Hello again my fellow YYH fans!!
Yusuke- How many times do we have to do this?
Everyone has to do them once so long as chapters are added.
Yusuke- -_-() She doesn't own us. So there!
That's great, Yusuke. *sweatdrop*
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Broken
By Ryoken
"Kireiko, wait!!" Kurama shouted down the hall. He couldn't see her, but assumed she had turned the corner. He did the same, only to find that he couldn't find her anywhere in his view. The elevator was on the other side of the apartments. Kurama stopped dead in his tracks only to have Kuwabara and Hiei run into him, causing him and the other two to fall to the ground on their faces.
"Hey, why'd you stop, Kurama??" Kuwabara asked.
"I'll tell you if you'd kindly get off of my back," he replied calmly.
"Sure, once the shrimp gets off MY back!"
"What are you talking about, I'm not even touching you anymore, idiot," Hiei said from behind.
"Oh." He got up and helped Kurama up as well.
"I stopped because Kireiko disappeared," Kurama said after he got to his feet.
"Disappeared??" Hiei and Kuwabara said, along with Keiko and Yusuke who had joined them.
"I turned the corner and I couldn't see her anymore. She may have gone into one of the other apartments, but I'm sure I would've heard a door opening and closing, and none of the doors here are open," he explained.
"Well, she's got to be around here some place. She couldn't have just walked through a wall, right?" Yusuke said carelessly. Keiko's eyes widened with realization.
"Keiko, what's the matter?" Kuwabara asked, noticing her fright.
"I think...I think maybe...she...can..." Keiko said, on the verge of passing out.
"WHAT?!?!!?" The four said.
"Keiko, what the hell are you saying?!?" Yusuke said, grabbing her shoulders.
"What if...what if she's a ghost or something?!" Keiko said.
"Well, that does make some sense, only ghosts can't be seen. Yusuke would know that from personal experience, correct?" Kurama inquired.
"Yeah. No one could see me, but if someone was asleep, I could enter their bodies and control 'em for a little while," Yusuke noted. "But that still doesn't explain how she'd be able to walk through a wall, if she even did."
"That's true, it doesn't. Perhaps Koenma would know more about something like this, or Botan," Kurama suggested.
"Sounds like a plan to me," Yusuke said. Suddenly, Yusuke turned around to face the other direction of the hall.
"What is it, Yusuke? Did you see her?" Keiko asked.
"No...But it feels like someone's watching us. Can't you feel it?" He asked.
"No. You sure you're feelin ok, Urameshi?" Kuwabara said.
"Yeah, I'm fine! 'Cept for the being watched part...I could've sworn I heard someone laugh back in the apartment and I thought I saw someone out of the corner of my eye..." Yusuke scratched his head in thought. Maybe I'm going crazy... He thought.
"That's odd..." Kurama remarked. "We'd better see Koenma."
Koenma groaned. "I still haven't found much of anything on this demon. It doesn't make much sense, it's like she just dropped out of our record books!"
"Haven't you found anything at all?" Kurama asked through the communication mirror (they'd gotten a replacement).
"Nothing we don't know already."
"What about what happened earlier. How would you explain something like that?" Kurama asked.
"I wouldn't know. Botan wouldn't either. It defies all logic, I'd really like to have met this Kireiko. Or, if not me, then at least Botan." Koenma sighed again. "And you haven't been able to even see one of those black-hooded cultists?"
Kurama shook his head. "It's as though they all got up and left at the exact same time."
"This is awful! We've got no good leads except that they're probably somewhere in Europe and who the heck knows where!!"
"What's going on, you guys?" Keiko asked in the background.
"Huh? Oh, there's these weirdos trying to bring some sort of demon into the human world and we think they're somewhere in Europe. Hey, Keiko, you said that little girl was from your dream, right? From what I heard, it seems like that girl and these freaks could be related."
"Yeah. When I talked to her, she said was from Italy. Maybe that's where they are?" She suggested.
"That does narrow it down a bit, but where in Italy? That could easily be anywhere," Koenma said, now donning his teenager form as Keiko came onto the screen.
"In my dream, they were in some sort of dark tunnels. Like they were underground...Maybe some sort of tomb?"
"That sounds like a catacomb!" Koenma exclaimed. "What else was in the catacomb, Keiko?"
"Well, there were a lot of skulls and bones. Most of the ones I saw...were in one room that was lighted by candles. They were all over, but it looked like someone had tried to decorate the room with them," Keiko shivered, recalling the creepily placed bone structures. "There can't be very many cities that have something like that, right?"
"No, there aren't. None like that. In fact, there's only one city in Italy that's even close to what you've described..."
And so the Yu Yu Hakusho team, consisting of Keiko, Kurama, Hiei, Kuwabara, and Yusuke, traveled through Spirit World to Rome, Italy.
"Wow, this place is so amazing, isn't it, Yusuke?" Keiko said as she looked at the Coliseum.
"Remember, Keiko, that we're not here on vacation," Kurama said.
Keiko took a face of seriousness. "Right."
Yusuke took a little tour guide map. "Well, then, shall we start lookin, or what?" He looked the map. "There's a ton of entrances to this place! I don't even know which one to start at!"
"How many are there, exactly?" Kuwabara asked.
"There must be at least fifteen of them!!"
"That's a lot," Keiko noted unhappily. "Maybe we should split up and take them two at a time?"
"I don't know...We don't know our way around the catacombs, let alone the city. These guys are bad news...I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to have only two fighters to a group, don't forget that that lady could be around here too," Yusuke said.
"You mean the one we couldn't detect?" Kurama asked.
"Yeah, that one. If we split up, she could probably just pick us off one at a time without a sound. For now, let's just stick together," Yusuke finalized.
"Agreed. Now, which entrance should we start off with?"
"The ones closest to us would probably be the best choice," Yusuke suggested. Yusuke looked at the map. "It says here that the nearest entrance should be underneath a...bridge?" Yusuke stopped and turned the map sideways. Then he turned it the other way and scratched his head.
"Here, let me see it," Kurama said, taking the map. Yusuke pointed to the location and Kurama screwed up his face in thought. The map talked about the location in a side-panel, but where it was supposed to be on the map, it pointed to a building instead of a bridge.
"Anyone know how to speak Italian?" Yusuke asked with a grin.
"Well, let's just go to the location and see what we can find," Hiei said.
"Sounds like a plan to me," Kurama agreed. The five walked along the streets, following the map as best as possible. They reached the spot and saw a fence that looked a little out of place. They went to it and saw that they were several stories up from a different road, and were obviously on top of the specified bridge.
"Ok, so now how do we get down there?" Kuwabara asked.
"Why don't you just jump down?" Hiei said as he walked towards the way they came, looking for a side street to go down. "Maybe you can find an entrance down there as you flatten so we can get down there safely."
"HEY! Why we just throw you over the fence then?!" Kuwabara said.
"Hn, like you'd be able to get me anyways," he retorted.
"Now now, children!" Yusuke said.
"Um, guys, I found something," Keiko said from up the street. They rushed to her and saw that she had found the way down.
They reached the underside of the bridge and instead of there being the other side of the bridge, it was walled up with bricks with the exception of a hallway big enough for one person at a time to fit through. Yusuke went in first, followed closely by Keiko, then Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei. They soon emerged in a small room where there was a desk and a person sitting behind it. There were several other people there, some of which looked like tourists, others who wore gray cloaks and had unlit lanterns in their hands. There was another person sitting beside the person at the desk. There was a name plaque on the space where the person beside the other person was sitting. It read: Translator. And underneath that was the name Rita Kindle. Yusuke and the gang went up to the translator.
"Ah, hello! Welcome to the Rome Catacombs!" She said from the desk. "I'm the translator for foreign tourists. Would you like to go on a tour of the catacombs?"
"Uh, yeah," Yusuke said.
"All right then," she talked to the guy beside her and they exchanged money. She then called over one of the people in the gray cloaks named Suzie. "Suzie here will be your tour guide. Don't loose sight of her or you might get lost and not all of these tunnels have been mapped yet," she added. The tour guide lead them into the tunnels, speaking in rapid Italian, which none of them understood except Kurama, who didn't bother to translate unless it seemed important.
During the middle of the tour, the guide stopped and turned around, like she did every so often, and a strange look crept over her. She said something concerned in Italian, which Kurama replied to in question. She pointed behind them rambling on again, only there was nothing there. Kurama looked stunned.
"What did she say, Kurama?" Keiko asked.
"She asked where our sixth person went and I asked her who. She pointed behind us and told me that there was a little girl behind us, but that she's gone now..."
Everyone stared blankly at them. The tour guide said something and hurried along, the others trying to follow behind.
"Hey guys, maybe we should try to find these guys on our own? I mean, I doubt if the tour guides would actually go anywhere near these cultists, and I'm sure the cultists wouldn't be performing any rituals near the tour guide route," Yusuke said.
"That's true, but what if we get lost? What then?" Kurama said.
"I don't know...Maybe we could leave some sort of trail?"
"Of what?" Keiko said.
"Maybe one of us could leave like a small string of spirit energy?" Yusuke suggested.
"Hn, for once Yusuke uses his brain instead of his luck," Hiei said.
"Hey! I'll have you know-"
"Shhhh!" Keiko said.
"What is it?" Yusuke and the others said.
"If you'll be quiet, maybe we can hear something," she said.
They remained silent for a while, but heard nothing except their own footsteps and the Italian words of the guide. Suddenly, clearly, they heard a giggle. They stopped dead in their tracks, as did the tour guide. She had heard it too. The giggle had echoed through the treacherous tunnels.
Yusuke and the others looked in every possible direction that the sound could've come from, but saw nothing. The giggle of a young child came again, a little louder this time, and the tour guide suddenly ran off, carrying the only means of possibly returning to the surface with her. The five were left standing in the dark until the fire youkai lit the halls with a flame in his hand. Keiko let out a small shriek as her legs gave out beneath her and she was eye-level with Kireiko. She was smiling.
"Kireiko! We finally found you!" Kurama said. "How did you get all the way here??"
Kireiko said nothing, but she smiled at everyone in turn. Suddenly, she seemed as though she had remembered something, and she turned around and looked up.
"Something's up," Hiei said, and all could see that his Jagan was glowing brightly under his headband. Kireiko took off unexpectedly, but at a pace that they could all keep up with. They followed suite.
Kireiko seemed to be leading them deeper and deeper into the catacombs of Rome, twisting and turning, going up and down stairs, but in a manner that told the team that she knew exactly where she was going. After a certain abrupt turn, Kireiko vanished, and a trace couldn't be found of her anywhere. Now the team was horribly lost in the catacombs, and yet not even close to the heart of the catacombs.
Well done, little one. Now, if you would be as so kind as to watch over those new strangers...
Kireiko nodded in affirmation, and vanished out of sight.
Everything is going as perfect as it possibly can. Although these strange humans and apparitions could be a threat, now that they are hopelessly loss in the maze of the catacombs, they'll pose no threat until we have need of them. As for those others, we must know just why they are here and who's side they are on.
"Yes, Master. I'm sure they pose no threat either if they're anything like the intruders," a woman in a black robe said.
We must take no chances. The alignment of the stars and celestial beings such as on a night like this only comes every 200 years. I've been waiting patient and hungry for far too long to fail once more. The child will not fail me, she knows what will happen if she does.
"Of course, Master. And should something happen, your loyal servants will take care of them."
Of course...
A laughter that wouldn't need the help of the hallways to echo, rang out in the halls and tunnels, and reached the Urameshi team's ears.
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Oooo, so very scary, ne? ^_^
Hiei- No it isn't.
-_- Do not make me use the mallet of doom on you, Hiei... Anywho, who are these new intruders that...that person talked about?!?! ^^' Guess you'll just have to wait to find out!!
