It was late morning and she woke up feeling groggy and strangely exhausted. It was late morning to judge by the slant of the sun. Her stomach was growling at her but despite her state of half-asleep, Yuka found herself aware of the world in a way she never quite had been before. The air seemed to shimmer ever so slightly, little sparkles like day stars swirling in a strange half-vision. She could also feel things around her, it was an impalpable sense, a lot like a song played just on the edge of hearing, her new spiritual "ears" could just pick up the notes. She could "feel" every bit of metal in the room around her, could feel its shape and what it's content was, the sharp notes of it almost seemed to ring out in the air around her. The wood of the floor beneath her was a hollow, slightly dead ghost-note, the fibers of the cloth were tiny and high-pitched but distinctive, more clearly she could sense the trees of the forest in the distance bending and swaying in the wind.

:There's an awful lot of metal so very close to me,: she thought groggily, trying to bring her mind up to speed.

She blearily looked around her trying to make sense of her senses enough to figure out what was going on. Taiki sat at a nearby table looking worried. There were several armed guards in the room and they were all looking at her. Yuka didn't want to come to any snap judgements, but they seemed a little suspicious of her. She had been disliked in school often enough to be able to immediately tell when there was some sort of new rumor flying around about her. She sighed tiredly, feeling a bit of a headache coming on already.

"Kaname, what's up with the guard?" she asked tiredly as she dragged herself over to the table nearby and helped herself to some breakfast. She was surprised by how ravenous she felt when Yuka was sure she hadn't been doing anything more strenuous than sleeping.

:But I had such a strange dream last night...: she thought, remembering it.

"Miss Yuka," Eishou said, entering her chambers without even knocking. She glared at him a little for the familiarity (she didn't really much care for strange men in her presence) and for interrupting her meal.

"You were gone from your bed last night," he said without preamble, looking sharply at her. "Would you care to tell us where you went?"

Yuka yawned sleepily over her food.

"I went to the cave," she mumbled around a mouthful of rice.

"Yuka!" Kaname admonished her. "You should never do such dangerous things alone, especially without telling anyone. You could have gotten hurt and then we wouldn't know where you were."

Her instructors had stressed the exact same thing. Over and over. It seemed a little strange to her now. It had made perfect sense last night but now, in the light of day, she knew perfectly well that it had been extremely foolish. She flushed a little in embarrassment, knowing she had only a weak excuse to offer.

"I wanted to see it again," she explained lamely. "But I knew you'd probably try to stop me so I just went on my own."

Yuka was accustomed to answering only to herself as to her whereabouts. As soon as she'd come of an age to go to high school, her father had picked a school in another district and sent her to live in student housing. The old lady who ran the complex she lived in was supposed to be keeping an eye on her but in truth didn't really bother.

"You were out all night with no-one to vouch for your whereabouts and you say you went to go and explore a cave?" one of the guards said, sounding like he didn't quite believe her.

Yuka didn't like his tone.

"Is that a problem?" she challenged. "If you have something you want to say, then say it."

"Look girl, we've struggled through six years of hell with barely any hope that things would get better. There's a madman on the throne, our king can't be found and our kirin disappeared, then all of a sudden you show up. Some strange kaikyaku witch. You don't answer to anyone, you don't follow anyone's orders, you have no loyalty to anyone... you think we're just going to trust you because you say so?"

:Sheesh, this guy was holding a lot in, wasn't he?: Yuka thought resentfully.

She was accustomed to being disliked, and she'd developed a thick skin, but having to put up with an attitude from someone she hadn't met, whose name she didn't even know, when she was actually going out of her way to help those people out was really too much. Yuka forced her body to relax and her expression to smooth over. The first thing she had learned in her house was that to display ones emotions was weakness and weakness was not tolerated. Her father was forever saying that to control ones self made it possible to control ones enemy. "The harder something is or the greater effort it takes, the less emotion you should show." that was how a successful person won.

Yuka forced her expression to remain bored and smooth, looking at him casually from out of the corner of her eye, as if he were a particularly annoying insect she was forced to pay attention to because it would not stop buzzing.

"If you're asking me that question seriously," she replied evenly. "Then the answer is yes."

The man scowled at her, temper clearly rising. Yuka's usual desire to goad reactions out of people rose up to the fore of her. It was a terrible habit of hers, but people were so boring otherwise.

"You asked me where I was and I told you," she added. "There's no point in your getting mad about it just because you don't like the answer."

The guard spluttered a bit, but Yuka turned back to her breakfast. She'd just made an enemy. She shrugged, she was used to it. As long as the person was not smart enough to match her, then there was no point in worrying about him.

"I'm for some morning practice Kaname," Yuka said after finishing her breakfast.

The two rose and walked over to the private courtyard behind the rooms that were given to the Tai Taiho.

"You didn't have to make an enemy of that person Yuka," he chided her.

"He wasn't exactly neutral about me before," she said back, trying to sound uncaring. "I hardly think that he's going to want to join hands an sing cumbaya with me just because I ask him to. Besides, if he can't take having his world views challenged a little bit every now and then, then he's too rigid."

Kaname sighed.

"We both know you were only toying with him, Yuka, and that's not good for you. It's a terrible way you have of controlling your environment by manipulating the people around you. I know you think that if you can prove that they don't like you then you can predict which way they'll move and be prepared to counter them, and I also know you goad people to keep them at arms length because you don't want them to hurt you."

Yuka was actually struck dumb for the first time in a long time. As much as he could be a bit of a crybaby at times, there were other times when Kaname was scary perceptive.

"You have a good ability to read people,"Kaname encouraged. "And I'd like to see you start using that talent of yours for good, especially your own good."

She didn't really have anything else she could say to that, so Yuka said nothing. She picked up the two new oak sticks she had chosen for her escrima practice and paused.

:That's odd,: she thought, frowning in puzzlement.

The two sticks, which had just felt like ordinary sticks to her the day before, now felt... alive in her hands. They had a strange sort of energy thrumming through them and they literally felt like an extension of her arms. She moved with them, and instead of the movements with the sticks feeling like it was just her, striking with two hard sticks, it felt like it was her spirit essence moving around in the world around her.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the "sound" she could feel from the sticks, her attitude becoming one of listening and slowly more "sounds" became apparent. She could feel each blade of grass, every flower, every tree in the whole courtyard and she wasn't sure how but she took that same strange ability of listening and pushed it inward, somehow, willing herself to "sound" just the same as the noise of the wood. Something inside of her began to buzz with a strange soft resonance.

"Yuka?!" Kaname shouted suddenly, sounding panicked, it broke her concentration and the feeling of resonating shattered.

"What?" she asked, a little irritated at having been interrupted just as it was getting good.

"Y-You disappeared!" he said in amazement.

Yuka looked back at him, nonplussed.

"What do you mean I disappeared? I'm standing right here Kaname."

"Well, yeah, I mean now you are, but a minute ago you weren't. I mean...You were there and then suddenly you were not there. I couldn't see you."

"It must have been a trick of the light?" she hazarded.

"I don't think so," Kaname replied positively. "I was looking right at you and suddenly it was like I couldn't see you anymore. I knew you were there but it was like my eyes slid right past you."

"I'm going to try it again," she said.

Once again she listened, and then once again she turned her focus inward, calling up the energy within her that sounded like the wood around her breathing it in with a long deep breath, this time she managed to hold onto it. Pushing it a little further, Yuka expanded her awareness all around her as she expelled her breath. She could feel where every blade of grass, every leaf, every stick was located, knew where it was safe to step and where a noise would give her away. She padded softly over, just knowing somehow, without being sure of how, that Kaname couldn't see her.

"Gotcha!" she called out merrily, dropping her wood-sense and ruffling his hair.

Kaname stared at her, wide eyed.

"I guess it wasn't a dream after all," she murmured to herself.

It had all really happened last night. She wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but she had a few gut feelings about it.

"How did you do that?" he asked, curiosity making him exited.

"I'll tell you if you promise that you won't tell anyone else," Yuka replied.

Kaname gave his word, so Yuka, after listening around for strangers who might be listening in, very quietly told him of the thing that had happened the night before that she thought had been a dream. About the cave full of dancing starlight and the ghost-shadow reflections of herself. Even though Kaname was her best friend, Yuka felt that the conversation she had had with herself was too private to share with anyone. She'd wrapped it up with relating the strange feeling she'd gotten when she'd run back to the fort, the way it had felt like she burst into the wind.

"I'm still not sure what it all means myself just yet," she finished. "But since we don't have anywhere else to go right now, and nothing else to do, I'm sure going to try and figure it out."

Truth to tell, Yuka was pretty excited by the prospect of exploring the new-found power. It felt like for a change she was the heroine of her very own story. She had an ability that no-one else (not even the kirin!) had, and she wanted to know just what she could do. That feeling from the night before, that wanting to be able to stretch her hands out into the world and know just what kind of person she could make herself into, was born again inside her.

"How do we do that?" Kaname wondered. "I still haven't figured out how to regain my proper form as a kirin yet."

Yuka took a long moment to think about it. Generally, the quickest way she learned anything was by simply doing it, but an instinct warned her that using her new abilities could dangerous to learn by trial and error, especially since there was no sensei of shihon or even a sempai to keep her on the right track.

:Well, I gained these new abilities because I wanted to become more myself,: she reasoned. :So it would make sense that the way to learning about them and mastering them would mean learning more and mastering myself first.:

She related this feeling to Kaname but then added that she was uncertain how in the world anyone might go about doing such a thing. Kaname. surprisingly, had some useful advice.

"I don't know if you're any good at it," Kaname said helpfully. "But a long time ago, i heard Gyousou-sama say that in order to truly learn how to excel in anything, a person had to master themselves first and figure out what it was they really need to know."

"Well how would I do that?" she asked curiously.

"I think that a good first step is meditation," kaname said. "Everyone path might be different, but finding a little more inner peace surely never hurt anyone. You often act like you're at war with the whole world, and sometimes I think it makes you grumpy. Try giving up the fight for a little while and you might be able to see something new. I like the person you are when you're being my friend. If you like I'll meditate right beside you, I think it's high time I talked with my shirei as well."

"I'm not very good at meditation,"Yuka said was pleased that Kaname offered to share and activity with him, but she didn't really want to try meditation because it sounded so boring.

:Still, I do have to admit that Kaname is right far more often than he is wrong,: Yuka said internally. :I should listen to him because he seems like he knows what he's talking about.:

"I'm more of a do-er than a thinker, but in this case, since we have the time and nothing else better to do, I guess it would be wise to be cautious in moving forward until we have a better handle on things."

"Actually, even though I was a kid on Mount Hou, my nature tends toward meditation anyway. I'm a little surprised I didn't think to try it sooner," he replied.

Kaname needed nothing more than to suit action to thought. He immediately settled himself into lotus position and was soon deep in meditation, his posture both rigid and relaxed. Yuka tried not to glare at him in envy.

She folded her body up into lotus position right next to where her friend was already meditating and slowly closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing and trying to relax enough that her thoughts would quiet. As usual, it wasn't easy for her. Her mind kept trying to concentrate on the person who had been rude to her over breakfast, and whether or not he might be a dangerous person to have as an enemy, and from there it wanted to sort out just what he might be planning against her and how many other people he might know or come into contact with that he would speak of his suspicions to. From there it tried to wander to just where this supposed king of Tai might be and how they were supposed to find him much less rescue him, and just what sort of person was he and what was Kaname's enemy like and-

Yuka pulled her runaway-train thoughts up sharply and redoubled her efforts to focus. She forced her mind to clear itself and think of nothing but her breath. In and out, steady, calm... Slowly she felt a strange sort of warmth well up from within her, spreading out gently and making her feel strangely relaxed with a sort of dreamish wakefulness.