He sat behind his desk for what felt like the first time in an eternity.

He had been forced to be careful in Demon World while the Chimera was still in play, depending on reports from the reapers for information as to the known locations of Masanori's passing.

It would have been disastrous if he had somehow found his way within the Chimera's direct path.

Each place that had been the site of a pulse from the Chimera was distressingly different.

Some were entirely unaffected, reapers able to conduct their duties as would have been normal but some were so affected even he could not step foot within the space of trapped souls.

There did not seem to be real rhyme or reason to how the pulse operated which made it all the more frustrating.

The affects of Witnesses, even strong ones were suppose to be somewhat predictable.

So far, the Chimera was anything but predictable.

His power seems to be steadily growing…and mine affecting the Demon World less and less…

It was humbling in its own way, his lack in ability to affect souls.

As far as he knew there was no precedent for what was occurring, there had been no real point in creation that the ruler of Spirit World could not at the very least make their presence known to mortals.

He held within him the power to create things such as the Kekkai Barrier, needed expansions of the Spirit World and even to a certain degree control the mortal planes.

Yet in the face of this Chimera Soul he was utterly powerless to do anything and even if he wanted to allow himself to bear the brunt of some confrontation it would only result in a more powerful being.

He rubbed his forehead tiredly only slightly aware when the door opened to admit someone.

"This had better be important…" He began irately, stopping mid sentence as he picked up his head.

"I believe it is." Hiromi responded, her face drawn with concern, "Several problems have come up that require your attention."

"…the plans within plans within plans…who could have known…deceit is the only true weapon in the affairs of the soul…I knew…I knew…"

The wait for when Hiromi could finally bring Kanako to him had been part of his major frustrations.

He absolutely required the information only one of the experts in the intricate ways of Fate could provide.

He had not expected to be presented with what Hiromi had brought him to.

Kanako sat in a chair in the corner of a darkened room, muttering to himself as his hands traced invisible patterns in front of him. Unlike the vast majority of souls he had met with after death Kanako appeared faded, every inch of him some hue of grey.

He stared at the soul, partially horrified, "What…happened to him?"

Hiromi was quiet for a long moment, "At times when I've collected those of his race there is a…period of insanity from exposure to the nothing that exists between."

"They normally recover?" He prompted, frowning.

"Given time and left to their own devices." Hiromi assured him, her tone still carrying concern, "I think more is at play in this instance."

"Like what?" He asked, his eyes never leaving Kanako.

"I believe because his death occurred so close to the initial pulse of the Chimera he is more than simply insane. The graying suggests true damage to his soul itself." Hiromi informed him, gesturing at the muttering soul, "I am uncertain that he will recover."

"If it's because of the Chimera…" He began, his mind churning possibilities.

"You can do nothing, Lord Koenma." Hiromi cautioned almost angrily, "If it is due to the Chimera any intervention on your part may set a chain of events into play that the Three Worlds would never survive."

"You mean I can't help him until things are resolved." He corrected her, anger making him straighten as he turned to the ancient reaper, "I know my limitations here but don't think for one second I'm not keeping track of what I need to attend to after this is done."

Hiromi studied him, the concern of before slowly leaving her face, "My apologies, Lord Koenma. I overstepped the bounds of my place. Of course you will correct any abnormalities caused in this event."

He held her eyes, at first uncertain if she was mocking him or actually giving him a compliment. With Hiromi that was always a point of consideration; in some ways dealing with Hiromi was exactly like dealing with Kurama. Motivations for the two were rarely able to be taken at face value in the long run.

"…but it stays in parts till it comes together again….it does not matter that the ground is made of glass…it will shatter…and then…and then…and them…chains…" Kanako said into the silence, brushing a clawed hand over his face before returning to the abstract movements of before.

He purposefully turned his back on the pathetic soul, pushing aside the additional wisp of frustration that floated through him.

"Make sure he stays comfortable at least." He said, moving to the door of the room.

"You think you know so much godling but you don't. This was never in your hands and may cause your ruin."

He froze in the doorway spinning to look at Kanako.

The demon was not looking at him but at the far wall, for the moment his hands had fluttered to rest in his lap.

"What?" He whispered, a tendril of fear shifting through him.

"You should never trust when there is no focus….you should…shatter the ground…" Kanako murmured, lowering his head as his voice became distant again.

The silence lengthened, became thicker and more difficult to remain in as he waited to see if Kanako would say something more but it seemed the demon was content with the quiet.

He sighed softly and left the room, feeling more tired than he had an hour ago.

He would have to go back to studying the book, examine it once again for a clue he had perhaps overlooked.

"Lord Koenma…" Hiromi began as she matched her steps with his.

"What is it?" He asked, distracted.

"If you recall I said there were several problems." Hiromi replied, uneasily.

"So get on with it." He half snapped.

"Botan is…missing." Hiromi supplied.

He stopped mid-stride, "Hiromi, how is one of the reapers missing?"

It was a shock to hear Hiromi say that, all of the reapers could locate one another just by thinking about each other. It was a universal ability that was a built in reality of their creation.

He opened his mind, searching with growing anger and a small bit of apprehension.

"Hiromi, how is it that I can't locate a reaper?!" He half yelled rounding on her.

Botan was not just missing, she was absent as if she no longer existed.

That was not possible as far as he knew; there was no conceivable way that a reaper would just pop out of existence without him knowing it had happened.

Hiromi's eyes darkened, "I have no experience with this, Lord Koenma. Even in my exile I could always locate one of us. The others simply assumed she was on an assignment of yours that clouded their ability to find her."

He could not fault them for assuming that about Botan, it was not unusual for her to focus on certain things instead of the general duties of the reapers.

He continued walking to his office, trying to recall the last time he had actually laid eyes on Botan.

He was inside of his office, in the act of sitting back down in his chair before he trusted himself to speak again.

"Have one of the reapers go check on Yusuke and Kuwabara." He ordered, scowling at the blank screen of the far wall. "I want visual confirmation of where those two are."

He knew it was useless to even try to use it.

During the events three years ago he had only been able to view the events taking place if Fate was not pooling its energies which was another reason he had been forced to rely on the gang leader Narumi for insight. Narumi's small talent for sensing energies had given him a loophole that allowed him to keep tabs on everyone.

Tapping Narumi was pointless since the gang leader only spent time with Kurama after Shizuru being taken to the Demon World. He assumed it was due to her being use to avoiding Kuwabara and the others on Shizuru's orders.

Keiko had no real ability so trying to have similar contact would be useless, and he had no other options that he knew of that were in regular contact with either Yusuke or Kuwabara.

"You believe she is with them?" Hiromi inquired, stepping up to his desk.

"With the way things are right now I wouldn't be surprised." He confessed, moving to prop his elbows on his desk, "If she is with them…at least then I'll know she is around. Just make sure to warn them absolutely no interference no matter what they see, not even with Botan herself."

"You intend to leave her active?" Hiromi asked, surprised.

He sighed heavily leaning his chin on his folded hands, "I have to risk it. All things considered Botan was involved with the Phoenix Soul, it's hard to call this a coincidence. I can't disturb that balance of who was involved during that time. It's essential if this is some sort of echo to those events that the same pieces go into play in one form or another."

"You feel this is an echo of before?" Hiromi prompted, raising an eyebrow.

He looked up at her, and then away, "Back then I suspected there might be repercussions to what I had you suggest to Shinya and Kanako. Shinya warned you there might be. I did interfere when I stopped Shinya from erasing the memories of Shizuru. The universe may have decided my suggestion itself warranted interference."

"Yet you took the risk as if there was no consideration of that." Hiromi pointed out, her brow furrowing.

"No, I took the risk regardless of it." He corrected, lost in his own thoughts, "It might surprise you but I do pay attention. The fact that the universe was so unbalanced being brought to my attention in that way forced me to start noticing smaller details."

He had to wonder if he had noticed the right smaller details.

He had to wonder if all he had set in motion had been ensuring the Three Worlds did not survive.

He had to wonder if his initial reasons for doing the things he had done would end up only destroying the people he had been attempting to return to that balance.

He had to wonder if he was any good at being the Ruler of Spirit World if he could insist on the attention to those smaller details instead of only focusing on the broader concepts.

"Find Botan," He insisted without looking up again, "and if you have to contact Keiko, but only if you have to. If Yusuke and Kuwabara can't be found usually she knows where they headed off to but make sure it's one of the younger ones. You terrify demons just showing up, I don't need to have to answer for the girl having a heart attack."

"And the Gate?" Hiromi prompted, "It is still in Kurama and Hiei's possession."

"Go get that as soon as you can," He answered, covering momentary chagrin he had actually forgotten about the artifact, "That's too dangerous to have around Shizuru."

"Yes, Lord Koenma." Hiromi responded, bowing her head slightly before leaving.

"Why is it that none of my pulses seem to do anything to you, Shinya?" He asked, curious for the moment as they left a small village.

Or rather what had been a small village that once had been a thriving community of demons who had filled it with the noise of everyday life.

That had been a day ago; due to a pulse it had taken less than twenty four hours for it to become simply the most recent of his victims.

Not even birds called out as they traveled the main road out, the creatures of the surrounding area having reacted to his ministrations as they always did. His steps were the echo of death, his scent one of chaos that even nature rejected by fleeing or hiding from it.

That might have bothered him before, if he had been a demon who had any real love of the spaces around him which he had not concerned himself about.

His life had been dedicated to order, the clash of battle to ensure it existed, the enforcement of its continuation.

Now he could only dwell in the shadow, immerse himself in the spread of chaos, indulge in the umbra of knowing what he knew.

"When one is exposed to Fate as often as I have been one develops a certain type of immunity to its impulses." Shinya answered from behind him, "May I ask…what exactly are your final intentions in all this?"

He smiled to himself, "When you look around with those special eyes, what do you see?"

"I see the flow of Fate and life itself." Shinya responded, carefully.

"No, you see an altered reality." He corrected, stopping to turn towards the other demon, "One that allows me to exist, one that ultimately will be erased."

"You cannot do such a thing as you are." Shinya remarked, his brow furrowing.

"I won't." He agreed, his smile deepening, "not alone but in time I will have what I need. The threads are moving of their own accord already. All rushing to me to ensure my intentions will be the ones that mold Fate into its former frame."

"As opposed to…?" Shinya prompted uneasily.

He might reconsider the presence of the old one, while at the moment it was imperative he be at least marginally involved he would not allow interference of any kind in his plans.

Shinya might well prove dangerous if he was given enough information. The sway of Fate was easily influenced at the moment, and Shinya would become aware of that soon enough.

"So full of questions, I thought you kind never questioned." He answered flippantly as he continued down the road they were traveling, "Some details are only for those who will be a part of them, Shinya. If you prove useful, you may well be one of those."

"I do not travel with you to prove useful." Shinya denied, following again.

"No…you travel with me as a means to an end. It was arrogance for you, assuming you were the one that unraveled things. Do not misunderstand; you were a major player in these matters but not the main ones. Anyone with knowledge would have easily replaced you." He assured Shinya.

They continued in silence, his thoughts drifting among the things he intended to make happen.

In a way he was rather in awe, such a simple thing had caused such a multitude of rents and tears within the fabric of Fate but he understood it had also created the possibility of his creation.

There was a place, beneath the obscurity of chaos where resentment lived and breathed.

If there was fault he knew where to lay it, who to exact his vengeance upon and just how to go about doing so.

The chains of Fate would be reformed and strengthened through the devastation he wrought.

When he was done, when balance was finally restored and the moment of change erased he would remember their screams with baleful fondness.

He was uncomfortable.

He concentrated on the flickering of the campfire making conscious effort to not allow just how uncomfortable he was becoming.

It made a sort of sense that in the monotony of continuous travel some subjects would be spoken of just to pass the time between the other two who were more prone to talk of trivial things.

It was the subject that they seemed to be speaking more and more about that was causing the increase in unwanted sensation.

For no reason he could fathom Shizuru had become curious about the Human World, in particular about humans themselves.

So far it had only grazed physical aspects, what the landscape was like and other such basic understanding but it was beginning to delve deeper and Kurama responded with what appeared to be uncaring willingness to supply information.

He were beginning to feel as if he were being poised on the edge of a knife while listening to their discussion, he should not care that the two indulged in the topic but he could not help but be aware each time it came up.

"I rarely think of them as simply humans," Kurama said adding wood to the fire as he answered a question Shizuru had asked,

"And you like living there?" Shizuru prompted quietly.

"I have more than one reason for my partiality now." Kurama responded as he returned to his seat beside the fire, "It was an interesting transition between my life here and one of preference there. Not many demons who venture into the Human World develop that distinction, most end up longing for the Demon World and a return to it."

He could not help the increase in tension from Kurama's words.

He was just such a demon, one that had spent time within the Human World and longing for the Demon World. There had been a time that want had obscured everything else that surrounded him. There had been a time where he had contemplated the incursion of the Demon World on the Human World with a sense of uncaring anticipation.

Denied easy travel back to his home world he had thought very little of Sensui's bid to open the portal between the worlds, allowing himself to be immersed even momentarily in that desire to return to where he belonged and not locked into a world he would never have chosen.

He barely managed to escape the train of thought that internal admission strained to take him down.

He refused to acknowledge that any real desire to be in Demon World was prompted by his ambitions and had nothing to do with the general want to exist in it.

He refused to be twisted further by the fact that at times within the past three years the Demon World had seemed more of a self imposed cage that he dwelt in than his actual home world.

If there had existed a fourth world he would have preferred that to the ones that were available to him including Spirit World, an existence even there would have still held too much of the past for him to truly long to inhabit it.

This line of thought being evoked was one of the main reasons he found himself so hyper aware of these conversations.

He did not want to think of these things.

He did not want to travel down these paths within his mind.

He did not want to find himself contemplating Shizuru more and more as these conversations took place having to acknowledge how little they meant to her since she lacked any real connection to the subject.

Shizuru could look at Kurama and perceive his human form but beyond that humans and the Human World were an abstract to her.

He had done that to her, had robbed her of that connection and in the future planned to simply reform her world by giving her over to a human that she would come to know as her brother but it would mean very little to her.

He could even admit the thought touched off a dark and unworthy emotion in him.

That Kuwabara would be given even that small connection through reality to her but his own must remain hidden from her.

It seemed it was his lot to remain hidden from those desired connections, to set aside his preferences for what he perceived as another's welfare.

How was it that he constantly found himself within that trap?

Shizuru could not go into those future events without such base information, that was cruel even to his standards but he did find himself wanting distance from these times though he could never quite bring himself to leave.

"Your reasons must be pretty good." Shizuru commented, staring off into the gathering darkness, "I can't really see you staying somewhere you find boring."

Kurama chuckled, "Hardly, if the Human World were boring I would have remained here after the first Demon Tournament. Aside from my human mother residing there I also have other ties that make returning there often an anticipated action."

His eyes cut to study Kurama, the tension coiling inside of him.

"What? Your friends?" Shizuru asked, her voice slightly mocking.

"A human woman I came to find enjoyed my company as I do her own." Kurama supplied, his mouth curving slightly in fondness, "The Human World holds many interesting things but none as fascinating as Narumi."

Incredulous shock filtered through him.

What game was Kurama playing that would require he use that name instead of keeping the conversation obscure?

He could not help that his eyes sought out Shizuru's face to see what her reaction might be if any.

As far as he could see there was nothing more than a slight raise of an eyebrow that could easily be interpreted as dismissal.

Wasn't that the best outcome he could have foreseen?

If so then why was it that it disturbed him to see her so casually toss aside Kurama's involvement with a human?

It should set him at ease to see that continued lack of invested interest from her. To have it constantly asserted that this Shizuru truly was doing nothing more than entertaining herself with the questions she put forward about the Human World.

Instead it only added to that growing sense of being balanced between impending harm and ambiguous disassociation within him.

"The Human World sounds dull to me." Shizuru stated, still looking off into the nothing of the night.

"It has its moments of being unbearably interesting." Kurama countered, chuckling softly, "Certainly not in the same sense life here contains but well worth the time spent in it. The Demon World holds constant physical dangers; the Human World can be seen as one that holds constant all encompassing ones. I have found myself entangled in many events that could not be called simply physical in nature. If anything life in the Human World requires me to know myself far better than I might if dwelling here."

He sincerely wished that Kurama would silence himself.

Though the fox demon was obviously talking about himself he could not help but feel he was under some barrage each time Kurama spoke.

He could not dismiss how those words pertained to his own experiences in the Human World and all that encompassed.

"Why would you want that?" Shizuru asked, smirking as she turned her head to look at Kurama, "Humans can't be that much different than demons. Bothering to get to know them just seems like a waste of time."

"It may seem that way to someone in your situation but can you honestly say you are less knowing the small amount you have come to know me?" Kurama questioned his voice deceptively gentle.

Shizuru frowned, "I'm not less or more, Kurama. If anything it's probably wrong of me to let you get to know me at all. You don't have a good record with Witnesses and you're really not as unaffected by me as you should be. The way I am now…it'll be gone one day too. You're just setting yourself up for more pain."

Back and forth, like a bladed pendulum he was tied beneath.

He yearned to destroy that aspect that caused her to accept that would be her fate.

He yearned to never see her again, to leave her to what would happen if he was no longer an aspect of her current path.

"I thought you were unconcerned with the right and wrong of things?" Kurama said, raising an eyebrow.

Shizuru sighed heavily, pushing herself to her feet, "Things change when you get use to someone being around. I was use to Kanako and even Shinya; now that they're gone I notice where they would normally be…at least Kanako. I get that so I get what it's going to do to you if I'm no longer around. I wouldn't call it caring…more not wanting you to do that. I don't want you to…notice where I use to be."

It had been spoken haltingly, as if she were attempting to express something far beyond her capabilities to understand. Her frustration was obvious in her furrowed brow, the inflection in her voice, and the sudden lessening of her presence.

There was something different about her in that moment, something he could not quite put a name to.

The silence that followed that statement was not just uncomfortable, it was intrusive and biting.

He refused to be the one to break it, though it strained in him to do just that.

What could he offer her?

Shizuru had been surprised of his intervention during her fall. That was not a person who would find strength in his presence, not a person that would react to what he could offer her. Nor did he think she would be willing to as she had been before.

Kurama slowly stood, "What you ask is impossible, Shizuru. I would notice your absence…but you mean more than just to convince me to be uncaring towards you."

His eyes swung back to Shizuru who had given into her habit of touching the mark along her collarbone.

It made his insides crawl to watch her do so now, knowing what lay beneath her fingers.

There was no more meaning to that motion then there was to her interest in the Human World.

He had to believe that were the case, that she did not find comfort in that habit.

That light, rhythmic touch in no way insinuated something more.

He would drive himself mad with this doubt, with the continual surge and receding of his emotions.

"I'm not sure what I meant…" Shizuru muttered, turning away from Kurama, "I just…don't want that to happen."

In the dim light of the fire he watched her raise a hand to her head, then fumble in the pouch at her side for one of the sticks she chewed on.

Kurama returned to his seat, simultaneously seeming to ignore Shizuru and keeping careful eye on her as he added a bit more fuel to the fire.

Normally when it was just the two of them they rarely set a fire but it had become habit during this trek, Shizuru seeming to relax more if they had one.

Which would in turn lead to these discussions, and his own eventual need to "scout" instead of remain with the pair.

He stood on the thick branch he had been occupying, putting out a steadying hand on the wood.

He had his fill of listening to them, of fighting his own want to interject.

He did not bother informing them of his intentions, leaving before either of them could question them.

He did not have a suitable reason to give.

I know this one is short, promise the next one will be longer :) Please Review :)