Tren: Alright, I'm back again… I felt vaguely bad that I left Keichi off in such bad shape.
Keichi: You did? (skeptical)
Tren: Yeah. For a full three minutes. Then I logged onto Neverwinter Nights and forgot all about it.
Keichi: I knew it… (looks off darkly)
Tren: Heh. Seems a bit heartless now that I think about it. Well, I'd say let's celebrate that fact that YYHKids made it to it's 21st chapter (didn't think it'd ever make it) but we all know what happened LAST TIME I busted out champagne.
Keichi: Ah… heh heh… (blushes and looks off)
Tren: Mm Hmm.. SOMEBODY had to get drunk. Well, I do believe it's time to start this chapter off!
Keichi: Better late than never…
Tren: Uh… yeah… sorry 'bout that. Went on a trip with my school's band and we had to compete in California. Ugh… so just sat down and started to type.
Keichi: No…you were just lazy, admit it, Tren.
Tren: Um… (blushes) yeah… Well, onto the storyline, remember, Keichi has just been injured and Hiei has been called in to help…. Oh, and I do not own the one line by Terry Pratchett in this! Thanx!
It is often said that just before you die, your life passes before your eyes. This, as most people would lead you to believe, is true. It is called "Living". Keichi had this distinct feeling, as soon after he closed his eyes, he found himself lost in a memory that had yet again been erased.
He was a child, no older than three or four, sitting on the stiff, large bed of his old bedroom at his mother's mansion. Legs pulled up tightly around his chest, Keichi's small face rested on one knee as he squeezed his eyes shut. Lying on the floor just a few feet in front of him was a thick leather bound book, filled with the stories of the demon gods who came before him. It didn't make any sense to him, he knew he wasn't partly demon, but part of him was shaking anyway, fearful that the monsters of those tales would soon consume him. There was a quick knock on the door but it didn't matter as the person stepped in anyway.
For an odd reason, Keichi couldn't see the person clearly, he was blurred, features blended together in one large blob of black and tan. They picked the book up quietly with one hand; head tilted down to stare at the cover for an instant and sighed. Walking over to the antique table in the corner of the room, they placed it gently on the surface and looked over, a blank face staring at the child form of him.
"Did you read it?" it asked in a familiar voice, surprisingly soothing.
Keichi nodded his head quickly and then looked off, ashamed. Again, the person sighed deeply, an old kind of sorrow seemed to flow off the figure and it walked over and sat on the bed next to him.
"It won't happen to you," it reassured, even though there was doubt in its voice.
Not wanting to respond, Keichi just squeezed his eyes shut, looking away from the speaker, wishing he was alone.
"You're a good kid, I wish you could meet your father," it added, running a bandaged hand through Keichi's messy auburn hair. Getting up, hand still on his head, the figure walked off, closing the door behind him while Keichi curled up a little tighter. He wished he knew his father too. Trying not to think to hard about it, he gripped his little hands tighter around his legs and listened to the beginnings of an argument outside his room. It was between his mother and the visitor he had just a few moment ago.
"What were you doing in there!" His mother's voice demanded, growing shrill in panic.
"Nothing, though I have not clue as to why you'd ask. What do you care about that child anyway? You treat him like a monster," the visitor spat back, it's voice obviously male compared to his mother's high tones.
"He IS a monster, in case you haven't noticed! What did I tell you about visiting him?" Her voice was beginning to rise and Keichi began to wince, trying to ignore the harsh words as usual.
"If I don't visit him, who will? Dammit, Arisa, why haven't you told his father? Do you think this is healthy for a child?" though her voice was rising, the male speaker's voice was growing more cold and insistent, each word sounding vaguely like a threat.
"His father doesn't need to know! I made a mistake!"
"A MISTAKE!" Keichi could imagine his mother beginning to cower as the man outside roared at her. "That is your child! You had better damn well start seeing it that way!"
Someone, most likely the man, stormed off and her could hear his mother begin to cry. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to sleep, the part of him watching all of this wondering who the blurred man was…. He sure was short…
While Keichi was hovering between life and death, Kurama was pacing outside his room. His hands clasped behind his back, his brows knitted together in worry, every single thought in his mind was consumed with one question: How much longer was Hiei going to take?
Sure, it had only been a minute since he hung up the phone but it wouldn't stop him from pacing. Part of him felt guilty for calling on his friend like that, after he had already done so much for his family but it was safe to say that a much larger part of Kurama was more concerned with the well being of his son.
Finally there were three sharp knocks on his door. Spinning around nervously, Kurama raced down the stairs, his feet barely touching each step before they moved onto the next one. Seconds after the last knock, he threw open the door to reveal his old partner and friend.
Still looking the same as ever was Hiei. Dressed in human clothes it was a pair of comfortable dark jeans, his shirt was covered by a sensible yet vaguely complicated looked black jacket. Bored crimson eyes stared up at Kurama and finally, he spoke.
"Are you just going to stand there like an idiot or are you going to let me in?" he asked disdainfully, his nose wrinkling slightly in distaste at the rather obvious stench of blood that wafting out of the still messy house.
"Oh, right! Uh, sorry for calling on you like this but I didn't know of anybody else to-"
"Don't apologize," Hiei replied tersely as he made his way into the house and up the stairs to stop outside the bloody hallway.
"I… I forgot to clean the walls..." Kurama muttered off before shaking his head to clear his thoughts. "Keichi's right in his room."
With that Kurama lead Hiei quickly to his son's room and motioned to where the teen lay, sprawled out over the bed.
"Jesus Christ, what the Hell did you let him get into?" Hiei breathed, his eyes scanning the body, trying to decide where to examine first.
"I did not let him get into anything! Besides, it's not exactly like I could just tell him 'no'. He's more stubborn than Yusuke!" Kurama moaned, leaning up against the slightly cluttered work desk in his son's room. Knowing that someone was there to help, he began to slowly calm down just a little bit, his heart ceasing its jackhammer pace.
"You still haven't answered by question. What did he do?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the red haired fox demon while he gently touched the deep cuts that laced over Keichi's legs, refraining as usual from wincing with practiced ease.
"That's the thing, I don't know," Kurama sighed as he stared out the window, "He went to get rid of an item he stole… and he must have been intercepted by spirit detectives. Who could it be though? Kazuma and Yusuke?"
Hiei thought it over for a moment before something glinted in one the teen's cuts. Gently he plucked it out from deep inside the cut and watched, surprised, as it melted away.
"Ice… crystals?" he wondered out loud.
"What? Neither of those two could have done that… Toya is out the picture… And most definitely NOT Yukina…" Kurama went down the list of names in his head that might in any way be connected to the ice crystals when it hit him the same time it hit Hiei.
"Samui." They said in unison. Getting up quickly, Kurama left the room to reach the phone in the kitchen, calling up Kuwabara's cell number.
It rang eight times before someone picked up.
"Hello?" asked the gravelly, groggy voice of another one of Kurama's partners.
"We need to talk, Kazuma," Kurama answered quietly into the phone, though there was definitely a no-nonsense tone to his voice…
Back in the room, Hiei looked around the large amount of supplies Kurama had left him with and decided first to clean the worst of the wounds, the legs. Obviously, using a cotton ball with a dab of alcohol wasn't going to cut it. Accepting that the bed was already ruined he upturned the entire dull black bottle over the body, watching the boy twitched, still unconscious, and the thick white foam that normally welled up in infected wounds began to seep out of the gashes. Wrinkling his nose slightly at the slight stench of the bottle's contents he then proceeded to wrap them tightly in pale cream bandages, ignoring the soft, animal-like whimpers that Keichi ever so often let slip out sleepily.
As soon as the legs were covered in three layers of bandages (it took all three to stop the blood from, well, seeping through the rest.) he moved onto the ribs. Steadying himself to reset the bones, he took a slightly deep breath and…
"DAMMIT!"
Kurama's voice shot through the air as though sent by a rifle, making Hiei nearly jump. Glaring darkly off at the door and where he guessed Kurama was standing, he took a minute to make sure it wasn't going to happen again and with one deft movement cracked the first part of a rib back into it's rightful place. The unconscious demi-god gasped quickly, his definitely pretty boy face scrunching together in pain.
"Hn… just be grateful you aren't awake," Hiei muttered off, snapping the second part of the rib as fast as he did the first and then moving onto the other three.
Finally, he reached the last major break and again, he steadied himself when…
"KAZUMA, WOULD IT KILL YOU TO JUST LISTEN!"
Swearing his red haired partner off, again Hiei glared at where he guess the man was, it seemed he had moved. Most likely he was pacing around the kitchen. Turning his attention back to the teen, he decided to set the bone as fast as possible before Kurama decided to have another outburst.
It slid back to it's normal place with practiced ease and already Keichi's defiantly unnatural healing abilities began to kick in, obviously intent on making sure he wouldn't die because that sure as hell would ruin his day. In less than three minutes the boy was entirely bandaged and Hiei tended to the far smaller, more trivial wounds before he sighed, realizing that he was now done. Taking a seat on the chair tucked under the work desk, Hiei resigned to staring at his hands which were now covered in the antiseptic and watered down blood.
"You look filthy," came Kurama voice, slightly hoarse from what Hiei guessed was the yelling.
"Hn, then give me a damn towel. You didn't leave one amidst the rest of the first aid supplies," Hiei quipped, staring over at his friend with exhausted crimson eyes.
"Oh… here then," Kurama quickly darted to the bathroom and came back with a soft hand towel and tossed it over. Thinking about it for a second he pulled out Keichi's cell phone out of his back pocket and tossed it haphazardly onto the messy table. Though he acted like nothing was wrong, the slight twitch in one eyes led Hiei to know otherwise.
"What exactly happened while you were one the phone, and must you scream so loudly? Kazuma may be an idiot, but yelling at him would undoubtedly confuse him further," Hiei reminded Kurama dryly, grateful to be wiping the gross mess on his hands off.
"Well…" Kurama trailed off.
(KURAMA'S PHONE CONVERSATION FLASHBACK)
"We need to talk, Kazuma."
There was silence across the other line as Kazuma noticed, not without some dismay, that Kurama sounded upset to say the least.
"Huh? What's wrong Kurama?" Kuwabara's voice sounded vaguely groggy as his mind was still reeling from the rather hard collision his skull had experienced from a tree branch while fighting Keichi.
"What's wrong? Nothing…" Though Kurama sounded fine, sure enough, Kuwabara could just barely hear the soft, tell tale signs of anger creeping into his friends voice like one of the many plants he used while fighting.
"Uh, man, you really don't sound that fine," Kuwabara replied cautiously, just waiting, knowing that if all else fails, he'd get Kurama losing his temper out of his way just a little bit faster.
"Hmm…" Kurama murmured, disinterested, before taking his time to speak, making sure each word came out just right. "I will ask you just a few questions and all I want are yes or no answers… got it?"
"Uh… yeah, got it?"
Kurama could hear Kuwabara gulp loudly on the other line.
"Good… now then, were you recently put back into the service of Spirit Detective?"
"Uh… yeah."
"Alright, and were you sent after two thieves last night?"
Kuwabara thought hard on how he could possible avoid the questions before coming to a conclusion. The chick dressed in back was a killer, not a thief, right?
"No. No, I wasn't. Gawd, why are you askin' all these weird questions? I finally get back to Japan and this is the greeting I get!" Kazuma tried his hardest to act outraged by this fact, not wanting to tell Kurama that indeed, yes, last night he was fighting Keichi.
"Fine, were you sent after a thief and an Assassin?"
Damn, Kazuma thought to himself. He's good.
"Yeah, yeah I was."
"Alright, and did you fight my son, Keichi?"
Kuwabara tugged at his bottom lip fretfully before responding.
"Yeah. Why are you askin' me this?"
Waiting for just a second, Kurama finally replied.
"Because this morning I woke up and thought a horror movie was filmed in my hallway. Because my son is in his room dying and I can't do a damn thing about it," Kurama's voice was cold as ice as he spat out each word.
"You sayin' I tried to kill 'em? 'cuz that's just crazy and you know it! I wouldn't fight your son, 'cuz I don't have a death wish! And you think that's bad, do you even know what-" Kuwabara didn't get much further in his beginning of rant before Kurama butted in, a vein now throbbing in his temple angrily.
"DAMMIT!"
There was silence across the line as Kuwabara was speechless, staring at the phone in his hand, trying to debate on whether or not speak but Kurama then added more, in a far better tone of voice.
"I do not blame you for attacking my son; I'm blaming your own child, Samui. There were ice crystals in his legs. He's bleeding out right now and I'm lucky I found someone to help him."
Kazuma felt the beginnings of his one temper begin to flare as he spoke up, his own voice rising to match Kurama's own impressive decibel level.
"Yeah, well, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR KID DID! HE attacked us and now MY SON is probably worse off! He COLLAPSED! Your kid doesn't just fight physically, he destroyed Samui mentally!"
At this point Kazuma took in a deep gasp of fresh air while Kurama again lost his temper, which seemed to be a far more frequent thing now that he had a child as troublesome as Keichi.
"Kazuma, is what you say is true, then, I'm sorry but-"
"Dammit, don't you believe me? It's true, you kid freakin' attacked us!"
"Yes but-"
"No 'buts' your kid attacked us!"
"I didn't sa-"
"OH yes you did! That's exactly wha-"
Groaning to himself, Kurama butted in to Kazuma's little arugement, nearly yelling at the top of his lungs.
"KAZUMA! WOULD IT KILL YOU JUST TO LISTEN?"
Again, Kuwabara fell silent as Kurama took a deep breath and finally got out what he wanted to say.
"I realize that Keichi can fight, and I do apologize though what in your right mind persuaded you to try and relive your high school years and chase after criminals? And I do feel horrible for Samui, but do you realize that Koenma will care whether or not he lives or dies. Keichi, on the other hand, is just some criminal. He will get no medical attention because, quite simply, all of it is going towards your son. Mine on the other hand was lucky to get help from someone who is not entirely qualified to heal people. I would feel far worse for your kid if he wasn't the one who nearly killed mine, and now is getting every single spirit healer's full attention. Got it?"
Not waiting for an answer, Kurama hung up the phone…
(Phone flashback end!)
Hiei stared at Kurama with bored eyes then sighed.
"I guess that does sound like the moron… Well, this is the best I can do for him. I'll try and call in a few favors later. Now then, if you'll excuse me," as he said this Hiei got up to leave headed down the stairs while Kurama at his heels like a lost puppy.
"Alright… Hiei… I don't know how to thank you…" Kurama trailed off and Hiei rolled his eyes.
"I'm not doing it for you, I'm doing it for Keichi," he replied simply, opening the door.
"Hiei… why exactly do you care for Keichi so much?" Kurama knew it was silly question, but his good friend had really never truly explained it to him.
"Because… I was unable to help him before," Hiei replied, cryptic as ever before closing the door.
Sighing mainly off to himself, Kurama leaned his forehead against the smooth grain of the door and shook his head slowly. There really was no figuring that man out…
-Tren: Alright… sorry, I really ran out of steam during that last part. So please, let's just get to reader responses…
Mystical Demon: Did I update quick enough? And yeah, Hiei's appeared.
Marieko: Glad it amuses you. Was this update fast enough?
HieiFan666: Life is happy? Did I keep the character's relatively in Character, though mind you, they have changed after dealing with all the issues of having kids and all. And Keichi only had enough energy to get home once, and not get over to Mukuro's place AND go home. Also, as usual, he wasn't thinking straight. Don't worry, Keichi won't die… yet… and woot! I definitely deserve more reviews? Too kind! There'll be 100 soon… and yeah, Kazuma must die… slowly… painfully… crazily. Maybe I'll just sic Kurama's parental ass on him?
Sabs: Yeah… shadddup.
Paksennarion: Nothing happened? Well, sorta… it's just setting up the plot for THIS arc… damn, this story is NEVER GOING TO END!
Poltergeist report 101: you like the names? Well, Midori and Samui are REALLY lame puns, but Keichi and Appoline are pretty good! What other names have you seen?
TessaCilory: Hiei knows how to use a phone because I say he does… though I really should tell how he got one to begin with…
Sugar high water uma: I torture Keichi 'cuz he's so cute in pain! Glad this chapter was susometastic!
-Until next time, cheerio!