Author's note

Here's chapter ten! Y'all better be happy this is up, because I am soooo tires right now, but I felt like a terrible person for making my like ten readers wait for this.

Oh I just want to say that I got NO reviews for that last chapter and that made author-sama very sad. But I still love anyone who reads my story

And I wanna say thanks to Writes Like Crazy for bing awesome and caring about my puny little story. She(ur a girl right?) bugged me about updating and I was happy :3

So yea, morale- REVIEW...please*puppy dog face*

Ummm...this chapter is short, and pointless, I made them talk for a chapter and I feel pathetic. And I have no excuse for the crummy chapter except that I'm lazy.

(secret: hey this story's like over 3/4 done! I'm so excited!)

~ 3 wow tht intro was long O.o

Kurogane laid back on the long grass, waiting for the adrenaline to leave his system. As he laid he heard a familiar rustle of voices that didn't belong to Kazahaya and Rikuou. He slowly opened his eyes, letting them adjust to bright light. As his vision came to, a familiar blonde face came into focus.

"Fai?"

"KURO-RIN!" the calls sounded simultaneously as Fai and Kurogane spoke. Fai collapsed onto the ninja and began blubbering about how much he has missed him and how scared he had been. Kurogane looked on as the magician sobbed. He awkwardly patted him on the back before unceremoniously yanking him off.

"Goodness mage, calm down." Kurogane said

"But I was so worried!" Fai offered lamely.

The two continued to bicker as the others began to question Kazahaya and Rikuou.

The two teens were starting to get up slowly, with much complaint. The fall had been painful even though it hadn't killed them. They hadn't been expecting such and ordeal. Kakei had told them to go up to the big tree and try and figure out what was wrong. They hadn't known something was wrong, everything seemed pretty normal to them at the time. But once they had gotten up there and had to fight a tree, it was pretty safe to conclude something was wrong.

"So, who might you be?" Syaoran asked the two boys

"I'm Rikuou"

"I'm Kazahaya, but you can call me Kaza." the two responded. Aria suddenly remembered that these were the two guys she had seen at the store, they were Kazahaya and Rikuou from Legal Drug! It took all of her willpower not to do something stupid. She was very compelled to squeal, jump, run, or do something to let out her rising excitement. But she stood there and bit her lip, she wouldn't look like an idiot in front of them.

Fai and Kurogane slowly stood up, there reunion complete, but fai was clinging on to Kurogane's arm like a lifeline. Kurogane seemed to have either given up trying to get the mage to let go, or had stopped caring. This caused a bit of confusion on the part of Kazahaya and Rikuou.

"What's their deal?" Rikuou inquired.

"It's best not to ask." Syaoran replied. He looked over at the two, "I mean, I don't think anyone could properly explain it to you." Aria and Kyle nodded in consent.

When Kyle nodded, Aria realized that she hadn't seen him since they got to the tree. She felt like a bad friend for not noticing, but a certain part of her was suspicious. What if he had just gotten here? What had he been doing? She looked over at him and found him deep in though, his brow furrowed and arms crossed firmly across his chest. What was so interesting?

Kyle saw Aria staring at him from the corner of his eye. He tried to relax his features, he couldn't let her know what he had just seen

~~flashback~~

He was grudgingly running toward the giant tree, and he couldn't help feeling a bit underwhelmed. He was glad that they were gonna find Kurogane and all, but he didn't really see anything interesting about the tree, or even about the gash in the ground, it was probably just a side-effect of the earthquake.

He was behind everyone else, it wasn't that he couldn't keep up, he just didn't feel the need to sprint. He saw Aria turn around to look at him, she almost tripped. Before she did, Kyle saw the fire in her eyes. She was so excited. He figured she would be, she was living her dream right now. Unfortunately for him, Aria's dream had bitch-slapped him in the face saying that he was actually a reincarnation of an evil CLAMP universe character. He couldn't say he appreciated that.

He had just been running with his thoughts until a wave of pain hit him. It was as if he had ran into a wall. And suddenly his head felt like it would burst. He was in so much pain he couldn't make more than a whisper of sound as he fell to the ground, now nearly hidden by the long grass.

Make it stop, make it stop! He couldn't focus, couldn't think, couldn't tell up from down. For that brief moment, be was all pain. His entire existence was limited to the pain drilling through his skull. And then when he came to, he wasn't himself.

He was looking down on the others. They were done running and were now talking to Kurogane and the two people with them. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he was suddenly filled with a terrible hatred for all of them. He couldn't stand them, he couldn't stand what they, and the others like them were doing to his home, to hisland. He had been here first. Then they had come with heir axes and fires and started killing the earth, they took his family from him and built over their homes with their ugly polluting buildings that just say there. He wanted to destroy it all. He wanted to rip the earth clean of the ugly humans, they had to go. They had to go!

He was no longer looking at the humans. He was seeing into the body of the tree, he felt it relish in its new power. The power to control the tremors, to change the land back to what it should be. He saw the feather, in the very heart of the tree. The feather had created a shell of intertwining branches and leaves to protect itself. To protect itself in it's world of teen light and smooth wood. The small room the feather was in seemed to just glow. It also didn't seem to fit into normal space, as if the feather had created a new magical dimension for itself inside the tree, so that no one could find it. No one could take away it's power.

A strong tremor shook the ground as Kyle finally came to, lying in the grass in a cold sweat. It took a moment for him to remember to breathe. He gasped in air, eyes wide wondering what had just happened. He wasn't really an environmentalist, he usually just went about his life without really caring. But his sister did, she was always going on about recycling and stuff. But he'd never been that way, so why was he having these thoughts?

As he sat there in the grass, leaves from the tree blew over his head. Almost without think, he reached up to grab one. As he looked at the leafy in his hand, he had a realization. He quickly sat up and plucked another lead out of the air.

The tree. It had been the tree's thoughts, somehow amplified by the feather. For some reason they had invaded his head, he now knew what the tree wanted. He felt it's pain. He looked back up at the tree and pointed near the middle of its large trunk.

That's where it was. That's how you got the feather. He didn't know why he knew it, but he did. He suddenly knew how to get the feather, he could jut go there and take it. But did he want to?

Kyle slowly stood up, and as he started moving towards the tree he realized he didn't. Why should he give away the tree's one defense against humanity. Sakura didn't need anymore feathers. And why spoil the fun of watching the others work to find the feather? A small grin graced his features as he broke into a run. He ran toward the tree and the others savoring the wind through his hair, and the smell of the clean, fresh air up in the hills. He wanted to stay in that moment, but all to soon his thoughts were pierced by more prevailing thoughts as he came up on the rest of the group. They were questioning Kurogane and Fai's sexuality, which wasn't that difficult to do. But he just nodded along with Aria as if he knew what was going on.

(~~flashback has caught up with real time~~)

"So why are you here again?" Syaoran asked the two boys.

"Our boss told us to go check this place out. He said something was wrong, and I'd definitely call moving treeswrong." the blonder of the two said.

"The tree moves?!" Aria gasps. She looks up at the branches of the tree, trying to find a trace of unnatural movement. But when no suspicious met her eye, she looked back down a gave Kazahaya a questioning look.

"Really?" Rikuou chuckled softly at Aria's disbelief in Kazahaya. When questioned Kazahaya got defensive and spluttered about making odd excuses and swearing that he was telling the truth.

"Oh come on Aria, you saw people fall out of thin air, moving trees isn't that big of a stretch." Fai said. It was the first time the blonde had spokes to someone besides Kurogane since they had gotten there. He and Kurogane were finally separated and standing up in a respectable manner.

Rikuou and Kazahaya exchanged glances when Fai mentioned falling out of the sky, but they chose to keep quiet. Kurogane didn't. He opened his mouth to take charge of the situation, but before he could get more than two syllables out, Kazahaya jumped in front of him and interrupted, "Wait! We still don't even know all of you guys' names yet!"

"Kaza, is that really so important?"

"My name's Aria, and the crazy blonde is Fai and these two are Syaoran and Kyle." Aria said pointing to each respective person. Fai gave a slight gasp of disapproval at being called crazy, but was soon occupied by the more pressing matter that Kurogane had posed by laughing at the statement. But the ninja simply brushed of the smaller man's words and got back to taking command.

"So we know why you're here, but what the hell are you actually supposed to be doing?" he asked the two older boys

"Well, I dunno. Kakei just sent us up here and didn't really tell us what to do, but something usually comes up. Kakei almost never makes us do things that are pointless." Rikuou said.

"Yea, even though he sometimes doesn't tell us what we are supposed to do, it's usually only when he knows we can figure it out on our own. He's not the type to tell you any more than you really need to know." Kazahaya added

"So you two don't really have a goal?"

"..." Kazahaya was silent.

"Not at the moment." Rikuou said reluctantly

"Good, so now you can help us." Kurogane said. "You know that the magical feather thing is making the tree all weird, and I don't know if I told you that we need it back, but we do. So perhaps you two could do something useful."

"But what if we are supposed to do something else?" Kazahaya questioned

"Your boss said something would turn up? Well we turned up, so do you have an ideas on how to help us?" Kurogane silenced all argument. The other four behind Kurogane had just stood in silence. If they had ever wanted to add anything to the conversation, there had just been no chance. Kurogane's marines commander talk had just barreled right over anything that anyone else had wanted to say. Fai had even soundlessly opened his mouth a few times, but had to shut it in defeat each attempt. The blonde looked very dejected at his lack of participation in this discussion.

"Well how can I help?" Kazahaya asked, and in the brief pause when Kurogane was thinking Syaoran spoke, "Hey Kurogane, what about us? Anything that we would do? Can we help?"

"Oh. Yea. Mokona, how do we get back in there?" Kurogane inquired

"I dunno, try making it mad." the puff ball offered. Kurogane wasn't satisfied with his answer, "Can't you magic us in there? Fai, can you?"

"I know nothing about that tree Kuro-kuro. Don't ask me to do magic again." he said in a deceivingly soft voice.

Kazahaya scooted over to Aria. He bent down and whispered to her, "He's magical!?" when she turned to him, she saw his eyes wide in anticipation, he really did look like a cat sometimes.

"Aren't we all magic sometimes?" Aria said, rather please with her enigmatic answer.

"What?" He whispered harshly.

"Just deal with it Kaza. You're gonna see weird things today." and she left it at that. The teen jumped over to Kyle leaving Kazahaya to wander back to Rikuou in rejection.

"Come one Mokona try!" Fai was saying. The younger members of the group rejoined the other conversation and saw Mokona start to glow and then her eyes open wide. She flew up the trunk slowly, until she stopped halfway up and then flew into the trunk. But she didn't go through the bark or anything, she just bounced right off. She tried again, and again, but nothing happened. The manjuu kept running into the tree and Fai finally had to yell at her to get her down.

Once the creature was safely in Fai's arms she sighed sadly. She felt she had failed, and after complaining about this and then being comforted by Fai, she regained some of her energy and gave a recap of what had happened

"The feather was strongest where I flew up to. It was almost as if the feather was right there, but it also felt weird. It wasn't quiet..." She moved her little arms around oddly.

"It wasn't quite-" Kyle said doubtfully, mimicking the odd hand motion.

"It just didn't feel there" she said loudly, "like I could feel the energy but it wasn't really real, like maybe it was in another type of dimension thingy."

"Well that actually makes sense." Rikuou said, "We were in this weird maze that seemed to be inside the tree, but it obviously wasn't. So maybe this feather thing like created another dimensions inside of itself just to confuse the shit out of us."

"That's actually a really good theory." Fai said. "Is there anything else you guys might know, any small insight is helpful."

"Kaza might be able to." Rikuou said

"No Rikuou!" the smaller teen said desperately. "It doesn't work well, I've only been able to do it once or twice!" their voices had switched to tense whispers as if it might make a difference, they could still be heard just fine.

"So, Kaza? You've gotta try." Rikuou persisted.

"No! It won't work!"

"Yes!"

The others watched this exchange is curiosity. What was going on? He two were arguing in rapid whispers about this unknown ability that Kazahaya had. At last, Rikuou seemed to have won the argument and Kazahaya was pushed towards the large tree by the larger teen.

Kazahaya walked the last few steps looking back at Rikuou pleading to get out of whatever sad fate he had been sentenced to. The boy took a deep breath and turned towards the tree, he slowly stuck out a hand and put it flat on the tree.

Nothing happened for a long moment and all six of the bystanders watched in close observation. Even Kyle was eagerly watching their attempt to find the feather. He watched intently as Kazahaya suddenly shuddered and faltered a bit.

The youth stayed were he was then suddenly collapsed onto his knees; but his hand stayed where it was. This was apparently not Kazahaya's doing because he instantly stood back up wide eyed, causing Rikuou to came over to him asking what had happened.

"I felt it, I felt the trees feelings. It was so angry at everyone for hurting the earth, all it wants is for the earth to be health again!" Kazahaya said in one big breath. He took a deep breath and continued in the same nervous voice, "It desperately wants to protect the feather, it's one chance to do something besides sit here and photosynthesize. It has used any means it can to protect it. It moved the feather out of this dimension and into a small one just for the feather." Kazahaya talked rapidly, using the hand not on the tree to make wild gestures to go along with his story. The look on the boys face was one of wonder, disbelief. He was in shock at this new knowledge that he had received empathically. It was so much more detailed and vivid than anything he'd ever been able to perceive before.

"But the problem is, my hand is stuck." he ended his story.

"You're kidding!" said Rikuou exasperatedly. He walked over to Kazahaya and pulled on his arm that was supposedly stuck. It didn't move and the force used caused Kazahaya to yelp in pain.

"My hand won't move!" he yelled at Rikuou staring the obvious. The others had now crowded around the youth, unsure how to react to this, when the youth began to be pulled into the tree.

Kazahaya started screaming, the tree was eating him! Rikuou and Kurogane tried to slow his movement, but slowly the boy was pulled further and further into the tree.

End note:

So YAAAY I have ten chapters and it's almost 50 pages in word 8D this is the longest thing I've ever written and I think im actually gonna finish it! So for those of you who don't read Legal Drug, sorry some stuff is kinda confusing I guess. Well Kaza is an empath and he can like feel things emotions by touching them and he's I was touching on that.

So the next chapter might not be up for a while. Cuz I kinda have no idea how I'm going to make that work...but I promise it will live! So thats all. And sorry if there's some discontinuity in this chapter, I'm too lazy to bother to remember what I wrote earlier.