Disclaimer: I do not own YYH or it's characters. I own Cuddles, Neko, Kaze, Taki, Kanaria, Taka, and ALL other Shape-shifters of Darkness. I am not gaining any profit from this.
AN: Characters that I own may be used in other fics/stories IF credit is given. I only wish that all Jin/Touya lovers enjoy, and any ideas you might wish to see enter this story please be added in any reviews. Again, enjoy. Thank you.
CHAPTER THREE: TRUTH
"Neko?" Touya asked later, after Kaze had been patched up.
"Hmm? Yes, Touya?" the girl replied, pouring hot water for tea.
"No one here has been comepletely honest with everyone else. For example..." the ice master began. He glanced over at Jin, who shrugged.
"Your choice to tell 'em..." the wind master stated, looking down at his hands. Faint reminants of Kaze's blood were still visible, even though he'd washed them several times. Touya remained silent for a minute, then continued.
"We - Jin and I - knew you and Kaze were Shape-shifters of Darkness. Knew you were demons of ice and wind."
For a moment nothing was said, and Neko continued pouring tea to the unexpected guests. Steam wafted about the cold room from the boiling water and the glasses clinked against the small plates beneath them as Kanaria and Jin shivered ever so slightly. At first Touya was unsure if he'd get an answer.
"Koenma told you, didn't he? He wants you to take us to Demon World because we're changing very soon, correct?" Neko asked suddenly. Touya was able to see the side of her face, and realized the girl's mouth was becoming a tight frown. He nodded dumbly, unable to figure out what he wanted to say. The girl's voice was becoming sharply edged like Kaze's, but it was calmly spoken. Jin nodded at Touya, still looking at his blood-stained hands.
"...Well, yes. That's why we're really here. However..." the ice master started, looking at Jin and nodding, "Jin and I made a decision earlier. If you'll except, and Koenma too, perhaps we can come to a compromise."
"What kind of compromise?" Neko, Taki and Kanaria inquired in unison. The three were staring point-blank at them, and the boys felt as though they should get to the point.
"Well...We could remain here to keep your powers in check," Jin began, "Then Koenma may allow you to stay here without disruption..." As he finished, the boys saw Neko's eyes widen, assumed to be from shock. A split second later, she grinned. Then the grin faded, and Neko turned her head away from her guests.
"I'll have to speak with Kaze. But before you have your hearts set on staying here, I think I should warn you. Even though the other Shape-shifters of Darkness are our main enemies, Kaze and I are somewhat rivals ourselves. Typically, I run the inside of the house, and Kaze handles anything outside. But sometimes we can't stand each other's way of running things." she stated, hesitating to continue.
"And..." Touya encouraged. Neko paused, then sighed.
"Sometimes we get so mad at one another, we...we transform into our demon forms and attack each other. You stand a good chance of getting hurt." she finished.
"Ummm...Speaking of places to stay, is there a cheap place to sleep around here?" Taki asked politely. Neko looked at her four guests. Sighing, she shrugged.
"I guess it wouldn't be too bad to let you stay as well. We actually have a few other rooms here. They are more secluded, and warmer than most other rooms. But Kaze is the only one that knows how to get into them." she explained. Kanaria and Taki exchanged glances, shrugged, and nodded.
"How much?" Kanaria asked. Neko pondered.
"Normally I'd charge $300. Because they are warmer. But since this may be for only one night, you can stay for free. That goes for you boys too." she said.
"Thank you. We'll talk to Koenma tomorrow." Touya said, bowing.
"You people are friggin' insane. You know that, right?" asked a weak voice from the staircase behind the group. The other five jumped.
"Kaze! You shouldn't be up. Your wounds are extremely deep." Neko said, obviously worried.
"Yeah, well, what would you expect from Taka? Damn psycic. I see why Yusuke lost to her before. Between being able to tell what he's goin' to do and those talons of her's, it's hard to believe he's still alive. Or maybe she just thought he was hot." Kaze replied, glancing dully about the room from the bottom step on which she sat. What little bit of bandage could be seen from under her shirt was blotched with blood, and the girl seemed to be clenching her teeth.
"Yusuke!" Jin and Touya asked, half shouting the name.
"Yeah. Yeh know 'im?" the wounded girl inquired in a half-interested tone. The four guests were surprised at how calmly she was taking everything. Jin nodded.
"I fought against 'im in the Dark Tournament a few years ago, then we helped 'im out in the Demon World Tournament. He's a pal." the wind master explained.
"Oh...Interesting. Then you and Touya are demons too?" the girl asked. Jin nodded slowly before removing his hat and revealing his elf-like ears. Taki and Kanaria stood.
"We almost forgot. We are demons too. We've been acting like humans for a few years now..." Kanaria explained. The others just blinked.
"Yeah, anyways...Taka is one of the other Shape-shifters of Darkness. She and Yusuke went at it last time they showed up." Kaze continued, flinching slightly as she stood.
"Yusuke was up here? May I ask why?" Touya questioned catiously.
"He ran into Taka at a bar after Keiko left him for some other guy. Then when she was coming up here to inform us of the next enemy target, he followed her to ask her to go out with him." Neko explained. Jin and Touya blinked.
"Keiko left him? Odd." Touya said. Neko shrugged.
"Umm...Hello? Some one gonna fill us in?" Kanaria asked. She was more than a little upset that she and Taki were being left out and confused. Jin and Touya sighed, then took turns filling the girls in.
Later, after the long tale of how they met Yusuke, fought him, aided him and hadn't seen him since, the boys decided it was late enough.
"What time is it?" asked Touya, covering his mouth as he yawned. Jin yawned too, stretching. It was then he was reminded of something.
"But 'fore anyone heads to sleep, can you two answer us one more question?" he asked the owners of the home. The two exchanged wary glances, then sighed.
"Let me guess: you want to know what's up with Kaze's room. We can't tell you now, because we just ran into you all, and it's too long a story right now." Neko retorted, ushering the boys to their rooms. Before either could say anything more, she closed the doors in their faces.
"I didn't want to do that..." the girl said.
"Well it's none of their damn business anyways. Here are the keys to the other two rooms. Take 'em and go to bed, dammit." Kaze said gruffly, shoving the keys into Neko's hands. Then she turned on her heel, strode to the iron gate, opened it, and disappeared into her room. Her friend sighed.
"Again, you'll have to excuse her. I find it a bit...devastating...myself. I mean, we both knew we'd been changing. We jsut didn't expect..." Neko didn't bother finishing. The other two women understood; it was written in their eyes.
Even though everyone had gone to sleep at about five in the morning, Kaze was up and out of the house when Jin got up at eight. He had been comfortable in the bed, and wanted to stay there an extra ten hours. However, he and Touya still needed to speak with Koenma. Soon. Otherwise, he didn't know if he could sleep well. It would be nice to stay in Human World and not have to look over his shoulder all the time. Sometimes, sure. But not all the time.
The thought was incredibly nice. It was more like a dream than a possibility. But the reality was that they had to consult Spirit World's prince first. And getting the 'okay' might be out of reach. They'd already been pushing it asking Koenma to help them out with paying the rent.
Touya had gotten up an hour before Jin, and was currently eating breakfast with Neko. Scrambled eggs and bacon sat on a plate in the microwave, and a tea kettle was busy heating up on the stove. Taki and Kanaria were still asleep in their rooms, which were hidden at the back of the house.
"Morning Jin. Did you sleep okay?" Neko asked, retrieving the plate from the microwave and setting it in front of him as he sat down.
"Like sleepin' on air." the wind master answered, taking a bite of food afterwords. He chewed, swallowed, and continued. "Great food." Neko giggled.
'She's so cute when she does that.' Touya thought to himself, before his thoughts collided into a mental brick wall like a crash test dummy in a car going about seventy miles per hour. 'Wait, no. I can't, I can't, I can't. I don't even really know her. I must band those thoughts. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts.' he said in his head, forcing himself to the conclusion he needed to meditate when he and Jin returned from Spirit World.
"Thank you, Jin. I never pay that much attention, and Kaze hardly ever eats." Neko said, her voice floating through the ice master's head in a sluggish manner. It was a cheery, holiday-like tune in his opinion, and he favored it over the usual sluggish vocals of cocky, know-it-all teachers like the ones he'd had. Only one teacher was an exception; the Shinobi ice master before him, Koori.
"Yeah," Touya said softly, "yeah, the food was really great. Fantastic. You're a very talented cook, Neko." All of a sudden he felt like the slow heartbeat of the demon he was had sped up a notch, and noted his throat was painfully dry.
Jin tried so hard not to laugh at his friend. Touya liked Neko, a lot, and it was so comepletely obvious it was hilarious. He just hoped it would all work out.
'I don't think I've ever seen 'im look at a girl that way...' the wind master thought, almost choking on his breakfast as he successfully stifled a laugh. He managed to swallow, clear his throat, and took another bite. Neko, who had turned around to get the tea kettle from the stove, didn't notice Touya's sneaky glances that were making Jin blue in the face from trying not to crack up.
"Oh! Thank you Touya. Very glad to hear it." Neko replied, chuckling slightly at the compliments. She poured hot tea into some cups and passed them out.
"So...Kaze. She, erm, what's she do?" inquired Jin, curious about how and why the hell some one could and would get less than three hours of sleep, still be motivated to go outside, and do whatever it was they did. Neko laughed again, a briliant smile decorating her face. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a pony-tail, and seemed to elegantly follow her every move.
As Touya was noticing all too well.
"Probably hunting again. If so, she might be gone for a couple of days. But she never wanders very far." the girl responded, taking Jin and Touya's now food-free plates and placing them in the sink.
"So she stays nearby? Why? To monitor you?" the wind master questioned. Neko shrugged.
"I would think so. She worries too much." she replied, smiling even wider than before.
Kaze was, at that moment, making her way to a towering pile of rock. It was near there that she'd been attacked, and she'd lost her prized weapons in the scramble to get home. As she carefully picked her way through the shrubbery, she became aware of just how hungry she was. She'd been lying to Neko; lying about how often she was eating, and fibbing about the amount of sleep she'd been recieving.
An unseen root caused her to trip, and she landed on top of a jagged rock. The point was immediately embedded in her injury, and Kaze became acutely alert of fresh, warm blood slowly soaking her abdomen. Pain flared at her stomach as she pushed herself up off the edge of the rock, and she noted there was still a pool of her blood from the previous night only a foot in front of her.
Staggering to her feet, Kaze pressed her hands over the re-opened slash, hoping to ease the bleeding. Grinding her teeth, the girl cursed and swore at the throbbing affliction sinking into her body. Stumbling weakly forward, her foot slipped on a crest beside the river. Before she could react, Kaze fell into the icy water.
Seconds after she slipped, Kaze's clothing was wetted down. She'd ended up in deep water, and strong currents blasted her against a boulder in the middle. The granite stone, slippery with algea and moss, failed to aid her before she was swept away and tossed head-long into another rock. As her vision blurred and blackened, one slowly processed thought crossed her mind.
'Is this how I die?'
The boys slinked down the nearly-empty hallway, their feet padding softly against the floor. Koenma's office was a mere four or five yards away. One or two of the six ogres taking that same hall barely glanced at them, trying to see who they were. Upon seeing the boys' faces and realizing who they were, the curious ogres strode even swifter, almost to the point of losing their precariously balanced loads of papers.
When he reached the door, three steps ahead of his friend, Touya placed a hand to the large wooden doors. Before he could knock, however, the doors were flung open by a sobbing Botan. Her eyes clouded with tears, she could not see, and therefore bumped into Touya. Both fell to the ground, startled, right as Koenma raced out.
"Botan! Please, calm yourself! I'm sure Kaze is fine. What are the chances of anyone capturing her so close to her home? I think those bastards are just trying to put everyone in an uproar." the prince exclaimed nervously, patting the woman on the back and helping her stand.
"Koenma? What's going on?" Touya asked, getting up and brushing off.
"Jin! Touya! Some horrible demons claim they have Kaze and will make her transform if we don't do what they say! They want us to give Neko to the Demon Slave Trade!" Botan shouted, still sobbing uncontrolably.
"What!" the boys hollared.
"Like I said, I don't think anyone could overpower her on her own turf right now." Koenma said, less than calmly. Jin and Touya looked at him.
"What the hell is wrong with you! If anything has happened to Kaze, Neko may suspect us!" Touya screamed, panick overwhelming him. In an attempt to get him thinking straight, Koenma did something very uncalled for; he slapped Touya across the face. The ice master, dumbfounded, shut up instantly.
"Because, I know Kaze isn't captured. She's...in even worse danger. She's drowning in the river near her home." Koenma said, not daring to look the other three in the eyes.
"What?" Jin yelled, actually frightened the girl was dying.
"It's a long story. I can see certain people in Human World using a demension mirror. It's like looking through a television screen; I can see things going on in other worlds, but occupants of those places cannot see me. When I used the demension mirror in the house, I realized Kaze wasn't there. When I did see her, she was slipping into the river." Koenma explained in a rush, "And I know you two want to change the plan. I agree; if you two can rescue the girl, I'll allow you and the girls to stay in their home. You won't have to take them to Demon World."
"FINE!" the boys yelled, "NOW CAN WE GO SAVE HER?"
"Please do." Koenma said, ushering them down the hall to the nearest exit.
As darkness loomed near, Neko, Taki and Kanaria began getting nervious. Over twelve hours and not a word from Kaze or the boys. They were all sitting in the living room when the door shot open.
