Last Chapter: Back on the day of Shizuru's birthday/the Lure's first appearance, Shizuru, armed with her Chekhov's gun camera, joined her brother and Kurama to witness Hiei delve into Botan's illusionary world to bring her back to reality. The Lure showed its true face, but fled before it could be caught, leaving Kurama and Kuwabara cutting Botan from its web and Shizuru to have a small tet-a-tet with Hiei.
Chapter 27: In too Deep
"Wake up."
Shizuru sat up abruptly, sweating and breathing heavily. She hesitated, her mind in a fog of ignorance for one blissful moment before a sickening thought hit her hard: the Lure had escaped the day before, and it was still running rampant somewhere in her world.
She threw off her bedsheets and hurriedly got dressed, running downstairs. Her father joked with her about how she should at least take a comb through her hair before leaving the house, but she ignored him, running straight to the front door and throwing it open.
Outside, the sky appeared normal, but a creeping, sickening feeling made Shizuru walk down the garden path and the turn around. Behind the house, the horizon was black, and long, wavy tendrils of blackness stretched out towards her, coming to pointed ends directly above her house. She heard a little girl laugh and it sounded close. She looked about herself, a fresh sweat breaking out all over her body.
"Don't bother, Shizuru," the voice that had awoken her said.
"Damn you!" she cursed under her breath.
She turned on the spot several times, expecting to see the Lure somewhere nearby, despite knowing that the blackness on the horizon, the source of the tendrils, was where it really was. The apparent source, the area the Lure appeared to be, was difficult terrain to cross, but logic finally returned to Shizuru's mind and she ran back into the house, grabbing up the enormous, heavy camera her brother had given her the day before, running up to her brother's bedroom and bursting into the room.
"Shizuru!" Kuwabara wailed, diving underneath his bedsheets.
"Not now, Kazuma," she muttered, throwing down the camera and hurriedly switching on his television and video player.
She switched the television to the correct channel before turning to the camera again and pulling open the door at the side. In her haste, she snatched out the tape within without really paying attention to what she was looking at. The tape contained everything she had recorded the day before, and it might show a glimpse of the Lure as it fled, what form it had been in when it left, which path it had taken.
"What the hell is this?" she cried.
She held up the video cassette she had recovered from the camera, staring at it in utter disbelief.
"Kazuma?" she said.
The video cassette looked as though it would not fit into, let alone play on, the video player before her.
"Kazuma!" she yelled.
"What, Shizuru?" Kuwabara wailed, throwing off his bedsheets and sitting up. "Oh, yeah, you're gonna need an adaptor."
Shizuru sighed.
"An adaptor?" she asked.
"To watch the video," Kuwabara replied, as though she did not already know what the problem was. "I think you can get one at an electronics shop."
Shizuru threw down the tape and stood up, rounding on her brother.
"An adaptor?" she yelled at him.
"Yes!" he yelled back. "You need an adaptor to watch the video. The camera is from Russia, so it records onto Russian cassettes. You need an adaptor to be able to play them here in Japan."
Shizuru gave her brother a long, flat look, but he appeared not to realise how ridiculous he sounded, so she retrieved the cassette she had thrown down and took it over to him.
"This cassette is a damn triangle, Kazuma!" she shouted, brandishing the oddly-shaped video cassette in his face. "What the hell kind of adaptor is gonna let me watch this thing? A set square?"
"Maybe like two small triangles onto here to make it rectangle-shaped like a normal video cassette," Kuwabara said, making triangle shapes with his hands either side of the point at the top of the triangular cassette.
"Damn it, we need to see what's on here!" Shizuru groaned, throwing the cassette at her brother's chest.
He grunted and caught it awkwardly as it fell towards his lap.
"That thing is still out there somewhere," Shizuru said, moving to his window and throwing open the curtains.
His bedroom window overlooked the back of the house, affording her a disgusting view of the black mess in the sky.
"I think it's got another victim," she said quietly.
"You don't think Botan went back…?" Kuwabara began.
Shizuru clutched at the curtains.
"She's not that dumb," Kuwabara said. "And Koenma wouldn't just let her go back."
Shizuru felt a sickening feeling welling up inside of her.
"Call Yusuke," she said quietly. "And… Get me a fresh cassette for the camera."
She turned to look at her brother, who only hesitated momentarily before nodding his understanding and retrieving his communication mirror.
When Keiko pulled into the car park of a scenic public park, it almost seemed wrong: but the damp and cloying atmosphere Shizuru could feel, even from inside the car, combined with the fully blackened sky overhead, told her they were in the right place. She hoisted up her camera and switched it on, started recording, and followed Keiko, Yusuke and Kuwabara into the park.
"You should go home, Keiko," Yusuke said to his girlfriend.
"No way!" she protested. "Botan's my friend too!"
"It's dangerous here, you idiot!" Yusuke barked at her.
"I'm not leaving!" Keiko argued.
"Damn it…" Yusuke grumbled.
They rounded a row of bushes and came out onto a winding path. At the arc of the bend in the path was a long, low, stone bench: and Botan was suspended, encased in webbing, just above it.
"This park still has people in it."
"Kurama," Yusuke said as the fox demon joined them.
"I've been moving people along," Kurama explained. "They can't see it, they lack the spiritual awareness to see a demon and a spirit, but it's dangerous for them to stay here. We have to move quickly. I will continue to keep people away from here, but I will need help. Yusuke, Kuwabara, will you manage between you to cut her free?"
"Sure, how hard can it be?" Yusuke asked with a shrug.
"Um, it's pretty gnarly, Urameshi," Kuwabara said sadly.
"I'll help you clear the park," Keiko offered. "I want to help, but Yusuke won't let me get close to that thing, at least this way I am helping."
"And staying away from the danger," Yusuke added. "Yes, go!"
Keiko groaned and moved away with Kurama.
"You should stay back too, sis," Kuwabara advised Shizuru, looking directly into the camera as he spoke.
"I'm not in any danger," she flatly replied.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "I just meant stand back so you can get a good shot of me being heroic, so I can show Yukina later!"
"Damn it, Kuwabara, keep it in your pants!" Yusuke snapped.
"Shut-up, Urameshi!" Kuwabara snapped back.
"Okay so how do we get her out?" Yusuke asked, approaching Botan.
"Not like that…" Kuwabara muttered.
The Lure appeared from above Botan hissing and swiped its long, bladelike fingers at Yusuke, who narrowly leaned back out of the way.
"This thing ain't so tough!" he said with a smirk.
"Don't touch it!" Shizuru warned him.
"Why not?" he asked. "You wanna keep it as a pet? Stick it in a little terrarium and feed it your brain?"
"If you hurt the Lure, you hurt Botan," Shizuru reminded him.
"Oh, right, yeah," he agreed, stepping further back as the Lure crept down over Botan. "So what do we do?"
"We need Hiei."
Yusuke turned abruptly to Kuwabara.
"Gees, Kuwabara, never thought I'd hear you admit that," he said.
"Hiei can talk to Botan when she's like that," Kuwabara explained. "Last time he spoke to her and she started using her healing magic and the Lure backed off. Then we were able to cut Botan free."
"What exactly is it doing to her, anyway?" Yusuke asked.
"I dunno," Kuwabara admitted. "I think it like injects venom into her that makes her hallucinate and dream, and then it feeds off her dreams, or something. Alls I know is, the longer it holds onto her, the stronger it gets."
"Right," Yusuke said. "So… We need to find Hiei."
"Get out of my way."
Yusuke stepped back as Hiei marched past him, as though on cue.
"Nice timing, Hiei," Yusuke commented. "How did you know?"
"I watched her," Hiei replied. "I thought she might try to go back to it, so I kept watching her after…"
Hiei's voice trailed off and he turned fluidly, his eyes staring directly into the camera. He gave Shizuru a hard look, but she said nothing. She knew he was worried that she may have said something about their conversation the day before, or that she may comment on his latest remark about watching Botan, but she had done – and would do – neither. After a brief moment, he appeared to accept this, almost as though he had read her mind, and he turned back to Botan. In one smooth movement he swept off his scarf and cloak and approached her.
"You're wasting your time, Hiei," the Lure hissed at him. "You haven't even fully recovered from what I did to you yesterday."
"Huh?" Yusuke said.
"I put my finger right into that artificial eye of his," the Lure explained to Yusuke. "He's healed the other wounds I gave him, but not that one."
"It's nothing," Hiei said as he removed his bandana.
"You think you still have complete control over that false implant?" the Lure teased him.
"Yes," Hiei plainly replied.
Hiei took another step closer and the Lure shot out a finger, puncturing Hiei's shoulder. He staggered back a step, but recovered quickly, moving forward again, willingly impaling himself further onto the Lure's finger.
"What the hell is going on?" Yusuke asked. "Why did he just let that thing attack him?"
"If he hurts the Lure, he hurts Botan," Shizuru reminded him.
"Seriously?" Yusuke echoed. "So you expect me to stand here and watch that thing assault Hiei?"
"That was what we had to do last time, Urameshi," Kuwabara solemnly answered him.
Yusuke gave him an incredulous look, before shooting the same look at Shizuru. She nodded and he appeared to reluctantly accept his predicament. He grumbled a few choice curses against Koenma and Spirit World, but relaxed his stance, and so Shizuru turned her attention back to Hiei, who had managed to grab the webbing around Botan.
"Let me give you a "hand"," the Lure hissed.
It shot the remaining fingers of its hand into his torso and hoisted him up.
"Hn, idiot," Hiei cursed it. "You've merely hastened your own demise!"
"Touch me, and you lose the girl," the Lure answered, it's already disgustingly bulging eyes growing larger.
"I don't need to touch you," Hiei casually replied. "I can hurt you in other ways."
He grabbed the webbing either side of Botan's face to steady himself, the jolt causing splats of blood to fall from his puncture wounds. From the corner of her eye, Shizuru could see Yusuke getting agitated, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists so tightly, his knuckles were bright white against his taut skin. The physical manifestation of his frustration was almost reassuring to witness, as it succinctly expressed how Shizuru felt inside, watching on helplessly as Botan appeared to be having her very soul sucked out of her, being tortured mentally and emotionally, and Hiei was being tortured physically – and surely mentally, as it could not be easy for him to willing let a creature so much weaker than he was assault him the way the Lure did.
Every one of the Lure's jagged teeth became visible as it hissed, its lips peeling back, in apparent response to what Hiei was doing, as Botan's face was starting to twitch, as it did when Hiei somehow managed to bridge the gap between them psychically.
"Why did you go back to the Lure?" he asked her, his voice in that even, controlled tone that defied his physical state of distress. "Everything that wastrel showed you was false. Why would you pursue something that is false?"
The Lure hissed and pushed its fingers into Hiei until it could push no further, but, other than swaying slightly with the pressure and shedding more blood, Hiei did not respond.
"Are you listening to me, woman?" he asked, his tone a little more abrupt.
Botan made a small movement of her head that could have been anything. Hiei reaffirmed his grip of the webbing around her face and pulled himself closer to her, one knee bumping into the webbing over her legs – and even that small mishap did not go unpunished, as the familiar purple flare of demonic energy surged around the point of contact, and Hiei's knee came away smoking. To Shizuru's surprise, despite Hiei having been the one to have been hurt by the action, he mumbled something to Botan that sounded strangely like "apologies" – which was not something she had expected to hear from him under any circumstances, least of all his current one.
"Why did you go back to the Lure?" he asked again.
"I just wanted to ask it a question," Botan finally answered him, her voice sounding small and far away, but her words clear nonetheless.
"You had no need to consult with the Lure," Hiei answered her. "Kurama and I have plenty of experience of its kind. There is nothing you could need to ask of it that we couldn't have answered for you. Tell me why you really went back to it."
Shizuru cast her eyes to her right, where she saw Yusuke and her brother exchanging looks as surprised as she felt upon hearing Hiei tell Botan she should have asked him for advice.
"I-I never thought about asking you," Botan said, voicing the same thought everyone else listening was already having.
"You never do," Hiei quietly answered her.
"What?"
Botan spoke the question, but Shizuru, Yusuke and Kuwabara all mouthed it along with her.
"Never thought I'd hear Hiei invite the biggest mouth ever to come talk to him," Yusuke said to Kuwabara.
Hiei's top lip twitched and he made a small growling sound of irritation that was clearly directed at Yusuke's remark, despite his attention remaining focused on Botan.
"Why did you seek it out?" he pressed. "You literally went looking for it the moment you were back on your feet."
"I just…" Botan began. "I just needed to know why."
"Why what?"
"Why it showed me… One of the things that it did."
"There's something you covet that you need the Lure to provide for you?"
"No…"
"You never struck me as the type who needed anyone else to get what you want. You've never been backward at coming forward."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're terrible at keeping secrets. I'm certain if there was something you really wanted, everybody would know about it, and you being as stubborn as you are–"
"Hey now!"
"–you would surely be chasing after it already. So again, why did you go back to the Lure?"
Their conversation finally sounded a bit more like the sort of exchange the two usually shared – though Shizuru was beginning to suspect that the earlier part of their conversation, where Hiei had unusually told Botan she should have sought him out, really only confirmed what she had suspected to be the case the day before. Hiei managed to lean in a little closer to her, something Shizuru was sure he was doing in order to try to hide their conversation from the audience he had behind him. A glance at Yusuke and her brother told her they had yet to figure out what she had the day before – that Hiei's enthusiasm to sacrifice himself the way he was pointed to him having hidden feelings for Botan.
"When I heard a Lure was in the human world, I thought it might take Yusuke's woman to try to get to Yusuke," he continued, his voice quieter still. "Or that it might take Kurama's human mother to toy with him. I thought it might even go after Kuwabara."
"Hey!" Kuwabara protested.
Hiei narrowed his eyes and his top lip flickered, briefly flashing his teeth in what was, again, clearly a response to someone behind him, but, again, he kept his eye on Botan.
"It never even occurred to me that you would be the one to fall victim to the Lure," he eventually continued. "Lures target the emotionally weak. I never thought of you in that way."
Shizuru smiled to herself. Yusuke and Kuwabara still appeared to be clueless, but every word Hiei said merely reaffirmed to her that Hiei really did have feelings for Botan. As though sensing he may have given himself away, Hiei gulped and tried to correct his last statement.
"Not that I think of you," he said. "At all. Ever."
"Okay," Botan responded. "Thank you for clearing that up."
"Just tell me why you went back to it," he insisted. "If I know why, it will be easier for me to help you."
"Help me?"
"I'm trying to get you out of this."
Shizuru had been so caught up in the moment between Hiei and Botan, she – just like everyone else, Hiei included – had failed to notice the Lure readying its other hand. A mere moment after Hiei had spoken, the Lure thrust the fingers of its free hand into Hiei's Jagan Eye.
"Shit!" Yusuke blurted, starting towards Hiei.
"Yusuke, no!" Kurama shouted over to him. "Don't touch them!"
"What?" Yusuke echoed, turning to face Kurama.
"You can't do anything, Urameshi," Kuwabara told him. "We just have to wait for Hiei to draw her out of it."
Yusuke turned to him, searching his eyes desperately for any sign he might have been mistaken.
"I know it's hard to watch, but it's what we've gotta do," Kuwabara insisted.
"As soon as that thing lets them go, I'm gonna turn it into mincemeat," Yusuke growled, pointing a finger over his shoulder at the Lure.
The Lure laughed and Yusuke rounded on it, brandishing a fist in the air.
"I don't know what you're laughing at, you God-ugly son of a bitch!" he shouted at it. "I'm gonna make eat every one of those fingers you put in Hiei's body! And the fingers you put in his eye? I'm gonna shove them so far up your ass, you're gonna be farting over your own elbow!"
Kuwabara managed to get Yusuke to step back after his outburst, the two once more taking their place at Shizuru's side. It was hard to watch, but Shizuru felt more confident with Yusuke on hand: once Botan was free, Kuwabara and Kurama could free Botan, as they did before, and Yusuke could pursue the Lure and finally slay it.
Hiei had become so still and silent, it momentarily looked as though he was dead. The wounds he had sustained ought to have been enough to kill him, and as he was doing practically nothing to defend himself there was a chance he could perish at the hands of the Lure. Hiei being Hiei, Shizuru knew he would never have chosen to fall at the hands of a foe as weak and disgusting as the Lure, but again, that only made her all the more certain that he was enduring it so steadfastly because he cared about Botan. He was hanging limply, his hands still holding the webbing at either side of Botan's face, but his grip had clearly weakened. His head was drooped, but his eye, despite being punctured, was still looking directly at Botan.
After a long, silent, painful moment, something happened that almost made Shizuru drop the camera in shock. Botan's left hand suddenly burst out of the webbing and reached out to Hiei. Even the Lure looked shocked. Her initial reach was confident, but as she neared Hiei, her movements became tentative. Her fingers lightly touched Hiei's bare shoulder, fluttering there for a moment before moving forwards slightly, and resting her hand over the curve of his shoulder, her fingers pressing into him in a way that seemed to revive him as he grunted and lifted his head.
"Hiei?"
When she spoke his name Shizuru felt a pulse of something dark pass over her, something she would have been wary of long ago, but it was something she had come to recognise as Hiei's energy signal. He reached up his right hand and pulled her hand from his shoulder, attempting to pull her towards him: however her arm remained the only part of her that was free of the webbing, the rest of her body still firmly encased in position. Hiei growled in frustration and another surge of his energy washed over Shizuru.
"What is it that you needed from the Lure, woman?" he asked, his voice having clearly gained a grainy, impatient and faintly desperate edge to it.
"I just wanted to know why it kept showing me something," she replied.
"What?" Hiei insisted. "What did it show you that was so important you had to go back for more?"
"It showed me life."
Shizuru tilted her head to one side. She had heard Botan talk before about wanting to have a "life", about wishing she could have more days like her days off, when she got to be with her friends, but she had never heard Botan admit it to anyone other than her.
"I-I've never really felt alive before," Botan continued, sounding slightly sad, in a way she rarely did. "I've felt happy and sad, but the emotions I felt, the hope, the passion… I've never felt those feelings, never felt anything so intensely… I felt more alive when I was "hallucinating" than I did when Kurama woke me up and Kuwabara took me back to Spirit World!"
"Alive?" Hiei said quietly.
"I know it probably sounds stupid to you!" Botan cried with a burst of passion. "But it was everything to me! I just want to feel that way again! I just want to really… I just… I want to feel that way. I want to be that person. I want my life to matter. I want exciting things to happen to me, not just to other people around me. I want to be the hero of the story for once. I'm tired of watching life happen to other people, I want to live my own life."
"You don't need the Lure to make that happen," Hiei said, sounding surprisingly sympathetic.
"Yes I do," Botan said. "I do because one of the things I want in my life can only be possible in my imagination."
"You can have anything you want if you try hard enough," Hiei answered. "And you've never been one to give up on something just because it was difficult."
"This isn't a difficult thing, Hiei. This is an impossible thing."
"Hn, I never thought I'd hear you call anything impossible."
"You."
"…What?"
"It's you."
"What is?"
"You're impossible."
"What?"
"It's you, Hiei. I just wanted you. And the only way that can ever happen, is in my imagination."
Keiko gasped at Shizuru's shoulder. Shizuru nodded at her in acknowledgement, and Keiko mouthed out the question "did you know?" and Shizuru shook her head. She had heard Botan talk about Hiei, but it had always been in a stifled manner, as though talking about him made her feel uncomfortable, which Shizuru had put down to the ferry girl being afraid of the emiko who could, literally, reach into her mind at any time and scrutinise her every thought. She had never suspected that Botan actually had feelings for Hiei, and, in light of what she had deduced about Hiei's feelings for Botan, she had to wonder how Hiei felt hearing Botan admit that the one "desire" the Lure had shown her that was so tempting to her was in fact him.
"The Lure showed you me?" he asked, his voice so quiet it was barely above a whisper: probably in the hope that nobody else present would hear him.
"Yes," Botan replied, her voice as quiet as his. "It showed me a lot of things, but that – you – is the thing I think I want the most."
"You want me?" Hiei asked, the hint of surprise in his voice making the moment surprisingly touching to witness.
"Yes, I think I do."
Hiei grunted something Shizuru could tell Keiko and Kuwabara had not made out: but the look on Yusuke's face told her she had heard him correctly. He had clearly muttered out the words "why would you".
"But…" Botan continued. "That can't ever be a reality, can it? You couldn't ever… You wouldn't ever want to… We won't ever be… Right?"
Hiei was frozen in place, but this time it was clearly not because of anything the Lure had done to him.
"Right, Hiei?" Botan pressed.
"I…" he began, his voice still quiet.
"Hiei?" Botan said softly.
"I can't do this," Hiei said breathily.
He took a couple of audible, uneven breaths before speaking more clearly.
"I can't do this," he said again. "This… I can't do this!"
Yusuke cursed and he, Kuwabara and Shizuru all stumbled back a few steps as Hiei pushed himself back from Botan, sliding along the length of the Lure's fingers before dropping to the ground. He landed on his back, but was quickly on his feet – and, had he been more focused, that probably would have been how he had landed.
"Hiei, what the hell are you doing?" Yusuke asked.
"Yeah, you can't stop!" Kuwabara added.
"Get out of my way," Hiei growled, thumping past them.
"Hiei!" Yusuke shouted at him.
When Hiei did not answer, Yusuke turned to Kuwabara, and they exchanged exasperated looks.
"So what now?" Yusuke asked Kuwabara. "Can we kill that thing?"
Kuwabara looked up at Botan, watching as lengths of webbing reached out and wrapped around her freed arm, pulling it back down and into the cocoon of webbing the rest of her body was encased in.
"I don't think so," Kuwabara replied.
Yusuke and Kuwabara began debating the matter of just attacking the Lure, but Shizuru turned her attention to Hiei, who had stopped a little way away from them as Kurama had moved into his path.
"Keiko, could you mind the gate?" Kurama called over to Keiko.
"I gotta go," Keiko said to Shizuru.
"Good luck," Shizuru said to her.
Keiko nodded and ran off to take over blocking entry to the park as Kurama confronted Hiei. Shizuru took a few long, swift steps closer to them, just enough to make their words clearly audible, before stopping and turning the camera on them.
"Hiei, you were making good progress, why did you stop?" Kurama asked.
"I can't do this," Hiei ground out.
"I know this must be difficult for you," Kurama began. "I know the physical wounds you've suffered are nothing right now to the wounds your pride has suffered–"
"You don't know what you're talking about," Hiei cut him off.
"I do," Kurama replied. "During the Dark Tournament, I let a demon much weaker than I assault me because my step-brother's safety was at stake. I had a plan, I was luring him in, but Yoko Kurama would never have let something so weak assault him over the fate of a mere human. I know it can't be easy for you to let such a weak demon wound you so."
"This is hardly the same thing."
"You're feeling humiliated because an enemy much weaker than you is appearing to dominate you. It can't have been easy for you to walk into this knowing this would be the case, and, not only have you walked into it once, but you walked back into it again today."
"I know what I'm doing."
"Then why are you walking away?"
Hiei paused, his head lowering slightly.
"I see," Kurama concluded. "I understand you must be feeling–"
"Don't talk to me about "feelings"!" Hiei snapped, his head snapping back up so that he could glare at Kurama.
"The Lure will drain all energy from her, and she will be left a husk, with barely a trace of her soul left in her body," Kurama said harshly. "If you would rather that than deal with your own inability to process your "feelings" then please, continue on your way."
Kurama stepped aside and held out an arm to indicate that Hiei should pass him. Hiei stayed where he was and a protracted, silent moment passed before he turned his head to look directly at Kurama again.
"Give me something to heal this," he said. "And make it quick."
Kurama nodded and Hiei started back towards the group. Shizuru quickly turned back towards Botan, but Hiei stopped at her side.
"You'll keep your mouth shut, if you know what's good for you," Hiei warned her.
"Didn't say a word," she casually replied.
"Yet," Hiei growled, continuing past her to Kuwabara and Yusuke.
Shizuru took the opportunity to follow him back to her original position, feeling confident that his threat was an empty one.
"Changed your mind?" Yusuke asked Hiei.
"Shut-up, Yusuke," Hiei grumbled.
"So, uh, was that just some weird thing with the Lure, or did Botan say the thing she wants most of all is you?" Kuwabara asked Hiei.
"Why don't you mind your own business?" Hiei snarled at him. "The only use you serve is as a human slave to Yukina, and if she ever tires of you, I will kill you."
"Nice to see it's not affecting your mood at all, Hiei," Yusuke said with a smirk.
"Why don't you worry about making a fool of yourself for that human woman some more," Hiei shot back.
Yusuke shrugged.
"At least I'm getting some," he muttered.
"At what expense?" Hiei retaliated. "I've seen the absurd nonsense you do to please her. The ridiculous errands you run for her, degrading yourself publicly, humiliating yourself – and everyone else who has to witness it – just because she asks you to. It's pathetic. It's disgusting."
"It's also kinda what being with a girl is like sometimes, Hiei," Yusuke replied. "Sometimes you gotta go that extra mile to get some puss."
Yusuke put a hand on Hiei's shoulder, but Hiei immediately shrugged him off.
"I would never humiliate myself the way you do," he sneered. "Sitting around while she buys dresses, going to watch stupid, false, human movies that make her cry – it's disgusting!"
"Watching romantic movies with a girl isn't disgusting, Hiei," Kuwabara interjected.
"See Hiei?" Yusuke said, grinning at the irate fire demon. "Even Kuwabara knows sometimes you gotta submit to get that clit."
Hiei's back straightened and energy began visibly flaring around him.
"Urameshi!" Kuwabara squealed, the colour of his face confirming what everybody already knew about the status of his relationship with Yukina.
"Okay big guy, now how about you put that energy to good use and get Botan back?" Yusuke said to Hiei.
Hiei snatched the leaves Kurama was holding out towards him and stuffed them into his mouth, angrily chewing them up. He then marched back over towards Botan and grabbed at the webbing around her, hoisting himself up again.
"Kurama," Shizuru whispered as the fox demon made to leave again.
She had spoken softly, but she knew he would hear her with his heightened sense of hearing. He nodded and came to her side, leaning towards her, seeming to understand that she wanted to talk exclusively to him.
"What did you just give him?" she asked.
"A handful of dandelion leaves," Kurama replied.
"That's what I thought," Shizuru said. "And the point of that was…?"
"A placebo, yes," he admitted. "We don't have the luxury of time required for me to create anything that could heal him right now. And besides, I knew there were other, more effective, ways to motivate him back into the fray."
Kurama turned to look pointedly at Yusuke and Shizuru smiled and nodded.
"Good call," she said.
Kurama nodded and headed back towards the park gates to help Keiko keep the public out. Shizuru turned back to Hiei, surprised to find that the Lure was not attacking him, rather it was simply hovering over him, watching him with an unsettlingly wide grin. Hiei gripped into the webbing either side of Botan's face – which was continuing to repel him, to blacken his skin on contact – and pulled himself closer to her.
"You know they say the best lie is based largely on the truth," he said, sounding almost unnaturally calm and controlled after how he had sounded only moments earlier. "I suppose you think this seems normal? It's almost mundane. But I suppose that's how it gets you."
The Lure's grin widened – something that had seemed impossible but happened regardless – and Shizuru began to grow apprehensive that it was either planning something sinister or it knew something vital that Hiei did not. As Yusuke breathed out a curse, Shizuru noticed a shadow stretching across the ground. She looked up to see its source, tensing as she saw the Lure pressing all of its long, spiny black fingers together, to form a thick spear, which it then thrust into one of Hiei's shoulders. He was jolted back from the force of the impact, pausing there for a moment before forcing himself back, impaling his shoulder to the hilt of the Lure's hand. The Lure sneered and hissed at him but he smiled at it, his lips parting to show his teeth: which also revealed the extent of his injury, as blood trickled down the sides of his mouth.
"This isn't fun for me," he said, the movement of his lips as he spoke smearing blood over his teeth. "But I'm still here. And I know you can hear me."
Botan moaned and writhed a little inside the cocoon containing her.
"This is only going to get harder, for you and for me, if you don't listen to me," Hiei said. "You need to end this. And only you can end this. You start it, and you end it. It doesn't matter what you think, or what anyone else might have told you. You control this. And you can end this. You just have to wake up."
"This is it," Kuwabara whispered to Yusuke. "Last time he told her to wake up, the Lure left and we got her out."
Whilst what her brother had said was true, looking up at the grinning, maniacal face of the Lure, Shizuru was doubtful it was about to retreat. It almost looked bigger, the aura it was emitting felt stronger, and the sky overhead was now completely black. The Lure was not about to leave. Hiei had been right when he had said it was about to get harder for everyone involved.
After a long, silent, still moment, it became apparent that Botan was not about to wake up, the Lure was not about to back off, and the battle was long from over.
With the sky black, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was, but Shizuru knew they had been standing in the park for some time, as she was becoming increasingly aware of the weight of the enormous camera on her shoulder. She readjusted it, but in doing so, only moved it out of a groove it had worn into her skin and then back into the same position, creating a stinging sensation that made her wince.
"Are you alright there?" Kurama asked her.
"I'm fine," she tersely replied.
"That must be heavy," he commented.
Shizuru sighed quietly, but otherwise ignored his obvious remark,
"It's been a long time," he added. "Maybe we should consider getting a tri–"
"I said I'm fine, Kurama," Shizuru cut him off harshly. "I'll hold it as long as I have to. Let me worry about this, you worry about getting them all out of here."
"Alright, but if you need a break–"
"Back off, Kurama. I mean it."
Kurama nodded and returned to his task of herding people out of the park. He and Keiko had gotten everyone out, but new groups of people continued arriving, blissful in their ignorance of what was going on. To them, the sky looked normal, and a woman was standing pointing an enormous video camera at absolutely nothing, while two men stood next to her muttering to themselves and looking agitated.
"Are you okay, sis?" Kuwabara asked her.
"I could take over, if you want?" Yusuke offered.
"Your arms must be getting tired," Kuwabara added. "We could all take turns holding the camera.
"Yeah, my arms are tired, okay?" Shizuru snapped. "But whose fault do you think that is?"
"Kuwabara's, for buying a dumb camera that was probably meant to be mounted onto a submarine rather than carried around?" Yusuke offered.
Shizuru offered him a forced smile for his attempt at humour.
"Maybe we should rotate jobs," Yusuke added.
"You're only saying that because you can't stand standing around watching," Kuwabara argued.
"And you can?" Yusuke shot back.
Kuwabara nodded.
"Hey, Kurama!" Yusuke called.
Kurama was at the park gates, some distance away, mid-conversation with a trio of teenagers trying to access the park.
"He won't hear you," Shizuru advised. "Probably best just to leave him, he's got a difficult enough job to do, and he's probably the only one patient enough to do it."
"Yeah, I don't think you should be telling people to leave, Urameshi," Kuwabara agreed.
"Why not?" Yusuke asked.
As they began a small argument, Shizuru turned her attention back to Botan, Hiei and the Lure. Hiei and the Lure were unchanged, but Botan's face was twitching, mostly through a range of agitated or frightened expressions.
Then something happened that never had before: her eyes opened.
Her pupils were huge, barely a ring of colour visible around them, but she was looking out towards the park gates so intensely, it was as though she could actually see what was happening there.
"Botan?" Shizuru said quietly.
Botan shifted her gaze downwards, but did not look directly at Shizuru, rather looking towards Yusuke and Kuwabara.
"How long is this gonna take?" Yusuke groaned.
"It took all day last time," Kuwabara answered him.
"Damn it…" Yusuke growled under his breath.
"Boys…?" Shizuru said, keeping her eyes on Botan but reaching a hand out towards the two at her side.
They looked first at her and then up at Botan, muttering surprised and confused responses as they watched Botan blink a few times before closing her eyes again.
"Was she awake?" Kuwabara asked.
"Damn it, this is taking too long!" Yusuke complained.
"I think it could take a lot longer yet," Shizuru warned him, looking up at the self-satisfied, grinning monster detaining Botan and impaling Hiei.
Shizuru kept her eyes on the bulging eyes of the Lure, even though it seemed to enjoy her looking at it. Looking into its eyes, she could concentrate better. Like her brother, Shizuru had always had a heightened spiritual awareness. It was a trait they had inherited from their mother. Their father liked to call himself "spiritual", but his awareness was about the level of a person with above average spiritual awareness. It was something, but not a patch on the level of awareness their mother had possessed. Coming from two parents with above average awareness, it was almost a given that both Shizuru and her brother would inherit the gift: though Shizuru still believed that now, even after training, neither she nor her brother came close to the level their mother had been at.
Whilst Kuwabara had taken his awareness in the direction of battle, training himself to conjure and master his Spirit Sword, Shizuru had – unbeknownst to her brother – taken lessons from Genkai in how to focus her awareness on detection. Looking into the Lure's eyes, she could feel every little anomaly of its energy signal. She determined to take that moment to really study it, really get a feel for it, to the point that she would be able to find it in a field of Lures if need be.
Because, she told herself, this time, the Lure was not going to escape when they freed Botan from its hold.
Next Chapter: The battle to free Botan continues, and it starts to really take a toll on all involved, including Shizuru, who is suffering mentally and emotionally from reliving the experience of watching someone she cares about spiral into addiction. As Botan's hallucinations continue, and as some of them bleed out into the real world, it becomes increasingly obvious to everyone watching on and waiting that Hiei has been suppressing feelings for Botan every bit as much as she has for him. Chapter 28: Every Piece of me
