The Bonds of Time

Chapter 12

Andrew Joshua Talon, with many thanks to Kanako Urashima

DISCLAIMER: Love Hina is not mine. I'm not making any profit off this fanwork, and the authors used own themselves. "The Love Hina Fan Boy War!" is the property of Kanako Himekazi-Urashima, which she gave me permission a while ago back to write a prequel to.

Therefore...

***~''~***

"Well?"

"…what do you mean, 'well'?" Kebinu snapped, glancing back at his companion in irritation.

Naru folded her arms and shifted her weight onto her good leg, fixing him with a glare. "Did you put the code in?"

"Of course I did! What did you think I was doing, playing Tetris on the damn control panel?" he barked, stomping a foot on the ground.

"Judging from what happened, it's not out of the question," Naru shot back, pointing at the gigantic steel door within the Eisenhower Tunnel, which remained shut as tight as it had ever been. "Are you sure you got the right code?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" he shouted in frustration, conjuring a fireball to better examine the sheet of paper in the cavernous and dimly lit tunnel. "It says right at the top, 'the secret code to open the way forward.'"

"Which means exactly jack and shit," Naru countered, rubbing her forehead. "Notice that it doesn't say, 'the secret code to open the damn giant door in the damn Eisenhower Tunnel."

"Do you see any other doors around here?!" Kebinu yelled, waving his arms in the air. And at that very moment, apparently just to spite him, the control console emitted a loud beep and the door opened. Not the giant twenty-feet-wide, five-feet-thick steel door, mind you, but rather a normal-sized door cut into the concrete right next to the console. He could feel Naru's smug grin from ten feet away.

"As a matter of fact—"

"Not a word out of you, gimpy girl," Kebinu growled over his shoulder. "Wait here, I'm going to investigate."

"What?! You're leaving me out here? You jerk, I oughta—ouch!" Naru grunted as she tried to put pressure on her injured ankle to walk and instantly made a face indicating she regretted doing so.

"Calm down, I'll only be a minute," he replied with a wave of his hand as he trod into the darkened hallway.

Ten minutes later, he let out a loud curse and stomped the floor—a floor, which, incidentally, had stopped being concrete at some point and converted to rock, on which he'd caught his toes more than once. One would think it would be difficult to get lost in an access corridor that by all means should only have one entrance and one exit.

Which is precisely why he was trying not to think about it at this very moment. Instead he elected to punch the wall and curse again. What the hell was the point of this tunnel? It would make sense if it was just a short, curving pathway to get around the steel door and come out on the other side, but instead this passage was taking him deeper and deeper into the mountainside. Furthermore, it branched off continuously, and judging by the slope and change in temperature it was dropping down in elevation.

"God, now I'm lost, and Naru's probably pissed off at me. This cannot get any worse…"

And, like clockwork, it inevitably did get worse as the flame he was holding in his hand to light the way snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness. He immediately conjured another flame, and it too winked out of existence—although before it did, it changed its shape, flattening out from a sphere into…

"…an arrow?" he murmured, staring down at his hand in mystification.

He tried again. Once again, the flame flattened into an arrow before vanishing after a few seconds. This time, he glanced up in time to see that there were three passageways cut into the rock in front of him, and that the arrow had indicated the one to his right. For a second he pondered the meaning of what he had seen; actually, the meaning was fairly obvious, so it was closer to hesitation.

"Well, what the hell," he shrugged after a moment's deliberation. "Here's hoping I'm not gonna get chased by any rolling rocks…"

Following the pathway, he felt a sharp change in the passage's vertical direction. He was now working against a steep upwards incline, finding the rock beneath him growing increasingly slippery, and keeping his footing in total darkness was precarious, to say the least.

"What in the hell happened to this rock?" he growled, glancing futilely down but still unable to see anything. "It's so slippery, it's almost like it was…"

Drip.

"…wet…"

He quickly conjured another fireball. Once again, it lasted but a few seconds, but he had enough time to catch the reflection of the fire from the floor.

Limestone is not a reflective surface, by the way.

"Crap. Water," he mumbled, lifting his foot and stomping it down, hearing a light splash. "What's next?"

He put his foot out to take another step and instantly regretted asking, as his foot found nothing but empty air to tread on. Flailing wildly, determined not to fall forwards lest it be a bottomless pit or something worse, he tipped backwards, losing his footing and crashing to the wet rock floor with a curse. Shaking himself off, he got onto his hands and knees, crawling forwards until his hands felt a sheer edge dropping downwards. Slowing his breathing, he could hear running water.

"Fire."

He spoke the word aloud for extra emphasis as he summoned another fireball, seeking to keep it from going out. The flame appeared in his hand, and with some extra effort he was able to maintain it bright enough to see, but the balance was precarious. He could practically feel the power flow out of him, as though it was being attracted and absorbed into something…

Glancing down, he could see a small, rectangular pool of water, approximately ten feet deep by five feet wide and long, fed by a spring flowing through a crack in the rock wall. The water was cold and crystal clear, and he was able to easily see to the bottom, at which something appeared to be resting, though the trickling water meant the surface never smoothed out and therefore refraction was constant. As a result, all he could make out of the object at the bottom was an unrecognizable shape that emitted a dim red glow.

Moving his face closer to the water's surface, he squinted to no avail in an attempt to identify the object. As he looked up, still squinting, something caught the corner of his eye and he quickly turned to look at his hand. He could see that the fireball in it was shrinking in size, tiny wisps of fire coming off of the main flame and trailing through the air towards the pool, at which point they angled downwards and became tiny red streaks racing towards the bottom. He looked between the object and his hand for a few seconds and drew the obvious conclusion.

"It's absorbing fire," he murmured. "What is that thing? …well, I guess there's one way to find out…"

Shutting his eyes and concentrating, he focused his powers to their utmost. Pressing the balls of his feet into the slippery rock, teeth mashed together, he raised his hands and felt a large fireball appear between them over his head. Fighting against the draining sensation coming from the submerged object, which was now starting to glow more brightly, he continued to gather power until the fireball was two feet in diameter, then with a single, violent motion, swung his arms forwards and down. The fireball raced from his hands and struck the loud water with an explosive hiss, vaporizing the cold liquid and sending massive clouds of steam into the air, which quickly condensed and clung to the rock walls. Opening his eyes with a loud gasp after the effort expended to generate the fireball, he looked down to see the water's depth now reduced to about two inches, and the object was clearly visible.

"No way…"

He was greeted with the sight of a long, slimly tapered metal shaft, measuring approximately six and a half feet, at one end of which two sharply swept cutting blades protruded, split by a sharpened spike in the middle. At the other end, two dull but swept-back pieces of metal, which now glowed cherry red, were affixed to the other end of the weapon. It appeared to be an oversized double-headed halberd or mast axe.

"An axe? What the hell is it doing here?" he mumbled to himself. Curiosity getting the better of him, he sat down on the ledge and dropped into the hole. Landing with a splash in the shallow water, he picked up the axe by the handles in the middle and nearly screamed in surprise as power abruptly flowed through his arms. He looked down to the bottom of the axe again, to the swept-back devices near the end, where the power seemed to be flowing from.

Those things must have been what was absorbing my fire, he noted, but for what reason?

For a moment he pondered it, before being interrupted by the trickling of a stream of water. He looked up to the lip of the pool.

Ten feet above him.

"Shit!" he shouted, angrily stomping his foot, resulting in a splash. "Now how am I gonna get back up?!"

He looked around. Water had started flowing back into the pool again from the spring; he could wait for it to refill and float to the top. However, it would take hours or days for that to happen, and in the meantime Naru would be left all alone. Clearly, that was not an option.

He tried jumping up, but came up about half a foot short of the lip—and the slick, wet surface meant he couldn't get a grip anyway. Next he tried getting a running start and performing a wall kick, but a chasm only five feet wide was not enough room to get up speed.

In frustration he jammed the sharpened spike on the top end of the axe down into the rock—and gasped in surprise when it tore into the limestone like a knife into butter. Having been struck with an idea, he pulled the axe out, and drove it into the side wall, a few feet off the ground. Once again, the head of the axe embedded itself in the wall. Next, he set his foot on top of it, testing the shaft's strength. Seeing that it did not bend when he placed his weight on it, he carefully wedged himself between the axe and the wall, shimmied up the wall with his back to it so that he was above the axe, then pushed out, leaving him balancing on top of the weapon. He then slowly turned himself around, bracing himself against the other walls for balance, and finally made a leap from the axe up to the top, scrambling over the ledge, then reaching back down to remove the axe and bring it up with him. Beaming with satisfaction, he sat down to catch his breath—and realized his next problem.

"Great… now how do I find my way back?" he mumbled, looking down the rocky corridor. He stood and took a few tentative steps, and as if to answer him, the luminosity of the axe increased slightly. It seemed to be responding to something.

"Naru?" he murmured. "If this absorbs fire, then… is it reacting to her power?"

He glanced down at the axe again, then shrugged.

"Well, what the hell. I haven't got any BETTER ideas…"

***~''~***

Retracing his steps, letting the axe make his decisions for him by observing the intensity of the glow of the two swept-back devices on the bottom, he found himself traveling down the steep slope, and then back up the more gentle incline of before, the sound of water fading, and eventually a dim orange light became apparent to him.

"Must be Naru," he smiled. "She's probably using a fireball to light the tunnel, or something. Wait'll she sees this thing."

Another half minute and he now was in the access corridor from before. Breathing a sigh of relief, he stepped out of the doorway into the main tunnel.

"Hey, Naru, guess what—"

"YOU BASTARD!!!!!"

Kebinu's eyes widened in alarm. He was greeted with the sight of Naru Narusegawa, wearing a face of unmitigated rage, holding a fireball some ten feet in diameter over her head.

"Do you realize how long you've been gone?!" she roared before he could even say a word, at the top of her lungs. "I've been left out here all by myself! You insensitive bakayaro!!!"

"Swearing in Japanese. Not good," Kebinu mumbled to himself, a second before Naru confirmed it for him by summarily flinging the gigantic fireball right at him. Letting out a rather unmanly cry of terror, he vainly held out the axe in front of him to shield himself, and braced for the burning sensation that would precede his untimely demise.

Except it didn't come.

Eyes wide in amazement, he stared down at the axe, which had simply sucked Naru's fireball right out of the air and channeled it into the two devices on the bottom end. Said devices now glowed with incredible brightness. The axe began to vibrate in his hands, growing steadily more violent. He by all accounts should have simply dropped the axe and run for it, but clear thinking eluded him, and all he could do was stare dumbly at it.

"Hey," Naru started, seemingly noticing the axe for the first time, "Where did you get—"

Her words were drowned out as the two swept-back devices on the bottom of the axe abruptly discharged an enormous, concentrated beam of fire through the bottom of the shaft, which just happened to be pointed at the enormous metal door. Said beam struck said door and wasted no time in cutting a line straight through the thick steel, cleaving the door neatly into two halves, which then toppled over, leaving the tunnel unobstructed.

For just a moment, neither spoke, choosing to ogle the weapon, which now no longer glowed or shook.

"Capacitors," Kebinu breathed after a few seconds. "That's what those things on the bottom are. They absorb fire and then amplify and discharge it. Cool."

"Um… what the hell just happened?" Naru stammered. "Where the hell were you?"

"Figuring out how to open the door, of course," Kebinu replied, giving her an 'I-meant-to-do-that' smile and flashing the V sign. "Guess we can be on our way."

"Good," she replied, apparently trying to disguise her surprise at what had just happened. "My car or yours?"

"Well, mine is a BMW 300-series convertible. What's yours?"

"…a Microbus," she muttered, looking at the ground.

Kebinu bit so hard into his lip to keep from laughing that he nearly drew blood. "We'll stick with my car… it should be at the east end of the tunnel. Let's go," he replied, setting Naru back on the ATV and holding the axe in one hand as they sped off down the tunnel.

Five minutes later, they were in fading daylight at the east entrance to the tunnel, the four-wheeler parked next to his car. Kebinu set Naru in the passenger's seat and made his way around back, the axe slung over his shoulder.

Naru ran a hand over the smooth leather interior, admiring the exquisitely maintained German auto, and noting his suitcases and garment bags in the back seats. "So this is really your car, huh?" she murmured absentmindedly as she reclined her seat and sunk back into the soft leather.

"Yeah, it was my parting gift from the people I spent ten years protecting," he answered wryly as he set the axe in the trunk and circled around to drop into the driver's seat next to her.

"So where were you off to in this car, anyway?"

"I was heading deeper into the mountains, to a little town called Breckinridge," he sighed, glancing westward at the towering peaks of the Rockies. "When I was sixteen, my father took me to Colorado on a skiing trip, and I just fell in love with the place. It was this beautiful little town, tucked up in the mountains, covered with snow… when I saw it, I realized I wanted to live there someday. Just find a nice girlfriend, move up there, and be content with my life… that was my dream. Now of course, it seems pretty stupid, huh? I mean, most guys want to be rich and famous, have women hanging all over them… I had the lamest dreams," he shrugged with a weak laugh, turning to see Naru shake her head.

"No, it's not stupid. I think I understand," she replied, gazing at the mountains. "There was a time when I had a dream like that. When I was going to live happily ever after with someone." She lowered her head and her body shuddered slightly. "Keitaro…"

"The guy you were searching for?" Kebinu asked, and she nodded in reply.

"Yeah," she said, turning to look at him, a slight smile crossing her features and her eyes shimmering just a bit. "It took me a while to realize it, but he was… a very important person to me."

He couldn't help but note the change in her personality when the name Keitaro came up. "Did you… love him?" he prodded gently.

Naru's brow furrowed, and she looked away nervously. "Yes… no… I don't know. God, I just didn't know. Does it even matter now? He's probably dead… that idiot never could take care of himself. He was hopeless without me… that's why I wish… I'd gotten to him in time…"

"So that's it, you just gave up on him?" Kebinu queried. "Naru… there are some things you seem to have trouble saying, but the way you act speaks volumes. Tell me… how did he feel about you?"

"He liked me. A lot," she answered quietly, looking down, her voice shaking. "No, he loved me. He told me so himself… you see, the two of us knew each other when we were little kids, and we swore we were going to get into Tokyo University together. And I didn't think he could do it—hell, I didn't think I could do it—but we did. Somehow, we did. And after everything we went through together, and we were finally happy… this happened."

"Naru, I'll tell you what."

She looked up, brushing her left eye with her fingers. "Hmm?"

"Don't give up on finding Keitaro. Let's look at this another way. If we go back to Denver and clean house there, word will get out about us… and the more influential you are, the more information you can get. You might just find out what happened to him."

Naru sat there for a moment, as though pondering, then nodded. "All right, what the hell. And when I find that guy, he's gonna pay for making me worry about him like this!" she proclaimed loudly, smacking her fist into her palm. "Honestly, making a girl worry about his dumb ass for all these long years… I'm going to get wrinkles because of him!"

"You don't age, remember?" Kebinu smiled, already sensing Naru was back to her usual self.

"Shut up, you," she growled, shooting him a dirty glance. "Now take me back to my car, there's some things I need to get."

***~''~***

"What in the hell is this?!" Kebinu sputtered, gaping at the enormous stack of paper Naru had dropped in his hands. It looked liked it easily topped 500 pages.

"Your employment contract," Naru responded brightly, grinning as she thrust a pen at him. "Just to make things official."

"You're kidding me," he muttered, slowly letting his eyes shift to the paper. "Fine, whatever," he growled, snatching the pen from her and turning to the last page, laying his pen to the contract to sign it.

"Aren't you going to read it?" she asked, slightly surprised.

"Look, Naru, I have several powers, but speed reading isn't one of them," he replied testily. "Besides, no one ever reads all the way through legal documents," he added as he scribbled his signature into the contract and handed it back to her.

"Well, okay. But if I were signing my life over to someone, I would have at least checked the conditions," Naru replied matter-of-factly as she took the contract back from him.

For a moment both were silent as he sat there and simply blinked at her.

"…huh?"

"See?" she immediately responded, flipping it open to a random page somewhere in the 200s. "'Signee agrees to become the empress's personal domestic servant, chauffer and all-around bitch.'"

"What?! It can't say that—" he started, before being cut off as she shoved the contract in his face, allowing him to confirm that it did indeed say that.

"Oooh, here's another good one," Naru giggled as she read through the contract again. "'Signee agrees that the signee will forego all negotiating rights regarding working conditions and hours, and receive pay raises only when the empress feels like it.'"

"What's all this 'empress' crap?" Kebinu stammered. "You're not an empress!"

"Yet," she replied, a giddy but somewhat frightening smile on her face. "Ah, here's another nice one. 'Signee must do any damn fool thing the empress says, up to and including the Chicken Dance.'"

"What?!" he screamed angrily, his eyebrow twitching.

Naru shrugged, scratching her head and beaming. "What can I say? It's a catchy little ditty."

"What in the hell have I gotten myself into?" he muttered into the dashboard as he laid his head on the steering wheel again. "You've got way too much time on your hands if you were able to come up with a contract like this…"

"Come on now, no moping," said Naru, rapping him lightly on the head. "We've got work to do, so let's get on our way."

"But…" he started, "Can't we just go to Breckinridge for a little while first? I just want to see it again…"

"No way. It's out of the way, and besides, the snows will be coming soon. I don't want to get stranded up there," she replied, folding her arms sternly.

"Well, there goes my fantasy of being snowbound in a house with her and only one blanket…" Kebinu sighed to himself under his breath. "She'd probably just take it and let me freeze, anyway…"

"Did you say something?"

"Not a thing," he replied smoothly and went to put the car in gear.

"Hold it, Mr. Smartass," Naru said with considerable force, leading him to haul his hand back from the gearshift immediately. "I think you need a little lesson about just who wears the pants around here."

***~''~***

"Look, Naru, I don't know if you have some kind of power fetish or what, but this was overkill!" Kebinu snapped angrily as he took his eyes off the road momentarily to glare down at his lap.

"What?" Naru replied evenly from the passenger's seat, glancing over at him, her long hair whipping out behind her in the wind. "I told you I was going to show you who wears the pants in this relationship. Besides, I must say, you have some mighty comfortable pants."

"But isn't this a bit too literal?! Why the hell didn't you just ask for one of my extra pairs instead of taking mine?!" he wailed, pointing at his lap and glaring at her. "Or at least… at least you didn't have to make me wear your skirt!"

"Oh come on, don't be like that. It looks good on you," Naru cooed teasingly, patting the pleated red folds that now covered his legs to the knees.

"Gah! I don't want to be told I look good in a skirt!" he howled, flushing. "And it's so drafty! I'm so cold I'm gonna have to put the top up in a minute!"

"Stop whining. Besides, I bet a perv like you really enjoys wearing the same skirt I wore."

"Don't bring that up!" he wailed, shaking his head quickly to clear it of the inevitable naughty thoughts. "God, why me?"

"Oh, settle down," she responded again, and this time he detected a playful note in her voice, just before she leaned across the center armrest and laid her head against his shoulder, provoking a startled gasp.

"N-Naru…?" he murmured, suddenly very quiet.

"Look at it this way," she said softly. "I can already tell you'll make a good assistant. You did just what I said, right away, with no complaining. Well, not too much, anyway…"

"Should I take that as a compliment?" he replied uncertainly, concentrating very hard on the road and trying to ignore how warm her cheek felt against his arm.

"Yes, you should. I kinda like you," she confirmed. "And I appreciate you agreeing to help me look for Keitaro; it was very gentlemanly. So I'll tell you what… if it turns out I can't find him, then you could consider this a foot in the door…"

His eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. "A-are you serious?"

"I am," she replied as she sat back up again and settled back in her seat. "But! That won't happen until I know for SURE what happened to him, so I expect your full cooperation, got it?"

"Yes, empress, I understand," he replied quickly, using the title for the first time.

"So, I'll be the empress Naru, and you'll be my faithful retainer, Kebinu," Naru started, smiling. "Wielder of the mighty axe… what do you call that thing, anyway?"

"Huh?" He frowned, confused.

"Doesn't it have a name?"

"Not as far as I know," he shrugged.

"You should give it one, then. In Japan, sword smiths hundreds of years ago would name the blades they forged. We not only learned the names of the great heroes in our legends, but also the names of their weapons."

"Really?"

"Well, not me, personally. Motoko just told me that," Naru shrugged.

"Who's Motoko?" he frowned.

"A friend of mine. I'll have to tell you about them all, sometime. You might meet them someday."

"Are any of them cute and/or single?"

"None of your business, pervert," she replied. "So are you going to name that thing or not?"

"Well, I haven't really done anything with it to warrant naming it yet. Ask me again sometime later," he replied, indicating he had nothing else to say on the matter. He leaned back and rested his head against the headrest, moving his eyes to take in the scenery around him; the mountain terrain rushing past him, the wind in his ears, the setting sun behind the peaks, the beautiful girl next to him—

"What are you doing?" she spoke over the wind as she watched his hand reach behind his seat and dig into his garment bag.

"Something I'd promised myself a long time ago that I'd do someday," he responded as he pulled a compact disc out of the bag and slid it into the opening in the console. "Please allow me this little indulgence, empress."

"All right," she nodded and leaned back, closing her eyes as the sound of synthetic drums and an electric guitar filtered through the speakers. "I can appreciate the importance of a promise…"

He nodded in thanks and said no more. For a few seconds neither spoke. Then she cracked an eye open and glanced at him.

"I've never heard this song before," she said. "It sounds kinda melancholy… but determined."

"Yeah," he responded, watching the road as he flipped the headlights on. "It's, uh, kind of an oldie."

"…do you know the words?"

"Yeah. I've been listening to it since I was a little kid."

"Then… sing for me."

"I, uh, empress… god, this song's kinda at the top of my range, I'd rather not—"

"Just shut up and do it," she growled in annoyance, conjuring a fireball for incentive.

"Okay, okay!" he said quickly, starting to sweat, and sucked in a deep breath as the car sped on down the darkened highway, back towards the east.

***~''~***

"How could he be such a sappy kid, and yet..."

"Become a wacked-out, genocidal monster?" Talon quipped. Arney, blushing slightly, nodded.

"People change. It's simple enough. However..."

"However?"

"People can't change completely overnight," the professor said thoughtfully, "nor easily, even over centuries. Kebinu remained good inside, even with all the horrors he committed and saw committed. Hm, I suppose Jack would have found that amusing..."

"Mm? Jack?"

"Tuxedo Jack, Miss Arney. Of the Shinobu and Suu Alliance..."

***~''~***

And the saga rolls on...

NEXT TIME: Tuxedo Jack's journal is related between professor and student. On the horizon, the beginnings of the First Goddess War...

The author notes for this installment are in the next chapter. Please be patient!