Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ My Downfall ❯ The Stolen Moment ( Chapter 14 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: LucretiaDecoy 
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.
Anime/Manga: Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 08.15.2009 | Pages: 22 | Words: 18.8K | Visits: 499 | Status: Completed
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.
Anime/Manga: Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 08.15.2009 | Pages: 22 | Words: 18.8K | Visits: 499 | Status: Completed
A/N: I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters herein, they are all the property of Yoshihiro Togashi.
Are you sitting comfortably…?
This is a monstrous long saga of a chapter (about 10K words), but I didn't feel that splitting it out was right, since the events are all written in a specific order, intended to be read together for enjoyment of the irony. Rating increase to cover necessary bad language and violence.
The “timer” on Botan's hand is my nod to “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” - my all time favourite anime movie.
Recap: Yusuke, Kurama and Hiei killed the bandits in demon world, Botan and Kuwabara found The Stolen Moment, and (despite good intentions being exactly the wrong reason to time travel) Botan made what she thought was a good wish, sending herself back in time 99 years, but somehow she returned to the present day in demon world outside of the ice village. And now we found out why…
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Chapter 14: The Stolen Moment
Kuwabara staggered into the hotel he and the others had been staying at, almost falling across the reception desk, his chest heaving and his breath rasping. He was dripping sweat and rainwater, but he was beyond caring, even when he saw his own reflection in the mirrored wall at the back of the reception desk that showed his face was beet red and his hair was dark orange and plastered down over his face he did falter.
“I need to use your phone,” he wheezed, fumbling over the desk at the receptionist's phone.
“Excuse me?” she echoed. “You can't just come in here like that!”
“Emergency,” he said, pushing back his hair with one hand and grabbing up the receiver with the other.
He dialled with a shaking finger, mutter impatiently to himself as he waited for an answer.
“Hello?” a voice eventually spoke to him.
“Yukina!” he blurted out.
“Oh, Kazuma!” she replied. “Are you alright?”
“Yukina, you need to… Get Ayame to… Call Yusuke,” he said through ragged, wheezing breaths.
“Kazuma, you sound awful!” Yukina said, sounding tearful. “What's happened to you?”
“No time to explain,” he said. “Please Yukina my love… Get Ayame.”
“Ayame's not here right now.”
Kuwabara mouthed out a curse.
“Get Keiko to call Yusuke! Call Yusuke!”
“Why, what's wrong?”
“It's Botan. The Stolen Moment made her disappear and she didn't come back.”
Yukina was quiet for a long time before eventually answering.
“We have to find her,” she said. “I'll get Keiko.”
“Good luck.”
Kuwabara hung up the telephone and staggered back from the reception desk before the security guard reached him.
“Damn it I hope it's not too late,” he muttered as he shouldered his way out of the front door.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“It seems logical that the sketch is hers, Sir,” Ayame said.
“Botan?” Koenma echoed. “Are you sure? I mean, Botan? My Botan?”
“Your Botan, Sir?”
“Botan is my best ferry girl!”
Ayame's face dropped.
“You're good too Ayame, but Botan is the kindest and most honest girl I have in my employ!” Koenma said impatiently. “I don't believe for one minute that she would do something as stupid as inform demon world about something like this! Botan is, in every sense of the word, an angel!”
Ayame gave a small shrug.
“It's just a possibility, Sir,” she said.
“No it is not, Ayame, you hear me?” he yelled back. “Don't ever let me hear you talking about Botan like that again!”
The two stared at each other in determination, the moment only ending when a red light on the television screen in front of Koenma's desk began flashing.
“Come in!” he snapped irritably.
The television screen flickered to life and an image of Yusuke's head and shoulders appeared. His hair was white with snow and his skin red, but his eyes were wide and watery, his mouth hanging open, breathing out small clouds of steam against the cold around him.
“Yusuke?” Koenma asked. “You look terrible, where are you?”
“Koenma it's…” Yusuke began, before shaking his head a little. “We didn't know, she just… She fell out of the sky and… She's dead.”
“What?” Koenma echoed. “What are you talking about, Yusuke?”
Yusuke's mouth moved around a little but no sound came out. Koenma could hear desperate voices behind him, his concern only rising when he realised that one of them was Kurama's.
“She's dead,” Yusuke whispered.
Koenma held his breath as Yusuke moved the communicator away from his face, the television screen filling up with the image of a lifeless female body lying between Kurama and Hiei.
“Come on Botan, stay with us,” Kurama said, his voice tense and urgent as he pushed at her chest.
“Are you doing it right?” Hiei snapped at him.
“She's not responding, I'm doing all I can,” Kurama snapped back.
Koenma sat back hard against his chair, his pacifier falling from his lips.
“Koenma, you have to help us out,” Yusuke's voice said, the screen panning away from the terrible scene unfolding and back to Yusuke's face. “Can you send Ayame here? We need to get her back to spirit world. She'll be alright if we can get her back, right?”
Koenma moved his eyes to Ayame.
“Tell him to meet me in the living world,” she said.
Koenma started to argue but Yusuke interrupted him.
“We'll get her through the nearest portal, we'll be at the site in the south where all this crap started,” he said. “Just make sure there's somebody there to take Botan back to spirit world.”
Koenma nodded numbly and Ayame ran out of the office.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Oh dear, this is no good at all!” Botan muttered as she lowered herself to the ground.
She checked her hand again: 51 minutes left.
“Excuse me?” she said, approaching a nearby female demon. “Could you tell me where the ice village is?”
“What?” the demon echoed.
“You know, the home of the ice maidens?” Botan pressed.
“Get away from me, you crazy bitch!” the demon snapped, before marching off.
“Well that was very unfriendly of you, young lady!” Botan scolded her.
Botan gasped as the demon flicked her middle finger in the air.
“Such awfully bad manners!” Botan muttered to herself.
She sighed and checked her hand again: 50 minutes left.
A sudden wind swept past her, dropping the temperature of the air so drastically Botan began to shiver. She grabbed the hood of her velour tracksuit and pulled it up over her head, pulling the drawstrings tight until only her eyes, nose and mouth were visible. She looked about for the source of the sudden cold, seeing nothing at first. She heard a male demon call out something sickeningly suggestive before screaming out in pain. She turned to see a heavily built troll in a loincloth turn to ice in a matter of seconds. His friends scurried off and a single figure walked past the frozen troll, head held high, hands concealed inside the sleeves of a kimono by her waist.
“Oh my goodness!” Botan cried, her voice muffled by her hood. “Yukina!”
Botan watched, wide-eyed, as petite Yukina strolled by, her back rigidly straight and her face set in a determined scowl that looked entirely out of place. It was clearly Yukina though: she was wearing the same kimono, she had the same aqua-blue hair, the same small and neat figure, the same spiked red ties around her hair, the same delicate features and porcelain skin, all of which made her look like a precious and priceless doll.
“Yukina!” Botan yelled, her voice still muffled by her hood, but loud enough to reach the ice maiden.
She stopped in her tracks and turned her head towards Botan, her eyes narrowed into an accusing glare that made her look alarmingly like Hiei.
“Yukina, what are you doing here in the past?” Botan yelled. “Oh wait…” she muttered to herself. “Maybe the time travel spell wore off when I entered demon world!”
Botan checked her hand again to be sure: 49 minutes left.
“Who are you?” Yukina called over to her.
“It's me, Botan!” Botan replied, pointing at her semi-concealed face, which was currently cat-shaped. “I didn't know you could travel through time too!”
“Leave me be, you frightful abomination!”
Botan gasped in horror, but Yukina turned her head and walked on.
“Yukina!” Botan yelled, hurrying after her. “Wait, Yukina!”
Botan touched a hand to Yukina's shoulder, screaming out as she suffered an ice-burn: now both her hands hurt, one from heat and one from cold.
“My name is not Yukina, you are mistaken,” Yukina spat at her.
“But you look just like…” Botan began slowly. “Wait… You must be Yukina's mother!”
The ice maiden's stern face flickered a little.
“Bingo!” Botan said cheerfully. “You are Yukina's mother! How wonderful, I came here to find you! And with… 48 minutes to spare! I need to talk to you about Hiei!”
“Hiei?” she echoed. “I've never heard that name. I'll admit, I do have a young daughter called Yukina, though how you know of that is beyond me.”
“Yes, well I know all about Yukina. And since this is 99 years in the past, she must be… Just a few months old, right?”
“My daughter is more than a year old. Now leave me alone or I will do to you what I did to that filthy troll.”
“Over a year-”
Botan stopped abruptly as the ice maiden's eyes glowed white.
“Can you at least tell me your name?” she asked sweetly. “My name is Botan.”
“What's in a name?” she scoffed.
She turned and started to walk off, leaving Botan deflated: and with 47 minutes to go.
“It's Hina.”
Botan broke into a huge grin as she watched Hina walk away.
“But I am not looking for a friend, so I don't expect to see you again.”
“Well,” Botan muttered. “The apple certainly didn't fall far from the tree, did it? If only Hiei knew…”
Botan paused, thinking over her options. She eventually decided to follow Hina, since it was unusual to find her away from the ice village after Yukina and Hiei had already been born. She was also a little confused: she had specifically asked to go back in time 99 years because that had seemed logical, yet nothing seemed to be adding up. In the time she had come from, Yukina was 100 and newly pregnant, and as far as Botan was aware, a pregnancy lasted nine months. Since the ice maidens conceived at 100 years of age, Botan had assumed that going back 99 years would take her to the point when Hina was 101 years old and Yukina and Hiei would be just three months: yet Hina had said that Yukina was already more than a year old. She wanted to find out why that was, and decided that following Hina was her best option.
She wondered where they would end up. As Hina took a sharp turn and entered a club, Botan hesitated. The signs above the doors were adorned with pictures of semi-naked women: what sort of place was this, and why was Hiei and Yukina's mother going there?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Damn it, Kurama!” Hiei cursed.
Kurama ignored Hiei's outburst, keeping his ear pressed to Botan's chest.
“What's happening?” Yusuke asked, closing his communicator and dropping down beside Kurama. “Is she breathing?”
“Her heart is beating now, but she's barely breathing,” Kurama concluded, lifting his head.
“You're not trying hard enough!” Hiei snarled. “Move out of the way!”
Hiei grabbed at Botan's clothes and lowered his mouth towards hers, his lips stopping just millimetres short of their goal as Kurama grabbed a handful of his hair to halt his actions.
“Hiei, please,” he said, trying to sound as calm as he usually did. “You are too aggressive, you'll do more damage than good.”
Hiei lifted his head sharply, leaving Kurama's hand hovering in the air above Botan, several strands of black hair lodged between his fingers.
“Fuck you!” he spat out.
Kurama sighed.
“I'll pick her up,” Yusuke said to Kurama. “You did well to get her heart beating, but now we need to get her back to the living world. Ayame should be there, she'll take Botan back to spirit world.”
Kurama nodded and Yusuke started to reach for Botan.
“Stop!” Hiei snapped.
Yusuke paused, his hands hovering above Botan.
“You can't just…” Hiei muttered, his eyes looking away from them for a moment. “She's so cold.”
He reached his unbandaged hand towards her face, his fingers shaking all the way. Yusuke glanced at Kurama, who was too busy staring to Hiei to notice. As Hiei's fingers neared Botan he curled them around and dragged his knuckles down the uninjured side of her face.
“She's so cold,” he said again.
“So let's get her out of this cold place,” Yusuke suggested.
“I'll carry her,” Hiei said.
Yusuke rolled his eyes.
“Let me carry her, she's my assistant,” he said.
Hiei's head snapped around and he glared at Yusuke.
“And she's my friend,” Yusuke added. “And she's quite tall, your arms are-”
Yusuke abruptly stopped himself from saying “your arms are too short to carry her”, quickly covering his blunder with a smile.
“What?” Hiei asked quietly.
“You're so fast, it would be better if you ran ahead and made sure that Ayame is ready for us,” Yusuke offered.
“You're right, I am the fastest one here,” Hiei replied. “Which is why I should carry her. In the time you've wasted arguing this with me, I could have taken her all the way to spirit world and back.”
“Hiei-”
“But you don't trust me to touch her.”
Yusuke's face dropped.
“What?” he yelped. “That's not it! That's not it at all!”
“Yes it is!” Hiei snapped bitterly. “You were about to say that my arms are too dangerous to take her in them!”
Hiei roughly pulled off his coat and threw it down into the snow.
“It's because of this, isn't it?” he asked, ripping off the bandages around his right arm. “You don't think that I have complete control over the dragon?”
Hiei clawed his hand in the air, the black dragon encircling his arm twisting with every twitch of his muscles. Yusuke narrowed his eyes slightly as he noticed that Hiei had positioned his arm in such a way that the gaping jaw of the dragon was pointing towards Botan's throat - an accidental coincidence he was sure.
“Hn, you're probably right to be afraid,” Hiei said, smirking darkly. “Those hags said it best,” he added, jerking a thumb up towards the cloudy sky. “I am the forbidden child, who will destroy everything he touches in a blazing inferno.”
He grabbed up his coat and stood up to pull it back on. Yusuke turned to Kurama, who looked concerned.
“We don't have time for this right now,” he said quietly. “Pick her up, Yusuke.”
Yusuke nodded, gathering Botan into his arms and rising to his feet. She moulded limply in his hold, one arm folded across her chest, the other hanging down at her side. Her head hung back as though it was too heavy for her body, her position making her look all the more pitiful.
“Hiei, will you go ahead and check for Ayame?” Kurama asked.
“Fine,” Hiei grunted.
Yusuke watched Hiei dart off before turning to Kurama.
“What the hell was all that about?” he asked.
Kurama shook his head and together they started after Hiei.
“Kuwabara said there was something going on between Hiei and Botan, but I thought he was just… Being Kuwabara,” Yusuke said.
“You know Hiei,” Kurama replied. “He is a very complex character, and he shows his friendship in the most unusual ways. I can only imagine how he would express himself towards somebody he loved.”
“Yeah, he's pretty repressed around Yukina,” Yusuke agreed. “But I don't get why he would like Botan. He never liked her before, and she's not exactly his type. Apart from anything else, he's a demon and she's practically an angel!”
Kurama nodded but said no more.
“Yeah, that's pretty complex alright,” Yusuke muttered.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Botan decided to keep her hood up as she walked deeper into the throngs of demons. Ahead of her Hina was approaching the bar, but Botan was struggling to keep her attention away from the stage to her right: a pair of twin female cat demons were doing things she had not thought physically possible, much to the delight of the mostly male audience in attendance. This must be one of those strip clubs she had heard of, and although she was interested to see just what they were all about, Botan was mostly curious about why an ice maiden would willingly leave the ice village to come to such a crowded place.
Botan checked her hand: 44 minutes to go.
Botan gulped noisily. She did not like the sight of the number 4 appearing on any part of her body, but seeing it twice on the palm of her hand made her positively nauseous. After all, 4 was the number of death, and surely a bad omen.
Botan shrieked into her hood as a heavy hand gripped her shoulder and pushed her to one side. She staggered under the pressure but managed to avoid colliding with anything, quickly righting her balance and glancing about for the source of the action. She eventually located a dark-haired male demon walking away from her, pushing his way past others the way he had her. Botan felt something inside of her buzz as she saw the man approach Hina, who greeted him with a hug. Botan tried to listen to their ensuing conversation, but she was too far away, the club was too noisy, and her hood was muffling all sounds anyway. She did not dare go any closer, as she sensed that they were sharing a tender moment, and she did not want to interrupt it - after all, doing so might change history in a way she was not trying to, she told herself.
Suddenly the man turned fully towards Botan as though to leave, stopping short as Hina grabbed his arm and held him back. Botan could not be sure what sort of demon he was: he had no strikingly unique characteristics that marked him as any kind of animal demon, so she assumed he was probably some kind of elemental demon. He almost looked human, and looked quite weak compared to the other demons around them. His clothing also indicated that he was not powerful or influential, and Botan wondered why Hina would be involved with such a character. But as she watched Hina tugged at his arm and appeared to be almost pleading with him. Eventually he managed to gently ease his way out of her hold and he quickly made his way out of the club.
“Wait, please!” Hina cried, running after him.
Botan turned away as Hina passed her to make sure that she would not be recognised, peering at the doorway until she saw Hina leave through it before daring to turn around.
Botan checked her hand: 43 minutes to go.
She hurriedly slipped her way through the crowds and out of the club again, quickly locating Hina and her friend, who had both stopped at the other side of the loosely arranged street. Botan crept as close to them as she could get, hiding herself behind a large cart that seemed to have been abandoned by the side of a tall building.
“This is the last time I can ever see you,” she heard Hina say. “I have to go back for my daughter.”
“I won't give up,” the male demon replied.
“You're being unreasonable,” Hina said. “I can't come down here again, it's too dangerous. I can't leave my daughter.”
“I'm not giving up on you, please don't give up on me!”
“It's been a whole year already. He was thrown from the ice village, the fall would surely have killed him. It's time to give up.”
“I will find our son, Hina.”
Botan gasped, barely able to believe what she was hearing. She looked about for way to get closer to the couple without being seen, but could find none. In her desperation she clambered into the cart, burying herself under the canopy lying over it. At first she regretted her decision, finding herself surrounded by all manners of trinkets that clattered about beneath her, but she quickly crawled over them on her belly, lifting a flap of the canopy at the other side and peering out, finding herself a few feet closer to the two demons.
“I know he's still alive, you should too,” the man said.
Hina shook her head, and he pulled her into a hug.
“Don't give up yet,” he insisted. “I'll find our boy and we can all be together again. And no matter what, know that I will always love you.”
Hina sighed and buried her face into his shoulder, saying something that Botan could not make out.
“It's okay to love, you know,” the man told her. “Despite what you've been taught by those who raise you, it's not a crime or a weakness, I promise.”
“But our son…”
“Don't cry, I'm going to find him. And when I do, you will give him his name.”
“I can't hang onto hope any more. I… I love you too, but this can never be. Love isn't enough to make this work. I let my son die, I was weak, I-”
“Stop, don't say that. I promise you that I will find him and you must promise to think of a name for him. If you don't you're giving up on him.”
Botan pulled a face. Hiei's mother had not named him? Then who had?
“He is the symbol of our love,” the man said.
“Aw!” Botan whispered. “How wonderful! Hiei was born out of love! Wait, Hiei was born out of love? That's not wonderful, it's wonderfully ironic!”
“They said he was a monster,” Hina said faintly.
Botan gasped, gripping the side of the cart in anticipation of what was to come next: but it never did as two large demons approached and Hina's lover took her hand, pulling her away. The two ran off together and Botan decided to follow, but as she tried to stand she was knocked back down as the cart was suddenly jolted upwards. She was thrown about mercilessly amongst the treasures around her, biting at her hood to keep from crying out as she felt bruises forming.
By the time Botan managed to find her balance amongst the chaos and crawl to the back of the cart, she lifted the canopy to see something that made her both sick and terrified: the cart was moving unbelievably fast, leaving the town far behind it, carrying Botan away from Hina and Hiei's father, and away from the portal she knew how to access.
“Oh dear,” she muttered, dropping the canopy again.
Botan looked at her hand: 39 minutes left.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
As Yusuke finally passed through the portal to the living world, the first sound that greeted him was his phone ringing.
“Can you grab that, Kurama?” he asked.
Kurama reached into Yusuke's pocket to retrieve the phone, looking down at the display.
“It's Keiko,” he said. “Do you want me to answer it?”
“Yeah, tell her we're busy,” Yusuke replied.
“Hello, Keiko?” Kurama answered the phone.
“Yusuke!” Keiko cried frantically back at him. “Kuwabara called, I've been trying to reach you for almost an hour! Kuwabara said “Botan used The Stolen Moment and it made her disappear and she hasn't come back”. He said to get Ayame. What's going on?”
“Keiko, this is Kurama,” Kurama corrected her. “Yusuke can't talk right now. Don't worry though, we've found Botan. If you can reach Kuwabara, perhaps you can let him know. And if you can reach Ayame, tell her to get here fast.”
“What's happening?” Keiko demanded. “What's “The Stolen Moment”? Is it some sort of weapon?”
“We can talk about this later. Please Keiko, we need Ayame.”
“Alright fine, I'll do what I can.”
Kurama hung up the phone and Yusuke looked back at him as they ran.
“What did she want?” he asked.
“She said Kuwabara called to say that Botan disappeared after they found The Stolen Moment,” Kurama replied. “Something must have gone wrong when she tried to destroy it, and somehow it sent her to demon world.”
Yusuke glowered at Kurama.
“Is that seriously what you think happened here?” he asked in a low voice.
“The other alternative is something I would rather not consider at this point,” Kurama replied.
Yusuke looked down at Botan's pale and limp form in his arms.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he muttered, more to himself than Kurama.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hiei scaled a nearby tree with skill that a squirrel would be jealous of, taking himself to its highest point before leaning back, pulling the top of the tree with him and the leaping forwards, using the treetop as a catapult to rocket himself through the air. He had considered that what he was doing was probably not a good idea, for many reasons, but the lackadaisical attitudes of everyone else around him were starting to eat away at his common sense.
The dark-haired ferry girl screamed - as he knew she would - when he collided with her, and they tumbled through the air for several seconds before she righted herself and began trying to push him off.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“What are you doing, you stupid woman?” he snapped back, balancing his feet on the flat of her oar's blade.
“Let go of me,” she hissed, tugging at her arm.
Hiei kept his fist clenched around the material of her kimono and glared down at her.
“Something happened to the other ferry girl, you have to take her back to spirit world,” he said.
The woman in front of him arched her eyebrows and gave him a condescending look that made his blood boil: if she was not so necessary right then, he would have gladly torn her apart for looking at him in such a manner.
“I act according to the orders of Lord Koenma,” she said sternly. “And for your information, he would not look kindly on a demon like you putting your hands on one of his ferry girls.”
Hiei faltered for an instant at her words, and she proved to him then that he had misjudged her intelligence, as she immediately sensed his moment of vulnerability and spun around in the air. Hiei's feet slipped and he fell from her oar, her kimono tearing around his fingers, leaving him to fall to the ground with a handful of black silk.
He groaned as he back hit the ground, but his was up and on his feet in a heartbeat.
“Sneaky witch,” he cursed her, before running after her again.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Botan checked her hand: 32 minutes to go.
The cart had stopped and her body had almost stopped throbbing from the various knocks she had taken during her brief journey. She had not dared look outside again since stopping, as she could hear several voices not far from her, and the amount of bad language they used was enough of a warning to her that they were not the most benevolent of demons and it was highly unlikely that they would be pleased to find her hiding amongst their loot.
Botan was torn between keeping herself safely concealed and making a break for her freedom: she had been travelling so fast she knew she must be miles from the town already, and she did not even know which direction to take to get back. And of course, she had a limited time to find out.
Botan checked her hand: 31 minutes remaining.
“This just won't do,” she whispered to herself.
As carefully as she could, Botan picked her way to the nearest edge of the cart and peeled back the canopy, poking her head outside. It was quite dark, but a quick glance about told her that the darkness was an illusion, as the sky above was still moderately bright. She was in the heart of a thick forest, the trees obscuring most of the daylight and making the group of demons ahead of her appear as nothing more than shadows. Feeling confident that she could use the darkness to her advantage, Botan slid out of the cart and dropped to the ground, crouching low by the wheel and waiting there to be sure that she had not been spotted before moving on.
She dashed to the nearest tree, putting it between herself and the demons. Again she waited there, partly to try to get her bearings: but the trees were too densely-packed for her to make out much of anything. She dashed to the next closest tree, pressing her back to it and pausing there again. A sweat began to form along her brow, soaking into the hood of her tracksuit: she was not alone.
Botan swallowed hard before slowly turning her head, keeping herself flat against the trunk of the tree, she peered around for any visible trace of her follower. She saw nothing, but after a few seconds of looking she heard a small noise that almost sounded like someone saying “hn” somewhere beneath her. She slowly dipped her head and lowered her eyes, inhaling sharply through her nose and containing a scream at what she saw.
Peering up around the tree at her was a tiny face with enormous red eyes and a mess of black hair with a streak of white around the front section.
Botan slowly and carefully turned fully around to stand in front of him. He watched her every move without so much as blinking. She lowered herself into a crouch, but still her face was higher than his: he was almost ridiculously small. He was dressed in black and wore a long, flowing cloak, and around his neck hung a long, fine chain, supporting an unmistakably familiar hirui stone.
“Hiei?” Botan whispered.
The small face grinned at her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Yusuke staggered to a halt, torn between relief and guilt as he looked at the two figures running towards him.
“Thank goodness,” Kurama said, stopping at his side.
Yusuke's legs buckled and he fell to his knees, barely managing to lay Botan on the ground before he sank back to sit on his heels. Koenma dropped down at Botan's other side, the frantic concern even more evident on his teenage face than it had been on his baby face.
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“Oh dear…” George muttered as he knelt down by Koenma's side.
“She just fell out of the sky,” Yusuke said, shaking his head.
“We learned through Kuwabara that she disappeared from the living world when she tried to destroy The Stolen Moment,” Kurama said as he knelt down beside Yusuke.
Koenma looked up at Kurama with wide eyes.
“She died trying to destroy it?” he asked.
“She's not dead!” Yusuke said firmly.
“I managed to revive her, but she is extremely weak,” Kurama added. “Her spirit energy is completely drained, and most of her life energy is gone too.”
“She's been attacked,” Koenma said, reaching a hand towards the wound on Botan's face.
“Yeah and somebody pissed on her too,” Yusuke added. “And I swear if we find who did this to her, we'll kill him ourselves!”
“I'm sure that won't be necessary,” Kurama said.
“I'm sure it will!” Yusuke snapped.
“I don't understand why Ayame isn't here yet,” Koenma said. “She left spirit world before we did.”
“We sent Hiei to find her,” Yusuke said, wiping a hand down his face to clear the sweat and melted snow. “Will she be able to revive Botan?”
“I don't think she can heal wounds that severe,” Koenma replied, pointing at the wound on Botan's face again. “But she can at least help. If it was just some physical wounds I wouldn't be worrying, but with such low spirit and life energy, it doesn't look too good.”
“Are you saying she'll die?” Yusuke asked.
“I don't know,” he said with a small shake of his head.
“Isn't there anything we can do?”
“Hope that she's strong enough to pull through.”
“Hope that she's strong enough to pull through? Are you crazy? This is your fault, you know! You sent Botan to destroy that stupid device!”
To Yusuke's surprise, Koenma did not argue back. Instead he hung his head and gripped his fist at his knees.
“Damn…” Yusuke muttered.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
There was no mistaking it: against all odds, Botan had actually found Hiei. He was barely bigger than Koenma and his face only a little more mature, but he was definitely Hiei. He was of course missing the dragon on his right arm and the jagan on his forehead - he probably did not even know what either of those things were, far less how he would come to acquire them - but he had the same spiked black hair with the same starburst of white, he had the same upturned, deep red eyes, the same delicate features and smooth pale skin that ought to detract from his masculinity and yet somehow never did.
“Hiei!” she gushed. “Look at you, you're so small and so young! And so… Well, you're quite ugly, aren't you?”
Hiei's smile did not falter.
“A bit disproportionate, I suppose,” she added quietly. “Chubby little hands, stubby little nose, big forehead, wide eyes…”
Botan stopped herself as she realised what she was saying and to whom she was saying it.
“But take heart,” she added. “You grow up to be a very handsome young man!”
Botan smiled at him, but as he continued to grin back at her a little too widely, she began to feel as though she was no longer looking at baby Hiei but rather present-day Hiei.
“Not that I've noticed,” she added. “Because I haven't. I don't look at you like that - I mean, I don't think about you like that - I mean I don't think about you at all - I mean I don't like you - I mean I don't like you like that, if you know what I mean.”
Hiei continued to grin. Botan sighed.
“Look at yourself, you stupid ferry girl,” she muttered. “Trying to convince a toddler that you're not attracted to him. You must be losing it.”
“Are you talking to yourself, or the brat?” a voice asked her.
Botan screamed, standing up and turning her head to the source of the voice in alarm. A tall and lanky grey-skinned demon with silver hair and pointed ears was grinning at her amusedly.
“What sort of witch are you, anyway?” he asked.
“Witch?” Botan echoed. “How very dare you?”
“What's with those weird clothes you're wearing?” he added, waggling a finger at her pink velour tracksuit and well-muddied pink sneakers. “What are you hiding underneath that hood?”
Botan gasped, touching her hands to her hood, which was still drawn tightly around her face.
“What are those weird markings on your hands?” the demon asked.
Botan turned her hands over: one was still littered with red streaks from the frost burn Hina had given her and the other told her she had used up exactly half of her time in the past already.
“I'm bald,” she said suddenly, unsure herself where such a ridiculous lie had come from. “And I'm very self-conscious about it, so if you don't mind mister, I'll just keep this hood up thank you very much!”
Botan turned to little Hiei.
“You're coming with me, Hiei,” she said.
“Whoa there, crazy,” the demon said, stepping forwards and grabbing her shoulder. “That little shit belongs to us.”
Botan gasped.
“How dare you call Hiei a name like that?” she hissed, jerking her shoulder out of his grip. “And how dare you use language like that around an infant? You sir, are a very bad man. Now if you will excuse me, I don't have much time left in this world, I have to make every minute I have left matter. I'm going to take Hiei back to his mother.”
“What are you talking about, woman?” the demon echoed. “And what the hell is a “hiei”?”
“Not what, who!” she corrected him. “And this is Hiei!”
The demon looked down at Hiei with a curious frown.
“You didn't know that was his name?” Botan asked.
The demon shook his head, before proceeding to tell Botan that his gang had assumed that Hiei had no name, and so they had been calling him by a word Botan was sure had a terribly offensive meaning.
“What a disgrace!” she cried in outrage.
“I can't let you take him, whatever his name is,” the demon warned her. “First of all, that kid and that stone belong to us. He won't let us take the stone, but he's a pretty efficient killer and thief, he more than earns his keep, so we ain't giving him up for anything. Second of all, that kid is stronger than my boss, he'll eat you alive you dumb whore.”
“We'll just see about that!” Botan snapped.
“Please, go ahead and try to take him away,” the demon snorted. “Me and the boys need something to laugh at.”
“It's “the boys and I need something to laugh at”, actually. And I just mi-oh, holy mother of-!”
Botan looked down sharply, her eyes doubling in size as she saw Hiei had grabbed her leg and sunk his teeth into the back of her knee, and blood was already soaking through the soft pink fabric of her sweatpants.
“Hiei!” she cried, trying to ignore the laughter building in the trees around her. “Stop that! Don't you remember who-oh, wait, you haven't met me yet, you don't know who I am yet… But you will one day mister, and when you do, you will regret biting my leg like that! Yusuke will punch your lights out for that, Mister Hiei!”
Botan paused.
“Wait, maybe he won't, actually,” she muttered. “Because once I take you back to your mother, you won't be a horrible little boy any more, and you won't become a criminal, so you'll never steal the shadow sword, and then Yusuke will never meet you-oh, I don't have time for this!”
Botan reached down and grabbed Hiei's tiny shoulders and began pushing him back. He eventually let go of her leg, but she had been pushing at him with such force that, upon the sudden release of pressure on his part, she pushed him over to the ground, where he landed quite hard.
“Oh my goodness, Hiei!” she wailed, dropping to her knees and gathering him up into her arms. “Oh Hiei, I'm so sorry!”
Botan cuddled baby Hiei into her chest, closing her eyes and enjoying the moment: it was probably the only time she would ever be able to hold him so close without him trying to kill her, she decided. His body was as intensely warm as it was in the present day and his scent was almost exactly the same: Botan inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and losing herself in the dull smoky aroma uniquely blended with the sweet woody scent of tree sap. The moment was almost adorably cute and uniquely sublime. Almost.
“Oh-G-th-Hiei!” Botan choked out as his razor sharp little teeth suddenly clamped onto the side of her face.
She screamed out, tears bursting freely from her left eye as she felt one of his fangs pierce clear through her left nostril and another puncture her top lip. His tiny hands gripped at her neck as though he was trying to choke the life from her.
“Well…” she said in strained voice. “There's no mistaking it: this is definitely Hiei!”
“Don't say I didn't warn you lady,” the grey-skinned demon muttered at her side. “So why do you call him Hiei?”
“Because that's his name!” Botan snapped. “He's a flying shadow!”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“And now I have to take him back to his mother.”
Botan summoned her oar and used it to prise Hiei from her face, catching him awkwardly in her arms before he fell to the ground again. She saw her own blood spilling from the wounds he had opened on her face, red splats littering his hands and face as he grinned maniacally up at her through blood stained teeth.
“You are a bit of a handful, Hiei,” she muttered. “But I don't have time to teach you how wrong you are. I'll be taken from this world in mere minutes, we have to go.”
“I don't think so,” the grey-skinned demon said, stepping forwards.
Botan swung her oar around, swatting him over the head. She then hurriedly leapt onto her oar and took off into the darkening sky, barely escaping the gang of demons who tried to grab her as she went.
“Oh Hiei,” she said with a sigh. “That was close!”
Hiei - who was resting on her lap quite contentedly at that moment - grinned up at her with the same vicious glint in his big eyes.
Botan checked her left hand: 26 minutes left.
“Now we just have to find that town again,” she said. “And lucky for you, Mister Hiei, I found your father, too! You can grow up with your sister, your mother and your father! You will know love, and you will grow up to be a nice, pleasant boy!”
Botan smiled and pulled one sleeve over her hand to wipe it against the corners of Hiei's mouth to clear the blood there.
“I suppose you're not terribly ugly, though I certainly can't say that you're cute,” she said.
Hiei's grin widened and he shot forwards, sinking his teeth into Botan's abdomen, causing her to cross her eyes and scream out in pain, her oar faltering beneath her. They juddered about in the air, Botan clinging to her oar to keep them afloat and Hiei clinging to her belly, apparently intent on tearing free a chunk of flesh from her.
“Hiei,” she growled through tightly clenched teeth. “You have to stop this, or you'll kill us both, which absolutely defeats the point of me being here!”
Hiei bit harder and Botan did something that shocked them both: she drew back one hand and slapped him hard across the face.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The dark and dull ferry girl eventually came down to the ground as she reached a group stopped in the hillside. Hiei shoved the boring ferry girl to the ground to get past her, finding Kurama, Yusuke, Koenma and one of his minions kneeling around Botan, who looked just as deathly as she had when they had first encountered her in demon world.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, looking around the four faces watching her. “Why aren't you helping her?”
“There's not much we can do now, Hiei,” Koenma said.
The prince looked like shit, Hiei thought to himself. He was in his adult form, and his pacifier was missing. His hair was wet and plastered around his effeminate face and the dulled look in his eyes said that he had lost all hope.
“Tell me what I have to do, Kurama!” Hiei barked, dropping to his knees by Botan's feet.
“She's lost all of her spirit energy and a significant amount of her life energy,” Kurama replied. “We're not sure how this could have happened to her.”
“I'll give her some of my life energy,” Yusuke said. “That worked for me before, right? When I fought Suzaku? Kuwabara gave me some of his life energy and I was practically brought back to life.”
Yusuke started to move but Hiei shoved him back hard.
“I'm stronger than you, I'll give her mine!” he snapped, before falling on top of Botan and gripping at her shoulders.
He closed his eyes and began transferring his own life energy into her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hiei was looking up at Botan, his blood-filled mouth hanging open and his enormous scarlet eyes wide and startled. Botan was looking back down at him, her mouth open as wide as it would in light of the swelling she was suffering from his second bite, her pink eyes wide in disbelief.
“Oh Hiei!” she gasped, gathering him into a hug. “I'm so sorry! You can't help what you're doing, you don't know any better! But it's okay now, you don't have to be that way from now on. You are free to be happy at last, Hiei.”
To Botan's surprise, Hiei let her cuddle him. She righted herself and they flew on for a long time in that manner. After a short time Botan eased Hiei back a little, looking down to see that he was asleep. He was just a baby, probably no more than the one year of age that Hina had claimed he was, and although he was already very strong and vicious, he was still just a child. Botan sighed and allowed herself a smile - though by then smiling was almost impossible as her face was quite swollen and painful.
Botan gathered Hiei against her chest again and checked her hand: 17 minutes left.
The town was nowhere to be seen. Botan used Hiei's nap as an opportunity to start healing the wounds he had given her. She concentrated first on the one on her stomach, focussing hard and exhausting a substantial amount of spirit energy just to seal the wound to stop it bleeding. When she had finished with just that one wound she was light-headed and her oar was juddering, forcing her to focus all her remaining spirit energy on keeping them in the air.
“You really are quite a strong little bugger already, aren't you Hiei?” she whispered. “But when I see you again, as a grown-up, I have a feeling you will be a completely different demon. And then maybe you won't be so cruel to me. And we…”
Botan fell silent, cuddling Hiei closer and thinking carefully about what she was doing. If Hiei did grow up to be a completely different demon, he would not be Hiei at all. He would not have the jagan if she followed through with her plan and he would probably not have mastered the dragon of the darkness flame either. He would not even know who she was: she would need to start all over with him. But that would be easier if he was nicer, right?
“I wonder…” she whispered into the wind. “Maybe I'm doing you a great injustice, Hiei.”
She looked down at his tiny sleeping face.
“Were you really so bad just the way you were? What right do I have to do this…? I…”
Botan's nose creased as Hiei began to stir from his sleep. His eyes slowly opened, looking up at her through a haze of sleep, unfocussed and innocent. Botan eased him back a little, and suddenly felt her lap being blasted by cold air, the smell of urine invading her senses.
“Couldn't they have at least put something on you until you were toilet trained?” she grumbled.
Botan sighed and began to take them in for a landing. If nothing else, she intended to ask for directions.
Botan checked her hand: 14 minutes left.
“I've failed, haven't I Hiei?” she said softly as they neared the ground. “This was the one thing I could have given you for Valentine's Day and I've ruined it. You were right: I am useless.”
On the ground Botan placed Hiei down on his feet, looking down at herself miserably. Her tracksuit was torn, bloodstained, urine soaked and muddy. She looked and smelt awful. She contemplated cleaning Hiei up after his little accident, but the thought of facing him as an adult afterwards made it too awkward to seriously consider. Instead she took a hold of his hand and started walking him towards a group of demons sitting around a table playing cards.
As she neared them, Hiei sank his teeth into her wrist and she moaned out in pain.
“Excuse me?” she said in a strained voice as she reached the table, blood pumping out of her wrist and down the sides of Hiei's face. “Can any of you tell me where I can find the ice village?”
“Lady, you've got a mini monster trying to eat off your arm,” a panther demon told her.
“Oh no, don't mind him,” Botan said with a forced smile. “He's… My son.”
The panther frowned slightly, and Botan tried to make her smile seem convincing.
“Maybe we can help you, but we'll need payment,” the panther said.
Botan checked her hand - which luckily was not the one Hiei was gnawing it - and saw that she had 12 minutes left.
“I don't have long left in this world, and in this life,” she said, slamming her hand down onto the table. “I need to find the ice village! I'm here on borrowed time, do you understand?”
The demons shook their heads and Botan growled in frustration.
Her hand told her she had just wasted another minute.
“Well, I suppose I'm rewriting history anyway, I can probably say whatever I want,” she muttered, pushing her hand into her pocket. “Now listen carefully,” she addressed the table of demons. “I've come here by the power of The Stolen Moment to save Hiei. He's going to grow up to be a moody little man with no manners if I don't do this. I have to get him back so that he can grow up with his twin sister Yukina. I'm here on borrowed time. The Stolen Moment allows time travel, and it will be lost for another 99 years, before it appears in the living world.”
Botan slammed down her ferry girl notebook, open at her page of notes on The Stolen Moment.
“There, you see?” she said. “That device allowed me to travel here from the future to save Hiei.”
The demons all eyed Botan over as though she was crazy.
10 minutes left.
“What are you hiding under that hood?” a horned demon asked her. “A lobotomy scar? And what's with those weird markings on your hand?”
Botan sighed as patiently as she could manage.
“I'm bald, and very sensitive about it,” she said, deciding to continue the lie she had told the bandit who had tried to stop her taking Hiei. “And I like tattoos. Now please, you have to help me find the ice village!”
“Sure, it's up in the sky, over that way,” the panther said.
Botan did not know if he was telling the truth or not, but she did not have the time left to argue with him. She hurriedly wrestled her arm free from Hiei and healed it enough to stop the bleeding. She then turned to recover her notebook from the table, stuffing it back into her coat pocket.
“Thank you,” she said, bowing to the demons.
She held out her hand and tried to summon her oar, but nothing happened. She tensed, frowning at the empty air in front of her palm.
She lifted up her other hand: 9 minutes left.
With a great strain, Botan eventually managed to summon her oar, hopping onto it and grabbing up Hiei with her. As they flew upwards Botan struggled to keep them in the air.
Her hand told her she had 8 minutes remaining.
Ahead of her, in the sky, she could see clouds of all shapes, sizes and depths, and the air was growing bitterly cold. She cuddled Hiei closer for warmth, wincing as he bit into her shoulder and her oar shuddered beneath her legs.
Botan checked her hand: 7 minutes left.
She did not have long, and she supposed it would be alright to resort to a slightly desperate tactic: Botan began using her life energy to force her oar to fly higher and faster, rocketing them into the grey clouds. Soon they were surrounded and blinded, and the air began to fill with ice crystals that reflected tiny and beautiful rainbows of light back at them.
Botan's hand told her she had 6 minutes left.
It was not long enough to find the ice village, find Hina (or Rui, she decided) and convince her to take Hiei back, she thought miserably, and simply getting there alone was not enough.
5 minutes left.
Botan expended the last of her spirit energy and began relying wholly on her life energy to fly on through the thickening cloud and the slight resistance of demon energy she could feel present there. At least she appeared to be approaching the ice village, she consoled herself.
4 minutes.
Hiei made a small “hn”, and Botan felt his weight moving from her legs. She grabbed at him desperately to stop him from falling, finding him grinning wildly at her again. In one hand, he was building a red ball of energy that was emitting intense heat, vaporising the ice crystals around them.
“Hiei…?” she whispered faintly.
The ball began to crackle and burn.
3 minutes.
“Hiei, please don't do that,” Botan begged. “If you launch that, I might drop you!”
Hiei grinned wider.
Ahead of her Botan could see the faint shadowy outline of a village comprised of houses with spiked rooftops.
She was so close, but it was taking all of her energy to keep herself up, moving forwards at speed and to push against the heavy, freezing clouds around her.
Hiei drew back his glowing hand and took aim.
2 minutes.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Do you think he overdid it a bit?” Yusuke whispered to Kurama as Hiei flopped onto his back at Botan's side.
Koenma, George and Ayame backed up to give Hiei room, all staring down at him in slightly fearful disbelief.
“I think everything is as it was meant to be,” Kurama replied. “Whether that's for the best or not, only time will tell.”
“You're talking in riddles again, fox boy…” Yusuke grumbled.
Kurama leaned over Botan and Yusuke joined him, both smiling a little as they saw that she appeared to be breathing more easily and some of the colour had returned to her face.
“Can you carry her down the hill?” Kurama asked Yusuke.
“Sure,” Yusuke agreed, gathering Botan into his arms again. “Though maybe when she wakes up I'll tell her she needs to go on a diet…”
Kurama shook his head slightly before crawling over to Hiei's side.
“Hiei?” he said, shaking Hiei's shoulder experimentally.
“What just happened here?” Koenma asked.
“Hiei just gave Botan some of his life energy,” Kurama answered him.
“That's not exactly what I meant, Kurama,” Koenma replied, his brow lowering into a frown. “I know what happened, I just don't understand why.”
Kurama smiled whimsically at him before pulling Hiei up and manoeuvring him onto his back. As Kurama stood and Hiei slouched against him, Koenma held up a hand to stop him from following after Yusuke.
“I'm confused,” he admitted.
“Well it would appear that The Stolen Moment could not be destroyed so easily as we had expected,” Kurama calmly replied. “The theory was that if it was ignited by a person with no desire to travel back in time, it would simply explode harmlessly with no ill effect, and yet somehow when Botan tried this method it sent her to demon world, the transition somehow injuring her in the way we see now.”
“That wasn't what I meant,” Koenma said, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Though I still don't understand why being sent to demon world would leave Botan with tooth-marks in her face.”
“I believe it would be wise to let Botan and Hiei rest for now. This is not the time for questions.”
Koenma nodded, but Kurama did not miss the way his eyes wandered to Hiei and one of his eyebrows twitched slightly upwards. Satisfied that Koenma had said all that he intended to then, Kurama walked on quickly, Yusuke coming into his sights again after a few minutes, near the foot of the hill. He heard a grunt in his ear and felt Hiei twitch, indicating that the fire demon was waking up again already.
“Hiei, there is something I must ask you,” Kurama said, slowing his pace a little to keep himself behind Yusuke and out of earshot.
“What?” Hiei moaned groggily.
“That strange woman who kidnapped you as a child, the bald one in the unusual clothing with the tattoos, what happened to her in the end? How did you get away from her?”
“I killed her.”
“I see. Can you remember how?”
“I blasted her into oblivion.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hiei snarled and took aim at Botan's face.
“Hiei, no!” she screamed.
In her desperation she gripped her hands into his cloak and leaned back, spinning around in a full circle in the air, hoping to disorient him. The village was so close, she just needed a little longer.
But she only had 1 minute left.
“Hiei, please, I'm trying to help you!” she pleaded.
But there was not an ounce of remorse in those red, red eyes. Hiei took aim again, this time launching his attack without hesitation. Botan was engulfed by a wall of smoke, and she felt her oar vanish beneath her.
She tumbled through the air, free-falling helplessly, the smoke fading to be replaced by heavy snow. The cold and wet of the snow brought Botan back to her senses long enough for her to draw once more from her diminishing reserve of life energy to summon her oar and level out in the sky.
Hiei was gone.
Botan's heart skipped a beat.
“No!” she cried.
She began swooping about aimlessly through the clouds and snow.
“No!” she screamed, over and over.
She had done the worst thing imaginable: she had dropped Hiei from the ice village all over again. She had gone back to help him, but instead she had killed him. His attack had not hurt her, so she could only conclude that she had dodged it. In saving her own life, she had sacrificed his.
“Hiei!” she yelled, her eyes blurring with tears and her voice shaking. “Hiei, no! Please, no!”
Botan screamed out one last heartfelt cry of despair before losing consciousness, her oar vanishing and her body falling from the sky.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Next Chapter: The chaos concludes from the time travel incident, and all that is left is the consequences; thankfully one person seems to have figured out exactly what has happened. Chapter 15 - The Why of Hiei.