Disclaimer: I don't own YYH or the characters.
The performances were over when Kurama decided to take a moment to go backstage. When his mother asked, he simply told her that he wanted to talk to one of the girls and congratulate her for a stunning performance. Smiling, his mother took the answer, and now here he was moments away from cornering his target.
The girl, Tsukiko, had no idea she was being watched by anyone. She was working on gathering her things as the other girls discussed how excited they were to hear the results after the final performance in a few days. Tsukiko wasn't really taking part in any of the discussions, but after gathering her things she swiftly turned around and paused in her stride when her eyes met Kurama's. He smirked as she smiled.
"Busted, huh?" she asked, not at all feeling nervous. "I would ask how you managed to find me, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised."
With those words spoken, Kurama frowned. This girl knew too much about them, and he had no idea how far her knowledge of each individual went. "How do you know so much about us?" he asked, a darkness entering his voice.
Tsukiko looked back to the other girls who were looking at Kurama dreamily. "Um, yeah…" she started, emphasizing the 'yeah.' "I really don't think this conversation should be held here."
Kurama took notice of the other girls as well and calmed his demeanor, but he still wasn't letting the girl off the hook. "Come with me," he ordered. His voice left no room for argument.
Tsukiko followed, and the two of them walked side-by-side in the hall. Neither said anything for a bit, but then Tsukiko added, "So…do we talk now?"
Kurama shook his head. "No," he answered. "Where I don't like the idea of letting you leave without my knowledge of your whereabouts, this conversation cannot be held here. We will soon be reaching my parents."
Tsukiko nodded in agreement. "So what do you propose we do?"
That's when Kurama smiled again. "How would you like to be my date for tomorrow?" he questioned shocking the girl. "You see, my mother is trying to set me up, and if I tell her I'm going out with a girl, she'll drop the matter."
"And instead of a date, you'll be questioning me," Tsukiko finished with a grin. "That's sneaky, but that's fine. I don't intend to run now that I've been caught. You already know my name and what I look like. To be honest, I knew I couldn't hide forever."
Kurama was about to ask why she did hide, but the voices of others carried to their direction as they got closer. He would get his answers when he questioned her. For now, he needed to play his cards right and introduce the girl to his mother. Though his step-father's colleague would be dismayed, his mother wouldn't mind especially because he was "choosing" someone himself. There was more than one way to appease her, after all.
The next day, Kurama and Tsukiko met up at a restaurant. Even if she wanted to escape, she couldn't go back on her word when she saw how excited his mother was for her son. She knew she was caught, too, which made the decision easier. These fighters had intel, and they'd easily be able to track her and anyone else she knew down. It was much easier to go quietly then to start having the people she was close to getting sucked into everything.
The hostess greeted them with warmth and was about to sit the two of them in the center of a busy room when Kurama spoke up. "Is there any chance you could seat us somewhere a little more private?" he asked smoothly.
The hostess blushed slightly and nodded. "Um, yes, right this way, sir." She brought them to a booth in the back that was uncrowded at these lunchtime hours, excused herself, and then headed off in a rush.
Tsukiko snorted and shook her head. Kurama eyed her curiously. "What?"
Tsukiko just smiled at him and said, "Well, she totally won't think you're doing something to me back here," sarcastically. "Seriously, did you have to ask for privacy in that way?"
"In what way would you have me ask?" Kurama countered narrowing his eyes. "Unless, of course, you wanted to have this conversation in front of many other humans."
Tsukiko was undeterred. "It's all about tone and diction," she explained. "Your voice that you forcibly kept even made it sound like you were trying to make a pass at me. You emphasized the word 'private' and it honestly sounded like you were flirting with that girl trying to make her bend to you whim. Now, if you had said it in a more upbeat tone instead of being so intense, it would have sounded like we were more casually dating than…what made her run off so quickly."
She giggled slightly, just thinking of the girl's reaction and how it was so ridiculous while Kurama stared at the vigilante in shock. These were things about himself Kurama never noticed, and it all had to do with the sound of his voice. "I take it that you are an expert on speak patterns, then," he remarked. "Does it have to do with your musical career?"
"I don't know," she returned smugly. "Does it? You've only seen me perform in an opera competition. How do you know I have a 'career,' as you put it? It could just be a hobby, something I do in my spare time."
Kurama chuckled at her attempts to throw him off. "Yes, but I highly doubt you could make it to the finals of a competition just because it's a 'hobby." He opened the menu and held the guise of actually reading it. "Now, about your other 'hobby,' what exactly do you know about us and how?"
Tsukiko followed suit, though she was actually looking at the entrees. "Well, I've seen you all before," she began. "I've been chased down by demons before, and there were times when I was hiding from them that you and your friends just happened to show up. I watched you take them out, and then heard you talk about your boss, who and what you are, and just other information about yourselves. I never meant to overhear, but I didn't know if I should reveal myself.
"Then my ability grew a bit stronger, and I was going to be attacked again, but I didn't see the demon and was just trying something out, and somehow I managed to subdue it. Then I heard your voices, all trying to figure out where the demon was, so I ran off, but the demon remained subdued. The little guy…Hiei, I think, had assumed that the demon did something stupid and got himself knocked out by a stronger opponent."
Kurama remembered that night. It was the first time their mission had been completed before they arrived. He still had no idea why some demons were going after humans with the peace that had been instilled, but now he was realizing that maybe it had something to do with this particular human.
"And then a bunch of students from around my university started to disappear," she continued. "I could sense something different about those students, like me. I mean, I always had my ability, but some of these students I knew from high school, and they developed their abilities then when there were some weird demon bugs flying around."
She meant when the portal to Demon World was being opened by Sensui. That meant all of these humans most likely possessed territories and didn't know how to control them.
"I ended up investigating everything myself. I went out late to see if someone would come after me, and it actually happened. I let myself be captured, went quietly, because I knew I could stop them, and I knew you guys would be there to collect them."
"You make a lot of assumptions," Kurama interrupted. He pretty much knew where the story was going. The human trafficking demons' defeat was what alerted Koenma and them to the fact that someone else was doing their work for them. "It was not wise for a young girl to willingly go off with a demon, especially one with those motives."
"And what motives are 'those?'" Tsukiko asked. She put down her menu as he did. "As far as I know, I'm doing the exact same thing right now. I mean, I'm still a young girl, willingly going off with a demon, and who knows what you plan to do to me? I mean, other than kidnapping humans for slaves, what do demons do to young girls like me?"
She asked that last question in jest and, when Kurama smiled, she leaned back very proud of herself for turning his words against him. "Touché," he commended, "but I'm sure you already know what my intentions are."
Tsukiko nodded. "If you were going to hurt me, you would have by now, and if you were going to imprison me, your whole team would be here, and instead of lunch I would have been carted to your boss, right?"
"You learned way too much from simply eavesdropping," Kurama murmured. "How am I to know that you haven't been spying on us?"
"I will admit," she started, "that I know a few of you by reputation. Kazuma Kuwabara went to my high school, and I heard the girls talking about his abilities to predict the future, though I had a feeling it wasn't really the future he was detecting. Some guys asked him if it was true, him being friends with Yusuke Urameshi, some guy he apparently went to middle school with, and the name of the leader in your group, who was so disappointed when he didn't get to fight that one demon.
"As for you, I heard Yusuke teasing you about letting your mother know her 'precious Shuichi' was staying the night. I knew that name because half the girls in my own middle school knew who you were, which is surprising since I heard your school was on the other side of the city. Then everyone was so disappointed when you decided not to go to high school. I must ask, where did you go after that?"
"When did this conversation become one about me?" Kurama returned, forcing her to stay on topic. "Hiei?"
Tsukiko smirked slightly. She didn't know much about the fire demon other than that, and that he was arrogant. "I know he's a demon," she stated honestly. "For someone who isn't a member of society, you really can't overhear too much."
Kurama had gotten a majority of his answers, and the girl did not seem to be lying. Her story flowed too well with exactly what happened. She would have had to rehearse for years to make her body react without giving a hint of deceit. She didn't have a thousand years of practice like he did. "Why are you being honest?"
"I told you," Tsukiko reminded him, "I was already caught. I have no reason to lie about anything. I also have no reason to not tell you that I plan to continue stopping these demons. I'm not going to let anyone get away with kidnapping people or coming after those with abilities."
Kurama wasn't surprised. From her story, he could tell that she was thankful to their group for keeping her safe those few times she was attacked. Though he didn't know what exactly her power was, it was clear she believed she could handle herself. She wanted to help them as a way to thank them, but that was where the problem lied.
Spirit World did not tolerate vigilantes.
Spirit World kept everything quiet as much as they could. They would not want a human involving herself, regardless of it being of her own free will. Their approach to bringing in humans involved background checks, psychological profiling, and power assessment. With their three spirit detectives, all those methods had failed. They wouldn't be so lenient with yet another human trying to help the cause. Koenma would actually be stricter after what happened with Sensui, and definitely after finding out about Yusuke. The only successful choice in a spirit detective had been a woman who left to start a family.
"I'm afraid we can't allow that," Kurama whispered darkly. "You know too much as it is."
Tsukiko didn't seem worried. "Is this the part in the movie where I get locked in a cell while the bad guy tries to force me to forget through torture?" she asked. "Because it's really starting to sound like that."
Kurama shook his head. "You said you could tell from my tone that I had no intention of harming you," he answered. "You were right, but that doesn't mean we can just allow you to roam free and continue getting involved in our business."
"It's my business, too," Tsukiko reiterated. "Demons have been after me. The demon traffickers took me. Yes, I put myself out there in that one instance, but it still means I would have been captured anyway. That last demon I helped out with was coming after me, too. I don't know who they are; you don't know who they are. Shouldn't we work together instead of you just sending me off telling me 'don't fight them?'"
He didn't have a respond. She had done the impossible and stunned him into silence. Her point was made, and he couldn't counter it. Even if Koenma demanded this girl not get involved with their affairs, she already had been because she was the target for whatever reason.
The intensity of the mood was interrupted when the waiter came by to take their order.
"We need a few more-"
"We'll have two waters, no lemon. For food, I'll have the Peking duck, and he'll have a large seasonal salad with the vinaigrette dressing on the side, won't you honey?"
Kurama's eyebrow twitched slightly in irritation when she called him by a pet name. When he didn't remark, she looked at the waiter and took Kurama's tensed hand. "It's our anniversary you know."
The waiter just chuckled and decided to leave the couple alone to enter in their orders.
"Why did you do that?" Kurama asked as he pulled away.
She chuckled. "You see, now that's the tone you should have used when you asked the waitress to seat us," she joked. "It has the same effect, AKA getting people to leave us alone, but it doesn't strike fear into their hearts about what exactly is happening back here."
The fox demon was again stunned, but was still irritated at the earlier display. Still, he needed to push the conversation forward and finish their earlier topic of discussion before she attempted to steer the conversation again. "I think you should come with me after this," he told her. "If you're going to be a part of this, we'll need to go through the right channels."
"And what channels are those?" Tsukiko pressed.
"You'll see," was all Kurama as he reached for the loaf of bread the waiter placed on the table.
Tsukiko hadn't noticed the loaf. "Huh," she muttered quietly. "When did that get there?"
Kurama sighed and shook his head at her. This girl… He had no idea what exactly their team was going to do with her.