The four of them woke up the next morning to skies that seemed to give such an ominous warning that few demons dared to walk out on that day. There was something that made would make any living creature tremble, and yet the three teens and one fire demon were already out and heading towards the portal to Ningenkai. They had set out later than any of them had truly planned, but Yomi didn't really seem to be willing to have them there any longer so they had no choice.

They arrived at the portal hidden in the same cave that connected them to the other world, and none of them wasted time leaving Makai as its menacing sky loomed over them. Yusuke was the first to emerge on the other side and it was almost immediately he noticed something was wrong. There was a complete silence that could've never been so close to Yusuke's city.

Once Kurama, Hiei, and Kuwabara had also arrived in Ningenkai they also noticed that something was off right away. For a brief moment none of them spoke just to see if there would be some type of noise somewhere, but there wasn't anything.

"Why's it so quiet?" Yusuke started going towards the city, and the others followed.

"I think it's an improvement from all the commotion that's usually going on in this pathetic world." Hiei was the last in the group as he enjoyed the solitude that he had never experienced in the human world before.

"I think it's kind of eerie..." Kuwabara rubbed his arms unconsciously as they waded through more underbrush of the forest.

It didn't take them very long to come to the city and find it completely deserted, even as they walked down one of the streets that is always busy, there wasn't a soul in sight. Hiei began to get a bad feeling as they were getting close to Kuwabara's house, and he knew the big guy was going to start a scene.

"Hey Shizuru! Are you home?" Kuwabara barged into his own home and began looking around for his older sister, and he found her up in her room asleep. "Shizuru, wake up! What the hell is going on with everyone?"

Kurama didn't know for sure, but he just had the feeling it wouldn't be so easy to wake her up. He wasn't thinking of her as a deep sleeper or dead, but the redhead just had a feeling Kuwabara wasn't going to wake her up any time soon by just shaking her.

"Kuwabara, it might be best if you just stop... I don't think she'll be waking up any time soon." Kurama put his hand on his friend's shoulder, but Kuwabara just looked pissed as he turned to face the fox.

"Are you saying she's dead?! Shizuru would never just die on me like that!"

"That's not what he's saying you dumbass, there's obviously something going on with all the humans in this city. Most likely they're under some type of curse or something." Hiei was somewhat surprised himself at the fact that Kurama wasn't freaking out over his mother yet, but then again the redhead wasn't usually that much of an extrovert with his feelings. "We just have to figure out what the hell happened here while we were gone and kill whoever did it."

"Yes, but the hard part is that if everyone is asleep like we're assuming... how are we going to find out what happened?" Kurama began to head downstairs as he contemplated what exactly they could do about this whole disaster. "I think I'll go make my own family comfortable for their sleep and then we can meet later to figure out what to do."

Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Hiei all agreed with Kurama's plan, but the fox wasn't entirely sure he could handle the sight of his family just lying there unconscious knowing that there may be a chance they would never wake up. Yet he also knew that Yusuke and Kuwabara were feeling the exact same way right now, and if this was happening all over the world there was a chance Hiei would soon be feeling it as well if Yukina had fallen into this mysterious slumber.

So the four of them separated, one staying in his home, the other two heading to their homes, and the last one going to search for his sister.

---

Yusuke had immediately gone to check on his mother, and he found her asleep in the middle of the kitchen. So the spirit detective had gently carried his mother to her bed and then headed over to Keiko's home. They were just about as close as family, and he couldn't stand the thought if they were left just lying wherever. He found Keiko's parents in their restaurant, whenever this incident had happened it had apparently occurred in the middle of work hours for the two as they were asleep behind the counter.

The teen figured that Keiko would probably be at the school if her parents had been working at the time, and headed over there quickly. Sure enough he found Keiko in their classroom asleep on her desk. All the other students were in the same condition, but Yusuke honestly couldn't care less about any of them at the moment. They had never exactly treated him that great, so why should he care where they slept?

Yusuke tried to ignore all of the motionless forms, but he knew it would only earn him a scolding in the end by someone if he didn't help the kids. The spirit detective wasn't stupid enough to go dragging people to their houses, but he did try to make them as comfortable as possible in the positions they were in.

He then put Keiko in the piggy-back position on his back and began to carry her home. Yusuke almost felt like this was what would happen at the end of the world. Everyone would fall asleep and never wake up as the planet slowly died, but the only thing he hoped was that he wouldn't be the only person still alive while everybody else slept.

He figured with the way his life was going right then, that's what would probably end up happening anyway.

---

Kurama had started by fixing his family up in their own beds, and then had sat down and turned on the TV to see if the whole world was being affected by this. As it turned out, all he seemed to get were either a bunch of people asleep in a live broadcast or just screens claiming the station was having 'technical difficulties'.

The redhead then attempted to find some station still working on the radio, but all the stations were silent as he went through every single one. As if the situation hadn't been bad enough, it was now obvious the whole world was experiencing this horrible fiasco.

"The question now is what to do..." Kurama pondered as he sat in the creepy silence of his usually lively kitchen. There was something so dismal knowing the fact that not even his mother would be able to greet him or worry over him, and the fact that his little step-brother wouldn't even be around to talk with him or ask for some type of help. "What are we supposed to do if we can't even figure out what the hell has caused all of this?!"

It was no longer possible to keep everything hidden from himself, the feeling of grief was overwhelming him quickly and there was nothing he could really do about it now. After all the time of never showing his loved ones the true pain he lived with every day of his life, and this had been the final thing to cause his own breakdown.

---

Hiei had gone straight to Genkai's temple, and not so much to his surprise did he find Yukina there and asleep. But when he stumbled upon the sleeping form of his sister, Genkai herself had been helping to make the girl more comfortable. The fire demon hadn't been at all astonished at the fact that Genkai hadn't been put into the 'sleep', after all she was the most powerful psychic in the world.

"So you should know what happened since you were here." Hiei wasted no time getting right to the point even though his own sister was on the floor unconscious.

Genkai knew that to show how he was worried about the ice maiden, whether he was outwardly expressing it or not. She moved her odd pink hair from in front of her face and led Hiei toward the walkway outside her small temple.

"To be honest I can't say I know exactly what happened, but I do know that it's a demon you've fought before. His obvious thirst for revenge against the four of you numbskulls has dragged all of the humans in Ningenkai into your problems once again." Genkai knew that there was no point in sugar-coating any of this for Hiei or the other three when the truth was so painfully obvious already. "The fact is that Yukina and everyone else may never wake up Hiei. So what do you all plan to do about it?"

"What else are we going to do? We're going to kill this bastard, and then we'll make sure everything is back to normal." Hiei knew it was unusual for him to say something that was defending humans, but his sister was the only true reason he would help everyone else.

"The only thing I really heard from Koenma is that this demon was one that you and Kurama must've known personally at one time. That's about all the information I was able to receive from his last message."

"That certainly narrows it down," the sarcasm was dripping from his voice, but Genkai didn't do anything to retaliate.

She knew that her small amount of information wouldn't really be that much help to them, since Hiei and Kurama had known quite a few demons personally. The small demon didn't hang around long after that, and Genkai knew that Hiei would go to tell Kurama what useless bit of info he'd heard.

"This is quite a mess you two have gotten humanity into... and for once it's really not that idiot boy's fault."

---

Kuwabara watched over his older sister as if he were the older sibling this time. Even though the guy didn't often show much intelligence (in Hiei's opinion anyway), Kuwabara had quite a bit of common sense that could lead him to take care of Shizuru without anyone's help at all.

He had already double-checked the whole house to make sure there was nothing that would end up burning it down or anything, and that's when he had noticed something strange.

Even though everyone was still asleep, it seemed like the world just felt so much more at peace, and that there was a certain balance restored. Kuwabara knew it was a terrible thing to think, but in a way whatever demon had done this had done Ningenkai a favor.

The only bad thing about what this demon had done was the fact that it had basically destroyed everyone's lives right when they were least expecting it. It was a terrible thing to do to innocent people, and yet if left alone the world might actually be able to restore itself.

But as he watched his sister sleeping, Kuwabara knew he had to save her. No matter what the cost would be, he would make sure that she would live out the rest of her life just like she deserved to.

---

Hey guys! I'm so sorry I missed updating last week! I didn't even realize I hadn't written anything until it was already too late to update for that weekend. (I'm also sorry about updating late this week.) I'll make sure not to skip anymore weeks unless I'm dying or something, so don't worry!

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter. And if you guys didn't really, feel free to give me some criticism (not flames though).

Please R & R!

Shari Maxwell