Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ THE WOLVES OF MUSHIYORI CITY ❯ Walking On Good Intentions ( Chapter 8 )

CHAPTER 8: WALKING ON GOOD INTENTIONS

 

 

 

 

"Did you know that you have some sort of imp underneath your foot, Kiyoshi?" Kaito asked Mitarai who looked off into the distance as he ground the small demon into the concrete with his foot.

Mitarai handed Kaito the note he had received from the imp.

 

"Do you suppose they tortured him?" Kaito asked knowing full well how stupid his question was. He sat down on the curb next to the spirit detective and the small groaning demon under his left foot. "Have you told Kuwabara?"

"He's getting the others. We still have a good half hour to meet at Irima Cave. For once I'm not going to be late. You'll drive me?"

"Yes."

 

On the drive to the rendezvous with the others Kaito made a point not to make conversation or play the radio no matter how desperately he wanted to fill the void of silence. The irony of being unable to speak of certain things while with Mitarai didn't escape him considering his power.

"Why don't you put on one of your albums?" Mitarai finally asked after ten minutes of silence.

"If I did then for the rest of my life I'd associate Parliament Funkadelic with this day. If I did I wouldn't be able to listen to funk music again without projectile vomitting."

 

Yu Kaito turned his radio on to a talk radio station which nauseated him anyway just to distract himself and Mitarai until they pulled up to Irima Cave where Kuwabara and the others save for Asato were gathered around Amanuma's dented gray Civic.

"Suppose he's dead," Amanuma said . "Will it have sunk in that this was stupid?"

Mitarai noticed that Amanuma and Asato were clumped together while the others were leaning against the far side of the car indicating one group that hated him and another that hated him more.

 

Mitarai put his backpack on the ground and took out one of his black balloons filled with blood, water and lye and tossed it into the air and formed it into an acidic monster the size of a baseball. Instead of the normal sphere it became a jagged toothed, tentacled representation of his mood.

He spent the next thirteen minutes in a slight trance until Yana walked into his field of vision trailed by a man in his thirties with long, wavy gray hair wearing a kind of demon scale armor over a torn t-shirt. and ragged jeans.

 

"Hello, dead man," Mitarai said as his water and lye creature bobbed up and down.

Shinji squinted his eyes and pointed to Kuwabara. "You're the guy, right? Spirit Detective or whatever?"

Kuwabara pointed to an increasingly angry Mitarai.

"Oh, you have got to be shittin' me!" Shinji rolled his eyes and sighed. "Fine. Whatever." He pushed Yana in Mitarai's direction. "I was told to give you and your people a message from my people. Once the barrier is down you can consider everyone in this city on the menu. They decided to allow two of you to become personal property of each of my bosses to avoid getting eaten. They thought they'd give you some time to decide."

 

"Can you deliver a message?" Mitarai asked in an even tone that surprised the people around him.

"Sure. What you got in mind?"

Mitarai pulled two water guns from the waistband of his jeans and pointed them at Shinji then fired two pointed streams of water at Shinji who waved them away only to have them rebound and attack him again.

He fired again and again until it seemed as if Shinji were being attacked by twelve floating icesickles then ordered his lye monster to attack which unlike his other attacks was not easily fended off.

 

Shinji rubbed at the chemical burn on his shoulder from the monster's attack.

"So, you want to play it that way. You people would live a lot longer if you took the easy way out." He shot a concerned look over to Kuwabara who he saw as the most powerful but who didn't budge from sitting on the hood of Kaito's car.

While Shinji was distracted focusing on Kuwabara, Mitarai pierced his left calf with another shot from his water gun.

 

The wound from the shot closed and healed in the time Shinji took to rise to his feet after being knocked down. He opened his closed fist and extended his arm while pointing his open hand at Mitarai. Then before Mitarai could react Shinji covered the fifteen foot distance between them and buried his rock hard and suddenly sharp hand into Mitarai's stomach.

With a series of blindingly quick swipes of his right hand he severed the major tendons in Mitarai's arms and legs.

"You'd be surprised how much you learn about how humans are put together in the makai, man." For good measure he placed his foot on Mitarai's right knee cap and fractured it with a mimimum amount of pressure.

 

Kuwabara clenched his fists until blood dripped down his fingers. "Hannah..."

She looked to Kuwabara and nodded as a silent contract was struck. He tilted his head down as she passed to aid Mitarai.

"If he hurts you too bad, I'll kill him."

"That's sweet, Kazuma. But remember that I do my best fighting when I'm on the ropes."

 

Hannah raised her hand in a gesture reassuring non-interference from the others although she knew if she couldn't win against him they certainly couldn't.

She swaggered up to Mitarai who was doing his best to hold his stomach together despite limited use of his arms then smiled at Shinji.

"By the looks of things you're kinda fast, strong and tough-skinned enough to use your hand as a knife. You must not have that much spirit awareness though, because if you did you'd have run back to the makai by now." She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and created a nodachi in her right hand.

 

After Shinji had lazily dodged her first swing and plucked her glasses from her face Hannah dropped the heavy and cumbersome nodachi and instead formed a wakizashi for each of her hands lacking the destructive power of her discarded nodachi but much lighter and easier to wield.

On Shinji's second pass she only managed to knick his side which healed before it could even bleed. As further evidence she wasn't being taken seriously Shinji had replaced her glasses.

 

Without her noticing Shinji reappeared ten feet in front of her holding the nodachi she was forced to discard and with one hand effortlessly checked the large sword's balance by flicking his wrist.

"I've had a pretty shit day thanks to your friend there," Shinji said pointing to Yana with the nodachi. "Now's not the time to be leaving big swords lying around me." He charged at Hannah again who could only back up as he swung and had to sacrifice a large gash in her stomach in lieu of being cut completely in half.

Although she intened on ramming one of her swords just behind his clavicle once she sprang forward the wakizashi ended up breaking on the psychic's hard skin.

Once again Shinji shrugged off her attack and countered by poking a hole in her right shoulder with his index finger then backed up to wait for another attack.

 

With her left hand she covered her stomach wound and prayed that she wouldn't pass out before making one last gambit. Kuwabara psychicly piped his voiced into her head and gave her the codeword that would release her spirit cuffs and give her total access to her building spirit powers. Although she intended on wearing her psychic weights until the final battle the situation dictated otherwise.

Hannah could do nothing but smile as she choked out Kuwabara's chosen phrase to disperse the spirit cuffs constricting her spirit energy.

"My girl likes to party all the time."

Though she felt silly stating the name of an old one hit wonder she considered it worth it to be able to spread her arms and legs without continuous effort of her spirit energy. Despite the horribly bleeding gash in her stomach and wounded shoulder she felt immensely powerful.

"Okay....I'm done playing now."

 

"Babe, even with your power boost you're still wounded....and besides, a C-Class fighter like you is no big shakes as far as I'm concerned. We may both be in the area of C-Class but you're still totally out of your league. This fight is stupid. I delivered your spy and my message so now I'm going."

With renewed strength and speed Hannah formed another short sword and charged at Shinji who caught both the wakizashi's she wielded simultanously by their blades and snapped them in two at the bases of the blades.

When she saw his hands were full her own hands darted out to touch Shinji's head and focused on his spirit energy as she focused on her own when she created matter from her own ki.

Shinji died instantly when the spirit energy emmanating from his body was transformed into one solid piece of steel which erupted from him as if his skin were trying to tightly cover the metal and burst in several places.

"I'd like to be healed now please, Kazuma," She said just before she slowly lowered herself to the ground and passed out.

 

Sniper, Kaito and Amanuma kept their awe in check as well as their nausea due to the massive amount of blood spilled and Shinji's mangled corpse while Kuwabara went about healing first Hannah then Mitarai.

Kuwabara advised the others to go and for Kaito to stay to give the three of them a ride back.

Though, not a risk of dying any longer Hannah and Mitarai were still passed out on the ground next to Shinji's dead body.

 

"They'll be fine, but they're still going to hurt for the next couple of days," Kuwabara said to Kaito as he took Hannah's glasses from her face and cleaned them off with his shirt before putting them into the pocket of his white overcoat.

"What went on between the two of you just before she decided to enter the fray?" Kaito felt compelled to ask.

"We struck a deal that I wouldn't get involved. In exchange she wouldn't dump me for someone better. It's always the same thing with us. I want to protect her and she really resents that. You know what I mean. Mitarai doesn't like our help but we're always giving it to him."

Kaito began to deny that he felt protective of Mitarai but knew that while Kuwabara was not as smart as himself he was still amazingly intuitive.

"When you have the power to protect someone you love it is difficult to not use that power. As for myself, I only came because Mitarai knows that he only has to appeal to my vanity and jealousy of Kurama to get me to do something."

 

Kuwabara thought about calling Kaito on his lie and wanted to comment on how alike the two of them were in their complicated feelings for Mitarai Kiyoshi but didn't.

"You do realize that if we don't stop protecting Mitarai he's going to hate us, don't you? He won't get stronger as a fighter if I'm always around..."

"And he won't become any stronger as a person if I'm constantly there to support him no matter how much of an ass he becomes. I see your point."

Kaito kneeled down and brushed Mitarai's stringy blonde hair out of his dirty face. "It's not easy doing nothing, is it?"

"Nope. Hey, Kaito? Do you....I mean....Mitarai and all...."

"I don't know. I know what you are going to ask, I just don't know the answer."

Before the awkwardness of their emotional back and forth could begin Kuwabara suggested burying their dead foe's body before the police or unwary hiker stumbled upon it.

 

When Mitarai woke he found Hannah lying next to him and surrounded by shelves of compact discs and books. He began to wonder where he was until he noticed three cats curled up at his feet and between his knees.

He gently slid out of bed trying not to disturb the cats or Hannah. Mitarai examined the albums and found a row of Metallica albums next to pop bands whose fame ended in the 1980's.

After examanining the evidence it was no surprise to see Kuwabara pushing vegetables around a hot skillet while boiling a pot of water.

 

Mitarai sat down at the table a few feet away from the kitchen and next to Kaito who was engrossed in a crossword puzzle.

"How long, Kuwabara? How long would it have taken you to kill that guy?"

Kuwabara paused as he opened a package of dried ramen noodles and absently dropped them into the boiling water. "Not important. He's dead. Pass the soy sauce."

He put a bowl of ramen noodle soup in front of Mitarai and began work on a second.

 

"Am I the biggest screw-up you've ever met?" Mitarai asked out of the blue but which Kuwabara predicted.

He decided to not spare his friend's feelings and answer honestly.

"Yeah. You're a friggin' mess, Mitarai. We're both the types to rush into something without thinking. I just don't drag people along with me. The difference is you're smarter and get away with it."

 

"What he's trying to say, Kiyoshi," Kaito said while not looking up from his puzzle. "Is that you have a tendency to get people involved in things and not give it a second thought when they're hurt. Asato and Yana are prime examples. Answer honestly. Why didn't you tell Yana the truth about his mission?"

As Mitarai began to answer he was struck mute by how his honest answer made him sound.

"Shit. Why didn't you speak up about this before?"

 

"Don't put this on Kaito, dickhead! Take some responsibility for the shit storms you create."

Kaito quietly stood and pulled his car keys from his jacket pocket. "It's fine, Kuwabara." He turned to Mitarai. "I'm going to see Yana. Are you coming, Kiyoshi?"

Mitarai weakly nodded and silently left.

 

Upon reaching Yana's apartment Kaito instructed Mitarai to say hello for him and drove off.

Mitarai noticed that not only was Yana in due to his van in the parking lot but so was Amanuma as his familiar gray civic with the Atari logo decal was parked next to Yana.

He assumed that Asato would be there too which put him even more at ill at ease. After a full two minutes of steeling himself up he knocked and received a grunt as a response he recognized as Asato's too distracted to bother speaking greeting and let himself in to the unlocked apartment.

 

There he found the three people who had the most reason to hate him sitting together watching an animated pornographic movie.

"Hey, Yana. Uh, how are you feeling?"

At first it looked as if Yana were still gathering the energy to speak until Mitarai realised that his friend was gathering his thoughts. "Like I don't want to be a part of this anymore. Once I give you the information that was given me I can go, right?"

"S-sure."
Yana reached over the side of his couch and extended his hand to Mitarai who took it with a bewildered look until the information that Yana received from Shinji was transmitted to Mitarai.

"I learned a new trick at least. Get anything useful?"

 

Mitarai processed his new memories and compared them to the spirit world intelligence reports he had on the two demons Shinji worked for.

"Yeah.....actually." He pretended to sort through his new memories to stall for time to think of a something diplomatic to say before giving up.

"Yana...uh, I knew about these guys before. I sent you in to get confirmation."

"....Did you know I'd be captured?"

"I assumed. I also assumed that they wouldn't kill you. It didn't seem to be part of their M.O. Sorry. I just trusted you more than spirit world intelligence."

 

Yana slowly nodded and turned his attention to the hentai on screen before saying: "Asato?"

Asato opened his psychic territory and before Mitarai could notice that his shadow was pinning down his own Mitarai was paralyzed.

Over the next fifteen minutes he stood unable to move as Yana watched the cartoon porn in a state of semi-catatonia. Asato and Amanuma divided their attention evenly between the television and glaring at Mitarai.

Once the credits began to roll Yanagisawa stood and looked Mitarai in the face.

 

"I got tortured, you know? A lot. He'd heal me so he could torture me again. That's not the bad part, though. What's bad is you sent me there like I was cannon fodder and lied to me about it."

"I thought you wouldn't do it if I told you."

Yana reached out and touched Mitarai's hand and transmitted his memories of being tortured to him. If Mitarai could have moved enough to fall to the floor in tears he would have.

"The real bitch of this is that even if you'd have told me I'd be tortured I'd still have done it. Stupid fucker. Get out and leave me alone."

Kido took that as a cue to release Mitarai's shadow and Mitarai took it as his cue to leave without a word without looking back.

 

Mitarai estimated about fifteen hours of straight sleep would be required before he could function properly again.