Disclaimer: I don't own YYH (pooey). Oh well…
Warning: Um…action violence…I think that's all Kurama's age is an approximation. It's supposed to be set after the Three Kings Saga.
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Chapter One:
Shuichi Minamino, or Kurama to his friends, was twenty-years old. He was a manager at his father's company. He was good with statistics and strategy. That's not all he was good at.
There were few humans that knew what Shuichi Minamino was capable of. They'd learned either through accident or trust. They knew that he wasn't completely the quiet red-haired adult that was portrayed on the outside.
They knew that a part of him was Youko Kurama: a fearsome, bloodlusting, silver-haired demon who cared for no one. However, not even his friends knew about the internal struggle that happened daily inside of him. Youko was endlessly trying to take Shuichi's body over permenantly, and Shuichi was putting up a valiant fight to keep that from happening. It had helped that Kurama had stopped taking the Idon potion to transform him into a demon, but Youko wasn't going to be suppressed without a fight. Kurama himself was confused as to who he was anymore. Had there ever, truly, been a Shuichi Minamino, or had he just been the creation the human woman Shiori?
Why did it seem that he had to keep getting involved in bloodbaths? That just made it easier for Youko to resurface. Gama…Gamemaster…Shigure…
…Karasu
The death of that crow-demon was perhaps the one that most heavily weighed on his soul. There was no question in his mind that his only chance to survive had been through Karasu's death, and yet…
Karasu's memory continued to haunt him. After all this time, he still had nightmares in which he was ambushed by Karasu. At other times, he had a strange dream in which he found Karasu in a deep forest. Though it was hard to tell through the mask, the other man seemed to be crying.
Nande?
Nande?
No matter how many times he asked, Kurama never got an answer to explain the strange, almost electric-like current between him and his deceased demon foe.
Koenma was filing through stacks of papers. It had certainly piled up over all these years of spirit detectives, Dark Tournaments, Sensui, the Makai Tournament, revolution…
Some of the records were half a decade old.
"Botan!"
The blue-haired ferry guide rushed into the room, trying to avoid tripping over lopsided stacks of legers everywhere. "Yes, Koenma-sama?"
He threw a folder at her. "Would you please go take care of this soul? The file says that she's been dead for years. Why hasn't she been picked up yet?"
Botan studied the folder and sighed before replying, "We've tried, Koenma-sama?"
"What?"
Botan turned the cover of the file to face him. "This girl, Mitsuru Takei. We've been trying to bring her to spirit world for years. No matter who we send, she always rejects the offer to leave Ningenki."
Koenma rubbed his temple. "Why not?" It was unusual for spirits to reject death for as long as this one had.
"She says she's waiting for someone."
Koenma scoffed. One of those. Distressed spirits were troublesome. They clung to life, waiting for someone or something to happen, sometimes without knowing that the person they waited for was either in another country or had died themselves. "Well…just do something!"
"What can we do, Koenma-sama? She's stubborn."
Stubborn? That phrase had a familiar ring to it. A wicked smile stretched across Koenma's face. "Get Yusuke to do it."
"What? But, Koenma-sama…he hasn't been spirit detective for years!"
"Just get him to do it…for old times' sake. He was always the womanizer…I doubt he would pass up one last chance to persuade a lost, female soul."