Dragons in Time

by Bigimotik

Yusuke and the gang head off to recover a mystical power source that was stolen: the Astoria stone. However, in order for the recovery to be a success, they must join forces with a mysterious fighter. Rated T for some language.

15. A Dilema with Dragons

A/N: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Nara Ska. I thought it was time to bring the group back, so here is more stuff including some Kuwabara-bashing (only slightly), Tarkuon's great escape and you get to meet the silver dragon. FUNFUNFUN!!!

I'm doing the best that I can to update, but I have a lot more play rehearsals now, so I write when I can. Please enjoy.

Part 15: A Dilemma with Dragons

"If we are all to fight against Sukeisa, we must begin to train."

"Hn. Agreed. The baka needs more help than anyone."

"I suggest that we get everyone together in the park or somewhere private so that we can train."

"Fine. I'll go back to your house and see if the baka girl is asleep."

"I will get Kuwabara and Yusuke. Meet in the park in about twenty minutes."

Hiei blurred away and Kurama smiled, 'If you wanted to check on Yukina, you only had to say so.' Then he set off toward Kuwabara's house to meet the first of two challenges of the day.

Ding Dong! Kurama rang the doorbell and waited patiently on the front step. Shizeru opened the door. "What the hell do you want?"

"Is Kuwabara here? We are supposed to meet some friends in the park. Apparently, he has forgotten the arrangement."

Shizeru smiled, "That's my baby brother, always forgetting everything. I swear, he'd forget where he lives if we didn't constantly remind him. I'll go wake him up." She paused before going to Kuwabara's room, "What's your name, by the way?"

"Shuichi." She turned and went into Kuwabara's room.

Kurama waited in the hallway for about ten seconds before he heard noises that sounded like World War III. "Sis, why do I have to get up this early? It's a Saturday. I need to recover from the ba—I mean party I went to last night."

"It doesn't matter. Your friend says that you agreed to meet in the park. Get your lazy ass up!"

"What if I don't wanna? And who is this friend anyway?"

"He says his name's Shuichi."

"Shuichi? I don't know any Shuichi. Oh, wait, do you mean Kurama?"

Kurama rolled his eyes and mentally smacked himself in the head.

Shizeru replied, "I don't know. Why don't you get your freaking butt out of bed and find out?" She stepped out of the room as the door slammed behind her. Within minutes, Kuwabara was out of his room and ready to go.

"Kurama? So it is you. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

Kurama put on a strained smile, "I did. Anyway, the others are waiting."

"What others?"

Shizeru hit him in the head, "Don't you remember anything? The friends you said you'd go to the park with?"

"I never said—" he stopped when he saw the look that Kurama was giving him. "Oooohhh, yeah. Now I remember. We gotta go pick up…." He thought for a moment, "Urameshi, right? Yeah. We gotta go pick up Urameshi."

Kurama headed for the door and Kuwabara followed. They headed over to Yusuke's apartment, where Kurama found that waking up the spirit detective was much harder than waking up Kuwabara.

Ten minutes later, the three of them were walking over to the park.

"Aww, Kurama. Why'd you have to get us out of bed this early?"

"Shut up, baka. No one wants to hear you complain." The three stopped and saw Hiei on a branch of a near-by tree.

"No one asked you, shorty!!"

Yusuke groaned, "Can't you guys give it a rest for while? Some of us are still, technically asleep."

They walked forward for about five paces before the tree next to Kuwabara exploded. "AHHH!! WHAT WAS THAT?!!" Kuwabara ran and hid behind another tree.

Aniya walked toward the remains of the tree. "I think I've got that one mastered, finally. And I think that's all the attacks, isn't it?"

"Yes. You're not half as bad as I thought you'd be."

Kurama and Hiei looked at her and Aniya noticed them, "Oh, hey. What are you guys doing here?"

Still behind his tree, Kuwabara yelled, "What do you think you're doing, blowing up trees?"

Aniya grinned, "What have I been doing? Would you like to see what I've been working on?"

Kuwabara peeked out from behind his tree. He frowned and then came out. "I thought that you had silver hair…oh, wait. That's right. You're a human now, weaker than ever."

Smiling grimly, Aniya raised her hands. "I guess you're right. I don't have as much power as I did when I was a dracon, or when I used magical power. The only difference is that my spirit energy attacks are so much more damaging, now that they're fully spirit energy and not some weakened version of magical and spirit energy. I only have a limited number of attacks, but the ones that I do have suit me well."

Powering up, she started to emit little, electrical flashes from her fingers. Kuwabara started to back away, "Actually, it's okay. I don't need a demo right now."

"Come on! I just finished working on this one! Please?" She looked at him with an evil glare in her eye.

"Aniya." She turned to look at Genkai. "Remember what I said, you need to learn to deal with your emotions because if you don't, you will return to using magical energy, and that is something that we don't need right now."

"Oh, fine." She took aim at the tree that Kuwabara had been hiding behind. Kuwabara gulped and backed away from the tree that exploded. Aniya dusted off her hands and was about to start up another attack to show everyone when she noticed that Kurama had brought out his rose whip. Aniya gave him a questioning look, to which he said,

"I'd like to test your new attacks. It will also help you practice for your fight."

Aniya nodded. "Fine." She powered up her hands and legs so that she would have more powerful blows, then she ran toward Kurama, hoping to get in an attack before he had a chance to use the rose whip. Kurama flicked the whip and forced Aniya defend herself with her arms. The whip curled around her crossed arms.

'Ouch. I'm going to have to remember to wear armor when I go into battle with Sukeisa. These are going to be some pretty nasty cuts.' She twisted her hands around so that she could grab the whip. He pulled on the whip and Aniya nearly let go because the thorns were digging into her vulnerable human skin.

She tried to send an electrical wave up the length of the whip, but then remembered that organic matter, such as plants, were not good conductors for electricity. Her wasted energy shot toward the sky. She released the whip and dodged the next attack from the rose whip before it cut her into minced meat.

'Since when did I get to be so slow?' She cursed herself for being human and set about powering for her slash attack.

Yusuke turned to Genkai as the two continued their fight, "So what exactly were you doing?"

"It's none of your business. We were just training that's all."

"Fine old hag. Don't tell me what you were doing." He turned back to watch the fight. He noticed that Aniya, while strong in the beginning, was starting to slow down and appear tired. Genkai noticed his stares.

"She is stronger than she was originally in this state, but she is still weak. She's the best that she can be without her dracon powers."

"She can beat Sukeisa, though. Right?"

"I don't know, Yusuke."

Aniya suddenly stopped fighting. She whipped her head toward the edge of the park. Unprepared for such a suddenly lack of opposition, Kurama nearly sliced Aniya in two with his rose whip. He managed to twitch it away in time. "Aniya? What is the matter? Why have you stopped fighting?"

"It's dragon man. He's here. On earth!" With that said, she started to run toward the road, even with blood streaming out of the cuts she had.

Kuwabara muttered to himself, "Now she's gone mental."

"And you haven't?"

"Shut up shorty!" Yusuke punched Kuwabara.

"There's no time for fighting. We have to keep up with Aniya!" Yusuke, Genkai, Kurama and Hiei began to run in the direction that Aniya had.

Kuwabara was on the ground with little swirlies in his eyes. "Why can't we fight? Mommy…why're there liddle kiddies 'round my head?" With that, Kuwabara renewed his old acquaintance with Unconsciousness.

"Aniya!" Kurama called out to her. "Come back!"

But Aniya wasn't in the mood to listen. 'I can sense him. The dragon man, he's here! It has to be him…or at least I think it is.' Suddenly, the sense was gone. She tried to make her human ears strain a little harder to hear everything that she could, but he was gone.

The others caught up to her, as she was standing on the sidewalk, looking down at the ground, disappointment written across her face. 'I was this close to finding him. I'm sure that finding silver dragon dude is the right way to solve this problem.'

Yusuke put a hand on her shoulder, "Hey, next time you go running off like that, let us know, okay? We don't want anything to happen to you."

She shook of his hand. "I can take care of myself, idiot."

"Oh, that was cold."

Aniya turned and icy glare on Kuwabara. "Do you want to experience some serious pain, dumbass?"

Kuwabara ducked behind a tree, realized what she could do to the tree and then went to hide behind Yusuke. Realizing furthermore what she was likely to do to Yusuke, he went to hide behind Kurama. Aniya watched his antics. "Come Kuwabara, you aren't afraid of a little, weak, human girl with next to no powers, are you?"

He just shrank back in fear. Aniya sweat dropped, "I'll take that as a 'yes' then." Sighing, she continued to cross the street and head back to Kurama's house. Kurama caught up to her.

"Aniya, are you alright."

She smiled, "As much as I can be. I thought I sensed dragon man around."

Kurama frowned, "You mean the presence of the silver dragon?"

Aniya nodded. "Yup. By the way, do you have any bandages? I'd like to get this covered up before they get infected or anything."

"Sure. Either Yukina or I could help to speed the healing process too, so you aren't wounded if Sukeisa plans to fight."

"Thanks." She looked up at the sky, 'And I was so close to finding the silver dragon and actually getting some real answers around here. The closer it gets to the fulfillment of the prophecy, the more fucked up and confusing this gets.'

*****

'Come on Tarukon, near to top now!'

"Thank you, old man. I didn't really need to know that right now." Tarukon felt as if he had been climbing for ages. 'Stupid ladder. Why couldn't the stupid Doukai person just install escalators or elevators and make an escape plan easy?'

'Because is not his way of doing things.'

"I told you to shut up old man—OW!!" Tarukon had hit his head on the ceiling above the ladder. 'Great, now I'll have a great big lump on my head. What do I do now, oh, wise and trusty little man?'

'Unscrew top.'

Tarukon tried for a few seconds. "It's not working."

'Is because you twist wrong way. Lefty loosey, righty tighty.'

"Thank you, master of the home appliance advice." After a few more seconds, the pothole began to twist open. "We are on a roll."

*****

"OW!!!"

Kuwabara jumped. 'Hmm…I'm not getting the tickle feeling, where did that come from?' Looking around, the only people that he could see were Urameshi, Kurama, the old lady, shorty and the other short one walking away from him. 'Oh, well it must have been a squirrel or something.' He started to walk across the street.

"It's not working."

This time, Kuwabara whirled around. "Who said that?"

"Thank you, master of the home appliance advice."

Frantically searching for the source of the noise, Kuwabara looked all around him. 'Trees—blowing in the normal wind—perfectly normal. Bushes rustling—perfectly normal. Sky is blue—like normal. Metal circle opening in the middle of the street—perfectly…NOT NORMAL!!' Kuwabara started to back away from the metallic disc twisting in the middle of the road.

"URAMESHI!!!"

Yusuke and the rest of the group turned around as they saw Kuwabara coming straight at them. "What is it Kuwabara?"

"The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are coming after me!!!" He cowered behind Yusuke and pointed at the street. Yusuke and the rest of the group sweat dropped.

"Kuwabara, there's nothing there." Yusuke explained patiently.

"Look at the metal thingy in the middle of the road?"

"What about it?"

"It was moving and there were voices!"

"Were they saying anything about pizza, ninja stuff or 'dudes'?"

"Uh…. no."

"Then it couldn't have been the Ninja turtles. Logical."

This seemed to calm Kuwabara down a bit. Aniya on the other hand was staring at the pothole in the middle of the road. She began to walk toward it, oblivious to the odd looks that she was getting from the group, not to mention the people that were walking on the sidewalk. 'I can feel him…. or both of them?' She looked straight down at the pothole with a puzzled look on her face. 'There should only be one…why do I suddenly sense two?'

She watched with fascination as the metal disc slowly came up, spiraling, from the ground. She heard a voice, "I said to be quiet! I've had enough of you. I wish I had never agreed to allow you into my head. You are driving me insane!"

Kneeling down, she made her vision at eye level with the gap between the pavement and the metal disc. Suddenly, a pair of gray eyes met with her dark blue ones. "Ahhh!" yelled the voice below the pavement as the metal disc fell to the ground again. "See? I knew there would be someone up there. Some help you are silver dragon."

Aniya immediately ripped off the metal cover. "Who are you? How do you know the silver drag—oh, it's you Tarukon. What the fuck are you doing underground in the middle of the street?"

He smiled at her. "Aniya! Am I glad to meet you! This guy in my head is driving me crazy!"

"You haven't answered my question: why are you in the sewer pipe-thing?"

Tarukon shifted nervously. "Well, about that. I've run away."

"Run away? From who?" Aniya was looking at him as if he'd gone mad.

"Lord Doukai."

Kurama asked, "Your father?"

"He's not my father."

Now Yusuke was getting frustrated with the young man, "What do you mean, he's not your father? Koenma told us that he was!"

Tarukon sighed, "I will explain, but will you let me get out of here? I would rather not lose my head or my fingers to oncoming traffic." Aniya helped pull him off the ladder and onto the street. Then, flinging the cover back into place, she followed the rest of the group back to Kurama's house, trailing behind with Tarukon.

"There's something different about you Tarukon. What have you done to yourself?"

"I will explain everything to everyone once we get to Kurama's house. That way, I will not have to repeat myself, and Aniya." She looked up as he said her name; "The silver dragon has a message for you."

Aniya practically mobbed Tarukon to death asking what the message was. So finally, when Tarukon could get a word in with the plethora of questions that Aniya was spouting at him, he said, "Calm down, Aniya. What he said, and I quote him on this, was to 'use dragon technique'."

She stopped in her tracks. "Use dragon technique? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Tarukon shrugged, "Your guess would be as good as mine."

Aniya spent the rest of the walk back to Kurama's house thinking about what Tarukon and the silver dragon could possibly mean. Once everyone was in the living room, and Kurama had checked to make sure that his mother wouldn't hear a word of what they were going to say, Yusuke pounded on the guy.

"Just who the hell do you think you are? You're on the bad side and you expect us to believe that you're a good guy?"

Everyone looked at Yusuke in puzzlement. HE explained, "You were the last person to talk to Aniya before the problem with stone, and you expect us to believe that you aren't responsible for the stone's breaking?"

Tarukon held out his hands in defense, "I did not break the stone, Nara Ska did."

"But she's dead."

Aniya coughed nervously, "Umm…not exactly Yusuke. Nara Ska is tied to Katomi's power and currently, Calisandra is harboring some of Katomi's power, and so she still exists."

Tarukon nodded, showing his agreement. "I'm here as a messenger from the silver dragon. He has a solution, or so he says."

Hiei's eyes became slits, "How do we know that we can trust you? You say he has a solution. What if he's merely using you to try and destroy Aniya?"

Her eyes widened as she looked at Hiei in amazement, 'Was that concern in his voice? Wow.'

'Hn. Don't think anything of it. I am merely concerned about us destroying Sukeisa.'

Aniya smirked. 'Sure.'

Genkai scowled, "Enough with this chitchat crap. Give us the message so that we can fix Aniya as soon as possible. We have less than nine hours until Sukeisa can send Nara Ska for Aniya's answer. We must be prepared to face an attack in that instant."

Kuwabara was still behind the times. "I thought you said that Lord Doukai was in charge of Calisandra, who is in charge of Nara Ska. How is Nara Ska under Sukeisa's command?"

"Isn't it obvious, baka? Lord Doukai works for Sukeisa." Hiei sneered at the human's stupidity.

"Oh." Kuwabara seemed to want to sit and think about this for a while. Everyone else turned to Tarukon so that he could tell them what the message was.

"What the silver dragon said was, and this is verbatim, 'use dragon technique'. I have no idea what he means, so don't bother asking."

Aniya was frowning, "Why didn't you ask him what it meant in the first place?" then a thought hit her, "How are you communicating with him anyway? Do you know where he is?" She leaned forward anxiously, hoping that Tarukon would provide the answer.

Tarukon answered, "You see, I'm a reincarnation of a sort for the silver dragon. So what happens is, he's in my head right now. He talks to me and wants me to relay messages. Unfortunately, the connection sometimes doesn't happen because I try to talk to him, and he tries to talk to me, but I can't hear him very well. Right now we can hear each other fine."

"Can you ask him what the dragon technique is?" Tarukon nodded. "One moment."

'Hey, Mr. Silver Dragon—hey, do you have another name I can call you because silver dragon doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.'

'You call me Tarukon.'

'Why? That's my name.'

'Is my name too. You reincarnation, no? So what better name for reincarnation than mine?'

'But that's going to be confusing. Can't you pick some other name to be called?'

'Umm…Laotsu? How 'bout that? That good?'

'That's fine. Laotsu, what did you mean about the dragon technique?'

'Is a technique that involves dragon.'

Anticipating the reactions of the others if he relayed this answer to him, Tarukon pried further. 'What do you have to do to achieve the technique?'

'You make dragon.'

'What?'  Tarukon waited for some reply, but there was none to be had. 'Hey? Laotsu? Are you there? Hello?'

Aniya was watching Tarukon's face go from questioning to annoyance to keen interest to dissatisfaction, confusion to alarm. "What's the matter Tarukon? Doesn't he know?"

Tarukon shrugged, "I don't know if he does."

Kurama was frowning, "But you said that he was inside of your mind, so why can't you communicate?"

"I have no idea. Sometimes we just can't talk and this is one of those times. It's nothing that I can do. All he said was that the dragon technique was a technique that involves dragon and that you have to make dragon. He has such bad grammar that I can't figure out if he means that you have to make a dragon or you have to make something become dragon like."

Yusuke thought, "What if he meant both?" Everyone looked at him. "I mean, what if he meant that you make a dragon in order to make something else dragon like?"

Kurama nodded, "I see. So if we were able to figure out the technique that resembles a dragon, and used it on Aniya, that it might bring Aniya back into her dracon form."

"So who knows a dragon technique?" Genkai looked at all of them. "You're a bunch of experienced fighters, one of you must have heard of something. I know that I have." Everyone except Aniya, Tarukon and Kuwabara glanced at each other with worried looks on their faces. They wanted to figure out an alternative to even suggesting it.

Kuwabara decided to be the voice of doom, "What about that darkness technique that the shrimp uses? That's a dragon."

Aniya looked at Hiei in alarm. "The dragon of the darkness flame technique? Is that what you mean?"

Kuwabara nodded. "That's the only dragon attack I can think of. So it's probably the one that we're supposed to use."

Frowning Aniya shook her head, "I'm sure there's another attack that Laotsu meant." She turned to Tarukon, "Are you sure that you can't figure out what he means, or that he absolutely can't talk to you right now?"

Tarukon paused and appeared to be thinking. He looked back down at her, "No, I am sorry. He's not there. I wish I had asked more about what he meant earlier on."

Aniya sighed. "That's okay. I'll have to figure out another way to get my power back." She started to head upstairs.

"Where are you going?"

"To ask Yukina to fix these cuts." Tarukon seemed anxious to stay with her.

Kuwabara got up to go too. "Where do you think you're going?" Yusuke asked the big lug.

"I'm going to see Yukiiiina." Kuwabara sang as he skipped down the hall to the stairs. Tarukon, who felt uncomfortable being in a room full of people with faces as grim as those, chose to follow Kuwabara to Kurama's room where Yukina was healing Aniya.

Once the door had closed, Yusuke, Kurama, Hiei and Genkai immediately began to discuss the situation. Or at least, Kurama and Yusuke did. Hiei stared out a window and Genkai watched.

"So Hiei's dragon of the darkness flame is the only thing that can bring Aniya back to her dracon form?"

"Apparently so. But unlike the last fight, where she was in her dracon form already, and was able to deflect his attack, she will not be able to withstand it. In her human form she cannot harness the energy to prevent it from injuring her."

Genkai held up a hand to stop the flow of the discussion. "I think you two aren't' giving Aniya enough credit. She has the skills right now to be able to defeat his technique, but it would be risk to see if she could survive using those skills in the human body."

"So, basically you're saying that she has no chance of succeeding of surviving the dragon attack either."

"I didn't say that Yusuke. I just said that there would be likely that she would die trying to return to her old body."

"Same thing."

Kurama turned to Hiei, "Hiei. What do you think about all this? After all, it will be you who deploys the attack if Aniya wants to attempt to return to her human body."

Hiei smirked and continued to look out of the window. "The baka will die because she is too weak. Last time she survived my attack by chance, when she was stronger and used her magical energies."

Yusuke looked at Genkai, "You trained her not to use her magical energy? Why? It made her attack stronger."

"But it also crippled her fighting abilities. While magical energies, when she is in her demon form, make her attacks grow stronger, actually make her attacks weaker in human form since a human body and a demon body react differently to the magical energy. The human body has to make it on its own, so it takes spirit energy to make the magical energy. The demon body uses the magical energy as a magnification for spirit energy."

Kurama nodded. "Also, if she were to use magical energy, the enemy would have a considerable chance of being able to control what attacks she could use at what time if they had appropriate songs or drama techniques. It is safer for her to fight, in either form, without magical energy because she has the advantage."

Genkai continued, "Sukeisa and Lord Doukai think that she still uses magical energy, so they will be unprepared for her when she fights with pure spirit energy."

Yusuke frowned, "She'll be able to survive if Nara Ska decides to attack in eight hours, but there's no way that she could survive a battle with Sukeisa."

"We can't afford to let her die. She is our last chance. None of us could defeat Sukeisa. We need her in her dragon form."

"But we can't get her in her dragon form without the risk of destroying her."

"Dammit…."

A/N: I know, it started off okay, but then it got boring. Don't worry! The next part is full of: Excitement! Adventure! Or Possibly Not! Anyway, I hate to stoop to these levels, but I'm going to ask that if you read it (and if you've read this far into my story, I congratulate you and thank you for suffering through this fanfic), that you please review. Reviews motivate me to get more chapters out sooner.