Disclaimer: I still don't own Fushigi Yuugi or anything that goes with
it. I'm just playin' around. ^____^
Please enjoy chapter 4!
Ack! Sorry this is quite a bit late! I know not many people are reading
this, but for anyone who is. . . I broke my promise of once a week. ^^;
Oh well.
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Chichiri had a massive headache, and he knew that it wouldn't be going away for a long time. He now was walking across the countryside with two complainers, and they weren't going to stop whining until a) they reached an inn with alcohol and/or women or b) They stopped to sit. It hadn't even been two days, and already Tasuki and Hikari were acting like brother and sister, or rather like the old Tasuki and Tamahome.
"Oi, 'Chiri. Can't we just stop for a while? You still have that kesa of yours! We could just teleport to an inn! One, two three, we're there!"
"Yeah, Chichiri, you didn't tell me you could teleport. You're hiding things from me! I bet you could make us fly too, could we fly the rest of the way? Please?"
" 'Chiri! You're so cold hearted, just let us teleport! We've been walking for so long! I think Hikari might faint! Right Hikari? Are ya feelin' weak?"
"CHICHIRI! I can't deal with this guy anymore! We don't get along! Make him leave me alone, PLEASE. ...And I am feeling a bit weak, maybe we could just leave Tasuki behind and..."
"You two are getting along just fine," Chichiri replied, exasperated. There was no response. He turned around to find Hikari stomping on Tasuki's foot and Tasuki using her head as an armrest. "You two! Get a move on, we're going so slowly! If you hurry now, we could reach the village in an hour." They stopped what they were doing and perked up. "But if you don't, we'll have to camp out again..." He saw Tasuki use his seishi-speed to whiz past him. "A left, Tasuki, take a left."
With Hikari marching alongside Chichiri and Tasuki a little ways ahead, the three of them reached the stone steps of a rather large house in a rather large village quickly. They ascended the steps and knocked on a big wooden front door.
"Hey," Tasuki mumbled. "I feel like I've been here before, but I can't put my finger on it. Chichiri, have we been here before?"
"In the past, yes. I didn't expect you to remember it that much," Chichiri replied. Just then a plump, aging woman answered the door.
"Yes? Can I help you?"
"YES MA'AM," Tasuki said loudly, stepping up to be a little closer, leaning in and squinting one eye in an interrogating way. "Do you have any Suzaku seishi in your house at the moment?"
Hikari stomped on his foot for what wasn't the first time that day. "Yes of course, they have them over for tea every afternoon!" She rolled her eyes. "Honto ni baka. Don't you have any manners?"
Chichiri interrupted the two and spoke to the woman. "We are Chichiri and Tasuki of the Suzaku seishi, along with our new priestess, and we're trying to gather our warriors. Perhaps you may remember several years ago when we visited in our past lives? This is the home of Chiriko, is it not?"
"Chiriko...? It sounds familiar, but....ah! Recently my son has been insisting on being called Chiriko. He said the stars told him to expect important visitors soon."
"That's our man! I mean, boy!" Tasuki said, turning to grin at Chichiri.
"He is a child," the lady said, "But he's very bright. I wouldn't doubt him for a minute. He was planning to take the civil service test as soon as he turned seventeen."
"Oh, so he hasn't taken the test yet? Last time he took it when he was thirteen," Chichiri said.
"Oh no, he said he had a bit more studying to do. He must be in his room now, I'll take you up to him." The three followed the woman up a narrow flight of stairs and down a dusty hallway until they reached a door, where she knocked.
"A- I mean, Chiriko? There are some people here to see you!" There was no response. "Chiriko? Are you in there?" The woman knocked a little louder several more times. This time they heard the abrupt scraping of a chair and then a heavy sounding thump, followed by two or three more softer but still heavy thumps. There was an "Ow!" and then,
"O-okaasan? People? Oh, of course! Let them in! J-just a moment please!"
The woman smiled at the three guests and opened the door, revealing a very cluttered room. Books and scrolls lined the walls and were piled on every piece of furniture available. Papers were strewn all about the floor. The only place that was not covered in some sort of studying material was a large bay window slightly to the right of the center of the room. There had once been a chair positioned in front of it, but this chair was now tipped over on the floor. Sprawled on the chair in an awkward position, with a book half covering his head and papers all about him, was a young man. Hikari, Chichiri, and Tasuki stared in disbelief.
The young man looked up at the doorway, then turned red and removed the book from where it had fallen on his head. He scrambled around in the sea of papers to sit up but failed, slipping.
"Are you Chiriko?" Hikari asked nervously. The two seishi looked at her and saw that her eyes were wide and she was blushing slightly. It was obvious that Hikari was flustered at having surprised the boy. But the young man nodded in answer to her question.
"NO WAY!" Tasuki shouted. "Chiriko was like, this high!" He gestured with his hand to a space just below his hip.
"Uh. . ." the boy said. "I was thirteen at the time of the first summoning. I'm sixteen this time." He met eyes with Chichiri, who was looking this teenager over thoroughly. The boy who claimed to be Chiriko stood up, knowing he was being inspected. He was significantly taller than his former self, and was the height of an average teenage boy. Rather than the ponytail that used to stick straight up, his dark blonde hair was short and looked as if it had been randomly cut at with a knife when it got in his face. He no longer wore the oversized robes his former self used to wear, instead he was wearing clothes that were more similar to what the other seishi used to wear. He turned red as the three people stared at him. "I was expecting you. I just got lost in a train of thought and you surprised me." He laughed nervously as he tried to explain why he had fallen backwards in his chair.
Still a little shy, Hikari walked up to Chiriko and bowed. "It's nice to meet you. I hope we can be good friends." He bowed back, both of them appearing like the very awkward teenagers they were.
They all stood and looked around awkwardly, both Chichiri and Tasuki being caught off guard by Chiriko's maturity. "Uh," Chichiri started. "Let's go no da, shall we?"
"Ah, Chichiri, you're doing that no da thing again!" Hikari said in an attempt to break the silence as well. Chiriko's mother still stood in the doorway, looking confused. Hikari looked at her guility, and spoke. "Ano. . . we'll try to come visit soon. Chiriko won't be away too long, I don't think." The seishi and Hikari filed out the door, bowing politely to the woman, who looked a bit sad.
---------------------
It was nighttime, and refusing the woman's offer to spend the night, the three seishi and Hikari found themselves settling down around a fire in the middle of a random forest. Chiriko was discussing something quietly with Chichiri, who was trying very hard to ignore the death glares coming from Hikari and Tasuki.
"Ne, Tasuki," Hikari muttered under her breath, leaning in towards Tasuki. "He's making us sleep in the wild again."
Tasuki nodded seriously in agreement. "How shall we kill him?"
"We could shoot him."
"What?"
"We could tie him up."
"And dangle 'im from a tree!"
"Upside-down!" The two of them cackled evilly and the other two seishi gave them odd looks.
"Or, ya know, I could just burn him to a crisp with my tessen!" Tasuki said proudly.
"You're tessen? You mean the fan that spits fire? You still have that?!?!"
"Course I do! Where'd ya think I'd put it?"
"Well, it was from your past life and. . . Wow, you really are exactly the same!" Suddenly Hikari's eyes lit up and she grinned, clinging to his arm. Tasuki raised his eyebrow. "Ne ne, Tasuki-ku-u-u-n," she said sweetly. "Can you show me? Please please? Make fire come out of the tessen!"
Tasuki, always the sucker for flattery, especially from a Miaka look alike, grinned and whipped out the fan from behind his back. He stood up and raised it above his head, then whipped it down yelling, "REKKA SHIN'EN!" Flames shot out in the direction of the other two seishi. They both fell backwards, avoiding the flame, which unceremoniously hit a tree. Chichiri and Chiriko sat back up. Chichiri looked half exasperated half amused, but Chiriko looked flustered, as he had earlier that day.
"Ano, Tasuki-san, please don't hurt me with your tessen!" he said nervously.
Tasuki, sitting back down, looking quite pleased with himself, waved a hand, avoiding Chiriko's point completely.
Chichiri stood up and walked calmly over towards Tasuki, only to kick him. Hikari, in a much less shy mood, crawled her way around the campfire towards Chiriko. He looked at her nervously. "Hi!" She said.
"Hello," He said back quietly. "I hope you'll excuse my rudeness earlier, and maybe even now as well. It's just that I, um, am not very good with people."
"Eh? Oh that's okay!" Hikari said, patting him on the back. "You've been studying right? What kind of things do you study for a civil service exam?"
Chiriko looked down. "Well, there's mathmatics, and astronomy, and the sciences, and formulas that go with those things, and all the kanji characters in the language. . ." As he continued, Hikari started to look ill. "Hikari-san? Are you alright?"
"Uh, yeah," Hikari said, laughing awkwardly. "I mean, god, I thought I had it tough with my exams and stuff. But ALL the kanji? Urgh."
"You have exams too in the other world? What do you study for them, Hikari-san?"
"Hmm, there's math, like you said. But now it's crap like quadratics and geometry and trig and algebra and calculus, but that's after pre-calc. And for the sciences we have sooooo many of them. And then there's Japanese, we have to learn kanji too! And English class, god I hate that, I'm so bad at it, and history. We don't really have any exams for P.E., but I'm crap at that too. They make me stay afterschool sometimes to make up for it. So WHAT if I can't play volleyball? I can do karate just fine! Oh, and I'm rambling, sorry."
"No no, you're world sounds so interesting! What do you mean afterschool? Where do you go to study these things?" Chiriko was smiling now, not looking nervous at all.
"School. It's this big place where people around my age, give or take a few years, and study."
"Amazing! What opportunities you have there!"
". . .You could put it that way," she said, looking away. He smiled at her.
"Hikari-san, do you know where we're going next?"
"Ah, no. Where?"
"No idea. I was dicussing that with Chichiri, I think he knows." They looked in the direction of Chichiri, except he was a little busy. Tasuki was yelling something, leaning away from Chichiri and looking defensive. Chichiri was calmly giving him a look, obviously having the upper hand in their discussion. They watched for a few minutes as Chichiri took away his tessen, and Tasuki looked about ready to cry, reaching to get it back, only to be pushed away by Chichiri. Chiriko and Hikari looked at each other and laughed.
"Bit busy, isn't he."
-------------------
Yay! Sorry that chapter ended kind of. . .blandly. But I wanted some Tasuki Chichiri banter, and I had to bring Chiriko out of his shell at least a LITTLE bit! ^____^
If you like this story so far, please review!! Hopefully I'll get some more chapters done over the vacation.
Ja ne!
----------
Chichiri had a massive headache, and he knew that it wouldn't be going away for a long time. He now was walking across the countryside with two complainers, and they weren't going to stop whining until a) they reached an inn with alcohol and/or women or b) They stopped to sit. It hadn't even been two days, and already Tasuki and Hikari were acting like brother and sister, or rather like the old Tasuki and Tamahome.
"Oi, 'Chiri. Can't we just stop for a while? You still have that kesa of yours! We could just teleport to an inn! One, two three, we're there!"
"Yeah, Chichiri, you didn't tell me you could teleport. You're hiding things from me! I bet you could make us fly too, could we fly the rest of the way? Please?"
" 'Chiri! You're so cold hearted, just let us teleport! We've been walking for so long! I think Hikari might faint! Right Hikari? Are ya feelin' weak?"
"CHICHIRI! I can't deal with this guy anymore! We don't get along! Make him leave me alone, PLEASE. ...And I am feeling a bit weak, maybe we could just leave Tasuki behind and..."
"You two are getting along just fine," Chichiri replied, exasperated. There was no response. He turned around to find Hikari stomping on Tasuki's foot and Tasuki using her head as an armrest. "You two! Get a move on, we're going so slowly! If you hurry now, we could reach the village in an hour." They stopped what they were doing and perked up. "But if you don't, we'll have to camp out again..." He saw Tasuki use his seishi-speed to whiz past him. "A left, Tasuki, take a left."
With Hikari marching alongside Chichiri and Tasuki a little ways ahead, the three of them reached the stone steps of a rather large house in a rather large village quickly. They ascended the steps and knocked on a big wooden front door.
"Hey," Tasuki mumbled. "I feel like I've been here before, but I can't put my finger on it. Chichiri, have we been here before?"
"In the past, yes. I didn't expect you to remember it that much," Chichiri replied. Just then a plump, aging woman answered the door.
"Yes? Can I help you?"
"YES MA'AM," Tasuki said loudly, stepping up to be a little closer, leaning in and squinting one eye in an interrogating way. "Do you have any Suzaku seishi in your house at the moment?"
Hikari stomped on his foot for what wasn't the first time that day. "Yes of course, they have them over for tea every afternoon!" She rolled her eyes. "Honto ni baka. Don't you have any manners?"
Chichiri interrupted the two and spoke to the woman. "We are Chichiri and Tasuki of the Suzaku seishi, along with our new priestess, and we're trying to gather our warriors. Perhaps you may remember several years ago when we visited in our past lives? This is the home of Chiriko, is it not?"
"Chiriko...? It sounds familiar, but....ah! Recently my son has been insisting on being called Chiriko. He said the stars told him to expect important visitors soon."
"That's our man! I mean, boy!" Tasuki said, turning to grin at Chichiri.
"He is a child," the lady said, "But he's very bright. I wouldn't doubt him for a minute. He was planning to take the civil service test as soon as he turned seventeen."
"Oh, so he hasn't taken the test yet? Last time he took it when he was thirteen," Chichiri said.
"Oh no, he said he had a bit more studying to do. He must be in his room now, I'll take you up to him." The three followed the woman up a narrow flight of stairs and down a dusty hallway until they reached a door, where she knocked.
"A- I mean, Chiriko? There are some people here to see you!" There was no response. "Chiriko? Are you in there?" The woman knocked a little louder several more times. This time they heard the abrupt scraping of a chair and then a heavy sounding thump, followed by two or three more softer but still heavy thumps. There was an "Ow!" and then,
"O-okaasan? People? Oh, of course! Let them in! J-just a moment please!"
The woman smiled at the three guests and opened the door, revealing a very cluttered room. Books and scrolls lined the walls and were piled on every piece of furniture available. Papers were strewn all about the floor. The only place that was not covered in some sort of studying material was a large bay window slightly to the right of the center of the room. There had once been a chair positioned in front of it, but this chair was now tipped over on the floor. Sprawled on the chair in an awkward position, with a book half covering his head and papers all about him, was a young man. Hikari, Chichiri, and Tasuki stared in disbelief.
The young man looked up at the doorway, then turned red and removed the book from where it had fallen on his head. He scrambled around in the sea of papers to sit up but failed, slipping.
"Are you Chiriko?" Hikari asked nervously. The two seishi looked at her and saw that her eyes were wide and she was blushing slightly. It was obvious that Hikari was flustered at having surprised the boy. But the young man nodded in answer to her question.
"NO WAY!" Tasuki shouted. "Chiriko was like, this high!" He gestured with his hand to a space just below his hip.
"Uh. . ." the boy said. "I was thirteen at the time of the first summoning. I'm sixteen this time." He met eyes with Chichiri, who was looking this teenager over thoroughly. The boy who claimed to be Chiriko stood up, knowing he was being inspected. He was significantly taller than his former self, and was the height of an average teenage boy. Rather than the ponytail that used to stick straight up, his dark blonde hair was short and looked as if it had been randomly cut at with a knife when it got in his face. He no longer wore the oversized robes his former self used to wear, instead he was wearing clothes that were more similar to what the other seishi used to wear. He turned red as the three people stared at him. "I was expecting you. I just got lost in a train of thought and you surprised me." He laughed nervously as he tried to explain why he had fallen backwards in his chair.
Still a little shy, Hikari walked up to Chiriko and bowed. "It's nice to meet you. I hope we can be good friends." He bowed back, both of them appearing like the very awkward teenagers they were.
They all stood and looked around awkwardly, both Chichiri and Tasuki being caught off guard by Chiriko's maturity. "Uh," Chichiri started. "Let's go no da, shall we?"
"Ah, Chichiri, you're doing that no da thing again!" Hikari said in an attempt to break the silence as well. Chiriko's mother still stood in the doorway, looking confused. Hikari looked at her guility, and spoke. "Ano. . . we'll try to come visit soon. Chiriko won't be away too long, I don't think." The seishi and Hikari filed out the door, bowing politely to the woman, who looked a bit sad.
---------------------
It was nighttime, and refusing the woman's offer to spend the night, the three seishi and Hikari found themselves settling down around a fire in the middle of a random forest. Chiriko was discussing something quietly with Chichiri, who was trying very hard to ignore the death glares coming from Hikari and Tasuki.
"Ne, Tasuki," Hikari muttered under her breath, leaning in towards Tasuki. "He's making us sleep in the wild again."
Tasuki nodded seriously in agreement. "How shall we kill him?"
"We could shoot him."
"What?"
"We could tie him up."
"And dangle 'im from a tree!"
"Upside-down!" The two of them cackled evilly and the other two seishi gave them odd looks.
"Or, ya know, I could just burn him to a crisp with my tessen!" Tasuki said proudly.
"You're tessen? You mean the fan that spits fire? You still have that?!?!"
"Course I do! Where'd ya think I'd put it?"
"Well, it was from your past life and. . . Wow, you really are exactly the same!" Suddenly Hikari's eyes lit up and she grinned, clinging to his arm. Tasuki raised his eyebrow. "Ne ne, Tasuki-ku-u-u-n," she said sweetly. "Can you show me? Please please? Make fire come out of the tessen!"
Tasuki, always the sucker for flattery, especially from a Miaka look alike, grinned and whipped out the fan from behind his back. He stood up and raised it above his head, then whipped it down yelling, "REKKA SHIN'EN!" Flames shot out in the direction of the other two seishi. They both fell backwards, avoiding the flame, which unceremoniously hit a tree. Chichiri and Chiriko sat back up. Chichiri looked half exasperated half amused, but Chiriko looked flustered, as he had earlier that day.
"Ano, Tasuki-san, please don't hurt me with your tessen!" he said nervously.
Tasuki, sitting back down, looking quite pleased with himself, waved a hand, avoiding Chiriko's point completely.
Chichiri stood up and walked calmly over towards Tasuki, only to kick him. Hikari, in a much less shy mood, crawled her way around the campfire towards Chiriko. He looked at her nervously. "Hi!" She said.
"Hello," He said back quietly. "I hope you'll excuse my rudeness earlier, and maybe even now as well. It's just that I, um, am not very good with people."
"Eh? Oh that's okay!" Hikari said, patting him on the back. "You've been studying right? What kind of things do you study for a civil service exam?"
Chiriko looked down. "Well, there's mathmatics, and astronomy, and the sciences, and formulas that go with those things, and all the kanji characters in the language. . ." As he continued, Hikari started to look ill. "Hikari-san? Are you alright?"
"Uh, yeah," Hikari said, laughing awkwardly. "I mean, god, I thought I had it tough with my exams and stuff. But ALL the kanji? Urgh."
"You have exams too in the other world? What do you study for them, Hikari-san?"
"Hmm, there's math, like you said. But now it's crap like quadratics and geometry and trig and algebra and calculus, but that's after pre-calc. And for the sciences we have sooooo many of them. And then there's Japanese, we have to learn kanji too! And English class, god I hate that, I'm so bad at it, and history. We don't really have any exams for P.E., but I'm crap at that too. They make me stay afterschool sometimes to make up for it. So WHAT if I can't play volleyball? I can do karate just fine! Oh, and I'm rambling, sorry."
"No no, you're world sounds so interesting! What do you mean afterschool? Where do you go to study these things?" Chiriko was smiling now, not looking nervous at all.
"School. It's this big place where people around my age, give or take a few years, and study."
"Amazing! What opportunities you have there!"
". . .You could put it that way," she said, looking away. He smiled at her.
"Hikari-san, do you know where we're going next?"
"Ah, no. Where?"
"No idea. I was dicussing that with Chichiri, I think he knows." They looked in the direction of Chichiri, except he was a little busy. Tasuki was yelling something, leaning away from Chichiri and looking defensive. Chichiri was calmly giving him a look, obviously having the upper hand in their discussion. They watched for a few minutes as Chichiri took away his tessen, and Tasuki looked about ready to cry, reaching to get it back, only to be pushed away by Chichiri. Chiriko and Hikari looked at each other and laughed.
"Bit busy, isn't he."
-------------------
Yay! Sorry that chapter ended kind of. . .blandly. But I wanted some Tasuki Chichiri banter, and I had to bring Chiriko out of his shell at least a LITTLE bit! ^____^
If you like this story so far, please review!! Hopefully I'll get some more chapters done over the vacation.
Ja ne!