Xellos tipped the bottle of 180 proof vodka into the cup of coffee and then sat back to watch the fun. Lina, Filia, and Zelgadis were just arriving to the hotel and carefully checking in. Filia hauled her huge pink suitcase up into the room while Zelgadis looked faintly disgusted at the whole situation and so grabbed the cup of coffee (caffeine, opiate of the masses) and began to sip it. Lina, in a lousy mood because Gourry had wandered off again, came into the room and sat down in a slight huff.
As they all sat about the living room that connected the suite arrangement, Xellos said, in his nauseatingly chipper voice, "Anyone want to play truth or dare?"
"Drop dead," Zelgadis said, concentrating all of his thoughts on the spiked coffee.
"With you? Ewww." Filia said, trying to locate her tea supply.
"What? Afraid of playing?" Xellos said.
Filia tried to control her look of complete disgust with little success. "Not with you."
"Lina?" Xellos said.
Lina shrugged. "Might be interesting."
Xellos settled back. "Then Lina, truth or dare?"
"Dare."
The cast looked about. "What should we dare her?" Filia asked, trying to maintain a safe distance from Xellos.
"What about?" Zelgadis pondered.
"Lina," Xellos said. "I dare you to sing a song and do a dance to it."
"What? Sing?!! I don't even know any songs."
"Sure you do," Zelgadis said, smirking.
Lina glowered, raising her hands as if about to do a fireball spell, but reconsidered, briefly.
"But I can't sing!"
"Doesn't matter," Xellos said.
Lina scowled again, asked, "Is anybody watching," gained a "No", response, and then rose and slowly sang, while kicking legs up periodically, "Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight, she is the one named Sailor Moon...etc. There. Is that enough yet?"
"Sure," Zelgadis said. "Your turn."
Lina smiled. "All right, then. Zelgadis, truth or dare?"
"I'm not playing."
"Sure you are. Truth or dare?"
Zelgadis grumbled for a few minutes before saying "Truth."
"Good," Filia said, smiling. "We can ask him about Amelia!"
Zelgadis coughed. "I meant...uh...dare."
"Hmmm," Lina said before a long silence permeated the room as everyone but Zelgadis thought up creatively cruel ways to torture the doomed chimera.
"I know," Xellos said, with a cruel grin. "We could let Filia dress him up."
"Great idea. OK, Zelgadis," Lina said. "I dare you to let Filia dress you up."
Zelgadis cringed. "No."
"Then why don't you tell us about your feelings for Amelia..."
Zelgadis slowly rose from his seated position as Filia got up.
"Oh, I've got some of the prettiest dresses," she gushed. "Just let me get them."
Filia tossed through her suitcases. She first pulled out her typical pink dress, then followed it by a gauzy dress. The last had a long skirt, a fitted waist, and long, puffy sleeves.
"Which one?" she asked, holding them up, one by one.
"The one with the puffy shoulders," Lina said.
Filia handed the dress to the grumbling Zelgadis and he slowly walked off to another room, dress held tentatively between two fingers. Lina, Xellos, and Filia waited for his arrival, listening to the stream of expletives emerging from the room.
"It doesn't fit," Zelgadis said.
"Come out," Lina ordered.
The door slowly opened to reveal Zelgadis in a long pink dress, the shoulders slipping off onto his arms, the pink poufs on either side barely fitting through the door. The large bow on the back of the dress drooped drearily as if agreeing with its wearer that chimeras were not meant to wear pink princess dresses.
"One more touch," Filia said, putting a pointy hat with a long piece of gauze drifting down from the top on top of Zelgadis' head and carefully tying the pink ribbons under his chin. "How cute!"
Zelgadis, having completed the dare, turned and ran for the room to change back into white, or, as he insisted, beige.
"Wait," Lina called. "We want pictures."
This proclamation only made Zel run faster. Xellos snapped a picture, catching him just a second before the door slammed shut.
When Zelgadis finally reappeared, he turned on Filia and said "Truth or dare?"
"Truth," Filia said, calmly sipping her tea.
Zelgadis sat for a second and then said, "Why do you wear those earmuffs?"
"What sort of question is that?" Lina demanded.
"I've just always wanted to know," Zelgadis said, with a slight smile.
Filia smiled, took another sip of her tea, and said, "I store my tea in them."
"Oh..." Went the group.
"My turn," Filia said, smiling before getting a look on her face that could best be described as pure evil. "Xellos. Truth or dare."
"Dare," Xellos said.
Filia smiled, fumbled in her bag, and pulled out pink lipstick, foundation, eye shadow, mascara, and an eyelash curler. "Apply," she said, tossing them at him.
Xellos played with the make up, putting eye shadow on his lips and decorating his cheeks with lipstick designs. "How's that?" he asked, appearing by Filia to return her make up.
"Go away!" Filia screamed, threatening him with her mace. "And throw that stuff away."
Xellos disappeared and reappeared by the garbage, tossed the make up in, and returned to his seat.
"Zelgadis," he said.
"Why me?" the tortured chimera asked.
"Truth or dare."
"Truth."
"Tell us about your first love."
Zelgadis blushed. "My hamster."
"Your first human love," Lina said.
"I answered," Zel said, taking yet another sip of the coffee. "My sword then."
"Go on," Filia said, stroking her mace.
"My...uh...sister. It's a family tradition."
"You don't have a sister," Lina pointed out.
"Damn. Then..." Zelgadis turned even redder.
"Who?" Xellos asked in the most innocuous voice that a mazoku is capable of.
"Uh..." Zelgadis coughed, trying to hide his voice. "Uh...cough...uh...Eris."
"What?" everyone said, almost in unison.
He coughed a few more times. "I need coffee...or tea..."
He raced over to get yet another cup of coffee which Xellos had kindly dumped alcohol into. Zelgadis returned to his place, drank the coffee and then turned to Xellos and said, "Truth or dare?"
"Dare," Xellos said, grinning.
Zelgadis grabbed Filia's purse o'everything and searched through it. "Here," he said, picking up a bottle of nail polish labeled "pearlescent pink" before saying "paint."
Xellos took the bottle, looked at it quizzically, and then unscrewed the top and slowly painted his first nail. After a few minutes, he started on his right hand and said, "It's difficult to paint with your left hand..."
"Maybe the nail polish isn't of very high quality..." Lina said, as Filia growled, trying to control her mace wielding and tail growing instincts.
The group sat for a moment watching Xellos transform his nails to baby doll pink and then wave his hands in the air in front of his eyes to say, "Not bad."
"Your turn," Zelgadis prodded.
Xellos looked around. "Your turn, Zel," he said. "Truth or dare."
"Truth," Zelgadis said.
"Why don't you tell us the ten things you like best about Amelia."
Zelgadis gagged.
"I'll record!" Filia said, grabbing a tape recorder.
"No," Lina said. "Let's video tape it all."
Xellos withdrew a video camera and handed it to Lina, who pressed the "play" button.
"Uh..." Zelgadis said. "I guess that she's a good white sorceress..."
Filia marked a single slash on a board with a dry erase marker. "Go on!"
"Uh...I guess that she dresses well...lots of...uh...white," Zelgadis said, trying to control his blushing, not made easier by the large amount of toxins currently in his blood stream.
"Only eight more," Filia said.
"Uh...I like black, and her hair is black..."
"Eris?" Lina said.
Zelgadis attempted to bury his forehead in his hand before continuing, "I guess that she could heal the headache that I currently have from playing this stupid game."
"That's four," Filia piped in.
"Uh...she doesn't make me feel short..."
At this point, Xellos decided to brighten up the long pauses by grabbing Filia's mace as she spent her time debating whether or not to decorate her chalk board slashes. She growled upon seeing her vanished weapon and lunged towards it, grabbing onto it and being dragged about the room by Xellos. "She...has...uh...good leadership skills."
"What do you mean, 'leadership skills'?" Lina demanded, looking ready to fireball Zelgadis.
"Uh...nothing," Zelgadis said, turning the shade of a rotting tomato.
Filia regained her mace and looked at it as if it was a hurt kitten.
"Only four more," Filia said brightly.
Zelgadis hunched over, mumbling. When Lina approached him, she heard him whisper, "Oh no...my thoughts are getting more impure..."
"What was that again?" she asked. "Filia, record this."
Zelgadis hunched over, looking like an animal in a trap who was sincerely considering how much it would hurt to gnaw the trapped leg off.
"It was something about 'impure thoughts'," Lina glowered.
"I wonder what Amelia would think..." Xellos said.
"Thanks a lot guys..." Zelgadis snapped.
"We still need four more answers," Filia said.
"Uh...well..." Zelgadis hid his face in his cape. "She looks great in a bathing suit."
"What was that?" Lina asked.
"Only three more!" Filia said, making another mark.
Zelgadis continued thinking, occasionally mumbling, "Must not stray from the path, Zelgadis, must not stray from the path." as the other characters drew in more closely to see if they could discern individual words and, more importantly, record them for posterity.
Zelgadis clutched his sword more closely.
"She's much bustier than Lina," Xellos volunteered.
Lina growled and screamed, "Fireball."
"Uh," Zelgadis said, before the somewhat charred Xellos managed to rise to his feet again, "She's female, and I guess that we need females for the race to continue..."
Lina poked Xellos and whispered, "That means that she's a goddess in his eyes."
Zelgadis looked ready to drop as Xellos whispered back, "What race?"
"Only two more, Zelgadis," Filia said, marker raised.
"Can't take it anymore..." Zelgadis mumbled and then said, "Nosebleed...must find tissue..." and ran off to search for a cure about the hotel.
A long intermission ensued while Filia, Xellos and Lina discussed the weather.
By the time that Zelgadis had returned, Gourry had been found and added to the group, as had Amelia. Valgarv decided to appear and Eris came back from the dead for this special occasion. (We all assume that she cloned herself, or would that be kopiied?)
Zelgadis returned and sat down in time for Lina to say, "It's your turn."
Zelgadis frowned, "Then Eris. Truth or dare."
"Truth," Eris said, looking about at the room with a curious expression.
Zelgadis, more heavily under the influence of alcohol than he would like to admit said, in a deceptively calm voice, "What attracted you to Rezo, Eris?"
"Hmmm," Eris said. "A lot of things. He was tall...and he was very powerful. Oh...and I always liked the color red. And he had such wonderful purple hair..."
"Then why didn't you like me, Eris?" Zelgadis demanded somewhere in the range between angry and pathetic. "I have purple hair...and a red jewel." He looked around the room. "Why are you all laughing at me? I hate you...I hate all of you!!!"
Eris looked around, sighed, and then shook it off and turned to Valgarv who she felt a strange empathy with.
"Valgarv," she said. "Truth or dare?"
"Truth," Valgarv said, leaning back with a self satisfied smirk.
"What are your true feelings about Filia?" Eris said, narrowing her eyes with a smug look of self satisfaction.
"I uh...I...sympathize with Filia and so I will let her live," Valgarv said, before laughing maniacally.
The cast raised eyebrows, and then Valgarv turned to Xellos and said, "My turn. Truth or dare, Xellos?"
"Dare," Xellos said, grinning.
"I dare you to..." Valgarv said, grinning viciously. "I dare you to spend the entire day with Filia and to be nice to her."
Xellos twitched like something that had been electrocuted repeatedly. "Be nice...to Filia?" He shuddered and then muttered, "Truth or dare is for masochists."
But, sensing yet another chance for him to be sadistic, he said, "Gourry, truth or dare?"
"What?" Gourry said.
"Truth or dare?" Lina said.
"Huh, truth?" Gourry asked.
"Or dare," Lina said.
"What's a dare?"
"Aaaaaah...you jellyfish brains! Don't you even know what a dare is?"
"A dare?" Gourry asked. "Oh yeah...that...no, wait. No."
"Just pick one," Xellos said.
"Uh...what were the choices again?" Gourry asked. "I forgot."
"Truth or dare," Filia explained.
"Then...uh...truth...no wait, what was the other?"
"I give up," Zelgadis mumbled. "I'm going to bed."
"Yeah, me too," Amelia said, heading off for her, Lina, and Filia's shared room.
"Let's just play again tomorrow," Lina said, before leaving to go to sleep.