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A Ghost of a Chance 4

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Chapter IV:  Fun House

“Okay, Mark, you can unhook the scythe now.”

With a grunt and a heave, the blade of the scythe was loosened from the column of concrete holding up the overhead road.  It had been a lucky save back there.  If it weren’t for the scythe and Mark’s quick thinking, we would have been a part of that explosion as well as Johnny 13.

We bounced harmlessly off the road, the force of the fall being taken in by the bike’s shock absorbers.  That trick had bought us some time, but we were still lost in enemy territory.

That didn’t mean we weren’t allowed to enjoy our break in action.  With a relaxed wheeze, I flopped onto the bike’s handlebars.  The past day’s events were finally catching up to me, for I was utterly exhausted.

I even began to hallucinate, for the butterflies we had been following before those zombie bikers attacked rushed before my weary eyes.  One even landed on my hand and phased through the skin.  My eyes grew fuzzy with fatigue, blurring a figure that appeared before me before I passed out.



I could feel an icy chill brush up against my cheek.  I was lying on a cold surface of some kind, cold and hard as a tombstone in winter.  Even though my eyes were still closed, I could still tell that there was barely any light shining in the room if any at all.  I slowly sat up on whatever I was laying on and rubbed my eyes.  Blinking into the faint light, I looked around.  The room was a stone cubical from a medieval castle, or at least it looked like it.  A torch burned on the wall in front of me, and another still figure was laid out on a second slab of stone (similar to the one I had been sleeping on) next to the wall opposite mine.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a voice said from behind me.  The voice was gentle, but it still froze me to the core.  I hadn’t expected any conscious company.  I slowly turned around to where the voice came from and looked right into the face of a woman seated in a chair.

The woman smiled at my surprise and confusion and said, “Is that how you look at a lady, especially one that saved your life?”

I looked away from the woman, down towards my feet covered in a blanket.  “I’m dreaming; I’ve got to be dreaming.”  I lay down again, but I smacked my head a little too hard.  I quickly sat up, both of my hands racing towards the throbbing pain in my head.

“You’re not dreaming, silly,” the woman said with a chuckle.  “You’re really here.”

“I realize that, now,” I hissed as I rubbed my sore.  “So, where is ‘here,’ anyway?”

The woman’s jovial face grew darker.  She sighed, looked down at her folded hands, and said, “The castle-to-be of a madman named Suzaku.  I managed to get you to the basement of the old theatre where he’s stationed at.  It’s awful.  He’s tricking the deceased to clean out the city in order to claim it as his own.  He called them all upstairs, but I fear for them.  This man has strange powers, powers he could use to curse them all or worse…  He must be stopped.”

“He will be.  One way or another, he will be.  This is my city, and I’ll be the one to defend it.  There are too many happy memories here for me to give them all up to some psychotic son-of-a-bitch.”

The woman’s jovial mood returned slightly, but she still looked sad.  “I wish you the best of luck, but I still don’t know how you’re going to defeat him.”

I looked at my fist, which was starting to glow the mysterious light blue.  “I think I’ll manage to find a way.”  I hopped off the bed and walked past the woman, grabbing hold of the scythe’s handle as well as the doorknob.

Suddenly, a thought struck me.  “I don’t believe I caught your name, Miss…”
“Emily, my name’s Emily.”

I nodded sagely, turned the door handle, and disappeared into the black hallway.

Emily continued to look after me until the door closed shut.  “Be careful, my rescuer,” she whispered into the bleak light of the room.

As I journeyed down this first corridor, I only had one thought shaking my brain:  why did that Emily person only have one eye?



Suzaku stared out into the sea of decaying and spectral beings making up the bulk of his audience.  All of the zombies had smiles stretching their rotting skin from ear to ear; each one of them had a canister of blood in their laps.  The ghosts, on the other hand, had their green amulets in their hands and barely a glimmer of happiness showing on their faces.  Skulker and Desiree especially looked dismal, having almost accomplished their mission that day.

“My friends,” Suzaku announced, “it brings me great pleasure to officially close this event, for you all have put in such a grand effort into it!”  A hearty cackle erupted from the stands as weapons were waved in the air.  “Now, to announce the winners of my grand contest.  The undead being that collected the most blood was…  Me!”

As soon as this last word left his foul mouth, a set of bars rose out of the ground at the base of all the doors leading out of the room.  A yellowish band of energy snaked its way from Suzaku’s hands, ensnaring all of the dead present.  Unable to move, much less escape the madman keeping them all there, the zombies and ghosts started a universal panic.  Try as they might, their pleas fell on deaf ears and their efforts to escape their shackles proved useless.

Suzaku cackled as the yellow energy turned red.  As soon as an undead came into contact with this red energy, he (or she) disintegrated until there was nothing left except either the blood canister or the useless green amulet.  An entire room was destroyed within a minute, and the rest of them followed suit in under the next one.

Suzaku hopped down from the stage and walked over to one of the blood canisters sitting comfortably in one of the seats.  He tore off the lid, dipped his hand in, and drank the sample.  Suzaku smiled at its taste, lifted the container to his lips, and drank heavily.  Some of it even dripped onto his clothes.

When he finished with this one, he threw the empty metal into the side wall, where it shattered into fragments.  “Like I said, I gathered the most blood.”  His cackle echoed down every empty corridor that the theatre had to offer.

“Now, as for the winner of the possession contest… I should pay her a little, personal visit.”



As I felt my way around the first bend through the empty hallway, I heard a dark, malicious laugh before me.  My blood chilled, and goose bumps raced up my spine.  Whatever lay before me, it didn’t play around.  I pressed on, the only light in this section of the theater coming from the weird energy radiating from my hand.

“What kind of trick is this?” I asked myself as I stared at my glowing hand.  I tried to concentrate on my hand, hopeful that something would reveal itself.  Did it ever.  Another of those enigmatic energy butterflies raced from my hand, flying on a straight course down the hallway.  I quickly ran after this butterfly, for it was an even brighter source of light than my hand was now.

Doors passed me on either side of this twisting labyrinth, but they were too dark underneath for me to want to venture into them.  Right now, I wanted to get to the main theater, where Suzaku hopefully was.

The corridor rose up an occasional set of stairs which the butterfly rose right along with.  I followed just as quickly, my scythe held at my side.  As I concentrated my sights harder on the butterfly, the energy in my hand spread to the other one, even crawling up the length of the scythe shaft.

A familiar melody wafted through the halls, standing out clearly in the emptiness.  I perked up my ears to listen to this soothingly attracting music.  “So… dark and mysterious, and yet… so peacefully alluring.”  All concentration fell off the energy and the butterfly, and both faded from sight.  I closed my eyes, allowing the music to guide me along my path.  I stumbled on the stairs from time to time, but otherwise it was fine.
When the music was its loudest, I was in front of another of those wooden doors.  This one looked newer, not even a year old, whereas the other ones looked like they had been there for centuries.  I opened this door and found myself in a lit room.

Well, lit wasn’t exactly the right word.  The room was hidden behind a curtain, leaving only a meter’s worth of floor between it and the wall.  A pale light shone from underneath the curtain and from a crack right in front of me.

I pushed through the curtain and ended up on a stage.  Torches burned all around the audience’s seats, most of which were filled with strange but familiar metal canisters.  In front of me, a figure was seated playing on an organ.  The pianist’s fingers were deftly moving from one side of the keyboard to the other, keeping up with the tune coming from the instrument.  He was wearing a red garment overlapped by baggy white pants.  His spiky blond hair was the shiniest thing in the room.

Suddenly, the pianist stood up from the organ and turned to me.  His piercing red eyes studied me for a second before he sneered.  “So, you come here before me, the cleverest human in this entire city, in an attempt to challenge my authority.  I send you challenges to test your courage as well as your cunning that you so miraculously passed, but you have no hope of ever passing the final exam with I, Suzaku, as the teacher!”

Suzaku jumped back well over twenty yards to the technician’s booth near the back of the theater.  A yellow ball of energy encased his hands as a blue energy encased mine.  “So, you’re the bastard that’s been causing all of the zombie trouble!” I hollered at Suzaku.  “You don’t seem like such a tough guy to me.  Sure, you can jump far, but I don’t see why so many people fear you.”

I definitely hit my opponent below the belt on that one.  “Your arrogance wears my patience and my kind hospitality thin.  I could have ordered my zombies to attack your petty defense within my own castle at any time, but then I would have been bored for the rest of my stay here.  So entertain me if you can!”

Suzaku threw the balls of energy in his fists at me.  Even ‘entertaining’ someone like this would be harder than I thought.  I held up the scythe defensively, and the first energy ball got skewered on the tip of the blade; the second one splintering the organ and vanishing without a trace.  I grinned at my luck and swung the scythe.  The energy ball flew off of the scythe, through the air, and splintered a part of the wooden booth surrounding Suzaku.

“Crafty as you are clever.  Well, if it’s a battle of old you want, I’ll be happy to oblige!”  The ball in Suzaku’s other hand grew long and curved back slightly.  Another ball in Suzaku’s other hand grew long as well, but this one sprouted a tip on the end, a jagged tip that looked like it could rip through anything.  He drew this energy arrow across the bow he made and took aim at me.  A tomato right then would have been even more appropriate, and I wished he did have one.

The arrow flew through the air, but I was ready for it.  I quickly dodged the arrow, swinging my scythe around.  The enhanced blade of the scythe caught the shaft of the arrow long-ways, taking it on a round-about flight path.  I released the arrow, throwing it back at Suzaku.  I missed again, but I did take another chunk out of the booth.

Unfazed by this second redirection of his own attacks, Suzaku drew another arrow across his bow.  This one he fired at me quickly, reloading it with yet another arrow not a split second later.  This one he fired right alongside the first.

I looked upon both arrows with a sense of dread; I knew I couldn’t work my trick on both of them.  Instead, I leapt back until I hit the folds of the curtain.  I stuck my hands out in a measly defense, the only one I could possibly muster.  I closed my eyes and looked away from the sight, awaiting doom.

I felt a slight pressure on my hands, but other than that, nothing.  I opened one eye and looked at my hands; I quickly opened the other one after it.  The energy in my hands had caught the arrows!  Suzaku looked stunned by this turn of events, but he didn’t look half as surprised as when he saw me grab the arrows in mid-air, turn them around, and throw them both back at him at the same time!  This time my aim came through, and the arrows collided into him at the same time.  A huge explosion shook the booth, splintering what was left of it.

I ran up there to check on the damage.  When I made my way to the splintered mass of wood, I sifted through it, looking for Suzaku’s body.  I tore the whole pile apart, but I didn’t find anything!  Suzaku had disappeared!

The sound of a flute coming from the stage stopped me cold.  I slowly turned around and saw Suzaku on the stage – all six of him.

“You thought one Suzaku was bad enough, didn’t you?” one of them asked.

“Well how about taking on seven at once?” the other five added.

Now I saw it clearly:  Suzaku battled with me using a clone that had evaporated when the arrows struck it.  I now faced the real one, sevenfold (well, sevenfold minus one) in power and double that in attacks.  I was definitely outmatched, unless I could whip up another miracle.  That didn’t seem likely.

Suzaku wasn’t going to give me that chance, anyway.  All of his clones along with the real one formed those energy spheres in their hands.  It was like reliving dodge ball in gym class, except Kurama wasn’t here to bail me out.  No one was.  I had to rely on the tricks I had used against the Suzaku clone, and even these would prove ineffective.

I felt a pang of nausea hit my head like the wall back at school all of a sudden.  I turned around and reached for my head, dropping the scythe on the wood pile.  The feeling in my brain worsened, bringing me to my knees and sapping me of my strength.  It was even affecting the beating of my heart.  “What’s happening to me?” I groaned as my vision grew blurry.  I looked behind me, and I saw the Suzakus throw their energy spheres.  A mad cackle erupted through the theatre as the balls flew towards me.  I was a dead man.  With the last of my energy gone, I fell backward and waited for oblivion.

Strangely, the board in front of my head lifted up off the ground.  Several other boards around me lifted as well.  They flew to my feet and formed a wall.  The energy spheres harmlessly bounced off of the wooden barricade and vanished.  The boards were shielding me from Suzaku’s attacks!

As wave after wave of attacks were repelled, I felt something alight on my back.  With immeasurable effort, I rolled over onto my back, allowing the thing on it to flutter off and alight again on my chest.  I focused my eyes on this object, as it glowed with the same calming blue energy as the butterfly that had led me here to this deathtrap.
Were these butterflies a blessing or a curse?

This particular butterfly was a blessing.  The blue energy that pulsated from it flowed onto me like melting candle wax, sinking into my exhausted flesh.  As it did, I could feel my strength returning to me, the pain in my head dying away.  It felt just as I had felt in the hallway of my school:  peaceful, painless, and satisfying.

When I had enough energy back, I slowly sat up and scratched the back of my head.  But it wasn’t hair I felt; it was feathers.  I reached back there with both of my hands and firmly grasped this feather duster and ripped it off of my head.  I brought it around to my eyes to see what it was, only to find out that it was – a parrot?

The parrot grimaced in my hands and said, “Murugu want a cracker… ^^;

I scowled in reply and told her, “Murugu need a taste of cold steel!”  I snatched up my scythe with one hand and pinched Murugu’s wing with the other.  She struggled to get away like a moth in the same exact position, but her efforts were useless.  I wouldn’t let go until she paid for my pains, inflicted on me by her bloody feet.

I held the scythe right below its blade and stabbed the bird through the heart.  She let out one final trill before she dangled limply on my scythe blade.  I almost felt sorry for it; a beautiful bird working for a boss like Suzaku.  But I dismissed these thoughts and threw Murugu’s carcass over the barricade.

When Suzaku saw Murugu fly over the barricade, at first he smiled.  But, when he saw her flop onto the stage with a splatter of blood leak from the gash in her chest, he grew angrily horrified.  All of the clones stopped firing their projectiles and gathered around the body of the bird.  The real Suzaku nestled the bird in his arms.  “Even in death your beauty shines,” he told her.  He gently laid her down on the stage and glared at me.  All of his clones did likewise.

The boards that had formed the wall fell to the ground.  Where a board had once floated, a butterfly now fluttered.  They also fluttered out from behind the curtain in droves, passing the Suzaku sextuplets and converging around me.  They flew around each other, producing a white light as their flight pattern grew more congested.  Within this light the butterflies’ shapes blurred together.  A new shape formed altogether within the light, the color returning as the light faded.  I staggered back, surprised to see who now stood before me.  It was Emily!

Something was different about her, though.  Her calm smile was replaced by an angry scowl, and her eye was fixed on Suzaku.  Her fists were clenched tight; I could hear and see the knuckles crack in her skeletal arm.  She held out this arm, hand opened.  My right arm had a slight spasm, and yet another butterfly flew out of my palm and into Emily’s hand.  “You’re welcome for the rental,” she whispered to me.  The butterfly glowed white as soon as she said this, and it morphed into a round sphere.  When the color returned to it, the sphere had become an eye!  Emily turned away from me and popped the eye back into place with a squeak.

Suzaku was just as surprised by this as I was.  “Emily!” he called to her.  “Why are you helping that mortal?  He’s the enemy!”

Emily turned towards Suzaku and replied, “If you ever had a heart, you’d know.”

Suzaku chuckled at this comment.  “I did have a heart, once,” he said.  “One of the finest meals I ever had.”  His five clones busted up laughing at his joke.  “Jokes aside, wench…” he jumped clear from the stage to the shattered maintenance booth to my horror and gripped Emily around the throat, lifting her up single-handedly.  All of the Suzaku clones leapt up to join the original, surrounding the three of us.  “…you should never have crossed paths with me, for I have control over everything, including death!”

As his grip on her throat tightened, she desperately tried to pull his hand free of her.  His grip was just too powerful.  He laughed at her futile attempts.  As she struggled, she gasped, “Do what you want to me; just don’t harm him.”

My eyes were opened to the truth by this statement.  This mysterious Emily woman’s intentions throughout my adventure – the trail of butterflies, the healings, the lending of that arcane energy, the tending to our wounds in the back corridor, the defensive actions, and now this – proved only one thing:  she was in love with me!  She had done so much for me; I had to do something for her now.

Since all of the Suzakus had their attention fixed on Emily and her captor’s spectacle, I managed to sneak right behind the real Suzaku unnoticed.  Emily did notice me and immediately figured out what I was planning.  I positioned the scythe behind Suzaku on the ground and winked at her.  In reply, she kicked Suzaku in the stomach with both of her feet.  The shock that she actually attacked him forced his hand to release her, and the force of the kick itself sent him falling backwards – right onto my scythe blade.  I heard several ribs crack as the blade sliced through organs and skin tissues.  The part that stuck out was covered in glistening deep-red blood as red as the blood streaming into a puddle around him.  All of Suzaku’s clones were thunderstruck.

I got up off the ground as if nothing had happened and dusted myself off.  I turned to Emily and gave away a smile, despite still being in the midst of the clones.  She returned it just as happily.

However, when she looked down at my feet, her face grew horrified.  Strangely, I felt something around my ankle.  The Suzakus around me started to chuckle.  Curiously, I looked down to inspect it, but I wish I hadn’t.  My face grew just as horrified as Emily’s as I realized the grim truth:  it was Suzaku’s bloody hand gripping my ankle!  His grip tightened as we locked eyes, those blood-red eyes almost searing my cool blue ones.  He revealed a smile with most of his teeth dripping with blood.

He spat some of this blood into the wood pile and said, “Did you honestly think that you could kill me with such a pathetic attempt as this?”  He gave my ankle a final clutch that split my foot and leg bones and brought me to my knees before he stood up.  One of the clones tore the scythe out of his back as he said, “Like I said before, I control death in this domain of mine.  And that includes yours!”  His fist lit up with the yellow energy again.

Sensing what was about to happen, Emily rushed between us, outstretching her arms to protect me.  “Don’t even think about touching him,” she told Suzaku.

Suzaku sneered and spat some more blood into the wood pile.  “And what are you going to do to stop me?”  Without waiting for a reply, he punched her solidly in an uppercut with his energized hand.  The other Suzakus made room for her to be sent sailing onto the stage, causing a squealing sound as she skidded across the waxed wood.

The assailant turned his attention back to me, as did all the others.  My ankle still hurt, and even if it weren’t broken I still wouldn’t have been able to escape with the Suzaku clones closing in around me.  The original one’s eyes were fixated on me, but I refused to look into them.  It was a hopeless situation, with me undefended without even a weapon for company and everyone who could help me being either dead or unconscious.  A tear welled up in my eye as I accepted the now completely and undeniably inevitable end.

As Suzaku pulled back his fist for the fatal delivery, Emily groaned and propped herself up on her arm, holding her head with the other.  She looked back to the Suzakus and caught the main one halfway in the act.  “Please!  No!” she pleaded, but her words fell on deaf ears.  Suzaku followed through with his attack, plowing his fist in an uppercut right under my ribcage.

I let out a scream releasing all of the pain, fear, and sorrow I had amassed as I flew upward and out of the back wall of the theatre with a splatter of blood.  Horrified by the sight, Emily ran back through the curtain and back down the dark corridor, weeping the whole way.



As I flew into the open night air, still on a ruler-straight flight path, I crashed into something.  Despite the repercussion that I felt, I was actually hopeful; I could feel myself hit something!  Despite the savage attack and the pain I had endured, had I survived?  As I hung onto the object I crashed into, I looked back at the theatre.  To my surprise, I hadn’t left a hole in the wall.  What was going on?

“Could you get off my ride?  I have a lot of business to take care of tonight.”

I looked up at who was speaking and looked right into the glowing red eyes of the Grim Reaper!  I really was dead!

“Seriously, off the scythe.  I haven’t had this much business since 9/11, and you’re holding me up in my duty.”

I looked down at the street below me and sheepishly looked back up at him.  “Will I fall?”
“Why should you care?” he replied, slightly aggravated.  “You’re a ghost; you’re dead.  Now leave me alone.”

“Let me handle this,” another voice said.  The Grim Reaper turned behind himself as I followed his gaze.  Both of us caught sight of a second figure flying towards us from the direction of downtown.  When she got closer, we both saw that she was a very young woman (early twenties/late teens tops) with light-blue hair and a pink kimono on.  Instead of riding on a scythe like the Grim Reaper, this person (or spirit, ghost… whatever) rode on a long oar.  “You never were great with kids.”

“What are you doing on my turf, Botan?” the Reaper demanded of our guest.  “I thought you were supposed to only take care of those on the Eastern Hemisphere.”

“Yes, but Koenma sent me here on a special assignment.”  She pointed right at me and said,

“He’s it.”

The Grim Reaper snickered.  “As long as you take him off my hands (as well as my scythe), I’ll forgive you for this intrusion.”  He glared at me with his red eyes from underneath his midnight black hood.

“Okay then, Michael, time to go.”  Botan pulled up her oar right under me.  I let go of the Grim Reaper’s scythe and dropped onto Botan’s ride, right behind the pilot.  We flew off as soon as I was situated, disappearing into the maze of buildings and leaving the Reaper to his work.

As we weaved through the debris-and-blood-covered wreckage of the city like a river through a canyon, I posed a question to Botan:  “Who is this Koenma?”

Without looking away from her course she replied, “You’ll see soon enough.  We’re going to see him soon.  The portal to Spirit World is just up ahead.”

“The portal to where?”



Suzaku took his hand out of my chest and licked some of the blood off of it.  “I don’t know about you,” he told his snickering clones, “but blood always tastes better fresh and when you’re the killer.”  They all gave another hearty laugh at this.

“What do you think we should do with him now?” one of the clones asked.

Suzaku smiled a wicked and conceited smile and replied, “Why don’t we just drain the rest of his blood and use his head for kickball?”

“Using a head for kickball?  I’m okay with that.”

All of the Suzakus looked around, startled by this uninvited voice.  “Who are you?  Show yourself!”

“Well, if you insist!”  A figure dropped down from the sky lighting and stomped right on Suzaku’s face, plowing it straight into the cement platform.  The intruder continued his attack by delivering a roundhouse kick to the rest of the clones.  The intruder leapt back and sat back in one of the theatre seats.

Suzaku stood up with his hand on his face; blood dripped between his fingers.  With his unwounded eye, he glared at his intruder with murderous recognition and screamed, “You!”
The intruder smiled and ran his hand through his straight, jet-black hair.  “Well, Suzaku, you sure seem to remember me.”

“How could I not remember you, you smug little bastard?  You foiled my plans to take over Human World almost two years ago; and now you face me again, Yusuke Yuromeshi.”

“Hey, duty calls.  But I’m always open for a rematch with a has-been demon like you.”  Looking around as he cracked his knuckles, he took notice of something.  Or should I say something missing?  “By the way, where are all of your pals from before?  I thought that if you had returned then they wouldn’t be far behind; I even invited a few of my friends over to enjoy some kind of party together.”

As if on cue, three of the still-suffering Suzaku clones were sliced cleanly in half, each one disappearing in a puff of smoke.  The others followed suit, this time being pierced through the heart (or whatever was there).  In a blink of an eye, two other figures stood beside Yusuke, one about two-thirds his height with the same color hair and a sleek black robe on.  A white headband was wrapped around his forehead with his black spiky hair hanging over it.  The other one was just as tall as Yusuke with a pink jumpsuit on and pinkish-red hair:  Kurama.

The shortest of the three looked up at Yusuke and said, “You humans speak too much; I almost fell asleep through your little speech.”
Kurama glared at him through the corner of his eye and said, “Quiet, Hiei, we’re in the middle of something here.”

Suzaku looked at all three of them, reminiscing how easily he had been defeated last time and how not to make a repeat performance.  “Well, Yusuke,” he said, “it seems that you caught me off guard.  Allow me some time to give you a proper fight, along with those friends of mine you want to see so badly.”  He backed off from the three of them, leapt backwards towards the stage, and vanished in a blur.

Kurama smiled and sighed, “Now that he’s gone, let’s tend to the matter at hand.”  He turned towards my corpse and started to inspect the wounds.  After checking a blood sample, he concluded, “This blood is still warm; not even dead for fifteen minutes.  We may be able to save him if we hurry.”

All three of them looked down at my lifeless, ragged body.  “Tell me again why we’re about to help this worthless bastard,” Hiei complained, an angry scowl on his face.

Kurama was just as scornful in his glare at him.  “Apparently, you have learned little of Demon World lore on your travels.  This boy plays an important role in the balance of power in Demon World, one that reaches almost as far back as the divisions of the three kingdoms.”

Kurama sat back against the cushion of the theatre seat, closed his eyes, and folded his arms across his chest.  He took a deep breath and began his tale.  “Long ago, before any of us were even born, there lived a demon, an incredibly powerful A+ Class demon by the name of Sakurayo with unrivaled power, power that has never been matched before or after.  He slew every demon within a kilometer of him just by approaching them.  It was a special species of demon energy requiring immense training, taking up over one-thousand years, which overloaded its victims as long as they possessed any demon energy within them.  Only special shields kept out this special demon energy.  Any demon that could penetrate his energy deathtrap was quickly dispatched by his legendary phantom blade, known as Soul Edge.  It was only through the combined efforts of Mukuro, Raizen, and Yomi that could bring the demon to his knees and imprison him within an amulet; it is because of this combined effort that the three grew jealous of each other and caused the eventual division of their empires.

“This amulet eventually made it into the Human World, where a man known as Adolph Hitler discovered it.  It drove him mad with its immeasurable power, resulting in the infamous World War II.  The amulet was lost after that, but Sakurayo swore that his sign would reveal the next person destined to wield the amulet.”

“And you said that humans talk too much, Hiei,” Yusuke joked.

“Just tell us what the sign is,” Hiei grumbled impatiently.

“A rose on the sole of the foot.”

Hiei smirked at this comment.  “Sign of an ancient accomplice, Kurama?”

“Nothing of the sort.  I was always with Yomi, no one else.”

“So what does the rose have to do with this guy?” Yusuke asked as he nudged my foot.

“Watch and learn.”  Kurama bent down and took off my shoe.  He wrinkled his nose as he took off my sock, although I would have smiled if I were conscious.  He pointed to the bottom of my foot, where a black-petaled rose was clearly tattooed, the stem curling down the curve of the sole. 

Yusuke was perplexed.  “How did you find out about this?”

“I was an exchange student sent here by the Spirit World to investigate a strange disturbance in the Order from last year.  This boy was where a strange energy presence led me and was also in the school I went to.  We even shared the same gym class.  The rest should explain itself.”

Hiei was getting impatient.  “Enough of the bedtime stories.  Now let’s wake up this dead weight before he starts to decay.”  He held up a fist, and it glowed with a turquoise flame.

“Oh, if we’re getting physical with it…”  Yusuke held up a fist of his own that also shone a light blue.  “Care to join us, Kurama?”

Kurama sternly shook his head.  “That wouldn’t be wise, Yusuke; you of all people should know that!” he angrily hissed.

The flame on Hiei’s hand was replaced by a fire in his red eyes.  “Well, if you don’t want us to do things the fun way, what do you suggest?”

“We take him to Koenma.”
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