Oh man, did the whole 'space' thing piss you guys off? I'm sorry...I COULDN'T HELP IT! I WANT MY SPACES!

...Uh, ah, yeah. Sorry 'bout that...

Disclaimer: Authoress only owns made-up stuff that was invented by her. Unfortunately, that doesn't include Yugioh


-

"KC-4, you are cleared to land on Runway Two," came the call from the air-traffic tower.

Everything had gone smoothly. The flight hadn't taken too long, the landing clearance had been given promptly, and there was plenty of space in the small-aircraft section of Sydney International Airport for Kaiba's airplane.

In fact, Jonouchi was the first one to notice the first major obstacle - well, a major obstacle as far as HE was concerned.

"GAAAHHH!" Jou bellowed, as soon as the five of them exited the plane, "WHY IS IT SO COLD!"

"And there goes my hearing," Duke grumbled, rubbing the offended organ and taking a big step away from the blond.

"This is the Southern Hemisphere, dimwit," Kaiba growled - the teenage billionaire now fully recovered from/in total denial about his loss to Yuugi, "And since it's the beginning of summer in Japan, that makes it the beginning of winter here."

"But we were just in da Himalayas!" Jou wailed, "Why can't anyplace we go be warm?"

"Don't look at me!" Mokuba shot back, "I wanted to go to a massive tropical rainforest!"

Yuugi, used to his friend's antics, refrained from adding fuel to Jou's fire. Instead, he followed when Kaiba started stalking away towards the terminal. Kikki, perched on his shoulder as usual, preened quietly.

It was nice and warm inside the terminal. Jou commented on how much he enjoyed the change so loudly that the others suspected THAT was the reason Kaiba got them a car so quickly. One of those safari-cars that had no roof, no less.

((You know, stupid-tall-tree is much good at his fun. I think of big-talon eagle in with fat-dirt-egg-layers,)) Kikki commented.

Once he realized that 'fat-dirt-egg-layers' meant chickens, Yuugi was very much inclined to agree with the blue jay. Even though it was sort of Jou's own fault for being so easily rattled, Kaiba didn't have to go so far out of his way to pick on the blond.

This time, Mokuba came to the rescue.

When the proposal came up of them using the 'open-to-all-the-elements-car' for the rest of their stay in Australia, Mokuba sneezed as loudly as he could. And thus, not wanting to give his little brother a cold - and for NO other reason than that - they got to exchange the freezing unsheltered jeep for a regular car. And then a train, since Ayer's Rock wasn't exactly within walking distance of Sydney.

Even though the train ride wasn't going to take more than a few days at the most extreme, Duke got very fidgety very quickly. Finally, he excused himself to 'get some air', and then didn't come back for about eight hours.

He'd stayed mostly in sight of the train during that time, though, so not even Kaiba was worried that Duke was going behind their backs. Which he wasn't. Yuugi spotted him the most, taking full advantage of the cloudy winter sky to swoop low and then soar back up out of sight.

Ban-Ile sure seemed to get claustrophobic easily, Yuugi noted to himself. At Jou's house, even before they'd gone into the sewers, Yami had been pretty twitchy himself.

'And with demons chasing you, who wouldn't be nervous?' he chided himself.

But if Duke was willing to shadow their train so closely, surely that meant that the demons weren't currently following them. Otherwise, they might as well mount a huge, flashing neon sign to their train car that screamed, 'HERE WE ARE - COME AND KILL US!' for every single one of those monsters to see.

Naturally, though, Jou had to start complaining about how long the train ride was taking. It was apparently the latest turn of the relationship between Jou and Kaiba - a never-ending contest to see who could piss the other one off more. The blond probably felt more secure with complaining at this point do to Mokuba's total lack of a desire to freeze in a jeep again.

"I mean," Jou declared, "We could've at least landed da plane closer ta where we're going!"

"Idiot," Kaiba retorted.

"HEY!" Jou protested, "You and your damn insults…what makes ya think I'm an idiot now, huh?"

"…Everything," Kaiba answered after a moment's pause in which he pretended to think about it.

"WHAT WAS DAT!"

Hoping to head off the scene Jou was well on his way to making, Yuugi finally stepped in.

(I also was wondering,) he signed, (We did land farther away than we needed to I think)

"Even though I don't care in the slightest about you and your crazed need to travel to obscure locations," Kaiba coolly replied, "I have my own problems which require me to keep a low profile. A small private jet that lands in a less-frequently used airport after an international flight is far more noticeable than a small private jet that lands in a large city boasting a well-recognized international airport. The fact that this might be helpful for you geeks is merely a coincidence."

This was just enough information to shut Jou up for the rest of the trip.

Jou's complaints started up again the instant he spotted the sign saying, 'Ayer's Rock - Guided Tours' placed right by the train station. Surely, was the blond's reasoning, the fact that the huge rock was a tourist attraction was a good enough excuse to land Kaiba's plane closer to their destination?

He wouldn't stop pointing this out until Yuugi pulled him aside and in pointed sign language told Jou to stop complaining about the train ride. Kaiba wasn't the only one tired of listening to Jou go on and on, after all.

When the five of them - Duke had rejoined them well before their stop had come up - went to the place that was hosting the Guided Tours of the rock, they were surprised to discover the modest building was surrounded by a large mob of people. Some of the people looked almost like hippies, and only a fourth of them even looked Caucasian. They were all protesting against the tours, the flustered tour manager explained when the group finally got past the mob.

"Even if they don't look it, a lot of them are just crazy college students who've taken the idea of protecting the environment a little too seriously," the manager explained, "And the rest are just the local Aboriginals. They say the presence of tourists angers their gods or something, but my cousin runs a guided tour of those old Mayan temples - in Mexico - and he never gets this sort of trouble from the Indians over there."

Of course, this one and none of the other 'guided tours' of Ayer's Rock could help them out, and all of them warned against Yuugi and the others about taking themselves to see the rock up close. The 'locals' had roughed up adventurous tourists before, they were told.

At least the only hotel in the area had rooms for them to stay the night. Yuugi barely slept, though. He and Kikki had agreed that the bird should check with the local wildlife to see if it would be worth trying harder to find a way to the great rock or not. So now Yuugi was waiting for the Blue Jay to return, even though common sense insisted that it was pointless, and that losing sleep wouldn't hurry anything along.

Common Sense was right, as usual. The next morning found Yuugi very tired, and Kikki still very much gone.

The bird didn't return until the gang was finishing up their 'complimentary continental breakfast', and then he refused to tell Yuugi anything until he'd eaten most of Yuugi's scrambled eggs. Which, even though birds were known to eat other birds, totally grossed out Jou and Mokuba.

((It weird-strange,)) Kikki started right off the bat, ((There too many flyers here with dirts, and dirts are weird also.))

Pretending to sneeze, Yuugi covered his face with a napkin just long enough for a faint whistle of (((How?))) to get out without his very-much-present companions taking notice. The whole 'I-can-talk-but-only-like-a-bird-and-to-birds-oh-and-I-can-also-understand-them-too' thing was something Jou and the others did not need to experience, in Yuugi's opinion.

((Flyers stay with dirts. They talk of wisedirts that can talk with them. Not like you, not Flyer-No-Fly, not Flyertongue at all! Weird-strange. Me say we want perches on Wisedirt-Rock, they say they tell wisedirts, and later they say wisedirts say 'walk to Wisedirt-Rock when sun sets'. How you gonna explain dat to your dirt friends?))

Before Yuugi could even begin to try and think of such an explanation, Kikki had an idea of his own for the problem.

((Me know! I will tell the Lying-scratchie what flyers and their wisedirts say! Me no say 'bout your Flyertongue, but he can talk too. Stupid dirts will listen to scratchies.))

Immediately, Kikki fluttered from Yuugi's shoulder to Duke's. The Ban-Ile was briefly startled at first, but after listening to Kikki's explanation, he started looking very interested. Thus, Yuugi and Kikki were the only ones present who were not shocked to hear Duke suddenly suggest that, 'We head for Ayer's Rock ourselves.'

"Won't da locals try ta stop us or something, like dat guy said?" Jou protested.

Duke shrugged.

"Then we'll just have to head there when it gets dark. That way, they might not notice us, and if they do stop us, we can just say we were going on a hike or something, and that we got lost when the sun set because we couldn't see the trail we were using. Its worth a shot, and this way we won't have gone all this way for nothing."

"It's a better idea than doing nothing," Mokuba agreed.

So, when the shadows started growing longer in the late afternoon, four humans, one Ban-Ile, and one Blue Jay began walking towards Ayer's Rock. They were starting early because their hotel had been built a good distance away from the rock - in an attempt to ease local feelings - and because it would seem very suspicious to start a hike when the sunlight was too dim to see where you were going.

They were halfway there when the sun began setting in earnest. Not long after, the sound of someone running towards them came to them from behind them. When they turned, the group found themselves facing six native-looking men who weren't particularly happy to see them.

"I suppose you tourists are here to see the 'big old rock', right?" one of them said sarcastically.

"Who gave you any permission to come stomp in our sacred place?" added another one.

"Hold it!" came a new voice.

This one was coming from a trio of figures - it was too hard to make out clear features with the sun almost below the horizon - but they were also natives, and more specifically had come from the direction of Ayer's Rock.

"Go back to your tents, mates," the leader of the new trio told the original group of six, "These are welcome visitors."

"Welcome?" protested the group of six, "Who welcomes these trespassers?"

The 'trespassers' in question, for their part, weren't moving or trying to talk during this exchange - there wasn't even any sort of protest from Jou.

"Mori is the one that welcomes them," the trio said.

Whoever 'Mori' was, the fact that 'Mori' was the one who wanted to see them - possibly even the same 'wisedirt' the birds had told Kikki about - it was good enough for the six men. They turned around and left.

"Please forgive them," the leader of the trio said to Yuugi's group, "They mean well. Now please come with us. You must be taken to Mori."

"And who is this 'Mori' person?" Kaiba asked, as they all headed for Ayer's Rock.

"Mori is the person you mates are gonna be speaking to," the leader answered wryly, "He said you wanted a better place to see things than the roof of your hotel, and you get a pretty good view on top of our little rock, mate."

When it got too dark to see where they were going safely, their three guides produced flashlights. When they finally reached Ayer's Rock itself, their little procession headed for a campfire that was twinkling not too far away.

Sitting on the far side of the fire from them when they finally arrived was the person called Mori.