Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Shattered Gates ❯ The Elemental Stone of Fire, Kakai ( Chapter 5 )

CHAP 4

The next day, just after the sun had peeked over the horizon, Karyuu personally woke up each of them using the new technique she had taught them the day before, gently rousing each of them out of a deep slumber.
Not surprisingly, Yusuke had been the most difficult to wake up. It had taken several minutes of Karyuu's voice calling his name to finally drag him out of the realm of sleep with an incoherent curse.
They sat down to a bowl of Corn Pops (a disappointing development, despite Karyuu' warning that she wouldn't be cooking them breakfast every morning), and ate in relative silence. Hiei, who had joined them at the table, refused the cereal, but did accept a cup of Karyuu's tea.
"So what're we doing today?" Yusuke asked sleepily.
"Well, since it rained again last night, I suppose we'll start with Fire."
"Why Fire?" Kurama asked. "I would have thought Water would be more to the point."
Karyuu nodded.
"Yes, it would, but if you four are new to this, then the less flammable the surroundings, the better."
"It's always nice to know that our teacher holds so much confidence in us," Kurama murmured, and she smiled at him almost apologeticaly.
"Hey!" Yusuke said suddenly, looking up from his bowl of cereal. "Something occurred to me last night, but I forgot to ask you about it."
Karyuu raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.
"You said before, that when we fought Yakumo, we didn't kill him with that big attack of ours because we were missing an element."
She nodded.
"Right."
"And yesterday... when we did the thing with the Stones, we all got an Element, right?"
"You got all five," Karyuu corrected almost absently. "But yah, that's about right. So?"
"So who's Water?"
Kuwabara looked up and frowned, counting on his long fingers.
"Hiei was Air... Kurama was Earth... I was Fire... Urameshi got Spirit... along with everything else... yah, he's right, we're missing somebody…"
"No, we're not," Kurama said suddenly.
Karyuu looked at him and smiled, motioning of him to continue.
"Unless I am mistaken... Karyuu is Water... because she's female."
Karyuu sighed quietly and shook her head, slummping a little in her seat, apparently mildly disappointed with the fox-demon's reasoning.
"Despite popular belief, being a woman has nothing to do with being close to the Water element, but in my case, yes it's Water."
"Oh."
"Anyway, our little group has everyone it needs, so we don't have to worry about that any more."
"Okay, I guess that makes sense," Yusuke said, poking at one Corn Pop with distaste, before looking up at her again. "I've got another question for you."
"Go ahead."
"What are you, anyway?"
Karyuu smiled and was about to answer when Kuwabara gave a snort.
"She's a girl, Urameshi, I woulda' thought that was kinda' obvious…"
Yusuke glared at his tall friend.
"Shut up doofus! I know she's a girl! It's kinda' hard to miss. What I mean is what…" He paused, trying to think of the right word.
"Species?" Karyuu supplied, smiling at him.
He nodded a little sheepishly, and the others looked up at her. None of them had been quite bold enough to ask what she was, and the opportunity to have their question answered was eagerly accepted. Even Hiei, who had been ignoring the small snatches of conversation, seemed to perk up in interest although he did not raise his eyes from his tea to look at her.
"Well... there isn't really a name for my people, we've always called ourselves 'Servants of Gaia', but I guess you Humans would have called me an elf in the old days - "
Yusuke and Kuwabara laughed at that.
"Karyuu," Kuwabara said shaking his head. "Elves are little green guys with bells on their shoes, and they're really short."
"And what would you call me?" She asked with self-mocking amusement. "Vertically challenged?"
Hiei snorted at that, and Kurama gave his friend a knowing look. Until now, Hiei had been the smallest of their group, (with the exception of Genkai), but with Karyuu's addition, she had now taken his place.
"I won't get much taller than I am now," Karyuu continued, as the two Humans stared at her. "And although I am short even amongst my own people, the tallest of us is at least two heads shorter than you, Yusuke. A person Kuwabara's size is considered a giant back home," she sighed and closed her eyes. "A long time ago, my people associated freely with Humans, and for a while it was our job to look after you and your Realm, but as you grew and evolved, you turned away from Gaia in favour of technology, as races of your kind are prone to do. Eventually you forgot about us, but we've been walking among you unnoticed for hundreds of years, anyway. Now I don't remember a time when Humans remembered us as anything more than little green men that repair people's shoes in fairytales. I'm not nearly old enough to remember it, but stories about our people's friendship are in all of our history books, and through them, we remember you as you were, even though the majority of you have forgotten us."
"Wow," Yusuke said quietly, looking strangely guilty all of a sudden. "Man, I didn't know that…"
"Yah, neither did I…" Kuwabara said looking at his now soggy Corn Pops as they bobbed around in his milk.
Karyuu laughed suddenly, a warm tinkling sound that made them look up at her in surprise.
"Don't look so guilty, guys! That's ancient history, and my people have better things to do now, then sing songs in the trees... like helping you save your Realm from the Armies of Hell," she drained her cup and got to her feet, closely followed by the others. "Lets go."
*****
The forest was damp, and the smell of fresh rain clung to everything, making the rich deep smell of loam thick in the air as they moved along a nearly invisible track that snaked through the shadowed undergrowth. Karyuu lead them through the thick forest surrounding the Temple, and brought them unerringly to a wide, babbling brook that ran through a wide clearing in the trees and ended in a deep pool about fifty feet across.
"Here we are," Karyuu said, looking around. "We shouldn't damage too much if we train here."
"I take it, the stream has a large part in your decision?" Kurama asked, coming to stand at the edge of the pool.
Karyuu shrugged. "Partially, but this is also a good spot because it's far enough from the Temple to make sure that if things get out of hand, we'll be able to stop it before the Temple is destroyed."
"You've got a lot of faith in us, huh?" Yusuke said sardonically, his hands in his pockets.
"Fire is a difficult element to control at the best of times, Yusuke," Karyuu said calmly, as she undid her leather jacket, but did not remove it as she had the day before. "And since you don't know what you're doing, it's a good idea to be careful. Trust me on this."
He shrugged.
"What ever you say."
She sighed and looked around at them.
"Look, I know you guys are sure of yourselves, and you're proud of your abilities, and from what I've heard, you've got every right to be. But the kind of power I'm going to be teaching you to use is stronger than anything you've ever run into before, and if you're not careful, you could do a lot of damage to... well just about everything."
There was a note of appeal in her voice that made Kurama frown.
'She's afraid to teach us,' he realised, as he looked at the serious expression on her face. 'She's afraid that we may not have the discipline to control the power we've been given…'
Karyuu moved away from the water and stood in front of Yusuke, looking up at him seriously, her multicoloured eyes searching.
"You out of all of us have the power to destroy, Yusuke," she said quietly. "Please take this seriously."
He looked down at her, surprised, and she backed away from him, until she stood near the centre of the clearing. They felt her Spirit Energy decrease dramatically, and for a moment, they thought something was wrong. But then, very suddenly, they watched as her aura became clearly visible for all to see, shrouding her in a constantly shifting nimbus of white flame.
"This is my real Spirit Energy," she said looking at them. "Compared to yours, it's less than a preverbal fart in the wind," Kuwabara sniggered at that, but quickly regained his composure as she continued on. "But with Gaia's help, I can draw on Her energy, and become far stronger."
As she spoke, Karyuu bowed her head, and the four Spirit Detectives heard a dull rushing sound so faint they were almost uncertain that they were hearing it at all. As the rushing sound grew, they were astonished to see Karyuu's energy skyrocket to unbelievable levels, going so high that none of them doubted that she could have easily killed all of them, even Yusuke, if she had been so enclined with little effort. She opened her eyes, and they saw that her eyes, ever changing, now glowed with some unearthly light, giving her an almost ethereal appearance. A wind they could not feel stirred her hair around her, and the white fire of her energy shifted and swirled around her as if she stood in a torrent of flame.
"This is the kind of power I'm talking about," she said within the depths of their minds. "But this, my current maximum, is nothing compared to what you will be capable of if you take your training seriously... Please take it seriously." The last portion of her statement was directed at Yusuke alone.
Then, Karyuu's eyes met his for half a second, before the glow in her eyes faded and her Spirit Energy dropped back to what they had, (until now), believed was her normal energy level, which flickered and shifted like the ever-changing colours of her eyes.
"Personally, I prefer to keep my energy at approximately this level she said calmly as if nothing at all remarkable had happened. "Each of you will have to decide what level is most comfortable eventually, but for now, let's just focus on drawing in the power and holding on to it before we work on using it practically."
"That was pretty amazing!" Kuwabara said enthusiastically, unaware of the very serious plea Karyuu had made to Yusuke.
Hiei was surprised to see a slight blush touch her cheeks in embarrassment... It was obvious that she was not accustomed to praise of any kind...
"Thanks, Kuwabara, but like I said, that's nothing, compared to what you guys will be able to do once I'm through with you."
"Then, what're we waiting for?" Yusuke asked, giving Karyuu a cocky smile that held a degree of discreet reassurance that only she saw.
*****
They spent the rest of the day, working non-stop learning how to draw on Gaia for Her Fire, or Kakai as Karyuu called it.
"Every living thing, as well as non-living, generates heat," Karyuu had said. "And as a first step in learning to use the element of Fire, you'll have to draw some of that heat into your body and bring it under your control before we can begin to manipulate it."
She had demonstrated it, and then motioned for them to do it themselves.
Unfortunately, their success was minimal. Kuwabara, (who had bonded with the Fire Stone), had naturally been able to draw on the heat generated by everything around him, but had focused so much on his living team-mates, that he leached the heat they were trying to gather themselves, even going so far as to take so much of their body heat that Yusuke and Kurama's lips actually turned a faint shade of blue for a while. After everyone had warmed up again with Karyuu's help, and various degrees of beatings aimed at the orange-haired young man, they had resumed their training. Hiei, who was a fire-demon, had better luck, and was able to draw a fair amount of heat into his body after only two hours of work. Yusuke and Kurama, however showed almost no progress at all. The fox-demon, who was naturally at odds with the Fire element, stood sweating and breathing hard after four hours of attempting to draw on the heat generated by the environment around him.
He understood the concept, certainly, but for some reason, he simply couldn't hold on to the energy long enough to gather anything more than a warm breezes worth.
Yusuke was the worst of them by far. He had managed to learn how to draw on all the energy he wanted, but he seemed to have trouble absorbing it physically, always ending up with a massive ball of raw, seething heat directly before him that made the grass around him wilt and eventually burst into flame. After the fifth hour had come and gone, something finally happened to break the mounting frustration that had begun to build within their group.
Yusuke was making another attempt at drawing on the heat from everything around him, and containing it inside his body, and much to Karyuu's relief, it looked as if he was about to be succeed.
"That's it," Karyuu said encouragingly. "You've almost got it, Yusuke. Just allow it to enter your body, absorb it…"
The brown eyed Spirit Detective was scowling as his eyebrows knotted together in concentration, beads of perspiration gathering on his forehead.
"C'mon, Urameshi!" Kuwabara called from a safe distance. "Just do it! We've been here forever waiting for you to get this stuff... You're slowing us down, Punk!"
Yusuke's eyes flickered to the orange-haired young man in annoyance, his already thin temper coming dangerously close to breaking.
"Shut up Kuwabara!" Yusuke snapped.
"Concentrate!" Karyuu snapped, returning his attention to it's proper place. "If you don't learn to concentrate, you're going to loose it, or worse, hurt yourself!"
He gave her a glare that exactly mirrored the one he had aimed at Kuwabara and sighed disgustedly.
'Kuwabara's right, though,' Yusuke thought silently. 'This is taking too long... awwww to hell with it!'
In a sudden, (and very foolish) burst of stupidity cleverly disguised as inspiration, Yusuke pulled the massive ball of pulsating energy toward him, enveloping himself with the heat he had gathered in the hopes of absorbing the energy by allowing it to touch him physically.
Unfortunately, Yusuke's theory was incorrect, and before Karyuu realised what he was trying to do, he was enveloped in a seething mass of raw heat energy.
It was out of his unwise action that a release of tension was executed... unfortunately it would be at Yusuke's expense.
As a result of his earlier training and the sheer level of his natural Spirit Energy, the heat that surrounded him did little more than soak his bare chest, arms and forehead in sweat as his body reacted to the sudden increase in temperature.
However Yusuke's clothes were not subject to his natural defences and reacted accordingly.
Luckily, Karyuu had enough time to realise what was happening before the brown-eyed young man's jeans, socks, shoes and underwear burst into flame, and whirled around, putting her back to him before anything... embarrassing was revealed. She stood there, both hands clapped over her mouth as she giggled shrilly, a blush raging across her cheeks, opal eyes wide as she stared devoutly at the safe, Yusuke-less woodland before her. She felt the heat energy dissipate once again as Yusuke failed again to absorb the energy he had gathered, and was dimly aware that Kuwabara, who stood to her right, had directed his gaze upward, an embarrassed flush across the tall young man's nose, his expression pained. There was a very brief, extremely uncomfortable pause, broken only by Karyuu's almost convulsive giggles, before she heard Yusuke swear profusely and the sound of his quickly retreating footsteps, accompanied by a rustle of bushes that told her that he had hidden himself behind a bush somewhere behind her.
"Damn it, Karyuu!" He bellowed, prompting another burst of giggles from the furiously blushing Servant. "Why didn't you tell me my clothes were gonna' disappear?"
Karyuu forcibly suppress the laugh that welled up inside her chest and cleared her throat.
"They didn't disappear, Yusuke," she corrected, her voice taught with suppressed laughter. "You burned them off when you pulled that stunt with the energy you gathered…"
"Burned? Damn it! Why didn't you stop me then?"
"It wasn't my fault, you did it before I could stop you - "
He said things in response that would have made Emperor Ennma himself blush in embarrassment. Karyuu, however seemed to think the verbal onslaught was funny rather than offensive and had to bite her lip to keep from being reduced into new bouts of laughter.
"Now Yusuke," Kurama said in a placating tone from somewhere to her left. "There's no need for that…"

Yusuke grumbled something about 'kicking butts' to himself from his retreat in the bushes behind her and she heard the fox-demon chuckle quietly, though she doubted anyone else did. Cautiously, she turned her head to the right, until she could see Kuwabara, who was still looking up into the rain cloud-spotted sky, and Hiei, who stood with his arms folded over his chest, ruby eyes directed at the scorched grass, scuffing it lightly with the toe of his booted foot an equally pained look on his normally expressionless face.
"Hiei?"
He glanced up at her and then back at the ground.
"Hn?"
"Do you think you could run back to the Temple and snag our naked commrade some new clothes?" She asked, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
The fire-demon seemed to mull it over and then shook his head.
"Hn, no."
As expected, Yusuke, who had been listening anxiously from his bush began hurling curses at Hiei, who didn't seem to hear him, though Karyuu could have sworn she saw a ghost of a smile on his face.
"C'mon, man, you're the fastest," Kuwabara said.
"Make Urameshi go for his own clothes," the fire-demon said calmly.
"No way!" Yusuke bellowed. "Keiko's there!"
"So?"
More curses followed from Yusuke who was feeling understandably put-out by now, and the sheer indignant roar of their leader's complaints were enough to make even the kind-hearted Kurama begin to laugh.
Karyuu felt a twinge of sympathy for the brown-haired Human and decided to end his torment for the day.
"Yukina's there too, Hiei," Karyuu reminded him silently, making the ruby-eyed demon look up at her suddenly. "If you don't go, Yusuke might go for his clothes as he is, and you know that Yukina will be waiting to welcome him back, not knowing he's naked... You wouldn't want to subject her to that would you?"
She watched him from the corner of his eye as he glared at her and then he heaved a sigh.
"Shut up, Urameshi!" Hiei snapped, as Yusuke continued to hurl insults and threats at Kuwabara and Kurama, silencing him in mid-rave. "I'm going! Just stop your whining!"
And with that, the fire-demon sped off, darting at blinding speed though the trees before disappearing out of sight.
Karyuu watched him go with a satisfied smile, and watched as a still chuckling Kuwabara took off his jacket and with his blue eyes still directed skyward, he walked out of her line of vision and presumably tossed his long white coat to his naked, and probably chilly friend. Karyuu heard Yusuke grumble a grudging "Thanks," and she risked a cautious peek over her shoulder.
She was relieved to find that Yusuke had put on the oversized jacket, buttoning it up to his chest, the long coat dragging on the ground as he moved... toward her, an expression of deep, embarrassed anger flashing in his dark brown eyes. Seeing that he was 'decent' for now, Karyuu turned around to face the enraged Human, and opened her mouth to speak when he surged forward, teeth bared as he caught her by either side of her jacket, a normal reaction of his whenever he was angry, but because of her unnaturaly light weight, his 'grab-them-by-the-shirt-and-give-them-a-shake' technique resulted in simply lifting her off of the ground until she was eye-level with him. She blinked at him, not particularly alarmed, but surprised none the less, meeting his furious brown eyes with her own calm, deeply amused opaline gaze. She heard Kurama and Kuwabara inhale sharply as she was hoisted effortlessly into the air, moving forward to stop their angry leader before he did something rash.
"I've never hit a woman that wasn't trying to kill me in my life," he growled through clenched teeth as she continued to regard him in the same calmy amused way. "But I'm startn' to think this might be my first…"
"Urameshi!" Kuwabara yelled in alarm. "Don't Hit Girls, remember? It just isn't right... no matter how strong she is..."
"It also wasn't her fault," Kurama said in a soothing tone.
But Yusuke ignored them, all of his attention focused on the elfin Servant he held in the air in front of him, so much in fact that he didn't even notice Hiei's arrival with his clothes. The ruby-eyed demon raised a quizzical eyebrow at Kurama, who returned it with a mildly worried look. He doubted Yusuke would really hurt Karyuu... but then again, he was awfully angry at the moment…
"You know what?" Yusuke said quietly, his brown eyes narrowing.
"What?" She asked casually, her head cocking to the side.
"I think you didn't tell me on purpose."
She laughed at that and he shook her angrily.
"What's so funny?"
"Why in the Nine Hells would I do that?" She asked, putting her hands over his, leaning her face forward, so that their noses almost touched, opaline eyes boring into his. "Do you think I wanted to watch your naked pasty butt run through the bush?"
This obviously wasn't the response he'd been expecting, and all four men gaped at her incredulously.
She sighed quietly as a vibrant blush crossed the bridge of his nose.
"Look, I didn't see anything, alright?" She said placatingly. "I turned around when I realised what you were doing to yourself, but it was already too late by that time, and by then ... you'd made yourself naked…" She cut off a rising giggle and shook her head, at Yusuke's discomfort, her opaline eyes sparkeling in amusement. "All that blood rushing to your head... I figured you were hard-core punks who'd seen everything there was to see... Didn't think you could be embarrassed that easily."

Yusuke glared at her as a grin tugged at the corner of her mouth and was reduced to a positive scowl as she suddenly broke out into hysterical laugher, her head thrown back, legs kicking a little in the air.
"I slipped in a dirty joke and no one even noticed!" She crowed gleefully.

They stared blankly at her, wondering for a moment if she had gone mad, and Yusuke shook her again, stilling a little of her laughter down to a gleeful chuckle.
"What the hell are you talking abo - " He blinked as the joke finally sank in, and he began to laugh in spite of himself, closely joined by Kurama and Kuwabara, leaving Hiei to wonder what the hell was so funny...
The leader of the Urameshi Team laughed so hard in fact, he dropped Karyuu without thinking, realising his mistake only when she dropped very suddenly to the ground, landing on her feet unharmed, and laughing along with him, her opal eyes shining with silver tears of laughter. He put a half apologetic hand on her shoulder and bowed his head shoulders shaking with each hearty 'gafaw!'.
After a few minutes, they managed to regain their composure, much to Hiei's relief, (as he was beginning to get tired of listening to them laugh at a joke he didn't understand), and Yusuke caught the new assortment of clothes the fire-demon had brought for him as they were tossed to him neglegently.
"Thanks, Hiei!" Yusuke called from behind the bush he had taken refuge behind earlier.
Karyuu turned her back to him again, and to pass the time, traced archaic looking symbols into the sand with the toe of her boot while Yusuke changed. Kurama came up casually beside her and looked down, his head cocking to the side as his emerald eyes moved over the writing.
"Is that the language of the Servants?"
She glanced up at him.
"Mmmmhmm," she said quietly, and then dragged the side of her foot over the script, wiping it clear.
He frowned a little and met her gaze, seeing the half-reprimanding, half-apologetic look in her opal eyes.
"No peeking Yoko," she said with a smile. "Servants only, you know that."
He gave her a slightly pained, slightly amused look that told her she'd caught him being sneaky.
"Sorry," he murmured. "Old habits die hard, I'm afraid."
"What kind of a fox would you be if you weren't sneaky?" She grinned at him, and bumped her shoulder against his arm in a playful manner, dispelling the discomfort of the ex-thief with that singular friendly gesture.
Yusuke emerged finally from behind the bush, tossing Kuwabara his long coat as he moved forward, stopping in the middle of the clearing to face Karyuu as she and Kurama turned to face him. Karyuu noticed with a certain amount of amusement as Kuwabara went to put on his coat, and then paused, made a face and folded it over his shoulder almost primly.
'There's one coat that'll be washed tonight,' she thought silently before returning her attention to Yusuke, who stood with his hands in his pockets, tapping one sneakered foot against the scorched earth.
"Listen, Karyuu... I'm... you know, sorry about what I said earlier…"
She shrugged dismissively.
"Don't mention it."
"No, really... I'm sorry."
She looked at him strangely, as if his insistence on apologising was strange to her. Her head cocked to the side a little and something in her smile changed a little, grew warmer almost, despite the fact that there seemed to be nothing at all forced about her smile.
"It's alright, Yusuke. No harm done. Now let's try that again... and for Kami's sake, ask me before you try any experiments, okay?"
He nodded and smiled at her, running a hand through his thick black hair as the others laughed quietly.
*****
Another two hours, passed and Kurama had managed to at least harness the energy, and Yusuke had finally managed to absorb some of the energy he'd gathered, but not all of it. Breathing hard, the two dropped to the ground beside each other, sweating profusely. Karyuu, who had been watching their progress raised an eyebrow at them.
"Giving up, already?"
They both gave her a less than friendly look and Yusuke flopped onto his back, arms outstretched.
"It's break-time, Karyuu."
"It is?"
He raised his head, looking up at her over his heaving chest, brown eyes narrowed a little.
"Yes," he said firmly. "It is. If I sweat anymore, I'm gonna' drown..."
Karyuu laughed quietly.
"Okay guys, our mighty leader has spoken! Break time!"
He glared at her and then lay his head back on the cool ground, closing his eyes.
Karyuu went to the back-pack and dug around, producing plastic-wrapped sandwiches, which she tossed to Kurama and Kuwabara, and with an expert flick of her wrist, pitched one through the air to land squarely on Yusuke's chest. He started slightly and opened an eye to look at the food sitting on his chest, before sitting up, a grin on his face as he unwrapped the sandwich and took a deep bite. She gave Hiei an enquiring look and he simply looked away, leaping lightly into a low branch of a near-by tree, and sitting with his back to the trunk, he closed his eyes and ignored her and everyone else as usual. Karyuu shrugged and after pulling out a sandwich for herself, she sat down near to the others, although she kept her distance, not wanting to intrude on their conversation and ate in silence, content merely to listen to their conversation.
*****
Hiei watched Karyuu from where he sat in his tree from beneath his eyelids. He watched as she shrugged when he ignored her offer of lunch and taking one plastic-wrapped sandwich for herself, went to sit near the others.
'Near,' he thought silently, narrowing his already half-closed eyes at her. 'But not with them. She never actually sits with them, just near-by... The same way that I do…' He scowled and closed his eyes fully, turning his head away from her. Their reasons, however seemed entirely different; he sepperated himself because he prefered to keep his distance, especially from that oaf Kuwabara. She on the other hand seemed to have no problem with the obnoxious antics of the orange-haired giant. Her sepperation seemed to be the natural reaction of a stranger who had suddenly found herself amongst a close-knit group of friends, and sepperated herself for fear of imposing her presence on them. For some reason, her automatic separation of herself from the others seemed to bother him on some level, especially in light of her seemingly willing inclusion into their group, and her apparently genuine enjoyment of Yusuke and the Oaf's antics. After that ridiculous incident with the clothes, it seemed as if she was quite rapidly becoming a part of their little group, (almost at an alarming rate in his opinion). But this personal seclusion, automatic in it's nature and completely unnoticed by the others, seemed strange to him in a way that he couldn't identify... almost so much that it made him uncomfortable. He shifted in his tree, opening ruby eyes to look down into the clear sparkling water of the stream flowing below him and wondered briefly how the Water element was manipulated. Was it done in the same way that Fire was? If that was true, then it might be possible for him to begin training with multiple elements at the same time…
Experimentally, he attempted to draw on the strange, shifting energy of the water below him, an energy he had just recently become aware of since his 'bonding' with the Elemental Stones. But after spending almost twenty minutes without any result, he gave up and returned his attention to his team-mates.
That baka, Kuwabara was enthusiastically relating some foolish story about some Ningen game he had been wasting his time with. Both Kurama and Yusuke seemed to be enjoying the story, however and laughed as the oaf proved his idiocy by going into great detail of how he had miraculously won the 'racing game' by falling off of the 'bike'. How anyone could win a game by falling off of something was beyond him, but apparently it was very amusing, because the three burst into laughter as Kuwabara's story concluded. Karyuu however, did not join them in their laughter, despite the fact that he could plainly see the smile that touched her face as she continued to eat her sandwich. She was effectively pretending not to be listening, and enjoying their company at the same time, despite the fact that they had effectively excluded her the instant they had settled down to eat the lunch she herself had prepared for them. Hiei knew his fellow team-mates had not excluded her on purpose, it simply wasn't in their nature, and somehow she seemed to know this as well, since she showed no signs of discomfort at any time... It was as if she expected this, and having expected it, she was willing to accept it unquestioningly, just as she accepted the rising of the sun every morning as it banished the night that would inevitably return.
'Why does she do that?' He wondered silently.
But before he was able to answer his own question, Karyuu raised her head suddenly, one fine eyebrow raised quizzically.
"Something you want?"
He blinked and looked away quickly.
"Hn, no."
"Then why do you keep looking at me like that? Am I supposed to vaporise your team-mates or something?" Her tone was supposed to be playful, but Hiei being who he was, chose to ignore the statement completely.
He huffed, folding his arms across his chest without looking at her. Below him, he heard her sigh quietly, and he senced, rather than saw her rising from the ground, walking on soundless feet to stand beneath the tree in which he sat, leaning against the trunk to look into the clear, sparkling water of the stream before them.
"May I make a suggestion?" She asked him silently.
When he didn't answer her, she continued anyway, taking his silence as permission.
"If you're going to try to manipulate the Water element, you should try looking at it as a whole, pliable mass rather than a singular, semi-constant force. The shape of water is ever changing, and therefore, so is the energy it produces. Trying to grab it the way you would Fire or Earth, just doesn't work, it'll just keep slipping through your fingers."
He looked down at her sharply, not at all pleased at being caught.
"How did you know what I was doing?"
She touched one delicately pointed ear with her finger, without looking at him.
"I can hear it. Playing with the elements causes dissruptions in the natural flow of energy that Servants can hear... And by the time your training's done, you'll probably be able to hear it too."
"Oh." He supposed that made sense, after all, she was in essence a part of everything around her, so it made sense that she would be able to detect any change that might occur.
"But still I'd rather you didn't play with things until I give you a little training in that area... I don't want anyone getting hurt."
"Hn."
"Hey, Karyuu!"
She turned and saw Yusuke still sitting on the grass with Kurama and Kuwabara, his head cocked a little to the side.
"You're supposed to be resting!"
"Yah," Kuwabara said. "You're making us look bad!"
She laughed quietly and as she turned to face them fully, her sensitive ears caught Hiei's deep, quiet voice above her muttering something about 'Not needing help in that department...'
"Well, I can't help it," Karyuu said with a shrug, moving away from Hiei's tree to come to stand before the three men, hands in the pockets of her jacket. "You guys are pooped already, and I haven't even warmed up yet... Can you blame me for being bored?"
They blinked at her and shared a slightly embarassed look. Despite the obvious difference in their power levels, they couldn't help feeling mildly put out at being upstaged by a woman, even if she seemed to think that they would become far stronger than she after their training was finnished.
Kuwabara was the first to give in to his masculine embarasment and got quickly to his feet, stretching his thickly muceled arms and shoulders a little.
"I'm ready to go again," he said, puffing out his chest, as if to proove his point.
Yusuke rolled his eyes, but go to his feet as well, closely followed by Kurama.
"Sure you are," the brown-eyed Spirit Detective said disdainfully. "Fire's your element... you're supposed to have an easy time..."
The taller young man glared down at his friend, and then turned his head up and away, effectively dismissing him.
"You're just jealous, 'cause I'm better at this than you are..."
Yusuke laughed dryly.
"Yah, right, in you're dreams, Kuwabara!"
And so, with that, the Urameshi Team resumed their training, under the tuitiledge of their newest member, redoubling their efforts in the name of competition, until the sun began to set, and Karyuu lead them back to the comfort of the Temple where Keiko and Yukina would have dinner ready for them.

** Author's Note ** Well... that was the first four chapters... I hope you enjoyed it, or if you didn't, that's okay too... I'm a big girl... (sniff...)
^_^u

Heh, heh... sorry.
Anyway,
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Have fun!