Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Shadows of a Crimson Moon ❯ Gyranthrial : The River Of Light And Sound ( Chapter 4 )

 

He was laughing so heartily that he seemed to have scarcely any control of himself, and he entered the air corridor with the others, still in a haze of a grand draught of hilarity.

His beaded ebon eyes lit up with his joyful, gleeful bliss.

“Do it again, Urameshi! Do it again!” He bellowed out raucously.

The person whom he was strutting merrily against had his fists clenched tightly in his front trouser pockets, back slumped and shoulders wilted, and strands of his pomaded raven hair collapsing before his large amber eyes.

“It's gotten a little old, Kuwabara. It really isn't funny anymore.”

 

“It wasn't amusing to begin with,” a dim, gloomy looking figure broke out before him. His garnet, wine-coloured eyes were narrowed into threadlike slits, a sneer resting upon his lips. His arms were intertwined across his chest as he continued stridently, ring of metal arising from the katana which clicked harmoniously with every step he took.

A lengthy, white handkerchief was placed across his brow, his spiked, soot coloured hair not adding much to his significantly short altitude.

“Hey, shut up Hiei, no one freaking asked your opinion on anything.” The boy identified as simply “Urameshi” retorted.

 

“I'm afraid I must agree with Hiei,” a faint, eloquent voice chimed out from the side of him, “there may be things in which you don't agree with that Koenma does, but you do owe him extensively for all he has done for you, and returning his favours with a crude, rather disrespectful impression of him is hardly any way of doing so.”

Kurama's words were very flowing and supple, his vivid green eyes contrasting profoundly with his extensive, garneted crimson locks passing down his shoulders as he walked leisurely, swaying slightly.

 

Yusuke's wide, russet eyes rolled themselves to the bright ceiling in a full loop.

The rest of their passage down the ochroid walled hallway was silent, until it came time to turn once more, into the corridor that led to Koenma's office centre.

 

Kuwabara had been knocked off his feet, his figure collapsing vociferously with a great thud as he did so.

“Hey-watch where you're-”

A rather colourless, emptied palm was given to him, connected to a frightening, shadowed figure.

 

It was a young woman's hand.

 

He grasped it with his own, large and somewhat clammy one, amazed at how sturdy the grip was.

Slowly, the figure pulled him to his feet.

Kuwabara and the three others stared relatively blankly as the mysterious figure lowered the hood of its massive cloak, revealing its stunning and exquisitely appealing face.

 

“Please, pardon me from my imprudence and thoughtlessness. I am afraid I was not looking as to where my feet were straying me. Forgive me, I implore you.”

Kuwabara nearly fainted at the resonating charm of her lush, intelligent and slightly brusque voice, as well as the beauty of her appearance.

“Uh…it's all right…” He stammered awkwardly, his face flourishing a heavy scarlet.

The stranger began to turn to leave after taking a profound obeisance (bow), when Yusuke's words had haltered her.

“Hey, just who are you? You a friend of Koenma, or something?”

 

She twirled forward gracefully, tendrils of her lengthy, midnight coloured hair falling before her, veering broadly.

 

It was then when they all got a stern look at her, grasping her enthralling and enchanting image to its highest extent.

 

Some eyes seemed immovable from her own bottle green ones, others captured on the threatening and severely marring scars located upon her flesh in numerous areas.

 

 

She did not reply, for it was instead Botan who broke the inaudible silence between the lot.

 

“Tari?! There you are!” Botan scampered rapidly to her side, eyes blaring in rapturous success.

 

“Tari? Is that your name?” Yusuke's right eyebrow rose at his inquiry.

Botan turned to them. “What are you all still doing out here? Koenma asked to see you about an hour ago.”

“She bumped into me,” Kuwabara shot back, pointing a narrowed finger to her direction.”

 

Tari gazed at him and his flaring orange hair intently.

 

“And I am remorseful for it, and apologised hoping for an acquit.” She rejoined solemnly in her typically sumptuous manner.

 

“A what?”

She smiled feebly, luminous gaze now cast downward.

 

“You idiot,” Hiei barkeed from beside Kurama.

”What was that, shorty?” Kuwabara snapped, turning sharply.

“Are you kidding? With ears as large as your own, I would imagine it impossible not to hear me.” Hiei's narrow stare tore into Kuwabara.

 

“Don't make me drop kick you, punk.” Kuwabara threatened portentously, as Hiei reached for his katana that was contained in its sheath at his side.

 

Tari's articulate voice broke their quarrel.

 

But, more so, a small hint of laughter.

It was faint, but evident as how radiant the glow of her emerald eyes.

 

It melted Botan's core to see the befriended stranger convey enjoyment, even a shred of happiness.

 

`After all you've been through Tari,' Botan thought to herself as her lavender eyes blazed in amazement of how beaming her acquaintance appeared to be, `I hope you can find something here that will make you happy. I hope you find peace here. I hope you will be okay from now on.'

 

~.:.~.:.~

“You were the two that broke into the Tower…and brought me here.” Tari directed humbly toward Hiei and Kurama as they sat to the right of her.

“It was a pleasure. I am merely glad that we could help.” Kurama responded with a bright, joyful grin.

 

“Words cannot touch how indebted I am to you, and if that means nothing as of now, I assure that I will do all in my authority to reimburse you both.”

 

“Hn, don't waste your time. You were just another assignment.” Hiei grimaced enigmatically.

 

Kurama nudged him in the ribs with his elbow.

She smiled weakly, staring attentively into her emptied, bruised palms.

 

“That, I recognise is true. But I just hope I will live up to be more than that. In any instance, you deserve my regards and remembrance throughout the ages. I merely want you to know how grateful I am to the two of you, no matter how meaningless my words may in fact be.”

 

“Don't sound so noble and prestigious,” Hiei snarled back savagely, his ruby eyes glaring in her bearing.

She looked upward, focusing her incandescent stare to his own malicious one.

 

The intensity of her gaze silenced him.

 

~

“Frankly Hiei, I'm disgusted with your behaviour. How dare you speak to her like that?”

 

“I owe her no respect.”

 

“Why do you hate her?”

 

“Don't tell me what my feelings toward that demon are, fox.”

 

“But why are you so rude?”

 

“What has she ever done for me, to earn anything more?”

 

Kurama sighed. “Hiei…”

“Don't preach to me, Kurama. There is no law stating that I had to be `kind' to her, and even if there was one in existence, I would most likely not abide by it.”

 

“I didn't think so. But, I don't know Hiei,” Kurama smiled jestingly, “I sort of got the impression you…like her.”

Hiei sneered, a jolt of malice pulsing between Kurama and himself.

 

“If you think that, then you are more of a fool than I thought you to be. Don't be an idiot, Kurama.” His words were forged into one, sincerely ill-omened assertion.

 

~

 

“It would be wise to just ignore Hiei,” Botan proclaimed sweetly, putting forward a large, succulent piece of fruit to Tari, “he's never been that easy to talk to.”

 

Tari smiled, rejecting the offer of the portion of food. “No thank you, Botan. I'm not…one for eating.” It took her a moment to refer back to the comment of Hiei.

Finally, she found words.

“Botan, one of the greater things I have learned over my existence, is that one must appreciate all life. No matter how peculiar they possibly may be, we must tolerate it, and try to find the light in it, and attempt brighten, and enhance it, so that it may soon give light to another life, showing it its way through the darkness.”

 

There was a distant, isolated and remote tint in her gaze as Botan's eyes tore into her immensely.

 

“That's beautiful…” She stammered, rather unsurely.

 

“That, I believe, is life, Botan.”

 

Quieten weighted upon them for a moment.

 

“That's the first time you've ever said my name, Tari.”

 

“And that is the first instance when you have ever stated my own, not in a question.”

~

“That damn fox. He has no idea what he speaks of.” Hiei snarled inside the bowels of his mind as he looked upward toward the indigo tapered skies, a milky coating of waxen stars seeming to taunt him as he glared into them.

 

“No matter what any of those fools think. I hate that weakling of a girl.”

A shadow of her faint laughter played inside the howls of the faint wind that twined through the gnarled twigs of the Sakura tree. The blossoms were birthing, slowly, at the rate of the coming spring. Fall was departing, and in its place, the sun would come.

~