Disclaimer:Sniff, sniff, WWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! Yu-gi-oh, Inuyasha and 3x3 eyes were never mine, aren't mine and never will be mine! Please don't sue me! I'm broke!
Author's Notes:
This is not happening in Shinjuku anymore. Therefore, I can no longer use Mama. Dang. And he's so entertaining too.
This is not happening in the Sengoku Jidai. Therefore, I cannot use Miroku or Sango. Since Kikyou is not in this story, assume that the earth-and-bones Kikyou can age like a normal human, in which case she'll be dead.
It's not specified exactly where in Tokyo the Higurashi shrine is situated, so I took the liberty to make it Nerima, the same district as in Ranma 1/2.
These characters are mostly based on the manga. Unfortunately, I only own numbers one to five of 3x3 Eyes, and find some of the anime too good to leave out. So basically, Yuugi, Yami, Jounouchi, Kagome, Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru and Shippou are manga, and Yakumo and Pai are hybrids.
Youki is demonic energy.
A Trio of Demons
Chapter 1: Suspicions
"Two days since we arrived." started Yakumo to Pai and Meishin as they sat in a small cafe in Domino. "And not a clue!"
"Well, it's only been two days." reasoned Meishin. "Besides, all the cases of sudden madness stopped a while ago. And I'm glad for that."
"I sense something." interrupted Pai abruptly. "It's coming from over there." She pointed toward the Turtle Game Shop, which was right across the street.
The store bell rang. Yuugi looked up from his game of Solitaire to see a boy and a girl of his own age walk in.
"Ooh! Yakumo! Look at all the cute toys!" exclaimed the girl excitedly to her slightly embarrassed companion, who was trailing nervously behind her.
"Hello, what can I do for you?" asked Yuugi.
"Ah... Not much, really... We're just looking. Hey, aren't you a little young to be watching the store?" inquired the young man.
Yuugi sighed. "I'm sixteen years old. I just don't look it." he lamented.
"I know the feeling." replied the boy.
"So am I correct in assuming that the girl is doing the looking and you're not doing much?" said Yuugi.
"How did you guess?" grinned the young man.
"I could tell by the sort of nervous look on your face. Can I interest you in a video game?" asked Yuugi all of the sudden.
"Nice try, Mr. Salesman. I don't have a console, and it would be a waste to get one." countered Yuugi's would-be customer.
The girl sauntered over to the counter, an armful of stuffed animals in her arms. "Yakumo! Can I have them!" she asked.
"Pai, you don't really expect me to buy all of these, do you?" Yakumo exclaimed his companion.
Pai didn't answer. She dropped the toys as she noticed Yuugi.
"Can Pai see your puzzle for a moment?"
Yami did not like the way things were turning out. The aftermath of someone closely examining the Millennium Puzzle, even for a short period of time, nearly always ended badly. For example, this rather dim sounding teenage girl might really turn out to be an evil, arrogant sorceress prone to going on bloody rampages. He informed Yuugi of this.
Yuugi was puzzled. Yami had been feeling rather paranoid lately. He claimed that someone was watching him. Yuugi mentally told Yami that he was sure that Pai was nothing of the sort. Yami relented, but he couldn't shake the presentiment he was going to tell Yuugi he told him so later.
"That's a nice pendant. Where did you get it?" Yakumo was asking.
Yami also noted that this Yakumo person was asking too many awkward questions.
"My grandfather gave it to me. He found it in Egypt on an archaeological dig. It's my most treasured possession." answered Yuugi.
"Egypt?" asked Yakumo, looking over his companion's shoulder. He seemed mildly surprised. "It certainly looks Egyptian." the man seemed confused.
Both boys watched Pai as she examined the puzzle intently. She turned it over, looked at it from every angle, felt it all over.
"So what does it do?" Yakumo inquired abruptly. Pai had given Yuugi back his puzzle.
"What does what do?" asked a confused Yuugi.
"What does that puzzle do? Most things like that have some symbolic value, or are said to have such and such magical properties..." Yakumo explained, in a manner that suggested more playful teasing than anything else.
"Err..." Yuugi hesitated, "It grants wishes."
"What did you wish for, then? Money? Fame? Girls?"
Yuugi blushed at the thought that anyone would suggest something so petty. "No, I didn't wish for any of that... But the thing I wished for did come to pass."
"Then you have to be careful what you wish for." Yakumo winked and picked up one of the plushies Pai had shown him. "I'll take this please."
Yuugi told the taller boy the price, and Yakumo bought it. With a wave and a see you 'round, he and a happy Pai, hugging her stuffed animal tightly, walked out the store.
"Well... That was strange." Yami commented, shifting from inside the puzzle to the semi-transparent form he assumed when they were alone. "What did you wish for, anyway?"
"Well..." Yuugi grinned in the air of someone embarrassed. "I wished for a friend."
"Ah." commented Yami. "Yeah, that would make sense. And afterward, you and Jounouchi became pals."
"And Honda joined our circle, then Bakura, and Anzu had always been there, and you were always there too. At the time we didn't know you existed, then I knew but couldn't talk to you, but you were always taking care of me and them as well. I considered you a friend then, and I still do." added Yuugi.
Yami looked at the shop entrance balefully. "But I still say those two knew something." he maintained, going back to the original conversation.
Yuugi rolled his eyes at this. "You're just being paranoid."
Kagome Higurashi walked into the class, a disgruntled look on her face. She stood by, listening indifferently to the teacher introducing her, and wondered whether Domino would be half as interesting as Nerima. She was half-way through convincing herself it wouldn't when she sensed something odd about the classroom. Something... Familiar... But she couldn't quite put her finger on it... It was something she hadn't felt in some time...
"Kagome, will you say a few words about yourself to the class, please?" The teacher unceremoniously interrupted her train of thought and startled the would-be miko.
"Oh, yes, err... Well... I'm Kagome, I used to live in a Shinto shrine before we moved here, my grandfather, mother and brother and I..." And I love a half-dog-demon I was expecting to see soon but hasn't shown up who crashes to the ground the moment I say 'sit'... That sentence was not a good one to say out loud... But the truth was she missed him. There had been a squabble over the land that came with the Shrine, and she and her family had been forced to leave to make way for some restaurant. She'd warned Inuyasha of the trouble, and told him to meet her in Domino city in the spring of 2003. Both well and Shrine were destroyed now.
She took a seat next to a tall brown haired girl and spent the rest of the class daydreaming... Any moment now... Any moment now, and Inuyasha will come bursting through that door, and we'll argue, and he'll get mad, and I'll probably say sit... Okay, this is getting sad. she thought.
"You look lovesick." commented the brown-haired girl next to her softly and surreptitiously, as so not to disturb the class.
"Am I that obvious?" asked Kagome in the same tone of voice.
The girl grinned in response. "I'm Mazaki Anzu. Wanna talk about it?"
"My b- I mean, the boy I like," through long practice she skillfully avoided the term 'boyfriend', "I told him to meet me, and he hasn't come. To top it all off, I have no way of contacting him, and I don't even know where he lives. I hope he's not dead." answered Kagome.
"Mazaki! Higurashi! Go stand in the hall!" the teacher yelled.
Kagome and Anzu went to stand out in the hall, carrying a bucket of water in each hand.
"You don't... really think it's a possibility..." continued the taller girl, her face twisted in an expression of concern.
"It's been three months since I've seen him. And he's in with a rather bad crowd."
"Three months?" Anzu commented. "He must really be something special."
"Actually, no. He's insensitive, violent, has the foulest vocabulary of anyone I'm ever likely to meet, is impulsive, foolish, and worst of all, he couldn't decide between me and his ex!" Kagome's voice became a crescendo of vindictiveness as it rose to the climax of indirectly mentioning Kikyou.
"Forget about him, then. Anyone that bad doesn't deserve a girl like you." Anzu suggested, a bit freaked out by Kagome's display of emotion.
"He wasn't all THAT bad!" Kagome protested. "He saved my brother's life once." she said. "Despite his flaws, I loved him, and I still do. If only I knew what happened to him..."
"Have faith. If it really is True Love, he'll turn up!"
Kagome wasn't sure whether to take that seriously or not. "I take it you've got someone you like too?"
"He saved me from a serial killer in a fast food restaurant. I was blindfolded, but I fell in love with his voice!" answered Anzu.
How glamorous, Kagome wanted to say. Although really, considering the way she'd met Inuyasha -he tried to kill her because she'd been holding something he wanted- she shouldn't even be thinking like that.
Kagome tuned out the other girl and plunged into her own ruminations again. Tomorrow was her sixteenth birthday. It would be nearly a year relative to her since she met Inuyasha, and three months since she'd seen him. Whenever she did her homework, she counted down from ten to his arrival, only to have her predictions go amiss... Because she no longer lived at the Higurashi Shrine, and the well no longer existed.
Detention was the bane of any student, and Yuugi had just escaped from it, after an hour of mind-numbing torture. He opened the door to his locker, and found a letter inside. There was no return address. Yuugi quickly opened it. It was a single sheet of white printing paper, on which had been printed the following sentences: "We will blow up the school if you do not come alone to the library straight after school. You have ten minutes starting from the bell ring." Yuugi checked his watch in disbelief. "But it's been an hour since school was out!" he said chuckling. "Gee, if they'd only told me sooner, I wouldn't have kept them waiting for so long."
"Great, now you've made us look like idiot pranksters! It's been an hour since the bell rang." Yakumo complained to the woman whose personality now occupied Pai's body.
"I'm a Sanjiyan, Yakumo, and Sanjiyan never look like idiot pranksters. Additionally, Wu, I was under the impression that it was YOUR idea to draw him out here." retorted the miffed demoness.
"Yes, but I didn't decide to put in some crackpot blow-up-the-school gag! He's probably not going to take us seriously and leave." protested Yakumo.
"A comment a Sanjiyan makes is anything but crackpot." continued the Sanjiyan loftily.
Yuugi stood outside the library door.
"I bet you one hundred yen those two customers you were so suspicious of will be the ones waiting for me on the other side of this door," he teased Yami.
"That's my line." Yami grumbled, "and I haven't got even one yen. I don't know what's on the other side of that door, but I get the feeling it can't be good. Furthermore, I claim the right to say 'I told you so.'"
Yuugi felt worried. Yami had been so gloomy lately. He shrugged off the thought and and turned the handle-
And Yami walked in the library, stunned at the sudden, unplanned switch in personalities. He asked Yuugi, but didn't receive an answer. Somehow, his aibou had suddenly fallen unconscious. Why? How? He then decided to take things into stride, and scanned the room. Ofuda were plastered in every single nook and cranny of the room. The biggest was on the door he'd just come through. But the first thing he noticed, was at the other end of the room, true to his aibou's jibes, their customers from yesterday were, or more accurately, had been, waiting for him. Presently, however, they were bickering.
Even though it seemed that the girl was acting totally different from the other day, and it looked like she had a third eye on her forehead, and the ofuda stuck to the walls didn't inspire him any confidence, Yami felt relieved, and astonishingly calm. He pulled up a chair and sat, so as to wait for the two to finish their argument in a more comfortable position. He needn't have bothered.
The girl noticed him first. "We have a visitor, Subordinate. It's rude to keep visitors waiting." she interrupted.
"Ah!" exclaimed her startled companion. "Well," he said, stepping forward, "My name is Fuji Yakumo, of the Yogeki demon-extermination society. And my 'superior', " upon those words he looked dismayed, "is called Parvati IV. I suppose you're wondering why we invited you here."
Yami nodded. "You assume right. What do you want from me? Why did you draw me out?"
"That's very simple. We wanted to see if you were a demon." Yakumo stated.
"So you could kill me?" Yami raised an eyebrow. "If I was a demon, I definitely wouldn't say so that to self-avowed demon slayers. And I suppose you have ways of telling other than getting me to confess. What makes you think I'm a demon?" Yami's interested was piqued. He'd never met such unprofessional villains before. None of the opponents he'd faced before were so counter-productively honest.
Yakumo gestured to the ofuda stuck to the walls. "These make sure that anyone who doesn't have any youki would have fainted right away. Mind telling us what you are? It would definitely simplify things." replied Yakumo coolly.
"To be honest, I'm not so sure myself. First of all, I don't even know my name, much less my past. I'm not in a good position to tell you so. Second of all, why is it any of your concern?" asked Yami.
"Someone's watching you. He's a terrible being. You're definitely safer with us than with him." Yakumo answered.
Yami frowned. "Are you offering me your protection?"
"We're offering you a partnership. We'd rather have you on our side then on the other guy's." answered the other man.
"But I'm not even involved!" protested Yami.
"Are you a Sanjiyan?" asked Parvati.
"What's a Sanjiyan?" came the quick answer.
"That doesn't explain anything, especially the fact that his youki is like muted Sanjiyan youki." commented Parvati. "That's probably why Benares has him watched." she told her companion.
Yakumo sighed in exasperation. "This is getting us nowhere." he said.
"You have a point there." added Yami.
"I think the problem is his memory. If he knew about his past, he could probably tell us a lot more." continued the man from Yogeki.
Yami started getting annoyed. It looked like his two pursuers had begun ignoring him. Yami wasn't used to being ignored. Underestimated, insulted yes. Ignored? Never.
"It's rude to talk about someone as if they aren't there." he said pointedly.
Yakumo seemed ready to talk again. "Tell you what? We'll make a deal. You said you don't remember your past? We help you remember it, and you tell us what you are once you do. Deal?" suggested Yakumo.
Yami fell silent. He was glad Yuugi was unconscious for this. He had the impression that he'd have to leave Yuugi sooner if he regained his memory, which was something he was not looking forward to. Yami reflected on this for a moment. "Give me time to think about it." he decided.
"How does three days sound to you?" inquired Yakumo.
"That ought to be enough, yes." agreed Yami.
"Alright... In three days, we'll meet back here, then." decided Yakumo. Yami walked out of the library while Parvati and Yakumo started collecting the ofuda.
'Well...' thought Yami at last, when he'd put a reasonable distance between himself and the strange pair were gone. 'That was...' The dark spirit never had time to finish his thought.
'Yami, what's going on? Why are you out? What happened back there?' babbled a confused and conscious Yuugi.
Yami walked out of the library and closed the door behind him. He and Yuugi switched again, and Yuugi once again had control of the body.
'You were saying?...' he asked his darker self.
'Tell you when we get home, Yuugi. It's too long a story for you to listen to here.'
