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Kitsune Lina
Gathering of Jackals "You're acting like we shouldn't go look for Lina," Zelgadis noted, as Gourry came down the stairs yawning.
"You don't think I want to make sure she's safe?" Amelia responded, insulted.
"Make sure who's safe?" Gourry asked. "And where's Lina."
"We don't know," Zelgadis said.
"I don't think we should get involved, Zelgadis-san," Amelia said once again. She hated her own thoughts and kept them to herself. She didn't want to admit that it was probably a good thing that Lina was gone. "Zelgadis-san might think he's a monster, but Lina actually is."
"Well, wouldn't she start from where this all happened?" Gourry asked. Amelia and Zelgadis blinked and looked at the swordsman as he started to order breakfast.
"That's a good idea," Zelgadis said, surprised. "Perhaps we should look for her at the last town."
"What about this hermit of yours," Amelia asked. "Shouldn't you be heading to see him about your cure?"
"I didn't suggest that she stop travelling with us just to leave her to every bandit looking for a reputation," Zelgadis asserted. "The hermit will be there after we find Lina."
"What if she doesn't want to be found?"
"It never stopped us from following Zel," Gourry noted, making a second useful observation in one conversation.
"What are you hiding, Amelia?" Zelgadis asked.
"You'll have to ask Lina," was all Amelia said.
"You sound like Xellos," Gourry noted.
"Speak of the devil," Xellos whispered from the shadows. He watched the three make preparations to leave, not wanting to reveal himself to them. The resulting suscipision, chaos and anger would be delicious, but it would just be diversion. "So there really is something wrong with Lina." Besides, Amelia and Zelgadis were more than making up for the lack.
He wanted this to be a short jaunt, Xelas wouldn't tolerate him being away from his post for too long. He affirmed to himself again that the only reason he was out and about was that he needed some time away from that over-violent, insolent, dragon-girl. Xellos cast about with his senses for Lina's magical signature while the Slayers beneath him gathered there things and waited for Gourry to finish devouring breakfast. He couldn't feel anything, either she was out of his range. Or else whatever had happened to her hadn't just blocked her magical power, it had stripped it.
"She must be out of range," Xellos decided. Lina hurt all over, she couldn't move any part of her body, breathing ached, the blood roared in her ears. All she could do was stare through the trees and wait for the sun to set. She felt herself healing slowly, but at this rate it would be a while before she even looked alive to the outside world, much less be able to move. The fact that her new state of being kept her alive didn't soothe her much. If she could still cast magic, she never would have even had a problem.
She shouldn't even be in this situation now, she had been cocky. After all, bandits had never caused her a real problem before. The amount she had depended on magic was painfully clear now, very painfully. She ran over the scene in her mind one more time, analyzing her mistakes again. "Okay, you little creep," Lina snapped as she landed from the tree in front of the courier. "Who paid you to deliver these?" She snatched the scroll case from his hands and recovered one of the "Lina Inverse has lost her power." posters.
"What's it to you?" the courier asked nervously, taking in the hooded cloak, armor and swords. "You're a bandit aren't you?"
"I just want to know if the information is genuine," Lina asserted. She paused and sniffed at the air then, something had attracted her attention. Lina didn't know if the enhanced senses were a bad sign or not, her sense of smell especially was getting more acute with each passing hour.
"What does it matter if its genuine or not?" the courier asked nervously. Lina shook away the uncomfortable feeling the "scent" gave her. It was probably just her imagining things anyway.
"I don't like being used as a decoy," Lina told the courier. "Now where is the person that hired you to deliver these."
"Are you interferring with the mail, little girl?" a voice behind her demanded. Lina knew she wasn't imagining things now as the sound of men surrounding her and the courier carried through the forest.
"You know what," a second bandit asked.
"What?"
"I think she's the 'bandit killer' and I'll bet that information there is correct."
"Are you crazy," Lina shouted. "If I was her, I'd have dug myself into a hole by now."
"Hey, isn't Karl a survivor of the Bandit Killer?" someone demanded. The courier edged away and was blocked by two large bandits. "Oh let him go, everybody should have that information after all." The circle of bandits parted a little to let the man by, he ran at a breakneck pace away from the developing scene.
"Yeah, let's pull that hood back and see if Karl recognizes her."
"Just try it," Lina snapped, drawing her blade. She looked frantically for a way out, but found nothing. She should have left when the first twinge of danger came to her, now she was stuck. "I don't want to die quite yet, I still have to find Martina, and thank her."
"I don't care, I just want that sword of hers."
"Oh, you want that little baby sword?" somebody teased.
"Mind your own business, let's just kill her and figure out who she is later."
The following battle didn't last long, Lina had put up a good fight, but without magic there were just too many of them. Still five of them weren't going to be anybody's problem again. What happened after the battle was the real horror.
"It looks like she's still alive," the speaker ran her through one more time as he spoke. The pain was incredible, but Lina wasn't able to respond. "Look at her eyes."
"Don't be stupid," somebody closed her eyes, but she lifted them open moments later.
"Yeah, that's the 'bandit killer' allright," a burn-scarred man she assumed must be Karl told the others. He lifted her head up by bloodsoaked her and spat in her face, Lina blinked. The man let her head drop back down to the ground, it hit hard. "She's still alive." He kicked her, several times, Lina thought she felt one of her remaining ribs break.
"It's just a reflex action, don't worry about it," he closed her eyes, again, but she popped them open. She was going to make sure she knew who these people were. "See, look, they just pop open. It's odd, but we've all seen dead bodies do stuff like that before."
"Come on let's get out of here," somebody said. "We've pretty much taken everything of value." The men around her stood up and started walking away, all agreeing in various ways. Each of them paused to give Lina's conscious, but immobile body a kick or stab. Lina thanked L-sama that there wasn't a single silver weapon among the lot of them.
"I wonder what she used the manacles for?" The voice was fading away, she was alone in a ditch on the side of the road in the middle of the roads. Which brought her to her current situation.
Her feet itched now, it was a good sign, the feeling was returning to her limbs. It was still taking to long, somebody might come along and decide to do something more than just beat the bandit killer's corpse. She sighed and wondered just how long she was going to have to stay in this hideous state of immobile consciousness.It wasn't all that much longer, fortunately, as the sun began to sink and the transformation was triggered, her rate of healing accelerated. The pain was incredible as bones knitted and nerves reconnected to each other. It was comparatively short lived though, and Lina was soon nearly completely healed. As soon as the full transformation ended the healing slowed down again, but it was still at much higher rate than before.
"First piece of business is to get my stuff back," Lina growled, tail swishing smoothly. "Without them learning it was me." She didn't want it getting around that she was a were-creature, and if the rumors spread that she was dead, well that was so much the better.
If she suspected her senses were enhanced in human form they were incredible now. She had been too preoccupied with moping on the previous night to notice them. For one thing it was easy to follow the bandit's trail through the woods, and moving silently and swiftly.
The bandit lair was more of a challenge, but the level of drunkeness and chaos still made it easy for her to get in and out with her stuff and a little extra without being seen. She left only one exception, one of her earrings planted in one of the bandit's packs to implicate him in the loot's disappearance.
Lina sighed as she left to the sound of a rising fight, but if she had fought some of them would have escaped. Then Lina Inverse would be known as a werecreature and she'd never be able to find Martina. The fighting grew louder as Lina began travelling down the road, hood pulled deep over her head. As she neared the next town Lina settled in to another solitary camp site to wait for daylight to come.
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