. . . means, among other things, oblivion.
"Well, after this I should think nothing of falling down stairs."
The moon hung high in the sky, but not full, though Saika thought it should have been.
Every one of Saika's dreams- and nightmares- were marked by a full moon.
So, she had to face reality.
Saika thought that being so close to the taxi driver as he drove her across town would make her feel more sane, and closer to humanity, but it only reminded her how very different she was from every other person in the world.
He dropped her off, so formally, at the towering steps of Genkai's temple. The white light that fell onto the steps created the illusion of walking up to the moon. She knew she would never get there.
The curtain of her parted hair fell over her eyes, as it often did, and she tucked it behind her ear. The reality of it all was suffocating, worse than any bad dream.
Saika walked upward at a relentlessly slow pace, wary of the dark forest around her, that seemed to shake with anticipation. As if something in it were hungry.
Again, awareness hit her: she was being followed.
And it didn't come in the form of a captured thought. She heard his footsteps behind her, hitting the pavement each time she did.
Saika picked up pace; so did he.
The past two years had been the worst by far for Saika.
Ever since her youth, Saika knew that she wasn't quite typical, and some variously dangerous situations had been effected by her- peculiarity. Luckily, her life was just boring enough for her to keep a cap on herself.
But something mysteriously specific happened one day, as she packed up from cram school. She snapped her pencil in her hands, feeling a sort of disturbance-in-the-force.
The next day at school, Yusuke Urameshi was reported dead.
Saika's dreams, which had before been her oasis, became startlingly paralleled to life as it happened.
She dreamt of demons eating children's souls, when those kids began randomly falling comatose. When she dreamt of Keiko talking with Yusuke about his death, Keiko stopped coming to school with swollen eyes.
Then, when Yusuke arrived back at school after his funeral, Saika was positive that something was going on, and she had a clue as to what.
She had been keeping a dream journal. It was vague, scratchy, and torn on many pages, but looking over it in recent weeks, she found that it dimly resembled a story, of demons and spirits, the likes of which surely didn't exist. Surely couldn't exist.
Saika felt like she was losing her mind.
Then, with the sound of rushing wind, another set of footsteps took place behind Saika, though she didn't turn around. She felt like a helpless accountant at an out-of-the-way ATM, being approached by a hooded stranger.
It took all of Saika's strength not to run. At least she knew that much about predators.
Saika wasn't sure when, but she realized that two other pairs of footsteps took place behind her.
The gang was all there.
She could almost envision them behind her, each of their faces set, as she had seen them in her dreams.
Saika decided, fretfully, trembling, that she would ignore them. She could ignore them! They weren't there. She was dreaming again.
To convince herself of her own company, Saika began to hum. The shaking in her voice tripled her fear.
She swallowed back her melody, choked on it, and leapt off of the steps into the forest like a deer. Like a fool.
Immediately, one appeared behind her, though she didn't see him. She felt his hand scathe her back, in an attempted grasp.
Saika grabbed at a tree, forcing it to fall with her glowing hands. In a blur of purple, it came out of the ground and fell back at her pursuers. Dust and branches flew everywhere.
Then came the rush. Saika was running faster than she ever had through the woods, in no general direction.
Like a hasty child, she only wanted a barrier between herself and her stalkers. Anything would do.
Searching frantically, her mind stumbled across a strange, powerful feeling resonating from someplace not too far off.
If she could reach it, she told herself, she would be safe. If she could only get away.
Her scarf caught on a tree branch, catching her throat and gagging her, but with some jerks, she tore it. They were catching up.
No; with a sharp crash of wind, two were in front of her, and two were behind. She was boxed in, and with terrible realization, she found that her purse was gone.
Looking more menacing than he had when he helped her on the sidewalk, the red-haired one held it, and went through it to find nothing of interest.
The four turned their eyes to her journal, which Saika held on to as though holding in her own stomach.
"Leave me alone!" Saika shouted futilely, only to receive narrowing of eyes.
Hiei was the first to move, and he leapt towards her, winding her with a swift kick in the stomach and sending her back hard against a tree.
"Hiei!-" Kurama called, not yet ready to attack the human, but Hiei ignored him and curiously examined the journal he had procured.
Saika tried to shout her protest, but she had never felt such force in her life and took the time to spit up a bit of blood.
Yusuke came up behind Hiei, but Kurama and Kuwabara remained wary of Saika.
"What is this?" Yusuke asked as he took the book up from Hiei's hands. Reading a few lines of the randomly opened page, he shouted, "What the hell?"
Hiei took the book back when Saika let out an enraged shout.
The two trees on either side of Saika fell out of their ground into an X, causing the four boys to leap away to avoid being crushed.
As Hiei jumped back, anticipating the girl's actions, he was surprised to find her leaping at him through the confusion, with an uncharacteristically determined look on her face.
Hiei ducked and pushed off the ground with the journal in hand, then sprang through the trees with Saika in pursuit on forest floor.
Predictably, she fell onto the ground, sliding several feet. She looked up to see Hiei standing in front of her. She looked backwards to see the others standing behind her.
In desperation, Saika let her hands illuminate in purple as Hiei unsheathed his sword. She had never before unrestrained herself that much.
Then, Saika's eyes set upon a spot on the ground. Her pursuers closed in around her, but the heat that rose in her chest.
The sight of that simple spot of grass burnt her, frightened her. Gave her an out.
Hooded and looking petrifyingly grave, Yusuke Urameshi grabbed Saika by her jacket's collar and pulled her off of the ground.
"I think you'd better start talking," he warned. Saika's eyes didn't move, and he noticed her fixation.
The four looked back at that splotch of ground. Kuwabara crept over to it slowly, then set his hand on it, only to fall into the ostensible grass up to his shoulder. He pulled himself up goofily, only to declare it be a "portal".
Again, Saika looked up at the sky. The moon still wasn't full.
"So you're a demon, are you?" Yusuke asked.
The red-haired boy disagreed, claiming that Saika's energy had no essence of demon.
"Well then, what the hell is going on?" Yusuke shouted as he clenched Saika's collar in his fists.
"Don't you know?" Saika asked quietly, also confused. It was as she feared.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he barked in her face.
Concerning Urameshi, Saika had two hypotheses: quite simply, he was a "good guy" or a "bad guy".
Considering that he had cornered her alongside a duo of demons, and held her by the scruff of her coat at Spirit Gun-point, she found the latter highly more believable.
"Give me my journal back!" She commanded unconvincingly with her breathy voice. Her hair fell in front of her eyes, but still she trained her eyes on her journal, in the hands of the small, red-eyed one.
Before any of them could deny her, both Saika's hands and eyes began to glow in an eerie purple. Yusuke let go of her collar, so as not to be burnt. Saika lunged at Hiei.
He jumped back, but as he landed, he fell through that plot of grass. As Saika would soon find out, he fell through more than the ground.
Before she could stop herself, Saika landed badly, with her arms flailing, toppling headfirst through the grass just behind Hiei.
She closed her eyes and expected impact but instead felt the sensation of flying. Her first totally inappropriate thought was, "This is just like a dream."
But instead of falling onto her hardwood bedroom floor, Saika crashed into surprisingly soft grass and opened her eyes to a hazy purple mist.
A subtle terror feeling crept through her blood as she felt the grass below her close softly around her, grasping her as best it could, like a living hand.
Staring down in horror at it, she could have sworn that one blade blinked open a single, staring eye.
A mortal scream rang through the Makai.
Yes? No? Maybe? Don't you know? Must I repeat the question? Ah, Saika has entered Wonderland! Er, the Demon Plane. Same thing, really, as you'll soon find out. . . but that's a story for another chapter.