Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C8: Vigilante!)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: Hiei and Kurama decide to go it alone.
A/N: The infamous Yojigen Mansion plays a prominent role in YYH's Chapter Black. For Hiei's adventure with Kaitou Yuu, please refer to The Book of Cat With Moon. Grandma Hirameki appears in Trade Secret.
"I'm watching you."
Maya's Tale (8: Vigilante!)
by
Kenshin
In his laboratory on the second floor, Von Brandt tried to concentrate, but failed.
For one, there were footsteps coming from the tower room, creaky, hesitant footsteps. She was pacing again.
Throwing down his tools, he glared at the ceiling, as though he could pierce it with eyes alone. But he must master himself, or get nothing done.
With an effort, he tore his attention from the footsteps overhead. Von Brandt picked up his instruments again and continued to hone the camera, refining its capabilities so that it would capture more than mere images of people who had previously passed through a scene.
Once, he reflected, savages had believed that the camera could capture one's soul. But primitives lacked Von Brandt's drive, imagination, and genius.
He would use these qualities, along with his instruments, to augment his own powers through the lens.
But again, his concentration wavered. He was holding a tiny screwdriver no longer than his little finger, and this time, he put it down gently, lest he destroy it.
The image of the twisted Bartholomew tree, and those who had destroyed it, rose again to taunt him.
He took a moment to play out a number of scenarios in his mind. When he was certain he had covered all eventualities, he thought again of the two young men.
They could wait. He would avenge the tree soon enough. This unassuming little camera must first be properly altered, for everything depended on it.
His concentration restored, Von Brandt picked up the screwdriver and went back to work.
0-0-0-0-0
The weather was frigid, and the hour indecently early when Kurama stopped at the Hirameki Studios.
Grandma Hirameki, bullfrog-voiced and brillo-haired, was wearing a cigarette and a flowered muu-muu. She gave Kurama a jaundiced glare. But she condescended let him in, and did not pitch him headlong from a window.
Kurama waited in an alcove that was evidently part coat rack, part storage closet, and listened to a familiar-sounding song play in the background, until Shayla Kidd appeared in sweat-soaked, tattered rehearsal gear, gasping for breath.
She was also wearing pink toe shoes, and a white towel around her neck, with which she liberally blotted her face.
"Am I interrupting?" Kurama asked.
"They're done yelling at me. I think." Shay-san released the towel, but kept in motion, rising up on her toes. An athlete himself, Kurama understood the value of keeping muscles warm, especially in this meat locker of a studio.
"Someone really needs to explain why they hire you because you dance a certain way, then proceed to beat it out of you."
"Couldn't begin to try," said Kurama. "No Hiei?"
She gave a little grimace, half pity, half dread. "He's in a costume fitting."
"Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh is right. Listen. That pixie dust of yours-"
"Dreamflower pollen," Kurama corrected.
"Does it have a shelf life?"
"A what?"
"Because Maya recognizes Hiei. Just not from where."
His brain still fogged from study and sleep deprivation, Kurama struggled with that a while. "About Maya," he said. "Did you find out-"
"Nothing," she said.
"Nothing?"
"Zero, zip, nada. Unless you count clothes and make-up."
"I don't."
"That's the spirit."
"Maya didn't say anything was worrying her?"
"Nope. Just us girls, running from store to store trying on things, driving the people at the make-up counters insane. You know how it goes. Then again, you don't. For which I am infinitely relieved."
Shay-san had done her best. It wasn't her fault this puzzle could not be solved in a day. "Hiei's at a fitting?" Kurama repeated. "He won't be in a good mood."
"I wouldn't plan on poking him with a stick, no."
"Sorry. I ask too much of you."
"I'm the one who's sorry. Still, I enjoyed the afternoon."
"Glad to hear it."
"Not Hiei. Not when he gets the bill."
"You bought Maya clothes?"
"No. Just found stores that fit her budget. But I did treat her to some make-up from Shiseido. So you might want to avoid Hiei for, say, ten years."
"Perhaps it's up to me to find out whether Maya-san is actually in danger."
"Don't drug her and tie her up or anything."
"No."
"Look..." Speaking hesitantly, Shay-san gazed down at her pink shoes. "Maybe it's just... you haven't seen Maya-chan since when? Since you were both fourteen? Nearly ten years."
"What are you saying?"
She looked up at him. "Maybe you just miss her."
"That's not it." He said it too fast.
"No. I suppose not."
"Kidd!" Grandma Hirameki's bellow came from the next room. "Get yer ass in here!"
Calling, "Reporting for duty, Ma'am!" Shayla Kidd did not depart from the alcove. "There is one thing."
"Which is?"
"That spooky old mansion of yours-"
"It's not mine. It's just there."
"That Yojigen Mansion."
"What about it?"
"Get the hell back here!" Grandma sounded like she meant it.
"Maya is friendly with a couple of elderly ladies who live on that same block."
"Kidd! Get a move on."
Shay-san did not bat an eye. "Elderly ladies, who, I am quite sure, do not possess Grandma Hirameki's unique charm."
"One can only hope."
"Actually, I kind of like Grandma H."
"Kidd!" Grandma Hirameki came stomping toward the alcove.
"Their name is Kawasaki," Shay-san added.
"I am obliged."
"And Maya-chan's mother died about a year ago."
That was a surprise. "Sorry to hear it."
"To try and contact Mom, Maya-chan sees some kind of fakir or medium who calls himself Muktananda."
"Kidd! Get in here or get canned!"
Sketching Kurama a salute, Shay-san gave a delicate pirouette and danced back to where Grandma Hirameki waited.
0-0-0-0-0
In her little room, Kitajima Maya was having a good time, trying on belts and scarves for Luna-P to admire.
"Minamino's still cute," she informed Luna. "His hair's longer than I remember, but then, so's mine. Wonder if I should tell the girls about meeting him after so many years. Maybe it was a psychic connection! What do you think, Luna?"
But then, of course, the phone rang. And of course, it was Quicksilver, sending her out on a new job.
Grabbing a new rose-pink scarf, Maya tied her hair back and knotted the scarf into a bow. It made her feel just the littlest bit more feminine. Hastily diving into her old green sweats, she ran for the door.
0-0-0-0-0
Shayla Kidd really had done a day's work, and then some. Kurama was already sketching out a plan. He risked phoning Hiei, and said he had something that would cheer him up.
"This better be good," Hiei growled.
"Meet me in the woods at the end of Derelict's Row."
Thirty minutes later, they were seated up in the branches of a white pine tree, enveloped in its sharp, resin scent.
Hiei at his perfect ease in the tree, with knees drawn up, arms around them, face hidden but for the glint of his crimson eyes. Kurama somewhat less at ease, partly due to a persistent branch jabbing the middle of his back. "Maybe next time we'll meet in a cafe," he grumbled.
"At least this is private." With half his face covered, Hiei's words were somewhat muffled.
Kurama could see Hiei was not to be trifled with, but he trifled anyway. "How did the fitting go?"
"The costume's pink."
A biting wind plucked Kurama's clothing and chilled his face, helped to blow some of the cobwebs from his mind. He dropped the teasing. "Hiei... why did you choose this location for your training?"
"Why do I do anything? Kaitou."
"Kaitou Yuu? He has that much power over you?"
"Stuff it." Hiei thought a while, then elaborated. "A lot of your arsenal works at a distance. The Rose Whip. Semaneki Grass. Thrashvine. Not mine. Fists, sword-"
"What about the Dragon? Your fire?"
"Not always advisable. And sometimes it's not prudent to fight at close range. I wanted to improve my aim. The big park's getting too crowded. Kaitou was blabbing about this neighborhood only last week."
"I see."
"I hope to hell this isn't what you consider cheering me up, because if it is, I'm going to have to kill you. Just on general principles."
Kurama chuckled. He did not fear Hiei's threat; he knew from long experience it was just Hiei, letting off steam. Probably. "That Agency you work for sometimes-"
"THIS is going to cheer me up?" Hiei's eyes glittered. "Such a pity to cut you down in your prime."
"You wouldn't want Kaa-san to be sad."
"It's the only thing stopping me. Anyway you work for them too. The Agency."
"Only as your consultant. You're the one on their payroll."
"You're not borrowing money from me. Shay-san bought that girl a lipstick. From Shiseido."
"This isn't about lipstick. Or your wallet."
"What then? Because you're running out of cheer-up."
Filling Hiei in on what Shay-san had told him earlier, Kurama concluded, "The Agency. They're not to be brought in."
Hiei's eyes took on a happy gleam. "We're going vigilante?"
"That's one way to put it."
"No paperwork?"
"None."
The huddled knees and arms came down. Hiei stretched, yawned. "Count me in."
"I was thinking that Shay-san could act as Maya-san's guardian. And that I would visit the Kawasaki sisters."
"Leaving me the fake swami," Hiei said. "Sounds like fun."
"I wonder if the 'fake' is working a blackmail angle."
Hiei snorted in disdain. "What would a little girl like Kitajima have for anyone to blackmail her about?"
"I'm counting on you to find out."
Hiei leapt from the tree. "You're right. This did cheer me up." With a backward wave, he departed. Kurama watched him stroll through the woods.
He was in the sisters' neighborhood, true, but he needed time to prepare for the meeting.
Was Shayla Kidd correct? Had he conjured the worried-about-Maya angle merely because after all these years, he wanted to see her again?
Kurama supposed he could be capable of such self-deception. But that recurring dream was real enough: the hazy image of a girl floating, a sense of doom crowding her like miasma. Wondering about it, Kurama got down from the tree.
"I do not take it kindly, little man."
Kurama whirled.
The woods were empty. The deep, threatening voice had come from nowhere.
-30-
(To be continued: While Hiei wades through candles and crystal balls, Kurama negotiates with a pair of sisters.)