Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Shattered Gates ❯ Chapter 7: Creatures in the Dark and Unforseen Paralisis ( Chapter 8 )

CHAP 7

The four members of the Urameshi Team went to their beds after a full day of grueling work training with the Fire Element, only to awake hours later to the sound of Karyuu's voice in their minds in the dark of the night when both the moon and the sun shed no light over the Earth.
"Wake up now! We've got trouble coming your way!"
"What is it?" Kurama asked, running outside to the courtyard, only pausing long enough to pull on his shoes.
"Nevermind!" She snapped and he felt a deffinite surge of fear, anger and an oddly preaditory tone in her voice that he found more than a little alarming. "Just get your butts to the front steps, but don't; I repeat: DON'T pass the arch. The Wards will hold it at bay until I get there."
"It?" Yusuke asked, darting out from his room, his shoulder bouncing off of the wall as he skidded around the corner before running down the length of the covered walkway on his way to the courtyard just ahead of Kurama. "You mean it's one of them?"
"We aren't children, Karyuu," Hiei said grimly, cutting off her answer to Yusuke's question. "And we're far from ametures -"
"That's what you said last time, and you remember how wellthat turned out?"
There was an indistinct grumble in answer as they all arrive at the courtyard and ran to the far end, stopping at the gate as she had told them to, their senses straining to find her or approaching attack.
"Awww, man..." Kuwabara groaned. "I can feel it coming... awww geeze... it feels twice as bad as that other thing was!"
"Shut-up, Kuwabara, I'm try'n to listen!" Yusuke hissed.
The four stood in absolute silence, painfully aware of the unnatural silence that surroundedthem in all sides. They waited uneasily and suddenly a soft, timid voics sounded behind them, starteling them badly.
"What's going on here?"
They whirled around to see Yukina and Keiko stood behind them, sleepy and wide-eyed in their house-coats.
"Keiko! Get back to your room!" Yusuke yelled in alarm.
In his hurry he had fogotten about the two women completely...
Golden-brown eyes narrowed and hands went to her hips in the classic posture that told the well-meaning Spirit Detective that he was imminantly going to be in trouble...
"No way!" she snapped. "Not until I know what -"
"Look, it's dangerous!" he roared. "Go back where it's sa -"
But Yusuke never got to finnish.
A surging, gurgeling, hissing sound behind him and he whirled around to face the gate, immidiately putting himself between the two, gentle women and the abomination that stood just on the other side of the gate.
Thankfully it was smaller than the last one they had faced, but from the chill of fear that seemed to radiate from it, Yusuke had the feeling that they'd have a much worse time with this one...
It was like something from a nightmare out of a horror-fan's brain; large eyes bulged from it's head, glowing a pale green light as it flared at them from the other side of the arch, long, unnaturally shaped maw of teeth were bared at him in a feral grin that was extreemly unnerving. It stood seven or eight feet tall, its body every much like any other hummanoid demon they had seen except that it looked impossibly, annerexicly thin, giving it a skellital appearance that was very unnerving when coupled with the bonelike scorpion tail that lashed back and forth very slowly as clawed hands gripped a wicked looking spear covered in barbs.
"What do you want here?" Kurama asked, as the rose-whip having materialized in his hand while Yusuke back was turned.
The creature let out another gurgeling hiss, and attempted to come forward, only to be incased in a crackeling mass of blue and white electrival feild as the Ward took effect. They drew back sharply, sheilding their eyes from the sudden bright light as the creature let out a grugeling shriek, leaping back with astonishing speed, very much like the kind of speed Karyuu weilded, landing back on the stone stairs, glowing yellow eyes blazing as the scorpion-like tail thrashed violently from side to side in anger. The creature crouched low and in the pale light escaping the windows of the Temple, they saw its pale skin scortched in several places, making the palid skin bubble and blister grotesquely, some wounds excreeting thick, dirty yellow puss that smelled strongly of rotting bananas.
"What do you want with us?" Kurama demanded again, knuckels whitening as he gripped his weapon.
'That would have killed one of us if we had triggered that Ward,' he thought silently. his emerald eyes flickering over the burns on the unholy creature's deadly pale body. 'And yet it only received a few burns...'
"My Massster wishesss the heart of your Quintessenccce," it hissed at him in a voice that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. "Give it to me and I will leave you in peaccce..."
"We don't have a Quintessence here," he said firmly. "Leave now. You are not welcome here."
The creature's bulbus eyes narrowed and its teeth bared in a vicious smile that chilled their blood.
"Asss you wishhh..." it hissed, before stabbing the horrendous spear forward into the feild of blue and white electricity that rose to meet it and to their horror, it seemed that it was tearing a hole through the barrier as if it was made of some thick material, making a hole that grew larger with each passing second.
Yusuke turned to Keiko and Yukina, who stared wide-eyed at the creature, stunned.
"Run! Get to your rooms! We'll hold it here!" Keiko looked about to protest but with another look at the grinning beast and then at the pleading, almost panicked look in Yusuke's eyes, she nodded and catching Yukina's hand in hers, she turned and ran back to the interior of the Temple complex and the safety of their rooms.
"What're we going to do, guys?" Kuwabara asked within the depths of his companions' minds. "If that monster thing can take one of Karyuu's Wards and not fry on the spot, what good're we gonna' be?"
"Not much," Yusuke said grimly, his Spirit energy rising in preperation. "But we've got to stall it 'till Karyuu gets here... We can't let it get to the girls..."
The four nodded in agreement, readying themselves to battle the creature against which they had no chance at victory.
But luck was with them.
A ringing chalange sounded from somewhere beyond their sight, the voice and sudden surge of familiar Spirit Energy filling them with a mixture of releif and anxiousness...
"Oi! Bone-Devil! Get your buggy butt away from - my - Wards!"
It was only later that Kurama would realize that the elfin woman may not have been reffering to 'Wards' of the strictly paper variety...
The creature half turned to face the new voice before a large section of its lashing scorpion tail was sevevered, the stump spouting thick black blood as it shreiked in pain and rage, whirling to face its unseen attacker.
Karyuu appeared breifly and and they saw her lunge at it as it tried to impale her small form on the wicked barbs of the spear, but she blocked the attack, her sword catching the barb deftly and setting her feet beneath her, the Servant of Gaia was able to hold the deadly thrust at bay. The two remained locked for a moment, their movements visible once again to the eyes of the four stunned men, the creature's bone-thin arms shaking with the strain. Yusuke and the others instantly began to move forward to help, but they heard her voice in their heads as the small woman's lips drew back into a feral snarl they had never seen before, opaline eyes blazing with that strange pale white light they had seen only once before.
'You keep your butts behind that barrier!" she barked within the depths of their minds, the full force her inherant power rendering them imobile. "This beast is mine!"
The viciousness of her tone surpprised them.
They had never thought it possible that they would hear the usually good-natured Servent's voice hold that much ferocity... that much preaditory hate...
They halted and watched in amazement as she snapped her sword upward very suddenly and with a speed they couldn't follow, she chopped the barbed head of the spear off and as it clattered to the stone, she swung up, slicing the creature diagonally in half from hip to collar bone before leaping into the air to lop off its head with the finall deadly blow. It happend so quickly that the creature she had called a Bone-devil, didn't even have time to scream before it's body fell in peices to the stone steps, severd head rolling down the long flight of stone stairs, making a hollow 'clop' noise with every bounce.
Karyuu stood there, breathing hard as the others stared at her in shocked silence, her body turned three-quarter of the way from them, her body and sword litterally dripping with thick black blood of her slain enemy, her head bowed a little.
Half a beat passed before she straightened and turned fully to face them, opaline eyes oddly dark in the moonless night, the white light gone from her eyes, her clothes sticking to her, shining a little in the dim light shed from the windows of the Temple.
"You guys okay?"
They blinked, coming abruptly out of the stunned silence that had accompanied the cold effectiveness with which their team-mate had dispatched the enemy, displaced by the show of concern she was displaying now for her team-mates.
"Yah..." Yusuke said faintly, looking a little shaken. "Yah, we're fine... are you okay?"
She looked down at the blood that drenched her body and made a face.
"Yah, I'm good," she said, looking back at them with a shrug. "I need a bath, but I'm good..."
"That... was the grossest thing I've ever seen..." Kuwabara said quietly. "Great, but really gross..."
"Baka," Hiei groweled. "Gore means nothing. That was beyond 'great'."
Ruby eyes met hers in a peircing gaze, full of renewed assessment and speculation that had yet to completely leave him when he looked at her.
"Where did you learn that level of fighting capibility?"
He and Karyuu both knew he wasn't reffering to her sword-style, but her ability to abandon her naturally gentle nature when she was faced with a deadly enemy who threatened her survival and that of her team-mates.
"My Master," she replied plainly.
"Hn."
"Well... you should get cleaned up..." Kurama said.
Even he appeared a little off-balance after witnessing the speed and savagry of her attack.
"We can take care of that -"
"Just leave it where it is," she said dismissively. "The body will fade with the sun.
They decided not to ask why the carrion that splattered the front steps would be bannished by the sun, preffering to allow her to explain later...
"Alright... then I shall take the next watch and you can get some rest," the Kitsune said awkwardly.
"No dice, Kurama," she said, shaking her head. "Nobody's going outside the Temple walls until the sun comes up. The woods belong to Hell tonight."
"So we're just going to hide here?" Yusuke demanded.
She held up one blood-streaked finger.
"Exactly. You guys are no where near strong enough to face one Bone-Devil, let alone a group, and I'll be damned if I'm going to take all of them out on my own. I'm good, but not that good... Hell, I ran into six of the bastards trying to get back here, and I sensed as many as a hundred slinking around out there."
"I don't see what good hiding will do us if your Wards can't hold one of those things at bay," Hiei pointed out, folding his arms over his chest.
Karyuu shrugged and walked forward until she had one leg on either side of the barrier, the black blood crackeling and burning as it came in contact with the electrical feild, but seemed not to harm the elfin woman at all. She used the tip of her bloody sword to scratch a faint series of symbols into the very stone of the entrance and then drew a circle around them.
The Glyph glowed breifly and then everything around the them glowed brightly with that light before fading again. She heaved a sigh and then walked past into the courtyard to stand before them.
"This Protection Glyph will keep just about everything out," she said quietly, looking very tired all of a sudden.
"Why didn't you do that in the first place?" Yusuke demanded, an irrational part of him angry with Karyuu, mainly because Keiko's safety had been threatened.
"Because it's only temproary, Yusuke. I'm only able to use it every few weeks, and then I'm just about completely drained afterward for hours," she said tiredly.
"Why is that?" Kurama asked, his emerald eyes glinting with professional curiosity as he looked at the Glyph she'd scribed into the stone.
"It's a Protection Glyph... it draws it's power directly from Gaia," she said absently flicking a wad of congealed blood from the back of her hand, apparently not at all alarmed by her gory appearance. "She only allows us to do it under extreme circumstances and only with her express permission, since it could cause disruptions on the cosmic level because of all the energy it uses."
"That's a good reason," the fox-demon agreed. "And when you said it would stop just about anything... what did you mean?"
"Exactly what I said. Just about anything... Barring Lord Enma, the King of Hell and a few others, the barrier can't be passed, broken or avoided until it wears off."
Kurama was about to ask if Koenma was included in the list, but he lost his chance when the approaching patter of bare feet on stone caught their collective attention.
Turning toward the sound, they saw Keiko dragging Yukina accross the courtyard, housecoats trailing behind them as they ran toward the group of friends.
"Yusuke! We saw a light and everything was glowing!" Keiko said between gasps. "Is everything okay? Where's the monst -"
But she stopped as Yukina gasped softly and followed the ice apparitions gaze, the young Human woman spotted the remains of the beast on the other side of the gate, her golden brown eyes going wider still as she followed the bloody foot-prints to Karyuu, who still stood covered in the creature's black blood, looking calmly at her. She went very pale, her eyes going wide as the source was revealed, backing away a little, as if afraid of the elfin woman.
"It's okay," Karyuu said in a reassuring tone. "It isn't mine."
The two nodded slowly, as some of the shock wore off, but the twin expressions of horror told her that her macaber appearance was extremely unnerving to them.
"I'll... go get cleaned up," she murmured quietly, moving past them toward her room, suddenly embarassed by the look of disgusted surprise on the faces of the other women, but paused suddenly and pointed her sword at them. "No one leaves till sun-up, right?"
They nodded and she continued on her way, dissapearing around the corrner of the covered walkway that would lead her to her room and the fresh set of clothes waiting within. After she had passed from their sight, the six friends retreated to the kitchen to explain everything that had happened to Yukina and Keiko who had begun demanding answers almost immediately.
However, the story was halted momentarily when they came to the very breif conversation Kurama had had with the creature.
"What's a Quintessence?" Kuwabara asked suddenly, inturrupting Yusuke's fairly accurate impression of the Bone-Devil's gurgeling hissing voice.
The red-haired demon frowned and sipped thoughtfully at the tea Yukina had made for everyone.
"Well... as far as I know, a Quintessence is another term for the legendary Philosopher's Stone."
"Isn't that the thing that turns lead into gold and makes you immortal?" Keiko asked.
He nodded.
"Yes, but I don't understand why that thing would have com here to look for one. The only one that was ever sucessfully made appeared in the 1800's, made by a man named Nicholas Flamell..." he smiled a little guiltily. "Actually, I had my eye on it, but he died before I had a chance to... procure it and the stone dissapeared. I suspect Koenma had something to do with the stone's dissapearance, though I'm not certain, of course."
Kurama was privately releived that no one saw it fit to comment on his previous plan to steal the stone.
Despite his realitively clean slate in his life as a Human, he still felt remorse for what he had done in the past as a theif...
"Okay, so what did that thing think we had one?" Yusuke wondered aloud, scratching the back of his head bemusedly.
"I don't know," Kurama said quietly.
"Perhaps she knows," Hiei said in his quiet voice as he went to the door, dissapearing through it before sliding it closed behind him.
"Where's he going?" Kuwabara asked.
"Probably to ask Karyuu about it, doofus." Yusuke said disgustedly, making the taller man give a slightly sheepish smile.
"But... she's in the bath..." Keiko said.
The three men shared a speculative look and then mutely shook their heads as an unspoken question passed between them and was dismissed almost as quickly.
Not even Hiei would walk into a bath while she was in it... he had at least that much in the way of manners.
"She's probably out by now anyways," Kuwabara said with a shrug, sipping on his third cup of Yukina's tea. "We've been in here for over an hour..."
"No way," Yusuke said, waving a hand dismissively. "She's a girl, Kuwabara. Girls never get out after only an hour..."
Keiko's responce was swift and sure, boping the brown-eyed Detective on the head with her fist and the two launched into an arguement that lasted for over ten minutes before they had calmed down enough to continue the account of the events, forgetting Hiei and the opal-eyed Servent he had, (presumeably) gone in search of in the process.
******
Hiei had gone to the bath to ask Karyuu about the Philosopher's Stone just as Keiko had suggested, and had even gone to the rice-paper door before pausing, remembering at the last second that it was probably very unwise to barge in before he knew whether she was clothed or not.
As if in answer, he heard a slosh of water and dripping, both of which were fairly clear indications that Karyuu had just climbed out of the bath and... and what he saw next was oddly starteling and mezmerizing at the same time.
Through the thin rice-screen panneled door, a sillouet appeared and Hiei realized with wide-eyed surprise that it was Karyuu... He also realized that she was very much naked on the other side of the thin screen door.
Almost without realizing it, his ruby eyes traced over the smooth, shapely curves of the Servent's body, realizing for the first time how... appealing her form was. He had known of course that she was fit physicaly but he had never considered how attractive she was... he had never thought to look at her that way, why would he?
But standing there, faced with her silloueted image, realization struck the stoic fire-demon like a slap.
Karyuu really was beautiful...
His face felt suddenly hot in the cool night air and his heart began beating much faster than was normal, as Karyuu dried herself with a towel before shifting and bending a little to pick up a brush, which she began to run slowly through her dripping hair, turning to the side as she did so, unwittingly giving the transfixed fire-demon her profile, a sight that made his breath hitch in his throat for no apparent reason...
A part of his mind was demanding angrily why he wasn't turning away and the fact that he couldn't answer that voice was distinctly alarming.
She was humming softly now, her gentle voice playing out a quiet, pleasant tune that seemed to perfectly suit the still of the night that surrounded them and added to the surreality of the scene, especially after the graphic violence that had occured just an hour or so before.
It was only when she wrapped herself in a towel, effectively hiding her form from his eyes and moved in a way that her shadow was no longer cast on the door was he released him from the transfixed paralisis he had been struggeling inefectually to free himself from for several minutes.
He backed away almost silently, eyes a little wider than normal, his breathing slowing and his heart began to return to normal, although his face remained uncomfortably hot...
With a silent curse, he wheeled away and darted through the Temple grounds, sprining onto the safty of the living room roof, where his friends continued talking below him as he tried to control the alien heat that permiated his cheeks and sort out the cause of his paralisis.
'What's happening to me?' He wondered silently, drawing his arms around himself as he leaned against the chimney, a deep frown crossing his features. 'Why didn't I look away? Why couldn't I move?'
His ruby eyes stared out into the dark, aware as everyone in their group was of the evil circeling their Temple retreat, and yet his mind was not on the unseen threat lurking in the shadows around them.
His mind returned immediately to what he had just seen and the strange effect it had had on him.
During the three-hundred plus years he had been alive, he had seen females of all races and all degrees of beauty in various states of nakedness for one reason or another, but not one of them had ever had that kind of effect on him before...
'Just the mere outline of her form paralized me... why? Has she done something to me?' But before he could answer himself, Kurama's quiet voice entered his troubled mind.
"Hiei?"
"What?"
"Have you asked her?"
Hiei felt the blush return unbidden once again as he was remined of the nearly disasterous event just minutes ago, a fact that he found infinitely irritating.
"No."
A pause, in which Hiei could mentally see the red-haired demon frown in mild confusion.
"Why not?"
"I wasn't aware that I was supposed to," he replied mulishly, forcibly fighting down the blush that had risin in his cheeks again.
He heard the Kitsune sigh mentally, and after a quiet murmur to the others, he heard Kurama's voice again, and knew that all five of their group could hear him through the link they shared.
"Karyuu?"
"Yes, Kurama?"
"We have a question we need to ask you..."
"That's not surprising... Fire away."
There was a small pause of hesitation and Hiei knew the fox-demon was debating silently whether or not to continue the conversation with a woman who was currently occupied in a bath, his Human logic telling him that it would be more... 'socialy appropriate' to wait for her to emerge, rather than continue.
It seemed that he decided to continue, since she seemed unoffended and resumed speaking, his tone delicate and slightly awkward, obviously not wanting to sound accusing at all.
"Well, it has to do with something the..." he broke off, not remembering what the creature was called, and allowed her to supply it for him.
"Bone-devil," she suppleid immideately. "They're a low-level soilder of Hell... Fairly common in the bad-old-days in most of the Realms, but after the Gates were closed, we haven't seen very many in this Realm for a very long time..."
"Yes... well, before you arrived, it asked for the heart of the 'Quintessence'," he said.
When she didn't respond, he continued, "We thought it meant the Philiosopher's Stone, but we have no idea as to what could make it think we had one here at the Temple and we thought you might have an answer..."
There was a pause and then she answered them slowly, as if coming out of an attempt to recall a memory.
"No... Damn, why would it think that?" She said and Hiei turned to see the door of the bath-house slide open and Karyuu emerged, her sheathed sword in hand, her form covered in a clean pair of clothes she had presumeably retreived from her room earlier.
She paused on her way to her room.
"The only one I know of was made about two-hundred years ago... but we took care of it and there hasn't been another one since..."
"You did that?" Kurama asked in surprise.
"Not personally, but Servents of Gaia were responsiable for the Stone's dissapearance and disposal..." She turned toward where the Kitsune and the others were and Hiei was surprised to see an almost playfull smile playing across her lips. "Why, Kurama? Did you have your eye on it?"
Her tone was playfull, not at all serious and Hiei smirked in spite of himself.
Kurama was a well-known theif in the Demon Realm and had been extreemly good at it, (which was of course the reason why the two had met in the first place), though occasionally there was a loss of life as a result of his persuit of treasure. As a result, the fox-demon had a great deal of trouble discussing his past life, and the Jaganeshi had trouble understanding why his friend was so ashamed of it, especialy in the light of his attempt to 'make a clean start' as it were.
This must have shown on the said demon's face, because Yusuke's voice answered her, in place of the Kitsune.
"Hey, lay off, Karyuu," the Spirit Detective said, coming to his friend's deffence, his tone a little angry and harsher than usual. "That stuff dosen't matter any more."
Karyuu's head bowed a little, as if she had flinched at his tone and Hiei thought he had seen a breif flicker of pain cross her features as her attempt at a joke was met with hostility, before it vanished as she turned and continued her quest toward her room, her blood-soaked clothing in hand, slinging her sword over her shoulder as she walked.
"I never said it did... There are far worse things to do with one's time than stealing things from the rich, Yusuke," she said calmly. "Kurama and I know that, don't we, my red-haired friend?"
Hiei heard Kurama laugh quietly at that from below him.
"Yes, I suppose there are," he replied.
"So you've got no clue about the stone thing?" Kuwabara's rough voice asked.
The fire-demon sighed and rolled his eyes skyward, grumbeling, "Baka..." under his breath before Karyuu answered.
"Nope."
The elfin woman emerged into view again and went toward the building in which the others were occupying, glancing up at him on the roof and smiled a little in acknowledgement before going in.
Again he felt that strange heat return to the skin accross the bridge of his nose and cheeks, but luckily she seemed not to have noticed it and disapeared inside without pause.
He scrubbed his face vigerously with the palms of his hands.
'Damn it, damn it, damn it!' He growled mentaly, his anger making the blush fade again. 'This is rediculous! She's just a woman! That's all! Nothing about her is different from any other, so why am I acting like that rediculous baka, Kuwabara, blushing over nothing!'
He could, he supposed, sepperate himself from the confusion, but she had stopped him from even being able to do that.
She was the cause of his embarassment and confusion and she was also keeping him there, despite the threat of those unearthly 'Bone-Devils' slinking around the forrest outside the Temple walls that could easily kill him. Hiei cursed quietly and paced silently along the spine of the roof, one hand gripping the hilt of his sword almost absently.
The only logical explanation he could find was that because he had been interacting so closely with her over the last month, he had been embarassed by finding her... exposed... the way she had been, and it was because of this embarassment on her behalf that he felt his cheeks heat in an uncharacteristic blush and his muscels froze because of his surprise...
That was it... It had to be...
Hiei allowed himself a breif smile, and halted his pacing, pleased with himself for solving his odd behaviour and leapt from the roof, to the courtyard, confident that he had freed himself of the strange parallisis that had taken control of him, and entered the building to join his team-mates.
He took a seat near the wall where the elfin woman in question was plainly visiable, and was in her line of sight, inwardly releived to find that he could now look at her and meet her gaze without the return of the blush or any other strange manefestations caused by her presence.
Satisfied, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, half-listening to the speach of his friends and allowed himself to relax a little, folding his arms across his chest and drawing his knees up, head resting against the cool wood of the wall.
"No, I really haven't heard of anyone else who mannaged to make a Philosopher's Stone..." Karyuu was saying as she looked at her hands folded in her lap. "And it beats the hell out of me as to why the Armies of Hell would think that we had one... They know it was destroyed... The kind of energy it releases is kind of hard to miss for them."
Hiei opened an eye just a fraction to look at the opal-eyed servent.
He didn't know why, but something about the way she was speaking didn't sound quite right to him, though her tone showed no difference from her normal speaking voice, (except, of course that she was worried and confused).
'I almost get the feeling that she's lieing to us...' he thought silently, studying her movements, failing to find any foundation for his suspicions. 'And yet she seems perfectly normall... even her scent declares a complete lack of untruthfullness...'
He could always try to use his Jagan, of course, but he seriously doubted that he would be able to penetrate her mind's natural defences, let alone without her notice, and so he was left to consider his sourcless suspicions in silence.
"So," she said quietly, running a hand through her hair. "That leaves us where we are now... confused..."
"It seems that the Armies of Hell were misinformed..." Kurama murmured, his emerald eyes assessing her in the same way that Hiei was... searching for some sign of dishonesty and coming up with nothing, despite the fact that they both felt a kind of nervous tension radiating from her that sparked the more suspicious sides of their natures.
"Look... I want to apologise," Karyuu said quietly, making the others look at her in surprise. "I didn't expect this kind of thing to start yet... And I'm sorry I wasn't here to -"
"Don't apologise, Karyuu," Kurama said quickly. "It was bound to happen..."
"Yes, but..."
"Don't worry about it," Yusuke said with a shrug. "You saved our butts... it dosen't matter if it was a close call or not..."
The opal-eyed Servant seemed unconvinced, but nodded none the less, sighing quietly.
"Well... I'm going to bed," she said quietly, getting to her feet once again. "We'll be training again tomorrow..." The elfin woman paused as if to say something else, and then shrugged and turned waving a hand over her shoulder at them as she moved. "Good-night everyone..."
They called their good-nights after her, watching as she dissapeared through the door and closed it behind her, her booted feet not making any noise as she crossed the courtyard on her way to her room.
"Do you think she's okay?" Keiko asked quietly, a small frown on her face. "She seemed kinda' upset..."
"She thinks it's her fault that bone-monster thingy came to get us while she was in the woods," Kuwabara said, seeming a little confused himself, as if such a protective sentiment seemed alien to him coming from a girl... one who didn't know them very well to boot...
"I beleive you're right, Kuwabara," Kurama murmured. "And I have a feeling that she might be inclined to remain awake on watch while we sleep after the Protection Glyph wears off tomorrow..."
"If it makes her feel better, I guess that's okay..." Yusuke said uncertainly.
"But dosen't Karyuu-donno need to sleep too?" Yukina asked, crimson eyes concerned, her gentle heart already worried for the elfin woman.
Kurama seemed to concider it.
"I'm not really certain... I've never heard of a Servant sleeping before... though I know from personal experiance that they can go for over a week without rest..." he mused speculatively. "It's possible, I suppose for her to keep watch at night... probably several nights in a row... But then again, after she made Hiei's Jewel of Affliction, she spent a fair amount of time sleeping, so we know that she does require rest for time to time... and forming the Glyph seemed to tire her greatly..."
"Well, that's just dumb," Yusuke said shaking his head. "She can't spend all day training us, and then spend all night standing guard... she'll go nuts..."
"I don't imagine that she would allow her sleep-deperavation to go quite that far, Yusuke," Kurama said with a slight smile. "But she may over-tax herself by trying to protect us... Perhaps we can convince her to allow us to take turns on watch during the night."
Neither Yusuke nor Kuwabara seemed pleased about this, but remained silent.
Karyuu had just saved their lives again and the least they could do was let her get some sleep once in a while...

** Author's Note ** Chapter 6 was kind of short, so I posted this one too... yah...

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