Here's some little fic I wrote when I was sick and decided to kill some time. This is my first Slayers fanfic, so a) there might be some factual errors because I haven't seen all episodes of TRY yet, b) there might be some other errors because English is not my mother tongue and c) this fic isn't necessarily very good because I'm not a very good writer. You can say that by watching my school essays.... Hehe! Anyhoo, who actually cares about factual errors? (I do! If they're in my fics, I mean.) Fanfics are just fanfics and so they're always full of all kinds of stuff which fans have made up by themselves. So I'll stop this babbling now, let's get to the fic. I hope you'll like it! :)
It was a late afternoon when a tired group arrived to a small village surrounded by forest. They were hungry and tired after walking whole day and had decided to spend a night in a tavern. Last night they had slept outside, and it had been okay until just before the sunrise it had started to rain. A red haired sorceress known as Lina Inverse opened the door and stepped into a cosy tavern named "Raccoon Dog". After her came Gourry, Zelgadis, Amelia, Filia and Xellos. It was warm inside. A red painted cuckoo clock ticked on the wall and on the reception table near the door was a little manekineko which smiled it's cat-smile looking friendly. Soon about 30 year old woman came to the room. "Welcome! How can I help you?"
"We need rooms for six for this night", said Lina.
"Thank you," The woman said. "It'll be rooms 5 and 6."
"The place surely looks nice," Lina said. "I really wanna rest for a while. I haven't got a decent meal or sleep for the past few days!" That was true. For three days they were walked without seeing any taverns or restaurants. There had been a farm where they had bought some food, and the farmed had even let them to sleep in his barn, but the night had been cold and so it wasn't a very nice experience. Besides, the barn had been full of rats who practiced some odd musical all night. They seemed to be sure that it'd be a big hit someday.
Soon they were sitting around a table and eating. "Man this food is GOOD!!!" Lina said happily. Or at least she tried to say like that. Because she had her mouth full of food it sounded more like "mmam mif ood if oodmf!".
Xellos just drank tea and ate some stew, being a Mazoku he didn't actually have to eat human food anyway. Suddenly he noticed that the woman they had seen earlier was talking to a maid and sounded worried. Xellos listened to them curiously.
"Oh Marja, I don't know what to do anymore! This morning Risu ran away, again! I've looked all over for her...."
"Don't be too worried, ma'am," the girl answered. "I'm sure that she'll come back home. She always does."
"But.... This time she got really mad.... There was only one muffin left and I gave it to Ryuu. Risu said that she had wanted it too and I said that Ryuu is still a little bit sick and that's why he can have it. Then Risu yelled that I care about Ryuu more than her. I tried to say that it wasn't true and as his bigsister she should let him have the muffin but then she said that she'll run away and will never come back.... After her father died she's been like this.... I don't know what to do anymore!"
"I'm sure that she hasn't wandered far.... She might be at her treehouse." the maid said.
Xellos finished his meal and stood up. Then he took one sandwich and wrapped it into a napkin. "I'm going for a walk."
"Sure, go ahead," said Lina who was fighting over a fried chicken with Gourry. Zel was just sipping his tea.
"That's good. Then I don't have to watch your face anymore, it spoils my appetite," Filia said. "Namagomi!" she added.
Xellos sticked his tongue out at her. "If you like that stuff so much then why don't you go to the backyard to meet Mr. Compost?" Then he slipped through the door before Filia had a chance to hit him with her mace.
"Why that...... that JERK!!!!!" Filia yelled angrily.
"Calm down, Filia-san," said Amelia smiling brightly. "Here, have an apple."
The sun was setting when Xellos stepped outside. He noticed a path and decided to follow it. He came to a little glade where he saw an old oak. There was a treehouse, but it was empty and it didn't seem that anyone was around. The surrounding forest started to look dark already. He was about to turn back but noticed another path. Or it wasn't actually a path yet, it looked more like someone had walked through the vegetation. "Maybe some animal," Xellos thought but started to follow the path wondering why he actually was so interested in finding that 'Risu'-girl. He was a Mazoku, he shouldn't be so eager to find some human brat. Maybe he was just bored. Yeah, that was it, he was just bored. While Lina and the others were eating he could easily kill some time by finding the kid.
After a short while he came to a shore of a lake. The shore was full or rocks and some fishes were swimming in the water creating circles to the surface of the water as they ate something. There was a lot of water horsetails and some flowers too, like forget-me-not's and those red thingies you see in the places like this. The trees and common reeds offered a great visual obstruction.
About 8 year old girl with red hair and pointy ears was sitting on a rock watching the fish. The light of the setting sun made it look like she had golden trimmings around her. She watched the fish and obviously hadn't noticed Xellos.
"Hey there," Xellos said. The girl jumped up and turned to look at him. "You're Risu, right?"
"Yeah," the girl said looking Xellos doubtfully. "What do you want?"
"I happened to hear that you ran away from home," Xellos said.
"And I suppose that you came to bring me back? Forget it! I'm not going back! EVER!"
"My my.... do you really mean that?" Xellos asked thinking that only a person with some kind of mental problems could be mad over a single muffin for a whole day. No, this had to be something else. "Your mom is worried about you, you know?" he said.
"So?"
"She has the right to be worried, a forest isn't the safest place for a little kid like you in the middle of a night. Some hungry wild animal could attack you or you could stumble upon a nasty Mazoku or something. Has it crossed your mind that even I could be a Mazoku?"
Risu looked at the smiling priest. "You don't look very dangerous to me."
Xellos chuckled to himself and sat beside the girl. He took the sandwich under his cloak and handed it to Risu. "Here. I thought that you might be hungry."
Risu took the sandwich. She was hungry, all right. She hadn't eaten anything but berries and wood sorrels since the morning. "Thanks," she mumbled.
"So.... Are you really planning to spend your night here or could it be possible that you'd come home with me?" Xellos asked.
"Forget it," Risu said. "I'm not gonna go home. I told you that already."
"Are you really that mad over that muffin?"
"It's not only about that stupid muffin!!!"
"Thought as much."
"It's about..... She doesn't care about me. She only cares about Ryuu. That's why I left."
"Who? Your mom?" Xellos asked. "Then why's she so worried about you? You put me into a difficult situation, you know. What do you except me to say to your mom when I return to the tavern? 'Hello, ma'am, I found your daughter, but she didn't want to come home. I didn't want to drag her here by force and so I left her in the woods.' Is that what you want me to say to your mother?"
"SHUT UP! She isn't even my mother!" Risu almost yelled. "She cares only about Ryuu because he's her real child!"
Xellos looked shocked for a while. "Really?"
"Yeah," Risu answered. "I found it out after my dad died.... Not that he was my real dad anyway." She finished her sandwich and placed the napkin on a rock. "She finally told me that they had found me when I was a baby. I should have guessed..... They don't even have pointy ears like I have....."
Xellos was silent for a while thinking of what to say next. "But does that really matter? You can love someone even though that person isn't your child."
Risu glared at the Mazoku with her green eyes but remained silent.
"If your mother didn't care a rat's ass about you then why did she sound so worried?" Xellos said opening his eyes. "Have you thought that maybe he gave that last muffin to Ryuu because he's smaller and he had been sick and because she thought that you, being already a big girl, wouldn't mind?" he continued, hoping that this was working out. He wasn't very used to this sort of thing.
"Maybe...." Risu had to admit.
"Well then," Xellos said smiling cheerfully, "shall we get going?"
Risu nodded. The sun had set a while ago and it was beginning to be dark and cold. Maybe it wouldn't be so nice to spend a night outside. Not that she was afraid of wild animals, no.... She had her treehouse. But it'd surely be cold..... she didn't even have anything warm to wear. Risu trembled a bit and Xelloss handed his cloak to her. This had went fine, he had found the kid and killed some time; Lina and the others would propably finished eating by now.
"If you're cold you can wrap this around you."
"Thanks," Risu said. "Aren't you cold?"
"No," Xellos answered smiling happily.
"Man, he sure is an odd guy....." Risu thought. "Why does he smile like that all the time? And he's being awfully nice to me even though we are total strangers."
"By the way, Risu," Xellos said. "You have a funny name."
"Yeah.... But it's just my nickname. Mom said that I remind her of a squirrel. I'm always running in the forest, sitting in a tree and forgetting where I left my stuff.... I guess that name suits me pretty well..... My real name's Natsuko. What's yours?"
"Xellos," he answered.
At the next morning the gang were leaving the tavern. Risu, Ryuu and their mother came to the doorway to say goodbye.
"I surely slept well!" Lina said stretching.
"I didn't," Filia said. "I woke up when that idiot Mazoku darted into our room. You and Amelia didn't propably notice it since you slept so deeply."
"Sorry about that," Xellos said happily. "I remembered the number of the room wrong."
"Like hell you did, you did it on purpose, didn't you? You filthy, perverted NAMAGOMI!"
"Tsc tsc, there's kids in here. You don't want to be a bad example, do you?"
Filia didn't have time to response because Risu's mother started to speak. "Thank you again for bringing Risu back home, Xellos-san," she said. "She's so stubborn that I was afraid that it'd take longer than this to get her back home."
"It was all my pleasure, ma'am," Xellos said happily.
"Xellos-san?" Risu asked, "Are you really a Mazoku?"
Xellos smiled and winked at her. "Sore wa himitsu desu!"
They had walked a good while before Filia started to speak again. "Why did you go look for her, namagomi? I thought that you didn't care much about other people."
"Well," Lina said, "I guess that Xellos can be as nice person as he seems. Ne, Xellos?"
Xellos just smiled as usual. Filia glared at him angrily but didn't say anything.
To be honest, Xellos wasn't very sure himself why he had gone to look for Risu in the first place. Maybe he really had something human in him even though he was a Mazoku.
Risu was still sitting on the stepping stone wondering to herself and fingering a forget-me-not in her hand. Had that really been a Mazoku who had brought her home last night? He was nothing like the Mazoku she had heard about. The Mazoku she had heard about were all pure evil and they had big claws or something like that. No one had told her that there might be a Mazoku who smiled all the time and persuaded a runaway girl to return home. Maybe all of them weren't completely evil after all.
She looked at the flower in her hand. "Forget-me-nots look really nice at the first glance", she thought, "but when you look at them closer they're kinda creepy". They're like staring eyes. She kept looking at the small blue flower turning it in her hands and smiled. "Actually, it looks kinda nice after all."