Whisper of the Wind

By: Dawnn's Grace

Chapter 4: The Devil You Know

"You could've been nicer Sanzo." Goku scolded helping Brii to her feet.

"Why? It'll just encourage her to follow us. Another mangy animal," Sanzo said turning away.

"Like I'd want to hang out with a droopy eyed baldy with a stick up his ass." Brii shot back. Sanzo's fan came out, and Brii dodged.

"So you won't be joining us on our journey?" Hakkai asked politely.

"Nah, after all that time cooped up I need to stretch my legs a bit, heck stretch my wings. The world and me have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe I'll see you around." Brii said gliding over to Goku her feet never touching the ground. She gave Goku a brief kiss on the cheek. "Bye Goku."

And with that a strong breeze entered the clearing and picked Brii up like she was a feather. Goku watched her disappear in the distance as the others began to trek back to the camp and begin another day of travel.

"I'm glad that girl ain't traveling with us. She was a total nut case." Gojyo commented as the group walked back down for the last time.

"It would've been rather inconvenient driving with a fifth person as well. Still," Hakkai drawled off.

"What's up?" Gojyo asked always feeling off balance when Hakkai broke off mid-sentence.

"I wonder if we should have warned her about the current situation with the youkai before she left." Hakkai commented causing Gojyo to stop walking.

"Shit," Gojyo commented before continuing. "She'll figure it out soon enough."

Brii was about to figure the situation out.

Since it was morning. Brii had decided to race the sun. The objective of the race was to make it back to her cage before morning the next day. It was a good exercise and gave her new landmarks for this new world. She didn't get as far as she thought she would before she was distracted by something.

A column of thick black smoke was beginning to rise in the southwest. The lack of thick clouds meant it wasn't thunderstruck. A village was always a good landmark, even a burned out one. As she flew over it she spotted more then just a burning village. It was a battle. No, it was a slaughter.

The villagers were too busy fending off a band of attackers to do anything about their houses burning. The problem as Brii saw it was that the defenders were being pushed toward the burning buildings by the attackers and the attackers seemed to be trying to eat them.

Normally, she wouldn't have stopped to do anything. She wasn't a fighter. She was good at running away and getting in and out of places. None of those things would be of use to the villagers. But the last time she had roamed the world when bandits attacked they'd take what they want, maybe set fire to the houses to make it easier to get away and rarely killed more then five villagers if any at all.

Usually though you didn't see the bandits considering the people of the village as the valuable items or edible items. So the first thing Brii decided she needed to do was to keep the two groups away from each other.

Working with wind was a lot more difficult then working with the other elements. Despite the long-standing belief that wind was the element of freedom, wind wasn't like that. There were several laws that wind observed. Wind must always move. If wind went still it was no longer wind, it was air and air had no magic for Brii. Air fell under the category of ether because air was required to breathe and breath was required for life and life was ether. Second law of wind was wind could not pass through solid objects. Thankfully Brii had never found a building that was airtight. Finally, wind moved from high to low pressure.

Theoretically Brii could impose her will on all of these laws. In reality she generally worked with the third, as it was the easiest to work with. Poe was the only reason she had attempted the second law and though she managed to she was left with a head splitting headache. She wouldn't even bother with the first law because so long as there was the slightest movement of air there was wind. Blinking an eye, she could create a tornado. If she was ever in the situation without wind then she was either, dead, buried alive, or under water. Any case, she was screwed.

Brii grabbed a roving band of wind and encircled it around the defenders as best she could. After all, if two groups are fighting a bloody battle it was rather difficult to draw a definite line between the two. The attackers made this easier though, they seemed to be all youkai and so they naturally felt when the winds changed against them.

The villagers were amazed at this new development but not so much as when Brii set the second and third band, the second going in the opposite direction as the other two. This created a very powerful self-perpetuating tornado. If left at that, the attackers would go hungry but the defenders would suffocate. Brii began to expand the center of the tornado. When the edge of the tornado reached the burning buildings it put out the fires but ended up collapsing most of them. When the edge of the tornado reached the attackers, it picked them up and tossed them a mile and a half away. The remaining youkai decided it was prudent to leave well enough alone and disappeared into the surrounding forests.

Brii set her bands of wind free when she was convinced that the attackers wouldn't be back any time soon. The villagers had finally figured out that their savior came from above and were calling for her to come down. With thoughts of shiny rewards, Brii let herself be lured down to the decimated village.

"Y'all all right?" She asked, as the remaining villagers surrounded her.

"Thank you child," one woman repeated taking Brii's hand and kissing it.

"And as a reward," a man behind her said and Brii felt the stab of a blade in her back. Instinct had Brii weaving through the crowd and into the forest.

Her breeze left her in a clearing an easy mile from the village where her back burned indicating a shallow, but still painful, cut. She hissed to herself as she tried to turn around and see it. A twig breaking in the forest caused her to drop the painful task of looking at her wound and looking at the forest around her.

She was surrounded. Three of the bandits from before were now entering the clearing looking straight at her.

"What's the matter with you?" One of the youkai said clearly addressing Brii. "Haven't you awoken yet?"

"Huh?" Brii asked obviously confused.

"Guess she's still a kid." The second one said.

"I know. Why don't we make her a woman the old fashioned way?" The final one said with a perverted laugh.

Brii didn't wait around. She shot straight in the air and headed full speed towards where she had left Goku. She'd lost interest in learning about this new world.

The Sanzo party was traveling in their usual manner riding in jeep their usual mode of transportation. Hakkai drove with his pleasant smile plastered on his face. Sanzo read his paper ignoring the two in the back who had been arguing but where now just name calling.

So naturally it was Hakkai who first looked in the rear view mirror and noticed Brii perched quizzically on the spare tire watching Goku and Gojyo. Although Hakkai was curious which of his companions would notice the girl first, he was also worried how much paler she looked then this morning.

"Well Brii," he began pleasantly causing Goku and Gojyo to stop mid fight and look at her. "To what do we owe your sudden appearance?"

"Physical harm to my person has been attempted twice today and it's not even lunch yet. I figured it better to stick with the devil you know instead of trying for my third strike." Brii answered matter-of-factly.

"Brii," Goku asked looking at her. "You're bleeding."

"All right then, one of them managed to succeed." Brii answered less matter-of-factly.

Hakkai sighed and pulled jeep over to the side of the road.

TBC

Disclaimer: Do not own Saiyuki.

A/N: I have no excuse for my laziness. Forget the Thursday update. I'll just update when I feel

like it though I'll still try to update at least once a week but I'll never update on Sunday

because we're not allowed to use such things as computers and game systems on Sunday.