Arrivals and Confusions
by the Rurouni Idoru
Yukina was gone, almost back to the frozen continent. The Reikai Tantei and their assorted companions were so worried they had began arguing and were now not talking to each other. Bara's mother was doing laundry. Perhaps it was no ordinary day, but it wasn't quite strange either. Hiei was letting out his frustrations by steadily glaring at an innocent wall. Indeed, if walls could talk, this one would be pleading that it hadn't done anything wrong. Kuwabara kept fidgeting, visibly nervous about Yukina's safety. Yusuke had whipped out a cigarette and lit up, very glad that Bara's mother was also a smoker. This meant that there were ashtrays all over for him. Kurama sighed regularly. Bara had calmed her frazzled nerves by performing a favorite pastime of hers: Making origami cranes out of candy wrappers. While it was difficult to fold a piece of soft, thin waxed paper into a bird, few of the room's occupants had ever seen it done so well before. In fact, few of them had ever seen it DONE before. Teara was still rhythmically banging her head against the wall. And what was Yukina doing?
Yukina was staring. There it was. The place she hadn't seen in so long. The frozen continent. Home. All that stood between it and her was about 120 yards of open air. She glanced downward to see large birds flying around. Finally, she caught sight of one that was familiar. She remembered back when she first left for Ningenkai. One of the elders had sighed, and said, "So be it," when Yukina said she wanted to search for her brother. That elder taught her a special whistle, and directed her to a particular bird. That bird, Yukina was told, recognized that special whistle, and would come when she heard it. She could ride the bird to and from the frozen continent instead of climbing up mountains. Little did she know back then just how often she would be doing that.
She took a deep breath, and began to whistle as loudly as she could. The different pitches made something of a song, but it only seemed to have half of a tune. Her eyebrows arched in half-fear, nervousness about what came next. What was it that came next? The bird flew near the cliff, and because of her weak, skinny bird legs, Yukina had to jump onto her back if she wanted to get on at all. She shivered slightly in fear that she would fall off of the edge and get killed, or even worse...
"This never gets any easier..." With that said, she started running, shrieked, and jumped as high and as far as she could. Her eyes were shut tightly, as if she felt that what she couldn't see couldn't hurt her. Her arms outstretched, she reached for a neck at best. She would settle for a wing, even tailfeathers. But she wanted to grab hold of the bird's neck. She heard strong, steady wings flapping below her as she started to fall, and then, with a small yelp concluding her scream, she felt herself land on the soft, warm, feathery body of the bird. One arm had managed to hook around the bird's neck, and she began panting. Only then did it dawn on her: For now, she was safe. Her breathing slowed to its normal pace, and she hugged the bird, stroking its smooth feathers. The bird let out a cry that sounded vaguely like Yukina's whistle, and then it began doing some sort of strange bird version of purring. She had gotten onto her vessel, now all she had to do was wait for it to take her where she needed to be. She knew what awaited her on that island. She just hoped she could survive it this time.
The problem with riding the large youkai bird was that one couldn't really will her where they wanted her to go. It was obvious that she recognized Yukina, and the whistle, and knew where Yukina wanted to be taken. She was an intelligent bird, after all. Not your ordinary sparrow who fails to see the danger of an approaching car on the road it's standing on. The thing was, she didn't really care. Yukina could do whatever she wanted, there was no way to control the bird's movement. And the bird had her own agenda. Not much of an agenda compared to those of humans and humanoid youkai, but for a bird, she was very busy. She was also fairly indecisive. She would fly for a while in one direction, then turn around and fly the other way. It was because of this that it took Yukina twenty more minutes to get to the frozen continent.
Finally, the bird landed on the edge of the island. Getting off was considerably easier than getting on, because now the bird could fold her legs underneath her and land on solid ground, and only support her own weight when she stood. Had she been standing with Yukina on her back, the added weight of Yukina's body would be very hard on the bird's weak legs, and she would not have been able to take off with the koorime on her back. Without Yukina, however, the bird was able to stand up and fly away. And after Yukina petted her head, and gave her a sincere "Thank you," that was exactly what the bird did. Now came the final obstacle in getting to the city, where she would find friends and familiar faces. She had to get onto the main land.
Now, it should be obvious that the koorime's only line of defense was not living on an island in the sky that was close to impossible to get to. They had fully prepared for the possibility of someone finding out the same method Yukina had used, or an attacker with wings. While most of the koorime were fragile and gentle, the kind that would never hurt anything else by choice, there was another breed that were not. Due to strange adaptations, a select few koorime, thousands of years ago, became excellent fighters who protected the island. Soon, their children began training others, and by one year, a final number was reached. These koorime were all strong, and had curious transparent blue hiruiseki. This was the result of selective breeding. They were the same race, but they branched out differently. Perhaps it would be made more readily understandable if a human analogy was used. While there are many caucasian people, for example, people of some descents seem to get painful, red sunburns frequently during the summer, while others simply become stylishly tanned. While essentially the same race, they do indeed have different characteristics. Just like the normal koorime and the warrior koorime. The warrior koorime are trained from birth, so they can become ever stronger. They also guard the borders of the cities, to make sure that no intruders with the intent of harming the koorime can get inside. However, action does not come frequently for these koorime, and so when they believe there is an intruder, they tend to become a bit overzealous.
"INTRUDER!" Yukina heard it pierce the cold air. She looked up in shock and confusion. Had they really seen her coming already? She didn't have much more time to think, of course, because soon the warriors were charging her. Dressed in semi-kimono, fighting gi, and other clothing one would not expect to see on someone the same race as kimono-clad Yukina, they came at her screaming. It was all she could do to dodge on time. She had quickly discovered that watching her friends spar, and actually fight, was helpful to getting into town alive. Just by watching them, her defenses had gotten far better.
"Stop! It's me!" She held up her arms in an attempt to guard all oncoming attacks. There was silence.
"Yukina...?" Yukina dropped her arms and looked at the formation of warriors around her. She instantly recognized the speaker's voice.
"Rikka-san!" The two rushed to embrace.
"It's been too long! Where've you been?" Rikka, as she was called, was certainly the most unique of the group. Her hair was cut into a downward point shape in the center of her forehead, then again just below her lip-level in two bangs that hung by her face, fanning out to point outward onto her cheeks. Then there were the long forelocks sitting on her shoulders and chest. And the rest of her hair fell smoothly down to the small of the back. She wore a garment that vaguely looked like a cross between a kimono and a tight, short dress. Slits went up the sides and right to where her hips began, pointy decorations made the lapels of the "kimono," Which revealed her neck and shoulders. The "obi," which was just different colors on the dress in the vague shape of an obi, consisted of a lovely sky blue, with a navy blue stripe inexplicably down the front. She wore short, tight pants under her dress in a royal blue. Her shoes were like those typical of a martial artist, and aquamarine. Even for a warrior koorime, who were different in themselves, she was different from anyone Yukina had ever known. And she loved that about her.
"I was in ningenkai."
"Again?" Another of the girls asked. Yukina rapidly nodded.
"I've finally found my brother!" Then, there was silence again. Rikka grinned.
"So...what was he like?" Rikka's smile and casual tone obscured the terror and shock that the warriors all felt. If there was one thing scarier than a male, it was a male fire youkai.
"He's wonderful!" Yukina exclaimed. "He promised to always protect me! At least, that's what Teara told me, but I know I can trust her, because she spends so much time with him." Some of the listeners' mouth fell open in horror. "Bara says he'd never say it to my face because he's afraid that'd make him look like Kazuma, and he doesn't like that for some reason. I don't see why, Kazuma's been very nice to me so far, and he's always so poilte and brave. Bara said that there should be attractive, intelligent men like him, and then she could go elope with one of them. I don't know what THAT meant, but Bara likes to talk about complete nonsense." At that point, almost all of the girls looked terrified. Even Rikka, who had been mischeviously curious about what males were like, looked apprehensive at the least.
"These women...WANT to spend time with men?" Yukina turned to the one who had spoken, and nodded.
"They have to. It's how they reproduce. Although some women like to spend more time with women, and some men with other men, but they don't reproduce. When I asked Hiei-san to explain that to me, he looked a little flustered and told me to go ask Teara and Bara. Bara says she hates spending time with men, but I think that's just because she's so much like Yusuke, and they're always arguing. I've seen Bara become very silly because of a male, and just because he called her pretty and danced with her. And not silly like she normally is, either. It was a new level of odd for Bara." Everyone, including herself, was amazed at how much Yukina had just said. She giggled and apologized. "I'm sorry if I'm talking too much. I think Bara might be rubbing off on me." The other koorime just stared.