Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho characters or plot.
Thanks to reviewers, Crystal Koneko and Moments of Insanity for finding my story interesting, Tsume-Hiei Luver for encouraging me to continue, and Cwolf2 – thanks for the compliment! I struggle with Botan at times because it's hard to maintain her chipper attitude without making her annoying to the readers. Any advice on this is welcome!
CHAPTER TWO: INVESTIGATING
Team Urameshi gathered outside Koenma's office as beleaguered ogres hurried by or stopped to hike up their stacks of papers. Small knots of blue, red, and a few green skinned ogres consulted in whispers and cast frightened glances at Koenma's door.
"What's with them?" asked Yusuke, jerking his head at a group of blue ogres holding a whispered consultation nearby, their expressions ranging from sullen to worried.
"I believe Botan mentioned that the atmosphere around the castle was unusually tense." Kurama offered reflectively. "I assume the rumors of an imminent attack have spread."
"Rumors Schmumors!" scoffed Kuwabara loudly, breaking off his quarrel with Yusuke to put his two cents in. "I'm going to find out who's behind the plot. Koenma trusts me to do the job." He ended on a note of pride, glaring at Yusuke as if daring him to contradict Koenma's verdict.
Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Oh please. He just said that to get rid of you."
"Did not!"
"Did too. And what's more, I'm the one who's going to find out who's behind the plot and make him wish he hadn't been born."
Kuwabara's face turned red, but before he could retort, Kurama stepped between the two boys and said, "If both of you plan to stay here to investigate who's behind the assault on the castle, then Hiei and I should go back to the human realm to retrace Botan's movements. Perhaps we can discover when and how she was taken."
He paused to look at Hiei, whose glare sent a perturbed group of nearby ogres scurrying back to their tasks, except one who dropped his stack of papers in fright. Kurama stifled a smile and continued. "Unless Hiei would prefer to remain in the Spirit Realm instead of finding Botan. He does, after all, have more experience in this realm than either of you." Kurama observed.
Yusuke smiled and pointed his finger like a gun. "All the experience I need is right here." he said, gesturing with the finger he used to concentrate his spirit energy blasts.
"Yeah, who needs experience? We'll break a few heads and get answers in no time." Kuwabara, quarrel forgotten, instinctively seconded his friend.
"Hiei?" Kurama lifted an eyebrow questioningly at the diminutive demon.
The black haired demon placed his hand on the sword hilt at his side and began stalking down the hall. "Let the humans do as they like. We're wasting time."
"Then back to the human realm it is." murmured Kurama, allowing Hiei to go past him before following, gazing speculatively at the smaller demon's retreating back.
He paused for a moment to write down the address of Botan's last soul pick up from a passing blue skinned ogre, who spat out the information, then ran off as soon as possible.
"Curious."
"What is?" asked Hiei impatiently, clenching his hand on his sword hilt and glaring down the hall at the ogre who was practically sprinting to get away.
"Ogres are never particularly shy, yet that one never looked me in the eye."
"He probably wanted to get out of here, as do I." growled Hiei accusingly, annoyed at the delay.
Kurama shrugged apologetically and began to walk. "You're right. Koenma's castle has an unhealthy feel to it. Even my human body has begun to sense it."
They set off down the corridor, found a portal, and emerged from it back into the human realm. Kurama convinced Hiei to allow him to drive them to the address. Hiei accepted with ill grace, distrustful of human machines, and got in muttering darkly about stupid ferry girls who couldn't take care of themselves.
"We're here." Kurama pulled up alongside a small house in a row of houses on a street across from a park. It was late, and most of the houses on the street were dark.
"Which is it?" asked Hiei.
Kurama opened his car door, got out, and pointed to a completely dark house in the middle of the block. No lights shined from windows or by the front door. "That one." he said, pointing.
In a blur of black, Hiei was gone and back within seconds, clutching a piece of paper. "No one's home. This was on the front door."
Kurama raised his eyebrows and accepted it. "It's a note to the babysitter explaining that the family won't need her tonight as they've gone to a relative's house, but they want her to come back tomorrow afternoon." Kurama folded the note and handed it back to Hiei. "This is interesting."
"I fail to see how."
"The note doesn't mention a death in the family. According to the castle records, Botan was sent to the backyard of this house to pick up the soul of a little girl named Mariko, yet if the family needs a babysitter tomorrow, it appears the little girl is still alive."
"So Botan never made it here." Hiei frowned at the empty house at if it were to blame.
"Perhaps not, but even so, why would the child still be alive? Ferry girls like Botan don't cause death, they merely escort the souls to the Spirit World after they die. Yet I don't sense any loose souls, do you?"
"What do I care about human souls?" shrugged Hiei. "How do we know there ever was a soul anyhow?"
"A ruse?" guessed Kurama. "Perhaps she was lured here by a false report of death?" He thought a moment. "If Koenma's fears are correct and the castle has already been infiltrated, it would be relatively easy for whoever is behind the plot to send Botan on a wild goose chase and capture her while she wasn't expecting it."
Hiei's eyes narrowed. "I will kill them." he decided.
Kurama glanced at him. "Well, there's nothing more we can do tonight. I suggest we come back tomorrow when the family is home. If the little girl looks healthy, we can assume that it was a false report. Who knows, the family may have seen something suspicious."
"Now." Hiei put his hand on his sword again.
It took all of Kurama's powers of persuasion to convince the fire demon to wait until the next day, since neither one of them knew the address of the relative the family had gone to visit. Eventually, Hiei grudgingly agreed to meet Kurama back at the address the next afternoon. As Kurama drove away, he saw Hiei disappear into the park, and smiled to himself. The fire demon wouldn't stray far from the last clue to Botan's disappearance.
When Kurama arrived the next afternoon, Hiei was sitting in the top branches of a tree, arms crossed, staring at the house. Kurama walked over, skirting a family that was trying to get a kite up in the air. The park was beginning to get busy now that schools were releasing students to make their way home.
"So, any movement?" asked Kurama, coming to a stop under Hiei's tree, and trying not to be obvious about the fact that he was speaking to someone up in the branches.
"No." replied Hiei shortly. "And that baka babysitter never showed up to read her note."
"Perhaps they telephoned her as well as leaving the note, then phoned again to say they were staying another day."
Hiei dropped out of the tree, landing gracefully upright, knees slightly bent to absorb the impact. He turned to Kurama with a look that spoke plainly of his opinion of humans who dared to change their plans when it inconvenienced him, and began striding over to the house.
Kurama's longer legs enabled him to catch up to the smaller demon in a few steps. "Shall we start with the back yard?" Kurama preferred to do his breaking and entering discreetly, though Hiei would much rather have marched up to the front door and kicked it open, regardless of witnesses. Once Hiei decided on a course of action, it was impossible to stop him, though he could, at times, be guided. Letting Hiei loose in a human's house while he was in a bad temper was a recipe for trouble.
Hiei agreed with a curt nod, and they made their way around the row of houses to the alleyway behind where the back fences of the homes abutted the cracked asphalt of the alley. Kurama felt his spirit senses come alive as his brain went into defense mode automatically.
Just as they reached the back fence of the house they wanted, an enormous beast crashed through it, sending splinters flying, and landed with a roar in the middle of the alley.
Hiei and Kurama split up, leaping out of its way. The beast looked roughly like a grossly over sized green ogre, only unlike the few green skinned ogres in Koenma's castle, it was a deeper shade of green, so dark that it was nearly black. It was also so muscle bound in its legs that they were more like animal haunches. Black eyes and four inch claws on its hands and feet completed the impression of a monstrous animal rather than a thinking humanoid being. The stench of its breath coming in puffs between its yellowed incisors seemed to hang like a cloud over the still air of the alleyway, already pungent with the scent of garbage cans. The beast moved its head this way and that, targeting first Hiei then Kurama with its obsidian colored eyes.
Deciding on the taller of its two opponents, it crouched down on its haunches, then leapt at Kurama, clawed hands outstretched.
Kurama's rose whip appeared in his hand in an instant. As he moved back, he coiled it then cracked it across the monster's palms.
The oversized ogre roared, twisted, and lunged at Hiei instead, presenting its back to Kurama, who stepped forward and brought his whip around to slice at the beast's backbone. That was when he noticed the tail. It was thicker at the base and tapered to an end that was encased with a metal tip liberally festooned with sharp spikes. The tail reared up to brush away Kurama's whip as the rest of the creature continued to lunge toward Hiei.
Hiei let it come, dodging away at the last minute, and sliced down with his katana, eldritch energy sparkling up the length of the Japanese sword. The metal connected with the huge ogres' claws, but did not slice through them. Instead, the blade stopped with a 'clank.' Hiei jumped back as the monster continued to move forward, clutching at him.
Meanwhile, Kurama followed the beast, his attempts to slice open its back foiled by the metal tipped tail. "Hiei! It's resistant to spirit energy." He called out.
"I know that." Huffed the fire demon, jumping aside as his massive opponent pressed forward, clawing at him with great sweeping motions.
Suddenly the green creature swerved and skewing its backside around, made a sweep with its tail that forced Kurama to jump forward quickly to join Hiei.
"We're being herded." Kurama realized aloud.
"Hn." grunted Hiei, his dark eyes glittering with excitement at the fight.
The alleyway led, not to another street, but to a dead end, a wall made out of firebricks, lined with dumpsters. A quick glance revealed that the dumpsters were set out far enough from the wall to be concealing any number of enemies crouching behind them.
"I'll take the ogre." said Kurama, for want of a better term to describe the large beast. Hiei immediately shifted to stand behind Kurama's back, facing the dumpsters.
The creature bellowed and lunged, forcing Kurama and Hiei to move back. By snapping his sharp-thorned whip at the monster's eyes, Kurama managed to slow its advance, causing it to raise its clawed hands to protect its face.
The beast truly was more beast-like than ogre, and with its oversized tail, its form was distinctly lizard-like. It didn't seem able to speak, though it possessed battle cunning. Kurama and Hiei allowed themselves to be herded, stepping effortlessly into the team work demanded in battle partners. Each time Kurama took a step back, Hiei sensed it and moved forward. They became a defensive square of two, each facing a different direction, and defending each other's back.
The massive creature stopped and drew its claws along the asphalt ground, the metallic black tips creating sparks and an eerie screeching noise.
Kurama didn't bother to ask Hiei if he were ready, for the fire demon was already plunging forward into the mass of green normal-sized ogres jumping out from behind the dumpster, obviously called to attack by the oversized ogre's signal.
The beast raised its claws and attempted to crush Kurama with a bear hug. The red head leapt back, but the monster's tail swung around in a blur and caught him on the side. If Kurama hadn't sensed it at the last minute, one of the metal spikes would have pierced him through. As it was, when he twisted away from the spikes, the fleshy part of the tail knocked him across the alley and into a wooden fence on the opposite side. He dropped to the ground, landing on his hands and knees.
Pain heightened Kurama's senses, a welcome side effect of owning a human body. He smelled the mixture of oil and dirt rising from the ground. He felt each individual bit of broken glass and rock pressing into his splayed hands. Narrowing his eyes, he drew in a breath. The beast was smarter than he'd thought, and a great deal faster. It had been playing with them, purposely moving slower than it could so they would underestimate its abilities.
So be it. Kurama's green eyes took on a determined glint, and he pushed his human body to the limit, rolling adroitly out of the way as the beast's tail went crashing down, its spikes imbedded into the pavement where Kurama had landed seconds before.
Rising to a crouch, Kurama gripped his rose whip and prepared for an assault. From behind him the cries of Hiei's opponents grew less and less as their members dwindled. Occasionally a clanking noise reached Kurama's ears as Hiei disarmed (both in the accepted sense of the word and a more gorily literal sense) those ogres who'd picked up pieces of rebar or wood as weapons.
The oversized ogre jumped up in the air towards Kurama, arms outstretched as if diving, and attempted to flatten him by landing on top of him in a manner that would have done a professional wrestler proud. It was a very unexpected move, and out of keeping with the lumbering, earth bound advances it had made previously.
Kurama hesitated. 'This,' he reflected with an inward wince, 'is going to hurt.' He jumped forward, under the belly of the beast, so it overshot him instead of landing square on top of him. The creature noticed immediately, and kicked out at Kurama with its back legs, catching him along his side. Kurama rolled with the blow, having anticipated it, and turned as he fell, flicking the rose whip along the beast's foot, effectively discouraging any additional kicks.
Rolling as he landed, the red head came to his feet, clutching at his sore side, and watched his green-skinned opponent pull its knees under itself until it was up on all fours. The beast shook its head as if to clear it of dizziness. Suddenly Hiei appeared at Kurama's side.
Grasping the lower edge of his black tunic style shirt, Hiei used the loose material to wipe ogre blood from his sword blade, and sheathed the weapon quickly, shoving it under the sash around his waist. Eyes never leaving the monster he asked, "Poison seed?"
"Yes." Kurama had delivered the fast acting seed via his rose whip, flicking it under the creature's toe-nail where it joined the blood stream and grew steadily along the inside of the veins, releasing poison spoors throughout the monster's body.
Since the large ogre had proved so adept at using its claws to repulse the whip, Kurama had had to come at it from an odd angle, flicking the whip behind and under the foot claws. The maneuver had forced him to come close to getting smashed, but it was effective.
The remains of Hiei's opponents lay scattered in pieces along the dumpsters. Kurama barely had time to make an approximate count when the oversized ogre staggered to its feet and burst through a nearby wood fence.
'The beast is certainly full of surprises.' thought Kurama as he and Hiei immediately chased after it. Despite its great size, Kurama figured it would be dead by now from the poison, not lumbering through the back garden and between houses out into the street.
In a burst of speed, Hiei jumped to the roof of one house then back down, landing in front of the creature on the sidewalk, attempting to block its path, but the beast swung its claws at him, the full power of its onward rush behind its arms. Hiei jumped away, using his sword to slice the beast's shoulder after it completed its swing.
It howled but did not turn around to confront the source of its pain. Instead, it blundered across the road and into the park where, Kurama realized with a thrill of horror, children were playing and innocent humans were out walking.
The monster had just crossed the sidewalk edging the park and stepped onto the grass near a sandbox when the rose whip snaked around one of its ankles. Digging his heels into the asphalt, Kurama hauled on the whip with all his strength.
The monster tripped and fell heavily on its belly, the tips of its outstretched claws only inches away from the edge of the sand box where three little boys gaped at it, frozen in horror. The beast shuddered, exhaled, its breath ruffling the hair of the child nearest it, and then it quivered one last time and lay still.
On a park bench next to the sandbox an elderly couple, probably the grand-parents, grabbed each other's hands. As Kurama retracted his rose whip he also saw a group of young schoolgirls, distinctive in their brown and white uniforms, stop dead on the sidewalk, and stare. Behind them, an older, college aged boy, grabbed the hand of a small girl, undoubtedly a sister, and immediately began to pull her back the way they'd come as the girls in front of him began to shriek.
Kurama didn't blame them. The sight of an enormous green ogre crashing past you to die in the park wasn't something the average human was equipped to deal with as they walked home from school. He noted approvingly that the older boy had taken his sister nearly halfway down the block and out of harm's way while the older couple had jumped into the sandbox and were gathering up the boys protectively.
Hiei reappeared at Kurama's side.
"Well?" he asked, eyebrows raised at the conspicuous lump of green flesh on the lawn, pointedly ignoring the hysterical schoolgirls.
"We'd better get it out of here." nodded Kurama, grimacing slightly at the noise the girls were making.
"Can you make a portal?" asked Hiei, looking at the left side of Kurama's torso.
Kurama glanced down, noticing that he was still absently holding his injured side where the monster had knocked into him. He tightened his hand, gauged the amount of pain, and answered, "The ribs are merely bruised, not broken. I'll be fine."
Concentrating, he flicked his rose whip and caused a hedge to grow around the corpse, shielding it from view. Concealed from spectators' eyes, Kurama gathered most of his remaining spirit energy and opened a portal directly under the body, which dropped through it like a stone.
Nodding at Hiei to let him know it was time, he allowed the fire demon to step to the edge of the glowing hole and nonchalantly drop off into space. Taking a last glance around, Kurama followed. Within seconds the portal closed up after him disappeared.