Adult-FanFiction.org : YuYu Hakusho

Stepfather
By : Artemick
Category: Yuyu Hakusho > Yaoi - Male/Male
Views: 7320 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I make no money. I own no YYH.
Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
What had seemed perfect and natural late at night because embarrassing in the morning. We were both preparing to see the rest of the group. We were tired. We felt stupid, now that the feeling was gone. The nighttime privacy that had let it happen was gone, even inside our minds.
I didn’t expect to feel such a rush of distaste. It was human, culturally – regret. I remembered Keiko wrapping her arms around my neck the other day, in pity and friendship. She had so much energy to listen and heal, even when she didn’t understand. She was like him, an enthusiastic idiot. I spoke, “Yuusuke?”
The young man froze, then continued tying his sneakers. “What?”
“I’m sorry about last night. You should stay with Keiko. Get an apartment with her. She's great.”
Yuusuke stood, wiping his palms. “Yeah. No, it was all me, man. My mistake.”
He sounded relieved.
I nodded. He came over and took my hand. “It was alright though.”
I grinned. “We were great.”
“Just not – “
“Yeah.”
I exhaled when he nodded. Yuusuke said, “It was fun, though, right?”
“Completely.” I felt like a freed slave at his easy acceptance; he must have also been the same. Still, I felt like I was losing the pearl of great price in the Christian story. I was leaving something valuable buried behind me.

Hiei’s eyes went wide. He could smell it on me. He began to laugh, then to point.
"Shut up." I hissed.
Hiei wrapped his hands around his middle for a moment.
I cleared my throat.
Hiei crouched down, shaking.
“Jackass,” I muttered, nudging Hiei with my foot.
“Hey,” Kuwabara squinted. “What’s going on? What’s so funny?”
"Your face. It's on backwards again. Swapped it with your ass." Yuusuke shoved his hands into his pockets, scowling like a delinquent. “Can we just get going? Ignore him.”
"Gladly." Kuwabara followed him onto the train.

We met the three humans at the train station, the best of Genkai’s thirty, all gifted psychics.
I went immediately to Kaito Yuu. The tension I played up with him was largely in fun; Kaito would never beat me. But I respected him. He was an academic and scholar with his whole heart, and had risked destroying himself for the sake of success when he expelled his own soul to test his power of taboo. I respected that intensity.
“Good morning, Kaito.” I smiled.
He looked uncomfortable. “What should I call you?”
“We go by our names here. So call me Kurama.”
Yuusuke barked then, startling us to attention. “Right! So we have questions to get answers for. How many fighters are in their group? Who is their leader, and what is the nature of their true powers?”
“Is he reading that off his arm?” Kaito asked, staring.
I shrugged. “You see what our purpose in the group is.”
“Quite. That’s funny,” Kaito said, unguarded. “I was afraid to see who you kept company with, but they’re nothing like you.”
“There’s…a balance?”
“Really. What does he do for you?”
I bit my lip, remembering the night before. “Nothing. I mean, he has…admirable qualities. Strength, for one. Impulsiveness. He’s unpredictable; that’s been useful.”
Kaito sighed. “Unpredictable? So we’re babysitting.”
Hiei looked up. He stepped over to Kaito, ready to join our group, which was as close to forgiveness as Kaito was ever going to get from him.
Genkai took Hiei away, however, when we split into two teams. She gave me Kaito, Kuwabara, and Botan, leaving Yuusuke the rest.
Alone, my team took the red line train out to the industrial storage facility where the distortion field was located. Botan went to get tickets with company money. Kuwabara followed her skirt with a mess of blind hope on his face.
Alone, Kaito and I sat down at a nearby table.
A server came out and offered us laminated menus shaped like daisies. “It’s Wired Wednesday, so the wireless is half priced with an espresso, and we’ll give you an extra shot – “
I opened my hands. “No money, sorry.”
She shuffled and bowed. “I’m really sorry, but you can’t sit here if – “
“Coffee, black, two sugars,” Kaito said, handing the menu back. “He’ll have green tea, not very hot. I always wondered about that, you know. Is it a chemical thing?”
“I don’t like to hurt the leaves.”
The server took my menu, grinning in a moe way.
“Why treat me?”
“I don’t want to stand.” He grew quiet. “That…makes sense. For a scientist and a thing of myth. You’re a stroke of poetry.”
I thought of the poems dedicated to foxes in general and laced my fingers together on the table. “Do you like old stories?”
“Honestly, I didn’t think there was anything to them. Fables, moral metaphors for modesty, temptation, and respect.”
“All life needs that.”
“You know, I like how you talked in class. Never to the point, but always zen. Perfectly arranged speech."
I looked at him.
He apologized. “That was forward.”
We watched the cars flash by. There was no sign of Botan in the crowd.
“I’m sorry about not stepping in now.”
“Excuse me?”
“In the locker rooms. I thought – I thought you deserved it.”
I felt a sudden fierce blush, remembering the awkward hazing and curious bullying that inundated the gym events I attended. I was different. Gaijin and halfs were inhuman, and even if I wasn’t the former, I was clearly the latter. They knew it and awkward encounters in those corners teachers couldn’t watch were typical.
“It’s alright,” I said. “That was nothing compared to the Makai. I wasn't even bruised. I know the difference between children playing cruelly and killers with intent to murder. Those humans were puppies. I’d never hurt them.”
"That's too bad," Kaito said.
I frowned. The coffee and tea arrived.
I sipped, enfusing the leaves with ki.
“I…um,” Kaito laughed, pushing his glasses up. He held his hand out, shrugging. “I can’t think of anything that would interest you.”
I smiled, swirling the cup. “Tell me about your family?”
“Oh, sure. I have four sisters - I'm the middle child. Single mom.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I know. The funeral. I was there.”
“Oh. I – I don’t remember.”
“Of course not! You shouldn’t. God. You had other things to worry about.” He scoffed, touching his hair. "Hey look, I just wanted to say I'm glad to work with you. That's all. I'm honored. You can count on me."
"I know I can." I smiled, just as the others returned. We left our cups on the table.

“I don’t see any psychic, unless he looks like grass,” Kuwabara announced.
Kaito groaned. I tried to model good behavior to him, translating the solution for the less sharp members of the group. “The distortion zone takes the form of a circle; the psychic has to be here.”
“Just not on the surface,” Kaito finished, demurely.
“Underground?” Botan inferred.
"Exactly." I felt a burning on the back of my neck.
Whipping around, I ran towards a flicker of shadow behind a near shed. But no one was around when I got there.
“Was someone watching us?”
I felt a jolt of panic. Our group was poorly assembled to handle a confrontation – an untrained reaper, a spirit blind moron, and two scholars with human bodies. Hiei at least would have been able to both see the attacker before hand and catch him.
“Let’s get back to the others,” I said.
My cell phone rang.
I ignored it.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Kaito asked.
I checked. Itou. Exhaling, I opened the phone, my voice dropping low with embarrassment and fury. “Hello?”
“Knocking on heaven’s door, Shu-chan?”
He knew our location.
“Just taking a leisurely stroll, Itou-san.” I said. “Are you alone?”
“When I talk to you, I like privacy,” he grunted.
I muted the phone and whispered, “Split up and listen for a stranger on a cell phone. Don’t get near him. It’s Takasune. He’s close.”
“Who?” Kaito asked.
“A psychic, with the power of fear. Don’t get close. I don’t want to engage him in any way. We need to know which way to retreat and if we’re in range.”
Kuwabara and Botan nodded. They edged towards the three nearest buildings.
Itou was calling my name. I un-muted the phone.
“Where have you been living?” I teased. “Underground, like a potato? Eyes everywhere?”
“I got a room to myself.”
Rooms, I noted, looking at one of the bigger storage buildings. There were windows; perhaps they’d rented out a set of offices. I whistled to Kuwabara and pointed up to the second floors where the windows were.
I had to keep him talking. “So, do I get to visit your room?”
He chuckled. “Someday.”
My stomach churned. I watched Botan reach the nearest building and circle it. Nothing.
“You get to see your friends die.”
“I don’t think so.” I directed her to go towards Kuwabara as I went toward Kaito, to double us up. But Kuwabara waved her away, entering the ground floor of the second closest warehouse, leaving her outside.
“Why not?”
“You know why.” I was speaking nonsense, trying to make him talk.
“Oh! Do you have a plan? I love your plans. I’ve enjoyed your plans down to my shaking bone.”
Fuck you, I thought. No. Too strong. “I don’t suppose you’d like to guess what I’m wearing?”
He chuckled, his voice very low.
“You’re here, aren’t you,” I sighed, turning in a full circle, still blind.
Itou hung up.

I jogged out to Kaito and Botan.
“Kaito, extend your territory. Do it now,” I ordered. “Keep Botan inside. The new taboo should be that no psychic can come inside the boundary.”
“That’s not how it works, Minamino. It’s based on words.”
This close to Itou, hearing my family name spoken chilled me. “Try. How about – anyone who says some innuendo for lust loses their soul? Botan – don’t talk.”
“I wouldn’t - !”
“Just…shh. Please.”
“I’ll set it up,” Kaito smiled. “That’s a good rule. Complex. The stronger the rule, the better the territory. And I’m quite well mannered.” He offered his elbow to the genki reaper, like a gentleman.

With them secure, I ran toward Kuwabara’s warehouse. I drew the rose from my hair and shook it out into a long, trailing whip.
I touched the door with my hand. It was propped open. Bad sign.
Inside was dark. I adjusted in a moment, hiding inside the door. The place was stripped of mechanics, even pipe and wire, though a few settings remained.
I could hear Kuwabara talking above me. His voice was bouncing over the walls, through the outside windows and inside the vents. I couldn’t make up the words, but it quickly rose to shouting.
I crouched down on the dirty cement floor. This was a bad place to meet Itou. He had the advantage of familiarity. I might be walking into a workshop of murder tools and chainsaws, or more likely the same trap that had been set on my home, along with a dozen magnifying enchantments that would make it inescapable.
I cursed Genkai, then myself. She’d probably meant to split me from Hiei and Hiei from Kuwabara, for the sake of peace and breaking that unmanageable power base. She liked us, but didn't trust us; she was being a practical general. But the result was that the most effective fighters were together, and my group was defenseless.
It made sense if we doing simple recon, without this complication. But the two communication units, my cell phone and Botan’s mirror, were also clumped with them, so my team couldn’t reach Genkai's for help.
I dialed Botan. “Itou’s upstairs with Kuwabara.”
She whimpered, “No…”
“Find Genkai’s group immediately. Tell them what happened – that we found the right location, but also one of the psychics. I’m going to wait as long as I can, but I’m going to have to move on him before you get back."
“Don’t! I mean – “
I stared up at the cracks in the ceiling. Sunlight was dripping down. "Just go."
I turned my phone off.

Kuwabara was screaming, raging. The noise shook showers of white dust motes down, sparkling through the bars of leaked light.
I lifted my hands, baring my wrists to air, and released the smokescreen.
The smokescreen forms by the gradual disintegration of organic material into phosphorous. It ignites when it hits the air, forming thick, awful smoke. I like kudzu for the smokescreen; its base material grows extremely rapidly, the closest to a Makai plant in this realm. I keep my hands aside because, at its production, the phosphorous allotrope could drop gobs on melted skin onto the floor if it touched me. The trick is to keep the moisture over it, keep it inactive until the last second.
I trickled energy through my arms, building the attack. Smoke filled the bottom floor, billowing out from my hands.
The day’s heat drafted the smoke up into the top floor. It lifted through the stairs and the openings that once served for conveyor belts.
I reached out with my ki, looking for the edge of the psychic’s power, any distinction that would indicate the territory's limit. When I couldn’t feel or see it, I threw out a hand full of kulanni spores. They eat energy; it makes them good indicators. When they hit the edge of the psychic’s ki charged territory, they devoured it and exploded in great puffs, fat on energy and ready to fruit.
I backed away, having made my preparations and aware of Itou’s. Inside that boundary were all the nightmares of the last week, the doll box, waiting fresh for my return. Probably next to some new terrors I'd developed. I needed to get Itou out of the building, away from my teammate. My greatest fear at that moment was that if I went up into his territory, I would kill Kuwabara by accident. That couldn’t happen. I had to separate us and stay outside the limit of the territory.
I ran to the edge of the territory, not a half dozen steps from where I stood.
“Itou!” I shouted. “I’m here.”
There was a silence upstairs. A large body hit the floor.
I backed up, hoping for Shizuru’s sake that Itou was as innocent to blood as I suspected and that he wouldn’t kill Kuwabara for fun or convenience.
“Itou!” I screamed again. I was surprised at the rough timbre in my voice - so that was human hatred? “I hear you up there!”
There was a scuff of tennis shoes and a low laugh. “Shu-chan.”
I stretched the vine out and lunged forward, whipping it in a huge arc, my body snapping like a tennis pro might swing a racket. The vine whip struck the ceiling, under the sound of Itou’s voice, tearing out a line like a waterjet carving through steel.
I spread my feet, setting them wide, and yanked my arm up, with the whip. The second stroke ripped at an angle from the first. Then I twisted, dragging downward as if I were swinging a saber. The whip bit in a third and final time.
Three hits. I had cut a large triangle into the ceiling.
There was a creak. A massive chunk of concrete and ribar slipped down, stone grinding stone. I struck again and it fell in distorted blocks to the ground, knocking back clouds of smoke.
The drop was too slow. There was enough warning for the human boy to catch his balance and leap off the collapsing floor.
I could see his foot disappearing. I bared my teeth, vicious, and flicked my wrist up.
The vine whip corkscrewed out, wrapping Itou’s boot. I dropped my wrist. The thorns dragged off, biting through the leather and down through the flesh.
I smelled the blood showering back on me as I coiled the whip. Itou was crying out. His shoe fell to the ground as he dragged himself out of sight.
I crouched looking up through the gap, inhaling heartily. No doubt my eyes were slit like a predator’s at that scent. Blood again. Sweet, metallic raw blood in the air. That is what I wanted, what I most missed about the hunt.
Itou stared down. He saw only the white smokescreen; I was hidden.
“Minamino?”
“Partly,” I called.
He scrambled up. I splayed my knees, ducking low so that I could see his face, his fear, his pain.
“Itou-san,” I called out. I lifted two fingers, and with them, brought up a shower of cherry petals, each sharp as ice, hanging about me like dull fireflies. I crooned, “You’re cute, Itou, to think I can’t reach you there.”
I pointed my fingers up.
On the blind instinct that causes one to duck under the nearest eaves at the clatter of hail, the rapist dove the instant he heard petals ping off the bottom of the floor on their way up. He dodged. The petals flew up through the gap I’d cut and past him like darts, burying into the wall with puffs of grit.
My lip curled in annoyance. There was not a clear wind path that I could use to hit him while he was out of sight.
“Stop it! I’ll kill him!” I heard Itou shout.
“Kill who?” I lied. “You’re trapped.”
“I have your school pal. Likes kittens.”
That threw me for a moment. But I shouted, “So kill him.”
He laughed. “Not buying it, but you’re welcome to come right up and test me. Please do – it’s an invitation. X-O-X-O. Signed with hearts.”
“You can’t kill him,” I bluffed again. “Your boss needs him.”
“For what?”
He sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Don’t you know who he is?” I taunted. “Are you ready to lose that sort of asset?” For psychics to not need an energy powerhouse like Kuwabara was like an American saying they didn’t need a dozen terawatts of hydropower. It was an oversight if their leader hadn’t noticed his strengths.
“You gonna tell me? I got a knife to his throat,” the rapist crowed. “And you’re obviously too chicken shit to come up here and stop me. What, you afraid of your own happiness, dear? That he’ll see? Or that I’ll use the blade on your sweet hide?”
I sneered, “Is it retractable -- one of your home movie props, you stupid child?”
He muttered, an order, You are afraid.
“Won’t work,” I yelled. “I’m beyond your limit – in so many ways, human.”
“You sure, Shuichi? You must have missed me if you volunteered to come here. You want to be tied down again?”
I shuddered, remembering my image training.
I began to walk backwards, tossing ivy seeds toward the load bearing walls. When he fell, I didn’t want to risk being inside the diameter of his territory.
I lifted my hand, running energy to the central column in the room. I’d seen Kuwabara buried in stone before; I could count on his fortitude.
The ivy burst into life, leaves stretching the size of a man’s back, tendrils driving into the concrete.
“Shuichi?”
“Fall,” I said.
The column shook; the ivy ripped it apart and shattered chunks to the ground.
Itou screamed; the floor under his feet was tilting.
I backed off, into the sunlight outside. “Come down and we’ll talk like grownups.”
“I’ll kill him!”
“So kill him,” I said. “We’re not close.”
“You – came all the way over to save him when you could have run!”
I called back, “No, I came for you. I came here for your neck, Itou!”
I closed my fist, and the west and south wall collapsed.
- 8
- 9
- 10
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

Stepfather	By : Artemick Category: Yuyu Hakusho > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 7320 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I make no money. I own no YYH.

Stepfather