Jaynin
4th Level Red Feather
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Slayers: The Enchanted Circlet
“So, let me get this straight,” Gourry said, mournfully upending a sack and shaking out meager crumbs. “We have no food.”
“Mmmhmm,” Lina said grumpily, trying to ignore him and her gnawing hunger as she laid under a tree, half-dozing.
“And we also have no money,” Gourry said next, tossing aside the empty sack and plopping onto the ground, sighing.
“Nope,” Amelia replied. “We spent the last of it on that meal at the last inn we visited.” She kicked a rock and sighed. “Miss Lina ate the entire thing all by herself.”
“So what? I’m the most important member of this group and that means I get the first call on any grub we find.”
“That’s not fair, Miss Lina!” Amelia complained. “You’ve eaten the last three meals all by yourself! Mr. Gourry and I have been forced to eat – “ Amelia’s sentence was cut off as Gourry clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Now Amelia, what have I told you about saying things like that?”
“Been forced to eat what?” Lina asked dryly, glaring at the both of them. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“No, no! You’ve got it all wrong, Lina – ACK!”
“You’re hiding food from me! Tell me where it is! Tell me tell me tell me!!!” Lina shouted, shaking and hitting Gourry.
“Miss Lina, please stop! All this fighting isn’t going to help us find any food!” Amelia unsuccessfully joined the brawl in an attempt to pull the combatants apart.
“I knew it! I knew you’d been hiding food from me! Out with it, where have you put it? Is it roast turkey or some beef stew or…or…or…! Waaah!” Lina stopped shaking Gourry and instead plopped down in the dirt path, whining. “I’m soooooo hungry. I’ve barely eaten in days.”
“Gee… I feel bad for Miss Lina,” Amelia said to Gourry some distance away. “She’s taking this really bad. I wonder how hungry she really is?” The predictable roar from Lina’s stomach answered that question, followed by Lina’s glare.
Just some distance away, yet another band of bounty hunters, heroes, and the like had gathered to try and capture the evil Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev to obtain the 500,000 gold piece bounty on each of their heads. Unlike the other groups, though, this particular group was at least putting some thought into their plans. After following the three of them for the past two days and seeing the unfortunate charred would-be heroes littering the trail, it had seemed wise to them to be cautious in their attack.
“The first phase is complete,” one of them said to the titular leader. “We’ve managed to buy up, hide, or carry off any food for a mile around them as they’ve traveled. There’s no doubt that they must be starving by now.”
“I heard the witch’s stomach from here,” another lookout said. “Trust me, they’ll be fighting for scraps at this point.”
“Perfect,” the leader said, turning to another member of his group. “Now. What about the next part of the plan?”
“Well, um…” she stammered.
“What’s wrong? Spit it out!”
“We went to the cave like that strange wizard told us to,” she went on, recounting an event a few days past in which a strange hooded sorcerer had clued them in on a special way to capture the fugitives. “And we found those ancient relics that he said would be there, but…”
“But what? Don’t tell me you lost them or something!” the boss snarled.
“N-no! We were very careful with them,” the woman said quickly. “But what we found when we discovered the artifacts was that one of them had already been broken. We only have one of them, not two.”
“Hmm… that means we’ll only be able to disable one of the sorceresses,” the leader mused, thinking. “It’s a minor inconvenience, but no more. To be truthful, I didn’t think we’d have any trouble with that little girl. She’s too clumsy to be of much trouble. It’s the evil Lina Inverse that we need to be careful of. Now…” He turned back to the woman who had retrieved the old and worn-looking circlet. “What exactly is this supposed to do?”
“It’s an artifact that can render female sorceresses helpless without actually hurting – “
“I know that, but how does it accomplish that fact? Perhaps you’d be willing to run a quick experiment for us?”
The woman looked around at the other members of the group and read their faces. She was being punished for failing to retrieve both of the circlets, and she knew it. There would be no sympathy for her. Taking a deep breath, and with trembling hands, she fastened the circlet around her forehead. The boss smiled slightly.
“Now, try and cast a spell.”
“Sooooo hungry…” Lina whined, hobbling down the dirt path with the help of a stick and keeping up a constant stream of complaints. “I’m going to starve to death soon if I don’t get something to eat!”
“Lina, you’re only wasting your strength by complaining about it. If you just be quiet and walk, we’ll get to the next town that much faster.”
“But what are we going to do, Mr. Gourry?” Amelia asked. “We have no money either. We can’t afford to buy food and we don’t have any of our own. You’re not saying that we should… steal food, are you? Heroes of justice would never break the – “
“Put a sock in it already!” Lina said. “Look at it this way. We can’t continue to uphold justice and all that if we’re all DEAD OF STARVATION!” Lina growled. “Now keep looking for food.”
Gourry had stopped walking at Lina’s shout, and for a moment it was quiet. “Hey, do you two hear something? Listen… I’m pretty sure I can hear a woman laughing.”
“You’re just hallucinating,” Lina grumped, whapping Gourry with her stick as she tromped by. “Quit being stupid and help me look for – “ Lina went quiet, sniffing the air. “Hey!!! Do you guys smell that too?”
“Smells like…” Amelia took a few more sniffs. “I don’t know what it smells like, but whatever it is, it smells GOOD!”
“Food!!!” Lina shouted, abandoning her walking stick and charging off into the woods in the direction of the smell. The others were right behind her, eagerly babbling and trying to guess what kind of treat awaited them, of course not giving a thought to who might be the owner of the food. Not even Amelia raised a protest about the assumed heist of what they decided was roast quail.
Bursting out into a small clearing with an equally small cookfire, they indeed found a small quail on a spit roasting. Strangely, there was no tent, or anything to indicate that someone might be camping there, just the fire and the food, and that was really all they cared about at the moment.
“Hey! Gimme some, Lina! That’s not fair! We should share that!”
“Oh, you two can have what’s left after I’m done,” Lina said, reaching the meat first and holding it out of the reach of the others.
“But Miss Lina, all that will be left are bones! Mr. Gourry and I will starve!”
“You two have that stash of food you’ve been holding out on me with. You’ll survive.” With that, Lina took a big bite of the roast bird as Gourry and Amelia looked on in dismay.
“Mmm… it’s so good… hey!!!” Lina protested as Gourry quickly snatched it from her and stuffed his mouth with three quick bites. Gourry in turn lost the quail to Amelia, who got a few bites in before Lina snatched it back for good and vacuumed up the remaining bit of meat.
“Ahh… that was delicious!” Gourry proclaimed, tears of joy streaming down his face. “The most wonderful meal I have ever eaten!”
“Yeah!” Amelia said, stifling a big yawn as she did so. “But it made me really sleepy. I think I’ll just lie down and have a nap for a while…”
“Don’t be silly, we can’t sleep… now…” Lina’s protest trailed off as she slumped back against a tree, eyes closed and snoring loudly. Gourry, true to form, hadn’t even said a word and had just slumped over face-first into the ground, snoring away.
“Ooh, that was such a nice rest,” Lina yawned, stretching as she woke up some time later. Blinking herself awake, she luxuriantly stretched her limbs out, working off the sleep-induced heaviness that was keeping her legs from moving – “Hey!” Lina cried, eyes snapping open and becoming instantly alert.
She found herself tied loosely to a log, ropes looped around her legs securing her in a sitting position with legs stretched out, but strangely without any restraints on her upper body. All around her were more of those idiots who had come to try and claim the bounty on her head, the so-called heroes and bounty hunters that were flocking from around the land to try and defeat the evil Lina Inverse. They’d managed to capture her, probably with a drugged quail… they were clever enough to exploit that, but apparently less clever than they would have liked to be. Her sword was gone, but… These morons don’t know I’m a sorceress, Lina thought with some satisfaction. A quick spell would scatter them and allow her to work herself free at her leisure.
“Awake yet, Lina Inverse?” the boss asked her with a sneer on his face. “Good, right on schedule. Soon enough we’ll collect that 500,000 gold piece reward for your capture, so you just sit there and don’t move, okay, little girl?” There were rough, derisive chuckles from the assorted men and women in the small band.
“Little girl?!” Lina snarled, a vein throbbing in her forehead to let everyone know that the leader had hit one of her sore spots. “I’ll show you a little – “
“Now before you go about casting spells, why don’t you take a look at the little circlet on your head, girl?” the boss said, cutting her off. “And take a look at your pals.” He gestured to Gourry, who was looking miserable, although he had a right to be, currently hung upside down from a tree limb and wrapped liberally from head to toe in rope. A woman with a sly smirk on her face and a scimitar in her hand stood just beside him. “Make any trouble, and your pals will be the ones to pay for it.”
“You jerk! How dare you do this to us!” Lina searched her own bonds with her strangely free hands, looking for a knot or some other weak spot in the rope that she could exploit. The leader grabbed her hand roughly, smirking.
“Don’t think that you can get away just because you’re not completely tied up,” he said. “And I told you not to make trouble.” To a pair of his followers out of sight in the brush, he said, “All right, give her another treatment.”
This statement was followed by two snickering voices and a loud wail from Amelia. Immediately a struggle commenced, with the two men yelling at each other and Amelia shouting at them, trying to cast spells. “Stop it!!” Lina screamed, struggling more. “What are you doing? Don’t touch her or I’ll kill yo – huh?”
Amelia’s loud yells had changed to something more like frenzied laughter. “NAhahhAHAHHAhAhAHAHAheheheh no no please mister don’t do thahahahaahahaat!!! Oh ohheheheheheheahahahahah no not there! Don’t touch my feeeeheheheeheheheheheeet!! AhAHAHahAAHAHAHah stoppit noooooo please pleheheheheheheze save me Miss Liiihihihihihihihihhiiiiina!!!”
Lina’s anger had quickly been replaced with confusion. “Ah… uh… what the hell is going on here?” she demanded of the leader, and also remembering the circlet that they’d put on her head, wondering what it would do, and trying to think of a way out of the situation.
“It’s quite simple, really, almost too simple if you think about it,” the boss said rather dramatically. “You’re a sorceress, so you know that to cast a spell, you need several seconds of concentration, correct?”
“Yeah, so – oh, is that what this is?” Lina smirked, remembering her visit to Seyruun and the scuffle with Zangulus and Vrumugun (Author’s Note: I was too lazy to look up the proper spelling) there. When captured, her captors had placed on her a circlet that shocked her whenever she tried to cast magic. Clearly, these hoodlums had left her arms free so she could try to cast something and then snicker at her misfortune when she got zapped. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they found out she could maintain her concentration even through the pain of being shocked…
“Not quite what you think. You see, we realized that most spellcasters train to be able to cast a spell even while being attacked or while in pain. Therefore simply shocking you or something to that effect isn’t going to keep you there. No, what we needed was a way to disrupt your concentration more effectively – and we’ve obtained an ancient artifact designed for keeping female spellcasters where they’re put.” He grinned at Lina. “Go on. Try to use a fireball or even cast the Dragon Slave.”
Provoked by his remark, Lina began to channel her magic for a fireball into her hands – and as she did so, felt something strange occur in her body. It felt like invisible fingers were poking her sides, and it was a most… most… Lina couldn’t even concentrate enough to think of a word for how it felt, and this realization also brought her spell to an abrupt halt.
Apparently the group had known what to expect from this and burst into derisive laughter. Gourry, still hanging upside down, asked mournfully: “What happened, Lina? I’ve seen you cast spells even while being beaten silly… or wait, is it that time of the month again – “ A rock somehow managed to strike him on the head. (Author’s Note: For those of you who haven’t seen Slayers, yes, they DO talk about this.)
“Shaddap!” Lina hissed, glaring at the laughing bounty hunters and “heroes”. “Why you – just you wait…!” Lina again started to cast a Fireball spell, this time determined not to lose her concentration. And that strange sensation came back, fingers poking and wiggling against her sides and ribs, a feeling that actually – Oh no! Lina realized suddenly what was going on here, and burst into a minor explosion of giggles. “That tickles!” she cried reflexively, hugging her arms to her sides in a vain attempt to ward off her invisible tormentors.
“You get it now?” the sorceress who’d been forced to test the circlet sneered. “There’s no way you can concentrate enough to cast a spell, and the more you try, the worse it tickles!”
She’s right, Lina mused to herself. “I guess having one of the most beautiful and luxuriant bodies on the continent must have some drawbacks.” This statement caused the laughter to cease and dead silence to reign for a moment while everyone present sweatdropped.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Lina,” Gourry groaned. “Honestly, who could think that an underdeveloped girl like you – “ Another mysteriously launched rock managed to strike him on the other side of the head, causing two matching bumps to rise.
“I’ll show you underdeveloped!” Lina snarled, unthinkingly preparing another spell to blast Gourry with – and breaking off into a flood of laughter as she felt fingers skitter up and down her sides, all over her upper body, tickling her all over. Even after she stopped trying to cast a spell, she still felt tickling sensations on her bare feet, going up and down and up and down her fair, beautiful soles… Not until she opened her eyes, shrieking with giggles, did she realize that some of the gang had pulled her boots off and were tickling her feet themselves.
“What are ya gonna do, little girl?” one sneered. “Cast a spell on me? C’mon, I dare you! Hit me as hard as you can!” he chuckled, tracing a finger up and down her arch.
Lina’s ego, which was a little too big for her own good, rose to the bait again and she gritted her teeth through the giggles, yelling, “I’ll make you eat those words, you jerk – AHHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!” The magic-induced tickling took place again, tickling now under her arms and on her ribs too, seemingly getting worse each time she tried to defy it.
About that time, the two men who were charged with keeping Amelia under control decided that it would be fun to join in the festivities, and with Amelia sitting on a rock with her arms tied overhead to a tree branch and her ankles tied together and held in the crook of one of the men’s arms, they had an equally helpless target to devote their attentions to. The one holding her legs chuckled. “Kitchy-koo, little girl! Tickle tickle!” he teased, skittering his five fingers lightly on her feet, causing a girlish giggle to come from Amelia’s mouth.
“Oh noooohohohoho please! Don’t do thahahahahahahahahahahhat don’t tickle plehehehehehehehehze no!!!” she cried, tossing her head back and forth while giggling madly. “Oh Mr. Gourry!!! Miss Liihihihihina!! Pleheheheheheheheheeeeze save me!!!”
“No one’s gonna save you,” sneered the other man, who stepped behind her so he could have a shot at her underarms and sides, nicely exposed from the way she was tied up, and finding that Amelia wiggled quite a lot when she was tickled even the slightest bit. Her upper body wriggled and tried to bend away from his hands, giggling all the while from the tickling on her feet, and trying to ignore the derisive teasing from her two tormentors.
“Nahahahaheheheeheheh no no NOOHOOHOHOHOHOAHAHAHHAHEAHE!!! AHHAah AHAHheEH EHAH HA oh stop stoppit AHHAhaHheehehHAHAHAHAHEAEHehheehehAHAHaha!!!”
“Ooh! I think I found a good spot!” one of the proclaimed, drilling his fingers under her arms again and getting the same result as before. “Damn, this is the best technique for fighting sorceresses ever! I could fight ‘em all day like this! Couldn’t you?”
“You bet!” And they both laughed and continued to make Amelia do the same.
Gourry meanwhile was peacefully swaying back and forth from his tree branch, being rather unable to do anything but filing away the effectiveness that tickling Lina seemed to have for future disagreements and arguments. Lina was in a pretty pickle herself, because when she started to cast a spell to blast all these jeering jerks it tickled all over her upper body, worse and worse each time, and when she stopped they’d start making fun of her again and tickling her sometimes on her feet.
The cacophony of laughter in that small clearing of forest was incredibly loud, and Gourry wondered why no one had heard it and at least come to take a look out of curiosity. About that time he figured that trying to find a way out of this predicament might be a good idea, since he had no desire to be turned in to someone for a large bounty. His Sword of Light was gone, unreachable by far, along with Lina’s sword, but…
Lina was meanwhile desperately trying to think of an idea for escape, since she had realized these goons weren’t happy unless she was laughing herself silly, whether that meant they had to do it or she inflicted it upon herself, at this rate she was simply going to overload and lose her mind or something like that… With startling suddenness the idea hit her. “Thahahahahahhat’s it! I’m gonna gehehehehehhehet you all!” she laughed, as their fingers descended upon her feet once more, she began to cast another spell.
The tickling hit her with doubled intensity now. There were spectral fingers and hands all over her body, driving her mad with laughter, but she held the magical energy even though it did nothing for her but make the circlet go off and tickle her worse. Lina abandoned the notion that she’d be able to look dignified doing this and just laughed her head off, twisting her upper body and head around and pounding the log with her fists in ticklish helplessness, but she still didn’t release the magic, triggering the mechanism on her forehead over and over again, sending waves of tickling through her body.
“AhAHAH AHAHha AHEhehAHAHAHA hAHAAH ahehehAEHEHEAaheheeheheha ahAHA AAaAAHahaHAh!!! AHHAAHAHEhahEHAhe AhhaHAHA I’ll get you ahahHAHHE eheh just… you wait!!! AHhaAHAHHEhehehEHehEHEHeHEHEHEHEHEHAHHAHAH!!!!”
“You’re not in much of a condition to do much of anything,” the boss sneered, enjoying the show with the rest of his gang.
“Lina! What are you doing?!” Gourry cried, wriggling back and forth in an attempt to snap the tree branch. “You’re not going to be able to cast a spell like that! Stop it!”
“Hey, boss!” one of the men cried in dismay, pointing at the worn circlet that adorned Lina’s forehead.
“Oh crap!” he yelled, seeing what his men saw, that the circlet had an unstable-looking magic aura around it, and it seemed to be disintegrating before their very eyes. “She’s overloading it! It’s going to break!”
Yes! Lina thought in triumph. As I thought, this thing is so old that it can barely work anymore… In that moment, the circlet shattered, and Lina felt the tickling sensation vanish from her body. “Quickly, you fools!” the boss screamed. “Get her before she – “
“Fireball!” Lina yelled, launching her trademark spell at the clustered men and women around her, scattering them with a massive explosion. “Ha…ha…ha!” she panted. “Don’t think… that something so stupid… as tickling… can stop the mighty… Lina Inverse! Ha ha ha ha!”
“That’s nice, Lina, could you get me down now?” Gourry asked, wincing. “I have a huge headache from hanging upside down for so long.”
“A head like yours should ache,” Lina shot back as she used a quick burst of magic to burn her ropes off. “Hey, weren’t there two others – “ The sound of Amelia’s girlish laughter caught her ears.
These two, apparently so caught up in their fun, hadn’t noticed the explosion that had carried off their cohorts. So when Lina and Gourry crashed their party, their faces went pasty white. “Uh… uh… bye!”
“Hold it!” Gourry demanded, grabbing the nearest one by his shirt collar and holding him. “I want to know something from you… how did you know where to find us, and how to use a food trap against us? You wouldn’t know that if you were just another one of those wandering bands out to get the reward for us…”
“D-don’t hurt me! I’ll tell you!” he squeaked. “It was when we decided to seek the reward for Gourry Gabriev, some woman said that she knew how to get some inside information…” He commenced with the story he had heard.
(Author’s Note: This is a cheap segment of the story meant to work in all the main female members of the first season. So sue me.)
Late one night in Sairaag, a certain quiet, shy, long-haired girl had blown out her candles and clad in her nightgown, had gone to bed. Not long after she had fallen asleep, another woman, clad all in black gear, had slipped into her room by way of the window. She landed quietly, taking a thorough look around for anything that resembled an anti-intruder defense or a trap… Seeing nothing, she silently padded to the room’s door, making sure that it was locked. With her preliminary check done, she returned her attentions to the sleeping girl, and with quick, practiced motions, used something resembling a soft, silky, yet strong rope to bind the sleeping girl’s ankles and wrists to the posts of her bed.
This of course awakened her, though as she was not the quickest of minds, it took her several seconds to come to, and by that time, the intruder had already placed a cloth-covered hand over her mouth. “Stay quiet, girl, and you won’t get hurt,” she said quietly. “Scream and it’s all over for you, got that, Sylphiel?”
Sylphiel (Author’s Note: You did see this coming, right?) nodded, eyes wide open in shock and not a little bit of fear. “A-all right…” she said softly.
“Now, I know that you know Gourry Gabriev fairly well,” she said, reaching into her tunic and withdrawing two dark objects that Sylphiel couldn’t see in the darkness. “I’d like to know where he was or where he is going.”
“I… I don’t know,” Sylphiel said hesitantly. “He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Come on, do you expect me to believe that he left without even telling anyone where he was headed?” the woman asked, brandishing those familiar but still obscure objects in her hands. Sylphiel let out a little gasp. Were they… knives? “Surely you must know something about where he was going.”
“N-no, Gourry dear didn’t tell me anything about where he was g-g-going eheheheheheehheeh!!! Ahahhaahahahahahahahahah stop that tickles!” Syphiel protested squeakily, feeling something soft yet stiff brush against her sole. “HEeheeheheeehehahahah!!” She tried to wiggle her foot away but it was bound to the post of the bed.
“Ah ah,” the woman teased, “stay quiet, or you’ll be in trouble… Now, if you just tell me where ‘Gourry dear’ went, I’ll stop and leave you alone and never bother you again.”
“B-b-buuhuuuhuhuhut I don’t know…! No, pleheheheheheheheeze!” Sylphiel cried as the feathers swept up and down both of her arches. “Stahahahahahahahaap! Nooohohohohohho pleehheheheheheeze it tickles!!! I don’t knoooooooow!”
“Tsk, tsk, I told you to be quiet!” the woman teased again, drawing a strip of dark cloth from within her sash and tying it over Sylphiel’s mouth. “Now I’ll let you think about it for a few minutes before I ask again, okay?” With that, she proceeded to tickle all over Sylphiel’s feet with her dark, stiff feathers.
A muffled cacophony was going on beneath the gag. Sylphiel’s head tossed back and forth, the cloth wrapped around her face stifling the full volume of her laughter as her soft, sensitive feet were tickled gently and precisely by the woman in the ninja suit at the foot of the bed. She waited for a few minutes, chuckling at the girl’s attempts to get free without making too much noise, and then removed the gag from her and asked, “Now, are you going to tell me where Gourry is?”
“I don’t know!” Sylphiel burst out, almost in panic. “Gourry only said that he was going to go adventuring, and that was all! He didn’t even say where he was going to go!” Sylphiel squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that wasn’t going to satisfy her strange assailant.
But it had seemed to placate her, amazingly enough. “Going adventuring…? Well, that at least gives me a place to start… You see, Sylphiel, there are a couple of well-known places where adventurers stop by. Now I can make inquiries with my contacts there to see if they’ve seen anything of Gourry.”
“Wh-what do you want with him?” Sylphiel asked, afraid that she might have betrayed him to a terrible fate.
“Nothing that concerns you, my dear,” the woman said, loosening the knots on her silken ropes enough so that given a few minutes’ time, Sylphiel could work herself free. “In fact, neither I nor anyone I’m associated with will ever bother you again. Pleasant dreams,” she said with a chuckle, swinging out the door…
“…and that’s how we found out where yous was goin’,” the bounty hunter concluded, swallowing past a very dry throat as he watched Gourry’s expression remain neutral through the whole story.
“What is it with you guys and tickling, anyway?” Lina asked. The bandit froze. But it was just an idle question from the sorceress. “Ah, whatever. Gourry, show him the road. Consider yourself lucky not to be fried,” she said, blowing a mock kiss to him. “And don’t try following us again. Otherwise you’re not going to enjoy the results.” Nodding frantically, the bounty hunter scrambled off down the road.
“That was definitely one of our weirder adventures,” Lina said as they set off towards Sairaag again. “Well, at least we got a meal out of all that. Come on, let’s get going.”
“Sure. Say, Lina, I didn’t know that you were ticklish,” Gourry mused.
“Only if you want broken fingers, Gourry.”
That bounty hunter ran down the road until he came upon the town in which his band had just been in. Perhaps they’d all missed the huge bounty on the two fugitives’ heads. But like a true bounty hunter, he had planned for what he would do in case of failure. In this case, it was a special assignment from the very same person who had dropped the hint about the ancient artifact to them.
He entered a dark, unused building on the edge of town. Inside, it was very dark, because all the windows were boarded up and only a few rays of light made it inside from the cracks in the structure. Withdrawing some sort of strange magic device – he was a bounty hunter, quick, agile and good at fighting, not with magic devices – he followed the instructions he had been given and walked into the darkness. “I did as you said,” he called out to the darkness. “I-I have here what you want.”
An indistinct figure glided out of the darkness to take the device.
“So, let me get this straight,” Gourry said, mournfully upending a sack and shaking out meager crumbs. “We have no food.”
“Mmmhmm,” Lina said grumpily, trying to ignore him and her gnawing hunger as she laid under a tree, half-dozing.
“And we also have no money,” Gourry said next, tossing aside the empty sack and plopping onto the ground, sighing.
“Nope,” Amelia replied. “We spent the last of it on that meal at the last inn we visited.” She kicked a rock and sighed. “Miss Lina ate the entire thing all by herself.”
“So what? I’m the most important member of this group and that means I get the first call on any grub we find.”
“That’s not fair, Miss Lina!” Amelia complained. “You’ve eaten the last three meals all by yourself! Mr. Gourry and I have been forced to eat – “ Amelia’s sentence was cut off as Gourry clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Now Amelia, what have I told you about saying things like that?”
“Been forced to eat what?” Lina asked dryly, glaring at the both of them. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“No, no! You’ve got it all wrong, Lina – ACK!”
“You’re hiding food from me! Tell me where it is! Tell me tell me tell me!!!” Lina shouted, shaking and hitting Gourry.
“Miss Lina, please stop! All this fighting isn’t going to help us find any food!” Amelia unsuccessfully joined the brawl in an attempt to pull the combatants apart.
“I knew it! I knew you’d been hiding food from me! Out with it, where have you put it? Is it roast turkey or some beef stew or…or…or…! Waaah!” Lina stopped shaking Gourry and instead plopped down in the dirt path, whining. “I’m soooooo hungry. I’ve barely eaten in days.”
“Gee… I feel bad for Miss Lina,” Amelia said to Gourry some distance away. “She’s taking this really bad. I wonder how hungry she really is?” The predictable roar from Lina’s stomach answered that question, followed by Lina’s glare.
Just some distance away, yet another band of bounty hunters, heroes, and the like had gathered to try and capture the evil Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev to obtain the 500,000 gold piece bounty on each of their heads. Unlike the other groups, though, this particular group was at least putting some thought into their plans. After following the three of them for the past two days and seeing the unfortunate charred would-be heroes littering the trail, it had seemed wise to them to be cautious in their attack.
“The first phase is complete,” one of them said to the titular leader. “We’ve managed to buy up, hide, or carry off any food for a mile around them as they’ve traveled. There’s no doubt that they must be starving by now.”
“I heard the witch’s stomach from here,” another lookout said. “Trust me, they’ll be fighting for scraps at this point.”
“Perfect,” the leader said, turning to another member of his group. “Now. What about the next part of the plan?”
“Well, um…” she stammered.
“What’s wrong? Spit it out!”
“We went to the cave like that strange wizard told us to,” she went on, recounting an event a few days past in which a strange hooded sorcerer had clued them in on a special way to capture the fugitives. “And we found those ancient relics that he said would be there, but…”
“But what? Don’t tell me you lost them or something!” the boss snarled.
“N-no! We were very careful with them,” the woman said quickly. “But what we found when we discovered the artifacts was that one of them had already been broken. We only have one of them, not two.”
“Hmm… that means we’ll only be able to disable one of the sorceresses,” the leader mused, thinking. “It’s a minor inconvenience, but no more. To be truthful, I didn’t think we’d have any trouble with that little girl. She’s too clumsy to be of much trouble. It’s the evil Lina Inverse that we need to be careful of. Now…” He turned back to the woman who had retrieved the old and worn-looking circlet. “What exactly is this supposed to do?”
“It’s an artifact that can render female sorceresses helpless without actually hurting – “
“I know that, but how does it accomplish that fact? Perhaps you’d be willing to run a quick experiment for us?”
The woman looked around at the other members of the group and read their faces. She was being punished for failing to retrieve both of the circlets, and she knew it. There would be no sympathy for her. Taking a deep breath, and with trembling hands, she fastened the circlet around her forehead. The boss smiled slightly.
“Now, try and cast a spell.”
“Sooooo hungry…” Lina whined, hobbling down the dirt path with the help of a stick and keeping up a constant stream of complaints. “I’m going to starve to death soon if I don’t get something to eat!”
“Lina, you’re only wasting your strength by complaining about it. If you just be quiet and walk, we’ll get to the next town that much faster.”
“But what are we going to do, Mr. Gourry?” Amelia asked. “We have no money either. We can’t afford to buy food and we don’t have any of our own. You’re not saying that we should… steal food, are you? Heroes of justice would never break the – “
“Put a sock in it already!” Lina said. “Look at it this way. We can’t continue to uphold justice and all that if we’re all DEAD OF STARVATION!” Lina growled. “Now keep looking for food.”
Gourry had stopped walking at Lina’s shout, and for a moment it was quiet. “Hey, do you two hear something? Listen… I’m pretty sure I can hear a woman laughing.”
“You’re just hallucinating,” Lina grumped, whapping Gourry with her stick as she tromped by. “Quit being stupid and help me look for – “ Lina went quiet, sniffing the air. “Hey!!! Do you guys smell that too?”
“Smells like…” Amelia took a few more sniffs. “I don’t know what it smells like, but whatever it is, it smells GOOD!”
“Food!!!” Lina shouted, abandoning her walking stick and charging off into the woods in the direction of the smell. The others were right behind her, eagerly babbling and trying to guess what kind of treat awaited them, of course not giving a thought to who might be the owner of the food. Not even Amelia raised a protest about the assumed heist of what they decided was roast quail.
Bursting out into a small clearing with an equally small cookfire, they indeed found a small quail on a spit roasting. Strangely, there was no tent, or anything to indicate that someone might be camping there, just the fire and the food, and that was really all they cared about at the moment.
“Hey! Gimme some, Lina! That’s not fair! We should share that!”
“Oh, you two can have what’s left after I’m done,” Lina said, reaching the meat first and holding it out of the reach of the others.
“But Miss Lina, all that will be left are bones! Mr. Gourry and I will starve!”
“You two have that stash of food you’ve been holding out on me with. You’ll survive.” With that, Lina took a big bite of the roast bird as Gourry and Amelia looked on in dismay.
“Mmm… it’s so good… hey!!!” Lina protested as Gourry quickly snatched it from her and stuffed his mouth with three quick bites. Gourry in turn lost the quail to Amelia, who got a few bites in before Lina snatched it back for good and vacuumed up the remaining bit of meat.
“Ahh… that was delicious!” Gourry proclaimed, tears of joy streaming down his face. “The most wonderful meal I have ever eaten!”
“Yeah!” Amelia said, stifling a big yawn as she did so. “But it made me really sleepy. I think I’ll just lie down and have a nap for a while…”
“Don’t be silly, we can’t sleep… now…” Lina’s protest trailed off as she slumped back against a tree, eyes closed and snoring loudly. Gourry, true to form, hadn’t even said a word and had just slumped over face-first into the ground, snoring away.
“Ooh, that was such a nice rest,” Lina yawned, stretching as she woke up some time later. Blinking herself awake, she luxuriantly stretched her limbs out, working off the sleep-induced heaviness that was keeping her legs from moving – “Hey!” Lina cried, eyes snapping open and becoming instantly alert.
She found herself tied loosely to a log, ropes looped around her legs securing her in a sitting position with legs stretched out, but strangely without any restraints on her upper body. All around her were more of those idiots who had come to try and claim the bounty on her head, the so-called heroes and bounty hunters that were flocking from around the land to try and defeat the evil Lina Inverse. They’d managed to capture her, probably with a drugged quail… they were clever enough to exploit that, but apparently less clever than they would have liked to be. Her sword was gone, but… These morons don’t know I’m a sorceress, Lina thought with some satisfaction. A quick spell would scatter them and allow her to work herself free at her leisure.
“Awake yet, Lina Inverse?” the boss asked her with a sneer on his face. “Good, right on schedule. Soon enough we’ll collect that 500,000 gold piece reward for your capture, so you just sit there and don’t move, okay, little girl?” There were rough, derisive chuckles from the assorted men and women in the small band.
“Little girl?!” Lina snarled, a vein throbbing in her forehead to let everyone know that the leader had hit one of her sore spots. “I’ll show you a little – “
“Now before you go about casting spells, why don’t you take a look at the little circlet on your head, girl?” the boss said, cutting her off. “And take a look at your pals.” He gestured to Gourry, who was looking miserable, although he had a right to be, currently hung upside down from a tree limb and wrapped liberally from head to toe in rope. A woman with a sly smirk on her face and a scimitar in her hand stood just beside him. “Make any trouble, and your pals will be the ones to pay for it.”
“You jerk! How dare you do this to us!” Lina searched her own bonds with her strangely free hands, looking for a knot or some other weak spot in the rope that she could exploit. The leader grabbed her hand roughly, smirking.
“Don’t think that you can get away just because you’re not completely tied up,” he said. “And I told you not to make trouble.” To a pair of his followers out of sight in the brush, he said, “All right, give her another treatment.”
This statement was followed by two snickering voices and a loud wail from Amelia. Immediately a struggle commenced, with the two men yelling at each other and Amelia shouting at them, trying to cast spells. “Stop it!!” Lina screamed, struggling more. “What are you doing? Don’t touch her or I’ll kill yo – huh?”
Amelia’s loud yells had changed to something more like frenzied laughter. “NAhahhAHAHHAhAhAHAHAheheheh no no please mister don’t do thahahahaahahaat!!! Oh ohheheheheheheahahahahah no not there! Don’t touch my feeeeheheheeheheheheheeet!! AhAHAHahAAHAHAHah stoppit noooooo please pleheheheheheheze save me Miss Liiihihihihihihihihhiiiiina!!!”
Lina’s anger had quickly been replaced with confusion. “Ah… uh… what the hell is going on here?” she demanded of the leader, and also remembering the circlet that they’d put on her head, wondering what it would do, and trying to think of a way out of the situation.
“It’s quite simple, really, almost too simple if you think about it,” the boss said rather dramatically. “You’re a sorceress, so you know that to cast a spell, you need several seconds of concentration, correct?”
“Yeah, so – oh, is that what this is?” Lina smirked, remembering her visit to Seyruun and the scuffle with Zangulus and Vrumugun (Author’s Note: I was too lazy to look up the proper spelling) there. When captured, her captors had placed on her a circlet that shocked her whenever she tried to cast magic. Clearly, these hoodlums had left her arms free so she could try to cast something and then snicker at her misfortune when she got zapped. Wouldn’t they be surprised when they found out she could maintain her concentration even through the pain of being shocked…
“Not quite what you think. You see, we realized that most spellcasters train to be able to cast a spell even while being attacked or while in pain. Therefore simply shocking you or something to that effect isn’t going to keep you there. No, what we needed was a way to disrupt your concentration more effectively – and we’ve obtained an ancient artifact designed for keeping female spellcasters where they’re put.” He grinned at Lina. “Go on. Try to use a fireball or even cast the Dragon Slave.”
Provoked by his remark, Lina began to channel her magic for a fireball into her hands – and as she did so, felt something strange occur in her body. It felt like invisible fingers were poking her sides, and it was a most… most… Lina couldn’t even concentrate enough to think of a word for how it felt, and this realization also brought her spell to an abrupt halt.
Apparently the group had known what to expect from this and burst into derisive laughter. Gourry, still hanging upside down, asked mournfully: “What happened, Lina? I’ve seen you cast spells even while being beaten silly… or wait, is it that time of the month again – “ A rock somehow managed to strike him on the head. (Author’s Note: For those of you who haven’t seen Slayers, yes, they DO talk about this.)
“Shaddap!” Lina hissed, glaring at the laughing bounty hunters and “heroes”. “Why you – just you wait…!” Lina again started to cast a Fireball spell, this time determined not to lose her concentration. And that strange sensation came back, fingers poking and wiggling against her sides and ribs, a feeling that actually – Oh no! Lina realized suddenly what was going on here, and burst into a minor explosion of giggles. “That tickles!” she cried reflexively, hugging her arms to her sides in a vain attempt to ward off her invisible tormentors.
“You get it now?” the sorceress who’d been forced to test the circlet sneered. “There’s no way you can concentrate enough to cast a spell, and the more you try, the worse it tickles!”
She’s right, Lina mused to herself. “I guess having one of the most beautiful and luxuriant bodies on the continent must have some drawbacks.” This statement caused the laughter to cease and dead silence to reign for a moment while everyone present sweatdropped.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Lina,” Gourry groaned. “Honestly, who could think that an underdeveloped girl like you – “ Another mysteriously launched rock managed to strike him on the other side of the head, causing two matching bumps to rise.
“I’ll show you underdeveloped!” Lina snarled, unthinkingly preparing another spell to blast Gourry with – and breaking off into a flood of laughter as she felt fingers skitter up and down her sides, all over her upper body, tickling her all over. Even after she stopped trying to cast a spell, she still felt tickling sensations on her bare feet, going up and down and up and down her fair, beautiful soles… Not until she opened her eyes, shrieking with giggles, did she realize that some of the gang had pulled her boots off and were tickling her feet themselves.
“What are ya gonna do, little girl?” one sneered. “Cast a spell on me? C’mon, I dare you! Hit me as hard as you can!” he chuckled, tracing a finger up and down her arch.
Lina’s ego, which was a little too big for her own good, rose to the bait again and she gritted her teeth through the giggles, yelling, “I’ll make you eat those words, you jerk – AHHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!!!” The magic-induced tickling took place again, tickling now under her arms and on her ribs too, seemingly getting worse each time she tried to defy it.
About that time, the two men who were charged with keeping Amelia under control decided that it would be fun to join in the festivities, and with Amelia sitting on a rock with her arms tied overhead to a tree branch and her ankles tied together and held in the crook of one of the men’s arms, they had an equally helpless target to devote their attentions to. The one holding her legs chuckled. “Kitchy-koo, little girl! Tickle tickle!” he teased, skittering his five fingers lightly on her feet, causing a girlish giggle to come from Amelia’s mouth.
“Oh noooohohohoho please! Don’t do thahahahahahahahahahahhat don’t tickle plehehehehehehehehze no!!!” she cried, tossing her head back and forth while giggling madly. “Oh Mr. Gourry!!! Miss Liihihihihina!! Pleheheheheheheheheeeeze save me!!!”
“No one’s gonna save you,” sneered the other man, who stepped behind her so he could have a shot at her underarms and sides, nicely exposed from the way she was tied up, and finding that Amelia wiggled quite a lot when she was tickled even the slightest bit. Her upper body wriggled and tried to bend away from his hands, giggling all the while from the tickling on her feet, and trying to ignore the derisive teasing from her two tormentors.
“Nahahahaheheheeheheh no no NOOHOOHOHOHOHOAHAHAHHAHEAHE!!! AHHAah AHAHheEH EHAH HA oh stop stoppit AHHAhaHheehehHAHAHAHAHEAEHehheehehAHAHaha!!!”
“Ooh! I think I found a good spot!” one of the proclaimed, drilling his fingers under her arms again and getting the same result as before. “Damn, this is the best technique for fighting sorceresses ever! I could fight ‘em all day like this! Couldn’t you?”
“You bet!” And they both laughed and continued to make Amelia do the same.
Gourry meanwhile was peacefully swaying back and forth from his tree branch, being rather unable to do anything but filing away the effectiveness that tickling Lina seemed to have for future disagreements and arguments. Lina was in a pretty pickle herself, because when she started to cast a spell to blast all these jeering jerks it tickled all over her upper body, worse and worse each time, and when she stopped they’d start making fun of her again and tickling her sometimes on her feet.
The cacophony of laughter in that small clearing of forest was incredibly loud, and Gourry wondered why no one had heard it and at least come to take a look out of curiosity. About that time he figured that trying to find a way out of this predicament might be a good idea, since he had no desire to be turned in to someone for a large bounty. His Sword of Light was gone, unreachable by far, along with Lina’s sword, but…
Lina was meanwhile desperately trying to think of an idea for escape, since she had realized these goons weren’t happy unless she was laughing herself silly, whether that meant they had to do it or she inflicted it upon herself, at this rate she was simply going to overload and lose her mind or something like that… With startling suddenness the idea hit her. “Thahahahahahhat’s it! I’m gonna gehehehehehhehet you all!” she laughed, as their fingers descended upon her feet once more, she began to cast another spell.
The tickling hit her with doubled intensity now. There were spectral fingers and hands all over her body, driving her mad with laughter, but she held the magical energy even though it did nothing for her but make the circlet go off and tickle her worse. Lina abandoned the notion that she’d be able to look dignified doing this and just laughed her head off, twisting her upper body and head around and pounding the log with her fists in ticklish helplessness, but she still didn’t release the magic, triggering the mechanism on her forehead over and over again, sending waves of tickling through her body.
“AhAHAH AHAHha AHEhehAHAHAHA hAHAAH ahehehAEHEHEAaheheeheheha ahAHA AAaAAHahaHAh!!! AHHAAHAHEhahEHAhe AhhaHAHA I’ll get you ahahHAHHE eheh just… you wait!!! AHhaAHAHHEhehehEHehEHEHeHEHEHEHEHEHAHHAHAH!!!!”
“You’re not in much of a condition to do much of anything,” the boss sneered, enjoying the show with the rest of his gang.
“Lina! What are you doing?!” Gourry cried, wriggling back and forth in an attempt to snap the tree branch. “You’re not going to be able to cast a spell like that! Stop it!”
“Hey, boss!” one of the men cried in dismay, pointing at the worn circlet that adorned Lina’s forehead.
“Oh crap!” he yelled, seeing what his men saw, that the circlet had an unstable-looking magic aura around it, and it seemed to be disintegrating before their very eyes. “She’s overloading it! It’s going to break!”
Yes! Lina thought in triumph. As I thought, this thing is so old that it can barely work anymore… In that moment, the circlet shattered, and Lina felt the tickling sensation vanish from her body. “Quickly, you fools!” the boss screamed. “Get her before she – “
“Fireball!” Lina yelled, launching her trademark spell at the clustered men and women around her, scattering them with a massive explosion. “Ha…ha…ha!” she panted. “Don’t think… that something so stupid… as tickling… can stop the mighty… Lina Inverse! Ha ha ha ha!”
“That’s nice, Lina, could you get me down now?” Gourry asked, wincing. “I have a huge headache from hanging upside down for so long.”
“A head like yours should ache,” Lina shot back as she used a quick burst of magic to burn her ropes off. “Hey, weren’t there two others – “ The sound of Amelia’s girlish laughter caught her ears.
These two, apparently so caught up in their fun, hadn’t noticed the explosion that had carried off their cohorts. So when Lina and Gourry crashed their party, their faces went pasty white. “Uh… uh… bye!”
“Hold it!” Gourry demanded, grabbing the nearest one by his shirt collar and holding him. “I want to know something from you… how did you know where to find us, and how to use a food trap against us? You wouldn’t know that if you were just another one of those wandering bands out to get the reward for us…”
“D-don’t hurt me! I’ll tell you!” he squeaked. “It was when we decided to seek the reward for Gourry Gabriev, some woman said that she knew how to get some inside information…” He commenced with the story he had heard.
(Author’s Note: This is a cheap segment of the story meant to work in all the main female members of the first season. So sue me.)
Late one night in Sairaag, a certain quiet, shy, long-haired girl had blown out her candles and clad in her nightgown, had gone to bed. Not long after she had fallen asleep, another woman, clad all in black gear, had slipped into her room by way of the window. She landed quietly, taking a thorough look around for anything that resembled an anti-intruder defense or a trap… Seeing nothing, she silently padded to the room’s door, making sure that it was locked. With her preliminary check done, she returned her attentions to the sleeping girl, and with quick, practiced motions, used something resembling a soft, silky, yet strong rope to bind the sleeping girl’s ankles and wrists to the posts of her bed.
This of course awakened her, though as she was not the quickest of minds, it took her several seconds to come to, and by that time, the intruder had already placed a cloth-covered hand over her mouth. “Stay quiet, girl, and you won’t get hurt,” she said quietly. “Scream and it’s all over for you, got that, Sylphiel?”
Sylphiel (Author’s Note: You did see this coming, right?) nodded, eyes wide open in shock and not a little bit of fear. “A-all right…” she said softly.
“Now, I know that you know Gourry Gabriev fairly well,” she said, reaching into her tunic and withdrawing two dark objects that Sylphiel couldn’t see in the darkness. “I’d like to know where he was or where he is going.”
“I… I don’t know,” Sylphiel said hesitantly. “He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Come on, do you expect me to believe that he left without even telling anyone where he was headed?” the woman asked, brandishing those familiar but still obscure objects in her hands. Sylphiel let out a little gasp. Were they… knives? “Surely you must know something about where he was going.”
“N-no, Gourry dear didn’t tell me anything about where he was g-g-going eheheheheheehheeh!!! Ahahhaahahahahahahahahah stop that tickles!” Syphiel protested squeakily, feeling something soft yet stiff brush against her sole. “HEeheeheheeehehahahah!!” She tried to wiggle her foot away but it was bound to the post of the bed.
“Ah ah,” the woman teased, “stay quiet, or you’ll be in trouble… Now, if you just tell me where ‘Gourry dear’ went, I’ll stop and leave you alone and never bother you again.”
“B-b-buuhuuuhuhuhut I don’t know…! No, pleheheheheheheheeze!” Sylphiel cried as the feathers swept up and down both of her arches. “Stahahahahahahahaap! Nooohohohohohho pleehheheheheheeze it tickles!!! I don’t knoooooooow!”
“Tsk, tsk, I told you to be quiet!” the woman teased again, drawing a strip of dark cloth from within her sash and tying it over Sylphiel’s mouth. “Now I’ll let you think about it for a few minutes before I ask again, okay?” With that, she proceeded to tickle all over Sylphiel’s feet with her dark, stiff feathers.
A muffled cacophony was going on beneath the gag. Sylphiel’s head tossed back and forth, the cloth wrapped around her face stifling the full volume of her laughter as her soft, sensitive feet were tickled gently and precisely by the woman in the ninja suit at the foot of the bed. She waited for a few minutes, chuckling at the girl’s attempts to get free without making too much noise, and then removed the gag from her and asked, “Now, are you going to tell me where Gourry is?”
“I don’t know!” Sylphiel burst out, almost in panic. “Gourry only said that he was going to go adventuring, and that was all! He didn’t even say where he was going to go!” Sylphiel squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that wasn’t going to satisfy her strange assailant.
But it had seemed to placate her, amazingly enough. “Going adventuring…? Well, that at least gives me a place to start… You see, Sylphiel, there are a couple of well-known places where adventurers stop by. Now I can make inquiries with my contacts there to see if they’ve seen anything of Gourry.”
“Wh-what do you want with him?” Sylphiel asked, afraid that she might have betrayed him to a terrible fate.
“Nothing that concerns you, my dear,” the woman said, loosening the knots on her silken ropes enough so that given a few minutes’ time, Sylphiel could work herself free. “In fact, neither I nor anyone I’m associated with will ever bother you again. Pleasant dreams,” she said with a chuckle, swinging out the door…
“…and that’s how we found out where yous was goin’,” the bounty hunter concluded, swallowing past a very dry throat as he watched Gourry’s expression remain neutral through the whole story.
“What is it with you guys and tickling, anyway?” Lina asked. The bandit froze. But it was just an idle question from the sorceress. “Ah, whatever. Gourry, show him the road. Consider yourself lucky not to be fried,” she said, blowing a mock kiss to him. “And don’t try following us again. Otherwise you’re not going to enjoy the results.” Nodding frantically, the bounty hunter scrambled off down the road.
“That was definitely one of our weirder adventures,” Lina said as they set off towards Sairaag again. “Well, at least we got a meal out of all that. Come on, let’s get going.”
“Sure. Say, Lina, I didn’t know that you were ticklish,” Gourry mused.
“Only if you want broken fingers, Gourry.”
That bounty hunter ran down the road until he came upon the town in which his band had just been in. Perhaps they’d all missed the huge bounty on the two fugitives’ heads. But like a true bounty hunter, he had planned for what he would do in case of failure. In this case, it was a special assignment from the very same person who had dropped the hint about the ancient artifact to them.
He entered a dark, unused building on the edge of town. Inside, it was very dark, because all the windows were boarded up and only a few rays of light made it inside from the cracks in the structure. Withdrawing some sort of strange magic device – he was a bounty hunter, quick, agile and good at fighting, not with magic devices – he followed the instructions he had been given and walked into the darkness. “I did as you said,” he called out to the darkness. “I-I have here what you want.”
An indistinct figure glided out of the darkness to take the device.
