*Standard disclaimers*

Shisou: Koenma The Price of Power

By Take (May 1998)



I am one of them, and yet I am not. For a while, I am their friend, but in the end, I am always their boss. Always the one ordering them to risk their lives again and again. I feel remorse, yes, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Isn't that what every ruler or person in a position of power is taught?

But it hurts.though I try not to show it. It's easier to hide my emotions in my toddler form, which I find more comfortable than my teenage one. Every order I give my Tantei as boss to employees cuts me like the sharpest knife. Any one of them could be wounded, perhaps fatally, at any given time. And yet I send them out, my Reikai Tantei; will keep sending them out.

I have no choice; there is no one better qualified than these four, no one else I can trust to do the job right. I hide behind my frowns and my tantrums, hoping my pain will go unnoticed. Botan knows; she has known me the longest; knows how it pains me to send my friends out into battle. She understands, and for that I am grateful.

I all my centuries of life, only two mortals have been my friends. The first was Sensui, my lost Tantei. The second is a cocky, over-confident high school boy with an arrogance that is matched only by the depth of his heart. Despite myself, I found myself liking the boy.

I'll admit that I still had my doubts about Yuusuke when he became a Reikai Tantei, but he pulled through, and in the process managing to acquire the finest team of Investigators ever seen. I could never tell him - or any of them - how proud I am to be called their friend.

But even then there is the ever-present knowledge that I am their superior. So I keep myself as aloof from them as I can. I know that I'm in too deep already, that should anything befall these young men, or even on of the girls, I would be devastated. That is something I cannot afford. The Reikai cannot afford it.

After every visit to the Ningenkai, I return to my lonely desk in my huge office and continue my work as if I'd never left off. After all, that's what I came into existence fore, isn't it? Just a demigod behind a desk, stuck with stacks of paperwork. Emotions are impractical when processing files; they get you too involved with your cases and employees.

I didn't listen, and here I am. Part of a group and yet not, always with the need to distance myself from them. That is the price of power.





~Owari~