Disclaimer: Okay. I think I might have gotten a hit of Calvin and Hobbes in here somewhere and I used a couple anime series like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. Otherwise, you have already heard my ranting. Be gone!
Story Thus Far: Shizuru, Alaster and Cloud are departing from the city in search of Touya and Jin. However, Jin (along with the toddler Minna) have fled to warn Yuusuke leaving Touya to fight Karasu alone. Beyond that Koenma is a prisoner of his own status while his father plots...something?
Enjoy chapter 6!
Not So Delicate Primrose
"Whaddyu mean 'sick'?" Yuusuke demanded, brow creasing in mild confusion.
He folded his long, powerful arms across his chest, the dark tattoos etched across his flesh dark against smooth skin. His jet black tresses which had once grown down his back in spiky waves had been hacked short and forcibly tamed with a strip of green cloth tied in a band about his head, stray spikes jutted rebelliously up from his skull in a testament to his personality. Dark eyes that constantly waged a war between a soft coffee and a violent blood red roiled as the Lord of the Third Realm let his mouth pull in a slight glower.
Dressed only in casual jeans, torn and frayed at the knee, sneakers and a ragged green T-shirt no one would have thought this young man to be the deadly War Lord he was or a powerful ruler over a Realm in the Makai. No. Any passerby would have called him a delinquent or punk or something along those lines. He certainly looked the part. Cocky smile, sardonic quirk to the eyebrows, slump of the shoulders and battle scarred hands. His body was that of a twenty one year old, young, athletic, slightly stocky, but it was something about his stature that threw you for a loop. Something about the strange power that radiated from his youthful frame.
But being a Toushin often had that kind of affect on one's aura.
"What are the symptoms?" he wanted to know of his most trusted General.
The demon shrugged thin, but sleekly muscled shoulders, jet black skin rippling over sinuous arms. His reptilian yellow eyes blinked emotionlessly up from his angular, ebon face as he finished his field report. He'd flown over eighty miles on his powerful black wings to inform his Emperor of the most unusual developments among his men. He was about Yuusuke's height, though the Lord could never be certain because he tended to slouch. He went by Veil; nothing else and that suited Yuusuke just fine. The General belonged to a sub-class of dragon demon, exotic, massively rare and powerful to boot.
The draconic youkai scratched the back of his slender neck, running supple fingers through his fire-orange licks of flaming hair. His dark red tunic jangled and clinked, millions of razor sharp metal barbs all glittering from his thick leather belt as he moved. They didn't look too dangerous but in Veil's hands...they were lethal. Yuusuke had been on the receiving end of his friend's devastating attacks before and rather preferred having the draconic demon under his command instead of standing against him.
Veil sighed, voice a soft, reverberating echo, like the low purr of some great beast coiled within his narrow chest.
"My Lord, the troops along Mukuro's – ahh, excuse me – Kumuro's borders have reported hostility toward their sentries, my Lord. I think we might worry more about possible invasion than a few bouts of illness in the ranks," Veil said testily.
He'd lost several troops of men to aggressive border guards hailing from the dead Emperor's territory. It had put the demon in a foul mood and flying a considerable distance to deliver a rather the message hadn't done anything to heal his frame of mind. It was obvious to Yuusuke that the ebon-skinned youkai would much rather be attacking the former Mukuro's guilty border patrols instead of discussing things here with him.
"Hey, Veil. Chill man, we're gonna nail these guys, but I need to check with Yomi," said Yuusuke, placing a hand on his comrade's tense shoulder. "He reported sickness in his troops, too much. He's had to quarantine two garrisons and put down several of his strongest Captains because they went berserk. I don't want any of our men to end up like that."
Veil drew a steady breathe and nodded in agreement. Yuusuke inclined his head in gratitude and stepped back from his friend.
"Okay. So what kind of sickness are we talking here?"
"Hmm...It's a strange one. It starts out like any common cold, fever, chills, aching and such. Then the victims becomes...erratic...starts hallucinating and ranting about strange names and people," the dark skinned demon replied to Yuusuke query. "The weaker demons fall into a deep coma while others begin to attack one another."
Yuusuke bit his lip, face falling in a sober expression. "Same symptoms Yomi reported. This is getting too weird," the Toushin said, brow furrowing deeper. "And all this right after your men started having those weird skirmishes with Mukuro's troops."
"Kumuro, my Lord," Veil corrected gently. "Kumuro now rules Mukuro's throne."
Yuusuke winced; irked that he'd forgotten the death of the powerful woman even after all these years. She'd become something of an older sister after he'd taken over the Third Realm and under her tutoring he'd become far more adept a ruler than he'd ever thought himself capable of. Her brutal murder, even now had not settled with him and neither had the disappearance of the illustrious Hiei Jaganshi. The prime suspect to everyone but those who knew him.
Hiei respected Mukuro. He'd been more loyal to the disfigured, yet beautiful female Emperor than he'd ever been to Yuusuke or even Kurama. He'd never turn his blade on her. Not unless she asked it of him and she'd never leave Hiei under such a damning circumstances. The woman had valued Hiei like a brother if not a mate. Course, neither of them had ever indicated they were anything more than Emperor and heir, but rumor so did love to mutter otherwise.
"Yeah...right and stop calling me Lord," the Toushin said absently. "Look, I just think it's way to coincidental. You think he's going for biological war?" Yuusuke speculated while strolling thoughtfully along the wide balcony over looking the exotic expanses of the Makai forest. The trill of wild birds echoed up from the canopies like some mournful wail of a mother to her lost child. Yuusuke, however was deaf to it in his thoughts.
Veil frowned. "With both you and Yomi? Not very wise. He's hardly half the ruler Mukuro was."
"I know, but he's an ambitious little prick and I ain't gonna sit around and wait for him to slide a dirty dagger between my ribs while I wonder," he chuckled bitterly. "I'm sending someone in there to take a look around for any suspicious activity."
"Like what?" Veil asked vaguely intrigued. It was pretty plain in his body language he wanted to be that 'someone'.
"I dunno weird things...suspicious things," Yuusuke replied, equally vague.
Veil's handsome face became annoyed and sardonic. "You really have an eye for detail, you know that, Yuusuke?"
The dark-haired Emperor laughed, sweatdropping as he slumped against the stone hand rails along the walkway. Veil was, of course, right but he didn't really want to get into a debate with him about it today. The dragon demon had a tongue on him like no other and more often than not Yuusuke was struck with nothing left to say while Veil walked away with the bickering championship.
"Okay, fine. Define 'strange and suspicious," Yuusuke huffed.
Veil's dragon gold eyes lifted, amused and he thoughtfully began to cast his mind about for thoughts, gaze scanning the stormy skies idly. Then his face contorted in a most random look of confusion, brow furrowing, lips twisting so the demon managed a most peculiar expression. Yuusuke, somewhat troubled by his friend's...odd reaction, arched a brow at him. Veil only glanced back at him and pointed an elegantly clawed hand into the sky.
"That."
Yuusuke turned to look. "What he hell...?"
Zooming top speed out of the skies overhead was some kind of strange zig-zagging creature, flashing and darting back and forth across the scarlet clouded heavens. Yuusuke's head followed the spastic flight path of the wayward creature, face swinging back and forth in rhythm to the dark figure's movements across the atmosphere. Veil's head did not sway like Yuusuke's but his narrowed eyes followed the air-born speck as it grew larger, drawing closer and closer across the skies.
"Umm, should we be defending?" Veil asked slowly.
Yuusuke's head had begun to bob and weave from left to right, up and down as if hypnotized by the wild movements. "Uh...not really. It looks like this guy's gonna...oh shit!"
Yuusuke spun and tackled a startled Veil just as an explosion of pink and blue ripped through the air they'd just vacated. The two men went tumbling to the ground in a rolling tangle and ended up slammed up against a nearby stone column. Veil blinked from his position belly down on the stone, Yuusuke sitting in the middle of his narrow back. The speeding...whatever it was...was gone leaving the two to stare dumbfounded at the empty air.
"Gods...I didn't realize how fast that thing was going!" the warrior swore under his breath.
"Yeah, she tends to have that affect on people..." muttered the Toushin, rolling off his General.
Veil stared. "Beg pardon?"
"Her. She. Ferrygirl with a speed fetish," Yuusuke snapped massaging his shoulder which had smacked the wall with numbing force. He glanced down at Veil who ogled up at him. "Oh...yeah that's right you haven't met her yet." The former Spirit Detective cleared his throat and swung around the stone pillar. "Oi! Botan!! What the hell are you doing here?! You finally nag Koenma into letting go on a vacation?"
However instead of receiving a heated reprimand or a screech of 'you inconsiderate jerk' Yuusuke found himself roughly tackled to the floor in a flurry of pink kimono and blue hair.
"Yuusuke!! I'm so glad to see you!" Botan wailed loudly. "I didn't think I was going to make it! THANK THE FATES!!"
Botan quickly dissolved into mad tears of hysteria, clinging to Yuusuke's chest. Veil's left eyebrow was slowly tracking high into his hair as he watched the drama unfold. The raven-haired Toushin shot his subordinate a glowering warning look as if to say: 'not a word, dragon-boy'.
"Should I...go get Keiko?" Veil asked, a thin smile pulling at his lips.
Yuusuke glanced down at the blubbering ferry-girl and groaned. "You'd better. I don't speak weepy girl language."
"Right away, sire."
"Don't call me that..."
"Cloud...if you kick one more rock down on my head I swear I will crawl up there and castrate you."
"Bite me, Shizuru."
Whap! Smack!
"Ow! Those hit me!"
"Sorry, Alaster," chorused Cloud and Shizuru; not even glancing at the abused fox-demon betwixt them.
The silver-haired youkai rubbed his head mournfully reflecting that this mountain was at least another two hours' climb in this fog. Not that he minded the workout, it was actually quite refreshing, but the social interaction between his sworn sister and their new team mate was less than pleasant. Prevented from faster travel due to avalanche threat and opaque fogs, the trio was forced to move at mortal speed, tediously hiking the mountain's rocky trails and enduring the presence of each other in silence for far too long.
Only an hour into the journey, Cloud had carelessly knocked a shelf of earth from its ledge and sent it raining on Shizuru's head. Positive that he'd done it on purpose the young woman had started up a verbal flurry of insults and stinging jibes that seemed to only stoke the slow-burning fires that smoldered beneath the dark angel's seemingly calm exterior. The blond had responded in turn by continuing his climb using...less than the usual amount of grace gifted to a shadowkai.
Needless to say, both Shizuru and Alaster were interesting shades of purple and blue.
However, though Cloud enjoyed the sound of his captors' suffering, he was the one who had to deal with the small, annoying groups of squatter demons that clustered in cold mountain snows such as these. He'd been attacked twelve times already. Never, hurt of course, but squatters were decently powered youkai, certainly worth destroying with a sizable energy blast.
"DIIIIIIE!!" squealed a 'threatening' falsetto as several gaggles of furry, fang bearing monsters leapt out to sink pearly teeth into the sweet looking morsel that Cloud presented himself as.
Grumbling, Cloud casually flicked his wrist, energy coiling in the slender tendons and snapping through the air as his hand reached the zenith of its motion. The dark wave of power surged through the empty space and all twenty of them vaporized on the spot, popping out of existence and leaving only oily smoke in their wake. The shadowkai sniffed the air, wrinkling his nose slightly at the stench of sulfur, charred meat and fur. He knew he'd reek of squatter hair for days to come and coughed slightly in agitation.
"The fog is lifting," he called back to his two 'companions'. "I think we can get down the mountain by dusk and be at the rendezvous by nightfall. But only if we hurry. I don't want to be dodging mountain skeet demons all night."
"Well, if skeets worry you so much I guess we'll just have to hurry won't we?" laughed the familiar drawling, purr. Shizuru hadn't quite forgiven him for kicking that rock on her skull and he doubted she would. Cloud shook his head angrily and boosted himself over the next rise with relative ease, swinging long legs over the edge and staring out over the opposite side of the mountain.
The tangled, battle of branches and brambles boiled across the landscape, leering back at him from their dark mêlée for domination of the forest. His dark garnet eyes took in the twisting foliage with mild, unflinching calm.
The Dame Yume Forest.
"Our contacts are out there somewhere," a voice said informatively.
Cloud glanced at the speaker to find Alaster standing beside him, sucking away at yet another flavor of sucker. The half-demon had a strange affection for hard candies that he could not fathom, but then against Alaster struck him as someone who probably cared less what people thought of him. The silver-haired demon glanced at him, wine-hued eyes somewhat apprehensive to the disposition of the dangerous shadowkai.
The dark angel nodded and began a lazy descent toward the looming tree-line. He wasn't exactly thrilled to be meeting up with anyone or anything else that might be associated with Shizuru, demon-hunters, Karasu, revenge or, or...to hell with it! He just did not want to end up surrounded by more fanatical Cloud-haters nor did he wish to go further into the depths of Makai. They had already descended two levels and Cloud's instincts already flirted with outright paranoia. He wondered if Shizuru would be watching to see if he squirmed.
The pale-haired demon swung his garnet gaze around to sneak a glance at his human captor. Sure enough she was drilling holes between his shoulder blades with that stare of hers; like she could cause him to spontaneously combust if she glared hard enough. Yeah, friendly; pleasant in fact. Cloud quickened his step down the trail, eager to get out of the mountainous fog and into the familiar shadows of the forest. Ahh, but there it was again. Shadows. And him taking comfort in them. Damn...
"Hey! Blondie. Hold up, no need to rush into the forest so quick," came the inevitable shout, sending small prickles of annoyance like ants down his spine. Shizuru was suddenly right along side him, ditching poor Alaster in the dust and smiling too-warmly at him. Cloud bared delicately tapered fangs in what idiots could translate as a smile and tipped his head as if regarding the air three inches from his head and not the young woman beside him.
"Rushing? No, never my delicate primrose. Only scouting ahead. Wouldn't want to be ambushed by psychopathic demons with a detonation fetish," he said sweetly.
There was really no reply to something like that and Shizuru fell abnormally silent if only for an instant. Cloud savored the breath but a moment. The complimentary nickname had thrown her off for a moment. The shadowkai was obscurely pleased by this, hadn't he suffered the title 'blondie' enough to justify calling her 'primrose.' The human regained her tongue and her wits and smirked, bitterness on her lips as she did so. She laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, hand falling easily across his thin frame as she smiled.
"Certainly not. If Karasu were to blast us that would set us back quite a bit, wouldn't it?" she agreed. "That's why you get to go first, Cloudy-baby. That way only the one that deserves it gets his."
By then the girl had her arm around his shoulder, hugging him in a comradely fashion while leaning against his shoulder. The shadowkai twitched imperceptibly and shot her a sideways smile. She beamed right back, eyes daring him to keep talking. If this had been the animal kingdom and not a battle of intelligent banter he suspected she would have gone for his jugular by now.
"Well, I think it's you he'll be interested in blasting outright. After all you and fox-boy are the ones chasing him now aren't you?" said Cloud, not so much as registering the arm about his shoulders, at least not visibly.
Her smile was a snarl now. "As long as I know he has to go through you first I'll die happy," she told him.
"Rest in Pieces, bitch."
"That's so sweet, blondie. But so will you, so my eternal happiness is assured. You get to rot in hell, freak-show."
The two verbal combatants, anger fueling their feet to move faster, had already broken through the tree line. They saw nothing of the surrounding forest, absorbed totally in each other and their poisonous words. Alaster was lost back in the trees and mountainous outcropping as they stormed through the foliage, anger peaking to the physical point. Already an aura of flickering shadows had gathered about Cloud's shoulders and beads of light shimmered at Shizuru's fingertips. The leaves of the underbrush waved, swaying as they passed, energy sending a ripple through the air around them.
Cloud's eyes glittered as he smirked at the girl. "So letting Karasu get away with the stuff he's done is fine with you as long as I get offed?" He snickered and tossed his head as he moved past her and began to climb over the arching root of a Blood Oak. "I think you gotta get your priorities straight, little girl. Which act of revenge is more important: me or him?"
"Karasu, but watching him tank your sweet ass." Here Shizuru took advantage of Cloud's leading position and slapped him across the backside. Cloud spun around so fast Shizuru was reminded more of a startled cat than anything. The look of pure poison he shot her could have disintegrated Togoro. She smirked flirtatiously at winked, finishing her former sentence. "Will be more than worth it."
"You...bitch!" he hissed as if no words in all human languages could possibly express just what she was. He leapt back off the root and advanced on her so fast Shizuru stutter-stepped back into a tree, Cloud's ruby eyes inches from her own. Though he wasn't much taller than her, he seemed to absolutely tower over the female demon hunter. Maybe it was the haloing shadows outlining his entire body. The sheer power of his spirit signature disguised his thin body until all you could see was the massive aura of darkness around him. She was pinned by glowing red eyes, too shell shocked to call upon her own aura.
"Don't you ever touch me!" he spat, voice quiet but scathing. "And if you think this is a game then get your head on straight. Karasu was child's play a century ago, nothing. You think he's still that same? That his power hasn't grown? Think again, little girl! Reality check! He's strong enough to take on any one of the former Reikai Tantei and you, child, aren't one of them!"
His fist slammed into the tree trunk by her head. Shizuru stiffened, but to her credit she didn't look afraid. Her eyes shown a dangerous ocher light in the shifting shadows of the Dame Yume trees. Right then she looked anything but scared.
She looked downright pissed.
"Child? That's what I am?" she chuckled. Cloud's aura remained intact, darkening the air around him, glittering over pale skin and slithering through the folds of his dark trench coat. She grinned up at him. "So I can't take Karasu on you say? I don't know how is that it? I've only trained my whole life and use the power you gave me to fall short? And you know how to fight him, right? 'Cause I'm too inexperienced, too emotionally clouded to handle Karasu."
Cloud's eyes narrowed. "Stole the words from my mouth," he said.
Shizuru smirked that crazy, impulsive grin. "That's not all I'll steal."
Too fast for even demon eyes to follow her hands flashed up and grabbed Cloud behind the neck, fingers tangling through soft blond hair and yanking the startled demon to her; closing the inches between their faces and closing her mouth over his. The shadowkai made a ridiculous gasping sound against her mouth and his aura shattered, blinking away into nothing and leaving him vulnerable to attack. Shizuru couldn't help but grin inwardly as she crossed her right boot behind his and spun him around, slamming the shell-shocked Cloud against the tree.
For an instant his hands flashed up toward her throat, fingers rigid for a lethal strike, but she pressed hard against him and snapped her hand down into his jacket and laid her hand along the gun at his thigh. She knew he could had struck the vital point in her neck, but his hands halted and inch from her skin, so close to their goal they trembled to finish the job. Cloud couldn't hurt her though. He wanted to, but he couldn't.
He still owed her.
Instead of striking the killer blow, the dark angel planted his hand against her shoulders and shoved her away from him, cursing in his own language as she leapt back, laughing. Cloud spat on the ground, letting his disgust be known he pushed away from the trunk and vanished with a sudden burst of speed. A flicker of after image was all that remained before empty air.
Shizuru smiled. Chalk one up for the delicate primrose.
There was a rustle of motion and Alaster sleek form vaulted over a rise in the ground not far off. There was a scowl on his face as he regarded his comrade. But before he could think of anything to say he notice the distinct lack of tall, dark and scary in the atmosphere and glanced about.
"Where's Cloud?" he inquired.
Shizuru grinned. "Licking his wounds somewhere. No matter. We're here. Now we wait for Jin and Touya."
Too busy gloating over her psychological victory over Cloud, the young woman didn't sense anything strange. Too annoyed with the controversy among their number, Alaster didn't even hear anything nor smell any strange odor. If he'd been more alert he might have scented the smell of frost on the air. As it was, neither of them suspected a thing until a familiar voice spoke from behind them.
"Hey guys..." There was a glitter of lucid, blue eyes. "What's up?" Touya said.
Down in the city of Cambridge the night air was balmy and cool, damp with the constant fall of rain. Winter was slowly creeping up upon the November weather, sneakily stealing the daylight and heat from the sunshine hours. Soon December would stop playing nice and drop kick fall into next year. The snows of American Christmas were already heavy in the mountains and several snowboarding trips had been arranged by thrill-seeking Harvard students and high schoolers from the nearby non-college schools.
Mika Urameshi was one of them. She could not go one letting her beautiful Soloman 36 gather dust in the corner of her room. Either she would be shedding a mountain side by the end of the month or she'd be shredding her guardian's next English essay in the smoothie maker. Hopefully she would not have to resort to outright violence. Perhaps sweet talking with a hint of trickery would pull it off.
Like a coiled cat she waited, poised for the attack on the living room sofa she sat, clutching her chosen weapons. Bright mocha eyes trained upon the doorway. She waited. Yes. Her next move was plotted perfectly. She knew precisely how to take down her wily opponent. She would pull this off. She would do the impossible. She was going on the damn snowboarding trip. Ahh, yes. Her sharp senses had already picked up the sound of his near-silent approach. He would be coming through the door any moment she waited.
The click of the key in the lock echoed through the apartment. Mika tensed, ready, this was it. The door swung open.
"I have papers for you to sign," the brunette shouted over the commotion of the television. She waved at large wad of papers positioned on top of her shoulder bag on the table. The front door swung closed and the sound of a backpack being dropped reached her ears.
"What are they?" came the mild, mandatory inquiry.
"The usual. Detention slips, tardies, parent teacher conferences and an admission for the art contest at the new art and city center," she drawled loudly. On the screen she laughed hysterically as Spike Spiegel attempted to filch a hotdog from a hot Hispanic woman, stuffing the entire thing in his mouth. She heard the amused 'hmm' from her roommate as he rifled through her detention slips.
"Who did you punch this time?"
"Larry Moffet. He slapped my ass and tried to make a pass at my friend," she supplemented, casually munching on the contents of an Oreo bag. "Where were you? You're late."
"Tutoring."
"Liar. It was your fan-club wasn't it?" laughed the sixteen year old. "Was it that one queer from the modeling agency? Wait! No! It was those skitzos from the art club. They make you sit for them a couple hours? Hell! Just think of all the portfolios with foxy red-heads in them. I'll bet their employers get scared and fires them."
There was a sigh and the said red-head moved into the next room, presumably to find a pen. "Jus because they ask me to sit for their portraits does not mean they like me. I may just be the most inspiring thing they can find."
Mika rolled her eyes. "Oh, inspirational and modest. How do-o you do it?"
"Couple thousand years of practice." There was pause from the other room and a sudden inquiry. "What's this?"
Damn. He spotted the snowboarding application, thought Mika furiously. She'd been hoping the red-head would take her word for it and just sign on the dotted lines, but then again fooling Yoko Kurama with a simple distraction and misdirection hadn't been the best plan she'd ever concocted. She pouted as the slender figure of her legal guardian stepped accusingly into the foyer, holding the guilty looking snowboarding flyer.
The flickering light from the gunfight on the plasma screen cast a blue tint across the angular, features of her annoyingly good-looking roommate; hiding the perfect alabaster cream of his skin and sending stripes of shadowy black through his short scarlet hair. There was an explosion from the screen as the mobile spaceship Swordfish sent a stream of bullets through the bad-guys' car. She smiled innocently, trying to meet those glittering green-gold eyes without flinching.
"I just wanted to go a little trip into the mountains," she said, making such and escapade sound harmless.
"Surely. And without me there to watch you," said Kurama pointedly though vaguely amused. "You can't be outside of my sensory range Mika. There's no telling when one of your father's enemies or my own might find you. I must be there to aid you."
The teenager let loose a self-suffering moan and flung herself across the back of the couch. "You're such a stick in the mud! I can take care of myself and no one has been the wiser to us for six years. Gosh! What's the matter with you? Some wild, roughish bandit you turned out to be!"
Kurama smiled and walked across the floor to drop the pile of papers in her lap. Blinking Mika picked up the papers and looked at them.
"I'll ignore that grossly immature attitude for a moment and sign the admission anyway," said the fox-demon airily.
Mika squealed in an uncharacteristically girlish voice and tackled her guardian over the back of the sofa. The red-head, somewhat startled allowed himself to be attacked and crushed about the ribs. The girl hugged him hard and began some wild celebration/victory dance about the room, punching the air and cheering. Very much the daughter of Yuusuke Urameshi, thought Kurama, watching her leap upon the couch and continue with some kind of insane snowboard-boogie. The brunette hooted and leapt up and down wildly, hopping on the couch and bouncing all over the cushions.
"THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! You're the best! I love you!" screamed the girl excitedly. Kurama, having grown used to the behavior of teenaged girls, only nodded and smiled as she destroyed the springs in the furniture. Mika suddenly stopped screaming and tripped over the back of the couch. Hitting the floor hard, the red0head flinched, thinking her hurt and moved to help her up.
Instead the teen leapt up and glared up at him, suspicion in her eyes.
"What's the catch fox boy? My dad made you promised never to let me out of your sight. Why are you breaking that promise?" she demanded of the fishy situation.
The twenty-one year old who was actually closer to a thousand, smiled and dropped himself into the flattened sofa. Snatching a couple Oreos from the bag he grinned up at her.
"I'm just going to be...chaperoning if you will." He took a bite of his cookie, not dropping a crumb as he did so.
"WHAT! NO!" Mika shouted, launching herself over the back of the couch to shake her head wildly at him. "If you're there all the girls are gonna be drooling and crashing into trees over you and I won't get a moment's peace if anyone ever figures out you're my legal guardian! No! No way! You can't come!"
Kurama shrugged. "Fine." He nabbed the signed permission slip and tugged it from her fingers. "Then you won't be boarding with your friends."
Mika made a little choking sound.
The legendary King of Thieves smiled winningly. "Isn't better to be boarding with friends who crash into trees than not be boarding at all?" There was a dramatic crash as a bullet was fired and glass shattered on the television screen, after a couple moments of jazzy music and rolling credits the screen swapped off to a couple frozen images of Tokyo. Mika worked furiously to find something to say but two commercials later the beginning scenes for Trigun began.
Wishing to resolve this in time for her show she went against her better judgment and gave in.
"Stupid fox!" she hissed and stole the Oreos from him.
Keiko Urameshi liked to walk. She took them often. It gave her time away from the hectic business of running a demon realm. One hundred years ago all of this death, fighting and demonic activity might have driven her mad. Now she accepted it with a grim determination and slow resilience. She could not be the lady of an Emperor without being at least mildly feared. Having sold her mortality, she had become a low level of quest demon, capable of creating things out of nothing.
Namely...sharp things.
Her most feared technique was one called Needles if that was any indication.
The last few weeks had been hectic. Reports of guerilla, hit-and-run attacks had been pouring in from all the border scouts. Yuusuke was awarded no sleep half the time, rushing out to address a serious attack every other day. Keiko reflected sadly that if this kept up, they'd be caught in another demon war. In a single century she'd seen enough of them to hate them and if one started now then it could go on for over a year and how would they visit their daughter if they could not risk leaving the Third Realm?
Sighing, Keiko ran her fingers through her long, jagged hair, hues of blonde, orange, gold, black and pink shining silkily under her neatly manicured claws. Her hair was strange and new to her odd, unpredictable; it tended to change color according to the seasons and often grew too fast. Her human incisors had lengthened to carefully proportioned fangs and her skin darkened to a shade of walnut brown. Her ears had tapered to gentle points and her senses increases a hundred fold, but otherwise she was still Keiko.
And she still loved Yuusuke. So it bothered her to see him so agitated, always tense and ready to take off the moment trouble sprung up. Her demonic instincts said it was natural for a Toushin to protect his territory, but the human side of her pointed out that even an S-class demon needs to sleep eventually.
She propped her chin on her hand, elbow leaning on the hand rail beside her. But what could see do? She was, at heart, not a fighter. She could defend herself, surely. Her power had reached a low level A-class and her legendary dispatching of a deadly assassin in her court had stunned the kingdom, but what had they expected from the mate of Yuusuke Urameshi? However, she didn't enjoy this new found stress. She wanted more than anything to go to the Ningenkai and see her baby-girl again.
She'd be sixteen now.
Keiko felt tears gathering. Oh no. Not again. She did not need to be depressed now. She was busy to be depressed. Darn it.
"MISS KEIKO!"
"AHH!" screamed Keiko as something popped up from the bottom of the balcony and hovered in front of her. A set of familiar blue eyes, round with urgency peered down at her from the railing (she'd fallen artlessly on her butt) with something like near-panic. Clutching her chest and sucking great gasps of air she stared haplessly at the new arrival with mixture of polite confusion and annoyance. It was bad enough he'd startled her, worse yet when she was feeling so rotten.
"Keiko! I have t' be taklin' with Urameshi! S' important, that it is!" he chattered.
Keiko stared. Why was he carrying a little winged demon girl in his arms?
She frowned and caught his wrist, guiding the hyperactive wind-elf out of the air and toward the ground. "What is it, Jin?"
Jin opened his mouth to go on, but the sound of someone running toward the terrace stopped him. Moments later a lithe, ebon-skinned figure with fire-red hair and pale eyes sprinted out onto the balcony in time to see Jin landing on the ground beside Keiko. Veil frowned. He recognized the mischievous Wind Master from his previous visit to the Third Realm. Together he and Urameshi fueled one another's impulsive personalities. One three days they had pulled more pranks on the members of the court than he was willing to recall. One transgression stood clear in his mind.
The Noodle Incident and we'll leave it at that.
Dark days...dark days...
"Wind Master?" he said mildly, expecting a goofy grin and some too-fast-to-be-understood-chatter.
Jin however, looked nothing like he usually did. Veil was disturbed to see his care-free blue eyes clouded with a haunted look of anxiety and a poisonous look of dread. The girl in his arms was a variable he could not figure out, but it was obvious something was amiss with the shinobi.
"Trouble. I have t' see Urameshi," he repeated.
Veil nodded mutely, but looked to Keiko. "A ferrygirl is here. Botan I believe. Yuusuke would like to see you right away."
Keiko's mouth dropped open and hung there. "Botan? Oh gods! Let's go!" Without another words she seized both Jin and Veil by the arm and yanked them down the hall. Minna cheered happily in Jin's arms, glad to be seeing bold and bright new places such as this. What fun she was having since her family had died.
-Devil in disguise...
Author Note: Terribly sorry for the delay. The entire chapter got deleted and I had to rewrite it. Sucky huh? Anyway, I'm aiming for a shorter story than all my other epic fics of random prattling. Expect this fic to fly so please buckle up and return your seats to their full and up right positions. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
Cloud8.9: I think her muses are on the fritz, she had no idea what the heck she's doing.
Muse1 (Cheezit): (waving papers around and racing around the room) Hey! I have some new ideas! What do think of killer high schoolers, college students? How 'bout an avalanche and then...
Me: T.T Slow down! I can't take it! (sobbing)
Cheezit: Suck it up pansy girl! We have a fic to write! (slaps papers on the desk)
Cloud8.9: Think of it as a plane-ride...with the pilot blindfolded. Hold on tight.
Cheezit: R&R! We need the critiquing. Some people are getting lazy. (glares are Syco and Cloud8.9)