Changing Death

Posting this chapter without beta. InkMistress, I still love you! I am merely weak of will, and way past my deadline.

Odd pacing and weird scene flow abound in this chapter, and it also turned out unexpectedly lighthearted. Here's hoping it works out to be effective.

25: One, Two, Many

(Oblivion - 30 Seconds to Mars)

-February, 1993-

After the Tournament, it was really hard to look at her. At any of them, actually. That made things just a little awkward and Yuusuke had to pretend that he was just tired out from everything that had happened. It helped that he was, so it didn't take much to play it up even with as crappy as his acting skills were, but he needed distance to make it work, so he just lounged around on the deck of the boat, leaning over the railing, watching Honshu bob lazily closer under crinkled-clouded skies. They weren't going very fast. The wind through his stiffly-gelled hair was easier to focus on, so he did, and tried not to think very much. It was cold.

Botan had disappeared before they boarded; Genkai and Yukina and Shizuru let him alone, and so did Hiei (though definitely not out of courtesy), but he had to rebuff Kuwabara twice, who kept wanting to talk about their training and all the new power they both had now. Something about what he wanted to do with it now that he was a detective, too, and wanting to know what Yuusuke was going to do since he'd finished training with Genkai. Yuusuke wasn't in the mood to be philosophical or any of that kind of shit, and finally just quit answering, acting like he'd been insulted and leaving Kuwabara to wonder what he'd said wrong until he finally went away. Kurama was easier to get to leave him alone, catching on after the first mumbled, disinterested response and drifting off to exchange wordless conversation with Hiei further aft as if that had been his plan all along. But, after almost half an hour, it figured that Keiko would eventually be the one Yuusuke couldn't shake loose by acting petulant or distracted.

Never could put one over on her before, either.

Her light step behind him on the wood of the deck let him know she was approaching more than a minute before she came up alongside him and rested both small, tapered hands on the rail, the breeze pushing her brown hair into gently tousled waves. "This is really nice," she said, and smiled at him.

He nodded; his shoulders hunched.

She continued, "I'm really glad we're all going home. I've been out of school for too long, and my parents will be disappointed if I don't catch up soon, but mostly I'm glad everyone is all right now."

Noncommittal noise of agreement. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and put feeling into his lean.

After a silence that might have been companionable, if Yuusuke hadn't been so focused on wishing she'd go somewhere else, she straightened just a little bit so that he knew she was about to say what she'd meant to say before walking over. She'd only waited this long because there was probably something she wanted him to say first, only he couldn't think what, so he didn't.

"Yuusuke…" A halting beginning, and then a too-even continuation: "Is this what you do now?"

"Meaning what?" The words were out before he really thought about them, a little defensive but still casual enough not to make her mad.

"This. Fighting, and demons, and everything."

Oh. That. He shrugged. Might as well cop to it since it was already too late. "Kinda, yeah." He tried to keep it nonchalant. Like the Tournament was no big deal. Like he'd done it before and would do it again.

"How long have you been…?"

"Since I got hit by that car."

"I see. So that time when Botan told me you worked for a detective agency―after the incident with the teachers and those insane people, at the school―"

"That was sort of my fault," he admitted. "That they came after you, I mean. The demon controlling them wanted to rattle me."

"Oh." She seemed like she didn't know how to respond to his open statement. Neither did he. It was nice to be able to tell her the truth, but it was also weird, and he still didn't want to be talking to her at all right now. Maybe if he told her everything else, she wouldn't ask anything else.

It seemed like maybe it was a little colder by the time she spoke again. Sunset had broken through just at the horizon, glowing-coal orange against the sheet of clouds above it that turned pink in response, making a single bright strip of the farthest water that Yuusuke watched until his vision spotted and danced. It was suddenly kind of nice to have her nearby, he discovered during those few silent minutes. That was confusing since he still wanted to be alone, but he'd take what he could get right now, and he let himself relax a little more, hearing her breathing and the shifting of her clothes just under the dull roar of wind in his ears. All his senses were so sharp now. He could also hear the talk elsewhere on ship: Shizuru was making fun of her brother, Kurama was murmuring something to Genkai now while she answered just as quietly, and other, unfamiliar voices made muted swells of sound below deck. He could even hear where Hiei probably was, a spot of notable quiet on the fringes of Kurama's conversation that Yuusuke's ki sense told him was nothing but vacant space.

Everything was tranquil; everyone was safe. Everything would be back to normal once they hit land again.

Keiko said: "Kuwabara said you came to the island to fight that―that monster again." Nodding, Yuusuke glanced at her, but couldn't read her expression. "Why would you want to do that?"

"I didn't want to," he answered, pushing himself more upright.

"Didn't you?" was her response, and it was sharp.

So she was angry with him for coming. Big surprise there. Well, he could be angry back; it didn't take much more energy than half-pretending to be bushed. It should be easy to be this way with her, since they fought so often.

Still, he couldn't really manage to feel worse than indignant, so he ran with that. "I did not!"

"Why did you have to go?" she demanded, and maybe it wasn't really anger in her eyes, but it came across that way anyway. "What would have happened if you hadn't? Botan wouldn't tell me!"

He finally looked at her straight, glaring, and it was an aggrieved sort of glare. "Look, I couldn't just let a jerk like Toguro go around torturing girls and killing people! It's my job―saving the world from creeps like him! So stop yelling at me, I didn't have a choice!"

But why was it still so calming to have her standing next to him?

She scowled. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. What kind of question is that?"

"What do you mean, it's your job?"

He matched her, continued glare for just-formed glower. "I mean it's my freaking job. I'm a spirit detective. It's not like they actually pay me, but―"

"I understand that," she said, and let go of the rail, standing erect on the lightly pitching deck. "I want to know what it means."

How the hell am I supposed to know?

The thought, like a snarl that didn't quite escape into reality, surprised him.

He was sure he did know what it meant―or, at least, what it should mean. It meant he was a protector, Defender of Humanity, or at least Pummeler of Bastards Who Deserve It. When demons got uppity, he punched them out, annoyed them with wisecracks, or otherwise stopped them from doing what they'd been doing; and humans, too, like Tarukane or Sakyo, when the cruel shit they did involved demons or spirit energy or whatever. Not that he'd technically stopped (or punched) either of those two personally, but he got to be involved and give it his best try, and it kind of gave him a feel for what he was supposed to be doing. Saving the world, or sometimes just a bunch of people, or sometimes just a girl, and trying not to get dead in the process.

Or, sometimes, because he couldn't be sure it wouldn't happen again, risking his life and his friends' lives in fights that didn't even matter and watching people he cared about die because if he didn't, everyone he knew would be wiped out by someone whose only motivation was getting a good challenge out of him. He was really glad Botan hadn't told Keiko that part, and he sure as hell wasn't going to.

So he talked around it. "I got drafted, Keiko." He let the words sour in his mouth. "I've always been good at fighting, and now I'm better at it, so now I get to fight demons so they don't kill people." Another shrug. "What do you think it means?"

Keiko didn't get to answer, because at that moment Kuwabara dashed up.

He was half-bounding as if he were used to surfaces that moved (a subconscious balance he hadn't possessed before the Tournament, just a week ago), and grinned at the two of them. He was back in his blue school uniform now and had been since shortly before they'd left the hotel, apparently expecting to be skipping classes the minute he stepped foot off the boat, or maybe he just didn't want to wear that white jacket with the holes in it anymore, for which Yuusuke really wouldn't blame him.

"Hey, Urameshi, Keiko! Yukina wants to play cards, so you should come!"

Keiko looked startled; Yuusuke figured he did, too; but it was fine. He was more used to Kuwabara (even in worship-Yukina mode) and for once he knew what to do before she did. He flashed her a smile that seemed to startle her even more.

"You wanna?"

A short pause, as she glanced between him and the hopeful Kuwabara, before she answered his smile with one of her own. Ha. So he'd been right; she hadn't really been angry with him, after all. And now they would have to talk about other things, and maybe never talk about this again, and that was fine with him. He'd owe Kuwabara a beer.

"Sure," she was saying now, to Kuwabara rather than to him, and she stepped away from the railing, tugging at her collar against the biting air. Yuusuke followed.

He didn't really want to play cards―his feeling of needing solitude resurged, now that the weird, half-hostile conversation with Keiko was over―but oh, well. They were almost home, anyway, and he might as well ease back into things. Once they got there, he'd have no excuse.

Still, though, it took some effort to look any of them in the face, while he sat there and puzzled over a card game he'd never played before and at which he was sure Kuwabara was cheating with spirit sense. It was still hard to look at them at all. Especially Genkai. She was really the one he'd gone up to the front of the ship to escape, even though he'd missed her terribly, and even though she hadn't really come too near him or even acted like she might disturb his standoffish withdrawal.

Maybe it was because out of all of them, Genkai was the only one who made him unsure about whether he'd really told Keiko the truth, or just told her what he wanted to believe. Maybe it was because looking at Genkai made him know, without room for illusion, what the answer to Keiko's question really was:

It means I'm not allowed to quit.

Whether he wanted to… that was another question altogether.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

There was no time for any kind of real reaction, because Yuusuke's sudden appearance coincided with all hell breaking loose in an immediate and particularly chaotic fashion. Donari had raised a hand to loose a vivid pulse of power and called a single, ringing command―a Makai dialect with which Kurama was not acquainted―and as a downpour of energy slivers pinged against Touya's shield, Gendou and those subjugated demons remaining sprang to attack. Shouting, scrambling, milling about, and hastening to all act at once: every standing enemy combatant (save Donari herself) was in motion, and most were hurling offensive barrages before they had bothered to aim. They were handily deflected by the frigid barrier, but that was of no help to the abruptly beleaguered detective towards which a good third had diverted, who had overbalanced in an attempt to backpedal and was now fleeing on all fours like a drunken crab in an attempt to regain some ground. Kurama could have displayed an astonishing repertoire of leaf-scorching invective, as a mixture of mental rejection, relief, alarm, and the fact that it was more than a little absurd to watch, but was otherwise occupied.

The slivers abated just when they would have endangered the enemies as they neared, leaving not a scratch in the pale hemisphere that defended Kurama, and he seized Touya by one shoulder to spin him around and stare into the surprise in his eyes. "Include Yuusuke in your protection, or let me free," he ordered. He had to exert control to avoid sinking his claws into Touya's skin (or breaking them on it, given the internal defense offered by the Orb).

He didn't receive an answer in words, which would have been inefficient, he supposed through surprise of his own.

Being already slightly dizzy, it was an experience, to have a miniature bubble-shield form around him and then propel him across the distance towards Yuusuke at alarming speed, exiting the larger energy barrier without slowing in the least. Its distortion and velocity together smeared the world so that he could hardly see where it took him; he braced himself against it with both arms straight out to either side, fingers curling against its icy, slippery curve, careening right past several very startled demons and further towards their target. His conveyance abruptly dissipated somewhat past the halfway point (too much a split of Touya's concentration, no doubt), and with his previously ludicrous agility curtailed to near human limits by the effects of low blood pressure, moderate bodily harm, and accruing fatigue, Kurama was subject to the indignity of absorbing considerable momentum in a series of short, ungainly, skidding hops. Then he collided with Yuusuke's still-retreating rear end and sent them both sprawling.

Well. That was effective, if undignified.

"Hello," said Kurama, upside-down. It seemed the thing to say.

"Get off me," Yuusuke grumbled.

Somehow, via clambering and flailing and using one very angry demon as a springboard, Kurama managed to get Yuusuke all the way back over to Touya despite the veritable thicket of dangerous energies being flung about with abandon in their direction. It involved a great amount of ducking, as well as a great amount of stopping so that Yuusuke could punch something, and while they did not manage to kill or even seriously injure any opponent, at least they made it back to shelter relatively intact.

The two of them actually misjudged their final jump―Kurama gripped Yuusuke's elbow for additional stability at the exact moment that they tried to take different angles―and bounced off Touya's energy barrier, and landed in yet another simultaneous collapse. Yuusuke's voice could be heard over a burst of light as he loosed a shotgun, somewhat weaker than his usual, from his supine position on top of Kurama's leg, attempting to keep the enemies from swooping in and eviscerating them where they lay.

The contact with Touya's ki shield was excruciating; how Yuusuke had still been able to form an attack was unfathomable. For one agonizing moment, it was like Kurama had been flash-frozen all the way through, like his blood had turned to spiky shards jutting from every breach in the skin, and he was quite sure he'd be incapacitated… but it passed, and the dimmed sound returned in full, and his lungs filled when he ordered them to. As his eyes finally stopped blurring, after half a minute or so, the protection had been expanded to include them both, and he was not frozen in truth nor was any part of him―he still bled, though no more than before. He even had the presence of mind to immediately feel humiliated at having reacted so strongly to the experience.

Even wounded, I should be doing better than this.

But there was plenty else to focus on. Still being down, for one thing, and the complete turning of this fight on its ear for another.

Yuusuke was standing several feet away with Touya, who was giving him a grateful, enigmatic smile.

"Good of you to join us," the ice master said dryly, the disapproval belied by that expression. He sported folded arms and relaxed posture; the field maintained its integrity without any visible exertion on his part. It was, with its blue tint overlaying the riot of color outside, very like being in an impenetrable bubble underwater (or an extremely peculiar, dangerous aquarium).

"No problem," Yuusuke muttered, looking around, wincing as several demonic ki strikes glanced away less than an arm's length from his torso. He poked the field, which glowed sullenly in response. "Nice place you have here."

Kurama stood up, stumbled, righted himself, and then merely stood there watching the two of them, absently growing a saffron-colored leaf-bandage for his bleeding arm using the trickle of energy he still had left; even that wanted to sputter out like his rose whip had done. The cacophony swirled all around like a tempest that would not abate.

In a delayed reaction that would have fascinated any student of psychology, he felt his mouth go dry and dumb, losing even the slight, friendly giddiness that had allowed him to speak before, because it had abruptly hit home that Yuusuke was actually here. And it wasn't just that he was here; it was that he was Yuusuke. His eyes had dark rings. His shirt was half-tucked. His balance was bad. He was a mess, and a more timely one Kurama had yet to see―because underneath it all, he was himself again.

The same collection of scratches, bruises, and even smudges decorated his exposed face and arms as last night, indicating that he'd apparently failed to take a bath today, which theory was borne out by the fact that he was wearing the same clothes as well. His hair was still loose and tousled. Beyond those things, he might as well have been a different person entirely from the one Kurama had last beheld. Written into his stance, the tension of his muscles and the lines of his face, was much more of the Yuusuke that Kurama knew than had been in him when he'd refused to fight at all, as if he'd discarded a costume and the role of avoidance with it.

Kurama hadn't planned for this at all.

When has anyone ever planned for what Yuusuke does?

The Tantei was dusting himself off and muttering in annoyance. He acted as if he didn't even see anymore the enemy demons whose collective bombardment continued to rebound off the shield. As if he'd been here the entire time, and exactly as it had seemed certain that he would not come at all.

It surely was dedication to his ideal of being unpredictable, to paradoxically manage it by acting as he always had before.

I cannot believe he's here.

And I thought I knew him better than to doubt.

Just when they needed him. Just when he was least expected.

Kurama's head was still fuzzy from the blood loss, and later he attributed his failure to keep from cracking up to that fact. It nearly doubled him over with its abruptness so that he had to brace both claw-tipped hands on his knees, and he couldn't even finish applying the leaf-bandage, which landed next to his right ankle, red and yellow on green. He wasn't even initially aware that the jarring and out-of-place barking noise was coming from him, until he saw Touya's face adopt a blank mask of sheer bafflement and felt his own sand-dry mouth parch even further with every gasping inhalation. It was just―he couldn't even form the thought. There was too much genuine, unmitigated irony for him to comprehend.

It fortunately did not level out at being the most painful experience in recent memory, laughing so hard while in this state of injury (though it toed the line), so he hardly cared.

Yuusuke hadn't even said much yet, and in truth appeared to have lost some planned words in his reaction to Kurama's reaction, mostly made up of raised-eyebrow puzzlement and a healthy dose of irritation as he took a step back and went into a hip-shot stance, seeming almost sullen at Kurama's mirth. So heartening, to see such a banal emotion on the detective's face again.

Kurama found after a moment that despite being able to pay attention to what was going on, he was continuing to laugh, and could not (at present) halt it. Little dust poofs rose around his ankles as Yuusuke's ire deepened by the moment, which he could just see through the tangles of his soiled silver hair. "What the hell is so funny?" Yuusuke finally demanded, which only made him laugh harder.

And that was part of it: nothing was actually humorous, and the fact that Kurama found everything so anyway somehow contributed to his response. It was funny because he found it funny despite that it was not funny. Hiei would have been disgusted with him for days over the paradox inherent. Yuusuke, in point of fact, was now wearing an expression so like what Hiei's would have been―which was also not funny at all―that Kurama feared he might expire from lack of oxygen.

He almost missed the change of tone as Yuusuke asked, "So where's Kuwabara?" and could not regain full control of himself in time to answer; Touya did instead.

"Wounded, and unconscious, but alive," said the ice master, tatters of nonplussed disapproval clinging to his voice. He'd moved a little to the side and stood uneasily on the scorched grass. Kurama idly wondered where Touya's sense of humor had gone since the Tournament, even as he was aware that this was a terrible and dangerous time to be laughing regardless of whether any actual humor was involved anyway. He was having a semi-hysterical moment of tension-relief which would be over any minute now. That was what his intellect told him―but, truthfully, it was as bemused as Touya, and had as little control over the situation.

As if the unnerving silence he'd displayed recently had been part of that thrown-off veneer, Yuusuke kept talking, the rhythms of his speech familiar and sorely needed on this kind of battlefield. "Good to know. And Botan's gotten herself nabbed, huh? Typical. I knew things would go to shit while I wasn't looking. Were we actually going to do something about it, or what?"

Kurama knew when the last two words of a sentence were aimed at him.

If only because his abdominal muscles had reached their limit, the laughter dwindled rapidly, cleared away in large part by the reminder that Botan was hostage, and the indirect reminder that he had caused it. "Yes, Yuusuke," he managed, "we are. You just―you―"

"What?" Yuusuke drew it out into nearly three full syllables. Kurama choked as it almost set him off again.

He recovered. "You're here."

"Well, yeah." As if it had been the plan all along. "I figured you'd notice that eventually. So we've got a fight to win―let's get moving." He offered a lopsided grin, eyes saying he hadn't really been immune to the laughter after all. "Sorry I missed so much of the fun."

And, finally, Touya joined the madness by smiling in turn, and relaxing his posture again. He didn't say anything; he didn't have to.

At least now, if they were all going to die, some small but vital thing about the world was right again.

The object that slammed into Touya's shield with the force of a freight train was made up of tusks and spittle and rage and the scream of fractured ice, and a howl that deafened.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

"Hey, guys!"

Kuwabara snapped awake.

Somebody was laughing. Then it stopped.

He blinked at the vermilion sky; blinked again, as he registered that the sounds around him were quieter than they should be. Then he sat up―and promptly pitched back over again. He hurt.

After a few deep breaths, Kuwabara tried again (with much muffled cursing), and this time he succeeded in getting himself upright, though arduously. His midsection throbbed with an unsteady beat, and his shoulder affected a sharper, nastier method of informing him that he'd taken a not-insignificant hit.

He was lying in the grass, alone, in an out-of-the-way spot which he thought had to be at least a hundred feet from the ongoing battle, to explain why nothing was as loud as it had been before. He glanced down at his front, annoyed to see that one side of his jacket had been cut up with messy carelessness to make bandages for his wounds, which he didn't really remember getting in the first place. They weren't too bad, though. His arm moved all right when he tested it, if a little slowly, and it didn't hurt to breathe, so he figured he didn't have any broken ribs. Toguro the Elder had done him worse and he'd kept going just fine; injuries like this were no more than an inconvenience, as long as he was careful.

But obviously he'd missed something, being unconscious and all. Last thing he did remember, Kurama had just sailed out of the air and landed next to him, and then…

Speaking of Kurama―where was he?

Kuwabara's head immediately snapped to the side, and craned his somewhat sore neck to see over the tussock-hill that tried to block his view. He was much farther away than he'd thought, more than eighty yards distant from what was left of the fight; there were Kurama's plants, or he figured anyway that those were Kurama's plants since that was the only way so many could have sprung up while he was unconscious; he scanned the flat, beaten-down swatch of demolished village where the melee had been, straining to spot Kurama, hoping he was okay but unable to catch even a glimpse.

There was one of the two main demons standing off to one side, and also there were a handful of the small ones left, clustered around a funny blue dome and doing something, maybe attacking; he couldn't see. Blades of soiled, apathetic grass waved in and out of the picture, the strange angle of his vantage making it even harder to tell what might be happening that he was too far away to actually see.

Where the hell is everyone? he wondered, anxious. Did we lose?

Then, still looking, he saw them in the dome. Touya was standing with Kurama and Yuusuke next to him, and they looked like they were talking―not in guarding stances, not even back-to-back, like the remaining enemy apparitions weren't there at all. Kuwabara was immensely relieved that they were all okay, and blew his breath out in a sigh. But why are they just standing there?

He wouldn't be able to tell anything useful until he stood up, and he needed to do that, anyway, because he couldn't beat up demons very well lying down. He wasn't sure why he'd been out so long, since his injuries really weren't that serious; they did hurt a lot, though, and making his way to his feet took him a few seconds. Once he had, he threw a couple experimental punches, and got ready to head in and back them up.

Then, he did a double-take.

"Urameshi?"

His incredulous shout was absorbed inside the explosion that happened then, swamping the tableau in crimson light and nearly knocking him over even at this distance. He caught his footing after an undignified moment of windmilling his arms, and before that moment was even over he was sprinting, each step jarring his entire ribcage and sending shooting pains through his chest, and he didn't care.

He had no time left for being surprised. The dome was gone, and the bigger one of the two big demons was right there next to his friends while the smaller demons all took a step back as if preparing to charge as well―Kuwabara had to be there to interfere.

His bandanna streaked in the wind of his passage. "Hey!" he yelled, ignoring the catch at the bottom of his lungs that wanted him to cough. "I'm coming, guys! Kuwabara to the rescue!" And then there was no more distance left, and he was in the thick of the enemy again (what little of them were left, anyway).

Immediately, Kuwabara noticed two things. One, though there were a lot fewer demons than there had been, they were a hell of a lot stronger than most of what he'd been fighting before. Two, his Reiken didn't work anymore.

He almost tripped over an opponent―a short and squat glob of a demon with horns dotting its forehead and no neck at all―when it failed to appear on call. He managed to throw a punch instead, and to duck the incoming club, and squawked, "What the hell?"

The demon snarled something dire and came at him with the club again. He kicked it in the face.

After that, it was too hard to concentrate on wondering why it wouldn't work; he couldn't kill demons just by punching them once, like Yuusuke could, so they stayed dangerous for a lot longer now that he couldn't slice them up. He tried again a couple times, though, and even tried the sword-shards trick he'd used during the Tournament finals, but his reiki wouldn't even glimmer, much less pound anything. He took two hits to the shoulder, one to the jaw, four to the ankles and shins, and too many to count to his torso itself, most of them energy blasts, all within a minute and a half of flailing. Then, of course, he started to hold his own, as he finally remembered to be angry instead of just puzzled, because being angry always helped him fight better. It really, really made his wounds hurt, though.

Stupid demons think I'm helpless without my sword? I'll give 'em helpless!

Still, what gave him the biggest push forward was relief. Yuusuke had shown up after all, and that meant they had a chance at winning. Not that he could see what any of his friends were doing right now, but that didn't matter―it also didn't matter that he could tell the demons were all strong enough to be a little scary and would probably kick his ass once he ran out of steam. It only mattered that he was keeping these bastards busy for a short while so the others could get to winning the fight.

He was glad that his wounds weren't really bad enough to keep him down. It meant he had another chance. He'd be able to make sure, this round, that Kurama wasn't the one protecting him.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

It was already dark outside, and Keiko hadn't begun to study yet. Other things occupied her mind, things which had nothing to do with schoolwork and which were only peripherally connected to anything in her everyday life. Her parents' shop made busy noises downstairs while she let it be near-silent around her, contemplating.

It was really only an awareness that existing would be different now, the course of her life shifted a fraction, in time moving farther away from its previous trajectory as the not-quite-parallel tracks slowly pulled what might have been out of sight over the horizon. She would study tonight, eventually, because she would still get into a good high school and from there a college, and while she hadn't quite decided on a specific area of focus, she excelled enough at many things that her options were open.

Rakish smiles, cigarettes, danger and bright lights, waiting and resenting―these were vanishing to one side, dropping away as their velocity failed to match hers, or hers failed to match theirs. It didn't matter which. They'd probably be visible out of the corner of her eye for long enough that she wouldn't even notice when they were finally no longer there. She hoped she wouldn't.

She hadn't actually dumped Yuusuke; if she changed her mind, nothing was final yet. Nothing, except for the fact that she was already quietly planning how her future would progress without him, which told her that she and Yuusuke were finally over for good. Being who she was, Keiko felt it would be foolish not to try to figure out why.

He'd been nebulous there to begin with, she decided (or discovered; her mind allocated a fractional space for arguing over which word was more applicable) over the time since she'd arrived home, while sitting in her room, idly twirling a pencil between her fingers and watching a brown, solitary moth hurl itself against the bulb of her desk lamp and cast uneven shadows over her notebooks. The window was open to let in cooler air. Yuusuke, she determined (there it was), had never had a defined role in her imagining of her later life. To be certain, he'd been there in it, always, just being himself and slotting in wherever he could jury-rig a compatible opening. She hadn't really managed to confine him. Maybe that meant she hadn't really expected much from him. He hadn't given her a reason to. If there had been anything she really wanted, she'd only hoped for it, not even actually seen it in her head.

It was what that meant, and why it changed things, that she had been thinking about the most. It meant she'd been wrong.

Not wholly wrong; Yuusuke was an immature brat who lacked the consistent ability to know what he wanted or whether what he was doing would get him there, and he always thought he knew what was best for her when he actually didn't. He barely knew what was best for himself and was usually bad at doing it even when he did, and was so unashamedly hypocritical that she'd slapped him more often for that than for any other reason. But Keiko herself wasn't quite hypocritical enough to think she was never a hypocrite, and today she'd been one.

He couldn't stop fighting, and he couldn't take her with him into his fighting. It was just how it was. She'd seen it at the Tournament, and known it since then.

She and Yuusuke were still over. She mused, though, that maybe it wasn't all bad―maybe they would be better as only friends. Was that a rationalization? Another maybe.

She thought that tonight, she wouldn't set pencil to paper and begin her studying until she was sure she understood, one way or the other, why she didn't ache inside yet, the way she knew she should.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

Seven little women circled the little room with its gently swaying wind chimes just outside. They swayed as gently in their own rhythm independent of the wind. Their bodies bent only slightly, like saplings, and they sang a soft, chanting song for their missing sisters. Gossamer layers of ice, thin as water bubbles, smoothed over tatami matting and over wooden beams, crept into crevices to hide there and push the fibers apart, and reflected uneven candlelight like slivers of mica on the side of a cliff.

Standing with her eye at a crack in the door, watching the grief that etched each pale face but one―and that one bearing the faintest of smiles―Genkai was certain only that there was something very wrong with what she saw, there in the quietest corner of her own house.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

Yuusuke was flat on his face again, mouth full of dirt and bitter-tasting grass stems, wind knocked out of his chest so that he lost a reflexive wisecrack to gasping and spitting. Somebody was shouting something that was just barely audible over the ringing that muffled his hearing, and whoever it was sounded enraged. It wasn't really a consolation, but at least he hadn't been the only one bowled over; Touya was over there, picking himself up, and the Tantei spotted Kurama's white shoe out of the corner of his eye. It wasn't clear what had hit all of them. A shock wave, maybe, from the exploding barrier, to go with the shower of abundant red sparks and the noise like a thunderclap.

Fighting another huge, unstoppable demon―well, that's what he'd come back here to do.

It's so refreshing to be on my ass again.

And, somewhere behind the sarcasm, it was.

Maybe someday he'd learn that it didn't matter if he felt like shit, or if he had no energy, or even if he couldn't see. He always fought better when it was really necessary, so he was up and swinging before he remembered any of what was working against his chances. Fists connected with scaly unyielding hide and drove it back an inch with the sheer force of his stubbornness, more than any real strength, because he still didn't have that. The shotgun had taken it out of him pretty hard. It was like fighting Rando all over again, except less smarmy. He was tired of starting fights with his reserves already drained… or maybe he was just glad to be in this fight at all, now that he was here, and was just grumbling in his head because he always did.

He didn't grin or relax or do anything stupid that could fuck up the part of it that meant they might survive―but something in his chest vibrated with every punch and kept him pushing the demon back, something that eased the tightness there.

"Hey, asshole!" he yelled at Gendou as he pummeled, knuckles feeling bruised like he was punching a chunk of rubber. "Remember me?" The demon roared at him in reply, and the stench nearly took him off his feet at this range. He spluttered. "Ew, gross! That is some serious roadkill breath!"

"Yuusuke, to me!" shouted Kurama, hilariously grass-stained down his entire white front and already in defensive position with Touya, heading for the knot of enemies where―

Kuwabara? What the hell?

Yuusuke blinked, tossing a wild and ill-advised glance towards Touya and then Kurama to see if they were seeing this, too. It looked like they were, since they seemed about as startled as he was. When did he get here? Wasn't he out?

Obviously not.

Kuwabara was an angry whirligig of fists, sporting that doofy headband of his, a bunch of bandages, and a black eye, in the middle of a melee that promised to bury him in another minute or so. Yuusuke wasn't too worried since backup was already on the way, so the instinctive spike of alarm at seeing his best pal in trouble settled away quickly, replaced by a stronger sense of battle euphoria that sharpened his senses even as it almost felt relaxing.

Still swinging, though already turning to head towards Kurama (who obviously was the one with the plan here), Yuusuke finally did grin. It was nice to see that some things―like the general inability of any given super-enemy to keep Kuwabara down―didn't change.

"Ignoring me, human?" came the crunching voice in his ear, just before a giant yellow mitt crashed into it, snapping his head to the side an instant ahead of his body. The horizon spun. Someone was ringing a brassy, booming gong in his head, underscored by his collision with the ground―greenery shredded itself against his body and took most of his shirt with it, but he hit with enough force that he didn't even slide very far, instead making a crater about a foot deep, in the center of which he sprawled for a rueful moment of half-dazed recovery.

Goddamn. He was going to be deaf in that ear for hours.

Past that, though, it had actually hurt, the muscles of his neck and shoulders feeling it as much as the throb in his temple. It was totally unfair for random demons to be able to do that; ever since Toguro, he'd been―well, not quite impervious to punches, but they usually only threw him around at best instead of causing actual damage. A rusty taste flooded his mouth, and he spat, rolling to all fours and then standing up.

"Hey―Kurama!"

-o- -o- -o- -o-

Well. This was annoying.

She had no patience for interlopers, and this one wasn't even interesting. He'd been easy to defeat before, and even the idiot Gendou had just flung him aside like a doll; he was only spoiling the look in her fox's eyes, that look of panic and defeat that she'd savored for scant seconds. Her fox, alive! It seemed she'd been mistaken about many things. This was an opportunity she did not intend to allow past without seizing it.

"Fool!" she snapped, arresting Gendou in mid-pursuit of the irrelevant one. "Get to the other one, the challenger! Ignore the weakling!"

He was slow to hear her, slow to alter his trajectory, and just as slow to recognize that he was being stupid. "I want it!" he bellowed.

"Do as I say!" She used the wet-gravel syllables of his native dialect, coating them in malice, and he literally stumbled in surprise. Then he obeyed. He always obeyed eventually; that was why she kept him.

Meanwhile, she had action of her own to take. The fox would be hers again, or she would rend him apart before the sun went down.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

When he needed to be, Yuusuke was fast. Even Hiei had stated it as fact despite being faster by an appreciable margin. He really didn't use it much, though, or at least not to full capacity. There just wasn't a lot of stuff that needed him to be that fast anymore, since these days he wasn't fighting one-on-one with anything as dangerous as Toguro. He did his best to employ it now, realizing how far he'd been thrown, cursing as he knew he wasn't reaching his maximum. Of course he wasn't. Out of practice; Genkai would thrash him. If she ever speaks to me again, he remembered abruptly, and he was almost more distracted by the fact that he didn't immediately feel like shit than by what he could tell was going on ahead.

Gendou had turned around and was headed for Kuwabara, who was back-to-back with Touya now, protected enough by Touya's power that the two of them were starting to make the smaller demons look nervous. Kurama, though―

Botan's pink kimono sleeves hung like limp, fluttering flower petals, and her hair mixed with Kurama's, shadows on snow. Donari grasped the ferry-girl's nape and held her aloft at full arm's length, nails snagged in the heavy fabric, and with her other hand she tried to twist Kurama's arm up behind his back. Tried―and it looked so bizarre, the little girl-child demon standing over a fighter almost a foot taller than she, muscular and bloodied and fighting her grip while he slashed ineffectually with his free hand at her face. Yuusuke had trouble seeing exactly how it was happening while he ran, trying to make it stay still instead of jerking up and down in time with his strides. But what the hell was Kurama doing? This wasn't like any strategy Yuusuke had ever seen him use. Hell, he hardly ever bothered with hand-to-hand, much less clawing like a jealous girl, and it didn't look like it was working either―

―until the claws were suddenly aimed away from Donari's eyes and ripping apart the back of Botan's kimono, freeing her to drop, boneless, to the ground.

Yuusuke couldn't see it because he was coming up from directly behind, but Donari's face probably had that half-furious, half-surprised expression that Kurama evidently lived for, because it happened just about every time he did something an enemy hadn't expected. He was also sure his own face looked similar. He didn't know how to feel at that instant: glad that he would have a chance to rescue Botan, or absolutely enraged that Kurama had obviously (now, at least) let himself get grabbed in order to free her because he knew Yuusuke was coming. Goddammit, it was a strategy he'd seen, and it was the same strategy Kurama kept using even when he shouldn't (because he never should), and so Yuusuke decided he wasn't going to be stupid enough to put up with it again. No one said he had to buy into anyone else's suspect tactics, no matter how much they looked like a good idea. He was better at bad ideas.

They tended to work out pretty well for him, actually.

So instead of snatching up Botan and carrying her to safety when he reached the three of them, he aimed right down the middle and baseball-slid into Donari's ankles in a spray of earth and plant matter, knocking her and Kurama over. Then he sprang up, kicked her off of the redhead, stepped on her face to smother whatever angry threat she was probably making, grabbed both of his friends, and took off in a mad dash for Kuwabara and Touya, shaking dirt from his hair as he went.

And that is how this fight should be going.

Kurama was too surprised to protest yet, other than with a smothered, "Yuusuke!" It was excellent revenge for the fox dragging him halfway across the battlefield by one wrist during their last fight with these demons―but he wasn't thinking about that fight, not once, not at all, not ever again if he could help it. Sure as hell not while he was still pretending they could win this one.

The spot between his shoulder-blades tingled ominously, expecting some kind of retaliatory attack. Demons didn't like having their faces stomped, especially girl demons (the last time he'd done that during a fight had been memorable, especially since he'd also had to punch out Kuwabara afterwards), so he tried zig-zagging a little to throw off her aim. "What the hell does she like you so much for?" he asked his larger burden.

His only reply was the ungentle noise of all the air leaving Kurama's lungs as a bolt of youki connected squarely with the youko's back.

The force of it wrenched Yuusuke's shoulder and almost took him off his feet, but somehow he kept his hold, and so he was able to see Kurama change, up close, closer than he'd ever been to it before. Crimson overtook silver, wide yellow eyes flashed green, and all the bones of him softened and narrowed. His muscles attenuated and became more wiry. The voice that gasped for air was higher, younger. He'd lost so much of his power…

For one instant, they were on a different plain of desolation, days ago. The echo was too strong. Yuusuke's vision deserted him.

When it returned, he was standing with Botan and Kurama behind him, sighting on Donari with his index finger, and the colossal explosion of blue-white reiki obliterated everything else before him.

It won't happen again!

It was huge, that burst of brilliance, but also weak, spotted with dimmer places where it held its shape only through some kind of inexplicable surface tension. At Yuusuke's current, pathetic level of energy, it worked out to hardly better than a glorified flash-bomb; it was slow to dissipate, but he felt heightened by the dizzying vertigo of fear, and hyper-aware of everything the instant it became possible to perceive it. He could pick out everyone, one at a time, with his ki sense or his sight: Kuwabara first, Touya next, the demons around them, Gendou, and Donari in his sights―untouched, unworried, unmoving. He knew she would be. The Reigan had had no effect on her before, when it had been as strong as it ever was, so of course it wouldn't trouble her now. He saw in a moment exactly what he had expected to see.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

He'd wasted what little energy he still had; nothing was different.

Nothing, except one thing.

Yuusuke almost missed the ki signature coming up on the devastated prairie, light-headed from the air pressure of his own attack. His senses thrummed with tingling battle-paranoia as he stared Donari down, or he would have. Even then, detecting it as it came into range failed to trigger a reaction at first; it was too familiar, and almost ignorable. He recognized it even so.

He froze. He wasn't the only one.

The entire field was suddenly on pause.

It might have been the wrong world for this, but the same kind of quiet descended over everything as cliché would have backed with ubiquitous, chirping crickets. Here in the Makai insects were not so bold as to be within any audible distance of a fight like this one, nor did many live in these grasses to begin with; somewhere overhead there might have been birds or other tiny, winged things of particular moxie, but nobody was watching to know, because everyone was looking to the north. There was pressure there, stinging ozone in the air, roiling humidity that changed the tint of the sky and smelled like every kind of danger.

At the center of that invisible storm walked a familiar, diminutive shape, wreathed about with indigo flames, a silhouette and an afterimage and the unmistakable source of deadly power.

On Hiei's forehead, the Jagan blazed golden.

-o- -o- -o- -o-

Just then, up in Spirit World, Koenma was busy laughing himself into tearful asphyxiation.

Dad and I might just get along after all!

-o- -o- -o- -o-

Kurama skirted the edges of consciousness, black edges flirting with his vision and a tight, stretched feeling over his entire head and neck, but still he knew unnatural silence when he heard it. Swimming against the thick current of disorientation, he shook himself, trying to make the fuzz of colored shapes resolve into things that had meaning. The first he saw clearly was Hiei.

It was like a jolt to his brain, a sense of heat and airlessness that made it seem certain he was hallucinating it. He'd certainly lost enough blood that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility, while this being real…

―something surged along the link, something hot and electric and angry―

And then he didn't have time to speculate.

"Yuusuke! Stop!"

But Yuusuke didn't stop. He'd hurtled into motion, into a charge, and it didn't matter where he was headed―towards the vision that was Hiei or towards the enemy, for Donari stood scarcely a hundred feet away and who knew where the others were, Kurama couldn't see or even sense them―it didn't matter, because it was too dangerous for him to charge. They had to stay together to live. Too dangerous, and Kurama wasn't close enough to stop him―

"Yuusuke!"

The whip lashed faster than anyone's vision, movement begun and completed ahead of any conscious directive; it outraced everything but its kindred reflexes, but those at least were intact, and Kurama knew that because Yuusuke was not dead. Even so, he did not immediately know it, and open horror existed in the spaces between kinetic release, visual reception, and cerebral rendering. The impact of those spaces contracted around Kurama's chest; a blurry tangle of arms and legs and bloodless sweat filled the whole of his esthesis, and he had no time to be certain of anything, but his adrenal system had an eternity to inject terror like mercury through an already battered and overtaxed body.

But no blood sprayed, and though Yuusuke seemed supremely surprised as he toppled backwards, yanked from his feet by the pale green coils, he remained whole―the whip, despite its primary function and the battle instincts of centuries, had been a harmless cable devoid of thorns. Somehow, as unintentionally as he'd acted, Kurama had also pulled his punch.

In the moments that followed, which were full of confused, pulse-pounding fleeing and the explosions of pursuit, the entirely-too-fortunate kitsune promised himself that he and his reflexes were going to have a very long talk, concerning the issue of who was supposed to be in charge.

-Kurama really doesn't have the power to be using his Rose Whip, thorns or not. There will be consequences.

-It's a bit of a relief to have everyone back in one place, more or less. It was getting hard to keep everything straight.

-NOTE: I'm aware that averaging a chapter per year is kind of tanking my chances at a steady readership, and that even if I posted every week, it wouldn't entitle me to one, anyway. However, and with trepidation, I'd like to make an actual, plea-type request for concrit reviews. I get all the fluffy happiness I need from watching the hit counter and getting the occasional Favorite or Alert, but I could really use some critical feedback as I try to get the last few chapters out. I'll still be working on the fic regardless, and certainly won't hold chapters back even if I don't get any reviews at all (goodness knows, you probably wouldn't be able to tell, anyway); it would just be awesomely helpful.