Although they got screamed at by the principal, they were still happy, laughing about the totally awesome way they had tricked the idiot preps. The next day, which was the last day of school, passed quickly, with them doing nothing in all the classes. Afterwards, while they were wandering through town after school, enjoying their summer vacation freedom, they ran into Yusuke and Kuwabara.

"Hello," Kurama said as they approached.

"Hey guys. And girl. Yeah, I was just thinking that you guys should have some fun, since you've been in school every day, all day and you had no way to vent your anger, Hiei, I thought---" Yusuke stopped, staring at them. "What happened to you?" he asked, staring at the newest bandages.

The two boys' first spar wounds had healed in a couple days, thanks to Kurama's lovely plant concoctions, and, being stupid boys, they had decided to go out and spar again. This time they mauled each other again, but Kurama had promised that Hiei would suffer more injuries this time. Kurama came through on his promise. Hiei had gotten pretty cut up and chewed up by various evil plants. Since they were in the forest, Kurama had had the advantage, and he had used it.

The wounds they had this time were more numerous than the first time. Hiei's arms were bandaged all the way up. That was normal, even when he wasn't wounded. But he also had bandages wrapped around his chest, neck, and horizontally to cover one shoulder, and he had a bandage over his cheek again.

Kurama had one arm, from his shoulder to his elbow, bandaged. He also had his chest bandaged and a couple Band-Aids on his face. His wounds weren't as bad as Hiei's, because, like I said before, he had had the advantage in the forest. All their bandages were very noticeable because they were both wearing baggy sleeveless shirts with nothing over or under them to hide their arms.

"They were being idiots," Shadow said.

"We were not!" they said at the same time.

"They sparred. Rather cruelly. Twice. It wasn't really a spar. In a spar, you're not supposed to get hurt much. Kurama said so himself. But these two idiots weren't following their own rules, and this is what they got for it," Shadow explained.

"Hey, I thought you had more brains than that, Kurama!" Kuwabara said. "You're not supposed to go out and fight your best friend. You'll maul each other, and then you'll regret it later!"

"Well, we don't regret it yet, and it's been a week since the first one. And besides, fighting Hiei is just like fighting any other superfast sword- genius fire demon. Not that I've fought many of them. But it's not much different," Kurama said, shrugging.

"Oh." Kuwabara looked confused. They'd all gotten quite used to that look.

"Anyway, I came to invite you two, or three if Shadow would want to come along, to a paintball fight. You can spar that way. With guns and paintballs and stuff. You wanna come?" Yusuke asked.

"Of course we do!" Shadow said. "Lead the way!"

"All right!" Yusuke said. He led them away. Shadow had to grab Kurama and Hiei by their wrists and drag them after him.

"What exactly is a paintball fight, anyway?" Hiei asked.

"You have these guns, and instead of bullets, they're loaded with these balls of paint. You shoot people, and when the little ball hits them, it explodes or something and paint goes everywhere. It hurts, too. I don't know how well you two will do with your injuries, but you're demons, you'll live I'm sure," Yusuke said.

"Okay, that sounds rather simple," Hiei muttered.

"Yeah, it's so simple even Kuwabara can do it," Yusuke said.

"Hey! I take that as an insult, Urameshi!!!" Kuwabara said.

"No kidding, that's how it was meant to be taken, idiot," Yusuke said.

"Do we have like teams or is it every one for themselves?" Shadow asked, hoping to keep Yusuke and Kuwabara from ripping each others' throats out.

"Either way. We've got an odd number, though, so it should probably be every one for themselves," Yusuke said. "Okay?"

"Sure, fine."

They arrived at the paintball place and got the whole paintball suit and helmet and everything on, then they went out into the forest to shoot each other. Somehow, for some reason, they all seemed to gang up on Kuwabara. He managed to shoot Shadow and Kurama a couple times, he hit Yusuke once, then Hiei shot him really close and knocked him clear over. They all scattered and by the time Kuwabara got himself stood up, they were gone, and he had to go searching for them.

Hiei went into sniper mode. He hid in the trees and bushes, then when somebody walked by, he shot them. It was Kuwabara the first time, cuz he's stupid and he wasn't paying attention, so he got shot right in the back of the neck by the little sniper-demon Hiei. Kuwabara fell flat on his face agian and Hiei made a point to step on him a couple times on his way away.

Kurama did almost the same thing, but at the moment he was having a face- off against Yusuke. They were shooting at each other like maniacs. Yes, Kurama. Maniac Kurama. Yusuke got a paintball right in the face and went over backwards and Kurama took that opportunity to shoot the crap out of him. Being focused on shooting Yusuke, he barely noticed Shadow come from behind and he got shot too. Yusuke was down, completely covered in red paint, which was the color Kurama had chosen. Kurama turned around and started shooting his red paint at Shadow. She shot him with her blue paint. They were having an insane shooting frenzy when Hiei appeared out of no where and shot both of them with black paint. (Yusuke had been using green and Kuwabara had been using yellow, if it means anything to you.)

"YOU WILL NOT WIN!!!" Shadow screamed, shooting Hiei. She noticed that he only had a couple splatters of paint on him. 'I'll just have to change that,' she thought, shooting him with blue paint. She shot at him and he shot at her and Kurama shot at both of them and they all shot until they were completely out of ammo. Then they all three collapsed at the same time. Shadow fell on top of Yusuke, right onto his stomach. He grunted, but he was still just laying there, covered in paint.

Afterwards, they all decided, after looking at the amount of colors on each other, that Hiei had won by far. Kurama had come in second, Shadow in third, Yusuke fourth, and, no surprise here, Kuwabara came in last. Nobody had much yellow paint at all, but when they had finally found Kuwabara, he was soaked in black paint and also lying in a puddle of black paint. Yusuke had been covered in red paint, therefore Kurama was in second. Shadow completely saturated Hiei in blue, and now he had a nice blend of purple covering his paintball suit (blue [Shadow]+red[Kurama]=purple).

"Hiei wins. Kurama comes in second. Shadow comes third. I'm fourth. And Kuwabara is still unconscious. Hiei, are you sure you didn't give him a nice kick in the head, too?" Yusuke said.

"I didn't kick him. He's just weak!" Hiei said, pulling off his painted- purple paintball suit. He had huge welts everywhere he had been shot. Shadow and Kurama pulled off their suits and Shadow almost screamed at the amount of welts on her. Kurama got a slightly disgusted look on his face. Yusuke pulled off his suit and he also pulled off Kuwabara's suit. Kuwabara was still unconscious, but he looked like one big, ugly, puffy, red welt.

"He'll be feeling that for a while," Yusuke muttered.

"I'd say we all will be. Paintballs HURT," Shadow said, already taking some pain reliever pills. Yusuke snatched the bottle from her and ate a couple of them, shortly realizing that they tasted horrible because they were not chewables and he had just chewed them. Stupid Yusuke. He made faces like he would throw up, then he ran away with his hand over his mouth, and Kurama and the others had a strange suspicion he was doing just that.

They all sat down, exhausted, and waited for Yusuke to come back. While they were waiting, Kuwabara started to come to. The first thing he saw when he woke up was Hiei, sitting with his back to him. After a minute he remembered the last thing he saw before he passed out was Hiei, aiming a gun at his crotch.

Kuwabara jumped up and started strangling Hiei.

"You lousy stupid shorty! How could you shoot my precious balls?! How dare you!? That hurts a lot, you know! I'm gonna be sore for weeks, thanks to you!" Kuwabara yelled, shaking Hiei around like a rag doll.

"Kuwabara!" Kurama snapped, grabbing his arms and glaring at him. "Let go, you oversized jerk!"

"No! He shot me! He deserves to be strangled!"

Shadow decided that she wasn't in the mood for Kuwabara's stupid attitude, and she stood up and smashed him in the back of the head with her paintball gun. He went limp and fell over, smacking his head off the ground when he hit.

"That works a lot better than insults, you know," Shadow said to Kurama. Kurama shrugged. Hiei was sitting there rubbing his neck. He stood up and glared down at Kuwabara (wow, he was looking DOWN at somebody for once!).

"Your precious balls? God, you're sick," Hiei muttered, delivering a hard kick right between Kuwabara's legs. The guy twitched and grunted in his sleep.

"That had to hurt..." Kurama muttered, flinching.

"I'm sure it did. You want to know it as a fact?" Shadow said, meaning, 'If you're not positive, then I could just kick you in the balls and you can make sure you were right about it hurting.'

"No, thank you. This is one case where I'd say a very educated guess is best," Kurama said. He had a sweatdrop. Shadow burst out laughing.

"Okay, fine," she muttered, laughing. About then, Yusuke came back, wiping his mouth on a paper towel.

"I guess we're gonna leave now?" he said.

"Hey, why don't you all come over to my house?" Kurama said. "Or actually for the past few months, it'd be more appropriate to call it our house, but whatever."

"Sure. I don't want to have to drag Kuwabara any further than I have to, and your house is closest," Yusuke said. "Let's go."

"All right," Kurama said, leading the way out. Hiei walked beside him, Shadow was trailing a few feet behind them, and Yusuke was bringing up the rear, dragging Kuwabara by his arm.

When they walked up to the front door of Kurama's house, his mother was just walking out.

"Oh, Shuuichi! You brought friends over?" Shiori said.

"Yes, I hope you don't mind, Mother," Kurama said.

"Actually, I was just heading out... I have a few errands to run. You five can hang out here, I guess, if you want," Shiori said. "Just don't wreck the house."

"We won't," they all said at the same time as they walked inside.

Yusuke dragged Kuwabara in and left him lying on the floor in the living room with Shadow sitting on the couch with a fire poker, jabbing Kuwabara in the chest with it. Yusuke wandered away. Kurama was in his room, breeding his poisonous roses, and Hiei was in his room polishing his katana. Yusuke walked upstairs and into the first room he saw, which happened to be Hiei's.

After a while, Shadow was extremely bored with poking Kuwabara in the chest with a fire poker, and since he was making no signs of coming to anytime soon, she walked upstairs to see what the conscious boys were doing. She found Hiei and Yusuke in Hiei's room playing bloody knuckles. They were playing bloody knuckles and taking the name literally. Both of them had cuts on their hands and their blood was covering each other's hands. By this point they were wincing, but their eyes were locked on each other's, and neither would give up. Shadow stood in the doorway, staring at them with her mouth hanging open like a dork.

"What---" she started.

"Sh!" Hiei said. He slammed his knuckles across Yusuke's and Yusuke yelped, breaking eye contact and drawing back his hand. He stared at his bruised and bloody knuckles for a second while Hiei grinned at his victory. Shadow was still staring with her mouth hanging open. Without saying anything, she walked over to Kurama's room and pushed the door open to find him sitting on his bed, concentrating to make some plant grow. There was a rose growing up out of the flower pot in front of him, only it looked a lot more evil than a normal rose. Hiei and Yusuke walked over and stood behind Shadow to watch Kurama.

"Hello," he said, still staring at the plant.

"Hi. What's that?" Shadow asked, pointing at the evil-looking rose.

"It's a poisonous rose."

"So you finally got that whole hybrid thing to work?" Hiei said.

"Yes. I just don't know how it'll go with the rose whip and I have no one to test it on. By the way, if you're going to play bloody knuckles like that, it'd be best to get some medical help. You cut down to the bone, you idiots," Kurama said.

"Oh yeah. Well, having medicine would be good," Yusuke said.

"Who won?" Kurama asked.

"Hiei."

"Boo-yeah, go me," Hiei said.

"Medicine?" Yusuke reminded Kurama.

"Oh. Right." Kurama walked over and picked up a small jar off a book shelf. "This is something I made. It should help a good bit."

Yusuke took the bottle and looked at it suspiciously. "This isn't some freaky kind of poison, is it?"

"Do you really think I would try to poison my best friends?" Kurama asked, slightly annoyed.

"Give me that!" Hiei snapped, snatching the bottle. He popped off the lid and sniffed it. His eyes went crossed and he got a disgusted look on his face. "God, Kurama, what is this made of?! It smells horrible!"

"Does the smell really matter? If you care that much about the smell I'll add some roses and it'll smell all flowery! Would you be happy then?"

"No. Then I'd smell like you."

"Really! You shouldn't care about the scent! You're supposed to smell funny!" Shadow said, pointing her finger at Hiei's chest. She caught a whiff of the medicine and coughed so bad it sounded like she would puke up her lungs, or at the very least choke on them.

"Are you okay?" Hiei asked, looking down at Shadow where she had collapsed on the floor.

"That smells TERRIBLE!!! I forbid you to come near me if you use that!" Shadow said, pointing up at Hiei. He raised one eyebrow.

"Kurama, you better do something with this before we all die."

"I'm so glad you appreciate my medicines," Kurama muttered sarcastically, snatching the bottle out of Hiei's hand.

"They don't usually smell like some animal that's been dead and rotten for weeks and has flies and maggots living in it and it's nothing more than a melted slimey mess on the side of the road with bits of fur clinging to the bones of the whatever it was that died because nobody can tell anymore since it's just a puddle of slime and blood and bones with a few bits of guts and fur here and there and everybody who comes near it dies of a heart attack because the smell was such a horrible shock to their system that their heart stopped and left them to die and become another even bigger rottener slimeyer mess on the side of the road!!!" Hiei said all in one breath. He started panting and doubled over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. Kurama, Yusuke, and Shadow stared at him like he was insane for a few minutes.

Shadow finally broke their silence. "Nice details," she said sarcastically.

Kurama had started pouring in some rose powder before Hiei had started his rant about dead slimey puddles, and he finally snapped out of his staring and realized he'd poured in enough powder to start overflowing the medicine bottle. The powder was going all over the place. Kurama stopped pouring it and stared at the rose dust all over the floor.

"Nice mess you made there, Kurama," Yusuke said.

"Shut up or clean it up, your choice," Kurama said. Yusuke shut up. Kurama went about mixing his rose dust into the medicine while Hiei and Yusuke waited with blood still covering their knuckles.

"You could go wash the blood off while you wait," Kurama suggested. Hiei and Yusuke stared at their hands, covered in blood, and simultaneously walked into the bathroom to wash their hands.

"God, those boys are so ungrateful," Shadow said, walking around in Kurama's room, looking at his various bottles, picking up one occasionally and popping off the lid to smell it.

"Gah! Don't touch that one!" Kurama said suddenly, shooting over and grabbing Shadow's wrist before she touched a small bottle full of a strange blue powder.

"Why? What is it?"

"Deadly."

"YOU MAKE DEADLY POWDERS AND KEEP THEM IN YOUR ROOM??? WHAT THE HELL WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR MOTHER TOUCHED ONE, HM??? WHY WOULD YOU MAKE SOME DEADLY POWDER IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU INSANE FOX BOY??? ARE YOU NUTS??? YOU HAVEN'T HAD TO USE ANY OF YOUR SCREWED UP CONCOCTIONS FOR MURDER, HAVE YOU? YOU MAKE MEDICINES AND JUNK, NOT POISON!!! ARE YOU INSANE??? WHAT OTHER KIND OF THINGS DO YOU MAKE??? LOVE POTIONS??? TRUTH SERUMS??? DRUGS??? HALLUCINOGENS???" Shadow screamed. Hiei and Yusuke stared from the doorway. Kurama had one eyebrow raised and was looking at her like she was insane. He dragged her away from his shelves full of 'screwed up concoctions' and stood her in the middle of the room.

"I don't make anything that wouldn't be useful," Kurama said.

"That's vague," Shadow muttered.

"Yes it is, and I'm not gonna specify anything," Kurama said. He picked up his freshly altered medicine and handed it to Hiei. The he grabbed Shadow's wrist, dragged her over, grabbed Hiei's hand, put her wrist in his hand, closed his hand around it, and told Hiei to get her away from his room. Hiei complied by dragging Shadow down the hall, putting her in her room, and jamming a chair against the doorknob to keep her in. He was just about to use the medicine Kurama had just given him when, out of no where, Koenma appeared in front of him. Hiei almost had a heart attack.

"DON'T EVER JUST APPEAR IN FRONT OF ME WHEN I'M IN A HOUSE AND I DON'T EXPECT LITTLE PACIFIER-SUCKERS TO APPEAR IN FRONT OF ME LIKE THAT!!!" Hiei screamed at Koenma, who was floating at his eye level.

"DON'T YOU START CALLING ME NAMES TOO, HIEI!!!"

"I'LL CALL YOU WHATEVER I WANT, MIDGET BOY!!!"

"YOU BETTER WATCH IT, SHORT STUFF!!!"

"I'M BIGGER THAN YOU ARE!!!"

Poof. Teen Koenma appeared.

"Damn," Hiei muttered, looking up at Koenma.

"That's right, now you're short," Koenma said happily. Hiei got a sweatdrop.

"Whatever. Why are you here?" Hiei asked, hoping to get Koenma off the topic of hieght.

"Oh yeah. I came to tell you some good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Good news," Hiei said after a second.

"The good news is: I finally think Shadow is trustworthy enough that you don't have to keep her under constant suveilance anymore," Koenma said. A muffled "WOOHOO!!!" came from the other side of the door.

"HEY, NO LISTENING ON PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS, MISSY!" Hiei yelled through the door at Shadow. She didn't reply. "What's the bad news?" Hiei asked.

"The bad news is that you are about six months behind in your weekly reports, therefore you are in trouble," Koenma said. A muffled, "Ha ha!" came through the door, but Hiei ignored it.

"I'm in trouble? Like, how much trouble?" Hiei asked. Hiei didn't know, but Kurama was also listening in on the conversation, and at this point he walked out of his room, carrying the poisonous rose in a flower pot.

"Kurama, what's that?" Koenma asked.

"A rose," Kurama said.

'Good move, Kurama, you dumb shit,' the evil little chibi Youko said, appearing on his shoulder. 'You're in deep shit now. You can't cross makai plants and ningenkai plants legally. Stupid boy.'

'Shut up!' Kurama thought, glaring at his left shoulder.

'What will you do now, hm?' Youko asked.

'Shut up! Go away!' Kurama thought, annoyed.

"Kurama? That's not a normal rose, is it?" Koenma asked suspiciously.

"Well..." Kurama said, but the little Youko on his shoulder interrupted.

'Lie! Tell him it's normal! You can't get in trouble! He's stupid, he won't know the difference!' Youko said. Chibi Shuuichi appeared on Kurama's right shoulder.

'Tell the truth. He might be merciful. And if he's not, you and Hiei will go to prison together,' the little Shuuichi said, shrugging.

'Hiei's not going to prison, and neither am I!' Kurama thought angrily to Shuuichi.

'What makes you so sure? Koenma's pretty stupid sometimes, he might just decide to throw you both in prison and get it over with,' Youko said.

'I'M BEING GANGED UP ON!!!' Kurama thought angrily to the two little reflections of himself.

'Yes, well, if you didn't want our help then why did you bring us here?' Shuuichi asked.

'I didn't bring you here, you lousy chibi midgets!!! You appeared on your own!!!' Kurama snapped.

'That's true,' Youko said. 'But that's cuz you have a problem deciding these things properly on your own, so I need to help you.'

'You help him? All you do is confuse him, stupid fox! I'm the one who's helping!' Shuuichi yelled.

"Kurama, you haven't answered me yet. Is that a normal rose or isn't it?" Koenma asked.

Kurama was overwhelmed by the two chibis on his shoulders. They both started screaming instructions at him and arguing with each other and Shuuichi pulled out a chibi rose whip and Youko pulled out a chibi death tree and they started fighting on top of Kurama's head.

"No, it's not normal," Kurama said. The two chibis on his head, who had abandoned their plants and had resorted to good old fashioned rolling on the ground (Kurama's head) and strangling each other, stopped strangling each other and jumped back to Kurama's shoulders and started shouting in his ears again.

'What are you, nuts?! You're in for it now, you dumb shit, and since you disobeyed me, I refuse to help you ever again,' Youko said, crossing his arms and acting very stuck up.

'Yeah, like you ever helped him in the first place, stupid fox,' Shuuichi said. The he said to Kurama, 'Good boy. I knew you knew right from wrong. Of course, the human side is always better.'

'Humans suck,' Youko said.

'SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!!! GO AWAY!!! NOW!!!' Kurama screamed at them (thought/screamed). They glared at him. Youko vanished in an explosion of rose petals and Shuuichi just vanished. Yes, the demon always had to make his exit so interesting. But he left tons of chibi rose petals all over Kurama's shoulder.

"I knew it wasn't normal! What did you do with it, Kurama?" Koenma asked.

"Hey! Don't yell at Kurama! I want to hear you yell at Hiei first!" Shadow said through her door.

"Fine then," Koenma agreed, turning toward Hiei. Hiei had just been calming down a bit and preparing to listen to somebody else get lectured. He looked startled and started to 'innocently' walk away, but Koenma caught him by the back of his shirt.

"Where are you going young man?" Koenma asked.

"Away?" Hiei said, as if asking permission to leave.

"Nope. I haven't told you the bad new yet. You're in trouble, because you are months late on your weekly reports. You got the specific order to watch Shadow and report to me every week. Why didn't you?!" Koenma snapped.

"It's kind of hard to go to spirit world when you're in school!" Hiei argued.

"That's no excuse! You had weekends! You could have come during the middle of the night! You had plenty of free time!" Koenma said.

"I couldn't come on weekends because Shiori was almost always around and don't think she wouldn't notice me missing!" Hiei yelled.

"What about during the night? She would have assumed you were in your room asleep!"

"You know that's impossible, thanks to you! I know you sleep at night! I don't think you'd appreciate having some demon wake you up at night just to tell you some girl isn't causing any trouble!"

"Since when did you care what I cared about?!" Koenma asked.

"Since you became my boss!"

"That's---" Koenma started to yell, but then he looked confused. "You actually think of me as your boss? I mean, I know I am, but I didn't expect you to think of me as your boss, since you're the mighty Hiei or whatever and you don't listen to anybody."

"I don't listen to anybody," Hiei said.

"Except me."

"Shut up."

"You can't make me."

"You wanna see me try?"

"No."

"You're scared of me."

"No I'm not. Why should I be?"

"Because I'm a scary person."

"I can agree with that," Shadow muttered. They ignored her.

"You're not scary."

"Really?"

"Yes really."

"Boo," Hiei said dryly.

"AAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Koenma screamed.

Hiei raised one eyebrow.

"Just kidding," Koenma said.

"Yeah, I should hope you were."

"HEY, GET BACK TO PUNISHING HIM!" Shadow yelled, pounding on her door.

"DAMN YOU, SHADOW!" Hiei yelled.

"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot! Anyway, the punishment for being months behind on your reports and having no decent excuse is... You have to take the blue ogre's place for a month. He went on vacation and I need a servant," Koenma said matter-of-factly. Hiei's jaw dropped. Kurama and Shadow choked to keep from laughing. Yusuke was no where to be found.

'Maybe he fell in the toilet,' Kurama thought when he realized Yusuke was missing.

"Servant?!" Hiei said. "I am nobody's servant!"

"Well you are now. Come along, servant boy. You walk to my left and two steps behind me," Koenma explained, thoroughly pleased with himself.

"Don't start calling me servant boy, Pacifier Junkie!" Hiei snapped.

"DID YOU HEAR ME? STAND TO MY LEFT AND TWO STEPS BEHIND ME, SERVANT BOY!!!" Koenma screamed, his head inflating so big that Hiei cowered away like a scared dog.

"Yes, I heard you," Hiei said resentfully as Koenma panted for breath.

"Good. Now, Kurama, what's this rose plant you have?" Koenma asked, walking forward. He turned around and saw Hiei hadn't moved. "GET YOUR SCRAWNY SELF OVER HERE, SERVANT BOY!"

"DON'T CALL ME SERVANT BOY, SUCKER BOY!!!" Hiei screamed.

"WOULD YOU RATHER GO TO PRISON, SERVANT BOY?!"

Hiei looked startled but angrily walked forward and stood two steps behind Koenma and to his left.

Shadow was lying on the floor in her room, curled up laughing so hard she had long since stopped breathing. She had probably broken a rib or two from laughing.

"Now anyway, Kurama, what did you do with this rose?" Koenma asked.

"It's a hybrid."

"So? What's that mean?"

"I crossed it with another plant," Kurama explained, silnetly wondering how the hundreds-of-years-old ruler of spirit world didn't know what a hybrid was.

"What plant? An earth plant?"

"Sort of..." Kurama said nervously.

"Sort of? How can it be sort of?!" Koenma asked, thoroughly confused.

"Well, I grew it here, but it's from demon world, originally," Kurama said nervously.

"You crossed a human plant with a demon plant?" Koenma said.

"Yeah," Kurama said, flinching slightly.

"How could you be so stupid?!" Koenma asked. Hiei raised one eyebrow.

"It's not stupid! I'm not going to do anything with it except make a more powerful rosewhip!"

"Well that'll be good when you need your rosewhip, but you don't need it now so why do you need to go mixing different worlds' plants?!"

"So I'll have the plant when I need it."

"Oh... That's a good enough reason. I'll let this slip, but don't mix plants with the purpose of harming human life. If you ever do, you'll be in prison before you can do anything about it," Koenma said. Hiei's mouth was hanging open at the pure unfairness of it.

"You let him off for something even worse than what I did!" Hiei said.

"Shut up, servant boy," Koenma said. Kurama could almost see the steam pouring out of Hiei's ears.

"He's right though... You're not being fair," Kurama said.

"Since when did you care?" Koenma asked.

"He's my best friend, of course I care!" Kurama said.

"Well, he's my replacement servant until my normal one comes back from his vacation," Koenma said.

"How long'll that be?" Hiei asked.

"Two weeks," Koenma replied.

"Two weeks?!"

"Yup."

"Damn."

"What am I supposed to tell my mother?" Kurama asked. "She'll wonder where he is."

"Use that big brain of yours to think of something!" Koenma said. "Now, back to Spirit World!"

Koenma vanished. Hiei stayed right where he was. A half a second later, Koenma reappeared, grabbed Hiei's arm and they both vanished.

"Poor Hiei," Kurama said. Yusuke finally walked out of the bathroom.

"Why? What happened to Hiei?" Yusuke asked. Kurama got about five sweatdrops and explained.

"God, I pity him," Yusuke said after he finally stopped laughing and caught his breath.

"You pity who and why?" Kuwabara asked, walking up the stairs. Shadow pounded on the door, screaming.

"LET ME OUT, YOU LOUSY BUMS!!! DON'T THINK I CAN'T HEAR YOU OUT THERE!!!" she screamed. Kurama sighed and pulled the chair out from where it was wedged under the door. The door flew open and Shadow fell flat on her face.

"Hey, how'd I get here?" Kuwabara asked. He glared at his two friends, then at Shadow when she managed to stand up. "You guys better answer my questions!"

"God, you act like being at my house is a bad thing. Yusuke brought you here because Shadow knocked you unconscious and my house was a lot closer so he didn't have to drag you as far, and Yusuke pities Hiei because Koenma came and dragged Hiei off to be his new servant boy, as he's so fond of calling him..."

"Hiei is Koenma's servant boy?!" Kuwabara said, a smile breaking out on his face. He started laughing so hard he fell over. He smashed his head right into the chair that Kurama had just moved, and he stopped laughing and hit the floor, unconscious. Yusuke and Kurama sighed, staring at Kuwabara.

"That guy can't stay conscious for more than ten minutes at a time, can he?" Yusuke muttered.

"I like him a lot better when he's out cold on the floor," Shadow said.

"Don't we all?" Kurama said. Yusuke and Shadow looked at him with one eyebrow raised, but he didn't notice.