Quote of the Week: "Running is an unnatural act, except from enemies and to the bathroom." -unknown
Reviewer Replies:
Ebbster: ::blinks:: The cuttlefish is still there; currently, it is holding Lark hostage. 0 o
Ciardra: Ne, you have no idea, Ciardra... no idea. ;; Just don't let Azure-chan hear that cuttlefish comment.
Pegacorn: Er, good luck on your own ficcie, buddy. And, I'm back on schedule, so all is good. You find out about Koenma this chapter! W00t!
Azuredragoness: Alfred is your homeboy, Azure-chan. . Treat him well.
Punnamechibi: Why I'm replying to you, I don't know. However, taking up space on my review –board-thingy instead of E-mailing me is kinda useless. You wanna talk? By all means, the info is all on my bio. It'll be a pleasure, I'm sure, and I will be waiting for you.
What was Koenma doing here? He had said something about Rogerik and Yusuke being under his employ, but... it was too confusing to someone who was being tossed around by the mollusk of doom.
"Now, if you don't mind, I have a bit of clean-up to deal with." The brunette prince placed a hand upon the cuttlefish's soft body and Lark could see the reiki emanating from his fingertips. A squeal came from the mollusk out of water, and it recoiled from Koenma's touch, dropping Lark as it did. Koenma helped the girl to his feet, and continued to fire small spurts of reiki at the cuttlefish. Said creature as changing colors faster than the eye could follow, and lit up the entire room much like a strobe light.
The room was stark white at the random intervals of light, and everything seemed to move in slow motion, or stop-photography. It was so bright, in fact, that all present saw a humanoid figure leap out from the shadows, grab the painting from beside Rogerik's feet, and scamper away from them. Kuwabara and Yusuke both powered their weapons, the bright orange of the spirit sword illuminating the room when the cuttlefish turned dark, and a flash of blue tore through the would-be thief.
"Wha..? The CRAP?!"
Yusuke's thoughts were shared by all. Although the assailant had been shot clean through the chest, he didn't slow, or even miss a step. Instead, he folded himself into a paper crane and flew towards the wall, disappearing into a landscape painting mounted on the far wall opposite the door.
Needless to say, it was enough of a distraction to break Koenma's focus, and Lark had to shake the prince's shoulder to get him to realize the current situation. It was best not to wander off in thought when one was fighting an angry cuttlefish of doom. Honey-hued eyes narrowed, Koenma watched as the clock face distorted and the room was steeped in pitch black again. Lark clutched onto his arm with ungodly strength for a young girl, and once the unnatural dark had faded to be replaced by a slightly brighter night, he rubbed his sore arm to try and get the blood flowing back into it.
There was no creature; it had escaped. Even now, the clock was ticking from one past midnight to two minutes.
"It ran?" Kuwabara blinked, his spirit sword fading away in his hands. Rogerik knelt down and picked up the empty case for the twice-stolen painting, and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, well, something tells me we have a bigger problem..."
"Oh, you have no idea."
At the junior lord's words, all four students couldn't help but cringe. Inwardly, Yusuke hoped whoever was higher up than Koenma (besides his father) would spare them.
"Oh, God, you are alright, aren't you?" Lark stiffened at first, but quickly hugged her sister back. She had felt the same before, when the others had put forth their best on the night Giovanni had left, and she had been left in the house; awake and aware of it all, yet unable to help. Kurama started to get up from his armchair, but Lark gave him as genuine a smile as she could.
"Don't worry, we're fine. Personally, I didn't think Rogerik would get himself in this deep. If I had known..." The younger Admarant sister trailed off, and Kurama gave her an understanding nod. It was logical, really; who would hire a high-school kid to keep the peace?
Apparently, Koenma.
The young lord had entered the room fairly regally, considering he was a bit miffed over having to save them all and teleporting them back to their dorm. But, as Yusuke had pointed out to her, the prince would rot in his throne before being degraded to taking a public bus. Pulling his cape out behind him so he didn't sit on it, the prince sat down on the couch, and laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on his knees. Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Rogerik had already found seats, either on the floor, or having dragged in a chair from the dining room.
"Now, where do I begin..?" The prince mused. Yusuke shot Koenma an irate look, and crossed his arms. "Try the part where you hired him." The spirit detective jerked a thumb at Rogerik, and Koenma sweatdropped.
"Well, there is a thievery program here for a reason... good work is hard to find these days, especially for Reikai. And Rogerik is rather gifted in that particular field of work."
"And so isn't Kurama! Or does the name "Youko" not ring a bell?" Kurama stiffened at Yusuke's blatant mention of his other form, but Koenma didn't even bat an eye. "Perhaps you should be quieter, Yusuke. You'll wake up your roommates, and I don't want anyone worrying over what you just did tonight."
"What I did? You kept me in the dark, knowing that he-" Another thumb-jab in Rogerik's general direction. "- used my own home to hide from the police, reports of theft have been popping up every other day, and that I've been suspicious of him from the get-go!'
"Well, the news wasn't supposed to carry over this far... I thought that they had been paid to keep the wraps on it all, but I suppose that it's my fault as well. We were running short on time, and Givanni was growing in power."
"Whoa, wait, Givanni's in on this?" Kuwabara asked, and Lark could see most of the inhabitants of the room give the prince of spirit world a number of surprised looks (she supposed she was one of them, as well). Oddly enough, Kurama's face was emotionless. Had he known about it..?
"It's simple to figure out. Givanni uses paintings and pictures as weapons, and all of those reports were stolen artworks." The voice, low and dangerous, originating from the stairwell, and Kuwabara shot a glare at who had spoken. "Well, excuse me for needing a little more time, midget."
Hiei, not at all upset by the comment, appeared next to Kurama's chair in a blur of black. For once, Mara was absent from around his shoulders and neck. "Even you shouldn't have had to think that long. After all, he had held you prisoner in one such painting." Apparently, even Kuwabara didn't have an answer to that, and just glared at the shorter demon. Kurama softly chuckled, and waved a hand at the two. "Now, now... there's no time for arguing betwixt ourselves."
"Exactly. Now, since Hiei brought up a good point, the same painting that Givanni used to trap Kuwabara has been confiscated by Reikai. Such another piece of art would be a disaster if left in his hands; therefore, we've been putting them into safekeeping."
"By stealing them?" Lyra looked doubtful, and Yusuke only grunted in agreement from his spot on the floor. Koenma coughed, and seemed to find the carpet an interesting object to inspect. "To tell the truth, it's the fastest method possible. All of Reikai's best thieves are working on it, and for quite some time now. It was the first step suggested once Givanni escaped our trackers." At this, the prince heaved a great sigh and stood up.
"In any case, you two-" He pointed at Yusuke and Rogerik. "Have just tossed Reikai intelligence under the bus. I doubt Givanni will leave Reikai intelligence enough time to cover up what's happening, and that particular painting you so splendidly had snatched from under your noses has most likely undid everything Kurama and Hiei had done for the case during the summer."
Except for the two demons mentioned, all eyes turned to the pair. Kurama seemed a bit taken aback by the statement, but sweatdropped and raised his hands in a display of defeat. "Now, you give us too much credit, Koenma. I doubt it was so important if you sent Rogerik to steal it. No offense, however, from thief to thief."
"Understood. The truth is, Oikawa has gone missing."
"Oh, I know him!" A light bulb seemed to flicker to life above Lark's head, and it wasn't just a figure of speech, for once.
"What are you all doing awake at this time o' th' nigh'..? Eh, Koenma-dono!" Jin straightened up, all tiredness forgotten. "Lord, what are you doing here?"
Koenma raised an eyebrow, then gave a sidelong glance at the assembled students. "Discussing some important matters; I do believe you may want to listen." Turning away from the shinobi, Koenma nodded to Lark. "Yes, he is head of the thieving program I had founded here. And he has gone missing, and the target he had been sent to steal."
"So you blame this on me?" the spirit detective was beyond angry, and glared at his accuser. "What did you expect me to do? You left me out of the loop!"
"To prevent you from screwing things up," was the simple reply.
"Yeah, well, if you sent Rogerik after the painting, then Kurama's right; it's no big deal."
With all that said and done, the black-haired teen stood up and casually walked away from his boss. "Since you're done, I think I'm going to bed now."
A faint glimmer of blue surrounded Yusuke as the teen defied gravity and floated back to the room. "Kurama's hypothesis is wrong. It is a big deal." With an undignified thump, Yusuke fell onto the floor, wincing as he whacked the not-so-cushy coffee table with his elbow.
"This particular painting isn't strong by itself. It's when you channel in power from other sources that it takes form. And, given the right source..."
"Power isn't that hard t'get, actually... If you're talking about physical energy, at least." Jin seemed to think for a moment, and sighed. "Actually, all Givanni really needs to do is find a demon willing to help him... one with enough juice to give it a kick-start until he finds a more stable source."
"And energy is found anywhere," Rogerik finished. The blond shook his head slowly. "He could even hook the thing up to a potato, for all it matters..."
"Don't get my hopes up, please." The brunette prince managed a small, grim smile. "We need to get it back, as well as the other taken from Oikawa. And I would appreciate it if you stay out of my way."
Bwink
And then, the prince was gone.
Stay out of my way... For some odd reason, this bothered Yusuke greatly. He should have been glad for the break, this he knew, but it put him off. The toddler was trying to stop a guy this important without the help of the indispensable spirit detective? Why, For shame.
Okay, he had to admit, right about now, cleaning bat crud off of the hutch doors, he wasn't that awe-inspiring.
"I can't believe we got detention for that stunt," He muttered, wiping his forehead with his wrist. Rogerik, across the room, merely shrugged and continued to alphabetize the many books in Ryo's possession. "Don't make it seem like you're the only one suffering, Yusuke."
The black-haired teen paused in his scrubbing of the guano-encrusted perches, and raised an eyebrow at the thief. "Oh, trust me... keep it up and that'll seem like heaven."
A silent showdown, in which the two compared each other's various punishment – one up to his elbows in bat muck, while the other had twelve four-foot-high stacks of Latin tomes clustered about him – and the intercom buzzed loudly.
"Are you two done, yet? I have a late class coming in around eight." Ryo, taunting them in a singsong voice. Of course they had to stay after-hours once Rachel found out... Koenma never just "stopped by for a visit"; something had to be wrong. And, as she had guessed, something was.
So, for unwittingly aiding in Givanni's plot to come back out of hiding, they had been given a month's straight detention. Considering that said comeback could wipe out quite a number of living creatures, he supposed he had gotten off easy. The worst part was still what Koenma had said...
Keeping him out of all of this just because Reikai was worried he might screw up? And that explained why Kurama had been at that "Student Ambassador" program...
"Hey, what are you guys doing cleaning the tower room? Ryo said his class was being held in the study hall today."
Both boys looked up at the newcomer, who blinked at them with rather deep blue eyes. Wings reminiscent to those of a Monarch butterfly, only in shades of slate and gray, slowly fluttered at her back, and her blue hair fell in her face.
Noticing the surprise on Yusuke and Rogerik's faces, Clarice sweatdropped and slowly back away from the door. "Oh, uh, if I'm interrupting, I'm sorry..." Her retreat was halted by Yusuke, who had crossed the room at an amazing speed and grabbed her slim wrist. "He said what?"
"Uh, who?" Clarice blinked in confusion, already forgetting what she had mentioned just mere moments before.
"Ryo. What did he tell you?"
"That classes were in a different building tonight. You can get off early and finish up tomorrow." The fairy almost mistook Yusuke's sudden movement for physical contact, but only blinked even more fiercely when he literally seemed to... well, whatever the spirit detective prayed to. Puzzling... he hadn't seemed like the religious type to her.
"I am so outta here!"
"Eh, uh, hey! Don't run so fast!" Rogerik grabbed his leather pilot's jacket and followed his roommate out the door, quickly apologizing to Clarice as he accidentally shoved her into the wall. The winter fairy shook her head slowly, as if to clear it, and shut the door to Ryo's classroom, locking it with the extra key the elf had given her (since she had been hired as an assistant teacher for extra class credits). Listening to the two boys' footsteps on the stone floor, she faintly smiled and opened the window at the end of the hall, letting her wings carry her to her own dorm.
"Okay, that wasn't even faintly funny."
"Ah, stop whining. At least we got out early." Yusuke stretched, his neck cracking.
"Yeah, but it's still pitch-black out."
Indeed, it was. Only a little more than a month into fall, and the sun had set much earlier, at six. No one was wandering about campus now, so the lights that normally illuminated the pathways were pathetically dim. Add the late-night October fog, and it wasn't the exactly most scenic route home.
They walked on in silence, the blond keeping a good distance from Yusuke. What he wouldn't give to be inside... at least he could see where everything was. And there was always this nagging feeling that someone or something was watching them. The thief doubted Yusuke had noticed it; the other teen was much cockier, and sometimes blocked such small insecurities out.
It not only made Yusuke extremely prone to be the hero of the tale, but also made him a victim of the same lack of common sense that got many a horror-film protagonist into the haunted house.
"Hey, care to shed a little light?"
Yusuke blinked at the request, then laughed. "Oh, so you want a night light, eh?" With a sigh, Rogerik stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and shivered. "No, I want to be able to see."
"Fine, fine..." Yusuke grinned, a grin that looked less devilish and more good-natured as his sky blue aura lit up the pathway - and then some. That grin was suddenly replaced by a confused glare, and Rogerik felt the same feeling of being watched as the spirit detective stared at something over his shoulder.
"Man, move to your right, will you?" The aura glow from Yusuke didn't fade, but grew concentrated at his fingertip, and he motioned for Rogerik to step over to the side. One step, one tiny sound of sole on cobblestone, and the tree behind him ripped apart in a tangle of bark and leaves and rushing wind. Leathery skin brushed against his face, and high-pitch shrieks echoed in his ear as the bats whirled around the two boys and finally took off into the night sky.
Rogerik let his breath go, and silently cursed Ryo for letting his pets bats roam about at night. "Well, glad that's all," he muttered, then noticed that Yusuke's spirit gun was still charged and ready to fire. "Eh, what is it..?"
Cold metal slid across the back of his neck, and he could feel his hair being twisted around slender fingers. His gray-green eyes opened wide, the thief hoped to high heaven that his psychic abilities suddenly extended to telepathy. If they did, maybe he could convey to Yusuke the fact that shooting the Rei gun right not would be a bad thing; whatever was touching him was in close proximity to his head, and he was sure Yusuke's spirit gun would probably break his neck with the shock wave that accompanied it.
"Heh-heh-heh..." the laughter was cold, calculating, but thankfully ended soon enough as whatever it was took to the sky, metal wings flapping in the chilly air. There was only the reflection of blue reiki off of black iron as it disappeared into the fiery foliage, and all became quiet.
W00t... Wednesday, and KKC-chan finished! What pestered the boys, late at night? Well, in any case, you're not going to find out now, are you?
Next chapter!
Beware light-hearted happyfullness as the boys are dragged out Halloween shopping. .
Why one shouldn't have play sword fights in the house. o.0;;
Jin tries to make amends with Hanabi.