Fushigi Yuugi: Mysterious Worlds
Chapter 2:
Chichiri groaned. The ground on which he was lying was hard and cold, and his head hurt. He opened his eye, and immediately wished he hadn't. Everything he could see was washed with a dim red light that pulsed in time with his headache, and with the loud sirens that wailed persistently in the background.
Getting up slowly, using his staff for leverage, he looked around. He was relieved to note that Boushin was lying only a few steps away, and Tasuki a bit beyond that. They were both breathing, too; that was reassuring.
Chichiri tried to make sense of his surroundings. He seemed to be in a small rectangular corridor, and it was hard to tell with only the dim red light to go by, but it seemed that the corridor's floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of metal. That explains why the floor was so cold, he thought. But why use so much metal just to build a hallway?
Just then, Tasuki started stirring. "Shi-it," he groaned. "My head..."
While the red-haired bandit slowly sat up, Chichiri noticed that Boushin was starting to move. He knelt down beside the little Emperor. "Boushin-chan," he said softly. "Are you all right?"
The little boy sat up, and rubbed his eyes. Mutely, he stared wide-eyed at the strangeness of it all.
Tasuki was also beginning to take note of his surroundings. "What is this place?" he said, with a hint of fear in his voice. "And where's my bag?"
"I have no idea," replied Chichiri truthfully.
"Do you think we're inside the book? Like what happened to Miaka when she came to our world?"
"I think that's exactly what happened, no da."
The monk helped his young Emperor stand up. Tasuki used the smooth metal wall of the corridor to steady himself as he stood.
"Well, if we are in another world, there's no use just staying here waiting for something to happen to us, right?"
Tasuki's words reminded Chichiri of the large insect-man whose picture had been on the cover of the strange book. If this world is inhabited by creatures like that..., he thought, now feeling a little concerned. He said, in complete agreement with Tasuki, "We should move on."
"Which way, then?"
Chichiri looked down the corridor in both directions. Both ways were shrouded in shadows that the red lighting didn't pierce. He could detect no appreciable difference between them, and shrugged helplessly. Tasuki took the initiative and started walking along the shadowed corridor. Boushin gripped Chichiri's hand tightly as they followed the redhead into the darkness.
Empress-Regent Houki stared in horror at the two objects that the palace guard had placed in front of her. "And this is all you could find?" she managed to say.
"Just this strange book, the bag, and the carved horse," the burly Captain of the Guard said gruffly. "That's all. My Empress, I told you that bandit would be a security hazard. And now he's somehow managed to kidnap your son right under our noses. We should have never let him into the palace..."
"That's nonsense!" the Empress cried. "I know Tasuki! He would never do anything to harm Boushin. And besides, Chichiri was there! He wouldn't have allowed "
"The monk could have been overpowered. Or he could have been in on it. You can never tell, with some people."
Houki shook her head weakly. "I just cannot believe it," she said softly.
"My Empress, you must believe it. It's the only possible explanation," said the Captain, with a sense of finality.
After walking for several minutes through the alternately shadowed and red-lighted corridor, with sirens constantly wailing in the background, they saw no signs that other people had ever passed this way. Chichiri was faintly relieved; true, they had seen no other people, but they had also seen none of the insect-like monsters, either.
Tasuki, up ahead, was growing visibly irritated. "Does this blasted hallway go on forever?" he said loudly. "No turns or anything!"
Chichiri wondered whose hands had created this long, straight corridor, and for what purpose. And why had they abandoned it? Maybe, he wondered, thinking about the insect-man on the cover of the book, they had fled an invasion, or maybe they had all been killed. Or maybe the corridor had been built by the insects, and the three refugees from the Universe of the Four Gods were walking towards their deaths...
Up ahead, Tasuki didn't seem to be affected by the same fears as Chichiri. The blue-haired monk wondered if he should mention them to the bandit, talk about the possibilities so that they could prepare for them. Then, he remembered the strangely silent Boushin, who even now had a death grip on his hand. If I talk about my fears, Boushin will be even more scared, he realized. Tasuki can take care of himself, he decided, no matter what happens.
Tasuki stopped walking and said, "Finally!" He had reached an intersection. Chichiri and Boushin joined him at its centre. Boushin took his hand out of the monk's.
Suddenly, the little boy gasped. "My horse! It's gone!"
Tasuki looked over at Chichiri worriedly. "Should we go back and get it?"
Boushin said in a small and tired voice, "I want my horse back. I want to go home. I want my Mama."
Both of the seishi of Suzaku looked back down the corridor from which they had come. Should we risk it? thought Chichiri. He turned towards Boushin and said, "I don't know, I..."
He gasped. The boy was gone!
"Where did he go?" said Tasuki. "Which way?"
Chichiri shook his head, in shock. "Why did he leave?"
Tasuki said bitterly, "We have no choice. Let's go." He ran off down one of the other corridors. Chichiri chose another and started running.
"We've searched every inch of the palace. They must have gotten away somehow; maybe they had inside help," said the Captain of the Guard gruffly.
The Empress Houki sighed. She picked up the strange book and started idly leafing through it. "I still find it hard to believe that Chichiri and Tasuki, two of the Seishi of Suzaku..." She stopped suddenly; she saw something on one of the book's pages, near the beginning of the novel, that caught her attention. "Boushin?"
"I assure you, we're doing everything in our power to "
"No," she said, reading the page on which her son's name had appeared. "Here. In the book." She read further, then exclaimed, "He's in the book!"
"My Empress, perhaps your grief is clouding your judgment. It's impossible for people to go into books. It's probably just a coincidence; after all, Boushin isn't a very uncommon name."
"Yes, but how many Boushins are accompanied by a red-haired bandit named Tasuki and a monk named Chichiri? They're all in the book!" she stated emphatically.
"I don't believe that " started the Captain, still skeptical.
"That must be exactly what happened! Don't you remember Suzaku no Miko's tales? Of how she and her friend Yui were in a library, opened an old book, and found themselves here? The same thing must have happened to my son!"
She gripped the book tightly, and started calling into it. "Boushin! Come back! Come back to me!"
The Captain shook his head. He turned, and motioned two guards over to him, intending to give them more instructions. But then, the Empress cried out her son's name joyfully. The Captain turned back, and was astonished to see the young Emperor sitting in his mother's lap.
"Mama!" cried the little boy, hugging her fiercely.
"Oh, Boushin-chan," she said happily, hugging him back.
The Captain of the Guard could only stare in astonishment at the scene which presented itself before his eyes, mouth open wide. People just don't disappear into books, he thought. Valuable kidnapping victims just don't suddenly reappear where they're supposed to be. His entire pragmatic view of the world had just been fundamentally challenged.
"I guess it wasn't a kidnapping, after all," one of the guards said dryly.
Tasuki pounded down the corridor. Just as he passed an intersection, he saw two men running away. He shouted, "Stop!"
Surprisingly, they did. They turned and pointed metal tubes at him. One was tall and seemed, in the red light, to have fair hair. The other was smaller and darker-complexioned. They were both wearing black uniforms.
"Stay there or we shoot," said the fair one with a strange, heavy accent.
Tasuki stopped a few paces beyond the intersection. He yelled, "Give back Boushin," hoping they knew what he was talking about.
"Give back what, Delani?"
The shorter man said to his companion, with the same heavy accent, "Than, the kid is unarmed. And where in hell did he come from? We just scanned that entire sector!"
Tasuki tried again. "Give back the Emperor!"
The fair man laughed. "We don't have the Emperor! If we did, all our problems'd be solved, wouldn't they, Keane?"
"But you know where he is!" shouted Tasuki, astonished.
"Of course we do!"
"Why don't you come with us?" said the shorter man. "After all, we're the ones with the guns here."
"Yeah, right this way, Delani scum," said the fair man, grinning.
Tasuki growled. "Give him back."
"Don't make it hard on yourself, kid," added the smaller man. "You don't have a lot of choice."
Oh, I don't, do I? thought Tasuki with a smirk. He took his fan from where it was strapped to his back. I'll just singe them around the edges. That'll hopefully get them to tell me where Boushin is. He raised the fan high and shouted, "Lekka..."
He never got to finish. A blow to his neck knocked him unconscious.
"Nice going, Korry," said the smaller man to the lady who had emerged from the intersection and who had hit Tasuki from behind. She gave him the thumbs-up sign.
The fair-haired man picked Tasuki up and slung him over his shoulder. "Man, this mission is going well," he said. "We've even got ourselves a Delani prisoner."
The lady picked up Tasuki's metal fan. "What is this," she asked, "some kind of new Delani weapon?"
"Well, he certainly thought it was," said the darker-skinned man. "Okay, let's go." All three continued running down the corridor.
A few minutes later, Chichiri was still running down his corridor. He had seen no sign that anyone had ever passed this way, but didn't dare turn back until he knew for sure that Boushin wasn't here. There were still branching corridors that he hadn't checked yet. He hoped beyond hope that Tasuki had found the little Emperor already.
Suddenly, the ground lurched beneath his feet. He had to grab the wall to steady himself. What is this? he wondered. An earthquake? The floor stopped moving after a few seconds, and he continued on his way.
The next quake happened a minute or so later. It was more severe; Chichiri had to kneel until it was over, and it lasted much longer than the first one. When it ended, he got up quickly and raced forward again.
The corridor only continued for a few more paces until it opened onto a large room, with many corridors leading to it. The room was full with hundreds of people. The vast majority of them were coming from one of the centrally located corridors, and everyone was quickly being herded through circular doors into brightly lit areas. Several people in silver uniforms were doing this herding quickly and professionally.
A lady in a silver uniform, who had frizzy brown hair, noticed Chichiri. She stared at him in surprise, then motioned frantically for him to come join everyone else. He froze.
"Hey, c'mon, get over here! We don't have much time!" she shouted, with a strange accent, then turned to another person in a silver uniform, a black-haired man. "Metaxos! Who is this guy?"
The man looked up and scrutinized Chichiri. "Could he be a Parathaian?"
The lady laughed. "Dressed like that? And with no weapons, no backup? Oh, please!"
Chichiri composed himself, and asked, "Have any of you seen a little boy, about so high?" He held up his hand at about Boushin's height.
"Nope, sorry," said the lady. "Come on, this way!"
"Wearing a little bucket hat, no da?"
"We haven't seen any kids. Or hats."
"Thank you for your time," said Chichiri dejectedly. He turned to leave.
The lady shouted, "Hey! Where do you think you're going?"
Another earthquake started. This one was much more violent than the previous two. Chichiri was thrown forward and lay on the ground, stunned, as it bucked and leaped beneath him. The black-haired man shouted, "Shit! They're getting really bad!"
Finally, the quake ended. Chichiri got up to continue on his way, but the frizzy-haired lady caught up with him and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Don't you realize the ship is breaking up? We have to get out of here!"
Chichiri struggled, trying to break her surprisingly strong grip. "Let go!" he yelled. "I have to find him!" The ground trembled again, and Chichiri managed to wrench away from her grip.
"Jaxie, come back here!" shouted the man. "If he's determined to stay, let him. We're almost ready to launch!"
"No!" she yelled back. "I won't leave him here to die!"
"Oh, Mama, I was so scared! Everything was red, and my head hurt so much from the noises..."
Houki held her son close. "You're safe now, Boushin-chan. Everything's going to be all right."
Over to the side of the room, the Captain of the Guard held his head between his hands. He could be heard quietly muttering, "I just don't believe it" over and over.
Boushin settled down, and started looking around, glad that he was back in a familiar world, surrounded by familiar people. His eyes settled on the small carved figure of a horse that was lying on a nearby table. "My horse!" he exclaimed joyfully, jumping off his mother's lap. He ran to the table and picked up his horse. "Look, Mama! Tasuki gave it to..." His voice trailed off. "Mama, where are they? Where are Tasuki and Chichiri?"
"I'm not sure," she replied, "but I think they're still in the book."
"The book!" Boushin cried. He looked around wildly, and saw it lying on the floor, where his mother had dropped it in her joy at his safe return. He picked it up with shaking hands. He almost dropped it himself, however, when he looked at its cover.
"The cover... changed," he whispered. Trembling, he showed it to his mother, the Empress-Regent. Sure enough, in addition to the picture of the large insect-man, the cover now showed two human figures, in fighting stances. One, dressed in black, had red hair and what seemed to be a large fan. The other had blue hair and a staff, and was dressed in silver.
Empress Houki shook her head sadly. "They're part of the story now," she said. Her son mutely climbed back into her lap, and opened the book. He started reading the story with his mother looking over his shoulder.
He skipped over the early parts of the book, as he knew what had happened then; after all, he'd been there. Boushin started reading in earnest when he got to the part about his own disappearance, however. He read about Tasuki and Chichiri running off in different directions, then looked up and said quietly, "They don't know. They don't know that I'm back here." He continued reading, gasping out loud when Tasuki was hit from behind and knocked out, and following Chichiri's search with a worried frown.
Boushin frowned even more when Chichiri refused to follow the uniformed woman in order to keep searching for him. "I have to tell him somehow that I'm safe," the young Emperor decided. "But how?" Then, he read the next paragraph. His eyes widened.
"The Delani spaceship's constant trembling," it read, "was a symptom of a very great danger. When the Parathaians attacked the ship, they damaged its internal gravity generators. Delani soldiers, recognizing the danger, evacuated everyone from the ship, because the unbalanced forces that were being produced by the generators would soon tear the ship apart, killing anyone who remained there." Boushin didn't understand many of the words, but he understood that if Chichiri stayed on the ship, he would die.
"No!" he shouted, starting to cry. "It's my fault! If I hadn't turned the page, they'd both be here. They'd be safe!"
His mother hugged him reassuringly. "You had no way of knowing," she said. But Boushin couldn't be reassured.
"It's all my fault," he sobbed. "Tasuki's been kidnapped and Chichiri's going to die, all because of me!" Tears streaming down his face, he shouted into the book. "Chichiri! Listen to me. I'm here. I'm out of the book! Go with the lady. Go now!"
Chichiri froze. That voice... was it... was it Boushin's?
"Come on!" shouted the frizzy-haired lady, who caught up with him again, and started pulling him back towards the brightly lit doors. "There's no time, get moving!"
Again the voice was heard, coming mysteriously from nowhere. "It's me, Boushin! I'm back home. I'm safe. Please go with her!"
The lady looked around, startled. "What was that?" But she wasted no time dragging the blue-haired monk towards safety. This time he didn't try to break her hold. Just as the ground started shuddering again, they reached the last open escape pod door. It slammed shut behind them, and the pod quickly sped away to safety.
