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"You know, I think we should install one of those nifty gothic pipe-organs in the Wind." I stated out of the blue about two weeks after we discovered who I was- or rather who I had been.
"A pipe organ?!" Jess exclaimed incredulously from the depths of her beanbag chair. "In the Wind?"
Lucca looked up from the National Geographic magazine he was reading. "That would be kind of strange... even for us Kamui."
I shrugged and attempted to sit up from my own beanie chair. "Yeah but whenever we docked anywhere we could freak out the locals by playing nifty horror-movie music really loud! It'd be fun!"
"Loud horror-movie music?" Arowyn queried as she entered the 'mess hall' (see all purpose lounge-room wherein we sometimes eat). "Like that whole screechy violin thing?"
"Ah, no," I replied with a slight sweatdrop. "I was just saying we should install a pipe organ... but now that you mention it the screechy violin bit has potential too...."
"Hmm... but y'know," Arowyn said thoughtfully, "I bet that Darvin could probably do something with a pipe-organ.... maybe some type of new propulsion drive based on sound waves?"
For some odd reason Lucca and Jess went awfully pale at this suggestion. I smirked. "That does sound like a good idea Arow. We'll have to ask Darvin about that later." Suddenly something occurred to me. "By the way, if you're here, who's driving the ship?"
Arowyn blinked. "Huh? Who's driving.... Oh! I left her on auto-pilot so I could get me a Pepsi."
"Ah. I see."
"We almost there yet Arowyn?" Jess asked with a yawn.
Arowyn shook her head. "Nope. Cuz've that stop we made in LA we're gonna be another two days at least."
"Right. I'm going back to sleep then."
Arow sweatdropped. "You do that."
She turned to me, "So any more ideas for our trip to Japan next month?"
"Not really. We need more info before we can do much of anything really. Darvin's been doing his best to cover our tracks and stuff but... I'd really like to know just what we're gonna be walking into."
That was why we were heading back to the Dawnlight Estate in southwestern Canada rather than straight to an unknown [Destiny] in Tokyo. Aunt Miya was pretty good with situations like this and, even if she couldn't help, the Estate had one of the best collections of magickal paraphernalia and lore on the planet. Plus Miya had a lot of friends in the magickal community who might at least know who this 'Hinato-hime' I was supposed to see was. We already knew from pure logic that she was probably the seer from Lucca's vision, but it'd be nice to know just how important she was.
"Me too," Arowyn commented. After a slight pause she asked, "What did you mean Darvin's covering our tracks? I mean it's not like the Wind is one of those big oil tankers you can follow easily."
I blinked. "Er... actually I meant that he's making sure that no one will be able to look us up on a search engine or through government databases."
"Oh." Arow shrugged. "I guess that makes more sense then."
I smirked. "Yep. Dunno how he's doing it but.... well I'd much prefer whoever wants me in Tokyo to know no more about us than we know about them; or even less if possible."
She nodded. "Exactly. Even though you could have possibly said that in a way that made more sense I agree with you completely."
Suddenly Lucca looked up from his magazine. "That's probably not even going to be an issue," he said thoughtfully. "If L-sama has taken a hand in this then it's rather unlikely that anyone besides this Hinato person and your mother even knows you were missing."
"Maybe," I said. "Even so at least it's keeping Darvin busy."
Arowyn and Lucca nodded. Keeping Darvin busy was top priority on everyone's list. It had been made clear over the years they'd known each other that if Darvin got bored then interesting times soon followed. It had in fact, been one of his earlier 'boredom relievers' that had gotten the lot of them sans Lucca stuck in that temporal anomoly for all those years. Another incident had been the time Darvin had decided to meddle with alchemy and the crew had spent three weeks in a daycare as little kids. Then there was the 'love potion' catastrophe... it was good thing Arow and Jessa had been cured before they got to Switzerland. Even so neither of them had spoken to Darvin for three months after that. Though oddly enough it hadn't really effected their friendship with each other that much. Either way it was reason enough not always keep their chief engineer busy.
The next two days flew by quickly though we spent most of the time napping and generally lazing about. I wrote a new song and somehow managed to convince the others to play it with me, with Jessa doing the vocals. That quickly lead to an entire night of music and dancing which only begun to die down in the early light of morning when Lucca fell overboard. Rumor has it that he was actually pushed but I wouldn't know. Either way he was just a bit upset since it is the middle of December and we're far enough North that it's actually cold.
Finally in the early morning mist of the third day we arrived at the harbor we had intended to dock in. Only there was a bit of a problem. See it turns out that the harbor was frozen over. The five of us stood on the deck glaring at the ice with just a bit of malevolence.
"What do we do?" Jess asked, shivering. None of us were really dressed for winter... it just really hadn't occurred to us that we'd need to.
"I dunno," Arowyn replied. "I tried asking the ice to turn back into water but it doesn't want to. To bad we don't have a Firestarter in the group."
I grimaced, "Me and Lucca do have fire spells but I don't think that'd help anyway."
"It'd take too much personal energy," Lucca added with a nod.
Darvin looked up from the gadget he'd been fiddling with throughout our discussion. "Why do we have to park here anyway? Wouldn't it be easier to go directly to Dawnlight?"
We turned to stare at him as if he'd just grown a second head. After a moment I cautiously asked: "And just how do you propose we do that? Last I heard Dawnlight was landlocked."
Darvin blinked. "I know that. I was only suggesting that we could try out my new aero-sphere phase transmitter and just fly there."
I blinked, attempted to translate 'aero-sphere phase transmitter' into a known language, and then blinked again. At last I decided that since Darvin had mentioned the word 'fly' and that we did need to get to Dawnlight it was worth a try. "Er... okay?"
Darvin grinned. "Yay! This won't take but a moment!"
As he disappeared below deck I had a feeling I might regret this. "Don't look at me," I said to the others who were giving me various looks of alarm. "I don't exactly know- or want to know what he's doing but it might work. Maybe. I hope so."
A sudden jolt shook the Wind and suddenly a shock of vertigo ran through me. The Wind was rising. "Oh dear. So this is what Darvin meant when he said we could just fly to Dawnlight. Oh dear."
Before anyone could comment we were suddenly a good twenty meters in the air and rising. After the initial shock the Wind's external shields had modified themselves to compensate. There now appeared to be a translucently blue bubble around the ship and there was some sort of gravity modifier at work which prevented any further vertigo or acceleration pressure. Wordlessly the four of us gazed over the railing upon the increasingly smaller world below us.
At about a hundred meters above ground we finally stopped rising... though I had a feeling that Darvin had probably done this himself. It was rather likely, considering the gravity/shield bubble, that he had originally designed this new whatsit for space travel.
"Wow," declared Jess as she leaned over the railing. "Everything is so much smaller now."
"It's pretty cool," admitted Arowyn, staying a safe distance away from said railing. Belatedly I remembered she had a slight problem with heights. "Won't be as easy to navigate though I don't think...."
"Darvin probably has a way around that," I said. "And I think the bubble would catch anyone who feel overboard so you don't have to worry about falling to your doom."
She stuck her tongue at me. "You offering to try it out Mr. 'My psychic abilities enable me to fly'?"
I sweatdropped. "Er... no thanks."
"What I'd like to know," Lucca spoke up, "is what we're going to tell the nice folks in the Canadian Airforce who happen to be heading this way at the moment."
Arow blinked. "...Oh dear... Darvin must have forgotten to shield against normal radar."
"Quick!" I declared, thinking fast. "Everyone put on lab-coats and look professional! As of right now the lot of us are researchers the Dawnlight Institute of Mana-Tech, founded by Kamui Dawn himself."
To their credit the three of them only stared at me for a moment before rushing off to find the appropriate garments. I hurried down to engineering to get Darvin. He was the only one of us who spoke enough techno-jargon to be believable.
Five minutes later the five of us were assembled on the deck in plain sight of the approaching fighter planes. I noted that they'd brought in a helicopter too; probably to get in close. Each of us either held some piece of important looking equipment or a clipboard. Jess had even gone so far as to dress less skimpily and even put her long red hair up in a strict bun rather than her usual high ponytail.
The planes began circling after it became apparent that we weren't openly armed and the helicopter came in slightly above us and lowered a rope-ladder. Due to a slight modification we'd made, it went right through the shields as if they weren't there. A minute later a woman in army clothes climbed down the ladder to land on deck.
"Hello," I greeted cheerfully before she could start trying to arrest us or whatever. "Lovely day for a flight isn't it?"
She stared. "Er... who are you and what are you doing here?"
I continued to smile; doing my best impression of one of L-sama's favorite 'people', a mazoku general named Xellos. Despite the fact that he was technically evil I'd rather liked him when we met a year or so ago when we met L-sama for the 'first' time. I'd made a special point not to use his favorite catch-phrase very much though since I didn't care for being hit. "We're with the Dawnlight Institute of Mana-Tech." I said this in a way that made it seem like this was common knowledge and she'd have to be an idiot not to have heard of us.
"Oh," she said, floundering for words. I had a feeling they probably didn't have a proper procedure for this type of situation. "And exactly what are you doing...?"
I remained smiling. "Ah, Darvin?"
He nodded and started to explain in great deal exactly what we were doing here, why we were here, and how we'd gotten here. I didn't even bother to try and keep up with it but was rather amused to see the woman's eyes glaze over with incomprehension after the first five minutes. Negotiations went easy after that, and as soon as their higher-up's heard the name 'Dawnlight' they let us go with a polite request to stay out of major fly-zones and try not to scare anyone. Before we knew it they were gone and all we had to worry about was how to fly the Wind.
Luckily that proved to be rather easy since Darvin had indeed included navigational modifications when he'd added flight capabilities to the Wind. Arow was still a bit leery about being so far up but was rather happy with the nifty view screens Darvin had given her. At this rate we would be at the Dawnlight Estate in about twenty minutes.
End Chapter One.
In chapter two: We get to meet Kamui's 'aunt Miya' for the first time and preparations for the trip to Tokyo are made.
Author's Note: I know this is a bit short but I've recently discovered that I'm better at writing short chapters than long ones. Oh! And as for magic and psychic powers I'm using a mixture of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books' magic, Slayers magic, and random stuff I've made up in addition to what already exists in the X-verse. Please review!