Prologue

Carnivorous Wish Blossom; a Makai plant that has the ability to grant power to a demon that can raise them beyond S-class. Per the orders of King Yama, all Wish Blossoms must be eliminated from the Makai. All information on these flowers must be locked into the high-level vault and any copies must be destroyed.

The plants burn easily. So does the information. Get it done, Ootaki.

It was the last Wish Blossom in existence, and she had guarded the knowledge of it ever since she'd found the damn thing. Hidden deep in King Raizen's territory, surrounded by trees so ancient and tall, no one but the oldest of the demons would know their names...

It was an ugly thing; it looked like a human pitcher-plant, in that abysmally hot country she didn't care to know the name of. Actually, she didn't much care about knowing the names of any parts of the Ningenkai. Why bother? Humans were food, not people.

Or at least, that had been the general consensus for a long time. Until Raizen had gone to the human world and one of those animals had corrupted him. Now he was saying they had no right to eat humans! Someone of his power saying that had a ripple effect across all of Makai; the fighting could last for centuries, millennia, and they would all grow weak because he had fallen in love with some mortal bitch.

Satori hadn't known how quickly adulation could become contempt until she'd heard the words come straight from his mouth. Unfortunately, she was not as powerful as he was, and any challenge she might throw at him would end pretty swiftly... she would die, and that would simply be that. Even Koku, the one he'd most recently had some sort of relations with—and she had hated Koku for it—had been forced to concede to his whim.

Rather, Koku had tried to put Raizen through his throne room wall in her fury before breaking holes in every floor she stomped down leaving the palace. But it amounted to the same thing.

Satori had left much more quietly, her mind churning. What little she knew about the Wish Blossom suggested that if she found the right thing to feed it, to sacrifice to it, it would grant her the power she so desperately wanted. She could throw Raizen from his throne, and he would then come to her...

But sacrificing fellow demons hadn't gotten her anywhere. The ugly flower's bowl seemed to have grown, but she had been gifted nothing. No power had streamed to her from it, and part of her was convinced that it was just some ugly Makai variant.

She paced before it, weaving her fingers in her purple-black hair as she cursed vehemently. This plant would grant her wish, damnit. She would depose Raizen, he would come to her for all his needs because she would be the most powerful one in existence!

She just had to find that human woman that had made him go all stupid, and use her as a sacrifice.

Her name was unimportant to most people, and that was fine. Kasumi didn't need people to know who she was, so long as they continued to help make it so that she could help them. Her body was a relatively vicious stew of poisons, after all, meant to help other people gain immunity to such things.

She wished, albeit fleetingly, that she could have told that demon man. Wished a little more strongly that he would come back... Not just for her, but for the child that was growing inside of her. It had been over six months now, since she'd tended to his injuries and taunted him about eating her.

She hadn't expected him to eat her in a different way...

The memory was a pleasurable one, sending agreeable shivers down her spine, but it was pointless to linger; he was gone, and she was growing slowly weaker as the child within grew stronger.

A half-demon wasn't unheard of, but she wondered what the people in her village would make of it. Would the baby look like her, or would it look like the demon? If she died, as she suspected she might, who would take the baby in? Would the baby even survive the battlegrounds that her blood and flesh were?

She thrust the questions aside; pointless worrying wouldn't put food on her table for herself or the child. Whatever happened, it would come as it was meant to.

Kasumi looked out at the small well she had caught the demon man drinking from, and remembered that wild white hair, and the smell of demon blood.

Would he ever come back?

It had taken Satori an annoying amount of time to track the human woman; uncaring of Ningenkai geography meant that figuring out which country Raizen had been tended to in was a matter of guesswork and careful questioning. Blending in with the humans she so wanted to devour while seeking her intended prey.

But at last, the woman was located. Heavily pregnant, or so rumor said. Satori didn't care; two bodies would provide as good an energy source as one, after all. Finally getting some power out of the damned Wish Blossom had helped make this easier, but not by a great deal, and Satori bided her time a few days more. Watching.

The woman didn't seem to notice she was under scrutiny, and Satori mentally sneered at her obliviousness. For a human she was... pretty, maybe. Dark hair and eyes, pale skin, an air of regality about her. Raizen was a fool to fall for her, to vow to eat no further humans because of her. Worse, to order his people to not eat humans, to threaten punishment if they were caught...

She clenched her hands tightly, hissing softly in pain and pleasure as her nails pierced her palms. She would show him. She would take this woman from him, and this child too. It didn't matter if the baby was his or not; just knowing that it died would be enough.

The attack came at night; Kasumi was woken abruptly by a clawed hand covering her mouth, and found herself forcibly wrapped in layers of cloth, far too many to struggle out of easily, especially in her current state. She was tired. So tired.

She struggled anyways, and the demon who held her grinned coldly, fangs glinting in the moonlight.

"Scream and I will kill you here," the demon whispered in a sibilant voice, forked tongue flicking lightly. "But struggle if you like. That pleases me."

Kasumi responded by biting the demon's hand.

Sharp claws pierced the side of her head, raking across her face as the demon pulled away in a hiss of pain and fury. Kasumi spat out the traces of blood and skin she had managed to get, refusing to cry out with her own pain; whatever this demon wanted, it was not going to get the satisfaction of her agony.

Eyes the color of a ripe persimmon glowed with anger and hate, and Kasumi was wrenched from the bed, forced to stand as the demon whispered something; a strange and terrifying chant that opened a portal beneath them and dropped them into a world Kasumi had only every heard tales about.

Makai.

It was a dreary looking place, she decided, trying to ignore the blood that trickled down her face. The sky was deep red and cloud-covered, the air thick with the tension of an awaiting storm. The trees that surrounded them were tall, far taller than anything she'd ever seen before, and the nearest plants... she'd never seen anything like them.

In this light, she could get a better look at the demon who'd kidnapped her. The demon was vaguely feminine in shape, close to eight feet in height and scaled very much like a snake, colored black and gray. Dark purple-black hair was tied up in a tail and sprang from a single point at the top of her skull; on either side of the ponytail were silvery horns that curved back over her skull.

Her chest and belly were also scaled, these ones looking more like samurai armor, in a deep green, and seemed to be actual armor; certainly she wore no chest covering, and only a pair of loose black pants on her legs. Her feet were much like a bird's—two long, clawed toes in front and one in back, easily balanced upon by the demon.

Fighting against this demon was pointless; Kasumi was weak from carrying the child, and the rigors that posed on her already corrupted body. She wasn't even sure the baby was alive any more... it hadn't moved very much over the past few days.

But she wasn't going to go anywhere without at least saying something.

"Why... are you doing this?"

Talking hurt; the injuries on her face were not shallow. The demon's hard orange eyes narrowed a little in what Kasumi thought was satisfaction.

"You corrupted our king," she hissed. "You with your lofty ideals and human looks have made him weak. He now tells us that anyone who partakes of human flesh will be punished!"

"Your king...?"

The demon only hissed, picking Kasumi up by the back of her robe.

"This madness of his will only end if someone else has the power to beat it out of him. And once I feed you to the Wish Blossom, that great power will be mine."

The portal hadn't put them anywhere near the damned flower, but Satori made no effort to let the human woman know that. It was annoying having to carry her, but better to keep her bound than to risk her running off and being found by a demon who was afraid of Raizen and would bring this to his attention.

She could see now, a little better, why Raizen hadn't simply eaten her, though. The rank smell of her flesh suggested this woman was rotting from the inside out; how she'd lived this long was almost impressive. But mostly, it was just annoying. Humans had no right dictating the lives of demons, and her foul influence over Raizen needed to end.

It took almost a week for Satori, carrying the human, to find the Wish Blossom again; it would have been longer if Satori hadn't laced the area around it with her own energy. The energy kept away the lesser demons; no one wanted to tangle with her type, after all. Even if she didn't eat them, the venom in her jaws would rot them from the inside out.

The human woman was only barely alive, and only that because a living body granted to the Wish Blossom produced more power than a dead one. She hadn't spoken a word since Satori had mentioned the Wish Blossom at the start, and Satori was glad of it; humans spoke too much as it was. For stupid chattel, they seemed to think that they had the right to use words far more often than necessary.

"Your king won't thank you for this," the human rasped out as Satori hauled her towards the giant plant.

"I don't need his thanks," Satori snarled, venom slipping from her fangs as she bared them at the human. "His obeisance will be enough."

"If... he's the demon I suspect... you won't get that either."

Satori hissed, and dropped the woman into the plant. The Wish Blossom's leafy lid clamped into place, and she settled back to wait.

Kasumi bit back a cry of pain as she splashed down into the acidic water, closing her eyes tightly; she had spent most of the week wondering when the demon would kill her, what a Wish Blossom was, and why it was so important. Keeping those questions to herself had been perhaps more effort than they were worth. As the plant sealed over her, she considered what she had done with her life, and found that she regretted not even a single moment of it.

Her people were idiots, to be sure, but they would someday soon learn better ways. That's what humans were good at, after all; changing.

Her thoughts flicked to the demon, the one who had to be their king. He had decided to not eat humans, forbidden his people from it? It made little sense, but then, she couldn't say that she had known him very well. Tending to him, and that one night of passion...

The burn was getting stronger now, and the air thicker; what little ambient light there was had vanished after it plant had sealed itself up.

No regrets.

No wishes...

No.

One wish.

Her baby. She wanted to save her baby.

It was a fierce desire one that surged in the wake of the pain. She didn't care about herself, but her baby needed to survive. And to survive in this harsh world...

Kasumi brought her hands up, trying to ignore the bite of pain as she wrapped them across her belly; she had never been one for prayer before, but now she prayed with all she had, even as the darkness closed in completely around her.

Send my baby to their father.

Power began to coalesce around the flower, a deep, heavy power that made Satori grin; this was the right sacrifice then, the right beginning of the end of Raizen's foolishness. It glimmered golden, pale blue, lavender, and swirled in the heavy bowl where the human's body rested.

But when Satori reached out, to siphon the power away with a spell of her own, the flower, its contents and the power all seemed to explode into nothing more than dirt.

She stood there, a fine, ash-brown dust powdered over her scales, then shrieked in thwarted fury.

Raizen's throne room had been emptied for the day, mostly by his own ire at the constantly pestering demons who wanted to argue about his ban on eating humans. He had already thrown his own second through three walls to make his point, damnit, how many more idiots did he have to half-kill before they actually listened?

If he didn't have to spend so much effort on them, he could work on improvements to his territory, making himself more worthy of the human he had fallen for. To create instead of destroy... to eat no further humans until he saw her again, and could tell her of what he had done.

In another time, his earlier life, he would have laughed at himself and his romantic notions; being worthy of a human? A human with spine and spirit, enough to perhaps provide him with some interesting progeny... Assuming, of course, that her own corrupted flesh would allow her that ability.

Strange how she'd had so profound an effect on him. And yet... not an unwelcome one, despite what his people might think. As for those fools in Reikai, well..

Raizen snorted a little, dismissively. They weren't worth the effort of thinking about, really.

He levered himself from his throne to give vent to a restless sort of energy; the air felt thicker suddenly, more oppressive than usual for this part of the realm. He could feel no one near his throne room, not even Hokushin... though if he felt like being fair, Hokushin probably needed some time to recover. Three walls might have been a bit... much.

The fact that the monk demon had gotten up and wobbled away was promising though. A decade ago, that would have killed him.

Raizen stilled suddenly as power blossomed in the center of the empty room, throwing himself backwards and preparing for a fight.

A fight didn't come, but a literal blossom did; it reminded him of a flower in human world, multi-petaled and white... but that was a water flower, and this had grown up through solid stone. Where had it even come from?

It was glowing too, a light that was almost disturbingly pure for this realm, and he hesitated to get near it; was it some sort of hunter trap? How had it found him? How had it gotten in?

Slowly, petal by petal it unfurled, and he tensed further, energy flickering around his palms. As soon as something moved, he would...

Something moved all right. And then to his astonishment, began wailing. A baby... no... two babies? Were at the heart of the flower. And curled around them, a spectral figure, a woman. Dark hair like silk, her kimono tattered and ruined as if burnt...

Raizen's breath caught; he knew that body. But how? Why?

The spirit unfolded from the plant casting her gaze over the stone walls of the throne room, and Raizen felt rather acutely aware of the lack of comfort this room presented. When her gaze landed on him, he felt a heady rush somewhere between awe and anger; it was her all right. That coolly arrogant gaze was impossible to mistake.

"...you're dead," he said after a moment, feeling too stunned to be more articulate.

"Yes."

She looked down at the crying baby, then at the other, who seemed only to watching. As if she were still a physical presence, she reached down and touched the crying one's forehead. It subsided almost immediately,

"The flower brought me to you. Good. Then you can raise the child. Children. They're yours."

"...mine?"

Raizen approached the flower cautiously, taking a closer look at the two babies. A boy and a girl looked back at him with solemn brown eyes, wisps of black hair flattened to their heads. Definitely not newborns, but perhaps that was better... he had no idea how to care for children even this size. Smaller would have definitely been a problem.

"Yours," she repeated, her tone sardonic. "And if you abandon them, I'll find a way to make you regret it."

He looked at her again, taking in the way she stood and the narrow-eyed stare she was giving him. After a moment he nodded a little in somewhat pained acknowledgment; this woman was dead, and leaving him two progeny. Much more than he had even expected. He hadn't even known she was pregnant...

"Good. I have other places to be." She turned, paused, then turned back, hair flowing like spectral silk, "And whoever the idiot king is that demanded you not eat humans, ignore him. Just... ignore him."

"...that would be me," Raizen replied, and it was his turn to be sardonic. "I was going to abstain until we met again."

"Well, you're an idiot, then. It's part of what keeps you alive and healthy. You'll need that to care for them."

She gestured slightly to the twins—for what else could they be?—and he looked down at them warily again. There was the faint sound, like wet silk on rock, and when he looked up again, she was gone.

And he still hadn't learned her name.

The flower, however, remained, and the babies as well. Carefully he picked them up, one in each arm, and stepped back; the flower withered away to dust in seconds, leaving a faint trace of brown dust, and a series of cracks from where the things roots must've been.

After a moment Raizen simply shook his head, and kicked open the door; he had bigger things to worry about now...

Word spread rapidly, mostly due to the shock of it; Lord Raizen had taken in two orphan half-bloods. The idea that half their bloodline might come from him was glossed over quickly; Raizen's change from eating humans to not, and then back again—albeit in a more limited, restrained manner—was hard enough to process.

Satori, when she finally heard the rumors, was quick to make her way towards Raizen's castle; if anyone asked, she had not seen her lord in months, and this sudden switch back to sanity was almost... welcome. Almost. She hadn't, wouldn't, forgive him that human woman. No more would she forgive that human woman for stealing all that power that had been growing.

No, subduing Raizen was still her goal, but now she lacked the power for it. Without the Wish Blossom, it could take millennia to grow more powerful. She had to use more patience.

The stone fortress laughing knowing as Raizen's palace was almost a hive of activity, and Satori could hear Raizen's bellow from within; caution slowed her steps, and she moved with care through the halls until she encountered Hokushin, who was looking a bit... harried.

"Oh, Satori, you've returned," he looked at her hard for a moment, then shook his head. "Lord Raizen is occupied at the moment, but I expect he'll be willing to receive you in a while."

"With those two halflings?" she made a faintly contemptuous sound, and managed to keep from flinching back as Hokushin's expression turned cold. Barely. He could, if he was so inclined, flatten her like a makaichu.

"They are Lord Raizen's children, and it would be wise to keep insult from your lips," he warned. "He has not hesitated to put anyone through walls or windows for such words."

Satori bowed a little in acknowledgment. The warning was unnecessary; she wouldn't dare question the legitimacy of a child in front of Raizen; she liked her head where it was. Attached. But where had the children come from? Who had made him rescind the order against eating humans?

She waited for Hokushin to continue on down the corridor, then headed up it, following Raizen's energy.

The room she found had been unused the last time she had been in the palace; or rather, it had been used as storage for unwanted and broken things that had nowhere else to go. Now... She grimaced at the sight of a functional nursery, then forced herself to smooth out her expression. It had always been unwise to speak against Raizen before, now she didn't dare.

He was there, sitting in the middle of the room with two other demon women, apparently being instructed on the finer points of caring for babies. The babies in question were scooting along the floor on hands and knees after a brightly colored ball. The boy was negligible to Satori's eyes, but from the girl, she felt a wisp of power.

The Wish Blossom.

Satori narrowed her eyes, staring hard; it wasn't possible, was it? How had the blossom reached Raizen, why had it reached Raizen? The power in the blossom had been meant for her not this little rat of a half-blood child.

The ball bounced off the wall and rolled back towards the children, neatly rolling over the girl; the boy seemed to take exception to that and seemed quite determined to get the ball this time, despite the girl simply looking surprised and flopping over in an ungainly manner. His body wasn't developed enough yet for him to actively attack it but he managed to trap it between a table and chair leg, then pushed against it until it popped loud enough to startle him and the girl both. Raizen's laughter had both children turning towards him, though the girl's gaze was immediately arrested by the sight of Satori.

Silently, the demon melted away from the door; this was going to take care, planning, and a good bit of suicidal determination. Taking both wasn't feasible... but she didn't want both. Raizen could keep the boy, but the girl... Satori would have the girl whether he was willing to give her up or not.

Raizen's glance flicked to the door as Satori stepped away, and a sharp smile crossed his face; other demons had come and gone recently, old friends and allies that he had allowed to meet the babies—Kimiko had seemed particularly taken with Enki, and Enki had enjoyed holding both small children with a delicate touch few associated with the red-skinned demon. The fact that Satori, like Koku, had taken a long time to visit was not lost on him. Both women were still plainly furious about his choice of human lover.

Koku, however, had seemed to like the children; Satori's gaze had been far more predatory. He was going to have to tell Hokushin to keep an eye on her while she stayed within his walls, assuming his second hadn't already encountered her.

Yusuke crawled over to the older demon, and pulled his pants in a determined fashion until Raizen capitulated and picked him up. Kimiko remained in the middle of the room, watching the door with eyes that suddenly seemed like they could belong to a being much older. Then she looked over, saw that Yusuke was being held, and moved as fast as she could over to Raizen to demand her share of attention.

Demon children could age one of two ways; slow, taking centuries to mature, or fast, taking as little time as a few months. Taking their human nature into account, Raizen felt they would grow fast for demons, but slow for humans... though already they were both using micro-amounts of energy, a type that was not the reiki of humans or the yoki of demons. Yusuke's destruction of the ball had been with this strange sort of energy, and Raizen was looking forward to the day where he could train them both in earnest; fighting was in his blood, and theirs.

Yusuke was already trying to prove that, grabbing onto Raizen's long hair and pulling as hard as he could. When Raizen tried to disentangle the hair from chubby fists, he got bit for his pains. Given that both babies were—according to the two matrons who were teaching him—about eight human months, this was not as nice as it could be, and he growled at the boy.

Yusuke, to his surprise, growled back.

Raizen threw back his head and laughed, startling both children; only a quick shift of his weight kept Kimiko from tumbling out of his lap as she tumbled backwards, but then, he was a good bit faster than them.

"You are going to be a fierce fighter," he said to Yusuke, more amused than annoyed now. "You've got your mother's temperament for certain."

Yusuke's fierce expression turned pleased, and Raizen wondered just how much the babies understood. When he glanced at Kimiko, he saw that she seemed to be studying him with that same anciently thoughtful air that she had been giving Satori.

The thought was worrying; a son he could handle... sort of. He could still remember what it was like to be raised by his own father. But a daughter?

Kimiko blinked at him solemnly, then yawned, and stuck her thumb in her mouth. On the other side, Yusuke was chewing on his hair, uninterested in a nap the way his sibling seemed to be. Carefully, Raizen shifted the small girl until she was laying along his arm, and this seemed to relax her further. Brown eyes slid closed, and her breathing steadied out, deepening until she was well and truly asleep. With care he passed her off to one of the matrons, who took her over to the cradle and settled her in, then took up a watchful position.

Yusuke looked up the minute Kimiko was out of sight, and Raizen smirked a little; twins were auspicious for many reasons, not the least being the occasional unfathomable bond that could be developed. It hadn't escaped his notice in the past few months that where one baby went, the other followed, or threw a fit if they were separated for too long. Working together, they would be a formidable pair, and he wondered just how much training they would absorb without meaning to.

When Yusuke started to fuss, Raizen stood, and went over to the cradle to show the boy that his sister was just fine, only sleeping. Yusuke made a demanding sound that was, at this point, quite familiar, and Raizen dumped him into the cradle rather unceremoniously.

Which was pretty much what the baby boy had been waiting for; sitting net to his sleeping sibling, he was quite happy to go back to wrestling with a cloth doll—it was going to need repairs again quite soon.

Raizen grinned down at them, then turned away; he could feel energy that was unfamiliar, and no doubt was some group of fools who wanted to test their luck against his recent rulings. Well that was fine; he would put a few people through the ground, and then they would stop harassing him.

Satori made herself wait for nightfall; it was much darker in Makai at that point, and she was going to need all the help she could get in terms of stealth. Raizen in particular needed to be dead asleep, or this was only going to result in her own death.

Her one piece of luck was that the nursery had a wide window to the outside... but it was well up there on the cliff face. It was going to take some careful and precise timing.

The longer she stayed, the less chances she would get; Raizen knew full well that she was still angry with him, and he would never trust her alone with the children without months of work, months she didn't have interest in wasting. No, that girl carried the power of the Wish Blossom in her, and that power was rightfully Satori's.

But she had lived within Raizen's palace long enough to know when the guards changed shift.

The rock face was easy enough for her to scale; clawed hands and feet made short work of the many cracks in the mountain face, and even demons failed to look up more often than not.

The matrons would be more trouble; matrons were fierce demons who cared for the young until they were old enough to care for themselves, and nothing, not even hypnosis, would cause a matron to leave the child they cared for.

It was too much trouble to figure out which one was specific to the girl; she was just going to have to kill them both and be done with it.

The matrons had taken positions on either side of the large cradle, and Satori could sense the weight of unused power in the room. One matron seemed to be sleeping, while the other was focused on the cradle to the exclusion of all else.

Silently she slipped into the room, then snapped forward in a move she knew she couldn't repeat, using leftover power from what she'd siphoned from the Wish Blossom to boost her speed and strength.

The matron at the cradle died, but the second surged to life the minute her companion was killed, loosing a hair-raising shriek that woke the babies, and called in the guard.

Satori lashed out in a desperately move, her blade biting deep into the matron's eyes and sending her back to block the doorway. The twins were wailing, and she could hear the shouting; forced to make a quicker getaway than she wanted, Satori swore as she lit two smoke bombs. One she tossed into the center of the room, along with a burst of powder that would scramble her scent, the other she flung over the downed-yet-alive matron into the hall beyond. Thick gray smoke started billowing up immediately, and she turned to the cradle.

The boy's shrieks were deafening, and she sardonically wished Raizen luck with raising him. Then she snatched up the girl and leaped for the window, even as Raizne's fighters stumbled into the room.

Raizen's fury filled the palace with a cold and bitter intent; demons had stepped lightly before, but now the place was almost empty, no one willing to draw the wrath of their king down on their head. Only the most loyal remained...and the matron who had not died; most others had scattered to the four winds rather than become Raizen's next target.

It didn't help that Yusuke's furious screaming could be heard echoing down all corridors. Deprived of his sister, the only person who could calm him was his father... but Raizen saw little need for that, when he himself was not calm.

One of his children had been kidnapped.

"Hokushin."

Hokushin twitched slightly, and Raizen allowed himself a moment of malicious amusement. This failure was on his head as his second in command, after all.

"Report."

The word was a roll of thunder in the room; Hokushin remained on one knee and didn't look up.

"The matron in charge of Kimiko is dead, my lord. The other did not get a good look at whoever was foolish enough to take her, and between the smoke and the powder... and the mass exodus upon discovery, we... have no trail to follow."

Raizen's snarl had Hokushin pressing further to the floor. He didn't want to kill the other demon, but there had to be a better answer than that.

"I've sent men out," he continued, no tremor in his voice; clearly he recognized how volatile Raizen's temper was at the moment. "They have items that belonged to Kimiko, and will be using those traces to try and find a lead."

The strange energy of his daughter might well lead them to her... but it could be years until she was strong enough in that energy to do it on purpose.

"Get out."

Hokushin backed away carefully, and Raizen allowed himself another moment of malicious amusement at the speed the monk fled once he was out of sight. Then he surged to his feet and picked up the nearest stone table, throwing it through a wall and shattering both.

She had trusted him to protect their children.

And he had failed.

Kimiko was gone, and Yusuke's fury almost matched his sire's, even if his understanding did not.

Raizen had a suspect, of course; Satori. But where the woman had fled, he couldn't be certain, and there wasn't a chance in the hells that he was going to let her do it again. But it was infuriating to not be able to join his own men in the search.

Another table joined the first, and then several chairs as well as Raizen sought to tame his fury long enough to go and calm his son.

This boy that was all he had left...when he was old enough, the training would begin in earnest, until Yusuke was strong enough to go out on his own and seek out his lost sibling.