"Did you hear?" A girl asked her friend in the halls at school as they spoke near my locker where I was gathering my stuff. "Last night, Mouse hacked the NPA and stole one of their most important files before they noticed anything!"
Her friend sighed. "Mouse is becoming a real problem, but the government doesn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to catch him."
"Or her," the first girl argued, "Mouse could be a woman." The other girl just shrugged. After I walked away from them, I allowed myself a small smile. I felt a little pride that my schoolmates were unknowingly talking about me. My fame as Mouse continued to grow, which meant tighter security and stronger anti-hacking programs. Which made my job all the more exciting.
The rest of the school day passed without much excitement. My classes - Drafting, Calculus, Advanced Tech, Computer Design, Honors Japanese, Computers IV, and Advanced Art - may have been some of the top classes offered at Meio High School, but I still found them a tad too easy for me, even though it was still just the beginning of the school year. I was eager for university next year, hoping it would present me with more of a challenge.
I stayed at school late that night, working on a large drawing of an angel, chained to a cross and bleeding. I liked drawing macabre images. Even though I excelled at normal and advanced academics, I had two thing I was better at than anything else - drawing and anything related to technology. I was well aware that there were better artists than I and there were those better at academics out there, but I had yet to find any who even came close to being my equal in technology. I don't mean to sound conceited, but I doubted whether I ever would.
It was dark when I left school. I was exhausted from my lack of sleep the night before and all the hard work I had done today. So, when I saw the scene just outside the school, I wasn't entirely sure I wasn't hallucinating.
Four boys were on the grounds. One looked barely taller than me, with a black cloak and spiky black hair. Another was tall and burly, with a bright orange pompadour-like hairstyle. The third was tall as well with a lanky frame and slicked back black hair. The fourth boy had long, bright red hair that stuck out oddly, but still elegantly, and a tall, graceful, but very slender frame. Something about the last boy tickled at my memory. Unfortunately, all the boys had their backs to me, so I didn't know if I actually recognized any of them or not.
Now, four boys on a school campus - even if they were all dressed in plain street clothes - wasn't an oddity. What really was - the thing that left me questioning my current sanity - was the monster and the ball.
The monster stood a good nine feet tall, approximately, with a torso that looked akin to a tree trunk. His skin was a dark, almost hide-like skin, and he was far hairier than any humanoid being had the right to be. His clothes were ragged and ripped, as if he had grown too big for them in a short amount of time. Protruding from his oversized mouth were two large, ivory, and very lethal-looking tusks. And don't get me started on his clawed hands and feet.
Now, the ball. In the monster's deadly right hand, he bounced a glowing ball of red energy. The ball itself looked abnormal enough, defying the very laws of science the world was built on, but even from here I could feel the evil emanating from it. I shivered.
Looking back now, I have no idea why I was reacting so calmly to the situation, being careful to take in as much detail as I possibly could. It took me a minute to realize that my legs had given out from shock and I was kneeling on the ground. I felt numb.
The moment this realization hit me, the scene in front of me sprang into action. The four boys attacked the monster with weapons and moves that weren't humanly possible. They jumped around, attacking from all angels, at speeds almost too far for my quick eyes to follow. Their assault seemed pointless. The monster looked uninjured. I then understood that their goal was not to kill the monster, but to get the lustrous ball away from him. The monster was making a fair showing of keeping the ball in his possession. Suddenly, the tall black-haired boy leapt up behind the monster's right arm, his hands clasped together like a gun. His fingertip began to glimmer and a huge blast of blue-white light exploded from his finger, hitting the hand that held the ball. The monster roared in agony, brandished a now half-melted stump of an arm. The ball was knocked out of his grasp and flew through the air - right at me!
The next few moments passed in slow motion. I saw the ball flying through the air like an arrow, straight and true towards me, but beyond the demonic red glow I saw the four boys halt in their assault of the monster. I saw five pairs of eyes widen in shock as they beheld the ball's newfound target. Then, the ball hit me squarely in the chest.
The spot where it had hit felt as though someone had just whacked me with a sledgehammer. I flew backwards across the grass, landing painfully with a thud about twenty feet away. My body felt as though I was being electrocuted as strong shocks traveled through my every vein. I opened my mouth to scream, but I couldn't seem to produce a sound. I was too weak to writhe in pain, and above the thundering of the agony, I could hear parts of the fabric of my uniform give out and rip because of the immense energy shock of the ball. Finally, I could stand it no longer.
Darkness overtook me.
Words and voices floated across my dulled subconscious.
"What was she doing there? The idiot!"
"Hn. Typical human."
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Ayako Sasara…'
"Huh? You know her, Kurama?"
"Not too well. She went to Meio with me. She's a year younger than me, but brilliant. She's a great artist and a master guru of all things technological. I really wouldn't have wanted her involved in any of this."
"Hn. Kurama, you never want any innocent human involved in our affairs. But they act like complete idiots and somehow still manage to get involved. What makes this one so much different?"
"Hey! Be quiet! She's coming to!"
I groaned and shifted a little, slightly surprised to find that I could move at all. But, every movement stung like hell. As I came more into awareness, the pain all over my body began to dissipate, leaving me sore and with a bad headache. But my body felt odd. Different. Powerful. Inhuman.
I opened my eyes. I was lying in a bed, and the faces of the four boys who had been fighting the monster peered back at me. I now knew that I only recognized one of them. The redhead, Shuichi Minamino, had been a student at Meio High who had graduated last year. He'd been the only person at Meio whose scores at academics were always better than mine.
"Minamino?" I murmured, sitting up. "What's going on?"
"How do you feel, Sasara?"
I scoffed. "I feel like hell, sir."
"More literally than you think," the short boy said. He received a nudge with an elbow from the boy with the slicked back hair for his troubles. I frowned.
"What do you…? Never mind. What was that going on outside the school? What was that monster and that ball?" The boys shifted nervously.
"We should've erased her memory when we had the chance," the short one mumbled disdainfully. My eyes widened in shock while Minamino's emerald-green ones narrowed in warning as he glared at the boy.
"Hiei, you know very well why we can't do that." Minamino explained levelly. The boy - Hiei, was it? - shrugged and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
"It was jus at suggestion."
"Excuse me, sir?" I interrupted, bringing the attention back to myself. I wanted answers and was not in the mood to wait for the boys to finish arguing before I got them. "Where am I? What's going on?"
"You're in my bedroom, in a house I bought. And well," Minamino began, "there's no easy way to say this, so I'll just jump fright in to it. That monster was actually a demon who escaped into the human world to steal the ball, which is the Demon Orb. It was our," he broke off briefly to gesture to himself as well as the other three boys, "job to hunt him down and get the Demon Orb back. We're Spirit Detectives."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Demons? Orbs? Spirit Detectives? Explain, please, sir." He couldn't be serious! But from what I knew of him, Minamino wasn't the type for dumb practical jokes…
"Um…" Minamino looked for help at the others. The one with slicked back hair stepped forward.
"Nice to meet ya. Ayako, right? I'm Yusuke." He paused for a moment, seeming to decide what to say next. "Look, the world is a lot more steeped in the supernatural then you probably think. Demons, magic, spirits…All that exists. It's our world, so to speak. And you've just been thrust right in the middle of it."
My head was spinning with his brief overview. I had never cared much about science or the paranormal, but to a girl like me whose life was all about technology, I had always accepted science as the undeniable truth. Finding out about things that shouldn't exist destroyed that small security in my life.
"But that's not all." Minamino took up the explanation again. "That ball you were hit with - the Demon Orb - was a ball of pure, Class B demonic spirit energy. Strong, untainted, and adaptable. It will adjust to your body, and give you powers and inhuman abilities. Because your body absorbed it so readily, you've become an actual demon yourself. An artificial one, but a demon nonetheless."
My jaw dropped. This had to be some sort of sick prank. I hoped this was some sort of sick prank.
"You're not alone, though. None of us are fully human. Well, Kuwabara is -" Minamino amended, indicating the burly carrot top, "but Yusuke and I are half-demon, half-human, while Hiei is a full fledged demon."
Crazy! These people were barking mad! "I don't have to listen to this!" I snapped, throwing the blankets off of me. I made towards the door, but Minamino grabbed the sleeve of my ruined school uniform.
"Wait, you can't go!"
"Oh…Yes…I…CAN!" I wrenched my arm out of his grasp, and the sleeve tore completely, revealing my tattoo. I froze.
"Mouse…" Minamino whispered in surprise. I flushed and tried to pull the shoulder of my uniform down enough to cover the tattoo. I failed.
"Say what?" Kuwabara asked.
"Mouse." Minamino repeated. "It's the nickname of this famous super computer hacker. So far, no one can find a security program strong enough to resist an attack by Mouse. It's rumored that Mouse has a barcode tattoo on his or her upper left arm. That's you, isn't it? You're Mouse."
"So what if I am?" I snapped defensively. "Are you going to turn me in?"
"No, but…"
"But nothing." I strode quickly out the door. "Goodbye, sir."
When I glanced back, I saw Hiei put his hand on Minamino's shoulder. "Let her go, Kurama…" I turned away and walked briskly down the stairs and out the house.