Again the warm sun woke Keiko. Again she resumed her routine life in the village. Again, she continued her education under Genkai. Again, she felt like her life was missing something. Her friends had noticed a change in her ever since she left Atsuko that day. When they confronted her about it, she told them about Yusuke. They were stunned, to say the least. Even though they cared about her, they could only helplessly stand by her as she found her own way of coping with this revelation. And cope she did. Keiko knew she would never be able to forget Yusuke, but she would remind herself that he wasn't a part of her life anymore. She had lived without him for nine years; she could live without him now. After all, crying for a boy she had only met once wasn't going to change anything. A week passed, and Keiko had almost completely put the issue behind her.
It was dusk, the sun's rays beginning to disappear behind the horizon, the shroud of night falling over the village. Keiko, Kurama, Botan, Shizuru, and Kuwabara were gathered around a fire, telling jokes and stories and the like.
"Man," Kuwabara breathed, "can you guys believe it? Only three years ago we were giving up all our food and money to the Saint Beasts. Now look at us, sitting around without a care in the world."
His friends agreed. The Four Saint Beasts had been a group of powerful demons that had, five years ago, taken up residence just beyond the mountains that could be seen in the distance. From their so-called Maze Castle, the Saint Beasts had gathered a small army of rogue demons to pillage the nearby villages, demanding offerings of food and money once about every six months in return for not destroying them. It was pure suffering for the villages, every family in danger of starving to death but unable to do anything to break free of their newfound servitude. Given that Raizen's forces had virtually no presence in the area, and no samurai could even come close to defeating the Four Saint Beasts, the village seemed like it could simply die of despair. Then, three-and-half years ago, a spark of hope emerged in Keiko's village. That was when Genkai and Botan moved to the village. Upon learning of the village's suffering, Genkai agreed to train Kuwabara to control his spirit energy in order to fight the Saint Beasts. It was also Genkai who had first realized Kurama's true nature, but it was obvious to her that his caring and kind nature was not just an act. The rest of them, Shizuru, Kuwabara, and Keiko, they needed a good, long explanation. After it was given, and his friends accepted him for whom he was, he too trained under Genkai. Despite now having two students, Genkai was still rather disappointed. Even though he possessed incredible potential, Kuwabara's spirit energy took on a form so different from her own that she was unable to pass on her most powerful technique, the spirit wave, to him. She could only teach him the basics of controlling his spirit energy and forming it into a weapon, in Kuwabara's case, the Spirit Sword. As for Kurama, his specialty was summoning and controlling demonic plants, so he too was unable to learn the spirit wave.
This unfortunate circumstance didn't deter them. For six months they trained, hard, grueling training that set their muscles ablaze with pain and fatigue. But by the end of it, they were ready. Ready to take the fight to the Beasts themselves. It was then that irony struck. Mere days before they were to head into battle, a message reached the village. The Four Saint Beasts had been killed. And to add to the mystery, it was around that same time that demon activity in the forest had begun to ebb considerably.
Shizuru sighed. "I still wonder who did it. Must've been someone pretty powerful."
"I heard it was none other than Raizen's very own heir." Botan, ever the source of gossip. "He was sent so that Raizen could remind all the other demons who their king is. In other words, he wanted to make an example out of the Saint Beasts."
"I too, have heard that rumor," Kurama interjected, "but it remains unfounded. If Raizen had taken a wife, let alone produced an heir, it would be the news of the country."
"Yeah Botan, really. What I heard was much more realistic." It would appear that Kuwabara was using Kurama's intellect as a springboard for his own rumor. "I heard it was a band of demons out to steal Maze Castle's treasure. I mean, that's gotta be what happened right? After it wasn't just the Saint Beasts, but almost all of their army was killed as well. No way anyone could do all that alone."
Kurama shook his head. "Kuwabara, while your theory is indeed much more likely, it is still mere speculation."
Kuwabara seemed to take this as challenge. "Oh really Kurama, so what do you think it was?" Shizuru slapped him over the head. He had just used Kurama's demon name inside the village where others might overhear. What would Kurama do then? "What? Oh right, sorry. I mean Shuichi, what do you think it was?"
"I don't really know myself. But I can tell you this: Raizen himself could have destroyed the entirety of Maze Castle by himself if he so chose. If he did have an heir, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe this heir was capable of doing the same. But here we lack motive. What could killing the Saint Beasts possibly accomplish? There are but two answers: wealth and status. The heir of Raizen would need neither of these. And while a group may have been after the wealth, there are much easier ways to steal it than to massacre of almost everyone in Maze Castle." Here, Kurama was the expert. As a demon he had been one of the most legendary bandits of all time. "No, it must have been status. But that begs the question: why haven't the killers made a name for themselves since?"
Keiko had been thinking the same thing. And as she pondered this question, an idea hit her, an idea whose origin could be traced back to last week when another would-be suitor attempted to woo her by performing an original song on his flute. "Maybe they were just trying to impress somebody." The group turned to look at her. While other girls may have become shy under the cold, judging stares of her peers, Keiko welcomed the chance to show off her intellect. "I mean, think about it. If they didn't do it for wealth, but didn't let the world know about the fact that they were the ones who killed the Saint Beasts, they must've been doing it for a specific person right?"
Kurama seemed to take in this new idea with great interest. "Doing if for someone else? I can't believe that idea never crossed my mind; though I'm skeptical that impressing a single being was the motive." Keiko didn't let her annoyance show. There was only one thing about Kurama that got on her nerves, and that was the fact that he seemed to need to make a counterargument to anything anyone said, just to make sure he considered every possibility. At least she could take some pride in the fact that she had thought of something even he hadn't thought of before. "It's more likely that a group of mercenaries were hired by some-"
Suddenly Kurama, Shizuru, and Kuwabara all went stiff. As one, they all turned north. Keiko hadn't seen them act like this since… "Guys, what's going on?"
In unison, voices hushed, they answered with one word. And that one word sent a chill of fear up the spines of both Keiko and Botan, a fear Keiko had thought she'd never feel again. "Demons."