Disclaimer: Kenshin does not own the Yuu Yuu Hakusho characters (they are the property of Togashi Yoshihiro et al), and does not make any money from said characters. Don't sue.
What Kenshin does own, however, are any original characters in this work. Any attempt to "borrow" such characters will be met with the katana, or worse.
The events in Idiot Beloved take place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. This tale takes place somewhen during that chronology, and Hiei mentions events that occurred early on in FS, as well as The Book of Cat With Moon; Kurama relates a tale from St. Joseph's, the school that was the stage for Codename: Moron.
Title: The Thirteenth Attempt
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: General, Humor
Rating: K +/PG-13
Summary: Another day, another poison.
A/N: We take a break from posting the Cowboy trilogy to post-well, maybe it's a Christmas tale-Christmas in Easter, that is.
This author likes Urameshi Yuusuke quite a lot, but he's so strong in battle that it's difficult to give him a role in Hiei-centered battle stories. This, however, is a battle of a different sort altogether.
More a vignette than a story, The Thirteenth Attempt takes a look at Yuusuke's determination, the other boys' avoidance behaviors, and Hiei's surprising conclusion.
As always, thanks for reading this, and I appreciate your reviews!
'Waiter, there's a demon in my soup!'
The Thirteenth Attempt
by
Kenshin
"Well, guys?" Urameshi Yuusuke stood at the head of a clean, laminate-top table, surveying his companions.
Compact like a welterweight boxer and twice as fierce, Urameshi wore a grease-spattered T-shirt over jeans. His licorice-dark hair was slicked back in a style favored by the Yakuza, though he was no gang member, and had all his fingers intact. "Whatcha think?"
No one spoke. The silence had an ominous bent.
This was the Yukimura family diner, though Yukimura Keiko herself was probably hiding in her room. Their table was tucked in a corner, well out of the way of regular customers, a couple of whom still grazed at the sushi bar up front.
The hour was late, the night cold. Too cold for snow, though everyone had been anticipating the season's first snowfall. The interior was warm and welcoming, decorated for Christmas, with silver tinsel and tiny grain-of-wheat lights festooning the walls.
With Urameshi Yuusuke were four other boys, each with a steaming bowl of food before him.
One of them glanced out the window at the clear sky. "Not gonna snow. No way." Kuwabara Kazuma, tallest of the bunch, was built along the lines of a battering ram, his leather bomber jacket underscoring the effect. Classmate and semi-rival of their host, he narrowed his eyes at Urameshi; even his orange-peel hair was designed in in all its gravity-defying splendor to do Urameshi's one better.
The boy catercorner to Kuwabara, dark-haired and long of face, had no such designs. Kaitou Yuu adjusted his eyeglasses, in his tweed coat looking every inch the renowned writer he was. Sliding his chopsticks from their paper wrap and splitting them in two, he agreed, "Maybe for New Year's Eve, not before."
The others at table were not really boys at all.
"It's been too warm to snow." Minamino Shuuichi, while inhabiting a slim human body, could summon Youko Kurama's powers, and kept an arsenal of plants tucked among the strands of his unruly russett hair. Sitting at the foot of the table, he wore a tartan shirt with a bold yellow tie, and he split his chopsticks with surgical precision.
The last boy, seated next to Kaitou, was not a boy in any sense of the word, although his appearance was quite human, and he had been living in the human world for some time. Smallest in terms of height only, Hiei wore a black commando shirt and black jeans. Like the others, he had put a package or two under the table for safekeeping; tomorrow was Christmas Eve. His blue-black hair stood like a defiant candle flame, and owed nothing whatever to artifice, but to nature's imperative. "I'll lay you odds on snow before midnight."
"You're nuts," said Kuwabara.
"And you're on." At Hiei's elbow was a small cup of sake. He loathed the taste, but was a few years older than the others, and Yukimura's father always provided him with such a chaser.
Regarding his bowl of ramen with a suspicious garnet eye, Hiei struggled to identify its contents. The only elements he could name were the noodles themselves, and a thin slice of naruto maki with its pink-and-white swirl.
Due to his high-wire metabolism, Hiei had eaten about an hour ago and was in no hurry. Best not to come hungry to these monthly meetings.
He often wondered why Urameshi felt the need to prove his competence as a chef. Maybe to impress Keiko's father. Maybe out of sheer mulishness, which was not beyond credibility, as Urameshi had almost destroyed the kitchen back when they'd worked undercover in the Crazy Dog Diner.
The table almost rattled with expectation.
"Snow or no," said Kaitou, "I'm not doing this. I'm on deadline."
"You used that excuse last time," Kurama reminded him.
"Then I have the optometrist in fifteen," Kaitou retorted.
"Your appointment was last week," said Hiei.
"And I had my whole life ahead of me." Displaying a raw courage at odds with his rather blocky physique, Kaitou forged ahead. Capturing a glutinous coil of noodles in his chopsticks, he slurped them up, while the others looked on in awed silence.
"Well?" demanded Urameshi.
Kaitou did not swallow the noodles. He sat for one unblinking moment, his cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk's.
Then, grabbing a paper napkin, he discreetly ejected the mouthful. "I-forgot." Kaitou pasted on an apologetic grin. "I'm-ahh-allergic to, er..." He squinted at the bowl. "Ramen," he concluded.
Hiei snorted. Only yesterday, he and Kaitou had stopped at a ramen stand on their way back from a movie, where Kaitou had downed two bowls of the stuff without dying.
Urameshi thumped into his seat. "Dammit."
"I'm not very hungry," Kurama put in hopefully.
"Try it anyway." Urameshi bared his teeth. It was not a smile.
"I meant to say I'm on a diet."
"Considering that a stiff wind could blow you to Singapore," said Kaitou, "I doubt the veracity of your claim."
Sighing, Kurama took up his chopsticks, lifted a wafer of naruto from the bowl and took a delicate nibble. His leaf-green eyes welled up, but not with emotion. "Don't like spicy food," he coughed.
"'S' not spicy," mumbled Kuwabara, chewing stolidly.
"Then I don't like whatever this is," Kurama stated, fumbling for his teacup. He just as hastily put down the cup and dabbed his watering eyes with a napkin.
Hiei snagged a single noodle, bit off a quarter-inch piece, then picked up the bowl and sipped the broth.
Heads swiveled to watch.
He knew everyone was waiting for his opinion, and he played it. Good ramen tastes both salty and refreshing. Even so-so ramen had that particular savor, like the stuff he'd eaten the day before. Depending on what else you put in it, ramen could also taste meaty, or oceanic, or verdant. The noodles should have some give to the tooth.
This witch's brew had none of those qualities. Half the noodles were raw; others devolved into mush, and the broth tasted both musty and oily, with a noticible tang of sulfur. The unpleasant stink may have emanated from several charred black coils floating in the soup, like earthworms that had crawled across the third rail.
Rolling the broth on his palate like a wine-taster, Hiei swallowed, then spoke at last. "Needs more rat urine."
Urameshi clenched a fist. "Why, you-!"
Hiei shrugged. "Tonight, I'm in the mood for truth." He considered drinking the sake chaser. Not yet.
"Oi, Kurama!" Kuwabara waved in his direction. "Maybe you have some magic planty thing in your hair that could make this taste good?"
"Alas," Kurama sighed. "I fear that's beyond even my powers."
Urameshi flushed an angry beet color. "You guys just-"
Kurama cleared his throat. "You all know Dr. Smith?"
Everyone nodded; Smith, an American transplant, had a dry-ice demeanor and a threatening presence out of all proportion to his rather pedestrian, middle-aged appearance. He had stitched Hiei together on more than one occasion, and Kurama worked for him part-time as a physician's assistant.
"Dr. Smith," Kurama went on, "teaches an Intro To Medicine class down at St. Joseph's private school. This year, I made it my business to attend."
Kuwabara rolled his eyes. "Uh-oh, he's gonna tell us a bed-time story."
"At a crucial point in the lecture, Smith stopped. From a shelf in the podium, he extracted a jar filled with clear yellowish liquid and set it down. He informed us it was urine."
"Gaaah." Kaitou clenched his teeth.
"Dipping a finger into the jar, Smith then extracted it, and licked his finger."
"Gaahhh!" Urameshi shuddered.
"Smith's a maniac," said Kuwabara.
"Always did admire him," agreed Hiei.
Kurama rapped the table to regain their attention. "Next, Smith commanded everyone in class to come up to the podium and do exactly what they had just seen him do. Well-you know Smith. We were afraid to defy him." He took a breath. "When the demonstration ended, and half the class was gagging, Dr. Smith explained that he had indeed dipped a finger into the jar-his middle finger. But he had licked his index finger."
Urameshi put his head in his hands. "MAAAAN."
Kurama smiled. "It was, you see, a lesson in observation."
Urameshi gave him a look like thunder and lightning. "Are you implying my noodles taste like-"
"No," said Kurama. "I'm agreeing with Hiei. Urine could only improve the flavor."
Kuwabara leaned torward Kurama, chin cupped in hand, curiosity in his eyes. "So did you drink the pee or what?"
Kurama hastily took another sip of tea. His subsequent coughing fit prevented an answer.
Hiei tasted his own tea. It was bitter, sour. He'd had worse. In his time, he had also eaten far worse, and would have been glad to get it. Maybe now's the time for sake.
First, he studied his bowl. Took another sip. Bad idea.
Only Kuwabara chomped away without showing either pain or disgust. "Tell you one thing," he said. "This gives me a whole new appreciation of my sister's cooking."
"Tragic, really." Kaito murmured to Hiei. "Poor lad lost his tastebuds during the Great Crimean War."
Hiei only just avoided spraying broth aross the table. Lips twitching, he set the ramen down.
"Dammit." Urameshi reached for his portion and gulped it in a single draught, then spewed it back into the bowl. "I'll get this right if it's the last thing I do!"
"More likely it'll be the last thing we do," said Kaitou.
"As a chef..." began Kurama.
Urameshi glowered. "You calling me a lousy chef?"
"No." Kurama was all innocence. "I'll let Hiei do the honors."
"As a chef," Hiei summed up, "you're a great fighter."
"You can cook," sulked Yuusuke.
Hiei shrugged. "That's different. I do all things to perfection."
Only Kaitou Yuu dared laugh.
"And I'm still picking glass outta my teeth from last time." Kuwabara leaned back and wiped his mouth.
Urameshi managed a wounded look. "So it's my fault the glass rack fell into the deep-fryer?"
"Remember those tako yaki?" Kurama said to Kaitou.
Kaitou nodded. "The ones that tasted like iron filings?"
Urameshi slid down in his chair. "So it's my fault I couldn't tell the tuna flakes from the can of cleanser?"
They looked at him.
"Good thing I'm not a restaurant critic," said Kaitou.
"I'm just saying they could have labeled the stuff," muttered Urameshi.
"You're lucky they still let you use the kitchen," said Kuwabara. "And what about those rubber tire thingies?"
Urameshi pounded the table. "Those were salmon rolls!"
"Not to my stomach they weren't," said Kurama.
"There's a bright side to all this," said Kaitou. "Back in September, when I finally stopped projectile vomiting, I discovered I had lost five pounds."
As the others went on verbally tearing Urameshi limb from limb, a hiss of wind made Hiei lift his gaze to the window.
The sky had lost its ice-clear look, and had curdled into thick, threatening clouds.
Change.
The wind died.
At the head of the table, Urameshi, wielder of the Rei Gun, simmered with frustration. At the foot of the table Kurama, master of plant life, steepled his hands and regarded his bowl of congealed ramen with clinical distaste.
Directly across from Hiei, spirit swordsman Kuwabara was making a chopstick moustache; any second now the sticks would go up his nose. To his right, Kaitou Yuu, of the ultimate shield, folded an origami blowfish from his wrapper.
Hiei pondered the meaning of this night, but not in a sentimental way; he was in a mood for truth.
"The first time I met Kurama," he said, half to himself, "I tried to kill him."
A hush fell.
"Same with Yuusuke," he went on, aware now that they were all listening. "And the only reason I didn't try to kill Kuwabara was that Kurama stopped me."
Kaitou huffed, folding his arms. "Aren't you forgetting someone?"
Hiei conceded to Kaitou's objection with a nod. "Kaitou only thought I was trying to kill him." Hiei carefully weighed his next words. "And it's all thanks to Yuusuke."
Urameshi threw up his hands. "Great. Again I'm to blame."
"I already knew Kurama," Hiei elaborated. "And Kuwabara knew you. But if not for you, the rest of us would never have crossed paths."
The others exchanged glances. "True," Kaitou said.
With the help of Kurama many years ago, Hiei had defeated the demon Yatsude and rescued a human girl-and learned his own sister Yukina had not been a victim. He had performed onstage with Urameshi, Kurama, and Kuwabara, and had been lambasted for it in print by Kaitou, with whom he got along despite all odds. With Kuwabara he had solved the St. Joseph's poltergeist case and was surprised by how well they worked together, in spite of the idiot's braying-jackass manner.
He had never prosecuted a case with Urameshi alone, and suspected the mix of their personalities would resemble dousing flames with kerosene.
He was not the same person who'd fought for his life in Makai, and would have eaten bugs to survive.
He went on. "All of us changed thanks to Yuusuke. Maybe me, most of all. And for some reason, ever since we worked the Crazy Dog Diner, Yuusuke got a bee in his bonnet. So we've been coming here to the Poison of the Month Club for what, a year?"
Kurama checked his watch. "Has it been that long?"
"Tempis fugit when you're having fun," said Kaitou.
Kuwabara yawned. "Remind me to bring a dictionary."
"Hiei's quite loquacious," Kaitou said.
Kurama nodded. "Must be the sake."
"He ain't touched it," replied Kuwabara. "Been watchin' him." True to prediction, he had the chopsticks up his nose.
Because tonight was a night for truth, Hiei pressed his point. "And why do we continue to risk our lives like this?"
"I suppose nothing can stop you telling us," grumped Urameshi.
"Because we're friends," Hiei said.
All eyes were upon him. Kuwabara was literally gaping. Out fell the chopsticks.
For once, Hiei didn't care. "We enjoy each other's company, even when we squabble. Yuusuke's ineptitude as a chef just gives us a convenient excuse to get together."
Urameshi's eyes welled. "Hiei..."
Hiei turned to face him. "You're an amazing bastard, Yuusuke. Keep trying."
Lifting his cup, Hiei drank the sake slowly, as a sort of penance. It had gone cold by now, and he did not use his powers to heat it. It tasted the way gasoline smelled. "Maybe next time you'll manage something that won't cause internal bleeding."
There was a long silence while Hiei toed his packages out from under the table, retrieved them, then checked the weather.
The sky's earlier threat had turned to a promise, sifting flakes like powdered sugar onto the sidewalk.
Urameshi was nothing if not persistent. With the pivot of time as his ally, he'd win the battle, and Hiei knew that Urameshi's thirteenth attempt would prove the lucky one. I'll bank on it. He got up from the table.
"Look," he said. "It's snowing."
-30-
(Further A/N: This tale also references the manga story Two Shots, and echoes an Eizou Hakusho in which some future Yuusuke operates a ramen stand. Please stay tuned for the continuation of the Cowboy Trilogy, Once Upon A Time In The West.)