Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Shadows of a Crimson Moon ❯ The Art of Defiance, the Beauty of Redemption: Commission Is No Longer an Option ( Chapter 11 )

“Hate me if you wish, Koenma. I will hold nothing against you.”

 

“I don't hate you, Tari. I just don't understand why you ran off like that---Again.”

 

She gave no answer as she lay there.

 

He eyed the room, darting his amber eyes to all corners.

 

“The sun is out again.” She whispered after a time of formidable silence.

 

He glanced out from the glass window.

 

“So it is.” He concurred.

 

She laughed softly. “And so here I sit in my desert. Forsaken, a poor orphan, almost without human companionship. Where are those beautiful evenings which one can only remember, but not describe?”

 

He eyed her, arching his eyebrow in thought.

 

“Mozart.” He uttered faintly.

 

She shook her head gently.

“No. Haydn.”

 

He nodded rhythmically, looking away inadvertently.

 

After doing so, the large oak door opened steadily, a figure waltzing in stridently.

 

“Hello Botan.” Koenma muttered through his pacifier.

 

“Evening, Koenma.” She mused as she took a bow, her sapphire hair contrasting profoundly with her lilac eyes and pink kimono.

 

She looked down upon Tari, and smiled brightly, tilting her head to the side.

 

“You should have told me you wanted to go to the city,” Botan cooed downward, “I would have loved to go with you. We have such nice shopping facilities.”

 

Tari smiled grimly. “I'm afraid I did not enter the towns to purchase anything.

 

…At least not with money.”

 

Koenma sauntered forward from beside the window, near the doorway.

 

“…Koenma,” Tari breathed out faintly as he reached for the golden doorknob, “…what of Selene?”

 

Koenma gave her a grave smile.

 

“The child? She is fine, Tari. I sent Kurama to take her home a few hours ago.”

 

Tari gave a sigh of relief, resting her head gently back upon her feathered pillow.

 

“She was very fortunate, Tari. She was fortunate that you found her when you did.” Koenma breathed faintly. “We'll talk more of this later. Get some rest for now.”

 

Once again, he left her to dwell within the hints of bitterness that were tacit in his words.

 

~*~

 

Tari could not really say if it was the sunlight that had woken her, or the chirping of the larks from outside her chamber window instead. All she knew was that something within her had stirred, causing a slight uproar in her conscious.

 

She arose, cringing softly at the pain it wrought.

 

"Koenma," she whispered in a velvety soft tone, clutching onto her abdomen which felt as if it was on fire, and finally realising he could never have heard her and finally cried out louder, "KOENMA!"

 

He stormed in the sterile room in a daze, embers spurting from his eyes in his anxiety.

 

"Tari! What is it?! Is everything all right?" An untarnished sense of panic rang through his voice.

 

Her glorious silken legs swaying gently over the side of the bed, Tari eyed him with a profound sheen in her evergreen eyes. "Koenma," she sighed, pulling strands of raven coloured hair behind her ears, "please, sit down."

 

~.:.~

 

"Tari…are you sure about this?"

 

"I am quite positive, Koenma. I will leave on the first dawning of tomorrow night's full moon."

 

"Tari, I insist that the Urameshi team go with you."

 

"Koenma, they shall breathe their last within the first minute."

 

"We will not!" Kuwabara barked in retort from the wall he and all of the others were standing before. Botan had taken a seat beside Koenma on his desk, and Tari found herself sitting composed and serene on a wooden chair in the centre of the room.

 

Tari turned to Kuwabara when he had said this, and glared at him ominously. "You say that Tadashi is a simple task?" she murmured in his direction, "…Are you implying that he is nothing at all?! Suggest you to me, that you could kill him or not?!! DARE YOU ENTAIL THAT YOU, YOU HUMAN FOOL, ARE STRONGER THAN I?!!!" Tari roared with great ferocity in a voice that was far from her own, and by the time she had screamed her bitter words and thrown Kuwabara against the wall, she had jumped forward, thrown the very chair she was sitting upon against another wall beside her, and stood there, daunting over Kuwabara's trembling figure. She had dug her nails into his wrists where she was clutching onto him, feeling the tendons snap slowly as she applied more and more pressure. Crimson blood trickled down his hands and he let out a frustrating cry of pain and fear as Tari felt her prominent lips pull back to reveal her pearl like fangs, which were throbbing terribly.

 

"Tari! Calm down!" Botan cried and stood, starting to dash toward Tari, but soon thinking better of it.

 

Tari released him immediately after comprehending the eccentricity of her actions; backing away and looking around the room as if it was new to her. Her eyes widened with tears when she realised how childish she had been acting, and she reached out to Kuwabara once again, and tried to comfort him.

 

He merely jumped back, screaming at the pinnacle of his lungs, "You're crazy!!"

 

Yusuke punched him in the shoulder. "You're the idiot who pissed her off,"

 

Tari grabbed a hold of Kuwabara's large, blue clad shoulders, and forced his beady dark eyes to look into her own vivid green ones.

 

"Forgive me," she whispered tenderly as she let go of his shoulders and took grasp of his wrists gently, and a luminescent glow emitted from her hands as his flesh healed and seamed itself together, "I…I'm sorry. Please, forgive me," she took his face in her hands and smiled sadly as her cold hands and beauty caused his entire pallid countenance to glaze over in a scarlet hue. Hiei could smell the tears of shame in the brims of her eyes.

 

She turned, and waved her wrist at the pile of broken wood that was once her chair, and while she went to sit in mid air, the timber fixture had assembled itself back into its original form, and Tari sat gracefully down upon it in her regular manner, as if it had never broken at all.

 

"Koenma," she sighed as she rested her arms on her knees, her slender ivory hands dangling upon the front of her legs; lowering her head, "if you send these men with me, you condemn them to death. My answer is no. If you insist they accompany me, I guarantee that I will be gone by nightfall, and you will never look upon my face thereafter."

 

~.:.~

 

"Come in," she rang out in her lush languor as the door slowly opened, and Kurama was in the doorway. He looked startled when he saw her meditating in mid air.

 

"Tari, can…is it all right if I talk to you for a moment?" The sincerity in his crystalline eyes soothed her, and she nodded as she ceased in levitating and turned on the floor to look at him.

 

"Come, please, have a seat."

 

He did so, and smoothed out the wrinkles in his vermilion school uniform as he sat nimbly on the edge of Tari's vanity stool.

 

"Tari, I came to let you know that, well…we really do think of you as a fellow Spirit Detective here, and we do not want anything to happen to you."

 

She smiled affectionately, her eyes warm and subterranean. "Today might have swayed your opinion on me…to some extent, at least."

 

He raised a palm in protest. "Don't worry about that. Kuwabara loved the attention you gave him. Actually, you're the first girl who has ever voluntarily touched him…"

 

"Even if I intended to kill him?" Tari laughed slightly, standing up and walking over to her vanity table. She had placed metallic arm guards upon the face of the desk, and she began to hammer and strap them onto her toned forearms; their dark, silver sheen illuminating and glistening against the sunlight.

 

"Oh, I think we've all had our share of…threats for Kuwabara. He'll be fine."

 

She nodded, smiling shadily. Suddenly, she sighed and turned to look him deeply in the eyes. "Kurama," she uttered harmoniously, "do you think I'm foolish for going after Tadashi in this manner?"

 

A moment of thick silence passed between them, until the fox demon conjured up a reply. However, he could not utter it, for Hiei had appeared in the doorway.

 

Tari and Kurama turned to look at him, and were not particularly surprised to see that a sneer was playing at his lips.

 

"Out, fox," the ice demon growled as he walked coldly through the entrance and stood firmly with his arms crossed, his deep crimson gaze locked on Tari, daring her to ask him to leave.

 

Kurama obliged, nodding and smiling at Tari. "We'll finish our conversation later then, Tari." He whispered as he shut the door softly behind him. When he had left, Tari shot a glance at Hiei as she began sharpening one of her many daggers.

 

"How may I help you, Hiei?" She asked in a sigh as she swiped a thick cloth across the burnished blade, refusing to look him in the eye.