Hey minna! This is my first YYH fic, I usually stick to Rurouni Kenshin and Cowboy Bebop… but I thought I'd give this a try! This is an a/u fic set during the French Revolution when the people of the New Republic were killing every noble in sight without any cause whatsoever. Some people set out to stop this terrible injustice, some tried to rescue the nobles and bring them out of France and into the free world once more.

This will end up being a Kurama/Botan fic, but the first two chapters or so are introductory… that is, they will be introductory if you R&R…. flame me if you must, just leave me something!

..::Late 1700's, Paris::..

            He leaned his back against the wall and breathed sullenly. The Champs d'Elysee was quiet that night, the stars alone spoke to him and he felt somewhat out of place among the celestial finery. His red hair had loosed itself from its ponytail and framed his face against the moonlight. Standing across the street from main intelligence headquarters, he began to cross the crudely built road. Then he heard the noise in the background. It began as a very low rumble and increased with every second past to a heightened ecstasy. The wheels of a wooden cart could be heard in the distance followed by a roar of a crowd.

            Kurama darted into a nearby alleyway and pressed himself behind some trash. It would not do to be seen here by the French Republic Government, surely he would be sent to the guillotine. The cart came into his placid view. It was drawn by two nags and a toothless driver. On the back of it was a cage made of wooden bars, the cage held some six people dressed in fine brocade clothing. Behind the cart, Republic soldiers clad in red and blue followed with bayonets. Following the soldiers was a large mass of common people, crude clothing hugging their bodies. They held rotten vegetables and pummeled them at the nobles within the cage. Kurama caught sight of one of the prisoners behind the moving prison. A small boy, possibly nine or ten years old, clung to his mother's heavy skirt and cried. He looked so helpless and afraid, not at all like he had been last summer when the youth had visited Kurama at his London estate. The family was Madame and Monsieur d'Ambrois, Duke and Duchess of the Normandy, and their four children.

            Kurama knew their fate. They were on their way to the holding pen where they would be detained until sunrise. At that time, the entire family would be taken out into the courtyard and beheaded. Kurama also knew he had to do something fast, something this very night, to save the family he had known for so long.

            As soon as the caravan and the commoners had passed, he hurried across the cobblestone street and snuck to the back of a run down drinking establishment. A set of stairs lead down to what appeared to be a heavy cellar door. He knocked a series of times, beating out an archaic rhythm across the wood before a voice came from within.

            "Password?"the voice sounded crystalline and a bit angry.

            "Long live the House of Brunswick." The cellar door creaked open and Kurama hopped down into it, blinking his green eyes and adjusting to the lighted room. The older woman stepped aside to let him enter, her grey hair falling about her eyes. Genkai grunted as Kurama stepped past her and onto the main floor. In the square shaped confine stood the members of his troupe all busy about one thing or another. Kazuma Kuwabara had various maps laid out over a long wooden table and was busy marking them with a  feather pen. In one corner of the room, the black haired Hiei polished his sword with a cloth. His eyes narrowed into slits as he stared into the metal. Urameshi Yusuke had his feet up on the table and was busy writing a letter in his lap, no doubt to his exiled noble friend, Keiko. With the help of Kurama and the others, Yusuke had smuggled her into Austria when the French Revolution began. They constantly wrote to each other at least once a day and the entire group was sure that they were lovers even though both Keiko and Yusuke denied it.

            "Ahem…" Kurama cleared his throat causing the members of his troupe to look up at him. Yusuke laid his letter down on the table. "Did you hear the procession outside?" he queried.

            "Yeah. It was loud enough! Impossible to get any work done when the Republican Government comes through." Kuwabara continued marking up the maps as he spoke in a heavy stupor. "Hey, Kurama, did you bring any wine?" His eyes darted to Kurama's empty hands.

            "This is hardly the time for you to make yourself stupider than you are with the help of liquor." Hiei's words bit across the room at Kuwabara causing the large oaf to look up from the table and let out a carnal growl.

            "Hey, short stuff! I've been working for three days without sleep to try to get together this master plan for Kurama. What have you been doing? Oh that's right, you've just been sitting there!"

            "Guys!" Yusuke exchanged a desperate glance with Kurama. "You wanna shut up for a minute and hear what Kurama has to say?"

            The red-head cleared his voice and took a chair at the head of the wooden table. Genkai followed him and sat across from Yusuke. "Kuwabara," He began, "I know you have been working many nights on a plan to try to ship us all back to Britain where it's safe… but there's just a few things we need to do before we leave. The commotion outside was the Duke and Dutchess of Normandy being lead to the holding chambers. They'll be beheaded tomorrow unless we do something. I know I promised each of you that we were retiring from the life of rescuing people and sailing back home, but the d'Ambois have treated us all so well while we've been here… what do you say, just one more?"

            The members of Kurama's troupe did not look happy. They had been in Paris for over a year now, breaking the nobles out of the Paris jails and saving them from the guillotine. They were all more than ready to return to Britain where they could live without fear of being found out by the French authorities and done away with.

            Genkai spoke for the group, "Can you not let an old lady have her peace?! How long have we worked ourselves for this cause of yours? Plus, a ship leaves tonight for England and we have passage! The next one doesn't leave for another two weeks!" She looked angrier than usual in the candlelight and quite a bit older, too.

            "How can you say no? Can you really live the rest of your lives knowing that you had the opportunity to save the lives of six people and you didn't?"

            "Yes." Hiei answered bluntly.

            "Well, I cannot. Please return to England without me, then. I will come on the next passage in two weeks." Kurama placed his hands on his hips in a show of defiance.

            "Wait a second!" Yusuke stood up and toppled his chair over. His eyes burned with the determination he was famous for. "We've stuck together all this time and now you're just gonna run off without us? No, I'm staying too."

            Kurama smiled, a rarity in his line of work.

            "Well Urameshi, I can't have you looking better than me." Kuwabara guffawed. "Guess that means I'll stick around a little while longer, too." He chucked the maps up into the air and plopped down on his chair.

            Genkai let out a deep sigh of protest.

            "How about it, old hag? Wouldn't be the same without your griping all the time." The eighteen year old Yusuke grabbed the chair he had toppled over earlier and set it back upright.

            "What kind words, stupid student." Genkai's tongue dripped with sarcasm. "But I suppose without my wisdom you'll all die… or worse… and then I'd never hear the end of it from that Keiko of yours, Yusuke. I guess two weeks won't make that much of a difference." Before Yusuke could scream about Keiko not being his girlfriend, Kuwabara began.

            "Hiei, you sticking or are you running back home like the scared little man you are?" Kuwabara was hoping his words struck the heart more than they appeared to. Hiei merely stood up and swung his sword in a helicopter motion around his head.

            "Would you like to test the 'scared little man' theory, oh walking cloud of intelligence?" Kuwabara was just about to stumble backward when Kurama interjected with the diplomacy that only the leader of a group can posess.

            "Cut it OUT!" Hiei then let his sword drop down to his side. "Perhaps you are forgetting that you are here to save people not to fight amongst yourselves. It's not even midnight and already you want to try to kill each other?!" After the group had quieted down, he began again. "Well, Hiei, are you in or out?"

            Hiei scoffed as if it was an entirely stupid question. "Kurama, I'm always in for a good fight."

            "Great." A tinge of razor-sharp excitement quivered in the back of Kurama's voice. "Tonight is the last time we shall slither with snakes again."

Want the next chapter? Do ya? Wanna flame me? You can do that too1 just REVIEW! Hehe, until next time, minna

^_^

~Lara