Last Chapter: Hiei saved Botan from the Lure for a second time, and he and Shizuru swore to catch and kill the Lure, but Shizuru is still determined to be the one who – alone – kills the Lure, and their inability to work together led to the Lure escaping them. Hiei and Shizuru had a heart to heart, but soon after realised that the Lure had caught Botan for a third time. Yukina tried to confront the Lure, but it overpowered her, and Kurama admitted to Shizuru that he had been feeding Botan the same leaves he gave to her at the start of the story, via Ayame.
Chapter 30: I Could Never Say
Several hours had passed since Hiei had leapt at the Lure, and nothing had happened. Kuwabara and Yukina had returned with food and tapes, and Yusuke and Keiko had returned with blankets and the stove Keiko had promised. Yusuke and Keiko had cooked food and prepared drinks for everyone, but nobody consumed everything they were given. Botan and Hiei were both pale and motionless, and the Lure was still staring, with its unblinking eyes, and still grinning, with its lipless, beak-like mouth. Kuwabara was holding the camera, Kurama was reading the book Ayame had given him from spirit world, Yusuke was juggling empty drinks cans, and Yukina was fussing around the stove unnecessarily.
"Yukina, are you okay?" Shizuru asked her, from her position sitting on the ground near the stove.
"I'm not comfortable," Yukina muttered.
Shizuru had noticed that, for some time now, Yukina had strategically been keeping her back turned to the Lure.
"You can sit with me, sweetie," Shizuru offered her, patting the ground at her side. "I'll keep you safe."
Yukina stopped short, her eyes still on the stove.
"I don't feel in danger, Shizuru," she said, in that quiet, dark tone she took when she was angry.
Sometimes she was so like her brother, Shizuru mused.
"You're not, sweetie," Shizuru agreed. "But just… Sit here with me, okay?"
"You think I'm too fragile to be here," Yukina said.
Yukina shifted her eyes, fixing them onto Shizuru. With the blue flames of the stove illuminating her face in the dark of nightfall around them, the ice maiden looked unusually menacing.
"I'm glad that you're here, Yukina," Shizuru said gently. "It's important that you are. But please, just sit down here with me."
"You don't need to protect me," Yukina replied.
"Well… Maybe I want you to sit here to make me feel a little safer," Shizuru tried.
"Now you're mocking me."
"Okay sweetie, cards on the table: I'm getting tired, and the cold helps me stay awake."
Yukina glanced back and forth between the blazing stove and Shizuru, her eyes thinning sceptically.
"I need you here to keep me awake," Shizuru said quietly. "Please, sweetie."
"Alright," Yukina replied, her face finally softening.
Yukina started to sit down, but had to pick up a used cassette tape first. She finally took her place at Shizuru's side, and Shizuru put an arm around her. Yukina's eyes were still on the triangular cassette in her hands.
"This is going to be weirdest film ever," Shizuru said with a wry smile.
Yukina looked up at her smiled, before leaning into her a little more. She was cold, but her closeness was soothing. Keiko shortly sat down on Shizuru's other side, and she gladly put her arm around her too, closing her eyes and sighing as her two friends cuddled into her.
"She's coming back," Shizuru said, hoping the tear that escaped one of her eyes was not visible to anyone or affected the tone of her voice at all. "And when she does, we're gonna have a party."
Shizuru sighed, lowering the camera from her shoulder and swapping out the cassette. As she eased the camera back onto her shoulder, Keiko handed her a cup of steaming hot tea.
"I can't believe it's morning already," Keiko said, before taking a sip of her own drink.
Shizuru pointed the camera up at the Lure again, but it almost seemed pointless. She had burned through 4 cassettes already, and in that time, nothing had happened. Hiei was still motionless and lifeless, as was Botan. The only developments were the increasing size of the pool of blood beneath Hiei and the widening girth of the Lure's belly. Just as Shizuru was about to ask someone else to take a turn holding the camera, she noticed Hiei's mouth twitch, a grumbling sound escaping his throat. The others around her, despite having all been weary, snapped to attention and gathered around, watching on intently.
"Can you hear me?" Hiei muttered.
Botan remained unresponsive.
"Can you hear me?" he said again, his voice more forceful, his words much clearer.
Botan twitched and Shizuru gasped.
"Can you hear me, woman?" Hiei insisted.
Botan twitched again and the Lure snarled.
"Can you hear me now, woman?" Hiei said sternly.
Botan groaned and shivered.
"You're in deep this time," Hiei told her, confirming Shizuru's worst fears. "Very, very deep. I can get you out, I can help you, but you have to be willing. You have to want it. You have to rise up. You have to meet me halfway."
Botan did not respond, and appeared to slump back into her encasement. Shizuru shot Kurama a stern look, readying herself to demand that he explain himself: apparently his bitter leaves were having absolutely no effect on Botan.
"Answer me, woman," Hiei demanded.
His chest and shoulders began to heave, but this time it felt as though he was breathing more heavily out of frustration rather than physical weakness.
"Untie your pink panties and focus your attention over here, idiot," he said. "I'm tired. I'm pissed off. I've been humiliated. I have no patience left."
Botan opened her mouth and drew in an audible, rasping breath before finally answering Hiei.
"Did-did you ever have any patience?" she asked, her voice croaky and faint. "Ever? For… Anything?"
Hiei made a small scoff and managed a lop-sided smirk of amusement at her response.
"Well now that I do have your attention, maybe we can strike a deal," he said.
"Shizuru promised me this wasn't going to be a scary movie," Botan complained.
Shizuru gasped again: why had Botan said that? Had she heard Shizuru talking to Yukina earlier about the tapes they were recording, had she somehow heard her comment about it being a weird movie?
"Forget about that," Hiei said. "Just listen to me. I will do something for you if you will do something for me. Understand?"
Botan's head moved slightly in what may have been an attempt to nod.
"I will look up your skirt as often as you like, in any situation of your choosing," he said. "But you must first swim."
Kuwabara and Yusuke started to respond to Hiei's first comment, but fell silent in confusion upon hearing his instruction to Botan.
"Swim?" Botan repeated.
"You've fallen under," he replied. "I can't reach you down there. It's a wonder you can even hear me."
"I can hear you," Botan answered. "Can-can you hear me?"
"Yes, I hear you. I hear it all. All of it. Even when you think I don't, I can hear you. I can see you, too. You probably don't think that I can. I'm sure this ugly mongrel bitch tells you otherwise. And I can see that you've fallen under. You need to swim back up."
"S-swim back up? But I'm not – I'm not underwater."
"Yes you are."
"No I'm not–"
Botan stopped suddenly and the Lure glowered down at Hiei, its grin turning into more of a sneer.
"I don't know which way I'm supposed to go!" Botan suddenly blurted out, her voice suddenly surprisingly clear.
Hiei's mouth moved, but he said nothing, and together, slowly, he and Botan sank back into the still, silent, pale forms they had been before their exchange.
"I can't take this any more!" Yusuke complained.
"Then take this!" Shizuru said, shoving the camera into his hands. "You can't do anything, so at least do this."
"What is the point of this, anyway?" Yusuke asked her.
"Just keep filming it, and shut the hell up!" Shizuru snapped back at him.
She half expected him to make a cheeky remark about her attitude, but instead he silently obeyed, allowing her to march over to Kurama.
"A word, fox boy?" she said.
He nodded, and once more led her into the temple.
"Where are you guys going?" Kuwabara called after them.
"Never mind, just stay there!" Shizuru barked back over her shoulder at him.
He cowered back and Shizuru continued after Kurama, waiting impatiently for him to finally stop and turn to face her: and when he finally did, she spoke first.
"You said those leaves lessened the effect the Lure had on Botan," she began. "You said they made it easier for Hiei to reach her. Why then is it so much worse this time?"
"It will always get worse," Kurama replied.
Shizuru started to argue back but he held up a hand and she paused.
"Most victims are only taken twice, Shizuru," he explained. "The first time, the Lure lets go because it intends to, it lets go because it knows its victim will return to it. The second time, it holds on, and nothing can break its hold. But we did break its hold the second time. We got Botan back."
"It's not working this time though, right?" Shizuru asked. "Neither Botan nor Hiei have moved or said much, and all they seem to be talking about is how far gone Botan is."
"I think the Lure knows Botan has taken the leaves," Kurama said. "And I think it's ramping up its assault to compensate. It was important that the Lure didn't find out, important that we didn't let it try to launch a counter-measure against us."
"Surely it knows? It's inside Botan's head! Surely it can see that she ate that disgusting leaf!"
Kurama took on a strange look.
"What?" Shizuru asked.
"I instructed Ayame to deliver the leaves to Botan in a way that she would not notice them," Kurama explained. "She told me she could make them into a tea, and I told her to include flowers in the blend, to reduce the bitterness of the Deploro leaf, and to add berries for sweetness. It was important that Botan believed she was just drinking ordinary tea, so that the Lure would not know she had ingested the Deploro leaf, that she had not gained a degree of protection against its poison."
"You better be right about this, Kurama," Shizuru warned him.
"I know I am," Kurama confidently replied.
"Well you better be. Do you remember what I told you right at the start of this?"
"That if we didn't rescue Botan in tact, you would deliver me to my mother in a thousand pieces?"
"Yes. And I will if we don't."
"Fair enough."
Kurama seemed confident, but he was also an expert at hiding his true feelings, and so Shizuru remained guarded. It was clear, however, that it was pointless to argue with him any further, and so she spun around and marched back outside. She kept going until she was standing alongside Yusuke, who was still holding the camera, pointed up at the Lure.
"Did I miss anything?" she asked him.
"Nothing major," Yusuke replied. "But Botan's face has changed a few times, like she's having a bad dream."
Shizuru moved closer, only stopping when the Lure cast her a sideward glance. She only had to wait there for a few seconds before Botan's face twitched, her eyebrows pushing together and her mouth pouting, looking – just as Yusuke had said – as though she was having a nightmare. Hiei's face twitched, and his mouth moved, a grunting sound coming out, that made Botan flinch.
"H-Hiei?" she said, her voice soft and quiet, small and faint.
Hiei muttered out something indecipherable, his mouth moving incoherently.
"I-I can't hear you," Botan said, her voice becoming a little clearer and a little louder.
Then Shizuru heard a sound that made the blood in her veins turn bitterly cold.
"Who are you talking to?"
It was the Lure, but it had spoken not in its true voice, but rather in the voice of that sweet little girl it disguised itself as.
"Dirty, cheating bastard…" Yusuke grumbled.
"I can't hear you, Hiei!" Botan said suddenly.
Shizuru started to feel hopeful at her response, hopeful that it meant the connection Hiei had made with her was now stronger than the one the Lure had to her.
"It's just a film," the Lure said, in that cute little girl voice that so defied its true appearance. "No-one on that screen can hear you."
Hiei muttered out a string of nonsense, his tone desperate, ragged and pathetic.
"I can't!" Botan answered him, her voice suddenly alarmingly clear. "You're on the other side! I can't reach you!"
"You're hallucinating, Botan," the Lure said.
"This bastard…" Yusuke complained through clenched teeth.
The entire group gasped or yelped as Hiei suddenly, rigidly, lifted one arm, his clawed hand stopping right in front of Botan's face, and Botan responded by opening her eyes. Her eyes were that same, dilated way they were when she was under the Lure's thrall, but they seemed to be trying to focus onto Hiei's hand before them.
"If you can see my hand, take it!" Hiei said, his voice thick and wavering, sounding as though his throat was filled with blood: which it possibly was, given his current physical condition. "Take it now!"
The Lure screamed, the sound sending birds into the air from the trees around the grounds of the temple, as one of Botan's arms began stretching and breaking out of the webbing around her. She moved her arm in a strange, sluggish way, ultimately placing her hand loosely into Hiei's, still held out to her. Her fingers remained limp, but Hiei clamped his hand closed around hers, and began to pull at her, leaning back far enough that he began to drag himself down the length of the Lure's fingers. Botan finally wrapped her fingers closed around Hiei's hand, but as soon as she did so, a frown appeared on her face.
"You're hurt," she said.
"If you can feel that, you can swim to the surface!" Hiei answered her.
Botan looked confused – or at least, as confused as it was possible for her to look in her current state – but her entire body began to wriggle around inside the webbing and the Lure began to look clearly panicked. Shizuru tensed herself, readied herself to run, readied herself to chase the Lure again.
"Faster, woman!" Hiei cried desperately.
The webbing around Botan began to creak and moan, and flickers of light could be seen from within it, little sparks of Botan's energy. The group watching began to cheer and gather closer as the webbing began snapping, breaking, as though Botan would shortly break out of it entirely. Botan's body twitched and lurched and Hiei used her hand to pull himself closer to her, both of them swinging in the air as some of the webbing behind Botan broke away. A strange look passed over Botan's already strange face and suddenly she wretched up a mouthful of grey slime, spraying it over Hiei's face. He winced and she coughed a few times before speaking again.
"Sorry," she said weakly.
"Idiot!" Hiei snapped back at her. "Do you have any idea how close you came to hitting the bottom?"
"Wh-huh-what?" Botan coughed.
"You've been sinking the entire time," he snarled back. "Falling deeper, and deeper. It's taken me far too long to reach you!"
"I did-didn't even kn-know I was uh-under water."
"You're not under water. But you are drowning. And you will lose a lot more than your breath if you don't stop this!"
For a moment they both just panted and swayed in the air.
"Is it… is it over?" Kuwabara asked quietly.
"I don't think so," Yusuke solemnly replied. "Not yet, at least."
"What happened to you?" Botan asked, her unfocused eyes looking at Hiei.
"Nothing," he replied, his tone sarcastic despite his voice still sounding thick and unusual.
"You're hurt," she pointed out.
"Not as hurt as you're going to be if you don't stop this!"
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing everything! All of it!"
"I didn't give you those cuts on your face… Did I?"
"Physical wounds are meaningless, and nothing compared to the mental torture I've had to endure!"
The Lure wailed again as Botan's other hand tore out of the webbing – almost effortlessly – and she pressed her palm against Hiei's chest, leaning her head back a little. Hiei's face gained a little more colour, and he almost appeared to sweat.
"What is this now?" he asked.
"I was steadying myself," Botan replied.
"You need to get your hormones in check, woman!" Hiei snapped.
"Hormones?" Botan echoed. "But I'm not… Unless… Wh-what are you implying?"
"I'm not implying anything! You're the one who's fantasising about me in tight pants because you want to get a better look at…"
Hiei's voice trailed off, and for a moment, they all hung in the silence that followed.
"You want to try to figure out the size of my…" he tried, his voice trailing off again.
"Dick?" Yusuke offered.
Hiei growled and snarled and bared his teeth, a gesture that ordinarily would have been fearsome and threatening, but in his prone position and weakened state, instead just looked and sounded pitiful.
"Alright, listen to me," he recovered. "And don't think about anything else other than what I'm saying to you, understand?"
"I didn't want you to wear tight pants so that I could look at – well – you know," Botan said quietly. "I just wanted to know what your legs look like. You always cover them up."
"I could say the same thing to you."
"What?"
There was a short pause before Hiei answered Botan, his voice lowered to almost a whisper when he finally did.
"You don't – you don't wear form-fitting clothing on the lower half of your body either," he mumbled back, in a tone he clearly hoped would not be heard by those around him
"I have those… Striking blue leggings," Botan quietly pointed out.
"You never wear those around me."
"I did one time."
"With a long damn coat that came to your knees. What sort of cruel trick is that?"
"Well, I always wear them with something long. They're quite… Sheer… Keiko said she could see my underwear through them, she said I should wear long tops and coats over them."
"Why the hell are you letting that woman tell you how to dress?"
Keiko made a grunt of annoyance, but recovered with a noise of satisfaction when she heard Botan's reply to Hiei's remark.
"Keiko is very fashion conscious."
"She dresses like a librarian in a nunnery."
Keiko grunted again and Yusuke let out a small chuckle of amusement.
"What does a – how do you even know what that is?" Botan said, asking a question Shizuru herself had been wondering.
"Why does that even put you off?" Hiei returned. "I thought you liked it when others can see your underwear."
"I never told you that," Botan gasped.
"You showed me it often enough!" Hiei growled back.
"Why are you getting angry about it?"
"Because you showed me it, but you never showed me it!"
Yusuke sighed in frustration.
"What?" Botan muttered.
"You want me to see and I want to see it, and you're showing it to me, but you've never shown it to me!" Hiei replied. "I've been hanging here all day in the cold and I still haven't seen you flashing your ass in my face!"
"Hiei!" Yusuke snapped. "Put your fucking dick away and finish this!"
Hiei growled again, this time with a little more effort, sounding a little more like his usual self.
"Look at me, woman!" he said sharply. "You have to wake up!" he said.
"Wake up?" Botan repeated. "But I'm not asleep! I was underwater and-ah!"
Shizuru and the others all staggered back in alarm as, in a sudden moment, a series of things occurred: the webbing around Botan sagged, the Lure rapidly retracted its fingers out of Hiei and he began to fall, his weight catching on Botan's hand, which he was still holding onto, and she shortly fell with him, the pair hitting the ground hard. The Lure slunk back into the shadows as Kuwabara crouched down by Hiei and Botan. Seeing her opportunity, Shizuru darted forwards, using her brother's back as a springboard, ignoring the cry of complaint he issued, and launching herself into the dark recesses of the Lure's lair.
"Where the hell are you going?" Yusuke shouted after her.
Shizuru looked back over her shoulder and saw Hiei rise to his feet, his face smeared with blood and grey slime, and start to lumber forwards. Yukina leapt at him, grabbing one of his arms with both of her hands.
"You shouldn't be going anywhere!" she cried desperately.
"It's not working!" Kuwabara said to Kurama as he tried to cut away the remaining webbing from the lower parts of Botan's legs.
Hiei wrenched his arm from Yukina's hold and leapt up behind Shizuru. She nodded at him, and together they ran deeper into the darkness.
It was taunting them. It knew they were not fast enough to catch it. Shizuru was barely even running, Hiei was so weakened, he was substantially slowed. Every time she tried to run ahead of him he would grab at her – and his grip strength seemed to be the strongest part of him – and hold her back.
"This is no use!" Shizuru eventually cried. "We're never going to catch it!"
"You said you could track it!" Hiei spat at her.
"I can, but I can't keep up with it!"
Both stumbled to a stop as they heard the Lure laughing. Shizuru looked up as the faint, muddled energy signal of the Lure shot up, high into the sky.
"I think it can fly," she said. "We can't pursue it if it flies!"
"It just jumps really high," Hiei breathlessly replied.
Shizuru sighed and lowered her head. She looked over at Hiei, at her side, but his eyes were on the katana in her hand.
"And what exactly were you intending to do with that?" he asked.
He fell to his knees, but appeared not to even notice that he had.
"I'm going to stab this into that thing's eye," Shizuru told him. "So it can feel the pain its been putting you through!"
"Both that weapon and you are too weak to penetrate even the Lure's weakest point: its ugly big eyes," Hiei sneered.
Shizuru stowed her weapon back into its scabbard and knelt down beside Hiei. He frowned at her action and then looked down at himself, starting in surprise as though he had only just then realised that he had collapsed to his knees.
"The Lure said we need to do three things to defeat it," she said slowly. "First, we have to track it, which I can do."
Hiei nodded.
"Then we have to pin it down, and then we have to kill it," Shizuru continued.
"I can kill it," Hiei said, nodding his head in a bleary, bobbing manner.
"Right, so we've got the first and the third step down, but that second step is kicking our asses right now," Shizuru said with a sigh.
"So we would just need a way to pin it down."
Shizuru nodded.
"We should use this time to heal," Hiei said.
Shizuru started to tell him that she had no wounds to heal, but stopped when she saw how miserable he looked, and instead nodded her head in agreement.
"I will find you when I am healed," he continued. "And this time, don't go running off without me, understand?"
Shizuru nodded. This time she would wait for him, but only because, once he was healed, he would be fast enough to catch the Lure, and so it would be useful for her to keep him around. Hiei slumped to the ground, landing on his side in the foetal position.
"You okay, buddy?" Shizuru asked him.
"I'm healing," he mumbled, as his eyes drifted closed. "You should go do the same."
Shizuru looked about herself, before deciding that there was nothing in the human world that could be a threat to Hiei if he slept where he lay. She then got to her feet and started the long, arduous journey back home.
When Shizuru woke up, she felt quite rested, and could see that some time had passed since she had returned home and gone to bed. She was a little surprised that Hiei had not contacted her, and wondered if he had set out to catch the Lure by himself: but he would have no way of tracking it, and a moment of concentrating allowed her to track its signal down herself. It felt healthy, and it felt as though it was not too far away. Deciding she would keep her promise to Hiei, Shizuru instead went in search of Kurama. He had been reading that book he had apparently wrangled from spirit world, she was hoping he would be able to give her some useful tips for how to contain the Lure so that she could stab it in the eye and behead it. She tried Kurama's mother's house, but there Shiori told her that "Shuichi" was out shopping for plants: which sounded like a cover story to Shizuru, however, when she took her search to the nearest plant shop, she found that Kurama was indeed there.
Kurama was out in the back part of the shop, the part that was outside, an enclosed yard at the back of the shop where the larger plants and masonry were displayed. He was standing in back corner of the yard, facing a dark-haired woman, who appeared to be distressed. Shizuru slowed her approach, ducking behind some fence panels and edging close enough that she could hear their conversation. Peering around the edge of the panels, she was looking at Kurama's back, and, from her new vantage point, she could see the woman he was talking to was dressed in a black kimono, her aura clearly that of a ferry girl.
"I gave you that book in good faith!" she said in a hushed, urgent tone. "And you promised me if I gave those leaves to Botan, she would get better!"
"And she has," Kurama softly replied.
"No, she has not!" the ferry girl answered.
"She has," Kurama insisted.
"I risked so much taking that book to you! It contains classified information! And I risked so much making those leaves into a palatable tea and feeding it to Botan! You have betrayed me!"
"I assure you, that is not the case."
"Demon, you have betrayed me!"
The ferry girl summoned her oar and shot off into the sky. Shizuru watched her go, waiting to get an indication of the direction she might take, but rather than commit, she kept ascending, until she was swallowed up by the clouds and out of sight. Shizuru sighed. Kurama no longer seemed like the best person to get information from. She turned her attention back to Kurama, watching him until he had gathered up a large potted plant in his arms and moved back inside the shop before standing up straight.
"Pathetic, isn't it?"
Shizuru gasped and touched a hand to her chest, before turning around to face Hiei.
"Hn, I thought you would be battle-ready by now," he said with a smirk. "Apparently not, if I can still surprise you."
Shizuru sighed.
"Well, it's nice to see you looking a little more like your usual self and a little less like… A dango," she said.
"Dango?" Hiei repeated, tilting his head slightly.
"It's a cake that…"
Shizuru's voice trailed off as her hands began motioning skewering something and Hiei's face fell.
"You think I'm getting soft?" Hiei growled at her.
Shizuru pursed her lips to contain a smile and shook her head.
"You think I'm sweet?" he asked, almost spitting out the word "sweet".
Shizuru tilted her head slightly and Hiei growled again.
"Take me to the Lure," he recovered. "Now."
"Okay, let's do this," Shizuru agreed.
Hiei leapt over the high fencing around the yard and Shizuru rolled her eyes, turning around and heading back into the shop. Hiei did at least look like he had healed himself this time, with the only evidence of any lasting wounds being the bandaging he was still wearing around his forehead. A part of her wanted to ask him why he had not healed his Jagan eye – was he expecting to need to reach Botan again, was he expecting her to go back to the Lure a fourth time? – but she decided against broaching the subject. She had fled the scene to pursue the Lure, and Botan had gone by the time she returned, but, in the moment she had fallen free of the Lure's trap, Botan had looked really quite poorly, and it was unlikely she would have the energy to find the Lure again, even if she did set out to do so.
When Shizuru stepped out the front door of the shop, the sky overhead was dark: but looking up, she could see it was just from the thick grey clouds of winter. She shortly spotted Hiei, crouched on the roof of a nearby car, glaring over at her impatiently. She drew in a breath and focused her attention, intent on seeking out the Lure – and at the same moment she felt its location, she heard its voice.
"Shizuru, come find me, if you think you can."
Shizuru sighed out the air she had been holding in her lungs and moved over to join Hiei.
"It knows we're looking for it," she told him.
"Is it running away?" he asked.
"No, it's stationary," she replied. "It's not far from here, either. There's a hiking route to the east of the city, its right at the carpark there."
Hiei nodded and then vanished, the backdraft of displaced air from his high-speed exit blasting back Shuzuru's hair.
"Asshole," she grumbled, before turning and running across the car park.
She kept running, moving in the most direct route she could to the location she had sensed the Lure, but within a minute of starting her journey, she could feel that the Lure had moved suddenly, taking itself further down the hiking trail, presumably because it had sensed Hiei's approach. This, she thought to herself, was exactly why he should have waited for her, but she reasoned that it was partly her own fault for telling him the exact location to go to, as she should have known he would lack the patience to wait for her. When she eventually arrived at the trail carpark, she found Hiei pacing about by the trail map. He looked furious, but his energy and manner were a soothing sight, as it was much easier to see him that way than to see him the way the Lure had left him the day before.
"It's not here, Worthy," he greeted her.
"Well, I assume if you're still calling me that, you at least still trust me that it was here," Shizuru replied.
Hiei glowered at her.
"And if you'd waited for me, I could have told you it moved away when you started catching up to it," she added.
"Which way?" Hiei asked.
Shizuru glowered at him.
"Fine, we can go together," he conceded. "But you better move as fast as your pathetic human legs will let you."
"Can do," Shizuru agreed.
"And that will still be painfully slow for me," Hiei added.
"Of course it will."
Shizuru started to run along the hike trail, and Hiei began walking briskly at her side, his hands in his pockets as though he felt like he needed to remind her further still how painful it was for him to move so slowly: however his pettiness quickly left her thoughts as she realised that the Lure was moving at the same speed as her, leading her along the trail. As they continued, the scrub at either side of the path gave way to bushes and then trees, until soon they were deep into the trail, flanked by dense woodland. If the Lure turned off the main walkway, it would become much more difficult to pursue it, but it seemed to be intentionally continuing along the path.
As they passed the halfway marker at the side of the trail, Shizuru found herself struggling to remember the full route of the trail. She had hiked it before, many years ago, with her class at school. They had stopped halfway to have lunch and then hiked back to the bus. It was not a circular route. She remembered that it was an ascent that, as a child, she had found arduous, and she had been glad of her lunchbox at the end of the journey up. She could not have been more than eight years old when she had done the hike with her class, as she remembered then that her lunchbox had been packed by her mother, at a time when her mother was still semi-functioning. She could remember opening the box and seeing a hotdog, cut and cooked to look like an octopus, a ball of rice with a smiley face made of vegetables and, in the corner of her box, a single loquat. She remembered that her mother had packed that fruit for a specific reason. She could remember watching her mum pack it. The day before. Standing in the kitchen.
"When I was a little girl like you, sweetie, my mum would take me hiking up the trail out east, and we would pick these from the trees that grow wild at the viewpoint."
The Lure had stopped and Shizuru staggered to a halt. Hiei snarled a curse and stopped at her side, glaring up at her expectantly.
"It's a trap," she told him. "It's leading us to the viewpoint, there's a sheer drop at the other side. There was a landslide there, years ago, it created a ravine."
Hiei turned his head to look up the path ahead. He held that position for barely a second before racing onwards. Shizuru cried out his name, but he was long gone by the time she even started to shout. She hurried after him and did not take long to reach him, at a wide flattened area where the path terminated. Either side of the area were rough clumps of loquat trees, and directly ahead, at the end of the area, the ground dropped away. Shizuru looked at Hiei and he nodded, seemingly understanding what she was thinking, and together they moved on, to the edge of the ground, peering downwards.
"Nice try," the Lure called up to them from its position hanging from a large rock, suspended in the air by a length of the sickly, sticky webbing it used to trap Botan.
"I'm going down there," Hiei said.
"No!" Shizuru snapped, grabbing his arm. "You'll get yourself killed!"
Hiei snatched his arm from her grasp and it flared with a black flame, but as he reached his arm out over the edge, the Lure leapt away from the rock face, stretching out a length of web, before attached another length of web to something else and breaking off towards it. It dropped out of sight, and from there, it moved rapidly away.
"It's mocking us," Shizuru concluded.
"Where is it now?" Hiei asked her, the flames fading around his arm.
"It's moving away really quickly now," she replied.
"Which way? Where?"
"It's not as simple as that, it's down there, for a start!"
"I'll jump down."
"You'll die if you even try that."
"I'll aim for those trees down there, they will break my fall."
"Hiei, don't be ridiculous. Let's just go back and find a better way to follow it."
"Why are you giving up so easily?"
"I'm not giving up, but I'm also not about to walk right into one of that thing's traps! I'm sick of it thinking its smarter than all of us!"
"It's only going to keep playing games like this, we have to destroy it, and do it quickly!"
"Don't you think I know that?"
"Then why aren't you jumping down there with me?"
"Because I want to catch it, not kill myself stupidly trying to catch it!"
Shizuru sighed.
"I want to catch it just as much as you do, Hiei," she said in a more controlled tone.
"I don't think you do," he grumbled back.
"Then you have no idea what this fight means to me, jackass!" she snapped irritably.
"We shouldn't have let it get away!"
"We had no other choice! Don't you see? This is exactly what it said to us before: we need to do three things to beat it, we need to–"
"We need to destroy it!"
"Listen to me! Number one, we have to be able to track it; number two, we have to be able to pin it down, and number three, we have to kill it."
"Fine."
"Yeah, one and three are fine, because I can track it–"
"And I can kill it."
"But neither of us can pin it down. We need to set some sort of trap for it. We need to find a way to stop it flying away from us."
Hiei stared blankly back at Shizuru for a long moment.
"Like what?" he eventually asked.
"I was hoping you might know, big guy," Shizuru dryly replied.
Hiei growled and squared his shoulders, which, Shizuru reasoned, was as close as he ever got to admitting defeat.
"Excuse me?"
Shizuru and Hiei both spun around abruptly, inadvertently startling the owner of the timid voice standing behind them.
"Are you trying to catch the Lure?"
Shizuru tilted her head slightly as she regarded the apprehensive ferry girl facing her. It was the same one Kurama had been talking to at the plant shop.
"Are you Ayame?" Shizuru asked her.
She nodded.
"Don't bother giving it a name," Hiei scoffed.
Shizuru shot him a hard glare, but Ayame waved a hand and smiled.
"It's alright," she said. "He doesn't like me."
"He doesn't even know you, it's not personal," Shizuru assured her.
"Well, it actually is personal…" Ayame muttered.
Shizuru waited a moment for her to continue before turning to Hiei expectantly.
"Sometimes when I return humans who have wandered into demon world back here, they die," Hiei explained. "And usually Botan appears to collect their souls."
"But sometimes it's me," Ayame added.
"And that isn't Botan," Hiei said. "That is a boring excuse for Botan. That is a mouse."
Shizuru shook her head.
"I'm sorry about my cheerful, charming friend," she said to Ayame. "And yes, we are trying to catch the Lure, and it's really strong right now, so it's really dangerous for you to be here. You should leave."
Ayame held up a finger as though she had something else to say, but both Hiei and Shizuru turned their backs on her, looking out over the ravine once more.
"We could approach it from different angles, cut it off when it tries to flee," Hiei suggested.
"What about when it drops off a cliff?" Shizuru asked, waving a hand in front of the drop they were facing. "Or leaps into the sky?"
"The Lure has a limited flying ability."
Shizuru and Hiei both looked back over one shoulder at Ayame, who was still standing behind them.
"Why are you still here?" Hiei asked her bluntly.
"I heard what you said," she replied. "I-I hope you don't mind, I was listening, and I heard what you said. You said you need a way to pin the Lure down. That you need to pin it down to fight it."
"Yeah, it's a slippery bastard," Shizuru answered her. "And it's got a taste for ferry girl right now, so you should really get yourself somewhere safe."
Shizuru wanted to ask Ayame about the tea she ought to have created with the Deploro leaf, but she decided against it, as she suspected that mentioning it in front of Hiei might somehow allow the Lure to learn about it if Botan were to be taken again.
"Yes, boring Botan, leave us," Hiei said.
Hiei and Shizuru turned back to face the ravine.
"That was a little harsh," Shizuru whispered to Hiei.
"She is boring," Hiei grumbled back.
"I had already told her to go, you didn't need to add that in there."
"I can pin down the Lure."
Shizuru froze.
"I can," Ayame insisted. "I know how to do it. I can pin it down. I can contain it. I can restrain it. If you take me to it, I can close it in, so that it can't escape into the sky, or down a drop, or anywhere else."
Shizuru looked over at Hiei from the corner of her eye. He was already peering back at her. He gave a small shake of his head. She raised her eyebrows. He glared at her. Together, they turned to face Ayame.
"Keep talking," Shizuru instructed her. "We're listening."
Next Chapter: Ayame joins Hiei and Shizuru, but they are not quite a cohesive unit, as Shizuru is still determining to kill the Lure alone. After hearing Ayame talk about how odd Botan's behaviour has become when she is free, Shizuru confronts Kurama again, and he reveals exactly what the Deploro leaf does – and it's not good news. And, much to everyone's shock and horror, the Lure captures Botan for a fourth time. Chapter 31: From my Heart
