It was a typical beginning. Lina had dragged Gourry on yet another search for some magical item or other that he could never remember the name of. So they were in this town where all Gourry could remember was that it served marvelous food.
Lina had said she had something to do and told him to just wait a bit. That usually meant that Lina was going to get ready to sell some stuff to the local magic item shop so Gourry decided to find it and wait for her there.
Now this shop had to be the weirdest one he had ever seen. Not that all magic item shops were normal or anything. All Gourry knew was that one shouldn't touch or taste anything in a magic shop. So he was just looking at things when he found an interesting little toy. And forgetting what he shouldn't do in a magic shop, especially if he wasn't a mage of some sort, he picked it up.
"That doll holds a terrible curse."
Gourry looked to see who had spoken. And then looked down. Standing next to him was a wrinkled old man with spectacles and frizzy hair, the Storekeeper.
"You mean this?" Gourry asked pointing to the doll in his hand. Then he looked at the doll. "Hey, it looks like me." And in fact it did look like a chibi-Gourry.
"Yes. The doll takes the form of whomever owns it. Two of its previous owners were a scantily clad woman of your height with a hideous laugh and the other one had green hair and wouldn't stop praising something called Zoamelguster. But we shall not speak of such creatures again."
"That's nice," Gourry said absently, playing with the chibi-Gourry.
"It's on sale."
"Really?" Gourry perked up. Maybe he should get it for Lina. Then perhaps she wouldn't beat up on him so much. "That's good."
The old man noticed some steam coming out of the tall swordsman ears but didn't say anything. There was also that smell of something burning.
"It will murder all of your friends."
Gourry wasn't listening, already on his way out, with the doll in his hand.
The old man sweatdropped. "Errr... you forgot to pay for that."
After paying, Gourry met up with a very angry and impatient Lina Inverse who had turned the town upside down looking for her Sword of Light that Gourry was holding for her.
"What do you mean your Sword of Light? It's mine!" Gourry protested as Lina lead the way to their inn. This was of course after Lina had released some frustration by beating Gourry into the ground.
"I don't hear you," Lina sang, covering her ears. She was trying to recover some semblance of a good mood. After all, coming here was a good thing. Lina kept telling herself that.
Frustrated, Gourry just kept a very tight grip on his sword. And then came to a dead stop when he saw the inn.
Inn wasn't the word. More like vacation resort. Heck, the place could be a town all by itself.
"Lina," Gourry, forgetting he was angry at her, pulled on her black cape. "What is this place?"
Lina turned around with a huge grin. "Why it's just THE most famous adventurer's inn in all of the world! This is Xanadu!"
Gourry just looked at her.
"Don't tell me you've never heard of it," Lina groaned knowing that was exactly what he was going to say.
Gourry crossed his arms and thought.
Lina who didn't have time for this just grabbed a handful of the blond swordsman's hair and dragged him behind her into the resort.
Stepping inside, Lina noted with satisfaction that it hadn't changed much since her last visit. This wasn't some posh five-star hotel for the prince and princess but a nice laid-back resting place for adventurers run by former adventurers. The beds were nice and comfy, solid furniture and floor designed to take lots of abuse, monster heads and treasure knick knacks strewn on the floors and shelves, wide open places for impromptu spell battles and duels, and of course Lina's favorite, the big dining hall that served more food in one sitting than Saillune did in all of its banquets during the last ten years.
"Ya-ho! Innkeeper!" Lina cried as she dragged Gourry behind her. "Did you get my reservation?"
"Why hello Lina," grinned the Innkeeper. "I've got your two rooms ready." He took a look at Gourry. "You've got a live one this time. What's his name?"
"This..." Lina paused and grinned evilly. "This is jellyfish-for-brains."
"Well nice to meet you jellyfish-for-brains. A bit long though, how about I just call him Jellyfish?"
"Hey! My name is - " Gourry started to yell before Lina clamped a hand over his mouth.
"Yes, Jellyfish will be just fine." Lina grinned. "Keys?"
"Here you go. But they aren't next to each other. You've got your usual room Lina but Jellyfish is down in the Sword Wing. Which is for the best I think. Originally, I thought you were still with the Goldfish so I was worried that there'd be a problem, but yes I think he'll fit in quite nicely in the Sword Wing."
"Well, see you later then Innkeeper." Lina waved as she left, Gourry bouncing behind her.
They came to a split in the hallway. Lina handed Gourry a key and pushed him in the direction of one of the hallways.
"Okay, Gourry, your room is down there. Mine will be down this other hall, unless the Innkeeper changed the door, it'll be the one with gold phoenix knocker. See you downstairs in the lobby for dinner."
Lina turned and headed for her room but stopped after several steps. She turned around. There was big dumb Gourry.
"Hello, Gourry? Your room is down the other hall."
Gourry frowned. "But my room is always next to yours."
Lina scratched her head as she tried to figure out a way to get this into his dense head. "That's right. Usually in the other inns we get rooms next to each other. But this time it's different. Innkeeper likes to group people by profession or general interest. So all the mercenaries and fighters stay in the Sword Wing." Lina led Gourry back to the split and showed him the sword plaque. "See? That's the way to the Sword Wing. Magic users like me stay in the Scroll Section." And Lina pointed to a scroll plaque. "There are some other distinctions but I doubt they'd stick in your head anyway. So now do you understand?"
Gourry was sipping tea. "Huh? I wasn't listening."
"DIEM WING!"
And Lina blew Gourry down the hallway of the Sword Wing. "Your room is over THERE!!!"
Angrily, she stomped back to her room.
Gourry meanwhile would have still been flying down the hallway (it was a very long hall) if he didn't experience firsthand one of the laws in physics. An object in motion will remain in motion until stopped by an outside force. Now just because Gourry didn't know the law, and ignoring the fact that in this world normal physics just seems to fly out the window half the time, didn't stop the law from working. Gourry crashed into something and promptly fell on said thing.
Gourry sat up, cross-legged and grumbled. "Why does Lina always do that to me? Well, I'd better find my room." He stood up and stamped his feet on the ground several times to wake them up.
"srvop zzat."
Gourry looked around to see who was talking but the hallway was empty.
"That's strange. I knew I heard someone talking."
Gourry looked down and admired the nice rug he was standing on. Wait... didn't he hit something while flying through the air? Of course! Gourry looked around again for whatever it was that stopped him. But there was still nothing. Gourry walked back and forth over the rug.
"Maybe I was imagining things? But I did hit something. Hmmm..."
Gourry looked at the rug again. It looked familiar. Now where had he seen it before?
That's it! Gourry hit his fist into his hand. That guy with the Howling Sword was wearing a rug just like the one on the floor. Stepping off the rug, Gourry kneeled down and picked up a corner of the rug. Underneath was a twitching flattened Zangulus.
"Hey," Gourry asked poking him with a stick. "What are you doing under a rug?"
Lina was waiting impatiently in the main lobby for Gourry to show his sorry excuse for a face. She couldn't believe that he was going to be late for dinner. And she wasn't in a very good mood either. Who would she run into on the way to her room but Martina!
It had been two years since Martina's wedding and Martina couldn't resist making a comment about Lina's lack of growth. To be nice, since Lina didn't want to be blacklisted from the resort, she just fired a Freeze Arrow at the former princess.
And then on her way down she met Sylphiel who was being harassed by Lagan, the former vice president of the Magic User's Association who intended to use the Shadow Reflector to take over the world yada yada, but the worst part of her memory connected to Lagan was that he created THOSE shadows of herself and her partner at the time. As those shadows were still wandering around somewhere causing untold embarrassment to herself, Lina was not feeling very friendly toward Lagan. Anyway, Lina helped him to leave. Head first, out the window.
Sylphiel then latched onto Lina, wanting to see Gourry-sama. Lina swallowed the urge to gag and instead began entertaining ideas of pairing Gourry off with the quiet priestess and at the same time running off with his Sword of Light while his attention was occupied.
When they did get downstairs, who did the two see but Xelloss doing his utmost to anger Filia who was also dealing with a teething baby Val. Which is to say Filia was at the end of her rope and she went semi-berserk in Lina's opinion. What Lina meant by semi-berserk was that Filia hadn't transformed into a dragon but instead had pulled out her mace. And Xelloss being the overconfident Mazoku bastard that he was just floated out of her reach laughing.
In fact, he was laughing so hard that he didn't notice when Filia quietly made a few changes to her mace or the wicked smirk, that would have made a Mazoku proud, spreading across her face. Not that he could see much when in the next moment Filia's mace-turned-morning star introduced itself to his face and Xelloss went zinging off like a pin ball.
Most of the guests just watched the free entertainment. The Innkeeper, ever the entrepreneur, opened a snack bar. Sylphiel just watched in shock. Lina simply ignored the two's childish antics and pried her cape away from baby Val who was chewing on it.
Lina grumbled, wondering where the hell was Gourry. How could she set him up with Sylphiel and steal the Sword of Light from him during dinner if he didn't show up? Maybe, she thought sourly, he ran into Zangulus and they got into another sword duel. Of course, had that been the case, parts of the Sword Wing should have been flying by now.
Lina wasn't a least bit surprised about running into the others here. This was THE premiere resort for anyone who adventured. Still, that they happened to be here right now. Perhaps it was just a big coincidence. No sense in looking for trouble, she thought, as she tried to soothe her growing irritation.
A rustle of cloth as someone tried to sneak by her and Lina automatically recognized the person and, grabbing his cloak, gave a hard yank.
"Geh!" Zelgadis choked as his cape was caught.
Lina gave the chimera a very angry look. "Not even going to say hello? Zelgadiss Graywords-kun."
Oh boy. Zel knew he was in for it when Lina called him by his full name. She couldn't be angry just because he was trying to sneak by. Well, she could but normally she wouldn't if she wasn't already in a bad mood. Which he hoped she wasn't in.
Lina was in a bad mood. Things had been building up since she arrived at Xanadu and this was supposed to be a place where she could just relax and for some reason, seeing Zelgadiss just brushing by her like she wasn't even here increased that irritation ten fold. And he was still wearing that hood and mask because he was sooo convinced that he was some hideous medusa or something.
"AND TAKE OFF THAT HOOD AND MASK!!!" Lina screamed as she did the deed for him.
Zel, still wondering what put Lina in such a bad mood and how fast he would be able to get out of Dragu Slabu-ing range, entirely forgot the reason why he had been sneaking around.
"ZELGADISS-SAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!" came the yell coated with energy, exuberance, and justice.
Sylphiel, Lina, Martina (who had melted her way out of the ice prison by now and made her way downstairs), and Zel turned to see the young princess of Saillune come bouncing to them. A suspicious pile of cotton candy sticks lay at the feet of her guards. Amelia grabbed onto Zelgadiss's arm, or would have if a certain red-haired and very short-tempered sorceress who was already in a highly volatile mood hadn't grabbed her by the cape and pulled her to the ground.
"Give it a rest Amelia! Zel doesn't like you hanging onto him like that!" Lina glared at the younger girl.
Amelia and Zel stared at Lina. Not that Zel wasn't grateful, but Lina usually just ignored Amelia's antics. Zel decided that he had be better be very careful around walking-time-bomb Lina. When Amelia looked like she was going to protest, Zel gave her a sharp kick and scowl. Thankfully, Amelia got the message.
And perhaps also thankfully, Gourry finally made it down into the lobby, following Zangulus of course.
"Excuse me," the Innkeeper took a break from his thriving snack bar business to grab Gourry. He pointed to the little chibi-Gourry doll that was currently clutching onto Gourry's sword hilt. "Is that a cursed evil doll planning on killing everyone here?"
Gourry, who remembered what the Storekeeper had told him, responded as intelligently as he could, "Yes."
"Oh, just wondering."
And the Innkeeper turned back to selling popcorn and candy to those enjoying the Xelloss-Filia battle.
Not really knowing what to say to that, Gourry just promptly forgot about the entire thing. Then he tripped over a bald bearded old man sitting in a shadowy corner.
"Sorry gramps. Didn't see you sitting there."
Gramps looked hard at the chibi-Gourry doll which was now attached to Gourry's shoulder.
"That doll is EVIL I tell you. EVIL!"
Just then, Gourry's years of honed battle instinct (which never kick in when Lina is the attacker) kicked in and he ducked. Letting Xelloss fly over him and smack into the wall above them.
Gramps looked at the mess that was the mazoku Xelloss.
"That man is EVIL I tell you. EVIL!"
Amelia went and bought yet another stick of cotton candy.
"That girl is EVIL I tell you. EVIL!"
"O-HOHOHOHO! O-HOHOHOHO!"
Amelia choked on her cotton candy. Lina's bad mood just shot through the roof. Everyone else covered their ears in pain. And the Innkeeper was making a fortune selling earplugs that were going like pancakes. Naga the White Serpent, also known as the Goldfish to the Innkeeper, had made her appearance.
"That person is a WHORE I tell you. A - "
"DEMONA CRYSTAL!!"
Xelloss and Gourry barely got out of the way as Gramps became incased in a prison of ice.
"He's always trying to get attention," the Innkeeper sighed, shaking his head sadly.
"Alright then whatever let's go let's go let's go!" Lina yelled and somehow grabbed all of the people who at one time or another had adventured with her and lugged the whole bunch of them into the dining hall. Perhaps some food will make me feel better.