Hiei of the Thousand Eyes

Chapter Eight: Vestiges

Yukina placed a frozen touch on his forearm and Hiei was pulled back from his thoughts. His sister smiled softly, the same look she always gave him when asking for something. Her eyes were harder than normal and Hiei had to smirk at how powerful her gentle actions were.

"You have to start taking this seriously, brother," she told him. "I am thankful for your presence here. You were gone for years and I am happy to see you. But this is not a vacation. I know you to be restless. Training Chihiro is an opportunity to calm yourself."

"She's a weakling," he spat, rolling his eyes as he stepped away from the cold of her hand. "And she doesn't have the care to be stronger."

Yukina's smile vanished and Hiei hated himself for upsetting her. Still, he couldn't understand why this was so important.

"You're correct, Hiei," Yukina said. "She is weak. And she is a target. One that Koenma would like to keep safe. But more importantly," she started. Yukina looked back over to the strange former human who sat on the porch steps and stared at the woods. "I know what it's like to be alone and afraid." Yukina turned her eyes back on Hiei, a frown etched in her features. "To be caught in a situation where you are forced to rely on others, even trust them. I know you have, too."

Hiei turned his head with a tsk. He hated remembering his youth, cast aside by his kin and then again by the first to take him in. Hiei had learned quick to rely only on himself. He loathed to admit he was thankful of the fox's friendship. Then Yusuke's and even the oaf's. Despite the distance he still kept, he cherished his sister and every moment they shared. These relations no longer felt like weakness. It was now proof of his strength that he could be who he was and yet maintain them. Still, it was difficult to be reminded of who he once was: alone and at his most vulnerable.

"I was lucky enough to have found you and Kazuma and the others," Yukina continued. "I hope to say she was lucky enough to have found us as well."

Chihiro set her glass down and stood, the tremor in her finger stronger than before. "I'm going to take a walk, clear my head."

"Chihiro, please stay," Yukina said, turning to stop the girl.

"I'm fine," Chihiro said, ignoring Yukina.

Yukina was about to protest again when Kuwabara stepped out, holding onto their wailing son. "Sorry, Yukina. I can't get him to settle down." Yukina raced over to calm Hiko and Chihiro slipped away.

Hiei thought of letting her go. She was obviously spooked enough to need to clear her head, but at the same time he had learned to take the advice of his sister. This girl was in need of someone good to guide her. Not himself, obviously, but he was being forced into that role.

"I'll be back," he told his sister, before following after Chihiro.

The girl had gotten faster. She had already made it to the shrine halfway down the temple, although she had stopped there. Chihiro paced back and forth a few times before sitting on the steps. Hiei watched her from his spot in the trees, wondering how he should talk to her. He communicated best through fighting. When it came to conversations, this girl was as abrasive as Yusuke but without anything interesting about her. Unless you could count her turning into the very type of demon he had taken his greatest powers from.

She seemed to be waiting for something. Perhaps for him to jump down and join her. Chihiro had an uncanny ability to always know where he was. Then he sensed it, the humans approaching. They were just humans, nothing remotely special. Calmly sans the tremor in her finger, Chihiro stood and waited for the newcomers.

For the first time since her transformation, Hiei wished he could read her mind. Somehow her new set of eyes has given the girl the ability to keep his Jagan out. When the men arrived, Hiei didn't need that power to realize what it was that Chihiro was so afraid of. She told him herself.

"Father."

The leader of the small group smiled, a sickly grin that Hiei likened to the lowest scum. This was a man who thought he was clever for getting away with all his misdeeds. This was the man who Chihiro was afraid of, that caused the tremor in her finger. He was curious what she would do.

"I'm upset, Chi-chi. You weren't there to welcome me home."

"And yet you found me anyway," she called out with false cheer. Hiei didn't need his Jagan to feel her rage spill out from beneath the words she spoke.

"It was surprised. You managed to slip the eye I had on you during that fight at White Claw's club. That friend of yours, the brat from high school, came by your place and brought some of your things here, though," he smiled. "I'll have to give him my regards for leading me straight to you."

"Leave him alone."

"Your weak spot always has been easy to find," Chihiro's father gloated.

Hiei wondered if this was true. The boy didn't seem to him a weak spot. Her humanity still ailed her like a passing cold and her lack of patience in her training caused her to quit more often than push forward. Still, Chihiro seemed to have little care over people and things. Even her attachment to the Spirit Detective's twin wasn't so strong that she should feel threatened by this man. Especially now that she knows just how strong Kaisei is compared to the humans.

"So has yours," Chihiro replied. "Why come after me?"

Chihiro's father reached a hand up. It would have been imperceptible to any eye but Hiei's, the way Chihiro pulled one of her half swords and had it pressed against the older man's fingers. She moved before he did.

The edge of her blade dug into her father's skin creating a well of blood. He merely laughed.

"Don't touch me," she said, voice low and dangerous. For the first time Hiei saw in her someone who could be worthy of the power she had been bestowed.

"You always were the obstinate one," he grinned, pulling his hand away and waving off his henchmen that had pulled guns. "I want you to come back, Chi-chi. I want you to work for me. You've grown into quite the striking woman. You'd be able to sway favors and crush hearts so easily."

"You have no idea what I've turned into," she spat. "You can't have me. My friend can take care of himself. You've got no leverage here."

Her father brought his bleeding hand to his lips and licked away the blood like it was sweet nectar. "My sweet Chi-chi," he purred. "Did you really think I'd come here with nothing but vague threats?" He leaned in close, whispering words so softly even Hiei's ears couldn't catch them.

Chihiro's muscles tensed and she lowered her blade. "You're lying." All her rage had been replaced with sheer terror.

"What do I have to lie about?" he countered.

Chihiro shook her head and took a definitive step back. "No," she said, voice steady. "You can't mess with my head anymore. I know when you're lying. And you're lying."

Hiei smirked. Chihiro was a brat but she was sharp. Whatever this man said may have tricked her when she was still human, still capable of second guessing reality and being swayed by fears. She may not have control over her powers yet, but she could hear his lie as instinctually as she could find Hiei in the trees.

Chihiro sensed it the same moment Hiei did. Her father sneered and his henchman's gun came back up. Chihiro was proving herself to be smart, trusting her new talents even though she could not control of understand them. Still, other than the one time she managed to avoid Hiei out of fear and desperation, her speed was lacking even compared to these puny humans.

Hiei leaped forward and relieved the men of their guns before any of them had time to see him. He settled onto his feet a few steps behind Chihiro and spun one of the metal contraptions around his finger, the rest in a pile further back. "I never liked guns," he said. "They make decent long range attacks, but leave you without a form of defense if someone can get close enough." He didn't bother looking at the men as he talked. Hiei handed the gun over to Chihiro. "Here. You use them, don't you?"

When he reached her eye, she wasn't surprised to see him. She had known he was watching, of course. But she did seem taken aback by his presence. He pressed the cool metal into her empty hand. "Either take care of them or leave with them. I don't care which."

"Who's your new bodyguard?" Chihiro's father asked with a slimy grin.

Hiei only looked at him briefly, enough to confirm he wasn't making a move to attack. "You can still get away with killing them, being new and all that. I, unfortunately, have to follow a code."

Chihiro searched his gaze. He wondered, briefly, what for. He was honest with his words. He was not Kurama, living behind sweet worded half truths. Nor was he the Sato boy who had been hiding his double life from her for years.

Chihiro took the gun and turned to her father. "I'm not going to kill you," she said. "You're not worth the energy of disposing the bodies. You have nothing over me anymore. I'm not your daughter anymore. Don't come after me again."

Hiei should have expected as much. She could be loud and abrasive, but she was weak to her past. Her father's gaze had hardened, although that slimy smile still graced his lips. Then Chihiro did do something that surprised them both. She handed her father the gun.

"Go play mob boss with someone else," she told him before turning her back.

It was a powerplay to turn your back to the enemy so boldly. If he chose to shoot her then, the only thing protecting her would be Hiei. She had to bet on either him caring enough to do so, or her father being intimidated enough already by his first show of speed.

Hiei smirked and raced back up the mountain.

"Where's Chihiro?" Yukina asked, concern etched across her features as she still attempted to calm her crying son.

"She'll be back," he said with confidence.

Chihiro felt as if electricity were coursing through her veins. Her heart no longer had a beat so she could not feel it race in fear. The new sensation of her body reacting to seeing her father, turning her back on her father, was so foreign. It was the first time, despite everything else, that Chihiro no longer felt in her own body.

Only a few steps away and Chihiro heard the gun cock. As if seeing the whole world around her, Chihiro dipped low, sweeping her leg as her hands grabbed for her swords. Her father was knocked back, falling hard against the packed dirt. Chihiro held the tips of her blades to his throat. The gun in his hand still had the safety on. She had switched it before handing it back, knowing it would buy her at least a few seconds warning if he chose to turn it on her.

He hadn't flicked it yet. The gun hadn't been cocked to fire. But she heard it, she swore she heard it. Either way, Chihiro stared down the face of the man who raised her. He had been prepared to shoot her. Not kill, she was a prize he didn't want to destroy. At least, not completely.

"I'm giving you a chance," she reminded him coolly. "I won't do it again."

Chihiro withdrew her blades from her father's throat and turned back around.

It wasn't that Chihiro hadn't done bad things before. She had been raised by a mob boss, she worked for a different one. Her skills with her double blades and a gun were enough to warrant her a position of "security" as they were want to call it. Chihiro had hurt people at her boss's command. Chihiro had killed, even. But never an execution.

Never someone she knew.

Perhaps it would be better for her in the long run to get rid of the infection at the source. Her father would do well to die. But even now she didn't want to cross that line. It was near arbitrary, considering all the lines she'd willfully crossed in her life. Still, it was a line, and if she didn't find principles now, Chihiro feared she could be no better than the scum that she left on the ground behind her.

He didn't come after her again as she walked back up the mountain, but Chihiro wasn't deluded enough to believe he would stay away forever.

When she reached the last step, Chihiro looked up to see Hiei waiting for her. He sat in plain sight on the porch railing, not hidden in one of the trees or the on the rooftop as he usually was.

"You let him live," Hiei said. "I don't know if it's because you're too stupid or too arrogant, but troubles like that don't just wither away."

"If he comes after me, I'll defend myself," Chihiro said. "I'm not just going to shoot the man."

"You humans are all weak. I always look at the big picture and don't let anything get in my way."

Chihiro rolled her eyes as she neared the demon. "I bet that's true. Let me do things my own way, though. Human as it may seem." She made to pass Hiei into the temple but he reached out to grab her arm, too fast for her to dodge. Her protest died in her throat when she caught the expression of his blood red eyes.

"You don't deserve this, and I don't say that to be sympathetic," Hiei sneered. "You are smart and capable by human standards but you have done nothing to earn your spot among my kind."

"I'm used to being a disappointment," Chihiro scoffed. "What do you really want to say to me?"

Hiei dropped her arm but jerked his head as a motion to follow. Then he jumped. His movements were almost too fast for her to track, but Chihiro was able to find him off to the left in the trees. She groaned and raced after him.

"I'm not here for your dramatics, Hiei," Chihiro called out as she raced to catch up.

He lead her through the trees, down the opposite side of the mountain until they came to a clearing with a small pond. The water was muddied and dark, but reflected the sky and trees like a shimmer of something kinder than this forest usually offered.

"There are weak demons," Hiei said, landing softly beside her. "Scum, no better than insects. Petty beasts even you could destroy. I'm not so foolish to believe all demons are worth their weight. But you have been granted a power that is coveted by my kind. You weren't turned into some mindless puppet of a demon. That I could forgive. That would mean you could be used at the very least. But no, you have your thoughts, your will, and your stupid sense of compassion."

Chihiro watched their reflections. "You can't tell me you don't have compassion, Hiei. I've seen you with your sister."

"I'm strong enough I can afford it. You're not."

"So, are you finally going to train me then? Do as you were told instead of how you please?" It was a rude challenge, but Chihiro was tired of his attitude.

In one fluid motion, Hiei pulled off his cloak and shirt. Before she could get any words out, his skin began to change. He reached for the band that he often wore around his forehead and dropped it with the rest of his discarded clothes.

Under the early afternoon sun, Hiei's skin turned green like the moss that grew around the pond. Cracks in his skin peeled apart to reveal eyes like glassy lilacs. They graced his shoulders and arms and torso like badges, following her movement with a hazy focus. The one on his forehead, however, glowed with an intensity and intelligence beyond the rest.

"This is your… true form?" Chihiro asked, unsure how to phrase the question.

Hiei spat out air in a derisive tsk. "It is an altered form, one I was not born with. I desired strength, so I took it." He locked eyes with her in a meaningful way and Chihiro understood more about the pain that went into obtaining that third eye than she had ever wished to learn. "After I obtained this eye, my strength depleted to the point that this became my strongest form. A mirage of a true Jaganshi."

The eyes closed and the green faded. Chihiro bit her lip and looked away. "So what?"

"My true power is far greater than that now. Far greater than it had been before I got the implant. The point is, the Jagan is a tool. You have a whole arsenal under your skin. I went through years of training to be strong enough to open just one eye, and years more to master it. I can only teach you if you're willing to push yourself to breaking. I don't believe you have that in you."

Chihiro focused her gaze on the pond. "If you really believed that, you wouldn't be here explaining it to me," she said.

"I cannot and will not train someone who is afraid to break."

"How am I supposed to break more than I already am, Hiei!" Chihiro snapped, a sudden rush of emotion ripping through her chest. "You piss me off so much. You don't give a shit about me? Fine. I don't care. I don't need you to. But don't fucking judge me when you don't know what I've been through."

"I've seen your memories," he said.

"How much of them?" she countered, turning back on him. Hiei stood there, redressed in his shirt and cloak. He was so still like a statue, and yet Chihiro knew he could disappear as easily as the wind. "Did you look past what you needed to get into my apartment? How much do you know about my father? My childhood? The things I've done. The things done to me? What the fuck do you know?"

"I know you fear him and you've let that fear rule your actions even for all the years he was locked away. That's enough for me to know you're weak." Hiei turned from her at that, slowly walking into the thick of the forest. "I'll train you, if you ever decide to get serious. Until then, I'm better off training myself."

"Do you know what heroin is?"

Hiei's feet still just before he would have jumped to disappear into the trees. He looked over his shoulder at her. "One of your human drugs."

Chihiro nodded. She couldn't stomach talking about this. Even Kaisei didn't bring it up now that she was sober. "I was ten when my father decided his daughter would be more useful as a product tester. I may not have been thrown off a fucking mountain, but my father gave me drugs to turn me into his puppet, make me reliant on him more than a child is already reliant on their parents, and nearly killed me."

"And?"

"And!?" Chihiro let out a loud sound of disbelief. "And what?"

"You're not making any arguments, you're only complaining about your past. I don't care that that man ruined your precious childhood. I would only care if you then chose to do something about it. Which you don't. Stop wasting my time."

Hiei did not stall this time before disappearing into the woods.

Chihiro screamed, letting go of the rage and fear and fury she had pent up upon seeing her father. She knelt over the pond's edge and stared back at a reflection she barely recognized. In the years since her father was in prison, Chihiro had gotten clean, finished high school, and worked for a new boss. By all accounts, she was accomplished.

By all accounts, she hadn't done anything.

Kaisei had been trying for years to get her away from the mob scene, but she had always insisted on staying, afraid of what it meant to be in a world she didn't understand. For how terrible the yakuza were, it was a corruption she understood.

She was loathed to admit it, but Hiei was right. She hadn't been living a life, the way he accused when she tried to leave the complex. She had been running away, again. Finding comfort in familiarity and refusing to let herself be better than what her father made her.

And now here she was with the biggest reset button that could ever fall into her lap. She didn't have to be her old self anymore. She couldn't be her old self anymore. Her pathetic excuse of a life was like a bad dream , which was saying something as she now stepped into the world of monsters and demons.

Chihiro stared at the reflection on the pond and watched the way the sky would ripple. Except it wasn't, at the same time. Almost as if she were seeing the sky itself and not the pond that was unsteady in it's interpretation of the world. Chihiro blinked and she saw the sky.

Something clenched deep in the pit of her stomach. Carefully, oh so carefully, she raised her hand and held it up to the back of her neck. Her palm waved in front of her vision.

"Well, fuck," she whispered and tried her hardest not to pass out.

The door opened to the back room with a creak, a strip of light spilling in from the hallway. When Ryuoku flicked on the switch, Fubuki had the pleasure of watching him nearly fall over, her presence startling him so badly. She sat in his chair, feet up on his desk. She didn't flinch when he pulled a gun on her.

In mocking copy, Fubuki drew up her forefinger like a gun. "Mine's stronger, so don't start."

"How did you get in here?" he asked, gruffly.

"I'm looking into the Eye of Solomon. I heard you were the last to have it."

Ryuoku called out into the hall for his men, but this didn't sway Fubuki. She already knew he didn't have possession of the artifact. It truly disappeared in the fray that night. The club had been scoured top to bottom by the mob boss. Fubuki was aware that he believed Chihiro had taken it. She also knew this wasn't the case.

"Who did you purchase it from?" she asked. "Where did you learn about it."

"You pompous little girl," he sneered. "You really think I'll answer your questions?"

Fubuki summoned some of her energy and shot it off, the blast landing next to his head. "I've got more bullets than you do," she informed the boss. The man was shaking, eyes wide. Fubuki smirked. It always felt good to remind criminals like this they weren't at the top of the food chain. "Now I'll ask again. Where did you get it?"

Ryuoku called for his men again, real fear in his voice this time. It was curious they hadn't come running the first time he yelled, or that the blast hadn't summoned hundreds of thundering footsteps. Fubuki frowned.

"Hurry now, before I get impatient," she threatened, building another small ball of energy. It would be hardly enough to bruise, but showy enough to get what she wanted.

"I'm curious myself," a new voice said from the hallway, deep and confident, the voice of someone used to talking others into submission.

Ryuoku sneered and turned his back to Fubuki to peer into the hallway. This new voice was a recognized threat, one more dangerous to the mob boss that Fubuki, apparently. The man who joined them was flanked by a few grunts. He stared at Fubuki, who had pulled back her energy, then at Ryuoku.

"I have seen some strange things today," he said. "Things my informants trace back to you, Ryu-kun."

"Naya," Ryuoku spat. "You're not welcome here."

Naya's smile was slick, humored by Ryuoku's words. "Forgive me, Ryu-kun. I did not properly thank you for taking care of my daughter over all these years. My men in your numbers tell me you did a good job of keeping her safe."

Ryuoku's face was boiling with rage. The slick smile dropped off Naya's face and his eyes hardened like steel.

"But I also learned you tried to kill her. Over a trinket?"

"As fascinating as this is," Fubuki said, slipping her legs from the desk and standing. She rounded the desk with calculated movements. Both of these men were mere humans, but guns still did damage. "I don't care about your petty squabbles. I have an organization bigger than you both to track down. If you'd like me to take care of you first, it would be my pleasure. Or I could let you both walk out of here with an answer as to where the artifact came from."

There was a moment of silence before Naya asked of the other mob boss, "What's got you so spooked about a child?"

Fubuki smirked. She was going to enjoy this interrogation.