Chapter 2
Shaman
It was the weekend, finally. The first week of school only boded what was to come in the following months. Yusuke and Kuwabara stood on the roof of a city shrine; a small building with a sloped roof and open walls. Paper chains hung from the rafters, and stone statues of beasts guarded the sacred property. The case was supposed to be simple, easy enough for only two of the Tantei to handle. An unknown person had been exorcising spirits and ghosts illegally; that is to say, without a license. This did no damage to anything or anyone, but it went against protocol of the spirit world. Yusuke had only to arrest the person in question and bring them back to the spirit world. Easy, right?
"Urameshi, we've been on this roof top for hours, when's that guy gonna come or attack or whatever?"
"For the fifth time, Kuwabara, I don't know! We don't even know if he's gonna come here!"
"Sorry, I'm just anxious. It's a Friday night for crying out loud! All the parties and dating goes on a Friday."
"Like anyone would date you."
"Shut up! Why you always gotta rag on me! Pick another scapegoat!"
"Because the only other candidates for a scapegoat can kill me- hey, look there!" Yusuke pointed to a line of crepe myrtle trees. The shimmering form of a ghost was wandering around the property. "Well, lets go then!" Kuwabara took a step toward the edge of the roof. "Wait, if we hold back for a while, the exorcist might show up." Yusuke said. Kuwabara nodded in agreement. They watched the ghost from the roof of the shrine, crouching low to remain unseen. The apparition swirled around in drunken circles, moaning pitifully. It resembled a young man; his hair and eyes were a rich brown, but the ends of his hair were fading into gray. He did not look old at all; in fact he was quite attractive for a ghost, he was weakening. The spirit tripped over his ghost-tail for feet and fell to the ground.
The ghost looked toward the moon in the sky and stretched his arm toward it, as if it could give him strength. Another figure stepped out of the shadows and walked toward the spirit. It was a female from what the boys could see of her, mainly her skirt and the fluffy shirt she wore. She carried with her a wooden Shepard's crook. The spirit struggled to his feet/tail and backed away from the girl. "Don't try to escape; if not by my hand you will be destroyed, then another's." She raised her staff and struck him. The ghost cried out and fell back. She threw a silver chain with stones linked to it around his neck. The ghost shrieked and struggled to remove the chain, as if it brought great pain. The girl struck him again with her staff and he slowly began to melt. His substance gave away into nothing. Removing the chain from the ground, the girl rewrapped it around her arm. "Now!" Yusuke leapt off the roof and tackled the girl.
The lithe girl exploded in fists and heels. Kuwabara fell on his back, several bones having been rearranged in his face. Yusuke ignored his bloody nose and fired his Spirit gun point-blank in her chest; she slammed into the side of the temple and didn't move. Yusuke held her arms behind her back while Kuwabara held her legs. Yusuke pulled his communication mirror from his pocket, "We have her, Botan." He spoke to the person on the other end of the line. A blue haired woman riding an oar swooped out of the sky; Botan, pilot of the river Styx. Her cotton candy eyes glimmered, "Well done Yusuke. I'll open the portal for you." She said, and drew a circle appear in midair with her fingertip. Gazing upon the unnatural passage, the girl struggled and squirmed. The circle turned into a hole, splitting the dimensions, and the two Tantei stepped through, holding the squirming girl. The portal vanished and the four were suddenly in an office.
The room was spacious, with a large flat screen TV mounted on one wall, and a desk piled high with papers on the opposite side of the room. A small child with a large bulbous hat and a binky was busy filing, sorting and stamping papers. Next to the child stood a man in a leopard toga, blue skin, and a small horn coming out of his forehead. "Ah, Yusuke, you have found the renegade exorcist. Very good." The three struggling teens suddenly stopped moving. Yusuke had handcuffed the girl's hands in front of her before they had moved through the portal, and so she was freed from his grasp, allowing her to turn. What features had been invisible in moonlight had been revealed in the florescent lights of the office.
The girl had short curly blonde hair that stood out majestically around her head like the rays of a golden sun. Her glaring green eyes were directed at Yusuke. That particular glare reminded him of someone he had known for a very long time… "Yusuke?" she said.
"Gabi?" he squinted and looked at her face closely.
"Yusuke! Where ya' been, man! I haven't heard from you in years!" Gabi slipped her bound wrists behind Yusuke's head, smushing his head into her chest, and hugged him. His voice was muffled in her billowing blouse; releasing his head he gave a queer grin, "Keh heh heh, pillowy." She smacked him. He rubbed his face and laughed out loud, "Well, the last time you talked to me must have been six years ago! What'cha been doin'? Skipping Japan every time you circled the globe?"
"You're more scatter brained than me, I always wrote to you at regular intervals. I was lucky to get a postcard from you every six months!" she punched him lightly on the arm.
"Do you have any idea what postage costs from Japan to Madagascar, or Norway, or Mexico!" Yusuke waved his hands to illustrate his frustration.
"You could have e-mailed me!"
"Excuse me, do you two know each other?" the Reikai prince asked from behind his mountain of papers. The bickering teens ceased and turned toward him. "Hey, cool, a genius baby! How cute!" Gabi leapt forward and shook his small hands with her own, even though she was handcuffed. "Excuse me, but you must have me mistaken. I am Koenma." He corrected her. "Who?" She spied the huge remote used for the giant television on the opposite wall; she seized it and pressed the many buttons, "Sweet! Do you get cable with this thing?"
"Actually," Koenma corrected her, "I can use it to find nearly anything or any one at any given time or place."
"Sweet!"
Kuwabara, who had been forgotten to this point suddenly burst out, "Am I missin' something here! Okay, You know her, she knows you," he pointed to Gabi and Yusuke, "But didn't we arrest you as an unknown criminal?"
"I'm not a criminal!" she yelled.
"Yeah, she's not a criminal!" Yusuke chimed in.
"Everybody calm down!" Koenma yelled, his binky staying in place for no apparent reason. "Well, since you seem to be familiar with her, Yusuke, why don't you tell me who she is?" the raven-haired youth sighed, as if the most obvious thing in the world had eluded their grasps of intelligence.
"This is Gabi; she's a friend of mine from when I was a little kid. She travels all over the world with her foster dad. Every now and then she stops by to say hi. She's a good person, she wouldn't commit a crime without a reason." The deity sat back in his chair for a moment before speaking again. "This may come as a shock to you, Yusuke, but I have to put her in jail for breaking at least a dozen laws concerning exorcism." He said.
"What? Why? Who the hell are you, anyway?" Gabi said.
"I am the ruler of the spirit world, young lady, so watch your mouth! As for the reason of your detainment, it's simple. You do not have the proper warrant to be dealing with banishing spirits and apparitions-"
"Actually, it was in incubus I had been following for some time, keeping him away from innocent women until he was weak enough to kill."
"-And have repeated the offence of illegal exorcism. However, since Yusuke could vouch for you, I may have lessened your sentence, but your attitude is convincing me otherwise."
"C'mon, Koenma! She probably didn't even know about needing a license; I didn't know people needed licensees to banish ghosts and stuff!" Koenma sat and digested this information for a moment. Gabi looked sadly at the floor, away in her own little world of guilt.
"Hm, alright, I'll let her go with a little community service. But until this case is filed away and the paperwork for her release is in order, she has to stay here; understand?"
"Alright! You're off the hook, Gabi!" Yusuke gave her a double high five. The wheels in the princeling's head began to turn; he had a shaman at his mercy, who had the potential to become a professional spirit handler. The members of his tantei consisted of a dragon-wielding, fire-commanding swordsman, a plant manipulating, strategizing thief, a spirit sword kakai barrier slicing ox-of-a-man, and the successor of the master reiki manipulating psychic Genkai. If he had a shaman, a ghost hunter, a demon slayer, the tantei would be complete and balanced…
"Gabi, I have a proposition for you." Koenma interrupted the small celebration. The blonde turned to the prince and waited for him to continue, hope shining in her eyes. "When you are released, how would you like to receive training for your powers and become part of the spirit detective team?"
"Hmm… on one condition; see that thingy you use to find stuff?" she said.
"Yes,"
"Don't EVER use that to find me, or any where-one-or thing around me, got it? I need my space or I go loco on your head like anorexic camels."
"…Very well, then. George, take her to a suitable chamber were she may be detained until the proper paper work is in order." Koenma ordered the blue ogre next to him. Yusuke and Kuwabara had followed to keep her company. "So, what happened six years ago?" Gabi clinked her cuffs musically in beat with her footsteps.
"Well, I was having a bad day, then I got ran over and died. I took the test Koenma offered to come back to life, and then he made me Spirit Detective, like a policeman for the spirit world. I stomp bad guys with spiritual powers, or reiki, that try to take over the world, or blow it up, or something. I made some friends here and there, like Kuwabara, here. He used to be my rival, and he still kind of is, but we get along okay. Aside from him and myself, there are two more members to the Tantei."
"There's Hiei, and Kurama. They were both criminals who stole some stuff from Koenma and he sent me to stop'em. I beat Hiei, but Kurama just gave himself up because I let him use the treasure he stole to save his mother's life. They were both pardoned when they helped me on my next case against these four monsters who wanted access to the human world."
"That's some story."
"That's not even all of our cases."
"Yeah, you should have seen us during the Dark Tournament. I kicked some butt!" Kuwabara said, making a goofy smile and flexing his arms.
"Come one, Kuwabara! You got your butt kicked even more than the people that lost to us!"
"Nuh-uh, Urameshi!"
"Yeah ya did! I've got a whole stadium full of yokai who can vouch for you!"
"Hey, ogre-dude!" Gabi interrupted. George, the ogre in question turned to her. "Yes?"
"How long is this gonna take?"
"Well, adding the time it takes to fill out your paper work to the time to complete the paper work he already has, I'd say you're going to stay here over night."
"OVER NIGHT! MY GUARDIAN DOESN'T EVEN KNOW I'M GONE!" she shrieked. "Oh, fudge in a basket, what am I gonna do? I can't tell Daren I snuck out to fight ghosts and then got arrested by another dimension because I don't have a license for Ghost busting!" Gabi clutched Yusuke's jacket and shook him back and forth while wailing. "What am I going to do, Yusuke!"
"Calm-down-Gab-i!" he said as his skull was thrown helter-skelter. "Daren knows you're my friend, just tell him you stayed the night at my place!"
"But that's lying." She dropped him unceremoniously and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Well, if I stay with you, then you can just say 'you stayed with me', and he'll think you stayed with me at my house. No more questions asked. That's not technically lying."
"…That might work."
And so the remainders of the midnight hours were spent in a jail cell. A very nice jail cell; it looked like a hotel room with bars on one of the four walls. Kuwabara had gone home via Botan. Yusuke sat in a plush chair George had removed from the cell for him, while Gabi sat in another in the other side of the bars. "Anything happen during those six years with you? I mean, you know what I've been up to, so why are you a Ghostbuster? And why are you dressed like a cross between a pimp and a pilgrim?" Yusuke leaned on the rear legs of the chair with his feet hooked onto the bars of Gabi's cell. She was dressed in a deep purple bodice over a loose gray shirt with poofy sleeves bound at the elbows. Around her waist was a black skirt reaching to her mid calves with a smoke-like swirl of gray coming up from the hem to her waist. Under the skirt she wore gray leggings and navy button up shoes; the kind that ladies wore in centuries long past. Here and there, polished stones and small shells were fastened to her clothes; a swirly seashell hung at her throat; and in her hair were several exotic feathers.
"I've become a shaman, Yusuke. I think it's in my family, my blood family. The sixth sense is a genetic gift. I have been doing research and learning from the holy men and women on my travels, but I'm still not a master."
"So you're a Ghostbuster, only without an espresso machine on your back, or whatever they used in the movies."
"That movie rocked!" .
"So you can see ghosts and stuff?"
"You mean you can't? Even being Spirit Detective?"
"Nah, I'm a fighter. Kuwabara's family has the sixth sense, though. So does Genkai, my mentor. She could probably help you. I'll take you to see her when you get outta here. Maybe then THE OLD HAG WILL GET OFF MY BACK FOR ONCE!" he hollered into the air as if she could hear him.
"Could she help me control my other powers?"
"What, you can do other stuff besides destroy spirits?"
"Yeah, lots of stuff; here I'll show you. Hold out your hand." Yusuke obeyed, watching her curiously, "now don't move." She reached through the bars to her cell and flexed her fingers for a moment. Concentrating on Yusuke's hand, she slowly lowered her hand onto his. At first, her fingers collided with his palm, but then he could not feel her touch at all; her fingers became slightly translucent and passed straight through his hand. "Cool! Ghost powers! You could get out of a lot of trouble like that!"
" I can't control it as well as you think, sometimes I turn intangible during the wrong moments, so I don't use it often."
"Yeah? Like how?"
"Once I walked right out of my clothes."
"Oh." He sympathized with this single syllable.
"Yeah,"
"Kuwabara has a real strong sixth sense, but he can't do anything like you can."
"He seems nice, a little loud mouthed, but nice." Yusuke scoffed. "He's an idiot, but hey, so am I and I get along on my own just fine."
"How you made it to this age without dying, I'll never know."
"Hey remember I did die once?"
"Oh, Yeah."
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