A Drop of Magnesium

Chapter 1: Terra Nova

A/N: (Please read, I know it's long). Hi! I want to punch myself in the face for this, but I couldn't help it! This came from a literal dream and from that formed an entire story and a new OC (my favorite thing is creating new Ocs, hate me if you want lol).

I'm not following any rules. There will be modern technology in this story which completely fucks with the YYH timeline, but I don't care. It's set maybe like...6 or 7 years after the series. But guess what, the OVAs came out just last year, so let's go off of those (even though that completely ignores the manga timeline and y'all probably gonna be like, wtf you doing bitch. Idc. Call me a nutbag, if you will).

The name of this fic came from a NASA finding of the remains of an exploded star (a supernova), which released a bunch of gases into space, and magnesium was a predominant element within those remains. It shows up as blue in their imaging...which will make sense in the context of this fic very soon ;)

Hope you'll like it, my dudes!

. . .

She could feel the breaths gasp from her lungs as she pushed her weary legs faster, harder. They were almost out, she could see the light up ahead, just a little further...

Loud clacking and inhuman screeching drew ever closer, and so did the sounds of a sword hacking through the creatures' tiny bodies. They learned the hard way that knocking them down wouldn't stop them for long, so all they could do was run as the monsters swarmed out of the depths of the cave, the man behind her doing all he could to keep the herd at bay.

This was scary, right? Most chicks would be crying by now.

Not her.

This was about survival. She could bitch and moan later. Right now her legs needed to pick up the pace.

The air outside wasn't any fresher than the air in the cave, and her breathing grew all the more labored when they finally burst free, bolting for the massive tree not far in the distance.

She reached it first with him hot on her heels, and he didn't hesitate to offer her a boost up, which was not so much a boost more so than a toss. Her hands wrapped around the nearest branch and she pulled herself up, moving to wrap her legs around it and reach down to him.

No need. He jumped from the ground to the branch above hers, and so it went, up and up until he shoved her to the final branch strong enough to bear her weight.

The tree was old and gnarled and held no leaves, it's bark black as tar, falling away like ashes in her rough hands. She made the mistake of looking down, spotting the little bastards swarming the tree like massive insects.

They were too small to reach any of the branches...and considering they quite literally lacked a brain (empty skulls, ya know), they didn't think to use each other to climb the tree either. Safe, for now.

The man settled on a broad, sturdy branch several feet lower than her own. He kept his sword close and took a few moments to catch his breath after their mad dash for safety.

Each time she fell through a wormhole it was into another, and often worse, case of peril.

She took his cue and settled down herself, ignoring the sounds of chattering and screeching far below. Might as well sleep. Who knew how much travel was ahead of them. The things on the ground would give up eventually.

A sharp pain woke her hours later, the sky darker than before, a blood-colored moon high above them. One of their skeletal attackers had sunken its teeth into her thigh, and it was with some surprise she realized they finally got a clue and stacked atop each other to climb the tree. A long line of them stretched up and up, there bony fingers reaching for her, pulling at her clothes and hair.

She tore herself away, sliding across the branch and digging her hands into the skull of the one gnawing at her leg. She tossed it down hard, knocking over several of the others, and then pulled herself to a stand.

Her balance swayed, and her attempts to kick the rest off her perch ended up being a mistake. One managed to wrap a clawed hand around her ankle, the bone sharp and unpleasant on her skin, and tugged.

She stumbled and fell, crashing through two thinner branches before she landed into a pair of familiar arms.

"Thank the fuckin' lord. Where have you been?"

She looked up at him, her sizable body oddly scrunched in his hold, and felt her first sense of dread since they found themselves here.

"Hiei...?"

His eyes were not his own—glassy and far away. The third eye on his forehead bled a sickly shade of milky white and the standard red of his irises followed soon after.

She pulled herself from his grip, thankful his branch was considerably more extensive than hers had been, and began to back away.

Hiei drew his sword, and she held out a hand, to stop him or placate him or even just get his attention, she didn't know. He slashed without hesitation, cutting off all the digits but her thumb. She watched the blood gush from where the appendages once were and felt faint. The sight of blood never bothered her...but then again, she'd never had a piece of her cut off before.

She stepped back, felt her foot touch open air—and fuck, her fucking fingers were gone! They were fucking gone!

How the fuck was she supposed to box without any goddamn fingers?!

Her brain short-circuited. She didn't know which way was up or which was down and didn't even know if it mattered.

She took another step back...and fell.

Hiei came to at the sound of her body hitting the ground, a sickening crunch that caused his stomach to drop to his feet and lurch back up again twice as fast.

What the hell had he done...?

. . .

Hiei was patrolling the borders around Tourin late in the afternoon, evening dust clouds stinging his eyes and the summer air acrid in his mouth.

He took this job seriously, as he continued to do it years after the first tournament no matter who won or lost. Each day new wormholes opened, most natural occurrences caused by fluctuations in energy and the time of year, and spat out unsuspecting humans.

Sometimes Hiei didn't make it.

Sometimes he found bodies, killed by his own kind or the wildlife or even the air.

But they grew less and far between as more tournament rejects took up the mantel, patrolling all known regions of the Makai and shipping the humans back where they belonged.

Hiei liked this routine. Train. Patrol the border. Complete his duties with Mukuro. Fight Mukuro. Sleep.

Once a month go visit Yukina.

Twice a month go to Raizen's old castle and heckle Yusuke when he returned to take care of his lordly business.

Go back to the human world with him and pretend he was dragged against his will so he can check up on Kurama and the oaf.

Rinse. Repeat.

Simple.

Hiei liked routine. It gave his life a sense of stabilization he'd never had before.

How many years now? Six? Seven?

He didn't recall. Didn't care.

Today would mark a significant and irreversible break in that routine. A break Hiei couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried.

It was the day he met her for the first time.

The day he met Nobody.

It started off routine. Hiei found a human woman in the clutches of an ogre triple her size. Okay, nothing he couldn't handle, nothing out of the ordinary.

But it was the look on her face that made him wait.

A look of utter indifference. The woman's face so blank Hiei would be hard pressed to say if she even considered her inevitable death a minor inconvenience. He almost thought she might begin yawning, if it wasn't for the fact she was clearly trying to separate the beast's hands, her visible arm muscles bulging with the effort.

Hiei saved countless humans over the years. This was the first time he'd seen one so unafraid.

No.

So perfectly apathetic.

Was she familiar with demons?

He didn't sense any energy from her, not even the smallest of flickers. It didn't rule the possibility out, however, but did make him think it was unlikely.

He would have to read her mind and find the answer for himself, his curiosity getting the better of him.

His brow furrowed when the Jagan didn't immediately open at the thought, so he attempted to force it. It fought back, sending a searing pain through his skull that made him cringe. Something like this hadn't happened in years, not since The Dark Tournament.

He tried again and was greeted with the same result.

Battling through the pain, he mentally fortified himself enough to beat the foreign entity into submission, and it opened with great reluctance.

A wasted effort at best, as Hiei, neither saw or heard a single thing.

There was the connection, the feeling of slipping into what should have been her thoughts, but all there was inside was white noise.

He backed out, allowing the Jagan to close, flickering from his vantage point high up on a barren hill. He drew his sword as he flew through the air and sliced the ogre's arms from its body, watching as they, along with the woman, fell in a bloody heap to the sand below.

He made quick work of splitting the monster's skull, wiping the blood on his blade with the furs worn around the ogre's waist. He sheathed it and approached the woman lying still clutched between the ogre's enormous palms.

He pried them apart and watched, uneasy, as she crawled out from under them, her clothes dusty and tanned skin smeared with god only knew what.

Beyond her completely unperturbed facial expression, the most remarkable things about her were her height...the fluorescent green of her shoulder-length hair, and the multitude of tattoos littering her arms and legs.

She stuck out against Makai's dark sky like a sore thumb.

And it irked him that he had to look up to address her. The giant must be close to Kuwabara's height, for fuck sakes.

"Who are you?"

She shrugged. "Nobody."

Hiei's hand went to the hilt of his blade. She didn't have a shred of energy, but he wasn't about to be caught off guard. "Who are you?" he demanded again.

And once again she replied, "Nobody."

Aggravated, he didn't give her an ounce of warning when he lunged to knock her out. Her human eyes never even saw him move, not even when it was too late.

He did what he always did—wiped her memories. Stuck to the routine.

Hiei wasn't about to let her disrupt it more than she already had. Giant wench thought she was funny, telling him she was nobody. Well, Hiei wasn't laughing.

He threw her over his shoulder, the woman's build making her awkward to carry, and she was a lot heavier than she looked. The girl, albeit a freak of nature, was also made of compact muscle and it made his trip back to the human world all the more annoying.

It didn't take long to find the hole she fell through, and Hiei used it to transport them both back, climbing out into a piss-scented alleyway in the bad part of the city. The sun was setting, the summer heat only just barely tolerable because of it, and Hiei could already feel sweat coating the back of his neck. A bath was in order once he found a place to drop the girl.

Hiei stood there for a while, wondering where, exactly, should he put her. This was the slums. He couldn't just drop her in the alley. He might as well have left her with the ogre if that were the case.

"I live a couple blocks from here."

Hiei stiffened, not expecting her to be awake so soon and he hadn't noticed her heart rate pick up with her newly found consciousness.

When he didn't move, she cleared her throat. "You can put me down now."

Where was the fear? The sense of self-preservation? Did she lack all of that?

What surprised him, even more, was the fact her memories remained unaltered. Seemed reading her mind wasn't the only thing he couldn't do.

This was going to create a whole slew of problems.

Hiei sneered, dropping the woman to the ground. She landed with an "oof," but her face was still the same—neutral, aloof. It was like she was disassociating. Maybe she was in shock, though she lacked most of the other common signs.

"Do you know what I am?" Hiei snapped at her.

She stood, tugging at her shorts which had ridden up her thighs, and rubbed at her ass. She looked at Hiei as if he was stupid, the first show of, well, anything other than total indifference. "You look like a man to me, but who knows. Don't wanna just assume."

She looked him dead in the eye and Hiei, speechless for a split second, noticed her eyes were a shocking shade of bright blue. There was a tattoo of a small crescent moon beside her right eye...and a tiny metal bar through the black of her left eyebrow. Dark colored makeup was smeared in the corners and around the edges of her eyes.

She looked like she was trying a little too hard to be rebellious.

"Are you not afraid, you imbecile?"

The girl shrugged again and flashed him a peace sign. "Thanks for helping me...I guess? See ya around."

The woman turned to leave, giving him her back, a mistake only a senseless fool would make in his presence. He wanted to do something to frighten her, the sudden need to provoke a reaction from her burning in his stomach until his body moved of its own accord.

He pulled his sword and aimed for her neck.

She dodged by leaning her head to one side and then kept on walking, her hands disappearing into her pockets. Hiei stood there perplexed long after she was out of sight.

Who the fuck did the behemoth think she was?!

. . .

Yusuke's ramen shop was a welcome respite, as he split the Noren and was greeted with the scent of something mouthwatering. Hiei took his usual seat at the counter and didn't have to wait long for the detective to notice him.

A bowl of ramen slid down the smooth wood, and Hiei stopped it with a palm, snapping a set of disposable chopsticks in half and setting into his meal. He ate with vigor, his early irritation still bubbling over, and even the taste of good food couldn't fix it.

"What's got your loincloth in a bunch?"

Yusuke leaned his elbows on his counter across from the fire demon and grinned. He was never known for his patience, but Hiei made him wait until he'd drained his bowl before replying.

"I do not wear a loincloth."

"Boxers then."

Hiei shook his head, handing the bowl back to Yusuke for a second serving.

"Panties?" The detective asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Hiei glared at him, and Yusuke laughed, filling Hiei's bowl and passing it back to him.

"Commando, huh? Damn, I get why you wear such loose pants now."

Hiei didn't know, nor did he care, what commando meant. He was too busy thinking of the woman from early, and the thoughts were driving him insane. He quickly finished his bowl and laid his chopsticks across it, waiting for Yusuke to finish with another customer before he said, "I need to speak with Koenma."

Koenma was his best bet. The spirit world king kept files on all the inhabitants of Japan and his particular interest in Sarayashiki should work out in his favor. Hiei would find out who that girl was if it was the last thing he ever did.

Yusuke stood behind the counter with a towel over his shoulder as he washed used bowls and cups, drying them with the towel before finding homes for them. "Koenma? That's unusual. What the hell do you need with him?"

Hiei was about to tell him everything, but he abruptly shut his mouth, thinking better of it. He would never hear the end of it if he admitted to his sudden burning desire to learn more about a human woman. A human woman with no powers, abilities, or remarkable traits.

Just a weird looking idiot with no sense of self-preservation.

Her dodging his sword was only a fluke, he hadn't been trying to kill her, after all. He highly doubted it was because of some hidden talent.

So why was he so interested in her again?

Hiei wasn't sure he could even answer that himself, and he was concerned Yusuke would start digging into it, but the fool just shrugged and pulled out the communicator he still carried around in his pockets. He jabbed a few buttons...clicked it closed, took a breath to calm himself, opened it and jabbed a few more until it began to ring.

He tossed it to Hiei who snatched it out of midair.

"What is it now, Yusuke? If this is another butt dial I swear—" Koenma cut himself short, finally looking up at his screen to see Hiei's face there instead of his prized ex-spirit detective's. "Hiei? What..can I do for you?"

The child ruler always sounded wary when he spoke to him, and it gave Hiei great pleasure.

"I need you to pull a file for me."

"I can't do that without a good reason, you know that."

"Is allowing you to keep soiling your diapers reason enough?" Hiei snarled.

Koenma's face paled, but his lips turned into a grim, determined line. "You can't threaten it out of me, either."

"Give it here." Yusuke snatched the bit of technology from Hiei's hand and held it too close to his face, so Koenma was forced to look up his nose. "It's for a case. We're working on it together."

"Then why didn't you call me?"

"I have a fuckin' job, I don't just sit around all day and eat barbecue like you do. I was busy."

"Fine," Koenma huffed. "Whose file do you need to see?"

Yusuke looked to Hiei then, but the fire demon shrugged. Yusuke closed his eyes, steeling himself. "Don't have a name."

"How am I supposed to find it then?"

Yusuke cast the fire demon another questioning look over the communicator and Hiei gestured for him to hand it back, impatient.

"She has bright green hair," he supplied, and Koenma just stared at him as if Hiei'd grown a fourth eye in the past five minutes.

"So do more than a quarter of the apparitions in demon world. Try again."

"She isn't a demon."

Koenma blinked and then sighed. "Okay. I can work with that. A woman, green hair, lives there in the city, correct?"

Hiei nodded, and Koenma disappeared from the tiny screen, yelling at one of his ogres to pull all the files on human girls with green hair living in Sarayashiki.

"Dead or alive, boss?" Hiei heard the ogre ask.

"Alive, you idiot!"

The spirit world ruler returned to his chair, steepling his hands, and gave Hiei a nod. "I'll send what I find to Yusuke's smartphone."

The screen went black, and Hiei tossed it back to the detective.

Yusuke, once again leaning on the counter and eyeing Hiei with amused interest, asked, "So, you gonna tell me what's going on?"

"No."

Yusuke flipped him his middle finger and looked around his shop. A few stragglers remained, and after that, he would have to clean up for closing. Turning back to Hiei, he pointed, face as stern as the man could manage. "You, me, and a couple of beers. My place." He grinned then. "Don't even think about skipping out, I'll hunt you down. I've got a feeling this story is gonna be good."

Yusuke rubbed his hands together and got back to work.

. . .

"That's not her."

Yusuke drained his second beer and slammed the empty can down onto his coffee table. "This is the thirtieth fuckin' profile man, how goddamn many green haired chicks could there be?!"

Hiei stole the phone from his hand, and Yusuke yelped, trying to steal it back, but the fire demon flickered from the couch and reappeared across the room. Sulking, Yusuke went back to the kitchen to get more alcohol. Apparently, looking through copious women's backgrounds made for thirsty work.

Hiei scrolled, pictures flashing past his eyes at hyper speed, a colorful bright green blur.

When Yusuke came strolling back into the room, two cans of beer clutched in his fists, was when Hiei's scrolling came to an abrupt halt.

There—that was the one.

Yusuke's eyes brightened at the smug look on Hiei's face. "You find her?"

The fire demon smirked. Oh yes. Hiei'd found her, alright.

Her name was Nova Kai.

Aka—Terra Nova.

As Hiei skimmed her file, his smirk only grew, and soon enough he was settled back on the couch with a fresh beer and pages upon pages of records to read.

. . .

A/N: Nova Kai (alternatively Kai Nova if you go by the proper Japanese manner of speaking a person's name) is my newest child.

Please treat her gently...although she probably doesn't need it ;)

Don't expect me to update this shit on a schedule. None of my shit is updated on any kind of schedule, no matter how much effort I put into trying to keep one. If you can handle that, then I hope you'll like coming on this ride with me. If not, sorry you're missing out! Please send me some reviews, let me know if this is worth wasting my limited free time on!