Well, of course, some snot-nosed punk from the class right next to theirs had to come over and disrespect Kirishima's new girlfriend, acting like he was great and tough, so Kuwabara had to defend the girl's honor. And of course, it ended up as a bare-knuckle brawl on the school roof during lunch hour, and both boys were found by a teacher passing by who promptly suspended them for two days. So it was only obvious what Kuwabara would be reduced to: wandering around the commerce ward of lower Sarayashiki, stopping at every arcade he could to play as many rounds of pachinko he can manage before the owner saw him -- still in his scruffy blue school uniform -- and unceremoniously kicks him out. It's old hat to a delinquent like Kuwabara; the only difference is that his posse, loyal band of men though they are, were not with him. Even Yusuke freaking Urameshi, toughest and roughest of all brawlers in Sarayashiki Middle School, unofficially voted most likely to headbutt the principal come graduation (if he ever passes junior high), was still stuck in class, trying to make good for his sweetheart Keiko (even if the both of them would never admit to it).

He ended up grumbling and shuffling into a nearby udon shop and scarfing down three bowls of the hot noodles in soup before seeing the lucky cat staring at him from the window.

"D'you see that cat out there?" Kuwabara ended up asking the old man behind the serving bar, who looked at him like he was crazy. He looked back to see the lucky cat smirking at him, practically daring him to come out and challenge him. The teen punk was torn -- on one hand, he loved cats of all shapes and sizes; on the other hand, that moving, living lucky cat looked like he (or she) was fixing for a fight.

The push of brawn won over the pull of emotions, and soon Kuwabara was in the open doorway of the udon shop, staring down the lucky cat, eye-to-eye . Kuwabara eyed up the cat contemptuously: round face with red marks; white fur with a grey and orange pattern; four stubby legs; circle of white for a tail; a collar with a bell on it. All that was missing for the full lucky cat look was one paw beckoning him closer, the other holding a gold coin closer to his stomach. The cat eyed him back and made a low noise that sounded like something between a growl and a purr. It was on.

Kuwabara couldn't help the words that came out at that moment, lost in the oncoming bravado of a fight (even with an animal), one hand already pointed rather sharply at the feline: "Do ya feel lucky, cat? Well? Do ya?"

Imagine his surprise when the cat snorted and narrowed his eyes with equal contempt at Kuwabara. "Seriously, kid, is that the best you can do?"

"Oh man, another demon?" Kuwabara screwed up his face into a look of frustration, cheeks brightly flushed. "Just my luck, too!" To be fair, the cat looked nothing like any of the other demons he'd encountered so far; even the beasts in Maze Castle didn't try to trick him by disguising themselves as fluffy pets meant to be petted and coddled, not kicked into oblivion.

The cat reared back, as if about to pounce and scratch Kuwabara's face off, only to be pulled back by the scruff of its neck by a wrinkled hand. Kuwabara looked up from the cat into the face of an old man, his skin pale peach and wrinkled, with blue eyes that seemed to be deep with a white glint. White hair under a knit cap matched the long beard that came down to the middle of his chest. The man's grey-and-blue muumuu-like clothes seemed abstractly foreign.

Kuwabara watched for a moment as the man looked on with a pleasant face, smiling calmly even as he kept his grip on the cat, who howled and hissed and flailed around as an attempt to escape; with all the supernatural things he had ever seen since stumbling into the bureaucratic side of the spirit world, this one had to rank rather high on his personal list of life's oddities. Especially since there was something about the old man, some kind of strange aura about him, that suggested something hidden beneath his elderly exterior.

"Let go of me, you hack of a wizard!" the cat spat out, eyes narrowed in anger. "Don't touch the body of a major ayakashi like you're my equal!"

He smiled sweetly despite the verbal abuse. "Dear Nyansei--"

"Madara!"

"Yes, Madara, that is your name, which will come in handy when I seal you back into the shrine you came from, hmm?" And with a 'pop', the man disappeared into thin air, leaving Kuwabara behind, jaw hanging open like it had been unhinged.

For a few seconds he stood there, deathly still, letting the Japanese autumn air blow through his pompadour with ease. Then he ran back into the ramen shop, the soles of his shoes making an unearthly pounding noise on the floor, and slammed his hands on the food counter, barely startling the man behind it, who was back to cleaning out food bowls and cookware with an uninterested look on his face.

"Did you see--"

"Didn't see nothing. Now are you gonna buy some soba or are you---"

He felt a sizzle of electricity slam through his spine. Something was happening. Kuwabara flew out of the door in a rush, leaving the owner hanging in the middle of a sentence; he just sighed, shook his head, and went back to work while muttering about foolish youth.

The old man was back, only a few meters off the spot where he had disappeared, brushing off a sleeve with a brisk hand movement, looking calm as can be. The bottom hem of his cloak-cum-muumuu seemed to have been dusted in specks of dirt and mud, as if he had been kneeling on the ground and the fabric trailed through it as he moved. He did not notice Kuwabara running onto the sidewalk, and had moved from dusting himself off to inspecting his face dutifully with a compact mirror he had pulled out of the folds of his clothes.

"Oi! Old guy!" Kuwabara saw the man turn his head toward him -- blue eyes, deeper than anything he had ever seen -- and continued. "Whaddya do with that cat? A-and where did you go with the demon?"

"Demon?" The old man chuckled, making Kuwabara feel even more uneasy. "That was no demon, dear child, it was a simple spirit, gone back home. But, what does a young man like yourself know about demons?"

Kuwabara could not help himself; he puffed out his chest and grinned victoriously. "I'm a spirit detective. I fight demons for a livin'." Well, technically no, especially not according to Koenma's standards, but he wasn't about to tell Old Man Wizard that, not in a million years.

"And why do you fight demons?"

The young man took a step back; the question literally blew him back an inch. He had yet to really think about it. Fighting was in his veins -- from startling a tussle in the sandbox to throwing a punk into a locker until his legs bent backwards -- so when he developed his sense of spiritual energy and officially entered the world of spirits, it only made sense to start rumbling with the thick-skinned oafs with horns that messed with him (or Yusuke).

Kuwabara looked at the old man. "Because they're bad and someone needs to put them into their place. Right?" He wasn't looking for validation, not really.

The old man smiled warmly. "You have so much yet to learn, young man." He rummaged around in his pockets until he pulled out what appeared to be a thick knobby stick. "However, the world is not divided into black and white, and your mind's intentions cannot be spent on only fighting. There are greater aspirations to be had, yes, those of the mind and of the heart."

He couldn't help it --- Kuwabara made a "gag me" face. This was the kind of talk he expected from Keiko, maybe, or one of the old timers from his apartment complex -- not some old man who kidnapped talking spirit cats, someone who could vanish in the blink of an eye and make you shudder through your very core. "Are you kidding me, old man?"

The man just laughed again, his voice like wind chimes in spring. "No, I haven't the time to kid." He raised the stick up and Kuwabara saw a piece of paper, small and thin like parchment, appear above him. He jerked his wrist, and English characters began to form from an unseen source of ink. Kuwabara's English was crummy, so he couldn't tell what he was writing -- or, for that matter, how.

'Oh shit, is he a Spirit Detective?' Kuwabara began to panic as the man sky-wrote onwards without interruption. 'Is this some kind of test? Damn it, Yusuke, you didn't say there'd be a test!' Like English, tests was another thing he was usually a failure at, unless there was some kind of compensation at the end.

"Who are you?" Kuwabara demanded. "Are you with Botan or something?"

The man flicked his wrist, and the note shuddered, folded itself into a tiny square, and landed with a flutter in his outreached hand. "I'm not sure who you are talking about, but I can assure you I do not work for the current bureacracy in the Spirit World -- although we do have, from time to time, relations." Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a young woman by the name of the Dimensional Witch to visit, and I owe her the price for a wish."

"W-wait!" Kuwabara ran forward and -- he couldn't even believe himself afterward -- grabbed the man's sleeve. "But who are you?"

He looked into Kuwabara's eyes, and the young man was frozen in place. He dimly felt the man's sleeve leave his grasp, like sand slipping through a sieve but cleaner, more fluid. "Never mind who I am, it's who you are that should be your concern." He chuckled as he pocketed his wand, his scrap of paper. "Besides, what would a young man with such strong spiritual energy as yourself need with a hoary old conjurer like Albus Dumbledore?"

And then he was gone, leaving Kuwabara struck dumb on his feet, unable to hear the pop that accompanied his Disapparation or the old shopkeeper yelling at him from the doorway about his bill.

There are greater aspirations to be had, yes, those of the mind and of the heart, he could not help but reflect on these words shortly afterward, as his TV set showed the flickering image of a blue-haired maiden and Kuwabara, for once, followed his heart instead of his muscles into a whole other world of troubles