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Chapter 7

Training Begins

"No one should ever wake up before seven in the morning. Ever. It should be against the law— When I win the tournament, it will be against the law!" Yusuke grumbled groggily as he stumbled over his own feet on the way out of the temple. It was cold, and his body hadn't warmed up his metabolism yet, so he was shivering despite his jacket.

"That should be well within the committee's ability to grant," Kurama replied absently. They walked in silence along that path that lead away from the temple and into the woods. Neither Yusuke nor Kuwabara were morning people. They walked a couple of miles further up into the hills until they came upon a small circular clearing, where Kurama came to a stop.

"This is the place," he said. Kuwabara looked around curiously while Yusuke just yawned. From behind them came a cutting voice.

"The tournament hasn't even started yet and you already look dead."

Kuwabara screamed and whirled around, stumbling over his own feet and falling backward. Beside him Yusuke whirled and just barely managed to avoid doing the exact same thing.

"—Holy shit on a crap sandwich—Hiei! Don't do that!"

Kurama clamped a hand over his mouth and tried not to laugh. Hiei gave the two humans a sardonic look from where he stood a few paces behind them, hands buried in the folds of his cloak.

"And your response to an ambush is even more impressive. Why even bother training will skill like this?" he said sarcastically.

"A real man doesn't take his enemies from behind—!"

Yusuke snorted- cracked up, and did fall over this time as he clutched his sides.

"That's not what I meant—!" Kuwabara shouted, his voice echoing in the mountains and stirring birds from the trees. Hiei winced.

"Quiet or I'll mute you myself."

Kuwabara looked as if he was about to respond to that before Kurama stepped between them.

"Thank you for coming, Hiei. It is good to see you."

Hiei did not return the pleasantries. Kurama turned to address the entire group.

"We will start our training at six o'clock sharp. You have a half hour to run through any stretches and preparations you deem fit."

They each took a corner of the clearing. Kurama ran through a series of taichi while Yusuke and Kuwabara did some form of yoga that looked an awful lot like falling asleep mid stretch. Hiei simply watched.

At six the four were gathered back in a circle and Kurama was speaking again.

"Now then," Kurama said. "We have about a month to train for the tournament. Our training schedule will go like this: We'll break off into pairs of two. Every week we'll rotate who we're paired off with. In the morning we will train one on one with our partner for the week. In the afternoon session we'll train as a group. When we finish that, there will be a couple of hours left for solitary training. Every Friday you'll have an entire day to train alone. Every Saturday we'll have a day to rest. And on Sunday the two pairs will face off against each other in a day-long sparing practice session. That will mark the end of the week and we'll move onto our new partners from there. The first week's pairings will be this: Yusuke, Hiei, you're working together. Kuwabara, you're with me. Everyone understand?"

Yusuke and Kuwabara nodded.

"I agreed to fight with you," Hiei stated flatly. "I never agreed to play sparing mates with the detective."

"Aw, come on Hiei," Yusuke replied before Kurama had a chance to say anything. "I thought you were gonna fight me again to take your revenge. Why wait? We can settle this shit now."

Kurama smiled to himself. That was similiar to the argument he was going to make. Kurama added his own comments on the subject telepathically to Hiei.

/If there is a better way to learn the detective's style and weaknesses than to practice with him while you're still allies, please tell me what it is./ Kurama did not have telepathic capabilities, but Hiei did. All Kurama had to do was unshield that specific thought from his mind and Hiei would pick it up.

"Please focus at least a little on fighting together," Kurama said aloud.

"Yeah!" Kuwabara added. "Otherwise me 'n Kurama're gonna kick your asses!"

Yusuke laughed. "Seriously Kuwabara. No offense Kurama, but that's just not gonna happen."

"Oh yeah?" Kuwabara growled. "You're on Urameshi! You're so on!"

"Ooooo, threatening~," Yusuke replied. "Wanna put your money where your motuh is?"

"You're on!"

"If I win you've got to go to go to let the girls do your make up before we get on the boat!"

"Fine! If I win, then when we get back to school you've gotta take Puu to school and ask everyone to 'pet your special friend'."

"Deal!"

"Well then, that's that," Kurama said. "Shall we… train? At some point today?"

Yusuke turned to Hiei. "Alright! Let's do this!" Hiei rolled his eyes.

"Follow. Or don't. I couldn't care less," he said before he turned and vanished into the trees.

"Hey! Wait up- I don't move at that speed!" Yusuke yelled after him. "Goddamn it Hiei!" And he sprinted off after him.

"Alright! Now that those jokers are gone we can get down to business!" Kuwabara grinned. He stood just before Kurama hands buried in his pockets, stance poised to go. His morning exhaustion seemed to have worn off and his entire body was tense and ready for practice. "What're we gonna start with?"

"Please summon your spirit sword," Kurama instructed. Kuwabara did as he was told, giving the sword a brandish before falling into a fighting stance with it.

"Alright, bring out the targets! Let's get this going!"

"Well done," Kurama interrupted him. "Please summon a second sword."

A grin split Kuwabara's face. He loved this technique. Two swords made him feel like a ninja. Unfortunately he couldn't really summon multiple swords. But he could split his current sword into two smaller swords, so with a grunt he held out his hand and built another sword of blazing yellow-orange light.

"Alright! This is gonna be good!" Kuwabara said with a grin, when he had his two swords fully formed.

"Well done," Kurama complimented him again. "Now make a third please."

Kuwabara stopped mid brandish, and looked at Kurama.

"Uhhhh… I dunno if it's different for demons, but I only got two arms. What am I gonna do with three swords?"

Kurama smiled politely. "Please summon a third sword," he repeated. Kuwabara gave him a weird look, but obeyed. The two swords he already had both shrunk as he pulled energy into the third, which left him awkwardly clutching two swords in one hand.

"Alright, what now?" Kuwabara asked, his earlier enthusiasm now buried behind confusion.

"Summon another," Kurama instructed.

Kuwabara had no idea what Kurama was doing, and he wasn't entirely sure that Kurama hadn't taken too much foxy juice last tournament and gone a bit weird. But Kurama was the guy who'd trained him to survive the last tournament. So he owed him a bit of trust and he summoned another.

"Now?" Kuwabara asked.

"And another," Kurama instructed.

Kuwabara sighed and continued.

"So… we should be practicing together, right?" Yusuke asked as he stood awkwardly behind the silent, black form that he'd finally managed to catch up to. "What do you think Kurama wants us to d—Holy fuck!" Yusuke dropped catching himself with his arms as he narrowly avoided having his throat slit by the flash of black and the gleam of silver as Hiei whirled on him.

"What the fuck was tha—" Yusuke rolled to avoid another strike but a heavy boot caught him squarely on the collarbone. He choked and found the tip of a sword poised directly over his throat.

"Why don't we start with some basic reflexes," Hiei commented as he removed his blade from Yusuke's throat and stepped back to let the detective up.

"These aren't even swords anymore," Kuwabara complained, as he struggled to keep hold of the almost twenty increasingly small swords he was trying to clutch and tuck beneath his arms.

"So they aren't," Kurama agreed. "One more please."

Kuwabara groaned and set his attention to dragging out what was at this point just another measly little dagger.

Midday hit, and the four of them rejoined in the small clearing where they'd met that morning. Yusuke had a few new bruises and grass clinging to his hair and cheek. Kuwabara looked a bit tired, but not too worn. When they were all present Kurama began explaining what their group training would be.

"The main goal of our training is to improve our coordination as a group. Last tournament most of the battles that we fought were one on one. But that is not always the case in the tournament, as you may remember from the second round. At this point each of us has reached a high level of skill as individual fighters. But we have little experience complementing each other."

"Looking good foxie-," Yusuke said. "Hiei, I'm liking the hair, did you get a new gel? And Kuwabara… you haven't been dumb in like, five minutes, nice job. How's that?"

Hiei shot Yusuke a confounded look while Kurama just sighed.

"Wrong definition of complement."

"I know. I'm just fucking with you. So, how're we gonna do? Run through trust games? Because I think that if we try falling into each other's arms someone's gonna squish Hiei."

"And someone's going to end up with a blade through their abdomen," Hiei replied coolly.

"No, no. Nothing like that. I simply want to strengthen the skills that we're missing as a team. Yusuke, you're a very skilled lone fighter. I'd like you to now train as a supporting fighter."

"Great. I'll get my pom poms," Yusuke said without a hint of enthusiasm. Kurama ignored this comment and continued.

"Do you remember your first battle against Toguro in Tarukane's mansion?"

"Yeah."

"In that fight you used your spirit gun to boost Kuwabara's speed and allow him to stab Toguro before Toguro expected him. That's the kind of thing that I want us to experiment with and train."

"Yeah, ok. That sounds goo—Wait! How'd you know about that?"

"Koenma allowed me to watch the battle on replay from his records," Kurama replied.

"Koenma has that on record?" Yusuke asked.

"Koenma has everything on record, you fool," Hiei replied.

"…Everything…?" Yusuke asked looking a bit creeped out.

"Everything," Hiei confirmed.

"Thaaaaat's reeeeaally creepy," said Kuwabara.

"Guess I might as well not bother clearing my browser history then," Yusuke commented.

"To practice this move," Kurama cut in over the conversation and returned it to the topic at hand. "We'll use this." Kurama reached his hand out and the branches of one of the nearby trees leaned down with a soft creek, and curled into a hoop large enough for a human to jump through, but too high for them to reach.

"Kuwabara, I want you to run and jump through this hoop. Yusuke, you will use your spirit gun to give him the boost that will allow him to reach it. Once you've mastered Kuwabara's speed and weight you will try it with me."

Yusuke and Kuwabara were giving Kurama uncertain looks. Kuwabara still remembered the bruising and burns he'd had on his back for the next couple of weeks after that stunt, but Kurama seemed to have taken that into account. Before using his spirit gun on anyone Yusuke ran through a set of drills meant to both tire him so he wouldn't do as much damage, and teach him to lower the power level on his spirit gun to the point where it would hit without burning. Once Kurama concluded that the blast was weak enough they began the training.

It took awhile for Yusuke to successfully get Kuwabara through the hoop. By which time Kuwabara had accumulated a number of bruises and bangs from hitting the ground and being tossed into branches. By the time an hour had passed they still only had fifty percent accuracy at best.

Kurama went next. With Kurama Yusuke's accuracy jumped to 75 percent within thirty minutes of practice. Much of that was thanks to the fact that Kurama's sense of balance allowed Yusuke to have a larger margin of error. He finished the practice winded, but uninjured.

When they finished Kurama looked to Hiei. Hiei gave a twisted scowl.

"You can not honestly expect me to allow Enma's dog to shoot me in the back with my permission," he said coolly.

"I trust you too Hiei," Yusuke panted from where he stood breathing heavily and shaking out his tired arms. The drill involved a lot of running around for him to try and get the right angle to push his teammate through the hoop.

/We both know Yusuke poses no danger,/ Kurama said telepathically, not wanting the rest of the team to hear his response. /Yusuke is many things, but subtle is not one of them. He will not summon the power to hurt you without you noticing. You've only experienced his spirit gun once, and you weren't conscious for long after. This may be your only chance to experience his technique with no risk to yourself./

Yusuke and Kuwabara both watched while Kurama and Hiei seemed to engage in a silent, intense staring contest.

"…What are they doing?" asked Kuwabara.

"…You two having a moment?" Yusuke asked. They didn't reply. Yusuke frowned. "Come on, Hiei. Tomorrow we'll switch and you can stab us through the ass."

"Don't tell him that!" Kuwabara yelled.

Kurama and Hiei's connection snapped and Hiei gave a scoffing laugh and turned to Yusuke.

"If you pull anything stupid or creative, they will find your skull in the ocean, your spine in the demon world, and your rib cage in the spirit world."

"Sounds good," said Yusuke, doing some jumping in place as he amped himself up for another round. And with that the practice recommenced.

Hiei took his stance. Yusuke lined up his shot.

Hiei leapt.

Hiei landed.

Yusuke shot his spirit gun.

Hiei watched the bolt sail over them and turned to look back at Yusuke.

"Are you even trying?"

"Sorry, I forgot about the speed thing."

"Perhaps it would be helpful if Hiei slowed down until Yusuke's a bit more skilled," Kurama suggested.

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence."

"When in the ring would I ever be move that slowly?"

"Just humor me," Kurama said. They relented. It took them a few more tries before Hiei successfully slowed down enough that Yusuke could accurately hit him with his spirit gun.

Try 6

Hiei took his stance. Yusuke lined up his shot.

Hiei leapt.

Yusuke shot.

The bolt hit Hiei and Hiei went flying, up over the hoop, over the trees and vanished into the forest.

Yusuke and Kuwabara blinked after him, and then burst out laughing. Kurama had clamped a hand over his mouth and while his eyes portrayed that he though that Yusuke and Kuwabara laughing was a terrible idea, it was clear he was having difficulty keeping himself from chuckling as well.

It took a second or two at most for Hiei to reappear in the clearing, where he proceeded to nearly set Yusuke and Kuwabara on fire. While Yusuke and Kuwabara choked out comments like "What do you get when you wish on a shooting Hiei?" and singing things like "I believe I can fly."

It took a few tries and a few more choice words on Hiei's part before Yusuke managed to get the amount of energy right for Hiei's weight and hit Hiei anywhere in the vicinity of the hoop. A little while later and Yusuke could successfully get Hiei through about sixty percent of the time.

Soon dusk began to fall and they made their way back to the temple for dinner and rest.