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

Spirit Detective Saga
Chapter Ten - The Awakening!

Keiko pointed to a messy block of equations containing a couple subtle errors. "You'll want to double check your work here. These equalities are usually true but not always." Further down the paper, she noticed something else worth mentioning. "This part here. It's not wrong, but I learned a trick at Meiou that could simplify the math if you're interested."

Forcing Kuwabara to study science had been a gateway drug, oddly enough, rather than the punishment it'd been intended as. "Lay it on me," he declared. "Maybe I can get Mr Iwamoto fired next."

Keiko smiled and chuckled silently. She wasn't their math teacher's biggest fan either with how he treated Yūsuke, but she hardly thought doing well on his upcoming test unprompted would be what did his career in, not like trying to cheat Kuwabara out of a decent science grade had for Mr Akashi.

But maybe if Yūsuke's grades suddenly improved as well, his head would explode.

"So what mathemagics do you have for me?"

So prompted, Keiko conjured a chalkboard into Kuwabara's dream and launched into a short lecture on geometric series and limits. She answered Kuwabara's questions as she went while he took notes that would disappear come morning on his desk. When it came time to explain how to use the information, she said, "You can bound these terms from above by increasing powers of a half. The whole thing, then, is bounded by the limit, which converges on the area of interest, so you can skip over all these intermediary steps. The sum is at most two, whereas the right-hand side is strictly greater than two everywhere, so you're done. QED."

"Huh." Kuwabara went through the process of explicitly writing the solution down in his own words. Keiko checked it after he finished and gave him her nod of approval. "Awesome! Thanks, Keiko! You're the best!"

Keiko could get used to hearing that. Perhaps she should consider going into teaching when she grew up.

"How does Urameshi have such trash grades with you around?"

That had an easy answer. "Because he cares about school about as much as you used to." And Keiko had no real way to change that, unfortunately. Yūsuke wasn't any less intelligent than Kuwabara; he just didn't bother to try.

"Man, that punk really takes you for granted."

"No he doesn't," Keiko immediately retorted. Seeing Kuwabara raise his hands in surrender, she let the bite bleed out of her voice and idly twirled a pigtail around a finger. "I want more for him than he wants for himself is all. I…" She pursed her lips as she considered how to phrase what she wanted to say. "Traveling with Botan, watching her work, helping with her work, I've met a lot of ghosts. By definition, we are a sorry lot."

Kuwabara tried to tell Keiko not to talk about herself like that, but he was missing the point. "Ghosts only linger in the living world in need of a ferrygirl when they have problems. For me, it was a sudden, traumatic death." She thought the last couple months had perfectly distracted her from that and helped her heal, but she hadn't taken the time yet to sort out her psyche. "For most ghosts, though, their problems are more circumstantial than incidental, if that makes any sense."

"Yeah, I get it," Kuwabara said, nodding along. "It's like when you leave milk out too long versus using it in bad cereal."

A colorful analogy but not an inaccurate one, Keiko allowed. "Uh, sure. Anyway, I've met several people who remind me of Yūsuke. I've seen what happens to them, and why, and it's not their fault life deals them a bad hand. I want to help him, but he needs to want to help himself first. But to want to help himself, he needs to find some place to belong. To feel valued. And I don't know how to give him that or what it might look like, only that I haven't been helping as much as I'd hoped."

Kuwabara clapped a hand on Keiko's shoulder. "Hey. You don't have to give Urameshi nothing."

Keiko offered her unexpected new friend a smile. "Thank you, but have and want are two different things, now aren't they?"

"Yeah," Kuwabara said, "I guess they are."

A few moments of easy silence passed between them.

"Speaking of whom," Keiko led while they were on the subject, "how is Yūsuke? I haven't been by as often as I'd like lately. I've been…distracted." The last couple weeks since Teijō had left for Spirit World had been busy. She could barely remember the last time she'd stopped by to check-in on everyone.

Kuwabara waved the question away. He said, "Eh, he's the same foul-tempered punk he's always been," which Keiko translated as boy for, "He misses you but is doing all right overall."

"That's good."

"Yeah, kind of figured the move would give him something to be happy about, but—"

Wait, what? Had Keiko heard that right? "The move?"

"Oh, wow, you really must've been busy," Kuwabara said. "Yeah, some arsonist burned his apartment down."

Keiko's hands shot to her mouth in a gasp. "He and Atsuko weren't hurt, were they?" How had she not heard about this? She hadn't been that out of touch, had she?

"Nah. They're fine. Apparently, his mom had one hell of a fire insurance policy, 'cause he moved into a real nice place a few blocks away from here."

"That's…" Keiko had no idea what to say. "Well, good for them. I guess." Neither of them, she knew, had particularly cared for their old home, and she had her own copies of most of their photos. They couldn't have lost too much.

"So?" Kuwabara asked. "What have you been up to since you last stopped by? It's been a while."

It took a few moments for Keiko's train of thought to switch tracks. "Ah. Right." She shook her head of the visions of fire Kuwabara had put there. "Where should I start?"

There was so much and so little to tell. On one metric, Keiko had accomplished almost nothing lately other than going to class. Sayaka absolutely refused to travel through the Spirit World to move around the world quickly, so they'd mostly stuck to nearby locations within Japan. On another measure, however, she'd made leaps and bounds because she'd done very little. Where did she begin?

"I think the highlight has been my spiritual training," Keiko ultimately went with. "Sayaka — that's the little poltergeist using your VCR while we chat — was really frustrated with her decreased powers. With me as her training partner, she threw herself into practice with the single-minded determination of a kid with a new favorite toy. A little too intense for me, but I got a lot out of it. I'm a proper poltergeist myself now. When I get back into my body, I'm cautiously optimistic the skill will stick."

"So you'll have, like, the Force?"

Keiko giggled. "More or less."

"Any chance you can teach me?"

Keiko could only shrug. "You're spiritually sensitive, so I imagine you could pick it up eventually, but you'd have to learn how to access your spirit energy first. It's instinctual for ghosts. I tried teaching Maya for a while without success. The alternative isn't great, either. I wouldn't recommend having Sayaka pull your soul out of your body to practice."

Kuwabara clicked his tongue.

"What else have I been up to?" Keiko mused. "Oh, I took Sayaka back to see Fubuki and Kaisei a couple times. Those are the two kid psychics who had Botan's oar, if you don't recall. I figured it'd be good for her to have someone her own age she can play with without, you know, the aforementioned ripping of souls out of bodies. I have no idea how she figured out how to do that on her own."

"Yeah, no kidding," Kuwabara said, unease creeping into his voice. "No offense, Keiko, but your friends are kind of scary."

Keiko laughed. "Look who's talking." None of them were Yūsuke, but most of Sarayashiki Jr High steered clear of Kuwabara and his friends nonetheless. "But really, we're ghosts. We're supposed to be scary."

She had a point there. No one could deny that.

"Have you had another one of your not quite alive days yet?"

"Next week," Keiko replied. "I'm scheduled in for Sunday. I won't miss school and can have real visitors that way. Botan told me you can come if you want."

But Kuwabara turned the invitation down with a shake of his head. "Nah. Urameshi would kill me if he found out I went without him when you were awake. He's pissed enough that you can't talk to him."

Keiko rolled her eyes. Yūsuke wasn't nearly that petty, although she appreciated that Kuwabara cared enough to want to not make him even more fed up with the situation than he already was. Yūsuke could use more friends, even if it was just the weird frenemy thing he and Kuwabara had going.

Without warning, Keiko felt something suddenly shift inside her.

"Keiko?"

A something reached deep into her very being.

"Hey, are you okay?"

It made itself comfortable, settling in to stay.

"What's wrong?"

It pulled at everything that made her her.

The sound of of desk and chair tumbling over with pencil and paper sent flying barely registered.

Its presence subsumed itself into her.

The hands that fell into Keiko's shoulders went ignored.

It reemerged, then, no longer foreign and unwelcome yet distinctly other.

"Keiko!"

Keiko snapped out of her daze with a start. She barely had time to register that Kuwabara was shaking her before she said, "I need to go." Something huge had happened. She was sure of it.

She didn't wait for a response before she slipped out of Kuwabara's dream.

Keiko emerged from Kuwabara's dream sitting at his bedside with only the faintest rays of dawn poking in through the window. He had a bookshelf only just beginning to fill up with reference material and another dedicated entirely to manga. His own personal television sat across from his bed. It displayed a paused video with a wide-eyed Sayaka floating in front of it and facing away toward Keiko. The stereo system sitting atop his desk had been pushed to the side for schoolwork, which now took up the majority of the real estate. All that seemed in perfect order, more or less.

But one important item had gone missing: Keiko's spirit beast egg.

Out of the corner of her eye, Keiko noticed Sayaka point behind her. At what could have only one answer.

Before Keiko could turn to look, she felt something the size and weight of a housecat land on her shoulder with four little paws. It nuzzled against her cheek, revealing smooth, luxurious fur. A soft, fluffy tail fell against her back. When she searched for it, she found the bond between her and the creature. It felt like an extension of her own self, not entirely unlike a strange, fifth limb. New, curious, different, and not under her control, certainly, but undeniably her.

Keiko held up her hands, and her spirit beast eagerly leapt into them.

The first word that came to mind was simply, White! and a pure snow white at that. Then came small, slim, and sleek. Its tail looked like a pillow. Those triangular ears atop its head just begged to be scratched. An adorable muzzle projected out past dazzling amber irises. She almost mistook it for a puppy, but when it closed its eyes and grinned, she knew exactly what she had in her arms.

Keiko snuggled the arctic fox to her chest and finally returned its prior nuzzle with an irresistible squeal of delight. "You are so cute! I love you already!"

The young vixen yipped its agreement.

"Wait." Keiko held the fox out to better take it in all at once. "You are a vixen, right?" Even with Minamino having had some influence upon her spirit beast, it'd be really weird if her innermost reflection wasn't female. What would that say about her?

The fox frowned, and Keiko got the distinct impression from it through their bond that the question had offended it. Or perhaps that was an odd reflection of her own displeasure at the idea that it could be anything but? She recalled Prince Koenma mentioning that it could only feel what she felt, but surely it had some emotional wiggle room to account for context.

Keiko shelved the questions for later and instead happily spun in place with her spirit beast held out before her. She didn't care.

Then Keiko abruptly gasped. "A name! You need a name!" She set her spirit beast down on Kuwabara's bed. Frantically, she scanned her mind for good names for foxes. "Kogitsune-maru?"

The fox tilted its head to the side.

"No, that won't do. Inari is obviously out as well."

While musing on the matter, Sayaka reminded Keiko that she existed. She asked, only a step away, "Can I?" with her arms extended toward the spirit beast.

Keiko nodded.

That gave Sayaka all the permission she needed to coo and dote on the adorable kit as it — she deserved. She basked in Sayaka's affectionate petting, and it was all just so cute Keiko could just die all over again!

But her spirit beast still needed a name, so Keiko forced herself to focus on that once more. "Yuki?" she tried. "No, too obvious. Same with Shiro." She reached down to scratch behind the fox's ear. "You've already got us wrapped around your little paw. You're going to grow up too sly and clever for that, aren't you?"

"How about Tamamizu?" Sayaka suggested.

That didn't sound quite right, either.

Keiko hummed as an idea came to her. "You're supposed to be sort of a reverse ferrygirl. I can work with that. Not a shinigami but a…meigami." She wasn't quite sure if that would be the right reading of the kanji for 'life god', but the characters at least seemed right. If she took away the latter kanji and added in the one for fox, that gave her, "Meiko? Mei to your friends? How does that sound?"

The kit considered it for a few moments before uttering a pleased bark.

"Meiko it is, then."

A warm feeling bubbled up inside Keiko and had her itching to skip and jump. This little ball of adorable fluff was hers! She just had to show Mei off to everyone.

And better yet, while she was at it, she could tell them that she was finally passed her test to come back to life!

The trouble with night was that most people slept through it. Keiko couldn't very well throw a huge celebration with all her friends if half of them were unconscious. But she had Botan and Sayaka to share the joy with, so they would just have to do for now.

"Oh, I just knew you could do it, Keiko, my dear!" Botan said as she pet Mei, who had currently contented herself to travel in Sayaka's arms. "You're beautiful both inside and out."

Keiko blushed and said she wouldn't go that far. Of course, it was simple fact that Mei was the most adorable living(?) being in existence, and she wouldn't hear a word otherwise. Sure, it did come off as a bit narcissistic when one thought about it too much, but humblebragging in the face of unquestionable truth was equally unattractive.

"So what happens now?" Keiko had thought her spirit beast would just whisk her away back to her body, but she'd never asked for details, and that was now clearly not the case.

The question managed to draw Botan's attention away from Mei to look at Keiko. "Well, I'm not exactly sure. Clerical errors like yours are handled on a case-by-case basis, so I'll have to consult with His Highness first."

Keiko responded with a displeased hum at the nonanswer, drawing an apologetic smile from Botan. Still, if she didn't know, then she didn't know. Badgering her any more would accomplish nothing when she already intended to find out what they should do next.

"Right then," Botan said, finally withdrawing her hand from Mei. "I'll head out now and have a word with the prince when he can fit me into his schedule. I should be back by noon."

There was a question on the tip of Keiko's tongue.

Botan didn't miss that and asked, "Yes?"

After a moment, Keiko blurted out, "Can I talk to Mom, Dad, and Yūsuke now? I hatched the egg. My test is over, right?"

"I…would err on the side of caution," Botan said. Her tone begged forgiveness even as it pleaded for understanding. "Prince Koenma is a good man and likely wouldn't hold it against you either way, but I would appreciate it if you didn't potentially place him in a difficult position."

Keiko sighed. "Okay." She'd waited this long. She could wait another day or so.

In the meanwhile, after Botan departed, Keiko supposed she could (and probably should) go explain her abrupt departure to Kuwabara and then let Maya know that her egg had hatched. If they had time, she could also let the Fubuki and Kaisei know that she wouldn't be able to drop in on them after school so casually anymore.

After making the rounds with their friends, Keiko retreated with Sayaka to the long-term care facility holding her body. Rather than coop themselves up inside, they idled up in the clouds for no real reason other than that, soon enough, she wouldn't be able to do so anymore.

Botan, as promised, returned a couple hours before noon, but she'd not come alone. Prince Koenma had made the journey from Spirit World with her. He still had the appearance of a toddler, which Keiko could only assume was his real form at this point. She still didn't know what to make of that.

Sayaka floated up and over to whisper in Keiko's ear. "Hey, he's kind of cute, isn't he?"

Nope. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole.

"Who is he?"

That question Keiko could answer. "Sayaka, Mei—" She held out her arm for her spirit beast, who leapt onto it from Sayaka's own arms. Mei then scampered up and settled upon her shoulder. "—this is Prince Koenma. Botan tells me he does much of the day-to-day management of Spirit World for his father."

The prince held up a hand and uttered a casual, "Yo," in greeting.

"Sir, this is Sayaka and my spirit beast, Meiko."

While Sayaka curiously opted for a curtsy in her dress over a bow, Mei only shifted slightly and brushed her tail across Keiko's back.

After introductions were out of the way, they got down to business.

Prince Koenma's gaze shifted from the humans to observe Mei more closely. "A fox, then." A curious hum escaped him. "Not what I expected, but congratulations nonetheless. I presume you're ready to return to life?"

"I am," Keiko replied with a resolute nod. As much as she'd found ways to genuinely enjoy her time as a ghost, she wanted more to leave behind its restrictions. "If I may, how will this work?"

"The process is really quite simple," Prince Koenma replied. "You simply need to ask Meiko to guide you back into your body. She will handle the rest. Spirit beasts are naturally talented at manipulating their partner's soul."

That was it? Keiko hesitated a moment before hazarding, "Botan could have told me that. Surely you haven't taken time out of your schedule just to eliminate the messenger." She vividly recalled how backlogged Spirit World bureaucracy had been upon her first visit.

"You're not wrong," Prince Koenma said. "I'm here to observe. We've not yet performed many revivals in this manner, so this will be something of an experiment. If anything goes wrong, I'll step in."

Cautiously, Keiko asked, "But you don't expect anything to, right?"

Prince Koenma arched his brow. "No, and that is entirely the point. Spirit beasts are efficient and efficacious when it comes to this sort of thing. In fact, we hope to bypass some of our own limitations in the future by studying them."

For some reason, it struck Keiko as odd that the afterlife had its own R&D department. She'd not expected them to know everything about everything already, or at least as much as could be known, but when it came to ghosts, souls, and such, Botan had always either had an answer for every question or known someone who did. She supposed she'd just gotten too used to that.

"Now shall we proceed?" Prince Koenma asked.

Keiko nodded. "Please."

So agreed, they descended to the ground. They found the nice little park area nearby which Keiko used to mark her room's location from the outside and then headed straight there. Her body remained on her bed as always, but they hadn't caught her alone as they'd intended.

"I didn't expect to have an audience," Prince Koenma stated equivocally, betraying no sign of whether he approved or not, though he did glance at Sayaka for a moment.

Keiko, who knew very well this was a school day, flatly added, "Neither did I."

In contrast, Botan forced out a bit of nervous laughter. "Oh, Koenma, Sir, this is Kitajima Maya. Keiko bumped into her at school after death. Maya, this is Prince Koenma. He does a fantastic job running the Spirit World and organized Keiko's return to life."

Keiko swore she saw the prince roll his eyes out of the corner of her own. "Relax, Botan," he said. "Grey areas like these arise from time to time. No harm, no foul." He turned his attention fully onto Maya then. "I take it you know what's about to happen?"

With a nod, Maya said, "The news spread quickly. Everyone is here." Her voice arched as, to Keiko, she added, "You can't tell us, 'Oh, I'm coming back to life today,' and not expect us to come running."

To be fair, that wasn't precisely what Keiko had said.

"Kuwabara and I have been trading off vigils since the hospital won't let us all in at once. Would you like me to send Urameshi in?"

Keiko flushed. Flustered, she stammered out, "I — um, you don't have to — if you want to stay — that is, I — yes, please."

"No problem," Maya said teasingly. As she practically skipped out the door, she sung, "I'll tell him to hold your hand really tight, too."

A few moments later, Prince Koenma said, "How droll. But perhaps we can continue?"

"Ah! Yes!" Keiko flew up to her own bedside and set Mei down atop her body. "Shall I just…" She nodded down at her spirit beast, and the prince told her to go for it. "Okay. Okay, here goes nothing." A deep breath settled her nerves now that this was finally going to happen. "Mei, would you please help me get back into my body?"

A second passed in tense silence.

And then Mei nodded. She dove into Keiko's body, and the very next moment, she felt a sharp yank all over her ghostly form pull her inside as well.

Keiko awoke.

She felt just as awful as she had the last time it'd happened, although at the same time, she felt strangely more whole in a way she'd not noticed she hadn't before. A little bundle of something full of her spirit energy left her, and then suddenly there was a small weight on her chest.

"Whoa, what!"

That voice sounded familiar. The weight on Keiko's chest leapt from her toward it.

"Hey! What are — oh, you're…Mei, right?"

A happy little yip answered that question.

"Damn, you're a cute little bugger. Guess that makes sense. Hey! Don't lick me!"

Keiko recognized the voice now. She needed to get up. Her muscles refused to respond as she was used to, but she burnt spirit energy to get them to behave. She opened her eyes slowly against the bright light of the room and then sat up.

There only a step away from her stood Yūsuke, stunned as he watched her rise. Mei slipped out of his grasp and climbed to sit atop his shoulder, but he barely paid her any notice.

Keiko wet her mouth to speak. But what did she say? A normal greeting? A snappy one-liner? Something that he knew only she would? She should have thought about this more.

But then she remembered the one line of dialogue they'd truly been allowed to share during her ordeal.

"Yūsuke, I have so many stories to tell you."

It took a few moments before he accepted that this was really happening. Shock soon faded into wet laughter.

"Yeah?" he managed. "You'd better."

Then for once, Yūsuke hugged her instead of the other way around.