A/N: I have heard that my chapters are short… well, I am aware of this, and the reason is that because I come up with small ideas so often, I like to get them down and posted fast, so hence I do short chapters… but I do post them quite frequently to make up for the size… now, back to the story.
The Sun beamed as the morning came over Hinata Hot Springs, warming the town for the day ahead, and shining its light over the Hinata apartments, where Keitaro lay asleep next to Naru next to the desk they had been studying at the night before.
As the light filled the room, Keitaro began to wake up. Only slightly moving at first before he became fully aware of where he was. He looked beside him to see Naru, holding him within her warm embrace. He gazed at the beautiful girl he now called his girlfriend and smiled.
He could have stayed there by here side for the entire morning, but he was going to help Seta today, and he didn't want to miss out on all the fun. After a short time of being filled with a strange energy source he was getting from Naru's hug, he moved Naru as not to disturb her, and sat up. Unfortunately for him, His movements had awoken Naru, and she opened her eyes, still half asleep and looked the now sitting Keitaro in the eyes. The two of them gazed at each other for an extended moment before Naru broke the silence.
"Good morning Keitaro. How did you sleep?" She asked, almost making joke of the fact they slept on the floor the entire night.
"I am fine Naru, sorry to wake you this early on a Saturday, I was just about to go get ready to see Seta." Keitaro moved his upper body to the side to remove all the stiffness that sleeping on the floor had caused. Naru too sat up, now right beside him, as they were when they were studying the night before.
"You had better get ready soon, you don't want to keep Seta waiting." She put her hand on Keitaro's shoulder and used him as leverage to get to her feet. Then she offered Keitaro her hand to help him get up too. Naru looked at the clock on her wall and saw that the time was only 7:05, Keitaro had to leave in an hour to get to Tokyo University on time, but Naru wasn't one to be awake at this time.
"I think I should get a little more sleep" She began heading over to her bed. "And you should get ready now." Keitaro knew Naru was trying to get Keitaro motivated, though it came across as pushy. He knew she had his best as her intent.
"Thanks Naru." He said letting her know he understood her approach, "I will leave you now to get some sleep. Have fun today ok." Keitaro gave her a grin before moving the wooden board the separated the two rooms and jumped down the gap.
As 8 o'clock struck, Keitaro headed off to go to Tokyo University for the day ahead. Well he would have had he not been stopped by a giant synthetic, gooey spider week just outside the door, trapping him and holding his feet in place.
"Good morning Keitaro." The voice came from above him, he recognized it as Su's but didn't know where she was. It took him a moment to realize before he looked up and saw her sitting atop a giant metallic spider, about the same height as the apartments.
"Su! What is all this." He yelled trying to get his voice to reach her as he looked around the front of the apartments to se the same kind of spider silk scattered all over the place.
"This is that new invention I was working on. The TamaTrapper6000. I made it so u could catch Tama and keep her still so when the time comes I know where she will be when I make stew of her. But right now we are just in the testing phase." Su piloted the mechanical spider around the front of the apartments.
"Su, I would love to stay and chat as to why that sounds like a bad idea, but right now I have to go to Seta… so do you know how to get me out of this thing?" Keitaro was trying with all his might to free himself, pulling his legs and trying to lift his shoes up.
"Well, I haven't actually made a way to free the victim yet. Maybe I should make that so I can get Tama out of the web to cook her… oh, I know, try this." She threw him down a bottle, which he fumbled before catching. "It works to clean most of my messes when I am building things." Keitaro poured the liquid over his shoes, and within moments the affected area was covered in pink smoke and the sounds of sizzling. Once the smoke had cleared, there was nothing more than Keitaro standing there with his shoes still intact and cleaner than they had been in a long time.
"Thanks Su!" He shouted before running off to get to the University and meet up with Seta.
Keitaro ran into the University Room where Seta had his gear set up for all his archeological studies. Panting as he closed the door behind him, exhausted from running to make up for the time he had lost. He stopped and looked around the room, slowly feeling his heart beat return to its regular rate. There was no one to be seen, no Seta, no Sara, No-one.
"Hello! Anyone in here!" Keitaro shouted as he walked around the room waiting for Seta to show himself un-expectantly from behind some old artifact. No one was in the room, no one was hiding, and Keitaro was alone. He took a seat near Seta's desk, and decided to wait for him to show up. He sat there for nearly half an hour before he heard the sound of footsteps running down the hall. 'That has to be him' Keitaro thought as he shot from the seat and ran to the door, impatiently waiting on Seta's arrival. He poked his head around the corner before it was shot back in the room by the wind following the passing person. He put his head out the door looking down where the person had run. It was Seta; he had run right past the room.
"Seta… Shouldn't you be here?" Keitaro shouted down the hall, hoping to stop Seta. It worked, Seta stopped and turned to look back down the hall, the floor now covered in posters from the walls that were blown down as he passed.
"Sorry Keitaro, I had a little trouble with getting here and had to take a detour past the apartment to drop Sara off, which was no easy task." Seta walked back down the hall to the room Keitaro was in, with a bag in his hand, probably the stone he had shown everyone the day before. Seta came into the room and placed the silk bag on the table gently before falling into his seat behind the desk.
"Ok Keitaro" he began, slowly regaining his energy and his breath as he sat, "today we are looking for any links between this stone and other artifacts in here from the same time. Now most of the items I want you looking at today are over in this section." Seta pointed over to the near corner of the room where a 4 tier shelving system stood with many old items. There was eating utensils, ceremonial masks, Rune tablets and some things that Keitaro didn't know existed.
"Ok Seta, so what exactly am I looking for on all this stuff." Keitaro returned his focus to Seta and the stone that Seta had now removed from the bag and sat on the desk.
"Anything the looks like it has signs of a perfect black circle, symbols that look like it, gaps where the stone may belong, things like that."
"Ok then. I will get started right away." Keitaro headed over to the section he was designated and began inspecting the items, the ones on the top shelf to start with. Most of which looked like regular household items that were used in that ancient time. Nothing there looked like it could have anything to do with the stone. He moved down to the next shelf. This had a lot of ceremonial gear, masks, totems and symbols carved in stone amongst other things. Keitaro picked up a crown that sat in the midst of the collection on that shelf and inspected it. A crown much like that of the kings of the more recent times. It was a fully circular crown with a waving pattern forming the shape of the top. Along the outside were two snakes who curved with the top of the crown, starting with both tails at the back, and meeting at the front of the crown before curving down to make the heads side by side facing the wearers head.
As he looked at how extravagant the crown was, Seta got up from his desk, bumping it as he did, and caused the stone to roll out of the barrier that he had set up with the bag so it wouldn't roll away. As the stone gained its freedom, it began to roll away from Keitaro and Seta, heading for the edge of the desk, before coming to a stop and changing its direction straight towards Keitaro. The black stone rolled, increasing in speed as it moved along the desk, before reaching the end, and flying off. But instead of falling, the stone continued to move, floating straight towards the crown in Keitaro's hand. It came to a stop right in front of the crown, and the eyes of the snakes on the artifact began to glow, red at first and then changing to a deep black glow, much like the color of the stone. The stone stayed floating in the air the whole time before glowing red also. As this happened, it began to shrink in size until it was the size of Keitaro's fingernail. It then began swirling around the crown, still floating, traveling at a very fast rate. Both Seta and Keitaro stood there and said nothing as it happened, watching in amazement. It wasn't long before the small stone that circled the crown hit Keitaro on the hand; striking with so much force it knocked the crown out of his hands. The artifact fell to the ground bellow, before the sound of the metal it was made of vibrated as it his the floor and it came to a holt, undamaged on the ground at Keitaro's feet. The whole crown now began to glow black, a deep dark black identical to that of the eyes of the snakes and the color of the stone. After a few seconds of glowing, the crown let off a beam of energy, colored black as before, that shot to the sealing. The beam was about 3 feet in diameter and covered roof to floor. After a few blackened seconds, the beam dropped to the ground and the crown returned to its normal state, still with the stone surrounding it. As Keitaro and Seat both looked up to check the damage, they saw a man standing there. He was about 6 and ½ foot tall and had quite a masculine build to him. He had long black hair reaching to his hips, and was clothed in what looked to be ancient black royal garments.
Seta was the first to speak, still half confused about what was going on.
"Hi there" He started, friendly as usual. "My name's Seta, and this is Keitaro… and who might you be."
The man held a silence for a moment before shifting his body to a strong posture and boldly started speaking. "My name is Onyx, guardian of the 3rd stone of Amzuth."
