Welcome to Gaia! ::

So! This is a reposting, as I am rewriting this fic from the beginning. I'm kind of hoping for some feedback on how it's working, since I'm not really sure of my own ability to keep everything straight as I revise. Any comments are useful and appreciated, and I answer all questions.

BETA READER = InkMistress. heart


Title: Changing Death

Warnings: Death, Blood, Swearing, Violence

Genres: Action, Adventure, Angst, Drama, Psychological, Suspense

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: Yuusuke/Keiko

Summary: A single lie blossoms into many, and good intentions behind a quiet betrayal shatter the team, even as they must combat an unnamed force that may destroy more than one world. Set six months following the Dark Tournament.

Important Notes: Though Yuusuke/Keiko is the only overt pairing, there will be the occasional heavy subtext for Kuwabara/Yukina, Koenma/Botan, Hiei/Kurama, and Yuusuke/Kurama; ignore at your leisure. There's no focus on romance in any case, and there will be no sexual situations whatsoever. There are occasional mentions of suicide and attempted suicide, but nothing in-depth or graphic.

Occasional reference made to Define Mercy by Blossomwitch, which I've adopted as canon (with permission) for the purposes of the plot. It establishes two facts for this fic: 1) that Hiei is immensely claustrophobic, and 2) that Kurama negotiated parole on his behalf and agreed to see that he obeyed it.

2/19/10: I will no longer be having home internet access for a long while; if you have comments or concrit, please drop it on my e-mail at borderline_mary@hotmail.com -- I'll have a better chance of periodically accessing that than Gaia. If that's a hassle, look me up on FanFiction.Net; reviews from there go to my e-mail inbox. Sorry, all!

Changing Death
1: Presence and Absence


Chapter Theme Song: Fire Sign (David Berkeley)


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-The Present: July, 1989-

She looked out her window and realized that it was becoming light outside; she'd been up all night again without really intending to. Her homework was still not quite finished, and she really couldn't recall where the hours had all gone; now, knowing it was close to time, she closed her books, stowed them in her bag, and got up to prepare. Today it would be hot again, and she would need to leave early so that she would pass some of her wait outside in the cooler morning.

Standing outside―it had become her favorite hobby.

Yuusuke's apartment was in a relatively well-to-do district, and was a pleasantly short distance from her parents' ramen shop, but the walk had begun to seem long and foreboding; yet she took it every day and every night when her studies permitted, and stood outside, sometimes waiting for the door to open and Yuusuke to step out to walk to school (which was unsettlingly frequent these days), and other times for the light to go out in the single curtained window at the end of the day. She had not been inside for more than two weeks, though she had used to come in all the time since the Tournament in order to visit with his mother and make sure the place was clean; it had been a welcome induction into a private portion of his life, where he openly (but fondly) fought with Atsuko and shamelessly prevailed upon his female friend―based on her supposed innate expertise in all things domestic―to tidy up for the two of them. Now she would just stand on the street with her school bag in her hands and say nothing―nothing, when he joined her or when she left.

It was all right. She always knew where he was now.

This morning would be no different from any other in the past three weeks. He would exit his apartment, walk silently with her to school, and go to most of his classes without much complaint, though he kept up all his appearances once he was there and even talked trash with the other toughs. Leaving for the roof an hour or so before the day was out fulfilled the defiant class-skipping expected of him, and he waited for her there. The teacher, inured long ago to his abrupt withdrawals from class, never commented when he stood up and walked out every day; in fact, he seemed almost fond of the delinquent now that he had begun to arrive for classes on a regular basis. Principal Takenaka certainly was, and while Yuusuke would snub him and mouth off as he always had before, it had no real heart in it. His academic performance was the best it had ever been―not that he ever bothered with his homework, but just being in class, he learned enough to raise his test scores. It made her happy; he would never be book-smart, but she had always known he could hold his own.

After school, Yuusuke let her walk to his house with him, just as silent as in the mornings, and she had begun to look forward to their arrival at the building and the change in him that came with it. She was not ever invited inside anymore, but he always seemed reluctant to enter as well, and would begin to talk and even joke with her like normal for as long as she had time to linger. She would preach, he would shrug, she would scold, he would insult, and they would walk through the familiar push-pull of words with perfect choreography. When she left, she knew (from the glances she could not help but take over her shoulder) that he never watched her go, only stood looking out into the city until she was no longer able to see him.

She also knew that he usually went to visit Kuwabara after that, and was aware that the walk to his house was, in some bizarre path of logic, for her benefit and not his. Strangely, that made her feel better about his long silences and often-forced cheer. It meant he still cared.

And he did. He was still the same Yuusuke―just subdued, and more brooding than she'd ever known him to be. With this came things for which she had half-hoped for a long time: he spent time with her much more often, made an effort at school, and didn't get into fights much anymore. The silences weren't even that bad, really; they had come to be almost comfortable, as she had accepted over the last few weeks that he did not need to talk about anything during their walks, and forcing it on him would only strain him further. What he gave her after was enough.

Why she came to this street after nightfall to watch his lights go out, she was never sure; but she always did now. Often while she waited, and shadows glossed through the dim glow as he moved about inside, she reflected on what one person's absence had brought about.

When the two of them spoke, they never, ever talked about Kurama.

For herself, she was not sure how to feel about it. She had not really known Kurama very well. He was a charming, polite memory in her mind, tempered with an overlay of his acts of violence at the Tournament; the most vivid impression of him was actually a reflection of desperation in Yuusuke's eyes, as Kurama had nearly been killed several times over. She had always watched Yuusuke's eyes, and many of his friends had their own identities there. Of Kurama's personality, she recalled little, and had not spoken to him directly more than perhaps once or twice. In her mental image he was enigmatic and dangerous, and she had never been totally comfortable with him. Yuusuke, on the other hand―

She was not the sort to be jealous of anyone, but she had almost been tempted. Yuusuke plainly didn't know any other girls who were not off-limits in various ways, so she knew she was special―but the closeness he displayed when in the company of his demon-fighting team could still exclude her, and of all of them, Kurama had always made his eyes change the most.

Kuwabara was obviously Yuusuke's best friend―there was no disputing it. They hung out together almost constantly, bickered like a married couple, and were the quintessential tough guy pals. There was no mystery to them at all. Hiei―well, Hiei was nobody's friend. She found him a rather nasty little man, and he in turn ignored her as though she were transparent whenever she was present. With Yuusuke, he was straightforward and fair, and that was the most that could be said for him. Kurama had always been somewhere in the middle of them: never as close as Kuwabara, never as distant as Hiei, and his own brand of friend that was strange to her in many ways. He, at least, had been quite cordial, even warm, towards her and everyone else. She felt that otherwise she would have found him as unpleasant to be around as Hiei, no matter what else he was like.

Some of that had to do with Yuusuke. The way Yuusuke had used to talk about him sometimes―with an unlikely blend of trust and suspicion, camaraderie and worry―made her feel very . . . displaced. And even now that Kurama was gone, and Yuusuke's eyes had been the same faded brown ever since, Yuusuke still had never talked about her that way. Sometimes, though not often, she was nearly tempted to worry him on purpose, to see if perhaps he finally would. But she knew she would never have the heart.

She could see, as perhaps no one else could, just how hard it was for him to remain almost normal. She didn't know if she really understood why. Even when he had died, she had kept her own footing with very little struggle, though the pain had been the worst she could imagine feeling. How Yuusuke could be losing his own―and he was, slowly―was confusing. Her own inability to blame him was all that kept it from being hurtful. She had seen him fight, and seen how deeply he felt for his friends, and knew he would never fall apart if he had a choice―they needed him too much. That, at least, made sense. It was why he walked with her; he knew she needed him, too.

So she spent her time waiting for him to catch himself or fall, ready for either, and guiltily enjoyed the changes in him that brought him to her more often than before, that kept him from trouble and let her gently usher him into a normal life. She thought that maybe, if he stayed together, he would stop fighting altogether, and never return to the dangerous life he had shown her only once. The Tournament would be over for him, finally.

And, if he fell apart, maybe he would finally need her, too.

It seemed odd to her that she was still waiting for disaster. All the ways he had changed were good, were things she had always wanted to see in him. So why, she asked the rising sun as she walked, did she feel like she was losing him?

Each thought marked a footstep, each footstep a breath; for the morning had begun, and she was on her way to his house again.

Changing Death
3: The Definition of Irony

Chapter Theme Song: Opium (Marcy Playground)

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-May, 1989-

Hiei shifted his legs to ease the discomfort of the bark burrowing into his back, consequently inflicting a minor snag in his cloak, the which he freed with some annoyance. Were it to tear, he was out of spares (his last farcical excuse for a mission having ruined his only remaining one), and he knew the material of this one was becoming flimsy, if tree bark could hook it and leave a ripple in the fabric. He was going to have to be very careful until he had an excuse to be in the Makai again and could locate more of the flame-resistant cloth, given that he doubted the Reikai had any on hand, or would care to ask if he thought they did.

Today had been a trying day overall, or he might not be bothered by such an inanity―boredom had reached new and exciting heights, so masochism had dictated that he alleviate it by engaging in the one activity that never failed to instill definite agitation fit to occupy his mind for the rest of the evening: he had gone to watch Yukina.

It had been an unplanned, unofficial, and therefore secret visit―he had observed her from the cover of the park-side trees as she met with the oaf, and followed them invisibly as they strolled, watching the sunset. Kuwabara had spouted forth his requisite declarations of amorous intent, which had of course made Hiei bristle, and Yukina had smiled and sometimes laughed at them, which had of course made Hiei calm. As always, he marveled at how happy she looked, and at the pleasure it brought him to see that. Of everything else in his current, much restricted life, only killing―and perhaps watching Kurama through his window, which was why he had come here now―rivaled this feeling of contentment. It was almost worth the pain that came with it.

Pain was very like pleasure, he reflected, as he often did. The one invariably contained a ghost of the other―though he smirked sardonically to himself at the thought that his basis for comparison was rather diminutive. Real pleasure had, thus far, proved as elusive as true peace of mind, and he no longer knew himself which he would prefer to find. Probably neither; peace of mind was largely an illusion, and pleasure, he wouldn't trust.

The wind picked up, shrieking in agony through the boughs of the tree, and he shook his head, clearing it of the pointless train of thought, and pulled his damaged cloak tighter about his shoulders to ward off the chill. Ice heritage he might have, but he had never found the cold pleasant, and even in summer the nights could make him shiver. It must have been nearing midnight, though he couldn't see the moon through the screening canopy; the air was damp and smelled of the storm to come, the subtler scents of animal life and the exhaust of human vehicles superimposing it with a bitter tang. Even at this hour the odd window light could be spotted from his vantage, and a pair of owls voiced their pleasure at the cool night. It was so different from the Makai, where the wildlife was scarce during daylight hours and utterly silent after dark; each rustle was more likely to be a danger to life and limb than the sleepy raccoon family Hiei heard in the bushes below his tree.

Or, it might be more accurately said, Kurama's tree.

He seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time here on this particular branch, the leaves both hiding him effectively and letting him spy on his teammate with careless impunity. It irked him on occasion that he had nothing better to do, but his parole left him little leeway for personal amusement, and he grudgingly admitted to himself that (in the absence of violence) he found it soothing to watch Kurama go through the motions of human normalcy. Human customs were often boring, sometimes funny (most notably in the case of courtship and mating rituals, in which Kurama never engaged with any seriousness), and even, rarely, horrifyingly alien―but they were all worth watching in some bizarre way, and he had spent many idle hours trying to fathom the mindset behind such strange practices.

Right now, there was nothing to see, and he thought about sleeping. Trees made excellent perches and sleeping places, and this one more so than most in the area. It was old―perhaps as old as Hiei himself was―tall and creaking, appearing out of place near its younger brethren. Perhaps Kurama had encouraged it to become so large and so dense; it was a far cry from a Makai tree but closer than Hiei had been expecting to find in this city.

Just as he considered this, the temperature fell minutely, the damp smell becoming more pronounced. Hiei grimaced, his reflective mood spoiled―the rain was about to start. It never rains half this much in the Makai. How do humans stand all this water? He considered shrugging into the thicker parts of the tree, but he would still get more than a little wet (all trees in this world, even this one, were too sparse by far), so he decided to discard his notion of sleep and merely avoid it by taking immediate shelter.

This, of course, meant prevailing upon Kurama; if Hiei went anywhere else he would never avoid a soaking. Though his pride rankled, he had no one else he would want to stay with in the Ningenkai anyway, and his dignity would be further damaged if he were to be seen with his hair and clothing plastered to him by rain. It won't be the first time, he thought, not in the least caring that it was, and always had been, demeaning anyway. Kurama was far too hospitable for his own good, and had never yet done more than raise an eyebrow at Hiei's visits, nor mocked him for escaping the rain. Ignominy meant nothing if no one was going to hold it against him.

As the first wet vanguard began to strike the foliage, he hopped swiftly from branch directly to window ledge. The sill would shortly become slick, so he needed to get inside quickly. It was dark in the room and Kurama was likely asleep. Hiei tapped lightly on the window, and the pitch of the rattle told him it was not latched, so he lifted it cautiously open and slipped inside as soon as the opening had grown wide enough to admit him. Silent as the shadow he emulated, he shut the window behind him and padded across the floor.

Then he stopped short. Kurama was not, as he had anticipated, in his bed. Rather, he was still in his school uniform and sprawled half over his desk, a mess of papers pillowing his cheek. His neck was bent at an angle that, demon or not, would doubtlessly cause him pain in the morning; a pencil lay lax in his hand, and his hair spilled in an unruly mass over one shoulder and onto the desk. He looked for all the world as though he had fallen asleep in the middle of his schoolwork.

Hiei was vaguely surprised to find the comfort-loving kitsune in such a state. His first thought was to check for enemies or threats, but he already knew there to be none, having done a sweep when he settled into his perch on the tree. Still, it was quite rare for Kurama to fall asleep anywhere that he had not planned in advance, given the danger in that. Hiei would have thought the other demon's physical control to be better . . . but then, perhaps there was a rationale for this, and it was not as random―as human―as it appeared. Hn. What is that fox up to? He studied Kurama's position for a time, noting that it was not one particularly conducive to normal sleep. A ploy to provoke a reaction from his mother, perhaps? But that would be odd in itself. Kurama hated to manipulate her any more than was necessary.

Finally, Hiei shrugged to himself. It was no real concern of his, except insofar as he would have to hear about Kurama's stiff neck tomorrow. He had no intentions of leaving for any reason―if it were still raining when the morning came, which looked likely now, leaving would preclude his current notion to stay longer and possibly ask the fox to arrange that sojourn to the Makai for goods―although his presence itself might upset whatever plan was in place, presuming, of course, that said plan involved Kurama's mother or perhaps someone else finding him in this state. It needed to include that, though, because a sore neck could be easily enough faked, so the active factor had to be his sleeping position itself.

Hiei's eyes narrowed suddenly.

Kurama had to have known it would rain tonight, with his attunement to plants. Nine times out of ten, when it rained, Hiei sheltered in his room. This might just be another of his games―to see how Hiei would react.

He turned his back on Kurama, mind made up with alacrity. "Tch."

None of that mattered at all. It was not his business to be considerate of others' schemes, whether or not they included him. He would do exactly nothing outside his original plan of taking the night's shelter, and the fox could deal with it in the morning.

Facing the window now, he looked outside, where a driving rain was already in the process of drenching everything quite thoroughly and with a vengeance he had seldom seen in human weather. Though it rained more often, it was usually gentler than the storms of the Makai. It was a familiar, comforting white noise as it lashed the house in waves. He stripped off both cloak and sword, draping the former over the latter's hilt to keep it from sight, as was the custom he had adopted when staying here. Then he selected his favorite corner adjacent the window and curled up in a comfortable ball, careful to leave the weapon within easy reach.

Tomorrow, he would pick a fight with Kurama, and find out for certain whether he'd been correct. If he had indeed been the target of this little ploy, there would be payment to exact later.









She checked in very early in the morning―and he hadn't been expecting her to check in at all.

"Where have you been?"

"In hiding, of course!"

"You left it where I told you to?"

"Yes, sir."

"They accepted your story?"

"They seemed to."

"Were you tracked?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Very well. You're released. I won't call on you again in this matter."

"Thank you, sir."

He set about creating the circumstances that would finally resolve this situation for good, and was entirely thankful that it would be soon.









The door shut in Kuwabara's face.

He stood blinking at it, the hand that had until a moment ago held a six-pack of beer curling against itself reflexively, floored by the unexpectedly cold reception. Yuusuke had actually answered his knocks, which had admittedly been unlikely, but Kuwabara had figured the gift (it had been a lot of trouble for him to get it, as a known delinquent) would earn him at least a short conversation, even if it had to be held at the doorway like their last one. Instead, Yuusuke had accepted it, claimed fatigue, and barricaded himself behind the door before Kuwabara could even ask how he'd been.

Wow. Keiko was right. He really isn't coming out of there, ever.

He'd been avoiding Keiko just about as much as Yuusuke had been avoiding everyone, but he'd heard her tell her friends in response to their queries that she had no idea where Yuusuke had been this week, and didn't care to know. That was her way of expressing her worry, and Kuwabara had taken it upon himself to do something about the problem. Beer had seemed the best way to go about this―not that he actually did owe Yuusuke that six-pack, but it was a show of good faith anyway, and he'd thought it might get him talking.

Apparently he'd been wrong.

He tried knocking again, interspersing thumps with, "Hey, Urameshi, I really need to talk to you."

"Go away," came muffled through the jamb.

"I'm not joking around!" His voice rose. "You haven't been at school for a week and Keiko is worried sick! You really need to―"

The door yanked back open suddenly, and the Yuusuke that stood there now looked several degrees more pissed than the one from a minute ago. He was in his pajamas, as before, with his hair left loose and free of gel, and he looked in general like hell. After a week at home, and everything that had been going on, it was about how Kuwabara had been expecting to find him.

"Look," he said, voice low, "there have already been teachers calling and all my mom's weird friends asking about how I am, because I guess the whole frickin' town knows I haven't been to class for a while, and I'm tired of answering questions. I'm touched that you showed up to be my counselor today and thanks for the beer, but I'm not in the mood for it." He glared to reinforce his point.

Kuwabara, however, was glad for the opportunity to argue. "But the teachers and your mom's weird friends don't know what's really going on!" he insisted. "And what if a case comes up and stuff? We both need to be, y'know, ready!"

That, if possible, made Yuusuke's black look darken further, and he hooked an ankle on the door-frame, leaning to one side and appearing decidedly hostile. "Unless the end of the world is coming, Koenma can shove his cases where the sun doesn't shine."

"Urameshi! You can't just blow them off!" This was what he'd been afraid of, and it was just like Yuusuke to be a punk and decide this kind of thing. Kuwabara felt obligated to continue being a Tantei, even though his was technically the only volunteer position, but he didn't really want to have to go it alone. "What if there are monsters slipping through the barrier again? They could be eating people and you wouldn't care?"

Presently Yuusuke sighed, and pushed off the door to stand straight again. He jerked his head towards the apartment's interior. "You might as well come inside. There's no way we can wake up my mom, and if you're gonna argue with me again, I'd rather do it sitting down this time."

Kuwabara did so. And, of course, they had no time to talk about anything.









Shiori Minamino had a garden.

It had been one of her favorite pursuits before her long illness of two years ago, and she had kept roses there, and lilies, and orchids when it pleased her. This late in the summer, they were not flourishing as well as they had been, pushed down by heat and humidity into a slight wilt; still, though, they had grown well this year, as every year since she'd begun to plant them when Shuuichi was born.

It had seemed the thing to do, to celebrate his birth with life, and while she had never had much interest in gardening before then, she'd swiftly grown attached to the small corner of blossoms. Together they had often tended them, she and Shuuichi, and the blooms had always seemed to be brighter and stronger when they were finished. He'd had a gentle touch with them, and they had always recovered from the heat-damage, lasting all the way through to autumn just as lovely as they had been in early spring.

In three days, or perhaps four, she would transplant one of the rose bushes into a special pot and place it in his room, to welcome him home.

She still did not know where Shuuichi was―he had simply vanished, and no one could account for his absence, hard as some had tried. He'd been gone on a school trip, or so he'd said, but though it had taken the better part of a week for Shiori to become worried enough to call and confirm that no such trip existed, it was still difficult to believe he had lied to her. He never lied to her, so she knew that something very important must be going on, although she could not think what.

Gossip in the neighborhood and at his school had spread since her anxious phone call, speculating that he'd run away (and the mother of one of his friends had somehow mistakenly heard that he had died, and sent her condolences); Shiori knew he had not. He was the most dutiful son she could ever have asked for, and she never doubted for a moment that he would find his way home. She did worry, but she trusted him. After all, he'd arranged to return to classes after a month's absence, and whatever his reason for leaving, all she cared about was that he came back. The flowers missed him as much as she did, and she was glad he would return in time to save them from wilting as only he could.

When he did return, she was determined to welcome him with love and not anger. There would be time enough for sorting out all of this―first, they would garden together, and when the roses were sparkling again, she would ask him where he had been.









Koenma had called Botan into his office without warning and without checking her schedule, which he never did; so, despite being in the middle of a collection, she did a hand-off to Naoko (bless her for being so accommodating) and got herself there with all haste. There wasn't a lot to the journey―she'd undertaken it so many times now that she could have navigated the skies before the palace with a blindfold on, and the distance from Japan was entirely relative, given her ability to gate from wherever she was to any place in the Reikai. Usually, though, she preferred to come in at a slight remove from her destination, to collect herself and plan her words before every check-in; besides, she loved flying, and her designated section of the Ningenkai had very crowded airspace for an urban area. Ever since her first collision with a vee of birds, after she'd just gotten her human form, Botan had preferred to keep her aerial presence there to a minimum.

Strictly speaking, she wasn't supposed to be doing collections anymore at all―she was supposed to be Yuusuke's full-time assistant, and to do only specific, on-call assignments otherwise. She'd swapped duties with several other girls for this week in order to have more variety in her work, and the difficulty inherent in performing collection detail while wearing a human body (and therefore being entirely visible to normal humans at large) was keeping her mind very nicely off of present events.

But if Koenma was summoning her, during a time when he should have easily been able to verify that she was doing non-assistant work, it had to be an emergency. She skipped most of the flight in and skated a downdraft only the last hundred feet or so to the palace gates.

Her worries pursued her down the long hall.

I hope nothing else is wrong with the team . . . please, let nothing else be wrong with the team!

When she arrived at the terminus, groups of oni and other employees were clogging the doorway to Koenma's office, rather than their cubicles where they should have been, and the phones were ringing off the hook. The sight brought her up short for a moment―it was rare for work up here to be put on hold―but, galvanized, she elbowed her way through, determined to get to the front as quickly as possible, making free with her oar to thwack aside those who disregarded her terse demand to be let by on business.

"Sorry, Toji! Got to get through! Out of my way, Akito―you'll want to put some ice on that!"

The door yielded for her before she even pressed the intercom button, where it had not opened for the clerks. She flounced quickly forward, and felt the current of air as it snicked closed not two inches behind her obi.

It wasn't too hard to see what had made the others congregate so. Yuusuke was actually here.

There had been rumors flying around that he was never coming back up―premature rumors, to be sure, but after the last time he'd been here, the way he'd left had sent the whole office into a tizzy. Botan wondered who had been gotten to ferry him, since obviously she hadn't done it herself; probably Ayame, as she'd be off shift at this time of day. Kuwabara was here as well, although that wasn't as unusual―he'd been around several times in the last month, asking Koenma questions about everything that had been going on, and trying to pry more information about Kurama out of anyone he could, Botan herself included.

Everyone had been trying to pry information out of Botan, actually. She was regarded by the entire office to be the most handy source of gossip on the Tantei (which she was), and they'd been harrying her for confirmation of the rumors and anything else she might know, as if they all had a personal, vested interest in the detective group as a whole. That was part of why she'd taken to working mostly outside the palace for the last few weeks―she wasn't in much of a mood lately to be interrogated. It was true that this was the strongest and most volatile Tantei on record, and had helped out the Reikai in ways that previous groups would never have been able, and also had the most ridiculously entertaining interpersonal dynamics, but that didn't mean the office as a whole was entitled to celebrity causerie on call.

But it was both a relief and a source of anxiety that Yuusuke had returned. She hadn't been asking, but she had the suspicion that he hadn't been out of his house for the whole week. She knew Yukina had been worried, having spent some time at Genkai's since the incident, and from the way Puu had been acting, she wasn't sure she wanted to know what Yuusuke had been doing with his time.

Even as she took stock, however, it wasn't until she noticed that the ice maiden was also present that she realized what this meeting must be about.

Oh. So it's finally time.

"Botan, are you going to stand there, or are we going to get this briefing started?"

Koenma sounded incredibly irritated. Botan jumped a little, her unfamiliar heart beating a patter in her throat, and hurried behind the desk, settling her oar against the wall. Pretending nonchalance, she took a study of the three mortals in front of her, scanning their expressions for some indication of what the meeting might be like.
On the whole, she was not reassured.









In Ningenkai, a figure crouched on the branch of a very old tree, sniffing the lingering scent that remained there. The faint musk triggered dozens of associations, not the least of them his purpose in coming. He gazed piercingly into the window of a familiar room, taking in things already committed to heart and memory and reinforcing them.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He could jeopardize much if he failed to mask his ki completely, or if he was missed where he was supposed to be―but, after all, he had things to watch over, and he was not going to fully entrust that task to anyone. This would be an abbreviated visit at best; the time of day was wrong for lingering.

He wished he could check on his friends as readily, but knew better. He didn't dare get close enough to observe them directly, and searching for ki would reveal his own. His mind harbored the notion that perhaps they would find him instead, and absolve him of the blame for stepping outside his orders―but that, too, was foolish, and equally dangerous. He would see them when his task was over, and not before.

The energies from the house were quiescent; she was resting.

A sound from below alerted him, and with a last searching glance, the figure withdrew, and fled swiftly for the Makai gate.









Yuusuke hadn't really been sure he ever wanted to come up here anymore. He hadn't been since the final news about Kurama; he'd been able to fend off even contemplating it since, given that they hadn't had a mission in a while. He'd even, irrationally, hoped there would be no more missions. But here was one, and dammit, he didn't back out of these (his words to Kuwabara this morning notwithstanding), especially not when they were as important as this one was supposed to be. That other ferry-girl had made it sound like another freaking Tournament―and he wasn't so quick to call exaggeration on Koenma's part anymore.

His stance was hip-shot, casual, and radiating the highest level of boredom that could be managed. He considered throwing in a smirk for good measure, but if he didn't form it just right it would give him away, and he didn't have this front up for nothing. Yukina was here, and he was obligated. Not that acting like a blubbering crybaby was his first choice anyhow, but she was a delicate problem, and he didn't need a fight with Kuwabara to make this day any worse. So he settled for snide and belligerent rather than amused, and asked pointedly, "So, are you ever gonna tell us what this mission is about?"

Koenma's eye twitched, and his miniature hand set down the paper it was holding, which Yuusuke could tell he'd only been pretending to read anyway. "Don't get smart with me, Yuusuke. I've had a very bad day." He cleared his throat and made a visible attempt at looking less cross. This failed, but Yuusuke figured he shouldn't point that out. "I'm reluctant to even send you on this assignment without Hiei, but I don't have much of a choice in the matter."

It took effort not to flinch. That had been a warning, and they all acknowledged it.

It had made Kuwabara angry; he was practically steaming from the ears, torn as he was between yelling at Koenma and not offending Yukina. Yuusuke sympathized. He'd have liked to say something exceptionally nasty in retaliation for bringing Hiei up like that, especially in front of Yukina, but he'd only make it worse.

The prince continued: "You'll be gone for a few days, so get things settled in the Ningenkai first. You're going to a very specific area of the Makai―the koorime lands, to be precise." He nodded to Yukina. "That's why you're here."

Botan hopped in to keep it going without a pause. "It's just come to our attention that the koorime have something they shouldn't―a very volatile artifact that belongs to the Reikai. It's been lost for a long time, and we're not really sure how they got it, but it's dangerous, so your job will be to get it away from them by whatever means necessary." Her gaze rested on the ice maiden, gentling. "You don't have to go along if you don't want to. If it's better for you, all we need is some information on how to approach your people."

Yukina shook her ice-green head. "No, I'll go along. They probably won't talk to anyone else, especially not men."

"What's that?" Yuusuke asked, one eyebrow going up, diverted from his half-formed query about the mission parameters. "They have a problem with guys or something?"

"Well," Yukina said, dropping her eyes even as she looked at him, "it's complicated. But there are no men living in the village. That's why my brother isn't there―he wouldn't be allowed."

"What?" Kuwabara, apparently, felt that this was an acceptable subject about which to yell. "That's stupid! What's wrong with havin' men around?"

"Will you please stop getting distracted. We're here for a meeting. You can ask Yukina questions about her people on the way." Koenma's interjection was not as loud or as whiny as Yuusuke would have expected, but there was definite ire behind it; Kuwabara reluctantly subsided.

"Fine," he grumbled. "So what does this artifact thingy look like?"

Koenma and Botan exchanged glances; Yuusuke wondered why she even had to be here, since Koenma could have briefed them himself. Huh. Maybe she's here to keep him from freaking out. He doesn't look too great right now. Not that any of us do, but anyway. Well, it was hard to tell how well Yukina looked; she was always pale, and her eyes were such a vibrant red that he couldn't even really tell what emotions they held. It had been the same way with Hiei. Hers were gentle, where his had been sharp as glass and closed as hell, but there was something about the color that naturally hid their contents so that they just seemed startling, like the eyes of something you wouldn't want to come up behind you in the dark. She was an apparition, after all, as he had been.

But even for all of that, Yuusuke guessed that Yukina was holding up about as well as Kuwabara, which was probably not as well as it appeared on the surface. She lacked the dark circles that Kuwabara displayed under both eyes, making up for them with tiny lines creased into her forehead and the spot between her eyebrows. Yuusuke didn't even remotely want to know how he, himself, looked right now, because it was probably some humiliating level of abysmal, largely due to lack of sleep. The week had slurred by almost without notice, and there had been nights where he'd just stayed up doing not much of anything, or playing the hell out of his video games at a near-demonic speed that made the buttons jam. He'd ruined his two best controllers that way.

"Hey, Urameshi?"

Somehow he'd missed Koenma's answer, he realized abruptly, and he jerked back to himself with a spaced-out, "What?"

Everyone regarded him askance, with mixed additives in their expressions, as though he'd ignored repeated calls, and his response was to scowl and thrust both hands into his pockets. "I'm listening," he said defensively.

"I can tell," Botan returned acerbically.

"Hey, lay off and just go back a couple of sentences, all right? I've got better things to do with my afternoon than get stared at like a sideshow freak."

Someone actually did as he'd demanded. "I said, we're not sure what it looks like." Koenma picked the info-dump back up, fortuitously right where Yuusuke had left off, and sat back in his chair. "We think it's probably a jewel of some kind, but no one is quite certain. The records don't contain that information. You're going to have to figure it out for yourselves when you get there."

"Wonderful," Yuusuke said with sarcasm. "We're supposed to get it away from them without even knowing what it is? I know you're not big on actually helping us out, but this is pushing it."

Botan gave him a scandalized glare as Koenma made a sharp, exasperated noise somewhat resembling a snort. He shook his head. "I've already said I don't have a choice. You're the only ones who even have a chance of pulling this off without major casualties, so you're appointed, Hiei or no Hiei."

Another jab. Yuusuke could have blown Koenma up right then. He forewent answering to clench his fists and give the notion some cursory thought. All that paper would probably burn really well . . .

"What do you have to keep mentioning Hiei for?" This was Kuwabara, and he wasn't looking happy. "What's so dangerous about Yukina's people that we can't go and ask them for this thing without help? We're not that bad at this job." He'd crossed his arms and gotten very serious. "Is there some other kind of trouble?" he asked.

Koenma shifted uncomfortably, and his eyes followed suit, darting to Botan again and then back to the group without meeting anyone else's. "The koorime aren't dangerous," he started, then paused for no apparent reason. "The artifact is. You'll need to keep it safe until you can get it back here. That's why I'm sending all three of you, and that's why it would have been better to send four."

"So what's the big deal? We'll just call Botan and have her gate us." Yuusuke folded his own arms, head tilting to the side to fix Koenma with a suspicious gaze as he let his anger be plainly perceptible on his face. "Or is that the catch?" Because there's always a goddamned catch.

Botan answered for him this time, after another perfunctory, sidelong look that flashed between them like a ki bolt. "We're not really sure what will happen if you try to take that object through a temporary gate, Yuusuke. We're going to need to take it through the main Reikai gate instead, and hope that doesn't do anything to it or to any of you." She looked genuinely worried at the thought, which didn't exactly reassure anyone else. Yuusuke, however, had his attention caught by a detail.

"There's a main Reikai gate? You mean like the Makai gate downtown?"

She nodded, then qualified, "It's not quite the same; we put the Makai gate there for your team to use, but the Reikai gate has been in the Makai for centuries. No one uses it much anymore. The records say King Enma made it for his soldiers so they could keep particularly dangerous demons under control―this was before there were any Tantei."

"Yeah, now you guys make other people do it for you," Yuusuke muttered darkly, steered right back into his foul mood. "So, we have to get from the ice village to the gate on foot, is that it?"

"Actually," and she offered an embarrassed expression, "we're not gating you directly to the koorime village, either. We'll need a few days to make sure we have as much information as we can, but we want you on the way in case something comes up. That way, if we need to get things over with in a hurry, you'll already be close by."

Kuwabara was staring at her in incredulity. "You're gonna make us walk to the village? For days?"

"It's just as a precaution," she said hastily, raising both hands as if to ward off any attack. "It takes a while for me to collect you from the Ningenkai, even though there are only three of you, so if you're all together in the Makai, I can get to you right away. That's only if something goes wrong, though―otherwise you'll just have a bit of a walk. It was either that or keep you on standby here." She added, when his disbelieving expression didn't wane, "We have a communication mirror for you so we can keep in touch, of course."

"I can already tell this is well-planned," remarked Yuusuke with generous snark.

Yukina broke in before he got further. "No, this is a good thing. If my people have time to see us coming from a long way off, they'll send scouts to talk to us. If we appear close by, they might think we're attacking." She smiled then, sending a calming glance towards Kuwabara and a more animated one to Yuusuke. She almost seemed glad to be up here, being assigned this stupid mission, which was far and away more than Yuusuke could say for himself.

He took back what he'd decided earlier. Obviously, she was doing a lot better than he'd thought, because that was the only way she'd even have a chance at being cheerful right now. No sane being ought to be cheerful when they were being given a crap-job like this―and if it weren't for his prior determination not to back out, he'd be telling Koenma to go to hell right about now.

Could Koenma go to hell? Where was hell in the Reikai, anyway? Or was spending all his time in this place close enough already?

"Yes, well." The object of Yuusuke's petulance cleared his throat noisily, straightened that silly blue hat, and tapped his minuscule fingers on the smooth work surface. "That's all the information we have for you. Be ready tomorrow at noon. And don't," he added, "be late."

With this clear dismissal, Koenma turned his attention back to the haphazard mess of papers on his desk, and Botan wasted no time as she bustled over to usher them out of the room.

That had been―abrupt.

Yuusuke slowly let his fists relax out of existence, out of sheer gratitude that it was time to get the hell back home and away from here, and followed without another word, taking a hit to one thigh on the edge of that random new office chair in his haste. Kuwabara almost said something to him when he pulled alongside, but closed his mouth when Yuusuke glowered. He dropped back to walk with Yukina in lieu of pursuing that inclination.

We'll have freaking days to talk about nothing. He can wait until we're gone.

As they exited, they were almost flattened by Jorge, who ran right past them and into Koenma's office. The door slid closed behind him.









It was a small room, just shy of being labeled tiny, low-lit, with no windows and only one, barred door: a cell, and of a kind with which he was familiar. He'd been in this room before, or in one like it. He remembered that he'd burned it down.

Now, though, not only was fire no longer at his beck and call, but he was unable to summon even the slightest spark of energy. He was verging on the same kind of blind panic that he hated most, and could do nothing about his situation―not even destroy. They hadn't even bothered to restrain him now that he'd transitioned from alive to less than.

He didn't shiver; he wasn't cold, and the terror hadn't yet built to that point. He didn't move at all. Movement was wasted. There wasn't even a guard near his prison. Koenma knew he had no means of escape or resistance this time.

He remembered last time well, and it only overlapped with now: fighting his captors with every ounce of energy in his body, incinerating guards and handlers, cursing them with every breath, anything to be let out of those hateful little rooms with their confining walls that threw back flat echoes so he'd known even with his eyes closed how trapped he was, just from the sound of his own breathing. Sending out a wordless, desperate call with his telepathy, voicing the plea for help his pride would never allow to be spoken aloud. Ending up in his fourth cell, the smallest of them―smaller than this one―with his ki depleted and his panic overriding his ability to breathe.

Kurama, coming to liberate him, at the cost of their future freedom. It was a trade that he'd never have made for himself, but it was one for which he'd always been grateful. It, alone, had mended the betrayal between them.

But alive or not, Kurama wasn't coming this time.

The memories of Kurama came even more easily now, spilling over his fear, dulling it to an almost endurable level. After all the time spent ducking them, shoving them as far from consciousness as possible, they seemed almost to rebound and return stronger in the absence of that frantic pressure. It wasn't hard to sink into them now that they didn't carry confusion, ambivalence and the push-pull between denial and certainty. That color meant something again. It was keeping him sane, now, instead of driving him further from sanity. It was the one thing that was somehow better for all that had happened―however ironic it also was―a source of self-mocking but genuine relief.

So Kurama is alive after all. How perfectly ridiculous. Outsmarted by that simpleton of a kami, losing my control to nothing, and death is overrated.

I hope I never encounter any of those fools ever again―especially not the fox.

But it wasn't going to be enough―not for any length of time. It would all break down soon.

He refused to disgrace himself even an instant before it was necessary. He would deny his mind that relief until the last moment. This weakness was hated, and where he might not have fought it before, fighting it now was the only thing he could do that gave him any sense of self and self-worth. Fear should be a useful tool for survival, not this debilitating, mindless feeling that robbed him of even his tiniest shred of pride―and he was already dead; nothing should cause him fear now at all.

His mind still failed to listen to that logic.

He was definitely not cold. It was too warm here, the air too still, and that damnable echo assaulted his ears every time he twitched involuntarily and it would not be blocked out. Terror keened against his nerves, driving him to a momentary, hissing whimper as he controlled the urge to rage and hurl himself against the bars. Even if he failed and indulged it, it wouldn't last for long―he simply did not possess that much energy. Pointless, all of it. But he would fight it for as long as he could.

He was curled against the bars themselves, nearest the corridor, biting down on his panic and willing himself to remember things, anything he could, to keep from feeling as though this constrictive room would crush his lungs into nothing. He didn't have to breathe anymore, after all. His own ironic laughter, ceased long before he had been deposited here, seemed to reverberate from the walls along with the silence itself.

Watching the dull blue glow of his Jagan cast faint, pulsing shimmers on the far wall, just visible in the dimness, Hiei submerged his consciousness in memories and futilely willed to never come back out.

Changing Death
5: Nothing Much

Chapter Theme Song: Roadside (Rise Against)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-June, 1989-

"Get―the hell―off, dumbass!" Yuusuke yelled. It was loud enough to draw the attention of nearly all the other patrons, which Yuusuke did not notice, being entirely intent on not crashing his red sports car despite an irate Kuwabara who had all but draped himself over the machine and was shouting in his ear. Repeated threats of an a**-kicking were all he really cared to make out. "I can't see the screen!"

Kuwabara, of course, did not get off. The threats continued; Yuusuke's race car careened.

It was completely not fair to have his day complicated like this. He'd come here to relax, dammit, and he wasn't in the mood for a brawl right now, contrary to the widespread belief that he did nothing else with his time. Right now, he was trying instead to do his other favorite thing, which was loafing, and Kuwabara was going to get tied in freaking knots if he made Yuusuke lose this game. This was one of the expensive ones, and he wasn't going to get his money back if he crashed and lost, because arcades didn't have moron insurance.

A timid voice to his right said, "Excuse me?" just audibly over Kuwabara; both boys paused and looked over at the arcade employee, who stared nervously back as though he really didn't know what to say next.

"Great, you're finally here to kick him out," said Yuusuke petulantly, turning back to the game.

"Hey!" protested Kuwabara at the dismissal.

"Aw, s**t!" In the moment of inattention, and with the finish line in sight on the screen, the car had met a violent and fiery death against the concrete wall. Other vehicles zoomed past merrily. The console chirped its "Game Over" music at him.

"Serves you right, Urameshi!" his friend gloated, ignoring the employee.

"Ku-wa-ba-ra," he growled back, remembering not to break the plastic steering wheel in his grip. "I hope you're ready to take the beating of your life, right after you pay me back my hundred yen!"

"Like hell I am! I'll pound you so hard you'll be on crutches for a year!"

"Your lame a** won't be done with them yet! But I'll be generous and only take out one kneecap!"

"Um . . . excuse me . . .?" ventured the employee again.

And things, as usual, went downhill from there.

"I can't believe they kicked us both out because of your stupid grudge," Yuusuke grumbled as they headed, hands in pockets, down the street towards his apartment. "You owe me that hundred yen."

"I do not," Kuwabara responded, still surly (and the proud owner of a recently blackened eye) but a bit more calm about it. "I was trying to make you get off your butt and help me find Hiei, but we've lost him by now." He kicked a rock several yards.

Yuusuke snorted and took aim at another, restarting an old contest to see who could send one flying the farthest without cheating and using spirit energy. "So you weren't trying to pick a fight? Good to know you actually can learn. Why were you looking for Hiei anyway, and why can't you still look for him now, and why is it my problem?" He aimed the last part directly at his friend, communicating as much annoyance as he could manage.

Kuwabara's rock came perilously close to punching through a wall as he aimed it badly. "I wanted to talk to him, but he won't talk to me if you or Kurama aren't there, and Kurama's at school." He frowned, looking around for another missile. "I lost track of his spirit energy a little while ago, though, so now I dunno where he went. I think he's hiding again."

"You ruined my game for that?" They were in the residential part of town now, having been walking for a while, and the buildings were getting progressively shorter, with panels of grass showing in between. It was midday, which explained why Kurama was at school (where Yuusuke also should have been, according to Keiko), and also hot, part of why he'd taken refuge at the arcade to begin with. It was making him testy. "What do you wanna talk to Hiei for?"

"I wanted to ask him something about Yukina."

Yuusuke stumbled over the next rock he'd been about to kick and landed flat on his face.

As he was picking himself up, and Kuwabara was giving him a weird look, he tried to play it off. "What, really?" he drawled, checking to make sure his hair had stayed in place. "What makes you think Hiei knows anything about Yukina?" Right. That was very not smooth. Crap.

But Kuwabara didn't seem to notice, and started walking again once Yuusuke was back on his feet. "Kurama told me to ask him," he replied. "It's sorta because she's a demon, y'know, and so she sometimes acts weird, and Kurama said that Hiei's about the same age and would probably know why."

It took Yuusuke a moment to be sure he wasn't going to choke on his own tongue while he was stifling a guffaw. You devious b*****d, Kurama. That one's downright mean. To not only put Hiei in the position of having to talk about Yukina, but to have Kuwabara be the one asking―on second thought, considering the likely outcome, Yuusuke would have to ask Kurama if Kuwabara had made him mad or something. This was a little too close to malicious to be an accident.

He decided to keep shooting for nonchalance. "Hey, maybe I know, ever think of that?"

"Yeah, right, Urameshi. You don't know anything about demons except how to beat 'em up, and you definitely don't know anything about girls."

"And Hiei does?"

That took Kuwabara aback. "Well, the first one, yeah . . ."

Point for Yuusuke. He grinned. "Take it from me, man," he said cheerfully, "no one understands girls. Even girls don't understand girls. And that whole demon thing can't be that big a deal. Why don't you just ask her?"

He was satisfied to see Kuwabara's face turn beet red, and accepted the accompanying glare by widening his smirk insultingly, daring him to throw a punch. They were almost to his building anyway, and he could duck inside to avoid the fight if he felt like it. Or he could just give up being lazy and beat the snot out of Kuwabara; that would work, too.

" 'Cause―'cause I don't wanna be insensitive!" his friend blurted instead of swinging. "What if she gets upset?"

Yuusuke offered him a shrug. No fight after all, apparently. "You can always apologize to her."

"Sorry doesn't make it okay!"

"Sheesh." At least, as riled up as he was, Kuwabara clearly hadn't picked up on Yuusuke's earlier slip. That was something. "You sound like Keiko, which is just a little creepy if you ask me. Look, if you still want me to help you find Hiei, I'll help you find Hiei, but you're on your own if he gets cranky, got it?"

Kuwabara considered, looking suspicious for a moment, before nodding. "Sure. Dunno why he would, though."

Yuusuke grinned again.

The rest of his afternoon was spent combing the city, getting into random fights with random thugs to keep things entertaining, and eventually running like hell from one very-pissed-off-at-being-found fire demon (who for some reason thought Yuusuke was to blame for the "fool" asking him personal questions), leaving Kuwabara behind to yell after them in mixed confusion and outrage. After ducking through trees and alleys and across rooftops, moving too fast for normal people to see and winding up all the way across town in short order, the chase ended when Yuusuke stood his ground near Kurama's house, where throwing down would have made too much of a scene and probably gotten Shiori's attention. Hiei left in disgust, apparently unwilling to play that game, but Yuusuke knew he'd get everything figured out eventually. His helpful parting shout of, "KURAMA DID IT!" would probably help.

In all, it turned out to be a lot more fun than slumming around at the arcade―not that he planned to tell Kuwabara that until he got his money back.

And the awesome thing? Tomorrow would probably be even funnier. When Hiei went after Kurama for this, Yuusuke planned to have a front-row seat. Stuff would be on fire. It would be better than Tokyo Dome.









Hiei's mind vaulted gracefully from memory to memory, alighting on each one for only long enough that it might have begun to cohere, flitting between them in impatient bursts of anger as it beat moth wings against their somehow unattainable substance. Rest proved similarly ephemeral, though respite did not, and the latter was the more vital; without it, he would have had no energy for anger and no peace for rest. Amidst the swift stone-skipping that bounced him between bloody childhood and bloodier desires, he had the leisure to think a bit, with a clarity unmatched in weeks of turmoil and half-madness.

He did not keep his thoughts in neat boxes like the fox, but neither were they the wild and loosely-connected instincts of the detective or the oaf's plodding predictability. They were precise without being rigid, fluid without losing structure―or they had been before and were becoming so again. The jumble of snapped threads and fire-chewed clusters was quickly and efficiently repairing itself as though the last month of confusion and unfiltered weakness had not occurred at all; he could observe it in an almost visual manner, as firmly between consciousness and coma as he was.

Shame pressed in on him like the cell walls he'd blocked from his awareness, all of it that he'd been too disgraced to feel before, and it bolstered his anger in a bizarrely cathartic manner. Being angry was familiar and stabilizing, speeding the repair process.

Speed was important, he judged, and so he gave the fury its due attention; for among other things of interest, he sensed―in a mass without traceable source or reason―an unmistakable, unrelenting pulse of danger.

Some things, therefore, required re-prioritizing.









Yuusuke looked around dubiously. "Are you sure?"

Affronted, Kuwabara crossed his arms. His backpack shifted across broad shoulders. "I told you, Urameshi, this is where the feeling says to stay."

"But this spot sucks," was the response (with which Kuwabara really had to agree, even if he wasn't going to say so). "It's freaking cold, and we're gonna get wet if we sleep here 'cause of the snow, and Yukina says it's only another few hours or so from the ice village. Are you sure your spirit sense isn't just screwing up?"

"You always say that," Kuwabara muttered, "and you're always wrong. I'm not going anywhere until I feel like I should." He really didn't like it any better than Yuusuke, but that didn't mean Yuusuke needed to be an a** about it.

"Like we need this to take any longer," Yuusuke returned in the same tone of stubbornness, but he didn't follow it up with another argument, instead plunking down in place and proving that getting his clothes wet wasn't as big a deal as he'd made it sound. He folded his arms and glowered ineffectually at the horizon for a minute or so (Kuwabara knew him well enough to recognize his version of pouting); then he stood up again and wandered off towards the trees to the group's right.

"Hey, Urameshi!"

"Shut up, you win already. I'm just going to look for firewood. Dig a hole in the snow for it, will ya?"

"I will," volunteered Yukina, who stood at his side, losing the worried frown she'd adopted during the argument. She favored Kuwabara with a bright smile and elaborated, "My hands won't chill."

Kuwabara was momentarily at a loss, although it was a gratified one. Normally Yuusuke didn't give up so quickly; maybe he was finally learning to trust Kuwabara's hunches. "Uh, I guess I'll stand guard then," he said, smiling in answer for Yukina, and moved aside to let her pick a good spot for the fire before turning to start scanning the distance for signs of threat.

They'd been left alone for most of the last six hours, so there wasn't much to watch for, but he still hadn't forgotten his first trip to the Makai, when little hooded demons had popped out of the rocky ground like weeds. He wasn't ruling out the possibility that he could get sneaked up on, even with his spirit awareness sharper than it had been at the Dark Tournament. It was a quarter-blind all the time here, anyway. There was way too much to feel in this world, and none of it was very friendly, so low-level demons might get past his guard if he wasn't careful.

He was especially weirded out by the interference he got from the plants, none of which felt normal in any way even though they looked like grass and bushes and trees and other stuff from home. He was still getting used to ignoring the feeling that the whole world wanted to kill him, and making himself concentrate on the important feelings, like the one that had made him stop the group here.

He liked it better when missions were in the human world, which usually involved nothing more exotic than chasing down a rogue, low-level demon and beating the crap out of it, which he enjoyed anyway. This mission had been the first time he'd ever had to spend a single night here, much less two, and he was never going to get any decent sleep. Twitchy premonitions of danger, Yuusuke snoring, and worry for Yukina weren't a bundle of factors that helped him feel like resting, so he'd stood watch last night, too. It would be even worse tonight, since it was freaking cold here (although, to be fair, it hadn't exactly been warm where they'd slept last night, either―it just hadn't been frigid).

There would be lots of wind, too; his spirit sense had picked a huge clearing, a few hours in from the edge of the spreading forest which had grown icier and darker the farther towards its center they'd come. If this spot had been warm and grassy, it might have counted as a meadow, minus the cheery sunshine and pretty flowers books always described.

Yuusuke strolled back into view with an armful of hastily gathered sticks, shaking the snow from them as he went. He looked at Kuwabara, and veered to pass right next to him.

"What are you staring at so hard?" he inquired snidely, still annoyed and obviously spoiling for a fight; Kuwabara had seen him like this before, when he was too pissed off to calm down about something and looking for any excuse to punch out a set of teeth. Normally, a quick jaunt to the Makai to run down some demons was what fixed that, but this one had apparently worn out its welcome. "See any killer rabbits?" he prodded, a lame jab compared to his usual insults.

"Very funny," Kuwabara shot back. "I'm making sure we don't get attacked while we're getting set up." His expression told Yuusuke he'd fight if he had to, but he wasn't in the mood.

Yuusuke rolled his eyes. "Like we wouldn't be able to hear stuff coming."

Yukina's voice forestalled Kuwabara's retort. "The fire circle is ready," she called from a couple of yards behind him; he glanced. "I've cleared an area around it where we can sit." She indicated a sizable splotch of bare ground surrounding a neatly arranged ring of stones; she'd probably used her ice powers to move the snow, or it would have taken her much longer. She seemed tentative again, watching them warily in case they were going to start fighting, letting it show how much she hoped they wouldn't.

Kuwabara felt his mouth split into the wide, goofy grin that her gentle kindness always caused. He turned fully, beaming, his brooding forgotten. "Thank you, Yukina! Wow, that was really fast!"

He warmed to see her smile back in appreciation from where she stood next to her handiwork, while making a little gesture with her hands that somehow conveyed humility and thanked him for the compliment at the same time. With her here, and so obviously, literally in her element, neither this mission nor his spirit sense's inexplicable demands seemed nearly so bad; he was glad she'd gotten the chance to come back home, even briefly. For her happiness, he'd avoid fighting Yuusuke for as long as she wanted.

Yuusuke gave him a sideways, raised-eyebrow look of long-suffering resignation, directed a slightly softer look towards Yukina, and apparently also decided a brawl wasn't worth it right then, because he shrugged. "If you do see killer rabbits, catch one, and I'll pretend I know how to cook it," he said, and moved past.

"Ew! Urameshi!" Kuwabara yelled, spluttering, disgust at the thought―and Yuusuke's manners―cutting across his adoration of Yukina, who also looked faintly shocked. "We already have food!"

"Mmm, ramen noodles again. My favorite." Yuusuke didn't bother to turn around, laying the sticks next to the fire circle and beginning to set them up. Though she hesitated, put off by his manner, Yukina knelt to help him. He flashed her a passably nice smile for it, which failed to mollify Kuwabara.

"It's better than killing something!"

"They're rabbits, Kuwabara, not kittens. Unless you're obsessed with every little rodent that has fur."

"Shut up! I am not!"

"If you aren't, why'd you take me seriously? Like I'm really gonna cook rabbits. Don't remember how to take a joke?"

By the time Yuusuke was done sniping at him, in a much more sarcastic and relentless way than normal (probably still in a snit because he hadn't gotten that throw-down), Kuwabara was glad he'd volunteered for watch again. Even this creepy place would give him more peace and quiet.

He just hoped the feeling didn't make them stay there long.









Yuusuke, however, would not have agreed with him on anything but the last point. This place sucked.









Kurama gripped the half-buried rock and yanked, shrinking the gorse-bushes that concealed its already banal existence as he did so. Dust sprayed. He dropped the chunk of sandstone carelessly to one side, where it landed with a muted thud, prevented from bouncing or rolling by the soft earth. Pressed into the sandy bottom of the hollow left behind, there nestled a small packet of tightly wrapped leaves; he snatched it up.

A quick pulse of ki released the seal on the leaves, and they fell away from the glossy, violet compact they'd kept free of invasive grit, which he shoved into his tunic. He gathered the leaves up and stuffed them back into the hole, replacing the rock over them, and scooped the dust back in around the edges, rapidly regrowing the bushes to their former size to disguise the freshly-disturbed ground. His feet summarily darted him away, back towards the south end of his masters' house―Donari was out hunting, but he could still be caught if she came back early and he were to be anywhere in ready sight of the front door.

It would be better to do this much farther away from the house, anyway, but he was expected to be here when she returned, and accounting for his absence would be much more difficult than accounting for the small trace of foreign Reikai energy that she might or might not sense on his person.

Tucked away in the dwelling's richest shadow, he flicked open the communication mirror with a clawed thumb and depressed the emergency call button that would give him a direct line to the Reikai. His every sense remained on alert for Donari's arrival. "Botan, do you copy?" he hissed as it crackled to life with a soft hum.

Her miniaturized face appeared in the small circle after a tense moment, her smile quite cheerful over taut, obvious fatigue; Kurama blinked at her appearance in a moment of puzzlement. She looked positively worn out, and was not even trying to hide it. "What's up, Yuus―" she chirped, then broke off, her eyes clouding in alarm and the first stirrings of panic. "Oh! Kurama! What are you doing calling in? Your extraction's not for another two―"

"No time," he responded curtly, using the lower, more menacing pitch of his youko form's voice to arrest her words. "I need to speak to Koenma. It's urgent."

She hesitated, visibly torn, then nodded once; the signal cut, leaving the already anxious demon with another question whose answer didn't bode well.

It took a lot to wear out Botan . . . and surely his unauthorized call couldn't have caused that level of dismay by itself. Her run-ragged looks and unusually unquiet demeanor summed to Something major has come up.

No wonder the others were in the Makai; it had to be a case of some kind. So things were even worse than he'd thought. If they were to be surprised while they were in the middle of something as grimly important as this had to be―something that would subsume all their focus and leave little room for unexpected disasters―they'd be decimated with very little chance of deliverance. At most, Hiei alone might have the speed to escape, but his honor wouldn't allow him to act the coward and leave his allies behind.

So much the better that I can warn Koenma now.

While Kurama leaned to one side, risking a glance around the side of the house, the compact's screen blinked to life once more, framing the baby-round visage of Reikai's prince. "What are you doing checking in?" it demanded without preamble. "This had better be an emergency! Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?"

Inari; even Koenma looked dishevelled and worn. Kurama ignored the rather insulting rhetorical in favor of skipping straight to business. "Where did you send the others?"

Koenma glared. "Do you always answer a question with another question?" He was typically unreasonable and balky when he was under stress or deadline.

"Don't dodge the question," Kurama snapped. "Where. Did you. Send them?"

"To the new ice territory, to pick something up!" Koenma had acquired a flush across his cheekbones, whether from anger or chagrin, Kurama couldn't tell. "Which doesn't matter to you because they'll be done before you're extracted! I told you not to use the mirror unless it was an emergency!"

The ice territory. That was to the southeast. Which direction had the hulking demon gone? Not north; he and Donari always stayed well away from the fixed portal and the superstitious rumors surrounding it. Maybe west? No, not due west, because that was just the hunting forest. He'd left early in the day . . .

"Pull them back," he said after a short period of deliberation. The chances were too high that Gendou had gone the correct direction―no doubt the igurka had supplied him with a heading.

"And why should I do that?" demanded the Koenma-head.

"Gendou's gone after them."

That got Koenma's attention. Kurama saw the color in his cheeks drain away, and then some. He blinked almost owlishly, and then exploded, "WHAT? Why?" Genuine horror skewed his expression to an almost comical effect.

The kitsune's ears twitched in startled disgust―but then, if Koenma had been thinking ahead well enough to have figured it out, he wouldn't have sent the rest of the Tantei to the Makai in the first place, with things so unstable. He decided against being condescending; it would only slow things down.

"Curiosity," he replied, "and blood-lust. I followed Gendou and learned from him that their spies reported the Tantei somewhere in Makai, and he wants to see if they're as good as rumor holds. There's also still a name to be made from killing Yuusuke, especially after the Tournament." This was a fact on which at least someone in the Reikai should have counted given these circumstances, as well, and evidently no one had. "Why are they here at a time like this?"

A pause―nervous. "I didn't have any other options," admitted the kami, eyes darting. "The koorime have gotten hold of something very dangerous, and I need to get it back now before they figure out what it does. I'm talking worlds-will-fall dangerous. It should only take Yuusuke and the others one more day anyway, and it's at least three or four to get there from your position."

"Only two for someone as fast as Gendou can be," Kurama retorted, not placated in the least by this explanation. "We can't assume he'll be leisurely about it, or that things for Yuusuke will proceed smoothly or speedily. Send someone to back them up, at the very least; a warning won't be enough."

Once again, Koenma spent a moment in uncomfortable silence, and to say he looked unhappy would have been a dramatic understatement. His eye twitched twice. "It'll have to be enough," he said finally. "I don't have anyone to send."

Alarm spiked momentarily through Kurama's lungs―but it did make sense. His mind belatedly shuttered through the possibilities on which Koenma might draw, coming up with Yukina, Genkai, Shizuru, and Keiko: all of them unfit for that kind of fight, for various and separate reasons. Koenma himself had only defensive capabilities and couldn't cover the whole group, and if there were any Reikai agents as powerful as one of the Tantei, Yuusuke wouldn't have been thrown at half of the crises through which he'd already lived. Add to that the risk from whatever object the koorime had apparently obtained . . .

―which doesn't quite mesh, really; neither the mission nor the object sounds imperative enough to cause this level of rush or of strain on both Koenma and Botan―

. . . and Kurama himself was the only viable option for backup.

With that in mind, he fixed Koenma with a hard-gold stare and said, "Extract me early. Tonight. I will go."

"Absolutely not!"

Kurama's eyes narrowed to slits.

"I am unlikely," he began slowly, dangerously, "to find out anything more of use in a mere two days."

Koenma interrupted him in a fashion not even Hiei would have dared, ignoring the warning inherent in his gaze. "I don't care. I need you there. You'll be extracted in two days. I'll deliver your warning to Yuusuke, and keep an eye on the situation." The kami's eyes were nearly as slitted, and he'd gone from consternated to imperious with unlikely speed. "Reikai out."

The signal snapped off to a single star of light in the screen's center, which winked out and left it black.

Kurama was thoroughly, consciously careful not to crush the little mirror in his fist.

Unacceptable.

That response had been too quick and too final to be a reasoned decision. It fell into place alongside Botan's peculiar exhaustion and the Tantei's sudden, suspect mission, and he no longer had any doubt: something else was going on, clearly beyond (and even possibly unrelated to) what he'd been told, and Koenma didn't want him to know the details.

He took a moment to wrestle down his anger. What Koenma chose to tell any of them was his own business, and since Kurama was not on the same mission as the others, he was technically not entitled to know. Still, secrecy was, although not new, entirely unwelcome, especially as Kurama had just all but sprained his tails on a beastly and repellent assignment into which he'd been summarily shoved (via attempted blackmail and, when that failed, outright bribery) by the half-panicked, fully close-mouthed prince. He would be sure to ask Hiei what was behind all of this when he got to them―for backing up the others was not, as far as he was concerned, a negotiable point. If Koenma refused to extract him, he was more than capable of extracting himself.

That said . . . he really didn't have the time.

He tucked the mirror carefully into his tunic. He wouldn't have to worry about Donari detecting it anymore.









Upon later reflection, Yuusuke had thoroughly confirmed his initial impression: this place did suck. It was totally his right to complain.

Calf-deep snow had pulled at his shoes the entire way here (he'd almost lost one a ways back from the clearing), and his toes were numb, inadequately warmed by the fire that refused to burn very well through damp wood. They weren't the only parts of him with that problem, either; he figured going without a winter coat on a mission to a village of ice demons was not the smartest move he'd ever made. He'd mostly just forgotten since it was summer at home, and it hadn't been all that bad until they'd actually gotten to the forest, but it was still stupid of him. He huddled by the fire, wishing he hadn't been so petulant and sat down in the snow earlier, because his butt was cold now and there was enough wind to keep him aware of it. He refused to put his back to the fire to heat it up; it was humiliating enough already, even if Kuwabara was still keeping watch for the next few hours and wouldn't see him.

Yukina looked perfectly at home, and even happy (which he guessed made sense), having changed from the street clothes she'd taken to wearing at Genkai's back into the soft blue kimono that she'd been dressed in when they'd rescued her from Tarukane. It looked as natural in these surroundings as she did. If he followed her tranquil, wandering gaze, he could spot the wildlife he hadn't seen any of the whole trip: songbirds and rabbits (and here he'd been joking about that) and, once, a glimpse of what looked like a snow fox. Spotting that, he couldn't help but think that Kurama, in his youko form, would be perfectly suited to this place; he could blend right into the snow, and only his golden eyes would give the clue as to his position.

This speculation pissed him off, because he'd told his brain firmly that it needed to stop rerunning the same handful of masochistic thought patterns surrounding that subject, and began a rather interesting mental argument that lasted him a good fifteen minutes, while feeling slowly crept back into his hands and feet.

As soon as he had finally squashed the last of that entire topic and summarily ejected the remains, he reached for something to replace it before it revived. "Hey," he addressed Yukina, startling her from an idle snow sculpture with this sudden noise through the quiet. "What are the koorime elders like?"

Her expression, which had been gently serene and content, faltered a little bit, and she momentarily looked away. "The Elders can be very strict," she answered softly, and he could distinctly make out the title's formality from her inflection.

"Strict, huh?" Yuusuke poked at the fire with a stick. "Like how?"

"They're very difficult to convince of anything, and seldom change their minds," she responded, still speaking quietly, as though the topic dampened her spirits. "They disapprove of outsiders, and those who interact with them."

This sounds like it'll be all kinds of fun. Except not. "So what're the chances that they'll cough up the thing we need?"

"I'm not sure," she said, biting her lip. "Once they know it's important, they may refuse to part with it, especially since they'll be giving it to men."

There was that not-liking-men thing she'd mentioned before. He bit back the urge to interrogate her about it like he'd started to do in Koenma's office; now wasn't the time, and it wasn't like there was anything he could do about it even if he knew more. Instead, he muttered something caustic and reached up to scratch his head. "That's just it―I'm not sure we should tell them it's important at all. I mean, I don't know what we should tell them, but . . ."

"We're not going to lie, surely," Yukina said, startled, a line appearing between her eyebrows. "That wouldn't be right."

"Do you have any better ideas?"

He knew in a moment that it hadn't really been fair to ask her that. Distress was plain on her delicate features, and she shook her head without answering. Her snow sculpture began melting into a featureless blob.

Not really wanting to lie to her, Yuusuke kept silent as well, for a good while, thinking. The Elders sounded like Genkai on a bad day: uncompromising and unfriendly, and apparently all set to dislike Yuusuke and Kuwabara for being male (of all things). At least, with Genkai, there was usually a right thing to say that would make her let up, but that was because she usually just wanted to make a point or teach a lesson.

The Elders probably wouldn't want anything but for them to get the hell off their turf, and he didn't have the first clue as to what the right thing to say might be, anyway. Maybe they should just let Yukina go in by herself or something; but it didn't seem fair to make her, since it wasn't really her mission anyway. Or they could threaten violence―which wasn't a lot better than lying.

How much of the Tantei's colorful, demon-exterminating reputation should they expect the Elders to know? It could be a lot of trouble if they knew Hiei had been part of the group, because then they might let slip the brother-sister thing to Yukina, and Yuusuke was definitely not up to dealing with that. But he didn't really know how to avoid it, either, unless he could keep interrupting and distracting so that it never got said . . . which would probably make it so they'd get dumped outside the village without the artifact they'd come for.

He rested his chin on one hand, elbow propped on his knee, and made his mind wrap itself around the problem for a while longer, trying to work it out and letting Yukina guard her own thoughts on the subject; but he wasn't Kurama or Hiei. Both of them were the ones who planned things, especially Kurama, and that was because Yuusuke wasn't any good at it even on his best day. He had a really great track record for off-the-cuff decisions and strategies, at least when it came to fights, but whenever he thought too hard about things in advance, he always got muddled and uncertain. Making plans was bad for Kuwabara, too; it got in his way just as much as Yuusuke's; but that didn't mean they were better off going in blind and unprepared. With the two demon Tantei gone, the humans were left at loose ends, working without the fall-back of experience if their own attempts came up short.

There was a lot that Yuusuke wasn't good at. He was still discovering new things he could no longer do, that he hadn't really been aware had been their skills and not his after all.

Missing Kurama and Hiei because he couldn't plan without them seemed really childish, all of a sudden. He'd never ask them to help him like that again, ever, if it meant they'd come back―and there was a lot more he'd trade with it.

The fire crackled lower for want of fuel. It was getting colder, though it wasn't yet dark, and the wind was picking up. Yuusuke sighed heavily.

"Fine, we won't lie," he said into the silence, which had lasted more than twenty minutes.

Yukina looked up at him from the fire, blinking as her pupils dilated again, and visibly brightened, relieved. "Thank you," she said simply, and gave him a radiant smile.

Some days, he could really tell why Kuwabara was so badly head-over-heels. He returned a lopsided grin, then let it fade as he warned, "I can't promise we'll give them the whole story, though."

Fortunately, her expression didn't change. She just nodded, accepting.

Good. That makes my job easier. I guess I'll end up getting to play this my way after all. No sense trying to plan when I know I suck at it.

With as much conviction as he could manage, Yuusuke firmly resolved to quit thinking so much, and just do what he always did best: make something up when he got there. After all, it had always been a pretty good strategy in the end―and it was all he had to try.

s**t . . . I really wish Kurama and Hiei were here.









"Hiei," Koenma said. "Hiei!"

There was no response.

The fire apparition was lying down against the bars of the prison cell with his back to the corridor, eyes firmly closed, body perfectly still. His arms were tucked against his chest, hands curled into flaccid fists, and, leaning to one side, Koenma could see that there was a peculiar, eerie sort of cast to his face. He seemed to have passed into some kind of trance―which was not only not normal for a spirit, but shouldn't have been possible in the first place.

Most uncanny of all, his Jagan eye was glowing, a soft but definite blue that showed through the headband and brought out flickering shadows on his face.

When Jorge had reported the state Hiei was in, Koenma had come stalking down here in a huff to see for himself, certain the oni had exaggerated. This was clearly not the case.

He folded his arms, tapped one foot, and began going through a precise litany of internal curses, in the place of counting to ten, though he couldn't say whether it kept the explosion of his temper at bay or just distracted him from its imminence. It was obvious on first look that Hiei's claustrophobia was much more severe than Koenma had suspected, or than Kurama had said when he'd revealed its existence, and Koenma was totally stumped as to how to wake the demon up again. More unnerving was the glow of the Jagan; without the youki of a physical demon body, it shouldn't have been able to do anything at all, rendered as inert as Hiei now appeared.

"He's been like that for a while, sir." Jorge stepped over to speak to his currently teenaged ruler. "We haven't been able to get a response out of him for hours, not even by poking him with sticks." He shuddered a bit, probably at the recollection of either having to do that, or watching someone else dare it. Hiei scared Jorge at the best of times, which this wasn't.

Koenma didn't answer right away, being busy mulling over how this was going to collapse his entire plan if it couldn't be reversed quickly.

How am I supposed to convince him to come back to life if he's in some kind of self-induced coma?

He was also thinking, rather uncharitably, that if he'd known Hiei would eventually retreat into himself after being locked up for long enough, he'd have just refused him parole in the first place. This wasn't strictly true, since that wasn't how the rules regarding torture and imprisonment worked here, and he'd also have been royally screwed on several past cases without Hiei's enforced help; it just made him feel better to think it. He and Hiei had never been on good terms, and it didn't look like they were heading for better ones.

Or for anything else, for that matter, if he couldn't get Hiei to wake up.

"This is terrible," he said slowly, more to himself than to Jorge. "I really didn't think he was this unstable." He took one bar in each hand and gripped them absently. Damn it all―he really couldn't afford to have the fire demon lose his mind just now. Or maybe he hadn't; maybe he was just that strong-willed. He was certainly stubborn enough.

"Just what are we going to do about it, sir?" Jorge sounded rather skeptical that anything could be done.

"I really don't know," admitted Koenma, kneeling for a better look as though scrutiny would reveal an answer. "I haven't had much experience in working with suicide cases directly." Typical suicides were given mandatory sentences, so unless they were also unexpected, they usually got batch-processed, and he never had to see them himself. "Dealing with this kind of apathetic mentality isn't my specialty, and I also have no idea what he's done to himself to sink into . . . this."

The oni shuffled his feet uncertainly. "Well, I can go look into his file, if that's all right with you, sir; maybe we can find something he'll respond to." He waited for Koenma's nod, then turned and ran down the hall towards Records, obviously grateful to get away from the too-quiet scene.

It really was supposed to be impossible. Ghosts didn't sleep. They couldn't even meditate properly until they'd been ghosts for a long time and had learned to filter out the new spiritual noise that cluttered up their half-phased existence. Trancing was, for someone newly dead, definitely not an option. Although, no one had ever sealed the Darkness Flame into themselves before, either. This, Koenma supposed morbidly, was what he got for conscripting intelligent and innovative people into service. All of the Tantei had a tendency to violate just about any rule in their way rather regularly, and this was impressive but minor, all things considered, or it would be if it weren't a direct and thoroughly effective block to Koenma's plans. He really ought to be panicking right about now, but he was getting burnt out on that reflex.

While he waited for his flunky to get back with the file, he considered. If he could get Hiei to respond, it might be a good time to re-offer him his freedom in exchange for compliance. If he could break Hiei's mental escape, make it impossible for him to try it again, it shouldn't be so difficult any longer to make him see reason.

Still ruminating on that plan, and on how much he hated resorting to it, he reached out and opened the cell door, carefully and deliberately setting the prisoner free.

There wasn't even a glimmer of reaction. Hiei stayed where he was, unmoving.

Koenma chewed on his pacifier thoughtfully. For that kind of change to take place right next to him, presenting him with a chance at escape, and for it to be ignored, there was either an impressive level of mental control keeping Hiei under, or he really had broken down entirely. It was problematic, trying to tell deliberate coma from involuntary catatonia.

The pounding of bare feet signaled the oni's swift return. He was empty-handed. About to speak, he saw the open cell door and braked sharply, sliding several feet on the smooth floor and making a little scramble back. He cast a horrified glance at Koenma, shocked mute; he'd been witness to the last time Hiei had been in lockup, when the demon had been setting fire to everything that moved and some things that didn't, and it was plain that he wasn't reassured by Hiei's current lack of youki. Irritated by the cowardice, Koenma stood, up, shoved the door closed, and returned an exasperated glare.

"His file's not hard to find," he snapped.

"I―er―already skimmed it, sir," stammered Jorge. "It's not very long. It's mostly a description of the time he stole the Shadow Sword, and everything since Yuusuke caught him. He doesn't answer questions, so we still don't know very much else . . ." Withering under Koenma's glower, he let the glut of useless information and excuses trail off.

It seemed an appropriate time for a long, disgusted, weary sigh. Koenma turned his back on Jorge, and stared for another minute or so at his prisoner. He wanted to say that Hiei looked like he was sleeping, but that would be a half-truth. There was something not right, and certainly not peaceful, about the way he'd shut himself off. Koenma got the definite impression that he could try anything he liked, and still be unsuccessful unless and until the trance lifted by itself.

"I'm afraid this may be a lost cause." The words were reluctant. "We may just have to send him for final sentencing and try to find someone else to help the Tantei."

"But who, sir?" Jorge cringed at the daggered look he received for his question, and mumbled a hasty apology.

Koenma didn't answer him, because he didn't really feel like saying Hell if I know out loud right now. He'd sound too much like Yuusuke. In lieu, he turned on one heel and swept down the corridor towards his office. If there was still a way to make this work, he'd find it. He really didn't have a choice in the matter.

Changing Death
7: Touched Cold


Chapter Theme Song: The Remedy (Abandoned Pools)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-November, 1272-

"You're not serious, sir!"

"Of course I am, idiot! Did you find me those files or not?"

"But―sir―what about your stamping? You'll be doing catchup for months!"

Koenma flung his personal, highly valuable, never-to-be-in-the-wrong-hands Royal Stamp at the clerk, bouncing it off the oni's horn to clatter across the office, vanishing under a stack of paperwork. The creature stumbled in surprise, ducking in case more missiles were on the way.

"Stop arguing with my commands!" Koenma yelled shrilly. "When I say I want you to get me files, I mean I want you to get me files, not whine at me about technicalities! Now get moving before I kick you halfway across the palace and then demote you to cleaning out the cells!" The end of his sentence degenerated into such a snarl that all resistance vanished into sniveling, and the underling fled, ostensibly to do Koenma's bidding.

Finally. People around here were starting to listen to him.

Koenma had only lately figured out that, in the absence of his father, he had no one to argue with his personnel allocation, and that threatening to demote his clerks actually had an impact on their morale and their obedience (unlike throwing tantrums). They had begun to respond to his barked orders with the proper amount of fear, which meant they were getting things done on a more consistent and more rapid basis. The only ones not impressed were the ferry-girls, who couldn't be demoted, reassigned or fired by anyone besides King Enma, but he was working on threats that might change that. So far he'd discarded eliminating their tea breaks and had nothing properly menacing yet.

His new, ferry-girl personal assistant, whose schedule would normally call for her to be here by now and getting things done much more efficiently, was a motivating factor in finding something sooner rather than later. He'd recruited her at first because he had wanted someone who could explain unfamiliar procedures to him―they'd been coming up regularly since he'd been given this job, and he had gotten tired very quickly of making things up on the fly―but had rapidly realized that if he kept her on as his assistant, he'd have a much better handle on everything that went on in his office. After all, they were in the business of processing dead souls, and the first step in this was soul collection, handled exclusively by the ferry-girls. They were an insular bunch, interacting minimally with the rest of the staff and mostly only with each other, so having an insight into them was valuable for Koenma in a number of ways.

He just wished this particular one wouldn't screech at him so much. He'd picked her because she was a mid-ranked pilot with only a century of service, and could be spared once in a while to bail him out and let him know what was going on in the ferry-girl ranks, and because he'd really been given no other choice. She'd been elected by the others as soon as he'd demanded an assistant, anyway, and he'd been lucky to get one with the qualifications he wanted. But she yelled. A lot. It was kind of funny, since she seemed to have an enormous sense of propriety when other staff were present, and a low tolerance for anyone else showing him disrespect, but she also seemed to regard it as her duty to let him know (very loudly) when he was doing something wrong. Copious repetitions of what Enma would have done were a regular feature.

Today he'd deliberately not called her in, because he was doing something that Enma would never have done, and doing it on purpose this time. So his father wouldn't give him control of the defense force, even after ten years as administrator and at least that many problems with the dimensional barrier? Well, it was high time he got around that by keeping a defense force of his own.

Of course, it wouldn't be anything like the veritable standing army that constituted the main defenses, but rather more like a strike team. A group of people that would answer to his call, without the need for bothering Enma, and who could take care of things like the barrier and stray demons just as well. To that end, he was determined to search out untrained psychics―the trained ones would probably not obey him―and conscript them into service.

Even so, he blanched an unhealthy white when the oni returned, balancing a stack of files that barely made it through the door, followed by four more clerks with the same volume. "Sir!" they chorused.

"This is going to be worth it," Koenma reminded himself under his breath as he pointed to a cleared space near his desk, and the oni hurried to set their burdens down. "It had better be. Especially once Botan finds out."









Reality . . . was this reality? Perhaps he was dreaming, still locked in a stupor of servitude, still waiting for the weary sun to rise on another weary day of subterfuge and frustration. That reality seemed far more potent and tangible than what he was confronted with now. Yet the light had already burgeoned over the lustrous, snow-veiled horizon in the time that had elapsed since Yuusuke had begun to speak, and Kurama's mind purled like churning water, refusing to settle into any form of complacency. This―this was unimaginable, but he had to be imagining it; it couldn't be really real.

Myself presumed dead, Koenma confirming it, and . . .

Memories overtook him, mercilessly replaying, battering him with the knowledge that everything they represented would never come again. Hiei, dead by his own hand―in a way, it was what Kurama had feared most ever since they had become more than simply partners, and now he had caused it to be true.

This is my fault.

He looked up at Yuusuke, resisting the insane, triple urges of laughter, tears and rage. Yuusuke stared back at him with eyes dimmed to nearly black by the recounting, watching him for―what? Kurama had no inkling. Kuwabara and Yukina sat just in sight at the edge of camp, leaving Kurama and Yuusuke to talk alone at Yuusuke's request; he could feel their eyes on him as well, and felt a need to say something, anything. Yet, he was unable to utter a word in this numb state, where his mind floated just an inch above his body and refused to return until he convinced it this wasn't happening.

Yuusuke finally broke the silence. "We missed you, Kurama," he said quietly. "We all missed you, Hiei most of all."

Kurama felt a lance of guilt and something deeper, unable to meet his friend's eyes. Humans always knew the worst things to say, and they never realized. "Yuusuke―" His attempt at speech ended there as his airway closed itself off abruptly, instinctively. Shock had stolen coherent thought, and he wasn't even sure what he had been about to say.

Yuusuke put a hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to say anything, Kurama. I know you didn't know. Koenma lied to you, just like he lied to us." He spat Koenma's name with a hatred Kurama hadn't heard in a long time―not since the death of Genkai at the Dark Tournament. His grip tightened and his voice began to rise as he spoke again. "That son of a b***h. This is all his fault, he screwed us all over, and we trusted him! I've been feeling responsible for everything, and it's because of him that Hiei―"

"Don't," Kurama interrupted him softly. Briefly, his leaf-green eyes brightened and burned with the threat of emotional reaction; he blinked them reflexively before there was any outward sign. "Give me a moment to think," he said, very quiet, very controlled. Not Koenma's fault. Mine. Yuusuke couldn't know how much he was reinforcing that. If Koenma's lie―that Kurama had died―was the reason for Hiei's death, the blame could not be but Kurama's own. For deliberately pushing at Hiei's emotional defenses; for all but demanding friendship of a demon who had never before known it; for the arrogance of believing it would do no harm.

The hand abruptly withdrew, and Yuusuke looked guiltily away. "I'm sorry," he said awkwardly, after another short silence, which seemed as though it was all he could offer to honor the request. "We've had a lot of time to―adjust, and I shouldn't have dumped it on you so fast. I know you two were ********!" He punched the yielding snowbank, leaving a foot-deep hole in its crystalline crust. "None of this is coming out right!"

Kurama inwardly flinched, even as he felt a flicker of resentment that his thoughts still would not settle even for the moment granted; for Yuusuke, this was salt in an already deep wound. He abandoned the effort at sorting himself and straightened, reasserting his calm and glossing over the shock that kept him from it. He would deal with it later. I shouldn't make this harder for him. I'm youko; I don't have to give in to my emotions, and he needs the stability more than I.

"There is no need for that, Yuusuke. It's difficult for both of us. I just wish I'd been here, or that I could have known."

Yuusuke gave him a startled glance, obviously surprised by his sudden change in manner, and after a moment warily shifted subjects. "Where were you, anyway? All we knew is that it was a mission."

Kurama's expression was something less than a smile. "There is not much to tell."

"I wanna hear it anyway," Yuusuke persisted, seeming more like his old self.

"Very well, then." Kurama drew in a long, slow breath through his nose, releasing it in a loud sigh. His voice, when it emerged, was level and normative. "I've been in the―employ, shall I say, of two demons named Donari and Gendou. They were, up until a little over two months ago, the lowest class of demon, barely fit to survive in the Makai. They were lucky to have lived long enough to form a partnership."

"Employ, huh? Sounds fun. But why bother with them if they weren't even a blip on the radar?"

Kurama gave a dry chuckle. "They became, quite suddenly, a very large 'blip,' Yuusuke. Do you recall the killings near the eastern sector of Makai? Hiei spoke of them before I left."

"You mean the ones Koenma told us not to bother investigating?" His eyes widened as sudden understanding struck. "s**t . . . that was them? All those massacres?" Yuusuke shuddered, then stiffened as another thought occurred to him. "Koenma said not to worry about it―that was because he was sending you, wasn't it?"

A nod. "Because Gendou and Donari had gone from negligible to such high-level demons, Koenma was worried that they might become arrogant and attack the Reikai. Moreover, he was certain that somewhere still in the Makai was whatever had made them so powerful in the first place, and that it might well be in the worst of hands." He paused before continuing. "I was sent to be their slave, to gain their trust and to perhaps discover the source of their power. However, because of your arrival in the Makai, I left before I could learn much of use. The only thing I know for sure is that they are perhaps the most dangerous apparitions currently alive. They have virtually no practical knowledge of either the Reikai or the Ningenkai, though it is rumored that they have spies in both, and they know no more than hearsay about the Tantei as we are. They know your name, and that you won the Dark Tournament, and that your patron is the Reikai, but that appears to be the extent of it."

The fox gave his companion a wry glance. "As powerful as they are, even I could not hope to stand against even one of them for long. They came hunting you for your reputation, and now they will come hunting me for my desertion, so I thought it best for us to help each other. I see now that I should have done so sooner."

There was an interim of silence then, during which Yuusuke assimilated all of this information. When he spoke again, it was the question Kurama had hoped not to hear.

"Why didn't Koenma tell us? Why would he hide something like this?"

Kurama glanced at him, his eyes guarded. "I don't know, Yuusuke," he replied quietly. "I only wish I'd been aware of Koenma's deception in time to intervene. My instructions―"

"Don't you dare," his companion interrupted, his urgency forcing Kurama to look him in the eyes. "Don't you dare blame yourself. There was no way you could have known, and that's my stupidity, anyway. Besides, you know how hard it was to talk Hiei out of anything." He grunted sardonically. It might have been intended as a laugh. "If you'd shown up and told him not to, he'd probably have done it anyway, just to be an a**."

That struck exactly the wrong chord, almost creating reflexive anger as a defense against pain, but Kurama smoothed it out (―it can't have been intentional―) and managed a wan almost-smile for Yuusuke's benefit. "Perhaps you're right. I just can't help but think, knowing Hiei as well as I did, that I might have done something to prevent it."

"I know how you feel. Trust me―I know."

The mutual silence that came after lasted for a good while, long enough that Kuwabara and Yukina began to edge closer to see if the two were finished talking. Yuusuke noticed, gave them a 'one minute' sign, and turned back to the kitsune. "We're going to see the koorime Elders today. Are you coming with us?"

"Do you still consider this errand urgent enough to complete?" Kurama asked him, tone flattening. It was both like and unlike Yuusuke, to continue following Koenma's directives after this morning's revelation, but regardless, he should have known better than to blithely ask Kurama to do the same.

There was a momentary pause. Yuusuke blinked, then looked away. "Yeah," he said. "I mean, Koenma made it sound like people are gonna get hurt if we don't, and that's kind of what my job is for. This doesn't mean I'm okay with any of this, but . . . also Yukina wants to help," he finished lamely.

Kurama believed he understood. Yuusuke was, what Yuusuke was. Kurama did not share that imperative, but he could hardly fail to support it in his friend. "Then I will come with you," he answered softly, "and help you complete it."

"Thanks," Yuusuke said with obvious relief, looking a shade startled as well. "We could definitely use you; neither of us―" he jerked his thumb to include Kuwabara in that statement "―is any good at talking things out, and it could get pretty messy with the Elders if Yukina can't smooth things over."

"Are you talking about me, Urameshi?" Kuwabara demanded from across the clearing.

Kurama cracked a genuine (if muted) smile at that, and nodded affirmatively. "I'll help as much as I can. Be assured of that." Then he frowned. "But you've been up all night; are you sure you don't want to sleep first, and see them when you're not so tired?"

"You do have a point," conceded Yuusuke, glancing over at the other two party members. "Hey, you two, is it all right if we go see the Elders tomorrow instead? We need to get some sleep."

"Uh, sure, that's fine, I guess," Kuwabara called back, after watching Yukina for assent, which she haltingly gave.

"Then let's do that. I'll stand first watch."

"No, Yuusuke, let me. I have things to think about." More than you know.

Yuusuke searched his expression, and did not argue, only nodded. He got up, and went to settle by the now-dim campfire, leaving Kurama alone in the creeping light of dawn.









Walking down unfamiliar, lacquered-floor corridors in Reikai's palace, following his minuscule captor, Hiei was beginning to have serious misgivings.

The first among them concerned how this entire process was going to operate. He had been wondering for some time exactly how Koenma planned to restore his life. He had been dead for days―weeks? His sense of time seemed to have departed with his breath, but he guessed that at least five or six days had gone by. A body, even a demon's, would certainly begin to decay in that amount of time.

Then, listening to Koenma's stream of babble, he heard a passing reference to "stasis," and felt a flash of anger. They'd been keeping his body preserved, expecting him to cave, had they? And what was worse, he had. His pride smarted, stung by his weakness of will.

But the second misgiving was much more pressing: the sense of urgency that had prodded him to agree now pushed against his mind, screaming that all this was taking too long. He didn't have time to wait around Reikai while his body realigned itself―that could take days or even weeks, and the premonition of imminent danger refused to be stifled. He was becoming more convinced, with each moment, that if he waited that long, he would be too late; he didn't know how he knew, but the certainty of it was bone-deep.

It comes down to yet another ridiculous choice, he reflected sardonically. I can either go through with my return to life and be too late to do anything, or I can escape now and risk being unable to do anything anyway. I see the universe's sense of humor hasn't improved since I was alive. He already found it easy to think of his life in the past tense.

Koenma, still preceding him down the hall, stopped at a door and turned around. "This is where your body's being kept. We'll have to take it back to Ningenkai before you can be resurrected. Don't worry, we'll pick somewhere out of sight."

Hiei snorted. "Why Ningenkai? Can't you let me have a shred of dignity about this whole business?"

The toddler gave him a disgusted look that said it should be obvious. "Because that's where you died, and that means it's the only place where you can be brought back to life."

This was news to Hiei, who did not deign to reply. He waited with as much patience as he had left while Koenma pulled out a key and inserted it into the heavy brass lock, pulling the door open. "Follow me," Koenma said, and they went in.

The stasis room, as it turned out, was a most singular place. There were no lights, and yet there was light, coming from nowhere Hiei could see; the walls of the oddly ovoid room were a queer, off-color white that reminded him of eggshells. In the center of the room was a table, and on it a pallet.

There Hiei's body was laid out lengthwise, a strange humming coming from it that resonated along his every nerve. The body was dressed in Hiei's customary black cloak, with his katana in its sheath lying detached next to the place where it ought to be belted to the waist. The eyes were closed, the face peaceful―and covering one wrist and hand, clearly visible in the merciless, sourceless light, was a latticework of narrow, red scars.

That sight hit Hiei harder than he could ever have expected. The body lying there didn't look like him―it was a prison he had escaped, and yet he felt drawn to it. He froze, torn in an instant between an instinctive, soul-deep yearning to be merged with his empty vessel, and a revulsion almost like terror that welled up in his throat like bile.

He vividly recalled his first few moments of death, hovering in the black of Ningenkai's night and looking down at the shadowed, too-thin form that had lain so still in the darkness, blood gleaming wetly in the wan illumination of the moon. It hadn't seemed so real, then; he had felt little else besides an aching relief, knowing that his unkind existence was finally over with, and a blanketing sense of shame. Now it hit him like his own Kokuryuuha―and fear triumphed over longing.

I―can't go back!

Oblivious to his discomfiture, Koenma struck up his monologue again. "By my calculations, your body and your soul should be realigned in about seventy-two hours. Since your companions are all busy right now, we'll have to cheat a little; I can change some of my own energy into youki that is compatible with yours, so I'll be transferring the life energy to you myself. This does mean I'll have to kiss you," he added, lips twisting with irony and distaste, "but I hope you won't fault me for the necessity of―"

Turning around to face Hiei, he broke off suddenly. He was talking to an empty room.

Hiei heard the alarm being raised as he fled, but he was already out of the palace and heading for the portal that he knew would take him to Makai―and from there, to Kurama.









Yuusuke was of the opinion that the only reason the koorime "escort" hadn't attacked them outright was that Yukina was with them. The two females were surly and hostile towards everyone else, acting as if the Tantei would back-stab them any second, and though they were hardly civil to Yukina, at least they didn't growl every time she moved.

He glanced again at the scouts. They were dressed far differently from Yukina, in short white tunics that bared their long legs and with hair hacked functionally short, arrow quivers across their backs to accompany longbows that had been drawn since they had spotted Yuusuke and his group. They would have presented next to no challenge for him―but he wasn't about to fight them.

Moving on from deciding he was just going to have to wing it, he had also had time to decide that this was the stupidest thing he had ever elected to do in his life, both before and after his resurrection. Sure, suicide moves were his specialty, and he made a hobby out of risking his neck for trivial reasons, but he usually stood a good chance at accomplishing whatever goals he had set. Anything that brute force could solve, he considered as good as done.

This was an entirely different kind of thing. This required tact, skill, and quick thinking and talking. It wasn't as if he could just punch the Elders out, though it might be satisfying to try. He really wished it were just a routine errand, so it wouldn't matter if he botched things up, and he tried to tell himself that he could always resort to violence if he had to, but it wasn't working; if violence were safe to use, Koenma would have told them to do it that way in the first place (and he wouldn't have sent Yukina), and something that could make him so nervous was on par with some of Yuusuke's first big cases, such as the menace of the Four Saint Beasts. That was not reassuring. It also put a distinct crimp in his usual make-s**t-up method, since most of what he knew how to do on the fly involved his fists.

Now, as they approached Yukina's village, he became quite sure that he ought to have insisted on her going it alone. He had briefly broached the subject, unfair as it was to her, and braced himself for the inevitable, which had come in the form of Kuwabara's violent protest and Yukina being unable to get a word in. Yuusuke thought sourly that if she'd been allowed to talk, she would probably have agreed with him, but by now it was a very moot point.

Kurama's presence went a long ways towards stopping him from attempting to escape his near-hopeless situation. The kitsune was unfailingly suave and persuasive, and if all else flopped he could probably filch the item from under the koorime's noses without them ever noticing.

Funny how I just fall right into the old habit of relying on him to back me. It's like he was never gone―or at least, kinda like that. More like he was just gone on a trip or something, and we'd expected him back all along.

Then again, he hadn't ever really gotten out of that habit; every discussion he had had with Kuwabara in the last month had been laced with intermittent pauses, as Yuusuke stopped talking and waited for Kurama to offer advice or make a comment. Those intervals had echoed emptily then, but now that he was back they were again filled, and it was as natural as breathing. It almost seemed like that weird good luck he'd always had was acting up again―just as he'd been feeling trapped, wishing Kurama would come back and help him, the redhead had appeared. It was surreal. Yuusuke was pretty sure he wasn't done getting over the shock yet.

Kurama walked beside him quietly now, showing no outward signs of this morning's emotions, and though he was uncharacteristically taciturn, it was reassuring to have him so nearby. He was dampening his ki―a survival precaution for the time being, as he had explained (and which Yuusuke knew had to do with his mission and those two big demons)―so he had to be almost within arm's reach to be felt. But it was how Yuusuke had known it was really him, last night. Kurama's ki was one he would know anywhere, and had thought he'd never feel again.

If he hadn't been so nervous about his own mission, he had the embarrassing feeling that he'd have had trouble keeping his eyes off Kurama. As in, maybe ever again. He just needed to assure himself that he was really there, and would still be there between one minute and the next. It was difficult not to reach out for his shoulder, despite knowing how that would look, now that he would be solid and real and not just a dream-figment that would burst in the light. But he had to keep an illusion of nonchalance for now, at least until this mission was over, and that meant the contact that had been impossible against the backdrop of this morning's emotions would have to wait a while longer.

It still wouldn't make things normal, but at least it would keep Yuusuke from losing his mind.

His thoughts had carried him all the way beyond the village boundary, and partially to distract himself from the turn they'd taken, he paused in them to look around.

The koorime settlement itself was surprisingly simple, the dwellings unobtrusive and elegant without sacrificing comfort or practicality; the forest was such an integral part of the construction and atmosphere that they might as well have lived in the trees themselves. Most huts had a tree acting as a central pillar, and were thatched with dried grasses glued in place with thick, shiny sheets of ice, which continued to cover the entirety of the (clay? stone?) walls. Reflections glinted at every angle, making the village shimmer even in shadow. It all managed to look sophisticated and yet rustic, perfectly designed and yet haphazardly spaced―the resulting sense of almost anachronistic incongruity made Yuusuke's head hurt, though that might have been partially due to cold and fatigue. None of them had slept overmuch that day.

There were no koorime about save the ones leading them, which he found hardly surprising considering the hatred for men these apparitions harbored, but the overall effect (especially with all that mirror-like ice) was of a ghost village―deserted and creepy.

It became obvious that they were headed for the largest structure at what appeared to be the village's central square, or at least central clearing. It didn't have a tree, but didn't appear to need one―in fact, it looked for all the world like a traditional wooden building, sort of like Genkai's temple on a much smaller scale. The sliding door was not rice paper, although it might have been something close, but except for that obvious difference, it was alike in every respect to the older houses with which Yuusuke was vaguely familiar from his own city.

Huh. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's where the Elders are. Well, here goes. Yuusuke squared his shoulders and strode boldly where he was led, walking without an ounce of hesitation into the building.

He almost stopped short as a blast of cold air slapped him in the face; it was even colder inside than outside, if such was possible. The ceiling was high and peaked, with cleverly constructed arches of ice supporting it, making it seem overall to be more spacious than its plain exterior had hinted. Opaque ice panels sectioned off part of the main structure, creating an atrium effect. Yuusuke shivered. The koorime looked so human; for some reason he had expected their architecture to be somewhat less―well, alien. The outside looked so normal, too. Moreover, the use of ice as a permanent building material made him nervous―it looked far too fragile to be holding as much weight as it was.

There was a genkan; they all removed their shoes. Yuusuke was glad his toes were numb already.

The two koorime escorting them proceeded to the partition and halted, turning to flank it like door guards. Yuusuke blinked, but elected to say nothing. One of them raised an imperious hand and rapped once on the pane before her. A tone like a bell thrummed dully through the air, and Yuusuke realized that this antechamber had been specifically designed for that effect. Then a door-shaped opening seemed to melt out of the ice, and he forgot to be reserved and stared. This stuff is amazing. I didn't know you could do so many different things with just ice.

He glanced at Yukina, who was looking suspiciously misty-eyed, as the last ringing echoes faded from the room. I hope she and Kurama can get us through this. If not, we're so screwed it isn't even funny. I hate to think what'll happen if we can't get that artifact back. I wonder if the koorime would get hurt, like with the mirror, or hurt other people like with the demon-making sword? It would have been nice to get told what this artifact is supposed to do.

One of the koorime glanced at them with eyes as cold as the room. "If you'll follow us, please?" the scout said, directly to Yukina at the back of the group, looking past the males as if they didn't exist. Kuwabara stiffened at the implied insult, making as if to move forward and stopping at Kurama's restraining hand on his shoulder.

Yuusuke didn't bother watching his two teammates any longer. Taking a deep, slow breath, he followed Yukina as she in turn followed her fellow koorime through the doorway―and he halted.

He had expected (there was that word again) the remainder of the building to be one huge, echoing, intimidating room, perhaps with pillars and intricate ice carvings to enhance the effect; this room was smaller than the entryway and unequivocally bare, though there was a door at the back that presumably led into the rest of the structure. A semi-circle of knee cushions were placed against the back wall, a low table in the center, and on those cushions sat seven stately koorime.

Everyone stared at everyone else.

Yuusuke was abruptly tongue-tied. He had had a sketchy sort of speech planned out, but he couldn't recall a word of it. Panic began to rise in his throat as the women stared at him coolly, appraising him. Come on, Yuusuke, snap out of it! This is the crucial point! You can't afford to screw it up!

Just as something, probably the wrong thing, was about to claw its way out of his throat, Yukina stepped up and executed a graceful, low bow. "Elders," she said respectfully. "I have come to ask a favor."

The center of the seven replied, in a deep, feminine voice, "Yukina, Hina's daughter. You bring men into our village, a thing that is against our laws. By what right do you ask indulgence?"

Yuusuke saw her flinch slightly―she'd been expecting this, no doubt. "I had no choice, honored Elders," she said, and to her credit, her voice did not waver. "They were sent to accompany me by the great Prince Koenma, son of King Enma, ruler of the Reikai. It is on his behalf that I ask this boon. The Reikai has done me great service, and I discharge my debt by so asking." Her speech was stilted and formal, not at all the way she normally talked, but it also didn't seem as though she were forcing it. Maybe that was the way they all talked here.

Yuusuke held his breath as they appeared to consider this, exchanging mysterious glances among themselves though not speaking. He felt slightly relieved that he hadn't had to take the initiative yet; if stuff worked out right, he might not have to at all. Kurama was there as backup for Yukina if she needed it. He looked over―Kurama seemed utterly unperturbed. His stance was easy, without even a trace of battle-tense muscles, and his face expressionless without being overly so.

That's a relief. If he's not worried, things'll be fine. I just hope he knows what he's doing, 'cause I sure as hell don't have a clue. What the hell was Koenma thinking, sending me and Kuwabara on this goddamn mission in the first place? He knows we suck at this.

Kuwabara, in contrast to Kurama, was looking just as twitchy as his schoolmate felt. Mostly that seemed to be caused by anger. Not that it was surprising―he hated being looked down on, and the koorime had done nothing but. At least Koenma hadn't tried to send just Kuwabara, or things wouldn't even have gotten this far. Or maybe they would have; Yuusuke wasn't helping a whole lot, either.

It was actually kind of unfair, it occurred to him. Suddenly it was hard to figure out if he was glad that Kurama was taking charge, or put out because it made him feel useless and awkward. Maybe he still would've done fine on his own . . . except probably not, but that didn't mean he'd have completely ruined it . . .

After a short eternity during which he began to wonder just how long it was possible for him to go without air, one of the Elders spoke again, this time the one on the leftmost end. "Very well, Yukina. You may ask, though compliance is by no means assured."

Yuusuke's breath whooshed out, just short of audibly, and he gulped more air as his starved lungs complained. None of the koorime appeared to notice, though Kurama's eyebrow quirked and he glanced over.

"There is an artifact belonging to the Reikai that Prince Koenma believes is in your possession. He merely asks that this artifact be returned to him."

"And what is this artifact of which you speak?"

Here Yukina stalled, unsure of what to say, and Kurama stepped forward once more before she could lose her poise. "If I may, honored Elders," he said smoothly. "I realize that you have little love for men, but the honored Yukina is not fully aware of the details. Will you allow me to speak on her behalf?"

The center koorime arched a delicate brow, somehow conveying vast, expressive distaste. "And you are?"

To Yuusuke's surprise, the calm, composed redhead almost seemed to wilt a little under her gaze, and his voice, when he finally spoke, was defeated. "I am called Shuuichi, esteemed Elder," he replied, speaking directly to her in response rather than the group of them as a whole, and using his human name rather than the proper one. "I am in the employ of the great Prince Koenma and his exalted father, King Enma." He paused once more, then sighed heavily. "I humble myself before you in my unworthy state, and ask forgiveness for the temerity of my request. I withdraw it."

The detective nearly choked, losing his internal dilemma to indignation. Withdraw? What the hell does he mean, withdraw? What kind of strategy is that supposed to be?

But it was apparently a good one after all, because that response seemed to placate the Elders, and after another silent conference, the third from the right replied, "You shall be permitted to speak, but only on those things that Yukina cannot."

Yuusuke finally relaxed fully as Kurama curtly related the particulars as if he'd known them firsthand. So that's what he was up to. If he can maneuver them into letting him talk so easily, he's got his work cut out for him. Awesome.

He let what followed pass largely unnoticed as he cast about with his gaze, trying to see if the artifact might be in this room. He trusted Kurama to handle things from there; he'd get around to feeling shown up later on.









Kurama, on the other hand, was quite perturbed, contrary to Yuusuke's assessment. He had so little to work with that it made even him nervous―if Koenma had told them how the koorime had come into possession of the artifact, or given them more hints as to its appearance, he might have been more confident, but this was a dance of words that left him precariously close to slipping up. Protocol was of the utmost importance here, deference an art, placation and flattery interweaving like melody with harmony. He wouldn't even have attempted it, except for being much better at dissembling than the sweetly honest Yukina.

Keeping up the conversation (which consisted largely of relaying a meeting at which he hadn't been present, and stalling for time in general), he activated multitasking skills long unused and began to cast about with his gaze for objects that could possibly be their target, relying on minute muscle control to make each eye movement almost imperceptible. He immediately ran up against two problems: one, he didn't have the slightest clue what to look for, and two, there didn't seem to be anything in the room at all besides them and the Elders.

So―perhaps they have it.

He studied the women as unobtrusively as possible, scanning as well for any power signatures beyond their ki. They ranged from young to very old, all of the latter being on the righthand side, one positively ancient. The younger women were very similar in appearance save for subtle differences. The one on the far left end had angular shadows in her cheeks, and looked worn around the edges, as if she were under too much stress; the one next to her seemed less noticeable in an odd sort of way; the third from the left had softer eyes and seemed nearly as gentle as Yukina. Each one had a remote variation that made her easier to identify as an individual―but the koorime in the center was the one that caught his attention.

The youngest-looking of the seven, she reminded him of Yuusuke's girlfriend Keiko in a strange way, though this powerful woman was no young girl. She wore the same fine kimono as the others, a combination of silver and powder-blue with a lovely scarlet obi, but around her neck was an unusual necklace. The cord looked like woven silver, and the palm-sized pendant was a half-globe of faceted amber that seemed curiously burnt and ragged around the edges.

Ah. That may be it. Yuusuke and Kuwabara were told it could be a jewel―and I can feel that it has some power, now that I've focused on it. Excellent.

With an invisible smirk, he turned his full attention on his words, and the negotiation began in earnest. He wasn't sure if he was right, but if not, they could deal with it when it became necessary.









Koenma let loose a ripe oath that made Jorge's eyes go wide and threw his remote control across the office. It struck the wall with a satisfying swack and clattered to the floor, where it was instantly forgotten as he cast about for something else to fling in his ire.

"I'M SICK OF THIS!" he hollered for the third time, his voice cracking as it hit volumes several decibels above its normal capacity. He knew he'd have a sore throat for weeks after this tirade, but at the moment he didn't care. "I'm SICK of ALWAYS being DISOBEYED! I'm the KAMI here, you'd think I'D know best, but Enma forbid anyone actually LISTEN to me!"

His questing hands found yet another miscellaneous object, which joined the rapidly growing collection of banged-up odds and ends on the floor by the far wall.

"I FINALLY get him to agree, and then he RUNS OUT ON ME! How am I supposed to save the worlds if EVERYONE keeps DOING that?" With that, Koenma slumped down in his office chair, energy spent for the moment, and saw Jorge edging closer tentatively as if he might ask something. "Jorge," he whined instead of waiting to find out, "do you have any ideas? I'm all out right now."

"You mean you're actually asking for my opinion, sir?" The oni sounded genuinely shocked by the notion.

A snort. "Unfortunately, yes, I'm currently that desperate. Do you have any ideas or not?"

Jorge considered. "Well, why don't you just bring him back to life anyway? I mean, if his body is realigned and the life energy is donated, why does it make a difference if he wants to or not?"

Koenma glared. "If it didn't make a difference, do you think I would have spent all that time trying to convince him to agree? Life energy and alignment don't mean a thing if the will to live doesn't exist. Haven't you ever heard of people willing themselves to death?"

"Well, sort of . . ."

"Well, a person who's coming back to life has to will himself back, and I can't do it for him." He sighed, and put a hand over one eye as if the external barrier could block out the internal pain of his raging headache. "Hiei's just too stubborn. He'll never come back now."

"If I may ask, sir, why is he so important, anyway?" asked Jorge inquisitively. "If Kurama and Yuusuke are working together, can't they handle things?"

There was an internal snap, and it was almost audible, and even Koenma felt the shock wave emanating from his completely disintegrated temper. This was the last straw, the cap to a truly terrible day.

"DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ANYTHING?" he exploded at his personal clerk, spittle making arcs across the room. "Those two demons Kurama was working for are DANGEROUS! Even WITH Hiei, the Tantei might not be able to handle them alone, and if they lose then ALL THREE WORLDS ARE SCREWED!"

The oni gaped, eyes as big as saucers, and nodded vigorously to show that no further bombardment was necessary. Koenma, however, was not mollified.

"And it's all HIEI'S FAULT!"

SWACK.

Beep.

"Sir, you'll break your mirror!"









It was a distinctly surreal experience, flying over the forests of the Makai like some fantastic, invisible bird. Few of the demons he encountered were able to sense his presence at all, and none did more than look over their shoulders nervously as if feeling an unexplained draft. He passed places both familiar and foreign on his way.

It was just like his life in the Makai: forever watching his back, scanning with his senses for pursuit, flitting about with all his speed and agility and never staying in one place for long. That he did not require sleep was an asset; that he fled from his Reikai prison rather than other apparitions, of no consequence. The same instincts that had availed him well in life did likewise now.

It bothered him somewhat that he seemed to be skulking for nothing―as yet there had been no sign that he was being followed or tracked. Then again, that monitor in Koenma's office might make it a moot point; Hiei had no idea whether it could home in on him if his precise location was not known. He chose to believe it could not, and continued to keep up his erratic path to throw off his (literally) phantom pursuers.

One facet of being dead was irking him, however: his inability to sense ki. This handicap forced him to systematically search every inch of forest, cutting into precious time that he did not have to spare, and he grew more irritated by the hour. Where is that blasted fox? Of all the times for him to be finally hiding himself properly―

Not to mention that the thrice-damned wood seemed a lot smaller when viewed from above than it actually was.

He'd begun from much farther north than he was accustomed, given the location of the Reikai portal (the existence of which had greatly aided his theft of the Shadow Sword a year and a half ago), but north in the Makai was not like north in the Ningenkai, where it became progressively colder the closer one came to the pole; Makai's myriad of climates operated independent of location, all too often created artificially by powerful demons and left that way for millennia, so here it was warm and lush, populated by what passed for deciduous trees in a place that had no changing seasons (the shedding of leaves was bi-annual). It was a reasonably inhabited area, although there weren't known to be many very strong presences. Here was a haven for those middle-strength demons who could hold the land and had earned the right to do so by climbing over their weaker brethren.

At one point or another, Hiei was reasonably sure, this had been one of Youko Kurama's many homes, before he had ascended to greater power and fame. That made it a reasonably decent place to begin searching, given that he had no idea whatsoever where Kurama had been sent for his ridiculous mission, and could only speculate that it would be likely somewhere the fox knew well. If it weren't, any one of the group could have been conscripted for it. Unless, of course, it involved thieving, but if that were the case, it would not have extended so long. Even crafting and executing the most complicated of plans didn't take Kurama this much time.

That was, actually, one of the reasons Koenma's lies had seemed so plausible.

Hiei cursed the demon-turned-human inventively for having so many foxholes and hideouts. During his life, the famous burglar had run the entire Makai many times over, and all places but a very few were open to one of his former power and prestige. During the year he'd known Kurama prior to his first encounter with Yuusuke, Hiei had been informed during one of their offhand conversations that Kurama had "a few lairs here and there, for variety," which in demon parlance meant an extensive network of hiding places and treasure caches, and he possessed no earthly or unearthly notion which one the fox might be using.

And he had so little time, to search an entire world.

This was a game of which he was quickly growing tired.

It touched off such dreadful irony, to have all the time in three worlds, and none at all. But he searched, and that was all he could do.

The best chapter yet! : D

Please keep updating and do it soon~!

By the way, I MUST compliment you on the Kurama dream. It was ALL too amazing. Even if I HADN'T known Hiei slipped into Kurama's dream and there was continuous questioning of whether or not he was just a figment of Kurama's imagination, I would've known, just because you wrote him SO well, especially for the situation he was in. AND Kurama's tears were DEFINITELY a twist. I didn't see it coming and wouldn't have thought about it, but you did it EXTREMELY well. Like, okay. Dream = perfection! blaugh heart heart heart

Like I said, PLEASE update soon! : DDD

Changing Death
10: Night Visions


Chapter Theme Song: Prelude 12/21 (AFI)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You're going home?"

"I am."

"But why can't you stay with Genkai like you have been? You said you liked living at the temple."

"I will soon, but first, I have something I must do at my village."

"But―do you have to?"

"I do. The Elders will never forgive me if I don't return immediately and apologize."

"But you didn't do anything!"

"I brought you into my village, against the law, and you broke our hospitality. The responsibility is mine."

"Some hospitality! That doesn't make any sense! And won't you get in trouble?"

"Don't worry, I'll be fine. The Elders will find a suitable punishment for me, but no one has been banished from the tribe in all our recorded history, except―except my brother."

"I still don't get what their problem is with men. Did men do something bad to them, and that's why they're mad?"

"No, it's not that. Things have always been this way."

"That's stupid. There's nothing wrong with men, and you don't throw someone out of your city just because they got born different. No offense, but I don't gotta lot of respect for people like that."

"I have never agreed with them, either, but I will not presume to judge my own people."

"Hey―I'm sorry, Yukina. I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, it's all right. Would you like to come with me as far as the village? I would feel safer if I weren't alone."

"Of course! I'd go anywhere if you asked me to!"

"Thank you, Kazuma."

"No need to thank me, my love, just lead the way!"









"What are you doing here? It's pretty late."

"I didn't mean to wake you; I just heard from Yuusuke."

"Really? It's about time. Come on in. Would you like a soda?"

"No, thank you."

"Do you mind if I have a beer?"

"No, that's fine. Wow, things are really clean here. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to―"

"No problem, I understand what you meant. It's amazing what can happen when my brother is gone for a while. So what have he and Yuusuke been up to? Will they be back soon?"

"Pretty soon, probably in the morning."

"Wonderful. What were they really up to? Off fighting muscled freaks again?"

"Actually . . ."

"What's wrong? Did something happen? Is Kazuma all right?"

"He's fine. It's not that."

"Don't keep me in suspense, Keiko!"

"I know your brother told you about Kurama. Yuusuke says it's not true."

"Really? That's great news! So if he's not dead, where's he been all this time? Was he captured or something?"

"He was on some sort of mission that Yuusuke wasn't supposed to know about. Something top secret. But he's really okay, although Yuusuke said he might not be back for a while."

"But something else is wrong, isn't it? That was the good news, so what's the bad?"

"Kurama's not dead . . . but―Hiei is. For sure."

"Oh. I'm so sorry, Keiko; I thought you knew. Kazuma told me about it, but not much else, and not how it happened."

"Yuusuke wouldn't say either."

"I had felt something strange . . ."

"Shizuru?"

"A little over a week ago, I sensed something, like a wave of pain across my chest, but it disappeared. I thought it was a dream―I have them sometimes, since the Tournament."

"Yuusuke was so strange, Shizuru! He seemed so angry, but he would hardly talk to me, and I'm afraid! What if he has to leave again? What if the same thing happens to him that happened to Hiei?"

"It won't. Calm down, girl."

"What do you mean, it won't?"

"I'm not sure why, but I'm certain of it. He's safe for now. What happened to Hiei was something different."

"How can you know that?"

"I just know. Look, where did Yuusuke say he was going?"

"Home. He said he wanted to see Genkai tomorrow."

"Well, there you go. He can hardly be in danger there. And she's not the one who sends him on cases, is she?"

"I guess not."

"I'll bet he'll be better in a day or so. Hopefully Genkai will help him and Kazuma get through this―Hiei was a pretty good friend."

"I thought Kuwabara didn't like Hiei at all."

"Men stuff. They were friends, they just never admitted it. I'm glad that Kurama's alive, though. I'm not sure Yuusuke would . . . well, never mind."

"What? You're not sure Yuusuke would what?"

"I said it's not important. It's the middle of the night; you should go get some sleep. You'll be late for school if you sleep in."

"Well, all right. I just wanted to tell you what was going on."

"I appreciate it, kiddo. We'll have coffee tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."









"Sir? You called for me?"

"What? Oh, yes. I'm very pleased with your efforts in this matter. I wanted to tell you that you have a leave of absence for a few days, if you'd like."

"Yes, sir. Thank you very much."

"Make sure you finish up your report before you go."

"Yes, sir . . . what is it?"

"Can't you even look me in the eye anymore? No, don't answer that. I'm sure I don't want to know."

"But sir, I―it isn't that."

"Then what is it?"

"It―it's just so sad. They'll never come back here again. They'll never visit just because, or show up grumbling about work. It's . . . empty."

"I know. Things won't be the same around here. Even the oni aren't working up to par."

"So they've noticed, even this soon?"

"The way Yuusuke stormed out, did you think they wouldn't?"

"I suppose not."

"Do you think what I did was right?"

"Truthfully? No. I think it was cruel and horrible and I hate you for it. But I also think it was necessary."

"Fair enough. What now?"

"I'm not sure. Hiei should be captured soon; we can try again with him."

"No. That's not an option any longer. This whole situation is a ticking time bomb, and I can't wait for him to come around. When he's brought in, I'll process him as usual, and send him on. I'll let you know when that happens, if you want to say goodbye."

"But―I understand, sir. Just don't punish him too much. We forced him into it."

"I'm already waiving his sentence for breaking jail. That's the most I can do. But now we have to focus on our options. I can't use it myself, Botan. The backlash would be too strong. I needed Hiei to use it for me, because he's the only one who wouldn't be in danger."

"What about Kurama, sir?"

"Not unless he wants to join Hiei. Given his body's composition, it could very easily kill him. Then he'd be a willful death case and I don't want to deal with that."

"That's a ridiculous law and you know it. I don't know why King Enma hasn't changed it already. It's not fair!"

"It's dumbest rule in the book, but there's no getting around it. At least the sentence is relatively light―it's a lot better than an outright suicide, anyway. Though there ought to be a clause exempting Tantei; maybe my father would be willing to review it."

"You made an exception for Yuusuke."

"Yuusuke didn't quite count; he knew he was putting himself in danger, but he didn't know he'd die, and he wasn't driving the car. Though even if he had been a willful death case, I might have made an exception for him anyway―I needed a detective, and he just fell in my lap, and I don't think I'd have been able to pass up the opportunity."

"If I may ask, sir, why can't you make an exception for Kurama? He's a valuable asset."

"I've broken too many rules already; with things this close to the wire, I have to follow the rules, or I could catch my father's attention. This situation will go up in flames if that happens."

"Then we have to use one of them soon, before it gets any worse."

"I can't use any of them, Botan! None of them are safe!"

"But what about Yuusuke?"

"No! I won't let that happen again!"

"But he's only―"

"That's enough that I can't afford the risk! You're the only one who knows why, so don't push me!"

"I think he could do it!"

"I won't take the chance!"

"Then let me!"

"Hah! Interesting, but we can't afford that either. We have no idea what it might do to you―or to me."

"We're all out of options, Koenma. Either let me do it, or find someone strong enough who won't be killed. Or use Yuusuke. No one is irreplaceable in a situation like this."

"Stop it. You have no idea what it would mean if he were to die this way. I can't give him a reprieve―he'd be given a mandatory sentence, just like Hiei, because he's been brought back to life once already. I probably wouldn't even have to see him."

"You would."

"I won't. I won't let it come to that."

"I'm sorry. But you know those are your only options."

"Fine. I appreciate your help. You can leave now if you want."

"Thank you, sir. Let me know if―if anything comes up that you need me for."

"I will."

Changing Death
11-B: The Wrong One Underneath (Part 2)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Genkai eyed her visitor sardonically. "This is unexpected," she drawled. "You usually show up whining that you need more training, but somehow I don't suppose I'm that lucky. What do you want this time?"

The temple grounds were sullenly green under the humidity, the paving stones a muted gray, with heat shimmers turning the brown-tipped weeds slightly blurry. Cicadas trilled. Everything carried the unreal quality lent by intense heat. Yuusuke ignored the sweat rolling down between his shoulder-blades and squinted; he swore his vision had improved since he'd come back to life, but there was that about Genkai's temple that messed with his senses, especially when it was hot. He hated it.

"Well?" Genkai snapped impatiently.

Somehow that helped him to focus on her face. Maybe her vision was better now, too, so she didn't care that her whole place was hazy. "Have you talked to Koenma lately?" he asked.

"Aren't we blunt. No, I haven't talked to the Brat since the Tournament, and I'd like to keep it that way. I've had a good deal more contact with Botan. Why?"

The boy thrust his hands into his pockets and began to dig a small hole in the dirt with his shoe, between the paving stones. "Yukina said she's been keeping you updated, so you know most of what's up . . . when was the last time she was here? I―hey!" He coughed. "Don't blow smoke at me, hag!"

She deliberately exhaled another rank cloud in his face and eyed him with disgust. "I can figure what you're getting at, but you're certainly taking a long time about it. You'd better come inside and make sure you have everything straight."

"I don't need to." His lips settled into a sullen moue. He really didn't want to go in there. "I was just trying to figure out how much Yukina told you." That was so he'd be able to avoid making her angry by telling her things she already knew; he'd much rather just not talk about them at all, but he'd shown up here for a reason, and just because he was feeling disgruntled didn't mean he could just blow off the circumstances. Genkai was the only one who might be able to help him work them out.

He couldn't help the pout, but at least she gave him an answer anyway. Maybe she was in a good mood. "Fine," belied the thought with its jagged tone. "Very little. I'm out of the loop these days, and I haven't pressed her. She also hasn't been back here since she left with you." Her eyes appraised him from behind the heat, as if she knew precisely what he'd come for already―another thing he hated. Like the way he knew for sure that she could see the way he was spilling over with unused energy, sparking the air in a badly reined-in display of frustration. It was a disgrace to his training (not that he'd ever had a lot of self-control, but he was always required to exercise it when on the temple grounds) and it would probably make her just as pissy with him as he was with the universe in general right now.

Instead of waiting for a reply, she jerked her head warningly behind her, towards the door. She obviously wasn't in the mood to brook disagreement.

Dammit. He hated being right. He shrugged, as if he didn't care, knowing she already knew he did, and went.

An hour or so later, they were sitting in front of Genkai's battered old television in a room significantly cooler than the evening outside, and Yuusuke was more staring at his video game controller than actually using it, and paying very little attention to the grisly fate of his fighter on the screen. He let Genkai finish thrashing him, then set it down. Usually this kind of thing was good for relaxation, but it hadn't really helped, given what he'd had to relate.

Leaving the screen on, Genkai set down her own controller and reached over to an ashtray, retrieving her half-burned cigarette and tapping off the ash. She regarded him, slowly dragging on it until the end glowed orange, and thoughtfully released the smoke to one side.

"Well," she said, letting the word itself seem significant. "That's quite a story."

Yuusuke shrugged again. He didn't really have anything else he wanted to say. He hadn't exactly asked for advice, but he usually didn't have to, as sharp as the old lady was. She also knew how much he hated to talk about s**t. Unless she were feeling really vindictive, he wouldn't have to actually make a request.

She was still looking at him, and asked, "How long since Kurama reappeared?"

He shrugged yet again, which had been his default response since he'd gotten here. "A couple of days, maybe," he guessed. "I haven't seen him since he ran off. I always forget how to do the math for when that was in the Makai."

"Do you know where he is?"

"I don't have a clue―he could be anywhere by now. I didn't ask him where he was going."

"Hm. That could be a problem," Genkai said, expression tightening in concentration. "You should go talk to his mother as soon as you have an opportunity. I'm surprised you didn't go there first instead of coming to harry me."

"Actually, I went to see Keiko first." For a while. It had not made him feel better, as he had hoped.

"Yuusuke?"

"Hey, Keiko. It's been a while."

A pause. "Yuusuke, where have you been? What's wrong?"

He looked up at Genkai, finally meeting her eyes again and fidgeting with the fabric of his dark blue pants. "I told her everything. Figured she'd wanna know."

This seemed to gain her approval, and it showed in her raised eyebrows and slight smile. "Really? Well, that makes more sense. You really do have some sense of priority."

He shot her a look. Even when I do things right, she insults me.

"In any case," she went on, ignoring the glare, "be sure to visit Mrs. Minamino as soon as you get done here―and I will decide when that is." Her voice altered during the last part of that sentence, and was almost edged.

Yuusuke was startled right out of his irritation and into anger, answering with an unplanned, "Hey!" and crossing his arms in rebellion. That was a tone she never took with him unless he was in trouble for something, and as far as he knew, he hadn't even done anything wrong. He'd shown up here, hadn't he, when he hated showing up here? No one had even shoved him into it. He tried to think of something that she might be pissed at him for, and couldn't come up with anything, and that meant she was being unfair and hag-like to him when he really didn't need it. Right after she'd said something halfway approving, too.

"I'm not your student anymore," he snapped. "Why don't you lecture someone your own size?"

And that, as usual, was the wrong answer. Her eyes narrowed in the dimness, lit from one side by the still-flickering television and somehow accentuated by the fighting game's chirping menu noise.

"Don't talk back to me, brat," she snapped right back. "You think I can't still beat you into the ground if I want? You might have more of a problem with the senile old hag than you think." A disgusted snort, as if her anger suddenly wasn't worth the effort, and she puffed her cigarette. "Besides, I know where your weak points are. Mostly they're due to poor application of training. I gave you my Orb―which is why you're not my student anymore, dimwit, and don't you forget it―and then you threw all your technique away in favor of brute strength. That really was the best way to beat Toguro, but you should look into patching those holes in your defense before some rookie demon does something unexpected and knocks you flat on your a**. I could have kicked your face in when you walked into the courtyard and you wouldn't even have seen it coming."

"Hey! I said not to lecture me!" He stood up, reflexively dropping into a halfway defensive stance and clenching both hands into fists. It was so goddamned unfair to dress him down about his fighting when everything else was going to hell, and if she didn't shut up, he was going to have a hard time keeping his rei gan in check. That would be bad for both of them. Last time he'd blown out a wall, she'd made him pick up all the splinters by hand, and student or not, he might still have to. It would be worth it, though, to blast a smoking crater in her stuffy old house.

But continue she did, and blithely, unconcerned, knowing it would make him angrier. "You should take some pointers from Kurama," were her next words. "He took the time to master his transformation and keep himself in shape, and my bet's on him if you two decide to have it out. You're furious with him, aren't you?"

"Dammit, Genkai, I―" He paused, and blinked. "What?"

The old woman met her successor's eyes, and gave him a smile without humor but with a good measure of triumph, telling him that she knew she'd just confused him and gained the upper hand. Conversely, her tone gentled, and one wrinkled hand smoothed her red tunic.

"You might be angry at Koenma―and believe me, he deserves it―but you're also angry at Kurama for not trying to keep in touch during his mission. If he had, all of this could have been avoided. Never mind that it might have gotten him killed for real. You would have risked it, so you want to know why he didn't." She stood up to match him, and started towards the next room. That one was more brightly lit, with one window open to let in the setting sun, and was where she usually took tea and company.

He followed, not going to let her get away without an objection. "What―what the hell is this?" he sputtered, still outraged. "It's none of your business!"

"Sure," she said sarcastically, dropping into an easy seat at her tea table, and reaching for the pale green teapot, which she had warming over a small burner nearby, with a long-suffering sigh. "Just shut up and listen, Yuusuke. This is important. You're angry at Kurama, and don't bother denying it."

He promptly denied it. "I am not!"

And then, out of the blue, her fist connected with his face. It knocked him back, dumping him on his butt and throwing his vision into a cloud of sparks and whorls; he yelped, trying to catch himself after he'd already landed. By the time his eyes cleared, Genkai was back in her seat as if she hadn't left it, glowering at him with tea in hand.

"I told you to shut your trap, you insubordinate moron!"

"Ow!" he managed in protest, reaching up to make sure his nose was intact.

"You have the stupidest priorities of any student I've ever had the misfortune to teach!" she barked at him. "You're wasting energy being stupid over what you think Kurama could have done to keep Hiei alive, and ignoring the big picture, as though it makes any damn difference now. Well I have news for you." Sunlight glinted through the window and reflected in her cup's enamel, blinking at him in a mocking imitation of his trauma-stars.

Feeling his cheeks burn with humiliation at having her earlier words to him proven so easily, Yuusuke pushed himself into a sitting position and glared right back. "Spit it out, hag! I don't care what you say!"

"Good. Then you'll be quiet and listen to it."

A long pull from her tea silenced her momentarily, and her body adopted a less threatening and more preaching posture. Yuusuke seethed. Genkai just had to act superior at him every single time she saw him. This was a great reminder why he should never show up here again.

"Kurama is not a human being," she began.

As if I don't know that? he grumbled internally, arranging himself in a less undignified sprawl and folding his arms again, waiting to see where else her stunning logic went.

"He may have lived with us for over sixteen years, he may even have a trace of human soul in addition to his own, but he is, at his core, something else. He has a ruthless streak wider than I've ever seen and a survival instinct to match―he's crueler at times than Hiei, and he doesn't have the same excuse of being entirely sociopathic. I'm surprised he acted as foolishly as he did, assuming you've told me everything."

Unable to contain his frustration at being told a bunch of stuff that was already obvious, Yuusuke blurted, "So he's a demon! What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm not finished yet, nitwit." A teacup was shoved towards him, and he ignored it to keep up the glare. Genkai didn't seem to expect anything else, though, and leveled a piercing gaze on him, fully serious and no longer even lecturing, but speaking to him in that way she had that meant nothing but business. "However much he cares about you blockheads, he was perfectly right to keep his silence, and here's why: you might not care how you die, but demons care very much. Expecting him to risk being caught by these apparitions and proved a spy is worse than expecting him to grovel on the floor. He would have been hunted, trapped, and punished by some low-class scum with more power than they deserve, and that is not acceptable for him.

"He's very conscious of his pride, but that isn't why he didn't risk it. He didn't risk it because he would never have been able to look at himself ever again if he died that way."

She turned her attention back to her tea.

There was silence after the end of her speech, and Yuusuke let it happen, because (as usual) she'd won. It hadn't even taken her more than ten seconds, either.

He blinked once, twice, and dropped his crossed arms, reflexively curling one hand around the teacup on the table. He took a moment to look at her expression, taking in how she was looking at him, and how she wasn't trying to lord it over him but actually make him listen. She wasn't his teacher anymore, and she wasn't trying to be―she was trying to give him the advice he'd shown up for in the first place, and he'd be stupid not to listen.

Behind the passing anger, the smart place in the back of his brain knew that all of what she'd said made sense; he'd just never thought of it that way. It also knew that it didn't just sound like it made sense―it really did, because Kurama was really like that, and so was Hiei, and so were all the other demons Yuusuke had ever encountered. He knew from talking to Kurama that demons had their own system for deciding who outranked whom, and that it was really, really important because being lower on the totem pole usually meant you got to be a slave to whoever (or whatever) was higher than you. It was why the entire stadium of demons had turned on Chuu and Rinku, and then on the Shinobi, when they'd been beaten by Team Urameshi: because Kurama and Hiei were about as low-ranked as it got, here in the human world, because they were working for the Reikai and associating with humans. Getting beaten by someone under you was an automatic demotion, and you had to fight your way back up just to not get spat at by your friends.

To actually get killed by someone lower in the demonic hierarchy than you were . . . yeah, Yuusuke could understand how that would be. It probably meant your name never got said again, or got used to make fun of weaklings.

He had kind of . . . wondered. About why Kurama had gone along with Koenma's plan and agreed to be gone for a month without letting anyone know he was okay. Why he'd stuck to it so well that Koenma's lies had been believable. Maybe Yuusuke hadn't been happy about it; he still didn't know if he was really angry, but there was also a peculiar twist in his throat now that hadn't been there before, and half of it was frustration, like he'd been in the middle of a fight and his opponent had suddenly booked it before they could finish.

Dammit. Genkai was right, and she knew it, and she'd trapped him into knowing it, too.

But she saw that he did, and spared him from having to admit it out loud, instead pressing home her point with the same gravity. She broke the silence at exactly the right moment to dispel tension without cutting off his thought process. "At least you're finally thinking," she said. "Now that you've got something to ponder, here's something else. If you can admit you're angry at Kurama, you may as well go all the way and admit that if Hiei were alive, you'd kill him yourself. Right now you hate both of them. Some advice: get over it. They're both suffering enough without you piling your hurt feelings on top of it." She drained her teacup, then refilled it, and set it down on the dark, smooth wood of the table without taking another sip. Its depths swirled and then settled. She pointedly did not look at him again, having released him from her stare, and let him take his time to respond.

"I get it," he finally said, quietly, and that was as much as he could get himself to say in surrender. To let her know that was it, he also took a drink of the tea, accidentally burning his tongue.

Genkai almost smiled. "Good. Now, just to clear this up, Koenma was not justified. He understands demons, and he was probably trying to take some pressure off of Kurama by giving him orders not to contact anyone, but telling you that Kurama was dead was cruel, shortsighted, and unfair. He's too self-important and too fond of secrets for me to tell what else is motivating him, but I'll try to have a chat with him sometime soon. I think it's important that we all know what's really behind this."

"Sure," Yuusuke answered absently. Good luck with that. If he never had to see Koenma again, it would be too soon, and he was determined not to care no matter what the kami's stupid reasons were. He was also busy realizing that he probably really was angry at Kurama, in a really unfair way. It wasn't like the kitsune had known about Koenma's lies, any more than the rest of them. And Yuusuke had been really oblivious; he'd even demanded that Koenma make Kurama check in so they'd know he was okay, and hadn't even thought about how dangerous that might be.

I guess sometimes I forget he is a demon. He's such a nice guy most of the time―but Yukina's nice, too.

s**t. Apparently his standards for demon behavior versus human behavior were as stupid as he was.

He still had every right to be angry at Hiei.

He finished out the evening playing more video games with his mentor (she having declared that she wasn't done humiliating him yet), and tried not to think too much about how much he'd already screwed up. Kurama hadn't even been back for very long . . . and it might be a long time before he saw him again.









The single, kimono-clad figure accompanied her escorts into the deepest part of the village, head bowed, eyes averted so that she need not look into the faces of any of her people. The snow hardly crunched under her slight weight, and she was as silent as the scouts she followed, her shame palpable in the biting air.

There was no longer a central hall. Small teams of koorime were standing at even intervals, working with hands and energy to slowly build up the shattered walls from their crumbled and jagged foundations; the frozen wood was mended where possible and fitted back together without any gaps, to keep the new walls tight and strong, and new wood was being brought from close by, where one tree was already beyond saving. More teams, composed primarily of scouts, were healing the other damaged tree trunks and encouraging new branches to grow―it would be years, perhaps more, before those trees fully recovered.

The escort passed the construction and halted at a small hut―it belonged to a bonded trio, who had graciously given it up for the Elders' use until their own meeting hall was repaired. One of them rapped on the door, and was admitted. The other gestured to her ward and followed close behind.

A rush of pleasantly chilled air bathed Yukina as she stepped inside with trepidation. She slipped off her sandals at the tiny genkan, stepped forward and bowed as low as she could. The escort quietly departed.

"Elder."

The Elder nodded to her to sit down, and she knelt. This was the head of the council, by whose name Yukina had never heard her addressed―this was the woman to whom she would defer for her punishment. She kept her eyes low, and accepted the proffered tea with a mumbled thanks.

"Yukina. Why do you return here?"

So there were to be few pleasantries. "I return so that I may be punished for what I have done," she said, still not looking up.

"Why do you wish to be punished?"

"I am responsible for the destruction of the meeting place. I must be called to account." She trembled inside to think of it. The words she had spoken to reassure Kazuma seemed trivial and hollow. Her half-awake nightmares of the past days swam before her eyes as though they were new: her people could exile her forever from the village; though this crime might not warrant it, coupled with what she had done in the past, it was enough. She had fled without permission, breaking the taboo on interacting with the outside world, to find her brother, who was never even to be spoken of in the presence of the young children of the village. She had been gone so long that she had only seen this place once before, had not known of her people's abandonment of their island until her rescue from the human crime lord's stronghold. And yet still, inexplicably, unfairly, she did not want to be exiled. Though surreal and in many ways frightening, this place still felt like home.

"Is there anything else for which you must account?" The raspy voice was without mercy or expression.

Yukina's hands tightened around her teacup. "I must also be punished for running away, and defying the law."

There was a moment of silence, stretching on until she had to lift her head. The Elder was merely watching her, a thin rime of frost decorating her brow, impassive. Once Yukina was looking her in the eyes, she asked, "And do you know why the law exists?"

Not a surprising question, under the circumstances. "Yes, Elder. It exists to keep our people safe from the depredations of the outside world, and most especially of men."

"Yes. Even in these troubled times, the law may keep us safe. In the years since our floating city was abandoned, and the melting of the Land of Glaciers, we have been forced back to barbarism. Out of respect for this new land, we only freeze it, and leave its wildlife be―our homes are no longer beautiful buildings, but crude huts that use the trees for pillars. Our peaceful women have become warriors out of necessity. Only the ice we create allows us to survive."

"But I have lived in warmer climes, and not been harmed by the heat," Yukina said softly, falling naturally back into her people's archaic manner of speech. "I have dwelt among the humans, and known the best and worst they have to offer; I have known the most brutal torture from which our people fled, and I have known men gentler and kinder than I have ever been."

The temperature rose minutely, a sign of the Elder's sudden anger, and she flinched, losing the rest of what she had been about to say. But there was no harsh response, only a long, breathless minute of anticipation before the coolness returned to the room. "Do not be taken in by individual examples. Our people have avoided war and strife for thousands of years, only by ostracizing men from every aspect of our lives. Other places are in constant struggle, while we remain a society of peace and safety. One so young as you sees little beyond the moment―when you are a mother, and responsible for the safety of a life other than your own, you will see what our ancestors saw."

"Yes, Elder. I am sorry."

Internally, she was anything but. She had seen the price that this way of life exacted, and wanted none of it for her children. Danger was preferable to stagnation and fear.

"And now, we will discuss your punishment," the Elder told her. "Tell me, what would you mete out to one who has committed such an offense as yours?"

"I―I have not the wisdom for such a decision," she stuttered. "It is not my place!"

Almost gently, the older woman replied, "You will be an Elder yourself someday. If you do not have wisdom now, how will you acquire it?"

"I . . . through experience," was Yukina's hesitant answer. "Is this not the way of wisdom?"

"Wisdom is innate, my dear child. It must grow from an existing crystal, and spread as ice on a pane, until no transparencies remain. You will be as I am―this is a test of your growth. What punishment would you bestow?"

Yukina opened her mouth, then closed it again, at a loss. She was strangely torn. Here, this was one of the Elders she had respected for much of her life, speaking words of praise and according her great honor, and she was yet wary; this was also one of the women who had ordered her imiko brother killed in his infancy for nothing more than being born a male, and had denied Hina's plea to depart forever with her children so that he might be spared.

Do I truly wish that kind of wisdom?

Did she have a choice?

She said, "I would assign a task of reparation, of healing, to mend the damage caused. Perhaps a task that would require much time and toil. It seems to me that I had good intentions, though they went awry, and so I would not deserve a harsh punishment." Looking up into the Elder's lined face, and wondering if she even spoke the truth, she added, "I only wish to repair the destruction I caused by bringing men into our village and failing to keep our laws. I would not do such a thing again."

The older woman paused to pour more tea, then rested her hands on her lap. "I agree with your judgment. You are a good child; you have merely tested your bonds, as all children do, and are forgiven your transgressions so long as you accept your atonement. Your task will be this: you must go and find a strong sapling of the kind our village surrounds, and bring it to replace the tree that we could not save with our meager healing power. You may continue your life outside our village, should it be required of your debts to others―" The Elder's eyes pierced, condemning, even as she spoke the words. "―but you will return each month to care for it until it has grown stronger and taller than its predecessor, or until you become the mother of a mother. You must spend this day here in contemplation; tomorrow's dawn will mark the time of your departure. Will you submit to the will of your Elder?"

"I will, and gladly," Yukina answered in the ritual words. "I am honored by your leniency, and will trust in your wisdom always."

And her own voice mocked her in the dark recesses of her mind:

Liar.









The copse was at the edge of the Makai forest, its thirty or so trees thin and scrawny, though comparatively bigger and more lush than any in the Ningenkai. The six-hour time difference between the two mortal worlds made it several hours past sunrise here, the already reddish sky nearly molten, and clouds gathered at the western edge of the horizon, lightning visible even at this distance though the thunder of the shaping storm could not yet be heard. The rain would arrive just as the sun peaked completely, but that would not be for another few hours; for now, all was calm.

Sheltered by the innermost trees, where he could see neither sun nor bloody sky, Kurama lay, cradled by kind branches and soft, gentle leaves. Motionless, his hair concealed his face, aiding the shadows in making his vision all but useless. All he could see were blurred patches of gray and dark red, but he didn't need to see more. He'd watched many storms in this world, seen and known all kinds of trees in his long lifetime. Nothing was new to him now.

Not even this emotion was entirely a stranger. Once in a great while he had felt this way, and he could call each time to mind. The first time had been in his youth, when he was hardly into his second century―the cause had receded beyond memory. Hundreds of years had passed before he felt it again; Kuronue lingered in his thoughts for a time. And then Hiei, Yuusuke, Kuwabara―and now his human mother.

It was an odd sort of feeling that slowed his breathing and left a hollow pulse beneath his heart―like a sudden wind through a dormant room, a flutter, a strange echo. It wasn't even really pain, but it deadened his limbs, and he felt no need to move, to answer the calls of hunger or thirst, or to look at anything in particular.

He felt as though he could easily forget it had ever happened. This calm was so thorough that he was in no danger of disgracing himself as he had before. The news of Hiei's death had been so unexpected; a blow to the chest rather than this quiet, vacant sense of lassitude. It had hurt, and still hurt, threatening his control whenever he thought on it at all. To forget would be impossible for any but the barest of moments.

What, then, was the difference? He supposed that he had expected this outcome, and for far longer than he had admitted to himself. His vain hope notwithstanding, he had come to accept, somewhere deep in his unconscious mind, that this would come.

Her eyes so full of fear, her tears, her denial―

He had allowed so few close enough to cause this emotion in him, but his mother was the first human to come so near, and as always, his time with her had been short. Nearly seventeen years, and it was only an eye-blink in the span of his long life, even to only the years he had already lived. With his new body, he could live for centuries more―even he had no idea precisely how long his years had been extended by this form. The body he inhabited was much more than merely human. Changed on a fundamental level by his powerful youki, he estimated that he could sustain it for the next half-millennium if he so chose, and then he might even have the option of finding a demon's body to use, which would give him much, much longer. The prospect of near-immortality loomed in his future―

He was so damned tired of it all.

Would he ever unlearn his foolishness? After centuries, he still let people get close to him. Worse, in the last sixteen years, a mere sixteen years, he had allowed not one but four individuals inside his defenses. That was more than foolish: that was unforgivable. He was fully aware of what happened every time he did this; why hadn't he stopped it at the beginning, when there had still been time?

Yuusuke would say that even demons need companionship. Kuwabara would disagree and say that demons are evil―present company excepted, of course. Hiei would just say that he hoped I'd learned my lesson this time; friends are for the weak. My mother―she would wonder what she missed, who I was, why she never knew. A bright, cold feeling in his throat. I need them.

And yet a part of him looked back on his actions and thoughts and despised him for a coward and a weak-hearted simpleton. I never needed them, its voice scoffed. The spineless human I have become needs them. I am youko: I am above them. They are chattel. I should never have lowered myself to so much as grant them my notice; my human "mother" was a vessel to preserve my life, and nothing more.

It warred with his emotions. I owe them. I owe them my life many times over; I owe them more than my life. It is a debt I have not yet repaid. They have given without reservation, and I have not been truly honest with them, save Hiei. They will not understand, as my mother did not understand.

Then they do not deserve to understand. I owe them nothing.

I owe them a farewell, at least.

That is already given. What more holds me back? Honor? Loyalty? Those are dead. Demons do not need them. It is better to leave them behind.

I―cannot.

But I must.

It ended there.

He stood, pushing back his hair, the leaves and branches parting fluidly to expose the violent sky. He could smell the coming rain.

If I survive, I will not go back to the human world. There is nothing for me there now. When this is all over, Makai will once again be my home. My life will truly be as it once was―and I will not make the same mistakes again.