Start Date: Friday, May 30 12:03AM
Title: Of Raindrops and Bloodshed
Chapter 1: Fear Not Death's Smile
It was getting cold out. Ameko zipped up her sweater and looked around. The streets of Tokyo were filled with people of all ages, who all had different stories. Even through all the noise, it seemed nearly silent to her. The wind played with her short black hair, blowing it back and tousling about papers that littered the sidewalks. The forecast this morning said it was going to rain. I should've brought an umbrella. Oh well. The skies were the color of steel, and foreshadowed the weather to come. It was all trivial though, the place she was headed was only a few blocks down anyway.
Botan stood in the alley between two shabby old buildings. An elderly woman in a hospital not too far from her current location was about to pass away, and it was her duty to escort the spirit to the river Styx. She felt sorry for the old woman, but she knew that her good life on earth had earned her a place in the Spirit World where she would be happy. She was beginning to get a bit bored, and her mind wandered to all the people who would would eventually meet either her or one of the many other ferry girls. It was a depressing job, but all in all Botan kept a smile and stayed chipper.
Ameko was looking around, icy blue eyes absorbing the scene around her. She walked right past the suspicious-looking Botan, without even noticing her at first. But then she did a double-take, staring at the odd girl with blue hair and a pink kimono. Botan looked over to meet her glance, and jumped back a little. "Crazy tourists." The teenage girl muttered out loud at the grim reaper. Botan was shocked. Did she just see me? But how? That's impossible! Only the dead can see me right now!
Once she got around the corner, the skies decided to open up and let down the beginning drops of the storm. Ameko cursed silently under her breathe, reaching for her keys. Running up a flight of metal stairs, the small girl sounded like a stampede of wild horses with her erratic and heavy movements. Unit 5. That was her apartment. Unlocking the door, she stepped inside and quickly shut out the outside world and it's bad weather. Her apartment was nice, albeit a tad small. It was perfect for her, though, because she lived alone. Ameko kept the place very neat, not something often expected from a girl who graduated high school only a mere year ago. But that was just her way of doing things- she was always far more intellectually mature than her peers, which is what led to her loneliness. Sitting down and turning on the TV, it was about to be movie time.
"Koenma sir, can you hear me?" Botan called into the communicator. "Loud and clear Botan, what's up?" The ferry girl nervously explained to her boss about the living girl who had seen her. Something like this was a supernatural occurance. "Should we investigate this?" she asked. Koenma told her to return to her job, and he would send someone to try and track her down and figure this out.
In record time, Koenma had her file pulled up from the millions of records he had. Scanning over it, he noticed absolutely nothing out of the normal with her information. Just as he was about to put it
away, something caught his eye. "She's suppose to die soon, in roughly one month. This may have some sort of tie to the incident." Looking down further, the noted cause of death said 'Unknown'. These kinds of cases popped up every now and then, but they were more frequent to people who had died decades ago- back when the record keeping wasn't as efficient. Nowadays, it wasn't something that was seen all too often.
Back in Tokyo, the weather had significantly worsened. The sky was blackened, and rain pelted the earth with no mercy. And just as the movie was getting good, the power went out. "Aww man!" Ameko cried, "Great. There goes my entertainment. I should call Yusuke and see if he had power over on the other side of town." Ameko and Yusuke had been friends through highschool, and kept in touch afterwards. They hung out on occasion, but neither was a huge presence in the other's life.
She found her cell phone and called the former Spirit Detective. He did indeed still have power, and invited her over to enjoy it while it still lasted. During this time, Koenma had contacted Botan with the information he had found and told her to forward it to Yusuke in hopes of getting him to agree to help them out. The ferry girl flew to his house, and quickly briefed him on the new case. "It's not high priority, but if you notice any suspicious behavior, please tell us right away." She informed him. Even though the incident happened hours earlier, Botan couldn't get the image of the strange girl out of her mind. Her eyes were so piercing. It was like she could see right through me. I'm getting goosebumps just picturing her.
Just as she had finished wrapping up what she had said, a knock could be heard from the front door. Yusuke jumped up to answer it. The door swung open to reveal a dripped wet Ameko. "Lemme in it's freezing out!" She joked around with him. Botan froze. It was the girl from earlier.