The Comic That Got Out of Control

A fic that's going places you never suspected, so stay tuned

CHAPTER 1

It was spring in the Human World. Plants that had long since fallen into a sleep beneath the frost were stretching fresh green sprouts up to the sunlight and swaying now and again by a gentle wind that carried sweet scents.

This had cropped up quite a bit of Genkai's allergies, but Yukina was really starting to enjoy it. She was downstairs with the windows wide open, sipping tea and stringing a necklace at a table. Beside her work was a case of jewelry making supplies and an open book, with which she was terribly engrossed between reaching for the beads.

It was with pleasant surprise that she realized the crunch and squish outside her room was too much racket to be one of the various wildlife roaming about Genkai's compound. Unless you counted Hiei.

"Brother?" She asked over her shoulder. There was nobody there. Then, without making any further sound, a crown of dark, spiky hair emerged, followed by two wide, scarlet colored eyes staring intently. He kept his nose pressed against the outside of the sill. Yukina cocked her brow. "What...are you doing here?"

Hiei stayed where he was a moment before propelling himself through the window and rolling like a tumble-weed to the table, where he could poke around the food she had laying out. "Mukuro says I need to get out more."

"I thought you had patrol?"

Yes, but not as much as she thought. It used to be he would take every patrol shift he could get, back when he was having his "be extra about everything" phase, but it got tiresome and repetitive, so Mukuro pulled some strings. Now, it was either bother his friends and family unannounced or watch the demon world equivalent of daytime TV on Mukuro's wide-screen. He knew the latter was rotting his mind, so here he was.

"Not today," he answered with his mouth full of onigiri. After a few more chews and one ambitious gulp, he grinned at her with an impish twinkle in his eye. "I thought I'd pay my dear sister a visit."

It's not that Yukina didn't love having him around. Sometimes she even wished he lived there. She missed him, more than she would ever dare to even say to him! But she couldn't help but point out:

"You were here two days ago. And besides, you know I have-" Before she could complete that sentence, the door slammed open. When Genkai's eyes fell upon the twins, she snorted up all of her allergy-induced drainage and swiped her nose.

"You again?" She asked with one eyelid half open. Hiei threw up his hands. Yukina laid hers on his shoulder.

"She didn't mean it like that, it's just I'm about to have my tutoring. I won't be able to spend any time with you right now."

Tutoring? What was this nonsense? And why did it have to interfere? Yukina could already read these thoughts across his face, but she assured him she'd explain when she came back, if he could just find something to do for the next few hours.

He begrudgingly agreed and watched his sister leave the room. Before her cranky guardian closed the door on him, she made sure to emphasize that if anything anywhere had his smoky little fingerprints on it, she would raise her own kind of hellfire.

A part of Yukina was not really expecting to see Hiei when she got back. He was extremely flighty in human world, even at this compound, which was the closest thing he had here to a place where he... "belonged", openly, as himself. Or if not belonged, then was tolerated.

When she opened the door, however, he was lying on his back, holding her book above his face and muttering what words he could read in a dejected sort of drawl. Beside him, on the table, was her empty snack plate and a pile of bracelets. With her jaw dropped, she came to examine the area and realized he had used every last one of her beads. And when she picked up the teapot it was light as a feather. She turned around to face her brother, who didn't even notice her incredulous features.

"Hiei?!"

"Hehehghahahahahghah," he cackled at the book, with his tummy popping in and out of his shirt. Yukina prodded through the bracelets and found that each had its own special theme of colors and shapes. One of them had cloudy stone spheres and cool aquamarine as bright and glimmering as a Caribbean tide pool. Another was a strange combination of boho jade spheres on matte black string, sprinkled with charms of pizza and french fries. She was already suspecting something, but when she saw the one with bright pink beads and floral print marbles, she could not keep it to herself any longer.

"Hiei, are these... are these friendship bracelets?"

"Yeah," he answered casually. He laid the book down at his chest and looked at her. "But they're all mine."

"You're going to... wear them all?" He thought it over.

"No."

An awkward little laugh tumbled past her lips. "You know this set was a Christmas present, right?"

"Well fine, then you can wear them!" She still was in a strange emotional limbo of wanting to hug her brother mercilessly but also unable to comprehend why he had spent all his time making jewelry. Hiei, meanwhile, had gotten bored with the subject twenty years ago. "So what is this... tutoring?" He asked, propping himself up with his elbows and making pointed eye contact. She didn't realize she was still clutching all of her books under her arm, so she finally set them down.

"Well, Kurama and I were talking," she started, which already perked up every microfibre in Hiei's body. He knew the two of them had a strangely close relationship ever since she chose to live in the human world and needed someone to turn to who knew all about surviving as a demon. "Well, you'll probably think this is funny, but he brought up that most humans who are physically at our stage of life go to school."

This word had put off Hiei for years. School, as far as he knew, ate up everybody's time, caused them unspeakable and unnecessary anxiety, and lead to suitors by the dozen who couldn't get the message. Well, okay, maybe that last one was just Kurama's problem.

Suddenly, he cringed at the thought of Yukina having to reject horny, human school boys.

"Heh. I'm not going to school, though. Here in human world, you have to pass an exam to get into a good school, and I just wouldn't be able to..." Her tone when explaining this was dashed with more than just a wisp of disappointment. "And well, Genkai was worried – Kurama as well – that my... differences... physically... might be too much of a distraction, maybe even a burden here."

"Pshhh. That's ridiculous!"

"I know. Not so different from where we started, is it? Though it is funny that you have such an easier time fitting in here than I do." It was true. Most of the people on the street just thought Hiei was a sulking goth kid with red contacts. "Well anyway, since I'm not going to school, yet, Genkai teaches me! In a way, we learn together, since she's cut herself off for so long. She teaches me history, we read classic books, we go to art museums... I've really enjoyed it so far!" Hiei was only kind of sputtering at this point, unsure from which angle he should try attacking this strange concept. "It's not so usual here in Japan, but in other parts of the world there are lots of parents who do this with their children. It's called home-schooling."

"You mean to tell me this entire time Kurama could have stayed at home?!"

There was a stretching silence after Hiei's outburst, in which Yukina was not sure how to respond to this being his first formed thought on the issue.

In a way, Hiei felt like he had had second-hand homeschooling because frankly he tried to read everything the two of them had lying around: books, notepads, diaries... you name it. And he had stealth-participated in a variety of Kurama's field trips, including a museum. He still remembered it vividly: there were dinosaurs! Bones, that is.

"You think you'd want to join me... Brother?" Hiei snapped out of his pleasant reverie and glanced briefly at the pile of bracelets. If he had to do that again to pass the time, who knew what would happen to him.

"Hn. Why not?" He answered. After all of the detective's horror stories about her training, he would have liked to see how the hag ran a class, especially a class where his meek and mild ice maiden sister was the only pupil.

For a while now, Yukina had been watching a mysterious train of thought pass by in Hiei's unfocused gaze. Sometimes she understood him quite well without a single word exchanged. Other times, he seemed to be a different species. Either way, his acceptance of this offer had ignited a tiny flame of glee in her heart. She went to hug him from behind with her arms squeezed tightly around his neck.

"I'll just have to find a way of convincing her..." She trailed. With his back against her legs, weakly protesting the hug, Hiei hoped with her cheek smashed up against his that she still couldn't notice how much his face was burning now. "As you know, she is kind, but strict. She wouldn't stand for any time being wasted. You'd behave, wouldn't you?"

"Hmph, if for no other reason than to see the look on her face."

"Hehe!" She giggled into his ear before she let go. "I bet you could surprise her. You surprise me all the time."

It was still so unusual for Hiei to let someone do that instead of kill them on the spot. He half-mindedly scratched where their cheeks had been squishing and smirked at her.

Challenge accepted.