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Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½, Sailor Moon or Slayers Anime/Manga. Ranma ½ belongs to the lovely Lady Rumiko Takahashi. Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi and finally Slayers belongs to Hajime Kanzaka. This is story is created solely for entertainment purposes and no profits are gained from this. Neither do we own Slayers, although I have no idea that it belongs to.
" " Speech
' ' Thoughts
Perfect Chaos
By Montymouse
Chapter Two - Chaos & Water
*
Zelgadis groaned.
His head ached as if he'd just taken a drubbing from Rezo the Red Priest, but since Rezo had been dead for some time he doubted that was the cause. He shifted sluggishly, assessing the ache that radiated from his skull to his shoulders.
It reminded him of his first and only hangover, but without the more pleasant memories of getting drunk beforehand. Steeling himself, he dared a glance out of half-closed eyelids and, finding the light levels not too offensive, rolled over onto his back.
His hand struck something warm. ". . . Wssat?" it protested. "Ack!"
Headache pushed aside, he jerked away from the moving warmth, and unintentionally hit someone on his other side. There was a muffled groan.
"Get . . . off me . . ."
He recognised Lina's voice, and more importantly the tone of voice, and abruptly took refuge on the far side of the . . . whatever it was they were lying on. Certainly not a bed. Beds weren't generally made of unfurnished rock and bathed in a dingy, sea-green half-light. And beds certainly weren't designed to accommodate one white magician, one black sorceress, a swordsman and a chimera.
Where were they?
Taking care not to tread on any of his still-sleeping acquaintances, he stood up. The sickening headache was slowly draining away - perhaps he'd just got a crick in the neck from the position he'd been sleeping in - and allowed him to take a good look at just where they'd ended up.
The walls were black veined rock shot through with phospherent crystal; it was these that were producing the wavering milky green light, glowing through the glassy surface. It was warm and humid in here and over at the far side of the cave he discovered a pool of water. With his foot.
"Ch!"
"Zel?" A girl's sleepy voice responded. Amelia. He didn't answer, knowing they'd wander over regardless.
He peered closer, grimacing in disgust at its icy touch as he yanked his leg out of the pool. There was something wrong with the image the water showed him . . . The minute dots of light in the pitchy water were not reflected streaks of the glowing walls. They were blazing white and smaller than pinpricks; stars. They did not ripple where he had pulled his leg out.
"What in the . . .?" He was still staring when Lina clapped her hand on his shoulder and pulled him to one side.
"Ahh, water! Good going, Zel!"
"No no - wait a minut-"
Too late. With a satisfied gasp, the sorceress bent over and splashed her face with the stuff, imbibed liberally, and for a final fillip, worked it into the back of her neck to cool off. It was rather stuffy in here.
She turned about to see Zelgadis peering at her in dismay.
"What?"
"Lina . . ." he began quietly.
"What?"
Zelgadis paused, seeing she hadn't keeled over and died, and leaned over the pool to make sure he hadn't confused what he had seen. But there was no lie in the water. It was as clear as a sheet of glass and none of the lights or their shadows were reflected in it.
Just the stars.
". . . What did you just drink?" he asked slowly.
Lina shrugged and said, "It tasted all right. Very cold, kind of minty - flavoured . . ."
She followed his gaze and made a sort of strangled sound, gagged, scrunched up her eyes and clutched at her throat.
After a minute, she cautiously opened an eye.
". . . Oh."
"Oy, Lina, are you all right?" Gourry ambled over and rubbed at his forehead.
"Ano. . . I think so . . . Gourry? Gourry - don't drink that!"
Gourry looked up mournfully. "Why not? You can't drink it all, I'll leave some . . ."
"It isn't water!"
He stuck a hand in consideringly.
"It feels like water."
"Yes, but look at the stars!"
Somehow, coming from Lina to a baffled Gourry, that phrase was robbed of all poetry.
"But . . ." Gourry's brain ticked over for a second. "But water doesn't have stars in it."
Lina beamed. This was high-level reasoning for Gourry. Not that he wasn't intelligent. Just that he didn't, well, use it.
"So it must be my eyes playing up," he said happily, and scooped up a mouthful. Lina groaned but was not unduly worried. She hadn't suffered any ill effects from drinking it.
Yet.
Although . . . some poisons were slow acting and remembering this she clutched her stomach thoughtfully. A moment later she shook her head impatiently. There was no sense in dwelling on it now. And, talking of dwelling . . .
Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, Amelia staggered up to the group looking decidedly worse for wear, and voiced the million-dollar question.
"Where are we?"
*
The pool shimmered once around the edges of the stone. The stone itself vanished from view. Zelgadis surreptitiously rubbed the side of his leg when nobody was looking, wondering with a vague horror where the other end of it had actually ended up in his mis-step.
The pool was a mystery. It had resisted all of Amelia's efforts at purification, revelation, and even exorcism. There were no ghosts around here, which was not as reassuring as it might have been; perhaps no one had ever died here. Or perhaps no one had ever been here. Despite their familiarity with navigating caves, castles and otherwise labyrinthine hellholes, they had been unable to find a way out. Nor could Amelia's best efforts locate any.
". . . well, try harder then!"
Amelia sulked. "Lina-san, you know I haven't learned all of those spells yet." Lina threw up her hands in disgust. "Ever since you got Zel to teach you Shamanism . . ." she muttered darkly.
Gourry blinked and tactfully kept silent about Sylphiel.
Zelgadis sighed wearily and wisely kept out of it.
"All right," he spoke up. "What do we know about this place?"
"That it's a cave with a weird unnatural pool of water and no way out?"
"Gourry . . ."
Amelia, still rather annoyed about Lina belittling her abilities as a white magician - and guiltily aware that she had been neglecting them lately - sat away from them down by the pool and hugged her knees.
She glanced down at it.
"I wonder if that's how we got here," she murmured to herself.
Abruptly, annoyance forgotten, she found herself entranced. Really, the pool was very beautiful. Surely such a beautiful thing would cause her no harm?
The princess had learned enough in her adventures to doubt that idea. But the notion that they had somehow come through the water stayed.
None of them were wet - and the pool was, for all its unnatural stillness. But then, maybe they'd dried out - she had no idea how long they'd been here.
The others were still debating what 'here' was.
"Well, does anyone remember how we got here?"
"Someone might have drugged us . . ."
". . . hmm . . . hmmm . . ."
"Would that work on you?"
Zelgadis shrugged, dismissing it. He didn't need as much as a normal human, but he ate and drank the same way, and so suspected a drug might work on him. But he hated discussing the differences of his chimera form with Lina and co.
". . . nope, not a clue."
Warily, but unable to resist, Amelia stuck a finger in and sniffed the water. It remained on her skin and ran down it, scentless just like ordinary water, without a hint of the starry depths present in the pool. Could the stars be underneath the pool, somehow? But why didn't they ripple when she touched it?
She was just about to put her head under the water and see if it dispelled any of the mystery when someone cleared their throat behind her.
Thinking Lina and the others wanted her input, she turned.
A darkly clad stranger loomed above her, cloak swept back about his tall silhouette
". . . " Amelia whimpered.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," it said apologetically.
*
Amelia whimpered. Zelgadis froze. Gourry goggled. Lina whipped round and shrieked.
"Argh! Who the hell are you?!"
The man - or whatever it was - drew himself upright and surveyed the mere mortals below him with a regal gaze that was somehow discernible through the shadows obscuring his face.
"I go by many names, to many people, through many ages. . . none of which are particularly interesting, so we'll skip the introduction. Ahh, but I am so glad to see you have all accepted my offer!" the dark figure rubbed his hands gleefully as he sauntered closer, "excellent! I am so glad. . ."
"Offer? What offer? We aren't accepting any offers until we know the terms of contract." Lina folded her arms, relieved to get a topic she could handle.
"The terms of contract? Oh, those. . ." he waved an arm "Not important, since you have already accepted it."
"The terms?" Lina growled.
He sighed theatrically. "If you partake of the water, you have accepted my offer. It is written on the walls, you know."
They cast about wildly. But if their hours of intensive searching hadn't revealed the message, it was doubtful a panicked glance would uncover it.
"Written where?!" she demanded.
"Well, it's written in an obscure Urdu dialect, so I don't suppose you understood it," the man mused carelessly and waved the other arm, this time briefly flushing shards of the translucent walls with emerald light as it passed. It revealed that there were, indeed, regular symbols embedded in the walls, "but, can't be helped."
Lina opened her mouth to yell and decided to settle for strangling the man instead.
And then, on further reflection, wondered if it might be possible to get something from this man while they were talking. After all, if this guy had got in, he could get them out. . .
"All right. And we haven't accepted anything, pal. What do you want with us?" Lina sighed heavily. Mazoku and dragons and wacked-out priests. . . they were always getting singled out by one or the other. At a guess this man was a Mazoku, and a powerful one. No sense in ticking him off with an outright refusal until they knew what his game was, how to defeat him and best of all how to get out of here.
"Well." The dark head inclined slightly. "Let's just say that I'm taking a wise old friend's words to heart."
"Eh?" she couldn't resist adding "And didn't that wise old friend ever tell you to steer clear of Lina Inverse?"
"Actually her words were: 'You cannot place your opinion on a gut feeling.' she heard the mocking smirk in his words. "I'd much rather place it on you, my dear. . ."
"Hmm . . ." Suddenly its expression chang . . . was heard to change. His face may have been obscured, but it sounded as if it had raised an eyebrow. "Minty flavoured, you say?" He scratched something down on a pad. "For the survey," he explained.
Everybody sweatdropped.
"Now my friends, I do apologise for my abrupt departure, but time waits for man. In fact she is notoriously impatient. Give my regards to Dreamer, won't you?" He stepped closer to the wall and was suddenly gone. Not absorbed, not disappeared, but in a trick of perception his tall frame was subtly changed and merely rock, a vague and lifeless prominence. There was no trace of the man who had stood in its place.
They all looked at once another with identical open-mouthed expressions, except for Gourry who appeared to be thinking hard about something the stranger had said.
A disembodied voice echoed around the stuffy cave.
"Ah, I almost forgot . . ." a sharp snap, as of fingers clicking, and the shadows of the room stood out in sharp relief as a globe of snake-tongued green and golden energy rapidly expanded from a centrepoint above the lightless water. And as it filled the room, engulfing every inch of the haunting crystal walls, as they disappeared into a ball of luminous flickering energy, someone cried;
"I was right! It was water!"
TBC . . .
*
Guest Writer - Bluegoo. Thanks a lot.
Bluegoo: Apologies for the shortness and lack of scene-changing in the chapter; hopefully it will get longer as we figure out what the storyline is. . .
Montymouse: (bangs head against wall repeatedly) . . . she couldn't resist adding Slayers to the story! (stops banging his head) . . . oh well better start working on chapter three.