Shadows and Lies Author's Notes WARNING: These Author's Notes are possibly the longest (and silliest) ones ever posted on the Internet. Read them at your own risk. As Peter David likes to say, you could skip them and not miss much of anything important, but I must warn you, as a responsible and evil citizen, if you do not read them, you won't see the secret message at the bottom. Disclaimer: All characters in this story, with the exceptions of the shadows, Kuroi, and Eitaru, are shamelessly stolen from the show Yuu*Yuu*Hakusho. In addition, certain parts of the story involving pan-dimensional physics might bear a striking resemblance to the writings of Mercedes Lackey, the ones that involve elves and racecars. No infringements of the rights of the creators or distributors are intended, and we'd like to beg that they please not sue us; we're in college, so we're poor enough already. That said, here are the rest of the credits. Sionna: I would like to thank the Academy...no, wait, Kristin already used that joke... Okay, I HAVE to thank Kristin Huntsman first off, or else she'll do nasty things to me. Thanks go to her for addicting me to Yuu*Yuu*Hakusho in the first place (I have to think of something to return the favor someday...), dreaming up a large chunk of the plot to this story when I was charging aimlessly into the netherworld of plot purgatory (or Makai as the case may be...), allowing me to turn her side stories into actual scenes in the story, lending me all of her really neat YYH stuff to copy pictures from, and generally coming into my room at all hours to torment me. Kristin: Only after she started tormenting me by leaving me off at cliff-hangers EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Still, I suppose I got back at her, because I got worse at tormenting her than she ever was at tormenting me. Sionna: Yeah, I was supposed to be the evil one, and then she got better at it than me... Kristin: I learned from many sources, among whom were my mother, grandmother, younger sister, and, for my doctorate, Sionna. Let me tell you, folks, this woman is evil incarnate. I just know it, she's going to find ways to torture me over the summer, too... Sionna: Like my projects that are currently either in the process of being written or are slowly boiling in oil in my brain? Such as, for those in the audience who are actually crazy enough to read this, a Ranma 1/2 - YYH crossover tentatively titled "The Invasion" (until I can think of something better, that is. Titles are not my forte), and another YYH crossover with the X-Files (No, I'm not a fan of YYH, really! What gave you that idea?). Also coming up as soon as we can write it is Shadows and Lies 2...HAHAHA! Suffer, Kristin, suffer!!! Kristin: No, don't hurt me, Kodachi, please...waitaminnit. Sorry, wrong story. Yeah, well, she can't write it without me. So HA! Anyhow, my other projects are "Kurama 1/2", _my_ YYH - Ranma crossover, which is _completely_ different from "The Invasion", and my _other_ YYH - Ranma crossover, "Yuu*Yuu*1/2". Yeah, I know the title isn't very original, but I'm too busy writing it to bother with thinking up a cool title. I'm also slowly finishing another couple Ranma lemon stories - a two-parter called "Just Friends". Ah, summer is such a wonderful time to complete writing projects in... Hmm...maybe I should write stories from some other series one day... Well, to do that, I'll have to see more anime first! [insert expression of glee here] Sionna: Yeah, I know how much you _hate_ watching anime, after all the times I had to drag you kicking and screaming into my room to watch YYH episodes. Especially the ones with Kurama featured prominently in them. :) I suppose I should stop rambling so much and actually thank people... High on the list is Aaron Arce, for letting me borrow all of his YYH tapes and frantically try to watch them before the end of the school year. (And his TV, and his girlfriend to write this with. And letting me keep the tapes for a ridiculous length of time while I watched parts of them over and over again.) Kristin: Yeah, especially the parts with Kurama... She made me watch them with her, too. She wouldn't let me alone in peace for a single minute when there was a YYH tape anywhere near her VCR. I thought she was my friend! How could you do this to me, Sionna?! I blame you for everything! You're evil!!! Sionna: Oh no you don't...just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm responsible for _everything_. Partial blame must also fall on the shoulders of...hmmm...wait a minute. This story was _my_ idea... damn, I am responsible for this! I'll just have to live with the infamy...We also have to thank John Blankenship for tolerating our nasty habit of sending him six chapters (or more) at once to proofread. We have to thank him even more for actually proofing them. I personally want to thank my younger brother Dylan for actually reading this before I had to go home and beat him up, and reacting to the story favorably. I also want to thank Beowulf Rochlen for putting up with my sudden obsession with this project, and letting me ramble on about it to my heart's content. And my roommate, Rachael Souza, for not defenestrating me, even though she had both the opportunity and the motive several times during the course of the year. (The window's right there, after all...) Kristin: Hmm...she covered all the major players... Oh, well. I thank Aaron and John, too, for 1) putting up with me, 2) proofing this and other stories, and 3) there is no number three. As for who else... Okay, I thank Uncle Glenn for giving his 15-year-old niece the first tape of Bubblegum Crisis during one long, boring summer, and forever changing her life...my parents for more-or-less putting up with my addiction, Roy Rim for asking _me_ to proof his stories, Danyaw Chen for actually listening to me ramble on about YYH for pages on the 'Net. I suppose I have to thank Sionna after all, for coming up with the scenes that started this craziness, and for listening to me when I told her about a dream I had that continued where she'd left off...this entire story has jacked my anime dream percentage up to at least one a week, usually YYH. And the final thanks go to...my plants, all named after various YYH characters. Funny, though, all my killer ferns are named after the cheerleaders...Botan, Keiko, and Yukina. It's my fig plant that's called Kurama... Sionna: Gee, she's even thanking her _plants_...does that mean I have to thank my cat? No, my cat's not black...(You'd have to have read Kurama 1/2, sorry...) But I _do_ have to thank my dad, because he's the one who turned me on to anime in the first place. A-ha! It's partly HIS fault! He's also the one who, when I confessed my dream of being a writer, told me to go out and do it rather than try to steer me away because writing doesn't make any money. (ESPECIALLY writing like this. Too bad, I happen to love this kind of stuff. Oh well, money isn't everything. The pure joy of being evil is better.) Kristin: Oh, really? I thought it was the pure joy of in-jokes... I swear, the two of us now speak our own language: Shadowese. No one around us can understand the references, 97.3% of which are ours, the remaining 2.7% of which we borrowed from other YYH sources. And for a closing word, which only Sionna will probably get (yes, I have to have the last word): "Yum!" For anyone who is still with us, we hope that you had as much fun reading this story (and Notes) as we had writing it. If you did, please let us know. Our addresses are: for Kristin, 71411.1046@compuserve.com. For Sionna, tardis@cats.ucsc.edu. Comments, questions, and criticisms are all welcome, except questions like "Why did you waste our time with this?" And flames need not apply. And for anyone who DID have as much fun as we did, I must inform you that it's illegal. And, without further ado, THE SECRET MESSAGE!!! ************ TOP SECRET ************ There was no Chapter 13. Kristin's Y2K addendum to Author's Notes: Sionna and I have changed our e-mail servers and can no longer be reached at the above addresses. Her current address is kurayami@yahoo.com and mine is nataku@earthlink.net. Sionna, BTW, hates getting e-mails asking her to finish her unfinished stories (the reason she took all unfinished works off her page). Her website (vastly superior to mine) can be found at http://syne.simplenet.com/Starshadow/index.html while mine is located at http://home.earthlink.net/~nataku/main.html. We now live across the country from one another rather than just across a dorm hall. This makes cowriting harder, so "Dreams of Shadows" (the sequel) has been put on indefinite hold. Though our interests have grown and occasionally diverged in the five years since we started into fanfiction together with the question of "Sionna, *why* is Kurama attacking Yuusuke in this scene you just wrote?", we both still hold a deep and abiding love for YYH. P.S. Though the ferns were lost at some miscellaneous point, Kurama the ficus tree is still alive and vigorous. Perhaps I should name all plants for Inari's disciples?