Black Chimera
Chapter 3: Never Go Gently Part I
by Cricket


      Like a stealthy, red shadow, Kurama lead Hiei and Yo-mawari easily through the watch systems set up to protect the Makai Treasure House: Just as easy as he had remembered it all. A simple system of trip wires and alarms had still remained after all these years, guarded liddlessly at the main gates, something any amateur thief could have easily broken through. Those primary systems posed absolutely no problem to Kurama's expertise, enjoying more the thrill of the hunt for riches outside of his Youko body than what his possible mission here was.
      It was like a long-lost fantasy perhaps. Kurama felt some sort of wordless pleasure as he cleverly lead them through, chuckling at what Shiori-san would say to him if he found out he was purposely breaking into a dungeon. Dear, innocent, angelic little Minamino Shuuichi leading his own group of thieves and would-be assassins in the stronghold of one of the many enemies. Quite exciting!
      Directly behind him, Youko Yo-mawari darted from shadow to shadow, the surprisingly glimmering body molding perfectly to the dimness where he had spent the majority of his life. Playfully, the fox form would flick about, practically unseen by his other two companions, occasionally leaping forward to pull his brother's hair or ruffle his clothing, keeping up a continuous play as the small group infiltrated the Treasure House. Kurama didn't seem to mind much, swatting back playfully, occasionally turning to tease back in the whole thrill of things.
      And bringing up the rear, Hiei grumbled and smirked at the brother's before him, playing and pestering each other, seemingly making light of the moment and situations that could easily be the death of them all. Every ounce of Hiei's fighting conscious had told him to take back to his own feet and get the hell out of there. Death awaited them at each corner, forcing them to duck to shadows and doorways every few feet, impeding a quick progress which would lead to a quick retreat. They were getting no where!
      Around them all, bare and cold stone walls twisted and turned, a huge labyrinth of identical corridors and tall hallways. Kurama seemed to know where he was going, he seemed to have had the fortress mapped out completely in his head as he lead them. But to Hiei, every place seemed dreadfully the same, his way being quickly lost after about 10 minutes of their infiltration.
      Ahead, Kurama pulled the youko pestering him back to the wall, playful smacking him in the chest with a snort. The two completely different forms contrasted at every vantage, breaking every and all connection that the two could have ever been of the same blood. Ears and flowing silver hair challenged soft, peach skin and red hair, each mocking the other silently by the simple act of standing abreast.
      Kurama leaned around the Youko and waved Hiei up, wincing as Yo- mawari took a wild lock of red hair and tugged roughly, reeling Kurama back to the wall. The human body hit roughly, an immediate reaction springing to jerk on one of the Youko's ears...
      "You two," Hiei growled a warning. "If you don't behave..."
      "We're splitting up," Kurama announced quietly, cutting off the low, gruff voice before Hiei could continue. Kurama up-righted himself, shoulder to shoulder with the taller form of the Youko Yo-mawari beside him, listening carefully to the demon sentries pass beyond the corner of their hiding spot. "I'm going alone."
      "You're what!" Yo-mawari and Hiei hissed together, both turning glaring eyes back to him.
      "Don't argue," Kurama whispered back without meeting the glares, peeking around the corner. "There is a method to this. 'Wari-kun: you and I can link - unfortunately, I can't link that easily with Hiei - so you'll have to stick next to him. Be my eyes and ears, so to speak."
      "But Kurama-kun..."
      "Shh!" Kurama ordered, pressing a finger to his lips and clunking his forehead to Yo-mawari's. They both winced slightly, chuckling again to each other before Hiei's rough grunt ordered them to behave. "Now, the entrance to the dungeon is just across the way here..." he pointed to an oak door guarded by two large and fierce looking kaibutsu.
      "Any special way you want them taken out?" Hiei asked with a sly grin, the razor-sharp katana making itself know.
      "Yeah, quietly and as clean as possible! There's only two of them."
      "No problem!"
      Hiei flashed in a rat of black wind, leaving a wake or displaced air to ruffle the silver and red manes of the two brothers he left behind. For a short, silent instant, there was absolutely no sign of the youkai, save for the softly hidden glimmer of his you-ki, dancing on the edge of both the brother's minds. It only took a few seconds to seek out and follow that you-ki, tracing a zig-zag path to land perched atop a rafter directly over the two guards.
      The little youkai, dressed in a shadowed black, molded perfectly into the open ceiling beams above, calling two of the shuriken on Yo- mawari's shoulder out to trace the same zig-zag path, one whizzing unnoticed up to Hiei, another one hopping down to the floor silently.

      The larger of the two kaibutsu yawned, shifting in position before the door to the Treasure House dungeons. It had been a long day... way to long for his standards. He needed a rest before he collapsed on the spot, up since all hours of the morning. It had been like that alot around here lately: forced to rise early in the morning to guard and patrol the corridors until late at night, lucky if either of the two guards could squeeze in 5 hours of sleep a night.
      The other guard smacked him hard in the chest as he yawned again, grumbling to him in a wordless warning.
      With a smirk, the kaibutsu yawned again, defying his counterpart.... until he heard a tiny tinkle gently roll into the stone hallway, like small metal fragments falling on the cold stone floors. It was a could he had never heard before, perfect rhythmic tinkers coming down a connecting hall out of sight, heading straight for them.
      The guards readied their weapons just in time to see a small, black object, no bigger than a rat blink into view, rolling around the corner to lay a path directly before them. It was a dark metallic color, not black, not brown... not really any describable color. Just dark. As it rolled, it glimmered, shifting directions to begin down the corridor past the two guards, rolling atop 8 viciously pointed projections. A ninja throwing star: a shuriken.
      The two guards watched curiously as the little weapon seemed to have a mind of it's own, rolling right past them with the rhythmic tinkering as the vicious prongs met with the stone floor. It navigated up and over the uneven flooring to the end of the hall, pausing, shifting directions and rolling off around the corner and out of sight.
      "Nani?" one of the guards grumbled, bringing out what looked like a miniature reaping scythe. "Hmph... I'll check it out," he finished, his deep and sonorous voice almost shaking the surrounding foundations to their death.
      The other watched as his partner hobbled off down the hall... and then he noticed a similar object navigate it's way down the wall just past his shoulder like a giant spider. The guard jumped as if it really was a big spider, watching the identical little weapon veer off around another corner. So he followed.

      "I don't believe it," Yo-mawari whispered in Kurama's ear, his chin resting on his brother's shoulder as he watched the other guard leave his post to follow the other shuriken. "I do believe these kaibutsu are quite dim!" Kurama elbowed him in the side, watching his brother's chin topple
      from his shoulder to stumble back to his own feet. Beyond, they saw Hiei leap to the floor to land in a small, unmoving crouch, the black cloak making him look like a small, black rock. The red eyes scanned the hall quickly, swinging back and forth, little ears tuned to every sound around him.
      In one quick, fluid movement, the youkai's swift hand jammed the tip of the katana into the lock of the door, easily springing it, pushing it open all in one sweep. All too easy. With a curt smile, he glanced to the brothers, silently ordering them to enter the dungeon, a big 'After you,' sweep as he gestured into the dim stone stairwell beyond.
      Kurama and Yo-mawari, each mirroring the other despite the oddly contrasting forms, each crossed the hall, one after another and disappeared into the dungeon, quietly closing the door behind them.... seconds before both guards came back after having lost sight of the tiny little 8-pronged stars.

      "This is where we split," Kurama spoke silently, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the musty dungeons, reaching the bottom of the long, winding flight of stairs. "They don't keep many guards down here, but still, clean up every mess you make! It only takes one to sound of that blasted alarm of theirs."
      Yo-mawari stood firmly to attention, springing a finger to his forehead to toss off a mock salute, receiving a prompt shove from Kurama. "I'm serious here," Kurama said flatly, every hint of the playful fox gone from the green eyes that flickered in the torch light. "Be careful. There's only one way out of this dungeon... and that's the way we came. If we spring the alarms, the first thing they do is block off the dungeons. Got it?"

      A dungeon guard hobbled along, humming a dark and off-pitch tune to himself, stumbling through the notes. Before him, he carried a tray, on it a bowl of water and half of a loaf of bread. "Yo, din-din there, fairy-man," he snickered, stopping at a particular cell in the nearly vacant dungeons. He bent down and shoved the tray through a special opening under the bars, pushing it up and into the surprisingly dark cell, despite the torches that blazed just over his shoulder. "Eat up now. Wouldn't wanna spoil that figure of yours, now would we?"
      In the darkness of the cell a set of piercing blue eyes opened slowly, fixing on the guard with an undying lust for blood, searching the fat figure out like a wolf stalking an injured animal. They belonged to a battered face, the eyes deeply sunken in and ringed in sickly red and black circles from years of starvation and malnutrition. Though, however terrible their surroundings, the eyes had a luster and shine that rivaled every jewel that sat in the treasure house vault, completely out of place in the milky grey of the bruised skin.
      The creature was thin and bony, a living skeleton as he sat on a straw bed in the shadows, tucked off in a corner of the cell where the shadows laid the heaviest. He wasn't shackled, perhaps the large scars running along his shins and calves told why, instead, his keepers choosing to beat him on regular intervals, told so on the grey and pink scars that ran over and over his incredibly frail body.
      The guard couldn't help but shudder slightly, backing up from the cell, tugging on his shirt collar as the eyes glared him down, disembodied in the blackness. "Well then," the guard cleared his throat and gathered back his courage, trying to lengthen his portly figure to intimidate the prisoner. "Now there, be a good little boy for me. Remember what happened last time?"
      "Go to hell," the prisoner seethed, a fiery anger ragged in a dry throat that seemed to hold every deadly technique deep within.
      "Touchy touch. You would think after all these years you would have at least died! You are so damn annoying, you know that."
      "Why thank you, I'm glad to see my mission is being fulfilled then."
      "Kisama... you just delight in making everyone miserable around you now don't you? Why, of all the things to do, must you insist on being so DIFFICULT!"
      "It's my code, old man," the raspy voice spoke back, adjusting his frail body on the straw, pulling the thin, bony leg out of the light and into the shadows, hiding all evidence that a man sat behind those electric eyes. "Never go gently."
      "You little bastard.. I am sick to bloody death of you!! Of all things..." the guard whipped out a set of keys and opened the cell door. "I am gonna teach you once and for all to shut that disrespectful mouth of yours!! You seem to forget that YOUR the prisoner and I'M the keeper."
      "Go ahead and try," the deep blue eyes growled. "See how far you get before I lay another gash out of that ragged ear of yours.
      The guard hobbled in, taking out a length of hard leather from his belt, winding it one around his hand for support. "You... if you won't die on your own you'll die by my hand!!" He raised the whip... the prisoner closed his eyes...
      The crack of a whip echoed through the cell, the prisoner's body jerking at the noise... but there was no pain. The numbing, burning pain that usually followed that dreaded sound was not there. Oddly, it just wasn't there.
      Cautiously he opened an eye. The guard stood poised to strike above him, though looking a bit surprised, eyes wide and glazed as if the life had just been ripped from them... and in a sickening, undescribable sound, his head bobbled to one side, toppling off his shoulders to land in a crunch of bones and a splatter of blood on the floor of the cell.
      "Ah shit, now I'm gonna get blamed for this one," the prisoner grumbled. "Idiot.. cut his own head off. Hmph, what a moron."
      The body slid limply down to the floor... but another replaced it, the sleek shadow clearly not kaibutsu. In fact, the body looked vaguely human, tall and thin, almost beautiful in the silhouette it created around the torch light.
      "Wha'd ya want? If you're gonna kill me, then do it already."
      The figure shifted forward through the shadows, a long, barbed whip curling up to the figure's hand to dissipate into a perfect rose, watching the blue eyes slide shut in anticipation. But instead, a pair of warm hands grasped his cheeks, cradling them in their touch, the sudden feel of contact sending a shuddering gasp through the prisoner's body.
      He opened his deadly blue eyes to larger, shadowed ones, sparkling in the dim light to reveal sudden flashed of green color. They seemed to look him over, darting back and forth between his own blue eyes, searching out something.
      The prisoner caught his breath, gathering himself back up, returning his surprise to replace it with the snarling attitude that fit them too well. "Who the hell are you?" Quick fingers went to the new figures neck, squeezing. "Talk quick or I'll kill you!"
      The figure choked a bit, the grip doing nothing more than laboring his breathing, calming him back to the position he was before, the warm hands still cradling the prisoner's cheeks.
      One of the warm hands shifted, reaching up to push a mat of black hair from the prisoner's forehead, a shimmer coming to one of the large eyes to spill into a silver trail down the shadowed cheek. The prisoner released the grip slightly, hands still at the figure's throat, staring curiously back at the unfamiliar figure that sat before him.
      "Masaka..." the figure whispered, a soft and gently voice that caught the prisoner and threw him for a loop. There was a vague masculinity in that soft voice, assuring in a single word that no hard would come to the owner of the deep blue eyes. "Can't be you... Kuronue?"
      Snarling, the prisoner leapt to his feet and managed to fling the figure a good four feet across the cell before he toppled back down to the ground. Like a lame, vicious Makai demon, he pulled himself across the floor to the figure, taking up a hand full of silken red hair and yanking the figure to sit up. "Tell me now how you know my name! Tell me before I kill you!!!" he hissed quietly, shaking the handful of red hair with a deadly force.
      "Kuronue..." a pair of large green, feline eyes slid open, wincing as his captured mane of hair was violently shaken. "Kuronue.. it's me! Kurama!!"
      "Nani... LIAR!!!" The fingers went back to the redhead's throat, this time with a vice-like grip. "Liar!"
      Kurama chocked and pried at the fingers, gaining little leeway under the immense strength the almost skeleton-like figure suddenly possessed.
      "You bastard! Kurama's dead! Died along time ago. How DARE you..."
      "But.. I'm not... dead..." The redhead struggled to catch what little semblance of a breath he could, thrashing under the deadly grip ... and the human features suddenly bleached and blinked in the darkness, the human body fading out to be replaced with a taller, perfect Youko man, still struggling under the enormous grip the frail prisoner suddenly had. The blue eyes widened, the grip loosening slightly but still encircling the Youko's thin throat. Youko Kurama loosened the rest of the fingers with great difficulty, panting and gasping for air, leaning forward over his knees to cough the feeling back into his lungs.
      "No... they told me... they showed me. You're not Kurama, Kurama's dead."
      "I hardly think I'm dead, Kuro." Kurama raised his head to find the face of his once dear and loyal friend a horribly twisted face he could barely recognize through all the bruises and scars. He was like a ghost with large, blue eyes, the skin about them colored red and black from the poor nutrition and abuse e had suffered through the years. Scars and bruises riddled his thin face, moving down to thrash over almost every part of his body, making him into a grotesque monster that he had seen in old horror movies. "Oh gods, Kuronue. What have they done to you!" The Youko reached out and took the face in his hands again, another trail of silvered tears flowing down his cheeks. "Those BASTARDS!" he screamed... Kuronue shot a hand forward to cover his mouth.
      "Shh, they'll hear you!!" He looked the Youko straight in the face, realization dawning on him suddenly. Kurama WAS sitting before him, the Youko he had once known and thought killed by the same group of ruthless monsters that imprisoned him here. "I don't believe it. It is you Kurama... it is YOU!"
      Kurama leaned forward and gently laid his head down on a thin shoulder, wanting to hug the friend he had thought he lost, but feared crushing him under his weight.
      And Kuronue chuckled.
      Youko Kurama drew back and looked him straight in the face, a mixture of surprise, shock and what-not. "Kurama, do you have any idea the agony I went through when I thought you were dead?"
      "Yes, I do. And worse. You wouldn't believe how you've haunted me! Hell, one of Yakumo's men even took your form and tried to kill me little more than a few months ago. In a sense, he almost did!"
      One of Kurama's ears twitched suddenly, breaking the small reunion that had tried to begin, catching a faint voice of another guard. "I have to get you out of here now! Can you walk?"
      "No. All the injuries, all the beatings. They haven't healed right. Kurama, this is ridiculous. Did you hope to save me by coming here?"
      "Yes, of course!"
      "Idiot, my time's come and gone."
      "Fine. You talk like the worlds going to end, in the meantime, I'm carrying you."
      "Like hell you are, Kurama!"
      "Watch me!" Kurama hoisted the man up into his arms and rose swiftly to his feet, surprised at the light weight Kuronue's body held, even lighter than Hiei's little body.

      On the other side of the dungeon, a swift hand quickly caught Hiei and reeled him back, pulling him into a dim shadow. The golden eyes of the youko servant who accompanied him stared off, concentrating on a far corner of the dungeon as he received mental messages. "Kyoudai-kun's found him! I don't believe it." Yo-mawari smiled, trying to process the overwhelming wave of emotions that threatened to drown his mind on the spot. "Come on, Meijin-san. He wants us to get the hell out of here!" (c) September 1997 by Jiminy Cricket Presses

On to Chapter 3 Prt II