Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Balance ❯ A Lowly Creature such as Yourself ( Chapter 6 )

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

Disclaimer: so…have you ever been in a situation in which an "enemy" of yours tried to get on speaking terms with you, but went about it all the wrong way, and now you hate him even more? I've got that right now. Meh.

Aww…do you people know how wonderful you are? I mean my reviewers, of course. ::Squee!:: (Wow, how out of character was that?) Domo arigatou gozaimasu! (From what I hear, that's like "thank you so, so much!")

Balance

Chapter Six: A Lowly Creature such as Yourself

'You cannot accept change, can you?'

This is merely a last-ditch effort to spare yourself, he mocked. Pitiful.

'It is not. You are unable to accept that even youkai have the ability to change. Six years is a long time.'

The glass was breaking, and a line was formed between his eyes. The panels shifted on each other, giving his face a most disjointed look.

Oh?

'Indeed. You do not even believe that you still possess a heart.'

And how would a lowly creature such as yourself know of such things about me?

The man scoffed. 'A lowly creature. You thought nothing of the sort when we fought, side by side, six years ago.'

Six years is a long time.

'You do not believe you possess a heart.'

Because it is true, he replied, his voice coated in ice.

'It is not,' the man replied. 'It beats and echoes in your very soul.'

It means nothing.

'The pulse is in time with the beating of the heart.'

Irrelevant.

'It is not.'

He wheeled around and glared. You are nearly broken, he screamed. Again. Nearly gone. Again. Six years is a long time, but time does not erase itself, no matter how long! You will disappear just as you did, and life will become normal again.

'You have warped your definition of normalcy since I saw you last.'

It is you who has been warped!

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Kuwabara carefully held up his Reiken, making sure to get the correct angles before making the actual slice. Once he was positive, he slowly dug the tip of the blade into the stone and dirt, dragging the ki down through the lines his companions had so carefully drawn.

Finally, he had cut out a nicely sized block of earth, creating the beginnings of a wide tunnel. Hiei walked forward to inspect the workmanship, nodding appreciatively.

"Good. Now lengthen your sword and dig it deeper."

"Mm-hmm," Kuwabara replied, sweating slightly out of nervousness. Stretching out his sword, he made sure to stay inside the lines and hollow out the shallow cavern into a tunnel deep enough for them to stand in while Yuusuke blew their ditch deeper.

Hiei went in first and, taking his katana from its sheath, slammed the sturdy leather into the roof, creating a temporary support beam before heading back and leaning against the wall. Kurama followed soon after and knelt in the back of the hollow, Kuwabara not far behind.

"Ready?" Yuusuke asked, holding his hand out, aimed towards the floor.

"The impact will be great," Kurama warned. "Be prepared for the floor to collapse from under you."

"Aim…"

"We can't afford to lose a fighter such as you to a stupid mistake," Hiei added in a drone.

"Fire!"

Jumping at the instant the blast went off, Yuusuke hurled himself back into the cave where the other Tantei shielded themselves, thereby keeping from plummeting to the pits of the Earth with his reiki. Misjudging the angles slightly, he landed thumping against the back wall and hitting his head. Sitting up, he rubbed it with a bothered expression on his face.

"Dammit, that's the third time that's happened."

Hiei smirked. "Only the third?"

"Or was that just today?" Kuwabara piped in. Kurama let his mouth fall open just slightly.

'Kuwabara finishing Hiei's insults…oh, dear, this shall take some getting used to…'

They began another climb down.

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What felt like hours later, but in reality, was merely fifty and two minutes, Kuwabara scooted backwards and pointed at a spot on the ground.

"Hey, guys, I think I…eeto…found the bottom…of the hole…"

Hiei immediately flickered over beside the ningen, Kurama at his heels. They each crouched a distance away from the ground where Kuwabara had pointed, Hiei prodding at the ground and Kurama bending down to listen.

"Yes," said the kitsune, sitting back on his heels. "I can hear down to a base camp, of sorts, below where we are sitting."

Hiei, too, reared back. "Yes, but it's close. There can only be about a dozen centimeters of ground left between us and them, dozen and one half at most."

Yuusuke smirked. "Then let's make ourselves known."

"Wait."

Yuusuke looked up at Kurama, surprised to see a darkly calculating look in his eye that he hadn't seen in six years. The kitsune was looking down at the ground in a most suspicious manner, feeling across it with the tips of his fingers.

"Koenma said they would be classes B to high C, didn't he?"

A hesitantly perplexed look on his face, Yuusuke nodded.

"These youkai are not classes B to high C."

"Na-?"

Yuusuke bent closer to the floor, straining to sense what he could not see through the dirt and stone. Sending out shielded waves of reiki, he washed them over invisible targets and struggled to identify their levels.

"Oh! You're right!" he said finally. There were definitely youkai down there, and just as definitely was the fact that they were not B or high-C. The youki they radiated was far too weak, reminiscent of E, D, and low C youkai, if that.

"Either Reikai's been getting bum information," Kuwabara summarized, sensing it for himself, "or the youkai who were here have moved since they got that report." The others nodded.

"But maybe they have some information," Kurama noted. "Let's not waste any time."

Yuusuke blasted a hole into the ground and they leapt down.

Upon landing, they saw a most peculiar sight.

Four groups of no more than three youkai were scattered about a small cavern, suitable possibly for refuge during a storm. Not only were the youkai scantily clad in rags and scraps of animal and other youkai skins, their hair unkempt and their bodies stained in blood and gashes of cuts, but they looked miserable and frail, teetering around on their last legs. Ribs were visible through the skin on more than one of them, and it all made the Tantei sick.

"No invading our territory!" one shouted, trying to be brave. "Come on, you miserable brutes, we must attack! Defend our home!"

This youkai, the one who appeared to be the leader, stood first, the others following with some reluctance. Visible once he had risen was his matted purple hair, coming out in patches and sparsely decorating his otherwise scarred head. If Kurama hadn't known better, he would have assumed the creature had recently undergone some sort of cranial surgery. His ratty leopard skin patterned, tunic-style cloth hung limply about his shoulders.

"Hiraikotsu!" one screamed, hurling a long curve of a boomerang bone at them. Yuusuke dodged with ease and glided over beside the one who had launched it, pinning her to the wall.

"What's your name, pretty girl?" he asked derisively. She quivered under his gaze.

"Bakayaro! Ge' offa me!"

"Odd name," he said coolly, tightening his grip. "Now, what's your name, for real?"

She struggled vainly for a few moments before finally going limp in his grip. "Makoto…" she whispered.

He dropped her to the ground, looking down at her. She kept her gaze on the floor, eyes tearing slightly. Yuusuke could practically feel his kind nature creeping up on him as he offered her a hand.

"Trees, eh?" he said as she took it warily, letting him pull her up. She nodded.

Kurama, meanwhile, had nearly been struck down by a long thread of some sort of poison, dodging at the last second, more for his own amusement and for show than anything else. He, equally as easily, darted forward and pinned his captive, though he preferred to use the ground as a backing rather than the wall.

"Who has sent you here?" he hissed, tilting his head to the side to dodge as his youkai spit at him.

"Sent us?" the youkai snarled, looking tense and uncomfortable even through his showy toughness. "No one has sent us! We come to conquer this feeble world!"

"You shall do no conquering here," Kurama growled. "By whose orders are you in Ningenkai?"

"No-" The youkai paused as Kurama effortlessly summoned a blade made from a common leaf and held it to his throat. "N-no one…!"

The blade bit into skin.

"Not good enough."

Blood leaked from a narrow wound.

"Alright! Alright!"

Kurama kept the blade beside the creature's jugular, even as he spoke through nervous sweat and frightened tears.

"We were summoned by a few S-class youkai a couple days ago," the youkai blustered, "told to come here, to this cave, and make our home. They offer us food and don't let anyone come get us; we figured it a pretty sweet deal, so we didn't try to leave."

Kurama moved the blade back, withdrawing his ki and throwing the leaf aside. "But…?" he prompted.

"B-but they didn't-they didn't tell us what price this home would c-come at!" The youkai was crying freely now, wiping his eyes and only staining them further with dirt and muck. "We aren't allowed to leave, and they-they barely give us enough food for one person to live on, much less eleven of us to share! We're dying down here, and they come and v-v-visit us, sometimes, and-and-"

But the youkai stopped, then, blowing his nose on his palm and letting his brittle nails chip against the cartilage in his nose, partially visible as it was. Kurama sat back, giving the creature room to breath freely. Hiei stood looking over Kurama's shoulder, the slightest pity in his eyes.

Composing himself to a bare degree, the youkai sat up. "T-they come down here, and they threaten to kill us if we don't do exactly as they say. They hurt us if we don't do it right, and sometimes they torture us even when we do exactly what they say because they decided to change it without telling us. They cut us, they beat us, they steal our clothes, they rape us, they-I was going to just let them kill me next time they came…"

Kurama smiled weakly. "Hmm…what is your name?"

The youkai looked up in surprise, and Hiei turned his head away.

"K…Kira…"

Kuwabara, having gotten similar responses from his own target, dropped the youkai-who scuttled over to his friends where they sat-and went over to where Yuusuke was questioning Makoto.

"They ask us if we like it when they beat us. Then if we tell them no, they beat us more."

"Can you help us find them?"

Makoto shook her head. "Not much. I know they went west, probably to a place much like this. Underground, that is. A cave somewhere; the better hidden, the better the cave."

Kuwabara and Yuusuke nodded to each other, and Yuusuke to Makoto.

"Thanks."

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Reiki: spirit energy

Eeto: er…

Ningen: human

Youkai: demon

Youki: demon energy

Bakayaro: bastard

Ki: energy

Note: What2callmyself, yes, in fact, the clip from the last chapter about kitsune mythology was true. I (accidentally, actually) found an excellent site related to kitsune mythology called Foxtrot's Collection of Kitsune Lore (w w w . comnet.ca/ ~foxtrot/ kitsune/ index . htm (just take out the spaces, obviously)) and did a little reading.

Note: Olde English, anyone? "Fifty and two" doesn't mean fifty hours and two minutes. It means fifty-two minutes.

Note: yes, in Japanese, Kira is a male's name as well as a female's.