I woke early the next morning. The blinds on the bedroom windows were down, but the first rays of the rising sun had found the smallest crack between them, and were apparently determined to stab directly into my eyes.

I was, for the briefest of moments, irritated by the disturbance. But then I rolled out of Atsuko's bed and quickly onto my feet. If it was morning already, then something had to have happened. Yusuke and Botan would be back, surely, and hopefully Kuwabara with them. Still groggy, I made for the door and swept it open—then halted.

Soft yellow sunlight was streaming into the living room. Keiko was curled up on the lone couch, asleep, and Yusuke sprawled on the floor beside it, limbs splayed, half covered with a blanket, snoring. There was no sign of Genkai or Shizuru, let alone Botan or Kuwabara, but there was one other person I hadn't expected to see.

Through the sheer curtain covering the glass doors to the balcony, I could make out a very familiar head of long red hair.

I tiptoed across the living room on light feet, careful not to wake Yusuke or Keiko, and slid the door open quietly. Kurama did not turn, even as I gently eased the door shut again. Keiko scrunched her nose a little in her sleep, but Yusuke didn't even twitch.

"When did you get here?" I leant my forearms on the balcony railing, matching Kurama's posture. He looked at me at last when I spoke, and I was caught between amazement and disgust at the sheer greenness of his eyes. The morning light made the color look as vibrant as new spring grass. It was beautiful, but entirely unnatural—not unlike Kurama himself, I supposed.

"A few hours ago," Kurama said quietly. Then, in a slightly teasing tone, "You slept through all the excitement."

Excitement was never a good word with people like Kurama, Yusuke, and Kuwabara, especially given the tension of the night before. "What happened? Did Yusuke and Botan find Kuwabara, or—" I cut myself off. I didn't want to hypothesize; I just wanted Kurama to fill me in.

"He is safe," Kurama assured me. "He's sleeping right now, in Yusuke's room." Kurama sobered then, the humor leaving his gaze. "But he and his friends were attacked last night, by one of the psychics."

I paled, remembering the state of Kido's spine the day before. "Are they okay?"

"They are now." Kurama looked out over the city, not seeming to truly see the buildings across the road. "They won't remember what happened."

Spoken with the certainty of a man who'd erased their memories himself. It made my stomach twist uneasily, because I was sure that, unlike me, Kuwabara's friends had not been offered the sparkling golden pollen as a choice.

"And, what did happen?"

"Apparently the psychic known as Seaman has the ability to create creatures made of water. He attacked the four in the rain last night, with the intent to kill," Kurama said, almost clinically. "He would have succeeded, had Kuwabara's powers not returned in time to save him and his friends."

I waited for Kurama to continue, but he didn't. "What happened to Seaman?"

"He is also here, asleep in Yusuke's room."

I stared. That had not been on my shortlist of possibilities. The attacker got away? Sure. The attacker was defeated, or even killed? Certainly possible, though I doubted Kuwabara would kill a human on purpose. The attacker sleeping peacefully in my cousin's bedroom, though? No, not something I could have foreseen.

"It seems Kuwabara's sword slashed through one of Seaman's water monsters with so much force that Seaman himself, though standing several feet away, was cut quite deeply across the chest." Looking simultaneously exasperated and fond, Kurama continued, "Rather than leaving him to bleed out in the street, Kuwabara carried him here—along with, I should mention, all three of his other unconscious friends."

"Seriously?" Kurama nodded. I tried to picture the logistics of carrying that many people at once, but couldn't manage it. "Kid's a friggin' tank."

"Indeed." The word was laced with amusement, though at my words or Kuwabara's actions I wasn't sure. "We have bandaged Seaman's wounds for now. When he wakes, we will attempt to discern what he knows."

I nodded, casting a glance over my shoulder to the living room. Yusuke's light snores were just barely audible on the balcony, so I figured we had a while yet before any interrogations began. But, speaking of interrogations…

"Where were you yesterday, anyway?"

Kurama turned to face me fully, face unreadable. "Spirit World."

I flinched backward involuntarily, but quickly mastered myself. It wasn't anything to do with the Ichigaki mystery, I was sure. Yusuke was investigating this demon world portal, which meant it was Spirit Detective business. It was only natural that Spirit World would be involved. Kurama could not have missed my flinch, but he very tactfully did not react to it, allowing me the moment it took to think it all through.

"Did you learn anything useful?"

"Unfortunately not." A hint of frustration and something a little more dangerous crept into his gaze. "I suspect Koenma knows more about this situation than he has so far let on."

I didn't precisely trust Koenma, since he represented Spirit World, and since Spirit World may or may not have been involved in Ichigaki's experiments. But I was pretty sure that, at least in the goal to stop a massive portal from opening to demon world, we were all on the same side. Which led me to wonder, "What could he possibly have to gain from keeping us in the dark?"

"I am not sure." Not 'I don't know,' I noticed, which meant Kurama probably had a theory or two as to why Koenma wasn't sharing. I drummed my fingers along the railing, trying to puzzle it out.

"You don't think it's related to…" I gestured vaguely, attempting to silently convey the Ichigaki thing.

"No," Kurama said, and I was a little surprised to find that he sounded quite certain. He noticed my raised eyebrows and expanded, "For all his faults, I do not think Koenma would turn a blind eye to something like Ichigaki, let alone aid such activities. No… I think it much more likely that Koenma is attempting to hide a past mistake. It's becoming something of a pattern, with him."

"Well, that's…" I struggled to find an apt description and failed. I finished lamely, "Moderately comforting, I guess."

The others soon woke, and in another hour we all sat on the floor of Yusuke's bedroom, waiting for the psychic known as Seaman to finally wake. I didn't know what to expect when I entered the bedroom, but I hadn't anticipated that Seaman would be a teenager. He looked about my age, give or take a year. Even in his sleep his brow was furrowed, as if something was troubling him in his dreams.

Yusuke sat backwards on a chair near the bed, brooding and impatient for the kid to wake. Kurama and Genkai hovered over Yusuke's shoulder expectantly while Botan, Keiko, Shizuru and I hung back near the window, intending to observe but not participate in the coming interrogation. Kuwabara, still deeply asleep himself, lay on the floor near Shizuru, snoring softly under a crumpled blanket.

I nursed a cup of tea and tried to focus on the warmth of the cup in my hand and the green aroma of the leaves, instead of the tension in the room. We stood in thick silence for perhaps fifteen minutes before the sunlight filtering in from the window finally roused the sleeping psychic.

He blinked awake slowly, looking momentarily puzzled by the unfamiliar ceiling and bed. And then he shot up, eyes wide and panicked, breathing hard and gasping a small, pained breath as his right hand rose up to brace the bandages covering his injury. His eyes, I saw, were blue, and not unlike the sea. Fitting.

"Welcome back," Yusuke greeted, not sounding welcoming in the least. Seaman stared.

"You're Yusuke." It was a little weird that he knew my cousin by sight. But then, they had been watching him, hadn't they? Whoever they were. There were so many unknowns about this whole thing.

"That's right, Goldie, and that's my bed you're sleepin' in, thanks to the human freight train over there dragging you in so we could stitch you back up." Yusuke nodded to where Kuwabara lay, still snoring contentedly despite the morning sunlight and our conversation.

"His companions—your victims—have survived as well," Kurama added. I couldn't see his eyes from my position against the wall, but his voice was dangerously quiet and controlled. "They informed us all of the encounter with you, and we erased their memories of last night so they wouldn't be burdened by the darker truths."

"Like another human fighting for the wrong side," Yusuke finished. "Kuwabara saved your life after you tried to kill him. You owe him big, so start talkin'."

Seaman clenched his fists in his blankets, looking away from Yusuke's stare. "You don't understand. You haven't seen what I have. We should all die."

A beat of silence met this declaration. Kurama said, finally, "Clarify 'all'. You mean your fellow psychics?"

Seaman shook his head emphatically. "No, I mean all of us. Humans! You'd all think so, too, if you saw the video tape!"

"What video?" Botan asked. Seaman's clenched fists trembled.

Hesitantly, Seaman confessed, "It's the video they label 'Chapter Black.'"

Kurama straightened immediately. He sounded distinctly surprised when he asked, "You've seen it?"

Seaman nodded, looking pained. "Every single minute of it."

"Amazing," Kurama breathed. I glanced at Botan and the other girls, trying to see if they knew what Seaman and Kurama were talking about. I was rewarded with equally puzzled glances and silent shakes of the head.

Yusuke clearly didn't know it, either. He said to Kurama, "I'm guessing you've heard of it."

Kurama nodded. "It is a piece of intelligence, supposedly kept in the deepest bowels of Spirit World's records department," he explained. "Over its millennia of existence, the human race has committed heinous crimes against others and their own. This video tape is a compilation. It documents the most unspeakable acts of all. It is said to run thousands of hours. I knew well of the tape's existence, but never imagined it could be an impetus in this case."

I felt a little queasy just thinking about the existence of such a tape; I couldn't imagine watching it. If it truly documented the worst moments in human history… there was so much. War, genocide, rape…

You, a traitorous little voice in the back of my mind suggested. I shook my head and tried to force the thought to the back of my mind, but I didn't entirely succeed.

"So many horrifying things marching across that giant screen..." Seaman's eyes were distant, no doubt re-living the images he'd seen. "You don't know how we really are! What we're capable of... I saw it all. If you saw it, you'd think differently, too! You'd understand we're doomed. And so, we have to—"

Yusuke interrupted him by violently jumping to his feet, kicking away his chair and flinging it into the wall with a clatter. I winced and glanced at Kuwabara, but amazingly he slept on. Whatever he'd done last night must have exhausted him terribly. Seaman had gone silent, eyes wide. He reminded me strongly of a startled rabbit, scared and weak and wet-eyed.

"Have to what?!" Yusuke demanded loudly. "Have to get us all eaten up by some bloodthirsty monster?"

Seaman shouted right back at Yusuke. "That's right! You're defensive because you don't know the truth! Humanity only seems good to you because you were born in a peaceful time! But war is our nature! It'll always come back."

Seaman's voice went quiet then as he asked Yusuke if he'd ever seen hundreds waiting for their turn to be killed in a death camp, or watched horsemen destroy a village and sing happy songs while they danced on the bodies of their victims. Yusuke looked utterly unaffected by his speech, and I could not see Kurama's face, but Botan raised a hand to her trembling lips and Keiko squeezed Puu tighter to her chest.

"Civil war," Seaman continued, fiercely quiet, "where a mom is hacked up in front of her child, or a child in front of his mom. And a soldier, breaking up a family who loves each other and leading them into a fire. And his eyes, enjoying the torture!"

Keiko couldn't hold back her tears then, a hand coming to cover her mouth and repress a quiet sob. Shizuru took hold of her immediately, guiding her out of the room. Yusuke turned to watch them go, then turned back to Seaman with a hard look.

"And you think you're better than those people on the tape?"

"I know I'm not!" Seaman shouted. "Neither are you! No human can be!"

Unimpressed, Yusuke jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "What about Kuwabara? He saved you, right? You know, last night, when he came to for a minute, I asked him: 'Stupid, why the hell did you save that jerk?' and he said: 'Because, Urameshi, in his eyes, he was crying for help'." Yusuke leaned back, propping his hands behind his head, looking totally relaxed. "I thought it was a pretty stupid thing to say at the time, but now I see how scared you are and I kinda follow. A big oaf like Kuwabara, he's got that bully look you must hate. But he cared about you. Bet you weren't expecting that."

Moisture had been welling in Seaman's eyes as Yusuke spoke, and now he let out a pained wail that had nothing to do with his injuries as he hunched forward, fat tears falling onto his borrowed blanket.

"Every night I see them! The victims on that tape! I've always seen myself like them! But then, in my nightmares, I'm the one holding the weapons! You know? Like all along, it's been me who was doing those terrible things! And I feel dirtier and dirtier, like I need to make up for something! But I don't even know what. Like I'm the bully. I'm sorry! I'm... sorry..."

From the corner of my eye I saw Botan wiping away her own tears. I myself was torn between sympathy and annoyance. Sympathy, because I knew well how it felt to lose sleep for fear of reliving horrible scenes of violence and cruelty, scenes where you took someone else's life with your own hands. But annoyance, too, because at least when he woke up, he could take comfort in the fact that he'd never actually done those horrible things.

I had no such luxury.

"Perhaps we should leave him, now," Kurama suggested quietly. "Clearly, he must face his own demons before he faces us."

Silent nods of agreement all around. All of us but Botan filed out of the room. Botan, meanwhile, sat on the edge of Yusuke's bed, reaching out a hesitant hand to stroke Seaman's hair while he shook with sobs.

I returned to the kitchen, intent on washing my teacup, if only to have something to occupy my mind and hands. Watching Seaman break down had left me feeling odd and fragile, and I hoped that focusing on menial tasks would prevent my thoughts from wandering to dark places.

Shizuru and Keiko were there, with a lit cigarette and a glass of water respectively. Keiko's eyes were dry now, though she still looked somber as she sipped the water. With the hand not holding the glass, she still held Puu tightly to her chest, where the thing blinked slowly and occasionally looked up at her with a vaguely concerned expression.

"I've been meaning to ask," I said as I approached the sink and began to wash my teacup. "What is Puu, exactly?"

Keiko blinked at the question, glancing downward as if she had forgotten she even had the creature in her arms. "Oh, right. He's Yusuke's Spirit Beast."

I tilted my head. "Is that a Spirit Detective thing?"

"You know, I'm not exactly sure," Keiko peered down at Puu curiously, and Puu blinked its round eyes at her. "Botan said he hatched from an egg that Koenma gave him, so maybe." Keiko smiled slyly then, looking up at me with a mischief I'd never seen in her before. "He's supposed to reflect Yusuke's inner self."

I waited a moment to check whether Keiko was pulling my leg. A quick glance at Shizuru rewarded me with a smirk and a nod.

"Yusuke's inner self… is this cuddly little blue thing?"

"Puu!" said Puu, evidently in agreement. He flapped his—arms? Wings?—softly, making Keiko and me giggle, and making Shizuru huff an amused breath around her cigarette.

As if summoned, Yusuke stormed into the living room from the balcony then, falling to his knees and yanking open what looked like a bulky suitcase with enough force that I thought it might break.

"EARTH TO TODDLER BITCH!" He shouted at the thing. "You better speak now before I forever put that pacifier ten inches down your throat!"

The shouting quickly drew Kurama, Genkai, and Botan to look over Yusuke's shoulder. I craned my head around the doorway of the kitchen to see what was going on. On a small screen within the suitcase, there was indeed what appeared to be a toddler. He looked vaguely familiar, I thought, but it wasn't until he spoke that I finally saw the resemblance between the toddler on screen and the much older-looking Koenma I'd seen at the Dark Tournament.

"Ah, Yusuke," Koenma greeted. "I'm glad to see you've regained some enthusiasm. It's good, in small doses."

"Kurama says you knew who was behind this from the very start!" Yusuke bit out. "Why the hell haven't you told me?!"

Koenma hesitated. "I wasn't positive until the video tape. Only one man has a copy of that… I just didn't want to believe it."

"What's going on?" I jolted a little at the close whisper, and Keiko shot me an apologetic glance. "I can hear Yusuke shouting just fine, but it looks like everyone's just staring at static."

I blinked at her in puzzlement for a second. She couldn't see it? But then, it would probably make sense for Spirit World technology to be protected from view by normal humans. I turned back to the conversation, listening intently, and then paraphrased Koenma's half of the conversation for Keiko.

"Koenma says the guy behind all of this is called Shinobu Sensui," I reported quietly. "He was the Spirit Detective before Yusuke came along, apparently."

"That face!" Yusuke exclaimed at the picture of the teenager that appeared on the screen. "The one who confronted us in the fairway—but he looks a lot older now."

Koenma went on, and I listened for a long moment, absorbing Koenma's words.

"Sensui was a real black-and-white kind of guy, apparently. Sounds like he started having doubts or something, and eventually he dropped off the map about ten years ago, taking that awful video tape with him." Keiko gasped a little at the mention of the tape again, and I decided to leave out Koenma's warning to Yusuke about just how lethal Sensui could be. "Koenma is leaving for human world now, apparently, so I expect he'll be coming here soon."

The transmission ended, and Yusuke shut the communication case with a snap. "A detective… Well, I'm sure as hell not going to let some idiot just like me be the end of the world!" Yusuke whirled to face Botan then. "Look Botan, no more innocent acts. What the hell is this?"

Botan jumped in surprise. "Why me?"

"You help Spirit Detectives, right?" Yusuke asked impatiently. "You must have been with this guy."

Botan shook her head slowly. "In those days, I was just a simple grim reaper."

I glanced uncertainly at Keiko. "Botan's a grim reaper?" Keiko shook her head, apparently not any more informed than I was on that matter.

Yusuke and Botan exchanged a few more jibes that went entirely over my head before Kurama reminded them that they should be focusing on the problem of Sensui.

"Well, in that case, I'm useless," Botan said lightly. She turned away from Yusuke and Kurama and spotted me and Keiko hovering in the doorway. "Oh, Keiko! I've just remembered—do you have any more bandages around here? With all the excitement before, I'm afraid Mitarai's started to bleed through them."

"Yes, of course," Keiko said, then paused uncertainly. "Though, I think we're almost out..."

"Save them." I directed the words to both Keiko and Botan, then nodded at the closed door to Yusuke's bedroom. "Let me."

Botan's fidgeted anxiously. "Are you sure you should be using your energy right now? You're still tired from yesterday, and you might need it."

Botan glanced at Genkai, as if expecting her to give a ruling on the wisdom of healing Mitarai. I looked at Genkai, too, since she appeared to be the de facto general of our little group. Genkai, for her part, shrugged carelessly before fishing in her pocket for a packet of cigarettes.

"I'll be alright," I assured Botan. She still looked skeptical, but she obediently stepped out of the way so I could make my way towards Yusuke's bedroom.

"I think I'll go fetch some more bandages from the store anyway," Keiko said, behind me.

"Probably a good idea, with the way things are going," Shizuru agreed.

The door to Yusuke's bedroom opened before I got there, and a very tired-looking Kuwabara limped out, dragging his feet and mumbling irritably about Yusuke as he trudged toward the bathroom. He seemed not to notice me at all, and so I slipped by him and into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind me.

Mitarai sat straighter at my entrance, looking wary.

"Hey." I stood in the doorway for a second, meeting Mitarai's cautious stare with my own. "If I help you, do you promise not to try to kill anyone again?"

Mitarai blinked in surprise, then glanced away. "My powers don't work without water, anyway."

That was not a particularly comforting answer. "Yeah, not what I asked."

Mitarai jolted a little. A little shakily, he said, "I-I promise."

I eyed him skeptically a moment longer, but he seemed sincere. He might have wanted the human race dead, but he didn't seem like he wanted to personally kill anyone. He certainly looked far more sad than murderous.

"Alright then." I rolled up my sleeves and came to sit on Yusuke's bed. Mitarai flinched backwards at first, and with the motion of his raised arms I saw that Botan was right—he'd begun to bleed through his bandages. I did not reach for them immediately, instead holding my hands up where Mitarai could see them.

"The bandages have to come off," I explained patiently. "Will you let me take them?"

Mitarai hesitated, still eyeing me warily, but finally nodded stiffly and edged closer. With slow, deliberate movements, I unwound the bandages around his chest. The wound was long and deep, jagged around the edges. He was lucky that it hadn't penetrated further and pierced something important.

I piled the dirty bandages on the floor and turned back to Mitarai, hands raised. He seemed to notice, for the first time, that I had not brought any medical supplies. His eyes widened in alarm.

Before he could work himself into a panic, I said quickly, "I'm going to heal you. I will touch you lightly on the shoulder—not on your injury—and heal you with my energy." I held still, waiting for a reaction from Mitarai. "Can you handle that?"

He still looked a little lost. His eyes flicked over my shoulder briefly, to the door Kuwabara had exited through. Did he think Kuwabara would protect him, or did he just not want to be alone and at the mercy of one of his 'enemies'? I decided not to tell Mitarai that, had I wanted to kill him, I would not have bothered with the ruse of 'healing' him.

At last Mitarai swallowed and nodded. He braced himself as I brought one hand to his shoulder, like he was expecting an electric shock, or something. He received none, of course—only the warm flow of my energy into his system through the point of contact, and the slow course of it surrounding his sluggishly bleeding wound as it began to close, achingly slow.

Mitarai watched, wide-eyed, as the bleeding stopped and the flesh of his chest began to close back together slowly, perhaps a quarter of a centimeter per minute. After a good few minutes of gaping at his own insides, Mitarai turned those wide eyes on me, looking more lost than ever.

"Why are you doing this?"

I shrugged lightly with the shoulder that wasn't connected to the arm healing Mitarai. This was less complex than knitting a spine back together, and so I didn't much mind telling him.

"Because I like to feel useful," I said, since it was true. "Because you're injured, and I can heal you." Also true. I paused before continuing, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't hurt to add, "And because, if you do decide to try anything funny, I can pop your head like a water balloon."

Mitarai flinched a little, and I had to focus to maintain the contact on his shoulder. I shot him a warning glance, and he gulped and stilled. Warily he asked, "Is that why you're tired from yesterday?"

I looked at him in surprise. Had he been listening at the door, or were the walls of the apartment just that thin? I spoke before he could interpret my surprise as an admission of guilt.

"No," I said calmly. "Yesterday I stitched together the spine of another psychic. The victim of one of your allies—the Doctor." Mitarai's eyes widened again, and he turned his gaze away from me, toward the floor. Not about to let him distract himself from just who he'd joined up with, I continued, "His name is Kido, and he's lucky he can walk."

"...Oh."

Mitarai said nothing more. He stared at the floor of Yusuke's bedroom with distant eyes, brooding. I worked in silence, humming with energy as, slowly, Mitarai's bloody gash diminished into a thin red line. It was perhaps half an hour later, when the gash was almost completely closed, that something occurred to me.

"You and I have something in common, you know."

"Oh, yeah?" Mitarai glanced at me doubtfully, seeming to sense a trap. "What's that?"

"I almost killed Kuwabara once, too."

Mitarai gaped, but at least this time he didn't try to pull away. "What?"

"It's a long story, and I'm not about to get into all the details, but I beat him up really bad. I mean, really bad. As in, an ordinary human wouldn't have survived, bad." I glanced up to see if Mitarai was following. He was, it seemed, shock slowly melting into disbelief and amazement. "But he didn't even defend himself… he was trying to help me."

"But—" Mitarai halted, as if waiting for me to say something. I waited for him to finish his thought. Faintly, he said, "You're here."

And wasn't that an amazing thing? The fact that I'd survived this long, and the fact that I'd not just been spared, not just saved, but forgiven, and welcomed, and treated as a friend.

"Yes," I agreed. "I'm here. Kuwabara forgave me."

Mitarai shook his head, still disbelieving. "But how?"

I shrugged again. "I apologized… and I did my best to make up for it."

"And he just forgave you?" Asked Mitarai. "Just like that?"

I repressed a chuckle, because I thought Mitarai might take it the wrong way, but I couldn't suppress a small smile. "To be honest, I think he forgave me before I even apologized, let alone anything else."

Mitarai shook his head, staring out the window. "It doesn't make any sense."

I wasn't sure whether he was talking about what I'd said, or what Kuwabara had done for him. Both, maybe. I eyed him carefully as the harsh red line of the cut across Mitarai's chest finally knit back together, fading to healthy pink. Mitarai still looked pained, despite the fact that he was now completely healed. It was a familiar sort of look, and I stared after I removed my hand from his shoulder, probably rudely, while I tried to place it.

"You wish he'd killed you, don't you?"

Mitarai jolted away from me, eyes wide and panicked. I interpreted that as a resounding yes. I had seen the look before, after all—on the faces of En, Ryo, and Kai, after they'd been freed from the veruka and confronted with a lifetime remembering the horrors they'd wrought under Ichigaki's control.

"I know that look," I said, certain now. "It's not humanity you have the issue with, is it? It's yourself."

"That's not true!" Mitarai's voice cracked as he said it, though. I wasn't convinced, and neither was he, I thought. "It's not just me… It's all of us! We're all rotten inside!"

"Even Kuwabara?" He had no answer for that. "You want to say that all of humanity is rotten and that we all deserve to die, but that's not what you really think, is it? It's just what you want to believe, to justify the fact that you think that you're rotten, and deserve to die."

"I…" Mitarai heaved a labored breath, bowing his head. "I…" His shoulders shook. Teardrops fell to the blanket again.

I hadn't meant to make him cry, although I don't know what I expected to happen when I called him out on his suicidal proclivities. Feeling very much out of my depth, I hesitantly reached out to pat his hair, the way I'd seen Botan do earlier.

"It's okay," I said softly, because it seemed like the sort of thing you said to someone when they cried. Mitarai sobbed harder, and I glanced at the door behind me, wishing Botan would hear Mitarai's distress and return to save me. "It's okay…"

No rescue came. Mitarai turned his face into my shoulder, which soon grew wet with tears. I sighed, leaning back against the wall on the bed, and allowed him to fall to pieces, occasionally murmuring soft reassurances. Eventually Mitarai's sobs turned to sniffs, and his sniffs turned to soft, deep breaths.

I would ordinarily have been more annoyed at him falling asleep on my shoulder, but healing his wound had tired me out, and the sound of his soft breath was relaxing. I leaned back further against the wall, Mitarai warm against my side, and let my eyes slide closed. I'd rest here, just for a few minutes…

I woke violently. I'd been in the midst of a dream—a nightmare—involving pigtails and demons, and as I was forced harshly to the ground I twisted with a growl, forming a gleaming ball of golden energy without thinking and rearing back to smash it into my attacker's face.

The attacker, it turned out, was Kuwabara.

"Woah, woah, Ren, it's me!" Kuwabara hardly paid attention to the fact that I'd nearly taken his head off. He kept his right hand on my back, pressing me into the floor. With his left, I saw, he kept a very startled-looking Mitarai down low. "You've got to stay down!"

"Kazuma, what's going on?" Shizuru had apparently been sitting by the wall while we slept. A small music player sat abandoned in her lap. Botan also stared from her position across the room, a magazine held loosely in her fingers.

"The bad guys found us!" Kuwabara said urgently. His eyes darted briefly to the wall above the bed, where Mitarai and I had probably been dozing. I could just see, form my awkward vantage point, what looked like five small bullet holes embedded in the wall. Had I actually slept through someone shooting at me?

"Hit the ground, Botan, they're attacking through the window," Kuwabara warned. Botan quickly dropped to her knees, glancing uncertainly out the window. Kuwabara let out a frustrated breath. "I don't know how they got here!..."

Mitarai gasped in surprise and wiggled on the floor, reaching into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out what looked like a microchip. "What is this?"

"What?" Botan stared, then growled lightly. "I don't believe it, it looks like they bugged you!" She turned to shout at the window, made difficult from her position on her hands and knees. "How could you do that to your team mate?!"

"Maggots," Kuwabara muttered darkly. "Ready to kill your own man because he's lost his convenience? I'll teach you both!"

And then Kuwabara was off, on his feet and running out of the bedroom. Multiple pairs of feet followed him out of the apartment—I assumed the others followed him out to confront whoever was shooting at us. Shizuru shouted for Kuwabara to stay put, but it was far too late. Mitarai, eyes wide, shouted as well.

"No!" Mitarai reached out a trembling hand to the empty doorway. Desperately, he cried, "That's what they want you to do!"

I stared, anger roiling in my stomach. "Did you know about this?"

Mitarai turned to me with wide eyes. "N-no, I swear!"

"Then what do you mean, that's what they want him to do?"

Mitarai said nothing. He lay trembling on the floor, eyes wide. Useless.

I army-crawled across the floor, trying to get a better look out the window and at our attackers. Whoever had been shooting at us had apparently left their sniper's perch; down in the street below, two figures stood opposite Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, Koenma, and Genkai.

"Why would they fight on the street?" Botan asked, disapproving. "There could be innocents out there!"

"It's not the innocents you have to worry about," Mitarai said, finally finding his voice again. "It's Kuwabara!"

"My brother may be accident-prone, but with the others, he's safe," Shizuru assured him.

"You're not understanding me!" Mitarai denied, shaking his head. "Mr. Sensui desperately wants to recruit him to his side!"

"Recruit?" I repeated, trading baffled glances with Botan and Shizuru. To Mitarai I said, "Anyone who knows anything about Kuwabara knows he'd never help someone like Sensui open a portal to demon world."

Mitarai didn't look at all reassured. "Mr. Sensui has his ways. I don't have time to explain it, but believe me, I know! I'm sure Kuwabara is the psychic Mr. Sensui needs to cut down the barrier!"

The urgency in Mitarai's voice was genuine. Even if he still opposed us and considered himself on Sensui's side, he was still clearly indebted to Kuwabara—which meant that he was in danger.

"We've got to warn them!" Botan got to her feet, peering up and down the street. "I can't see them, where did they all go? Oh, great, they've moved on—" She leaned out of the window, shouting and waving her arm to try to get the attention of our friends below. "Hey!"

"Botan, get down!" Shizuru cried, just in time. Botan ducked and dove back into the room, narrowly avoiding small projectiles which whizzed over her head and embedded into the wall of the room.

I pressed my back against the wall next to the window, peering around the edge to get a look at whoever was shooting at us. It was a lone figure, rather like Yusuke in build. I couldn't get much more than a glimpse before I had to pull back as the glass of the window where I'd been peering exploded.

To Mitarai I said, "Who is this guy?!"

"That's Sniper," Mitarai said from his position on the floor, face pale. "Kaname Hagiri. He can—"

"I've figured out what he can do, thanks." I pushed myself to my feet, summoning an orb of golden energy to each hand. "And he's about to learn what I can do."

I jumped in front of the window and launched the first volley without really aiming, just lobbing it in the general direction I'd seen the figure. It was more a defensive tactic than anything, trying to prevent this Sniper guy from getting a shot in while I took real aim. The first shot went wide, and I saw Sniper smirk. He lifted his hand, which held a number of small projectiles. I lifted my right hand, rearing back to throw my second orb.

We both fired. Sniper's attack was faster than mine, and I barely had time to jerk out of the way. The marble, which had been barreling directly for the center of my chest, nicked my arm, cutting my shirt sleeve and drawing a line of blood. I hissed, and tried to see if my second attack had landed.

It hadn't. Sniper had dodged it, running a few feet away down the rooftop. He didn't have as good a shot at us now, but that didn't stop him from trying. I growled, summoning two more energy orbs.

"Ren!" I glanced at Shizuru only briefly, unwilling to take my eyes off Sniper. "You think you can distract him for a while longer?"

"I'm trying to do a lot more than just distract him." But still, I nodded. "But yeah. I'll hold him off. Go warn Kuwabara!"

Shizuru didn't wait any longer. She sprang to her feet, darting out of the apartment while Sniper and I traded shots. I had to dodge a few more marbles and only had a little success, earning more cuts and bruises, while Sniper managed to stay just ahead of my own attacks.

And then, the sun rose.

Or at least, that was what it felt like. Light and heat swept around the street corner like a shooting star, and then closed in on the apartment rapidly. The whole building shook ominously as it approached.

Everything went white.