A few weeks went by after the fiasco with the television, and none of them were planning on messing with it again. It was clearly out-of-control, even beyond Irie's rudimentary knowledge, and Kurama didn't want to risk another venture. Random portal-hopping would be pointless, and he told Koenma as much when the prince contacted Botan to ask why there hadn't been any headway.

One weekend, the gang decided to take it upon themselves to go into town for some extra grocery shopping; Irie was determined to stay behind, adamant that she'd bought enough supplies to last them the entire month. She had zero interest in leaving, but was mostly just being stubborn. Kurama volunteered to stay behind to keep an eye on things. He found himself in the kitchen, helping her make lunch for just the two of them.

Irie was humming some slow, Broadway ballad while she fussed over a couple of fish fillets frying in a pan. The sound of oil crackling, mixed with the scent of lemon, honey, and pepper, made Kurama feel warm. Like he was back home. It was a comforting feeling as he chopped carrots.

"Did you call your mother?" Irie suddenly asked.

He was surprised she'd remembered him mention wanting to. "Oh, yes. An hour ago." He dumped the carrots into a bowl of other sliced vegetables and moved next to her to start steaming.

"How is she?"

"Fine, thank you."

"That's good."

They kept cooking in silence, and a thought occurred to him. "What about your mother, Irie?" he asked. "You've never mentioned your parents once."

"They live in Yokohama," she said simply. "Moved there after I moved into the mansion. Mama wanted to be closer to Tokyo, and I can't blame her. She found a really good job out there, too, and so did Papa."

Kurama wondered how she could say it so matter-of-factly. "And they were fine with leaving you here? Over a thousand kilometers away?"

She shrugged. "It's not that big of a deal. Mama was born in America, so the distance between here and her new home probably seems like nothing to her." Well, that explained a few things. Like her eyes.

"America? What brought her here?"

With a small laugh, Irie glanced at Kurama and replied, "Papa. They met in college. He was doing some study abroad thing or something, and I guess they hit it off."

"It must have been hard for her," he noted, "Japan is practically a world away from America, in terms of culture. Not to mention the language."

"Everything's a world away from America," Irie said with a snort. "Any time I've been there to visit my grandparents, it was like I was shut off from the rest of Planet Earth. I couldn't even tell you what was going on in Canada." With a sigh, she split the fish out onto two plates and leaned against the counter. "What about you, red? You're clearly not a genetic native."

He blew a chunk of bangs that had fallen into his eyes from his forehead. "My father. His mother was a foreigner, like yours. Not American, though, I don't think." Kurama set the final timer they needed before lunch would be officially finished, so he could sit back, too. "I heard the last owner of your home was American."

"Who? Mrs. Wembley?" Irie had to think for a moment. "Oh, yeah, she totally was."

"Did you know her?" Kurama's interest was suddenly piqued. He knew the mansion had been left to Irie, but he had assumed it was through less than legal means.

"She was my English teacher in middle school."

The egg timer went off, distracting her, but Kurama wasn't finished with this conversation. "How did you manage to convince your English teacher to leave you a mansion in her will?"

Dumping a portion of steamed veggies onto one of the plates, she shoved it at him without meeting his eye and said, "A lot of broken locks."

~Irie, In the Mansion, Long Ago~

I propped myself up, groaning, in the battered floral couch that was in the living room back then, my four friends scattered all around me in various states of disarray. Masanori, dearheart, was shoving Mitsu off of him with a huge grunt.

"Jesus freaking Christ," he moaned, "I feel like I got hit by a Mac truck."

"You're lucky," I complained, "I've still got the damn coconuts ringing in my ears."

We all looked at each other in silence: dirty, bloodied, generally unkempt. Alive. The most alive we'd ever felt in our short lives that already had been "too long." Ayame was the first to crack a smile. Meeting Shinjuko's eyes, they both started giggling. Then I snorted trying to hold it back, and the five of us finally devolved into hysterical laughter. Mitsu rolled off the coffee table and hit the floor with a loud -thud!-, which made things that much funnier. We didn't notice that the sky was still bright, though we thought we'd been gone for hours.

Mrs. Wembley- we weren't allowed to call her by her Japanese name when we were in her English class- shuffled into the living room as fast as her severe arthritis would allow. "What happened?!" she fretted in her creaking voice. Her watery blue eyes glanced fearfully at the television, then back at us. "It…" Back to the TV. Putting on a stern expression, she demanded that we tell her what we'd just been through.

We were thirteen. A relatively rebellious thirteen, but harmlessly so, and this was back when we still generally respected authority. Before we learned. So, we told her, regaling her with our new tale of adventures in a world full of knights, jewel-encrusted goblets, and killer rabbits. How Mitsu had outwitted the Black Knight and cut him to ribbons while his back was turned, and how I'd traveled to a castle of nuns with a boy-man too soft for his sword. Most importantly, of course, was how Masa and Mitsu had stolen a magical blade named Excalibur out of the hands of an unwitting king. It had skittered across the room coming out of the TV screen, and was now out of everyone's reach.

Our teacher listened to us gravely, and remained silent for a little while longer after we'd finished. We all looked so proud of ourselves. We felt so accomplished! A handful of kids from the middle of Bum-Fuck Nowhere, Japan, taking on an army of angry knights! If that didn't say something about our character, if that wasn't enough to define our clear greatness, then what ever could be?

I glanced at Shinjuko and grinned. "Do you remember the wizard? And he said-"

"'It's got teeth like this!'" she finished in a bad Scottish accent, and we both held curled fingers to our jaws, not realizing that we'd remembered the phrase wrong. "Look at the booooones!" Everyone laughed, except for Mrs. Wembley.

"Alright, children," she sharply insisted, "Your study session is over. I'll see you all in class tomorrow." Eyeing the five of us critically to make sure we were packing up our things (and putting the living room back together), she added in a low tone, "I don't ever want to hear about the TV again. And from now on, we'll have study sessions in school, after classes are done."

We argued with and complained to her, not understanding why she was taking it so seriously. We'd lived. Nothing bad happened. None of us were injured, and it had been fun! We'd lived. But she didn't want to hear another word. We didn't know that she knew exactly what the television was, and how lucky we were to come back home in one piece. She practically shoved us out of the front door, ushering us back into her car. She would take us home, herself, and she kept the sword.

Of course, we didn't listen. Why would we? We were a little reserved about it at first, but Shinjuko convinced us to start sneaking back into the mansion, furiously riding our bikes in the dead of night and picking open a window to sneak inside. We learned to be quiet and undetectable. The best ways to move things without looking like we moved them. And. most importantly, how to survive flawlessly in the new universes we explored.

~Back to the Present~

"Of course, when we were children, we loved fucking things up for others," Irie continued. "We didn't understand consequences. These worlds were… they were like toys, for us. Games. Virtual reality, in which nothing had consequences. The people we hurt weren't real, so what did it matter? Nothing was at stake in our minds, not even our moral compasses." She bit her lip and stared at the plaque just in front of her. "So we kept at it, even after we started high school. And we were so wrong." She glanced into the hall, like she could see through the wall and into the living room. Closing her eyes, she murmured in a low voice, "That television is nothing but evil."

Kurama watched her shove her half-eaten meal an arm away. "It seemed more annoying than evil," he offered.

"You haven't gone through it enough. It changes you." She swallowed thickly. "It turns you into a beast."

"You shouldn't exaggerate," he joked as she got up and grabbed her plate again, "It's bad manners."

"Are you done?"

With his meal, yes, but before he had time to say that, she snatched away his empty plate and took it to the sink. He heard the water start to run, but not the sounds of cleaning. Looking over his shoulder, he saw her standing there, staring blankly at the stream running from the tap. Her hands held a plate, but she might as well have been holding air. It dropped to the bottom of the sink with a loud clatter! when she was startled by a blaring noise coming from the wine-colored velvet of her dress. A wet hand dove into the hidden pocket and desperately drew out a small, blue handheld device that was flashing, a lot like her secret security panel. Her breath hitched, and she fled.

"Irie?" Kurama followed her at a brisk walk to the basement, where she took the stairs three at a time down. "What's wrong?"

But she didn't answer. Instead, she wrenched open the laboratory door, releasing bright, flaring lights and loud wails of warning. Kurama followed her inside and watched as she pressed her hand against the glass of the float-tank standing in the corner. She looked distressed.

"No, little guy, don't do this today," she murmured. The blob-thing was shuddering, jostling the sparse wires taped to its lumpy form. "Fuck."

Irie went to the control center hooked up next to it and tapped away at the keyboard while Kurama approached her gingerly. "Do you want me to help?" he asked, though he had no idea what he could possibly do. "What's going on?"

"Vitals are crashing," she grunted brusquely. "It does this sometimes, the hormones get out of balance easily and it's not…" She trailed off, lost in thought. "Crapbaskets."

"Irie, what is it?"

Again, she ignored his question, this time in favor of hitting a few more buttons until one of the lights stopped flashing. Satisfied, she said, "That should keep you stable for a few minutes…" Turning around, she told Kurama, "You need to move." Irie didn't wait, either, and elbowed him away so she could get back to the door. "Watch him, I need to grab something upstairs."

As the click of her heeled shoes vanished out the door, Kurama dared to look back at the poor creature trapped within the thick, glass tube. The shivering subsided a little, and he saw some dark patch through the translucent skin pulsing like a heartbeat. It was slowing down. But he could see why Yusuke hated it so much. Those black eyespots seemed to follow him, no matter how he changed position. If it was stable, now… It was fine. He turned his back on it and left the lab.

He found Irie digging wildly through the entertainment center upon which the thing was perched, throwing open cabinet doors and drawers, searching desperately for something. "Where did I put those damn bottles?!" she hissed. Her shoulder rammed into his knee and jostled him against the television. It flickered into life, or into static, anyway. "Watch it!" she spat angrily as her elbow, this time, jammed into his shin. "What are you even doing?! I told you to keep an eye on him!" In her fist, she clutched a tiny vial of bright pink liquid.

Kurama stumbled back and felt one arm sink into the weird portal-pudding- it hadn't been static, after all. As Irie rose to her feet, his hand locked onto her bicep, desperate to keep from falling back any further. Unfortunately, he only succeeded in pulling her in with him.

"No!" he heard her shriek before the world went quiet and bright.

As they walked, he could feel her screaming at him, hurling curses meant to kill towards him. They vibrated through his mind like physical blows, and his heart had dropped into his stomach. Not for the thing they'd left behind that she was trying to save, for that was obviously what she was upset about, but because he felt remorseful for bringing her here. He liked her, when she was in a good mood. He hadn't realized it until this second, but he had wanted to keep her away from this machine.

'I'm sorry,' he thought, and he wouldn't remember to say it to her later.

Kurama landed unceremoniously in the midst of a small, dark room that felt very cramped: stacks of chairs brushed the ceiling, shoved against filing cabinets and empty shelves. He was sitting on some kind of table, or maybe a desk? And it wasn't the only one.

While he was still reeling from the unexpected landing, Irie's head popped out from underneath his perch. "Shit," she cursed in a low voice. "Kurama, we've gotta get out of here."

"What?"

She scrambled out from where she'd fallen and grabbed his hand, yanking him to his feet. "Oh my God, this isn't the time," she chided. Panic filled her features as she glanced about, taking in their surroundings: now that his eyes had adjusted, it looked like a storage room in an office. She propped open the door and peeked outside cautiously. "It's empty" she whispered over her shoulder, "Come on, we have to find the portal before anyone sees us."

It took him a second longer to feel what she was feeling. An intense miasma of demonic energy flooded the air around him. Of course she was on-edge. Though she'd spent the last month with a demon under her roof, this was enough to spook even the bravest human.

They slipped out from the door and into a long, brightly lit hallway that echoed with each step. Irie, as quiet as a cat, inched open every door to take a look, and every time, she pulled away shaking her head. Where was that damn return portal? Kurama helped as best he could, taking the other end, but his attempts were just as fruitless. She ran to him when finished on the balls of her feet, looking desperate.

"Anything?" she hissed. He shook his head, and her fingers worked their way into her bangs, twitching. "Shit, shit!" she muttered.

"You said it yourself," he quickly murmured, "It can't be too far from where we came out." Freezing, Irie slowly pulled her hand from her scalp and clenched it into a fist at her side. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Okay," she exhaled, "Okay. Let's keep going. We'll work the same hall, I don't want to split up or get separated."

"Perfect."

They rounded the corner only to see, much to her dismay, that there weren't any doors down this hall, only windows. Irie couldn't resist looking outside, and Kurama did the same. The cloud-covered sky was grey and drizzling, as dreary as the buildings. He recognized the city as Tokyo, but only because he saw Tokyo Tower off in the distance. Half of the block around them was crumbling into rubble without a person in sight, clearly abandoned. A truck rumbled past, over the broken road, and Kurama's eyes widened when he saw a passel of demons sticking their heads out of the windows.

"Demons in my world…" Irie breathed out beside him, pursing her lips.

"Be glad this isn't your world," he said grimly.

She sharply pulled him away and led him further down the hall. "Come on, staring out a window isn't going to help us. Find a door, a staircase, anything. What use are you?"

"More than you if we bump into demons."

"Shut up and be grateful I can run in heels."

They dashed down the hallway, and he was surprised how quietly she could run, even if she couldn't keep pace with him. Luckily, they saw a sign that read "STAIRS" at the end, and Irie looked happy, or at least more alert. But she gasped, and the two stopped and backed up a few meters when the door swung open.

Demons. Motherfucking demons. Big, grey, burly ogre-looking brutes with jarring tusks and huge, feet like an elephant's. They were vaguely dressed as security guards with the classic police caps and riot sticks clutched in their hands.

"Hey, who're you?" one of them grunted.

Kurama, on an impulse, stepped in front of Irie and put on a false smile, but Irie beat him to the punch. "We're from accounting," she brightly said, peering from behind him and grabbing his hand. "Exploring the building while on break. You know." It was the worst cover-story Kurama had ever heard.

A silent exchange went between her and the guards. One glanced at Kurama, then to their interlocked hands, and raised his eyebrow when he looked back at her. She tossed him a wink and a small, coy smile, and the ogre laughed.

"We won't keep ya, then," he said jovially, waving them off. "Get back to work. Crazy kids."

The two ogres plodded around the other corner, grunting to each other and occasionally breaking into chuckles. Irie let out her sigh of relief as they past and released her grip on his hand. "Oh, thank God," she said under her breath.

"How did that work?" Kurama whispered, watching her take the lead again.

"Ayame once said that every business has accounting. And I was hoping your stink would hide my human… ness."

Trailing behind her, he shook his head. Stink? If she was talking about his energy signature, that's not how it worked. Or was it? He was starting to learn that other worlds didn't seem to entirely adhere to the physics of their own. The guards had accepted their excuse easily enough, or perhaps they were just exceptionally stupid. They caught a glimpse of those ogres on their way towards the door, who looked over their shoulders. Irie waved and gave them a friendly grin, but it fell from her face when one of the demons sniffed heavily at the air, and she figured out that she was much too close.

"I know that smell…" the demon said thoughtfully. His eyes snapped onto her, predatory and fierce. "Human. Get it."

Without another word, Kurama fluidly shoved her out of the hallway, practically down the stairs, and slammed the door behind her. She tried the knob and screamed, "Kurama! Open the damn door!" She heard him grunt, and the crack of a whip, followed by the heavy sounds of fighting and "You're not from fucking accounting!" Her heart practically stopped. Not again.

Throwing herself down the stairway, she bypassed the second floor, the first, until she came to the basement, a floor that would have been pitch-black if not for the multiple, colored service lights. Whipping through the door, she ran, ducking away from stray pipes and wires, looking everywhere she could for- aha, there it was! A small room was tucked away among the mess, full of computer and camera monitors that hurt her eyes. Still, she scanned the cameras, until she found the two that showed Kurama.

"Shit, shit, shit," she whispered to herself, furiously typing on the keyboard. She hadn't tried to override a computer in years. That was always Shinjuko's job. Her eyes switched between the computer and Kurama, and she prayed that she'd be quick enough. Something heavy shifted in her pocket, and she remembered the bottle. Her face went white, and the earlier panic started to add itself to the current. She had to go faster.

~Kurama~

The thorns dug into the ogre's flesh as Kurama pulled sharply, ripping away a forearm and splattering blood across the wall. The demon howled, and the second charge Kurama angrily, screaming and brandishing his club. It was hard to avoid, since the hall was relatively narrow, but he managed to sidestep his way into a grazing blow to his side, rather than a harsh one to his stomach. While his back was turned, the freshly-injured ogre pounded down the hall and gored him with a tusk. Kurama let out a strangled grunt, pulling forward to free his shoulder blade. He prepared another strike with his whip, but pain cracked through his skull, and Kurama found himself on the ground. The two ogres loomed over him, and he feigned unconsciousness.

"What should we do with him?"

"Eat him?"

"Nah, he ain't human."

"We should kill him, anyway. Bastard took my arm! Besides, she wouldn't want an intruder to live."

"Good point."

"You fools."

The voice was cold, cool, and collected, and very, very familiar. Kurama's eye cracked open a sliver and he saw a small, dark figure making its way slowly towards them.

"Ma'am!" Both ogres stood at attention, saluting with their clubs. "Greetings, your Excellence!"

"Step aside." The speaker was feminine, and peered down at him from ruby-red eyes, but it was the tight knot of seafoam hair that rested at the nape of her neck that made him recognize her; the navy-blue kimono was throwing him off a little, along with his throbbing head. "What have you done?" she chided through gritted teeth. "He's on the list. You aren't to touch him. You should have been given his image during orientation."

"Y-yes, Ma'am!" one of the guards stammered, "Forgive us, Lady Yukina, we weren't aware!"

"Clearly. Oafs." Yukina made no move to help him, but calmly watched his bleeding form and shallow breathing. "It's your own fault, Kurama. I don't see why you still bother with that pathetic human form."

What in the world was going on? His mind raced, or it tried to. Not once had he ever heard Yukina speak like this to anyone. She sounded more like Hiei, than anything.

"Leave him be, gentleman," she insisted. "Walk me to the meeting room on Level Four."

"Yes, Ma'am! Right away, Ma'am!"

"Ugh, can't you stop that? I find the smell of ogre blood nauseating."

"Y-yes, Ma'am."

They left Kurama bleeding out in the middle of the hall, and only when he heard the door shut behind them did he sit back up. Blood had pooled under his back, but, all in all, it didn't feel too bad. It was better than what he'd suffered during the Dark Tournament.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway, and he simply sighed and prepared himself mentally for another fight. He wasn't entirely sure he'd be up to it, physically. Luckily, he saw Irie round the corner.

"Oh, Christ, Kurama!" She helped him stagger to his feet, and her eyes widened at the size of the stain across the back of his shirt. "Oh my God-"

"It's not that bad."

"'Not that bad-?'"

"Did you find a way out?" he interjected.

She bit her lip and gingerly started herding him down the hall. "Yes and no. I found a way out of the building, but not back home."

He wanted to argue, and she saw it on his face- they'd bought a little extra time, they could use it to search for the portal. And he could absolutely tell that she wanted nothing more than to get back home, to deal with whatever emergency she needed to take care of before he literally dragged her here. Kurama saw her bite her lip, and he knew she wanted to agree with his unspoken insistence. But the room started spinning after he took a few steps. Irie's eyes snapped to the floor. He was leaving a trail behind.

"Get patched up, first," she reaffirmed, however grudgingly, "Then we'll worry about home. Thank God I saw them leave you in the security cameras, I was getting nowhere with a distraction..."

She brought him to a freight elevator and mashed the button for the first floor, where they came out to a loading dock in the open air. Irie blanched and shivered as the cold, misty rain hit her skin. She'd frozen, just between the overhanging ceiling of the dock and the sky. Kurama rolled his eyes and nudged her forward, jumpstarting her jerky pace.

"You're useless," he teased, trying to smile. It came out like a grimace.

"Yeah," she hissed, tugging his arm over her shoulder when she saw him lose balance, "Says the guy who had to be saved from ogres."

"I had the situation perfectly under control."

"Whatever."

Both of them were glad for the rain, which would wash away Kurama's blood in time. They limped down the empty block until they found what Irie deemed a "perfect hiding spot," and that was a pizzeria.

"It has power," she pointed out, jerking her finger to a red security light inside, "Power means the freezer's running, and there's probably edible food inside in case we have to stay the night. If we're lucky, there'll be running water to boot."

The problem was unlocking the door, but Kurama had energy enough to pick it with a plant: he carried a few assorted seedlings in his pockets at any given time, and made this one grow until the vine activated the lock and the door popped open. They ducked inside, and Irie helped him into a chair.

The pizzeria had clearly been abandoned in a rush- there was a stale, moldy hunk of pizza dough on a wooden table, right next to a long knife with a handle on either side that was starting to rust. One of the tables had been tipped over and lost a leg, and part of the oven was melted. Irie started digging around behind counters.

"First aid kit, first aid kit…" she murmured frantically, shivering while the rain dried on her shoulders, "Shit. It's gone."

Kurama asked, "How do you know where to look?"

She popped up from behind the register. "I worked at a place like this when I was in college for a few months." Wrinkling her nose, she pawed at the spoiled dough on the back table until it dropped into a trashcan she'd kicked over.

"What about that bottle you grabbed back home? Do you still have it?"

"That's not what it's for." She closed her eyes and sighed, trying to collect herself. "Okay. I didn't want to do this." Irie hopped over the counter and sat herself down in the chair next to Kurama. "Move, I need to get a look at that."

He swung his legs over so she had free access to his back, and he gingerly unbuttoned his shirt until he could shrug it from his shoulders until the top of his torso was exposed. She gasped. "It probably looks much worse than it is," Kurama assured. "I promise, I've had worse."

With a gulp, she shakily said, "I swear, if you tell me 'it's just a flesh wound,' I'll slap you. If it had been two inches to the right, it would've severed your fucking spine. You're lucky it didn't puncture a lung." Her hands rested against him, and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply and ignoring his painful wince. She began to sing. Her voice was deep and fluid, like a steady river, and not what he'd expected at all. "Blume, leuchtend schön, kannst so mächtig sein. Dreh die zeit zurück , gib mir was einst war mein."His flesh glowed under her touch, and started knitting back together, much to his surprise. She wasn't even looking, too deep in her own concentration. "Blume leuchtend schön, lass mich nicht allein . Halt das Schicksal auf. Gib mir was einst war mein. Was einst war mein..."

The light faded slowly, leaving his back warm, as if it had been bathed in sunlight. "How did you do that?" he asked, reaching back to inspect it. There wasn't a trace of injury left, not that he could feel.

Irie flushed and swatted his hand away so she could slide his shirt back up. "I may or may not have eaten something I shouldn't have," she admitted sheepishly. "It was a long time ago. I didn't even know I could do it until well after the fact, anyway. Learning the incantation was entirely an accident."

"You learned German by accident?" he asked ironically, turning the other way so they could look at each other while they spoke.

She huffed. "I don't know German, dingus. Just the song. In a weird twist of fate, I saw Kiya post the lyrics on FriendSplash and decided to look up the song. Apparently, it's from a folk tale or something. YouTube started playing, and my hands started glowing. Fastest scar remover I've ever found, actually." At the look he gave her, she flushed and defensively spat, "I have cats."

He watched her move away, and wondered if every subject had to be touchy. "That's the first time I've heard you mention Toriaka since you met Koenma."

"I don't like talking about her."

"I can see that." Kurama watched her lean against the cool window, her breath turning to fog against the glass. She was watching the rain, which had picked up enough to be real water. "Why not? From what I heard, you were close."

Her lip found its way between her canines. "We were."

"Is having a conversation with you always like pulling teeth?"

"We had a…" She searched for the right word. "...a falling out, okay? It was nasty, and I don't like talking about it." Irie's eyes darted back and forth between the raindrops, counting them. Anything to keep from thinking about it.

Kurama remembered Kiya Toriaka by watching Irie- the two looked similar, between the nose and chin. Especially the way they smiled. Toriaka had been wilder, more vivacious by a solid kilometer and far less volatile, with tawny-brown eyes and a confident stride. Awkward in school, like most human teenagers, but she'd gathered a close-knit group over time. When she bumped into Yusuke, that group only grew. Like him, she and her best friend Nanami had a way of drawing others to them like otherworldly magnets, through the sheer force of their personalities. Also like Yusuke, both of them had a touch of demonic blood running through their genome. Though they'd met Yusuke first, most of their time involved with Reikai was ultimately spent with other demons- namely Jin, Chuu, Touya, and the rest of their circle.

But while Kurama had known Toriaka and Nanami, albeit briefly, he'd obviously never met Irie, before. He couldn't even recall her being mentioned. There had been too much excitement for the two girls with newfound powers, probably.

He furrowed his brow. "You sound resentful."

"Of course I'm resentful," she relented, almost explosively so. "For years, I was one of her closest friends! She was definitely mine, that girl knew every damn thing about me, and dammit if I didn't love her. She was like the big sister I never had! Then she met Yusuke, and you, and all the others, and suddenly she and Nanami had more in common with this punk who didn't make it into high school than they did with me. And I tried so fucking hard to hold onto them both, to keep everyone, and I just made things worse, and I… I felt so…" She broke off, biting back hot, angry tears.

He slowly shook his head. Humans. Honestly.

"Is that why you're so difficult?" he asked, moving his chair to sit next to her. "Why you'll lash out at Botan, of all people, when we're just trying to be friendly? Your life is too short to be dwelling on feeling-"

"Discarded."

She hung her head and curled her fingers back into her bangs, her other hand white-knuckling the seam of her dress. That hadn't been the word he was preparing to say. Irie's shoulders sagged and started shivering, and when he heard her sniff, he tentatively put an arm around her. Her crying sounded horrifying; it was a lot of breath-holding, trying both to calm herself down and keep from making a sound, and it sounded like she was struggling for oxygen. Her voice came out in tiny, intermittent squeaks. Very suddenly, once she'd calmed some, she straightened up, and glanced uneasily at him, shoving his arm from her back. Her eyes were greener when they were tear-stained, almost the same color as his.

"Okay, enough crying," she sniffed, pawing at her face until it tried. "I can't be crying while we're hiding from demons with no way home." She looked towards the kitchen dolefully. "What are we going to do? If we want another shot of finding the return portal, we have to get back into that… place, somehow."

"I might be able to get back in," Kurama said thoughtfully. "Yukina said-"

"Who?"

"Yukina. She's another friend of ours, and she said that I'd been put on some kind of list, that the security guards weren't allowed to touch me."

"Didn't stop them from ripping your muscles to pieces," she scoffed, getting up and pushing past his seat.

"Irie, it's perfectly logical." He watched her hop behind the counter again and inspect the double-handled knife, again. "Think about it: they didn't turn on us until they figured out you were human. If I were to transform into Yoko Kurama-"

"Who?"

"My demon form. Focus. I'll be much more likely to get inside as a demon, understand? Then I can hunt for the portal, return for you, and we can leave."

"I don't like it," she protested, shaking her head while she gave the long knife a test swing. "We're woefully unprepared, Kurama, and you know what happens to people who split up in horror movies."

Rolling his eyes, he sighed, "But we're not in a movie, and Yoko is tough. I'll be in and out and back for you in no time at all."

"And what are you going to do when another pair of ugly idiots leaves you for dead and shoved in a cubicle with no way to contact me?" A single inch of the blade sunk deep into the wooden table with a thick twang as the rest of it wiggled. Irie's hands were planted firmly on either side of it while she glowered at him. "I'm not going to sit here waiting for you. My hair'll fall out from stress and I do not want to waste my Angelic Pretty cash on wigs. I've already got to replace this goddamn dress."

It was his turn to stand up. "Stop being so pigheaded. You're worse than Yusuke."

"Ouch, low blow."

"They will kill you," he finally snapped. "You didn't hear them talking. They eat humans, and they were going to turn you into their next meal before I stepped in. So you are going to stay here where I know you'll be safe until I can figure out how to get the two of us back to our own dimension."

She flew to the counter and suddenly, she was nose-to-nose with him. "I hate you!" she shouted, cheeks turning red. "You're so fucking condescending, you always talk to me like I'm a child you need to babysit, Toriaka!" His shoulders relaxed a little, and he stared her down piteously until she realized what she'd said. Her eyes dropped down, ashamed. "... Okay." He felt Irie's fingers closed over his. "Okay. When I start projecting things on other people, I'm in zero shape to do anything useful. Please promise me that you'll be careful, though."

"Of course." He came around to her side of the counter and found a knife on top of the oven, in much better condition than the long pizza cutter, too high for her to see. "Here, use this. That thing's going to snap if you try to hit someone."

"Right, yeah."

Kurama glanced outside. "Look, it's stopped raining."

"You should go." Irie had set the knife down and was fiddling with the skirt of her dress, holding it up to inspect the smudged, glitter-made candelabras printed on it and exposing the soft lace of her petticoat. Kurama accidentally caught sight of the edge of her bloomers and looked away, but she wasn't paying attention. "I'll go nuts if I have to put up with the stench of stale pizza sauce much longer."

He laughed a little. "That stench is going to help hide you from any demons sniffing around," he teased. "Stay away from the windows, you don't need anyone seeing you."

"And you try not to get your lung punctured again," she demanded, poking his chest. He looked down at the top of her head, which only came up to his shoulder, and he hugged her.

"Try not to have another meltdown while I'm gone."

"Jerkface."

He made sure she hunkered down underneath a prep counter, hidden from view to anyone who might look in through the window and knife in hand. She gave him a smile and the thumbs-up.

"Hurry back," Irie whispered mousily as he unlocked the back door and slipped out.

Though it had stopped raining, the clouds were still dark and heavy and threatening to give way to another downpour. He closed his eyes and prepared himself for the transformation he hadn't made in quite a while, but then another familiar voice jarred him out of his concentration.

"Kurama?"

He jumped and widened his eyes at the sight of Yusuke- or, this universe's version of Yusuke. He was dressed in dark leather and laced in scars, much like he'd looked when his demon blood had first awakened. Granted, his hair was its usual length, but the criss-crossing marks scoring their way over his face were definitely reminiscent of his ancestor, Raizen. A massive two-by-four studded with long nails was casually slung over his shoulder.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Yusuke asked. "And why do you look like that? Your mom's place is on the other side of town."

"Yes, well…" What did he say? "I had business to attend to that required Shuichi."

Yusuke cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. "In a rundown pizzeria?"

"Merely a rendezvous point, I assure you." As if to prove a point, he quickly made the change and was suddenly standing a solid foot taller, whipping his silvery tail about to clear away the energy-laced fog that his demonic aura had created. "What brings you all the way out here?" he asked in Yoko Kurama's cool, throaty voice.

"Oh, y'know," he replied with a grin, "Hunting." He sniffed the air and scowled. "Man, why do you stink like blood?" His dark eyes lazed over Kurama's shoulder and through the back window. Frowning, he muttered, "What the shit?"

Kurama turned around, tossing his long, pale hair over his shoulder. He saw Irie's eyes, huge and petrified, staring at him from the window for only an instant before she ducked back down. Damn.

"Who is that?" Yusuke growled, throwing the door open. "Are you fucking spying on us?"

"She's with me," Kurama promptly insisted.

"A human girl?" Yusuke eyed him suspiciously. "Why are you hanging around a human girl? Where did you even find her, this part of the city's been cleared for three years." He groped around under the table until he grabbed a fistful of Irie's blouse and forcefully yanked her out. "Why were you eavesdropping?" he sneered. "Didn't your mommy ever teach you it wasn't polite?"

"Christ, Yusuke, we're the same age!" she squeaked fearfully, trying to twist out of his grip. But she couldn't stop staring at Kurama.

"How do you know my name?" he spat, pushing her towards the wall just as he let go.

"H-he told me," she quickly lied, pointing a shaking finger towards Kurama. "K-kurama did. Said you were friends."

"Irie, calm down," Kurama soothed. Hearing his voice, she flinched and looked away. "He's not going to hurt you. Are you, Yusuke?"

"Why would you keep her within the city limits like this?" Yusuke glanced back at Kurama, putting a hand on his hip. "You know what happens to humans in Yukina's territory. Remember when we brought Keiko and Shizuru to the safehouse?"

"It was an accident," he dodged, "I was bringing her there when we ran into a pair of ogres, and we had to-"

"What do you mean, 'bringing her there?'" Irie realized it before Kurama did, and blanched. Yusuke curled his lip. "You were the one who insisted we stop bringing humans in."

"I-"

"Who are you?" Yusuke demanded. "And why did you think disguising yourself as Yoko Kurama was a good idea?" The edge of the nail-driven plank landed heavily in Yusuke's palm and bounced slowly, threateningly as he approached Kurama.

"Wait, Yusuke!" Irie threw herself between the two of them, holding her hands out to stop him. "I know you don't have a clue who I am, but I can explain everything."

"Someone had better," he threatened darkly. "Or I'm gonna tenderize both of you for the next gang of demons that happen to walk by."

Author's Note: Wow, this one took a while to write! I was up super late finishing it and then took today to edit, but it's finally here! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, though. I'm a little proud of this new universe they're in (dedicated to user owlloveyou because she gave me the idea for it), and it'll get explained more in-depth in the next installment.

Thanks again for reading, everyone! Please don't forget to leave a quick comment in the review box for me, I love getting feedback and constructive criticism!

Lots of love, GrisailleDreams~