Any errors are because computers suck. I sent it through M-Word's spell check, but I didn't ever get the chance to reread it, so… Whatever. Anyway, I don't have time now cuz I'm expecting a phone call from my best friend cuz her b-day is Sunday and I'm going to her house. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy.
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CHAPTER FIVE
In which Bishie Challenge #2 takes place and Shadow pops pills
Hiei and Saitou had been on the tropical island in 2015 with green penguins and pink water for one full day already. They hadn't found the slightest trace of a silver medallion with a ten-point star and a ruby embedded in the center. However, they had managed to kill and eat one of the tropical penguins. They realized that penguin meat tasted bit like a mixture between fish and beef. Not chicken. Actually, if you want the honest truth, it tasted exactly like tropical penguin meat.
Anyway, over this full 24-hour period, they had decided that there was NO WAY IN HELL this was really a Caribbean island, even in 2015. They had a good bit of evidence. First, they'd seen fluorescent yellow dolphins. If that wasn't enough, these dolphins spoke. Yes, they spoke in perfectly understandable Japanese. Well, all they'd said to the two guys was, "Hello and welcome to the universe," or something to that effect. Of course, when a pod of fluorescent yellow dolphins swim by and welcome you to the universe, you have to suspect something's up. That is... if you haven't already suspected something because of green fanged penguins and pink water.
The second thing was the fact that they had seen a man float by on a boat shaped like a smoothie, doing the Mexican hat dance. He waved to them and continued dancing. However, he slipped and fell in the ocean, and was promptly attacked by a ginormous mob of killer... oranges... At least... they looked like oranges... they were orange spheres... with... eyes... and very sharp... teeth.
So anyway... The two of them had a bit of a problem. First, they both thought they were losing their minds. Second, they couldn't touch dry land without being attacked by the penguins. Third, they had no clue where they could look for the medallion. So they were sitting in the shallows by the island, the pink water gently lapping at them, completely oblivious to anything else except the dancing sea star in front of them.
"Saitou..." Hiei said finally.
"Hn?"
"I'm afraid I'm going to lose my temper and my mind if I don't see something normal at some point in the near future."
"Hai."
"I mean... sand. The sand is normal. The tree is normal. But the tree is surrounded by GREEN PENGUINS. The water looks like pink lemonade. You know what? I'm going swimming."
"Fine."
Hiei stood up, walked to the drop-off, and let himself fall into the water. To anybody who didn't know, they'd have thought he had dropped dead. Saitou had barely noticed except for the splash and the increase in the little waves. He was still focused on the dancing sea star, which, I seem to have neglected to mention, was black with red eyes.
Underwater, Hiei swam along the bottom, searching for the medallion. He seriously doubted he'd find it, but really he had nothing better to do. He was so busy looking from side to side that he didn't look ahead, and was promptly eaten by a giant clam. I mean a GIANT clam. You could have fit a horse trailer in this baby!
Inside, though it was rather dark, Hiei had good enough vision to see, in the center of the clam, a sparkling silver medallion. His jaw would have dropped, but he didn't feel like having a mouthful of water and being unable to surface to spit it out. He grabbed the medallion and went about searching for an exit.
He was quickly running out of breath. His lungs hurt. Finally, giving up on the idea of finding an exit, since apparently there was none, he decided he'd have to make one. He heated up the water inside the clam. It started boiling. The clam opened and he shot out so fast it was even faster than he normally was. He shot a jet of boiling pink water at the clam and it blew up. Then, he pushed off from the bottom of the ocean as hard as he could and rocketed towards the surface.
He surfaced a few feet away from Saitou, gasping for breath, blue in the face, but victorious, for the engraved silver medallion with the ruby in the center was firmly grasped in his right hand.
"What took you so long? I almost got worried," Saitou called. Hiei started towards him.
"This," he said, still panting slightly. He showed Saitou the medallion.
"You found it?! Where?"
"In a clam."
"A clam," Saitou stated dryly.
"Yes."
"You're serious?"
"Yes."
"What kind of clam? Fangs? Fluorescent orange? Did it have eyes and a smiley face?"
"It was about 30 feet in diameter, and its shell was more of a red than an orange, really," Hiei said, thinking back to the clam's last moments before he blew it up. "It actually doesn't matter in the least at the moment. It's dead. And if those girls don't get us out of here soon, they'll be joining it."
A voice appeared. Or... whatever voices do.
"Congratulations! Your punishment has been paid."
A second later, Hiei and Saitou were back in the white room. It seemed really dark in there compared with the constant (yes, constant, 24-hour) sunlight on the island. Of course, they were the only ones in the room. Hiei promptly passed out for some strange unknown reason. Probably a bit of a delayed reaction from having the chemical levels in his body get all jumbled like they do when you rise to fast from diving. Saitou looked down at him, completely emotionless, merely quirking an eyebrow and looking away. So cold... Heartless bastard.
"Oh God... Hiei!"
Kurama appeared in the room, along with his fanatic, Sano and his fanatic, and Hiei and Saitou's fanatics.
"Hey Saitou. Have fun?" Sano taunted. The police officer resisted the urge to lunge at Sanosuke, rip out his heart, and feed it to him through his nose.
Not-so-exactly-meanwhile, in the real world... Did I say that already once?
Well, over the day that Hiei and Saitou had spent in the shallow water around that island, Shadow and Eclipse had spent playing chess and watching cheesy Sci-Fi movies.
Koenma had found a strange trace of a temporal anomaly, which he was looking into. So far, all he'd realized was that it went from 2010 to 2004 to 2010 to 1880 to 2010 to a long long time ago, to some point at some time on another planet.
Really, all he'd decided was that somebody was messing with time and they had to be stopped. He also decided that these time messer-uppers were the ones who'd taken Hiei and the other two. He came to Shadow's house and told her his theory. She reacted quite... loudly.
"WHAT?! YOU'RE KIDDING ME? TIME TRAVEL? THEY'RE IN 2010?!"
"Yes, that's how it seems."
"Oi oi oi oi oi oi oi oi oi oi. OI."
"Really?"
"Yes, quite. So what are we gonna do about it?"
"What?"
"Time travel."
"We're gonna get a time machine or make a time portal. Then voila, we will go into the future and get back your precious Hiei."
"YAY! Thank you 8 billion times over!"
"Sure, whatever."
"When can we go?"
"Once I have a time portal set up and stabilized and safe!" Koenma snapped. Shadow cowered.
"Yes, sir, Koenma-sama."
With that, Koenma went POOF. Shadow stared at the spot he'd been. Slowly, she turned to Eclipse.
"THEY'RE IN THE FUTURE?!"
Hiei came to and found himself back in his cell in the round room. He had a throbbing headache, his clothes were still rather damp, but otherwise he was fine. He sat up.
"Oh, you're awake!" Kurama exclaimed. "How do you feel?"
"My head is pounding... It feels like I got run over by a bus."
"... Well, I suppose that's to be expected. You were pretty screwed up from your little trip..."
"Oh yeah? And why didn't Saitou pass out?"
"He's not the one who shot up from the bottom of the water so fast he nearly parted the sea."
"What? Wait. How did you..."
"The girls had a screen showing you guys the entire time."
"You're kidding."
"Nope. It was visual only... no audio, so if you were talking about murdering something, we wouldn't know."
"Oh. So you know about the pink water? And the green penguins... The guy on a smoothie doing the Mexican hat dance... And the talking dolphins?"
"I'm surprised you didn't lose any shred of sanity you had left."
"I felt like I was trapped inside Shadow's mind."
"Oh. That's scary."
"Yes it is. Only... I suppose if I'd been in her mind there would have been a bit more blood and gore, and a few weasels or three."
"Yeah."
Meanwhile, the other occupants of the room were staring at the two friends like they were off their cake.
"Weasels?" Sano ventured to ask.
"Shadow has about two dozen flesh-eating weasels in a spare room across the hall from her bedroom," Kurama explained. "She feeds door-to-door salesmen to them."
"Okay... Remind me to run away at top speed if I ever see her."
"Sometimes I regret not doing that myself," Hiei muttered.
Nobody said much of anything the rest of that day.
I am aware I've been leaving out the Inuyasha and Trigun characters in this, for which I am sorry... I'll try to fit them in more... later...
Meanwhile... at Shadow's house of three thousand insanities.
"Check mate," Shadow said dryly. Eclipse threw a pawn at her.
"You didn't even move yet!"
"I always hated chess."
"Live with it. I'm not giving up my glorious winning streak."
"I saw a cartoon once, where this old guy was playing chess with himself. He'd move a piece, get up and take off his glasses, walk to the other side of the table, and move an opponent piece, and then he went back and put on his glasses, and he just kept doing that... It was odd."
"What are you implying? That I should play chess with myself?"
"Exactly! Ta-ta!" Shadow chirped. She walked away, leaving Eclipse sitting there fuming. Suddenly, Koenma appeared.
"I have news," he said. Shadow nearly jumped out of her skin, but settled for a good yell.
"DON'T DO THAT!!!"
"Okay, okay... sheesh. Anyway... I discovered that Yusuke and the others are not the only ones missing. Don't ask me how I know this. I'm the great Koenma, after all... But it seems that ten other men have gone missing from their various time periods. They're all in 2010."
"And why are they in 2010? Where? Hmmm? Answer me that!"
"Well obviously somebody from that time period brought them there. And before you ask who or why, I don't know. The only way to find out would be to go to 2010 and locate them."
"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo," Shadow said. Koenma and Eclipse looked at her funny. Eclipse opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Shadow said, "Let's go."
"Go?"
"Yes. To 2010. Pack your bags, we're forming a rescue team!" Shadow cheered. "Wooooooooooooooohooooooooooo!" She ran off up the stairs, reappearing a second later with her katana and a bottle of caffeine pills.
"Shadow, what--"
"I'm ready to go! Let's go!"
"Shadow!"
"Come on!"
"SHADOW LISTEN TO ME!"
Shadow closed her mouth and looked at Koenma politely. "Yessir?"
"Shadow, as of right now, I have no ways to get to 2010. It's time travel, you know. Most people don't keep time machines in their garage."
"I don't have a garage, but I think there's a space/time anomaly in the wall of the weasel's room," Shadow said, shrugging.
"That's doing us a lot of good," Eclipse said sarcastically. "We can't get in that room without sacrificing half the population of Tokyo to those damn bloodsuckers you've got in there!"
Shadow's eyes lit up and she ran out the door.
"Where's she going?" Koenma asked. Eclipse shrugged. They went to the window and watched Shadow as she popped a few caffeine pills and leapt off the porch, tearing across the yard towards a man pushing a baby carriage, leading his pregnant wife who had two kids beside her, on holding each arm.
"Oh CRAP!" Eclipse yelled. She yanked open the door, knocking Koenma backwards, and shot across the yard so fast she was almost nothing more than a blur. She made a flying tackle and slammed into Shadow's back, plowing her into the pavement of the road. The family on the sidewalk stared as Shadow had her arms tied behind her back, a wad of cloth shoved in her mouth, her legs tied together, and was dragged, kicking and gagging on cloth in a futile attempt to scream, back into her house, mercilessly bouncing off the steps up to the porch and slammed into the door frame on the way in. The father then turned to his kids.
"And that is how you identify lunatics. Come along. We've got more research to do if we're going to make that 'Field Guide to Humans.'"
Meanwhile, inside, Shadow had the cloth taken out of her mouth, but she wasn't untied. She struggled and screamed and tried to bite off Koenma's feet, but all the accomplished was a bucket of cold water poured over her face, followed by more screaming.
"I can fix this," Koenma said, pulling a needle and a small bottle out of one of his pockets.
"What's that?" Shadow and Eclipse asked simultaneously.
"Well, I wouldn't call it a poison... It's a kind of tranquilizer that only stops working if you use the antidote."
Shadow's reaction was, "EEP."
Eclipse's reaction was, "Cool!!"
"Shall I use it on you, Shadow?"
Shadow paused. "May you never forget the blessings of foreign cheese, weasels, and freeze-dried squids. The God of Green Bananas is smiling down upon you." She gave them a stupid smile, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp.
"What the...?"
A second later, Shadow was lying there snoring lightly. Eclipse and Koenma barely saved themselves from falling over, and settled for sweat drops and astonished looks of pure confusion.
"I was thinking..."
Wolfwood broke the dead silence that had settled over the room. Everybody looked at him with bored, emotionless eyes, deciding that if he was going to break the silence, he'd better have a good reason.
"...What good are we doing to those girls? We just sit in this room all day... They've only given us one of those stupid challenges, so what's the point of us being here?"
"There is no point," Inuyasha said.
"They're fanatics. Fanatics are like that. They completely go nuts if they're even in the same room with their precious 'bishies.' They don't realize it's completely pointless. They aren't very focused on their objective, obviously..." Hiei drawled.
"Oh."
Silence again. They sat in silence for another hour before, without any warning at all, a voice exploded into the room.
"HI CUTIES!!!"
The guys all jumped out of their skins.
"DON'T DO THAT!" Hiei screamed.
"It's time for your next challenge! I know, we haven't been keeping to our schedule, but that little punishment kind of put us off a little. Well, here goes!"
The guys were all transported into the white room, which dematerialized around them as it had the first time. They ended up standing in knee-deep snow.
"Snow," Yusuke said dryly, poking it. It was soft, fluffy, almost-two-feet-deep snow. He drew an angry Wal-Mart-style smiley face in it.
"Okay... Snow," Sano said dryly. "Lots and lots of it. What's the point?"
"There probably isn't one, as usual," Kurama said dryly.
"Okay, boys! If you didn't notice, this is a maze," the girl's voice said. The guys looked at each other, confused. How was miles and miles of snow a maze?
"No it's not," Inuyasha finally said. "What the heck kind of maze is it?! There's no paths!"
"Huh?" the girl said. "Oh! Okay..." A few seconds later, 20-foot-high bright pink barriers appeared. Saitou grimaced.
"Pink," he spat.
"Hai. Pink. Live with it. Now, I'm sure you all know the objective of a maze, right? Find the end. When you reach then end, you'll find a colored door. Go inside. Once you're inside the room, you'll find a key the same color as the door you entered. That key will be important to your next challenge, so if you don't finish the maze, you won't be able to go to the next challenge, and will therefore be disqualified. Okay, one person per entrance. You're also going to be judged by how fast you solve the maze. That, too, will be important to your next challenge. Ready?" the girl said. "Take your positions."
"Hey lady, hang on a second!" Sano yelled.
"Yes dear?"
Sano flinched at being called dear. "Um... Yeah, if you didn't notice, it's kind of cold. What the heck are you gonna do if we get frostbite or something while we're trying to solve your stupid maze?!"
"Oh, silly Sanosuke. There's a cure for frostbite now!"
"Oro?!"
"That's my line," Kenshin whispered.
"No more procrastination!" the girl chirped, suddenly serious.
"Yeah. We might freeze to death if we stand here any more," Wolfwood grumbled.
"Take your places!"
Everybody chose an entrance.
"Go!"
At first, the guys just walked along shivering, but after a while they got so cold they ran to keep warm. Of course, that had been the genius fanatic retard girls' intentions from the first place. Make it so cold they had to run to keep warm, and that way they wouldn't just stand there and refuse to participate in the challenge.
Finally, about 45 minutes later, the first person reached the end of their maze.
Kurama stood in front of a blue door. He grabbed the knob and turned, pushing the door open and closing it behind himself when he got inside. TThe room was nice and warm, a drastic change from the temperatures outside, that had to be at least below 0 (F). Now, in this room, it was at least 70. Kurama was sure that even if the room had been 20 degrees, it would have felt about 100 degrees warmer that it was outside in the wind and snow.
By the time he'd warmed up and gotten his key from the table in the center of the room, Vash, Miroku, Inuyasha, Saitou, Kenshin, and Hiko were all in the room. Inuyasha and Miroku, being barefooted (or wearing sandals), were probably the coldest of them all. They sat there shivering for at least twenty minutes before even considering getting up. By then, Aoshi, Sesshoumaru, Wolfwood, Sano, and Yusuke had all arrived. Kurama looked around. One key remained on the center table, and he noticed somebody was missing.
"Where's Hiei?" he asked suddenly. Everybody looked around.
"Hiei's last? He's got to be the fastest. How could he be last?" Yusuke asked. Everybody was slightly worried or confused. There was no sign of him for another fifteen minutes. Suddenly, the last door, the red one, opened, and Hiei walked casually in, surrounded by an aura of fire. He was whistling casually and had a little fireball balanced on the tip of his finger, which he was absentmindedly spinning in a circle, leaving a little trail of fire behind it.
He glanced around, casually strolled over to the table, picked up the red key, looked at both sides of it, stuck it in his pocket, and walked back outside, either completely oblivious to or ignoring all the dumbfounded stares he was getting.
"What is he?!" somebody finally asked. Everybody's attention was drawn to Aoshi. It seemed that whenever he talked, everybody got completely silent, because it was such a rare thing. Boy, they'd be surprised if Sesshoumaru talked. I don't think he's said a word since he ended up there.
Before anybody could answer, there was a huge explosion outside and Hiei came flying through the door (the actual door, not the doorway) and tumbled backwards before finally coming to a stop, flat on his back, still surrounded by flames.
"He's a demon, obviously," Sesshoumaru answered. Inuyasha glared.
"A demon, huh? Well I guess I should have known. He smells like one."
"Huh?" Hiei said, clueless. He realized everybody was staring at him, especially Kenshin's group, Vash, and Wolfwood, who'd probably never seen a demon before in their lives. The next thing he realized was that he was surrounded by an aura of flames. It quickly vanished, as did the slight glow that had been unnoticed on his forehead by everyone but Kurama and Yusuke.
The startled group looked from Hiei, still sprawled spread-eagle on the ground, to the hole in the door, through which flames and ashes could be seen.
"What did you do?" Hiko asked, awestruck.
"Blew it up."
"The maze?"
"Hai."
"How?"
"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Hiei said, forming the little fireball on his fingertip and swirling it around again. "I like blowing stuff up."
"Oh no," Kurama muttered. Everybody turned their heads in unison to look at him. It actually looked kinda funny, ten people all turning their heads at the same time.
"What now?" Aoshi asked. It seemed he'd given up on complete antisocialism and was talking in two and three-word sentences. Big step forward.
"Hiei, come here," Kurama ordered. The little demon looked up from where he was still lying on his back on the floor.
"Why?"
"Just, come here."
Hiei got up and stood in front of Kurama. After a second of inspecting his friend, Kurama slapped him across the face.
"GET OVER IT."
Hiei blinked, looking startled. He rubbed his cheek.
"Itai..." he muttered.
"No more explosions."
"Awwww..."
"Congratulations, guys! All of you completed it within the time limit!" the girl's voice said suddenly. "Though Hiei placed last, we gave him some bonus for his skills with fire, then deducted some points for BLOWING UP OUR MAZE!!!" The girl broke down, sobbing hysterically. Hiei quirked an eyebrow.
"Can I go home now?" he asked.
"NO!"
"Damn."
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Oh, I suppose I gave a bit of a wrong definition on –dono. Somebody told me, then I looked back at my definition and voila, that person was right (thank you… I'm too lazy to look at reviews for your name. Sorry.). So –dono is equal to like… My lord/my lady…
