Disclaimer: I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho characters. If I did, Hiei would be
taller!
Thanks as always to my reviewers – goodness! You're an impatient lot. I'll try to get the next chapter up quicker than I did this one. Thanks to Caitlin for her enthusiasm, SakuraAngel04-I hope you'll approve of the direction this chapter's going, and thanks to YavieAelinel and RaikoGotal for reading my earlier chapters.
CHAPTER FOUR: AFTERMATH
It was late in the afternoon when Kurama pulled up to the ruined shrine. He'd had morning school then Juku, the intensive preparatory classes to get students ready for entrance exams, after lunch. His academic successes pleased his human mother, so he didn't mind the extra effort. It did, however, make him late for his rescue plan.
Exiting from the car, he walked to the shrine's wall and opened the portal Botan had led them through the day before on the way to the tournament. He passed through it and made his way around the hill by the empty, silent coliseum's entrance.
The girl was struggling to make her way out from under a heap of bodies. She'd managed to free her arms, torso, and one leg, and as he watched she pulled the other out from under the partial remains of a green skinned demon corpse. She slid down the heap of bodies and landed in the dust at the base, and brought herself shakily to her feet.
Hesitantly, she brought her fingertips up to press gently against the red, crusted line at her neck. Kurama figured that it was probably quite sore still, despite the mild healing coagulant he'd devised along with the sedative he'd placed on the rose whip's thorn that had slashed the wound on her neck. She raised her head, peering dully at him from under her bangs, staggering away from the body pile, as he came toward her.
Kurama stopped about five feet away, hands in his school uniform pockets, not wanting to frighten her.
"What is your human name?" He asked in Japanese. There was no response, just as when he'd tried it before during the tournament, so he switched to demonish. "What is your name, human?"
"Wind Slasher." Human throats not being designed for demonish, the words came out harshly. It was her fighter's name, not her real one, but Kurama let it pass.
"I live, why so?" Her grasp of the grammar wasn't very good, indicating that she hadn't been raised speaking demonish, but had picked it up later.
"I drugged you, so that you'd wake later. The drug simulates death, so it would appear to everyone that you'd died. I saw where they threw your body on the heap after our battle and I positioned you so that you'd be able to breathe. However, I hadn't counted on the laziness of the attendants. Evidently they threw more bodies from prior battles on top of you after I left. I'm sorry for that."
Kurama waited for a response for his simplified speech of demonish, but the girl merely stared, eyes just shards of blue under the shaggy mass of hair obscuring her face. Her hand was still at her neck, and she swayed a little. He realized that the drugs weren't entirely out of her system. The question was, what to do with her? She didn't belong in the demon world, and could barely focus enough to form coherent sentences.
"You'd best come with me." Kurama held out a hand and walked slowly toward her. She backed away, so he stopped. "It's alright. I won't kill you." He let his hand drop to his side. "Come." He said the word in command form demonish rather than suggestion form, turned his back and began walking to the portal.
She followed, reinforcing his impression that she was used to obeying orders in demonish, not giving them. She barely reacted when she crossed over into the human realm. The sky was orange with sunset, and it was beginning to get dark.
Kurama walked over to the passenger side of his car and opened the door. The girl hesitated, but got in, staying as far away from him as she could. When he got in the driver's seat, she leaned so far away from him that she was flush against the door.
On the way back to Tokyo, he tried to find out what language she'd been raised in. French, English, Italian, Chinese, and Germen yielded no response, and he soon ran out of the basic phrases he knew in each of those languages. With no way to know where her home was, he couldn't simply take her there or drop her off at an embassy. It would have to be Keiko's home.
However, when he pulled up to her building and rang the doorbell, his plans changed.
"Another houseguest?!?" Keiko stuck her head out the door as she bounced a small, crying child on her hip. "I'm sorry, Kurama, but we're full up! My aunt's decided to leave my uncle and she brought all her kids with her. I'm on the couch as it is, and I think one more thing will send my mom around the bend."
Thwarted, Kurama begged a change of clothes for the girl from Keiko, thanked the distracted brown-eyed girl, and left. His school was nearby so he drove up to the student parking area, picked the lock on the girls' locker room, and gently thrust the pile of clothing into the girl's hands, pushed her in and closed the door behind her.
She came out three minutes later, Keiko's pink sweatshirt having left her hair even more mussed than before, and the jeans skirt barely covering the tips of the leather strips she still wore underneath. Kurama supposed he couldn't blame her for not wanting to give up her fighter costume. By the smell of it she must have worn it for several days solid during the tournament, so she must be fond of it. Still, he hoped his mother wouldn't notice anything wrong. As she turned her back to him to get into the car he saw that her wound was still bloody beneath the thick pony tail that hung down her back, nearly to her waist.
He parked his car outside his apartment building, formulating his story as he went, and led the girl to his door.
His mother was setting a bag of groceries on the kitchenette counter as he entered, politely allowing the girl to precede him.
"Suichi, dear I've brought home some..." His mother, after calling him by the human name she'd given him at birth, trailed off distractedly as she noticed the girl who'd stopped in the hall and stared at the floor, head bent. "Who is this?"
Kurama plunged into the story he'd made up. The girl, he called her "Wendy" since it was the closest foreign name he could think of that sounded anything like the first part of "Wind Slasher", was a foreign exchange student from Germany. His mother had never met anyone from Germany, so if she heard Wind Slasher speaking, he could only hope that she'd mistake demonish for German. He told his mother that the girl had been mugged at the airport, her purse stolen, the airline lost her luggage, and the Japanese family from his school that had agreed to take her was divorcing. He convinced his mother that he'd been asked by the principal to put her up for a few days until the school could find a suitable family to replace the one that had backed out unexpectedly.
His mother's eyes grew soft with concern as she gazed at the silent girl. "Of course she can stay for a few days, Suichi, but where will we put her?"
"I'll give her my room and sleep on the couch."
"You must be tired." His mother came toward the girl who, Kurama was pleasantly surprised to see, did not flinch away. "Welcome to our home. Would you like a bath?"
Amused at how his mother was handling her new guest's fragrance, Kurama came to stand beside her. "She doesn't speak any Japanese, mother, so we'll have to be creative." He touched the girl's shoulder and motioned for her to follow, leading her to the bathroom, and closing the door behind her as she went in.
His mother went into her room, reappearing a minute later with a sleeping kimono. She knocked quietly, opened the bathroom door, and placed it on the floor inside. Kurama, unloading groceries, didn't look inside, but could hear pleased noises over the shower. The Wind Slasher was humming.
"What a long flight she must have had." His mother's comment her only indication that the fighter reeked. Kurama learned tact and politeness from watching the woman who'd raised him. "And what interesting hair styles they have in Germany these days. It looks almost as if someone had grabbed handful of hair and hacked at them with a knife."
"I didn't notice. Would you like me to chop the cucumber for the salad?"
She smiled approvingly, and set to work making dinner, Kurama helping.
The girl came out of the bathroom, clutching the kimono's neckline, just as they were putting the food on the table. She'd unbound her hair and blown it dry. It was a lighter shade of brown than he'd first thought, and the back of it was thick and fell like a waterfall down her back. The bangs were still a mass of uneven, overly long layers, and she continued to use them like a shield, keeping her head ducked as she came and sat at the table.
She didn't seem to know how to use chopsticks, so Kurama demonstrated, placing his hand over hers and guiding her fingers to show how to capture morsels. She ate slowly, savoring each mouthful with the careful appreciation of one who hadn't eaten much in a while. Kurama had noticed that she was thin, but with well defined musculature from training. He'd assumed that her painfully small frame was natural, but he began to wonder if she'd been starved, especially when she became full very quickly and stopped eating to prevent herself from throwing up if she over indulged.
"Thank you." She said quietly in demonish when the meal was done. His mother looked inquiringly at Kurama. "I believe that's German for 'thanks'" He translated smoothly.
"You've been learning German in school?"
"Just a few phrases here and there." Kurama assured her with false modesty. "I think that's why the principal asked me to put her up for a few nights."
"Ah." His mother smiled and began clearing away the dishes.
The girl fell asleep on the couch. In the end, Kurama's mother convinced him to leave her there rather than wake her to switch rooms. She was still sleeping when he left for school and his mother for work. Kurama told his mother that the school program she was joining would send a representative around later to check up on her. He wondered if she'd still be there when he returned.
He must have been more distracted than he thought, for when Hiei appeared directly in front of his car while he was driving to school, he had to slam on the brakes with more force than usual. Sighing, he rolled down his driver side window as the diminutive demon strode around to talk to him.
"Have you seen Botan?" Growled Hiei irritably.
"No, and if there's nothing else, I'm running late for school."
"I'd never let humans" (Hiei spat the word) "dictate my schedule."
"You forget I've lived in a human body for the past 16 years." Kurama reminded him patiently.
"Hn." Hiei left, taciturn as ever, and Kurama continued on to school, wondering what Hiei was up to with Botan. Since Hiei was rarely forthcoming, he'd have to wait and find out eventually.
Hiei watched Kurama's sports car drive off, then strode into the park. As he reached one of his favorite clearings, he sensed Botan's presence near by. He stood, arms crossed, and waited for her to land.
"Hello Hiei." The silver haired ferry girl was wearing her pink kimono, and slid off the wooden oar as she greeted him.
"Hrmph." Hiei responded. Why waste words when sounds would do as well?
"I've got a lead on our hammer fisted demon." She shared, and waited expectantly for him to respond.
Hiei didn't.
"Well? Don't you want to know how I found him?" Botan asked, obviously bursting to launch into a long explanation.
"Not really." Said Hiei repressively.
"Oh? Well, that's all right. I suppose we can't all be in good moods. I happen to be in a very good mood, and I won't let anything break it." She twirled her oar around and sat on it.
"What else is new?" Muttered Hiei.
"Did you say something?"
"No."
Botan rode the oar in a little half circle and skidded to a stop next to Hiei. "Hop on! You can hold onto me, you know. I might end up going very fast." She smiled mischievously.
The day Hiei held onto a girl for safety, even a ferry girl to the spirit realm, was they day he'd hand back his sword and Jagan eye and take up knitting.
"Hmph." He said, got on the back of the oar, and held it firmly on either side in a death grip that would take pliers to release. Botan laughed happily and flew them to the spirit realm.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Thanks as always to my reviewers – goodness! You're an impatient lot. I'll try to get the next chapter up quicker than I did this one. Thanks to Caitlin for her enthusiasm, SakuraAngel04-I hope you'll approve of the direction this chapter's going, and thanks to YavieAelinel and RaikoGotal for reading my earlier chapters.
CHAPTER FOUR: AFTERMATH
It was late in the afternoon when Kurama pulled up to the ruined shrine. He'd had morning school then Juku, the intensive preparatory classes to get students ready for entrance exams, after lunch. His academic successes pleased his human mother, so he didn't mind the extra effort. It did, however, make him late for his rescue plan.
Exiting from the car, he walked to the shrine's wall and opened the portal Botan had led them through the day before on the way to the tournament. He passed through it and made his way around the hill by the empty, silent coliseum's entrance.
The girl was struggling to make her way out from under a heap of bodies. She'd managed to free her arms, torso, and one leg, and as he watched she pulled the other out from under the partial remains of a green skinned demon corpse. She slid down the heap of bodies and landed in the dust at the base, and brought herself shakily to her feet.
Hesitantly, she brought her fingertips up to press gently against the red, crusted line at her neck. Kurama figured that it was probably quite sore still, despite the mild healing coagulant he'd devised along with the sedative he'd placed on the rose whip's thorn that had slashed the wound on her neck. She raised her head, peering dully at him from under her bangs, staggering away from the body pile, as he came toward her.
Kurama stopped about five feet away, hands in his school uniform pockets, not wanting to frighten her.
"What is your human name?" He asked in Japanese. There was no response, just as when he'd tried it before during the tournament, so he switched to demonish. "What is your name, human?"
"Wind Slasher." Human throats not being designed for demonish, the words came out harshly. It was her fighter's name, not her real one, but Kurama let it pass.
"I live, why so?" Her grasp of the grammar wasn't very good, indicating that she hadn't been raised speaking demonish, but had picked it up later.
"I drugged you, so that you'd wake later. The drug simulates death, so it would appear to everyone that you'd died. I saw where they threw your body on the heap after our battle and I positioned you so that you'd be able to breathe. However, I hadn't counted on the laziness of the attendants. Evidently they threw more bodies from prior battles on top of you after I left. I'm sorry for that."
Kurama waited for a response for his simplified speech of demonish, but the girl merely stared, eyes just shards of blue under the shaggy mass of hair obscuring her face. Her hand was still at her neck, and she swayed a little. He realized that the drugs weren't entirely out of her system. The question was, what to do with her? She didn't belong in the demon world, and could barely focus enough to form coherent sentences.
"You'd best come with me." Kurama held out a hand and walked slowly toward her. She backed away, so he stopped. "It's alright. I won't kill you." He let his hand drop to his side. "Come." He said the word in command form demonish rather than suggestion form, turned his back and began walking to the portal.
She followed, reinforcing his impression that she was used to obeying orders in demonish, not giving them. She barely reacted when she crossed over into the human realm. The sky was orange with sunset, and it was beginning to get dark.
Kurama walked over to the passenger side of his car and opened the door. The girl hesitated, but got in, staying as far away from him as she could. When he got in the driver's seat, she leaned so far away from him that she was flush against the door.
On the way back to Tokyo, he tried to find out what language she'd been raised in. French, English, Italian, Chinese, and Germen yielded no response, and he soon ran out of the basic phrases he knew in each of those languages. With no way to know where her home was, he couldn't simply take her there or drop her off at an embassy. It would have to be Keiko's home.
However, when he pulled up to her building and rang the doorbell, his plans changed.
"Another houseguest?!?" Keiko stuck her head out the door as she bounced a small, crying child on her hip. "I'm sorry, Kurama, but we're full up! My aunt's decided to leave my uncle and she brought all her kids with her. I'm on the couch as it is, and I think one more thing will send my mom around the bend."
Thwarted, Kurama begged a change of clothes for the girl from Keiko, thanked the distracted brown-eyed girl, and left. His school was nearby so he drove up to the student parking area, picked the lock on the girls' locker room, and gently thrust the pile of clothing into the girl's hands, pushed her in and closed the door behind her.
She came out three minutes later, Keiko's pink sweatshirt having left her hair even more mussed than before, and the jeans skirt barely covering the tips of the leather strips she still wore underneath. Kurama supposed he couldn't blame her for not wanting to give up her fighter costume. By the smell of it she must have worn it for several days solid during the tournament, so she must be fond of it. Still, he hoped his mother wouldn't notice anything wrong. As she turned her back to him to get into the car he saw that her wound was still bloody beneath the thick pony tail that hung down her back, nearly to her waist.
He parked his car outside his apartment building, formulating his story as he went, and led the girl to his door.
His mother was setting a bag of groceries on the kitchenette counter as he entered, politely allowing the girl to precede him.
"Suichi, dear I've brought home some..." His mother, after calling him by the human name she'd given him at birth, trailed off distractedly as she noticed the girl who'd stopped in the hall and stared at the floor, head bent. "Who is this?"
Kurama plunged into the story he'd made up. The girl, he called her "Wendy" since it was the closest foreign name he could think of that sounded anything like the first part of "Wind Slasher", was a foreign exchange student from Germany. His mother had never met anyone from Germany, so if she heard Wind Slasher speaking, he could only hope that she'd mistake demonish for German. He told his mother that the girl had been mugged at the airport, her purse stolen, the airline lost her luggage, and the Japanese family from his school that had agreed to take her was divorcing. He convinced his mother that he'd been asked by the principal to put her up for a few days until the school could find a suitable family to replace the one that had backed out unexpectedly.
His mother's eyes grew soft with concern as she gazed at the silent girl. "Of course she can stay for a few days, Suichi, but where will we put her?"
"I'll give her my room and sleep on the couch."
"You must be tired." His mother came toward the girl who, Kurama was pleasantly surprised to see, did not flinch away. "Welcome to our home. Would you like a bath?"
Amused at how his mother was handling her new guest's fragrance, Kurama came to stand beside her. "She doesn't speak any Japanese, mother, so we'll have to be creative." He touched the girl's shoulder and motioned for her to follow, leading her to the bathroom, and closing the door behind her as she went in.
His mother went into her room, reappearing a minute later with a sleeping kimono. She knocked quietly, opened the bathroom door, and placed it on the floor inside. Kurama, unloading groceries, didn't look inside, but could hear pleased noises over the shower. The Wind Slasher was humming.
"What a long flight she must have had." His mother's comment her only indication that the fighter reeked. Kurama learned tact and politeness from watching the woman who'd raised him. "And what interesting hair styles they have in Germany these days. It looks almost as if someone had grabbed handful of hair and hacked at them with a knife."
"I didn't notice. Would you like me to chop the cucumber for the salad?"
She smiled approvingly, and set to work making dinner, Kurama helping.
The girl came out of the bathroom, clutching the kimono's neckline, just as they were putting the food on the table. She'd unbound her hair and blown it dry. It was a lighter shade of brown than he'd first thought, and the back of it was thick and fell like a waterfall down her back. The bangs were still a mass of uneven, overly long layers, and she continued to use them like a shield, keeping her head ducked as she came and sat at the table.
She didn't seem to know how to use chopsticks, so Kurama demonstrated, placing his hand over hers and guiding her fingers to show how to capture morsels. She ate slowly, savoring each mouthful with the careful appreciation of one who hadn't eaten much in a while. Kurama had noticed that she was thin, but with well defined musculature from training. He'd assumed that her painfully small frame was natural, but he began to wonder if she'd been starved, especially when she became full very quickly and stopped eating to prevent herself from throwing up if she over indulged.
"Thank you." She said quietly in demonish when the meal was done. His mother looked inquiringly at Kurama. "I believe that's German for 'thanks'" He translated smoothly.
"You've been learning German in school?"
"Just a few phrases here and there." Kurama assured her with false modesty. "I think that's why the principal asked me to put her up for a few nights."
"Ah." His mother smiled and began clearing away the dishes.
The girl fell asleep on the couch. In the end, Kurama's mother convinced him to leave her there rather than wake her to switch rooms. She was still sleeping when he left for school and his mother for work. Kurama told his mother that the school program she was joining would send a representative around later to check up on her. He wondered if she'd still be there when he returned.
He must have been more distracted than he thought, for when Hiei appeared directly in front of his car while he was driving to school, he had to slam on the brakes with more force than usual. Sighing, he rolled down his driver side window as the diminutive demon strode around to talk to him.
"Have you seen Botan?" Growled Hiei irritably.
"No, and if there's nothing else, I'm running late for school."
"I'd never let humans" (Hiei spat the word) "dictate my schedule."
"You forget I've lived in a human body for the past 16 years." Kurama reminded him patiently.
"Hn." Hiei left, taciturn as ever, and Kurama continued on to school, wondering what Hiei was up to with Botan. Since Hiei was rarely forthcoming, he'd have to wait and find out eventually.
Hiei watched Kurama's sports car drive off, then strode into the park. As he reached one of his favorite clearings, he sensed Botan's presence near by. He stood, arms crossed, and waited for her to land.
"Hello Hiei." The silver haired ferry girl was wearing her pink kimono, and slid off the wooden oar as she greeted him.
"Hrmph." Hiei responded. Why waste words when sounds would do as well?
"I've got a lead on our hammer fisted demon." She shared, and waited expectantly for him to respond.
Hiei didn't.
"Well? Don't you want to know how I found him?" Botan asked, obviously bursting to launch into a long explanation.
"Not really." Said Hiei repressively.
"Oh? Well, that's all right. I suppose we can't all be in good moods. I happen to be in a very good mood, and I won't let anything break it." She twirled her oar around and sat on it.
"What else is new?" Muttered Hiei.
"Did you say something?"
"No."
Botan rode the oar in a little half circle and skidded to a stop next to Hiei. "Hop on! You can hold onto me, you know. I might end up going very fast." She smiled mischievously.
The day Hiei held onto a girl for safety, even a ferry girl to the spirit realm, was they day he'd hand back his sword and Jagan eye and take up knitting.
"Hmph." He said, got on the back of the oar, and held it firmly on either side in a death grip that would take pliers to release. Botan laughed happily and flew them to the spirit realm.
TO BE CONTINUED.