Disclaimer: See prologue.

Notes: As a celebration for my finals coming to an end, I decided I would post this early. Because I'm very happy for summer. And I thought the 'pheromone' stuff was pretty clear in this part, but if it's really confusing, let me know.

Warnings: Some violence. Some almost Shounen ai.

Onward!

Chapter 3

By the time I got to the door I understood Kuwabara's need to vomit. The nausea was not caused by the pheromone. The only power that held over us was that it made the victim extraordinarily submissive. Needless to say, that was not something to which I was accustomed. No one made me do anything I didn't want to do. Not even Shiori had that kind of power over me. (As you might imagine, I was a monster of a child. I still am baffled as to why she did not kick me out on my butt years ago.) So the need to be sick came from the awareness that I was moments away from submitting completely. If that happened, even to the extent that I sat back and let him beat the crud out of me, I thought I just might go insane. I swore to myself I would never allow it.

I really did not know what to do once I got to the door. It was an imposing thing, that scrap of wood that stood between me and my target. It would have been nothing to knock it down. But so help me, I did not want to go any further. How many years ago was it that I would have said 'to hell with the girl' and left? Not that many, come to think on it. Five. Six. Maybe eight. Before that I never sacrificed myself for anyone. I was like Hiei, only looking out for number one. But now, I could not live with myself if I walked away only to open the paper the next morning and discover a girl had been brutally raped and murdered. Guilt has got to be one of the worst forces in this universe.

The big problem came with the unknown in this situation. I did not know if Kitagawa had attacked the girl. I did not know if I would simply rush in and find them chatting over a cup of tea. If I had been in my right mind earlier I might have thought to look through the window before I rushed over here. But my brain was in such a state of denial that I doubt I would have recognized the situation for what it was had I looked. So I took my life in my hands and decided to go for the Yusuke method—that is, to haphazardly walk into the situation and see if I can't get myself killed in the process.

I knocked on the door.

The thought of Kitagawa actually interrupting himself and answering a knock was ludicrous. But chalk one up for stupidity because he did just that. The door opened, and I looked up into Kitagawa's bland face. He was as boring to look upon as his life was to observe. Brown hair, brown eyes, average height—just a little taller than I was—and average build. While he was by no means ugly, he was not particularly good looking. You might pass him on the street and never realize he was there. I had to give him credit for his success in fully integrating himself into human society in this way. Who would suspect a guy who looked like the average Japanese citizen of being a demon? Even his demonic features were somewhat human, save for an odd thickening of his lower body, but even that could be written off as someone who was bottom-heavy.

"What do you want?" Kitagawa asked irritably. I said the first thing that came to mind.

"Are you Kentaro?" Where on Earth had that come from? I nearly smacked myself for that one.

"No."

"Oh." I tilted my head to look around him, but he shifted to the side to block my view. Blinking to clear my head, which was rapidly fogging again, I asked, "Is he here?"

"No."

"Oh." This was not working. I had to get into his house somehow. "Well can I wait inside until he gets here?" Right. So I never was very good at talking my way in. I usually avoided that part. Knock out the guards or avoid them completely. I hated schmoozing.

"Look kid," Kitagawa glared at me. I think he was suspicious. For all intents and purposes, I should have been on my knees at his feet. That I was standing there as if nothing was wrong was probably a warning bell to him. "I don't know who Kentaro is, or what you want, but you need to get out of here."

"Are you sure?" I did a few interesting maneuvers to look around him with only minor success. At least I caught a glimpse of the girl. She was on the floor—not much clothes on—and holding her throat. There were any number of reasons she could have been doing that, but I had to assume foul play. I looked at Kitagawa again. He was not a happy demon, scowling at me in what he probably thought was an intimidating manner. "I could have sworn this was the address. Kentaro never lies, you know—"

I hit him. I had been right about his strength. He was a pushover. I'm not big on attacking with my fists. I usually end up with my face in the dirt if I try it. But Kitagawa collapsed to the floor holding his jaw. I shook my hand out, cursing the pain that came with punching a man at the joints like that. Bone on bone always hurt, even if I was the one doing the punching.

He sat up, rubbing his face and glaring at me.

"Ow!" he announced indignantly. As if to ask how dare I hit him. "That was uncalled for!"

I glanced over at the girl. She was looking at me in an utter daze, still holding her throat. The skin of her neck was already bruising, deep red marks forming as if he had tried to throttle her. Her face was wet, and she was still crying, but she made no move to get away. She was still caught in his spell.

My distraction cost me. Kitagawa was up again, fists flying to pay me back for that last blow. Not to pat my own back, but I did not fall when he hit my face. Staggering, blinking away stars, I sensed another punch coming and appropriately ducked. He stumbled from the miss, and I kicked him in the back as he tripped past me. He crashed into the table, his little television and computer accessories flying.

"You must really be desperate," I spat at him. I hated it when people hit me. "You have to force someone to be with you because no one wants you otherwise?"

He did not like that one. Shoving to his feet, he turned on me again, glaring murder. The taunting had been a mistake. The smart move would have been to grab the girl, however underdressed, and get the hell out. But I was not a fan of running from an enemy I should have been able to defeat. (Which if I had pulled out my rose and beheaded him right from the start, it would have been finished fast. You know what they say about hindsight.) So I was caught like the proverbial deer in the headlights when he slammed out more of that damned pheromone.

If you've ever taken a radio plugged into a wall socket and dumped it into a tub full of water and then watched the sparks fly and heard the radio station fizzle out with a blast of static, then you might have some inkling of what my head felt like at that moment. It explained why that girl was not running. She was obviously terrified and did not want to be there, but she could not move. I was vaguely aware of her screaming at the top of her very powerful lungs, which just went to prove how much he had to amp up his power to take out another demon. The human was not taking it well. I thought my head might just leap from my neck, thereby saving Kitagawa the trouble of cutting it off himself.

There was a distant awareness, the sense of someone grabbing the back of my neck and dragging me off the floor like I was some sort of animal. He shoved me back against the wall and said something. Of course, I was having a difficult time filtering out his words from the girl's screaming and the static in my head. He slammed me against the wall, and my head cleared. The girl's screams faded. Oh. The pheromone release was lowering. Thank god.

"What are you? Who sent you?"

I managed a groan. He shook me again, and I glared at him. He was awfully pushy for someone who was obviously accustomed to getting what he wanted just by asking. For lack of anything useful to say, I took a line from Kuwabara.

"What's it to you?"

He slammed me back against the wall again for that one. Fortunately he was not that strong, or it might have really hurt. His only real talent was that pheromone release.

"Don't be cheeky! You look human! How'd you disguise yourself to hide your demon side from me?"

I winced when I caught wind of his agitation. It seemed that anger and panic upped the dosage of that hormone. Hell of a powerful thing. And yet… I had smelled it before. It sounds disgusting, but I recognized it as surely as I would recognize Shiori's perfume. And I knew why Kitagawa was hiding in the Human World.

"I'm a special case," I retorted once my brain worked through an answer to his question. It took awhile longer than it should have, but at least I was not screaming my head off like that girl.

"Are you alone?" Kitagawa shook me again. "Who sent you?"

"Sent me?" As if I would just tell him. "Your stinking house drew enough attention."

"I don't believe you!"

"Why would I lie?" Why indeed? "I just don't like other demons moving in on my territory."

"You never cared before!"

Oops. How long had he lived here? Probably longer than I had been alive (as a human in any case). Funny thing about demons. They usually didn't age like humans did, even if they disguised themselves as one.

My brain went mush then. I was not even aware of him throwing me. The girl probably screamed, but I did not hear that either. That was one hell of a gift he possessed. My senses went haywire, my coordination completely lost. He might as well have been throwing a puppet around for all that I reacted. He then decided to send out an ungodly amount of that pheromone. Humiliatingly enough, I did scream then. It was not that it physically hurt. It didn't. It was just an invisible force, shoving down and stripping anyone in range of all their defenses. It was horrible. I never, never wanted to feel like that again.

It stopped abruptly. The flow died, and the remaining scent fell away as though sucked out of an airplane's open door into the atmosphere. My self-awareness returned, and I discovered I had been thrown, and that I was crunched up into a ball in the corner of the room. My lungs burned, and I recalled that nonstop screaming had the tendency to drain a person of much needed oxygen. A shadow fell over me, so I looked up and saw Hiei crouched beside me. His fingers went to my throat,but I was too tired to push him away.

"You okay?" he asked, finally pulling his hand away. I nodded quickly.

"Sure." It came a little breathless, but I was recovering. "Yeah, fine." He helped me sit up. "I am never doing that again."

Hiei smirked and let me use him as a guide to find my feet. I swayed a little once standing, then found my balance, and I was fine again. My head had cleared, and once that pheromone was gone, there was nothing to keep me down. I glanced over to see Kitagawa out cold, Yusuke bent over him with a skeptical look on his face. Kuwabara was helping the girl. Gentleman that he was, he had thrown his coat over her shoulders to cover her.

"What happened?"

"The detective got him," Hiei nodded toward Yusuke. "We had to wait until you were out of the shot, though."

"Better late than never," I murmured. "Is he dead?"

"Does it matter?" Hiei snorted. "The Spirit World will take care of him if he's not."

That was good enough for me. The Spirit World was known for their ungodly long punishments. Kitagawa would be a long time in returning to this world.

"Kurama!" Yusuke found his way over to us, looking worried. There was a sense of déjà vu when he asked, "You okay?"

"Fine." It was kind of nice having people worried about me. Almost nice enough that I did not find it annoying. "You came right on time."

"No kidding," Yusuke laughed, sounding nervous. "I thought we were going to have to drag you into the hospital. You sure you're okay?"

He grabbed my arm as if to steady me. Compared to the solidness of his hand, I was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. Damn him. I never would have noticed that had he not pointed it out. It was the lagging effects of what Kitagawa had done to me. Come to think of it, Kuwabara still looked pretty pale, and he had not faced Kitagawa up close. Yusuke probably shot Kitagawa with his Spirit Gun from outside the house.

"I'll be fine," I assured him, but I let him drag my arm over his shoulders. "What about Kitagawa?"

"He's not going anywhere," Yusuke replied confidently. The demon was dead, I concluded. "Kuwabara's taking the girl home. I think you should go home too."

"As long as we're out of this filthy place," I agreed lightly. Hiei was there helping Yusuke, much to my surprise. He slipped in closer than I expected, his arm around my waist, and let me lean on his shoulder. "You know, I recognized that scent."

"It's sold on the underground," Hiei explained. "Slave owners buy it."

"Mm," I remembered that. They sold it in little cologne bottles. And I remembered where they got the scent. "Bounty hunters kill demons like Kitagawa to harvest their glands."

"Ew," Yusuke concluded. "That's seriously gross. And he used that against you? It hurt?"

"Let's just say that next time I run into a demon like him I'll kill first and ask questions later," I retorted. I really did not want to answer that question. Yusuke did not need to know.

"Right…" Yusuke probably thought I was full of it. But that hardly mattered. "Hey, let's rest here a minute. You're shaking like crazy, Kurama."

I mentally thanked him for announcing it for all to hear. Still, I was not adverse to sitting, so I let them push me onto the park bench. Yusuke bounced around nervously for a few seconds, then decided he could not sit still.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," he announced. He shoved Hiei onto the bench next to me. "Make sure no one attacks him when he's all weak—"

"Hey!" I resented that remark. I was not weak.

"Take care of him, you know?" Yusuke continued right over my protest. He clapped a friendly hand against Hiei's shoulder, and ran off somewhere.

"Where is he going?" You had to admit, that retreat was awfully suspicious. Somehow, Yusuke must have sensed something I could not. That ticked me off for some reason. Yes, I knew Yusuke was more powerful, but it was not his place to coddle me. I could hold my own well enough, thank you.

"Who knows," Hiei shrugged, not caring at all. He grabbed my wrist and felt the pulse, apparently thinking I was going to keel over right there. "You should have been more careful. I keep telling you not to play with your opponents like that."

"I really don't need you lecturing me on my fighting technique, Hiei," I grumbled, not at all appreciative of his words. Who was he to tell me how to survive? I had survived quite a long time without his help. In a roundabout way, if not for him, I probably would not have been in this situation in the first place, so it really was none of his business.

"I just don't like seeing you hurt, Kurama."

Oookay. That was just a strange comment coming from Hiei. I squinted sideways at him, wondering if perhaps he had been affected by Kitagawa's pheromones. He looked fine. A little nervous, but fine.

"I'm fine, Hiei," I said after awhile. "He didn't really hurt me."

Pissed me off. Made me want to rip his throat out for daring assume he could make me cower before him. But no, he did not injure me.

"You should have waited for us."

"He was going to hurt that girl, Hiei," I snapped. The little prick was lecturing me! "What would you have done?"

"Cut his head off."

"I didn't know if he—"

"You knew."

"Look!" I twisted in my seat to glare at him. "You weren't there. Kuwabara couldn't handle it, so I did what I thought I had to do."

"You could have been killed!"

"I could be hit by a truck and be killed tomorrow, Hiei," I snapped. "What does it matter? I wasn't killed, okay? I'm alive and glad to be that way still. I don't need you telling me—"

"I'll tell you anything I want, fox." He was on his feet and visibly agitated. "You're mine, and I won't let—"

"I beg your pardon?" I sat straighter and stared at him incredulously. Had he just said what I thought he said? That pompous little…!

"You heard me, fox," Hiei grabbed my arms as if he thought he could force me back. He had made a lot of mistakes in the past, but this one was a whammy. And would he ever learn! "I won't let your—"

I broke his grip and shoved him back hard. He staggered a few steps—he's a heck of a lot stronger than Kitagawa was—and looked surprised when I stood to glower at him.

"Think carefully before you finish that, Hiei," I cautioned quietly. "Think really hard." He remained silent. Smart boy. "I belong to no one, Hiei. Not you, not Kitagawa, not anyone." He blinked a few times, probably realizing his mistake. "I don't know where you get off thinking you have any ownership over me or anyone else, but you'd better reevaluate your line of thinking."

That said, I turned to leave. This was grating on me. Especially after what Kitagawa had just done, I really did not need this.

"Kurama, wait—" He reached for my arm.

"Don't touch me," I growled at him. He yanked his hand away and watched me leave with a dumbfounded, open-mouthed gape. The little bastard had brought this on himself, so I felt no sympathy whatsoever. I did not expect anyone to have sympathy for me should I suffer for my mistakes, so I did not feel particularly bad about offering none to others in the same situation. There were more than a few guys at school who hated me for that. Girls… well, they were in another world entirely, so I really did not know what they thought.

And suddenly, it clicked. His behavior when he and Yusuke took their shift that morning and his awkwardness in our previous encounters. I stopped, unable to walk any further.

Was he… was he courting me?

I looked back at him. He was watching me still. He looked as if he had just eaten something extremely sour. Not far behind him, "hiding" behind a tree, I saw Yusuke. The boy smacked a hand to his face and hung his head. Were they all in on it? Yusuke had been making notes before—advice to Hiei? What was this! Some sort of colossal joke? A game? Let's see how much we can screw with Kurama's head?

Son of a—! Dazed and not a little angry, I continued on my way. I needed a bath after being thrown around Kitagawa's filthy house, not to mention a relaxing soak to ease my tension. If I had to think much more on Hiei's sudden display of territoriality, I felt I might explode. If he was serious about this—which I hoped he was, or only a divine act would save him—he needed to learn a few things before he continued. Because if he showed up on my doorstep with a ball and chain of any form in hand, I was going to make him regret it.

TBC…

Notes: Something I might mention, Kitagawa has no particular significance as a name. I just slapped together a couple Japanese words I knew and threw in a common first name. (If you want to know, Kitagawa is North River by the kanji. I did actually take advantage of this later in the story as you'll find out.)

Well, I was going to make this longer, but I decided the section did not fit very well with this chapter, so I shoved it into the next chapter. I hope no one minds.