A/N: Okie-dokie, well, there's an important revelation in this chapter. I was planning on dragging it out across more chapters and stuff but….I got impatient, I suppose. XD

Also…..REVIEW, PLEASE! Seriously. Reviewing won't hurt you. I swear. :D

They spent the next two weeks traveling through the forest. Strangely, they weren't attacked once during this time. Of course, that wasn't going to last.

"Sanzo, I'm hungry!"

Thwack.

"Guess that settles that, then." Keiko said mildly. She'd steadily become accustomed to the antics of the Sanzo-ikkou, though it had been a significant adjustment; she was used to having only Aya for company.

Aya, though, hadn't quite settled comfortably into their new situation; she seemed content to simply put up with how things were, making very little effort to get along with the others. Keiko, of course, knew that the main reason was her…condition. It made her opposed to making personal connections with others. Of course, it didn't help that the group, Sanzo in particular, seemed extremely keen on ferreting out their exact mission. Which Ayame refused to tell them.

"So, where are we going, exactly?" Gojyo asked, for what seemed like the millionth time, when they stopped for a break.

"A temple." Ayame said, just like she always did.

"And this temple is…?"

"None of your business." She answered curtly.

He sighed dramatically. "And here I was hoping to get at some of your secrets."

At that, Ayame went from answering in short sentences to answering with silence.

They were about to get back in the jeep when suddenly a horde of monster erupted out of the bushes. They resembled huge furry lizards.

"What the hell are these?" Gojyo demanded, slicing two of them in half.

"Demon-spawn!" Keiko snarled, slamming one in the head with the shakujo before tossing the staff to Aya, who was surrounded.

"Demon? You mean, like youkai?" Goku asked, sending four monsters flying.

"No, they're nothing like youkai." Aya said, dodging a monster's swipe. "Demons are like youkai in that they're individual intelligent beings. But while youkai are just like people," she jumped over a monster and whacked it on the head, "demons work only towards their own goals of destruction."

"They're evil and bloodthirsty!" Keiko added, slamming her dagger into the throat of the monster trying to chew her arm off.

"They seem pretty weak for an embodiment of evil." Sanzo drawled, firing his gun.

"Ah, well, that's because they're not demons." A laughing voice declared.

They spun around, and saw what appeared to be a young humanoid man leaning against a tree. He was tall and thin, and dressed entirely in black. The most striking feature, however, was his eyes; orange irises, and black sclera. "Those little things aren't demons, kiddo. I am~" He pointed a finger at himself, grinning widely.

"What a creeper." Ayame muttered.

Sanzo snorted, which she took as agreement.

"Ah! You're the Carrier!" He pointed at her. "I've been looking all over for you."

She didn't answer.

"What? No cheerful hello?" He pouted.

"Fuck off." she snarled.

He smirked and then vanished.

The next thing they knew, the demon had tackled Keiko, and was about to stab his hand into her chest when Aya darted forward and slammed her shakujo across his back. He snarled and leapt away. Ayame pursued him, and whacked him across the face. She was about to stab him through the chest with the unadorned end when she felt the beginnings of a coughing fit creep up on her. She jumped back as the demon reached out to grab her, touching her fingers to her lips. They came away red.

"Why not just let me kill you now?" the demon purred. "It'll save you the trouble of dying later on."

"No thanks." She turned to walk away as Sanzo reloaded his gun, wiping the blood from her mouth.

"Do your friends know?" the demon asked suddenly. "What it is you're doing?"

She froze.

"Ah~ So they don't know." He laughed, a high pitched screeching sound. "Perhaps I should tell them?"

"Can you shoot him now, please?" Ayame asked, her voice strained.

"She's in a hurry to get going, isn't she? But I think you fine gentlemen deserved the truth."

"Shoot that bastard!" she hissed.

"Come now, they deserve to know that you're-"

Keiko tackled the demon, slamming him to the ground. She followed it up by stabbing him through the chest with a naginata she'd summoned from thin air, destroying him.

Ayame turned back around without a word, and started walking, not looking back. Slowly, they followed her, until they reached the clearing where they'd made camp. Ayame had stopped walking and was just standing in the middle of the clearing.

"Care to tell us what that loser was talking about?" Gojyo asked.

Now's as good a time as any, I suppose. "I won't make it to my twenty-first birthday," she said quietly.

Gojyo frowned. "What do you mean?"

Keiko looked upset. "Aya, you don't-"

"They deserve to know." Ayame told her, still in that quiet voice.

"So tell us." Sanzo said flatly. "What's going on."

She took a deep breath, and looked past them, at something none of them could see.

"I'm dying."

The silence was overwhelming, then…"Dying?" Goku looked startled. "What're you talking about?"

"I'm dying." She repeated, and then sighed. "I am the Crystal Carrier."

"Which means what, exactly?" Sanzo asked.

"I am the only person who can carry the Phoenix Crystal. It's an ancient artifact," she explained, seeing their blank expressions, "A jewel, that comes from the Temple of Rebirth, where we're headed." She sat down on the ground, picking up a handful of leaves. "The Carrier is a unique individual. The Crystal is absorbed into their body once they find it. It's the only way for it…stay stable, I suppose. Otherwise it gives off energy, and this energy attracts…well, monsters, I suppose." She looked up, smiling sadly. "That's how I met Keiko. I was compelled to find the Crystal, but I hadn't yet. I was close to it, but I was attacked. Keiko saved me."

The Guardian kicked the ground, not saying anything.

"In any case," Ayame continued, "I absorbed the Crystal, and spent the next five days unconscious, recuperating….And when I woke up, Kanzeon Bosatsu appeared, saying we had to start a journey to the Temple of Rebirth immediately." She sighed. "There's a monster sealed away in the heart of the temple," she informed them. "And the seal is starting to break. Only with the Crystal's power can the seal be re-made." She lined up several leaves in a row.

"But re-making the seal requires the Carrier to expel the Crystal from their body." Keiko said angrily.

"I don't understand." Hakkai said, looking at Ayame. "What happens to you without the crystal?"

"I die." she said bluntly, tearing up a leaf. "Once bonded, the Carrier cannot live without the Crystal."

"So just don't go." Gojyo suggested. "You'll live then, right?"

"You're ignoring the monster." Ayame pointed out, looking back down at the leaves. "If the seal breaks and it goes free, thousands of people will die." She moved one of the leaves down and started making another row.

"But you'll live."

"No. I'll be just as dead." She tossed away a yellow leaf.

"Now what the hell are you talking about now?" Sanzo demanded.

"Terminal illnesses are a pain in the ass." She said in a rather detached way, sorting through her newest handful of leaves.

"You're sick?" Goku asked.

"Yes and no." She frowned at a leaf covered in moss. "The longer I have the crystal in my body while it's needed elsewhere, the worse I'll get. And if the seal breaks entirely while the crystal's still in my body, I'll die." She picked up a twig and nudged at a caterpillar crawling onto her first row of leaves. "I don't survive either way, you see. The seal is going to break apart fully four days before my twenty-first birthday. So whether I surrender the crystal and sacrifice myself before then, or run away and have the crystal tear itself from my body when the seal is broken…it doesn't make any difference. I won't make it." She swiped at her rows of leaves, scattering them. The only leaf left was the one being eaten by the caterpillar. "I'll die."

A/N: Okay, so…yeah. I was planning to draw it out more, and make you wonder what was up with Aya, but…I figured it'd better for her to tell them and have them knowing about it and sympathetic (in their own jerk-ass ways, of course XD) then to have them keep going w/out her telling them, because from the logical standpoint, they'd be uber-pissed for being kept in the dark. In any case, there's still lots more adventure in the future.

Hmm, what else...oh yeah! *snaps fingers* That's right!

PLEASE REVIEW. XD