Disclaimer: All fandom-based and real-life entities, including other art and literary works mentioned in this piece do not belong to the author with the exception of original characters, plot, and subplots. The views and opinions of the characters do not necessarily reflect that of the author.
Zwischenzug
by four-eyed 0-0
Part VI
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
― Marie Curie
o-o
Understand
The portal had made the four of them land in a dock by the seawall surrounding the south coast of Tokyo Bay. Yusuke ran down the stone steps to the raised platform that jutted out to the waters, readily spotting the small crowd of police officers looming over a pair of black-clad strangers pushed down to their knees.
Kurama and the others followed Yusuke, joining in on the conversation he was having with Inspector Inoue.
"—clearly following orders."
"What else?" Yusuke demanded in a tone that summed up their brief exchange.
"They won't say."
Hiei stepped past Yusuke and the inspector, pushing away the other two police officers and stood above the unshaken subjects.
"You," he said, keeping his hands to himself, refusing to have to touch the bald man by forcibly making him look up
The moment the man glared up at the fire demon, Kurama felt the slightest disturbance in the atmosphere. Hiei was through within a second's pause and turned on his heels, walking up to them with a scowl in his face that could only bode difficulty as the demon had always lacked patience to deal with convoluted matters.
"They were told to start the fire to draw her back to the city."
Kurama's chest felt heavy.
"And?" Kuwabara said.
"They're after her."
Yusuke blanched. "What of the masterminds?"
"They never met the subjects and only contacted them through the phone."
A moment of silence descended on all of them as the truth of the situation registered. The professor had been the sole target from the beginning and it would only mean they needed answers from her. They were desperate and disorganized enough as it was, or else they wouldn't have been this thorough with the plan of retrieving her.
A beeping sound went off and Yusuke fumbled for his communicator, flipping it to life with the frown never leaving his face.
"Yusuke," said Botan's voice, harried and panting. The four of them crowded around the detective and Kurama's jaw dropped.
"Shuichi—!"
"Mother?"
Shiori's brown eyes were wide with shock and fright. Kurama felt his stomach sink farther down the damp pavement.
o-o
What possessed her to succumb to the enemies was beyond her. Chiaki was sure she was put to sleep by the butt of a gun, and her head throbbed like someone had repeatedly stomped on it, topping off the burning pain in her elbow.
The cold, damp floor felt almost comforting to her injured head, but Chiaki was rightfully aware that she was not supposed to be here, at least according to the better part of her sensibility. Yes, she had chosen to save her helpless girlfriends, but she wasn't supposed to be caged up. If anything, she had expected to wake up in an interrogation room, strapped down by leather straps or a straitjacket.
She had trouble opening her eyes to see her surroundings, turning every which way to find out where exactly she was put when she volunteered to be roasted by the maniac behind all this.
Despite her condition, she had expected proper treatment for someone whom these crazies needed, but apparently she was no different from a pig in a pen; this pen was exceptionally cold and barred with thick floor-to-ceiling metal bars with a watchman sitting on a chair in front of the doors, lazily staring at her slumped form on the dirty, rough floor.
Chiaki's head throbbed again as she shifted in her position. She felt like puking from a possible concussion.
God, how stupid of me to play heroine again.
But she couldn't leave her friends to roast in her stead.
The floor proved to be quite a surface penetrable by all sorts of sounds, as she heard through the concrete the footsteps that pattered from somewhere and towards her cell. They grew louder as they neared, the mystery persons' shadows growing larger as they most likely passed by the same small, incandescent lamps that framed the watchman's figure, the only light source that made her prison less gloomy.
Chiaki could barely move her head, but from what little she could see of the people the watchman bowed to upon their arrival, her heart painfully wrenched.
"You," she managed to whisper weakly in a croaking voice. Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes for a very apparent reason.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing. As fuzzy as her head was, this was all too real.
"Yes, us."
o-o
The door slid open with a creak and Kurama stepped inside followed by his friends. The diner was still closed and for a stranger spectating from the inside, it would have looked like something shady was afoot.
His mother sat among the girls in the largest table in the center, her hair windblown and her face streaked with dried tears and dirt. Kurama could hardly lament the fact that the professor had been taken—willingly gone with the enemies, as Botan had assured them—upon the sight of his shaken mother who had to reluctantly experience this ordeal first-hand when he had done everything in his capacity to keep her from ever knowing about him.
Silently his friends left the two of them and went upstairs, and suddenly the diner looked darker and more sinister in light of what had happened over the course of mere hours.
The presence of his mother who didn't take her eyes off him wasn't helping him cope with the situation.
He hadn't expected for this to happen now. That he would have to tell her after all—after twenty-seven years of skirting around the subject when he was confident she knew there was something amiss with regards to him. She should know; she was his mother.
It took a while before Shiori moved, and when she did, she only silently gestured for him to take the seat in front of her. Kurama slowly acquiesced and sat in the proffered chair, keeping his hands planted firmly on the table and refusing to look her way.
Brilliant and calculating he was he'd given thought to how he would explain everything to her when the time came for him to do so. But now he was at a loss. Perhaps it was pride and overflowing confidence that she would never know that brought forth this unsolicited confession. Perhaps he was just was too afraid; thinking about it beforehand meant he believed it, even to an infinitesimal degree. And perhaps somewhere deep down he refused to believe it.
"Shuichi," said Shiori, but this time with a note of uncertainty, like she didn't know whether she should even be addressing him by the name she'd given.
Kurama dared to look her in the eye. He wasn't certain what he expected to see in them—hatred or confusion, perhaps—but now she stared back unseeingly.
"Mother," he said, testing the waters.
"Is that right?" she said, cradling her temple in her hand, looking down into her lap. It was as though she was reciting her thoughts in front of a stranger. "I thought you weren't going to respond."
Something clenched inside Kurama's ribcage.
Shiori's moist lips trembled and she turned to him with a tear-stained face. "Just… who are you?"
To say that he was hurt by such a spiteful, reproving question was understating the effect that this single sentence brought to a part of his soul that he no longer knew existed and felt. The stitch began to overwhelm him, and Kurama, for the three-millennium life of him, couldn't find the right words to say to this woman he had always considered his mother, long after his own had died without ever knowing who she was. Long after he was abandoned in a stream in some forest as a kit, as a child.
Shiori's face stared at him steadily, waiting for an answer. Kurama grappled for the right words that would soften the blow—surely the thought of a confrontation had gone into his brain once or twice in the past, only rammed into the deepest recesses of his mind, unwilling as he was to dig for them even now.
"Answer me, please," she said, grabbing his scarred hand and kissing him on the knuckles. The scars on her arms showed and for a fraction of a second, he felt most connected to her—both of them wounded and bearing reminders of past pains.
This woman had sacrificed so much for him even when she knew something was amiss, something was wrong with the Shuichi that she for nine gruelling months carried in her womb and for years dutifully changed soiled diapers, fed at ungodly hours and rocked to sleep.
Shiori was his mother. It was the truest thing in the world at that moment, as her tears fell on his hand.
Kurama felt so much guilt that his shoulders sagged as he rose to come to her side and cradle her head to his heavy chest.
"Mother, it's me. I'm your son," he whispered to her ear. It was true. He'd never believed in it as he did right now.
If this had happened a decade prior, he probably would have been reluctant to offer her any innocent and honest comfort. The soul of a demon in conflict with that of a human teenager nurtured with love and care from someone he was deceiving rendered him helpless most of the time. Conflicted was undermining the degree of confusion he felt in the past.
But now as he held Shiori in his arms, hushing her in consolation, Kurama felt nothing would keep him from seeing to it that she ceased crying for the twenty-seven years of wasted honesty and sincerity that they could have shared with each other.
"Will you please tell me?" she asked him, her voice weak but audible to his sensitive ears.
Kurama bent down in front of her, clasping her cold hands in his. Her tears still fell freely, making their way to his face that looked up to her own. Soft droplets like the rain that he'd bathed in after his abandonment, bewildered and broken. The rain had become too hard for his small, fragile form that he sought the shelter of a tree—but Shiori's tears were never deliberately painful even as they fell on his weakened form, bagged down with guilt. Shiori had always been his shelter from all of life's bitter pains.
"You're not going to like all of it, mother," he said truthfully.
Shiori's lips quivered to a small smile and she held his face in her hand. "You've always been able to make me understand."
Kurama rested his cheek on her palm. He felt the burden lighten—even by a feather.
"Where do you want to start?"
"The beginning."
o-o
"You!" she said in a harsh whisper, trying to get up from her position on the floor with her good arm. She wobbled to her knees and managed to push herself to stand on her feet.
Ishihara and Ozu were beyond the bars, but she could see how different they looked from the seniors she believed she had worked with. Their wizened, kind miens were nowhere in sight, instead there were smirking, over-confident masks that a part of her wished to melt away with the intensity of her glower.
"Quit repeating yourself, Aoshi," said Ozu in his gruff voice. It was the same voice that had often argued with Yamamoto from two years ago, now only heard after he'd been so conveniently on sick leave for three months.
"I'm sure you're having a hard time to process everything, but we're here to make you understand, Chiaki," said Ishihara calmly, betraying the smug look on his face.
These men are crazy, these men are crazy.
"You don't have to tell me to make me understand," she said, stepping closer to the metal bars. "I already know what you're up to and I'm not going to help you."
Ozu laughed, Ishihara breathed.
"That's a shame, Aoshi. You know we could kill you."
Kill.
They were bluffing.
Kill.
Fear didn't grip her; a different feeling was set afire in her chest, all-consuming and overwhelming. Realization hit her like a scythe—realization that they were murderers—and her unsteady feet brought her running towards the bars, trying to grab whatever she could of the two of them.
"You killed Isamu!" she screamed, stretching out her good hand for their sleeves.
But they were too far from her reach—too far to wound with her claws, too far to wrench and hit against the bars until they bled the same crimson blood that oozed out of Isamu's body as he lay at her doorstep.
Everything she saw was bright red, and not even the twinge from her broken elbow brought her back to the reality of the situation—that she was prisoner and they were her captors.
Frustrated, she thrashed at the metal bars with her foot, shaking the bars with her hands as she screamed bloody murder at the three of the spectating faggots with blackened hearts and souls.
If only she could grab anything of them!
…What would she do?
Tears ran down her face as her chest became heavier and heavier, her breathing shallow. The sound of her voice echoed through the cold cell, and she gave in to her weakness, falling to the floor as she dissolved to nothing like the woman she'd tried to be.
"We shall come back for you, Chiaki. You have till night time to think this through. We're desperate enough as it is."
Chiaki wasn't even sure if she'd heard them right. It was a huge farce if it were true.
o-o
"Why didn't you leave after all this time?" Shiori asked with a steady voice after a loaded silence that was as long as a lifetime.
"There was no reason to do so," he said honestly. "And still there isn't."
"What do you mean?"
"You still need me, or so I tell myself, mother." Kurama looked down on his knees. "Probably it's more accurate to say that you haven't made me feel unwanted."
Shiori's soft gasp was drowned out by the rapid beating of his heart. Her hands gripped his face. She was smiling at him, her eyes still glazed by tears that threatened to fall.
"But I need you, son. I need my Shuichi—or Kurama, if it helps you feel better. I need you. I'm your mother and I would never make you feel unwanted, remember that," she said. She shook her head. "How could I? You sacrificed yourself for my life and have stayed even when you had the capacity to leave. What did I do to deserve you?"
No, mother. What have I done to deserve you?
The posteriors of Kurama's eyes stung. He was never one to cry but he allowed himself to take comfort in her words even if only for now. Had it not been because of his confessing his history to her, these words would have not touched him this way.
Shiori's display of unwavering trust in him was overwhelming. It made his heart flutter in his chest and his lacrimal glands shed liquid that he had been desensitized to.
His mother wiped away the pair of droplets from his eyes and pulled his head to rest on her chest, to hear the heartbeat his own had shared before he was born to this world. The same heartbeat that was still in pace with his, reminding him of who he really was—Shiori's son.
How beautifully synchronized they were—a mother and son's beating hearts. For the first time, Kurama felt completely, wholly, a child.
"I love you, dear," said Shiori.
Kurama didn't have to say it back. He only allowed himself a smile.
This level of display of affection would have to wait. Even the manliest of the lot would be embarrassed to admit to such. He was no different.
o-o
Chiaki found herself in the far corner of her cell, contemplating her imminent death. What they wanted from her was not one she could give, and without any use of her, she would be disposed of just as everyone else they thought worthless.
She had known this for so long—that she had plunged to her death when she went through with her gut feeling and sought for help.
But it didn't deter her from resenting the fact that she would be offed just because she couldn't provide anything else but the obvious truth that any scientist would have known since the beginning: it was impossible to nurture a clone as powerful as the Reikai Tantei in so short a time, supernaturally or not.
She was beating herself because of it—they had so obviously been failing and now she put herself in a deeper shithole by playing heroine only to become a damsel in distress.
She was so screwed.
Unless…
Yamamoto had said this crazy had been going on for quite a time. That or he would have been able to worm his way back to sanity and still be shouting at her for being an incompetent pupil even though he didn't mean it. His letter screamed it was too late to go back.
Perhaps they'd only been biding their time to orchestrate the final attack? Perhaps they'd long been successful and only encountered a slight glitch that they thought she knew of as she was Yamamoto's most trusted student?
But she didn't know anything!
Chiaki tried to gather the loose fibers of herself, trying to clear her thoughts. She was not going to die today, she told herself.
Ishihara and Ozu's names didn't appear in the records—their names had most likely been in the pages that Isamu had taken. The rest of the lunatics were in this same place, perhaps only meters below or above this cell. That much she could say with confidence—why make it harder for them to keep an eye on her?
Whatever happened between the first and third attacks was crucial information. It wasn't, of course, just the second attack. But what was it?
What was it that was so important that Isamu died for it?
"You're awake," said Ishihara's voice.
Chiaki looked up from her musing and glared at his and Ozu's forms. "What do you want from me?"
Ozu tossed a brown envelope into the cell. It landed on the rough, concrete floor with a feather-like scratch, a foot away from her. "Open and read it."
They were not going to kill her just yet. The idea haunted her.
She took the envelope using her foot and dragged it toward her with little difficulty. It was as big as a legal size paper, and she opened the flap cautiously, letting the contents tumble out and onto the floor.
Four leaves of paper torn on one side—her heart skipped a beat—fluttered out. It took all her resolve to not look surprised at the sight of the evidence Isamu had withheld from her. Her fingers grazed the papers, trying to affect confusion as she scanned through their contents in the dim lighting of the cell.
Several names she found recognizable—each one sending a chill down her spine. Sure enough, Ishihara and Ozu's names were on the list. None of at least the fifty of them, as she realized, had been crossed off. None of them had dared to betray—or if they did, they had probably gone to hiding without ever being filed a missing case report that not even the human police would know.
Chiaki was beginning to think Isamu wasn't in on the secret that much if he never had the chance to list the names of possible demons involved in this case. Because how else would they be able to retrieve that much information on youkai biology if not first-hand? How else would they have operated in the Makai?
She perused the last two papers. Just as she and the others had presumed, they contained the entries missing from Isamu's records.
Chiaki slowly took in the words until she arrived at the pertinent date: June 19th.
Professor Yamamoto and I met. He brought with him a parcel and a letter giving me his final instructions. He said to only read and do as instructed on the day of the next attack.
Chiaki's heart clenched. Everything finally fell into place.
Yamamoto had asked Isamu to bring the book to her and make it look like a big secret crucial to the operation. Once the "secret" was heard of and her involvement realized, they would force her to reveal herself hence the attack at their secret laboratory. They would think she held the answer to the cause of their failures and hold her captive.
And when she revealed the truth behind all of it—
"I have a question for the two of you," she finally said, looking up at the two men who once again added another tally to her traitors list.
Ishihara merely nodded his head.
"Why are you doing all this?"
"Because humans and demons need to coexist," said Ozu without delay.
Chiaki's lips were drawn to a smirk. "Which is why you're creating clones of the most trusted men who serve under the Reikai. Why?" she said, feigning innocence. "Oh, I know. To shatter the peace and start a war against the all-knowing Reikai."
"You have no idea why that in itself is the most noble of scientific ventures," said Ishihara.
"Humor me, then, Professor?" Chiaki said, not dropping her detached attitude.
This was insanity at its finest, really.
Ishihara sat himself on the bench next to the watchman. "The Reikai has become too much of an authority to us humans and demons. They took down the Keikai barrier and let the demons and humans mingle but are we aware of their presence? No. Are we allowed to do whatever we wish to do with the friends we've made from the Makai? No. Why? Because some moron said to treat the human world with respect, treat the demon world with respect. Ridiculous.
"Science is yet to advance and the help of the demons and these hybrids could present novel breakthroughs, Chiaki! But we have to start somewhere, we have to protect ourselves, we have to let the Reikai know that we exist, that there are those among us who wish to better the three worlds!"
"By killing other people?"
"By making sacrifices! We had to recruit more to our side, we need manpower."
"And you thought you'll achieve that by force?"
"We had no choice."
Chiaki scoffed. "You were growing desperate because little by little, your colleagues are turning their backs on you. Yamamoto must have turned away even before the first attack if you revealed yourself carelessly—"
"What do you know, Aoshi?" said Ozu, impatient. A vein popped in his temple.
"Someone told me a while ago that nobody has ever succeeded in trying to shake the balance of the three worlds," she said in a lazy drawl.
The last line of Isamu's June 19th entry entered her mind again: He asked me if I still remember his little lecture on Dolly the Sheep. Without letting me answer, he went away.
She remembered the lecture well. "And someone else told me this: 'Dolly the Sheep short of telomeres dies drably due to stupid scientists'," she said.
Thin, stringy stems and broad, flattened leaves began to glow in pale yellow from her corner, enveloping the whole cell as the two male scientists and their servant stared agape.
"The trigger…" Ozu said in a whisper before he glared down at Chiaki.
She didn't know what precisely was happening and why Kurama's plant was aglow with his energy.
But she knew a few things: when Kurama had installed them in the IMCB, he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary while they were on infiltration and Ozu just said Dolly the Sheep was the trigger. To deactivate the force blocking Kurama's plants from sensing the paranormal, perhaps?
The brilliance of Yamamoto sparked hope in her heart. He had known all along.
She would get out of this alive.
o-o
A surge of energy ran up and down Kurama's spine and he pulled away from his mother. He stared at his hands as he felt the tingle that was reminiscent of blood flow after release from impediment.
His plants.
"Excuse me, mother."
Taking a seed in his hair, he tossed it to the soil of the potted bonsai on the counter, spiking it with energy to let the Eyevine grow and take root, its stems meandering to take anchorage on the countertop. As soon as the first leaf arose, he took it and toggled for the most recent recording.
The live feed flashed before his eyes—recordings of the same, familiar hallways he'd kept an eye on for the duration of their infiltration. He continued to switch cameras as his friends came thundering downstairs, probably catching the rise in his ki.
"What's happening?" asked Yusuke, coming up behind Kurama.
"The Eyevines at the IMCB," he said, not taking away his gaze from the monitor leaf. "They've been reactivated by youki."
"How—?"
Kurama's fingers froze as soon as the view of Aoshi Chiaki's face hit the monitor. Behind him, his friends gasped as his heart flew out of his chest. She looked so pale but the smirk on her face alighted a new form of hope in Kurama's heart.
She was safe.
He switched cameras and realized she was in a cell, and beyond the bars were three people, two of whom he didn't recognize—but the third presence he would not forget. The kind-looking Chairman Ishihara sent a chill down his spine as he banged at the bars with a ferocity only becoming of a mad man. The sound didn't penetrate through the feed, but he knew by the slight drop in Aoshi's smug exterior that it was strong enough to break the walls.
The gears in Kurama's head started working. Something had deactivated whatever it was that kept his Eyevines from sensing any of the youki in this part of the research facility. And whatever it was, Aoshi must have broken it.
He whirled around to face Botan. "Prepare the portal. Whatever it was that had blocked us from detecting the youki at the IMCB has been taken down. How, I don't know, but we must move. Professor Aoshi will receive Ishihara's wrath if we don't."
"I'll contact Koenma and Enki," said Yusuke, whipping out his compact communicator. Kurama nodded.
Each of them immediately took a function, and Kurama was left to navigate through the secret laboratories that had resided at the basement of the IMCB. How he could have missed this was no longer beyond comprehension now that it was clear as day that they didn't stand a chance with the enemies knowing of their probable involvement in the case and how to evade their strategies completely.
A few more minutes of navigating through the hallways and rooms—Kurama found himself flinching inwardly at the sight of the same gigantic tubes back at the facilities in the Makai—and he arrived at one that almost made him drop the leaf.
In four, fluorescent tubes and immersed in glowing green liquid were the four of them—he, Yusuke, Kuwabara and Hiei.
Aoshi had been right.
"Portal's here!" said Botan.
The four of them were set to motion to say hurried goodbyes to their friends, and Kurama withdrew his energy from the Eyevine. Shiori got hold of his sleeve before he could go to her and she looked at him with tears in her eyes.
"Will you be all right, my son?"
He held her face in his hand. "Yes, I promise."
Shiori didn't let go just yet. "And the brave young lady who saved us?"
"We'll bring her back."
His mother almost but not quite turned away. "Who is she to you?"
Her words from almost three months back rang in his head. She never missed a thing. "She makes me happy."
Shiori's lips curled to a smile. "Be careful."
For the first time in many years, Kurama felt he understood what it meant to go while looking forward to coming back to a home.
But not before he saved the professor, even when reluctant as a distressed damsel she was.
o-o
"What did you do?" shouted Ishihara, kicking at the metal bars.
Chiaki tried to push back the fear that dropped to her at that instant. Years under his pretend considerate tutelage had sheltered her from his wrath but now that the mask had fallen and he revealed himself at last, Chiaki found herself afraid of what he was capable of doing.
Ozu who was throwing a tantrum by stomping his feet and going around in circles that didn't help matters. "It's Yamamoto's ghost!" he was saying over and over again.
The guard shivered and visibly shrank to a dark corner.
Ishihara's hands landed on both Ozu's and the unnamed guard's heads. "Get hold of yourselves! There's no ghost. He built this facility and apparently his pupil knows about it!"
He spun to turn to Chiaki with his blazing eyes and lifted a finger to point at her. Chiaki tried to look unfazed. "You're going to tell us everything you know, do you understand?"
Shame, that is. She didn't know anything else. At least consciously.
The guard moved from his petrified pose and unlocked the door upon Ishihara's instructions. He ran towards Chiaki and wrenched her by her injured elbow—eliciting a small undignified squawk of pain to come from her throat—forcing her to her feet. Black spots danced in her vision as the guard pressed harder on the tender spot as he dragged her out the cell.
As they passed by Ishihara and Ozu who were both speaking to a walkie-talkie, her pain-dimmed brain managed to catch only patches of speech…
"—to secure the clones—"
"—the last of the hybrids—"
…before the guard pushed her to turn the dingy corner that led to a flight of stairs. The two of them reached the tiled landing, and she was shoved to another hallway that was too bright for her coming from the dark cells below.
Clones. Hybrids. Yamamoto built the facility and left. But he knew how to bypass the security. Apparently, Ishihara and Ozu had been stupid enough not to lick his shoes to be in the know of the secret.
Yamamoto had been the grand architect of this whole situation, it seemed. And he was the reason Chiaki was this close to dying.
(Yamamoto had most probably approved adding the lockups below. He had a sadistic streak, after all.)
The thought brought tears to her eyes more effectively than the bitch of a guard who kept pressing down on her broken elbow. After all that she'd gone through, she was afraid to die.
It was not the matter of dying itself. It was dying without having done something remotely worthwhile in her life. Like discovering the cure for cancer or developing pest-resistant rice.
Or perhaps telling Kurama that she had always liked the way he dressed and carried himself.
Chiaki sniffed as the guard pushed her into a monitor room whose presence didn't even surprise her anymore. It was like they did in the movies only that it smelled like there had an old man's feet in here. The computers had been shut down so that only the fluorescent lamps overhead illuminated the small space. She was made to sit on a swivel chair, and the guard stood at the door, his chin with his unkempt stubble set and his beady eyes looking past her who nursed her blasted elbow.
She was going to die and she had never bested her father in being the better person. She was going to die without ever telling Kuwabara that Yukina actually liked him but was still set on getting Hiei to confess to her that she was his brother (it seemed Yukina wanted to be traditional and have Kuwabara ask her only living relative for her hand in marriage). She was going to die without ever telling Kurama that she actually liked him, in a very twisted manner that made her miss him now that she was sitting alone with a stranger in silence.
The silence in the room was almost effective to clear her thoughts, inviting even, but not like the silence she had enjoyed with the cunning fox. His advances had been a surprise, but now that she was facing her imminent death she found herself admitting that his affections had always been welcome, if not wanted or needed.
That she might actually take a chance on the two of them even if there had been an Isamu in the first place. All because he'd never done anything to betray her.
She trusted the fox.
In the silence of the monitor room, she had a moment of complete honesty with herself. She realized humans were indeed not infallible and that there would always be evil in all forms—obsession, addiction, or compulsion. It had taken her a while to come to terms with it, to fully grasp the concept of how hopeless humans could be but now she understood.
Understood that in the face of evil there was good, that in the face of despair there was hope. Perhaps it would take so much energy to make the world a better place—an endeavor that would break her again and again—but she could always try.
Yamamoto had done the grave mistake of giving in to the temptation of being the greatest, of being recognized for his knowledge and skill, of being the first to discover and develop this and that. It had always been a problem in the scientific world—downplayed but nevertheless a competition that was afoot. But to what end? Again, nothing. Nothing but to feed a scientist's already dissatisfied ego.
It seemed Isamu, Ishihara and Ozu had fallen just as well.
Dealing with the science humans had established since the ancient Chinese and Greeks questioned the world was complicated enough. So why make it more so and become obsessed with things that were worse to be tampered with?
Wasn't science supposed to make things simpler for the average man? Wasn't it supposed to make everyone understand the world?
It had been drastic enough to tinker with nukes and biological weaponry. Humans had suffered enough from these little idiots' constant hunger for patents and Nobel prizes. The scientific community had been in a jackshit since time immemorial and yet they had never learned.
Guess there was no exemption when it came to greed.
Granted, their reasons had been slightly noble—too ambitious, but noble—while grandiose the execution that they required. Debates regarding the cons and pros of some scientific ventures were quite touchy and it didn't help that some people were way over their heads to think this through and be less stupid.
Remind her again why she hated egoists and idealists.
She swore to whoever was listening that she would do something about this if she ever survived.
Chiaki's form slid lower into the swivel chair, tears brimming her already heavy eyes. God, she was such a baby.
She would have already cursed the silence that prevented her from crying aloud to vent out her frustrations if not for the hullabaloo that later ensued past the metal door. To say that she was taken aback by the sudden eruption of screaming and thundering footsteps was understating how she almost fell off the chair as the door was blasted off its hinges, effectively squishing the guard underneath as Kuwabara's humongous form stepped on the metal junk, holding up the familiar orange lightning-like sword she'd seen once or twice.
Chiaki met the psychic's dark eyes and she bolted into his arms—relief washing over her. The tears came as soon as she felt this tall man's torso, happy that finally someone had come to rescue her.
As reluctant as she was to rely on someone else—much less on a man—to save her ass, she welcomed this much needed help.
"Professor!" he said, patting her on the shoulder. "It's good to see you. Are you okay?"
She pulled away from him. "Broken elbow. Otherwise, I'm whole."
Kuwabara smiled but it readily disappeared. "We have to get you out of here."
"The others?"
"We split up. It's dumb luck I sensed your presence here."
Chiaki was sure it wasn't merely "dumb luck" but she left it at that. She could use some humble sentiment in the midst of raging male pride and bravado.
Now that she'd been rescued, she couldn't afford to become merely a burden for the psychic to lug around. Chiaki stepped off the fallen metal door after she wiped her tears away and turned to Kuwabara.
"Do you mind lifting this away? I need to get something from the man underneath."
After a moment of hesitation during which Kuwabara checked for a clear coast, he hopped off and hoisted the door with little effort, setting it aside with a loud clang. Chiaki bent down to feel for the man's effects.
When her fingers finally grazed the gun and the magazines, she stood up and cocked the firearm.
"You won't need that," Kuwabara said, staring at her in incredulity.
"Believe me, I will."
Kuwabara didn't have a chance to react as a sphere of white-hot light glowed from somewhere and hit the wall outside, a mere two feet from the two of them. They both got down on the floor, her face almost kissing the man's stomach, as a shower of metal turned to dust gushed out from the zone of impact.
The ginger jumped to his feet as soon as he heard the guttural roar of the humanoid, galloping to the six-footer and slashing it with his orange sword. He stepped over the fallen body and beckoned for Chiaki to follow.
Chiaki pushed herself off the floor and ran after Kuwabara who charged to the end of the hallway. The two of them burst out to a hall, momentarily blinded by the bright light that spilled from above. A mass of rubble sat at the center and looking up, Chiaki realized the entire ceiling had collapsed on itself.
After surveying the coast for a moment, Kuwabara grabbed her by the shoulder and the two of them took off running towards another bright hallway.
Several footsteps were heard charging from the front, and Chiaki yelled for Kuwabara to drop down as the shadows grew bigger and nearer. Aiming at the men's arms, she pulled the trigger once, twice, before shooting the two guards in their ankles.
The two tumbled down and hit their heads on the walls, effectively putting them to sleep. Chiaki released a breath.
"You weren't kidding," said Kuwabara as they stepped up to the men.
"No," said Chiaki, taking the fallen guns and tucking one in each of her back pocket. "There are humans around here and I'm sure none of them would take a slash of your sword and survive."
"How did you know how to handle that?"
"Long story," she said dismissively. "Where to?"
Kuwabara seemed to have snapped from his momentary awe. "Two floors up," he said, indicating the flight of stairs.
The two of them started running again, Kuwabara bringing up the rear this time, keeping her close.
Chiaki could hardly feel her lungs, only focused on getting to where the others were.
She hoped Kurama was well.
o-o
His back collided with Hiei and Yusuke's, the three of them caught in the middle as more of the hanyou flocked to the center of the hall. The rest of the back-up troops had already dispersed to catch anyone who dared escape and now they were left to deal with the sick-inducing job as usual.
The three of them jumped in the air and attacked. Kurama raised his arms and beat his Rose Whip to slay six of the creatures in one stroke and another half-dozen as he changed the course of the thorny weapon.
The hanyou fell down before the others could counterattack. Multiple balls of youki and reiki made their way to him and Kurama dodged. They were still too slow for their team.
Kurama broke his fall and rolled on the floor, flicking his wrist to direct his whip against the humanoids' thighs. The floor shook as the lot of them fell down from his offense, and soon enough he was covered with blood and bits of flesh.
Hiei and Yusuke continued their slaughter. Yusuke's Rei Gun had punctured holes in the walls while Hiei's fallen victims had caused the collapse of one side of the room. If this went on, he was sure the three of them would make the floor cave in.
But the beasts stopped coming and suddenly he found himself panting, the hand that held his whip resting on his side. The room was silent without ballistic beasts coming at them from all directions.
Yusuke turned to the two of them, wiping blood from his nose. "Let's find the rest."
"There's no need for that."
Hiei jerked his head to the direction of the stairwell and Kurama heard it—a pair of rapid footsteps. Amidst the rusty stench of blood was the familiar lily-of-the-valley shampoo.
In no time, Aoshi Chiaki's head bobbed up to view, closely followed by Kuwabara's. She stopped as she hit the landing, her right hand holding a gun—much to his surprise—, her face torn between mortification and relief.
Their eyes met and relief won her over, her features lighting up like a beacon in the center of a bloody battlefield. Like a ray of hope.
She smiled at him and he smiled back, letting his heart sit in the middle for everyone to see. He was beyond happy to see her well, and even for a minute in this dangerous place he allowed himself some vulnerability to feel the fire that had consumed his being for some time now.
"We pulled the zwischenzug on them," she said quietly but loud enough for all of them to hear, for his friends to puzzle about once more.
Kurama understood and he found his lips parting more so. Competitiveness was never not part of her. "We did."
The subdued celebration was only shattered by a loud, thundering quake somewhere above his head.
Kurama didn't have to hear it twice—he vaulted the three feet from her and grabbed the professor by the waist, pulling the two of them to safety as the ceiling above them caved in with a shower of debris. With the impact of the large portion of the ceiling, the floor broke up and collapsed as well, taking with it the bodies of the dead half-demons. Still in the air in that split-second unfolding of events, her head pressed to his chest, he quickly flicked his wrist, letting the whip wrap around a metal beam that miraculously had stayed intact.
Aoshi clung to him desperately as they dangled from the middle of the crater where the floor had been, arms wrapped around him, her rapid heartbeat in synchrony with the frantic drumming of his.
He turned to look for his friends. They were all clutching onto some handhold or foothold, alive and well.
Momentarily dazzled by the collapse of floors, soon he realized that they were not alone—this he deduced from the twin grunting from Kuwabara and Yusuke that echoed through the air that very second.
He had barely reacted when he heard the crack of his whip and felt gravity taking over. Kurama forced himself to look up as he singlehandedly threw a seed onto the rubble in the dark floor below.
He heard his whip crack—no mistake about that; the whip that had severed his own was an exact copy of his, held by his reflection.
No, by his clone.
He and Aoshi landed on the brown mushroom head that had sprouted on top of the rubble just as the clone jumped from above them, standing several feet away. He heard the rest of his companions' expressions of befuddlement as they were forced to come together as their clones circled their small group.
Kurama's left arm snaked around the professor and he pushed her to his back, keeping her from harm. His three friends crowded around her as they came face to face with the duplicates that they had expected to see.
The similarity was almost awe-inspiring except for the fact that something felt off about his clone now that he stared him in the eye.
Aoshi's shaking hand grasped his elbow.
"They're not complete."
As though it was the single truth that they needed to hear, the four of them jumped from the mushroom head after securing her with the herbaceous stem of one of his protective plants, encapsulating the injured professor in a cage despite her indignant protesting.
They had already discussed their plan of attack as they had anticipated this to happen, but Kurama still shook as he ran in front of Kuwabara's clone. He was certain defeating their clones would be suicidal even if they were in fact incomplete, hence the strategy that he'd proposed and to which everyone else agreed.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Kurama flicked his wrist to direct it against the clone who dodged it but not as swiftly as the real Kuwabara would have done. This proved to be a surprise but at the same time eased the burden of battling with the mirror image of his friend, as Kuwabara himself, despite being stronger, was less agile than Kurama.
His lips drew to a smirk as he leapt out of harm's way and the duplicate glowing sword sliced through the huge chunk of concrete that Kurama had been standing on. Before his feet could touch the ground, he lashed his whip though the air and aimed for the faux-Kuwabara's arm.
This time the whip was successful and it rammed through the clone's bones, cutting the limb off with a gush of crimson blood.
The guttural roar from the clone nevertheless made his hair stand on end. From his right the real Kuwabara yelped after witnessing the gory fate of his clone before he vaulted the metal bar sticking out from a piece of rubble to evade the incoming katana from faux-Hiei.
Without further ado, Kurama tossed a seed to the faux-Kuwabara's feet and with a mere mental command, it bloomed to a pitcher plant. Its tendrils crawled and grasped the clone's feet before tossing the wriggling body into its mouth. Kurama turned away as the clone's screaming was drowned out as it died.
Kurama turned to help Kuwabara with Hiei's clone but he froze in his tracks as Aoshi's ringing voice echoed through the bedlam:
"Kurama, down!"
Cold, singing pain on his left shoulder followed a gunshot. Even with the shock that came with the blow, he was able to dodge the next bullet that was directed towards his way.
He had barely looked up to see who had fired at him when another gunshot—this time mere feet from him—pierced through his confusion. A body was suddenly falling from the non-existent ceiling and another was running his way.
The lily-of-the-valley shampoo wafted through his nostrils as Aoshi's form shielded his view of the perpetrator. Kurama looked behind him—the cage had apparently fallen down from his being distracted by the injury.
"Professor—"
"I know what I'm doing," she said, turning her head slightly to tell him she was listening. "And I didn't kill him."
It was when Kurama saw for himself the way she held the gun in front of her, as though she had long known how to fire such a weapon. Two more guns were secured in her back pockets, he dimly noted.
"You're not going to die, are you?" she asked, not taking her eyes away from the ceiling as she backed him to a hollow between two masses of debris.
"No."
"Good," she said.
"And by that I also meant that you don't have to protect me."
"That I'm the one in need of protecting, is that it?" she said, harrumphing. She dropped the gun she held and kicked it away into the wilderness of the rubble and exchanged it for one of the reserves.
Cocking the gun, she aimed at something above them. Kurama squinted his eyes to see the figure looming over the crater, his own gun aimed.
Aoshi fired, and the figure relinquished his hold on his arm and, in shock, fell into the hole and onto the pile of rubble.
A silence between him and Aoshi followed the impact, and the professor turned her head to look him squarely on the face.
"Bit of a surprise, I know," she said. "But I can handle myself. At least against the human morons."
Kurama remained silent.
"And I'm not killing anyone."
This made Kurama smile. He knew she would never soil her hands. But he wasn't about to accept her conditions. He instead dropped another seed at her feet before leaping out of the hollow, letting it grow into another contraption.
"You're a cheat!" she yelled in protest as he smiled at her before running to his teammates. "Come back, you cheating fox!"
But he turned deaf to her shouts that in turn dissipated as she kept her presumed role, shooting the people that dared to attack from behind.
Kuwabara was in a pickle as the faux-Hiei lobbed out his katana. Kurama flicked his wrist, ignoring the pain on his left shoulder, maneuvering his whip to cut across the clone's feet as it was distracted by Kuwabara's whimpers.
The thorny rope caught the clone's ankle and Kurama heaved the combined weight of the whip and the clone as he yelled for Kuwabara to deliver the final blow.
In synchrony, a shower of blood and three sets of screams of agony preceded the silence of their victory.
Kurama turned to his teammates and to the professor still caged up but bloody as well. After a moment's pause, they all sighed in relief, Yusuke and Kuwabara nervously laughing at such a humorless situation.
Ten minutes later, the five of them had somehow made it to a passage completely deserted except for two figures that were too familiar for him to forget.
As soon as their party came to a halt, the professor bolted down the hallway, running like she didn't see anything but red.
Everything happened so fast that he didn't realize she was armed and could well be motivated to kill in retaliation as she raised her gunned hand in front of her. The two figures stumbled backwards as they tried to back away from the furious woman, falling on their behinds in fright.
Aiming at Ishihara's face, Aoshi loomed over the two of her seniors.
"You killed Isamu or you didn't," she said, gritting her teeth. "Which is it?"
"Chiaki—"
"YOU KILLED HIM OR YOU DID NOT! WHICH IS IT?" she was screaming, stomping her foot. The gun shook as she jabbed at Ishihara's forehead.
Kurama stepped closer, afraid she would indeed murder somebody, afraid that she was capable of doing something so evil after all.
The old man shivered, and if it were possible, fell deeper against the cold, tiled floor.
"ANSWER ME!"
"I didn't, Chiaki," said the scientist, shaking his head. "He didn't die by my hand."
Another jab at the man's forehead. "But you ordered him killed."
Ishihara looked away.
A silence descended upon all of them only punctured by Aoshi's ragged breathing.
Kurama caught Hiei's eyes, nodding in warning. But Aoshi never pulled the trigger. She hurled the gun with so much force against the wall so that it clanged and bounced a few times before coming to rest a few steps away from Kurama's feet.
Relief instantly flooded inside of him. How could he have doubted her sensibility?
Aoshi was incapable of murder. But she didn't hesitate to slap Ishihara square on the face. Ozu didn't even bother to dodge her open palm, letting it land on his cheek, the sound echoing through the narrow passage.
"You won't have to die today. At least mull over your mistakes, stupid stuck-ups."
Kurama breathed deeply. He was, for the first time in a long while, truly glad.
A/N: This is the penultimate chapter. And the longest one at that.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed and added this story to their lists. As early as now, I'm thanking you all for sticking to this story. It's been a long journey. We'll see the end of it soon.
See you in the final chapter. :)