Slayers: Days

Arc 3

Seeking to obtain the legendary cure for the common cold to heal Gourry of his ailing, Lina ventures off on her own and finds herself pitted against a mysterious foe.

Slayers: Days - A Cure For The Common Cold

"Acho!" Gourry's voice echoed loudly across the inn room where he and Lina were staying. With a loud sniffle, he grinned sheepishly and tried again to communicate what he had been trying to say. However, his mind had gone blank, as if his thoughts had been thrown out along with the germs of the common cold. With nothing more to say, the blond swordsman only muttered unsure. "Um... Excuse me."

Lina blinked and let out a breath. "You're excused and bless you for the millionth time. And by the way, you're not going anywhere. Healing magic doesn't do a thing and I don't know what herbs to feed you." Who ever said idiots couldn't catch colds?

"But it's the common cold," Gourry reasoned with a sudden burst of logic. "It's not supposed to have a cure," he reminded.

"Until now," Lina daringly declared. "I've had it with this cold!" She growled with an unparalleled fury towards the microorganisms that caused the terrible incurable illness. "When you get over it, I get it and by the time I'm over it, you have it all over again."

"This cold's hard to kill," Gourry admitted with a groan. He sat down on the bed and it felt so good to rest that he decided to just sit there for a while. "It's a survivor."

"And we're its victims!" Lina emphasized. "No more!" The fierce redhead sounded dangerously determined. "I'll find a spell to cure you; I'll defeat the common cold!"

Gourry gasped, fearing the worse as Lina let out a stream of insane evil laughter. She looked very much like a crazy alchemist at the moment and that was certainly a cause for worry, especially since this as the Lina Inverse. "You're not gong to do weird experiments on me in your obsess quest to find a cure for the common cold, are you?" The flu afflicted swordsman coughed fearfully at the end of his frightened inquiry. Even if he felt like crawling under the covers and hibernating until his cold was gone, if it came down to Lina giving him an affirmative answer, he was ready to jump out the third story inn room window and run for his life.

"No," Lina replied, much to Gourry's relief. "But I have been doing some research. There's supposed to be some ruins or some such containing ancient findings about the super secret cure to the common cold. I've managed to pinpoint their location and that's where I'm going."

Noting the prominent use of singular pronouns, Gourry questioned, "you? As in not us?"

"Yes, you can't fight like this and I'll just risk getting the cold from you again. Stay here, I'll be back soon," Lina decided.

"But Lina," Gourry whined with a sad puppy dog expression.

The redhead paused at the inn room door. "No buts, stay here. I'll be fine on my own." Frowning unsure, Gourry finally nodded his dizzy head and laid back down on the bed.

xoxox xox xoxox

Time passed and Lina reached the supposed location of the ruins where the legendary cure to the common cold was rumored to be. She frowned at the whole lot of nothing before her. The area was empty of anything that stood out, for all it had was a large plain full of grass with some shrubbery and a few trees. It held nothing out of the ordinary and certainly no obscure legendary ruins. Lina was about to pull out her notes from the cape and try to see if she had misinterpreted the archaic clues that led to the location, but before she did, a peculiar feeling of foreboding overtook her. She took a few nonchalant steps forward, hand linked behind her back, then she suddenly turned around with such a fierce glare that it threatened to make even the astral being before her spontaneously combust. "Xellos!" Lina accused as if the act of being Xellos was a crime which, unconsciously, reminded her of when Wizer was trying to arrest her for being Lina Inverse.