SLAYERS GREATEST

Author’s note: If you’ve seen Slayers Great, one of Lina and Nahga’s movies, this may make more sense to you.

 

 

*Kapowie!!*

Rain poured. Thunder roared. Lightning flashed. Wind blew at hurricane levels. The Slayers, lead by one, Lina Inverse, dashed for cover from the horrible storm.

“Aaaah!” Amelia yelped as lightning spiked above the treetops. “Miss Lina, are you sure there’s a town nearby?!”

“Of course, I’m sure! I’ve been in this area before!” Lina yelled back, over the howling roar of the thunder and wind. Though just what town it is, I can’t remember, she thought as she ran.

Filia held baby Val close, under her cloak.

“I hope this town of yours is close, Lina! Baby Val’s getting soaked!” she shrieked.

“I know, Filia!” Lina shouted. “Look, there’s a house up ahead, on that hill!” The group panted up the hill, and Lina pounded on the door of the little house. “Please, could you let us in?!” she hollered. The door opened, and everyone tumbled quickly inside.

***

“Ahh! I’m full!” Lina sighed, contentedly.

“Me too, Miss Lina!” Amelia chimed in.

Gourry snored in his chair. Zelgadiss silently sipped his coffee. Baby Val snoozed in Filia’s arms. Xelloss sat as close to Filia as he dared, a cup of tea clasped in his hands.

The group was lounging in the kitchen of the little house they had discovered. The storm still raged outside, but inside the little house, all was calm after the free meal their host had so graciously offered them.

Their host was the Einberg family -- Garia, an older man, and his twenty-something children, Huey and Laia. Garia and Huey both made and sold golems, animated clay statues, and Laia held a job at a diner. Laia made most of the money and, therefore, supported the family. She held the most concern in monetry issues. Garia and Huey had more happy-go-lucky personalities.

Garia beamed at Lina.

“You still have quite the appitite, Miss Lina!” he chuckled, jovially. Lina laughed and rubbed the back of her head.

“Yeah, I guess I do, don’t I?” she replied.

Still has quite the appetite? silently wondered Lina’s friends. Question marks appeared over their heads.

***

Laia stood off to the side, looking at her soon-to-be-empty money purse. She shook her head, covered with blue lines.

“I am very unfortunate,” she murmered. (neat ‘dooing’ sound) [note: This is a running joke in Slayers Great.]

***

“Miss Lina, my dear wife will be so happy to see you, again!” exclaimed Huey.

Lina blinked in confusion.

“See me again? I’ve never met your wife before.”

Huey frowned. “Yes, you have, Miss Lina.” His face then lit up, and he snapped his fingers. “I know why you think you have never met my wife!” Lina folded her arms and waited impatiently for the answer. “We were married after you two split up. My goddess did so want to invite you to the wedding, but you were off traveling, and we couldn’t find you.” Lina got a sinking feeling that she knew who Huey was talking about, just as a woman appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing a simple black dress that couldn’t disguise her ample bosom. Her belly bulged slightly, and her face shone with an inner light.

Lina’s jaw sagged, and her eyes bulged.

“Nahga?!”

Nahga blinked, surprise evident on her face.

“Lina?!”

***

Day dawned bright and early. The birds sang, the sun shone, the farmers got up and worked their fields. Filia stepped outside the door of the little house and stretched like a cat in the warm sunshine. Her sleepy, smiling gaze drifted to the lake at the bottom of the hill, and she abruptly halted in mid-stretch. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes and blinked again. Was that. . .

“Lina?!” Filia cried in surprise. Her startled yell brought the group running from inside the little house. Lina came barreling out the door first.

“Filia, what’s wro. . . .” Lina froze as her eyes followed Filia’s pointing finger out to the lake.

In the center of the lake, stood a huge golem. Its eyes, cheeks, and hair were bright red. It wore a cute sorceress’s outfit. It looked just like a super-deformed version of Lina. A very large super-deformed version of Lina.

The rest of the group tore out of the house and stopped, staring, at the Lina-look-alike golem. Zelgadiss and Xelloss recovered from their shock first. Zel stifled a grin, while Xelloss didn’t bother to hide his amused smirk.

“Wow,” Amelia gasped. A slight pause. The princess’s eyes lit up. “It’s so cute!” she squealed.

Lina stared in utter shock and horror at the golem which now filled her vision. She twitched.

“Hey, Lina! That looks just like you!” added Gourry. Lina began to turn red.

Gourry went on, “Small chest, red hair, small chest. . . .” Lina started to shake with rage.

Gourry, still blissfully ignorant of Lina’s reaction to his comments, continued, “Short legs, small chest, little arms, oh, did I mention small chest?”

“Gourry. . . ,” sputtered Lina, as she slowly turned around.

“Yes, Lina?” the swordsman cluelessly replied.

“FIREBALL!”

*Pfoosh*

“Itai. . . ,” stated Gourry, as he fell over, charred.

Amelia and Filia stared. Zelgadiss shook his head. Xelloss giggled.

“He never learns, does he?” he snickered.

Bad idea, drawing attention to yourself like that, Xelloss.

Lina shifted her Glare of Death TM from Gourry’s prone form to Xelloss’s doubled-over, laughing form.

Deja vu.

“FIREBALL!”

*Pfoosh*

“Itai. . . ,” moaned Xelloss.

One extra-crispy-fried Trickster Priest fell to the ground beside Gourry. Filia laughed.

“Who ‘never learns,’ now, eh, Namagomi?” she snickered.

“You’re mean, Filia,” Xelloss whimpered from the ground.

***

That afternoon, after the fireballing incident, Lina and her group visited the marketplace of the little village.

***

Val stayed with Laia at the Einberg home, while Garia and Huey worked on their golems.

***

“WAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

“I am so terribly unfortunate.” (*dooing*)

***

Zelgadiss disappeared and went off by himself.

***

“How much for a special order?”

“Only twenty silver coins, sir.”

“All right, this is what I’ll need. . . .”

***

Lina, Gourry, and Nahga found a nice restaurant to terrorize -- I mean, patronize.

***

“Mmm! Hey, waiter! Bring food over here!”

“Mmmhmm! *gulp* I’ll take thirds of this and fourths of that!”

“OHOHOHO!! More pickles, ice cream, and chocolate syrup for me, please!”

*massive sweatdropping all around*

“How can you eat that stuff?!”

“Oh, a blossoming woman needs to keep her strength up, hm?”

“What are you talking about?!”

[note: That right, pickles and ice cream, with chocolate syrup. I’ve heard that a pregnant woman likes strange combinations of food.]

***

Meanwhile, Amelia, Xelloss, and Filia had found a make-it-yourself golem shop.

***

“Why do you have to come with us, Namagomi?”

*twitch*

“That is a secret Filia-chan.”

*twitch-twitch*

“Miss Filia! Mr. Xelloss! Look at this! A make-it-yourself golem shop!”

“Hah! I bet I can make a golem better than you can!”

“Yare, yare. All right, my dear dragon, you’re on.”

***

Later, Lina stepped into the make-it-yourself golem shop and into a furious competition. It was reminiscent of old days gone by, traveling with Nahga. In fact, the scene before her was nearly identical to the one she and Nahga had played out almost four years earlier.

Xelloss, Filia, and Amelia sat at a table, laboriously shaping clay into figures invented by their twisted minds. Xelloss and Filia sat across from each other, and Amelia sat at the head of the table. Xelloss’s tongue was sticking out the side of his mouth in concentration. Filia was hunched over her creation as she worked. Amelia was holding her figure up and admiring it. She noticed Lina coming toward them and called to the fire-headed sorceress.

“Miss Lina! Miss Lina! Come make a golem with us!”

Lina absently wondered just how much sugar Amelia had had that morning. She smiled at Amelia, anyway as she sat down across from the raven-haired princess.

“No thanks, Amelia. I’ll just watch.” Lina remembered all too well the way her last golem had turned out, especially compared to Nahga’s. Lina had made fun of Nahga’s creation at the time, but she really was impressed -- and rather jealous.

“Miss Lina!”

“Huh?” Lina blinked, shocked out of memory lane and back into the real world.

Amelia looked ready to jump through the ceiling, she was so excited. She held a clay object in her cupped hands.

“Miss Lina, look what I made!” Amelia squealed.

Lina stared at the figurine in Amelia’s hands. The clay was formed into a smooth, flowing, almost serpentine shape. It was a work of art, albeit a strange work of art. In her mind’s eye, Lina saw a very similar clay figure from four years previous, in Nahga’s hands.

“Wow, Amelia, that looks great!” Lina managed to say with some enthusiasm. Her mind, however, was preoccupied with one question: How could both Amelia and Nahga have sculpted golems that were near-replicas to each other? The abstractness of Nahga’s creation would have been hard to replicate, even if Amelia had had it to model her’s from. Lina frowned inwardly. Something fishy was going on here, and she was determined to find out exactly what it was.

***

Xelloss cringed as Amelia squealed about her golem. Amelia just had to emit the most sickening emotions. Plus, her high-pitched voice grated his fine-tuned ears. Amelia was entirely too happy for his tastes.

He then glanced surreptitiously at Filia and inwardly sighed. Filia, though she often got on his nerves, at least kept his Mazoku side fed, what with all those negative emotions constantly directed at him. Then, why did he find himself wanting Filia to emit happy emotions toward him? He shoved his thoughts aside for later. Dealing with the dragon maiden made him so frustrated. He didn’t need that, not right now. He turned his attention back to the clay golem he was molding.

“Molding into what?” you may ask.

Ah, my friends, that is a secret you will find out later.

***

Filia was lost in her happy little world of clay-molding. She simply ignored everyone.

 

 

by Chibi Ophelia