Again, thanks to Beagle for betaing.
To prevent confusion (more on my behalf than yours, I can assure you), present-day Kurama is referred to just pale ol' "Kurama" in the text but "Suuichi" by Youko and Kuronue… because that's kinda what he told them his name was… (cough, cough) ANYway, Youko Kurama is either just that, "Youko Kurama", or Youko (if I'm lazy) in the text, and Kurama in the dialogue.
Me, Myself, and Kuronue
-::- Kyun. -::-
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Yusuke barreled into the kitchen. "What's happening? Botan?!"
The girl in question had a horrified look on her face, as though she had started to watch a Barney DVD she thought was Pirates of the Caribbean. The flour all over her didn't help much. Kuwabara was giving her an odd look, but turned to the Boy Who Died But Then Lived.
Please ignore the Harry Potter reference.
"It was the weirdest thing, Urameshi," he said. "Kurama went to turn off the oven, and then there was this dramatically clichéd flash of blue light, and he was gone."
Yusuke frowned. "What do you mean he was gone?"
"He just vanished!" Botan cried, snapping out of her stupor. "Just poof, gone! And..." - she paused dramatically – "I got egg in my hair."
Yusuke fell over.
-----
Taking a deep but unnoticeable breath, Kurama took two steady steps toward the monster known as Gozuro, a plan forming in his mind. It my make him look like a fool, or even worse, a NERD, but it was the only weapon he had now.
"What do you know about right triangles?" he asked the demon in a surprisingly jovial voice.
"ROAR!!!!!!!!!" It yelled back at him, not wanting to reveal to his opponent that he couldn't remember if a triangle was the duck with six or twelve feathers, and that he had never heard of anyone distinguishing the difference between a wrong one and a right one.
"I just think they're fascinating," Kurama went on. "I mean, in what other geometric figure can you calculate the perimeter with just the measure of two sides? Well, I suppose if the shape was verified as a regular figure you could do it with just one side, but with a right triangle you can calculate even an irregular one using the Pythagorean Theorem."
"…Roar?"
"I think my favorite type of right triangle is a 30-60-90 triangle because you only need one side to calculate all the rest. You can do the same with an isosceles right triangle, of course, by saying the hypotenuse is a leg multiplied by the square root of two, but I like complexity, and I believe that the formulas for 30-60-90 triangles are more complicated. The hypotenuse is twice the measure of the leg opposite the thirty-degree angle, and this leg multiplied by the square root of three will give you the measure of the leg opposite the sixty-degree angle! Who ever realized that was brilliant, weren't they?"
At this point, it was all poor Gozuro could do to remember how many hands he needed to count to thirty.
"Brain… too small… Gozuro… no understand!" He moaned, crossing his eyes and shaking his head furiously as though he could shake some sense into it. It promptly exploded. The demons left standing blinked.
"That was unexpected," was all Kuronue could say. Youko Kurama took a different approach.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!!" he yelled, stomping over to Kurama.
"Geometry," was the stone cold answer.
Youko Kurama scowled down at him for a moment.
"…Can you teach it to me?"
It was all Kurama could do to keep from sweat dropping.
After a standing around awkwardly for a spell, the trio headed back up the hill into a conveniently placed and conveniently dark forest. Kurama lectured his counter part on various high school course mathematics, and Kuronue marched a good distance ahead, chopping off random limbs of various demons trying to pick a fight with them.
Presently, he came to a clearing with a stream running through it. Around this stream, cute little bunny demons were dancing. They each had color coordinating lollipops and freakishly big, shiny eyes. They were the gosh darn cutest things any mortal could have laid eyes on.
"Aaaw..." Kuronue cooed, kneeling next to one. "It's adorable!" He cuddled it to his cheek, grinning like an idiot.
Now, to see a full grown, feared-by-any-sane-person bat demon talking to a bunny in baby talk is a very odd, not to mention slightly disturbing, sight. Both Kuramas stopped in their tracks as they entered the clearing to stare at their companion. Youko was seriously considering disowning him as a partner. The bunnies, busily tying up Kuronue as he played paddy cake with one, did not notice the intruders until a split second after the fox demons realized what was going on.
But it was to late.
They turned to flee for their lives, a panicked look on both their faces. "Don't look at them!" they thought simultaneously.
"Kyuuuuuuuuuuuuuun?" On of the bunnies inquired.
Youko Kurama halted in mid-run; the cuteness of the cry was too much. Slowly, he turned his head around… then began to follow…
"Don't!" Kurama, who had had much more experience in Cute-Things-That-Were-Actually-Maniac-Homicidal-Killing-Machines, yelled from his left. "Resist it, Youko Kurama, resist it!"
"Kyun kyun kyuuun?" A bunny teetered up to the silver haired demon, peering sweetly up at him and offering a lollipop.
"Can't… resist… too cute…" the Legendary Bandit Youko Kurama fell to his knees.
"Kyuuun." More bunnies hopped over to him, each one carrying rope in their fuzzy lil' paws.
That last call had been too much for Kurama. He slowly uncovered his eyes and peered down at the huggable little demons at his feet. 'We're all gonna die' was the last thing he thought before accepting a lolly.
- :: -
When Kuronue came to, he found himself chained to a sturdy metal table and staring up at a big, fluffy, yellow thing. Normally he would refrain from using third grade vocabulary, but that was what it was. A big, fluffy, yellow thing.
"Kyuuuuun. Welcome, Kuronue," a high-pitched, wannabe menacing voice sounded from somewhere near the floor, "to the Tickle Torture Chamber of DOOM!!! Bwahahahaha!"
"…Tickle Torture Chamber of Doom?"
"Of DOOM."
"Yeah, whatever. Don't you think that's a bit lame?" Kuronue lifted his head as best he could in hopes of catching a glimpse of his tormentor.
"Don't you think you look a bit like gothic Barbie?" The voice snapped back.
"Hey…"
"Well, you do. Now FEAR!!! FEEEAAAAAR the Tickle Torture Chamber of DOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!! KYUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!!"
Kuronue sighed. "You wouldn't happen to have a Popsicle, would you?"
"No." There was a click like that of a lever to an inane device of torture being pulled.
"Damn." The thief watched the fluffy thing, which he now realized was a giant feather, lowered slowly toward him…
The sound of hysterical laughter filled the Über Cute Demon Bunny Secret Base of DOOM.
- :: -
Youko Kurama's golden eyes fluttered open. Groggily sitting up from a rather uncomfortable position on the stone floor, he surveyed the room. It was dark, dank, and musty, exactly the type of thing you found in a bad, medieval-type action movie. He was chained to the wall by his ankle, and the shackle clanked loudly against the cold stone as he crossed his legs.
Curled up in a corner, Kurama sat examining his fingernails. A deranged look lingered in his eyes.
"Suuichi?"
"I think mushrooms will make fine wallpaper, Mr. Toadfish."
Youko Kurama stared at him for a moment before turning to the lock on the cuff loosely dangling around his ankle. There must have been something in that lollipop.
It didn't take long to pick the lock, which made the silver haired bishonen wonder exactly who the bunnies thought they were. He leisurely strolled across the cell to the door. It locked from the outside and didn't have any windows, just one solid slab of rusty iron, so at least the Cute Ones had SOME sense. Pulling a selected seed out of his hair, Youko Kurama manipulated the plant under the door and to the outer lock, which the plant promptly picked. Even the demon's greeneries were master thieves. Youko pushed the door open and took a step into the dingy corridor outside.
"NO!! Not my painted mittens!" Kurama threw himself across the room and latched on to his counter part's ankle.
"Get off," the other commanded, kicking his foot sharply. Kurama still clung to it.
"But the powder only works on homo sapiens," the teen that was apparently not in his right mind stared up at the thief with the dazed look of a person who just went on the Tower of Terror twelve times in a row after not sleeping for three days, ate a pound of cotton candy, and threw it back up going on the Tilt-a-Whirl. It was mildly disturbing.
Youko Kurama made several attempts to separate himself from his future self, but gave up when knocking Kurama's head against the wall had no visible effect. He then settled on marching purposely out of the dungeon with a human clinging to his foot. If anyone asked, it was Kuronue's idea.
Youko Kurama roamed the halls of the… building, whatever it was, for quite sometime without interruption. On one hand, he didn't have to bother fighting evil and dastardly cute bunnies. On the other, he was pathetically lost and had no way of getting out of this miserable pit of flagrantly huggable youkai. Oh, and he needed to find Kuronue too.
"My neighbor won the singing contest for tone-deaf."
And that boy was REALLY getting annoying.
By the time he reached the kitchens, the youko was on the brink of mental break down. The absurdity of the bunny fortress, the building's repetition in dull decoration was gnawing on his very last nerves, and the simple fact that he, a self-proclaimed genius, could not figure out a way to defeat it was driving him up the dreary gray, mold incrusted walls. To sprinkle salt on the wound, the redhead would. Not. Let. Go. Of. His. DAMNED. FOOT. And insisted on screaming nonsense and making random comments on the ceiling cracks. The silver-haired thief stormed into the kitchen with a maniac gleam in his eyes, ready to rip the spleen out of the next living thing he saw, whether it was Kuronue or not.
It didn't work out in exactly that way.
The first thing that Youko Kurama saw when he entered the room was rising bread. The second thing he saw was a group of bunnies struggling to pull a gigantic chocolate cake out of one of the many ovens. The group looked up as a ominous shadow fell over them. Quickly, they began to turn on the cute. Youko Kurama smiled down at them, but not in the way they had expected. He jeered at them, a blend of psychotic blood lust and the frustration one can only obtain from wondering through an interminable maze with a parrot gibbering in their ear the whole way.
He grabbed the nearest spatula and, with a hair-raising war cry, charged at the bunnies. They squeaked, confused by the cute immunity, and ran. The thief took chase, knocking over tables and bumping into cabinets while screeching various profane insults.
A rabbit paused briefly to hurl a bowl of banana mush, followed by the peels, at him, but Youko merely knocked the bowl away. However, the peels took their toll as his foot came down on one, sending him face down on to the stone floor.
"My, those cracks look like a box of Coke cans, don't they?" Kurama giggled from his position at his past self's feet.
"Suuichi," the other mumbled, standing back up and grabbing a pie, "shut your pie hole." Unaware how corny that sounded, he lobbed it at the bunnies, who were hit dead on. One grabbed a tube of Go-Gurt and squirted its contents at the thief; he dodged and sent a cantaloupe back at them. A food fight erupted.
The thief and the bunnies continued bombarding each other with edible items, Kurama putting in his completely random commentary every now and then. Citrus fruits were hurled, watermelon seeds were spit, frozen fish sticks were shot from super-soaker water guns, and peanut butter was kept and eaten. Then, in a climatic act of desperation…
"ODE TO JOY!!!!!!!!!!!"
…the bunnies catapulted Makai's biggest piece of homemade taffy at Youko Kurama using a cleverly constructed machine made from old recipe books and dishtowels. Youko opened his mouth to yell, but no sound came out as the giant candy collided with him. He fell into the cake the bunnies had been baking; Kurama, still attached to his ankle, fell on his side half-on and half-off of the oven door the cake rested upon. Blinking, the stars from his eyes, Youko Kurama smirked up at his food-fight opponents.
"Ha," he said, "you're out of ammo." And he began to stand up to dramatically point, rant for a bit, and then finish them off. Or, at least, he tried to.
For a moment, the demon sat there acting triumphant as he tried to move his legs, but he was stuck. The taffy had served its purpose as an adhesive, and the universes greatest bandit found himself sitting in a cake, glued to the inner side of an opened oven door.
"Shit."
"Mushroom."
The bunnies burst into a chorus of high-pitched, disturbing laughter. They each produced a lollipop from behind their left ears, and held them up menacingly. Realizing those were the same type of lollipops the evil cutlings had given to the assumed human, Youko's eyes widened in fright.
"No…!"
The bunnies grinned in a way that, for once, did not make them look like they deserved to be cuddled.
"Yes."
The bunnies advanced. Youko closed his mouth as tight as possible.
"ALL I WANT IS A FIZZUCKING POPSICLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" A deep voice screamed from somewhere to the right, and the wall exploded. The bunnies paused, and turned to the disruption.
There stood a frazzled Kuronue. One of his scythes dangled from his left, and a charred looking rabbit hung from the other. The bat demon marched into the room, glaring at lollipop wielding bunnies.
"Alright, you Betty Crocker wannabe rodents," he snarled, "where are the popsicles? I know you have them, and don't think the cute thing will work on me twice."
"Kyuuuun," one little demon said. "We ate the last one about an hour ago."
"DON'T LIE TO ME!!" Kuronue bellowed, raising his scythe.
"Kyun, we really did."
"LIES!!!"
"Truth."
"LIIIIEEEEES!!!!"
"KYUUUN!!!!!!!!!"
This seemed to push the bat demon over the edge.
"BLAAARGGGHHHHHHHOOOOOOOAAAAAAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Youko Kurama closed his eyes. There are some this even HE didn't need to see. Hearing the bunnies' shrieks was enough. Something blunt hit his ear as it soared into the over, and Kurama made a rather odd statement as the color red.
After about a minute, the noise died down, and Kuronue breathed heavily before saying, "Well, that was a load off my chest." His partner opened his eyes.
"Kuronue?"
"Yes, Kurama?"
"Do you know the way out of here?"
"Erm…"
"Wanna wander around aimlessly until we happen across it?"
"Sure."