(A/n: Thank you ChishioShakun, RedRoseInADarkAlley, and The Crimson Darkness for reviewing, and everyone else for reading:)! I was wrong about the numbering on the last chapter, this is chapter nine. Sorry it took forever, I'm a bit unplanned.)

Chapter nine

Teacher

Zamba awoke the next day to the sound of waves rushing onto the shore. She remembered where she was (Or wasn't, really) relatively quickly.

A rush of homesickness swelled within her, she had to get back to prove that her brother and Kurama were alright. Sitting up, she looked around for the Wind Master.

But he was no where in sight.

"Jin?" She called worriedly, looking around again. She listened for any reply. There was absolutely no sign of where he had gone, not even a footprint in the sand. Slight fear crept in amongst worry within her.

Getting to her feet quickly, she swept the sand from her body a little jerkily, and raking her fingers through her hair in an attempt to relieve some of her queasiness. 'He wouldn't have left me behind . . . Would he?' Pulling the sword out of the sand beside her, she hefted it quickly, almost losing her balance as she did so. Looking around her again, she started off down the beach to look for her red-haired friend.

"Jin?" She called, more loudly than the first time, as she moved around a rocky outcropping. All the way down the beach, there was a large cliff wall, a smaller area of sand, and then the ocean. But no Jin. As she kept walking, a while later, the hairs on the back of her neck started to prickle. Looking behind herself worriedly, and finding nothing, she uneasily shrugged it off as being paranoia.

'Just calm down,' She told herself, 'you're scaring yourself.'

But she couldn't shake the feeling of bring watched. Craning her neck back, she looked up the cliff wall. But no one was up there, watching her. She looked out to the sea, and saw nothing. She laughed nervously, and then she smelled it. It was quite like the smell of rotting fish. But she had seen no dead fish in the shallows. But still the only sound she heard was the ocean.

'Well, Jin wouldn't have left me if I was in danger, or something.' She thought, still looking for the location of the scent. 'I should be safe.'

'. . . Right?'

A cold, slimy hand clamped down on her shoulder. Zamba shrieked and dropped her sword as she pulled away. Mentally preparing a rant to sling at Jin, she whirled around to meet eyes that should belong to a fish.

The creature was like a horrible cross-breed between a fish and a Human. It stared at her with lidless eyes and gasping mouth, like it was fighting to breathe. The dead fish smell was emanating from it. She olive-green-eyes girl stared at it, slightly disgusted. She began to back away.

The brownish-grey fish stood watching her blankly, its head cocked to the side; mouth still opening and closing, and gills down its abdomen and neck fluttered open and closed, flashing red. Suddenly it lunged at her, faster than she could suck in a breath. Its long, webbed, bony, slimy hands clasped onto her neck and yanked her off the ground and held her aloft.

Flailing and gasping, her eyes wide, she clutched at the hands on her neck, clawing and sliding over the slippery film on them. She desperately tried to struggle out of its grasp, and slowly began to fade as her air supply was slowly cut off methodically. Suddenly, a groggy plan formed, and she kicked upwards hopefully, closing her eyes. She felt and heard the crunch and she was dropped unceremoniously. Her foot had connected with the fish-human's jaw, and it had dropped her, hissing a garbled wail of pain as it brought its hands to the injured area.

Zamba scrambled away, but was now hemmed in. The fish-demon had attacked her in an alcove in the wall, the only was she could get away was though it. Walls rose up on both sides of her, and there was a wall behind.

Pressing her back to the wall behind her, she looked wildly for anything she could use to defend herself with. Hearing a sound, she whipped her gaze up to see more of the same fish-demons emerging from the sand and ocean.

They went to the injured one, seemingly to help it. The injured one was screaming a different wail now, though. It seemed almost terrified, attempting to hide its face with its hands. One of the fish demons seized the injured fish's arm, almost to pull it away from its face, but then began to pull harder. Zamba looked away, but could still hear the sounds of the bone cracking and flesh tearing away.

Turning to the wall, an idea formed in her head. She reached up and grabbed onto a handhold, tested it, then pulled herself up. The sound of something hitting flesh forcefully came from behind her and the wails ceased. Disgusted, she scaled the wall as well as she could. When she reached the top, she got up and ran, thankful she had liked rock climbing so much in school.

Eventually, she slowed to a trot, then a walk, and finally a stop when she figured she was far enough away. She plopped down, staring up at the sky. 'I want to go home.' She complained to herself, fisting handfuls of grass and chucking them up in the air in a childish temper tantrum.

Frustration vented, she stood, brushing off some grass that had landed on her, and finally looked at her surroundings. She was standing in front of a house. It looked a bit worse for wear, but smoke was curling steadily from the chimney. Smoke usually mean warmth, and warmth usually mean food. Zamba's mouth began to water, and she found herself walking up to and knocking on the door. It creaked open. Curiously, she looked around, noticing many things at once.

First, she noticed the house was filled with weapons and armors of different shapes, sizes, and even metals. Second, she noticed there was a large hunk of metal hanging from the ceiling on a rope. Third, she saw a table, set with soup bowls, and a large cauldron simmering over a fire, filled with what Zamba assumed to be soup.

"Hello?" The black girl stepped into the house almost timidly, sneaking over to the cauldron and picking up a bowl on her way past. Carrying the bowl around, she called around the house, and when no one answered, she returned to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, she stood nearby the cauldron, eating soup almost greedily, and feeling bad for doing so. 'Well, I am stealing, really, even though I haven't eaten in forever. . .'

"What are you doing in my house?" A voice demanded from the doorway. Zamba whipped around, some noodles hanging out of her mouth, to face a particularly fierce-looking woman. Her burnished armor glinted dully in the sun. Strangely, though there was enough armor here to construct multiple suits of armor, the tall woman only wore one piece of armor for each extremity. An armguard on her right arm, a shoulder guard on her left, an odd looking piece of armor on her right hip, and a shin guard that incased her lower left leg. She was also wearing a long tunic made of leather.

"Uh, I . . . Uh." The noodles fell back into Zamba's bowl as she scrambled for an excuse for breaking and entering. Or entering and eating, really. "I was going to pay?"

The fierce-looking woman stared at her, her expression slowly turning into that of curiosity and wonder. She strode into the room, crossing it quickly and tossing aside a javelin, and a sword that Zamba thought she recognized before dropping the soup bowl and scampering away.

The woman caught her shoulder easily, spinning her around and holding her at arms length. "Can you bend metal?" She asked the freaked-out girl. It took a moment for the question to register in Zamba's mind. 'Wait, what?'

The woman smiled. "I though so. You're a neophyte, aren't you?"

Zamba stared at the woman, looking confused. "A what?"

"You're a metal nymph, a fledgling metal nymph. Just learning how to bend and twist metals? " The fierce-woman asked, pulling Zamba over to the metal pendulum.

"Uh, um, No?" She lied, not wanting to be taken someplace.

The woman ignored her. "Sit here." She said, pushing Zamba into a stool seat at the table. "Watch." She instructed, grabbing a hold of the metal swinging on the rope. The woman took her other hand and plunged it into the metal.

Slightly fascinated, Zamba watched as veins of a coppery color slithered through the darker metal on the pendulum. It slowly blended until there wasn't a trace of the dark metal left. A large copper slab now hung in its place.

Zamba turned to the woman. "Who are you?" She asked. "Who are you; seeing as you broke into my house and raided my kitchen." The woman shot back, smiling slightly.

"Zamba Nessrhor." Zamba blurted.

"Well, Zamba, I'm Sarama. I am a metal nymph, as you could probably tell by now." The fierce-looking woman smiled wanly again.

Zamba stared around at the house, and then looked to the older metal nymph. "Teach me."