Chapter 7

New master New mistress

Disclaimer: you know the drill. Go look at the earlier chaps.

"Why did you do that? "Raiko demanded as his son hopped down from the wall.

"Because that's what she deserved." Said shortly, before turning to face the other slaves. He settled his hands on his hips. "Now," he said, "if you three would be so kind as to follow me." He cocked his head and walked through the garden gate.

"Kurama!" Akane, Ranma's wife, ambushed him as he walked through the gate.

"Hey!" Ranma said indignantly, "I thought you didn't like girls." Kurama who was already being strangled by Akane's hug, spluttered. Akane on the other hand let Kurama go in order to incur her wrath on her "unsuspecting" husband. It was a longstanding joke between him and his friends. His hair was longer than either of the girls, his face was more delicate than most of the guys, and as Yusuke had "pointed out", 'Get a pair of size b boobs, and put on a low cut, lace-less, emerald green velvet dress with a corset to push those babies up, and we'd have our very own Princess Kurama, later to become King-Of-The-Velvet-bodice"

Kurama blushed red. 'Leave me alone' he muttered ducking his head. Meanwhile there was a strangled "Itaiiiiiiii!" from Ranma.

"Oh he's SO CUTE!" Kagome, who'd gone to help Ranma escape being ripped limb from limb and therefore saving the castle's masonry workers from having to scrub the stones, caught sight of the dog boy's ears. She reached up and rubbed them to see if they were real.

He poor boy's eyes opened wider and he looked scared.

Kurama opened his mouth to tell her, but Kagome's hands lifted from his ears and started trying to just finger brush his hair.

She gave up very quickly though, seeing as it was pretty much impossible to untangle. She walked around him and looked at his face.

"You poor thing," she whispered, licking the tip of her finger before using it to scrub gently at a missed spot of blood on his cheek. "Kurama," she started in a voice that he recognized as her wheedling voice.

"Yes. That's why I got him, and sighed him out as a 'gift'. I thought Tetsuiga or what ever the heck it is?"

Kagome beamed. "What's your name?" she asked, all smiles like she usually was.

The poor demon looked terrified. His cute puppy dog ears were laid flat and his big golden eyes were wide and submissive. "Inuyasha, m-mistress." He stuttered.

For the first time, since they were about 6, Kurama saw Kagome frown. "how old are you?" she snapped.

"668"

"Ok. I'm 16. Now why the Hell would a strong Hanyou such as yourself be submissive to me, a lowly, little, brittle, human?"

"Because you're my master. Mistress."

Kagome took a deep breath to calm herself. "I'm sincerely hoping that you had some sort of attitude before they caught you." She said, about ready to smack the boy for his submissiveness.

Inuyasha was silently looking down at his toes. Kagome took another couple of deep breaths. She put her hand on the hanyou's arm. "I hope I can help you find your old self." She said twisting her head so that she could see under his matted bangs. She made a puppy face at him that made him jerk his head up in surprise.

"Who are you?" he blurted before he could stop himself.

"Hopefully I'll be your friend." Kagome replied. "Now let's go eat some cake. Now that birthday boy is here."

Sunsett was watching. She was surprised when he gave the black haired girl the slave, but she was even more surprised when Kurama mentioned Tetsuaiga (how is it spelled?). One of her old friends had a sword that had a name like that. She decided that she would investigate it later.

She was sad. She knew that she was home. If she'd been asked she could've told Kurama the number of stones that were in the wall below her, she could've, if offered gone straight to the room that she'd always called hers. She knew every nook and cranny in the fortress. Why? Because that was her home. She remembered sneaking out at night, thinking that Hiei was asleep, to see her beloved fox. She remembered the night that that same boy came running to the gate smelling of smoke and screaming of fire.

Vaguely she wondered if all of the old nooks and crannies were still untouched, she started to think about attempting to sneak in to look, but was interrupted by Raiko.

"You," he said pointing to Hiei, "Walk the perimeter of this wall. If you come across that little bitch that Kurama set free than I want you to kill her."

"Yes master" Hiei said through gritted teeth. He turned, like the little chip in his neck, was telling him to do when Sunsett dropped to the ground in front of him.

'KILL HER!' the chip made him think, 'Leave her alone!' Hiei thought. He'd found a couple hundred years earlier that he could resist the command for a few minutes.

The girl walked over to her friend. And very calmly used one of her sharp claw-like fingernails to slit the skin in the back of Hiei's neck.

She never once looked at her hands. Only at the king. She hooked a fingernail under the chip and yanked. The whole thing came up. Both she and Hiei knew that his nerves would have grown into the wiring of the contraption and that people would sill be able to order him around though they saw no reason to let anybody else in on the secret.

Aka dropped the chip on the ground and stepped on it.

"You little bitch!" Raiko roared, lunging at her.

Aka promptly disappeared into thin air.

Raiko found himself landing, chin-first, on the hard paving stones.

Kurama couldn't help himself, neither could his mother Inuyasha, Kagome, Hiei, the newly arrived Miroku and Yusuke, Akane, Ranma, Sango or the cook who was bringing out a massive red velvet cake. Hiei put a foot on the back of the King's neck.

"You would make a good king for the worms" he snickered, "Seeing as you are one!"

He picked up his foot and walked over to Kurama's side. "I think" he said, "That if I am to truly be a slave that I shall only be such for Aka-dono, Kurama-sama, or his mother."

Ranma and Inu looked at each other, grins spreading over their faces.

"That was wicked" Ranma said. "Is that where the girl learned how to fight?"

Hiei shook his head. He felt that Aka would be safer if they didn't know she was actually the empress of Japan.

"Well" Kurama said. "Now that everybody's here we might as well cut the cake."

The rest of the afternoon went well.

They had opened presents first. Kurama had gotten a new jacket (from Kagome), a little lacy scrap of fabric for his "girlfriend" when he got one, or so Miroku claimed, (mind you he said this with a straight face while "petting" Sango's ass). Ranma and Akane gave him the materials to make himself a combat whip, something he'd wanted for quite awhile. Yusuke, who was late, and looked like he'd run across the kingdom to Get there gave him a green velvet dress (he managed to tell Kurama to unfold the dress, before he sneered to badly.) in the dress Kurama found a piece of paper saying that he was going to be the new owner of a tiger cub, a wolf pup, and strangely a matched pair of foals. "To be delivered to His royal pompous ass at 9:30 the next day". When asked, it turned out that his mother's tiger, Sella, had had babies and that the one Yusuke was giving Kurama was the only white one of the whole bunch, and that the wolf mother and brother were found dead.

Aka was ecstatic. A pair of foals, and matched no less! From what she understood, most of the horses now day's were used for pulling plows. They were never ridden but because they were bred from horses that pulled plows that meant that with enough exercise and training they could be ridden!

"And what exactly am I supposed to do with these babies?" Kurama asked, his crimson eyebrows raised.

"You're going to keep them." Hiei said for Yusuke. "I'll take the wolf pup if you don't want it, leave the horses and the cat to Aka."

"But she's not around." Kurama argued.

Hiei snorted derisively. "Not around?" he scoffed "She's been in the tree the entire time."

"She has?" Ranma asked. "I would have felt her aura."

You have a lock on mine right?" he asked the martial artist, who nodded. "Try and find me!"

He disappeared and reappeared 3 minutes later laughing. "Had a lock on me did you?"

Ranma just shook his head his mouth hanging open.

"Can we have some of that cake?" Kagome asked, looking at the cake whose frosting was starting to melt.

"Yeah let's"

the cake wasn't even a quarter eaten by the time everyone had eaten all they could of it. They packed up or rather the castle's maids came to pick it all up. The entire gang went into Kurama's 'Playroom'. The area was actually more of an arena than anything though the prince had managed to make it a little more fun.

Kurama had left the entire thing in its original form and just built shelves and drawers to put things in. On one of the long sides of the room he'd built a table that he could put stuff on, to be built, tampered with, put back together, or just in general be putzed around with.

"Spar?" Ranma asked Inu-yasha, who looked at Kagome for permission. Kagome just sighed and said "Do as you wish," while she curled up in the comfortable chair beside the floor to ceiling bookshelves that were crammed with books.

Finally a few hours later, after the boys and Sango were sweating to the point where they stank, all but Ranma and Akane decided to leave. Because they lived on the other side of Japan they were going to stay over.

After Kurama said his goodbye's, thank yous and made sure that Ranma and his wife were comfortably settled in, he made a detour through the kitchen to get another monstrous slice of cake. It wasn't for him though. He figured that Sunsett would be hungry by then. All she'd had in a while was Naraku's arm, which couldn't have been very good for her. He carried the plate to his balcony, which was a good thirteen feet above the wall. He set it on the ground so that it wouldn't get knocked off.

"Sunsett," he said to the air, believe it or not, you're welcome here.

he stayed like that for a few more minutes, watching the moonlight shift and shimmer on the surface of the pond in the garden that his room overlooked.

"I hope that you'll be safe," he whispered, more to himself than anything." He sighed, then turned around and walked back into his bedroom.

He may have thought that he was talking to thin air but in reality They heard. They heard that Aka was loose, with no collar, and that there was someone who liked her enough to leave food out for her.

They looked at each other and grinned, light glinting off of sharp teeth.

It was time.

It was time for the games to begin.

A/N- Ok peoples. I have a.c. so I can type in relative comfort.

What I don't have is reviews. I will say this only once. I am putting this story up for your entertainment. I have been nice, I have been lamely funny, I have been subtle, E. T. C.. Now it is time, my friends, for me to do what I do best. Be perfectly and nastily BLUNT.

Believe it or not, I enjoy typing this story up. In what little spare time I have. If I do not get at least ten people telling me something as to their opinion of this story, it's not going to be typed. I have a horse to train, I have a job, I have a horse that some how managed to impale himself, I have school during the summer (college), I have to help my mother do her beading programs, I have another story that I'm trying to type for a friend who has been unable (due to reasons that I'm not going to tell you), get to the computer.

So let me make this perfectly clear. IF YOU ARE NOT KYUUBI-SAMA, SONYA WHITE ANGEL, RED KITSUNE FLAMES, OR WHOEVER ANONAMOUSLY REVIEWED AS RHIANNON (by the way, thanks guys), THEN THIS APPLIES TO YOU:

TEN REVIEWS BY THE TIME I POST THE NEXT CHAPTER (JUNE 20) OR THE STORY IS SLAUGHTERED.

Is that in any way unclear?

BTW- I don't give a donkey's tail if you cuss me out or what. Just give me SOMETHING so that I know what to do with my spare bits of spare time. Ok? Please?

(gasps for air at the end of tirade then scrambles to find royal party for all the grilling I'm going to get after this.)

Also BTW- alter ego's just a random blob that has an interestingtwist to it that I doddled in english class.In other words I don't particularly care what happens to it. as far as i can tell people have stopped reading it.

Black Crystal Rose (06-03-06)