He went to Yusuke's restaurant to get his food.

Not because he wasn't a tad bit tired of ramen. But because the food would tide him over for a bit and allow him some time to carefully plan out his next few moves before he needed to eat something else. Besides it wasn't as if he didn't like the place either.

He did. Everything about his friend's restaurant was nice, cozy, and relaxing. Which was something that he greatly appreciated since he often went there after a long and stressful day of work.

Yusuke never failed to notice him automatically and usher him to the VIP section of the restaurant. A hidden table in the back that was sectioned off from the rest of the room and patrons where he would be undisturbed. And just as importantly to him, be unheard- should he need to talk to the other man.

Which he did right that moment.

He had decided long before he had even walked through the door of his friend's establishment that he would need to talk to him about how best to woo Miss Kurosaki. And since Yusuke had been more or less in a relationship with his mate since he'd been a child...that made him ideal to speak too. Even if his advice might not be that great.

He had been sitting at the table in the back for a total of ten minutes when Yusuke walked over and set his usual order down in front of him with a smile as he looked at his friend, slightly startled.

"I figured that you might be back soon." Yusuke explained as he then slipped his apron off and pulled out the chair across from him and sat down before asking, "So, how'd it go? Did you meet her? Ichigo Kurosaki, I mean. What did you think of her?"

It wasn't lost on Kurama that since their retirement from being Spirit Detectives for Koenma; he and the others had developed a certain fondness for sitting down from time to time to gossip like old women. Something that was both embarrassing and funny. So much so that even Hiei tended to partake in the activity when he was there to visit.

Chuckling at Yusuke's enthusiastic questions, finding some of them a bit funny, as he picked up his chop sticks and began to tuck into his meal while his friend sat there patiently and waited for him to respond.

"Yes, I met her." He finally said once he'd managed to get enough food in his stomach. "I think our meeting went rather well. We spent all day in her office talking."

"Talking?" Yusuke repeated with a slightly skeptical look on his face. Kurama sent him a slightly peeved look but had to quickly cover a laugh with his hand when he caught Yusuke waggling his eyebrows at him.

"Stop that." He said in reprimand, though his tone was fond.

Yusuke did as he said. But only because he knew better than to piss the fox off as Kurama filled him in on everything, including the decision to court the woman. And by the time he stopped talking, the other man was practically gaping at him in shock.

Kurama rested his chin in his hand as he waited for his friend to snap out of his funk.

It took Yusuke a moment or two longer than absolutely necessary, but whatever. His mind had just been blown. Almost literally. So, he'd needed the extra time to gather his wits anyways. But once he did, he could barely contain himself.

Yusuke's exuberance practically had him vibrating in his seat as he rushed to ask him what he needed from him. Kurama grinned and began to lay out what he was planning as far as courting the woman went. And by the time he was finished, Yusuke was up out of his seat and running before he could so much as reach out and grab him.

He sat there, half draped across the table with an expression of utter astonishment as Yusuke practically called in sick and ran out of his own restaurant to so as he had asked him.

Which left the fox demon to deal with Keiko's temper.

She'd called Rukia the moment that she'd felt his energy leave her building. And then all she had to do was wait for her and Renji to show up at her office door.

The two of them within minutes of her calling them. Which was a little bit weird for Rukia. But not so much for Renji since he worked in the building with her.

The couple walked into her office without needing to alert her to their presence since she'd been able to sense them both easily enough. All those years she'd spent as a Soul Reaper had been good for something aside from upending her life, after all. And despite her retirement, she still tended to use her abilities subconsciously out of instinct.

So, sensing her friends was easy for her.

The moment that the door closed behind the two, they focused their eyes on her and a heartbeat went by before someone- Renji, obviously- asked her where she'd gotten the flowers out on her secretaries' desk. Which led her to bare her teeth in a silent snarl of sorts.

"I've had an interesting day, guys."

"Oh? Do tell." Rukia said curiously as Ichigo stood up and moved so that she could offer her chair to the smaller woman since this particular meeting might take them all a while.

Walking over to take the seat, Rukia shot her friend a fond smile before sitting down while Renji made himself comfortable by leaning his back against the office door with his arms crossed in a semi-lazy fashion that was meant to lure others into a false sense of security.

"Yeah, tell us what upset you enough to call us." Renji added quietly. His dark eyes sweeping over his friend, reading her body language. The kid was more tense than he'd seen in a while. Since the last war actually. And he couldn't help but wonder what exactly had her hackles up since she didn't usually get tense like this unless something big was going down.

"Before we get to that, let me tell you about yesterday-" She started, and then spent the next few minutes giving them the basic outline of her sort-of involvement in the bus incident, saving the elderly couple, being seen saving the elderly couple by her boss, and what had happened to her first thing this morning.

And by the time she finished speaking, both Renji and Rukia looked as if they were watching a soap opera.

They were staring at her with mirroring expressions of such shock and astonishment that she felt as if they should have been passing popped corn back and forth.

It irked her to be honest.

I mean, shouldn't they be more...alarmed? Maybe even upset about the possibility that her boss apparently wanted to get close to her? Shouldn't they be reacting differently than simply staring at her?

Finally having enough of their irritating staring she face palmed and growled out in annoyance, "The two of you are the worst lovers I've ever had."

Renji visibly bristled at her halfhearted joke, taking it as an insult despite the fact that his wife was sitting right there. Whereas Rukia giggled almost hysterically as she was hauled up out of her seat by her hand and then ushered out from around Ichigo's desk and over to Renji.

After that, the couple promptly found themselves kicked out of the office. Which bothered Renji more than it bothered Rukia since she could still be heard laughing outside of the door for a few moments before her husband decided that they'd leave and regroup for the time being.

Kurma had Yusuke in a headlock outside of Miss Kurosaki's workplace, trying to drag him away before the woman decided to leave and spotted them.

And he was making an utter spectacle of himself by doing so given how many people around them had stopped walking and were openly staring at them because of Yusuke's not so subtle bellowing and cursing.

Apparently seeing two grown men grappling outside of a multi-billion-dollar company was something fairly interesting to others.

Probably because no one really saw such things unless they were drunk and outside of a bar.

At the moment he had one arm wrapped firmly around the other man's throat and had even gone so far as to hook two of his fingers in Yusuke's nostrils just to keep a firm hold of him. Which was...gross, to say the least. Especially since he was fairly certain that once he removed his fingers, he'd probably find some boogers on them.

The two of them were carrying on like this for several minutes. Mostly because of Yusuke's enhanced strength made it just awful to reign the man in now compared to when he had still been a human.

Every inch he managed to drag the other man; Yusuke countered by dragging him back in the opposite direction. And at one point, his friend actually managed to get his feet up off of the ground.

Which left the fox demon little choice but to try subduing him in a different manner. He wasn't sure how effective the move would be, but hopefully it would work all the same. Releasing Yusuke from his head lock- while simultaneously removing his fingers from his friend's nostrils, and then he wound his arms and legs around the hayou and trapped him in a body lock maneuver.

He felt a very brief moment of triumph at managing to do what most would consider impossible. Until...

"Either you let me go right now, or I'm going to fall on you." Yusuke threatened him. Kurama's eyes went wide in alarm at the prosect of being squished under his friend's heavier body and he hissed out warningly.

"Don't you dare!"

Yusuke cackled. Which Kurama had learned years ago was never a good thing since it was usually a sign of impending doom for some unlucky bastard.

Unfortunately, he was the unlucky bastard this time, because Yusuke did exactly as he threatened, he'd do. He suddenly fell back without any more warning before Kurama could even release him and scramble away, which left to the red headed demon to being pinned underneath his friend with a pained grunt.

And since Yusuke's little revenge move had knocked the breath right out of him, he couldn't even begin to threaten the man with what he was going to do to him now. Not that the hayou seemed overly concerned about how he would get him back for this otherwise he would have moved off of him faster instead of just lying there like he was comfortable.

And this undignified position is how Miss Kurosaki found him when she was leaving work for the day. He saw her pause in mid step a few feet away from them and caught his eye. He flushed with embarrassment and expected her to walk away. After all, any sane, mature woman would have.

But instead, she surprised him by walking over to them and grabbing Yusuke by the ear and then hauled him off of him. Yusuke, of course, yelped and cussed and then whined about how his ear was going to fall off as she abruptly let him go and then leaned down and held a hand out to him.

Kurama, stared at her hand for a moment. Weighing the pro's and cons of letting her pull him to his feet when he weighed a bit heavier than she did.

But eventually he gave in and took her hand and allowed her to help him up. If only because he was happy to no longer be squished underneath Yusuke's body. He was sure that he did a terrible impression of a bug.

"What the hell were you doing?" She asked him once he was finally on his feet again.

He gave her an awkward looking smile and opened his mouth to explain why she'd just caught he and Yusuke lying on the sidewalk in such an undignified manner, while simultaneously punching his friend in the face. He paid no mind to Yusuke's yelp as he fell down from the force of his punch.

He did notice that Miss Kurosaki looked at his friend, sitting on the sidewalk on his ass exactly as he'd fallen, oddly though. And he wasn't really sure why, but he didn't want her looking at Yusuke. It made him feel oddly jealous since he wanted her eyes on him and only him.

Reaching out with his hands, he used them to adjust the direction that she was facing and then smiled happily once she was looking directly at him again as he prattled on about trying to drag his friend away from the building.

The cover story he gave her had absolutely nothing to do with his plans and everything to do with Yusuke's piss poor impulse control and curiosity.

Which technically wasn't a lie.

The whole reason that he was there at the moment was entirely because of those things. And had nothing at all to do with his plan to have Yusuke kidnap her so that he could 'save' her from him and show off his own abilities a bit.

Especially since he knew that if she knew about his own abilities- it would go a long way towards earning her trust now that he'd made up his mind to court her. It would also keep her from feeling overly concerned about being ousted to the public as a 'freak' and being hauled away to a medical lab to be dissected or something.

She bore his prattling about Yusuke's terrible habits with a weird sort of grace born from years of listening to others chatter on endlessly.

It was really impressive to him since some of his pack tended to prattle in much the same way.

And she was likely to get caught by someone who liked to chatter at others inevitably. But by the time he was finished explaining everything, he thought that he had managed to cover their asses just fine.

The moment that he went quiet, she sighed and motioned for Yusuke to get up join them with her hand. And then once his friend was close enough, she fished her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and then unlocked it and seemed to look for something for a second.

Curious, he and Yusuke got closer to see what she was doing, and then they both paled upon seeing what she was looking at.

Apparently while the two of them had been wrestling with each other- someone had decided to film them in all of their ridiculousness and then sent the video to several local news stations.

The title, 'Lover's quarrel or an affair gone wrong' was in bold above the Newsman's head as a clip of he and Yusuke played in the background.

He groaned and hid his face while Yusuke watched the video with a look of morbid fascination on his face for about two seconds. And then his phone rang, and he automatically checked the number to see if it was who he thought it was.

It was Keiko calling. And from the look on Yusuke's face, the hayou would rather have braved another few bouts in the demon world tournament than answer it.

Kurama couldn't help but wince in sympathy as his friend finally decided to answer his wife's call and promptly got screamed at as he continued to watch the video over Miss Kurosaki's shoulder.

"You're going to have to hold a press conference if you don't want this to affect the company." She said once the video ended. He grunted in agreement as she then slipped her cell back into her pocket and then tipped her head up a tad to look at his face and gave him a tight-lipped smile before saying in an unsympathetic tone.

"It's been nice knowing ya man."

He shot her a wide-eyed, semi-alarmed look as she patted him on the shoulder and then turned to walk away. Leaving him standing there glaring at her back and silently promising retribution.