Author's Note: Originally written for the Yu Yu Hakusho Kink Meme, on livejournal.
Things had changed in the two thousand years since the birth of Yusuke Urameshi. Raizen's prediction that the human world would overtake the demon was proven correct a mere thousand years past his death. Technology replaced what weak human limbs could not, and now demons were exterminated, nearly, or corralled in zoos.
Space was no longer the great unknown—it was now known indeed, with regular transports from one planetary system to another. The ningens had razed the Makai along with their torpid little planet, and youkai were hungry, hunted, isolated and outnumbered. The technological leaps to give humans super-demonic powers had been received by Kurama with dread.
Kurama still lived. Another two thousand years, albeit this time in the thin guise of a human boy, his body gaining demonic longevity long before technology granted it to humans as well, was not nothing, but understandable to a being already, at the time of his human birth, two thousand years old.
Well, my survival won't last for much longer, Kurama thought wryly, bitterly.
This was Karasu's third reincarnation. The first two times, he had been cut short by Kurama's own hand, the fight harder and more desperate each time. This time, however, Kurama feared he would not be so lucky. Falcon, as Karasu was known now, had done something he'd never done before—outsmarted and overpowered the ancient fox. It was with fear that Kurama looked up to his ancient enemy; fear, and no grace. Karasu watched him.
"All these years I've spent tracking you, Youko Kurama. All these years spent sniffing out your brethren in the Demonic Alliance and watching their blood flow in all its beautiful colors, just to find you. I must admit, it's rather breathtaking to have you here, before me. I'll have to take full advantage." He said the last sentence to himself, his lips, always the same, pulled up in a twist.
"Once upon a time, Karasu, you would have joined us." Kurama said it calmly, without any real emotion, and took the offered blow with grace. Karasu would have joined them, but he would still be where he was now: a brutal interrogator, leering at his defiant victim, the violence sweltering just below the surface. Kurama thought, not for the first time, that this must be fate. Karasu and he were destined to play this game into eternity.
He missed Koenma. The hostile leadership Spirit World had fallen under five hundred years ago only exacerbated the problems of an already ailing system. Koenma, perpetually a toddler, couldn't handle it. Koenma had died in his office, still clutching the red stamp. The last of the gods had left this universe long ago.
"Side with you? I wouldn't dream of it, darling. My place is here, above you." Karasu tilted his head and chuckled, stroking the point of his own chin, violet eyes demented as he examined his kitsune prey. "I'm going to give you your first gift, a chance to save yourself pain." Karasu's pink tongue drifted out to glide over his leering mouth, lustful and hungry. "Tell me the coding system for the demons' messages."
Kurama smiled arrogantly, his eyes shifting indifferently away from Karasu's face, finding the white contours of his glossy lips disturbing without the once-favored mask that even the previous Karasu had had an affinity for.
Karasu chuckled, a long-fingered hand drifting over the smooth, too-pale cheek of Kurama's delicate face, pulling it back when Kurama bit. "The answer I desired." Suddenly, Karasu's fist slammed into Kurama's jaw, knuckles ramming where they had previously caressed. Kurama reeled, his neck snapping and lips splitting with a splattering of blood. The chair toppled over, and Kurama skated miserably over the metal hull, skinning his thigh and arm, making him moan insensibly in pain.
"Process him," Karasu snarled to his waiting brutes. Then his voice was all honey. "I'll see you soon, Kurama."
Kurama's bonds were undone, solid arms ripping him from the chair and choking him none too gently, arms wrenched into a new restraint behind his back. The kitsune, blinking irately in the brig's mechanical light, was dragged away, the two guards giving him no time to put his feet down and walk. Green eyes muted with fear glanced over a thin shoulder, pink lips looking beautifully full as they bled from Karasu's blow. Watching brought a smile to Karasu's lips, and he giggled once, knowing what was in store for the defiant fox.
His beautiful hair would be cut, his clothes stripped and replaced by cold air and indelicate hands. His vitals would be taken, a crude medical exam preformed, just as it would be after every session. The brutes would complete the permanent warding of his yoki, a warding that would follow him onto death, as he shrieked in pain at the nanites stripping every bit of demonic power from his blood. Then the entre act's finale: he would be brought back with that bruised look of fear in his eyes, for the first round of interrogation.
It may take weeks to wring every drop of information from Kurama, days of blood, sex, and beautiful agony. Karasu conjured for himself the way Kurama's face had twisted from the insignificant little drops he'd felt so far. He smiled wider, pleased with Kurama's future in his hands. "It begins," he whispered, and walked through a second door, cackling to himself.