Kazumi: Alright, here's a Yu Yu Hakusho fanfic that I've been plotting for some time. Hopefully it's as good on paper as I imagine it. I already have it in a three story saga so I'm going to try and finish it. Just for the sake of not being sued Yu Yu Hakusho isn't mine, nor are the characters in it that you all know and love. I only own MY material and characters. Okay time to start the story!

'Text' - Thoughts

Text - Word emphasis, epilogue, prologue

A Fish Out of Water

Running, running, she had to get away. Long, light blue hair streaming after her, white fox ears were laid back against her head. Behind her she could hear the dying cries of her family, her clan, as they were destroyed and she clutched tighter at the small bundle in her arms. But she did not stop. She had an obligation to her people to make sure that the child - HER child - lived. The child was the key. The woman ducked underneath the door of an abandoned home as the sound of explosions rang around her, causing her child to wail even louder.

"Shh…it'll be alright." The woman cooed softly. She concentrated her energy into a small sphere and placed her hand on a nearby piece of ruble, pushing almost all of her power into the stone. Almost instantly a small rip appeared. The woman looked at her only child sadly, remembering the prophecy of her village. It was so much for such a small one too bear. To exact their clan's revenge against the one who killed them so many years from now when they had grown stronger. The mother stroked her child's light blue locks lovingly, looking into the deep blue eyes of the babe. As she sensed the awful danger approaching faster she kissed her baby on the forehead and focused on the infant's spirit, condensing the body and soul into a small form of a ball of light. She clutched it to her chest, weeping softly.

"My child, please hear my last words to you. Wherever I send you, always know that I love you dearly, my daughter." With those words still ringing in her mind she softly urged the ball of light into the rip in the stone. There was a moment of hesitation before it went through and the rip closed, leaving the woman alone in the deserted building. Suddenly a huge wall of ruble started to tip and before the woman could move it came down, trapping her in a cage of stone. She sighed and waited for her untimely death. For what seemed like an eternity she waited and eventually heard all of her village go quiet. By now it must have seemed like a ghost town when out of the blue, she heard footsteps swiftly jog over to the place she was buried. Her muscles tensed as the person stopped in front of the stone. The woman could hear rocks being moved, and as the last one was taken away, she looked up into the light to see a small figure crouched down before her.

"Ma'am, are you alright?"

--

It had been a very exhausting day for the fourteen year old, Japanese-American. It was almost the end of the first quarter of eighth grade and she just about had to work all-nighters so she could turn all her late work in. The girl admitted that she had been lazy – a shame upon the Asian stereotype – but now that she had finished all she had to do was relax. There was a four-day weekend that awaited her and she was going to use it for all it's worth.

Right after she forcibly removed her brother from her door frame.

"C'mon Kazumi!" The boy, two years her younger, pleaded as he remained clinging limpet-like to the wood, despite the middle schooler pulling on his ankles. "You're the only one who knows the password to the TV-"

"And as I said before – I'm not giving it to you. You're grounded remember?" Kazumi growled, pulling harder. It wasn't an easy task. Andrew had already taken three years of wrestling and was now onto his fourth – the kid had some serious arm muscles for being so damn scrawny! "So until you do all, and I mean every, single, mundane chore that mom is having you do and then call her to get the okay, I'm not going to tell you!"

"So can I watch it with you?"

'Sneaky aren't you, thinking of a way to get around being grounded?' The girl thought. "I'm not watching anything downstairs." The twelve year old gave her a curious look before Kazumi grinned evilly down at him. "I'm going to be chillin' up here with my portable DVD player." While her brother was distracted with feeling appalled by his sibling's behavior, the brunette took the opportunity to give one last good yank to detach the nuisance.

It worked, for about ten seconds, which she took to leap clear over Andrew and into her room, locking her door the minute she got inside. She leaned against it, feeling the harsh pounding that the door received from the boy on the other side through the wood and sighed. Now the teen just had to wait it out. There were some not-so youthful words said, none of which she was going to tell her mother unless she wanted to start another fight the minute the parent got home, and some moments when Kazumi thought that her brother might've killed the barricade she put between them. But after a few minutes, it was over. He left cursing his sister like a sailor and said sister returned to the position on her bed she was in before the fiasco occurred.

"Holy scrap metal Batman, I'm pooped." The adolescent moaned as she stared aimlessly at her white ceiling. "Being the older sister is hard…at least we didn't get in a fist fight this time though, he would've kicked my ass." As she lay on her blue-blanketed mattress, Kazumi let her eyes go around her room. They finally rested on a family picture taken when she was still in kindergarten. When her family was still together.

'Okay, not going to go there. I'm almost to the "vacation", so let's think happy thoughts! …whoopee…' The brunette rolled over so that her head rested smack dab in the center of a large pillow. Thinking about what her family used to be like brought up some sad memories. They, like almost every other American family in that day and age, had gone through a divorce when she and her brother were very young. Kazumi and Andrew lived with their father for a while until something happened with him, then they went to live with their mother. After a while everything settled back down and her parents, although apart, had a stable relationship with one another. The whole thing was very hard on her younger brother, for him to be at such a young age when it all started, and it changed his personality into a meaner one than she remembered. As a result they bickered constantly, but there were some good days where the brunette swore that her little bro was bipolar. Either that or he had two very different personalities.

"Alright then, what shall we watch today…maybe some Ayakashi? I feel in the mood for a good ghost story." She stretched, her short, brown hair tossing ever which way. Kazumi looked mostly like her mother – dark brown hair and brown eyes while Andrew looked like her father – black hair and dark brown eyes. They both had the same body type from their Japanese heritage, lean, whereas their faces were more of the American variety. Kazumi stood at 4'10" and her brother made it to her shoulder at 4'7".

It was funny because both of them practically had the same face, but they acted completely opposite of one another.

An hour passed and the teenager was about two-thirds of a way through her program when a loud and somewhat irritated knock at the door caught her attention. "Hey…I'm done…"

"Did mom give the okay?"

"Yeah…" Pausing the show, Kazumi pushed herself off of her bed and unlocked the door, not at all surprised to see her younger brother's pouting face glaring up at her.

"Wasn't that hard was it?" She smiled, thinking that the ordeal was over. Her guess was wrong as a sharp pain erupted in her shin, almost causing Kazumi to cry out. Almost.

"Don't do that again." The younger boy commanded as she struggled not to show any weakness. The teenager shrugged nonchalantly and coolly gave her sibling the password to the first floor television. As Andrew ran like a runaway bull downstairs, the brunette calmly walked back into her room, closed the door, buried her face into a pillow and cursed to the highest of heavens about her brother that should've never been born.

--

"Thank God for mom's good cooking," sighed the girl contently as she slipped into a plain white tee-shirt and black running shorts. "Thank you, thank you, and thank you." Dinner had gone over well, thankfully as she already said. Usually there was a chance of scattered bickering while the family of three sat eating their food in the living room, but whether or not they had a good show to distract the siblings was always the key for a quiet meal. She thought another fight was going to start between her mom and brother but they were able to settle the dispute without any fur flying.

"Kiddo, I'm coming in." A feminine voice called from outside her room.

"Okay!" The teen replied. There were probably only a few people who didn't make her life as she knew it into troublesome situations; her mother was one of them. Many, many times she praised whomever was watching over her for a mother that she really got along with, unlike the other girls at her school who constantly fought pettily with theirs. Kazumi could absolutely call the woman her first best friend in public and not have a care in the world.

Ms. Kuwabara walked through the door with a smile on her face, "Hey hun, how was your day?" She asked as she sat down on the corner of the bed.

"It's good. I got all my work in."

"That's great. That's really great." Kazumi grinned as her mother ruffled her hair affectionately. "For a second there I thought I was going to have to ground you."

The girl scoffed. "Yeah, good luck with that. I'm not affected by your feeble attempts to deprive me of social contact – I'm already a social reject."

"What about Haru?"

"…never you mind then." The older woman laughed and kissed her daughter on the forehead while the two exchanged hugs. Just as she was about to leave, she turned back around.

"I almost forgot to ask, do you want your window open? It's a little stuffy on this floor and I want to air it out a bit." The eighth grader nodded and her mother left soon after opening her window. Once the lights were off, Kazumi started imagining about a few things just to get herself sleepy, as she always did. A few sniggers and weird face or two afterward and she could feel the darkness of unconsciousness creep up on her. As she slowly drifted off however, she felt the air around her grow tense. Kazumi moaned at the thought of having to deal with the certain types of people who gave her the…what did the boy on TV who had her same last name call it? Oh, right, the tickle feeling. She blamed her father's side of the family for this, ever since she was in grade school. It never failed to surprise her with visits from the dead at ungodly hours of the night or early morning. 'And my friends say that we're not alike at ALL…gee, wonder how they came up with that one? A pox on my psychic family. Screw you all, ya friggin' poltergeists, I'll deal with you in the morning.' With that last thought in mind she finally closed her eyes for a good nights sleep……or so she thought.

--

The night still felt edgy around one o' clock in the morning, and for good reason. Under the watch of the nearby street lamp, two abnormal figures silently skulked around in the cul-de-sac, as if looking for something. As the street lamp flickered ominously one of the misshapen figures pointed to a house on a nearby corner with an open window on the top floor. With nods of agreement they took off toward the home.

--

"Nhh…" The brunette groaned slightly at the offending noise that had jostled her from her deep slumber. Through her clouded minds eye she could hear something moving around in her room. She kept still, not wanting to attract notice, but she couldn't keep her heart from beating faster as her fear peaked as she saw two figures inside her room.

'Just lie still and they won't pay any attention to me.' Her throat tightened and breath stilled as the two figures turned toward the bed. 'Oh crud.' Before she could utter a cry out to her family she was held down against the bed, kicking and screaming as well as she could with a hand over her mouth. As the brunette thrashed about against her assailant's grip she felt something cold being held against her left arm. There was a small sting, but it was somehow enough to put her whole body into a state of shock. The last thing that Kazumi was able to comprehend before her world went into utterly black was a roaring in her ears and a feeling of weightlessness. Then she was gone.

After what seemed like an endless slumber, she was finally able to open her eyes. Nothing had changed though, everything remained pitch black. Even after a few minutes of adjustment it was still as dark as it was when she woke, if not just a teensy bit lighter. 'What the–? Where…where am I? …And what is that smell?' The teenager went to rub her nose clean of the musky odor in the crook of her arm, and hit something with her elbow instead. Something metal, and cylindrical.

By looking just a bit closer she saw thick lines of black loosely crisscrossing around her in what looked to be a medium-sized room. It reminded her of prison bars…

'Bars… wait – whoa! I'm in a CAGE? Crap, ohhhhh crap…what'd I do to deserve this? Shoot! That whole pox thing was just a joke!' She let out a small whimper of discomfort when a sudden shuffling to her right alerted her to another presence. Not just that one…if she concentrated – sure enough, there were others in here just like her; locked in cages…but somehow different…

"So, you're the new kid huh?" A light, male voice came from the direction she first heard the shuffling from. Kazumi turned her head around the room. Far off in the corner she saw a dark silhouette get up from its sitting position and cross the room and stopped at the bars in its own space. Instinctively, she scooted back a bit just in case. "Relax. I'm not going to hurt you." The voice said again, "I'm here too after all, and I don't plan on making enemies with fellow inmates. Girls especially." The brunette blinked a few times to try and see what the person looked like. After blinking furiously in the darkness, the teenager's eyes finally got used to their surroundings. She looked closer at the figure and determined that it was a boy, but that wasn't all. She gaped and made a small, but noticeable squeaking noise. The boy who stood just a little ways from where she sat…did not the least bit human look human.

The boy chuckled, "Ah, I see. Never seen a youkai before huh?" She shook her head dumbfounded. "Well since it's your first time I'll let you have a good look." From his leaning position he got off the bars and spun around slowly for good measure. From her point of view it looked like he was a reptile of some sort. His skin was dark and had an odd texture to it that she could only assume that it was scales, and he wore a crude brown tank and pants. A long, scaly tail that extended from his backside and two pointed ears that were somewhat hidden, poked out slightly from his short, volumous hair. "So," he continued almost casually. "What's a ningen doing in a Makai slave market?"

It took the middle schooler a little over a minute to deduce what the demon was talking about before realization caused her to gape wildly. She suspected that the term 'Fish out of water' applied perfectly to her traumatized expression. Oh the irony. 'WHAT the HELL am I doing in the Demon World?! So that means that…damn! Those were youkai that I saw…' The two darkened figures in her room instantly came to mind as she clenched her fist angrily. 'How could I have been so STUPID? Argh…now my head hurts…oh, wait a minute-' Another sudden and much more ecstatic insight brought a grin to her face. She would've laughed hysterically but managed to hold it in for the fear that something might happen if she said anything. 'It's REAL, it's all real! Oh YES!! Haru SO owes me twenty bucks for this!'

"Yo, earth to ningen kid, you alive?" The boy's call jerked her back to the unpleasant reality. She tried as hard as she could to reply but something in her brain wasn't clicking that moment. It was the shock, she concluded silently. "What, can you not speak or something?" She paused for a moment before nodding. Hopefully if she couldn't talk her big mouth wouldn't get her into trouble. Yes, that would do.

Suddenly, another more menacing and blood-chilling voice spoke up out of the gloom. "It wouldn't matter Ryo." It mocked sadistically as Kazumi turning her head shakily towards the voice. "Even if that filthy ningen could talk, I'd tear her annoying tongue out the minute she did."

'Well, there's another reason for me to keep my big, trouble-making mouth shut.' She quietly thought to herself, forcing her head to look away from her neighbor who she could only assume was thinking of ways to skin and gut her. 'Oh…so that's where the smell was coming from…'

As she looked back to the boy, now known as Ryo, she could've sworn that for a split second she saw Ryo's eyes glint with such anger that it caused a serious bad feeling sensor to go off. "That so?" He said, tone dripping of cynicism. "What if I just happened to cut off your arm, Ukimo-san?" The reptilian youkai turned back to Kazumi with his genuine smile returned to his face. "Don't worry about him, it's not like he can do anything to you anyways. There's a biiig no-no rule about killing other slaves. Bad for profit if you know what I mean. So you shouldn't worry about most the creeps in here," his voice dropped to a very, very low whisper; but not so low enough so she couldn't hear it from across the room. "For the most part the youkai in here are really weak and low class, not to mention stupid."

"I resent that Ryo," another voice spoke up, much lighter and feminine than the last one, but definitely just as deadly sounded from somewhere off to the teen's right. "Now take it back before I rip off your tail and shove it up your-"

"Hey, hey, hey! Calm down already, jeez…" Ryo rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as he turned to face someone three cells from him. "Alright, intros – new kid this is Maori. Maori, new kid."

Kazumi's eyes went to a nearby cell and almost choked on her lung from trying not to laugh. The girl had very piercing eyes that could undoubtedly cut glass and was wearing some kind of black shirt and pants. She looked like a Goth, unbelievable! A Goth demon! But, that's not what actually got to her. It was the huge, poofy, adorable, rabbit ears coming out of her cropped hair and fluffy rabbit tail poking out of her pants. 'Oh my God…it's a visual oxymoron.'

Maori turned to face the Kazumi with a cold stare at the estranged sound the girl tried to hold back. "You think something's funny? Huh?" Kazumi shook her head rapidly as to not offend the angry youkai that was currently giving her what was known as the Stink Eye. "Hmph, good. I hate it when I get crap about the ears and tail." The Usagi youkai muttered.

Ryo turned his head towards Kazumi just a bit. "Especially from the guys, you have no idea how much she hates men until you see her get really pissed off."

"Ryo!"

"And she can hear practically anything with those big, stupid ears of hers!"

"…I am going to kill you."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, Maori-tan."

"What was that?!"

Kazumi shook her head sadly as the two youkai bickered. 'Dude, I'd be ticked too if I was born looking like a person out of a Playboy Mag.'

Maori turned toward Kazumi again and leaned on her set of bars. "So, you can't talk, at all?" She decided to stick with that story for a while so she nodded her head somewhat solemnly. "That sucks…well anyways it's almost nighttime so you should get what little sleep you can get."

Kazumi watched as Ryo and Maori went to the back of their cells so she decided to follow their example and do the same. As she went back she saw a small cot that she eagerly laid down on; it smelled a little odd but she could deal since there wasn't much of a choice. In the back of her mind she got to thinking. She decided that the two youkai that she had just met might be the only people in that God-forsaken stink hole that would probably talk to her, a lowly human in any other demon's eyes and that it would be much better to be their new ally than an enemy. It would be easier for her to stay alive longer if she had some buddies on the inside. Kazumi sighed, she sounded like she was in a high security prison that there wasn't a cold chance in hell that she was going to get out of. But the one thought that constantly rang throughout the teen's subconscious was how in heaven's name she was supposed to get home when she was being held hostage in a place – a dimension – that wasn't even supposed to exist.

Kazumi: Yosh! First chapter done and done, hope you liked it and please turn in for the next installment that will be coming in soon. And, always remember to R&R. Ja ne minna-san!