Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Kitsunebi ❯ Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Yuu Yuu Hakusho nor do I make any money from this piece of fanfiction.

 

Reader Warnings: Shounen-ai (AKA Slash, M/M), lime, pairings: Kurama x Hiei, Yomi x Kurama, Yuusuke x Keiko, Kuwabara x Yukina

 

AN: Chapter 4, fresh off the keyboard! And please do leave me reviews. I really do love reading them!

 

Kitsunebi

Chapter 4

 

By his own mental count, Hiei had another twenty minutes to fix the problem with his fox, as it were, before Yomi called an end to the sparring match. The thing is, as Hiei had expected, landing that one blow had made Kurama fight far more defensively and it was now becoming rather difficult to get past the thorny whip. While Hiei had the speed advantage - that was something that was never in question - their years of sparring together had given Kurama an almost sixth sense when it came to Hiei and his attack patterns. Even if Kurama might not remember the petite fire youkai, his body and his subconscious certainly remembered the fire youkai's preferred attack angles. Their delicate dance continued for fifteen more minutes, neither fighter neither yielding nor gaining an advantage over the other, ignoring the audience that watched the graceful beauty of their sparring match with held breaths.

 

Pushing for an advantage, Hiei leaps back, tapping into his connection into the dark flame dragon sealed in his right arm. Flames erupted along the blade as Hiei charged in for one last desperate strike to end the match. Swinging his blade wide, the unexpected attack burned through the kitsune's whip, and as Kurama leaped backwards to dodge the blow, the pendant trailed in front of him. Hiei saw the world move in slow motion as his sword made contact with the chain, neatly cleaving off the pendant.

 

And then all hell broke loose.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Mukuro, resting in a chair in her private garden, was calmly reading the latest report from her spies in Gandara when it happened. The “it”, as it were, was a huge youki signal, filled with pure unbridled anger. The angry flare lit up the Makai skies, and while her castle was too far away to feel the immediate effects - she pitied the fool who unleashed such anger and got to deal with the consequences - her garden was close enough to feel the strong breeze that rippled out across the land. The flowers in her garden shook and released their petals, as though they were weeping for their one true master. There was only one being in the three worlds she was aware of that had such a strong affinity to plants. And knowing her ambassador and heir, he had just been found.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Koenma had been calmly monitoring the events in the Makai. While he had not been lying when he said he had no jurisdiction there, he did have surveillance. And he was not about to lose one of the crucial members of the team, especially when the presence of this one was what bound another to stay. So, he calmly watched, and when all hell broke loose, he called for Botan, and told her to open up a portal to Gandara in the Makai and retrieve the three demonic members of his team, and, just to cover her ass, granted her clearance to open portals as needed. There would be hell to pay - not to mention a mountain of paperwork justifying it - for opening the portal, but he figured it'd be well worth it since he'd actually still have a Reikai Tantei team afterwards.

 

An enormous stack of papers came by, as he hears the scramble bell for the ferry girls to go to work. The bell was typically rung for large scale catastrophes in the Ningenkai, but given the small glimpse of what he saw from his screen before he lost visual, this was as close to one as it ever got in the Makai.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Botan soars through the portal, scanning the ground below. Plants for miles around the arena where Hiei and Kurama had been dueling were overgrown, many spearing through huts and villages. Some had bodies hanging from them as the plant life around them violently exploded to life in response of their master's raw anger. A large explosion sent Botan careening as she looks ahead at the arena. Urging her oar to go faster, she silently prays to every deity she knew of that Yuusuke, Hiei, and, most of all, Kurama were safe.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Yuusuke was aware of one and only one thing when the world slowed down as Hiei cut off Kurama's pendant. One, the two fighters were as still as a pair of statues as the pendant seemed to slowly fall to the ground. The sound of metal hitting stone echoed through the arena. At almost the same instant, the two fighters were shrouded in an unnatural mist as Kurama began to fall, unconscious. The next moment, youki exploded from the ring, one that Yuusuke usually associated more with calculated coldness than raw anger. And then, all hell broke loose as the plant life for miles around the arena responded to their master's fury. Just as sudden as time seemed to slow down and almost stop, it picked up again in full speed.

 

“Yuusuke, now!”

 

“REI GAN!” Yuusuke shouts, sending a truly enormous blast of youki directly at Yomi. He caught a trace of Hiei's youki flitting away, with a second, much smaller one that felt like Kurama's next to him. Deciding now was the time to run and ask questions later, the detective made a dead run to follow.

 

Clearing the smoke of the explosion, Yuusuke looks around, expecting to see Kurama running next to Hiei. “Hiei, where's-” Yuusuke cuts himself off as a flash of silver fur catches his eyes.

 

“We need to get him some place safe. That pendant was responsible for everything. Even I'm not sure what the damage is at this point. If Kurama wasn't out cold right now, I'd be more than happy to kill the goat in the most torturous and painful manner possible.”

 

“Yuusuke! Hiei!” The two lords glance up at the female voice shouting at them from above.

 

“Botan! Perfect timing,” Yuusuke says, knowing exactly what to ask of the ferry girl. “Can you get us to the temple?”

 

“It'll break all the rules, but Koenma's granted me clearance.” Within moments, the trio find themselves back in the Ningenkai, at the top of the steps of Genkai's temple. In the moments after the portal closes, Botan turns around. “Wait, where's Kurama? I felt his presence with you guys, but where is he?”

 

Hiei doesn't answer, but simply looks down into his arms. There, curled up into as small of a ball as possible, was Kurama. The kitsune was severely weakened, that much was for certain, but his state of mind was anyone's guess. Just why he took his animal form, the weakest of all of his three forms, was anyone's guess. Hiei, though, had a hunch, and, knowing Kurama, knew better than to share.

 

Of course, now that the adrenaline rush of the fight was wearing off, he wonders if he had done the right thing, whether Kurama had indeed cared for Yomi enough to be his mate and that for some reason, Kurama had wanted to forget about him, the Forbidden Child, and the rest of the group because he simply got bored and his youko half had decided that it was far more advantageous to be at Yomi's side than any other. `But if that was the case,' a small voice in his head says, `Kurama would not have spoken so hatefully regarding Yomi after they had reunited.' His thoughts, though, were roughly shoved aside as Yukina rushes out to greet them.

 

“Is-is that?” Yukina asks, looking from the ball of liquid mercury in Hiei's arms. A simple nod answered her question. Running over, she places her hands near the unconscious fox, only to find that there were no physical injuries, just that he had expended most of his energy and was now in a restful recharging sleep. “He's fine, just expended a lot of energy.”

 

“You mean physically fine,” Hiei snaps back. Hiei knew the approximate details of that pendant that Kurama was wearing around his neck. The swift fire youkai also knew that if you freed the wearer from its abilities in a sudden manner, it could cause mental damage, if the wearer was weak enough. In that heat of the moment decision, Hiei had not taken any of that into account, and now prayed to any god that would listen, but most of all, Inari, Kurama's patron god, that the fox he held in his arms had enough strength of will and personal mental defenses to be mostly fine after a sudden break. He sighs, suddenly wishing for Genkai's expertise. The occasionally cranky, but generally kind, master would have an answer for him.

 

“What do you mean?” Yuusuke asks, surprised at Hiei's correction.

 

“You saw that necklace I cut off m-the fox,” Hiei replies, catching himself. “It's a mind control necklace. Given the way I removed it, it's liable to cause mental damage.”

 

Yuusuke eyes harden in anger, his Mazoku tattoos flickering in and out of existence. Restraining himself, he punches the ground. “Damn it all! Damn that infernal goat!”

 

Hiei, while his ruby eyes never stopped almost glowing with fury, had a different concern. The only reason why Kurama would take that form would be to hide and did not want to be spoken to. Walking inside the temple, he asks Yukina to make a small den for the sleeping fox in the temple library. Hiei only prayed that there would be more information in the scrolls. In the absolute worst case scenario, Hiei figured he would have to ask Koenma for permission to speak to Genkai through Puu. While this was hardly the course of action Hiei would prefer, push comes to shove, he would rather owe the junior god a favor than to have Kurama forever locking himself in his fox form. This was going to be a long, long night, and he knew that over the course of the next few days, things were going to get worse before they got better. And maybe, just maybe, at the end of this whole mess, he would still have a partner.

 

To be continued . . .

 

AN: What do you think? I hope Hiei was in character enough; I always do have such a hard time writing for him. It's so hard to really know what he's thinking since he says so little that I don't really feel like I have much to go on. Remember, reviews make me happy, so drop me one!