Post by Chichiro Ketsueki on Apr 13, 2007 20:48:17 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Claimer:[/glow] Chichiro is mine, as well as the storyline, and any other original characters.
[glow=red,2,3,00]Disclaimer:[/glow] Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Koenma, Genkai, and any other YuYu Hakusho characters used are not mine. Kagura isn’t either, though she’s from Inuyasha.
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Chapter 9—The Second Form
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A low, irritable sigh spilled Hiei’s lips as he sprang tree-to-tree in the darkness of early morning. The sun had yet to peek over the forest and attempt persistently to blind him, though he figured it would be less than an hour before its reddish glow showed on the horizon. Crimson eyes scanning the terra before him as he thrust upward again strongly with his legs, he saw no movement to hint that he was near the one he sought. Annoyed, he figured that Chichiro had suppressed her energy to avoid tracking, and unfortunately chose to do so directly before her and Kurama’s battle was to commence.
Sailing downward toward a sturdy branch as he spotted a form below him, his feet made little sound as they planted themselves lightly down onto the tree.
Chichiro lay quite oddly in the center of a small clearing, the branches and leaves around her looking to have been swept aside quickly—likely just by a swish of hands—beforehand. Her eyes were shut, her body unmoving, and for a moment Hiei debated between mild elation at the thought that his annoyance was dead and anger that she had kicked it when he was still healing, forcing him to fight. But as her chest rose with breath, he realized she was quite alive, whether that was a good thing or not.
Springing silently off the branch and landing about seven yards away from the ends of her limp feet, he watched her a long moment, waiting for so much as a twitch. Nothing of the sort came for over a minute, nor did a sound, word or glance from her. He began to wonder if she was even conscious and if he should approach her or search for some sort of wound or attacker; of course, she could have just been deep in slumber, but he hoped she was not quite that useless.
“I’m not asleep,” Chichiro said finally, not opening her eyes. She sensed Hiei start when she spoke, but she continued in a calm, monotonous tone, “And whether I was or wasn’t, you don’t have the right to stare.”
“Ah, sorry,” he responded, and though his tone was genuine, she figured easily enough that it was nothing of the sort. “I failed to recall that only you are allowed that luxury.”
‘Luxury’? Chichiro’s mind wondered. She ignored it, though, and she mumbled softly, “It’s the corpse pose.”
“…Corpse pose,” he echoed flatly.
“It’s called yoga, smart *ss,” she continued on, finally sitting up. “What do you want?”
“Yoga is a human art, what would you want with it?” Hiei wondered aloud, but he didn’t allow her to reply and immediately continued, “The round is beginning soon. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
“Only if it was intentional,” Chichiro muttered back, closing her eyes as she stood; her gaze returned to the vertically-challenged fire demon before her as she said, “Why didn’t Kurama come for me?”
“Kurama isn’t quite as fast.” Hiei gave her an irritated once-over and grumbled, “But with all this pointless small talk, I’d say he could have already gotten you back to the arena by now.”
“Yeah?” The fox demoness disappeared from sight in a flash, and she briefly slowed as she passed Hiei, hissing beside his ear, “Well, then, we’d better get a move on,” and then she was gone.
Wordlessly and without showing any of his usual lack of patience, he turned and in a leap was rendered a small black blur to most eyes as he followed her.
--
Although Chichiro wore a flat expression and sarcastically mouthed, ‘Please state your names’ along with the loudspeaker as it boomed across the stadium, she did not appear annoyed as her actions suggested. She actually seemed uncharacteristically calm, and also uncharacteristically not pissed off after speaking to Hiei. This, however, was not meant to credit the Jaganshi for doing something ‘right’ by the demoness’s standards; no, she was simply still serene-seeming from the lucid effects of the yoga she’d performed. Indeed, Kurama noticed that even her aura had a certain meandering quality to it.
However, being that the familiar, formless voice had (as just mentioned) requested names from the contestants, Kurama raised his voice to name himself.
“Chichiro,” the demoness beside him followed.
The first of their opponents, a male demon that appeared to be some variation of wolf demon, called out, “Shu.” The navy-haired, gray-eyed fighter didn’t notice that his name had earned an amused twitch from Chichiro; his black wolf ears remained forward, eyes focused on the space between Chichiro and Kurama as though he had spied a third opponent there.
His companion, a she-demon also of the wolf kind that appeared to be related to him even though her brunette hair and green eyes did not match his own features, announced herself to be, “Myogie.” The pair could have also been mistaken for relatives to Chichiro if one could not tell the difference between wolf and fox appendages, for they shared Chichiro’s rare trait of having double tails each; theirs were also black-tipped, but they were gray rather than blue.
But this was not on the blue-eared fox demoness’s mind as she stared down her opponents, waiting for Shu’s discipline to falter and for him to meet her challenging gaze. Her only concern right then was discovering their weakness, battling her hardest and advancing to the next round. Her time on the sidelines had made her restless, and suddenly she ached for a good, long battle.
“BEGIN!”
Before the last syllable even had time to echo around the walls of the stadium, Chichiro’s form had short forward toward Myogie with speed that Kurama had not yet seen her display. After all, she had only used her speed in spars thus far into the tournament, and had only sparred Hiei. Kurama had not seen any of those ‘friendly’ fights that the two had held.
Kurama didn’t have any time to focus on her, though, for Shu also seemed to harbor both impressive speed and the strong desire to fight. With barely enough time to move, Kurama narrowly evaded the wolf demon’s fist as it slammed into the ring and shattered the tile of the floor; a small crater in the ground gave Kurama a hint as to the power of the one he faced, a power which he’d previously underestimated simply out of experience.
Although Chichiro had sorely desired to fight the male of their opponents rather than the female, Myogie’s form had been turned to Chichiro and had tensed to head for her in the beginning. Unless Kurama needed help with Shu, Chichiro would take what she had in stride and fight the she-demon instead. She also aimed to make the most of this battle, and rather than waiting as she normally did, she summoned her sword immediately as her body sailed for the female wolf demon.
Chichiro was impressed at her opponent’s speed when she unsheathed her own blade quickly enough to block Chichiro’s light and wind sword. It was more metallic, though, and not nearly as powerful as the energy weapon it needed to battle against. However, it was strong enough to withhold pressing against the other blade, least for a short time. Myogie didn’t seem willing to test out its strength, as she swiped her claws (Which unlike Chichiro’s had been lengthened the entire fight; the fox demoness figured that she couldn’t sheathe them or lengthen them, as they were only a few inches in length and didn’t grow at all when in use or shorten at all when being neglected for other fighting tactics.) at Chichiro’s stomach.
Leaping back, the raven-haired demoness easily avoided the attack, but she found herself smirking from the pleasure earned from a good fight as Myogie sprang at her immediately, sword poised and ready to try again to catch Chichiro at a disadvantage.
Kurama wasn’t enjoying himself nearly so much with Shu. Not only was he still sore and rather stiff from his back injury, he was also battling confusion; why had Shu and Myogie not decided to work together? This far into the tournament, he would have thought the fighting pairs would all be trying to tag-team as the past few pairs of opponents had. Then again, he realized as he chanced a glance sideways at his own fighting companion, he and Chichiro had not exactly devised a plan that involved working together. Nor had they tried to improvise, though as he noted the expression of pure sadistic delight on Chichiro’s face, he figured an attempt at that would be to no avail currently.
Shu didn’t appear to have any problem with fighting solo; however, his eyes left Kurama occasionally to check on Myogie, making the kitsune demon assume that they were like the earlier sibling pair and actually cared for one another. When Myogie was caught at a disadvantage, Shu’s fighting only slowed as he monitored it long enough to see whether she could get out of it and no longer. He never went to her aid.
Currently, the male wolf demon was using only his claws, as Myogie had in the beginning of the battle. Wolves are a feral sort, and enjoy using their bodies more than weapons. Even at a disadvantage, Myogie was only using her sword to block for the most part and offered few attacks with the blade. As to Shu, Kurama couldn’t even see a weapon on him and that likely meant he didn’t intend to use one at all.
A thunderous leap sent Shu flying at Kurama head-on, a bold if amateur move, and it snapped the fox out of his thoughts. Leaping backward, he reached behind him and into his red mane of hair, withdrawing the rose he so often used. Another evading leap later, he had had enough time to send demonic energy into the plant, causing it to lengthen and strengthen enough for him to snap it out at Shu.
As they fought, Kurama realized Shu’s reasoning for lack of concern for his teammate: though Chichiro was fighting her harshly, he must have had faith in Myogie’s ability because she was the stronger of their team. Shu was an impressive fighter, true, but he was no match for someone so skilled as Kurama, even if the fox was wounded.
Human sentiment made him consider allowing the wolf demon live, but he did not desire to appear soft before Kagura; even if he didn’t care what she thought of him, she had to think him worthy of battling her or she wouldn’t give them the chance to. Thus, he had to ignore his experience in the human world and follow his more Yoko-like instincts—he slew Shu quickly with a single snap of his whip, and the wolf demon never had the chance to give a counter attack.
Chichiro’s battle was not so unevenly matched. True enough that the fox demoness had caught Myogie at a disadvantage many times, but the wolf opponent was a force to be reckoned with to be sure. She obviously had experience with her claws and her blade, and now, she decided to take a chance to end this fight and lashed out her arm toward Chichiro’s throat. The fox demoness dodged, flipping backward, and as soon as she moved for her opponent she realized her mistake. The previous attack made by the wolf had been a fake-out so that Chichiro would counter-attack head on as she tended to; Myogie was reading into her moves and had put everything on the line on her assumption that Chichiro would attack a certain way. Unfortunately, that assumption was correct, and Chichiro was too far into her move to pull back without getting herself slain for certain.
She felt as though her sword was moving in slow motion as she dove for her opponent. The demon before her smirked and lifted her hand, knocking Chichiro’s sword aside with ease, having lowered herself into a position to make it nearly impossible not to deflect the attack. In an instant, the other demon’s blade rose and stabbed at Chichiro’s exposed abdomen. She cried out as she felt it pierce into her stomach, forcing her backward and making her body curl over onto the sword.
For a moment, Kurama’s emerald gaze paled with dread, same as his skin, and even the sadistic Hiei’s eyes widened as, for the briefest time, they thought their teammate dead.
But then, her eyes flared crimson, her hair billowing above her as the ebony roots of her locks bled out and became a bluish color, similar to Botan’s. The crimson glow of her eyes faded slightly enough for it to be visible that the hue of her irises had also changed to red. Her fox ears seemed to shrink into her head, and pointed, elf-like ears poked through her hair at the normal place of human ears. Large, blue wings punched from her back, bat-like in nature and membranous rather than feathered. Even her face shifted somewhat, adopting an almost animalistic undertone as the fangs within her jaw lengthened.
“So,” Hiei mused aloud, “then this is her full demon form she so often hides?”
Kurama chanced a glance toward his short, impish comrade. Full demon form? the fox wondered. He had sensed that she’d had a different form and had assumed it would be something fox-like, thus not recognizing this as her full-demon form; yet Hiei acted as though it had been quite obvious. That, and he had been waiting to see it.
The kitsune demon shifted his glance back to Chichiro just in time to see that the zigzag demon marks on her face had shifted; what appeared to be the black shape of a tear formed from the previous marks at the corner of her left eye, and a curved, triangular shape with the point facing away from her eye appeared beneath the same one.
And then, a grin slid along her face, replacing the pained expression, and the glow of her eyes ceased just as her opponent’s countenance changed to one of confusion. The fox demoness’s hand shot out, snagging the other demon’s throat, and as Myogie released the hilt of the sword to grab at Chichiro’s hands, the now blue-haired she-demon drew up her opposite elbow and cracked it into the wolf’s face. As soon as Myogie’s chin swept upward from the blow, Chichiro straightened her arm and dropped her middle and index finger as she did so, digging into the other’s eyes. Howling in pain, her opponent’s arms flew up to her own face, pawing at her bloody eyes, and Chichiro took the chance to rip the other’s blade from her stomach; as soon as she did so, it was as if a sort of plug had been released, and she knew she had one chance to take down her adversary before she lost consciousness. With a single swipe, she removed the demon’s head from her shoulders, and immediately her legs weakened.
Her hair darkened in a shot, demon marks returning to their former and her eyes—though rolling back and not visible—shifted back to their normal, piercing green. Her wings had been left unused throughout the battle, but she was unable to control whether they were released or not in the shift, and as she collapsed backward she made a small noise of pain as one of the fingers of the membranous wing landed at a strange angle, cracking it in the center. They withdrew into her back as though they had never been in the next second.
“That was almost impressive,” Hiei muttered with a smirk, deciding to go ahead of Kurama this time to get to Chichiro. Whether it was curiosity at her transformation or realization that with her second form, Chichiro may be of use to their team, Hiei had taken enough interest in her now to check on her welfare.
--
Her eyes were slow to register, but when they did, she was too surprised to react only for a split second as she realized the one propping her body up was Hiei rather than Kurama, although she could see both. Growling, she didn’t seem to notice that she was still bleeding, that Hiei had a hand pressed to her side to try to stop it, or that the arm she raised to shove him away from her was on the same side as the puncture wound. Only a wince revealed that she felt anything at all, but all she said was, “Get the f**k off me, jerk,” and pushed him back.
He didn’t seem bothered or surprised, and only raised his eyebrows briefly in response as she stood. “You know,” he commented, “you’re still bleeding.”
Ignoring him besides noting what he said, she put a hand to her wound (which, thankfully, was more to the side than the center and didn’t look life-threatening), drew it back to glare briefly at the blood, and then pressed her palm to it as she walked away from the ring and right past her two teammates.
Kurama looked after her, torn between following and asking Hiei a short series of questions that had entered his mind. He decided on the latter right then, and that he’d do the former when he was done. “You acted like you knew about her second form,” he murmured, looking to the fire demon near him.
Hiei stood, having kneeled beside Chichiro, and glared briefly at his bloodied hand before stuffing it in his pocket without further thought, heading for the side of the ring and leaping down. “What of it?”
Kurama followed him. “Well, how did you? And how did you recognize it so easily as her full-demon form?”
“Your senses are failing quite badly, aren’t they?” Hiei muttered in response, and Kurama knew well enough that he meant his ability to sense something about a person or demon rather than senses such as sight and hearing.
“I suppose so.” Kurama brought a hand to his face, covering his mouth briefly as he thought, and then he voiced, “When did you first realize it?”
“Realize what?” the shorter demon asked disinterestedly, already preoccupied in his own thoughts, which no doubt he regarded far more important than the topic at hand.
Kurama sighed. “Her second form.”
“When I fought alongside her in the ring last,” the fire demon replied, then glared at Kurama irritably. “If you have any more questions, go ask her.” And then he flickered from view, leaving Kurama standing alone in the hallway.
The fox demon sighed lightly, rubbing the back of his neck absently as he leaned against the nearest wall. If Chichiro had been well enough to snap at Hiei rather than accept aid or request it of Kurama, then he figured he didn’t need to seek her out. He could sense her ki energy far off, likely in the woods already, and figured he’d just bug her about getting herself bandaged later.
Little did he know, Chichiro had already snatched bandages from her own room (Where she’d hidden a small stash) and had indeed headed for the forest, where she intended to bandage herself. She was not to be left alone, however, for Hiei’s interest had not yet faltered and he did not feel so charitable as Kurama and had the intent to harass her.
He waited to seek her out until he knew she had bandaged herself and would acknowledge him, and then he used his jagan to track her to her current location.
She was farther into the woods than he was used to. Though she had not returned to her second form, both of her wings had been released once again, sprouting somewhere between her shoulder blades. The wing that had appeared to be broken when she collapsed was drawn over her shoulder, folded along the upside-down V-shaped bend joint. She was scrutinizing the snap of the wing, rubbing her fingers across the smooth, leathery, bloody skin above the broken bone. She released it as he watched, standing, allowing the membranous wing to slide back over her shoulder and fall limp behind her back. Raising it slowly, she flexed it once and flinched noticeably, cursing under her breath as the wound tore open and began to bleed again. Sighing lightly, she sat on the ground once more, lifting the wing halfway and then wrapping her fingers around the frame of it and pulling it the rest of the way over her shoulder.
Lifting her shirt the slightest bit, revealing little more than half of her bandaged abdomen, Chichiro unraveled a foot or two of the wraps and then bit down onto it, tearing it off of the larger section of bandage still around her stomach wound. Dressing her wing quickly, with little care, she then allowed both of them to shrivel and fold into nothingness on her back, leaving no trace that they had ever existed beforehand save for the twin slits through the back of her shirt; had it been a normal top rather than a belly shirt, there likely would have been holes in it.
She stood then, turning and meeting eyes with Hiei where he stood on a branch about fifty feet off, watching him in surprising hostility-lacking silence for a long moment. “…Hey,” she finally muttered, looking down ahead of her again before she turned around and walked forward toward a tree. She pivoted and leaned against it, watching as Hiei approached her.
“How did you acquire that second form?” he asked bluntly, not even responding to her greeting before posing the question that had caused him to seek her out.
She gave a low sigh, crossing her arms and glancing toward the ground. “I’m part pretty much any kind of demon you can think of: Fox, fire, bat, wind, cat—you name it and I’m sure I can find an ancestor that was that breed.” Her eyes were only faintly cold when she glared at him and said, “If you can remember the energies of my slaughtered parents, you should know they were mix demons as well. It’s not too surprising that I have more than one form.”
“Even if you are a mix of demonic races, you should not have a second form.” Hiei knew he had made it fairly obvious that he himself was not born from two parents of the same breed, but as long as Chichiro didn’t intend to ask, he didn’t intend to care. Thinking to his own, multi-eyed form that Chichiro had seen only once, “Such a transformation suggests that you were implanted with the power of the jagan eye.”
But the fox demoness before him only smirked. “Only the truly desperate seek such a remedy for their weaknesses. And you didn’t see me covered with a half a bajillion eyeballs, did you?” Shrugging, the continued on, “Besides, I am a full fox demon even if I do have a lot of other breeds in my blood; just picked up a few tricks along the way. Can’t help that I have a bunch of other demon species in my lineage, can I?”
And then she turned from him, her long legs leading her away from the clearing. As he watched her go with only mild interest, Hiei noted that she had never denied outright that she’d had a jagan implant.
She stopped short as the thought crossed his mind, and then she turned to half-face him. “And about when I first woke up…” She turned to face him fully, now, and mimicked Kurama’s earlier action and rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. “Look,” she finally said, “I’m not the best at apologies when they matter, but sorry I freaked on you. It’s just, I’m not used to waking to find people I dislike holding me, know what I mean?” She was grinning when she said ‘people I dislike’, and Hiei guessed she hadn’t meant for him to take that part of it too seriously. Not that he would have cared even if she had. “And besides, with the whole thing that happened to you after our last battle…” She looked away. “I guess I didn’t want us pissed at each other like usual, y’know? It’s not worth it over somethin’ stupid.”
“Like the past?” Hiei replied, his expression genuinely amused, with only a hint of ridicule in it. Chichiro glared at him, but before she could respond, he continued on to reply to her mention of his injury thanks to Marcella. “Kurama said you were worried.”
Her glare never faltering, Chichiro replied in an irritated tone, “It wasn’t that. I wasn’t worried. It was just a guilt thing.”
Hiei smirked. “Sure it was.”
She seemed to debate on barking some insult at him or yelling to wipe the smirk off his face, but she only grumbled something to herself and turned, once again heading back in the direction of the arena.
--
[EDIT: If anyone's curious about the rest of this fanfiction, the final chapters are posted on fanfiction.net: www.fanfiction.net/s/1688756/1/Voices_of_the_Lost_Realm_Book_I_The_Tournament ]
[glow=red,2,3,00]Disclaimer:[/glow] Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Koenma, Genkai, and any other YuYu Hakusho characters used are not mine. Kagura isn’t either, though she’s from Inuyasha.
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Chapter 9—The Second Form
--
A low, irritable sigh spilled Hiei’s lips as he sprang tree-to-tree in the darkness of early morning. The sun had yet to peek over the forest and attempt persistently to blind him, though he figured it would be less than an hour before its reddish glow showed on the horizon. Crimson eyes scanning the terra before him as he thrust upward again strongly with his legs, he saw no movement to hint that he was near the one he sought. Annoyed, he figured that Chichiro had suppressed her energy to avoid tracking, and unfortunately chose to do so directly before her and Kurama’s battle was to commence.
Sailing downward toward a sturdy branch as he spotted a form below him, his feet made little sound as they planted themselves lightly down onto the tree.
Chichiro lay quite oddly in the center of a small clearing, the branches and leaves around her looking to have been swept aside quickly—likely just by a swish of hands—beforehand. Her eyes were shut, her body unmoving, and for a moment Hiei debated between mild elation at the thought that his annoyance was dead and anger that she had kicked it when he was still healing, forcing him to fight. But as her chest rose with breath, he realized she was quite alive, whether that was a good thing or not.
Springing silently off the branch and landing about seven yards away from the ends of her limp feet, he watched her a long moment, waiting for so much as a twitch. Nothing of the sort came for over a minute, nor did a sound, word or glance from her. He began to wonder if she was even conscious and if he should approach her or search for some sort of wound or attacker; of course, she could have just been deep in slumber, but he hoped she was not quite that useless.
“I’m not asleep,” Chichiro said finally, not opening her eyes. She sensed Hiei start when she spoke, but she continued in a calm, monotonous tone, “And whether I was or wasn’t, you don’t have the right to stare.”
“Ah, sorry,” he responded, and though his tone was genuine, she figured easily enough that it was nothing of the sort. “I failed to recall that only you are allowed that luxury.”
‘Luxury’? Chichiro’s mind wondered. She ignored it, though, and she mumbled softly, “It’s the corpse pose.”
“…Corpse pose,” he echoed flatly.
“It’s called yoga, smart *ss,” she continued on, finally sitting up. “What do you want?”
“Yoga is a human art, what would you want with it?” Hiei wondered aloud, but he didn’t allow her to reply and immediately continued, “The round is beginning soon. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
“Only if it was intentional,” Chichiro muttered back, closing her eyes as she stood; her gaze returned to the vertically-challenged fire demon before her as she said, “Why didn’t Kurama come for me?”
“Kurama isn’t quite as fast.” Hiei gave her an irritated once-over and grumbled, “But with all this pointless small talk, I’d say he could have already gotten you back to the arena by now.”
“Yeah?” The fox demoness disappeared from sight in a flash, and she briefly slowed as she passed Hiei, hissing beside his ear, “Well, then, we’d better get a move on,” and then she was gone.
Wordlessly and without showing any of his usual lack of patience, he turned and in a leap was rendered a small black blur to most eyes as he followed her.
--
Although Chichiro wore a flat expression and sarcastically mouthed, ‘Please state your names’ along with the loudspeaker as it boomed across the stadium, she did not appear annoyed as her actions suggested. She actually seemed uncharacteristically calm, and also uncharacteristically not pissed off after speaking to Hiei. This, however, was not meant to credit the Jaganshi for doing something ‘right’ by the demoness’s standards; no, she was simply still serene-seeming from the lucid effects of the yoga she’d performed. Indeed, Kurama noticed that even her aura had a certain meandering quality to it.
However, being that the familiar, formless voice had (as just mentioned) requested names from the contestants, Kurama raised his voice to name himself.
“Chichiro,” the demoness beside him followed.
The first of their opponents, a male demon that appeared to be some variation of wolf demon, called out, “Shu.” The navy-haired, gray-eyed fighter didn’t notice that his name had earned an amused twitch from Chichiro; his black wolf ears remained forward, eyes focused on the space between Chichiro and Kurama as though he had spied a third opponent there.
His companion, a she-demon also of the wolf kind that appeared to be related to him even though her brunette hair and green eyes did not match his own features, announced herself to be, “Myogie.” The pair could have also been mistaken for relatives to Chichiro if one could not tell the difference between wolf and fox appendages, for they shared Chichiro’s rare trait of having double tails each; theirs were also black-tipped, but they were gray rather than blue.
But this was not on the blue-eared fox demoness’s mind as she stared down her opponents, waiting for Shu’s discipline to falter and for him to meet her challenging gaze. Her only concern right then was discovering their weakness, battling her hardest and advancing to the next round. Her time on the sidelines had made her restless, and suddenly she ached for a good, long battle.
“BEGIN!”
Before the last syllable even had time to echo around the walls of the stadium, Chichiro’s form had short forward toward Myogie with speed that Kurama had not yet seen her display. After all, she had only used her speed in spars thus far into the tournament, and had only sparred Hiei. Kurama had not seen any of those ‘friendly’ fights that the two had held.
Kurama didn’t have any time to focus on her, though, for Shu also seemed to harbor both impressive speed and the strong desire to fight. With barely enough time to move, Kurama narrowly evaded the wolf demon’s fist as it slammed into the ring and shattered the tile of the floor; a small crater in the ground gave Kurama a hint as to the power of the one he faced, a power which he’d previously underestimated simply out of experience.
Although Chichiro had sorely desired to fight the male of their opponents rather than the female, Myogie’s form had been turned to Chichiro and had tensed to head for her in the beginning. Unless Kurama needed help with Shu, Chichiro would take what she had in stride and fight the she-demon instead. She also aimed to make the most of this battle, and rather than waiting as she normally did, she summoned her sword immediately as her body sailed for the female wolf demon.
Chichiro was impressed at her opponent’s speed when she unsheathed her own blade quickly enough to block Chichiro’s light and wind sword. It was more metallic, though, and not nearly as powerful as the energy weapon it needed to battle against. However, it was strong enough to withhold pressing against the other blade, least for a short time. Myogie didn’t seem willing to test out its strength, as she swiped her claws (Which unlike Chichiro’s had been lengthened the entire fight; the fox demoness figured that she couldn’t sheathe them or lengthen them, as they were only a few inches in length and didn’t grow at all when in use or shorten at all when being neglected for other fighting tactics.) at Chichiro’s stomach.
Leaping back, the raven-haired demoness easily avoided the attack, but she found herself smirking from the pleasure earned from a good fight as Myogie sprang at her immediately, sword poised and ready to try again to catch Chichiro at a disadvantage.
Kurama wasn’t enjoying himself nearly so much with Shu. Not only was he still sore and rather stiff from his back injury, he was also battling confusion; why had Shu and Myogie not decided to work together? This far into the tournament, he would have thought the fighting pairs would all be trying to tag-team as the past few pairs of opponents had. Then again, he realized as he chanced a glance sideways at his own fighting companion, he and Chichiro had not exactly devised a plan that involved working together. Nor had they tried to improvise, though as he noted the expression of pure sadistic delight on Chichiro’s face, he figured an attempt at that would be to no avail currently.
Shu didn’t appear to have any problem with fighting solo; however, his eyes left Kurama occasionally to check on Myogie, making the kitsune demon assume that they were like the earlier sibling pair and actually cared for one another. When Myogie was caught at a disadvantage, Shu’s fighting only slowed as he monitored it long enough to see whether she could get out of it and no longer. He never went to her aid.
Currently, the male wolf demon was using only his claws, as Myogie had in the beginning of the battle. Wolves are a feral sort, and enjoy using their bodies more than weapons. Even at a disadvantage, Myogie was only using her sword to block for the most part and offered few attacks with the blade. As to Shu, Kurama couldn’t even see a weapon on him and that likely meant he didn’t intend to use one at all.
A thunderous leap sent Shu flying at Kurama head-on, a bold if amateur move, and it snapped the fox out of his thoughts. Leaping backward, he reached behind him and into his red mane of hair, withdrawing the rose he so often used. Another evading leap later, he had had enough time to send demonic energy into the plant, causing it to lengthen and strengthen enough for him to snap it out at Shu.
As they fought, Kurama realized Shu’s reasoning for lack of concern for his teammate: though Chichiro was fighting her harshly, he must have had faith in Myogie’s ability because she was the stronger of their team. Shu was an impressive fighter, true, but he was no match for someone so skilled as Kurama, even if the fox was wounded.
Human sentiment made him consider allowing the wolf demon live, but he did not desire to appear soft before Kagura; even if he didn’t care what she thought of him, she had to think him worthy of battling her or she wouldn’t give them the chance to. Thus, he had to ignore his experience in the human world and follow his more Yoko-like instincts—he slew Shu quickly with a single snap of his whip, and the wolf demon never had the chance to give a counter attack.
Chichiro’s battle was not so unevenly matched. True enough that the fox demoness had caught Myogie at a disadvantage many times, but the wolf opponent was a force to be reckoned with to be sure. She obviously had experience with her claws and her blade, and now, she decided to take a chance to end this fight and lashed out her arm toward Chichiro’s throat. The fox demoness dodged, flipping backward, and as soon as she moved for her opponent she realized her mistake. The previous attack made by the wolf had been a fake-out so that Chichiro would counter-attack head on as she tended to; Myogie was reading into her moves and had put everything on the line on her assumption that Chichiro would attack a certain way. Unfortunately, that assumption was correct, and Chichiro was too far into her move to pull back without getting herself slain for certain.
She felt as though her sword was moving in slow motion as she dove for her opponent. The demon before her smirked and lifted her hand, knocking Chichiro’s sword aside with ease, having lowered herself into a position to make it nearly impossible not to deflect the attack. In an instant, the other demon’s blade rose and stabbed at Chichiro’s exposed abdomen. She cried out as she felt it pierce into her stomach, forcing her backward and making her body curl over onto the sword.
For a moment, Kurama’s emerald gaze paled with dread, same as his skin, and even the sadistic Hiei’s eyes widened as, for the briefest time, they thought their teammate dead.
But then, her eyes flared crimson, her hair billowing above her as the ebony roots of her locks bled out and became a bluish color, similar to Botan’s. The crimson glow of her eyes faded slightly enough for it to be visible that the hue of her irises had also changed to red. Her fox ears seemed to shrink into her head, and pointed, elf-like ears poked through her hair at the normal place of human ears. Large, blue wings punched from her back, bat-like in nature and membranous rather than feathered. Even her face shifted somewhat, adopting an almost animalistic undertone as the fangs within her jaw lengthened.
“So,” Hiei mused aloud, “then this is her full demon form she so often hides?”
Kurama chanced a glance toward his short, impish comrade. Full demon form? the fox wondered. He had sensed that she’d had a different form and had assumed it would be something fox-like, thus not recognizing this as her full-demon form; yet Hiei acted as though it had been quite obvious. That, and he had been waiting to see it.
The kitsune demon shifted his glance back to Chichiro just in time to see that the zigzag demon marks on her face had shifted; what appeared to be the black shape of a tear formed from the previous marks at the corner of her left eye, and a curved, triangular shape with the point facing away from her eye appeared beneath the same one.
And then, a grin slid along her face, replacing the pained expression, and the glow of her eyes ceased just as her opponent’s countenance changed to one of confusion. The fox demoness’s hand shot out, snagging the other demon’s throat, and as Myogie released the hilt of the sword to grab at Chichiro’s hands, the now blue-haired she-demon drew up her opposite elbow and cracked it into the wolf’s face. As soon as Myogie’s chin swept upward from the blow, Chichiro straightened her arm and dropped her middle and index finger as she did so, digging into the other’s eyes. Howling in pain, her opponent’s arms flew up to her own face, pawing at her bloody eyes, and Chichiro took the chance to rip the other’s blade from her stomach; as soon as she did so, it was as if a sort of plug had been released, and she knew she had one chance to take down her adversary before she lost consciousness. With a single swipe, she removed the demon’s head from her shoulders, and immediately her legs weakened.
Her hair darkened in a shot, demon marks returning to their former and her eyes—though rolling back and not visible—shifted back to their normal, piercing green. Her wings had been left unused throughout the battle, but she was unable to control whether they were released or not in the shift, and as she collapsed backward she made a small noise of pain as one of the fingers of the membranous wing landed at a strange angle, cracking it in the center. They withdrew into her back as though they had never been in the next second.
“That was almost impressive,” Hiei muttered with a smirk, deciding to go ahead of Kurama this time to get to Chichiro. Whether it was curiosity at her transformation or realization that with her second form, Chichiro may be of use to their team, Hiei had taken enough interest in her now to check on her welfare.
--
Her eyes were slow to register, but when they did, she was too surprised to react only for a split second as she realized the one propping her body up was Hiei rather than Kurama, although she could see both. Growling, she didn’t seem to notice that she was still bleeding, that Hiei had a hand pressed to her side to try to stop it, or that the arm she raised to shove him away from her was on the same side as the puncture wound. Only a wince revealed that she felt anything at all, but all she said was, “Get the f**k off me, jerk,” and pushed him back.
He didn’t seem bothered or surprised, and only raised his eyebrows briefly in response as she stood. “You know,” he commented, “you’re still bleeding.”
Ignoring him besides noting what he said, she put a hand to her wound (which, thankfully, was more to the side than the center and didn’t look life-threatening), drew it back to glare briefly at the blood, and then pressed her palm to it as she walked away from the ring and right past her two teammates.
Kurama looked after her, torn between following and asking Hiei a short series of questions that had entered his mind. He decided on the latter right then, and that he’d do the former when he was done. “You acted like you knew about her second form,” he murmured, looking to the fire demon near him.
Hiei stood, having kneeled beside Chichiro, and glared briefly at his bloodied hand before stuffing it in his pocket without further thought, heading for the side of the ring and leaping down. “What of it?”
Kurama followed him. “Well, how did you? And how did you recognize it so easily as her full-demon form?”
“Your senses are failing quite badly, aren’t they?” Hiei muttered in response, and Kurama knew well enough that he meant his ability to sense something about a person or demon rather than senses such as sight and hearing.
“I suppose so.” Kurama brought a hand to his face, covering his mouth briefly as he thought, and then he voiced, “When did you first realize it?”
“Realize what?” the shorter demon asked disinterestedly, already preoccupied in his own thoughts, which no doubt he regarded far more important than the topic at hand.
Kurama sighed. “Her second form.”
“When I fought alongside her in the ring last,” the fire demon replied, then glared at Kurama irritably. “If you have any more questions, go ask her.” And then he flickered from view, leaving Kurama standing alone in the hallway.
The fox demon sighed lightly, rubbing the back of his neck absently as he leaned against the nearest wall. If Chichiro had been well enough to snap at Hiei rather than accept aid or request it of Kurama, then he figured he didn’t need to seek her out. He could sense her ki energy far off, likely in the woods already, and figured he’d just bug her about getting herself bandaged later.
Little did he know, Chichiro had already snatched bandages from her own room (Where she’d hidden a small stash) and had indeed headed for the forest, where she intended to bandage herself. She was not to be left alone, however, for Hiei’s interest had not yet faltered and he did not feel so charitable as Kurama and had the intent to harass her.
He waited to seek her out until he knew she had bandaged herself and would acknowledge him, and then he used his jagan to track her to her current location.
She was farther into the woods than he was used to. Though she had not returned to her second form, both of her wings had been released once again, sprouting somewhere between her shoulder blades. The wing that had appeared to be broken when she collapsed was drawn over her shoulder, folded along the upside-down V-shaped bend joint. She was scrutinizing the snap of the wing, rubbing her fingers across the smooth, leathery, bloody skin above the broken bone. She released it as he watched, standing, allowing the membranous wing to slide back over her shoulder and fall limp behind her back. Raising it slowly, she flexed it once and flinched noticeably, cursing under her breath as the wound tore open and began to bleed again. Sighing lightly, she sat on the ground once more, lifting the wing halfway and then wrapping her fingers around the frame of it and pulling it the rest of the way over her shoulder.
Lifting her shirt the slightest bit, revealing little more than half of her bandaged abdomen, Chichiro unraveled a foot or two of the wraps and then bit down onto it, tearing it off of the larger section of bandage still around her stomach wound. Dressing her wing quickly, with little care, she then allowed both of them to shrivel and fold into nothingness on her back, leaving no trace that they had ever existed beforehand save for the twin slits through the back of her shirt; had it been a normal top rather than a belly shirt, there likely would have been holes in it.
She stood then, turning and meeting eyes with Hiei where he stood on a branch about fifty feet off, watching him in surprising hostility-lacking silence for a long moment. “…Hey,” she finally muttered, looking down ahead of her again before she turned around and walked forward toward a tree. She pivoted and leaned against it, watching as Hiei approached her.
“How did you acquire that second form?” he asked bluntly, not even responding to her greeting before posing the question that had caused him to seek her out.
She gave a low sigh, crossing her arms and glancing toward the ground. “I’m part pretty much any kind of demon you can think of: Fox, fire, bat, wind, cat—you name it and I’m sure I can find an ancestor that was that breed.” Her eyes were only faintly cold when she glared at him and said, “If you can remember the energies of my slaughtered parents, you should know they were mix demons as well. It’s not too surprising that I have more than one form.”
“Even if you are a mix of demonic races, you should not have a second form.” Hiei knew he had made it fairly obvious that he himself was not born from two parents of the same breed, but as long as Chichiro didn’t intend to ask, he didn’t intend to care. Thinking to his own, multi-eyed form that Chichiro had seen only once, “Such a transformation suggests that you were implanted with the power of the jagan eye.”
But the fox demoness before him only smirked. “Only the truly desperate seek such a remedy for their weaknesses. And you didn’t see me covered with a half a bajillion eyeballs, did you?” Shrugging, the continued on, “Besides, I am a full fox demon even if I do have a lot of other breeds in my blood; just picked up a few tricks along the way. Can’t help that I have a bunch of other demon species in my lineage, can I?”
And then she turned from him, her long legs leading her away from the clearing. As he watched her go with only mild interest, Hiei noted that she had never denied outright that she’d had a jagan implant.
She stopped short as the thought crossed his mind, and then she turned to half-face him. “And about when I first woke up…” She turned to face him fully, now, and mimicked Kurama’s earlier action and rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. “Look,” she finally said, “I’m not the best at apologies when they matter, but sorry I freaked on you. It’s just, I’m not used to waking to find people I dislike holding me, know what I mean?” She was grinning when she said ‘people I dislike’, and Hiei guessed she hadn’t meant for him to take that part of it too seriously. Not that he would have cared even if she had. “And besides, with the whole thing that happened to you after our last battle…” She looked away. “I guess I didn’t want us pissed at each other like usual, y’know? It’s not worth it over somethin’ stupid.”
“Like the past?” Hiei replied, his expression genuinely amused, with only a hint of ridicule in it. Chichiro glared at him, but before she could respond, he continued on to reply to her mention of his injury thanks to Marcella. “Kurama said you were worried.”
Her glare never faltering, Chichiro replied in an irritated tone, “It wasn’t that. I wasn’t worried. It was just a guilt thing.”
Hiei smirked. “Sure it was.”
She seemed to debate on barking some insult at him or yelling to wipe the smirk off his face, but she only grumbled something to herself and turned, once again heading back in the direction of the arena.
--
[EDIT: If anyone's curious about the rest of this fanfiction, the final chapters are posted on fanfiction.net: www.fanfiction.net/s/1688756/1/Voices_of_the_Lost_Realm_Book_I_The_Tournament ]