Adult-FanFiction.org : YuYu Hakusho

Paperwork
By : Artemick
Category: Yuyu Hakusho > General
Views: 1696 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho and earn no money writing about it.
Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
*

From what Kurama heard from the eastern teams, Hiei’s reformation had failed spectacularly. He killed his team, then drove miles off-course to pillage two large towns of no particular interest except to Hiei – because…no one was exactly sure. Because they were on hand, or because he was lost and then…annoyed. Who knew?

When threatened with imprisonment, Hiei blamed Kurama, claiming Kurama had not entertained him sufficiently to ensure completion his work. Due to that, Hiei confessed he had lost interest in cooperation midway. He was refusing more assignments and apparently, it was difficult to punish someone whose body tolerated both star-hot temperatures as well as blizzards, someone who had chosen an implanted eye that caused chronic and continual intense pain. Hiei carried hell inside his skin.

Kurama couldn’t wait to meet up with him.

Each had planted the seeds that grew in the analysis after the break-in of Koenma's treasury. Wit, strength, accuracy, and a sort of finality to their accomplishments. Now they were an obvious match. Kurama could finish any job, no matter what the circumstances, but needed protection – someone who would respect him and work with a demon with an evil history. Hiei was near clairvoyant with his powers and insanely destructive, but would only be aimed and used to someone he respected to guard his interests –who happened to be conveniently employed at the same institution. Such coincidence.

Kurama slipped into Koenma's throne room. He was bent over a bowl of applesauce.

"We didn't have an appointment," Koenma said.

"No," Kurama said, disturbed by the prince's toddler form. "I…excuse me."

"That's the polite way of asking how the fuck you got in here."

Kurama clasped his hands behind his back. "Snuck through the void rape kits vanish into."

The prince grew, almost popping into adult form. Kurama felt rude staring at the pacifier and turned away, scratching his neck.

"Talk." The adult prince picked up the applesauce, flicking his scarf back.

Kurama squinted at the rubber tipped spoon. "I have a proposal for a team."

"You have a team."

Kurama's lips trembled into a smile. "You're joking?"

"Did we have a deal that you would do what you liked, or you would do what I say?" Koenma's tongue curled around the spoon.

Kurama said slowly, "I won't work with the SDF – ever again."

"You accused them. With little to no proof. All of them were interviewed again; none recalled a thing. You have a reputation of being a criminal, a con, and a liar; you've only proven it again by standing before me. You aren't exactly a stable witness."

Kurama stared at him. Without warning, the spiderweb of cracks with him jerked wider. His eyes welled and blinking set a tear over his right eyelid. Kurama brought his hand up, sniffing suddenly, trying to hide it, trying to make it look like a sneeze or anger or headache.

"Are you an idiot?" He growled, quietly.

"Excuse me?"

"Do you mean to tell me you looked into their eyes and you didn't see joy?"

"Kurama. I know – " The prince stopped, then opened a hand. "There's a hazard to running a military – "

Kurama whispered, "Over my lifetime as a fox, I led hundreds of killers. It is easy to set discipline. A real leader sets limits."

"And I have to pick which are most important. I can't just – snap, every time someone gets out of hand. Soldiers are rowdy." He bent over, trying to see into Kurama's ducked face. "They're not as weak as thieves. Sometimes, where there is already a personal conflict, tempers – "

"Shun-jun is more fit to rule than you. As conscienceless rapist, he controls his team better than you manage the spirit kingdom's mandate of fair judgment."

Koenma rolled his eyes. "You have no reference for the scale of this enterprise, fox. Not even your little band."

"You can't control five people. You think their behavior was an aberration. I bet you my life they're doing the same thing, this exact instant!"

"Is it really fair to bet me my own property?"

Kurama trembled. "You should treat your things with more care. Who did you send out with Shun-jun now? Who did you decide to gamble with?"

"They are professionals. I don't believe you understand…" He paused, lifting the report, then placed it back. "I don't think – I think this was, if it occurred, and despite the severity, an isolated incident due to your history with the SDF and the captain's obsession with you. Now that it's worked out – "

"Worked out. The man is a psychopath, a practiced rapist – the only difference between him and a serial killer is that he's collecting a salary for his indulgence. I guarantee if you looked at him this instant you would have your proof."

"Kurama. Thank you for your report. That's the end of this."

Kurama opened his mouth, trying to force the words. "Shun-jun does not believe that what he's doing is wrong. His team admitted to using rape and torture and murder routinely. And you forget I've seen them do it. I witnessed the rape, and torture, and murder of my friends when we were captured. They raped me as a game. To pass time. It was fun for them. It's the way they act on every mission you assign. They were organized. They were comfortable."

"I doubt it."

"You don't. You just want to check after I'm not here. Because you don't want to admit how wrong you are."

The brat prince raised his eyebrows. He unwound his crossed arms. "Ogre!"

One of the nameless ogres trotted out, saluting. "One more minute, prince – it's grilled, but the crusts are still on."

"Never mind the sandwich. Get the projectors on."

There was a sound like an old cathode television blinking on, a hail of such sounds. A dozen screens of light flickered into place, screens hanging around the air. They shone blue, then flickered one by one to static.

Koenma sulked, drumming his fingers on his arm and glaring at Kurama. He leaned forward.

"Let's show Kurama his career highlights," he said, as the televisions blinked into the testing pattern, great blocks of fuschia and green. "Records from Shun-jun's investigations."

There were screams of slaughter. On one screen, Kurama saw a pillar holding up a stone ceiling over a mass of demons. He could hear Yoko's voice calling out. In two snaps the vine whip sliced through the stone; a screech as it cut, the thorns dulled from battle. The pillar toppled.

Yoko and the other figures in white disappeared like ghosts into the entrance. The crowd poured up after them as the ceiling ruptured. Huge chunks of stone the size of houses and cars fell, before whatever the camera was mounted to collapse with it.

"You like that one. Rewind, ogre." Koenma examined the screen. He tapped on the crowd. "House camera is kind of fuzzy there. Not ours, or we'd have a nice zoom. But I do believe that that is a child."

Kurama's heart was racing. He breathed. "Yes. It is."

"This is the mass of your enemies' children?"

"Yes."

"All the children of the city hid here. For protection."

He walked close to Kurama, admiring the screens like an art museum.

"If I could kill that part of me and live, I would do it."

"What do you really think you deserve, Kurama?"

Kurama glanced over the rest of the screens. They were playing memories of the dead as Kurama came at their throats; they played security footage from the great houses he'd pillaged, where things had gone wrong and the families or guards had found them. A few, even Yoko's skin crawled to remember – torturing, humiliating, and executing prisoners from a rival gang. It was pointless cruelty, for show, out of joy of victory and anger at pain and confidence at losing.

Kurama's lips twitched. He could not form a smile - he shouldn't, but it was funny. Then, Yoko thought he was immortal, that he would never lose, that he would never be so weak or slow or stupid as to be caught as his victims were. Yoko had empathy. But more than that, he wanted to send a message. He wanted to win a fight – end conflict by decimating the enemy beyond recovery, beyond hope.

Kurama looked at the tapes.

There was a long silence until Koenma shoved him slightly. "Explain."

"Why? There are no words that can make this right. Except that we were hungry, and our culture is more cruel than yours by a thousand fold."

"The SDF largely operates in your world. So why complain over a little vented frustration?"

Kurama drew breath to shout and began to, but Koenma put up his hands.

"So much noise. Tell you what. If you confront the accusations and punishments of the souls you've put here, I will let you confront the SDF."

Kurama's eyes searched his face. "I signed a release over these very crimes. I was to be forgiven and work indefinitely under any conditions for indenture, and I will. But you guaranteed me against acts of vengeance."

Koenma pushed his lips together, cocking his head. "Well. What can I do?"

Kurama's eyes flared. He snarled, "At least I am penitent! I was serving time in peace, repentant, even before I was caught. I would make myself innocent if I could; I see these crimes and am sick to remember them. But I lead another life now, while Shun-jun is moving onto his next victim."

"In two centuries perhaps he'll have half the career you had. Maybe he'll run off and jump into some human child's soul and you can chase him. Call it even."

Kurama flushed, but did not rise to that. He put his finger on the desk. "I caused pain. I was not aroused by it. I surrendered, confessed, and was judged. I am making reparation. While you drag me through this shame, the worst moments of my life, Shun-jun and his team are out in the field raping the citizens you claim interest in extending protection to."

"So you want an apology?"

Kurama shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. "No. It would be a joke to him and then he would find me and make me regret it. He understands compassion and chooses to exploit it – he is a sadist making a fool out of you and every policy you pretend to enforce – and he has no intention to stop. Ever."

Koenma yawned, stretching. "Look. He hates foxes. As cops hate criminals. Whatever he did to you, Shun-jun is a captain with a career polished enough to see your reflection in. He has a string of successes. He hardly ever loses a fighter."

"What about contractors?"

"You're expendable," Koenma said, but he bit at the end, looking down. "I'm joking. That was – I didn't mean it seriously. It's just…this is such a bad situation."

Kurama stared. "If you inspected his life like you have inspected mine, you would find far worse that what I've done. I am not the only one to suffer this; I'm just the only one powerful enough to make it to your ear."

"Are you comparing? Really, this is how you want to go?"

Kurama stopped. His lip hung. "If we did…if there was a way…to compare, yes, I think you would find his real nature."

Koenma took a breath, but looked up. "He would have to die to be judged. Until then, I can't. He's too valuable."

"Would the tape be found?" Kurama asked. "I can wait, if there's hope there would eventually be justice."

"Oh no, Kurama. No. Kurama, I would have done that immediately if I could. If there was a tape – that would be that. We can't tape in early development communities, where there's no conceptualization of recording images. We have to get a telepath to send out her soul and it’s a whole complicated process, very time intensive, few people to do it. We use that for discreet surveillance, not monitoring our own people. At death, we can take the memory directly from the soul and judge that. But you have to wait until death." Koenma brushed the air with his hand. "There's spots of the human world it's not even logistically sensible to track. It's a mind game. The framework reflects the population we serve. Because there world is urbanized, we are bureaucratic; because we rule the dark side of all people, we have torture; because we rule the bright hearts left, we have justice, mercy, and heaven."

"What is there for me?"

His lips curled slightly. "Better locks."

"Be serious. You aren't taping Shun-jun right now? He could be committing an identical crime. Ogre, show him."

The ogre looked to the Prince.

"So it can be done?"

"Kurama…"

"I can free up the soul camera on the Hounti people," the ogre piped, his tusks coming over his lip in a grin. "That's nearly the same place."

The prince's eyes darted to Kurama, evaluating the impact of the indiscretion.

Kurama glared, misdirecting. "You sent him to the Hounti? Another innocent people. You want this man to be their first contact, your ambassador?"

"What you're saying is…baseless, Kurama. I need evidence. You don't have any."

"Maybe I am too stained to accuse him, and maybe I can't claim I suffered anything but what you clearly believed I deserved –- "

The prince tossed his head like a teenager, groaning, and kicked around the floor.

"But I am the only one who lived to talk to you. Of all the people he hurt, I am here with you. None of those he hurt lived to receive justice – or even have their souls gathered. So I am accusing him. Whoever he's with now may not be so lucky as to survive, to escape as I did."

The prince lifted a hand. "Show him. Take the Hounti camera. Straight down, no horizon, keep the zoom close."

There was a blur of brown vegetation and the screen shot toward trampled ground. Wherever Shun-Jun was, near the Hounti, it was day. The land was plains in dry season. The ground was trampled and scratched by herd beasts, birds the size of horses with dozens of clawed toes leaving makes like potters' combs.

Shun-jun's team were stripped down in the heat. Their skin gleamed. They passed two jugs around. As Kurama watched, Shun-jun spoke, grinning brightly. Wolf, Cerene, and Shun-jun cracking up and falling against each other, doubled up with inaudible laughter. From the angle, he could see Zel's smile. She was solid as stone. Harker, who looked as though he did not understand the joke, settled just on drinking.

Kurama saw her and tasted her, felt her thigh, and he was there, broken under Harker. He wrapped his arms around himself, his heart pounding.

"Kurama?"

"They're drinking," Kurama said.

"Seem to be. That's against policy. I'd have to have proof it's alcohol," he mused.

"Look for bodies."

"That's ridiculous --"

"This game you're playing is ridiculous."

"I'm not playing -– pull back, ogre."

The camera expanded out. Kurama saw a tree like a short baobab, wind twisted and solid.

The prince threw up his hands. "No bodies. No pools of blood. No fresh graves. Just dirt."

Kurama sighed. "You're right."

"Hm?"

"You're right, prince. I own my life twice over then."

Shun-jun, a thousand miles away, wrapped his arms around his troups and leaned over, kissing Wolf's head and Cerene's in turn.

Kurama turned. "I have to go. I can't – "

"Turn it off, ogre." The prince touched Kurama's arm. Kurama looked at him for a moment. He started to kneel, but Koenma stopped him sharply. Through grit teeth, he said, "You are my employee, and I have no way – I cannot punish them. I can't. For many reasons, half of which you can guess. Mostly the same reasons you were hired. But I've done wrong by you and I will be very careful in the future."

"Don't put me with them," Kurama tried to kneel again to beg. "Please. Put me with Hiei or Urameshi, we would work well together."

"You'd work with a human so weak?"

"Of course. I owe him my life. And I can control Hiei, I can. I would do whatever you ask, if it kills me."

"I'll think about it…"

"Please, prince. Don’t send me back to them."

The prince leaned down. "I can try, but we need your skills. And they are the only ones who can complete these missions."

Kurama tried to bow. "Please. I can. I can do it with Hiei and Urameshi, without them. Send us anywhere. I promise we'll be successful."

The prince wrapped his arms around the fox, enveloping him in heavy folds of silk. He squeezed tightly.

Kurama choked and began to cry. He clutched at Koenma's robes. His face was screwed up and blind with weeping. He grit his teeth and shook with sobs, trying to silence himself, then letting go.

After several minutes, he pulled back. He looked at the floor, ashamed to have claimed that moment. But Kurama felt a tawdry sort of peace, a child's shameless comfort.

"I'll think about it, okay?" The prince wiped a hand over Kurama face carefully, not touching him. The effects of the sorrow, the congestion and stinging, vanished. The faintest trace of divine power calmed his skin. "There now. Quite the professional."

Kurama stared. That was one of the kindest things anyone had done for him, since his mother had grown too ill to embrace him. Koenma suddenly seemed fallible, very good, and very much growing into an impossible role with as much humility as he could.

Kurama cleared his throat. "I understand. You can't punish your best fighters. I would do it differently, but I understand your kingdom depends more on stability than…I cannot call for justice, having the history I do. Thank you for your compassion and mercy. It's generous. I promise you, the team I suggested will be competitive. We would be a good investment."

The prince chuckled. "Right."

"Please consider it. In the meantime, I will wait for your instruction."

"Go back to school, Minamino. Rest. Take care of yourself. I don't have anything pressing."

Kurama thanked him again and moved to go. He paused as he left and tapped his finger on the doorframe, leaning back. "Will you do me a favor, prince?"

"Nothing about Shun-jun."

"No. It's a small favor, sire. Pass a few words to Hiei?"

"That tiny freak. What?"

"Just tell him soon he won't be bored."

*

The fire demon stared at him like a mad child, with eyes the size of dinner plates, cut with a cat's pupils.

Koenma curled his lip. "That's all he said. You won't be bored. So you'll take the assignment?"

The corners of Hiei's mouth turned up as he continued to stare. A third eye snapped open – the implanted Jagan. Koenma flinched back into his desk. He straightened as Hiei stood, unmoving – smiling – insane – three eyes wide open. The demon looked like he was under a bell jar vacuumed of air, his face expanding with excitement like he was a balloon stretching to explosion.

Hiei grinned suddenly, a grin inches tall. He flickered. And he was gone.

Prince Koenma shook his head, exhaling in disgust. He slapped his robes flat and sat down on the desk, shrinking. "Ogre! I need a drink."

His employee came out of the stacks, the sippy cup balanced on his tray.

*

Kurama braided his hair back. A vine grew gently around the end. He turned to his desk as there was a knock at the window. "Come in."

Hiei slipped inside and was beside him, looking at all the small pots and packets before him. "Watering the arsenal."

Kurama lifted several large seeds. He hid them with a sleight of hand and smiled.

"That doesn't fool me, fox."

"You're a tough audience. I have an easier one in mind. I need to borrow your sight to get to the proper theatre."

Kurama led him out the window; they dropped into the garden behind the house. There, a small decorative pool was set in ground. "Do you know the Hounti people? They live in a Pangea-like plains dimension. Very hot."

Duckweed bloomed on the pond as Kurama spoke. Hiei watched the small leaves form an island that nearly filled the water's surface, forming a map.

"They have population centers here." Clumps of duckweed shriveled and sunk, leaving dark patches of still water. "And outside there is a church settlement. The practioners there are in contact with other dimensions. That's the one gate in and out. But they are not allies of the Spirit World."

"We have that in common."

"Be aware in the human plane every moment is taped. Mine, anyway; I don't suppose they can keep up with you.."

"I don't care what they know."

"The tapes aren't reviewed until trial. Anyway, I would like to contact these practitioners across dimensions and warn them. Shun-jun's team is in this region. More specifically they are near the farms where they breed riding animals, large birds." Vines stretched out from the rocks of the pond, sunk, and came up to criss cross a small part of the duckweed map. "I want you to look for intersections in trails, where there is a unique tree some five meters from the path."

"A tree. You want me to look for crossed dirt paths and a tree."

"It's a desert, if that helps. There won't be many trees."

Hiei was staring at him with his brow drawn. But he shrugged and let the Jagan see. "I've had worse directions."

*
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Paperwork	By : Artemick Category: Yuyu Hakusho > General Views: 1696 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho and earn no money writing about it.

Paperwork