Chapter two… High Something Banter

"Hey… wake up!"

"You awake?"

"You even alive?"

"C'mon, this isn't funny, please wake up, you have to."

Riuki? She couldn't tell him what he can and cannot do, especially not when he was sleeping… couldn't she see that he was in no mood to play cards right now?

"Get up."

That persistent voice, the equivalent of an alarm clock's never-ending rhapsody of dream-shattering beeps. A hand on his shoulder, forcing his senses to sharpen.

The blackness was receding little by little. No hope of falling back asleep now. He wrenched his eyes open.

The first thing that registered on his dimly conscious mind was the fact that his entire body hurt as if he'd just been beaten with sticks. Not poked or tapped—beaten. He could hardly move without sending networks of pain all throughout his limbs.

Next, he saw that the face above him, slightly blurry but still visible, was not Riuki's. Whoever she was, though, she seemed oddly familiar.

"Thank God," the girl said, sitting back on her heels and studying him.

Mako didn't try to sit up, only laid there, wondering why he was smelling grass and not his own blood splattered over forty feet of pavement and two lanes' worth of cars. Maybe he was dead. That would explain a lot. He was dead and had passed on into—

"Hey, are you okay?" The girl's voice interrupted his train of thought. So much like Riuki, wouldn't let him think, maybe she was Riuki and he just hadn't recognized her… That thought pushed him up, made him sit straight, held his tongue while pain sizzled on each nerve…

But it wasn't Riuki who sat before him. Just the oddly familiar face who, by now, had wrapped her arms around her knees and was shivering, even though the temperature of the air was easily around 70 degrees. He couldn't think straight. Where was Riuki? Who was this girl anyway? What had even happened? Pieces of questions chased each other throughout his hazy mind, unable to rearrange themselves into intelligible sentences.

The girl's frightened face softened. "Y-you're bleeding, you know." This statement went right over Mako's head as if she had just begun speaking in a different language. He stared at her, trying his hardest to make something, anything, come out of his mouth.

He failed.

The girl huddled before him was perhaps about his age. She wore a dull gray skirt and a red cardigan, which her shoulder-length, twig-leaf-and-dirt-encrusted hair matched perfectly in hue. She was pale with fright. "You are okay, right?" she asked again, and when he didn't answer, she pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan. "Here. At least clean the blood off. I don't think it's that bad." She handed it to him, and he wiped the corner of his mouth absently. There wasn't much to clean; he must have simply bit his lip when he hit the ground.

The girl watched him for a few seconds before an idea seemed to come to her. "Do you speak English?" she asked. After another moment's pause, she asked the same question in about three other languages with slow and careful pronunciation, her tongue fumbling over the unfamiliar words.

Something clicked in Mako's brain. This girl had been standing next to him. She had looked at him. And then the light—whatever that light was—had exploded around him.

"Y-you," Mako stuttered finally.

The girl blinked, no more or less terrified than she had been moments ago. "English?" she said, and then, "Good, 'cause that's all I really know."

"You," Mako repeated, feeling foolish but not able to add anything else to his monologue.

The girl shivered again. "You were at Tokyo Tower," she said. "I remember. I saw you."

"Light," Mako managed. Images floated in his memory like pieces of driftwood, but he had a hard time piecing them together. "You, light, falling," he murmured, unable to piece these into a better sentence.

"If you're making a comment about my weight," the girl said after a moment's consideration, "that's very flattering, but I don't even know who you are—"

"I saw you!" Mako blurted. The wires in his brain had started to hook back together. Speech was beginning to make sense again. He continued. "I saw you, and then that light, and then falling…"

Fear flickered into the girl's eyes. "You saw it, too?" She paused. "Did—did you hear a voice?"

Mako nodded solemnly.

"Magic Knights," the girl recalled, mostly to herself, "you must come… save our world… What was that even about?"

"I don't know…" Mako trailed off, and the girl did not speak further, so he used the lull in the conversation to look around him. He couldn't see Tokyo Tower anywhere. In fact, the surrounding buildings and even the road had vanished. Behind him, maybe two hundred or so yards away, lay the ocean, sparkling more like a rolling sheet of pure sapphires than water. He and this girl, whoever she was, were sitting just inside a stretch of trees, and far off over her shoulder he saw a range of mountains. Which range, he couldn't say; they were completely unfamiliar, offering no clue as to his location. The air was warm, but not overbearingly so, and it carried a fresh hint of flowers in full bloom, though he couldn't tell which kind of flower it was. The sky above, as blue as the sea, hosted an occasional fat, puffy cloud, drifting lazily, in no hurry to disappear or even to change shape. And right next to the cloud that almost resembled Riuki's old stuffed bear was—

Mako shook his head and looked again, sure he was just imagining things, but it was still there the second time, and again the third.

The girl eyed him strangely. "What's the matter?"

Mako didn't answer right away. Eventually, he nodded his head toward the sky. "There's an island floating up there."

The girl turned over her shoulder. Mako waited for a gasp of surprise or both hands to clap over her mouth, but she simply turned back to him and shrugged. "I've seen it. I thought maybe I'd been knocked senseless when I fell, and maybe I was seeing mirages or something. But," she added, and her face fell, "if you can see it too, then that means it's really there."

"Wherever 'there' is," Mako said, still wondering if it really was an island in the sky, or if he was just having an extremely weird dream. "I'm having a hard time believing we're still near Tokyo Tower."

"Did we even survive the fall?" the girl asked, and Mako shrugged. "You've got me there." They lapsed into silence again.

"I'm Li," she said suddenly, as if the prospect of being dead was an event for formal introductions. "Li Kimoi. I'm fourteen."

Mako turned the name over in his mind, but he'd never heard it before. "Mako Keines," he answered, and she nodded. "I'll remember that."

"Are we the only ones from the Tower here?" he asked after a second.

"I think so," Li answered, looking around as if there might be someone else sitting by a tree that she had missed. "When I woke up, I saw you lying about twenty feet to my left."

"So Riuki's not here," Mako mused. Did that mean she was alright? What if she was grievously injured but still alive? What if—

He lost his train of thought again as Li gave a sudden, completely out-of-place giggle.

"Who's Riuki? Your girlfriend?" For the first time, her eyes began to sparkle with mirth, as if they had thrown off the heavy cloak of fear and uncertainty to reveal their shining selves. Never having been accused of dating his sister before, Mako stared at her in disgust before realizing that she didn't even know who Riuki was.

He didn't know why this surprised him.

"She's my sister," he said flatly, and Li stopped mid-giggle. Her face flushed ever so slightly. "Oh. I thought…"

"Forget it," Mako said, shaking his head.

"So you were hoping she'd be here?" Li asked, shifting positions and sitting cross-legged. "Are you two close?"

"I guess so." He'd never really thought about it before, and he didn't feel like starting now; he wanted to find out where they were, and what on earth they were doing there, and what that voice had meant when it said to do what they were destined to do…

Li's eyes had dimmed somewhat. "That's nice," she said blandly.

Immediately, Mako heard the sound of crunching leaves, a snapping twig: someone approaching from deeper within the trees.

He got to his feet, and Li followed suit, staring at him in curiosity. "What is it?"

Mako shook his head to silence her. He expected the crunching humus to stop, to move away from them… but instead, the outline of a man appeared between two strong oaks, clearly headed straight for them.

Mako felt a strange sense of foreboding. In one fluid motion, he stepped in front of Li. "If he turns out to be hostile, run," he muttered. Li didn't answer.

The man stepped into the light. He was extremely tall, so much so that Mako had to crane his neck up to see his face, which had well-defined features: strong chin, stern mouth, dark eyes. His hair was black as a raven's wing, pulled into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck; his forehead was covered by bangs long enough to reach his eyes. His robes—for that seemed to be what he was wearing—were blood-red, embroidered with the finest silver that absolutely shone even though woven into the fabric. He was carrying a girl in his arms; her sheet of honey-colored hair hanging over his elbow rippled with every movement he made. She was unconscious.

Where have I seen her before? Mako wondered.

The man in robes stopped just five feet from them. Mako and Li stood staring defiantly up at him, and he towered over them, studying them as though he had known he was going to happen across two lost and disoriented fourteen-year-olds stranded in an unfamiliar place after falling into an eternal black hole limbo void. He said nothing for almost a full minute, but when Mako couldn't stand it anymore and was about to demand information from him, he delivered his first speech:

"So."

His tone wasn't surprised, nor evil, nor angry or anything else Mako had been expecting. Instead, it was thoughtful, almost heavy with consideration. He continued. "There were three, after all." When he spoke more than one word at a time, Mako could hear the richness of his voice, a deep baritone. Wondering what three had to do with anything, Mako asked, "Who are you?" The man glanced at him, one thick brow arched, as if he had just realized that Mako was capable of understanding language.

"I am the High Mage Banter," he announced, and paused as if waiting for the appropriate reply.

Mako had no idea what the appropriate reply would be.

He settled for asking, "The High what?" while casting half a glance over his shoulder at Li, silently telling her to get ready to bolt for freedom.

High Something Banter frowned at him. "The High Mage," he said plainly. "Chief Magician in Princess Ciela's service."

"Right," Mako answered warily. "We're dead and you're a wizard. Maybe I was just knocked senseless."

High-Mage-Chief-Magician Banter seemed annoyed, maybe even angered. "Come with me." He began to turn around, but when he noticed that Mako and Li were staying where they were, he advanced on them again, glowering.

He'd turned out to be hostile.