Mizuhi woke up slowly; opening her eyes sluggishly. She wasn't a morning person, if it wasn't obvious yet. When she'd woken up, she turned her head towards the window seat and immediately sat up. Hiei was missing. "What the..." she said, before hearing something downstairs. She got up and changed out of her black flannel pants and dark orange t-shirt that served as her pajamas into baggy black jeans and a semi-tight dark blue t-shirt that said 'We can't all be morning people...' on it. She put her shark tooth necklace and a blue and white bracelet her friend had made for her on, then as a final touch, dashed on a tad of smoky grey eyeliner. She quickly brushed her hair and walked downstairs.

"Yo!" she called out to downstairs. "Anyone here?" She heard something like swords clashing outside and went to the backdoor. She peeked out the crack in the blue curtains and saw that Kuwabara, Yusuke, Kurama, and Hiei were all outside. Hiei and Kuwabara were having a sword fight, but Kuwabara was fighting with his Spirit Sword. 'So the idiot has talent, eh?' she thought. Hiei glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw her. He knocked Kuwabara down, almost breaking a sweat.

"Heh," he muttered, "I win."

"Damn you, Shorty!" yelled Kuwabara, nursing his back, which he fallen flat on when he fell over.

"Hmm," Kurama observed. "He's getting better. You're almost panting, Hiei."

"Tch," Hiei replied. "He is not getting better. She," he said, pointing as Mizuhi's innocent face peeking through the screen door, "distracted me. She threw me off guard, so I wasn't prepared to knock this baka over." He said the last part ignoring Kuwabara's growl.

Mizuhi made herself better known by walking out of the door and into the open, squinting at the bright sunlight. "Well excuse me for distracting you."

"I'm not arguing with you today."

"What!" Hiei was acting strange. 'Not arguing with me today?' she thought quickly and guarded from Hiei, 'What's wrong with him? Has he gotten fed up with arguing already?'

"Yes I have. And I've also gotten better at reading your mind. You're not guarding well this morning. I guess your shirt speaks the truth," he said, smirking.

Mizuhi ignored him and turned to Yusuke. "What're you doing?"

"We're just having skirmishes. Ya know, practicing."

"For what?"

"For...well...the next demon that might attack. Especially with that whole thing about them trying to get at your power now. We need to stay in tip top shape."

"Mind if I join?"

"You?" he said, laughing. "We'd cream you!" Mizuhi punched him in his arm.

"I bet you can't!"

"Fine. You can fight Kuwabara."

"Kuwabara! But he's the weakest out all of you!"

"It's either him or nothing."

Mizuhi growled, then went over to the makeshift battlefield. 'I'll make this quick to show them my speed...' she thought to herself, getting into a fighting stance. 'I'll win this one without my powers, maybe my karate lessons paid off...' Recently she'd been attending karate lessons; she'd started about three months ago, and she was pretty good.

Kuwabara got into a completely different stance. He smirked and said, "Don't expect me to go easy on you."

"I wouldn't want you to, cause I'm not going easy on you either."

"Ready!" yelled Kurama, apparently the judge, "Set...GO!"

Mizuhi charged at Kuwabara, lunging low so she could get at his stomach, but right before her right fist made contact, Kuwabara grabbed it and swung her around his head a few times before slamming her into the ground. Mizuhi had the wind knocked out of her for a moment, then recovered, hopping from foot to foot to warm herself up.

"You all right?" asked Kuwabara, somewhat concerned. "Didn't mean to go that hard..."

"That was perfect," she said, spitting out a bit of blood that she had in her mouth, "I was just warming up."

She lunged again, but this time high and dodging his grabbing hand this time and managed to land a fist on his gut, but he threw her ten feet away when she'd barely made contact. "Dang it!" she yelled in frustration after slowly getting up.

"And you thought you could take us on?" Yusuke asked, motioning to Kurama, Hiei, and himself.

"I'm not done yet!" she hollered before concentrating on the fight once again. She didn't lunge or jump or anything this time; she was going on the defensive this round. Kuwabara immediately jumped high in the air and attempted to crash down on her, but she jumped out of the way just in time, and Kuwabara crashed to the ground, nearly breaking his arm.

"Damn!" Mizuhi heard Kuwabara mutter with gritted teeth. She smirked and got into a defensive position again, waiting for him to make his move. He slowly got up, cradling his left arm.

"Did he break it?" Yusuke asked to Kurama.

"No...but he came close. He won't be able to use that attack again. At least not in this battle."

'So he can't attack with that anymore? Good, that was hard for me to dodge, and I nearly lost my footing...' Mizuhi was thinking to herself, as Kuwabara was getting ready.

Kuwabara dashed at her and she held her arms defensively. He let loose an onslaught of punches, but she withstood them all...barely. When he stopped for a moment, she ducked down and kicked at his ankles, causing him to fall over, hurting his back. She jumped on him one last time to make sure he was down and left one foot on his chest, but her weight on her other foot.

When he only grunted in pain, but stayed down, she grinned. "See?" she said to the others, "It wasn't finished, but now it is." She observed the remaining challengers, Hiei, Kurama and Yusuke. "Now," she said, pointing a triumphant finger at Hiei, "I wanna fight you!"

Hiei pointed blankly to himself. "Me? Why me? Why not Yusuke?"

"'Cause I wanna try fighting you. Plus, your aura's much more interesting that his."

"Hey!" yelled Yusuke in defiance.

"Shut yer trap," Mizuhi said, glaring at him, then turning back to Hiei. "Well, do you agree to my challenge or no?"

"I'll fight you," he replied lazily.

'Thank God he didn't do his 'I won't go easy on you' thing that Kuwabara did. I HATE it when people underestimate me like that!' Mizuhi thought, walking over to the makeshift battlefield. Sure, she'd barely won her match with Kuwabara, but like she'd said, she was just getting warmed up.

"Get ready," Hiei said, drawing his sword. Mizuhi could tell he was holding back.

"Don't go easy on me!" she yelled, snarling like some enraged lion.

Hiei blinked in surprise, then laughed. "I wasn't planning on it." She sensed his held back behavior lift.

'Good,' she thought. 'I want this to be a good, fair fight. I just hope I don't make a fool of myself...'

She held up her hands defensively. Hiei crouched slightly, then disappeared. Mizuhi blinked and looked right, left, down, then up. She saw him flying high in the air; sword pointed down. She rolled out of the way, but the sword had nipped her right shoulder.

"Dang," she muttered under her breath, holding her shoulder.

She lunged at him before he had time to recover, but he disappeared again. 'Alright,' she thought, 'He's a little faster than me. Okay, much faster than me, but I can still win this...if I can only—' Her thoughts were cut off by the hilt of a sword being slammed into her back. She had the air knocked out of her and she fell flat on her face, still too surprised to move.

She got up quickly and got into a defensive position. She saw Hiei standing holding his sword loosely. "Your guard is horrible," he said sneeringly. Mizuhi growled and stood her ground in her defensive position. Hiei disappeared and Mizuhi looked everywhere around her, finding nothing.

Mizuhi suddenly heard an icy voice in her ear. "You lose." She then felt a light tap on the back of her head and blinked a few times, confused at the weird sensation, then blacked out.