Beyond All Illusion

Chapter 4

The Worst Pain

Yusuke rubbed at a split in his upper lip with satisfaction and stood with his arms folded over the hunched figures of several lower-class slime that had been stinking up his turf. Not one of the figures moved and Yusuke shook his head at the unconscious boys. "Shoulda known better then to come 'round here," he muttered at them before turning on his heel and stalking away.

"One of them actually managed to hit you this time," a low, dangerous voice said to the cocky detective.

"Only 'cause I let him," Yusuke told the short demon that appeared at his side.

Hiei didn't bother with a reply and simply got to the point. "Koenma has been trying to call you. Turn on your communicator."

Yusuke dropped his hands to his sides and patted his pockets for the compact device that he used to keep in touch with Reikai's central office. He finally discovered it in his back pocket and flipped it open. After several failed attempts to find an on button, he shook it hard. "I didn't even know that you could turn this thing on and off," he swore. "Where's the switch?"

Hiei gave the detective a disbelieving look before pressing his lips together in exasperation. "Your reiki is the switch." he informed the oblivious detective.

"Oh," Yusuke said and gave the impassive fire apparition a victory sign before getting the screen to light up.

The screen blinked to life and Yusuke ended up staring at a miniature picture of his boss, complete with pacifier ring and twitching eyebrow to signal his annoyance. "Yo," he greeted the irrate spirit ruler. "What do you need?"

"I'm not even going to ask," the toddler sized ruler said and shook his head before getting down to business. "I've got a job for you."

"Figures. What is it this time?" Yusuke grumbled and followed Hiei down the walk. "And how many of us will it take this time?"

"Well," the image replied hesitantly, "you and at least Kurama. A demon has escaped and it is a fox demon. We are not sure what his purpose is, but it can't be good. Kurama will know what to watch out for since it is of his own kind," Koenma shrugged.

"Mmm," Yusuke grunted and glanced around the abandoned alley way they had stopped in. "Do you know where Kurama is?"

"School," came Koenma's dry reply.

"Oh yeah," Yusuke grinned. "I forgot about that."

"You would," Koenma sighed and waved his hand in a dismissive motion. "You know what to do. Just let me know when you are finished and I will get the paperwork finished on it."

"Got it," Yusuke affirmed and snapped the communicator shut. "Wanna tag along?" he asked the shadow that peeled itself from the wall and revealed Hiei's bored face.

"Whatever," the jaganashi answered and took his place beside the spirit detective.

"Well, lets go find Kurama," he said and braced his hands behind his head as he stepped back out onto the street. "He shouldn't be far."

"He's not." Hiei answered and disappeared only to reappear across the street on the roof of a building.

Yusuke grinned and strolled in his own good time through the slow moving traffic and almost immediately spotted a flash of red conveniently heading right for him. He watched with amusement while Kurama kept a preoccupied gaze fixed on the pavement and his hands in his pockets. Yusuke held an arm out to bar the fox from going farther and effectively stopped his progress.

"It's not like you to be so unobservant," Hiei called down from his perch.

Kurama obediently glared up at the other demon and then sighed before meeting Yusuke's brown eyes. "I knew you were there," he told them. "But I also knew that you would stop me if you needed me."

"Well, we need you," Yusuke shrugged. "Koenma told us we got a runaway. A fox this time."

"Only one?" Kurama raised a brow and looked skeptically at the other two. "Is it really necessary to send all of us?"

"Nah," Yusuke replied. "Hiei's just tagging along for fun."

Kurama narrowed his green eyes in silent contemplation. He really needed to talk to Keiko as soon as he could, but he was also aware that he was very nervous about approaching her with this. He hesitated to ask but found the words slipping from his mouth anyway, "What about Keiko?"

Yusuke rubbed the back of his head and laughed shortly. "Well, I didn't bother telling her I had another case. It's not like this will take too long or anything. Besides, she's going to be pissed at me for missing school again anyway. I'll deal with that later."

Kurama calmed his anger at the other detective and reminded himself that it was just Yusuke's nature to take the girl for granted. He nodded once in agreement with the mission and whispered in his mind that it was for the best to let Keiko calm down before approaching her today. Yusuke's absences always aggravated her in ways that nothing else could...perhaps tomorrow he would get his chance to speak with her.

Keiko winced when she managed to regain control of her muscles enough to open her eyes. She had managed to remain unconscious for the majority of the transformation, but had been shocked into wakefulness when the pain had become too intense to ignore. Her insides were still quivering from the waves of pain that had accompanied the rearranging of her organs and flesh to inhabit her new form. She didn't think that anything could hurt this badly. It was the worst pain.

She panted into the same dust that her fellow captive had before her death, in a body, identical to the last hair, that still lay unattended mere feet from her. Keiko twitched, her muscles still contracting with each spasm. She knew that her disorientation would fade and the pain would diminish, but she found that there were other concerns that tortured her mind at the moment.

Keiko was reduced to an animal. Her hands were delicate dark furred paws, her nose long and slender. She felt the foreign movement of a tail that she was certain graced her slim figure and she could feel the sharp mouthful of teeth with her tongue. Keiko wanted to curl up and cry, but she had yet to figure out how to get her new body to move correctly.

"Like a newborn kit," the demon fox laughed at her and scooped her up into his arms. "Keiko, now you will see..." he told her and stroked her newly pointed ears.

Keiko had never been more terrified in her life. She whimpered in her captor's grasp and failed to regain control enough to even struggle in his arms. He was gentle in his hold of her and tucked her into the crook of one elbow as he slunk from the clearing. She didn't know where he was taking her now, nor did she care. All she could hope for now was a quick rescue and a fast cure.

"Yusuke!" she cried out and was horrified by the garbled bark that emitted from her throat. Her eyes fell on the fox corpse one last time as they left the clearing. "Help..." she whispered into another bark before she gave into her pain and whimpered in soft pants while she was once again stolen away from anything familiar...

Hiei was quick to point them in the right direction. Kurama and Yusuke never once questioned the fire apparition's choice of direction and sedately walked to a familiar park very close by.

Kurama frowned and searched the available scenery for any hint of anything out of place. "Why here?" he whispered to himself in concern, recognizing it as the same park that he and Keiko walked through on a regular basis.

"Don't worry about it," Yusuke assured him. "This just means that we can get this done faster and get on with our lives."

Kurama scanned the park again and finally focused on the task at hand and picked up the demon's trail with ease. He motioned for the other two to follow him as he took the lead and began to spy out the way the creature moved and what his habits were by analyzing the clear trail that it had left through the wooded areas, bereft of paths.

He stumbled across a curious plant, shriveled and broken that did not belong in the human realm and was quick to use his youki to sap all signs of life from the specimen. If that thing had been able to recover and grow here, it could have endangered any living thing that went past it.

Kurama became increasingly more disgusted as they went and it showed. Hiei was careful to observe the spirit fox's frustration and commented with a soft "hn," when their eyes met.

"Never has there been a fox so clumsy!" he spat out at the obvious trail. "It can not be accidental. He wants us to follow him."

"You mean that this demon is inviting us in?" Yusuke grinned. "Ha!"

"It means that he already has plans made for our arrival," Kurama corrected the spirit detective. "There has to be some sort of trap in all this...but I have yet to find it."

They all turned when the sounds of crashing through the underbrush alerted them to an intruder. Yusuke and Kurama got into defensive stances until their opponent was revealed, while Hiei jumped into the high branches of a tree to watch the upcoming battle with interest.

A ragged and ugly demon with features that where neither man nor beast but somewhere in between emerged from the tangle of foliage. He caught sight of them almost immediately and sniffed the air with his twisted snout. "It took you long enough to find me," he said in a clear voice so that they could hear him without straining. "I was beginning to wonder if you were even coming."

"We just weren't in any hurry to waste our time with such a weakling," Yusuke announced and crossed his arms over his chest. "Besides, we're here now," he pointed out.

"And you are already too late, aren't they my pet?" the demon laughed and stepped further into the evening light from where he had been standing in the shadows of the trees. He was clutching a shivering fox in his arms and stroking it with his clawed fingers while it looked at them with fear in its liquid eyes.

Kurama frowned at the fox demon and its wild captive and demanded for all of them, "Too late for what?"

The demon grinned its twisted grin at them and just continued to stand there and rub the pinned back ears of the shuddering vixen in his arms. Kurama felt a moment of pity for the creature before he turned his full attention to their current problem. He narrowed his vivid green eyes at the other fox and tried to determine its purpose here in the human world.

It finally spoke again, but directed its attention solely to Yusuke. "You don't remember me, do you?" he asked the detective.

Yusuke wrinkled his nose in thought and then shrugged. "Nope. Should I?"

Keiko frantically tried to catch Yusuke's eye and plead with him to save her, but he was ignoring her presence totally. Kurama was the only on that had even acknowledged that she was there...but she did not believe that he even recognized her. She whimpered when the demon's grip on her tightened in anger and she managed to flail her legs about for one uncoordinated minute before he loosened his grasp and pointed one claw at her boyfriend.

"You murderer!" he yelled and pointed at the long disfiguring scars on his face. "Don't you remember this? You should since you are the one that put them there!" he hissed. "The night you killed my mate! I vowed I would get my revenge on you..."

"Revenge?" Yusuke asked in a bored manner. "I've never killed anyone or anything that didn't deserve it."

The demon swelled in fury and Keiko yipped loudly at the pressure he was exerting on her ribs. She felt her breathing become constricted and fear made her work harder at freeing herself and she managed to paddle her legs uselessly in midair. The tight grasp faltered when he seemed to remember something and he became instantly calm.

"I have already gotten my revenge," he said, going back to grinning at them and stroking the animal in his grasp. "The worst pain you could feel, detective. Pain that will match my own."

"What is he talking about, Yusuke?" Kurama asked quietly while he warily watched the other fox demon for any sign of deceit.

Yusuke looked confused and rubbed thoughtfully at his split lip. "Don't know," the spirit detective finally replied. "As far as I know he is just talking to hear himself blow hot air."

The other fox laughed outright and taunted Yusuke. "I have taken the most important thing you have and you will never find it. It could be right in front of you because you will never recognize it! It will be lost to you forever..."

Yusuke briefly tried to determine what that might be and came up empty. "You couldn't have taken anything too important or I would have already known that it was missing," he said and dismissed the fox's claims. With that said, he pointed his own finger at the frowning fox and allowed his energy to flow till his hand glowed blue. "You're just another idiot bent on self destruction. If you're so ready to join your mate, then just hold still." Yusuke announced and met the demon's suddenly terrified eyes.

The demon stared down onto the struggling form of his captive and whispered to himself, "...Keiko?", I couldn't have grabbed the wrong one, could I? he thought. This was the great Spirit Detective's mate, was it not? For once, he found he had doubts and the pleading terror in those soft eyes looking up at him made him flinch in response. He snapped his head back up when he heard the softly spoken words then sent terror into the hearts of most demons.

Keiko panicked even more. Not only was Yusuke not aware of her plight, he was going to shoot at her too. Keiko was going to die at the hands of her own boyfriend if she couldn't get free NOW!

"Spirit gun..."

Keiko felt herself being launched into the air and flipping head over tail as a blinding flash of light streaked past her. She cried out sharply when the energy sizzled into her side and burned the soft pads of her front paws and singed her fur right off of her battered body. That pain was quickly cancelled out by the immediate impact of the tree that caught her wild flight.

Kurama saw the demon throw the vixen through the air as he sped off the other way. He winced in sympathy when he heard a loud crack and a thud as the creature hit a tree but was engaged in a tug of war over the local flora to be too concerned with the plight of one wild animal. Right now, he was attempting to tame the vegetation that was intent on capturing Yusuke while he tried to give chase to the fleeing demon fox. Yusuke cursed at the vines curled around his ankles and turned to Kurama with a fierce frown.

"Why the hell didn't you stop these damn things?!" he demanded of his team mate.

"I stopped them from growing big enough to crush you," Kurama pointed out calmly. "There was no time to destroy them without taking you down too. I simply stunted their growth."

Yusuke kicked at the offending vines still waving unhappily from the ground until they disappeared in a shriveled mess of dead brown stems and leaves. "Lets go after him!" Yusuke said jumping up.

"He's already gone," Hiei said from his perch. "He got through a portal to the demon realm."

"Why didn't you go after him, Hiei?!" Yusuke pouted unhappily as he flexed his shoulders to work out the kinks.

"It was not worth my time," the fire apparition replied and left in a blur.

"Keh," Yusuke muttered and followed Kurama to the base of tree where a pile of fur was struggling to breath. "Damn," he said looking down on the broken fox. "He sure managed to do some damage to it," he commented.

"Her," Kurama said and gently ran his hands under the unconscious fox's nose to let her smell his scent before even attempting to touch her. "It's a vixen, a young one," he said and began to take stock of the small creature's injuries before attempting to help.

"Can I help?" Yusuke asked when the fox began to whine in pain when Kurama moved her front legs.

Kurama looked around and noticed the dying light as the sun set and the extensive wounds covering the young fox at his feet. "Give me your jacket. We'll make a sling for her."

Yusuke shrugged out of his jacket and helped Kurama shift her to the tough denim material. Yusuke didn't know how bad the wild animal was hurt, but he was sure that Kurama would know what to do to help her. He hated to see things suffering and it was easy to see that part of her wounds came from his attack on the demon. Feeling guilty, Yusuke gently followed Kurama's orders and helped him transfer the wild fox to his home several blocks away. If anyone could help it to recover, it would be Kurama...