InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fire in Ice ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc., of Inuyasha or Yu Yu Hakusho. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and not for profit.FIRE IN ICE

A/N: Thank you for all the reviews. I was surprised by the response to this story, I didn’t know there were that many HieiXSango fans out there. =)

Chapter Two

“Take five, dimwit. We got visitors.”

“Huh?” Yusuke barely saved himself from taking a header on the grass as the old priestess’s spiritual wall abruptly faded. “Damn it, you old witch! Ya cudda warned me!”

“Ha! Like you need any help falling on your face from me,” the grey-haired psychic snapped, before turning a raised brow on the glow of energy swirling across the grassy verge in front of the hill-top shrine.

“What the---”

“You need to work on sensing spiritual energy, dimwit. You suck.” Genkai glowered over her shoulder, arms crossing as she impatiently waited for the shadowy figures within that orb of light to solidify into the familiar members of Urameshi’s team. Botan’s energy was unmistakable, as were the aural signatures of Hiei and the human fox spirit, Kurama. The others, though...

“What’s with the petting zoo?” the elderly miko demanded, eying the ridiculous, bug-eyed amphibian who cowered behind Botan’s legs and the dead cat held in her arms.

“I’m so sorry for the intrusion, Genkai-sama, but---Yusuke!” Botan’s respectful bow turned into a wreath of smiles as she spotted the Spirit Detective.

“Hey, guys.” Yusuke raised a hand and then a brow when he spotted the girl in Hiei’s arms. “Stooping to abduction now, three eyes? What, the usual pick up lines ain’t working to get you the odd piece of ass?”

“You are a simple child, detective.” Hiei’s red eyes positively burned.

“Yusuke Urameshi!” Botan’s cheeks flushed with color as she used her best Mary Poppins’  voice to express her outrage. “That was hardly called for!”

“Trust the dimwit to stick his foot in it.” Genkai gave her pupil a sour look. “So, I take it this isn’t a social visit?”

“No, lady,” Kurama said. “It’s a long story---”

“Which in your polite way means, hurry up and let us inside.” Genkai smiled at the kitsune’s discomfiture. She liked twitting the younglings. “Well, come on, then. The day isn’t getting any younger, and Yusuke needs to get back to training.”

“Now wait a minute, Grandma!” Yusuke protested. “You can’t expect me to just---”

“Hell, yes, I can.” Genkai glared. “You wanna get strong enough to beat Toguro, you young snot? Because as you are right now, he’d kill your stupid ass with one hand tied behind his back.”

Yusuke grimaced. The old crone had a point, damn her.

“Better get your rear in gear, brat, if you wanna finish by supper-time. I expect five-hundred push ups and twenty miles before you see so much as a single grain of rice.”

“What!” Yusuke glared. “You’re a real sadist, you know that, Grandma?”

“Make that one-thousand push ups.” The priestess smiled sweetly, her worn face giving a hint of its former beauty, before turning away and snapping over her shoulder, “Well, are you just going to stand there looking stupid or come in? Damn kids!”

“Hn.” Hiei’s grin was pure malice for the sweat in store for Yusuke. Yusuke gave the short demon an impressive scowl before shrugging and dropping to the grass. His grouchy count accompanied them inside the dim shadows of the inner temple.

They crossed the main room, which was given over to the temple’s shrine, and followed the short, weathered figure as she took them to the tidy kitchen, where she collected some supplies and they left the amphibian with Genkai’s grim aside, “I don’t want him shitting on the carpet.”

“Come along, then. Might as well bring them both.” Her sour look didn’t fool any of them. Snicking the shoji screen back, the priestess indicated Hiei should lay his burden on the futon. “Open the window,” she told Kurama, “it’s stuffy. Haven’t had a reason to use this room in a while.”

Kurama did as ordered, and turned back, surprised by how carefully Hiei was laying the girl on the bed as Genkai peered at the small cat in Botan’s arms and grunted.

“Huh. A nekomata. Well, she’ll do for now. Just needs some sleep.” The old priestess turned a knowledgeable eye on the girl. “She, however…” The miko knelt across from Hiei on the other side of the futon, and busied herself checking the patient.

“Start talking,” she instructed as she went about her task, and Botan explained how they had found and freed the pair as she tenderly wrapped the little cat in a thick blanket and gently laid her at the foot of the bed.

“Here, Botan, help me get her out of this--”

“Armor,” Kurama supplied, and Genkai leveled a look at him.

“Think I don’t have eyes in my head, kit? I know what it is. Now, both of you boys get your asses out of here.” She matched scowls with Hiei. “Don’t even think about it, Sparky.”

“Hn.” The demon snapped to his feet and stalked out, Kurama gingerly following. He eyed the deadpan expression on the shorter demon’s face as he took a cross-armed stance outside the door, noting the fierce glitter in his crimson eyes. Hiding a smile, Kurama casually leaned against the other wall to wait.


The door eventually slid open to reveal Botan, her expression peculiar as she stared down at all the weapons held in her arms. “Here,” she pushed them on Kurama, “take these---somewhere. Genkai says, ‘Just in case.’”

At least one of them was being sensible enough to take precautions. Not that Kurama didn’t pity the girl, but they didn’t know enough of her story or her intentions. But what was done was done, and he wouldn’t have wanted to see her frozen still. He was just naturally more cautious than his friends, and often worried over the consequences their oft-times brash actions could bring. Normally, Yusuke and Hiei would share his suspicions, but the detective, surprisingly, was rather nonchalant about Hiei’s impetuousness. Perhaps it was because the girl hardly seemed intimidating, lying so pale and lost under the thick pile of blankets Genkai had spread over her to stave off a chill or fever as she recovered from her ordeal.

She was rather easy on the eyes---as Yusuke put it in much crasser terms---and that certainly didn’t hurt in winning the detective’s sympathy. Delicate of form and feature, she hardly seemed capable of lifting that giant boomerang Kurama had absently propped outside. Fetching it, the fox mulled over the quandary the strange girl represented as he locked it up with her other weapons inside Genkai’s dojo. There were certainly a lot of them, and he wondered how she had hid so many knives and stars and bombs about her person. But the weapons themselves only confirmed his suspicions that this girl came from the Warring States Era. Blades of such quality workmanship could not lie.

Hearing the distinctive scrape of  metal on wood, he looked over to see Hiei had unsheathed the taijiya’s sword to stare critically at the blade. The apparition idly tested the edge with a thumb, and it drew blood. Feeling eyes on him, the demon suddenly looked up and met the kitsune’s measuring gaze.

“Hn.” The demon sheathed the sword with a snap, and carefully laid it on the shelf above the scattered collection of the girl’s other weapons. He absently licked the blood from his thumb, the slight wound already starting to heal.

“You seem a little…preoccupied…with the girl, Hiei,” Kurama cautiously probed.

“And you seem preoccupied by that fact, fox,” came the quick snap of his reply. The shorter demon turned to face him fully, his piercing, red eyes narrowed. “Too much so.”

“Well, I cannot help but note that you seem rather…attentive.” Kurama couldn’t help but tease.

“That’s hardly your concern, Kurama,” came the chilling rejoinder as Hiei deliberately turned away. Kurama raised a thin brow, hardly intimidated by the lethal menace fairly seething off of the short figure. But any further questions were forestalled by Hiei’s abrupt disappearance as he used his inhuman speed to leave the fox alone inside the room.

“Interesting,” Kurama said, his green eyes thoughtful.


Padding down the dim hallway, Yusuke fought back a yawn as he distractedly peered inside the girl’s room. Perhaps it was the convenient set of red headlamps faintly glowing deep inside the shadows that stopped him, or perhaps it was the surprise that Hiei had strangely taken up residence on the window sill. Arrested by the fact, the Spirit Detective frankly stopped and stared at his friend, who finally left off pretending to brood out the window and met his rampant curiosity with a glare.

“What is it you want, detective?” The bite in the fire apparition’s voice hardly deterred the stubborn youth.

“Since when do you feel the need to baby-sit sick humans?” Yusuke bluntly demanded.

The lip curled. “You’re a fool.”

Yusuke smirked and casually propped one shoulder against the door-frame. “Really? Than why is it, three eyes, you’ve decided to park your carcass on that particular window?”

“Maybe because it’s the one place he thought he could escape your stupid mouth,” Genkai dryly interrupted, absently pushing him out of her way as she came to check on her patient.

“What is it with demons and darkness?” she grumbled, flipping on the switch and making both boys wince at the sudden flood of light. Ignoring them, the short priestess sunk to her knees beside the futon and rested one palm on the girl’s forehead.

A tiny head popped up from the bundle of blankets at the foot of the futon, black ears flicking up. A pair of crimson eyes blinked into focus and then a sudden, menacing growl erupted as the little cat took in the strangers around her. She bared her sharp teeth, her back stiffening.

“Grandma!” Yusuke darted forward to protect his mentor, but the old priestess held up a wrinkled hand as she scowled at the cat.

“Stop that,” she ordered. “We’re here to help.”

The cat stared at the psychic, who calmly held the scarlet scrutiny for a long moment, before the little cat finally subsided. She meowed in a way that somehow conveyed cautious question, and the priestess smiled faintly.

“Yes, I’m a healer. I’m Genkai, and that idiot over there is Yusuke, and that idiot over there is Hiei.”

The wide eyes regarded both boys with deep suspicion, the creamy tails twitching indecisively.

“They’re friends, even if they are idiots,” Genkai reassured the kitten, who visibly relaxed when Yusuke scowled.

“Gee, thanks, Grandma.”

The whiskers twitched, and he could have sworn the little cat was laughing at him, for the look in her red eyes was amused. She neatly wrapped her tails around her front paws as she sank back on her haunches.

“Speak for yourself, detective,” Hiei growled, and the cat gave him a piercing look. The staring contest that followed between the two made Yusuke raise a dark brow in question.

“Intimidated, three eyes?”

“You’re a fool, detective.” Hiei finally gave off staring at the cat to regard him with chilling disdain. “I’m certain Kirara appreciates the limitations of your human intelligence.”

“Kirara?” Yusuke blinked.

“That’s your name?” Genkai asked. The little cat meowed and suffered the elderly woman to scratch behind her ears. She raised a paw and patted the unconscious girl beside her, her demand imperious and unmistakable.

“She’ll be all right,” the old priestess reassured her. “It’s more the healing spell I put her under to stave off fever than true exhaustion. She’ll awake in the morning, I assure you.”

The little cat mewed worriedly, and huddled beside the unconscious girl, her red eyes never moving from the inert figure.


“You’ll stay?”

Hiei turned to regard the gruff priestess with a cool look.

Genkai smirked. “I take that as a yes.”

Expecting---and receiving---no reply, she merely patted the little neko before getting stiffly to her feet. Hiei watched the grey-haired psychic with a narrow eye. Genkai often pretended to more vigor than she really had. The day had been long for the old woman. Training a stubborn hothead like the detective would take a lot out of anyone, let alone casting healing magics.

“Fetch me if there’s need,” she said, and flipped the light off on her way out, knowing Hiei had no need of it.

“Hn.” He turned his attention back out the window, but knew immediately when the little nekomata jumped down from the futon and padded over to him. Mouth twisting, he stared down at her. She was rather repugnantly cute; tiny, big-eyed and two-tailed as she was. Not a bad tactic, actually, for a minor demon. Youkai often used pretty subterfuge to hide their true natures, knowing idiot humans would always fall for it.

She eschewed permission, just jumped up on the sill to sit facing him, her twin tails curling neatly around her black paws. Her eyes glowed as bloody as his, and they stared at each other for a long moment before she meowed and deliberately closed her eyes, inviting him to open up his mind.

Hiei debated---he wasn’t ever comfortable with just letting anyone inside his head, but it would be easier to communicate telepathically with the little youkai than in half-understood cat growls. Sighing for the necessity, he closed his eyes as well, and focused with the Jagan. A light green shimmer formed beneath the white bandana he kept the third eye hidden behind. He cautiously let down his mental barriers, and was surprised by the orderly warmth of the little youkai’s mind.

This cat was young, relatively, but had an old soul, one whose knowledge was passed down in fractured memories. Which might explain why he saw such strange images as a sad-eyed priestess dressed in ancient armor, and the next a statue of that same priestess locked in battle with a fierce dragon, shadowed in darkness inside a dusty cave. Or the memory of a young man bowing over another sad-eyed priestess, giving her some bauble that shone with a pure light. He saw that same man, his features roughened by age and battle, flanked by an earnest-eyed girl and a nervous little boy.

The next was a picture of the girl and boy much older, though both still so earnest and determined as they set off with others of their village to slay a demon at a lord’s behest. It was a ploy---which was uncovered as the village itself was attacked by demons en masse for certain shards they possessed, though Hiei did not understand their value. The village was decimated, the people slaughtered, the fire cat’s efforts to defend them in vain as she was trapped under an exploding house. Strangers came, a monk and a half-demon and a girl who made Hiei start, for her school clothes were unmistakably modern. He looked with more care as the unconscious girl returned, this time alone.

It was confusing after that, for first the taijiya fought the half-dog, and then they both fought a tentacled puppet. It was hard to relay more information with such brief snapshots of the cat’s memory flowing one into the other. Hiei only knew that for some reason the taijiya had decided to join the strange group, who all seemed focused on collecting more of the crystal fragments and killing some pathetic, baboon-cloaked half-demon.

More poignant---at least, from the cat’s perspective---was the burial of everyone they had known, all the people from youngest child to oldest grandfather who had once lived in the slayer village. Such slaughter was distasteful, even to Hiei’s jaded sense of honor, and entirely unnecessary, if the shards had been what the mindless rabble had truly been after. But such mindless, raging beasts in such overwhelming numbers as were unleashed on the unsuspecting village would not have settled for anything less than the carnage they wrought.

And wrought the girl was, for although she didn’t have the bodies, it was clear all those who had accompanied her to the lord’s castle---including the rough-faced older man who presumably was her father and the young boy who must be her brother---were dead. And she mourned, even as her eyes narrowed in hate for the pathetic baboon who had dealt the blow. Her earnestness was turned to resolution, and although they did not face the baboon again, thus thwarting perhaps her revenge, they had faced other demons, until finally caught by the icy blast of a serpent chasing yet another Jewel shard.

The serpents were yin and yang, fire and ice, and their jyaki was overwhelming to the misfit band. Strengthened by the jewel shards the twin serpents possessed, the half-demon tried to summon some kind of attack with his giant sword to distract the fire serpent as the slayer turned her attention on the ice. From the neko’s vantage, it was a strange battle of coiling bodies, red as molten lava and metallic silver-white, mixed with the half-caught images of the half-dog in red with silver-white hair even as the neko launched herself into the sky, the slayer upon her back. Hiei experienced virtual vertigo as the world rose to a dizzying height, the white serpent’s eyes glittering icy menace as the girl in modern clothes called out a warning.

And then the world was cold and ice and a feeble effort to stave off what the little youkai knew was the end…

Hiei reopened his eyes as the neko blinked tiredly, for the effort to cast such images inside his mind had cost her. Rather than asking permission, the little neko summarily climbed into his lap, instinctively seeking his warmth. Her reassuring purr and the glowing amusement in her red eyes mocked him as Hiei stared down at her in a mix of annoyance and surprise. He wondered how the youkai could trust him so readily, and wondered uneasily what she had caught inside his own mind, for the link could go both ways. He didn’t like the thought, and scowled down at the kitten, who only yawned and idly kneaded his coat before finally closing her eyes as she curled herself into a neat little ball.

“Hn.” Staring out the window, he brooded the significance of what he had seen. The room grew quiet as the night grew long, and the little neko’s light purrs increased as he tentatively stroked her, disquieting thoughts turned inward.


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