A/N: Frottage is easily one of my favourite words in the English language. The meaning is semi-amusing, semi-creepy, but mostly the word sounds fantastic. Try saying it out loud. Just, y'know, don't say it out loud where anyone might hear you!

Botan recites "To a Kiss" by Robert Burns (because Scottish poetry so has a place in a fic set in Japan… But seriously, how could I resist? The wording is just so appropriate!)

Also, this chapter is about 3000 words longer than I thought it would be. But I wanted to get to a certain point in the plot in this chapter, so here it is.

Chapter 31: Twin Nightmare

Yukina forgot how to breathe as she watched the scene unfolding behind her. The lush, bountiful pastures of spirit world were rapidly being reduced to a trench of rubble, the resulting earthquakes uprooting plants and causing landslides in the rocky hills. The Apepi's head and throat had barely cleared the ground, but already it was almost as high as Yukina's feet, dangling helplessly from Botan's oar. In the once pleasantly bright light of spirit world no feature of the beast was hidden, and, unfortunately, it was even more fearsome to behold than the image Yukina's panicked imagination had painted when she had still been in the darkened depths of the pit the monster had originated from. The beast was covered in glistening, deep blue-grey scales, its eyes were wide and almost hypnotically beautiful, their pale blue irises looking crystalline set against the dark of the scales around them. Its head was the shape of a snake's, and that was what Yukina had assumed the monster was: just a giant snake.

But then the Apepi rose a little higher out of the ground, two short, skinny arms emerging from the dirt, each ended with three-fingered hands bearing claws that were each longer than Botan's oar.

"Maybe you should fly a little higher," Yukina suggested, inwardly hoping that her voice had not sounded as small and insignificant to Botan as it had to her own ears.

"It's okay, I know how to fix this!" Botan replied, yelling her answer to ensure her voice would carry back to Yukina as she had to keep her face forward as she guided her oar on.

"Y-you do?" Yukina asked.

"Yes, don't worry! We just have to find Hiei!"

"Hiei?"

"Yes! He controls the Dragon of the Darkness Flame, and that's the only thing that can stop the Apepi!"

Yukina gulped apprehensively at both the argument Botan had just presented and the sight of the monster rising ever higher out of the ground it was tearing open below and behind them.

"Isn't that a very bad idea?" she asked once she had found her voice again. "As vile as this creature seems, doesn't it serve a vital purpose here in spirit world? Isn't erasing it from existence a really bad idea?"

"No, you've got it all wrong!" Botan answered, her tone still far too relaxed and controlled for Yukina's liking. "The Apepi is the keeper of the gateway of chaos: and chaos is the place the Dragon of the Darkness Flame sends its victims. If the dragon catches the Apepi, it will just send it back home."

"Oh. Well, that's very… Simple…"

Yukina started to relax, but her respite was short-lived as the trench the Apepi was creating suddenly widened drastically, creating more violent earthquakes and causing an entire hill to collapse: and the cause of the disruption quickly became evident as two arcing appendages began emerging from the ground on either side of the beast's torso.

"Fly higher," Yukina muttered.

"What was that?" Botan echoed.

"Fly higher, Botan!" Yukina screamed, her fists tightening around the oar on instinct.

"It's alright, it can't catch us up here," Botan assured her. "It's a snake. Snake's can't fly."

Yukina tried to correct Botan, tried to tell the ferry girl that, as she had spoken those every words, the tips of their pursuer's wings had already broken free from the ground far below them; but long before Yukina found the strength or sense to voice her concerns, a series of devastating things happened. Firstly the Apepi's wings erupted from the ground and rose up in the air, the tips passing high over the top of Botan and Yukina, casting them into shadow, and then subconscious instinct betrayed Yukina as her hands, still gripped around Botan's oar, shot out a burst of demon energy, freezing the wooden oar, which gave only a small crackle and creak of warning before it splintered and burst apart beneath them, leaving Botan and Yukina hurtling through the air, screaming for their lives.

Yukina's descent was mercifully short, though her landing was painful and left her winded. Lying on her chest, her limbs sprawled ungraciously at her sides, she moved her eyes around until she had confirmed what she had already suspected was the case: she had landed on the Apepi's back, just above the base of its wings. She watched in a state of bemusement as her eyes finally located Botan, clinging to an enormous leathery feather of the Apepi's wing, her screams fading in and out of range as the beast began making slow sweeps of its wings, dragging Botan up and down by almost a hundred feet at as time. As Yukina's initial daze began to pass she forced herself up onto all fours just in time to scramble out of the way as Botan slid from the Apepi's wing and landed beside her.

Yukina attempted a smile as their eyes met, silently wondering why Botan was smiling brilliantly, her eyes glistened with tears – was she deliriously happy, or just simply delirious?

"Oh Hiei, you came to rescue me!" she gushed.

"…No…" Yukina muttered hopelessly.

"Oh Hiei, I love you!"

Yukina groaned miserably as Botan pounced at her, flattening her against the scaly Apepi's back in a crushing embrace.

Hiei spat out a mouthful of fragrant petals, fighting back the urge to wretch from the perfumed taste that lingered on his tongue.

"You're not fighting to the fullest of your abilities," he said, before dragging his tongue along one arm in the hope of removing the awful taste.

"I'm not sure that I can," Kurama replied, lifting his fingers slighting and peering at the bloody wound his hand was pressed against by his shoulder. "I could have fought you with everything I had when I thought you had betrayed my trust by seducing both me and the woman I wanted, but now that I know that was not the case, and now that I see I was starting to desire the sister you are so protective of–"

"You're a fox demon!" Hiei interrupted. "You said your clan hunted ice maidens for sex!"

Hiei pointed his sword at Kurama, but Kurama knew that it was not a violent gesture.

"I had never thought of her that way before Hiei," Kurama said quietly.

"Never?" Hiei asked, slowly lowering his sword despite the darkening look in his eyes.

"Well, only when I found those flowers growing in the temple gardens – but not even then!" Kurama shakily replied. "Even then it was about the smell and never about her. She's… She's just a child."

"You think I'm just a child?" Hiei asked.

"Compared to me you are," Kurama flatly replied. "And her more so, due to her sheltered upbringing."

"I tolerated Kuwabara courting her because I knew he would never take it beyond silly, affectionate words and the occasional awkward act of inadvertent frottage, but you are quite different."

Hiei pointed his sword at Kurama again, but again Kurama felt confident that the gesture was non-threatening.

"Maybe before, maybe if you had remained as you were when we first met, I could have tolerated you sniffing around the hems of my sister's skirt," Hiei growled. "But now things are quite different."

"When we first met?" Kurama repeated.

There was a brief silence between the two, during which Kurama found himself once more replaying that strange period of time after his initial meeting with Hiei when he had been aware of the curious little fire demon secretly stalking him.

"Yes," Hiei eventually said. "Back when you were still more than ninety percent human. Back when you were just an adolescent boy with freckles, a shallow attraction to a homely schoolgirl and a penchant for ikebana."

Kurama swallowed down the niggling sense of humiliation threatening to surface: Hiei had even been watching him when he was attending ikebana classes?

"But then you changed," Hiei continued. "For the better, I thought. You tapped into more of your demon roots, you embraced your true self, you accepted that your time in living world as a human was finite, you unlocked more and more of the cunning and aggression that had once made you a legend in demon world."

Kurama gave a small nod to indicate that he understood Hiei's point.

"And your voice finally broke," Hiei added.

Kurama's face dropped.

"Though after a day in the sun, I can still see your freckles."

Kurama shifted his weight, trying to stay focused despite the odd tangent Hiei was steering the conversation along.

"But you're an adult human now and you've reverted back to more than one of your old demon instincts," Hiei continued. "How do I know that raping ice maidens isn't one of the dark habits you've reacquired as part of the evolution you've undergone?"

"Hiei, I can't deny that the desire surfaced when I first visited Arbeinia at the start of our mission," Kurama carefully replied. "But I can tell you that I consciously fought it off. It's a powerful desire, but it hasn't overcome me. And I respect Yukina, as your sister and as an ally, and if I did ever lose control of my urges, I would take myself as far away from her as I possibly could."

Hiei nodded and returned his sword to its scabbard at his hip.

"That was all I needed to hear," he said.

Kurama twitched involuntarily, and his action did not go unnoticed by the ever-vigilant Hiei.

"What?" Hiei asked quietly.

"I'm not sure that we have an understanding just yet," Kurama reluctantly admitted.

"But we do," Hiei insisted. "You just said that you will keep your urges as far away from my sister as possible. I will never forget what has transpired between you and Yukina during these last few days, but I can forgive it if you remain true to your word and keep away from her from now on. Isn't that what you're always telling me that "friendship" is all about? Forgiveness?"

Kurama sighed heavily.

"Impetuous and presumptuous as ever Hiei, you have completely misinterpreted what I said," he said.

"I don't see how," Hiei replied, his voice clipped and tense, his eyes regaining a little of the murderous fervour that had coloured them during their brief and awkward skirmish. "You promised to stay away from my sister. Or did you forget that already?"

"I promised to never treat her the way many of my kind have treated her clan in the past," Kurama pointed out. "I never promised to stay away from her entirely."

"I see," Hiei said quietly. "Well then you had best correct your promise right now."

"I'm no more obliged to make promises to you than you are to me," Kurama replied. "And no less likely to keep them: you went after Botan despite knowing that I desired her for myself."

"I had no idea you wanted the ferry girl. And for the record, she's very loud and showy in company, and incredibly demanding and wild in the bedroom. She needs to be kept in line to get the best of her, and you, with your flowers and your pretty hair, aren't up to the task. Also you covet your privacy so greatly, it would destroy you to lay down with a woman who consequently asked your mentor for advice on how best to please you sexually."

Kurama's face twisted in horror as Hiei gave a small shudder.

"I did you a favour," Hiei continued, quickly obscuring his brief moment of weakness behind a mask of impassiveness. "Botan would have ruined you, and you would have suffered every time you saw her face for another stupid mission or party. You have no reason to resent me. Nothing had occurred between the two of you, she didn't want you, and you would have ultimately been disappointed if you had managed to seduce her. I, on the other hand, have ample reason for my ire: you, a fox demon, molested my virginal sister, an ice maiden, and, to deepen the insult, you did it under the belief that she was me."

Kurama rubbed a hand at the back of his neck, not immediately realising why his action caused Hiei to reach for his sword. Kurama quickly held up his hands to indicate that he had not drawn a weapon and that he did not intend to fight.

"I'm not attracted to you, Hiei," he explained carefully. "I just found myself becoming attracted to what you had become."

Hiei narrowed his eyes and his hand remained on the hilt of his sword.

"That isn't any better," he said.

"I know," Kurama replied. "But I want to be clear that I have no romantic inclination towards you."

"The feeling is mutual," Hiei quietly replied.

"Then all that remains is for me to ask that, if you are to continue your affair with Botan, you will at least keep it respectful in my presence."

"That won't be a problem."

"Thank you."

Hiei growled and Kurama arched his eyebrows in surprise.

"Did you see what I did there?" Hiei snapped. "Did you see how I gave you my promise when you asked for it?"

"Yes, I noticed that," Kurama smoothly replied. "I am glad our friendship will survive this little trial of–"

"I'm waiting for you to return the favour, Kurama!"

"Excuse me?"

"I promised you I wouldn't subject you to the finer points of my dealings with Botan and now I'm waiting for you to promise me you'll stay away from Yukina!"

Kurama froze and Hiei growled again.

"I can't make a promise like that," Kurama eventually said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Other than missions and those stupid parties Yusuke invites us to, you are not to go near Yukina, understand?" Hiei pressed.

"It's more than that," Kurama said, his voice still faint, his words almost carried away on a light breeze that played through his slightly ruffled hair as he spoke,

"What are you saying?" Hiei asked.

"I can't just pretend the last several days didn't happen, Hiei, and I doubt Yukina can either. She and I have a lot to talk about."

"There's nothing to discuss."

"I disagree."

"The only thing you need to discuss with Yukina regards you telling her that she has been confused, and that you can never return her naïve and misinformed feelings!"

Kurama met Hiei's eyes and for a long time the two simply stared at each other, one teetering on the edge of rage, the other concerned but stubbornly determined. The silence eventually ended when Kurama spoke.

"After everything Yukina has said and done on this mission, I can't just walk away. I need to make my position perfectly clear to her and I need to know that she understands."

"This could work," Koenma said through a grin. "You could be like a stone gargoyle, only made out of ice."

"Sir, please!" George wailed. "Have mercy!"

"We can't leave him like that!" Kuwabara protested.

"Oh, thank you!" George sobbed, peering up at Kuwabara gratefully.

"We have to free that poor lady at least!" Kuwabara added.

"And the poor ogre too, right?" George said.

"Hey lady, we're looking for a fox, an angry midget, a loud-mouthed ferry girl, a hair model and a cross-dresser," Yusuke addressed Rui. "You seen them around here?"

"Pardon?" Rui echoed.

"We're looking for the fox demon Fumio, the fire demon Hiei, one of my ferry girls, a human boy with long red hair and an ice maiden disguised as Hiei," Koenma explained.

"We have to help the poor lady," Kuwabara pressed.

"Yukina fell!" Rui said to Koenma. "And Botan too! Fumio, the fox demon, pulled them down!"

"What about Kurama and Hiei?" Yusuke asked.

"Hiei passed this way alone," Rui replied. "He went that way."

Yusuke and Koenma looked in the direction Rui was pointing, each reacting differently to what they saw.

"Hey, what's with all those weird plants down there?" Yusuke asked, craning his neck to squint at the cluster of moving vegetation further down the path. "That looks like something Kurama would do. Or maybe Fabio…"

"What happened to the Meadows of the Meek?" Koenma roared.

"The what?" Kuwabara asked, frowning in confusion. "I don't see any meadows. All I see is a bunch of rubble and a big long hole in the ground."

"That's what I'm talking about, you pig-nosed idiot!" Koenma yelled, rounding on Kuwabara,

"Gees, keep your diaper on…" Kuwabara grumbled.

"The hell is that thing?" Yusuke asked.

The others all turned their heads in the direction Yusuke was pointing, watching in varying states of fear and confusion as a giant winged serpent danced through the skies along the horizon.

"The Ap…" Koenma said faintly, dropping his eyes down over the cliff edge ahead of him, almost stumbling over the steep drop as he looked into the seemingly bottomless pit far below him.

"Is that Hiei's dragon?" Yusuke asked.

"Oh hey, you don't think Hiei and Kurama had a fight to the death, do you?" Kuwabara asked. "Maybe those plants ate Hiei just after he let the dragon go, and then the dragon ate Kurama and now it's wandering about with no place to go…"

"That's not the Dragon of the Darkness Flame," Koenma said quietly.

"It's not?" Yusuke asked.

"Sure looks like it," Kuwabara added.

"No, that's one of the monsters from the pit of eternal pain and suffering," Koenma said. "It's also the bringer of chaos. My father is going to kill me."

"The bringer of chaos?" Kuwabara repeated, his voice cracking slightly as panic began to set in. "From the pit of eternal pain and suffering?"

"Well that's a relief," Yusuke said sarcastically. "Here I was thinking it was a bad thing."

"We have to get out of here," Koenma said, dropping to his knees by George's side.

"Oh Sir, I knew you wouldn't leave me here!" George said cheerfully.

"Help me free Rui," Koenma said to Yusuke.

"Right," Yusuke agreed.

George sighed forlornly, but nobody noticed, as the slithering silhouette in the distant sky was proving to be too much of a distraction.

Hiei stopped as he reached the darkened patch of ground cast into shadow by the giant monster hovering in the sky. He had just enough time to calculate that the beast was almost three times the size of the Dragon of the Darkness Flame, that it was easily as dangerous as the dragon and to decide that it was clearly something truly terrible before Kurama staggered to a halt at his side, breathless and sweating, his hair plastered to the sides of his face in a most unflattering manner.

"What is that thing?" Kurama asked.

Hiei gave him a flat look.

"I thought you might know," Kurama added quietly.

"It looks like one of the legendary ancients from demon world," Hiei said.

"Of course," Kurama agreed. "I had heard that spirit world captured all of the ancient monsters of demon world many millennia ago, but I had dismissed such tales as simple campfire banter."

"I might be able to take it down," Hiei said, touching a hand to his bandaged arm.

"You don't know what could happen if you even tried that."

"Do you have any better suggestions?"

Kurama looked about himself, his eyes pausing on rocks, ravines and a waterfall, but Hiei was rapidly losing patience waiting for him to formulate a plan.

"There is no other way," he insisted.

"We shouldn't just attack it without at least consulting with Koenma," Kurama argued.

"Hn, I don't need that brat's permission for anything," Hiei scoffed. "And besides, I'm doing this to save his home, he should just shut-up and be grateful."

"Wait!"

Kurama grabbed Hiei's hand as he tugged loose the bandaging around his right arm.

"What now?" Hiei snapped irritably.

"Isn't that Botan up there?" Kurama replied, pointing up towards the flying snake monster.

Hiei looked up, but saw no sign of the ferry girl. Deciding to give Kurama the benefit of the doubt, he removed his bandana and sought out Botan with his Jagan eye: a move that left him swimming in ambivalence.

"What did you see?" Kurama asked Hiei as he closed his Jagan eye.

"Botan is up there," Hiei flatly replied.

"I thought I saw her," Kurama said. "What is she doing on that monster's back? Is it possible she has found a way to control it?"

"Yukina's up there too."

"Maybe as a resident of spirit world Botan knows a way to – wait, what?"

"Botan and Yukina are both up there. On the back of the snake. And they're panicking."

Kurama glared up at the slithering shape blocking out the light above them.

"How do we get them down?" Hiei asked.

Kurama turned to him upon his question.

"We need to get them clear of that thing before I can attack it," Hiei explained. "So how do we get them down?"

"We don't know that they didn't choose to be up there," Kurama pointed out. "Botan is a resident of spirit world and one of Koenma's most trusted aides: maybe she can control the monster. Maybe she's trying to guide it away from us."

Hiei gave Kurama a withering look.

"You really don't know Botan at all, do you?" he muttered darkly.

"Not as intimately as you do, no," Kurama tightly answered him.

"I haven't forgotten that you haven't promised to keep your furry fox paws off my sister yet," Hiei warned.

"I didn't say that you should forget," Kurama replied.

"You didn't have to. I know you. This is the game you play: you use clever words and little distraction techniques to make me forget so that you get out of having to give me a direct answer."

Kurama glanced up at the dark serpent overhead.

"You're right," he conceded. "We should consider that neither Yukina nor Botan intended to place themselves on or near that monster. We should work out a way to get them safely clear of it before we take any further action."

"There, see?" Hiei sneered. "You just did it again. More distractions."

"Hiei, their lives could be in danger," Kurama shot back. "One is your sister and the other is your lover. Don't you care?"

"Now you're trying to break my concentration. I know your tricks."

"Hiei!"

Hiei growled and clenched his fists at his side, but said no more on the matter, instead turning his attention towards the beast again.

"We need to find a way to communicate with Botan," Kurama suggested. "She could fly free of the monster on her oar."

Three seconds after Kurama had finished speaking something hit the ground between him and Hiei, embedding itself into the earth. Hiei crouched down and levered the object out, holding it up to reveal a triangular section of wood, splintered along the longer side and smoothed and rounded along the other two.

"Is that…?" Kurama asked.

"Part of her oar, yes," Hiei replied.

Kurama nodded and Hiei flung aside the redundant shard of wood.

"They can't come down to us," Hiei concluded. "We have to get up there to them. Can't you plant something that can take us up there?"

"I can plant something that can take us up to about that height, but we're facing a moving target," Kurama replied through a sigh. "I don't possess a plant that can grow that high and still be able to manoeuvre us around if we need to chase after that thing once we get up there."

Hiei snarled out a few choice curse words of frustration, his tone and word choice changing – though his language becoming no less vulgar – as Koenma dropped down beside them, seemingly from nowhere.

"I'm going to pretend you just said "worthless runt", Hiei," he said, narrowing his eyes at Hiei.

"Well clean your damn ears out," Hiei snapped back. "Because I just called you a worthless–"

"Koenma," Kurama hurriedly cut Hiei off. "Is that one of the ancients from demon world?"

"Yes it is," Koenma confirmed, taking a subtle, sliding step away from Hiei. "But the good news is that we can easily banish it, with Hiei's help. That is the Apepi, it resides at the gateway to the same place the Dragon of the Darkness Flame sends its victims. If Hiei uses his dragon on the Apepi, he will send it back where it belongs. It won't surface again. It only leaves that place if it's directly provoked."

"Directly provoked?" Kurama asked.

Koenma lowered his head slightly and took on a more solemn expression.

"Yes, unfortunately it seems the Apepi was disturbed by three souls falling into the pit it resides in," he said quietly. "Fortunately, one of those souls was Fumio, the fox demon who has been causing us so many problems. Unfortunately the other two souls were Botan and Yukina."

"I told you she wasn't controlling that thing," Hiei said, giving Kurama a dark look.

"Was Fumio up there with them too?" Kurama asked him, ignoring the vaguely smug look on the fire demon's face.

"No," Hiei replied.

"Did either of you hear what I just said?" Koenma asked.

"Yes we did," Kurama replied loudly, almost completely blocking out Hiei's less than flattering reply. "But it seems Botan and Yukina have managed to escape the dark place that monster came from. They are on the back of the Apepi."

Koenma's head snapped up, his eyes doubling in size as he watched the giant snake writhe about in the air far above them.

"And it seems Botan's oar is broken," Kurama added. "We can't attack whilst Botan and Yukina are still up there."

"Right," Koenma agreed. "Though I don't really understand how they got up there in the first place…"

"Figure out a way to get them down or get out of my way!" Hiei snapped at him.

"I could fly up there," Koenma said.

Kurama tensed slightly.

"What?" Koenma asked.

"Why did you say it like that?" Kurama asked. "Why did you put so much emphasis on the word "could"?"

"I have the ability to get up there," Koenma replied. "Just not the…"

"Balls?" Hiei offered.

Kurama nodded.

"Then give me your flying device and I will go up there," he said. "Hiei can wait here, and as soon as I am free of the beast with Botan and Yukina, he can attack."

Koenma muttered something, but dismissed both Kurama and Hiei when they asked him to repeat himself. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned a hovering cloud, throwing a nervous grin over his shoulder at Kurama.

"I use this to travel around spirit world," he explained. "It's fast and nimble, and it's controlled telepathically."

"Alright, I understand," Kurama replied. "Hiei, as soon as you see that I have taken Botan and Yukina far enough from the Apepi to allow you a clear shot, do not hesitate to att-ah!"

Kurama yelped and then grunted as his attempt to leap onto Koenma's cloud failed, and he found himself passing straight through it and consequently landing on the ground below awkwardly on one knee. Hiei snorted in amusement as Kurama glared up at Koenma questioningly.

"You can't ride it unless you're pure of thought and soul," Koenma said quietly.

"Isn't that another universe?" Hiei asked. "A nimble cloud that only lets goody-goody types ride it – that's not part of this universe, is it?"

"I just told you it is," Koenma replied.

"You couldn't have told me that before I jumped onto it?" Kurama said tersely as he stood up and began brushing the dirt from his clothing.

"I thought if I told you only I could ride it you'd make me fly up there with you," Koenma replied.

"Good idea," Kurama growled. "You get on the cloud and I'll climb on the your back."

Koenma laughed nervously.

"You're not serious, of course!" he said, his voice a pitch higher as he began to sweat.

"I absolutely am," Kurama warned him in a low voice.

Koenma glanced back and forth between Kurama and Hiei before sighing, slouching his shoulders and then reluctantly clambering back onto the cloud. Kurama promptly leapt up behind him, grabbing onto Koenma's shoulders to steady himself. Koenma started to complain about the strength of Kurama's grip and suggest that there ought to be another way, but Kurama cut him off with a sharp order to make the cloud move and so he grudgingly obliged, levitating them both into the air, leaving Hiei behind, poised and ready to attack when the time was right.

"I don't want to die!" Botan wailed.

"We're not going to die, Botan," Yukina assured her.

"But if I do have to die, I want you to know that I'm happy that I died in your arms, Hiei!" Botan added.

Yukina groaned but decided against trying to correct Botan: after all, their situation did look increasingly bleak, and so she thought the best thing for Botan would be if she continued pretending to be Hiei. And so Yukina put her arms around Botan's shoulders and held her closer. The two of them were knelt in a ridge between the Apepi's two wings, in what felt like the space between two vertebrae. It was the only place they had managed to reach where they were not constantly thrown about as the monster slithered up and down and side to side through the skies. Yukina did not know how long they could stay where they were: she supposed it depended on how long the Apepi could remain airborne, and where it might take them.

She allowed herself a small, wry smile as she considered how ridiculous her situation was. Tsubara had always warned her against seeking out adventure, and the decrepit old witch had been right. Yukina wondered when would have been the right time to stop what she was doing, to have confessed the truth and backed out. It was a thought that had played through her mind almost constantly since Kurama had kissed her the night before, but every time she considered it, she always came back to the same conclusion: she never should have disguised herself as Hiei in the first place.

Maybe she would die where she was. She was not so sure that Botan would (or even could) die, but she was growing increasingly pessimistic about her own fate. She wondered if the gamble she had taken was worth losing her life for. It had not been an entirely bad or unsuccessful endeavour, after all. She had managed to prove to Kuwabara that she was not as defenceless as he had always thought she was and she had managed to spend a lot of time with Kurama – something that would have never happened under any other circumstances.

And, most amazing of all in Yukina's mind, Kurama had actually kissed her.

"Do you remember the first time we kissed?"

"Yes."

"We were all at Genkai's temple for Yukina's birthday. You were watching through a window. I only knew you were there because Kurama told me so. I realised that if it was Yukina's birthday then it must have been your birthday too, so I took a piece of cake to you. I said you could only have it if you ate it out of my mouth. And you did. It was wonderful."

"Yes it was."

"Do you remember what you said next?"

"Huh, of course I do you frivolous woman."

"You said "a kiss is the upper persuasion for a lower invasion". You said if I was instigating a kiss, I was basically just asking you for sex. You said that was the law in demon world."

Yukina froze on the spot, not even so much and breathing or blinking.

"I suppose you were right," Botan continued with a sigh. "I was using my kiss to try to persuade you to invade me. And it wasn't long before you did!"

Yukina made an involuntary squeak of horror.

"I like some of your demon world laws," Botan added. "Especially that one, because it brought us together. And it rhymed!"

"D-demon world l-law?" Yukina eventually managed to choke out.

"I imagine demon world must be quite a chaotic place with such a law," Botan replied. "Always having to make love to someone you kiss."

"It's not an actual law though," Yukina hurriedly corrected her. "It can't be! Who would enforce it? And how? And there aren't any laws in demon world! At least, not laws like that there aren't!"

"Oh. Oh, yes, sorry, I forgot! It's not a demon world law, is it? It's just the code the bandits of demon world adhere to."

"…Bandits…?"

"Tell me some more of the rhyming laws your band of thieves swore to. I like hearing you say them."

"You're not making me feel any better."

"Hearing them will make me feel better."

"Then why don't you tell me what they are?"

"I can't remember any of them."

"Than make some up yourself."

"I could recite my favourite poem about kissing for you. It's from human world, and it's a little more chivalrous than your demon world lyric."

"Just start the stupid poem already, you irksome woman!"

"Alright. Humid seal of soft affections, tenderest pledge of future bliss."

"Unf."

"Dearest tie of young connections, love's first snow-drop virgin kiss."

"Wait, what?"

"Speaking silence dumb confession, passion's birth and infants' play, dove-like fondness chaste concession–"

"I don't like this poem."

"It's not as succinct as yours about persuasions and lower invasions."

"I don't like that one either."

"Oh my, what's that up there?"

Yukina sighed audibly in relief as Botan pointed up at something above them, glad of the distraction it provided Botan from her poetry and Yukina herself from her own conflicting thoughts.

"Goodness, it's Lord Koenma!" Botan gasped.

"And Kurama," Yukina added as she finally sighted what had caught Botan's attention.

An instant after she had locked onto the image of two figures on a cloud being blasted about in the up-draught of the Apepi's wings, Yukina saw Kurama take a potentially suicidal leap towards them. She held her breath as he fell through the air, only allowing herself to sigh out the air that had been burning in her lungs when Kurama's feet landed safely on the scaly back of the Apepi a few feet away from her. She gasped again as she noticed that he was showing a few signs of having been in a difficult fight, most noticeably a gash in his upper left arm.

Yukina started to untangle herself from Botan, started to stand, preparing herself to hurry over to Kurama and offer to heal his wound; but she stopped short when he lifted his head and she saw the look on his face. Yukina had never seen Kurama look quite so dark, angered and intimidating as he did right then, and she was certain that his ire was directed at her, even though he did not look directly at her. He shortly began to move, quickly and carefully closing the gap between them, his eyes moving to Botan.

"We have to get out of here as quickly as possible," he said, his tone only slightly deeper and rougher than its usual, carefully controlled pitch.

"But how?" Botan asked him. "My oar was broken somehow!"

Kurama gave a small movement of one hand and he appeared to sprout giant wings, the suddenness of his action causing both Botan and Yukina to yelp in surprise and grip onto each other tighter.

"You can fly?" Botan asked.

"No," Kurama replied. "But I can fall with style."

Yukina was unsure if Kurama had intended his remark as a joke or not, but as neither he nor Botan laughed she chose not to respond just in case she offended him. Presumably he was just using the same demon plant she had seen Fumio use to save himself from falling into the pit she and Botan had met the Apepi in – though judging by Botan's reaction, she had either not seen Fumio use the plant or else she had forgotten in her current state of panicked confusion.

Kurama held out a hand towards Botan, who took it, releasing her hold of Yukina entirely and allowing him to pull her to her feet.

"Hold onto me carefully, it will be rough until we escape the violent currents in the air the Apepi's wings are creating," he advised.

Botan nodded and put her arms around his shoulders. He put one arm around her waist and with his other hand he threw one of the trailing strands from the plant on his back towards Yukina.

"Take hold of that," he said, looking down at her in a way that made her wish he had simply rescued Botan and left her behind. "Be sure to get a good hold, or you will fall."

Yukina slowly picked up the proffered strand, which was as thick as rope, wrapping it around one of her hands and grabbing onto it with the other, her eyes never leaving Kurama as she did so.

"Is that secure?" Botan asked, peering down at Yukina through a frown. "It seems dangerous."

"This is a very dangerous situation," Kurama replied, his voice and expression darkening, his eyes still on Yukina as he spoke. "This is not some sort of game."

Yukina rose to her feet, but lowered her head to avoid having to look directly at Kurama. Instead she obediently followed as he took a few steps forward over the base of the Apepi's wing, and she was then quickly robbed of her own feelings of self-pity as Kurama leapt forwards and she was tugged after him, into a violent torrent of crosswinds. For what felt like several minutes – though she later realised was probably only a matter of seconds – she was violently whipped back and forth in the air, the strain on her hands so great that she thought they would be torn from her arms. Then, as quickly as the struggle had begun, Yukina heard a series of creaking sounds before suddenly the pressure on her hands, wrists and arms vanished, and she found herself plummeting through the air for the second time that day.

Yukina's first thought was that, in her panic, she had done to the plant on Kurama's back what she had done to Botan's oar: but a quick visual check showed Kurama and Botan still gliding safely downwards at a controlled pace. However, sighting Kurama and Botan brought two jarring thoughts to the front of Yukina's mind: first of all, Kurama was holding Botan very tenderly, and secondly, she was falling away from them at a shocking rate, and as such her fall would undoubtedly end badly.

And, mere seconds after those thoughts had occurred to her, Yukina landed. Her landing robbed the air from her body and left her feeling light-headed and on the point of passing out, but her landing had at least been cushioned. Turning her head she saw why.

"Sorry Miss," George greeted her as their eyes met. "I tried to catch you, but you were falling so fast you took me off my feet!"

Yukina rolled off of the ogre, struggling against her own dizziness to check him for any wounds she could heal.

"Get back down!" a voice barked at her.

She yelped and flattened herself to the ground at George's side, peering back at the source of the voice in time to see Hiei unleashing the Dragon of the Darkness Flame at the Apepi. In the chaos of black flame and blinding flashes of light that followed, it was impossible for her to tell where Kurama and Botan were and if they were safe – but she trusted that Hiei would not have launched his attack otherwise. In the sky, the two monsters collided, and the backdraft of their conflict reached all the way down to where Yukina lay, creating a dust storm of rubble around her. She choked and blinked against the grains of dirt invading her mouth and eyes, but she only found relief when the winds eased off.

Yukina then lifted her head, watching as the billowing black body of the Dragon of the Darkness Flame receded back into Hiei's arm. Once the dragon was once more a seemingly innocent black mark on Hiei's arm Yukina turned her attention back to the sky, relieved to see that the Apepi was gone, Kurama was landing with Botan, and Koenma was following behind them, cowering on a puff of white cloud.

As Yukina sat up, she saw Yusuke, Kuwabara and Rui join them, reuniting the group in their entirety. Botan then noticed Hiei standing panting on the spot, his eyelids drooping as sleep threatened to take over after the exertion of using his most powerful attack.

"Oh Hiei!" she gasped, sprinting over to him and putting her hands on his shoulders to steady him. "You're so reckless! Kurama told you to keep a hold of the plant, but you let go just so you could get down here ahead of us to do this? The fall could have killed you, you silly thing!"

Hiei groaned and rolled his eyes, but before he could correct Botan she then noticed Yukina knelt on the ground by George.

"Hiei!" she said.

Her head flicked back and forth between Hiei and Yukina, her face torn between confusion, misery and fear.

"But why are there two Hieis?" she eventually wailed.

Yukina stood up, keeping her eyes on the ground to avoid having to look at anyone else – because in that moment, she could feel that every pair of eyes was on her – and she carefully untied the bandana from around her head. She threw it aside, but Koenma caught it, turning it over to frown down at the bloody talisman she had painted onto the side that had been pressed against her forehead. Yukina ignored his critical reaction, continuing to reach her hands up under the tight vest she was wearing beneath her shirt, fumbling awkwardly to unwrap the bandaging around her chest without removing her clothing. After a prolonged, silent moment of struggling, she eventually pulled the bandaging free of herself, dropping it to the ground at her feet.

"Oh my goodness!" Botan gasped. "Yukina!"

Rui muttered something derogatory under her breath, but Botan did not hear her.

"Oh Yukina, what happened to you?" Botan continued, releasing Hiei and starting towards Yukina. "What have you done to your lovely hair? And why are you dressed like… Like… Hiei!"

Yukina lifted her eyes to look directly at Botan, who stopped short, her face slowly morphing through a range of expressions, before eventually settling on a look of disgusted shock.

"You mean that all this time…?" she said, shaking her head in horror. "You were…? And I was…? And when we…? But… How could you?"

"I just wanted to help," Yukina quietly replied. "I never meant to hurt anybody. I just… Wanted to help."

Botan took a few wary steps back and Yukina moved her attention to Hiei.

"When I heard that you were sick, I just wanted to help you," she told him.

He gave her a critical look before falling to his knees, blinking hard as he tried to stay awake long enough to continue glaring at her. She turned her attention to Yusuke, who seemed to be trying his best to avoid looking directly at her.

"I thought I could help you," she said to him.

When he ignored her she turned her head again and found herself looking at Koenma, who was still holding the bandana she had been using.

"I know it was a dangerous spell to use, but I researched it very carefully before I tried it, I promise!" Yukina implored.

Koenma squared his jaw and shook his head disapprovingly, and so Yukina turned from him, bringing Rui into her line of sight.

"I was just trying to help!" she said. "You understand, don't you?"

Rui gave her a blank look, and so Yukina turned again, her heart sinking as her eyes met Kuwabara's.

"I-I'm so sorry Kazuma," she said softly.

He turned his head from her, and she had to swallow back the urge to break down. She turned her head again and her eyes landed on Kurama, who was already glaring at her with the same dark and disgusted look he had given her on the Apepi's back.

"I… I just…"

Yukina lost her voice as she fought to hold back her tears – despite having had years of practise, there were still times when she struggled to suppress her sadness entirely. Kurama glared at her for a moment longer before turning his back on her and walking away at a brisk pace. She started after him but Hiei caught her arm in a grip that was almost painfully tight, despite his weakened state.

"I think you've done enough for one day, don't you?" Hiei asked her as she met his sleepy eyes.

She hung her head and Hiei's hand slid from her arm, his body slumping to the ground as he was finally overtaken by exhaustion. All around Yukina the others began to follow after Kurama, with Yusuke picking up Hiei, until soon Yukina was alone with Rui. She then dared to lift her head again, looking over at her oldest friend. Rui's face remained blank, but she walked up to Yukina and gently smoothed out her hair, her welcomingly cool fingers wiping strays strands of hair back from Yukina's sweating forehead.

"Your hair will grow back in time," Rui said gently. "And until it does, we can tidy it up a little, wash that colour out of it and soon have you looking pretty again."

"I look terrible," Yukina forlornly replied.

"We can fix your hair," Rui insisted. "A short style will look pretty on you. You've always been a pretty girl, Yukina."

Yukina opened her mouth to reply, but her eyes blurred with tears. Before she could react she found herself pressed against Rui as her friend pulled her into a firm but tender embrace. Yukina gladly put her arms around Rui and relaxed into her with a sigh.

"We'll be alright," Rui assured her.

Next Chapter: Everyone returns to living world and Yukina attempts to explain herself and make amends with the gang, with varying degrees of success. Chapter 32 – Twelfth Night.