Underhanded, ch. 3

"I don't believe you," he said. "Not after last week!"

"It's legit this time! Right under your feet!" Botan bit her lip and seemed to think better of it. "Er - is this - "

"Kobayashi Kotoko," she introduced all-too-cheerily. "Don't worry about the detective stuff. I know everything. Go on, go on! I wanna hear about the new case!"

Yusuke scowled, but Botan continued. "It's a lesser demon, no great power to him - not compared to you, anyway," she added. "But compared to your average human - your average human girl..."

"Even the scum have scum," he muttered.

"It's been using the sewers to get around - it seems this demon kind of has the power to vaporize himself, and slink through really narrow passages. He crawls up through the pipes into girls' bathrooms and the like, does unspeakable things to them, and then swallows their souls and leaves their physical forms to rot."

"Yeesh," said Yusuke. "I mean, I like a good panty shot as much as the next person - "

"Pervert!" Kotoko cried.

"Don't act like I haven't heard that all before."

"You need to act quickly, though, while we're still certain of his location. There's no way he's further than a 3-mile radius from this school."

"And you're sure this isn't just another wild goose chase?"

"Certain of it!"

"Well then let's go!"

Yusuke and Botan stared at Kotoko.

"What?"

"You honestly think that I'm going to take a cumbersome human with no special powers on a case that'll basically put her right in the hands of a demon that's gonna rape her and then eat her soul?" said Yusuke. "Are you retarded?"

"She said he's not going to be a big deal for you to take down," Kotoko whined. "And I want to come with you on a case! Didn't Yukimura do that with you a lot?"

"Yes - when she was at greater risk away from him than with him. You're just going to put yourself in even more danger!"

"Yusuke's my boyfriend, he would never let anything happen to me!" Kotoko insisted. "And I wanna come. If you don't take me, I'm telling everyone!"

Yusuke winced. Her one bargaining chip and she was going to milk it for all she was worth. He shot a desperate look at Botan.

"How long till that chick gets here?"

"Two or three more days, tops, I promise you."

"Tell her to hurry her ass up." He sighed a long-suffering sigh, looking back and forth between his dumb-ass fake girlfriend and his pseudo-babysitter. All these freaking girls. Life with Kuwabara was infinitely easier. Why was it that the people who seemed to dick around the most were the people without dicks?

Kuwabara...his thoughts returned to the taller, infinitely more interesting redhead, and the way he'd run from the room after barely two seconds of speaking. He hadn't actually thought Yusuke was being genuine with all this dumb mushy girlfriend crap, had he? It worried Yusuke, and he stole his hand up to spin his earring in its loop a couple of times - only to remember when his fingers got there that Kotoko had demanded he take it out. People ask questions! she'd said, as if that was supposed to mean anything. And who cared if it did!

"Yusuke," Botan warned. Oh, right. No time to get lost in thought. There was a case. But even so, Yusuke leaned to her ear and whispered some brief instructions.

"Hey, go find Kuwabara and make sure he's okay. Tell him that I lo-- " He paused, and changed his mind. "That all this Kotoko stuff is bull. Send him on after us if he wants to work on the case too."

Then, angrier than he'd meant to be, Yusuke shot out his hand and grabbed Kotoko's wrist. If he was going to drag her along, he was going to drag her along. "Come on, then," he said, and they marched past Botan, and out the door.

-xxx-

"Can you really get into the sewers from here?" she asked from about two paces behind him.

"Yeah," said Yusuke, only half-paying attention - this was her third stupid question in the last five minutes. "The very first time I ever apprehended a demon was around here somewhere, I think."

"Wow, really? What was that like?"

"It was tiny," he said. "With horns. Crawled in through some dude's ear, turned him into an asshole, so he took - uh." He didn't really feel like telling the rest of the story. Kotoko already bitched at him when he mentioned Kuwabara too much. "Some...important stuff."

"That's terrible! Was he hard to fight? What did you do with him when it was over?"

Geez, it was like if Botan didn't already know the answers to everything. He couldn't imagine someone more annoying. "I don't know, okay? I just turned him into the good guys and stopped giving a crap. It's what I usually do."

"That's so cool. You're so tough!"

"It's whatever." He really wished she would just shut up. It was the least she could do after driving Kuwabara away - without Mr. Tickle Feeling, he was going to have to rely on his eyes and ears in the dark murk of the sewer, and her yakking wasn't helping at all.

"Ew, yuck!" she yelped, as they began entering its real depths and encountering, well, sewage.

"Hey, you're the one that invited yourself along on this case. It's the sewer, what do you expect?"

That, amazingly, silenced her for a moment, and Yusuke began walking a bit more stealthily, trying not to splash and drown out any possible demon sounds. The light of the place where they'd entered was growing fainter as they rounded a corner. Once Yusuke thought he heard something, but it turned out to be a beady-eyed rat.

"Gross!" Kotoko shrieked, clutching at the skirt of her fuku. Yusuke rolled his eyes. Not even Keiko had been this bad.

"Yusuke-kun, you're going to buy me ice cream when we're done here, right? To make up for making me come down here in the gross sewer?"

"I will buy you whatever the hell it takes to make you shut - " But he silenced himself just as quickly, because that time it had definitely not been a rat. He listened closely, then heard it again: a distinctly otherworldly hiss, from somewhere beyond them and to the left. He darted swiftly forward and Kotoko was jumpily on his heels, her hesitant feet splashing in the grime.

"Yusuke-kunnn," she whined, but he just held up a hand to silence her again. The sound echoed through the pipes again - louder, and yet somehow not seeming any closer. It must have entered a pipe already, was probably preparing to emerge somewhere -

And weren't they directly under the school?

"Oh, crap, Urameshi, you idiot," said Yusuke, and he ran past Kotoko and back toward the sewer's entrance. "Botan, you idiot!" Heading down into the sewers themselves wasn't the right approach at all! Where better to prey on unsuspecting virginal souls than in the girls' restroom of a public school?

"Yusuke-kun, wait for me!"

-xxx-

Kuwabara splashed one last handful of water across his face, giving his own cheeks a couple of good slaps and willing himself to snap out of it. From this point forward he was going to start anew. If Urameshi was going to have a girlfriend, so could he! He put on a winning grin and tried to stride from the men's room with renewed purpose. Unfortunately, someone was waiting for him, propped up against the wall right by the outside of the bathroom door.

"Kuwabara?"

"Oh, hey pretty lady!" he said. Botan! A girl! And yet why did the enthusiasm simply not come as easily as it had before?

"Are you...doing okay?" she asked hesitantly.

"Never better!" he lied. "What's the latest?"

"Oh," she said, and turned away, looking to the ground. "It's just - well, Yusuke seemed concerned about you, and he had some things he wanted me to tell you."

Kuwabara's face finally fell, unable to stand up to this. Who was he kidding? "Forget his crap," he said.

"But he - "

"No. I'm not hearing this. Geez, I knew he was a punk, but I thought for sure he'd be man enough to break up with me in person." He laughed bitterly at the phrase. Break up. "I know he's with that stupid Kobayashi babe now, and they're gonna have a wonderful life together. So I think I'm just gonna go party with Yukimura, and we can both bitch and moan about how that Urameshi son of a bitch had to go and ruin our lives. If you'll excuse me."

"Kuwabara, that's not - "

But she got cut off again - not, however, by Kuwabara this time, but by a vicious hiss of air emanating from back inside the bathroom, a hiss which grew in volume and creepiness until it was definitely a voice and not air. This was a demon.

"What the?"

It slithered out the door to sprawl between Kuwabara and Botan - it was almost like a snake and a centipede all at once, writhing and hissing and sniffing around. Botan froze, and Kuwabara just scowled.

"Ah c'mon!"

Amazingly, it spoke. "Youuu!" It was staring at Botan. "Yooouuu...not a human?"

"No I'm not, thank you very much!" she asserted, though she still looked scared out of her mind, trapped between the bathroom corner and the demon's long, hideous form. "No souls for you today!"

"Annnd yoouuu...not a lady~," it said to Kuwabara.

"Hell no," he said. But for the most part, he was ignoring it. Botan didn't seem to like this.

"Kuwabara, can't you kill this menace?" she demanded. "Don't just stand there, do something!"

But Kuwabara had already made up his mind. "Nah, I don't think so."

"What?"

"If I'm not gonna be hanging around Urameshi any more, there's no need for me to stay involved in this spirit detective bullshit. I'm gonna go back to being a regular guy and just beating up other regular guys for fun. Urameshi can handle it."

When the demon realized there were no delicious human females around to deflower, it began to slither off down the hallway in search of them. Botan was looking panicked. "Botan, you idiot," she berated herself quietly. Kuwabara started walking in the opposite direction, back toward where he'd left his lunch.

Quite suddenly, Urameshi Yusuke was blocking his path.

"Kuwabara Kazuma, you are a freaking jackass!" he screamed.

"Takes one to know one!" Kuwabara shot back almost automatically. "I didn't come here to listen to you - "

"What the hell do you think you're doing? The Kuwabara I know would never - "

"Well I'm not the Kuwabara you know any more, because you're not the Urameshi I - "

"Innocent people could - "

"Why can't you just - "

"Ahhhh!!!" Kobayashi screamed - because as he and Urameshi had stood there yelling at each other, the demon had apparently sniffed her out, and had come slithering back to where they all stood. Kuwabara and Urameshi both stood between it and the girl, blocking its path. Urameshi extended his index finger toward it.

"Nice try," he said with a smirk - but lightning-fast, with a speed Kuwabara never would have guessed it possessed, the slinking demon shot up and wrapped around his torso like a boa constrictor, immobilizing him and scraping over him with dozens of tiny prickling legs. It was enough to make him feel violated already, even through his clothes. With Kuwabara as a meat shield, Urameshi's spirit gun finger faltered.

"Mmmm, niiiice tryyyy, detectiiiive," it said. "Noooow what will it beeee - yooouuur friennnnd, or the giiiirrrrl?"

Urameshi did the last thing anyone was expecting - he grinned. "Done."

Before anyone else knew what was going on, he yanked Kobayashi forward by the wrist and threw her at the demon. Anxious for its prey, it tossed Kuwabara aside, practically into Urameshi.

"Yusuke-kun!" she whined. "How could you?!"

"No, bitch, how could you," he retorted. "You're the crazy bitch who invited herself along on this case, you get the full effects of what it's like to be stuck in real spirit detective situations. God, you are such an idiot!" He paused, and turned a meaningful look to Kuwabara. "And there's only room for one idiot in this biz."

That one look ruined him, of course. He knew in that instant what he'd known all along: he was lying to himself. He'd never get over this. He was so, so sold. To the point that he was even completely oblivious to the demon's long, forked tongue snaking out of its mouth and down the front of Kobayashi's fuku collar, if it meant Urameshi Yusuke was staring at him with wide, condescending brown eyes, as if he were the biggest moron in the world. Which was kind of how he was beginning to feel.

"But Yusuke-kun," she insisted, "you're my boyfriend - "

"No I'm not!" he shouted. "Can't you get it through your thick skull? What you're doing is blackmail! It's fake! I don't love you! I love this guy right here!"

Kuwabara planted one on him just as Botan crashed down on the demon's squishy centipede body with a hefty metal trashcan.

-xxx-

"So she was a spirit detective too?"

"Somethin' like that," Urameshi said. "I dunno what they really call them in China. But that spirit lightning thing she had, wicked. If she'd been here longer and if she'd spoken Japanese better I'd've asked her to teach me how."

"No kiddin'," said Kuwabara. He reached down to his bare stomach - the place where Urameshi's head happened to be resting - and brushed against his hair a little. But not in the way that stupid Kobayashi chick had done it. Urameshi actually liked his way.

"And she said she liked my earring," he said, the grin evident in his voice even though Kuwabara, eyes to the ceiling, couldn't see it. His hand trailed closer to Urameshi's ear, and his fingertips touched it, and spun it through a couple of times.

"That's a girl I can respect, then."

"Kobayashi doesn't remember a thing," he said, reaching up to entwine his fingers with Kuwabara's own. "Kind'f a shame, since she totally deserved the mental scarring that demon's tongue would have left her with. Guess we can't win everything."

Kuwabara disagreed. Victory, as far as he saw it, was theirs.