Began: August 2008

Hello! This is a fanfiction that came about in a relatively unique way from most of my other ones; basically, I wrote the most gruesome part of the fic first, intending that to be the first chapter. I was going to build from there. But, I got stuck on the second chapter, and then I overhauled the entire thing. Now, the storyline is essentially the same, but the order of events is quite different. Anyway, due to the rating restrictions on this site, I've had to edit this story severely. If you would like to read it in all its glory, please use the link on my profile. Enjoy!

Defeat and Victory

Part I: When We Were Kings

Things were not normal in the life of the Spirit Detective and his friends. Kurama was the first one to mention it, but the others came to the same consensus; things were strange. For starters, there was the fact that they had not been on a mission in quite some time. That in and of itself was just plain weird; Koenma made a point of sending them out to do the stupidest stuff whenever he could. Recently, though, he had almost been avoiding them, refusing to meet them at all. Kurama could pinpoint almost the exact day that things had changed; the day that his mother mentioned him giving her an excuse for being missing for several days. This by itself was not the strange part—he often had to make up excuses for his absence during the middle of the working week because of the missions that he went on with Yusuke (until they had abruptly stopped, of course.)

The odd part was that Kurama remembered neither giving this excuse nor going on a mission the week that his mother specified. Initially, he had believed that he was confusing the date, or that she might have been. After all, that had been at least a few weeks ago, and he was distracted by schoolwork and she by her job. However, when she pursued the notion, Kurama began to think that perhaps he had missed something.

"Kuwabara. Kuwabara, wake up," Keiko said, poking the boy in the ribs as he lay sleeping on his desk. The teacher eyed them with a frown and turned back to the board where he was teaching the quadratic equation.

"Now then. Negative B, plus or minus the square root of—"

"Kuwabara!" Keiko hissed, and that snapped him out of it. He sat up, yawning quietly, and rubbed his eyes. This was perhaps the third or fifth time that he had fallen asleep in school this week; he had lost track. Keiko frowned, and when the bell rang, she stood up slowly.

"Are you feeling all right, Kuwabara?" she asked. It was much like Yusuke to sleep in class (when he bothered to show up,) but Kuwabara was usually a decent student if not distracted. Recently they hadn't gone off to do anything dangerous—could he be bored of normal life?

"Yeah, I'm just really tired." The tall boy yawned yet again, proving his point. They began to leave the classroom under the watchful eye of the teacher, and set off down the hall together.

"Are you not getting enough sleep?" Keiko asked as they turned down a new hallway.

"I'm not getting any sleep at all," he admitted, to her surprise.

"Why not? I thought you and Yusuke weren't busy at all these days," she said, wondering if Yusuke was lying to her again. The thought was enough to make her heart sink.

"I keep having these nightmares . . . it feels like someone is trying to tell me something, but I don't know what," he said quietly, his thoughts introspective and curious. Keiko had not known Kuwabara to be so upset by nightmares unless they involved a ghost of some sort.

"Have you talked to someone about them? Maybe Kurama would know what's going on," she suggested, waving goodbye not long after as she went into the girl's bathroom. Kuwabara decided that she had a point.

When Kuwabara came to him, Kurama asked him to describe the dreams in vivid detail, as best he could. The boy's face screwed up as he tried to remember every bit of them. "It's all flashes of images, so it's hard to remember exactly what I saw."

"What is the overall impression that you get from these dreams?" Kurama pushed. It could very well be that whatever was haunting Kuwabara's sleep had something to do with Kurama's own troubles. He had not yet discussed them with the other team members, but presumably, they all felt some sort of discord, as well.

"Fear," Kuwabara said at once, "and anger. Mostly fear, though. If I had to describe it, I'd say that it feels like . . . red," he finished lamely. Kurama peered at him somberly as they sat on cushions in Kuwabara's bedroom. Shizuru was home, but probably not paying them any mind. Luckily, they had found a place to talk in private; Kurama was not sure that anyone else should overhear these thoughts.

"Red," Kurama repeated slowly. It meant absolutely nothing to him, and he had no idea what it might have to do with the dreams. "Describe what you see."

"Well, I see red," Kuwabara began. He paused, and then pushed on. "It's hard to describe. There's a black hole in it, though—I remember that. It's like a dark abyss, and I think it leads to Hell."

"Is it a trench, or the mouth of a cave?" Kurama asked. Kuwabara frowned, his eyes on the floor.

"Neither . . . but it's more like a trench, I think. I also see . . ." his eyes closed very tightly, ". . . a-a girl. She's not wearing any clothes, but she's s-scre . . ." Kuwabara began to struggle, his throat bobbing up and down as he swallowed. Kurama placed a soft hand on his shoulder, bringing him back. "Sorry," he said weakly. "It's so powerful . . . the fear is like a blanket."

"No need to apologize," Kurama said, his own heart beating quickly. Kuwabara's empathetic powers made for an intense amount of emotion; he felt what others felt, even when the situation did not call for it. Sometimes he needed to be brought back—always gently, and with a smile.

"The girl is screaming," Kuwabara said, now keeping his eyes open. When he closed them, it was too easy to see it all again. "The only other thing I see is black hair—long black hair that kind of hangs from the sky. And then it fades to red before that gaping hole, and then . . ."

"You wake up," Kurama finished. Kuwabara nodded, and his friend could faintly see beads of sweat on the boy's face. This was tearing him up; whatever spirit had come to him in the night (for Kurama knew without a doubt that it was a spirit haunting him—no mere nightmare could bring such a reaction) had undergone such a tragic event that even Kuwabara could not handle it. "Is there anything else?"

"Guilt," Kuwabara said, with an air of finality. "There's always guilt when I wake up."

"Guilt?" Kurama asked, his interest piqued. That was something he had not foreseen. "Can you tell why you might feel that?"

"No, but I know that it's my own emotion. I can't help but feel the same way the spirits do, but the guilt is not from the spirit. It's mine," he said slowly. Kurama rubbed his chin.

"How can you tell this?"

"Feelings are different when they come from ghosts. I don't have a context for them, so they usually don't make sense, even if I don't understand why they don't. This guilt, though . . . it makes sense to me, even if I don't know why."

"I see," said Kurama, though he really didn't. "I think it's time we talked with Koenma."

The ogre received a stamp to the forehead for his trouble. He immediately ran off to wash off the ink, which was semi-permanent and would make him the laughing stock of the office if it stayed. Koenma, meanwhile, left the stamp where it sat and knocked a stack of papers off his desk, just for the sake of it. Then he screamed for Botan.

"Koenma, sir?"

"DON'T 'SIR' ME! Yusuke is coming!"

Botan, for all of her grace, was flabbergasted. "Yes, I know he is, sir . . . I'm going to pick him up any moment."

"YOU CAN'T BRING HIM HERE!"

"Koenma sir, you're going to have to deal with this sooner or later," she said wisely, picking up stacks of the white paper and setting them back on his desk. He watched her, seething, his tiny fists clenched as hard as he could.

"I WILL NOT DEAL WITH IT!" he screamed, and flung himself on the desk. He pounded it with his hands and feet, kicking and screaming and rolling around and generally making a giant fuss. Botan watched him for a few seconds before slamming her own hands down on the desk, waking him out of his fit.

"Koenma, you cannot afford to act like a child! I am bringing Yusuke here in ten minutes whether you pull yourself together or not!" she said, and huffed off. He peeked up from his sprawling position on the desk before sliding off onto his chair again.

"She's right, ogre," he said solemnly as Jorge moved to finish picking up the papers. "Izanami's ghost is missing, Kurama is bound to start realizing what happened any day now, and we've still got a rogue demon on our hands," he said, moving the stacks of paper so that he would be able to look at Yusuke when he arrived.

"How long do you think you'll be able to keep this ploy working, sir?" Jorge asked, more for something to say than for the answer.

"Not long, ogre. Not long." He was afraid of that.

Yusuke arrived just after eleven, with his good friends in tow. Koenma had expected no less, but it did not make things any easier. In fact, he would much have preferred not to have Hiei present, at the least. The fire demon already looked murderous as they traipsed in through the door; apparently, he either knew what was going on or had guessed. "I'm glad the five of you are here," Koenma said after Botan left and closed the door. Yusuke looked around, counting heads. He knew little of why they were there; sure, things had seemed a little off, but he had chalked that up to a lack of action.

"There's only four of us," he said slowly, frowning at Koenma as though he was mentally unstable. Koenma gestured to Kuwabara.

"No, Yusuke. There are five. Iza?"

"Yes, sir," Kuwabara said. They looked over at him to see him with a very confused look on his face and his mouth pressed together.

"You may come out now," Koenma said, and a change came over Kuwabara. He tightened every muscle in his body before relaxing, and a small, silvery spirit came from him. It floated, barely visible, to Koenma, who touched it gently. The spirit materialized—sort of. It began to look like a person in shape and form, but it lacked color, and any real substance.

"This is Mikoto Izanami, Iza for short. You four have met her before," Koenma said, as the spirit bowed. They saw now that it was a girl; wearing a school uniform, she looked to be only slightly younger than they were. Luckily, she wore none of the scars that she had received upon death.

"We have?" Yusuke asked, puzzled. Kuwabara's jaw dropped when he finally got a good look at her.

"That's the girl from my dream!" he said, finally coming to the realization. She would have blushed if she had had a body.

"I'm sorry I had to invade your consciousness, Kuwabara," she said, bowing to him again. He looked at her for several minutes, his mind making connections that he had been looking for. Kurama envied him.

"An explanation, Koenma?" he asked, though this sounded almost the opposite of a question. The baby paled, reeling back in his chair as though he had been struck.

"I . . . you see . . ."

"May I tell the story, sir?" Iza offered, her voice coming through loud though she had no vocal chords or throat or tongue. Koenma gave her a long, long look. After some internal deliberation, he nodded to her.

"It began a few weeks ago, just after school . . ."