Disclaimer: Don't own Yu Yu Hakusho…

Chapter 14:

I blink, still with a stupid smile on my face. I can't seem to get it off. I feel like a dark-haired Barbie. "God." I repeat. "He really does hate me."

"She's going into shock." Hisses Shizuru at Hiei angrily. "Put it away!"

Hiei shrugs and, in another blinding flash of black and red fire, is replaced by the same raven-haired youth. Without green skin. Thank God.

Only, not thank GOD. Thank Satan. Maybe he still loves me.

Is this what shock actually feels like? That I absolutely can't move?

I take a deep breath, willing it away. That was just a magic trick. These people are trying to scare me with magic tricks. No big deal. I'm too smart for them.

Yusuke remains looking worried. "Are you sure you're all right?"

I say nothing. I just give him a look. Then, I say shakily, "You aren't cluing me in on anything. You're only screwing with my mind. But I'm onto you. So what if you can do a magic trick that looks like fire and turn into the green man? I'm not falling for any of this ridiculous fantasy that you've dreamt up. I won't help you. You can bash my head in, I don't care, I'm not doing anything for you band of minstrels."

Yusuke claps a hand to his forehead and runs it down his face in annoyance. "We are not minstrels. We are not gypsies. We are not magicians. We are the Spirit Patrol."

I blink again. "Still not falling for it."

Kuwabara tears out a chunk of red hair. "Just accept this!" he would go on, but Yusuke leads him out into the hallway. Kuwabara presses the button on his chair, which returns me to my natural horizontal state with a click of the gears that must be under my table. The other four follow Yusuke and Kuwabara out the door, switching off the light as the last of them leave, except for Hiei, who waits in his chair. I can't see him very well this way.

But that's good.

If I can't see him, he can't see me. He's only human. I'll be able to get to my lock pick easier this way.

While I am fiddling with my chains, Hiei starts to speak.

"Somewhere—"

"OV-ER THE RAINBOW!" I yell. I really don't want to talk to him. He creeps me out.

"No. Somewhere underneath all that denial, you know what we're saying is true."

"No, I really don't. I'm not buying it. I know that you'll let me go sometime, and then I'll never see you again. I don't care that your band has beat me. I'll go back to klepto-ness and be free of all this forever."

"Wishful thinking. Believe me, once we're done with you, if I get my way, I'm going to sell you into slavery myself."

"How comforting." Damn, I can't reach my waistband…oh. Someone changed my tattered clothes into a navy blue robe. "Who undressed me?"

"Yukina. Who else?"

"Making sure." Now I don't even have my lock pick? GRRR! I don't even know who Yukina is! I'm assuming she's a girl, though.

"You're much more trouble than you're worth. Your rolling head would be very satisfying."

Don't react. Don't react… "But you NEED ME. You can't just behead me and get away with it from Yusuke."

"After we're finished with you, that is. Then, you're nothing but a used rag doll. Taking off your head will be fine by everyone."

"God, you get out much? You have to have more hobbies then swift decapitation."

He says nothing for a few seconds. "I've done it all my life. One more won't hurt me."

"Yeah, it will. You'll be sent to hell when you finally do die."

He almost sighs, then catches himself. "I've been damned before I became what I am now."

"But you're like, 13!"

"16."

"Damn. Well, how many wrongs could you have committed that aren't killing people? You must have been a child!"

"I was."

"Well then?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does! What could an eight year old have done?"

"I wasn't eight!"

"Yes—"

"We're back!" Says Kuwabara happily, as the door swings open again. "I have a great idea to make you understand that we're for real!"

I notice that the others are out of breath, and that Shizuru has lit up on a cigarette. They've probably been arguing with him. Yusuke says quickly, "Okay. This is completely Kuwabara's idea. He copyrights anything that you are about to see. Ugh…none of it you can blame on me."

They all sit, and Kuwabara pulls out a small, handheld gray TV from his pocket. "I've been using this because I had the same problem as Kara does!" he says rapturously. "Here…" He inserts a tiny CD into a slot in the gray VCR and the screen flickers white before it goes into a regular picture.

I watch it, interested in spite of myself. It's a good thing I have good enough vision to see it over there.

A balding man with grayish hair wearing a neon checked pink tie over a bare chest comes on holding a poster reading STEPS OF ACCEPTANCE! The screen flashes, and I see a PowerPoint slide come on bearing words, in crude calligraphy, Accept Your Problems The Pie Way.

It switches back. I silently pray to God—no, Satan—that the TV explodes.

"When you are faced with a difficult prospect," he begins with this annoyingly hearty voice, "Sometimes, it can be hard to accept such a thing! Here is what can happen if you don't know how to deal with this!" The screen rapidly changes, and shows a small goose in a grass field by the lake. The duck is eating…cabbage…with a knife and…spoon? Then, it takes a bite about as big as its very head and chokes, making weird Daffy Duck noises. Then, all of a sudden, it explodes, completely without warning, with a deafening roar, and I actually flinch. Kuwabara laughs insanely. He is the only one.

The sludge that was the goose rockets up into the air, and V-curves back to earth. In a second, the gunk hits the ground where the duck was standing earlier. I can see its heart still beating, which promptly explodes on impact.

I stare. Kuwabara still thinks it's the funniest thing in the world.

The screen switches back to the guy.

"If you've bitten off more than you can chew, you can crack, like that Canadian goose did! To prevent this, you must know the four steps of acceptance. First, is denial!"

A poster board comes out of nowhere from the right and hides him from view. It looks like it is held by someone with a bad case of Parkinson's disease.

On this said poster is a crudely-made ClipArt showing a tiny, pink, blimp-like cartoon character being given a piece of pie by a huge hand that is equally pink and round. The cartoon character is staring at it and shaking it's tiny round head.

The poster disappears, and Mr. Drab is back.

"Denial is when you cannot accept something, and it gets so bad that you try to pretend that it doesn't exist. Like this man with the pie. The waiter, the hand, has just given you a peach pie instead of an apple pie. You are so distressed, you decide to pretend that it is an apple pie, but you still can't bring yourself to eat it. It is a very confusing stage in your life."

Oh my God. –Excuse me, oh my Satan!— I'm gonna croak! A peach pie! Noooooooo…

"The second step…avoiding the prospect!"

Another poster board with the weird guy on it. Now, it shows him in a corner of the room and the peach pie in the other corner.

"Now, this pie is now causing the man intense suffering. He avoids it, hoping something will happen to it to make it go away."

Is this pathetic or what? They used possibly the worst analogy for this in all of heaven—excuse me, hell.

"Step three…anger!"

Poster board with Mr. Blimp and the pie. The pie is now on a table. The man is holding a hammer directly above the pie. He seems to be steaming out the ears more than that damn pie is.

"The man has now realized that running away will not solve anything, so he is now attempting to beat the evil out of the pie."

At this, Kuwabara dissolves into a fit of laughter. I try to look away, but find that I cannot. It's funny, in a stupid sense. I've seen kindergartners do better presentations than this one. Maybe this guy was dared by his best friend to make this.

"And the final step is acceptance! This is when you realize that refusing to believe in, avoiding, or getting angry over your problem won't solve anything, so you accept it and learn to deal with it!"

Back to the ClipArt. The man has thankfully disposed of the hammer and is now smiling at the pie in a very forced way, although he is still not eating it.

"And that's how you overcome problems! Well, that's all I have, so remember not to beat your pies with hammers, eat them! It's such a waste of ingredients!" He gives the thumbs up, which looks really weird on an old man and the screen blips out entirely.

In the room, the lights go back on.

I look at the rest of them. Hiei looks like he was just subjected to the Chinese water torture. His right eye keeps twitching and he seems afraid to move. Kuwabara, of course, has the face of a very small child after watching Barney, but Yusuke looks like he's going to hurt someone. He's clenching his arms very tightly. Kurama and the aqua-haired girl look less indifferent than before, but it hasn't taken quite as much a toll on them than it has on Shizuru. She looks the worst out of them all. She is puffing on her cigarette so hard that she's probably turned her lungs into craggy rocks. Both of her eyes are twitching, and she looks more eager to kill her brother than anyone else in the room.

Yusuke stands up, calling attention to himself silently. "Kuwabara…that…that was…completely irrelevant…painful to watch…who the fuck was that guy anyway…why did you have to show it?"

"Aw, Yusuke, come on! It was enlightening for us all!"

"…enlightening in the what not-to-do when watching an ACCEPTANCE movie. A half hour of my time down the drain, just like that…horrible, sickening, shit…"

"Didn't you guys like it?" He asks slowly.

"NO!" Yells Shizuru, jumping up from her chair and screaming right in Kuwabara's face. "NO, AND IN FACT, THAT WAS THE MOST FUCKED UP THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE! THAT OAF WAS BLEEDING SHIT! WHY THE HELL DID YOU MAKE US WATCH THAT? EVEN IF IT WAS GOOD, WHY DID WE NEED TO SEE A MOVIE ABOUT ACCPETING THINGS?"

Kuwabara is cowering under his sister's furious stare. "I thought that it might be useful to Kara, since she won't accept that what we're telling her is real, you know?"

Shizuru's eyes pop. "YOU ARE SO STUPID! IT'S UNBELIEVABLE THAT WE'RE RELATED! GET A GRIP, KAZUMA! THE ONLY THING THE GIRL'S GONNA ACCEPT NOW IS THAT WE'RE LUNATICS WHO THINK THEY WORK FOR GOD!"

Kuwabara would probably crawl under a rock if he could. Or should I say, Kazuma.

"GOD, YOU ARE A FREAKING FANATIC—"

"Shizuru—" Say five different voices at once.

"SHUT UP!" She roars. God—Satan. Go to anger management much?

But a change has come over Kuwabara, and he nods at the standing Yusuke. He suddenly jumps on her and grabs both of her arms, twisting them behind her back. She yells even louder as Kuwabara drags her out of the room.

I stare at them. "What the hell is her deal?"

"Anger management issues. Once she starts, she can never stop. Lately, it's been getting more intense, so I think that we should just leave her be for a while." Says the aqua-hair. "I'm Yukina, by the way."

Oh yeah. I think she told me that. I shut my eyes.

They talk among themselves for a while, and unlike Hiei, they are doing a good job of masking their voices. I can only pick out random words here and there that don't mean anything.

I open my eyes, and Yukina speaks again. "Well, um, we realize that this has probably been stressful for you—"

"You have no idea."

"We apologize again for the video. Kazuma is a bit strange sometimes. It has to do with his mental state, which is most similar to that of an ape."

I almost laugh. It appears I wasn't too far off.

"But the movie—guys, I think I need to tell her something?" She says to the rest of the group. Yusuke nods and the rest of them all walk out. The iron door shuts behind them. Yukina gets comfortable and continues to talk. For some reason, I'm not obligated to be mean to her. She's too much like a little kid. I always did have a soft spot for munchkins. And she does seem kind of sweet. It radiates from her.

"But the movie did have a point—oh, yes. May I call you Kara?"

I grunt.

"Well, Kara, the movie had a point in that sometimes it can be so hard to accept things of the supernatural. I imagine that being told you are to steal something from God must be very hard to comprehend."

"Yeah, it really is. Because it's so obvious that you're all lying."

She sighs. "I guess you're still in denial. I hate to see what your anger will look like. I don't expect you to believe us anytime soon. You're a human. Only a human."

"As opposed to what?" I ask.

"A demon."

"Aha." I say, smirking. "I guess that's good to know. I'm not a hell's angel."

"No, seriously. Demons do exist. Our actual problem deals with this infestation of them."

I sigh loudly. "Just what are you here for? I'm not going to have another talk with a guidance counselor. Did you see what I did to Keeko?"

"That's Keiko. And yes, I know how you tricked her. I promise you that I won't make the same mistake as her. And I'm not another guidance counselor. She was human, and so that was what made her a guidance counselor. I am not."

"You're a demon." I say with a little laugh.

"Yes."

"A rose demon? A daisy demon? A—"

"An ice demon if you want to get specific. Like it matters. I am here to prove to you that what we're saying is true with my demon self."

"Oh. So, another magic trick. I guess you want me to believe that Hiei is a fire demon."

"Very good."

"Yukina, I'm not buying it. I know that transformation was just a trick of the eye, or something like that. Magic doesn't exist."

"You're right again. Mankind in their quest to explain how the planets move, and other such phenomenons, dreamed up magic. It's a myth, quite frankly. The thing that they tried to explain with magic is raw power, also known as the Spirit Energy. The force that formed the universe, and yet the force inside a human soul. This is the 'magic'."

"Uh-huh. Yeah, well, you're a really eloquent speaker and all, even with that squeaky voice, but you'd better bring out a better one to make me believe in you."

"Kara, I'll make this as simple as I can. You wanted to know why we needed you, right?"

"Of course. And nobody told me."

"It is because you possess vast quantities of this force in your soul."

"But magic doesn't exist. You said so yourself." I say blankly.

"But power does. That's what I've been telling you. This power is what makes you pass beyond the other great thieves, Kara. This is why it can only be you."

She stands up and trips slightly on the end of her pink kimono. "Again, if you believe me not, I don't blame you. I wouldn't believe me either. But before I go, I want you to take a good look at your body. Ask why you healed so quickly. Good night."

As she totters out, she switches off the light and shuts the door behind her with a very small click. As soon as she is gone, I shut my eyes and move each of my limbs, one by one.

I feel…great. In perfect health. I noticed before, but I was still too shocked. How did I heal so fast? One of the guys said that Yukina did it. It must have been the Yukina that just talked to me. Do they maybe have incredible medicine along with all their advanced technology?

Yes. That'd be it. But something doesn't feel right about that. With every medicine comes a side effect or two. It's a fact of life. But like I said, I feel perfect. No nausea, no headaches, no nothing. I feel great.

So then, what happened? One of them said I had been out for four days, right? So, maybe they gave me medicine and I got side effects when I was asleep.

But they'd have to give it to me intravenously. Wouldn't I have woken up?

Maybe I was comatose…

But I think that the strangest thing of all is how quickly I healed. No normal medicine could do that. It is just not possible. Four days and all those injuries…they'd have to be about two hundred years ahead of their time in medicine. And none of them are very smart. I don't see how they could have developed that.

So, does that mean that Yukina was right?

No, no way.

But what else could there be?

Lots of reasons. Lots of reasons.

They might have a research team.

No, definitely not.

So then…

Was I truly healed with power?

Are Yukina and Hiei really demons?

Just who are these people?

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A/N Hope you likey! Please review!