Hiei snatched the file from Kurama's hands. His eyes scanned it frantically as he flipped through the pages.
"Now that I think about it, there is a certain resemblance, isn't there?" Kurama pondered.
"But how...how is that possible?"
"It wouldn't take much of her DNA, just some blood or hair...we never really did think about the cleanup from the Makai tournaments, so maybe from there. And Elder Toguro we just left in a cave, wrapped up like a Christmas present, so that wouldn't be too difficult, if you knew where to look. So the question isn't how, really, it's why?"
Hiei's jaw tensed as he weighed his decision in his head, "Mukuro would want to know about this."
Kurama frowned, "Don't tell me you're going to leave now."
Hiei tensed, "I'll say my goodbyes first."
***
The girls were finishing up at the hot spring when Rieka saw the tall blonde woman from before. The one who knew Kurama so intimately. She felt a strange twist in her gut when she saw her, and inhaled deeply. This strange woman was to become her teacher, she must learn more about her and become more comfortable with her. Rieka's newfound sense of inner calm was shattered when she saw Hiro being dragged mercilessly behind her.
"Oh, so this is the hot spring, huh?" Scarlett released Hiro, and blinked at Rieka and the other girls as if she had just noticed them, "Aw, I missed everything, huh? From what I understand, going to hot springs is a major bonding experience for women in Japan. Now I feel left out," her lips formed into a pout.
The girls, (with the exception of Gadget, who was too young to understand), looked aghast at Hiro. Ayame had barely finished putting on a bathrobe and was briskly tying an oversized one onto a struggling Gadget. Hiro averted his eyes and blushed, "It's not my fault! She dragged me here!"
Scarlett looked confused, "Oh, I guess this must be a girl's only side, huh?"
Botan reddened, "You guess?"
Scarlett shrugged, "I sensed another male presence here, so I thought this was a common area."
Rieka's blood ran cold, she knew it was more than just a peeping tom. But before Rieka could even focus her energies to find the presence Scarlett spoke of, that woman was already untying the sash of her coat. She had a look of glee on her face as she revealed two flintlock revolvers that looked like they would have been a better match for a museum than the hands of a woman in the 21st century.
She saw Rieka eyeing them and winked, "They're Colt 1848 Dragoons. .44 Caliber. Real deal. I'm sure they must be worth a lot now, but I must say I'm rather attached to them."
She twirled them expertly in her fingers as she stared at the water garden near the hot spring, "This is my first time using these since I was set free. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm a little excited. Rieka, ready for your first lesson in sacred energy use?" Her sunglasses slid off the bridge of her nose and landed on the ground, revealing two eyes as grey as the winter sky.
"I'd be more ready if I had pants on," said Rieka.
"Well, enemies don't care much about manners, but if it makes you more comfortable, you can just watch this time." A flash of energy ran through Scarlett's body, lighting her up like a match. It was then Rieka noticed Scarlett's eyes had changed from that muted grey color to a vibrant, jewel-like red.
I thought all sacred energy was a golden color, thought Rieka, but she's all red!
Scarlett aimed one of the pistols at the water garden and fired it. Something in the air wavered like she had dropped a stone into water, before shattering like a mirror. A small winged demon fell sputtering to the ground. Scarlett blinked at it, and nudged it with her foot, "I must be getting rusty. It was just a little spy demon, after all." She hunkered down by it, and poked it with the muzzle of her still smoking gun.
"A spy demon?" Rieka asked.
Scarlett nodded, "A low-level demon who can work sort of like a camera for someone with a Jagan eye. Projects an image psychically into their heads, yeah? So either you got some pervert-Jaganashi around here or someone waiting for you to be alone and vulnerable," her eyes, now returned to their wintry-grey color, flicked to Rieka, "Say, how well do you know that little fellow in black?"
Rieka felt her face grow hot, "Hiei wouldn't do something like that! There is a different Jaganashi I know who might though--not the peeping thing, I mean. The waiting til I'm alone thing." Rieka's face grew more red when she realized that didn't sound any better.
"You would think being alone in a bath would make us pretty vulnerable," Ayame noted, "Rieka's the only fighter here, so why didn't they show."
Scarlett stood and re-holstered her gun, "Strong yokai have a strong presence, and with five S-class beings all in one area, he would be dead before he could lay a finger on any of you. He's probably waiting for you to distance yourself from the others before attacking."
Hiro counted the S-class beings he knew on his fingers, his dad, Yusuke, Kurama, Hiei, "Five?"
"Scarlett is an S-class being," Botan explained, "Though strictly speaking, that's off-the-record."
As they changed back into normal clothes, Rieka turned over what she had learned about her new instructor in her head. There were few beings which could be considered S-class, and their names were known far and wide throughout the spirit and yokai realms, so why hadn't she ever heard of her?
Scarlett mostly stayed out of everyone's way for the remainder of the day. Rieka noted she did some of the strangest things. She always watched everyone else in the room before acting. When they went inside, she watched the others line up their shoes in a neat row before entering, and carefully mimicked them as she did the same. She was fairly hopeless with a pair of chopsticks. Tofu slipped from between them and splattered on her plate. She stared at the others hands until she could get the positioning just right and practiced picking up grains of rice from her bowl sometime after the others left. She was also fascinated by the simplest things, like Rieka's MP3 player and Genkai's gaming system. Rieka didn't know what to make of her.
It was stranger still when Genkai was feeling well enough to come down. They gave each other a scrutinizing gaze. It was something bordering between recognition and suspicion.
"And who the hell are you?" Genkai demanded.
Koenma opened his mouth to explain, only to be cut off again.
"These days most people call me Scarlett," she said, "I used to be a Hunter."
"A sacred energy user," Koenma explained, "...for Rieka" he added lamely.
"Picked a hell of a time to bring uninvited guests by my house."
"Well, you see, at the time, we didn't know---"
"That I was dying?" Genkai snapped.
Scarlett looked at her like something had clicked in her brain. As if by magic, she produced a bottle of whiskey. It was a suspicious looking bottle, with a paper label marked with x's and incoherent numbers, "I happen to have just the thing for that."
"This really isn't the time--" Koenma argued.
But Scarlett was ignoring him, already fetching a round of glasses, "On the contrary, I think it's the perfect time," she poured out a finger of whiskey for Genkai and the others, whether it was asked for or not, or whether they were of age or not, "I made this whiskey with medicinal purposes in mind, and it's been left to age for far too long."
Genkai swirled the whiskey in her glass cautiously.
"Oh, come on now. You just told me you were dying, it wouldn't make a lick of sense for me to poison you, now would it?"
Genkai shrugged and sipped the whiskey, smacking her lips, "That's smooth. You might not be half-bad, for a Hunter, anyway."
"Ex-Hunter," Scarlett said, clinking her class against Genkai's, "and thanks."
Kurama sniffed at his glass, "What medicinal properties are contained in whiskey?"
Scarlett held the whiskey up to her face, the glass magnifying one grey eye, "Painkiller, disinfectant. Doesn't really cure anything but if you drink enough of it, you'll forget whatever was ailing you."
Genkai laughed at this, "I'll drink to that." Though she had looked so ashen and ill when they had first arrived, color had returned to her cheeks. The effect was infectious, and soon the rest of the adults were talking and laughing right along with them.
Rieka was unused to alcohol, and disliked the whiskey's strong smell, but her father was more than willing to oblige her in taking it off her hands. As she watched them, she realized Scarlett had been right. The gloom and worry that they had felt upon their arrival had melted away. She knew that she was saying goodbye to the woman she thought of as a grandmother, but the pain was lessened knowing that she got to see her smile one last time.