- Title: Eclipse (chapter 4)
- Author: Meicdon13
- Pairing(s): Gojyo/Hakkai, Kenren/Tenpou,
Kougaiji/Sanzo
- Rating: PG-13
- Summary: Sanzo's reincarnation works for Kanzeon Bosatsu. While he searches
for the three remaining sutras and the reincarnations of Hakkai, Gojyo, and
Goku, he comes across someone else from the past that might be able to help him
out. What he doesn't know is exactly what Kougaiji was to his past life.
- Website: http://meicdon13.livejournal.com
Location: Gobi Desert
Date: 30 Mar 21xx
Time: 1500
Goku squatted on the sand, a bandanna wrapped around his head and a lump of
dirt in his hand. Carefully, he tapped the lump with a pick until it cracked.
He continued chipping away little bits of the dirt until he exposed what looked
like a piece of pottery.
"Professor, I found another one!" he shouted.
A middle-aged woman ran towards him and eagerly, but very carefully,
took the pottery from the golden-eyed young man. "Excellent work,
Goku!" she cried, eyes gleaming as she looked at the prize she cradled in
her hands.
"Professor, it's just a bit of an old pot—"
"It isn't just that! This is also part of the culture of this very
city that we're slowly unearthing! Think about it! A completely unknown city
buried here in the Gobi desert! And we'll be the very first people to unearth
it; to see it after how many hundreds—maybe thousands—of years!"
The brunet looked at his professor and scratched the back of his neck.
Professor Huian easily got worked up whenever she was working on something and
now was no exception.
Goku stood up and stretched, removing his bandanna. The afternoon sunlight
glinted off of his golden coronet, making his professor blink a few times as
the reflected light shone right into her eyes.
"Oops. Sorry professor," he said sheepishly.
"No worries, no worries," Professor Huian said, waving the hand that
wasn't holding the bit of pottery. "As I've said before, I like your
coronet. It resembles the one that the mythical Son Goku from the ancient
stories wore." She glanced up at him and smiled. "And think of it; if
we unearth this city, we may be able to prove that he wasn't mythical after
all!"
"Professor!"
"Excuse me, Goku," the woman said and hurried towards another student
a few feet away.
"I'm not mythical," Goku said softly to no one in particular. His
smile was amused as he decided to take a break and go into his tent to rest.
As he lay in his cot, he thought about what exactly he was doing in this dig
site. What he was trying to accomplish by helping unearth a city that
supposedly had a temple at the middle. A temple that may or may not have one of
the founding sutras of Heaven and Earth. Years that had been wasted in the
pursuit of rumors led to this one moment.
Maybe nothing's even there, he thought to himself, golden eyes focused
on a shaft of light that filtered in through a small hole in the side of his tent.
But there was something that made him stay, to continue posing as an
archaeology student.
A strange familiarity niggled at the back of his mind; the part where Seiten
Taisei raged and seethed. If he listened to his instincts, this was where Sanzo
had been poisoned by the scorpion youkai. This was where he'd removed his
coronet to defeat Kougaiji. And this was where they'd been forced to leave a
sutra behind.
Goku closed his eyes and wondered what he'd do with the thing if he did
find it. It wasn't like he could use it, after all. And he knew that even if he
did find all five, there was no way he could bring back the dead—bring back
Sanzo and Gojyo and Hakkai and Hakuryuu—with them. He didn't even think the
gods were kind enough to make a trade.
A millennium of wandering and the only thing that weighed down on his mind was
five hundred years spent trapped in Mt. Gogyou. The reminder of the past before
Sanzo had been a blessing and a curse; that half a millennium of loneliness
following his life in Heaven, which were arguably the happiest days of his
life.
He thought of Nataku and wondered if he was still comatose like Kanzeon Bosatsu
had said he was when se'd restored his memory. That was the last time he'd seen
the deity; the day se came down to Earth to congratulate them on a job well
done and give them gifts.
The brunet's reminiscing was cut short when he heard someone calling for him.
With a sigh, he stood up and walked out of his tent into the bright afternoon
sunlight.