" AIJOU!" Uki screamed finally, drawing the attention of just about everyone in the shop. Ai blinked, staring at her twin, who was red faced.
" Hai?" she asked innocently.
" Three days! Three days you have dragged me out shopping! I-CAN'T-TAKE-IT-ANYMORE!" Uki shrieked, grasping her hair by the roots, eyes mad and insane.
"Then go home, Ukime," Ai shrugged as if her twin had not just burst out screaming in the middle of a packed department store.
" I hate you," the other one mumbled as she walked off. She sighed heavily as she closed her eyes, pushing open the door and walking straight into someone. She sprawled across her back, surprised, letting out a stream of multi-colorful and many-languaged curses.
" My, I'm sorry!" a feminine voice said, startled, and a hand reached into her field of vision to help her up. She recognized the red hair and emerald eyes as the teenager that, along with his companion, as the one who had found her as an enigma two days before.
" Ah, Minamino-kun, I knew you couldn't resist me," she said with a rueful smile, ignoring his hand and pushing herself up of her own accord.
" If I understood it correctly, you were the one who chose that precise moment to walk into me," Suuichi replied with a wink.
" Rarely have I met one who is so eager to engage in a battle of wits," Uki said, but sounded pleased.
" Yes, well, I usually pertain it to make my friends fell they are unworthy of my excellent presence," he sighed dismally, but Uki could detect the amusement, and joke, behind his words.
" Can we stop using large words? I've already got a headache from that demon I call twin." Suuichi looked alarmed at the mention of the word 'demon', but relaxed slightly as he saw Uki meant it as a metaphor, and not literally.
" Well, I'll have to leave you fawning over me, for I must escape the tyrant that is the modern day Shopper," Uki growled, glaring pointedly at her twin, who was leaving the checkout.
" Nice to have bumped into you," Suuichi bowed mockingly, and Uki grinned. Without further words, she spun around, feet moving with a fevered pace as she evaded the eyesight of Ai.
" At least he knew the meaning of his words," Uki said aloud of the conversation having just had. Within half an hour she had reached the apartment which she had rented with her sibling. " Ahhhh!" she screamed, realizing that Ai had thwarted her once more, though without knowing. It seemed that Ai had the only key to the door, and she herself was not due home for hour. As it was, a few hours would cause Uki great sickness if she couldn't get in, as the heavy storm clouds that had loomed over Tokyo finally decided to release their flow of pelting and icy sheets of rain.
" Why, Kami, must you make my life Hell!" She found herself shrilly shrieking as she leapt for the fire escape ladder that, too, taunted her by being inches out of reach. She crouched low, cursing, among other things, her small height. As she grasped onto the cold slick metal, her entire body received a shocking jolt, the ladder ( and ultimately, Uki's body) being illuminated in a dazzling display of blinding white lightning. She screamed, discolored eyes wide in pain and surprise, as she fell to the ground for the second time that day. The sweet smell of charred flesh drifted in all sorts of direction, and Uki's entire body felt as though someone had set fire to her. She panted heavily, tears streaming from her eyes, which also caused immense agony just to hit the ground. She couldn't move for shelter as each rain drop felt as though someone had stabbed her.
" Can you move, onna?" a harsh voice demanded, and although she recognized it, she could not tempt her headache for a name.
" No," Uki answered, and the stretch of her lips made her wish she had not.
" No matter how much this hurts, you cannot scream," the man, Hiei, she remembered, commanded. He lifted her from her sprawled position, and her skin screamed in protest as if someone had stuck a white-hot poker to her.
" We need to get her to Genkai's," someone else, out of Uki's vision, murmured, and her eyes widened. Suuichi?