See end of chapter for notes.


Legerity (origin Latin): (n.) a surprising quickness of mind or body.


Chapter Nine: Discovery


In Which a Dragon Learns a Secret and Our Traveler Learns a Skill


Kuronue was losing the staring contest because paper couldn't stare. Even magical paper from Reikai. He blinked and buried his face in his hands with a groan, slumping down in the desk chair. For what felt like the millionth time, Kuronue rehashed the same arguments. Serious invasion of privacy. Potentially learning helpful information. Betrayal of trust on his part-potential of betrayal of trust on Kurama's part.

Why did Koenma seem so set on making his life difficult?

He probably already knew most of what was in the thing. Hell, he'd been there for a lot of it, and what he hadn't been there for, Kurama had told him about. Hadn't he? Kuronue knew Kurama best, he always had. He did. Though he'd always wondered…

No, nope, no. Not doing it. If there were things Kurama didn't want him to know about, that was fine and it was his right and it was fine. Kuronue picked up the file and dumped it into the desk drawer, slamming it shut. He needed sleep. Koenma had dropped by to give him a new stalking subject (and bring up the file, the bastard), and he'd need rest if he was going to be tracking down a thief. Didn't humans have some sort of saying about that? They had some sort of saying about everything else… Set a thief to catch a thief, early bird gets the worm, can't see the forest for the trees…

Kuronue threw himself backwards onto his bed, landing with a huff, and tried to convince himself that it didn't matter that he had a guaranteed accurate summary of his best friend's life in his desk drawer, because Kurama had never lied to him.


Few things disgusted Hiei more than humans. He'd have never set foot in Ningenkai if he hadn't been chasing rumors of koorime. Two years of searching and nothing to show for it but a so-called job and the stench of ningen soaked into his very skin. Even if Hiei did return to Makai, he was no longer certain he'd ever feel clean again. To add to his indignity, he was now confined to the boundaries of this paltry human settlement they called a city. That damned koumori—not even access to Reikai's records was worth this.

And to be babysitting again while the koumori ran off to investigate some rumor for the princeling, on top of it all… Hells. At least he was able to preserve his dignity. The koumori had to trail after their target like some guard dog, but Hiei could keep an eye on him without moving from his perch at the top of the skyscraper. Even fifty stories of concrete and steel couldn't quite get him far enough away from the noise of the crowd and the reek of pollution. Hiei stood with his hands tucked behind his back, swaying with the wind and resigned to an extremely boring day as he watched the buffoon and his student struggle. Unfortunately, the jagan granted only far-sight, not far-hearing, but he had learned to read lips precisely for this reason.

At the moment the student was sprawled on his back, panting with exertion. Fools. They could only throw themselves at a brick wall for so long before admitting defeat—the ningen simply did not possess enough reiki to push outside his body in any meaningful way. They'd be better served by using what negligible power he possessed to enhance his physical strikes… But Hiei wasn't about to offer them advice.

"Kuwabara-kun, I've been thinking…"

Hiei snorted. He'd never had a conversation with the student, but even he could say the ningen didn't seem to do much else.

"Is it possible for reiki to be extended through objects?"

The buffoon's face scrunched up into a painful expression that meant he was trying to think. "Well… maybe," he said finally. "I mean, I used this bit of spiritually treated sword the first time I made my spirit sword, so I don't see why not."

"So, in theory, an object or weapon could be charged and manipulated with reiki?"

Hiei sighed. The buffoon had clearly never had any formal training. The strength of reiki lay in its adaptability, and thus its unpredictability. Youki was comparatively limited, only granting youkai a single manifestation or a single manipulation.

True, many of the more powerful or older demons, such as himself or the koumori, wielded both aspects of youki. His own sword and flames were a manifestation and manipulation respectively, in the same way the koumori summoned those strange scythes or controlled the wind. Of course, age and power were no guarantee of wielding both aspects: dangerous as the youko had been, he'd never displayed a manifestation. Plant manipulation and a particularly morbid creativity had made him deadly enough.

Reiki, though, could be trained in many, many different ways. The energy of a single person might be put into healing spells, defensive shields, or weapons. With training, experience, and will, anyway. That said, reiki could only adapt when in the form of pure energy. The buffoon may have used a stick as a guide for his sword, but the stick wasn't the weapon. Unless they managed to find a similar focus for his student—which was unlikely—they were pursuing the wrong route.

"Sure, I guess?"

The redheaded student sat up, a glimmer of determination in his eye. "Then… I think I have an idea…"

Hiei scoffed, and shook his head. This wouldn't work, but it might be a bit entertaining to watch him fail. Stubborn fools, the both of them.

The student rolled onto his hands and knees, sinking his hands deep into the grass of the Kuwabaras' back lawn. He took a deep breath, dragging his reiki to the surface until he glimmered slightly in the image given to him by the jagan—nothing in comparison to the detective's blaze, or even the buffoon's steadily glowing campfire, but the glimmer of dying coals.

Another deep breath, and the image… shifted. The student had pulled something from deep within himself, until the glimmer leapt higher like gasoline on a camp stove. The blaze flowed from the heart down the arms and hands, and out, until each individual leaf of grass for a foot around him was touched with that inner fire. A beat as the student breathed, and then the grass nearest him began to grow—lengthening and twisting and, in the Jagan's sight, blazing with ki.

And then it stopped.

Hiei sat down, blinking and losing the vision. It took a few seconds for him to find it again, but in the interim the buffoon had managed to cut himself on one of the altered grass blades, now as sharp as a razor.

"What the heck, Shuuichi! How'd you do that?"

The redhead looked gray, but very pleased with himself. "Manifesting my reiki as pure energy wasn't working—it needed a medium. I actually got the idea yesterday in the garden… Many plants have a natural defense system of some sort, the most famous being roses and their thorns. Some species of grass possess a very sharp edge, and they are called grass blades after all."

"So flowers and puns gave you the idea?" the buffoon asked, picking one of the grass blades by its stem very carefully. It promptly shrunk back to it's natural size. "Hey, what happened?"

Shuuichi reached out and had no such problem, turning the grass blade this way and that. It wasn't nearly long enough to use as a sword, perhaps only half a foot in length, but it would make a very effective dagger. "Perhaps because it is my reiki which created it, you are unable to wield it. Could another wield your spirit sword?"

"Good point, I guess. But Shuuichi, you look really, really tired. Maybe we should call it a day?"

Hiei blinked away again as the buffoon attempted to coax his student into setting aside his new ability for later study. For a moment, he sat there in silence and pondered what he had just seen. Suddenly, he laughed.

"Well, this shall be interesting…"

He'd already had a few pieces to an interesting puzzle, and he may have just found a few more, though he couldn't imagine how… It would take some time to see if his suspicions had any true basis, or were even possible. Even if he was wrong, working with Reikai was about to get much more entertaining.

The feeling was unmistakable. The buffoon wouldn't recognize it, but Minamino Shuuichi had just used youki.


Glossary

Ningenkai: Human World, Human Realm, Human Plane. The "real" world, the one we live in.

koorime: "ice maiden;" influenced by tales of yuki-onna, koorime are an exclusive, all female race of youkai which live on a floating mountain in Makai. They reproduce asexually and are forbidden from lying with males of any kind.

ningen: human. Used in this fic only in contrast with youkai.

Makai: Demon World, Demon Realm, Demon Plane. An alternate dimension that runs parallel to our own, inhabited exclusively by a sentient species called youkai.

koumori: literally 'bat.' In this fic refers to specifically bat-affiliated youkai, so Kuronue/Kuroji.

Reikai: Spirit World, Spirit Realm, Spirit Plane. Another alternate dimension, this one where Koenma and Botan live and work. A sort of realm of the gods or heaven, Reikai judges and sentences the souls of both ningen and youkai, and keep the peace between the three realms.

jagan: "evil eye;" the third eye Hiei had implanted in his forehead, which grants him (among other abilities), far-sight and enhanced sensitivity to ki.

reiki: "spirit energy;" paranormal energy used by humans for attack, defense, healing, etc. Yusuke's Spirit Gun, Kuwabara's Spirit Sword, and Botan's healing abilities are all variations of reiki manipulation.

youki: "demon energy;" closely related to reiki, but instead used by youkai. Thus has a different set of limitations and benefits.

youko: "spirit fox"

ki: "energy;" can also refer to someone's aura, spirit, or life energy.


A note on this chapter:

A little bit shorter than has been standard, I'm afraid. Apologies. Again, I'm hoping Hiei is in character and that you've enjoyed this little snapshot into his head. I think I write Hiei better from Hiei's perspective than I do from other people's... And it looks like he's figured a few things out, too. Heh, Kuronue just has no luck whatsoever.

Here's at least a little bit of my reiki vs. youki lore... If there's still any confusion, or it wasn't explained clearly enough, please either message me or review this fic, and I'll put in a more detailed explanation in next week's author note. Shuuichi-specific questions will probably be explained later, but anything about the differences in energy in general I'm more than willing to talk about. I don't think this is actually canon, by the way! There's probably a few youkai in canon that don't follow this rule (Rando and his ninety-nine techniques comes to mind), but as it's kind of a non-specific explanation anyway, you could probably debate semantics and stretch the theory and figure out a way to get it to work. For instance, Rando and The Beautiful Suzuki both manipulate their energy directly, in Rando's case this could allowed him to learn reiki techniques. If Suzuki manipulated his energy signature rather than his energy, it would allow him to both change his energy signature and bring out the potential of others via the tools and weapons he constructs, as demonstrated in the series.

Also, no, Hiei's sword is not an actual, real sword. He breaks it too many times for me to think it's a physical object. If I say it's a manifestation of his youki, though, in the same way the Kuronue's kusarigama are, then that solves the problem of how many times it breaks and where the hell it goes after he's not using it. Ditto with Kuronue and his scythes. Plot hole filling is fun!

Final note. I should probably have made this clearer from the beginning, but this fic doesn't take place in the same timeline as the original series. Most obviously you can see this in the technology, especially the games in the last chapter. I tend to be a bit... compulsive... when it comes to research, with very much an all-or-nothing mentality. It's why I'll never manage to write actual historical fiction, and why all my original fic is set in an alternate world "influenced" by a particular time period. If I was going to actually set it in the nineties, I would have made myself go research fashion, technology, popular culture, politics, etc... I was born in 1991. That wouldn't help me at all. So it's already severely AU from the series... I figured pulling it forward a couple of decades wouldn't make too much of a difference at this point.

Next chapter things will start seriously picking up and won't slow down until the end of the fic! I introduce an original case next chapter (Yukina will be rescued off-screen, post-fic), so be sure to come back next week!


Anonymous Review Replies!

Fox: Ha, I literally asked for information about Pokemon, so don't worry about going off on the tangent. I figure Shuuichi would probably play through the game multiple times with a different set each time, just to see if he could, but he's so strategic about everything that yeah, he'd put a weird amount of thought into his team and would be really unlikely to do theme teams (as much as I want to throw all the grass types at him...). That said I really need someone to set clips of his youko transformation in the Dark Tournament opposite clips of a Vulpix evolving into a Nine Tails, because now I can't un-see it. A friend of mine promised homicide if I didn't include Lucario on Yusuke's team, too... And if/when I write the actual Pokemon battle between the pair of them, I'll definitely do research for proper teams, and will probably use your suggestions as starting points. Anyway, promised lore for youki vs. reiki! And more Hiei!