All the Years Between: Messenger

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And part three - also not yet beta read.


All the Years Between: Messenger

mes·sen·ger
n.
1. One that carries messages or performs errands.
2. A bearer of news.
3. A forerunner; a harbinger.
4. A prophet.
5. Hiei's day job.





They were through the Gate and back to the Makai before Mukuro spoke so much as a word.

"What are your impressions?"

Hiei flipped his cape over his shoulder, baring one of his katana and keeping his senses wide open. The passage of Makai they had to pass through was one of the roughest in the Second Kingdom, not because the demons there were dangerous, but because the landscape devoured any demon foolish enough not to watch his step. Normally it was not an area they'd have crossed except for patrol or a dire emergency, but Mukuro had insisted on using it, instead of one of the more convenient Gates. She had seemed in a hurry to get out of the Ningenkai. "Rorgan is not as strong as he wants us to think."

"No?" Mukuro sounded disinterested. She had been a thief when he was still a squalling infant – she had surely noticed all this herself. But she did enjoy having a second opinion, he'd learned.

"Rorgan's army, such as it is-" Mukuro laughed softly but let him continue – "consists mostly of lesser demons willing to take orders. The stronghold itself is… not as secure as they act." It was a converted human building, one of the glass-covered mountains that dwarfed any forest. Skyscrapers, Hiei thought they were called. The only real security Rorgan could have from a building made mostly of glass over a hollow metal skeleton was its size. With Rorgan playing god from one of the top levels, he'd be difficult to reach.

Unless his attackers could fly. Or teleport. Or climb.

"Getting inside wouldn't be hard." Hiei grudgingly acceded the one advantage Rorgan had, "Getting inside unseen would be harder. No matter where you started from, someone would see you coming."

Mukuro tipped her head to the side. Kurama hummed when he had nothing he wanted to share, Yuusuke and the idiot had smirked, Koenma changed the subject. Genkai had told you to your face she wasn't sharing. Mukuro just didn't say anything.

Hiei was reluctantly interested to see where Mukuro was leading. Her interest in Rorgan was to be expected, given the situation. Rorgan himself was a petty, egomaniacal nuisance, and Hiei was willing to cut him down for that reason alone, never mind anything else. But Mukuro tended to be a bit more methodical. She planned, plotted and generally only moved when she knew exactly where the next ten moves would take her. It was a character trait she shared with a certain fox and one that made Hiei want to set them both on fire from time to time.

"Rorgan is interested in an alliance with the Three Kingdoms."

Hiei narrowed his eyes. "That's unusual."

"The Three Kingdoms are unusual. And unusually powerful. Perhaps he feels that it would suit his dreams of power to mimic our example."

"So he wants to make it the Four Kingdoms?" Hiei said skeptically.

"That seems to be his intent." Mukuro paused at the top of a rise, the wasteland spreading out around them on all sides. "He seems to think that a ragtag army and some ridiculous stronghold makes him an equal to the Three Kings."

It wasn't his place to say so, but Mukuro knew his insight was accurate. "Urameshi will never concede to an alliance with any demon who intends to conquer the human world. He's remarkably hostile to the entire idea."

"Imagine," Mukuro said wryly. "I imagine that involving King Urameshi will more or less bring the alliance to a screeching halt."

Hiei grunted agreeably. Mukuro had no intention of participating in any alliance with Rorgan, that much was obvious. Did she simply want someone else to refuse him? Knowing Mukuro, Hiei was certain that she had something else in mind.

Mukuro showed no signs of moving yet. "You did not meet Rorgan, did you?"

He hadn't, which she knew. As her heir, it had been his right to accompany her to Rorgan's throne room. As her servant, it had been his place to wait outside until their negotiations had concluded. That was the role Mukuro had asked him to play this time. While she was cloistered away with the Demon Lord, he'd spent the entire time exploring as much of Rorgan's stronghold as possible, talking to the slaves, the soldiers and the handful of powerful demons who made up Rorgan's court.

"Does Rorgan hold their loyalty?"

"As much as any leader. Less than some. If he were defeated they'd change sides in an instant, but as long as he's the strongest and smartest, they'll fight for him." Rorgan had one thing in his advantage; he'd known that the human world was ripe for more than pillage. He was the first one to come through the Tear with an army.

"And the slaves?" Mukuro was studying the horizon as she asked, but Hiei gave her a sideways glance.

"An egotistical mistake," Hiei said flatly.

Mukuro objected to slavery on something approaching moral grounds. Hiei just believed it was the height of stupidity to keep a conquered enemy in your house, serving your food and warming your bed.

Mukuro chuckled. "Rorgan assured me his humans were most harmless and docile."

Hiei had dwelt in the human world for several years before he was able to venture back and forth between the worlds at will. He'd worked with humans, fought alongside them, and battled one whose strength had rivaled a god. He didn't understand them, sympathize with them or particularly like them, but he did know one thing: humans made demons look like unimaginative amateurs when properly provoked.

"Rorgan's an idiot," Hiei said.

"A dangerous one, though." Mukuro turned to look back toward the Gate. "I need you to deliver a message for me."

"To Yomi?" If any of the Three Kings would approve an alliance with Rorgan, it would be Yomi, if only to try and keep an eye on him.

"To Urameshi."

Hiei paused slightly before following her. "Shall I tell him you have a proposition for him?"

She grinned at him from beneath the hood of her cloak. "Tell him I need to meet with him. Tell him I've found something he has lost. That should keep his attention for a little while."

Hiei could see how that conversation would go. Yuusuke would follow him around trying to guess what she'd found, all the while wondering why he hadn't noticed he'd lost it. "You don't plan on handing Urameshi the Ningenkai."

"Don't be ridiculous. Our alliance forbids any such thing." She smirked. "Quite specifically. No, no. Besides, Urameshi is far too powerful already. But there may be another option."

****

"I'm pretty sure I haven't lost anything," Yuusuke insisted thoughtfully. "I mean, it's not like I carry around keys or a wallet or anything."

Hiei crossed his arms and stared.

"You're no fun, you know that?" Yuusuke slumped in the chair across from him. "She really didn't tell you what this is all about?"

Attacking a Demon Lord was suicidally stupid, even if the lord in question was Urameshi Yuusuke, a demon who had an atypical habit of assuming that most people were as genial as he was. Hiei grit his teeth. "No."

Yuusuke grinned; a sure sign he was about to say something stupid. "Hey, maybe she's found my mind!"

Mukuro had better appreciate this.

"Get it, Hiei? I've lost my – oh, you suck."

"Your jokes suck," Hiei snapped. He gritted his teeth and reigned his temper in before he gave in to the temptation to take a swing. Urameshi always won anyway.

The mazoku was pouting as he leaned back in his chair. "I'm getting tired of waiting."

It had been less than an hour since Hiei arrived to deliver Mukuro's message, but it had been more than a year since the Tear and Urameshi's first desperate – disastrous – reaction to the invasion of the Ningenkai. More than a year of waiting, at Mukuro's behest, and Kurama's urging.

Hiei studied the architecture above Urameshi's head. "She opened a gate."

He could feel the tension in the room rise as Urameshi stilled in his seat, his only outward reaction to the news.

"Is that what she plans to tell me?" Yuusuke asked slowly and if his voice had dropped an octave into a dangerous growl Hiei didn't let himself react.

"No." The gate was important, certainly. It the first one anyone had managed to open in a year, but Mukuro would have called Yomi as well if that was all she had to tell. "Whatever this is about, it concerns you directly."

Yuusuke was watching him closely. "Something I lost," Yuusuke said slowly.

"Apparently."

Say what you will about him, Urameshi could occasionally catch a clue. "Or someone?"

Hiei hesitated. "I don't know."

"This gate she opened – where did it take her?"

"Japan."

Yuusuke nodded slowly. "How long will it take us to reach her palace?"

Hiei smirked. "Less than a day – if you can keep up."

"Che. Bitch. As if." Yuusuke stood, tossing aside the dark blue cloak. "We'll be making one stop, though."

He paused and risked a sideways glance at Urameshi. "We will?"

"Whatever Mukuro's got in mind, whatever she's plotting," Yuusuke waggled his fingers in the air and rolled his eyes. "I want Kurama in on it."

Mukuro wasn't going to like this. "Yomi was not part of the conversation."

Yuusuke made a rude sound – something human children did a lot, Hiei had learned. "Duh. Did I say anything about Yomi?"

Mukuro really wasn't going to like this, but Hiei figured she'd cope. And… it wouldn't be bad, to see Kurama again.

Hiei was, perhaps, a little tired of waiting himself.

****

They found him in a garden he had obviously planted and cultivated himself, coaxing Ningenkai plants to grow in Makai soil. He did not appear even slightly surprised to see them, but he was understandably skeptical. And annoyed. And also rather amused, but that was typical when Yuusuke was trying to talk him into doing something stupid.

Convincing him was harder than it usually was. They couldn't actually tell Kurama anything, as far inside Yomi's territory as they were. The risk that someone loyal to Yomi would overhear them was too high. Kurama got a little indignant at that. "And I'm not loyal, I suppose?"

Hiei crossed his arms and stared at the sky. "We're wasting time."

"You're loyal," Yuusuke said, and Hiei could tell that the idiot was about to say something stupid like 'to me' which would force Kurama to refuse him on principle.

"If we keep her waiting, it's entirely possible that Mukuro will go on without us," Hiei pointed out.

"You've both already said enough to get me in trouble if anyone were listening," Kurama pointed out, his gold eyes gleaming at them.

Yuusuke grinned. "He has a point."

Hiei sighed and resisted the urge to leave without them. "Mukuro opened a gate," he hissed, feeling a brief surge of satisfaction at the way Kurama's eyes widened. "We have to get moving, now."

"Did she go through the gate?" the youko asked.

"We did." Hiei said. "And I will not tell either one of you anything until we're moving again. We're wasting time."

Kurama stood, brushing dirt off his legs and smoothing down his tunic as he fell into step alongside Hiei. "Where are we going?"

"Second Kingdom," Yuusuke said. "Mukuro wants to talk to me about whatever she saw while she was over there."

Hiei could feel Kurama's gaze against his back. The youko wanted to ask the same thing Yuusuke had asked just a few hours earlier. Hiei didn't have an answer for either one of them. He didn't know what Mukuro had seen.

Or who.

But he had a feeling the waiting was over.


To be continued in Rescue