Okay, here's our first try….

        In one way or another, six hours passed.

Ahem.  Okay, can you tell that we've read "The Princess Bride" about 
sixty times?  But, seriously…..


        The gardens of Sailoon castle were an exceedingly pretty, 
pleasant-smelling place, and one which Lina, even during her extended 
fit of I'm-not-going-anywhere, had never felt the urge to explore.  It 
simply didn't fit with her image of what an adventurer, even a 
semi-retired one, did unless it was part of a cunning plan that 
eventually involved advanced breaking and entering.  However, when 
Gourry suggested taking a walk to help kill the time, she had been just 
bored enough with watching Myth scratch away at her notebook to actually 
haul herself along with.  As they walked, a little breeze came wandering 
along to play with their hair and cloaks, and butterflies fluttered here 
and there among cheerfully colored flowers, and Lina began to feel her 
brain slowly decaying at the pastoral sweetness of it all.
        "Oh, I'm going to DIE.  This is so BORING!"  Lina threw back her head 
in a howl of righteous ennui.  "HEY, L-SAMA!  NIGHTMARE!  PARADOX!  
ANYBODY!  NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO SMITE US!"
        Lina stood waiting expectantly for a long moment.  Gourry, with a rare 
display of common sense, had taken a dive into the bushes at the 
beginning of her rant and now crouched there in the relative safety of 
the rhododendrons, awaiting a response as well.
        Absolutely nothing happened.
        Lina slumped to the ground in despair.  "Pleeeeeeeeease?  Anybody?  I'm 
bored already….and I'm not even hungry….Someone has to DO SOMETHING!"
        Gourry, having decided that divine lightning was not about to fall upon 
his companion, stepped from the bushes and moved to hover at 
semi-comforting range over her.  "Lina?  You're not hungry?  What's 
wrong?  Are you okay?"  He rested the back of his hand on her forehead.  
"You feel normal…."
        Lina checked the automatic urge to pound him about the head and 
shoulders, reasoning that he'd been displaying enough signs of incipient 
brain damage in the last few hours.  She ran a hand through her hair and 
encountered the flowers she'd put there earlier, coming to a slightly 
unLinalike rationalization for not walloping him one.  Instead, she 
almost-gently removed his hand and used it to pull herself back to her 
feet.  "Ne, Gourry.  Thanks."
        Gourry smiled in his golden retrieveresque fashion.  Lina smiled back 
in a remarkably unthreatening manner.  She felt a simper coming on and 
nearly screamed again.  Instead, she grabbed his hand and dragged him 
down the path at a pace that could only be described as frenetic, even 
for her, babbling cheerfully all the while.  "Come on, Gourry.  I feel 
my appetite coming back and you know the kitchen staff has probably 
already forgotten that they wanted to lynch me and I want to check out 
our old rooms in case Myth left something behind and you know what else 
we can do-"
        Gourry, overwhelmed by the sheer volume, simply smiled, nodded, and 
allowed himself to be dragged along.


        Lina's frantic efforts to diffuse the sexual tension lasted for almost 
three hours before even her considerable stamina began to wane.  The 
kitchen staff had not forgotten her, and had run them off in a 
cleaver-meat tenderizer-spatula-ice cream scoop-and-garlic press 
wielding mob.  Their rooms had already been picked over by the cleaning 
staff and divested of any trace of their occupancy; when they had gone 
down to the laundry to ask about any left-behind-items, they discovered 
that the laundry staff remembered her too.  They had fled before they 
could discover just why they were tearing up loose sheets.  Lacking 
anything better to do, they went back to the garden.
        Myth hadn't, evidently, moved at any point in the last three hours and 
her notebook was rapidly approaching a state of satisfying fullness.  
She actually deigned to look up as they approached, grunted a 
monosyllabic greeting ("Can't talk.  Writing."), and dove back in.
        "Hey, Lina, I know."  Gourry piped up after a few moments of inactivity 
in which Lina felt herself beginning to drift off, "Let's play cards."
        "Gourry, you have a deck of cards?"  Lina sat up and bounced in place 
until the adrenaline began to flow again, "Why didn't you say so 
before?"
        There was an instant of ringing silence.  "Uh," Gourry admitted, 
"Well…I don't actually have any cards."  Lina's face fell.  
"But…but….Hey!  I know.  We can ask-"
        "Luck!"  Lina bounced to her feet and bounced over to their pack and 
began rooting frantically through it in search of their jelly jars, 
examining the labels closely.  "Drama.  L/L.  Okay!  Luck.  Brace 
yourself, Gourry, this is going to be…loud."
        Lina unscrewed the cap.  Luck materialized with a burst of musical 
fanfare such as might be heard in the better class of traveling circus.  
"HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!"
        Lina unplugged her ears and grinned.  "Uhm.  Hi.  We were wondering if 
you could help us….."
        "Help?  After being stuck in that jar?  You just let me out so I could 
help you?  You're only using me!  WAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"  Rivers of tears, 
neatly deflected by a well-timed shield; Lina began to entertain a vague 
fear that she was getting used to the wingless.  "I want to go back!"
        I'm going to regret this.  Lina decided.  "Back where?"
        "Back HOME!"  Luck bawled, her depressive phase lasting longer than 
usual.  "I want to go back home and be with the clowns and watch all the 
happy people and animals and-"
        "You can make us happy," Gourry suggested brightly and Luck's spirits 
snapped up instantaneously, her grin so maniacally bright it was 
actually attracting moths.  
        "Oh, really, Gourry-san?  How how how?"  Luck vibrated in place her joy 
was so great.
        "Well,"  Gourry rubbed the back of his head, looking utterly ingenuous.  
Lina fought the urge to flee the immediate vicinity.  "You could loan us 
a deck of cards."
        "A deck of cards!  Well sure!"  Luck rooted around in her purse for a 
moment, and came up with a small cardboard box, the word BICYCLE stamped 
on the side in gold lettering and the seal still inviolate.  "This is 
one of the boxes of cards we used back at the Bigtop Bigtop…I always 
carry one, just in case." 
        She handed the cards over and a shock of 200 proof Talent traveled up 
the natural conduit of Gourry's arm and took root somewhere in his 
brain.  He grinned foolishly at her for the moment it took Lina to 
pounce on the wingless with the jelly jar and seal her away again.  She 
screwed the Ball-embossed lid on vigorously and stashed it away again.  
Grateful for Gourry's ability to deal with someone even more inane than 
he, she resolved to play whatever game he suggested, thus neatly 
avoiding the necessity of teaching him one, as well.  "Thank, L-Sama-at 
least we got the cards.  What games do you know….Gourry?  Gourry?  
What's wrong?"
        Gourry grinned stupidly into space.  Well, more stupidly than usual.  
Lina poked him one.  "Gourry!"
        The shaggy blonde swordsman came back to himself with a jerk.  "H-huh?  
Uhm, what?"
        "I said, 'What games do you know?'"  Lina repeated, slowly and 
preparing to draw a diagram if necessary.
        "Oh, I know a few.  We play this game in Testabourne all the time…"
        "What's it called?"
        "Cutthroat strip poker."
        "…."

Submitted for your amusement by Myranda Kalis and Jo Ann Thompson ^_^