Jupiter Adept

By: Avaria

A/N: The (hopefully) long-awaited chapter four! For Griffinkhan—Picard is GS2's Mercury Adept. For everyone—Ok, Vil says some of the stuff in this chapter wasn't planned on in ALWHI, so I guess this is where I deviate from her ficcy a bit. But maybe she'll reconsider. But she's kinda ticked cause her puter might be missing for like a month.

Akiko: Isaac making an appearance? Maybe…

Feonyx: You keep track of those things? Vil always said you were a bit…odd…*laughs* not really. But thanks for reviewing!

Author bloopers! In that last chapter, where it said Jupiter Adept in bold under the author notes, it was supposed to be Jupiter Girl. Sorry—I kinda get carried away. You can understand the whole Ivan thing, right?

And in the first chapter, the words about "he'll be a strong young man" should be italicized too, as they are Ivan's thoughts also. Just wanted to clear that up. Now to have done with the writing:

Chapter Four: Vault (AT LONG LAST!)

            A light breeze ruffled the emerald leaves of the forest, which was shining from the newly fallen rain. The breeze became stronger, more insistent, and water fell from the moving branches and dripped onto the head of one Jupiter Adept.

            Ivan opened his eyes annoyedly and used his sleeve to wipe the water out of his face. This only served to complicate matters as he noticed that everything—his clothes, shoes, even his bag—was damp. In fact the bag was almost dripping.

            "Must have rained harder than I thought it would," he mused as he checked the contents of the bag. Everything inside was mostly dry, except for his clothes and one of his books. Sighing, he used a bit of wind to dry them off.

            Standing and stretching with a yawn, his face became puzzled at the strange lack of feeling in the left side of his face. Shouldn't it hurt like no tomorrow? Passing his hand over the spot, he found all traces of cuts gone, and he grinned. His mystery was not so mysterious after all.

            "Picard, you might want to get up," he said, turning to where he knew his friend was sleeping. However, instead of being met with the sight of the muscular blue-haired Mercury Adept sleeping like a rock, he found himself to be less than a foot away from a fallen tree. It was a rather large tree; the width of its trunk was longer than Picard was tall. And Picard was taller than Garet, who Ivan was used to measuring the height of things by.

            "Picard?" Ivan called a bit louder, realizing that the proximity and enormous size of the tree put it in the position to have squashed, for lack of a better word, his companion. "PICARD?!"

            "No need to shout! I'm awake!" came a muffled reply. "Though I'd rather be…what in the world?! Ivan, there's a TREE here!"

            "I'm aware," Ivan said sardonically. "It is a bit larger than an apple, you know."

            "It's not in a very good place, either."

            "Did it hit you?" Ivan asked, panic suddenly gripping him with icy hands. If something were seriously wrong with the Mercury Adept, Ivan could do little about it. This behemoth of a tree would have crushed—no, shattered—anything caught beneath it. Though it was obvious that Picard was still alive.

            "Missed by inches, actually," Picard answered, and Ivan breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, the trunk missed. The branched end is pinning me down. I think some of the sharper branches are stuck through my cloak and shirt and into the ground."

            "Well…I could try to use the wind to move the tree," Ivan began, thinking carefully. "But it's rather large…"

            "Noticed."

            "Can't you cut your way out?"

            "I would, to tell you the truth, only there's one slight problem."

            "What's that?"

            "Well, actually two problems. One is that the branches pinning my shirt also hold my arms down. And the other is that you have my sword."

            "Then I'll cut you out," Ivan said with a grin, pulling the sword from its sheath and lifting it to waist-height with a groan. "This thing is heavy!"

            "It should be." Ivan ignored this comment and worked at chopping away the leafy branches, unable to see any indication of the location of the Mercury Adept within their confines.

            "It's a good thing you don't wear green clothes!" Ivan pointed out as he chopped deeper into the branches. "It's hard enough finding you as is!" As he said those words, a hand appeared through a clump of leaves, waving about. "Scratch that. Unless there's someone else under that tree I should know about?"

            "Not anyone I remember." Picard said with a weak laugh. Ivan would probably find out anyway, he reasoned, but for now he saw no sense in telling the Jupiter Adept about it. Though it was worse when the tree shifted position due to the lack of weight on the side closest to Ivan. "Uh, Ivan, as much as I enjoy being trapped under this tree," Picard went on in a sarcastic tone, "could you speed it up a bit?"

            "If you carried a lighter sword, I'd be done already," Ivan shot back, straining to lift the blade yet another time. With a cry that was half triumph, half relief, Ivan brought the sword swinging down one final time, slicing through the remainder of the branches trapping Picard. With a resigned sigh, he grabbed an armful of loose branches and pulled at them, trying to free the adept underneath.

            "Can you move yet?" he asked, lifting another armload. Picard wiggled a bit, biting his lip to keep from crying out, then sighed.

"I can, but my lower half can't just get up and walk away and leave my upper half behind." He smiled when he heard Ivan laugh, then cried out and blinked as harsh sunlight hit his eyes.

            "Hey! You are in there!" Ivan said with a smirk, holding out a hand. Picard reached up and took it, pulling himself up, nearly pulling Ivan down in the process. Picard yelped as the stick that had gone through his other hand broke off with a loud snap.

            "YAH!" Ivan exclaimed, eyes widening at the bloody hole in Picard's hand. "You could have said something. Not that I would have been able to do anything about it, per se, but you still could have said something. I mean really, it's not like you didn't notice, you had to have noticed, who wouldn't notice something like that, unless you're really stupid, and if you were then you would be Garet, which you're most definitely not…I'm babbling again, aren't I?"

            "It's not having much of an effect, though," Picard said through gritted teeth. Looking at his torn blue tunic, he ripped a piece off with his free hand and tied it tightly around his wounded one. "Can we just get to Vault?!"

            "Yeah. Ok. Gust!"

            "What is it this time, oh great Master of Winds?" said the Djinni, hovering in front of Ivan. "Picard, you seem to get into so much trouble these days. Is Torrent rubbing off on you?"

            "Heard that," said a voice, but the form that the voice belonged to did not appear.

            "You were meant to. Now…did you want something, Iv'?"

            "Minimum time it would take us to reach Vault with no interruptions of natural or unnatural form, please," Ivan said in a professional voice. Gust, muttering to herself, launched into the air, shaking more water down from the trees onto Ivan's head. A few moments later, she came back down, disappearing before she even reached Ivan's eye level.

            "Minimum five hours, maximum an eternity, or never, take your pick. There's another storm on the way, though I suspect it won't get this far—it feels like it will break over Kalay. Other than that, the path's clear," said Gust's voice. Obviously, the Djinni liked the way a disembodied voice made the two adepts squirm.

            "Then let's get going," Ivan said, stepping from the cover of the forest and holding out his hand as though he held a staff of some sort. "Ack! I forgot! My Zodiac Wand! Picard, did you do something with it?"

            Picard, who was struggling to put his sword back on his belt with just one hand, looked up when he heard his name. "What? Zodiac Wand? It was right next to me…oh no."

            "Oh no? What's oh no?"

            "I can see it from here. Ivan…it's snapped in half."

            "Snapped in half!!!" Ivan yelped, practically flying over to where the top half of the Wand could be seen in the pile of branches he had pulled off Picard. Picking this up and pulling the bottom half from under the tree trunk itself, Ivan let out a cry of sadness.

            It's just a weapon, his mind told him. He promptly told his mind to shut up.

~^~^~^~

            Before they began the rest of their trek to Vault, Ivan cast a final glance back towards Kalay. Black clouds hung menacingly above the town. "Be safe, Sheba," he whispered. The wind stole the words from him, as though they could carry his message all the way back to Kalay.

            Kalay. His home. The whole reason he had left. He remembered when they had taken a boat across the Karagol and had to fight a Kraken. His Djinn had seriously beaten the thing up. Djinn. That word alone brought memories spiraling back. His seven Jupiter Djinn—Gust, Breeze, Zephyr, Smog, Kite, and Luff.

            Frowning, Ivan counted those in his head again. I've forgotten a Djinni, he realized. But which one?

            A tear fell as the name hit him like the tree almost had. Squall. He remembered Squall better than any other Djinni. Squall had been the most free-spirited and lighthearted of all his Djinn. And she had thrown herself in the way of one of the attacks from the Fusion Dragon, that day on Venus Lighthouse. The attack that would have killed Ivan. Instead, it had taken Squall.

            "Ivan?" Picard asked tentatively. When the Jupiter Adept turned around, all trace of his tears was gone.

            "Yeah. I know. Sorry. My mind has that tendency to wander. Jupiter trait."

            They walked in silence for a while, both of their minds on other matters. After an hour of this, the silence shifted from thoughtful to uncomfortable. After three hours, it switched gears from uncomfortable to unbearable. At precisely that moment, Ivan's mind lit on a topic of conversation.

            "So, Picard," he said, and the taller Adept looked down at him, reminding Ivan of how pitifully little he had grown in the past two years. "You never did tell me about your trip from Tolbi."

            "I never planned on it," Picard replied stonily. "And before you start in again, those tactics don't work with a master of the trade."

            "I don't know what you're talking about," Ivan said innocently. "But come on, spill it. Nothing could have been worse then that Kraken!"

            "You sure are persistent. Wait, don't tell me," Picard continued when Ivan opened his mouth to speak. "I know. It's a Jupiter trait."

~^~^~^~

            About two miles past the final bridge, Vault came into view before them. Ivan's whoop of joy and light spring into the air seemed a bit dramatic, when Picard was content with a sigh of relief and soft laughter at Ivan's antics.

            "I am going into that inn, paying for I guess two rooms, and eating a decent meal for once!" Ivan said happily.

            "You, dear boy, are making fun of your own cooking," said Gust, who had been swooping around above them for the past half hour or so.

            "Don't I know it. And we couldn't stop for lunch today, either."

            "Might you wait for me before you eat?" Picard asked. "It seems a bit unfair, you eating and me having a bit of a walk ahead of me."

            "A bit of a walk?! It's like ten feet! But I'll wait anyway, as you knew I would, because, well actually I don't know quite why, but just because." Saying this, and having just entered the village, Ivan and Picard split ways, Ivan heading directly into the inn.

            "Two rooms, please," Ivan said with a smile. It had been a long time since he'd been back here, but the innkeeper obviously still recognized him, flashing a smile his way. Ivan paid and took his stuff up to one of the rooms, sighing as he set both halves of the Zodiac Wand down on the bed.

            "I wonder if the man who runs the weapons shop can fix it," he mused, and, thinking this a good enough idea, picked up the pieces again and left the inn, practically sprinting for the armory.

            Upon entering the single-story building, Ivan handed the halves of the Zodiac Wand to the weapon smith. The man puzzled over them for a few moments, sighed heavily and shook his head. Seeing the crestfallen look on Ivan's face, the man handed the pieces back to him.

            "We have some other weapons that you might look at," he said hopefully, though this kid didn't look like he had enough for even the most inexpensive purchase.

            "What have you got?" Ivan asked dejectedly. He'd likely be leaving the Wand behind, and he did need a weapon. In response the shopkeeper led Ivan to a shelf that had all of their best weapons prominently displayed. When Ivan's eyes caught sight of the staff in the middle of the shelf, he almost gasped aloud.

            The thing was probably about his height, and a deep purplish-black color, and shone as though made of fine glass. More likely dark crystal, his mind reasoned. A shining crescent moon made of some material Ivan couldn't identify topped the staff, but it reflected the light into a rainbow of colors and had a sharp edge. It was obviously not just an ornament or precious artifact.

            "What is that?" Ivan asked, pointing it out. The shopkeeper gasped.

            "That's a Luna Staff," he said, a bewildered look on his face. "Best weapon we've got. Costs 2500 coins."

            "I'll take it," Ivan said decisively, pulling it from the shelf and at the same time leaving the coins on the counter. He was gone before the amazed shopkeeper could even say goodbye.

~^~^~^~

            "How goes it?" Ivan asked later when Picard sat in the seat across from him at a table in the inn.

            "How goes what?" Picard asked, giving Ivan a calculating look. "You're strangely cheerful all of a sudden."

            "Well so are you, more cheerful then I would think, after having had a tree fall on you and remain that way for most of a night." Ivan was about to go on when the food showed up, and both Adepts dug in greedily. "You know, this one-meal-a-day thing we've been doing hasn't exactly been ideal."

            "It's not as though we had any choice in the matter," Picard pointed out, taking a huge bite of his sandwich. "Mrrphm snnrr mildrrgn ffgguur grishmfal."

            "Care to run that by me again?" Ivan asked. Picard swallowed, grinned, and repeated himself.

            "I said, it's not like we were in the position to cook, either."

            "Point."

            The remainder of the day passed uneventfully, though Ivan's mind kept drifting back to Sheba and Kalay.

~^~^~^~

            A sudden gust of wind blew open the door, and Sheba rushed to close and lock it again. The storms were increasing in power and frequency, and she wasn't liking this at all. And, worse yet, Ivan had not returned from wherever he'd gone. In fact she and the twins had been planning to head out and look for him.

            The wind that had come into the house swirled around her for one brief instant, and with it came a soft, saddened voice. Ivan's voice.

            "Stay safe, Sheba."

            Her face set in determination, Sheba gathered the things she would need for a journey. Tomorrow morning, the three of them would leave to find Ivan, no matter what the weather.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Avaria: hope you liked chapter four! Please review w/any comments, suggestions, or anything else you feel like saying.

Kaede: and Alex, GET ISAAC A DRY ERASE BOARD! You're wasting money on all those signs. Or someone is.