, yet forceful. A voice that held a resolve not to be denied. "You possess an item that I will pay any price you name to obtain."
"I don't believe this…" Lina whispered at Gourry, who only nodded in reply.
The voice cut off what she was about to say next. "I understand that I am very unusual to you and that you must be suspicious… But I can assure you that, for now at least, I have no intention of harming you… Like I said, I only wish to do a business transaction."
"And what does he mean by that?" Lina growled under her breath then almost yelled at the door, "Does the term 'for now', or 'intention', change once you're through the door?"
There was a short, dry, laugh from the other end. "You're quite shrewd, I see… so saying 'don't worry' would be worse than useless…" There was a pause, then the voice resumed, "I believe that you have a competent bodyguard, so you shouldn't worry about it too much… if you trust him, that is."
Lina glanced over at Gourry, wondering if she could trust him, then shook her head, he was obviously trying to play with her sense of paranoia.
"Bodyguard?" Gourry questioned, knowing full well that the stranger was referring to him, but if he was using magic to eavesdrop it might confuse him a bit.
"He means you!" Lina whispered furiously at Gourry, then turned to the door, almost yelling again, "I'm warning you, any funny business and you'll get a powerful attack spell you won't forget!"
"I'll do no such thing." The voice replied, a slight edge of frustration in his voice, "Again, I say, I only want to do business."
"Okay." Lina replied, motioning Gourry to open the door.
"You're letting him in?" Gourry asked skeptically, it didn't seem like either the smart thing to do, or something Lina would do… then he remembered her 'performance' downstairs and thought that maybe this was the real Lina poking out.
"Just try to look threatening…" Lina said as she sat on the bed preparing a spell, just in case. "And open the door."
Gourry shook his head and walked over to the door, carefully opening it to reveal… a man in mysterious off-white robes with a hood and mask that covered everything but the eyes. It was in all, a stylish, yet effective method for concealing one's identity.
"Well, there's nothing suspicious about that." Lina muttered sarcastically, just a split second before the man in bandages followed him through the door. Gourry of course fell into a ready stance with his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"Are you friends with Mister Mummy here?" Lina asked the white-robed man… if that's what he was, she had the odd feeling that this guy was a lot more powerful that he looked. Which, even with the robes, would be a short and not-too-muscular form, but he moved with a confidence of body that she'd only seen on the overconfident or the very strong.
"M-mummy Man? " The bandaged man took a step forward to lunge, being interrupted by both the sound of Gourry's sword being quickly drawn and the robed man's hand shooting out to block his advance.
"Stop!" The robed man commanded, presumably just the bandaged man, but Gourry stopped as well when the bandaged man obeyed. The robed figure continued, never taking his eyes off Lina, "His name is Zolf. He is a good servant, if impertinent at times. Please forgive him his… enthusiasm for trying to retrieve the item I am interested in."
"Heh, no problem… I'll just raise the price." Lina said cheerfully, Gourry could almost swear he saw gold coins dancing in front of her eyes… he'd have to be careful about his money, and probably possessions, too.
"Again, a shrewd move." The robed man nodded, "Now then, let us get down to business."
"""You said you wanted something of mine, right?" Lina asked, trying to probe for r some information on what it was, Gourry thought.
"Yes, an item recently acquired from the bandit, the Dragon Fangs, to be precise." Was the reply, a bit too vague for Lina's probing to work.
Lina shrugged, time for the direct approach, "And what is this 'item' you want?"
"That I won't say."Came his simple reply.
Lina was stumped… how exactly did someone do business if you didn't know what was to be traded? "Well, I guess that cancels this transaction…"
"Wait." The robed man held out his hand, "If I told you what particular item I wanted, you would overcharge me… or perhaps refuse to part with it out of curiosity. So instead, you will show me all the items you took and give their prices."
"Excuse me!" He'd caught her, she had to admit, and it was a good solution to the trap she was planning… maybe she could apply it to all the items instead, thought. "Well, you were right about that."
"Show me the items you acquired in your raid and name your prices." The man repeated, insisting the continuation of their negotiations. "Then I'll tell you what I want."
"You don't seem to be one of the bandits, so why do you want it?" Lina asked as she got ready to pull out her loot.
"To find that item I have dispatched many servants, but then Zolf found it and infiltrated the bandits, but just as he was about to 'liberate' it…"
"I showed up, right?" Lina broke in almost joyfully.
"Yes, that is correct." The robed man conceded, letting Lina finish the explanation for him.
"Stealing from thieves, that's pretty low." Lina commented.
"Uh, Lina, you did that too…" Gourry broke in to the conversation, completely throwing Lina's train of thought.
"Gourry!" She yelled at him rather indignantly.
"Well, it's true." Gourry replied, making the only defense he could… and taking the wind out of Lina's sails.
"Well, uh, I guess I now know your circumstances…" Lina said, mentally adding 'Or at least what you're willing to tell me of them.' before smiling and withdrawing the cursed knife from earlier. "This enchanting knife…" Lina began, "will only set you back twelve… million."
The robed man went bug-eyed, as did Zolf and Gourry. Twelve million… that was enough to keep Gourry happily fed for a decade or three… without having to worry about work he could devote larger blocks of time to training… start developing those non-lethal forms.
"What? What's with that reaction?" Lina demanded angrily, bringing Gourry out of his thoughts, and the other two as well. "You men have no balls at all! You said I could set the price! It's only a hundred times the street value! Come on, come on! Pay up!"
The robed man scratched his head rather forcefully and responded, "I see, I was expecting you to charge two or three times the street price… but I didn't say it was the knife I was interested in."
Lina deflated slightly, then pulled out the statuette, "For this Orihalcon statuette… thirty million!"
"For that price you could buy a small castle from a prince!" The robed man responded, angry at the high prices.
"A castle?" Lina allowed a split second to daydream about living like a princess in a castle, that would be the life! Lina laughed, "Well, I guess when you think about it the prices are kind of steep, I'll tell you what, for you, I'll cut em in half."
"Just half? Are you joking?" The robed man was now indignant, but he seemed to catch himself, "Well, I suppose that is a generous concession on your part."
Lina nodded, of course it was, I mean who would ever accuse her of being stingy… where she could hear it anyway.
Zolf chose that moment to break in, "You brat, I should teach you to make fools of us!"
"Zolf!"
"Oh yeah?" Lina replied, "It's hardly fair, I mean a third-rate wizard that can't tell the difference between a fireball and a lighting spell!"
"Third-rate wizard?" Zolf bristled, "Wait... that was... A LIGHT SPELL?"
"Ah, Mr. Third-rate figures it out." Lina taunted.
It was then that the robed man pushed Zolf out the door, closing it on yells of 'impertinent brat' and several curses on her lineage.
"There, shall we continue?" The robed man asked, gesturing to Lina. "I don't usually carry millions with me, so… How about 100,000 up front, and the rest to be paid later?"
Lina shook her head, "I don't think so."
"I have one last idea then," The robed man doggedly continued the negotiations, long after most would have given up. "Why don't you join us? In six months time... you can have two... no, three times the price you asked for."
"N-n-ninety million!" Gourry could hardly believe that amount, it would make quite the family fortune.
"I see…" Lina began, "You want it very badly, so it must have one hell of a hidden value! The thing is, I really cant say... that I'd be comfortable hanging out with your type."
"You're not going to get a better deal, I assure you." The robed man said, hoping that she wouldn't reject the idea outright.
"Just call it woman's intuition." Lina said and, leaving no room for debate, she continued with "And this woman's intuition tells her that you're the type I'd sooner die than join up with."
"So, you're breaking negations?" The robed man asked quietly, "That's a pity…"
"Yeah, a shame." Lina sarcastically retorted.
"Then, as promised, I will leave quietly…" The robed man said softly, but with a tone of resolve that made steel look like Jell-O, "But I will take the item from you by force! Tomorrow morning, the moment you step outside this inn, we become mortal enemies!"
The robed man turned around and exited, turning around in the doorway to say something, "Oh, yes… my name is Zelgadiss."
"I'll remember that." Lina said, gesturing for Gourry to close the door. Which he did, with a thunk as it hit his face.
Gourry winced, he hadn't meant to literally close the door on the guy. Lina might not trust him, but Gourry got in impression of a code of honor, after all, he did keep his word about not attacking… but still…
A little later, after Lina shooed him out of her room, Gourry pulled off his boots as he prepared for bed, he still thought that it would have been a better idea to sell the item, get a bit of profit off of it, and be rid of its trouble. But then it was Lina's to do with as she pleased, so it really wasn't his business… except for the 'having mortal enemies' bit. He really didn't want mortal enemies, but it seemed like there was no avoiding this one, he couldn't leave Lina alone to face Zelgadiss alone.
Grunting, he pulled his boots back on and exited his room, standing in his doorway he guarded the hall, and Lina's room, all night. It turned out that it was an uneventful, boring, and tiring watch though.
• • • • • • • • • • •
About two hours before dawn Gourry groggily woke Lina and the two left town under the cover of the pre-dawn darkness. They were several miles outside the town when dawn finally broke, illuminating Gourry's zombie-like face, the sunken, bloodshot eyes in particular gave Lina the creeps.
"Gee Gourry! You sure aren't a morning person, are you?" Lina said laughingly, trying to alleviate her own uneasiness.
Gourry glared balefully in her direction, thinking of a proper response, one that didn't involve clouting her upside the head. Fortunately for him, a farmer going the same direction with a horse-drawn cart chose that moment to kindly offer them a ride.
Gourry tried to keep his mind on what she was saying, something about how either the statuette or the knife could be tracked, the knife with its spell, and the statuette with its magic-resistant materiel. The knife, she declared, must be useless, until Gourry pointed out, mid-yawn, that perhaps it was something like a key to a treasure chest or something.
"It could be Gourry!" Lina exclaimed, "perhaps you're not so dumb after all!"
Then she looked over at Gourry and found him sleeping, twitched twice, and shook him awake for falling asleep while she was talking.
• • • • • • • • • • •
"I can't figure out why they'd be so obsessed with either of them!" Lina said with some aggravation, re starting the dialogue from before.
Gourry sighed and shrugged, he didn't know enough of anything to be of help, one way or the other. Seeing that he was keeping quiet Lina just continued on as they entered the outskirts of a forest.
"One more thing, they'll be waiting to ambush us somewhere." Lina said.
"Yeah, here…" Gourry replied, somewhat cheerfully, now that he'd had a couple of hours of sleep. There were several dark eyes he'd spotted when they'd gone in a ways, not the eyes of animals, but the malicious gazes of monsters ready to lay waste to the two travelers.
A few more seconds and the monsters, berserkers, burst from their concealment, such as it was, and charged. Gourry wasted no time in meeting them and dealt heavy damage to the group in front of him, while he'd seen Lina go for the group on the left.
After slashing through several Berserkers, a tree, another Berserker, a charging boar (spooked by Berserkers), and yet more Berserkers, it looked to Gourry like they'd been fairly well decimated ane took the rest out in short order… if by short order you meant slowly, laboriously, and one-by-one.
Finally though, after dispatching the final Berserker, Gourry made his way to where Lina had been lazing about on the grass covered hillside, enjoying the sun and doing absolutely nothing to help out in their fight.
"Say, Lina, don't you feel bit ashamed about letting others fight your battles for you?" Gourry asked, panting, as he backhanded a Berserker that decided it was well enough to stagger to its feet and try to continue the assault on the two.
"But I did fight…" Lina said, shifting her position, "a little."
Gourry remembered her opening the battle with a few fireballs, but that was about it, she'd dropped off the radar really early in the fight. "Yeah, then you left me with the rest… which wasn't very nice, or sporting, of you."
"Well, you have a point., I guess." Lina shifted a bit more, uncomfortable, probably…
"Well, come on." Gourry said, trying to gather enough strength to continue on their journey. It would, after all, be a bad idea to stop… especially out in the open like they were, Zelgadiss would simply order his men to trap them if he could. "If we don't make it to the next village before nightfall we'll be easy picking for them. So, let's go."
"A little more… it's nice and warm here." Lina protested, obviously she'd found a good napping spot, she continued on for a while about how the spot was very nice.
"Would you cut that out?" Gourry asked, more than a bit angry at his seemingly new fair-weather ally, and grabbed her arm to pick her up.
She winced, not the oh-no-I'm-not-getting-my-way wince, but the oh-crap!-that hurts wince., the doubling over and subsequent shift in her position let him see that there was a wet spot on her red tunic, one that was made with her own blood… she hadn't been just relaxing and taking it easy, she must have been wounded early on… which, in turn, made Gourry feel like an insensitive jerk.
"Lina, are you alright?" Gourry asked with more energy than he felt due to the weight of guilt he now felt.
"I just ate too much before the attack." Lina said trying to put up a front.
"But you're bleeding!" Gourry rebutted, it wasn't eloquent or persuasive except in the concern that showed.
"It's ok… It's that…" Lina wondered what to say, then caught his concerned gaze, which changed what she was going to say, "I'm casting a healing spell, if we wait a while we'll be good as new."
"Lina… we don't have a while." Gourry said earnestly then, much to her dismay, picked her up and started carrying her to the next town.
Author's Notes:
Alright, I wanted to get to the end of the Rezo encounter, but this looks like a good spot.
Anyway, I suppose I should reply to some of the questions and reviews now, so here goes:
Zelinko - You have Sam's character down good, and he will indeed do something, but only when he can. So, you can count on seeing him in the story (as well as the other leaper), but not really soon.
TannimMurphy – Well, there isn't going to be too much deviation for this Arc… though there will definitely be in a later Arcs, right now I'm slowly introducing my SI. In about Arc 2 things'll start spiraling out in different directions. All I have to say about what will happen is: "Sore wa himetsu desu". (You can thank Xellos for that one.) Also, he won't really remember much until an evil event I have planned in the future… cackles evilly
Kyrtythren – Quite right in that without the intro it'd seem like a Slayers reiteration, and it would be to an extent, which I'm sure would throw people off when he suddenly jumps into another universe/character.