Xina was back in the tomb within fifteen minutes, and walking tentatively through the marble hall slipping from shadow to shadow cautiously. If she were lucky the scent would still be here even after a week had passed. No air carried through the tomb, and rain never fell there. It was a stagnant collection of air that only moved at the insistence of a pair of lungs.
She stepped tentatively out of the shadows in front of the shattered tomb and concentrated on collecting scents. The servants had cleaned the debris, but she could still smell a slight taint of blood and recoiled. She should have been thankful that these humans had no sense of smell to speak of, but she wished they had cleaned better anyway.
The worst of it was that she could pick out her, Zelgadis and Zangulus's scents, but beyond that there were dozens of scents and she didn't know who they belonged to. This had done her no good at all.
"This isn't fair," she grumbled. Xina picked up a new scent, he had to be right behind her if she could smell him at all.
"Did you have a dream?" Xalan asked.
"I remembered something," she shrugged non-commitally. He arched an eyebrow and bent down to sniff out the ground. "What do you think you're doing, it's just a jumble of scents."
"Why does one of those scents go that way?" he asked, pointing deeper into the tombs. Xina glared at him. "Maybe if you ever actually hunted yourself, instead of just leaving everything to me and mom." She stuck her tongue out at him.
"I hunt!!"
"I wouldn't call what you do hunting."
"Hmph!"
It wasn't much longer before they traced the scent to a cubby hole filled with a number of things probably pillaged from the various tombs. They certainly smelled like it anyway. Of course the staff wasn't among those items.
"Great, I'll bet its miles away by now."
"It'll turn up," Xalan shrugged non-commitally. "Let's worry about this bounty hunter first."
"No, we have to get the staff!" Xina snapped.
"Why? I'll bet its full of power and it was our father's, but still...."
"There was a voice," she continued hesitantly. Surprisingly it was actually more difficult to explain her theory to her brother than it was to Zelgadis. "While I was fighting, I think it was our father's voice."
"If this is one of your tricks..." he warned.
"Why would I lie about THAT?"
"Okay, I'll buy it for now, so let's get Jol and Ame..."
"You me and Val can handle this fine, now let's get..." she started walking back down the tomb until her brother grabbed her tail. "Ouch! Hey! What's the deal?"
"Where, out curiousity, do we start?"
"We just go to the uh..." and Xina exhausted her knowledge of urban crime and cities in general. "Oh kay, we'll get everybody else. Now will you let go of my tail?"
Unsurprisingly, Amethyst didn't know much more about the underside of the city than Xina and Xalan did. Surprisngly enough Jolrael did.
"Wait a minute, how can you know about this coming from an elven city? Aren't elves the embodiment of all that is joyful and good in nature and magic?" Jolrael regarded Amethyst blankly for a moment and then blinked.
"As I was saying..."
It took them a little more than a day to track down the thief could place them on the staff's trail. They were on the road not long afterwards, traveling near the pace of a sprinting horse.
"So what are those things in the cloths there?" Xina asked Amethyst as Sailoon shrank behind them.
"Oh, I almost forgot?" Amethyst flushed scarlet for a moment from the embarrassment and handed one of the cloth bundles to Xina. "My father wanted me to give those too you. I brought mine too, this time."
"What are these?" Xina asked as she unwrapped the cloth. She grimaced when she finally unwrapped the items. A fine long sword and a heavy, dull practice blade.
"Dad said to be your sparring partner!" Amethyst declared cheerfully. Xina heard her brother snicker. Jolrael glanced at the expressions of the two Kage-Kitsune and smirked.
"Maybe I can join your spars every once in awhile," he suggested. Xina winced, and then Jol turned toward Xalan. "How about you?"
"Oh, I never miss a chance to practice with my sister," he assured them.
"Won't this be fun?" Xina managed to plaster a fake grin on her face and laughed with Amethyst.
"Sure fun, why not?"
"Zangulus? What was he doing there?"
"He sort of robbed Xellos..."
"He robbed my Xellos's grrave?!!"
"What would that bounty hunter want from a dead mazoku?" Filia asked, only moderately calmer. Val knew he was in trouble.
"How did he get in there anyway, aren't there guards?"
"Well Xina tried to stop..."
"What did he do to Xina?"
"No she's fine, Zelgadis stopped...."
"SHE'S WITH ZELGADIS!!?"
"Last I heard they were going on the road to chase..."
"WHAT?!?"
"Shi - Ouch!" he looked up to his irate mother. "Sorry, mo - " and was dragged down to Lina's eye level. The human form dragon sweatdropped.
"Where were YOU during all of this?"
"Well I had to stay in dragon form because Xina lost my...." he noticed Lina looking over his new outfit and re-ran his last statement in his head. "Oh...shoot." he said as Lina's eyes widened.
"What were you doing with my daughter that SHE had your clothes?" She shook him vigorously.
"Lina, please unhand my son," Filia said. The were-fox looked in the dragon's direction and let go of Val testily. He breathed a sigh of relief and then winced as his mother's mace smashed into his head. "I thought I taught you better than that."
"I didn't do anything! I didn't do anything!"
"Listen, you deliquent dragon..."
"I'd say its your daughter that's deliquent, no offense."
"None taken," Lina said tightly. "But ANYWAY, you are coming with us back to Sailoon, got iit?"
"Go BACK to..." the younger dragon fainted. Lina and Filia looked at each other confused.
"Oh didn't think I hit him that hard!" Filia declared dismayed, trying to wake him up.
"What was that about?" Lina wondered.