Story Key: 'present thoughts' *emphasis, dreams, memories, letters, etc*
Standard disclaimers apply
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------
*A lone snowflake drifted past his eye and he looked up into the cloudy gray sky. Someone was waiting for him up there. He could feel it. It was silent except for the wind blowing all around him, he noticed it was faintly cold. A chill went up his spine, the world turned gray with the sky and more snowflakes fell past him. Above and below, there was no floor but he was not floating, he was... just there.
A faint crying noise reached his ears, he searched for the source but could find no one. Only empty gray. The sound had been near to him filling the space in the back of his head, but now it drifted far away like the snow, only it got louder as it left him and began to echo along the cold empty gray as if there were walls. But the snow fell everywhere and past as far as he could see in any direction.
A scream rent the air echoing along with the weeping sounds. It seemed like it would go on forever - he began to sweat.
"Hello?" he yelled into the air. "Is anyone there?" But his own words soon expanded and echoed like the other sounds.
"Help," a weak voice sounded somewhere in the distance. It too bounced along the invisible walls. "Help me." Only echo's. More voices began to beg at him, more screams and cries. A car horn broke through to his senses and pain washed over him. He heard voices calling to him.
"Is he all right?"
"Is he hurt?"
"Will he live?"
"I'm sorry." It felt like glass breaking inside his skull. He fell to his knees shaking as the voices abruptly fell silent. He could almost feel the shards of air around him falling.
And then he was on the ground, cold stone beneath his shaking palms. Cold suddenly filled him. A picture of Atsuka crying on the floor rose from the depths of his memories.
Flashes of light jolted past him as more pictures came up. Genkai praying in her shrine, Keiko searching for something, Botan yelling out someone's name. But after the first onslaught of sound no others came.
Hiei and Kurama running, searching for something lost. Koenma fingering through an ancient tome, Keiko cutting flowers. Now they shifted and blurred.
Koenma held Botan close as she cried on his shoulder, Kurama waiting for something through his rain-spattered window. Genkai sitting alone in the temple. Yukina crying in her room with Hiei standing at the doorway. Keiko cutting flowers.
The last one stayed with him for a long time. Then she started to look up in his direction tentatively, as if searching for something not quite there. After a while her picture closed in on him and she open her mouth to speak.
"Traitor," a low voice spoke out. It was soft but un-nerving, and not directed at him at all.
"You were always too weak. It couldn't be helped."
New voices rang out from a distance, growing steadily louder.
"Help!"
"...never much use..."
"Problem... much too..."
"...sorry."
"No! You can't!"
"I need..." Silence. Black. A lone candle burned beside him casting a tiny orb of light in the pitch-blackness of the room. Another car horn sounded.
"Yusuke!"
"No, please don't!"
"You can't!"
"...too dangerous."
"Traitor!"
"Murderer!"
"I hate you!"
"I need..." Again the chaos broke. This time Yusuke began to yell.
"Shut up already! Who are you anyway? Where are you?"
"You think you can run my life?" a soft voice asked him.
"What's going on? Where is everyone?" More voices joined in the melee.
"I'm lost."
"Has anyone found my..."
"Murderer!"
"Help, somebody, anybody!"
"I need..." Silence.
"I need..." A long pause followed. He could only hear his own breathing, a rattling sound deep in his chest. He wiped the sweat off his brow and tried to stand on his shaking legs.
"YUSUKE!" Keiko's voice cried at him. Pleading with him to stay.*
"I need more sake."
He sat up with a start. From head to toe he was covered in sweat. He lay thankfully back on his pillows with a sigh, 'Thank God it was just a dream'.
"Yusuke, can you hear me in there? I better not have to get up, my head hurts like hell ya know!" Oh yah, the party last night. It must have been some weird hangover dream. But he really hadn't had that much to drink, only a bottle or two. And his head didn't hurt today, not like Atsuka's.
"Yusuke! Don't really make me come in there," Atsuka's blurry voice called out from somewhere in the next room.
He heaved himself up from his futon, "All right all ready. What do you want?"
"I need more sake. And some food and aspirin. Quickly." He heard her moan and fall back onto the couch.
"All right, but I need to take a shower first." The water would feel nice on his sweaty skin he reasoned.
* * *
And it did make sense he realized, running his hands through his wet hair, that the dream meant nothing. Two bottles of sake on an empty stomach can do weird things to a person's brain. He pulled his towel loosely around his waist and reached for his hair gel. 'Maybe I should go check up on Keiko though. I haven't seen her in a while'. He tried to pour some gel onto his hand, but it wouldn't come out.
"Oh man, don't tell me you're empty now!"
*Ring*
"Yusuke, get the phone!"
"Since when do we have a phone?" he called back as he hurriedly pulled on some boxers and a pair of pants from the floor.
*Ring*
"We've had a phone since we moved in, you dummy! From the fire insurance on the old place, remember?"
*Ring*
"No," he whipped up his comb and started combing his hair.
"Just get it already, jeez what do I have to put up with to get some service around here?"
*Ring*
"All right, I'll get it, just hold on." He dodged around some junk and scrambled out of his room, following the annoying ringing sound to a beat up phone stuffed under the table.
"Hello?" he spoke into the receiver as he levered the rest of it onto the table.
"Yusuke," an old voice spoke up, "there's a crisis on my hands and I need your help."
"Who is this?" It sounded oddly familiar but... nah! I couldn't be...
"This is Genkai you asshole! I need your help!"
"Genkai? But... when did you get a phone?"
"That's not important at the moment. What is important is that I'm in a lot of trouble and I need your help. In return I'll train you, but I fear there might not be much time for that anymore."
"But you always train me! What good'll that do?"
"YUSUKE!!! I'M OUT OF TEA! I NEED SOME MORE!"
He paused, letting it sink in. Then laughed. A lot. When he was finally able to control himself again he chuckled into the phone, "So just go up to the store and buy some."
"I can't, it's against my morals. Plus, if you do it, it'll get you up here so I can train you. And I feel that soon enough you'll need all the training you can get. Now, I need: Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, Darjeeling, Chai, Green Tea, Oolong, Camomille, Rosehip, Apple, Ginger, Constant Comment..."
"Wait a minute, I need to get some paper, or something!" He grabbed at a pencil Keiko had left over, then grabbed a piece of crumpled up paper from somewhere.
"Black Tea, Black Pekoe, Orange Pekoe, Orange Spice, Orange Zinger, Lemon Zinger, Lemon Tea..."
"Wait a minute!" he cried. "Start over, I need to write these down you old bag!"
She paused, then chuckled. "So, you're to slow for me are you? Then I'll try to slow down... for you sake. Now, starting over I need Earl Grey. You got that?"
"Yes, I have Earl Grey."
"English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast... oh, maybe I should have started with the decafe blends..." Yusuke groaned.
* * *
The soft air conditioning in the store left a nice tingle on his skin after the hot mid-day sun. It had taken him a whole half hour to copy down all of Genkai's tea's and about ten to walk to the store, so he reasoned it was about one o'clock in the afternoon. There was something about today he was supposed to remember he knew that but could not remember what it was. 'Oh well', he reasoned. 'If it's really that important it'll come back to me one way or another'. He mingled around the isles picking up his hair gel and some breath mints before making his way to the cooking isle to get the tea.
He pulled out the list as he went, checking on what he needed. "Let's see now, cinnamon? Got it. Raspberry? Got it. Tension Tamer and Sleepytime? Got it. Blackberry and Jasmine? Okay. World Peace tea? When did they come out with that? Got it." Time went on.
He finally made it to the counter, laden with a shopping cart full of tea.
"Will that be all sir?" a familiar voice asked.
"Kuwabara?" he looked up to the carrot haired oaf. "What are you doing here? Behind the counter? Who was stupid enough to hire *you* to count other people's money?"
"Shhh Urameshi, or you're gonna get me fired." He put a finger up to his mouth and lowered his voice. "If you must know, Shizuru said that I had to get a job or she would kick me out of the house, so I asked the old man who runs the store and he said he needed some help with the register. He's an old family friend."
"Yah, well. Good luck making money and all, but that apron and cap look horrible! Green is definitely not your color." He took out his list again to make a last minute check while Kuwabara ran them all through the auto-pricier.
"Um...Licorice? Check. Lavender? Check. Brisk? That's the stuff in the can's, right?"
"Uh, yah..." came a half-hearted reply. Kuwabara seemed pre- occupied.
"Mint Medlee? Hm... must be for Yukina. If Genkai drank that once in a while she wouldn't stink so bad, huh?"
This time there was no reply. Yusuke put the paper down to see what was going on, but Kuwabara snatched it back up and started reading the back of it.
"Hey, wait a minute! I thought you were with Keiko. Who's this other chick?"
"What? Hey, let me see that." He snatched it back from Kuwabara. A series of hearts met his eyes. He groaned, "Oh no, I thought I threw this away!"
"So you do have a secret girlfriend, eh Urameshi? Well it's my solemn duty now to report it to Keiko now, ya know? As a friend." He grew serious.
"Hey man," Yusuke countered," you've got to be kidding. You can't tell her, it's not what it looks like. I don't even know who this chick is!"
Kuwabara narrowed his eyes at Yusuke, then broke out into horrible laughter. "Ha ha ha! You didn't actually think I was gonna tell her, did you? Oh God, that would have been fun to watch you get pummeled by her, though. But," he drew himself up to his full height and once again grew serious, "you should break it up with this girl, whoever it is. It's really not fair to anyone, ya know, to be left in the dark."
"Where'd ya learn that? Your sister?"
"No, Yukina said it. Ya know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that Hiei had his tiny little eyes on *my* Yukina, the way he's been following her around lately."
"Really? He really has been?" Yusuke wondered how Kuwabara still didn't know about the fire demon's hidden connection to Yukina. "Well, I've gotta go up there to deliver this junk to Genkai anyway. Thanks for the news, bye!" he called out behind him as he sprinted out the door of the shop and into the sun, turning a street corner and disappearing from sight.
"Wait a minute, Yusuke!" Kuwabara cried out behind him. "You haven't paid yet for all that tea yet! Yusuke! YUSUKE!!!" * * *
Yusuke laughed out loud as his friend's voice grew weaker and he felt the wind rush past his face. He stopped a little ways down the street to enter a park and began to whistle. It was a very nice day. The birds were singing on the telephone poles and the sky was a perfect shade of blue.
"Yusuke, wait up!" a voice called from behind him. It couldn't be Kuwabara, he was back at the store. And if it wasn't Kuwabara, then who was it?
"Yusuke!" he turned to see a young man in cloak and tunic running to catch up to him.
"Koenma?" he said uncertainly as the man stopped by his side, breathing heavily. "What are you doing here? Oh no," Yusuke felt his carefree spirit melt away, "Don't tell me it's another mission. We just got done with the last one." He groaned.
"Yusuke, you're a worry wart, you know that?" Koenma grinned as he stood up a little straighter. "Don't worry, it's just my day off."
"You get days off?"
"It's, uh... a new thing."
"So you decided to grace me with your presence?" He looked questioningly at the godling before him. Koenma nodded. "Man, if you're gonna hang out with me you gotta loose the pacifier. And get some new clothes! You look like you just walked out of Comic-Con!"
"Comic-Con?"
"Don't ask. Um... okay, we'll stop by my place and pick something up for you. Oh, and," he gestured to the bag in his hand, "I've gotta take a quick detour at Genkai's before I show you the sights."
The godling looked bewildered as Yusuke began to walk back the way he came. "Yusuke, I have no idea what you're talking about. And what's wrong with my clothes?"
* * *
Kurama walked up to Yusuke's door and knocked politely, his arms laden with paper and pencils he knew Yusuke didn't have. He had started trying to tutor him a few months ago, at his insistence, but so far it hadn't worked out that well. Like today, where was he? He knocked again, this time a little louder.
"Who's there?" a blurry voice called. The door opened a little and Atsuka's head peeped wearily out of the crack. Kurama smiled through gritted teeth. Where was Yusuke?
"Is Yusuke home?" He asked.
"Yusuke? What would a pretty thing like you want with Yusu... oh! You're that girly-man! Say, you're pretty good friends with Yusuke, right?" She smiled drunkenly at him as he started to back away.
"Um... yes, you could say that. Where is he?"
"He and his friend went out a little while ago."
"What friend? Kuwabara?"
"No, the other one, the brown haired one with the weird tattoo right... there." She pointed at his forehead clumsily.
Koenma? But why? "Did they say where they were going?" he asked hopefully.
"Uh... Genker's."
"Genker's? Where's that?"
"Uh... no. Gonkii's? No, that's not right. Umm... Gernatt's?"
"Genkai's?" he added hopefully.
"Yah, that's the one!" she slumped gleefully against the door, then straightened up and squinted at him.
"Hey, could you do me a favor?"
"Uh..." he racked his brain for an excuse.
"Yah. Could you go to the store and get me some saki? And rice? And Aspirin? The Aspirin would be good, God my head hurts. That bastard son of mine came home with 50 kinds of tea, but not one box of Aspirin! Can you believe it?" she gazed up at him hopefully.
"Umm... that's too bad, but I just thought of somewhere I need to be, so bye now, good luck!" He smiled his most charming smile and dashed of to Genkai's before she could stop him.
* * *
Botan sighed with regret as she walked away from the Prince of the Spirit World. Couldn't he see how much she had wanted to go with him? But she couldn't, it wasn't in her contract. And he was right, no proclamation can *ever* stop the dead from dying. She reached one arm up to summon her oar and the other to brush away a stray tear, pretending it was a lock of hair. She couldn't blame Ophelia for trying to help the staff as much as she could, but there just seemed to be something wrong about not including the ferry guides. No one had ever even so much as glanced at the complaint to put the guides into shifts for time off. It didn't seem fair.
"Oh well," she said, already feeling a steady rush of wind from her ascent into the Rekai sky's. Quickly she leveled out and headed for the Makai portal, where she knew her next client to be. At least there was always plenty of fresh air, she reasoned, unlike in Koenma's stuffy office. She reached into her kimono to pull out her schedule book.
"Hmm, let's see." She quickly opened the magical tome. "Looks like near the outskirts of Mukuro's lands, a B-class demon named Karess. Killed by the hand of... hey! Wait a minute!" The golden spirals of writing began to fade, leaving the page perfectly clean without a mark on it. "That's never happened before," she pondered worriedly. "Must have been some kind of mistake or something. Okay, well," she cleared her thoughts, "let's see who's next, huh?"
She veered out of the Makai portal and into the Ningen one, still pondering the mysterious fade. Perhaps the demon was saved and would have otherwise been unexpectedly killed? Then why would she have been expected? No one had ever been unexpectedly saved before.
Standard disclaimers apply
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*A lone snowflake drifted past his eye and he looked up into the cloudy gray sky. Someone was waiting for him up there. He could feel it. It was silent except for the wind blowing all around him, he noticed it was faintly cold. A chill went up his spine, the world turned gray with the sky and more snowflakes fell past him. Above and below, there was no floor but he was not floating, he was... just there.
A faint crying noise reached his ears, he searched for the source but could find no one. Only empty gray. The sound had been near to him filling the space in the back of his head, but now it drifted far away like the snow, only it got louder as it left him and began to echo along the cold empty gray as if there were walls. But the snow fell everywhere and past as far as he could see in any direction.
A scream rent the air echoing along with the weeping sounds. It seemed like it would go on forever - he began to sweat.
"Hello?" he yelled into the air. "Is anyone there?" But his own words soon expanded and echoed like the other sounds.
"Help," a weak voice sounded somewhere in the distance. It too bounced along the invisible walls. "Help me." Only echo's. More voices began to beg at him, more screams and cries. A car horn broke through to his senses and pain washed over him. He heard voices calling to him.
"Is he all right?"
"Is he hurt?"
"Will he live?"
"I'm sorry." It felt like glass breaking inside his skull. He fell to his knees shaking as the voices abruptly fell silent. He could almost feel the shards of air around him falling.
And then he was on the ground, cold stone beneath his shaking palms. Cold suddenly filled him. A picture of Atsuka crying on the floor rose from the depths of his memories.
Flashes of light jolted past him as more pictures came up. Genkai praying in her shrine, Keiko searching for something, Botan yelling out someone's name. But after the first onslaught of sound no others came.
Hiei and Kurama running, searching for something lost. Koenma fingering through an ancient tome, Keiko cutting flowers. Now they shifted and blurred.
Koenma held Botan close as she cried on his shoulder, Kurama waiting for something through his rain-spattered window. Genkai sitting alone in the temple. Yukina crying in her room with Hiei standing at the doorway. Keiko cutting flowers.
The last one stayed with him for a long time. Then she started to look up in his direction tentatively, as if searching for something not quite there. After a while her picture closed in on him and she open her mouth to speak.
"Traitor," a low voice spoke out. It was soft but un-nerving, and not directed at him at all.
"You were always too weak. It couldn't be helped."
New voices rang out from a distance, growing steadily louder.
"Help!"
"...never much use..."
"Problem... much too..."
"...sorry."
"No! You can't!"
"I need..." Silence. Black. A lone candle burned beside him casting a tiny orb of light in the pitch-blackness of the room. Another car horn sounded.
"Yusuke!"
"No, please don't!"
"You can't!"
"...too dangerous."
"Traitor!"
"Murderer!"
"I hate you!"
"I need..." Again the chaos broke. This time Yusuke began to yell.
"Shut up already! Who are you anyway? Where are you?"
"You think you can run my life?" a soft voice asked him.
"What's going on? Where is everyone?" More voices joined in the melee.
"I'm lost."
"Has anyone found my..."
"Murderer!"
"Help, somebody, anybody!"
"I need..." Silence.
"I need..." A long pause followed. He could only hear his own breathing, a rattling sound deep in his chest. He wiped the sweat off his brow and tried to stand on his shaking legs.
"YUSUKE!" Keiko's voice cried at him. Pleading with him to stay.*
"I need more sake."
He sat up with a start. From head to toe he was covered in sweat. He lay thankfully back on his pillows with a sigh, 'Thank God it was just a dream'.
"Yusuke, can you hear me in there? I better not have to get up, my head hurts like hell ya know!" Oh yah, the party last night. It must have been some weird hangover dream. But he really hadn't had that much to drink, only a bottle or two. And his head didn't hurt today, not like Atsuka's.
"Yusuke! Don't really make me come in there," Atsuka's blurry voice called out from somewhere in the next room.
He heaved himself up from his futon, "All right all ready. What do you want?"
"I need more sake. And some food and aspirin. Quickly." He heard her moan and fall back onto the couch.
"All right, but I need to take a shower first." The water would feel nice on his sweaty skin he reasoned.
* * *
And it did make sense he realized, running his hands through his wet hair, that the dream meant nothing. Two bottles of sake on an empty stomach can do weird things to a person's brain. He pulled his towel loosely around his waist and reached for his hair gel. 'Maybe I should go check up on Keiko though. I haven't seen her in a while'. He tried to pour some gel onto his hand, but it wouldn't come out.
"Oh man, don't tell me you're empty now!"
*Ring*
"Yusuke, get the phone!"
"Since when do we have a phone?" he called back as he hurriedly pulled on some boxers and a pair of pants from the floor.
*Ring*
"We've had a phone since we moved in, you dummy! From the fire insurance on the old place, remember?"
*Ring*
"No," he whipped up his comb and started combing his hair.
"Just get it already, jeez what do I have to put up with to get some service around here?"
*Ring*
"All right, I'll get it, just hold on." He dodged around some junk and scrambled out of his room, following the annoying ringing sound to a beat up phone stuffed under the table.
"Hello?" he spoke into the receiver as he levered the rest of it onto the table.
"Yusuke," an old voice spoke up, "there's a crisis on my hands and I need your help."
"Who is this?" It sounded oddly familiar but... nah! I couldn't be...
"This is Genkai you asshole! I need your help!"
"Genkai? But... when did you get a phone?"
"That's not important at the moment. What is important is that I'm in a lot of trouble and I need your help. In return I'll train you, but I fear there might not be much time for that anymore."
"But you always train me! What good'll that do?"
"YUSUKE!!! I'M OUT OF TEA! I NEED SOME MORE!"
He paused, letting it sink in. Then laughed. A lot. When he was finally able to control himself again he chuckled into the phone, "So just go up to the store and buy some."
"I can't, it's against my morals. Plus, if you do it, it'll get you up here so I can train you. And I feel that soon enough you'll need all the training you can get. Now, I need: Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, Darjeeling, Chai, Green Tea, Oolong, Camomille, Rosehip, Apple, Ginger, Constant Comment..."
"Wait a minute, I need to get some paper, or something!" He grabbed at a pencil Keiko had left over, then grabbed a piece of crumpled up paper from somewhere.
"Black Tea, Black Pekoe, Orange Pekoe, Orange Spice, Orange Zinger, Lemon Zinger, Lemon Tea..."
"Wait a minute!" he cried. "Start over, I need to write these down you old bag!"
She paused, then chuckled. "So, you're to slow for me are you? Then I'll try to slow down... for you sake. Now, starting over I need Earl Grey. You got that?"
"Yes, I have Earl Grey."
"English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast... oh, maybe I should have started with the decafe blends..." Yusuke groaned.
* * *
The soft air conditioning in the store left a nice tingle on his skin after the hot mid-day sun. It had taken him a whole half hour to copy down all of Genkai's tea's and about ten to walk to the store, so he reasoned it was about one o'clock in the afternoon. There was something about today he was supposed to remember he knew that but could not remember what it was. 'Oh well', he reasoned. 'If it's really that important it'll come back to me one way or another'. He mingled around the isles picking up his hair gel and some breath mints before making his way to the cooking isle to get the tea.
He pulled out the list as he went, checking on what he needed. "Let's see now, cinnamon? Got it. Raspberry? Got it. Tension Tamer and Sleepytime? Got it. Blackberry and Jasmine? Okay. World Peace tea? When did they come out with that? Got it." Time went on.
He finally made it to the counter, laden with a shopping cart full of tea.
"Will that be all sir?" a familiar voice asked.
"Kuwabara?" he looked up to the carrot haired oaf. "What are you doing here? Behind the counter? Who was stupid enough to hire *you* to count other people's money?"
"Shhh Urameshi, or you're gonna get me fired." He put a finger up to his mouth and lowered his voice. "If you must know, Shizuru said that I had to get a job or she would kick me out of the house, so I asked the old man who runs the store and he said he needed some help with the register. He's an old family friend."
"Yah, well. Good luck making money and all, but that apron and cap look horrible! Green is definitely not your color." He took out his list again to make a last minute check while Kuwabara ran them all through the auto-pricier.
"Um...Licorice? Check. Lavender? Check. Brisk? That's the stuff in the can's, right?"
"Uh, yah..." came a half-hearted reply. Kuwabara seemed pre- occupied.
"Mint Medlee? Hm... must be for Yukina. If Genkai drank that once in a while she wouldn't stink so bad, huh?"
This time there was no reply. Yusuke put the paper down to see what was going on, but Kuwabara snatched it back up and started reading the back of it.
"Hey, wait a minute! I thought you were with Keiko. Who's this other chick?"
"What? Hey, let me see that." He snatched it back from Kuwabara. A series of hearts met his eyes. He groaned, "Oh no, I thought I threw this away!"
"So you do have a secret girlfriend, eh Urameshi? Well it's my solemn duty now to report it to Keiko now, ya know? As a friend." He grew serious.
"Hey man," Yusuke countered," you've got to be kidding. You can't tell her, it's not what it looks like. I don't even know who this chick is!"
Kuwabara narrowed his eyes at Yusuke, then broke out into horrible laughter. "Ha ha ha! You didn't actually think I was gonna tell her, did you? Oh God, that would have been fun to watch you get pummeled by her, though. But," he drew himself up to his full height and once again grew serious, "you should break it up with this girl, whoever it is. It's really not fair to anyone, ya know, to be left in the dark."
"Where'd ya learn that? Your sister?"
"No, Yukina said it. Ya know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that Hiei had his tiny little eyes on *my* Yukina, the way he's been following her around lately."
"Really? He really has been?" Yusuke wondered how Kuwabara still didn't know about the fire demon's hidden connection to Yukina. "Well, I've gotta go up there to deliver this junk to Genkai anyway. Thanks for the news, bye!" he called out behind him as he sprinted out the door of the shop and into the sun, turning a street corner and disappearing from sight.
"Wait a minute, Yusuke!" Kuwabara cried out behind him. "You haven't paid yet for all that tea yet! Yusuke! YUSUKE!!!" * * *
Yusuke laughed out loud as his friend's voice grew weaker and he felt the wind rush past his face. He stopped a little ways down the street to enter a park and began to whistle. It was a very nice day. The birds were singing on the telephone poles and the sky was a perfect shade of blue.
"Yusuke, wait up!" a voice called from behind him. It couldn't be Kuwabara, he was back at the store. And if it wasn't Kuwabara, then who was it?
"Yusuke!" he turned to see a young man in cloak and tunic running to catch up to him.
"Koenma?" he said uncertainly as the man stopped by his side, breathing heavily. "What are you doing here? Oh no," Yusuke felt his carefree spirit melt away, "Don't tell me it's another mission. We just got done with the last one." He groaned.
"Yusuke, you're a worry wart, you know that?" Koenma grinned as he stood up a little straighter. "Don't worry, it's just my day off."
"You get days off?"
"It's, uh... a new thing."
"So you decided to grace me with your presence?" He looked questioningly at the godling before him. Koenma nodded. "Man, if you're gonna hang out with me you gotta loose the pacifier. And get some new clothes! You look like you just walked out of Comic-Con!"
"Comic-Con?"
"Don't ask. Um... okay, we'll stop by my place and pick something up for you. Oh, and," he gestured to the bag in his hand, "I've gotta take a quick detour at Genkai's before I show you the sights."
The godling looked bewildered as Yusuke began to walk back the way he came. "Yusuke, I have no idea what you're talking about. And what's wrong with my clothes?"
* * *
Kurama walked up to Yusuke's door and knocked politely, his arms laden with paper and pencils he knew Yusuke didn't have. He had started trying to tutor him a few months ago, at his insistence, but so far it hadn't worked out that well. Like today, where was he? He knocked again, this time a little louder.
"Who's there?" a blurry voice called. The door opened a little and Atsuka's head peeped wearily out of the crack. Kurama smiled through gritted teeth. Where was Yusuke?
"Is Yusuke home?" He asked.
"Yusuke? What would a pretty thing like you want with Yusu... oh! You're that girly-man! Say, you're pretty good friends with Yusuke, right?" She smiled drunkenly at him as he started to back away.
"Um... yes, you could say that. Where is he?"
"He and his friend went out a little while ago."
"What friend? Kuwabara?"
"No, the other one, the brown haired one with the weird tattoo right... there." She pointed at his forehead clumsily.
Koenma? But why? "Did they say where they were going?" he asked hopefully.
"Uh... Genker's."
"Genker's? Where's that?"
"Uh... no. Gonkii's? No, that's not right. Umm... Gernatt's?"
"Genkai's?" he added hopefully.
"Yah, that's the one!" she slumped gleefully against the door, then straightened up and squinted at him.
"Hey, could you do me a favor?"
"Uh..." he racked his brain for an excuse.
"Yah. Could you go to the store and get me some saki? And rice? And Aspirin? The Aspirin would be good, God my head hurts. That bastard son of mine came home with 50 kinds of tea, but not one box of Aspirin! Can you believe it?" she gazed up at him hopefully.
"Umm... that's too bad, but I just thought of somewhere I need to be, so bye now, good luck!" He smiled his most charming smile and dashed of to Genkai's before she could stop him.
* * *
Botan sighed with regret as she walked away from the Prince of the Spirit World. Couldn't he see how much she had wanted to go with him? But she couldn't, it wasn't in her contract. And he was right, no proclamation can *ever* stop the dead from dying. She reached one arm up to summon her oar and the other to brush away a stray tear, pretending it was a lock of hair. She couldn't blame Ophelia for trying to help the staff as much as she could, but there just seemed to be something wrong about not including the ferry guides. No one had ever even so much as glanced at the complaint to put the guides into shifts for time off. It didn't seem fair.
"Oh well," she said, already feeling a steady rush of wind from her ascent into the Rekai sky's. Quickly she leveled out and headed for the Makai portal, where she knew her next client to be. At least there was always plenty of fresh air, she reasoned, unlike in Koenma's stuffy office. She reached into her kimono to pull out her schedule book.
"Hmm, let's see." She quickly opened the magical tome. "Looks like near the outskirts of Mukuro's lands, a B-class demon named Karess. Killed by the hand of... hey! Wait a minute!" The golden spirals of writing began to fade, leaving the page perfectly clean without a mark on it. "That's never happened before," she pondered worriedly. "Must have been some kind of mistake or something. Okay, well," she cleared her thoughts, "let's see who's next, huh?"
She veered out of the Makai portal and into the Ningen one, still pondering the mysterious fade. Perhaps the demon was saved and would have otherwise been unexpectedly killed? Then why would she have been expected? No one had ever been unexpectedly saved before.