Hi!  I'm new around these here parts; this'll be my first posting 
to the ffml list.   Please, go easy on me ^_^;;;

I have an unfortunate tendency to put thoughts *between 
asterisks*, and emphasized words /between these slash thingies/ in 
my fics.  Just to warn you.

                Unbeliever
     A Slayers fanfic by Megan Jones
     (well, the beginning, anyway...)

 Standard disclaimers apply. Most of these 
characters don't belong to me and never will,
                dangit...

"The inverse..."

A yawn halted the grey-eyed girl in midsentence.  With a sigh, she
stretched and leaned back in her rickety chair.  The room in which she was
sitting was dark, and had been dark for hours; the only illumination came
from one crooked desk lamp.  Its harsh yellow glare was the only thing
keeping Sarah awake at this ungodly hour of the night.  

She brushed a few pesky strands of her long, dark hair out of her face,
and reluctantly turned her attention back to the book lying open on the
desk in front of her.  "I've got to get this done.  The Algebra midterm is
tomorrow, after all..."  

Mentally berating herself for leaving her studying to the last minute, she
read out loud from the textbook.  "The inverse of a matrix can be found by
dividing the adjoint by the determinant..." Almost growling in
frustration, she muttered, "And the adjoint can be found by taking the
transpose of the matrix of cofactors, which can be found by doing a ton of
weird things to a bunch of poor defenseless numbers that never asked to be
stuck into that danged matrix in the first place.  There's just so much to
remember; I'll never be able to learn it all in time.  A whole chapter on
vector spaces... Differential equations... Matrices... and inverses,
inverses, inverses..."

Sarah desperately wanted to give up, wanted to chuck the Linear Algebra
textbook across the room and go to bed.  But the midterm exam was tomorrow
morning; she couldn't put off her studying any longer.  Still muttering
under her breath, she fought off her sleepiness and buried herself in the
dreaded book once again.  

Over an hour passed before Sarah grudgingly decided she wasn't about to
learn any more, not at this late hour anyway.  Switching off the lamp, she
rose from her chair and staggered sleepily across her room, intending to
collapse onto her bed as soon as she encountered it.  In her tiredness,
however, she tripped over the turned-up edge of her carpet.  Too tired to
prevent it, she pitched forward and smacked head-first into the wooden
frame of her bed.  Pain exploded in her skull as the world faded away...

The sunshine was warm; warm, and alarmingly bright.  Sarah realized that
she must have forgotten to close the blinds again.  Curled up safe and
warm in her bed, eyes scrunched tightly shut, she mentally decided against
getting up to close them properly.  Besides, the alarm would ring soon
enough.  She wanted to simply relax and enjoy these last few minutes of
peaceful rest.  

A corner of Sarah's blanket tickled her nose.  She sneezed gently, and
tried to shift it away, to no avail.  *Huh... that didn't work...*  She
suddenly realized how uncomfortable she was.  Amazing how she hadn't
realized before how hard and lumpy her mattress had become...

She opened her eyes just a crack, deciding to get out of bed and not
especially wanting to do so with her eyes shut.  The first thing she saw,
to her great surprise, was green.  A lot of green.  This caused her no
little alarm.  *What's going on?  There's nothing green in my room...*  As
her vision cleared, Sarah noticed the blades of grass that had been
tickling her nose, the tall trees around her whose waving branches failed
to completely block the sunshine, the leafy ground on which she was lying,
the utter lack of familiar things like her bed, her desk, her house...

"Where am I?" wondered Sarah, a little concerned, as she sat up slowly and
took stock of her surroundings.  "A forest?  But why? How?"  She strained
her eyes for any sounds of faraway cars, strained her vision to the utmost
for the barest glimpse of buildings in the distance, but in the end she
had to admit that wherever she was, it was a fair distance from the city
she'd lived in all her life.  The familiar sights and sounds of
civilization were gone.  

She stood carefully, picking leaves off her clothes and out of her long,
now-tangled dark brown hair.  Having no idea what to do, and still feeling
a little sleepy, she set out slowly, figuring that if she walked long
enough, she'd come across a city sooner or later.  *Or at least a road
leading towards a city,* she thought.  *I'd settle for a road any day.*

A couple of minutes of walking later, a small sound coming from behind her
froze Sarah in place.  *Are... are those footsteps?*  She had no idea what
to do, and the rustling sound was approaching fast.  *If it's someone with
a gun, or a gang or something... Or a bear... bears live in forests,
right?  What'll I do?*  Paralysed by fear, she was nonetheless startled
when a cheery voice behind her proclaimed, "Hieee!" She spun around, and
got her first look at the people who'd been following her.

They were four.  They stopped walking and stood facing Sarah, a good ten
paces separating them.  The one who'd spoken was a brilliantly smiling
young girl, dark-haired and bright-eyed.  Her apparent perkiness and
enthusiasm didn't do anything to allay Sarah's fears, however.

The second was a tall man, armoured, with long blond hair and a dopey
grin.  Despite his vacant expression, the confident way he moved suggested
to Sarah that the large and very functional-looking sword buckled around
his waist was something other than ornamentation.  

The third, another girl; this one with long red hair whose colour reminded
Sarah of flames.  Her supremely confident gaze gave her an unshakeable 
aura of intelligence and ruthlessness; the combination made Sarah
shudder.  

And the fourth... His face was almost completely covered by a mask, and he
wore a hood pulled as far forward as possible, but what little Sarah could
see of his face made her stare.  He stared back, clearly annoyed at what
must have been a common reaction to his appearance.  

"Well, we're listening," snapped the slightly irate redhead, "so go ahead
and explain yourself!"

Sarah had absolutely no idea what the girl was talking about.  All she
could think of was the masked figure, now turning away from her curious
gaze.  *Did I see right?  Blue skin?  What on Earth is going on here?*

"Are you listening?" snapped the redheaded girl once more.  

Pulling herself marginally together, Sarah said hesitantly, "I'm not sure
what you want..." 

"That magical blast a few minutes ago... /You/ caused it. My head's still
ringing from the sheer power.  You wanted our attention, you got it."

"I'm sorry," tried Sarah, "but I have no idea what you're talking about.
I think I'm lost."

"Look here.  No one interrupts the breakfast of Lina Inverse with magical
fireworks, then pretends they don't know what's going on..."

"Inverse?" murmured Sarah.

"Yeah, Inverse!" At Sarah's blank stare, the girl's eyes widened 
in surprise.  "You know, the famous bandit killer and enemy of all 
who live, Lina Inverse!  Don't try to tell me you've never heard of 
me..."

Sarah stared at the redheaded girl.  *The inverse of a matrix can be found
by...*  Suddenly she grinned.  "I get it!" she said happily. "It's all
just a dream!"

This was most definitely not what Lina and her cohorts had been expecting
to hear.  "What?" spluttered the alleged legendary bandit killer.  

"All that studying must've affected my dreams," realized Sarah.  "And
probably that nasty bump on the head as well."  She looked around herself
in awe.  "This is the weirdest dream I've ever had... the most lifelike,
too."  Suddenly pointing at the redhead, she chuckled.  "If you're Lina
Inverse, then /you/..." she pointed at the younger, dark-haired girl,
"must be Molly Matrix!"

Ignoring the stares coming from all sides, the lost girl pointed at the
blue-skinned, masked man.  "And you're Victor Vector, of course!  And
you," she said, indicating with a grand sweep of her arm the blond
swordsman, "can only be the dashing Sir Differential Equation, come to
rescue me from my midterm!" Unable to contain herself any longer, Sarah
burst out laughing.  "And I though it was all for real!"

"Um..." interjected the swordsman, looking hopelessly confused. "My name's
Gourry, not... Sir... Diffaquasional... uh... is it?"  One glance at his
lost expression was all it took to get Sarah rolling on the ground with
laughter.  

Lina slowly backed away from the strange girl in hysterics on the forest
floor.  "Okay, maybe I was mistaken..."  

The masked, hooded young man shot her an irritated glance.  "We all agreed
that the source of the blast was near here.  And she," he nodded towards
the brown-haired girl, "is the only being in this forest, aside from us,
capable of doing anything more complex than gathering nuts for the winter.
There's even some magic residue lingering around her.  She's obviously the
source of... of whatever it was that we felt."

"But she's nuts, Zel!" Lina pointed out matter-of-factly.  "Completely
nuts!"   

"Are you okay, Miss...?" inquired the dark-haired girl, standing a safe
distance away from the strange young woman who couldn't seem to stop
laughing. 

Sarah, in a brief moment of lucidity, answered her with a
vigorous nod.  "Yup!  Perfectly fine!  Never felt better!"  She sprawled
out on the leaf-covered ground, her laughter subsiding, though an enormous
grin was still plastered on her face.  "Wow... haven't laughed so hard in
years.  This is so much fun..."  Suddenly thoughtful, Sarah stared up at
the tree branches arcing gracefully above.  "Now.  Lina... Inverse...," she
snickered involuntarily, "... obviously represents the Algebra midterm.
But what do the others represent?"  

"I mean, look at her!" muttered Lina.  "Off in a world of her own, talking
total nonsense... she's crazy, there's no doubt about it."  

Zel sighed.  "I'm not arguing about that, Lina.  It's just that she's
obviously the one we're looking for."

"But she's freaking me out!"

Gourry was still standing, bemused, off to one side.  "At least I /think/
my name's Gourry..." he said, completely lost. 

"My name's Amelia," offered the cheerful young girl, in hopes of steering
the brown-haired new arrival into something remotely ressembling a normal
conversation.  "What's yours?" she asked hopefully.

"Amelia!  That's my grandmother's name.  Oh yeah, her birthday's next
week, and I still have to get a present.  Wow, the subconscious mind works
in strange ways..."

Amelia decided enough was enough, and backed away to join Lina and Zel.  

"And Blondy over there... looks a bit like my old boyfriend... has just
about the same amount of brains, too..."  

"Er, Lina?  My name's Gourry, right?" 

"Okay, so he's got a little /less/ brains than my old boyfriend... but not
by much.  And now, the mysterious Masked Man...  hmmm... Where'd he come
from?" Sarah concentrated fiercely.  "Masked man... Zorro?  Didn't like
that movie.  Or maybe Tux-boy... naah.  Kal Torak?  The Lone Ranger?  
Or Chichiri? No, not cheerful enough... But why would he be blue?"  
Sudden realization dawned on her. "Oh yeah!  The Smurfs marathon last 
week!  Twenty back-to back episodes... That'll do it!"  

Lina couldn't stop herself from staring at the brown-haired girl, who was 
covered in leaves, and smiling smugly from her position on the ground.
"Well, we won't be able to learn anything from her," she said, more than a
little shaken by her close proximity to utter madness. "Come on, Gourry.
Let's get outta here."

"So you're sure my name's Gourry?"

"Of /course/ I'm... Aarggh..." Out of sheer frustration, Lina attempted to
whack some sense into her blond sidekick. 

"Hey!" called out the crazy girl, once again on the verge of laughter.
"It's just like Ranma 1/2!  Go get'im, Akane!  But you lost your
mallet..."

"Let's go, let's go, let's go," chanted Lina, attempting to herd everyone
as far away from the insane stranger as possible.  

"Miss Lina, we can't just leave her!" insisted Amelia, planting her heels
and not allowing herself to be herded away.  "It's our duty to help one so
obviously unable to take care of herself!  She'd probably get into all
kinds of danger if we just left her to wander around alone!"

"I don't see anything wrong with that," muttered Lina sourly.  

"Besides, the local lunatic asylum's probably offering a reward for her
safe return!"

"In /that/ case... You're coming with us, lady!"  said Lina with false
cheerfulness, grabbing the stranger by the elbow and hauling her to her
feet.  

############
That's it for now.  I will write more... eventually...

Anyone who can tell what excellent series of fantasy novels this 
fic is vaguely based on (okay, blatantly ripped off from...) gets 
brownie points.  The title's a dead giveaway, BTW.

I know I haven't gotten the characters quite right yet (especially Lina), 
but I'm working on it.  Comments and criticism are welcome; so 
are flames, mainly because it's starting to get cold up here in Canada...

-Megan 
"I'm not suffering from insanity, I'm enjoying every minute!"



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