A/N: The only problem with going back and editing stuff is that I'm erasing all of these good, juicy author's notes. Yeah. I know. You don't care. And you know what's sad? I don't really care either.
O/C22: Yusuke, Kuwabara and Misaki all overcome their trials and once the objects they were sent to retrieve are combined with the others, the cave dissipates around them and they are standing on a stone island in the middle of a sea. There are five stone statues in front of them; from left to right a hawk, a raven, a pedestal, an eagle and a falcon.
Misaki took a deep breath, closing her eyes. The sea, the wind crashing waves onto the shore, the salty air. The heartbeats. Misaki smiled.
Drake had spoken the truth. Part of her mortality had been erased, her senses now heightened so that she was able to truly take in what was around her. She had missed the heartbeats most of all.
"Wow, these things are pretty life-like!"
"And huge!"
Yusuke and Kuwabara were inspecting the bird statues, Kurama examining the words etched onto the pedestal. Yukina stood over Hiei, her faced lined with worry. Misaki saw her, watching carefully for a moment to make sure that the girl wasn't going to try and heal him any more. They might need her powers later. Hiei was sleeping peacefully now, his body overexerted from the healing combined with the use of the Dragon of the Darkness Flame.
"Misaki." Kurama called to her.
She walked up next to him where he stood over the pedestal.
"Not exciting." Was her first, depressed impression.
"More of the language of the stones. But I do not recognize this symbol." He pointed to it. "Based on the context I would assume it means 'speak'."
Misaki's eyes scanned the pedestal's engravings, only able to get the main gist of what the language said. "I would agree, I suppose."
Her nose was bombarded by his smell and since it had been such a long time since her senses had been so good, she wasn't able to control it. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. He smelled really good.
"Hey, so what do we do now?"
"How do we get off this stinking island?"
Now bored as they had finished their inspection of the statues and the island consisted of little else, Kuwabara and Yusuke came over to the other two.
"If I'm correct, these birds will take us to where the Oracle is." Kurama gestured with a hand, encompassing the statues.
"I hate to burst your bubble Kurama, but rocks don't float." Yusuke looked out at the sea which stretched beyond the horizon.
"What about churches? Maybe gravy?" Misaki gave him a dry look.
"A duck!" Kuwabara exclaimed, entirely too pleased with himself.
"Yes, but a stone duck would not." Yusuke pointed out. "And these statues are all made of stone."
"We aren't going to just throw them in the water and ride them." Misaki said, annoyed.
"Well good, because it wouldn't work. That's what I was saying."
Misaki gave an exasperated sigh at his Cheshire grin.
"I believe we have to reanimate them." Kurama concluded.
"And then ask them to take us to shore?" Kuwabara scratched his head.
"Yes, Kuwabara, that seems right." Kurama turned to Misaki and smiled, "Would you like to do the honors?"
"I'm sure you could figure out how to pronounce the reanimation." Misaki waved a hand at him dismissively.
"I'm sure that I already know how, but you should go ahead."
"Cocky spirit vessel." Misaki muttered.
"I prefer the term precise."
"I'll bet you would." Misaki looked over the words at the bottom of the writing. It had been an extremely long time since she had tried to speak the language, much more since she'd succeeded in any way, shape or form.
She placed her hands on either side of the pedestal, the others taking a step back as Kurama did.
Curious, Yukina came up beside them, having seen that Hiei was merely sleeping, his condition stable.
The words were quiet and hesitant, gravely sounding, Misaki referencing the pedestal the whole time. A glow of light began at her fingertips, slowly growing in brightness and then shooting down the pedestal into the ground.
She took her hands off, waiting with bated breath.
Everyone tried to look at all of the statues at the same time, their eyes flickering between them.
But nothing happened.
Misaki grumbled curses under her breath, going back up to the pedestal and examining the writing again as she put her hands back onto it.
Something struck her and she was flung backwards, smacking into the side of the cave that jutted out of the ground behind them before falling on her face.
"Hey, are you-"
"Don't move." Misaki advised, pushing herself up on her hands as Yusuke took a step towards her. She wiped a fist across her lower lip where blood now leaked, standing shakily as her mind cleared from the impact.
Their heads snapped back to the statues when they heard something.
Like a piece of newspaper set on fire, the stone licked back from the birds, slow at first and then picking up speed. The light that went out from the pedestal now glowed at the bottom of each statue.
As more of their bodies came free, the birds began to move. Their feathers ruffled in the wind, their heads turning this way and that, finally their claws shifting their weight back and forth.
After a moment of moving about once they were completely free, the eagle spoke up, the other birds scrutinizing each person in turn.
"Greetings, Stone-talker." The eagle's voice came from deep within his chest. He spread his wings and then took a step back, bowing his body so that his wings rose behind him in a regal bow. The other three did the same.
Misaki walked forward, spreading her arms to the side when she reached them and moving one foot behind the other in a human version of the same bow. She grimaced as soon as she did so, her head reeling, and she dropped the bow before the birds did to rub her sore arm. Drake's blood may have rid her of some of the pain of the limb but it was still quite sensitive.
"You called us forth for passage across this vast ocean." The raven croaked.
"And passage you shall receive, you who have awakened us." The falcon sounded lighter, more sleek.
"But whom dost thou request we carry?" One golden eye of the eagle swept over everyone as he turned his head to the side.
"We ask for transport, noble ones." Misaki waved at hand to include those behind her.
The birds considered them, their intelligent gaze piercing and severe.
Finally the falcon nodded. "So it shall be."
"As we cannot carry you on our backs," The hawk's face was fierce but there was a great brightness to his eyes as he looked at them, revealing the amusement he found at the prospect, "You must form together with us, fly with us."
"Our minds to your minds, our thoughts to your thoughts." Misaki said; it seemed recited.
Suddenly the birds were looking skyward, out and beyond the island they stood on, behind the gang. Everyone else automatically turned around.
In the distance, something glittered.
"Quickly!" The eagle was urgent.
Misaki hesitantly put her hands back on the pedestal, but when she found that she wasn't blasted backwards, her grip became more sure.
Again she spoke, though it was still slow. She was not in the mood to have to start over.
The group felt a tugging sensation come over their bodies and their vision closed in. They began to get dizzy, their eyes blurry and they felt themselves falling, but they never reached the ground.
Kurama's eyes opened to see the blue ocean rushing underneath him. Wind flowed through his wings as he instinctively adjusted single feathers to compensate for the direction and speed. The sun was bright in the sky but there was a downcast feeling to the air.
"Amazing." He was in wonderment at the intricacies of flying that he had never imagined.
"Flight always thrills." He heard the falcon say in his head.
"I never knew it took so much concentration."
"It would appear that it does but we are born knowing. It only takes it a while to figure it out." A memory of the falcon as a nestling trying out his wings flashed into Kurama's head, mixed with an amused emotion at the remembrance.
Kurama looked this way and that, his head, or rather he and the falcon's head, trying to take in all the sights.
"Careful now. We are being chased."
"By whom?"
The falcon turned their head so that Kurama could see behind them.
Kurama felt his vision shift and he wanted to shake his head but then the focus cleared and it was zoomed in on the glittering shape behind them. Kurama and the falcon's heart began to beat faster.
Yusuke could feel the spray of the sea in the air around him as he took a dive, speeding down towards the water. At the last second he turned his body to the side, dipping the very tip of one of his wings into the whitecaps. His thoughts felt much higher than those around him, more superior. His eyes pierced the horizon, his feathers waving in the flow of the wind.
He soared higher until he was above the others, surveying all beneath him.
"I suit you." He heard the majestic voice of the eagle ring true in his head.
"What's chasing us?"
The eagle did not answer but their speed increased.
All four birds sped up, tearing swiftly towards the horizon at a still out-of-sight destination. And yet each bird knew that their pursuer was gaining exponentially on them.
Everyone could hear the monstrous roar in their heightened hearing.
Unable to contain their passengers' sense of curiosity, the birds stopped, soaring and hovering in mid-air in one place above the water. They saw what was chasing them and they trembled.
Glinting more golden than the bright sun overhead, a huge dragon, its wing span around fifty meters from tip to tip, shot towards them. They could tell by the speed and the dangerous look in its eyes that it was not trying to catch up to exchange pleasantries.
The hawk's piercing cry echoed in their minds and ears.
"Quickly! We must fly!"
The four birds overrode their passengers' freeze and turned tail, flying towards the horizon.
The dragon gained more quickly than before.
"What can we do?" Kurama asked the falcon, feeling as though he was shouting to be heard over the wind that whistled around them
"Nothing!" The falcon shouted back at him, "We cannot fight this! It is beyond any of us! We are defeated before we begin!"
Kurama heard a snarl behind him and felt their tail feathers singe. He glanced back, seeing the deathly anger in the dragon's multifaceted, swirling eyes.
"Do not look back!" The falcon commanded, Kurama setting his gaze on the direction in which they were streamlining.
Their hearts lurched again as a looming shadow blocked the hazy sunlight above them, its shadow engulfing their own reflected on the sea below.
The dragon roared again and this time they could feel the rattle of the air in their very bones.
They all felt it take a deep breath, lungs expanding. The shadow receded as the dragon soared higher above them, aiming its mouth so that it could envelop them all in one fiery swoop.
Just as the fire licked past its jaws, something slammed into the gold's side, heading off its aim.
The blast of fire was intense, despite the fact that it swept wide to the right of them, the heat overbearing for a moment.
The birds were unable to contain their passengers' collective curiosity at the situation when the dragon did not follow after them. And so they all turned once more, soaring in the air.
An enormous black dragon had joined the golden one. The two fought fiercely, the black blocking the gold's path to the birds.
They slammed together brusquely, big, muscular bodies straining as they grappled in the air. Claws scraped against hard scales, making an awful noise. Teeth tore into flesh, though all of the wounds were small, one or the other swerving away just as it was caught.
The gold shot up high, the black giving chase, staying in between gold and the birds.
Suddenly gold seized black again, pinning black's arms and wings against its sides, then immediately turned in the air, pulling them both into a death spiral towards the awaiting ocean.
Black struggled fearlessly but gold had the upper hand. Gold wove their tails together, snarling angrily as black tried to use the tail to get free. The sunlight reflected and refracted on their entwined bodies, sparkling in a treacherously beautiful way.
"We must flee!" The raven called, "While we have the chance!"
None of them wanted to turn from the awe-inspiring, titanic battle, their eyes glued. But the birds were the ones who in the end were able to force a turn-around, eager to place as much distance between the two battlers as possible. If even one of the beasts dove into the sea, it would shoot so much water in the air that the birds would quite possibly be soaked, unable to fly at all.
Behind them the struggle continued, the situation unchanging. Black thrashed about violently as the looming ocean came closer, their speed increasing.
At the last possible second, gold let go of black, propelling the black dragon down into the water before pulling up out of the dive, barely skimming the sea's surface as the huge splash sent waves bellowing outwards on the sea.
Undistracted, gold shot for the birds once more, belly almost touching the water as it tucked its arms and legs close to its body to increase its aerodynamic flight. The sea was swept back with every beat of its humongous wings, the waves meeting and crashing with the already huge waves created by the dive, the impact of the two sending water snapping high into the air.
The eagle allowed Yusuke to turn their head back to see if the black dragon had been able to free itself. They exclaimed worriedly to the others their findings in a vicious eagle-cry as they turned back to the horizon. Everyone pushed their bodies harder, faster. They had to reach shore. But by this time, both bird and passenger were growing weary, having exerted so much already in their flight.
Kurama felt the dragon's teeth snap mere centimeters from he and the falcon's tail feathers and the shock gave them a sudden burst of speed. Kurama's mind only briefly wondered at how all four birds were traveling at the same breakneck speed as these four birds should not have been going at the same pace at their top speed.
"I'm afraid you're grouping us together with the birds you have already experienced in your lifetime. We are not those birds." Despite their danger, both Kurama and the falcon, well suited for one another, could hold a relatively intellectual conversation as if there wasn't a golden dragon nearly on their backs chasing them down to kill them.
But neither of them knew how long everyone could keep up this pace and the raven was already slowing.
All four birds came closer together, the stream of their bodies and their beating wings giving them a little relief from the harsh flight. They flew tip to tip, scattering only when the gold dragon swatted a claw in the midst of them, coming back together almost immediately.
And suddenly there was a large swoosh of water and the black dragon shot out of the sea just behind them to hover just shy of the water, their golden enemy unable to slow down or veer out of the way.
Gold's head slammed into the black dragon's chest, an obvious rush of air forced out of the black's mouth.
They both parted, gold's head reeling from the impact and black hunched over in an attempt to breathe again, their wings beating steadily to keep them in the air.
Seeing an opening, black soared forward before fully recovering, hoping to catch gold off guard.
Gold saw the incoming attack but was unable to dodge properly, only limping in the air out of the way.
The black dragon turned to the side, hooking the claw on the top of its wing into the fleshy material of gold's wing, and jerking upwards. The wing easily tore under the claw.
Gold cried out in surprise, pain in its head forgotten. Before black could fly away, gold latched on as it started to lose altitude.
The black dragon strained to stay in the air, but gold was determined to pull them both into the sea. Huge, gorgeous wings that glittered with water droplets beat in fierce agitation, the ocean below responding from the large gusts of wind, crashing waves together.
Both dragons on one set of wings was becoming too much.
For the second time, the black dragon was desperately trying to disengage the gold one. And like the first time, it was failing.
The four birds were quite far away now, hovering in the air again and watching, amazed, from a distance as the two monstrosities slowly began sinking towards the sea.
With the falcon's focused eyes, Kurama noticed that one front leg for the black dragon appeared newer then the others, the scales cleaner and brighter.
They watched as finally the black dragon, weak from the effort, dropped its wings to its body, letting the two of them crash into the foaming sea, a massive splash arching into the air.
Bodies tense, the birds watched keenly for any sign of either creature, a stirring of the water, anything.
One-by-one they wheeled off again, the eagle first, the others following.
As they realized they truly were safe, the gang's spirits lifted and they began to play, dipping and soaring through the air and finally understanding the joy of flight.
They flew slowly, recovering their strength and their wits from their close calls.
"Woo-hoo!" Yusuke shouted, the eagle crying out his enjoyment as it shot up in the air, turning as fast as he could before sweeping back down at the sea in a speedy dive.
"Yeah! This is awesome!" The hawk's shriek conveyed Kuwabara's words to the others.
"Misaki, I have to say that this is probably the coolest thing ever!" The eagle screeched happily.
The other birds translated the words for their passengers, this being the way they all were able to communicate with one another.
Kurama had known all along what the others only now realized.
The others were waiting for some dry remark from one of the birds, indicating that Misaki had heard them, but there was none.
The eagle called them to a halt.
"Misaki?"
The birds looked at one another intelligently, but there was still no response.
"Okay. Quick roll-call. Kuwabara?"
The hawk called out.
"Okay, Kurama?"
The falcon responded.
"Yukina?"
The raven.
"Wait…so if I'm with the eagle…"
"It means Hiei is not among us either. No one can carry more than one passenger?" Kurama asked through the falcon.
The answer was a negative. They could only carry one mind with them.
"Then where is…and…" The eagle's head shifted around, searching the skies as if another bird could be hiding among the clouds.
"We cannot stop any longer." The eagle said, "We must keep moving before our time with you runs out."
Reluctantly, they all started out again.
They no longer played in the sky, everyone searching the air for any sign of the other two.
The sea grew colder and the air slackened off, making it harder for them to find updrafts to soar on. No one talked as they concentrated on staying in the sky.
Their hearts sank when the sun above them was blotted out, an enormous shadow engulfing theirs in the sea. Their muscles wound tight as they prepared to flee again.
Heheh. Ten points and maybe sweet snow to anybody who knows what movie reference is made near the first part of the chapter.
-lotsm