It was amazing how a layer of dust and debris could coat a person, like a large gray sheet draped over one's body. Dust crept into the crevices and folds of one's clothes, blending clothing and skin to look like one and the same. It was an amazing sight to behold, and an even bigger surprise to find out who was under the dirt and grime.
"Eriol, is that you under there?" Syaoran called to the figure that was closest to him.
The person coughed a few more times before attempting to answer. "Yes, my cute descendent." Eriol wiped his forehead and eyes with the back of his hand. It did not improve his condition; if anything, it made it worse.
Eriol jumped over a concrete slab and approached him at a walk. Syaoran took a step back. Next to him, an unknown swayed back and forth from exhaustion.
Eriol took no notice of what the person was doing and bowed his head slightly to them; both stared at him, mouths agape. "Good morning, Sakura-san." He indicated the back of the stage with a nod of his head. "I am terribly sorry for the mess I caused. No one got hurt, right?"
Syaoran could not find any muscles in his body that seemed to work enough for him to manage a simple nod. All were paralized by surprise. Sakura, on the other hand, seemed to have gotten more control over her own reaction to relay to Eriol in a shaky voice about the crowd that ran out.
Eriol opened his mouth in a small attempt to smile. "Thank goodness we did not get anyone hurt. That would have been terrible." He patted his clothes again, sending small clouds of dust into the air. Eriol then shook his whole body like a dog, spraying the others in a shower of fine grit. By the end of it, Syaoran could see the outline of the jacket Eriol was wearing and could dimly make out the skin underneath the flexible mask of dust still covering his face.
The sound of a footstep alerted Syaoran to something at his side. Tomoyo had crawled out of the pit and was walking over to them, her eyes locked on the huge hole in the ceiling. Sunshine poured its way into the room for a few seconds before being covered up again by passing clouds.
"Ah, good morning Tomoyo-chan!" Eriol said, raising his hands into the air. "Did you film them like I asked?"
Tomoyo shook herself from her trace. "Yes..." she answered in a small voice, as though any more words would take too much energy.
Eriol smiled again. "Good, good." His eyes dropped to the ground to where Hiyoshi's unconsious body lay. Sighing, he turned to Syaoran. "I had a feeling this would happen. How did you find out?"
After the shock had abated a little more Syaoran's brain restarted again on full power. "What did I find out?" he repeated, unable to answer. "What the hell are you talking about? Where have you been? What have you been doing all this time? What-"
Eriol put his finger on top of Syaoran lips, trying to shut him up. Syaoran was ready to explode with anger. His blood boiled at the sight of Eriol grinning to himself. He clenched Eriol's hand in a tight grip and pushed it back sharply. Eriol let his hand drop to his side, unaffected by Syaoran's action.
"I have found the last player in this little game," he announced, waving one arm behind him. The stranger ignored Eriol, still swaying back and forth. "Actually, the last two players."
Syaoran looked at the stranger, unable to describe him since he was still covered in dust. The stranger stopped moving and turned its head towards him.
Syaoran felt his chest tighten and he choked on his words. Gray eyes. The stranger had gray eyes. He had seen those eyes once before. But where? Where had he seen those gray eyes?
A blinding white flash errupted behind Syaoran's eyes, causing him to cry out in pain. Memories swarmed his mind and Syaoran felt his barriers crumble and his aura succumb. Images and voices were brought forcibly out of the corners of his mind, as though he was reliving the memory over and over. And he remembered. He remembered those gray eyes.
"You..." Syaoran gasped, cluching his hand over his heart. "It was you. You took over my body..."
The stranger showed no emotion, rising instead a few feet up into the air and flying next to Eriol, landing gracefully on the ground. Gray, empty eyes pierced into Syaoran's heart as he felt the stranger's power gather. It was as though a large foot was on Syaoran's chest, pressing in slowly, making the pain last long.
"What are you?" Sakura asked, her voice shaky.
The stranger made no movement to show it understood. 'You found them, Human. You found your 'other',' a voice echoed inside of Syaoran's head. The same familiar voice. The same gray eyes. Any doubt that Syaoran had vanished into oblivian. This was the centaur that came to him in his dream.
The creature looked much different than the last time Syaoran saw it in his dream. It was in the body of a young man, maybe a few years older than Syaoran.
'We must leave now,' the soft voice of the Messenger whispered inside of Syaoran's head.
"Who was that?" Sakura asked, her eyes scanning the room.
Syaoran could not turn to her to explain, his mind too numb. "What? Where?" Syaoran asked. He turned to Eriol, "What going on, Eriol?"
Eriol bowed his head; wether it was in shame, or that he could not look them in the eye for pain and dismay, was uncertain. "I am truly sorry, my dear desendent, but you must leave with it. You must go to its' home." He indicated the young man floating at his side. "You, Hiyoshi-kun, and dear Sakura-san."
"What?"
"All will be explained." Eriol took a step toward Hiyoshi and in one fluid motion, picked up the unconscious body of the boy and handed it gently to the creature. He turned around to Tomoyo, Sakura, and Syaoran. "The game is over, Syaoran. All the players have been gathered. Now the real trouble begins."
Syaoran stood in front of Sakura a bit more, shielding her from the unknown. "Eriol, what's going on?" he asked, keeping his voice as steady as his anger allowed it.
Suddenly, the creature closed it eyes, swaying backwards and forwards. A murmur of sounds began in Syaoran's mind. After a second, he realized that the murmurs were words, being spoken in some ancient and magical tongue. They called to him, making his eyelids shut. They were a lullaby, drawing him closer into its grasp, smothering him.
"Syaoran!" Sakura's scream broke through the cloud in his mind and Syaoran snapped awake again. He could not see anything at first, it was all black. He blinked, and realized what he was looking at. Before him was a portal. A black portal. Its destination could not be seen, and Syaoran was moving closer to it.
"Sakura! Eriol! Tomoyo!" Syaoran shouted, his voicesuddenly weak. Darkness engulfed him. The lullaby of words played softly in the backround of his mind, covering it in darkness. He was in the portal. And where he would end up, Syaoran did not know. After a minute, he was no longer in a state of mind to care.
"Wake up,pretty boy." a deep voice growled.
'Touya?' Syaoran thought. 'No, can't be-' he opened his eyes to a strange sky. It blinded him for a minute and all he could do was lay there. His arms would not move. Nor his legs. Nor his whole body, for that matter. 'What the hell?...'
Someone stood over him, casting a shadow on his eyelids. Syaoran tried opening them again, finding this simple action more difficult then last time. "Ssssaa...haa...haa-"
"Shut up. You won't be able to talk for the next ten minutes, so you might as well not waste your energy."
'Who is that?' Syaoran wondered. The deep voice sounded fimiliar, yet he could not place his finger on it. 'Well,' he thought, 'first I want to be able to move my finger,' Figuring if the person who was standing over him had not hurt him yet, he was not going to, so Syaoran concentrated on his body.
He started testing every part of him, going through each and every limb to see if it would respond. After a few minutes, he got a tingling fedback crawling up his legs like a spider. His fingers twitched. His toes wiggled. This was good, he decided. Very good.
'Now then', he thought, 'mouth.' Before he could even click his tongue to form a word the deep voice growled at him again.
"I told you once, you are not going to be able to say a word for ten minutes. You still have two to go. Don't even try."
'What an ass.' Syaoran thought. Now that his body was somewhat operational, he wondered if he should try and move. The fact that he did not have the strenght to spread his lips apart crushed his ego somewhat, and Syaoran knew he could do nothing expect lay there, feeling like an idiot, and hope that whoever was telling him not to talk would yet not attack him in his weakened state. He dismissed the thought, finding it better to stay perfectly still and wait.
After two minutes, Syaoran spread his lips to his first word in this strange place. "Sakura." Now Syaoran could see, his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the sky, and looked around for the person with the deep voice.
"She is not here." the person said.
At last the voice clicked in Syaoran's head. "Hiyoshi." he said, feeling suddenly weaker. 'I need to rest some more,' he thought.
"Yeah." Hiyoshi stood over Syaoran, looking down at him. He walked behind Syaoran and pushed up on his back so Syaoran could sit up. "I woke up about half an hour ago. There is some other dude over there," Hiyoshi pointed somewhere to the right of Syaoran, out of Syaoran's vision, "He's also knocked out, but he'll wake up soon."
'You should know, you're a seer,' Syaoran thought bitterly. 'You should have seen this coming.'
The next half hour passed in silence. By the end of it, most of Syaoran's strength had returned and he and Hiyoshi walked the ten feet to the body, which was lying facedown on the ground. Hiyoshi turned him over so Syaoran could see the person's face.
"It's him!" Syaoran gasped.
"Who?" Hiyoshi asked.
The creature. Or at least the body the creature took over. The person was still covered in dust. His eyes fluttered open slowly, revealing blue orbs. 'This is not Messenger.' Syaoran thought.
As if on cue, there was a loud footstep in the distance. Syaoran looked over his shoulder and instantly knew what was coming. "Messenger." he said aloud.
Once again in the body of a centar, Messenger flew over to the three boys. Syaoran stared into the eyes of the half horse, half man. They were gray. 'Hello again, Simple Human.' It said; the Messenger turned its head toward Hiyoshi, tilting its chin upwards.
"It's you!" Hiyoshi's deep voice exclaimed. "You were the one who came in my dreams!"
'He must be able to hear Messenger's voice in his head, too.' Syaoran thought. Ignoring Hiyoshi, Syaoaran shouted a loud,"Where's Sakura?"
'Your Other is somewhere where no one can get to her,Simple Human.' Messenger said. 'She will be protected, until the time comes.'
"How do I know that?"
'I can not tell a lie.' came the soft reply. 'She is part of the plan. Without her, everything fails.'
An overwhelming urge of curiosity bubbled over. "What plan? Where am I? And-" he paused glancing back to Hiyoshi, who was still holding the shoulders of the unknown boy. "What on earth is he doing here - who is he?"
Messenger cocked its' large human head to one side. 'Be quiet, Simple Human.' It stomped its feet to the boys, raising its long fingers up into the air. 'This,' the soft voice said, 'is a neutral place between my world and yours. It is a holding place for you until you are ready to leave.'
Syaoran snorted, deeply offended that he was being referred to as an animal that need a place where it could not cause harm. "I won't go anywhere but Earth." He retorted.
'You have no power to do so.' the creature said. 'You can not leave this place without my knowledge.'
"What makes you so important?" Syaoran asked.
'Silence!' the soft voice turned cold, angry. 'I am one guardian of the worlds of the world you are going to, momentarily.' It continued to walk around the boys in a circle. 'On this world, there is a portal that has been opened to the demon world. Your mission, Simple Human, is to close it.'
Syaoran could not help but think that there was much more to this then the creature was letting on. "You have magic, Messenger. You close it."
'Though it may not seem like it, your power excedes mine.' Messenger answered. 'I have the ability to gather all that is needed to save my world. I, myself, can not save it. That is why I have brought you and your companions here. As I have told you before, you have much more power then any one person in my world. It is that power which can save my world.'
'As for your other question, I have brought the people who can help you the most with your quest.'
Syaoran looked back at Hiyoshi and the boy. He was supposed to work with them? The thought seemed ridiculous. Hiyoshi seemed to have nothing but utter contempt for them; as for the other boy, Syaoran had no idea. His aura was terribly weak, much weaker then Syaoran's and Hiyoshi's. "You're joking, right?" Syaoran said.
Messenger ignored his comment. 'You have the second most power when compared to your 'other' so you will be doing much of the grunt work.' Again Syaoran felt his anger boil at being referred to with the same measure as one would use on a slave. 'I figured a seer would be most helpful, so I choose one of the most powerful. He may be lesser than you in terms of strength, but his importance in your quest, his role, is equal to yours.'
It made sense. Though Syaoran's ego was slightly wounded, he found himself grudgingly in agreement with Messenger - he felt that light in Hiyoshi, flickering beyond the edges. Also, from the sound of Messenger's words, it seemed as though he had no voice about his companions on this mission.
"What about that guy?" Syaoran asked, jerking his thumb toward the boy, yet unsure and distrustful. His anger was momentarily pushed aside in light of the new infomation. "What's his importance?"
'That,' said Messenger, 'is the only heir to the rightful throne. He serves two purposes. One is that he knows the land and customs and will be your guide. Secondly is that he will become king if everything is corrected. The surrounding countries will need leadership and stability, government and freedom. Though he does not know it, he has the influence to start this countries on the road to peace. His fate, however, will be decided with the outcome of this mission. If the outcome is bad, he will die. If the outcome is good, he has a chance to become a great king.'
"What if he dies before the mission is over?" Hiyoshi's deep voice startled Syaoran, who forgot Hiyoshi was there.
Messenger looked at the tall boy. 'Then it is the same as if the mission failed. Thus it is up to you and Simple Human to make sure that this does not happen, and to close the demon portal. The portal must be closed before the truly powerful demons break through, so your time is also limited. If you fail, then so does the fate of this world.'
Now Syaoran knew that he had no choose in this. Everything was already decided and he would have to follow along like a good little boy. What was his role in all of this? Oh, yes, 'grunt' work. And babysitting. The thought that he could just make Messenger take him out of this place and back to Earth occupied him for a few seconds before being replaced a strange, choking feeling. It was not terribly foreign, this feeling, yet he had been far away from his own emotions it took a minute before he recognized it. Guilt.
Guilt traveled up his chest and made a large lump in his throat, causing any words he wanted to say to come out as silent whispers. 'You can not leave a world to die,' a voice inside his head said, oddly sounding exactly like Sakura. 'You have the power to save people. So you must try. How would you ever live with yourself, knowing you have condemed so many to their deaths?'
Hiyoshi's voice broke through Syaoran's thoughts again. "When do we leave?"
'Now' was Messenger's reply as he raise his arms, gathering magic. A portal opened before them, and Hiyoshi and the boy were lifted in midair and floated toward it. Syaoran could feel his body becoming weightless, yet he struggled to stay on the ground.
"What about Sakura? Where is she?" Syaoran shouted back towards Messenger.
'That is of no concern of yours, Simple Human. You must concentrate on your mission, and only on your mission.'
A storm of rage drowned his anger in agony and Syaoran revolted once more against the powers that where sending him to the portal. "You tell me where she is now! Or I'll-"
His threat was cut off as he entered the portal and dissapeared.
Messenger listened to the silence. It was nice, very calm and pleasing. Along with the silence came the end of the first part of Messenger's job. Now everything that happened to its world would be in the hands of humans.
Humans. What odd creatures. There were many on the world that Messenger protected, along with other beasts and of the like. As a whole group, humans were terribly boring when compared to their great potenial. They were lazy, and they smelled. It seemed that since they could not comprehend their somewhat pointless existance, they had to invent reasons for them to survive, causing even more pointless wars and such.
Also humans had an incredibly annoying habit of naming everything they came in contact with. Every flower, animal, element, and more had a name. It seemed somewhat silly to Messenger, who did not understand their fascination with names. For names would be forgotten in some odd number of generations, only to have new names appear. In all of Messenger's life, the current earth word for 'rose' must have gone through thousands of changes before they settled on this word, at least for the time being.
It is not as if they could not tell the difference between two things, so why name it? Messenger mussed over its own name for a minute. The Simple Human had chosen its name in passing, most likely without thought. It was cruel, Messenger thought, for its new name to have such little meaning in it. How cruel. Yet, for the time being, this was the only thing he would indentify himself as. At least, until the next human would name it. This was tradition lost in time, far before Messenger was born, most likely began with the first guardian, and will end with the last gaurdian, whenever that may be.
In all, Humans had nothing to offer to the universe as a whole; for they did not live very long, they spent most of their lives in a fruitless quest of some sort or another, and there were only a dozen or so every thousand years that truly strived to become great. Besides these few individuals, Messenger found humans pathetic.
Yet it loved them. Love was a predominant emotion in its being. How could it not love them? Humans, their worlds, their lives, their fates, were the only reason Messenger was alive. It was born to help the universe correct itself, and for some reason, for all their uselessness, humans were the one creatures that could decide the future.
It was in these few individuals, the ones that chose greatness and opened their eyes to their overwhelming potential, that Messenger found admiration for these creatures. Yet with humans, their interaction between each other fascinated Messenger. How they cared loved, how they hated, all mattered in understanding the animals Messenger was to gaurd, and love.
It supposed that the main reason for the many, many emotions (too many, Messenger thought) humans had was because they had two genders, each could not live without the other. And each never, ever being able to understand the other. This was another confusing trait humans had. How, or why, this came about, Messenger could not even pretend to understand. All it knew was that having two genders mattered alot in deciding the future, but not so much in mantaining it.
It halted its thoughts for a few minutes, drinking in the silence. It knew that inevitably it would need to leave the neutral place, and continue the second part of its' job. But for now, silence was needed, and welcomed.
Author's note: Wow. That took a lot longer then I expected, though I hope the result was worth it. The story is finnaly to the place where I want it, so now the excitment starts. As I have said many times before, reviews are always welcomed (and always needed), flames not.
Author's note2: The next chapter is to be expected sometime next week, though please forgive me if I am a bit tardy. I want to write the best I can give you, so if the chapter is a few days late, it is for a good reason. Thank you