Uncreativity & Idiodyssey

Canon: Slayers/Excel Saga
Title: Slayers: Excellency Chapter 1 - Inn Convenience
Pairing(s): Will eventually be Lina/Gourry and Il Palazzo/Excel, ’cause my squishy heart demands it.  MORE AS I THINK THEM UP.
Warnings: It is a crossover of Slayers and Excel Saga.
Wordcount: 1465
Summary: Lina and Gourry find a convenient inn at an inconvenient place…

“Lina…”

“Hm?” Upon hearing the plaintive cry, Lina turned to face her protector.

Gourry leaned on his sword. His face was gaunt; his eyes, dull. “Lina,” he repeated, “I’m not going to make it.”

Lina felt his pain as though it were her own, mostly because it was. She, too, felt as though every part of her body was on the verge of collapse. Still, she planted her hands firmly on the man’s ginormous shoulder guards and gave him a little shake. “Maybe we did miss lunch, and the breakfast before that, and the midnight snack before that… but if we stop now, Gourry, we will miss dinner! The biggest and therefore most important meal of the day!”

Then Gourry’s hands were on Lina’s shoulder guards, and he stared at her in that super-intense way that always made her blush, despite its tendency to be immediately followed by an exceptionally stupid statement. Tears welled in his eyes as he said, “It’s all right, Lina. I forgive you in advance for eating my dead body.”

Lina found the cannibalism joke in rather poor taste. “Hey now…”

“If there’s anything left, carve me up and crawl in for warmth,” he sobbed. “My last act as your protector…”

Lina kicked him in the face, and they resumed their travel.

Gourry saw the inn first, whooping with joy as he gripped Lina’s arm and veered her off-course. Lina did not see it at all, but she trusted her partner’s animal instincts, and when he broke into a run, she followed. (Though, to be fair, she would have followed anyone at that point if she thought there were a chance they were moving toward food.) And soon, Lina spotted it as well, a log cabin nestled (hidden) in the woods. They nearly broke down the door in their enthusiasm, howling in hunger.

There was a woman inside - a blonde, around Gourry’s age - and she greeted them with the same horror as though Mazoku had entered her door. In fact, a Mazoku had entered that door, but it was earlier in the day, and he’d been far more well-mannered than the demons now crossing that threshold.

To her credit, she quickly choked back her shock. “Right, then. Let’s get you to that dining room before you eat me.”

In the dining room, a busty barmaid flirted relentlessly with the only other customer, and their hostess beat her over the head.

“Is this what you call mopping the floor? We have more customers!”

“In a dive like this we shouldn’t have any,” she whined, earning herself another smack.

“You’ll find it harder to take their orders with my foot up your derriere!”

Lina cut in, “Just bring me everything on the menu.”

“Make that two!” Gourry piped up.

“In fact, just cook up everything in the kitchen.”

“Make that two!”

The women headed to the kitchen in a haste suspiciously resembling sprinting.

As they waited for their everything, Gourry asked, “Where are we going, again?”

“It’s not like I told you already today, or several times before that.” There was no real irritation to Lina’s words, as she was saving her energy to give him a good fork stabbing once the food came. “We are heading to Eff City, in Eff Prefecture, the capital of Eff Kingdom. Its magic academy is called Eff U, and it’s generally a pretty effed-up place. Are you following me thus far?”

Gourry, poised to parry with his butter knife, did not bother to feign thoughtfulness. “Nope.”

“I thought not. Well, we weren’t headed there for any real reason. It just seemed like the closest place with food, you know? It would have been, too, if somebody hadn’t lost the map.”

“Even if you say it that way, you were the one who set it on fire.”

“Shut up. Anyway, even if we didn’t have a reason, I have the sinking feeling something’s going to come up soon.”

“How come?”

“Didn’t you notice that guy sitting in the corner?” She jerked a thumb at the inn’s other customer, who smiled and waved politely.

“Well, of course I did, but…” Gourry scratched his cheek. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“Are you supposed to… that’s Xellos, you idiot, Xellos!”

“To tell the truth, I was a bit concerned that you’d forgotten me as well,” said Xellos, looking ever-so-sad.

Lina jabbed a steak knife in his general direction. “I refuse to deal with you on an empty stomach! You’re just going to have to wait after dinner!”

He held up his hands, the picture portrait of innocence. “Fair enough! It takes a braver man than I to come between Miss Lina and her dinner.”

“Really?” said Gourry. “But when it comes down to it, there’s no place I’d rather be.”

He grinned at Lina, who blushed before she could properly parse his words. Then she forked him.

* * *

Excel had been in the customer service business long enough to know when people were being serious about eating everything in the kitchen, and she treated the situation with a battlefield command that would’ve made Mr. Owner proud, had he not been out hunting bears. “Take out anything they can eat raw, and then come back and start baking. I’m going to throw together some starches and fry up some of the m-meat.” It was hard for her to speak the word aloud, as though holding it back would change the fact that she would not be eating it that night.

“Don’t you find it suspicious?” asked Elgala. “That anybody would show up out here, let alone three different people?”

“Yes, but you’re only saying that because you don’t want to cook. Go.”

The battle of dinner raged on both kitchen and dining room fronts; fiercely. And like many battles, it became quickly apparent this one would have no true victor. No sooner had their customers’ appetites been whetted than the food ran out. Elgala was in the unenviable position on the front lines, caught between ravenous demands and the throat-slitting motion that Excel was making in the kitchen door.

“Well, ah… there’s no more food in there… except what we’re holding back,” she added a trademark vocal thought.

“What are you holding back?” demanded the woman.

“Er… n-nothing, of course… Crap! I think this inhuman creature already knows about the spaghetti!”

“Inhuman… creature…?” She clenched her fork until it bent.

“Spaghetti, please!” cried the man, motioning frantically for Elgala to return to the kitchen.

Elgala went with resignation, out of the frying pan and onto the plate. She feared her senior’s wrath more than even the hungriest of monsters.

Excel, drained of her once limitless-seeming energy, stood quietly over the stove. She stirred the spaghetti sauce like a witch over her cauldron, her apron caked with tomato sauce and blood. “This was our second-to-last resort,” she said, icicles dripping from her voice.

“I, Elgala, am sadly aware of the fact. And that our first last resort is back home.”

“Elgala,” said Excel, stirring the pot slowly, not turning to face her.

“Y-y-yes, Senior? Please don’t kill and eat me! At least cook up Senior Hyatt first!”

Ignoring that thought, Excel said, “I’ll need Hyatt’s medicine.” Elgala gasped so loudly that Excel shoved a hand over her mouth before she could think anything too loudly. “Didn’t you hear them talking at all? Do you know who that is?”

Elgala peered in at their guests. “If I had to make an educated guess at this point… Shabranigdo?”

“No, no, no! Didn’t you hear what that big, blond ape keeps calling her? ‘Lina, Lina.’ That’s got to be Lina Inverse!” Excel’s voice was low and grave, like the teller of a scary story. “The fabled Lina Inverse… I thought she was a myth, just like most of the things I believe in, but it’s just like all the rumors say! Comes in like a whirlwind, eats everything in sight, haggles on the price, and - the most terrifying part yet to come - tips badly.”

“I, Elgala, seem to recall tales more related to death and destruction…”

“Speaking of which…” Excel crossed the kitchen to where the corpse lay in a pool of its own blood, and gave it a gentle prod. “Ha-chan, you still dead? …right. Silly question. Forgive the intrusion on your personage.” She rolled up her sleeves and began to ransack the body; after less than a minute, she’d produced a whole armful of pill cases, vials, and potions.

Elgala followed her back to the stove. “My, my Senior has turned to poisoning. I didn’t know she had the gall!”

“You bet your bulbous behind I do!” The blonde’s eyes gleamed as she dumped the drugs into the pot. “Lina Inverse will rue the day she ate our dinner!”

Tags: excel saga, fic, slayers, slayers: excellency

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 12:40 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.