Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara and Maribella didn't see Hiei again that evening. It was quite disappointing for Maribella, who had had a good, much needed laugh from his reaction. She had another present for him—a real present this time. But she hadn't wanted to give it to him with the others because… well… She didn't really know why she wanted to keep this a private gift better the two of them but she did. So she didn't actively look for Hiei either.

It wasn't until she retired to her room that Hiei's presence was felt again. She pulled the real present out of her bag and moved to the porch area, looking around. "Hiei? It was just a joke. A little tease," she said to the air around her, eyes searching for the fire demon.

"It wasn't particularly funny." His voice was disembodied, still hiding from her.

"You have to admit it was a little funny," she said with a small smile.

"No it wasn't." The clipped tone did not give her hope that he would look at it from her perspective.

"I'm sorry, all right? Now will you come out and accept your real present? I do have one for you," she called, clutching the item in her hands against her stomach. There was silence for a long couple of minutes, and then she felt his presence behind her. She turned, eyes adjusting to the dark as he stepped from the shadows near the corner of the porch.

Hiei eyed her and then her hands suspiciously. He had not liked the joke—he rarely liked being the butt of people's jokes. "Well?" he asked.

She had become distracted by how the shadows and the light played over his features, leaving half of him hard and unyielding and the other a mystery to be uncovered. She wanted to uncover it, whatever it was. His words though shook her out of it, and she held out the present.

Resting on her palms, an ordinary dagger rested. There was nothing special about it in appearance at first. Then, slowly, it grew. Or rather, the air around it rippled and shifted away to reveal a sword resting on her hand. As with the one that she had given Kurama, she had found a sword which had a decorative flare to it's deadliness. The design on this one however was that of a dragon, breathing fire down the twenty-five inch long blade. Its hilt was black and red.

It had jumped out at her at one of the shops and she'd seen Hiei give it an appraising eye and small nod. That was all she needed to know. Now Hiei stared at her as if she had a tentacle as a hand.

"Why would I need that?" he asked.

That was not the reaction she'd been hoping for. She stared at him and then down at the sword. "I thought you would like it," She said dumbly. "I— I mean you don't have to use it. None of you have to use what I got you, but I thought you'd like it. So just take it damn it." she turned her gaze away, looking out over at the lake as embarrassment swelled in her breast. What was she trying to do?

The weight of the sword didn't disappear from her hands. When she glanced back at where he had been, he was gone. Her fingers closed around the sword, wincing as the sharp edge pricked her palms, breaking the skin. Damn him! She turned and stalked into her bedroom, slamming the glass door shut behind her. She ended up throwing the sword at the wall in a fit of embarrassed anger.

"Damn you Hiei!" she snapped, before yanking off the lights and crawling in to sulk in her bed.

"I'm already damned, woman. I have been since the day I was born." Hiei's voice rang through the room.

She shot up from where she lay, glaring around her. "Get out of my bedroom! Get! Go on! I don't want to even talk to you any more!" she spat. How dare he! Perhaps her embarrassment was fueling her behavior. But damn him, he was being cold hearted and it pissed her off for some reason that he would rebuke her offering to him.

Silence met her cold glare and she flopped back, mentally exhausted for the moment. She even managed to turn over and brood herself into sleep.

Hiei watched her from where he'd been standing next to the discarded sword. He didn't know what he'd done to anger her this time. He knelt and picked up the sword, sliding it into a sheath that he'd gone to get when he'd seen the sword. It was beautifully made, even if it was a human creation. He would appreciate it later though when he figured out what he'd done to piss her off so bad.

He did leave however, taking the sword with him to take up his position outside her bedroom to keep watch. Perhaps once Jin got there they could set up a schedule for keeping watch. He couldn't survive on little sleep forever…

Midnight came and went and soon, Maribella was awake again, the feeling of suffocation closing in on her dragging her from sweet oblivion. She sat bolt upright, scaring poor Eikichi who had come in to sleep next to her on the pillow which was why she'd been having a hard time breathing. She sighed and rolled out of the bed, going to silently move to her new clothes and pulled on a pair of loose pj pants and a tank top. She'd forgotten about her dress again and sighed as she put it on the pile to be washed.

Maribella did all of this with the lights off, not noticing the disappeared sword as she left her room and went down to the lake just as she did the night before. She stared at the lake and then knelt. She stroked the top of the water, feeling its life but otherwise … nothing.

She pushed herself up and began to repeat the actions she'd done the night before. Back and forth in that strangely graceful and powerful dance, the waves lapping in a light breeze, Maribella moved. This time Hiei allowed her to do it for longer until she came to a stop by herself. Then he pushed himself up and came down.

"Is that all you are going to do?" He asked, eyeing her as she looked over at him with a scowl. "You'll never get better if you just do the same thing every day."

"This has worked perfectly well in the past when I was out of energy," she said stubbornly.

He watched her before pulling his cloak off, revealing a black sleeveless shirt. Setting it to the side, he motioned for her to move away from the water. "Come here. If that's all you've every done, then you need some serious reworking," He said.

"I'm not going to train with you," she warned, though she did move towards him.

"Fine, then just listen. You have great control. If you didn't you wouldn't be able to do what you just did, as well as hold onto an illusion all day even when your energies were extremely low," he said, "But stamina and control are not going to recover your powers. Time will do that. So until then you need to train on other parts of your body so that you aren't a walking target for any demon who wants to take you out."

She scowled at him before motioning for him to go on, "So what do you suggest oh all knowing one?" she asked, the sarcasm dripping like venom off her words.

"Become physically stronger," Hiei said without pause. "Work on learning new skills while you wait for your powers to return. Do your little dance but then turn around and do something else on top of it."

"I've only ever needed control. I'm an elemental demon, just like you. How can you—"

"Because I learned a long time ago that being elemental means you have more weaknesses than strengths. Sure, I can summon fire, and to a certain degree meld it to my will, but if I go against a water demon? What about an air demon who can sap the air away from the fire and leave it to gutter and die? You need a backup skill or you'll end up burned to the ground again," Hiei warned.

The imagery his words brought sent a visible chill down her back. "Then what do you suggest?" asked the woman as she shifted a bit. He made sense, damn him.

"For you? Swordsmanship or something long range," he said eyeing her form as if assessing a new weapon.

"I've used daggers before," she offered.

"Then start with dagger work. Be it fighting an imaginary target, or using the dojo for what it was meant to be for—training. We revamped an entire room to be a workout area with straw dummies. But do something Your body knows the routine You aren't pushing it. Find something new to push it.

For a long moment she was quiet and then her eyes raised to his face. "Show me."

"Get whatever weapons you want to learn and meet me here in ten minutes," he said before disappearing. He had some prep he needed to get—also known as a training dummy so that she wasn't throwing whatever she had at him because she still seemed pretty angry with him. Or maybe that was new anger. Ugh, who could read a woman accurately anyway?

Thirty minutes later Hiei was wishing that he'd never opened his mouth. It wasn't that she was horrible. It was that her idea of 'using daggers' consisted of getting up behind an opponent and striking him in the back with no thought of where the knife would land or if it would be a killing blow or not.

"Again! Seriously it isn't that hard to go at an enemy from the front. You run forward," Hiei snapped.

Her grip on the dagger in her hand tightened and Maribella swore she wouldn't throw it at him. But if he yelled at her one more time, she might just have to go dig it into his hand and see how he liked it. She stared at the dummy she'd 'killed' about 10 times so far. She didn't like the idea of just running at it. It left her too open to attacks. But she tried again.

Just as she was getting close, her mind decided to open up a bit. She was suddenly hit by a strong sense of deja vu as the dummy no longer looked like piles of hay tied together but of a man, tall, and devilishly handsome, looming over her. She lost the grip on her danger and stumbled backwards, putting on the breaks as best she could but in the end, she and the dummy collided.

Hiei closed his eyes to contain his frustration. What had he ever done to deserve a pupil like this? He stalked forward. "Get up Maribella," he ordered as he began to fish through the straw disaster that had been the dummy. "Are you even trying? Seriously, if you are going to do nothing but hold back, I'm not going to help you—"

She popped up, eyes dark with anger as she fought back panic and annoyance. Whomever she'd just seen it had had something to do with her attack. She was positive of that. "Would you back off!?" she spat.

"You aren't going to get any better if I do. Unless of course you want to keep getting burned alive," Hiei snapped as he began to reassemble the dummy.

She hissed and without thought pounced. She grabbed his shirt front and tackled him to the ground. "You do not get to say that Hiei! You don't get to say that, do you hear me!" She was straddling him on the ground, shaking his chest as she glared down at him. He reached up to catch her wrists just as they were about to go for his neck.

The world stopped around them for what was the longest moment. Their eyes, both filled with angry connected. Their skin heated and suddenly an inferno surrounded them—a fiery tornado erupted right there on the lawn, burning nothing as a pond of sorts formed below them and began trickling down into the lake. The three elements roared around them. A black band appeared at Hiei's throat, encircling it before traveling down his left arm, echoing the black dragon on his right and wound its way up Maribella's right arm to encircle her wrist. A black swirl began on Maribella's left wrist where Hiei's hand grasped it and moved down her hand to form an intricate smaller copy of Hiei's Dragon tattoo on her palm.

While this happened the tornado continued around them as their eyes remained lock. Within their minds, doors opened and connected, throwing the two of their minds together in a giant clump. Hiei was overwhelmed by her pain and weakness and hopeful nature as she was overwhelmed by the cynicism, dark, fairy mind of his.

The tornado slowly dwindled and the muddy grass beneath Hiei's back began to dry. Ari took a deep breathe, breaking the stillness of the moment.

"What the hell was that?"

Yusuke's voice, tired since it was almost 3 am at that point, came from their left, breaking the spell. Maribella shoved herself back, falling onto her backside and crawling away from Hiei as she looked at her hands in stunned, and perhaps horrified, realization. The marks weren't disappearing.

"Yo, Hiei, what's going on?" Yusuke demanded when the fire demon remained laying back, staring at the sky.

"Oh fuck," Hiei and Maribella said at the same time. Hiei disappeared as Maribella remained there staring at her hands. Oh god, what had she done? There was no way that they—that he was her—

Yusuke looked over at Kuwabara who had stumbled out just about then. "Kuwabara, get your friend to talk. What's going on?"

Kuwabara frowned at Ari and moved over, "Whoa, what happened to your hands Ari?"

Ari looked up at him and then back at her hands. "I think… I don't…" The words wouldn't come as she finally pushed herself up and kinda just kept staring at her hands. She needed time to process. This was… It was just too much.

She made it to the edge of the porch before her knees went out from under her and she collapsed. She welcomed the oblivion that came to her as her knees buckled and her head struck one of the posts. She couldn't process the idea of Hiei being her soulmate. She just couldn't...