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Chapter 1
Heather's Author Notes: Alright, I finally got this up. This unedited, and crappy! Any comment, correstion, or critisisms that you have may be e-mailed to me or placed in the guestbook on the main page. This is the fic that I've been telling my friends I'd get started on and really write for, well, over a year now... This is the third full revamp I've done to plot, characters, setting, etc. I hope you enjoy it. I am working on future chapters (and an actually story outline) but no promises as to when they'll be up.
*~*~*~*~*
Three girls were reclining peacefully in Brittany's room on both her bed and her sisters with a box of chocolates. Well, peacefully might not have been the best choice of words...
"Gimme the chocolates, bitch!" An italian girl with almost chin length bleached blond hair and brown eyes yelled across the beds at a chinese girl with shoulder length black hair and darker brown eyes.
"Make me, Britz!" The second girl clutched the box more tightly and sent an evil grin Britz's way as she hid on the other side of Lindsay's bed.
"Sharing works well, Tanya..." A taller whitie girl with long black hair tied up in a ponytail and mixed brown and green eyes suggested before being pelted with pillows from both sides.
"Shut-up, Heather!" Both girls told her, brandishing more pillows.
"Hey! It was just an idea!" She rolled off of Lindsay's bed and took cover in the space between the beds.
"My chocolates!" Britz crouched and leapt from her bed to her sister's, trying to grab the box of nummy treats from Tanya's grip as she landed.
"Fuck off!" Tanya hollered as she pulled back on the box.
"No, gimme!" Britz pulled harder.
Suddenly the grips of both girls gave way and the box went on a short (and definitely not first class, much to it's disappointment) flight, bounced off of Britz's covers and slid to a rest under Lindsay's bed.
"I'll get it!" Heather told the other two as they started fighting about whose fault it was that the chocolate had grown invisible wings. She lifted Lindsay's covers and started poking around under the bed, "Now, where'd it go.... Linz should really clean this out once in a while. What's that?" Heather poked at a particularly black spot, "Wha...?"
"I'm not the one who jumped across and grabbed it!!!" Tanya glared at Britz.
"Yeah, well who's the idiot who let go while I was pulling?!!!" Britz poked a finger at Tanya.
"Heather? Hey, Heather!" A short girl with longish dirty blond hair happily bounced into the room closely followed by a darker complexioned philippino girl.
"Out, Lindsay!" Britz turned her dark look from Tanya to the one who had interrupted her fight, "Oh, hi Jen."
"Where's Heather?" Jen looked around.
"She's trying to find the chocolates that flew over there." Tanya waved in the general direction before going back to her verbal war with Britz.
"No she's not," Jen peered over the bed, "hey Heather, where are you! Your little brother is on the phone!"
"She's not?" Britz walked around the bed, "Heather? Where'd she go?!!"
*~*~*~*~*
Heather began falling at a very alarming pace, what the hell was going on? You didn't just start falling when you were on someone's floor! Unless the house had collapsed? She realized that her eyes were closed and opened them.
"WHOLY SHIT!" She shut them again very quickly. It was NOT nice to know that you were very quickly approaching the ground.
Her, "Ow!" Was accompanied by a yell of, "What the fuck?!!"
Heather opened her eye a crack again, to find that she had safely, if you ignored the bruise that was going to appear vividly on her ass and the leg that was bent a little out of it's normal position, landed on solid ground. In a nice, homey forest no less.
"GEROFFAME!!!" The ground suddenly began to heave and Heather gave a frightened squeak before scuttling over to what looked like firmer terrain.
*~*~*~*~*
"She's not there?" A dark-haired fourteen year-old gave an exasperated sigh into the phone as the voice on the other end told him for the second time that they thought his sister had gone home.
"Sorry, Aaron. We really don't know what happened to her" Brittany sounded genuinely concerned.
"Yeah, thanks, I'll go look for her then. Bye." Aaron hung up the phone, that stupid bitch. She was supposed to be home babysitting while he went biking but where was she now? Somewhere between their house and Brittany's house. Great.
"Mark, think you can handle being him alone for a little while well I go find Heather?" He asked the eleven year-old who was watching a Jackie Chan movie.
"Yeah, sure." Mark didn't even look away from the TV.
"Good, I'm going to bike down to Brittany's house and find Heather before I go biking. C-ya later!" Aaron grabbed his helmet as he left the house, got his bike out of the shed, and started off along main street towards the hill down to lower Rossland.
*~*~*~*~*
Kouji rubbed his back as he got up. What in the fucking hell had he done to anger Suzaku enough for the animal god to drop someone out of thin air onto him? Without even a warning scream no less! He turned to glare at the person who had fallen on him to find a rather scared looking chick staring back at him.
She started to move away from him, he hadn't realized he was still glaring. She was wearing some really weird looking clothing, real skimpy compared to what the girls Kouji knew wore. It almost looked familiar, with some kind of weird writing he couldn't understand across the front, but he would need a bit of time to place it.
"Hey," Kouji gave the girl his dashing smile to try and keep her from running away and held out a hand to help her up, "What're ya doin' knockin' people over like that?"
"I-I wasn't trying to, I'm really s-sorry..." She stammered back. She took the proffered hand, even though she looked like she was going to bolt, and let him pull her to her feet. Kouji took a minute to look over her again, she was extremely tall for a girl, almost the same height as him. He looked down and his eyes caught on her shoes, Suzaku no Miko had shoes like that!
"'S okay, are you alright?" Kouji asked her, she hadn't even noticed that he had been rather obvious about looking at her. Kouji thought to himself, 'Gotta keep her here, make friends with her until we can get her to the emperor or somethin'.' It wouldn't do to have another miko running around, there were already two.
"F-fine," The girl turned her head and started looking around frantically then sighed. She started walking away from Kouji so he tightened the grip that he hadn't removed from her wrist, she jerked to a halt at the end of his reach as if she'd forgotten it.
"I can't let ya go into th' forest alone," Kouji explained as she turned back to give him a puzzled, why-are-you-still-here, glance. "There's wolves and dangerous bandits."
She shook her head lightly but seemed to regain some of her senses. "Wolves don't normally attack people... Oh, but I guess they might here. Where exactly is 'here', Kouji?" She pulled against his hold on her wrist.
"How do ya know my name?" Kouji gave her a weird sideways glance, "I know I didn't tell ya."
"Uh... Lucky guess?" The girl looked embarrassed and tried to distract him, "I'm, Heather, by the way."
"Well then, maybe ya should come back to my place with me." Kouji suggested. The, 'are you kidding me?' Look she turned on him convinced him to elaborate, "Just until I can get word to Hotohori-sama of yer arrival."
"Well," Heather looked around at the otherwise empty forest, "I guess I don't really have a choice here. Okay, lets go."
Kouji almost sighed with relief as he led her up the mountain path. She was a lot less stubborn than Miaka had been, maybe if he played his cards right he could even get a reward out of this. 'Doesn't really matter what kind, either,' he thought as he grinned to himself.
*~*~*~*~*
"I found you, chocolates!" Lindsay crowed with excitement as she pulled the much abused box out from under the bed.
"Give them to me!" Brittany commanded from her seat on the bed with Tanya.
"Oh, there's nothing in the box, anyway." Linz threw the box at her sister and went back to looking under the bed.
"Get out from there!" Tanya got up and pushed Lindsay out of the way, "If there's none in the box they must all be under your bed."
"Leave me some!" Brittany jumped off of the bed to join her in her search.
"What's this really black thing under your bed, Linz?" Tanya asked.
"Black thing? I dunno, grab it and I'll tell you." Lindsay told her.
The doorbell went off.
"Someone's at the door!" Jen yelled from the living room.
"I'll get it." Linz ran out of the room.
"Did you get whatever the black thing was?" Brittany asked as she turned her head to look at Tanya. "Tanya? Where'd you go?"
*~*~*~*~*
Heather sighed, this was just way too weird. She'd always wanted to go on some big adventure, but not by herself and maybe a little more prepared than she was here.
"Somethin' wrong?" Kouji asked her.
"Nope, I'm fine." Dusk was slowly creeping over the mountain and she was getting a little chilly but she could already see the bandit stronghold in the distance.
"Halt, who goes there!" A voice boomed as someone jumped out of the bushes beside the path.
"Ohmygod!" Heather yelled as she jumped backwards.
"Baka!" Kouji glared at the bandit guard who'd challenged them. "You should know who th' hell I am, Ahou!"
"Pardon, Leader." The bandit bowed immediately as he realized who he'd jumped out at.
"Fuck!" Heather took a deep breath, "Kouji, do all your guards try and scare the living daylights out of people?"
"Depends on how stupid they are." Kouji dismissed the bandit with a wave of his hand and a final dark look, "'S good to use a surprise attack on people who might be enemies, but the guards can usually recognise me. Shall we keep goin'?" He smiled at her again.
"Great... I guess so." She continued to follow him as he started up the mountain again.
"aaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!"
WHUMP
"Ow!" Tanya pulled herself to a sitting position as Kouji groaned in pain.
"Heather!" Tanya looked around and saw the other girl, "What the hell happened?!"
Heather gave Tanya a hand and pulled her to her feet, ""Um, get off of Kouji and I'll tell you what I know later when we can find a little peace."
"Kouji?" Tanya gave Heather a weird look.
Heather looked around Tanya to Kouji, "You alright, Kouji?"
"Fine," He pulled himself to his feet and rubbed his back. Being a landing pad was a painful job. He took a good look at the girl in jeans and a t-shirt proclaiming, 'Wo hen ni' in chinese (meaning 'I hate you'), "Whose yer friend?" He inquired with a laugh.
"This is Tanya." Heather beamed, "Tanya, Kouji."
"Hey." Tanya gave him a smirk, "You make a good crash-mat, Kouji."
"Thanks." Kouji said dryly and waved away a couple of bandit guards as they came to investigate the noises, "No problem here guys." He told them, 'Except for my back'.
"Do you mind if she comes, too?" Heather asked.
"No, no, just keep walkin'." Kouji continued up the hill.
"Why do I feel like I just got sucked into some kinda freaky dream?" Tanya commented to Heather as they walked.
*~*~*~*~*
"Brittany, it's Heather's brother. He couldn't find her." Linz poked her head around the door.
"Tanya? Oh great, Lindz, tell him to get his ass in here." Brittany growled.
"What'd you do with my sister?!" Aaron asked angrily the moment he stepped into the room.
"I dunno, but we just lost Tanya, too." Britz fumed, "I'm going to see if I can figure out where they went in a moment."
"Lost Tanya, too?" Aaron was confused, "How the hell do you lose them in your room?"
"I dunno!" Britz yelled, "We were going to have a sleepover to night so we were just trying to figure out what to do, then Heather vanished, and now Tanya has... GRRRR!!!" She had the foresight to grab Heather and Tanya's backpacks and stuff some snacks, extra clothing, essentials, etc into her own before venturing back under the bed.
"What are you doing?" Aaron stuck his head under the bed beside hers.
"Going after the two morons." Brittany held onto the three backpacks with one hand and reached out for the black thing with the other.
Suddenly Aaron was alone with Lindsay and Jen.
*~*~*~*~*
So yeah, we've somehow gotten to the FY world and ended up at Mt. Leikaku." Heather finished telling Tanya what she knew of their little trip.
"Kewl." Tanya grinned evilly, "So basically we've been released to wreak havoc on this world?"
"Guess so." Heather smiled back, " Come with me." She got up and walked over to tap the bandit leader on his shoulder while he discussed something with his men, "Hey, Kouji?"
"Yea?" He turned to face her. His men started snickering.
"Looks like one at a time wasn't good enough fer th' leader." One of the bandits whispered.
Both girls and Kouji glared at the offending party.
"Didn' say nothin'..." The bandit looked away.
"Anyway," Heather continued, "We were wondering where we're going to sleep tonight?"
More snickering.
"Well...." Kouji drawled, "I was thinking you could have his room." Kouji gestured at the whisperer, "Seein' as how he's gonna be on watch all night," the bandit groaned, "I'm sure he'd be happy to show us the way and move his stuff for you." Both men stood up and the bandit began to lead them towards his quarters, shuffling his feet.
"yyyYYYAAAAAAH!!!"
"Not again!" Kouji winced as he heard the yell above his head. Three backpacks smacked down beside the two girl and then a falling body knocked Kouji down for the third time that day.
"I-itaiiii..." Kouji muttered.
"W-what happened?" Brittany ask as she blinked, a little stunned from her rapid descent.
"Kouji just got knocked over for the third time." Heather grinned and offered a hand. Once she'd gotten Britz back on her feet she offered Kouji a hand, too, but he ignored it and slowly got back to his feet.
"Just forget what ya all saw." Kouji told the few bandits still hanging around in the dining hall. They nodded and slowly moved towards the door. Kouji sighed again, why him?
"Oh, Tanya!" Britz grinned, "Glad to see that the black thing kept both of you together!"
"Where are we?" Britz asked.
"If Kouji didn't give you a clue maybe FY will." Tanya grinned.
"FY?"
"Think inter-world portal, Britz." Heather grinned.
"Slammin'!" Britz was overjoyed, "Where's 'Chiri?!"
"No here, sadly." Heather stuck out her tongue, "I think they're at the imperial palace."
"Who's this?" Kouji was rubbing at his back again.
"Britz, Kouji. Kouji, Britz." Heather introduced them to each other.
"You girls have some pretty unusual names." Kouji grunted.
Britz shrugged, "So do you."
Kouji gave her a disgusted look, "Crappy landing habits, too."
The bandit who had been assigned all night watch and the loss of his room tried to edge away and escape.
"Where do you think, you're going, Bastard?" Tanya asked him with a sweet smile.
"Uh, uh, just, over, uh..." He continued trying to edge away.
"Ah yes, to our room." Tanya's foot impacted into the wall beside his head, "That's right, now, which way were we going?" The bandit twitched a little and promptly lead them down the hallway.
*~*~*~*~*
"Oh no they don't..." Lindsay fumed, "How dare they think they can go on an adventure without us?!!"
"I don't think they were planning on it." Jen smiled at her friend.
"She better not have!" Aaron was livid, "Now I have to go home and babysit for her!"
"Than hurry up and go." Lindsay shoved yet more food into an already bulging backpack, "We're going after them!"
"You'd better wait while I pick up some stuff for myself. I'm coming with you." Aaron glared at them one last time for good measure before walking out the door and shutting it behind him rather forcefully.
"Yeah, yeah." Lindsay began hunting for more easily carried, non-refrigerable food.
"Don't you think you have enough?" Jen asked giving the pack a dubious look.
"Me? This is just yours, I haven't even started packing my own food yet!" Lindsay gave her friend a puzzled look.
"What?! You expect me to carry that?!!" Jen tried to lift the pack and failed, "I can't even get the off the ground! How many Snack-packs are in here, anyway?"
"A good twenty." Lindsay answered, "Then there's the other kinds of food, barely enough for one day, I know, but we'll just have to survive." Lindsay poked through a rapidly empting cupboard.
"....." Jen just stared at Lindsay.
*~*~*~*~*
To be continued...
*~*~*~*~*
Fushigi Yuugi, Kouji, and the various bandits are copyrighted
to Watase Yuu, Shogakukan Shojo Comics, Flower Studios, Studio Pierrot, and
all others who have a viable and legal claim. No matter how much I wish I did
I do not own any of these characters.
I do however own the characters Heather, Tanya, Brittany (Britz), Lindsay
(Linz), Jen, Mark, and any other personal characters mentioned. So hands off!
If you steal them or use them without permission I'll let the in-real-life owners
of the names get their hands on you.