Riath – Thanks! No, I'm not as cool as Becca. Unfortunately, there will be some romance, but not much. Thanks for the review!
Gambit's Panther – I'm sorry, I've already paired Becca up! And I'll get back to you on the human part when I figure it out myself…[oops!] Thanks for reviewing!
Noises got louder, and soon we were at the outskirts of town. I stomped my first step on the sidewalk and kicked any rock or trash in my way. As we got into the heart of the city, I avoided contact with people and stared pointedly at the ground. Genkai said something, and I saw her slippers moving away as the others stayed put. My mind was burning with fury when - "Becca? Are you okay?" - and Yukina's worried red eyes were staring up into mine.
Aw, shit. I had the little princess worried. "I'm fine, Yukina," I lied as lightly as I could, straightening my posture to prove my point.
"Are you sure?"
No. "Yes."
They argued over what to do. I noticed Hiei looked almost as pissed off as me. They decided on something, but I wasn't listening. I followed them. They kept talking. We entered a book store.
"Be back here in fifteen minutes," Kurama said, gesturing at the doors.
I did hear that, and walked off moodily to the graphic novel area. The selections were endless, but I settled for a title I knew and picked up the latest edition I'd remembered reading. Standing with my weight on my left hip, I felt vaguely secure in my old habit of reading before buying. I head low voices and looked up, gaze pointedly overshooting a small group of jock-equivalent boys who kept looking my way. I slid my attention back to my novel and played innocent, adopting a transfixed look while playing with my hair with my left hand. After a moment I turned so that I could lean against the bookshelves, a gesture that looked like one for comfort but was actually so I could watch those boys. Raising my eyes slightly, I watched one of them take off their varsity jacket and hand it a teammate, probably trying to show that he and two others who were standing to one side were not together. Instinct told me to get away, to find Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara, or even Hiei, but for some reason I didn't move.
One of the boys wearing a school jacket walked over to the book row I was leaning against, not looking at me as he went by, and settled for picking up a novel some four feet to my right. I ignored him. A few minutes the later the boy without a jacket came to the shelf and stayed around the same distance from me as the other guy, only on my left. I ignored him, too. The third walked to the bookshelves across the aisle, directly in front of me. I noticed the two boys on either side of me gradually getting closer and finally decided to get away. I closed my novel and set it on the shelf behind my right shoulder. No way I was turning around to put it on the bottom shelf where it belonged. The only route of escape was between the boy on my right and the one in front of me. I pulled myself upright and started to walk, getting my expression calm, if not content.
The boy on my right suddenly moved to block me.
"What's the rush, sugar?" he asked in a pleasant voice.
I glared at him. "I have P.M.S., a black belt in karate, and need to use the bathroom. Don't mess with me." Lies come easy when you're scared.
He looked almost uncertain and relaxed slightly, which let his guard down.
Taking advantage of the moment, I hauled back and slugged him as hard as I physically could, surprising both of us by knocking him to the floor.
His posse yelled in outrage and came at me. I kicked, struck, bit and punched, somehow keeping them away from me while at the same time beating them up fairly badly. Even as I realized my last thought, an arm wrapped around my stomach, pulling me back. The boys didn't come after me and looked rather relieved.
"Becca! What happened?" Kurama demanded.
"They tried to kidnap me," I replied, but it was an auto-pilot response. I was astonished. Were those boys really so pathetic? Could they not fight?
"Is this true?" Kurama snapped at the boy I had first punched as he tried to sit up.
"Why...ow...-"
"Is it true?" Man, Kurama could be scary when he wanted something...
"Y-yes."
"I could have you reported for attempted abduction."
"And I could have her reported for assault! That bitch-"
"Was acting in self-defense. You were not."
The boy picked himself off of the floor, glaring accusingly at us, and mumbled for his crew to head out. My eyes were large as I watched them shuffle out, apparently unable to go any faster.
Kurama turned me around, hands on my shoulders, and looked ready enough to lecture me. He looked at me, however, and sighed, sweeping my hair over my shoulder instead. "At least humans are no longer a problem for you."
"Kurama...did I really...how..." I whispered haltingly, rubbing my right arm. This was too weird. How could I beat up a group of jocks and emerge unscathed?
He was silent a moment, then smiled a little. "You're stronger now." His hands clapped my shoulders gently. "You'll understand eventually, even if you can't see it right away."
I nodded. He turned and left. I took a step after him and stopped, looking over the graphic novels again. When fifteen minutes passed, I bought four, spending a fourth of my money. I played with my bag and tuned the others out as we walked. Things crashed and beeped, as things will do in a city, and I started and jumped periodically, as I was prone to do. Most people would've said it was nerves, but I was always like this, and I was not a high-strung person.
If I would've been paying attention, I might've heard Hiei join in a conversation. I blinked as were in front of an ice cream parlor. Habitually I ordered a chocolate dish, but as we sat outside, I ignored it and instead went about shredding my napkin.
By the time someone poked me in the shoulder, the pieces were about as big as glitter specks. I glanced -down- at Hiei. "Are you gonna eat that?" he asked, looking to my chocolate ice cream.
"No." I pushed the slightly melted sweet to him, and he took it with a mumbled thanks. At about that time, a gust of wind blew, taking my napkin pieces with it. Now, at this point in a story, many writers would've said something poetic, like, 'I wish I was those pieces of paper, wild and free, with nothing to hold me down,' but I opted against it. One, I didn't truly know what freedom was and was too used to taking orders to want to not have them; two, the wind would stop blowing eventually, and then where would I be; and three, the second it rained, I would melt. I hummed gently to myself.
When everyone finished their ice cream, the girls (without my help) talked the boys into going to the mall. I scowled at hearing that word. I hated the mall. I stalked around angrily for nearly an hour before accidentally meeting up with Yusuke.
His brown eyes softened as he plopped down beside me on the bench. "You're really having a miserable time, aren't you?"
"Hmph...I guess that's one way to put it."
"What would you like to do?"
Go home. I sighed. "Nothing."
"There's nothing you want to do? See?"
"Don't worry about it," I said softly.
"Are you sure?"
"M-hm."
"Okay," he said uncertainly, then glanced at his watch. "We should go to the entrance."
"Could you keep up with me if I walked fast?" I asked, looking around at the huge mobs of people.
"Yeah," he said, looking at me funny.
I smirked to myself. Finally. I tightened my grip on my bags, then stepped out fast. Yusuke kept up with me for a moment, but we hit a large crowd of people, and I began to walk even faster as I wove expertly through the throng. Shopping with me was hell on the holidays, I'd always been told. But my friends had always been able to keep up and beside me, more or less because we'd learned our skills in the same place. I heard the boy yelp, then lost all trace of him as I made my way to the doors of the mall.
I saw Kurama's hair through a break in people and pranced my way through them to him, Keiko, Yukina, and Shizuru. I snarled an obscenity to a group of people, who paused to stare at me, and I took that opportunity to squeeze my way through. I shook my hair back over my shoulders and pulled my bangs back down.
Yusuke was the last to arrive, and he stared at me in disbelief. "How...the hell...do you do that?"
I smiled. "When you're around senior boys three times taller than you, you learn to move fast when the lunch bell rings."
He groaned. "I swear! I've never seen a person walk so fast!"
"Oh, you should see me around the holiday crowds," I said, staring at my nails.
He stared at me stupidly as we left the mall.
I stared up at the sky, as was a habit of mine every time I left a building, even though I didn't know why. Peering west, I frowned slightly. "Gonna rain," I whispered, watching the too-blue sky with uncertainty.
"Hm?" Kurama asked, peering at me kindly.
I hesitated, then gave up my pretense with a sigh. "It's going to rain," I said in a low tone.
He cocked his head to one side. "How can you tell?" I pointed westward. He inhaled deeply, then shook his head. "I don't smell anything, and it's sunny."
"Not everything is what it seems," I replied, proud of my mysterious answer.
"We still have an hour and a half," Keiko announced uncertainly, completely oblivious (along with everyone else) about my prediction. "What else can we do?"
"We...uh...could...mmm...go....see a movie?" Kuwabara guessed, scratching his head.
"What's out? Damn, we've been stuck in the Makai so long..." Yusuke mused.
"There's a thriller-comedy that's gotten high reviews," Keiko replied, trying to think. "I think it's called 'Night Rose' or something."
Comedy? Comedy?! Hell, if it was comedy, I was there! Hilarity and laughs were things I looked forward to most in life. I remained quiet, and as I suspected, they agreed on it. We walked a block to the nearest theater and had ten minutes to spare after we bought tickets. We all totally splurged out on popcorn, candy, and soda.
There was us and two other much smaller groups. Had I been in America, my friends and I would've started a popcorn war, but people here in Japan didn't do such things unless they knew each other, so I refrained. We all sat in the same row, starting with Shizuru, then Kuwabara, Yukina, Keiko, Yusuke, myself, Kurama, and Hiei. Hiei, after an explanation of what a movie was and several warnings that it was not real, looked perplexed. I drank half my coke through the previews alone (as I was prone to do) and had to run to get a refill before the movie started.
Not even a half an hour into the movie we were rolling. Even Hiei was laughing, though not as hard as the rest of us. I was glad he was getting it. It would've been no fun for Kurama if he'd had to explain every little joke to him. The movie had a good plot, and a couple of 'loose' characters reminded me of Jack Sparrow from the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean.'
A fourth of the way through the movie I'd drank all my coke and was sharing Kurama's with him. We had no qualms about it, and I was reminded of the time my diet coke had went from mine to a community drink with eight of my friends. Half-way through the movie I had to go pee like you wouldn't believe and bounced my legs to keep myself occupied. Kurama noticed my predicament and shook his head with a large smile. The fact that I was laughing so damn hard, coupled with several explosions in the movie that shook the theater, put me into an almost painful state.
When it was over I was the first one out of the room.
We met up at the restrooms. As we waited and walked, we were all laughing and giggling and reciting some of the many catch-phrases and one-liners in giddy states of sugar-overload intake. Though I had done so around them, I'd never seen Hiei laugh, and it made me laugh all the more. He was about as childishly cute as Yukina. Which...led to something I'd noticed the moment I'd met the ice apparition.
Call me crazy, but...they looked alike.
I mean, hypothetically, they both had red eyes, both were short. I'd heard Yukina talk of still looking for her brother. I'd seen Hiei get pissed when she got upset, saw how his hand jumped to his katana every time the littlest thing startled him when she was around, the look of relief in his eyes when she'd arrived after the gateway incident...
When we turned the corner, I was pleased to notice it was raining heavily. Kurama's eyes widened, and he looked at me in confusion. I was, however, not pleased to see Genkai waiting for us at the doors. My laughter and mirth reached a record-breaking grinding halt. I was even in the middle of a laugh and stopped so hard I squeaked, which everyone else found incredibly funny until they saw something'd startled me out of it. We followed Genkai out of the theater.
I went back to tuning people out as we were led to three taxis. I really don't know what happened, but I somehow wound up in a taxi with Hiei and Yukina, the girl of which was in the middle. I guess it was the rain and excitement, for Yukina made quick work of falling asleep on Hiei's shoulder. Sliding down in my seat, I pretended not to notice Hiei's surprised discomfort and continued to do so even as he relaxed and rested his head against hers.
I shifted and loosened my seatbelt after realizing the taxi driver, like most, was going to take us on an unnecessarily long round-about route back to the temple. A nerve in my elbow pinched, and I rubbed it with a soft growl. This was going to be a long ride.