Bonus Chappie! (more confetti, more noise-makers)

Chapter 16

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"Okay, everyone! Time for Round Two of the Dark Tournament! I hope you're all ready for it!" Bloodthirsty howls are the answers Koto expects. "That's what I thought! Yesterday we had sixteen teams keep enough members alive to continue onwards and today that will be cut down to eight! Let the teams hear your enthusiasm!"

"How is that girl so damned perky this early in the morning?" Kohaku grumbles, still half-asleep herself.

Kurama shakes his head in rebuke. "If you had gotten to bed at a decent hour, you would also be awake. However, you came in at two am, and you know we planned to be here at eight."

"I don't get why," Yusuke yawns. "We aren't fighting until eleven."

Aislin is quite awake, and her answer is sharp. "Because if several teams finish their opponents faster than expected, we will be needed earlier. Really, Yusuke, I should think you'd know that, having attended the previous Tournament."

"Snowflake, don't use such big words with the detective. His brain isn't big enough to understand them."

"Shut up, Hiei." Everyone's heads jerk up at Koto's next announcement.

"Well! I've just been handed what appears to be the revised schedule for today's matches! Will Team Bourgogne and Team Urameshi please enter the area? Team Bourgogne and Team Urameshi, please enter the arena."

Yusuke just points a warning finger at Aislin, daring her to say it. Which she does. "Told you so, Yusuke."

Snickering, the rest of his team files around him and into the early-morning sunshine so that Yusuke brings up the rear. When they reach the ring, a cloud of smoke bursts into existence and makes everyone cough. When it clears, they find that it has been used as a dramatic entrance for Glace Corbeau and his team. Kohaku rolls her eyes at Aislin's disgusted snort for the theatrics, taking notice of the sky above the stadium. Despite the sunlight gathering clouds are forming, and are turning dark gray near their middles. Rain?

"Team captains, please decide the terms!" Mirror images, Yusuke and another dark-haired male stride to the center and converse quietly. When they separate, it's been agreed that it would be a fight-until-fallen for the overall match. Fighting first would be Kuwabara and a graceful teen boy with moon-silver hair and almond-shaped jade eyes.

"My father's told me so much about your team," the boy pipes as he faces the taller orange-haired human. "Is it true that you have criminals for friends?"

"What's it to ya, kid? And who's yer dad?"

"My father is Glace Corbeau, and I think it's exciting! Do you have to worry about one of them sneaking up on you in the middle of the night and cutting your throat?"

"With the shrimp, maybe…" Kuwabara sends an annoyed glance at an impervious Hiei, standing off to the side. "Just stop bouncin' an' start fightin', wouldja?"

"Oh, certainly!" With a resigned sigh that this battle would end quickly, Koto starts them off. It's not pretty. In two-and-a-half minutes Kuwabara is put through the beating of his life, the young demon slamming punches, kicks, and elbows into vulnerable parts of the human's body with devastating speed and power. Of course, Kuwabara being who he is, the damage is not as severe as it would be on, say, Kohaku. A particularly vicious roundhouse kick sends Kuwabara flying out of the ring and into the cement wall in a cloud of rubble. Immediately Koto begins the ten-count, hoping that the rock-head stays down so the real fighting can begin.

Wish granted! Kuwabara gets buried under the debris and doesn't free himself fast enough to make it back into the ring in time. Kohaku bounds forward after the ten-count ends and sends bits of cement flying with blurred hands, mounding the junk behind her until she unburies her friend.

"Someone get the tags fer that truck?" Kuwabara ask in a dazed tone, head spinning. Shaking her head, Kohaku helps the boy up and back over to the benches, then turns to find Kurama already in the ring.

"Aw, Kurama…" she whines, ponytail drooping in place of a real tail. "I was gonna take the kid on next."

"If I fall, yours is the next fight." Sighing, Kohaku pouts but nods, and Kurama turns back to the boy. "Your name has yet to be given, if I'm not mistaken."

"Oh, my manners have wandered again! My name's Glacier Corbeau! Pleasure to fight you!"

"Enough talk, more bloodshed!" Koto shouts. "Begin!"

Glacier's techniques aren't even close to good enough to defeat Kurama and his plant concoctions. All it takes is a moment's distraction while the fox-human allows himself to be struck, and Glacier is finished. A gentle kick sends the entangled boy rolling off the platform onto the grass below. The boy's desperate attempts to freeze the vines into fragility fail, and it is a disappointed Glacier that is picked up by his father and carried back to his team.

"Peiné, pére," Kurama hears in French as they move away. Corbeau answers his son with a soft negation, sounding proud that Glacier has gotten as far as he has. The red-head waits patiently as the other team discusses his next opponent and sends out a violet-haired woman who screeches 'danger!' with every predatory move. One ruby-tinted eyebrow rises as he spots her weapon coiled against her hip.

"It's been a while since I battled another user of a whip." The woman's face never changes, but she replies with something soft in French. If Kurama remembers his French classes correctly, her answer is not a very polite one and brutally blunt.

Mildly miffed at such a rude response to his perfectly civil comment, Kurama retorts with something equally pithy and is rewarded with a widening of the woman's dark gray eyes. Bowing slightly, the woman's next comment is just as soft as before, but much more civil. Kurama bows back then they both look towards Koto. Praying for at least a maimed limb for a change, Koto starts the match.

Blood still boiling from the barb about his lineage, Kurama sends his Whip howling through the air and leaps to the side in order to avoid his opponent's, yanking the thorned vine sideways into her path. A graceful leap carries her up and over the danger, her own leather lash licking a stinging welt on Kurama's bicep.

Wincing, Kurama redoubles his efforts and is relieved to note that the woman--who still hasn't revealed her name, and for some reason Koto has not been announcing them as they begin--is started to follow the pattern he'd been trying to create.

On the sidelines, Hiei and Aislin are both hiding smirks. They both know Kurama too well to believe that the numerous blows he's taking are due to poor defense. Though Aislin does spare a wince for her beloved's unfortunate shirt. She'd warned him about wearing his favorite silk shirt during a match, but his poor track record of listening to her warnings isn't going to change now. The other three, however, are on the edges of their seats yelling encouragement to their battered friend.

A sharp gleam in those calculating emerald eyes signals that things are about to get ugly. A subtle shift here, an invisible motion there, and those painful hits start missing the mark. Violet-hair takes on an expression of confusion but tries harder to hit the quicksilver ex-thief. As she makes more and more mistakes and becomes even more confused and frustrated, Kurama switches their positions. Now he is the one landing agonizing blows on his opponent--and since his Whip is effectively barbed with razor-edged 'blades' two-to-three inches long, they do much more damage.

Closing the trap, Kurama sends his Whip to tangle in the braided length of leather then yanks it out of the woman's hands, leaving her weaponless. Another flick of his wrist and the Rose Whip wraps lightly around her throat in the same manner that the dream-figment Goku had suffered. It is a very grim Kurama that holds the other end, pinning the still female with a surprisingly cold gaze. His words are equally icy as he informs her in French, (("Your surrender or your life, miss.")) Unwillingly, the woman nods once, curtly, and Koto steps forward.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Wisteria Chasseur has surrendered! Kurama moves to the next match!" With a last expert flick of the wrist Kurama unwinds the long thorned vine from Chasseur's neck and coils it into his hand. Despite the fact that his fingers are closed over some of the nastiest of the spikes, they don't pierce his pale skin. Yay for being a plant-manipulator.

Kohaku, Kuwabara, and Yusuke are chanting for victory in a circle, grinning fit to break their faces. "Two, five, eight, ten, see our team-mate win again! Kurama! Kurama! Yaaat-ta!"

"Ah, the enthusiasm of youth," Aislin chuckles weakly, sweatdropping at the sight of her friends. "Almost makes me long for the old days. Almost."

"Hn," Hiei snorts in agreement, turning his attention back to the ring as his fox's next opponent steps in. He can feel his hackles rise at the sight the female presents. Small, dark, and deadly. Her silken cap of obsidian hair frames large green-gold eyes in a pointed face. Her whole body from neck to toe is wrapped in black leather without a single bit of jewelry or silver to relieve the matte texture. The fact that she has six ink-black tails fluffed behind her doesn't help matters, either. Strapped to her hips are a pair of kodachi, the shorter sister of the katana. And by the power biting into the fire apparition's skin even here, she ranks at a solid A-class well above Kurama.

The two foxes, the ruby and the jet, bow courteously to each other and wait for Koto's signal. "Match four, Kurama versus Sang Renard! Begin!" Kurama goes to begin another 'dance' but Sang is having none of it. A cold-blooded combination sends Kurama rocketing into the dividing wall right next to where Kuwabara had impacted. Koto waits long enough to babble something about beautiful brutality before beginning the count, and finishes it without a single sign of movement from the pile.

Aislin, Hiei, and Kohaku immediately rush over and carefully unbury their team-mate, finding him unconscious and battered from having several hundred pounds of concrete land on top of him, but still very much alive. A gentle brush of healing-ki from Aislin (who had been studying with Yukina and Genkai) wakes the injured fox, who is then helped to limp back to the safety of his team and a further going-over from his beloved.

Hiei moves to enter the ring to thrash the over-confident female who had dared bring harm to one of his closest friends but finds his way blocked by a tanned hand. He glares at Kohaku's profile, her visible eye gleaming in predatory anticipation. "What do you think you're doing, ookami?" he grits, thumb rubbing the hilt of his katana in a habitual gesture.

"Kurama promised the next fight would be mine," is her calm reply. "Gonna make him break that promise?"

"You can't win. She's of a higher level than you, much higher."

"So? Remember when we met?" A wicked gleam in that bronze eye. "It's all a matter of leverage." Leaving Hiei to stare after her in disbelief, Kohaku settles her earphones over her ears and leaps into the ring. Sang eyes her new opponent and snorts, mocking the young wolf in thickly accented Japanese.

"You are fighting moi? A little pup like vous? Impossible."

"Believe it, 'cause it's true," Kohaku comments as she stretches a bit before hitting the 'play' button on her cd player. "So fight me or forfeit."

"As you vish." And the vixen nods curtly to Koto, who starts them off. Sang tries to repeat the same move that disqualified Kurama but finds that her opponent merely slips through the attacks with a smile, head bobbing to her music. It does Hiei's heart good to see the arrogant vixen chasing the wolf all around the ring yelling at her to hold still. Kohaku just turns the volume up and sticks her tongue out, weaving to and fro in unpredictable patterns that break any opening moves for a fox-style dance.

"Well, folks, it looks like Kohaku's leading the dance for this round and getting Sang pretty dizzy! And really annoyed! Just listen to that language!" Actually, very few can understand what the black-fox is saying, since in her anger she's slipped into her native tongue to snarl not-nice sounding things at the oblivious girl.

After seven minutes of watching Sang get harassed, Hiei's had enough. Not even bothering with physical speech since he doubts Kohaku can hear anything over her music, he says, /Enough, Kohaku. You've proved your point. Finish it, already./

He can see her stifle her disappointment as she puts the training of six months straight to use and uses reiki-charged kunai to hit several pressure points. Sang, caught off-guard with the abrupt change in tactics, is not quite fast enough to block or dodge the blades dulled with energy and goes down hard. Her cursing seems to be quite creative, since it makes Kurama blush and Glace cover his son's ears with a frown. Koto begins counting while Sang tries to stand with a body that's been numbed from the neck down.

At Koto's shout of "Ten!" Kohaku strikes a pose, holding her right hand out in the sign for 'victory' and grinning with enthusiasm.

"Hah! That's for that wisecrack about rhythmic martial arts, Genkai-san!" Said psychic is watching the Tournament on TV at her temple (ultimate cable!) and snorts at the girl's antics. "That makes victory number three for Team Urameshi!" The giggles she's unable to squash turn to a yelp of dismay and pain when a blow from behind sends her head-first into the ground beyond the ring with a huge cloud of dirt.

"Wow! It looks like Sang isn't happy about her loss and has decided to take it out on a distracted Kohaku! Such underhanded tricks! Aren't they wonderful??" Dazed Kohaku doesn't have time to dodge the next blow--a calculated kick to her ribs that has enough force behind it to snap at least two. Sang unsheathes a kodachi and prepares to plunge it into the downed wolf…

And an enraged Hiei cuts her head off. A wordless snarl escapes him as he kicks the body away to kneel beside his ward, delicate fingers tracing her side under her shirt and locating the two broken ribs as well as a very large bruise already purpling into a near-black shade. Kohaku lies still under his examination, teeth clenched against the pain with her breath whistling high in her throat.

Hiei has a moment to curse himself for being too slow before Aislin shoulders him aside and places a cool hand against the heating flesh of the injured ookami girl.

"People, you need to send in your next fighter!"

Yusuke turns on Koto, anger making his aura spark. "Our friend just got sucker-punched by their team-member! Ya can at least have the damned decency ta wait until we make sure she's gonna be okay!!"

"Erm..okay…" Koto wilts. Yusuke goes back to watching Aislin doctor Kohaku, the koorime's slim white hands glowing with a pale sea-green fire--even from where they rest underneath Kohaku's shirt. Hiei is actually hovering over Aislin, worry creasing his forehead, residual power outlining his Jagan beneath his bandanna. After about another minute the white-haired woman straightens from her crouch and reaches down. A tanned hand catches hold of it and Aislin gently helps Kohaku to her feet, supporting her as they walk over to where Kurama is already sitting against the wall.

Hiei takes his place in the ring, vibrating with righteous anger and the last of the residue from the guardian-released power surge. Koto works up her courage and delivers the announcement just given to her from the Committee through the communicator clipped to one furry ear, certain that this will not be good for her health. "It has just been decided that the match between Kohaku Piers and Sang Renard is a draw and both are disqualified, since both were disabled in combat." She squeaks but stands her ground at Hiei's angry roar that comes a split second ahead that of the crowd.

The audience may not like the fact that a demon is fighting for Koenma against her own kind, but they'll be damned if such a low trick like this will be gotten away with. Besides, Kohaku had won fair and square! Hiei advances on the trembling Koto, not even bothering to draw his sword yet. His voice is calm and cold. "I suggest you convince that bunch of fools to reconsider their ruling, or they'll have to find a new announcer."

"Look, Jaganshi-san, I've told you and your team before. I don't make the rules, I just announce them. If you want to keep going in the Tournament, you have to win your match against the Captain of Team Bourgogne. Now please take your place and get ready to fight. Please?"

Making a mental note between him and Aislin to make sure every member of this gets Jagan nightmares for the next three months the furious kajihenge stalks to the center of the ring. In front of him stands the Captain, tall and lanky with short, crinkly black hair.

He informs Hiei in flawless Japanese, "We do not like this declaration either, Monsieur Jaganshi. Sang was aptly named for her love of the life-wine, but it was dishonorable to attack your team-mate so. Would you be willing to accept a forfeit as a step to repair this unpleasant deed?"

Mildly taken aback and wondering just what kind of people the common populace of France's demonkind are with these people as examples, Hiei shakes his head in negation. "No. We'll win by fighting. But…thank you for the offer."

"Bon. Thank you, monsieur, for allowing us to repair the stain on our honor. When you are ready to start us, mademoiselle Koto?"

"Finally," said vixen mutters. "Okay! Hiei Jaganshi versus Daemon Ange! Fighters, begin!"

Hiei might have kept the man from withdrawing his Team, but he refuses to let them win. Without even bothering to declare his next attack--as is the usual etiquette that he can't stand--he brings up Fist of the Mortal Flame and uppercuts Ange before the demon has a chance to do more than take a step. Hiei follows up with a round of punches to the gut and a single open-palm strike to the solar plexus that drives Ange into the floor of the stone ring.

Backing up, Hiei allows the breathless Ange to regain his feet. He's not done with payback just yet. A sick crack accompanies the man's popping of his dislocated jaw back into place before he refocuses on Hiei. "That, mon ami, was not honorable."

That familiar smirk. "Hn. I've never been known for my manners." Then he resumes the assault. By the time he's done, the unfortunate Daemon Ange is an unconscious mess on the ring floor. But Hiei was feeling somewhat generous due to the level of morality the man had displayed; in exchange, he'd stuck to barehanded techniques. That first Fist was the only one he'd allowed himself, and after Koto finishes counting he lifts Daemon and carries him to the edge of the ring to where a disappointed Corbeau waits with raised arms.

"It's about time we see some brutality, people! With a devastating number of blows Hiei brought Daemon to the ground in just two minutes! With the score standing at three to two, Team Urameshi advances to the Semi-Finals!" Wild cheering meets this announcement as the unwounded fighters collect their two friends and head for the hotel room. With their advancement, they don't have to fight again until tomorrow, which would give them time to finish healing Kohaku and Kurama. Kuwabara's fine, if still scratched up a bit. He'd heal the last of those in a couple of hours. As they leave, the threatening skies make good on the promise of dark clouds and begin to pour down rain.

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/Hiei,/ Aislin chides from the doorway of Kohaku's room, /would you relax? Your pretty wolf is going to be fine./ She uses telepathy to speak to her 'mirror' in order not to wake the girl in a healing-trance on the comfy bed. Hiei looks up from his watch on the bedroom windowsill and gives Aislin a chilly glare that fades into something the koorime hesitates to label as…vulnerable?

/I have failed her twice, snowflake. Twice her life has been put in immediate danger and I've been too slow to act before the damage is done. What kind of guardian lets his ward be harmed so?/

Aislin ghosts into the room and sits down beside her soul-brother, bumping him gently with a shoulder. /The kind that lets his ward learn her mistakes herself. I highly doubt Kohaku will ever let her guard down around an opponent who is still conscious again. And you're not perfect, Hiei-baka, so mistakes are inevitable for you, too./

/Hn./

/Let me put it this way, dummy: will Kohaku blame you for not being 'fast enough'?/

Reluctant. /No./

/Then why blame yourself? It's over, it's done with, and the only blood spilled is the bitch who dared lay such violent hands on your ward. Kohaku will be fully healed by tonight and battle-ready by morning, as will Kurama. So stop fretting and relax for a change, all right? You barely relax these days unless your pretty wolf is making you./ A sisterly kiss on his cheek before she rises and glides on silent feet toward the door. /We're heading down to lunch soon, porcupine head. You aren't allowed to forget to eat./

Hiei unbends enough to stick his tongue out at the koorime. /Hn. I don't need a nursemaid./

/With the way Kohaku worries after you? I'd have to disagree./

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bourgogne: burgundy

Glace Corbeau: Ice Raven

Piené, pére: Sorry, father

Chasseur: hunter

Sand Renard: Blood Fox

Daemon isn't quite a real spelling--not official anyway--of demon. 'Ange' is French for 'angel'. I thought it would be a nicely ironic contrast.

Mon ami: my friend