Apparently I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho. I guess I'll just write fanfiction, then. Sorry, Pop.

He couldn't be mad about it. Stealing wasn't when you happened to find something, right? Though, if it had been his wallet, she'd have returned it.

Oh, sorry, Kurama—I found your hair on my coat and kept it in case of emergencies, and I knew it was yours because only Kuwabara has red hair too but this one was long and it was months ago really and I didn't think you'd need it back, it being a hair and all, but it was a bit sneaky and I don't have anyone else's hair, but I doubt Hiei would be obliging, anyway.

Botan inhaled; her mind ran so fast, sometimes, it felt like she was running too. She found a student walking his girlfriend home and asked him the time.

"Twenty after three."

"Thank you!" Botan smiled at the boy's girlfriend in a way she hoped was non-threatening, but the girl didn't seem to like her, anyway. The couple continued away from Meioh Academy as Botan checked her compass. It's still taking me to the school, she thought. Yusuke would've been home for hours already.

Botan's blue uniform among the throngs of fuschia students was the last thing anyone stared at when they looked her way; sure, the violet eyes were odd up close, and the unnatural tint of her bouncy ponytail got more stares than Hiei at a petting zoo, but it was the red compass on her wrist that made the girl seem so out of place. Sure, it looked just like a cheap watch, but now that she was honing in on Kurama, she had to keep her eyes glued to the compass's face so she wouldn't miss him, though she thought she knew where he would be.

Someone near her scoffed. "Mars is that way, sweetheart." The punk and his friends hissed their laughter, and Botan pressed her lips together before she—

"Actually, smarty-pants, Mars is that way this time of year. And I'm only going to public school." Too late.

His friends howled at his shame. Botan smiled and turned back to the Academy.

"He should be just about . . . here! Oh, no." Botan peeked up through the window where Kurama's back was to her; he was cornered by three cute classmates who seeed to bathe in his shadow every time Botan came here. She rapped on the window, and he turned, his mask of politeness cracking into a smile of relief. He motioned for her to wait and turned back to his fans. He didn't keep her waiting too long; he met her between the window and maple tree and wore a genuine grin.

"Did I save you for a change?" Botan teased.

"You did." He pulled one hand from his pockets and scratched at his nape. "I guess I owe you now."

"How can you say that? The score is one to . . . well, I lost count of all the times you've helped me."

"Yes, well, this day could have been much worse. Thank you."

Botan smiled. "You can pay me back now if you want. Where's your schoolbag? We can't talk here!"

Kurama pointed a thumb at the window. "Actually, I have some lab work."

"Oh. Maybe tomorrow, then."

"That . . . isn't what I meant. I reserved the biology lab for a few tests. We can talk there." He offered her an arm, and a ring of gossip flew around them when Botan took it.

As they made their way inside, Botan noticed the sneers she got from the other branches of the Kurama Fangirl League. Oh yeah, she thought. He's Suichi Minamino here.

He gestured her to his table in Lab C and went to the coat rack. "I'm sorry about the attention you're getting, Botan. It's against code here for students to color their hair."

"I seriously doubt that's why your fangirls were glaring at me." She held up the Demon Compass. "Speaking of hair."

"Good—then you didn't have trouble finding me." Kurama buttoned his lab coat. "I always planned to give you some, actually, but it kept slipping my mind."

Was that it? She had worried for nothing? Well, no sense in pressing it. "So should we talk now, or shall I not disturb you? I can be quiet for your experiments, I promise."

"Not at all, Botan, I enjoy your company." Kurama was squinting at a beaker of fluid and speaking with the softness of an absent mind. He made a note in his textbook and stuck the pencil over his ear. "So what's new?"

"Well," she said, pulling out a notebook, "we've been getting a lot of reports on the Red Glove Gang."

"What an imbecilic name."

Botan laughed at his earnestness. "We can't all be Yoko Kurama, can we? Anyway, they have a few things in common with the king of thieves himself." She waited for him to look interested, but he was slicing a plant pod.

"I'm listening," he said.

"There's been a slew of heists lately, and that's usually no big deal to us when it happens in Demon World."

"But?"

"It's all Spirit World ambassadors. And it's all very high-profile stuff. Not Auntie's pearls."

"Artifacts."

"Right." Botan watched him cork some of the beaker's contents in a test tube. "Are you sure this is a good time?"

Kurama smiled. "Please don't fret. I'm just trying some inter-genus splicing to get the perfect paralysis poison for my Rose Whip."

"What! You can't do that here, Kurama, that's—"

He set his book in front of her and met her eyes. "I'll be good, Botan. Promise." He winked and resumed his work. "What kinds of artifacts have been taken?"

"You tell me."

He turned back to her and laughed when he saw she was joking. "I thought that was the kind of talk you wanted to have. Or are you going to give me a Spirit Gun, too?"

"I never knew you could be this feisty."

"You know what they say about a fox and his teeth." He smiled from the next table over, scribbling his notes and tossing his pencil down.

"You love that you're a fox, don't you?"

Kurama leaned over the table until he was too close to her. "What are you on the inside? A bird?"

"Why, because I fly?"

"And you chirp."

"Is that so?"

"It is. And I always liked chasing birds."

Botan faked a cough. "So, about the great fox and the Red Glove Gang."

He had moved over to his bubbling poison. "What about them?"

"They've never been caught."

Kurama was silent a moment, looking beyond the tubes in front of him. "Is your pen ready?"

Botan nodded.

"If you don't have any information on its members, you're probably dealing with veterans—thieves who have been caught before. At least the leader is a career thief. He could be teaching some low-class apparitions his tricks . . . Some places have alarms for only middle-class demons and higher. Do the hauls ever include something like those imaginary pearls you mentioned?"

Botan sifted through folders in her bag. "Let's see. Lamota said only the items from the safe were stolen, which included some family jewels and the Mirror of G'darth. But the report says he and his wife had returned from an opera that night, and during the robbery, Mrs. Lamota's sapphire tiara lay on her dressing table, within sight of the criminals for certain."

"Then you have a fishing job on your hands. Or a cult."

Botan scratched "fishing" and "cult" onto her handheld notepad, then stood to close the door, just in case. Through the glass pane, she saw a teacher down the hall rounding up his detention attendees. He must have felt her eyes on him, so she hurried back to her table.

"Getting a bit paranoid, are we?" Kurama laughed.

Botan opened her mouth to respond, but the door burst open instead.

The teacher from detention leaned in and adjusted his glasses. "Minamino? What's a Sarayashiki girl doing in our biology lab?"

"Mr. Shubinori," Kurama said with a respectful smile. "Botan is a good friend. Her parents asked that I tutor her for an upcoming project."

Shubinori nodded. "Very good, then. But if I have to use my key to open this door, you'll be in my classroom after school. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," Botan and Kurama said as he left.

"Why on earth would we lock the door?" Botan asked.

"As far as they know," Kurama laughed, "we're hormonal teenagers."