Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho – plot or characters.
Note to reviewers: Thanks to Crystal Koneko and Cwolf2 for complimenting the fight scene. I had fun writing it!
To Topaz Dragon – good eye! While I don't usually write romance, I know authors who do, and my idol Skitzo-phrenick (author of 'Tears' and 'The Darkness Within') loves to pair off Hiei and Botan, so I leave in hints that Hiei likes Botan, though I don't usually go anywhere with it. I did the same thing in my last story (Opal Quest), it's subtle, but it's there if you're looking for it!
To Poltergeist Report 101 – Thanks for your honesty. Don't worry about not liking the plot. Different people have different tastes, and even an author you adore can sometimes write something that just doesn't appeal to you. (For instance, I love Dean R. Koonts, but his book "Night Visions" just didn't work for me. I never did finish reading it) Thanks also for calling me a 'great author'!
CHAPTER THREE: BACK IN THE SPIRIT REALM
"It's this way." Kuwabara nodded at a rift leading down to a steep gorge.
"Are you sure? Because we've been walking around for hours." complained Yusuke. "I'm tired, I'm hot, and I want food."
"I don't believe you, Urameshi! What's more important, rescuing Botan and the castle, or your stomach?" yelled Kuwabara, stamping impatiently down the rift in the dry grassy hill.
"Right now? My stomach."
Kuwabara splayed his hands out for balance and ran down the uneven ground to end up at the bottom. He turned to watch Yusuke take the last few feet in a series of jumps. They were now inside the gorge, standing by the edge of a narrow river, which ran through the center of it.
"Hey, what's this?" Kuwabara noticed the river.
"The River Styx." answered Yusuke, trudging over to kick a few pebbles into it.
"You mean like in the myth?" Kuwabara's head whipped from side to side, looking up and down the river. "Hey, where's Charon, that ferry guy you have to pay to get across it?"
"There is no Charon. What do you think Botan and the other ferry girls do? They don't call them ferry girls for nothing."
"Oh yeah." Kuwabara's eyes narrowed and he concentrated. He pivoted in a slow circle, then pointed upriver. "It's that way."
Yusuke squatted by the river, leaning against one of the many rocks jutting up at the river's edge. "You sure about this? Because we are in the spirit realm, you know. I bet almost everything around is giving off spirit energy."
"Not like this! This is bad energy."
Yusuke stretched his back, using the rock as a support. "Whatever." Stretch finished, he jumped to his feet in a quick, fluid motion. "Let's go."
The boys followed the river, through the twists and turns of the gorge, which rose up in sheer walls on either side.
"Hey, isn't that Koenma's head ogre?" Kuwabara paused in the middle of clambering up a large boulder. He got to his knees and then his feet and pointed down at the dirt trail that skirted the boulder and led into a crevice in the gorge wall. Halfway between the boulder and crevice stood a blue ogre with one horn in the middle of his forehead, wearing a spotted animal skin about its middle.
"Huh?" asked Yusuke, head appearing over the boulder's edge. He looked over to where Kuwabara was pointing and frowned. "Nah, that's not Jorge, that's another…"
At that moment, the blue skinned ogre on the path turned, saw them, and bellowed something as he pointed back at them.
From the crevice behind him, a large number of other blue ogres began emerging and fanned out along the path, holding cudgels.
"Uh oh." said Yusuke, climbing to his feet. "Something tells me these guys aren't feeling very friendly."
At that point the ogres attacked, and there wasn't time for any more talking. Kuwabara was first to fall into the river, carried there by an ogre who'd tackled him, knocking him off the boulder. He came up sputtering, kneed the ogre in the head and splashed his way back to land.
Yusuke used his spirit gun on half a dozen of the blue ogres, before two of them rushed him, backing him into the river where he skidded to a stop, knee deep in water, then reversed direction and charged, throwing them in opposite directions.
The blue ogre who'd bellowed the order saw that the battle wasn't going his way, and fled into the crevice in the side of the gorge wall. Yusuke, occupied with three blue ogres circling him, yelled at Kuwabara to follow.
The boy obeyed, leaving a trail of moisture from his sopping clothes, but wasn't able to catch up with the ogre. As soon as he reached the crevice there was a rumbling noise and half the cliff face came tumbling down into the gorge.
"Kuwabara!" Yusuke kicked out, breaking one ogre's kneecap, ducked under another's punch, elbowed him in the ribs, and took out the last one with a punch to its solar plexus. He ran to the pile of rock and dirt that had once been an opening.
A mass of carrot-red hair emerged from the rubble, followed by the rest of Kuwabara's head and shoulders as the boy crawled out of the dirt.
Yusuke stepped forward, grabbed his hand, and hauled him out the rest of the way.
"Thanks." Kuwabara said, leaning over and coughing dust out of his lungs.
"Don't mention it." Yusuke moved back, surveyed his friend, and burst out laughing.
"What?"
"You look like the abominable mud monster." scoffed Yusuke.
Kuwabara brushed ineffectively at the inch of wet dirt plastered all over his school uniform. "Stop laughing!"
"Why? It's funny." chortled Yusuke, "You need a bath."
Kuwabara stood up and glared, then brightened. "Then let's both take one." Ducking his head, he butted it into Yusuke's middle and rushed, landing both of them in the river Styx.
"Hey!" Yusuke came up sputtering and swearing. He caught sight of Kuwabara, already swim-walking to the shore and followed. Grabbing him by the shoulder, he yelled, "What'd you do that for?"
There was no response. Kuwabara stood still, staring down at one of the ogres who'd been knocked unconscious, lying half in, half out of the water. Yusuke let go of Kuwabara and stared as well.
The blue ogre was now multi-colored, both blue and green with purple bruises beginning to form. The half that was underwater had turned green while the half outside the water was still blue.
Yusuke dropped to his knees and poked at the ogre's leg where it hit the water. Holding up his finger, he saw that the tip was blue. "Body paint?" he asked incredulously. "Why would a green demon want to paint itself blue?"
Kuwabara pointed at the pile of rubble that had nearly killed him. "Forget that, I want to know what's in that cave over there."
Yusuke shook the paint off his finger and stood. "So do I."
It took the two boys hours and most of their spirit energy, but they managed to blast through the rubble and find the entrance to the cave.
It was empty except for some hastily discarded boxes, and crumpled up papers. However, the back of the cave was a mass of openings, tunnels leading off in different directions.
Yusuke groaned. "We'll never catch that fake blue ogre now. He could be anywhere."
"Hey Yusuke! Look what I found." Kuwabara held up a package of beef jerky, scavenged from one of the boxes.
"What else is in there?"
"Hmm. Blue paint, more beef jerky, matches, some sticks – I think they're supposed to be torches, tea bags, a mug, papers, and that's it."
"Pass the beef jerky. I'm dying here," said Yusuke. "Time for a dinner break."
The dinner break turned into a nap break when the boys realized the ogres had left behind some animal skin blankets. The torches made a great campfire, serving to help dry their clothes.
Sitting companionably around the fire, wrapped in separate cocoons of ogres' blankets, the conversation dwindled as they stared into the fire. Kuwabara was first to nod off. Yusuke realized his friend was asleep when his repeated "Hey, Lunkhead" remarks didn't get a response. Yusuke smirked, shrugged, and settled down on the sandy floor of the cave to follow Kuwabara into slumber.
Yusuke woke first the next morning. Stepping quietly out of the cave, he washed in the river, dressed, and returned to wake Kuwabara. When "Hey, get up already!" and nudging the sleeping boy with his toe didn't work, Yusuke decided to take a more direct approach.
"What the…?" sputtered Kuwabara, leaping up from his nest of blankets as a mug full of river water was poured over his head. He stuck his fists out in front of his face, like a boxer, and glared wildly around the cave.
"Glad to see you're awake…finally." Yusuke said. He threw the mug aside and grinned. "Nice boxers. I'd never have figured you for a polka dot kind of guy."
Kuwabara glanced down, gulped and turned a fiery shade of red that rivaled his hair color. "Yusuke! I'm gonna get you for this!" He dove back under the blankets and grabbed his dried clothes from off a rock by the dying campfire. "As soon as I get dressed."
After a breakfast of leftover beef jerky, the two boys decided to explore the tunnels at the back of the cave. Kuwabara sensed several different bad spirit energy signatures leading down different tunnels, indicating that other ogres had escaped with the blue one who'd fled into the cave and caused the rockslide that concealed the entrance.
They searched for hours, but most of the tunnels either ended in other artificial rockslides or came out onto deserted locations in different areas of the Spirit Realm.
It wasn't until late in the afternoon that they came upon a tunnel that led to a trap door outside of Koenma's castle.
"Looks like that one was cleaned out too." Yusuke remarked, pulling himself up through the trap door, which opened up behind a hill, shielded by small shrubs and clumps of brown foliage.
"Yeah. Whoever was in there is long gone." grumped Kuwabara, hauling himself out onto the coarse yellowed grass next to the tunnel's opening. "And here I was spoiling for a fight."
Though it was obvious a large number of ogres had lived in the caves (remembering the smell from the latrine portion of the caves, Yusuke involuntarily wrinkled his nose) they hadn't found any ogres remaining. There were only abandoned supplies and scrape marks along the floor where boxes and belongings had been hastily moved.
"Sheesh. How long were we in those caves?" Yusuke asked, noticing that the late afternoon light was beginning to turn to dusk. "It's getting dark out here."
Kuwabara stood and shuddered, turning slowly to face the hill that obscured the lower half of Koenma's castle. Without answering, he walked up the hill as if in a dream.
"Kuwabara?" asked Yusuke as the boy walked past him to stand at the top of the hill, placing his hands on his hips, gaping at the castle.
Yusuke followed quickly. "Hey! Answer me! You're really freaking me out. What's…" his voice trailed off as he saw what had captivated Kuwabara's attention.
There, a few minutes walk away, stood the castle, rising splendidly next to the gorge that concealed the River Styx from view. Above it towered a dark light, a glowing miasma that twisted and swirled slowly around the top of the castle, capping it like a mushroom.
"It's spirit energy." said Kuwabara, his voice dulled with shock. "Lots of it, more than I've ever sensed in one place before." He shuddered again. "It ain't natural."
"What do you mean?" asked Yusuke belligerently, glad of something, anything to argue about to take his mind off the dreadful swirling mass. "We're in Spirit World. Of course there's going to be a lot of spirit energy around. There's nothing 'unnatural' about that."
A frown creased Kuwabara's forehead. He shook his head slowly as he turned to look at his friend. "Something's messing with that spirit energy. It's being…altered somehow. It doesn't feel normal."
Yusuke opened his mouth to make a flippant remark when movement near the castle gate caught his attention. "Look!"
A portal opened in the air directly in front of the castle gate. It started as a pinpoint of light, expanding rapidly to a large circle shape, edged by golden light.
A huge blackish green ogre fell through the portal and landed gracelessly on the yellow grass. The thing's body was so long that its claw tips touched one of the gateposts as it landed in a still heap. A blue ogre poked his head around the gatepost and started in surprise at the sight of the monster lying on the grass.
A few seconds later Hiei appeared, landing with a thump as though he'd jumped down to earth. He stepped through the portal and stalked determinedly forward past the dead ogre. He made it several steps, then swayed and slumped to the ground as the spirit energy above him gathered in a clump, overshadowing him and began to slowly descend.
Too far away to do anything, Yusuke and Kuwabara watched helplessly as Kurama appeared next, stepping lightly out of the portal, which closed behind him. Spotting Hiei, Kurama rushed over, waving aside the blue ogre in the gateway who dithered a moment before running back inside the castle.
"Come on!" Yusuke smacked Kuwabara on the shoulder and took off down the hill, hearing his friend striding after him. Kurama was bent over Hiei, one hand on the small black clad demon's neck, the other held out in front of Hiei's mouth, checking for a pulse and breath.
Just as Yusuke reached the bottom of the hill, the blue ogre reappeared in the castle gateway and gestured wildly to someone standing behind the gate, then pointed at Kurama and Hiei.
Kurama looked up just as a swirling mass of the miasma high above the castle detached itself and descended rapidly upon him, covering him. Yusuke saw through the misty swirls that Kurama had fallen on his back to the ground.
Blue ogres emerged from the castle and, reaching into the miasma, grabbed both Kurama and Hiei, also encased in miasma, and dragged them into the castle, shutting the gate firmly behind them.
END OF CHAPTER THREE