It's been some time! Sorry for the wait! I don't have much to say, except thank you for your support and your comments, they are always the highlight of my day.

I am also writing a one-shot about when Makoto and Fumiko became friends that I hope can see the light of the day before the months is over. I'm still debating whether to post it as an extra chapter in this story or as a standalone, but it will be available here and on my tumblr.

Hermetics: Thank you! I didn't want to leave Atsuko home because she may be a terrible mother, but her heart is in the right place and I don't like how the anime pushed her to the side in favor of Shizuru (I don't like how the anime treated the girls, in general…). Koenma's also a good guy trying to keep the balance between worlds, but he's aware of the faults of the system and wants to fix them. I suppose I wanted Makoto to know that not everybody upstairs was a complete asshat to those who fall between the cracks. And I always appreciate when someone likes Kurama's characterization, because I'll never get tired of saying that he's nightmarish to write.

intrigued: Thanks for reviewing! I like that Makoto has been well received, because I have a lot of fun writing her personality. As for her backstory, I didn't plan on going into detail because I don't think it's all that relevant or interesting, but I may explain it later in the story or write a one-shot if there's interest. As I hinted on the first chapter, the short version is that one day Makoto's mother dropped her daughter on her brother's doorstep and said she didn't want her anymore.


Chapter 9

"I refuse to believe that this is happening," Makoto said dryly.

"How long has that alarm been ringing?"

"Five minutes and fifteen seconds. Sixteen. Seventeen."

"Turn it off!"

Makoto dived towards Atsuko's nightstand and smacked the clock hard enough to loosen a screw or two.

Blessed, blessed relief.

"Let's leave without them," she suggested, because if the experience from the day before was anything to go by, this wasn't going to be easy, and Makoto had the feeling that they had to get to the stadium urgently. She couldn't tell why, but she knew to trust her instincts. It made it difficult to explain to other people when she needed to make a point, though.

And it wasn't like she could have convinced Keiko, anyway. The girl was already thoroughly invested in serving justice. "Oh, no," she said, rolling up the sleeves of her sweater and closing in on the other girls. Makoto was reminded of those African wildlife documentaries where a pack of lions hunts a bunch of pasturing gazelles, with the slight difference that there was just one lioness and the gazelles were sleeping with their bellies facing up. "I'm going to take matters into my own hands. And you are going to help me."

"Leave them alone, Keiko," she tried, knowing it wouldn't work anyway. "We are running late."

"Then they should have known better than to get drunk last night!"

It was becoming steadily clear to Makoto why Keiko had become a student representative. Her willingness to take responsibility for others' bad decisions wasn't something she could get on board with, but she thought it was admirable quality nonetheless. Even if it was one Makoto wasn't keen on sharing.

Keiko pointed at Botan's bed. "Makoto, hold that side of the sheet!"

"Yes, ma'am," she replied mechanically, walking to that side of the bed.

Keiko halted her rampage for a moment, and said hesitantly, "Sorry. Am I sounding that harsh?"

"Not really. I just think we are wasting our time."

She recovered her determination in the blink of an eye. "And what about my time?"

"Your time?" Makoto asked, confused.

"When yesterday you fled like a coward," Keiko shot at her, "and left me with these hyenas, they didn't stop making fun of me and Yuusuke for hours."

Makoto made a blank face at the accusation. "While I cannot imagine how my presence could have possibly stopped them, I could toss them out of the bedroom if it would make it up to you."

Keiko blinked a few times. "You mean like picking them up and dropping them outside? You can do that?"

Makoto nodded, and Keiko seemed to consider it. An internal battle raged behind those big brown eyes, and Makoto hoped she'd take up the offer to expedite things.

"Last resort," she decided. "I don't want to injure them."

That was a good point for an empathetic human being, but Makoto wasn't fully either. "Are you sure?"

"Don't tempt me," she said, stressing every syllable. "On the count of three you pull up the sheet under Botan, okay?"

"Just to be clear, you do not want her to hit the ceiling, correct?"

Keiko stared very seriously at Makoto. "Pull softly."

Makoto had to hold back the beginning of a smile. "Yes, ma'am."

When Keiko counted to three, Botan woke up, and every other remaining guest in the hotel did, too, with the unholy scream she let out.

Makoto was sulking, plain and simple. If her regular stares were unnerving for the unaccustomed recipient, one quick glance at her face could have now killed a faint of heart stranger. Evidently, none of her companions fit those conditions.

"Aaah, I'm getting old… To think I just had a couple of glasses…"

"You had at least six, Atsuko!"

Keiko's reproaches weren't helping the hungover part of their entourage, but they made Makoto feel better without her having to put any extra effort towards it.

Never again. She promised herself that this had been the last time she waited for them.

"What's with the sour face?" Shizuru asked, bringing a bottle to her lips that Makoto felt the urge to slap from her hand. The glare she sent her didn't faze Shizuru at all.

They had missed the team's fights. They had missed them for sure, but she hadn't felt Kurama's presence returning to the hotel while they were still wasting time, and she was going to snap if something bad had happened to him while she wasn't looking.

The closer they got to the stadium, the more she felt that something was about to happen. She kept an eye out for anything strange—

"Look, Kuwabara's fighting!" Keiko exclaimed, pointing at the giant screen that had been installed for the people outside the stadium.

—not that, she wanted to watch the fight, but there was something more important, getting closer with each step.

One…

There was a nostalgic, cold feeling in the air.

"That person…" Botan muttered next to her.

Two…

Makoto moved through the crowd, trying to find the source, and then Botan yelled in surprise she saw what she had been looking for.

Three.

"Botan?" A short girl in a blue kimono with turquoise hair turned to look at her. "I wasn't sure it was you."

Longing, surprise, nostalgia, all those feelings hit Makoto at once. It was the girl she had seen upon meeting Hiei, and she had to shake some nervousness away because for some reason it felt wrong to have met her before he did.

Botan introduced her as Yukina and explained that she had come to the Human World in search of her brother.

Those red eyes were familiar.

Then Makoto noticed that Botan was sweating bullets and decided to leave the questions for another time. The priority now was to get inside the stadium and find a way to sneak Yukina in with them. She looked at the mob of ticketless demons and the security guard, wondering if he could be distracted long enough for Yukina to scurry inside unnoticed, but it seemed that Makoto was the only one considering the operation from a tactical standpoint, because the other girls were already making their way to the main entrance, tickets in hand.

The guard, who seemed to be the type to get a kick out of bullying easy targets, stopped them with some cheap excuse about humans not being allowed in. He also seemed the type to have extremely poor judgment choosing his victims.

The next thing Makoto knew, before she could step in front of the girls when she smelled the trouble, was that the three human members of the team had literally smacked the man senseless and they were grabbing her and Yukina by the arm to run into the stadium. The cheers and thanks of the demons who had been also trying to get in followed them for some of the way.

Only a few weeks ago, Makoto thought her life had spiraled out of control the day she had to sneak out of school to go to the Minaminos. Deciding that the best course of action was to turn off her brain for a while and go with the flow, she let herself be pulled alongside them. As she had told Keiko, she sure wouldn't be able to stop them.

The group rushed towards the stands, but instead of wasting time finding their seats, they stood up on the lower level, just behind the barrier. They weren't supposed to be there, but Makoto pitied any security guard who tried to pry them away from the spot they had claimed.

On the ring, Kuwabara was getting beaten within an inch of his life, and a quick look at the electronic display told Makoto that Yuusuke and Kurama had lost two matches, so the current one must have been the decisive one, and it wasn't looking promising. Hiei and Genkai were inside what looked like a first-aid tent, and she couldn't see Kurama anywhere. Besides, they had gotten to the stadium very late. There was no way that the round had run so long that they were still on the same one, so what was going on?

She ended up locating Kurama after a second scan of the area, and she almost wished she hadn't. He was sitting against the stone ring, hidden from plain view, his clothes were torn and painted, and he was severely injured. A plant grew from a slash on the inside of his left forearm, looking sharp and rigid. She glanced back at the display. Three opponents in a row. This was either the cumulative work of all of them or the doing of the last one, and she hoped it was the latter, because it was a wonder that he was conscious after sustaining so much damage. It made more sense than to have kept fighting in that state.

His energy was more subdued that usual, weaker, like it had been drained to the last drop. No, not exactly drained. It was there, but so self-contained, so tightly packed, as if forced to stay in a vessel it didn't fit—that was it.

She realized then why she hadn't seen him right away, and she blamed the slowness on the uptake on the surprise of seeing so much blood on someone who, at least until that moment, had been neatly classified as untouchable in Makoto's mind.

His youki was sealed. That was why she couldn't sense it without paying an extreme amount of attention. It seemed to want to escape its confinement through the plant and the blood, but it was bound there, unable to slip farther away.

On one hand, it was disquieting that there were people in the tournament who could do that. On the other, it was oddly reassuring. Kurama had only ended up like that because he could not access his power. It wouldn't have happened otherwise. She wanted to believe so, at any rate.

She was so deep in the thoughts she had told herself to ignore just a few minutes ago that she didn't notice the developments of the current fight until she heard a rough landing and Kuwabara appeared next to their group, on the other side of the barrier, to talk to Yukina, fresh as a daisy, as if hadn't been receiving the beating of his life until then. Abandoning them with the promise of a swift return, he climbed onto the ring before the referee's count reached ten. His opponent was out, and Kuwabara had single-handedly, in a literal sense, as Makoto would be told later, salvaged the round in his efforts to look good in front of a girl.

"You are the worst," Makoto said bitterly, wrapping a bandage around Kurama's right arm while he was busy wilting the plant protruding from his left.

The hotel room of the Urameshi team was empty save for the two of them. Yuusuke was occupying the bathroom, Kuwabara had gone off with Yukina as soon as he'd had the chance, and the other two had left the hotel as soon as they were clean. Keiko had tried to give Yuusuke an earful, but he had run like the wind towards the safety of a locked door, and the others had tried to distract her by dragging her to buy drinks for the reunion party they were planning for the night. Makoto had refused to go. They overwhelmed her, she was positive that Keiko could handle them and by now she was also reassured that they wouldn't run into trouble with any of the visiting demons – if anything, it's the demons who would get in trouble with them.

"You aren't pulling any punches this week," Kurama joked.

"You grew Shimaneki grass inside of your arm! Are you nuts? Did you really have no better option than a life-sucking demon plant?"

Kurama appeared to be amused rather than put off by her reaction. "It isn't life-sucking, strictly speaking. It absorbs the nutrients it requires from the bloodstream of the host, instead of using water and soil."

"A blood-sucking plant."

"It also takes root in muscle tissue to reinforce its stability," he kept explaining. "It makes a good weapon. Solid and resistant."

"You are not even trying to make it sound acceptable."

"It was a spur of the moment thing. And it worked."

It had, and Makoto couldn't say much against that. "Someday you should find a way to get through a single fight uninjured."

"I'm not that bad."

Makoto stared at him fixedly and very unimpressed. "Really? The two rounds you have been in suggest otherwise. And whatever trouble you got into right after saving your mother. And whatever you did at the Four Saint Beasts' castle. I will be courteous and not mention the hospital incident."

Kurama blinked curiously at her. "How do you know I got injured those two other times?"

"Because you smelled like blood for days when you came back. You may be able to hide it from humans, but not somebody with a decent nose."

He hummed, interested at the revelation. "I thought you didn't notice."

"I thought it was none of my business."

"And now it is?"

Makoto looked at him blandly and went back to the bandage without a word.

"I shall console myself with the fact that you aren't angry with me now," he said when it became clear that she wasn't going to dignify his question with an answer.

Makoto sighed tiredly. "Why do you think that?" She asked, sounding more resigned than argumentative, though she was a bit irked.

"Because you speak less formally when you are."

Her eyes widened a fraction and she paused what she was doing to look at his face. "I do not."

"You do. You don't usually speak with contractions, but you kept using them when you were chewing me out yesterday. It was quite amusing."

Her mouth opened the slightest bit in surprise, which, had she been another person, it wouldn't have deserved a thought, but if the small quirk at the corner of Kurama's mouth was anything to go by, in Makoto's case it was worth a laugh.

She recovered quickly when she saw his reaction, and said, "I don't know why I'm helping you," in a monotone, disgusted voice.

Kurama smiled more widely and seemed to be about to say something when the bathroom door opened and Yuusuke came out, stretching and looking refreshed, and went straight to them.

"Kurama, how are you doing?"

"Better," he replied, twisting his arm enough to let Yuusuke watch the receding plant. "It's almost gone."

Yuusuke grimaced anyway. "You've been at it what, an hour? Couldn't you have used something easier to get rid of?"

"I find it concerning that we are on the same train of thought," Makoto felt compelled to say.

Kurama chuckled softly, and Yuusuke's reaction was an ear to ear grin, like he was proud that his incisiveness had dragged her momentarily to his level.

She decided to change the subject before they tried tag-teaming her. "Did you speak to Yukina yet?"

"Yeah, Kuwabara and I caught up with her after the round. I wanted to talk to you guys about it." He sounded strangely unsure, like he was afraid of saying something he shouldn't. Yuusuke wasn't the type to care about those things, so it had to be important. "She told you too that she was looking for her brother?"

"Yes, she said something about it." Makoto thought that Yuusuke could be the safest person to question about Yukina. He knew her from before, Botan's face had turned green when Yukina had mentioned her brother for the first time, and Hiei would presumably be uncooperative if she tried to get information from him. "Yuusuke, do you know if she's related to Hiei?"

That got Kurama's full attention fast.

Yuusuke grinned again, and his whole demeanor relaxed. "You can tell? That saves me a problem. I think Hiei wants to keep it a secret from her, so we aren't supposed to tell anyone. I mean, even Kuwabara doesn't know because his dumbass left the room before hearing all the info from Koenma when he sent us to rescue her. Can you imagine his face if he finds out that Hiei's her brother?" And he laughed.

Whereas other people would have exclaimed, 'it knew it!" Makoto was content to release a placid smile of satisfaction.

"Hiei is Yukina's brother?" Kurama repeated, looking quite astonished.

Yuusuke's laughter froze and his voice became panicked and hushed, "What? What do you mean? Why are you asking? Don't tell me you didn't know, don't you two go way back?"

"We haven't known each other that long, and Hiei is a very private person. He never talks about his family, and I had no reason to pry."

"Oh man," Yuusuke said, smacking his own face with both hands, "I messed up bad. Don't tell anybody else, okay?" He said to them in a hurry. "Especially Kuwabara. This is classified information and the last thing I need this week is an angry Hiei coming after me."

"Don't worry about it," Kurama reassured him. "We are good at not talking."

"Some better than others," Makoto quipped.

"Good thing it's just the two of you," Yuusuke said, not noticing the offended glance Kurama sent in Makoto's direction, and grumbled as he walked away. "If I'd said it in front of my mother the entire island would know it by tomorrow. Anyway, I'm gonna take a walk. See you later."

When he was out of hearing, Makoto asked Kurama, "Hiei never mentioned he had a sister?"

"No, but he was searching for a koorime when we met. It didn't occur to me they could be family, for obvious reasons."

"It doesn't happen usually, I take it? Siblings having such different powers?" Makoto didn't personally know enough people to tell, but she was under the impression that these things ran in families.

"Not only that," Kurama confirmed. "Koorime are notoriously reclusive and never leave their home country. And they are all women."

That didn't make sense. "Surely they have male children as well?"

"The rumor is that they reproduce by parthenogenesis. They can't."

Makoto had never heard of a humanoid species that worked like that, but she wouldn't put it past the workings of the Demon World. As far as she was concerned, everything was possible there. "So the daughters are genetic copies of their mothers?"

Kurama gave a light shrug. "I can't say for certain, but it would stand to reason."

"That is…" Makoto was curious about what mechanism could make male offspring come out of that system, but she wasn't by any means an expert in demon reproduction, so couldn't make head or tails of Hiei's existence, which was the only sure thing about this conundrum. "Hm. Interesting."

"Indeed."

There was a pensive silence as Makoto finished tying the bandage and Kurama got rid of what was left of the plant. After it had completely retreated into the wound, Makoto winced as she watched him dig out the remains with his fingers, and wondered how many heavy injuries he had sustained through his life to be able to do that without flinching. She became acutely self-conscious that the person before him was centuries old, and yet he was there making conversation with a fifteen year old. It must have felt so bland and boring from his point of view.

At last, he took out something, and Makoto saw between his bloodied fingers a seed, the size of a cherry pit, and just as inoffensive-looking. When the week was over, she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able not to regard every single plant with suspicion.

"I found out something the other day, right before I left," Kurama said, looking exhausted after the strain of removing the parasitic plant was over, but also more at ease. He began to disinfect the wound, and it didn't seem like Makoto's help was needed any longer. "Mom told me she's going to marry again."

The news immediately lifted Makoto's spirits. She wouldn't have bet on getting such a nice surprise those days, and it was the first time in days that she was able to have a conversation that didn't revolve around tournaments or the supernatural. Even she missed being normal, sometimes. "Congratulations!" She said in an uncharacteristic expression of joy. "Is it with Mr. Hatanaka? When will it be?"

"This autumn," Kurama replied, smiling quietly at her enthusiasm. "They have already begun organizing it. I think they wanted to have it completely settled by the time they told anyone else."

"I hope everything goes well for her," Makoto said truthfully. "She deserves it."

Kurama's peaceful smile lingered enough for him to say, "I hope so, too," but it faded soon to be replaced by something darker. "I kept thinking on the way here that I wouldn't be able to go to her wedding."

Makoto's face fell, and she felt like a hypocrite as she said, "You cannot know that," because she had been anticipating him not to come back home since she had known he was to participate in the tournament.

Kurama raised his eyebrows in surprise, probably because he was expecting a les dissenting reply. "You are acting remarkably less fatalistic than in the last few weeks. Did something happen?"

Makoto remembered what she had seen when Keiko had touched her, and the memory felt like a bucket of cold water. She couldn't say she had any solid reasons to believe Kurama would fare any better. "Is that what I seem to you? Fatalistic for the sake of it?"

If Kurama took notice of her avoidance of the question, he was too polite to say it. "It wasn't meant as a reproach."

"I did not take it as such."

Since she didn't say anything else, he continued, but he said something she didn't expect. "I never told you what happened that night at the hospital."

"I never asked."

"And I appreciate it." He smiled briefly. "Yuusuke told me something when we were on the rooftop. He said that there was nothing worse than to watch your own mother cry over her dead son," he paused, going over his next words. "It got me thinking."

Yuusuke was so reckless and happy-go-lucky that Makoto often forgot that he had been dead, even if it was the whole reason that he had been plunged into this mess. What hadn't clicked until that moment was that Atsuko had gone through the death of a son, and all of a sudden Makoto saw her in a new light. She thought of Miss Minamino going through the same, and she wasn't sure that she'd have come out of that ordeal retaining so much strength. Atsuko certainly felt like a force of nature. Like mother, like son.

Perhaps in more than her case, Makoto thought as she looked at Kurama.

"Your mother wants you alive and happy. At all costs," she said. "Just as you do for her. It's what mothers do."

He sighed. "Then I guess I need to get out of this island alive, don't I?"

"You will," she said with a certainty the root of which she couldn't determine.

Kurama looked up at her with interest. "Is that a prediction?"

"Who cares about predictions?" She said with a tinge of annoyance, and Kurama's just stared at her outburst. "If your mother needs you to be happy, you will leave this tournament in one piece and go back to her. And even if I had seen you dead with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it. It would not be the first, nor the second time you openly cheated death." And then she added, a bit more quietly. "I have not, for the record."

For once, she seemed to have run out of witty remarks to make. "No pressure," he said.

"I have faith in you. Everybody who knows you does. It is about time you did it, too."

Makoto was aware that she was being thoroughly analyzed at the moment.

"You have changed," he observed. "In a very short time."

Makoto didn't take that remark as either good or bad, so she didn't say anything. Besides, she didn't know what she could give away, if she did.

"Will you come to the wedding?" He asked then.

The non-sequitur acted like a blow to her steely determination, and suddenly she felt a little dumb for getting so intense. "What?"

"Mom asked me to invite you," then he admitted, "As things stood, I didn't think I would be able to."

"I believe you meant to say 'as I stood you up.'"

"I know what I said, thank you."

Makoto looked at him skeptically, but her words went against her expression as she answered the earlier request. "I would like that. On the condition that you are there."

Kurama's smile widened, and through her mind passed the fleeting thought of how many girls would envy her for having him look at her that way.

Over a thousand years. But for a moment, she didn't feel so inadequate.

"It's settled, then," he said.

Since the dirty play of the organization had made the team fight two rounds in a row, they didn't have to compete the following day and use that time to rest and prepare.

That didn't mean that Makoto wanted to miss an entire day's worth of combats, but predictably, her priorities didn't align with the rest of the girls. On the flipside, she knew Kurama would want to go watch, so he unwittingly provided a great excuse to not make it look like she was going alone.

She planned to do that the next morning, in the off chance that the others woke up soon enough to see her leave. They wouldn't, but she didn't want to be pegged as a repeat offender if it would jeopardize her chances of being able to sneak away in the future.

When the time came, though, she ended up going to the stadium alone, because she lingered for longer than she should have during breakfast, and assumed that Kurama would be gone by that point. Taking that walk alone didn't bother her. But on the way out, as if her lucky stars had aligned to give her a foolproof excuse, she ran into somebody else.

"Master Genkai," Makoto said.

They hadn't had a chance to talk the day before. It was apparent that she was trying to hide her identity, and according to the team there was a young woman hiding under the mask, though they all had expected her to be Genkai.

Makoto could understand Hiei and Kurama buying it, since they weren't acquainted with Master Genkai from before, and wouldn't have more than a passing knowledge of the Spirit Wave. She could justify Kuwabara not being able to tell it was her, since they had only met once, even though Genkai's energy was so crisp and clean that Makoto could tell her apart in a crowd with her eyes closed. The young appearance would have thrown most people off, though.

However, Yuusuke not being able to recognize her immediately, and even worse, not knowing about the rejuvenation properties of the techniques he was the rightful owner of was plain, facepalmingly stupid. What had he been doing for the past two months?

She wasn't questioning Genkai's judgement, but her faith in Yuusuke's work ethic was a lot more wobbly.

"Makoto," Genkai acknowledge her, and waited for Makoto until she fell into pace next to her. "I was surprised to see you here. You usually prefer to stay out of trouble."

She wondered if that was also a subtle dig at her for letting her physical condition slip, but then again, Master Genkai didn't have a problem saying things to someone's face, no matter how rude she may sound. She said she was too old to care. Makoto not so secretly thought that she was as awesome as she was tiny.

"I may have had a few bad influences in my life lately."

"Is that so?" Genkai replied with humor. "Maybe it's done you good. You look more spirited than the last time I saw you."

"Do I?" She pondered, and remembered what Kurama had told her the afternoon before. "I suppose. Many things have happened since then."

"It's not so bad to step out of your comfort zone sometimes. You, in particular, should keep that in mind."

That made Makoto feel a little guilty about leaving the girls in the hotel room. She wasn't making much of an effort to get along with them, though they had been nothing but welcoming to her.

"That is true," she agreed. "Though I do not think the current situation was the best way to put that advice into practice."

"I think we can all agree on that."

Once at the stadium's gate, the security guard let Makoto pass as soon as he saw who she was with. He didn't even ask for the ticket. She supposed Master Genkai had put out an impressive show during the round she had missed. Just her luck, she thought crankily.

"Did you receive an invitation, or did you come to help Yuusuke?" Makoto asked, trying not to think of that wasted opportunity..

"A little bit of both and a little bit of neither."

Makoto hadn't seen that second part of her answer coming, but she didn't press the issue. She would have said more if she wanted to.

The stairs that went to the topmost level of the stadium were long and grim as they took them.

One—

Master Genkai was three steps above her, climbing with an ease that Makoto could only hope to match when she got to her age.

Two—

Even with Nana gone, Master Genkai was a strong, comforting presence that Makoto knew she could count on. She'd always been there, and it felt like it always would.

Three.

Genkai was cradled in somebody's arms, eyelids closed, body limp, blood spilling from her chest. Gone.

Makoto lost her balance when she came back to the present and had to make a grab for the railing to keep from falling.

Genkai noticed right away and stopped on her tracks. "Is something wrong?"

Makoto didn't like to lie, and it was no use doing it to the old master.

"I think I will get a drink from the vending machine we passed below. Do you want anything?"

Genkai didn't insist on her question, something that Makoto was eternally grateful for. She supposed her face must have been an answer in itself, because all its color had drained as she did her best to keep her composure from cracking.

"No, thank you. I'll wait upstairs."

Makoto nodded and turned around as fast as she could without looking desperate, wanting to disappear behind the nearest corner until her heart settled down.

When her companion was gone, she sat at the bottom of the stairs and burrowed her head between her arms, not caring at all about the passing demons who saw her in that state.

It was the first time in her life that Makoto resented her power.