Lene: Of course. Problem is, the stars of the next one are being very stubborn. I think I might have worked out my current writer's block, but I'm not holding my breath. Luke and Craig can be persnickety.
Peeka-chan: ACK! —thud— OW! Help! Rabid reviewer!
Silverwing013: Yes, nice twist with Yomi, wasn't it? And I'm the author, I'm supposed to give them trouble or there wouldn't be a story. Can you imagine if there wasn't? "One day there was a fox who fell in love, and he and his mate lived happily ever after. The end."
Shadespirit: Welcome! I'm glad you liked Winter's Rose. As you can see, you get plenty of Aislin in this one, ne? As for the upcoming battle, it's not quite like that. Higurashi needs the Avalons alive—specifically Obsidian—in order to maintain his hold on the dragon. If the container for the mind dies, then the mind returns to the dragon, nullifying the whole thing. Not what 'Rashi wants.
Kitsune Kit: I promise Aislin will get out of this relatively intact. I refuse to guarantee anyone else. Yes, Higurashi is a bastard, as all of my best villains are.
EHI: Isn't he cool? I modeled him after my dad. Only my dad doesn't have quite the same figure—then again, he hasn't spent a thousand years whacking sense into a bunch of Seelie elves. My dad's just as stubborn, protective, and wickedly-humored. Yes, Higurashi is a prick, we've already covered this, Kit-chan quite…um…emphatically. ¬.¬! Hi, Angela!
Rikka-chan: Oh, yes, I got the picture. -,.,-! I think is the worst-hated villain I've ever created. Wow. I've been to Mammoth, nice place. Fantastic view, but I went when the weather was warm. They have ants the size of Chihuahuas in the summer. Cool, huh? Besides our favorite little black fox, those with fuzzy ears include Yoko, Aislin, Kohaku, Ikazuchi (when he makes an appearance). Of those, I think Kohaku would be the only one you'd have access to petting. Oh, there's also Ivory. You might be able to pet her.
Obsidian: —continues purring—
DevilDucky1304: Aislin, I promise, will live, but she won't be thrilled about it.
Digitaldestiny360: I picked a random couple of names, goose. Besides, I doubt my 'Haru' is the same as your 'Haru', so desu ka? After all, my Haru is actually Obsidian in disguise. I'm glad you like my stories, I hope you keep reviewing! (Also, you weren't really annoying. I live with a psychotic Muse on a daily basis.)
Okay, everyone! I'm going to put up the last couple of chapters as a present for the end of this year! That way, I'll start a new story for a new year! This way, you also get to avoid the serious cliff-hanger I have at the end of this chapter. Aren't I so nice to you? n,.,n-♪
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Despite uproarious protests, in the end, only the members of Team Urameshi head for the Barrens, the layer of the Makai where nothing but rocks and dirt grows, about four layers from the top. And even with the huge amount of ground to cover, it's no hard task to locate Higurashi or his proceedings. Not when to any nose keen enough to scent magic is lifted to the winds. All it takes is a quick yank on reality for Aislin to transport them to within a mile—as close as she wants to get via telekinesis, considering what she could land them on top of.
It's a wise decision. Even from a mile away, it's no hard task to see the giant ancestor of the blind earthworms coiling itself into one hell of a Gordian knot. Should Aislin have brought them in as close as Yusuke wanted, they would have been crushed by one of those tree-thick coils. The ice-fox hadn't wanted to bring even her team with her, but Yoko had flat out refused to let her go without him. And then Hiei had added in his two cents, giving her one of his potent stares while informing her that in no way could he allow two fluff-brained foxes such as themselves to go larking off on their own.
That of course had brought Kohaku into the equation, the wolf utterly adamant against letting her fluffy-fur fiancée to go romping with a dragon without her. "He could get scratched or something," she had protested to a frustrated-nearly-to-violence Aislin. Then Kuwabara had jumped in with his usual bluster about not letting a sweet girl like Kohaku go off with the likes of Hiei without a better escort than two vengeance-bent kitsune. Of course, that meant Yusuke had to come along as well to keep Kuwabara from getting himself killed.
So the fuming ice-fox has brought them all with her, but by no means are they going to be fighting her battle. Yoko recognizes the battle-hunger on her; he's seen the signs before, when her temper had worn thin and she was itching for something—or someone—to take it out on. And if there's one thing he knows, it's how possessive she can be about her enemies.
The group runs closer, stopping when the dragon's thrashing form still comes down a few hundred yards away. Higurashi stands about the same distance away, in front of a rough-hewn stone altar, upon which are laid the still forms of Ivory and Obsidian. Thanks to Hiei's Jagan, his soul-sister is assured that they still live and breathe—and the fire apparition knows that it is that sole reassurance that keeps this layer from being covered in a coating of ice. The last time someone had incurred her grief, she had frozen over a portion of land by one of Makai's seas. And it has stayed frozen even without her presence for the last two decades.
"All right!" Yusuke enthuses, cracking his knuckles and taking a step forward, "Let's bag us a dragon!"
A white-clad arm blocks his path. "You're not fighting it."
Disbelief. "You aren't fighting that thing alone, Aislin! It'll crush you to powder!"
"Perhaps." And even Hiei is unsettled by that flat tone to her voice. "But it will die even as it does so. And before you scold me on the risks of my unborn child, precautions rivaling that of the Kekkai barrier have already been laid down."
The fire apparition is standing just a step ahead of her, so he is able to turn and see her face. It is a pitiless mask, the water-tinted orbs as familiar to him as his own crimson gone cold and empty. No, not empty, frozen, crystalline. There is only a deadly resolve shining out of them now; the paled blue rings of her pupils carved from the heart of a glacier.
He is the one to turn to Yusuke and shake his spiked head in a minute gesture of warning. Hurt, bewildered, the Spirit Detective backs off, leaving his friend to make her way alone into the dragon's sphere of awareness.
Aislin's mental shields are as tight as she can make them, with a number added just to make sure that her thoughts would be impossible to be read by anyone. Because despite her brave and merciless front, her very life is flashing before her eyes in that annoying, cliched movie fashion.
She is the most physically and spiritually strong person that she is aware of in terms of pure energy. The Sleeping Ones are likely stronger, and those few beings known as World-Shapers who keep things in balance, but she isn't aware of knowing any of them. Yet despite her strength, her enemy now holds greater strength than she and the very souls of her chosen young in peril. The only edge she might possess is the fact that without its mind, the dragon is only half of itself without ability to draw on its full strength.
Magic and technique takes will.
The will is the soul and the mind.
Without the mind, one cannot use magic or techniques.
There is no telling what will happen during this battle. All Aislin can be sure of is that it's going to hurt.
A lot.
"Aren't you cold? It's gotta be somewhere around twenty degrees out here."
The dragon finally takes notice of her, the deer-like head with its molten bronze eyes watching her approach with all the concentration of a snake for a bird. It pisses her off, taking away a fraction of her atavistic fear. This thing is huge; a rough estimate of size would equate it to at least ten of the America's Sequoia or Redwoods, a good third of that a whip of a tail, barbed and gleaming with its metal scales. The whole creature, when taken in at a distance, would appear to be some form of gold-smith's fantastic work come to life, right down to the teeth as long as her arm and the claws bigger than she is.
But those molten eyes hold no spark of comprehension in them. Obsidian hadn't died in the summoning spell, so it is still lacking the crucial component, its' mind. In one mercurial motion her hands are filled with the familiar weight of her ice-katana and something at last fills those blank brass eyes.
Rage.
"I've never met someone like you, you're interesting."
A high-pitched whistle accompanies the lashing of that steel-cable tail, slamming into the rocky ground where Aislin had been standing a moment before. Something chimes off the ruddy gold scales and Aislin reappears atop one pointed spire, ruefully examining the shattered remains of the hilt in her hand before tossing it away to form a complicated hand-kata.
"Frozen voices of the distant north," she begins to intone, only to once more dodge when the dragon's mouth clamps down on her spire's needle-like tip, her hands remaining in that position as she takes up a new perch.
"What's a pretty little thing like you doing in a place like this?"
"I call upon your chains of lightning…" Slam! Another close call, this time the tail comes so close that it tears a long rent in one white wool sleeve. For the third time Aislin relocates to the top of a particularly tall spire out of reach of head and tail.
"'Just me' indeed! You could have killed me with that!" Indignant gold eyes gaze reproachfully at her from beside the ice-kunai vibrating in a tree trunk.
"Sing your bonds around my enemy…" Hiei surges forward a couple of steps at the sight of Kin'iro-Ryu picking up a large boulder with its tail and flinging it at a wide-eyed ice apparition. Apparently, even without a mind to reason, some things are still perfectly obvious to a strategist, born and bred.
"MOVE, SNOWFLAKE!" Ka-boom! There comes a pained cry as the top of the spire shatters upon impact, knocking Aislin off her perch and forcing her to abandon her near-completed spell. Yoko moves as though to head for Aislin's rescue despite her firm command to stay put, but a grim-face Yusuke and Kuwabara clamp hands down onto his shoulders. Kohaku moves to stand beside Hiei, her hand seeking his and twining their fingers together in an effort to find some measure of comfort.
In an uncanny effect of sympathetic Empathy, the wolf's eyes have turned that molten bronze, caught up by Aislin's effort to reveal her own full strength. If he hadn't had Yusuke or Aislin to compare that strength to, Hiei would be dazzled. But it is still shockingly impressive for a eighteen-year-old, pure-blood wolf to be ranked at A-class.
Yoko blocked her way and she'd growled at him. "Move, baka kitsune."
"On one condition."
"That I don't gut you where you stand?"
That grin that she'd used to despise had somehow managed to get bigger. "That you go out on a date with me."
"Aislin!" roars Yoko, head twisting wildly in an effort to locate his beloved.
"Hn. Calm down, fox." Hiei's entire body is implacable, his garnet eyes searching the field for some flash of white. "The snowflake isn't going to die that easily." He stiffens and jerks his chin off to the left, triumph and the barest hint of relief flickering in the depths of his eyes. "See?"
A bruised Aislin now stands on the ground in front of the rampaging creature with her hands full of some glistening green powder. She shouts something no one can understand and flings it into the air just as those formidable jaws come darting in again.
The dragon recoils in apparent agony, claws scoring on its muzzle as it tries to rid itself of whatever horrid thing has coated its mouth with sticky green goop. Aislin takes the time during her distraction to once again find a high perch and resume her spell.
"Frozen voices of the distant north, I call upon your chains of lightning. Bind my enemy into death by the glory of your light!" She flickers out of view, reappearing between the relatively stationary shoulderblades and slamming her sparking hands down on the scaled back. /"Shaeth'orrin!"/
Everyone flings their arms up to protect their faces as a huge lightning-bolt sizzles from an empty sky to smash into the writhing dragon, exploding into clouds of dust as the rock below liquefies, turns to glass, hits flash point and powders. When the dancing spots are able to be blinked away, Aislin is standing several yards away from a limp golden body coiled loosely in a shallow crater. Shallow being a relative term: the hole is a deep enough concavity to bring the highest point of Kin'iro-Ryu flush with the ground surface.
Yusuke and Kuwabara begin to breathe sighs of relief as their friend slowly turns and takes a few steps towards Higurashi…only to have a huge, horned, deer-like head rear up behind her.
Yoko screams out the warning. "AISLIN! BEHIND!"
"I'll have you know you were easier to take care of half-dead."
Another dust cloud is raised by that lethal tail, a spire crumbling when a small body rockets into it, that splash of white getting buried under the falling rubble. "Shit," Hiei curses softly, swiftly sending out a telepathic thread to his soul-sib to check her condition. A low, furious hissing fills his mind: Aislin muttering every single curse she knows in every language she knows at top speed. Somehow, Hiei isn't as relieved as he should be that his soul-sister is capable of continuing her fight.
"You're wasted on the underworld, Aisu-san. If you ever think about joining a good merc band, think o' me first. I'd love to have you as co-captain."
The silver fox stops trying to free himself from the hands gripping his upper arms and shoulders when the pile explodes outwards, that petite white-clad form standing in the middle of the resulting shower of debris, blood running down her face from a forehead slice and from her nose. Thankfully for her, the cartilage had remained intact despite the abuse.
"That hurt, you know," she tells her opponent in a dangerously calm voice. Hiei winces and takes a few steps backwards, pulling Kohaku with him. He knows perfectly well what's about to happen and he wants to make damned sure neither of them are going to be caught in the backlash. After a split second the remaining three males follow his example.
Black-gloved hands are lifted into the air as Aislin steps from the rubble and begins a sway-hipped approach to the abruptly-still wurm now eyeing her in suspicion. Wordless singing rises from her throat and rings through the still air—Yoko blanches and hauls everyone back another twenty feet or so.
The serpentine neck curves upward, then that elongated head begins to sway in time to the melody being sung to it, a cobra dancing to the music of his keeper. Then Aislin gets within touching range.
KA-BOOM! A reaction not unlike a miniature nuclear bomb being dropped—Hiei had had the dubious honor of being present at Hiroshima, and has thanked the gods every time he remembers about it that demons are immune to radiation poisoning—lights up the area for half a second before the world drops out from under everyone's feet. The swirling cloud of noxious-looking gas dissipates just feet in front of the gathered team, Hiei muttering curses at himself under his breath for underestimating Aislin's power.
Breaths are held as the gas fades away, the dust and debris settling and allowing visibility of the area again. There's a really big crater, but no sign of the dragon.
Or of Aislin.
"AISLIN!" screams Yoko, surging against the holds his friends are keeping with more difficulty. Kohaku can see their fingertips digging into his flesh and spares a wince; those are going to be some stellar bruises come tomorrow.
"What?" echoes in irritation over the plain. A pile of dust shifts, then spills outward when Aislin stands up, baleful gaze locked on the crater she's just made bigger. Scratched hands brush off dust, and the ice-fox winces when she is unable to spare her bloodied nose from a hard sneeze. "Damned dragon. I know it can't have been that easy. Where is it?" From across the open space, Higurashi watches it all with his cold, calculating black eyes, still holding the sculpture of the summoned wurm in his clawed hands.
From above comes a furious roar and Aislin once more leaps to the side as over a ton of scaled muscle slams into the ground where she had been standing less than a split second before, while the wind of Kin'iro-Ryu's controlled tumble blasts bits of rock across the lifeless ground.
"You wouldn't be laughing if you had to deal with her on a pixie-trip."
Everyone watches in horror when Aislin reappears less than a hundred yards away and takes the very tip of that lethal tail full in the chest, to go flying back into another spire that crumbles around her. Yoko fights for real now against his comrades, desperate to not let his ice-flower fight alone…or die alone. But yet again that battered form rises from the rubble to fix the snarling creature before her with a frozen hatred blazing in those jeweled eyes.
"Vindictive little vixen, yes, she is."
"You want to play rough, do you, you damned minion?" she hisses softly, crooking her hands into claws and dropping into a deep crouch. "Fine. We'll play rough." Everyone stares as her body shifts, elongates the slightest bit as translucent dragonfly wings unfurl from her shoulders to vibrate there, producing a harsh buzzing noise as her hair lengthens, her ears point further, every part of her taking on an ethereal quality.
Hiei takes a deep breath as a form he'd only seen a few times in his life makes a reappearance. "She's tapped into her faerie blood, that's not a good sign."
"Why not?" demands Kohaku from right behind him, her fists clenched at her side as she watches. "Why is that not a good sign?"
Garnet eyes flick to meet bronze ones. "Because it means she's beginning to lose her temper. That she's shifted to anything besides her kitsune or her koorime form always means she's getting dangerously angry." He looks back to watch as the snarling, deceptively-fragile looking female darts in and out of range, scoring long bloody gashes down the dragon's body with her claws. "Let's hope she doesn't forget everything and go berserk."
"What do we do if she does?" grunts Yusuke, hands full with writhing, fighting silver kitsune.
Hiei's reply is quite simple. "We run."
An eldritch howl echoes over the battlefield as the dragon's tossing head slams into Aislin's side and sends her flying for the third time into stone. There's not many spires left near the rock-strewn space now, and those that are aren't looking too stable. Rising from the rubble this time is someone no one has ever seen before.
Jet black hair spikes over midnight blue eyes in a face that shifts subtly every second, depending on how the light hits. The wool clothing has been traded for matte black leather, butter-soft and so form-fitting that it appears painted on. Black furred ears flick between flat against the skull to pointed as far forward as they can go; nine tails bush behind the slender legs.
Even Yoko pauses for a moment, caught off-guard by this stranger's face that echoes his beloved in one of her violent moods. The conjured beast lets out a sound that resembles thousands of tea-kettles going off at once; Dragon-tongue, which not even Hiei speaks.
"I hate you," comes a haunting, sexless voice from the pale throat. "I hate you very much. I haven't used this body in centuries and you force me to use it in just minutes. Do you have any idea…" The voice trails off when talons sweep towards that dark form, booted feet taking just a few steps backward into the shadow of the nearest spire and melting into it. Everyone stares when pale-skinned Aislin emerges from the shadow beneath Kin'iro-Ryu's belly and stabs a glittering katana deep into the gut. "…how much energy this takes?"
Those who are not gifted with a subsonic ability—namely everyone but Aislin—falls to their knees in agony as the dragon screeches in furious pain and thrashes around. Aislin melts back into the shadow and reappears less than twenty feet away from Higurashi, the only other shadows being the ones that the still forms of the kits and the lizard demon cast; she'd use those and simply steal Obsidian and Ivory back, but those shadows are warded against such means already, to her disgust.
"Hiei," Kohaku grits out over the agonizing howls, "what form is that?"
"A mix," manages Hiei, his hands still clapped over his ears. "Her shadow and her fox blood. She's really pissed off, now. She's only used it once before and that was when some jackass decided that she'd make a good play-toy. She splattered him all over the tavern-room in one attack."
"Overconfidence killed the kitsune, you know."
Kuwabara looks about ready to knock Yoko out and sit on him to get the taller fox to hold still. "Then why isn't she using that now?" he demands.
"You want her to use something that will kill us all?" Hiei's disgust with Kuwabara is clear. "I was passed out so she couldn't sense my youki; if she had, I'd have been turned into paste along with the three or four others that had been in the room at the time. That attack focuses on anything with a conscious energy signatureand a shadow within her range, moron."
"I know it ain't the time or place, but why were you passed out?" Yusuke inquires, sweeping Yoko's feet out from beneath the fox and sitting on his back, hands pinning the muscular shoulders to the ground. The fox yowls several suggestions of anatomically-impossible acts for Yusuke to perform while he attempts to free himself.
"I was barely fifty at the time, Detective. I hadn't learned how to pace myself when drinking Takanada's Demonslayers." The mildly embarrassing facts are spat out with little regard to this piece of blackmail he'd just given them: all of Hiei's real attention is focused on the dark body flickering in and out of his Sight.
His soul-sib shifts back into a form he knows almost as well as his own; an Arctic fox the size of a Rottweiler whose eight tails are bushed angrily behind her. Hiei bites the inside of his cheek to keep his dismay from showing: despite the fact that she's making it look close to effortless to dodge those vicious attacks, Aislin is losing energy at a rapid pace. It takes youki for her to shift, even if it's one of her bloodlines' various manifestations, and she's used up quite a bit by now. However, her claws and teeth are almost as effective as her faerie claws had been at rending metal-based scales.
"Give it up, Whiteout!" shouts Higurashi from across the battlefield, his voice mocking while he stands in front of the still bodies of the Avalon twins. "You'll die by my manipulations as surely as that Frenchman the toddler hired did!"
Sunlight reflecting off stained-glass windows, shimmering up from the grass with heat she would never feel as such. A tall, brunette male with grieving brown eyes tempered by some form of…pleasure? At seeing her? Surely not. "His real name was Anthony Barbarac, and he was of the lesser nobility."
A rueful rubbing of her jaw. "He had a hell of a roundhouse for a nobleman."
Hiei instantly scoops up Kohaku and bolts for it, the other three males right on his heels with confusion reigning for both human-born young men.
"Hiei, why are we running?" demands Yusuke, garnet eyes gazing back over a black-clad shoulder.
"Remember what I said about her temper?" Kuwabara and Yusuke nod. "She just lost it."
A howl pours from Aislin's throat, the emotion contained within gone far, far beyond mere hot anger or frozen rage. With every passing second the aura around her body flares higher and higher, burning an ever-deeper shade of ice-green. Even the dragon looks a little taken aback at the energies suddenly flooding the battlefield.
Now so far away as to be barely able to see anything, the rest of Team Urameshi gathers, Hiei still feeling distinctly uncomfortable at being even this close. Somewhere across the Makai, and on another level, perhaps. Maybe over in Ningenkai on the other side of the planet. Yeah. That might be far enough.
"That caught your attention, did it?" Higurashi laughs, holding that statue out in front of him as a sun-hued bubble encloses his prisoners and himself. "I'll bet you didn't know that I tipped off the authorities about the raid for that Summer Stone your handsome fox went after, either. Oh, the look on your face was priceless, Whiteout. Absolutely priceless."
Serious, loving eyes the color of newly-minted gold coins gazed down at her from within a smiling face. "If the worst should happen, I will be back before ten years pass. This I swear on my blood and bones, and all the treasure in the world. Wo ai ni, my white rose."
Yoko turns to Hiei when the fire apparition's face grows grim. Sharp eyes pick out the violet glimmer behind that familiar snowy bandanna and make the connection. "Hiei, what did Higurashi just say?" A louder note of concern. "And why is your hair beginning to flatten?"
Hiei starts edging backwards, his birthright eyes gone wide with horror and anger. He's torn between those two emotions as he continues to slowly reverse. "HIEI!" Yusuke shouts. "Spit it out already!"
"Higurashi was the informant that lost you your kitsune body and fifteen years of your life with Aislin, Kurama. It's his fault, and he just admitted it. And he's laughing."
Yoko's golden eyes are now fearful, pupils mere pinpoints within the metallic irises as he stares across the expanse of rubble-filled land that separates him and his beloved. "Are you sure this is far enough, Hiei?" he asks faintly, joining the fire apparition in his careful retreat.
"Not. Even. Close."
All of the battle-aura that had been incandescently twining around the white-furred body vanishes as though turned off with a switch. Her thick snowy pelt flattens from the upward rush as blank turquoise orbs travel to meet gloating ebony ones. Hiei watches and listens to it all with his useful Jagan, forehead furrowed in concentration while he tries to observe without tripping.
One snowy paw lifts and comes down thistledown-light closer to Higurashi in a circle of frost. The dragon is forgotten. Her elegant head, the ears tipped with that color too deep for blood, too bright for wine, turns towards her new target. That sinuous body follows as she slowly starts walking step by delicate step on a frosted beeline for the snake-youkai who has all at once realized that he has just dug his own grave.
"You dared to put my life-mate, my beloved, at risk, Higurashi?" Hiei starts to get very edgy. The tone she's using doesn't sound dangerous; it's perfectly calm, polite—sweet even. But it's that empty, soulless smile baring snowy fangs that flattens his crest to his head and makes him start running flat-out, followed by everyone else.
There's not enough space in the three worlds that would keep them safe right now.
Nowhere.
But he's making the effort anyway. And while he does, the Jagan continues to watch it all.
Aislin continues her slow pace towards the frightened youkai holding her adopted children as ransom, little patches of ice-crystals sprouting and dissolving with every footstep. She's still in fox-form, but her fur is turning almost crystalline in texture, catching every stray beam of light in its silken depths. "I'd like an answer to my question, Higurashi."
Kin'iro-Ryu slams down in front of her, lowering its head to roar point-blank in her face. She walks around it in a meager acknowledgement of its existence. Brilliant metallic eyes in a golden head twist to follow her, the dragon making a quizzical sound at this abrupt change in its enemy's demeanor. Has furry-thing forgotten that it can rip furry-thing's head off as soon as it can catch furry-thing?
If Yusuke could see the beast now, he'd recognize the overall expression. He'd felt the same way when he'd first met Aislin in the office of Koenma, Prince of Reikai, three years ago—when Koenma had wanted to test his Spirit Detective's strength against her. She'd given him a brief greeting, an equally brief lesson in minor Demonic Agreements, and had turned to Hiei as though the youkai-descended boy didn't exist. His match with her had been…an experience.
"You forgot to disable the cameras."
Once again the dragon roars in that high-pitched whistling that is Dragon-tongue—it almost sounds insulting. But it makes Aislin turn back to face it with that curiously empty face. "The only reason you are still alive right now is because I'm allowing you to live. Do not think to challenge me right now, world-shaper. For if you were to attack me in my current mood, I would be having dragon sashemi for supper tonight."
For some reason this reply to its provocation has Kin'iro-Ryu hissing angrily and snapping at those pretty ten tails swinging slowly behind the fox. And then it yelps and goes tumbling backwards as Aislin spins into her human form and delivers a devastating back-fist to the scaly jaw at the same time.
"I'm just going to admit she's got one heck of a right hook and leave it at that."
Hiei grabs onto Yoko's arm and hauls them both to a halt, a low whistle escaping between his teeth while he watches the dragon pull itself back onto its feet, shaking its head in a dazed fashion. "Hold up, fox. She's starting to take the edge off and treated that thing to one of her patented spinners." Everyone else slows, turns, then gathers around the clairvoyant, who closes garnet eyes to see his visions better. "But I don't think we can head back just yet; she's channeling her siren blood again."
"Siren?" Yusuke and Kuwabara blink at each other. "Like what's on top of cop cars?"
Kohaku smacks the boys upside the head in a display of annoyance. "No, you twits! Sirens were a big part of Greek mythology, not just the cop cars' noisemakers. They were kinda like naiads, water-maidens, who had the most beautiful voices in the world. Anyone who heard them singing lost all sense of themselves and would try to follow the singing back to the sirens on their island, drowning themselves because almost no one knew how to swim back then. Haven't you ever read the Iliad?"
Far away, Aislin smirks inwardly, picking this all up with her own Jagan, not opened but awake, thanks to the fact that she's calling on all aspects of her lineage for this fight. For them to have read Homer's tales, they would have had to bother going to school first. Well, she amends in her thoughts, Kuwabara might have read it sometime in his growing thirst for knowledge, but as sure as she's breathing Yusuke hasn't. What no one else but the two Jagan-holders know is that Aislin isn't the only one in their group to have siren blood running through her veins. Hiei does, too, that's why when he got dragged to a karaoke bar by Kohaku, Kurama and herself, he sang that song as though he'd done it a hundred times.
"Hiei, please sing for us? Pretty, pretty please?"
She gracefully sidesteps another strike of Kin'iro-Ryu's tail and opens her mouth. Beautiful music tumbles forth, the koorime's entire body getting into the slow rhythm while she sings, dancing a slow circle around the dragon, every motion seeming to be uncalculated but perfectly timed to dodge every attack her opponent makes. Said wurm is now curious as to why pretty ice crystals are sprouting in the now-not-furry-thing's wake, leaning in close to see better.
Apparently Kin'iro-Ryu is unable to see youki, that, or it's simply so used to seeing it with everything that the large quantities making each spire glow means nothing to it. Hiei's expression reminds a watching Kohaku of nothing but what Kurama had looked like the morning after the fox had introduced her to the only kosher rave-club in their ward. Relieved, resigned, and somewhat testy.
"There goes my perfect-idol image right out the window. Goodbye, and good riddance."
Through his Jagan, Hiei watches Aislin close the circle and step out, the fire apparition's arm snaking out to grab Kohaku, pulling her close against him as his soul-sister raises her arms yet again and chants. "Moon's faerie ring, oh come to earth, come grant the wish I've sung. Bring death to all within your hold and on the chosen one!" Forget nuclear explosion. A wall of air filled with red rock-dust and the glittering of crushed dragon scales torn loose in the fight rushes the distant Team with hurricane force.
"Get inside the castle, Detective," Hiei had commanded, pointing towards the gigantic gates. The two human boys had begun to protest—Kurama had wisely already begun to sprint for the doors—and were silenced by a second, louder command by Aislin and the reinforcement of a mild telepathic shock from two minds.
"Move your ass, Urameshi!"
Yoko snags both fire apparition and wolf and shoves them behind him, while Yusuke grabs onto Kuwabara and spreads his feet into a defensive stance. Even so prepared, the strength of the wind-wall nearly has them tumbling end over end—it's Kuwabara who helps out Yusuke when the demon-kin male is hit in the head by a surprisingly large rock and loses his balance. The carrot-top sinks his Spirit Sword into the ground and uses it for a handle while his other arm is engaged in keeping a stunned Spirit Detective in place, the blood-red wind shrieking past them.
Finally it dies down and Hiei risks peering around Yoko's ribcage, the silver fox slowly lowering his scratched and bleeding arms away from his face. The back of his wrist, heavily gashed by some piece of shrapnel, is gingerly licked at to clean it and stop the blood-flow. The only sounds besides falling pebbles is a hard coughing in a familiar alto.
Aislin stands near the edge of a charcoaled circle blasted flat, at least two hundred feet in diameter; most of it is taken up by the sinuous body of Kin'iro-Ryo, with nary a twitch to betray the spark of life. The white wool covering most of the pale koorime is ripped, bloody, or so covered in dust that it's impossible to tell that it had been snow-white at the beginning of this battle. Still gasping for breath, Aislin gives her team-mates a long-distance sideways look with the barest hints of triumph beginning to liven dulled turquoise eyes.
"Well, damn, and here I was all worried that I'd get my ass kicked and everything."
Aislin chuckles to herself at that cheery memory, Kohaku's reaction to seeing all of the so-called 'gotta-proves' waiting for the boat to Hanging Neck island, home of the Dark Tournament. It matches her feelings perfectly at the moment. Yusuke lets out a joyous whoop and pumps his fist into the air, everyone beginning to run over to their tired friend.
Hiei is the first to reach the still-coughing ice apparition, his garnet eyes gleaming with approval, respect, and relief. "Hn. Stop showing off, you crazy fox."
"What's—" cough, cough, "—the matter, Hiei?" Cough, cough, particularly hard cough that flecks her lips red. "Worried…about…me?"
Yoko produces a vial of something emerald-colored from his pocket-space and pops the cork with his thumb, advancing in a threatening manner on his beloved with a determined look on his face. "Koi, you're going to drink this even if I have to pour it down your damned throat."
Kohaku walks around behind the koorime and presses her hands against the tattered flesh stretched over no less than three broken ribs. "You're nearly tapped out, Aislin. Much more and your body would've collapsed whether you wanted to or not."
"Hn. Reduced to baby-sitting yet again."
The ice apparition pushes the vial away from her lips, swallowing the last of the potion with a sour expression. "Stop worrying…about me…and go kill…Higurashi, damn it!" Reminded by their companion as to why she was fighting the dragon in the first place, everyone not healing or Healing whirls towards the place where Higurashi stands.
He's still there, and looking remarkably unperturbed at the fact that his summoned dragon is face-down on the bare ground. Then he lifts up the intact statue with a grin. Aislin's eyes widen as her own Jagan shows her this and loops her remaining energy around her friends, teleporting all but her away just when that golden body surges up and slams a rock-hard head into her side.
The rest of the gang materializes several hundred yards away, still in their various motions of running. Kuwabara trips and falls flat on his face, Kohaku is caught by Hiei and his hand on the back of her shirt before she can repeat the carrot-top's folly, and Yusuke and Yoko instantly stop. Of course, Yoko immediately takes off again in a dead sprint for his beloved and her attacker, who has her pinned and helpless to the second-to-last spire on the field.
Her broken ribs are screaming with every half-breath she can take with that heavy talon pressing her into the rock, her body finally registering the relative cold now that anger and most of her energy is gone. She's got enough youki for one last transformation and then she's either stuck with mundane attacks or resorting to body-energy and suicide. But what transformation to use? What can she be that is able to take on a full-grown ancient wurm?
Her head bows in defeat as she draws a blank, the shouts of her name barely registering. But they do, and they trigger a memory.
"Hey, Aislin?"
"Hm?"
"Can you actually turn into a dragon?"
Aqua eyes snap open as the graceful head rears back, Kin'iro-Ryu plunging his head into a massive flurry of platinum dust that engulfs the spire and everything around it. Yoko screams his hopeless defiance and is tackled by Yusuke and Hiei at the same time.
…"So…can you?"
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Aren't you lucky I decided to give you the next couple chapters for free? Kin'iro-Ryu means Golden Dragon. I had to have a name for him since I couldn't keep repeating myself with 'the dragon'.