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On the way back from a labyrinth, Lizel’s party ran into Aign’s party on the carriage.
“Good afternoon,” Lizel greeted them. The carriage was crowded, so he took a spot standing in front of them, refusing the offer to take their seats. “What is that you’re holding?”
“Our prize for the day!” Aign held “it” up triumphantly. It looked like a hive, papery and lumpy.
“Ohh, a pepperball?” Eleven said, leaning forward. “I’m surprised you lot didn’t break it.”
Lizel checked his memory, ignoring the indignant protests and sneering between Aign’s party and Eleven, and came up empty. “What is a pepperball?”
“Just what it says it is.”
“It’s a rare ingredient!” Aign put in, feathers still ruffled about Eleven’s jibe, but that’s just how it was with Lizel’s party. “The giant wasps in the Magic Forest Labyrinth make ‘em, but they’re super fragile. Even puttin’ ‘em in space magic might break ‘em, so you have ta carry them suuuuper carefully!”
Just as Aign said so, the carriage hit a bump in the road. Gil grabbed Lizel as he wobbled, wrapping a hand over his nose and mouth. Aign screamed as the pepperball bounced out of his hand and smashed on the floor, erupting in a cloud of spice. Immediately, the carriage was pandemonium, every adventurer coughing and sneezing and yelling.
“Leader, are o—....” Eleven stopped and then, “WAAAHH!!”
Eleven’s scream cut through the rest of the chaos, turning attention from the culprits, Aign and his party, to Lizel’s party. Gil was still standing at Lizel’s back, and for some reason Eleven had yanked Lizel’s hood over his head, hiding his face.
When the pepperball had fallen, Gil had not only grabbed Lizel to steady him, but also wrapped a hand over his nose and mouth to protect him from breathing in the spicy cloud. But that hadn’t protected his eyes. When Eleven looked over, tears were streaming down Lizel’s calm face. The sight of Lizel crying, that wasn’t something Eleven ever wanted or expected to see. That was… That was unacceptable. And it was even more unacceptable for anyone else to see.
“I’m alright, Eleven. Are you and Gil okay?” Lizel tried to look up, but Eleven was still holding his hood over his face.
“Fine!”
Gil and Eleven, of course(?), were largely unaffected by the pepperball.
“What are you doing?” Gil asked flatly. Standing at his back, he hadn’t seen Lizel’s face.
“Leader, Leader’s face is…!”
Gil pulled Eleven’s hands off and turned Lizel around, lifting the hood just enough to see his face. He, too, froze for just a second.
“You don’t look affected at all,” Lizel said with a wry smile. He lifted a hand to wipe his eyes.
“Don’t!” Gil and Eleven barked at the same time. The pepperball spice had settled over everything in the carriage, including Lizel’s hands. Gil grabbed both of Lizel’s hands to stop him and clicked his tongue. He couldn’t use his own hands either.
It was lucky that most of the carriage had quickly gone back to yelling at Aign’s party, who were themselves busy crying both from the pepper in their eyes and noses and the loss of the pepperball they had worked so hard to get. Gil bent over Lizel and licked his eye. Lizel’s shoulders bounced at the foreign, slippery feeling. “Gil?”
“Hold still,” Gil said; he licked the other eye.
Lizel blinked several times when Gil pulled back. His eyes didn’t sting as much as before. “Thank you.”
Unnoticed, Eleven muttered under his breath, “Niisan… is incredible in a lot of ways…”
Able to take in the situation more easily now, Lizel used his magic to conjure a wind and blew all the spice out of the carriage. There wasn’t anything to be done about Aign’s party being at fault, so he didn’t help them against the other adventurers, though.