Requiem

By Dan'yu

Chapter One: Kazuma

It couldn't be true.

The moment he watched Urameshi hit the ground, his body gone limp and still, his heart and body froze. The world seemed to move in slow motion, every ragged breath, twitch of muscle, the thundering of his heart slowed to the point of nearly nonexistence.

His mind was sluggish, lethargic, struggling to form a single coherent thread of thought through the shock induced haze. Thought and feeling fought to banish the numbness, to penetrate the ice that surrounded him. He was so cold. Everything had gone so cold.

"N-no…" A single word fell from his lips as feeling came back to him, his body trembling in the aftershock. The broken voice reaching his ears hardly resembled his own, and yet he knew he had been the one to speak, his desperate attempt to deny what was so blatantly real before him.

No. No…no…no. No, no, NO!

Urameshi!

Images flew through his mind faster than he could consciously recall, memories he held so close to his heart.

Barely two years before, he had known him by little more than name. Yusuke Urameshi. Only fourteen years old and already a legend. Rumors about him had run rampant around the local gangs, stories of an invincible thug with a vicious eye and a mean right hook. Kuwabarra was enraptured by the tales of the Urameshi, exaggerated as they were. Curiosity became fascination, quickly growing into a desperation bordering on obsession when the matter came down to Yusuke Urameshi. With every fight, every wisecrack and pummeling sent his way, every defeat he suffered, his determination to meet Urameshi in battle as an equal only continued to grow.

Honor and strength were two ideals Kazuma Kuwabarra held highest in his world, and Yusuke Urameshi became the living epitome of those ideals in his eyes. Their fights became more than physical struggles, battles of brute strength. He wanted to beat Urameshi, of course, but there were so many more reasons why he challenged the other again and again, knowing all too well just how much of a brutally strong bastard Urameshi was.

Some kind of common thread drew them together, something that linked them beyond the need of acknowledgement or words. They spoke through their fists, and that communication was violence, fierce in its brutality and turbulent in its intensity. Urameshi spoke that way, with grace and strength and confidence that was awe-inspiring. Kuwabarra fought for the sake of one thing: to bring himself on level ground with this otherworldly ruffian.

There was something so utterly human about this boy he made his rival, a candid kind of sincerity that both repelled and drew people to him. Kuwabarra found himself willing drawn into the storm that was Yusuke Urameshi.

Their rivalry made the rather rough transition into friendship, and the rest was history. Urameshi had become such an integral part of his life without him even realizing it, and that final transition came when he was the least suspecting.

People respected him in some ways, for his strength, his sense of loyalty, the code of honor he held in such high esteem. But people looked down upon him, lack of brains, lack of skill, a bumbling idiot who could never measure up. Until Urameshi. Urameshi made him feel more that inadequate, motivated him to better himself, to strive to be something greater. Urameshi saw him as an equal.

He couldn't believe it. He refused to believe that he had lost the one person who made the man he was. He refused to believe he had lost his best friend.

It was a joke. Right? It had to be a joke. Urameshi was just pulling his leg, giving him the payback for the Toguro tournament. It was just a joke.

Except that there was no pulse in his best friend's neck, no steady beating of a heart in his chest, no breath gently exhaling from bloodied lips.

Yusuke Urameshi was dead.

The cold, numb nothingness began to melt away, the rush of molten heat that accompanied rage enveloped him in the arms of devastation.

Denial faded into vengeance, and the battle for a fallen hero began.