A/N: And I'm back with a new chapter. I hope you guys aren't getting bored with this fic or anything. I didn't really get much of a response from you guys last chapter. Is the story progressing too slow or is it the long breaks between updates? I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong. But anywho… hope you guys enjoy this chapter since I think I might have fallen in love with this Fai because of this chapter. ;) ;)
Don't get yourself killed, Kaijuu," Touya murmured softly as he hugged his little sister before boarding the white ship Mokona. The ship was built for speed, as was evident from the sleek, streamlined shape of the hull, but special attention had also been paid to comfort and style. The ship was a dream come true for any speed-junkie and the hunter knew it must have cost a fortune. But funnily enough, no one had bothered enquiring about him keeping it when it obviously did not belong to him. They all hated Ryanban far too much to be bothered by him stealing the ship. Besides, that fat idiot was long dead. No one really cared what he did with the stolen vessel. The dead ruler's heir might be looking for a way to get it back, but he'd be damned if he would let go of the beauty any time soon.
"You too, Onii-san," Sakura replied with a small smile as she pulled away from the hug, "See you in a little while." He watched her as she boarded the black ship, identical to his own in every way except for its color, right after the two blonds.
"You ready to leave now?" Kurogane asked impatiently from the ramp leading to the entrance of Mokona's belly.
"I hope you had a light lunch," he replied airily as he passed the man, "I won't like it at all if you throw up inside my ship."
"Don't worry, Touya," the pretty medic hurriedly interrupted before her fiancé could explode at him, making the hunter smirk a little. "Fai is quite a crazy pilot, I'm sure you can't be any worse than him."
"What do you mean 'crazy'?" The smirk slid off his face as he hurried towards the view screen installed in the cockpit, worried for the safety of his loved ones. He got his answer in the way the black ship shot out of the launching bay and vanished into the distance all in the span of five seconds. "Shit!" he cursed, rounding on the duo following him, "he'll get them killed!"
"I'm more worried about you getting us killed." Kurogane grunted with a roll of his eyes as he buckled up into his seat right next to Tomoyo. "Are we going to move sometime in this cycle?"Touya bristled at the implied insult and the other's impatient and dismissive attitude, but held his anger in check. It wouldn't do well if he somehow ended up botching up this suicidal rescue mission because he killed the brat's adoptive brother before the mission even began. It was actually quite surprising and somewhat refreshing to see someone of non-magical origin treating him so normally. Though his magic had never been common knowledge, his presence still managed to instill fear wherever he went thanks to his status as a hunter. Magic or not, quite a few of his colleagues were known to be rather vicious towards those that irked them.
"Well?" The red-eyed man quirked a brow when Touya did not move.
"You know," Touya said with a small smirk, feeling a grudging respect for the seemingly-ordinary man before him. Even without magic, this man was someone who could hold his own in battle, and it showed in the way he held himself. A little brash and impatient, but Kurogane Suwa was a man who would make a formidable enemy. Touya pitied the fools awaiting them at Clow. They wouldn't know what hit them. "I wouldn't mind kicking your ass once this whole shit is over and done with."
"If you survive that long." The ex-captain smirked back. Exchanging a small nod with his new companion, Touya strapped himself into his seat before the view screen, powering up the vessel as he did so. Casting one last glance over his shoulder to confirm that the others were both in place, he placed his hands over the control console built into the hovering panel before him and Mokona shot off the launching bay like a loose arrow.
-0-
Sakura had thought she had had some idea of the way Fai piloted from her time aboard Little Dragon, but she was wrong. Even the time when they had been engaged in a dogfight with space pirates could be compared to coasting on a flat surface in comparison to what the blond was doing just then as he moved their ship past the Bat Lord's barricade of high-tech battleships that were stationed at the border that officially divided the areas of space under the control of Lord Fei Wong and the Time-Space Witch Yuuko.
"Enjoying the ride, Princess?" The blond grinned over his shoulder as his fingers smoothly flew over the controlling consol. His enchanting blue eyes remained on her face even as their ship did another barrel roll to avoid incoming fire.
"Very, just keep your eyes in front." She all but screamed at the blond, her eyes widening at the deadly Viper that cut into their path, "The front, Fai! Look out!"
The blonde's only response to her scream was a boisterous laugh as his left hand slid to the right over the console while his right danced to the left. The result was Mokona giving a horizontal ninety-degree turn, easily moving out of the way of the Viper at the last possible second, before Fai reversed the position of his hands and the sleek vessel twisted in space once more.
"And here I thought Touya was a crazy pilot." She heard Yukito murmur from his position next to her.
"Fai, stop looking at me before you get us all killed!"Sakura shrieked. Sakura had been in quite a lot of chases with Fei's watchdogs herself, but this was just insane. Fai was piloting Mokona without even looking.
"Don't fret about this, Sakura," the blond replied with a calm grin as he thankfully turned his head back to face the front, "I could fly us through this barricade with my eyes closed. Have a little more faith in me, won't you? I did keep Fei from tracking us down for several cycles on a ship that was nothing like this baby. Oh, hey,"and he was looking back at her again, "Do you think your brother might be willing to sell his ship to me after all this is done and over with? I don't think Yuuko would like to part with this one, but…"
"I'll ask him for you, but can you please turn back around and keep looking at where we're- LOOK OUT!"
"You need to calm down, Sakura-chan," Yukito said softly as he placed a comforting hand on her arm. "I am quite sure Yuui-san knows what he is doing, even if it doesn't look like it."
She gave the bespectacled man a shaky nod, struggling to bring her breathing under control. She was gripping the seat so hard she was sure her fingers must have left gouges in the expensive leather seat covers. Yuuko would so not be happy about that. She forced herself to loosen her grip on the chair. This ship was one of Yuuko's babies and she had never actually had a chance to use it before. That the witch was willing to lend it to them was a little surprising, but not all that surprising at the same time. They needed to be able to travel quickly, for with every passing minute, Fei's hold on his newest weapon grew stronger, making it just that much harder for them to save the brunette from his grasp. Yuuko did not want something so powerful under her enemy's control, for if he had such a weapon at his disposal, he would surely wipe out what little resistance there was on other planets before setting his sights on conquering Infinity. And if that were to happen…the fate of all magical beings would be sealed as slaves of the Bat Lord.
To a normal observer, it may have seemed like a lack of skill and a whole lot of good luck was what was keeping them from dying, but Sakura knew the blond was getting a thrill out of doing so. If he wanted to, he could easily avoid them altogether but for some reason, he seemed to be enjoying these brief brushes with death. One tiny miscalculation on his part, one tiny mistake and they would be blown to smithereens, yet the magician apparently could have cared less about it as he gave delighted whoops every time one of Fei's ships missed crashing into them.
Reinforcements from surrounding areas in space seemed to be arriving as the space before them filled up with endless black vessels, all deadly-and-ferocious-looking. Flutterbies were fluttering about madly inside her stomach and she resisted the urge to be sick at the frightening sight. She had known this was not going to be an easy task in any way, but the way Fai was attracting attention made their little mission appear almost suicidal. And the fact that Mokona was not exactly a battleship did not help matters any. Sure Chun-hyang and Primera had added a few upgrades to the vessel, but those were in no way powerful enough to get them through the horde that surrounded them on all sides. She wondered why the pilot was attracting so much attention toward themselves, wondering if Touya's ship had safely made it across before she realized just what it was that the blond was doing. He was helping the others by taking attention off of them and bringing it all upon this vessel. The others would be able to slip past the small guard left behind on the other sides.
Fai's only response to their predicament was a scoffing 'heh' as he wiped the side of his nose with his thumb before his grin took on a predatory edge.
"This will be fun."She heard him say, and it took everything Sakura had in her to not march straight up to the blond and throttle him within an inch of his life. Even if it was kind of sweet that he was helping her brother and the other two get through safely, he was so going to get them all killed. As Fai sent the ship into a corkscrew, narrowly avoiding a pair of Chasers from ramming into their vessel, Sakura decided to focus her attention on the interior of the cockpit instead. She'd only keep having mini-heart attacks witnessing the way the pilot narrowly avoided all attacks sent their way. Maybe if she avoided thinking about their current, hopeless situation, she'd wake up and find out that it was all nothing but a nightmare brought on by nerves, though she had never been this nervous in her entire life. Not even when she had gone on her first solo job. This was crazy. Absolutely, positively crazy. Maybe if she came out of this encounter alive, she'd… she'd do something to send Touya into a murderous rage and then maybe laugh about it with Yukito while her brother made a fool out of himself. Oh, and throttle Fai till he was half-dead, too. She'd definitely have to do that.
Looking around, she noticed that the cabin was not really as big as it had been designed to appear at a single glance. If she had to hazard a guess, she'd say it was only six foot by ten at max, longer than it was wide. The pilot's chair was set up right before the view screen, with a hovering console that flickered into existence before the pilot's seat when the ship was powered up, no doubt a way to save up on space while making the interior look high-tech and posh. The view screen itself was tinted the lightest shades of blue, thanks to the various statistics that were showing up on the left and right corners of the screen.
A couple of feet behind the pilot's seat, built into the walls of the metal cabin- equipped with seatbelts and life-support systems- were a total of eight seats, four on either wall, placed at a distance of about half a foot from each other. The seats sunk a little into the wall itself, but were rather comfortable with soft cushions and whatnot and Sakura suspected that they also doubled as escape pods. She could see the tiny shield projectors jutting out of the floor a few inches from her feet and looking up she noticed the receptors built into the roof parallel to the projectors. An expensive carpet was fixed to the floor and some rather intricate designs were carved into the dark metal walls studded with an expensive and unique stone which was rumored to have powerful magical amplification powers, the Flourite stone, but sadly not all magical beings were capable of harnessing its powers. There was a unique style of spell casting that could bring out the potential of these stones,so most nobility usually used them only for show.
Her attention was torn away from her musings when she sensed magic beginning to gather in the space around her, the very air itself becoming alive with the buzzing energy. The stones set into the walls began to glow, light spilling out of them into the carvings that were all interconnected, bathing the interior of the ship in a blue radiance as the light moved through the carvings towards the view screen. Though she could not see it, she could almost imagine the powerful energy gathering in other parts of the ship, bleeding out towards the surface of the metal as the spell got to its final stages. The glow grew brighter and brighter until the light was so blinding Sakura had to close her eyes and still she could feel the power burning brightly through her closed lids. With a small boom which rocked the entire ship, the glow faded, leaving Sakura to see bright spots of light in the absolute darkness that seemed to envelop the cockpit after the spell was launched and the stones resumed their previous translucent blue shade. Shaking her head and blinking the spots away, she looked towards the view screen only to see the enemy vessels encased in huge chunks of ice, floating lifelessly in space.
"It's a good thing my brother taught me how to harness the power of these stones," Fai chirped happily as he slid his fingers across the console in slow, sweeping motions and Mokona shot forth , dodging the frozen ships left and right until less than a minute later they were in open space. "That felt so good."
Shaking her head in slight exasperation, Sakura couldn't help but wonder why the Bat Lord had never gone after this particular magician. Even with a seal locking away most of his power, he was still insanely powerful. Why had that man gone after two little kids instead of this guy? Had he not been weakened by this seal, Fai might have been able to crush Fei's forces singlehandedly, so then why? Powerful as she might have been, she was not even near the blonde's level and he had said she was strong enough to rival the legendary Clow Reed. If that were the case, then wouldn't that mean that Fai would have surpassed Clow Reed?
"Oh, would you look at that!" Fai exclaimed all of a sudden, "there's a button for defensive shields on the consol. How come I failed to notice that before?"
Sakura grit her teeth as her fingernails dug into the soft leather covers of the seat once more. As soon as they landed on Hong Kong, she was strangling the blond.