Hello one and hello all; welcome to this chapter. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed planning it. I'd say writing, but at times that can be a little tedious during the dull moments. But enough ramblings! On to what you came here for. Enjoy

The Tenth Tribe

Chapter: 5

From One Storm to Another

It was close to midnight by the time Jackie uncle and Tohru got home; hours later than Jackie wanted to be. Before uncle could grab his attention about warding the shop from the new evil at large Jackie climbed the steps to the living area to check on jade. She didn't pick up when he phoned to let her know they were coming home and that worried him. Jade was normally quite a light sleeper even if she struggled to get out of bed in the mornings, so her not hearing her cell phone ring after two attempts was not a good sign in his books.

Entering her room he had to admit that it was too quiet. He smiled a little when he noticed cough medicine on her bedside table, he was also surprised to find a bowl of cold water there as well and that she had placed a damp wash cloth on her head before going to sleep. 'She really can look after herself.' Taking the cloth off from her head he mindlessly went through the routine of cooling the cloth down again as he thought about the events of the night.

Why did the shadow scrolls turn to ash? Was it because they reacted badly to the good magic surrounding them? But if that was true then how were they protected from evil before now? Jackie didn't think this was correct, but the tests that uncle had done on the ash confirmed that it was thanks to the good magic around the scrolls that caused them to be destroyed. They had to be missing something!

Sighing once again Jackie finished ringing out the wash cloth and placed it back onto his nieces head, brushing her hair out of the way first. 'I wonder why jade hasn't asked for a hair cut yet. Normally she's very adamant that she wants short hair, but it looks like it hasn't been cut in a month. Hehe maybe she's finally touching into her feminine side and growing it long. Wait didn't she just get her hair cut a couple of weeks ago? I'm sure she did; sigh better check to see if any of uncles potion ingredients are missing.'

By now Jackie had his fingers lightly wrapped with her hair. Slowly untangling his fingers to prevent her waking up, he couldn't help but notice how pale jade's forehead was compared to his fingers. Peering a little closer Jackie got even more concerned as he noticed her skin actually had a blue tinge to it.

Jackie was worried now; he quickly left the room to collect a thermometer and checked her temperature by placing it under her armpit. Jackie's concern grew as jade was still out for the count even as he carefully manoeuvred her so he could get the thermometer under her armpit. The icing on the cake however was when he saw just how hot jade really was.

"39.2 degrees!(102.6F)" Jackie quickly left the room all the while calling for Tohru and fishing his cell phone out of his pocket.

"Jackie what is it what's wrong?" Tohru called as he ascended the stairs as fast as they would let him. Jackie didn't look up as he started dialling his local hospitals number.

"It's jade; she has a fever of 39.2. I'm calling the hospital to tell them that I am bringing her over, if you could carry her into the car with her quilt for me thanks. Oh, hi my name is..." Jackie turned around at the same time Tohru started to head off towards jades room.

Picking her up, quilt and all, Tohru started to shake with worry as he carefully carried her down the stairs and heading towards the door. He gave out a silent prayer to whoever was listening that the rains seemed to be letting up for now as he juggled with the door to Jackie's car and not dropping jade. Fortunately it was here that Jackie came to lend a hand and opened the door for Tohru to place jade into the car.

As Jackie drove off with jade Tohru was still shacking like a leaf, it got to the point that he had to hold onto his arms to try and calm down. He knew he was worried about jade but having this strong a reaction over it seemed wrong. As he calmed down he began to think and then it hit him.

"The wards! I didn't feel them at all when I left the shop; they must be completely down. I have got to get those back up as fast as possible" and with a determined glint in his eye Tohru went back into the shop to research.

Yami was worried, try as she might she couldn't make contact with her queen. She was currently meditating within the shadow realm, trying to contact her queen once again. From what she could gather from the visions her Shadowkhan have shown her, her queen was beginning to enter the final stages of the transformation. The transformation to become completely demon was, at the best of times, an exhausting and even painful time; but the mortal virus she had appeared to be causing complications.

Not only that, but with the volume of chi her queen had was also extending the process. This thought actually excited the general; her queen, with no foundation to magic, other than the few attempts she managed herself, was already on her fourth day of the transformation and her chi was still in the process of changing its nature.

This spoke wonders of just how much potential jade had within her. Yami had to agree with her queen's statement about her relatives; they truly were fools for not taking advantage of such a vast well of power.

Speaking of the devil Yami suddenly felt a connection to her queen and latched onto it before it had a chance to escape her clutches. With the tiny trace of a connection established Yami forced a portion of her conscious to try and communicate with her queen.

What she found upon her arrival was a black void of nothingness, the darkness held no warmth, and was if anything more oppressive than her time spent under Tarakudo. Shouting out into the nothingness Yami was rewarded by a slight moan that seemed to come from everywhere and yet nowhere. Spurred on by this revelation she called out again; her persistence was rewarded as a figure started to appear on the ground.

The figure was in a fatal position and appeared to be trembling slightly. Getting closer to the body Yami quickly realised that it was both a faded image of her queen, meaning that her connection to the mortal plane at best was as weak as her current connection to her queen; and that the trembling was actually more of a shiver of someone one being cold, not scared.

"My queen. Come on now wake up for me my queen" Yami called to jade as she lightly tapped the see through cheek. This produced the biggest response yet; one of the eyes opened to see what was going on before the other slowly did the same. Her queen was still see-through but at least a part of her conscience was responding.

"Mmm, nnngh. Huh. Yami? Wha, what's going on? Where are we? What are you doing?"

"We are within your mind. You must have completely lost consciousness after I left on my mission. The Shadowkhan I had protecting you showed me that your uncle has taken you to the hospital."

Jade blinked owlishly for a second or two as her brain was only firing on one cylinder and needed the extra time for the information to register.

"I'm at the hospital" Yami nodded her head in conformation "Jackie drove me over there after he got back from the museum" another nod from Yami set this information in her head. But she knew there was something missing, something that she needed to ask about that involved her uncle's trip the museum, but just couldn't think of what it was.

Jade was just too tired to think clearly, she guessed her illness was worse than she thought; she felt herself start to drift off once again. Apparently her tiredness was clearly visible because Yami quickly asked what she should be doing while her queen was indisposed. Jade couldn't get anything from her head to even start to make sense, let alone get it coherent enough to work out a plan of action.

A thought struck Jade from out of nowhere; didn't she already have an additional plan laid out and waiting for her to give the go ahead. It sounded like something she would do in case of just such an emergency.

"Start that other plan that I told you about" the words were slurring together but enough of them stayed apart for Yami to get an idea of what she meant.

"Which plan my queen? The aggressive or the infiltration plan?"

"Aggressive, mumble mumble snort! NO! Must be different from evry on else. Place spies, make network. Know everything. Go quiet part 2. Pancake god says mumble zzz..." The see through jade disappeared from the plain indicating that Yami's connection to her queen had been lost once again.

This didn't worry her though; her mind was now focused on her queen's orders. Yami had gathered from the sleep induced ramblings that phase 2 was to start and it had to be done quietly. This would prove significantly harder than the aggressive plan Yami had thought of.

On top of that, it sounded like her queen wanted a spy network established as well. Yami simply turned from her spot and headed towards the door of the shadow plain that only she could see.

"You do like to give out challenges my queen. Established a base of operations away from prying eyes and leave nothing to tip off its location. So, I have to legally obtained an appropriate head quarters with minimal funds collected from various places to avoid additional suspicion. Sit tight my queen I may be gone for a day or so but I will obtain a place worthy of you."

Jackie was pacing back and forth within the waiting room of the hospital; he had no idea that jade was so ill. She was certainly pale and he thought she looked a little discoloured, but apparently even the slightest colouring change is quite the concern. She was rushed into the ward and was currently being tested for so many different things that Jackie couldn't remember even one of them.

Before long a young bald African American doctor with a goatee walked up to him with a neutral expression on his face.

"Mister Chan, your niece is in a stable condition and from the looks of things it was just a minor case of phenomena that we managed to catch before it got a chance to develop. However what is concerning us is her skin colour.

"Normally a situation like this is caused by a lack of oxygen circulating but so far there are no other symptoms to support this; her airways are clear and her O2 stats are within the normal range, if anything there a little on the high side. There is also no sign of trauma around the neck to indicate induced suffocation. I'd ask if she has been like this her whole like but the question is redundant since we have her GP report and nothing is mentioned anywhere about blue skin.

"We've taken some blood and have started testing to see what is causing this, and from what few results we have so far nothing appears to be wrong with her."

"If you can find nothing wrong with her when will I be allowed to take her home? I don't like the idea of her changing colour but if you can't find the problem..." Jackie left the question in the air but the doctor seemed to get at what Jackie was trying to say.

"From what I can tell so far nothing life threatening is happening to her. We would like to keep her at the hospital for a couple of days just for observation but if that all checks out then you should be able to take her back by then. Of course this would depend of her being completely healthy apart from her skin colour."

Jackie sighed in relief, while the thought of Jade changing colour terrified him for a reason he couldn't quite remember, the news that apart from that was still very reassuring. The doctor placed his hand on Jackie's shoulder in a reassuring gesture.

"You looked after her very well. From the last appointment there was nothing to indicate that this was anything other than a simple case of the flu. You can go and see her if you want but I don't think she will be waking up any time soon. What I would suggest is that you get yourself cleaned up before she sees you; no offence but it looks like you need more medical treatment than your niece" looking over himself, Jackie started to feel the aches and pains from his fight with the general. Sheepishly scratching the back of his head he followed the doctor to the clinic to get himself patched up.

Keeping to her queen's request, Yami stayed silent and unnoticed by everyone and everything as she and her Shadowkhan infiltrated every retail business and bank she stumbled upon and retrieved funding for her queen's plans. Her queen wanted no evidence at ALL and while she didn't say why Yami guessed that her queen's uncle must have access to quite an information network; so taking just 10 dollars per place she robbed should not leave sufficient evidence for anyone to pick up on. The problem was that this method was ineffective in gathering large funds; it was also very time consuming.

Daylight was starting to appear and she had only managed to collect 5000 dollars; looking at businesses that sold property she couldn't even attempt to buy a property with the measly sum of money she had collected so far and would take her months if she continued at the current rate.

Growling in frustration as she walked by yet another property shop with all of its buildings going for substantially over her current budget, her eyes are drawn to a bright and colourful poster advertising a place called Las Vegas.

Her knowledge of the present time was purely thanks to her time spent training her queen. Jade was adamant that she needed to learn about the current period in time; that not having it would be like walking around with a brightly glowing sign screaming "I'm the latest evil trying to take over the world! Please come and stop me!"

Within the short amount of time that Jade had to teach her general, she had managed to get a feel on what the most obvious things where in this time line. Like the currency of the country, how to get about using public transport, and who had the job of ensuring the peace.

Yami also glanced through the dictionary within her queen's room to make sure that the meaning of words hadn't changed. Yami felt that she could blag herself as a tourist from another country successfully if she got some of the stranger words wrong; though she would be keeping an eye out for these giant spiders that have apparently covered the world in a web that everyone must connect to. 'I must remember to ask her majesty why they trust this 'Internet' to spiders once this mission is over.'

Shaking her head out of that train of thought, she re-read the sign that was hanging in the window.

"Hmm, 'tour former Mafia gang hide outs before trying out your luck and beating them out of their money!' Well, well this 'Las Vegas' place has had its share of crime and gambling problems. I wonder if they still play Chō-Han in their gambling dens? Well, even if they don't its likely they will have something similar that I can swindle them out of the money I need.

"Chuckle maybe I can even find some remains of old gangs that this Mafia drove out of business, and persuade them to help my queen. After all she's asked for a lot and a few extra hands that know what to do should get the ball rolling nicely; as the modern saying goes.

"Yes, thinking about it a trip to this 'Las Vegas' really is starting to sound better and better." And with that last comment to herself, Yami summons her Shadowkhan back to her before disappearing into the shadows with them, off to the desert land with fountains in front of every building.

Tohru sat down as heavily as he could without breaking the chair. It had taken the rest of the night, but the wards around the shop were now fully powered once again, meaning the family was safe from this new demon general and her Shadowkhan. Uncle was doing research on what this general might be looking for, as well as trying to find information on her. Unfortunately information on both questions was minimal at best and not really turning up any good leads; or too many leads but he couldn't narrow the list of items down without more information.

Uncle even tried a location spell to try and see what the general was up too. While he managed to pick up multiple shadow signals throughout the city there was nothing to indicate that anything was happening other than she was looking for something. Just to be sure though, Uncle would get Jackie to contact Capitan Black and see if anything was taken from the locations he had been able to see.

Speaking of Jackie, he had returned from the hospital not too long ago, looking a little better than when he had left with Jade. The bruises and cuts around his hands and face had been taken care of and this brought a slight smile to uncle. If Jackie had gotten looked at, then Jade must not be in that critical condition; this thought was confirmed as Jackie told both himself and Tohru what the doctor had told him.

With the news that Jade would be well and home again in a few days, the wards around the shop restored to full power and knowing that the demon general appears to not know what she is looking for, all of this allowed Uncle to call it a night and get some rest. Tomorrow was just starting, but a few hours rest to recover from such an intense night was certainly what his good chi called for.

Ah another chapter done and dusted. Hope you liked it and thanks in advance for any and all reviews. Things should start to pick up in action on the next chapter, but if not then defiantly the one after; try and get a roller coaster of excitement going on with this thing. Hopefully the wont be too long, but I will be the first to admit that my time keeping on these things is not the best; but that a bit of OCD for you. To be perfectly honest I couldn't tell you if it's true or not, but I really do enjoy getting these stories of mine just so.