Disclaimers: FY not mine. No books mentioned in this chapter are mine, either. ^_^

Warnings: Tasuki language. Spoilers—believe it or not—for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. ^_^() Probably sap. Shounen ai. ^__^

Notes: Sorry this took so long!! Gahhhhhhh………….stupid school. **sigh** Personal apology to DemonDancing, heehee! **waves** Sorry for keeping you waiting! ^_~ I hope this chapter’s okay. ^^;;; Ne, Kokkei, Plushie’s skating and being show-offy as I’m typing this. Curse you and your Tom Cullen hair cut, Plushie!! **shakes fist** Heehee.

Have fun, everyone! Thanks for reading; hope ya like it.

Six o’clock found all six of us piled into Shouka’s brother’s full-sized mauve van, half an hour into our haphazard road trip, singing along to one of Gen-chan’s mix tapes. He was quite the Gorillaz fan, so the song gracing our ears at the moment was 19-2000, and we were singing in parts. Since Gen-chan was the only one who actually knew all the lyrics, he sang the verses—believe it or not, the guy actually has a pretty decent singing voice—while Doukun and I did the "Got the cool shoeshine" bit, and Taka and the others chimed in with the background stuff and the "Doo DOO doo DOO doo!" Although…it was really mostly Taka who did that part, since Myojuan was driving and Saihitei had to stop singing periodically while trying not to laugh at us. Anyway, it was great fun.

"You guys, we should form a boy band!!" I exclaimed when the song was over, completely and utterly kidding. The others, it seemed, were not amused, and Gen-chan and Doukun threw their pillows at my head.

"Don’t you ever fuckin say that again," Gen-chan warned.

"Yeah, we all know you’re a closet Britney Spears fan," I accused teasingly.

"GODDAMMIT!!" he cried. "It’s fuckin normal!!! The girl is fuckin hot!! If you weren’t fuckin gay, you’d feel the same way!!"

Doukun raised an eyebrow at him, and Myojuan gave him a similar look in the rearview mirror.

"Fuckin weirdos," Gen-chan huffed, folding his arms.

"I thought you hated girls, Gen-chan," I reminded him.

"She’s not a fuckin girl! She’s…a singer!"

"Okay, people," piped up Doukun, "can we turn the music down for a while, please? I’m going to try to get some homework completed while I’m still sane enough to do so."

Myojuan nodded and turned down the volume; Genrou immediately began complaining.

"Ohhhhh, come oooonnnnnnnnnn!!! Fuckin forget about the fuckin homework!! We’re on a road trip!!! Rrrrrrrrrrroad trip!!!!"

"Calm down, Pyro Spazz!! Give him a break, he can study if he wants to!" Taka called from the passenger seat.

"Well, what’m I supposed to do, goddammit??"

"Shut up!!"

"Read a book, or something," I suggested, taking out one of my own from my knapsack. Saihitei did the same.

"Fuckin book," he groaned.

"You can have one of mine," I offered, handing him one.

Grudgingly, he looked at the cover. "Harry Potter? What the fuck, Ryuuen?? This is a fuckin kids book!!"

"There are people older and more mature than you who have read and enjoyed it," I told him cheerfully.

"I enjoyed Harry Potter very much," Saihitei contributed. (He himself was reading a biography of Harry S. Truman.)

"As did I," Myojuan added. Doukun nodded, and Taka gave us a thumbs up.

"You’ve gotta be fuckin kiddin me," Gen-chan growled.

"And the movie version comes out tomorrow!" I said, bouncing.

He glared at me.

"Love ya, Tasuki-chan," I beamed.

"Hey, Juan," Gen-chan called to the front, "are we plannin on stoppin fer fuckin dinner, or what?"

"Don’t call me ‘Juan,’" Myojuan insisted calmly; Genrou had pronounced it the Spanish way, ‘Huan,’ which he had a teasingly annoying tendency to do. "If everyone feels like stopping, we certainly can. It would save Miaka some worry about how and what to feed us. But perhaps we can wait until we cross the border before stopping again."

Everyone agreed, and I huddled down in the very back seat—Gen-chan and I were in the very back, Myojuan and Taka were up front, and Doukun and Saihitei were in the separated chairs in the middle—and began reading ‘Wizard and Glass,’ by Stephen King.

You should really be reading your primary sources for your thesis, my logical and diligent side nagged.

It’s Thanksgiving Breeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaak, was my normal side’s excuse, and I guess it worked, because Logic shut the heck up right away.

A ways into my chapter, though, and by no fault of Mr. King, I began fading into a light sleep. I always feel sleepy during long car rides, especially at night…and the fact that it was so quiet didn’t help things much, either. My last coherent thought before my head dropped sideways onto the pillow I’d propped against the window was that I wished I’d been sitting next to Saihitei, because, as has already been established multiple times, he was a simply fantastic pillow.

Maybe an hour and a half later, I was rudely awakened by a bump in the road the size of a small cow, which, apart from waking me up, sent me flying about a foot in the air before my seat belt kicked in.

"Oops," called Myojuan from the front. "Sorry!"

Sitting up, I rubbed my eye groggily and stretched. "Mmph. Whtimezit?"

"Almost eight o’clock," Saihitei told me, peering back at me from the middle van seat diagonal from where I sat and smiling. It was a fairly big, "Aw-My-Boyfriend’s-Doing-Something-Cute-Again" smile, and I couldn’t help the teeny flush that hit my cheeks. "Are you hungry?"

"Does anyone want to stop for dinner?" Myojuan asked, addressing the question via the rearview mirror.

I raised my hand. "I could eat. I’m not starving, though, so if no one else wants to stop, I can wait ‘til later."

"I’m starving," said Tama-chan. "I could eat my weight in tacos."

"Did you know that the meat for tacos at El Super Burrito is one grade below cat food?" Doukun piped up.

Silence.

"Thanks a bunch, pal," Taka grumbled.

"Oooooh, look!!! There’s a sign for Fazoli’s, next exit!!" I exclaimed, perking up in my seat and pointing out the window. "Dude!! They give out free breadsticks!!"

"That’s fine with me," Taka said. "Is that okay with everyone else?"

A quick census showed that five out of six reincarnated seishi would be fine going to Fazoli’s, with one abstention. That abstention…was Genrou, who, it seemed, was not paying attention at all.

I twisted in my seat and nudged him in the side with my foot. "Heyyyy, Gen-chan! You hungry? Wanna go to Fazoli’s?"

"Dammit!" he growled, without even looking at me. "Woulja leave me the hell alone and let me read my fuckin book???!!! There’s a fuckin troll wreakin havoc, here!!"

I giggled. "What, you mean…you actually like Harry Potter? But Gen-chan, it’s just a stupid kid’s book!"

He bristled, face coloring a bit. "Sh’uuuuuup, Ryuuen!!! Don’t diss the fuckin book!! That fuckin red-haired kid kicks ass!!"

"D’ya think you can tear your eyes away from the story long enough to eat?" I said, still laughing a little, just from the irony of it all.

"No matter what he says, we’re stopping!" Taka announced.

"Ahhhhhhh, give a guy a fuckin break!!" Gen-chan cried. "Nice fuckin campaign we got here! Who the fuck are you guys, the fuckin Anti-Literacy Warriors?? ‘Nnnoooo, don’t reeeeead!’" he mimicked, his voice a high-pitched whine. "‘Don’t expand your miiiiiiiind!!! Go to fuckin Fazoli’s and gorge yourself on fuckin breadsticks, instead!!!’"

Taka turned from the front. "Tasuki, geez, take some helpful drugs, or something!"

"You can take the book into the restaurant!!" I said quickly, seeing that, from the look on Gen-chan’s face, he was about three seconds away from leaping to the passenger seat and twisting Taka’s head off. "You can read while we eat, okay okay okay??"

Narrowing his eyes, he turned to me, and I raised my right hand like someone being sworn in in a courtroom. "Promise," I said.

He grunted, sulked in his seat, and started reading again.

"You’ve sure found a way to keep him quiet," Doukun whispered to me through the crack between his seat and the door. I rolled my eyes and smiled.

~*~

The restaurant was dead, even for eight fifteen in the evening. And it was freeeeezing outside. How it had dropped to Ice Age temperatures in the two hours it had taken to get us from Illinois to Indiana, I did not know. All I knew was, we ran from the van to the Fazoli’s like six bats out of hell. It hadn’t snowed yet for us, but it was certainly getting there, and even after we’d stood in line for our food and had slid into a large red booth, Doukun and I—having less in the way of "insulation" than our friends—were still shivering violently.

Saihitei’s solution to this was, as per usual, to take off his trench coat and drape it over my shoulders with a concerned frown. I knew better, by this time, than to protest, and merely smiled my thanks. Across the table from us, Myojuan apparently thought that Saihitei’s idea was a good one; removing his own navy blue coat, he offered it to Doukun, who raised a tentative eyebrow.

"Go on," rumbled Myojuan, pressing the item of clothing further in our friend’s direction. "Take it; it was foolish to leave your own in the trunk."

Doukun accepted it, giving his benefactor a dry look. "All right. But this doesn’t mean I’ll date you." I giggled.

We ate our spaghetti and breadsticks in relative silence, simply because we were weirded out by the whole Mostly Empty Restaurant thing. Gen-chan sat there and read the whole time. And I got to thinking…about the whole situation with Houjun.

I’d tried to ignore it, at least until we got to Miaka’s. I think we all had, because, well…there wasn’t anything we could do about it until we actually got there, and too much thinking without the opportunity for doing would be pretty stressful, to say the least. We’d talked it over briefly, after Taka had found that mysterious mirror thing. He’d said it had been sent by some old scary floating woman, and that we’d had something like it back in The Past, and that it was supposed to give clues as to the whereabouts of the Warrior Guys, blah blah. So we assumed that it was now flashing hints at where Houjun had run off to, and the clue we had for him was "Freedom."

Taka insisted that it was referring to another possible translation of the same symbol: "Liberty." And he had submitted the belief that, therefore, Houjun was heading to New York City. There was a river there, after all. A river and the Statue of Liberty. It was the best we had to go on, so we took it. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we were wrong. But hopefully, once we met up with Miaka, she’d be able to t…

"What the fuck is up with the breadstick dude?!" Genrou had, apparently, torn himself away from his newfound guilty pleasure to pose the irritated question. I was startled out of my Deep Thoughts, and blinked stupidly across the table at him. "We’ve been waitin fifteen fuckin minutes for the fuckin guy with the basket to give us some goddamn breadsticks!! Where the hell is he??"

I peered over the booth to see if the Breadstick Man was in sight, but to no avail. "I dunno…maybe they don’t do the free breadstick basket thing this close to closing," I said with a shrug.

"Goddammit, I want my fuckin breadsticks," he growled.

"If you’ll kindly nail your mouth shut with a railroad spike, I’d be happy to give you mine," Doukun offered.

"Yeah, here," I said, taking one of my own and reaching over to drop it onto Gen-chan’s plate.

"That’s not…the fuckin…point," Gen-chan said through clenched teeth. "They say they have free fuckin breadsticks here, and I ain’t got no free fuckin breadsticks."

"Then, you have some?" Doukun said, deadpan.

Genrou gave him an enraged "What The Hell?" look; Myojuan rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly, and Saihitei was taking in the conversation with mild interest. On my other side, Taka was completely ignoring everything, digging happily into his lasagna.

"Double negative," I explained to my red-haired friend sheepishly, just as Myojuan practically groaned the same thing from beneath his hand.

"What the fuck does that have to do with anything??!!!"

"Will ya stop shouting?" I hissed. "Just go back to Hogwarts and…stay there for a while!!!" Vaguely, I was aware that Saihitei had raised his arm and was waving at something, for some bizarre reason.

"Fuckin double negative???!!! Buncha fuckin grammar Nazis!!! What the hell??!"

"Ahhh…Tasuki," came my boyfriend’s quiet, pleasant voice, cutting through the verbal battle and quenching my projected retaliation. We turned to see a rather terrified-looking, red-shirted young waiter standing at the head of the table, a basket of breadsticks slung over his arm.

"Umm…breadstick?" he squeaked.

Genrou looked him up and down menacingly. "Took ya long enough, pal," he said with his usual good manners, and proceeded to help himself to about six.

~*~

A great deal of the remaining trip was spent "discussing" the fact that, wherever we seemed to go, "some of us" always wound up scaring the poor waiting staff. Interestingly enough, Genrou, who was the main target of the conversation, did not participate in it, as he had, indeed, returned to Hogwarts, and did not look like he’d be leaving until he needed me to give him the second book.

We arrived in Perry, Indiana at about 12:30 in the morning, and as we pulled up to the front entrance of Miaka’s dorm, there was—like in the restaurant—a startlingly low amount of movement in the neighborhood.

At Allenby, the weekend practically started on Thursday night. There were all sorts of Thursday Parties in all the frats and stuff, and were almost as loud and vibrating as the Friday and Saturday Parties. Then again, all the frats and stuff probably had Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday parties, too. Not that frat boys are all necessarily wild party animals…well, yeah, okay, so they are.

Taka had called Miaka on Saihitei’s phone right before we’d arrived, so she was waiting at the door as we parked, her little face watching us from the window. By the time we’d gotten out of the van, she had run down the steps and thrown herself into Taka’s arms…and I could’ve been wrong, but I think she was crying a little. Whatever the case, she sure sounded like it.

"Taka…thank you for coming, thank you so much for… Oh, Taka, I’m…I don’t know what’s happening, I’m so scared…"

Slightly startled, Taka hugged her close and reassured her in a gentle voice; I wrapped my arms around myself, the gravity of the situation really beginning to settle. Even Gen-chan had put down his newfound love and was leaning against the vehicle, staring at the ground, his jaw jutting out slightly.

Saihitei gave Taka and Miaka a few moments before stepping over himself and putting a hand on Taka’s shoulder. "Should we move the discussion to a hotel?" he inquired softly.

Taka nodded, and carefully got Miaka into the back of the van; I followed, and joined them, leaning over and throwing my own arms around Miaka. She would be fine, I knew, now that we were there…but it must have been awful for her to have had to deal with this alone.

I rested my chin on her shoulder and sighed. Gen-chan took Taka’s place in the front seat, and we were off to the Holiday Inn Express, courtesy of Saihitei’s ample inheritance.

We got two adjoining rooms: one for Doukun, Myojuan, and Genrou, and one for "The Two Couples."

Well, anyway…as soon as we’d dragged all of our luggage up to the third floor, we gathered in The Couples’ Room to discuss—albeit briefly, as it was nearly one in the morning—the plans for the following day. Taka brought up New York, and asked Miaka if that seemed plausible; he showed her the mirror, and she took it, wide-eyed.

"Liberty," she breathed, moving her eyes up to Taka’s. "New York. Do you think…that’s right?"

"I do," said Doukun. "I have a feeling…I don’t know if it’s the same with the rest of you. But I feel something pulling me…and this is going to sound awfully insipid, but whenever I think of New York, and that Houjun might have gone there…the pulling gets stronger." He gave us a tentative smile. "Is it the same for the rest of you?"

Not for me. I shook my head, and saw the others do the same.

"But that’s a good enough affirmation for me," said Myojuan solemnly.

I nodded. "With that and the mirror thing…and the email he sent, about the river…I think it’s a pretty good chance to take."

"Indeed," said Saihitei. "I’d say it’s the only lead we have."

"You okay with the New York thing, Gen-chan?" I said, looking over my shoulder from where I lay on the bed.

He didn’t answer.

"Gen-chan?"

"AHHHHHH!!" he roared, and leaped up from where he’d been sitting. I scrambled to my knees in shock, and everyone else’s reaction, from what I could tell, was about the same.

"Tasuki, what?" Saihitei said urgently, setting his hand on my shoulder, I guess to keep me from going over to Gen-chan in case he was in some sort of contagious trouble, or something. Heeee, how sweet. "What is it? What’s wrong??"

"It was QUIRRELL!!!" Gen-chan shouted, eyes wide, jaw slack, and I realized he was still holding the book I’d naïvely lent him. "It was fuckin Quirrell all the time!!!!!"

Silence. Time…had frozen.

And when it melted again, and began to flow, Gen-chan found exactly six pillows thrown with startling accuracy directly at his head. I took a small amount of pride in the fact that mine was the one that succeeded in knocking him backward off of his chair.

Notes: Ummm…so, Tasuki reads the better part of ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" in seven hours? Heyyyy, it could happen. ^_~ Sorry if this chapter was a disappointment to people who might be wondering exactly what’s up with Chichiri…but I’ll get to that as soon as I can! ~.~() And if you guys have any comments about editing, etc., since I didn’t get the last part of this beta-read…please, feel free to yell at me. ^_^

Poll: Ooookay, so…I’ve gotten a lot of comments concerning the rating of this fic, and I was wondering what you guys thought about it. It seems lotsa people think I should change the rating from R to PG-13. Now, uhhh…it’s rated R because of language, and I don’t think there’s really a lot of other R-quality stuff in it. **shrug** But a lot of people don’t appreciate this type of language in a PG-13 story. So…I dunno. I’m bad at deciding stuff like this, cuz different people have different ideas about what the rating system should be like. I’d be interested to hear what everyone thinks. ^_^()

Narrator: And so, Hori Potter boarded the train to Hokkan, in search of the fabulous and much-needed Shinzaho…

Hori: Ahh! Now for some much-needed beauty sleep.

Narrator: But alas, a nap was made unlikely by a shout of…

Ronsuki: REKKA SHINEN!!!!!! **sudden eruption of ten-foot flames in compartment of train**

Hori: **singed**

Ronsuki: Heh heh…sorry about that. There was a fly on the window.

Hori: **trying to regain his regal bearing** Aghh…no problem. W-won’t you come in?

Ronsuki: Thanks, pal! **goes to sit down** The name’s Ronsuki. And you are?

Hori: Hori Potter.

Ronsuki: **eyes bug out** Whoah, no way!! You’re the emperor of Konan???

Hori: **pleased** That’s right.

Ronsuki: Dude, that rocks!! I’ve heard all sorts of stories about you.

Hori: Really? Such as?

Ronsuki: Well…mostly that you sit around playing Kirby’s Dreamland all day. But still…you’re the emperor! That’s freakin awesome!!

Hori: I’m also wildly attractive.

Ronsuki: **raises eyebrow** Ehhhhh…sure ya are. So…

Nurmione: **entering** S’cuse me. I’m looking for a cat named Tama. Some monk lost him, or something.

Ronsuki: Sorry. We haven’t seen no damn cat.

Nurmione:  ‘Haven’t seen no?’ Obviously, grammar is not a priority with some people…

Ronsuki: Shut the hell up.

Nurmione: **taking a seat** I’m Nurmione Granger. I take it you two are looking for the Shinzaho, too?

Hori: That’s right.

(JK Rowling: You know, Mouse-chan, I’ll get you for this.

Mouse-chan: Sorry, Ma’am…I plead temporary insanity.

Kaze-chan: TEMPORARY!! BAAAHHhahahahahahaaaa!!!)

Nurmione: You know, we should pool our resources! Work together as a team to find the Shinzaho!

Nako: **entering** Don’t even dream of acquiring the Shinzaho, Potter. You’ll never get it before…ME.

Hori: **blank stare** Excuse me…I don’t believe we’ve met.

Nurmione: **darkly** That’s Nako Malfoy. He’s the local Tenkou worshipper.

Nako: You’ve done your homework. Unfortunately, it won’t do you much good when you bleed to death on the top of a snowy mountain.

Nurmione: Ummmmm, whatever, Nako….

JK Rowling: All right, all right, already! Please, I beg you! Stop the madness! ><;;;

Mouse-chan: ^_^() Gomen!