Yusuke stretched, cracking the vertebrae in his neck as he wandered into the kitchen. He sniffed the air and looked around.
"What in the three realms are you cooking?" he asked Kurama curiously.
"It's nothing I'm cooking," Kurama groaned, slumping in front of the stovetop. Sleep had alluded him for the rest of the night, plagued by the smell of demoness-in-heat. Deep bags and pale skin gave him the look of death. "Genkai was wrong; Sagaku is not too young to be in heat."
"Oh," Yusuke said simply. He plopped down into a seat. "That can't be good. Smells good, though."
"What smells good?" Kuwabara asked. He stood in the doorway, sniffing the air experimentally. "I don't smell anything."
"You're all human," Yusuke reminded his rival and friend grumpily.
"Rub it in, will you?" Kuwabara sniped at Yusuke. If he were even a little bit demon, maybe he would have something to offer Yukina. But no, he was just human. Not the kind of suitor the koorime would be interested in.
"Hush," Kurama commanded them. "We need a plan. A real plan. Her scent will spread very quickly, I expect."
Sagaku stayed locked in the room despite her sisters' pleas. She'd told the men that when she went into heat, she would lock herself in here; she meant to keep that promise. But the younger girls didn't understand.
In the kitchen, the men argued over every suggestion.
"There's nowhere we can send them where they'll be safe!" Yusuke pounded his fist onto the wooden table. "And all of them are in trouble as long as she's like this!"
There were no words for the sweet, musty smell that was permeating the house. It might as well be poisonous gas, sealing the kiss of death on the girls should other demons find them. The smell made Kurama especially testy, until finally he pinned his nose with a clothespin to allow his thoughts to stop swirling around so chaotically. Hiei managed to keep his dignity, breathing through his mouth instead of his nose.
Needless to say, no one was surprised when the first demon appeared. The second and third ones got lucky, arriving while the first demon still fought. Regardless, Kurama tore into the first demon with all the pent up energy he had been storing. Together, the others took care of the other two.
Sagaku watched the bloodshed from the window in her room. Her frozen fingers were twisted into long tendrils of hair. Even though she could feel her limbs again, the cold having eased with the arrival of the sun, she was still freezing. It was as if her entire body believed it to be winter, though spring air taunted her outside the window; even her lips felt chapped from the phantom cold. Her three sisters crowded around her, hiding their faces from the violence. Instead of being comforted by their warmth, she found that where they touched her felt raw and over-exposed. To make matters worse, she couldn't even wallow in self-pity-every time she started to, her mind turned to Usagi who was probably feeling just as wretched.
"It's really bad," Yusuke explained to Genkai over the phone that night. Sagaku sat just beside her bedroom door, eavesdropping shamelessly. "Can you take Sagaku there? I've seen more demons today than I have since the last time I was in the Makai."
Genkai's voice was made tinny by the speakerphone. "We're still seeing action near the forest, and the breeder has been out of heat for almost a week." There was silence for a minute.
"If we sent her to you, that would only be one place that needed strong defenses," Yusuke finally said.
"You really want to put two demons in heat-or still smelling of it-in one place?" Genkai snapped at her former trainee. "They would tear each other apart, sisters or no."
That gave them all pause; none of them had considered how the sisters would act if they thought they were in competition.
"Some female demons have been known to tear each other apart close to a mating," Kurama confirmed. It wasn't quite the same, but theoretically would yield similar results. The chapter on being in heat in the book he read didn't quite cover two demonesses being in heat at the same time; instead, it said that Hanshoku were usually secluded with their male handler during times of heat.
"If you can't handle it, tell me." Yusuke bristled at the tone Genkai took. It was her favorite taunt though, one that worked. He wouldn't back down from a challenge.
"Can it, Grandma," he snapped at the phone, and hung up rudely. Undoubtedly, Genkai was smirking. Yusuke sneered at the device in his hand, venting his frustration.
"Supposedly, the influx of hormones is very uncomfortable," Kurama said in a mild tone. He tapped the cover of the book he held in his hands. "They're very warm-blooded, in a figurative sense as well as literal, and as I'm sure you've noticed they tend to crowd very close to each other. The hormones flooding her bloodstream right now leach that natural heat. Their temperatures drop exponentially while they're in heat."
"How does that help us?" Kuwabara asked, eying the book as if it were the holy grail.
"It doesn't," Hiei snapped.
Kuwabara refrained from pointing out that Hiei, who was normally quite irate and appeared to suffer from a Napoleon complex, was being downright unbearable today. Even Kurama had a sharp edge surfacing beneath his normally calm and patient demeanor.
"How long does it last?" Kuwabara finally asked. Usagi had gone into heat several weeks ago, it seemed, and was now physically okay even if the supposed scent lingered.
Kurama sighed wearily, slumping into his seat. "Anywhere from hours to weeks," he answered. "It seems to depend on the demon, the circumstances, the environment, and everything in between. My hope is that given her age, it may not last that long."
"Or it may last even longer since it wasn't even supposed to happen yet," Yusuke groaned, ever the pessimist.
All four men glanced to the hall that hid the suffering girl, even the stoic fire demon. For their sake, if not hers, they hoped it wouldn't last weeks.
"Kuwabara, you seem least affected," Kurama said thoughtfully. "Perhaps tomorrow you can stay here, and we can bring the younger girls out. That way Sagaku isn't confined to one room for the indefinite future."
"Do we really think it's safe though, if there might be more demons?" Kuwabara asked.
Yusuke groaned, and dropped his head to his hands. There would be no relief from this catastrophe, it seemed.
When the conversation appeared to die, Kurama flipped the book back open to the ribbon that marked his spot. Unlikely though it was, maybe there was an answer hidden deeper in these pages.
"Why is it impossible for other demons to resist her?" Yusuke's voice was muffled by his hands. "We're managing."
"I can't even smell it," Kuwabara said proudly. "As long as I'm not in the same room as her, it doesn't affect me at all."
The others ignored him in favor Yusuke's point.
"We're actively resisting," Hiei finally said when the fox appeared to be too engrossed in the book to answer. "Caught unaware, without Koenma's laws to limit us, we wouldn't."
Kurama was apparently not as engrossed in the book as he'd led his friend to believe, murmuring in a somewhat distracted tone, "That, and it's been somewhat gradual. Through constant proximity it's possible that we've built up some amount of immunity."
They took shifts that night, one staying awake to track the ever-nearing presence of more and more forms. None of the demons ventured too close to the house, though, apparently sensing the stronger males and the danger thereof. If they hadn't been so distracted, it would have perhaps occurred to the men to wonder how so many demons, lower class or not, had managed to find their way from the Makai to the Ningenkai.
Sagaku tried her hardest to make it easy for the men, even going so far as to have her sisters check the hall before she dodged to and from the bathroom. Kurama noticed her efforts, and appreciated them. Privately, though, he knew it made little difference. The carnal temptation invoked by her smell was being resisted by those in the house; it was everyone outside the house she should be worrying about.
Sagaku was worried about the demons outside; she wavered between putting herself between the windows and her sisters so if a demon did come it would take her and leave her sisters alone, and hiding in the corner of the room farthest from the window so it would be harder for the demons to sense her. Undoubtedly, it didn't make much of a difference either way.
The second day was harder than the first, except that Sagaku had sunk into a lethargic, depressive state which was at least moderately preferable to blind panic. It was just...she could feel the other demons. The fire that fueled their core. The heat, the warmth...Had she ever coveted anything so dearly? She wanted what she felt from them so bad, it took all of her self control to not leave the room and find one of them. Any of them, be it a demon outside, or even one of her friends inside. Ironically, the cold driving her instincts was also the factor holding her back; any movement made it feel like chunks of ice were breaking off in her veins. Even if she could dredge up the energy to take what she needed, her sisters kept her urges in check with their innocent distractions. At least, Sagaku mused, Usagi wasn't in heat anymore. There was an end in sight.
When the atmosphere inside the house became too much to handle, Kurama, Yusuke and Hiei decided to make a day of clearing their heads by clearing the demons that prowled ever closer. Kuwabara stayed to babysit inside. If Sagaku hadn't expressed such delight at being outside of her bedroom, he would have voiced his complaints. As it was, he just smiled painfully at her and hid across the room from her. Even if he couldn't smell her the way the others could, it was hard to deny that there was some form of allurement in such close proximity.
Taking turns guarding the house, the others felt out the lesser demons and snuffed them out, one at a time. Two proved particularly troublesome though; as soon as they got close, the demons melted away. No trace of energy or odor was left behind. As elusive as shadows, they flitted from one end of the property to the other, always ahead of the team.
Even with the frustration of being unable to trap the remaining two demons, all three men had managed to unwind some of their baser instincts. It was time, then, to return from the frying pan to the fire.
Kurama knocked on the door, giving Sagaku ample time to return to her room. Hiei couldn't make himself wait with the fox and the Spirit Detective, though. He propelled himself onto the roof, blending into the shadow of the peak. Tonight, he would sleep out here, he decided.
Kurama woke the others that night with excited pounding on their bedroom doors.
"I have it!" he exclaimed when Yusuke and Kuwabara were in the living room with him (Hiei being no where to be found).
"Have what?" Yusuke's eye twitched. He tried not to glare at Kurama-who was, he reminded himself, a friend. Kuwabara looked around the room, clearly hoping to find whatever it was that made Kurama so excited.
"A solution," Kurama claimed. He thrust the book under Yusuke's nose, pointing to the characters near the bottom of the page. Then, before Yusuke's eyes had a chance to focus enough to read the words that clearly had Kurama in a twist, the redhead jerked the book away and stalked back and forth mumbling to himself.
"Now we just have to find out where we can find it," he said loud enough for the others to hear.
"What is 'it'?" Yusuke snapped, stepping into Kurama's path. Kurama drew back sharply, looking down the few inches to Yusuke's face.
"Serpentine," he sounded puzzled. "Didn't you read it?"
"You want to get her a snake?" Kuwabara asked in confusion. He let himself sink onto the couch, his long legs stretching out ahead of him.
"Not a snake," Kurama hissed in exasperation. "A stone. Serpentine. New jade. The book mentions it, just once, as a footnote. If she can tap into it, it will help channel her kundalini and-"
"Whatever that means," Yusuke cut Kurama off. "So what, this isn't guaranteed to work? Just maybe?"
"Better than nothing," Kuwabara yawned, slumping further down on the couch. "Let me know when you find some."
Kurama was able to find some sellers of serpentine online, but with 2-4 weeks shipping it wasn't entirely feasible. Instead, after ensuring that the other boys had matters well in hand, he drove to town to search around the different mystic, occult, and naturalist shops. With luck he wasn't expecting, and a fair bit of bargaining the fox reveled in, he returned to the house with a rough chunk of rock.
With more trepidation than Kurama cared to admit (because if this didn't work, he was out of ideas and footnotes), Kurama called Sagaku into the living room. The others joined as well, though Hiei and Yusuke both kept their distance.
"We'll have to do this quickly," Kurama said. The nasal quality of his tone, as he tried to breathe only through his mouth, made Ririshii giggle, but when no one else did she quieted.
Sagaku hesitated at the last step of hall, wary of stepping past the perceived protection of the two walls. Kurama beckoned her encouragingly though, so she heaved a deep breath and stumbled forward on numb feet.
Kurama reached for her hand, pulling it forward and pressing something hard into her palm. Her fingers closed stiffly around it.
Curious and anxious at the same time, Sagaku looked down at her fingers. Olivey green peeked out between her fingers, mottled with mossy gray, unfinished stone.
"Is it working?" Yusuke asked from across the room.
Sagaku studied the rock in her grasp, ignoring the intent focus of the men in the room.
"It has a pulse." Her brown eyes, unusually serious, looked up to meet Kurama's for the first time since her body had wreaked havoc on their lives. "I recognize it. What is it?"
"It's called serpentine," Kurama said. He glanced helplessly around the room. The scent was as prevalent as ever. "The book didn't say exactly what it would do, just that it helps. Try...meditating on it." Not the best advice, but all he could think of. Or was he supposed to ground it up, make some sort of tea out of it?
"Let me know if it actually works," Yusuke said in a bored tone, stalking from the room.
The others had left the room, leaving only Kurama who suffered stoically to try to work through the mystery of the serpentine with Sagaku. He even showed her the footnote, though she admitted she gained nothing more from it than he had.
Serpentine, known to channel energies and awaken kundalini, has been used in two known cases to ease the onslaught of heat on Hanshoku females. Effectiveness wears off gradually and must be monitored.
"I just have to focus on it?" Sagaku asked again, but she didn't hear the answer. She was already absorbed in the stone, rubbing her thumb across the sharp edges. A steady pulse emanated into her thumb. Her own pulse? Maybe, but the briefest thaw leant feeling to her hand. The sharp edges were pressing painfully. Her grip tightened.
It pulled at her, the stone, her mind sinking into the alien feeling. Its pulse-it definitely wasn't her pulse, since she could feel two beats now-was drawing her like a magnet until her heart beat slowed, matching the thrum of the stone. It beat, again and again. Light sensations pulled at her ankles, and wrists. Tension eased at the base of her spine, climbing upwards. Warm. Comfortable. Familiar. It was home, she realized. It felt like home. The warren must have been surrounded by serpentine, and they grew up never knowing why they felt so safe.