Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Shattered Gates ❯ Chapter 10: Water Training ( Chapter 11 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Vitaralastla 
Anime/Manga: Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Romance / Occult | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 02.20.2005 | Pages: 4 | Words: 7.9K | Visits: 141 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Romance / Occult | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 02.20.2005 | Pages: 4 | Words: 7.9K | Visits: 141 | Status: Completed
CHAP 10
Dawn came, and the Urameshi Team awoke at dawn once again, the sun just begining to peek over the eastern wall, brilliant yellow-orange light seeping over the cold stone of the Temple complex, bannishing the shadows of the night before.
It was a beautiful morning, its coming announced by the merry twitter of the birds, and the gentle stiring of the morning air as the sun rose, bringing with it the promise of a new area of training...
Kuwabara, who had spent most of the night thinking about the potential dangers threatening his best friend and the secrets Karyuu was keeping from the Team, was less than inthusiastic about getting up at the crack of dawn to start training with the Element he was undoubtedly going to have a great deal of trouble with, being Bonded with the Fire Stone and all...
His displeasure must have shown on his face, however, because the brown-eyed Spirit Detective he had lost sleep worring about yawned sleepily, stretching a little before clapping him on the shoulder.
"Hey, Kuwabara, you alright?"
The taller man shrugged.
"Yah, I'm fine, Urameshi," he said with a small smile. "Just had some trouble sleepn', that's all..."
"Well, we'll all sleep pretty good tonight," his friend said with a smile, tapping one sneakered toe against the cobbled stones bneath him. "I've got a feeling Karyuu's gonna' be pushing us hard for a while 'till she calms down about the whole Hell-Spawn thing..."
"Great..."
Dawn came, and the Urameshi Team awoke at dawn once again, the sun just begining to peek over the eastern wall, brilliant yellow-orange light seeping over the cold stone of the Temple complex, bannishing the shadows of the night before.
It was a beautiful morning, its coming announced by the merry twitter of the birds, and the gentle stiring of the morning air as the sun rose, bringing with it the promise of a new area of training...
Kuwabara, who had spent most of the night thinking about the potential dangers threatening his best friend and the secrets Karyuu was keeping from the Team, was less than inthusiastic about getting up at the crack of dawn to start training with the Element he was undoubtedly going to have a great deal of trouble with, being Bonded with the Fire Stone and all...
His displeasure must have shown on his face, however, because the brown-eyed Spirit Detective he had lost sleep worring about yawned sleepily, stretching a little before clapping him on the shoulder.
"Hey, Kuwabara, you alright?"
The taller man shrugged.
"Yah, I'm fine, Urameshi," he said with a small smile. "Just had some trouble sleepn', that's all..."
"Well, we'll all sleep pretty good tonight," his friend said with a smile, tapping one sneakered toe against the cobbled stones bneath him. "I've got a feeling Karyuu's gonna' be pushing us hard for a while 'till she calms down about the whole Hell-Spawn thing..."
"Great..."
"Aw, c'mon, Kuwabara!" Yusuke said absently, his brown eyes raising from his feet as he felt Karyuu's Energy drawing closer. "It's a beautiful summer day... the birdies are singing... Karyuu's in a bathing suit... the sun's shini... Hold up, Karyuu's in a bathing suit?"
It was true... the opal-eyed Servant of Gaia was walking across the garden toward them, clad in a one-peice baithing suit of deep blood red, rather than her customary jeans and tank top. It was an unusual cut, coming high over her curving hips, to gather at the throat, small, triangular strips of material missing midway between her hips and her ribs, exposing about two inches or so of smooth skin beneath. She paused, and cocked her head to the side, one eyebrow raised quizzicaly, a hint of defenciveness in her eyes as she looked at the two thunder-struck Humans.
"What an astute observation, Yusuke," she murmured dryly, slinging a pale green towel over her shoulder as she moved past him, retreiving a pair of jeans, he haddn't noticed drying on the clothes line behind him. "You're sharp as a tack this morning. You must've slept really well..."
They blinked and looked away, embarased as she began to pull on the recovered jeans over-top of her suit. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing, they supposed, but it still made them uncomfortable for some undefined reason. She seemed to sense this, and paused with one leg in, to glare at them in annoyance, just as Hiei and Kurama entered the garden, the two stopping dead in their tracks, both pairs of eyes widening a little as they caught of Karyuu, climbing into her jeans. Sensing their arrival, she turned her head, fixing them with the same glare she had aimed at Yusuke and Kuwabara seconds ago when she discovered similarly surprised expressions on their faces as well.
"Oh, brother, not you guys too," she grumbled, pulling on her jeans over her other leg, and up over her hips, giving a little jump to set herself fully in the pair of jeans, before doing up the button in front and pulling up the zipper sharply.
With that sound, the four young men looked away quickly, all of them looking mildly embarassed. The suit was nothing too scanty, or revealing by any means, in fact, it was stylish and tastefull, something that seemed to fit her perfectly, and yet to see her in something so... form fitting, seemed... well, strange, reminding them forcefully that their newest team-mate was most deffinitley a woman.
She looked at all of them, annoyed at their embarassment, and feeling self-concioius at the same time because of it.
'Their reaction couldn't have been more surprised if I'd come out here naked...' she thought sourly, slinging her towel around her shoulders, freeing her hair with a negligant flip of her hand.
"As you've probably guessed," she said, moving back toward the courtyard, her bare feet making no print in the grass as she passed over it. "We're begining our Water training, so get into your swim suits, grab your towels and meet me at the front gates, okay?"
They nodded quickly and began to move into their rooms without protest.
Hiei, however was confused and reached out, touching Kurama's mind through the link they shared.
"Kitsune? Why is Karyuu running around in her underwear?"
He felt a distinct flicker of embarassment from his commerad.
"Er... it wasn't underwear, Hiei. It was a baithing-suit; a Human garment made for swimming."
"Hn, I've seen Ningen females wearing similar things beneath their clothing, and were exremly angry when a male veiwed them in it," he replied, leaning against the wall outside the door of the Kitsune's room, ruby eyes directed at the wooden boards beneath him. "What makes that any different? She's hardly wearing anything at all."
Another embarassed pause.
"It's considered acceptable to wear in public..."
"But underclothes aren't?"
"No... It's the material that makes the difference, I suppose," Kurama tried to explain, realizing how the basics of this Human sensibility seemed absolutely rediculous to the ears of both Hiei and the Kitsune side of himself.
Ah, the complications of culture clashes...
"Ningens are rediculous."
"Yes, I know..."
"I suppose you're going to be running around in your underclothes as well?"
Kurama laughed aloud...
"Yes, I suppose so..."
"Hn."
Hiei heard Kurama come out from behind the blind within his room and reached out, pulling back the sliding door and stepped inside.
He disliked speaking to a person telepathicaly if they were right there... It almost seemed a waste of energy, much like a pair of Ningens talking to one another with those 'cellular-phone' devices while standing in the same room.
His partner was rummaging around in a drawer, searching for a black pair of sweat-pants, dressed only in the 'swim-trunks' they had been discussing; a green pair that reached the tops of his knees, who's fabric seemed light and yet remained opaque, undoubtedly made of one of those Ningen synthetic materials that smelled odd.
Having retreived the item of clothing, Kurama turned and with barely a glance at the stoic fire-demon, began to climb into them, looking up as Hiei scoffed.
"You look rediculous."
Kurama sighed irritably and continued to struggle into his pants, carefuly tucking the swim-trunks close to his legs so that they didn't bunch up while he was pulling on the pair of thick cotton sweat-pants.
"Yes, well, at least I'll be comfortable in the water," he replied, having conquered his clothing and was now pulling a t-shirt on over his chest. "You on the other hand will most likely sink like a stone when those clothes of yours get soaked with water... I have a spair pair of dark-blue trunks in the drawer there if you want them."
Hiei snorted.
"Not in a million years, Kitsune. You may not mind making a fool of yourself, but I would rather keep my dignity intact."
Kurama chose to ignore the jab and shrugged.
"You'll never be able to swim properly like that."
Hiei smirked and lead the way out as Kurama followed close behind, white towel in hand.
"Hn. Who said I was swimming?"
*****
After they had assembled in the courtyard, Karyuu led them from the Temple grounds, and into the forest at a light run, guiding them through the dense underbrush through paths that seemed to suddenly open up out of nowhere. After ten or so minutes, they arrived at a wide stream that ran through the forest that looked deep enough in some places for five or six Kuwabara's to stand on one another's shoulders from the bottom and be totaly submerged beneath the quickly flowing water.
"I had no idea this was here..." Yusuke said, looking around at the scenic little spot, tossing his towel onto a near-by tree-branch before he and Kuwabara began to wiggle out of their pants, revealing a pair of swimming trunks beneath; Yusuke in a dark yellow pair, with a black line running down either side, and Kuwabara in a pair of almost violently bright orange that came close to matching his hair in the bright morning sunlight.
"And I thought I'd seen everything in these woods when Genkai was training me... How'd you know where it was?"
Karyuu shrugged, folding her own towel over near-by rock that jutted out of the ground some hundred feet from the water's edge, before stripping out of her own jeans, once again revealing the red baithing suit that had caused them so much discomfort earlier.
"I could hear it," she said, placing her jeans neatly beside her towel before turning to look at him. "Suidai, or the Water Element to you, likes to make a great deal of noise... talking to itself and anything else that'll listen..."
"Talking to itself?" Kuwabara asked, drawing away suddenly from the water. "Water talks?"
She nodded, looking amused.
"Of course it does," she said calmly, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "Everything 'talks'; Fire, Water, Earth, Air... the plants, the stones, the birds, the bees... everthing."
"But how come I can't hear it?"
She cocked her head to the side.
"Because you aren't listening."
He frowned in confusion and then closed his eyes listening hard. Yusuke laughed.
"I don't think that's what she means, Carrot-top," he said shaking his head.
Kuwabara opened his eyes, frowning at him.
"He's right," Karyuu said, moving over to the tall young man. "You can't hear it with your physical ears... Well... you guys can't anyway, because it isn't really a physical sound..."
"That dosen't make much sence, Karyuu," Kuwabara said, looking down at her. "How can I hear somethin' that doesn't make any sound?"
Yusuke sighed disgustedly.
"It does make a noise, doofus," the brown-eyed Spirit Detective said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "It's like... you see ghosts sometimes, right?"
Kuwabara shifted uncomfortably and nodded.
"Yah... sometimes."
Karyuu looked up at him with some surprise, unnoticed by the two Humans.
That was a detail she didn't know about her tall team-mate...
"Well I can't, but that doesn't mean they aren't there."
"But that's only 'cause I've got more Spirit Awareness than you..."
"Exactly," Kurama said. "Your Spirit Awareness lets you hear things most people can't... the same way that both Yusuke and yourself can see things most people would normally miss, or in most cases, can't see at all... it's just a matter of knowing what to look for... or listen to."
"Oh..."
"That's part of it," Karyuu agreed with a nod. "But not all..."
She paused and looked out over length of the stream, her opal eyes shining a little.
"It's a little difficult to explain, but it's sort of like Spirit Awareness... only different."
Hiei scoffed off to the side, but she ignored him.
"See, Spirit Awareness allows you to hear and see things that exist in a physical form... or did at one time. What I'm talking about never had a physical form... but it's there none the less..."
"So... this sound, or 'talking' isn't physical the way soundwaves are, but it exists on a more... metaphysical level?" Kurama asked, his own emerald eyes confused as he neatly folded his pants, having removed them a moment before to reveal the pair of green swimming trunks he'd donned earlier.
Karyuu made a face and sighed.
"That's sort of the idea... Look, the simplest way to describe it is this: The Elements generate their own respective forms of Energy, right?"
The three men nodded, and Hiei rolled his eyes, becoming decidedly bored very quickly.
"And the Elements make up everything around you, right?"
They nodded again.
"Therefore, something like the stream, generates it's own Energy."
"I guess that follows..." Yusuke said, looking a little muddled, but he seemed to still be following her, if only barely. "But I don't get how that lets a puddle talk..."
"Well, anything that's able to generate it's own Energy, it capable of a certain form of conciousness... a sense of being, you could say. And as such, even things like stones, or water are able to speak to one another in a way, because they're made up of the same things... Energy."
"That still doesen't explain why I can't hear it," Kuwabara said.
"You can hear it, if yoiu learn to listen the right way..." Seeing the looks on their faces, she sighed and motioned for everyone to draw closer. "Okay, come here."
The three hesitated and then approached her, and with the exception of Hiei, who just folded his arms accross his chest and looked away, his expression bored, they followed her lead, kneeling in a half circle, with her at the center, waiting a little sheepishly for her to do whatever she was going to do. Karyuu shifted herself forward, lifting up a little on her knees to face Kuwabara and Yusuke who knelt side-by side. She reached out her hands, and hesitantly, they bowed there heads a little toward her, feeling more than a little awkward. Karyuu, however seemed to be imune to their embarasment, (or if she wasn't, she showed no sign of it) and reaching out, she slipped a hand around the backs of their necks, until her thumb rested just below their ears. She closed her eyes and they felt a slight tingeling sensation, where her cool hands touched their skin, and accompanying it, was a strange surging whisper, that shifted constantly, growing louder and softer all at once. Their eyes widened a little as the sound grew a little clearer, and they realized with a jolt that they were listening to voices... hundreds of thousands of millions of voices, all whispering at once in a language they couldn't understand, the voices rising and falling in the same light, ever-shifing song.
"Whoa..." Yusuke said quietly as Karyuu pulled her hands away, allowing the water's song to fade in their ears.
Kuwabara blinked and nodded in silent agreement, looking a little awed.
Karyuu smiled, shifted to face Kurama, and slipping her hand around the base of his neck, she repeated what she had done with Yusuke and Kuwabara just moments before, allowing the red-haired Kitsune to hear the water's song.
He remained silent, emerald eyes closing to better focus on the strange sound reaching his ears for the first time, opening them only when Karyuu pulled away, taking the song with her. He raised his eyes to meet hers for a moment and looked at her strangely, as if he were about to ask her something, but thought better of it. Kurama turned on his knees to look at Hiei, who was watching them out of the corner of his eye.
"Don't you want to hear it, Hiei?" Kurama asked. "It's quite beautiful..."
"Hn."
"Aww, c'mon Hiei!" Yusuke called. "It won't kill ya'!"
The fire-demon glared at his Human friend for a moment, before turning to meet Karyuu's opal eyes as she watched him, her expression neither expectant nor conserned. Whether he came, or not seemed to make no difference to her.
He sighed disgustedly, and came forward resignedly, dropping to his knees before her, his face mildly annoyed. Karyuu seemed to find this amusing, because she smiled a little at him, before reaching out her hand to touch him. Ruby eyes followed the path of her hand as it slipped around the back of his neck, muscels giving a slight jolt when the naturally coolness of her palm came to rest against his skin. He did not like being touched... but if it was necessary for him to hear this 'beautiful' sound, he supposed he could endure it for a little while.
Karyuu closed her eyes again and allowed him to hear the song of the near-by stream.
Hiei was stricken as he listened to the song, the sheree complexity enough to mesmerize him, let alone the strange ever-shifing beauty of the whispering song itself, though none of this showed on his expressionless face, the only indication of him even hearing anything was a slow closing of his ruby eyes.
After a moment, Karyuu withdrew her hand and they both opened their eyes, gazes meeting for a moment.
"So that's what you were talking about," he muttered quietly, almost to himself.
She nodded and then got to her feet, the others following suit, not having heard him speak.
It was true... the opal-eyed Servant of Gaia was walking across the garden toward them, clad in a one-peice baithing suit of deep blood red, rather than her customary jeans and tank top. It was an unusual cut, coming high over her curving hips, to gather at the throat, small, triangular strips of material missing midway between her hips and her ribs, exposing about two inches or so of smooth skin beneath. She paused, and cocked her head to the side, one eyebrow raised quizzicaly, a hint of defenciveness in her eyes as she looked at the two thunder-struck Humans.
"What an astute observation, Yusuke," she murmured dryly, slinging a pale green towel over her shoulder as she moved past him, retreiving a pair of jeans, he haddn't noticed drying on the clothes line behind him. "You're sharp as a tack this morning. You must've slept really well..."
They blinked and looked away, embarased as she began to pull on the recovered jeans over-top of her suit. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing, they supposed, but it still made them uncomfortable for some undefined reason. She seemed to sense this, and paused with one leg in, to glare at them in annoyance, just as Hiei and Kurama entered the garden, the two stopping dead in their tracks, both pairs of eyes widening a little as they caught of Karyuu, climbing into her jeans. Sensing their arrival, she turned her head, fixing them with the same glare she had aimed at Yusuke and Kuwabara seconds ago when she discovered similarly surprised expressions on their faces as well.
"Oh, brother, not you guys too," she grumbled, pulling on her jeans over her other leg, and up over her hips, giving a little jump to set herself fully in the pair of jeans, before doing up the button in front and pulling up the zipper sharply.
With that sound, the four young men looked away quickly, all of them looking mildly embarassed. The suit was nothing too scanty, or revealing by any means, in fact, it was stylish and tastefull, something that seemed to fit her perfectly, and yet to see her in something so... form fitting, seemed... well, strange, reminding them forcefully that their newest team-mate was most deffinitley a woman.
She looked at all of them, annoyed at their embarassment, and feeling self-concioius at the same time because of it.
'Their reaction couldn't have been more surprised if I'd come out here naked...' she thought sourly, slinging her towel around her shoulders, freeing her hair with a negligant flip of her hand.
"As you've probably guessed," she said, moving back toward the courtyard, her bare feet making no print in the grass as she passed over it. "We're begining our Water training, so get into your swim suits, grab your towels and meet me at the front gates, okay?"
They nodded quickly and began to move into their rooms without protest.
Hiei, however was confused and reached out, touching Kurama's mind through the link they shared.
"Kitsune? Why is Karyuu running around in her underwear?"
He felt a distinct flicker of embarassment from his commerad.
"Er... it wasn't underwear, Hiei. It was a baithing-suit; a Human garment made for swimming."
"Hn, I've seen Ningen females wearing similar things beneath their clothing, and were exremly angry when a male veiwed them in it," he replied, leaning against the wall outside the door of the Kitsune's room, ruby eyes directed at the wooden boards beneath him. "What makes that any different? She's hardly wearing anything at all."
Another embarassed pause.
"It's considered acceptable to wear in public..."
"But underclothes aren't?"
"No... It's the material that makes the difference, I suppose," Kurama tried to explain, realizing how the basics of this Human sensibility seemed absolutely rediculous to the ears of both Hiei and the Kitsune side of himself.
Ah, the complications of culture clashes...
"Ningens are rediculous."
"Yes, I know..."
"I suppose you're going to be running around in your underclothes as well?"
Kurama laughed aloud...
"Yes, I suppose so..."
"Hn."
Hiei heard Kurama come out from behind the blind within his room and reached out, pulling back the sliding door and stepped inside.
He disliked speaking to a person telepathicaly if they were right there... It almost seemed a waste of energy, much like a pair of Ningens talking to one another with those 'cellular-phone' devices while standing in the same room.
His partner was rummaging around in a drawer, searching for a black pair of sweat-pants, dressed only in the 'swim-trunks' they had been discussing; a green pair that reached the tops of his knees, who's fabric seemed light and yet remained opaque, undoubtedly made of one of those Ningen synthetic materials that smelled odd.
Having retreived the item of clothing, Kurama turned and with barely a glance at the stoic fire-demon, began to climb into them, looking up as Hiei scoffed.
"You look rediculous."
Kurama sighed irritably and continued to struggle into his pants, carefuly tucking the swim-trunks close to his legs so that they didn't bunch up while he was pulling on the pair of thick cotton sweat-pants.
"Yes, well, at least I'll be comfortable in the water," he replied, having conquered his clothing and was now pulling a t-shirt on over his chest. "You on the other hand will most likely sink like a stone when those clothes of yours get soaked with water... I have a spair pair of dark-blue trunks in the drawer there if you want them."
Hiei snorted.
"Not in a million years, Kitsune. You may not mind making a fool of yourself, but I would rather keep my dignity intact."
Kurama chose to ignore the jab and shrugged.
"You'll never be able to swim properly like that."
Hiei smirked and lead the way out as Kurama followed close behind, white towel in hand.
"Hn. Who said I was swimming?"
*****
After they had assembled in the courtyard, Karyuu led them from the Temple grounds, and into the forest at a light run, guiding them through the dense underbrush through paths that seemed to suddenly open up out of nowhere. After ten or so minutes, they arrived at a wide stream that ran through the forest that looked deep enough in some places for five or six Kuwabara's to stand on one another's shoulders from the bottom and be totaly submerged beneath the quickly flowing water.
"I had no idea this was here..." Yusuke said, looking around at the scenic little spot, tossing his towel onto a near-by tree-branch before he and Kuwabara began to wiggle out of their pants, revealing a pair of swimming trunks beneath; Yusuke in a dark yellow pair, with a black line running down either side, and Kuwabara in a pair of almost violently bright orange that came close to matching his hair in the bright morning sunlight.
"And I thought I'd seen everything in these woods when Genkai was training me... How'd you know where it was?"
Karyuu shrugged, folding her own towel over near-by rock that jutted out of the ground some hundred feet from the water's edge, before stripping out of her own jeans, once again revealing the red baithing suit that had caused them so much discomfort earlier.
"I could hear it," she said, placing her jeans neatly beside her towel before turning to look at him. "Suidai, or the Water Element to you, likes to make a great deal of noise... talking to itself and anything else that'll listen..."
"Talking to itself?" Kuwabara asked, drawing away suddenly from the water. "Water talks?"
She nodded, looking amused.
"Of course it does," she said calmly, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "Everything 'talks'; Fire, Water, Earth, Air... the plants, the stones, the birds, the bees... everthing."
"But how come I can't hear it?"
She cocked her head to the side.
"Because you aren't listening."
He frowned in confusion and then closed his eyes listening hard. Yusuke laughed.
"I don't think that's what she means, Carrot-top," he said shaking his head.
Kuwabara opened his eyes, frowning at him.
"He's right," Karyuu said, moving over to the tall young man. "You can't hear it with your physical ears... Well... you guys can't anyway, because it isn't really a physical sound..."
"That dosen't make much sence, Karyuu," Kuwabara said, looking down at her. "How can I hear somethin' that doesn't make any sound?"
Yusuke sighed disgustedly.
"It does make a noise, doofus," the brown-eyed Spirit Detective said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "It's like... you see ghosts sometimes, right?"
Kuwabara shifted uncomfortably and nodded.
"Yah... sometimes."
Karyuu looked up at him with some surprise, unnoticed by the two Humans.
That was a detail she didn't know about her tall team-mate...
"Well I can't, but that doesn't mean they aren't there."
"But that's only 'cause I've got more Spirit Awareness than you..."
"Exactly," Kurama said. "Your Spirit Awareness lets you hear things most people can't... the same way that both Yusuke and yourself can see things most people would normally miss, or in most cases, can't see at all... it's just a matter of knowing what to look for... or listen to."
"Oh..."
"That's part of it," Karyuu agreed with a nod. "But not all..."
She paused and looked out over length of the stream, her opal eyes shining a little.
"It's a little difficult to explain, but it's sort of like Spirit Awareness... only different."
Hiei scoffed off to the side, but she ignored him.
"See, Spirit Awareness allows you to hear and see things that exist in a physical form... or did at one time. What I'm talking about never had a physical form... but it's there none the less..."
"So... this sound, or 'talking' isn't physical the way soundwaves are, but it exists on a more... metaphysical level?" Kurama asked, his own emerald eyes confused as he neatly folded his pants, having removed them a moment before to reveal the pair of green swimming trunks he'd donned earlier.
Karyuu made a face and sighed.
"That's sort of the idea... Look, the simplest way to describe it is this: The Elements generate their own respective forms of Energy, right?"
The three men nodded, and Hiei rolled his eyes, becoming decidedly bored very quickly.
"And the Elements make up everything around you, right?"
They nodded again.
"Therefore, something like the stream, generates it's own Energy."
"I guess that follows..." Yusuke said, looking a little muddled, but he seemed to still be following her, if only barely. "But I don't get how that lets a puddle talk..."
"Well, anything that's able to generate it's own Energy, it capable of a certain form of conciousness... a sense of being, you could say. And as such, even things like stones, or water are able to speak to one another in a way, because they're made up of the same things... Energy."
"That still doesen't explain why I can't hear it," Kuwabara said.
"You can hear it, if yoiu learn to listen the right way..." Seeing the looks on their faces, she sighed and motioned for everyone to draw closer. "Okay, come here."
The three hesitated and then approached her, and with the exception of Hiei, who just folded his arms accross his chest and looked away, his expression bored, they followed her lead, kneeling in a half circle, with her at the center, waiting a little sheepishly for her to do whatever she was going to do. Karyuu shifted herself forward, lifting up a little on her knees to face Kuwabara and Yusuke who knelt side-by side. She reached out her hands, and hesitantly, they bowed there heads a little toward her, feeling more than a little awkward. Karyuu, however seemed to be imune to their embarasment, (or if she wasn't, she showed no sign of it) and reaching out, she slipped a hand around the backs of their necks, until her thumb rested just below their ears. She closed her eyes and they felt a slight tingeling sensation, where her cool hands touched their skin, and accompanying it, was a strange surging whisper, that shifted constantly, growing louder and softer all at once. Their eyes widened a little as the sound grew a little clearer, and they realized with a jolt that they were listening to voices... hundreds of thousands of millions of voices, all whispering at once in a language they couldn't understand, the voices rising and falling in the same light, ever-shifing song.
"Whoa..." Yusuke said quietly as Karyuu pulled her hands away, allowing the water's song to fade in their ears.
Kuwabara blinked and nodded in silent agreement, looking a little awed.
Karyuu smiled, shifted to face Kurama, and slipping her hand around the base of his neck, she repeated what she had done with Yusuke and Kuwabara just moments before, allowing the red-haired Kitsune to hear the water's song.
He remained silent, emerald eyes closing to better focus on the strange sound reaching his ears for the first time, opening them only when Karyuu pulled away, taking the song with her. He raised his eyes to meet hers for a moment and looked at her strangely, as if he were about to ask her something, but thought better of it. Kurama turned on his knees to look at Hiei, who was watching them out of the corner of his eye.
"Don't you want to hear it, Hiei?" Kurama asked. "It's quite beautiful..."
"Hn."
"Aww, c'mon Hiei!" Yusuke called. "It won't kill ya'!"
The fire-demon glared at his Human friend for a moment, before turning to meet Karyuu's opal eyes as she watched him, her expression neither expectant nor conserned. Whether he came, or not seemed to make no difference to her.
He sighed disgustedly, and came forward resignedly, dropping to his knees before her, his face mildly annoyed. Karyuu seemed to find this amusing, because she smiled a little at him, before reaching out her hand to touch him. Ruby eyes followed the path of her hand as it slipped around the back of his neck, muscels giving a slight jolt when the naturally coolness of her palm came to rest against his skin. He did not like being touched... but if it was necessary for him to hear this 'beautiful' sound, he supposed he could endure it for a little while.
Karyuu closed her eyes again and allowed him to hear the song of the near-by stream.
Hiei was stricken as he listened to the song, the sheree complexity enough to mesmerize him, let alone the strange ever-shifing beauty of the whispering song itself, though none of this showed on his expressionless face, the only indication of him even hearing anything was a slow closing of his ruby eyes.
After a moment, Karyuu withdrew her hand and they both opened their eyes, gazes meeting for a moment.
"So that's what you were talking about," he muttered quietly, almost to himself.
She nodded and then got to her feet, the others following suit, not having heard him speak.
"Anyway, that's what I meant by 'talk'... when you've got better control of the Stones, you'll be able to listen to it too."
"Do the other Elements have similar sounds?" Kurama asked, coming to stand beside her as she moved to the edge of the stream, one foot testing the water, and he was dissapointed to find that it was very cold.
"They all sound as... complicated as that, but... say Jikai, the Earth Element, moves very slowly, it's voices are much deeper as well..." She paused and looked up at him. "You know Buhddist Monks? The slow, multi-layered thrumming sound they make when they chant all at once?"
His emerald eyes lightened in understanding and he nodded.
"That's probably the closest thing on this Realm that sounds like that... obviously the chanting has different meaning... and it isn't religious in any way, but you get the idea."
He nodded and she smiled a little, before striding forward, not even flinching at the cold water before diving in, her form cutting easily through the water like a hot knife though butter, dissapearing out of sight into the depths of the unusually deep stream before re-appearing several moments later, her blackened silver hair shining in the light as her head broke the surface of the water with only a slight disruption of the river's flowing surface.
Kurama blinked, surprised at the grace with which she seemed to move though the water and her seeming immunity to the icy quality of the brisquely flowing stream.
She cocked her head to the side and smiled a little at the Urameshi Team who still stood on the bank of the stream looking at her in a kind of bemused inquizitive way.
"Well?" She called expectantly. "What are you waiting for?"
There was a breif pause, and then, deciding not to make a complaint about the water's less-than-friendly temperature, the Kitsune gritted his teeth and trying not to wince too obviously, he began to move forward, the smooth rocks on the bottom making it difficult to keep his footing as he carefuly moved up to his waist before ducking his head under the water in an attempt to get the shock of the cold water over-with as soon as possible. His attempt seemed temporarily futile as his entire body shreiked in protest at the sudden temperature change and he let out a quiet gasp as he re-surfaced, pushing his now thuroughly soaked crimson locks out of his eyes.
His discomfort seemed to show on his face, because Karyuu's light laugh carried accross the water to him as he turned to face her, making him give her a slightly irritated smile, trying and failing to surpress a shiver as the early morning breeze buffeted him, making him break out in goose-bumps appearing instantaniously on his pale skin as he shuddered.
The others, who had yet to touch the water, regarded him warily, and not missing his expression, they made no move to join him, the most noticable being Hiei, who was still completely dressed, one eyebrow raised at the comical look on the Kitsune's face.
"You look traumatized, Kitsune."
Kurama gave Hiei one of his rare glares of annoyance and waded further out into the stream until he was about chest-deep in the water, not four feet from where Karyuu floated easily, her muscled legs kicking slowly, arms flowing back and forth to keep her afloat, (her diminuitive height forcing her to do so), with seemingly little effort.
'That's right...' the fox-demon mused destractedly. 'Kuwabara said something about Karyuu's weight being disportionately light...'
"What's the matter guys? Can't swim?" The said elfin woman called to the others.
Yusuke and Kuwabara shared a look and then folded their arms accross their chests, twin expressions of stubournness touching their faces.
"I'm not goin'' in," Yusuke said with a shake of his head. "Not 'till the water warms up."
"Me neither." Kuwabara said, glaring irritably at the water.
"We'll loose a couple of hours if we wait," she protested.
"So what? I'm not gonna' freeze my butt off for training... Can't we do Earth or something?"
She raised an eyebrow at the two, and judging by the stubbourn look of defiance, most obvious in Yusuke's eyes, a glint of mischeviousness touched Karyuu's face.
"You have to the count of three Yusuke," she said with a positively evil grin. "After his time is up, you, Kuwbara have three seconds. Hiei, you have three after Kuwabara... Starting now..."
The three loooked at her and then at eachother, their expressions stating clearly that they had no intention of complying with the order given to them simply because she said so.
"... One..."
No movement.
"... Two..."
They looked away as if they were ignoring her, and acting on pure instinct, Kurama moved away from them, coming closer to where the Servant floated, a sneaking feeling in his gut telling him that it might be... 'safer'... to be closer to her then his team-mates in a moment.
"... Three..."
Instantly, Yusuke was lifted high off the ground, spun in the air, and dropped abruptly into the river several feet away, an incoherant curse the only sound that reached their ears before the brown-eyed Spirit Detective dissapeared below the quickly flowing water with a splash.
Half a beat passed before was water thrown into the air as his flailing body broke the surface, a sputtering, chattering mass of goose-bumps and impotent fury.
"Karyuu! Why the hell did yo - Oh shit... oh shit!" Yusuke wailed in shock as he flailed, wading as quickly to shore as he could as the biting chill of the water assailed his sences. "ColdcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldCOLD!"
"Do the other Elements have similar sounds?" Kurama asked, coming to stand beside her as she moved to the edge of the stream, one foot testing the water, and he was dissapointed to find that it was very cold.
"They all sound as... complicated as that, but... say Jikai, the Earth Element, moves very slowly, it's voices are much deeper as well..." She paused and looked up at him. "You know Buhddist Monks? The slow, multi-layered thrumming sound they make when they chant all at once?"
His emerald eyes lightened in understanding and he nodded.
"That's probably the closest thing on this Realm that sounds like that... obviously the chanting has different meaning... and it isn't religious in any way, but you get the idea."
He nodded and she smiled a little, before striding forward, not even flinching at the cold water before diving in, her form cutting easily through the water like a hot knife though butter, dissapearing out of sight into the depths of the unusually deep stream before re-appearing several moments later, her blackened silver hair shining in the light as her head broke the surface of the water with only a slight disruption of the river's flowing surface.
Kurama blinked, surprised at the grace with which she seemed to move though the water and her seeming immunity to the icy quality of the brisquely flowing stream.
She cocked her head to the side and smiled a little at the Urameshi Team who still stood on the bank of the stream looking at her in a kind of bemused inquizitive way.
"Well?" She called expectantly. "What are you waiting for?"
There was a breif pause, and then, deciding not to make a complaint about the water's less-than-friendly temperature, the Kitsune gritted his teeth and trying not to wince too obviously, he began to move forward, the smooth rocks on the bottom making it difficult to keep his footing as he carefuly moved up to his waist before ducking his head under the water in an attempt to get the shock of the cold water over-with as soon as possible. His attempt seemed temporarily futile as his entire body shreiked in protest at the sudden temperature change and he let out a quiet gasp as he re-surfaced, pushing his now thuroughly soaked crimson locks out of his eyes.
His discomfort seemed to show on his face, because Karyuu's light laugh carried accross the water to him as he turned to face her, making him give her a slightly irritated smile, trying and failing to surpress a shiver as the early morning breeze buffeted him, making him break out in goose-bumps appearing instantaniously on his pale skin as he shuddered.
The others, who had yet to touch the water, regarded him warily, and not missing his expression, they made no move to join him, the most noticable being Hiei, who was still completely dressed, one eyebrow raised at the comical look on the Kitsune's face.
"You look traumatized, Kitsune."
Kurama gave Hiei one of his rare glares of annoyance and waded further out into the stream until he was about chest-deep in the water, not four feet from where Karyuu floated easily, her muscled legs kicking slowly, arms flowing back and forth to keep her afloat, (her diminuitive height forcing her to do so), with seemingly little effort.
'That's right...' the fox-demon mused destractedly. 'Kuwabara said something about Karyuu's weight being disportionately light...'
"What's the matter guys? Can't swim?" The said elfin woman called to the others.
Yusuke and Kuwabara shared a look and then folded their arms accross their chests, twin expressions of stubournness touching their faces.
"I'm not goin'' in," Yusuke said with a shake of his head. "Not 'till the water warms up."
"Me neither." Kuwabara said, glaring irritably at the water.
"We'll loose a couple of hours if we wait," she protested.
"So what? I'm not gonna' freeze my butt off for training... Can't we do Earth or something?"
She raised an eyebrow at the two, and judging by the stubbourn look of defiance, most obvious in Yusuke's eyes, a glint of mischeviousness touched Karyuu's face.
"You have to the count of three Yusuke," she said with a positively evil grin. "After his time is up, you, Kuwbara have three seconds. Hiei, you have three after Kuwabara... Starting now..."
The three loooked at her and then at eachother, their expressions stating clearly that they had no intention of complying with the order given to them simply because she said so.
"... One..."
No movement.
"... Two..."
They looked away as if they were ignoring her, and acting on pure instinct, Kurama moved away from them, coming closer to where the Servant floated, a sneaking feeling in his gut telling him that it might be... 'safer'... to be closer to her then his team-mates in a moment.
"... Three..."
Instantly, Yusuke was lifted high off the ground, spun in the air, and dropped abruptly into the river several feet away, an incoherant curse the only sound that reached their ears before the brown-eyed Spirit Detective dissapeared below the quickly flowing water with a splash.
Half a beat passed before was water thrown into the air as his flailing body broke the surface, a sputtering, chattering mass of goose-bumps and impotent fury.
"Karyuu! Why the hell did yo - Oh shit... oh shit!" Yusuke wailed in shock as he flailed, wading as quickly to shore as he could as the biting chill of the water assailed his sences. "ColdcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldCOLD!"
"If you get out again, Yusuke, I'm just going to dump you back in!" Karyuu called lighlty to his retreating back.
He froze and turned to glare at her, wrapping his arms around himself tightly, brown eyes narrowed dangerously.
"It isn't so bad once you get used to the... brisk temperature," Kurama said in an attempt to lighten his friend's mood as he watched him weigh the thought, if however un-likely of blasting Karyuu with a good burst of his Spirit Gun...
"Shut-up, Kurama," Yusuke muttered, though he was motivated by Karyuu's threat and reluctantly moved back into the water to his waist, arms folded tightly across his chest, his expression sour.
Karyuu smiled and turned her eyes on Kuwabara.
"One..."
Not needing to have the abrupt demonstration he had just witnessed aimed at him, the orange-haired young man held up his hands in the classic 'surrender' possission and began to move into the water, flinching at the less than hospitable temperature and grumbled a little to himself.
"I'm commn'... I'm commn'... Don't toss me into the air or anything..."
The elfin woman smiled and then laughed as Yusuke, jealous that his friend had mannaged to avoid his fate, began splashing the orange-haired giant with the icy water, making him shriek and flail around until he forgot the effect of the cold water on his skin and went right for revenge, leaping unexpectedly at Yusuke before dragging the smaller young man down under the surface of the gently flowing water.
After a moment, Karyuu turned her opaline eyes on Hiei who regarded her expressionlessly before she began to count once again.
"... One..."
Ruby eyes narrowed at her.
"... Two..."
He continued to glare at her, but as her lips parted to form the last number that would result in him being flung into the air and doused in the water as Yusuke had before him, his gaze flickered to the said Spirit Detective and then back to her.
"Th-"
"Wait."
She paused and waited paitently for him to continue.
In the blink of an eye, the fire-demon had stripped out of his cloak, shirt and boots, laying his sword on the pile of disgarded clothing before he began to move forward, striding without flinching into the water until he came to his waist and stood there in his thoroughly soaked pants, arms folded over his chest as he glared at her.
The expression on his face told her plainly that if she dared say anything, he would deck her one, and so, in the intrests of continuing the day's activities peacfully, she turned her head to look at the rest of them and cocked her head to the side.
"You're still cold?"
Yusuke, Kuwabara and Kurama turned to glare at her irritably, all three dripping wet and shivering noticably, Hiei's naturally warm skin guarding against the chill of the water, protecting him in a way unavailable to his more Human team-mates.
"Of course we're still cold!" Yusuke snapped angrily. "The water's friggn' freezing!"
She stared at him for a moment and then began to laugh, shaking her head before slipping down beneath the surface of the water, shooting forward at a surprising speed before re-surfacing a few feet away from them, standing on the smooth round rocks of the river-bed as she looked up at them.
"You're telling me, that I spent the last few months teaching the four of you to use the Kakai... the Fire Element, and you haven't figured it out yet?" She gave them a few seconds in which expressions of extreme embarassment touched their faces and they shifted a little in the water, feeling rediculous.
"Oh... yah..." Kuwabara muttered, almost to himself. "kinda' forgot about that..."
She shook her head and waited paitentely as the three gathered the appropriate energy, raising the temperature of the water around them to ease the chill of the river, their shivering ceasing almost immediately and the three sighed as Hiei rolled his eyes.
Yusuke shifted his shoulders, easing the tension brought on by such a drastic change of temperature and frowned almost accusingly at the Servant of Gaia that stood there smiling up at him with such an amused expression, her blackened-silver hair wet and pushed back from her face, making her look sleek and almost otter-like, her pointed ears seeming more prominant, revealed as they were with her hair slicked back as it was.
"I did warn you, Yusuke..." she murmured, giving him a playfull poke in the ribs, making him jerk slightly and she ducked away as he made a grab for her hand and fell back into the water, regarding him beneath the surface for a moment before turning over, and with a swirl of hair, she swam swiftly away from him, appearing in the deeper part of the stream, floating effortlessly with just her head above the water.
"Alright, guys, let's start."
*****
They began much the same way as they had with the Fire Element, becoming aware of it, sensitive to the strange, flowing, ever-shifting energy it generated, surprised at how different the Water Element felt when compared to the Kakai... It was... 'fluid', for lack of a better word; insubstancial and yet tactile at the same time, and there was a distinct feeling of soothing coolness that seemed to accompany it, where the Fire Element seemed to carry a more dry, comforting warmth.
Immediately, they realized how difficult this was going to be when none of them mannaged to seem to gather even a miniamal amount of the energy they were aiming at.
Yusuke had almost boiled the water around him, having slipped suddenly by accedent, but Karyuu had caught the brown-eyed Spirit Detective before he turned them all into soup.
Karyuu dissapeared beneath the water frequently, and seemed to just hover below the surface for almost alarmingly long periods of time as they struggled with gathering any amount of energy that they could detect flowing around them, a fact that eventually began to ware on Hiei's nerves.
After almost four hours of continuous trying, hearing Karyuu's voice in their minds, coaching their progress from beneath the surface of the water as she swam casually back and forth along the length of the screen, not passing more than five feet away from them at any time.
When she made one of her periodic trips to the surface to take a soft breath, Hiei lost his temper.
"Damn you, woman! Get up here!" He snapped, and opaline eyes opened immediately to regard him calmly, her body righting in the water so that both pointed ears were above the surface.
"Yes, Hiei?"
But he didn't seem to have anything else to say, seemingly satisfied that she appeared to be paying genuine attention once again. Taking the hint, Karyuu remained floating above the water opaline eyes intent as she watched them struggle.
Yusuke, however wasn't that satisfied with her attention and he sighed heavily and slumped visiably, breathing hard.
"Karyuu! Show us how, will ya'? I don't even know what it's supposed to feel like..."
She paused and cocked her head to the side, a curious sort of jesture, since they could only see her from the bridge of her nose up.
"Alright..."
Instantly, the water around her began to swirl gently and her body began to rise out of the water until she stood quite casually on the surface, her skin shining with water, a slight ripple emminating from where her bare feet touched the surface the only evidence of her manipulating the Element beneath her.
"Suidai is very subtile in it's nature. You four are tensing up too much... think 'liquid', flowing energy, not raw, crackeling energy," she said with a smile. "The key behind it is to relax... be at home in the water."
"I'm dead meat then," Kuwabara muttered sadly. "I don't swim too good, you know..."
The elfin woman shrugged.
"You'll have a hard time, sure, but you aren't dead meat... bruised meat, maybe, but not dead..."
He blinked at her and then laughed a little.
"Alright now, concentrate and pay attention..."
*****
The rest of the day was spent with Karyuu giving various examples, which the four young men coppied as best as they were able, until finally they were able to make some progress, Hiei, surprisingly being the first to do so, raising himself just a few inches from where he stood on the smooth rocky bottom.
Progress at last...
This development seemed to incourage the others, but by then the sun had begun to set, and the five were forced to cease their training for the day and begin the journey back to the Temple.
They waded back to the river-bank and began to dry off, and as Karyuu put her back to them, crouching to reach the pale green towel she had placed on a low rock earlier, each of them noticing for the first time that day that her smooth skin was marked hair-fine scars with suprising frequency, confirming the unspoken assuption that the elfin woman had a fair amount of battle experiance to be true. The scars were so thin and so faint, however, that they evaded notice until now, many of them almost invisiable unless the light touched her in just the right way.
'Man, she's got a lot of scars... They're tiny, but that's probably 'cause of her healing abilities...' Yusuke thought, glancing at her back again out of the corner of his eye as he toweled off his arms and chest. 'Makes the collection I've got look like nothing...'
In a way, it was a little alarming to the more protective side of his nature that a woman had suffered enough to get so many scars, but then again, it was also kind of comforting in a way.
It told him that what she was teaching them came from expreiance too, not just theory, and it helped to inforce the idea that what he and the others wittnessed that day when the Bone-Devil attacked the Temple wasn't just a stroke of luck...
"Hey, Karyuu?" Kuwabara said, pulling his shirt over his bare chest, making a concious effort not to stare at, or comment on the tiny little scars either. "You know how you said the Elements had different properties... like Fire isn't just for buring stuff, it's about light too?"
She nodded, toweling her thick, blackened silver hair, her head cocked a little to the side.
"Yes, that's right."
"So, what's water do besides get stuff wet?"
Hiei sighed none too quietly and shook his head in disgust.
'One could easily believe that baka dosen't actually use his ears when spoken to...' The fire-demon thought as he pulled on his boots and got to his feet, belting his sword at his waist as he moved.
"Well, aside for crushing, tearing and breaking things," she said, sharking her now towel-frizzy hair out of her face, slinging the pale green towel over her shoulder as she beagn to look for her disgarded coat absently releasing a puff of heat to dry the last of the moisture clinging to her hair and body, guarding herself against the chill air of the late afternoon. "Suidai applies to ice, steam, and anything else in liquid form..."
"Does blood count?" Yusuke asked suddenly.
Karyuu nodded, bending to retreive the brush hidden inside a pocket of her coat and began to pull the bristles through her thick hair.
"Yep."
"Geeze..." he muttered quietly. "You could stop a guy's blood from moving... You could kill him without a fight and there'd be nothing he could do to stop you..."
Karyuu paused in brushing her hair, looking at him for the first time.
"True, but in my experiance, the most popular method is to force the blood to the brain. Stopping all the blood flowing though your enemies veins will kill him, but it takes a while. Applying that kind of pressure to the brain will kill him much faster and I'm told it hurts less, though I've never tried it myself."
The casual tone in her voice made all of them pause, staring at her with a mixture of surprise, horror and speculative study, watching as she glanced at them, shrugged, and began to pull the brush through her hair again.
"All Elements can be used to kill through indirect methods. Kakai... the Fire Element, can be used to draw all the heat out of an enemy, and they die out of hypothermia, or tremendous ammounts of heat can be forced in, and they'll spontaniously combust. Suidai can be used to stop blood (or any other fluid), re-direct it to a place here it can cause tremendous damage, or in a slightly less-direct rout, cause moisture in the air in the victem's lungs to condense and drown him," she returned the brush to an inside pocket of her coat. "It's all about how direct and how... inventive you want to be. Basicly, anything you can think to do with the appropriate Element is a viable way of taking the life of another. It's up to you to figure out how you want to do it."
There was a sober silence and as Karyuu pulled on her coat, having sufficently tamed her hair, freed it from the confines of her collar with a flick of her hand.
Then, as a means of lightening the mood, she added with a slight smile, "Personally, I preffer to keep things as simply and cleanly as possible, so I never tried most of those other methods... Too messy and painful. Anyway, I like using the more positive aspects of the Elements."
"What do you mean?" Kurama asked.
She rolled up the sleeves and with a little extra drama to lighten the mood, she looked at the low clouds overhead and raised her hands to the sky, palms up, fingers wide. They heard a rushing sound in their ears as she gathered and released the appropreiate Energy and then they heard her say, "Ta-da!" in a sing-song kind of voice.
They all looked up as one and were starteled to see white, fluffy snowflakes falling from the summer clouds that setteled on their clothes for a moment before melting in the residual warmth of the late spring air. They stared awed, and a little wide-eyed as the seemingly impossible phenominon fell down arround them.
Yusuke laughed with almost child-like delight, and opened his mouth and commicly shifted back and forth, possitioning himself under a particularily large snowflake and caught it in his mouth where it melted instantly on his waiting tongue.
The motion was so innocent, a thing made infinitely amusing by the fact that this same young man had apparently spent a large portion of his life attempting to appear as hard and 'tough' as possible, that Karyuu smiled and laughed quietly, alerting him to the fact that they were watching and he straightened imediately, embarassed.
"Heh, heh... Haven't had snow around here since I was a kid..." he mumbled, rubbing the back of his still-damp head of hair.
Opaline eyes regarded him for a moment and then with a glance up at the sky, the unnatural snow-fall stopped and the Servant turned, shouldering her pack over her jacket, slipping her hands into her pockets as she looked up at them.
"Well... from what I know, Tokyo should be getting a very heavy winter this year," she said as she turned to leave. "You and Jack Frost are due for a reunion..."
The four blinked at her and then moved to catch up, Yusuke falling into step beside her.
"How'd you know it's going to snow this winter?"
"I can tell... I'm in-tune with Nature and that kind of thing..."
Kurama raised an eyebrow at her.
"Do you know what the weather will be like every day?"
She nodded and turned to look at him.
"Mmm,hmm... Weather-patterns are very organised, despite the inability of Humans to predict them properly... The weather isn't something that ever changes... at least not on a grand scale, and not without some kind of interference..."
"Of the Servant variety?"
Karyuu laughed and nodded.
"Exactly..."
*****
That night, they ate the dinner Yunkina had prepared for them, and Hiei and Karyuu took up their place in the garden for his reading lessons, leaving Yusuke to take first watch, and Kuwabara to help Yukina with the dishes (Keiko having left the Temple several days ago to keep her parents from worrying about her).
The night passed on, and very little happened, save for a broken dish, (via Kuwabara's less than dexterous fingers), which allowed for Hiei to continue learning to read at an impressive rate, speeding through the complicated work of literature at an increasingly quickening pace, the words coming easier as they progressed until Karyuu had barely anything to correct him on, seemingly content to listen to the fire-demon's deep, soft voice reading through the story she had been enjoying since it was first published in England after the Human Realm's Second World War.
'He's doing so well,' the opal-eyed Servant thought silently, closing her eyes and tilting her head back and to the side a little as she listened. 'It's surprising he hasn't just picked it up through what little English there is here in Japan during the time he's been here...'
She was brought back to the present when she heard his voice shift into another language, one that surprisingly, happened to be 'Elvish', a false-language developed by Tolkein himself for the express use in his books... a language Hiei couldn't possibly have heard before, and yet was somehow mannaging to pronounce the complicated language with almost perfect precision.
He seemed to sence her sudden increase in attention and paused, ruby eyes raising to meet hers as she looked at him.
"What?"
Karyuu smiled and shook her head.
"Nothing. I'm just impressed that after only two lessons you've mannaged to get as far as you have... it's pretty impressive," she looked down at the page where his bandaged finger was keeping his place. "There's also the fact that your pronouncing the Elvish speech with a surprising amount of accuracy."
He looked at her expressionlessly for a moment before returning his atention to the book.
"Hn. It seemed the right way, but I don't understand it. Where in the Ningenkai is it spoken?"
She shook her head.
"Nowhere. The authour, Tolkein, created the language himself, along with every other language in there... except English, of course... But for the book's perpouses he calls it Common."
"Why?"
"To make it more realistic, I suppose. The more convincing the story being told is, the more enjoyable it becomes, right?"
He shrugged and turned the page.
"It seems like a waste of time to me," the fire-demon replied without looking at her.
"Only if you aren't entertained by the story."
He glanced up at her and then back to the book.
"Hn."
*****
The two continued to read for some time, until they became aware of Kuwabara trading watch with Yusuke, the moon hanging high above them as the night wore on.
Karyuu yawned, and stretched, struggleing to her feet as Hiei closed the book and came to stand beside her, regarding her expressionlessly with his ruby eyes.
"Well... my watch is next, so I'm going to get some sleep before Kuwabara wakes me up again," she said, stretching a little before retreiving her lamp and extinguished it with a twist of a nob, returning the little patch of wall to the gentle shadows of the night. "Try and get some sleep too, alright?"
He nodded and watched as she leapt from the wall, landing silently on the grass below before moving off in the direction of her room, the lantern swinging casually from one hand as she walked.
Hiei watched her go, eyes narrowing in thought.
'I should have asked her about the Wards...' he thought to himself. 'I don't like not knowing things... Especially since this has a very good potential of becoming a dangerous situation... Damn.'
And with that, he was gone, taking up a place on the roof of his sleeping sister's room to keep watch over her while she rested, a black shadow against the dark grey of the Temple's slate roof.
There was time to wait, he supposed; time enough for he and Kurama to decide on whether or not to press the opal-eyed Servant on the issue of Urameshi's unknown allias and the Wards she had set strategicly all over her room.
He froze and turned to glare at her, wrapping his arms around himself tightly, brown eyes narrowed dangerously.
"It isn't so bad once you get used to the... brisk temperature," Kurama said in an attempt to lighten his friend's mood as he watched him weigh the thought, if however un-likely of blasting Karyuu with a good burst of his Spirit Gun...
"Shut-up, Kurama," Yusuke muttered, though he was motivated by Karyuu's threat and reluctantly moved back into the water to his waist, arms folded tightly across his chest, his expression sour.
Karyuu smiled and turned her eyes on Kuwabara.
"One..."
Not needing to have the abrupt demonstration he had just witnessed aimed at him, the orange-haired young man held up his hands in the classic 'surrender' possission and began to move into the water, flinching at the less than hospitable temperature and grumbled a little to himself.
"I'm commn'... I'm commn'... Don't toss me into the air or anything..."
The elfin woman smiled and then laughed as Yusuke, jealous that his friend had mannaged to avoid his fate, began splashing the orange-haired giant with the icy water, making him shriek and flail around until he forgot the effect of the cold water on his skin and went right for revenge, leaping unexpectedly at Yusuke before dragging the smaller young man down under the surface of the gently flowing water.
After a moment, Karyuu turned her opaline eyes on Hiei who regarded her expressionlessly before she began to count once again.
"... One..."
Ruby eyes narrowed at her.
"... Two..."
He continued to glare at her, but as her lips parted to form the last number that would result in him being flung into the air and doused in the water as Yusuke had before him, his gaze flickered to the said Spirit Detective and then back to her.
"Th-"
"Wait."
She paused and waited paitently for him to continue.
In the blink of an eye, the fire-demon had stripped out of his cloak, shirt and boots, laying his sword on the pile of disgarded clothing before he began to move forward, striding without flinching into the water until he came to his waist and stood there in his thoroughly soaked pants, arms folded over his chest as he glared at her.
The expression on his face told her plainly that if she dared say anything, he would deck her one, and so, in the intrests of continuing the day's activities peacfully, she turned her head to look at the rest of them and cocked her head to the side.
"You're still cold?"
Yusuke, Kuwabara and Kurama turned to glare at her irritably, all three dripping wet and shivering noticably, Hiei's naturally warm skin guarding against the chill of the water, protecting him in a way unavailable to his more Human team-mates.
"Of course we're still cold!" Yusuke snapped angrily. "The water's friggn' freezing!"
She stared at him for a moment and then began to laugh, shaking her head before slipping down beneath the surface of the water, shooting forward at a surprising speed before re-surfacing a few feet away from them, standing on the smooth round rocks of the river-bed as she looked up at them.
"You're telling me, that I spent the last few months teaching the four of you to use the Kakai... the Fire Element, and you haven't figured it out yet?" She gave them a few seconds in which expressions of extreme embarassment touched their faces and they shifted a little in the water, feeling rediculous.
"Oh... yah..." Kuwabara muttered, almost to himself. "kinda' forgot about that..."
She shook her head and waited paitentely as the three gathered the appropriate energy, raising the temperature of the water around them to ease the chill of the river, their shivering ceasing almost immediately and the three sighed as Hiei rolled his eyes.
Yusuke shifted his shoulders, easing the tension brought on by such a drastic change of temperature and frowned almost accusingly at the Servant of Gaia that stood there smiling up at him with such an amused expression, her blackened-silver hair wet and pushed back from her face, making her look sleek and almost otter-like, her pointed ears seeming more prominant, revealed as they were with her hair slicked back as it was.
"I did warn you, Yusuke..." she murmured, giving him a playfull poke in the ribs, making him jerk slightly and she ducked away as he made a grab for her hand and fell back into the water, regarding him beneath the surface for a moment before turning over, and with a swirl of hair, she swam swiftly away from him, appearing in the deeper part of the stream, floating effortlessly with just her head above the water.
"Alright, guys, let's start."
*****
They began much the same way as they had with the Fire Element, becoming aware of it, sensitive to the strange, flowing, ever-shifting energy it generated, surprised at how different the Water Element felt when compared to the Kakai... It was... 'fluid', for lack of a better word; insubstancial and yet tactile at the same time, and there was a distinct feeling of soothing coolness that seemed to accompany it, where the Fire Element seemed to carry a more dry, comforting warmth.
Immediately, they realized how difficult this was going to be when none of them mannaged to seem to gather even a miniamal amount of the energy they were aiming at.
Yusuke had almost boiled the water around him, having slipped suddenly by accedent, but Karyuu had caught the brown-eyed Spirit Detective before he turned them all into soup.
Karyuu dissapeared beneath the water frequently, and seemed to just hover below the surface for almost alarmingly long periods of time as they struggled with gathering any amount of energy that they could detect flowing around them, a fact that eventually began to ware on Hiei's nerves.
After almost four hours of continuous trying, hearing Karyuu's voice in their minds, coaching their progress from beneath the surface of the water as she swam casually back and forth along the length of the screen, not passing more than five feet away from them at any time.
When she made one of her periodic trips to the surface to take a soft breath, Hiei lost his temper.
"Damn you, woman! Get up here!" He snapped, and opaline eyes opened immediately to regard him calmly, her body righting in the water so that both pointed ears were above the surface.
"Yes, Hiei?"
But he didn't seem to have anything else to say, seemingly satisfied that she appeared to be paying genuine attention once again. Taking the hint, Karyuu remained floating above the water opaline eyes intent as she watched them struggle.
Yusuke, however wasn't that satisfied with her attention and he sighed heavily and slumped visiably, breathing hard.
"Karyuu! Show us how, will ya'? I don't even know what it's supposed to feel like..."
She paused and cocked her head to the side, a curious sort of jesture, since they could only see her from the bridge of her nose up.
"Alright..."
Instantly, the water around her began to swirl gently and her body began to rise out of the water until she stood quite casually on the surface, her skin shining with water, a slight ripple emminating from where her bare feet touched the surface the only evidence of her manipulating the Element beneath her.
"Suidai is very subtile in it's nature. You four are tensing up too much... think 'liquid', flowing energy, not raw, crackeling energy," she said with a smile. "The key behind it is to relax... be at home in the water."
"I'm dead meat then," Kuwabara muttered sadly. "I don't swim too good, you know..."
The elfin woman shrugged.
"You'll have a hard time, sure, but you aren't dead meat... bruised meat, maybe, but not dead..."
He blinked at her and then laughed a little.
"Alright now, concentrate and pay attention..."
*****
The rest of the day was spent with Karyuu giving various examples, which the four young men coppied as best as they were able, until finally they were able to make some progress, Hiei, surprisingly being the first to do so, raising himself just a few inches from where he stood on the smooth rocky bottom.
Progress at last...
This development seemed to incourage the others, but by then the sun had begun to set, and the five were forced to cease their training for the day and begin the journey back to the Temple.
They waded back to the river-bank and began to dry off, and as Karyuu put her back to them, crouching to reach the pale green towel she had placed on a low rock earlier, each of them noticing for the first time that day that her smooth skin was marked hair-fine scars with suprising frequency, confirming the unspoken assuption that the elfin woman had a fair amount of battle experiance to be true. The scars were so thin and so faint, however, that they evaded notice until now, many of them almost invisiable unless the light touched her in just the right way.
'Man, she's got a lot of scars... They're tiny, but that's probably 'cause of her healing abilities...' Yusuke thought, glancing at her back again out of the corner of his eye as he toweled off his arms and chest. 'Makes the collection I've got look like nothing...'
In a way, it was a little alarming to the more protective side of his nature that a woman had suffered enough to get so many scars, but then again, it was also kind of comforting in a way.
It told him that what she was teaching them came from expreiance too, not just theory, and it helped to inforce the idea that what he and the others wittnessed that day when the Bone-Devil attacked the Temple wasn't just a stroke of luck...
"Hey, Karyuu?" Kuwabara said, pulling his shirt over his bare chest, making a concious effort not to stare at, or comment on the tiny little scars either. "You know how you said the Elements had different properties... like Fire isn't just for buring stuff, it's about light too?"
She nodded, toweling her thick, blackened silver hair, her head cocked a little to the side.
"Yes, that's right."
"So, what's water do besides get stuff wet?"
Hiei sighed none too quietly and shook his head in disgust.
'One could easily believe that baka dosen't actually use his ears when spoken to...' The fire-demon thought as he pulled on his boots and got to his feet, belting his sword at his waist as he moved.
"Well, aside for crushing, tearing and breaking things," she said, sharking her now towel-frizzy hair out of her face, slinging the pale green towel over her shoulder as she beagn to look for her disgarded coat absently releasing a puff of heat to dry the last of the moisture clinging to her hair and body, guarding herself against the chill air of the late afternoon. "Suidai applies to ice, steam, and anything else in liquid form..."
"Does blood count?" Yusuke asked suddenly.
Karyuu nodded, bending to retreive the brush hidden inside a pocket of her coat and began to pull the bristles through her thick hair.
"Yep."
"Geeze..." he muttered quietly. "You could stop a guy's blood from moving... You could kill him without a fight and there'd be nothing he could do to stop you..."
Karyuu paused in brushing her hair, looking at him for the first time.
"True, but in my experiance, the most popular method is to force the blood to the brain. Stopping all the blood flowing though your enemies veins will kill him, but it takes a while. Applying that kind of pressure to the brain will kill him much faster and I'm told it hurts less, though I've never tried it myself."
The casual tone in her voice made all of them pause, staring at her with a mixture of surprise, horror and speculative study, watching as she glanced at them, shrugged, and began to pull the brush through her hair again.
"All Elements can be used to kill through indirect methods. Kakai... the Fire Element, can be used to draw all the heat out of an enemy, and they die out of hypothermia, or tremendous ammounts of heat can be forced in, and they'll spontaniously combust. Suidai can be used to stop blood (or any other fluid), re-direct it to a place here it can cause tremendous damage, or in a slightly less-direct rout, cause moisture in the air in the victem's lungs to condense and drown him," she returned the brush to an inside pocket of her coat. "It's all about how direct and how... inventive you want to be. Basicly, anything you can think to do with the appropriate Element is a viable way of taking the life of another. It's up to you to figure out how you want to do it."
There was a sober silence and as Karyuu pulled on her coat, having sufficently tamed her hair, freed it from the confines of her collar with a flick of her hand.
Then, as a means of lightening the mood, she added with a slight smile, "Personally, I preffer to keep things as simply and cleanly as possible, so I never tried most of those other methods... Too messy and painful. Anyway, I like using the more positive aspects of the Elements."
"What do you mean?" Kurama asked.
She rolled up the sleeves and with a little extra drama to lighten the mood, she looked at the low clouds overhead and raised her hands to the sky, palms up, fingers wide. They heard a rushing sound in their ears as she gathered and released the appropreiate Energy and then they heard her say, "Ta-da!" in a sing-song kind of voice.
They all looked up as one and were starteled to see white, fluffy snowflakes falling from the summer clouds that setteled on their clothes for a moment before melting in the residual warmth of the late spring air. They stared awed, and a little wide-eyed as the seemingly impossible phenominon fell down arround them.
Yusuke laughed with almost child-like delight, and opened his mouth and commicly shifted back and forth, possitioning himself under a particularily large snowflake and caught it in his mouth where it melted instantly on his waiting tongue.
The motion was so innocent, a thing made infinitely amusing by the fact that this same young man had apparently spent a large portion of his life attempting to appear as hard and 'tough' as possible, that Karyuu smiled and laughed quietly, alerting him to the fact that they were watching and he straightened imediately, embarassed.
"Heh, heh... Haven't had snow around here since I was a kid..." he mumbled, rubbing the back of his still-damp head of hair.
Opaline eyes regarded him for a moment and then with a glance up at the sky, the unnatural snow-fall stopped and the Servant turned, shouldering her pack over her jacket, slipping her hands into her pockets as she looked up at them.
"Well... from what I know, Tokyo should be getting a very heavy winter this year," she said as she turned to leave. "You and Jack Frost are due for a reunion..."
The four blinked at her and then moved to catch up, Yusuke falling into step beside her.
"How'd you know it's going to snow this winter?"
"I can tell... I'm in-tune with Nature and that kind of thing..."
Kurama raised an eyebrow at her.
"Do you know what the weather will be like every day?"
She nodded and turned to look at him.
"Mmm,hmm... Weather-patterns are very organised, despite the inability of Humans to predict them properly... The weather isn't something that ever changes... at least not on a grand scale, and not without some kind of interference..."
"Of the Servant variety?"
Karyuu laughed and nodded.
"Exactly..."
*****
That night, they ate the dinner Yunkina had prepared for them, and Hiei and Karyuu took up their place in the garden for his reading lessons, leaving Yusuke to take first watch, and Kuwabara to help Yukina with the dishes (Keiko having left the Temple several days ago to keep her parents from worrying about her).
The night passed on, and very little happened, save for a broken dish, (via Kuwabara's less than dexterous fingers), which allowed for Hiei to continue learning to read at an impressive rate, speeding through the complicated work of literature at an increasingly quickening pace, the words coming easier as they progressed until Karyuu had barely anything to correct him on, seemingly content to listen to the fire-demon's deep, soft voice reading through the story she had been enjoying since it was first published in England after the Human Realm's Second World War.
'He's doing so well,' the opal-eyed Servant thought silently, closing her eyes and tilting her head back and to the side a little as she listened. 'It's surprising he hasn't just picked it up through what little English there is here in Japan during the time he's been here...'
She was brought back to the present when she heard his voice shift into another language, one that surprisingly, happened to be 'Elvish', a false-language developed by Tolkein himself for the express use in his books... a language Hiei couldn't possibly have heard before, and yet was somehow mannaging to pronounce the complicated language with almost perfect precision.
He seemed to sence her sudden increase in attention and paused, ruby eyes raising to meet hers as she looked at him.
"What?"
Karyuu smiled and shook her head.
"Nothing. I'm just impressed that after only two lessons you've mannaged to get as far as you have... it's pretty impressive," she looked down at the page where his bandaged finger was keeping his place. "There's also the fact that your pronouncing the Elvish speech with a surprising amount of accuracy."
He looked at her expressionlessly for a moment before returning his atention to the book.
"Hn. It seemed the right way, but I don't understand it. Where in the Ningenkai is it spoken?"
She shook her head.
"Nowhere. The authour, Tolkein, created the language himself, along with every other language in there... except English, of course... But for the book's perpouses he calls it Common."
"Why?"
"To make it more realistic, I suppose. The more convincing the story being told is, the more enjoyable it becomes, right?"
He shrugged and turned the page.
"It seems like a waste of time to me," the fire-demon replied without looking at her.
"Only if you aren't entertained by the story."
He glanced up at her and then back to the book.
"Hn."
*****
The two continued to read for some time, until they became aware of Kuwabara trading watch with Yusuke, the moon hanging high above them as the night wore on.
Karyuu yawned, and stretched, struggleing to her feet as Hiei closed the book and came to stand beside her, regarding her expressionlessly with his ruby eyes.
"Well... my watch is next, so I'm going to get some sleep before Kuwabara wakes me up again," she said, stretching a little before retreiving her lamp and extinguished it with a twist of a nob, returning the little patch of wall to the gentle shadows of the night. "Try and get some sleep too, alright?"
He nodded and watched as she leapt from the wall, landing silently on the grass below before moving off in the direction of her room, the lantern swinging casually from one hand as she walked.
Hiei watched her go, eyes narrowing in thought.
'I should have asked her about the Wards...' he thought to himself. 'I don't like not knowing things... Especially since this has a very good potential of becoming a dangerous situation... Damn.'
And with that, he was gone, taking up a place on the roof of his sleeping sister's room to keep watch over her while she rested, a black shadow against the dark grey of the Temple's slate roof.
There was time to wait, he supposed; time enough for he and Kurama to decide on whether or not to press the opal-eyed Servant on the issue of Urameshi's unknown allias and the Wards she had set strategicly all over her room.
** Author's Note **
Yes, beleive it or not, I've actually updated!!!
I do have an excuse for my lack of contribution though...
I've moved (actually twice), since my last posting and this is the first time I've been able to get a hold of a bloody computer with the internet on it!!!
Ah, ha,ha,ha!
Technology!
o.0
Anyway... please acept my most sincere apologies, and to make it up to you, I've posted about four more chapters, so keep reading, and don't give up on me!