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Watching from Above

Destination 35: Reading the Newspaper

Sanzo walked around the inn room, searching for a very important item. It wasn't like him to misplace such a thing, but somehow he had. With his precious newspaper in hand, Sanzo was on a quest to find his reading glasses. Finally, when he was about to give up hope, he spotted the glasses innocently sitting on a table, as if mocking him because he didn't find them sooner. He walked towards the aforementioned table, pulled over a chair, sat down and placed the newspaper on the table's smooth surface. He picked up his glasses and before he could put them on, chaos broke loose in the form of a kitten.

Goku had entered the room with the fluffy chaotic creature in his arms. The ginger ball of fur squirmed and jumped out of his arms, making a bee line for the table. Sanzo immediately pushed his chair back as he felt something soft and furry rub his leg under the table. "Why did you bring that thing in here?"

"Because it's cute," Goku spoke as if cuteness was the answer everything and in many ways it was. Yet it wasn't a good enough excuse to bring a cat in, at least from Sanzo's perspective.

The kitten must have been feeling brave, for he leapt into Sanzo's lap and stood on his back legs placing his two front paws on Sanzo's chest for support. Then looking up at the annoyed blond he meowed happily.

Sanzo yelped and dropped his glasses. He remained immobile for a few seconds before picked up the kitten with both hands and attempting to put some distance between himself and the feline. That activity proved difficult, the kitten held on to his shirt with his little claws and refused to let go.

"Aw, he likes you," Goku chirped, "he's giving you a hug!"

Sanzo continued trying to pull the kitten away despite his meows of complaint. "I don't like him," why anyone would like that ball of fur was beyond Sanzo. Finally, the kitten gave up and let him go. "Go bother Goku," Sanzo placed the kitten on the floor. Goku extended his arms and the little feline jumped into them.

"Can we keep him?" Goku gave Sanzo his best sad kitten look to match that of the actual kitten.

"Absolutely not," Sanzo decided and Goku knew there would be no changing his mind. He ran off to play with the kitten while he still could.

After Goku was gone, Sanzo prepared to read his newspaper, but he found that once again he was missing his glasses. He remembered he dropped them when the kitten jumped on him and saw them on the floor, luckily unharmed. He got up from his chair and took a step forward in the direction of the glasses to pick them up, but before he was even close, Gojyo entered the room.

"Hey Sanzo, you're not going to believe what just happened!" The red haired water sprite approached and crush!

"No!" Sanzo yelled.

Gojyo appeared happy over Sanzo's apparent excitement to hear his tale. "Let me tell you-"

"I'm going to kill you!" Sanzo yelled.

Seeing the genuinely murderous look on Sanzo's, face Gojyo backed away. "What's wrong? What are you yelling at me for?"

"Shut up cockroach, you stepped on my glasses you idiot!" readied his revolver.

Gojyo lifted his foot to find a mass of smashed metal and glass. "Sorry about that." Clearly sorry wasn't good enough, soon the sound of gun shots echoed and bullets flew, piercing the walls. Gojyo dropped a book he was holding and concentrated on survival.

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Today Hakkai was having one of his 'spoil Hakuryu' days. It was one of those days when he couldn't help it but to marvel at the ultimate cuteness of his little dragon. Instead of being perched on his shoulders, today Hakuryu was cuddled in Hakkai's arms while Hakkai petted the little dragon and continuously remained him of how cute he is. All was cuteness and fluff in their world, until they reached their inn room and heard the gun shots. "Oh dear, it seems something made Sanzo rather upset, I wonder what it was?"

The gunshots stopped as Hakkai entered the room to find that Sanzo had Gojyo pinned against a wall with his hands firmly wrapped around his throat. Gojyo was futilely trying to pry Sanzo's hands off and feed some much needed oxygen to his starving lungs.

"I'm sure whatever it is, it can be solved without killing each other." With a smile on his face, Hakkai placed Hakuryu on his shoulders and attempted to free Gojyo from Sanzo's deadly grip. "What happened?"

Finally, the water sprite was released. He gasped for air as Sanzo glared daggers at him. "The cockroach stepped on my glasses and now I can't read the newspaper!"

"That is a problem, but I'm sure it can be solved." Hakkai spotted the mess of metal and glass on the floor. "I'll clean this up, I'm sure you can get a new pair. I saw an eye doctor's office not too far from here." Hakkai quickly placed the pieces of the broken glasses in a plastic bag which Sanzo immediately snatched.

The very annoyed blond looked sadly at the contents of the bag, before sending one last deadly glare in Gojyo's direction and finally leaving with Hakkai to visit the eye doctor.

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Once at they arrived at the eye doctor's office, Sanzo dropped the plastic bag on the counter. "I need these fixed right now."

The doctor's secretary looked at the shattered contents of the bag. "I'm sorry sir, I don't think we can fix them. You'll have to get a new pair of glasses made and for that you'll need to retake the eye exam." She ranted on and on about their offers. It was a speech that Sanzo did not want to hear. She appeared to ignore his irritated expression and she continued fully devoted to her speech. She didn't shut up until she noticed there was a revolver pointed directly at her face.

"I don't have time to waste," Sanzo insisted.

The secretary nodded so quickly you'd think her head was going to fall off her shoulders. "Yes, sir, go right in, the doctor is waiting for his next patient."

With no other choice than to get another eye exam, Sanzo entered the examination room and sat down in front of a strange contraption that looked like many binoculars put together.

"Okay, you just sit right there and I'll ask you a few questions for the exam as we go along!" The overly cheerful doctor greeted. "Let's begin, which one is better, this or this?" He switched between two different lenses in the binocular machine.

"I have no time for this!" Sanzo switched around until he saw something familiar; that was how the world used to look behind his glasses, so that was what he needed. "There, that's the one. I want my glasses ready in ten minutes."

"I'm afraid that's not possible sir. The glasses will take three days to be ready." The doctor was stepping into dangerously deadly territory, daring to 'argue' with Sanzo.

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Hakkai was in the waiting room. "Did you break your glasses too?" The secretary noticed that he appeared to be wearing only half his glasses.

"Oh, not I'm fine. I just came to make sure Sanzo doesn't kill anyone," Hakkai politely answered.

"But your glasses are broken. You should get a new pair; we just got this catalog with lots of designs." She handed him the glasses catalog.

Hakkai flipped through the catalog. He found glasses that looked identical to the pair Sanzo used to have. Maybe if he got a pair that looked the same he would forget about this incident faster. "For Sanzo, I believe he would agree to get these," Hakkai pointed at the design in the catalog.

"I'll make sure to remember that." The secretary circled the glasses with a red pen, as if her life depended on it and for all she knew, it did. Then gun shots were heard.

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Hakkai rushed to see what was going on but it looked like it ended as quickly as it stated. "Sanzo?"

"We came to an agreement. The glasses will be ready this afternoon at two and not a moment later. It's still a long wait." He glanced at the terrified doctor. "Think of yourself as lucky, I'm feeling merciful." Sanzo exited the examination room office. "Let's go back Hakkai," Hakkai nodded and soon they were heading back to the inn on jeep-Hakuryu.

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Once at the inn, Sanzo had no intentions of waiting until that afternoon to read his newspaper. Of course it was impossible to read normally without his glasses, but he realized something, his problem was reading up close, so maybe he could read the paper from a distance. Goku was all too happy to assist him. "You're still too close, go further back," Sanzo instructed.

Goku nodded and backed away while holding up the newspaper. "How is it now?"

"No that's still too close," Sanzo replied.

Goku backed up against the wall. "I don't think I can go further back than this."

"The stupid inn room is too small, let's go outside." Out on the street it looked like they had all the space they needed. Goku stood a considerable distance away from Sanzo holding up the newspaper. From that distance, Sanzo could read just fine. But their troubles didn't end there, people started to walk between them blocking Sanzo's view. "Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to read?"

"Sanzo my arms are getting tired and I'm hungry," Goku complained after a few minutes.

"Don't complain and turn the page," Sanzo ordered.

As Goku tried to turn the page, the wind blew and stole the newspaper. It was amusing to see Goku and Sanzo running after it, trying to collect all the pages.

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Hakkai looked out the window and saw the commotion. "I think it's best if Sanzo comes back inside before he becomes annoyed enough to go on a killing spree."

Gojyo agreed, "right, I'll go get him."

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It took a lot of guts and even more insults to persuade Sanzo into returning to the inn, but Gojyo finally did it. Currently, Goku sat in a corner eating, Hakkai cradled a sleeping Hakuryu in his arms and Sanzo and Gojyo sat on the couch. You could cut the tension with a knife.

Unexpectedly, Gojyo got up and picked up the book he dropped when Sanzo started shooting at him before, which Hakkai had placed on a table.

Hakkai got up for no apparent reason. "Goku, I think I saw a pizza place on the way back from the eye doctor. Why don't we bring back a lot of pizza for lunch?" Goku happily bounced out of the inn room with his bag of chips in hand. Hakkai glanced back at Gojyo who blinked in confusion, then gave a small nod as if he understood.

After Hakkai and Goku had left, Gojyo sat down on the couch again next to Sanzo, holding the book. "This is what I was trying to tell you about before you tried to kill me." He handed the book to Sanzo and waited for his reply.

Sanzo examined the book. The cover was leathery black with golden letters. The letters looked a bit blurry to him without his glasses, but they were big enough to read. "The Best of the Newspapers, collector's edition?" He opened the book and found that he could not read the print inside. Without his glasses they were all a bunch of illegible blurry black lines on white paper.

"I saw it in the glass display of a book store when I was out this morning and thought you might want to read it, since you like newspapers and all. The guy from the book store said it was a compilation of the best newspaper articles from the past ten years. It even has a few articles related to our group. He mentioned that it got pretty good reviews. Now do you believe me that stepping on your glasses was an accident? I wouldn't buy a book for you, then step on your reading glasses," Gojyo explained.

Sanzo stared at the book. It looked like it was of very good quality and truly worthy of being called a collector's edition. He had heard of the newspaper compilations that were sold every ten years, but had never actually found one. Unlike the sheets of paper used for newspapers, the book was of much higher quality and it certainly wouldn't turn his fingers black with ink. He was surprised that Gojyo would see something like this and actually buy it for him. It seemed that Hakkai knew all along. There was a long pause followed by an almost inaudible "thanks..."

By the time Hakkai and Goku returned with the pizzas, the tension in the atmosphere had dissipated. They found Gojyo reading an interesting article and Sanzo listening.

End of Destination 35

Disclaimer, I don't own Saiyuki.