"So I guess Mimi told you about my so called "tainted blood"."
This was the first clue to Gojyo that he may have been a bit hasty in choosing to chase this particular tail. No, scratch that, he knew he had been. He had known it even as he had been spewing stupid about protecting her, etc. At the same time, however, this girl that walked beside him was something of a curiosity – a quarter demon, a fighter, and, apparently, attention deprived. By bringing up that subject (the subject of her heritage), she was all but screaming, "Look at meeee!"
"She mentioned it," he said dryly, very willing to avoid the entire conversation. Whenever someone brought up bloodlines, they would talk about their own for a bit, than move on to his in the very next breath. He really, really didn't want to talk about that, especially not when he was still attempting to figure out what, exactly, they had all gotten themselves into. Stuck for the night between a very convenient rock (cliff) and hard place (river), with four girls that they didn't know, one of whom he still had yet to meet. The fact that they had openly admitted to not only being of mixed blood company, but with a full demon and not related by blood, only gave him more to be suspicious about. A secret, smarter part of him (kept a secret because he didn't really utilize it all that often) had urged him, in addition to other, usually more often head parts of his brain, to follow the sister that was leaving. She had, after all, proven to be the most dangerous.
"Good," said the lone wolf sister, tucking one arm against the small of her back. "If it's all the same to you, I really don't give a damn what you think, so keep your opinions to yourself." He stopped for a second, and she moved on, leaving him a slightly shocked, silent form of a man who had just lost hold of a very dear, however unfortunate, cliché of victimization.
"Now, hold on a second," he demanded, catching up to her. "What makes you think I had an opinion!" Only after the statement left his mouth did he realize how stupid it sounded, but all she did was chuckle and push a strand of errant black hair away from her face.
"Everyone has an opinion," she said. "Quarter bloods are a helluva lot less common than even people such as your, the common theory being that quarter bloods are all the result of females half bloods working as whores."
"Ah…" Where to take that statement? "… is it true?" She shrugged.
"I've never met another quarter blood," she answered. "I wouldn't know. My parents were married, though, I can promise you that." She stopped walking, and set the basket down on a outcropping of rocks, than leaned her sword next to it.
"Let's not talk about that," she said, reaching up for the corner of her towel. Her hand stopped just as her finger touched the fabric. "Would you please… look away?" she asked, and, to her surprise, he did, turning his back to her with a small grin on his face. He heard the whisper of the towel hitting the sand, but waited until he heard the water splashing against her skin to even venture a look. Usually, he would have looked sooner, but, to be truthful, something in the way she had asked her question told him that even warrior girls had something to hide. He could respect that, at least for the moment.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that heritage and talk of breeding isn't your favorite subject," came her voice, and he realized her couldn't see her. Then, her head popped out from behind a pile of rocks that jutted out into the water and she pulled herself up far enough to rest her chin on her arms. Her hair was wet and hung heavily around her face, framing very quizzical eyes.
"Not really," he answered, leaning his back against a tree. Now that he knew where she was, he was both safe and accomplishing the task he had assigned to himself with his own big mouth, the task of protecting her. She grinned.
"My mom used to throw things at people who even attempted to broach the subject," she said. "The best was when she nailed the shortest man in the village with a teacup on the back of a head through a crowded street." He gave a low whistle.
"That's pretty impressive," he said, shaking his head. "I wish my mom had been like that." It just kind of slipped out, and the aftertaste it left in his mouth wasn't pleasant, but the way she tilted her head and gave a small smile was almost enough to make up for the mistake.
"Not all mothers are same," she said, lowering her eyes. "It happens. You can't be ashamed of them, because they're still humans and demons, sometimes at the same time. Imperfect, but infallible in the memories they leave us." She looked up and directed that sad smile at him. It wasn't sympathy, it was…
She slid of the rock and disappeared under the water, only to surface again quite a few feet out from shore. This particular section of the river was more a reservoir than anything, the result of a short waterfall that level off and a perfect angle before drop offing again some distance away. It was deep enough that the water close to the surface was calm, if dark, and in the fading sunlight, Kuroi's hair seemed to almost grow from the river itself. Her face was lost in shadow, but he saw the flash of her teeth as she smiled at him.
"Are you going to stay there forever, Gojyo-san?" she called. "The water's perfect!"
"Hehehe…" How to refuse her nicely? How to refuse her at all? She was entirely naked underneath all the water, but then again, the water was the problem. Swimming was, again, not a strong point – but just as he opened his mouth to give her the best rejection he could (while mentally kicking himself all the while), he realized that he had lost sight of her. The surface of the water was almost glassy again, save for a few ripples from the breeze.
"Of course," came her voice again, this time much closer and to the left of where he was looking, "the closer you are to the beach, the warmer the water is." She was standing in water that rose to just above her waist, the same shadows that had hidden her face hiding all but the silhouette of her form. The edges of her body were lit with orange red and her hair dripped fire down her shoulders, where the water slid down her skin to once again join with the water that it had come from.
"Is this a better place. Gojyo-san?" His name rolled off her tongue and it was in the tone of something that whispered stronger ideas into his mind.
Could he handle four feet of slow moving water? Especially for something that… well, that?
He believed the answer was a firm yes.
It was a deal of time later, in the full arms of darkness, that they lay side by side on the sand, barefoot but dressed in the minimum, with the waves of the tide brushing the soles of their feet. They weren't touching, except where their arms had falling next to each other, and yet, that was okay. Gojyo was, at heart, not much of a cuddling person, and not that he could speak for her, but Kuroi seemed perfectly happy stretched out as she was, wrapped once again in her towel.
"Supposed we missed dinner?" he asked, and she started laughing.
"I hope your friend Goku was able to eat," she said, sitting up and pulling her knees to her chest. Her hair had… fallen… out of its chopstick hold, and no amount of searching was going to rescue it from its new home several feet below the water, so now it tumbled down her back, a tight mess of curls and waves that mimicked the harsher parts of the river.
"Wasn't your hair straight earlier?" he asked, sitting up. He could feel the sand where it was dug into the skin of his back, but he had pants on, and he felt that was all that was necessary for the moment. She looked over at him and rolled her eyes.
"It does this when it gets wet," she explained, pulling a chunk forward and yanking it straight between her fingers. "Mimi will have to straighten it in the morning – otherwise, it dries out and I look like a hyperactive bush." It was his turn to laugh, because the mental image was, indeed, funny, but she laughed along with him. A sneeze soon interrupted her, and she snapped something angrily in the same tongue that he had heard her use earlier.
"What is that?" he asked, gaining a very confused look from her.
"What?" She tilted her head to side, then wrinkled her nose. "Oh, that," she said. "It's one of the words I used to hear my grandfather use all of the time, from the language of his homeland."
"His homeland?" She nodded.
"He was from the west," she explained, "but further West than most people have ever thought of being. "A lifetime away" was what he always told me. He taught me some of his language before he passed away – the keyword to the tunnel if from one of the words I remember." It was his turn to nod, because that made a lot more sense than his original theory.
"That's what I thought," he said, raking his fingers through his hair. He gave a sigh when he saw the amount of sand that came away on his fingers. "Man, this is going to take forever to wash out." She chuckled and patted his shoulder.
"Just ask Midori to get it out. She has some amazing skills with hai-" He heard it before he saw it, but oddly enough, he grabbed Kuroi at the same time she tightened her grip on his shoulder and they pushed each other down at the exact same time. Something whistled over their heads and kicked up a cloud of sand as it hit the ground, before it buried itself in the exact tree that Gojyo had been leaning against before and exploded, sending a shower of wood chips raining down on them and his shakujo skittering across the sand. Kuroi was up before him, jumping over him to reach her sword. She was stopped.
"Lovely evening wear, Kuroi, my dear," chided a voice as Gojyo pulled himself to his feet. In whatever amount of time it had taken for the first attack to detonate, they had become surrounded by a full force of shadowy figures marked with claws and smiles that glinted of even sharper edges. The one nearest to Kuroi let itself be revealed in the moonlight, and the noise she made was not a happy one.
"And here I thought you'd be smart enough to stay dead once someone put a sword through your face," she snapped as she took a precautionary step backward. Gojyo took a step closer to her, but turned his view onto the other half of the entourage, pressing his back against hers as he did.
"That was quite an interesting show you put on," said the monster again, his pale smile lit up in the moonlight. His skin was almost the color of the light itself, but his hair was as black as hers, and his eyes just as dark. The sound she made this time was almost a squawk.
"You pervert!" she yelped, wrapping her arms around herself. "How dare you-!" The demon stepped forward and ran his fingernails across her cheek, making her wince as he did so.
"I was so glad to see that you still bear the marks I gave you," he said quietly, but Gojyo heard him, and the sound that Kuroi made. This time, it was something choked in the back of her throat.
"You… you… stupid… goat sucking… pig faced… pervert!" Gojyo felt the warmth of Kuroi's skin leave his, and heard the thud as she tackled the demon and slammed him into the ground. Even as she was pushing herself off of him and lunging for her sword, Gojyo was taking the chance at the shocked faces of the other demons to make a mad dash to his weapon. He could take them as he was, sure, but things were so much easier if he didn't actually have to touch them.
"Got it!" He wrapped his fingers around the hilt and caught himself on the sand before he slid too far. Kuroi was already on her feet, sword in hand, scabbard cast to the side. She was also… wearing his shirt!
"Hey!" he cried. "I'll be wanting that back!"
"Yeah, well, you try fighting in a towel!" she yelled back, widening the stance of her feet. Gojyo may have had a few inches of height on her, but even his shirt was almost too short to cover up all of the essential parts. "Well! Bring it on, you empty headed forest monkeys!" Several of the demons shifted to attack, but their leader, the one that Kuroi so obviously hated, was back on his feet, his hands raised.
"No, that's all right," he assured his followers. "Let them be. We've done our part here – now we can go join the real fun." He grinned at Kuroi and blew her a kiss as he, and his minions, disappeared into the shadows, leaving two very confused, half naked, and well armed people standing on the shore of a quietly turning river.
"Real… fun?" wondered Gojyo. "What in the hell was he-urk!" She had his collar in a firm grip, and was hauling him a break neck speed back in the direction the originally came.
"He's attacking the house!" she said. "They're going after Pehji!"
"The house?" He pulled himself free and stopped to brush the dust off of his pants in a very nonchalant manner. She stopped, as well, and turned on him.
"What are you doing!" she screamed at him. He only looked over at her.
"If it's the house, where your sisters, as well as the other guys, are there shouldn't be a problem," he said, then grinned. "It'll be all right. No need to hurry." A very sharp, angry metal tip of a sword pressed itself into his throat and the eyes that stared up him weren't the same inviting eyes that had stared at him less than few hours before.
"If you think," she started, her voice as hard as the ground she stood on, "that Tartals and his band are the only people after my sister, than you're sadly mistaken." This was the same Kuroi, then, that had emerged from the tunnel at the beginning the afternoon, the one with eyes like coal straight from the mountain, and skill with a weapon, to boot. She was-
"You're a very smart girl," said a voice, reverberating from the trees around them. It was a voice that caused a chill to go up Gojyo's spine. "And I commend you for that. You might want to hurry, though – the show's about to begin." The laughter that burst forth, than faded away just as quickly, was high pitched and irritating and left a grating sensation across Gojyo's nerves. Kuroi's sword lowered only a moment before she turned and took off in a full keep run towards the path. Gojyo was right behind her.
