**Standard disclaimers apply**

Warning: Contains yaoi

THE LABYRINTH
     
Chapter 3: Nothing, Tra-la-la
          
by: Cricket



  Boredom encompassed nearly 90% of his time now, he had figure that
much out a long time ago.  So many times, he had tried to find things
to occupy his time, to keep his mind away from the fact that he sat
alone in this great castle.  Games had never been his fancy.  Neither had
long walks through the countryside, watching over the extent of the
hands of his power.  Perhaps he found comfort in visiting the gardens
regularly... but they were to far away, and the keeper was a real jerk.
   Or perhaps, Kurama-Osama just did not have the right kind of person
in his life, keeping him occupied, putting his mind to good use.
   Kurama sighed heavily and leaned his head back over the arm of the
great chair he stretched out in, cradled like a small child, his legs
dangling weightless over one of the arms.  "I am so BORED!" he
declared in a great sigh, watching upside-down as the small koorime
baby tossed a tinker toy at one of his goblins, giggling adorably.
   Kurama pushed himself up to sit straight in the chair, still cradled like
an infant.  He held out his hand flatly, a swirl of ki collecting above it in
a clear sphere.  Twinkling and swirling, Kurama moved it closer to his
green eyes, following swirls of dust as it materialized into a tangible
picture.  Inside was a surveillance image of the little black-haired
youkai whom he had met not more two hours ago.  The little, compact
body flitted about the maze, this way and that, never noticing that The
Labyrinth would shift and change behind him, herding him about in
circles.
    Kurama smiled lazily and leaned back in the plush chair, smiling as
he watched the little youkai struggle within.  "He's a kawaii little thing,
ne?" he asked the globe before him, swirling it about in his fingertips,
watching the black figure closely.
   "Nani, Kurama-Osama?" one of the little goblins blurted out.  The
small, grotesque little figure scampered over and stood straight at
Kurama's feet, raising a hand quickly to toss off a primed military
salute.
   "Nan demo nai," Kurama smiled, dissipating the globe into thin air. 
"I was just thinking out loud."
   "Oh, hai!"
   He flipped the black cape over one shoulder as he un-cradled himself
from the chair, the black leather tightly caressing his body, creaking and
slipping beneath him as he moved, tightening around his slim figure and
enhancing his build.  
    "You know... I think I've just found something to occupy all this free
time of mine," Kurama smiled, flashing green eyes over to the baby
koorime.
   The entire room erupted spontaneously into cheers, party streamers
and confetti sparking into existence.
   Kurama frowned heavily, rising from the chair in a humph as the
goblins began their 'hip-hip-hurray!' around him.  With the speed and
agility of the wind, Kurama dashed across the room in a heartbeat,
grabbing one of the Captains of the Guards up by the shirt collar and
hoisting him eye level." Are you trying to IMPLY something here?!"
   The little guard sputtered as Kurama shook him violently back and
forth, a little blue pacifier wobbling from side to side in his mouth. 
"Uh.. no, Your Highness!!" he choked, his little body tossing back and
forth.  "Uh.. it was only a joke!  Hai!  A joke!"
     "A joke?" Kurama's eyes sparkled a bit as he stopped shaking the
little captain.
   "HAI!"  the whole room agreed in one voice, cowering back a bit, the
confetti and streamers fluttering to the ground defeatedly.
   "Ahahahahahah!!!" Kurama tossed his head back and laughed loudly,
clutching his chest and nearly doubling over.  All around him, the
goblins sweat-dropped, eyes growing wide as they watched their king
rolling into fits of hysterics, crickets chirping in the background around
them.
   "...ahahahah ...    well, laugh," Kurama ordered with narrow eyes,
scowling about the palace room at the goblins.
   As a collective, the goblins all broke into hysterics around him,
laughing as best as they could, rolling on the floor and on each other.
   Kurama recovered in the hysterics about him, picking himself quickly
to his feet and adjusting the black leather.  "QUIET!"  he ordered... and
within two seconds, the palace room fell silent.
   Kurama smiled again, tapping his toe on the stone floor, ringing a
sultry echo through the room.  "What we need is some music... " 
   "Hai, Kurama-sama!!" a handful of goblins shouted, scampering off
into the palace depths immediately.

    Hiei flicked to the top of a short set of stairs, red eyes scanning the
maze walls around him.  For some odd reason, he knew he had been
here before.
   "K'so," he murmured, standing straight in the sunlight rising behind
him.  "I'm going in circles."  Anger crowded over his face, furrowing
his brow and wrinkling the little forehead as he scowled deeply.
   He walked over to the marble wall and laid a hand on it, feeling the
cool stone underneath.  Somehow he had to mark a trail so he knew
where he was going... but how?  He had no katana to mar the walls
with, he had no tools whatsoever...
   Hiei shoved a hand into his pocket and fished around.  Surely he had
picked something up that could help him out here!  He continued to
fish, coming up with only balls of lint before his small fingers wound
around something long and thin.  He pulled it out.
   In his hand sat a long, fat, pink  tube of something, large golden
letters reading 'Mabeline' on the side glinting back at him through the
sunlight.  "Nani..." he spoke to the tube, half expecting it to answer
back to him.  He fiddled around with it for a few moments before he
managed to uncap it.
   A pointed rod of dark red something stuck out from the tube,
glistening, rivaling  the color of his own deep eyes.  Curiously, he
sniffed it, brushing it against his nose.   He wiped his nose immediately
as the strange, perfumy smell stuck to him, coming back with a red
streak smeared across the back of his hand.
   "Lipstick," he snarled, furiously wiping a sleeve over his nose.  "Well,
it's better than nothing."   Hiei tossed the cap aside and bent down to
the floor of the maze, blowing dirt and leaves from one of the
sandstone tiles that laid over the floor.  With the lipstick, he drew a
perfect red arrow on the surface marking his intended path before
flitting quickly off.
   Hiei had disappeared around the corner all to quickly to notice the
stone under the red arrow shift and lift up.  From under it, a tiny head
popped out, quickly blowing a raspberry to the direction the youkai had
ran off in.  "Baka.... do you know how long it takes to CLEAN these
damn stones???"
   The little elf expertly flipped the stone over above him, his little hands
becoming instantly covered in the red lipstick.  He grumbled lowly to
himself as he lowered the stone back into to place, the red arrow gone
from the floor of the maze.

    Hiei knelt and wrote again in lipstick, flitting quickly off in the
direction the lipstick arrow pointed him to...
   And just as before, the stone moved, another little elf flipping the
stone over and crawling back under, muttering curses to himself.

    A heavy beat pounded throughout the room as Kurama pranced
daintily about, kicking goblins out of his way as he danced happily,
ruffling his hair about his neck and shoulders seductively.  Lightly, he
sung along with the music, glancing out the window every chance he
could, looking out into his Labyrinth and to the little youkai he knew
tried furiously beyond to conquer it.
   "Ah, my darling little youkai," he said to himself above the music,
furiously booting another goblin into high orbit under his feet, prancing
by with a playful grin painted widely across his face.  "If you only knew
that no one has ever been able to solve my Labyrinth... oh, but where's
the fun in telling you?  It will be so much more fun when your time runs
out and you become mine out of sheer default."
   He chuckled deeply and bent down, scooping up the baby koorime
into his arms.  He cooed and babbled lightly to it... until he noticed it
was only a rag-doll impersonation of the baby, a placid, dumb little face
grinning stupidly back up at him.  
  Quickly he stopped his prances and darted green eyes to the playpen
in the middle of the room.  The real baby koorime sat laughing and
tossing toys around, so absolutely adorable it made Kurama's teeth hurt
just looking at her.
    Kurama shrugged and tossed the rag doll high into the air, catching it
and tossing it again, higher and higher each time as he sang along to the
music, dancing around in place.
   On the last throw, Kurama stepped out from under the rag doll,
watching it plummet like a rocket back to the floor, its plastic head
busting into three pieces as it hit the stone tiles.  And Kurama-Osama
laughed hysterically.
     The goblins around him all stopped their dancing and
sweat-dropped again, watching their king laugh and point fingers at the
busted doll head on the floor before him.  "Ahahahahah.... well, laugh!"
he ordered over the music, laughing and prancing over to the playpen.
   Once again, the entire room broke up laughing.
   The little koorime babbled and drooled at Kurama as he nestled down
beside her, tickling her little stomach.  "In 12 hours and 26 minutes...
you'll be mine!  And your handsome little uncle too!"

   ACHOO!!
   The little youkai sniffled and raised a finger to his nose, coaxing away
the tingling sensation that tickled him.  "Damn Ningenkai wives-tales."
   Hiei tried his best to ignore the music floating to his ears from the
castle as he bent down and wrote another red arrow into the stones. 
He got quickly to his feet and flicked off...  only to come nose to nose
with a dead end.
  "Damn," he whispered to the wall, backing up a few stepps to stare
confused at it's polished, marble surface.  "That's not right.. I could
have sworn this was an open passage."  He eyed the wall momentarily
and flicked back to his red arrow...
   The red arrow had turned 180 degrees, pointing opposite the
direction he had originally drawn it, pointing on it's merry way right 
through a wall.  "Nani?    What the.. someone's changing my marks! 
What a horrible place this is!  It's not fair!!"  Hiei pounded a fist into
the blocks, tossing the lipstick tube through the maze.
   "That's right!  It's not fair!!"  A voice laughed at him, chorused by
three other laughs.
   "But that's not even the half of it!!"  another laughed.
   Hiei sprung to his feet and leapt forward toward the voices, snarling
and raging.  He was prepared for just about anything... except what he
came up against.
   Hiei slid to a clumsy halt, arms sprawling forward over his sudden
loss of momentum, wobbeling the youkai about in place.  Two figures,
resembling living playing cards blocked passages to two doors directly
before him.  Each figure had two heads, one on top right-side up, the
other on the bottom of the card, upside-down.  They giggled and
snickered at Hiei as he looked them over carefully, giggling amonst
themselves.
   "Yoroshiku!"  one of the card heads laughed.  It was dressed in red
as far as Hiei could tell, a little head with three red stars lined under
one, large brown eye.  "Rinku desu!" the top red-clothed head greeted.
   "Chuu desu!" the blue-clothed top head greeted, guarding the other
door across from Rinku.
   "Shura," the bottom red-clothed head sang.
   "Shi-shiwakamaru," the other bottom, blue-clothed head echoed.
   "What in the hell are all of you" Hiei steamed.  "This was a dead end
just a minute ago!"
   "Nope.. that's the dead end behind you!" Shura giggled, pointing out
from under the card.
   Hiei whirled to come nose to nose with a wall blocking his way
where once there was an open passage.  "Nan da... this damn place
keeps changing!  How in wonder am I supposed to solve this blasted
thing if it keeps changing?"
   "Well..." Rinku started, winking a large, brown eye.  "The only way
to get out of this place is through one of these doors.  Rule Number
One:  One way always leads to the castle at the center of The
Labyrinth, and the other way always leads to certain death."  He smiled
widely.
   "So..." Chuu echoed.  "What the shrimp is tellin' you is that one of
these doors takes you to the castle, one of them is sure to eat you alive. 
So.  Choose which one.  You're boring us!"
   Rinku leaned over off his card and stuck his tongue out at Chuu's big
head, darting quickly back.
   "So, which one goes where?" Hiei asked gruffly, crossing his arms
over his chest.
   "Uh.. we can't tell you," Shura said simply.
   "Because we don't know," Shi-shiwakamaru echoed.  "But they do,"
he pointed a fat little finger up to the top heads.
   "Rule Number Two!" Rinku declared.  "You may ask only one of us
one 'yes or no' question."
   "Rules rules rules," Chuu complained, popping a whisky bottle in his
mouth and taking a big glug.  "You talk to much!"
  "I do NOT!!"  Rinku shouted back.  He pulled down an eyelid and
blew off a giant raspberry, coating Chuu in a generous coating of
slobber.  "Baka!!"
   Hiei sighed heavily and reached forward, bonking Rinku heavily on
the head.  "Shut up now.  I want to ask a question."
   "AH HA!!  Rule Number Three!!!" Rinku shouted, flashing a 'V' sign. 
He watched in awe as Hiei face-faulted and crashed to the ground
under him, kicking up a large dust cloud in his wake.  He leaned over
the edge of the card and yelled down to the youkai  "One of us always
tells the truth, and one of us always lies.  Heh heh... see that big dumb
galoot over there?" he threw a thumb over his shoulder to Chuu.  "That
dumb ox always lies."
   "I DO NOT!!!" Chuu bellowed back.  "I tella truth!!
   "Oh, what a lie!!" Rinku chuckled, echoed by his counterpart below.
   "Shut up!"  Hiei growled, pulling himself to his feet, brushing plumes
of dust off his black clothing.  He whipped out a finger and pointed it
directly at Rinku's little head.  "You!  Answer this.  Would he," Hiei
pointed a finger to Chuu, " tell me that this door leads to the castle?"
   Rinku thought a moment, disappearing behind the card to confer with
Shura underneath.  Several minutes passed by as the two whispered and
chuckled, Hiei growing more and more impatient with every heartbeat.
   Just when Hiei though his patience would force him to the brink of
insanity, Rinku's little head popped out, smiling widely.  "Yes!"  he
declared, flashing another 'V' sign.
   "So... "Hiei thought briefly, stepping back.  "The other door leads to
the castle and THIS door leads to certain death."  In one of those rare
moments, Hiei smiled, baring little fangs. 
   "Nani?  How do you know, Mr. Smarty-Pants-san!" Chuu bellowed.
   Hiei smiled wider.  "I asked Rinku what your answer would be if I
asked YOU whether or not the door behind him lead to the castle.  He
said 'yes.'  So if he told me that you said 'yes', someone's lying in there
someplace, so the answer is really 'no'."
   Chuu poised himself to ask another question, his mouth flopping
open as the thought escaped him at the moment, the sheer complexity
of the statement freezing his drunken brain solid.  "Uh, is that right?" he
asked Rinku.
   The little guy just shrugged.  "Beats me.  I've never understood it!"
   Hiei snorted and pushed Chuu out of his way, throwing open the
door beyond.  "Hn... this ain't so hard," he snickered, stepping quickly
through the door.  "This Goblin King should redesign this place.  It's
entirely to easYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"
   Rinku and Chuu blinked across the maze at each other, turning to
look through the doorway.  Hiei was nowhere in sight.  Instead, a large
trap door spanned the width of the corridor beyond, Hiei's voice
disappearing into the blackness beyond.
  
   "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH... *thud!*
    Hiei's fall ended abruptly as he landed on a pile of hard pillows in
absolute darkness, the smell of centuries of dust rising up to his nose.
   And he sneezed.

    Kurama glanced into his sphere, seeing a dimly lit outline of Hiei
against a sea of black, stumbling around the new prison he found
himself in.  "Damn... he's in the oubliette," he growled.
   Around him, over his shoulders and perched on his lap, the little
goblins all flew into fits of hysterics, rolling about and creating a
roaring ruckass.
   "SHUT UP!" Kurama shouted.  "He shouldn't have made it that far...
he should have given up long ago."
   "Um, what if he never gives up, Kurama-sama?" one of the goblins
squeaked quietly, cowering behind one of his buddies.
   "Hmm... good question.  Well, he'll realize his efforts are hopeless as
soon as the gardener leads him back to the beginning.  He'll give up
when he realizes he has to start all over again!  And until then, I'm
going to have some fun with him!"  Kurama dissipated the globe and
began laughing rolling over onto his back and chuckling heavily at the
ceiling.  "Well...?" he grumbled.
   The goblins flew into fits of hysterics around him again as ordered,
rolling over the floor as Kurama disappeared in a flurry of rose petals.

    Hiei felt blindly through the darkness, groping at walls that seemed
to surround him at every turn.  Things littered the floor that he could
not see... possibly a few pillows to serve as a bed and a pool of water
to keep him from going thirsty.  But he was alone.  So desperately
alone.
   He cringed inwardly and whimpered slightly, pulling away from the
wall to stumble through the darkness.  "Hello!!" he called frantically,
his eyes desperately searching for some ray of light to focus on.
   "Hello," a soft, whispy voice called through the darkness, drawing the
adrenaline into Hiei's veins.  Quickly, he twirled around to catch two
thin slits of green light before they closed, a soft, deep chuckle dimming
with them.  The hair on the back of Hiei's neck stood on end, chills
running up and down his body.  He was being stalked.
   With a yell, Hiei darted across the stone prison cell to where the
green slits were supposed to be, tumbling over the pillows to smash
into the wall beyond.  "K'so.  where the hell are you!"
   "Over here," the deep voice whispered seductively.
   Hiei spun to catch the green slits, again bounding over the pillows
only to smash into the wall again.
   "Damn you!  Show yourself!"
    Silence.  Nothing more.  A great, black devouring darkness that
dropped Hiei's hopeful soul through his feet.
    Hiei turned in a frantic circle, rubbing his eyes, straining against the
blackness that encompassed his vision.  "OI!  where are you!"
   Silence yet again.
   "But.. don't leave me alone here..." he whispered to himself, feeling
long curling fingers creep around his elbows... but those weren't his
hands!
   "You're not alone," the voice whispered above him, green glowing
eyes sparking into existence and looking down onto him as long, strong
arms wound around his shoulders.
   Hiei froze in the beaming light of the eyes, staring up into them as the
arms lifted his body to lay him gently on the pile of cushions he knew to
be somewhere in the blackness.  He was paralyzed, like a wild animal
caught in the headlights of a car at night, unable to consciously move
his body as all he could do was stare into the green eyes.
   They glowed with a disembodied life of their own, seeming to speak
the soft words that were being muttered down to him.  They would
shift and smile, thinning into green slits occassionally as they blinked
lazily.  The eyes were all Hiei had to focus on, staring into them, using
them as a life line through the darkness, his soul fluttering nervously as
they would blink out of existence only to appear bolder and brighter.
   "Who.. who are you," Hiei whispered, finding the mobility to stretch
a finger through the air.  He was surprised to find it come in contact
with soft, warm skin hovering above him, the green, glowing eyes
blinking lazily at him again.
   He never got an answer.  Instead, the green eyes slid shut, plunging
Hiei's vision back to black.  He laid perfectly still, feeling the figure
above him lean down onto him... before soft, warm lips pressed firmly
over his little mouth, calling him into silence.
   Hiei's eyes slid shut, unable to tell when his eyes shut completely... he
was rewarded only with black either way.  He felt a tongue rub gently
against his lips, parting them slightly.  His little body reacted, gasping
and involuntarily opening his mouth, letting the tongue slip into his
mouth in the darkness, strong arms drawing his body up into the body
of another man's just above him.

(c) August 1997 by Jiminy Cricket Presses