Full Story Summary: Kazuma Kuwabara was the worst punk Sarayashiki Junior High at age 14. His only competition to becoming the king of street brawls was a loner, named Yusuke Urameshi, a loner with incredible skill in street fighting. A brawl between the two leads Kuwabara to the spirit fairy, Botan, or the Grim Reaper. Having died unjustly at Urameshi's hands, Kuwabara is offered a chance to regain his life through the various authorities of the Spirit World and its leader, Lord Koenma Junior.

Shorter Summary: Kuwabara, the worst punk of Sarayashiki, is beaten mercilessly into his afterlife by Yusuke Urameshi, and encounters the Grim Reaper, Botan. However, he is given a second chance to resolve things and get even by becoming a Spirit Detective.

"Sagas" are large sections, such as the Spirit Detective and Dark Tournament sagas, that cover a massive expanse of the storyline.

"Arcs" are medium sections that cover small, important events and fillers, like the Rescue Yukina story that encompassed a few episodes.

"Chapters" are small sections of the story that collectively tell the plot itself, you understand these obviously.

Spirit Detective Saga
Deadly Ignorance Arc

Running in a crowd
In a faceless town
I need to feel the touch of a friend.


In the countryside
I wander far and wide
The isolation gets me again...

I don't know where to go
When I feel like crying
Oh my!

It's time to open myself
Do something new
I want to stop...
and grow up a bit!

Then suddenly, my power and confidence
starts swelling up.
Magically erupts
And it's all because of kindness that I feel
From people I don't even know!

Then suddenly, my intuition and my wisdom grow
And then I know
But most of all I sense compassions that's real
Thanks to strangers where ever I go...

Thank you

for waking me

up!

Prologue
Bad Day

"Gah."

Kazuma Kuwabara, age 14. Waking up to the sky's dull, tasteless aroma passing through his gums freely without any restraint of physics. He turned, and screamed the air out of his lungs for a good minute as he realized that he was now floating meters above the ground, above a gathering of people plus a couple of paramedics. He wiped his mouth clean of the terror-doused drool dribbling down his chin, the cause of which was floating just as he was, only somehow farther in his way. Kuwabara's tired eyes fluttered at the sight of light pink garments, an animate oar, and a large crimson sash fastening the kimono's reversed position, worn by a blue-haired goddess who extended her hand to him.

Her touch was deathly strange, he understood that the moment his flesh touched her, but somehow, his first guesses began to vanish as his own vision reached back to her, thanking her for the help while subconsciously questioning her integrity. She seemed to giggle at this as she covered her mouth with her long, beautiful sleeve, her kimono shifted in synergy with her bountiful blue eyes. Kuwabara's face ignited...

"Bingo!" she chimed responsively, like she was reading his thoughts, and even the thoughts he hadn't thought of yet, "I'm glad to see you've grasped it so quickly, if only we met under more official circumstances Kuwabara!"

Her voice was enchanting, almost mystical as if her slender, clothed kimono was encasing him in a field of pink flowers. He tried to breath, but remembered that his body no longer needed the oxygen, it merely flowed through his brain, the idea of breathing, and gradually pushed itself out. He was too caught by this woman's beauty to concentrate on the fact that he was floating higher and higher, no longer needed to breath, and was feeling ever more light-headed.

"Umm...is there something wrong?" the woman, holding her hidden hands below her nose, asked him.

He dashed at her, making her hop in surprise as he gently clasped her wrists and held her softly, using little power to draw her closer to him and embrace her genuinely. He kept his eyes shut and envisioned her delicate, precarious form sitting sidesaddle on the floating oar, and welcomed her eyes into his when he opened them, ignoring the started tremor of her irises as he whispered warm words to her. She leaned away, letting him collapse only to float back up in the air, shivering and floating back to where she was, more than disturbed by his action.

"I'm sorry Kuwabara, I don't think that's in my job description, now um, please hold on for a second!"

"But I...wait a mi-" he studdered, the feeling of nausea and illusion began to overcome him, "Oh...my-m......AAAAA-HAAAAA!!!!"

He was screaming, but she gestured for him to stop as he began to fall, stopping and dropping with every individual scream. He came at a stop, only ten feet away from "landing" on the rooftop of a building, a house populated with three teenagers and an adult who were watching television. He gazed inside, levitating over their backyard, and watched as they were occupied with watching a sports commercial. The angel woman descended to his side, grabbing his arm and towing him upward above the house.

"Kuawabara, listen!" she ordered, finally irritated at the constant intervening.

He wanted to apologize for whatever he'd done to upset her, but could only manage a stupified expression.

"Am...am I dead?" he asked, in a very stellar tone. The oar-riding female nodded silently.

"Yusuke and you are rivals right? Well, unfortunately, you and your friends didn't emerge so lucky from that last brawl." she explained, succinct despite the clear eerie feeling of awe and rage the street gang leader was experiencing, "Yusuke sent you head-first into concrete, your consciousness managed to squirm its way into a pain-free zone, which is why you're up here with me right now. But you're skull didn't survive the hit, you're body was totally trashed and couldn't take the trauma, which must be why your ghost popped out of there so quickly."

She whipped out a tiny booklet out of her sleeve, casually opening and switching through each page. While she searched for the right chapter, Kuwabara gazed at the city he had once been so famous for, the overhead view gave him a lasting solace as he progressively replayed and accepted the fact: He was dead, corporally-challenged, living-inept. He didn't know what those words meant, of course, but they sounded fitting coming from his sister, Shizeru, who he recalled threatening him as a kid for messing with her room. Those threats always sounded so childish, his mother had always told him he would never die on her, even though the reverse had happened so shortly afterwards.

Tears ran down his cheek, but he brushed them against his uniform as the woman's voice called to him.

"Ah, there we are! Kazuma Kuwabara. Age 14. Sarayashiki Junior High, your case is quite common but rare in this city individually. You were brutally assaulted and killed by another human. Oh...I'm terribly sorry, Kuwabara." she read, face on the verge of breaking just as his was.

"Nah, its alright. We all have to die when our time comes, but if we go out doing what we love, we don't got regrets." the words seeped uneasily, in truth he was covered in regrets, doubts, and wishes. "That's me, I went out fighting....But I CAN'T BELIEVE I LET A PUNK LIKE URAMESHI KILL ME. GRR...DAMMIT....DAMN IT!!!! AAGGG....!!!!-grr...a.h.." he sobbed, throwing his arms down below his legs, punching invisible concrete.

"Kuwabara..." the woman whispered under her breath, slowing her descent as Kuwabara raised his arm.

"Say, forgive me...for not using my ...You already-" his voice cracked, "You already know MY name, what should I call you? Your too pretty to be that Grim Reaper guy."

"Ha ha." she chuckled, "I don't know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment. Botan's my name, pilot of the River Styx! When people die unexpectedly like you just did, often they can't accept it and become a ghost like you just did!"

"Err, wait. If I'm a ghost, does that mean no can see me and I can go an' haunt houses and stuff?" his voice said, enthused.

"Well, erm, yes, technically. But that's why I took this job. My job, like you said the "Grim Reaper", is to keep ghosts and apparitions from wreaking havoc in the living world. Ghosts are usually kind people like yourself, but there are evil spirits who try to spawn Chaos everywhere they go. I take the Departed to Spirit World, where their lives are evaluated and they are sent to a happy afterlife or a miserable, painful one. Kuwabara, the truth is, we weren't scheduled for you to die so so early, all of our intelligence cleared it that Yusuke would never have the power or will to actually KILL you, you were supposed to come out of this with a bad back and a week out of the gym. We don't have a place for you yet, that's why I have to keep you here in the Living World for a while."

"Gck-WAAHT!?" Kuwabara cried, throwing his arms in every direction except at her. Botan forged a grin as Kuwabara raced around, vulnerable more to his own emotions than the realization that he may never see his loved ones and best friends ever again. She still had yet to tell him the bad news on the living side of things...

"Kuwabara, come on, don't act like a baby. You were bound to be seriously harmed when you started street fighting, Yusuke probably bent your spine on more than one occasion. Its a miracle that you've survived thus far."

"A-NO WAY, BOTAN. I'M SORRY, BUT I...I CAN'T TAKE IT. IM GONNA GO POUND HIS STUPID FACE IN. THAT'LL SHOW HIM, AAH, JUST YOU WAIT URAMESHI!! IM FINALLY GONNA BEAT YOU, YOU'LL SEE. Oh wait a minute, NO YOU WON'T, HA!!"

Botan watched Kuwabara as he dominated the ability of flight and speeded down the uptown street, without a clue of where his long-time rival had even gone. She didn't bother call out to him, merely tracking his feint spirit energy as he combed the city, screaming obscenities and threats at the missing Urameshi. Six minutes of searching passed, and Kuwabara finally seemed to tire. That was when she reappeared, pulling on his shoulder as he looked into her concerned eyes once more.

"Kuwabara, I'm afraid I have bad news and good news for you." she exclaimed sadly.

"Ha....ha....ha...ha.....ha...what is it....Botan? I have to kick Urameshi's square butt halfway across the city! Grr...I KNEW it, hee's hiding from me! He's scared 'cause he knows he can't beat me now! YA CAN'T HIT WHAT YA CAN'T SEE URA-"

"KUWABARA." Botan yelled, smacking him in the back of the head. He turned to her finally, content on listening, "I'm trying to tell you this, but you're not making it easy. Yusuke may have driven you into the pavement a little too hard this time, but you're a GHOST now. You can't go running off like that and picking fights with him anymore, besides, with Yusuke's sudden power increase, you wouldn't stand a chance."

"It doesn't MATTER how much power he has, if you're quicker and invisable, then all that powersa' waste!" Kuwabara rebutted.

"Look, the point is, I may not have a permanent place for your spirit right now, but I can still take you to Spirit World. If you go there, there's a chance we can get your life back and you can train to beat Yusuke!"

He gazed at he sky, and then back at the ground. 'What does she mean "Spirit World"?'

"Alright Botan, if I go to this Spirit place or whatevar, can I see my parents?"

"What?" she gasped, "You mean you don't want to come back to life?"

He nodded, "Fighting Urameshi and beating him was my one purpose in life, I thought beating him would make me invincable. But my life's over, even if I didn't die the way I wanted, I have to commit to other things in my afterlife. I lost my mom when I was only 9 years old, and my father went and left my sister and me at an orphanage until I was a teenager and Shizeru could afford to get us our own house. If the punk isn't dead yet and I have to wait a few more years to pound his face in, then so be it, but I can still my mom right?"

"I'm sorry, Kuwabara. Even if I could locate your mother on the etheral plane, spirits who have already received judgement from Lord Koenma and King Yamma must stay in their chosen realm unless given permission otherwise. The only other way to see her would be to unbalance the River Styz, which would simultaneously destroy the world as we know it, heh-heh....er..."

Botan sighed as Kuwabara's face lit up like a cherry, the devious, good-intended thoughts running through his mind were made true as he said, "Wait, so if I could beat his King guy and unbalance his operation, I could see her!"

"No Kuwabara-"

"Oh, don't worry Botan! If it's about fighting a King, all I have to do is land him one good fist where the sun doesn't shine! He-he, and then I'll throw him off a cloud and let him fall, an'-" He interrupted brashly, running off several violent ideas and running around in the air.

"NONE OF THOSE WILL WORK." Botan screamed impatiently, "Come on Kuwabara, you have to think this out. A person with your track record and morals has a below-average chance of getting into a Joukai 天国 world. But even if you do get accepted, it could take years to travel the entirety of Tentou with so much as a hint of her existance. If you complete our ordeal and get your life back, you'll have at least seventy years of good health to correct what few regrets you have and get even, and then have all the time in the universe to seek her out in the proper world."

Kuwabara wasn't listening. He was floating above a soda machine and was searching his pockets for quarters or a spare dollar, and began to panic when he discovered that all of his lunch money had vanished. He searched the area for anything he may have dropped while floating in the air, but soon resorted to yelling and punching the soda machine, each jab missed and made him scream as he passed harmlessly through the machine's metal exterior. He wailed and thrashed, helpless as Botan floated overhead, sighing.

"Darn it, howm' I gonna fight some big king and an' army if I don't have any energy, come on!"

"Alright Kuwabara, you can spend some time as a ghost at your wake. I'm going to do some investigating elsewhere and then return to Spirit World to report in, I'll be back to hear your final decision later." she exited, emphazing her "later" with a sweet-sounding voice as she flew off into the sky, leaping over a cloud and thinning into nothingness. Kuwabara ignored her, still throwing his fists back and forth on the unresponsive soda machine.

OOO

"Urameshi."

"Rrrr...." the mild-mannered 14-year growled, hands shoveling his pockets as he stomped down the uptown sidewalk. He kicked a discarded soda can into the road, scaring off a couple of skipping Sarayashiki students who recognized his menacing attitude easily. Two other men in dark blue senior uniforms jumped out from the separate crosswalk, another leaped out from the building he'd just passed. And right on cue, the leader of the street-fighting idiots himself appeared in the center of the street: Kazuma Kuwabara.

Kuwabara looked exactly the same way he did in almost all of thier confrontations. He wore a light blue, yellow-buttoned school uniform with the Sarayashiki school design pinned on his right shoulder, obviously something he didn't wear unless it was for a brawl. He considered himself the chief fighter of Sarayashiki and subconsciously probably would be if Yusuke hadn't been born. His friends would follow the same tactic: Let Kuwabara get beat, then surrender to his awesome power just to succumb to the fool's ambition the next day.

"You caught me...on a bad day...Kuwabara." Yusuke mumbled, his fists shook red.

Kuwabara gasped as Yusuke bolted at him, he reached a speed that had to be superhuman as he vanished from Kazuma's eyes, his left arm wailed the auburn-haired student in the chest and again in the knees. His friends were stunned and watched in horror as their leader was mercilessly beaten, in a manner far more violent and fierce then usual. Yusuke ended his assault by lifting Kuwabara over his shoulder with one hand, delivering another quick punch and smashing his jaw out of place, and then chucking him at the raised cement wall nearest him.

Kuwabara's skull dented the wall. Akubo screamed, racing off from Urameshi only to be caught by his nape. Yusuke vanished again, this time with Akubo, and returned without the victim teenager. His hair flared silver-white, brine with an almost unnatural fire of age running through his heightened locks. The other two took off in any direction, but Yusuke laughed and brought them to the hardest pits of the asphalt.

Blood stained his hands, the scent seemed to snap him from his blood-craving as his eyes calmed and he regained his prided grin as Kuwabara's foolish action in challenging him, this "battle" made one hundred and fifty-six wins and zero losses Yusuke. But it wasn't a moment to celebrate, no, because his eyes widened when he realized that two of Kuwabara's friends had disappeared entirely.

'That Akubo guy would never leave Kuwabara in the lurch...' Yusuke questioned mentally, looking around for any sight of them. People began to surround him, but he saw it as just another crowd wondering what had happened to the "poor boy on the pavement".

"W-wh...what the h-hell!?" Yusuke shrieked, spotting one of the gang members stretched out over a telephone box. His head had been impaled and wound up with the payphone's own cord, the rest of his body was strung up in the entanglement and slumped underneath it, trapped. His expression was made even more meaningless, however, as he saw Kuawabara's sprawled form smashed against the sidewalk, the blood in his cheeks exploded along with several other teeth.

"Oh my god...did I hit him too hard or something?" he whispered, staring blankly at Kuwabara and the people surrounding him. Cellphones flipped out instantly and children were pushed back as people finally absorbed their inner common senses to instinctively call the police. Screams furthered when a brave first-responder turned him over, checking his breaths and revealing two huge claw marks that had eviscerated him.

".grgr......URA...MESHI..." the words gradually proccessed their way out of his disarranged teeth.

Unsure of what to do, but nonetheless aware that the police would question somebody with red-painted skin, Yusuke sprinted away from the bloody scene, catapulting over a brick wall and past the next chain of store buildings. He was successful in dodging the police, the sirens carelessly waltzing past him as they hurried to the crime scene. Within an hour of his departure, news of the incident scattered over the city, with an interesting report on two middle-school boys found dead and skinned in an apartment complex not less than a mile from the scene of the incident.