Catse: So sorry this was late! I hate myself. But my cousin was here this weekend, and in spending time with her, I wasn't able to get around to finishing the writing of this chapter and updating. So please forgive me...Please!!!!! Pretty please!!!!! With suger and cool whip and a cherry on top of a huge mountain tall bowl of icecream along with pocky sticks!!!! Yeah, that's exaggerating a bit much but I bet it makes your mouth water, right? Well anyways, here's the update. Oh, and January fourth I may not be able to update. I'm warning ahead of time. I have a HOSA competition in Laredo and we leave early Friday morning. Oh well. Thank you for reading and please enjoy the chapter! Ja Ne for now!!!!
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Disclaimer: See chapter one....
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Kenya woke with a start in his bedroom. He had dreamt that the house spider's in the walls had grown to an unbelievable size and ran around his house, eating everyone he knew, and he couldn't move from where he was.
A few sighs, and a pat on his back to tell he had woken with cold sweat and he was up and ready for a shower.
The warm water felt like wonder's upon his cold skin, having been in the chilliness of the due to an open window. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened yesterday. This was his ritual morning, and usually he would go over the latest events while he showered, but strangely, there was nothing to go over.
'Why can't I remember what happened yesterday?' he wondered to himself, grabbing a towel from the rack. 'Why does there seem to be a big white spot where yesterday's memories should be?'
Stepping out of the shower, the towel over his hair, he came up to the mirror to look at himself.
It was foggy. He pulled the towel from his head and wiped the mist away, to reveal him as he was, but with a peculiar looking mark on his neck.
He cocked his head so as to get a better view, and found a huge gash there, sewn back together with pieces of medical string.
"What the hell…?"
In a moments time of ignorance from the spider, he had reached in next to Kenya's neck, and bit down, causing the whole net to vibrate with his force.
'What…happened…?'
"Kenya!" He heard his mother call outside of his room. "Kenya, are you up yet?"
"Yes mother! Coming!" He shouted back, deciding to ask his family later about the bite.
Two or three minutes later, he was dressed and out the door, wondering where Seika was. Usually, Seika slept on another pallet in his room, yet his friend was strangely missing.
'Maybe he's already up and waiting for me downstairs.' He thought to himself.
When he hit the bottom step, he happened to notice a peculiar scene in the living room.
Seika was sitting in a recliner, his eyes a perfect silver-gold, with his hair darker than normal and his skin just a tad whiter than usual.
Across from him, glaring back, was Kuwabara, looking very determined about something.
The rest of Kenya's friends were seated around the room.
Haku was reading a herbology magazine. Katai was sitting next to Satou and Suki, flipping through channels on the television set in boredom. Yusuke and Keiko were staring at Seika and Kuwabara, along with Hiei in his own corner, reading a newspaper (can you imagine Hiei reading a newspaper?! That would be hilarious!) Yukina, Kurama's wife Jennifer, and Suta were in the kitchen, chatting about the latest.
Kurama himself, was no where to be seen.
"Morning guys…" Kenya mumbled.
All sound completely stopped. Quiet echoed through the house like a thunder storm. The television was turned off, and slowly, one by one, everyone started creeping towards him, like he was in a graveyard of zombies.
Seika and Kuwabara didn't notice a thing, and kept on glaring at each other.
"How you feeling Kenya?" Katai inquired, hand on his forehead.
"Um…fine…" He answered, completely confused.
"Are you sure…?" Suki added, grabbing his cheek to take a look at his face.
"Yeah…"
"Completely positive?" Came Yusuke, with Keiko staring at Kenya in the exact same way as everyone else.
"Yes…I'm very positive. Thank you…"
"What about…?"
"Enough guys! You're spooking the hell out of me! Could you get away now! I'm not clausterphobic but if you keep crowding me in I will be!"
Instantly, everyone broke away from him, and the next person to come up to him was his mother with a glass of orange juice.
"Morning Kenya. Here, drink this." She thrust the cup into his hand, and then proceded to check his temperature. "Well, your fever dropped. And your skin color came back! Oh I'm so relieved! For a while there we weren't sure if you were ever going to wake up!"
Kenya brushed his mother's hand away and and drank down the juice, handing it back with a wipe on his mouth from the back of one hand. "Mom? What's going on here?"
"You don't remember?" She inquired, setting the empty glass on a table.
"No. What? Should I remember?"
"Yeah! You should!" Katai shouted, taking up his shirt in a fist that planted him against the wall in a bully-like action.
"Katai…put me down!!" He winced.
"No! Not until you tell me everything you remember!"
Kenya sighed, taking a moment to go back on what was still there.
"Um…I remember the tournament…I beat Haku…Seika beat you…Then it was a sort of tie between me and Seika…then our parents came and took us to the mission…Oh god! The mission! Was it completed? Did we get Lord Rioko? What about the children? Did we get the children—"
"No Kenya. We didn't." Suki replied, here face hidden behind her long hair. She didn't have it in a pony tail today. "It was all a trap. He was planning on getting us killed so we didn't hinder him any further."
"What?"
"Don't you remember anything?!" Yusuke replied, knocking Kenya on the head as if it were empty.
"No I don't! If someone could explain the situation to me, then I might!"
"It's natural you don't remember. Spider venom will do that."
All eyes turned to the dojo door. Kurama stood with his own newspaper in his hands, a wane smile on his face.
"What do you mean?" Katai inquired, glancing back at the yoko.
"What he means kid, is that spider venom, if enough, can erase an entire section of the memory of the one bitten. Kenya was nearly filled to the brim with it. It's not suprising he remembers nothing from the moment he started until now." Hiei answered instead, looking up from his paper with a mean glare in his eyes. "Now put my son down."
Katai nodded begrudgingly and set her friend back in standing position.
"Thankyou." Kenya replied. "Now if you'd all be so kind as to explain how the mission went and what happened, and then I might be able to remember something."
"The mission…started well…" Suki began, as Katai went back to sitting on the couch and Kenya took a recliner near the table in the middle of the room.
Suta picked up the glass of orange juice to refill it, as the explanation continued.
Haku picked up on it and continued the explanation. "We entered with six total. Yoru, Arune, Katai, Seika, you and me. At the beginning the mission started as normal. We infiltrated the enemy base, fought a few demons, and were to be on our way."
"Yes, but we were called back to find the Satou had entered the barrier." Katai continued, staring at Seika and Kuwabara's staring contest. "Then we had to find her."
"When we did," Suki took over, "we found her in a surrounding of demons, in which Haku came up with a way to get her out without hurting her, but enabling us to kill the demons."
"Afterwards," came Haku, "we were met by an afterimage of Lord Rioko. He took Arune and Yoru from our group, and left us with a large spider on our hands. During the fight, you sacrificed yourself to save your younger sister, and the spider drank away most of your blood and left almost the same amount in venom."
"Spirit World got that cleaned out for you, and you almost died there." Yusuke inserted, smiling. "You're one tough kid."
"The battle ended with Satou being the one to beat and finish of the spider demon. But, with what power, we are not sure." Kurama finished, having taken a seat in a simple kitchen chair near the doorway. The girls were still chatting in the kitchen, and Suta came out with another glass for Kenya to drink.
But he couldn't drink. He was left in a dazzle. That much had happened, and he didn't remember a bit of it! How was that possible? How could he have not remembered being bitten by the spider?!
Kenya's eyes widened in shock for a moment, but as the spider slowly drained away his life, he glanced at Seika, and smiled bitterly.
'That's right…I was bitten…But I don't remember anything else except that moment. This sucks…'
"But there's still more…" Hiei continued, standing up from his seat and dropping his paper unto his chair.
"When you were still fighting the spider, we were met with our own pack of demons. They were easy B-classes. But they stole Tsuki. The girls are in the kitchen trying to calm down Yukina as of this moment. Which brings us to our next assignment. We, the normal detectives, must now take on the mission and enter the enemy base. It has been relocated to the farthest reaches of demon world, for it seems he has enough children for whatever he's planning."
"How many is that father?"
"A full, thousand, human children."
The room was completely quiet as the information was digested.
A thousand children was quite a bit. But why did he need so many…and why children?
"We've decided, that we, the original team, will be the ones to bring back Lord Rioko, dead or alive. You children have done enough. We should have never sent you in the first place."
"But! That was not our fault! We made an excellent team! We're all still living! It wasn't our fault that our first mission was in an area we'd been tricked into thinking was Lord Rioko's!" Katai shouted, fists clenched close to her body with a glare that was purely her father's.
"Doesn't matter. Kenya almost lost his life in that." Koenma replied, coming in through the front door.
Hiei, Kurama, and Yusuke all bowed their respect for him.
Kuwabara however continued glaring at Seika.
"Then that means, we've been cut off! We started this mission, and now you're saying we can't do it anymore! You gave it to us! As what we are we should be allowed to finish it!!!" Katai shouted, tears swelling in her eyes as they had never seen before. "This is so stupid! We should be the ones finishing the mission! We are the detectives of tomorrow! How are we ever going to be able to fight for ourselves if our father's are always taking over for us!"
"Katai…" Yusuke growled.
Katai paused to glare at him, her face twisted in anger and sadness. Then, with out another word, she ran from the room and into the Nohara's back yard.
"Now that that is settled, you all will do as your told and step down." Yusuke remarked.
Kenya bowed his head and nodded begrudgingly. He was just as passionate as Katai in keeping the mission, even more now that Tsuki had been taken and he had failed as the leader he was supposed to be. The leader wasn't supposed to be bitten by a spider!
But he figured, all the pain he felt now, was nothing compared to Seika. Seika sort of considered Tsuki as a little sister. Family he never had.
"Okay…hey you two! You can stop that now!" Yusuke shouted, kicking Kuwabara in the behind.
Kuwabara looked back for only and instant, and then returned to glaring at Seika…or was it Shadow?
"What are they doing?" Suki inquired, staring at the two.
"Mind battle." Hiei answered instead. "They've been doing so all morning."
"Mind battle?" Yusuke inquired, staring at the two. "How do you have a mind battle?"
Just then, Kuwabara stood and began dancing in crazy little circles, hitting his behind as if it were on fire.
"Put it out!" He shouted, jumping from one foot to the other. "Put it out—" He accidentally ran into a wall and fell over, knocked out.
Shadow smiled and stood up. "He's got some mental abilities, but he ain't got what I do."
"What was that?" Suki inquired, standing up to stare at Kuwabara. "You made Kuwabaka knock himself out."
"Of course! What, did you think I would make him grab a knife and cut himself up or something?" Shadow replied, looking strange in Seika's face.
"Yeah!" Almost everyone in the room acknowledged.
"Gee. I may be bloody but I ain't that bloody. I only made him think his ass was on fire and he ran himself into the wall."
Everyone laughed. It was impossible not to. Except Kenya.
He stood up and walked to the stairs, head hung as he began climbing. He was in no mood to sit around laughing like that. He couldn't bare to be in anyone's presence as of the moment.
Shadow noticed him leave and felt the pang of Seika's sadness from within him.
'He feels sorrow…Interesting…There's a friendship there I doubt either of them fully realize…'
Shadow excused himself from the room after checking to make sure Kuwabara hadn't hit himself too hard. Half way up the stairs, he let Seika take control once more, and quieted down for a bit of sleep so the boy he had inhabited could speak with his friend.
The door was closed when he reached it, so he knocked.
"Kenya? May I come in?"
"Sure." Someone replied from inside.
Seika opened the door and stepped in, closing it behind him.
"How you feelin'?"
Kenya glanced up from his seat on the bed and nodded. "Well enough."
"Hm…"
"You heard everything right?"
Seika nodded. "Yeah. They don't want us to complete the mission."
"I don't see why not. None of us are dead. And we need the experience." Kenya replied, his eyes glaring at the floor.
"Yes well, I think I understand that. We're just kids. Hell, Yusuke was fifteen when he started as a spirit detective. And even then he was lucky he could kick ass. We may be their children, and we may have the training, but in reality, we are still, just children. No older, no younger than what we say we are. To them, we're just way too young to take on a mission of such dyer circumstances when they themselves are still standing."
Seika sat down next to Kenya and began looking at the bite on his neck. "But that spider did indeed give you a good nip in the neck. That's most definitely gonna leave a scar I'm sure the ladies will love."
Kenya smiled lightly, but then frowned once more.
"Even so. They should at least take us with them. If we're to get experience we need to actually experience it. Not sit on the sidelines and hear by-the-fire stories. It just doesn't work that way."
They were quiet for a moment, until Seika stood and looked out the window.
"You know something Kenya."
"What?"
"When you got bit, I think all of us freaked out. We didn't think anything would happen to us until then. It took that to put us into the right frame of mind to realize that we are human, and we can be killed. Well, you're three-fourths demon, but still. They die too. They were saying downstairs that they figured, since there was so much venom in your body, that it was going to change some things. Like how you move and think. I didn't figure it. You seem as strong as ever. But they were talkin' about getting some training into you just in case. I figured you should know."
Kenya sighed. "Thanks." Was his only reply.
"Oh yeah, and you know how I never knew how I died."
"Yeah?"
"Well, I still don't know. But I'm positive Shadow does. He's been hinting at it for a while. I'm going to see if he'll tell me anything. So I guess you and I are a lot alike. There's pieces in our minds we don't quite remember. Oh well, I'm headin' outside to see what I can do about the raging Ken doll. Talk to you later."
Kenya nodded. "Okay. See you."
After Seika left, Kenya began to wonder about what he had said. The spider venom could have left something for him. But what. What would it have changed?
Kenya stood up and decided to test it.
He tried his reflexes by jumping out and reaching for a glass on the desk.
'Reflexes seem normal.' He thought, figuring that maybe his mind would have changed.
So he wrote out a normal school problem, and worked it out.
Still took him about the same time to do that too.
'No extra intelligence. What could I have been left?'
At that moment, he noticed something about the floor he hadn't ever before.
His floors were completely oak, made into finely waxed boards similar to the ones in the dojo, only not as well set together. There was one board however that was slightly a different color than the rest. Crouching down next to it, he found that the board wasn't nailed in right, and that it might be easy to pull up.
Knowing his parents would kill him if they found out he was tearing up the floor, he tugged the board up, revealing something unexpected beneath.
A long box, with a letter on the front.
He reached in, but had to pull another board away that was also strangely loose, in order to pull the box out.
Picking up the letter on the front, he found that it had his name, in tiny black letters on the front.
Deciding it was best to read the letter before open the box, in case it told him the contents, he set the box aside, and opened the note.
The contents surprised the hell out of him, because the person that signed it he wasn't familiar with.
Dear Kenya Nohara,
I'm sure you're shocked that I know your name. That' because I am your grandmother. I also know you never met me, but that is fine. I have never met you so we are even. How do I know of you? I used to be a time seer. I could see the future and the past, but I had no real control of it. It was more of what I got to see in my dreams. I saw your father, when he met your mother, my daughter. And I know that my brother Shadow controls your best friend, Seika. But don't worry. He may seem like he wants your friends body, but in reality, even if he tried, he could not have it. Seika is far too powerful for that. His spirit energy prevents anything from keeping a close control of him, unless he hands himself over. I didn't see far enough to know if he hands himself over, but from the way he seems, that will not be a likely choice. Watch out for Seika. He is legendary. In short, there was a legend of a dragon demon with so much energy he couldn't control it. He gave that energy to Spirit World by dying, and from there it was reincarnated into Seika. He is that dragon demon, which is why Niko came out with most of the body of one. Yes, I know of the spirit beast. But this letter is not to tell you of future events, or how everything happens. No one should know their whole fate, which is why I trust you'll keep this piece secret from your friend. I merely left this letter to tell you that in that box, lies the future of the world, and every child in it. Lord Rioko is a menacing opponent. He will stop at nothing to kill everything in the world, starting with the first line of defense. You are that first line of defense. Lord Rioko can only use children as power, therefore, only children can beat him. Use what I left you with Hiei's sword, and you will be able to fullfill your fate…as a detective. I merely leave a warning. Watch those you know, and watch those you don't. You may find allies and enemies in places you would have never suspected. I love you all even in death and I bid thee well.
Your Grandmother,
Hinote Nohara
Kenya set the letter aside, a little stunned. After a moment or two of digesting the information, he reached towards the box, and slowly, taking a deep breath, he opened it.
The contents inside struck him like lightning.
It was his father's sword in almost exact detail.
The same gold handle with the dragons reaching towards the end. The same finely thin blade that was a little wider than the usual. The only differences in it, were the eyes of the dragons that on his father's were white and red, but on this were green and blue. The jewel they were biting into had a greenish tint to it, and the kanji on the blade was different.
'Tool master: Protector of the Innocent' the kanji said.
His father's merely said 'Protector of the Protector' which meant his mother was the protector of the barrier, and his father protected her.
"Tool master…Does she mean the weapons? And the Protector of the Innocent…The children?"
In an instant, Kenya was up, with the letter, and running downstairs to his father.
The group was still in the living room, still missing Katai, Seika, and now Haku.
Kenya searched for his father, and upon asking Yusuke, found that he was in the home dojo.
He knocked and entered, seeing his father with his sword out, practicing.
"Father…." He gulped air, beckoning his father's attention.
When Hiei turned his eyes to him, he immediately presented him the sword. "Look what I found in the floor boards of my room."
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Catse: There you go, what do you think? I like the chapter specifically because I introduced that other sword. And yes, Hiei's and Kenya's swords do work together. Also, do you think the kids are really going to back down from their first mission without a fight and a few sneaky moves? Course not...and you can probably guess who's going to start it all right.We're getting closeto the end of the story already. I recieved an idea from my nine year old brother to do a third sequel, but in mymind that seems to be dragging this story out a little bit. In any case, the next story I've got an idea for, so I'm polling to seethat, when this finishes, if you would really like to see a third. Oh well. Got to go. JaNe For now!
