Shishiwakamaru's Story: Honor

Characters: Shishiwakamaru, Suzuka, Kurama

Pairings: None

Continuity: English Anime (he was totally there at Toguro's battle YOU JUST DIDN'T SEE HIM.)

Summary: He's strong. He's popular. He's famous. So why is he never satisfied?

Author's note: I really wanted to work with Shishi after seeing him featured in a youtube video—"Yu Yu Hakusho Heros" [sic], with the song "Hero" by Superchick. Thanks for the inspiration, MysteriousNekoHanyou. Great vid. :)

This came out rather differently than I expected, though…

"Worthless boy."

The young imp refused to let his elder see how much the words stung.

"You'll never amount to anything! You might as well just die!"

The child's tiny body curled in on itself, trying to hide from the truth he saw in those words.

Shishiwakamaru awoke with a start, cold sweat coursing down his face.

When he realized that it had just been a dream, he cursed himself for such a moment of weakness. Hadn't he already left all that behind? Hadn't he stopped caring years ago?

The child's pain had grown into the young man's anger, as he stubbornly refused to give in to the assumptions everyone held about him.

He would show them.

He would show them all just how good he could be.

He had started by working on his limited shape-altering abilities—if he was going to be famous and powerful, he needed to look the part. So his low-class imp form would never do. He needed to look like the high class demons did.

This form was going to be a masterpiece. He carefully molded and shaped his body to conform to the standards of attractiveness among the high class. He figured out how to hide his horns and fangs, how to shorten his ears, though they kept coming back whenever he lost control. He made himself taller, much taller, though he reached his limit while still shorter than he would have liked. He was especially proud of his eyes—he had altered their shape and color until he was sure they were perfect. Their lovely violet was as far removed as it was possible to get from their original ugly yellow, and his slit pupils became perfectly round.

He kept his antennae, though— he would be crippled without them. Besides, even high classes often kept some demonic traits.

When he decided he was ready, he ran away, adopting his new form more or less permanently. He stole enough money when he left to buy himself a sword, and offered his services to the first band of roving mercenaries he could find.

His high-class disguise must have worked—they were more than happy to take him on, even without any test of his abilities.

He learned much with that group—both techniques of swordsmanship and fighting, and a philosophy that said honor was the most important thing in the world.

And "honor" translated to "fame".

Shishi did his best to forget the family that had already denied him, and sought instead to prove himself to the world.

He never did quite gain the self-awareness to realize that that was an impossible, endless goal.

He never realized that proving yourself to the world is synonymous with proving yourself to yourself.

Eventually he grew tired of the mercenary group. His ambitions had already expanded beyond anything they could hope to offer, and his powers had grown to the point where he might have a chance to pursue them.

That was when Suzuka stepped in.

Shishiwakamaru was the first one he approached, before he took on the guise of Onji.

He spoke glowingly of the wonderful opportunities of the Dark Tournament, and promised that he could provide weapons and tools that would increase Shishi's power so that he could win any fight he wanted.

"The eyes of two worlds will be upon you! And even better—for the first time in fifty years, Toguro will be competing! Whoever beats him will be more than famous! He'll be legendary!"

Shishi wouldn't let it show—it would go completely against the image he was trying to project—but the prospect thrilled him. This could be his chance—he would beat Toguro, and then no one could deny his worth!

He really should have objected to Suzuka's "strategy" to make the rest of their team comparatively weak, specifically so they'd be killed before the finals.

Of course he should have. It was a profoundly stupid plan.

But he didn't.

Because the fewer people were on the team when they beat Toguro in the finals, the less he would have to share the glory of his victory.

His defeat had been deeply humiliating.

Not only had he been proved wrong after all of his boastful declarations of superiority, not only had he been beaten by a human, not only had his defeater been a freaking granny—no, worse than all that, he had been beaten with his own power.

That brought it home to him.

The power he'd been relying on wasn't really his.

It wasn't really his any more than the form he'd come to think of as his own was really his.

He was a fake.

His worst fears were really true—he was worthless, was incapable of accomplishing anything on his own.

Even the adoring cries of his fangirls brought no comfort. How could they, when they were in love with someone who didn't really exist?

Shishiwakamaru was more than ready to sink into a pit of self-loathing and never come out.

He would have, too—but Suzuka, who just wanted to see Toguro beaten by someone, dragged him out to see the rest of the tournament. He kept up his more humanoid form—he wasn't sure why he bothered—and went along to shut the clown up.

Shishi didn't cheer for anyone during the last battle.

He didn't even bother to protect himself when Toguro started sucking up the souls of the crowd. If he hadn't been behind Suzuka's shield, he would have been swept away.

He wished he had been.

What did he have to live for?

He spent the next few months in something of a haze.

Demon world had nothing more to offer him than human world had, and he simply spent most of his time fighting.

All he could even feel through this strange lethargy was the desire for an honorable death. At least that would be real.

But he still retained enough of his sense of pride that he wouldn't let just any low-class kill him. No, that would never do.

So he just fought, waiting for something to happen.

When it did, though, he was completely taken off guard.

"Something" took the form of Kurama, finding him out in the wilds of demon world.

He offered him a proposition: come and train under Genkai, become more powerful, and then come work directly under one of the three most powerful demons in all of demon world.

Shishi almost refused.

Why in any of the three worlds would he want to train under the woman who had defeated and humiliated him?

But something stopped him.

Perhaps it was the memory of his own excitement when Suzuka had made a similar offer. Perhaps the idea of cheating his opponent's victory of its sting by learning her power appealed to him.

Or perhaps it was simply the temptation of having a purpose, however temporary it might turn out to be.

"Very well," he said, faking indifference. "If you insist."

By the time he arrived at Genkai's, Shishiwakamaru actually felt a flickering of enthusiasm at the idea of working hard for something.

So he decided that he would do it right.

He shed the form he had been using to fool himself into thinking he was a high class, and began his training as the weak imp he had always been.

When he did that, he found out two things that shocked him to the core.

The first was that his assumptions where badly out of date. It had been years since he had last reverted completely to his imp form…and when he did, his own power level astounded him.

Even without all the items he had been using to prop himself up…he was strong.

Much stronger than he remembered, much stronger than he had imagined he was.

He had held onto that self-image for so long, resisting this form out of fear of weakness…when had that changed?

And then there was the second thing.

This form, the one he had been born into, the one he spent so long thinking of as his true form…no longer felt like home.

The imp form might have been his original one…but it was no longer him.

When he hadn't been looking, reality had switched on him.

He really should have realized it sooner—at first it had taken a great deal of effort to maintain his humanoid form, but it had grown easier to the point where he could hold it while knocked unconscious. And he had even found the younger form of the human Genkai attractive!

He continued to train in his imp form for a while, but he grew more and more certain that it wasn't his real form. He learned what he could in it, and then, when he was finally satisfied that he had given his old self the training it deserved, he let it go.

Not forever—he had no qualms about taking it up again if it suited him. But he was ready to set it aside as an alternate form, not the real one that he had to hide.

Once again he grew taller and more human in appearance, took on those violet eyes that he loved so much, and stepped into the identity he had built for himself.

And this time, it wasn't fake.