It was in a small, nondescript tavern in a town so small, it didn’t have a name. But such a thing was not important in a battle of this magnitude.

Lina glared at Gourry. Gourry glared at Lina. This battle had been at a stalemate for some time now, and neither side would give in. Though battles between the two in restaurants were not uncommon, this time, there was no food involved. Lina defiantly stepped back, a smug look on her face. She stuck her chin up and launched her next attack:

“BUUUURRRRRPPPPP!!!”

Gourry took a step back and grinned. “Oh yeah? Well, BUUUUUUURRRRRPPPPPPP!!” he countered.

Amelia sat across from them at the table, and held up two signs. One read “9.6”, the other “9.8”.

Lina pounded her fist on the table in frustration. “Drat! Best 22 out of 41 then?” she asked, once again raising the stakes to have another shot at it.

Gourry shook his head. “Sorry, Lina. Why can’t you just admit that there are some things that I’m better at than you?”

Lina scowled, then retorted with an eloquent, “BUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRPPPPPPPP!!!” Amelia scrawled something down then held up a sign reading “9.9”. Lina smugly turned back to Gourry, with a look that said, “beat THAT!”

A look of serious concentration and determination covered Gourry’s face. He puffed up his chest and sucked in as much air as he could. Then, with a window-rattling power, he let forth his ultimate “BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!” Amelia applauded and held up a “10.0” sign.

Lina’s eyebrow twitched. That was the last straw. She would win this battle, no matter what. She held her arm in the air and snapped her fingers, saying simply, “Burp!”

And the entire tavern exploded.

After the dust had cleared, Amelia’s hand poked up from under the rubble, holding a charred and tattered sign reading “11.0”.

“Victory!” shouted Lina, striking a pose.

Zelgadis came running out of the shop across the street, sword drawn. But after he saw Lina gloating over the pile of tavern, he sighed and put his sword away. “I don’t think I even wanna know…”

Lina ignored him, beaming over her latest accomplishment. Gourry had landed somewhere down the street. He coughed up a cloud of smoke and moaned, “No fair….”

“Hmph!” said Lina smugly. “You should know better than challenge me. No matter what it may be, the beautiful sorcery genius, Lina Inverse, will always triumph.”

Zelgadis halfheartedly clapped. “Good for you. But you do realize that you just blew up the only restaurant in town, and consequently, the only place to get food for miles, don’t you?”

Lina’s face immediately fell. “Noo! Food!” She dove into the remains of the building, digging around for anything that resembled a scrap of food. “What’ll I do? I’ll starve!” She grabbed something and bit it.

“Kyaaaaaaaah!! Lina-san, that’s my arm!”

“Oh, sorry, Amelia.”

Gourry wandered back over to the rubble and scratched his head. “She ate enough there to last her a week. I don’t know what she’s getting so excited about.”

“Someone like her will get hungry when there’s no food around, regardless,” Zelgadis reasoned. “I suggest we get a move on before she does any more damage.”

“But she’ll probably just end up blowing up the next town we come to, too,” Gourry countered.

“Such things can’t be helped with her around,” said Zel, as he watched Lina pop out of the rubble, dragging Amelia with her. She tossed Amelia on the ground and took a deep breath of air, preparing to make a speech.

“Okay, guys, here’s the battle plan: We get to the next town as quickly as possible, and I get first dibs on the food there, so you guys had better make double time or else I’m going to be very angry and you don’t want to see me when I’m angry and hungry because bad things happen like what happened to that tavern so you’d better heed my warning and go quickly or elseImightbeforcedtoeatyou,” she finished in one breath. Lina panted a moment, then tore off down the road. “Come on, slow pokes, hop to it!” she shouted.

Zelgadis sighed. “Do I even bother going along?”

Gourry shrugged. “You want her to eat you?” For some reason, this prompted Amelia to picture Zelgadis on a platter with an apple in his mouth, but she quickly banished that ridiculous image.

Lina came charging back up the road and ran in circles around everyone. “C’mon c’mon c’mon! I can’t wait any longer! Let’s go find some food! Please please please! I’m hungryyyyy!” she whined like a little kid.

Gourry grinned. “If she keeps up that energy, we should be at the next town in no time!”

Three hours later, Lina was trudging along, holding herself up by a long stick. “So… hungry…” she complained. “Are you guys sure you know where you’re going?”

“Well, you’re the one leading us to food, Lina-san,” Amelia reasoned.

“What a tragic end for the great Lina Inverse,” Lina groaned. “To starve to death in the middle of nowhere rather than fight a Dark Lord or demon king or do something useful.” She collapsed on the ground and twitched. “Everything’s getting dark! Goodbye cruel world! Cruel for not giving me enough food! Ohhh…” She coughed dramatically. “Darkness…closing…in…. So… cold…. Dark…. Cough, gasp…. Dark……”

Meanwhile, Zel, Gourry, and Amelia were off to the side sipping tea and completely ignoring her.

“Hey!” she shouted, jumping to her feet. “I’m trying to have a dramatic death scene here! The least you could do is be somewhat concerned with…. Hey, where’d you get that tea? Gimmie!” She lunged at them, but the tea was magically gone by the time she got to them. “What sort of cruel trick is this? How dare the world deny me tea!”

Amelia was half-contemplating putting Lina under a sleep spell to calm her down, but she knew that Lina would probably kill her as soon as she woke up. Amelia might be crazy at times, but she wasn’t suicidal.

Just when it seemed like all hope of sanity was lost, Gourry spotted something down the road. It appeared to be… a chicken. About 500 feet in front of them, a chicken was crossing the road. “Lina, I see a chicken,” Gourry pointed out.

“Chicken?! WHERE?!” Lina frantically looked around and spotted her victim. “Roast chicken! Fried chicken! Chicken tenders! Chicken soup! Spicy wings!” She ran off down the road, shouting everything that came to mind that one could do with a chicken.

The chicken saw her coming and squawked in terror. It ran off down the road, but Lina was easily able to overtake it. The next thing it knew, the chicken was in Lina’s hands, squawking and fluttering around, desperately trying to escape the grip of Death herself.

Amelia came running up behind her. “Lina-saaaaan! Do you really think it’s such a good idea to eat that chicken?” she asked. “I mean, we never passed any farms or any other place that looked like it might have chickens. In fact,” she added, looking around, “there doesn’t seem to be much of anything around here.”

Lina glared at her, the struggling chicken still firmly in her grasp. “Are you implying that this might be some sort of demon chicken? That it’s flesh is deadly when eaten? That it will grow into a monster and attack me at any second?” Lina almost appeared to grow fangs. “I’ll bet you’re saying that because you just want this chicken to yourself!” The chicken squawked again.

“No, no, I didn’t mean that!” Amelia said hurriedly. “I just thought that it was a little strange for a chicken to be out here.”

“It probably just fell off a cart. Now let me eat!” Lina commanded. She raised her hand and prepared a fireball to make herself some roasted chicken, when a call came from a little ways up the road.

“Heeeere, chicken! Chick chick chick! Heeeere, chicken! Niiiiice chicken. Come out, come out, wherever you aaaare…..”

Gourry came trotting up behind Lina. “Looks like your chicken has an owner. I guess you can’t eat it now.”

“NOOO!” shouted Lina. “I’ll just eat it really fast! He’ll never know!” With that, she tore off back down the street, chicken in hand.

“Ah! Lina-san!” Amelia called after her. “What an unjust thing to do. To steal a poor man’s chicken from right in front of him. I’ll bet its owner is a poor, old traveler who has no company other than his trusty chicken…”

“Chicken? Heeeere, chicken…. Chick, chick, chicken…” The voice was getting closer. What would they tell him? That his chicken was taken by some maniacally hungry sorceress and was probably right now situated somewhere in the pit of her stomach?

Finally, the owner of the voice rounded the bend. Right off the bat, they could tell that he was just about the exact opposite of what Amelia had envisioned. He was rather tall, with long, blonde hair tied back in a loose ponytail. He was wearing what appeared to be a white lab coat, with a green sweater and tan pants underneath. Plus…. he was carrying… a net.

“He doesn’t strike me much as a lowly traveler with a chicken as his only company,” Zelgadis commented. Amelia shrugged.

The man with the net looked up and saw the three standing in the road. “Oh, hello!” he shouted to them. “Have any of you seen my chicken? It got away from me this morning.”

The three of them scratched the back of their heads, twiddled their thumbs, brushed the ground with their foot, mumbled to themselves, and basically went through pretty much the entire repertoire of being uneasy about something.

The net man scratched his head. “Well, if you don’t know, that’s okay.” He proceeded to pass them and began to make his way down the road again.

“Wait!” called Amelia. The net man turned. “I just can’t let you leave while I still have a guilty conscience. See, my friend Lina-san…. took your chicken and ate it. Please forgive her! She was so hungry!” Amelia got on her knees and pleaded.

He dropped his net with a shocked expression. “Someone…. ATE… my chicken?!” he gasped.

“Please, sir!” said Amelia, bowing before him. “Please forgive her! I know you must be upset that she ate your chicken, but there was nothing we could do about it! So please… forgive us all!” The man stared at her blankly for a moment.

And then he burst out laughing. “Someone…. ATE… my chicken! Bwahahaha… that’s rich! Kyaahahahaha! Someone ate the chicken! Oh, that is TOO funny!” He continued laughing.

The others looked at each other in confusion. “He seems to be taking this rather well,” Zelgadis observed, noting that the net man was practically on the ground in tears from laughing so hard.

Gourry scratched his head. “I wonder what’s so funny, though?”

Finally, the net man got up, wiping a tear from his eye. “Eh heh heh…. Sorry about that. Anyway, no, I’m not mad at you. However, I guess this means I’ll have to find a new test subject.”

“Test subject?” Amelia asked. “That chicken was a test subject? What for?”

The man waved his hands frantically. “Uh, actually, I think I’ve said to much. Actually, I know I’ve said too much. This is a secret, hush hush test.” He trotted past them again and headed back up the road. “So, uh, bye! Forget you ever saw me!”

Zelgadis sighed. “So, what are the Gold Dragons up to now?” The man screeched to a halt and turned around, sweatdropping.

“You, could tell I was a Gold Dragon, huh?” He laughed nervously. “Guess I wasn’t making myself inconspicuous enough…”

“Your blonde hair, blue eyes, and pointed ears kind of gave you away,” Zelgadis said flatly.

Net man, now revealed to be Gold Dragon man, walked back towards them. “If you can recognize me as a Dragon, I’m assuming you’ve had dealings with my kind before.” They nodded. Well, Amelia and Zel nodded.

“I dunno. Have we?” asked Gourry.

Amelia sweatdropped. “Um, yes, we have, Gourry-san. Remember Milgasia-san? And Lina-san’s fight with Gaav?”

“Oh yeah!” said Gourry, pounding his fist into his palm. “Anou… was Gaav a Gold Dragon?”

Everyone present fell over. “Gaav most certainly was NOT a Gold Dragon!” said the Gold Dragon. “Anyway,” he continued, “I suppose I can trust you a little more than the average humans. My name is Scirei, and am doing studies into chimeras, copies, and artificial life.”

This perked Zel’s attention. “You’re studying chimeras?” he asked.

“Well, sort of,” said Scirei. “My studies have to do with taking a life form’s essence and transferring it to another body; an artificial body. That chicken was one of my experiments.”

“You mean…?” said Amelia.

“Yes,” said Scirei, beginning to chuckle a little again. “What your friend ate was merely the soul of a chicken inside an artificial body. It’s mostly metal, fabrics, and other alloys.”

Amelia bit her finger. “Lina-san’s not going to be too happy about that…”

As if on cue, Lina came screaming back up the road, holding the mangled metal chicken. “Okay, who’s idea of a dirty joke was this?” she growled, her eyes glowing red.

“Ah!” said Scirei happily, “I guess I should commend myself for making that chicken look so believable!” He began to chuckle again. “However, I’d guess it doesn’t taste all that believable,” he added. He began laughing again.

Lina fumed. “Okay, who’s this smart ass here?”

“Um, this is Scirei,” said Amelia. “He’s a… Gold Dragon.”

Lina was boiling mad. She’d been cheated out of food one too many times today, and she’d had it. Amelia, Zel, and Gourry noticed her flaming aura and began to back away. Scirei just continued to laugh.

“Ohhhh, Dragon, huh?” sneered Lina. “Dragon…. Dragon…. DRAGON SLAVE!!”

Scirei’s laugh caught in his throat. “HAHAHAH…..eh?”

And the entire valley blew up.

Lina stood proud and tall, with Gourry, Zelgadis, and Amelia beside her, charred beyond recognition, but other than that, none the worse for wear.

“Ah, that felt good!” said Lina.

“Anou, Lina-san,” Amelia ventured. “Did you really need to do that? Scirei-san didn’t mean to trick you.”

Lina waved it off. “Aw, he’s a Gold Dragon. He might walk funny for a while, but he’ll be fine.” She rolled up her sleeve and looked ahead down the road. “Anyway, we’ve wasted enough time. Time to get to the next town and find some food!”

Scirei pulled himself out of the rubble and wiped the soot off his face. “Oy… I guess that girl can’t take a joke. Was that really necessary?” He looked down the road, but the group was already out of sight. He coughed up a bit of smoke and scratched his head. “Oh well. I suppose she had the right to be a little angry.”

A shadow appeared over him. “What was all that commotion about?” came a voice.

Scirei smiled. “Oh, just a couple of travelers. Nothing to get too excited about.”

The figure nodded. “Even so, you will meet them again.”

Scirei chuckled lightly. “Coming from you, I guess I shouldn’t doubt it. But in any case, let’s get back to work.”