Chapter Text
*In graves of innocence, power sleeps*
*Until collector's promise keeps*
The laboratory occupied the sixty-third floor of the Hunter Association's former administrative tower — a space Pariston Hill had "borrowed" eighteen months ago through a series of paperwork so elegant that the Association still believed the floor was undergoing asbestos removal. The windows offered a panoramic view of the city at night, though Pariston had drawn the blinds. What happened in this room didn't need an audience.
The Innocence fragment sat on a titanium testing platform at the center of the lab, suspended between electromagnetic clamps that held it precisely three centimeters above the surface. It pulsed with its own light — green-white, steady, rhythmic. Like a heartbeat. Like something alive.
Pariston stood six feet away, jacket removed, sleeves rolled to his elbows in a display of informality that would have alarmed anyone who knew him. Pariston Hill did not roll up his sleeves. Pariston Hill did not sweat. Pariston Hill certainly did not spend fourteen consecutive evenings in a private laboratory running tests on an object he'd paid four hundred billion Jenny to acquire.
And yet.
"Attempt forty-seven," he said aloud, though no one else occupied the room. He'd developed the habit of narrating his experiments to no one — a quirk he found privately amusing. "Nen-enhanced compression at three hundred percent baseline output."
He placed both hands on either side of the fragment without touching it, channeling his aura into the electromagnetic clamps. The machines whined, the sound climbing from a hum to a shriek as the compression force increased. Three hundred percent of what would crush industrial diamond into powder. The clamps trembled. The platform groaned. The bolts securing it to the floor began to bend.
The fragment pulsed once. Twice. Unchanged.
"Fascinating," Pariston breathed.
Not a scratch. Not a fracture line. Not even a shift in luminescence. Forty-seven attempts using every method available — Nen enhancement, physical force, chemical dissolution, thermal shock, even a borrowed Nen ability specifically designed to shatter molecular bonds — and the object remained exactly as it had been when Chrollo Lucilfer placed it on a negotiating table eight months ago.
He released the compression. The machines wound down. The fragment continued its patient pulse, green-white light painting the laboratory walls in rhythmic waves.
Pariston picked up his notebook — handwritten, because digital records could be hacked and Pariston's paranoia was as refined as his smile. Forty-six previous entries documented forty-six failures, each one annotated with observations that grew progressively more fascinated rather than frustrated.
*Attempt 12: Fragment does not respond to Nen manipulation. Enhancement, Transmutation, Emission — no interaction. Energy passes through as if the fragment exists on a different operational frequency.*
*Attempt 23: Applied Conjuration-based deconstruction technique (borrowed). Technique failed to engage. The fragment did not resist the ability — it simply did not acknowledge it. As if the two systems occupy the same space without interacting.*
*Attempt 31: Thermal cycling between -200°C and 3,000°C. No change in structure, luminescence, or energy output. Fragment maintains constant temperature of 37°C regardless of external conditions. Human body temperature. Interesting.*
*Attempt 39: Attempted to cut fragment with Nen-enhanced blade rated for cutting through Nen-reinforced steel. Blade shattered on contact. Fragment undamaged. The energy it emits upon physical contact is neither hostile nor defensive — it simply IS, in a way that makes our tools irrelevant.*
He wrote his forty-seventh entry with the careful penmanship of a man who treated documentation as art.
*Attempt 47: Compression at 300% baseline. No effect. Beginning to suspect that this object cannot be damaged by any force native to our reality. It does not resist our energy systems — it exists outside them entirely. Our Nen interacts with it the way sound interacts with vacuum. The medium for transmission simply does not exist.*
He set down the pen.
*Addendum: This is the most interesting thing I have ever owned.*
He approached the fragment directly, leaning close enough that its green-white light reflected in his eyes. At this distance, he could see things the clamps obscured — faint patterns within the crystal structure, like veins in a leaf. They moved. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the internal patterns shifted and rearranged themselves in configurations that followed rules he couldn't identify.
It was alive. Not biologically. Not in any way his understanding of life encompassed. But the fragment possessed something that resisted the word "inert" — an internal logic, a self-organizing principle that operated independently of any external input.
"What are you?" he asked it, the way someone might address a particularly compelling chess opponent.
The fragment pulsed. Brighter than usual. Just for a moment.
Pariston smiled. Not his public smile — the warm, trustworthy expression that made people want to confide in him. His real smile. The one that meant something had exceeded his expectations in a way that made the world marginally more worth inhabiting.
He reached out and touched it.
The effect was immediate.
The fragment's luminescence doubled — tripled — the green-white light flooding the laboratory with an intensity that burned afterimages into his retinas. The internal patterns accelerated, their slow drift becoming a frenzy of reorganization. And the energy it emitted changed. Not in type but in volume. What had been a contained pulse became a broadcast — a signal radiating outward from the sixty-third floor with the subtlety of a lighthouse in a hurricane.
Pariston withdrew his hand. The fragment dimmed slowly, returning to its baseline pulse over the course of thirty seconds. But the broadcast continued. He could feel it — not through Nen but through something more fundamental. A vibration in the floor. A pressure change in the air. The windows rattling in their frames for no discernible reason.
He'd activated something. Or awakened it. Or simply given it what it had been waiting for — contact with a living being's energy, any energy, to use as fuel for whatever signal it was now transmitting.
Pariston looked at the fragment. The fragment pulsed at him.
"Well," he said pleasantly, "that's new."
He should have been concerned. A rational person would have been concerned. The object he'd spent eight months studying had just done something unprecedented in response to physical contact, and the energy it was broadcasting could be reaching — well, anywhere. Everywhere. Across distances and barriers that Nen couldn't cross.
Instead, Pariston Hill rolled down his sleeves, put on his jacket, adjusted his tie, and sat down in the laboratory's single chair to wait.
Something would respond to that signal. Something always did.
He was looking forward to meeting it.
---
Four dimensions away, in an office that existed between the living world and the dead one, a stack of papers fell off a desk.
This was not unusual. Paper fell off Koenma's desk with the regularity of rain in monsoon season. The prince of Spirit World processed ten thousand soul judgments per day, each one generating between three and seventeen forms depending on the complexity of the deceased's moral history, and the resulting paperwork had long since exceeded the structural capacity of any filing system designed by beings who understood physics.
What was unusual was the alarm.
It came from a device mounted on the wall behind his chair — an ancient instrument that resembled a seismograph crossed with a music box, its needle scratching across treated parchment in patterns that translated dimensional vibrations into visual data. The needle had been still for 8 months. Been going off more then usual the last 3 years. Koenma had honestly forgotten the device existed, having buried it behind a photograph of his father looking disappointed (which described most photographs of his father) and a motivational poster that read "You Don't Have To Be Dead To Work Here (But It Helps)."
The needle was moving now. Not the gentle oscillation of routine dimensional activity — the kind generated by Hiei moving between the human and demon worlds, or Kurama's residual fox energy creating minor fluctuations. This was violent. The needle whipped back and forth with such force that the parchment tore, the scratch marks deepening into gouges that cut through to the desk surface beneath.
Koenma stared at it. His pacifier stopped bobbing.
"Jorge," he called.
The blue ogre appeared in the doorway with the harried expression of someone who'd been in the middle of something and would very much like to return to it. "Sir?"
"When was the last time the dimensional monitor activated?"
Jorge squinted at the device on the wall, recognition dawning slowly. "The... oh. That thing. Um. 8 months ago? When those three anomalies in the Hunter dimension started tearing holes between—" He stopped. His blue face went a shade paler. "Oh no."
"Oh no," Koenma agreed.
He was already pulling files. Not the digital archives — the sealed ones. The physical folders locked in the cabinet that required three keys and a Nen-infused thumbprint to open, containing documentation on incidents classified above Spirit World's standard clearance levels. Incidents that involved multiple dimensions. Incidents that generated paperwork measured in cubic meters rather than pages.
The folder he extracted was thick enough to serve as a doorstop. The label read:
**CASE FILE: INTERDIMENSIONAL CONTAMINATION EVENT**
**STATUS: ONGOING**
**PRIMARY SUBJECT: DERRELLY, RAVEN**
**THREAT LEVEL: CATASTROPHIC (BUREAUCRATIC)**
Koenma opened it. The first page was a summary he'd written himself, six years ago, in handwriting that deteriorated from professional to unhinged over the course of a single paragraph:
*Subject is an interdimensional anomaly carrying energy signatures from at minimum three (3) non-native realities in addition to her origin dimension. Subject has demonstrated the ability to traverse dimensional barriers using a technique classified as "Kamui" over a 2 year period (stolen — see attached incident report RE: Uchiha, Obito). Subject has contaminated realities designated HXH-Prime, NARUTO-7, DGM-4, and JJK-12 through repeated unauthorized crossings. Each crossing generates cumulative dimensional stress fractures that compound over time.*
*Recommended action: Immediate detention and dimensional energy quarantine.*
*Action taken: None. Subject moved between dimensions faster than tribunal could convene. Paperwork for detention order still pending approval from Department of Interdimensional Affairs (estimated processing time: four to six centuries).*
He flipped to the damage assessment appendix. Three pages of itemized dimensional tears, each one catalogued by location, severity, and rate of expansion. The oldest entries dated back years. The newest—
Koenma's pacifier fell out of his mouth.
The newest entries were *multiplying*. Not slowly. Not incrementally. The dimensional monitor's data, cross-referenced with the catalogue, showed twelve new stress fractures in the last eight months alone, all originating from a single point source in the HXH-Prime dimension. A point source that matched the energy signature of—
"The artifact," Koenma breathed. "Someone's been *poking* the artifact."
He slammed the file shut. Stood on his chair to reach the communication crystal mounted on his shelf. Pressed the sequence that connected to exactly four people.
"Emergency channel. Priority Omega. All operatives report to Spirit World immediately." His voice carried the specific authority of someone who'd been doing this for seven hundred years and had run out of patience somewhere around year three hundred. "This is not a drill. Repeat — not a drill. The dimensional contamination case just went active."
He paused.
"Also, someone bring me a new pacifier. Mine just rolled under the filing cabinet and I am NOT reaching under there again. Last time I found something that was technically alive and definitely shouldn't have been."
---
Yusuke Urameshi had been asleep.
This was important context, because Yusuke's mood upon waking directly correlated with how violently the next several hours would unfold, and being woken at 3:47 AM by a communication crystal screaming about dimensional emergencies placed his mood somewhere between "actively hostile" and "considering whether punching reality itself was a viable option."
He materialized in Koenma's office seventeen minutes later, wearing sweatpants, one shoe, and an expression that promised suffering for whoever was responsible for this meeting.
Kuwabara arrived next, because Kuwabara always arrived next. His spiritual awareness had been pinging since before the crystal activated — he'd been lying in bed staring at the ceiling, feeling something wrong in the fabric of reality that he couldn't articulate but also couldn't ignore. He wore a full suit. At 4 AM. Because Kuwabara believed that official business required official attire, and nothing Yusuke said had ever changed his mind about this.
"You're wearing a suit," Yusuke said.
"You're wearing one shoe," Kuwabara replied.
"Fair."
Kurama entered the way Kurama always entered — already present before anyone noticed his arrival, standing near the wall with his arms crossed, red hair immaculate, green eyes alert and analytical. He'd been awake when the crystal activated. He was always awake. The fox didn't sleep so much as he reduced his operational frequency and continued processing information at a lower resolution.
"You've read the file," Kurama said to Koenma. Not a question.
"I've re-read the file," Koenma corrected, the thick folder open on his desk. "Specifically the sections I highlighted six years ago that said 'this will get worse if we don't act' that everyone ignored because the processing time for an interdimensional detention order is—"
"Four to six centuries. Yes." Kurama's expression didn't change. "And now it's worse."
"It's worse."
Hiei appeared in the window frame. Not through the door. Never through the door. He crouched on the sill like a gargoyle with better hair, his third eye covered by its usual bandana, his sword across his back. He didn't greet anyone. He rarely did. His presence was his greeting.
"Four dimensions," Hiei said, because Hiei had already assessed the situation from whatever shadow he'd been monitoring it from. "The fractures span four dimensions. That's new."
"That's catastrophic is what it is." Koenma floated up to eye level with the assembled team, his pacifier — a replacement retrieved from a drawer, slightly discolored — bobbing furiously. "Six years ago we flagged an interdimensional anomaly causing cumulative damage across multiple realities. We couldn't detain her because she kept jumping between dimensions faster than our jurisdiction could follow. We filed the paperwork and hoped the damage would stabilize on its own."
"Let me guess," Yusuke said, dropping into a chair with the boneless slouch of someone who resented being vertical. "It didn't stabilize."
"It got exponentially worse." Koenma spread the file across his desk, pointing to a graph that climbed at an angle suggesting the mathematician who'd drawn it had given up on optimism. "And tonight, something changed. A massive energy spike from the HXH-Prime dimension — someone interacting with a foreign dimensional artifact that's been sitting in that reality for eight months. The interaction triggered a cascade that lit up every monitoring station we have. Four dimensions. Twelve new fractures. And the rate of expansion just doubled."
"So we find the artifact and contain it," Kuwabara said, because Kuwabara's approach to problems was direct in a way that was either refreshing or infuriating depending on your tolerance for simplicity.
"We find the artifact," Koenma agreed. "But more importantly, we find the source. The artifact didn't walk into that dimension on its own. Someone brought it there. Someone who's been tearing holes between realities for years and generating more paperwork than any single entity in the history of Spirit World's record-keeping system."
"Who?" Yusuke asked, though his tone suggested he didn't care about the answer so much as the address.
Koenma pointed to the file's cover page. The name printed there in Spirit World's official typeface.
"Raven Derrelly. Interdimensional anomaly. Carrying stolen abilities from at least three non-native realities. Associated with a criminal organization called the Phantom Troupe in her home dimension." He sucked his pacifier with aggressive emphasis. "She is, without exaggeration, the single worst thing that has ever happened to my filing system."
"Filing system," Yusuke repeated flatly. "The multiverse is cracking and you're worried about filing."
"You don't understand. The forms alone—" Koenma caught himself, visibly deciding to prioritize. "The artifact first. Our monitors traced the energy spike to a specific location in the target dimension. High-rise building. Sixty-third floor. The person in possession of the artifact is—" he flipped a page, "—one Pariston Hill. Former vice chairman of the dimension's Hunter Association. No criminal record, which in itself is suspicious given his profile. Described in our intelligence files as—" he squinted at the notes, "—'aggressively pleasant' and 'probably the most dangerous person in the room at any given time.'"
"Sounds like a fun guy," Yusuke said, cracking his knuckles.
"He's not." Kurama spoke for the first time since the briefing began, his voice carrying the quiet authority of someone who'd studied the file before entering the room. "I've cross-referenced our records with the dimensional intelligence we maintain on HXH-Prime. Pariston Hill is a political operative who collects leverage the way others collect stamps. He doesn't fight. He doesn't need to. He dismantles people through information, manipulation, and strategic patience."
"So he's a talker," Yusuke summarized.
"He's considerably more dangerous than that." Kurama uncrossed his arms, green eyes meeting Yusuke's with measured seriousness. "He's the kind of person who lets you win the battle because he's already won the war. Brute force won't work."
"Brute force always works."
"It categorically does not."
"Name one time—"
"Sensui."
Yusuke shut his mouth.
Koenma cleared his throat. "The objective is retrieval and interrogation. Get the artifact. Find out where he acquired it. Follow the trail back to its source." He produced four thin bands of metal — spirit cuffs, their surfaces inscribed with characters that glowed faintly in the office light. "These are rated for interdimensional containment. They'll suppress any ability regardless of the energy system powering it. Nen, chakra, cursed energy, divine power — everything."
Hiei dropped from the window frame, landing without sound. He took a pair of cuffs, examined them briefly, and tucked them into his cloak. Efficient. No questions.
Kuwabara took his pair with more ceremony, turning them over in his large hands. "These feel weird. Like they're vibrating."
"They're calibrated to resonate across multiple dimensional frequencies," Koenma explained. "Standard spirit cuffs only suppress one energy type. These suppress all of them. They're extremely expensive, extremely rare, and if you lose them, the replacement cost comes out of your afterlife benefits."
"We have afterlife benefits?" Yusuke asked.
"Not anymore if you lose those cuffs."
Kurama took his pair without comment, pocketing them with the precise economy of someone who'd already planned where they'd be used. His green eyes held that distant, calculating look — the one that meant Yoko Kurama was closer to the surface than the polite university student typically allowed.
"One more thing." Koenma's voice dropped, the pacifier slowing its rhythm. "This isn't a standard retrieval. The person who brought that artifact into HXH-Prime is the same person who's been contaminating dimensions for years. She's dangerous. She collects abilities from the people she forms connections with — and she's formed connections in at least three non-native realities. We don't have a complete inventory of what she can do because the list keeps growing."
"She steals powers through relationships?" Kuwabara's face scrunched with confusion. "That's... really sad, actually."
"It's really effective is what it is." Koenma snapped the file shut. "The artifact first. Pariston Hill. Sixty-third floor. Get in, get answers, get the Innocence fragment contained before it tears another hole in reality."
"Innocence?" Kurama's eyebrow rose fractionally.
"That's what it's called. Don't ask me why. The naming conventions of other dimensions are not my department."
The team moved. Yusuke first, because Yusuke always moved first — momentum was his natural state, stillness an aberration. Kuwabara followed, straightening his suit jacket with the determination of a man heading into battle dressed for a board meeting. Hiei vanished, reappearing at the portal junction that connected Spirit World to the living dimensions with the efficiency of someone who considered doors a waste of time.
Kurama lingered.
"The Phantom Troupe," he said quietly to Koenma. "How many members?"
"Thirteen. Currently operating in Yorknew City."
"And the three who were in the foreign dimension — the ones who brought the artifact back?"
"The leader. Chrollo Lucilfer. A specialist in ability theft." Koenma's ancient eyes met Kurama's. "A small combatant named Feitan. Torture specialist and speed fighter. And the anomaly herself. Raven Derrelly."
Something shifted behind Kurama's green eyes — not concern, exactly. Recognition. The way a former predator recognized the hunting patterns of a current one.
"Ability theft," Kurama repeated. "Through emotional connection."
"Yes."
"And a group of thieves who operate as a family unit, loyal to their leader above all else, willing to kill and die for each other without hesitation."
"That's the profile."
Kurama was quiet for a moment. The office hummed with the ambient noise of Spirit World — distant stamping, shuffling papers, the murmur of souls being processed through eternal bureaucracy.
"I know how people like that think," Kurama said. "Hiei does too."
Koenma studied the fox demon's face. "Is that going to be a problem?"
"No." Kurama turned toward the portal junction. "It's going to be an advantage."
---
The portal deposited them on the roof of the building adjacent to Pariston's tower, the night air of HXH-Prime hitting their lungs with the distinctive taste of a dimension that ran on Nen — clean, charged, humming with an ambient life energy that made Kuwabara's spiritual senses light up like a switchboard.
"I can feel it from here," Kuwabara said, his voice tight. He pointed toward the sixty-third floor, where faint green-white light pulsed behind drawn blinds. "That thing is wrong. Like, fundamentally wrong. It doesn't match anything in this dimension."
"Because it's not from this dimension." Kurama scanned the building's exterior, mapping entry points with a thief's practiced eye. Old habits didn't die. They evolved. "Security systems?"
"Nen-reinforced. Standard for high-value facilities." Hiei's Jagan eye glowed faintly beneath his bandana, scanning the interior. "One target. Sixty-third floor. Seated. No visible weapons. No combat stance."
"He's expecting us?" Kuwabara asked.
"He's expecting something." Hiei's voice carried contempt for the concept of someone sitting calmly while four operatives prepared to breach their location. "Foolish or dangerous. We'll know which shortly."
Yusuke rolled his shoulders, spirit energy gathering around his right hand with the unconscious ease of someone who'd been channeling it since adolescence. "We go in hard?"
"We go in smart." Kurama produced a seed from his hair — small, unremarkable, holding potential energy that belied its size. "I'll secure the perimeter. Hiei takes the exits. Kuwabara monitors for dimensional fluctuations. Yusuke..." He paused. "Try not to destroy the building before we get answers."
"No promises."
They moved.
Kurama's plants breached the ventilation system first — vines threading through ductwork with silent, organic precision, sealing every exit from the sixty-third floor within seconds. Hiei positioned himself at the building's primary stairwell, sword drawn, a shadow among shadows. Kuwabara stationed himself on the roof directly above the laboratory, his spiritual awareness creating a net that would detect any dimensional shift within a three-block radius.
Yusuke took the direct route.
The elevator doors opened onto the sixty-third floor with a pleasant chime. Yusuke stepped out, right hand raised, index finger extended, spirit energy concentrated into a point of blue-white light aimed directly at the laboratory door.
He kicked it open.
The room beyond was exactly as the intelligence described — laboratory equipment, electromagnetic clamps, a testing platform at center. The Innocence fragment pulsed its patient green-white rhythm from within the clamps, casting the entire space in oscillating light.
And Pariston Hill sat in a chair facing the door, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap, wearing an expression of such genuine, warm delight that Yusuke's trigger finger actually hesitated.
"Oh, wonderful," Pariston said, as if greeting dinner guests who'd arrived precisely on time. "I was hoping it would be something interesting."
"Pariston Hill." Yusuke kept his spirit gun aimed, the energy humming with lethal potential. "Spirit World. We have questions about that thing." He nodded toward the fragment. "You're going to answer them."
Pariston's gaze moved from Yusuke to the spirit gun to the vines now visible in the ventilation grates to the faint presence of Hiei in the stairwell — acknowledging each element of the breach with the appreciative attention of a man reviewing a well-executed performance.
"Spirit World," he repeated, tasting the words. "Interdimensional law enforcement. How exciting. I didn't know such an organization existed." His smile widened. "I have so many questions."
"We're the ones asking questions."
"Of course, of course. Forgive me." He uncrossed his legs, recrossed them the other direction, and gestured at the fragment with an open palm. "You're here about my purchase. Understandable. It is rather unusual."
"Where did you get it?"
"Ah." The smile didn't dim but it shifted — becoming something more layered, more considered. "Now that's an interesting question. Not 'what is it' or 'how does it work.' Where. You already know what it is. You just want the supply chain."
Yusuke's finger tightened. "Answer the question."
"I acquired it through a private transaction. The seller was reputable — well, 'reputable' is generous. Accomplished, certainly. The kind of people who can acquire things that shouldn't exist and deliver them without leaving fingerprints."
"Names."
"Names are such definitive things, aren't they?" Pariston tilted his head, that warm expression somehow making the evasion feel like hospitality. "They close doors. Reduce people to labels. I find descriptions far more illuminating."
"I don't have patience for this." The spirit gun's glow intensified.
"You have exactly as much patience as you choose to have." Pariston's eyes — pleasant, intelligent, completely unintimidated by the weapon pointed at his face — held Yusuke's with steady warmth. "But I understand the urgency. Your monitoring equipment detected the energy spike. The artifact is broadcasting in ways it wasn't before. You're concerned about dimensional stability. All very reasonable."
"Then give us reasonable answers."
"The sellers were collectors." Pariston's smile reached its fullest expression — the one that made people want to trust him against every instinct telling them not to. "A group of them. Thirteen members, if the intelligence I gathered is accurate. They operate as a unit — quite tight-knit, from what I observed. Familial, almost. Their leader conducted the negotiation personally. Charming man. Dark hair. The kind of calm that comes from being absolutely certain you're the most dangerous person in any room you enter."
The laboratory door opened again. Kurama stepped through, having apparently decided the perimeter was secure enough to join the interrogation directly. His entrance was silent, his green eyes already fixed on Pariston with an intensity the blonde man noticed immediately.
Pariston smiled with genuine pleasure. "How lovely. Your energy is quite different from the others — older, more complex. You've lived many lives."
Kurama didn't acknowledge the observation. "The group you described. They brought the artifact from another dimension."
"They brought it from wherever they'd been, which was clearly somewhere else." Pariston's gaze lingered on Kurama with the appreciation of someone recognizing a fellow strategist. "The artifact doesn't belong here. I knew that when I bought it. That was rather the point."
"You bought an interdimensional artifact knowing it was foreign to this reality."
"I bought it because it was foreign to this reality. Objects that follow the rules are boring. Objects that exist outside the rules..." His eyes drifted to the pulsing fragment. "Those are worth four hundred billion Jenny."
Kurama stepped closer. Not threatening. Conversational. The approach of someone who understood that force would produce nothing useful from this particular subject. "The leader of this group. You said he negotiated personally. Did he give a name?"
"He gave a name he wanted me to use. Whether it was his real name is a question I found more interesting than the answer." Pariston paused, and the pause was deliberate — a beat timed for maximum engagement. "Chrollo Lucilfer. Leader of the Phantom Troupe. Class-A bounties across six continents. Quite the résumé."
"You researched him."
"I research everyone. It's what makes me such an excellent buyer." The warmth in his voice was genuine despite the circumstances — or perhaps because of them. Being interrogated by interdimensional law enforcement was clearly the most stimulating thing that had happened to Pariston in months. "He had a companion. A woman. Dark hair. She objected to the sale — rather strenuously, from what I could observe. He overruled her. And she was the one who retrieved the real item from..." He waved a hand vaguely. "Somewhere else. A portal. A pocket dimension. She opened it like a door and stepped through."
"Kamui," Hiei said from the doorway. He'd relocated from the stairwell without anyone noticing, a habit that Pariston's eyes acknowledged with a flicker of impressed attention. "The dimensional displacement technique."
"You know it?" Pariston asked.
"We know of it." Kurama's voice carried careful neutrality. "The woman. Describe her."
"Protective of the artifact. Uneasy about the sale. Abilities she kept carefully hidden — though I could tell she was hiding them by how precisely she moved. Nobody moves that naturally unless they're compensating for something unnatural." He smiled at the memory. "I liked her. She had instincts. Better instincts than her leader, as it turns out, given that the thing she didn't want sold is now causing exactly the problems she apparently predicted."
"This woman," Kurama continued, "is the primary subject of our investigation. Her activities across multiple dimensions have created the fractures your artifact is now amplifying. We need to find her."
"Then you need to find the Phantom Troupe." Pariston spread his hands in a gesture of helpful openness. "They operate out of Yorknew City. Thirteen members. Various abilities, all formidable. Their leader's ability involves stealing other people's techniques through a conjured book. The woman — Raven, I believe — has abilities from multiple dimensions. And there's a small one. Quiet. Violent. I only caught a glimpse of him in the building's security footage, but he moved like someone who'd been killing professionally since childhood."
"Three targets," Hiei said. "The leader, the anomaly, and the killer."
"The rest of the organization is peripheral to your concerns," Pariston agreed. "Those three were in the other dimension. Those three brought the artifact back. Those three are your supply chain."
Yusuke lowered his spirit gun fractionally. The interrogation had produced results faster than expected, which made him suspicious. "You're awfully cooperative for someone who just got raided."
"I'm cooperative because cooperation is interesting." Pariston stood from his chair — smooth, unhurried, as if the spirit gun and the vines and the demon in the doorway were ambient decoration rather than threats. "You're from another dimension. You enforce laws I didn't know existed. You've just told me that reality itself is fracturing because of an object I purchased. This is the most fascinating evening I've had in years. Why would I obstruct it?"
He extended his wrists toward Kurama. The gesture was almost gracious — a host offering to clear the table.
"I assume you'll want to detain me. The artifact is clearly evidence. I'm clearly a person of interest. Standard procedure, I'd imagine, even for interdimensional agencies."
Kurama produced the spirit cuffs. Pariston watched them with the same analytical interest he'd given the Innocence fragment — studying the inscriptions, the faint glow, the way they resonated with frequencies beyond normal perception.
"Those are beautiful," he said as Kurama fastened them around his wrists. "Truly. The craftsmanship is extraordinary."
"They suppress all supernatural abilities," Kurama informed him.
"Even better." Pariston's smile didn't waver as the cuffs activated, their glow intensifying as they calibrated to his energy signature. "I do so prefer conversations where everyone is equally limited. It keeps things honest."
Yusuke exchanged a look with Kuwabara, who had appeared in the doorway. The big man's face carried the specific expression of someone whose spiritual senses were screaming warnings that his brain couldn't fully translate.
"This guy gives me the creeps," Kuwabara said. "He's smiling like he planned this."
"He didn't plan this," Kurama said, guiding Pariston toward the portal junction with gentle, unyielding pressure. "He's simply enjoying it."
"Is there a difference?"
Kurama glanced at Pariston, whose pleasant expression had, if anything, brightened since being placed in restraints. The man was studying everything — the portal technology, the spirit cuffs' energy signature, the way the four operatives moved in formation. Not memorizing for escape. Memorizing for *understanding*. Collecting data the way some people collected art.
"With this one?" Kurama said. "No. There isn't."
Hiei secured the Innocence fragment in a spirit-sealed container, the green-white pulse dimming as the containment field cut off its broadcast. The dimensional monitor in Koenma's office would register the cessation. The fractures would stop accelerating.
But they wouldn't close. The damage was already done — twelve new tears in the fabric of reality, joining the dozens that had accumulated over years of unauthorized dimensional travel. The artifact had amplified the problem. It hadn't created it.
The source was still out there. In Yorknew City. Operating with thirteen members, stolen abilities, and a portal technique that treated dimensional barriers like suggestions.
As they escorted Pariston through the portal back to Spirit World, Kurama fell into step beside Hiei. The demon's expression hadn't changed — it rarely did — but his hand rested on his sword with a tension that suggested thoughts he wasn't voicing.
"The small one," Hiei said. "The killer."
"What about him?"
"Pariston said he moved like someone who'd been killing professionally since childhood." Hiei's crimson eyes flickered with something that wasn't quite emotion. "I know what that looks like."
"I know you do."
Silence between them. The portal's light washed over their faces — Kurama's thoughtful, Hiei's unreadable.
"The Troupe won't come quietly," Kurama said. "They're thieves who operate as family. They'll fight for each other. They'll die for each other. And the anomaly — Raven — she has abilities from multiple dimensions that we can't fully predict."
"Then we don't give them time to fight." Hiei's voice carried the flat certainty of someone who'd already planned the engagement. "We take them fast. Before they know we're coming."
"It won't be that simple."
"It never is."
Kurama's lips curved — not quite a smile, but an acknowledgment of truth. "No. It never is."
He glanced back at Pariston, who was being led through the portal by Yusuke and Kuwabara, his pleasant expression unchanged, his curiosity apparently boundless. A man who'd bought interdimensional contraband for entertainment and was now being arrested by beings from another reality entirely.
And he was still smiling. Still collecting. Still finding the experience more interesting than threatening.
Kurama recognized the type. He'd been that type, once. A very long time ago, in a body with silver hair and golden eyes, when the world was something to take from rather than protect.
He turned back toward the portal, the Innocence fragment's sealed container pulsing faintly against Hiei's back, and began planning how to capture thirteen thieves who would see them coming.
Because thieves always recognized the approach of other thieves.
It was, after all, how they survived.