Somewhere in the madness that was the desert night, Hakkai had gotten a little tired.

It was not a surprising thing; after all, he'd been driving for two days, all the while trying to keep everyone in high spirits and under control. But that was very difficult when the road had thinned to a small, bridge-length path, and his monocle had fallen out countless times, leaving him with a deadly headache. For someone whose very energy came directly from concentration, this headache... which hadn't ceased for about a day and a half... was quite a problem. The constant throbbing eventually became such a dull pain that his attempts at comforting the other three people in the jeep had become all but heartless.

As for those other three, they were having fun verbally sparring at each other. Gojyo and Goku inevitably had their hands wrapped around the other's throat, their unruly hair blowing in back of them as they sputtered, choked, and generally tried to kill each other. Sanzo, in the mean time, was polishing his firearm while rubbing some spilled wine off of his robes with a napkin that he had swiped from a monastery a couple weeks ago and some soda water that a young girl had given him for some reason. All in all, it was cleaning up nicely. At least it wouldn't look like he was peeing blood now. And, yes, it had gotten that bad before.

"Monkey-brain, gimme that! It's mine!" Gojyo yelled, yanking wildly at a beef sandwich. His stomach growled, giving him yet more want for it, and his efforts increased, his other hand still firmly around Goku's gullet.

"Fat chance, ya' mangy kappa!" Goku cried out, his eyes shut tight as both hands gripped the precious sandwich. "I haven't eaten in a week!"

"Actually..." Hakkai called back half-heartedly, "...you both ate. Two hours ago." He remembered clearly how it had happened. There were two sandwiches, four people, and a three-day trip. Of course, they found that Goku had already eaten half of Hakkai's portion, and Hakkai, not wanting to cause a problem, gave the other half to Gojyo. Sanzo declared some time ago that he would not be eating and that he would rather just finish off a bottle of wine, and ever since then, Gojyo and Goku had been at it over the stupid bare-bones bread-and-beef. Meanwhile, Hakkai became more hungry, and more tired, his headache never letting his go from it's painful grasp.

"Don't bother, Hakkai. Those two idiots would eat their foot before letting the other one eat that thing. I shoulda just eaten it to begin with and avoided this dilemma." Sanzo said cooly, still rubbing at his robe. "Mangy monkey and crazy kappa..."

"HEY!" Both Gojyo and Goku yelped out as they turned to him. Sanzo looked back, shook his head, and let them continue their sandwichy, sandwichy struggles.

The day rolled on and the night crept through it, starting with the moon and ending with a cloudy blackness that gave Hakkai an even more dull pain in his skull. Throbbing, never stopping, always persisting as a claw through the brain itself. Piercingly dull, that was all he could call it. The road had become narrower than before, with small hills on either side, rocky things that would certainly mean a crash. Worse yet, a wind was picking up, and rains weren't far behind. His fears were confirmed when the clouds seemed to break over his head and unleashed their grand torrent upon the exact area that the jeep was driving through.

"Uch... figures..." Hakkai groaned, trying and failing to slow up.

Goku was still trying to grab the sandwich from Gojyo, this round's victor. He pulled it away and stuffed the remnants into his gaping maw, to Goku's planned chagrin.

"You sandwich-stealer! I should eat your hands off!" Goku screamed, trembling in rage.

"Shut up and let me enjoy this. Mmm... mm! Mmm, mmm, mmmmmmm! Ah, mmmm!" Gojyo moaned in the pleasure of the sandwich. When he was done, he sucked on each of his fingers in turn before lying back and patting his stomach. "Man, that was the best sandwich I've ever had in my entire life! Soooo tender and soooooooooooooooo meaty! Simply delectable."

Goku could feel his teeth sinking into the kappa's arm. In truth, he had actually ended up sinking his teeth into the kappa's shoulder.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Sanzo, get it off, get if off, dammit!" He said, shaking his arm, to no avail whatsoever. Sanzo grinned.

"Why? This is the only entertainment I've had in weeks. Minus... y'know, all the killing." Sanzo replied with an airy tone while finishing his scrubbing.

Hakkai forced a laugh. If not just to keep from crying himself to sleep.

"Hakkai, gimme some help! Hakkai? Hakkai, are you listening up there?" yelped Gojyo, bashing his shoulder against the back of the hard seats.

But Hakkai couldn't really give him any help. He was still focusing on the narrow road while not focusing on the rain and the clouds and the darkness. Plus, being on the planes, he was aware that, as the tallest things in the area, there was the threat of lightning... but that was highly, highly unlikely.

Around midnight, the road became too thin for the jeep to continue. But it was dark, the moon had been covered, and to be frank, Hakkai couldn't care less; he could hardly care at all, seeing as his head had broken into the rest of his body and he was tired. No... not tired. At this point, it was better described as 'asleep at the wheel'. His eyes were shut, and the road was thinner than ever, the drop to the valley below a good thirty feet of slope.

But he wouldn't know; he was asleep.

"Pay attention to the road Hakkai, hm?"

"Oh, Haaaaaaakaiiiiii...Haaaaaaakaiiiiii..."

"Yo, Hakkai! Get your eyes on the road, you idiot!"

"WHAT?" Hakkai yelped as his eyes flew open, his monocle falling out. He looked around desperately and took his hands off the wheel the grasp it. But to no real outcome. Suddenly, the road seemed to slip out from under him as a flash illuminated the sky.

Suddenly, the engine was blown and the jeep was on fire. Though the swerving and the screaming, Sanzo could swear that he saw the moon come out again.

The jeep rolled left and continued to roll with Hakkai becoming cut and thrashed in the drivers seat. But what happened to the others, it wasn't really positive. Before any more damage was done, Hakkai felt the jeep carve out from under him and re-form into Hakuryu, who met a battered Hakkai alone and isolated from the rest of the party. And the rest isolated from each other.

Isolated.

United...

They stood.

Divided...