So I can work on it while I'm away...

[onemuseleft]

Three demons fell out of a hole in the sky.

The demons were pale, silver-grey and smooth, no pores or wrinkles to mar the corpse-like whiteness of their flesh, with narrowed almond eyes and hair like cornsilk. Their entire eyes were a liquid red, not the bright red of a digital alarm clock, but a deeper, crimson color like fresh blood. They were humanoid and human sized, with two legs and two arms and other various pieces of anatomy. They did not wear clothes, unfortunately, and Kuwabara managed to see quite a bit more of them than he really needed to before they got their claws in him.

Literally. They had fingers like railroad spikes and he didn't have time to react before they were on him, claws punching through his skin, tearing holes in his guts and his right thigh and one of them, snarling in his face with thousands of needle-shaped teeth, punched its fingers right through his chest. Blood mixed with air and bubbled in the back of his throat and then they pulled and he was yanked off his feet into the air, and the pain was really really not good. He gagged on a scream, blood thick in the back of his throat and it was no consolation that if he wasn't suffocating in his own blood he'd have been screaming his head off and what the fuckK because he'd been minding his own damned business for once.

His reiki was faltering somewhere, thin in his blood where it should have been focused around the wounds, healing the damage. This was bad admittedly, but he'd lived through worse and his reiki was still there just pushed back, almost like it couldn't survive in close proximity to whatever it was that had hold of him.

And fuck, that wasn't good, and then something crashed against him and the demon who'd had him by the leg was gone and Kuwabara and the remaining two demons were falling.

He hit the ground hard, his chest and head cushioned more or less against Yuusuke's side, his lower body hitting the asphalt a little harder than he was comfortable with, but not enough to do any damage. Youki exploded just past his ear and he could hear Yuusuke's voice shouting. Youki burned his wounds, fire hot and lightning strong, where the demons had dug their claws into him but faded as the demons were destroyed.

Instinct kicked in and he shoved at Yuusuke's chest with one hand, not so much pushing the half-blood away as sort of flopping himself out of Yuusuke's grip, and he sort of half-dragged himself to the edge of the street, away from the lingering residue of whatever those things had been, away from the press of Yuusuke's youki. His reiki surged forward as soon as he did, uncurling through his body like cold water, like fresh air, and he curled up on his side and hacked up blood into the gutter and tried to force himself to take slow, even breaths while his insides slowly knit themselves back together.

Demonic energy surrounded him again but it was the familiar-safe sense of Yuusuke and Kuwabara couldn't be bothered to react. Yuusuke prodded him in the shoulder with one finger and Kuwabara snarled at him weakly, blood on his lips making the expression fiercer than it was.

"Dude," Yuusuke said. "What the hell?"

****

Shit just happened sometimes, they figured. Humans with reiki were always targets for demons, though it was rarer and rarer for anything to want to pick a fight with Kuwabara. Too powerful for the majority of demons to risk crossing and too well-connected for the stronger ones to target without good reason. He just wasn't used to being a random target, but apparently it happened all the time. Apparently the flesh of a human with reiki was tastier than the flesh of normal humans, a bit of knowledge that Hiei seemed quite comfortable dishing out.

Anyway, when nothing else showed up after a few days, they chalked it up to random violence. Yuusuke spent a couple weeks referring to Kuwabara as demon-bait and calling him his little damsel in distress, which was perilously close to the standard norm for them.

And once they'd washed their hands of it, let their guard down again, the demons were back.

Different ones, because Yuusuke had pretty thoroughly annihilated the last three, but obviously of the same kind of demon, red eyes and cornsilk hair and sharp (very sharp) fingers.

Kuwabara'd sensed something, felt something, like a ripple in the air. He'd glanced to the side as he passed an alley and he'd seen the air split open like a grape, reality pierced and peeled and opened in a portal the size of a small car. And through that portal he'd seen something – he wasn't too clear on what afterwards, and the selective memory loss made Genkai narrow her eyes thoughtfully – something that wasn't the Makai and wasn't another part of Earth. Maybe it was the Netherworld, or maybe Hell itself, but all Kuwabara clearly remembered seeing were the demons. An ocean of them, all of them pushing and surging toward the portal. Two had crawled their way out of the portal, claws gripping the edges of reality like a doorway and pulling themselves up into the real world.

The reiken had slaughtered those first two easily, but whatever was keeping that gate open wasn't either of them, and more had crawled up and out.

He'd cut his way through a dozen of them, skirting the edges of the portal, his reiki flickering weakly as he got too close to it, then returning as he punched and clawed his way through a wall of the demons, skulls shattering under his fists, claws digging into his arms and legs and one getting a grip on his shoulder before he wrenched free. He ducked past the portal and paused long enough to look at it from behind; He couldn't see it from that side, it was as if it wasn't there, but demons were still climbing out of thin air, so the portal hadn't shut yet. He reached into the space where it had been, felt his hand brush against the hair of a demon he couldn't see yet, and felt something hot stir in the back of his mind.

The portal snapped shut with a rush of air, atmosphere filling a vacuum, and the demon who'd been crawling its way into the human world fell to the pavement, crushed to a boneless pulp.

"Huh," he said, studying his hand. "What the hell?"

****

After that the demons began to hang back.

Kuwabara could see them, because they obviously weren't trying to hide from him. They weren't about to attack again, either, it seemed, so after the first couple times he slipped away to kill them, he just started ignoring them. There would be one lingering in an alley as he walked to work, or sitting on top of the station as night fell. He'd see one peering out from under a parked car, perched on a window ledge or leering at him through a window. They appeared outside his bedroom window and one dragged its tongue over the bathroom window while he took a piss on morning.

"It's giving me a complex," he complained irritably to Kurama after about a week.

Kuwabara had mentioned the second attack to Kurama, less because he thought his friend could do anything about it and more in a 'well, if I happen to vanish off the face of the earth anytime soon, this is probably why and by the way keep your eyes open cause we still don't know what they want' sort of way. Kurama, in turn, had dragged Kuwabara to some occult library and done the research thing, trying to figure out what the demons were.

"I think we can safely agree that they won't remain passive for long," Kurama said. "Their first two assaults were highly aggressive. I believe they've decided to hang back and evaluate you before they attempt a third attack."

Neither one of them mentions that demons who can open portals and attach by the hundreds only need wait till he's incapacitated.

So far they haven't shown up in his apartment, which could indicate restraint on their part. Kuwabara's hoping it means the wards cut into his doorframes and windowsills and even the mail slot are working. They'd taken a lot of energy and effort and he'd be really pissed if it turns out that the only demon they inconvenience was Yuusuke (not that they stop him, but he always complains that they make his skin itch). The wards had been cut with painstaking precision using a knife dipped into a mixture of his own blood and saliva ("Spit," Kurama had instructed and when Kuwabara blinked at him added, "Blood magic works best as a defensive magic when mixed with another bodily fluid. So either spit, or drop your pants.") and were meant to keep out anything that meant him harm ("Which explains why they bother Yuusuke.").

As they were leaving the library Kurama saw the two demons peering up from a storm drain.

One night Kuwabara dreamed he was tied up on the floor, watching a young blond man about his own age, his arms and chest and guts cut (carved) open and blood spilling down him, wrapped in chains and hoisted into the ceiling, left to dangle from a beam.

He woke up with the uncomfortable feeling that it hadn't been a dream and looked up to see one of the demons standing outside his bedroom window, a hand pressed flat against the glass, watching him.

"We're not the main characters this time," Kuwabara said fuzzily, his mouth thick with exhaustion after Kurama woke him from a dream about the same blond guy, now bandaged up, fighting one of the grey-skinned demons somewhere with one hell of a cityscape in the background.

The youko quirked an eyebrow at him and Kuwabara licked his lips and glanced around, trying to remember if he'd let Kurama into the apartment at any point. "You know," he said, letting just a sliver of irritation into his voice, "when I'm being stalked by the demon hordes, it does not make me feel better to know you can just slide in and out whenever you want." He figured he sounded more resigned than angry.

Kurama ruffled his hair. "The wards weren't meant to keep me out," he said. "Get dressed. I think I know what your demons are."

"They're not my demons," Kuwabara grumped, temporarily burying his face in the pillow and trying to get the vague premonition out of his mind. Whoever the blond guy was, he was having a worse couple days that Kuwabara was, and there was something he was missing. Something the dreams were leading up to.

"They obviously like you best," Kurama said. "And I think I know why. Get dressed. The others are going to be here in a few minutes."

****

"The 'Ouch'?" Yuusuke repeated doubtfully, sitting up from where he was slouched against the front of Kuwabara's couch.. "I don't know, guys. I don't know how seriously I can take a bad guy called The Ouch."

"The Auphe," Kurama corrected him gently from the couch above him. "And there's more than one. Considerably more."

"The original bogeyman," Kuwabara added, flipping through the old book Kurama had apparently stolen from Genkai. "The things that go bump in the night. These guys are the reason that humanity coined the phrase 'a plague of demons'. Even other demons don't seem to like them very much."

"Not much to like," Hiei said, voice cold steel and bitter winds. He stood in front of the sliding glass doors and watched them all in their reflections. "The Auphe do not forge alliances outside their own kind and they hunt demons as readily as humans, if slightly more discerningly."

Yuusuke leaned back on his hands and frowned at the ceiling. "Okay, so what do these Ouchie Boo-Boo guys want with us?"

"Nothing, I dare say." Kurama ignored the incredulous glances coming his way and added, "They don't want us. I believe they're targeting Kuwabara specifically."

"Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside," he muttered.

"How many of these things are there?" Yuusuke asked.

"Many," Hiei said. "I can smell dozens of them just in the vicinity around the apartment."

Kurama nodded and Yuusuke wrinkled his nose. "Gross," he whined.

"Do not tell me these things are marking their territory all over my apartment," Kuwabara said incredulously. "You've got to be kidding me."

"On the bright side," Kurama said, "the Auphe are so generally feared and reviled, that few other demons will bother you once they know the Auphe have set their eyes on you."

"Thanks a lot."

"So how bad are these guys?" Yuusuke asked.

"Individually they are actually fairly harmless to us." Kurama folded his hands together. "They're fast, but not very fast. They're strong, but not stronger than us. The trouble with the Auphe is that they are inhumanly cruel and violent and there are so very many of them. If one Auphe is after you, it is a safe assumption that all of them are."

Kuwabara flipped the book shut. "How many are we talking about here?"

"It would not be remiss to assume millions," Kurama said gently. "There are rumors, however..."

"Rumors?" Kuwabara prodded.

"The Auphe lost a battle recently," Hiei said, still talking to the sliding glass door. "I don't know any of the details - and most are wary of talking about the Auphe for fear the Auphe will take offense. But it seems the Auphe recently picked a fight with someone in the human world and lost sorely."

"So what? They're doing it again?" Yuusuke glanced at Kuwabara, then Hiei. "I'm not trying to be all ego-driven here-"

Kuwabara and Hiei snorted.

"-shut up. I don't know who the Auphe went up against last time, but there's no way we're an easier alternative. I mean," he gestured at himself. "Hi, King of the fucking demon world here. And as bad as the Auphe's reputation is, Kurama's at least that scary - or did we all forget about a stadium full of demons wetting their pants at the sound of his name? And Hiei's - well, Hiei, I'm sure you'll get a reputation when you're all grown up."

"I believe," Kurama said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the sound of Hiei's katana sliding free of its sheath, "that you missed the point, Yusuuke."

"They're not after you," Kuwabara said. "They're after me, and they seem to think that's pretty good odds."

"Well if they're after you they're going to get us," Yuusuke snapped back. "What kind of stupid fucking demon attacks a guy without checking to see if he's got friends?"

"That may be why they backed off," Kurama said.

"The issue isn't how strong we are, or whether the Auphe intend to battle us," Hiei said. "The issue is what the Auphe want with him in the first place."

****