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She heard the girl faintly, saying," Open.... mouth" She opened her mouth and water began to drip into her mouth, cool, refreshing and good. She was thankful that this girl did not decide to leave her...

Having surveyed the area she hesitated for a moment. The plains were a potential deathtrap, there was no where to hide, not that they hid much but they were trying to stay out of sight.

"Yessir." She said finally and took off keeping her speed down, fully aware that her Commander wasn't using his powers for a reason, or so she believed.

In a few moments they hit the plains at a rapid pace, the long coarse grass easily reached her thighs as she ran keeping one hand on her Zanpakuto. It was true she didn't know if there was anyone out there but she was being cautious.

The Asssaian saw the white-haired man coming in his direction , he knew that man was looking for him. Well, at least he didn't know where to look for the assaian,....

((-cough cough- Hey guys :'D I'm not dead yet :] And neither is my character I hope. My summer vaykay's over so it's kinda icky settling into a new routine. So I'm *kind of* caught up with what's going on but not exactly sure so....well, I planned to do this with my character anyways so I don't think when I did this matters much ^^''))

A split second before the realization of a sudden landslide dawned on the group, Maaika had changed directions and leaped away without warning. In a series of movements that were only visible as flashes to the average person, she traveled to the far side of the landslide where no damage would reach her. For her last move, she jumped up to a high but sturdy branch of a thick (dense? in terms of leaves) tree. There, she had a couple of openings to see what was around her but not enough to reveal her location to a wandering eye.

She remained almost motionless in a crouching position as if she were about to leap off the branch at any moment. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, she surveyed the area around her quickly before letting her reiatsu draw up another mental map in her mind. A faint whiff of another presence right before she noticed the landslide was what caused her abnormal and almost panicked reaction. Though it was too brief a moment for Maaika to figure out anything about who it was, it was enough to draw suspicion. Maybe she was just being a bit paranoid since the whole incident of arriving at the soul society. Maybe there was something going on after all.

Putting her thoughts aside, the mental map she drew up showed her another person with the captain's group. From where she was to them was about the extent of her map right now. Her reiatsu was returning rather slowly since the seal just completely worn off not too long ago and she needed a lot more to sustain a larger map of her surroundings. Now that they were in a safe place and with the landslide out of the way, Maaika considered returning back to the group since they were now moving through the plains and further off the map. She jumped down from the tree and used shunpo to catch up to the group before matching her pace with the others.
She grinned lazily at the group, "Sorry I ran off for a bit." She said and then gestured to the girl in Yu's arms. "Who's this?" She wondered aloud though she had witnessed the whole thing.

((lul this turned out a bit wordier than I expected and a bit out of character...-shrugs- Meiji chocolate is SO AMAZING O_O I just had...469Calories of it ;O And yall know whats weird? I have a cold o-o And it's like, 95 degrees outside. Yerr.))

Yu nodded to the girl, he wasn't particularly sure where she had gone but now she was back the group was complete again.

"I...don't know?" Yu looked down at the girl in his arms, "Aheh."

The Plains seemed to go on for quite a while, usually this would have taken him mere moments, mostly to think about where he was going rather than time it would have taken. They had left the cliffs suitably behind as well.

For a moment he thought he heard something but he put it down to his ears playing tricks on his mind.

Yu also stopped but at the moment he was quite obviously the weakest of the group at the moment, although that shouldn't prevent him from helping or directing the group. At that moment the ambushers decided to reveal themselves.

Clad in stone armor they reminded him of the Terracotta army for a moment.

"Why choose stone...?" He knew full well that Stone tended be brittle and very heavy yet these...whoever they were didn't seem to mind the weight, "Everyone keep your guard up. Something isn't right." They were armed mainly with spears and blades also tipped with the stone. Whatever it was it looked integral to their plan.

Before he could give further orders the group of bandits, around twenty of them all rushed forwards. Holding the girl in one hand he was forced to draw his Zanpakuto haphazardly.

"Contact!" He yelled. An old term he had become used to during his short stint with the 2nd.

The assaian was not going to join in. He wanted to see how strong the Commander and his group was.

What confused Maaika more than the fact that she didn't even sense these people approaching was their curious armor. Stone? She was about to scoff at the absurdity of it before one of the men swung a sword at her. Jumping back a step, she moved just out of reach of the tip of his sword. The big hat that she 'borrowed' earlier hampered her vision so she took it off. She squinted slightly at the sun's rays and took a few steps backwards toward the center of the circle where the captain and now-conscious girl were.
"Scary." She muttered, pouting slightly.