Spoilers: Arcs up to and including Celes
Warnings: Rated T for now, may be bumped to M in the future if there's sex involved.

A/N 1: This is part 5 of the 'sword to my shield' series (if you didn't already know), and is the sequel to 'ink, fire and fiddle'.

A/N 2: Speechless guest - I actually posted a (rather long) reply to your review on my invisible-as-i-run tumblr, hope you don't mind! :)

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and its characters do not belong to me.

the sands of Harasa

Chapter 1: A Lesson on Cacti

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Air prickled hot and dry against his skin. It wafted about his head like an invisible haze, sapping his energy away the longer he sat in it. It felt as if he was losing moisture with each dusty breath he took, dry air in and wet air out. The people back at the slow-moving marketplace had not been lying; two hours in this world and his lips had become chapped. His skin felt far too tight on his body.

Kurogane swallowed, stepped gently on the brakes as they neared a fork in the flat dirt road. In the rear view mirror, clouds of dust obscured the path they'd just driven down.

"I think we should take a right." Syaoran looked up from the crinkling map, and Kurogane nodded. He stepped on the gas pedal once more, tugged lightly on the steering wheel.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

"Tick, tick, Kuro-pon is driving. Tick, tick, we should all, tick, tick, cheer him on, tick, tick."

"Shut up," Kurogane said. He craned his neck to glare over his shoulder briefly. It was far too hot for crap like this, and the incessant clicking of the turn signal did not help. Even Syaoran had tried taking a look at the circuits, but the two suns of Harasa had been bearing down on them, and they were all better off inside the car and on the road, faulty electrical circuit be damned.

The wizard and the princess were strapped into the backseat of the car, silly smiles on their faces. Fai's cheeks were flushed from the heat. "Does Kuro-tan get angry so easily?"

"Kuro-tan should sing along," Mokona said from her perch on Kurogane's shoulder, and he swatted her off irritatedly. She sailed into the back, squealing.

"Either help, or shut up," he growled, turning back to face the dusty road.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

They had been thrown from world to world ever since they left Yama. First, Mokona had brought them back to Shara, although it had been an entirely different place when they arrived. Where the atmosphere had been depressive and saturated with belligerence, and where the statue of Yasha had cried tears of blood, there was instead a wedding in the new Shara, and the statues of Ashura and Yasha had been placed together. It was disorienting. The kids had figured out that they'd traveled back in time and forward again, and it was an alien concept that Kurogane still had yet to fully comprehend.

He had not the chance to question Fai about either Ashura when Mokona's wings soared, and they were thrown into this new world, right in the middle of a busy marketplace. People had shrieked; Fai had grinned at them and put up the friendly act, and they'd slipped away to a quiet alley. From there, they'd figured that there was indeed a feather in this world, and that it was a long ways off from where they'd landed.

Fai had used their savings from Yama to purchase a car. Kurogane had looked at the other options—little dirt bikes, or foot travel—and decided that this was the best route they could take. The bikes did not have enough storage space for them to bring along a week's worth of food.

So, they were all riding in a worn, sturdy car, which creaked in some places and which had a turn signal that never stopped clicking from the moment he turned the ignition on. (It had been fortunate that they'd learned the basics of operating a vehicle in the flying rock world. Driving on the ground was a combination of driving a flying car and steering a horse.) What mattered most, however, was that it provided blessed shade, and they had supplies to last them for days until they found the feather.

Kurogane could live with that.

As it was, the kids had taken exceptionally well to the heat. Syaoran had suggested that the princess's body remembered the soaring desert temperatures; they'd both put their thick, white robes on without complaint. Fai had made a face and whined a little, but Kurogane couldn't deny that the robe was a damn lot more comfortable than the leather and armor they'd been traveling in, remnants from their time in Yama.

The even road petered out into gravel and loose rock suddenly. Kurogane swore as the vehicle began to tremble, windshield and windows alike. All he heard was the deafening rumble of the vehicle's parts grating against one another. The stiff seats transferred the jarring vibrations into their bones, and he gripped the steering wheel tight in case it wrenched out of his grip.

"—down!"

"What?" he yelled back over the rattling, glancing at the boy from the corner of his eye.

Syaoran cupped his hands around his mouth. "Slow down!"

Kurogane hit the brakes. They were all thrown forward, seat belts jerking them back, and someone had to have caught Mokona because she wasn't flattened against the inside of the windshield.

"Kuro-wan doesn't drive very well," Fai whined from the back. "Bad dog."

"Will you shut up," he hissed, before turning back to Syaoran. The boy tensed beneath his glare. "What?"

"I didn't say to stop, Kurogane-san," he stammered, waving his hands frantically. "Just go slow. The people at the market said you can't go more than... ten miles an hour when there isn't a road."

He hadn't heard that. He'd probably been distracted with checking that the car was working decently when the kid asked around for information. Kurogane frowned. "Why?"

"It's best for the car. We'll use less fuel this way, too."

"Kuro-daddy shouldn't go too fast, it makes the children scared!"

Kurogane twisted at his waist, turned to glare at eyes so brightly blue they were almost glowing at him. "If you don't intend to be useful," he snarled, "shut the hell up."

Fai's smile was flat. He looked away, out of the window. "Maybe Kuro-rin shouldn't listen to me, then."

The wizard was still angry with him. He swore again, wished they weren't tied down inside the car so he could beat some sense into the idiot, but there were more pressing matters to attend to. It figured that Fai would lay blame on him for listening to his monologue, when Kurogane had finally, finally understood him after six months of incomprehensible babble. If he didn't have so many damn secrets in the first place, maybe he wouldn't need to worry about being heard.

Kurogane turned his attention back on the road, got the car moving again, albeit at a slower pace. He couldn't read the numbers on the dashboard gauges. "What's ten miles on this?" he asked, jerking his chin towards the various dials.

Syaoran strained against his seat belt, squinting at the different characters behind the plastic dashboard screen before pointing one out. Kurogane nodded his thanks. True to the kid's words, the rattling was more bearable at this speed, and they weren't bumping around in their seats as much. It did seem to take forever to travel any decent amount of distance, however, and he could tell when Fai began to shift restlessly despite his attempts at chatter.

The landscape around them had been the same for the last hour or so—flat dirt ground interspersed with low brush, nothing like the sand dunes the children had grown up with. A low, black ridge rose up on their left, almost a wall, and there were large clumps of black rock spotting the plains. Far in the distance, low hills broke the straight line of the horizon, a mix of dark and light grey. There weren't any animals that he could see. Civilization had long been left behind, and it was eerily quiet all around them, past the crunching of gravel beneath tires.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

"Is it always this quiet?" he asked.

Syaoran nodded. "When you travel far out enough that there aren't people anymore, you'll only hear the wind. Maybe some insects."

The boy had been adamant that the dangers of the desert were in the sheer harshness of the environment, and he could see why. It was late morning; the suns had not fully risen, and it was already unbearably hot. It wasn't humid, though. Kurogane acknowledged that it could be worse.

He lapsed into silence. Fai changed the subject of his monologue, describing the animal comics that he'd drawn during their time in Yama. Hearing him speak now, after having listened to the man for a good six months, Kurogane knew that he wasn't faking the softness to his tone. Fai had spoken like that sometimes, his voice mellow, as if he'd been reminiscing about pleasant things. He never looked at Kurogane during those times, though, so Kurogane was certain that the wizard didn't harbor any softness towards him. (It was fine. Really.)

"...and so Big Doggy turned into a grumpy tall man. Big Doggy liked his children a lot, you know. A little kitty and a little puppy. There was a big kitty too, but Big Doggy just barked at him a lot."

"That cat was the damn wizard," Kurogane said.

"Oh?" Thin fingers tapped him lightly on the head. "Clever dog."

He sighed and ignored the blond, listening only when Syaoran and Sakura talked. It rankled, the little slights Fai threw at him now. Kurogane had been bewildered when the wizard became subtly acid in his retorts, even though he'd made his mistake worlds ago. Dragging Fai to a side and asking had only earned him a closed look and a thin smile, and Kurogane didn't know how he could reverse this. Would telling Fai what he'd heard put him back in the idiot's good graces? Did he want to resort to that?

(All the same, he wanted a moment with the witch when he had the chance.)

They drove on for another half hour or so before the gravel road faded away completely. Kurogane slowed the vehicle down, glanced towards Syaoran. Of the group, the kid could read maps best; the maps of Nihon had none of the criss-crossing straight lines and roads and redundant detail on the map Syaoran held. "Where next?"

Mokona hopped back onto his shoulder, waving toward the hills they'd slowly been approaching. "Mokona senses the feather! It's a bit closer now, behind this hill."

"Past that, huh?" He surveyed the land ahead of them. There were smaller shrubs between taller plants, and he'd heard the locals say something about "off road" back at the marketplace. Kurogane took that to mean he could drive over the littler shrubs.

The vehicle slowed to a crawl when he steered them around boulders and over deep ruts in the ground. His senses stretched out wide, searching for predators, and even the conversation in the car had gone silent.

"If it isn't too far away, maybe we should walk instead?" Fai said quietly from behind. "It doesn't seem like we're making much progress here. Sakura-chan can walk faster than this, can't you?"

Kurogane frowned. Syaoran shook his head. "No," the boy said. "It might seem like a short distance, but distances in the desert are deceiving. I think we're still a long way away from those hills."

He had to admit that the boy was right. They'd spent the last ten minutes meandering around large bushes, and Kurogane was sorely tempted to drive right over them, but Syaoran had warned against doing that, too. "The supplies are heavy," he said. "No point carrying them right now. We still have fuel left."

(The responsibility of transporting their food and water would have fallen to him, too, because the kids would not have been able to manage it all, and he couldn't trust Fai to pull his weight right now.)

The car listed to a side when two tires rolled onto a low ledge. "I should cut a path through this," Kurogane grumbled, impatient. "Fewer damn plants to drive over."

There weren't any protests to that. He got out of the car soon after, unsheathed Souhi, and loosed a wind attack in the direction they were headed. It felt good to stretch his muscles, to feel energy coursing through his body. Kurogane cracked his eyes open when the wind and dust died down, bringing a hand up to cut the glare from the sun. A clear path stretched out half a mile ahead of them, with a few large rocks edging its sides. Satisfied, he headed back to the driver-side door.

Only to have pain stabbing suddenly into his foot, high and sharp. "Fuck!"

He jerked his leg up, rocked back onto his other foot. There hadn't been needles on the ground. What he found, instead, was a fuzzy—spiny—green lump stuck to the underside of his shoe. How deep the spines had embedded in his foot, he didn't know. He set a hand on the hood of the car, snatched it off scorching metal with a louder curse.

"The hell is wrong with this place?"

"Kurogane-san?" A car door clicked shut. Syaoran picked his way over carefully, both eyes on the ground. Kurogane glowered at the boy, lowered himself onto the plastic front bumper of the car instead, foot dangling awkwardly in midair. It did not help that the suns' rays stung at every bit of exposed skin.

"The hell is this?" He jabbed a finger irately at the plant (at least, he thought it was one). On closer observation, there really was no visible handhold on the spiny ball. Ivory, hairlike needles covered every inch of it, save for the flat break in its stem, and he could not touch it without having his fingers perforated ten times over.

"Oh," Syaoran breathed as he came up next to Kurogane. "It's a cactus. I'm sorry, I didn't think to warn you about these—"

"Save it. How do I get it out?" The question came out harsher than he intended, and the boy flinched. "Look, the sooner we get out of the sun, the better off we'll be."

They'd been sunburnt before. Kurogane wasn't looking forward to going through that again, especially this soon into their time here. It wouldn't be the worst thing to happen, but.

The other doors on the car opened, concerned faces peeking out. "Kuro-rin?" Fai called. "What happened?"

"Nothing. Shut up and get back inside," he snapped, at the same time Syaoran supplied, "it's a cactus, Fai-san."

Kurogane glared at the kid. It wasn't his fault, but he didn't need the damn fucking idiot traipsing over to poke at his wounds, when all they had to do was get it out and get going. The wound in his foot was throbbing. "It's nothing. Sit back inside."

"A... cactus?" Fai's door was still open, as was Sakura's, though the princess wore a sympathetic wince. Mokona was clinging onto the ends of her hair. "What's that?"

The wizard got out of the car. Kurogane wanted to groan. "Just let me get this thing off in peace, damn it!"

"Watch where you step," Syaoran said hurriedly, moving around Kurogane so he could attempt to head Fai off. "Don't step on anything furry—"

"Do you mean one of these?"

Kurogane glanced up in a mix of spite and trepidation. He didn't want Fai hurt, but damn if that idiot didn't need a lesson. To his dismay (relief?) Fai had jabbed a thin stick into another green, spiny lump, and was peering dubiously at it.

Syaoran grimaced. "Yes. Put that down, Fai-san."

The idiot attempted to shake it off his stick. Kurogane saw the instant that became a bad idea, when Syaoran paled, and the spiny ball went flying into the air, right towards him.

He reacted on instinct, snatched Souhi out of its sheath with a hiss. All of them watched as he sliced cleanly through the woody plant, altering its course so one half fell harmlessly to his side, and the other landed on the car hood and rolled off.

"Oops?" Fai had the decency to look sheepish.

Kurogane swore again. If his foot wasn't already a pincushion, he'd be slicing that idiot into bits right now. "Get back inside. And stay in."

"But Syaoran-kun said—"

"Get. In. Now." Kurogane glared. "Before you turn into a crisp and I cut you into bite-sized pieces."

Fai opened his mouth, then thought better and shut it. Kurogane seethed, glanced at Syaoran. The boy winced. "Right. The best way to get a cactus out is to use a comb, but I don't think we have one—"

"Mokona has a comb!" The meat bun hopped up from somewhere, landing neatly on his shoulder. Not for the first time, Kurogane wondered if she was susceptible to physical damage. He'd attempted to squeeze the life out of her, and she'd been none the worse for wear. Would she be hurt by a sword? By magic?

She spat out a purple, glittery, plastic comb from one of the other worlds, that Fai had got for Sakura at a shop selling secondhand wares. They'd bought better combs since, ones that actually looked respectable, and this had been all but forgotten. Kurogane grabbed it out of the air, eased its blunt teeth between the dense spines of the cactus. A sharp tug later, the fuzzy ball dislodged, leaving white specks on the shoe where the spines had broken off.

"That looks painful," Mokona cried softly, scrunching her face up.

Kurogane shrugged and tugged his shoe off. "No big deal."

One of the car doors opened again, and Kurogane was picking unsuccessfully at the stubs of cactus spines when a shadow fell over him.

"Need some help, Kuro-pon?" Fai was frowning, lower lip pushed out in a pout. He looked vaguely torn, like he couldn't decide if he wanted to remain holding his grudge. "I thought I should apologize for earlier."

There were many things he could apologize for, and for a moment, Kurogane wondered how Fai would react if he were more severely injured. The cactus spines were a minor setback; they hurt whenever he put pressure on them, and they would be a pain when he next drove. Aside from that, they weren't something a ninja of his stature couldn't deal with.

"It's nothing," he ended up saying, shoving his foot back into his shoe. Already, his skin was hot, prickling beneath the harsh sunlight. "We'll keep going."

"But your foot—"

"Stand out here any longer, idiot, and you're going to burn." He flicked his gaze upwards, met Fai's eyes. "You aren't going to shut up if that happens."

Fai blinked at him, comprehension dawning on his features. "Kuro-puu cares about me," he said with a half-smile, disbelieving. "How very sweet of—"

"Look, why don't you drive. I still have spines in my foot." He'd said it so he didn't have to hear the ring of truth in the wizard's words, though all the same, it would be nice if Fai shouldered some of this responsibility.

Fai slithered away, a brighter smile pasted on his face. "Of course not. Kuro-myu needs all the practice he can get to be a good ninja."

"I'm already a good ninja," he shot back, watching as Fai slipped back into his seat, car door slamming solidly shut. Kurogane sighed. He tested his tread gingerly, found that the spines embedded in his foot still hurt, but the injury wasn't anything debilitating. So, he returned to the wheel, started the car up again.

Fai had struck up a conversation with the kids, which Kurogane tuned out as he drove them down the cleared path. This brought them back to the previous speed of ten miles an hour—still painfully slow, though at least it was quicker than driving around damnable rocks the entire time. When they got to the end of the path, Kurogane got out of the car again, cleared the next stretch of land, and brought them onward. (He made sure to look before setting his foot down.)

It seemed almost too easy, this rinse-and-repeat pattern of clearing brush so they could make progress. Thus far, there had been no monsters nor strange weather patterns, despite what the people in the city had warned them about. Fai kept the general atmosphere in the car light, doling out water on occasion to the kids first, then Kurogane, and if there was any left in the bottle, to himself.

When they stopped for a short toilet break and Sakura came back for Mokona, a pinched look about her face, Kurogane frowned.

"What's wrong?" Fai asked, leaning forward in concern. There really wasn't very much privacy at all in the open desert, so the rest of them had decided to stay in the car, and have the princess keep to the dusty dirt road behind them.

"It's... well, it's nothing," she said uncomfortably. "I'm bleeding again."

All eyes in the vehicle snapped onto her.

"It's... it's nothing unusual, right?" Fai asked. "I— Well, Kuro-rin and I spent six months in Yama... I've lost track of how long it's been for you. Is everything okay?"

She nodded, cradling Mokona close to herself. Bright red dusted her cheeks. "I'm fine, Fai-san."

They watched as she hurried off to the back of the car, and Fai cleared his throat.

"Kurogane-san, how did you and Fai-san communicate in Yama?" Syaoran asked suddenly, eyes bright with curiosity. "Fai-san mentioned the comics..."

"That was easy. We mimed things," the wizard said, shoving his fingers into his hair and scrubbing at his scalp. "This meant bathing, for example, and this meant eating."

Kurogane snorted when Fai pretended to chew. "I'm surprised you even learned five words."

"Idiot," Fai said, and it was slightly mispronounced, even now.

Syaoran blinked. "That carried an accent. I didn't think Mokona's translation matrix would do that."

"There seem to be certain things Mokona doesn't translate fully," Fai agreed. He settled back into his seat, pinched his cloak up and wriggled it around to circulate air against his skin. "This is the hottest place we've been to so far, isn't it? It's so hot that I want to take all my clothes off!"

Kurogane didn't believe his teasing lilt for a second. Syaoran, however, stiffened and stared at Fai in horror.

"Don't believe him," he said to the boy.

"I didn't think Kuro-sama would be so immune to my charms," Fai whined, pouting and slipping a finger along the collar of his robe so he exposed the sharp edge of a clavicle. He wasn't looking at Kurogane, however, and that was enough of an indication that Fai remembered what they most certainly did not have going on between them.

(Kurogane wasn't entirely immune, no. They both knew that.)

"I didn't expect Ashura to treat you well," Kurogane said to the boy, watching Fai from the corner of his eye. The wizard tensed briefly, made himself relax. "What's he like?"

Syaoran glanced between him and Fai, setting the map down on his lap. "Ashura-ou was a very good host. Sakura-hime was able to get some rest in a comfortable chamber, and we were given a lot of delicious food."

"Did you just accept that food?" Kurogane narrowed his eyes. Syaoran hesitated, like a rabbit sighting a predator. "Don't be so trusting, kid. That king let his men die for him without batting an eyelid. Can't trust everyone you meet."

"Kuro-daddy is all concerned about his children, hyuu!" There was a flicker of honest delight in blue eyes. "How caring of him!"

"Shut up," he hissed, glowering at the blond. A quick glance through the windows showed no movement, nothing around that would attack the princess while they were supposed to give her space.

"I didn't see Kuro-rin being suspicious about the food in the Yama camp," Fai pointed out slyly, reaching out to prod his shoulder with a slender, hard finger. It was the first time Fai had touched him since grabbing him around the neck on Shura, and Kurogane welcomed it.

"They weren't going to poison all the soldiers. Don't be an idiot." Kurogane turned back to the boy. "Remember that the next time we aren't around. Though it's not like this idiot can do anything to save his life."

Syaoran nodded earnestly. Fai pouted. "I won't leave them to die, Kuro-pyon. Don't be mean."

"I didn't say you would." Fai would save the kids' lives, anyone he liked, really, except his own. Kurogane stared at him, at his chapped, red lips and bright eyes, and Fai gulped, looked away.

Syaoran shifted, as if he could feel the abrupt tension bubbling up between them, and Kurogane looked to the back windows again.

Sakura stood up suddenly. He couldn't see much of her through the tinted window except the raised hood of her cloak. She made no move to return to the car, however. Instead, she appeared to be staring straight ahead of herself, nary moving an inch. There was something in front of her. Big, and mostly underground.

"Shit," Kurogane said.

Fai and Syaoran whipped their eyes to the back. Fai tensed. Kurogane was already moving, pulling his door open quietly and scanning the area around them. Nothing lurked to the front, or to the expanse of land on either side of the car. Pain bloomed in his foot when he stepped out; Kurogane swallowed his curse, tread carefully through the strewn cacti on the ground. Fai slipped out behind him, shoulders tense. "Kuro-sama," he murmured.

"Get the princess. I'll take that on." And he was moving, sword drawn swiftly from its sheath.

Kurogane reached the back of the car. For a long second, everything was still. Then the freshly-carved ground exploded just three feet in front of Sakura, scattering dirt everywhere as a giant, scaly worm reared up, its mouth a great, yawning maw, edged with rows upon rows of teeth. Sakura gasped; Kurogane grabbed her arm and dragged her behind himself, where Fai was.

He unleashed one of his sweeping attacks, a wide-angled one that blew outwards, slashing into the creature. This wasn't human; he could kill as he wished. Kurogane grinned, watched as the towering worm was cleaved right in two, murky green blood splashing onto dry dirt.

Its head landed on the desert brush with a resounding thump. Kurogane watched as it writhed, life energy still pounding within. Its wounds began to knit together. The top half of the creature stretched in a ghastly imitation of a balloon, and its flesh bubbled and darkened, reshaping into a thinner body and tail. The same happened with the other half of its body; wet, gleaming flesh shuddered and morphed into another head, still eyeless, with only a mouth wide enough to swallow Kurogane whole.

He swore beneath his breath, heard Syaoran mutter an exclamation on the other side of the car. "Get back in the car, kid!" he yelled.

He'd seen nothing like this in all their travels, didn't suppose things could recover that quickly. There had been rumors about regenerating octopuses and starfish, but nothing like this, that healed itself in mere seconds. He hadn't even sensed it showing up until it was almost too late.

"But I should help—"

"Sakura-chan," Fai said somewhere behind Kurogane, car door ajar at his side. Kurogane assumed the princess was safe. "You need to get back out. Now."

There was such a strange inflection to the last word that Kurogane was instantly on the alert.

And there, beneath the ground, he sensed something else tunneling towards them at great speed. It would end up surfacing beneath the car. In about ten seconds. "Mage," he yelled, tearing his gaze off the gory, regenerating worm. "Get them out of here!"

Fai turned towards him, still standing by the back door, his face ashen. "I—"

"Just fucking do it!"

He saw, in that moment, Fai making a decision. It closed off his expression, and his eyes were brilliantly blue. "The princess, at least," he murmured, raised a hand that was already flying, scribbling glowing violet runes in midair. His other hand slammed the door shut. "Syaoran-kun, get in the car."

Fai's tone held no space for rebuttal. Kurogane watched as the boy's eyes grew wide, watched as he jumped into the car, pulled the door shut behind him.

The wizard's spell looped around the car in the next breath, snapped tight, yanked it up into the sky at the same time the ground exploded next to them, a bigger worm thrusting up like a fountain, snapping jaws barely scraping the dull, smooth underbelly of the car.

Kurogane sprang forward, slashed at the worm with his sword. He felt the give of its thick flesh as he cleaved it in two. More murky green splashed out; he leaped backward on instinct to avoid contact, landing in a mess of hard, scratchy branches. Fai did the same a few feet away. The decapitated head landed heavily on the dirt road. Above them, the car floated, safely out of harm's way.

"Don't let them down," Kurogane said, returned his attention to the two healed worms from before—except there was only one. The other had gone missing.

It was underground, tunneling towards him.

He swore again, loosed a hurricane around him to clear the cacti and prickly brush. It would spare him the need to check the ground—the spiked plants were an enemy in themselves. Fai's response was lost to the noise of the gusting winds. Past the whirling dust of the hurricane, the wizard had hopped down the open road on one side of the fallen, regenerating worm, but Kurogane's attention was no longer on him. The ground exploded a few feet away.

This time, the worm emerged at an angle, gaping mouth aimed right for Kurogane's head.

He slashed it into multiple parts, big, ugly chunks that fell onto the ground around him, oozing green blood and quivering in all their individual bleeding pieces. They were still alive. He could sense them, could see as the little bits began to bubble and stretch themselves into new worms, sand-colored scales on the outside and tapering tails on one end, little mouths on the other. This was wrong, repugnant. He tasted bile in his throat.

"Don't these things die?" he shouted, took a flying leap to the outer edge of his circle, closer to Fai.

The wizard looked back at him, lips pressed thin. "I've never seen this before," he said. "You're just creating more enemies we have to fight against, Kuro-pon."

"Then tell me how to kill them!" Was this what Tomoyo meant by not killing? How the fuck was he supposed to annihilate them? With love?

"I suppose they could be frozen." Fai turned away, facing down the other regenerated worm. Kurogane frowned, had a moment to wonder why Fai didn't have a weapon of his own if he was so opposed to using magic. There were only half of the little worms left on the ichor-stained ground when he next looked that way. The other half had left little holes in the dirt. "Why don't you try that?"

"I don't have an ice attack!" he roared. Three wormlets burrowed their way out of the ground, flying at his calves. He swore, leaped back, twisted in midair when another flew at him from the side. "You know that! Damn it!"

Pain burst in his uninjured heel when he landed. For a moment, he was sick with dread, that he'd let a damn worm sink its teeth into him. (Could it somehow live in his body?) But it was only a ball of prickly cactus, he realized, kicking out at one of the worms with the spiked ball. It didn't go as well as he'd imagined—it wrapped its mouth around the cactus, chewed through it.

He slammed his foot into the ground, grit his teeth at the pain that lanced through his foot, and the worm shuddered, its head a dark green smear on the dirt. He kicked the cactus off his shoe, ignored the next piercing stab of pain. "Smashing them works, it looks like."

Except the worm began to bubble again, and the rest of its clones were in the barren ground around Kurogane, burrowing up towards him. He swore, leaped over the flying worms. One shot up quicker than he could withdraw; Kurogane grimaced when its teeth scraped through the leg of his pants, that he wore beneath his robes. The robes themselves were thick and hindered movement, and he wished that he was back in simpler clothes. As soon as he thought that, he was shrugging the thick, white robe off, tossing it onto one of the nearby plants for safekeeping.

"What're you doing?" Fai yelled.

Kurogane spared the wizard a glance. Fai was dancing between three half-sized worms now, the remnants of Kurogane's earlier attacks, and the kids were still in the car, faces poking out of the open windows in grim horror. "The fuck are you doing?" he hollered back.

"I'm afraid I don't have much of an option here." Fai's robes flapped in the wind as he wove between the relentless worms trying to charge him down. "I'm not giving myself more work, unlike you!"

"At least I'm trying to kill them!" The worms were coming at him again, and Kurogane could sense more rapidly approaching below ground, larger ones that were stronger and faster than these midgets still haunting him. He growled, thought about unleashing a lightning attack on the worms. "Why don't you try freezing them, idiot?"

"I'm getting along just fine here—"

Two other worms erupted from the ground between him and Fai, showering dirt and cactus upon them. Kurogane swore. Balls of spines landed on his head and arms, some catching on his skin. He was tiring of these creatures, things he couldn't kill with simple moves. On impulse, he let loose one of his lightning dragons, directing the crackling energy so it arced through the two new worms, sizzling them into burnt crisps. With energy remaining in the attack, he sent the dragon into the ground he'd cleared around himself, where the tiny worms were still burrowing and trying to leap at him.

They went out with a sizzle, sparking and catching fire and charring. He should have done this from the start.

It was only when the burning carcasses thudded onto the ground that he heard Syaoran shouting from somewhere high in the air. "They're flammable," he said, hands around his mouth. "Cacti burn!"

(Maybe he'd been depending on the wizard to put the fire out.)

The blaze began with flying sparks from the carcasses that landed on the dry shrubs in front of him. Cloudy yellow flames flickered to life on crooked, thin branches. The fire gained momentum, spreading from bush to bush, burgeoning into a sea of fire separating him from Fai. Past that, the wizard was still dodging the trio of worms, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, limbs flowing with sheer grace. He was beautiful. And he was safe.

Something sunk its teeth into the back of his calf. Kurogane cursed, twisted around to look at the little worm that his lightning attack had missed. It was disgusting, sharp teeth chewing into his leg, and he kicked at it, crushed it into the ground and stomped on it so all that remained was a bubbling, gooey mess, a broken mouth and scaly skin. His muscles throbbed, trickling sticky blood.

There were even more worms coming beneath the ground. He was starting to suspect that they were drawn by the scent of blood.

"Kuro-tan!" Fai called. His voice was a little fuzzy. Kurogane grabbed his cloak before the rest of the bushes around him caught fire, unleashed another gusting wind attack to the side, where the shrubs were half a minute away from being set ablaze. His feet throbbed as he jogged a detour back to the idiot. His skin prickled with the first signs of sunburn. "There are more coming— What happened to you?"

"You think?" he snapped.

His feet weren't working as well the closer he got to the road. Fai was still engaged in his dance with the other worms, and as he turned to watch the wizard, Kurogane tripped, reached out to steady himself. He fell, instead, into a mass of needles that pierced his midriff and chest, and very nearly his face. Spines scratched thin lines of heat across his cheek. Through the pain blooming in his body, Kurogane heard Fai's exclamation of shock.

There was a chilly breeze suddenly, ice-cold, and Kurogane sighed as it cooled the burning air around him. He struggled to get up, squinted when he saw a flash of gold. Gentle fingers slipped around his shoulders and abdomen, pulling him away from the overgrown cactus. Some of the plant broke off, clung to his skin like baby animals to their mother.

"What're you doing?" he slurred.

"Getting you to safety. You can't protect the children like this," Fai whispered, cradling him flush against his own chest. "Don't struggle."

He wasn't planning to—he lacked the strength—and concentrated on holding on to his bundle of robes while Fai dragged him out of the brush. There was the faintest whiff of cinnamon in the air.

This was enough, Kurogane thought. It had to be.

A/N: Inspired by the thought, 'what if I put the Tsubasa family in a Jeep?' (Yes, the "car" is a Jeep JK. To Kurogane and co., it's just a car. ;) I know what you Jeep people are saying. LOL Husband and I own a Mini and a Jeep, and the Mini has already starred in 'when flight falls short'.) We have also gone on multiple trips out to the desert... so I figured that it would be the perfect setting for an arc. Special thanks goes out to expiration on FFN, who helped brainstorm the unfortunate events that will be going ino this fic ;)

To those of you who are interested, I will be posting photo sets of different deserts on my invisible-as-i-run tumblr (pics taken during our road trips) as a complement to this fic. Plus previews, etc, but you already knew that. ;)

Currently writing 4th chapter of this fic.. I haven't found as much motivation somehow, and so have been writing slowly. :( If you have any thoughts and/or comments, feel free to share them!