Alrighty then, it's time for the next chapter. As I stated before, I really don't know a whole lot about pregnancy (as I have obviously never been pregnant) except for the basics, so excuse me if something is wrong. I'll probably just end up skipping around a lot since I won't be writing about the entire nine months. Oh wows…. Automatically skip to the middle why don't I…Oh, and I don't know if people back then knitted, but they do now. Sorry.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dynasty Warriors, obviously.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

CHAPTER 16 START

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It had been about two months since it had been found out that Yue Ying was pregnant, meaning that she was now about four and a half months along. Currently, Liu Bei had taken some of his generals and gone off to take over Luo Castle. Obviously, Yue Ying could not go along with them, or if she did, she could not fight. Not seeing the use in going to just sit around and wait for news of the victor, she decided to stay back at the castle. Zhuge Liang would have normally gone along with Liu Bei, but had decided not to this time so that he could stay back home with his wife. Instead, Pang Tong went in his place.

Liu Bei was still a bit skeptical about Pang Tong's abilities, and had been secretly sending letters to Zhuge Liang about Tong's ideas and plans before trying to do anything. Liang had, of course, read over them carefully and always replied to Liu Bei that he should trust Pang Tong. Often, Liang would open up a map of the area and would also look in his books for information about it.

'I bet he wishes he could have gone,' thought Yue Ying one afternoon when she saw him doing this. 'He loves coming up with strategies. I suppose that now he is just trying to go over the plans that Pang Tong has made and see if they will work from what he knows of the place.' She turned back around and looked at what she was trying to make. With having an extra life inside of her, there was not much that she could do without endangering it. To pass the time, she had actually learned from one of maids how to knit. Her work was hardly above satisfactory, but it still gave her something to do. At the moment, she was working on trying to knit a blanket for her child to use when it was born. It was actually going quite well. As she continued working on it, from behind her, Zhuge Liang suddenly jumped up from his desk.

"No!" He shouted. Yue Ying jumped, not expecting this sudden outburst. She turned around and looked at him. He was glaring at a page in one of his books.

"Uh, what is the matter?" She asked, looking at him questioningly. He shook his head and sat back down again.

"I must write a letter and get it to him at once!" He mumbled before walking over to the door that led out into the hallway. "Servant!" He called loudly and soon one of the servants came scurrying from somewhere down the hall to come see what he needed. Liang quickly walked back to his desk with the servant following. Grabbing a piece of blank parchment, he dipped his quill in the inkwell and hastily scribbled something on the parchment. After he finished writing, he picked it up and started swishing it through the air, trying to dry the ink faster, even though it would probably start to run and smear from this as well. After doing this for a few seconds, he shoved the parchment at the servant.

"Take this to the swiftest messenger in town. Tell him to take this letter to Lord Liu Bei and tell him to ride as fast as his horse can carry him!" Zhuge Liang told the servant, who nodded and ran out of the room and closed the door behind him. Yue Ying stood up from where she had been sitting and placed her knitting on the table.

"What was that about? What is wrong?" She asked, starting to worry even though she did not yet know what was wrong. Zhuge Liang sighed and turned around, shaking his head and looking quite tired. He sat down on the edge of the bed and started to rub his temples. Yue Ying sat down beside of him and watched him, waiting for an answer to the question she had already asked twice. Her husband shook his head again before answering,

"In the last few letters that Lord Liu Bei has sent, he told me about Pang Tong's strategies to take Luo Castle. Well, just now I was reading up about the terrain and such of the area around Luo Castle to try and walk through Pang's plans. As I was doing so, I noticed something in my book. A certain hill that Pang Tong is going to go over had another name, a name that not many remember anymore… It is a bad omen for him, Ying…" He answered, shaking his head again. Yue Ying put a hand on his shoulder, worried about her old friend Pang Tong.

"And… what exactly is the name of this hill?"

"The name of it is Fallen Phoenix Slope…" Yue Ying gasped. This was not good at all! Oh why must Pang Tong have been named The Fledgling Phoenix out of all of the other names?

"Oh no! I hope the message gets to Liu Bei in time so he can stop Pang Tong from going there…" said Yue Ying. "But wait, you can use telepathy, can you not? Why did you not use that? It would have been much quicker."

"Yes, I can use it. The only thing is that there are restrictions. I can only speak to someone within a mile radius of myself, in which Liu Bei and Pang Tong are not within that radius," answered Zhuge Liang. He stood up and walked back over the window to look out of it. The season was beginning to change into the fall. The green leaves were changing into the colors of red, orange and yellow, and the dead brown as well.

"Well, I suppose there is no need in worrying over it at the moment. I just hope Pang Tong takes the letter seriously…" He said, putting his arms behind his back and watching a few leaves break off of their tree limbs and drift to the ground.

x-x-x

A few days later, a reply returned from Liu Bei. A servant boy knocked on the door to Zhuge Liang's room and Yue Ying opened it to answer.

"Hello, Lady Yue Ying. Is Master Zhuge Liang here? I have a message for him…"

"No, he is not here at the moment. The last I heard from him was that he was going down to the library to research something. I am not sure if he is still there or not, but perhaps you should go down and see. If he is not there and you cannot find him, then just come back here and I will give it to him when he returns," Yue Ying replied. The servant nodded and walked off to go find Zhuge Liang.

Not too long after that, Zhuge Liang came bursting through the door, once again making Yue Ying, who was trying to work on her knitting, jump. He stormed into the room and over to the desk, which he hit the top of in his anger.

"Argh! Why must he act so childish!" He fumed and gritted his teeth. Yue Ying stood up as he began pacing around the room and throwing a few things into a chest.

"Why? What is it?" she asked. This was the angriest she had ever seen him; she had not seen or heard of the incident with him and Tong two months ago, so she obviously couldn't have said that was the angriest she had ever seen her husband.

"What is it? That idiot Pang Tong thinks that I am just jealous of him coming up with that strategy to take Luo Castle! He has never heard of the name Fallen Phoenix Slope, so he therefore automatically assumes that I am just trying to mess him up!" He said, still grabbing items like books and clothes and throwing them untidily into the chest. After grabbing one last thing and throwing it in, he closed and latched the chest.

"I am sorry, Ying, but I must go and try to stop him before he does something stupid. And… if worse comes to worse, so that I can help Liu Bei come up with a way to take Luo Castle." He walked over to her and put his arms around her. He gave her a kiss and then hugged her for a moment before letting go. Walking back over to the chest, he grabbed the handles and moved it over to the door. Opening the door, he once again called for a servant to come.

"Take this chest downstairs for me and call ten of the fastest horsemen here to quickly get ready for battle and join me down there," He ordered once another servant boy popped up from down the hallway. The boy bowed and started trying to carry the chest, but found it to heavy and began to drag it instead. "Be careful going down the stairs with that! You had better not damage anything!" Zhuge Liang called to the boy. He turned back around to face Yue Ying.

"I will see you later, Ying. Hopefully when I return, it will be with that idiot riding his donkey beside of me." Yue Ying nodded.

"Goodbye, and please be careful. I will pray for both your and Pang Tong's safe return." Turning back around, Zhuge Liang walked out of the room and closed the door.

x-x-x

Only an hour after the past written events, Zhuge Liang rode out of the city on the fastest horse available with his ten horsemen following. They headed off to find Liu Bei's camp, with Pang Tong hopefully still in it. From the window in her room, which was quite high up in the castle, Yue Ying could see out and past the gate of the city. She watched as her husband rode off, and did just as she told him she would do, she prayed for both his and Pang Tong's safe return.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

CHAPTER 16 END

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There ya have it, chapter sixteen. Oh, and please excuse me for calling Pang Tong an idiot! Please? I'm sorry if this chapter was bad or something. I somehow wrote like all of it in three hours, so I'm not too sure of it's worth. It's also about one hundred words shorter than normal, but I'm sure you guys don't really care about that…

CrazyInsanity - Yes yes, poor Tong. I wish I didn't have had to do that, but he was the only person that I could think of that would go and visit Zhuge all the time. It's just his luck I guess…. Anyway, thanks for reviewing!

Tdino - Yup yup! Thanks for reviewing!

zhugeliangsgrl - If you were Zhuge you would…? Heh, oh well. Yup yups. Thanks for reviewing!