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Search for the Stones - Topaz |
Last Revised: Never
Mark sighed as he sat down for the
teacher's conferences. With everything he was going through, this
conference was just icing on the cake. Aurora was at his apartment
hopefully sleeping. But for some reason he didn't think she was doing what
the doctor had ordered her to do. He placed his hands on his head and
groaned lightly when the chair next to him was pulled out.
"Hey, you don't look so good... what's wrong?" Yorukai
asked, pulling out a chair next to Mark.
"Nothing really." Mark replied running his hand through
his long hair. He pulled out notebooks and papers he had to grade.
"Aw... come on! I can tell there is something wrong.
You can tell me!" Yorukai pestered...er...that is, he offered with a huge
smile on his face. "I'm sure that, with the kinds of horrors I have
survived, I can at least offer you some advice."
"One of my students has two broken legs. Her mom
doesn't have a car so she can't get the girl to school." Mark stopped
there not sure how much to tell him.
"Ow! How did that happen?" Yorukai paused long enough
that Mark begun to answer before he continued speaking. "I hope that she's
going to be okay. Having one broken leg is bad enough, speaking from
experience. But hey, I could give her a ride on my way to work!"
"Actually she's staying at my apartment till the casts
come off. Which is making life kind of interesting." Mark told him.
"Oh! I could come over and help nurse her back to
health, if you want. It's the least I can do for a colleague in distress!
Hmm, I can even bring someone over who knows medicines and stuff like
that." He flashed his most convincing 'please-don't-tell-me-no' smile.
"Well….. I don't see why not. Ok, here's my address."
Mark was writing down the address while he talked. He gave the paper to
Yoru and turned to pay full attention to the speaker.
* * *
Aurora was in Mark's private study
looking for a healing spell when she felt Mark's mental touch. 'Company
is coming so we have to behave ourselves.'
'If I must, though it is hard around you.'
Aurora sent with a light mental caress. She smiled as he started grumbling
about how stupid he was for inviting them. Aurora wheeled her self out to
the living room to close and lock the two doors of importance in the
apartment. She did one final check to see if anything of their other lives
was out in the open and when she saw it was clear she lifted her self to
the coach. She started working on homework and waited for them to get
here.
* * *
Yorukai saw Amefuri before she could
run away and leached onto her arm with unholy glee. "Ame-chan! It's
wonderful to see you, you're just the person I was looking for! You're
going with me to this place and help me!" He beamed as he pulled her
stubbornly resisting form down the street.
"What place?" She demanded while trying to pull free
and glare threateningly at the same time.
"Mark's. He's got a student who is injured and in a
wheel chair and we're going to play nurse." At this point he was dragging
her so quickly that she had to stop struggling. She didn't want to look
even more undignified by tripping.
"If I refuse, you're just going to force me to come
anyway, aren't you?"
"Of course not!" Yorukai gave her his best winning
smile. "I would just do my best to talk you into it!"
"Same thing." Amefuri sighed and resigned herself to
glaring menacingly at passer-bys.
* * *
Aurora looked up as the doorbell rang.
She sighed because Mark was in the shower and she had to get up and
manoeuvre to the door to open it. Before her stood the blue haired teacher
that almost everyone she knew spent hours trying to avoid and the purple
haired girl that had no friends cause everyone was afraid of her.
"Come in, Mister Brooks is in the shower and he'll be
out in a second." Aurora forced a smile on her face as she motioned for
them to come in. She then slowly worked her way back to the coach and
offered them a seat. 'Mark! Your friends are here and if I could I
would be leaving about now.' She thought at Mark.
* * *
Amefuri had struggled to free herself
the entire time they traveled to apartment complex. It was by some
perverse twist of fate that Yorukai had caught her while investigating a
strange power in the area. She stopped fighting against his grip when she
realized that they were heading for the area of the power source. Then she
realized that if she was going to find whatever was causing this power and
escape undetected, Yorukai's presence would most inconvenient.
But before Amefuri could resume her quest for freedom,
an almost electric shock passed through her. Her suspicions were correct.
Power seeped through one of the plain brown doors through what ever was
behind it. She scanned the room and noticed the wheel chair and the
condition the girl was in.
"Although I was conscripted to help against my own
will, I might as well do something while I am here. Where are your herbs?"
Amefuri addressed the room with disgust.
"Cupboards over the stove." Aurora said sending a
pleading glance at Mark as he got out of the bathroom with a towel around
his hips.
"Oh, I didn't know you guys were here. I'll be right
back." He ducked in his room to change.
'You are going to come out here. You will not leave
me at the hands of these two!' He cringed as the thought came to him
almost giving him a headache with the force behind it.
Aurora smiled as Amefuri handed her a mug of tea.
"Thank you." She took a single sip and almost gagged. She forced a
pleasant smile and set it down on the table.
"You will drink all of that. It will speed your
recovery." Amefuri glared at her. She obviously took some offence to
Aurora's reaction to her tea.
* * *
Unnoticed by Aurora and Amefuri,
Yorukai had made it to the kitchen without mishap. He looked around and
smiled. He knew full well what would help the girl heal and it wasn't one
of Ame's nasty potions, it was good old-fashioned food.
'Then again,' He thought cheerfully while going
through the cabinets to see what he could find to cook, 'the taste is
probably half the reason you heal faster. The sooner you get better, the
sooner you don't have to drink it anymore.'
"Okay, now that we have all the ingredients out, let's
make us a meal to remember!" Yorukai slipped an apron around his neck and
got to work.
* * *
"Somebody must have left a window
open." Mark told himself as he pulled his shirt over his head. "There's no
other reason that I'd shiver for no reason."
Opening the door, he instantly began to regret allowing
Yorukai to invite a friend over without finding out WHOM that person was.
"Drink it!"
"Ugh, No way!"
"You will finish it!"
"Forget it!"
"I'm the one who knows more about medicine than you, so
DRINK IT!"
"It's my life that's on the line, so I SAY NO!"
"Umm.... hate to interrupt but where is Yorukai?" Mark
asked coming into the room.
Aurora set the tea down on the coffee table and looked
around. She heard noise in the kitchen. "Yoru, are you in the kitchen?!"
She screamed.
Yorukai popped his head out the door to the kitchen.
"You rang?"
"What are you doing in there pray tell?" Aurora glared
at him.
Mark flinched for Yorukai had unknowingly broken one of
Aurora's rules. No one was allowed in her kitchen unless she knew they
knew how to cook. That meant that they had taken cooking lessons from her.
He didn't blame her after tasting his cooking compared to hers.
"Does he know how to cook?" Aurora asked Amefuri.
"What do YOU think?" Amefuri snapped as she bolted for
the kitchen in an attempt to grab Yorukai before he killed them all. Smoke
was already billowing out of the doorway so Mark grabbed his keys and ran
for the fire extinguisher in the practice room he used to train Aurora's
senshi skills. After what felt like an eternity, they managed to put out
the small stove fire before it spread. Amefuri dragged Yorukai by the
braid into the main room, swearing under her breath the whole way.
"Now what?" Aurora asked glaring at Yorukai
"I suggest tying him up outside." Amefuri said with
what could probably pass for a smile on her face.
"I got a better idea. We'll just throw him in here he
can't get out." Mark took the braid from Amefuri and dragged Yorukai into
the practice room. "Just till were done cleaning up the mess."
He closed and locked the door. "Sorry Yoru, but I do
not need my apartments burning down." The remaining three proceeded to
ignore the banging and pleading that followed.
Amefuri was more than a little nervous. Either these
two had no idea about the power that was coming from beyond that room, or
they had a very high opinion of Yorukai's self control. Needless to say,
her rating of their intelligence plummeted several points. Nobody in their
right mind would lock Yorukai in the room with a something with great
power and anything less than a 10 foot deep steel wall in the way.
* * *
"Oi! Let me go! I was only trying to
help! HEY! I know you can hear me!"
Yorukai kicked the door one last time before giving up.
He normally wouldn't give up so quickly, but the door showed no signs of
yielding to his demands anymore than the others. He slumped against the
door with a pout and glanced around his current room. Maybe there was
another way out.
'Jackpot!' Yorukai thought with glee as he
rushed for the door across the empty room. He turned the knob and frowned
when it too refused to open. Thinking that it may have been stuck, he
knelt down to examine the lock in hope of finding some clue to aid his
escape.
"Hmm, I wonder what's on the other side of the door?
Must be something valuable if Mark is using such a high-tech lock. Well!
One way to find out!"
* * *
"Drink the tea." Amefuri gave Aurora
her best threatening look.
"Can't you make something that tastes better?" Aurora
said almost pleadingly.
"Drink the tea or I'll…." Amefuri snarled.
"Or you'll what?" Mark asked coming to Aurora's defence
for the first time. He was scared of this Ame girl but he had sworn to
protect Aurora... and had failed so far. Any further argument was halted
as a loud boom came from the practice room.
"I'll buy you a new door Mark! Promise!" Yorukai
shouted. "Wow... look at all this stuff!"
"Mark get the door open now, before he gets his hands
on the stones!" Aurora shouted frantically.
* * *
Yorukai stepped over the charred
remains of what was once a sturdy oak door and came to a conclusion. "He's
an even bigger packrat than I am!"
Lining the walls were bookshelves crammed full with
every sort of vaguely interesting and bizarre paraphernalia imaginable. In
the corner, a vaguely desk-like object sat beneath a mound of odd bits and
pieces that looked like they were bought at the same place the stuff in
the bookshelves were. He couldn't help but think of what Merlin's tower
looked like in The Sword in the Stone.
Carefully picking his way over to the
desk, Yorukai spotted an elegant jewelry box sitting on top of a sliding
pile of papers. Never one to refuse the call of curiosity, he freed the
clasp and opened the lid to reveal a pair of stunningly pure jewels, a
topaz and an opal. As he picked up the topaz to examine closely, a foreign
power flowed through him.
"Oh, hey guys!" Yorukai smiled charmingly as Mark,
Aurora and Amefuri burst through the remains of the door.
"Ah...?" A slightly clueless expression crept across
his face as he looked at the group. Aurora seemed to have been replaced by
a vaguely familiar queen sitting in the wheel chair. "Excuse me Ma'am, but
I don't suppose that you know the girl that was just here?"
"Oh no! Not him! Why are the gods this cruel?" Aurora
cried throwing her hands up in the air.
"What do you.. Oh No." Mark turned to Aurora with a
look of horror on his face. "Please don't tell me that he's one of us
now!"
Aurora's only reply was to bury her face in her hands
with a moan of anguish. She was convinced that she must have offended a
higher power in a past life to be punished with THIS fate. What other
explanation was there? There was no possible way that Yorukai was part of
her court, or any court for that matter.
"Would one of you be so kind as to explain what you
mean by 'oh no, not him'?" Amefuri crossed her arms. There was a nagging
feeling that she was missing something rather important. Amefuri most
definitely did NOT like that feeling.
