Chapter 1

"Remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder Hika," her mother told the young woman before her. Tylia the half bat demon watched her daughter that was slowly binding her bat wings down against her back. The special bindings that would hold her bat wings underneath the shirt of her school uniform were spelled so that the wings would not interfere with her sitting or moving about while making them invisible to anyone that didn't have spirit energy.

This was the third time that the young Hika had been talking about how she didn't like the bindings. She had made the mistake of saying that she didn't feel in the slightest good looking without her wings. She felt like a stupid human she had said. And she did look like a human as well. Her black hair which had been grown to her waist had been cut to her shoulders, which Hika had insisted was the newest human 'popular' style of the time. The young woman getting ready for high school had also pointed out that her hair would have centuries to grow out again. The eyes that peered at her mother with a 'are you serious' look were the pale blue-grey that Hika's grandmother, Hiromi, had had—just another piece of evidence that she was Hiromi's incarnation.

"And if you think looking like a human is a bad thing, then I would like to remind you that Lady Hiromi your grandmother—"Tylia said before Hika rolled her eyes and cut her off.

"Was a spy for Lord Koenma who has so graciously allowed us to come here to live? She was also a human that was able to ensnare Kuronue's heart. She is I and to insult humans is to insult my spirit which passed to me the day I was born for that day Hiromi had died as well." Hika said in a bored tone. She had heard this all before. There wasn't anything new to her mother's reasons that living among humans was a good thing

"Yes. Now," Tylia said coming forward to mess with her daughter's hair. "I don't see why you would care about being popular when you insult humans all the time. Also, remember that we are in human world. Disagreements are fought with words not fists and powers."

"Yes mother." Hika answer and brushed her bangs out of the way and contemplated her hair. "I should get some dye and put a silly color in my hair. I mean I'm the newest thing to come to this town since the invention of the television and radio." She received a slap on the back for that, right between her two bound and protesting wings. She winced and glared icily over her shoulder at her mother who smiled sweetly.

"Just making sure your bindings are good and tight." Tylia told her daughter with a satisfied smile before she turned away and left her daughter to finish pulling on the school outfit—a black knee length skirt and white blouse. There had been a fight over that choice of clothing as well. Hika had wanted to wear the men's outfit—a pair of slacks and a shirt that matched the girls outfit—because she'd be able to run and at least feel some wind through her hair—her favorite aspect of flying. But her mother and the school had vetoed her request.

Hika didn't stay around for her mother or the other two—Takji and Night—to wish her well in her mission: blend into the school and don't make a fuss about demons. She slipped like the skilled thief she was trained to be out of the house and moved down the road towards the school. She had put a necklace of a white rose with a red ruby in the middle around her neck to accent the few buttons on her shirt that she had left open when she'd dressed. It had been something that had been given to Hiromi it was said because few lived today that had been there that day when she had accepted the gift.

As she turned a corner she saw the school looming before her. A nervous left hand went up to fiddle with the necklace as she stared up at the school. She wasn't daunted by its size. No, Yoko Kurama's castle was three times as big as the school. It was the amount of humans that were flooding the courtyard through the gated entrance. Maybe 300 teenagers were standing in small groups with their friends. That, as far as Hika knew, was maybe one third of the total number of humans she would be seeing in the school.

Never being one to back down the young woman raised her head and released the security necklace. Taking a deep breath, she walked forward, though she was certain, against all logic, that her wing were visible when the first group stopped talking and turned to look at her as she walked through the crowds to the entrance of the school. Trying to relax, Hika looked around as if the staring didn't bother her at all. The staring would go away eventually when the news of her arrival was outshined by something new.

As she walked a group did catch her eye. While she kept her face forward, she looked at them from the corner of her eyes. It was a group of three boys that were staring at her—but not out of curiosity at her being the new girl. Their eyes held that of surprise and intrigue. She almost faltered in her stride as she surveyed them.

A young man of maybe five feet seven inches height had the hair of a carrot cut in a common short hairstyle and the eyes of the sky on a clear spring day. On his neck was a tattoo that she could only partially make out because half was hidden behind the collar of his shirt. He could have been seventeen or eighteen Hika guessed, testing her skills.

The second tallest, beating her by three inches at five feet eleven inches, was more interesting than the carrot top. This one had green eyes and bright red hair but was not wearing the uniform for the school as the other two did. Those eyes twinkled with a light that she knew all too well from her teacher who had died almost eighteen years before. Hika considered changing course and going over to say hello for the first time to the human form of Yoko Kurama. Her mother had met him a year before at the Demon World Tournament, but Hika had been busy fighting an opponent when Suichi Minamino had offered them a position in the Human World as portal watchers.

But then her gaze landed on the last young man who was easily six feet five inches tall. He watched her with almost the same interest as a viper looking a mouse. His eyes, which at first glance suggested being black, were a mix of the darkest purple she had ever seen on top of a black-blue upon closer inspection, making the difference in colors almost invisible. His hair, though pulled back in a horse tail at the nape of his neck was black.

She shuddered and decided that it would be better to let Kurama (as she had been told he went by now) come to her rather than she go to him. Just because they worked for Lord Koenma on the side did not mean they were completely safe from everything. In the smallest of waves, Hika showed Kurama that she'd seen him and would like to talk to him eventually before he left for whatever mission he was being given next. All of this happened in less than thirty seconds and Hika had passed them and were mounting the steps into the school.

The young half-bat demon was on her way to her locker when she heard the tell-tale sound of three sets of footsteps following her. She closed her eyes and opened up her demonic senses. She smiled and gave the smallest nod to herself. She felt Kurama's demonic energies. Then as she left her senses open, she noted a subtler energies that she couldn't identify. She paused and looked behind her tactically. Kurama was being followed by the tall, 'evil' looking young man. It was strange to feel such demonic energies from a person that looked so much like a regular human. There had been human looking demons that she had met before but this young man was so human that it was scary. He didn't have anything that was possibly demonic around him except for the small amounts of energies that had been coming off him in waves.

Kurama walked up to the new girl and broke out into a smile as he surveyed the young woman. His friend stopped next to him and continued to look at her like she was something he was going to eat soon.

"May I help you?" the young woman asked, not wanting to give away anything that he might not want her to say in front of this strange human. Hika lowered her grey eyes from the tall intruder to look at Kurama instead.

"Actually I was going to ask you if you needed any help yourself. I am Suichi Minamino, also known as Kurama around my friends." Kurama asked before gesturing to the tall man behind him. "This is my friend Kuronue Kumori."

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Hika said distantly, watching Kurama with suspicion the moment that the first name was spoken. Was he trying to pull her leg? Kuronue had been killed almost a century before she had been born. What it just a coincidence that Kurama was friends with a human that had weird demonic properties in his energies that was named Kuronue? No. Nothing around Kurama was a gamble. He made sure everything was right.

Hika's eyes widened and then closed as if she were trying not to say anything. "You, sir Kurama, have a lot of explaining to do when I get you alone." She whispered as she turned and walked away, leaving the two to go to her new locker and then off to class.

Nibbling her lip as she entered the classroom, she waited up next to the desk for the homeroom teacher to appear and ask them where to sit. She wasn't nervous. She stared at anyone that was willing to meet her eye. She watched them carefully, mentally marking those that were popular, the athletes, and the loners. Her thief instincts were demanding her attention though she was supposed to be just a normal human girl. Finally she looked down and didn't meet anyone else's gaze.

When the teacher said to introduce herself she finally looked up and bowed to the classroom. "Hello everyone, I am Hika Shiroibara. I moved here with my mother and aunts into our old family home that has been deserted for almost two hundred years. I hope to make friends here." With that said she was given permission to take a seat in the back of the room next to the door, which she took grateful to be out of the eye sight of most of her classmates. It wasn't a thief's job to be seen. It was a thief's job to take without notice.

Kurama finally caught up with her at lunch, this time mercifully alone. She was sitting on the window on the edge of the schools roof, listening to the wind play with her hair and around her ears. She had spelled the door to alert her if any humans were coming up and had unleashed her wings so that she could stretch them from her bindings. Thus, she sat in only an undershirt that had been cut to allow her wings through and her skirt. Scars that had been invisible earlier because sleeves had been covering them were now plainly visible to any that knew where to look.

"I forgot how much you looked like your grandmother." Kurama said when he was sure she knew he was there and wouldn't jump off the roof at a surprise. He stood behind her about three feet so that when she launched herself into the air, did a backflip and landed next to him, he wasn't hit.

"I forgot how much you liked to compare me to my grandmother." Hika told him in return with a straight face, before breaking out into a grin and returning the hug that Kurama offered her. "It is great to see you again, even if you are in a silly human form when you could be your fox spirit self."

"It is great to see you as well, though my appearance here will not be constant, as you have been told. I will be off in three days on my next assignment by Koenma. I wanted to make sure that you were going to be okay in this human school. You were, after all, my favorite sparring partner when you were a child."

Hika laughed. While she wasn't the best fighter, she had always managed to stay out of his reach, or when she was really angry, kick him in the shin, which had caused him to laugh rather than be angry. She had loved to play pranks on the giant of a kitsune.

"So why did you ditch me Kurama—Oh, Miss White Rose, right?" came a voice from behind them. They released each other form the embrace and looked towards the entrance onto the roof. Standing there was Kuronue Kumori.

It took a moment for Hika to remember that her fictitious last name meant 'white rose' in Japanese. She ended up scowling at him. "You can call me Hika. Shiroibara is my family name. And I don't like it being translated for such a stupid purpose." She told him stonily before she remembered at the last minute that her wings, which she'd been so happy to have unbounded were in complete view of the human. She quickly pulled her wings in close and hid behind Kurama.

"Oh my, Kurama, I am sorry I completely forgot that—"She started to whisper, trying to look over her shoulder for her school blouse and binders. They would have to find some way to get the human to forget what he saw. Her heart was hammering against her chest at the sight of the human. Why hadn't her spells gone off to warn her that a human was about to come up and see her without her bindings? When she reached out her power to feel for her spell she felt nothing. Her eyes widened as she looked over Kurama's shoulder at the human. He'd destroyed her spells!

Kurama was chuckling. She could hear it through his chest and by the movements of his shoulders. Then he moved out of the way and shook his head.

"Relax little Hika. Kuronue is here as your guard of sorts. You both need protection, but Lord Koenma is reluctant to assign you official protectors. Your mother and her adoptive aunts are busy looking over their section of the portal. Kuronue knows about Demon World and will be able to make sure you don't fall into the mistake of taking your bindings off again." Kurama said, motioning for Kuronue to near them.

Hika backed away as Kuronue neared. When he was standing next to Kurama, she turned and picked up her bindings. With quick work she pulled them on and fastened them and then pulled on her shirt. She heard the two talking as she stood fixing her outfit. She couldn't hear what they were saying but it sounded like an argument of the serious kind. She suspected that Kuronue was trying to refuse to help. When she turned around though to face the two men, Kurama was gone and Kuronue waited for her. He was glaring away at the sky to the east.

She put on a tough smile and held out her hand in some semblance of being polite. "So you know about demons right?"

"I know a bit. It comes from having a demon turning up and saying 'you are the reincarnated form of my best friend' when you are 5 and he's six." Kuronue said at an attempt of humor as he took her hand and shook it. Hika blinked and tried to figure out who he could be talking about. "Kurama." Kuronue finally elaborated when her look of confusion didn't vanish. The confusion vanished only for a second and then she was frowning up at him.

Hika was about to say something when she noticed that he hadn't yet release her hand. She slipped her small hand away from his larger one and hid it behind her body. Could it be that this Kuronue was the Kuronue that her grandmother had fallen in love with all those centuries ago, like Kurama was Yoko Kurama, only unawaken? She had definitely felt a spark when he had gripped her hand.

"I see. Well, I hope we can get along, and perhaps learn a bit from each other." Hika finally said, letting the thoughts of reincarnations slide for the time.

"A diplomatic demon? Now I really have seen almost everything there is to see about demon kind. Hurry, give me an apologetic demon and I will be set for life." Kuronue said before turning and motioning. "Have any lunch?"

Hika had chuckled at his exclamation of her being a diplomatic demon. He knew little about demons if he thought that she had been being diplomatic. Friends could be allies and allies were to be trusted less than enemies and enemies were to be trusted only as far as one could throw them. Learning from another demon was simply a way to get better than that demon and to someday destroy them.

"No I do not. I wasn't sure if I'd be hungry. Lord Yoko taught us, the demons underneath him, how to go up to a day without food. I was going to bring a lunch but I wasn't sure what was normal for humans to eat around here." She explained as she followed him down the stairs.

"Well I have some that I'll be willing to share for today only. I promised Kurama I'd take care of you, and part of that is not letting you fall over in class from hunger." Kuronue said as he led her to a small table in the middle of a courtyard where the carrot top human was sitting, guarding two lunches. Once again, Hika could feel the people staring after her as she moved behind Kuronue.

Author's Note: HI THERE EVERYONE! :D Everyone ready to see the conclusion of Hiromi's (Now Hika) and Kuronue's story? Good. I hope you all enjoyed this first chapter. If you have any questions about it (For I think some of it may be a bit hard to understand) Ask me via comment or pm, otherwise I will be explaining more on the form of reincarnations and other things in later chapters :3 -ROSEY