Alright here it is, chapter 5!
When we last left off Claire and Hikari saw a gummi ship crashing down into the world! Let's get right to it shall we?
Enjoy!
Chapter 5
Seconds later Claire pops her head into the gummi ship, "Hikari! There's another gummi ship out there! But it looked like it was going to crash into the ocean!"
Hikari turned to face Claire and with urgency said. "I think there were people on board. Come on, let's go to help them." She then brushed past Claire exiting the ship and broke into a run back towards the shore they practiced on, Claire followed quickly behind her.
When the two reached the shore, they could see what appeared to be two people drifting in the water, not really moving towards shore. Hikari quietly said something about getting wet again while running into the water before swimming out towards the two. Claire ran into the water just seconds behind Hikari. The two swam out to where the two people were, Hikari grabbed the one nearest to shore, who at brief glance was a young male with spiky brown hair. Claire reached the other, a male with purplish silver hair, and the two girls began dragging them to shore.
When the two reached shallow water, Hikari stood up, and after checking to make sure he was breathing, was able to pick up the boy she pulled out of the water and carry him inland enough to reach dry sand. Hikari laid him down on the sand and turned to see if Claire needed help with the other one.
Claire was nearing the shallows, but as she got more and more out of the water, the harder it was to carry the boy, "Uh.. Hikari...Um could I get some help over here."
Hikari nodded her head, and waded back out to where Claire was. When she got to them, Hikari briefly checked over the boy before a look of recognition crossed her face.
"Riku?" she murmured under her breath. She just shook her head and turned to Claire. "They're both breathing fine from what I can tell. Let's get him to shore before I see if anything else is wrong." Hikari then maneuvered him so that she had one of his arms slung over her shoulders and Claire shifted so she had his other arm over her shoulder.
"So you know this guy? I heard you murmur a name." Claire said
"Maybe," Hikari answered after a brief pause. "Natural silver hair is fairly rare to find, and he looks to be the right age, but I don't want to jump to conclusions. We'll just have to wait until they wake up."
"Hm alright." Claire said as they got far enough up shore to place the guy down, just a few feet away from the other. "Now what?"
Hikari didn't give a verbal answer, instead, she walked over to the smaller male and began a more thorough check for anything wrong.
"Is he okay? Do we need to use cure?" Claire suggested.
"I can't find anything major, just what appears to be bruises forming from what I assume was them crashing or escaping at the last minute. Also, while cure does treat infections, I don't trust myself to cast it when I had so much trouble with water earlier." Hikari then turned her attention away from the boy with spiky hair, and returned to the other male's side, beginning to look him over again.
When she finished, Hikari spoke, "He also has some bruising, and a cut going up the upper portion of his right arm and diagonally across his shoulder. It also appears that he broke his left wrist a while back , which hasn't finished healing." She then stood up and turned to Claire. "While the cut doesn't look to be bad, I'm gonna head back and get the medkit. Will you be alright if I leave you here to keep an eye on them?"
"Sure." Claire said as she nodded.
Hikari turned and began to jog back to their campsite, leaving Claire with the two unconscious boys. After a short while, Hikari returned holding a small med pack in her right hand. She knelt down next to the silver haired boy on his right and set down the kit beside her. Hikari then opened the pack and withdrew some cotton balls and a bottle of disinfectant. Using one of the cotton balls, she soaked it in the disinfectant and began dabbing it on the cut. He did visibly flinch at the application, but did not wake up due to the stinging sensation of the alcohol. After Hikari finished cleaning the wound, she was able to determine that the cut was fairly shallow and didn't need stitches. Hikari then pulled out a cotton pad and some medical tape to bandage it up. When she finished, she put away all the unused/remaining supplies back into the kit.
"So now we just wait until they wake up, right?" Claire asked.
"Unless you want to carry them back to camp, yes. I have no intention of leaving them unattended here."
"Do you think they may have somehow heard our distress signal?"
"It's likely, although from what I could hear from the communications, it seemed like they were arguing, so maybe not." Hikari thought out loud.
Sometime later the boys finally began to stir and let out a few groans. The brown haired boy started to open his eyes first. He yawned and stretched a little before opening his eyes a little more. A few seconds later the silver haired boy opened his eyes as he slowly sat up, as soon as he fully opened his eyes he was looking right at Claire, who was sitting in front of him.
They stared at each other for a moment before the other boy spoke up as he sat up, "Uh, where are we? Who are you two?"
Hikari, after noticing that Claire was lost in the silver haired boy's gaze, spoke up. "I'm not entirely sure about this world's coordinates, but we're on the shores of what appears to be an island. I'm Hikari, and my entranced student over there, is my friend Claire."
Claire blinked and shook her head a little, looking away from the silver haired boy and now looking at the brown haired boy, "Uh, hi."
"Hi I'm Sora." The brunette said pointing to himself. "And this is my best friend Riku." He gestured to the silver haired boy.
Claire turned back and looked at Riku, "Riku…" She then looked at Hikari, "Isn't that the name you said before?"
"What do you mean by that?" Riku asked.
Hikari didn't answer immediately, instead she tilted her head to the side in thought, with the ears on top of her head turning sideways and her forked tail swishing behind her. She eventually answered. "I have a younger half-brother by the same name, and while I haven't seen him in a decade or so, you remind me of him."
Claire looked at Hikari with surprise, "You have a half-brother and you never told me?"
"Didn't I tell you I had a sibling?"
"I thought you were referring to Dawn," Claire said.
"While I may sometimes address her as my younger sister, her existence is a bit more… complicated."
"What do you mean by that?" Claire asked but before Hikari could reply Sora interrupted.
"Um, can I asked something? Were you the girls who sent out the distress signal?"
"Our distress signal was actually heard?" Claire asked.
"Most of it. It was a bit garbled, but we managed to find where you two were." Sora said.
"And instead of rescuing us, you've now joined us." Hikari said in an even tone.
"It's something about this world, right? As soon as we got close to this world all the systems on the ship malfunctioned." Riku said with sigh.
Hikari gave a slight nod. "I assume so. I couldn't even override the autopilot once we entered the outer atmosphere."
"If it's the world that caused us to crash why did you blame me?" Sora said as he sent a childish glare at Riku.
Riku sighed again, "I didn't think about it until now. And if I remember correctly, didn't you crash a gummi ship before?"
"It wasn't entirely my fault!" Sora shouted.
"Uh guys, you can talk about that later. How about we head back to where our camp is and talk more there." Claire suggested.
"That sounds good." Riku said as he stood up.
"Let's go." Sora said as he also stood up.
Hikari just nodded her head, picked up the medkit, and started heading back to their camp, giving the universal hand signal for this way/follow me. The group of four started making their way to the girls' campsite.
When they arrived, Hikari and Claire went over to their bags, kneeling down beside them and started digging through their contents. Sora and Riku stood there for a minute while silence surrounded them.
After a minute Sora finally spoke, "So...Um….What's with the tails and ears?"
Hikari looked up from what she was doing, a tad confused before glancing over to Claire and remembering. "Oh, right. I'm honestly not sure about that. We kinda…" She paused, "well, we kinda just woke up with them this morning."
"And how long have you guys been stuck here?" Riku asked.
Claire this time pulled out her mini fridge from the bag, and she pulled out a cup of yogurt and an apple. She then paused and thought for a moment, "Hmm I am not entirely sure. Hikari and I were unconscious for a little while. Maybe a little over a twenty-four hours."
"Thirty hours, seventeen minutes, twenty-six seconds and counting!" came an energetic cry from Hikari's bag.
"Well that answers that." Sora said, not giving the random voice from the bag a second thought.
"Uh, why is there a voice coming from that bag?" Riku asked.
"That's just Dawn. I'd recommend ignoring her to spare your sanity." answered Hikari with a dismissive wave.
"I guess that answers it." Riku said with a shrug.
After spending some more time searching through her bag, Hikari just sighed, stuck her head in and shouted "Dawn! Where's the fish?!"
She stepped back when she heard some rustling, and after a moment, a travel-sized icebox popped out of the bag landing on the ground with a thud, followed by the gas stove and some metal skewers. Hikari then turned to face the boys. "Would you guys like me to cook up some fish for you?"
"Sure." Sora said and Riku nodded in agreement.
Hikari set up the stove, and set three fish on skewers to cook. In the meantime, she pulled out three water bottles, tossing one to each of the two boys and keeping one to herself. Once the fish were done and the three were eating, Hikari decided to break the silence.
"I'm a bit curious, what are the two of you going to do for supplies and stuff? We didn't see anything other than the two of you out in the water."
Sora immediately jumped up, "Ah! All our supplies is still on the ship!" Sora turned around and started running back towards to beach.
Riku sighed with a smile, "Well, there he goes. Might as well go and catch up with him." Riku stood up and ran after Sora.
"We should go help out too." Claire commented as she closed up her magic bag.
Hikari sighed and nodded, quickly picking up and packing away the used skewers and gas stove. The two stood and quickly followed after the boys, albeit at a more normal pace.
They made their way to the beach where they saw Sora and Riku standing on the shore. Though Sora was squinting to try and see if he could see where the gummi ship could have crashed.
"I wonder how deep it is out there." Sora said just as Hikari and Claire joined.
"I could go and check." Claire said as her dragon wings appeared on her back again, "I'll be back in just a minute." Claire then took off into the sky and flew towards the water.
Riku and Sora looked at Claire for a moment then looked at Hikari, both giving her a look saying 'can you explain that to us?'.
"Claire was born into a human-dragon hybrid race, who have the ability to sprout dragon wings and fly. Even though this world has altered our appearance, she's still capable of accessing that part of her."
"That's pretty cool." Sora said as he put his hands behind head.
"I agree. It's not something you really see everyday." Riku added just as Claire came back.
"Okay, so it doesn't look that deep, I can still kinda see the gummi ship, but it's hard to tell how deep exactly it is from an aerial view." Claire explained.
"Well I guess we'll just have to swim out there and see." Sora said with a grin as he faced Riku. "I bet I can swim out there faster than you can." Sora laughed childishly.
"Oh yeah? You're on!" Riku laughed.
Both boys stared competitively at each other before taking off their clothes, except for their boxers. Startled by the suddenness of the guys in their boxers, Claire covered her eyes with her hand as her cheeks showed a slight red. Before any questions could be asked, the guys ran off into the water and started swimming outward.
Hikari just raised an eyebrow at the boys' sudden removal of clothing before glancing at Claire and letting out a small chuckle.
"It seems like our little dragon princess has as crush." Hikari said in as teasing manner.
Claire glared at Hikari, her cheeks still red "Well I didn't expect them just to suddenly strip into their boxers!"
"While unexpected, boys will be boys. Though I thought they should have had enough sense to leave their clothes out of the water if they didn't want to get them wet again."
Claire sighed, "Yeah, I know. But still...I didn't expect that."
"Maybe not, but it seemed like you enjoyed the strip tease."
"Hikari!" Claire said as the redness showed up in her face again, "Cut it out."
Hikari just gave a slight chuckle. "Ok fine. I'll stop… until you go and start making it more obvious that you like him."
Claire let out a angry puff of smoke before taking in a few deep breaths. They turned to look out at the water. Several feet out, they could see Sora and Riku swimming over one area. It looked like they were probably talking to one another until Sora dove into the water, only to resurface a few seconds later. Then Riku dived down, but he too also resurfaced several seconds later.
The two started to swim back towards the shore, once they were there, they walked up to Hikari and Claire. "It's just a little too deep for us to dive down and have enough time to get our stuff from the ship." Riku explained.
"So you guys can't get any of your supplies?" Claire asked, trying not to look directly at the shirtless boys.
"Yup." Sora nodded.
Hikari's tail swayed back and forth in thought. "Seeing as I don't think Claire or I would be able to reach your gummi ship, we should probably head back to camp, the two of you should dry off, and then maybe work out a more thorough plan."
"That sounds good." Riku said as he picked up his clothes.
"Our clothes are still slightly wet from before. We'll probably need to hang them and let them dry." Sora said.
After the boys had gathered up their clothes they all walked back to the camp area. Claire reached into her bag and pulled out a clothesline, which the guys hung between two trees. They hung up their clothes along the line. Hikari, having gone digging through her own bag again, was having some trouble finding what she was looking for. So, rather comically, she reached in so that her head and upper torso were now inside the bag. With a quiet, triumphant noise, she withdrew herself and a pair of towels from the bag, handing one to each of the guys. The guys wrapped the towels around their waists and sat down, waiting for their clothes to dry.
"While I don't mind the two of you staying with us for the time being," Hikari addressed the boys "there is the issue that the two of you only have the clothes we found you in, and I don't think Claire and I have enough supplies to cover for all your needs."
"I guess we just gotta wait for the clothes to dry then." Sora suggested. "It shouldn't take too long."
"I was referring to more than just your clothes." Hikari deadpanned.
"We only have the two tents." Claire said. "And I don't think you guys wanna just sleep out here in the open."
"In an unfamiliar world probably not." Riku said.
"So what are we going to do?" Sora asked.
"Hmm, I don't know…" Claire said. "What do you think Hikari?"
"Technically speaking, the tents have barely enough room for two people if they're comfortable enough to be in such close quarters with each other."
"So that means Riku and I would have to sleep in the same tent?" Sora asked as he and Riku looked at each other.
"It's either that or you guys sleep outside. Though I don't know if the weather will stay nice," Claire said as she looked at the sky, which was now turning a reddish-orange.
"Another option would be to sleep in the gummi ship wreck, but seeing the circuits have blown up on two separate occasions and are still unstable, I don't know if it's entirely safe to sleep in there just yet." Hikari pointed out.
"Oh, plus there are the creatures we've seen. They don't seem to hostile, but we don't know much about them." Claire added.
There was a moment of silence as Riku and Sora looked at each other before both of them let out heavy sighs. "I guess until we can get our supplies from our ship we will just have to deal with it." Riku said.
"Ok then. You guys can use my tent for the time being." Hikari offered, gesturing to the tent beside her bag.
"Oh, well thank you." Riku said.
"Yeah, thanks." Sora added.
After some very brief, awkward conversations and just silence, the boys' clothes were dry. Once they were dressed, dinner was prepared, served, and eaten. By the time everything was said and done, the sun had fallen from the skies, signaling time to settle in for the night. After Hikari had cleared out any of her belongings from her tent, the boys said their goodnights to the girls and the girls did the same to them. Before heading to the separate tents, Hikari and Claire each got an extra sleeping bag out from their bags. One was giving to the boys while Hikari kept the other for herself. The four then split into two and went into the separate tents. Inside the girls tent they got into their sleepwear before laying down the other sleeping bag.
"Quite a day, right?" Claire asked as she got into her sleeping bag.
"I'd have to agree. First the changes," Hikari began, "then messed up magic, and now we're joined by Riku and Sora. Do you think that this place will change them too?"
"I don't know...maybe? I mean they are just normal people, you and I are different. I'm not exactly sure how to word it….do you get what I mean though? Claire asked as she stretched.
"I understand. We're different. My change could be chalked up as part of my heritage, but yours? You now sport fox appendages when you're part dragon."
Claire gently rubbed her new fox-like ears, "Yeah guess you're right. I hope we can find a way to fix this though."
Hikari's newish tail bobbed side to side behind her. "Staying on this world for a long enough period of time, approximately a day, apparently caused the change to happen, so theoretically, when we leave this world, we should change back. Maybe not immediately, but it shouldn't last longer than the time we spend here."
Claire nodded, "Well that sounds reasonable. So…" Claire turned onto her side, "What do you think of Riku and Sora?"
"I think that Sora is too impatient or energetic… or maybe a combination of the two. Riku on the other hand," Hikari paused, thinking on how to word the next bit, "I think Riku's a bit wise beyond his years, like he's gone through things that most never have nor will. Now how about we go to bed so that you can dream about him shirtless."
"W-What?" Claire turned to face Hikari as she raised her voice a little. Hikari could see the redness in her cheek return.
"Well, you obviously attracted to his appearance from what I've observed. Whether or not it develops into something more depends on the two of you." said Hikari, starting off a tad amused before getting more serious.
"I-I'm not just attracted to his appearance...I mean… I don't know how to describe it. It's just when we first looked at each other…." Claire sighed as she buried her face in her sleeping bag. "Maybe it's 'love at first sight'... but it feels childish to say that…"
Hikari just shook her head with a slight laugh. "You may understand the concept of love, but to understand the emotion within yourself requires a bit of trial and error on your part."
Claire sighed again, "Yeah...Well I don't know what to think now. I just met him...But I guess we will see what happens."
With that, Hikari just nodded, turned over on her side and tried to drift asleep.
And that wraps up chapter 5. Thanks for reading. We hope you are enjoying it so far.
So what will happen next? Will the same thing that happened to Claire and Hikari happen to Riku and Sora?
Find out next time! :D