Chapter 17 – Temptation

Botan's experience of attending the very first Demon World Tournament was – initially at least – a quite scary, gritty time. Koenma had kept getting overly excited and popping out of his adult form disguise, George had kept accidentally picking fights with demons by blurting out faux pas after faux pas and Botan herself had been a source of ridicule for most of those she passed. During the tournament, she was staying in the hotel by the arena: Koenma and George were sharing a twin room on the top floor and Botan had been given a standard double room on the seventeenth floor: a place she had been prepared to gladly retreat to – even if it meant spending the rest of the evening alone – after an especially stressful day quite early on during her stay in Demon World. As she had reached the hotel entrance, a demon mosquito had started chasing after her and she had raced indoors in the hope of evading it, but without much luck. She could remember swatting it with her fan only to have another of the buggers bite her leg.

Just as Botan had started to believe that the insect was going to eat its way into her flesh before she could detach it, Yusuke arrived, like a true hero, and effortlessly removed and disposed of the little beast. It had left a nasty wound in the side of her leg that looked as though it would linger, but Botan was just glad to be free of her attacker.

"This day has been so stressful," she had confided in Yusuke as he had given her a strangely interested look, as though he actually wanted to listen to her recall how terrible her day had been. "I'm going up to my room and I'm staying there for the rest of the day because that way, nothing else stressful can happen!"

"You know, you shouldn't really come in here flashing yourself around like that," he replied, looking slightly concerned then.

Botan looked about herself and then down at herself: she and Yusuke were the only ones present and she was wearing multiple layers of clothing, showing only the skin on her face.

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

"You were opening up your outfit," Yusuke replied.

Botan nodded slowly.

"Yes, because that mosquito was biting my leg and I had to get to it," she said.

"Okay, I guess that makes sense, but from where we were standing, it kinda just looked like you came in here, did a little fan dance and then whipped open your kimono and started showing off your legs," Yusuke said.

Botan gasped, her face flooding with colour.

"Yusuke, not you too!" she complained. "I've had demons leering at me and making lewd comments all day long: can't you just be chivalrous, just this once?"

Yusuke shrugged.

"We thought you were just trying to give us an eyeful of those sexy panties you've got on," he said.

Botan felt her face get hot, and, on the edge of her vision, she could see that even the tip of her nose had turned red. Yusuke was smiling, but he looked oddly sure of what he was saying, as though he actually had gotten an eyeful of her underwear during her struggle to remove the mosquito.

"You were standing watching me try to stop that awful little pest from biting me?" she asked.

"Oh yeah," he confirmed. "We saw everything. Well, we saw that you wear sensible panties, but if you'd been wearing something a little cuter, we would have seen a lot more."

"Why did you just stand about watching me struggle instead of coming to help me sooner?" Botan demanded angrily.

She had been humiliated enough that day, she did not need one of her friends mocking her too.

"It was Hiei's idea," Yusuke said, pointing over one shoulder.

Botan leaned past him and gasped in horror as she noticed Hiei, standing some distance away, blushing furiously.

"What?" she wailed, moving her attention back to Yusuke.

"Yeah, he's got a crush on you," Yusuke casually replied, looking and sounding far too smug. "He's been watching you get undressed from outside the hotel, using his Jagan Eye, and he told me you wear granny panties, and I said no way, and then when you came in here stripping off your dress, it seemed like a good opportunity to settle the bet. Damn it Botan, you cost me five hiruiseki!"

"You made a bet about what type of knickers I wear?" Botan growled.

"Yeah," Yusuke replied.

"With Hiei?"

"Yeah."

"I don't believe you! Hiei would never make such a horrid bet and he would never spy on a girl in one of her vulnerable moments!"

Botan had been winning the argument – she was sure – but, in a moment of madness that she was still at a loss to explain, she said something really stupid that completely undermined her argument and handed Yusuke the upperhand once more.

"Would Hiei spy on a girl like that?" she asked meekly. "I-I never thought that he would be the type who liked to… Watch…"

A shadow fell over Yusuke's already gleaming, mischievous eyes and his grin became feral.

"Does that excite you?" he asked.

Botan paused before shaking her head. Why had she paused?

"Are you sure?" Yusuke asked. "Because you know Hiei is the sort who likes to watch. He likes to watch you in the shower. What do you think about that?"

Botan shook her head, but words failed her.

"He sees everything you do."

Botan froze. Truthfully, she had always felt a strange attraction to Hiei. It was purely physical, she told herself. When she had confided it in Ayame, the bookish ferry girl had advised her that what she felt was not love or even a crush: it was something called "parataxic distortion". Apparently she was just projecting an idealised view of Hiei onto him and that was what she was attracted to: the Hiei she had imagined and not the real, actual Hiei.

But that had not stopped her taking the odd moment to appreciate how beautiful everything about him could actually be.

It had not stopped her thinking about him when she was in the shower – not even when she was in Demon World.

"E-everything?" she asked faintly.

Yusuke nodded. Had Hiei told him what he had seen?

"Oh dear…" she gasped.

"Don't worry though," Yusuke said. "He said he likes what he sees."

Botan began to worry even more then, because Yuuske's last words surely confirmed her worst possible fear.

"Of course, he thinks you think that way about every guy you meet," Yusuke continued. "He actually has the cutest little crush on you, but he doesn't think you'll want him back, so he has to make do with spying on you."

Botan shook her head, again speechless.

"Don't worry about it Botan," Yusuke said. "It's been going on so long, I'm sure by now he gets that you're not interested."

Botan gasped.

"I told him he should let go and move on, but… I guess he's just got it so bad, he just can't let go," he concluded. "Poor guy."

"I had no idea…" Botan said faintly "I-I've always liked Hiei, it pains me to think that he's been torturing himself all this time over me…"

"You like Hiei?"

Botan bit her lip: could she trust Yusuke enough to tell him the truth about her feelings – even Ayame had told her it was all in her imagination, after all.

"That's great!" Yusuke said suddenly. "You should let him know. He's too shy to make the first move, so you should go over there and just let him know that you like him too."

Botan looked over at Hiei and her heart began to race.

"Just go over there and…?" she muttered. "And tell him? I can't do that!"

"Wow Botan, you really are a cock tease, huh?"

"What?"

Yusuke sighed, leaning forwards and pressing the call button for the elevator.

"You just go on ahead back to your room," he said. "And I'll just have to tell Hiei that you don't care about him. Who knows, maybe this time he'll finally get the hint."

"Yusuke, don't say that!"

But before she could stop him, Yusuke had started towards Hiei. Knowing that she could not stop him if he intended to make a joke of the situation, Botan instead turned her attention to the elevator, frantically pressing the call button in the hope of hurrying the elevator to her. When the doors finally opened she leapt through them and pressed the number for her floor before looking for the button that forced the doors to close early: but, in typical Demon World style, there was no such button, and so Botan had to wait for what seemed like an eternity for the doors to close. The doors took so long to close that she saw Yusuke and Hiei walk by: and, just as the doors did finally close, she saw Yusuke hurl Hiei into the elevator alongside her.

The doors closed and the elevator began to move before Hiei had made it to his feet and started towards the doors. Botan had always thought that moment to be the strangest part of the entire memory, as, with his incredible speed and reflexes, Hiei ought to have had enough time to get back up and stop the doors before they closed: it almost seemed as though he had deliberately waited until the elevator started to move and he knew that by then it would be too late to stop it.

He stood glaring at the doors until they had passed the first few floors before turning abruptly to face Botan.

"This wasn't my idea," he said gruffly.

"Wh-what do you mean?" she asked, clutching her hands at her chest protectively.

Hiei twitched but said nothing. Instead he stood staring up at Botan in a way that made her too afraid to move. Something about his demeanour made her feel strangely guilty and accused, and so, when the elevator finally stopped and the doors opened and she found herself unable to get past him to leave, she went on the defensive.

"I was bitten by a cruel insect, Hiei!" she said shrilly. "They were hunting me all the way back to the hotel and then they assaulted me! I was not flashing my legs at anyone, I was trying to stop that little menace from bleeding me dry!"

Hiei stepped to one side and Botan gladly strode past him. She had been ready to carry on with her original plan – to hurry all the way to her room and lock herself in it for the remainder of the day in peace and solitude – but all thoughts of finding peace left her mind when she distinctly felt something touch her as she stepped out into the hallway beyond the elevator doors. She stumbled to a halt, her heart jumping into her throat. She waited there momentarily, expecting Hiei to say something after what had apparently just happened – because surely it had been a mistake – but he did not so much as move. When the elevator gave a ping and the doors started to close, Botan acted on impulse and spun around, smacking her hands against the edge of one door. The doors halted abruptly, partially closed, leaving Botan still clutching one of the doors and glaring in at Hiei, who had moved to the back of the elevator, his hands in his pockets, his eyes watching the floor as though the speckled pattern on the elevator floor was somehow the most interesting thing he had ever seen.

"What was that?" Botan asked.

Hiei's eyes flicked up to her, but still he kept quiet.

"When I was walking out of the elevator, it felt like you…"

She could not even bring herself to say it. Even just thinking about it was embarrassing and yet simultaneously unbelievable.

"What I mean to say is that something touched me as I was…"

Trying to say it out loud was challenging. Saying it out loud whilst looking at Hiei was impossible.

"D-did you…?"

Botan gulped and slowly slid her hands from the door.

"N-never mind," she muttered.

She turned to leave, again hearing the ping of the elevator and the sound of the doors starting to close: but again the sound was cut short. She looked back over her shoulder to see why, and found Hiei suddenly standing in the by then quite narrow gap between the two doors, the outer edges of his feet pressed against each door to stop them closing.

"Do you have something you want to say to me?" he asked in a low voice.

Botan slowly turned around to face him.

"You touched my…"

She wanted to be indignant. She wanted to shout at him.

"My… You… When I walked past, you put your… It felt like… Your hand…"

"And what if I did?"

Botan was momentarily stunned. Of all the response she had expected, that was the absolute last one she could have guessed Hiei might give. She had mostly been expecting him to either accuse her of bumping into him or else tell her she had imagined it: because the alternative, the idea that he had deliberately touched her, was absurd.

Or maybe not, if what Yusuke had said earlier was actually true.

"That depends," she said, hardening her resolve and straightening to her fullest height. "Did you?"

"Yes I did."

"Well then. Checkmate."

Hiei frowned slightly and Botan understood why: she could not fathom why she had responded as she had, but since she had sounded so confident when she had spoken, she did not make any attempt to retract her words.

"What do you want to do about it?"

Botan almost fell over.

"About…?"

Hiei stepped out of the elevator and the doors slid shut behind him. He looked up and down the length of the empty hallway before fixing his eyes onto Botan's.

"Which room is yours?"

Botan did not really want to answer Hiei, as there was something mildly sinister about the way he was looking at her, but, as though it was acting on a will of its own, her right hand moved out to her side and pointed down the hallway. He looked in the general direction she was indicating before giving a single nod of his head, and, as though her body had started acting independent of the instructions from her mind, Botan found herself starting down the hall towards her room, the sound of Hiei's light footsteps following after her. As she started to unlock the door to her room she felt a repeat of what had happened when she had exited the elevator and she let out a yelp, spinning around abruptly, her back clattering against the door as she realised just how close Hiei had been standing behind her.

"Alright I know that was you!" she said.

He said nothing, and although his expression did not change, he almost looked amused upon hearing her words.

"You just touched my bottom!" Botan blurted out.

"What do you want to do about it?" Hiei responded.

"Well I know what I ought to do about it!"

"Which is?"

Botan paused before answering. It was the sort of conversation she could barely imagine herself having with Yusuke, far less Hiei.

"I-I um…" she began weakly.

"You might as well tell me," he said. "Because I'll find out eventually anyway."

Botan held up one finger, ready to ask him how exactly he thought he would find the answer out: but as he tilted his head downwards slightly and she saw a faint bluish glow through his bandana, she realised that he intended to read her mind, which would be disastrous, because if he did that, he would probably also learn that she sometimes had some quite inappropriate thoughts about him doing far worse than grabbing her rear end.

"I should slap you across the face," she said, fumbling for the door handle at the small of her back in the vain hope that if she could open the door, she might be able to flee into the room to escape Hiei.

"Then why don't you?" he asked.

"Well, the moment's passed now… Sort of… Seems like… A delayed reaction?"

"What would you do if I did it again?"

"A-are you going to do it again?"

"I might."

"Ah… Then… Well, I suppose I would also wonder wh-why you're doing it?"

"Because I like the way it moves and I wanted to touch it."

"Well it belongs to me and I control how it moves and how it feels."

Botan frowned slightly, unsure if what she had said had even made any sense – but she did not get long to contemplate the sensibility of her retort.

"So you admit to wiggling it provocatively in my face?"

Botan held up a finger, but it shortly wilted as the full implications of Hiei's words sank in.

"Hiei, do you…?"

She had to know. All those ridiculous things Yusuke had been saying were all starting to seem substantially less ridiculous and possibly even factual and she just had to know.

"Do you want me to…?"

"Open the door."

"…That wasn't what I was going to say…"

"Open the door."

"Okay."

Botan reaffirmed her grip on the door handle and pushed open the door behind her, staggering backwards into the room. She kept herself pressed to the door as Hiei casually strolled past her into the room beyond. More out of habit than for any logical reason, Botan closed the door before moving into the room to join Hiei by the foot of the bed.

"It's quite a pleasant room actually," she said.

"I wouldn't say so," he replied, looking about himself.

"The bed isn't very comfy," she conceded.

"But the rug is."

Botan looked down at the fluffy rug Hiei was standing on. She placed one foot onto it and experimentally pressed her weight down, before nodding.

"I suppose so," she concluded.

"So where would you prefer I take you, the bed or the rug?"

Botan paused, her eyes still on the rug as she lifted her foot off of it. She slowly returned her foot back to its original position, all the while torn between wondering if she had heard Hiei correctly and trying to deny that he had said anything at all.

"I prefer the rug myself," Hiei added. "But you're the one who will be on your back, so I'll let you decide."

Botan supposed that, in hindsight, what Hiei had said then had been the absolute most disgusting thing any man could have said to her; but for some reason, at the time he had said it, she had found it more intriguing and exciting than crude and disgusting. And when she had lifted her head and met his eyes she had only had a few more seconds to think about anything before she found herself finding out exactly how comfortable the rug could be.

The next morning, Botan had awoken to find herself naked and sprawled out on the fluffy rug on her bedroom floor, her head resting on something that was even hotter to the touch that her own skin felt. She sat up slowly at first, wiping away her hair – which had become stuck to her sweaty face – and stretched her arms above her head before noticing the time on the clock on the nightstand and leaping to her feet in a panic. She darted about the room, hauling on her clothes and hurriedly tying up her hair, only stopping when she noticed that somehow, amidst her chaotic dashing around, her pillow had arisen, dressed himself and smoothed out his hair, looking perfectly calm and in control despite her thundering heart.

"Don't tell anyone about what happened last night," he said as she met his eyes.

The truth was, she barely even believed what had happened the night before herself, so she had no intentions of telling anyone, as she was sure nobody else would believe it either.

"My face feels funny," she said instead, rubbing a hand at the side of her face that had been practically stuck to Hiei's chest when she had woken up. "It's really hot – like I've been burned."

"I mean what I said," he said. "Don't tell anyone."

Botan nodded numbly and reached for the door, shortly finding her hand touching Hiei's as he reached the door handle just ahead of her. She hurriedly snatched her hand away, clutching it to her chest and feeling horribly embarrassed, despite the fact that a small voice in the back of her head was screaming at her that it was ridiculous to feel embarrassed about touching Hiei's hand after she had touched every other part of his body the night before. Hiei turned to her, his eyes glaring – though that was all they ever seemed to do – and his mouth set into a displeased pout.

"There's a bar in this hotel," he said.

Botan arched her eyebrows, wondering why he would say such an odd thing at such a moment.

"I'll be there tonight," he continued after a short pause. "I expect you to be there to."

"Um, okay?" Botan muttered, confusion taking over any sense of awkwardness she had been plagued by.

"If I look directly at you, if I make eye contact with you there," he said. "I expect you to come directly up to this room."

Botan's eyebrows flickered into a twisted frown.

"Wait for me here. I will join you as soon as I can."

Botan shuddered.

"But if you tell anyone about this, I will never look at you again."

"Okay."

Hiei nodded and opened the door and Botan followed him out of the room. As they moved down the hallway and entered the elevator together, Botan wondered if Hiei's behaviour was just a demon thing – that demon's conducted their romantic affairs in a different way from other beings – or it was just a Hiei thing. Either way, she believed that the physical part of their relationship had to precede the development of the emotional part of it. When the elevator reached the ground floor and Hiei abruptly marched out, leaving her to stagger out to find Yusuke snorting into his hand at a joke nobody else seemed to know about, Koenma looking irritable and George hiding beside a potted plant, Botan could feel not only the warmth still lingering in her face where she had been resting on Hiei but also a faint hint of the buzzing feeling around her lips that had so overwhelmed her better judgment the night before when Hiei had kissed her so persistently and passionately.

"Aren't you even going to attempt to explain to me why you're so late?" Koenma had raved at her.

Botan could not remember what – if anything – she had said back to him. He ended up asking her that very same question every morning thereafter until the day they left Demon World, because every night thereafter, regardless of what had happened during the day, Botan overslept in the morning and always awoke to find herself sprawled over the fluffy rug of her bedroom floor, unable to distinguish whose sweat she was coated in: her own or Hiei's. Every night she had gone to the bar in the hotel, and every night Hiei had either been there waiting or else he had arrived shortly afterwards, and every night he looked her directly in the eye just as he had said he might.

Every night she thought he either would not look at her or not even turn up at all, but every night he did. At first, she would arrive at the bar and Hiei would already be there with Yusuke and a few other familiar faces. She would order a glass of pink lemonade and sit in a dull corner of the room and wait for him to look at her – which he would usually only do once the bar was quite full of bodies and Yusuke and his friends were quite merrily drunk – and then she would go to her room to wait no more than ten minutes for him to join her. But, after the first few nights, Botan started going to the bar earlier and earlier, until soon she was there before it had even opened and long before Hiei himself would show up. And, with time – between her arriving earlier and the number of contestants in the tournament diminishing, making it take that much longer for to the bar to get busy enough for them to sneak out unnoticed – the time Botan spent sitting waiting for Hiei's signal became longer and longer, and she hated it.

And she loved it.

She simultaneously hated waiting so anxiously for him, so terrified that he might not give her the signal, so worried that he might have changed his mind about seeing her, that she might have done something to displease him during their last encounter; but equally she loved the excitement of it, the way he would turn in her direction several but not look directly at her, she loved watching him nurse a single bottle of beer the entire night as he pretended to drink with his friends, she loved being so close to him but not being able to touch him just yet, the delicious anticipation only making what would follow all the more wondrous. She never knew if Hiei knew what he was doing to her in those moments, and she was never sure if him deliberately delaying her pleasure made it any more or less exciting.

It never occurred to her that they conducted their affair from the end of August through to the middle of October without anything ever preventing them from doing so. It seemed so stupid to think about it in hindsight: it was the sort of story most people would roll their eyes at, but it was Botan's reality. Anything about real life was forgotten during that time and even when it ended, even when she returned to Spirit World, she still did not realise what had happened. She went back to work and tried to sneak back to Demon World to see Hiei when she could, but every time she went, she could never get to him: she was always stopped before she could even get close to him, usually by Mukuro's foot soldiers. It was only when she went to see him around Christmas time that she realised the truth; after being denied access to Mukuro's fortress she had burst into what had been her worst ever bout of tears. She cried so forcefully she almost passed out and she even eventually vomited – at which point, one of the men who had stopped her pointed out that she was getting fat and told her she was obviously a high maintenance girl who comfort-ate.

Once she had recovered from her initial grief, Botan had flown slowly to the living world, the winter air feeling that much colder against the tracks of tears streaked down her face. She went to Keiko, because she did not know who or where else to go to, and she was always glad that she had, because Keiko had been her usual, sensible and sympathetic self. She gave Botan some cocoa, a change of clothes and she sat up all night with her as the pair of them tried to come to terms with the fact that Botan was pregnant.

Keiko was so good, she never even asked who the father was; Botan, of course, could never tell her.

She could never tell anyone, because nobody would ever believe it.

And, for the next three years, until the second Demon World Tournament, that was exactly how things remained: despite all the whispered rumours and the distinct downward slide her reputation in Spirit World took, Botan had her baby and told no-one about who the child's father was.

Even Koenma respected her wishes to keep her secret.

As Botan arrived back in Spirit World, she wiped her face with her sleeve and forced a smile: she could not let anyone know where she had been or that she had been crying, but that had been the way of life for her for the last fourteen years.

Hiei glanced back and forth between both ends of the room ahead. At his side, Yusuke, Chu and Touya were as stunned as he was. They all had seconds to make a decision but none of them wanted to commit, none were confident enough to make the first move.

After conducting an impromptu funeral for Suzuka and returning to creep through Yomi's by-then abandoned temple, they had finally reached a room with three people inside it.

Shura was standing at one end of the room and Yomi was standing at the other. Jin was standing in the middle, tensed in a fighting stance, his eyes flicking between the father and son. It was clear that all three had been fighting, but it was unclear whether they had been fighting each other or not.

"Hey, Jin?" Yusuke said. "What's going on here, buddy?"

When Jin did not respond to Yusuke, verbally or physically, Yusuke took a step forwards: but he stopped there abruptly as Yomi turned his head towards him.

"Don't come any closer," Yomi warned him.

Yusuke looked over each of his shoulders at his team-mates, but none of them had anything to offer him as they were all as confused as he was.

"We came here to help, you know!" Jin said suddenly, his eyes fixed on Yomi.

"This is my problem, and I've already told you, I expect you to stand down," Yomi replied.

"Jin's right, Yomi," Yusuke tried. "We came here to help. We're trying to stop the Dark Force. That's what you want too, right?"

"No."

Yusuke, who had been starting to edge forwards again, stumbled back a step in surprise at Yomi's response.

"Wh-what?" he grunted.

"I want to stop the Dark Force as much as anyone else," Yomi explained. "But not at the expense of my own son's life."

Hiei turned to Shura, something about the askew grin on his face reminding him of Risho's smug face when the Dark Force had spoken through him.

"Wait…" Yusuke said.

"Shura's aligned with the Dark Force," Jin said. "He's been runnin' all this madness here. It's because of him everyone here ended up under the control of the Dark Force. He took 'em all, and now he wants to take his father – and us too, if we let him!"

"Damnit…" Yusuke muttered.

Hiei drew out his sword and Yomi reactively held up a hand to indicate that he should not come any closer.

"I'm afraid this situation has gotten out of your control, Yomi," Touya tried. "I understand that this must have been difficult for you, but surely now, with your entire army and all of your possessions desecrated, you must realise what is really going on here."

"I've always appreciated your insight, Touya," Yomi calmly replied. "But I'll ask you to stay out of this."

"You have to kill the boy," Hiei said sternly.

Shura turned his head to Hiei, and, for the briefest moment, Hiei felt slightly ridiculous for having called him a boy, as he was as tall as Yomi, though a little gangly in build: but clearly no longer a boy.

"No, we can't let that happen!" Jin said urgently.

"Whose side are you on?" Hiei snapped, turning his attention to the wind demon.

"Don't you see, Hiei?" Jin asked. "This is what the Dark Force wants! He wants to make a father kill his own son! He wants to feed off all that negative emotional energy! He's a rotten bastard and we can't let him have his way this time!"

"Yeah, that's right!" Yusuke said. "You see? I told you Jin wouldn't let the Dark Force take him over! He's still on our side and he's the only one making any sense right now!"

"Yes, he is making sense," Hiei said. "The logical solution here is for the four of you – Yusuke, Jin, Touya and Chu – to get Yomi out of here and I will kill the boy."

It was, after all, the only logical way to deal with the situation. Shura had to die – even if he was only being controlled by the Dark Force, killing an S-class demon from the Dark Force's army would be a significant blow to the enemy's strength. Letting Yomi do it would be too emotional and it would only generate more fodder for the enemy to grow stronger from, making Shura's death a milder blow to it.

"That's not what I meant, Hiei!" Yusuke snapped at him. "We're not killing the kid! He didn't choose to have that bastard living inside of him!"

"How do you know that?"

Yusuke and Hiei both turned to Shura, who was smirking at Yusuke after his last remark.

"He didn't choose," Yusuke insisted. "And I know you're not Shura right now, you're that creepy bastard who lives in an underground cave most of the time."

"Maybe he did choose to join me," Shura replied, his tone sickeningly similar to the one Risho had used when the Dark Force had spoken through him. "Maybe he was sick of the false life he lived here with his false father. Maybe he understood that my way is the better way of life. Maybe he understood that my intention to revolutionise the three worlds isn't the evil plan some seem to think it is."

"Don't even bother pretending you have a noble cause, you sick piece of shit!" Hiei growled. "Yusuke if we don't do something, this bastard will torture Yomi to death and then come after us. You remember what I told you about how the Dark Force will make someone say things they never would or would never want to? Well that's what will happen here: Shura will say things to Yomi that will destroy him mentally and emotionally until he takes his own life or else relinquishes his soul to the Dark Force. If either of those things happen, the enemy will have reached a level of strength that we will no longer be able to control."

"What are you saying?" Yusuke asked.

"He's saying that if the Dark Force succeeds in either feeding off the emotional torture of a demon as strong as Yomi or else manages to take control of Yomi, Demon World will be all but lost," Touya explained.

"As in… Stage Two of the Dark Age?" Yusuke asked quietly, glancing back and forth between Hiei and Touya.

"Exactly," Hiei confirmed. "If we don't act quickly and correctly here, then we will be responsible for having allowed the Dark Age to progress into its next stage; and I believe that's the opposite of what we came here to do."

"Nobody is laying a hand on my boy," Yomi warned.

"Nobody wants to kill anyone here," Yusuke told him.

"But if it comes down to killin' him or him killin' all of us…" Chu began.

"I think it's clear what we have to do," Touya said.

Hiei turned to Touya, who nodded at him to confirm that he agreed with his earlier plan. Chu nodded too and Hiei turned to Yusuke, who hesitated.

"Hiei's right, Yusuke!" Jin said.

Hiei took that to mean that all the others – with the exception of Yusuke – agreed with him, and that was as close to a unanimous decision as he was going to get. Touya, Chu and Jin started towards Yomi and Hiei started towards Shura.

"Don't bother smiling at me like that," Hiei warned him. "Surely you remember how quickly I dealt with you the last time we met? Well this time won't be any different."

Hiei reaffirmed his grip on his sword and started to charge at Shura, only to grunt in complaint as something collided with him side-on, sending him flying into the wall. Hiei turned his head and bared his teeth at Yusuke, who looked every bit as angered with Hiei as Hiei was with him.

"What are you doing, you fool?" Hiei demanded.

"Stopping you from making a huge mistake!" Yusuke argued back.

"You don't know what you've just done," Hiei growled.

Yusuke frowned slightly but Hiei merely jerked his head towards Shura. Yusuke turned to watch, along with Hiei from their position at one side of the room, as Yomi dodged past Touya and Chu, threw Jin to the opposite side of the room and then launched himself at Shura. The father and son began wrestling on the floor and Hiei quickly pushed Yusuke aside, scrambling to his feet. Hiei ran over to where they were fighting, but stopped partway there, along with the others who had all tried to join him, as Yomi called out to them.

"He's my son," he said. "Let me deal with this."

"Don't do this!" Jin insisted.

"Shura wouldn't have wanted to be a puppet," Yomi said. "He's my son and I will deal with him."

Yusuke and Jin both ran forwards to try to stop Yomi, but both somehow ended up falling backwards and a flash of blinding light filled the room. When the glow had faded, Yomi was lying on top of Shura, who was missing a large part of his midsection, his lifeless eyes looking up at the ceiling.

"What the hell just happened?" Yusuke said as he got to his feet.

"You said you wouldn't let anyone kill the boy!" Jin added, standing up beside Yusuke. "Why did ya change your mind so damn fast?"

"Yeah…" Yusuke said slowly. "You changed your mind about that real fast! Like, suspiciously fast…"

Yomi slowly rose to his feet, his back turned to the others. He held his position for a few moments, during which, Hiei felt a sinking sense of dread deep in his gut. As Yomi turned around, an oddly detached look on his face, Hiei realised, with a curse, that their problems were only just beginning.

Next Chapter: Kurama discusses Akira with Kuwabara and Shizuru, the DW team have to make a very difficult decision about Yomi and Jin that leaves Yusuke and Hiei at each other's throats (literally), and Kurama's latest battle simulation goes horribly, horribly wrong when he inadvertently hires the help of two powerful fighters with a major grudge against one of Kuwabara's three students. Chapter 18 – Divisive Action

A/N: First of all, Chapter 17, Botan's hotel room on the 17th floor and the chapter title is temptation because Temptation by Heaven 17.

Secondly, Botan's memory of the conversation with Yusuke was deliberately different from Yusuke's memory of it because I wanted to make it seem that Yusuke thought that whole event was so insignificant he can't actually remember the details of it, and instead his memories are what he expects Botan would probably have said, whereas Botan remembers everything because it was a key event for her.

Thirdly, there is a future chapter called parataxic distortion – the condition explained in this chapter – because that concept is going to mean something later on.