"The inverse..."
A yawn halted the grey-eyed girl in midsentence. With a sigh, she stretched and leaned back in her rickety chair. The room in which she was sitting was dark, and had been dark for hours; the only illumination came from one crooked desk lamp. Its harsh yellow glare was the only thing keeping Sarah awake at this ungodly hour of the night.
She brushed a few pesky strands of her long, dark hair out of her face, and reluctantly turned her attention back to the book lying open on the desk in front of her. "I've got to get this done. The Algebra midterm is tomorrow, after all..."
Mentally berating herself for leaving her studying to the last minute, she read out loud from the textbook. "The inverse of a matrix can be found by dividing the adjoint by the determinant..." Almost growling in frustration, she muttered, "And the adjoint can be found by taking the transpose of the matrix of cofactors, which can be found by doing a ton of weird things to a bunch of poor defenseless numbers that never asked to be stuck into that danged matrix in the first place. There's just so much to remember; I'll never be able to learn it all in time. A whole chapter on vector spaces... Differential equations... Matrices... and inverses, inverses, inverses..."
Sarah desperately wanted to give up, wanted to chuck the Linear Algebra textbook across the room and go to bed. But the midterm exam was tomorrow morning; she couldn't put off her studying any longer. Still muttering under her breath, she fought off her sleepiness and buried herself in the dreaded book once again.
Over an hour passed before Sarah grudgingly decided she wasn't about to learn any more, not at this late hour anyway. Switching off the lamp, she rose from her chair and staggered sleepily across her room, intending to collapse onto her bed as soon as she encountered it. In her tiredness, however, she tripped over the turned-up edge of her carpet. Too tired to prevent it, she pitched forward and smacked head-first into the wooden frame of her bed. Pain exploded in her skull as the world faded away...
The sunshine was warm; warm, and alarmingly bright. Sarah realized that she must have forgotten to close the blinds again. Curled up safe and warm in her bed, eyes scrunched tightly shut, she mentally decided against getting up to close them properly. Besides, the alarm would ring soon enough. She wanted to simply relax and enjoy these last few minutes of peaceful rest.
A corner of Sarah's blanket tickled her nose. She sneezed gently, and tried to shift it away, to no avail. Huh... that didn't work... She suddenly realized how uncomfortable she was. Amazing how she hadn't realized before how hard and lumpy her mattress had become...
She opened her eyes just a crack, deciding to get out of bed and not especially wanting to do so with her eyes shut. The first thing she saw, to her great surprise, was green. A lot of green. This caused her no little alarm. What's going on? There's nothing green in my room... As her vision cleared, Sarah noticed the blades of grass that had been tickling her nose, the tall trees around her whose waving branches failed to completely block the sunshine, the leafy ground on which she was lying, the utter lack of familiar things like her bed, her desk, her house...
"Where am I?" wondered Sarah, a little concerned, as she sat up slowly and took stock of her surroundings. "A forest? But why? How?" She strained her eyes for any sounds of faraway cars, strained her vision to the utmost for the barest glimpse of buildings in the distance, but in the end she had to admit that wherever she was, it was a fair distance from the city she'd lived in all her life. The familiar sights and sounds of civilization were gone.
She stood carefully, picking leaves off her clothes and out of her long, now-tangled dark brown hair. Having no idea what to do, and still feeling a little sleepy, she set out slowly, figuring that if she walked long enough, she'd come across a city sooner or later. Or at least a road leading towards a city, she thought. I'd settle for a road any day. A couple of minutes of walking later, a small sound coming from behind her froze Sarah in place. Are... are those footsteps? She had no idea what to do, and the rustling sound was approaching fast. If it's someone with a gun, or a gang or something... Or a bear... bears live in forests, right? What'll I do? Paralysed by fear, she was nonetheless startled when a cheery voice behind her proclaimed, "Hieee!" She spun around, and got her first look at the people who'd been following her.
They were four. They stopped walking and stood facing Sarah, a good ten paces separating them. The one who'd spoken was a brilliantly smiling young girl, dark-haired and bright-eyed. Her apparent perkiness and enthusiasm didn't do anything to allay Sarah's fears, however.
The second was a tall man, armoured, with long blond hair and a dopey grin. Despite his vacant expression, the confident way he moved suggested to Sarah that the large and very functional-looking sword buckled around his waist was something other than ornamentation.
The third, another girl; this one with long red hair whose colour reminded Sarah of flames. Her supremely confident gaze gave her an unshakeable aura of intelligence and ruthlessness; the combination made Sarah shudder.
And the fourth... His face was almost completely covered by a mask, and he wore a hood pulled as far forward as possible, but what little Sarah could see of his face made her stare. He stared back, clearly annoyed at what must have been a common reaction to his appearance.
"Well, we're listening," snapped the slightly irate redhead, "so go ahead and explain yourself!"
Sarah had absolutely no idea what the girl was talking about. All she could think of was the masked figure, now turning away from her curious gaze. Did I see right? Blue skin? What on Earth is going on here?
"Are you listening?" snapped the redheaded girl once more.
Pulling herself marginally together, Sarah said hesitantly, "I'm not sure what you want..."
"That magical blast a few minutes ago... You caused it. My head's still ringing from the sheer power. You wanted our attention, you got it."
"I'm sorry," tried Sarah, "but I have no idea what you're talking about. I think I'm lost."
"Look here. No one interrupts the breakfast of Lina Inverse with magical fireworks, then pretends they don't know what's going on..."
"Inverse?" murmured Sarah.
"Yeah, Inverse!" At Sarah's blank stare, the girl's eyes widened in surprise. "You know, the famous bandit killer and enemy of all who live, Lina Inverse! Don't try to tell me you've never heard of me..."
Sarah stared at the redheaded girl. The inverse of a matrix can be found by... Suddenly she grinned. "I get it!" she said happily. "It's all just a dream!"
This was most definitely not what Lina and her cohorts had been expecting to hear. "What?" spluttered the alleged legendary bandit killer.
"All that studying must've affected my dreams," realized Sarah. "And probably that nasty bump on the head as well." She looked around herself in awe. "This is the weirdest dream I've ever had... the most lifelike, too." Suddenly pointing at the redhead, she chuckled. "If you're Lina Inverse, then you ..." she pointed at the younger, dark-haired girl, "must be Molly Matrix!"
Ignoring the stares coming from all sides, the lost girl pointed at the blue-skinned, masked man. "And you're Victor Vector, of course! And you," she said, indicating with a grand sweep of her arm the blond swordsman, "can only be the dashing Sir Differential Equation, come to rescue me from my midterm!" Unable to contain herself any longer, Sarah burst out laughing. "And I though it was all for real!"
"Um..." interjected the swordsman, looking hopelessly confused. "My name's Gourry, not... Sir... Diffaquasional... uh... is it?" One glance at his lost expression was all it took to get Sarah rolling on the ground with laughter.
Lina slowly backed away from the strange girl in hysterics on the forest floor. "Okay, maybe I was mistaken..."
The masked, hooded young man shot her an irritated glance. "We all agreed that the source of the blast was near here. And she," he nodded towards the brown-haired girl, "is the only being in this forest, aside from us, capable of doing anything more complex than gathering nuts for the winter. There's even some magic residue lingering around her. She's obviously the source of... of whatever it was that we felt."
"But she's nuts, Zel!" Lina pointed out matter-of-factly. "Completely nuts!"
"Are you okay, Miss...?" inquired the dark-haired girl, standing a safe distance away from the strange young woman who couldn't seem to stop laughing.
Sarah, in a brief moment of lucidity, answered her with a vigorous nod. "Yup! Perfectly fine! Never felt better!" She sprawled out on the leaf-covered ground, her laughter subsiding, though an enormous grin was still plastered on her face. "Wow... haven't laughed so hard in years. This is so much fun..." Suddenly thoughtful, Sarah stared up at the tree branches arcing gracefully above. "Now. Lina... Inverse...," she snickered involuntarily, "... obviously represents the Algebra midterm. But what do the others represent?"
"I mean, look at her!" muttered Lina. "Off in a world of her own, talking total nonsense... she's crazy, there's no doubt about it."
Zel sighed. "I'm not arguing about that, Lina. It's just that she's obviously the one we're looking for."
"But she's freaking me out!"
Gourry was still standing, bemused, off to one side. "At least I think my name's Gourry..." he said, completely lost.
"My name's Amelia," offered the cheerful young girl, in hopes of steering the brown-haired new arrival into something remotely ressembling a normal conversation. "What's yours?" she asked hopefully.
"Amelia! That's my grandmother's name. Oh yeah, her birthday's next week, and I still have to get a present. Wow, the subconscious mind works in strange ways..."
Amelia decided enough was enough, and backed away to join Lina and Zel.
"And Blondy over there... looks a bit like my old boyfriend... has just about the same amount of brains, too..."
"Er, Lina? My name's Gourry, right?"
"Okay, so he's got a little less brains than my old boyfriend... but not by much. And now, the mysterious Masked Man... hmmm... Where'd he come from?" Sarah concentrated fiercely. "Masked man... Zorro? Didn't like that movie. Or maybe Tux-boy... naah. Kal Torak? The Lone Ranger? Or Chichiri? No, not cheerful enough... But why would he be blue?" Sudden realization dawned on her. "Oh yeah! The Smurfs marathon last week! Twenty back-to back episodes... That'll do it!"
Lina couldn't stop herself from staring at the brown-haired girl, who was covered in leaves, and smiling smugly from her position on the ground.
"Well, we won't be able to learn anything from her," she said, more than a little shaken by her close proximity to utter madness. "Come on, Gourry. Let's get outta here."
"So you're sure my name's Gourry?"
"Of course I'm... Aarggh..." Out of sheer frustration, Lina attempted to whack some sense into her blond sidekick.
"Hey!" called out the crazy girl, once again on the verge of laughter.
"It's just like Ranma 1/2! Go get'im, Akane! But you lost your mallet..."
"Let's go, let's go, let's go," chanted Lina, attempting to herd everyone as far away from the insane stranger as possible.
"Miss Lina, we can't just leave her!" insisted Amelia, planting her heels and not allowing herself to be herded away. "It's our duty to help one so obviously unable to take care of herself! She'd probably get into all kinds of danger if we just left her to wander around alone!"
"I don't see anything wrong with that," muttered Lina sourly.
"Besides, the local lunatic asylum's probably offering a reward for her safe return!"
"In that case... You're coming with us, lady!" said Lina with false cheerfulness, grabbing the stranger by the elbow and hauling her to her feet.
That's it for now. I will write more... eventually... Anyone who can tell what excellent series of fantasy novels this fic is vaguely based on (okay, blatantly ripped off from...) gets brownie points. The title's a dead giveaway, BTW. I know I haven't gotten the characters quite right yet (especially Lina), but I'm working on it.