Chapter 12a: No Friend of Mine
As Hiei finally returned to his living quarters he came to a halt, watching as Botan picked up a vase he had recently recovered from an abandoned village, hurling it across the room, seemingly at nothing. The vase hit the wall and smashed into pieces: but, much to Hiei's amazement, en route, the vase had grazed the fleeting shadow darting about the room. The blow finally slowed the creature, large wings flailing, a few stray blue and pink feathers breaking loose, before the creature ultimately managed to right itself in the air, and Hiei finally got a good look at it.
It was a bird demon, but no ordinary bird demon. It was larger than the more common birds of Demon World, with thick, strong feet and legs, a broad chest, and muscular shoulders supporting broad wings. It had the hooked beak of a predator but it also had several ornate, long feathers that stuck out above the rest, forming a circle around its head, giving the illusion of a halo.
It was clearly a partner demon, and, by the strength of its body, its main offering was probably as a carrier or hunter.
The bird finally looked over at Hiei, with eyes that were oddly the same colour as Botan's, set under thick black eyelashes. As they locked eyes, Hiei could not help but think that the bird itself was oddly reminiscent of Botan herself, and he momentarily wondered if it was that similarity that had attracted it to her in the first place.
Before Hiei could draw any logical conclusion on the situation, Botan swung her metal baseball bat at the distracted bird, smashing its wing nearest her, the sound of bones literally shattering filling the air. The bird screamed out in an strangely human-like voice and collapsed to the ground in an ungraceful heap of blue and pink. Such a wound was basically a death sentence for the creature, since its only real advantage in any situation – its only real offering as a partner – was its ability to fly, and it would clearly never fly again after such a brutal blow.
And that was obvious, so when Botan stepped one foot over the bird and raised her bat high above her head, clutched in both hands, Hiei found himself doing something he never imagined he ever would: he leapt forwards and caught Botan's attempted hit.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Ending it," she replied breathlessly. "This horrid menace has plagued me long enough, it deserves to die!"
Botan made a genuine attempt to wrestle the bat out of Hiei's hands, which was only all the more bizarre.
"Botan, calm down!" he ordered her. "Put your weapon away! Have some dignity!"
She met his eyes and for a moment she had the strangest look on her face. It passed quickly though, and with a whine of complaint, she banished her baseball bat.
"Now step back," Hiei said.
"What?" she echoed. "Why?"
"Just step back," Hiei insisted.
Botan finally acquiesced and took two steps back, removing herself from her stance over the fallen bird demon.
"You, bird," Hiei said, lightly prodding the toe of his boot against the bird's uninjured wing. "Look at me."
The bird slowly lifted its head, gazing up at him with the most pathetic expression he had ever seen on any creature's face.
"What brought you here?" he asked it. "Who do you work for? Why are you bothering Botan?"
The bird lowered its eyes to the floor, its sides visibly moving as it heaved a sigh. It then moved its fuchsia eyes back up to Hiei's.
"I made a mistake," it said in a faint voice. "I did a stupid thing."
Hiei found the bird's choice of words highly unusual, particularly as it spoke them as though they somehow had a much more profound meaning, and instantly explained everything.
"I'm sorry Hiei."
Hiei narrowed his eyes at the bird, but it simply continued to look up at him with sad, almost pleading eyes, as though hoping he would both understand why it was apologising to him personally and that he would forgive it whatever misdeeds it had done.
"Get it out of here Hiei, it frightens me!" Botan wailed.
Hiei looked over at Botan. Considering how brutally she had hit the bird, how easily she had taken it out, and how willing and ready she had been to smash its skull into the floor, he found her latest outburst more than a little disingenuous.
"We'll put it outside, beyond the gate," Hiei concluded, backing away from the bird, mostly to avoid having to look at its truly pathetic eyes. "If it can survive there, it will. If not, then so be it."
Botan nodded and Hiei moved to another part of the room to get a blanket, intent on bundling the bird into it: but behind him he heard movement, a part of him almost already knowing what was about to happen. Nonetheless, Hiei turned around, watching in a blend of disbelief and confusion as Botan grabbed the bird's short, fanlike tail in both her hands and dragged it across the floor and out the glass doors, onto the balcony. There she hauled it up and swung her arms around, launching the bird from the balcony where, without the use of its right wing, it spiralled through the air away from them before plummeting down the steep drop to an inevitable death on the gravelled ground far below.
Botan wiped her hands on her kimono and returned to the room.
"Why did you–" Hiei began.
"Oh Hiei, that monster has been the bane of my life, I hope it never comes back again!" Botan wailed over the top of him.
She shuffled across the room and threw her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his hair.
"Oh Hiei, I'm so glad that I'm here with you, away from that beast, and finally free of it always pestering me so!" she whimpered into his hair.
"You shouldn't have done that," Hiei told her. "We should have asked it who it was working for, what it wanted with you."
"Who cares? It's gone now, and that's all that matters. Finally I'm free to just..."
Hiei waited for Botan to finish her thought, but instead of speaking, she angled her head lower and kissed his cheek, sighing lightly through her nose, the air tickling at his ear. He did still want to know what the partner demon had been after – particularly as its demeanour had been so odd – but the feeling of Botan breath on his neck and her fingers lightly playing with the hair at the base of his skull was proving to be incredibly distracting.
"Don't leave me again," she whispered to him. "Just stay here with me."
Upon hearing those words, Hiei was abruptly reminded why he had left Botan in the first place: he had been on his way to tell Mukuro that he would have a guest staying with him.
"Come with me," he decided aloud.
Botan took a step back to look him in the eye.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
She looked as though she did not especially care where they might be going, as though she was just asking the question for the sake of making conversation, but he answered her regardless.
"I will introduce you to Mukuro," he told her.
To his surprise, she looked quite pleased by his answer.
"I've always wanted to meet Mukuro," she said.
After witnessing Botan's behaviour – and the frankly absurd and ineffective disguise she had worn – during the Demon World Tournament, Hiei was a little surprised to see her suddenly keen to meet Mukuro face-to-face. His memory of her behaviour during the tournament had been that she had largely remained in the company of Koenma and his assistant, and any time she had been separated from her fellow Spirit World natives, she had become panicked and flighty. She had been terrified of almost every demon competing, especially the A-class and S-class demons – whom she had probably had no exposure to prior to that event – their power clearly at a level that even she understood she was helpless against. Even Kuwabara had accepted that a demon like Mukuro was in a completely different league from him, and likewise would have afforded her a fearful respect.
"It's such a great achievement that she thinks so highly of you, Hiei," Botan added. "Is it true that she considers you her heir to her empire?"
"Mukuro isn't in charge any more," Hiei reminded her. "But it's true that I am her second-in-command."
"Oh my."
Botan touched a hand to her chest and got that look she wore when Yukina presented her with one of those cream cakes she very occasionally made. Hiei did not especially like the fact that she appeared to be attracted to his position of power with Demon World, but according to her notebook, she had been attracted to him for quite some time, and certainly before he ever met Mukuro. He decided the best way to test if her awe of Mukuro was adding to her interest in him was to simply take her to Mukuro and gauge her reaction: and so, letting her once more hang onto his arm with both of hers all the way there, that was exactly what he did.
Shizuru looked down at her packet of cigarettes. She only had two left, which she felt was oddly symbolic. She withdrew one and lit it, taking a long drag on it as she surveyed her new surroundings. Koenma had lied to her – not that she was at all surprised about that – in that she had not merely been kept in Spirit World for one night. After leaving her in the interrogation room until late at night the day she first arrived, where her only company had been a brief visit from Yukina, guards had taken her back to a holding cell: and when she got back there, all the demons who had been in that area in the morning had been moved elsewhere, leaving her there alone. Ogres had brought her food and water during the next day, but nobody had offered her any information on what they thought she had done or when she would be released.
And, other than Yukina, nobody had come to visit her: not even Koenma or Botan.
After a day and night in the holding cell, Shizuru had been moved again, to the place she resided currently. She was not so stupid that she could not tell exactly where she was, but what was odd about her current location was why she had been put there. She knew that, even if Spirit World did believe that she had been communicating with a demon spy as they had implied they thought she was on the day of her arrest, that crime was not great enough to warrant her being placed in the maximum security section of the prison. Even the guards who had taken her there were apologetic about it and one had mentioned that it ought to only be a temporary measure, but offered no timeline for how temporary a measure it might be. Shizuru had a cell to herself, but all around her, the other cells were filled with bodies, as though every other prisoner or demon in Spirit World had been taken to the small area, and stuffed into the eight cells that made up that particular part of the prison.
As time wore on, something Shizuru had suspected to be true seemed more and more likely: Spirit World had not put them all there to contain them and stop them from causing trouble, but rather they had been moved into the most secure part of the prison to protect them from something far worse that had entered Spirit World.
Shizuru could feel what was happening, the tension so great she was confident that even someone with little to no awareness would have felt it. But, even if she had been unable to feel it, she still could have deduced there was trouble brewing by what she could see. The number of guards in the prison kept diminishing, and less and less spirits were passing through, to the point that, as she reached halfway through her second last cigarette, there was only one guard remaining, and it had been some time since anyone else had passed by.
The bad feeling that Shizuru had was not the one that would have seemed most likely in her current situation – the presence of very powerful demon in the prison or an altercation between inmates that had gotten out of hand – in fact, the feeling needling her was not the feeling of a powerful or dark aura at all. The troubling feeling concerning Shizuru was one of emotion.
Somewhere, not very far away from where she was being held, there was a very strong feeling of desperation. It was intensifying with every passing minute and it was coming from multiple sources. Most of them were close by, and they became more intense the further away they emanated from: but all of them combined were nothing compared to the feeling of desperation and bitter despair that came from somewhere far beyond them all.
Someone was suffering terribly, and Shizuru had the distinct feeling that their pain and anguish would very soon turn into anger and determination, a need for vengeance: and when that happened, she suspected that whatever it was that was really going on in Spirit World would take a very drastic turn.
Koenma had adopted his teenage form when he left his office that morning, with the idea that it would make him look more authoritative when he went to address the SDF. The soldiers had spent weeks carefully planning their border expansion operation in Demon World, even going so far as to have a contingency plan in place, should the absolute worst case scenario occur; an alternative option that would allow them to still take some land even if they were forced to retreat. At first all had seemed well: Ryuhi called in regularly with updates, and it seemed that they were in fact following their plan.
But, very quickly, the situation changed.
Since Ootake had been removed from service, Koenma had appointed Ryuhi as acting leader of the SDF. He had never formalised her position, but between them, they had agreed that he should do so after the SDF took more ground in Demon World, as the mission was her best opportunity to demonstrate to her fellow officers why she ought to be their new commander. Koenma had been vaguely concerned that the lack of formality behind her position could leave her vulnerable, as at least half of her fellow officers often had problems following orders, even when those orders came from someone in a confirmed position of authority, but Ryuhi had been confident and insistent that they proceed as they were.
Koenma also thought it had been a mistake for the SDF not to take Botan with them. Botan herself had said that she was not interested in going, but Koenma better trusted Botan's critical judgement in a dire situation: where the SDF would remain and fight, Botan would have the sense to know when to retreat and when to call for help. As it was, Botan had of course ended up in an entirely different battle instead, as she had brought him the news that Shizuru had been secretly meeting with a partner demon that appeared to be carrying messages back to its master in Demon World. It had clearly been difficult for Botan to admit that her friend was a traitor, and so Koenma had no difficulty in immediately supporting her concern by arresting Shizuru. After that, he had hoped Botan might stay and help the SDF after all, but she had wished to return to the living world, and so he allowed it.
But without Botan, and with updates from Ryuhi fading away and eventually ceasing altogether, Koenma had been forced to take matters into his own hands. In his more adult form he had left his office and left the temple altogether, heading for the point where the SDF had passed through to Demon World to carry out their plan. He reached the point where Spirit World ended and Demon World began – the point where he expected to find Ayame and a handful of ogres who the SDF had chosen to guard the line – and instead found there was nobody in sight. Concerned and very aware that the existing barrier at the other end had already been removed, Koenma continued into Demon World, into the land owned by Spirit World. However, before he could even reach the limit of the land Spirit World controlled, he had been forced to scramble up a tree and hide himself within the foliage.
Demons were passing by him, and continuing on into Spirit World.
Increasing numbers of demons, of increasing sizes and strengths, unharmed and heavily armed, were invading Spirit World, unhindered: they had clearly not met any resistance between Demon World and Spirit World.
Koenma was stuck in his hiding place, as there were so many demons roaming about, he would surely be seen if he tried to escape. He waited at first, assuming someone would come along and stop what was happening – be it one of the back-up team of Ayame and the ogres, or even an actual officer of the SDF – but time passed, and he neither saw nor heard any trace of his fellow spirits. Instead he was left watching helplessly on as Spirit World was invaded, with no SDF around and all their best fighters already deployed to assist the SDF. There was nobody really capable of fighting them off back in Spirit World, but, Koenma thought darkly, there was an entire prison full of demon convicts who would be more than willing to join them.
Telling himself that he had to act, steeling his nerves and determining to do something useful, Koenma finally dropped out of the tree.
But as soon as he did so, a large shadow fell over him.
He looked back over his shoulder, and the sight that greeted him told him he had just made a big mistake.
To say the situation in Demon World was out of control was an understatement. And the situation was only worsening, coming close to the point where even damage control was not a viable strategy for dealing with it. Ryuhi took a step back and looked around herself. None of her officers were following any of the plans she had laid out. They had deviated from the primary plan quite early on in the operation, and, when demons had started gathering and she had broken off to push them back, her officers neither stuck to the original plan nor resorted to the secondary plan. Instead of trying to keep as much of a barrier in place as possible, the SDF had torn down the old barrier, and, after rebuilding parts of it – mostly over the wrong coordinates – they had subsequently all abandoned the barrier to fight the onslaught of demons attempting entry to Spirit World.
The situation was becoming desperate, something made horribly clear when, much to Ryuhi's horror, a ferry girl came streaking towards her.
"What are you doing out here?" Ryuhi shouted at her.
"I've come to help," she called back. "There are demons pushing into Spirit World, those of us who were stationed at the original border have become caught up fighting, some have had to retreat to try to catch the demons invading. The situation is getting out of hand, I couldn't just stand by and watch it happen."
"You're not a soldier, you're not fit for combat!" Ryuhi argued. "You will only be a hindrance to us out here when we are left trying to save you. Go back to Spirit World! Demon World and war are no places for a mere ferry girl!"
Ayame circled around and came to a halt, hovering on her oar in front of Ryuhi, glaring at her with a respectable degree of contempt for such a weak spirit.
"I will not hang back there and watch Spirit World fall," she said sternly. "You have lost control of the situation here and I am going to do everything I can to change that. You asked for my assistance with this mission, now stop arguing with me and accept it!"
"There's nothing you can do!" Ryuhi cried as Ayame shot away from her.
And, as though to prove her point, a flying demon began pursuit of the ferry girl. The demon was faster and more agile than a ferry girl on an oar, and it was only a matter of time before it caught her and made a meal of her. It was just another failure Ryuhi would have to report back with: the loss of a foolish ferry girl. She sighed and began taking aim to attempt a shot at the demon chasing Ayame – but the ferry girl was apparently not done acting ridiculously.
"Don't you dare waste your energy on this thing, Ma'am!" she shouted down to her. "Get back to rebuilding the barrier, let me deal with the demons – that is something I can do – only you can rebuild the barrier!"
Ryuhi lowered her arms and watched as Ayame wove through the air, making a decent effort to evade attack, but the demon still ultimately catching up to her. Then, in what seemed like an act of very poor judgement, Ayame arced around and shot downwards at a forty-five degree angle, moving in a straight line, allowing the demon to gain on her quite rapidly. Ryuhi opened her mouth to shout at the ferry girl to make an evasive manoeuvre while she still could: but before the words could form in her mouth, the demon chasing Ayame collided with a section of barrier Ryuhi had been building, catching on it momentarily and writhing about in pain. Ayame, as a spirit, had passed straight through it, and casually floated around, scouting the area for any other airborne threats.
As she passed by Ryuhi, flying at a distance just a few feet above her head, Ayame glared down at Ryuhi with a look that was almost enough to make Ryuhi – an officer of the SDF – nervous. Ryuhi awkwardly nodded at her and she shot off again, flying directly towards another flying demon with an air of confidence that was, perhaps, quite justified after all.
Next Chapter: Hiei introduces Botan to Mukuro and they have a little chat, though Hiei is ultimately left displeased by the conversation. Elsewhere in Demon World, Yukina and Rui are getting ever closer to a dire fate (and a fire date), and Yusuke and Kuwabara are facing an ordeal of their own as they attempt the last stretch of the mountain to the ice village. The demon invasion of Spirit World has become rampant and Shizuru suspects she may be in great danger: and elsewhere, Koenma, Ayame and even the officers of the SDF have been completely overwhelmed. And finally, (it's a very action-packed chapter) Keiko tries to reason with Maya. Chapter 13a. Liar
A/N: Okay, so here we go with the 6-part masterplan... There are 6 separate disasters happening (1- Keiko/Kurama/Maya, 2- Yukina/Rui, 3- Yusuke/Kuwabara/Puu, 4- Shizuru, 5- Koenma/Ayame/SDF/Spirit World in general, and, let's be honest, 6- Hiei/Botan) which are going to escalate insanely as we circle back towards the B story. There were a couple of reveals in this chapter (why Koenma arrested Shizuru) and more of that foreshadowing (expressed via Koenma and Ryuhi). Also Shizuru's wildly accurate premonitions.
Chapters (A and B) get longer from 13 onwards, just because there are 6 separate dramas going on, and how they play out is going to be pretty wild...
