InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Heart Within ❯ Chapter Forty-One ( Chapter 43 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

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.THE HEART WITHINSummary: 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: The YYH anime doesn’t really go into detail about Koku’s youkai nature, so I invented my own. Hope you likey. =)
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR YYH CHAPTER BLACK, THE THREE KINGS SAGA, MAJOR CUSSING AND RUN-ON SENTENCES

Chapter Forty-One

Koku was perched on a handy stump, crossed leg swinging lazily and Jack keeping her company as the camera-girl expertly parked on the stone dais that served as the main battle arena. Quickly finishing him off, the demoness negligently tossed the empty bottle over her shoulder before standing up with her hands on her hips.

“Took you long enough,” she groused, eyes glinting like yellow diamonds. The green-gold of her hair was even more pronounced against the backdrop of dark pines.

“You shouldn’t litter,” the camera-girl scolded as Sango dismounted. The giant blue eyeball rolled back at her as she circled around the winged demon.

Koku smirked. “So go fetch it, furry, if it offends you so much. Might as well pick up all the guys---Jim and José and Cap’n Morgan.” She pointed at the shiny glint of other abandoned bottles that lay around the grassy stump. Sango wondered where the woman managed to stash all those “friends” of hers, as the skin-tight maroon leotard and shiny blue spandex didn’t leave much room.

The camera-girl scowled, but stiffened when Koto’s voice over the speaker on her handlebars demanded shrilly what was taking so long. “We got rabid demons drooling for a good chick fight, Yuki! What’s the hold up?”

“Oh, right! Sorry, Koto! They’re stepping into the ring now.” The girl wagged her head for them to hurry as her optic demon unfurled its wings.

Koku grinned, showing sharp canines. “Well, I know I’m ready.” She rolled her bare shoulders and cracked her knit fingers as she stretched her arms out. Strolling over to the far side of the dais, she gave Sango a hard look as she gingerly followed. “And don’t think I’m going to go easy on you, honey! I’m here to win!”

“I expect nothing less,” Sango said, a bite to her voice as she took her place across from the blonde youkai. Closing her eyes, she deliberately pushed all her inner turmoil aside as she readied herself for battle. This was it. This was where she was going to test how well she had learned to control her dual nature. She wasn’t going to use anything but her own abilities, as she had purposely left her sword and knives behind. Now was the chance for her to show what she was truly made of.

Drawing her jyaki around her like a hug, Sango opened her eyes. The mahogany depths were now burnt into cherry as the crimson of her called demon energy stained them. Shoulders loose and weight resting lightly on the balls of her feet, she waited.

Koku smirked as she brought her flat hands up in a classic stance.

“All right, ladies!” The camera-girl flew up, the wind of her launch back into the sky rustling dead leaves across the stone circle between them. Yuki brought her raised hand down in a sweeping motion. “Begin!”


Yusuke quit trying to persuade that irritating, stupid-stubborn fox to finally go to the hospital when he realized that that hot chick hanging off the back of the cute camera-girl flying by was Sango-Anei-whatever-her-name-now-was.

“Ooh, aye, that be Lily, lad!” Jin agreed, his piercing blue gaze following the giant eyeball’s line of flight as it winged past Hiei’s okininju stalk and on to the next.

Meeting Kurama’s green eyes, Yusuke sighed. “Damn it. All right, fox. We’ll stay for this one, too. But then your ass is going to the hospital!”

“Only if I need it.” Kurama winced as he tried to stand on his own, Yusuke still propping him up under one arm. At least the bleeding had stopped, the wounds closing with a remarkable alacrity considering the normal time it took for the redhead to heal.

Kurama suddenly tensed, his head turning sharply to the right. “Hiei---”

Eying the dark figure slowly making his way towards them, Yusuke sucked in his breath as he read the short demon’s erratic energy signature. “Damn it. You guys sure are a pain in the ass. Jin, Touya---hurry and take Kurama. I gotta go grab that idiot before he falls flat on his face in the dirt!”

“Oh, aye---” Yusuke surrendered Kurama to Jin. The fox looked unhappy at not being able to follow as the former Spirit Detective took off. He was at the stubborn apparition’s side in a matter of seconds. And none too soon, for Hiei slumped right into his braced arms, growling he didn’t need help even as Yusuke lifted his heavy ass up.

“God, three eyes, what the hell have you been eating? You sure have packed on the pounds!” Yusuke twitted to try and ease the shorter demon’s discomfort over the need for his help.

“Shut up, detective.” Hiei wearily pushed the sweaty bangs back from his Jagan, his red eyes closing as the third eye expanded, the pupil growing in the lavender depths in a strange way. “I have to see…”

“You’ve already exhausted too much of your jyaki, idiot.” Yusuke scowled, already knowing it was in vain.

“Hn.” The demon’s lips quirked but he remained focused on his task with the singular tenacity that Yusuke both admired and found so damn annoying in his stubborn friend.

“Well, it’s your coma.” The detective shrugged, and started slogging back to their friends, hauling the short apparition along with him.


The brush of the fire demon’s thoughts was a whisper across his own, and Kurama stiffened. Jin looked at him questioningly, but Kurama only shook his head as he closed his eyes to better focus. Hiei’s mental link was fragile, his energy reserves nearly depleted. Having only a minor talent himself, Kurama could at least use his better energy levels to anchor the link and support the fire demon with his own jyaki. He leaned lightly against Jin, letting the taller wind demon take some of his weight as he mentally funneled energy to the grateful apparition.

*Hiei---grateful?* The odd thought brought a wan smile to the fox’s lips as the fire demon sent him an offended scowl of emotion. The whisper of his thoughts was so light when compared to normal, and all because his energy was so low.

*Perhaps you shouldn’t be wasting your energy this way, Hiei. Although I am grateful you’re allowing me to see---*

*Shut up.* The demon managed to thrust those words through, though there was no bite to them.

“Heh.” Kurama let the smile ghost across his mouth before the hazy image of two women facing off formed inside his mind. He lost awareness of the world around him as he sharpened his mental focus on it.

Sango’s fight had begun.


Koku’s first move was predictable enough---a short blast of pure jyaki, yellow-gold in color, to test her resources. Rather than meet it with her own blast, as most demons would do, Sango only swept it aside. Her jyaki-fed winds pushed it to the left even as they circled hungrily around it. Koku’s golden energy flared wildly across the dais, leaving a trail of smoking stone in its wake.

Koku grinned. “Not bad. At least, for an amateur.”

Sango raised a brow. “You think that was it? You underestimate me, demon.”

Twisting her open palm in a snake-dancing pattern, Sango suddenly closed her fist and sharply jerked her elbow back. Koku’s yellow eyes widened just before she staggered off-balance, yanked forward by one caught wrist.

“What the…?”

The demoness clutched her wrist with her free hand, trying to regain control as Sango took a step back, dragging her forward so that she fell to her knees. Koku’s eyes narrowed, and then, throwing her head back, she laughed. Taken aback, Sango stared at her.

“Ah, I see! You used the dissipating trail of my own jyaki to twist your winds around it and follow it right back to my hand so you could capture it. Nice move, honey, but it can’t keep an S-class demon like me trapped for long!”

Baring her lengthening nails---which now resembled claws---Koku did the unexpected, and plunged them right into her own wrist. Blood smeared across the fair skin, and it sizzled where it dribbled over the invisible air-currents Sango had wrapped around her wrist. They were highlighted into sparkling gold relief before literally dissolving under the woman’s stronger jyaki.

Sango wasn’t stupid enough to wait for the woman to retaliate, and was already diving out of the way as a pure blast of golden energy scorched the spot she’d just been standing.

“My blood burns hotter than yours, hanyou!” Koku taunted, flicking the blood off her claws and then adding solidity to the tiny red droplets. They hung in midair, glittering like tiny rubies as they elongated into diamond shape, the pointy edges wickedly sharp.

“Better get a move on it, babe!” Koku grinned, and then shouted, “Bleeding Heart Adamant Strike!”

The shards moved so quickly Sango could barely get out of the way. She hand-sprang back on one arm, pivoting her extended legs at the last minute to avoid the twisting rain of deadly shards as they eerily mimicked each of her movements. Crap. Like her giant boomerang, they were spinning back on their axis. Koku stood up, arms crossed as she smirked, content to let the blood-formed rubies do their job.

Sango jumped away, barely touching the ground with one pink sneaker to help spring her up above the ruby pursuit. She quickly summoned her winds in a protective barrier around her, shouting, “Crosswinds Barrier!” to help focus the airy energies of the defensive maneuver. Most of the rubies were swept aside to land in a splatter of blood across the ground, but one shard managed to win past her barrier and scratch her cheek. The light wound stung sharply, but Sango only wiped the blood away as Koku laughed.

“First blood!” she mocked, and then launched herself up to Sango’s airborne position, one fist drawn back for a hard strike.

“First mistake---” Sango replied, taking the punch on her crossed arms, and then kneed the haughty bitch in the stomach. Koku’s eyes bulged, and Sango followed it up with a flurry of chops that the woman barely staved off, mostly due to Sango’s inability to stay airborne for long. She felt her body dropping back to the earth as the wind slipped, and rolled under the demoness’s reflexive white-booted stomp for her head.

“Dirty,” Sango growled as she stood up, feet back on dry land. Koku landed several yards away. The demoness only grinned, showing her fangs.

“All’s fair in love and war, babe.”

And then they sprang at each other, striking and twisting and dodging and chopping and punching and kicking in movements almost too fast to follow. Damn, but that crazy drunk was quick! Almost as quick as Hiei. Sango could barely keep up with her, and knew that it would be the woman’s speed that eventually overcame her own greater knowledge of martial arts.

Back-flipping to avoid the woman’s roundhouse kick-and-chop, Sango decided to up the ante. Calling jyaki to her fist, which glowed in fuchsia-fired brilliance, she threw it forward with a harsh grunt. The blast widened, and Koku laughed in delight even as she abruptly disappeared. Sango’s eyes widened just a second before she felt claws dig deep into her shoulder, turning her slightly for the woman’s white-knuckled fist.

“You’re slow, hanyou!”

She shuddered under the impact, feeling the blow right down to her toes. Gods, that woman had a mean right hook! Growling, Sango jabbed a sharp elbow into the woman’s midriff, forcing her to let go, and landed a hard fist upside her jaw. Koku’s growl was bitten off as she literally fanged her lip, and she abruptly teleported. The demoness reappeared several yards away, wiping her bloody lip with hot eyes. She stared at the bright blood on her upraised finger and than stuck it inside her mouth to lick it clean.

Ugh. What was it with demons and their taste for their own blood? Koku smirked at Sango’s expression of disgust, and mouthed “Yum!” as she took her time.

Rolling her eyes, Sango drew the jyaki in the wind around her until she fairly glowed with it. Her body thrummed with the surging energies, and she felt it lift her off a foot or two from the ground as she concentrated.

“Oh, my.” Koku dramatically pretended to quiver in fear. “Not that again!”

Sango’s reddening eyes narrowed, and she threw the energy out in a cresting wave that knocked the drama queen right off her retro, spiky-heeled boots. Flipping up to meet it, Koku rode the curling wind like a surfboard, crazily shouting, “Wheeeee!” as Sango’s eyes widened in utter disbelief.

The wind eventually dissipated as the jyaki that drove it faded, and Sango watched as the beautiful youkai floated back down to the earth. She flipped her messy green-blonde ponytail over her shoulder and put one hand on her hip as she struck a cocky pose. “That was fun, honey, but now it’s time to really start rocking!”

The demon lit up like a supernova, and cracks appeared in racing spider webs in what was left of the stony dais between them. Chunks of rock and boulder-sized stone broke free, rising up as Koku’s yellow eyes glittered like diamonds.

Shit!

Sango was already running before the first rock cracked into the tree behind her. She skidded left, right, twisting around the giant pine trees to avoid being crushed as stony death reined down upon her. She finally took to the tree tops, hoping to rise above the continual assault as she coughed on the dust rising from Koku’s attack. But the rocky meteors were now curving up over the top of the pine trees as the demon’s laughter eerily rang out across the forest.

*Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.* Sango swore and jumped and dove, thankful for Jin’s rough lessons on how to “bounce.” The rocks and boulders hurling behind her crashed into trees she barely escaped, smashing into smaller pebbles that pinged her sharply upon impact. A hard pebble gave her a good bruise on her upper right arm, and she hissed. She was tired of this game, and so spun herself in midair, summoning the wind with a snarl.

“Crosswinds Barrier Aerial Reverse!”

The wind came with a shriek, the various air streams whipping past Sango to fling the flying rocks back on the cocky bitch who floated up above the trees to better direct her attack. Koku’s eyes widened, and she threw her arms up to try and stave off the rocky bombardment now flung back at her, but she disappeared among the rain of rubble.

Sango landed tiredly in a tree, and wiped her sweaty bangs back as she panted. She knew she only had a minute---a youkai of Koku’s strength wouldn’t be held up for long by being buried under a loose avalanche. Damn but that woman was good! Sango knew with dawning apprehension that Koku was better than her. Far better. But that didn’t mean she was going to just roll over and let the crazy bitch win.

*Over my dead body!* she vowed, and pumped air into her lungs to still her pants as she swept her arms up, hauling the wind back to her in a spinning ball of protection. And just in time, as the rocks exploded from around Koku, freeing the demoness as she snarled some insult lost on the shrieking turbulence surrounding Sango. Probably something inane like “Die, you bitch!” since the broken rocks around the woman started glowing like molten lava.

Sango jumped back, the protective winds around her adding an extra bounce to her leap---though damn if being in the middle of that spinning vortex didn’t make her feel like a hamster in its plastic ball. But most attacks would be swept aside by the continuously spinning winds, and it gave her an extra mobility she didn’t have to think about. She continued to leap back as she warily watched the glowing rocks assume a particular diamond-cut shape, flaring into white fire before they finally solidified into brilliant yellow gems.

Gems---no, not gems, but diamonds. Sango’s eyes widened, and she finally understood what Koku’s strange aura portended. Koku was an adamant demon---a yellow diamond apparition. Diamonds were the hardest substance known to man, and Koku’s earth affinity allowed her to manipulate and even reshape the very rocks into her own impenetrable missiles.

Now the shit really hit the fan---literally, for the first wave of glittering yellow death was barely turned by Sango’s protective barrier, the second winning through as the jyaki-fed winds were ripped apart by the first. Sango cried out as a razor-sharp edge sliced along her arm, another across her thigh. She protected her head with her arms, taking multiple cuts along her braced forearms as she blindly flung herself out of the air.

She landed in a tangle of brambles, which tore the rags of her pink hoodie from her body as she lurched her way free. She impatiently tugged the last stubborn sleeve off her wrist as she twisted out of the way as those freaky yellow rocks arced down towards her vulnerably exposed position.

Damn it! She barely avoided the explosion of earth as the giant yellow diamonds thudded into the brambles, decimating the area under their impact. She wove among the thick trees, hoping to hide her tracks as she pushed the pain of her multiple wounds aside to focus on how she could turn this fight back in her favor. She felt a distinctive aura on her left, and whirled, both hands shooting up palm-down to fire multiple wind blades at the demon who ran alongside.

The trees were sliced in half between them and Sango grinned as a loud wail of protest signaled she’d gotten in a hit. But then those damn rubies were back, as Koku used her drawn blood to fire back at her. Sango cursed, stumbling over her own feet to get out of the way as they hurtled towards her, keeping up a shadowy mimicry of her own evasive maneuvers as they oriented on her jyaki.

She burst out of the forest and her eyes widened, the bloody tint dissolving into dark astonishment as the ground abruptly fell away. She plummeted down the side of the cliff, rolling herself into a protective ball as she hit the gods-granted water far below with a splash. The impetus of her fall drove her deep into the churning water. She felt her lungs burning for breath as she fought against the current, kicking out and swimming back up to the surface. She burst free of the water with a heaving sob, greedily filling her gasping lungs with blessed air. But a shadow loomed over her, and Sango choked as she saw the cliff-side she’d just fallen over literally break apart under Koku’s jyaki-fired fists.

Wrenching the wind to her with a jerk, Sango bent all of her will to the task, calling a cyclone to form out of the churning water to bear her up out of the way of the falling cliff-side. She barely escaped as the split rocks thudded in big chunks with torn globs of dirt and grass and earth. She couldn’t hold such a powerful force of nature as a water spout, and sent it cresting after the falling avalanche, catching a surprised Koku in the watery wave that shot nearly three hundred feet into the air. The demoness screamed in fury before abruptly sinking under that wind-driven wave, and Sango fell like a limp doll back to the water, her jyaki temporarily spent in that harried blast.

The water closed back over her head, and she kicked feebly, dragging herself up by will alone as she grit her teeth and renewed her efforts. The swirling water was a muddy blur around her, but she felt an up-surging current sweep up behind her as a particularly large chunk of earth settled to the bottom of the pool. Sango rode the current up and out as it unceremoniously spat her up on the muddy bank.

She gasped and choked, coughing the water out of her lungs as she lay there numb on the bank. The mud sucked noisily at her body as she arched her spine, forcing her elbows to brace her weight as she looked around for her opponent.

Koku was sprawled on her back, golden eyes wide as she stared up at the sky as her breasts heaved with the effort to draw breath. Her green-golden hair was streaked with mud, her leotard a dark, indeterminable color as her torn spandex showed a creamy length of dirt-streaked thigh. Her eyes flicked to Sango, and she surprisingly grinned.

“Gods, that was great!”

That bitch was on crack.

“C’mon, hanyou, I know that’s not all you got!” Koku staggered to her feet, pausing to puke water---and probably ten bottles of booze---out of her lungs as she braced her hands on her knees before finally wiping the residue away with the back of her hand. “What, are you going to just lay there like some weakling?”

“I---” Sango pushed herself off of the ground even as her arms trembled with fatigue, her dark eyes narrowing as they bled into ire, “am not weak!”

She threw herself at the woman, fist punching forward to drive her back on her ass in the mud. Koku flew back with a surprised shout of delight, and slipped in the mud trying to get back on her feet. “Oh, you are going to pay for that, babe!”

“Please! Your ass can’t even get up!” Sango growled, slipping herself as she tried to run forward. She landed painfully on her hip, snarling angrily as she spun across the smooth mud before digging her knees in and lurching back up to her feet.

“Looks like you have the same problem, honey!” Koku threw a ball of mud at her, and Sango wiped it off her cheek with a growl before flinging herself at the woman, knocking her laughing ass over with one shoulder and then straddling her to keep her down. Koku immediately flipped them over, and they wrestled in the mud, both sliding and losing grip in the slippery muck as they hurled insults and blows with equal abandon and little effectiveness.

Sango managed to slap a double-handful of mud right in the woman’s face, and Koku dragged it off of her with a snarl. “Why, you dirty little bitch---”

The yellow eyes bled for the first time, and Sango froze.


“Oh, god, that’s fucking hot,” Shishi breathed, eyes riveted to the screen as they all were.

Chuu, for once without words, simply nodded in awe as the two women continued to wrestle in the mud, which clung to their bodies as tightly as their drenched clothing clung to their curves. All those luscious curves and all that sliding skin, all those long fingers grappling over one another as they rolled about in the mud. Oh, sweet Jesus…

“I don’t get it,” Rinku said, scowling.

“You will, bledger, one day,” Chuu said kindly, eyes still pinned to the screen.

“I don’t get it, either,” Lord Tenga deliberately drawled, studying his manicured nails.

“At least one person understands!” Rinku said, oblivious.

Shishi just shook his head as Lord Tenga smirked.


“Crap, I don’t know what just happened, but there’s a whole shit-load of jyaki suddenly being pulled up onto that okininju stalk!” Yusuke stared up at the distant plateau in awe.

“No lie, lad,” Jin said, worry in his frank blue eyes as he repositioned the fox’s weight against him. Kurama’s head was bowed, a faint frown turning the edges of his mouth down as his thick lashes fluttered in a mimicry of REM sleep. His awareness was drawn inward like Hiei’s, traveling somewhere up there on the Jagan.

“That battle’s coming to a head,” Touya said quietly.

“Aye,” Jin agreed. “But I don’t like the surge of that energy, lad, I don’t. It be too strong for Lily.”

“Yeah.”

Yusuke stared down at the exhausted apparition in his arms, but Hiei didn’t stir, the neon-green glow surrounding the Jagan continuing to pulse in time with his slow, steady heartbeat.


The mud literally peeled off of Koku as she rose, her body glowing in flickering fuchsia fire as her red eyes turned white hot in rising anger. This was the power of a thousand-year-old, S-class demoness in full fury, and a part of Sango watched in stunned admiration even as another part quailed before it. Gritting her teeth, she refused to bow beneath that greater power, and answered the demoness’s challenge with her own sharp summoning.

The jyaki sang along her blood, wrapped as one with her chi as it had always been---though for a long time she’d been blind to it, until Hiei and Kurama had shown her in the Forest of Fools how to see it. She felt the white fire of human energy flickering along the edges of the deeper fuchsia snarl of her jyaki, and her heart started racing as the center of her concentrated power drew it in until she burned with it. She felt the sticky mud splatter off of her as the cleansing winds she gathered blasted it away, and her eyes glowed into the bloody orbs of the Wind Sorceress whose heart beat a rising staccato inside her chest.

This was what she’d been striving for. This singular moment, when she would pit her new strength and determination against another worthy enough of the effort. Like Touya had said---burning her candle to its dimmest state, she would find out what she was now made of! Elation filled her as Sango met Koku’s snarl with a ringing cry of challenge. The jyaki exploded out of each of them to meet in a spectacular flare of energy that battled for supremacy as each woman applied their stubborn will against the other, striving for mastery.

The demoness’s mastery was hundreds of times her level, and the spectral fires of Koku’s jyaki quickly surrounded her smaller, burning nova of concentrated energies. The bigger fire battered at her edges, seeking to snuff it out beneath its greater weight. But Sango hung on with grim determination, her jyaki a flaring white beacon against the woman’s fuchsia ire.

“I will not stop! I will not die! I will never, ever, give up!” Sango screamed in defiance, her throat working convulsively though no sound emerged. Never, ever, no, never---not then---and certainly not now!

“I am,” she shrieked, and the world went white as she poured every ounce of her heart and soul into the declaration, “the WIND!”


A twister formed on Group D’s okininju stalk, funneling straight up to the sky in a blast of airy white light like a steaming geyser, pushing the pulsing fuchsia energies around it aside as it shot straight to the heavens. The clouds roiled, dissolving under that singular blast of raw wind energy as it pierced through the constant cloud cover. A strange, ghostly white light filled the area. Yusuke’s mouth fell open as he saw the seldom-glimpsed, full moon’s face, wrinkled and wise, framed in that hole in the sky. The wind abruptly thinned, slowly sinking back down to the plateau as the fuchsia energy engulfed it in muffling waves before they, too, flickered and died.

A lone wind whistled over the grassy plain, ruffling the dark bangs on the short apparition Yusuke still held in his arms. Hiei’s red eyes opened, the Jagan shrinking, and he tiredly smirked.

“She lost,” was all he said before his eyes rolled up in his head and he literally passed out.

“She lost?!” Yusuke stared up at the okininju stalk, before a wry chuckle had him staring back over his shoulder at the red-haired fox still hanging off of Jin.

“Might be she did, lad, but that…was something special,” Jin said in quiet awe.

“She’s whole,” Touya strangely said, and the Wind Master solemnly nodded.

“Aye, she is at that, lad.”

“Well, that’s all well and good, but now the fun’s over, don’t you think it’s time we get your butts to the hospital?” Yusuke inserted, pointedly glaring at Kurama, who still had a hand pressed to his side as he sagged wearily against Jin.

“Sango,” he said roughly.

“Oh, aye, I can go and fetch her, fox. Let me just give you over to Touya, here--”

“No need,” Touya said, arms crossing as the earth shuddered.

Yusuke suddenly grinned, recognizing the heavy, ground-shaking footfalls of his “father’s” old friend.

“Is that a moving mountain?” Suzuka, quiet until now, demanded as he shaded his eyes to better see the shadowy forms emerging from the base of the okininju stalk across the gentle slope of the plain.

“Pretty much,” Yusuke said, shrugging Hiei’s heavy ass into a more comfortable position as they waited for the mountain to come to Mohammed.

“Gods, I hope you brought me a drink!” A shrill voice wafted towards them.

“Of course, my darling.”

“At least you did that right, you big brick.” There was the sound of a tab opening, and a glugging noise worthy of Chuu at his finest. Then a sudden, gagging spit. “Egh! What is this swill?”

“Well, sweetie, you did say to bring you something light---”

“Oh, holy god! This is non-alcoholic beer! You’ve got to be kidding me! Are you insane? Did that stupid ram in the first round knock you in the head one too many times? What were you thinking?”

“Now, Koku, sweetie---”

“Don’t Koku-sweetie me, you big oaf!” The demoness easily crushed the can in her hand into a flat disk and chucked it over her shoulder. “Now quit teasing me and give me the good stuff!”

The red giant sighed, nodding towards his back pocket as he held the unconscious slayer in his big arms. The blonde demoness dove, retrieving the silver hip flask with a cry of triumph before greedily sucking down the contents.

“Gods, much better!” She wiped her flushed lips with the back of her wrist, and glared at their fascinated audience. “What are you looking at?”

“Raizen Junior!” Enki shifted the tiny slayer over to one arm so he could wave.

“Hey, there, big guy,” Yusuke greeted the giant, horned demon with a grin.

“What’d you do to him?” Koku demanded, jabbing a finger at Hiei.

Yusuke colored. “Ah, wasn’t me.”

“Hey, isn’t that the little twerp that faced that crazy bitch Mukuro?” Koku leaned in for a closer look and almost fell over.

“Watch it, darling, you’re still weak!”

“Just on jyaki, you big idiot! That wind witch drained me but good!”

“Did she now?” Jin looked happy at the thought as Kurama stiffened.

Koku’s golden eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I still can’t kick your ass, windy!”

“Sango,” Kurama reminded, green eyes on the limp form who looked like a small child cradled against the huge demon’s chest.

“Oh, sorry.” Enki companionably grinned. He looked at Yusuke. “Mind if I do the honors?”

“The honors?” Yusuke looked confused as Koku rolled her eyes.

“God, you don’t know shit, do you, half-breed? Shows what mixing your blood with a living world whore does---”

“Hey!” Yusuke bristled at the slight on his ancestress. True, Raizen had dumped Koku for that living world whore---

“Please,” Touya said courteously to Enki, who nodded. Taking a deep breath, the red giant closed his eyes. The flare of his enormous aura enveloped them all in hellish flames until they abruptly disappeared, leaving the grassy plain empty.