A/N: Heh. I like this chapter. A lot. And I hope that any of my however-many reviewers enjoy it as well.
This is the third chapter I've posted for my stories today, one for nearly each, and I'm off to write yet another. I'm very proud of myself for that fact, since it's the most writing I've done in a long while. However, I digress. Again.
Moving on, I would like all to know that I did research for the second part in the reef. Research. Most information is correct, although some I just picked from other sources in a similar category and placed in my story for fun and excitement.
But, comments: Am I moving them too fast? Or does it seem about right? Anyways, for my other IF series readers, I'm pleasently surprised to see that I'm still getting reviews for Truth. Even one of my friend's is reading it (somehow, that sounds like bad grammar) and says that her favorite character thus far is Buka. And it (he? She? Who knows?) was just there because I needed something to write, too...
Right, well, the poll hasn't changed since last time: Karasu: 1; Naraku: 0; Toguro: 0; Rando: 0; Other (specify): 1 (Urasue from Inuyasha).
Anyways, I'm done. Enjoy the chapter. I enjoyed writing it.
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"Suuichi, you need to use more polish."
"That's not enough, I said!"
"Dammit, can't you get simple instructions through your thick skull?"
'Suuichi' sighed, picking up the same spear he had been polishing for the past hour, took it back to his workplace, and began the routine over again. It had been the same routine for the past few days- he would do his best with the vague instructions from Inuyasha, take the spear up for inspection, get yelled at or a small comment of gruff approval, and either be sent back with the same spear or recieve a new one to work on.
Shippo swam up to Inuyasha, twitched a bit before Inuyasha passed the weapon, and got a new one to work on. The bubbly child swam back to Youko, smiling at his frustration. Shippo had already passed the thirty mark for polishing weapons, whereas Youko was on his fifth.
"You get used to his standards," the young boy had said to a growled out insult from the land-prince.
Youko didn't know what Inuyasha saw that he didn't. Youko used all of his hard-earned muscle, scrubbing as hard as he could to get the grime, dirt, and questionables from the tips, but it still wasn't enough. He polished them until they shone like miniature suns in the (somehow) glowing reef, yet it still didn't meet with the brunette's approval.
Youko yawned, setting down his spear as he stretched. It was his fifth day working in Atlantis (or so he figured- it was impossible to tell morning from night there, let alone one day from the next). Kagome had visited him each day, bringing with her the latest gossip and helping him become more profficient in his swimming. He could nearly keep up with her, now.
Nearly was the operative word. She could still swim circles around him if she tried, and that didn't help Youko's self-esteem when it came to fitting in in the city. He was as slow as the children just learning their first strokes, and was often reminded of that fact by Kagome's friends.
She had brought them with her on the second (or was it third?) day. They had immediately began to point out his flaws, telling him what he was doing wrong, but not helping to correct his mistakes. The constantly repeated what Kagome had told him the first day- if he didn't learn by trial and error, how would he learn?
It seemed to be the city motto.
He picked up his rag as he thought about Yuusuke and Miroku. They both seemed pretty alike, in the respect that they both cared immensly for Kagome, and both possessed a blatant disregard for rules. From their tales, they were often a factor in Kagome's excursions.
Still, Youko was beginning to like them. They had a decent (if, in Miroku's case, twisted) sense of humor that Youko could relate to. He had more in common with them than at first glance, and they were very good at holding an intelligable arguement. But none of them could hold a candle to Kagome.
She had often backed Youko into a corner with her arguements. She was in the perfect position for gathering information, being welcome in both the palace and the city, and being neither noticed nor ignored. It helped her collect vast amounts of intelligence, with which she used against the shocked merman whenever possible, and with much more relish than should be legal.
As if his thoughts summoned her, Kagome opened the door and swam into the workroom without any regard to the fact that Inuyasha was standing just inside. She ignored him and made her way to Shippo and, in retrospect, 'Suuichi'.
"Shippo, Yo-Suuichi," she greeted. It was a good thing she had caught herself. Youko had expressed his wishes for her to calm him by his birthname the first time she had kidnapped him (that was the only term that could be used when she literally dragged him from his station) and took him for a stretch. Her friends had the same permission, knowing that he possessed all of his memories but respecting his refusal to talk about it.
"Kagome! If you're taking Suuichi, can I come, too?" the boy asked, turning puppy eyes onto the young princess. "Oh, please?"
Kagome laughed and returned his warm embrace. "Sorry, but you already have my sisters wrapped around your finger. I know for a fact that you get them to take you out, so don't think that I'll follow in their footsteps," she scolded mildly.
Shippo grinned impishly. "You're right," he agreed. It had been with a nasty shock that Youko had found out Shippo had a nasty, prankster persona about himself. In fact, the boy had pulled a prank on the prince himself, one that made the red-head shudder from embarrassment at the memory of.
Kagome turned to Youko and motioned to him. "I don't have all day, you know, and by now you deserve a break. Come on." Youko gladly dropped his work as he followed her out, ignoring the murderous look that Inuyasha gave them. The weaponsmaster had tried to talk the princess out of kidnapping his newest victim, but she had nearly pulled rank on him to plow over all of his excuses. Now, all he could do was stare with blatant disapproval.
When they were away from the palace and well on their way to the outer city limits, Youko spoke up. "So, where are we headed to today?" So far, Kagome had brought him to an enclosed grotto, a deep canyon (in which Youko had been surprised to discover he could see perfectly fine) and swimming with a few dolphins.
Kagome smiled grimly. "I want to get as far from the palace as I can. Suzaku has been taking to following me wherever I go, adament that he's only conserned for my safety. I had to pull some fancy swimming in order to get away from him, and then I had to sneak out right away after."
Youko smiled. "Well, it's not like it's your fault, right?" Youko had filled her in, with more detail, about Youko's own bethrothment and his view on his bride-to-be. It had been a real eye-opener to find that Kagome was one of four princesses, and Kagome had had to nearly bite off his head in order to get him to settle his nerves and stop treating her like a porcelain figure.
Kagome sighed heavily, bubbles floating from her mouth. "I know it isn't, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, right?" She glanced over at him, glad that he wasn't trying to say what good it would do for the kingdom. She got enough of that from her family and friends. "Besides, nobody listens to me when I say he isn't...right." She couldn't elaborate more than that, but Youko felt he understood.
Instead of saying anything, he nodded. Then he turned his attention to the scenery, as it was a place he had yet to go to. The seaweed thickened slightly, waving fanfares to the sparkeling water. The ocean floor had risen without him knowing, taking him closer to the surface than he had been since he first got to Atlantis.
Coral began to spread out in the distance, brilliant colors creating an underwater painting. Youko could see fish swimming about lazily, without a care in the world, their scales glittering in the sun's light.
"Just ahead, that's the origional location for Atlantis." Youko raised an eyebrow at Kagome. "Origionally it was meant to be a bright city, but then the gliding creatures came, the ones that skim the barrier," she clarifyed. Youko nodded, knowing that she meant the fishing vessels. "That scared the people to the darkness, and that's where the palace was raised."
The red-head knew that she meant it literally, when she said raised. He knew the palace was made of coral, and there was only one way that you gained the substance. "What is it used for now? Anything?" He was always curious about Atlantis' history, and Kagome was only too happy to tell him about it.
"It's just there. Just another peice of reef, there for anyone's enjoyment. The only thing that makes it special is the fact that Atlantis would have been there, instead of where it is, had we not been too afraid to discover the creatures' purposes and braved the light." Her tone was sad, revealing her love of the sun.
Youko's face fell. He had hoped that she would be telling him another peice of legend, another new piece to the puzzle that made up this underwater paradise. Even now, days later, it seemed like a waking dream. Youko thought that any moment, he would wake up and realise it was only weeks until the wedding, days, hours, mere moments before his freedom was ripped away from him forever...
"Stop!" Kagome said harshly, softly, throwing her arms out as an automatic action. Her eyes were cautious, her body tense, and Youko knew better than to go against her when she had been born and raised in the water. "Something's not right." She narrowed her eyes, squinting, searching for the slightest sign that would tell her what had caused her to stop.
Then she saw it. "The seaweed is moving against the current," she said quietly. And indeed, it was- the current was moving Kagome's hair from left to right, yet the weeds were moving the opposite, right to left. "Why would it do that? Unless..."
That was all the warning that was given. A scream from Kagome to swim for the reef, to find a place to hide, right before the biggest monstrocity ever seen in Youko's short and eventful life attaced.
Actually, it was many somethings. Each one was blue in color, with a white underbelly. There were at least five, but no more than ten. That was all Youko could gather before they attacked, each shark possessing a set of deadly teeth, and each one deciding that Youko was the better bit of food.
He had to move fast, and there was no time for thought. He swam for all he was worth, swimming towards the reef. He could no longer see the glitter of scaled fish. They had seen the danger long before the two people had, and had fled in terror. And now, with a pack of vicious, hungry sharks quite literally on his tail, Youko knew the blind terror that took over their small bodies just before death's icy grip took them into his grasp, snuffing out their short lives without mercy.
He couldn't see Kagome. Not that he had much of a chance- one eye was watching for sharks to his left, another for them to his right, and a third he didn't possess was searching for a place of safety. He listened in for them, trying to pick out their gnashing jaws from the rest of the noise they were making.
He caught a glimpse of blue from the corner of his eye, and dodged just in time. Still, he thought that he had lost a few scales back there. He turned and began to swim. It was only moments later that he realised he was no longer swimming to the reef.
The sharks attacked again when he tried to swim back to safety. He realised, some twisted part of his mind laughing ironically, that he was being herded somewhere. And that somewhere could only be towards more of their brethren. He was done for, and he was going to die underwater, with nobody realising what had happened to him, never being able to say goodbye to his mother, his father, Rin...
A flash of blue ahead. The rest of the pack, a further seven of them, none less than eight feet in length. They swam to meet him, and he could see the raw hunger in their eyes, the need for food, the savage instinct that gave them the means to their survival. It terrified him, nearly so much that he didn't make his next move.
He realised that they were just surrounding him on his sides. They were doing nothing about his escape routes above or below him, and he knew he could take that to his advantage, however small and miniscule it would be.
Swimming down was out. The ocean bottom was too close to where he swam, and he would run into it and beach himself like a ship running into the shoals. The only way he could move was up, and so he uttered a mindless prayer, conveying his desperation, his need, just before he acted.
He had to angle himself, and he nearly didn't make it. He wasn't used to swimming, as the sharks obviously were, and he was growing tired. But with one great pump of his tail, his arms flat against his sides so they didn't slow him down, he shot out of the water.
It felt like he was suspended in the air. The sun beat down on his shining skin, it's heat kissing him as he arced through the air. He caught sight of a ship in the distance, seeing ant-size people scutter and shout on deck. He heard and glimped a handful of sharks break the surface themselves, before he was falling into the fray once more.
Time sped up. The water was cool, shocking him from his dream-like state. He swam down and around, hoping the sharks would follow his path blindly and not be as intelligent as he thought they were. He nearly lost it when he swam under a horde of them, each fighting the other, not paying attention to him until he had already passed them by. They sorted themselves out, then, and began the chase once more.
He saw Kagome in the near distance, her face pale, her eyes wide with fright. She was waving him over, motioning for him to follow her to wherever she had gone, and then she, too, was swimming for her life.
She kept ahead of him, swimming around the seaweed with the ease and grace of practice. She swam, always keeping just in his sight, until she came to a cave of sorts. She swam into it, not looking back, and he spurred his already screaming muscles into new vigor.
He had barely cleared the entrance of the cave, it's inside pitch black, unable to see even with his improved eyesight, before a stone was falling into the place of the only light source. Youko caught on quickly, throwing his weary body in to help her, placing the stone over the entrance just in time.
The thudding of over twenty bodies hitting the entrance echoed off the walls. They almost lost the battle when the stone groaned in protest, sliding across the sand ever so slightly. But then there was silence, except for the heavy breathing of the two people, the adrenaline still running, the instinct of fight or flight still foremost on their minds.
"Well," Kagome said with false cheer, starteling Youko nearly from his mind, "that wasn't what I had planned. Sorry," she apologized. Youko could sense her weariness, sense her being unused to using up so much energy at once.
"What," Youko paused to take control of his shaking voice, and to gather his wits, "what were they? And how can sharks travel in packs?"
"Those were blue sharks," Kagome said. "And they travel in packs according to size and gender. We're just lucky that none of them were female, otherwise we would have been toast." She sagged against the rock and heard Youko do the same on her other side. "If they had been female, they would have had mating scars covering their skin."
Youko laughed without humor. "I was too busy swimming for my life to notice, but I'll try to keep that in mind next time I decide to have a morning jaunt through the waters pursued by a group of hunger-crazed fish," he commented, voice laced heavily with sarcasm.
Kagome smiled. "Still, now that you can look back on it, it seems a bit surreal." Her heart was still pounding, and though it usually stopped by now, even after such a strenuous swim, she attributed the fact to having survived her first encounter with a pack of sharks out to do her in.
"It does." Youko closed his eyes. Not that it would matter much; neither of them could see in the darkness anyway. "But I won't be laughing any time soon, so don't ask me to." He tried to slow his breathing, tried to calm down. He started to take systematic, deep breaths, and that seemed to help a bit.
"Neither will I," she said with a yawn. "But now that we're relatively safe, a nap sounds nice." She pulled her tail to her chest as she heard, rather than saw, Youko nod beside her. "Pleasent dreams, I hope," she said with a small smile.
Youko nodded again, yawning himself. Whoever said yawns were contagious had the right idea, he thought. Slowly he drifted off to sleep, dropping into the land of dreams just after Kagome herself. The young princess's head fell sideways as her neck stopped supporting it, and it fell onto Youko's chest. And there they slept, until the search party was sent out to find them sometime later.
There was nothing like a near-death experience to bring two people together.
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End Chapter
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