The moment the name "Tamamo-no-Mae" left Koenma's lips, Kurama went rigid.
He'd had reason enough to worry when the young ruler of Spirit World contacted him out of the blue, claiming he had something of the utmost importance to discuss with the former detectives, and arranged for them to meet at a cafe in town.
"Tamamo-no-Mae?" Kurama echoed, and made a conscious effort to hide the worry from his voice, "Wasn't she exorcised from the Killing Stone long ago?"
"That's what we thought," Koenma said, shaking his head, "In hindsight, we should've known better, but when she didn't appear again for over a thousand years, it seemed safe to assume she was gone for good."
"Gone for good," Hiei scoffed, "I've yet to hear of a kitsune that simply let death take it."
Kurama wondered how exactly Koenma had managed to convince Hiei to return to the Living World, though he imagined patrolling the borders for lost humans must have become tedious long ago.
"Am I missing something here?" Yusuke asked, glancing between them, "What's a 'Tamamo-no-Mae?'"
"You haven't heard that story, Urameshi?" Kuwabara sneered, "Even I've heard it."
Before Yusuke could begin arguing, Kurama cut in, "Tamamo-no-Mae is a very old, very powerful apparition—a kitsune, to be precise, like myself. In Japan, she was first documented in the twelfth century, during the reign of Emperor Konoe."
He saw from the way Yusuke's eyes were glazing over that the boy was quickly losing interest and frowned, skipping ahead to what he hoped would be more engaging. "She took the form of a human and attempted to kill the retired emperor but was unmasked at the last moment. She was pursued by an army and managed to kill hundreds of soldiers and samurai, but was finally slain by an archer. Her body became the Killing Stone, which exuded an unnatural miasma that killed everything that came near it, and she haunted this stone until a passing monk exorcised her spirit from it." He paused. "Or so it was believed."
"Of course, Tamamo-no-Mae existed long before that," Konema said solemnly, "Her crimes date back to human prehistory and the dark ages of Demon World. Spiritual cannibalism was common practice in those days; I believe that's how she became so powerful."
Yusuke raised a brow. "What, like demons eating other demons?"
"It's not practiced by civilized society," Hiei scoffed, "And it's purely superstition; only bottom-feeding apparitions living in the dark corners of Demon World still believe in that kind of thing, holding onto the hope that they can become stronger by eating those weaker than themselves."
"It's not entirely superstition," Kurama said, words trailing off when all eyes fell on him. Koenma looked perturbed and Kuwabara looked frightened, but Hiei and Yusuke simply looked curious. "Hiei is correct; it's an outdated practice," he added, "Much of civilized Demon World does not participate in such acts, and it was even outlawed by each of the three kings during their reign, a decree which Enki has chosen to uphold. That being said, there are doubtlessly still denizens of the lower spheres of Demon World and smaller villages who might still do it, and we should not be so quick as to dismiss spiritual cannibalism as nothing more than wishful thinking."
"You think it really makes one stronger?" Hiei asked.
Kurama didn't quite meet his eyes. "It isn't as simple as devouring another demon," he said, "The process must begin while the victim is still alive or immediately after death, and an incantation must be recited to trap the prey's essence within the body. It requires most of the corpse to be consumed. Of course, only a powerful demon is worth eating, but successfully carrying out this kind of ritual with someone significantly stronger is no easy task."
Koenma glanced at him warily. "It sounds as though you're speaking from experience."
Kurama chose not to answer.
"Regardless," he went on uneasily, keeping one eye on Kurama, "I received reports several days ago that Tamamo-no-Mae was spotted in the recesses of the first sphere of Demon World, in land where even Enki's control is limited and my father never could gain a foothold. I foolishly believed it to be a rumor, but I still sent a few oni to investigate." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "They were sent back to me, in pieces, missing their livers. Presumably, she wanted to tell me that they weren't worth completely devouring."
The room fell silent and seemed to get colder.
"She's making demands," Koenma continued, "none of which I've fulfilled, and I can only imagine her patience is running thin. Strange things have been happening at the edge of Spirit World—thefts and disappearances that I'd be slow to connect if they weren't all happening so close together. Today, I was contacted by Genkai, and she's told me that there's been an incident in the Living World now; a young woman came to her for help, claiming she and her sister were attacked by something in the mountains. Genkai said that something about this is just...odd. I can't overlook it as coincidence. You'll need to investigate."
Yusuke leaned back in his chair, frowning at Koenma. "You know what I'm gonna say, right?" he asked.
"I'm well aware that you're no longer detectives," Koenma nodded, expression grave, "That does not change the fact that Tamamo-no-Mae is a threat that outranks anything you've ever fought before, and frankly, I don't know anyone else who even stands a chance against her."
No one spoke for a while. Kuwabara glanced across the table without making eye contact with anyone, looking like he'd rather not say anything. Hiei sat with his arms crossed over his chest, stewing silently at the thought of being ordered around by Spirit World yet again. Kurama watched Yusuke's expression closely; he knew, by now, that the rest of them were doomed to fall in line with the former detective and whatever ridiculous thoughts went through his head. It was simply how they functioned as a group, with Yusuke in the lead.
"Well," Yusuke said at last, "I guess you could consider this a personal favor, rather than a spirit detective mission."
Koenma's shoulders visibly relaxed.
"Our first step should be to talk to this girl, then, right?" Yusuke reasoned, "If Tama-what's-her-face is planning to make a move on the Living World, we'd better check out the first incident here."
"Precisely." Koenma inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. "I can't stress enough that there is no room for failure. Tamamo-no-Mae is a true monster, the sort that other apparitions tell their children about to keep them in line."
"After everything we've been through," Yusuke said, "I really don't think one more monster is going to be a problem." He looked to the others as though searching for agreement, but only Kuwabara jumped up to proclaim how easy this case would be compared to the fight against Sensui, or the Dark Tournament.
It was true, Kurama had to admit, they'd each seen plenty in their short lives. But Kurama had seen much more, and he knew better than to be overconfident.
Koenma left not long after giving them the details of where to find their contact, and though Yusuke attempted to catch up with the others, Kurama insisted they do so on the way so as not to lose time.
It hadn't been all that long since they returned from Demon World, but they'd grown apart. Kuwabara was as excitable as ever, but he'd lost some of his brashness and in its place was hesitation. Kurama saw his reluctance when he had appeared in the café door at the beginning of the meeting and counted the extra seconds it took for him to finally come and sit down. Despite the brave front he put on in front of Yusuke, it was obvious that he was tired of straddling the line between the Living and Spirit worlds, his psychic abilities never allowing him a completely normal life. Kurama couldn't say he blamed him.
Yusuke, on the other hand, had only become even more deeply entrenched in Demon World and its politics, his fascination with his heritage bordering on obsession. Keiko had confided in Kurama more than once about him taking off in the middle of the night and disappearing for days at a time, back to Demon World, where he could vent and fight and be himself in a way that just wasn't possible in the Living World.
Hiei, Kurama thought, had changed the most, though this was perhaps because Kurama had known him the longest and any slight change was easy to spot. To call him gentle would have been a bit of a stretch, but it was something akin to that; Kurama noticed how he hadn't slipped out the moment the meeting was over or gone off on his own, choosing to linger and walk with the others with something like fondness in his eyes. No longer did he hurry through life searching for threats to eliminate. He took his time now, looked carefully but not coldly, and he moved with newfound purpose, perhaps something he'd found since he began working with Mukuro.
They'd all found something, Kurama realized, lives apart from the trouble Spirit World had roped them all into, grown and matured and changed, and Kurama felt as though he'd been left behind. Of course, he'd always had a life separate from being a spirit detective, a mother to look after and goals to achieve; in that way, the others were only now catching up to him. Perhaps it was because Kurama was old, much older than them, and he was done growing and changing, and for some reason, he'd foolishly hoped they were, as well.
He had to shake his head and laugh inwardly; kitsune abhorred change. For all the shapeshifting they did, they would always return to their true form, because they knew that was how they were meant to be. They were timeless creatures, long-lived and stubborn, and no matter how many faces they wore, none would ever be as comfortable as the one they were born with.
Kurama wondered what that said about him, the kitsune who chose to remain a human, finding the role he played more comfortable than his true self. He thought he must be the opposite of Yusuke, more human than apparition, agonizing over a part of himself that he'd acquired along the way. He'd lost his roots.
With a hint of optimism, he thought that pursuing Tamamo-no-Mae could very well be the thing to knock some sense into him, reuniting him with his old friends and showing him that they really were the same people he remembered, regardless of their changes. Maybe he could find change in himself, as well, and feel that he had not traded one face for another, but simply metamorphosed into another self. The reappearance of the old kitsune was sure to dredge up parts of Kurama's past that he'd chosen to never confront, but perhaps the time for that discussion was closing in.
Assuming, of course, that Tamamo-no-Mae didn't kill them all first.
The girl and her sister were staying at an old-fashioned inn far removed from the city, nestled at the base of the mountains. Genkai had contacted the innkeepers before their arrival, and they were led down the hall to the last room on the left side. Kurama felt a heavy miasma hanging thick in the air, an eeriness that followed creatures that traveled the boundaries between worlds. Something had come in, and was likely still there. Yusuke knocked on the wooden door, and after a long pause, it creaked open and young woman poked her head out.
"Hello," she greeted them, sounding anxious, her gaze wandering from face to face, "Are you. Ah. Did, did Genkai send you?" Kurama sensed something odd, but it was too weak to put his finger on. She looked ordinary enough, dressed in one of the inn's striped yukata with her black hair cut short to the base of her neck.
"Yeah, she did," Yusuke said.
"Oh, good." The young woman laughed, though she sounded nervous. "Um. I-I'm Shiori, by the way," she said, opening the door the rest of the way and stepping back to let them in.
Kurama couldn't help but smile a bit. A nice name.
He stopped in the doorway, taken aback by the overpowering scent of a demon, its aura draped over the entirety of the room, a marking scent that clung to everything inside. He could tell it was strong because even Kuwabara stumbled a few steps in and the others looked similarly bothered.
Shiori didn't seem to notice their discomfort—presumably, she couldn't sense anything strange—and went unhindered to the corner of the room where one of the futons was still rolled out, and another girl with an identical face and haircut was wrapped in the thick comforter, sweat beads collecting on her forehead and cheeks flushed with fever.
"Saki," Shiori said quietly, "Saki, the people Genkai told us about are here. They're going to help us."
Saki's eyes fluttered open and she glanced at the spirit detectives deliriously. She mumbled something that sounded like a greeting, but it was all slurred together.
"She's very sick," Shiori explained, kneeling at Saki's side with her hands clasped together in her lap, "She has been ever since we were attacked. She can barely sit up."
"Attacked?" Kuwabara repeated.
Shiori nodded. "Saki and I wanted to go hiking," she said, "We're twins, and we grew up very close, but our lives have taken us far away from each other. That's difficult, since we were always together when we were young." She rose to her feet, smiling sheepishly. "You don't have to stand. Make yourselves comfortable. I can make some tea, if you'd like something to drink?"
"Please don't trouble yourself," Kurama said, though he joined the others at the sectional couch in the middle of the room, sitting beside Hiei. "I was just about to ask if you were twins, actually. You look almost identical."
Shiori nodded, sitting adjacent to the detectives and glancing over at her sister, "I think anyone in my position would be worried about their sibling, but for us, it's deeper than that. I can feel that there's something wrong." She shook her head helplessly. "I just want her to get better."
"Tell us about what happened," Yusuke urged.
Shiori nodded. "We planned to go hiking," she continued, "We're actually not from this area, so we had to travel a little ways to get here. We thought we'd go across the mountains here and stop whenever we got tired, but we didn't get very far. On our first day, not far from this inn, we were walking along when something jumped out of the bushes."
"Something?"
"I thought," Shiori paused, "Well, I thought it was an animal. Something native to the area that lived in the mountains. It wasn't very big, but it was fast. I didn't get a good look at it. It jumped on Saki and knocked her over. I was scared, and I screamed and tried to throw something. It was gone so quickly."
"Did it do anything to her?" Kurama asked, "Does she have any wounds? Scratches or bite marks?"
Shiroi shook her head. "I couldn't find anything. Just scrapes on her knees from when she fell. But after that, she had trouble getting back up. She said she was dizzy, and she had to lean on me. We decided we'd rest for a while, and this inn was the first place we found."
Saki let out a whine and Shiori was on her feet in an instant, hurrying to her sister's side. "What's wrong?" she asked, "Does it hurt somewhere? Do you need some water?"
Saki rolled over to face her sister, reaching for Shiori and gripped her yukata. "Home," she whimpered, "I want to go home."
"I know. I know you do. We'll go as soon as you're feeling better."
It was then, as Shiori comforted her twin who writhed beneath the blankets, that Kurama noticed something—a piece of evidence—and rose from the couch. Shiori looked back over her shoulder at him, glancing up apprehensively, but she let him kneel next to her and examine Saki. Reaching to the edge of the blanket, he pulled a few stray hairs from where they'd been plastered to Saki's neck, damp with sweat. Kurama rubbed them between his fingers and held them up to his face, sniffing, and pointedly ignored the perturbed look on Shiori's face.
"Cat hair," he said, and she blinked, confusion obvious on her face.
"A cat? But that's," she paused, shaking her head. "No. It wasn't a cat. It couldn't have been just a cat." She became agitated then. "You think I'm making this up, don't you? Or that I'm crazy?"
"Nobody's accusing you of anything," Hiei said dismissively, and went to stand beside Kurama to get a better look at the hair for himself. "And it was no ordinary cat." There was something distinctly demonic about it, the slightest traces of otherworldly energy. The list of potential suspects had narrowed.
Kurama felt Hiei's eyes burning a hole into his side and looked over, sharing a knowing glance. There was something very strange about this; they'd come looking for evidence of a spirit fox and found a cat instead. Two apparitions immediately came to mind—the bakeneko and its larger, more troublesome relative, the nekomata—but if the sisters had come across one, it wouldn't have just jumped on Saki and run away, and it certainly wouldn't have left Shiori alive to tell the tale.
And perhaps, more pressingly, neither of these apparitions were frequently seen, even in Demon World.
Kurama glanced at Shiori once again, whose attention had shifted back to Saki when the other girl groaned and rolled onto her side, turning her back to them. He didn't sense anything overtly demonic in either of them, but there was something odd, draped around Saki as though the beast that had done this had left its scent on her. That didn't make sense, either; animal apparitions didn't leave scents behind without very good reason, and he could only think that it must have been accidental. The creature had come close to her and left something behind without meaning to.
But why didn't it kill her? It went to the trouble of making itself known to two humans alone in the mountains, and yet it left them both alive.
"We're going to need some time to think this over," Kurama said, and Shiori turned to him, "It's clear that your sister has been attacked by something, and there's definitely some sort of demonic energy clinging to her that's making her ill. Beyond that, we'll need to do some more investigation."
"That's," Shiori spluttered, "That's it? You can't help us anymore than that?"
Taking the lead for a moment, Kuwabara stood from the couch, pen in hand. "You got any paper?" he asked, and Shiori stood confused for a moment before slowly nodding and going through a hiking bag in the corner for a notebook. Kuwabara tore a few pages out and ripped them into long rectangles, carefully writing out blessings not unlike the sort adorning shrine ofuda, and muttered a few words to infuse them with energy. Kurama raised a brow, impressed with what he'd learned in his absence, and watched Kuwabara walk around the room, placing them next to the window and in the closet. "They're not shrine-consecrated or anything fancy like that," he said, "But they've got some juice in them. They'll keep demons out."
Shiori looked confused but slowly nodded, seemingly placated for the time being. "Will you come back tomorrow?" she asked, "Even if you don't find anything?"
"Yes," Kurama said, "I'll bring something for your sister's fever, if you'd like."
"Please."
They filed out the door one at a time, Kurama lingering to look back at Shiori's brow creased with worry and Saki's beaded with sweat. Kuwabara stood behind him, and he waited for him to go on ahead, but the human didn't leave. It was then that Kurama noticed the final paper talisman in his hand, and he realized that Kuwabara was waiting for Kurama to go to place it at the door. He went out into the hallway, standing with Hiei and Yusuke while Kuwabara looked for somewhere unobtrusive to put the talisman.
"It's rather impressive," Kurama noted, "I know very few people capable of creating barrier talismans."
Yusuke had a strangely solemn look on his face, having followed Kurama's gaze to watch his friend in the doorway. "Yeah. He wasn't too sure about learning how to do it at first. On one hand, the guy's practically a weirdness magnet; ghosts and demons gravitate towards him, and he's tired of low-rank apparitions busting in at night looking for an easy meal. On the other hand, you remember the job where we had to rescue Yukina, and the wards Tarukane used to keep her from leaving?"
Hiei didn't flinch at the name anymore, but his eyes narrowed at the memory.
"In the end, though, she talked him into learning how to make them from a guy at the local temple," Yusuke continued, "She said she knew he'd never use them for evil, only to protect people, so it was okay."
Kuwabara was as soft-hearted as ever if he was reluctant to learn a defensive technique simply because he'd seen it used malevolently before; it made Kurama feel better somehow. "He has talent. I can tell they're strong from here."
"Ha. Don't tell him that, it'll go to his head."
Kurama smiled. "I doubt that."
Kuwabara came into the hall a moment later, frowning, and asked what they were all smiling about. Yusuke said he was just telling the others how he'd probably rather adopt a cat apparition than fight it and Kuwabara grabbed a fistful of his shirt collar and looked vaguely offended, but the gesture was lighthearted and playful.
Some things, Kurama thought with a smile, never changed.