Chapter Fourteen: Reikai Tantei
Technology: I was so set on using the name Onizuka (it sounded Japanese but turns out to be the name of a Challenger astronaut) that I never found out that shuttlepods are…hmm, distinctly small. We see the Onizuka in three episodes (Ensigns of Command, Mind's Eye, Outcast), none of which I've seen recently. Besides, scale in Star Trek…not going there. Let's pretend (there's that phrase again) that this particular shuttlepod is actually the size of a regular full-size shuttlecraft, because otherwise I don't know how I'm going to fit four people into it, and revamping several chapters again isn't all that appetizing. Let me know if you think I should go back and change it.
Author's Note: On another note, there is a very good reason why this is late. (Sorry!) FINAL EXAMS. (Or are they midterms? Whatever.) As a not-so-valid reason, I have been on a serious Star Trek: The Original Series binge for the last week or so, and have had problems writing in Yu Yu Hakusho mode after a couple days of our beloved Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, etc. all running around in my head and the TV. So if this chapter has a distinct flavor of TOS, that's why. Maybe that's why I couldn't get it to sound right. Does this set some sort of record for 'lousy excuse'?
If You Didn't Know: "Reikai Tantei" Spirit Detective(s).
ON WITH THE SHOW!
Yusuke Urameshi had woken up with a hangover once—well, once that he would admit to. He had promptly vowed, once he could think relatively straight, never to get into that state again.
He was pretty sure either he'd just broken that vow, or something had belted him with the nearest mountain. Hadn't there been a couple at hand? Was it worth thinking about? What was the question again? His head was pounding like a jackhammer, only twice as loud, and if the world would stop spinning, he might be lying on the floor.
Where the heck am I?
Let's see. Let's replay the day's events…training, Kuwabara, OK. Argument, fight—that sounded OK, or at least unremarkable, too. Hiei and Kurama, spaceship…hold on a second…
"What the hell?" he yelped, sitting up with a start, and regretting both actions. He put his head in his hands, closed his eyes in a futile attempt to make the world go away, and contemplated lying back down on the rough carpet. "What's going on?" he asked from behind his hands.
"Evidently you don't time-travel well," an annoyingly familiar and—equally annoying—mildly amused voice said.
He didn't see the humor. "Damn you, fox-boy, this isn't funny."
"The headache will go away once your body adapts, Yusuke."
"To what?" he asked before he realized how stupid a question that was. "No, I don't want to know. Why am I sitting on the floor?" That, he figured, was probably a safe question.
"You passed out."
Now that was a nice, simple answer. Now for a slightly harder one. "Uh, and just why did I pass out?"
"Like I said, you don't time-travel well. Luckily for your ego, neither does Kuwabara."
"Oh good," he said fuzzily, and risked opening one eye. Hm…grey carpet.
Oh.
He opened the other eye, slowly lowered his hands from his face, and looked up, absently slicking back his black hair. "Cool," he said absently, not wanting to completely ruin his self-image by completely panicking. "Are we really on a spaceship?" The answer was obvious; as there were stars streaking by out the windows, and he was surrounded by technology he'd never even seen except in sci-fi movies. Still, he had to make sure.
"Last time I checked, yes, but we can check again if it will make you happy."
Yusuke was feeling up to glaring now, and therefore proceeded to scowl at Kurama, who was sitting quite comfortably in a chair, as opposed to the floor, and quite clearly getting a huge laugh at his expense. "Oi, wipe that smirk off your face."
"Sorry."
"Like hell you are. Why are we on a spaceship?"
"We already told you once; evidently you weren't listening or the time warp wiped your memory. Wake up the idiot first so we only have to tell it again once," Hiei's perpetually annoyed voice ordered him from the other seat, spinning it around to face them.
"Did that even make sense? This had better be good," Yusuke threatened as he noticed that Kuwabara was also sprawled on the floor and shook him rather hard by the shoulder. "I don't think you two are even supposed to leave the area, much less the planet."
"Huh? Oh, we forgot about that. It's been a while since we had to bother with it. But really, we're still there, you know."
"What?" Yusuke asked. He had a feeling that he was going to be using that word a lot in the next few minutes.
"Never mind."
Yusuke narrowly avoided being whacked as Kuwabara responded to the shaking by flailing about with his arms. "What's happening?" the tall boy hollered, leaping to his feet. Luckily, Starfleet had been generous with the height of the ceiling, and Kuwabara was not knocked out for a second time.
"What are we doing on a spaceship?" was his first question, as 'what's happening' didn't really count.
"A new mission—not exactly, but that's close enough," Kurama started as the Spirit Detectives had a brief staring contest for the spare chair. Kuwabara won, if only because he cheated by sitting down anyway as they glared at each other. Yusuke briefly considered hitting him, but desisted when he realized that if he did, it would be a while before any sort of explanation would be forthcoming.
"All right, I'm with you so far," he said, electing to lounge against a wall in an effort to look nonchalant. "So what's this mission and what does the spaceship have to do with it?"
"The spaceship is rather essential, considering it's our only way to where we're going. Beside that," Kurama sighed, "it has nothing to do with anything."
"Ok, now we come to the hard questions," Kuwabara said. "Where are we going?"
"The name wouldn't mean anything to you; suffice to say it's somewhere else," Hiei snapped without much venom.
"Oh yeah? How do you know?"
"Because it didn't mean anything to us until a few hours ago, and we're actually from this time."
"All right, everyone shut up," Yusuke attempted to restore order, heading off another pointless back-and-forth between the orange-haired teenager and the fire demon by waving his fist around in the general direction of everyone else and missing all of them. "You better start from the beginning. This isn't making any sense. All I can see is that we're on a spaceship, careening through space to who knows where—"
"We do."
"That wasn't a question. –You two have apparently stolen said spaceship—"
"I lied."
"You shut up too! –Nobody is answering any questions in any way that sounds remotely normal, one of these weird-looking panels is making an annoying noise—"
Kurama slapped it silent without even looking at it. "Not important."
Actually, it was, Hiei told him, turning his back on the ranting Spirit Detective in favor of investigating the sensor blip.
Shh, I'm trying to see how long he can keep up this sentence.
"—You two are thinking at each other again, and I have no idea what's going on!"
There was silence in the shuttlecraft for perhaps three seconds, except for the quiet noises emitted by the shuttlecraft controls.
"Are you quite through?" Kurama asked, straight-faced.
"And you're laughing at me!"
"I see not," the kitsune added, smile beginning to break through. Winding up Yusuke had been one of his more entertaining hobbies in life, as long as he wasn't around, or at least, not the target, when the human exploded. Unfortunately, there wasn't anywhere to run in a shuttlecraft, so he gave it up.
About time too.
Fine, I'll get to the point, as I presume you don't want to explain all this.
Hell no.
"All right, calm down. If you explode, the fire-control system will get you, and that would be distinctly unpleasant for you."
Well, almost to the point.
"Kurama, if you don't start talking some sense right now, I am going to punch you into next week," Kuwabara growled.
"You're already in the next three centuries; don't bother," Hiei growled.
And you think I'm a problem! "Well, simply speaking, we've got a rogue on our hands out here, and Hiei and I decided—"
"You decided."
"—to recruit a little help. How we did it doesn't really matter—you don't really want to know—but Fenell, as he calls himself, has become a problem, and it'll be easier to handle him with you along."
"Now we come to details I can handle," Kuwabara approved. "So the mission in a nutshell is…"
"Capture Fenell if possible, kill him if not, recover a dangerous substance he has in his possession, end of mission."
"Can do!" Yusuke approved. "What are we hanging around here for?"
"You want to jump out of the airlock and walk there, go ahead." Hiei rolled his eyes. "You won't get to Anara V any quicker."
"Anara Five?" Yusuke jumped on that before he could fully process and be properly offended by the fact that he had probably just been threatened and called stupid in the same sentence. Again.
"It's a planetoid a lot like Mars, only with less inhabitants."
Kuwabara squinted at the redhead at the conn. "Kurama…no one lives on Mars."
He returned the look. "The Moon was colonized in—what was that for?"
Hiei moved his fingers back to the console before his partner could snatch them. "The captain's going to have a fit anyway; do you have to tell them stuff?"
"Oops." That was still completely uncalled-for. "The point is that Anara Five, which is a planet, is where we're going, because Fenell is hiding there. And because he still has a couple of kilograms of infernium, which is still experimental, not to mention illegal, we can't get near him, which is unfortunate since that's what we're supposed to take away from him."
"Why not?" Yusuke asked.
"The radiation is poisonous to us. We could get close to it, but it would kill us very quickly."
"So that's why you brought us along," Yusuke concluded. "Whose idea was this anyway?"
Before either demon could answer, Kuwabara broke in with "Hey, wait a second! What's all this about radiation? What's it going to do to us?"
"Nothing." Hiei reconsidered for a moment. "Unless you eat it."
"Why would I eat something called 'infernium'?"
"I have no idea."
Kuwabara leapt out of his chair, narrowly missing the ceiling again. "You really think I'm that stupid? Why, you little—"
"Oh, stop it, both of you," Yusuke intervened, stealing the other teen's vacated chair.
"Hey! That's my chair!"
"Not anymore."
This was a mistake.
Probably. I hate to say I told you so…
Liar. Rub it in, why don't you?
…but I did.
It took the arrival of a planet out the window and the disorienting drop out of warp to get the attention of Yusuke and Kuwabara, who had gone from arguing over the chair to slinking around looking for food. They went from there to finding an alternative to slinking, as two teenage boys with attitudes and tempers don't slink very well. The alternative happened to be barreling about hollering, but there wasn't much room to run in a shuttlecraft, so they gave it up, having discovered neither the existence nor the purpose of the replicator.
"That doesn't look anything like the moon, Kurama," Kuwabara protested, looking down at it.
"No, I suppose it doesn't," he replied, not bothering to inform him that, yes, it did; the Moon had been terraformed two centuries ago.
Anara Five was a very-Earthlike planet, M-class; with approximately equal distribution of water and land. There were no indications of either current technologically developed or undeveloped civilizations. However, a large swath of dead land, sweeping across the equatorial region, indicated an ecologically damaging operation in the near past.
"What happened there?" Yusuke asked, nose pressed to the window. Under his breath, he muttered, "Too weird," as he had persisted in doing at random moments since his reconciliation with the fact that he was, in fact, on a spaceship.
"I'll check, but it looks offhand like a mining operation of some kind."
"You don't know?" Kuwabara inquired delightedly. "And I always thought you were some kinda human encyclopedia or somethin'!"
"He isn't human in the first place, you idiot," Yusuke reminded him, bonking him on the head with his fist.
Kurama ignored the banter, scrolling through the ship's databanks. Someone—most likely Data—had thought to upload the most exhaustive report on Anara V available into the shuttlecraft computer.
"Well?" Kuwabara asked, placing both hands on the back of the chair and looming ominously behind him.
"I'm looking! Why don't you let me look? Go bother Hiei for a while."
Maybe I heard you wrong, Hiei half-growled. You're really in trouble now, kitsune.
Sorry. He was quite obviously not. Tell them about Fenell and how we got into this mess anyway.
What if I don't know?
Make it up; they won't know the difference.
"Fine," he said aloud, glaring at his partner, who ignored the look and resumed scanning through the report. "Even you've gathered by now that Fenell, a rogue spirit being, managed to steal a load of infernium. Now what infernium is and what it does isn't quite sure, but a group of scientists recently discovered that if they combine several common materials with a slightly uncommon substance found in only remotely distant sectors—oh, damn."
"What?" Yusuke asked.
"Kurama."
"Yeah?"
"'Ryalin'?" He flicked one hand at the computer screen.
The redhead paused. "It would figure. I'll check."
"What?" Yusuke near-howled, knowing from experience that when the demons were worried, something was wrong.
"The most essential component of infernium is probably located right down there."
"So they could make more?" Kuwabara asked.
"Probably, yes," Kurama muttered, looking up from the screen and nodding. "It's not in large quantities, but the scanners say it's down there, and the energy reading I think is their crashed shuttle is right on top of the largest deposit. Normally, it wouldn't matter, because from what I've read it would seem that it takes a while to be prepared, but the mining operation—that is what happened, by the way—might have provided a cover for them to begin processing more quite a while ago."
"Another monkey wrench. Wonderful," Yusuke complained. "So why is this Fenell a problem?"
"He holds the reins of an empire that all but worships him. Isn't that enough? As to how we got mixed up in this, he holds a deep dislike for demons, and us in particular."
"What did you two do to him?" Kuwabara grinned. "Steal something?"
"Actually, it would be easier to ask what you did to him. You were rather instrumental in his downfall and near-death too."
"Us?" Kuwabara asked, pointing at himself.
"Yes, you. Your future, our past. Koenma came running to you when Fenell decided he was going to manifest himself as a god to certain cults. He's always had a taste for being worshipped, ever since taking control of the early Lhyarri. You were ordered to take him down. We showed up to save your butts—again. We lived, he died; we thought. The Lhyarri, his followers, got possession of his corpse and managed to keep him in stasis until he could be revived."
"What idiot let these Lhyarri guys have his body?"
"Koenma." All responsibility denied in one word—convenient.
"Figures," Yusuke muttered, slumping in the chair that he currently had possession of. "Stupid toddler messes something else up."
"Wait a second," Hiei glared. "If you already know that there was a mining operation, how come you're still reading?"
"Because you asked me to look up ryalin—and besides, you were doing so well."
"So how do we get off this spaceship?" Kuwabara asked. "If we're up here and they're down there, what do we do?"
Evidently they don't remember the transporter.
That could be useful; let's not expose them to it unless we have to. Besides, we can't transport down. Those same minerals would probably scramble the beam. "It lands, Kuwabara—and yes, we can fly it."
"Good. If I'm gonna die in a crash, I want to at least crash in a cool car."
"Hn. Your turn to talk to them." Hiei spun his chair back around and took over the helm.
"How are we planning to deal with him once we run into him?" Yusuke asked. "I'll bet a little discussion is out of the question."
"Definitely. Once he sees you—and you can bet he'll remember you—he's going to be pretty mad, and he already knows we're after him."
"Can't we just land on top of him? Dropping a spaceship on him would probably put anyone out."
"That's it? That's your whole plan?"
"Yeah. What do you think?"
"In the last ten seconds you have just gone from merely clueless to dead stupid," Hiei informed him without even turning around.
"He may be rude, but I must agree. That is only the fourth-most stupid plan I have ever heard."
"Wow," Yusuke said, impressed. It had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, but he hadn't thought it was that stupid. "What were the first three?"
"I can't tell you," Kurama said, smiling suddenly.
"Why not?"
"You haven't come up with them yet."
"I thought of the stupidest plan you've ever heard of?"
Kurama nodded solemnly. "We kept track."
"Why don't we just try a head-on assault? It's worked before." Yusuke gave no one any time to contradict him, and continued, "Once we land, do you know which way we're going?"
"We can find where they crashed their shuttle, and start from there," Kurama responded instantly.
"Neat," Kuwabara said from where he was standing, leaning on the back of Hiei's chair (to the fire youkai's growing annoyance) and looking out the window. "How?"
"I'm not explaining the sensors to you, Kuwabara, and besides, we'd rather use our own senses anyway, but look." Kurama ran his fingers over the console and pulled up a scan of the area below, which was rapidly getting nearer. "Here's where we're landing; a kilometer west of their crash point."
"Why'd they crash?"
"Probably engine burnout; they were pushing the engines pretty hard. By the time they made it here from Hel's Gate, they would have been hard-pressed to have working thrusters. In any case, they're a kilometer inside the burn zone, so I suppose we'll land on the border to give you time to acclimatize."
We decided on that earlier, there's no 'I suppose' about it. Why are you trying to sound as if this is all new strategy?
Well, we know they'll always go for a head-on assault anyway. Besides, even if Yusuke had suggested something else, we would have done exactly what we're doing now. They won't be quite as annoying if they think they're in charge. No offense to them, but this is neither their time nor place, and if they pick a losing strategy and get killed, I don't want to think about what that'll do to the timeline.
"This looks like Earth," Kuwabara said skeptically. "Heck, it even smells like Earth. Are you sure we didn't go in a circle by mistake?" His uncertainty was easily understandable. In the valley between the large hills in the distance, dusky through the atmosphere, and their landing point, lay a grey and clearly abandoned mining facility, little more than a collection of weather-beaten buildings, and strips of brown earth where heavy use and repeated excavations had laid waste whatever had grown there.
"Perfectly sure, I don't know how I can prove it to you until we run into one of Fenell's people; I doubt there are many humans among them."
"We're dealing with aliens too?"
"To them, you're the aliens," Hiei snapped, shooting Kuwabara a you-idiot glare from his perch on the roof of the shuttlecraft. "That smoke's not natural, Kurama." A small wisp of smoke was drifting from the edge of the group of buildings.
"Then that's where we're going," Yusuke said cheerfully, somewhat secretly relieved at being back on solid ground. "We're going to get ambushed, aren't we?" he asked rhetorically as they started down the hill.
"Of course."
"Wait a second," Kuwabara stopped them. "What about the space—the shuttlecraft? How do we know they won't slip round behind us and steal it?"
"You'd make a good thief, Kuwabara," Kurama said blandly, continuing to walk. The others followed. "But it'll lock itself until we get back." Or until the Enterprise shows up and orders it to unlock itself.
The Lhyarri will keep them busy for a while, and then they've got to find it. I blanked us out of the sensor spectrum a while back.
"Ok, now I know we're not on Earth," Yusuke said a moment later, detouring slightly and hurrying down the hill a little way. "What is that?"
"That" was an indigenous creature, six-legged, mammalian, and pale blue. It leapt off the rock it had been sitting on at the teen's approach, baring two-inch fangs and making a skittering noise to warn him off. "Shoo!" he yelled automatically, waving a hand at it. It did, racing off on all six legs in the general direction of a large patch of scrub and small trees. However, before it got there, it stopped short and detoured, careening down the hill.
"I'll bet anything there's someone in there that creature didn't expect. If it's a trap, I'll spring it for them," Kuwabara challenged, and charged off. "Three battle auras!" he yelled, as he got closer.
"Three he can handle on his own," Yusuke said to no one in particular and to the accompaniment of a yell.
"If you helped, he'd probably be offended, right?" Kurama asked.
"I'd never hear the end of it."
"They're only Lhyarri anyway—wait, one's an Andorian," Hiei corrected himself.
"How can you tell?"
The fire demon was spared answering as Kuwabara reemerged from the bush. "That guy was blue!" he yelled for the whole area to hear.
"That's how," Hiei muttered, rolling his eyes.
"He was a lousy martial artist, though."
"You just knock him out, or what?"
Kuwabara waved a fist in the air and grinned.
Perhaps it was that there were only a limited amount of people one can pack into any shuttlecraft still small enough to be called a shuttlecraft. Perhaps it was that Fenell didn't trust many of his crew. But for any reason, they were attacked only once more in their journey to the crashed shuttle.
"What's with these guys?" Yusuke asked, flipping a stunned Lhyarri over with one foot. "If they didn't have those little ray guns, they wouldn't live out the day."
"Yeah, well, I still wouldn't like to be on the business end of one of those lasers. This coulda been us, y'know!" Kuwabara gestured to the black scorch marks scattered across the formerly green landscape. Firing wildly, the pack of six Lhyarri had charged out of one of the ramshackle buildings as the four Spirit Detectives had approached over a wooden, rather ramshackle, walkway. It seemed the training, whether it was simply beating each other up or not, had come in useful; neither human had been at all intimidated by the phaser fire, and had met them head-on, Spirit Sword and Spirit Gun flaring to life. Perhaps expecting a Starfleet away team, the former Reikai beings had been disoriented for a split second, and that was all it took for Yusuke and Kuwabara to be right in the thick of things.
We could have almost just set them loose and told them to come back when they finished Fenell off, Kurama commented. I'd forgotten how good they really were.
"Wow, these are pretty neat," Yusuke said happily, confiscating a fallen phaser. "Kapow!" he cried, aiming it at the door.
Kurama and Hiei traded I've-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this expressions. "Do you want to try to take it away, or shall I?" the fox asked.
"How come?" Yusuke overheard. "If Fenell is really all that tough, oughtn't we arm ourselves?"
"I suppose you can't shoot yourselves with them," Hiei said. "Let them have them, then?"
"Hmm." Kurama picked up another phaser and fiddled with it. "Here, Yusuke, trade."
"Sure, but why?"
"That one's set on stun now. Don't change the setting." He handed the one Yusuke had been holding to Kuwabara. "They work exactly like they look. Front, back, trigger."
"What are the other settings?" Kuwabara would ask.
"Unnecessary."
"That's not an answer, shrimp."
"Just ignore the settings. He's not human, so stun might not knock him out. Only use your powers if you have to."
"All right, have it your way. Lock and load!" He paused. "Um, where do we go from here?"
"You're the sixth sense, idiot," Yusuke reminded him. "You tell us."
"Right!" Kuwabara concentrated for a moment. "That way," he said after a few seconds, raising one hand to point ahead and slightly to the right. "He's not even trying to hide."
"Good, he's probably out of ambushes then." Yusuke led the way in the direction Kuwabara had pointed.
"I guess so; I didn't sense anyone else…wait, no."
"What? Don't tell me you've overlooked an army hidden in—oh, that wooden shack over there."
"Drop dead, Urameshi," Kuwabara glared. "There's a second, much weaker aura almost hidden beneath Fenell's."
"Well, if it's that weak, we don't need to worry about it. Let's go!" Yusuke charged off in the direction formerly indicated, with the other three following behind.
Yusuke didn't even halt as he realized his path was taking him straight through the doors of the largest building in the complex. Dust flying, he skidded to a halt before slamming the door open. Luckily, hinges in twenty-fourth-century Anara Five functioned exactly the same as hinges in twentieth-century Earth.
"Who—" the man bending over a viewscope in the middle of the room snapped as he looked up.
Fenell gaped for an instant before regaining his composure. "Well, this is an unexpected…surprise," he said smoothly. Clearly, he could not bring himself to say 'pleasure'. "Permit me—how the hell did you two boys get here?"
Yusuke and Kuwabara had been referred to collectively as 'you boys' before, and it was still a tossup as to which annoyed them more; being called 'boys', or being lumped into the same category with each other. In any case, they glared across the obviously refurbished machinery at him.
An aura, visible even in the mundane plane, veiled the details of his appearance and clothing, revealing only indications of pale skin, a burgundy outfit, and a shock of brown hair. The only feature that could easily be seen was more than slightly supercilious golden-brown eyes, which were currently flickering between glaring in old anger and darting around the room ceaselessly.
"Not even the depths of space can keep you from justice!" Kuwabara yelled, enjoying the moment.
"Yes, I'm sure, but three hundred years are a little harder to traverse," he acknowledged. "I presume you two are responsible. Finally figured out you're helpless on your own, I see."
"Well, we were getting tired of chasing you round the galaxy; it's really inconvenient," Kurama replied, ignoring the insult breezily.
"I think I can return the compliment," Fenell snarled back. Without warning, he lifted one hand and flung it forward. The missile embedded itself in the wall with a thunk, narrowly missing Yusuke.
"Hey, watch where you're throwin' that!" he yelled. Glancing around to make sure his teammates were all right, he discovered that only Kuwabara was still within arms' reach.
"We can't get close, remember?" Kurama called. "Your battle!"
"Excellent, a free field," Yusuke said boldly, pulling the oddly shaped missile from the wall. Bouncing it in his hand, he noticed briefly the odd, grainy encrustations on the edges before flinging it back. Unused to the balance of it, he missed, but it was sufficient to send Fenell moving. Dodging between the racks of processing equipment, he managed to reach and hit a companel embedded in the wall, producing a squeal of feedback audible even over the crash of many metal tables hitting the floor as Yusuke and Kuwabara dashed round, into, and occasionally over in their offensive charge, powering up their spirit weapons. What had happened to the phasers was anyone's guess.
Unable to jump in and assist their teammates, the demons were forced to merely lurk on the sidelines and watch until the answer to Fenell's summons entered in the form of an armed and—this time—ready Nabuhari, who experienced no hesitation in launching an attack on the demons he so feared. Keeping right on the edge of the danger zone, they kept him away from anywhere with a stash of infernium. There was definitely more than 2.65 kilograms here, most of the extra—if not all—in this room. They could feel, almost hear, it grating on their senses like the scratch of a poor whetstone across pitted steel, which was indubitably a sensation that affected anyone within range, and badly.
Yusuke swore as he crashed into and through a table, which upon close encounter proved to be the twenty-fourth century equivalent of folding cafeteria tables: bulk-issued and easy to move, especially upon collision. Pulling himself to his feet, he prepared to release a trademark 'shotgun' blast from his clenched fist, but was forced to abort as Kuwabara leapt unknowingly into his line of fire. The teen struck at Fenell with his glowing, golden sword, but the blade merely bounced off a suddenly thickened line of aura.
No matter how much they jumped around, they couldn't get to him through the aura cloak. Countering their blows by channeling the veil into the point of contact, he was protected by that specific angle until the substance—whatever it was—was re-routed elsewhere to deal with a fresh attack.
"This isn't working," Kuwabara gasped, falling back to Yusuke's fallen table and using it as a shield of sorts. "Nothing we do can get through!"
"There's got to be a way," Yusuke said, half to himself, half to Kuwabara. "Wait, so he's invincible because of that cloak, right?"
"Right…"
"So if he's invincible, we need to make him not invincible."
"We need to get that cloak away from him!" Kuwabara concluded. "Any bright ideas on how to do that?"
Yusuke released the stored barrage he'd kept clenched in his fist, sending glowing blue pulses of spirit energy at their slowly advancing foe, stopping him again as he was forced to change the distribution of his cloak's power. Under cover of fire, he kept thinking aloud. "He's gotta have a controller of some kind. I can't believe he wears that all the time. If we can break the controls, it might lower on automatic. Start looking for something that looks like it could be a remote!"
"Hold on a second! What if it just locks it on 'on'?"
Yusuke thought for a second. "Then we run for the hills," he tossed off over his shoulder, and leapt out from behind the table, shouting something incomprehensible. Aiming a futile punch at Fenell, which sent a charge spitting through his body as the fist made contact with the cloak, he glanced around hurriedly. Remote, remote, remote. Where is the remote? Are remotes out of fashion in whatever century we're in? he wondered spontaneously.
Kuwabara let Yusuke cover for him, dashing around the fallen items and smiting whatever was relatively small and blinking, on the off chance it might be the required controller. Though he glanced back over every few seconds, the cloak showed no sign of any deterioration—although he couldn't say the same for Yusuke's strength. The shocks from contact with the cloak's exterior were beginning to tell on him.
"Switch off, Urameshi!" he yelled, grabbing the shorter boy by the shoulder and tossing him away as he prepared for another attack. Swinging his Spirit Sword as fast as he could in a quick, pattern-free melee, he went on the offensive, trying not to let the cloak touch him, although Fenell continually swiped and struck outward with the cloak still covering his fists and arms.
Fists…
Deliberately, Kuwabara focused his strikes on Fenell's right side, forcing more and more 'charge' to respond to his attack. As it drained away from the left, it cleared just enough to reveal a silver box shaped somewhat like a cell phone clenched tightly in their opponent's hand.
"Urameshi!" Kuwabara yelled. "It's in his hand!"
Stripped of his cumbersome robes and with a long knife in each hand, Nabuhari, aristocrat of the Lhyarri, was far more intimidating than he had appeared over a viewscreen on the bridge of the Enterprise. The knives were only one of Hiei and Kurama's concerns, however. No warrior intending to survive the day goes into battle with only one trick up his sleeve, and Nabuhari had taken that adage quite literally. He had more than a latent talent for illusion, and was using it to its fullest extent. Impossible explosions erupted beneath their feet, waves of darkness and distortion washed over them; phantom armies stormed through the walls, and behind it all, the knives scythed.
Can you do anything about him? Hiei asked. I can handle his knives if you'll dispel the illusions.
I'll try…
Nabuhari might have been fast, but no one who ever saw Hiei in battle, whether they were on opposite sides or not, failed to notice that his true gift was speed. He might have been small, yes; but that often led to him being underestimated, and if you had time to realize your error there wasn't much many people could do about it before his katana made the point rather moot. You can't, in truth, hurt, what you can't, in fact, hit, and Nabuhari was suddenly forced to shift his style from one-on-two to one-on-one as Kurama dropped back, which set him off just a little bit in mid-battle.
Disregarding the crashes and sizzles of breaking machinery as Yusuke and Kuwabara began their remote-smashing tactic behind him, they locked blades. Eyes meeting in silent snarls, each sought to gain the advantage, neither daring to shift their feet for a better stance for fear of losing their footing altogether. For an uncountable string of moments, they were at a complete standstill.
Of course, neither had worked completely alone for hundreds of years, and it was, in the end, two against one. As Nabuhari spared a single, simple thought to activate an illusion held dormant in reserve, Kurama caught the command and sent his own retaliation back along it, exploding the illusion, and the Lhyarri's concentration. Stumbling backwards as the shock of having his work undone by another, the blades' deadlock was broken against him. A single strike sent him flying into the wall at a corner, razor-sharp sword blade deflected from his throat only by the simple fact that it encountered the still-crossed knife hilts first—and those were strong knives.
As Nabuhari slid limply down the wall, it began to tremble somewhat, ancient timbers beginning to give way. Exposed to wind, rain, and whatever the elements and time had thrown at it, the building really was not designed to take a flying body into one of its key points in its current condition. A small tremble became a distinct shake, but went no further.
Kurama and Hiei glanced at each other. Some things could be suggested without any words, even telepathic ones.
Chalk up another stupid plan for the list, Hiei said wryly as they put their shoulders to the key point and shoved.
The building was old. Really old. That last push was all it took to tip the balance in gravity's favor—and the Reikai Tantei's. Fenell, taken by surprise as his headquarters began to give way, was not as quick as he should have been to modify his shield-cloak.
Yusuke really was becoming a good shot. He blasted the controller right out of Fenell's hand, and if a couple of the spirit being's fingers got scorched in the process, there really were bigger things going on. A well-aimed blow from Kuwabara's Spirit Sword eliminated the shield-cloak forever; without the controller, as of very recently a useless lump of fused metal and relays, the cloak would quite clearly not function.
Perhaps one of Yusuke or Kuwabara's blows had connected; in any case, by the time Fenell began to make his way to a way out—although at that point, he could have just walked through the wall at any number of points—he was far too late to escape the avalanche of rotted timbers that came cascading down on top of him.
Author's Note: Wow! Look! I wrote a combat scene! Where did this (adjective at your discretion!) scene come from? As of this chapter, I'm discontinuing review replies. However, I should tell you that this is your last chance to ask questions—any questions! If I've left any plot holes, tell me! I'll patch them, or at least patch the lack of a patch. (What?) I hate plot holes. The last chapter should be ready right before or just after the New Year.
Happy holidays to all.
Glory to God in the highest/and peace to his people on Earth.