Title : A Fangboy's worst nightmare
Author : K.B.
Disclaimer : Don't own, don't make money
Warnings : None yet, though I could be wrong about the rating for later
chapters .
Chapter I
Walking through the pitch-dark forest in the middle of a wet, cold and stormy night of December, Tasuki, the red haired bandit of the seven Suzaku seishi, wondered for the thousands time how he had gotten himself into this mess.
He had been knocked out cold for hours and hours, only remembering a scream followed by a bright light. And now he found himself walking through this forest not knowing where he was.
But the most important question was, where had his companions disappeared to ? He remembered Nuriko's ghost nagging at him to hurry so they wouldn't be late for his highness' son's birthday. Why the other seishi kept on running after Hotohori even after his true sex had been discovered and after actually dying, was beyond him, but he guessed that's Nuriko..
At the thought of one of his closest friends the red haired bandit chuckled until a wind blow reminded him that he still was lost in an unknown forest with his clothing totally soaked so that he even briefly wondered how in Suzaku's name he should ever be able to get them dry again.
After a while he began to get suspicious about the silence that radiated from the forest instead of the sounds of animals. At first he hadn't noticed the unnatural silence which lingered all around him, finding it not unusual that most animals had searched for some kind of shelter from the heavy rain which came pouring down from the heaven as if trying to extinguish the fire of hell. But now it came to him that even the small noises, which can be even heard throughout the most horrible thunderstorm humans can imagine, were missing.
Suddenly Tasuki stumbled in a clearing turning around in a split second to see the trees forming an impenetrable wall behind him. Now he knew something was very wrong with this forest.
The last time, when there was still the light of the fading sun, he had climbed on a tree to get a better look of his surroundings, the only thing he had seen was one large carpet consisting of tree tops, spreading from one horizon to the other. Besides, since he had gotten to the clearing he had a very funny feeling in his gut and his character on his right forearm had started to glow bright red, the character "yoku", meaning wing, was clearly visible even from a wider distance.
When Tasuki finally turned around again he saw the statue of the most beautiful female creature he had ever seen, standing in the middle of this wondrous clearing, illuminated by the full moon. Wide-eyed and gaping he walked very slowly towards to the kneeling ivory epitome of purity and beauty.
As he got closer he noticed that it couldn't be the statue of a human women, unless their ears had grown a couple of inches, becoming longer but slender and definitely more elegant he decided. Besides the ears the face wasn't as soft as a human woman's would have been, but rather more elegant with sharper contours, giving it a hint of haughtiness and arrogance, which was only softened by the eyes. The eyes were made out of pure gold and as he looked at them he had a feeling that she was looking down at him with compassion and wistful.
She was wearing a dress, which was without any decorations, covering her whole body without concealing one of the very female curves of the body. The only other plain visible parts of her body were her hands, which were folded in front of her as if she was praying.
Tasuki's eyes drew slightly together as he got the feeling that there was something missing and when he was practically standing nose to nose to the statue he saw that there had once been something she was holding.
While the bandit was trying to figure out where he had heard of such a creature, which was now kneeling in front of him, before, a red sign suddenly appeared on the statue's forehead and he got a feeling of floating through space with the earth dissolving into nothing leaving him without support.
As he fell into the darkness, which had suddenly opened beneath his feet he heard the sound of mountains crumbling and crushing above his head. The last thing he thought before drifting into oblivion was that a few hours before on his look out he hadn't seen any mountains.
When the red haired man regained conscious he found himself in a tunnel deep inside a volcano. A volcano ?!? There was no doubt in Tasuki's mind that he had indeed ended up in a volcano. He could hear the distant sound of the boiling lava and smell the ash, he even saw a glimmer of red at the far end of the tunnel.
To the other side the tunnel abruptly ended as he came face to face with a solid wall made of stone. Turning he went towards the red light, noticing as he passed that the tunnel had been carved into the rock and that torches on either side of the tunnel lightened his way towards the centre of the volcano.
While walking he muttered to himself about him and his luck, cursing whomever was responsible for getting him there and immediately addressing an excuse to his guardian god Suzaku, who was the source of his powers, in case he was the one who got him there. If Suzaku was indeed the one who sent him there, he must have had a reason for doing so and a god normally didn't meddle with the affairs of mortals, unless it was very important, affecting the carefully guarded balance between the worlds.
Tasuki was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice the sweat running down his temples as he came nearer and nearer to the source of the red light. The sight of the bright red opening in the tunnel before him tore him away from his brooding. Leaving the tunnel he had wandered through for the last hour he stepped onto a large platform, 10 m above the hot lava.
Leading from the platform to the other side of the crate was a bridge made of granite. Well the bridge wasn't really a bridge nut rather a stone plank with the diameter of 30 cm. On the other side was an opening with ornamentation around it, but he couldn't make out the kind of the ornaments as the "bridge" was more than 2 km long !
The red head started to cross the crate by looking at his feet and carefully putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to lose his balance and tumble into the red liquid beneath. A few meters before reaching the other platform he looked up again and lost his balance as the result of what he saw.
Only due to his fast reflexes was Tasuki able to grab a hold on the plank just before falling down for an unwanted hot bath in the lava. Well at least he wouldn't need the ability to swim if he fell down there he decided. With a brief thought about getting those swimming lessons Tamahome had promised to give him, his gaze rose to meet the sight of the open mouthed, angry looking dragon face which was carved into the stone around the opening.
The opening was framed by huge teeth and the when one went on through the opening it looked like if one was walking down the abyss of the enormous beast. Tasuki felt the goose-pimples ascent on his forearms and the small hairs on his neck rising.
With little effort he climbed back up onto the "bridge" and while walking the rest of the way to the platform he kept chiding himself how stupid he had been to get scared by a stupid peace of rock and thinking about how Tama and Nuriko would have made fun of him for being so easily unnerved.
As he thought about his friends he felt a sudden feeling of loneliness wash trough him. He shook his head wildly to get his mind back to the here and now. One last gulp and wetting his lips the bandit disappeared into the dark yawning opening.
After about 5 minutes walking down the dark corridor, feeling his way with his hands, Tasuki felt an expansion of the room surrounding him, the passage had apparently led to a huge hall. Keeping close to the wall he entered and when he felt the familiar shape of a torch, a maniacal grin spread on the young man's features - he would need fire for this little baby, but hey that was no problem for the "master of fire"!
With a short bark of laughter he pulled out his tessen ( flame fan ) and with a "rekka shi-en", just as he came to the "-en" part remembering to only create a small flame instead of his usual, which would destroy the torch instead of lightening it, he was surrounded by light.
He noticed that the walls were as smooth as glass with fine lines of gold in between where a gold vein passed through the rock. As he turned his gaze to look across the hall, he saw big rocks scattered around the middle of it. Walking closer, he noticed they weren't normal rocks but pieces of a fresco.
Deciding to lighten the other torches as well, so that he would actually be able to see the fresco, Tasuki went back to the wall. When he was finished with the torches he looked up and the one torch in his hand dropped as all of his strength was suddenly needed for keeping him standing upright.
At the ceiling creatures like the statue he had seen earlier, smaller, sturdier built beings and very ugly beasts were fighting against each other, seeming very much alive and looking as though they'd come down any moment to pull him into their fight as well, above them several dragons were having their own fight going on.
This was all made out of gold, silver and bronze, Tasuki estimated that the fresco would be worth more than all the money in Konan combined. He stood there, only capable of gaping wide eyed at this wonder, wondering who on earth could have painted such a thing, Suzaku be damned, he even could see the smallest details even though the ceiling was more than 50 m above his head, nevertheless built such great hall deep down inside a volcano.
Gazing up at the ceiling he knew from one moment to the other what those wondrous creatures were called, remembering stories his mother used to tell him when he was a little boy. They were elves, dwarves and hideous trolls, but how could it be possible, that they were drawn so real, as if the painter had had them right before his eyes, drawing exactly what he saw.
That couldn't be true though, because they were only figures out of fairytale, right ?!? He was suddenly torn out of his observations by screams, which sounded like lost souls wailing over their fate.
The young seishi was beginning to feel very cold, jumping between two large pieces of the fresco, which had fallen down, he precautionary pulled out his tessen as shivers ran down his body. Tasuki cowered low behind the shelter of the rocks, waiting.
With a shrill squeak a mouse came out of its hiding place. The red haired man was so surprised, that he fell back on his butt, blinking stupidly at the small mouse with unusually huge violet eyes. When the mouse got on her hind legs to look around curiously he heaved a big sigh of relief.
Just then an enormous paw with razor sharp claws came down in front of him, only missing him by millimetres, squashing the mouse. With an expression of utter thunderstruck Tasuki raised his gaze to look directly in a huge, smug appearing, eye of one of the dragons, who had been so realistically caught in the picture of the fresco.
The eye was as big as he was and in it he could see his own reflection, glimmering with a light golden complexion since the eye's colour was one of pure gold. As he kept staring at his reflection he saw his own eyes roll back into his head and with a hint of annoyance he noticed that he was falling unconscious yet again.
The last thing he saw before everything went black was a hint of a silver- blue shimmer, which he recognised as the dragon's body colour.
Chapter I
Walking through the pitch-dark forest in the middle of a wet, cold and stormy night of December, Tasuki, the red haired bandit of the seven Suzaku seishi, wondered for the thousands time how he had gotten himself into this mess.
He had been knocked out cold for hours and hours, only remembering a scream followed by a bright light. And now he found himself walking through this forest not knowing where he was.
But the most important question was, where had his companions disappeared to ? He remembered Nuriko's ghost nagging at him to hurry so they wouldn't be late for his highness' son's birthday. Why the other seishi kept on running after Hotohori even after his true sex had been discovered and after actually dying, was beyond him, but he guessed that's Nuriko..
At the thought of one of his closest friends the red haired bandit chuckled until a wind blow reminded him that he still was lost in an unknown forest with his clothing totally soaked so that he even briefly wondered how in Suzaku's name he should ever be able to get them dry again.
After a while he began to get suspicious about the silence that radiated from the forest instead of the sounds of animals. At first he hadn't noticed the unnatural silence which lingered all around him, finding it not unusual that most animals had searched for some kind of shelter from the heavy rain which came pouring down from the heaven as if trying to extinguish the fire of hell. But now it came to him that even the small noises, which can be even heard throughout the most horrible thunderstorm humans can imagine, were missing.
Suddenly Tasuki stumbled in a clearing turning around in a split second to see the trees forming an impenetrable wall behind him. Now he knew something was very wrong with this forest.
The last time, when there was still the light of the fading sun, he had climbed on a tree to get a better look of his surroundings, the only thing he had seen was one large carpet consisting of tree tops, spreading from one horizon to the other. Besides, since he had gotten to the clearing he had a very funny feeling in his gut and his character on his right forearm had started to glow bright red, the character "yoku", meaning wing, was clearly visible even from a wider distance.
When Tasuki finally turned around again he saw the statue of the most beautiful female creature he had ever seen, standing in the middle of this wondrous clearing, illuminated by the full moon. Wide-eyed and gaping he walked very slowly towards to the kneeling ivory epitome of purity and beauty.
As he got closer he noticed that it couldn't be the statue of a human women, unless their ears had grown a couple of inches, becoming longer but slender and definitely more elegant he decided. Besides the ears the face wasn't as soft as a human woman's would have been, but rather more elegant with sharper contours, giving it a hint of haughtiness and arrogance, which was only softened by the eyes. The eyes were made out of pure gold and as he looked at them he had a feeling that she was looking down at him with compassion and wistful.
She was wearing a dress, which was without any decorations, covering her whole body without concealing one of the very female curves of the body. The only other plain visible parts of her body were her hands, which were folded in front of her as if she was praying.
Tasuki's eyes drew slightly together as he got the feeling that there was something missing and when he was practically standing nose to nose to the statue he saw that there had once been something she was holding.
While the bandit was trying to figure out where he had heard of such a creature, which was now kneeling in front of him, before, a red sign suddenly appeared on the statue's forehead and he got a feeling of floating through space with the earth dissolving into nothing leaving him without support.
As he fell into the darkness, which had suddenly opened beneath his feet he heard the sound of mountains crumbling and crushing above his head. The last thing he thought before drifting into oblivion was that a few hours before on his look out he hadn't seen any mountains.
When the red haired man regained conscious he found himself in a tunnel deep inside a volcano. A volcano ?!? There was no doubt in Tasuki's mind that he had indeed ended up in a volcano. He could hear the distant sound of the boiling lava and smell the ash, he even saw a glimmer of red at the far end of the tunnel.
To the other side the tunnel abruptly ended as he came face to face with a solid wall made of stone. Turning he went towards the red light, noticing as he passed that the tunnel had been carved into the rock and that torches on either side of the tunnel lightened his way towards the centre of the volcano.
While walking he muttered to himself about him and his luck, cursing whomever was responsible for getting him there and immediately addressing an excuse to his guardian god Suzaku, who was the source of his powers, in case he was the one who got him there. If Suzaku was indeed the one who sent him there, he must have had a reason for doing so and a god normally didn't meddle with the affairs of mortals, unless it was very important, affecting the carefully guarded balance between the worlds.
Tasuki was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice the sweat running down his temples as he came nearer and nearer to the source of the red light. The sight of the bright red opening in the tunnel before him tore him away from his brooding. Leaving the tunnel he had wandered through for the last hour he stepped onto a large platform, 10 m above the hot lava.
Leading from the platform to the other side of the crate was a bridge made of granite. Well the bridge wasn't really a bridge nut rather a stone plank with the diameter of 30 cm. On the other side was an opening with ornamentation around it, but he couldn't make out the kind of the ornaments as the "bridge" was more than 2 km long !
The red head started to cross the crate by looking at his feet and carefully putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to lose his balance and tumble into the red liquid beneath. A few meters before reaching the other platform he looked up again and lost his balance as the result of what he saw.
Only due to his fast reflexes was Tasuki able to grab a hold on the plank just before falling down for an unwanted hot bath in the lava. Well at least he wouldn't need the ability to swim if he fell down there he decided. With a brief thought about getting those swimming lessons Tamahome had promised to give him, his gaze rose to meet the sight of the open mouthed, angry looking dragon face which was carved into the stone around the opening.
The opening was framed by huge teeth and the when one went on through the opening it looked like if one was walking down the abyss of the enormous beast. Tasuki felt the goose-pimples ascent on his forearms and the small hairs on his neck rising.
With little effort he climbed back up onto the "bridge" and while walking the rest of the way to the platform he kept chiding himself how stupid he had been to get scared by a stupid peace of rock and thinking about how Tama and Nuriko would have made fun of him for being so easily unnerved.
As he thought about his friends he felt a sudden feeling of loneliness wash trough him. He shook his head wildly to get his mind back to the here and now. One last gulp and wetting his lips the bandit disappeared into the dark yawning opening.
After about 5 minutes walking down the dark corridor, feeling his way with his hands, Tasuki felt an expansion of the room surrounding him, the passage had apparently led to a huge hall. Keeping close to the wall he entered and when he felt the familiar shape of a torch, a maniacal grin spread on the young man's features - he would need fire for this little baby, but hey that was no problem for the "master of fire"!
With a short bark of laughter he pulled out his tessen ( flame fan ) and with a "rekka shi-en", just as he came to the "-en" part remembering to only create a small flame instead of his usual, which would destroy the torch instead of lightening it, he was surrounded by light.
He noticed that the walls were as smooth as glass with fine lines of gold in between where a gold vein passed through the rock. As he turned his gaze to look across the hall, he saw big rocks scattered around the middle of it. Walking closer, he noticed they weren't normal rocks but pieces of a fresco.
Deciding to lighten the other torches as well, so that he would actually be able to see the fresco, Tasuki went back to the wall. When he was finished with the torches he looked up and the one torch in his hand dropped as all of his strength was suddenly needed for keeping him standing upright.
At the ceiling creatures like the statue he had seen earlier, smaller, sturdier built beings and very ugly beasts were fighting against each other, seeming very much alive and looking as though they'd come down any moment to pull him into their fight as well, above them several dragons were having their own fight going on.
This was all made out of gold, silver and bronze, Tasuki estimated that the fresco would be worth more than all the money in Konan combined. He stood there, only capable of gaping wide eyed at this wonder, wondering who on earth could have painted such a thing, Suzaku be damned, he even could see the smallest details even though the ceiling was more than 50 m above his head, nevertheless built such great hall deep down inside a volcano.
Gazing up at the ceiling he knew from one moment to the other what those wondrous creatures were called, remembering stories his mother used to tell him when he was a little boy. They were elves, dwarves and hideous trolls, but how could it be possible, that they were drawn so real, as if the painter had had them right before his eyes, drawing exactly what he saw.
That couldn't be true though, because they were only figures out of fairytale, right ?!? He was suddenly torn out of his observations by screams, which sounded like lost souls wailing over their fate.
The young seishi was beginning to feel very cold, jumping between two large pieces of the fresco, which had fallen down, he precautionary pulled out his tessen as shivers ran down his body. Tasuki cowered low behind the shelter of the rocks, waiting.
With a shrill squeak a mouse came out of its hiding place. The red haired man was so surprised, that he fell back on his butt, blinking stupidly at the small mouse with unusually huge violet eyes. When the mouse got on her hind legs to look around curiously he heaved a big sigh of relief.
Just then an enormous paw with razor sharp claws came down in front of him, only missing him by millimetres, squashing the mouse. With an expression of utter thunderstruck Tasuki raised his gaze to look directly in a huge, smug appearing, eye of one of the dragons, who had been so realistically caught in the picture of the fresco.
The eye was as big as he was and in it he could see his own reflection, glimmering with a light golden complexion since the eye's colour was one of pure gold. As he kept staring at his reflection he saw his own eyes roll back into his head and with a hint of annoyance he noticed that he was falling unconscious yet again.
The last thing he saw before everything went black was a hint of a silver- blue shimmer, which he recognised as the dragon's body colour.