Chapter Seven

Predictably, Hiei's first words were, "Where'd the idiot go?"

"Human world, I guess," Yusuke replied vaguely. He was watching Kurama.

"He left?! After I told him not to?"

"Yeah, he's a real rebel. Listen, Kurama--"

"Don't." Kurama cut him off swiftly, but his tone was not angry, and he was smiling.

"I was just going to--"

"Apologize. But you shouldn't--not yet. You'd be half-assing it." Yusuke raised his eyebrows. "You've got a lot more people to apologize to than just me," Kurama continued in a matter of fact tone, "and a lot more to apologize for than you think you do. So until you're ready to do it right, let's just assume that the need for apology doesn't exist."

It took Yusuke a minute to work through everything Kurama meant. "O...kay," he finally said, slowly and still a bit puzzled.

"Hiei says you're feeling better."

"Well, I feel less shitty than I did."

"Do you mind if I check your blood for snow?"

Yusuke blinked. "You can do that?"

Kurama smiled. "Microscopes are for amateurs."

"I already told you he's clean," Hiei muttered. He was standing a few feet away from the other two with his arms crossed, clearly keen to disassociate himself from anything resembling an apology that might have happened.

"You'll forgive me if I don't rely on your judgment," Kurama replied without so much as glancing at him.

"It's not like it's hard to--"

"Maybe not, but I still refuse to--"

"Why don't you just--"

"Cut it out!" Yusuke interrupted, annoyed. He hadn't realized it up until that moment, but he'd actually enjoyed the respite from yelling when Kurama had been gone. "You two--you know what you make this feel like? Like I'm some damned kid with divorced parents. The kind of divorced parents who fight over who gets to take the beat-up old toaster. You don't have to fight over everything just to prove how pissed you are!"

Silence. Yusuke was halfway afraid one or both of them was going to take offense, but he only got surprised looks. Then, after a moment, Kurama started to laugh. Yusuke joined in, a little shaky, and Hiei huffed and looked away. "That painted quite an image," Kurama said thoughtfully.

"God, don't--just don't, don't say anything else. I didn't mean it that way. Just--forget it," Yusuke replied, still laughing. He couldn't help himself--the idea of Hiei and Kurama as--and him as--damn, he should not have said that...

Hiei made an irritated noise. "You two are acting like idiots. Just do whatever you want to do to him and get it over with."

Kurama looked like the only thing stopping him from rolling his eyes was that he was above such gestures. "Give me your hand," he said to Yusuke.

Yusuke did so. He didn't see what it was Kurama did next--he barely felt it, either, but the next thing he knew he was bleeding from a cut on his finger and the blood was collecting on a large, raggedy-edged leaf. "You're clean," Kurama announced.

Yusuke stared at him. "How--how do you know? How did you do that?"

"This plant reacts violently to the presence of snow," Kurama explained, as though he'd done nothing out of the ordinary. "If there was even a trace in your system, it would have attacked you."

"...Well, thanks."

"I didn't really think there would be," Kurama said, almost glancing at Hiei but stopping halfway through the motion. "And the attack wouldn't have been bad."

"I'm still touched."

"Let's drop the subject. I have news for you."

"News?"

Hiei dropped his pose of calculated boredom and turned to face them again--apparently, Kurama hadn't let him in on whatever it was yet. Kurama reached into his pockets and produced three photographs, which he then spread out on the ground in front of Yusuke with a flourish. Yusuke picked them up and looked at them. Three really ugly demons. So what?

He looked up at Kurama, letting his face express his confusion. Kurama was looking pleased with himself. "I thought you'd need something to focus on to keep from getting bored while we're training together. So I did some reconnaissance."

"Some what?" Yusuke asked, baffled, looking at the photos again.

"He's been spying on people," Hiei translated in an exasperated tone.

"Oh. Well, it's not my fault he always uses such big words."

"Back to the matter at hand..." Kurama gestured at the photographs. "Each of these demons is at the head of a drug-dealing ring."

"So what, fox?" Hiei asked, annoyed. "There are hundreds of drug rings in Makai. What makes these three important?"

"Glad you asked," Kurama replied without missing a beat. "These three are selling snow to human world."

"What?!"

Both Yusuke and Hiei had spoken, but Yusuke's voice was much louder. They glanced at each other, then at Kurama, silently demanding more information. "Snow works the same way on humans as it does on demons," Kurama said, "with one considerable caveat. While it will take a year or more--several, if you happen to be Yusuke--for snow to eat through a demon's energy reserves, it takes much less time for the average human's store of energy to be exhausted."

"How long?" Yusuke demanded.

"Somewhere between two months and two weeks," Kurama replied. "Demon go-betweens who can pass themselves off as humans sell snow disguised as a human drug, usually party drugs like ecstasy. If the human's lucky, they'll simply die from the addiction. If they're not, the demon will make a meal of them when they're no longer able to resist."

"Don't the human authorities notice people going missing?" Hiei demanded.

"Hardly ever. The disappearances are usually dismissed as runaways, and the deaths are ruled drug overdoses. It's actually a relatively intelligent scheme for a demon to run. Human governments historically show very little interest in helping their drug-addicted citizens; sometimes, they're even grateful when they disappear."

Yusuke's fingers crumpled the photographs slightly as he fought the impulse to make a fist. Kurama noticed. "I thought I'd give you a choice of targets," he said, addressing himself solely to Yusuke. "You can decide which one to go after."

"I've already decided."

Kurama frowned. "You don't want to hear more about them first?"

"We're getting all of them." Yusuke glared at the other two, unable to quite put his rage into words. "Selling that--giving that to humans--and they don't even know what it is. Two weeks." He gave into his earlier impulse and crumpled the photographs, both hands fisting tightly. "We're getting all of those bastards. And we're doing it now."

He faced them defiantly, glaring fiercely, expecting them to refuse; expecting them to try to reason with him. Instead he get stunned silence--and then, a quick movement, something like a shrug or a cough, and then Kurama was hunched over slightly with his hand covering his mouth, eyes mirthful. Hiei--his expression still blank with disbelief--turned at the motion and saw Kurama standing there trembling on the brink of laughter--trying so hard not to go over--and Hiei's face twitched.

Yusuke wasn't sure which one of them cracked first. All he knew was that he suddenly found himself crossing his arms, trying not to get really annoyed, while the two of them laughed as loud and hysterically as he'd ever seen anyone laugh. Hiei had to sit down, he was laughing so hard, and Kurama soon followed him, and neither of them could breathe anymore but still they were laughing like it was the funniest damn thing in the universe. "Guys, I'm standing right here," Yusuke finally reminded them. He might have spoken to the wind for all it mattered. He clenched his fists. "What is so funny?"

Kurama rather bravely attempted a sentence, but had to break off in the middle, a victim to the ongoing laughter. "You--you haven't--"

"Changed," Hiei finished for him; Kurama nodded to indicate that yes, that was what he meant, still laughing helplessly. "He hasn't changed," Hiei continued, gasping around his own laughter. "Not--"

"Not one bit. This is so like him."

"Kind of reminds you of him trying to take down Suzaku with his shoes over his hands?"

"Or running in circles around that one cave just to prove Sensui couldn't predict what he would do, remember?"

"Or shooting that damned mirror of yours to catch me in the back. He's still the same."

"Good to know he's still there underneath the snow," Kurama concluded, cheeks pink from laughter.

Yusuke opened his mouth, then shut it--several times. He thought about complaining about being talked about in the third person when he was right there, but thought better of it. He wanted to complain that they were making fun of him, but he sensed they weren't, not really. "I'm serious," was all he finally said, in a mild tone.

"We know you are," Kurama said in a conciliatory tone. He was wiping tears off his face; Hiei was still chuckling. "But we can't do this immediately. You'd get killed."

"Never seems to hurt me."

"Well, I won't be responsible for it."

"Neither will I," Hiei put in quickly, the laughter gone. "We already made it clear: if you want to leave this cave, you have to be able to fight your way past us."

"Which we will, of course, help you learn how to do again," Kurama added. "But only if you're ready to commit to that goal."

Yusuke nodded, but Kurama held up a hand to keep him from speaking. "Don't agree too quickly. This will be a contract, once we decide on the terms. One that we will hold you to, and you us. So think carefully."

"Terms?"

"Your goal for the training," Hiei said. "Ours, as self-defeating as it may seem, is to have you beat us. Yours can be the same, or it can be to defeat these three demons, or it can be to defeat every drug-dealer you can get your hands on, or it can be something else. But we all need to know what it is, so we know when the contract's been filled."

"Think about it before you decide," Kurama stressed again.

Yusuke nodded his understanding. "Okay."

They sat in a remarkably companionable silence for a moment. Then Kurama sighed and stood, gathering up the crumpled photographs. "To think," he said in a tone of mock offense, "that I went to all the trouble of putting together all that information and he doesn't even want to hear it..." He kept muttering to himself as he moved into the cave. Hiei made a face and flitted off into the trees.

Yusuke stayed where he was, mulling over the task ahead of him. What exactly did he want to accomplish here? Even having the question before him--having it be his choice what happened next, not his friends' choice, and certainly not the snow--was something he felt like holding on to and enjoying for a moment before making a decision.

Suddenly he remembered what Kuwabara had said. In the shock of Kurama's reappearance and the news of what he'd been doing while gone, Yusuke had almost forgotten about Kuwabara's visit. Now he thought about the challenge Kuwabara had presented him with; a "stealth mission," almost, to be slipped in underneath the contract he would make with Hiei and Kurama. He thought about that, and about what had just happened; their shared laughter, the way they rushed over each other's words the moment the forgot to be angry. Finishing each other's sentences left and right.

Yusuke stood. He knew what his goals were. He would never again give into snow. He would destroy the demons who were sending it to human world. And he would get Hiei and Kurama to settle their argument, no matter what it took.