A/N: Kateracks does hereby decree that Chapter Thirteen be dedicated to jasmine. Thank you very much for your encouraging reviews. This is a very good chapter to have your name on, too. It's got some good action and plot points in it. :D I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho.
Chapter Thirteen—A Dark Resting Place
"Can't see him," Yusuke stated. "When does he die?"
"I can't tell you for sure if he does anymore, let alone where." I shrugged and smiled apologetically.
"Damn, and I was looking so forward to killing the bastard myself," he said, walking out onto the broken bridge.
"Why do you want to kill him?" I wondered.
"Well, for one, he tried to kill our leader and only chance of survival. And for two, he insulted the way of following your instincts. Following my instincts is the only way I've ever succeeded at anything."
"I can't believe he just said that with a straight face."
Kurama sighed from beside me. "Sadly, though, it's the truth."
Christy stared at her Guardian in uncertainty for a minute and then aired playing a drum set. "Doo-doo-doo, ch!"
"Hey!" Yusuke whined. "At least I can figure some stuff out! Like….if there's a turn switch thingy over there then we're supposed to use it for something important. Are we gonna turn it or what?"
"But there's also one down on the floor," Christy informed us.
Yusuke's shoulder slumped. "I was wrong again?"
"No, I think you're right, we will have to turn that," I reassured him and bent over to look beneath us. "But there are some crocodiles in the water and one over there and since it would be wise to dispose of any immediate threats first, we might as well turn the switch down there first."
"Wait, let me figure it out!" cried Kuwabara. If I were him, I would be tired of just sitting around, too. After squinting at the room from several angles, he pointed at the support to the bridge over by the turn switch Yusuke had mentioned. In as smart a manner as he could muster, he told us, "That pillar is broken in several areas. We will be able to find many places to hang onto in its surface so we can climb down."
"Well done, Clueless," I said while patting him on the back. "Just for that, you can lead the group down to the switch."
"Hn, and where are you going?" asked Hiei.
"The platform that used to be on the right caved in, but there's some supplies over there. It requires a grapple so I'll meet you on the ground."
While they were climbing down, I ran along the wall to my target and then jumped backwards to the path that used to be connected to the platform. Laying on its surface was a set of ammo clips that I had never seen before. The engraving in the metal read Mini SMG, but even I didn't know what that was. In the pocket created by the collapse of the platform were some shotgun shells and from there I could drop down to a pile of debris and then the ground.
Tayg and Dusty had been picking away at the crocodiles in the water and so I gave the shotgun shells to her and then we turned the switch. The water in the pool drained completely revealing four things in the bottom forming the shape of a diamond. Once we climbed into the bottom, we could see that the right and left things were grates—the one on the right had a wooden platform inside and the one on the left had another box of shotgun shells. Instead of bothering to find what opened that one, Yusuke just reached inside to claim his prize. The top and bottom of the diamond were pressure pads.
Kuwabara strutted to the bottom one while Christy, who also wanted to do something helpful, limped over to the top one. The one Kuwabara stepped on lowered a gate on the right side of the pool which had no purpose as far as I could tell. The one Christy stood on opened the grate containing the wooden platform.
"That was easy," said Christy, but once she stepped off, the grate slammed shut again.
"Nothing's ever easy for us," said Yusuke as he absently stroked Lalo's head. Then he realized he was doing it and quickly switched to scratching his own head. "So where is that wooden thing supposed to go?"
"I'm guessing over by the exit since we couldn't reach it from the pathway," I surmised.
Kuwabara looked at the exit far above us. "We can't get it up there."
"Honestly, Kuwabara," sighed Dusty. "You have a brief shining moment and then—"
"That's why we can change the water level," interrupted Tiara. "It will float."
"Cool, now I can just sit here and still be useful," said Christy and took a seat on the pressure pad.
Kurama chuckled. "No, you can't. Even if you wanted to, the water would make you float, too." Christy mumbled, "Oh yeah," and dropped her head. "I did notice a box up by the rotating switch, but it was on the next platform over and the bridge over to it is broken."
"Well, there's got to be some way to get to it. I'll go check it out."
But, as usual, I wouldn't be going alone since Hiei followed me around like a lost puppy. ….A very pissed off puppy with a grudging step.
We climbed back up the same way our team had reached the ground and found that the only way to get to the box Kurama had mentioned was a very round-about way, meaning we had to go completely around the room in order to go next door. Luckily, there was a second box along the way.
"Alright, so it looks like the only way to get over there is to use my grapple like I did before, but I think there's a second hook that I didn't see before," I informed Hiei. "You can just hang out here because I'll need your help to turn the switch when I come back."
It occurred to me as I was gaining an adrenaline rush while crossing the room just how bored Hiei must have been with being my Guardian. Since I was the main leader and many of the puzzles involved me (and because I liked to be more independent now that I had my new legs), he didn't get much of a chance to protect me. On the other hand, if I was the same as I was in the real world, he would be sick of being my Guardian by now.
I reached the walkway that went underneath our exit and over to the opposite wall of the room and spared a glance at him. He was leaning against the switch like he didn't care one way or another and following my every move with his usual indifferent gaze. It then occurred to me that he truly was handsome even if he was dirty and sweaty….and then it occurred to me that I should get him near a shower soon.
I quickly ceased that line of thought before he got any ideas of what I might be thinking and I busied myself with performing some gymnastic flips over two poles to reach the first of the two boxes. Kurama had trailed after me on the ground and took down another crocodile while I worked to push the box over the ledge. He then pushed it into the drained pool so they could position it on Christy's pressure pad while I continued over some more poles to the next box next door to the switch where Hiei was.
After the second box was sent down to where Tayg could push it into the pool, I jumped over the gap in the bridge to return to Hiei. (Since I was on the higher part of the bridge, I could reach the lower portion, but we couldn't use it to get up to the box.)
The second box was positioned on the pressure pad where Kuwabara stood, but I was still confused as to what good that gate did when it was open.
"Now, see? I don't get that," I said to Hiei and then called down to my foxy friend. "Kurama, what's with the gate?"
He looked to the gate and considered the puzzle for a few seconds before explaining, "If the water level rises and the platform stays here, it will be much too far from the exit. We'll have to pull it into that area so it will be more accessible."
Dusty and Tiara climbed out of the pool to turn the first switch which filled the pool again. The rest of our troop just remained in the water and rode the current and then Yusuke helped Kurama maneuver the platform into the formerly fenced off area. Hiei and I went back and turned our switch and then we met the rest of the team over by the exit.
The small conjoining room only had a pool in it being filled by three bearded heads spewing water. Once we dove in, however, a current immediately seized us and propelled us down a hall which gradually grew narrower and then shot us out into an underground cave. The way out of the cave was in the right corner of the pool, but Yusuke had to snag some shotgun shells off the shore before we swam through.
Where we resurfaced was a shock to me. We were in front of a stone building with two centaur statues guarding the closed gate.
"I didn't expect to end up here," I muttered.
"What, you don't know this place?" Kuwabara asked.
"No, I know it. This is the Tomb of Tihocan, but they must have combined it with the level that was The Cistern because there was no puzzle to get here."
"The gate is closed," said Tiara. "Maybe that's the puzzle."
"No, there should be a tunnel under the tomb somewhere with a switch that will open it."
I dove under the water and found the tunnel exactly where I expected it to be and all that was in it was a switch. I was a little disappointed that the levels were combined, but at least it cut down some of the time we would spend in this universe. When I surfaced again, my team was on the foregrounds of the gate, wringing out clothes and looking utterly sick of swimming.
I slowly led them up to the entrance of the tomb, wary of the creepy statues guarding either side. I felt like they were watching us but neither one moved at all. I had expected them to because they had come alive in the last game to prevent me from entering the tomb so it was eerie when they didn't.
Inside we moved right and weaved through some red pillars and up some steps to view the second piece of the Scion and a sarcophagus.
"Another piece of the Scion?" Kuwabara wondered. "How many are there?"
"Three," I answered.
"Where's the last one?" Yusuke asked.
"In The Sanctuary of the Scion. Kurama, here's some more hieroglyphics. Can you read what these say?"
He stepped up beside me as the rest of our team of inexperienced tomb raiders surrounded the sarcophagus. He gently ran the pads of his fingers over the carvings, removing a bit of dust as he began to read.
"Here lies the God-King Tihocan; one of the Triumvirate; Keepers of the three pieces of the Scion; Leader of the Chosen after the Great Betrayal caused Atlantis to be lost beneath the waves."
I cocked my brow at this and then bent to brace my hands against the lid of the sarcophagus, preparing to open it.
"Katie, what are you doing?" Tiara asked.
"I just want to see what this one looks like," I replied, pushing against the hard stone.
"But don't you remember what happened last time you looked too closely at one of these God-King guys?" Dusty asked.
"Yes," I grunted. "But I don't see any mummy guards, do you? I never got to see Tihocan in the last game."
She shrugged. "Well, just let me get on the other side in case he decides to come alive and jump out."
Everyone else seemed to feel the same way and backed up as I finally got the lid to crack open. Once the seal was broken, it was much easier to open a bigger space. Smiling in satisfaction, I peered inside….
There was no body.
"Um…." said Christy.
And then a gun cocked and a barrel was held to the back of my head.
"You see?" spoke that ever annoying Frenchman. "Instincts can be expensive, mademoiselle. Yours are going to cost you both pieces of the Scion."
I frowned down at the sarcophagus, pissed off that I had once again neglected to sense him behind me. "That's not a price I'm prepared to pay."
His voice showed a bit of astonishment. "Don't be absurd. No job is worth dying for."
You have no idea what would happen if I gave this piece to you. "Yes. It is."
I heard the creak of his leather glove as his finger tightened on the trigger and that's when I ducked, the shot ringing in my ears as it ricocheted off the wall behind me and I spun around to punch the bearded loser right in the jaw. Too bad for me, it wasn't strong enough to knock him off his feet and I found myself having to flip to the side and then dive back as he shot several more bullets at me.
I got close enough that I could grab his wrist so he couldn't move to shoot me again and it gave me enough leeway to turn and get him in the face again, this time with my elbow. He cracked off another shot wildly as he stumbled backwards, making my ears ring again. I sprang backwards and joined my team behind the sarcophagus as some more shots sailed after me. Grabbing my guns, I peeked over the top just in time to see Pierre run out of bullets and dodge behind a pillar, running toward the entrance.
So that's how they come to life. I got up and ran off after him.
"Kat?" Yusuke called after me.
"Stay here!" I yelled over my shoulder as I swerved around the doorway.
"What?" he shouted back as I arrived on the scene just in time to see one centaur try to trample Pierre and him escape the deadly hooves only to be stopped as the other threw a handful of fire at him.
He stopped moving and the centaurs slowly advanced onto him. Staring up at the foreign beasts and then looking at the object from the same culture in his hands, he realized what they were after.
"On second thought," he said uneasily as he saw me the doorway. "You have it!"
He chucked the glowing artifact to me and the centaurs' heads whipped in my direction as I, for once in my life, caught something without dropping it.
Pierre smiled nervously and gave me a small wave. "Bon chance."
Bad idea. The centaurs' attention was brought back to the Frenchman and before he could even blink, they had reared up and crashed down on top of him with their destructive hooves. His dying screams brought my team running and I descended the steps to the tomb and prepared to fight when the creatures directed their focus back onto me.
A protective wall of fire blazed up in front of the tomb door, separating my team from aiding in my fight, but one of my teammates had stepped just one stair too far.
A frightened whimper behind me caused me to turn and meet the sight of Tiara staring wide-eyed at the centaur twins.
One centaur charged her and she ran to the side, but was stopped by a fireball from the other. I tried to run toward her to provide some cover, but I was also stopped by a fireball. She looked to me for help as the two creatures started circling us, but I was looking to where Yusuke was jumping up and down behind the flame wall.
That gave me an idea and I yelled to Tiara, "Stay close to the tomb! The centaurs won't harm something sacred!"
She nodded and ran past one centaur and around the corner of the stairs leading to the entrance. The centaurs didn't bother to go after her since I was the one with my hands on the Scion. I waited for an opening in their barrage of fireballs and then sprinted over toward the water surrounding the foregrounds. No sooner had I dropped in and swam a few feet from the ground did a fireball barely miss my face and sink into the water in front of me.
Right. It's magical fire.
I began to wish I had noticed these kinds of things sooner as I was all, but trapped while swimming back to the shore. Fire collided with the water near me and flipped me sideways and then another handful of fire met my arm, crisping the flesh instantly.
I crawled back onto the ground just as another ball of fire connected with my leg and a centaur charged toward me. With no time to spare, I dove to the side and fired a stream of bullets at the passing creature. However, the bullets merely bounced off of the skin and hit the ground uselessly. Again I had to roll sideways as the other centaur ran toward me and I shot at it, too. This only succeeded in making them mad.
Meeting in the middle of the fighting area, the twin centaurs reared up and seemed to be laughing at me as their eyes began to glow and I was encompassed in a beautiful green light. I almost felt at ease and stumbled forward a step further into the beam, wanting to indulge further in that magnificent light. It was like a warm blanket of comfort wrapping around me and shielding me from the depressing cold of the surrounding tomb and I wanted more of it.
Something rammed into my side and I was thrown out of my trance when I hit the hard ground. As I shook off the blow to my head, an unfamiliar sound met my ears of something heavy falling to the ground behind me. Like a rock….or a body.
Or a body of rock, I realized with horror when I turned around and found a life-size statue of Tiara standing where I used to be, a petrified look on her frozen, stone face.
"Tiara!"
The centaurs began circling us again and hurling fireballs. One struck the ground just in front of my friend and a chip broke off of her surface and fell to the ground. In shocked fury, I was about to run after the strange monsters and attack with everything I had (whether it did any good or not), but then more chips began to break off of the rock surface. I could have sworn I saw a change in Tiara's expression and a bit of skin was showing on her hand. She was trying to break free!
With a bit of hesitation, I took a hold of her arm and gently began to shake it, breaking more pieces of the stone covering off of her. One centaur noticed this and charged so I hastily began shaking her harder, scattering fragments of stone everywhere until she was finally free and sank to the ground gasping for air.
The centaur reared up in front of us and, with my guns rendered useless, I did the only thing I could think of. I slid under it's wildly thrashing front hooves and kicked as hard as I could at one of its back legs. The overgrown horse toppled over backwards, breaking the ground beneath it and distracting its partner enough that I could help Tiara closer to the tomb.
"Are you alright?" I asked as she choked on fresh air.
"I will be. That green beam is like the gaze of Medusa—if you stare into it, you'll be turned to stone."
"Yeah, I noticed that."
"But what you didn't notice was that there's a ring on the back of the centaurs' shields. The surface of those shields are like mirrors. Do you remember how Yusuke defeated Hiei the first time they fought?"
"Yeah, Yusuke reflected his shot off of the Forlorn Hope to hit Hiei's back—his weak point."
She nodded. "The weak point is their heads; it's the only part of them that's actually protected by armor."
I stood up. "Okay, I'll try."
She grabbed my wrist. "Wait, I want to help, too. Right now those centaurs are toying with us because they don't think we can win. But if you get the upper hand on one, the other will come to the rescue."
I tugged her up from the ground. "Think you can imitate my dodge-roll?"
"Yours? Probably not; I'd dislocate a shoulder jumping sideways like that. But I bet I could do a somersault form of it."
"Alright, you get the left one. Ready? Go!"
We veered off from each other and I antagonized my target enough that it charged me again. Right as I would have been trampled, I leapt sideways and brought my guns up. My adrenaline made everything appear to go in slow motion as I aimed toward the centaur's helmet and squeezed the trigger.
The impact of the bullet to the protective metal was enough to stun it for a second but a second was all I needed to latch my grapple onto the ring and jerk the shield from the centaur's hand.
Tiara met me in the center of the battlefield and we switched targets. If the other centaur still had its shield, it would be able to reflect the beam back at us. Using the same process as before, the second centaur was soon left without any protection and Tiara and I both had some.
I provoked one enough that it tried the Medusa Gaze trick again and we grabbed our shields. The green beam bounced off of the slick surface and trapped its source in the enticing green light, turning it to stone.
The second centaur didn't like this one bit and chased Tiara around while I started pelting away at its partner. Unfortunately, .50 caliber pistols can only do so much damage to stone. However, luckily for me, Tiara had led the twin centaur back my direction.
"Katie! Stop, drop, and roll!"
I followed instructions and Tiara did likewise, rolling under the legs of the centaur statue as the mobile centaur wheeled around and kicked its legs back at her, missed, and shattered its partner.
Tiara and I laughed and high-fived while we followed the other centaur around the battlefield until it tried the same trick and created its own demise. I blasted away at the statue while Tiara spun around in circles with the shields and then threw them at the statue, splintering pieces off of the sculpture. I laughed again in amusement and relief that she was already back to her old self.
Finally the statue was reduced to nothing but a pile of dust. The fire wall which had been dwindling since the destruction of the first centaur now vanished completely and our team ran to check up on us. Too bad I had to turn around and catch sight of the battered and bloodied corpse of Pierre.
My smile faded and disgust welled up in my stomach. Hiei noticed the sudden change in the air, but unsure of what to do, only thrust his hand into my backpack and retrieved the two pieces of the Scion. Turning me away from the sight, he held the pieces up to my face.
"Well? How do these go together?"
I sighed. "I don't know. The structure of it is different than in the last game. Kurama, want to do the honors?"
I set the two pieces in his hand and he examined them for a couple minutes before he set the second piece on top of the first, hooking some pins in the middle and then turning so the two pieces connected.
My hand moved of its own accord and I was drawn to the glowing artifact. Christy and Hiei were given the same fate and then it looked like the floor dropped out from under us. (The others later told me that we had actually risen up in the air with dreamy looks on our faces.)
We were free falling through a lightning filled sky for several minutes before we suddenly stopped and hovered above the Scion. All three pieces were connected, but as we floated looking at it, it then separated into the three individual pieces.
Then we were hanging in the air in the midst of three kingly individuals. They all wore crowns, but two of the kings stood before the third, who was on their knees. I couldn't see the face.
The first king to speak was a male with a flowing yellow and black cape and spikes protruding from his back. He was very angry.
"You have tainted the power of the Scion and betrayed your fellow kings. You have broken the sacred Triumvirate of Atlantis. You have maimed Qualopec—your own brother!"
He pointed at the second kingly figure and I never would have guessed it was Qualopec since it was just a torso, but the spider legs did look familiar. Perhaps he had received prosthetic legs later?
Qualopec leaned in and hissed in a robotic voice, "I'm still here, wretch. Tihocan has ended your treachery, but it is my face you will see in your nightmares."
Tihocan spoke again, "What do you have to say for yourself?"
The figure on their knees raised their head a bit and then bowed it again as they prepared to answer. We never got to hear them speak as we began falling alongside one piece of the Scion. Our descent paused briefly in front of an entrance to a tomb in which the piece of the Scion disappeared from sight. We then found ourselves falling to the ground outside Tihocan's tomb along with the two connected pieces of the Scion.
I lay on my back for a while, analyzing the picture in my mind of where the final piece of the Scion was hidden. Where was The Sanctuary of the Scion?
Eventually, Hiei hauled me to my feet and Tayg asked, "Wha' 'appened?"
"We saw a short history of the Scion," I responded, rubbing my hip.
"So?" prodded Yusuke. "Where's the last piece?"
I smiled. "Egypt."
A/N: Alright, I'm going to try something new this chapter. I would like to get two reviews before I update again. The next chapter is also a very good one with some action and comedy in it. It would be neat to have your name on that one. I hope you enjoyed it! Even if you didn't like it all that much, go ahead and tell me what I can improve on.
Please Review!!
~Kateracks