Disclaimer: Don't own Yu Yu Hakusho. Kurama, where is my rose-colored nail polish? You know I have to have it on to portray…him.

Kurama: It's on top of your head.

UK: Oh…Stupid me, balancing things there again.

Kurama: sigh Please do not place things on your head, UK. It is not a very wise action to take.

UK: But I like balancing things. It makes me fell special.

Kurama: You already are. mutters Special Ed.

UK: beams, unknowing of muttered words Thank you, Kurama!

Kurama: On with the story.

Chapter 18: Captured

… Kurama …

The minute Bri and I entered the classroom, I could feel the girls' eyes fall on Bri. Such loathing creatures. Not one eye, save Keiko and the male population, fell off of Bri as she took her seat. Keiko asked in a hushed voice how everything went. Bri and I both smiled and said it was fine. At last, the girls' eyes strayed from Bri.

Then "Toguro-sensei" entered and hell simmered.

Bri and I turned our assignments in, to which he nodded. He launched into the lecture right away. However, Bri and I were ready. After a year of my garbled English and Japanese, Bri could understand the Japanese language even if you shot it at her at three hundred words a minute.

Which is what Toguro-sensei seemed to be doing.

When he asked her the first question, she promptly answered.

"Wolf, true or false: No creature can live under extreme heat or cold."

"False. One-celled microorganisms thrive in those conditions."

The whole class was, of course, dumbfounded. That was my little Neko. Class continued, but Toguro-sensei seemed to have lost his nerve, being outwitted by Bri. He didn't go quite as fast, and he hopped the "questions" to different people. Some people answered as prompt as Bri. Others did not.

And they paid the price for it.

Classes seemed to go by twenty times too fast. When we parted ways, she ascended into Gina's classroom among her art peers. I went to dodgeball.

I still hadn't really decided where I was going to take her for our date. When the end-of-school bell rang at last, I sprinted to the music room to ask Keiko.

"You're taking her on a date?" Keiko blinked in shock. "Um…Well, she loves roses and cherry blossoms, for some reason. I'm sure she'd enjoy your garden. Dinner, probably Sammy's. She liked that. Kurama, I know you've known her for a year, but are you sure…?"

"I've never met anyone like her," I said. "She's different from any other person I've met."

Keiko smiled. "Yusuke said something like that once, too. I won't say anything to her."

"Thank you. See you tomorrow."

"Bye, Shuichi!" she called aloud.

I met Bri under a tree in front of Meikou. A cherry tree, fittingly enough. She smiled when she saw me. She almost shyly held her books closer to her chest. Almost as though she were afraid I'd take them from her. I almost laughed, because I was planning on carrying them for her.

"Want to drop off our books at home first?" she asked.

I shook my head. "I've got a better idea."

I took her hand and led her to a portal that would take us to my garden, one that bordered the edges of Spirit World and the Human World. I covered her eyes, ordering her to close them. I set my books down next to my favorite red rose bush, which stood in a stand of trees.

"Open them," I said. She blinked, then smiled at me. Her eyes roamed the vast garden I'd tended since Koenma had given me the land.

"It's so beautiful here…"

"My garden," I said. "Some of the plants are primarily for attack, but plenty are just for me. This part is for you."

I took a seed from one of the full-bloomed red roses and grew from it a new bush. She smiled. I planted the new bush right underneath a cherry tree.

We did our homework together, just as we had in the Chronodom. I guess you really wouldn't call it a date, necessarily, at that point. I led her all along the Spirit World side of my garden, showing her all the flowers that grew beautiful just for demons and spirits.

Her smile was enough to tell she was enjoying it.

I entwined her fingers in mine. Faintly, I could feel her heartbeat begin. Then it stopped. It happened so often now, that I knew she hardly noticed. I wasn't really sure what to think about it. She was literally a member of the undead.

I loved her too much to care.

"You're so awesome, Kurama," she said. "You can grow a beautiful flower in under a minute. All I can do is read hearts. Gee, too bad I can't really read my own." Bri sighed and plopped next to her rosebush under the cherry tree. "Do you think my heart will ever start and keep beating again?"

"I don't know." I sat down at her side and hugged her close. Just when I'd begun to think of her heart, she does too. Great minds think alike, as they say.

"If that isn't the sweetest thing I've ever seen," said a sarcastic voice. "A little fox and a cat, curled under a cherry tree. Watch out for the rose bush, you might prick your little paws!"

Bri and I leapt to our feet. "Who's there?" Bri demanded.

"You'd think you'd recognize your favorite teacher's voice."

Toguro-sensei stepped out from behind the rosebush from which I'd taken the seeds for Bri's. Had he been there the entire time?

"You," Bri growled. "How'd you get here?"

"Followed Youko's energy signature," he chortled. My eyes narrowed. "It's so distinct, you see. You really ought to be more careful, Youko."

"You're dead, trespasser." I whipped a rose from Bri's bush and manipulated it into my Rose Whip. I swung the whip straight toward his neck.

And he caught it.

He caught the Rose Whip!

"Did you really think that little toy was going to hurt me?" he growled. "The great Gun Wa? You are sadly mistaken, little one."

He yanked the whip, pulling me from Bri and hard onto the ground. In an instant, I couldn't move my limbs. Whatever he'd done to me, I was paralyzed.

But I could still hear and see.

"Pathetic little fool," he said. "Wolf, come here."

She made for the Spirit World side of the garden. Go, Bri! Run!

"It rubs off, I suppose," Gun Wa sighed. He flicked his wrist toward her, and suddenly, Bri was in his arms. She squirmed and punched, but to no avail.

He had her.

And I was helpless.

… Bri …

"Let me go, you incredibly awful person, you!" I knew I was being sarcastic and dumb and foolish and vaguely early-childhood television-ish, but I couldn't help it. Gun Wa was carrying me in a very awkward way—upside down and very near a certain area.

Gun Wa didn't answer in words.

Instead, my body refused to respond to any more commands from my brain. It was like the only thing that worked anymore were my eyes (limited and unfortunate point of view), my ears (like I wanted to listen to Gun Wa), and my brain (yeah, I'd think my way out of his arms and away from his I-don't-want-to-think-about-it).

"Bridget Wolf, do you know just how long I've searched for a way to do this?" Gun Wa asked. His voice was a little loud. Why? To let everyone around him hear that he'd caught me? "Your little friends thwarted me last time. I won't let it happen again."

Again?

"My real name is Sakyo, as if it mattered to you," he said. "Koenma will rue the day he didn't kill me himself."

Sakyo. I remembered Kurama saying something about Sakyo. Sakyo was the one who dragged them into the Dark Tournament, the one where Karasu bombed him mercilessly. Well, Sakyo and Toguro the Younger. No wonder he was using that name as his teacher name. Gah, too many names!

"I left my human host Sakyo in search of a better demon. I found this one. Stronger even than Toguro was, and I'm betting stronger than even Yusuke Urameshi."

Why was he telling me all this?

"My host was your father's brother. Marion Wolf. A legend unto himself. Gun Wa Wolf was his brother, and he always envied him. He made this plan many years ago. I took it to heart, after I killed off his mind. Gun Wa is as dead as Marion."

I fumed inside. How dare he talk about my father that way! Granted, I'd never known my father anyway, but still! He was my father! He's my blood and heart!

Wait a second. Gun Wa was my dad's brother?

My uncle?

"I don't care if you spent ten years in that Chronodom with that idiot Kurama."

Idiot?

"You won't last a day against me."

He called Kurama an idiot!

"You're helpless. Pathetic partling."

Pathetic!

By now, I wasn't just mad. I was ready to explode. But I couldn't yell at him. I could only see and hear. What good was that gonna do me?

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that we had entered a dark room full of shadows. I saw several of my teachers all around the room, minus Gunner and Gina. I recognized my math teacher, her wrinkled old face nearest to mine. Gun Wa threw me into a chair in the center of them all. The only good thing about this was that his crotch was no longer in my face.

"D'you think it really worked, Sakyo?" asked one of the twelfth grade teachers. "She an undead?"

How did they find out about the lightning?

That's when it dawned on me.

They'd been the ones to kill me in the first place! But how could they have made Botan botch the rejuvenation?

"I see it in your eyes," Gun Wa smirked at me. "Your heart stopped beating, but you're still alive. I did it myself. It's simple, really. You weren't dead yet when that pathological nightmare of a Grim Reaper revived you. Your brain was still alive. The beauty of Dream energy, when properly controlled."

"Quit acting like we're still in school, imbecile," stated a harsh voice. "She's never going to die, and there you are telling her all about your silly little plan. It's uneconomical."

I'm never going to die?

"My apologies. Matsu, are you ready?"

My math teacher, whose first name I hadn't heard before now, stepped forward. She still had the sharp features of a tall mathematics teacher, but now her face was more menacing. I guess it would be in most kids' nightmares to have their algebra teacher torture them to death.

Now, it seemed it was to become my reality.

"Turn her up, Sakyo," she said, her voice raspy tender. Like someone who's about to make love. Sakyo placed his hand in front of my head.

My head exploded. Millions of tiny bits of information, right down to every emotion of every person within thousands of miles hit me like a two-by-four. I knew, somehow, they could also feel me. My pain, the ripping and tearing at my brain. But my heart stayed silent. Somehow, I knew they could feel that, too.

And I was frozen, helpless to do nothing but see what was in front of me and hear what was going on. Helpless to feel the thousands of people's emotions and confusion. I tried to focus on something, anything other than the voices.

What's going on?

Who is that?

Why is this happening to me?

Why is…?

What?

How?

When?

WHY?

My math teacher's hands expanded. Green energy formed there. Similar to the bombs that had torn Kurama's flesh to pieces at the Dark Tournament, I realized through the haze. Sakyo looked like he was going to cry. Tears of joy?

"Karasu. Put up the shield, please."

In a darkened corner of the room, a man stood. A man whose face I knew all too well. It was Karasu, the demon who had fallen for Kurama and nearly had taken his life. But Kurama said he was dead! For a minute, nothing but that mattered.

And then, Matsu's green energy tore into my flesh.

I couldn't scream. Couldn't cry. Couldn't move. I was paralyzed in a burning body, but I could feel every ounce of pain. It transmitted to everyone outside of the room. They crashed to the ground, slammed into trees and buildings in their cars. I heard every cry of pain, and it reverberated around in my own skull. Their screams, their cries…

Babies wailed into the sky, their arms ripped like mine. Women, men, kids at an elementary school down the street. Matsu aimed the second green energy bomb at my chest. I prepared to die.

It plunged into my chest, cutting and slicing my heart to ribbons. But I didn't die. I didn't die. I was alive, and I was still there, still conscious as thousands of people died, screaming all around me.

If I could have cried, I would have. If I could have screamed, I would have. If I could have done anything but wail inside my own head as the silence fell. The silence. If anything was worse than the noise of those people in my head, it was the silence when they were dead.

Dead.

All because of me.

Because I was weak.

Pathetic.

Sakyo placed his hand in front of my head and the silence went away. I felt nothing at all anymore, nothing but my own fatal-not-fatal wounds. My history teacher, Une-san, stepped forward.

The physical pain in my arm and chest went away.

But the pain of those deaths would never leave me again.

"Knock 'er out, Karasu," Matsu said. "We're going."

The others left, letting my paralysis leave. Sakyo warned me before he walked out that Karasu could do the same. I only sighed, letting the tears well up in my eyes.

"Did my dear Kurama tell you about me?" Karasu asked sweetly. He had lovely eyes and beautiful hair—all only skin deep. I bared my teeth at him as an answer. "Oh, poor pretty thing. Too bad you can't die. I would love to squeeze your life from you."

"How'd you survive, vermin?" I scowled. He yanked me to my feet, pressed my back against the door, and shut it, all with one swift move. A spark of fear ran up my spine.

What was he doing?

"You're weak, stupid, and pathetic. What does my Kurama see in you?"

I growled despite myself. "He's not yours."

"Unlike Kurama, I won't have to destroy you to keep you close," he smirked, pressing me closer to the door. "I get to destroy you again and again. And you'll always come back to me. You won't grow old and die."

"Freak!" I pushed as hard as I could on him, but he wouldn't budge. He was too strong for me! He could easily…No, I wouldn't think like that. "Get away from me!" He pressed in closer. "Stop! Stop it!"

Karasu backed away slowly. He then took my hand and led me away, but the fear lingered on my heart. It didn't start to beat again. It sat there inside of me, as dead as the day Keiko and I had died together.

Several things. One, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANKYOU all for the reviews! I have never gotten so many! I feel so loved. Although, it's probably Bri you all love more…

Thank you to my email reviewers (you know who you are) for giving me help with Ayame's character. And thank you to Suntiger and sillylittlenothing for their reviewed offers. I think I've got Ayame down now. Arigatou!

And now, the news you ALL want to hear…THE SEQUEL IS COMPLETE! I repeat, the SEQUEL IS COMPLETE! I've decided to call it Wolf's Last Cry and will start uploading it as soon as Heal Me is completed.

Now, to my individual reviewers…

Suntiger: Thank you so much for your offer for help. Somebody else (who wishes to remain anonymous, stupid boy…) helped me with her before I checked the rest of my email. I know who to call if I ever need help again! Thank you soooo much for your continuing support! I decided not to let her mate with Kuronue, though…

RoseFire-shadow: Thank you very much for your concern. Sevon meant a lot to me and the fact that he went out the way he did makes the scar far more deep. I write about death a lot because I know too much about it.

Saori: I love romance, too, it just boggles my mind some of the things people do for love. I've never been there before, but I hope my journey's wonderful and filly with adventure so I can write about it some day. LOL

Sillylittlenothing: I can't tell you how much you've helped me. My brain was blocking everything and you and a few others have helped unblock it. THANK YOU! You know, I didn't think to include everyone's reactions to their new relationship, only Keiko's take on it in this chapter. Everything else kinda just…falls away after this.

Princess Kandra: No worries, they will be up soon.

Next update scheduled for: Wednesday, the 29. I work that night in the computer lab, that's why.