(Also copious thanks to MExum65008 and Luriko-Ysbeth
for the Shattered-Land ideas)
In the sibilant backwash of roaring vortices of chaos-drawn space lies a
single, stagnant place. Tranquil as cairn moss, the things that hover uncertain
between true life and oblivion lie sleeping; torpid for now, ravening dulled by
indifference.
Within the lifeless waters of this horribly still place, a creature that
is one and yet a conglomerate of many creatures hovers over a prison with
neither walls nor bars. It has long forgotten what or who it was. Not that it
matters.
The creature gropes for the prison with disparate and disjointed grasping
limbs, sucking with many broken-toothed mouths at the unyielding surface,
mindlessly hungry for the warm flesh warm soul tucked so snugly within. It is,
of course, an unsuccessful effort. Five hundred thousand times this nameless
thing has searched the prison over to find an opening, any opening at all. It
would have given up its search and forgotten the object entirely if it had not
been for one thing; the lingering aroma of old pain older fear that sifted from
it like a miasma that was sweeter than honey to the creature outside.
And so it remained, in this lone tideless pool in a Tide-wracked
universe, a soulless thing thirsting forever for the forbidden blood of a single
forgotten prisoner.
Kurama sat up in bed with a groan. That damn dream had come back again, as
it did every spring. His mouth felt like he had been sucking sand all night;
gritty and sour. Muzzily he ran his fingers through his tangled hair and yawned
hugely. He would not be getting back to sleep tonight, not with those unsettling
images haunting the backs of his eyelids. He wished that Hiei was with him; he'd
outgrown teddy bears years ago and he needed something to hug. He wrapped his
arms around his knees with a sigh and let his mind wander, eyes finding patterns
in the shadows sliding over the furniture. Here and there, he saw hints of his
nightmare that highlighted his early-morning loneliness. A slim body dancing in
patches of false-dawn light, leggy as a cheetah and smoother than silk. A shirt
hung over a chair provided the figure with batlike wings, an art project in
progress on his desk gave it the semblance of a battered hat. A scarf blowing in
the breeze from the partially opened window suggested a flowing ponytail. The
breeze itself brought near-inaudible, ghostly whispers of a half-forgotten
voice. He watched the shadow dancer for a timeless time, and then something
startled him badly; the dancer turned to face him, and a marble that he had
found in his garden lent a cobalt glint to a shadow eye. Help...
whispered the breeze.
"Kuronue!" Kurama gasped, and then it was gone.
The first rays of dawn turned the glint back into a plain blue marble; the
shadows were just shadows. Birds twittered sleepily outside, warming up for the
day. Kurama shivered, donned his bathrobe, and went out to the garden to let the
fresh air clear his head. The dew of new grass chilled his toes, but he barely
felt it as he drank in the cool morning air, sweetly scented with the first
cherry blossoms of the year. The sun rose slowly in the east in a blaze of
vibrant colors, bringing with it the Love of Spring. Kurama could feel it, the
enormous but infinitely gentle force that pushed life back into the world with
slow, deliberate pressure. The warmth was coming back early this year. Soothed a
bit by the peace of his garden, Kurama knelt and gently fingered the new
russet-green leaves of his rose bushes. A burst of fiery ki behind him announced
Hiei's arrival. "You're going to get thorns stuck in your feet if you're not
careful." He remarked matter-of-factly.
Kurama gave a small snort of amusement, swivelled around and wrapped his
arms around his firebaby, holding him very close and leaning his head on the
smaller boy's chest. Hiei wasn't quite sure what to make of this; there was
obviously something bothering the Kitsune, but Kurama didn't seem inclined to
discuss it. So instead he stood there in silence, combing the fox's tangled hair
with his fingers and enjoying the tranquility.
Several hours later, Kurama was still feeling haunted and morose as he
ambled through the pine forest with Hiei. He couldn't get either his nightmare
or the predawn shadows out of his mind; never before had such a nebulous figure
pleaded to him for help, and Kuronue was long dead, gone wherever departed
spirits go. He'd probably already gone through four or five reincarnations by
now, anyway. Yet still a sense of foreboding haunted him. Something was going to
happen, he just knew it.
Hiei by now was feeling a tinge of worry; He'd never seen Kurama quite this
moody before. He had asked the fox what was bugging him during breakfast, but
Kurama had told him that he'd had a bad dream and that it was nothing to worry
about. Hiei wasn't too sure about that. Come to think of it, Kurama got this way
every spring, but never this bad. He wondered what dreamtime horror had so
rattled his lover.
In silence they left the woods and entered the park. Kurama perked up a bit
at the sight of the flowerbeds; the time of crocus and spring iris had passed,
but all sorts of daffodils and tulips were in enthusiastic bloom, and tiny
sprigs of grape hyacinth poked their indigo cones up around the larger plants.
Hiei sighed softly with impatience and stood quietly by as Kurama examined the
display. Sometimes he wondered if there were a dryad or two in Kurama's
ancestry. Hiei didn't have time to get seriously bored, fortunately. Yuusuke and
Kuwabara arrived, looking very pleased with themselves. "Hi there, guys." Kurama
said with a welcoming smile. "You look like you've been trawling for muggers
again."
"Gotta do something to keep in shape." Kuwabara laughed.
Yuusuke and Kuwabara had discovered a new team sport just after Christmas-
vigilantism. The Harlequin had given them a couple of marvellous new weapons to
play with, and they had done so with wild abandon. There was not a single
mugger, rapist, thief, arsonist, or gang member in the entire district that did
not scream a lot and run away whenever they saw the pair walking down the
street.
"So, what's been up with you lately, Kurama?" Yuusuke asked. "We haven't
seen all that much of you lately."
"Exam week." Kurama replied with some distaste. "I've been studying so hard
that the subjects have been branded into the backs of my eyeballs, and it's
going to be the same again starting Monda-aaah!"
Kurama reeled as a flood of images suddenly deluged his mind. Again he saw
the dark, stagnant place of his nightmare, the taste of chill, brackish sand in
his mouth. Fossilized fear ran up his backbone like a frozen spider and again a
shadow begged for help.
"Kurama!" A distant voice called. "Are you all right?"
"You aren't getting epileptic on us, are you?" Asked another familiar voice.
Only one person could be so tactless in a situation like this, and the
knowledge guided him back to reality. Kurama found himself leaning heavily on
Kuwabara's shoulder, trembling with a new urgency. "Something's going to
happen." Kurama gasped. "Something terrible, if we don't do something."
"He's right," a new voice came from behind them, making Kurama start in
surprise, "Koenma needs you guys right now, if only to get the Piper calmed
down."
"Hi, Botan," Yuusuke said, "what's going on?"
Botan shook her head and manifested her oar. "I don't have time to explain.
Come on!"
Something was wrong with Interspace this time; it twisted under their feet
like a gigantic snake and roared with the sound of a storm-tossed ocean. Much to
the Spirit Detective's relief, it did not break under their weight, though it
did sag and tremble like overburdened rubber. When they did arrive in Koenma's
study, they could instantly tell that some disaster had happened; the air was so
full of nervous tension that one could almost cut it into bricks and build a
wall.
Koenma himself was seated at his desk, shuffling through the stacks of
paperwork and fidgeting with his pacifier. "Ah, you're here," he said, looking
up from his work.
"Hey, guys, glad you could make it," Someone else said from on top of the
drapes. "I nearly didn't."
They looked up. Perched atop the curtains was the Harlequin, playing
straight Solitaire with an unmarked deck. For once, the God of Chaotic Silly
wasn't smiling- a very bad sign. "What's going on here?" Yuusuke asked.
"Both the Ningenkai and the Reikai are in deadly peril," Koenma began,
standing up on his chair, "A very important spirit has been kidnapped by evil
creatures of the Shattered Lands, and-"
"Tell them the truth, you misbegotten son of a yellow monkey." The Piper
growled from the far corner of the room.
The Spirit Detectives got something of a shock when they saw the huge
monster- he was extremely pissed off at something. His glossy brick-red hide had
darkened to the shade of old blood, and his faceted obsidian eyes glittered with
internal fire. He was reclining in an intricate coil in the corner, sharpening
one of his massive katanas, drawing the whetstone over the blade with a
hair-raising screech. George stood by holding another one of the swords,
obviously scared out of his socks at being this close to a big, angry predator.
The only thing that kept the poor Oni from bolting was the end of Piper's tail,
which was wrapped firmly around his ankle. "Go on," Piper grated, barely
suppressed rage filtering through every syllable, "tell them. It's not a good
idea to lie to your agents."
Koenma deflated visibly. "It's like this; the outlying provinces of the
Reikai have been giving my father a lot of trouble lately, and he's been in a
really awful mood for weeks. I recently got a message from him that says he's
going to hold a big inspection when he gets back, and if there's any loose ends,
no matter how small, I'm in for a real spanking! And as if that weren't bad
enough, you can just bet that the Ningenkai will feel the backlash of his
temper. I've managed to clean up all the troubles but one; there's one last lost
soul somewhere in the Shattered Lands-"
"Which you expect me to find at High Tide. High Tide!" Piper bellowed
furiously, interrupting the nervous demigod. "In the space of a few days, a week
at most, the Shattered Lands will be a chaotic deathtrap! Already the orbits
have shifted and the Free-Roamers have gone to ground for the season- as I
should be doing right now! I have already risked my very existence just getting
here, and I refuse to risk the lives of others in such a foolish expedition.
Besides, that spirit has been where it is for many years, and three more months
should not make a difference."
"But Lord Enma will be furious!" Botan pleaded. "There's no telling what he
might do."
Piper was unmoved. "Enma has had temper tantrums before, Koenma has had
bruised buttocks before, the Ningenkai has had natural disasters before. All
three have survived these tribulations easily. The misplacing of one Chimera
spook is not worth the demise of a team of promising young people. I will not
go."
Chimera! The word made something go click in Kurama's mind.
"Cool it, Piper," Kuwabara said to the fuming monster. "Just what is this
'high tide' thing, anyway?"
Piper sat back with a sigh of exasperation. "During the spring months-
March, April, and May, life must be pushed back into the worlds. The Hub does
this, sending out incredibly enormous pulses of life force like the trunk of a
tree returning sap to the outermost twigs. The pulses increase in power steadily
through March, and by mid-April they reach their full strength and highest
frequency. In the Three worlds, which are a lot stabler than the Shattered
Lands, this means that your gardens are blooming like crazy. The Shattered
Lands, however, are tossed about like pebbles in a tidal wave, and are totally
impassible. We Free-Roamers call this time High Tide, for the sheer rush of life
force that sweeps through everything, for good or ill. It is also very close to
mid-April now, and as for the state of the Lands themselves... Just see for
yourselves."
Piper pulled out the map of the Shattered Lands that Harlequin had given him
at the Christmas party some months ago and activated it. He hadn't been
exaggerating the problem. Shards of strange realities hissed and whirled in
extremely eccentric orbits around the Three Worlds, little clusters breaking off
from the main rings to dance in tight spirals and roulettes through the system
like drunken tornadoes. Waves of them whirled strangely in Escherized ripples in
and out of the Interspace cables, some eddies ripping out of the rows and
getting stuck in rocking backwashes behind the main Worlds. There was no rhyme
or reason at all behind the glittering display; it was like watching an animated
Pollock painting, or maybe the Harlequin's chromatic slacks.
"And this is just the start." Piper murmured. "Sometimes I wish that the
Netherworld hadn't been destroyed; things were a lot stabler then. In a few more
days, the Lands will become impossible to navigate- even now you would have to
stick your sense of self-preservation on a shelf somewhere to do so. Even if we
leave immediately, we would have only a very small chance of getting out alive,
much less locating and returning with the Chimera."
"Damn, what a mess." Hiei said as a couple of shards collided and exploded
violently. "I'm willing to wait another three months."
"Same here." Yuusuke agreed.
Kurama, however, had something else on his mind. "Koenma, would this Chimera
spirit be about this tall, with bat wings, blue eyes, gray-black hair, and a
beat-up old hat?"
Koenma shuffled around in the stacks of paper until he found the dossier.
"Let's see... Yeah, that's him. He answers to the name 'Kuronue'. It says here
that he was last seen robbing a palace in the Makai in the company of a Silver
Kitsune."
Kurama promptly turned around, grabbed Piper's topmost shoulder straps and
hauled his head down to eye level. "We're going after him." Kurama said in a
flat, final tone. "Now."
"Kurama, don't be stupid!" Piper yelped, trying to pull away and failing.
"According to that bit of paper, Kuronue's been wherever he's been for well over
a century. Three more months will make no significant difference in this matter.
If we get wiped out trying to get to him now, he will stay where he is forever!"
"I'm willing to take that chance." Kurama said quietly. "Kuronue was one of
my best friends. I'm not going to lose him again."
"You're going to force me into this, aren't you?" Piper said with a groan.
"You betcha."
"Very well, I'll take you to look for him, but if we get killed along the
way, I am never going to talk to you again. Anyone else want to follow us on
this fiasco?"
Hiei stepped forward. "Where Kurama goes, I go."
"I'll come, I'll come!" Harlequin shouted, leaping off the curtains and
scattering cards everywhere. "I've always wanted to see a Universe playing
'Twister' from the inside!"
"I admit that I'm curious about this Kuronue guy," Yuusuke said, "it's been
bugging me ever since Yakumo tried to rebuild the Netherworld on our turf."
"And I'm not going to let you guys hog all the fun." Kuwabara declared. "I'm
up for a little adventuring. It's more interesting than studying for the history
final, anyway."
Koenma, meanwhile, had been fishing around in his desk drawer. With a grunt
of triumph, he pulled out a small device, which he handed to Yuusuke. "Here," he
said, "this should help you find Kuronue. It's a tracking device tuned to his
ki. Happy hunting!"
Piper gave him a look that could have withered a thornbush. "When this is
over, you and I are going to have a talk. One way or another. Come on, people,
let's get going before this little twerp gets any more bright ideas."
The trip through Interspace was unsettling- it took longer than it normally
did, and faint rainbow ripples ran up and down the spectrums around them. Weird,
unearthly music whispered around them, and half-formed figures gibbered and
beckoned from a distance. With some relief, they burst out into a place both
still and dimly lit. There was no sky, just an area of blackness overhead, and
the bleak ground was nothing more than barren dark stone with a few crags and
weathered formations here and there, interspersed with the occasional still,
deep pool. It was absolutely silent, the air hanging dully like ancient drapes.
Harlequin sniffed disapprovingly. "Not exactly a party joint, is it? Just
where are we, Piper?"
"Bone Man's Office." Piper replied calmly, and then plucked the tracking
device out of Yuusuke's hands and tossed it into a nearby pool.
"Hey!" Yuusuke protested as the gadget sank out of sight. "What did you do
that for?"
"Koenma slipped us a ringer." Piper said. "That was a tracking device, all
right; one set to track us. The gods have always been curious about the Lands,
and waste no opportunities to find out about them."
"What?!"
"Oh, it's quite true. There's a great deal of power and treasure to be had
in the Lands, and that sort of thing always attracts the wrong kind of people.
Besides," Piper said with a disapproving sniff, "this is my turf. I'm not
about to have a bunch of claim-jumping deities messing about and destabilizing
the whole works."
"Then what about him?" Hiei said, jerking a thumb at Harlequin.
"I'm already unstable." 'Quin replied, and turned into a purple marmoset to
prove it.
Our heroes set off across the barren terrain towards some goal known only to
the Piper; in time, a tiny golden glow in the darkness became visible, shining
elusively among the jutting rock formations that dotted the landscape like
public sculpture. Every so often, something nightmarish would stick its head out
of a pool and watch them go by with deep, curious eyes. Eventually, they came to
a wide, rough-hewn monolith on which perched a perfectly ordinary
steel-and-formica desk; the glow that they had been following for the past ten
minutes turned out to be a reading lamp. Working at the desk was an elderly
blue-skinned and white-haired Oni wearing a patch over one eye. After a moment,
he looked down at them, smiling when he saw Piper. "Hi, Piper. What do you need
this time?"
Piper snorted. "I don't come here all that often, Alexander. Is
Spargenox in?"
Alexander shook his head sadly. "Sorry, no. The boss left three days ago to
repair the anchoring on Golganoth and Ionia- he may not be back until High Tide
is done with. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"We need a good spirit trace on a certain misplaced soul, a Chimera by the
name of Kuronue."
"No problem. The equipment and the ledgers are all in the shed way over
there. If you would follow me..."
Alexander spiralled down out of view, as though he was descending a spiral
staircase. This was not exactly accurate; to the horror of the Spirit
Detectives, Alexander was a giant centipede from the waist down- instead of a
chair, he used a long pole thrust into the stone behind the monolith. On the
ground, he was as long as Piper was, but stood no taller than Hiei. He scuttled
off towards the distant shed in a fluid motion of smooth coffee-colored chitin,
hundreds of jointed legs moving in perfect sine waves underneath. Piper and the
others followed with some show of unease from the Detectives.
Kuwabara leaned over to Piper and muttered: "Piper, just what is this guy?"
"Chimera." Piper replied, unconcerned.
"Chimera?! He doesn't look anything like Kuronue." Kurama said,
looking askance at their guide.
Harlequin chuckled at their confusion. "Kurama, the word 'chimera' is a very
old one; the original root word -loosely translated- meant 'spare bits'. The
race is not an old one by a long shot. They were invented quite by mistake by
the sorcerers who lived during the Makai's Golden Age well before the
Netherworlders crashed the party. The Chimerae were very popular as bodyguards,
pets, watchdogs, slaves, and um... curiosities. Their construction became
something of an art form up near the end of the era, and the more complex the
mix, the better the people liked them. I'm afraid that sort of thing didn't work
very well for the poor creatures; rather a lot of the Chimerae were fragile,
psychotic, stupid, or all three at once. The simpler mixes, such as the
batwinged humanoids and Oni-centipede crossbreeds managed to survive the
disaster and spread all over the place. I've even found the silly things as far
away as Greece."
They had reached the shed at that point. Inside the building was shelf after
shelf of heavy leather-bound grimoires, the floor littered with crates of arcane
paraphernalia. Alexander dug into a nearby crate and after some rummaging, came
up with a device that looked like a cross between a compass and a skeleton
watch. "Found the tracker," Alexander said, "and now for the trace."
He handed the tracking device over to Hiei and pulled a thick, dusty book
down from its shelf and began flipping through it. Inside were long descriptive
passages written in a strange, alien script, each passage accompanied by a
small, leaf-shaped flake of colored light. "Let's see," Alexander murmured,
tracing the script with one finger. Kekko, Kiroushi, Kourin, Kynn... Fellas, I
hate to tell you this, but Kuronue isn't in here."
"What?!" Our heroes chorused.
"These volumes clearly list every single lost dead dude in the entire
system!" Alexander said with some agitation. "If he's not registered here, it
means that he's still alive somewhere."
"Right!" Kurama snapped, grabbed Piper's harness and set about dragging the
monster out of the door. "We're going to find him this instant and-"
"Kurama!" Piper cut him off desperately, toeclaws skittering over the stone.
"We don't even know where to begin looking!"
Kurama let go with a curse. "Is there any way to learn?"
"There might be." Alexander put in, flipping through a book of spells. "We'd
need someone who was fairly close to the creature, a friend or a lover or
something."
"Speaking." Kurama replied.
"I, too, have been acquainted with him." Hiei surprised everyone by saying.
"Oh, that's right," Kurama muttered, remembering something, "Kuronue did
have our children by you, didn't he?"
"Nani?!" Kuwabara gasped, unable to believe his ears. "How... What..
Did you.."
Harlequin fell over, howling with laughter. "Oh, what a picture! Hiei
pregnant with twins! Did you bottle or breast-feed them, Hiei? Or maybe-
aaarrgh!"
Hiei did not like to be laughed at. Blushing furiously, he zonked the
laughing god with a fireball.
"Well, that'll better our chances of getting an accurate trace, at least,"
Alexander said diplomatically, "if you two would step over here, please..."
Kuwabara, slightly sickened, leaned on Yuusuke's shoulder as some serious
spellsay occurred some distance from the group. "How did he... they... I mean,
yuck..." He whimpered.
"Koorime can breed same-sexed. They don't need a guy or a girl specifically,
just a partner." Piper said, dipping a still smouldering Harlequin into a nearby
pool. "This is a good thing, considering that the Koorime tribe generally
consists of females obsessed with racial purity. Hiei is an exception, seeing as
he actually had a father."
"All the same, bleah."
Perhaps half an hour later, Kurama, Hiei, and Alexander returned, the Oni
holding a tiny sliver of swirling blood-and-tangerine light. "This should lead
you right to him," he said, slipping the shard into the tracker. "Haul out that
map you've been boasting about and have a look."
If anything, the Shattered Lands were whirling about even more crazily than
before. The tracker seemed to know what it was about even in that mess, and a
spike of red orange light pointed unerringly to a small, dull-grey Land that
circled sullenly in the backwash of the Ningenkai... "Three times curse it,"
Piper grunted sourly, "he's stuck in the Glen of the Damned."
"Wonderful." Yuusuke groaned. "Come on, let's get him out of there before
something eats him."
"You sure you want to do that?" Alexander asked, examining the map and then
pointing to an ivory-tinted Land hovering between vortices of Interspace cables.
"We're here; the Glen is way the hells over there. That's a real hazardous route
to take right now, since the Nightmare has recurred again and the middle orbits
have broken up."
"We don't have much of a choice in this matter," Hiei said with a sidelong
glance at Kurama, "this idiot fox will go though hell and high water to get his
old partner back."
"You'll see enough and more than enough of both." Alexander conceded.
"You're all quite mad, you know."
"Whatever took you so long to figure that out?" Harlequin said, going cubist
and following Piper and the other into Interspace.
"Where the hell is this?" Yuusuke asked, trying to focus on the new
surroundings.
It was like walking through a thick fogbank; the eyes refused to register
depth perception. The air had a curious underwater quality to it, and it rippled
slightly when they moved too quickly. Pearly white it glowed most dreamily
luminous, and angular silver gleams drifted lazily through it like tissue paper
on a languid breeze. A soft sound of glass chimes tinkled through the air-
mirrors dancing the last waltz in freefall.
"We call this place Analogue Mirrors," Piper said softly, "you can see who
you are in other dimensions here. Walk softly though, and make no sudden moves.
This place is quite unstable at the best of times, and I'd rather that it didn't
break while we're in it."
"Sound reasoning." Yuusuke replied.
They walked in silence from then on, watching their otherworldly
reflections. Yuusuke saw in passing one of the gleaming silver mirrors a tall,
young, dark-haired man, dressed in ancient Chinese robes. The Chinese pictogram
for "ogre" had been tattooed on his forehead, and a long ponytail hung over one
shoulder. The reflection flickered over the breath-thin surface and was gone,
leaving Yuusuke to wonder who that bright-eyed stranger was.
Kuwabara paused and stared at his reflections, for there were two; the
images sifting and decanting from one to the other. One was an extremely tall
and powerful brown-haired young man dressed in white; his long coat had the word
"bad" written on the back, and he carried a huge cavalry blade over one
shoulder. The other image was considerably shorter. There was a look of almost
terminal rage and confusion on that face, dark eyes glaring at something other
than Kuwabara. He was dressed in yellow, carried a large backpack and a red
bamboo umbrella on his back, and wore a yellow headband patterned with short
black stripes. For some reason, the image of a small black piglet was
superimposed mistily over the boy in the mirror. "Weird." Kuwabara muttered,
shaking his head.
Harlequin strode smugly down the milky halls, grinning at his reflections.
There were dozens of them, and only a few of them were recognizably human. A
one-eyed priest with turquoise blue hair mocked a belligerent redhead carrying
an iron fan; Duo, the boy with the long braid whom they had met during
Harlequin's Christmas party painted "Kick Me" on the back of a huge robot. A
tall man in his twenties wearing the traditional garb of a swordsman wielded a
wooden sword, an expression of cretinous nobility on his face. One of the most
unexpected images was Jin, caught in the act of raiding a cookie jar. What every
one of these images shared were the slightly manic eyes and the insolent smirk
of the accomplished goofball. The air around them shimmered with echoes of
unheard laughter.
Kurama smiled back reflexively at his reflection; the resemblance was all
but perfect. Perhaps a few inches shorter, the image of a blue-eyed redhead
stood resplendent in archaic swordsman's robes. The only thing that marred that
gently smiling face was a vicious cross-shaped scar on one cheek and a strange
pain that haunted the eyes, hiding behind a genuinely sweet nature. This was the
face of a man who would not only help with the laundry but would also assist in
kicking invading ninjas out of the garden.
Hiei glared around at the mirrors with some suspicion. He didn't know
exactly how thin the worldwalls were at the moment, but he'd had some bad
experiences with magic mirrors in the past. Most of the images were harmless-
short peevish people for the most part, a few junkyard dogs, a big striped cat
or two, the tall, stone-faced guy with the gun fixation from 'Quin's Christmas
party; nothing to concern himself about. Thus, he was unprepared for an image
that manifested itself right in front of him, forcing Hiei to halt and stare.
The person on the other side of the rippling silver gleam was propped up on a
stone, glaring over the horizon, deep in his own thoughts. Hiei shifted his
weight uneasily; something about this image was wrong... The motion attracted
the attention of the figure on the other side, who glared right into Hiei's
eyes.
Piper scarcely paid any attention to his reflections. He'd seen them before
and had even talked with a few of them in his past travels. He was far more
interested in getting to the Glen and back without getting them all killed.
Yuusuke interrupted his ruminations on this subject with a very important
question. "Hey, Piper, can any of those mirror guys see us?"
"No," Piper replied with a shake of his head, "such an event would be most
unusual, even for this time of year. Why do you ask?"
"Because Hiei and his reflection are glaring at each other."
Piper swung himself around with a yip of alarm. Sure enough, Hiei stood face
to face with an almost exact image of himself, air rippling furiously in tempo
with Hiei's growling. In perfect unison, they raised a fist to strike the
phantom cold...
"Hiei!" Piper barked as the twinned fists rushed forward, "Stop! Don't do
th- Oh, crap!"
As the blows reached their goal, the fabric of space and time warped
impossibly around each other and, unable to bear the strain of the impossibility
occurring within it, Analogue Mirrors fragmented around them with an
unbelievable sound of shattering.
Yuusuke awoke on a hard, cool surface somewhere where the air was warm, the
gravity light, and the illumination was softly silver. As his bleary vision swam
back into focus, he realized that he had landed on a familiar Land, that place
that was made all out of crystal. A world of flat glassy plains and huge crystal
formations that sailed silently forever under an endless nightscape. The two
gemlike moons were twin crescents cupping a waterfall of bright stars between
them. A few feet away, Harlequin rolled onto his belly with a groan. "Ooooh.
That's the last time I fly commercial. Is everyone still extant?"
With a long series of moans and whimpers, the others hauled themselves into
sitting positions. "Let's see," Kuwabara said, clutching a throbbing skull,
"there's Yuusuke and Kurama and that annoying clown guy and Piper and... Uh oh.
Guys, there's two of Hiei."
Sure enough, sitting up at exactly the same time, rubbing their heads with
exactly the same motion, and wincing identically at exactly the same headache
were Hiei and a very close analogue. The moment they caught sight of each other,
they began to bristle up and growl ferociously at each other, two tigers on a
hill preparing for the attack. Fortunately before any fights could start, the
newcomer was hauled eight feet into the air with his arms pinned behind him and
a very firm grip clamped onto the long monkey tail that extended from his butt.
"And what is this?" Piper said, examining his struggling captive with great
interest. "A strange creature of short stature, a long fuzzy tail, scary hair,
silly armor, and miserably bad temper. Hello, Vegita."
"You!" Vegita snarled in a voice much like Hiei's, only made harsher from a
lifetime of shouting too much, "You're dead! I blasted you clean into another
dimension!"
"Quite true," Piper replied calmly, "but where do you think you are now? My
dear boy, I've been jumping from dimension to dimension since before your
great-grandfather was an evil gleam in your great-great-grandmother's eye. Do
you really think that another crash translation would jostle me?"
Before Vegita could come up with a suitable (or printable) answer, Harlequin
bounced into view, full of mischief as a truckload of ferrets. "Hark! I have
heard the voice of an old acquaintance! Hi, Veege! Hi, Veege! Hi, Veege!!"
With a screech of terror, Vegita wrenched himself free of the Piper's grip
and took refuge on the monster's topmost shoulders. Piper gave the trembling
stranger a surprised glance, and then turned a glare on the Harlequin. "All
right, you psychotic mime," he sighed, "I have fought this little horror before.
He fears absolutely nothing and would happily fight to the death to prove it.
Yet still he hides trembling on my back at the very sight of you. What did you
do to him, Harlequin?"
'Quin shrugged, slightly embarrassed as everybody turned a suspicious look
on him. "Oh, nothing much."
Group glares from everyone made him sag slightly. "Oh, all right, so I
dressed him up in a cute little pink tutu."
"And?" Piper grated.
"...I made him dance Swan Lake."
"And?" Growled Yuusuke.
"...As the Swan Princess."
"And?" said Kurama.
"...On national television."
"And?" Hiei hissed.
Harlequin winced. "...On Opening Night."
His voice trailed off uncertainly into a silence rife with outrage and
shock. He shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. "I'm not gonna get off
easy for this one am I?"
"'Quin, that goes completely beyond the pale, even for you." Piper said at
his most disapproving. "Hiei, are you still willing to maim this joker at the
slightest provocation?"
Hiei's only answer was the metallic-silken sound of his katana sliding out
of its sheath.
"Vegita, would you like a free shot at this creep?"
Vegita growled, small crackles of energy crawling over his skin as he
powered up. Harlequin dithered nervously at the prospect of being mauled by two
pissed-off firebabies. Piper grunted in satisfaction and set Vegita on the
ground. "Sic 'em."
'Quin took off screaming over the horizon with both of the little monsters
hot on his heels.
"Feel free to take a break, kids." Piper said, settling himself to the
ground as the explosions lit up the skyline. "I have the feeling that this is
going to take a while."
"Jyaoh Ensatsu Kokuryuuha!!" Came faintly to their ears, followed by an
impressive pyroclasm that illuminated the crystal formations for miles around.
"Ka me ha me ha!!" Followed not far behind, lending a spectacular brilliance
to the display.
The Spirit Detectives found nothing wrong with Piper's advice, so they
arranged themselves comfortably on a nearby formation to watch the fireworks.
Yuusuke was a little curious about their guide's acquaintance with Vegita, so he
leaned over to Piper and asked: "So, you've fought that little guy before?"
Piper nodded, checking the tracking device for imperfections. "I visited his
home dimension once. Nice place, if a bit disorganized. Vegita and his kind were
a prime example of that. The Saiyins were never very numerous, but they made up
for that lack in sheer destructive power. Just one of their juveniles could wipe
an entire planet clean of its native civilization in under five years. That was
their species' stock in trade until someone meaner than they were blew up the
planet out of self-defense. There were very few survivors, of which Vegita is
one of the strongest. He's even worse at controlling his temper than Hiei is,
but not nearly as bright. He lets his muscles and his arrogance do most of his
thinking for him, but that's normal for the last surviving member of the royal
family of any species."
"Great." Kuwabara said. "Another short, evil-tempered badass to deal with.
Are we going to have a lot of trouble from him?"
"I doubt it." Piper replied. "Once he realizes the fix he's in, Vegita will
jut have to swallow his pride and deal with it. He's a xenocidal maniac, but
he's not entirely stupid."
Kurama only listened with half an ear to the discussion going on around him;
his mind was full of images from another time. So Kuronue still lived, somewhere
out there. He could still remember every detail of his old partner. The narrow,
sharp-featured face with those bright eyes dancing with mischief. The heavy
cloud of his long, dull-black hair that hung in silky tangles after he had
bathed. The soft rush of air from the black bat wings, fanning them both when
the summer's heat grew too oppressive. That long, lean, lithe body that had fit
so well with Kurama's own when they slept together, filling Kurama's nostrils
with his warm, musky scent. Gods, how he had mourned that Chimera, had missed
him down through all those weary years. Kurama felt a stab of anxiety then; he
wasn't sure how Hiei was going to react to this. The little Koorime was very
possessive of the people he loved, and Kurama's own love for Hiei was most
intense. There was no knowing, no telling, how this problem would work out, not
until they found Kuronue and saw where his affections lay. Kurama shook himself
firmly to rid himself of the ghosts of the future. Speculation at this point was
useless.
Not long afterwards, Hiei and Vegita returned, dragging what was left of
Harlequin facedown by the ankles. "That was fun," Vegita said, dropping 'Quin's
ankle and wiping his hand on his breastplate, "now send me back to my dimension.
I have important things to do."
"Can they wait three months?" Kurama said, rising to his feet and
stretching. "We have a problem of our own to deal with right now."
Vegita waxed wroth. "No! I demand that you send me back immediately! You
will do this or-"
"Or what?" Yuusuke cut in. "Piper's the only one who knows how to get around
these places You blow him up again and we'll all be stuck."
"You shut up, you pathetic weakling!" Vegita raged. "This is none of your
affair!"
"On the contrary," Piper told him, bending double to look the surly Saiyin
in the eye. "You, the useless prince of a dead world and its nearly extinct
race, are an intruder into our affairs and have no business commanding my
services as though it was your right. We have wasted enough time; within a few
days, this set of dimensions will become true chaos, absolutely deadly to any
outsider. Already the madness has spread from the Hub, stretching its tendrils
to the outlying Lands. We will finish our errand, and then return to our homes.
There will not be enough time to return you to yours before Interspace is
impassable. I will not force you to join us, Vegita, but you will not survive
here alone. Am I clear?"
Vegita glared at them in impotent fury. If any of these creatures were
speaking the truth, he was in deeper trouble than he had ever been in before.
This, he realized with an inward snarl, was definitely not his day. Though he
hated to have to follow these weirdos around like a tourist, he had no choice.
"All right," he grated, "but if you are lying to me..."
"Can it, Monkeyboy. 'Quin, pull yourself together and let's get out of
here." Kuwabara nudged the charred heap with one foot, ignoring the Saiyin's
enraged sputtering.
"Monkeyboy?!"
Harlequin rose dramatically out of his own ashes, flaming phoenix-style and
whistling "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain When She Comes". They ignored
him, too.
The next world-fragment they arrived in was beautiful to look upon, but it
made Piper and Harlequin very nervous for some reason. "This looks like one of
the Seasonals." Harlequin said to Piper.
Piper nodded. "I think we may be on the verge of a Roulette in the Lands.
Kids," he said to the rest of the team, "stick close. This is one of the Lands
that only turn up during High Tide and is thus more dangerous than the usual
bunch." With that, he pulled out his map and tried to find just where they were
in the scheme of things.
Vegita and the Spirit Detectives weren't paying much attention, being far
too busy trying to make sense of what they were seeing. The sky was a rushing
river of azure, streaked here and there with gold and creamy white, and the
atmosphere underneath was tinted faintly orange. A stream off to their right cut
through soft gold-edged gray grass, bubbling and fizzing and smelling strongly
of champagne. A walking forest of graceful trees formed of magenta crystal
meandered over the meadows, singing softly in wind-chime voices and stopping
occasionally to embrace each other. A constant sifting of sparkling ashes
drifted from pure golden flowers of flame that nestled among the branches
covered with amethyst leaves that tinkled when the wind caressed them. Slender,
long-horned creatures with coats of greenish-white cornsilk picked their way
leisurely among great low-lying patches of the most breathtakingly beautiful
flowers that any of them had ever seen, grazing occasionally on the walking
trees. As they watched, one beast stumbled over something in the grass and fell
into the center of a flower patch and disappeared with a cry that sounded like
clogged plumbing.
"What the hell?" Vegita said, and went over to the plant bed to solve the
mystery; the others following closely.
Prying up a thick mat of greenery, he uncovered something extremely odd:
There was no ground underneath the blooms. The root system was thick but bare of
dirt, and floated on the updraft of an unbelievably deep hole in the world.
Peering over his shoulder, Yuusuke made an observation.
"Those are stars down there, aren't there?" He said through a suddenly dry
throat.
"A globular cluster, I think." Kurama said, very quietly. "I saw a picture
of one on television once. Vegita, please put the flowers back."
Hiei, however, was fascinated. "Is that what space looks like from the
outside?" He asked Vegita, who had to be nudged in the ribs before he would
answer.
"Yes." The Saiyin replied, half-mesmerized by the sparkling starscape. "What
kind of planet is this? This sort of thing just isn't possible!"
"Out here it is." Kuwabara told him, edging nervously away from the hole.
"Put the flowers back, Vegita. I'm getting vertigo."
"We'll all get worse than that soon enough," Harlequin said, coming up
behind them, "we have to get to the next jump point within the next few minutes
or we're as good as mulched."
"What?" Yuusuke said, looking around for any danger.
"Over there." Harlequin pointed off to the south, where ugly rust-colored
clouds were boiling over the horizon with incredible speed. Every few seconds,
gleaming black lightning forked through the billows, and a scarlet fog brushed
the ground beneath them. "This place is called Red Rains, and it's murderous
death to anything living- acid rain at its absolute worst. Come on!"
They ran back up the hill they arrived on, where Piper was waiting for them
impatiently. Thunder like a tyrannosaur's roaring shook the air as they took off
across the landscape at a gallop, avoiding the flower patches as best they
could. Black lightning lanced down around them as the storm gained on them,
turning anything they struck into a dead-brown skeleton of what it once was. A
great jangling wail rose from the walking forest as the red rain fell on it,
quickly silenced by the burning onslaught of the deadly weather. A thick,
copper-salt smell blew sickeningly around them, the scent of poisoned blood as
the grass and flowers died practically under their feet.
"Almost there!" Piper called encouragingly to the others as hissing spatters
of deadly liquid started to shower down around them.
Too late; Kurama and Kuwabara shrieked in pain as a gust of rain caught
them, causing them to stagger and fall toward a denuded world-hole...
Before they could fall into the icy depths of outer space, Yuusuke, Hiei,
and Harlequin managed to drag their stricken friends upright again and guide
them into the cool, singing tunnels of Interspace.
They tumbled out into a blessedly still, flat area devoid of evil weather.
Piper didn't waste any time, though, and started pulling the rapidly dissolving
shirts off of Kurama's and Kuwabara's backs while they howled in agony; the acid
rain had eaten right through clothes and skin alike, leaving white bones exposed
to the air. In a flash, he pulled out a small pot of cloudy green paste, which
he spread liberally over their wounds. With vast groans of relief, they
collapsed in their friend's arms.
"Red Rains," Vegita said, watching in wonder as the green healing salve
closed the gaping holes in Kuwabara's and Kurama's bodies. "That's nasty stuff.
Are the rest of these dimensions as bad as this?"
"Some of them are worse." Hiei said, running comforting fingers through
Kurama's hair.
"And we're in one of them." Piper said, standing up and flexing his
green-smeared fingers nervously. "Get Kurama and Kuwabara back on their feet;
we've got to get out of here right now."
Nobody was going to argue- They realized to their shock that Piper was
actually scared. His normally glossy red hide had a grey tint to it, his eyes
were dulled and nervous, and there was a definite tremor in all four of his
hands, which kept twitching toward the hilts of the long knives he kept in the
harness straps of his lowest shoulders. His long tail whip-cracked in impatience
to be gone, the sharp report making Yuusuke jump as he hauled Kuwabara upright.
"Um, Piper," 'Quin said worriedly, "just where are we?"
"Akira's Nightmare." Piper replied and moved off, forcing the others to
scramble to catch up.
"Doesn't look like a nightmare." Kuwabara muttered, rubbing a still-sore
shoulder.
"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Hiei said, steadying a shaky Kurama,
"Take a good look around. This place feels all wrong."
Hiei spoke truth. The place was wrong. They were in the heart of an
incredibly huge metropolis, with buildings so massive that they were a quarter
of a mile square at the base. The windows, and there were thousands, were
brightly lit for the most part, but they were also as empty as the heart of a
miser. Separating the towering edifices were layer upon layer of four-lane
streets, spotlessly clean and devoid of any sign of life. It was late at night-
at least it felt late. The street lights were shining too brightly for there to
be much in the way of darkness, but it sure wasn't daytime. Yuusuke looked up,
trying to see the sky past the peaks of the skyscrapers, and hauled up short
with a curse. "Guys, the sky's missing!"
"There is no sky here." Piper said ominously. "Just oblivion."
Yuusuke shuddered and looked away; the bottomless void sucked at the
eyeballs like a sinus headache.
The worst part of it all was the silence. Any normal city, even around four
'o' clock in the morning, always has some sound to it; the gurgle of the sewers,
the ever present noise of traffic, the brainless barking of someone's watchdog.
This city was totally, eerily silent. Not even a breeze was present to stir the
still air. It made them all nervous, especially Vegita, who was sorely tempted
to blow something up just to break the monotony.
They soon came to something both familiar and sinister in its ordinariness:
a playground. Just as tidy and well-lit as the rest of the city, it seemed
almost unreal. There was a slide and a swing set, of course, and a sandbox full
of silver-grey sand. A few well-pruned trees stood stiffly here and there, and a
basketball court lay to one side, forlornly empty.
"Damn." Piper murmured, real worry seeping into his tone. "Tatsuo's starting
his rounds. This way, kids, and hurry!"
As they turned away from the park, Yuusuke decided that he'd been kept in
the dark long enough. "Piper, just what is this Land all about?"
"It's Akira's Nightmare." Piper replied, unwilling to talk.
"Akira and Tatsuo" mused Kurama, "I've heard those names before. Wasn't
there an animated movie called 'Akira'?"
"I saw that once." Kuwabara said. "Not a nice cartoon."
"There is, or was, a place in space-time where that movie was real life,
once." Piper told them, relenting. "Some time ago it fragmented and a part of it
got stuck in the Shattered Lands. This part. As you might recall, Tatsuo sold
his body to an experimental laboratory for a goodly sum of money. They did some
horrible things to his brain. The scientists gave him power, vast amounts of it,
but he was too old for the treatments, and far too unstable already from a bad
childhood and drug abuse. They could not train him to use his powers because
they did not understand them, either. In the end, it drove him mad. He destroyed
the city and everyone in it, and followed that up by destroying the entire
world." Piper sighed deeply. "Tatsuo still haunts this place, hunting down his
favorite victims and killing them in disgustingly graphic ways. When he runs out
of those poor souls, he goes looking for any lost Free-Roamers that might be
around."
"Like us." Harlequin put in matter-of-factly.
"Yes, like us. We call this place Akira's Nightmare not only because it is a
horror to haunt dreams, but it also recurs every Spring. Every year, Tatsuo
destroys it utterly, and every year at High Tide it comes back to repeat the
cycle. What's more, this place follows this deranged lunatic's rules and no one
elses', so don't expect to be able to make use of your own special powers."
As if to illustrate that point, a shriek of utter horror shattered the
oppressive quiet, only to cut off abruptly in a terrible wet bursting noise. A
soulless, malicious laugh echoed chillingly over the city, and then the silence
prevailed once again.
Harlequin shuddered. "Piper, please tell me we're getting close to the
Glen."
"I think so." Piper answered.
"Good! Let's go get closer."
Akira's Nightmare was a labyrinth. It had once been planned on a grid like
any other city, but the deranged mind of the resident lunatic had caused serious
disturbances in the way things worked. Buildings were misplaced and distorted
here and there; one was upside down, and another had been turned around through
the eighth dimension so that it was nearly a mile high, but only a foot or so
wide. Yet another had been crushed flat, and a viscous gray fluid trickled from
the windows like tears. Every so often another howl of terror would ring across
the dead city, inevitably ending in a nasty gristling noise or a wet explosion.
Once, they heard gunfire instead of a scream, but it ended the same way. The
laughter that followed each kill was getting progressively more and more insane
as the madman glutted himself on murder. It wasn't long before our heroes came
across some real physical evidence of Tatsuo's haunting; the pitiful remnants of
a human being, smeared thinly across the street and up the side of one
skyscraper- a livid splash of bloody gore, shattered bone, and worse. Kuwabara
had to stagger off to one side and throw up, and the others, even Vegita, were
close to following him.
"Sweet Inari..." Kurama choked, looking away.
"Yechh." Was Hiei's contribution.
Harlequin fell over in a dead faint.
Vegita, however was distraught. He may have made his living by outright
genocide, but he'd never done anything as ugly as this. "What kind of monster...
I only ever blew them into another dimension. I never tried to paint the
landscape..." He gulped, trying to keep his last meal where it was.
"Let's not waste any more time." Yuusuke said grimly. "I don't want to end
up like this poor loser."
Nobody was going to argue with that. They stepped carefully around the mess
in the road, and set off down an alley at a fast trot. They came across a lot of
other victims, but weren't willing to look too closely; Tatsuo had gone easy on
that first one, compared to these.
"Over there!" Kurama called suddenly, pointing to a blot of wavering air at
the other end of the street. "Is that the jump point?"
"Yup!" Piper replied. "Full speed ahead!"
As one, they picked up speed, glad to be almost out of this mess.
Unfortunately, just before they were within range, Tatsuo himself appeared
between them and escape, forcing them to haul up short. He was young; far too
young to have been driven so far around the bend. He was about Yuusuke's age and
height, but his features and hair resembled Hiei's. He wore only a smudged white
T-shirt and shorts, with a cape fashioned from a piece of red awning cover. His
eyes were totally mad, wide and unfocused and bloodshot, and his smile was the
most evil thing that our heroes had ever laid eyes on. Vegita panicked and tried
to blast the boy clear over the horizon, but all that came out was a fizzle and
a flash of weak light. Tatsuo giggled and raised a clenched fist, and Vegita
gave a wheezing cry of alarm as an invisible force began to crush him, squeezing
the air from his lungs and bending his bones to the breaking point.
It was Piper's turn to panic as the others found themselves similarly
powerless. He swung himself around, jaws gaping as twin jets of fluid from his
venom glands spurted out and drenched Tatsuo from head to foot. Tatsuo gave a
bellow of fury and pain as the corrosive liquid dissolved his front; distracted,
he lost his hold on Vegita, who sank to his knees gasping painfully.
Our heroes didn't hesitate to leave. Kuwabara scooped Vegita up under one
arm and ran after the others as they stampeded down the street towards the jump
point. A yowl of insane fury heralded disaster behind them as Tatsuo turned his
destructive strength in a new direction. A howling whirlwind blew up around the
fugitives, and the Land itself started to crumble around them. The skyscrapers
came apart in chunks, dissolving before they hit the ground, and great cracks
opened up in the road as Tatsuo's mad laughter roared around them on the wind.
The violent air grew thick and heavy as treacle around them, sapping the
strength from their limbs and forcing every movement into a slow-motion parody
of itself. The dissolution of the road under their feet accelerated, however,
great lumps of tarmac falling away into naked grey void. Kuwabara and Kurama
weren't up to this; already weakened from the storm in Red Rains, their steps
faltered badly, and the land gave way under them. They would have fallen forever
into the nothingness that gaped hungrily below them if it hadn't been for
Harlequin, Yuusuke, and Hiei, who caught their flailing arms and pulled them out
of danger.
They were almost to the portal...
With a deadly crack, the last of the roadway disappeared, and everybody
grabbed onto the Piper, whose long wings beat frantically to keep them airborne.
Reaching out as far as he could, one finger brushed the ethereal membrane of the
jump point-
A flash of lavender-blue light and a sensation of impossible speed later,
they fell eight feet out of thin air to land with a thump in a place where the
sky was green and the grass was blue. Piper struggled into a fighting crouch to
see if anything was going to try to eat them, but nothing presented itself.
"Take five, guys," he said breathlessly, "I think we're safe for the moment."
Everybody took the chance to pass out cold from exhaustion right then and
there.
Kurama crawled out of sleep as though it were a deep, dark pit. He lay there
for a few minutes with his eyes closed, savoring the feeling of not being chased
by certain death. It was almost astonishingly pleasant. The sun was warm on his
body and the air was fresh, sweetened with the aroma of crushed grass. Someone
was snoring loudly nearby, almost drowning out the birdsong. Something tickled
Kurama's nose, and he opened his eyes to meet the cold gaze of two grotesquely
bulbous gold-green insect eyes. He nearly had a heart attack before he realized
that a large butterfly had perched on his nose; nothing more. Sitting up and
waving the brightly-colored insect off, he took a look around him. Yuusuke was
curled up on his side nearby, out cold. Kuwabara was flat on his back under a
tree, vibrating the branches with his snores and occasionally scratching his
crotch. Kurama shook his head with a smile. What a messy sleeper. Harlequin was
hanging by his knees from a branch, smearing pistachio ice cream all over his
torso in his sleep. "Weird." Kurama muttered, and looked around for the other
three members of their party. He couldn't see them, but the unmistakable buzz of
Hiei's happy purring was clearly audible even above Kuwabara's noise. Kurama
clambered to his feet, wincing as a sore spot on his back protested; he still
hadn't quite healed completely from Red Rains. He set off among the trees,
following the purring, and soon came to a clear spot where he found Piper coiled
loosely, giving both Hiei and Vegita a backrub. Vegita's battered armor lay
discarded off to one side, pitted with acid burns and spiderwebbed with cracks
from the crushing force of Tatsuo's will. Vegita himself was flat on his front,
looking as though he wanted to thump Piper one for his impertinence, but maybe
later. After he'd finished. Yeah. Definitely.
Hiei, however, was shamelessly enjoying himself, purring up a storm as
Piper's fingers expertly smoothed knotted muscles and realigned vertebrae with
small popping noises. Kurama smiled affectionately at his firebaby and knelt
down to scratch Hiei behind his ears. The moment that Kurama touched him, Hiei
wrapped his arms lovingly around Kurama's waist, laid his head in his lap, and
buzzed louder than ever. "Good morning, Kurama. How's your back?" Piper said
softly so as not to disturb the others.
"A little sore, but otherwise fine. That healing ointment's good stuff."
Kurama answered, running his fingers through Hiei's hair.
Piper nodded. "I'm thinking about giving the recipe to Yukina. I've a
feeling that you kids will need it more than I will."
"Hmm."
There was a krink as Piper pressed down on Vegita's spine. The surly
Saiyin gave a grunt and relaxed still further into the grass with a sigh of what
sounded suspiciously like pleasure.
"What are you doing?" Kurama asked. "Aside from giving free backrubs."
"Noting similarities and differences." Piper replied. "I haven't seen two
analogues this perfect since Cloning Constantly blew up."
"Where?"
"Another Shattered Land. The inhabitants of Cloning Constantly made their
living by genetic manipulation and duplication; basically, they could clone
anything and gene-tailor it to match a buyer's wishes. Their last and greatest
project was a creature so powerful that it could destroy whole solar systems on
a whim. Just as the clients showed up to pay for the beast, the poor stupid
thing got a migraine and annihilated itself, its owners, and the entire Land."
"Ouch." Kurama said. "But why bother with comparisons? Hiei just looks a lot
like Vegita, is all."
"I like to see the small details." Piper replied. "It's a bad habit that I
picked up from Issola. I've found, however, that it makes it easier for me to
figure someone out. See this," he said, tracing the lines of Hiei's and Vegita's
shoulders, "Vegita is a bit coarser and heavier around the arms and upper back;
his hands are less limber. Hiei, however, is a great deal more flexible- as I'm
sure you've noticed."
Kurama went bright red in the face and concentrated on getting the tangles
out of Hiei's hair.
"Hiei shares his graceful physique with martial artists, acrobats, and
dancers; all smooth hard muscle. Bruisers like Veege here tend to bulk up and
get beefy- they tend to make up for their lack of speed or agility in strength
and firepower. Swordsmen also have greater concentration and discipline; I've
only ever seen a true professional lose control once, and that was because she'd
just fielded seventeen thousand volts of electricity." Piper ran firm fingers up
Hiei's spine, making it crackle, and waved a cautionary finger in Kurama's face.
"Beware the dancing kind, Kurama. Speed, grace, and control count for a great
deal in a pitched battle."
The lecture was suddenly cut off by a scream, a crash, some more screaming
and a flare of energy. Then Harlequin sailed over their clearing with his pants
on fire, landing in the brush with a thump some ten yards distant. "What the
hell was that?" Vegita snarled, hopping up into a fighting stance.
A storm of cursing tuned the air blue over where Yuusuke and Kuwabara were.
The others stood up for a look, and saw Yuusuke inventing swearwords and rubbing
some new bruises; Kuwabara was slumped against a tree, looking both charred and
stunned. Harlequin, his fundament still smoking slightly, came out of the bushes
scowling with annoyance. "What happened over there?" Kurama asked him.
'Quin made a face. "Some of my ice cream melted, splashing Kuwabara, so the
big dip got up and rattled the tree. I lost my grip on the tree, fell on
Yuusuke, who took offense in the worst way. My pants are never gonna be the same
again. Does he always wake up like this? If so, tell Keiko to buy some fireproof
nighties!"
Vegita gave a disgusted snort and tried to stand up straight, but stopped
with a pained grunt halfway there. Piper eyed him speculatively and gave him a
sharp jab that sent off a chain reaction of pops and snaps all up and down his
backbone. With a look of bliss on his face, Vegita toppled over into the grass.
"That should hold him for a while," Harlequin observed with a laugh. "C'mon,
let's go get Yuusuke calmed down."
"And maybe throw a bucket of water on Kuwabara. He looks like he needs it."
Kurama said.
"And you should go sit in one, clown." Hiei said. "Burning buttocks smell
funny."
Yuusuke was in an absolutely foul mood. Being woken up out of a sound and
much-needed sleep by a falling ice-cream-smeared deity was not the way he
preferred to start the day. Kuwabara was not in a good mood either; getting
dripped on and then caught in the backblast of a poorly-aimed Rei Shotgun wasn't
any more preferable a wakeup call. To say the least, they were both in a poopy
state of mind. "Right," Yuusuke growled, flicking an inquisitive katydid off of
his sleeve, "let's check the map and get out of here. No offense, Piper, but I'm
getting really sick of the Shattered lands."
"Hear, hear!" The others chorused.
"All right, all right." Piper soothed, digging out his map. "Hiei, if you
would go prod Vegita into motion again, I'll check our location."
Hiei ambled back into the clearing where they'd left the Saiyin, and found
his analogue still flat in the grass. He nudged the recumbent doppleganger
carefully with one foot. "Come on, Vegita, we're about to leave."
Vegita sat up with a frown and reached for his armor. "Will the next place
be any better than the last two?"
Hiei shrugged. "I don't know. Either we'll come out in the Glen of the
Damned or get chased by giant carnivorous pickles or something stupid like
that."
Vegita stared at him a moment. "You're serious, aren't you? About the
pickles, I mean."
"Welcome to the Shattered Lands, where things are done differently and more
often. Now let's get going before they send Confetti-Breath the Wonder Goof
after us."
Vegita gave a snort of laughter and eyed his battered armor sourly;
scorched, cracked, and pitted with slagged pockmarks, it was nearly useless
against a determined attacker. What the hell, he probably wouldn't need it
anyway. He was tougher than any pickle, even giant carnivorous ones. So
thinking, he followed Hiei back to where the rest of the group were, leaving it
behind for the weeds to climb over.
There was something very wrong with Interspace. It had gone all pink and
smelled of peanut butter. Something about it moved Harlequin to declare in
rolling tones: "The Great Truth rings to the farthest stars; Heaven is paved
with granola bars."
Yuusuke was unimpressed. "Go renew your poetic licence, 'Quin. I think that
one has expired."
"Eat spam and mope, Ferret." Harlequin replied cheerfully.
Yuusuke would have answered this with a real zinger if they hadn't tumbled
out into a drearily familiar Land at that point. Sere, grey, and heartbreakingly
gloomy, the Glen of the Damned was strangely quiet; even the wailing breeze was
absent. The corpse-trees were lifeless, totally unaware of their presence.
"We made it!" Kuwabara shouted in relief. "Woo-hoo! Let's find this Chimera
guy and go home."
"Never thought this dump could look so good." Kurama agreed. "Give me the
tracker, Piper, so I can find Kuronue."
Vegita, however, could not understand why they were so happy to be in a
place that gave him the creeps. "Where the hell are we this time?! Don't tell me
you wanted to come here."
"We're in the Glen of the Damned- one of the original Hells. This is what
this whole misadventure has been all about, Veege." 'Quin informed him. "One of
Kurama's oldest buddies got stashed here by one of their enemies a while ago.
When Kurama found out that his friend was here, he bullied Piper into coming
after him, despite the seasonal difficulties."
Vegita looked at him as though he had grown antlers. "That human
forced that monster into doing this?!"
'Quin shrugged philosophically. "Kurama's not precisely human, and Piper's
more easily bullied than he looks. Hey over there! You guys found that Chimera
yet?"