A/N: In the off-chance that it doesn't translate – because I'm not sure if it does or not – "moggy" is a slang word for cat, much like "pussy" or "kitty" (this may just be a UK word though).
Chapter 20 – Mutual Agreement
"You do know being here and getting involved in this mess will reflect badly on you, don't you?"
"I don't care. I fight for honour and justice. I fight to protect the weak and downtrodden, and I, Kazuma Kuwabara, will not rest until these ladies have a nice place to live in peace."
"I wasn't talking to you, fool."
Kuwabara rounded on Hiei, glaring at him moodily.
"Getting involved in this debacle may actually boost your pitiful reputation here in demon world," Hiei added. "After all, the existing bounty on your head is the most laughable one I've ever heard of."
"There's a bounty on my head already?" Kuwabara echoed. "But I just got here!"
"Get involved with the rebel cat demons and the bounty offered might actually involve real money," Hiei casually replied.
"I don't care about stuff like this," Yusuke said, ignoring the grunts of complaint and confusion Kuwabara had started to make. "I've never given a damn about complicated rules. I'm just here to support Kurama and Keiko."
"Hn, that's ridiculous," Hiei scoffed. "Kurama is here for all the wrong reasons. If you wanted to support him, you would spend your efforts making him realise what a stupid mistake he was making."
"I thought Kurama just came here because he's got a crush on the pink-haired cat lady?" Kuwabara commented.
"Yeah, exactly," Yusuke added. "Kurama's here to help out his old girlfriend and we're here to help out Kurama."
"Ridiculous," Hiei said again.
"Oh yeah?" Yusuke echoed. "If it's so ridiculous Hiei, why are you here? Admit it: you're here to support Kurama too!"
"Yes I am here for Kurama's sake," Hiei said. "But not because I intend to aid these miserable moggies, rather because I intend to bring Kurama back to his senses. And sense is something that's been sorely lacking in general since those bitches showed up."
"Lighten up, Hiei," Yusuke said. "Live a little! I know it's gotta be hard for you now that your best friend is going steady with a girl, but you've just gotta trust that he won't forget about you and he'll still be around to do guy things with you from time to time. Just be happy for Kurama!"
"What… The hell are you talking about?" Hiei growled.
"And, once you get past the fact that her friends kidnapped us and tied us up with weird plants, it's actually really funny. I mean, this is Kurama we're talking about here. You know, cool, calm, always-in-control Kurama? And he's making a complete ass out of himself trying to impress a girl! Do you know what this means?"
"You're rivalling Kuwabara in the stupidity stakes?"
"It means Kurama is just like the rest of us! He's just as pathetic as Kuwabara when he puts on his special bandanas and fawns over Yukina and he's just as hopeless as I am when I try to convince Keiko that the next time I come back to the living world, I will actually make good on my promises and marry her!"
Hiei growled and bared his teeth, but neither Yusuke nor Kuwabara appeared to care how ridiculous he thought they were behaving.
"I'm sticking this one out, Hiei," Yusuke added. "Mostly just so as I can see how much more flustered that girl can actually make Kurama."
Yasashi moved her eyes to something behind Kurama's head. At first he frowned, wondering what had captured her attention: but as her face began to illuminate he realised that she was watching the moon emerge from behind a cloud. Her mouth opened slightly and her eyes distinctly widened, giving her the appearance of being hypnotised by the sight. She looked so captivated, Kurama eventually found himself looking back over his shoulder to see if there was something unusual about the moon that night. However, a cursory glance told him that it was just the same old yellow-green moon that appeared in the skies of demon world every night. As he looked at Yasashi again her eyes flicked back and forth between his face and the moon before a slightly bashful smile appeared on her face and she settled on looking him in the eye.
"Sometimes it's the little things that you miss the most," she said.
"I think the moon in the living world is a far more wonderful sight," Kurama replied. "Have you ever seen it?"
Yasashi nodded, which Kurama thought was odd as he was unaware of her having ever spent any more than the last three days in the living world; but as she still looked a little distracted, he assumed that she had not really heard his question and therefore was not answering honestly. He looked over his shoulder again, noticing then that the moon was less than full, in its waning phase and appearing in the shape of a mango.
"It always looks better at its fullest," he commented. "Though it should reach that point again in another three weeks or so. It will be quite a pleasant sight then. A full moon was always a good time for midnight raids in my days as a bandit."
Kurama turned back to Yasashi with a smile, but his expression quickly changed when he saw her staring at the moon, her eyes suddenly filled with an inexplicable sadness.
"Is everything alright?" he asked.
"Tora and I did all of our best work when the moon was like it is now," she said faintly, her eyes still on the moon. "When the moon was full, there were too many others out at night and when there was a new moon it was too dark, but when the moon was like this, three-quarters full, it was still quite light, but without all the chaos brought on by a full moon… Tora loved the moon when it was like this…"
"Is she sleeping?" Kurama asked. "If she misses seeing the moon tonight, I'm sure she'll see it tomorrow: when we celebrate reclaiming the hinterlands in the name of the rebels."
Yasashi slowly moved her eyes to Kurama's, her pupils contracting in a most disturbing way. When she did not explain herself he focused his attention on the faint energy signals inside the bunker; when he noticed Tora's signal was missing, he thought that perhaps she was concealing or distorting her energy signal. But, as though she had read his thoughts, Yasashi slowly gave a small shake of her head.
"Iruka?" Kurama asked.
"No," Yasashi quietly replied. "Jagasame."
Kurama was surprised to hear her speak the cat demon tribe leader's name: it was always a rare thing for Jagasame to show his face and the fact that he had killed Tora himself showed that he was taking the rebel's stand very seriously, despite his having an obvious advantage over them, both in terms of power and number of allies at his disposal.
"I was arguing with her before it happened," Yasashi added. "I was yelling at her for being reckless. I didn't even… She was my best friend and I got back into this body just to have a few short days with her and now I have this one night with you and…"
She lowered her head but Kurama felt her tighten her grip on his hands.
"I can stay with you a little longer," he offered.
She shook her head, but did not look up.
"You have to go back," she said.
"Yes, I do have to go back to the living world," he agreed. "And once I do so, it will probably be impossible for us to meet again until my time comes to return to demon world. But I meant what I said: when I return here, I will find you and we will be together."
Yasashi slowly lifted her head, a forced smile gracing her lips.
"Now that Tora has gone, I have no other choice," she said sadly. "I… Before, when I saw how well Tora was leading the others, I thought that maybe after we had found a peaceful home here in demon world, I thought that maybe… Maybe I could return to spirit world. I thought I could return to my life there for as long as you were in the living world, and that way I could be with you and I could still check on the rebels in demon world."
Kurama was unable to stop his eyebrows from lifting in surprise at her words.
"I had no idea you had such a plan," he confessed.
Yasashi shook her head.
"It doesn't matter now anyway," she said. "I have to stay here. With Tora gone, I can't expect Chita to take over as leader – she's too young and inexperienced."
Kurama nodded.
"We both have obligations in different worlds," he said. "But one day we will have time together. And right now, we have tonight."
Yasashi looked as though she might say something, but her eyes wandered to the moon again and she started to look lost again.
"Tonight it's just you and me," Kurama said.
She slowly moved her eyes back to his.
"Sometimes we met on nights just like this one," she said. "Sometimes you came out when the moon was just like this."
"That's true," he agreed. "Sometimes on a night just like this, we would meet – by chance, of course – and we would "dance"."
Yasashi smiled, looking genuinely less saddened.
"I don't know about you," she said. "But for my part, our meetings were never something that happened by chance. I deliberately went to places I knew I would find you."
Kurama frowned.
"You did?" he asked. "I didn't know that. It always felt as though I had to find you."
"Yes, well, I never openly presented myself to you," she replied. "But I always made it obvious to you where you could find me."
Kurama smiled.
"Will you do something for me, Kurama?" she asked.
"Anything," he replied.
"Just tonight, this one last time, will you dance with me?"
Kurama rose to his feet, moving away from the edge of the roof. Yasashi copied his actions and he reached a hand into his hair, drawing out his trademark rose.
"I should warn you before we do this that I'm not the same man you once knew," he said. "When we met in the past, we were in the same class – albeit perhaps at different levels within that class – whereas now I am an S-class demon and my strength does greatly outmatch yours."
Kurama paused, one hand holding his rose in front of himself, the other poised at his side, his eyes on Yasashi. She was standing in a very unusual position and had not drawn a weapon and he was unsure if she was trying to deceive him or if she was trying to challenge him to hand-to-hand combat; the latter seemed doubly absurd after what he had just told her about his own physical strength.
"Should we move this somewhere else?" he suggested. "In case we wake those sleeping beneath our feet."
He glanced down at the metal roof he was standing on before looking up at Yasashi again, finding her still standing a short distance in front of him, one hand hovering in the air at the side of her face and the level with her waist and reached out slightly at her side, both of her palms facing him. Kurama slowly lowered his hands to his sides, the shimmering rose in his right hand hanging loosely in his fingers. Yasashi then moved closer to him and, as he customarily did in any physical challenge, be it friendly or not, he waited for her to make the first move.
When she placed her left hand on his shoulder and touched her right hand to his left hand, he felt no surer of what she was about to do.
"I just want one last dance," she said as she stepped closer to him again.
"Oh…" Kurama said, his rose slipping from between his fingers and landing softly on the bunker roof at his feet. "You meant a literal dance this time…"
He shuffled closer to Yasashi and enclosed his hand around hers, moving his other hand to her waist. She leaned closer to him and began to softly sway to the rhythm of a tune that only she seemed to hear, and so he let her lead his movements as best he could. They slowly moved around in a circle, Kurama's eyes passing over the valley entrance to the hinterlands and then round to the gibbous moon, still low in the sky. As he turned further, Kurama lowered his eyes slightly, finding Yusuke and Kuwabara on the ground a short way away from the bunker, apparently arguing about something, and Hiei standing, one hand in his pocket, the other resting on the hilt of his sword, his eyes watching Kurama and Yasashi unblinkingly.
Kurama thought that there was something amiss with the way Hiei was regarding him: but he had felt that there had been something amiss with Hiei ever since their showdown with Iruka and his bandits on Ping Island.
He wondered what was bothering his friend.
Yasashi could not help but notice the way Hiei was watching her every move. A small part of her optimistically hoped that he would not enact his earlier threat: he had often threatened to do cruel things in the past but then changed his mind or else done something more constructive when the opportunity arose for him to fulfil his promises. But the way he was still glaring at her suggested that he was still as determined to carry out his threat as he had been when he had issued it earlier that night, and, when coupled with his loyalty to and friendship with Kurama, his apparent determination only seemed all the more resolute.
She reasoned that she perhaps ought to tell Kurama the truth herself – the whole truth, the truth about who she had been in spirit world for the last thirty years and what she had said to Koenma in her dying moments – but in that moment, under the light of the demon world moon that reflected so mesmerizingly off of Kurama's silvery hair, it felt like the wrong time to discuss such things. That night, after a day spent returning to demon world, returning to the hinterlands, losing Oyama and losing Tora, it was neither right nor appropriate to discuss such things. Yasashi lacked the clarity of mind or the strength of heart to confess the truth; but, as the moon continued rising in the sky and Hiei's eyes only appeared harsher, it was blatantly apparent that time was running out for her to say much of anything to Kurama. Before long the night would be over, and dawn would bring a host of new problems, and the temporary reprieve she and the rebels were enjoying would be cut short as they were forced to move on.
But it was not the right time.
It never had been before, it was not the right time that night and it probably never would be again. Yasashi was caught with the difficult choice of either telling Kurama the truth herself or having Hiei retell his twisted version of it to Kurama, and she only had a few hours to decide which would be the case.
As she once more caught sight of Hiei watching her, Yasashi wondered again where the Raspberry Sundae file was. She found it hard to believe that Koenma had actually added her last words to the file: though he must have done in order for Hiei to have such a detailed knowledge of what she had said that day. She contemplated the coincidences of her becoming assistant to the spirit detective in spirit world at the same time that the spirit detective was sent on a mission to recover a treasure stolen by Kurama. It was almost sickeningly ironic. In her dying moments she had cursed her lack of time with Kurama, and that night, as she held him on the roof of the bunker, she was cursing her lack of time with him again: but she had been granted ten years of time with him, with she as Botan as he as Shuichi, and neither of them had appreciated it.
"Do you have a plan for tomorrow?" Kurama asked.
His voice was quiet and his tone soft, his words so light their meaning seemed far less significant than they truly were.
"I'm still figuring it out in my head," she honestly replied.
"I don't think we can vanquish all of the loyalists in one run," he said, blissfully oblivious to the double-meaning of her reply. "And I know some of those still living in the hinterlands are innocents. I predict some of your enemies will flee, and there is a risk they will form a group much like the one you did, and you will later by plagued by their attempts at revenge or their claims of land."
"I hadn't thought about that," Yasashi admitted.
"I thought perhaps we should set up a deal with the border patrol."
"The border patrol?"
"Yes. Hiei is in charge of the border patrol, I'm sure we could ask for his assistance in the matter."
"…I'm glad you're sure, because I'm not…"
"If he has appeared unpleasant at all, don't worry about Hiei. He may be brusque – even by demon world standards – but he does know right from wrong and he does always do right in the end."
"Yes… That's what I'm most afraid of…"
"I was thinking we could ask the patrol to extend their route – perhaps even to extend the road – down into the valley. The presence of a patrol might help deter any defectors who try to cause you trouble after you have reclaimed your homeland."
Yasashi smiled. It was typical that Kurama would have thought so far ahead and strategized how best to deal with any possible outcome.
"Not all of those in the hinterlands are legitimate enemies," she said. "Some of them are just weak and scared."
"They have to make a stand when the time comes," Kurama replied.
Yasashi stopped swaying and Kurama stopped when he noticed that she had. She leaned back to look him in the eye.
"Some of those in the hinterlands don't know any better," she pointed out. "They're so much weaker than those in charge and they have been raised to believe that the rebels are weak. They might be too scared to side with us."
"That's one of the unfortunate consequences of warfare, Yasashi," he replied.
Sacrificing the weak and naïve was just another thing nobody had warned her about, Yasashi thought bitterly. She slid her hands from Kurama and turned her back on him, looking up at the moon forlornly. She simultaneously resented the fact that she had lost thirty years in spirit world and envied the life she had enjoyed there. She wanted to overthrow Jagasame and disband his army, but she had no quarrel with the remainder of the cat demon tribe and no desire to fight any of them.
Maybe Hiei was right: maybe she was a miserable excuse for a demon.
Maybe only Jagasame and his soldiers would fight. Maybe it would be much easier with stronger fighters assisting the rebels. Maybe it did not have to end in yet more bloodshed and loss.
"Hey, heads up, we've got company."
Yasashi turned abruptly as Yusuke leapt up onto the roof beside her. When he caught her eye he pointed back towards the road and as she followed the direction of his finger she saw the headlights of a patrol vehicle seemingly heading straight towards them.
"But that doesn't make any sense…" she said quietly.
"Hiei said the border patrol guards have been ordered to find out who attacked one of their tanks earlier today," Yusuke explained. "They're looking for you, Keiko, Kuwabara's sister, Yukina and Puu."
"It looks like they've left the road," Yasashi said, squinting at the approaching headlights.
"Yeah, they're not messing around," Yusuke replied.
"They're not the only ones."
Yasashi turned at the sound of Kurama's voice, looking first at the fox demon and then in the direction he was looking. In the darkness of the night it was more difficult to see the valley entrance to the hinterlands, but the combination of the moon shining down onto the valley and the glow of energy radiating off of those lining up over the edge of the hill, the view was clear enough: Jagasame had reappeared, once more surrounding himself, but this time not only by his strongest fighters but also by the weaker members of his tribe – the workers, women and children – that Yasashi had feared confronting in combat.
"Well this is about to get interesting…" Yusuke muttered.
"We can't retreat in either direction," Kurama said. "We'll become trapped if we do. We need to dissuade the border patrol unit from getting involved in this."
"Yeah, this could turn into a real catastrophe…"
Yusuke glanced at Yasashi and Kurama and when both glared back at him he quickly changed the subject from his poorly-timed pun.
"Hey Hiei!" he called out. "Help us out here!"
Kuwabara and Hiei jumped up onto the bunker roof, the former looking concerned and the latter still – Yasashi noted – watching her with the same look he had been the entire night.
"Hiei, you've gotta convince your men to back off," Yusuke said to Hiei.
"They're under orders to stop this madness," Hiei replied.
"Yeah well tell them we're taking care of it, they just gotta give us a little more time, okay?" Yusuke said.
Hiei gave Yasashi one last strange look before hopping off the roof again.
"We'll go inside and warn the others what's happening," Yusuke said to Kurama and Yasashi. "And make sure none of them run out and accidentally surrender themselves to either side of this."
Kurama nodded and Yusuke waved to Kuwabara to follow him, the two of them quickly dropping off the roof and moving inside the bunker. Kurama and Yasashi stayed at the far end of the roof, nearest the hinterlands, watching as more and more bodies lined the hillside: Yasashi was starting to appreciate the earlier remark Iruka had made about the tribe having increased their number in the last thirty years as there seemed to be even more than she would have expected there to be before Hiei's dragon had taken out a chunk of their number. As the sheer number of loyalists threatened to overwhelm her common sense, Yasashi found her sense of hearing oddly heightened – just like it had been the day she had died – and she heard every word Hiei said to the patrol guard behind her only too clearly.
"I have this under control."
"We've been given orders to come here."
"I just told you: I have this under control."
"We have orders to arrest Yusuke Urameshi, Yoko Kurama and Yukina for interfering with the border patrol and for inciting war among the cat demon tribe. We have instructions to quarantine a giant blue pigeon named "Puu" and we have been ordered to recover three humans – Kazuma Kuwabara, Shizuru Kuwabara and Keiko Yukimura – and after putting them through the standard process of mind cleansing, to return them to their own world."
"None of that is necessary. I have this under control. It will all be over by dawn."
"I also have an order to arrest you if you interfere or resist our attempts to carry out our other orders, Hiei."
Yasashi chewed at her lip. Time was running out, and the ending she had least hoped for was starting to look like the inevitable conclusion to that night.
She looked up at the moon, finding it fitting that both she and Tora would meet their demise on the sort of night they had once both loved so dearly.
She looked up at Kurama, who met her eyes, a look of determination and scheming still obvious in his features, and she took comfort from the knowledge that he still thought there was another way, even though it was becoming so apparent that there was not. Unable to think of anything appropriate to say to him, she instead forced a weak smile and then walked across the length of the bunker roof, stopping by the edge overlooking where Hiei was standing addressing the border patrol unit.
"Hey bounty hunter," she called down.
Hiei turned his head to look up over his shoulder at her.
"Catch me if you can."
She threw a handful of petals towards him and then leapt from the roof, racing around the building and down the sloped landscape towards the hinterlands: in order for her plan to work, it was imperative that Jagasame witnessed first-hand what would happen next. Behind her, as she had expected, the border patrol guards had fallen victim to the petals of her raspberry sundae, all collapsing in a deep sleep. Hiei – again, as she had expected – had leapt out of range before she had even finished throwing the petals, and he was starting to pursue her down the hillside. She knew he could have caught up to her much sooner, and she wondered if maybe he understood her desire to be caught further down the hillside, if maybe he was granting her one last favour before finally putting an end to the war between the loyalists and the rebels.
As Yasashi passed over the churned earth where she had been attacked by roots earlier, reaching the undisturbed ground beyond it, she felt the blow she had been expecting for some time. It took her off her feet, sending her flying forwards through the air. When she did land, she rolled over a few times with the momentum before coming to a stop in a crumpled heap on the ground, the back of her head throbbing where she had been struck by what she assumed was a punch. By the time she had righted herself and risen to her knees, Hiei was standing over her, his cloak absent and his sword in his hand.
"Before you do it, I have one last request," she said.
"Hn, you think you're in any position to bargain with me, Botan?" Hiei responded. "You do know I could collect a bigger bounty if I handed you back to them alive…"
Yasashi nodded.
"Yes, I know that," she said. "But I think you want a resolution to this as badly as I do, and there's only one way to fix this."
"Get to the point, the sound of your voice is starting to irritate me," Hiei warned.
"Please don't ever tell anyone about what you saw in my file."
"Too easy."
Yasashi wanted to ask Hiei if his words meant that he intended to do as she had asked; but before she could even draw breath to question him he had torn his sword across her chest and she was falling forwards into a rapidly expanding blood stain on the ground. She felt the impact of her fall, but little else thereafter. All physical sensations faded rapidly, including her vision, until soon the only indication she had left that she was not quite dead yet was – just as it had been before – her still present sense of hearing.
"She's dead," Hiei said.
"I would have preferred her alive," Jagasame replied.
"Your poster claims you will pay three quarters of the bounty for her death," Hiei argued back. "Now stop stalling and hand over the money."
The last sound Yasashi heard was a sizeable sack of hirui stones being thrown by Jagasame and caught by Hiei.
Yukina had left the bunker, still a little dazed from having awoken abruptly after only a short sleep and being quite exhausted from her earlier escapades, and found Yusuke shouting creative insults at an unconscious border patrol unit who had parked their vehicle awkwardly outside the front of the bunker, Kuwabara standing at the back of the bunker watching something that appeared to have shocked him and Kurama running down the hill away from the bunker and towards the hinterlands. When it had become apparent that Yusuke was too preoccupied to explain anything, Yukina moved over to join Kuwabara at the top of the hill overlooking the valley, where she had promptly found herself adopting the same look and stance as Kuwabara.
Yukina paused at Kuwabara's side only momentarily, her confusion at the scene ahead of her clearing in a moment of sickening realisation as Hiei accepted the bounty from Jagasame for slaying Yasashi.
When she started to move again, her thoughts did not linger on why Hiei had done what he had: she thought perhaps he had been ordered to do it as part of his duties with the border patrol, and he probably had no idea that she was Botan. As she ran down the hillside, Yukina's thoughts quickly moved to something else entirely, and she found herself truly understanding why Yasashi had been so reckless after witnessing Tora's death, as the need for vengeance was rapidly taking over every part of her being.
Kurama reached the scene first – unsurprisingly, as he had already been halfway there when Yukina had started running – and his first reaction was to reach for Yasashi. Hiei stopped him from reaching his goal and the two began a verbal altercation; but Yukina's focus was still on Jagasame, and her motivations only became stronger when she was joined by Shizuru and Keiko.
"Do we have a plan?" Keiko asked as they neared their destination.
"Even the score," Shizuru replied.
When Yukina saw Keiko nodding her agreement she pushed herself harder, running faster and ultimately launching herself at her target. Before she even got close to him, Jagasame knocked her back with the shock wave of a punch he aimed at her, but before she had even landed, Keiko and Shizuru had leapt at him too. Yukina started to push herself up, but her arms could not support her weight, and she only managed to shakily lift herself a short distance before collapsing to the ground again. She saw that Keiko and Shizuru had become similarly incapacitated and on the edge of her vision she could see that Jagasame was still standing, seemingly unfazed by their attempts. She started to think that she had done something wrong, that she was too exhausted or too weak: but when she saw each of the rebels all attempting to attack and all being thrown back with the same apparent lack of effort, she realised that what Yasashi and Tora had always said was true: Jagasame was too strong to fight head-on.
This, Yukina thought to herself, was why the rebels always ran. In a battle with a single loyalist – like the battle Yukina had been involved with against Iruka – they stood a chance of victory: but against all the loyalists or even just against Jagasame, it was a hopeless endeavour.
Despite feeling weak and being unable to rise – like all the others around her who had made an attempt to attack Jagasame directly – Yukina could still clearly see Hiei and Kurama standing close by, and she could still clearly see them arguing. Her thoughts then wandered back to Hiei, the combined realisation that he had killed Yasashi, collected the bounty on her head and was apparently stopping Kurama from attacking Jagasame starting to make her feel even more physically overcome than the after-effects of being floored by Jagasame's defence.
She wondered why Hiei would stop Kurama from fighting, why he cared. He had done his duty – or at least, what she assumed was his duty – and killed the rebel leader, likely ending the feud between the two factions of the cat demon tribe and he had even been paid for his efforts. And yet still he was intervening and acting in favour of the loyalists. Yukina wanted to ask Shizuru what it all meant – because Shizuru seemed to be able to find answers when they were needed, just like she truly was the "New Kurama" – but she was too weak to move and too weak to speak.
"Whoa, he's like an uglier, older, fatter version of Byakko…" Kuwabara said as he joined Kurama and Hiei, his face twisted and his eyes on Jagasame.
"Hey asshole, someone just told me you killed Tora," Yusuke said as he too joined them. "Is that true?"
Jagasame turned his attention to Yusuke, looking down at him with what even Yukina could see was condescension.
"Wrong answer," Yusuke said, pointing the index finger of his right hand at Jagasame.
"Stop!" Hiei yelled, grabbing at Yusuke's arm.
"I've had it with these assholes!" Yusuke argued back. "They've been bullying a group of girls and keeping everyone else like slaves and this bastard is the reason for it all. If we don't stop him now, he'll keep doing it!"
"No!" Hiei insisted.
"What the hell is your problem, Hiei?" Kuwabara said.
"Your efforts could be put to better use elsewhere," Hiei answered him.
There was a brief pause before Kuwabara let out a cry of alarm and Yukina heard him running towards her. He lifted her from the ground, holding her in his arms and, even though her vision was a little blurry, she could see the genuine concern in his face as he looked down at her.
"Yukina my love, are you alright?" he asked.
She managed to mumble out a garbled three syllable reply that he seemed to understand as the relief in his eyes was obvious. He started to carry her away from the others and she wanted to argue, wanted to ask where he was taking her, why he was walking away, why he had left his own sister lying on the ground and what was going to happen to Yasashi: but she was starting to lose consciousness, and one last glance over Kuwabara's arm showed her a scene of chaos as those that were able to began helping those who had fallen. She saw Yusuke helping up Keiko, the rebels helping each other, Kurama tending to Shizuru and Jagasame walking away from it all, returning to the hinterlands unharmed and unaffected.
Yukina thought it was slightly odd that she could no longer see Yasashi; but as she recalled how Tora and the other rebels had always spoken about plundering the dead for their weaponry, and knowing that Jagasame had always coveted Yasashi's raspberry sundae, she was left with the horrible idea that the loyalist leader had taken Yasashi's body with him.
Shizuru looked up at Kurama, readying herself to tell him that she was prepared to take her chances trying to stand without his assistance as he was being a little rough as he hauled her to her feet; but when she saw the look on his face she decided against it. She let him pull her to her feet, at which point he made eye contact with her and appeared to at least partially realise his error as his fingers loosened their grip of her slightly.
"Are you badly hurt anywhere?" he asked her.
"Just my pride," she replied with a half-smile.
"Don't feel bad. In my human form, he would have outmatched me in terms of pure physical strength."
Shizuru supposed that Kurama's last statement was meant to have been reassuring somehow, yet neither his tone nor the look on his face suggested that he felt any depth of empathy.
"I guess we got a little over-confident after we beat Iruka," she confessed.
When Kurama did not answer her, Shizuru looked up at him again expectantly and found him staring at something intently. She turned to see what had caught his attention and saw something that seemed illogical: even though Hiei had killed Yasashi and Jagasame had moved some distance away already, Chita was holding a collection of seeds in one hand and Yasashi's raspberry sundae in the other. As strange as it seemed that Jagasame would pay the bounty for Yasashi and not take her weapons, Shizuru allowed herself to smile at the small victory the rebels had achieved despite all their losses.
"Hey Spots?"
Chita turned her head to Yusuke, who had appeared at her side, still supporting Keiko with one arm.
"This place isn't so great you know," he continued once he had her attention. "There's a real nice piece of land by a river over in Tourin, not far from my place. If you and your gang wanna come and stay there, I'd be cool with that."
Chita nodded her head and Keiko put her arms around Yusuke, smiling up at him proudly. Shizuru turned her attention back to Kurama, but he was still staring at the flower in Chita's hand.