Suddenly, for no particular reason, it was daytime. Around ten o'clock, I'd wager.

Whatever happened to those several hours between night and day that we typically call "morning," I'll never know.

Yûsuke and Keiko were long gone, being that several hours had passed since they had stood to leave, and Hiei's and Kurama's jaws were getting pretty tired. They closed their mouths and bit down a few times to make sure that they could still work the bones properly. Alexis was standing beside a lighted tree, shoving a matchbook in her pocket.

"There!" she said happily, clapping. "I did it!"

"With some assistance," Hiei muttered. Alexis looked over at him, her head tilted "cutely" and her eyes somehow enormous.

"What was that, Love?"

"You lit it with matches," Kurama accused. "I can't believe you would do that to such a defenseless creature."

"Leave it to a fox to get sentimental about a tree," Hiei muttered, smirking. Kurama lightly whacked his shoulder, also smiling. It was a friendly kind of joke that Alexis shouldn't have been able to understand right away.

So she misinterpreted it.

"Yeah, Kurama," she said fiercely. "It's just a stupid tree. Leave it alone, it's dead now."

Kurama glared over at her incredulously and walked up to the now smoldering stump. Placing his hands over the remains, he brought it back up to its former splendor, minus some leaves and maybe a branch or two. Actually, much of the left half was completely gone, but it would grow back. Someday.

Standing, Kurama dusted his hands off and looked at Alexis with a cocky smile.

"You were saying?"

She blushed madly for some reason and turned to Hiei, her smile wider than ever.

"Hey Lovely—"

"Don't call me that!"

"—wanna hit me up?"

Hiei blinked, buying himself some time.

"…hit you up."

"Yeah!"

"As in, have sex with you."

Alexis winked, trying to be seductive. "Yes, sir!"

"…no."

"Saving yourself for the wedding night, huh? That is so adorable! Aww, I love you!"

Alexis latched herself around Hiei's neck, nuzzling her face into his throat and thinking she was being wonderful and clingy, exactly what Hiei would want.

Hiei would have "sweatdropped" if he did that sort of thing on a casual basis. Instead, he looked to Kurama with blind panic.

"She's hanging onto me…"

"Um…I can see that, Hiei…"

"Do something!"

Kurama edged forward (a little scared, or maybe just annoyed) and put his hands on Alexis's shoulders, trying to drag her off. The Iron Grip™ was back, much to Hiei's chagrin, and Kurama was…unsuccessful, let's say.

"Dammit" was running through exactly two heads at that moment. A few fuzzy streams of consciousness ("fuzzy" in the literal sense—with fur and everything) were running through the third, as well as some pictures of Hiei with hearts drawn around them and "I LUV U" scribbled across some faces.

Hiei clawed at Alexis's hands around his neck, but even that didn't set off the little light bulb in her head that screamed "Hiei hates you! Get off!"

"…wait it out?" Kurama suggested. Hiei grimaced and nodded, walking back down the hill with his foxy casual sex partner at his heels.

About halfway there, Alexis leapt out of her loving stupor and screeched "Wedding plans!"

Grabbing Hiei's wrist, she dragged him down the rest of the hill and towards the urban part of town. Rather than resist, as he might have done normally, Hiei let himself be dragged—thereby providing himself a little time to think of an escape plan.

If he could just break the Iron Grip™, he would be fine.

Therein, of course, lay the problem. Alexis Ballista whatever had the power of infliction on her side, and Hiei's own fire was not strong enough to break it. This called for some serious training, but not until she was gone.

"Infliction," what a funny thing to call a power. Come to think of it, Hiei was pretty sure it started with an "F," but it didn't matter.

"Pretty white dresses!"

Hiei shook himself out of his stupor and looked around at their surroundings—or, not so much their surroundings as the store they were stopped in front of. "Wedding Stuffs R Us"? What kind of stupid name was that? More to the point, what kind of idiot would think up a stupid name like that?

…a stupid one, of course.

Alexis had dragged him into the store at some point and was fondling wine…goblets as she stared intently at a huge crystal punch bowl. Hiei tried not to grimace, but this stuff all seemed so unnecessary, it was hard not to. He called it more of a "tense smile" than a "grimace." Alexis would have called it "adorable," but she was too interested in glassware to notice.

"I thought you were in here for pretty white dresses?" Hiei said in a questioning way. Alexis blinked and nodded emphatically.

"Oh yeah!"

Hiei looked around, bored out of his mind.

"…hey, where's Kurama? He was right behind me a minute ago…"

Alexis nodded. "Yeah, Love, I like this one, too!"

Hiei snapped his gaze back to Alexis and cocked his head.

"I thought you weren't being 'traditional.'"

Alexis snapped her fingers. "Oh, yeah! I'll need a pretty hand-made tunic, completely unique and fitting of my character. It'll need Light attribute decorations and Darkness attribute decorations and Fire attri—"

Hiei tuned out right about there.

Ten minutes later, when he figured Alexis had to be finished outlining the design of her "wedding tunic," he tuned back in.

"—and really pretty matching silk pants! But not too busy, or they might clash with my beautiful one-of-a-kind tunic. Maybe I should use a silk skirt…except if it's too loose, it might catch on fire from the candles lining the aisle, and if it's too tight, I might not be able to walk gracefully enough…pants it is!"

"Candles lining the aisle?"

Alexis nodded happily. "Sure! And the ceremony will be at night in the forest, a really secret place with pretty white candles and rose petals and a shiny white archway for you to stand under! But not too shiny, or it'll be distracting, what with all the lighted candles and all. Of course, they'll go out as I pass them—it'll be so romantic!"

Hiei looked tense, skeptical, annoyed, and about to set something on fire. Maybe a little sick to his stomach, for good measure. Alexis giggled, entirely oblivious.

Go out as she passed them? A shiny white archway? What was wrong with this girl?

"I suppose there will be world-class singers, too," Hiei noted satirically. Alexis waved him off.

"Oh, no, of course not."

Finally, something sane. Er, marginally.

"I'll be singing after the ceremony, at the reception. We won't need to spend the extra money to hire professionals."

Hiei raised his hands to ring her neck, but restrained himself—this was for Kurama, after all. He couldn't do anything rash.

But come to think of it, her voice didn't sound very pretty. She might be able to carry a tune, sure, but she was no diva.

"You…sing?"

Alexis looked at him, surprised. "Of course! Don't you remember? You heard me singing in the park on a cool summer night and fell madly in love with me at first listen? And then you hid behind a tree, and I noticed you—I sensed you with my super demon powers because my fire reacted to your fire because we're soul mates—and laughed, very cutely, and you came out blushing, and told me I had a beautiful voice? And I said I'd sing for you if you wanted, and you said that would be lovely, and I did, and you asked me out?"

Hiei's head was spinning. For one thing, he was positive he hadn't known this girl for more than a day, yet at the moment, it was the beginning of spring. For another, she didn't have any fire powers and even if she did, there was no such thing as a "soul mate," and even if there was, one fire demon's energy didn't "react" to another's because of it. For yet another, he didn't think he'd ever said "lovely" in his entire life, and he'd certainly never "asked a girl out."

He felt a little like screaming.

Alexis continued examining glassware.

Best to start with the most obvious flaw in her claim…or at least the simplest one.

"It's the beginning of spring."

"Uh-huh, and your point is?"

"You said we met on a cool summer night."

"We sure did!"

"I haven't known you for more than a day."

"Spring comes right before summer, Love."

"It's the beginning of spring."

"And your point is…?"

Hiei started to speak for a moment before he realized that this girl simply would not hear logic. Rolling his eyes (he's been doing that an awful lot), he shook his head.

Alexis moved down the table, tracing her finger along the glass rims as she went.

"Ooh, dresses!"

"What about the tunic?"

"Oh yeah…"

Hiei put his head in his hands. This girl was hopeless. Utterly, utterly hopeless. She couldn't even keep track of her own fantasies, what made her think she could keep track of him? Or even a wedding, for that matter?

"I'm leaving," Hiei said huffily. Alexis grabbed a hold on his wrist and stopped him short.

"Not if you don't want Kurama to not have his freedom anymore, you're not," she babbled. Crossing his eyes, Hiei tried to sort out that sentence. He boiled it down to "Stay here if you want Kurama to be safe."

That was a good enough reason for him.

"Are you almost done?" he tried. She looked at him with sparkly eyes and smiled winningly. He tried to keep from retching.

"Almost!" She looked at her watch. "Ooh, but if we want time to get to the custom tunic shop before sundown, we ought to leave now!"

Thank you, Hiei prayed silently.

But…custom tunic shop? He knew of no such thing around these parts of the city. He knew of no such thing in Tokyo. Come to think of it, he had only run across a small one in a remote region of Demon World.

So then where…

Oh, no.

"Do you think Koenma will open up a portal for us today?" Alexis asked cheerfully, as though she fully expected Koenma to open whatever portals they needed right on the spot. Hiei shook his head.

"I doubt it. It takes a lot of effort to open one of those portals."

"Sure he will!" Alexis cried. "Anything for love!"

"I've never heard him say that—"

"Hurry up, Love!"

Mutter grumble.