Two Days Left

"God, don't we have anything better to do?" Me'ran drawls in whining tones. As it turns out, the day the five of them got stuck down here didn't count as day one, even though all of them spent about... twelve hours or so here before any of them got any of what broken sleep they could get. Me'ran figures Anzu and Touka were hoping that being down here would kill the boys by dehydration, and leave her alive because she can't die.

However, what she thinks may actually do them all in is boredom. Me'ran and Kuwabara and Yuusuke and even Kurama, now and again, started playing little kid's games; Tag, Hide and Go Seek, and the newest member introduces them to another game that she used to play in swimming pools, called Wuss-Out. (This game is played with a diving board, normally, and someone does a trick off said diving board into the water. The leader position rotates, but whoever is leading does a trick, then must be matched or bettered by one of the followers. Without a swimming pool, this was even more fun, because if one messed up, then one had to deal with more pain. They used running up the wall as the dive, and powers other than super humanity became off limits quickly, due to inability to use spirit sword, guns, rose whip, or barriers. Yuusuke usually won, but Kuwabara managed to pull through a number of times, and even Me'ran managed to win once or twice, and Kurama, though Me'ran doubted him at first, won only a few times less than Yusuke.), Slapjack/Hot Hands, Sardines (Which is Hide-and-go-Seek where everyone looks for the one hider, and then joins him/her), and those old games where the goal is to make the other one laugh. Me'ran uses the staring one contest-laughing, mostly, but now and again, she agrees to play dumber ones like Sausage (Which is where they have to ask questions of one person and make them laugh. Their only answer can be one word. You have learned a few profanities this way.)

Me'ran and Yuusuke are playing slapjack, right now. She's almost gotten fast enough to hit him, but he's still got the backs of her hands roughly the same color of a lobster. However, she's won this game all three times she's played simply by having a higher pain tolerance. Even though he broke one of her fingers, once, on accident when she started to move and he hit her wrong.

Her hands rest on his, and she's given up on moving entirely. She's leaning back and looking at Kurama, who is back to sitting on his rock with his thumb between his front teeth. He's been sitting like this the entire time they've have been down here, not including the few minutes they talked him into playing with them.

"Kurama?" she asks. "What've you been so concentrated on?"

"A plan," he answers. He looks at her and he gives an odd smile, like he's happy, but not quite. Cautious optimism.

"To get out of here?" she asks.

"Not quite. To beat them," he sighs. She twists for a better look.

"What've you come up with?"

"I've been thinking of a diversion. I think that... Well, you would make an excellent diversion," he concedes, looking down at you with the smile again, but a different kind.

"Why would I make a good diversion?" Me'ran asks, nearly choking on her tongue as she figures out what he's talking about and Yuusuke slaps her hand at the same time. "OW!"

"Hah, three licks for me!" Yuusuke crows.

"Don't hurt yourself," she warns blandly. She thinks her hands are going to begin bleeding before long. She looks back at Kurama, and tries to hide the wincing. "Why would I make a good diversion?"

"They are interested in you. You're a female, and they need new females. Human women can only give birth once a year, and human children take a while to grow. They're planning to take advantage of their particularly strong genes. Perhaps Touka has the ability to bring demonic or animalistic traits out in humans. I'm not sure. He's the one that is..."

"Fathering," she supplies shortly before another loud slapping noises and a strange warmth spreads over her hand. Yuusuke's hands fall away from the human girl's, and he sighs.

"I quit. I made your hand bleed again," he groans, turning away.

"'Again'?" she echoes. "Did you manage to before?"

"Well, I figure that bleeding and broken go hand in hand," Yuusuke says. She licks the blood off her hand and looks back at Kurama.

"So, what? I offer myself as a gift, then..."

"They will treat it as a trap, and they will be wary, but we'll let them think they have us, until they try to set us free or kill us, whatever they intend to do, and we will attack them in return. Then the Spirit World's defenses can come and take care of everything, here."

She begins to think it over. "That might work."

He nods, then puts his thumb between his teeth and continues chewing. "It could use some thinking over, though."

"You're going to make your head explode," she giggles with a smile. He smiles back at her.

"I think if my head were going to explode, it would have, by now."

"Fair point."

"I swear, this is so fucking boring!" Me'ran whines, tossing her arms and stomping her feet and kicking a rock on the ground into a tunnel's entrance before dropping onto her ass and crossing her legs indian style and putting her fists under her chin.

"I'm going to kill the next person that whines about boring," Hiei spits from his corner of the cave.

"Fuck you, man, you can stand to sit for hours and do nothing. I get tired of that after thirty minutes. I'm an American, I'm not MADE to sit and do something down to every minute detail! Hell, if I'm sitting down for more than thirty minutes, it's because I'm asleep!"

"Shut up. Your talking is exhausting me."

"You shut up. Your talking's pissing me off," she counters. He stands up, and for the whole-bunchieth time in the last thirty-six hours, he draws his sword at her.

"Don't think you can defeat me in battle. You're wiser than that," he says, holding his sword at his side, glaring hard at her. She doesn't even face him, just glares at him out of the corners of her eyes.

"Did you forget I'm immortal?" she chides, still not facing him.

"Doesn't mean you're invulnerable," he answers.

"Who said it did?"

"I don't have to kill you, I can just cut off a hand."

"Go for it, let's see if I can't stop you."

He starts at the young woman with his sword, but it's suddenly wrapped up by a thorny green vine. Kurama pulls his whip back, and Hiei's sword clatters uselessly to the ground.

"If you're going to fight, I insist you use your fists only, Hiei. We need our Healer, even if only for defeating the one we cannot in our upcoming fight."

"What?" he demands, twisting his head. The look on his face is almost pure hate.

"Oh, yeah," Yuusuke mumbles. "That Touka guy is Indestructible, too, isn't he?"

"Oh, is that what we're called?" she asks as she grins. "He was right."

"Huh?"

"Pops used to call me Indestructible. I was going to get it tattooed down one arm, I think," she tells him with a bright smile. She sees an odd look cross Kurama's face, and Yuusuke smiles, and even Hiei looks amused. Kuwabara just looks confused, though.

"So, what's the deal with Indestructibles? Koenma didn't tell me much," she says, putting her chin on her hands and leaning forward. Hiei sits back down, all thoughts of fighting gone. He closes his eyes, too- probably to sleep.

"You're all abnormally tough," Kurama begins. "It begins at any point in life. One in three and a half million people become Indestructible, eventually.

"Something odd is the eighty-six percent of all of you are born in the year of the dragon, a sign marked by luck. The way one becomes Indestructible is by surviving your death, as Koenma undoubtedly told you," Kurama says. He's finally moved, leaning back on his hands and looking dreamily up at the sky.

"Yeah, I got that part. If you're supposed to die, and you don't, then you basically survive forever. There are things that can kill us, though. What were they?"

"Old age, mostly. A lot of you go until your body finally just can't, anymore. Suicide is another way, but that is related to the last way. An Indestructible may take another Indestructible's life. They are the only ones that can."

"So, what are the odds that I know two of them?"

"Actually, Koenma told me that you all have a terrible habit of attracting one another, by what usually appears to be sheer chance," Kurama says. "That seems to be how a lot of you survive the things you shouldn't. Chance. It's nature's way of attempting to fix the upset balance, introducing you all to one another, in hopes one will kill another."

"Nice," she says with a grin. "So, Touka's another one?"

"That's not good news," Kurama says. "That means that he will be very hard to take down, and impossible to kill. You don't like to fight, true?"

"Y. Why does that. How. What the hell?"

"It's one of the other reasons we picked you, though it wasn't a trait that any of us particularly liked. Not only do you do your job without letting your feelings get in the way, but you don't like to hurt people. It's a sign of not liking other people's pain, which means that you'd make a good healer. That's what Koenma said. I don't particularly agree, it's something that I find a sign of weakness, and it takes off quite a chance of survival by rights. However, you are not supposed to fight, so we overlooked the severity of that weakness and took it more as an advantage."

She sighs a little. "You know, this whole, 'we know everything about you' is getting a little old."

"If it makes you feel any better, the four of us actually chose you intentionally, but the screening process was incredible. Koenma first eliminated all the boys- Male Indestructibles tend to discover theirs early on, and they are very aggressive. We specifically needed a Healer, and another male would want to fight, and probably injure himself before healing any of us. From there, personality and psychological profiles were used to eliminate the unworthy candidates. He narrowed it down to you and a few others, who were eliminated, one by one, cut when we found something we couldn't stand. Needless to say, Hiei did a lot of the choosing, because he didn't want another one of us anyway, and he remains very selective in who he will even consider allowing on his side, much less trusting them to take care of him or people he considers his friends. He almost excluded you, but then he didn't complain nearly as much about things-- Which is to say that he complained about you least of all. Kuwabara disliked two when they said they hated cats. After that, we picked the one we thought we would get along with best. You aren't the only female Indestructible in the world with your personality and coping skills. Several young women, actually, were headstrong and empathetic at once, and a few less, but still many that refused to cause pain, no matter how much they wanted to. However, you were the only one that was..." He pauses, and you see how he looks like he's trying to come up with something to say.

"Enough of a demon," Yuusuke finally says.

"What's that mean?" she asks.

"Well, Hiei's the one that explained this in detail, but you know those nights where you really wanted a fight? Or when you'd watch a fight and get the contact rush? Or when you got to spar with people with those bokkens?"

Me'ran grins. "Yeah, I nearly broke poor Ben's thumb. First time I met him. But. Alright, so. I'm going for a walk," she says, swinging herself to her feet and starting to walk away. Kurama gets up, too, and he starts following her.

"Pardon me, but I would like to go with you," he mentions lightly, not really giving her the chance to say go away.

"Alrighty."

Kurama and she walk for a couple of ages, but neither of them says anything for the longest time. He takes a few preparatory breaths to speak, but he always lets them out as sighs. She doesn't press him to go ahead and say it, but she can't say she's not dying to know what he does not want to say.

"So," she finally says. Maybe he'll get it out if she starts a conversation. "I'm getting to know you guys better," she says brightly. "I think being stuck down here for three days is giving me a great opportunity to meet you guys. Though Hiei hasn't stopped trying to kill me."

"I don't think he's trying to kill you. He would have if he were trying."

"You said we survive by chance, didn't you?"

"And you did survive a punch from Yuusuke at full power."

She smiles. "Is that an accomplishment?"

"For a human, that is incredible," he answers, smiling. "I was proud for you."

"Alright," she mumbles. She feels his eyes again, but they're shifty, this time.

"You can't see in the dark, huh?" she asks, looking back up at him. Down this tunnel, there's no light, and neither of them has a spirit power that lights up the dark. She can only see the edges of the back of him where the light followed her around the tunnel. She can make out slight details as he turns to face her.

"What?" he asks, confused.

"Your eyes. You stare, most of the time, but you're not able to keep track of where I am, so it's shifty."

He smiles a little. She thinks. She's only half-able to see him. "There's not enough light to bounce off your skin, now, it makes you harder to track in the dark," he explains.

She laughs quietly and scratches her head, hiding her face under her hair. "You're kinda creepy, you know. The staring thing, and the hidden stuff under your face."

She feels him react strangely next to her as he shifts on his feet for a minute, and his face adjusts.

"The 'hidden stuff under' my 'face'?" he echoes with something like a smile. She can tell something hit him when she called him creepy, and it occurs to her why he has that odd look on his face every time he sees her, and why she feels his eyes on her, and that weird smile every time she catches him staring blatantly.

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't want to be wrong- that's a hell of an awkward situation. So she attempts to explain the phrase "hidden stuff under your face".

"You know stuff. You're always thinking. And your face is always trying to keep from showing it," she says, gesturing with her hands uselessly.

He smiles again, and she passes another hole to the sky and she can see his face again, and she can see that it's marked by that damn smile.

Well, this makes things weird, she decides in the back of her head. My former stalker and now-coworker likes me.

She paces ahead, jamming her hands in her pockets and grinning. He follows her slowly.