A/N: I'm working really hard to get chapters out to finish the story. Enjoy!
Chloe tapped her fingers nervously, glancing at Carmen for the hundredth time. "How long has it been?" She asked finally.
Carmen didn't look up from braiding her hair. "I answered that two minutes ago. It's only been ten minutes."
"How will we know if he did it or not?"
Carmen sighed exasperatedly. "Kurama will wake up. Stop fretting Chloe. We'll know when we know." Chloe bit her lip. "Wh-what if he doesn't do it?" Carmen looked at Chloe's worried eyes, and almost felt compassion for her. "Then I'll go track the bastard down."
Chloe's eyes widened. "What about the tournament?"
Carmen glared at Chloe. "I don't fight until tomorrow. Stop asking so many questions. Go eat an apple or bother Haru or something. Shoo." She made shooing motions with her hands. Chloe started to protest, but a look from Carmen sent her scurrying for the stairs. "You'll tell me if-" "GO."
"How is he?"
Chloe jumped at Haru's voice next to her. "You scared me!" She came onto the landing, a hand to her chest; Haru chuckled. "That's not hard to do." She glared at him. "Yeah yeah. He's the same. What if Alexander doesn't release Kurama's soul? .. That just sounds so weird." She shook her head.
Haru shrugged. "I don't know. I guess Carmen will have to go get it."
"But what if she is so injured that she loses the tournament, or can't even fight in the tournament? What then?"
Haru sighed. "Chloe, listen to me. All these 'what if's aren't doing anybody any good. I may not trust Carmen personally, but I think we've seen enough to know that she knows what she's doing. Besides, she knows more about demon politics than either of us do." He patted her shoulder. "Stop your worrying. It's only gonna stress you out further."
"I know…" Chloe hung her head. "I can't seem to help it. My mind just keeps going and going.."
Downstairs Eric came and sat with Carmen, handing her a glass of ice and pouring a dark liquid out of a green bottle. "What's this?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, raising it to her lips. She took a tiny sip, savoring it's flavor. "It tastes like scotch."
Eric smiled. "Very astute. It is similar to scotch, but much stronger. It's my own blend. Do you like it?"
Carmen nodded approvingly. "It's great. Now that you've got me drinking go ahead and ask your questions." Eric chuckled. "That obvious? Okay, what are you going to do when the time runs out?"
Carmen swirled another sip in her mouth and swallowed. "I don't know. I can't wait for my fight because Chloe will be dead or Alexander will be long gone. I daren't fight him before my match because I'll lose the tournament." She clenched her jaw, then relaxed and took another sip. "It's a damn sticky mess I've been put in. If Chloe had just told me that he was- well, it's done."
"Don't take this wrong, but why are you doing this?" Eric took a sip himself. He did love his creation.
Carmen thought for a minute. "Sometimes I don't know why the hell I'm doing this. I guess my damnable sense of pride and duty won't let me turn my back."
"Even when it's against your brother?"
Carmen froze with the glass to her lips. "He's been dead to me for a long time." There was venom in her voice.
"How long has it been since you saw him?"
Carmen took a large drink. "Since the last time he tried to kill me." Carmen put her glass down – it was empty. Eric leaned over and refilled it. "That time in Otara?" Carmen shook her head. "No, he tracked me down in the human world a few years after that."
"So your honor dictates that you save Kurama, but it is your brother you will have to face. So what are you going to do?"
Carmen took a sip. Suddenly she sat up straight. "If I were to ask you to hide this place for a couple of days what would you say?" Eric sighed. "You know I'd do it for you. What are you going to do?" Carmen smirked and drained her glass before standing up. "I'm gonna go fight. Tell Chloe to stay here, no matter what; keep an eye on Kurama and wait for me.
…
Chloe paced back and forth in Kurama's room. It had been two days – two days! Not a word from Carmen. And all the doors and windows were locked up tight, so they were trapped in here. 'I'm going stir crazy!' She sighed and went to the window for the umpteenth time. There had been no change in Kurama. No good change at least. He seemed paler than before, but she couldn't be sure. She'd barely slept herself.
Then she saw something, or rather, someone. "Carmen!" She squealed, bolting out the room and down the stairs. Eric looked up from cleaning glasses behind the bar as she came stomping down the stairs. "Slow down. What did you see?"
"I saw Carmen. Open the door!"
"Eric it's me, open up."
Eric approached the door slowly, silently. He motioned for Chloe to be silent and waited.
"Eric, please, I'm injured. I don't have time for games."
Eric still didn't move a muscle. Chloe opened her mouth to speak but Eric was beside her and his hand was over her mouth before she could make a sound. She stared up at him wide-eyed, unsure of what his strange behavior indicated.
Suddenly there was a string of curses – but it was no longer Carmen's voice; it was the orange-eyed man, Alexander's voice. "You may as well give up now. I've killed Carmen." When nothing happened there were more muttered curses, but the voice got gradually fainter. Finally Eric went back to the window and looked out.
"Wh-what just happened?" Chloe sank into one of the chairs.
"Alexander was hoping to trick me into revealing this place. I could protect all of you against a swarm of demons, but against the likes of him.." He shook his head.
"Why is he so different?" Chloe asked, curious of why he was so terrifying.
Eric waved it off. "Ask Carmen. It's not my story to tell."
"What if she doesn't come back?" Chloe couldn't hide the fear in her brown eyes. "What if Alexander really did kill her? What will we do then?"
Eric returned to the glasses and started cleaning them once again. "If there's anything I've learned about Carmen over the years it's never to underestimate Carmen. She knows how to take care of herself."
"But-"
"Listen to me young miss. Come hell or high water Carmen will find a way back here, even if it meant selling her soul to the devil himself or bleeding out on those steps out front. If you're gonna believe something, believe that. Carmen will come back as soon as she's able. So relax, go distract Haru, whatever. Stop sitting around fretting."
Chloe got up grudgingly and went upstairs and knocked on Haru's door. "Haru?" She pushed it open, cautiously peering inside. He was standing in front of his window, staring out. "Haru?" She repeated, clicking the door shut behind her. She reached out and touched his shoulder. He stirred from his reverie finally and looked at her.
"Chloe. Hey." He blinked. Chloe could tell he'd been some place far away. "What were you thinking about?"
Haru sighed and wrapped his arms around her. He'd been thinking about the river goddess. Something had happened to him there, he could feel it – something was off. And he couldn't seem to get her out of his head. But he didn't want to tell Chloe that. "Nothing. I wasn't really thinking about anything." He rested his chin on her head. Chloe giggled. "You're a horrible liar, you know that? But fine, don't tell me." She would have pulled away, but for some reason she could tell Haru didn't want to let her go.
"Are you two gonna stand there all day?"
Chloe whirled around. "Carmen!" She exclaimed, leaping over and throwing her arms around the demoness. Carmen took a step back to steady herself. "Are you done?" She asked dryly, untangling the girl's arms from her torso. "You'd think I came back from the dead or something."
"For all we knew you were dead!" Chloe smiled broadly.
Carmen straightened her jacket. "I said I'd be back. Besides, I've got a fight tomorrow. You didn't think I'd miss that, did you?" She turned. "Let's go give the breath of life to your boyfriend, as it were." Chloe blushed but followed her into Kurama's room.
The green-haired demoness pulled a small, glowing glass ball out of her pocket and held it in her open palm. She muttered a few strange words and then tapped the ball with her nail. A crack appeared and the light seemed to squeeze out of the crack and disappeared into Kurama's body. Chloe watched in amazement as his whole body seemed to glow, but then the light seemed to begin leaving his body again and heading for the ball.
"Smash this." Carmen tossed Chloe the glass and bent over Kurama, placing a hand on his chest.
"What's happening?" Chloe asked, worry gnawing at her stomach.
"Stupid bastard placed a binding spell on his soul." Carmen closed her eyes and her lips started moving again, her other hand performing strange movements close to her chest. Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light. It disappeared as quick as it had come. Chloe blinked as her eyes tried to adjust. "Look!" She exclaimed.
Carmen didn't need to look. She could feel Kurama's breathing and heart rate grow stronger beneath her fingers. "Welcome ba-ahck!"
Yoko's hand squeezed her throat tightly, constricting her air flow painfully.
"Carmen!" Chloe exclaimed, jerking in shock.
Carmen grabbed Yoko's wrist, trying to pull it off. "I'm. helping. You!" She gasped.
His yellow eyes opened suddenly and his grip relaxed. "Where's the scum I was fighting?" He demanded, sitting up only to hunch over in pain.
Carmen took a step back, rubbing her throat. "He ripped your soul from your body at some point during or after the fight."
"That's impossible. No demon is strong enough to rip my soul from my body."
Carmen just grunted before turning to Chloe. "I'll smash it." She took the glass ball from the stunned girl and left, taking one quick peek back before shutting the door.
Chloe just stared at Yoko, hunched over on the bed. "H-how do you feel?" She asked finally, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. "Like hell." He responded grumpily, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
"I'm not so sure you should…whoa…" Chloe tilted her head back, swallowing a little when she saw just how tall he was. She unconsciously took a step back, intimidated by his size as he stood up.
"Are you afraid of me?"
Chloe choked a little. "Wh-what?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Are you afraid of me?"
Chloe's heart pounded in her chest. "I-I don't know. Maybe a little." She swallowed hard. He looked down at her with his unreadable yellow gaze. "There is no need. I would never harm you." He saw her relax ever so slightly. "I know I look different, but I am, essentially, Shuiichi Minamino. Think of this as just a different side of me." She still didn't look convinced. Yoko sighed. "I was a demon before I joined with Shuiichi. I was dying, so to save myself my soul joined with the unborn child of a human woman. Over time our two souls fused together so now we are one and the same."
Chloe's face looked pensive as she thought about it. After everything she'd been forced to accept lately though... this didn't really seem out of the realm of possibility. "Okay." She said finally. Even as she spoke he seemed to change before her eyes, getting shorter and his hair turning red. In a matter of moments the Kurama she was used to now stood before her.
"You're alright!" She threw her arms around him.
He winced in pain but made no noise. His body hadn't entirely healed while his soul had been gone. "Yes I'm fine Chloe." He kept any sign of pain out of his voice and patted her back. "Let me go talk to Carmen for a minute, okay? Why don't you go tell Haru what's happened. And Chloe?" He looked back at her from the door. "Don't tell him about Yoko."
Carmen poured another small glass of Eric's jazzed up scotch, lifted it to her lips, and drained it. Her face scrunched and she took a deep breath. She pulled her jacket off, cursing at the blood stains on the inside. There was dried blood all over her arms and various blood stains on her clothes. She filled the glass and downed it again.
"You are going to explain everything to me, right now."
Carmen paused in the act of lifting yet another glass to her lips. "I'm not going to explain any more than is necessary." She drained that one as well and poured another. Kurama came beside, his green eyes dark and angry. "I know you know a lot more than you're telling, especially as relates to the man that attacked Chloe and I. Now tell me."
Carmen swirled the scotch in the glass, debating for a moment. "He's my brother." She said finally, picking up the glass. Kurama pushed it back down. "And?"
Carmen sighed. "And he wants to kill me. Failing that he just wants to make my life miserable by messing up anything I'm involved in. So he's going after the medallion and Chloe." She lifted the glass to her lips.
"You selfish bitch." All his frustration and anger at Carmen welled up in him all at once and without even thinking his fist had moved of its own accord, connecting squarely with Carmen's jaw. The glass shattered. Carmen crashed into a table but grabbed it in time to keep from falling to the floor. She spit some blood out of her mouth and a growl rose in the back of her throat. "That was stupid Kurama. I'm in the mood to fight and you just gave me a reason to." She launched and barreled into him, which sent them both crashing into another table, which sent the chairs scattering.
"You three have been ungrateful, distrustful annoyances!" She hissed, kicking him off and leaping to her feet. "Your reputation doesn't give us a reason to trust you.." Kurama hopped into a fighting stance facing her. Carmen's yellow eyes narrowed. "I have done nothing to break your trust through this whole ordeal."
"You manipulated Chloe into helping, and through her me."
Carmen snorted derisively. "Cry me a river. You think I wanted to do any of this? This is a whole heap of trouble I didn't need."
"You don't do anything unless it benefits you!" Kurama threw a chair in her face and followed up with a punch. Carmen didn't bother blocking. She let both the chair and the punch hit, full force. She staggered back against the bar, blood dripping from her mouth and split lip onto the floor. "Yes Kurama, I did this for myself." She ripped her shirt off and dropped it to the floor.
Kurama paused. It looked like she'd been dragged across a barbed-wire fence. When she turned her back looked similar. She had a bandage wrapped around her waist, and in the back it was completely soaked through with blood. Without hesitation she reached down, tore it, and let it drop to the floor. A deep gash ran across her lower back, so deep it was still bleeding.
"Yes, I'm a selfish bitch. A selfish bitch who nearly died to return your soul to your body." She spat, her angry yellow eyes turned on him once again.
Kurama felt his anger slipping. "You only did that so I could watch Chloe while you fight in the tournament." He shot back, trying not to let the gruesomeness of her injuries get to him. Carmen snorted again. "I don't need you for that. I would just leave her here."
Kurama straightened up, holding his hands up in a peaceful gesture. "Let's call a truce. Let me sew that up."
"Like I'd let you lay a hand on me now." Carmen spat more blood out of her mouth and went back around the bar, picking up the bottle of scotch and beginning to down more. "You guys are the ones who shouldn't be trusted." She slammed the bottle down, just soft enough to not break it. "Every chance you get one of you is running off, or going behind my back, or trying to fight me. I have done nothing but protect every single one of you! And that's the thanks I get? Deceit and mistrust? You know nothing about me so stop thinking you have me figured out." Carmen's eyes flamed again and she downed the rest of the bottle.
"You can't reach your back Carmen, and that wound is still bleeding. Let me help you." Kurama had the feeling maybe he'd misjudged Carmen. He still didn't agree with her methods, but perhaps the hearsay about her had been wrong.
"To hell with you." Carmen threw the bottle across the room and it smashed against the wall. She grabbed another bottle and walked stiffly over to the door to the back, where Eric's room was. "Eric? I need a patch.." She disappeared through the door.
Kurama picked up the chairs and the table, setting them back in their places. Well he'd screwed that up. How long had it been since he lost his temper like that?
'I think I'm rubbing off on you.' Came Yoko's voice.
Kurama didn't bother answering, merely began sweeping up the glass from the bottle and Carmen's glass. Carmen was royally pissed off, and he wasn't sure he could blame her. Then again he wasn't sure he wasn't in the right. Reputations were born somewhere in truth, and Carmen was so secretive and unpredictable it was impossible to guess her true motives.
….
"Are all the battles this..gory?" Haru turned away from the arena, disgusted; seeing someone literally turned inside-out had not been on his list of things to see before he died. Chloe nodded, her eyes examining her hands intently. "That's why I don't watch."
Haru shrugged, watching as the body was cremated on the spot by a couple of fire demons. This whole tournament was run with business precision, it was kind of creepy.
"Hey guys." Eric sat down next to Haru, sending a lazy smile to all three.
"What brings you here?" Kurama asked, his eyes on the arena as Carmen strutted out. She was barefoot again, clad in a white dress that showed her whole back. His eyebrow quirked slightly –he could see no blemish on her skin. She couldn't have recovered that quickly since yesterday. Unless..
"Just came to see Carmen fight."
..she was sending a message to the man she'd fought the last two days. She'd probably just concealed the remainder of the injuries to show that she could not be beaten and was fit as a fiddle.
At first nothing happened. Carmen stared at her opponent, her opponent stared at her. Suddenly Carmen felt the ground growing cold and damp beneath her feet. "Shoot." She bolted for edge of the arena. She hadn't gone more than five steps before suddenly she was engulfed; the entire arena had flooded in a matter of moments and was rising.
Suddenly Chloe saw glass walls rising from the ground next to the arena boundaries. "What are they doing?" She leaned over and whispered in Kurama's ear.
"Keeping the water contained so he doesn't flood the stadium."
As the glass rose the water rose as well, staying no less than a foot beneath the edge. The water demon floated on top, blue eyes focused on Carmen's struggling form beneath the surface. Suddenly her head broke the surface. She swam strongly towards the water demon, but suddenly the water twisted and she rolled back under, caught in a rapidly spinning ball of water. The water demon started running along the surface in a circle, getting faster and faster.
"What's he doing?" Chloe asked, anxiously clutching both Kurama and Haru's hands. "He's creating a whirlpool." Haru answered quietly.
"If he succeeds in finishing it she's done for." Eric spoke suddenly, his jaw tight.
Kurama leaned down to Chloe's ear so only she heard. "If this ends badly, be ready to run."
Chloe's eyes widened and she felt her heart speed up. 'Don't lose Carmen, don't lose!'
Just as the demon made a third pass Carmen's hand shot up out of the water and grabbed his foot. When he pulled she used a boost of demon power to fling herself out of the water and up onto the edge of the glass. She clung there, dripping wet and shivering. The water was colder than a glacier and stabbed worse than a thousand knives. Her fight with Alexander had taken so much out of her, she'd been fighting so long…what if she just forfeited? Her eyes drifted over the crowd, suddenly stopping on Eric, Haru, Chloe..and Kurama. Chloe trusted her so much and still didn't hate her for treating her so badly. And Kurama…the bastard had seem more of her than she'd let anyone in a thousand years see of her. He was just starting to trust her, a tiny bit. She couldn't let them down.
Carmen's eyes snapped back onto the water demon, who was hastily starting the whirlpool again and making the water rise even further. "You fool!" Carmen shouted, straightening up. Her back, which was not fully healed, spasmed, but she forced herself to bear through it. "You might have had a chance if you had hidden your hand longer, but now you're done – I know your cards!" She glanced up at the sky the launched herself off the glance. She collided head-first with the demon, sending them both crashing under the surface of the water.
Kurama looked up at the sky. A storm was brewing, unbelievably quickly. A thunderstorm? Suddenly he knew what she was doing. "Get out of there Carmen…" He muttered, looking nervously at the storm clouds.
Suddenly a head of green hair broke the surface, swimming strongly for the wall. Carmen kicked hard, glancing up at the sky several times. Perk of this trick was that the storm was there in a matter of minutes. Bad part was that once you started it it was nearly impossible to reverse, so you better not change your mind. Just as suddenly as she'd appeared she disappeared, pulled under once more by the water demon.
The storm was now almost all gathered and made its presence known to the crowd with a loud roll of thunder. Half the contestants jumped and the water reverberated. Carmen knew that was her cue to be out of the water. She landed a heavy kick to her opponents throat and let the current sweep her away. She kicked at the appropriate moment and thrust her claws into the glass, effectively keeping her in place. She gave a mighty heave coupled with some demon-powered kicks and shot out of the water, just managing to grab the edge of the glass. She pulled herself up and leapt, hurtling down into the crowd just as a huge bolt of lightning touched down on the water.
These events happened simultaneously and so quickly that Chloe didn't have a chance to see Carmen escape. She just saw the lightning hit. "CARMEN!"