angel part four
Chapter Four


"What?! I have to travel all the way to Merame Mountain in the same caravan as him?!"
"Calm down, sis. Daisuke isn't really that bad..."
"To you, maybe, but I find him an annoying brat. And with the way you keep on pushing him at me, he'll never leave me alone."
"Frankly, I think you two would make a great pair."
"Frankly, Taichi, if that's the best you can think of then stay out of matchmaking."
"As a princess, it's your duty to marry for the good of the kingdom. Daisuke's a Guardian-trainee and can become heir-presumptive, whhich, may I remind you, you can't."
"Taichi, brother, I love you but sometimes you're an idiot. Daisuke would be an awful King. Marrying him would be for the bad of the kingdom. If you absolutely have to pick a marriage for me, at least pick one intelligently."
"There aren't any other eligible Guardian-trainees. Well, possibly Yamato, but I thought you'd want someone closer to your own age."
"You speak of this as if it were already arranged. I've rejected Daisuke many times and will continue to do so. And furthermore, don't you think it a bit presumptive of you to decide people's lives like that? You're not King yet, Taichi, and if you continue to behave in this fashion I almost hope that you never will be."
"You don't have much right to talk. You may be a princess, but unChosen you can't get into the line of sucession. You need to marry to preserve the kingdom."
"I'll do so only if and when our parents say so. Taichi, you're only Heir."
"But I'm the only possible Heir."
"Well, maybe there's another way. You aren't omniscient. For all we know I might be Chosen tomorrow."
"Might. You're sixteen, Hikari. If there were a Partner for you, she would have showed up by now."

"You're joking."
"I rarely make jokes, Koushiro."
"But..."
"I'm too old to make the journey. but everyone needs to continue their training. You are the most gifted, magic-wise, of the trainees, so I am delegating you as temporary trainer."
"But, Gennai! You're the wisest mage in all of File! How can I ever compare to you as a trainer?"
"I'm not asking you to better me. All I'm asking you to do, Guardian of Knowledge, is to learn by teaching. All you need to do is keep their skill level from degrading too much. No new material to teach, just maintenance."
"But what about Miyako? She has mage-potential, not just Guardian's magic. What if her Gift emerges on the trip?"
"It probably won't. I wouldn't worry." (AN: Famous last words...)

Takeru sighed. For night watch, he had been paired with Daisuke, which made it a strikingly unpleasant experience. The vast majority of his time was not spent watching for enemies. Rather, it was spent watching Daisuke and waking him up on the frequent occaisions that he fell asleep. It's a good thing he didn't have to undergo a squire-vigil, snickered Takeru to himself. Probably he'd have been impervious to the wakeroot. Speaking of wakeroot, someone should find some tomorrow; it'll be very useful.
While shaking Daisuke awake for the tenth time, Takeru noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned towards it. Hikari had wakened. Or had she?
She wasn't acting as if she were awake. She walked in a sort of daze, almost like a sleepwalk. Still, Takeru would have been inclined to dismiss it as normal groggy behavior but for the fact that Hikari was glowing with a faint pinkish light.
That light made him guess that she was in a trance of some sort, and that made him decide to follow her. He turned back to Daisuke.
"Hikari is in some sort of trance. She'll get hurt or lost alone, so I'm going to follow her."
"I'll go with you."
"Someone needs to stay and guard the camp."
With those words Takeru walked off, following Hikari. Daisuke went after, ignoring Takeru's warning to remain at the camp. They both followed her through the woods of File for several hours before they noticed that it was beginning to lighten. They realized that at about the same point that they realized that they were completely and totally lost. In typical male fashion, they each blamed this on the other.
"You were the one who decided to follow after Hikari."
"But I told you to stay at the camp."
After about ten minutes of this, their arguments were cut off by a simeltaneous observation: Hikari was nowhere in sight. They naturally began to argue about whose fault it was that they'd lost track of her. After another fifteen minutes, they came to and finally figured out that it just might be more efficient to solve the problem than distribute blame. They began to look for Hikari, but they didn't need to look very hard. A scream was heard about ten feet away, in what sounded fairly like Hikari's voice.
They rushed towards the source of the noise, which turned out to be (AN: in typical clichéd fashion...) a group of bandits armed with dirks, a kind of long knife. Hikari had panicked just slightly at the sight of them, but had figured out the intelligent thing to do: run. Unfortunately, it's fairly hard to run fast in a dress, so Hikari would probably be kidnapped and held for ransom, or worse, unless someone else helped.
Daisuke, showing quite a bit more presence of mind than usual, immediately began to attack the attackers. He used the particular bit of Guardian battle-magic that he had gained from his Digipartner, the Exveelaser. An x-shaped beam of light shot from his hands at one of the theives. Unfortunately, Davis hadn't been practicing that much lately, so the light beam missed. He stared at it for a while, not really comprehending that he'd made a mistake. This hesitation was his downfall; one of the others grabbed him from behind and knocked him out, leaving the entire battle up to Takeru.
That was not necessarily a good thing for the princess; Yamato had only had time to teach Takeru a few staff tricks. Still, a staff was a good weapon against a crowd, and Takeru had eavesdropped when their father was teaching Yamato staff-fight strategy. So the battle wasn't hopeless, merely a bit doubtful.
Takeru spun around hard in a circle with the staff whirling around him and going quite fast. After five spins, he'd felled the two dumbest of the eight bandits, but the others were staying well away from the spinning wood. It would only make him dizzy to continue spinning, so he charged at the center of the enemy formation, hoping to split them into two separate groups.
Not only did they cooperatively divide, they also divded evenly. Perfect. He turned to face one of the clumps, and bluffed an uncontrolled swing towards them. When they scattered, he thrust the staff behind him, hitting a man in the stoamach, hard. He whirled to face the other two from that subgroup, putting his staff up in a diagonal guard, hands apart. They backed away slightly, but he advanced a slight bit more.
Suddenly there was a swishing noise from behind. The three other bandits all threw their knives at him, hoping one at least would take him out. However, their aim was no better than Daisuke's. It's very unwise to throw away your weapon; retreiving it is a tricky problem. It was not a problem those raiders wanted to solve, and as "there's no honor among theives" they showed their disloyalty and cowardice by running away. Takeru now only faced two.
These two, however, were a bit more skilled than their fellows. They quickly maneuvered so that Takeru was between them, an easy target as he could only defend against one. He concentrated on the larger of the two, and clumsily fended off the blows he couldn't duck. But his staff was only wood, and they had knives. It was standing up admirably well against attempts to cut it, but it would give way and crack eventually. Realizing this, he stepped backward, hoping to gain more room to maneuver. To clear the way, he swept his staff towards the rear again, this time hitting his enemy in the chest. Only one left; a much fairer fight.
He swung his staff around in an attempted disarm. Unfortunately, the disarm only suceeded in disarming him; the staff flew high in the air as the force on it became too much for his fifteen-year-old muscles. More luckily, on its trip back earthward the staff hit his opponent on the head, stunning him temporarily. In his daze, he didn't move as Takeru hit him on the knuckles. Or rather until Takeru hit him on the knuckles; at that abrupt pain he dropped his knife.
"Go. Now." Takeru warned. The thief obeyed.
He turned back to Hikari. "Princess, are you all right?"
"Thank you."
They both looked at each other, slightly embarrased, before diverting their eyes to Daisuke's prone form.
"Still out, probably."
"Almost definitely."
"We need to get back to the others. Let's wake him up; he can communicate with them through Exveeme."
"Good idea, Hikari... oops... I mean Princess..."
"It's all right."
Takeru was surprised; when Daisuke called Hikari by her name, she usually blew up at the familiarity. Ai. There was no accounting for girls, especially princesses.