Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. I do own Arissa and Alexia.
AN- As I write this, I realize that a horse ranch in the Rocky Mountains might be impossible or not right, but I had to have her origins in a secluded place, and I decided to have horses, so what. I've restarted this after WA and BA and I realize that the twins in this fic and the twins in WA and BA are named the same. But hey! Aren't they just cute names for the children of Yukina and Kuwabarra? 'Sword' and 'Cherry'.
Chapter One
"What type of youkai or apparition is she Hiei?" A tall red head asked politely. He pulled the neck of his orange jacket even closer as a fierce wind blew through the trees, blowing his long hair into his face. His much shorter companion shrugged, ignoring the wind as it whipped against his black cloak. "Mukuro and Koenma don't know. All they know is that a large amount of demonic energy burst from her a few months ago. The youki is still there but now acts like a burning ember that only dimly glows to identify her as either youkai or apparition but not enough to get a clear reading." His red eyes glared, and a glow showed through the bandana on his forehead. "Even I can't get a good read on her Kurama."
Kurama's green eyes lost focus as he thought deeply. -Is this girl knowingly hiding her aura or does she even know that she's a youkai…- His vision refocused on Hiei. "Does either Koenma or Mukuro even know whether or not this girl knows she is a youkai?" Hiei shook his head, "Both Mukuro and Koenma believe this girl is unaware of being an apparition or youkai. Koenma did a background check. The girl has been leading the life of a regular ningen. Not even showing any signs of extraordinary powers." Hiei shrugged again. "Of course she could be a good actress, even better than you." Kurama looked questioningly at Hiei. Hiei rolled his eyes. "C'mon, you could have had just a 'well above average IQ' than a 'well above genius IQ'. With your intelligence, you stuck out like a sore thumb compared to all of those baka ningens." Kurama smiled. "Yes, but Kito did give me a run for my money that one time." His smile widened. "And as I recall, it was you who fell first to him, instead of our dear 'baka ningen' Kuwabara." Hiei growled as Kurama brought up one of the times that he had acted foolishly.
"Back to the mission…" He changed the subject. "We are to find this girl and watch her carefully. Mukuro and Koenma do not believe her to be a threat, but they want to be sure." Kurama nodded. "And where do we start looking?" Hiei glowered. "Where we first sensed the burst of energy. In the backwaters of the Rocky Mountains of the U.S."
Kurama out right laughed at this. A few years back Hiei had to escort a ningen that had accidental stumbled into Makai. The human happened to be American and Hiei had the displeasure of being introduced to American society. He later complained to Kurama, saying that he had thought the ningens he had met in Japan were fools, but the Americans were plain insane.
"Yusuke you jerk!" Yelled a furious woman, throwing various kitchenware at Yusuke. "OW! Calm down Keiko!" He yelled back, ducking through the doorway that led into the living room, trying to avoid the flying saucer. He failed. "Calm down! CALM DOWN!" The brunette screeched as she followed Yusuke into the living room, a frying pan in her hand. He quickly ducked behind the couch. "No I will not calm down! You are leaving on another stupid mission while I'm three months pregnant! You JERK!" She wound up and pitched. Yusuke, thinking she had paused for breathe, unfortunately peeked his head above the couch. Direct hit. He fell backwards on to the floor, seeing stars and yellow chicks. "Eeeee…." Keiko gasped, "Oh Yusuke!" She ran over to him, and knelt beside him. "Oh I'm soo sorry! I didn't mean to do that!" As Yusuke came to, he slowly sat up, "I know you didn't-" KERWHAP. His head snapped to the side as Keiko's hand connected with his cheek. "I meant to do that! You jerk!" She said again, starting to cry.
As Yusuke rubbed his red cheek, he reached over to his wife, wiping tears off of her cheek. "Hey, don't cry." He pulled her close and hugged her, caressing her hair. "I know it's not right that I'm leaving. I don't want to go either. But Koenma thinks it might be necessary for me, Kurama and Hiei to check this girl out." "Why must you go? Hiei and Kurama can manage one girl on their own." "Well…Koenma is not really afraid of the girl. He's afraid that some powerful youkai might want to get a hold of the girl. The power that she emitted was really powerful and other youkai might want to use her power for their purposes." She sniffed. "So you're acting as a guard against them." He nodded. "…As much as I hate it that you're a spirit detective, I guess you have to do your job…" Yusuke nodded. He knew how much Keiko had hated it when Koenma gave him back his job as Spirit Detective. Though she still hated it, she had come to accept it over the years, telling herself that protecting the world against demons and such was more important than staying home, yet at times like this she resented his job. Yusuke agreed with her. He would like nothing better than to stay home with his wife, and soon his child. She pulled away, wiping away her tears. "When do you leave?" "Tomorrow."
"Heeeyy! Look at these cute faces!" A tall light red haired man said, practically squealing. "Kuwabara, quit it!" Yusuke griped, pushing aside the photo that Kuwabara was shoving into his face. He, Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama were standing in an office with a big desk and a large flat screen TV. "But they're so cute!" Insisted the tall man, looking fondly at the picture of two little twin toddlers, one cherry-haired boy, one ice-blue haired girl, both with cherry red eyes. "I know Kuwabara, I see Ken and Sakura all the time. After all you did make me their uncle." Yusuke smiled at his friend. Kuwabara nodded. "Yes, though I wish someday they'll get to meet their real uncle." Yusuke and Kurama started to sweat as they turned to meet Hiei's piercing glare. -I wonder what he'd say if he found out that Hiei's their uncle…- Yusuke thought, sweating even more under the fire apparition's glare. He was just about to take the conversation back onto a safe road when a tall young man walked through the door.
"I see you all were able to make it." He said as he walked behind the large desk. "I'm sure most of you have been briefed on the upcoming mission…" Kuawabara shook his head, "Not all of us, Koenma. I haven't a clue as to why you asked me up here away from my two little rays of sunshine." He had started the sentence looking serious but it had ended with him smiling like a proud father and showing off the picture of the toddlers. Koenma sighed. "I know you haven't Kuwabara and I'll get to that later."
He turned to the big screen TV behind him and clicked a little remote that he had grabbed off the desk. A picture of a girl with indigo eyes and long blonde hair blowing in the wind flashed onto the screen. Koenma turned to the group. "This is Arissa Laine. As you all know, or well all of you except Kuwabara, a few months ago she emitted a great power." The group, minus Kuwabara, all nodded. "So far the Reikai intelligence has yet to identify it fully." Yusuke spoke up, "What do you mean by 'fully'?" "I mean that we haven't exactly identified it as whether it's demonic, human, or even Sacred energy. We think it's slightly demonic, which is why we are referring to her as probably being a demon." Kurama narrowed his eyes. "How exactly can you not know what type of energy it is?" Koenma sweated underneath the ex-thief ex-demon redhead's stare. "Well…it was masked underneath several other energies…" "Kurama, think of it this way…It's Reikai intelligence." Hiei remarked, smirking. Yusuke laughed, "Good one Hiei."
"Ahem," Koenma coughed, bringing the attention back to him. "As you might suspect, the next mission is finding this girl and identify her power. But that's not all. The strength of that burst of energy and the presence of those other energies, which we are having trouble identifying as well, leads us to believe that she has a valuable power and that other demons or even humans are hunting her for this power." He paused and looked around at the serious faces. "We also fear one other thing. If she is evil, she has the potential to become the next Toguro or even worst, the next Sensui at his best." The faces around him became hard at this statement. Everyone remembered how hard it was to defeat Toguro, but that was when their energy levels were lower. Now, though, Yusuke, Hiei, Kurama, and maybe Kuwabara could take on Toguro with moderate ease. It was the possibility of another Sensui that made them sweat. It took Yusuke dying and having his then unknown youkai blood revive him and turn him into a youkai before he came close to matching Sensui. And even then he only won because his ancestral youkai father possessing his body and fighting for him before he could beat Sensui. Sensui at his best was in the S-class energy level. At this moment, Yusuke, Hiei, and Kurama, when he transformed into Yoko, were in the S-class range, but that didn't necessarily mean they would have had an easier time beating another Sensui now.
"…Okay enough reminiscing…" The teen god said. Their eyes turned towards him. "We've managed to track the girl and isolate an area of where she could be." A click of the remote brought up an image of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S.A. He clicked again. The image zoomed in on the state of Colorado. "This is the area we have isolated." A red circle appeared on the map, encircling the two cities of Vail and Aspen and the Lake Sylvan. "Our intelligence says that she lives on a horse ranch somewhere in this area. It's safe to say that she needs to go to town every now and then to get supplies, so you might find out something in these two cities." Koenma clicked the remote one last time and the TV turned off.
He turned to the four young men in his office. "So now you know where you're going, do you have an questions." Yusuke piped up. "Yeah, when do we leave. I want to get this over with ASAP." "Right now." Yusuke started to head for the door, Hiei and Kurama following. Yusuke turned to look at Kuwabara but he shook his head and crossed his arms. "I'm not going on a goose chase that takes me that far from my family." Koenma sighed again. "No of course you're not. You weren't originally going to know much about this mission, however, I figured you were going to learn about it anyways due to someone's big mouth," His eyes glared slightly at the pink kimono clad figure that had been standing in the corner. He ignored the indignant 'I'd never!'. "Anyways, you'd be suspicious when you found out that not only Kurama, and Hiei were gone but so was Yusuke, especially since Keiko's pregnant." He smiled cheerfully. "So instead of letting you think that Yusuke had skipped outta town and ditched Keiko," He ignored the yell that resembled an 'I'd never' from the doorway. "I figured we might as well tell you." Kuwabara nodded thoughtfully, "That's true, I would have thought that." Koenma's smile disappeared as the tall man started to exit the room. "Kuwabara, that's not all. Someone is going to have to stay and protect yours, Yusuke's and Kurama's families."