Hunting Season

Hunting Season


by
Koko-chan and The Blue Spanch


Lady Fukushu lounged on her silken divan and grumped. She was dissatisfied, whimsical, and more than a little bored. She was currently one of the most versatile, thoughtful, and powerful sorceresses in the Makai at the moment, and it was a fair indication of her skill that she'd been able to keep the other sorcerers from finding this out.
Her thoughts turned to the past, as they always did when she felt gloomy. Kurama. That name still haunted her thoughts like a thirty-year-old coffee stain. Her memory played back every detail of the silver Kitsune, from the yellow eyes sparkling with mystery and mischief, the slender, lithe body, to the down-soft mane of silver hair. A most beautiful thief, and thief he was! In the brief time that he had spent in her castle, he had managed to make off with half of her heart and most of her treasury. He had left quickly -so quickly!- that one moonless night, leaving her angry and disappointed. She had been only a beginner in the arcane Arts at that time, unable to stop him from escaping. Since then, she had devoted herself to her studies, and now she was strong; strong enough to control a Hunter. Lady Fukushu smiled smugly at that thought. She had three of the faceless monsters confined in the basement, penned behind strong wards and thirty feet of stone. She could feel their predatory rage even from here. A thought slid into her mind then, a very nice one. "I would like to have that fox back." She mused. "And my control over those Hunters is very strong; I bet I could control just one completely. How nice to have a challenge! I will send one out to find Kurama and to bring him back alive and in mostly one piece. That furry thief ran off with half of me. Why should he remain unscathed? Especially since he's fallen in love with a fire demon- a Forbidden Child at that!"
Lady Fukushu sat up and conjured a vision of her captive Hunters. Which one to send? Let's see...
"Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch a..." Fukushu paused, thinking. "...Kitsune by the toe. If he hollers, tie him up and drag him to the dungeons. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. My-mother-told-me-not-to-pick-this-one-but-I-picked-it-anyway-just-to-spite-the-old-bat-so-you-are-It!"
With a gesture, she teleported her choice up to her room, where it appeared with a clap of displaced air. It tried to attack her, of course. She swept it easily into the air and deposited it neatly on the far side of the room. Lady Fukushu then grasped its mind. Hunters really didn't have a brain. What they did have was a collection of limited emotions, instincts, a highly selective memory, and a constant and unrelenting hunger. Lady Fukushu sank her mental claws deep into the creature's driving thoughts as it screamed in defiance and fury. It wanted her dead. It wanted everything dead. She knew this, so she ignored the storms of pure hatred that battered at her and tightened her will around its limited mind. She prevailed of course, much to the Hunter's disgust. "Now then,"She said, leaning back and wiping the sweat from her brow. "You will go and find the youko Kurama. You will bring him back here alive. Not necessarily whole, but alive. Destroy any of his companions if you want, but bring that fox to me. Now go, and don't come back without him."
With an angry snarl, the Hunter left the room. Lady Fukushu reclined once more on the silken cushions and called up a viewscreen to watch her emissary with. Even if that monster didn't succeed in capturing that wily fox, its efforts were bound to be amusing.

It was a beautiful afternoon, and Kurama and his friends were enjoying every minute of it. For once, the homework had been light, and quickly done. The only thing that detracted from this idyllic scene as they strolled through the park was that Hiei was not here. Kurama sighed softly. Hiei was off at Mukuro's place, doing things that remained a mystery to him. Oh, well. There would be a full moon tonight, so it was a fair bet that a ruby-eyed shadow would ghost through his window at midnight...
"Penny for your thoughts." Botan said, nudging him in the ribs.
"What? Uh, um, never mind, nothing important." Kurama said, a little guiltily.
"Then why are you blushing, eh?" She giggled.
"None of your business." Kurama said shortly.
"Don't bug him, Botan." Kuwabara said. He had visited Yukina recently, so he was in a happy mood. "I figure he's planning a raid on someone's treasure or something."
"Or something, indeed." Kurama thought.
"So, Kurama," Yuusuke said, changing the subject. "What were you saying earlier about Norkie? I remember that you said he'd gone to Yomi's city with you and Hiei, and that he'd done something, but we were interrupted at that point."
Grateful for the shift in discussion, Kurama answered readily. "We're not really sure exactly what happened." He said. "Norkie had gotten all upset about a dead Squirrel-girl in a ditch on the way there, so he apparently decided to avenge her. He traded an opal for a Sprite's Sword that afternoon, and the next morning, Yomi had been neatly de-balled."
"Ow." Kuwabara said, wincing.
"How appropriate!" Botan said approvingly. "Yomi's been something of a problem to us for a long while."
"I guess death wasn't good enough for him." Kurama continued. "Norkie wanted to divest that pervert of both pride and power, and that was the best way of doing it. Hiei tells me that Yomi had to go to Mukuro for help."
They all laughed. The very thought of it!
"Took her an hour to stop laughing." Kurama said, between chuckles.
Yuusuke saw something out of the corner of his eye at that point that made him forget his merriment. He turned his head carefully to get a better look. "Um, Kurama?" He said, nervously. "Is Van in town?"
"No. Why?"
"Because nobody else pals around with one of those." He pointed at a large, dark figure that was bearing down on them at a dead run. A thin, hungry metallic-sounding laugh came to their ears.
"Oh, crap." Kuwabara muttered.
"Scatter!" Yuusuke barked.
Kuwabara, of course, did not. He manifested his Rei Sword as the others bolted for the trees, preparing to meet this new challenger. The Hunter laid him out flat in the grass with one negligent-seeming backhanded blow to the head. It had better things to do than to fight with upright apes; its mistress wanted the fox. It sensed only one fox out of all these others, so, that was the one it would hunt.
Kurama was determined to get away from that shadow-born horror. Hunter, Van's tame Golganoth, still haunted his nightmares occasionally. "Dammit!" He thought furiously. "Why didn't I think to ask Van how to kill one of those things?"
A triumphant, metallic shriek sounded behind him, and he redoubled his efforts to get away. He felt its hand scrape down his back anyway, and heard its snarl of frustration as he eluded its grasp.
It didn't take Yuusuke and Botan long to realize that the Hunter was ignoring them in favor of chasing Kurama. Botan flew ahead on her oar with the intention of scooping Kurama off the ground; Yuusuke settled for blasting the Hunter. "Rei Gun!"
The bolt blew a hole the size of a basketball in the Hunter's back, an injury that staggered it for a moment. It came to a halt, stooped over, and turned its head to glare at Yuusuke. To Yuusuke's absolute horror, there was no blood. Steely bones and grey-black muscle were all that there was to this monster. Then it healed itself up in the space of seconds, and it seemed that the wound had never been there. It turned then, growling, and began to advance on Yuusuke. Yuusuke had not counted on this happening. He turned and ran as fast as his legs would carry him, but it wasn't fast enough. A hand like cold-forged steel closed around his throat in a crushing grip and forced him to the ground. Metallic laughter filled his ears as the Hunter's other hand dug under his breastbone. Yuusuke tried desperately to push the hand away, but he may as well have tried to move a mountain. Blood spurted and he screamed in agony as its hand broke through his flesh, seeking his wildly beating heart, and then stopped. The Hunter's head snapped around, suddenly silent. It then dropped Yuusuke and took off in a cloud of torn-up grass. He staggered to his feet clutching his wounds, and looked up. High above, he saw an airborne oar with two passengers on it sailing off into the sunset with the Hunter hot on their heels. Yuusuke heaved a sigh. "Botan can take care of things from here." He muttered. "I gotta see Genkai about this. Where's Kuwabara?"
He found his friend still unconscious in the grass, with an ugly bruise forming on his temple. "C'mon, Kuwabara." Yuusuke said, nudging the recumbent man with one foot. "We have to tell Genkai about this."
Kuwabara stirred and uttered an anguished groan. He'd managed to acquire a splitting headache somehow. He forgot about it when he saw Yuusuke's wounds, though. "You're hurt bad!" He said clambering upright with the help of a handy tree.
"Yeah." Yuusuke replied weakly. "Van wasn't kidding about it going for the heart."
"Oh, gods! Are you- Did it-"
"Nah, something distracted it just in time. Now could we get to the temple before I bleed to death, please?"

Genkai got to try out a few new Spiritual Healing techniques while listening to their story. She almost wouldn't have believed it, except that they had both come back alive. Hunters couldn't be controlled that completely. Could they? "Any idea of why it let you go, Yuusuke?" She asked.
"I think it was after Kurama." He replied, wincing as she drew the bandage tight around his ribs. "After it dropped me, I saw Botan flying off with him, and the Hunter was making fast tracks after them."
"I don't like the sound of that. Tell you what, I'll call up the Piper and see if he can't find Van for us."
"Yeah." Kuwabara said. "That robot's the only guy around who knows anything about Hunters."
"Hold it." Yuusuke said, puzzled. "Koenma has all sorts of trouble even finding the Shattered Lands. You can just call up the Piper?"
"After your little adventure, he stopped off here and gave me his number."
"Oh."

Meanwhile, somewhere over west Tokyo, Botan was having a hard time breathing. "Kurama! I need those ribs!" She gasped.
Kurama's hair was standing on end, and his eyes were glued to the figure chasing them far below.
"Kurama! If I lose consciousness up here, we're gonna fall!"
"What?" He said. "Oh, sorry."
"(Gasp!)" Botan took a few deep breaths to reinflate her lungs. "I don't think we can shake it. Did Van ever tell you guys how to get rid of those things?"
"No. What's worse, his could go to different worlds." Kurama replied, not taking his eyes off of their pursuer.
"This one isn't his. Maybe it can't follow us through Interspace, and maybe Koenma-sama will know how to kill a Hunter."
"It's worth a shot." Kurama said. "Let's go."
They abruptly disappeared. The Hunter stopped in its tracks, glaring at an empty patch of sky. A policeman who had been informed over his radio of a uniformed madman smashing his way through the city decided to take a few shots at it, so long as it wasn't moving at the moment.
The Hunter had followed Botan and Kurama directly; it had kicked its way through a great many buildings. It was very angry at the moment. It didn't like it when its prey flew up in the air, and it didn't like having to bash its way through a warren of habitations full of prey that it didn't have time to hunt. Then its target had the unmitigated gall to exit this plane of existence and come out over there, just out of reach. It was figuring out a way to bridge the gap between here and there when some idiot started shooting at it. It was furious and hungry and it needed lunch. The shooting idiot would fit the bill nicely.

The main room of the Temple was a large one, but the Piper made it seem crowded. "What's up, Genkai?" He asked.
"Hunter problems. Can you find Vanguard for us?" Genkai asked.
"You betcha. Give me half an hour."
"Make it twenty minutes, Piper!" Yuusuke said. "That thing's going specifically after Kurama!"
"If that thing kills him, Hiei will smear us all over the landscape for letting it do that!" Kuwabara added.
"The little bully would go ballistic, wouldn't he?" Piper said. "Okay, I'm off!"
Yuusuke had grown rather numb to the "Bully and Weenie" antics, so he only winced a little as the Piper dove back into Interspace.

Botan and Kurama burst into Koenma's study, badly startling George, who still hadn't recovered from the last time someone had materialized right in front of him. "Botan!" Koenma snapped in that annoying squeaky voice of his. "What are you doing here? And you know that I've asked you not to come through the wall like that."
"I'm sorry, Koenma-sama," Botan gasped, still sitting on the oar. "But we've got a serious problem! Do you know how to kill a Hunter?"
"A Hunter?" Koenma said, baffled.
"Like what Van- you know, that big robot?- had with him. You remember, that thing that dangled George upside down by one ankle?"
A whimper from the other side of the room told them that George certainly remembered it, even if his master did not.
"Oh, that thing!" Koenma said. "The Golganoth. As far as I know, they can't be killed. But then again, I don't know all that much about them. Maybe there's a book about them in the Library."
A frantic search of the library turned up nothing but an old book of Makai folklore. They returned to Koenma's study to pore through the dusty pages in the better light. There were a number of horror stories about Hunters exterminating entire provinces before some of the more powerful gods were able to send them back to where they had come from, but not much else. Oddly enough, it was George who spotted the most important bit. He had flipped to the reference section of the book, and had found something hidden in the credits. "What's this?" He muttered. "'The Breath of the Dragon will drive the Faceless Monster Back, and the Mouth of the Fire-Giant will Consume It.' Dragons got bad breath?"
"No, George, I don't think so." Kurama said, taking the book from him and peering at the inscription. "If this is true, then Hunters don't like fire."
"It would have to be Dragon fire, but I don't know what it means by 'Fire-Giant'." Koenma said.
"I've heard the term before." Kurama said, thinking hard. "I can't remember where, though. It'll come to me at some point."
Just then, there was a crash of stone from outside, and the whole fortress shook.
"What was that?" Koenma asked in a flat voice.
Botan went over to the window and peered out. "It looks like something's broken a hole in the wall down there." She said.
Crashing noises and terrified screaming started to emanate from the lower levels of the palace. George, ill-advised as ever, put one ear to the door to try and hear just what was going on. "Sounds like a monster truck rally down there." He said.
The unpleasant screaming died off after a while, but the crashing continued. Eventually, that stopped, too. "Do you hear anything?" Botan asked nervously.
"Nothing at all." George replied. "Wait a minute."
A cold, anticipatory chuckle drifted through the wood like a bandsaw right by George's ear, freezing his blood solid with horror. A gray-and-black mottled fist smashed right through the door, nearly taking his face with it. George jerked back from the door, uttered a terrified shriek, and crashed through the window as the Hunter reduced the doors to toothpicks. The Hunter was angry again, and it was spattered liberally with someone else's blood. As it dove for them, Botan re-manifested her oar, and both Kurama and Koenma climbed on as they sped for the window, narrowly avoiding the Hunter's iron grasp. They shot out of the window like the Millennium Falcon with the Hunter in hot pursuit. The Hunter found out, to its immense displeasure, that it was incapable of flight. Down it went, tumbling straight into a moat well-stocked with things with many sharp teeth. Botan circled the palace a few times, allowing everybody a few minutes to get their heart rates back to normal. They found George during this time; he was clinging to the weathervane with a death grip and having hysterics. "Hey, George!" Koenma called to the panicking Oni. "When you're done freaking out, get someone to replace the doors, okay?"
"Yes, Koenma-sama!" George said, and then went back to panicking.
"What now, guys?" Botan asked. "The Hunter's climbing out of the moat!"
"We have to find Hiei!" Kurama said. "He's got a dragon."
"Any idea of where he is?" Koenma asked him.
"At Mukuro's place in the Makai. Plus, he may be able to tell us more about Fire-Giants." Kurama answered. "Now, let's go before that thing learns about hang-gliders or something!"

Hiei stood in the dim hall, sword ready. Mukuro was giving him another round of sword- fighting lessons, although this time, she wasn't fighting him herself. The creature that had that honor was a nine-foot nightmare with altogether too many arms, legs, tentacles, claws, heads, and weapons. It slavered revoltingly as it lurched forward, waving its limbs around menacingly. Hiei was about to cut its legs off when he saw something blue flicker right behind it. A rather confused moment later, the monster was lying flat on the floor with at least three splitting headaches. Botan, Kurama, and Koenma were sitting on its broad back, looking dazed. "That's the last time I fly commercial." Kurama muttered, shaking his head to get the ringing out of his ears.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Mukuro demanded, rising to her feet from her throne on the other side of the room. "How dare you barge into my palace like this?"
"Sorry, Mukuro, pressing business." Koenma said.
"Hello, Hiei." Kurama waved at the surprised fire demon. "We need to borrow your Dragon. Oh, by the way, do you know anything about Fire-Giants?"
"What?" Hiei and Mukuro said in unison.
"Just what is going on here?" Mukuro said suspiciously.
There was an unpleasantly familiar crash downstairs that shook the castle to its foundations, and a certain amount of screaming.
"That." Botan said.
"What is going on down there?" Mukuro said, glancing out a window at the large hole in her walls.
"Lady Mukuro!" An Oni guard burst into the room. "There's something awful crashing its way through the palace, and it's just kicked the living daylights out of Gatrark!"
"Gatrark?" Koenma asked Mukuro.
"Something I imported from the Glen of the Damned. It looks like I'll have to get another."
"Lady Mukuro," The frightened guard continued. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the intruder is a Hunter! But they only haunt the Shattered Lands, don't they? Please say yes."
Mukuro looked at Kurama for an answer. "Nope, it's a Hunter, all right." He said unhappily. "It's been chasing me all over the place."
The guard groaned. "We're doomed, doomed!" He moaned, falling to his knees. "It will kill us all!"
Mukuro was about to tell the Oni to stop being such an idiot, but the sight of the Hunter knocking down the near wall with its bare fists stopped her. The Guard shrieked and scrambled out of the room as though his pants were on fire. The Monster on whom Botan, Koenma, and Kurama were still sitting took one look at the Hunter, uttered a shrill howl and exited via the far wall, dumping the three on to the floor. The Hunter paused in the opening it had just made, trying to find the fox in all this confusion. There were still a few piranhas from Koenma's moat clinging determinedly onto it. It stepped out into the room, determined to capture this most annoyingly elusive prey.
Hiei stepped protectively in front of Kurama, but Kurama, who knew better than that, grabbed his cranky little buddy and climbed back onto Botan's oar with her and Koenma. "Get us out of here!" He shouted.
"Hey!" Mukuro said. "Wai-" Too late, Kurama and the others were gone.
Mukuro snapped her fingers in frustration and glared at the Hunter, which was growling and snarling to itself. "You." She said shortly. "Out."
The Hunter gave her a startled look, and then left in the same way that Botan and the others did.
Mukuro glared around at the wreckage of the room, cursing softly under her breath. She walked back to her throne and pulled a purple bell-pull. A somewhat harried-looking servant crept in after a few minutes, looking around fearfully at the destruction. "Yes, Lady Mukuro?" He quavered.
"Find me a good stonemason." Mukuro said. "Several walls seem to have collapsed."
"Yes, Lady Mukuro."
Van dropped out of a vortex in the ceiling, and landed with a clang in the middle of the floor, nearly flattening Norkie. "Sorry about that, little dude." Van said to the furiously sputtering furball. He then turned to Genkai, Yuusuke, and Kuwabara. "You called?"
"Not bad." Genkai muttered, looking at her stopwatch. "Nineteen minutes and forty-two seconds."
"What?" Van asked, puzzled.
"Yuusuke told Piper to get you here in twenty minutes." Kuwabara said. "We need your help, Van. Where's your Hunter?"
"Hunter? I took it back to Golganoth yesterday. It started getting all moody and homesick. Why?"
"Because it, or one of its cousins is chasing Kurama." Yuusuke said.
"I think that you'd better tell me the whole story." Van said, sitting down.
When Yuusuke had told him the whole misadventure, Van steepled his fingers and thought for a moment. "This is improbable." He said in a cold, analytical voice. "Point one: It was going after only one target.
"Point two: It was willing to pass up two kills- to wit, merely knocking Kuwabara senseless, and then dropping another kill already in progress- Yuusuke.
"Point three: Hunters generally dislike bright sunlight; yet this one acted contrary to its nature and blew right into the park not an hour ago."
"And the Conclusion?" Genkai asked.
"Unsettling." Van answered. "I'm going to have to see the scene of the attack."
"I don't think that that's a good idea." Kuwabara said. "People tend to get a little freaky around great big robots."
Van shrugged, and took an odd little gadget out of a compartment in his left arm. He flipped a small switch, and he was suddenly not there. "Humans generally don't freak out if they don't see anything out of the ordinary." His voice drifted eerily out of nowhere. "Invisibility is such a nifty thing, wouldn't you say?"
"Cool!"
The park was unchanged when they got there, although a gardener was grumbling sourly about the state of the lawns. Van presumably (they still had trouble knowing exactly where he was) stepped out into the midst of the torn-up places, and stood there, just listening. After a while, he came back. "Let's get out of sight." He murmured grimly. "We have to talk."
A copse of young pines served as a good screen, and Van became visible once more. "I wish it wasn't so," He began. "But that Hunter was being controlled."
"What?!" The others chorused.
"How can you tell?" Genkai asked.
"All living things have a certain personal mental signature; I believe you call it youki, or just ki. When people are doing stressful things, like running the marathon or fighting for their lives, that signature can hang around for hours, even days, after they've finished. That Hunter was in the worst mood that I have ever seen, and another's signature was overlaying its own. It was sent specifically to find Kurama, and to bring him somewhere alive. A Hunter has a hit-and-run mentality; they don't stockpile victims for later."
"I though that you were the only one who was able to boss those things around." Kuwabara said.
"Look, Kuwabara." Van said in a weary tone. "The only reason that I could order it around was that it let me do so. It wasn't my idea to have it tagging along all the time. It would take an enormous amount of power to actually control a Hunter- power that I don't have."
"But someone does." Genkai said. "Is there any way to break that kind of control?"
"No. Not without killing either the Hunter or its master."
"Which reminds me." Yuusuke said. "I've been meaning to ask you just how you can kill those things."
Van paused, thinking. "It's not easy, not easy at all." He told them. "Hunters don't have internal organs, blood, or brains. They don't feel pain, and they heal in a tearing hurry."
"I noticed." Yuusuke said dryly.
"I'm sure you did. The only things that they will go out of their way to avoid are ultraviolet lasers, which humans haven't figured out to build yet, large vats of caustic chemicals, and excessively hot fire; you know, Dragons and volcanos and things."
"Hiei's got a dragon." Yuusuke said thoughtfully.
"And that volcano in the Inner Makai should still be spitting." Genkai continued for him, picking up on his thoughts.
"Hey, Van, would you give us a lift?" Kuwabara asked with a grin. "I think that Kurama might like to know about this."
"Certainly." Van replied politely. "If I can get a fix on the signature of whoever is controlling the Hunter, I can find him/her/them and then we can persuade him to stop."
"Persuade." Genkai said, cracking her knuckles. "That's a good word for it. Let's get going!"
"Do you know where Kurama and Botan are?" Yuusuke asked, just making sure.
"I'm not as good at location as the Piper is, but I have a good idea of where they are, yes." Van replied. "Somewhere in the Reikai, I believe. Hang on."
"Kurama!" Hiei choked. "I need those ribs!"
"Sorry." Kurama loosened his death grip on Hiei and tried to spot the Hunter. Sure enough, there it was. It still had a few piranhas clinging to it. "Botan, where are we?"
"Back in the Reikai." She said. "The Mountains of Morning."
"Where's the Hunter?" Koenma asked. The Hunter had disappeared. "Oh, crap."
The faceless monster scared them all very badly when it emerged on top of a cliff just ahead of the flying oar and hurled itself off of the precipice in a mad effort to reach them. Botan pointed the oar straight up, causing the Hunter to miss them. It fell, shrieking wordless curses at them, toward a small river in a forested valley over a mile and a half below them. "This is starting to get old." Koenma said peevishly.
"Tell me about it." Kurama retorted in an identical tone of voice.
"Hey, Hiei, do you know what a Fire-Giant is?" Botan asked.
Hiei gave her a funny look, but answered her anyway. "It's an old term for a volcano."
Kurama snapped his fingers. "That's it!" He said triumphantly. "Hunters don't like serious amounts of fire!"
"What?" Hiei said.
"We found an old inscription in one of Koenma's books. It said that Dragon-fire and volcanos could kill a Hunter!"
"Izzat so?" Hiei grinned unpleasantly, and started unwrapping his arm.
"Hiei, no!" Botan cried. "If you release that Dragon up here, you'll blow us all to Pakistan!"
"How 'bout that mountain that the 'Quin raised up in the Inner Makai?" Hiei asked. "Is that thing still erupting?"
"Last I saw, yes." Koenma answered him. "I went to a beach near there just last week, and it was covered in ash drifts fifteen feet deep."
"Let's go!" Kurama said.

"Godsdamnit, Van!" Yuusuke shouted after they had come out into the Reikai. "Next time look where you're going!"
"Sorry." Van said, genuinely contrite. "I've never been to this part of the Reikai. I didn't even know that there was a forest here."
Van's calculations had brought them to the place where Kurama was. Unfortunately, he hadn't adjusted for altitude. Currently, they were all tangled up in the branches of a very old oak tree. Getting loose from the gnarly old tree was hard enough, but that was nothing compared with what happened to them a moment later. "Hey, guys?" Kuwabara asked as he tried to get a sprig of acorns out of his shin.
"What is it, Kuwabara?" Genkai asked a little distractedly. An outraged squirrel was giving her some trouble.
"What's that thing falling right above us?"
"I don't know. I-"
CRASH!!!
"Fzznarrrkgrrrowl!!"
"Ohmigod! It's the Hunter!"
"Whoa!" Shouted Yuusuke. "Chinese Fire Drill!"
The next few minutes were confused and very busy as everybody got untangled all at once and dove for the underbrush. The Hunter, still fizzing in fury, fell the rest of the way and disappeared in cloud of dead leaves.
"What was all that about?" Genkai demanded.
"Chip!" Said the squirrel.
"You stay out of this." She snapped at the arboreal rodent. "There they go!"
Sure enough, an overloaded airborne oar was barely visible through the dark green crown of the old oak tree, and they all managed to catch a glimpse of it before it vanished.
"Damn!" Sputtered Kuwabara, spitting leaves. "Just missed them!"
"Well, let's get going after them. Van, can you follow them, and get it right this time as well?" Yuusuke said, pulling broken twigs out of his hair.
No answer.
"Van?"
"Over here." Came a rather muffled reply.
Van had not landed well. He was resting upside down on his shoulders in the loam, with his back shoved up against a young maple and his arms spread at odd angles. Part of a dead branch was twisted around one ankle. Yuusuke, Kuwabara, and Genkai nearly burst a gut laughing. "Long legs are very good for making fast time on roads and open land." Van said in the dry, clinical voice he used when he was annoyed or embarrassed. "They do, however, have their drawbacks when it comes to lightly springing from limb to limb. When you are all quite finished, would you give me a shove, please? I seem to have landed at the exact wrong angle." He paused a moment. "That is, assuming that your lungs don't collapse from the strain of your merriment."
They laughed even harder, if that was possible.

Botan broke through the world-wall into a scene from hell. The air stank of sulphur and brimstone, and it seared the lungs with its heat. Crumbled chunks of black stone formed steep, fanged slopes and ridges like a wolf's jaw, and thick, red-black lava surged sluggishly out of a vast oval caldera to swamp the land around it. Enormous sticky bubbles rose and burst on the surface, smoking and giving vent to gaseous belches. The sky was clouded in a perpetual pall of ashy clouds, which rained hot snow over everything. All the same, the place smelled rather better than it had before the mountain had been awakened under Yashi's Palace. In fact, an oddly familiar scent came to them on the boiling breeze. Kurama sniffed at it. "Spearmint?" He exclaimed.
Strangely enough, Kurama's mutated mint had survived on these bleak slopes; indeed, a whole forest of it flourished even up near the rim of the caldera. Wordlessly, they moved into the greenery. It was much easier to breathe among the tall stalks.
"What now?" Botan said, putting her oar away. "We won't be able to run again. I'm pooped out."
"We wait for the Hunter to get here." Hiei said shortly. "Then I'm going to blast it straight into next week."
Hiei was feeling hot and happy. He could feel the incredible surge and flow of the volcano beneath him, and where else but on a flaming mountain would a Fire Demon feel at home? Even if it did smell a bit like charred sneakers. Hiei sneered inwardly at the previous occupant of this fire-height, an idiot demon lord who had groped clumsily for the geologic power that he had not a chance of ever controlling. Hiei was a fire demon, distant kin to the ancient spirit that lurked sullenly within the volcano. Power flowed in a steady trickle from his great-great-many-times-great grandfather into him, and he could feel the tattoo that wound around his left forearm writhe in anticipation. An awareness that predated recorded history focussed gently in on Hiei, sending forth a greeting. Hiei was only faintly aware that he was smoking gently.
"Is he all right?" Botan asked Kurama. "There's smoke coming out of his ears."
"He's a Fire-Demon, Botan." Koenma replied. "For all I know, he might decide to live here."
Kurama, however, was a little worried. He and Hiei had grown very close since they had first met. He was starting to sense an overwhelming ki around this place. He hadn't been able to detect it before, for much the same reason that he couldn't see all of Japan from his back yard. It was everywhere. The only reason he could find it at all was that it was feeding strength into Hiei at an alarming rate. He walked over to his silent friend. "Hiei, are you all fight?" He asked.
"Stupid fox. I'm fine." Hiei said.
"You're starting to glow like that caldera down there."
"My grandfather wants to help us."
"What?" Kurama said. Hiei didn't talk about his family much.
Hiei wouldn't say any more, and he didn't have to, for the Hunter burst out of a drifting cloud of ash, bent on messy destruction.
Hiei had been waiting for this. "KOKURYUUHA!!!"
He hadn't bothered to remove the wrappings on his arm. They flashed into nothing as the night-black leviathan surged off of Hiei's arm with a bellow that caused stars to drop like flies in all three worlds. Hunters were brainless, but they weren't completely stupid. It came to a dead halt as the Dragon boiled the air around itself as it rose into the heavens, staring in awe. Then the Dragon went berserk. Kurama, Koenma, and Botan hit the dirt as the night suddenly became very full of flaming, Hydra-like destruction. Rocks the size of condominiums were shattered to gravel, the clouds above were scattered and torn, the ashy waste for miles around hissed and sizzled as the vibrations of the pyroclasm shook it. The Dragon's enraged bellows were heard as far away as Koenma's palace, where George decided that it might be better to hide in the basement instead.
When it was over, Hiei sank to his knees, trembling with weariness from his exertions. The others sat up in the shocking silence, only to see something terrible. The hunter still stood. It had been blasted down to the bones, which gleamed coldly in the firelight, and it swayed unsteadily on its feet. But still it stood.
Kurama growled. He had had more than he could stand from this midnight marauder. Grasping a long, sharp stalk of mutant spearmint and shouting defiantly, he charged, intent on skewering his adversary like the world's most unappetizing shish-kebab. The Hunter didn't even sense him coming. The spear struck it solidly in the gut with an impact that splintered the shaft and sent the Hunter staggering over the edge of the caldera. It screamed once as it flashed into flame, leaving nothing but slagged silvery bone that sank into the thick red lava, never to rise again.
Kurama sighed, suddenly very tired. He dropped what was left of his spear, collected Hiei, and walked back toward the mint forest. Botan was still trying to get the ringing noises out of her ears, but Koenma was enthusiastically congratulatory. He was holding up an Olympic scorecard with a "10" on it and cheering. Kurama was not in the mood for cheerleaders. He gave Koenma a glare that dropped him on his butt and killed a five-yard swath of mint at the same time. He wandered up to a sheltered ridge above the volcano's mouth and sat down, leaning against an aromatic stalk with Hiei curled up in his lap.
"Feh. Hunters." He muttered, and decided to follow Hiei's example and take a nap.

Perhaps a half an hour later, Van and the others arrived. Aside from the single red ocular that protruded from the front of his head, Van didn't have much of a face. He made up for his lack of facial expression in body language. It was easy to see that he was quite put out by something. Genkai, Yuusuke, and Kuwabara kept having giggling fits, though. "Hi, there!" He called to the people among the mint. "These guys called me in to -will you lot stop snickering?!- help you out with your Hunter problems."
He then took in the scene of more-than-natural devastation. "What in the name of the Seventeen Spam-Flavored Hells happened here?"
"You're late." Koenma said.
"Kurama and Hiei already took care of it." Botan told them, pointing to the ridge.
"Oh, borkle." Van muttered.

Lady Fukushu watched her viewscreen with a certain amount of crankiness. Her Hunter had blown it. Kurama's pet firebaby had queered the whole bust, and the fox himself had shoved her emissary into the pit. Oh, well, what the hell. It had at least been far more fun to watch than daytime television. She knew, of course, that the addition of Van and Koenma would be a little dangerous. Kurama and Hiei would insist on tracking her down and doing something permanent to her, and Van could lead them right back here with little or no difficulty. Now how was she going to be able to duck that? Powerful as she was, Lady Fukushu did not really enjoy open combat, and the Spirit Detectives had gained themselves an admirable reputation for bringing down whatever challenged them. Van was known to be relentless and totally implacable when someone threatened him. And Koenma? Koenma was a whining incompetent, but his Dad was not to be messed with. How was she going to dodge this? Ah! She thought happily. I know!

It took some doing, but they were able to bring Kurama and Hiei back to the land of the upright and conscious. Van sat on the ridge with the rest of them, talking and warming their tootsies over the fires beneath. Hiei had elected, of course, to inhabit the mint behind them. He was currently halfway up a large stalk, chewing reflectively on one leaf as he listened to the discussion below him.
"Should have figured that you kids would figure it out on your own." Van was saying, flicking pebbles into the mouth of the volcano. "You don't stay immortal by being a slow learner."
"What are you talking about?" Koenma inquired. "Immortal is for keeps."
"Tell that to Yakumo." Van replied matter-of-factly. "Immortal is just another word for 'not dead yet'. Try to remember that when your Dad starts sending you out to personally oversee some heavy law enforcement."
"Eep." Koenma squeaked.
"Back to the important talk." Genkai said firmly. "We need to find out who's been sending Hunters, and why that person has a grudge against you. Kurama, have you offended any really powerful sorcerers in the past?" Kurama gave her an unhappy look, and then started counting on his fingers. Five minutes later, he was still at it. Van handed him a notebook and pencil when he started spraining his fingers.
"You've been busy." Yuusuke remarked dryly as Kurama started to run out of pages. "Can we narrow that list any?"
The narrowing was extensive. Van amused himself by teaching Botan and Hiei how to make paper airplanes out of the discarded pages. It was only natural that Kuwabara wound up getting one stuck in his ear. Hiei had very good aim, and even managed to look innocent when Kuwabara looked around for whoever had thrown the airplane at him. Kurama's eyes softened when he looked at Hiei, who was still munching on a strip of spearmint as Kuwabara glared suspiciously at him. Hiei was so cute when he played the innocent. Unconvincing, but cute.
Even with the paring down, the list was still extensive. "We aren't getting anywhere with this." Koenma moaned. "There has to be a better way!"
Kuwabara, still rubbing his smarting ear, realized that they had been forgetting something important. "Hey Van, can you track the signature now?"
"Not the controlling mind." Van said calmly as the others looked on in bafflement and chagrin. "But I can certainly track the Hunter."
"What is this?" Hiei asked.
"Oh, that's right!" Yuusuke said, slapping himself on the forehead for his forgetfulness. "Van can sense ki and trace it like a bloodhound."
"Can he still track it, though?" Genkai asked. "The Hunter is dead, after all."
"I can." Van replied. "That Hunter was part of a pack, and the rest of its pack is somewhere in this world."
"How can you tell?"
"Hunters breed parthenogenetically, rather like flatworms. One Hunter is very like another, and the bonds between pack members verge on the telepathic. It's a bit like tracking a ninja through a strobelight testing area, but I can follow it."
"And the others are in this world somewhere." Botan said. "They'd have to be tightly confined, or they would have scared the pants off of the entire Makai by now."
"And they probably would have killed half of it, too." Van added. "Do any of you have a map? I could probably pinpoint their location for you."
"Why didn't you tell us about this before?!" Koenma demanded imperiously.
"I was waiting to see if these three would remember what I told them." Van flicked his fingers at Yuusuke, Genkai, and Kuwabara. "Plus, you didn't ask. Besides, after the oak tree incident, I felt that they owed me a moment of humility."
"Oak tree incident?" Kurama asked in horrified fascination.
"I'll tell you later." Yuusuke said.
Not surprisingly, it was Hiei who produced a map, and a very familiar map at that.
"Hiei," Genkai said warily. "Just how did you get hold of the Harlequin's map?"
The thieving Fire Demon only smiled mysteriously.
"Never mind, I don't want to know."
The map had changed dramatically since the first time that they had seen it. Yashi's palace and the big red "BULLSHIT" that had been stamped over it were gone; a great smoking volcano had popped up like a geological pimple and had drowned most of the Inner Makai under thick layers of ash and lava. It was an improvement, really. "Hey, wow!" Koenma exclaimed. "I can see us down there! What an accurate map this is!"
"The most accurate one there is." Kuwabara agreed. "Well, Van? Where are they?"
Vanguard took the map and peered intently at it. "Here." He said, jabbing one finger at a smallish drawing of a palace.
Kurama scowled at the spot. "Are you sure?" He asked. "That's Lady Fukushu's place. Last time I saw her, she was barely a witch, much less a sorceress."
"I'm quite sure. The Hunter you killed was the pack's leader, and they're complaining loudly about their loss. By the way, Kurama, just how long ago did you meet her? Also, just what did you do to make her this mad at you?"
Kurama actually had the grace to blush. "She was an old girlfriend- sort of. Fuknshu was a wonderfully thorny little dryad, and a rich one. I left her in the end, and I took nearly all of her treasure with me. She sent her soldiers after me, of course, but I got away with it. I always did."
"Busy little man, weren't you?" Yuusuke said. "These demon-girls sure carry a grudge."
"I've noticed." Kurama said glumly.
"It's quite obvious that she's been studying up for the payback." Van said, rolling up the map and handing it back to Hiei. "I'm going to have to pay her a visit and get those Hunters of hers back to where they belong. They're far too dangerous to leave lying around."
"We're going to accompany you there." Hiei said firmly. "Perhaps we can persuade her not to get any more of them."
"Yuusuke and I'll come too, just to make sure that you don't make any mistakes." Kuwabara said, pompous as ever.
Yuusuke gave his friend a ferocious scowl. Healed or no, his breastbone still hurt, but his honor compelled him to go along with Kuwabara. "Might as well." He sighed. "By the way, Van, next time you see Issola, ask her to put a permanent seal on Golganoth, okay? Chasing around after nigh-invulnerable monsters gets to be tedious after a while."
"I'll second that." Botan said.
I'll make a special point of it." Van promised.

The trip to Lady Fukushu's castle wasn't easy. Only a few people at a time could fit on the oar, even when Koenma consented to flying. Picking your way across semi-active lava fields is a tricky business. Van was able to help simply by picking up any stragglers and trotting on. Hiei, of course, wasn't bothered by the heat. Once out of the Inner Makai, things went a lot smoother. Lady Fukushu had situated her domain in a thick jungle near the eastern border. It appeared as a dark green smudge on the horizon with a huge moss-covered keep looming out of it like a hunchbacked giant. "Can you believe that the jungle over there used to be an herb garden?" Kurama said.
"Yes." Yuusuke replied shortly. He had nearly burned his foot off a few minutes ago and wasn't very happy about it. "I don't suppose there's any wild animals in there."
"Oh, lots, probably." Kurama replied. "Fukushu liked to keep pets."
"Great."
The jungle wasn't all that impenetrable; in fact, there were several well-worn paths. They all tended to come to abrupt ends, though, usually at pools, caves, and suspiciously pleasant-looking meadows and clearings. One such flower-speckled meadow seemed to lead directly to the castle, and Kuwabara was thoroughly sick of tripping over vines. Kurama managed to haul him back just in time. "What was that for?!" He said hotly.
Wordlessly, Kurama picked up a dead branch and swirled it around in the "grass". The greenery was actually some sort of floating aquatic plant. "You'd just get wet if you tried to cross that." He said.
More than wet, as it turned out. The floating grass exploded as the lake's inhabitant came up to defend its territory. It wasn't much bigger than a man, but it was eight times uglier than all the freak tents in the world. It looked like an awful cross between a shark, a squid, and a bicycle. It let out a bellow like an out-of-tune bagpipe and chased them screaming back into the jungle and up a tree. Fortunately, it wasn't any good at climbing. "Whattahellwhazzat?!" Yuusuke half-shouted after it left.
"I don't know." Genkai said, batting at something vaguely squirreloid. "I don't think I want to know."
"Knrkt!" Said the squirrel-thing.
"You stay out of this." She snapped.
Once out of the tree, they continued on their way. For the next few hours it was fairly uneventful, if you don't count the time where they had to get both Botan and Koenma out of the clutches of a very large sundew plant. Everyone was covered with sticky, sweet-smelling goo that attracted a number of very unusual insects. Botan did not like the demon-flies. A waterfall and some soapleaf bushes came in very handy.
Lady Fukushu's pets were everywhere, and they kept getting weirder. The Elephant-turtle wasn't too bad, but the armadillo-scorpions and the black widow shark caused them a fair amount of trouble. They paused for a breather in a grove of squat, thick-boled trees that were riddled with holes big enough to hide a grapefruit in. "This is stupid." Kuwabara said, dropping down onto a fallen log after checking it for signs of life. "We're getting nowhere. Are you sure this was a good idea, Kurama?"
It had been Kurama's idea to go through the jungle. "No, but there's a secret entrance into the palace cellars somewhere around here. How do you think I was able to get clean away the last time I was here?" He said.
"Queep." Someone said.
"I never did!" Kurama retorted. "I- er. Oh, dear."
The grove was suddenly alive with hundreds of softball-sized furballs. Each and every hole in the trees had at least two sets of beady black eyes peering out of them. The air was filled with queeping as the trees overflowed with Norkies. There were thousands of them. Ginger ones, black ones, white ones, grey ones, and the whole range of browns, spots, and stripes. They surrounded our nervous heroes completely. One of them stepped forward out of the mass, looked Yuusuke and the others over, and then turned to the furry horde. "Fizz! Yah! Woop!"
The mass rose as one and tackled Hiei. Once they got him down, they started combing his hair and purring. Hiei, predictably, was having a screaming hissy-fit. He did not like being coddled by small strange furry things! "Gerroffa, you little rats!"
The others watched this with a great deal of amusement. Kuwabara had to go off and fall over laughing. "Do you think we ought to help him?" Van asked.
"Nah." Genkai said, chuckling. "He's doing fine on his own."
If looks could kill, Hiei's glare would have fossilized them.
A loud crashing in the bushes distracted them. A tall woman with purplish hair and a long braid crashed through the underbrush, nearly flattening Kuwabara. "'Scuse me!" She shouted as she disappeared into the jungle.
The reason why she was in such a hurry was soon evident as four or five angry-looking glowing guys with huge manes of spiky golden hair flew after her. "Fizz! Woop! Queeeeep!!" The spokesNorkie shouted.
The Norkies acted as one again, and they, too, turned gleaming golden and spiky and flew off in pursuit of the group of strangers.
"What the hell was that?!" Koenma said.
"A cameo, I think." Van replied. "C'mon. I'm getting some readings of a tunnel from over that way."
"Cameo?"
"Just come on."

The tunnel was cleverly concealed behind a thick canebrake of nettles, and getting them cleared was painful. Each stiff, springy branch was home to at least a hundred inch-long needle-tipped thorns that came loose at the worst times and embedded themselves painfully in their limbs. Even Van wasn't immune to them; twice he had to pick them out of his finger and wrist joints, and once he fell over trying to kick a particularly ferocious specimen out of his ankle workings. Hiei, already peevish from the attack of the Norkies, nearly blew the whole thing up with the Dragon, but Kurama stopped him just in time. "Save it. We may need the Dragon later."
The secret entrance itself was hardly more than a badger warren- narrow, dark, and low. With the exception of Koenma, the others had to stoop to get in. Then there was Van. Van was nearly eight feet tall, and broad across the shoulders. He took one look and sighed unhappily. "Is this the tunnel that you were talking about, Kurama?"
"Yes, this is the one." Kurama replied.
Van groaned softly. "Does it widen out any along the way?"
"Not noticeably, no."
"No help for it, I guess. Here goes."
Van bent over, cocking his knees and placing his hands on the ground. Then, with an oddly natural gait, he entered the tunnel. "I absolutely hate this." His voice echoed back to them.
"You're claustrophobic?" Botan asked.
"Yup. I'm a plains-runner, not a burrower. Now come on before I panic and collapse this whole system!"
"Coming."
The Tunnel was dark, dank, and smelled like fungus and dead worms. Van remained silent throughout their trip, but that ended when they reached the end of the tunnel. It was blocked. Van started cursing fluently in fourteen languages at once. Still cussing up a blue streak, he turned around. Not an easy thing to do in that narrow a space, but he managed. "What now?" Yuusuke asked.
"This." Van replied, braced his arms, and lashed out with both feet.
The barrier crumbled like the proverbial cookie; several pieces wound up embedded in the far wall, in fact, and one chunk of stone had been propelled into the thick skull of something that had probably acted as a watchdog.
"I suppose that I should make some godawful joke about killing two birds with one stone, but I think I'll pass on this one." Genkai said as she came out of the tunnel.
"Good idea." Hiei growled.
"It's not a bird anyway." Koenma added, peering at the overly-fanged corpse.
Kurama had already found the door as the others made pithy comments about the watchdog. With a skill born of long practice, he picked the lock and opened it just a crack. Nothing other than a root cellar presented itself, so he alerted his teammates and they all passed through without incident.
Lady Fukushu's basement had obviously been built to confuse the enemy. Kurama, however, knew his way around quite well; he hadn't been entirely an enemy the last time he was here. Kuwabara did pause once to make a discovery. He saw a door that was a bit different from the other grim portals that appeared in the walls every so often; it was made out of solid granite bound with what could only be termed "adamant". A small window constructed of some kind of crystal that had to be at least four inches thick was set into the door. True to his nature, he had a peek inside. "Yukk!!" He said, jerking back.
"What's wrong?" Yuusuke asked.
"See for yourself." Kuwabara replied in a sick voice. "You weren't kidding when you said they were like flatworms, Van."
Yuusuke's reaction was much the same as Kuwabara's. "That's gross!"
Van took a look through the window, and then straightened up with a slight creak. "Ah, yes. They don't like it when their pack is incomplete."
The others, of course, wanted to see, too. There were Hunters in there. One was just standing by, watching, as the other one was squatting on the floor doing something profoundly biological. A new Hunter was growing out of the old one's back, and various arms and legs stuck out at grotesque angles. It wasn't fully developed yet, rather resembling a horribly deformed amphibian of some sort. Then, sensing their presence, all two and two-thirds of the Hunters turned to face the doorway. The standing one moved forward to put itself between the door and the other one, settling in an aggressively protective stance. The other one tried to stand up, but it had too many legs for that at the moment. The infant monster started to struggle, wanting to be free of its parent so that it could join the protective one.
"Come on, let's get moving." Van said. "It's not a good idea to aggravate them right now. Fukushu's done a good job of confining these two -um- three, but Hunters get very, very dangerous when their pack members are breeding. A really pissed-off Hunter could probably get loose even from that cell."
There were no objections to that. It was with great relief that they found a stairwell out of the basement, and they all went up it three steps at a time. The floor above wasn't much of an improvement. The halls were uniformly white with a rather tasteful ivy motif, and they twisted and turned and intersected in labyrinthine patterns designed to severely croggle the brain. Kurama stopped after a while, staring in hopeless bemusement at a faithful representation of one of M.C. Escher's most confusing stairways. It led everywhere and nowhere at once, and to get anywhere, they would have to defy several laws of physics and the law of gravity, too.
"She's rebuilt this whole place since last time." Kurama said. "It used to be merely confusing. Now, just looking at that makes my head hurt!"
"Join the club." Yuusuke murmured. "Let's go back down the hall a ways. I don't want to have to navigate that thing."
"Yes, let's." Van agreed, turning around. "I'm going to have to mention that construct to my Motherboard when I get back home. I do believe that parts of it are actually impossible."
Genkai was about to say that this whole trip had been impossible, but something weird happened. They had just reached an intersection of three hallways when the lavender-haired young woman that they had seen earlier in the jungle ran right out in front of them from another hallway, causing the group to pull up short. She stopped to catch her breath, looking apprehensively back the way she had come. Then, with an evil cackle, she brought out a notepad and a pen, scribbled something down on it, and then ran off. A thick wall of clear glass that stretched from wall to wall behind her came abruptly into existence with a popping noise. Shortly afterwards, the golden-glowing grumpy guys and the whole cloud of flying Norkies streaked down the hall in hot pursuit and smacked soundly into the glass wall. They peeled off of the wall like a thrown pancake and landed with a variety of thumps on the floor. One of the men hauled himself into a sitting position, shook his head to make the birdies go away, and then shouted with rage. "UTOPIAN!!"
Then they picked themselves up off the floor, smashed through the glass wall, and tore off on the girl's trail with the Norkies queeping enthusiastically.
"Another cameo?" Genkai said, rather weakly.
"Yup." Van replied.

Not long after that, as they traveled down the hallway, they ran into two more strangers. They were a pair of dark-haired girls, one dressed in blue with glasses, a battered baseball hat, and a braid that reached clear down to mid-thigh, and the other in black and purple, with short hair and a T-shirt that read "Don't annoy the crazy person". They were walking slowly toward our heroes, their attentions riveted on a crudely drawn map, over which they were arguing. They stopped when they noticed that several people were blocking their path. "Excuse me," The long-haired one said politely. "Do you know where the bathrooms are? This is one crummy map."
"Also, have you seen a purplish-haired girl anywhere?" The other one asked. "She would have been being chased by a bunch of guys who glow yellow."
"They went thataway." Koenma said. Down to the intersection, the hall with the broken glass all over it."
The short-haired girl suddenly brandished the nastiest-looking metal Louisville Slugger that they had ever seen, shouted: "We're coming, U.T.!!", and headed off down the hall at a dead run.
"Koko-chan!" Long-hair called after her. "Oh, damn." She then pulled a huge, bazooka-like weapon with the words "Fruit Launcher" stencilled on it out of thin air. "What're you guys staring at?"
"Oh, nothing!" Botan quavered uncertainly. "Do you know where Fukushu is?"
"Sure. Just go back that way until you get to an Escher-like mutation of a staircase. Join hands, close your eyes, and start climbing. Whatever you do, don't open them or let go of each other until you've reached level ground again! I really mean it."
"Spanch!" Came a distant shout. "Get your rear in gear or I'll punt your bottom to Pakistan!"
"And leave my top here so that my hands can type." Spanch shouted back. "Yeah, I know. Coming!"
With a hoot and a holler, she was off. "Yad ho!"
"Cameo number three." Kuwabara said.
"Shut up." Everyone chorused.

Oddly enough, Spanch's instructions worked. Climbing the Escher staircase was no problem. The feeling of climbing up, down, upside down, sideways, and inside out was a bit of a strain, though. Kuwabara's slightly delicate stomach rebelled with a vengeance when they got to the next floor, and it was some time before he could stand up. "Oh, Gods, that thing's worse than the Python!" He managed to gasp out between heaves.
The others were feeling a bit green as well. "You said it." Botan moaned.
"(Fizz!)" Yuusuke said, from ground level.
Even Van's knees seemed to be a little wobbly. "I was right." He remarked to nobody in particular. "Parts of it were impossible. My central processor hurts."
Koenma and Kurama didn't bother to comment, for fear that their lunches would speak for them. Hiei was the only one who wasn't affected by the stairwell. "Hn." He snorted. "Wimps."
"It didn't bother you?" Genkai said.
"Nope. Remember that night at the Carnival when we had to catch the Harlequin? If I could handle a ride on the Python while high on caffeine and sugar, I can handle something like this."
Kuwabara looked disgusted. "Remind me to kick you at some point." He grouched.
Hiei smiled that small, smug smile of his and went to scout down the hall.
By the time that the others had managed to get back upright, Hiei had found out the location of their enemy. "She's in the throne room at the end of the hall, feeding one of her pets. It's ugly."
"So what?" Kuwabara snapped. "I've had a rotten day so far, and I feel like doing war on something. Especially if it's ugly." With that, he stomped down the passage.
This hall, mercifully, did not branch out everywhere. It led in only one direction, and that was straight to the throne room. On the way there, Yuusuke noticed that one door was slightly open; he'd check up on it later.
The doors to the throne room themselves were rather elegant. Arched, of course, and only twice as large as they really had to be. The ever-present ivy motif was embossed in gold and jewels on it, and the hinges were well oiled. Kurama pushed them open with ease.
The throne room was huge, and potted plants were everywhere. It was as if a chunk of the jungle outside had been lifted wholesale and plopped down onto the third floor and then had walls built up around it. The ceiling, naturally, was one really big skylight. Fukushu herself reclined on a divan that had been formed out of the living trunk of a gnarled old tree that sat by itself in a mossy little grotto. The Lady Fukushu was a tall woman, and heart-stoppingly beautiful. Her flawless skin was a study in leaf-dappled shadow, and her hair held all the colors of autumn in it. Her gown was simple, but left nothing to the imagination, and every movement held the grace of reeds bending in the wind. Her eyes, however, were that strange ice-emerald color that one sees on the hearts of glaciers at dawn, and just as chill. Out of a golden bowl, she fed chunks of dripping raw meat to a creature that crouched by her throne.
Hiei was right. It was ugly. It had the body of a giant bat, but its two heads were those of a pit viper's, and they hissed like ruptured inner tubes when they caught sight of the intruders. Lady Fukushu looked up from her noisy pet and gave them a smile like a dose of nightshade. "So." She said coldly. "You survived the trip. It took you long enough to get here, lover boy. I was beginning to think you had lost your edge."
"What do you mean by that?" Kurama asked.
"You are getting rusty, sweetie-fox." Fukushu said, rising to her feet. "All that nonsense with that Hunter was to get you here, of course. I prefer to deliver my recriminations in person. You've made me very, very angry, sugar-tail. I intend to make you extremely sorry- briefly."
There was something unpleasantly final about the way she said "briefly".
The two-headed snake-bat rose abruptly with a high-pitched hissing screech and clawed its way through the air towards the ceiling. Our heroes focussed all their attention on the beast, expecting it to attack; it didn't, but the whole room did. Lady Fukushu was a dryad, a forest-spirit, and she really cut loose. Vines of all sorts tore themselves off of the walls to strangle them, trees and bushes reached for them with craggy fingers, flowers suddenly grew fangs and thorns; even the moss writhed and attempted to eat their feet. Koenma and Botan reacted predictably; neither of them were up to these epic battle things, so they headed for the rafters in a hurry. Yuusuke and the others didn't have that option. Kurama was the first to react. Fukushu wasn't the only youko around who could boss the shrubbery! Thorn fought thorn and branch fought branch as they strove for victory, leaving the others to take care of themselves. Hiei didn't know much about gardening, but he knew that a plant can't do much when you slice it off at ground level. With a swift efficiency, he felled ferocious weeds right and left. Yuusuke used carefully controlled blasts of his Rei Gun to flash-fry patches of creeping bindweed off at the root, and Genkai took his tactics one step further by casually uprooting everything in sight. Van was by nature the third cousin twice removed of a weed-whacker, and the blades in his wrists left terrible destruction behind him. He feared no veg, for his steely carapace was immune to the lashing greenery. It was Kuwabara, however, that stunned them all with his ferocity and inventiveness. He had already had an absolutely foul day, and he was feeling more than a little queer. He made a few adjustments to the configuration of his Rei Sword, and manifested it dramatically. "Rei Shears!"
Yes, shears. Instead of a sword, he carried the biggest, most fearsome-looking pair of electrified golden hedge-trimmers in all the worlds. With a defiant shout of "Piranha!!", he mowed through a wide swath of savage garden without breaking a sweat. Everybody stopped fighting to stare at Kuwabara as he, still shouting, chased several hedges around the room.
"Is he always like that?" Fukushu asked, staring in disbelief as Kuwabara cornered his prey and pruned them right down to kindling.
"Come to think of it, yes." Kurama replied thoughtfully. "Kuwabara, are you all right?"
"No!" The maddened hedge-hunter shouted back.
"Sounds normal." Kurama sighed, and then turned back to his adversary. "Where were we?"
"Right about here." Fukushu said, and began to tear at him with a mutant morning-glory.
Kurama darted back out of the monster weed's range, and snapped a bloom off of a flailing rosebush. "Rose Whip!"
The whip was a devastating weapon, but he was outnumbered by the sheer mass of the morning-glory. He knew that the only way to stop this vegetative madness was to do in its mistress, but Fuknshu was unassailable behind her defenses. She laughed the mocking laugh of the haunted forest as they were slowly swamped under by her horrible garden.
At about that time, Hiei had just been bitten by a huge snapdragon plant. He was not happy about that, not happy at all. Already short-tempered, the young Koorime decided to return the favor. The trip over the lava fields had revitalized him to an extent that he had never experienced before; he was brimming with fiery force, a parting gift from his ultimate grandfather. Black flame flared around him, causing the monster-weeds to shrink away. He smiled grimly as he sheathed his sword and unwrapped his arm. No puny wimp-weed was going to get the best of him! "JYAOH ENSATSU KOKURYUUHA !!!"
His voice drew echoes from the walls, but they were drowned out in the roaring of the Black Dragon Wave. Yuusuke and the others were bright enough to hit the dirt as all hell broke loose right above them. Waves of searing heat flashed and boiled overhead, and the noise was tremendous. The air filled with the stink of charred compost, and the floor quaked under them as though it was afraid. With a vast shattering sound, the skylight gave up and came down in a rain of shining razors that slashed the greenery to ribbons. After what seemed like years, it stopped, leaving a shocking silence behind it. Yuusuke sat up, thumped his head a few times to get the ringing out of his ears, and winced as a hundred small cuts reminded him that broken glass plays for keeps. "Oww." He muttered, and then looked around for his friends. "Is everyone okay?" He called.
"More or less." Van said, getting up. "Cripes, what a day."
Kuwabara hauled himself into a sitting position, dabbing at a cut on his forehead. "Yup."
Kurama's clothes looked like they'd been washed with breadknives, but he was otherwise unharmed. "I'm alive."
Genkai was pissed. A foot-long shard had bisected her hat, and nearly her head with it. "Hiei!" She snapped. "If I ever catch you using that thing indoors again, you'll be mopping floors for a month !"
Hiei didn't seem to have heard her. He was sitting on his butt in the wreckage of a pussywillow looking exhausted and chewing on a leftover bit of spearmint.
"Are Botan and Koenma still with us?" Van asked, picking glass bits out of his shoulder joint.
Everybody looked up at the rafters. Sure enough, the two noncombatants had survived the cataclysm, and so had the snake-bat. At that moment, Botan was fending off the frightened beast with her oar.
"They're just fine." Kuwabara said. "Where's Fukushu?"
"Over there." Yuusuke replied. "And over there, and there, and some over here, and-ow!" He would have continued, but Genkai kicked him in the shins.
He wasn't just kidding around, though. Lady Fukushu had been standing right under the place where the main breakage of the skylight occurred, and the full brunt of the avalanche of shattered glass had fallen on her. There really wasn't all that much left of the sylvan sorceress. "I think that takes care of it." Van said quietly. "C'mon, guys, let's pick up the Hunters and get out of this place."
"Do we have to?" Kurama said, making a face.
"Do you really want those things running amok all over the Makai?"
"Good point."
Kurama helped Hiei to his feet as Botan and Koenma descended from the ceiling, leaving a rather battered and sore snake-bat to nurse a double headache in the rafters. The doors had shattered sometime during the fight, and chunks were scattered all up and down the hall. More out of habit than anything else, Kurama paused to peel a strip of jewel-crusted gold off of a piece or two. On the way back to the Escher staircase, Yuusuke tripped over a chunk of rubble and stumbled up against a door. It was partially open already, and he fell right in with a thump, portal swinging wide open. He landed on his face in a woven rag rug in a warmly lit room that was stacked to the ceiling with books. The others all trotted over to see if Yuusuke had broken his face or anything, and got the shock of their lives. Sitting wrapped cozily in a blanket in a leather armchair was Lady Fukushu, who had a large book open on her lap. She watched with some amusement for a few moments, sipping at a mug of hot cocoa as our heroes picked up their jaws. "What gives?!" Kuwabara sputtered. "You're supposed to be dead!"
"What you attacked was my carbon copy. I purposefully made it act like me when I have PMS, because I know that you guys would have been disappointed otherwise." Fukushu replied, turning a page.
"Carbon copy?" Kurama asked faintly. "You mean you really didn't want to kill me?"
"Of course not. I was bored. There really isn't all that much to do around here except breed strange creatures. But now my new book has come in, and you can go home now. I won't bother you any more."
"Huh?"
"By the way, Kuwabara, that was a very innovative thing to do with your spiritual energy. I never would have thought of garden shears. I'm going to have to remember that the next time someone tries to invade."
"Thanks. I think." Kuwabara said.
"Excuse me, ma'am," Van said in his very best policeman tones. "I'm sorry, but I do have to take your Hunters back to Golganoth. They are much too dangerous to leave lying around, you know."
"Too late, Van. I took care of that while you guys were smashing up my throne room. You will have to ask Issola to please put a permanent seal on that Land. Just looking at it makes my brain hurt."
"I'll do that." Van said evenly.
"Don't worry about the damage you did to my throne room, fellas." Fukushu said, taking another sip from her steaming mug. "I need to remodel it anyway. I need the room to start making a bigger and better butterfly."
"One with fangs and a poison sting?" Genkai muttered.
"Don't be silly. I just want one big enough to ride. They are ever so much prettier than moas, don't you think? Perhaps I should make one for you, Kurama. A red one, to match your hair."
"Please, no, Fukushu." Kurama moaned. "I've got enough problems already without having a giant bug in my garden."
"Ah, yes. Speaking of that," The dryad said in a steely voice. "I want to see the children in less than a decade, you two. I mean it."
"Urk!" Hiei said.
Kurama's expression turned to one of long-suffering embarrassment. "Not you, too! This is as bad as Issola and Lillias!"
"Of course." Fukushu replied happily. Lillias, Issola and I are part of the Ladies' Knitting and Terrorist Society. We meet every week."
"Ladies' Knitting and Terrorist Society." Yuusuke said, unable to believe his ears.
"Yes."
"You mean you sit around discussing world domination while knitting an afghan?!"
"Sweaters, usually, although Lillias likes to knit booties. Gods only know what she does with them."
"Booties?" It was Koenma's turn to be boggled. "How does she- I mean, snakes don't have... Aw, never mind, I don't wanna know."
"That's just as well, 'cause it's a craft secret, anyway." Fuknshu said smugly. "Now, since you kids are all pooped out from ridding the world of my evil clone, I'm going to send you all home for a nice, hot bath. Goodbye!"
She snapped her fingers three times, and the world dissolved around them.

SPLASH!!
"Brblephrsssht!"
"Aaaieee!"
"Whoa !"
"Aaah! Nasty wet stuff! With bubbles!"
"You weigh a ton!"
"Sorry."
Do you know how hard it is to stuff five people and an eight-foot robot into one bathtub? I don't know either, but Fukushu managed. Even so, she had to dangle Botan and Koenma from the shower fixtures, which had drenched both of them. To make matters worse, Atsuko came in, holding a bottle of something strong. She stopped in her tracks at the sight of her crowded tub, and stared as Van waved a polite hello. She looked groggily at the bottle she was holding, poured it out in the sink, threw the empty out the window, and stomped off while muttering something about hallucinations. Van pulled himself out of the crush and closed the door. He then pulled a rather waterlogged Yuusuke from the bottom of the pile and proceeded to knead the water out of him on the floor. Kuwabara and Hiei didn't pay any attention to this, as they were busy arguing. "Get off me, Hiei! You weigh a lot for such a runty little guy!"
"Runty?!" Hiei demanded, eyes blazing. "Who are you calling runty, you great stupid water buffalo?!"
"What did you call me?! Why you little... Rei Sword!"
"Not in the tub! Not in the tub!!" Genkai hollered, hauling herself over the edge just in time, with Kurama right behind her.
FRATZ!!
Bad mistake. "Spiritual energy must be cousin to electricity." Van said with interest as he observed the two rather badly stunned and scorched people in the tub. "It seems that any sort of flashy power will not mix well with power. Good for a laugh, though."
"Shut up." Kuwabara snapped, trying to smooth his hair back down. The electric discharge had caused every hair on his head to stick straight up, making him resemble a dandelion.
Hiei merely sat there and steamed, static electricity sparking off his hair.
"Are you guys done yet?" Botan asked wetly.
"Get me down from here!" Koenma wailed.
Kurama managed to get them down without falling in, although that nearly happened several times. Tiles can be very slippery when wet. The towels came in very handy, although Koenma tried to pull rank and steal them all. Yuusuke solved that problem by pitching him back into the water. They soon found out that demigods don't swim very well, so Van had to push water out of Koenma, too. "Ever thought of hiring yourself out as a fountain?" Yuusuke joked.
"Shut up." Koenma sputtered.
Eventually, they got dried off, and out of politeness, cleaned up the mess in the bathroom. "Thanks for the misadventure, fellas." Van said. "I think I will leave you here, as I have things to do elsewhere, such as asking Issola that favor. See ya later."
Koenma and Botan left shortly after him, for much the same reasons. Besides, Koenma wanted dinner. Genkai, Kurama, Kuwabara and Hiei exitd via the front door, for a change. "See you later, kids." Genkai said. "I think I'll see about entering that Knitting organization. It sounds like fun."
Kurama and Hiei rolled their eyes heavenward and left for Kurama's place, leaving Kuwabara to amble home by himself. He waved goodnight at the whole world in general and staggered home for a snack before passing out cold. It had been a long day.

Later that night, Hiei brought up something that had been bugging him. "Kurama, Fukushu called you 'sugar-tail'."
"I was hoping you'd forgotten that." Kurama sighed. "It was something she used to call me when I was going out with her."
"I'm surprised that you let her. What ever possessed you to take up with her, anyway?"
"She had a well-stocked treasury, and she was a nice girl. Pretty, too." Kurama smiled sadly. Ah, sweet memories! "There were times when I was almost sorry about what I was doing to her."
Hiei snorted. "Put them aside, fox. I've got you now, and any other such affairs are absolutely forbidden!"
"Heh. Convince me!"
Hiei spent the rest of the night doing just that.

THE END


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