Of Love and Death.

The Present Chapter 10: Homeward Bound Pt. 4

     Shu rubbed his eyes, incredibly thankful, for once, that he was jet lagged. It only felt like noon to him, which was great. What wasn't great was that he'd departed from Spain after only a couple hours to rest from his flight from New York. Traveling sucks sometimes. So he was tired, felt completely disoriented after walking around in three time zones in the past two days, and didn't even feel like it was time to sleep. So, nevermind. He wasn't glad to be jet lagged.

     That was awful, Valt remarked in Shu's head. Shu turned to look at his crush who was walking right alongside him. Valt looked, perhaps, even worse for wear than Shu did. To be honest, the only person who seemed completely unaffected by all of the chaos that this flight had been was Free. Which was to be expected, considering that it was Free. He had a talent for basically everything. Ilya and Kit were also hanging in there, although the former seemed very upset about all of the delays.

     "I AM NEVER FLYING ON A PLANE AGAIN!" Ilya declared as soon as she stepped outside the tube that connected the plane to the airport. Instead of laughing at her remark, there were groans of agreement from everyone onboard. Shu felt especially bad for Ilya, considering that she had been stuck with Kit in the back row, and had been the very last person on the plane. "They were a stupid invention and Earth was doing just fine without them, you know," Ilya continued. Shu was fairly certain that she kept speaking but he tuned her out, turning back to Valt.

     "Yeah, it was," Shu whispered. He glanced up at Free, who was leaning against the wall, watching as everyone got ready to head to the bag pickup area. The former number one blader in the world seemed content to observe the chaos. Shu was actually kind of surprised that Free was sticking with the group. He'd managed to pack everything he would need in an overhead bag, so he didn't need to pick up a checked bag. If Shu was Free, he'd likely have ran to a hotel as soon as possible. Well, no, Shu would wait for Valt. "You good though?" He asked Valt.

     The blue-haired blader nodded, but still looked awful. All things considered, I'm as good as I can be. But I want sleep, Valt announced. Shu laughed quietly at that, drawing a look from Fubuki who was close enough to hear him laughing at nothing.

     Clang! The sound resounded all throughout the mostly empty airport, causing everyone to look toward who had made the sound. Standing in front of the crowd of exhausted bladers was Kris with what appeared to be a small gong in her hand and a mallet in the other. How she had gotten those through security, Shu had no idea. "Alright everyone," Kris began, placing her impossible noise making instruments in her pink and black striped bag. "Let's go to the bathroom and then get our bags. Sooner we do this, the sooner we can meet up with everyone waiting for us and/or go to sleep."

* * *

     Kit did not expect to be tackled as soon as he into the public part of the airport. However, it happened. He barely had time to register the barren airport before he and Ilya were nearly crushed under the weight of three excited, lovable, universal police officers, basically. Laban, Reina, and Pheng lept upon him, pressing him into a huge bear hug. Not that any of them were actually bears, Kit had checked after learning about Ilya. Apparently Reina and Pheng were both human, well, sort of, in Pheng's case.

    "EEEEEEEEEEE!" Reina screeched. "YOU'RE ALL HERE! AND NOT FOR FIVE REASONS SO WE CAN HANG OUT!" Granted, she wasn't the only one who was excitedly screaming. Pheng just wasn't saying words, more sounds. Kit tried to smile at his team, but found he was being hugged too tightly to do so. So instead he just decided to hope his ears wouldn't bleed from all of the loud noise. He wasn't too hopeful.

     After a long moment, Ilya finally pushed out from the giant group hug. "Okay!" The Five's leader of sorts, announced, splaying out her hands in the hopes of getting her teammates to calm down. Although Kit didn't know who she thought she was fooling. "We're all excited to see each other for non-work purposes, but Reina, would you please stop shouting in Latin? You're getting weird looks."