School's finally out, I finally I have time to write! Yay! The chapters will be out sooner and stuff..^^ Sorry for keeper you guys waiting. Enjoy the chapter
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Chapter 12: Pressing forward
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A flute started to play, all eyes fell on Kibou. She smirked and put the flute down, the real Kibou..she was missing! "I came just in time, didn't I?"
"Ohne-chan..?"
"You have failed at summoning Suzaku." she said coldly. "Now, you will all die."
She started to play the melody that could kill us all. Miaka slowly walked towards her. "Ohne-chan, it isn't you! It isn't! It can't be you!"
Miaka fell to her knees. "Ohne-chan.."
Another flute..or something that sounded like a flute started to play, I reconized the melody, it was one of the counter melodys. Everyone looked over to the door, Kibou stood there, holding herself up with her right leg, bleeding from the exact spot where she was hit by the robber quite some time ago now. The fraud went over to Kibou and knocked her to the floor.
"In case it didn't work, I left a little surprise. If you didn't know, Kibou was stabed here. By me!" Her form started to change and it was a form of a man, he had white and black painted strips on his face. "There was poison that could only be effective at a certain point."
He started to disapear slowly. "First the visions, two the bleeding where I injected it starts up, then she faints, finally she dies. And there's no cure!..Good luck."
He completely disapeared, we all ran to Kibou, I picked her up, she was barely awake. Miaka ran up to her cry, Miaka hugged her tightly. "Ohne-chan! Ohne-chan! wake up, please wake up!"
"I-I'm fine Miaka." she said slowly sitting up. "The fire. It's still burning, we have to try again," she whispered.
Miaka got up and looked to the blazing fire. "Your right..But Ohne-chan..."
"I'm fine, come on, I can do this."
I helped her to her spot where she pushed me away showing that she could stand on her own. Miaka tried again, but this time, Taiitsukun appeared and freaked everyone out. Taiitsukun ignored them and looked to Kibou. "Chiriko, you are critical to this team, you cannot die now."
She rose her hand and sparks came from it and enveloped Kibou. Her leg wound healed and the bleeding disapeared, as well as all the blood. She got up slowly. "Thank you, Taiitsukun."
"As for the rest of you, you will each receive something for all the hard work you have done so far."
A light shone above us and we all received something, I received beads, improved looking prayer beads, they were still the same ones Kibou gave me, but these had more designs on it. I looked over to Kibou, her flute was now silver. Tamahome soon relized he gets nothing and started to fuss a bit, but after a bit of a talk about some sort of thing called a shinzaho, we were all sent out of the room for some reason and we waited since everyone but Miaka was kicked out. "What exactly happened to you, Kibou?" Tamahome asked.
"The impersonator, his name was Tomo, he made himself an illusion of me and put into effect the poison that had been flowing through my body. It only had to be triggered. It was triggered when I was starting to have those visions but they stoped now. Taiitsukun healed me so I no longer have to worry."
"Well, at least your better, no da." said Houjun
"The shinzaho...Toroki, she always talked about a man named Tatara...something about him and the shinzaho, I never really paid attention too much...God, I wish I did now." Kibou said muttering a bit.
Miaka soon came out, she had a sad look on her face but then she looked up and smiled. "Come on, we have to get ready to go to Hokkan."
I walked with Kibou to her room since there wasn't much else to do and she didn't mind. Once we got there, there was ink dripping from a brush on a paper on her desk. She went over to look at it. "Oh yeah, tommorow night's the star festival, do you want to go?"
"Sure, no da."
She sat on her bed, she stayed silent for a bit, not waiting for me to start a conversation but trying to figure out what to say. She got up, "I haven't seen Namame in a long time...I need to check up on her."
She went to the door and turned back to look at me. "Do you want to come with?"
I nodded slightly and followed her out. Once out of the gates, she knew exactly where she was going. We came to the shop where I had helped out the lady there to carry Kibou home that one day.
"Namame? Namame?" she called leaning over the counter. "Namame?"
I noticed the jewelry was all taken down, there was a sign that said it was closed, but I heard from Kibou, the shop was her home and she just had to go around the back. Kibou stood strait up, a worried look on her face. She went around to the back and opened the curtains. She gasped. "Namame?!"
I followed her in. Namame was there...but I felt not really anything from her, she was an inch from death...
Her body was a bloody corpse, she was stabbed in the back by a sword and thrown aside on the floor. Kibou bent down to her. "Namame? Namame? Please don't do this! Namame!!"
Namame was pale, her eyes were wide open and a pool of blood was at her mouth. Kibou picked her up tears blured her eyes and quickly streamed down her now pale cheeks. "Namame....Juan...We need to get Juan!!" She set her down gently and came up to me.
"Houjun, we need to get Juan! Please, we have to get him..He has to heal her!!" She sobbed into my chest. "We have to get him, Namame's..Namame's.."
Tears blured my eyes, feeling her pain, I embraced her softly. "She can't be dead!" she cried. "Namame...She can't be!"
"We...need..juan..." she said over her hiccups.
"...Kibou, Mitsukake..he-" I refused to say it, the fact that it would put her in more pain, even though she knew.
"...Kibou...Dear...." I heard a faint whisper.
Kibou quickly looked to Namame and quickly came to her side. "Namame, just wait, I'll bring someone who can heal you. Just wait, please hold on!"
"I'm too old, I've lived my life, it had to end sooner or later...I knew I'd be able to see your face before I died..."
Kibou tried to speak while trying to control her hiccups, but couldn't. "W-who, did this t-to you?"
"A seiry--"
Her voice cut short, her life force completely disapeared. I looked down, then back to Kibou holding Namame. She was trembling. "Why?" she asked getting up again putting Namame down. "Why couldn't I go to Juan...? I-I couldn't get him...I could've saved her."
"Kibou, it wasn't you.."
"Seiryu....A seiryu seishi did this...Nakago's the only one...the only one that wants to piss me off like this!" She turned around to me, behind the tears and the greif and saw the anger that filled her eyes. A faint fed glow emitted from around her.
"Kibou, calm down." I said coming over to her slowly. "Come on, we have to give Namame a bruial."
The glow immediatly disapearedas her eyes widened. "Namame!...your right..."
Biting her lip she came to Namame and pulled the sword from her back and picked her up. "There's a cemetary just outside the gates near this store." I said trying not to say anything that could make her cry anymore.
"O..k.." she answered. She got a sheet and covered her with it. We then carried her just a minute's worth of walking and then saw a man there digging a hole to bury someone
"E-excuse...me, s-sir." she said her voice very cracked and seemed that she couldn't finish.
"We need have someone we want to bury here." I said finishing her sentance.
He came out. "And who is this?"
"Namame...she was the owner of-"
"Namame? She died?! I thought she'd live forever!" he said interuping me. "Well, I can make another for who this was for, so we can bury Namame here, is that her?"
Kibou nodded. "I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to do...So we brought her here."
The man nodded. "Yeah, that's fine, your that girl that worked for Namame for a bit, aren't you?"
She nodded again. "Thank you."
She gently laid Namame down there and the man buried her. Kibou then again fell to her knees and cried. "I can't even have proper funeral for her...I don't have time..."
The man looked at her with great sympathy. "I can arrange that, there's alot of people who respected Namame so I could tell them all and have a proper burial for her."
"Can you really do that?"
"Of course." he answered holding out a hand to help her up. "Don't you worry, I'll make sure it's the best that it can be. While your away, don't worry."
"I can't thank you enough sir.....thank you."
"Now go on, I'll organize this whole thing, it should be ready in 4 days."
Kibou bit her lip. "I might be gone by then...But ok, as long as I know she has a funeral, thank you." She turned away and headed back into town. I followed her, she came back to Namame's shop. Stains of blood were thoughout the inside of it. She picked up the bloody blade and then wiped it off with her dress. It had seiryu on it. She found a case and straped that to her other side, then put the sword into the case. I could feel the anger from her while she did this. She began to mutter lowly, "...Nakago...he'll pay...I swear to god, he is going to pay, that damn bastard..."
She disapeared right before my eyes, I tried to sense her immediatly, she was back at the palace. I looked around the store again, there was a small note on there. I walked over to it, the paont on the paper was very much dry,as if made a day before.
"Kibou" it read. "To tell you now, is better than never. I was most important to my preistess and seishi because I had the power to see the future. I saw my death coming and didn't do anything about it. Don't blame yourself, I leave you with one last message though, think it through carefully, it'll make sense when the time come...When they come together and it's all gone, the taste of death will be very near, but will be saved by the hand of care....It'll all make sense in the future, I promise....I'm sorry I left you like this.."
It was written on a scroll so I rolled it up and teleported myself to the palace. I felt a strong force coming from Kibou so I followed it. A firey red aura surounded her and she was training intensly with her sword, I held my staff so I came to Kibou and blocked her sword coming down with my staff, she was incredibly strong right now. Her eyes were dull and there was nothing but anger in the teary eyes. She stoped immediatly when she saw me. "Hou..jun.."
She turned away, "I need to train, if I don't train, I won't be stronger than Nakago!"
I made her put her hand down. "His power is physical attacks and everything that can hurt you badly, Tamahome would be the best one for that because that's power of being a seishi, your power's wisdom..Let Tamahome handle that, you are strong, but with out a power in it, you can't win."
The red aura disapeared and she put down her sword. "Then I'm worthless.."
"Your power is wisdom, if we didn't have a smart person like you, we'd probably be dead...I'd probably be dead."
She dropped her sword and looked down. "It's not fair..Toroki, Namame...They both died when I came around, I'm afraid of what might happen next to the people I care for. And you, your like a brother to me, Houjun...If anything happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."
"The journey ahead is going to be a dangerous one Kibou, but we all know that. We might not all survive, and I promise you that I'll survive and protect you." I... I just completely opened up to her... I might actually be....
"Thank you, Houjun...I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused you today." she said in almost a whisper and ran off.
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Ok, Now that I have time, the next chapter should be out soon. Sorry for taking so long, you know those end of the year things, you always want to hang out with your friends and stuff...Well, yeah....I have the entire summer to do that so I'll be writing more. ^^
~*CosmicMoon
~*~*~*~*~
Chapter 12: Pressing forward
~*~*~*~*~
A flute started to play, all eyes fell on Kibou. She smirked and put the flute down, the real Kibou..she was missing! "I came just in time, didn't I?"
"Ohne-chan..?"
"You have failed at summoning Suzaku." she said coldly. "Now, you will all die."
She started to play the melody that could kill us all. Miaka slowly walked towards her. "Ohne-chan, it isn't you! It isn't! It can't be you!"
Miaka fell to her knees. "Ohne-chan.."
Another flute..or something that sounded like a flute started to play, I reconized the melody, it was one of the counter melodys. Everyone looked over to the door, Kibou stood there, holding herself up with her right leg, bleeding from the exact spot where she was hit by the robber quite some time ago now. The fraud went over to Kibou and knocked her to the floor.
"In case it didn't work, I left a little surprise. If you didn't know, Kibou was stabed here. By me!" Her form started to change and it was a form of a man, he had white and black painted strips on his face. "There was poison that could only be effective at a certain point."
He started to disapear slowly. "First the visions, two the bleeding where I injected it starts up, then she faints, finally she dies. And there's no cure!..Good luck."
He completely disapeared, we all ran to Kibou, I picked her up, she was barely awake. Miaka ran up to her cry, Miaka hugged her tightly. "Ohne-chan! Ohne-chan! wake up, please wake up!"
"I-I'm fine Miaka." she said slowly sitting up. "The fire. It's still burning, we have to try again," she whispered.
Miaka got up and looked to the blazing fire. "Your right..But Ohne-chan..."
"I'm fine, come on, I can do this."
I helped her to her spot where she pushed me away showing that she could stand on her own. Miaka tried again, but this time, Taiitsukun appeared and freaked everyone out. Taiitsukun ignored them and looked to Kibou. "Chiriko, you are critical to this team, you cannot die now."
She rose her hand and sparks came from it and enveloped Kibou. Her leg wound healed and the bleeding disapeared, as well as all the blood. She got up slowly. "Thank you, Taiitsukun."
"As for the rest of you, you will each receive something for all the hard work you have done so far."
A light shone above us and we all received something, I received beads, improved looking prayer beads, they were still the same ones Kibou gave me, but these had more designs on it. I looked over to Kibou, her flute was now silver. Tamahome soon relized he gets nothing and started to fuss a bit, but after a bit of a talk about some sort of thing called a shinzaho, we were all sent out of the room for some reason and we waited since everyone but Miaka was kicked out. "What exactly happened to you, Kibou?" Tamahome asked.
"The impersonator, his name was Tomo, he made himself an illusion of me and put into effect the poison that had been flowing through my body. It only had to be triggered. It was triggered when I was starting to have those visions but they stoped now. Taiitsukun healed me so I no longer have to worry."
"Well, at least your better, no da." said Houjun
"The shinzaho...Toroki, she always talked about a man named Tatara...something about him and the shinzaho, I never really paid attention too much...God, I wish I did now." Kibou said muttering a bit.
Miaka soon came out, she had a sad look on her face but then she looked up and smiled. "Come on, we have to get ready to go to Hokkan."
I walked with Kibou to her room since there wasn't much else to do and she didn't mind. Once we got there, there was ink dripping from a brush on a paper on her desk. She went over to look at it. "Oh yeah, tommorow night's the star festival, do you want to go?"
"Sure, no da."
She sat on her bed, she stayed silent for a bit, not waiting for me to start a conversation but trying to figure out what to say. She got up, "I haven't seen Namame in a long time...I need to check up on her."
She went to the door and turned back to look at me. "Do you want to come with?"
I nodded slightly and followed her out. Once out of the gates, she knew exactly where she was going. We came to the shop where I had helped out the lady there to carry Kibou home that one day.
"Namame? Namame?" she called leaning over the counter. "Namame?"
I noticed the jewelry was all taken down, there was a sign that said it was closed, but I heard from Kibou, the shop was her home and she just had to go around the back. Kibou stood strait up, a worried look on her face. She went around to the back and opened the curtains. She gasped. "Namame?!"
I followed her in. Namame was there...but I felt not really anything from her, she was an inch from death...
Her body was a bloody corpse, she was stabbed in the back by a sword and thrown aside on the floor. Kibou bent down to her. "Namame? Namame? Please don't do this! Namame!!"
Namame was pale, her eyes were wide open and a pool of blood was at her mouth. Kibou picked her up tears blured her eyes and quickly streamed down her now pale cheeks. "Namame....Juan...We need to get Juan!!" She set her down gently and came up to me.
"Houjun, we need to get Juan! Please, we have to get him..He has to heal her!!" She sobbed into my chest. "We have to get him, Namame's..Namame's.."
Tears blured my eyes, feeling her pain, I embraced her softly. "She can't be dead!" she cried. "Namame...She can't be!"
"We...need..juan..." she said over her hiccups.
"...Kibou, Mitsukake..he-" I refused to say it, the fact that it would put her in more pain, even though she knew.
"...Kibou...Dear...." I heard a faint whisper.
Kibou quickly looked to Namame and quickly came to her side. "Namame, just wait, I'll bring someone who can heal you. Just wait, please hold on!"
"I'm too old, I've lived my life, it had to end sooner or later...I knew I'd be able to see your face before I died..."
Kibou tried to speak while trying to control her hiccups, but couldn't. "W-who, did this t-to you?"
"A seiry--"
Her voice cut short, her life force completely disapeared. I looked down, then back to Kibou holding Namame. She was trembling. "Why?" she asked getting up again putting Namame down. "Why couldn't I go to Juan...? I-I couldn't get him...I could've saved her."
"Kibou, it wasn't you.."
"Seiryu....A seiryu seishi did this...Nakago's the only one...the only one that wants to piss me off like this!" She turned around to me, behind the tears and the greif and saw the anger that filled her eyes. A faint fed glow emitted from around her.
"Kibou, calm down." I said coming over to her slowly. "Come on, we have to give Namame a bruial."
The glow immediatly disapearedas her eyes widened. "Namame!...your right..."
Biting her lip she came to Namame and pulled the sword from her back and picked her up. "There's a cemetary just outside the gates near this store." I said trying not to say anything that could make her cry anymore.
"O..k.." she answered. She got a sheet and covered her with it. We then carried her just a minute's worth of walking and then saw a man there digging a hole to bury someone
"E-excuse...me, s-sir." she said her voice very cracked and seemed that she couldn't finish.
"We need have someone we want to bury here." I said finishing her sentance.
He came out. "And who is this?"
"Namame...she was the owner of-"
"Namame? She died?! I thought she'd live forever!" he said interuping me. "Well, I can make another for who this was for, so we can bury Namame here, is that her?"
Kibou nodded. "I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to do...So we brought her here."
The man nodded. "Yeah, that's fine, your that girl that worked for Namame for a bit, aren't you?"
She nodded again. "Thank you."
She gently laid Namame down there and the man buried her. Kibou then again fell to her knees and cried. "I can't even have proper funeral for her...I don't have time..."
The man looked at her with great sympathy. "I can arrange that, there's alot of people who respected Namame so I could tell them all and have a proper burial for her."
"Can you really do that?"
"Of course." he answered holding out a hand to help her up. "Don't you worry, I'll make sure it's the best that it can be. While your away, don't worry."
"I can't thank you enough sir.....thank you."
"Now go on, I'll organize this whole thing, it should be ready in 4 days."
Kibou bit her lip. "I might be gone by then...But ok, as long as I know she has a funeral, thank you." She turned away and headed back into town. I followed her, she came back to Namame's shop. Stains of blood were thoughout the inside of it. She picked up the bloody blade and then wiped it off with her dress. It had seiryu on it. She found a case and straped that to her other side, then put the sword into the case. I could feel the anger from her while she did this. She began to mutter lowly, "...Nakago...he'll pay...I swear to god, he is going to pay, that damn bastard..."
She disapeared right before my eyes, I tried to sense her immediatly, she was back at the palace. I looked around the store again, there was a small note on there. I walked over to it, the paont on the paper was very much dry,as if made a day before.
"Kibou" it read. "To tell you now, is better than never. I was most important to my preistess and seishi because I had the power to see the future. I saw my death coming and didn't do anything about it. Don't blame yourself, I leave you with one last message though, think it through carefully, it'll make sense when the time come...When they come together and it's all gone, the taste of death will be very near, but will be saved by the hand of care....It'll all make sense in the future, I promise....I'm sorry I left you like this.."
It was written on a scroll so I rolled it up and teleported myself to the palace. I felt a strong force coming from Kibou so I followed it. A firey red aura surounded her and she was training intensly with her sword, I held my staff so I came to Kibou and blocked her sword coming down with my staff, she was incredibly strong right now. Her eyes were dull and there was nothing but anger in the teary eyes. She stoped immediatly when she saw me. "Hou..jun.."
She turned away, "I need to train, if I don't train, I won't be stronger than Nakago!"
I made her put her hand down. "His power is physical attacks and everything that can hurt you badly, Tamahome would be the best one for that because that's power of being a seishi, your power's wisdom..Let Tamahome handle that, you are strong, but with out a power in it, you can't win."
The red aura disapeared and she put down her sword. "Then I'm worthless.."
"Your power is wisdom, if we didn't have a smart person like you, we'd probably be dead...I'd probably be dead."
She dropped her sword and looked down. "It's not fair..Toroki, Namame...They both died when I came around, I'm afraid of what might happen next to the people I care for. And you, your like a brother to me, Houjun...If anything happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."
"The journey ahead is going to be a dangerous one Kibou, but we all know that. We might not all survive, and I promise you that I'll survive and protect you." I... I just completely opened up to her... I might actually be....
"Thank you, Houjun...I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused you today." she said in almost a whisper and ran off.
~*~*~*~*~
Ok, Now that I have time, the next chapter should be out soon. Sorry for taking so long, you know those end of the year things, you always want to hang out with your friends and stuff...Well, yeah....I have the entire summer to do that so I'll be writing more. ^^
~*CosmicMoon