BONUS EPILOGUE: "Don't Go Near the Fandom of Fear"

Yusuke waited in darkness and in silence for his prey.

Or, more specifically, he waited under Keiko's bed for her to come home while whispering curses about how this prank was turning into quite a pain in the neck (literally and figuratively, both). He'd played hooky that day, heading over to her house a solid hour before she normally got home—just in case she was early. Because he'd only get one shot at this, and he knew he couldn't afford any mistakes. Which is why he'd been under her bed for an hour, making friends with dust bunnies, misplaced socks and spiders (girl needed to sweep, stat). It was hard to see and hear, not to mention breathe, but dammit, he was determined to see this through.

Well, mostly determined. Just as he wondered if the hassle and dust-bunny-induced hay fever would be worth the payout, he heard a telltale shout of welcome from the kitchen, and then feet tromped up the stairs at a trudge. Grinning, Yusuke readied himself as the bedroom door swung open, Keiko's socked feet scuffling over the carpet as she approached the bed and threw her backpack on top of the covers.

Yusuke struck like a snapping snake, lashing out just as she came close. His hand closed over her ankle, and as she gave a startled shriek, he thrust his head out from under the bed with a gurgling roar. He caught sight of her terrified face for just a moment, eyeholes of his mask too tiny for anything more substantial—and then she aimed a kick at his jaw with a bellow of enraged adrenaline. He barely managed to twist his face away in time to deflect some of her blow, but even though she still kicked him hard enough for his ears to ring, he started to laugh as she fell on her ass and scooted away from him across the floor.

"Your face!" Yusuke roared, slapping the floor with one open hand. "Oh my god, your face! You shoulda seen your face!"

Terror turned to embarrassed rage in an instant, because apparently Keiko recognized the cackle coming from the monster's fanged mouth—or, more accurately, the very, very familiar cackle coming from the boy wearing a monster mask replete with fangs, horns and beady eyes. As Yusuke howled and hooted, Keiko snatched a pillow off the bed and chucked it at him, glaring hard enough to set him on fire.

"You—you asshole!" she said as Yusuke clambered out from under the bed, still giggling. Darting forward, she swiped the mask off of his head and glared at it, too. "Where the hell did you even get this mask, anyway?" Anger morphed into begrudging admiration. "It's kind of awesome, actually."

"Yeah, it is," said Yusuke, wiping at his streaming eyes. "Funny story about that. You know that favor I did for Koenma last week?"

Keiko's brow lifted slightly. "The one out in the middle of nowhere in the haunted house?"

"Yeah, that one—but it wasn't what Koenma thought it was," said Yusuke. "You'll never guess, but it turns out we weren't the only ones investigating. The caretaker of the old house had an imp demon possessing his head, and he'd kidnapped—"

He fell into the story with gusto, gratified when Keiko's eyes widened and her jaw dropped at his tale of unexpected kidnapping, weird cartoon physics, psychic laugh-tracks, the gaijin in their van, and the all-important mutated dog-demon named Scooby-Doo. Her eyes got rounder and rounder with every word he spoke, her hand creeping up to clasp her mouth in shock and awe (or so he assumed) at the twists and turns that had plagued the investigation at Onigumo Manor. She was clearly digging the story, so Yusuke embellished it as much as possible, acting out fights with sound effects and gestures that'd make a rakugo professional proud—and he had only barely finished his story when she interrupted him at last, grabbing his wrist as it flailed about to get his story-bound attention.

"Four gaijin and a talking dog," Keiko said—with disbelief. Like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

And Yusuke took exception to that. "Um, yeah?" he said, testy at the unspoken accusation that he was making all this shit up, which he was not, because it was just too weird to be anything but the truth. "That's what I've been saying." When she just stared at him, expression utterly blank, he loosed a frustrated growl. "Keiko, have you even been listeni—"

Keiko let go of his wrist, but only so she could lurch up onto her knees and clasp his face in her hands. "Four. Gaijin. And. A. Talking. Dog?" she repeated, enunciating every syllable as she stared with detached dispassion directly into his eyes.

"Why the heck are you grabbing my face?" Yusuke said through squished cheeks.

She squished, glared and enunciated harder. "Four gaijin and a talking dog who solve mysteries and drive around in a van?"

"Stop squishing my face!"

"Four gaijin and a talking dog who solve mysteries and drive around in a van and the dog's name is SCOOBY-DOO!?"

"Yeah, what about it?" Yusuke shoved her off of him at last, rubbing at his offended face. "Goddammit, why the hell are you so damn weird all the time?! You heard what I—wait, where are you going?"

"I'm going crazy is where I'm going!" Keiko said, already halfway out the door and with the wildest look in her eye that Yusuke had ever seen. "God fucking dammit, I can't believe this—"

She was gone before she could finish, bellowing something about needing to call someone named Kagome as she bolted down the stairs—but this was only the fifth-weirdest thing Keiko had ever done, so Yusuke just shrugged and went home, where he pranked Botan, his Mom and eventually Kuwabara with the monster mask he'd pilfered from Onigumo Manor (Hiei and Kurama, it should be noted, could not be so easily duped). He eventually retired the mask onto a wig head (stolen from Shizuru) and put it on his dresser as a trophy.

As an added bonus, every time Keiko came over to play Dragon Quest, she'd look at the mask and shudder—and because that was satisfaction enough, Yusuke never asked questions about her overblown reaction regarding a certain demon-pup named Scooby-Doo.

NOTES: SO THIS IS LC CANON NOW, LOLOLOL

But please imagine that when she runs out of Yusuke's house, NQK activates her SOS necklace, summoning Not-Quite-Minato and Not-Quite-Kagome to her aid, and they arrive with guns blazing, totally ready for a fight because OBVIOUSLY Keiko would NEVER use the SOS necklace for petty reasons… but all she does when they bust through a door-portal is say "Rut-roh, Raggy!" and start screaming that Scooby-Doo is real and she needs Minato to use his portal technology to take her to America so she can smoke a bowl with the Scooby gang; it's a dream of hers, you see, and now she has a chance to live it!

Minato, expression deadpan, just turns around and walks back through the door-portal he came from, slamming it shut behind him and stranding Not-Quite-Kagome in the middle of the street.

Not-Quite-Kagome's bet on who the Scooby Doo "not quite" is? She thinks it'll be SCRAPPY-DOO.

And with that, I put this garbage story to bed in the dumpster fire from whence it came. Thank you, I love you, and good night.

THE END (for real)