Fate: Ta-dah! This one was fun to write. Got a tad long, but was fun. INVASION OF THE MINAMINO SHUUICHI FANGIRLS!
Disclaimer: Not ours. Any of it. Except Yoshiko. We want her. Oh, and Aven Vincent. But you can keep the fangirls.
the next night
"Shuuichi-kuuuuuuuuuun!"
"Omigod! Shuuichi-kun!"
"Shuuichi-kun? Daijobu ka?!"
Kurama stiffened but didn't look up. "What the fu – ?" Hiei began.
Kurama clapped a hand over his mouth. "My friends from school must have just arrived. No," he added, when Hiei reached for his sword. "They have an internal hierarchy which keeps them in order."
Hiei was growing tired of the shrill girly voices sounding from the hallways, but decided not to argue. Not like he wanted ningen blood soiling his sword or anything anyway.
"Shuu-shuu-chaaaaaaan!"
"Oh, I bloody draw the line there. Stupid tarts," an alto voice muttered from just outside the room. "URUSAI! DON'T MAKE ME GET OUT THE ROLLED NEWSPAPER! BEHAVE, DAMMIT!" THWACK
"But Shuu-shuu-chan!"
"Be respectful, dammit!" THWACK THWACK THWACK "If you can't manage to be decent, go outside and whinge!"
"Deeeeemo..."
"OUT!" THWACK
"Hai, hai, senpai..."
"Sorry, senpai..."
The alto voice sighed sadly and showed itself to be a part of a black-haired schoolgirl coming forward to kneel in front of Kurama. She was part of a small group paying their respects to the bereaved redhead, who was at that point looking as though he'd been smacked over the head with a fish which happened to have been duct taped to an enormous brick.
"Sorry, Shuuichi-kun," the girl began. "I'm really terribly sorry. I thought they'd stay outside as usual," she said, staring at the tatami mats. "I didn't think they'd be so...focused."
"No, no, it's okay. Thanks, Yoshi-chan," Kurama replied, looking up. He glanced over at Hiei, caught the faint confused glance, and almost smiled. "Hiei, Oyumada Yoshiko, Yoshi-chan, Hiei."
Hiei and Yoshiko stared at each other for a long moment. Hiei saw a girl of about sixteen with straight black hair, wide eyes, and the hint of a pink and black spangled Hello Kitty collar underneath the high neckline of her uniform. Yoshiko saw a dark-haired, red-eyed muscular young man wearing a rather ratty dark shirt with "SAVES THE DAY" emblazoned across it in teal and painfully tight black jeans with a sheathed sword stuck through one of the belt loops. Each looked quite perplexed by the other's presence and appearance.
Yoshiko jerked her head towards the sliding door. "I'd like to talk to you, Hiei. Not in here, though."
"Hiei." Kurama jumped in before Hiei could reply in his normal manner. "Do it?" It was almost a command, but the force wasn't there.
"Yeah, doing it," Hiei muttered, scrambling resentfully to his feet and leaving the room with the girl. He wasn't sure why he was following Kurama's orders. Possibly it had something to do with the big, imploring youko eyes.
"You can call me Yoshi-chan," the girl started.
Hiei shrugged. "Do I have to?"
"It doesn't matter. Shuuichi-kun matters." The girl folded her arms. "I'm his best friend at school. You must be his best friend the rest of the time."
Hiei tilted his head and looked at her inquisitively. "So in the ningenkai what friends you have depends on where you are? Strange. Usually who you have as friends depends on how useful you are to them at the time."
"Ningenkai?" Yoshiko blinked. "Huh. Well, I see what you're getting at. That's usually how it is most of the time too. Listen. Hiei? Shuuichi-kun mentions you sometimes. He pretends he doesn't, so you must be some kind of secret...heeeeyyy..." Her eyes sparkled. "Are you his boyfriend?"
Hiei looked even more confused. "...?"
"Never mind. It was worth a shot," Yoshiko sighed. "So. You're the mystery friend, and I'm the Head Fangirl. Teamed up with the creepy pretty-boi, we make a team made somewhere really unpleasant. Look. You've got to take care of him."
"Kurama can fend for himself," Hiei said idly.
Yoshiko looked slightly at a loss. "D'you mean Shuuichi-kun?"
"Yeah," Hiei told her.
"Not going to ask," Yoshiko said. "Can we get back to Shuuichi-Kurama-kun? Sure, he can normally take care of himself, but...now isn't normal. We need to cooperate. Or something," she finished. "I don't know. I just wanted to meet you."
"Why?" Hiei demanded.
Yoshiko opened her mouth to answer, but was drowned out by a tiny, pink-haired girl in a sailor suit careening through the halls and screeching at the top of her lungs. "Senpai! Sennnpaaaaaiii!"
"Yes?" Yoshiko asked, folding her arms and looking very angry.
"Does Shuuichi-sama need taking care of?" the girl asked, her eyes whirling around in her head and flashing all colours of the rainbow. "I thought perhaps if he wanted to –"
"Bloody hell no," Yoshiko snapped. "The boy's not for your pity fest. Go to someone else's memorial and leave him alone."
Hiei's respect for Yoshiko twitched upward a bit as the pink-haired thing slunk away without another word.
"I'm going back in," Yoshiko said. "Please consider what I asked."
"Hn." Hiei watched her go sit next to Kurama. He stared at the pair of them for a very long time afterward.
"So you see, it all makes sense!"
"No it doesn't."
"How could it not make sense?" Yusuke demanded.
Kuwabara was unmoved. "What about Kurama and the midget? How does anything you're saying relate to them? Do you have any proof? What, exactly, are you talking about? Does it have to do with kittens? Dammit, Urameshi!"
"You're hopeless," Yusuke announced, throwing up his hands and nearly smacking Shizuru.
"What's he hopeless about?" Shizuru asked, batting Yusuke's hands away.
"Their eyes! And the way Kurama stands! And the interpretation thingie! And they spend all their time together! And Kurama and the towel! The towel, dammit!" Yusuke again waved his arms for emphasis. "You should have seen Hiei's face! And the whole blood thing, that was kinky, but they're demons."
Shizuru's eyes went wide. "Ooooh," she breathed. "I've only seen them together once, but it makes so much sense now."
"You see?" Yusuke demanded of Kuwabara.
"No," Kuwabara replied. "What are you going on about?"
"Yusukeeee!" Keiko and Botan both hurried up and joined the group standing outside Shiori's fiance's house. "What's this?" Keiko asked.
"Hiei and Kurama!" Yusuke burst out. "The rain! He was in the room when it was raining! Do you remember the coffee? And the eyes they make at each other! And did I mention the way Kurama stands?!"
"Oooh," Keiko said simply.
"And don't forget the sado-masochistic bits where Hiei went all 'I love to hurt you' on Kurama," Botan piped up.
"Oooooh," everyone went. Except for Kuwabara, who was still really bleeding confused, having either not been on the spot during the recent rabid attack of the subtext or not being of a fangirlish mindset. Your choice which.
"Someone just tell me what's going on?" Kuwabara demanded.
"It's the – "
"Ah ah ah," Shizuru said, holding up a finger to hush Yusuke. "Allow me." She leaned over and began whispering in Kuwabara's ear.
"Meanwhile, I need to give a progress report," Botan said, discreetly taking Yusuke by the elbow and leading him a few feet away from the gossiping horde of teens. "Koenma-sama has agreed to 'borrow' the human for a bit and investigate him. They think that the idea of a gang going after Kurama's mother in such a violent way is strange enough to warrant a little digging. We want to know just what sort of gang it is. I'm going to have to be on the spot for a while there, so don't look for me for a few days," Botan reported. "As the shinigami, Koenma will sometimes use me if the investigator doesn't turn up much. The investigator is a legend of his own, so we don't expect such a thing, but...you never know."
"Wait, so you have powers as the Grim Reaper?" Yusuke inquired, scratching his head.
Botan held her fingers close together. "Just a few. My pneumatherapy, a bit of fire and dark arts, and then the really extreme ones – giving life and giving death. I can't use those more than once every hundred years or so." She glanced over her shoulder. "Oh look, I think Kuwabara's just figured out what's going on. You'll have to tell him what I told you when he recovers."
Kuwabara had one eye squinched up and was apparently trying to play a game of midair connect-the-dots with one finger and no board.
"Maybe we shouldn't have told him about Kurama and Hiei," Yusuke remarked. "Now he's going to start making fun of Hiei more than ever, and then Hiei will eviscerate him, and we'll all be screwed."
"Just be discreet for a while," Botan said, flapping one hand dismissively. "I've got to go talk to Kurama."
"Wait until after the people have gone," Yusuke cautioned. "He's been on edge lately."
Botan looked around at the stream of people flowing into and out of the house. There were a lot more going out than in. "Good call," she said softly. "Does he have any other human family, do you know?"
"Well, there's his mother's fiance, and his would-be stepbrother," Yusuke listed. "And there's this girl running around too. I've seen them together before. She seems to be in charge of beating off other girls with a stick. He seems to be pretty dependent on her right now. More than on the guy his mother would've married. Oh, and...you know." Yusuke looked around furtively, as though the 'you know' in question would magically materialize out of the sidewalk and do a fine berserker impression as thanks for the reference.
Botan giggled. "You're so paranoid. When will everyone be gone, do you think?"
Yusuke consulted his watch. "It is not three in the afternoon!" he snapped at it. "Piece of junk," he added, tearing it off his wrist and firing it into the nearest trash can. "Oh I'm good," he added.
"Well, near-death experiences and the like will alter your electromagnetic field enough that wearing things like watches becomes impossible," Botan pointed out.
"I'm a walking near-death experience," Yusuke announced proudly.
"Dolt," Keiko contributed, joining the small group. "What's up?"
"Botan wants to pay her condolences, but it might be a good idea for her to wait a bit. She's a little noticeable," Yusuke fabricated.
Botan cast a sulky glance at her clothes. True, it was an old-fashioned kimono, but honestly. It was black silk. Really not that out of the ordinary. Just like a man, to pick on clothing as a reason to hide. Idiot.
"We'll be moving along now," Shizuru announced. "Kazuma still has a lot of questions that he would be unwise to try and answer now."
Yusuke considered what would happen if Kuwabara confronted Hiei or Kurama. Hiei would stare at Kuwabara, then run him through and get blood all over the clothes Yusuke had loaned him. Kurama would probably laugh. Then again, given Kurama's current state, he'd laugh himself into hysterics, lock himself in the closet, take a four-hour shower, then drink ten cups of coffee to take his mind off the issue at hand. And then Hiei would pop up and run Kuwabara through and complain that it was because he made Kurama all whiny.
Scary, how he could figure out their minds like that.
Then again, Hiei's mind was pretty damn straightforward.
Perhaps he'd better have a talk with Kuwabara.
"Look, I'm not going to wait any more," Botan spoke up. "I need to get back. I have to go talk to Kurama and then I have to go. Koenma-sama just paged me."
"You have a pager?" Yusuke demanded.
Botan put her fists on her silk-clad hips and glowered at him. "As it were. Now if you'll excuse me, I have emotional news to impart, followed by a human interrogation."
"No need to get huffy. All in good time."
Yusuke, Keiko, and Botan all spun to behold a black-haired girl still in her school uniform watching them. "Oyumada Yoshiko," she introduced herself. "You want to see...Kurama-kun?" she asked, lingering over the redhead's name. "Best do it soon. His fanclub will be back in..." Here she looked at her watch. "Hmm. Seven minutes and twenty-two seconds. Let us be off."
"Fanclub?" Yusuke demanded.
"Yes," Yoshiko replied. "You see, someone has to beat the girls off of him with a stick. I happen to be that someone," she added with a quick, mirthless smile.
"And they listen to you?" Keiko asked.
"If they want to get near Minamino Shuuichi, they do," Yoshiko replied. "I do all their scheduling."
"That's a bit sinister," Yusuke said thoughtfully.
"It works," Yoshiko said with a shrug. "I act as his publicity agent of sorts."
"Are you for hire?" Keiko asked.
"Interesting question," Yoshiko replied, looking over at Yusuke.
"Keiko? What's going on here?" Yusuke demanded suspiciously.
"Nothing."
"Keikooooo! Tell meeeeee!"
"You," Yoshiko said, appearing at Botan's side. "Let's go. We have less than five minutes now."
"Ah...Oyumada?" Botan asked.
"Yoshi. Please," Yoshiko corrected. "Yes?"
"How...how long have you known Kur – Shuuichi?" Botan asked slowly.
"Since junior high," Yoshiko said. "He didn't really start picking up girls until high school, though. You?"
Botan figured that the truth would not exactly be prudent and opted for a bit of a deception. "I work for a private detective agency. I'm an errand girl, more or less. My boss is a friend of the family and has agreed to help the family – namely, Shuuichi – in any way possible. He has managed to obtain a meeting with the...the man who did it. He thinks perhaps he will be able to discover something to give...to give everyone involved some peace of mind. He wanted to tell Shuuichi himself, but he had to leave earlier for another...another case? Case. Yes. The interrogation will be taking place quite soon, so I need to just pop in and talk to Shuuichi for a second, then I've got to dash."
Well, maybe the lie didn't have to be that elaborate, but it was rather close to the truth. Sort of.
"Kurama-kun?" Yoshiko slid the door to the side and gingerly peered around it. She recoiled sharply, then tentatively returned to her former position. "Kurama-kun? There's a young lady here to see you from a...detective agency?"
"What the hell?" Hiei demanded from inside the room.
Botan felt it was necessary at that time to save Yoshiko from being dismembered and strode into the room. "Eeeep," she squeaked when a sword swung up to hover in her face.
"Kurama-kun, I have to go home," Yoshiko said from her partial hiding place. "I'll see you in school." The door slid shut with a thump.
"Sorry for scaring her," Botan said meekly. Hiei rolled his eyes and seemed to be biting back laughter. "She's started calling you Kurama, you know."
"You have news?" Kurama asked, staring at the floor.
Botan examined the pair of them. Kurama was sitting on a low table with his elbows propped on his knees, his head in his hands. Hiei sat leaning against the table not an inch from Kurama's left leg, his sword held out across Kurama's body to point at Botan.
"Put the sword down and listen to me," she said, taking a deep breath. Best to get it over with now. I have things to do, cruel as it seems. "Kurama. Are you paying attention?"
Kurama slowly looked up, then gently pushed the sword to the floor. "Yes." Hiei simply glowered.
"The human has been borrowed for interrogation," Botan told them. "Koenma-sama suspects demon connections behind that gang. He doesn't think that your mother's death was random."
"So who's gonna interrogate the ningen, you?" Hiei sneered.
Botan closed her eyes. "After I leave here, I'm to bring Aven Vincent to the interrogation room with the human." She opened her eyes to behold Kurama frozen in place, with Hiei watching her again with an odd kind of respect from his now-bloodless face. "I take it you two both know Aven Vincent."
Kurama nodded jerkily. Hiei looked away sharply and tightened his grip on his sword. "So you're taking this seriously."
"The man tortured the innocent human mother of one of our agents. We're taking this very seriously," Botan said coolly. "Now if you'll excuse me, our interrogator doesn't like to be kept waiting. Ta, now." She snapped her fingers and vanished on the spot.
"Show-off," Hiei muttered.
Kurama whistled through his teeth, still partially frozen. "Aven Vincent..."
Hiei stuck his sword into the ground and looked up at the redhead. "What'd he do to you?"
"When I didn't cooperate...he tore my ears off. Not cut. Tore." Kurama shuddered. "To start."
Hiei settled slightly closer to Kurama. Which translated to leaning both on the table and on Kurama. "Stay out of the Makai while he's around."
"A demon gang," Kurama burst out. "Murderers for hire. Mutilation. Aven Vincent. Oh, Inari..." He dropped his head back into his hands.
Hiei glanced over his shoulder at the window. Rain was splattering along the glass again.
He swiveled back to his former position and stared at the flat of his sword, lost to memories.
Fluffy: La. Be happy with the speculation. HAPPY! This will not be a fic where everyone ignores the obvious. Not even Kuwabara. The only people who get to ignore the obvious are the demons. And maybe not even them. Mwa ha ha ha. Ha. Ha.
HieilovesBotan: Heh. Thanks. blush
Higashikaze: Won't be the last time you see it, either. Mwa ha ha ha.
SweetMisery: Indeed I did.
Henrika: Huh. I got Atsoko from Shounen Jump. goes and beats on the Shounen Jump people Yusuke smokes...well, always. Again, got that from the manga. I only have one DVD and a ton of manga. ;;
Silverchild of the winds: Don't worry, Botan's a major character in the rest of this. Very major. She'll pop in and out for a bit, then will return to stay with the rest of Team Urameshi. Can't very well neglect them, can I? Oh, and the title...that's a secret, for the time being.
Liviania: There'll be more of them, too. Wait a few chapters. There's even an almost-meaningful shower scene! Gasp!
Psychopathic Sixth Grader: Hee. That one's fun because it's so....oxymoronish. I like it. ;;
Duel: Hi. You know me. Or maybe you don't. But if you don't review...we'll meet again. And now on pleasant terms. :E)
