Mizuhi came to hearing some scraping noise. She opened her eyes and found herself in a black room. She looked around and saw that there were the familiar blue dragon and silver wolf on her walls and she calmed down. Apparently her house was safe again, allowing her to come back. She sighed in relief that she hadn't been blinded by bright pink walls like in Keiko's house. She looked around, trying to find the source of the scraping sound and found Hiei sharpening his sword in her black beanbag chair next to the window. Unfortunately, she hadn't been able to get a window seat, but her humongous bean bag chair just about made up for it. Hiei looked up from his sharpening when she woke.
"Sorry," he quietly muttered.
Mizuhi was surprised. "What for? Why should you be sorry—" Then she remembered yesterday. "Well...it was my fault. I let my guard down. It wasn't yours!"
"I know, but I didn't have to resort to the pressure point on the back of your head to win. It was cheap, and I can do better than that. I barely got to use my sword at all. I'm almost apologizing to myself for being a cheap skate."
Mizuhi was silent for a minute, and then got up. She was still in her outfit from yesterday. She looked at the clock and saw that it was only 3 A.M. She shrugged in her mind and went downstairs to her computer. It didn't work. She smelled a slight smell of booze on the keys of her desktop's keyboard. "Yusuke..." she growled, then stomped upstairs. She was still slightly mad at herself for letting Hiei beat her. 'Kurama must be worse than Hiei, otherwise I would've beaten him...I think...' she thought, walking towards the guest room in which she thought Yusuke was in. He was. She walked over to his futon and knelt beside him.
'What should I do...' she thought, going through a mental list of silent tortures she could make Yusuke endure in her sleep. She'd been reading his mind, and found out that some of the guys had a party last night and they'd spilled booze on her keyboard, and after a moment of staring horrorstruck at it, ignored it altogether. 'Maybe I should just make him pay two times the amount for a new one...Ahah!'
She quickly ran and got a bucket of warm water. She ran back and dipped Yusuke's left hand into it, smiling at the puddle that appeared halfway down the sheet. She quietly laughed evilly, then snuck back out and back into her room, still snickering.
She sat down outside the doorway to his room so he couldn't see her, but she could hear him. She heard a stirring, then a growl of, "What the..." She grinned wide...like the Cheshire cat.
"MIZUHIIIIIIII!"
She burst out laughing, rolling on the floor to stop herself from falling over. Yusuke almost tripped over her in his hurry to kill her. He glared at her and hollered, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO, MIZUHI?"
She couldn't hear him over her bouts of laughter. He kicked her hard in her side, bringing her to her senses. "Ow..." she muttered, but didn't yell back, knowing she deserved it.
"What...did...you...DO?" he shouted angrily. Hiei had come to her doorway now, watching the act from the safety of her room.
"Oh...just the trick of your hand in the water," she said, still grinning like an evil cat.
Yusuke raised his fist, about to give Mizuhi what was proper, but Kurama appeared out of nowhere between them and held Yusuke's hand back.
"Kurama!" yelled an annoyed Yusuke, "I was about to...uh...discipline your sister. Or do you want to do it?"
"You won't be doing any fighting inside my household," Kurama growled, with unusually cold eyes glaring into Yusuke's. Yusuke shrunk back and lowered his fist. "Now," started Kurama, "apologize. Both of you."
"I'm sorry," Mizuhi said politely, bowing like she'd done nothing at all.
"Why you—" started Yusuke, but bent over into a bow (even though it was Kurama pushing hard on his back that made him bend over) and muttered, "Fine then, sorry."
"Okay, now why did you do that trick to Yusuke, Mizuhi?" asked Kurama, then peacemaker between the two.
"He and his jerk-off friends spilled booze on my laptop!" she yelled, the fire she'd had while arguing returning and coloring her eyes a greenish red.
"It's not our fault it was lying there out in the open!"
"Hello? The sign on the front of the door says, 'No Booze Allowed!'" she yelled back.
Yusuke flinched. He wasn't expecting her to have brought that up, even though it related directly to their feud. "Uh..." he said unsurely.
"Yusuke, did you do this? Did you bring booze into the house while knowing it's against the rules?" asked Kurama.
'Yes, yes, YES! He's SO getting what he deserves!' thought Mizuhi joyfully.
Yusuke hung his head and muttered, "Yes..."
"Can you fix computers?"
"I can't even pass all my classes in school! You think I could fix a computer!"
"It's okay, Kurama," Mizuhi said, "I just wanted to see him squirm under your grilling eyes. I can fix it. I was blowing it all out of proportion." She turned to Yusuke and said, "Yusuke, I deserve to be knocked out. Please do the honors."
Yusuke grinned and said, "Gladly!" He was about to punch her, and Kurama was about to stop him, but right before he made contact, Mizuhi dodged and ran out the back door as fast as she could. Today wasn't the day Mizuhi would get k.o.'d by Yusuke Urameshi.
She took a breath of fresh air and flopped down on the grass. Suddenly her right arm burned. The same commanding voice that spoke to her the last time she was in this state talked to her again. 'Mizuhi, get up.'
'Wh...why?' muttered Mizuhi, grunting through the pain. 'Are they...'
'Yes, they're coming for you again.'
'Why?'
'You know the answer,' he scolded, but sounded concerned as well. 'Now get up! They're almost—' but her guardian didn't get to finish before a tall, pale boy appeared out of nowhere and walked over next to where Mizuhi was lying.
'Guardian? Guardian! Why aren't you talking anymore?' Mizuhi cried out desperately in her mind, but to no avail. The boy smirked, flicking his purple hair out of his eyes. (Inu-Freak: Yes, this is a character semi-based off Yuki from Fruits Basket, but he won't be here for long.)
"Are you the one they call Mizuhi?" the boy asked with his soft, kindly voice. He smiled reassuringly enough, but Mizuhi was still worried. She tried to get up to talk to him face to face, but found herself bound to the ground by some invisible net.
'Darn it!' she yelled at herself, 'You let your guard down, idiot! Baka baka baka!'
"W-why?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking as much as possible.
"Oh, no reason, he said, turning his back to her abruptly. She could feel the 'net' lift, and immediately jumped up. Her right arm burned, and she looked down and saw a small flame, and in the flame, she saw an image. The image showed Hiei trying to get out the back door, but it had been permanently sealed. She looked at the back door, and sure enough, Hiei was standing there, banging on the glass, even though she couldn't hear or sense a thing.
The boy turned his head to look at her again, and smirked in his kind, yet evil way. I see you've realized that this backyard's been covered with a shield, correct? You don't seem like the smartest one though, so I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't figure it out. Looks like your little bodyguard can't protect you. Maybe you should get RID of hi—"
Mizuhi dashed over to him as quick as she could and held him by the front of his shirt and raised him a few inches off the ground. With blood red eyes, she growled, "Don't ever talk bad about my friends. Not Kurama, not Yusuke, not even Kuwabara! And especially," she levitated, lifting both of them a little higher, eventually where they were three feet off the ground, "NOT HIEI!" And with that, she threw the boy to the ground with a satisfying crash. She fell almost as quickly and landed shakily on her feet. She was shuddering all over—she hadn't used that much power for a while. The boy stood up calmly and brushed himself off.
"Were you expecting that to hurt¸ Mizuhi-chan?" he said, sickly-sweetly.
"Graaah!" she hollered before leaping at him aerially. Right when she nearly made contact, he held up his and hand and held her where she was flying at him. She fell to the ground and he put his foot on her head, pushing on it slightly.
"Now that isn't any way to treat your husband-to-be, now is it, my dear?"
"Husband!" she screamed, and pushed up as hard as she could, but only endingup in the same state as before.
"Yes; husband," he said, leaning as far down to her ear as he could without letting up with his foot. "You will marry me to save your little friends' lives, won't you?"
Mizuhi looked frantically with crazed eyes at the back door again and saw Kurama on the floor, cringing. Hiei was on one knee, obviously in pain. Mizuhi's anger flared and she pushed off the boy, finally. He stumbled back and regained his balance again.
"Heh. You're a fairly worthy opponent. My name's Hoshiro."
"I...will...NEVER marry you!" Mizuhi cried after regaining her breath. Her right arm burned again and she grasped it painfully.
'Mizuhi...hold out your hand towards Hoshiro.'
'Ung,' she grunted in pain, 'oh...okay...' She held out her hand and asked quickly, 'What now?'
'Utter the phrase, 'People of the flames, dance!''
"People of the flames...DANCE!" she yelled. A giant blue flame burst forth from her right arm and leapt immediately towards Hoshiro. He screamed and was engulfed in the flames.
After he'd been incinerated, Mizuhi's knees buckled and she collapsed. She held tight to what little consciousness she had and take a raspy breath.
'Good job, little one,' her guardian said.
She smiled inwardly and slowly closed her lids, feeling warm all over her body rather than just her arm. She relaxed in the comfort and lost consciousness.