Title: Tales of the Unconscious Hero
Summary: A young woman went to bed one evening and awoke to find herself trapped in the consciousness of a young man.
Disclaimer: This is just one of those stories you have to write. I have no idea how this idea happened and I sincerely apologize but here it is.
I make no claims to the Yu Yu Hakusho franchise and earn no profit from this.
First chapter may be a bit slow but stick with me and reviews are always welcomed.
Chapter 1 – Sleep Tight.
Elizabeth collapsed on her roommate's futon, fatigued from the day's work. She stared around their shared room at the posters plastered to the walls. Her walls were covered with family pictures and various junk, things and posters she'd torn from magazines or gotten at concerts and various school events; her roommate's walls were similarly decorated, not including the large wall scrolls of drawn cartoon characters in various poses. Many of the characters were hidden behind a veil of bubbles and sparkles, the girls had abnormally large eyes and were the epitome of cute. It was like the Oxford and Webster dictionary mated and their definitions of cute evolved and then threw up to produce the characters. The boys seemed as if they were supposed to be attractive what with their eyelashes and what her roommate had explained to her were "bishie bubbles". In fact, as Elizabeth stared up at the ceiling from her place on the lumpy futon, 4 such boys stared down at her. The expansive wall scroll occupied a large portion of the ceiling in what was clearly a horrendous fire hazard.
"Yu Yu Hakusho," Elizabeth mumbled to herself, reading the script scrawled along the bottom of the scroll. "The redhead is definitely a girl. No doubt about it. It's like the short guy dipped his head in a bucket of industrial cement or some, why is it so pointy? And why do the other two look so pissed off? It's not my fault they're trying to come out from a two-dimensional world." These idle thoughts momentarily distracted Elizabeth from the stress of her day. However, the phrase 'coming out' soon brought her problems back to the front of her mind. Groaning loudly, she kneaded her fingers into her eyes to blot out the sight of the 4 cartoon boys and her memories.
"Tough day?" her roommate asked. Natsumi ceased her incessant typing and looked over at her roommate.
"College sucks. And so does my boyfriends apparently," Elizabeth said, launching into the story of how her now ex-boyfriend came out to her today. "I think the worst part is that I was the tester girlfriend, just so he could make sure he was actually gay."
"I told you he was gay!" Natsumi exclaimed.
"Yes, my terrible excuse of a relationship will teach me to never doubt the powers of a yoo-ey fanfiction writer," Elizabeth said sullenly.
"The word is yaoi," Natsumi corrected, as she turned back to her unfinished scene. "Ichigo nervously spread his legs wider to allow Chad easier access to his erect member. He watched as Chad's dark head of hair moved towards his crotch, teh mussels in his back rippling. 'Chad-kun maybe we shouldn't -' 'Its okay Ichigo, jsut trust me,' Chad said sultrilee. And with that, Chad lowered his head, wrapping his lips around Ichigo's swollen, throbbing co - "
"You spelled 'just' wrong."
Natsumi jumped and turned around to see Elizabeth reading over her shoulder. "Why are you reading - "
"Also, 'sultrilee' should be 'sultrily', change 'its' to 'it's', why do you always spell 'the' wrong and what the fuck kind of character has mussels in his back? Sounds delicious." Elizabeth continued skimming through the badly written pages of boy-on-boy action that Natsumi was so eager to submit the internet to. "Say, aren't you a virgin?"
"Yes, so what?" Natsumi said huffily, snatching her laptop away from Elizabeth's prying eyes.
"So why are you writing porn when you've no idea what the real thing is about?"
"Asks the virgin with the gay boyfriend."
At this reminder of yet another failed relationship, Elizabeth pitched herself onto her bed, groaning into her pillow. She didn't even have the energy to argue with the girl. She listened as Natsumi resumed her furious typing coupled with several giggles and heavy breathing.
"Well at least she's enjoying herself." Laying prone on the bed, Elizabeth thought over her life. In all of her 19 years, she had never thought that she would end up going to the University of Tennessee, much less end up with a self-proclaimed mega-otaku ("I still don't know what the fuck that is; some cartoon fanatic?") for a roommate. Yet here she was, homework shoved into a schoolbag, roommate wetting herself on the futon, gay ex-boyfriend for good measure. She let out another loud groan, exhausted with the path her life had taken.
"Do you want to watch some anime?" Natsumi chimed from the futon. She'd finished the scene and was now uploading it some adult fanfiction website. She had, however, forgotten to spell-check but that is of no importance on the interwebz. "It might make you feel better."
"Do you really think watching your silly cartoons will make me feel better? I mean if it was some Powerpuff Girls or Dexter's Laboratory, hell even Hey Arnold would be better than Digimon or your usual sparkly, glittery, pretty-boy 'Oh I am so tragic and in love with huge eyes and bigger tits! Love me, my lovey lover love!' Shoujo nonsense."
"Glad to see you have such high standards," Natsumi said dryly. "But no it's not my usual 'shoujo nonsense' it's Yu Yu Hakusho; I saw you staring at the poster. I'll let you hold my Kurama plushie." She managed to make the prospect of holding a plushie sound appealing and Elizabeth found herself back on the futon holding a plush miniature version of the redheaded girly thing that graced the wall/ceiling scroll, the doll's uniform perfectly matching the gag-inducing shade of magenta on the girl's uniform.
"So is this girl your favourite character or something?" Elizabeth asked, tossing the Kurama plushie form hand to hand.
"Which girl?"
"This one," Elizabeth said, shaking the plushie in front of the girl's face for added emphasis. She was met with a loud bark of laughter and watched as the girl literally rolled on the floor laughing, her black hair splayed around her head. Eventually, Natsumi was able to pull herself together and tell Elizabeth that Kurama was a boy. "I refuse to accept that."
"Nope, he's a boy."
"This," she said, pointing an indignant figure at the tiny red-vested fox demon, "is a terrible excuse for a man."
At this Natsumi became quite offended that her favourite character was being so freely insulted. "I will have you know, that Kurama is a beautiful fox demon - "
"Pfffft hahahahaha!"
" – whose luxurious magnificent features overshadow any flaws he may possibly have whatsoever and he is a perfect prince who can do no wrong and why are you laughing at me?"
"Because!" Natsumi managed to gasp out between her violent giggles. "That sounds like a terrible character! How do people possibly like him? He just sounds like some silly pretty boy that's only there for the female audience to lust after. Does he actually do anything?"
"Yes actually." Natsumi was quite indignant at this point and was determined to prove the worthiness of her fictional love interest. "He uses plants to fight, - "
"Oh yes, daffodils are so very scary."
" – and he's really smart,"
"To make up for his lacking personality, I'm sure."
" –and he uses a whip of thorns to lash people."
"Sexy."
Natsumi just glared at her roommate's smug face and knew there was no way she could convince her that Kurama was the absolutely fantastic, flawless character that she knew and loved him to be; the prince of pansies, the ruler of roses, the king of chrysanthemums! So she'd let the anime speak for her. Ignoring the smirk on Elizabeth's face, she brought up the list of episodes she'd saved to her computer's hard drive. Putting the machine between them, she pressed play and they sat in silence as the first episode played.
"Oh he's dead."
Well momentary silence anyways.
"What the hell kind of hero dies in the very first episode?" Elizabeth received a harsh 'Shhh!' in reply and she settled down, twiddling with plushie-Kurama's hair made of bright red felt. "Ooooh flashback scene, fancy. Is that angry girl his girlfriend? I bet she's his girlfriend, she seems like angry wife material. Oh that's believable some chick with blue hair, pink eyes and riding on a boat oar. Ha! Grim reaper my ass. His mom looks sexy." This continued until Kuwabara came on-screen and Elizabeth fell quiet for the duration the scene.
"Is something wrong?" Natsumi asked at her sudden silence.
"That guy, Kuwabara. He's cool."
"You're joking!" Natsumi exclaimed. She would never have thought to brand someone such as Kuwabara with the title of 'cool'. If anything, she felt Yusuke was more deserving of that title, perhaps even her Hiei, but he didn't get really cool until later on in the series.
"No, dude's cool. At least he's a man, not all prettified and sparkly like the redhead thing." By this time, she was spinning the plushie around by tag sewn into its back.
"But . . . he's ugly."
"At least he doesn't make you wonder if you're a lesbian if you find him attractive like this guy here," she said flinging the plushie at Natsumi's head.
"Well, why don't you think Yusuke's cool?"
"He died in the first episode."
"Saving a child!"
"Pfft, excuses." Obviously, Elizabeth was not one who easily changed her opinions about fictional characters. Natsumi was tired of arguing with her and missing out on Yusuke's misadventures and so turned her attention back to the screen. Elizabeth continued watching, making slight comments every now and then as they played through the episodes ("They guy Toguro has really tiny eyes; holy shit, epic 'roid rage! Yeah, Kurama's definitely a girl or definitely gay, Karasu is proof of that. I never knew a pink-haired granny could be so violent. The Hiei guy is an ass."). Soon, night fell and the pair grew tired and had to prepare for the next day of classes.
Stretching, Elizabeth returned to her side of the room, lugging her bag to her desk as she shuffled things about looking for homework due tomorrow.
"So," Natsumi said tentatively, "did you like it?"
"Yeah it wasn't too bad," Elizabeth replied to Natsumi's surprise.
"Really? Are you sure? This is the first time you've watched an anime with me that you haven't entirely ripped to shreds."
"Well this is the first one you've shown me that doesn't have people turning into bubble-gum sweetness or blushing every 5 seconds. Plus the Kuwabara guy is a plus."
"Ugh, I still can't believe out of all the people he's the one you like best. He's such a useless character. I'm sure the creator only put him there to draw attention to how awesomely hot the rest of them are," Natsumi said, already planning another adult fanfic with a particularly raunchy three-way scene.
"Kuwabara is plenty useful!" "And why the hell am I defending a cartoon character?" she thought. "He's like Samwise Gamgee to Frodo, Frodo here, being a greased-up, high school delinquent, half-dead zombie paranormal researcher."
"Spirit Detective."
"Same fucking thing."
"And he's not a zombie, he's awesome," Natsumi said, as she searched around the room for her shower caddy.
"He rose from the dead; he's either Jesus, a zombie or a vampire. I'm not about to let a high school dropout with bright lights spouting from his finger be my Messiah, much less clamp on to my neck so he's a zombie. I just watched half a series about a zombie. I hope you're proud of yourself Natsumi."
"Why yes I am," Natsumi said, actually sounding quite pleased as she located her shower items and left to go scrub the day's filth from her body.
Elizabeth settled down in her chair, regarding the piles of homework in front of her. She could feel the bass of her neighbour's stereo as he blasted R&B/funk music to cover the sounds of his latest girl conquest through the thin dorm room walls.
"Ah yes, nothing like sex music and moaning to help me fight off my own sexual frustration and write this paper, Thank You College." Elizabeth cracked open the spine of her bio book to the chapter on plants and couldn't help thinking back to the effeminate redhead. "He's really way too pretty. I feel like my entire sexuality would be thrown out the window if I fell for that guy. Wait. So does that mean Natsumi is . . ." She quickly disrupted her own thoughts about whether her roommate may rape her in the middle of the night and focused on the task at hand. As she transcribed noted from the text to her answer sheet, the nib of the pen cracked and ink spurted from the barrel across, the paper, her hand and into her mouth. In her hurry to wipe the ink form her face, she rubbed her ink-stained hand across her mouth, effectively spreading the stain across the lower half of her face. "Oh goddammit." With her clean hand, she reached into a desk drawer, removing a pack of baby wipes. She tilted a nearby mirror so she could better see the mess that she'd made of her face, swiping and the smear with the wipe. In the corner of the mirror, she saw the reflection of the Yu Yu Hakusho poster staring down at her, the members of the paranormal research team ("Correction: the 'Spirit Detectives") ready to jump from the poster and into action.
"What're you lot staring at?" she asked miserably. She could almost hear Hiei's snide voice saying 'You, you idiot.' (a/n: or yu yu idiot, if you're feeling clever)
"Awesome. I'm talking to myself and now I've convinced my poor brain that cartoon characters are speaking to me. I need to retire. Or at least marry a millionaire so I can be a trophy wife. This is probably the worst Monday I've ever had: lost my boyfriend, tripped and fell into a bathroom stall earlier, sat on a pencil and now I've lost my mind and my pen explodes. Awesome. Starting the week off with a bang."
Giving up on the ink stain removal, she returned to her ruined homework and started over, throwing herself into the task at hand. When Natsumi came back the room, clean as can be, she saw Elizabeth hunched over, scribbling madly at some assignment. She crawled into her bed, ignoring the neighbour's sex roars and went to sleep. Elizabeth worked well into the night, her lamp burning brightly as she flipped through texts and sources, writing papers and studying until she fell asleep at her desk, using her laptop keyboard as a pillow. The moonlight shining through the window illuminated her hunched over figure, reflecting off her angled mirror and shining around the room. She fell into a deep slumber, waking 9 hours later in order to get to her 10 a.m. class. Elizabeth groaned as she moved her head about on the soft pillow, unwilling to leave the comfort of the perfectly formed dent in the bed.
"Wait a minute, 'bed'? When did I get up? Did I drag myself over to the futon in one of my half-asleep stupors? I don't remember moving. Oh well, I'll just lay here a little longer." Elizabeth ignored any troubling thoughts and let her head further nestle inside the comforting cotton of the pillowcase. She could faintly hear the ticking of her alarm clock as the second hand moved around the clock face. She'd hoped to just ignore it until she had to wake up and silence it by flinging it against the room door. Her drift into a further slumber was disrupted once she became aware of a constant rumbling in the room, most noticeably from her chest. "Why am I sleeping with my phone on my chest?"
Opening her eyes, Elizabeth aimed her sleep-encrusted eyes downwards towards her chest and felt her heart fly into her throat. There, laying on her torso, was evil personified, her very worst fear manifesting itself onto her body. The small orange and white-haired cat breathed and purred deeply in its slumber, the vibrations of its life actions being transferred to Elizabeth's fear-filled gut.
"Why? Why why why why is there a cat on my stomach, oh dear holy and wondrous Willy Wonka why?" Elizabeth said, her overwhelming fear causing her to shake and emit a high-pitched whine. Ever since a cat had latched itself to her head on her 10th birthday party and she's spun around until she fell flailing into her cake and then the nearby pool, she'd been scarred for life and harboured a lasting fear for all things feline. The whine and shaking had steadily increased in intensity, effectively startling the cat awake. Its big brown eyes opened and stared up at Elizabeth. It let out a loud meow/cat-yawn that doubled as greeting or, as it translated in her head "Yo, what the fuck you looking at bitch? Never seen a motherfucking cat before? Yeah that's right this here's my turf and I'll scratch the catnip out your jugular so don't test me motherfucker! Gangsta pussy, what!"
"No, please don't kill me!" Elizabeth thought in response, her shaking getting more violent until she could feel her arms start twitching. Apparently the gangsta pussy was starting to get irritated at its rest post seizing and so jumped off her chest. Elizabeth watched as it landed on the floor and slinked over to a corner, jumped onto a chair with clothes resting on the seat, where it promptly took up residence and resumed its slumber. She breathed a sigh of relief as she watched the cat doze off.
"Yeah that's right, you just go to sleep on that stack of folded boxers . . . since when do I own boxers?" During her fear-induced hysteria, she had not taken the time to glance around her surroundings. Now that Evil Incarnate (the cat) had been vanquished, she felt free to sit up and look around the room only to realize that she was most definitely not in her dorm. Looking around, she saw a large jacket flung carelessly over the back of the chair the cat was sleeping on. The puss itself was lying on several pairs of folded jeans, boxers (really though, who folds their underwear?) and shirts. There was a desk similar to hers in that it was cluttered with open textbooks and several sheaves of paper littered its surface along with pencil shavings, half of an eraser and, oddly enough, a broken pen and evidence of an ink explosion.
"Oh man, did I get high and just not realize it? Whose room is this?"
Soft moonlight streamed in through an open window as thin curtains moved in the night air.
"And I could've sworn I've been sleeping for a while now, how is it still night?" She grabbed the clock sitting on the night table beside the bed. Instead of her normal polka dotted clock face staring up at her, the image of romping kittens with numbers surrounding the border laid siege to her retinas. Swallowing her urge to fling the abomination through the window, she read the time: "10:45 p.m. Tuesday."
"Yup, I've definitely been captured and taken to some far off remote place like Mongolia. And now someone's going to storm in here and take me from this bed and force me to work in a sweatshop making hideous sweaters for Old Navy and Forever 21. Also, why do I have man hands?"
She stared at the hand holding the abominable clock and realized it was much larger and different that how she was used to her hands looking. She dropped the clock, ignoring the clunk as it hit the floor and sat and stared at her hands. She brought the strange hands up to her eyes, hoping that if she rubbed them vigorously enough she could change what she was seeing. She felt calluses on the hands rub roughly against her eyes. She stared at the hands once more before concluding that they were in face not hers.
"Okay, so no, not a sweatshop. I'm part of some biological experiment and they, the evil government funded surgeons have removed my body parts and replaced them with others to understand the psychological effects of limb replacement on amputee candidates. Makes sense to me. There are probably cameras all throughout this strange room so they can watch my reaction. Well i won't give them the satisfaction of seeing me freak out, hell no you slimy bastards! Yeah. This makes total sense. I wonder what else they took. . . ."
She began her exploration of her body to verify her completely rational theory. She soon discovered that her breasts had been either removed or flattened out and were replaced by a broad a very muscular chest. She ran her hands under her shirt feeling where the skin covered well-toned muscle; her new arms showed the same amount of build. Her new limbs appeared longer, judging from the reach of her arms and the length of her legs as seen against the blanket she still lay beneath.
"Heh. It's like they turned me into a dude or something. . .maybe . . ." Curiosity at this prospect bubbling inside her muscular chest, she threw the blanket off her new lower half, revealing hairy legs poking out from the openings of a pair of bright blue boxer shorts. She moved her new legs until they were out of the bed, eventually manoeuvring the precarious ratio of limb, muscles and body mass until she was standing; the new body was heavy and she was having steering issues.
"Okay, time to find out about the goods. Am I a man or aren't I?" She moved her hand to the front of the boxers and hesitated. 'Innocent' girl as she was, she had never seen a man fully unclothed before. "Well, I mean I've seen them on the internet but those ones are freakishly huge, like you're supposed to feed it your firstborn in order for them to keep the crops healthy, and I only googled 'monster cock' on a dare!" Overcoming her uneasiness, she laid her hand on the area and quickly yanked it away.
"Ohmagawd there's a lump."
She stood with both hands twitching nervously by her ears as if someone had caught her wringing the baby elephant trunk. She had confirmed that she did indeed now have a penis, in addition to or instead of her regular business end, she did not know. However, the information that one had grown additional genitalia would be enough for some people. But no, Elizabeth's curiosity roared back to life and she wanted to know how this new accessory of hers looked. Her hands moved to the waistband of the shorts, and she hesitated once again.
"I've never seen a guy's no-no zone before. Maybe I shouldn't. Well I guess it's my no-no zone now so no shame in looking at it. Okay. No more being afraid. Time to unveil my genitals!" And with that she dropped the shorts to the floor and looked at her new crotch. And then quickly looked at the wall, heat stinging at her face.
"Yup, that's a cock. I went to bed and now I have a penis."
She glanced down quickly just to make sure and then just as quickly went back to staring at the wall.
"Yes that is most definitely a dick attached to me." She covered her mouth to keep the combination of maddened laughter and screaming locked in her throat. She stepped out of the shorts, kicking them across the room and started pacing frantically back and forth, her bare ass glowing in the moonlight. The blush that had crept up to her face stayed there as she continued her manic pace around the room. "There's a dick! But whyyyyy? What am I supposed to do with it? I really hope I don't have to pee soon; I might not have the courage to aim. I...I kind of want to touch it." At this thought, Elizabeth felt her face grow even warmer. "What the hell am I thinking? I can't be playing with some random guy's dick? What kind of person – oh hey I can make it swing!" Elizabeth had found, that if she moved her hips in just the right way, she could get her new member to swing back and forth. Somehow, watching her penis flap about like an indolent fish by the roadside, a penis pendulum if you will, was enough to turn the frantic surprise into hysterical hilarity. The giggles she'd repressed came out, manifesting themselves as deep chuckles than the chirps that were previously typical of her nervous laugh. She placed her hands on her hips and started rotating her lower half.
"Look at that! It's flying! Like a helicopter! No wait; like a Heli-cock-ter!"
At this thought, she belched a loud guffaw of laughter that startled the cat awake and through the half-open bedroom door. She continued helicocktering her way around the room, making various sound effects and announcements ("Prepare for takeoff!") laughing loudly until the bedroom door slammed open. She stopped molesting the air and let her member flap limply against her thigh as she was confronted by a very irate brunette who greeted her with a punch to the stomach
"Listen Kazuma not everyone has tomorrow off like you. I have to wake up early tomorrow morning so you need to shut the hell up so I can get some sleep or I'm going to punch you in your spleen. Again." Elizabeth lay on the floor, the air knocked out of her and stared up at the tall dark-haired angry she-creature of sleeplessness. "Also, why are you waving your dick about in the middle of the night?"
Elizabeth was more preoccupied with something the she-creature had said earlier. "Who's...Kazuma?" she managed to ask breathlessly.
"What, I punch you once and you forget your own name? You're getting soft. (a/n/: totally another penis pun.) Fine let me remind you: you're Kazuma Kuwabara, overwhelming ass who is currently laying bare-assed in front of his beautiful and wonderful sister who is nothing short of a saint for loving him, Shizuru Kuwabara. This all coming back to you or do I need to whack you on the head next?"
"No I remember," Elizabeth said hurriedly, hearing the gruff of her new voice. "I'll try and keep it down." And with that, the she-creature slammed the bedroom door and went off to her Cave of Beauty Slumber. Elizabeth lay on the floor absorbing what she'd just heard.
"She said her name was Shizuru. There's no way that's the Shizuru from the anime Natsumi showed me earlier. But then why did she call me Kazuma Kuwabara? This must be some clever trick that the scientists are pulling on me to see how well I'll accept my new body and any identity attached to it. I must be the best test subject; i doubt they do this for all the participants. It's probably my adorable face that made them pull out all the stops. Oh yeah, I wonder if I have a new face now." Her half-nakedness long forgotten she jumped up excitedly and made her way over to the mirror resting on the desk. All excitement drained from her body as she stared back at the reflection showing a 3D version of the 'manly man' she'd found agreeable from tonight's anime watching. Her hands groped over the planes of the face, feeling the cheekbones, poking at the mouth, pinching the surface of the eyes. Her hands roamed up her new air, redheaded and protruding from a cone atop her head.
"No. No that's just...that's just silly. There's no way I'm in somebody's body, that's just dumb. It was probably just reconstructive surgery. Yeah. I sleep-walked out the window and Natsumi told the paramedics that I thought Kuwabara was cool and then they decided to change my entire body so that I looked like him. And add a dick. Because paramedics do that. Fuck."
The overwhelming flaws in her theory became apparent even to her as she quickly fell into a panic. She started scrambling around the room looking for forms of identification, anything that could prove her wrong. Unfortunately for her, her search yielded nothing but evidence for the theory that was indeed Kazuma Kuwabara. Her mind reeled at all the possibilities that could have brought her to this point. She slipped back into the hysteria that had previously gripped, silent giggles racking her broad chest. She was on the verge of tears, questions racing across her mind "How? Why me? Where are the shorts, my ass is cold!" As she slipped deeper into mental ill-being, a short jingly erupted from the surface of the night table. Turning, Elizabeth noticed the cell phone lighting up on top of the table. She scrambled over to it, flipping it open. The jingle was a text alert.
To: K. Kuwabara
Message: Hey Kuwabara, you awake, I need to ask you something.
Sender: Y. Urameshi.
Elizabeth read the names over and over and could no longer attempt some crackpot theory of what her reality currently was. Realizing that she definitely was no longer herself, she did what felt most natural: fainting.
Shizuru only faintly heard the ga-thunk of her brother's unconscious body collapsing on the floor, passing it off as another passing sound in the night.
Meanwhile, the orange and white cat, who we know to be Eikichi, slinked back into the room, planting herself on her master's exposed crotch, keeping his genitals warm against the cool night air.
Needless to say, Elizabeth's week was not going particularly well.
-End Chapter 1-
Thanks so much for reading if you've made it all the way through this first chapter, thanks for sticking around, reviews are greatly appreciated.
Small not about the time difference: Tokyo is roughly 13 hours ahead of Tennessee, according to the source I used anyways. So if Elizabeth woke up at 9 a.m. Tennessee time, then she'd be awake at 10 p.m. Tokyo time. If there are any other questions, drop me a line.
COMING UP IN CHAPTER 2
Kuwabara deals with morning wood.
Elizabeth deals with how Kuwabara deals with morning wood.
Will she ever understand what's going on? Find out next time...once I write the chapter...