Chapter 7: Human Hang-ups and Demonic Desires
"You have to go through this nearly every day of the first part of your life?" Suzaku asked as he half-sprawled backward in his chair. His detached purple eyes swept the room with boredom, and ignored the small host of schoolgirls that sighed contentedly as his eyes past over them. Suzaku had shown up midway through the first hour of school, and Yusuke had no idea how the orange-haired Yokai had managed to talk his way in Yusuke's class, but at least it gave him someone to talk to. With nearly an hour in class, the various young ladies of the class were instantly swept up in a horrible case of hero-worship. Suzaku's chilly responses to their scattered questions had only temporarily kept them at arms length, and the Demon was speaking frankly while he could.
"More or less." Yusuke grumbled, leaning back as well and earning a glare from a girl whose view of the Bishonen had been cut off, "Explains why I've ditched more often then not, doesn't it?"
"This, in turn, explains why you've been in the same grade for the last three years." Suzaku muttered, earning a harsh look from the spirit detective. With a yawn, Suzaku added, "If this is what you humans do day in and day out, I may go back to my 'idiot race that deserves extinction' theory."
"If I don't pass again, I may just join you in that." The green- jump suited youth quipped, putting his hands behind his hands and gazing at the ceiling. At the front of the class, the teacher droned on about something or other, but it was not surprising that Yusuke did not pay attention to it. For a long moment, he pleasantly daydreamed about telling the host of girls who their handsome target really was, but dismissed it. After all, if, on the off chance, they believed him, it would only cause trouble.
"I really would love to stay here and all, but I doubt I'm learning very much about you humans just observing you in your boredom." Suzaku grumbled, sitting up in his seat. Yusuke glanced at him incredulously and said,
"Hey, even I don't walk out in the middle of class." He protested, "You can't just get up and go anytime you feel like it."
"You underestimate me, Spirit Detective." Suzaku smiled at him. His hands clasped in front of his stomach, and his eyes closed. For a moment, the line of his closed eyes glowed slightly orange as he invoked his energy.
The world turned topsy-turvy for the oddly dressed Demon. He was drowning in a sea of blue motion, feeling wind that was not real as his will was flung across space. His stomach, if he still had it, felt like it wanted to cough up his lunch the other way. He gave a chill scream that no one heard as he felt himself funneled through another container.
For a long moment, Suzaku simply concentrated on breathing raggedly. Though he had performed the technique before, it was not a very pleasant one to use. He found himself on his knees, the thin cloth of his pants not fully keeping off the chill of the floor of Genkai's temple. Though each of his duplicates had their own free will and personality, he, the user of the technique, had ultimate control over them. When he perished, his personality and will was transferred over the bond between himself and his clones, overriding the clone's own personality. Over long practice, he had learned to transfer himself over the link and trade places with one of his other selves without dying.
But it certainly wasn't pleasant.
He stood, nearly fully recovered, and smiled at the sparsely furnished temple. After an hour of being stuck inside the human classroom, he was highly thankful to transfer out of it. The clone he had replaced, Three, was actually rather interested in the learning centers, which is why he had chosen to replace that one.
"Suzaku." A soft voice called from behind him, and the Yokai turned to find Kurama leaning against one of the wooden doors leading into the room. The other demon's reddish pink jumpsuit stood out clearly against the dark oak wall behind him, "I thought you had gone to school with Yusuke, but I sense that the real you has remained here." Suzaku was not thrilled to let another in on the secrets of his techniques, so when his answer came, it was rather curt.
"I got bored."
"I see. And what do you plan to alleviate that?"
"I was planning on going for a walk around the city."
"Would you like company?"
"To watch the people or to watch me?" Suzaku asked pointedly, a slightly flash of ire at this verbal sparring.
"Both." Kurama replied, his calm face completely unfazed by the question, "Your intentions may well be benign, but I have no reason to assume so." The demon Yoko's grey eyes flashed momentarily through Kurama's and met Suzaku's purple orbs. It was a subtle threat, but one that did not bother Suzaku.
"Alright, feel free to come along then."
***
"These humans truly are interesting creatures." Suzaku observed, stepping carefully across the red brick. The day grown late as they toured the town. Kurama was a fascinating tour guide. Every inch of the city was his territory, and every facet of it had been examined and calculated into an overall picture of what the world was. When Suzaku had complimented him on this, however, Kurama insisted that it was merely a result of misplaced energy upon first arriving.
"One learns nothing about humans from simply observing." He had said, "I thought I could understand them simply by time and close proximity, but it did not work out that way."
"How did it work out?" Suzaku had asked curiously, his neck craning to peer at the former Fox Spirit walking to his left. Kurama's arms were folded over his stomach in the style of a well-fed senator preparing to deliver a lecture.
"It was like a sickness." Kurama explained, his voice faltering slightly, "Or at least that's how I viewed it at first. A slow annexing of what I once was as I began to act in fashions that did not make sense to my former logic. By the time I realized it was happening, it was too late to stop it. Because I did not want to stop it."
They had walked in silence since then, and Suzaku had been turning that conversation over in his head. Yoko Kurama, the legendary spirit bandit, had been snared in a net so fine that, even once the trap had been realized, it was pursued to its ending regardless. For a long moment, Suzaku's felt a very real fear. If a demon that specialized in robbery and escaping had been caught so easily, how would he survive?
But he was not Kurama, he told himself, and he would not be snared the same way. Across the street, he caught sight of a pair of people. One female, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, and a male of about the same age. As he watched, the two held hands on a bench, their faces hidden by the shadows of the setting sun. The male leaned down, and touched his lips to the female's. Rather then being frightened by this strange motion, the female seemed to enjoy the experience, and the two held that pose for a good amount of time.
"Kurama?" He asked his guide curiously, pointing at the couple, "I'm afraid I've missed something of my human history there. What type of ritual is that?" Kurama turned interested, and glanced the couple across the street. For a long moment, he stood with a bemused expression his face. Then he chuckled, long and slowly, as he turned back to the rather confused former Saint Beast.
"All this time studying the human race." He laughed, "And you have not seen kissing before?" Suzaku felt his face heat, and he snarled back at the Spirit Fox,
"I'm here to learn, and that implies there are things I don't know!" He admitted loudly, "Why don't you stop laughing and explain?"
"It's a sign of affection." Kurama explained, the laughter in his voice still rankling Suzaku, "Humans enjoy the activity, and most indulge in it as often as possible. It gives them pleasure."
"Pleasure?"
"An emotional form of it, similar to comfort, and closely related to love" Kurama continued slowly, and Suzaku turned immediately to pay attention to the lecture, "In fact, it is the most common outright sign of love that I'm aware of. In my opinion, I would have to say that the power of love is directly related to the human perchance of-."
Kurama's words ended in a muffled set of sounds as a gentle pressure moved over his mouth. His eyes opened wide with surprised as he realized what was happening.
Suzaku was kissing him!
***
"So, what news?" Matthews asked, leaning behind the tech and gazing at the green flashing screen displayed in the center of the terminal.
"The news isn't good, Sir." The tech, Peterson, told the icy-eyed Chief Aide, "The blood we have of the Main Subject is growing more diluted each time we pull what we need from it. It would be dangerous to invest in one more soldier, and impossible for two I suspect. Simply put, we need a fresher source."
"Damnit." Matthews snarled, and the aide looked at him in surprise. In the last five years, Peterson had never seen the other swear or even lose his blank faced stare. The tech straightened his glasses, and batted stray strands of greasy black hair out of his face as Matthews continued, "Alright, what else is going to blow up in our face?" It was a rhetorical question, but one Peterson had an answer for anyway.
"I'm beginning to worry about overexposure, Sir." He said gravely, tapping his keyboard like a chicken hunting for bits of grain, and another display popped onto the screen, "Some of the units used for these operations are beginning to exhibit signs of mental instability."
"Instability?" Matthews sneered, "They're military, name one who's stable to begin with."
"Yes, Sir." Peterson replied, only because he had to, "But it's worse then that. Each groups is beginning to show signs of pronounced mental and emotional strain. The speed of the process varies from group to group almost exactly in accordance with how much exposure they've had to our injections. In Particular, Guiness, Skull, and Wolf have been showing symptoms of a greater problem. I've written a full report, if you and the Director would care to read it."
"I'll read it." The cold aide commented slowly, his eyes squinted in thought, "But cut any reference to it out of the copies sent to the Director." Peterson turned to look at him with outright surprise written all over his face.
"Cut it out, Sir?" He asked in surprise, then a tad of angry confusion, "I can't just take things out of an official report to one of my Commanding Officers. You can't order me to-."
"Oh no." Matthews corrected, his tight smile reminded Peterson of a tiger on the prowl, "I'm not ordering you to, and I'm just going to let you choose your policy. If honesty is your decision, then I'll have to be honest as well. So when the local police receives a anonymous tip of a local computer aide with an adolescent paramour."
"You're a bastard, Sir!"
"Thank you. I want the paper on my desk, and only mine, by the end of the hour."
***
Kurama's hand came up without conscious thought, forming into a fist and bashing into Suzaku's temple with enough force to make the Yokai's knees feel faint, sending the former Saint Beast a few steps backward. Kurama's chest heaved with indignation, and his eyes were filled with fire as he met Suzaku's chilly cool orbs.
"What on Earth was that about?" Kurama demanded harshly, reaching out and grasping the front of the other demon's shirt and nearly losing a grip on his human side as his anger raged.
"Did I not do this correctly?" Suzaku asked him calmly, his fingers coming up to grip Kurama's arm and force it away from his throat, "You told me this action gives humans pleasure, and you retain a human body. Is there more to it?"
"It's not simply that easy!" Kurama raged, but was catching hold of his anger, forcing himself to speak more quietly to avoid the attention he had already garnered from the nearby people. Of course, Suzaku would have no knowledge of social significance behind the kiss, nor the effect of simply indulging in one without warning. "That action implies a level of relationship we have not, and will not, reach."
"Why?" Suzaku asked coolly, and Kurama wanted to hit him because, as Yoko, he would have said the same thing. Cool analysis and detached interest was all a demon had to keep them going, and very few Apparitions ever advanced beyond that point. His teeth, slightly pointed with his spirit fox past, ground together for a long moment. When, he finally spoke his voice was surprisingly calm.
"That action has a great deal of significance to it." He explained tightly, "It is done only with close family, or those in love. In either case, there is a great deal more time spent in the relationship then a casual friendship. Besides, it is standard to kiss and pursue only the opposite sex, not the same one, and only then a single person after a long courtship"
"There are no exceptions?" Suzaku asked softly, and Kurama's thoughts flashed momentarily to the small field slightly outside of the town. Pulling his mind from those thoughts, he snarled with more anger then he meant to,
"You'll not find your exception with me!" The red-haired Fox Spirit turned on his heels and strode off into the night. Suzaku watched him go, the Saint's Beast's cold purple eyes scanning until his target disappeared into the crowd. Then, he shrugged, and strode off further down the street. Another pedestrian on a busy sidewalk.
"You have to go through this nearly every day of the first part of your life?" Suzaku asked as he half-sprawled backward in his chair. His detached purple eyes swept the room with boredom, and ignored the small host of schoolgirls that sighed contentedly as his eyes past over them. Suzaku had shown up midway through the first hour of school, and Yusuke had no idea how the orange-haired Yokai had managed to talk his way in Yusuke's class, but at least it gave him someone to talk to. With nearly an hour in class, the various young ladies of the class were instantly swept up in a horrible case of hero-worship. Suzaku's chilly responses to their scattered questions had only temporarily kept them at arms length, and the Demon was speaking frankly while he could.
"More or less." Yusuke grumbled, leaning back as well and earning a glare from a girl whose view of the Bishonen had been cut off, "Explains why I've ditched more often then not, doesn't it?"
"This, in turn, explains why you've been in the same grade for the last three years." Suzaku muttered, earning a harsh look from the spirit detective. With a yawn, Suzaku added, "If this is what you humans do day in and day out, I may go back to my 'idiot race that deserves extinction' theory."
"If I don't pass again, I may just join you in that." The green- jump suited youth quipped, putting his hands behind his hands and gazing at the ceiling. At the front of the class, the teacher droned on about something or other, but it was not surprising that Yusuke did not pay attention to it. For a long moment, he pleasantly daydreamed about telling the host of girls who their handsome target really was, but dismissed it. After all, if, on the off chance, they believed him, it would only cause trouble.
"I really would love to stay here and all, but I doubt I'm learning very much about you humans just observing you in your boredom." Suzaku grumbled, sitting up in his seat. Yusuke glanced at him incredulously and said,
"Hey, even I don't walk out in the middle of class." He protested, "You can't just get up and go anytime you feel like it."
"You underestimate me, Spirit Detective." Suzaku smiled at him. His hands clasped in front of his stomach, and his eyes closed. For a moment, the line of his closed eyes glowed slightly orange as he invoked his energy.
The world turned topsy-turvy for the oddly dressed Demon. He was drowning in a sea of blue motion, feeling wind that was not real as his will was flung across space. His stomach, if he still had it, felt like it wanted to cough up his lunch the other way. He gave a chill scream that no one heard as he felt himself funneled through another container.
For a long moment, Suzaku simply concentrated on breathing raggedly. Though he had performed the technique before, it was not a very pleasant one to use. He found himself on his knees, the thin cloth of his pants not fully keeping off the chill of the floor of Genkai's temple. Though each of his duplicates had their own free will and personality, he, the user of the technique, had ultimate control over them. When he perished, his personality and will was transferred over the bond between himself and his clones, overriding the clone's own personality. Over long practice, he had learned to transfer himself over the link and trade places with one of his other selves without dying.
But it certainly wasn't pleasant.
He stood, nearly fully recovered, and smiled at the sparsely furnished temple. After an hour of being stuck inside the human classroom, he was highly thankful to transfer out of it. The clone he had replaced, Three, was actually rather interested in the learning centers, which is why he had chosen to replace that one.
"Suzaku." A soft voice called from behind him, and the Yokai turned to find Kurama leaning against one of the wooden doors leading into the room. The other demon's reddish pink jumpsuit stood out clearly against the dark oak wall behind him, "I thought you had gone to school with Yusuke, but I sense that the real you has remained here." Suzaku was not thrilled to let another in on the secrets of his techniques, so when his answer came, it was rather curt.
"I got bored."
"I see. And what do you plan to alleviate that?"
"I was planning on going for a walk around the city."
"Would you like company?"
"To watch the people or to watch me?" Suzaku asked pointedly, a slightly flash of ire at this verbal sparring.
"Both." Kurama replied, his calm face completely unfazed by the question, "Your intentions may well be benign, but I have no reason to assume so." The demon Yoko's grey eyes flashed momentarily through Kurama's and met Suzaku's purple orbs. It was a subtle threat, but one that did not bother Suzaku.
"Alright, feel free to come along then."
***
"These humans truly are interesting creatures." Suzaku observed, stepping carefully across the red brick. The day grown late as they toured the town. Kurama was a fascinating tour guide. Every inch of the city was his territory, and every facet of it had been examined and calculated into an overall picture of what the world was. When Suzaku had complimented him on this, however, Kurama insisted that it was merely a result of misplaced energy upon first arriving.
"One learns nothing about humans from simply observing." He had said, "I thought I could understand them simply by time and close proximity, but it did not work out that way."
"How did it work out?" Suzaku had asked curiously, his neck craning to peer at the former Fox Spirit walking to his left. Kurama's arms were folded over his stomach in the style of a well-fed senator preparing to deliver a lecture.
"It was like a sickness." Kurama explained, his voice faltering slightly, "Or at least that's how I viewed it at first. A slow annexing of what I once was as I began to act in fashions that did not make sense to my former logic. By the time I realized it was happening, it was too late to stop it. Because I did not want to stop it."
They had walked in silence since then, and Suzaku had been turning that conversation over in his head. Yoko Kurama, the legendary spirit bandit, had been snared in a net so fine that, even once the trap had been realized, it was pursued to its ending regardless. For a long moment, Suzaku's felt a very real fear. If a demon that specialized in robbery and escaping had been caught so easily, how would he survive?
But he was not Kurama, he told himself, and he would not be snared the same way. Across the street, he caught sight of a pair of people. One female, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, and a male of about the same age. As he watched, the two held hands on a bench, their faces hidden by the shadows of the setting sun. The male leaned down, and touched his lips to the female's. Rather then being frightened by this strange motion, the female seemed to enjoy the experience, and the two held that pose for a good amount of time.
"Kurama?" He asked his guide curiously, pointing at the couple, "I'm afraid I've missed something of my human history there. What type of ritual is that?" Kurama turned interested, and glanced the couple across the street. For a long moment, he stood with a bemused expression his face. Then he chuckled, long and slowly, as he turned back to the rather confused former Saint Beast.
"All this time studying the human race." He laughed, "And you have not seen kissing before?" Suzaku felt his face heat, and he snarled back at the Spirit Fox,
"I'm here to learn, and that implies there are things I don't know!" He admitted loudly, "Why don't you stop laughing and explain?"
"It's a sign of affection." Kurama explained, the laughter in his voice still rankling Suzaku, "Humans enjoy the activity, and most indulge in it as often as possible. It gives them pleasure."
"Pleasure?"
"An emotional form of it, similar to comfort, and closely related to love" Kurama continued slowly, and Suzaku turned immediately to pay attention to the lecture, "In fact, it is the most common outright sign of love that I'm aware of. In my opinion, I would have to say that the power of love is directly related to the human perchance of-."
Kurama's words ended in a muffled set of sounds as a gentle pressure moved over his mouth. His eyes opened wide with surprised as he realized what was happening.
Suzaku was kissing him!
***
"So, what news?" Matthews asked, leaning behind the tech and gazing at the green flashing screen displayed in the center of the terminal.
"The news isn't good, Sir." The tech, Peterson, told the icy-eyed Chief Aide, "The blood we have of the Main Subject is growing more diluted each time we pull what we need from it. It would be dangerous to invest in one more soldier, and impossible for two I suspect. Simply put, we need a fresher source."
"Damnit." Matthews snarled, and the aide looked at him in surprise. In the last five years, Peterson had never seen the other swear or even lose his blank faced stare. The tech straightened his glasses, and batted stray strands of greasy black hair out of his face as Matthews continued, "Alright, what else is going to blow up in our face?" It was a rhetorical question, but one Peterson had an answer for anyway.
"I'm beginning to worry about overexposure, Sir." He said gravely, tapping his keyboard like a chicken hunting for bits of grain, and another display popped onto the screen, "Some of the units used for these operations are beginning to exhibit signs of mental instability."
"Instability?" Matthews sneered, "They're military, name one who's stable to begin with."
"Yes, Sir." Peterson replied, only because he had to, "But it's worse then that. Each groups is beginning to show signs of pronounced mental and emotional strain. The speed of the process varies from group to group almost exactly in accordance with how much exposure they've had to our injections. In Particular, Guiness, Skull, and Wolf have been showing symptoms of a greater problem. I've written a full report, if you and the Director would care to read it."
"I'll read it." The cold aide commented slowly, his eyes squinted in thought, "But cut any reference to it out of the copies sent to the Director." Peterson turned to look at him with outright surprise written all over his face.
"Cut it out, Sir?" He asked in surprise, then a tad of angry confusion, "I can't just take things out of an official report to one of my Commanding Officers. You can't order me to-."
"Oh no." Matthews corrected, his tight smile reminded Peterson of a tiger on the prowl, "I'm not ordering you to, and I'm just going to let you choose your policy. If honesty is your decision, then I'll have to be honest as well. So when the local police receives a anonymous tip of a local computer aide with an adolescent paramour."
"You're a bastard, Sir!"
"Thank you. I want the paper on my desk, and only mine, by the end of the hour."
***
Kurama's hand came up without conscious thought, forming into a fist and bashing into Suzaku's temple with enough force to make the Yokai's knees feel faint, sending the former Saint Beast a few steps backward. Kurama's chest heaved with indignation, and his eyes were filled with fire as he met Suzaku's chilly cool orbs.
"What on Earth was that about?" Kurama demanded harshly, reaching out and grasping the front of the other demon's shirt and nearly losing a grip on his human side as his anger raged.
"Did I not do this correctly?" Suzaku asked him calmly, his fingers coming up to grip Kurama's arm and force it away from his throat, "You told me this action gives humans pleasure, and you retain a human body. Is there more to it?"
"It's not simply that easy!" Kurama raged, but was catching hold of his anger, forcing himself to speak more quietly to avoid the attention he had already garnered from the nearby people. Of course, Suzaku would have no knowledge of social significance behind the kiss, nor the effect of simply indulging in one without warning. "That action implies a level of relationship we have not, and will not, reach."
"Why?" Suzaku asked coolly, and Kurama wanted to hit him because, as Yoko, he would have said the same thing. Cool analysis and detached interest was all a demon had to keep them going, and very few Apparitions ever advanced beyond that point. His teeth, slightly pointed with his spirit fox past, ground together for a long moment. When, he finally spoke his voice was surprisingly calm.
"That action has a great deal of significance to it." He explained tightly, "It is done only with close family, or those in love. In either case, there is a great deal more time spent in the relationship then a casual friendship. Besides, it is standard to kiss and pursue only the opposite sex, not the same one, and only then a single person after a long courtship"
"There are no exceptions?" Suzaku asked softly, and Kurama's thoughts flashed momentarily to the small field slightly outside of the town. Pulling his mind from those thoughts, he snarled with more anger then he meant to,
"You'll not find your exception with me!" The red-haired Fox Spirit turned on his heels and strode off into the night. Suzaku watched him go, the Saint's Beast's cold purple eyes scanning until his target disappeared into the crowd. Then, he shrugged, and strode off further down the street. Another pedestrian on a busy sidewalk.