Kyoshi-neko – O.o I think we're telepathic. When I first thought of this story, I thought of doing the Yusuke/Becca and Kurama/Hiei thing and am still very, very clingy to that idea. I'll probably use it.
Nobody – Thanks for reviewing! Unfortunately, the more I look at the YYH story selection here at FF.net, the more Kurama/OC I'm seeing. It's really annoying me, so I'll probably make it Yusuke/OC; sorry! But please keep reading…I need readers. ;_;
Well, three months later found me still pleased with myself. I was almost completely down in my good, bad, and straddle leg splits. I could do a backbend down the wall and only needed to touch the wall three or four times. I was fairly flexible and could jog in place for nearly forty-five minutes. I could sprint from end of the cell to the other in about three seconds. I could do about fifty boy push-ups. I was as skinny as the girls at school now. I had, however, lost most of my leg and arm muscle that I had gained from taking care of my horses, and I was disappointed to see it go. My butt was even thinner, which made me scoff, because I had just gotten used to it. I was probably more fit now than I had ever been in my life.
My singing had definitely improved. I mean, I had been an okay singer before...maybe a little rough around the edges...but now I could warble notes, lilt my voice, and had a vibrato that would've made Celion Dion jealous. I had sung quietly at first, then decided to screw it - the guards could cover their ears if they didn't like it. Heh, Lord only knew how many songs I knew and sang. I had roughly sixty-two CD's at home and many more on tape, so my selection was pretty much endless. There was one song I sang a lot. It was called 'Unwell', by Matchbox 20, and had been the image song for one of my horses before...well...before.
Things were never boring around the dungeon. There were always screams and shouts, threats and pleas. The guards got angry and beat a lot of the creatures around me. Sometimes, when I stood at my wooden door and peered through the square opening, I could see them leading them around. It didn't take me long to figure out the people around here hated humans, so I often remained hidden from sight.
I even made some friends. The feminine-sounding creature in the cell immediately to my right sang with me after a month or so of hearing 'Unwell.' It had scared the crap out of me the first time, but she persisted on singing it and several other songs with me, even though we didn't speak any of the same languages. I probably could've sang 'The Animal Song' and she would've sung it with me. She was exceptionally good at harmonizing, and we had fun together. Of course, she was probably a criminal who had killed and plundered and slit one too many throats, but hey, stone walls can do miracles for one's safety standards.
The only things I missed were my music, computer and e-mail, books, television, sugar in all its glorious forms, brush, toothbrush, deodorant, and drawings. Oh yeah. I missed showers too. And a different pair of clothes. I had taken to not wearing my tennis shoes, socks, and shirt; I was decent enough, however, to keep my jeans on.
During the day.
Yeah, modesty wasn't really my thing.
But one day, that all changed.
The guards were nervous. Even my bad hearing could detect their uncertain mutters and hushed conversations. The guards were usually loud, bantering and bragging and fighting and drinking. Their silence was unnerving. That immediately alerted me, and I donned all my clothes, even my shoes. I began to sing 'Street of Dreams' to keep myself occupied, and the girl next door sang with me. I could hear uncertainty in her voice as she probably could mine. Faintly, so far away, I began to hear explosions, and the ground shook slightly.
The girl's voice trailed off moments before mine stopped abruptly. How far down were we? Would this place collapse on us? What the hell was going on? I stood up as the sound of quick marching told of the arrival of more guards. They all stopped outside my door. That was more than enough to really scare a person, especially since the explosions were getting louder. Louder equals closer, and the ground was shaking harder. I could hear people screaming. Within moments the guards outside my door were shrieking, I could see lights flashing through my little window on my door, and boys' voices yelled at each other.
"Spirit Gun!!" a teenage-sounding boy yelled.
There was a huge explosion down the hall that took my door with it. Dead creature bodies immediately spilled into my room, and I gasped as I back-stepped quickly. A medium-sized boy with brown hair, brown eyes, and icky green jumpsuit looked around before stepping into the room. "Is your name Lea...Lr-e..."(1)
"Rebecca Wallace?" I offered.
The brown-haired boy lit up in a smile. "Yeah! That's it! That's you?" I nodded. "My name's Yusuke Urameshi, and I'm here to get you out of here. Come with me?" he asked.
"Sure." Like I have anything else to do. I walked quickly over to him, stepping over the former guards' bodies. He turned and led me to my right. I paused and looked around. My cell was the only one with a wooden door on it - all the rest were see-through gates. My attention perked, and I looked into the cell to the right of mine.
There was no one there.
I could feel myself go pale. I was saved a sputtering fit of babble when Yusuke said, "Let's go before Koji gets a chance to regroup." I nodded dumbly.
Yusuke hesitated, then grabbed my hand and took off running. We ran up several flights of steps and through many halls before arriving in a familiar room. The only other way out was blocked by an all-too familiar person and his posse of freaks. Yusuke released my hand and stepped in front of me in what I understood to be a protective gesture.
"Spirit Detective, leave the girl and I will let you out alive," Koji said calmly.
"As if. It took us three months to find her-" he jerked his thumb at me, "and we're not giving her back." Well, would you looky here! Someone was fighting over me!
"She is mine."
"Am not!" I yelled, then clamped my hand over my mouth.
Koji glared at me, and I glared back. "I have deciphered the rest of the legend, and-" Blood flew as a blur dropped down from the rafters and quickly dispatched the pearl-skinned demon. Wah! Now I'll never know what I'm destined for! I mentally cried.
"We need to work on your timing, Hiei," Yusuke said flatly, starting to walk ahead.
My foot was off of the ground as I attempted to follow him when someone who was not Yusuke appeared in front of me. "Not you again!" I complained with a scowl.
I felt more than heard the swish of a blade and stepped back into just as a sword cut my arm. Had I been standing where I was before, he might've hit my neck. I let fly more curses than I ever had at one time and glared daggers at the male. There was another blur of movement, and the guy fell to the ground, dead, eyes still open. I looked at the person who had done me justice and found myself staring into another pair of blood red eyes. This one, however, was shorter. "Thanks."
"Hn."
"Ugh, sorry about that...hey, Hiei, he looks sorta like you," Yusuke mused, rubbing the back of his head. The shorter boy glared at him shortly and disappeared.
"Right," I said, holding onto my bleeding arm dumbly. We continued running and were soon clear of the palace. As we stood on a tall hill overlooking it, the thing exploded sky-high. I noticed there were now two more boys with us.
"Well, that's that," Yusuke declared cheerfully, and we set off to walking again.
"Yeah. Score!" the taller of the new boys yelled.
"Right. So, you know where you are?" Yusuke asked, smiling.
Is the world square? I made a slight face that was somewhere between disbelief and concern.
"Thought as much; Koenma said you've never been in the Makai before."
"The what?"
"The Makai; the Demon World. There's the Human World, Demon World or Makai, and Spirit World or Reikai."
I'll be damned. So there were three worlds.
"Have you met everyone yet?" Yusuke asked.
I shook my head.
He stopped us. "Okay. That's Kuwabara-" he pointed at a tall boy that had orange, curly hair, wore a blue school uniform, and quite frankly looked rather dense, "he's Kurama-" he pointed now at a person that just about made my heart stop. I saw why Yusuke had said 'he,' otherwise I would've sworn the magenta-haired person behind me was a girl. He was beautiful, with hair almost as long as mine and content emerald green eyes.
It almost made me sick.
Suddenly I felt scornful and flustered. Beautiful or very pretty people often had that effect on me. I didn't like them, and I very well had my reasons. Now, this one I couldn't be jealous of because of guy attention (although...), but it did make my nose feel a few sizes too big. Which it already was. Okay, so I wasn't ugly, but I wasn't pretty, either. From the front, maybe, sometimes, I thought I looked good, but my side profiles always made me sneer. My nose was big, and my brown hair was my best asset. I could sit on it now, and my blonde highlights began behind my ear. My eyes were gray, blue, and green, with dark blue rings around my iris and outer eye. They also had freak, faint yellow lines in them that you could only see if you were nose-to-nose with me, something not very many people got the opportunity to do. I had too many freckles. Yeah, well, at least I couldn't complain about my stomach anymore. My long legs still spoke for themselves, although they shouted now since they didn't have much muscle.
If one said I had an inferiority complex about my looks, one'd be right.
"-and...well..." Yusuke looked around. I was wearing my suck-up smile and kept a merry glimmer in my eyes. "Hiei's around here somewhere." Kurama, Kuwabara, and I bowed. "We know your name, by the way. It's Lea...Lr-e...Lllrraah..."
"Rebecca Wallace. I tell you what, Yusuke - just call me Becca."
"Becca. Okay. I can say that. Oh yeah! I gotta question for you. What's up with your name?"
"It's English," I grinned. "I am...was...an American. We...moved to Japan fou-...seven months ago. My dad had a job transfer with Toyota." I could not stop my voice from getting hard and mocking. It was impossible.
"You speak Japanese well," Kurama said politely, green eyes uncertain.
I know. "Thanks. I was really into anime for a few years and learned a lot of Japanese. Then a year ago my dad enrolled us all in basic language crash-course, and I rounded out my vocabulary there," I said with a twisted smile, changing the grip I had on my bleeding arm.
Kurama and Yusuke immediately brought up my injury, and the red-head set about to bandaging it as we continued walking. Conversation was stinted and didn't really exist. As we sat by a stream, Kurama looked at my shirt. And chuckled. "Is it true?" he teased. Watch it, pretty-boy...
"Yep. You speak English?" I asked, then put on a fake smile.
"A bit. I've taken two years in high school," he admitted. I've taken fifteen in real life.
I shifted positions. "I took Spanish in America, and I take English here."
His green eyes widened. "You can do that?"
"'So long as I'm not a part of the language team,' yeah."
He chuckled. "What school do you go to?" Hopefully not the same as yours.
"Hirosha, but I'm right on the borderline between it at Sarayashiki (2) High," I replied.
"No way! That's where me and Urameshi go!" Kuwabara exclaimed.
"Urameshi and I, you dolt," Hiei's curt voice snapped from branches above us.
I grinned.
"We should be getting you home soon," Yusuke said, interrupting a verbal fight between them. "I'll have my boss take care of the fact you were gone-"
"Don't rush." I shook a white-blonde-no-longer-a-baby baby bang away from my face and smiled softly at him.
He looked taken aback. "Don't you want to go home?"
I want to go home more than anything else in the world, Yusuke. But I can never go home. I have to go back to Japan. I looked him dead in the eyes, letting my eyes reflect my actual feelings - if only for a second. "No." I want to go back to America.
(1) – Japanese people do not have the 'r' sound in their language and have a difficult time pronouncing it, especially if they've never been taught it. Yes, I know this for a fact – one of my friends has foreign exchange students every year, and last year they had a Japanese one. She couldn't say my name because it has an 'r' in it.
(2) – Okay, I KNOW that's not how you spell Yusuke's and Kuwabara's high school's name. If you know how to actually spell it, let me know and I'll change it.
Did I have anybody thinking Hiei was Lord Koji's agent? No? Oh well.
I personally like this chapter. If you don't, I'm not going to make any apologies. I'd chatter more, but I have to go study. A lot. So…later.