As promised by the bait-message that Amara received earlier, they did enjoy a luxurious break that day with exquisite foods and expensive drinks. A young man was playing the piano in the salon they had crossed before reaching the division, so live jazz music helped soothe their nerves. The company was less than ideal though, as Yomi kept ignoring Amara for the most part, and trying to sting Kurama about being dishonest, a traitor, unreliable and pretty much every word in that spectrum. On the other hand, Kurama was indirectly hinting towards Yomi being easy to manipulate, simple-minded, and unfit to lead even a small team, leave alone a kingdom. A list of demands were made, and a deadline for making up his mind. Kurama had until the end of the week, the discussion taking place on a Friday.

As they left, Kurama's senses were on full alert. The Shadows which Yomi mentioned were extremely good at hiding their true nature, as there were no physical signs telling them apart from ordinary humans, and their energy was completely contained. That level of self-control could only be achieved through years of intense training, as he was well aware that the Shadows were generally S-class demons. There were probably weaker ones as well, but he assumed there had to be some kind of rule or trial deciding who was ready to go outside and who was still staying somewhere hidden, possibly training.

Amara followed quietly until they were out of the building and taking a few turns through the city. She noticed that they were going home.

"Let's go buy some wine. I think we should have... that talk, you know?" the girl suggested.

Although not his first choice, Kurama decided to tag along. He didn't want Amara walking around alone now that he knew there were Shadows mingling with the people. He followed her towards the University's campus, past a small liquor store, and eventually reached an Italian shop. It looked like a small family business, opened on the ground floor of a house.

Kurama looked around out of curiosity. It didn't take Amara long to fill her cart with herbs, cheese, dried vegetables, meats, and wine. After paying, Kurama offered to carry the bag, and she accepted. The rest of the walk home was rather silent and uncomfortable.

However, as soon as they found themselves inside, the silence disappeared.

"Who was that? You seemed to have known each other for ages," Amara pointed out as she was sorting and putting away the groceries. A bottle of fresh, fruity, half dry white wine remained on the counter.

Kurama sighed heavily. There were traces of Hiei's energy - faint, but still there. It was time to come clear, it seemed...

"Is that the only question you have for me?"

He watched as Amara opened the bottle with surprising dexterity and heard the pop when the cork finally left the bottle.

"That's my most recent. This Yomi guy seems like a ghost from your past, so I figured you'd start with the beginning if I asked about him."

Amara poured two glasses of wine and offered him one. She was heading towards the balcony and Kurama already knew her reason.

"...Correct, although that left me room to avoid all that by talking about Yomi instead of myself."

"Look - I don't blame you for not trusting me. We've both got our skeletons, and there's always going to be someone hiding more of them in their closet than others. That's fine, I didn't really need to know and I usually don't press people to talk, but I get the feeling things just got a hundred times more complicated today."

Leaning with his elbows against the railway, Kurama tasted the wine. He could sense a refreshing citrus flavor. "You may be right. How much do you know about the world, or should I say worlds?"

"I already told you I nearly died when I was six. I've never been the same after that, and the one I call a father was actually my master. He used to be an Exorcist, but he retired a few years ago. That's basically a Spirit Detective here in Asia or a Shaman in North America. We get many names, depending on the culture, but we all do the same thing. I can't really tap into my spiritual powers all that well on my own, but my master crafted me a weapon that I can use in battle without much effort. It feels very much like a partner or an extension of myself, and sometimes it can act on its own account."

Although he recognized this as a tactic, Kurama couldn't help but fall or the same old trick again. He knew that Amara was opening up first in an attempt to win his trust, and it always seemed to awaken his curiosity when people spoke of themselves. There was something unique and so powerful in hearing the life story of another, and more often than not, he was able to emphasize with them. This time though, he wasn't in a fight, and Amara was on the same side as him, so perhaps it was safe... Not that he could back away now, anyway.

"Were you also an Exorcist after your master retired?"

Amara sipped from her wine and nodded. "For a couple of years... That implies traveling a lot though, and it was getting in the way of my studies. Besides, it's not exactly a rewarding job... That's the real reason why I ran away. I wanted to be a normal human being for once, you know?" she laughed. "I wanted to study and work and live simply, not having to sleep on a train more often than in a bed, fight demons, and be called to check out hauntings and odd creature sightings and whatnot."

"This makes much more sense than running away from a controlling tutor," he said with a smile.

She shrugged. "That wasn't a complete lie, though. He's kind of authoritarian. If he were in charge of a state or something, he could compare to all the tyrants in history."

"If you were honest about him being a University professor, that means he's also quite intelligent, which would make a terrifying combination, indeed," Kurama chuckled lightly.

"Hey - I did not lie to you, okay? I just left out the demon-fighting part." Amara tried to be serious but ended up laughing. "Not the best conversation starter."

Kurama answered her in his mind but decided the joke would be too rude and could be mistaken for passive-aggressiveness.

"I suppose it's my turn now?" He smiled as Amara lit a cigarette. "I'm a little bit older than I look," he began.

"Are you a demon?" she asked with a smile.

The simplicity caught him off guard. Kurama looked at her for a moment, trying to see if she was expecting him to say yes, and debating the issue himself.

"I told you, my weapon sometimes acts on its own. It activates when it senses danger, usually demonic energy, and it's been acting that way sometimes at night or when your friend comes to visit. I also noticed that plants seem to thrive around you, and I'm guessing it has something to do with your energy. That's not a type of aura that humans possess - it's typical for nature spirits."

"...You are correct in your assumptions. Aren't you concerned about your own safety, now that you've noticed this?"

Amara shrugged. "You seem pretty peaceful, and you've had a few chances to kill me. I'm not that defenseless, but I figured I'm safe enough around you."

"I did notice your weapon and Hiei, my partner in battle, did warn me about it. He used to come here often, but he's very slow to trust people in general, so he's been outside looking in for a little while now."

"He hates me being here, then? Tell him I don't bite," she laughed.

Kurama smiled, sipping his wine and looking down at the city, "I guess I would qualify as a half-demon. I merged with this body soon after its conception, as a means to keep myself alive after... one of my plans had failed miserably, and to put it briefly, I had no way of saving my old body. Therefore, I left it behind, screening my own death, which gave me the time to recover some of my energy in a new body in a much safer world."

The girl breathed out the smoke in her lungs. "Sounds pretty awful. What did you do to get yourself into that?"

"It was a burglary gone wrong. I lost my partner there. He got injured and asked to be left behind, but I didn't make it much farther. My mind was elsewhere, I failed to notice the trap and I ran straight into it."

"What's your demon name? This whole thing sounds really familiar."

His eyes widened. "What do you mean by that? I doubt the legend has made it to this world."

"Answer me and I'll answer you," she shrugged with a smile and sipped some more wine.

"Youko Kurama. I'm not that proud of my past..." he began, but Amara interrupted him.

"I could've bet! Dear Lord, if my master knew about this..." she laughed. "Let me explain. He's probably your biggest fan, and he keeps saying there's no way for that legend to be true. Something about it not fitting your style or character, I never really listened, but the point is that he kept saying Youko must be alive somewhere, laying low."

"Well..." he chuckled. "I'll be honest - that was unexpected. I hope not many others had figured it out." Kurama tried to play it cool, but there was part of his mind already making the connection. His act was not as convincing as he had hoped... If a mere mortal could figure it out, then it was possible - no, it was likely that some demons had too. This was terrible news. He should have planned it better, but he had so little time to act, he didn't consider the details...

"I don't think anyone took him seriously," Amara chuckled. "People see him as kind of mad, even if they don't say it upfront."

"Any particular reason for that?"

"Plenty," Amara admitted, "but let's talk about you. What's the deal with Yomi? It seems to me like he hates your very existence."

"Probably," he sighed. "He used to be my right-hand-man about a thousand years ago. He showed great promise, but his flaws eventually convinced me that he was a liability. You must understand that I've lost men, gold, and strategic advantages because of him. He would sneak out from the camp, walk straight into an ambush or a trap - sometimes both, killing good, valuable men in the process and injuring others, and then he'd wait for me to notice their absence, mobilize the men left - usually the weak and already wounded from previous raids, and go rescue him and the others. Perhaps it wasn't my best decision, but from a strategic point of view, it was a profitable decision, no doubt..."

"Why are you trying to excuse yourself?" Amara asked.

"...I arranged his assassination."

There was a moment of silence before he heard Amara breathing out the smoke from her lungs. The realization had hit her like a brick. The one next to her was Youko, merged with a human, confessing he had planned the murder of his right-hand, who somehow survived and was probably out to get his revenge on him. How the hell did she wind up in the middle of such a mess between two debatably legendary demons?

"...Oh," was all she could say. Her eyes were on Kurama the entire time.

Avoiding her eyes and breathing in, he continued. "Clearly, it went wrong, for which I am grateful. However, I'm afraid I might have accidentally thrown him into a very dangerous kind of darkness. You see, he mentioned the Shadows, and it's very likely that the guards at the restaurant were, in fact, S-class demons."

She shook her head. "I call this a scam. Clearly they can't disguise that much energy - one of us would have noticed it slipping."

"They can. It's amazing how well they do, but they can. I've seen it once before. You see, I've had a... friend," Kurama sighed again. He took a mouthful of wine, keeping it in his mouth for a moment to feel the alcohol warming his tongue. "A bat demon named Kuronue. He was a little younger than me and by that, I mean a few seasons. We raided together for the most part, then began thinking of building our own kingdom right around the time when Raizen had proclaimed himself king, so we agreed to gather a band of thieves and Yomi earned his position as my second. During those first years of running the band, a woman contacted us two. She was more interested in me."

Amara raised an eyebrow. "Alright...?"

A small smirk spread over his face. "None of us had any intention of settling down and becoming loyal to one woman, keep that in mind. So we received a message and agreed to meet her, even though I could not find any information on who she was or what business she could have had with us. I was intrigued at first because it was usually me doing the choosing. Either way, Kuronue and I follow the instructions and go to meet her on our own. She had called us in the middle of the desert. We were greeted by A and S-class demons, blindfolded, and escorted deeper into the desert. She had an impressive layer underground on many levels and an amazing greenhouse with the entire ceiling made of glass. Many of her specimens were hybrids, which for some reason, did not ring any alarm bells at the time."

"What's so odd about hybrids?"

"I'll get to that. So, Kuronue and I meet this woman in her underground garden. She's a female and a raven - a very rare sight, as most die in childbirth very early in their lives. She's wearing a mask over the right side of her face. After the introductions, she claims that one of her ladies who tend to her daily is pregnant and supposedly, Kuronue is the father. That was highly unlikely as the girl claimed it was rape, and as barbaric as we were in battle, we never forced ourselves onto women. We had plenty to choose from."

Amara rolled her eyes. "So Kuronue didn't rape this servant girl?"

"No. He also had the ability to remember everything he did while drunk, and I mean really drunk - I always envied him for that. Well, parenthood talk aside, this raven woman offered to make me king of a kingdom as wide as the desert. She was rich, pretty, intelligent, and she had successfully trained a handful of demons to surprising levels of power and loyalty, and that finally rang an alarm for me. It sounded too good to be true. There had to be a price for all of this, something greater than settling down with her. I turned her down and she threw a fit, which only boosted my ego at the time, but I had made my decision. It was only the beginning, though. That would find out about our raids, track us down, and keep sending her people to bribe us. She sent us women, soldiers, medicine, even weapons. Some of our men left us with the promise of riches and a military career. Nobody ever heard of them again, it was as if they had never existed. Some had families, others had women looking for them, asking if they had died on a raid, but we always announced these deaths to those we knew."

"Do you think they were killed?" Amara asked.

"Maybe. We were completely in the dark until a few days after I thought I had Yomi killed. One of our men was returned to us in the early hours of the morning. We had fallen asleep collectively - something which had never happened before. He was still alive because of the high levels of adrenaline. I won't describe to you how he looked, but I will say he had seen torture to such a degree that a band of cruel, barbaric killers felt sick. His mind was gone and he was completely incoherent. He died while screaming at something that was not there and trying to fend off imaginary enemies. There's more, though..."

The girl looked absolutely disgusted. "Go on..."

"Are you sure?" Kurama asked.

She nodded and emptied her glass of wine.

"Are you familiar with the Blood Eagle execution of the Vikings?"

Once again, the girl nodded. "I read about it."

"The ribs on his back along with the muscle and part of his spine were gone. He was a medium for a wide variety of carnivorous plants, all hybrids of several generations to the point where even I had trouble identifying their lineage. Three of those were developing neurotoxins. The men I had clean up the camp and burn the body were paralyzed for days simply from having made contact with the said plants."

Amara's expression changed from disgust to pure horror. "Oh, God... Just from touch?! Paralyzed?"

"Four to seven days, yes. I was unable to heal them sooner."

"Do you think... Yomi...?"

Kurama looked away. "I've suspected it for a while. Now that I've seen him with the Shadows, I am almost certain."

Amara dropped the cigarette as it burned her. "Shit!"