Notes: Everybody wants to tell me Xellos was born mazoku. Fine, have it your way, call it AU. I have more fun the other way.
So he'd wandered off, before he got frustrated enough to stop teasing her about her figure in classical and approved dumb-insensitive-merc fashion and started telling her to grow up. That would not only have been unforgiveable, it would have compromised his position as the only person in their little group more out of it than Amelia. It was a good position, he reflected as he walked over the dunes, compromising fragile ecosystems and getting munched on by various small insects. He liked it.
It was all right for Zel. Zel craved challanges, especially intellectual ones, and no matter how grumpy and offputting he could get, Gourry knew how happy it made him to be asked things and looked up to. Or, well, even when he was in one of those moods where he never got happy, exactly, he was very unhappy when that didn't happen. He'd seen Zel's type before, seen people raised by respected, demanding guardians, and they were often starved for respect and clamouring to prove themselves, one way or another.
No thanks. He himself was happiest in the background, where no one was demanding much of him, so he could keep an eye on things without interruption. Lina, who had been raised in a similar situation to Zel's, but whose guardian's failures had been more on the abusive than the neglectful side of the scale, was a scruffy-hearted little advantage-seeking punk who would never have left him alone if she'd formed the impression that his brains were made of the usual pink and grey stuff instead of yoghurt. As it was, she let him get on with taking care of her without too much fuss.
There was the sea. He liked the sea. He liked the waves, and the rough, wind-touched patches, and the clean-as-glass bits, and the dirty lines of seaweed on the hot yellow sand, and the sharp and smooth rocks and shells at the shoreline, and the ever-moving off-white lines of foam. He liked the way it was blue or green or grey or brown or purplish, although the water on this beach was surprisingly darkish and red-tinted, even for the time of day. He liked the whisper of the wind on the grass in the dunes, and the rush of it moving the sand, and the pound and break of the waves.
Someday, when he was old, he thought he might retire to the beach, and let the unforgiving sun tighten his skin into leather and bleach the ridiculous gold of his hair into foam-white so it wouldn't tell everybody and his kid sister exactly who the Swordsman of Light was. Luna Inverse was lucky. Her hair was a color that hid her alliances. If he lived on the beach, he could eat fish as much as he wanted and the sea would yield, and get frightfully bored, and leave after a few months. His grandfather had always said that active old men should retire. Often.
He passed a sign on the way to the water. It read, in vaguely familiar calligraphy, "WARNING! DO NOT FISH! DO NOT DRINK THE WATER!" and then a lot of stuff in small print he wasn't interested in. He didn't need to know the reasons. Someone had been alarmed, and that was enough for him. Besides, he wasn't hungry or thirsty, and he didn't feel much like swimming. He just wanted to skip rocks.
There was another sign with a large heading, halfway down the beach. It seemed to be instructions for a game of some sort. That was nice, but he was alone, so he didn't bother reading that one, either, although he did note absently that the handwriting was the same.
He ambled to the water's edge and started skipping. There was something odd about the water, something that affected the surface tension to his advantage, and he'd broken his previous record by a good fifteen skips when he noticed a shadow in the water. Squinting at it, he decided there was a largish fish hovering a few meters from shore, and lightly tossed a largish stone at it to make it go away.
The rock hit where its nose ought to have been, but instead of a darting flash of movement, he saw the fish convulse in the water with a brief flailing of unfishlike limbs before going limp, and the tips of beige boots broke the surface before subsiding.
Gourry swore, stripped off his boots and heavy armor, and dived into the water without further thought. He was grateful not to have any cuts, because the water's color and weight made him think it was probably salty in the extreme. Not that he would have cared about that, but it was nice not to be in pain. Remembering the sign, he was careful to breathe through his nose. If the reason for it had been a potion spill, getting water in his mouth might have any effect at all, which made it doubly important to get that person out. He grabbed a limp arm and headed back towards shore as quickly as he could.
Go on to Worth a Shot