Kitsunetsuki : One
Title: Kitsunetsuki
Warnings: Eh...ah, none? *feels strange*
Rating: PG (for now)
Pairing: Youko/Kurama/Kuronue
Summary: Inari is less than pleased that Kurama has chosen to be a mere human. Thus, by the deities will, he is reminded of who he had been once before.
Notes: Soooo, yeah. This is going to be another multi-chap. A SHORT ONE. *shakes fist at self* Ten chapters max. Hopefully.
-
Kurama, meet Youko.
-
Stars. Light.
Pain.
Kurama gasped suddenly, his eyes flying open. He coughed and rolled onto his side, old habits making him curl into a protective ball, using his arms to protect his sides.
He ached. All over he ached like small pins were being driven through each and every one of his cells. There was the taste of blood in his mouth, the urge to throw up, light-headedness.
Where was he?
A light touch on his brow. Two fingers, the skin of which was soft and creamy white. When he tried to open his eyes he felt like daggers were being driven into them. Too bright, too bright.
“What?” he rasped, pressing his forehead into...something soft as he curled and arched in pain. Slowly it lessened, became something of a dull ache. But he was still blinded, he couldn’t see where he was.
Something urged him wordlessly. Feather light across his consciousness. Calm. Safe now. Motherfatherprotector.
Then he realised he was being cradled in someone’s lap. And the lap was that of a woman. Her hands stroked his hair, pulling it back from his forehead, pawed at his neck and chest, nudged him lightly like a curious animal.
Safe. Motherfatherprotector.
It took him a long time, but eventually he relaxed in her arms, and slowly, he became adjusted to the light. He opened his eyes a little and looked up.
A woman stared down at him. She was elderly, a mere wisp of something she had once been, he could tell. Thin and with sunken in eyes and sagging skin she smiled sweetly at him and pulled his hair away from his neck. He was sweating and yet he felt so very cold.
Behind her nine white tails swayed gently.
Kurama’s eyes flew wide and he stiffened. He couldn’t breathe or blink, he merely stared.
Motherfatherprotector.
“I...”
She smiled. I’ve never been fond of you, Kurama, but even I think that you need a little divine assistance this time.
He stared. Her fingers brushed along his neck and he shivered, her claws, long and pale, scraped along his neck but his instincts didn’t cause him to flinch at all. She wasn’t speaking, merely mouthing the words, her brilliant red eyes watching him as if she could see right through him.
His brain caught up with him. “But you don’t assist humans.” Well, not unless it had to do with the rice crops.
Point?
“...I am human,” he said resolutely. There was a thickness between them. He’d rejected her centuries ago, shunned and hated her, and yet here she was. Talking to him in a field of white on white on white and-
She snorted rather rudely. You are kitsune. The skin you wear does not define you.
Kurama swallowed thickly. “What do you want?”
This is about what you need.
The woman’s lips thinned as she smiled, raising a weathered hand up to his forehead and pressing two fingers there again. And suddenly it was like being pushed through a pinhole again. His entire body screamed, pain wracking him as space and time folded and collapsed around him.
He drifted, and then, suddenly, it all stopped.
Gasping and coughing Kurama opened his eyes to soiled grasslands, and the stench of blood and death.
“Oi,” a voice called, “this one is still alive!”
Kurama knew that voice. He knew that voice. Oh god. Oh Inari, what have you done?
Pushing himself up, and struggling to do so, Kurama managed to get up onto his hands and knees. Footsteps and the sound of crunching bones, the clatter of weapons kicked clear out of the man’s path, the man who was advancing on him from behind. Kurama moaned quietly in annoyance more so than pain.
A clawed hand fisted in his hair and wrenched him up onto his knees, pressing his shoulder blades into leather-clad thighs, forcing Kurama to arch his back. Raven hair slid into his vision from above, along with a face. Kurama stared, unsure of whether he wanted to cry, laugh or let out a sigh of relief.
Kuronue sent him a toothy, upside-down smile. “Very alive, from the looks of it, and pretty, if not somewhat stupid.”
Kurama glared.
“Hm? Let me see.” Someone else was approaching. The sound of earth moving and a slight melody of bells and trinkets moving alerted Kurama to this new person’s position. Kurama had an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach that said he knew damn well who this was.
Youko pocked his head into Kurama’s line of vision, then moved around to crouch before Kurama. His ears were perked high and alert, his tail swaying slowly. He was covered in blood, dressed in a long-sleeved outfit that was more blood than material. He dripped dark, congealed clumps of blood onto the grass before Kurama’s knees.
Youko reached forward and grasped Kurama’s chin, tilting Kurama’s head back and forth. He did the same with the rest of Kurama’s body, gliding hands along his arms and sliding his critical gaze all over him. Kurama swallowed thickly, still rather confused and shocked enough to not really react too much at all. The sheer oddness of staring back at his other face was...kind of overwhelming. “Beautiful indeed. We’ll sell him at the traders in Shintosato.”
Kuronue groaned like a child. “That’s three days travel! We’ll be dragging him along all the way.”
Youko smirked up at Kuronue. “You’ll get over it, I’m sure. He’ll buy us a few days of peace, and a quiet place to stay before we head back home.”
“Excuse me,” Kurama interrupted, blinking up at them. “Where am I?”
They paused and looked down at him. Kuronue arched an eyebrow and Youko merely narrowed his cold eyes down at Kurama.
“You are in Makai, human. Just east of the Great East Forest,” Youko supplied wearily, his eyes shining oddly. Kuama knew his own hidden confusion and curiosity when he saw it; to anyone else it would have appeared to have been a stern warning.
That answered a number of questions that Kurama hadn’t asked aloud. One, he appeared human. He assumed that his red hair meant that he was still in his old body, and while he had no knowledge of ever capturing someone who looked like his human body, he assumed that Inari had pulled some major shit to get him placed 400 years in the past. Two, Shintosato hadn’t been built until Kurama had been around 600, and if Kuronue was here, and Shintosato already had a slave trader’s market, them it’d make Kuronue 500. A few years away from his death and the day when Youko would come across Yomi.
“Ah,” he said, dropping his head a little in a slight bow. “Thank you.”
“You know, call me fucking crazy or whatever, because you wouldn’t be the first, but, seem as we’re, well...us, shouldn’t you be terrified or something? Or do you not know who we are?” Kuronue mused, his hand tightening in Kurama’s hair, pulling at his scalp and making him wince a little.
“I know who you are,” Kurama said calmly, conversationally even. He blinked his giant green eyes up at Kuronue, who was frowning down at him, past the red pendant that was hanging from his throat. “Kuronue and Youko Kurama. You are thieves. Murderers. Quite famous and adored, but feared as well.”
“And that doesn’t frighten you?” Kuronue asked, surprise weaving through his tone.
Kurama thought about it for a moment. He calculated the best way to act to keep him alive, knowing his and Kuronue’s attitudes and actions at that point in time.
He smiled up at Kuronue, ignoring Youko’s slowly narrowing gaze. “No. Not really.”
“Well... that’s the most interesting reaction I’ve ever got from a human who wasn’t some kind of zealot. You’re not a zealot are you?”
Kurama opened his mouth to say that no, he wasn’t a zealot, and then he remembered that a few moment’s ago he had just been sent back in time by Inari. “I...don’t know. Am I?” It was a question he posed to himself rather than his two confused captors, but it seemed as if the question were posed at them instead. Kurama was pleased to see that it was only digging the blade of confusion deeper.
“He’s touched, Kuronue. Ignore it.” Youko rose to his feet again, his face utterly blank of emotion. Kurama knew all too well what must have been going through his...er, Youko’s mind. He allowed himself a smile and grunted a little as Kuronue yanked him to his feet and tied his hands behind his back silently. It felt like ordinary rope, something that would be easy to keep humans, but useless against demons.
Kurama wondered if he could still use his skills without making the universe implode in on itself if Youko found out that he was indeed actually his later self from the future and that, yeah, everything he knew was soon to turn to shit and he’d turn into and even more heartless and cruel bastard after Kuronue’s death.
“I am sane,” he said simply, standing still while Kuronue tied knots and watched Youko’s back as he rooted through the pouches of the dead all surrounding them.
“Uh-huh. My name’s also Annie.”
Kurama took the time to drink in his surroundings. Like Youko had said they were indeed just on the fringe of the Great East Forest. Close enough to almost touch the line of thick, demonic trees were he to extend his hand. The rolling hills that carved up towards the forest was full of thick grass long enough to brush along his calves as he stood staring west at the blackened clouds above and dark, healthy grass plains. The dead were numerous and all very, very dead, if it was not too redundant to say so. An ambush, from the looks of it. Or that is what it had obviously been intended as. Now it was just a massacre.
Kurama looked down at himself.
He was dirty. His legs were covered in grime, sweat and dried blood. He wasn’t wearing the warrior garb as those around him, but rather that of a service boy. Why the hell a small army would bother to take a slave along with them set Kurama back a few moments before his rusty and ignored libido kicked him savagely. Oh. Ergh, so he was a bed slave.
He’d always hated that the warriors of demon lords would bring such a boy along with them wherever they went. Not old enough to be a man and thus sexless enough to still have feminine traits. Though seventeen, to these demons, who were thick and tall, he -- a mere human -- was thin and scrawny. He looked enough like a child, and his body functioned as a man. He would suffice.
His clothing confirmed as much. No shirt or shoes, just a swathe of cloth around his midsection that barely covered all of the important bits above his thighs, and leather arm guards. There was a small dagger attached to his right thigh, but Kuronue slipped it out of the holder and stashed it with his other weapons. Kurama forced himself to not frown at that.
He needed to find out if his youki still existed here, or if he truly was human for the time being.
“Come along, little human poppet,” Kuronue chirped, tugging on Kurama’s hands and not bothering to slow his pace when Kurama stumbled and yelped. Well, it looked like he’d be making the journey backwards.
-
Three days travel for demons was actually five days with two demons and a human who liked to do everything he could to impede the process, Youko and Kuronue quickly discovered.
“Fuck it!” Kuronue proclaimed loudly, tossing Kurama down towards the river bed. He watched him slide in the mud for a bit before he turned to Youko and opened his mouth to say something further.
Kurama shook the mud out of his hair the best he could and rolled onto his back, then sat up. He wormed forward a bit, into the water, and looked at himself in the rippling surface. Grime ridden face, a black eye, split lip and bright, cunning eyes stared back at him. His crimson hair that wasn’t covered in mud appeared to be on fire as the sun shone through the red lining of the black clouds above.
“I either need a rest, or you can drag the stubborn shit yourself, you arrogant prick,” Kuronue seethed, flinging profanity at Youko in his frustration.
Kurama smiled fondly and his reflection copied him.
There was a rustle of trees, indicating Youko jumping up into them to brood for a while as he waited for Kuronue to calm down enough to continue on.
Kuronue marched to the water, and consequently, Kurama. He began to strip himself of all unnecessary clothing, and Kurama made damn sure to keep his eyes on the roiling reflection of his old friend. He missed that body, he hadn’t seen it in centuries. Hadn’t touched or kissed it. Hadn’t...loved it.
Kuronue strode past him and waded into the water, lifting his wings above the water as if he was afraid they might make him sink or something. Kurama stared at his ass until it disappeared into the water itself. Then he sighed and looked down at his grimy body and twisted his hands behind his back.
If Kurama wasn’t...well actually Youko, he would have believed this farce of an argument. Youko was keeping watch over Kurama while Kuronue bathed under the guise that they had let their guard down. They were testing Kurama, seeing if he really were just an ‘insane’ human, or something more.
After all, they surely had to have noticed that Kurama had more ki than normal humans did. And it tasted suspiciously like youki.
Raising his head, Kurama splashed his legs around in the water a bit, trying to get the dirt off them as Kuronue released his hair from its tie and dunked his head into the steadily flowing river, then rose again, flicking it back over his shoulders. His long ears poked out of the sodden mass in an endearing way.
Youko shifted in the tree behind him, quiet enough that a normal human would not be able to hear the sudden stiffening. Kurama’s eyes flicked in the direction they had come in, just as Kuronue paused, his hands falling to his sides in the lukewarm water.
There was an S-class demon passing by, warning them to not dare to try anything. Kurama closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest.
It was Raizen.
Slowly, as he passed by, Kuronue began to animate again, and Youko settled. Kurama went back to splashing his feet in the water like a demented three year old with a large stick that liked to make splashing noises.
“Strange, for a human to go suddenly quiet when a human eater just happens to wander by,” Youko’s voice drifted from the high branches of the nearest tree.
Kurama smiled to himself. “I have been in Makai long enough to know which demons to avoid when I can.”
There was silence for a long time, and then Youko settled back into the tree wordlessly. Kuronue snickered quietly.
It wasn’t often something slipped Youko’s mind, so either he was preoccupied (which meant something serious was up) or he needed to stop staring at the muscles shifting in Kuronue’s back as he washed his arms and neck.
Well, plenty of time for investigating later. After all, Kurama had yet to find out the reason for Inari’s impromptu lesson in the quantum physics and the Butterfly Effect with a very hands on approach.
Ah, that was something he’d have to think about actually. If he did something wrong now, how badly would he screw up his own future?
-
Next
Warnings: Eh...ah, none? *feels strange*
Rating: PG (for now)
Pairing: Youko/Kurama/Kuronue
Summary: Inari is less than pleased that Kurama has chosen to be a mere human. Thus, by the deities will, he is reminded of who he had been once before.
Notes: Soooo, yeah. This is going to be another multi-chap. A SHORT ONE. *shakes fist at self* Ten chapters max. Hopefully.
-
Kurama, meet Youko.
-
Stars. Light.
Pain.
Kurama gasped suddenly, his eyes flying open. He coughed and rolled onto his side, old habits making him curl into a protective ball, using his arms to protect his sides.
He ached. All over he ached like small pins were being driven through each and every one of his cells. There was the taste of blood in his mouth, the urge to throw up, light-headedness.
Where was he?
A light touch on his brow. Two fingers, the skin of which was soft and creamy white. When he tried to open his eyes he felt like daggers were being driven into them. Too bright, too bright.
“What?” he rasped, pressing his forehead into...something soft as he curled and arched in pain. Slowly it lessened, became something of a dull ache. But he was still blinded, he couldn’t see where he was.
Something urged him wordlessly. Feather light across his consciousness. Calm. Safe now. Motherfatherprotector.
Then he realised he was being cradled in someone’s lap. And the lap was that of a woman. Her hands stroked his hair, pulling it back from his forehead, pawed at his neck and chest, nudged him lightly like a curious animal.
Safe. Motherfatherprotector.
It took him a long time, but eventually he relaxed in her arms, and slowly, he became adjusted to the light. He opened his eyes a little and looked up.
A woman stared down at him. She was elderly, a mere wisp of something she had once been, he could tell. Thin and with sunken in eyes and sagging skin she smiled sweetly at him and pulled his hair away from his neck. He was sweating and yet he felt so very cold.
Behind her nine white tails swayed gently.
Kurama’s eyes flew wide and he stiffened. He couldn’t breathe or blink, he merely stared.
Motherfatherprotector.
“I...”
She smiled. I’ve never been fond of you, Kurama, but even I think that you need a little divine assistance this time.
He stared. Her fingers brushed along his neck and he shivered, her claws, long and pale, scraped along his neck but his instincts didn’t cause him to flinch at all. She wasn’t speaking, merely mouthing the words, her brilliant red eyes watching him as if she could see right through him.
His brain caught up with him. “But you don’t assist humans.” Well, not unless it had to do with the rice crops.
Point?
“...I am human,” he said resolutely. There was a thickness between them. He’d rejected her centuries ago, shunned and hated her, and yet here she was. Talking to him in a field of white on white on white and-
She snorted rather rudely. You are kitsune. The skin you wear does not define you.
Kurama swallowed thickly. “What do you want?”
This is about what you need.
The woman’s lips thinned as she smiled, raising a weathered hand up to his forehead and pressing two fingers there again. And suddenly it was like being pushed through a pinhole again. His entire body screamed, pain wracking him as space and time folded and collapsed around him.
He drifted, and then, suddenly, it all stopped.
Gasping and coughing Kurama opened his eyes to soiled grasslands, and the stench of blood and death.
“Oi,” a voice called, “this one is still alive!”
Kurama knew that voice. He knew that voice. Oh god. Oh Inari, what have you done?
Pushing himself up, and struggling to do so, Kurama managed to get up onto his hands and knees. Footsteps and the sound of crunching bones, the clatter of weapons kicked clear out of the man’s path, the man who was advancing on him from behind. Kurama moaned quietly in annoyance more so than pain.
A clawed hand fisted in his hair and wrenched him up onto his knees, pressing his shoulder blades into leather-clad thighs, forcing Kurama to arch his back. Raven hair slid into his vision from above, along with a face. Kurama stared, unsure of whether he wanted to cry, laugh or let out a sigh of relief.
Kuronue sent him a toothy, upside-down smile. “Very alive, from the looks of it, and pretty, if not somewhat stupid.”
Kurama glared.
“Hm? Let me see.” Someone else was approaching. The sound of earth moving and a slight melody of bells and trinkets moving alerted Kurama to this new person’s position. Kurama had an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach that said he knew damn well who this was.
Youko pocked his head into Kurama’s line of vision, then moved around to crouch before Kurama. His ears were perked high and alert, his tail swaying slowly. He was covered in blood, dressed in a long-sleeved outfit that was more blood than material. He dripped dark, congealed clumps of blood onto the grass before Kurama’s knees.
Youko reached forward and grasped Kurama’s chin, tilting Kurama’s head back and forth. He did the same with the rest of Kurama’s body, gliding hands along his arms and sliding his critical gaze all over him. Kurama swallowed thickly, still rather confused and shocked enough to not really react too much at all. The sheer oddness of staring back at his other face was...kind of overwhelming. “Beautiful indeed. We’ll sell him at the traders in Shintosato.”
Kuronue groaned like a child. “That’s three days travel! We’ll be dragging him along all the way.”
Youko smirked up at Kuronue. “You’ll get over it, I’m sure. He’ll buy us a few days of peace, and a quiet place to stay before we head back home.”
“Excuse me,” Kurama interrupted, blinking up at them. “Where am I?”
They paused and looked down at him. Kuronue arched an eyebrow and Youko merely narrowed his cold eyes down at Kurama.
“You are in Makai, human. Just east of the Great East Forest,” Youko supplied wearily, his eyes shining oddly. Kuama knew his own hidden confusion and curiosity when he saw it; to anyone else it would have appeared to have been a stern warning.
That answered a number of questions that Kurama hadn’t asked aloud. One, he appeared human. He assumed that his red hair meant that he was still in his old body, and while he had no knowledge of ever capturing someone who looked like his human body, he assumed that Inari had pulled some major shit to get him placed 400 years in the past. Two, Shintosato hadn’t been built until Kurama had been around 600, and if Kuronue was here, and Shintosato already had a slave trader’s market, them it’d make Kuronue 500. A few years away from his death and the day when Youko would come across Yomi.
“Ah,” he said, dropping his head a little in a slight bow. “Thank you.”
“You know, call me fucking crazy or whatever, because you wouldn’t be the first, but, seem as we’re, well...us, shouldn’t you be terrified or something? Or do you not know who we are?” Kuronue mused, his hand tightening in Kurama’s hair, pulling at his scalp and making him wince a little.
“I know who you are,” Kurama said calmly, conversationally even. He blinked his giant green eyes up at Kuronue, who was frowning down at him, past the red pendant that was hanging from his throat. “Kuronue and Youko Kurama. You are thieves. Murderers. Quite famous and adored, but feared as well.”
“And that doesn’t frighten you?” Kuronue asked, surprise weaving through his tone.
Kurama thought about it for a moment. He calculated the best way to act to keep him alive, knowing his and Kuronue’s attitudes and actions at that point in time.
He smiled up at Kuronue, ignoring Youko’s slowly narrowing gaze. “No. Not really.”
“Well... that’s the most interesting reaction I’ve ever got from a human who wasn’t some kind of zealot. You’re not a zealot are you?”
Kurama opened his mouth to say that no, he wasn’t a zealot, and then he remembered that a few moment’s ago he had just been sent back in time by Inari. “I...don’t know. Am I?” It was a question he posed to himself rather than his two confused captors, but it seemed as if the question were posed at them instead. Kurama was pleased to see that it was only digging the blade of confusion deeper.
“He’s touched, Kuronue. Ignore it.” Youko rose to his feet again, his face utterly blank of emotion. Kurama knew all too well what must have been going through his...er, Youko’s mind. He allowed himself a smile and grunted a little as Kuronue yanked him to his feet and tied his hands behind his back silently. It felt like ordinary rope, something that would be easy to keep humans, but useless against demons.
Kurama wondered if he could still use his skills without making the universe implode in on itself if Youko found out that he was indeed actually his later self from the future and that, yeah, everything he knew was soon to turn to shit and he’d turn into and even more heartless and cruel bastard after Kuronue’s death.
“I am sane,” he said simply, standing still while Kuronue tied knots and watched Youko’s back as he rooted through the pouches of the dead all surrounding them.
“Uh-huh. My name’s also Annie.”
Kurama took the time to drink in his surroundings. Like Youko had said they were indeed just on the fringe of the Great East Forest. Close enough to almost touch the line of thick, demonic trees were he to extend his hand. The rolling hills that carved up towards the forest was full of thick grass long enough to brush along his calves as he stood staring west at the blackened clouds above and dark, healthy grass plains. The dead were numerous and all very, very dead, if it was not too redundant to say so. An ambush, from the looks of it. Or that is what it had obviously been intended as. Now it was just a massacre.
Kurama looked down at himself.
He was dirty. His legs were covered in grime, sweat and dried blood. He wasn’t wearing the warrior garb as those around him, but rather that of a service boy. Why the hell a small army would bother to take a slave along with them set Kurama back a few moments before his rusty and ignored libido kicked him savagely. Oh. Ergh, so he was a bed slave.
He’d always hated that the warriors of demon lords would bring such a boy along with them wherever they went. Not old enough to be a man and thus sexless enough to still have feminine traits. Though seventeen, to these demons, who were thick and tall, he -- a mere human -- was thin and scrawny. He looked enough like a child, and his body functioned as a man. He would suffice.
His clothing confirmed as much. No shirt or shoes, just a swathe of cloth around his midsection that barely covered all of the important bits above his thighs, and leather arm guards. There was a small dagger attached to his right thigh, but Kuronue slipped it out of the holder and stashed it with his other weapons. Kurama forced himself to not frown at that.
He needed to find out if his youki still existed here, or if he truly was human for the time being.
“Come along, little human poppet,” Kuronue chirped, tugging on Kurama’s hands and not bothering to slow his pace when Kurama stumbled and yelped. Well, it looked like he’d be making the journey backwards.
-
Three days travel for demons was actually five days with two demons and a human who liked to do everything he could to impede the process, Youko and Kuronue quickly discovered.
“Fuck it!” Kuronue proclaimed loudly, tossing Kurama down towards the river bed. He watched him slide in the mud for a bit before he turned to Youko and opened his mouth to say something further.
Kurama shook the mud out of his hair the best he could and rolled onto his back, then sat up. He wormed forward a bit, into the water, and looked at himself in the rippling surface. Grime ridden face, a black eye, split lip and bright, cunning eyes stared back at him. His crimson hair that wasn’t covered in mud appeared to be on fire as the sun shone through the red lining of the black clouds above.
“I either need a rest, or you can drag the stubborn shit yourself, you arrogant prick,” Kuronue seethed, flinging profanity at Youko in his frustration.
Kurama smiled fondly and his reflection copied him.
There was a rustle of trees, indicating Youko jumping up into them to brood for a while as he waited for Kuronue to calm down enough to continue on.
Kuronue marched to the water, and consequently, Kurama. He began to strip himself of all unnecessary clothing, and Kurama made damn sure to keep his eyes on the roiling reflection of his old friend. He missed that body, he hadn’t seen it in centuries. Hadn’t touched or kissed it. Hadn’t...loved it.
Kuronue strode past him and waded into the water, lifting his wings above the water as if he was afraid they might make him sink or something. Kurama stared at his ass until it disappeared into the water itself. Then he sighed and looked down at his grimy body and twisted his hands behind his back.
If Kurama wasn’t...well actually Youko, he would have believed this farce of an argument. Youko was keeping watch over Kurama while Kuronue bathed under the guise that they had let their guard down. They were testing Kurama, seeing if he really were just an ‘insane’ human, or something more.
After all, they surely had to have noticed that Kurama had more ki than normal humans did. And it tasted suspiciously like youki.
Raising his head, Kurama splashed his legs around in the water a bit, trying to get the dirt off them as Kuronue released his hair from its tie and dunked his head into the steadily flowing river, then rose again, flicking it back over his shoulders. His long ears poked out of the sodden mass in an endearing way.
Youko shifted in the tree behind him, quiet enough that a normal human would not be able to hear the sudden stiffening. Kurama’s eyes flicked in the direction they had come in, just as Kuronue paused, his hands falling to his sides in the lukewarm water.
There was an S-class demon passing by, warning them to not dare to try anything. Kurama closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest.
It was Raizen.
Slowly, as he passed by, Kuronue began to animate again, and Youko settled. Kurama went back to splashing his feet in the water like a demented three year old with a large stick that liked to make splashing noises.
“Strange, for a human to go suddenly quiet when a human eater just happens to wander by,” Youko’s voice drifted from the high branches of the nearest tree.
Kurama smiled to himself. “I have been in Makai long enough to know which demons to avoid when I can.”
There was silence for a long time, and then Youko settled back into the tree wordlessly. Kuronue snickered quietly.
It wasn’t often something slipped Youko’s mind, so either he was preoccupied (which meant something serious was up) or he needed to stop staring at the muscles shifting in Kuronue’s back as he washed his arms and neck.
Well, plenty of time for investigating later. After all, Kurama had yet to find out the reason for Inari’s impromptu lesson in the quantum physics and the Butterfly Effect with a very hands on approach.
Ah, that was something he’d have to think about actually. If he did something wrong now, how badly would he screw up his own future?
-
Next