InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Heart Within ❯ Chapter Nine ( Chapter 10 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: YoukaiFate 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 09.07.2008 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.9K | Visits: 690 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 09.07.2008 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.9K | Visits: 690 | Status: Completed
THE HEART WITHIN
Summary: She has carried vengeance in her shadowed heart for 500 years, sacrificing her self for that dream. Now, Sango just might get her chance… (IY/YYH crossover)
A/N: Thank you again for the continued encouragement. (Fate)
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH BLACK AND THE THREE KINGS SAGA!
WORD DEFINITIONS
Nekomata - fire-cat, Kirara
Raspberry - when someone sticks their tongue out and blows
Chapter Nine
Yusuke regarded the strangled pair of dead birds vined together on the rock where he had left them with distinct distaste.
“Ugh.”
Hiei, the little bastard, only smirked.
“I really gotta clean these things?”
“If you want to. You can eat raw feathers for all I care, Detective.” Hiei was in his usual indolent posture, leaning against the rocks above where their abandoned breakfast lay.
“This just sucks.” Yusuke glared down at the demonic birds with repugnance. They, of course, each had three eyes and a wicked looking beak to go with their plump feathers and extra-long legs. Even the chickens in Makai were downright creepy.
“I can clean and cook them, if you gather kindling for a fire.”
Yusuke turned to the heaven-sent girl, who only looked at him as he beamed at her. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” She looked amused, and then startled, as he lunged forward and hugged her, hard.
“Thank God you’re here, Anei!”
“What are you---!” She colored up like a tomato, pushing him off her with a hard enough shove that it sent him sprawling back on his ass, neatly knocking his head against an inconvenient protrusion of stone.
“Oops!” Yusuke was totally unrepentant as he rubbed the back of his shaggy black head and grinned up at her. “Forgot about the whole ‘touch me not’ thing. Sorry.”
“You’re treading on thin ice, Detective,” Hiei warned, though his red eyes were resting on Kurama and not on the girl.
The slayer just gave him a scathing glare as she palmed a knife. The former Spirit Detective was entirely too grabby, in her opinion.
Yusuke’s grin died, seeing the glittering edge to the sharp weapon, but the taiji-ya only bent to pick up the pair of dead birds, one of whose heads lolled. Man, was that disturbing. He didn’t like his soon-to-be-breakfast staring back at him with its tongue protruding, as if giving him the raspberry.
Yusuke scowled.
“I think it would be best if you go and gather some firewood, Yusuke.” Kurama’s distinctly chilly voice broke into the detective’s preoccupation and Yusuke grinned again, recalling the expression in the fox’s green eyes when he hugged the slayer.
Totally worth it.
“Okay.” He was in an agreeable mood and went off with a cheesy, knowing smile to go find some damn wood. It wasn’t hard, given they were in the middle of a damn forest. He was quick about it, and made two trips with a little more grumbling on the second go when Kurama indicated he hadn’t brought enough on the first. But the fox had a small fire going by the time he returned, a weird kind of pot starting to boil as the girl reappeared with two stripped bodies who resembled the whole chickens he was more used to buying at a grocery store. He set himself down on a convenient rock somewhat below Hiei’s perch as he watched the taiji-ya expertly rig a type of tripod arrangement over the fire to cook the speared birds.
He was a little dubious, thinking burned chicken slung over an open campfire couldn’t be all that great without any salt, but Kurama had been busy. His long fingers had stripped away the outer layers of some of the leafier plants he had gathered in his reed-woven basket earlier that morning. The two would-be gourmets rubbed and stuffed some of the herbs into the birds before stringing them up to cook. Yusuke soon grew bored watching them and flopped back to stare up at the strange sky as he rubbed his aching stomach. This killing and cooking your own shit sure took a long time. By the time those stupid birds were done, it’d be lunchtime!
“Tea’s steeped, if you want a drink.” He felt the fox looming above him and cracked open an eye, having closed them out of sheer boredom. Cloud-gazing wasn’t exactly his thing, either.
“Tea.” Yusuke’s disgust was evident, but he took the pot, which was some weird collapsible thing made out of metal.
“You can thank Anei for the pot. She came prepared, as she so modestly put it.”
“Huh.” Yusuke blew on the contents before gingerly taking a sip. The pot wasn’t
hot, the fox having allowed it to cool before offering it to his friends as a make-do mug. The drink was sharply bitter, but it did wake him up pretty thoroughly.
“Wow. That sure tastes like shit but it’s not half-bad.”
Kurama’s mouth quirked. He was at his driest when he replied, “Thank you, Yusuke.”
Wiping his chin with the back of his hand, Yusuke grinned. “So, I’m forgiven?”
The green eyes slightly darkened, but the wily fox only asked in a mild, unaffected voice, “Is there a reason for you to be forgiven?”
Yusuke wasn’t buying Kurama’s act. He was a lot more perceptive than others often gave him credit for. He smirked, willing to play along---for now. “Not particularly.”
“Heh.” Kurama turned to glance up at the fire demon, who was watching them with a rather cool expression. “Tea, Hiei?”
Neatly jumping off his rock from a sitting position to land in a standing one right beside them, Hiei took the proffered pot and drank his fill. His gaze followed Kurama’s, who couldn’t quite keep his eyes from lingering on the girl, who was below them, all but oblivious of their regard as she tended to the fire. The aroma of roasted chicken was making Yusuke drool and he wondered irritably how much longer it would be.
“Gotta love a girl who can cook.” He snickered as the two demons looked back at him. Teasing them sure took his mind off his growlly stomach.
“You really are a child, Detective.” Hiei handed the pot back to Kurama before leaping back up to his abandoned perch.
“What?” Yusuke demanded, all innocence, and not fooling anyone with it.
Kurama just looked at him.
Yusuke felt a bead of sweat suddenly forming on his right temple.
“Food’s ready!” Anei called, interrupting them.
“Thank God!” Yusuke shouted, leaping away from the kitsune. Damn, that had been close!
She could hear the others slightly beyond and to the left of her. She glanced at them and saw Yusuke sucking the meat off a leg bone with a slurp, using his wrist to scruff at the grease on his chin and licking his fingers as he negligently flung the bone over his shoulder. Hiei made some derisive comment she couldn’t hear and the ex-detective only laughed as he reached for another piece. Even Kurama was tucking into his food, though with far more neatness than the other two. Hiei had condescended enough to accept some of the chicken, and his portion had disappeared with the same speed with which he did everything, apparently.
This place was so strange and the people she now found herself with so different than what she could have ever expected. She felt restless, with the turmoil of her thoughts in regards to them, and more than a little pensive. She was so used to being alone---it was strange how easy she felt in their company, now that she could no longer hold a grudge against the fire demon. It was hard to, after he had tickled her, of all things. Not to mention that instant when she had thought that he just might---she cut the thought off quickly, flushing slightly as she looked at him out of the corner of her eyes.
Spiky-haired and red-eyed, he could scarcely pass for human. Although he did not sport the pointy ears or claws most demons favored in their human guises, there was the rather obvious presence of his Jagan eye, which stared unblinking from the middle of his forehead, the iris a rather pretty shade of lavender. He had never bothered replacing the white bandana he normally wore to cover it, and his thick black bangs curled on either side. There was a frosting of white edging the upper bangs which spiked above the tangle of his lower bangs, and his hair stood up a good six inches in almost a candle’s flame-like silhouette. He was wrapped in the black cloak-like coat that he used as an outer garment, not having a shirt underneath, though the white scarf-like collar at the top seemed like it could be one. She was curious about the white bandage he kept wrapped over his right arm, from knuckle to bulging bicep, but it might only be some type of arm-guard for his sword, which he was particularly adept at using.
He was not tall, but he was well-built. Even wrapped in the ambiguity of his black cloak, he exuded a sense of power and strength. Not demon strength, as in aura or energy---though he had that in plenty---but there was that assuredness about him of a warrior who knew well his own physical limits. It was something worn unconsciously, and probably something a man would never detect, even in another. But she was a warrior trained in an era where women were not, and she had picked up on certain things, a defense for her lighter strength by judging others---her opponents, at least---quickly for physical prowess.
Yes, Hiei was strong. He was also quick. Very quick. Even her own heightened speed and agility, granted by Kagura’s heart, were nothing to his, and she didn’t like that fact.
He was not unhandsome---typical for a demon who could affect a more human form than his natural one. Her father had always warned her that the most dangerous demons were ones who could assume the guise of a man. Funny how the youkai who reviled humans so much were always striving to look more like them. She had never understood that. Some of the most beautiful beings she had ever seen had been but youkai putting on a dreamy face, masking their true selves with the enviable beauty they could wrap themselves in.
Hiei did not have the unearthly beauty Kurama had had in his Youko form---not that Kurama was any less beautiful in his human form, which seemed more earthy than the ethereal, white-haired god to masculinity he had appeared to be the first time she had seen him. Funny, it had been easier to dismiss Youko from her thoughts than it was proving with his more human counterpart. The other was almost too perfect, as most demons were, and she had known many of them in her long life. They became, after a time, like a fine statue one could admire but not fancy. Kurama as he was in his human form was so much more approachable---it disturbed her how much more approachable.
She was silly to even be thinking of such things. Didn’t she have so much more she should be thinking about? Like Naraku? And Kohaku? And how she might go about killing one and freeing the other? But still she watched the three young men out of the corner of her eye even as she pretended not to. There was an easy familiarity between the three of them that was almost enviable. She missed that. It was something she had had with her friends, back when she was still human and they were still chasing the Jewel shards across Japan. Life had been so uncomplicated then…
She would depress herself with such thoughts. Dispiritedly picking at her plate, Sango forced herself to eat, knowing she needed the nourishment. Her energy was recovering, but still passing out last night and sleeping like the dead had not restored it fully. That was another disturbing revelation---that she had used so much of it that she had all but dropped unconscious at the first chance she could.
Her demonic energy was not something she used all that frequently---rather, she preferred to use the benefits it gave her of buoyancy and revitalization, quick healing and outer sensing. Her own small gift of spiritual sensing---which had served her well as a taiji-ya to detect the presence of demons, if they were strong enough for her to detect---had somehow bonded with her demon aura, which enhanced her own small, natural ability. She had spent some time exploring the limits of it, developing the senses to feel out the presence and proximity of youkai energy around her. Honed to a fine tool under the tutelage of a passing sage she had met sometime in the late 1600’s, she had felt she had known the limits of her power, but it seemed she had overstepped her small knowledge and now ranged into un-chartered territory.
It might even be the jyaki that existed everywhere in this place that was forcing her to use more of her own energy than she could realize. She didn’t know, and didn’t like that fact one bit, but could hardly ask without revealing just how little she did.
That was all mere speculation, really, and did not have any true bearing on what was really bothering her---which was her odd reaction to the three men who sat just beyond her, chatting and laughing like the best of friends that they were. She felt trust when she shouldn’t, felt a part of them when she daren’t, and felt a haunting sense of attraction, especially to two of them, when she didn’t need the foolish complication of it. Granted, all three were healthy young men in their prime, but she had been around many of those, and they hadn’t affected her like this.
Sango’s fingers tensed until the knuckles were white as her hands curled into fists on either side of her. This was exactly why she had always traveled her road alone. Because the weakness of her spirit---as had the weakness of her flesh in the past---would prove her undoing. What was she doing? She should be focused on only one thing---and that was Naraku. Only Naraku---and only her brother. For even as she sat here ogling three demons, he was trapped out there, somewhere, under Naraku’s control, as he had been for five hundred years.
*Five hundred years.*
And for that same time, she had been too weak, always too weak, to free him and see an end to it. And now---now she was stuck here, waiting on her own weak body to heal itself, its energy, as she was stuck here waiting on them to heal theirs, for she knew, she knew, that she couldn’t find Naraku on her own. No, she needed them, for she was too weak to do it on her own.
How pathetic! But that was the way it had always been---she was the one always too weak. Too weak to save her family and her village. Too weak to prevent Naraku from taking her brother and using him as a puppet to pull at the very strings of her anguished heart for his own malicious amusement. Too weak to stop the foul oni, and too weak to save poor Kohaku, or to even save herself, there in the end, during that final battle, when both her nekomata and her beloved houshi had sacrificed themselves to save her from her own weakness.
She had watched them both die in agony and in pain, too weak to stop them or prevent the terrible inevitability of it as the scene unfolded in ponderous detail right before her very eyes. Even the heart-wrenched scream that had been ripped out of her in denial as they had both disappeared in a torrential storm of wind-raised blood and fire had only come out as the weakest whisper of sound as the dark hanyou’s tentacles had tightened around her, preventing even a deeper breath to shriek her stunned grief to the world…
And then her weak body had betrayed her, her breath grown ragged until she had blacked out from the lack of air, to be tossed aside by the sneering hanyou as too pathetic to even bother and kill, even as he had redirected his attention on her two remaining friends. She had come to only long enough to see Kagome struck down even as her arrow and Inuyasha’s Wind Scar had shredded the stunned oni to pieces. Only Naraku’s fuchsia globe of protection had swept up to protect him at the last minute as Inuyasha pulled the limp, white body of his beloved into his arms, tears coursing down his cheeks as he had stumbled to the well, the nearly completed Shikon no Tama clenched in Kagome’s fist by the broken chain from around Naraku‘s neck.
Crawling to her knees, Sango had been too weak to prevent Naraku from sweeping up her brother‘s body, her outstretched hands only holding empty air as he laughed madly, his eyes glinting bloodily as he disappeared into the exploding Void caused by Miroku’s death. She had been left there, alone, on the bloody battlefield of the dark hanyou’s abandoned castle, which had suddenly appeared right in the middle of Inuyasha’s woods, crushing the trees aside like so many matchsticks as it abruptly materialized amidst them.
And even as she watched, the castle had started to fade, and she had lurched to her feet, stumbling inside, desperately hoping that it would take her to wherever her brother and Naraku had disappeared to. But the abandoned castle had only rematerialized in its original place---the place where it had all begun, three years before. The place where her father had died at her brother’s hands, and her weakness had allowed poor Kohaku to be taken from her to be used as the dark oni’s tool.
She had staggered out of the castle, the vertigo that had accompanied the abrupt transition from Inuyasha’s wood to Lord Kagewaki’s lands having left her dizzy and stumbling. She had fallen to the ground, the ineffectual tears trailing down her cheeks as she realized that both her brother and the evil hanyou were past her reach, for the only way the haunted castle would return to its origins would be if Naraku were no longer in this world to anchor it to his will. She had pounded her fists into the dirt, her screams of loss and frustration and thwarted anger at being denied again bouncing and echoing off of the brooding stone walls around her until her throat was raw and her eyes dry and burning from the tears that could no longer fall.
She had sat there on her knees, her fingers curling into the ashy clay, and could only heave dry sobs that slowly quieted to stillness as her weak body betrayed her unspeakable sorrow with utter exhaustion. It was then that she realized, with dawning horror, that she was sitting on the very place that she had once been buried, together with her arrow-pierced brother, by the young Lord’s men. She had awoken to soiled darkness and the smell of rotting flesh. The icy terror of being buried alive had forced her to ignore the pain of her wounds to claw herself free, gasping for breath as she finally emerged from the heavy grip of the earth. She was determined to live, and to avenge herself and her family.
But she knew how useless a vow that was, if Naraku had fled to the demon realm, as she suspected with the castle reappearing solid once more on its original foundations. She knew she could not survive for long in Makai, as a human, but she thought that maybe she could survive for just long enough to see it done and finished. She wished for nothing else, then. Not life---for how could she live it, without Miroku and Kirara? And certainly not peace---for how could she ever have that, either, knowing how much she had failed them? She just wished for closure---and the chance to make right her family and friends’ senseless deaths.
She had staggered to her feet, her wobbly legs barely supporting her as she lurched back inside the castle, hoping to find some way to follow her brother and the loathsome hanyou to wherever they had fled. The distant thought that Naraku had had many demonic artifacts and tools that they had never seen, one of which might even prove useful to her cause, had spurred her on. That was when she had stumbled across the one thing she had not thought of---Kagura’s heart. And it had come to her, the sudden thought, that here was her chance, if she dared to take it and to use it, to ensure that she would not fail again.
But even Kagura’s heart had not proved enough to overcome her own weakness. She had sacrificed her family’s honor in order to receive the bare chance to see an end to it all, accepting a despised demon’s heart to supplant her own and knowing full well she was giving up her very humanity by the doing. And still she had proven too weak, even with the aid of Kagura’s heart, to cross the barrier between the human and demon worlds. She had seen centuries pass, fighting her way through the anger and bitterness and long denial of a revenge grown old and sour for the years it took to see it realized. And now that she had it in her grasp, now that it was finally within reach---now her very own weak and baser emotions were playing with her, proving her weak once more, even in fortitude.
The glowing red eyes of the despised baboon danced before her churning thoughts with a mocking laugh. It mocked her despair, and the knowledge of her weakness, and the ever-ready rage built, answering the memory of that contemptuous laugh as the sardonic smile beneath the mask of the white monkey curved across the despised hanyou’s face in her mind’s eye. The rage was always there, just seething beneath the surface, and she fought it, silently, only her narrowed eyes and her fisted hands and the slight trembling of her shoulders telling of the silent battle within.
The darkness and rage lay ever-seething inside her, and she fought the ugly bitterness down as her impatience warred with her dwindling sense of reality. She needed to release it somehow---somehow where she wouldn’t betray the rage that hovered just inside her. It had taken her over before, this rage, born from her own impotence and weakness. Her chest burned, her heart---no, not her heart, it was Kagura’s heart---beating harder inside her chest. She knew from the past that the faint, spider-like scar that lay across her skin and between her upper breasts would be darkening into purple-black lines, glowing slightly as if Naraku’s madness seethed within her own boiling blood.
She had rejected it, before, this rage. She could again. There had been too many other times when it had won, and she had been all but mindless with the vengeful wrath that filled her until it boiled over, only retreating when she had let the blood-fever wear off in the aftermath of battle. It took death---bloody death dealt by her own bloody hands on youkai flesh---to release it, but there were other ways, if she caught it soon enough. She had lived this way for untold centuries, and she knew with bitter awareness that it was only one price of many she had paid for the despised privilege of having a youkai‘s heart buried inside her chest.
She was on her feet, drawn sword in hand, and vanishing down the rock-strewn hill and out among the trees from one moment to the next, her lips white and her shadowed gaze chilling even as she left the others to gape as her abrupt disappearance.
“Hiei?” Kurama glanced at the demon, who scowled.
“Don’t tell me, Kurama, you didn’t feel her aura building. It’s not surprising she’s so impatient, if what you tell me is true. She’s angry, but she is just going into the woods to work it off.”
“The suddenness of it doesn’t surprise you?”
“No.” The demon folded his arms across his chest, seemingly with no intention of moving from his chosen seat as Yusuke glanced from one to the other in confusion. “She has no true control over her demonic energy, not consciously. It’s bound to spring forth now and again.”
“Couldn’t that be dangerous?”
“Not for her.” Hiei shrugged.
“Are you certain of that?”
“No.” The red eyes met the fox’s sharp gaze with bland indifference.
Kurama’s fists tightened and he abruptly stood up.
Yusuke, not entirely sure what was going on, was still game for bouncing off this damn rock and finding out just what, exactly, had his red-haired friend so upset. Tossing his chicken negligently over one shoulder, he stood up as well. “I don’t know what kind of wild hair that chick just got up her ass, but if you’re so worried, Kurama, than I’m going with you.”
“Hn.” Hiei looked distinctly displeased. “I already told you, fox, it’s nothing for you to concern yourself with. She’s just going to work off some of her excess energy.”
“Wait a minute---I thought the whole object of us lazing around this damn cave was for us to regain our energy,” Yusuke growled, hands on his hips.
“It is,” Hiei growled back, look impatient. “But considering she over-used her jyaki---what little she allows herself to admit to having---last night, and the lack of conscious control she has over her demonic aura, I’m not surprised by the backlash of energy spilling over her control as she regains it.“
“Huh?” Yusuke didn’t quite get it.
“It’s like a cup overfilling, Yusuke,” Kurama explained, his green eyes boring into the fire demon’s bland gaze. “She has no control over her own aura---for some reason she has chosen to reject it. She poured the cup of her energy out last night, and in Makai, it’s like she’s turned a shower on full force instead of using the tap to fill it back up. She has no control over the strength of her returning energy, and needs must use it or be overwhelmed by it.”
“Okay, I get it, but that still doesn’t explain why she just took the fuck off without saying a word to any of us.”
“Please, Detective. A child could figure that out. She was suddenly overwhelmed with it, and only knows how to release her demon energy through physical means. She’s going off on her own to expend it. There’s no need for us to involve ourselves.”
“Truly?” Kurama demanded, his gaze challenging for some reason. “You don’t think, Hiei, that your little near-fight earlier this morning in the unicorns’ valley didn’t trigger something?”
“Hmph.”
“Her jyaki was strong enough then to bring the entire herd’s wrath down on your heads, and you don’t think that now, only a few hours later, that it isn’t stronger?”
“She’s not your concern, fox.”
“Woah.” Yusuke shied back from the sudden darkening in Kurama’s eyes, hands held up in surprise.
“You show so little concern yourself, Hiei. I wonder if you are just frightened of the depth of your own feelings.”
The demon’s sword was out with a single scrape of steel against the sturdy wood of his scabbard. “You go too far, Kurama. Even for you.”
“Hey! Guys?” Yusuke stared from one to the other, taken aback by the sudden anger blooming between the two demons. The air was fairly sizzling between them and he was startled by the flat growl in Kurama’s voice as he replied.
“And you will never go far enough, my friend, and will never admit that it’s fear that drives your caution.”
“Damn you, fox---”
“HELLO! Can you guys get a fucking grip on yourselves? What the hell’s gotten into you two? Sheesh!” Yusuke jumped between them, fists held at the ready to start swinging. “Do I have to start knocking your heads together just to get some damn sense into them? What the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s like some weird type of vibe has just broken out to influence both of you! You never fight! Not you guys! What the fuck is going on?”
Both demons stiffened, and Kurama’s eyes widened. “Yusuke---what do you mean by influence?”
“Hell if I know, Kurama! I just know both of you are acting like a pair of crazy crackheads, ready to go and fight one another. What the hell’s gotten into to you two?”
Hiei abruptly sheathed his sword. “The Detective might have suddenly stumbled across something vital, in his own stupid, bumbling way.”
“Now wait just a minute, three-eyes!”
Ignoring him, Hiei stared at the fox, whose mind was churning as he bit his lip. Looking up, Kurama said, “Could her aura be powerful enough to influence the jyaki around her?”
“Yes.” Hiei sneered. “I’m surprised you couldn’t tell that for yourself.”
“Not with your depth or precision, my friend.” Kurama lightly touched the middle of his forehead, indicating the apparition’s third eye, which was glowing slightly. He had never bothered to re-cover it after the jyaki called up in the valley this morning had burned the bandana away. The fox’s voice was soft, and faintly chagrined. His look was both apologetic and challenging. Hiei knew it was the only apology he would get from the red-haired young man, though that was fair enough, as he had no intention of apologizing either. What was said was said, and could not be recalled. Not that it mattered all that much, anyway.
“So let me get this straight---” Yusuke frowned, fists back on his hips. “---what I’m hearing from you two is that Anei is boiling over with some kind of mad energy and that it’s influencing the very air around us? I shouldn’t be so surprised---she is a wind demon, or whatever.”
Hiei shot the detective a startled glance as Kurama hissed in his breath. “Than there really is no time to waste, Yusuke. For if she influenced us enough to feel anger towards each other, than think what she could do in the middle of a demon forest.”
Surprisingly, Yusuke’s brown eyes lit up as he punched a fist into the air. “Oh, hell, yeah!”
“Have you lost what little mind you have, Detective? Do you understand the consequences of unleashing that type of angry influence in the Forest of Fools? It was enough, before, to rouse an entire unicorn herd!” Hiei snarled, jumping down to confront the exuberant youth.
The ex-detective’s smile only grew wider. “Shit, yeah, I’m thinking ’bout it, three-eyes! I’ve been itching for a good rumble since that jerk ancestor of mine stole my fight with Sensui. Those stupid birds last night weren’t nothing but a warm-up and way to stretch my muscles. If that crazy assassin-chick can get a whole demon wood riled up, just think of the possibilities!”
“I am, Detective.” Hiei met Kurama’s eyes with a grim gaze. “I am.”
Summary: She has carried vengeance in her shadowed heart for 500 years, sacrificing her self for that dream. Now, Sango just might get her chance… (IY/YYH crossover)
A/N: Thank you again for the continued encouragement. (Fate)
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH BLACK AND THE THREE KINGS SAGA!
WORD DEFINITIONS
Nekomata - fire-cat, Kirara
Raspberry - when someone sticks their tongue out and blows
Chapter Nine
Yusuke regarded the strangled pair of dead birds vined together on the rock where he had left them with distinct distaste.
“Ugh.”
Hiei, the little bastard, only smirked.
“I really gotta clean these things?”
“If you want to. You can eat raw feathers for all I care, Detective.” Hiei was in his usual indolent posture, leaning against the rocks above where their abandoned breakfast lay.
“This just sucks.” Yusuke glared down at the demonic birds with repugnance. They, of course, each had three eyes and a wicked looking beak to go with their plump feathers and extra-long legs. Even the chickens in Makai were downright creepy.
“I can clean and cook them, if you gather kindling for a fire.”
Yusuke turned to the heaven-sent girl, who only looked at him as he beamed at her. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” She looked amused, and then startled, as he lunged forward and hugged her, hard.
“Thank God you’re here, Anei!”
“What are you---!” She colored up like a tomato, pushing him off her with a hard enough shove that it sent him sprawling back on his ass, neatly knocking his head against an inconvenient protrusion of stone.
“Oops!” Yusuke was totally unrepentant as he rubbed the back of his shaggy black head and grinned up at her. “Forgot about the whole ‘touch me not’ thing. Sorry.”
“You’re treading on thin ice, Detective,” Hiei warned, though his red eyes were resting on Kurama and not on the girl.
The slayer just gave him a scathing glare as she palmed a knife. The former Spirit Detective was entirely too grabby, in her opinion.
Yusuke’s grin died, seeing the glittering edge to the sharp weapon, but the taiji-ya only bent to pick up the pair of dead birds, one of whose heads lolled. Man, was that disturbing. He didn’t like his soon-to-be-breakfast staring back at him with its tongue protruding, as if giving him the raspberry.
Yusuke scowled.
“I think it would be best if you go and gather some firewood, Yusuke.” Kurama’s distinctly chilly voice broke into the detective’s preoccupation and Yusuke grinned again, recalling the expression in the fox’s green eyes when he hugged the slayer.
Totally worth it.
“Okay.” He was in an agreeable mood and went off with a cheesy, knowing smile to go find some damn wood. It wasn’t hard, given they were in the middle of a damn forest. He was quick about it, and made two trips with a little more grumbling on the second go when Kurama indicated he hadn’t brought enough on the first. But the fox had a small fire going by the time he returned, a weird kind of pot starting to boil as the girl reappeared with two stripped bodies who resembled the whole chickens he was more used to buying at a grocery store. He set himself down on a convenient rock somewhat below Hiei’s perch as he watched the taiji-ya expertly rig a type of tripod arrangement over the fire to cook the speared birds.
He was a little dubious, thinking burned chicken slung over an open campfire couldn’t be all that great without any salt, but Kurama had been busy. His long fingers had stripped away the outer layers of some of the leafier plants he had gathered in his reed-woven basket earlier that morning. The two would-be gourmets rubbed and stuffed some of the herbs into the birds before stringing them up to cook. Yusuke soon grew bored watching them and flopped back to stare up at the strange sky as he rubbed his aching stomach. This killing and cooking your own shit sure took a long time. By the time those stupid birds were done, it’d be lunchtime!
“Tea’s steeped, if you want a drink.” He felt the fox looming above him and cracked open an eye, having closed them out of sheer boredom. Cloud-gazing wasn’t exactly his thing, either.
“Tea.” Yusuke’s disgust was evident, but he took the pot, which was some weird collapsible thing made out of metal.
“You can thank Anei for the pot. She came prepared, as she so modestly put it.”
“Huh.” Yusuke blew on the contents before gingerly taking a sip. The pot wasn’t
hot, the fox having allowed it to cool before offering it to his friends as a make-do mug. The drink was sharply bitter, but it did wake him up pretty thoroughly.
“Wow. That sure tastes like shit but it’s not half-bad.”
Kurama’s mouth quirked. He was at his driest when he replied, “Thank you, Yusuke.”
Wiping his chin with the back of his hand, Yusuke grinned. “So, I’m forgiven?”
The green eyes slightly darkened, but the wily fox only asked in a mild, unaffected voice, “Is there a reason for you to be forgiven?”
Yusuke wasn’t buying Kurama’s act. He was a lot more perceptive than others often gave him credit for. He smirked, willing to play along---for now. “Not particularly.”
“Heh.” Kurama turned to glance up at the fire demon, who was watching them with a rather cool expression. “Tea, Hiei?”
Neatly jumping off his rock from a sitting position to land in a standing one right beside them, Hiei took the proffered pot and drank his fill. His gaze followed Kurama’s, who couldn’t quite keep his eyes from lingering on the girl, who was below them, all but oblivious of their regard as she tended to the fire. The aroma of roasted chicken was making Yusuke drool and he wondered irritably how much longer it would be.
“Gotta love a girl who can cook.” He snickered as the two demons looked back at him. Teasing them sure took his mind off his growlly stomach.
“You really are a child, Detective.” Hiei handed the pot back to Kurama before leaping back up to his abandoned perch.
“What?” Yusuke demanded, all innocence, and not fooling anyone with it.
Kurama just looked at him.
Yusuke felt a bead of sweat suddenly forming on his right temple.
“Food’s ready!” Anei called, interrupting them.
“Thank God!” Yusuke shouted, leaping away from the kitsune. Damn, that had been close!
ooOOooOOooOOoo
Sango picked at her chicken---or whatever it was---and stared off toward the forest, her mind preoccupied. She sat a little separated from the rest of them, her knees drawn up and the wide, bowl-shaped leaf Kurama had kindly provided as a plate for her share of the meal resting across them. Her back was nestled against the curve of the cave’s outer wall and she was using her folded cloak as padding for her bottom. She had stripped the dual knife-belts off her, intending to go through the leather and test for any weakness in the stretched, damp harness. She also needed to take a whet-stone to her blades and check for any nicks. Stabbing knives into tree trunks was never a good idea if one wanted to keep the keenness of the blade intact.She could hear the others slightly beyond and to the left of her. She glanced at them and saw Yusuke sucking the meat off a leg bone with a slurp, using his wrist to scruff at the grease on his chin and licking his fingers as he negligently flung the bone over his shoulder. Hiei made some derisive comment she couldn’t hear and the ex-detective only laughed as he reached for another piece. Even Kurama was tucking into his food, though with far more neatness than the other two. Hiei had condescended enough to accept some of the chicken, and his portion had disappeared with the same speed with which he did everything, apparently.
This place was so strange and the people she now found herself with so different than what she could have ever expected. She felt restless, with the turmoil of her thoughts in regards to them, and more than a little pensive. She was so used to being alone---it was strange how easy she felt in their company, now that she could no longer hold a grudge against the fire demon. It was hard to, after he had tickled her, of all things. Not to mention that instant when she had thought that he just might---she cut the thought off quickly, flushing slightly as she looked at him out of the corner of her eyes.
Spiky-haired and red-eyed, he could scarcely pass for human. Although he did not sport the pointy ears or claws most demons favored in their human guises, there was the rather obvious presence of his Jagan eye, which stared unblinking from the middle of his forehead, the iris a rather pretty shade of lavender. He had never bothered replacing the white bandana he normally wore to cover it, and his thick black bangs curled on either side. There was a frosting of white edging the upper bangs which spiked above the tangle of his lower bangs, and his hair stood up a good six inches in almost a candle’s flame-like silhouette. He was wrapped in the black cloak-like coat that he used as an outer garment, not having a shirt underneath, though the white scarf-like collar at the top seemed like it could be one. She was curious about the white bandage he kept wrapped over his right arm, from knuckle to bulging bicep, but it might only be some type of arm-guard for his sword, which he was particularly adept at using.
He was not tall, but he was well-built. Even wrapped in the ambiguity of his black cloak, he exuded a sense of power and strength. Not demon strength, as in aura or energy---though he had that in plenty---but there was that assuredness about him of a warrior who knew well his own physical limits. It was something worn unconsciously, and probably something a man would never detect, even in another. But she was a warrior trained in an era where women were not, and she had picked up on certain things, a defense for her lighter strength by judging others---her opponents, at least---quickly for physical prowess.
Yes, Hiei was strong. He was also quick. Very quick. Even her own heightened speed and agility, granted by Kagura’s heart, were nothing to his, and she didn’t like that fact.
He was not unhandsome---typical for a demon who could affect a more human form than his natural one. Her father had always warned her that the most dangerous demons were ones who could assume the guise of a man. Funny how the youkai who reviled humans so much were always striving to look more like them. She had never understood that. Some of the most beautiful beings she had ever seen had been but youkai putting on a dreamy face, masking their true selves with the enviable beauty they could wrap themselves in.
Hiei did not have the unearthly beauty Kurama had had in his Youko form---not that Kurama was any less beautiful in his human form, which seemed more earthy than the ethereal, white-haired god to masculinity he had appeared to be the first time she had seen him. Funny, it had been easier to dismiss Youko from her thoughts than it was proving with his more human counterpart. The other was almost too perfect, as most demons were, and she had known many of them in her long life. They became, after a time, like a fine statue one could admire but not fancy. Kurama as he was in his human form was so much more approachable---it disturbed her how much more approachable.
She was silly to even be thinking of such things. Didn’t she have so much more she should be thinking about? Like Naraku? And Kohaku? And how she might go about killing one and freeing the other? But still she watched the three young men out of the corner of her eye even as she pretended not to. There was an easy familiarity between the three of them that was almost enviable. She missed that. It was something she had had with her friends, back when she was still human and they were still chasing the Jewel shards across Japan. Life had been so uncomplicated then…
She would depress herself with such thoughts. Dispiritedly picking at her plate, Sango forced herself to eat, knowing she needed the nourishment. Her energy was recovering, but still passing out last night and sleeping like the dead had not restored it fully. That was another disturbing revelation---that she had used so much of it that she had all but dropped unconscious at the first chance she could.
Her demonic energy was not something she used all that frequently---rather, she preferred to use the benefits it gave her of buoyancy and revitalization, quick healing and outer sensing. Her own small gift of spiritual sensing---which had served her well as a taiji-ya to detect the presence of demons, if they were strong enough for her to detect---had somehow bonded with her demon aura, which enhanced her own small, natural ability. She had spent some time exploring the limits of it, developing the senses to feel out the presence and proximity of youkai energy around her. Honed to a fine tool under the tutelage of a passing sage she had met sometime in the late 1600’s, she had felt she had known the limits of her power, but it seemed she had overstepped her small knowledge and now ranged into un-chartered territory.
It might even be the jyaki that existed everywhere in this place that was forcing her to use more of her own energy than she could realize. She didn’t know, and didn’t like that fact one bit, but could hardly ask without revealing just how little she did.
That was all mere speculation, really, and did not have any true bearing on what was really bothering her---which was her odd reaction to the three men who sat just beyond her, chatting and laughing like the best of friends that they were. She felt trust when she shouldn’t, felt a part of them when she daren’t, and felt a haunting sense of attraction, especially to two of them, when she didn’t need the foolish complication of it. Granted, all three were healthy young men in their prime, but she had been around many of those, and they hadn’t affected her like this.
Sango’s fingers tensed until the knuckles were white as her hands curled into fists on either side of her. This was exactly why she had always traveled her road alone. Because the weakness of her spirit---as had the weakness of her flesh in the past---would prove her undoing. What was she doing? She should be focused on only one thing---and that was Naraku. Only Naraku---and only her brother. For even as she sat here ogling three demons, he was trapped out there, somewhere, under Naraku’s control, as he had been for five hundred years.
*Five hundred years.*
And for that same time, she had been too weak, always too weak, to free him and see an end to it. And now---now she was stuck here, waiting on her own weak body to heal itself, its energy, as she was stuck here waiting on them to heal theirs, for she knew, she knew, that she couldn’t find Naraku on her own. No, she needed them, for she was too weak to do it on her own.
How pathetic! But that was the way it had always been---she was the one always too weak. Too weak to save her family and her village. Too weak to prevent Naraku from taking her brother and using him as a puppet to pull at the very strings of her anguished heart for his own malicious amusement. Too weak to stop the foul oni, and too weak to save poor Kohaku, or to even save herself, there in the end, during that final battle, when both her nekomata and her beloved houshi had sacrificed themselves to save her from her own weakness.
She had watched them both die in agony and in pain, too weak to stop them or prevent the terrible inevitability of it as the scene unfolded in ponderous detail right before her very eyes. Even the heart-wrenched scream that had been ripped out of her in denial as they had both disappeared in a torrential storm of wind-raised blood and fire had only come out as the weakest whisper of sound as the dark hanyou’s tentacles had tightened around her, preventing even a deeper breath to shriek her stunned grief to the world…
And then her weak body had betrayed her, her breath grown ragged until she had blacked out from the lack of air, to be tossed aside by the sneering hanyou as too pathetic to even bother and kill, even as he had redirected his attention on her two remaining friends. She had come to only long enough to see Kagome struck down even as her arrow and Inuyasha’s Wind Scar had shredded the stunned oni to pieces. Only Naraku’s fuchsia globe of protection had swept up to protect him at the last minute as Inuyasha pulled the limp, white body of his beloved into his arms, tears coursing down his cheeks as he had stumbled to the well, the nearly completed Shikon no Tama clenched in Kagome’s fist by the broken chain from around Naraku‘s neck.
Crawling to her knees, Sango had been too weak to prevent Naraku from sweeping up her brother‘s body, her outstretched hands only holding empty air as he laughed madly, his eyes glinting bloodily as he disappeared into the exploding Void caused by Miroku’s death. She had been left there, alone, on the bloody battlefield of the dark hanyou’s abandoned castle, which had suddenly appeared right in the middle of Inuyasha’s woods, crushing the trees aside like so many matchsticks as it abruptly materialized amidst them.
And even as she watched, the castle had started to fade, and she had lurched to her feet, stumbling inside, desperately hoping that it would take her to wherever her brother and Naraku had disappeared to. But the abandoned castle had only rematerialized in its original place---the place where it had all begun, three years before. The place where her father had died at her brother’s hands, and her weakness had allowed poor Kohaku to be taken from her to be used as the dark oni’s tool.
She had staggered out of the castle, the vertigo that had accompanied the abrupt transition from Inuyasha’s wood to Lord Kagewaki’s lands having left her dizzy and stumbling. She had fallen to the ground, the ineffectual tears trailing down her cheeks as she realized that both her brother and the evil hanyou were past her reach, for the only way the haunted castle would return to its origins would be if Naraku were no longer in this world to anchor it to his will. She had pounded her fists into the dirt, her screams of loss and frustration and thwarted anger at being denied again bouncing and echoing off of the brooding stone walls around her until her throat was raw and her eyes dry and burning from the tears that could no longer fall.
She had sat there on her knees, her fingers curling into the ashy clay, and could only heave dry sobs that slowly quieted to stillness as her weak body betrayed her unspeakable sorrow with utter exhaustion. It was then that she realized, with dawning horror, that she was sitting on the very place that she had once been buried, together with her arrow-pierced brother, by the young Lord’s men. She had awoken to soiled darkness and the smell of rotting flesh. The icy terror of being buried alive had forced her to ignore the pain of her wounds to claw herself free, gasping for breath as she finally emerged from the heavy grip of the earth. She was determined to live, and to avenge herself and her family.
But she knew how useless a vow that was, if Naraku had fled to the demon realm, as she suspected with the castle reappearing solid once more on its original foundations. She knew she could not survive for long in Makai, as a human, but she thought that maybe she could survive for just long enough to see it done and finished. She wished for nothing else, then. Not life---for how could she live it, without Miroku and Kirara? And certainly not peace---for how could she ever have that, either, knowing how much she had failed them? She just wished for closure---and the chance to make right her family and friends’ senseless deaths.
She had staggered to her feet, her wobbly legs barely supporting her as she lurched back inside the castle, hoping to find some way to follow her brother and the loathsome hanyou to wherever they had fled. The distant thought that Naraku had had many demonic artifacts and tools that they had never seen, one of which might even prove useful to her cause, had spurred her on. That was when she had stumbled across the one thing she had not thought of---Kagura’s heart. And it had come to her, the sudden thought, that here was her chance, if she dared to take it and to use it, to ensure that she would not fail again.
But even Kagura’s heart had not proved enough to overcome her own weakness. She had sacrificed her family’s honor in order to receive the bare chance to see an end to it all, accepting a despised demon’s heart to supplant her own and knowing full well she was giving up her very humanity by the doing. And still she had proven too weak, even with the aid of Kagura’s heart, to cross the barrier between the human and demon worlds. She had seen centuries pass, fighting her way through the anger and bitterness and long denial of a revenge grown old and sour for the years it took to see it realized. And now that she had it in her grasp, now that it was finally within reach---now her very own weak and baser emotions were playing with her, proving her weak once more, even in fortitude.
The glowing red eyes of the despised baboon danced before her churning thoughts with a mocking laugh. It mocked her despair, and the knowledge of her weakness, and the ever-ready rage built, answering the memory of that contemptuous laugh as the sardonic smile beneath the mask of the white monkey curved across the despised hanyou’s face in her mind’s eye. The rage was always there, just seething beneath the surface, and she fought it, silently, only her narrowed eyes and her fisted hands and the slight trembling of her shoulders telling of the silent battle within.
The darkness and rage lay ever-seething inside her, and she fought the ugly bitterness down as her impatience warred with her dwindling sense of reality. She needed to release it somehow---somehow where she wouldn’t betray the rage that hovered just inside her. It had taken her over before, this rage, born from her own impotence and weakness. Her chest burned, her heart---no, not her heart, it was Kagura’s heart---beating harder inside her chest. She knew from the past that the faint, spider-like scar that lay across her skin and between her upper breasts would be darkening into purple-black lines, glowing slightly as if Naraku’s madness seethed within her own boiling blood.
She had rejected it, before, this rage. She could again. There had been too many other times when it had won, and she had been all but mindless with the vengeful wrath that filled her until it boiled over, only retreating when she had let the blood-fever wear off in the aftermath of battle. It took death---bloody death dealt by her own bloody hands on youkai flesh---to release it, but there were other ways, if she caught it soon enough. She had lived this way for untold centuries, and she knew with bitter awareness that it was only one price of many she had paid for the despised privilege of having a youkai‘s heart buried inside her chest.
She was on her feet, drawn sword in hand, and vanishing down the rock-strewn hill and out among the trees from one moment to the next, her lips white and her shadowed gaze chilling even as she left the others to gape as her abrupt disappearance.
ooOOooOOooOOoo
“Um…” Yusuke blinked at the sudden silence, a greasy chicken bone half-way to his opened mouth. The slayer’s abandoned leaf was still falling gently over her scattered breakfast in the wake of her sudden departure. Her empty scabbard clattered to the ground, the rattle loud in the arrested stillness.“Hiei?” Kurama glanced at the demon, who scowled.
“Don’t tell me, Kurama, you didn’t feel her aura building. It’s not surprising she’s so impatient, if what you tell me is true. She’s angry, but she is just going into the woods to work it off.”
“The suddenness of it doesn’t surprise you?”
“No.” The demon folded his arms across his chest, seemingly with no intention of moving from his chosen seat as Yusuke glanced from one to the other in confusion. “She has no true control over her demonic energy, not consciously. It’s bound to spring forth now and again.”
“Couldn’t that be dangerous?”
“Not for her.” Hiei shrugged.
“Are you certain of that?”
“No.” The red eyes met the fox’s sharp gaze with bland indifference.
Kurama’s fists tightened and he abruptly stood up.
Yusuke, not entirely sure what was going on, was still game for bouncing off this damn rock and finding out just what, exactly, had his red-haired friend so upset. Tossing his chicken negligently over one shoulder, he stood up as well. “I don’t know what kind of wild hair that chick just got up her ass, but if you’re so worried, Kurama, than I’m going with you.”
“Hn.” Hiei looked distinctly displeased. “I already told you, fox, it’s nothing for you to concern yourself with. She’s just going to work off some of her excess energy.”
“Wait a minute---I thought the whole object of us lazing around this damn cave was for us to regain our energy,” Yusuke growled, hands on his hips.
“It is,” Hiei growled back, look impatient. “But considering she over-used her jyaki---what little she allows herself to admit to having---last night, and the lack of conscious control she has over her demonic aura, I’m not surprised by the backlash of energy spilling over her control as she regains it.“
“Huh?” Yusuke didn’t quite get it.
“It’s like a cup overfilling, Yusuke,” Kurama explained, his green eyes boring into the fire demon’s bland gaze. “She has no control over her own aura---for some reason she has chosen to reject it. She poured the cup of her energy out last night, and in Makai, it’s like she’s turned a shower on full force instead of using the tap to fill it back up. She has no control over the strength of her returning energy, and needs must use it or be overwhelmed by it.”
“Okay, I get it, but that still doesn’t explain why she just took the fuck off without saying a word to any of us.”
“Please, Detective. A child could figure that out. She was suddenly overwhelmed with it, and only knows how to release her demon energy through physical means. She’s going off on her own to expend it. There’s no need for us to involve ourselves.”
“Truly?” Kurama demanded, his gaze challenging for some reason. “You don’t think, Hiei, that your little near-fight earlier this morning in the unicorns’ valley didn’t trigger something?”
“Hmph.”
“Her jyaki was strong enough then to bring the entire herd’s wrath down on your heads, and you don’t think that now, only a few hours later, that it isn’t stronger?”
“She’s not your concern, fox.”
“Woah.” Yusuke shied back from the sudden darkening in Kurama’s eyes, hands held up in surprise.
“You show so little concern yourself, Hiei. I wonder if you are just frightened of the depth of your own feelings.”
The demon’s sword was out with a single scrape of steel against the sturdy wood of his scabbard. “You go too far, Kurama. Even for you.”
“Hey! Guys?” Yusuke stared from one to the other, taken aback by the sudden anger blooming between the two demons. The air was fairly sizzling between them and he was startled by the flat growl in Kurama’s voice as he replied.
“And you will never go far enough, my friend, and will never admit that it’s fear that drives your caution.”
“Damn you, fox---”
“HELLO! Can you guys get a fucking grip on yourselves? What the hell’s gotten into you two? Sheesh!” Yusuke jumped between them, fists held at the ready to start swinging. “Do I have to start knocking your heads together just to get some damn sense into them? What the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s like some weird type of vibe has just broken out to influence both of you! You never fight! Not you guys! What the fuck is going on?”
Both demons stiffened, and Kurama’s eyes widened. “Yusuke---what do you mean by influence?”
“Hell if I know, Kurama! I just know both of you are acting like a pair of crazy crackheads, ready to go and fight one another. What the hell’s gotten into to you two?”
Hiei abruptly sheathed his sword. “The Detective might have suddenly stumbled across something vital, in his own stupid, bumbling way.”
“Now wait just a minute, three-eyes!”
Ignoring him, Hiei stared at the fox, whose mind was churning as he bit his lip. Looking up, Kurama said, “Could her aura be powerful enough to influence the jyaki around her?”
“Yes.” Hiei sneered. “I’m surprised you couldn’t tell that for yourself.”
“Not with your depth or precision, my friend.” Kurama lightly touched the middle of his forehead, indicating the apparition’s third eye, which was glowing slightly. He had never bothered to re-cover it after the jyaki called up in the valley this morning had burned the bandana away. The fox’s voice was soft, and faintly chagrined. His look was both apologetic and challenging. Hiei knew it was the only apology he would get from the red-haired young man, though that was fair enough, as he had no intention of apologizing either. What was said was said, and could not be recalled. Not that it mattered all that much, anyway.
“So let me get this straight---” Yusuke frowned, fists back on his hips. “---what I’m hearing from you two is that Anei is boiling over with some kind of mad energy and that it’s influencing the very air around us? I shouldn’t be so surprised---she is a wind demon, or whatever.”
Hiei shot the detective a startled glance as Kurama hissed in his breath. “Than there really is no time to waste, Yusuke. For if she influenced us enough to feel anger towards each other, than think what she could do in the middle of a demon forest.”
Surprisingly, Yusuke’s brown eyes lit up as he punched a fist into the air. “Oh, hell, yeah!”
“Have you lost what little mind you have, Detective? Do you understand the consequences of unleashing that type of angry influence in the Forest of Fools? It was enough, before, to rouse an entire unicorn herd!” Hiei snarled, jumping down to confront the exuberant youth.
The ex-detective’s smile only grew wider. “Shit, yeah, I’m thinking ’bout it, three-eyes! I’ve been itching for a good rumble since that jerk ancestor of mine stole my fight with Sensui. Those stupid birds last night weren’t nothing but a warm-up and way to stretch my muscles. If that crazy assassin-chick can get a whole demon wood riled up, just think of the possibilities!”
“I am, Detective.” Hiei met Kurama’s eyes with a grim gaze. “I am.”