Chapter 7: Meditating and Practice Fights

"Hey Yasu, why don't we have a practice session? It's been awhile since our last one." Rai asked. It had been a week since Koenma had given the detectives their mission.

"Why not? I'm sure you may have gotten a bit rusty, seeing as how you spend more time on music and with your new friends than practicing your aim." Yasu said with a smirk.

"There's only one way to find out." She answered grinning. The two grabbed their equipment and made their way to a secluded forest clearing.

The two stood some distance apart, each taking a fighting stance. Yasu unsheathed a thin, unadorned katana, while Rai drew no weapon. This didn't relieve Yasu one bit.

"Ready?" Yasu shouted.

"Whenever you are!" was her answer.

No one moved for, what seemed, the longest time. Then Rai suddenly made her move.

She leapt in the air, and with a small flick of the wrist, flung an eight-edged shuriken at Yasu. It had come from seemingly nowhere. Yasu yelped as she dodged the spiked menace. She had seen this many times, but it never stopped surprising her. Then again, a good thing about training with a lightning demon is that they can be random. You never know what they'll do next. To predict one is next to impossible. So you have to be ready for anything.

"Be quick, Yasu. To stay still is to be dead. You know that." Rai teased Yasu. Yasu nodded and charged at Rai, swinging her katana sideways for a quick swipe. Rai moved to dodge it, but it was a feint. Yasu swung up instead in the full circle.

Rai smiled, "Glad to see you've been learning from my techniques of unpredictability." Rai tossed a shuriken to move the blade from its path and it worked.

Rai then drew one of her two tanto, and slashed at Yasu. Yasu quickly deflected the blow with her katana. Yasu saw the small gap in Rai's defense and went for it. Rai twirled her tanto upward to block the blow.

The noise was quite loud as they traded blows after blows.

Finally, Rai jumped away from Yasu. Both were breathing hard, each had made talented attacks and tactical defense towards each other.

Rai made quick flick of the wrist to show four shuriken ready to throw. Another flick of the wrist and they were tossed. Yasu twisted out of the way of each of the deadly projectiles. Rai gasped as out of nowhere, four familiar faces had popped up… In the way of the shuriken. She closed her eyes.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! The sound of metal hitting wood was loud in Rai's ears. She opened her eyes to the boys pinned to different trees by her shuriken. They had looks of shock on their faces.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't know you guys were even there. I'm so sorry!" She said apologizing. She pulled the shuriken from the bark and released her friends. Yasu was trying not to laugh. It was funny seeing them stuck to the trees.

"Wait… Where's Hiei? I thought I saw him here too." Rai asked, seeing only three boys and three shuriken.

"Right here."

She jumped. "Why do you insist on scaring me?" Rai demanded.

"Hn." Hiei turned away from her, "I believe this is yours." He held up a shuriken up for her to see.

"Thanks Hiei. Are you guys alright?"

Kuwabara looked at Rai funny. "What were you thinking throwing that stuff around? Someone could hurt!"

"That's what they're for. What were you guys thinking walking in on a fight?" She countered.

"We thought we heard someone, so we decided to check it out." Kurama explained.

"Oh, that must've been Yasu. I seem to remember startling her when I first started throwing them."

Yasu glared at Rai. "You're talented with the shuriken. If I had been fighting you to the death, I may have been dead by now."

Rai yawned, "Whatever. I'm feeling really tired right now, so I'm going home to take a nap. Buh-bye." She waved good-bye and walked off.

Kuwabara stared after her surprised, "Is she that strong?"

"Let's put it this way, I'd rather be her ally than her opponent. And, as lightning demons go, she can be very… Random." Yasu stated. "I might as well go after her. She has a knack for starting trouble. Plus, she dropped both her shuriken and her tanto." She looked at everyone, "I guess you can follow me if you want. Just be warned, when she's asleep, don't make very loud noises. As I'm sure as you have seen earlier, she's rather jumpy."