Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. (Of course.)
Anything You Want
The air was still, cool and a little stale, but he could feel sunlight. Mitarai opened his eyes and looked out through the open blinds at a pure blue sky. He lifted his head off his desk, and groggily looked at the jumbled words of his notes that he'd been napping on."What am I doing? I never sleep in . . ." He looked across the silent classroom at his sleeping classmates. They all had their heads down on their desks. They slept so quietly that they seemed to be a part of the furniture. The only motion came from the tiny teacher who vigorously drew birds on the blackboard. She wore duct tape wrapped up her legs like thigh-high boots with an oversized green tweed jacket over red hotpants. Her wild multi-colored hair was combed for once and tied into surprisingly thick braids that sprung from random points on her head. She wore pink-framed tinted glasses, black lipstick, and a matching black lace shirt. Mitarai sighed. "So things aren't back to normal yet. I wonder if this is even really my school." He looked again across the classroom and in a flash his classmates were twisted on the floor, frozen in mid-scream. Then he blinked, and they were once again sleeping in neat rows. A faint smell of swampwater drifted through the air. "That was too real." He stood up to leave and noticed that his chair made no noise against the floor. Then, like a delayed reaction, there was a vibration of metal against linoleum. "O.K. Not the real world. But a world that feels real."
"Yeah! You're up! You're up!" Graffiti abandoned her drawings and ran to him with open arms. She wrapped her little arms around his waist with an impact that made Mitarai stumble back a step.
"What is she doing? Even for Graffiti . . ." Mitarai tensed, and nervously looked down at the suddenly affectionate psycho. He remembered the new bite marks on his neck. "Um, Graffiti, could you please . . ."
"You've been sleeping for a long time." Graffiti stepped back and smiled warmly without a trace of anger.
A deep pit opened in Mitarai's stomach as he stared at that pure, open smile. "She's just lying again, right? Graffiti has never been able to fake a smile like that."
A thick, colorful braid flopped over one wide eye when she cocked her head. "Is something wrong? Do you still not feel well? It has been a bad day, hasn't it?"
"Yeah." Mitarai stepped back a couple feet. "This isn't the real Graffiti." He nervously crossed his arms, and his eyes darted around the perfectly still classroom. "Of course, I can't trust the real Graffiti anyway, but is anyone here real?"
"This place is dead isn't it?" Graffiti said like she had heard that thought. "Why don't we leave these worthless dregs? Teacher says that school is out today!" She waved her fist in the air and pivoted on her heels. She started goose-stepping toward the door. "Left, Right, Left, Right . . ."
Mitarai's slight shoulders slumped. "Following Graffiti to who knows where for no known reason. Haven't I made this mistake enough yet?" The silence was smothering. "It's like living in a photograph." He followed her out into the hall and stopped just outside the classroom door. "Where are we? What is this place?"
The tiny girl spun around on her toes like a ballerina. "I can do anything! Because I am Graffiti! Fear me fool!" Graffiti stumbled dizzily as she tried to point an authoritative finger at Mitarai. She attempted a fierce grin, but it looked like a child imitating a pirate.
Mitarai stared blankly at the posing girl like an exhausted babysitter. "Sorry, but I've had enough weird games today." He turned his back on her and started walking toward the basement stairs. It seemed the best place to start looking for answers.
"No, No! Wait! You're not really a fool! I'm sorry! Please, are you angry?" The tiny girl sprinted up to him and desperately clung onto his school uniform sleeve.
Mitarai sighed. "Definitely a fake." Then he noticed the blue of his sleeve. He was wearing his school uniform again without any burns or stains on it. "But it was destroyed." He put his free hand on his neck and felt neither gauze nor fang marks. "So, it's been healed? Or . . . I'm not really here either." He stopped walking and stared hard into Graffiti's face.
Graffiti cringed under the stare and hid her face behind his elbow. "Are you mad? Why are staring at me like that? Please don't."
"Oni." For a split second, Mitarai saw the white void with its writhing black sky. Then it was the hallway again with its neat rows of tan lockers.
Graffiti's jaw dropped. She looked at the floor and nervously rocked on back and forth on her feet for a moment. Then she sheepishly looked up at Mitarai again. "Oh, rats!" Graffiti's tiny body faded, and a boy only a few centimeters shorter solidified in her place. "It was perfect. I looked just like her! What gave me away?!" He protested with his lower lip sticking out. His skin was an unnatural ashy white. His eyes were pitch black, as was his straight, short hair. The veins beneath his thin, pale skin seemed to be black as well. His protruding lower lip was the color of charcoal. He wore a plain, baggy white T-shirt, tan cargo pants and white sneakers.
"So it is you! Am I trapped in your territory again?" Mitarai looked around at the perfectly clean hallway that smelled faintly of new paint and swampwater. "You've never done an illusion like this before. Why were you pretending to be Graffiti?"
Oni hid a laugh behind his pale hand. "Little sister's the strongest, next to me, of course. I just thought it would be fun to be Little L for a while. She acts so crazy, you know." He smiled broadly and warmly, but the inside of his mouth was black.
Oni's unnatural white-and-black smiling face reminded Mitarai of a zombie he saw in a video game. "What are you? Both of you?"
"Hmm?" Oni cocked his head again. "Oh! I'm the big brother!" He pointed to himself proudly. "I was made to be 7, and Little L was made to be 11. It's been a few years, and we're growing awfully slow. However," He raised his voice to let Mitarai know that this was the important part. "I'm really 6 months older! No matter how bossy she is, I'm the big brother."
"What is he saying?" Mitarai shook his head. "No, Oni. Are you two human?"
"Ooooh, That's long answer. You sure do ask a lot of questions." He sat down on the floor, grabbed his ankles and started to rock back and forth. A red stripe abruptly appeared across his white shirt."Sister hasn't told you much, has she? Very well then, but first I want ice cream. It's now time to eat!" The off-color child nodded his head sagely at this decision.
"So the overeating is genetic, is it?" Mitarai groaned. "All right. If you tell me what's going on, you can eat anything you want."
"Okay!" Oni jumped back to his feet which now boasted bright red sneakers. "Take us to ice cream! Where's the best store?"
"He's asking me that? I don't even know if this illusion extends outside of the school." The teen stared at the tan lockers on the opposite wall and could only think of an ice cream store on the far side of town. Then Mitarai blinked, and the wall was pale blue between two large storefront windows. He looked around and saw people eating ice cream and chatting at the tables scattered across the store's white tile floor. The chatter was only meaningless noises that contained no real words, and nobody had eyes. It was just plain, smooth skin from their eyebrows to their chins. On the walls were framed pictures of foreign beaches, and dressed all in white was an eyeless clerk sweeping behind the counter. The letters on the menu behind him were an impossible jumble, and the picture displayed mint chocolate chip as the flavor of the month. "It's the store I was thinking of, or rather, it's imitation."
Oni was tilting over sideways staring at Mitarai like a painting that was hung upside down. "You look weird."
Mitarai looked at his faint reflection in the store front window and was relieved to see eyes, brown eyes. His hair was black and straightened, and he wore the same worn jeans and striped shirt that Kyo had lent to him. There was a gauze patch on his neck that he vaguely remembered Graffiti applying.The sounds in the store switched to a soft girl's voice spiked with random patches of fury. It echoed everywhere like it was being played over a loudspeaker, but the words were too distorted to understand.
"Is that sister's voice? What's she saying?" Oni looked excitedly at Mitarai for an answer, but the teen only stared at his reflection.
"You know, it does look weird." Mitarai narrowed his eyes at his reflection, and it changed. His hair went back to neat, wavy blonde with only a couple locks hanging down across his forehead. He wore a yellow, long-sleeved shirt with a hood pulled up over his head and blue jeans. "I'm in my own mind, aren't I? My classmates are forever asleep, because I wanted them to leave me alone. The people here have no eyes because I don't want them to look at me." He scowled at his own reflection like it betrayed him. "I thought I was through running away, but some part of me must still be afraid."
Oni shrugged. "That's normal. Everyone is afraid of what's hurt them before." He spun around and goose-stepped up to the ice cream counter. "If you're done scowling at yourself, I'm ready to order. Since we're in your world, I bet we have to pay. I don't even bother with the store anymore. When I eat ice cream, it's on the back of a whale with the northern lights above me. Of course, I've never seen whales or northern lights or even tasted ice cream. But I know all of it from the memories I've stripped out of other people's heads. I can assemble my own perfect world from the bits and pieces of other people's lives. It doesn't really matter that I've never been outside myself." Oni's happy tone dragged with this last sentence. "Is it really that different in the real world?"
Mitarai looked away and put his hands in his pockets. He found his old switch blade in the right one and took his hands back out. "This place isn't alive. It just . . . feels like an illusion. I can't really describe it."
"So it is different." Oni let his head fall against the glass of the ice cream case, and stared down at his favorite flavor. "Hmph." Oni started to smile again. "It doesn't matter. I'm who I am, where I am, right now. That's all I'll ever have." He beamed at the eyeless ice cream server. "I'll have three Bubblegum, two Chocolate, and just one Butter Pecan. He happily waved at Mitarai. "Don't you want any? It still tastes good if you think it does."
". . . Yeah, alright." The thin blonde walked over and stared at the eyeless server who politely smiled back. He focused his attention on the deformed face and two squinted eyes appeared. It reminded Mitarai of Gourmet, and suddenly, the whole server became Gourmet.
"Ya want something, kid?" The huge server said through his thick lips.
Mitarai remembered him swallowing the mind-reader whole. The store warped into a dark, brick-wall alley. Again, Sea Man just stood in the alley and watched mortal terror spread over the other boy's face. The mind-reader already knew what Gourmet planned to do, but he couldn't run. Mitarai's water golem blocked the alley's mouth. "It's all for Sensui's plan. This is justified. They'll all be dead soon anyway! They deserve to die!"
Gourmet's throat expanded as his jaw unhinged. The boxer's screams were muffled by the huge man's flesh.
"What is this?! I just wanted ice cream! Take it away!" Oni covered his face with his hands. Then the alley was gone, and they were back in the ice cream shop. Oni started to sniffle. "Why'd you do that? You can see anything you want here. Why did want to see that?"
Mitarai opened his mouth to explain, but couldn't put the reason into words. "I'm sorry." He finally said. "I just remembered something, that's all." He nervously looked at Gourmet who stood ready with an ice cream scoop behind the counter. "Well, I guess he's a food expert, and I'm just eating the illusion of my choice . . ." He pointed to the flavor in front of him.
"Give you a tip, kid?" The server Gourmet opened one narrow eye.
"Um, sure." Mitarai stared at him with his hand still pointing toward vanilla.
"Don't trust anyone." Gourmet said with Toguro's voice, and then the top of his head became a tree that grew up into the false ceiling. All around them echoed the high-pitch squealingof the elder Toguro's laughter.
Mitarai shook As his eyes grew wider, the room started to darken.
"Why is he a tree?" Oni glanced at the trembling teen. Then the puppetmaster took hold of Mitarai's still-pointing hand. "You'll get used to it. Just remember, your thoughts are real here." His childish grin was wide and charcoal black. He climbed up over the white counter. "I'll just help myself. Keep the lights bright. I don't like the dark."
The store lights returned to their original florescent brightness. Mitarai sat down on the floor and held his head in his hands. "Why am I here?"
"Little L brought you here." Oni hoisted a steel mixing bowl onto the counter to use as his ice cream dish. He looked skeptically at the ice cream scoop in the increasing tree-like Gourmet's hand.
"After she bit me . . ." Mitarai remembered Graffiti's fangs sinking into his neck, and a white-hot static rushing into his mind. The shop flickered, and Mitarai quickly forced himself to think of ice cream. "Whew, that was close. I wonder what happens if I pass out in here? But how do I talk about it, without thinking about it?" He put his hand on his neck and found that the gauze had reappeared.
"Did she really bite you? I want to see!" Oni got on his toes to look over the counter, but all the small boy could see was the top of Sea Man's yellow hood. "Come on! I want to see the bite mark."
"It's really nothing to look at." Mitarai pulled the side of his hood further over his neck. "Where am I, physically?"
Oni whined with disapointment. "Your body is at Trans Labs in the second Dream Machine that Doctor Stine and Kyo put together. Your conscious mind is now a part of the machine, and is helping me maintain the really big territory that Doctor Stine ordered. With your waking mind reduced to a machine part, your self, as you know yourself, retreats into your unconscious mind where all your dreams come from. But, don't worry. The longer you're in here, the easier to gets to flow out into the void and see other people's minds. That's how I'm here. I'm visiting." Oni triumphantly smiled and held up a red ice cream scoop from a drawer under the counter. "Make sense?"He eagerly dug the red ice cream scoop into the Butter Pecan.
Mitarai stared straight ahead at the white wood in front of him "I'm . . . I'm helping you . . . the huge territory, the void with all those twisted, broken minds and souls. I'm helping you expand that horror right now!" Mitarai got to his feet, and gave the mutant child a purely psychotic look.
"Eeep!" A scoop of Chocolate whacked the menu sign and splattered. Oni ducked behind the counter. "Why?! What's wrong?! You don't have to do anything! I'll do all the work. It's . . .it's just like adding another motherboard into a computer. Daddy only wanted you to increase the capacity!"
Mitarai swung his legs over the counter and stood before Oni with Sea Man's crazy, wide eyes. "Let me out now! I am NOT part of your plot to destroy the world! I DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT!"
Oni balled up and covered his head with his arms like he was expecting a blow. "NO! I didn't do it! It's O.K. It's O.K!"
"No, Oni, it's not O.K! You trap people, rip them into pieces and hang them from the ceiling! IT"S NOT O.K!" Mitarai screamed. Then they were on the void. The black living sky above moaned and cried out from thousands of twisted throats. A high wind from an unseen maelstrom tore across the normally still white floor.
Oni started to cry. Black wires appeared puncturing his arms and chest through his shirt. "I-I . . .Doesn't . . .It's O.K. They're not real. None of them are real people!" Oni's small chest shook with sobs, and black tears rolled down his young cheeks. "None of them . . .they're all fake. All worthless and selfish . . . And, and . . ." He gasped for breath and sobbed. "The real world is all fake people. Little L, she tells me . . ." Oni pressed his ash-white hands over his ears and started to shake violently. "Shut them up! They're not real people! They're mean and worthless, and they shouldn't be making noise!"
"Graffiti . . .so you'll even brainwash your own brother. But why?" Sea Man concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths until his heartbeat stopped pounding against his ribs. "Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream . . ." He chanted with his eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them again, they were back in the ice cream shop.
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"Now that we have our second Oni, we won't have to worry about exhausting our ki during a fight. It also could solve our food problem." A young man in his early twenties jotted notes down into a navy binder. He wore a white lab coat with khakis and an ice blue collar shirt. He had a long face with droopy gray eyes, and his white shoulder-length hair was blue at the tips. The room around him was poorly lit and piled with cardboard boxes and spare furniture.
"Does it really matter, Max?" A tall red-haired teen brushed back his bangs in a stylish flourish and lazily stretched out on a dusty, brown sofa. "Frankie's set it up so we won't have to lift a finger. All of those robot-brained third-generation reanimates will be exterminated by our "unexpected" guests."
"That will not be the end. We will fight." A tall girl with black hair flowing down to her waist stood arrow straight by a steel door. Her face was smooth, stunning and complete void of all emotion. Only the droop of her eyelids betrayed that she might feel a bit bored. She wore fitting black jeans with a retractable blade strapped to her left arm and three watches on her right. Her large breasts were held tight in a black corset-like top with a low scooped neck and laces stitching up the front.
"Of course, my lovely Still-chan." Max gave her a playful wink that was completely ignored. "As a matter of fact, our long anticipated guests are approaching the front gate now. Your fight is close at hand." He snapped his notebook shut and cocked an ear toward the back of the storage room. "Kyon, I do believe the guide we sent wants a word with you over a disguise? Something about a skirt?"
Kyo smiled and crossed his arms behind his head. "Ah yes, he did look gorgeous. Frankie's got a picture of it, if you want to see."
"No, thank you." Max held up his hand in a "stop there" gesture.
Still walked out through the steel door. Inside a schoolboy with wild multi-colored hair sat on the concrete floor staring up at a metal pod with a small window. Countless cables, tubes and wires attached to the coffin-like pod until the wall behind looked like a mass of metal snakes. An old generator crackled against the brown, stained wall. "Commander, they're here."
The schoolboy got to his feet and dusted off his blue shorts. "Daddy will send out the thirds, of course. Regardless, Koenma's fighters must stop Oni, or the territory will never collapse. I'm confident they will defeat the third generation.We bide our time, and betray our sadistic maker after his defense is shattered. Are the second generation ready to fight for our freedom?"
Still's chest and jaw lifted slightly with pride. "In the end, all the second generation has joined our revolution."
"Then break out the good china, my Second." The child flashed a furious grin and both eyeteeth hung over her small, stretched bottom lip. She pointed at Still like a disco queen. "Our time has finally come!" Graffiti then skipped out of the dark, mechanized room like the schoolboy she appeared to be.
Still shut the door behind her with a clank. The quiet crackling of the old generator was the only sound in the windowless, dark room. A small, slim figure slipped out from behind the metal pod. The dark, tiny silhouette lightly ran her fingertips over the machine's window glass and leaned against the cold metal door with her bare skin. "You're so much trouble, sweet Mitarai-kun." She looked in through the small window with a wide, wicked smirk. "Now I have to go find a change of clothes. Even I can't lead a revolution completely naked. It distracts people."
