Thanks to everyone who reviewed my first chapter. I really do appreciate it. Here's the first chapter...enjoy! Please read and review!!

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

-T.S. Eliot

November (six months earlier)

She drifted somewhere in the dark blue. Her head was directed to a cushion but she couldn't bring herself to care who it had been. The blue was an enemy, that muddy haze that dimmed all senses save hearing. She let out a breathy sigh and pulled her elbow underneath her head, listening to the conversations circulating above her head with heightened perception. The sofa shifted as someone sat down by her feet.

"Yusuke, calm down," the person said. Botan breathed deep. Kurama. It was hard to misplace that measured, soothing tone he used. It had saved her from many nervous breakdowns in the past.

"No, I'm sick of waiting Kurama," the teenaged spirit detective seethed. He huffed by the sofa on his thirteenth lap across the room. "The toddler told us to be here at eight o'clock sharp. We were here at seven fifty-nine. Four and a half hours ago. How long does he expect us to way?"

Botan forced her lips to move. The words came out as a sluggish murmur, "Quit your whining, Yusuke. He'll be here when he gets here."

She heard the shuffling of his feet as he finished another lap of his frustrated pacing. Kuwabara sounded equally frustrated. "It is rude to tell someone to be somewhere and then not bother to show up."

"He'll be here when he gets here," Yusuke mimicked her. "He should be here when he says he will be. I don't like being – ow!"

Another voice, dripping with sarcasm, drowned him out. "Shut up, Yusuke, I'm trying to sleep."

She couldn't help the smile that curled up the edges of her lips. Keiko was another who had helped her through the years.

"Keiko, will you – oh, don't give me that look Hiei! You're taking their side?"

Botan peeled back an eyelid to see the fire demon shift his withering glare back to the window. "Hn. The sound of your voice is growing annoying."

Yusuke fell into a chair and muttered, "I just love it when everyone gangs up on me." He paused and then spoke again. "Koenma still isn't here, by the way. Just in case no one noticed."

She forced herself into an upright position, magenta eyes glaring through the strands of aqua blue that had escaped her ponytail. Her T-shirt slipped off her shoulder as she sat up and she grabbed at it with weak, sleepy fingers. "Yusuke!"

"Show some patience, please," Koenma's laugh was low and forced from the doorway. All eyes went to him. The confidence was gone from his teenage shoulders and there was an subdued urgency shining in his dark eyes. The unexpected seriousness drained the argument out of everyone. Even Yusuke's shoulders slumped a little. "This is the end of the world, you know."

Kuwabara sat back in his seat. "That bad, huh?"

Kurama raised a hand, "Perhaps we should listen and hear what Koenma has to say."

The ruler of Spirit World crossed the room and sat down at the only vacant seat remaining. "I do apologize for being late. It wasn't my original intention. But I'm here now so let me explain."

He folded his hands and stared at the ground as he began to tell his tale. "You're all aware, of course, that there are innumerable types of beings alive in the three worlds. There are the humans, the demons, the spirits – and they all have their own special part to play." He waited for their nods. "And then there are some beings who do not fall under any category and whose purpose is essential to that of all the others. There has been a mutual, however unofficial, agreement between the three worlds that such creatures are to be protected, remain unharmed. Unfortunately, there are some who hold no loyalties to anyone or anything. You will be undergoing a recovery mission, to bring someone back under the protection they were taken from."

He leaned forward and placed a file on the coffee table in the center of the room and then stood, walking to the window behind his seat. "Your mission is simple. Rescue the girl." He looked out over the darkness that covered the street below them. "However, I fear you'll face numerous difficulties before you can complete this task. Why don't you take a look at the woman you're rescuing."

Yusuke snatched the file from the table and opened to the large photo attached on the inside cover. She seemed normal enough, certainly not enough to put Koenma in such a state of panic. Caramel colored brown hair framed a heart-shaped face. On a street, he probably wouldn't have given her a second glance.

Then he saw her eyes.

They glinted up off the page at him like dew covered sapphires in the sunlight. One glance into them was like peering into a pool that held past, present, and future. His mouth fell open as he stared into the blue. They stared back up at him, stared through him. He knew those eyes would be able to see everything; there was no hiding from truth while under that gaze. He passed the file around, his mind reeling.

Kurama diverted his attention away from her mesmerizing stare. He swept his own eyes over her other features, cataloguing her minor attributes. She was pretty, but in an unusual manner. It was a simple beauty that provoked caution, told people to stay away. She was dressed in normal human clothing. She wore hardly any jewelry or makeup to help identify her. Except –

"The necklace," he gaped. Hiei took the file as Kurama stepped towards the prince of Spirit World.

Botan watched shock flicker across the fire demon's face. He raised a brow, "A phoenix? That's impressive."

When the folder reached her, her eyes shot straight to the thin chain about the woman's neck. The pendant at her collarbone wasn't extravagant, but there was something ethereal to it. A burgundy stone was inlaid in the center of a silver wiring that looped in and around itself, with no apparent beginning or end. It was unlike anything she'd seen.

Yusuke stumbled through his words. Confusion was the dominant expression on his face. "A phoenix? What - ?"

Kuwabara frowned. "But aren't phoenixes magical birds that live for a long time and then burn and then…they're not human girls."

Hiei rolled his eyes and muttered, "Idiot."

Koenma turned from the window, "The phoenix bird is merely the human perception. And I assure you, Kuwabara, she is not human. Nor is she a demon or a spirit."

"Then what is she?" Yusuke demanded. "I mean, I know she's a phoenix whatever that means, but what does that have to do with anything? If we humans got it wrong then what is right?"

Koenma sighed and sat down again, motioning for everyone to do the same. "Since the beginning, there has always been a phoenix. She is a collective for generations upon generations of knowledge, healing, and infinite power. The real thing follows its human idea in that she lives out her life and then, when they die, the power, the "gift" of the phoenix, is passed on to her successor. The new phoenix gains access to everything the former generations knew. Thus, the resurrection. Rising from the ashes."

He paused and took a breath. "In the past, they were depended upon as bringers of peace following the catastrophes that struck the planet. And now one has been taken. Captured. The survival of this woman is imperative."

Yusuke narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean "imperative"?"

Kurama closed his eyes. "If a phoenix dies before her time, there can be no other. The wisdom and insight gathered over countless generations will cease to be."

Koenma nodded. "Centuries worth of knowledge and power lost forever."

Kuwabara glanced at the picture again. "Well that's bad."

Hiei grinded his teeth together. "Yes, you fool."

Well, there's the Chapter 1. Hope everyone liked it. I feel like it wasn't my best writing. Let me know what you thought of it. Thanks!