(A/N) Aww yiss! Two chapters in two days, I'm on a roll!
... Though I should maybe be studying for that history exam coming up next week... psh, nah. Later. Later is good.
So here you have it, the explanation behind this madness.
Enjoy!
Hiei pulled back from the kiss and dragged his arm across his mouth, a frown severely etched onto his face.
'If the detective doesn't wake after that, I'm going to find his human female and make her do it,' he thought ruefully. His scowl turned into a smirk when he thought of bringing in the fool, Kuwabara, instead. Wouldn't that have some interesting repercussions!
His musings were cut short however, when Yusuke bolted upright and glanced around in a rather vexed manner before spotting him and opening his mouth, probably to give a most impressive rant.
Hiei cut him off. "Before you go and open your big mouth-"
Wait, the detective had already done that... whatever, I doubt he'll notice that little incongruity.
"-try to remember that I just saved your life."
Hiei sneered down at the detective. "In fact, I think you owe me now."
Yusuke regained his wits and got up angrily. "The hell I do!"
...And began his rant. "Who are you, what was that, why are you here...!"
It was all very interesting and Hiei was left wondering when he'd run out of breath.
Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to test that experiment. No doubt denizens of Spirit World would be paying the house a visit soon and he'd rather not be around when that happened. 'At least, not until I've regained my strength and powers...'
"Sorry to cut your rant short, Yusuke," Hiei started, "but let's just say that now isn't the time for questions and that you and I will be meeting again very soon."
With that, he was gone, leaving Yusuke with many unanswered questions and an extreme sense of confusion. Never one to enjoy being in such a state, Yusuke was quick to get over it.
Then he got pissed, glaring irritably at the empty space his 'savior' had vacated. "Who does that guy think he is, huh? I'll show him grateful!"
Yusuke stomped around his room, mockingly repeating Hiei's words out loud to himself and generally cursing the other's existence. It didn't take him long to calm down though.
The sheer sensation of being alive again was making it difficult to stay angry at anything.
Looking around, he noticed that nothing much had changed since he'd been gone, except that the place was much cleaner- probably thanks to Keiko since his mother couldn't be bothered to do it herself. All of his things were neatly stored around the room as if they had somehow known he'd be brought back to life. Yusuke smiled at the thought that he hadn't been thrown aside like trash and forgotten after his death like he'd originally thought he'd be.
'I guess... maybe it's not so bad to be alive after all.'
It then occurred to him that he'd had a companion before being sucked back into his body. "Oh thanks, Botan! Leavin' me with alone with the guy who can teleport and probably wants to kill me! Yeah, really awesome!"
Yusuke huffed when he got no response and realized he was shouting at himself. "Oh well. Hey, I wonder what I've missed the past couple of days."
'Kuwabara could probably do with a good beat down right about now. I bet he misses getting his face punched in and I bet the pavement is starting to miss him too!'
With that charming thought, Yusuke was up and out the door, barely taking time to make himself decent and do a little happy dance. He was back in his own body and no weird midget with a bad attitude was going to ruin his good mood!
Said midget with a bad attitude was currently racing through the city towards the outskirts where he could vanish and plan his next move.
He found himself in a dense forest (and it wasn't Genkai's forest either, not even Hiei was foolish enough to tempt that old woman. She could probably kill him just by sneezing at this point!) and darted up a tree before alighting on a branch and making himself comfortable.
"Well, that went well," he muttered contemptuously, eyes taking in the surrounding forest that was so familiar to him with slightly feigned disinterest. It had been awhile since he'd been here, back in the Human World...
Hiei forced his train of thought back to the matter at hand. Now was not the time for reminiscing.
He could have handled that better, he realized, but his impatient nature wouldn't let him wait for the string of events that had led up to his and the detective's first meeting. Hiei also couldn't trust that Yusuke's human girl would have been able to get to him in time.
He gave a soft snort at the thought, narrowing his eyes briefly.
From what he understood, she had barely been able to make it with only seconds to spare and Hiei wouldn't allow for something so precarious to decide Yusuke's fate. He had seen Yusuke die once; losing him a second time was entirely unacceptable.
He was left to decide what would happen now and pondered the exact events that had led up to this hiccup in time.
'Perhaps I should learn to listen to Kurama more often...'
The mission was a simple one and really not even an actual mission. Koenma had needed help finding an artifact that had been stolen some odd number of years ago but whose disappearance the demigod hadn't noticed until now.
And Yusuke had been very bored.
Somehow he had convinced both Kurama and Hiei to come along with him
'Come on guys, it'll be just like old times, you know you missed me!'
Though Kuwabara had told him that on 'no uncertain terms' would he be risking his neck for one of Yusuke's whims- he had finals in a week, darn it!
So the merry band of friends made their way cheerfully through an ancient forest.
Well, maybe not so cheerfully. In fact, Hiei and Yusuke were on their fifth argument since they'd begun the trek, leaving a weary Kurama to play the mediator. Needless to say, he wasn't very successful.
"So, short-stuff, did ya hear? Kuwabara an' Yukina are daaating," Yusuke said in a singsong voice. He snickered when he noticed Hiei gritting his teeth in agitation.
"Detective, continue that train of thought and it'll be the last thing you ever do!" Hiei snarled at the toushin.
"Come now, you two, is it so wise to argue before a possible fight?" Kurama attempted in the small hope that his companions would focus a bit more. It was, of course, utterly in vain.
'Well, at least I tried...'
"Tch! Tell that to the fool who got us into this mess!" Hiei growled out, shooting a dark look at the 'team leader'.
"Hey now, I thought Kuwabara was 'the Fool'," Yusuke said brightly, seemingly ignorant of the violent looks Hiei was sending him.
"Yes, and you're starting to remind me of him," Hiei shot back.
Any further talk was abruptly cut off and the forest was suddenly completely silent. The group looked around themselves with expectation, though Hiei and Yusuke shared eager smirks, all hints of enmity towards each other forgotten. This was the part they'd been waiting for.
They were utterly surrounded on all sides by a rather large group of bandits who seemed to think that numbers would somehow win them the battle. There didn't appear to be a leader among them, or if there was, they were hardly any more interesting than their men.
The former Tantei resigned themselves to a rather boring and easy fight.
Kurama and Hiei glanced at each other and quickly split apart in opposite directions from the formation, darting into the foray to begin the battle, while Yusuke waited calmly in the center of the chaos.
To make the fight more exciting, Hiei forewent using his demonic energy and relied on his speed and sword skills to take down the enemy. They died quick, messy deaths but the blood never even hit him before he was on to the next vict- er, opponent, yes that's right, opponent...
Kurama, on the other hand, was bringing the surrounding plants to life and using them against his opponents while gracefully dodging and evading their feeble attacks. He felt they should have thought before facing a master plant manipulator in a forest of all things. It had been quite a long time since he'd had so much fun; the Human World really couldn't compare. He let loose a delighted laugh and continued to fight.
Yusuke always enjoyed a good brawl, and although he preferred to face more challenging opponents, he was determined to be entertained all the same. The demons who weren't busy with Kurama and Hiei immediately charged him and Yusuke responded with a powered-up shotgun. With a large grin on his face he let it fly at them, taking out half their numbers with direct hits and vaporizing the few unlucky ones who had been too close to the energy and were too weak to withstand it. He smirked confidently and jumped into the crowd, beginning the unholy beat-down.
All three of their group met up in the middle of the battlefield surrounded by the still warm bodies of their opponents. It had been a quick fight.
"Well, that was disappointing. I hardly even broke a sweat!" Yusuke said with a laugh.
"The fact that you broke a sweat at all is pathetic. These weaklings shouldn't have been that much of a challenge for you," Hiei taunted, still in a good mood after the battle.
Arguing with Yusuke was just an added bonus for a job well done.
Kurama sighed, though really, he should be used to their constant bickering by now.
"Well, these seem to be the bandits Koenma was talking about." He paused. "I don't suppose either of you thought to keep one of them alive for questioning?"
At their mumbled confirmations that, no, neither had thought beyond the thrill of the fight, Kurama sighed again.
"Well then, it's a good thing that I had that foresight, isn't it?" Smile looking suspiciously like a smirk, he glanced back to where he'd tangled up a couple of the demons in energy leeching vines. Yusuke cracked his knuckles loudly and Hiei's grin was definitely on the evil side. They walked over to begin the interrogation. Oh, but Hiei loved those interrogations.
Unfortunately, the demons cracked long before Hiei could really get going and they began the short walk to the bandit's camp, leaving Kurama's plants to make fertilizer out of the bodies. They held no pity for them; after all, this was the Demon World, only the strong survived.
Things went downhill from there on out, but really, it was all Koenma's fault for not informing them in the first place what the effects of the artifact were.
They found it lodged in a tree.
("Well, that's a stupid place to put it."
"Shut up, detective!")
Yusuke hung back with Kurama at the edge of the encampment while they made a call to Koenma, informing him of their success.
Hiei's impatience got the better of him.
Again.
He stalked up to the tree and reached out for the stupid thing, blandly noting that it was in the form of a bracelet. It was heavy looking and shaped more like a manacle than any jewelry he'd ever seen. He noticed that it seemed to be inlaid with darkened gold symbols in a strange language he couldn't decipher.
Hiei shrugged and yanked it out of its niche in the tree.
Two things happened when he reached out and grabbed it: Yusuke and Kurama shouted out in alarm, and the bracelet firmly latched itself onto Hiei's wrist.
He felt a disorientating sensation, as if his body had been flipped upside-down.
'I am going to kill that toddler!' the demon thought as his body gave another lurch.
Hiei managed to focus his spinning vision on the other's faces and felt the serrated edges of fear dig at his insides. The look Yusuke was giving him was the same one he'd worn when Toguro had 'killed' Kuwabara, and Kurama's unbreakable calmness had come undone.
The last thing he heard was Yusuke calling his name in fear and desperation.
"Hiei!"
Everything went black.
Beta'd by Kurama's Foxy Rose
