Note: I did the bad thing again. I tacked on another part to the previous
chapter, having discovered that it fit better there. *hangs head* Please
go back, take a quick look, and then hop to this one.
I've also fixed a few tiny details, nothing significant unless you're amazingly attentive. And re-edited it a bit for flow =) I'll try not to be too hasty next time, Quantum ^_~
..........................................
Afterwards there were some those asked, If the gods were watching, why didn't they just make it easier? Why not just zap all four of them to Tenjiku? Why make the whole process so unsure, so inefficient?
To which a goddess who seemed to disagree with the idea that clothing had anything to do with concealment replied, Because Fate is determined by Choice. Then, seeing their blank looks, further replied, Yes, you morons, Fate is still absolute. It is not simply a matter of statistics. Once a Choice has been made, Fate is what will happen.
But, spluttered the questioners, what Choices are these?
You'd be surprised, said the heavenly ruler. They can be quite minute.
Wait, said one, If they are constantly making small choices which each affect Fate, wouldn't it be more accurate to say they choose their own fates? Meaning that there is no Fate at all?
And the goddess put a finger coyly to her lips, and smiled.
............................................
The going was slower than he'd thought. He was hurting, and it was dark under the trees. The ground didn't seem to hold even for more than two steps at a time, and every time his foot was snagged by a root or sunk into a small pile of leaves he stumbled slightly. Normally it would have been nothing, but now it it jarred his wound and make his breath hitch with pain. He wasn't sure he was going in a straight line.
It felt like he'd been making his way through the trees forever, but the moon that peeped through the branches was not yet high in the sky. He'd only been gone for a few hours, then. He wondered if the others were on his trail yet, and if they were close. Perhaps they hadn't come at all.
The thought was an unexpected wrench, and distracted him enough so that he nearly tripped over a fallen limb. He still caught it with his toe, and the foot came down hard as he flailed. Pain shot through his guts again, and he gritted his teeth. An alien sense of self-pity stole over him. For a moment he thought about turning around and heading back.
An owl hooted. The sound seemed close, though it was hard to name the direction. He wondered briefly if it was the same one he'd seen earlier. If he shut his eyes he could still see it, broad silent wings blotting out the moon. Something had dangled from its talons, something that was probably being devoured in a tree right about now.
It was having better luck than him, then. It had gotten what it wanted AND it was eating. He scowled, and straightened, starting forward again. He refused to be outdone by some bird. He'd come hunting too, and he wasn't about to go back empty-handed.
It was hard not to feel clumsy, though. He was making noise as he moved through the trees, and each snap and rustle made him jumpy. Keeping his eyes on the ground, he tried to walk more carefully. The trouble was focusing, since part of him kept wanting to crane his neck to look for enemies. Remembering what Hakkai had said, he compromised and let his ears stand guard. There weren't any songbirds at night, but if the crickets and frogs shut up all of a sudden, he wanted to know.
Only ten minutes had passed when he caught the sound of rushing water. He followed it, treading cautiously until he could make out a place ahead where the trees grew thin. A dozen yards more and he was there, looking down at the swift-flowing creek.
He'd crossed at a broad shallow point last time, but here it seemed to run narrower. He wondered if it got deep. He didn't know if he could swim. There were so many things he seemed to have forgotten about himself.
The water bubbled by, carrying moonlight, and refused to tell him its depth. Probably full of fish, he thought wistfully. If only they weren't in such a hurry to get West, perhaps they could have stayed to find out. It felt like they'd been through hundreds of towns already. But they never stayed long enough to see much more than the inn. Inns, he found after a while, all started to look the same. And the food they served for the most part tasted the same; Houmei's cooking had been the one marvelous, memorable exception. Despite Gojyo's opinion, he could tell the difference between good and bad meatbuns. It was partly why he'd let the stableboy take one.
The shock of cold water brought him back to the moment. The current was strong, and tugged at his legs as he waded out. He was in to his knees, and then his hips. For a moment he almost lost his footing, and then abruptly the water grew shallow again, and he was squelching onto the other side. He shivered, and decided that being wet at night, with no strong sun to dry him out, was less fun than it was in the day. The water had stopped just short of the hot ache of his wound, so it felt as if he were burning on top and freezing below.
He followed the streambed, looking for a bigger clearing downstream. When he'd fretted over not knowing where their attackers had gone, Hakkai had told him that they were most likely camped somewhere downstream. You didn't make your camp too far away when you planned an ambush, he said, just in case you had to get there in a hurry. But you didn't make it too close, either, just in case things went awry.
Why downstream, he'd asked. Why not just deeper in the forest? His older friend had begun to assume an instructive air. Most experienced travelers camped in a clearing, he explained, because it made it easier to see anyone coming, and kept you away from wild animals. And it was easier to make camp near fresh water, for drinking and cooking and washing and getting rid of waste.
It was simple when Hakkai put it that way. Hakkai was smart, and best of all, he explained, unlike Sanzo. Sanzo just said things he couldn't understand and then hit him when he asked. Hakkai was a good teacher. He'd said as much, but the man had first looked startled, and then shook his head. Before he could ask about it the stupid kappa had barged into their conversation, saying that it was only because Goku was a dumb ape that everyone around him seemed smart. That had tipped off another battle until Hakkai reminded him gently that Sanzo was sleeping next door.
A branch whipped him across the face, and he bit off a cry of annoyance. He should have watched where he was going, but it was hard to concentrate on _here_ when he really wanted to be _there_. He didn't have to be there, he told himself. He knew Sanzo was sleeping, he'd come in and looked at his sleeping face, which sometimes looked so different from his waking one.
Not this time, though. Even asleep he looked like he was in pain. Sanzo was going to be fine, Hakkai had said so. Even Gojyo said that Sanzo was as lucky as a virgin gambler, and was far too mean to make anyone's life easier by dying. But every time something like this happened, and it happened far too often, his heart lurched in his chest. What if one day Sanzo never woke up?
He didn't like to think about it, could never imagine it, really. It was like trying to hold on to a greased boulder. It always slipped out of his mind's grasp, pulled down by its own weight. He would never let anything happen, as long as he was there. And maybe, if he did this right, then Sanzo would stop being mad, would decide it was ok to keep him. He'd meant what he said. He just had to prove it.
And all of a sudden, as if the gods had heard him, the camp was there, around a bend. It wasn't a large clearing, but it was a spot on the bank where the trees were pushed back several feet, didn't dip their gnarly roots right into the water. There had been a fire but it was long gone, and so there was no light or smoke. There was just suddenly body-shaped masses that were wrapped in blankets, and a second look revealed those bodies to have pointed ears. He'd nearly stepped on the closest one.
He hesistated. It seemed stupid, after the attempt at stealth, to go and wake them up. Yet the idea of attacking them in their sleep was somehow revolting. He had just decided to hit one, but not too hard, when it occurred to him that there were only three of them. Far fewer than he'd expected.
The owl hooted again and something crashed into his back, knocked him to the ground with an impact that left him stunned and breathless. He tasted blood and dirt in his mouth, and thrashed, trying to dislodge it, until he felt the cold prick of a dagger just under his ear, the tip digging into the skin.
"Don't you people know anything?" the weight on his back asked. "We sleep in the trees."
..............................................
They'd left Jeep on the road and were trekking through the woods now.
"This is my fault," Hakkai said. He's already said it about fifteen times, but he knew that Hakkai only did it beause each time he said it it felt truer than the last. Nevertheless, he rolled his eyes.
"It is not your bloody damn fault and if you say that one more time I'll hit you."
The other man shut up, and he regretted putting it that way because now Hakkai would just go on saying the words in his head. "Look, just because you told him where he MIGHT be able to find the camp, does not mean that you could figure out with your genius brain that he was going to do something this incredibly stupid and dangerous. I was there and I didn't even notice you telling him, ok?"
"We've got to go faster," he got for his pains.
He hoped on several levels that Goku really was all right, that he'd never find the camp, that he'd somehow manage not to get lost, that he'd kill them all singlehandedly and come back without a scratch. Because if the ape had really gone and gotten himself killed, there was going to be no living with the two of them. Maybe even with the three of them. Hells, he might as well just kill himself too and spare himself all the moping.
Ok, that's enough of that, he thought, and pulled himself up sharply. Despite everything that had happened to him so far, at bottom he was an optimist, if only out of the quasi-belief that thinking bad things made them more likely to come true. Plus, it spoiled his mood.
"I need a cigarette," he half-moaned, half-muttered. "Look, you're taking this way too seriously. This is Goku we're talking about, remember? He can kick Kougaiji's ass in combat, he's probably killed more youkai than you."
"More than one thousand?"
In the darkness, where he couldn't see the smile, the bitterness came through more clearly. His mouth twisted. "My point was, Goku can handle himself."
"Normally," and even Hakkai was beginning to pant with the exertion of moving through the woods, half-blind. "But now he's wounded and anxious and probably tired--"
"--you forgot hungry--"
"--and hungry, and these youkai are apparently very good at moving quietly through trees. One was able to surprise Sanzo, even. And this is a forest."
"I'd noticed." He had to admit, it was worrying. You had to get up pretty damn early to get a jump on the monk, he was paranoid that way. And the thing about his paranoia was, most of the time, it was right. The encounter with Kami-sama had royally fucked with all their heads, and even now they were jumping at shadows, worried that things would go wrong--not little things like getting clawed in an ambush, but really big things. Like the quest.
He'd put it down to nerves, the way Sanzo had acted two mornings ago. But now it was having repercussions, repercussions that left him on a wild-ape chase through the woods, next to a bitter Hakkai. He sorted through his stock of insults, trying to figure out which ones to use on the ape when they finally caught up, and decided that the occasion merited an entirely new one, or three.
Eventually they came to the stream. The cold moonlight made it look as if it were full of tiny silver fish. When they had crossed it he turned to ask, "Now what?"
His friend was already walking. "Now we go downstream."
"Down? Why not up?"
"Up is closer to the road. They would have been trying to get away from us." Hakkai's voice was flat, dispassionate, like the moonlight.
An owl hooted overhead. The sound was spooky and surprisingly loud. He felt like a chill go through him that had nothing to do with the water or the night breeze. He quickened his stride to catch up, and didn't complain at the pace. He also did his best to ignore the nagging sense that, for the third time in two days, he was going to be too late.
..........................................
He gritted his teeth, knowing that if he moved, the steel would go through his skin and right into his brain. The knowledge was as automatic as breathing. Stupid, he thought inside, stupid, stupid. Gojyo's right, you really are a dumb ape. Of course they had sentries posted.
"Well, now, what shall we do with you, now that you're here?" There was something terribly off about the voice. It didn't just talk, it sing- songed. Other shapes were dropping out of the trees now, he could feel them at the very edge of his vision, which was currently stuck staring at the dirt under his nose.
"Let me go and fight fair," he snarled, "Quit it with this stupid ambushing stuff!"
The voice sounded amused. "Give up the only tactical advantage we have? I don't think so. We were hidden, and all focused on one target, and still he managed to wound three of us, and the rest of you killed one. You're bigger, and stronger, but we've still got the trees." The point pressed a little harder. He could feel it drawing blood and fought the urge to squirm. "That's why we were sent. Because this is our territory."
His attacker rapped out something in a harsh chatter and the other shapes clustered near. He saw movement from those on the ground, and blurted, "How come those three weren't in the trees?"
"Because your leader shot them, of course," and something hit him so hard he blacked out.
.................................................
tbc
Does anyone think I'm writing Goku OOC? Too intelligent? Too talkative? Not hungry enough, what? Just let me know...I'll get better at this, I swear.
Yes. Short chapter, but quick update, so don't hit me *cringe* I'm risking life and limb staying up this late, but I feel like the fic is on a roll and I'd like to get to the good part, so please, please, please be appreciative and review =)
Ok. Slight warning. The monkey's gonna feel some pain in the next part. I have to pack, and I don't like that, and he's going to suffer my angst. That's also why the next update might take a few days. Hope that's ok with you all.
Sorry, I'll thank Ch. 4 reviewers in my next part, ok? It's just too damn late tonight. ^^;;
~Aki
I've also fixed a few tiny details, nothing significant unless you're amazingly attentive. And re-edited it a bit for flow =) I'll try not to be too hasty next time, Quantum ^_~
..........................................
Afterwards there were some those asked, If the gods were watching, why didn't they just make it easier? Why not just zap all four of them to Tenjiku? Why make the whole process so unsure, so inefficient?
To which a goddess who seemed to disagree with the idea that clothing had anything to do with concealment replied, Because Fate is determined by Choice. Then, seeing their blank looks, further replied, Yes, you morons, Fate is still absolute. It is not simply a matter of statistics. Once a Choice has been made, Fate is what will happen.
But, spluttered the questioners, what Choices are these?
You'd be surprised, said the heavenly ruler. They can be quite minute.
Wait, said one, If they are constantly making small choices which each affect Fate, wouldn't it be more accurate to say they choose their own fates? Meaning that there is no Fate at all?
And the goddess put a finger coyly to her lips, and smiled.
............................................
The going was slower than he'd thought. He was hurting, and it was dark under the trees. The ground didn't seem to hold even for more than two steps at a time, and every time his foot was snagged by a root or sunk into a small pile of leaves he stumbled slightly. Normally it would have been nothing, but now it it jarred his wound and make his breath hitch with pain. He wasn't sure he was going in a straight line.
It felt like he'd been making his way through the trees forever, but the moon that peeped through the branches was not yet high in the sky. He'd only been gone for a few hours, then. He wondered if the others were on his trail yet, and if they were close. Perhaps they hadn't come at all.
The thought was an unexpected wrench, and distracted him enough so that he nearly tripped over a fallen limb. He still caught it with his toe, and the foot came down hard as he flailed. Pain shot through his guts again, and he gritted his teeth. An alien sense of self-pity stole over him. For a moment he thought about turning around and heading back.
An owl hooted. The sound seemed close, though it was hard to name the direction. He wondered briefly if it was the same one he'd seen earlier. If he shut his eyes he could still see it, broad silent wings blotting out the moon. Something had dangled from its talons, something that was probably being devoured in a tree right about now.
It was having better luck than him, then. It had gotten what it wanted AND it was eating. He scowled, and straightened, starting forward again. He refused to be outdone by some bird. He'd come hunting too, and he wasn't about to go back empty-handed.
It was hard not to feel clumsy, though. He was making noise as he moved through the trees, and each snap and rustle made him jumpy. Keeping his eyes on the ground, he tried to walk more carefully. The trouble was focusing, since part of him kept wanting to crane his neck to look for enemies. Remembering what Hakkai had said, he compromised and let his ears stand guard. There weren't any songbirds at night, but if the crickets and frogs shut up all of a sudden, he wanted to know.
Only ten minutes had passed when he caught the sound of rushing water. He followed it, treading cautiously until he could make out a place ahead where the trees grew thin. A dozen yards more and he was there, looking down at the swift-flowing creek.
He'd crossed at a broad shallow point last time, but here it seemed to run narrower. He wondered if it got deep. He didn't know if he could swim. There were so many things he seemed to have forgotten about himself.
The water bubbled by, carrying moonlight, and refused to tell him its depth. Probably full of fish, he thought wistfully. If only they weren't in such a hurry to get West, perhaps they could have stayed to find out. It felt like they'd been through hundreds of towns already. But they never stayed long enough to see much more than the inn. Inns, he found after a while, all started to look the same. And the food they served for the most part tasted the same; Houmei's cooking had been the one marvelous, memorable exception. Despite Gojyo's opinion, he could tell the difference between good and bad meatbuns. It was partly why he'd let the stableboy take one.
The shock of cold water brought him back to the moment. The current was strong, and tugged at his legs as he waded out. He was in to his knees, and then his hips. For a moment he almost lost his footing, and then abruptly the water grew shallow again, and he was squelching onto the other side. He shivered, and decided that being wet at night, with no strong sun to dry him out, was less fun than it was in the day. The water had stopped just short of the hot ache of his wound, so it felt as if he were burning on top and freezing below.
He followed the streambed, looking for a bigger clearing downstream. When he'd fretted over not knowing where their attackers had gone, Hakkai had told him that they were most likely camped somewhere downstream. You didn't make your camp too far away when you planned an ambush, he said, just in case you had to get there in a hurry. But you didn't make it too close, either, just in case things went awry.
Why downstream, he'd asked. Why not just deeper in the forest? His older friend had begun to assume an instructive air. Most experienced travelers camped in a clearing, he explained, because it made it easier to see anyone coming, and kept you away from wild animals. And it was easier to make camp near fresh water, for drinking and cooking and washing and getting rid of waste.
It was simple when Hakkai put it that way. Hakkai was smart, and best of all, he explained, unlike Sanzo. Sanzo just said things he couldn't understand and then hit him when he asked. Hakkai was a good teacher. He'd said as much, but the man had first looked startled, and then shook his head. Before he could ask about it the stupid kappa had barged into their conversation, saying that it was only because Goku was a dumb ape that everyone around him seemed smart. That had tipped off another battle until Hakkai reminded him gently that Sanzo was sleeping next door.
A branch whipped him across the face, and he bit off a cry of annoyance. He should have watched where he was going, but it was hard to concentrate on _here_ when he really wanted to be _there_. He didn't have to be there, he told himself. He knew Sanzo was sleeping, he'd come in and looked at his sleeping face, which sometimes looked so different from his waking one.
Not this time, though. Even asleep he looked like he was in pain. Sanzo was going to be fine, Hakkai had said so. Even Gojyo said that Sanzo was as lucky as a virgin gambler, and was far too mean to make anyone's life easier by dying. But every time something like this happened, and it happened far too often, his heart lurched in his chest. What if one day Sanzo never woke up?
He didn't like to think about it, could never imagine it, really. It was like trying to hold on to a greased boulder. It always slipped out of his mind's grasp, pulled down by its own weight. He would never let anything happen, as long as he was there. And maybe, if he did this right, then Sanzo would stop being mad, would decide it was ok to keep him. He'd meant what he said. He just had to prove it.
And all of a sudden, as if the gods had heard him, the camp was there, around a bend. It wasn't a large clearing, but it was a spot on the bank where the trees were pushed back several feet, didn't dip their gnarly roots right into the water. There had been a fire but it was long gone, and so there was no light or smoke. There was just suddenly body-shaped masses that were wrapped in blankets, and a second look revealed those bodies to have pointed ears. He'd nearly stepped on the closest one.
He hesistated. It seemed stupid, after the attempt at stealth, to go and wake them up. Yet the idea of attacking them in their sleep was somehow revolting. He had just decided to hit one, but not too hard, when it occurred to him that there were only three of them. Far fewer than he'd expected.
The owl hooted again and something crashed into his back, knocked him to the ground with an impact that left him stunned and breathless. He tasted blood and dirt in his mouth, and thrashed, trying to dislodge it, until he felt the cold prick of a dagger just under his ear, the tip digging into the skin.
"Don't you people know anything?" the weight on his back asked. "We sleep in the trees."
..............................................
They'd left Jeep on the road and were trekking through the woods now.
"This is my fault," Hakkai said. He's already said it about fifteen times, but he knew that Hakkai only did it beause each time he said it it felt truer than the last. Nevertheless, he rolled his eyes.
"It is not your bloody damn fault and if you say that one more time I'll hit you."
The other man shut up, and he regretted putting it that way because now Hakkai would just go on saying the words in his head. "Look, just because you told him where he MIGHT be able to find the camp, does not mean that you could figure out with your genius brain that he was going to do something this incredibly stupid and dangerous. I was there and I didn't even notice you telling him, ok?"
"We've got to go faster," he got for his pains.
He hoped on several levels that Goku really was all right, that he'd never find the camp, that he'd somehow manage not to get lost, that he'd kill them all singlehandedly and come back without a scratch. Because if the ape had really gone and gotten himself killed, there was going to be no living with the two of them. Maybe even with the three of them. Hells, he might as well just kill himself too and spare himself all the moping.
Ok, that's enough of that, he thought, and pulled himself up sharply. Despite everything that had happened to him so far, at bottom he was an optimist, if only out of the quasi-belief that thinking bad things made them more likely to come true. Plus, it spoiled his mood.
"I need a cigarette," he half-moaned, half-muttered. "Look, you're taking this way too seriously. This is Goku we're talking about, remember? He can kick Kougaiji's ass in combat, he's probably killed more youkai than you."
"More than one thousand?"
In the darkness, where he couldn't see the smile, the bitterness came through more clearly. His mouth twisted. "My point was, Goku can handle himself."
"Normally," and even Hakkai was beginning to pant with the exertion of moving through the woods, half-blind. "But now he's wounded and anxious and probably tired--"
"--you forgot hungry--"
"--and hungry, and these youkai are apparently very good at moving quietly through trees. One was able to surprise Sanzo, even. And this is a forest."
"I'd noticed." He had to admit, it was worrying. You had to get up pretty damn early to get a jump on the monk, he was paranoid that way. And the thing about his paranoia was, most of the time, it was right. The encounter with Kami-sama had royally fucked with all their heads, and even now they were jumping at shadows, worried that things would go wrong--not little things like getting clawed in an ambush, but really big things. Like the quest.
He'd put it down to nerves, the way Sanzo had acted two mornings ago. But now it was having repercussions, repercussions that left him on a wild-ape chase through the woods, next to a bitter Hakkai. He sorted through his stock of insults, trying to figure out which ones to use on the ape when they finally caught up, and decided that the occasion merited an entirely new one, or three.
Eventually they came to the stream. The cold moonlight made it look as if it were full of tiny silver fish. When they had crossed it he turned to ask, "Now what?"
His friend was already walking. "Now we go downstream."
"Down? Why not up?"
"Up is closer to the road. They would have been trying to get away from us." Hakkai's voice was flat, dispassionate, like the moonlight.
An owl hooted overhead. The sound was spooky and surprisingly loud. He felt like a chill go through him that had nothing to do with the water or the night breeze. He quickened his stride to catch up, and didn't complain at the pace. He also did his best to ignore the nagging sense that, for the third time in two days, he was going to be too late.
..........................................
He gritted his teeth, knowing that if he moved, the steel would go through his skin and right into his brain. The knowledge was as automatic as breathing. Stupid, he thought inside, stupid, stupid. Gojyo's right, you really are a dumb ape. Of course they had sentries posted.
"Well, now, what shall we do with you, now that you're here?" There was something terribly off about the voice. It didn't just talk, it sing- songed. Other shapes were dropping out of the trees now, he could feel them at the very edge of his vision, which was currently stuck staring at the dirt under his nose.
"Let me go and fight fair," he snarled, "Quit it with this stupid ambushing stuff!"
The voice sounded amused. "Give up the only tactical advantage we have? I don't think so. We were hidden, and all focused on one target, and still he managed to wound three of us, and the rest of you killed one. You're bigger, and stronger, but we've still got the trees." The point pressed a little harder. He could feel it drawing blood and fought the urge to squirm. "That's why we were sent. Because this is our territory."
His attacker rapped out something in a harsh chatter and the other shapes clustered near. He saw movement from those on the ground, and blurted, "How come those three weren't in the trees?"
"Because your leader shot them, of course," and something hit him so hard he blacked out.
.................................................
tbc
Does anyone think I'm writing Goku OOC? Too intelligent? Too talkative? Not hungry enough, what? Just let me know...I'll get better at this, I swear.
Yes. Short chapter, but quick update, so don't hit me *cringe* I'm risking life and limb staying up this late, but I feel like the fic is on a roll and I'd like to get to the good part, so please, please, please be appreciative and review =)
Ok. Slight warning. The monkey's gonna feel some pain in the next part. I have to pack, and I don't like that, and he's going to suffer my angst. That's also why the next update might take a few days. Hope that's ok with you all.
Sorry, I'll thank Ch. 4 reviewers in my next part, ok? It's just too damn late tonight. ^^;;
~Aki