Disclaimer: Pixar owns everyone except the family tree I made up for Luisa. This first chapter is exposition, but this is the only time this will all be explained, so bear with me.

Chapter 1: Catching Up on the Family Tree

It was the first collaborative effort Miguel had ever made with his cousin Rosa. Which they both felt quite proud of, as normally, they bickered as if they were siblings. Which they practically were, what with growing up in the same home and all. And after Miguel returned from his night in the graveyard (at least, that's what he'd told his family had happened), he had made it clear that family was so incredibly important to him now. His success in bringing some life back into Mama Coco's eyes convinced his abuelita to lift the ban on music, and they had even listened to Coco and Miguel recount Hector's life, bringing him back into the family and restoring his picture on the ofrenda. But for Miguel, it wasn't enough. He wanted to do something more. So, for Mama Coco's 100th birthday, he enlisted Rosa's help to put together a comprehensive family tree, going back as many generations as they could on the Rivera side, and expanding the tree to include the families of those who had married into the Rivera family.

Actually, when he'd casually mentioned to Rosa that he would like to do something like that, she was the one who became excited and insisted on starting right away. After all, neither of them knew how much longer their great-grandmother had, or even if she would make it to her 100th birthday in a few months. So the cousins pooled their resources, including their savings, went to the local library, and registered for an online ancestry database. It took months of researching and hunting down the smallest leads, right up until the deadline, but at Coco's 100th birthday party, the two were able to present a beautiful printout of the Rivera family tree going back to the early 1800s, and including branches to other families, such as those of Rosa's mother and Miguel's mother. Those portions were incomplete, the cousins admitted, but the focal point was always intended to be the Riveras. Mama Coco was able to enjoy the gift for a moment before becoming tired again and settling back into her normal, relaxed state. But Abuelita loved the gift, and couldn't stop gushing over it. She said she would have to find a way to display the tree in the ofrenda room.

And that was supposed to be that, with Miguel and Rosa continuing their research casually, as they had the free time to do so and were thinking of it (they were both pretty busy these days, adding music lessons on top of school and work). But there was something about his research that Miguel couldn't get out of his mind. He added footnotes about it in his music journal, and the thought kept him awake many nights. Even after Mama Coco passed shortly after her birthday, Miguel couldn't get his mind off of a certain dead end in his research into his mother's part of the family tree.

His great-grandfather on that side of the family was born out of wedlock to some B-list actress, and no one knew who his father was. In fact, Miguel's research had presented him with only a name for this once-aspiring thespian who had appeared by all accounts to have been cut off from her family: Josefina Mendez.

Miguel couldn't silence the nagging thought that if it had taken that much digging to uncover the identity of his great-great-grandmother, that perhaps she had already been forgotten. Or at the very least, she was in danger of being so. His fears were only worsened when, while pestering his mother for any information she had on her side of the family, he'd been told that hardly anything was known about the mysterious relative other than that she played small roles in small movies. Her son had been eventually surrendered to a convent, and was fostered by the very family into which he would eventually marry. His story had turned out very happy, but he never did learn what had ultimately become of his mother, despite searching for her for years as an adult. Marco was his name. He was regarded as the patriarch of the Mendez-Rodriguez family, whence came Luisa, Miguel's mother. Miguel did learn that Marco preferred going by Rodriguez rather than Mendez. Which told him that his great-grandfather had been somewhat conflicted about his loyalty to the woman who birthed him.

But Miguel wasn't one to just give up on a family member, no matter how disgraced they were. He spent the summer and early fall doing as much research as he could on Josefina Mendez. He learned that her resume included small supporting roles in two or three of Ernesto de la Cruz's films. But as de la Cruz was now disgraced after being outed as a thief and accused of murder (Miguel, of course, couldn't prove the claims, but once the story of Hector's death came to light, people became very suspicious of de la Cruz), there weren't many people left willing to talk about the work they might have done with him. And they certainly couldn't remember an actress named Josefina.

As Dia de los Muertos approached, Miguel considered giving up. With no leads left to follow, he was convinced it would be too late to save his great-great-grandmother anyway. She had almost certainly disappeared from the Land of the Dead by now.

It was a chance encounter that led Miguel to the biggest lead he'd had in his search so far, and it was all thanks to his music.

An agent from Mexico City was having car problems while traveling through Santa Cecilia one day, and he happened upon Miguel working out the final notes on one of his songs, which Miguel wanted to have finished before Dia de los Muertos, so that he could be sure Hector and his deceased family would hear it right away. The agent liked what he heard, and the next thing Miguel knew, he and his father were on their way to Mexico City to record the song. It became a local hit, and Miguel would later receive the first check he'd ever made on his talent.

While in Mexico City, Miguel was introduced to a music studio owner whose father had, as it happened, been a gaffer on some of de la Cruz's biggest movies. And this studio owner recounted a story during a lunch break of his father's observations of de la Cruz's behavior toward women. Miguel expected tales of gushy romance, which wasn't exactly his preferred genre. But what he heard instead was disdain. Apparently, de la Cruz was quite the womanizer. He regularly manipulated his girlfriends into gaining favors for him, and he was never faithful to just one girl, having on and off flings on the side. One of his one-night-stand dates was a lovely backup dancer by the name of...Josefina. The studio owner recounted how his father had told him that Josefina was fired from the film a month later, after telling her boss she was pregnant. De la Cruz never came to her defense, and she disappeared from show biz after that.

Armed with this knowledge and all the notes that went with it, Miguel returned home with a plan. He was going to find out what happened to Josefina, even if it meant going to the Land of the Dead to do it. And, of course, Miguel knew from experience the best way to get into the Land of the Dead. All he had to do was steal something from one of his relatives, explain to them his mission, complete said mission, and get their blessing to go home before sunrise.

Easy, right?

AN: I am omitting accents and Spanish punctuation, as they are really, REALLY annoying to continuously copy-paste whenever I need them, and my computer does not provide any shortcuts to type them in (I've tried; the shortcuts they list do not work). I will make an exception for the ñ, as it's more important to the pronunciation of a word than an implied accent.