A/N: Alright. So I haven't had a chance to get on the computer every night like I have been. Coupled with the fact that I don't actually have anything written up anymore (so far I've been following scripts that I wrote a while back) equals my excuses for not posting a chapter every day. And I can only offer assurance that the time between chapter postings will probably only get longer as I'm steadily getting busier. Oh well. Just wanted to get all of my excuses out now and not have to mention them later.
O/C16: Team Urameshi successfully wins their third match. And they decide to celebrate by going to the arcade. Woo arcade! Genkai shows up some cocky youkai named Jacka while she's there. Meanwhile, Hiei, on his return trip from dropping Kurama off with Koenma, has a vision of Misaki dying. He finds her immobilized but very much alive somewhere in the middle of the forest. Her muscles are tightened, thus making it impossible for her to move. He relaxes them with heat, and she gets mad at his interference, reminding him that he hadn't wanted help while dealing with his arm during the Dark Tournament. Anyway, the next day all four semi-finalist teams convene at the coliseum, only to find that they will have to complete a maze within a set amount of time and the speed with which they complete it will determine who they battle in the semi-finals.
--
Team Ike, with the three men in perfect stride with one another, took off to the left entrance which was nearest to them.
Ike winked back at Misaki, "See you on the other side!" Then he and the other two disappeared around a corner.
Team Lanora, their blonde hair streaming behind them and their white dress-robes doing the same, dashed off to the right at the same moment as Team Ike.
"Alright. Come on." Misaki said to Team Urameshi, running to the final entrance, the one that went straight.
The six members of the two teams ran together into the maze.
Misaki found that Kurama and Hiei were flanking her.
"Kurama!" She exclaimed, never breaking stride.
"So it seems." He smiled at her.
"Are you okay?"
He hesitated, "I admit that I still feel a bit strange, but other than that I appear to be fine."
"No over-exerting yourself." She ordered.
"Yes doctor." His eyes danced and a small smile touched his lips.
"I mean it. This place will get crazy, I'm sure. I won't have you collapsing on me."
"Yes doctor." His voice was perfectly serious.
"Are you sure we shouldn't have taken a different path?" Genkai asked her.
"I know exactly where are." Of course she had no idea. The maze was bound to have changed since the first time she came.
They followed the path as it led them, a turn to the right, a turn to the left. Finally they came to a large door frame with no door in it that opened into a room and Misaki stopped as she came into the room, the others close behind.
They looked around, all expecting an attack or a similar occurrence.
Something was wrong with the room.
"Yusuke, don't step forward!" Misaki shouted as Yusuke put his foot down.
He turned to face her, "There's nothing here."
"Famous last words," She smacked a hand to her forehead.
Everyone heard a distinct 'click' and the floor opened up, sending the six of them plummeting down.
Misaki dropped through the air for a while, finally smacking face-down onto the floor. Her ribs felt as though they might have been bruised from the impact and she was lucky not to have a broken nose. Something landed on top of her and she knew for sure that at least one rib was bruised.
It was pitch black, but she could hear all of the appropriate heartbeats. Someone stood shakily.
"Where are we?" she heard Yusuke's voice.
"I don't know," Misaki tried to stand up.
"Ironic. Could you get off me?" Hiei's voice came from under her, just in front of her face.
"Oh, sorry," she realized that her hand was on his chest and not the floor as she had first assumed. She tried to get up again, but couldn't. "Kuwabara! Get off me!" she shouted. There was no mistaking that heavy load.
He didn't answer.
"Kuwabara! You lousy no good—"
"I think he's unconscious." Kurama's voice came from somewhere to her right. "Probably. He's fainted like a little girl," Yusuke laughed.
"Well that proves it," Kurama sighed, "If he had been awake, surely he would have protested."
"Get him off of me!" She said through clenched teeth.
They were silent as they headed for where they thought they had heard her.
"You two bakas! Get your butts over here! I'm over here!!"
"Keep talking," Kurama spoke up.
"If you don't get him off me in the next two seconds I'm gonna, ow!" Someone had stepped on her other hand's fingers.
Kurama reached down to find it. "There you are," he sounded relieved, "Yusuke, she's over here."
Yusuke found them without too much trouble as she continued yelling at him and the two yanked the lug off onto the floor where he rolled over and began snoring.
Misaki shakily sat up and felt Hiei grab her arm to steady her. She stood up and stepped to the right. Hiei sat up.
"I think my backbone's ruptured," Misaki rubbed her spine where Kuwabara's had slammed against it.
"Yours?" Hiei said.
"Right. Point taken." At least her spine hadn't been lodged against the stone floor. She held out a hand that he took somehow, and helped him stand up.
"The dummy has fallen asleep!" Yusuke said, kicking the snoring lump. "Kuwabara, wake up!"
A snore was the only response he received.
"Well it's comforting to know that he can sleep through anything." Genkai's voice said from nearby.
"I was wondering where you had gotten off to, Genkai." Misaki said.
"There's only one path leading out of here but it goes down and not up." She had followed the wall all the way around the black, square room, finding a door in one.
"That's our way then I guess." Misaki cupped her hands together, gathering spirit energy into the palms. She released the energy and it shone brightly as a round orb, casting an odd light.
"Why didn't you do that in the first place?" Yusuke grumbled.
"I was sort of pinned at the time." Misaki answered, turning to the door Genkai was standing next to.
The hallway was as dark, if not darker, than the room they just left.
They all followed the orb as it followed Misaki. She found it odd that they all just sort of up and made her the leader without saying a word. It also worried her. Genkai was one of the few lucky ones, Koenma and Botan being another of the few, they all had known her for a while now and yet they still lived. It was comforting, but harrying at the same time, for she knew that somehow or another, each and every one of them would die. She just outlived them. Or would at some point. The Elements all had tried to comfort her, telling her that it was simply the way things were. Nothing could die until it had done what it came to do. And Misaki hadn't done what she came to do, apparently. And so in a way, she was invincible. To a point. It was just a matter of figuring out what that point was before she died from it.
She felt the hallway widen out into another room and as everyone filed in behind her, dim lights came on from around the room.
The walls were in fact mirrors and not walls, reflecting the group several times over.
"I am staying right here." Yusuke thought to himself.
Misaki didn't get the same feeling from this room as she got from the first one and she took a step forward, "It's alright, this room won't open up beneath us." Throughout the room, all of her images took a step forward in every direction.
"Interesting." Kurama took a few different steps himself, his eyes watching every move every one of him made.
"There doesn't appear to be an exit." Genkai noted, walking across the glass mirrors that lined the floor to the other side. She placed her hand on the solid glass across from them to prove her statement. While the mirror reflected the door they came in from, there was not a true door where one should have been.
Kuwabara turned back to the door they just came in and ran into the wall. "Hey!" He rubbed his nose. Carefully, he stuck a hand out and found that there was a reflection that did the same thing. Hand met hand and he realized that they were trapped.
Misaki, Kurama and Genkai all traversed the room, touching different spots along the mirrors as if a door might possibly be hiding in one of them.
"Wow. Now that's just creepy."
They all turned back to see Yusuke staring up at the ceiling and they followed his gaze. There was one large mirror that lined the roof above them, and it reflected everyone perfectly normally...except for the fact that there was two of everyone.
"Look runt! There's actually someone who is the same size as you for once!" Kuwabara pointed at the two Hiei-reflections.
"As if the world needed two world-class bakas." Both of them responded.
"Strange..." The two Kurama's noted.
Misaki tore her eyes away from the ceiling to see that there were in fact two of every person in the room. "Uh...guys...I hate to tell you this..." The two Misaki's announced, pointing at each other from across the room—opposite each other of course.
"Hm." The Genkai's considered the situation.
"There is no room for two Kuwabaras! There is only one true Kuwabara!" The Kuwabaras said indignantly.
"Man this makes my head hurt." The Yusukes complained.
"Didn't know you had a brain in there to hurt." The Genkais commented.
"Oh great. Two insults for the price of one." They both sighed.
"So...wait...if I'm the real Kuwabara...who are you?" Kuwabaras asked each other.
"Or are you in fact the true Kuwabara? Or is he the real Kuwabara?" The Misakis said philosophically.
"Is this making your head hurt? It's making my head hurt." The Yusukes said to each other.
Neither of the Kuramas had said anything. In fact, they were moving around the room, analyzing the other person's movements, though who was moving and who was mirroring the movements, neither one of them knew for sure. When one went left, the other went right. A step forward equaled a step forward. A right hand moved and a left hand responded. But a step back equaled a step back. To move right meant to move left. Looking left meant seeing to the right.
Curious, the Misakis blasted a ball of spirit energy at each other. The movement was so fast that they were only just able to dodge it, their shoulder getting singed in the process. The energy dissipated into the mirror.
"Promise me you won't do that again." The Genkais said.
There was a strange look in both of the Misakis eyes. "However, it would certainly make for an interesting fight."
"Alright. So what now?" The Kuwabaras crossed their arms.
"What do you mean, 'what now'?" The Yusukes asked.
"Well. We need to get out of this room. But the door is there and there." He pointed at either end of the room, the side they came in at and the side they should be exiting out of. There were doors on either end of the room, but they were within the impassable mirrors. "And we can't get to them because they aren't really there, they're behind the mirrors."
"We'll just blast our way out." Two finger-guns, one pointed at one door and the other pointing at the other, raised up and aimed at the mirrors.
"Won't work." The Misakis spoke up.
"The mirrors are protected somehow." The Kuramas agreed, "The energy Misaki fired off merely disintegrated when it hit the mirror, there was no actual damage done."
"Oy, my head." The Yusukes looked a little dazed.
"Then why is there a black mark over here?" Kuwabara was facing the mirror the shot had hit.
"There isn't any black mark." Misaki scowled, looking at the mirror behind her.
"Wait, which one of you said that?" The Kuramas asked.
"Me." All of the Kuwabaras and Misakis answered him.
"No I mean only one Kuwabara and one Misaki spoke that time," they specified, "So wherever the black mark is, the Misaki across from it is the real one. One Misaki wasn't able to talk about the mark, because there was a mark. One Kuwabara wasn't able to mention the mark because where he was there wasn't a mark."
As if that wasn't confusing enough, it made perfect sense.
"That means I'm the real Kuwabara!" The one who had mentioned the mark seemed happy, "I was getting confused. But only the real Kuwabara would be able to think for himself and mention something that was out of place. The reflection wouldn't be able to do that."
Everyone was staring at him.
"What?" Both Kuwabaras raised their hands in defense.
"What you said makes sense." The Genkais said.
"And...?"
"You never make sense." The Misakis finished.
"Okay so before my head starts hurting again, what are we going to do?"
"Only a reflection is able to go through a mirror because it isn't substantial enough to actually hit anything." The Kuramas mused.
"Despite the fact that I could have blown my shoulder off." The Misakis added.
"Despite that."
"So in order to leave, we have to walk through the wall using our reflections." The Genkais considered it.
"But then if the only way we can leave the room is by our reflections, then won't the reflections be the ones going on through the maze and not us?" The Kuwabaras looked thoughtful, "So it really won't be us, will it? Or will they be us since they have all of our memories and feelings? Have we all already died, we've just had all of our memories placed into a robot-like body that only seems human? We're just memories aren't we? What's the point in going on?!" The Kuwabaras dropped to their knees in despair.
In the midst of their theatrical and theoretical performance, they realized that everyone was staring at them again.
"What?" They asked as they stood up, annoyed.
"You did it again." The Misakis told him.
"Did what?" They were confused.
"Is it sadder that he does it or that he doesn't realize he ever did it?" The Hieis spoke up.
"Do what!?" They demanded.
"Must be a random insight savant. That's the only reasonable explanation." The Misakis piped up.
"Oh man I wish." The Kuwabaras said.
The Misakis rolled their eyes.
"Before this gets too out of hand for the third time, let's begin." The Genkais interrupted. "You're going to have to think backwards in order to get this to work. You want your reflection to end up over there." The two of them pointed at opposite doors. Both of them frowned, and then blasted a shot of energy across the room at one another. "Which one left a mark?"
"This one." Misaki said, her reflection unable to comment. "That means the one across from it is actually Genkai."
"Okay, make sure you pay attention to the correct one because this will get confusing." The Genkais said.
The Kuwabaras moaned, "It's already confusing!"
Haha. Oh man. I'm confused. Is anybody else confused? I suppose that's kind of a bad thing when the writer of the story is confused. Nah, I guess I'm not. Better try harder next time.
-lotsm