Misinformed
chapter 1
by Mousse K

Name: Mousse K
email: mousse@crosswinds.net
site: www.crosswinds.net/~mousse/
category: Conflicts

Oops. Sorry about that last one. Didn't know that the forum didn't support HTML. Oh well. All you're losing is the one link to the endnote...Here it is:


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Standard disclaimer applies. Urameshi Yusuke, Kuwabara Kazuma, and Hiei were created and are trademarks of Yoshihiro Togashi and Jump Comics. Ginny Seta was created and therefore belongs to by Ginny S. Saitou Eiji is copyrighted © Ginny’s Friend 2000. Oh yes, and in case you’re wondering, Edanoshi Ryoma is my own creation. Please don’t use the last three without our permission, and please don’t sue if you own the rest.
 
Reader discretion is advised… not that there’s anything in here that needs it…
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A Yu Yu Hakusho fanfic by Mousse K
 
Misinformed
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A humongous Panasonic digital clock on a glass-lined Tokyo skyscraper hit 2:00 as the railroad-crossing bar slowly angled up toward the clear blue sky. The air was crisp and warm, the perfect day for a walk. That was probably why so many people were out that day. Pedestrians, cyclists, and cars crowded every square centimeter of the avenue leading to the commercial district, overflowing the sidewalks while shuffling past the department stores and office buildings lining both sides of the street.
 
Six stories up from the streets, several figures stood at the edge of the observatory floor of a Seikyuu department store. One was a rough-looking high school student with gelled black hair in a t-shirt in jeans. Next to him stood a taller red-haired man dressed in a Meiou High School uniform. The first was leaning over the metal railing, staring down at the streets, watching the moving mass of colors below with amusement. The second stood next to a pay-telescope, staring out into the blue.
 
“Kurama, you should take a look at this! I’ve never seen this part of town so crowded! There’s got to be a thousand people down there...”
 
Urameshi Yusuke looked up to see Kurama’s deep emerald eyes was focused into the void. He waved his hand in front of the redhead’s face, with no response.
“Hey, Kurama, wake up! Earth to Kurama… Come in Kurama…”
 
Yusuke was too busy trying to get Kurama out of his trance to notice the “Yusuke, catch!” or the two incoming cans of Coke. Yusuke’s lightning fast reflexes allowed him to grab one out of the air, but he didn’t react quickly enough to prevent the other can from hitting Kurama square in the back of the head. Fortunately, Yusuke did react quickly enough to prevent Kurama from toppling over the railing. The two glared at the perpetrator who had thrown the projectiles, who innocently scratched his head and apologized with an “oops”. Kurama looked as if he was about to kill somebody.
 
“What the hell was that for?!?” burst out Kurama, scaring the wits out of the nearby Yusuke.
”Well, at least you’ve finally come out of that daze,” replied a completely composed Ryoma, shrugging his shoulders as if he had done no harm. Kurama tried to throw himself at the bushy-haired student, but Yusuke restrained him before he became the primary witness to a first-degree murder.
 
After several moments of kicking, screaming, and resisting, Kurama came out of his murderous rage and reverted to his calm, rational state. The fox-demon’s head dropped, and the usually brightly lit face of Minamino Shuichi became dark and solemn.
 
“I’m sorry about that Ryoma. It’s just my biorhythms acting up again,” he said, almost sobbing upon realization of what he had done.
“D-Don’t worry, Kurama!” comforted Yusuke in a much-forced cheerful tone, “It’s not your fault that you’re doing this, right? I mean Yomi’s the one responsible for your body’s screwing up, right? Right?”
 
Ryoma popped open his coke as he stood there, not even bothering to console his friend.
“Let him be, Yusuke. It’s enough that he has to get over the fact that he went and killed you while he was in psycho mode. You don’t have to remind him of Yomi and his…”

Ryoma had his sentence cut short by Kurama’s bursting into tears. Yusuke helped him to a nearby table, while giving Ryoma a ‘now-you’ve-done-it-you-idiot’ look. The bushy haired bishounen quietly slipped away wearing his trademarked expression of innocence. Ah, it was one of those days…
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 
About ten minutes had passed. Kurama finished drying his tears as Yusuke used his coke can to keep the bump on the redhead’s cranium from becoming any bigger. Ryoma was sitting at the next table over, playing solitaire with a deck of faded cards.
 
Dark gray clouds had filled the once clear blue sky, and the number of people on the roof of the building began diminishing quickly.
“Looks like rain. Come on, Kurama. Let’s go inside.”
Yusuke and Kurama filed toward the stairs. As they left, a few raindrops splattered on the dull tiled surface of the floor, and Ryoma hastily gathered up his cards and shoved them into his khakis’ pocket. He just managed to scramble inside before the rain had him completely soaked.
 
“Damn. This blows,” complained Ryoma as he ran his hand through his thick black mane, “We should’ve checked the weather forecast before we came here.”
 
“Yeah, I think I hear the weatherman giving his report. He says there’s a ‘90% chance of precipitation with a 100% chance of Ryoma.’ Yep. That did ruin our day.” The angry sarcasm in his voice was probably sharp enough to penetrate Kuwabara’s thick head. “We came here so that we could make Kurama forget about that little murder incident, and all you’re doing is making things worse!”
 
“Oh, look who’s talking, Mr. Had-a-screaming-fit-the-moment-Koenma-revived-you. You’re the one who was screaming ‘I’ll have that fox’s head for this!’ for an entire week after that! You’re the reason we couldn’t get this over sooner, you little…”
 
“ENOUGH ALREADY!”
Kurama’s sudden outburst silenced the two and startled almost everyone else passing through the hallway. Shoppers stood and stared, forcing the embarrassed trio to quickly shuffle into a corner. “Please, don’t argue,” said Kurama, almost whispering. “You’re making my headache worse.”
 
“And whose fault is it that you have a headache in the first place, Kurama, my very best friend?” Yusuke put his hand on Kurama’s shoulder, and sneered at Ryoma. Ryoma narrowed his eyes and leant up on Kurama, putting his arm on his other shoulder.
 
“So Kurama, buddy, whose fault is it that we’re here again in the first place? Hmmm?”
 
Kurama looked as if he was about to pass out.
He never got the chance to, though, because a loud cry followed by a shrill scream snapped the three to attention. Several panicking customers ran out of a nearby sushi bar.
“Help! Somebody call an ambulance,” one of them shouted.
 
Kurama, followed closely by Ryoma and Yusuke ran inside the cozy bar to find a twenty-some year old businessman sprawled on the floor. Both his hands were at his neck, and fresh blood streamed from his mouth. Yusuke rushed to the body, preparing to perform first aid. The teenager tore the man’s hands off his neck, and replaced them with his own hand. There’s still a pulse. He put his free hand over the victim’s mouth.
 
“Shit. He’s not breathing. I’m gonna do rescue breathing.”
Yusuke bent down to put his mouth to the victim’s, but a firm hand stopped him.
“Kurama… Why are you…?”

”Do you smell that?” he asked, a serious expression on his round face. Yusuke sniffed the air around him, though he detected nothing.
 
“It’s the smell of almonds. It’s probably potassium cyanide. Clean his mouth out before you do anything.”
 
Yusuke looked around, and grabbed a nearby glass of lemonade. He tore out the straw, tossed out the ice, and held it close to the victim’s mouth when another hand grabbed his wrist.
 
“Don’t use that! Use this instead,” shouted Ryoma, shoving an open carton of milk into Yusuke’s hands. “And when you resuscitate him, put this over your mouth,” he said, handing him what looked like a dentists’ modeling cast.
 
Yusuke did as he was told, pouring the contents of the carton into the victim’s mouth, flushing it out, and using the mouthpiece to perform mouth-to-mouth at an incredible pace. Kurama cringed at his own helplessness, itching to conjure up an antidote for the toxin but being unable to because there were too many humans watching him.

Thanks to the scene, though, no one noticed Ryoma calling the police on the cell phone he had ‘borrowed’ from a bystander.
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 
“We believe the toxin used was potassium cyanide. The dosage wasn’t lethal, but it did enough damage to his throat and lungs that we had to put him on a respirator. He’ll probably be okay. Good work, boys. If it weren’t for you, we would’ve had to call the morgue, not the paramedics.”
 
A police investigator tipped his cap toward Yusuke and Kurama before he excused himself to the crowd of officers surrounding the crime scene. The two gave the officers uneasy smiles and turned their backs to them Since Kurama had always been terrified of policemen and Yusuke’s had enough run-ins with the law for five lifetimes, both were too afraid to do anything but sit at the counter of the restaurant and wait until their turn for interrogation came around.

”Shit. I’ve never been so nervous in my life,“ Yusuke whispered the redhead, who was as still as a corpse undergoing rigor morits.
 
“Don’t do anything to attract their attention, Yusuke. I don’t need my kaasan finding out about this from anyone, from a newspaper or from the police.” Kurama was getting lightheaded just thinking about what kind of a reaction his mother would have if she found out her perfect Shuichi was involved in a crime scene. Kurama’s tightened the grip on both his closed fists, turning his knuckles sheet white.
 
Yusuke wiped the sweat off his brow with his shirt. He looked at his surroundings for the first time since he entered the sushi bar. It was a small restaurant, with a counter and six or so wooden tables. The decorations lining the door and walls were all very ocean-ish. A net hung on the wall near the entrance, large plastic fish and sumi paintings of fishing boats colored the wall opposite the counter. There was a large glass window where the fourth wall should have been, through which one could see a panoramic view of the city of Tokyo. The floor was tiled in white and blue specks. The room looked like it was ripped out of a fishing boat.
 
Then there was the table with the body. A white line was taped over the outline of the victim, who had been taken away by paramedics only minutes ago. Nearby were a pair of disposable chopsticks, fragments of a glass soy sauce dispenser, and the remnants of a few tuna rolls. Four oaken chairs were strewn around the entire mess, which in turn was surrounded by a dozen uniformed police investigators.
 
“Ugh. We have to get our minds off of this.”
Yusuke racked his brain for a topic of conversation.


”Say Kurama, why the hell did Ryoma stop me from using lemonade on that guy?”
”What?” Kurama looked puzzled.
“You know, I tried to rinse that guy’s mouth out with lemonade, and he stopped me. What was that for?”
 
Kurama’s usual air of confidence began to come back to him.
“Oh, that. Lemonade is acidic and it has grains of sugar floating in it. If you poured that into his mouth, you would have just caused more damage. That and milk has a lot of protein in it. It helps heal the cuts and scrapes inside his mouth.”
 
Kurama’s calm, composed tone helped Yusuke relax a bit. Both of them became a little less stiff in the joints as they continued talking, in much less hushed voices.
 
“What really bothers me is why that man ingested the poison at all.” Kurama had his hand on his chin now. “You normally wouldn’t have anything like potassium cyanide sitting around a restaurant, and from the looks of the people who were around that man, none of them should have had such a deadly toxin.”
 
Yusuke was the one looking surprised now.
“People who were with that man? Who… How do you know who they are?”
 
“Hm? Oh, over there.” Kurama motioned to five people sitting three stools down the counter. “They’re the other people the police rounded up for interrogation. You were probably too busy saving the guy’s life to notice, but they’re the others who were sitting at the table.”
 
Yusuke leant back to take a good look at the group Kurama was talking about. The first must have been the victim’s girlfriend, because she was a fountain of tears. She was wearing a young, slender woman wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She carried a leather purse on her shoulder and wore a gold wristwatch on her right hand. There was a handsome gentleman, probably in his mid-twenties, consoling her. He wore a shirt and tie, and had a professional-looking office haircut.
 
A seat down sat a muscular college student. From his physique and short hair, it was pretty easy to tell that he was an athlete. Probably a soccer or baseball player. He sat with his head in his unornamented arms, looking as dark and gloomy as the sky outside. Next to him was a rough-looking guy in a leather jacket. Unlike the others, he wasn’t facing the counter, but leaning back against it. His hair was unkempt, and he was dribbling cigarette ashes all over the floor around him. One didn’t need to look twice to see that he was probably just some rich playboy. A teenaged girl in a waitress’ uniform occupied the stool next to him at the end of the counter. There was a very apologetic expression on her face, which was almost parallel to the table. She looked very shy and reserved, as could be told by the hands clasped together in her lap.
 
“Yusuke, look. Here comes Ryoma.”
 
Ryoma maneuvered gracefully through the tables, his hands in his pockets all the while. He pulled a chair up from one of the tables so that he was facing his two friends. As he did, he pulled a notepad out of one of his pockets, and a pen from the other, then tilted his wooden chair back on its hind legs.
 
“Before I tell you anything, let me ask you a question. Yusuke, did you wash your mouth out after you gave that guy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”
 
“Yeah, but it wasn’t really mouth-to-mouth. I used your mouth protector so it shouldn’t matter, should it?”

”Well, it doesn’t really, but you might be happy to know that you did.”
 
“Why?” Yusuke demanded.
 
“Because I couldn’t find the little plastic cover piece for that rescue breathing unit, so I used a condom instead. It should work just as well, but I’m not sure.”

Kurama and Ryoma stared as Yusuke’s face turned white, then red, then green. Yusuke put a hand over his mouth and made a break for the bathroom door.
 
“Hmph. I don’t know what he has to worry about. It was new.”
Ryoma scratched his head and flipped a few pages in his notebook.
“Yeah, um... In any case, I got some interesting details from one of the kanshiki over there. The victim was Shota Morinaka, age 26. He’s a programmer for a software company three blocks away. He came here with four of his friends and they walked into this restaurant to get lunch. According to the chef that was working the counter, they were here for about 10 minutes before Morinaka stood up, coughed up blood, and fell on the floor.”
 
Ryoma leant back a bit more as he turned a leaf in his notebook.
“They’re questioning the witnesses now, so we’ll find out who those guys over there are soon,” he said, pointing the eraser end of his pencil at the group down by the other end of the counter.
“Until then, I won’t have anything on who did what when.”

”I do have something from the guys about the toxin, though. They swept the entire area and all of the victim’s belongings, and found traces of potassium cyanide on his right index finger as well as both ends of one of his chopsticks. Oh yeah, there was some on the floor, too, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, the guy fell on it. It probably just rubbed off of somewhere”
 
By now Kurama was already leaning forward, his chin resting on his clasped hands. The police, the witnesses, and the entire restaurant faded away as he concentrated on Ryoma’s every word.
 
“There’s one slight problem though. They don’t know where the poison came from. The patches of KCN (it’s the chemical symbol for potassium cyanide. I’m short on time here so I’ll just abbreviate) on the chopsticks were shaped like his fingerprints...”
 
“Which means he touched the chopsticks after he dipped his finger in the poison,” stated Kurama, with his chin still resting on his knuckles.
 
“Right. And so far, they haven’t found the source of the KCN. All they know is that it was mixed in with some petroleum jelly for substance.”
 
Ryoma sighed and flipped his notebook closed.
“That’s all I have for now. All we can do is sit and wait till they finish questioning everybody.”


The teenager shoved his notebook back into his pocket and the chair back under the table. He then sat down on the stool next to Kurama.
“Want a drink? I don’t they have any wine here, but…”
 
“How about we lay off the alcohol for now, eh?” Kurama interrupted, sweatdropping, “The police are watching. Besides, there’s work left to be done.”

”Work?” The expression on Ryoma’s face was a mix of interest and displeasure.
 
“Yeah. Look. Remember what I told you at the party last week at Kuwabara-kun’s house?”

Ryoma shuffled through his mental Rolodex for the answer to Kurama’s question.
“Wait, was that when you got drunk and started howling at the moon? I think I remember something about it. You said something about making that Hiei Hatanaka guy your lover?”
 
Kurama’s face turned beet red as he frantically glanced around to see if anyone was listening. Thankfully, no one was within hearing range. He quickly corrected Ryoma before he could blurt any other private information out to the public.
”No, I told you about my being a fox demon remember? And you know what foxes are known for, right?”
 
“Oh yes,” Ryoma mocked with a smirk on his face, “insatiable sex drives? Oh no, wait, it must be the…”
 
Kurama glared at Ryoma, who quickly shut up. The fox cursed himself for referring to the incident in the first place. He took a few moments to regain his composure before he continued.


”Foxes are known for their acute senses.” He pointed to the crowd around the table. “If you can manage to get some of those officers away from there, and I can sniff out the source of the poison.”
 
“Feh.” Ryoma rolled his eyes. Kurama was a good friend, but his occasional gaudiness was sickening. He glanced at the hand-carved clock. “I can buy you five minutes,” Ryoma sighed, uninterested, “Do whatever you like.”

Kurama smiled. “Thanks, I’ll be back in a few.”
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 
Yusuke meanwhile was busy attracting some attention of his own. He had his mouth wide open as he faced the metallic bathroom mirror, scrubbing his tongue with a paper towel in between rinses and expletives. The few customers who were in the public washroom quietly shuffled out so not to incur his wrath.
 
Screaming out incomprehensible gibberish, Yusuke kicked open a vacant stall and sat down on the toilet seat. He reached into his pocket and drew out a pack of cigarettes. Thanks to his transfer to what must have been the most competitive private school in the area, he hadn’t been able to smoke for weeks now. For a few seconds, the delinquent turned student stared blankly at one of the two-toned rods of tobacco. Shaking his head, he shoved the light orange end of the cigarette into his mouth and lit the other end. Yusuke took a deep breath, pulling about an eighth of the cigarette into his lungs.
 
Yusuke blew a perfectly circular smoke ring. He watched the smoke particles scatter as all of the anger within Yusuke dissipated as well. Ah, there’s nothing like a nice stick of nicotine to calm one’s nerves. Yusuke quickly finished off the cigarette with a few more puffs. He tossed the butt into the toilet and kicked the flush lever as he unlocked the stall door. With a fluid motion he stuffed the pack back into his pocket, swinging his body out the door. Only the clinking of a small glass bottle made Yusuke turn around to see the toilet overflowing.
 
“Ah shit,” he muttered under his breath. This kind of thing always happened at the worst times.
“Who the fuck put this in here, anyway?” he asked himself as he knelt down to examine the bottle. It was a transparent tubular vessel, something that resembled a 100mL beaker with a giant rubber stopper stuck on top. The bottle was cracked a bit near the rim, and the entire thing was full of water. Floating in the crystal clear water was a moisture-absorbing packet from a box of chocolate chip cookies.
 
Yusuke stared at it blankly. “What the hell is this?” He poked at the jar with his foot, causing it to roll further into the expanding puddle on the floor.
”Maybe Kurama will be able to figure something out. He always knows about this kind of stuff.”
 
With that he slipped out the door, leaving the out of order toilet out of control.
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 
“Well, how did your little sniff search go?” asked a slightly disheveled Ryoma.
 
“Very nicely!” Kurama was beaming “I found at least five other objects in the room with traces of poison on it. By the way, great job on the distraction. How’d you manage to find a shoplifter to chase around on such short notice?”
 
Ryoma used his hands to comb a tuft of hair back into place. “There’s an entire row of stores across the hallway.” He motioned toward the small shops on the other side of the hallway. “All I had to do was walk in to each one, and find someone wearing a trench coat. Shoplifters are all really stupid. They don’t think people are going to suspect something when they waltz around wearing a heavy winter coat in 75-degree weather.”

He tried to comb his bushy hair straight, but to no avail.
”Damn, it’s all puffy now. Kurama, would you happen to have something to…”
 
“Yo Kurama! Come here for a sec!”
Yusuke’s upper body called from the half-open bathroom door. Kurama ran up to him almost immediately, leaving Ryoma behind with his mess of black hair. Yusuke let his red haired partner into the empty bathroom.
 
“Kurama, what do you think of this?”
Yusuke led him to the stall he was just sitting in. He crouched down and tried to show Kurama his findings. Kurama, however, was too busy staring at the gallons of water pouring out of the porcelain bowl in front of him.
 
“Yusuke, what the hell is this?” He involuntarily swore.
 
“Never mind that. I need you to look at this,” Yusuke pointed toward the bottle.
 
“Yes, but this is vandalism! They could fine you for this!”
 
Yusuke shook his head.
“Forget it, Kurama. Look at the bottle.”
 
Kurama reluctantly turned away from the overflowing toilet bowl. He gently picked the container up between his fingers, glanced at it, and put it back down. The fox demon had never seen something like it before. Where did it come from? The drugstore? No, they wouldn’t put anything in glass. Grocery shop? No, it’s too small for food. Then what…
 
Kurama’s thoughts were interrupted by the slam of a door. He slowly turned his head to see Ryoma, still wrestling with his hair.
 
“What are you guys doing in here? What’s…”
 
The entire room suddenly fell silent. Yusuke and Kurama slowly looked up at their partner. Ryoma’s lightly tanned face was unusually pallid, and his light auburn eyes were affixed on the bottle on the floor.
 
“Yusuke,” he began in a shaky voice, “do you know the number to the nearest hospital?”
 
“Yeah. Why? Are you sick or something? ‘Cause if you are, I can drive you there…”
 
There was no response. Yusuke was worried now, and began to panic.
“Let me call the hospital,” Kurama suggested helpfully, “What’s the number again?”

Yusuke practically yelled the numbers into his friend’s face. He paused to give Yusuke a look of annoyance before dialing the number. As Kurama punched in the digits, he turned to Ryoma once again.

“So what do you want me to tell them? It’s about the guy who was poisoned here, right?”
Ryoma responded in a harsh voice.

“Yeah… It might be too late now…”

He turned to look Kurama straight in the eyes.
“Tell them they’ve been misinformed.”

-=-=-=-=-=-=-
End of Chapter 1


Kanshiki are the crime scene investigators that do all the on-your-knees dirty work in an investigation. They lift prints, check for toxins and their chemical contents, and basically act as the eyes and ears for the police detective on the scene.

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