Chapter Thirteen: Haunting Honesty.

Taylor's P.O.V

"Before we start this little story of ours, I want to make sure that there aren't any interruptions."

Akako's words were just as bitter as before, and as she sat on the bed with feather like weight she looked even more intimidating with her proper posture. Amber locked the door, but by this time I wondered if we were alright with each other. With Amber it was un-telling how she felt at the current moment.

"Shoot, we're ready for this." With Amber's approval we sat on Hiei's bed and waited for them to speak.

"Long ago before hardly any part of Demon World was under Spirit Worlds order, there was a section within Demon World that belonged to us." Kano began, leaning near the door as if to guard it.

"When chosen to lead your elemental land it is a process only chosen through a selective system. This system goes by your power, your will to control the power, element, and how alike you are to the element. Once we are chosen there is a ceremony to claim your element, and that is how you become a leader. Years and years of training is in order before you can actually claim the throne though, you don't just automatically come into great power—though there have been kings and queens to do that in the past, so we're told."

Kano scoffed while keeping a small smile.

"For us it wasn't the case. We were in training sessions with some of the wisest, and some of the most brutal of elemental trainers. Of course we were offered what we believe to be life's most indulged pleasures; sex, money and power. We also had gained respect whenever we took the throne, and that is something the four of us wanted the most. We grew into power quickly from that."

His eyes had glazed over as he stared in one spot for so long as if he were playing the memories of the past one by one. His constant smile had lost some of it's brightness as he kept watching this old movie, and I quickly came to the conclusion that those pleasures didn't exactly make everything so grand for Kano.

"But sibling rivalry is something that cannot be avoided,"

Akako interjected and looked up at us from her finger nails slowly, the foreboding tone she used gave way for a tragedy that was about to be revealed.

"We all wanted to be the dominating element out of the four. Naoko was always considered the dominant one because he was the Northern leader, and the earth element. It was an unfair dominance in our eyes. Nagi, however, never cared for it as much as we did. She was always so calm—practically bland if you ask me, and annoying. Even if she didn't directly admit it, the little bitch always implied that she wanted be on top. Always."

Akako sneered at the last part as if just speaking about Nagi was a painful thing to do. I glanced to Amber with a questioning look, but the only response I received was a shake of the head and a shrug. She was just as confused as to why Akako seemed so enraged about this Nagi as I was.

"I had enough of all our little spats and battles we had over this dilemma, so I took action and decided to do something about it thanks to the help of my brother."

Akako looked over to Kano with such a sly smirk I could've sworn she was a snake charmer. Kano smirked, sighing as if the subject was exhausting for him to continue.

"It was a very deadly war. When we fought we would sometimes carry our battles to our villages, and in that affect would kill many of our own people. It was a bloody war, and hardly any of the commoners actually lived through it. We were naïve and blinded by the greed of power. That's all what we were back then. Naïve and blind to what would eventually be our downfall."

Kano was no longer smiling or even barely grinning at this point. I hadn't known him very long but I could already tell that it meant that this was serious business. Those people that were innocent had fallen at the hands of their leaders; the people that trusted them more than anything had died because of pride and greed. I could only guess that after many years Kano had probably beat his self up over it, or at least gotten better at hiding so much regret.

"As legend and truth goes our sister, Chiyo, interrupted our last fights. She wasn't very nice about ending it either. The Spirit element rarely changes though, so it just added to her anger that we were the foolish ones.We were concealed to these stones that you now have, and will keep for some time. The rest you should know about."

A long and uncomfortable silence passed between the four of us. The pink elephant practically sat on top of us in the room, so the only way to get him out was to take initiative. I hesitated before standing up and walking over to the dresser drawer. Upon opening it I took out the two stones by their silky strings and examined them. The fiery and watery colors contrasted aggressively together that it was almost too unnatural to have them right by each other, but even so it would've been a shame to take them apart. They were ying and yang elements after all.

"Ah yes, bring them out will you child?"

As much as I wanted to correct the fire demon I restrained my self while walking back around and putting the two necklaces in front of Amber; a pause before she reached up and took the glimmering blue stone in her hand. I watched for a bit as her thumb rubbed back and forth on it before sitting back down and copying her moves. Mine didn't glimmer like hers, but it did shine. It didn't seem as smooth and cool to the touch as hers as so much as it was soft and warm.

"These," I started while breaking my silence and trance into the stone to look at the siblings. "Are what you were sealed in, right?"

Akako raised a thin eye-brow and blinked. "We just said that."

"I know, but… Your spirit's are in them."

Kano giggled lightly but loud enough to grab our attention. He had a few fingers to his chin when his spoke.

"Was; our spirit was in them." He corrected and gracefully kicked off the wall. Footsteps that would make any ghost jealous came closer to us while he continued to explain.

"For us to be free and to have any access to our element, we need a vessel for that access."

I narrowed my eyes while trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that.

"Vessels, what do you mean by that?" Pulling a Hiei and reading my mind, Amber piped up. She was just as confused as I was.

I looked back to Akako and waited for her answer. She couldn't contain that gleeful yet sinister smile which spread wide on her pale face. Bright golden eyes were filled with excitement as red lips were taunting me with that answer, and even if she did have to explain to anyone that was listening I already knew what she had to say.

"Bodies are vessels you know. They're the vessels of your spirit and that goes for every being alive and dead. Our vessels, however, must require the same elemental birthmark but also require the vessel itself, the body, to be strong enough to hold our great power."

With a small gasp I felt my heart flutter. She had confirmed what I was exactly thinking.

"We're your vessels…"

"Correct. When you touched the stone it was almost destiny to say the least. Really, anyone like you two could've been picked, but there should be a click between spirit and vessel. That's why you can see and hear us only. Think of it like a connected telepathic kind of thing that we can only see, along with anyone else that would happen to have the other two stones—"

"Wait, what?!"

Mind you that neither Amber (to my knowledge) nor myself had actually thought about the other two stones until it was brought up. There was a lot of stuff going on, you know.

The siblings jerked back a bit by the sound of our very loud confusion. Kano started to scratch his neck and blinked a couple of times. "You can't honestly say that you forgot, could you-?"

"Is everything alright?"

Thanks to Shizuru's natural mother/sisterly instincts of course she'd be the one to come and see what all the commotion was about. Well, anyone who'd heard us and even cared.

"W-we're fine. Just… don't worry about it!" Amber called back, earning a giggle from Kano and myself. Her animated features were too entertaining, especially when they showed some kind of distress.

"Alright, just try not to kill each other in there!" She called back, and after a few minutes I nodded for the two to finish.

"You seem surprised though I don't know why; the papers said there were fourand not two stones." Akako continued and rolled her eyes. She then laid down on the bed sideways, a hand resting her head. "I assumed you weren't complete idiots."

I narrowed my eyes at the insult. "We aren't. We've been busy you know."

So much information just handed to us like some kind of big homework project that counted for most of you grade, and we were expected to learn, memorize and remember other things or we'd fail (probably a lot worse considering the situation). Yet, here we are with more questions and very few answers now.

Like:

One, if there were two other stones then did anyone have them? Were they good guys or bad?

Two, could they be a threat to this world, or even, to the guys? Of course if it affects the world it'll probably affect the guys, and wasn't I here to guide them from the bad?

Three, still why us? The siblings had explained that it could've been anyway, and hell both Amber and I couldn't have been the only kids that "matched" or whatever.

"All in all, you better be ready when the time comes to take on our powers." Akako's tone wasn't exactly kidding, or even light. "It wont be pretty on how it comes about…"

I stared at her, mouth a gap and wondering what she meant. I was too sure I wanted to find out on how I'd be able to access a demons power (even though that was probably the coolest thing I'll ever do, besides traveling here) but from her somber expression I can only imagine… well, that it wasn't going to be pretty.

"Well, that was splendid!" Kano broke in while sighing and looking to his sister. "We must be leaving now."

"Whoa, you can't leave we have more questions!"

"Those can simply wait till the next time we see each other. We've used a lot of our energy to speak to you all, and we need recovery." Akako sat up, stood up with grace and walked toward Kano to stand by his side. Before Amber could protest even more the both started to fade, Kano waving vigorously while Akako standing with both hands on her hips before they finally gone. Amber then proceeded to seethe with frustration.

"That's the last time I ever listen to the two of them."

I will not bore you with the other things we talked about after that. The basic jist of it was trying to wrap our minds around it as much as we could, and then apologize to each other for our spat. Though that didn't matter anymore; we had bigger things to worry about.

Hours passed with very little to say, and hardly any socializing unless it was "I'm going to get something to drink/eat, you want something?" I mostly stayed in the room dozing off and on again. I was almost at a complete lose of energy until I heard loud laughter after Amber left the room.

It confused me; what were they laughing at? Getting up from my spot I sluggishly walked over to the door and opened it up, and looked at an almost full room.

Keiko and Botan had returned and were sitting on the couch with Shizuru, Yukina and now Kuwabara. Yusuke was being tortured by Kuwabara, but instead of his words I was more concentrated on the blue fluffy thing on the top of his head.

It looked like some kind of stuffed animal, and was pudgy with a bird like beak and long droopy rabbit ears. It was, in fact, Puu.

"How adorable was that!" Yusuke had taken enough of the little girl jokes, and hit Kuwabara. I didn't mean to be as loud, but I couldn't help my giggle at the comic relief.

Kuwabara, with quick movement, went over to a now blushing Yukina and grabbed her hands into his while speaking into a low voice.

"Oh Yukina, would you please heal Kuwabara's wound and make him feel all better?"

But that only earned him another hit from his elder sister. "Give it a rest for one minute, lover boy!"

I smiled at this picture, but felt sympathy for Kuwabara considering how much he was beaten on a daily bases. Whenever he sat up and rubbed the back of his head he had spotted Amber and I and waved; I guess he could sorta tell I was down or something, because whenever he smiled I could almost spot the tinge of sympathy in his look. If he did catch my slightly sour dull mood, I felt better that he tried making me smile when he didn't even have to. I directed my attention to Yusuke then, trying to not feel too awkward with that much eye contact with a person.

"Looks like you finally had your spirit egg hatched, eh?" I then gathered the rest of the other's attention. A very pissy Yusuke responded with a glare.

"Yeah, thanks for the heads up, Taylor. You're so helpful!" Sarcastic as every Yusuke only used it to make a point, but that only made me laugh more. The sight of Puu's playfulness and his curiosity was just too adorable. Puu himself was just adorable.

Us girls were gathered around the cute little "beast", admiring how innocent it was. It was weird, and I understood why, how Puu was suppose to be Yusuke's inner self, but with how Yusuke put's on this front of intimidation and roughness yet he would produce this.

Guess it shouldn't matter, wasn't I suppose to know better than that? Yeah, right.

Kuwabara and Yusuke were now near the window socializing about the semi-finals.

"…They're just like everyone else in this stupid tournament."

I glanced over to the two; they were concentrated on the discussion. I felt for them a lot, even when I was merely watching the anime. The committee wasn't giving them a break with all of this fighting, and just about anyone could tell that it was rigged from the start. I exhaled deeply knowing the only thing I could offer for help was telling them what to do, instead of fixing it to the point where they could've easily be done with everything. You can't have your cake and eat it too, or whatever.

Puu flapped his ears and landed on Yusuke's head; exclaiming his signature "Puu!" squeak.

Yusuke seemed surprised and annoyed with the sudden move by the little guy.

"You know you two kinda look alike when you're together, he's even got your hair!" Keiko pointed out, causing Yusuke to scoff and fold his arms.

"I'll say the little bugger's got my hair, he's got it right between his retarded claws and he ain't lettin' go. He better not leave me any spirit surprises!"

"Oh Yusuke, chill out! You can't hide the fact that you're just an adorable stuffed animal on the inside!" Amber mocked him, earning plenty of laughter from everyone except for Yusuke.

Puu even found it funny by exclaiming, once again, "Puu!"

Botan, who was now standing next to Keiko who was standing near Yusuke, looked to her watch and mumbled out "How did it get so late?"

"Time flies when you're mocking Yusuke mercilessly."

"Let's go."

It was going to suck without the girls here, and I could only wish for them to stay the night but there really wasn't any room here. Plus they had their own rooms and what not.

"See ya later!" I called to them while waving; they all waved back and responded the same way.

"That's right, get lost for all I care!" Yusuke retorted to them, only earning another chuckle from Amber and myself.

Botan turned around and spoke excitedly. "And don't forget, Yusuke, we've got an early match tomorrow that determines the next team we fight, so we want a sneak preview of what we're up against! So try not to sneak for a wink this time!"

"Later, Urameshi!"

After Kuwabara's later comment, the sound of a saddened Puu came and caused the Kuwabara, Keiko and Botan to reappear, and laugh to Yusuke's misery. Amber and I couldn't help but do the same as well as run into our room before Yusuke could attack us ourselves.

For me it seemed like a tiring day, and it was of course. Tomorrow Kurama should be out of his treatment enough to where he could come back to the hotel. Tomorrow we would see the infamous Yuriatoki fight and tomorrow would be a very interesting day all around.

As I closed my eyes, my mind drifted to Akako's words like some kind of haunting, echoing reminder.

"For us to be free and to have any access to our element, we need a vessel for that access."

Authors note: MY STORY IS A TEENAGER NOW! Get it, cause it's thirteen?...No?...Okay .' Anyway, WOO I'm so happy because after this there will be an actual fight scene (no lying this time either) so I'm really happy about that! : D Well this chapter should be more… detailed in Akako's and Kano's past. I'm going to try and make it a long chapter, because those are always fun : D It is also important for you to not really skim this chapter. If you do you will easily be confused. Oh, and I don't know if that's how you spell the teams name. It's kinda a guess.

This is the stranger's talk. This is Taylor's response
-This is Hiei's telepathic talk-
*Kurama responding*
~Taylor Responding~

Updated: 5/14/13: God, I'm a horrible writer. Trust me, I'm trying to update these before I move on!