Warnings and such in the previous chapter.

Still dedicated to Mana. Yayness for Mana.

Hope you enjoy.

At sunset the next evening, the fox left his mother's apartment and headed toward Genkai's temple, a fresh set of casual clothes on as opposed to the suit he was halfway forced to wear to work. His classes were in the morning, his hours at work in the afternoon, and his free time in the evenings, which suited him perfectly. He loved the dusk air and subtle crimson glow of the sun.

As he hadn't been able to the previous evening, Kurama began walking toward Genkai's temple to pay Yukina a visit. He could only hope that Kuwabara wasn't there, otherwise he'd be unable to hold back the lingering suspicion from the previous evening. He couldn't assure himself one way or the other. He knew Kuwabara was more intelligent than many people gave the human credit for, but would he be so wary of Kurama that he would guess the truth? Would he know that Kurama was trying to take Yukina away from him? Kurama couldn't help but think that was preposterous.

The red sunlight bled over the air, illuminating storefronts and bringing the last lingering bit of light to the children playing in the streets. Display windows were nothing more than glares of light that blinded the passerby unless it was guarded against. Kurama took care to do just that, knowing that he had been lucky to dodge the car last night, and he wasn't one to take his chances at missing the red crosswalk and sauntering right into oncoming traffic.

A small child ran by him, circling around him before dashing back in the direction that he'd come from, distracting Kurama for a moment before he gave a subtle shrug and ignored the child. His gaze returned to the sidewalk ahead of him. The laughter of children hit his ears again as two of them-one being the boy from a moment ago and one being a new girl-sprinted ahead of him. The pair looked between each other sporatically before the boy leapt to the side and began climbing a flight of stairs outside an apartment building. The girl skidded to a halt and turned to follow, climbing at a quicker rate to catch up.

As the fox got to the apartment building they were climbing, he stopped and stared at them. The boy continued to remain a good five steps ahead of the girl, but neither seemed to care that they were so far apart. The fox gave another grin to the display. He'd never had a playmate like that in his childhood. He'd been a very untrusting fox thief trapped in the body of a small human child and had only bothered with friends to avoid being dubbed anti-social and forced into therapy. But he'd never cared to play in such a manner. He'd preferred seclusion.

Finally taking his gaze from them, Kurama caught the sound of yelling and looked up to see a vase falling from the sky. He jumped from the path and watched it smash against the concrete. More yells preceded a young man dashing from an apartment on the fourth floor and coming in a collision with the girl. She gasped and slammed against the railing, then slid to the ground. The boy went to check on her, then glared at the man, who was running from an apparently angry girlfriend.

The man reached the ground and began dashing away, ignoring that he wasn't wearing any shoes. The fox caught sight of a woman up on the fourth floor, his eyes widening to see that she was carrying a shotgun. She glanced at him before taking aim and firing. Before she pulled the trigger, Kurama turned tail and ran, hearing the shot digging into the concrete. Another shot trailed him before he turned a corner and heaved his breaths in and out. His eyes were wide as he stared around the street, noticing that it was strangely empty.

'What was wrong with that woman?' the fox wondered angrily. He didn't look anything like the man that had run from her apartment, so how could she mistake them? It was highly unlikely that she'd open fire on a random person on the street. The only way she could have thought he was the man running from her was if there was some illusion on him. He glanced at himself, seeing his own clothes and body.

The sound of shoes clacked against the ground and the woman with the shotgun turned a look around the corner. She narrowed her eyes at him before passing him by, not lifting the gun as she trotted around him. Definitely an illusion.

How could he have had an illusion on him and not noticed? But of course, the children had been a distraction. His attention had been sent astray. So, they had either been enticed to distract him, or had been hired to. But that made little sense, as demons were often prone to underestimate others and would have tried to commit the action without distracting him. That would be true, as long as they didn't know him and his attention to detail. So, either he was being watched without his notice-which was almost impossible with said attention to detail-or it had been planned out by someone familiar to him.

After two attempts at his life, the fox was about fed up with this. His decision was made, then. This was too much of a coincidence to not be plotted and, as Kuwabara had motive, he was the first suspect. Kurama wasn't about to tolerate such actions against him. He didn't care if he was intruding on what the human thought to be his territory. He was being as possessive as a demon, and hadn't even cared to ask what the fox thought himself to be doing.

Leaving behind the children and the woman with the shotgun, Kurama headed toward Kuwabara's apartment. It wasn't so far away that he'd need to take a subway, though that would have been the quicker method. His footsteps were hurried as any tread in a city would be, though his disposition was about as sour as Hiei's normally would be. The humans around him didn't immediately suffer a glare, but anyone that dared to bother him would receive a prompt scowl and be ignored. More often than not, a scowl would get whoever it was to leave him be. Not very many people appreciated being watched with eyes that said the onlooker would rather kill them than talk to them.

Upon reaching Kuwabara's apartment, the ill demeanor sank down and he knocked on the door, finding that it swung open under his touch. He blinked at it, the bad mood now genuinely gone, replaced with a curiosity. It didn't seem likely for this family to have left the door wide open, or Kurama thought that. He took a careful step in and asked in a higher than decent volume, "Hello? Is anyone home?"

No response.

Now a little suspicious of the circumstances, Kurama slipped off his shoes and plucked a rosebud from his hair. He slipped silently through the house as he checked each room in turn, finding nothing but empty space and a note for Kuwabara in an unfamiliar handwriting that told him "we" would be back that evening. Who "we" were was a mystery to Kurama, but he could brazenly assume that it was from Kuwabara's parents and sister.

At the final room, Kurama found himself staring at what was sure to be the door of Kuwabara's bedroom. He knocked twice, asking, "Kuwabara? Are you in there?" Again, he got no response. With nothing else to lose by checking, the fox pressed his left hand over the doorknob, feeling the icy touch of the metal, and turned. He spared a glance inside, muttering, "Kuwaba-" His breath left him all at once in shock. His rose fell from his hand as he opened the door wider still to cast his gaze upon walls that were drenched in blood, splatters of it trickling in streams across posters and the window. The mattress and bedsheets were completely saturated, which was not surprising in itself as, on the bed, Kuwabara laid, blood-soaked and pallid.

Stepping more fully into the room, Kurama set his gaze on Kuwabara, finding his beady, brown eyes were constantly watching the ceiling. He was unblinking, unmoving. Hesitantly, Kurama took his pulse, finding it nonexistent. He cast his gaze tentatively over the rest of his body, finding a gaping wound in his abdomen, through which all of his internal organs, save his heart and lungs, were ripped out and lying over the side of the bed, carefully cut loose from the body and discarded. His arms and legs were tied to the bed, keeping him from moving his dead limbs, but that would serve no real purpose, and neither would the gag. These things had been set in place to keep his living form still as whoever had done this eviscerated him while he was alive, keeping the organs necessary for immediately survival inside as he suffered this death.

"Who would do such a thing?" he whispered harshly.

"Good question," came a voice, drawing his attention to the door, where Yukina stood, teargems falling to the ground. The fox relaxed and gave his gaze back to Kuwabara. "I suppose he's no longer here to compete with you, though. You should not mourn his death. It is inappropriate."

"In the demon realm, yes. But he was a friend to this human life...so no. It's not."

"We are demons, Kurama. Demon realm traditions should be inforced. Just as humans and demons should not hybridize, just as competitors should not pity one another, just as you should not mourn for the passing of one whose path obstructed your own-"

"What about the laws of your people? Would you obey those?"

"The laws of my people state that I should kill whosoever should dare to court me." The fox turned his gaze back to her to see a bloody knife in her grasp. Her eyes were cool and stolid. The teargems had ceased falling. The fox backed away and moved to draw another rosebud from his hair, but the air around him froze solid and he was trapped within a shield of ice. "May your soul find peace, disrobed of this frail form," the Koorime muttered quietly, as if giving last rites. "May your soul find solace in that you are cleansed of these internal working." She rose the knife up and scratched a line down the fox's front, piercing his skin as well as his shirt. "May your life be given to help that of the Koorime child growing within this womb, that she should follow the guidelines and customs of my tribe, that we should live in peace without the interruption you forced upon us."

Passing a final glance to the hard eyes Kurama put upon her, Yukina blinked. "You do not fear the death I gave to Kazuma." She gave a faint grin. "You would make a good mate, if this were not necessary." Her fingers sank into the wound as she proceeded to cleanse her Koorime soul of the evils males put upon her.

Yay. Ritual murder. Ice demonesses kick ass.

Just to tell you, the implications of her being pregnant are my thinking along the lines that Koorime reproduce asexually. They're like sentient cloning machines: each can create a child herself and she'll, supposedly, look exactly like her mother. This is only altered when they bed with a male, upon which time two children are conceived, one of which is a Koorime that looks like her mother, the other a male and thought of as forbidden and taboo. So, the kid in her womb is a pure Koorime.

Thanks! FrozenBlueRose (Aika-chan), HalfMetal Homunculus (Mana), miyako14, and Nyte Kit. Hope you all liked the conclusion and i hope school doesn't kill you. Heh.

10:40 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time. U.S. Wednesday, September 14, 2005.

Owakare.

Chiisai Mu.
Little Nothing.