Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ My Downfall ❯ The Thief ( Chapter 13 )

A/N: I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi.

 

Recap: Yusuke, Kurama and Hiei found the troublemakers they were looking for in demon world, but the gang seemed to know Hiei. Meanwhile, Botan and Kuwabara set off to search for missing item the demons were looking for.

 

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

 

Chapter 13: The Thief

 

“Hey Kurama, you're a smart one,” Yusuke said, his tone hinting at his increasing nervousness. “Any ideas what move we make next?”

 

Kurama did not answer Yusuke, his eyes fixed on the five demons sat before them. Yusuke saw one of Kurama's hands make a small movement, as though he had just snuck something invisibly from his sleeve, the sight of which did little to ease Yusuke's concerns.

 

“You all better start speaking the truth, or I'll have to force it out of you!” Hiei warned, pointing his sword at the gang.

 

“Your old lady was right, you did grow up to be a moody little bastard, didn't you?” the panther asked, grinning at him.

 

Hiei bared his teeth but said nothing.

 

“Look, we're just here because the living world are noticing bodies going missing,” Yusuke said, hoping to alleviate the situation. “We just want to know where they are and to make sure that it stops.”

 

And, Yusuke thought darkly, he wanted to find out without having to fight Hiei.

 

“We're not looking for trouble,” the panther said. “Just The Stolen Moment.”

 

“Nobody knows where that is,” Yusuke answered him.

 

“This little guy ought to know,” the panther replied, pointing a claw at Hiei.

 

“Don't you think that if I knew where it was, I would have used it or sold it by now?” Hiei shot back.

 

“You see it's statements like that that make us doubt you…” Yusuke muttered.

 

“How did you find out about The Stolen Moment?” Kurama asked.

 

“Hiei's old lady told us,” the panther replied.

 

Kurama nodded.

 

“I'm afraid information on that artefact is classified,” he said. “I'm sure you appreciate how dangerous it could be if others found out about such a device.”

 

“We haven't told anyone,” the panther replied. “We're gonna use it ourselves.”

 

“Not gonna happen,” Yusuke said. “And since it's only the five of you that know about it, I'd say the quickest solution to our problem is to make sure that you five don't live long enough to tell anyone else. Hiei, are you with us?”

 

“What a stupid question!” Hiei snapped. “Kill them all, but leave the panther. I think he could prove useful.”

 

Yusuke glanced at Hiei and then at Kurama, who nodded that he agreed. Yusuke was a little wary about sparing the apparent leader of the group, but decided that he had no other choice but to trust Hiei.

 

“Well, you've never let me down before, Hiei,” he said with a shrug. “I've got your back if you've got mine.”

 

Yusuke leapt off of the boxes and charged at the demon gang with Kurama and Hiei following closely behind him.

 

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

 

Botan wondered which moment she would pick, which exact second in time she would choose to steal and reinvent to her own liking.

 

“Koenma said as soon as I find it I have to leave here,” Kuwabara said at her side, before sipping at his bottle of water. “He said I shouldn't even touch it, the temptation would be too much for me. And I gotta say, when I saw that picture of it, it made me feel sick just to look at it.”

 

Two days, two weeks, two months, two years or twenty-two years: was there even a specific moment? Did it even matter for what she hoped to achieve? Accuracy was possibly not an essential element of her plan.

 

“I don't think I would use it though,” Kuwabara continued. “I'm pretty happy with my life. I like studying now, I've found my true love - Yukina, of course - and I've got some great friends and we've been through a lot together. If I went back in time all of that might change, and that would suck.”

 

Botan came to the conclusion that she did not actually have to even pick a precise day. She did, however, have to worry about the consequences. That had been the key part of her lesson on The Stolen Moment: the consequences. How would she deal with the new world her actions would create? If she went back very far, would Kuwabara still know who she was? Would he ever have become part of the spirit detective team who faced so many great challenges? Would he ever meet Yukina? And what of Yusuke and Kurama? Would Yusuke just die that day he saved the boy from being hit by a car? Would Kurama lose his life to the Forlorn Hope when he tried to save his own dying mother? Who would Genkai give her powers to before she died?

 

“Everything happens the way it does for a reason,” Kuwabara said. “This is the life we made for ourselves, why would we even want to change it? If we want to change things we need to change them for the future, not in the past.”

 

Did she even have the right to use the device, to change the pasts of Kuwabara, Yusuke, Kurama, Hiei, Yukina, Genkai, Keiko and so many others?

 

“And besides, it's a stupid thing,” Kuwabara said, standing up. “Eight seconds to make your decision. Even if you made it before you lit the fuse, could you honestly say that you wouldn't change your mind part way through? And what if you did? You could end up somewhere horrible, forced to relive a horrible part of your life, forced to watch it happen again or to interfere, knowing that if you did, you could destroy everything in everyone else's lives afterwards. I say the sooner we find this thing and destroy it, the better.”

 

Kuwabara started back towards the field, grabbing up his shovel again to once more dig around the area he had sensed something amiss.

 

Botan stood up and summoned her oar, following after him.

 

“I'm going to help, I think it's the least I can do,” she said as she joined Kuwabara by the hole he was creating.

 

“You're gonna use your oar to dig?” he asked.

 

“Why not?” she asked with a smile.

 

He nodded and together they began digging.

 

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

 

The underground bunker was a wreck - not that it had been particularly tidy or in tact before - and little remained of the gang of demons who had been playing cards there only minutes earlier. In one corner of the room Kurama was recovering his rose whip from a dismembered body and in another Yusuke was kicking aside the remains of the table that had been in the centre of the room. By the foot of the steps Hiei was standing over the panther demon, his hands bunched into his clothing.

 

“You had better start making sense,” Hiei warned him. “I'm going to ask you again, and if I don't like the answer you give me this time, I'll remove whatever part of your body my hand touches first.”

 

“I already told you, we got the information from your mother!” the panther shouted back desperately. “You were there, don't you remember?”

 

“Liar!” Hiei roared.

 

He raised one hand above his head but before he could swing it back down at his victim he felt a hand grip his arm around the elbow, halting his advance. He looked back angrily, finding Kurama holding his arm and watching him with his usual air of indifference.

 

“Perhaps this is the wrong approach,” he said.

 

“And what would you suggest, fox?” Hiei spat back.

 

“Allow me,” Kurama replied.

 

Hiei reluctantly stepped back, slowly releasing his hold of the panther demon. Kurama released Hiei's arm and stepped forwards, reaching one hand into his hair. He produced a seed which he promptly poked into a gash by the panther's collarbone.

 

“I've sowed the seeds of the truth plant and the death plant in you,” he said. “If you start talking, you won't be killed.”

 

The panther shook his head.

 

“I'm telling you the truth!” he insisted.

 

Kurama narrowed his eyes slightly and Hiei started towards the panther again.

 

“Whoa there, little guy,” Yusuke said, hooking his arms around Hiei's from behind.

 

“Get off of me detective, or I will kill you!” Hiei snarled at him.

 

“You've got to calm down, Hiei,” Yusuke answered him. “We'll never get any answers out of this guy if you kill him.”

 

“It would appear that he is telling us the truth,” Kurama said quietly. “Or at least, he thinks that he is telling us the truth, which is practically the same thing.”

 

“What?” Hiei roared, struggling against Yusuke's hold.

 

“I am telling you the truth!” the panther insisted. “We got that diagram of The Stolen Moment from Hiei's mother! She told us it would appear around here after 99 years, and it could be used to travel back in time and change one moment in history!”

 

“You filthy liar!” Hiei shouted, kicking back at Yusuke and managing to slide his arms free. “My mother is dead! And even when she was still alive, she never left the ice village!”

 

Kurama muttered something indecipherable and Hiei's head snapped around, his blazing crimson eyes fixing onto him.

 

“Say that again, fox,” he said in a low voice.

 

Kurama glanced at Yusuke before answering.

 

“Your mother must have left the ice village at least once,” he said quietly. “Otherwise you would not be here.”

 

Hiei shook his head slightly.

 

“Maybe so, but that would have happened before I was born,” he pointed out. “This fool is telling us about something that happened a year after I was born.”

 

“Maybe he's telling the truth,” Yusuke said with a shrug. “I mean come on, him and his gang were pretty weak, why would he bother trying to lie to us now? Maybe your mother did know about The Stolen Moment Hiei, and maybe she was the one who drew that diagram.”

 

The last word of Yusuke's speech barely left his mouth before Hiei's fist connected with his jaw. Yusuke was sent back a step, rising one arm almost on instinct as Hiei tried to hit again with his other fist.

 

“Can you describe what the woman looked like?” Kurama asked.

 

Yusuke shoved Hiei back from him, but, undeterred, Hiei launched himself at Yusuke and tackled him to the ground.

 

“She was really crazy,” the panther began. “She was bald, and she was dressed in really weird clothes. She spoke in riddles and she had a strange tattoo on the palm of her hand. She was obsessed with time and she kept saying she didn't have long left, like she thought she was gonna die soon.”

 

Hiei froze, one hand gripped around Yusuke's throat, the other balled into a fist and poised above his head. Slowly the sneer on his face eased and his grip on Yusuke lessened.

 

“Sound familiar?” Yusuke asked him.

 

Hiei took his hand from Yusuke's throat and let both his arms fall by his sides.

 

“Kill him, Kurama,” he said quietly. “I understand now.”

 

A short scream permeated the air, followed by the tearing of flesh and mass spreading of blood. Hiei got to his feet and turned to Kurama.

 

“I think he was speaking the truth, though he didn't understand the facts,” Hiei said.

 

Yusuke got to his feet with a small grin.

 

“So your mother was bald and crazy with tattoos?” he asked.

 

“That woman was not my mother,” Hiei sharply corrected him. “I barely even remember her, most of my knowledge of the event is based on what I was told about her.”

 

“So there was a woman with knowledge of The Stolen Moment 99 years ago,” Kurama said.

 

“Yes,” Hiei confirmed. “I was told that…”

 

Hiei gave Yusuke a long, scrutinising look before continuing.

 

“As a child, all manners of demons tried to kidnap or kill me for my hiruiseki,” he said. “The first to succeed was a crazy woman who kidnapped me from the bandits I was raised by when I was an infant. I don't remember very much about it, but I was told that she was bald, dressed in unusual clothing and she spoke nonsense. I often wondered if she really was my own mother, gone mad and come to look for me. Because the ice maidens never leave their village, they dress in very dated fashions, so the description of her wearing unusual clothing seemed to fit. All I can remember about the whole thing was that she was terrified the whole time I was with her.”

 

“No wonder!” Yusuke laughed. “I bet you were a violent baby too!”

 

“But it wasn't me that she was afraid of,” Hiei corrected him. “It was something else.”

 

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

 

“Oh man, I can't believe it's raining again!” Kuwabara moaned.

 

“I did have a lovely umbrella, but I'm afraid I lost it,” Botan replied. “Lord Koenma gave it to me, it was white and just the right size for sharing.”

 

Botan frowned slightly as she caught Kuwabara giving her a funny look.

 

“I don't think you're ever gonna see that umbrella again, Botan,” he said.

 

“Probably not,” she agreed. “I lost it near a small river, it probably got carried away in the water.”

 

Kuwabara snorted in amusement, but Botan failed to see what was so funny.

 

“Never mind,” she said with a shrug. “We'll dig a little longer and then stop for a bit until the rain lets up.”

 

“I was thinking maybe we should stop for today,” Kuwabara replied. “It's not like we need to find it right now, right?”

 

Botan hesitated, again at war with herself. Kuwabara was of course right: they did not need to find the device immediately, but she wanted to find it before sundown because she had decided that what she was going to do with it was going to be the best Valentine's Day gift ever for Hiei.

 

“We should keep digging for now,” she said, driving the blade of her oar into the ground again.

 

“Okay,” Kuwabara agreed.

 

They dug in silence until the rain became heavier and the ground around them began to become waterlogged, at which point both stopped working.

 

“This is hopeless, Botan!” Kuwabara shouted, the noise of the rain forcing him to raise his voice to be heard.

 

“But we were so close, I was sure of it!” Botan shouted back.

 

“We have to stop!”

 

Botan sighed, wiping a muddy face over her face to clear the water, but doing little more than smearing her face with dirt. She did not want to give up, but she was starting to think that Kuwabara was right. She had been thinking a lot about The Stolen Moment whilst digging, and it had occurred to her that it was fate that she had been sent to recover and destroy it. Surely the fact that she was sent to collect it the day before Valentine's Day was a sign of something, she told herself, and surely the device had the power to bring Hiei the one thing he seemed to be lacking in his life: happiness. He seemed unable to forget or let go of his painful past, so maybe the only way for him to find that happiness was for her to rewrite his past and create some memories that would make him smile.

 

Just then, Botan saw something behind Kuwabara. A small irregularity in the ground behind his head. They were standing deep in a trench they had excavated, walls of mud all around them, and although most of it looked the same, there was something slightly different behind Kuwabara. Botan took a step towards him, reaching her hand over his shoulder.

 

“Hey, what are you doing?” he asked, turning his head to watch her hand pass his shoulder.

 

“Look Kuwabara,” she said. “I think we've found it.”

 

Kuwabara turned fully around, clawing at the dirt a little. When he stopped, he had revealed a long thin object almost as brown as the mud itself, decorated with gold swirls and characters.

 

“I think we did find it, Botan,” he said incredulously. “I don't wanna touch it though, Koenma said the power of it might corrupt even me.”

 

“You should get out of here,” Botan said, stepping past him to approach the artefact. “Get as far away from here as you can. I have to blow it up.”

 

“Right,” Kuwabara agreed.

 

He hoisted himself up the walls of the hole and back up to the field above them. He hesitated by the edge of the hole, peering down at Botan in concern.

 

“Will you be alright?” he asked. “Should I stay nearby in case you get hurt when you detonate it?”

 

Botan looked up at him and smiled, though it was not her usual, careful and cheerful smile.

 

“Run as far away from here as you can Kuwabara,” she said. “And if I don't ever see you again, let me take this opportunity to say that it has always been a pleasure working with you and you have been a most wonderful friend.”

 

“Hey Botan, don't talk like that,” he said, his face creasing in concern. “You're gonna be okay. It can't kill you, you're already dead, right?”

 

Botan smiled again, and again it was a darker smile than she usually wore.

 

“I've never been alive to die, Kuwabara,” she said.

 

“But you've got a human body here in this world, so that makes you alive!” he argued.

 

Botan shook her head, her by now soaked ponytail slapping against her shoulders.

 

“My body may be alive, but my soul is not,” she said. “Now get out of here before you get hurt.”

 

Kuwabara nodded, though his furrowed brow suggested that he still disagreed with her words. He backed away from the hole until he was out of Botan's line of sight, at which point she gently eased her fingers into the dirt, touching The Stolen Moment for the first time. She smiled as she felt it cool against her skin. She hoped the fuse would still light in the pouring rain - how ironic if it would not, she thought.

 

She carefully pulled The Stolen Moment free and wiped the excess dirt from it with her fingertips before cradling it in her hands and taking a moment to admire it. It looked just like the sketch she had drawn in her notebook, down to the last detail. It was a lot smaller than she had imagined it to be: it was proportionately longer and thinner than she had expected too. It was hard to imagine that something so small, so seemingly insignificant, would be so powerful and have such an impact of the lives of so many.

 

Botan was still not sure that she had the right to use it, but she knew that as soon as she lit the fuse, she would be unable to stop her mind from making the wish she had been thinking of: she could only hope that it was the best thing for all concerned.

 

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

 

“She was afraid of something else?” Yusuke asked. “Like what?”

 

“I don't know!” Hiei snapped irritably. “And nor do I care. She was a greedy fool, probably only after my hiruiseki.”

 

“Maybe not,” Kurama said. “I have a theory, but I'm not sure I want to voice it just yet.”

 

“Oh come on, Kurama!” Yusuke moaned. “We've wasted the last week chasing after a bunch of weak D-Class wannabes, and for what? A missing spirit world artefact that we still haven't found? This blows.”

 

“This could be far more serious than you are allowing for,” Kurama said firmly. “We must find that artefact ourselves and destroy it. I have a terrible feeling that if we do not act quickly, we may be too late to prevent something terrible from occurring.”

 

“If you're not going to be specific, then don't bother talking at all!” Hiei snapped.

 

“Yeah, this is starting to piss me off,” Yusuke muttered, fumbling in his pockets. “I'm gonna give that toddler bitch a piece of my mind.”

 

Yusuke produced his communicator and called Koenma, who duly appeared before him.

 

“Ah, Yusuke!” the young prince greeted him. “Glad to hear from you. How are things?”

 

“Not good,” Yusuke sharply replied. “What were you thinking wasting our time sending us in here to catch a group of weak, low-class demons?”

 

“I had to be sure anyone with knowledge of The Stolen Moment was swiftly eradicated,” Koenma calmly replied. “If you've taken care of that side of things then this mission is almost complete.”

 

“Almost?” Yusuke echoed, tensing in preparation of hearing something that was going to push his anger over the edge.

 

“Yes, almost,” Koenma confirmed. “As we speak, I have a top team searching for The Stolen Moment, and they must be close to finding it by now. They are under strict instructions to destroy it as soon as they find it.”

 

“A “top team”?” Yusuke said dryly. “Shouldn't you have done that right at the start of this investigation? And who exactly is your “top team” anyway?”

 

“Kuwabara and Botan, of course.”

 

“Kuwabara and Botan! Are you out of your mind? Kuwabara can't be trusted with a time travel device! He'll use it and kill us all!”

 

“You're lack of faith is disappointing, Yusuke.”

 

“Seriously Koenma, that idiot will use it! He'll probably ask to go back in time to stop Tarukane from abducting Yukina, thinking that he's doing a good thing, but actually totally screwing up everything!”

 

Yusuke yelped as his communicator broke apart in his hand with a blast of air. He looked up to see the top half of the communicator sparking on the ground and Hiei slowly bringing his sword around.

 

“My sister suffered greatly because of that bastard,” he growled, pointing the tip of his sword at Yusuke's nose. “Who are you to say that she should not be allowed to have that horrible memory taken from her life?”

 

Yusuke sighed, dropping the lower half of his communicator and taking hold of Hiei's blade between his thumb and forefinger, pushing it downwards.

 

“Because, Hiei, it would change everything that happened from that moment onwards,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “If he doesn't kidnap Yukina, Tarukane won't have to hire the Toguro Brothers to stop anyone from rescuing her, I won't have to fight them because I'll never go there in the first place, Toguro won't ever know who I am, we won't ever train for the dark tournament because we won't be made to fight in it, we won't get stronger like we had to, Toguro will kill Genkai and I won't be able to finish him, Kurama won't become Youko, you won't master the dragon and when Sensui shows up, we'll all die before we even get close to him.”

 

Hiei lowered his sword.

 

“Don't you get it?” Yusuke continued. “Time travel is a major thing. Nobody just goes back in time and makes good things happen, stopping bad memories, no matter how good their intentions are. If even one slight thing is changed in the past, we'll all be living in a totally different future.”

 

“Yusuke is quite correct, Hiei,” Kurama added. “That device is more powerful than we give it credit for, largely because of the implications of its use. One seemingly well-meaning gesture of somebody travelling back to time to stop something bad from happening will inevitably create infinite chaos. We must get to Kuwabara, and destroy the device ourselves. Alone the temptation to abuse its powers will be too much to overcome, but as a group we can work together to prevent a disaster.”

 

“Right,” Yusuke agreed. “And if Hiei hadn't just sliced my communicator apart, I could have called Koenma to ask where Kuwabara and Botan are right now.”

 

“Hn, fool,” Hiei said with a smirk. “We have a spare.”

 

He produced the communicator he had taken from Kuwabara, tossing it over to Yusuke,

 

“Alright!” Yusuke said. “Let's get this sorted and end this whole joke so that we can all go back to our normal lives!”

 

Yusuke called up Koenma again, smiling nervously as he saw his former boss glaring at him.

 

“Was that another one of my communicators getting destroyed?” he demanded.

 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Yusuke replied. “Can you tell us exactly where Kuwabara is?”

 

“Certainly. He's at the portal in the south where we discovered clear evidence of missing people.”

 

Yusuke looked up at Hiei.

 

“That's not far from here,” he confirmed.

 

Yusuke snapped the communicator shut without bothering to end his conversation with Koenma.

 

“Then what are we waiting for?” he said. “Let's get this thing before Kuwabara does something stupid that we all regret!”

 

Kurama and Hiei nodded their agreement, and all three started off towards the stairs.

 

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

 

“Sir, I've had a thought,” Ayame said, approaching Koenma's desk.

 

“What is it, Ayame?” he asked her.

 

“It's about the illustration that was recovered from demon world,” she replied.

 

“This one?”

 

Koenma picked up the page from his desk and Ayame nodded.

 

“It's quite a specific size and shape, Sir,” she said, reaching a hand up her sleeve. “Actually, it's this specific size and shape.”

 

She pulled a notebook from the sleeve of her kimono, opening it out and placing it down on Koenma's desk. He leaned forwards, laying the paper in his hand over a page of the book.

 

“It's exactly the same size and shape!” he remarked. “And with this ragged edge, it looks like it could have been torn from this very book!”

 

“This is a ferry girl notebook, Sir,” Ayame said, closing the book to show him the cover.

 

“What are you saying, Ayame?” Koenma asked.

 

“I'm saying that the page in your hand was taken from the notebook of a ferry girl.”

 

“But how could that be? And how did it end up in demon world?”

 

“I don't know Sir.”

 

“That could only mean two things: either a demon stole it from one of my ferry girls or one of my ferry girls went to demon world.”

 

“As far as I know, Lord Koenma, only one of your ferry girls has ever gone to demon world. And from what I can tell, she's been there more than once.”

 

Koenma's face dropped so suddenly he almost lost his grip on his pacifier.

 

“Are you saying that this sketch belongs to Botan?” he asked.

 

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

 

Looking up at the sky, Botan could not see a single break in the clouds. She was not sure how the fuse would burn in such wet conditions, but she was growing so apprehensive she knew that she could not wait for a change in weather. With trembling hands she pulled a box of matches from her pocket and struck one, bringing it towards the fuse of The Stolen Moment. The flame hissed and sizzled against the rain, fading to a dull blue and threatening to die altogether. Eventually the fuse took light with a burst of green sparks, so bright, hot and sudden, Botan dropped the match in her surprise.

 

Botan stared at the glowing green flame, shooting out sparks and burning intensely in spite of the dampness of the fuse itself and the rain falling relentlessly onto it. In her shock she almost forgot that the brilliant light marked the start of her limited time to make her decision, and as she tried to remember the finer details of her plan, her mind went blank. The fuse was half burned out already.

 

“Oh dear…” she muttered.

 

Maybe it would not be so bad to just let it burn out, she thought. That was what she was meant to be doing after all. She guessed she had about two seconds left before The Stolen Moment detonated.

 

“Take me back exactly ninety-nine years to this day!” she cried out.

 

Botan felt The Stolen Moment vibrate in her hand for just a moment before it disintegrated with a bang and a cloud of smoke enveloped her.

 

“Botan!” Kuwabara cried, charging towards the hole.

 

He threw himself into the ditch, landing in an awkward crouch, his feet landing in Botan's footprints. The rain that fell around him was grey with ash, and both Botan and The Stolen Moment were gone.

 

“Botan!” he screamed desperately. “Botan, where are you?”

 

He turned on the spot in vain, but still found no sign of her. With a sickening feeling consuming him, Kuwabara came to the reluctant conclusion that something had gone terribly wrong. If Botan had not made a wish, The Stolen Moment should have blown up without affecting her in any way. If she had made a wish, she ought to have returned already, since the principle of the device was that it would send the user back in time for one hour and then bring them forward again to the point in time immediately after the wish was made; yet Botan was nowhere to be seen.

 

Either her wish had created a new reality where Botan no longer existed, or she had somehow died during its destruction.

 

“Botan!” Kuwabara cried, dropping to his knees and clawing at the earth. “You can't disappear, I can still remember you!”

 

He punched at the mud and cried out in frustration. He needed help, and fast. He began searching for his communicator to call Koenma or Yusuke, his eyes clouding over as he remembered that the arrogant little fire demon had it.

 

“Damn you, Hiei!” he roared.

 

Kuwabara leapt out of the ditch with inhuman agility and launched himself into a sprint, tearing down the hillside as fast as his legs would allow.

 

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

 

“Botan!” Yusuke yelled. “Come in, damn it!”

 

Yusuke shook Kuwabara's communicator angrily.

 

“She's not answering!” he said.

 

“Call Koenma,” Kurama suggested.

 

“Don't involve that idiot yet,” Hiei argued.

 

“This isn't funny!” Yusuke cried, his voice breaking a little in his desperation. “We could all vanish from existence at any second! Damn it Hiei, why did you take Kuwabara's communicator from him?”

 

“I had a need for it,” Hiei replied.

 

“Do you even know how these things work?”

 

“Hn.”

 

“Damn it!”

 

Yusuke pushed himself harder and Kurama struggled to match his increased speed. Hiei kept up with ease, but had to admit that even he was impressed with the effort Yusuke was putting in.

 

“I've overcome too much crap to die like this,” Yusuke told them. “Some stupid time paradox isn't going to be the death of Yusuke Urameshi!”

 

“That's the spirit!” Kurama said with a smile.

 

“What's the matter old man?” Yusuke asked him with a grin. “Too fast for you?”

 

“Never,” Kurama replied; though inwardly he was hoping that Yusuke did not run any faster.

 

“Probably like moving in slow motion for Hiei,” Yusuke joked. “Right Hiei? You never stand still for long, huh?”

 

“Stop!” Hiei bellowed.

 

Yusuke struggled to slow himself to a halt, almost tripping over his own feet. Kurama managed to stop beside him with only a little more grace, and both turned to look back at Hiei, who had somehow managed to stop several metres behind them. He looked unusually small and unsure of himself, his appearance only making Yusuke and Kurama worry all the more about why he had halted their progress.

 

“It's here, I can feel it,” they heard Hiei faintly say.

 

He was standing with his legs astride, his head tilted back and his eyes rolled up towards the sky.

 

“Up there, it's close,” he said.

 

Yusuke looked up at the sky, searching it for any signs of anything unusual. When he found nothing of the sort he turned to Kurama who shook his head to indicate that he too was confused.

 

“What are you talking about, Hiei?” Yusuke called over to Hiei. “We don't see anything. There's nothing up there but a bunch of clouds.”

 

“That's it, the clouds,” Hiei replied. “They're just an illusion to hide it.”

 

Hiei held out his unbandaged hand, his head lowering to watch as something almost invisible floated into the centre of his palm. Kurama copied his action, and both he and Yusuke gasped as a single snowflake landed on the underside of Kurama's middle finger.

 

“It's snowing?” Yusuke asked, looking up at the sky incredulously.

 

“It's a defence mechanism,” Kurama replied. “We're close to the ice village, the elders there have conjured a snow storm to keep us at bay.”

 

Hiei marched up to join them, his face once more devoid of feeling.

 

“Let's keep moving,” he said. “I don't like the idea of that apish moron gaining possession of The Stolen Moment.”

 

“But Hiei…” Yusuke began, caught between looking at Hiei's blank expression and the steadily increasing number of snowflakes falling onto his own skin. “Isn't this…?”

 

“We have no business in the ice village, Yusuke,” Kurama said. “Hiei is right: it is far more pressing that we continue and return to the living world.”

 

Yusuke slowly nodded, giving Hiei one last questioning look.

 

“Hn, enough with the dramatics, detective,” Hiei said with a smirk. “I have nothing to say to those hags, and there is nothing any of them could possibly have to say to me. The fox is right, we should keep moving.”

 

“Right,” Yusuke agreed.

 

Kurama started to comment on the possibility of taking a slightly longer route to avoid passing under the ice village, but his voice failed him as a blood-curdling scream resounded above their heads. All three looked up with a start, searching the clouds desperately for the source of the agonising cry. When it came again Yusuke's face twisted.

 

“It sounds like somebody's dying up there!” he said. “Where is it coming from?”

 

“I can't tell,” Kurama replied. “The clouds and the approaching storm are producing interference, it would be impossible to pinpoint the exact origin.”

 

The voice cried out again, even more desperate than before, this time clearly crying out one word.

 

“No!”

 

“Somebody is dying up there, I'm sure of it!” Yusuke yelled, clenching his fists.

 

“And what do you intend to do about it from down here?” Hiei asked. “It's not our concern, we should move on.”

 

“What if it's one of your relatives, Hiei?” Yusuke demanded. “It sounds like a woman!”

 

“I wouldn't care even if it was,” Hiei flatly replied. “Though clearly you know nothing of the ice maidens. They are incapable of emotion, they would never scream like that. That is a voice expressing extreme mental anguish.”

 

“Could you not use your jagan to find the source?” Kurama asked.

 

“I could,” he replied. “If I cared. But I don't, so I won't.”

 

“You little bastard, Hiei!” Yusuke cursed him.

 

The voice cried again, and all three froze on the spot, their eyes wide like dinner plates.

 

“Hiei!” it screamed.

 

Yusuke and Kurama slowly moved their eyes to Hiei, who looked every bit as startled as they felt.

 

“Hiei, no! Please, no!”

 

They heard another anguished cry mixed with sobbing before the air became oddly still and silent, the snow by then falling steadily around them.

 

“Shit…” Yusuke muttered, giving a small shiver.

 

“Maybe you want to reconsider using your jagan, Hiei,” Kurama said. “Whoever that is seems to know you.”

 

Hiei opened his mouth but said nothing, his face still uncharacteristically twisted in horror.

 

“I don't think you're gonna need to use your third eye,” Yusuke said, his face creasing and his body tensing. “Deadweight at one o'clock.”

 

Yusuke pointed over Hiei's shoulder, and both Hiei and Kurama turned to watch as a dark shape fell through the air. Against the blur of the flurry of snow the only thing that could clearly be seen was that it was a limp body of general humanoid shape. After a delay of shock, all three took off towards the falling body, Hiei arriving by it an instant after it smacked hard against the ground. Kurama and Yusuke shortly arrived either side of him, and all three frowned down curiously at the shapeless, snow-covered mass below them.

 

“What the hell is this?” Yusuke whispered, crouching down and wiping aside the snow. “It's like somebody just fell out of the sky, how is that even possible?”

 

“Perhaps she was cast out of the ice village,” Kurama suggested, crouching down and grabbing a handful of snow-soaked material and lifting it upwards.

 

Yusuke cursed as he saw the underside of the arm Kurama was lifting, seeing the sleeve was tattered and bloody. Kurama leaned forwards before recoiling back, standing up and staggering back a step, one hand clamping over his mouth and nose.

 

“Wh-what is it?” Yusuke asked, withdrawing his hands cautiously.

 

“The smell…” Kurama replied in a choked voice. “It's… overpowering…”

 

Yusuke slowly lifted his hands to his nose and sniffed.

 

“Aw!” he cried out, falling back onto his backside with a thump. “She stinks like a urinal! Did she piss herself before they threw her down here?”

 

Hiei slowly knelt down on the ground, tensing a little as the odour of urine the others had mentioned reached his delicate nasal passages. Ignoring it as best he could he reached both hands towards one end of pile in front of himself, gripping two handfuls of cold and wet soft fabric. As he pulled and lifted the folds apart he focused some of his energy into his hands, warming the fabric and melting the snow, revealing more bloodstains and a deathly pale face.

 

Hiei snatched his hands back as though he had been stung, glaring at the face he had uncovered in horrified disbelief.

 

“Oh dear, it is just as I feared,” Kurama gasped.

 

“What is it?” Yusuke asked Kurama.

 

When Kurama did not answer him, Yusuke grabbed Hiei's shoulder and pushed him back to lean over the body and see what the other two were so transfixed by. At first all he saw was the pale face of a woman who looked dead to the world, a nasty wound over one side of her nose, mouth and cheek. Then he noticed the delicate pale blue eyebrows and the sickeningly familiar heart-shaped face.

 

“Oh shit, it's Botan!” he wailed.

 

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

 

Botan coughed and spluttered, waving her hands about at the clouds of smoke around her. They took far too long to dissipate, and when they eventually did, they left her feeling completely confused. She must have spoken her wish too late, she concluded, since she was still on the same hillside by the same old farm.

 

But it was no longer raining and she was standing on ground level, the hole she and Kuwabara had spent so long digging vanished.

 

Botan slowly turned around on the spot, taking in her surroundings. Everything looked the same, but there were a few minor differences. First of all, there were people standing by the farmhouse, all watching her in awe. Studying them a little longer she noticed that they were dressed in clothes that she had not seen humans in the living world wear for many years. She hissed as her left palm burned by the point where The Stolen Moment had exploded against her skin. She turned her hand over to inspect the damage, frowning curiously as she saw a distinct mark there.

 

Botan slowly lifted up her hand, her thumb pointing towards the sky and her fingers below. Looking at her palm side on like that, the burn on her hand appeared to form a pattern.

 

“09,” she read aloud. “How peculiar indeed…”

 

Botan lowered her hand again and looked across at the family by the farmhouse, the sight of their agape faces reminding her of Kuwabara.

 

“Ooh, Kuwabara!” she gasped, looking about herself again. “Kuwabara! It's safe to come out now! I destroyed The Stolen Moment!”

 

Botan turned three times on the spot, making herself dizzy.

 

“Kuwabara?” she muttered, a small frown tugging at her features.

 

He must have run off in his panic at the explosion, she decided: though that did seem unlike him. Botan shrugged off the thought and jogged over to the family by the farmhouse, her eyes growing wide as the father of the family ushered his wife and children indoors in a panic at her approach.

 

“Oh no, it's alright!” she called out to them. “I mean no harm! I just wondered if perhaps you had seen my friend Kuwabara?”

 

“I don't know what sort of demon you are, but you better keep your distance!” the man warned, raising a pitchfork.

 

“Oh my…” Botan muttered, stopping abruptly.

 

She slowly eyed the man over, again struck by his dated clothing. She looked at herself, in the pink velour tracksuit she had acquired specifically for the task of hiking up the hill in search of The Stolen Moment, deciding that she probably did look odd in such an outfit compared to what the farmer was wearing.

 

“Please Sir, I'm just a lost little kitty!” she implored, pulling her very best cat face.

 

“Demon begone!” he hollered, throwing something at her.

 

“Ah!” she yelped as something slapped her in the face.

 

She grabbed awkwardly at the object as it fell from her face and fanned out over her arms. Opening her eyes again she saw that it was a newspaper, but it was unlike any newspaper she was accustomed to seeing Kuwabara or Kurama reading. She carefully shuffled the pages back into order to study the front page, frowning at the headline.

 

“Well that hardly makes sense,” she muttered.

 

Her eyes trailed up from the bold headline, locking onto a small line of text above it. The date on the paper was unmistakeable, and the newspaper was in far too pristine condition to genuinely be that old: apparently The Stolen Moment had worked, it had sent her back in time.

 

“Oh goodness, no!” she gasped. “This isn't right! I did ask to go back 99 years, but this is not the right place! I'm still in the same place I was in when I made the wish! Wait… It only transports through time, not distance or dimensions! I'll have to travel there myself!”

 

Botan threw down the newspaper and smacked a fist into her open palm.

 

“Owie!” she complained, shaking off her burned palm.

 

She held it up again, gasping as she saw that the burn had changed shape.

 

““bS”,” she read. “What does that mean?”

 

She frowned at the symbols, but still they looked like a lower case letter “b” and an upper case letter “S”.

 

Botan slowly twisted her hand around until her thumb was nearest the ground and her little finger nearest the sky.

 

“59,” she read again. “Ooh, 59! And it didn't say 09 before, it said 60! It's a timer! This is how many minutes I have left before I go back to the future!”

 

Botan smiled at her own ingenuity before turning blue with fear as she realised the implications of what she had discovered.

 

“I only have 60 minutes in the past, and I've wasted my first minute already!”

 

She hurriedly summoned her oar and flung herself onto it, rocketing into the sky towards the portal to demon world.

 

“I probably should have planned this a little better,” she muttered to herself as the wind whipped her wet ponytail about behind her. “I don't even know where I'm going, I just hope I can find her before my time is up.”

 

Botan checked her hand again, relieved that it still read 59, before pushing on faster and disappearing from the living world through the portal to demon world.

 

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

 

Next Chapter: Botan has gone back in time and is on a mission to change the past. Meanwhile, in the present day, tensions are high as it appears that something terrible has happened to Botan. Chapter 14: The Stolen Moment.