Part 25: Transmission
There was a rose growing out of his front door.
Aniki Toguro blinked at the plant, both arms wrapped around brown grocery bags. He was fairly positive that he hadn't planted a rose in the wood of his door before he left for the store.
"I'm on the fifth floor." The demon muttered to himself, glaring down at the plant as though his gaze could fry it out of existence. "Who the hell leaves roses on the fifth floor? In a door?"
It was a painfully rhetorical question. Generally, Aniki was okay with plants. He enjoyed being outside, and trees were fun to lounge in. Shizuru grew the nicest azaleas, and he liked the color and variety of flora. But roses had held a special little enmity in his heart for a while now. Might have something to do with botany-obsessed demons and mind-nullifying trees.
He rolled his eyes. "Brilliant way to try and kill me, Fox." He muttered to himself. "It worked so well the first time."
He should have known, really. Kurama was never one to take a loss lying down. He had been willing to kill himself to off Karasu, for the sake of the Gods. Word that he'd survived must have reached Makai. Things like that always made it to the Makai.
Bah, whatever. Might as well get it over with…
Aniki glanced at his left hand. A sixth finger slowly grew from between his middle and pointer. He poked at the plant.
Nothing exploded. Nothing showered him with acid or attempted to bite his newest appendage off. Instead, the rose's bright red bud opened, revealing a small white scroll resting within.
Aniki's eyebrows rose to his hairline. He dutifully gripped the scroll, his sixth impromptu finger melting back into his hand as abruptly as it had appeared. The rose immediately whithered in on itself, turning into a dried husk and falling off the door to the carpet with a definitive thump.
Ani looked down at the dead plant for a moment, then shrugged and stuck his key in the door lock. He shouldered his front door open and headed to the kitchen, dropping his groceries on the table. Then he yanked a chair out and sat backwards in it, gazing down at the small piece of paper in his hands.
"Well," he informed the empty room, "in for a penny…" He unrolled the scroll.
Touch him and die.
"Touch him and die?" Aniki said to the empty room. "How frustratingly vague. Really, Kurama…" he sat back, staring down at the note. That Kurama had delivered it he had no doubt; it had all the trappings of an authentic yoko-sealed delivery, right down to the easy whithering of the plant. He could easily believe that the writing was Kurama's. It was prim and slanted elegantly, the writing of a well-learned student.
What bothered him was the wording. Kurama was anything but vague. Sneaky, yes, self rightious, yes, crafty, absolutely, but with a message like this his modeus operandi should be crystal clear. 'Touch him and die'…
"But I already HAVE." Ani said to his kitchen. He began ticking off his fingers, conveniently adding new ones as he spoke. "There was that chaos demon affair a month ago, had to shove him out a window for that. And then when he collapsed and I took him to Genkai's, that counts. He gave me a boost to the window when those half-breeds were using the warehouse and one of them warded everything. We had to use his car when we went after Mitarai's awol little water demon, gods was THAT a mess... I dragged him out from under the awning at the Modo last week..." Aniki huffed at the note on his table. "Geeze, Fox. Get a clue."
He gazed down at the note idly. While Kurama was certainly a serious threat, even to someone as frustratingly unkillable as him, there was no real way a second fight between them could end. With Yoko's vast experience and Ani's sheer stubbornness, they'd destroy half the Makai before either gained the upper hand in a rematch.
He tilted the note. This sounded remarkably like…a hollow threat.
The hollow threat that one friend would give to another.
"We aren't friends." He informed the room. "We aren't. We hate eachother's blasted guts!"
He had considered, sometimes, what would happen when and if the rest of the Rekai Tantei returned from their little foray into Makai. He knew that nothing would end well. If Aniki Toguro was anything, he was a brutal realist. There was no way, not with the past few meetings involving almost certain armegeddon and the consumption of human psychics. Aniki figured one of two things: one, a weird sort of truce would pop up, or two, he would conveniently disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. It had never once occurred to him that, perhaps, a truce wouldn't have to be forced.
Of course, all things considered, if anyone was going to believe he'd joined the good guys it was Kurama. After all, being trapped in a human body after millions of years as a scheming fox demon did some weird things to a guy's morals. The demon was a sucker for a good sob story- wasn't Reverse Urishima proof of that?
The note was practically smirking up at him from the table. Aniki made a face at it.
Kurama was an enemy he understood. He was underhanded and sneaky and experienced, and he liked catching his opponents off guard.
Well. This had certainly caught him off guard.
"Sneaky son of a bitch." Aniki said to the room, to the absent redhead. "Make some sense, will you?"
The paper winked.
A chance.
It hit Aniki like a ton of bricks. He was being given a chance, by the second person on the very short list of "People-who-could-kill-me-and-I-wouldn't-really-mind".
How generous.
He took the piece of paper and ripped it neatly in two, tossing it in the trash can. He glanced at the clock; he had twenty minutes before he was due at Oblivion. Enough time to change and ask Kuwabara just how forgiving his friend was known to be.
A/N: Well, Kurama WAS the only one who made forays back into the human world. It would make sense for him to notice that something was up. A really WEIRD kinda something. And as a cultural note, Ura-Urishima's properly translated name was Reverse Urishima, and he was a villan in a japanese fairytale, hence his team's REAL name, "Fractured Fairy Tales" (all warriors in that team, including Shishiwakamaru, were all the mistreated villans of ancient stories.)