Gourry wiped his brow as he studied his opponent. They had been battling for who knows how long now, and he knew he wouldn't last much longer. It was time to end this. He drew his weapon and prepared to engage with the enemy one last time.
He advanced quickly, not allowing his opponent time to do more than react. He would thrust, the other barely keeping up. Gourry threw in a few fakes to keep his opponent guessing what his next move would be, not wanting to lose this battle.
Finally, Gourry held his weapon out in a declaration of victory, then with a mighty "Ha!", delivered the killing blow!
"Tic-tac-toe, three in a row! I win again!" Gourry smiled as he drew a line through the winning row, his opponent looking down in shock. "So, want to play again?"
Zelgadis looked at the game in disbelief, wondering for the umpteenth time how Gourry was so good at this! He glanced over at the score Amelia had been keeping on the wall nearby: to his credit Zelgadis had tied against Gourry a few times, but the majority of the games went to Gourry. Zelgadis hadn't won a single game! He grunted and tossed his piece of charcoal onto the ground, admitting defeat.
Gourry frowned, having been enjoying himself. "Aw, come on, Zelgadis. Just one more game? I'll go easy on you if you like."
Zelgadis shook his head no, trying not to look into those pleading eyes. If he didn't know any better, Gourry was enjoying this a tad too much. It would be much better to have to sit and listen to Amelia gush about love and justice at this point, Zelgadis reasoned with himself.
Come to think of it, Amelia had been awful quiet. Zelgadis lifted his head and looked about the room. She had been sitting by the wall earlier to keep track of their score, although one glance at all of the completed games doodled on the floor told Zelgadis she'd stopped keeping score long ago. So where did she get off to?
Zelgadis noticed movement out of the corner of his eye, diverting his attention. Then he saw her. Tucked back in the far corner, near the capsules that had held Dorel's twisted creations before, Amelia was quietly sleeping, her ear twitching every now and again. That had been the movement he had noticed.
"We can play Hangman if you like," Gourry's voice cut back in.
Zelgadis sighed. Oh well, it would help pass the time. Sooner or later, whether it was minutes, hours, days, Zelgadis really had no idea just how long it had been since Lina and Dorel locked themselves away, Lina and Dorel would return, and hopefully this would all be over. Zelgadis picked up his piece of charcoal.
"All right, that's more like it." Gourry smiled happily. "Do you want to go first?"
Zelgadis nodded. He had just the thing in mind to stump Gourry. That would teach him for showing Zelgadis up in Tic-Tac-Toe... Zelgadis began to draw on the floor.
"We did it!" The door flew open, banging against the wall.
Gourry jerked up, Zelgadis' charcoal flew across the floor ruining his drawing, and Amelia leapt to her feet. All three looked in shock at the doorway.
Lina laughed nervously. "Sorry about that, guys. Been waiting long?" She coughed. "Anyway, this is it! We've got it for sure this time!" She held a small syringe in her hand.
Gourry blinked. "What is that?" Whatever Lina was waving around, he didn't want anything to do with it. If it was anything like her cooking...
Lina gave a wink and a grin as she held up the syringe casually. "This, dear Gourry, is my genius at work."
"And a genius you are, Miss Inverse!" Dorel gushed from behind. "Why, if I had known, I would have asked you to be my assistant ages ago! Master Diol was insane to want to make you into one of his creations."
"Glad you see things my way," Lina muttered. "Anyway, we need to find out if this is going to work. I mean, of course it'll work since I helped make it! ...we're just not exactly sure what it'll do." Lina laughed nervously.
Zelgadis and Amelia looked downright terrified. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea...
"What's it supposed to do, exactly?" Gourry scratched his head, still unclear how a tiny vial would do any good.
"I already explained to Miss Inverse how I make chimeras by combining the various essences of creatures together," Dorel replied.
"Yeah," Lina nodded, "so we worked on that principle, but reversed it."
"Uh..." Gourry looked lost.
Lina sighed. "Don't even ask. What I mean is, instead of attacking the host essence with something new to overpower and take over, this will draw out the offending essence, leaving the original intact."
"Umm..." Gourry looked like he was facing down a rampaging dragon.
Lina sighed, putting her free hand to her face to collect herself for a moment. "Right, right, I keep forgetting. Simple terms for Gourry!" She coughed into her fist. "I made pretty magic to suck out the bad stuff."
"Oh, I get it!" Gourry beamed. "That's great! So that'll make Zelgadis and Amelia look normal again, right?"
"Right," Lina nodded. "So, are you guys ready for this?" Lina turned to look at the people in question, her grin fading when she saw them cringing in a far corner. "Hey! I worked really hard on this! Are you saying you don't trust me?" Lina scowled.
Zelgadis and Amelia couldn't help but whimper as they looked at each other, hoping the other could make the situation seem better. "This is Miss Lina we're talking about here," Amelia whispered, "She is really good with magic, so it should be okay. ...right?"
Zelgadis shot a nervous glance back at Lina. "True, but this is also Lina, who is more likely to cause mass mayhem."
"What are you saying, Mister Zelgadis?" Amelia shot a concerned look in Lina's direction.
Zelgadis gave a nervous cough. "I think I'd rather she test that on something else before we volunteer ourselves. Just to be on the safe side."
"Oh, I see. Unfortunately, we killed off all of Mister Dorel's chimeras, remember? What are we supposed to use? It would be wrong to make him create something else, just to test Miss Lina's concoction on it." Amelia frowned.
Zelgadis scanned the room before seeing a telltale tail poking out from behind Dorel's robes. "Not quite." With a grin he snuck up to Dorel, scaring the living daylights out of the man, before pouncing behind him.
Dorel gasped. "What are you doing with Servee?" He looked like he would cry seeing his little servant dangling helplessly from Zelgadis' claws.
Zelgadis growled quietly, then pointed from Lina to Servee. The little animal struggled for its life, but Zelgadis had too strong a grip.
Lina quirked an eyebrow. "What, are you saying you want me to test this out on that thing?" At Zelgadis' nod she scowled. "You don't trust me?"
"I-it wouldn't work, anyway. Servee's not made like you were," Dorel pleaded, "he was an original creation of mine. Please, don't do anything to him!"
Zelgadis shot a glare at Dorel. Make this complicated, why don't you... He looked at the pathetic creature in his hand before tossing it at Dorel, getting some sense of satisfaction watching the two cling to each other. A tsk from Amelia's direction quickly brought him back down. Zelgadis instead opted to tap his claws against the floor.
"Come on, Zel, this is not the time to be picky! Didn't you want to do anything to cure yourself? I mean, you would have even worked for Shabranigdo." Lina glared. "This won't kill you, I promise! Stop being a baby."
Zelgadis bit his tongue, trying very hard not to meet Amelia's gaze. He was already getting bad vibes from what must have been a new revelation to her. Leave it to Lina to dredge up his less than stellar past... He sat back on his haunches and folded his arms. "Fine!"
Lina had no idea what the snarl meant, but seeing Zelgadis wasn't making any new moves, that had to be a good sign. "That's better. Honestly, Zel, sometimes I don't know why I put up with you. Are you ready for this?"
Amelia quietly walked up beside Zelgadis. "Are you sure you want to do this first? If something happens-"
"I'd rather it happened to me." Zelgadis snapped, but looked ashamed when he saw Amelia frown. "Sorry, Amelia, Lina put me into a bit of a mood. You've been through enough today. If anything happens, I don't want to see you hurt," Zelgadis coughed, "again."
Amelia gave a small nod, then backed away. "Hope for the best, and everything will work out."
Zelgadis gave a small smile, then looked down at Lina. "Only one way to find out for sure..."
Zelgadis settled back down to the ground, then offered up his arm as sacrifice.
Lina suddenly looked very unsure of herself as she realized the situation. She gulped. "Okay, here goes. This might hurt a little..." She couldn't help but close her eyes as she jabbed the needle into Zelgadis' arm.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes: Yes, I am awful! I left it on a cliffhanger! (You can send hate me if you like. You know how to reach me.)
Truth be told, I know what's going to happen next, I just haven't geared myself up for writing it yet. I'm also not quite sure when this story will end, but I've a feeling it will be soon. I doubt it'll end in the next chapter, but I'd rather be safe than sorry and not make this chapter too huge.
As to the chapter itself, am I the only one who thinks Gourry would be really good at tactics games? One day the idea of Gourry playing a simple game of Tic-Tac-Toe the way he fights in combat just struck me as hilarious, so I had to work it in. And as much as we all like to think Zelgadis the smarter of the two, Gourry still bests him with a blade. (Heck, in the manga and novels Gourry nearly takes a chunk out of Zelgadis when they are fighting against each other.)
Of course, then I had to introduce Lina back into the mix, and she instantly drags Gourry back down. Ah well. Just to cover my bases, when she says "dear Gourry" she's not being sappy or anything. Not that she's being condescending, either. It just struck me as something she'd say when trying to show off her skills, and since she does talk to Gourry often...erm, yeah, I'll just stop before I dig myself deeper. (I usually see people use 'dear ' when they are very familiar with the person, be it friendship or otherwise, so there you go. And no, not in the way Sylphiel addresses Gourry in the dub. Blah.)
Next time: Is...a secret! Will Lina truly be as skilled as she claims, or will this turn out to be a flop?