No Exit

A Yu Yu Hakusho fanfiction by Sir Psycho Sexy

A/N: A plotbunny came into my head when I was reading about otakin and the people who believe they're reincarnated anime characters. They're obviously insane, but I wondered, "what if such a thing actually happened?" And then I remembered that Toguro wished to be punished in the deepest level of Hell, and this fic was the result of the two ideas merging.

I hope you enjoy. (And, yes, the title is after the Sartre play in which the famous line "hell is other people" shows up.)

-SPS

He remembered the man that he once was; a soul who could never be punished enough for turning into a demon, a soul who could never be punished enough for letting Kairen rend his students apart. And now, as per his final wish, the man, the demon who was Younger Toguro, was nought but a distant memory.

In this existence, he had grown from a young boy who was terrified of everything, his life not having any meaning, into a man who was confident in who he used to be. His recollections of being Younger Toguro had started as a teenager, when he first read the Yu Yu Hakusho manga. Funny, he thought, in hell this was fiction, but it had really happened to him. Yusuke had defeated him after he had finally used one hundred percent of one hundred percent of his power against the boy. And now, here he was, trapped in this scrawny, lanky, uselessly frail body, the complete opposite of what his demon form had once been, screaming from the rooftops what he had known to be the truth, in this world a manga and anime series, and he was brushed off as a kook. Laid aside as if he did not know who he truly was.

There was one teacher in this life, in this hell, who had been "concerned" for him, sent him to see a psychiatrist, and now here he lay, swaddled in a straitjacket that his weak human body could not break free from, medicated past the point of being able to think abstractly. His days were an endless schedule of nurses walking into his padded cell with foodstuffs and medications, trying to cure the "delusion of being an anime character".

Sometimes he'd be lucid enough to catch a conversation between one of the nurses and the psychiatrist that handled his case.

"Kids today," spat the psychiatrist, "they've attached themselves so much to this Japanese animation crap that they can't even think straight. My hypothesis is that, in addition to delusional disorder, this patient must have had a wish to be completely physically powerful and to do away with life's obstacles with so much as an explosive tap to the forehead."

The nurse smiled at him. "You do know that a lot of them want to be supermen."

"Yes, and also villains, as many patients I have seen have a marked antisocial streak. Which is why I have taken the liberty of researching the characters these so-called "otakin" have believed themselves to be, as I do not really watch the medium myself."

"I miss the days when they used to think they were Jesus or Napoleon", answered the nurse. "At least then people got it."

The doctor nodded in approval as the nurse walked towards his cell, cup of anti-psychotic medication and water to wash it down with in hand, and briefly placed them on a desk outside to unlock the door to his cell. She knelt by him, her smile fake as usual, as she pried open his mouth, placed the medication on his tongue, and placed the cup of water to his lips. Toguro's stomach turned as all he could do was swallow, swallow, swallow...

As he was knocked out yet again, losing touch with himself, he wondered if this would be the worst part of his punishment, or, after he grew old and died in this Hell, another one would be opening up its wide jaws for him, with even more horrifying punishments in store. Though, he mused as he fell asleep, being a complete weakling, bound in a mental institution in a perpetual stupor knowing about his past with no one believing him as his past was considered part of a work of fiction, was a rather fitting punishment for the atrocities he had committed...

-FIN