Karasu paced the open area of Team Toguro's lavish suite, gracefully avoiding the glass table in the middle of the room without paying the slightest heed to the velvet hangings or crystal chandelier. No, being the favored team certainly had its perks, but his mind was set on something much finer indeed.
He paced back over to the window and looked out over the forested expanse of the island.
"Tomorrow," he said softly. "Tomorrow, Fox."
Younger Toguro glanced up from the book he'd picked up. "You're obsessed with him."
Karasu sent an indescribable look back over his shoulder. "More so than you are with fighting Urameshi?"
Toguro shrugged. "That's nothing personal."
Karasu laughed slightly. "Of course not. Nothing ever is for you."
"But this is personal for you. Why? Do you have some history with him?"
"Of course not. We'd never met before the other day. I'd hardly even heard of him."
"Then why are you so infatuated with him?"
Karasu smiled under his mask, and his eyes glinted like a crow's feathers.
"He's just so…breakable."
Kurama stood in the center of an open field, motionless and distant-eyed. To all outward appearances, he might have been asleep on his feet.
Within his mind, however, he was locked in a deadly struggle.
Vines twisted and lashed at his opponent, only to be blasted apart. Youko's power flared and held, only to be battered and brought back down to his human level. Kurama spun to avoid another attack, only to be caught in a deadly embrace.
A slight shifting of the fox's gaze was the only outward sign as he died yet another bloody death within the confines of his mind's ring.
He took a breath that was a fraction deeper than the one before it and closed his eyes for an instant. Time for the next option.
"I don't break so easily," he muttered as he set the next model.
Shifting his eyes back to the middle distance, he began the scenario, clinging to the smaller logic of his mind games in an effort to avoid the larger conclusion that he would not live beyond the next day.
"How can I explain?" Karasu waved a hand. "These low-levels we've been fighting? They're nothing. This fox though…he's strong. Very strong, very crafty, and yet…" Karasu leisurely stretched the hand toward an imaginary Kurama.
"And yet…he hasn't the slightest chance of success against me. He knows it, too, deep inside. His fear is…" He licked his lips beneath his mask. "So delightful."
"You only like fighting those you're assured of defeating, then," said Toguro.
Karasu spread his hands and smiled. "Did you expect otherwise?"
Toguro tilted his head slightly.
"Besides," said Karasu, running his hand down long, imaginary hair, "he's just so pretty."
Dodge, parry, counterattack.
Kurama slipped away from Karasu's clutching fingers even as he stood motionless in the field.
But yet again, it was all for nothing. Karasu's reaching hand brushed against his skin and disappeared in an aura of deadly light.
Scenario: Failure.
Kurama shifted his gaze slightly, burying his cold dread at the thought of the deadly touch in the beginning of another scenario.
Perhaps, if he took the potion a little later on? If he could survive a few minutes longer as his human self, perhaps Youko's power could buy him victory?
Settling back into his mental training stance, he started the scenario over again.
"You won't have me," he murmured, and then his eyes went blank.
"I want him," said Karasu, and his eyes were filled with a dark light, though it was anyone's guess whether he was smiling behind his mask.
"I want him to struggle futilely against me. I want to see him cornered, caged in, desperate for an escape he knows will never come. I want his despair."
"So I had gathered," said Toguro expressionlessly.
But Karasu appeared to have forgotten his existence, and turned instead to his imaginary opponent.
"You know it already, Kurama," he murmured. "There's no way out. The best plans you can come up with will do no more than delay the inevitable…and you may find you regret even that."
"There is always a way out," whispered Kurama. "You can't trap a fox that easily."
Shifting swiftly out of his deceptively-relaxed posture, Kurama paced to the edge of the clearing and stared into the trees.
There had to be something he had failed to consider, some assumption he had failed to examine!
"Not too soon," purred Karasu. "Don't give up too soon. I want to be there. I want to see the light die in your eyes."
"No," whispered Kurama as yet another possibility gave up the ghost.
"Yes," said Karasu. "Yes, struggle against your inevitable doom until the last possible second. I will be there to guide you to your fate."
"I won't let you. I won't let you own me."
"You will let me. You will want me. I will wait, you know it, until that moment when the will to live turns cold inside you. You will look at me and wish for death—and in that moment, you will be mine."
Kurama's fists clenched.
"Never," he whispered, but the word was cold on his tongue.
He closed his eyes, trying not to know what he had already seen too clearly.
With an effort of will, he blocked out the mocking, imagined voice of his not-yet opponent.
If he wanted to survive past tomorrow's match…
His thoughts trailed off.
"You're going to die. There's no way you can win."
Karasu's eyes glinted with the finality of assured triumph.
Kurama's breath stilled even as his veins pulsed with adrenaline's fire.
That was it.
There was yet one thing he could do, little enough though it would help himself.
"I may not be able to avoid losing," he whispered to his mental adversary, "but you are not going to win."
The new plan ran to completion in his head.
Even as the explosions ripped apart his mental body, Kurama smiled the slow, cold smile of the damned.
Scenario: Acceptable.