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Chapter 53
It was really kind of sad, Shinichi thought to himself, that his first thought on having the mountain protest the stone's removal was 'We must have offended it.' As a teen the first time—or even a grade-schooler the second—something like that would never have crossed his mind.
The chaos quickly proved him wrong, though, as Pandora was well and truly shielded and even if it were offended (and it hadn't done anything the 'first' time, when they hadn't quite made it out of the cave and had been significantly less careful), he would have felt something before everything started coming down around their heads.
He got clipped by a smaller rock and nearly flattened entirely by a tree before things settled down, and he looked around to find himself genuinely surprised that he hadn't been killed about forty times over. Only the one rock had actually hit him, and that had been a glancing graze which wasn't even going to leave much more than a long scrape and a relatively shallow bruise.
…Perhaps that kind of thing was part of how the stone got the 'immortal' legend. Not immortality, just luck?
Not that he'd care to keep it and find out.
Either way, why had half the mountain come down around their ears, and where was Kaito? He'd been forced to dodge the opposite direction from Shinichi, and even from where he stood, Shinichi could see that the path of destruction didn't go much further in that direction. Kaito had probably made it out of the rockslide's area entirely.
Only probably, and Shinichi had to know for certain. His ears were still ringing from the thunderous noise, though, and he doubted he'd be able to make out a shout from underneath the ringing and the remaining thumps and grinds of still-settling scree, so he shook himself and started making his way up the mountain at an angle, aiming roughly for where what remained of the path was.
He tried to stay calm, tried to convince himself of the truth of his own thought—that Kaito was safe, had to be safe, but he couldn't check because having linked in once already had that such a spectacularly bad idea that he'd become an outright liability if he did.
He wouldn't be able to do anything even if he located Kaito that way: the results would have him blind and likely immobile. If Kaito had been hurt, that would make this take longer. If Kaito was hurt, they couldn't afford for this to take longer.
Minutes stretched by and there were glistening dark splashes amongst shattered wood and stone, one large, and he'd felt fear before realizing it was the wrong shape and size, that there was fur where Kaito had worn cotton. Of course there were animals on the mountain, and a large area had come down. It wasn't Kaito.
But—motion, there, and that was Kaito against the moonlight, moving towards the same animal (deer perhaps?) that Shinichi had spotted, probably not able to see it from the angle he was coming from. Kaito was moving smoothly (if he was injured, it wasn't badly), but landing in what would be still-warm gore would be extremely unpleasant at best, even if it did turn out to be an animal.
"Kaito!" he shouted, hoping the magician could hear him. If Kaito's ears were ringing, too, he would not be surprised, and while the ringing was starting to die down, it still made the relative silence left in the wake of the landslide hard to discern.
The movement paused. "Shinichi?" a return call.
Huh. He could hear better than he'd thought. "Here—no, wait there, Kaito, five more meters and you'll regret your next step. I'm coming to you."
"Are you all right?" Kaito demanded, stopping in place.
"A scrape and a bruise, that's all. I admit to being kind of surprised I wasn't flattened, but I only got clipped the once. You?"
"Fine," Kaito assured. "I got out the edge without even realizing it."
Shinichi nodded to himself as he picked his way through rubble more cautiously. Dusk had turned to full-dark somewhere along the way, and if weren't for the full moon, he'd have been hard-pressed to make it without a flashlight. He had his watch, but the beam—while useful—wasn't very strong. Agasa was still working on that; the lights he'd used in it after adding the satellite phone the 'last' time around hadn't come out for public use until the next year, and while Agasa knew how to make lights, making small ones required equipment the inventor just didn't have.
Shinichi was tempted to acquire them from another source, now, for all that it would be hideously expensive.
He shook his head and skirted around the dead animal, (probably deer, or young elk. Certainly not a predator's hide,) accepting Kaito's hand up onto the slightly higher plain of brand-new scree-field. "Hey," he let Kaito check him over even as he did the same to his partner, making absolutely sure he was all right.
"Hey," Kaito greeted back. "Was that Pandora or…?"
Shinichi ran a finger over the piece of stone they were standing on, seeing part of one of the cave-paintings on it. "I don't think so," he decided. "Not directly. Look here—see that?"
"The mica is… disintegrating."
"And the rock is unaccountably warm. Probably a reaction to the energy field it was putting out—that would explain why the cave was so warm. I'd assumed it was just all the geologic activity in the area—it is a hot-spring resort town; surely there are a few unclaimed wild springs as well."
Kaito nodded, "That's what I'd thought, too, but there's no water in this mess."
Shinichi agreed, "So, somehow the heat was a reaction to the energy field. When we cut it off, the expansion caused by that much heat started to go, quickly, and the mica broke apart. Everything came down."
"… which could be why it didn't happen before," Kaito hummed. "We didn't shield it, so…"
"Exactly. Although I'm not going to look for verifying evidence; we don't have time for that and I'd rather not stay here. Even if it has started to settle, new scree is never safe."
"Yeah," Kaito was already looking for a good path back to the trail. "Do you have your glasses on you?"
Shinichi smacked his forehead. He did, and a spare pair for Kaito. Night vision would make this so much safer.
"Yes, but you forgot?" Kaito interpreted the head-smack.
Shinichi wordlessly handed him a pair while sliding his own on and activating the night-vision. Kid's monocle had the same functions, now, but they had quite deliberately left that and everything else Kid-identifiable in Japan. If it had just been a monocle with a clover charm, they could pass it off as a fan-item. With the Agasa-and-Jii upgrades? Yeah, not a chance.
The glasses weren't iconic, and very few people looked closely at glasses when someone carried them. The automatic assumption was 'reading glasses', and they were ignored as such.
Ten minutes later and they were far enough away from the landslide that they both turned around to look at it properly.
"Huh," Shinichi said. It looked worse from the outside. No wonder Kaito had been reckless in heading back in.
"… Spectacular," Kaito decided. "In the literal, dictionary definition of the word."
Shinichi had to agree. It was eye-catching even in the moonlight, obviously new and with jagged edges of broken stone jutting at sharp angles, splintered wood and tumbled brush tangled amidst the rubble. Not beautiful, by any stretch of the imagination, a scar of destruction across the mountainside… but spectacular, yes. He could see that.
"Let's go," Shinichi replied after a moment. He didn't want to stay here, with some of the surviving small animals making sounds of pain. Now that his hearing had just about returned to normal, it wasn't something he wanted to stay for.
He knew better than to bother looking or trying to help any of them. Even tame animals were dangerous when hurt, and wild ones would be even more so. If they could even locate them, in the mess.
Kaito nodded and moved towards the path as Shinichi followed. "Got to ask, though," he added.
"Hm?"
"Granite?"
Shinichi blinked. Well, there wasn't a lot of granite in the area. "There is some around here," he pointed out, "Maybe not much, but with that crystal being as it was, it makes sense that whoever put it there matched it to the quartz in the granite."
Kaito hummed thoughtfully, "Point. What with how a lot of those ancient superstitions went, I could see them thinking it was honoring a god of some kind."
"May even have been," Shinichi agreed.
Kaito shrugged, acknowledging. "Yeah, let's get down to the… uh, who do we report this to? It's not a crime…"
"Police anyway," Shinichi decided. "They'll know who to inform, at any rate. I doubt anyone else was up there, but they'll be able to get word out and on the off chance that someone was, they'll be able to set up search and rescue."
Kaito huffed, "And I'm not sure whether I'd like them to run a background check or not. They'd probably ask us to leave if they figure out that this is benign, for us."
"You mean 'me'." Shinichi corrected dryly.
"Well, I have pretty weird luck, too," Kaito pointed out. "What with Akako and everything else."
"So. Landslide where no one gets hurt is your luck, then?"
Kaito made a grumpy sound, "Let's just get off this mountain before your luck kicks in, okay?"
Shinichi didn't protest. His luck had been remarkably dormant this trip—he was not going to push it.
xxxx
It was well into morning by the time they actually got back to the hotel, the hike back down the mountain followed by reporting the landslide and the police insisting on having both of them looked over by paramedics.
Said paramedics were surprised that Shinichi's bruise-and-scrape was the worst either of them had.
That was understandable, Kaito had informed them. He was surprised they'd gotten out of it so well, too. Grateful, but surprised.
"Shinichi. Bed," he ordered, swiping the box with Pandora and stowing it away. Shinichi could probably find it, if he really wanted to, but it was quite obvious that Kaito wasn't the only one who could use some sleep. "I'll set up the usual alarms and put the 'do not disturb' sign up, but we both need to sleep. We've been awake for over twenty-four hours."
Shinichi blinked, shook his head, and huffed. "I forgot… we're on vacation, aren't we? Now that we've taken care of the important things."
Kaito shook his head right back, "Jeez, Shin-chan, you're worse than I am."
"Oh, thanks," Shinichi glanced around the (very much Yukiko-decorated) room, then shrugged and wandered into the bathroom to get ready for bed. "This still feels weird—it's morning. I should be getting up, not going to bed."
Kaito rolled his eyes, despite the fact that Shinichi wouldn't be able to see it from in front of the bathroom sink, "We can get up in a few hours," he informed. "It will still be morning, then. Barely."
Shinichi rapped a quick, amused response on the countertop, probably with a mouthful of toothpaste.
"I will insinuate sappy romance in front of the hotel staff," Kaito threatened.
Another, completely unrepentant and unintimidated set of knocks replied.
Huh. Shinichi had a point. They weren't likely to ever see anyone here again, so that was a pretty empty threat. Oh, second point—they were married, and while sappy romance wouldn't be expected by anyone in Japan who knew them (and the fact that it had been arranged, though not the fact that they had prompted the arrangement), here it really would be. Arranged marriages were almost unheard of in America, and while Kaito wasn't absolutely sure about Canada, he assumed it was similar in that regard. Also, it was extremely rare for alliance-marriages to involve same-sex couples*, because children were expected.
A moment of the sound of the tap running, and Shinichi came back out, dressed in pajamas and a little bleary-eyed. "'Night," he informed.
Kaito set up the last of the standard alarms—well, their standard, anyway—and speed-changed into his own sleepwear before climbing into bed beside Shinichi. "Goodnight, he replied, cuddling down in the blankets.
Sleep sounded good.
xxxx
*Since same-sex marriage isn't actually recognized in Japan, this is completely a headcanon. Of course an alliance would expect children, and while adopting is a possibility, traditionally it would be expected for the child to be born to them, yes?
