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onemuseleftTitle:A Thousand Years of Solitudes
Chapter: The Swarm
Pairing: Kurama/Yuusuke-ish
Rating: PG for language and violence
Warnings: Well, it's set a couple hundred years in the future, so some people are dead.
This story is dedicated to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scheherezhad. Possibly the most belated birthday gift-fic in the world.
This story takes place after Partings
A Thousand Years of Solitudes: The Swarm
Yuusuke reappeared in Kurama's life as suddenly as he had left it. Kurama didn't sense him coming – oddly appropriate, since Kurama had never seen Yuusuke's leaving either, not until it was too late to stop him or follow him. Kurama hadn't ever intended to do either of those things, but he hated to be caught unaware.
Kurama was tracking a small band of human bandits through the edges of the growing wastelands of eastern China. They were a minor threat, little more than a nuisance to the rest of the local human population, robbing supply caravans and raiding farms. So far they hadn't caused any major damage or injuries, but that wouldn't last. As food became scarcer and the government aid faltered, people would start defending their crops more fiercely. Food riots were already commonplace in many parts of the world; most of the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula; huge sections of Europe were starving as a largely urbanized population began moving out into the countryside and discovered just how useless their BAs were in a world where a full meal had become a luxury. So far the Chinese government had kept order by the simple matter of feeding their military well and arming it better, but Kurama knew it was just a matter of time before the system broke down here as well.
Stopping one band of thieves wouldn't save the world, or even the surviving population of China, but in the last century Kurama had seen mostly harmless bands like this grow bolder and bolder, becoming marauders and murderers – or worse. Cannibalism was mostly occurring in heavily urban areas where people could not grow their own food, but desperation was desperation. If Kurama could make sure it never went that far, then he would.
He'd tracked them for several days, watching as they raided solitary farms for crops and livestock. Never seed or farming implements – they weren't interested in growing their own food when they could take it from others. More lazy than evil, in Kurama's estimation.
Humans were odd creatures, Kurama had always believed. Sloth was a deadly sin, but murder had never made the list.
He was waiting on a hillside, crouched beside scrub brush, his hair hidden beneath an earth-colored cloak and hood, watching the bandits from a safe distance as they wound their way deeper into the wasteland. He didn't realize anyone was approaching until he heard the dry crackle of footsteps on dead grass and a shadow blocked out the sun. He turned before they got too close.
Urameshi Yuusuke stood at the top of the hill, backlit by the sun, looking like nothing so much as a particularly disheveled avenging angel.
"I wasn't expecting to see you again," Kurama said, letting his quarry slip away. He'd find them again; Yuusuke he wasn't so sure about.
Yuusuke looked like he had the last time Kurama had seen him; his hair was more disheveled, perhaps, but it wasn't like you could get hair gel anymore. He was smirking, the wind blowing his hair in his face. Then he moved and Kurama had to shield his eyes against the sun.
"You're a hard man to track down," Yuusuke said. "I had to go to Yomi."
Kurama found the thought that Yomi was still keeping tabs on him somewhat unsettling. "I didn't know you were looking."
"I wasn't. Not for you. Not at first." Yuusuke shrugged. "Not for a long time."
Kurama deliberately raised one brow. "Who were you looking for then?"
Yuusuke grinned, a sheepish expression, and almost the exact same look he'd had the last time Kurama had seen him. He stooped down, balanced on the balls of his feet until he and Kurama were eye-to-eye, and he held out his hand, palm up, fingers curled into a fist. Kurama held Yuusuke's glance for a moment, then glanced down. Yuusuke opened his hand to reveal a small, slug-shaped demon.
Kurama held his hand out and Yuusuke tipped the creature into his grip. It was perhaps an inch long, about as thick around as a shoelace. Its skin was reptile-smooth unlike a real slug, the flesh pale brown and beginning to rot.
"So long without a word," Kurama teased, "and on your first day back you bring me a decomposing slug?"
Yuusuke pulled his eyes away from the creature long enough to meet Kurama's gaze. His eyes were dark, shadowed and when he spoke his voice was tight and nearly breathless. "It's part of the Swarm."
Kurama barely stopped his hand from clenching around the tiny corpse. "You're certain?"
A short, laughing huff was Yuusuke's response as he carefully plucked the body from Kurama's hold. "A hundred fucking years I've been looking for this thing, Kurama. Believe me, I made sure."
There had been no funeral for Kuwabara, no memorial service. There was no urn or burial plot, and whatever prayers had been said for him had been said to empty space instead of over his body. He'd been reported missing by one of his professors in Los Angeles, but the authorities had never found him and gradually the case had gone cold and been forgotten.
They'd known he was dead before anyone had even missed him. Kurama had killed demons and humans and he'd watched them die, but he'd never felt someone die before. A century and a half later, there were still times Kuwabara's loss echoed like a phantom pain in the back of his mind
A demon-hunter based in California had contacted them to tell them their friend was dead. Kurama had been standing in the street outside the man's home by the time his phone rang with the news. They had hunted for the demon that killed Kuwabara, but all they had found was a string of missing people and talk amongst the local demon population about something called The Swarm.
They'd hunted until the demon population of Los Angeles was in chaos, until even the human authorities began to notice. They'd hunted until it became painfully obvious that there was no trail to follow. And then they'd hunted until every demon they could lay their hands on who had knowledge of the Swarm's activities was dead. It had made for pale vengeance. Going back to Japan empty-handed had been the single most painful defeat Kurama had known in his entire life.
Two hundred years should have dulled the sting of defeat, but with Yuusuke's words it was as if it had been only days.
****
There was a working dimensional gate located north of the Korean peninsula, if one was willing to stretch their definition of the word 'working'. The upheaval that had struck the human world had affected the dimensional gates – many were submerged, others were destabilized by the chaos surrounding them. Kurama had not traveled by gate since he had left Japan more than a hundred years ago; he had not even known that there was a functional gate left in that part of the continent.
"It feels like it's about to collapse," Kurama observed as they set foot in the demon world, the gate sputtering shut behind them.
Yuusuke shrugged. "At least it didn't spit us out in open air." He rubbed the back of his head and winced. "If you're ever trying to get to North Africa, by the way? Don't use the Cairo gate."
Kurama slanted a sideways glance in Yuusuke's direction. "You think?"
"Smartass," Yuusuke said.
Their final destination was somewhere in Northern America – Yuusuke hadn't given Kurama any specific location, but Kurama was well aware that his friend and former teammate had never been very good at directions even before the world dissolved into chaos and maps became useless. To get there they would have to utilize another gate, one well within the borders of Yomi's kingdom.
"You didn't like, sleep with his wife or spit in his face or anything when you abdicated, did you?"
"I didn't abdicate, Yuusuke." Kurama wrapped his cloak around his shoulders to ward off the chill of the damp Makai air. "And Yomi doesn't have a wife."
Yuusuke didn't look terribly reassured. "Uh-huh. So he's not going to kill you for setting foot in his territory?"
"I'm sure Yomi has more pressing concerns than waiting around for me to show my face," Kurama told him.
"Dude waited a thousand years to kick your ass," Yuusuke pointed out, cheerful. "He became king of the fucking demon realm just so he'd be able to kick your ass."
"It was your ass, specifically, that got kicked," Kurama said. "And Yomi's desire to become king had a great deal more to it than simple vengeance against myself."
"But it was a huge bonus."
Kurama bit back a grin. "Perhaps."
After more than a hundred years they probably should have been relative strangers, awkward with one another and tentative in their conversation. Instead it was as if they were back in Japan before the waters rose and they both lost everything they'd had.
Except each other. The thought rose, unbidden but not unwelcome, in the back of Kurama's mind and he conceded it was true. Ultimately, of all their friends and family, they were the only two left. And then even Yuusuke had been gone, swallowed by his grief. And, apparently, pursuing his vengeance.
Kurama maintained a wary eye as they crossed the Makai at a run. The demon world seemed little changed by the last century, though logically Kurama had known it would be. Aside from losing their access to human food sources, most demons had little invested in the human world – and under the triumvirate rule of Yuusuke, Yomi and Murkuro, Enki's ban on human flesh had been maintained far longer than anyone had ever believed it could. So when the human world fell, the demon world had barely batted an eye.
It was the Spirit World's sudden disappearance – and potential destruction – that had gotten their attention. And it was the Spirit World's disappearance that had sent demonkind scattering through the human world like ants to a picnic.
Kurama and Yuusuke had tried to stem the tide, but there were dozens of gates throughout the world, and even with half of them lost or destabilized, it was still more than the two of them alone could control. In hindsight, Kurama could see how Yuusuke's increasingly frantic efforts to control the demonic activity in the human world were an indication of his friend's grief.
Keiko had died the same day the Spirit World fell. And neither of them knew if her soul had made it to heaven, or if she had been only the first of millions to die and be left to wander in the void.
In truth, they didn't know that reaching heaven would have saved her. Kuwabara, Genkai, Atsuko, Shiori – they had all died before the Spirit World fell, but there was no way of knowing if they were still there, still safe, or if they had been destroyed in whatever event had caused it all. It didn't bear thinking about, so Kurama focused on other things, but sometimes he remembered his step-brother's children, Yuusuke's son and daughter, the dozens of people he'd come to know and care about over the centuries since his rebirth.
"Whatever you're thinking about," Yuusuke called from ahead of him, "stop it."
Kurama blinked at Yuusuke's back for a moment, then shook his head. "Since when are you so intuitive?" he asked as he quickened his pace to draw even with his old friend.
"Please," Yuusuke said. "I could always read you like a book."
****
The gate Yuusuke led them to was far more stable than the last one and Kurama stepped through one side and into the HumanWorld in one smooth movement.
The gate let them out in a desert, not unlike the one Kurama had just left, but this one felt different to him. Older. "The Mojave?" he asked and Yuusuke shrugged.
"Some kind of desert in California," he said. "I flunked geography."
Kurama swept the horizon, concentrating on their surroundings. He could feel the cacti and scrub brush, the few weathered trees hardy enough to survive there. Beneath that he could feel the dead and dying roots of older plants that could no longer survive on what the desert provided. This desert was old, created long before the great drought that had changed the world, but it was getting bigger, spreading every year. "Everything is dying here," Kurama said absently, regretting it when he noticed the way Yuusuke stiffened beside him. "But there's something out there."
He could feel it, a brush of something very nearly unfamiliar. He closed his eyes and focused on the half-forgotten sensation of reiki. "Yuusuke-"
"I know. I feel it, too."
Reiki had vanished with the Spirit World. Humans born with the spiritual energy had been unable to replenish it once they had spent it. Ferry girls caught in the human world had wasted and died. Leylines and elemental sites the world over were fading. They would not vanish entirely, especially not the elemental sites, but the spiritual energy that had made them thrive was gone.
"A leyline?" Kurama suggested. "Or an ancient holy place, perhaps. Something with residual power, and no one or nothing to drain it…"
Yuusuke shrugged and started forward.
"Have you been here before?" Kurama asked. "Do you know where we're going?"
"No. The person who brought me the slug-thing is someone I trust, though. And they told me where they had found it." Yuusuke shrugged. "I went for you before I came here."
"Just as well you did," Kurama said. "I'd have been annoyed if you'd gotten yourself killed fighting this thing alone."
"Yeah, whatever. I could totally – get down!"
Yuusuke tackled Kurama around the waist, knocking them both to the ground several feet away. Kurama pushed his hair out of his eyes just in time to see the creatures that swept down at them from the sky.
"Angel-Eaters," Yuusuke said grimly as he pushed himself to his feet. "Shit. I thought those things were all dead."
They were demons, or demonic creatures. Low-level, largely unintelligent, but vicious and highly adept at killing. They were the size of a small child and humanoid in shape, with membranous wings and thin, knobby limbs with exaggerated, swollen joints. Instead of fingers and toes they had wickedly curved talons. Their heads were narrow and pointed, such as a bird, with leathery skin and hundreds of needle-sharp teeth.
They also fed on reiki. They had earned their name by attacking and killing ferry girls, though they would also hunt humans and anything else that had spiritual energy.
"They've been living off whatever the source of reiki in the desert is," Kurama said. "But it can't be sustaining them particularly well. They look half starved."
The three Angel-Eaters did look even more wasted than their kind usually did, and as Kurama watched them swoop around for another dive, he could see how their movements dragged with exhaustion and hunger. Not quite at death's door, not yet, but they were starving. "They must be the last ones," Kurama said. "Or nearly the last. But I thought they could only devour reiki from living flesh. I've never heard of one draining it from an elemental site before."
"Kill first, hypothesize later," Yuusuke instructed.
Kurama almost felt bad about it – the creatures were so obviously not a threat to them. "Why are they attacking us?" he asked. "They can't feed off youki so they've no reason to be hunting us."
Yuusuke shot him an exasperated look. "Seriously? They're called Angel-Eaters, Kurama, something tells me they don't really need justification for trying to kill things."
The creatures were almost on them again. Kurama snapped his wrist and the thin rose stem he kept there slid into his palm, the red bud opening into a bright blossom.
"Two hundred years later," Yuusuke said, "and you still have the gayest weapon ever."
Kurama fed youki into the flower and the rosewhip coiled around his palm. "It's best to kill them," he agreed, ignoring Yuusuke's comment. "We can't leave them here to attack other travelers."
"Or to keep feeding off whatever is out there," Yuusuke said quietly. "If there's any reiki left at all, we can't let these things suck it dry."
The first Angel-Eater tucked its wings against its side and dive-bombed down at them, its two companions following close on its heels. Kurama stepped back in bemusement as all three of them went straight for Yuusuke. The half-blood grabbed the first one out of the air and ducked the other two, rolling on his side to get out of their line of attack. The one in his hands shrieked as it flailed at him, but Yuusuke held it at arm's length. "Why me?" he asked with an air of long-suffering as he shook the Angel-Eater.
"Possibly they still sense traces of reiki in you."
Yuusuke made a face. "I used up all my reiki a long time ago."
"Well, then maybe they just think you're pretty," Kurama suggested.
Yuusuke rolled his eyes and stepped to the side as one of the remaining creatures came around again. He threw the creature he already held, using it to knock its companion out of the air. Both hit the ground hard and did not get up again.
Kurama turned to meet the final creature's dive. It shrieked at him as it dived, but the shriek turned into a scream as it burst into flames and plummeted to the ground a blackened carcass.
Kurama stared at it for a moment, shocked, then spun to the east as a familiar youki washed over him. "Hiei!"
The fire demon stood a few feet away and looked the same as he had the last time they'd met, before he returned to the Makai permanently to take his place as Mukuro's heir. Kurama found himself smiling as he looked upon his oldest living friend and shook his head. "I should have known you would be here."
"You could have just told me you'd found the bastards," Hiei pointed out. "It would have saved me time." He nodded to Yuusuke, who was watching Hiei with his own bemused grin. "As it was, my messengers told me that Yuusuke had switched suddenly from looking for the Swarm to looking for you. It wasn't hard to put together."
Yuusuke planted his hands on his hips. "You've been keeping tabs on me?"
"Yes," Hiei said. "And Kurama. And my sister. And several other beings of note."
"I'm a being of note," Yuusuke said smugly.
"Barely," Hiei said, his voice drier than the desert air. "You haven't done much of interest until now."
Ignoring Yuusuke, who was sticking his tongue out at Hiei, Kurama offered the fire demon a warm smile. "It's good you're here."
Hiei nodded, uninterested in a sentimental reunion. "You recognize it?"
Yuusuke scoffed. "It hasn't been that long, Hiei. We still know reiki when we sense it."
The look on Hiei's face suggested that they were both idiots. "I didn't ask if you sensed it. I asked if you recognized it."
Words died on Kurama's tongue as he focused on the reiki again and suddenly realized what Hiei was asking them. He did recognize it. It was oranges and coffee, worn leather and stale cigarettes, cold water and the thin ozone feel of lightning on the horizon.
"Kuwabara," Kurama said.
He could tell by the widening of Yuusuke's eyes that he had realized it as well.
They crossed the distance at a run, sand and stone kicked up behind them. Four or five miles was nothing, and within moments Kurama could feel reiki in the air around him, smell it like rain. It felt like Kuwabara, tasted like him, and Kurama had to swallow against the memory
Yuusuke had his hand out in front of him, palm up. His eyes were distant and Kurama resisted the urge to snap out of it. "There's a lot of reiki here," Yuusuke said, his voice thick. He closed his eyes and Kurama could see the spiritual energy soak into his skin. "Whatever Kuwabara did here, it left traces."
"More than a trace." Hiei untied the ward on his Jagan and let the bandana hang around his neck. The third eye opened slowly and Hiei followed its gaze down. "Underground," he said.
Before Yuusuke could do something destructive, Kurama stepped forward. There weren't many living things here, but there were enough. He concentrated on the dry grasses and the thorny brush, pushed their roots through the earth. He sensed it when they brushed against the source of the reiki under the earth and directed them around it, pushing hard-packed dirt up and away until a bowl had been cut into the ground.
There were hundreds of thousands of the same tiny slug-like demons Yuusuke had shown him. All of them still, frozen beneath a seal of reiki. Hung in stasis for as long as Kuwabara's wards would hold. "This is the Swarm," Kurama said. "This is what Kuwabara came here to hunt."
"The wards are breaking down," Hiei said. He knelt at the edge of the seal and skimmed his fingers over the energy barrier. It flared a familiar fire-orange at his touch, subsiding as he removed his hand. "He didn't intend this to be permanent."
He wouldn't have. He would have gone back to LA and recruited help from the other demon-hunters. Or he would have come back with gasoline and a match. He was just containing it until it could be killed.
Hiei stooped and took something from the dirt. When he stood, he held a part of the Swarm in to fingers. "They're slowly getting loose," he said. "This is what the reiki-eaters were living off. They've absorbed some of Kuwabara's reiki after two centuries in the seal. It was just enough to keep them alive all this time."
"I don't get it," Yuusuke said. He stood beside the seal, his hands in his pockets. "If he sealed it, how did it kill him?"
"Unless it wasn’t the Swarm that killed him."
There was something in Hiei's voice that spoke of doubts long considered, and a theory long contemplated. Kurama frowned at him. "What are you saying?"
Yuusuke was watching Hiei from behind his bangs. "Yeah, you were there. You followed the same trail we did."
Hiei stepped closer, his black cloak swirling around his legs. "Consider. The only reason we went after the Swarm is because the demon hunter told us that was what Kuwabara was after."
"You think he lied to us?" Kurama didn't think so. The demon hunter – despite being part demon himself – had been dedicated to protecting humanity. He'd also seemed genuinely grieved by the circumstances, and he'd helped them on their months-long hunt for Kuwabara.
"If he'd lied I would have known," Hiei said. "But the only reason we focused on the swarm was because we knew Kuwabara was after them already. There was no independent evidence suggesting they had killed him."
"No body," Yuusuke said the words like they made him sick. "The Swarm devours."
Hiei's eyes flickered in Yuusuke's direction. "Yes. But, obviously, they didn't devour Kuwabara. He couldn't have sealed them in if he was already dead."
"So maybe he sealed himself in with them," Yuusuke argued.
"There's no death here," Hiei said. "You think I wouldn't be able to see it if one of my partners had been eaten alive not three feet from where I'm standing?"
Kurama stepped in before either one of them could snap at each other further. "The Swarm didn't kill Kuwabara."
"He was alive when he sealed them here," Hiei said. "And he didn't die here. He left the Swarm and went-" He gestured out at the desert around them. "-he went somewhere. He died somewhere. But not here."
Yuusuke clenched his fists and his side and when he spoke his voice was a low rumble of thunder. "You're telling me that for two hundred years, we've been hunting the wrong damn thing?"
Hiei met his glare evenly. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
****
There was nothing else to do. Hiei burned the Swarm, pushing hellfire through the two-hundred-year-old wards and consuming every last particle of the creature. When the creature was dead the wards dissolved into reiki, which lingered in the air like the scent of water before fading.
They left the dessert together, the three of them a team again for as long as it took to reach the gate to the Makai.
Neither Kurama nor Yuusuke noticed when Hiei, his Jagan still unbound, paused at a certain point halfway to the gate and stared up toward heaven.
****
The end.
Chapter: The Swarm
Pairing: Kurama/Yuusuke-ish
Rating: PG for language and violence
Warnings: Well, it's set a couple hundred years in the future, so some people are dead.
This story is dedicated to
scheherezhad. Possibly the most belated birthday gift-fic in the world.This story takes place after Partings
Yuusuke reappeared in Kurama's life as suddenly as he had left it. Kurama didn't sense him coming – oddly appropriate, since Kurama had never seen Yuusuke's leaving either, not until it was too late to stop him or follow him. Kurama hadn't ever intended to do either of those things, but he hated to be caught unaware.
Kurama was tracking a small band of human bandits through the edges of the growing wastelands of eastern China. They were a minor threat, little more than a nuisance to the rest of the local human population, robbing supply caravans and raiding farms. So far they hadn't caused any major damage or injuries, but that wouldn't last. As food became scarcer and the government aid faltered, people would start defending their crops more fiercely. Food riots were already commonplace in many parts of the world; most of the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula; huge sections of Europe were starving as a largely urbanized population began moving out into the countryside and discovered just how useless their BAs were in a world where a full meal had become a luxury. So far the Chinese government had kept order by the simple matter of feeding their military well and arming it better, but Kurama knew it was just a matter of time before the system broke down here as well.
Stopping one band of thieves wouldn't save the world, or even the surviving population of China, but in the last century Kurama had seen mostly harmless bands like this grow bolder and bolder, becoming marauders and murderers – or worse. Cannibalism was mostly occurring in heavily urban areas where people could not grow their own food, but desperation was desperation. If Kurama could make sure it never went that far, then he would.
He'd tracked them for several days, watching as they raided solitary farms for crops and livestock. Never seed or farming implements – they weren't interested in growing their own food when they could take it from others. More lazy than evil, in Kurama's estimation.
Humans were odd creatures, Kurama had always believed. Sloth was a deadly sin, but murder had never made the list.
He was waiting on a hillside, crouched beside scrub brush, his hair hidden beneath an earth-colored cloak and hood, watching the bandits from a safe distance as they wound their way deeper into the wasteland. He didn't realize anyone was approaching until he heard the dry crackle of footsteps on dead grass and a shadow blocked out the sun. He turned before they got too close.
Urameshi Yuusuke stood at the top of the hill, backlit by the sun, looking like nothing so much as a particularly disheveled avenging angel.
"I wasn't expecting to see you again," Kurama said, letting his quarry slip away. He'd find them again; Yuusuke he wasn't so sure about.
Yuusuke looked like he had the last time Kurama had seen him; his hair was more disheveled, perhaps, but it wasn't like you could get hair gel anymore. He was smirking, the wind blowing his hair in his face. Then he moved and Kurama had to shield his eyes against the sun.
"You're a hard man to track down," Yuusuke said. "I had to go to Yomi."
Kurama found the thought that Yomi was still keeping tabs on him somewhat unsettling. "I didn't know you were looking."
"I wasn't. Not for you. Not at first." Yuusuke shrugged. "Not for a long time."
Kurama deliberately raised one brow. "Who were you looking for then?"
Yuusuke grinned, a sheepish expression, and almost the exact same look he'd had the last time Kurama had seen him. He stooped down, balanced on the balls of his feet until he and Kurama were eye-to-eye, and he held out his hand, palm up, fingers curled into a fist. Kurama held Yuusuke's glance for a moment, then glanced down. Yuusuke opened his hand to reveal a small, slug-shaped demon.
Kurama held his hand out and Yuusuke tipped the creature into his grip. It was perhaps an inch long, about as thick around as a shoelace. Its skin was reptile-smooth unlike a real slug, the flesh pale brown and beginning to rot.
"So long without a word," Kurama teased, "and on your first day back you bring me a decomposing slug?"
Yuusuke pulled his eyes away from the creature long enough to meet Kurama's gaze. His eyes were dark, shadowed and when he spoke his voice was tight and nearly breathless. "It's part of the Swarm."
Kurama barely stopped his hand from clenching around the tiny corpse. "You're certain?"
A short, laughing huff was Yuusuke's response as he carefully plucked the body from Kurama's hold. "A hundred fucking years I've been looking for this thing, Kurama. Believe me, I made sure."
There had been no funeral for Kuwabara, no memorial service. There was no urn or burial plot, and whatever prayers had been said for him had been said to empty space instead of over his body. He'd been reported missing by one of his professors in Los Angeles, but the authorities had never found him and gradually the case had gone cold and been forgotten.
They'd known he was dead before anyone had even missed him. Kurama had killed demons and humans and he'd watched them die, but he'd never felt someone die before. A century and a half later, there were still times Kuwabara's loss echoed like a phantom pain in the back of his mind
A demon-hunter based in California had contacted them to tell them their friend was dead. Kurama had been standing in the street outside the man's home by the time his phone rang with the news. They had hunted for the demon that killed Kuwabara, but all they had found was a string of missing people and talk amongst the local demon population about something called The Swarm.
They'd hunted until the demon population of Los Angeles was in chaos, until even the human authorities began to notice. They'd hunted until it became painfully obvious that there was no trail to follow. And then they'd hunted until every demon they could lay their hands on who had knowledge of the Swarm's activities was dead. It had made for pale vengeance. Going back to Japan empty-handed had been the single most painful defeat Kurama had known in his entire life.
Two hundred years should have dulled the sting of defeat, but with Yuusuke's words it was as if it had been only days.
****
There was a working dimensional gate located north of the Korean peninsula, if one was willing to stretch their definition of the word 'working'. The upheaval that had struck the human world had affected the dimensional gates – many were submerged, others were destabilized by the chaos surrounding them. Kurama had not traveled by gate since he had left Japan more than a hundred years ago; he had not even known that there was a functional gate left in that part of the continent.
"It feels like it's about to collapse," Kurama observed as they set foot in the demon world, the gate sputtering shut behind them.
Yuusuke shrugged. "At least it didn't spit us out in open air." He rubbed the back of his head and winced. "If you're ever trying to get to North Africa, by the way? Don't use the Cairo gate."
Kurama slanted a sideways glance in Yuusuke's direction. "You think?"
"Smartass," Yuusuke said.
Their final destination was somewhere in Northern America – Yuusuke hadn't given Kurama any specific location, but Kurama was well aware that his friend and former teammate had never been very good at directions even before the world dissolved into chaos and maps became useless. To get there they would have to utilize another gate, one well within the borders of Yomi's kingdom.
"You didn't like, sleep with his wife or spit in his face or anything when you abdicated, did you?"
"I didn't abdicate, Yuusuke." Kurama wrapped his cloak around his shoulders to ward off the chill of the damp Makai air. "And Yomi doesn't have a wife."
Yuusuke didn't look terribly reassured. "Uh-huh. So he's not going to kill you for setting foot in his territory?"
"I'm sure Yomi has more pressing concerns than waiting around for me to show my face," Kurama told him.
"Dude waited a thousand years to kick your ass," Yuusuke pointed out, cheerful. "He became king of the fucking demon realm just so he'd be able to kick your ass."
"It was your ass, specifically, that got kicked," Kurama said. "And Yomi's desire to become king had a great deal more to it than simple vengeance against myself."
"But it was a huge bonus."
Kurama bit back a grin. "Perhaps."
After more than a hundred years they probably should have been relative strangers, awkward with one another and tentative in their conversation. Instead it was as if they were back in Japan before the waters rose and they both lost everything they'd had.
Except each other. The thought rose, unbidden but not unwelcome, in the back of Kurama's mind and he conceded it was true. Ultimately, of all their friends and family, they were the only two left. And then even Yuusuke had been gone, swallowed by his grief. And, apparently, pursuing his vengeance.
Kurama maintained a wary eye as they crossed the Makai at a run. The demon world seemed little changed by the last century, though logically Kurama had known it would be. Aside from losing their access to human food sources, most demons had little invested in the human world – and under the triumvirate rule of Yuusuke, Yomi and Murkuro, Enki's ban on human flesh had been maintained far longer than anyone had ever believed it could. So when the human world fell, the demon world had barely batted an eye.
It was the Spirit World's sudden disappearance – and potential destruction – that had gotten their attention. And it was the Spirit World's disappearance that had sent demonkind scattering through the human world like ants to a picnic.
Kurama and Yuusuke had tried to stem the tide, but there were dozens of gates throughout the world, and even with half of them lost or destabilized, it was still more than the two of them alone could control. In hindsight, Kurama could see how Yuusuke's increasingly frantic efforts to control the demonic activity in the human world were an indication of his friend's grief.
Keiko had died the same day the Spirit World fell. And neither of them knew if her soul had made it to heaven, or if she had been only the first of millions to die and be left to wander in the void.
In truth, they didn't know that reaching heaven would have saved her. Kuwabara, Genkai, Atsuko, Shiori – they had all died before the Spirit World fell, but there was no way of knowing if they were still there, still safe, or if they had been destroyed in whatever event had caused it all. It didn't bear thinking about, so Kurama focused on other things, but sometimes he remembered his step-brother's children, Yuusuke's son and daughter, the dozens of people he'd come to know and care about over the centuries since his rebirth.
"Whatever you're thinking about," Yuusuke called from ahead of him, "stop it."
Kurama blinked at Yuusuke's back for a moment, then shook his head. "Since when are you so intuitive?" he asked as he quickened his pace to draw even with his old friend.
"Please," Yuusuke said. "I could always read you like a book."
****
The gate Yuusuke led them to was far more stable than the last one and Kurama stepped through one side and into the HumanWorld in one smooth movement.
The gate let them out in a desert, not unlike the one Kurama had just left, but this one felt different to him. Older. "The Mojave?" he asked and Yuusuke shrugged.
"Some kind of desert in California," he said. "I flunked geography."
Kurama swept the horizon, concentrating on their surroundings. He could feel the cacti and scrub brush, the few weathered trees hardy enough to survive there. Beneath that he could feel the dead and dying roots of older plants that could no longer survive on what the desert provided. This desert was old, created long before the great drought that had changed the world, but it was getting bigger, spreading every year. "Everything is dying here," Kurama said absently, regretting it when he noticed the way Yuusuke stiffened beside him. "But there's something out there."
He could feel it, a brush of something very nearly unfamiliar. He closed his eyes and focused on the half-forgotten sensation of reiki. "Yuusuke-"
"I know. I feel it, too."
Reiki had vanished with the Spirit World. Humans born with the spiritual energy had been unable to replenish it once they had spent it. Ferry girls caught in the human world had wasted and died. Leylines and elemental sites the world over were fading. They would not vanish entirely, especially not the elemental sites, but the spiritual energy that had made them thrive was gone.
"A leyline?" Kurama suggested. "Or an ancient holy place, perhaps. Something with residual power, and no one or nothing to drain it…"
Yuusuke shrugged and started forward.
"Have you been here before?" Kurama asked. "Do you know where we're going?"
"No. The person who brought me the slug-thing is someone I trust, though. And they told me where they had found it." Yuusuke shrugged. "I went for you before I came here."
"Just as well you did," Kurama said. "I'd have been annoyed if you'd gotten yourself killed fighting this thing alone."
"Yeah, whatever. I could totally – get down!"
Yuusuke tackled Kurama around the waist, knocking them both to the ground several feet away. Kurama pushed his hair out of his eyes just in time to see the creatures that swept down at them from the sky.
"Angel-Eaters," Yuusuke said grimly as he pushed himself to his feet. "Shit. I thought those things were all dead."
They were demons, or demonic creatures. Low-level, largely unintelligent, but vicious and highly adept at killing. They were the size of a small child and humanoid in shape, with membranous wings and thin, knobby limbs with exaggerated, swollen joints. Instead of fingers and toes they had wickedly curved talons. Their heads were narrow and pointed, such as a bird, with leathery skin and hundreds of needle-sharp teeth.
They also fed on reiki. They had earned their name by attacking and killing ferry girls, though they would also hunt humans and anything else that had spiritual energy.
"They've been living off whatever the source of reiki in the desert is," Kurama said. "But it can't be sustaining them particularly well. They look half starved."
The three Angel-Eaters did look even more wasted than their kind usually did, and as Kurama watched them swoop around for another dive, he could see how their movements dragged with exhaustion and hunger. Not quite at death's door, not yet, but they were starving. "They must be the last ones," Kurama said. "Or nearly the last. But I thought they could only devour reiki from living flesh. I've never heard of one draining it from an elemental site before."
"Kill first, hypothesize later," Yuusuke instructed.
Kurama almost felt bad about it – the creatures were so obviously not a threat to them. "Why are they attacking us?" he asked. "They can't feed off youki so they've no reason to be hunting us."
Yuusuke shot him an exasperated look. "Seriously? They're called Angel-Eaters, Kurama, something tells me they don't really need justification for trying to kill things."
The creatures were almost on them again. Kurama snapped his wrist and the thin rose stem he kept there slid into his palm, the red bud opening into a bright blossom.
"Two hundred years later," Yuusuke said, "and you still have the gayest weapon ever."
Kurama fed youki into the flower and the rosewhip coiled around his palm. "It's best to kill them," he agreed, ignoring Yuusuke's comment. "We can't leave them here to attack other travelers."
"Or to keep feeding off whatever is out there," Yuusuke said quietly. "If there's any reiki left at all, we can't let these things suck it dry."
The first Angel-Eater tucked its wings against its side and dive-bombed down at them, its two companions following close on its heels. Kurama stepped back in bemusement as all three of them went straight for Yuusuke. The half-blood grabbed the first one out of the air and ducked the other two, rolling on his side to get out of their line of attack. The one in his hands shrieked as it flailed at him, but Yuusuke held it at arm's length. "Why me?" he asked with an air of long-suffering as he shook the Angel-Eater.
"Possibly they still sense traces of reiki in you."
Yuusuke made a face. "I used up all my reiki a long time ago."
"Well, then maybe they just think you're pretty," Kurama suggested.
Yuusuke rolled his eyes and stepped to the side as one of the remaining creatures came around again. He threw the creature he already held, using it to knock its companion out of the air. Both hit the ground hard and did not get up again.
Kurama turned to meet the final creature's dive. It shrieked at him as it dived, but the shriek turned into a scream as it burst into flames and plummeted to the ground a blackened carcass.
Kurama stared at it for a moment, shocked, then spun to the east as a familiar youki washed over him. "Hiei!"
The fire demon stood a few feet away and looked the same as he had the last time they'd met, before he returned to the Makai permanently to take his place as Mukuro's heir. Kurama found himself smiling as he looked upon his oldest living friend and shook his head. "I should have known you would be here."
"You could have just told me you'd found the bastards," Hiei pointed out. "It would have saved me time." He nodded to Yuusuke, who was watching Hiei with his own bemused grin. "As it was, my messengers told me that Yuusuke had switched suddenly from looking for the Swarm to looking for you. It wasn't hard to put together."
Yuusuke planted his hands on his hips. "You've been keeping tabs on me?"
"Yes," Hiei said. "And Kurama. And my sister. And several other beings of note."
"I'm a being of note," Yuusuke said smugly.
"Barely," Hiei said, his voice drier than the desert air. "You haven't done much of interest until now."
Ignoring Yuusuke, who was sticking his tongue out at Hiei, Kurama offered the fire demon a warm smile. "It's good you're here."
Hiei nodded, uninterested in a sentimental reunion. "You recognize it?"
Yuusuke scoffed. "It hasn't been that long, Hiei. We still know reiki when we sense it."
The look on Hiei's face suggested that they were both idiots. "I didn't ask if you sensed it. I asked if you recognized it."
Words died on Kurama's tongue as he focused on the reiki again and suddenly realized what Hiei was asking them. He did recognize it. It was oranges and coffee, worn leather and stale cigarettes, cold water and the thin ozone feel of lightning on the horizon.
"Kuwabara," Kurama said.
He could tell by the widening of Yuusuke's eyes that he had realized it as well.
They crossed the distance at a run, sand and stone kicked up behind them. Four or five miles was nothing, and within moments Kurama could feel reiki in the air around him, smell it like rain. It felt like Kuwabara, tasted like him, and Kurama had to swallow against the memory
Yuusuke had his hand out in front of him, palm up. His eyes were distant and Kurama resisted the urge to snap out of it. "There's a lot of reiki here," Yuusuke said, his voice thick. He closed his eyes and Kurama could see the spiritual energy soak into his skin. "Whatever Kuwabara did here, it left traces."
"More than a trace." Hiei untied the ward on his Jagan and let the bandana hang around his neck. The third eye opened slowly and Hiei followed its gaze down. "Underground," he said.
Before Yuusuke could do something destructive, Kurama stepped forward. There weren't many living things here, but there were enough. He concentrated on the dry grasses and the thorny brush, pushed their roots through the earth. He sensed it when they brushed against the source of the reiki under the earth and directed them around it, pushing hard-packed dirt up and away until a bowl had been cut into the ground.
There were hundreds of thousands of the same tiny slug-like demons Yuusuke had shown him. All of them still, frozen beneath a seal of reiki. Hung in stasis for as long as Kuwabara's wards would hold. "This is the Swarm," Kurama said. "This is what Kuwabara came here to hunt."
"The wards are breaking down," Hiei said. He knelt at the edge of the seal and skimmed his fingers over the energy barrier. It flared a familiar fire-orange at his touch, subsiding as he removed his hand. "He didn't intend this to be permanent."
He wouldn't have. He would have gone back to LA and recruited help from the other demon-hunters. Or he would have come back with gasoline and a match. He was just containing it until it could be killed.
Hiei stooped and took something from the dirt. When he stood, he held a part of the Swarm in to fingers. "They're slowly getting loose," he said. "This is what the reiki-eaters were living off. They've absorbed some of Kuwabara's reiki after two centuries in the seal. It was just enough to keep them alive all this time."
"I don't get it," Yuusuke said. He stood beside the seal, his hands in his pockets. "If he sealed it, how did it kill him?"
"Unless it wasn’t the Swarm that killed him."
There was something in Hiei's voice that spoke of doubts long considered, and a theory long contemplated. Kurama frowned at him. "What are you saying?"
Yuusuke was watching Hiei from behind his bangs. "Yeah, you were there. You followed the same trail we did."
Hiei stepped closer, his black cloak swirling around his legs. "Consider. The only reason we went after the Swarm is because the demon hunter told us that was what Kuwabara was after."
"You think he lied to us?" Kurama didn't think so. The demon hunter – despite being part demon himself – had been dedicated to protecting humanity. He'd also seemed genuinely grieved by the circumstances, and he'd helped them on their months-long hunt for Kuwabara.
"If he'd lied I would have known," Hiei said. "But the only reason we focused on the swarm was because we knew Kuwabara was after them already. There was no independent evidence suggesting they had killed him."
"No body," Yuusuke said the words like they made him sick. "The Swarm devours."
Hiei's eyes flickered in Yuusuke's direction. "Yes. But, obviously, they didn't devour Kuwabara. He couldn't have sealed them in if he was already dead."
"So maybe he sealed himself in with them," Yuusuke argued.
"There's no death here," Hiei said. "You think I wouldn't be able to see it if one of my partners had been eaten alive not three feet from where I'm standing?"
Kurama stepped in before either one of them could snap at each other further. "The Swarm didn't kill Kuwabara."
"He was alive when he sealed them here," Hiei said. "And he didn't die here. He left the Swarm and went-" He gestured out at the desert around them. "-he went somewhere. He died somewhere. But not here."
Yuusuke clenched his fists and his side and when he spoke his voice was a low rumble of thunder. "You're telling me that for two hundred years, we've been hunting the wrong damn thing?"
Hiei met his glare evenly. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
****
There was nothing else to do. Hiei burned the Swarm, pushing hellfire through the two-hundred-year-old wards and consuming every last particle of the creature. When the creature was dead the wards dissolved into reiki, which lingered in the air like the scent of water before fading.
They left the dessert together, the three of them a team again for as long as it took to reach the gate to the Makai.
Neither Kurama nor Yuusuke noticed when Hiei, his Jagan still unbound, paused at a certain point halfway to the gate and stared up toward heaven.
****
The end.
