Chapter XXXII: The Mighty Pencil ~Kyanosa

Kaia, Kyanosa, Mazzic, and Mecha were wandering through an area that vaguely resembled the aforementioned Big, except that this one had a rough covering of very brown dead or dying grass and a few liberally scattered trees. Mazzic was in the lead, diligently leading the quartet forward into the very exciting expanse of further grass. Kaia was kind of following, every once in a while losing her focus and taking a quick walking nap, which would have her go completely straight until she woke up and promptly fell into step behind Mazzic. Kyanosa was following Kaia closely, often tripping over his own feet as he had grown accustomed to watching them and now his sights were so intent on following Kaia that he failed to note that he still had two. Mecha was behind Kyanosa, making sure he didn't fall onto his sword, and not much else since that took up most of anybody's energy.

In one of the group's more groupy moments, Kaia suddenly stopped and sat down, causing Kyanosa to trip over her leg and faceplant a few feet away. "I'm tired of walking. Where are we going? How far away is it? Why are we going there? Why couldn't we go with another group? How long until we eat? Why are you on the ground? What are you anyway?"

Mecha looked at her. "A Yoshi. What are you?" Since that was the only question anybody remembered enough to answer, Mazzic and Kyanosa just blinked. Actually, Kyanosa also stood up. That's important.

Mazzic looked at Kyanosa. "Where are we going?"

Kyanosa looked back at him. "Aren't you leading?"

"I was waiting for you to say where to go."

"I don't know where to go. The terrain changed too much with all the exploding. I don't know if anything's still standing."

"So we've just been wandering for hours?"

"Pretty much, I guess so."

Kaia scooted over to a log on the ground, sat on it, and pouted. "Doesn't feel like hours. Feels like we haven't done anything for a month."

Mazzic sighed. "More like a month and two days."

Kyanosa smiled. "Oh, you haven't felt a month of nothing yet."

Mecha raised a finger. "Can somebody do something productive?"

Mazzic crossed his arms. "First we need an idea of the area around us. That way we can form some sort of general plan."

"We could split into teams and search, then get back together and compare notes."

"But then we might get lost and die and things. Besides, what if we all search the same areas, losing productivity, or forget what we saw? And what if you get into trouble?"

Kyanosa raised an eyebrow. "What about you?"

"I think I can handle most of what this place has to offer."

Mecha nodded. "What if we mapped it from the air?"

Mazzic put a hand to his chin. "That could work, but we'd have to get pretty high up."

Kaia pointed to her wings. "I can fly. I can go up and look around."

Mecha sighed. "I intend no offense, but I'm not sure that you can remember the whole landscape and relate it to all of us. We would need a hard copy. Does anybody have any paper?"

Then all looked at Kyanosa, who had gotten out his book to look for maps and was now hugging it possessively. "Mine."

Mazzic turned away. "It wouldn't matter anyway. We would need something to draw with."

"Oh! I can do that!" they all looked back to Kyanosa. "No, really, I need that log." Kyanosa draw his sword and walked over to the log on which Kaia was sitting. He sawed off a small branch and cut another end from that, ending up with a foot-long stick maybe a centimeter in length. He shifted to Fire power and lit the very end of the stick, burning it partially and extinguishing any leftover flame. He held the stick like a pencil with the burned end down and rubbed it across the book's back paper cover, leaving a dark mark.

Mazzic nodded, impressed that Kyanosa had the mental capacity to note that fire burns things. "Alright. So give her the stick and book and let her make a map."

Kyanosa shook his head. "No, that won't work. It'll need to be burned repeatedly to keep writing, and returning here would be a waste of time."

Kaia, raised her hand. "I can do fire." She stood, and flapped her wings, quickly forming a fireball in front of her, which quickly shot a couple hundred feet away and incinerated a tree.

Kyanosa blinked, wondering in the back of his head if she could teach him how his umbrella yet. "Right, but you have to stop flying to do that. That's not good; gravity and all."

Mecha had just returned from looking at the remains of the tree, but nobody noticed. He'd done it so quickly that nobody knew he was gone. "Also, you run the risk of killing the stick."

"I, on the other hand, can control my fire powers to a tee!" He thrust his finger in the air triumphantly, accidentally shot a fireball up, and watched as the burning corpse of a bird dropped to the ground near the group. "Hm, there are birds here. Anyway, you could take me up and I could use the parasol to get down."

Mecha placed a hand on his shoulder. "How well can you control flight with that parasol?" Kyanosa looked at his feet and kicked the ground. "Exactly. I think the best way would be for Kaia to carry Kyanosa around while flying. then she can keep him up there while he concentrates on the map and burning things."

Mazzic thought. Go figure. "It's not bad, but can she carry him around?" Kaia walked over to Mazzic, grabbed his ankle, and picked him up, balancing him on her palm such that he remained upright. "Okay then."

"We will stay here and wait. maybe look for food."

Kyanosa pulled out his book and stick. "I dunno. I've been here for a few days solid, I've only slept twice, and I have yet to eat. I'm not sure how necessary food is."

"We'll do it anyway. Otherwise we'll be bored."

He nodded. "Fair enough."

Kaia put Mazzic down. "What would be the most comfortable way to do this."

Despite being a male student in an American high school, Kyanosa repressed the instinct to make a joke. "Just grab my ankles like that and I'll hang upside-down. If I tilt my head up, I'll get a bird's eye view, and the only concern would be dropping the pencil or book."

Mazzic rubbed his ankle, a bit insulted. "What if we end up with an upside-down map?"

"The only alternative I can think of that frees up both my hands would be if she held me around the waist. Which I wouldn't mind." He grinned like he had just made a joke.

Marginally oblivious, Kaia nodded. "The first one then." She stooped down, grabbed his ankles, and took off, giving Kyanosa a half-second to get a grip on his belongings, remember something about blood rushing to one's head, and start scanning the landscape.

Mazzic nudged Mecha. "Is there anything else going on with her we should know about?"

Mecha looked at Kaia, then back to Mazzic. "Kaia, female human-like lifeform. Five feet, six inches tall. One hundred fifteen pounds. Glowing wings and eyes, different magic of unknown type inherent in each. Able to lift great amounts, though probably not as much as I. General motion speaks towards a person trained in the physical arts. Her measurements are-"

Mazzic held up a hand. "Forget I asked."

Ten minutes later, some headway had been made. Kaia and Kyanosa had a rough sketch of an area maybe ten miles wide, and the latter had spotted the Yoshi Sanctuary, which he was sure had something of value inside. Unfortunately, he was getting progressively woozy, and Kaia's arms were getting stiff. Oh, and neither could look behind them, that'll come into play in a few paragraphs.

Looking from the ground, Mecha was scanning the sky in the general area of Kaia and Kyanosa, watching their progress. He blinked, trying to make out a dot hovering near them. He let his vision system do the work and squinted at it, quickly dropping the possibility that it was a bird. Heck, it looked human, or at least had all of its limbs in the right places. It was also getting closer to the others.

He glanced at Mazzic, who was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. An analysis told Mecha that he had lapsed into some kind of dream world. He didn't risk trying to wake him up, since he had no idea that Mazzic had such a trait and was worried about possible repercussions from doing so, like mental damage to Mazzic or the removal of Mecha's head. He contented himself with watching the other two and the suspicious dot near them.

Instantly, the dot accelerated, so we'll switch points of view. Kyanosa heard a faint noise, somewhere between buzzing and putting, but he was in no overall condition to bend his neck further and look for the source. Kaia heard nothing; she was heavy into a daydream, and anyway had long ago blocked out all sounds, since most of them were from Kyanosa as he really, really tried to flirt. Thus neither was expecting it when the dot, who in fact was a human, smashed into Kaia's side.

Kaia instantly lost her grip on Kyanosa, dropping him and falling to the side. Kyanosa fell through the air, only half understanding what was going on. He felt somebody grab his ankle, and looked up in anticipation of another witty remark. Instead of Kaia, however, he found himself looking at a person not entirely alien to Kyanosa, but with blond hair and a metal vest. He held Kyanosa's leg with one metal-clad hand and floated in the air by means of a jetpack on his back.

The young man shot an evil grin at Kyanosa. "Always watch your back." The jetpack disappeared and they both started falling. A headband shimmered into existence on the man's forehead, and he threw Kyanosa downward with a force that boggled both minds before reverting to the jetpack and stopping his descent. Kyanosa, who was still too spaced-out to know what was going on, knew enough to keep a grip on his book and makeshift pencil but didn't think to use any powers. He tried to remember from where he knew that face, where Kaia was, and why the heck the well-dressed man in the center of the universe had chosen yellow for the books' cover. Kyanosa didn't like yellow, or many things that are yellow. He looked down, with was still up for him, and wondered how hard the ground was, then took a quick nap.