A/N: Sadly, I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

Spirit Detective Saga
Chapter One - Goodbye, Material World!

The latest news had it that Urameshi Yūsuke killed for fun and had two thousand goons at his beck and call. Or was it that he summoned them with a whistle? The rumours were unclear on that particular point. No one was quite sure how the math worked out there. That would make him the leader of every gang in the prefecture, surely. And at the same time, every delinquent wanted him dead. Logically, that meant Yūsuke commanded a lot of people who wanted to kill him at the first opportunity.

It was flattering in a way that people thought that highly of him.

Yukimura Keiko had a very different opinion. He was a jerk, yes, and got into fights all the time, but then there were moments like this that showed how badly misunderstood he was. Just across the street, she saw him making funny faces in an attempt to amuse a young boy who looked no older than five. It hadn't gone over that well at first, but then he decided, of all things, to stick the kid's ball down his pants, hunch over with his jacket pulled up, and do the strangest little dance.

Keiko resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. She felt embarrassed just watching him, and the stares he was getting… But the kid was laughing, and Yūsuke seemed very pleased with himself for it, so she supposed all was well. If only he could show this side of himself more often, then maybe he wouldn't have such a horrible reputation.

After he returned the boy's ball (which, gross, obviously), Keiko watched him speak with the kid for a short while. He then went on his way opposite home, both his and hers, to get into some manner of trouble, she was sure, while the boy left the other way. For the sake of his silly pride, Keiko stepped into the shadows when his gaze turned in her direction. He wouldn't want anyone he knew to have seen that. It didn't mesh with the ridiculous image he presented to the world.

But perhaps she would tease him a little over this later when he'd gone back to his usual grumpy self.

And so, feeling a little less annoyed with her friend after his antics earlier at school, Keiko went on her way as well. She needed to get home soon. Her parents had asked for her help with the family restaurant this evening, which meant she needed to get her homework done early if she wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

"Hey! Watch out! Stay on the sidewalk!"

Keiko's head snapped toward Yūsuke. She saw him running at a dead spring along his side of the road. Then her eyes fell on the reason why. The boy from earlier had kicked his ball into the street and chased after it, and she didn't need to listen to hear the squeal of tires headed his way.

Compared to some other animals, humans were really very bad at judging speed and distance, but one thing was certain.

Yūsuke wasn't going to make it.

But Keiko thought she could.

She tossed her schoolbag aside and slid over the hood of a parked car. She might not be as athletic as Yūsuke, but the boy was right there and not even half her weight. She just had to pick him up and get out of the way as fast as she could.

In one smooth motion, she leaned down and snaked her arms underneath the kid's. She put all her strength into lifting him with legs, arms, back, and anything else that would help as the oncoming car's horn blared louder and louder as it drew closer and closer.

But the boy didn't weigh as much as she'd thought. While momentum threw him forward out of the way, it left her dangerously unbalanced in the process. Worse, her tunnel vision on the child had prevented her from noticing Yūsuke, equally laser focused, leaping to the rescue a split second after her.

Their eyes met for one horrible moment just before they cracked skulls.

Then Keiko felt several thousand pounds slam into her at over twice the speed limit.

When she came to, Keiko felt…fine, to her great surprise. She was so sure that something had hit her. Hard. But she was having trouble remembering. She closed her eyes and concentrated on pulling the memory to mind. A pair of familiar eyes slowly bubbled to the surface. Yūsuke had been involved…right? But he'd never hit her! She'd slapped him more than once, sure, but he'd earned every single one. Anyone else would have reported him to the police for his childish pranks that bordered on sexual harassment! He seriously needed to grow up already.

But she set that aside for now. As she tried to work out what happened to her, she finally realized something that should have been obvious: she was flying! Well, she was more floating, but that wasn't the point. She froze in place out of fear she might break free of whatever force held her and fall if she moved, but then it occurred to her that she'd been moving before. She cautiously tested her range of motion and found that she could move about at will through the air.

"Okay," Keiko mumbled to herself. "Weird, but convenient." All she had to do was not freak out. She could handle this.

Her first move, she decided, was to plant her feet back on the ground. Gravity might not care for her as much as it used to, but she very much wanted to pretend it did.

Except when she finally looked down, she saw the horrific scene of a traffic collision right below her. Yūsuke was sat on the ground against a parked car with two men watching over him. He was uncharacteristically still but otherwise looked unharmed at a glance. The boy from earlier was nearby as well. While he'd acquired a few scrapes and was crying, he'd survived the crash mostly uninjured. Of particular note, there was also a man resting in the passenger seat of the car that had, judging by the skid marks, caused the collision. He showed the characteristic swollen bruises of a Yūsuke beatdown with a missing tooth thrown in for good measure. A woman tended to him with clear affection while the scene developed around them.

But it was the fifth form that stole Keiko's breath. It was her. One of her arms was bent in the wrong direction, and a red stain had grown on the pavement beneath her head. She moved out of morbid curiosity to get a better view and deeply regretted it. Someone had clearly tried to provide first aid, but she couldn't imagine anyone surviving that sort of injury.

Which meant she was dead, didn't it?

The revelation came with less utter devastation than she would have thought. Maybe she was too numb to really feel it, or perhaps it was because she was clearly still alive, just not in the traditional sense of the word. When she neared the ground, she noted that no one paid any attention to her. Moreover, when she tried to touch Yūsuke, seeking comfort and reassurance for them both, her hand went right through him. That left her with only one conclusion.

"I'm a ghost."

Saying the words aloud made it all real. The truth hit her hard, and she shuddered as she drew in air in an effort to not panic or break down in tears.

"Bingo. Bingo, you win the prize!"

Keiko snapped back to reality. Her head turned toward the new voice. Floating just above her was a woman riding an oar. She wore a kimono and had a classical air of beauty, although the blue hair stood out as unusual and modern. Assuming it was dyed, of course. Now that Keiko was a ghost, she wasn't sure what to expect from life after death. Maybe her own hair was blue now. She'd check, but she was a bit preoccupied with staring at the moment.

"Our records indicated you were a smart girl," the other ghost (presumably) continued with a cheerful energy, "but I didn't expect you to figure it out so quickly. Traumatic deaths are so often difficult to grasp, you see."

Keiko's breaths came faster and heavier. She was dead. So what if she was dead? She wasn't dead dead. She could handle this. What more could the world do to her? Right?

She couldn't handle this! She felt the welling tears finally spill forth. She was dead. She was dead and alone. Everyone she knew and loved was still alive, and she was a ghost, and alone, and—

A soft hand fell onto her back and moved in small circles while the oar riding woman (ferrygirl, Keiko's brain corrected even in the midst of her breakdown, because this woman was obviously here to ferry her to the land of the dead as per the stories) murmured words of comfort.

She wasn't alone. And that made all the difference. She could do this.

Eventually, Keiko managed to calm herself enough to ask, "Who are you?"

The ferrygirl pulled back and puffed herself up a bit. "Botan, guide to the river Styx, at your service," she said with the same vibrancy she'd shown earlier. This was just another day at work for her, Keiko realized now, and not the end of all things. It was curious, really. Had she ever stopped to think about what she expected of a shinigami, comfort and a friendly smile certainly wouldn't have been it. Not that she didn't appreciate a bit of congeniality in this situation.

Keiko pulled herself together and offered Botan a bow. "I'm Yukimura Keiko." But then Botan had mentioned records, so she'd surely already known that. Still, an introduction was only polite. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Circumstances notwithstanding."

"Likewise," Botan said. "What you did was very brave."

She wasn't sure if she'd weighed her actions enough for them to qualify as brave specifically, but Keiko offered Botan a smile in return nonetheless for the compliment. If she had to die, at least her death had come with meaning. She'd saved a child. And Yūsuke, now that she thought about it. Who would have foreseen that? She carried him through school. He beat up anyone and anything that so much as looked at her funny. Those were their roles, at least on the surface. How ironic this ending was.

A small sigh escaped Keiko. She might not be happy about her situation, but she felt a little at peace for having done some good. "So what happens now?" she asked. "Do the dead mourn the living? Will I have time to say farewell?"

Botan pressed a sleeve of her kimono to her mouth and tittered beneath it.

Perhaps, in hindsight, the idea of mourning the living was a bit odd, but Keiko didn't think it was that funny.

"You've got the wrong idea. I'm not here to take you anywhere, at least not if you don't want to. I'm here to see if you'd like to take a test to come back to life."

Keiko's breath caught. Some part of her that never stopped thinking wondered at the notion of a ghost breathing, but the vast majority of her looked to her broken form below. "That's possible?"

"Mm-hmm."

"But I…" Keiko touched the back of her ghostly head and was pleasantly surprised to find no sign of injury there. She supposed that didn't transfer over like it usually did in ghost stories.

Botan's easy smile fell into a thin line. "Yes, these things are a good deal easier with less damage to the body, but you're not a hopeless case. We can put you back together while no one is looking. I have a knack for healing, you see. It's melding the soul back into the physical that's tricky."

The seed of hope was planted, and Keiko so dearly wanted to water it. "And this test, it's goal is to do just that, isn't it?"

With a snap of her fingers, Botan said, "Smart as a whip, Keiko! I take it you're interested?"

"Yes, but…why?" She glanced down at her bod — corpse as it was being covered and loaded for transport. There was no question. She was dead. Medical miracles were rare and never like this. Her revival wouldn't be subtle. "Is everyone allowed to take this test?"

When Botan laughed this time, there was a distinct edge of nervousness to it. "It's funny, Keiko, none of us were expecting you to die today. You weren't supposed to be here, and your friend Yūsuke threw us all for a loop. Quite frankly, we haven't prepared a place for you yet."

Keiko blinked. "Yūsuke?"

"Oh, yes." Botan withdrew a little black book from the sleeve of her kimono and opened it to a bookmarked page. "No one expected that he'd risk his life to save that boy, much less pay him a second thought. Without his shout, you wouldn't have noticed in time to effect your daring rescue. Without his own attempt, you would have made it out alive. Not well, mind, but alive."

Keiko had no idea what she was supposed to do with any of that information.

After a few moments, Botan faked a cough. "Well, you know what they say. No good deed goes unpunished."

"What was supposed to happen?" Keiko hazarded asking. If there was such a thing as 'supposed to' in a world that evidently had enough free agency to catch the afterlife off guard.

When Botan hesitated to reply, "Are you sure you want to know?" that told Keiko everything. Nonetheless, upon her insistence, Botan answered, "The ball would have acted as a cushion. As much as I hate to say this, the boy would have escaped with one less scrape."

One weak laugh became two. Nor could Keiko stop the progressively more broken ones that followed. She held a hand to her head and tried her best not to cry again as they turned into sobs. Her sacrifice had been meaningless. Yūsuke had demonstrated to everyone that, at his core, he was a good person, and this was his reward?

"Remember death isn't always permanent," Botan said hastily. "You have a chance to come back."

That wasn't the point, but…Keiko could focus on it and strive toward excellence in this test as in any other. She firmed her resolve. "Please tell me what I have to do."

"That's the spirit!" Botan said with a little fist pump. As she slid up her oar, she patted the free space behind her. "Hop on board. I'll take you to see Prince Koenma. He'll explain everything."

Keiko paid her body one last glance before daring to properly look at Yūsuke for the first time. Even had she known him only half as well, she could tell blindfolded that devastated barely sufficed to describe him. She couldn't speak to what was going through his mind just this moment, but she could guess. He thought this was his fault. If she could, she'd tell him to stop being an idiot. She'd tell him she was proud of him.

But right now, all she could tell him was, "Goodbye, Yūsuke. I'll see you soon." She hoped.

With her brief farewell out of the way, she settled onto Botan's oar. She held tight to the shaft, and they shot into the sky.

A/N: If you're waiting for me to update something else, I've been very busy and not had time for serious writing lately. Sorry. KSCoB is still next on the list for an update when I find the time.

Anyway, this story will have smaller chapters than my usual fare (roughly covering the same amount of material as one of the manga's chapters). I have a buffer out to the end of the second volume of the manga (ie when our spirit detective returns to life) that I intend to empty.

For reference, I'm pulling source material from both the manga and the anime. For this first arc, it'll largely be the former since the anime skipped most of that material.

Behold! A shameless self-promotion! I have a Patrreon account under the username Forthwith if you want to support my writing in general.