An unrecognizable demon twined around Sagaku, wrapping her up in his limbs. "You smell mouth-watering," he said softly against her cheek. "What are you?"
Sagaku twisted out of his grip, breaking one of his wrists in the process. He had four of them.
"Is specie-ism a thing?" she asked the four-armed, blue-skinned creature. His face didn't even register pain from the broken wrist, and given that he had three others she couldn't blame him.
When the demon didn't attack again, just watching her with growing interest in his pale eyes, Sagaku took the offensive and leapt at him. A kick to his chest did nothing-he had four legs planted on the ground so his balance didn't even falter. With a curse, she spun and slammed her other leg into one of his knees. Even with the aid of her stones, stabilizing her and lending her strength, the demon didn't seem to register her attacks.
Three arms wrapped around her again. Why couldn't she stay out of his reach? His arms might as well have been elastic, reaching her no matter where she stood! Sagaku thrust her elbow up. His head snapped back with the force of it. Breaking free-again-Sagaku managed to get behind him.
Hiei watched from a short distance, looking bored and cleaning his katana.
"Feel free to help!" Sagaku snapped at him. He smirked laconically. Jerk.
This time when the demon latched on to Sagaku, she went limp and let him drag her closer.
"Breeder," he said. "I recognize you now."
Sagaku bid her time. She could sense Hiei, finally getting ready to jump in and help since it looked like she'd be defeated. Staring directly into the demon's eye, she called on the fiery pulse of the red jasper on her arm and burst from his grip once more. She twisted one of her legs over his shoulders, bringing him down to the ground with a resounding thump. Without waiting for him to return fire, so to speak, she wrapped her hands about his head, pushed down, twisted, and then jerked. It was an imperfect move, but it worked. Neck broken, spine severed, the demon slumped to the ground in an inanimate pile.
"What did he say to you?" Hiei asked. He always finished with his demons first, even when she faced only one opponent and he faced multiple. It was irking, to say the least. Especially since then he felt free to critique her fights and how long she took.
"Just the usual threats," Sagaku answered absentmindedly, tugging her phone from the pouch she'd sewn inside her skirt to protect it.
Once the verbal report was made, and Hiei had disappeared, Sagaku left for the protection of her bedroom.
She called Shoseki and Mineo that night with no regard for the time difference.
"I'm not surprised," Shoseki said when Sagaku blurted out what the demon had said. "We had a bet that you would go into heat while you were still here in America. You've held out a lot longer than we expected."
"So what do I do about it?" Sagaku asked desperately. "I've been cold, lately, but I thought...well, it'll be winter soon. And I thought with the serpentine-" she cut herself off before her voice could take on a higher pitch.
"Nothing," Shoseki told her firmly. "The serpentine is probably what held it off this long. It's dangerous to stop nature, though. Really dangerous."
Silence crackled across the phone connection. Shoseki would know better than anyone. Trying to escape nature is what had killed his mother.
"You probably have a few more days before it's too late," Mineo said. His voice sounded tinny, farther away from the phone. "Find somewhere to hole up and ride it out. Your boss will understand."
"I'll figure something out," Sagaku muttered disponently. "Thank you." Before they could respond, she added, "I miss you." And then hung up. A shudder wracked her body as she remembered how frigid she'd been the last time she was in heat.
As if sensing she couldn't stand to hear more, Shoseki sent her an email later that day with more instructions. What it boiled down to was that she had to take off the serpentine-it wasn't worth the risk of confusing her body. Sagaku refused to take the serpentine off, though. At least, not until she desperately needed to.
The thoughts of the past brought messy dreams of being at home with her family to her. The girls would be getting so big, now. In her dream, each time she tried to hug one of her sisters they pulled away, shunning her. And each time, another drop of ice built up in her veins.
"Onna!" someone snarled angrily in Sagaku's ear. She closed her eyes tighter, hugging her sister closer to her-her sister was so hot she could have been burning-and then her sister jerked away angrily.
Sagaku flew upright, heat boiling and warring against the ice in her body. Confused dreams muddled with reality. Hiei looked like he might actually murder her. But...what was Hiei doing in her room?
"Hiei!" Sagaku yelped, embarrassment flooding her face. The sleep shroud around her mind disappeared. Her nightgown was an unruly mess, long sleeves rumbled all the way up past her elbows. The fury in Hiei's gaze made Sagaku wince, hugging her arms around her chest and bowing her head.
"Koenma's been trying to reach you," he snapped impatiently. "There's a new assignment."
When it didn't appear that he was going to move, having crossed his arms in an unconscious mirror of hers, Sagaku said meekly, "Hiei, I can't go like this…"
"Obviously," he snarled. What little patience he'd tried to emanate disappeared.
"Get out of my room," Sagaku glowered, pointing at the door. She didn't wait to see what his reaction was. The second he'd left the room, she jumped out of bed and scrambled to pull on her regular clothes. She was still latching some of the jewelry clasps as she rushed outside. Hiei waited for her there. By her bed, the serpentine laid by her phone forgotten.
"What's the assignment?" gasped Sagaku as she raced after Hiei.
"Four demons," he said. He didn't even sound out of breath. "They're tearing open an unregistered portal."
When they found the demons, it was quite on accident since they thought there was further to go. The demons were equally as surprised. Unfortunately, one of the demons recovered before Sagaku was able to. His thorn-covered fist slammed her into the ground. Two of the other demons lunged forward. Hiei intercepted them.
Sagaku launched herself off the ground, dodging the next thorny punch before it landed. The last demon, apparently having decided Sagaku was no threat, took off after Hiei as well. The thorny demon sniffed the droplets of blood on his knuckles.
"Someone should have told me a jewel like you was around, sweetheart," he growled low in his throat. He was very interested, all of the sudden. Sagaku did not like the stare he levelled at her any more than she liked the other area his interest was showing.
"Jewel?" she quipped, drawing in protection from her stones. "Sweetheart? Can you try for some creativity, please?" Distracted by her own words, she wasn't able to dodge the hand that flew at her. This time it wasn't a punch. Rock hard fingers latched onto her arm. The thorns on his hand tore at her skin.
"Perhaps you prefer something more colorful," the demon deadpanned. He ignored the warning flares of stones across her body; most likely, he didn't understand the warning. "Should I call you whore? Slut?" His fingers dug deeper into her arms. Blood trickled down, staining her favorite shirt.
"Allow me to introduce myself-" the demon broke off with a pained snarl.
Sagaku crouched, having barely caught her balance when he released his hold. A feral expression crossed her face, lips curled up and eyebrows drawn in. The aciculate slivers from the demon's hand had slid through her skin like knives through butter.
"Call me whatever you like," Sagaku hissed. She reached up for her sharpened chopstick, pulling it from her unbrushed hair and wielding it like a dagger. "It's hard to talk once you're dead."
In a flurry of kicks and punches, Sagaku launched herself at the demon. He snarled in fury, meeting her attacks. Sagaku feinted a kick at his midsection. He blocked, missing the fist she swung to his face. The chopstick pierced an eye.
"Ugh!" Sagaku cried in startled disgust. Pus poured out of his eye socket, tinged almost green.
She reached her fingers to the tiger eye stud in her ear, feeling its pulse speed to meet that of the ulexite and zincite rings. The feral expression on her face shifted to a grin.
With one hand clasped over his ruined eye, the demon launched a large green spike from his palm. It flew at Sagaku. "No you don't, bitch!" he growled. She dodged the first spike, but not a second one and third one that were already in the air. One pierced her in the side. The other grazed her thigh.
"Yes, I do," Sagaku growled through gritted teeth. She couldn't let her fingers drop from her ear, not with what she was about to attempt.
Power poured from the stones, focused with a will she'd never had before. The fourth spike missed her. The fifth did, too, flying off course as the demon suddenly cried in anguish. His surviving eye disappeared behind splitting light, blinding and burning him. Sagaku jerked another chopstick out of her hair. With a battle cry she came to regret later, she raced at the demon with the chopsticks crossed in front of her like medieval lances. Thanks to the cry, he heard her coming and thrust his hand out, another spike forming rapidly on it. She didn't have time to dodge. Neither did he.
One of the other demons tried to leap at her, to end her while she was down. She ripped the third chopstick from her hair. It pierced his throat. He stumbled back, clutching the small weapon as his throat bled around it. Sagaku watched the idiot pull it out, letting the blood spurt freely. Distantly, she wondered when the pain in her stomach would start.
Hiei saw the onna get hit, out of the corner of his eye, and renewed his efforts. His second opponent fell beneath a fury of flame and sword. Hiei turned in time to see Sagaku kill the last demon. She wasn't standing, exactly, half-fallen against a tree, and her eyes were dazed. Hiei didn't have time to worry about her. The detritus on the ground was swirling with strange red markings-chalk, not blood. Sounds of shrieking were emanating from the smoky haze that seemed to be preceding the portal. Hiei used his boots to scuff out the red marks, watching the smoky haze slowly evaporate. When the last symbol was erased, the start of the portal finally disappeared. Shrieks sounded through until the last second.
Seeing that the stupid girl had allowed herself to get hit and wouldn't be able to make the report, Hiei called Koenma himself. Koenma promised a cleanup crew to make sure no remnants of the portal or the dead demons remained.
For a brief moment, Hiei entertained the idea of leaving the onna there for the clean-up crew, but she had fallen to her knees. With his luck, the clean-up crew would take her for some sort of rebel and then the fox and Spirit Detective would blame him for getting her killed. Hiei sighed. He bent to lift her with all intentions of slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Seeing that the spike was still thrust into her stomach he opted instead to carry her in front of him.
There was no one around to see Hiei take the girl to his home, a quiet, small house, barely more than a shack. Still, he couldn't stop the wary glance he cast about to make sure no one was watching. He would have to take care of the girl.
"I think it's starting to hurt now," Sagaku murmured against Hiei's shoulder. If she rubbed her nose against his shirt one more time, he vowed he was going to drop her, wounded or not.
"It's supposed to," Hiei snapped at her. One of her hands rested on his opposite shoulder, staining it with blood. The damn onna still nuzzled his shoulder, even as she died-no wonder there were so few Hanshoku in the Makai. Their priorities were horrendously skewed.
Sagaku couldn't help her physical actions. Hiei was so warm. The heat pooling off him was enough to distract her from the ice in her toes and fingers, spreading faster now as blood seeped from the awful wound in her stomach. She craved that heat, needed it. Anything to hold the cold at bay.
"Let go of me, onna," Hiei ordered. He tried to set her on her feet just long enough to unlock his door, but she didn't relinquish her grip on him. With less grace than usual, thanks to the injured demoness who seemed determined to be his new necklace, Hiei managed to maneuver them into the small kitchen and dropped her mercilessly onto the cold tiles of the floor. Sagaku struggled to bring herself to a sitting position, but Hiei had already disappeared. He returned a few seconds later with his bundle of supplies.
Hiei didn't warn the girl. From experience, he knew that anticipation made the pain worse. He came over her, kneeling on the floor, and jerked the spike from her stomach. A sick cry escaped her mouth. Forming fists with her hands, she punched out blindly. Hiei growled, pinning her down with a roll of his eyes. Of course she would make this difficult.
The large spike hadn't pierced any organs by some stroke of luck. Hiei flushed it with saline solution, finding a few splinters of the spike that had been left behind. Sagaku hyperventilated, her eyes closed. She held so still now he almost feared she'd fainted. He pressed his fingers against a needle, searing it with heat to sterilize it. The onna didn't even cry out as he stitched the gaping wound shut. It was possible, he realized, that she'd gone into shock.
He needn't have worried; as he lifted her shoulders up awkwardly with one hand to wrap the gauze around her stomach, she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his chest. He continued wrapping the gauze around and around, now with both hands.
"You're really hot," Sagaku muttered. She slid in her own blood in an attempt to press closer to him, drunk on pain and dizziness.
"Hn," Hiei grunted, his attention only half on what she said. He tolerated her touch only because was now using metal tweezers to dig through the wounds on her upper arm, collarbone, and thigh. The demon had left quite a few thorns embedded deep in her flesh.
"Really," Sagaku insisted, "you could be a furnace." The words muffled against his chest.
With clinical detachment, Sagaku hiked Sagaku's skirt up, flushing the skin there with saline solution also. It was only a surface wound, though it looked gruesome. Hiei bandaged it, trying to work around her hunched shoulders which she somehow managed to get in the way of her leg.
His work done, Hiei pushed Sagaku back by her shoulders, eying her distastefully. What was he supposed to do with her now?
"I should have left you for the cleaning crew," he growled. Maybe Kurama would come and pick her up. If not, he could leave her at someone's doorstep, like an abandoned kitten. He snorted in amusement. Sagaku's fingers twined around Hiei's hand as her eyes fluttered shut and her body drooped. Hiei narrowly saved her from landing back on the bloody tiles. Yeah, he was definitely not keeping her here.
Sagaku woke to Kurama's pleasant green eyes. A curtain of his hair fell around both of them. He was examining the scrapes on her arm, gently rubbing an ointment that smelled pleasantly of honey and spearmint over the affected areas.
"Morning, 'rama." Sagaku yawned hugely, right in Kurama's face. He chuckled lightly, nuding her cheek with his knuckles.
"Hiei says you took out a Class A demon all by yourself," Kurama congratulated his friend. He left out the part where Hiei exhausted his dictionary of curse words and said Sagaku almost got herself killed being an idiot. He had also mentioned that dumb luck was all that saved the girl. Kurama left that part off as well.
Sagaku cracked her neck. "Was he Class A? I thought he just caught me off guard."
Kurama smiled and capped his jar of ointment. Hiei had done a decent job of cleaning and caring for the wounds the night before. Considering his description of the fight, Sagaku's wounds were reasonably uncritical.
"Go back to sleep, Sagaku," Kurama ordered her. Her eyelashes were already fluttering against her cheeks. "You still need rest."
"Sleep with me?" she muttered.
Kurama sighed heavily. She hadn't asked him to do that before, though he'd always suspected it would come up. Hanshoku just weren't meant to be alone.
"I'm sorry, Sagaku, truly I am." The girl was sleeping already, and didn't hear his words.
Hiei checked on the onna that night, coming in through the window. He could hear the Spirit Detective and his girlfriend arguing about dishes closer to the door.
The girl was sleeping, one hand resting palm up with fingers curled near her face. The pillows and blankets she normally slept with were all kicked away. He suspected that any weight or pressure against her wounds was causing discomfort. He crept closer, just close enough to examine her wounds and assure himself that the fox had come by and treated them. That weight lifted from his mind, Hiei began slipping back.
"Fire," Sagaku whispered softly, turning towards him in her sleep. Hiei froze. She stopped stirring, though, and groaned before turning back again, to the side not plagued by the wound. Crisis averted, Hiei left.