Meet Delis
The next day, Nuema was standing in the kitchen of her house, opening the freezer. Shiei was sitting at the table, arms crossed and watching Nuema closely.
"Chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry?"
"Chocolate."
Nuema and pulled two containers out of the freezer and tossed one of them to Shiei and a spoon. Nuema closed the freezer and leaned against a counter, spoon in hand and opened her container, revealing that it was a small container of chocolate ice cream. Shiei had a similar container. Both ate their ice cream in silence for a few moments.
"I'm going to have to bash Koenma's head in one of these days."
Shiei paused in eating her ice cream and smirked, "Let me know the time and I'll join you." After a few more spoonfuls she asked a two-word question, "Why though?"
"He got his detective and his friends to 'protect' me."
"All guys?"
"That and the detective is a pervert, another is a moron. I care not about the other two."
"Really."
Nuema shrugged and took another spoonful of ice cream before answering. "Dealing with one of them is almost like dealing with you, I'd actually say he was your twin if I didn't know better. The other is...tolerable."
"I see." Shiei put her empty ice cream container on the table in front of herself, the spoon in it. Nuema cocked an eye brow at this and looked down at her own container, which was about half full.
Nuema was about to make a comment along the lines of "and I thought I ate ice cream fast," when something flew in through the window. Broken glass flew to the floor, making deep scratches in the tile. A large rock broke the ceramic tile that it landed on. There was a crystal tied to it that was mainly clear except for the multi-color threads in it.
Nuema looked at the crystal for a few seconds and then placed her ice cream container haphazardly on the edge of the counter. She picked up the rocked and pulled the crystal off of it. She placed her index fingers on the ends of the crystal and muttered a brief chant. A voice filled the room.
"White phoenix, show yourself, or human's family dies. Come to the marked warehouse."
Nuema's brows furrowed at the message.
"They want her to take over."
Nuema nodded, "I know..." she sighed and pocketed the crystal and ran out of her house. Shiei got out of her chair and followed Nuema.
Outside, the gang was searching for Delis. Yusuke hadn't filled Kuwabara on the new case yet and was doing so now.
"Basically all we gotta do is keep Nuema out of trouble."
"I see."
Just then, they noticed Nuema run past them on the other side of the street, Shiei following after her.
"Hey...wasn't that the girl we need to be protecting?"
"Yes."
"And wasn't that a demon chasing her?"
"Eh...yeah...b-" Kurama was about to say Shiei wasn't going to kill Nuema when Kuwabara ran off after the two. Yusuke slapped his forehead.
"Kuwabara you dumb ass!" He ran off after Kuwabara, leaving Kurama and Hiei. Hiei was glaring at Kuwabara's back and Kurama was rolling his eyes.
"I guess we should go after them."
"Hn. Why should we help the idiots?"
"Because...what if Nuema is going to need help? I don't think Shiei would be following her otherwise."
Hiei crossed his arms. "If there is any trouble, Shiei should be strong enough to handle it. You can go if you want, but I'm not, I'm going to continue searching for Delis." Hiei smirked as Kurama rolled his eyes and left before running off top speed after Shiei, taking all the shortcuts he could.
Shiei had followed Nuema into an empty warehouse with a strange, nearly demonic, energy coming from it. There was a maze of corridors in the warehouse and Shiei followed Nuema's spirit energy after she lost sight of the Nuema. Shiei stopped at a dead end, barely in time to keep herself from running into a wall. Shiei heard footsteps behind her and she turned around facing the gang minus one fire demon.
"Where's Nuema?"
Shiei glared at them and saw Hiei come up behind the group, "Hn!" With that she ran the three and then Hiei. Hiei was the only one who could have stopped her, but he didn't even try to.
"Why did you do that, shrimp?"
"Listen fool, that demon doesn't pose a threat to Nuema, besides chasing down that demon was not on my agenda for being here."
"Well its on ours, Hiei!"
Hiei looked over at Yusuke, "I thought yours was finding Nuema."
"She can help us with that!"
"Hn, whatever, I don't care." Hiei then ran down the corridor, after Shiei. He had come here to find Delis, who was Nuema according to his knowledge, and Shiei knew where to find both it seemed.
Hiei ran into a room and looked around, "Where would I hide?" He noticed a large shadow in the room and smirked, walking over to it.
"Shiei, come out."
There was an evil sounding snicker and something black ran past Hiei. He felt something poke him in the back of the neck, that something was sharp and pointy. Hiei growled and his eyes narrowed into a glare. He turned around to face Shiei, who was smirking. She snickered and put her katana back in its sheath.
"I never thought it would be that easy."
"Hn. Do you know where the baka ningen onna is?"
Shiei's red eyes rolled at Hiei's statement before staring over at a door. "In there, but be careful, she's not herself right now." With that Shiei disappeared into the shadows. 'Whatever you do, don't help, or even fight at all, I'm warning you now.'
Kurama, Yusuke, and Kuwabara ran into the room. Hiei regarded them coldly before walking across the room and walking through the door Shiei had pointed out earlier. Kurama followed Hiei. Yusuke and Kuwabara looked at each other before walking through the door.
The next room was very large. The other striking feature was it occupants. There were about two hundred or so demons in the room. They were circled around one demon. She had a katana with an odd sort of hilt. Her long purple hair danced and trailed behind as she moved. There was a large demon on the far side of the room. He was smirking as he watched the demon.
Her sword passed through several demons, but they kept reforming. It was obvious that she was going to tire before the demons were dead.
"Only your mastered technique can save you now, white phoenix."
The demon's head snapped up. She continued to fight even though her gold eyes were trained on the large demon.
"The Takabu is an honor to have used against you. I won't give you such a privilege." She snickered and smirked sadistically, "But I'll tell you what, I'll honor you with second best, it should be more than enough to do the job."
Yusuke stared at the demon in shock, something Koenma had told him echoed in his mind. 'Her name is Delis, Delis Nuema. We don't know what she looks like, except she is a master of the Takabu... 'The Takabu...that person has mastered it...she must be Delis...'
Delis brought her sword up, so the blade would be perpendicular to the ground. She brought her index finger of her free hand to the tip of the katana's blade. A white fire formed around the blade. The hilt wavered and when it became 'solid' again, it was orange and tapered from the hilt to a dollop shape at the end of the hilt. In the dollop was a red and orange stone. At the base of the blade were four talon's in the same formation a as bird's would be.
Delis sliced her sword in the air. As the fire moved, some sparkles stayed in the air. After she made five swings, the sparkles glowed yellow and condensed, forming a large tiger. The tail was still attached to the blade and a final swing freed the tiger completely.
The gang, conveniently missing Hiei, looked from Delis to the tiger. Delis had used a lot of spirit energy; a normal person would be useless after using that much energy, but she looked perfectly able to fight some more.
The tiger roared and released several sparks of energy. The sparks headed, and hit, each demon in the middle of the room, anyone on the edges like the gang and the large demon, were safe. Each of the demons faded, until one was left, a very familiar short male fire demon with a black cloak.
Everyone could sense that Hiei's spirit energy was fading fast, the probable cause being the spark that was attached to him. His katana was lying forlorn on the ground. Something was thrown in the path of the spark. The split second disturbance caused the spark to disappear. The object turned out to be a katana which landed on the ground and spun on the floor for a few seconds before lying still.
The tiger roared and disappeared, turning into sparkles which Delis's sword absorbed. Delis closed her eyes, "I've done my job..." Everyone's eyes widened as Delis's long purple hair shortened as it whirled around her body and changed from purple to brown. Delis became shorter, from looking about seven foot to about five and a half. The clothes changed to an outfit easily recognized as Nuema's own. When Delis's eyes opened they were an unnaturally cold quick silver.
Everyone had some form of shock on their faces, except for Hiei who was out cold lying on the floor. Yusuke was pissed, the demon they had been searching for, for so long had turned out to be right under their noses the whole time!
If they had been shocked to see Delis turn out to be Nuema, they were a bit more surprised to see the demon that had been chasing Nuema walk out from the shadows where the sword had been thrown from. Shiei walked over to Nuema with her hands in her pockets and glared at Hiei.
"Stupid idiot, I thought I had warned him not to intervene," She muttered under her breath.
Nuema gave a null reaction, save for muttering something under her breath, "He obviously didn't take your warning seriously, Shiei..."
"Hn."
Everyone had gotten out of their varying stages of stupor by this point, or at least Kurama had.
"Nuema...you have a-"
"Spirit demon half?...Yes." Nuema walked over to Hiei and put a hand on his shoulder, said appendage glowed gold. After a moment she stood up and stared flatly down at Hiei. He sat up and looked around then up at Nuema, he glared. "Maybe next time you are warned not to help Delis, you'll listen. She doesn't take kindly to people that interfere in her own affairs." This sent everyone back into shock...
"Hn, I'm alive aren't I?" ...except for Hiei, and Shiei.
Nuema pointed to the mysterious katana on the ground. "If it wasn't for that, you wouldn't be." She turned on her heels and walked to a stair case on the other side of the room.
By this time, Yusuke had gotten over his own shock and annoy-ment.
"Nuema! Where the hell do you think you're going?"
Nuema looked back at him, there was a slight smile on her face, so slight, one could barely notice it. "Up the stairs, my parents are in here and I'd like to find them rather quickly."
"Your parents?"
"Yep." Nuema nodded and then turned around to run up the stairs. Yusuke made to follow her, but Shiei stopped him.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing!"
Shiei nonchalantly raised a hand and the thrown katana flew into it, hilt first. She then casually lifted the blade to Yusuke's throat.
"Hn. She'll be down soon, no need to follow."
Yusuke sweat dropped. "Okay, fine...mind taking you sword away from my throat?"
"Hn." Shiei didn't show any signs that she was going to do so.
"You know Shiei, you really should listen. You're in enough trouble as it is."
"Hn." This time, with that particular response, Shiei sheathed her sword. She turned to glare at the person who had spoke.
"Ah!" The blue haired person behind Shiei shrieked slightly and backed up several feet. Shiei smirked, scaring people was so much fun.
"Botan?"
"The one and only" Botan was trying to sound chipper, but also trying not to look at the double glare she was getting from Shiei and Hiei.
"What're you doing here, Botan?"
"Well...Master Koenma is getting impatient for you to find Delis."
"We already found her, she'll be back-"
"About now, right behind you, but she would like to get her parents safely home first."
Everyone turned around to face Nuema. She was standing in front of the staircase, behind her were two people. Both appeared to be rather young, probably only in their early thirties.
Her mom and dad looked at her, "Zaira, are these your friends?"
"Yes..."
Her parent's exchanged a glance, "Okay, why don't you stay here and talk with them, we can go home by ourselves."
Nuema nodded, "Okay, if you go out those doors and follow the yellow path, you should be able to get out, and be near the flower shop."
Her parents nodded and left the room. Two questions burst forth from the room.
"How old are they?"
"What yellow path?"
The first was asked by Yusuke, the second by the more practical Kurama.
"They're 33 and 35..." Nuema then looked at Kurama, "The yellow path I made a few seconds ago..."
Kurama nodded, that had been enough for him, however... "33 and 35!"
Yusuke probably would have continued with his statement, but Nuema cut him off with a glare colder than one Hiei or Shiei were known to give, 'Don't let your mind go there for even a second...'
"Uh right, why don't we go to Koenma's office now? Once we find Delis that is."
Yusuke looked over to Botan, "Delis is here, let's go."
Botan looked confused, "Uh...right! Okay then!"