Chapter 7 – Last Secret

Yusuke slid from Puu's back, landing on the soft ground of a farming field. Kurama leapt down behind him, reverted once more to his full demon form due to their arrival in his home world. Yusuke took a long moment to look at Kurama's face, the tension in his jaw, the thinness of his lips, the darkness in his golden eyes and the persistent twitch of his right ear noticeable even to Yusuke's often unobservant eyes.

"You okay?" he asked.

"He's late," Kurama answered, his eyes watching the lone tree in the middle of the field they had agreed to meet at.

"Maybe we're early," Yusuke said with a shrug.

Kurama gave a small growl and marched up to the tree. Yusuke petted Puu on the head and then followed after him.

"You seem a little uptight," he said.

"I'm just anxious – as I'm sure you are – to put an end to all this nonsense," Kurama replied.

"Yeah, I hear ya," Yusuke said. "Too bad we can't fight them, right? We could've kicked them all back into demon world right at the start."

When Kurama did not answer him, Yusuke again felt the need to ask a question nobody else around him seemed to care about the answer to.

"Are you taking this personally?"

"I'm taking this seriously," Kurama replied.

"It kinda seems like you're taking it seriously personally…" Yusuke said carefully.

"This is something that merits serious consideration," Kurama said. "Because as you can now see, we are dealing with creatures who don't see fit to play fair."

Yusuke turned around and found a group of at least fifteen demons standing in the field, fronted by a male cat demon.

"I guess you must be Iruka," Yusuke called over.

"Yoko Kurama," the cat demon called back.

"No, I'm Yusuke Urameshi," Yusuke replied.

The cat demon moved away from the remainder of his group, walking straight up to Kurama.

"It's been a long time," he said.

"Not long enough," Kurama gruffly replied.

"I understand my wife has been giving you a spot of bother."

"Your wife?" Yusuke cut in.

The cat demon turned to him, eying him over in a way Yusuke did not particularly appreciate, though it was a look he had grown accustomed to over the course of his life.

"Tora is not your wife, Iruka," Kurama said.

Iruka turned his attention back to Kurama.

"How would you know?" he asked. "A little bird told me you've spent the last twenty-five years playing human in the living world, "Shuichi"."

A murmur of amusement passed over the gang of demons behind Iruka.

"Tora was always impetuous and prone to bad decision-making, but even a hot-headed fool like Tora has enough sense to stay clear of a thoughtless foot soldier like you," Kurama said.

"Is there a reason you summoned me?" Iruka asked. "I wouldn't want to keep you from your other, human, life. Either of you…"

He turned to give Yusuke another brief look of disdain.

"Why are you promising a bounty for the head of someone you and I both know is already dead?" Kurama asked.

"I don't promise anything I can't deliver," Iruka replied.

"I don't doubt your leader would fund any bounty you named, but I do doubt the legitimacy of your wanted poster for the former rebel leader," Kurama explained.

"Ah, I see," Iruka said, finding his smile again. "This about our old friend "Raspberry Sundae"."

"She died long ago," Kurama said firmly. "You should know that better than anyone: you were the one who dealt her the fatal blow that took her life."

"How do you know that? Were you there? I don't remember you being there… Which is odd, because every other time I had that girl cornered, you had a strange habit of showing up and helping her escape capture."

Yusuke raised his eyebrows at Kurama, who kept his attention on Iruka.

"I didn't come here to discuss the past with you, Iruka," Kurama said. "I came to discuss the future. You need to stop spreading lies about the deceased and you need to accept the fact that you have hunted the rebels into near extinction."

"I'm not the one spreading lies, Kurama," Iruka replied. "And I don't stop the hunt until all the girls are back with the rest of us or dead."

"You need to consider your future actions very carefully."

"Oh really?"

"Yes. Or you may not have a future."

Yusuke opened his mouth to intervene but stopped short when Kurama grabbed a hand onto the tree behind him and its branches creaked over towards Iruka.

"Are you sure you want to threaten me?" Iruka asked. "We do outnumber you."

He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at his gang to illustrate his point.

"You do outnumber me, but I alone am more powerful than all of you combined," Kurama answered.

"You've really lost your fun, foxy sense of humour, Kurama," Iruka said.

"Yes I have," Kurama agreed. "You killed it."

Iruka looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes scanning over the branches reaching for his head like wooden fingers, before taking a decisive step back.

"Okay, I'll play," he said. "It's like this: me and my men here had that girl cornered. I know I hurt her badly enough to end her life, but I was never afforded the chance to confirm her death or to recover her weapons because the good old spirit world Special Defence Force showed up and took the body – and everything on it – back to spirit world."

Kurama gave a short, humourless laugh.

"And you think that means she is still alive?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Iruka replied. "At first I was sure she was dead anyway. But something changed. We caught and converted a rebel a couple of months back and she told us spirit world took their leader for another reason."

"I'm growing weary of the sound of your voice," Kurama warned. "You had better say something constructive or you will be the latest casualty of the cat demon quarrel."

"I don't have anything else to say. If you want to know why spirit world took the girl, why don't you ask someone in spirit world?"

Kurama released the tree, which swayed back into its original position and shape. Yusuke started to suggest that they return to Puu, but before he could finish Kurama punched Iruka in the face.

"That's new," Yusuke muttered, at first too surprised to see the fox demon using such a blunt and basic physical attack rather than respond more sensibly.

When the gang of demons who had accompanied Iruka began charging towards them, Yusuke made to again suggest to Kurama that they leave; but Kurama had pounced at Iruka and the two were entangled in an inexplicably physical, hands-on battle for two demons who usually relied on plants to fight.

"Damn it…" Yusuke said with a sigh.

Unsure how politically correct it would be to blast Iruka's gang into oblivion, Yusuke instead relied on his fists and his feet to knock them down. They were all relatively weak and within minutes half of them were unconscious on the ground and the other half had surrounded Iruka and run off, leaving Yusuke staring at an uncharacteristically ruffled and bloody-lipped Yoko Kurama.

"Hey fox boy," Yusuke said, waiting until Kurama looked at him before continuing. "Wanna tell me what the hell that was all about? Because you were definitely taking that seriously personally!"

Kuwabara sat down hard onto a rock, his face in his hands. His eyes were still stinging and he was still almost certain that he had been permanently blinded, but a pair of hands had guided him to what he could feel and hear was a campfire, and he felt strangely at ease as soon as he sat down.

"What did you do to him?"

"Yukina?"

Kuwabara's head snapped up and he opened his eyes, ignoring how painful it was to do so. He saw a blurry image of a fire and several faces sitting around it and he could just about make out what looked like Yukina standing at his side.

"Relax snowflake, he'll be fine," a sarcastic voice said.

"Kazuma, are you alright?"

Kuwabara blinked a few times and almost managed to recognise the face looking at him as Yukina's.

"I had a nightmare, a vision that you were in danger!" he said.

"That wasn't a nightmare, we are in danger," Yukina answered him.

Kuwabara rubbed at his eyes frantically before blinking a few more times to find his vision had almost fully returned. He was sitting in front of a medium campfire, with Yukina at his side, a row of cat demons across the fire – including the mother who had blinded him along with her identical twin daughters – and the cat demon with the jagan eye was standing at one end of the row.

"What do you want with us?" Kuwabara asked, addressing his question to the cat demon on her feet.

"Tora thinks we know something about her plight," Yukina quietly replied before sitting down at Kuwabara's side.

"Tora knows you know something about her plight," Tora said sternly, glaring at Yukina.

"I don't know anything about any of you," Kuwabara said. "Well, except that that lady over there has a really nasty little plant that blinds people…"

He glowered across the flames at the black-haired cat demon who had blinded him and she glowered back.

"I've already told you everything I know," Yukina said. "Please, let us go. Or if you won't let me go, can you please at least release Kazuma and Mister Hiei?"

"I forgot about Hiei," Kuwabara said, snapping back to attention. "Hey, I thought me and Hiei already left this island. I remember escaping from a plant and running away…"

"That was an illusion," Tora told him. "Induced by the seeing ivy and watched by my jagan eye."

"…The seeing ivy?" Kuwabara said slowly. "You mean that creepy plant with all the eyes?"

"That you somehow managed to escape from, yes," Tora replied. "How did you manage to escape?"

"I could sense that my Yukina was in danger."

Kuwabara turned to Yukina to smile at her, noticing then that she was dressed in the clothes she usually only wore when they went to the cinema or shopping and she had a clumsy pink bandana on her head.

"Are you alright, my love?" he asked her quietly.

"No," she whispered back. "We have to get out of here."

"Where's everybody else? Where's Urameshi and Kurama?"

"Nobody knows you're here," Tora interrupted. "None of your friends know where you are, so none of them have come looking for you."

Kuwabara looked around the fire at the cat demons again. The sky overhead was getting lighter, so he assumed it must be morning, which made their need for the fire all the more unusual.

"How did you all get here? And what do you want with us?" he asked, turning back to Tora.

"That's an interesting question," Tora replied. "Because we originally came here in search of Yoko Kurama."

"Kurama?" Kuwabara echoed.

"Yes," Tora said. "Kurama. But then my jagan eye found Yukina and our plans changed. We only wanted closure at first: we wanted to know how our leader died and why we never found her body or her weapons after her death. We thought Kurama might have some answers, but Yukina seemed better placed to fill us in, since she was one of the last ones to see our leader alive."

"Is that true?" Kuwabara asked Yukina.

Yukina nodded solemnly.

"But along the way, we've learned a lot of new and interesting information," Tora continued. "First we found out that our leader and all her belongings were taken to spirit world after she was wounded. And now, thanks to Yukina, we've found out a little more about what happened after that."

"I don't have anything else to tell you!" Yukina cried.

"You didn't need to say a word," Tora reminded her. "It only took minutes with the seeing ivy to get the rest of the information out of you."

Yukina gasped.

"It's not true!" she tried. "Whatever your plant told you, it's not true!"

"So if you're done being creepy and using your weird plants on us, can we go?" Kuwabara asked. "Did they hurt you, Yukina?"

"Not yet," Yukina muttered.

"What do you need Hiei for?" Kuwabara asked Tora.

"We don't need Hiei for anything," Tora replied with a shrug. "He offered himself to us and once he'd found us, we couldn't let him go back and tell anyone else where we were hiding."

"Typical Hiei…" Kuwabara grumbled.

"You could let him go now," Yukina said. "If you have all the answers you wanted, you have no reason to hold him here."

"No, we're not letting Hiei go," Tora said. "And we're not letting this one go either."

She pointed at Kuwabara.

"Me?" he asked. "What do you want from me?"

"I need a couple of decent hostages if I want to have any chance of negotiating with Koenma," Tora replied.

"Koenma doesn't negotiate with terrorists," Kuwabara said.

"Koenma promised us something a long time ago," Tora said. "Our leader acted as a spy for him in exchange for a piece of land within the spirit world owned region of demon world, a place we could all safely live without the constant threat from the loyalists. Our leader did a lot of work for Koenma and she was taken down during one of her missions for him; but still he didn't hand over the land like he promised."

"I guess that doesn't sound fair," Kuwabara agreed. "Though you ladies are all demons and I don't think anyone in spirit world really likes demons so much."

"They liked our leader while she was working for them. We upheld our end of the bargain, they owe this to us. We were hoping to negotiate the land from Koenma. But last night we learned something that has changed our plans again."

Yukina shook her head.

"It's not true," she said.

"I haven't told you what it is yet," Tora pointed out.

"So tell us already," Kuwabara said.

"When our leader was mortally wounded, the soldiers of the Special Defence Force took her to spirit world," Tora explained. "Koenma, we are led to believe, felt guilty that she had perished working for him. He tasked his best healers with helping her recover, but the damage was too great. In his desperation to salvage her life, he went to his father and begged to have the agreement re-written: instead of spirit world giving us a safe place to live, they used their powers to transfer our leader's soul into another body. Yasashi – or Raspberry Sundae, as she was more widely known – is still alive."

"…What does that have to do with me or Yukina?" Kuwabara asked. "Or Hiei?"

"Koenma has gone to great lengths to hide Yasashi's location and identity, but he is a fool. She was the most powerful cat demon ever born in demon world – even more so than the tribe leader who wanted her for his wife. Others think she is frivolous but they don't see that beneath her friendly façade she is a cunning, clever, powerful force that cannot possibly be contained within a false body. She will have been using this time to recover, to regain her strength and to learn; and when she returns, she will be stronger than ever."

"Like Kurama?" Kuwabara asked.

"I suppose so," Tora reluctantly agreed. "But unlike Kurama, Yasashi will not be drawn into the silliness of the world she was placed in."

"So… She's a human?"

"No."

"Huh?"

Tora turned expectantly to Yukina.

"Koenma created a spirit body and identity for Yasashi," she said quietly. "He even gave her a job in spirit world…"

"And, according to your own thoughts, Koenma hasn't done a very good job of hiding what he's done," Tora added.

Yukina looked up at Kuwabara sorrowfully.

"The name he gave her, the way he made her look, the job he gave her…" she said. "It's all so obvious…"

"So…" Kuwabara began. "Somewhere in spirit world there's a super-powered, super-smart cat demon, gaining power and getting ready to break free?"

"Exactly," Tora said smugly.

"Gees…" Kuwabara muttered to himself. "Wonder what she's like?"

"Anytime you feel like talking…"

Yusuke glared at Kurama, who, as they had just returned to the living world, had been returned to his human form.

"I'm not sure what came over me," Kurama said, wiping away the congealing blood from his lower lip. "I'm sorry Yusuke."

"I don't care that you punched that guy in the face – he was an arrogant asshole and he deserved it – I'm just a little pissed off that you've been giving Yukina such a hard time for not telling us that she knew this Raspberry Sundae girl and now I've just found out that you knew her too and you never told us."

Kurama nodded and Yusuke raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"That was my way of telling you I'm not landing Puu until you explain to me what the hell is going on," Yusuke pressed.

"Of course," Kurama said with a sigh. "And may I begin by acknowledging that you are indeed correct: I am taking this personally."

"I know you are," Yusuke flatly replied.

"I did know her – Yasashi was her real name – a long time ago. At first, she was someone I hunted, because the bounty on her head was double the one offered on that wanted poster we have. When I did find her, she surprised me on two accounts: firstly that she cared more about having fun with her friends than actual power, despite being the leader of a major rebellion, and secondly that despite her blithe demeanour, she was an incredibly skilled and cunning warrior. I could have defeated her, but I became distracted by my own curiosity. I continued to chase her, but not because I wanted to catch her, just because I wanted to understand her. Fun and games were things I had no time or thoughts for, but she made them look easy. She had me under her thrall but I don't she ever realised it."

"Oh…"

"What?"

"I get it."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, sure. You've got a crush on her."

"Don't be ridiculous, Yusuke."

"So do you still want her now that you're Shuichi again, or do you only want her when you're Yoko?"

"Yusuke, the woman is dead."

"I guess she looked kinda hot in that wanted poster. Did you seal the deal?"

"What?"

"Did you seal the deal?"

Kurama narrowed his eyes.

"Have you "sealed the deal" with Keiko?" he asked in a low voice.

Yusuke twitched involuntarily.

"That's a very sensitive and ongoing issue," he mumbled.

"Alright then," Kurama replied.

"But… Why didn't you say something sooner?" Yusuke asked.

"I didn't have anything to say," Kurama replied. "I wasn't there when Yasashi perished, and although my association with her was perhaps longer than Yukina's, I think she was probably closer to Yukina than she ever was to me."

"What do you mean?"

"When I met her, we fought."

"Right…"

"The first time it was because I was trying to capture her, but after that… It became more of a… Series of sparring sessions."

""Sparring sessions", huh? Is that what they called it in demon world back in your day, old man?"

"Very funny. No. We just… Sparred. Although sometimes…"

"Yeah?"

"Sometimes she called it dancing, but I'm almost certain that was just another of her jokes. She liked to mock me… Sometimes I don't understand why I kept going back for more…"

Puu landed and Yusuke and Kurama leapt to the ground.

"It's strange to think of it all now," Kurama continued as Puu preened his ruffled feathers back into place. "When I met her, I had no time or place for friendship or fun: those were things I learned about and grew to appreciate in my human life. I didn't even understand the word affection until I merged my soul with Shuichi's. I suppose that, since that day at the ice cream parlour, I've been wondering if my relationship with Yasashi would have been different if I had met her now. Maybe if I had only just met now, I…"

"Would have sealed the deal?" Yusuke offered.

"You're incredibly puerile and insensitive sometimes, Yusuke," Kurama flatly replied.

"You're the one being an ass here, Kurama," Yusuke scoffed. "At least I can admit when I've done something dumb. Why don't you just admit that you wanted her and you were too chicken to make a move and now it's too late?"

Puu took to the air to return to his roosting location out of sight, leaving Yusuke and Kurama alone in the disused field.

"Sometimes I think she's spoiled me for any other," Kurama said quietly, his eyes on the ground as he spoke. "She was a magnificent creature."

"That's just first love!" Yusuke said with a casual, dismissive wave of his hand. "I can't believe I'm having to tell you that! I'm twenty-four and you're like a thousand and twenty-four! Shouldn't you have learned this basic relationship stuff during puberty? Which for you was like what, some time back in the 12th century?"

Kurama lifted his eyes to Yusuke and started to smile; but his expression quickly changed when he saw a flash of blue at one of Yusuke's shoulders.

"How long have you been eavesdropping, Botan?" he said harshly.

"Huh?" Yusuke grunted, looking back over his shoulder.

Botan slowly stood up, peering over Yusuke's shoulder from behind a pair of large dark glasses.

"What the hell are you doing?" Yusuke asked her.

She stepped out from behind Yusuke, grinning nervously. Yusuke ran his eyes over her, noticing that she was wearing jeans and that stupid sweater decorated with fish again.

"Don't you have some dead people to give ordeals to?" he asked.

"I wasn't eavesdropping," she said, slowly pulling off her dark glasses and looking over at Kurama meekly.

"I believe you were, Botan," Kurama replied.

"Eavesdropping implies that I was listening in on a private conversation with malicious intent!" she said.

"And how would you define what you were doing?" Kurama asked her.

"I was minding my own business flying on my oar and the two of you started flying beside me and started a conversation that I just so happened to hear only a very small part of!"

"Idiot," Yusuke growled.

"I won't tell anyone," Botan quickly said to Kurama. "I'm very good at keeping secrets! I've never told Keiko or Yukina that Hiei is Yukina's missing brother!"

"You've come damn close to it more than once though," Yusuke said.

"So have you!" she snapped at him.

"What did you hear, Botan?" Kurama asked.

"Not much…" Botan said, trying to look innocent.

"That means she heard everything," Yusuke told Kurama.

"Well maybe if it hadn't been so interesting, I wouldn't have felt so compelled to eavesdrop!" Botan argued.

"Thought you said you weren't "eavesdropping"…?" Yusuke muttered.

"I wasn't!"

Botan glanced back and forth between Yusuke and Kurama, her ponytail swinging wildly about as she did so and her face growing pinker as a look of guilt filled her eyes.

"I wasn't eavesdropping, I was just in the right place at the right time!" she wailed defensively.

"Lucky you…" Yusuke said sarcastically.

Botan grinned meekly and then pulled her sweetest cat face, raising one pawed hand in the air.

"Just like the maneki-neko," she said sweetly.

"We all know what curiosity did to the cat," Kurama bluntly reminded her. "And the rule applies to even the luckiest of cats."

Her cat ears wilted and her hand fell to her side.

"Stop pulling stupid faces and let's go," Yusuke said sternly.

Botan shook off her cat face and gave Kurama one last nervous grin before all three started to walk towards the gate leading out of the field. After a silent walk back to the Kuwabara house, they arrived to find Shizuru, Keiko and Koenma in the living room.

"Who did you meet in demon world?" Koenma asked as they entered the room.

"I'm great Koenma, thanks for asking," Yusuke sarcastically replied. "I especially love running around doing your stupid errands even though I'm not even working for spirit world any more…"

"We met with Iruka," Kurama said, watching Koenma carefully as he spoke.

"Why would you do that?" Koenma asked.

"Interesting that you recognise the name," Kurama replied.

Koenma tensed slightly.

"All the most notorious demons of demon world are well-known in spirit world," he recovered.

"Iruka is neither notorious nor well-known," Kurama returned. "You must know the names of many, many demons if your role requires you to know someone as insignificant as Iruka."

"The problem between the two factions of the cat demon tribe is a well-known one in spirit world," Koenma said.

"I wonder why that is," Kurama said.

"Isn't it because the rebel leader was a spy for spirit world?" Botan asked.

Koenma gave her a harsh look and she shrugged innocently.

"Why did you meet with one of the loyalists?" he asked, turning his attention back to Kurama.

"To find out why the rebels had come to this world," Kurama replied.

"But the asshole wasn't really in a helpful mood when we met him," Yusuke added. "All we found out was that all the pussies – the liars and the assholes – think there was some conspiracy about how the Raspberry Sundae girl died."

"Which side are the liars and which side are the assholes?" Shizuru asked.

"Who cares?" Yusuke groaned. "They're all liars and assholes."

"So basically you learned nothing," Koenma concluded.

"At least we're trying to do something," Yusuke complained.

"Well the good news is we made some progress this morning while you were gone."

Yusuke turned to Keiko, half expecting her to tell him she was making a joke.

"We took Botan's advice and we used the demon compass," she said instead. "We found several signals, but we couldn't get close to them."

"Why could you not get close?" Kurama asked. "What stopped you? Is there a barrier concealing the rebels' hideout?"

"No, we came to a dead end," Shizuru replied. "We got as far as the harbour – the place the cat demons asked Yukina to meet with them, strangely enough – and from there it looked like the signal was coming from the water."

"The ocean?" Kurama asked.

"Could the cat demons be hiding underwater in some kind of cave?" Keiko asked.

"Unlikely…" Kurama said, shaking his head.

"Yes, because cats hate water," Botan added.

The others all turned to her, giving her flat looks.

"It's true," she said.

"Moving on," Yusuke said, turning away from her again. "Maybe we could set them up. Since they want to meet with Yukina so badly, maybe we could take her to the harbour and get them to come to us – you know, what we were supposed to do in the first place before Hiei got himself caught and Yukina got herself operated on?"

"Maybe Yukina isn't well enough for that sort of excitement yet," Botan protested.

"She managed to come to demon world with me and Kurama yesterday," Yusuke pointed out. "Where is she now, anyway?"

"She's resting," Keiko said.

"Okay, well when she gets up, get her on it," Yusuke said.

"Shizuru worked out a plan for what we should do if we meet the cat demons at the harbour," Keiko offered.

"Wow, you guys really are the new spirit detective team, huh?" Yusuke said with a smile.

"I guess so," Keiko said.

"Yeah," Yusuke said. "You're the new me, leading the way and it's like Yukina's the new Hiei."

"There's a world of difference between Hiei and Yukina," Shizuru pointed out.

"Not really," Yusuke said. "They both ran off to do their own thing and they both have a creepy third eye now. Also they're both really short."

"So I guess that officially makes me the new Kuwabara," Shizuru said with a smile.

"Nah, you're more like the new Kurama," Yusuke said. "Because you're the sensible one who always plans ahead and says clever things none of the rest of us would have thought of. Botan's the new Kuwabara."

"Me?" Botan echoed.

"Yeah. You're loud, you're insecure and you're awkward. That's Kuwabara."

The others laughed and Botan pouted dejectedly.

"I was always helpful to you when you were spirit detective, Yusuke," she said sorrowfully.

"Yeah, sometimes you told me things or gave me things halfway through a mission," Yusuke replied. "Would've been nice to get the information and the tools upfront, but you came through for me eventually, I suppose."

"Do you have any spirit world items we could have?" Keiko asked Botan.

"I probably do," Botan replied, reaching up one sleeve.

"Why don't you go back to spirit world and get your suitcase of special spirit world items?" Koenma suggested.

"I have some up my sleeves," Botan replied.

"You keep special spirit world items up your sleeves?" Shizuru asked. "Even on that outfit?"

"I always keep things up my sleeves," Botan muttered as a pile of mejiru shiiru labels fell from her sleeve to the floor.

"We have more useful items back in spirit world," Koenma said.

"Yeah Botan, take the hint," Yusuke added.

Botan sighed and rolled her eyes before summoning her oar.

"I'll be back," she said.

"Don't hurry back," Koenma said.

Yusuke laughed as though the spirit world prince had made a joke, though Botan looked less than impressed as she left the room, her oar in hand.

"I'm gonna go see if Yukina's up yet," Yusuke said once she was gone. "The sooner she wakes up the sooner we can finally take some action to get rid of these stray cats…"

He left the room and the others continued idle conversation without him. He first checked the downstairs spare room Kurama had placed Yukina in after recovering her from demon world following her operation, but it was clear that she was no longer there and so he continued to the top floor of the house, knocking on doors and entering rooms as he tried to figure out which room was hers. Along the way he passed Shizuru's room, Mister Kuwabara's room, the bathroom, Kuwabara's old bedroom – which was unchanged from his high school days, even down to the Megallica posters littering the walls – before finally stepping into a small and neat bedroom, where it appeared Yukina was asleep in the bed.

"Yukina?" he said, edging closer to the bed. "Yo, are you awake?"

He reached out a hand and poked at what he hoped was her shoulder, but something seemed amiss as his finger pressed into the fabric of the bedsheets. He edged closer still and tensed before carefully peeling back the bedsheets, glancing over his shoulder before he began the task in case Keiko caught him in the act and accused him of leering at Yukina whilst she slept.

After a few cautious inches of movement, Yusuke yanked the sheets off the bed, revealing a giant blue teddy bear. He threw down the sheets and moved over to the window, looking outside for any sign of Yukina. In the time it took him to look for her, he considered what he ought to do next: he reasoned that he ought to go downstairs and tell the others, but since learning that Kurama had been hiding his knowledge of the rebel leader from him, Yusuke was not really sure that the fox demon could be trusted to stay in control if they confronted the other cat demons.

And, he thought to himself, he appeared to be the only person who understood the significance of why the signal on the demon compass led to Sarayashiki Harbour: the cats were obviously hiding on Ping Island.

After one last glance over his shoulder, Yusuke opened the window and leapt out, making his way to the ground where he snuck out the back gate and quickly took himself back to the abandoned field to meet up with Puu.