Uh…

Hello.

My name is Yusuke Urameshi.

Well, uh, you're probably wondering what's going on.

I'm not so sure, myself. I just became privy to all the details about ten minutes ago, and it hasn't quite assembled itself into something that makes sense yet. The last half hour was especially crazy. But, someone has to explain what happened today, and as the only capable party, I guess that makes it my job.

Maybe if I just start talking, it'll all come together.

We're all at Genkai's compound. So…

Man, I don't know where to start.

Well, right now, Yukina is healing herself, assisted by Shizuru, and trying to get a demonic vine out of her leg. Koenma is keeping an eye on a monster plant that had a strange attachment to her toe. Keiko is with Kuwabara, keeping him from fainting and force-feeding him some tea. Tea that's loaded with Kurama's dream-whatever plants for erasing memories. Botan is administering her white magic and basic first aid to an unconscious Hiei, who sports a nice dent in his torso. Genkai's charge is Kurama, and she's trying to help him pull a 3-foot long 2x4 from his chest. No anesthetic. Good luck, Grandma.

I would like to take a second to point out that the only injury I received the entire fight was a snowball to the face.

I guess it's pretty easy to see how we got here. Why, is another story, but we'll work on that later. The plants attacking Yukina is obviously Kurama's handiwork. That's undisputable. Kuwabara's not actually injured; he just learned some info that he would just as soon forget. And if Hiei were aware of this, I'm sure he'd concur with our method of "healing" him. You can guess about my little run-in with the snowball. Kurama's situation is a little tougher to figure out, but it all comes down to the fact that Hiei didn't want to bloody his katana. As for the shorty's own injury, I neglected to mention that his shirt is singed in a perfect circle around the dent.

Heh. Never know when those Spirit Guns will go off.

So, that's the how. We're all gonna live, provided Kuwabara doesn't go mental. Or Kurama. Or Hiei, if Kurama ever tells him what happened. Or me, since I'd just hate to be the only one not in style.

And yes, we did all attack each other.

Why? You know… I'm really not sure. The results, I'm pretty clear on, but everything else is kind of a mess. Welcome to our lives.

One thing I remember with perfect clarity is the cell phone. It's pink. Well, was pink. But, after playing target practice with it, well, even Kuwabara and his sixth sense couldn't put it back together. Let's see, the snowball was pretty vivid. Until Kurama showed up and went postal. And after I specifically told him to stay tied to that tree.

Whoops. A tree. So, that wasn't the part of the day when I had a brainwave, okay?

Oh, and Hiei. I remember Hiei. I don't quite remember what he was doing, or how he got there, but I remember he was there. With the cell phone. And the bus.

Right, so the cell phone was Yukina's. Kuwabara bought it for her. Worst present ever. As long as she just stayed on the stupid mountain with Genkai, she was cute and sweet, but the second he gave her a freaking lifeline to the outside world…!

She wouldn't stop calling us. Not that I don't like talking to her, and truth be told, her phone calls weren't annoying at all. Her fascination with it was kinda adorable, (I guess they didn't have cell phones in her little floating ice village) and so we really didn't mind her calling every single one of us about three times a day. Kinda like when a baby knocks over a tin of flour, and everybody spends about five minutes taking pictures and cooing before realizing that they have to clean up the mess.

But it really wasn't a nuisance. Yukina's actually pretty interesting to talk to, and anyway, she was just as fascinated with our answering machines, if we weren't in the mood to pick up. Besides, after a week, she realized that she didn't need to call us every day to stay in touch.

So, that's not the reason I deep-fried the cell-phone with my spirit gun. While it was in Hiei's hand. And, since the only contact device Hiei has is Mukuro's private come-and-do-my-evil-bidding line, Yukina's constant phone calls were not the reason he shoved a 2x4 through Kurama. Or dropped that kid off the cliff. And it definitely wasn't annoyance that possessed Kurama to later jump off that same cliff, or drove me to shoot Hiei and throw him through that bus.

Or for Yukina to throw a snowball at me.

But, you see, that phone is an instrument of evil. Really. It was the agent that began a chain of events that led to three boys and an ice maiden trying to kill each other, and giving Kuwabara a heart attack. And I feel he deserves that shock to his system, because he gave Yukina that stupid phone in the first place.

He's the one that got her the gift of communication. And that got her information, and that got her involved in our lives, and it's his own fault for not seeing the danger. After all, he should have known; he is the one who hikes up to see her all the time.

Yeah, Yukina's dangerous. Don't believe me? Look around the room. And this is just the people who are "in the know", so to speak. The regular humans are an entirely different story. One's at her home, waiting to boil her son alive, and that one kid is still at the bottom of the cliff. Thanks to some quick thinking from Puu, (which, indirectly, makes me smart) he's okay, but Big-and-Blue is keeping him from running off and causing, you know, more trouble. Ayame and Jorge are still dealing with all the people on the bus.

So, Yukina is evil. Even more so than her phone. She's fine as long as she's kept somewhere with limited contact and no gossip, but that darn phone….

She learned things, man. Basically, it was stuff she already knew a bit about, because she was, like, our friend. The big stuff. The stuff we probably couldn't keep secret if we tried, so no harm in her knowing those issues existed. But now she was talking to us every day, and she got… details. Subtext. Little things that we maybe don't talk about so freely, but everybody else had already assumed about us, because they talked and pried and nagged us every day.

Now the chick had ammo. And little did we know, she was already armed to begin with.

But I didn't know all of that when my day started. When my day started, I was only concerned with meeting up with Kurama and planning our vacation. (Not mine and Kurama's, me and Keiko's. Sort of a second honeymoon, since she'd dragged me off to some cutesy island resort for the first one. Those are only fun for guys when they're single and trying to meet chicks.) The only thing running through my mind was "I wonder where in the Demon Realm is a place where I can have fun with Keiko, pick a few fights, and not have to worry about her dying via natural or nefarious means?" Actually, I don't think those were my exact words. If they were, Kurama had planted them there first, because I don't know what some of them mean.

But, anyway, I was cluelessly innocent when I walked up to the Hatanaka/Minamino household, and very confused to see a pissed-off Kurama exit the house and slam the door. I heard the distinct sound of an angry mother's "Get back here, I'm not done talking to you yet" tone, which always sounds the same, regardless of the wording, the language, or the mom in question. I had heard it way too many times at my own home to not recognize it, but you can bet I was suspicious when I heard it from Shiori.

At least, I think it was Shiori…I never did see her face. If it wasn't than this is even more screwed up than I thought.

But, anyway, after taking his anger out on the door, I saw Kurama take a deep breath. I don't think he noticed me. Had he noticed, I don't think he would have cared. If he did, maybe I wouldn't have had to hit the car or tie him to a tree. But, he didn't.

So, after inhaling all the surrounding oxygen, everybody's favorite redhead turned his face skyward. "HIE..." It would be a lie to say I was not stunned by the length to which he was able to hold the 'eh' syllable, which every singer I've met claims is very hard to do for long periods of time at a high pitch and volume, all three conditions met by Kurama. But I was floored when he managed to move on to the "ee" syllable without taking another breath, and continuing to hold it for another twenty seconds. "...EI!"

After reassuring all doubters that he did, indeed, know how to pronounce Hiei's name, he took another deep breath and continued with his rant.

"IT TAKES THIRTY MINUTES FOR ME TO GET FROM HERE TO GENKAI'S COMPOUND!" Frankly, I wasn't sure why he thought Hiei would care.

"SO YOU'VE GOT HALF AN HOUR TO OFF ME, 'CAUSE I'M GOING TO GO KILL YOUR SISTER!"

This had me in shock, and I watched him tear down the street. Using his rose whip, he got a secured grip on a street light, and actually managed to use that plant trick of his to leap over a house. In broad daylight. With people around, who lived in the same neighborhood he did.

So, I threw off my shock and decided I better go see what was up. Or, like, save Yukina, or whatever.

But, I was so busy contemplating my one thought, (Which went something like, "What the crap?") that I didn't realize I was still in the road, until I came to the intersection.

Of course, did I care? Nope. You see, at this point in my training, I'm a little difficult to kill. It took Sensui, like, half an hour of solid beating, and that was before I became a demon and trained with Houkushin and the Monkettes. Plus, once I am dead, I tend to just come back to life, anyway.

So, I kept going. Through a car. No, I did not get hit by a car, this time. I went through a car. The trunk half, and though it did do a lot of swervy, erratic things before achieving a park on somebody's lawn, it did not explode. The driver did, though, figuratively. There was much cursing coming from that guy's mouth. But, hey, I had to catch up with Kurama, and he already had a head start!

Just for the record, that car didn't even scratch me. The scratches currently on my arm are from hiking through the stupid forest to get to Genkai's. Go figure, huh? Keiko wants me to get it looked at later, in case it's poison ivy.

Demonic Heroes are not brought down by poison ivy. Ever.

But, whatever.

It doesn't really count as an injury, since it didn't happen during the fight. Even if it did, it's a scratch, not a freaking chunk of wood. No, the only thing happening during the fight was Yukina throwing a snowball at me. Well, a couple, but only one actually hit. If she trained to be like Toya, I bet she could learn to project her aura into her snowballs, and that would be way cool. I think I'd even have put her down for our fifth in the Dark Tournament. I mean, a team member who can heal the entire team, and kill people? Score!

Ah, but Hiei wouldn't allow that. I think. Well, he might, if she was strong enough. And she's definitely not, how you say, innocent. Not after her big long speech about payback, and torturing Kurama to get to me, and Shizuru doesn't count and the moon is made of green cheese.

Okay, I made up that part about the moon. But, the rest of the speech was true, and the cheese makes way more sense than the rest of the stuff she was saying. But, luckily, Kurama sic-ed his plants on her, and that ended the little monologue.

Why would Kurama attack Yukina? Well, it's not like she didn't ask for it. In fact, I would go as far as to say she attacked him first. A snowball is not the same thing as a man-eating plant, but no one can say that Kurama was not provoked. I don't think he would have killed her, though. And I bet she'd have regained use of her leg in a few days. Hiei really didn't need to bring in the bus.

But, I wasn't really paying much attention to what Hiei was doing. I wasn't even aware he was coming. Maybe Kurama was, but I doubt it, because he'd decided to have an emo moment, and really wasn't capable of anything right then. So, I took over his job of yelling at Yukina.

Of course, I lost that argument. Even when you know she's absolutely, completely and horribly wrong, it's hard to yell at that girl. Which is probably why she's not fertilizer yet. So, I let her lecture me, with her big eyes, and cute little voice as she told me why Kurama and I were scum. It was a long, loooong lecture, man. Long enough that Kurama managed to get out of 'depressive' and back to 'manic'. I was beginning to have thoughts of joining his 'kill the ice maiden' crusade, after having to stand there and listen to "Please forgive me, you jerks, I'm sweet, I'm cute and helpless, and you totally deserved it, and I'm doing it all for your own good, and it was cruel and heartless of you to do this and this and that, and so I had to do it, and so there and I'm right, you're wrong, so don't hate me for completely and purposefully messing up both of your lives."

One thing makes perfect sense, and that's the whole 'torturing Kurama to get to me' theory she had. It is so true. We never should have let her in the Dark Tournament. Of course, if Kuwabara hadn't given her the stinkin' cell phone… But, I'll admit it. He's not Keiko, but after the whole Mirror Ritual of Doom, Kurama and I are pretty wrapped up in each others lives. Not that we actually have a bunch of heart to heart chats, or anything. Kurama's way of putting it to Koenma was "We provoke, rather than collude." My definition is "Who needs discussion? Either I trick him into doing what I want, or I flip him off!" Historically, the scores show that Kurama has been doing more of the 'tricking' and I have been doing the 'flipping off', but we all have our strengths. Whatever gets the job done, I say.

But, yeah. Thanks to our selfless acts and an inconvenient habit of caring for the other one more than important things, (like life, liberty, victory and the pursuit of happiness,) what happens to one, matters greatly to the other. His life is my life.

Of course, Kurama almost didn't have a life, after that little stunt Hiei pulled. Hiei, (who, if I'm not mistaken, did not even know what was going on,) decided to drop that Shuichi kid over the side of the cliff, and that was just dumb. Kurama's reaction to that was absolutely spectacular. Oh, no, that's not sarcasm here. He managed to raise my blood pressure to obscenely high levels as only Kurama can, and plunged off the cliff.

So, now we had two Shuichi's overboard.

I'm not sure what Kurama thought he was going to do. Kuwabara claims that Kurama can metamorph into a butterfly, but I don't believe that for a second. It's more likely to think that he was trying to do something crazy with his plants to save his step-brother, but he seemed to contract Alzheimer's in addition to rampant insanity. You see, for some mysterious reason, he couldn't form plants.

Mysterious? Not really. It happened in the Dark Tournament, too, though that was a while back. Now, personally, I think that a battle against a dude whose idea of flirting is to blow you to smithereens would be hard to forget, but Kurama did. He forgot a rather important factor in that battle, that sadly, applied to this one, and that is that his demonic aura is weak and erratic when he's on the verge of dying.

In layman's terms, it doesn't work so well.

And since Hiei had just run him through with a 2x4…

Now, this where Puu's hero act suddenly went sour. After displaying amazing foresight in rescuing little Shuichi from a nasty fall, he managed to neglect big, falling, redheaded Shuichi.

Yeah, Big Shuichi went splat.

Actually, it was the most awkward sounding 'splat' I'd ever heard. Possibly due to the fact that the 2x4 in his chest was five feet long before the fall. It was a lot shorter when we set about dragging him back to the compound.

Luckily, Kurama's like me, and also pretty hard to kill. Plus, he's also got that neat little talent of bouncing back whenever he does kick the bucket. But, despite all this knowledge, after hearing that weird 'splat', I decided to conduct an experiment and see if Hiei had the ability to resurrect himself after death. I guess I'll never know, because it turns out he's also pretty hard to kill. Go team.

I wish I could say the same for the people on that bus I threw him through. Of course, only one actually died, and Koenma brought her back, under a bit of duress. The rest of them will have to be healed, once Ayame and Jorge finish with the memory wipes, the paperwork, the cover story, etc. I vote we make Yukina do it all. It is all her fault.

At which point she'd say it was Kurama's fault, and I'd say it wasn't either, and she'd say I was right, and it was really my fault, because I'm the one who told Kurama, and I'd say Kurama usually just knows everything anyway, so it's not my fault, which would bring me back to square one and the lecture would begin again.

Such a headache. I can tell this story isn't making any sense to you. It's barely making sense to me. After all, I still haven't said why Kurama is so mad at Yukina, or why Hiei loathes Kurama.

The more I think about this, the more apathetic I get. Usually the opposite would happen, and I'd get madder, but… well, the damage has already been done, you know? Even if we got back at Little Miss Ice Princess and her cell phone, we'd still have the problem that we can't deal with…

And now that problem is coming up the walkway, in the form of Shiori Hatanaka, née, Minamino.