CHAPTER TWO

A Short Chapter

Back at home, Shadow forced Hiei into a chair and sat across from him at the dining room table while Eclipse and Kurama hung around in the living room having a conversation about... Well, more like a one sided conversation that consisted of Eclipse staring blankly at Kurama, who was trying to understand the current situation from an intelligent point of view and thinking out loud.

"So I suppose you're not pulling some elaborate joke, are you?" Shadow asked.

"No, baka! The stupid fox is really in my head!"

"Must you be so cruel?"

"Shut up, fox!"

"Okay. I'm going to have to make some plan to deal with this," Shadow said thoughtfully. "But until then... avoid thinking, especially about anything private, and anything about me."

"Too late for that," Hiei muttered. Shadow's eyes widened.

"Nice," she said, pale.

Inside Hiei's head, Youko was chuckling to himself as he read all Hiei's thoughts.

"I wonder..." Hiei started, sounding nervous.

"Oh yeah. I can."

"Oh crap. Please don't."

"Why not? You haven't gotten used to me. You haven't got control of me. I could take control of you any time I felt like it."

"Hiei?"

"Huh?"

"Why do you look so freaked out?"

"Oh, no reason in particular," Hiei said, standing up. "I'm gonna go up to my room and try to get this fox out of my head before he tries anything."

"Tries anything? You're so distrusting, Hiei."

"Yeah, well what do you expect with you in my head?" Hiei snapped, stalking up the stairs.

Shadow paced over to Kurama. "Figure anything out?" she asked.

"Uh-uh," he said, shaking his head.

"Great. So how are we gonna deal with this?"

"SHUT UP!" came Hiei's voice from upstairs. Everybody stared. A minute later, Youko Kurama came strolling down the stairs and stopped halfway to look at them. Shadow's jaw dropped.

"Ohcrap," she said, running the two words together.

"Uh-oh," Eclipse said, staring.

"Hi, Shadow," Youko said, flicking his ears. Shadow stared, slack-jawed, her right eye twitching. Eclipse and Kurama watched her, waiting for some explosion. Instead, she fell over backwards and started twitching. Youko stood there and looked at her in an amused sort of way.

"I'm happy to see you too," he said, smirking. He jumped over the railing and walked towards Shadow.

"Youko, leave her alone," Eclipse said. "Why don't you nicely bring Hiei back so Shadow doesn't lose her sanity..."

"I don't think I will right now. I haven't been out for quite a while, thanks to dear Shuichi here," Youko said, looking at his human counterpart.

"You know nothing good happens when you're out," Kurama said. "Shadow has to hide in a dark corner shivering until I manage to get control again. Now she's even worse off."

"Why's that?"

"Hiei's the one she usually looks to for protection, in case you hadn't noticed," Kurama said.

"Ah yes. Hiei," Youko said, looking up. "He's not coping with this too well."

"WHAT?" Shadow jumped up and grabbed Youko by the front of his shirt. "Are you hurting him?"

"Nah. Not physically."

"YOU PSYCHO!" Shadow screeched, shaking him.

"Calm down, Shadow!" Youko said, grabbing her wrists. His ears twitched.

"I don't need to be stuck alone with some pervert! Hiei's in your head or something, Yusuke's not here, but he wouldn't help anyway, Kuwabara... he's completely out of the question... Eclipse is just... she's just too Eclipse--"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"--And Kurama... Shuichi... person... is human now! AND YOU'RE A PERVERT!"

"I'm not that bad, am I?"

"Uh... Yeah. You are. Would you let go of my wrists now?"

"Ah. Right." Youko let go. "I think you're being a little unfair, Shadow. I haven't seen you in quite a while. Do you have to be so mean?"

"YES. Because whenever I do see you, you harass me!"

"... But..."

"NO. No buts."

Youko swished his tail. "Fine. But Hiei has no control over me at the moment. So I could just show up whenever I want to."

Youko--seven feet tall, silver hair, white clothes--vanished, and in his place was Hiei--barely over five feet, black hair, and black clothes. He looked around, seeming confused, then patted himself.

"I'm me!" he said. Shadow squealed. Hiei glanced at her and shuddered. "I never want that to happen again."

"Well, you have no control over me. We can't guarantee anything now can we?"

"You know what, fox? Shut up!" Hiei snapped. Youko made some dissatisfied pouty noise, but he shut up.

"We seriously need to do something about this before that ever happens again," Shadow said. Hiei rolled his eyes.

"No, really? Maybe I should just go seal myself in my room until I figure out how to control him."

"You wouldn't seriously do that, would you?"

"I think I should learn to read minds so I can figure out what that pervert is saying to you every time you flip out," Shadow mumbled.

Youko chuckled.

"You probably wouldn't want to know," Hiei said. "Judging by what he's said so far, it can only get worse."

"What's that supposed to mean? I haven't been that bad!"

"Sure you haven't. It was only two seconds after you found out you could access my thoughts that you searched for anything interesting I might know about Shadow," Hiei shot back in his head.

"Well what did you expect?!"

"Maybe you could be a bit more... I don't know... Perhaps you could learn to suppress your pervertedness, for everybody's sake."

"I can. I just choose not to. Partially because it annoys people, partially because Shadow's attractive," Youko said.

"Why don't you harass Eclipse?"

"Aw, are you defending your girl?"

Hiei growled. "Shut up, freak."

"Embarrassed? How cute!"

"DON'T USE CUTE IN RELATION WITH ME! That should be criminal."

Youko chuckled. It was only then that Hiei became aware that Shadow was waving her hand in front of his face and yelling his name.

"Sorry. What were you saying? I was too busy talking to the voice in the back of my head," Hiei said.

"Ah. I was asking you if you wanted to go up to Reikai to see if Koenma can do anything about that fox," Shadow said.

"I doubt he can. I think I'm just going to seal myself in my room for a while. See you later," Hiei said. He darted up the stairs before anybody could say anything about it.

...........................................................................................................................

I did have writer's block, but then I read some reviews of the first chapter and had ideas. I decided that the entire next chapter will probably be Hiei sitting in his room talking to Youko. More like arguing, probably. That's probably gonna be it. But it might not be up for a while.

Oh, by the way, it's March 14th. My BIRTHDAY! Woot.

I have another fic I'm working on, but I'm not gonna post it because I still have four posted that aren't finished... And I'm not done with "Work Sucks" yet... That one still has a lot to go. And... There's still eleven days worth of vacation in the "Sun, Sand and Surf" story... The Bishie story is almost done, maybe one or two chapters left, but I'm adding some stuff on the end. Outtakes and deleted scenes and other such fun stuff. ^_^

Thanks to Demon Ashika for the title!