Mystery of the Dead Miko

"You have an incoming call, sir." Jorge hesitantly informed his toddler employer. When Koenma didn't look up from his mountains of paperwork the ogre added, "It's the spirit detective, sir."

At last the prince looked up, sighed around his pacifier and prepared for the inevitable storm that was to follow. "Put him through."

With a click of a button and a flash of static, Yusuke's irate and bleeding face appeared over the huge flat screen TV. "Listen the fuck up diaper rash!" He immediately snarled.

"Nice to see you too Yusuke." Koenma quipped. "How did the mission go?"

Yusuke rolled his steadily blackening eyes. "Oh fan-fuckin-tastic." He leaned back a bit, giving the prince and ogre a full view of the large gash on his forearm that he was attempting to stitch up as he talked to them.

He went to continue but a feminine voice cut in from off screen, "You remembered to sanitize the needle first, right Yusuke?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it you nag." He called back; an affectionate smile working it's way onto his face.

Koenma cleared his throat. "I'm glad you are okay. I take it you completed the mission to a success?"

The spirit detective turned back to the screen with a scowl. "No shit, I did. Just like I do all your damn missions."

"Good, good." The prince said, "because I have another case I want you to look-,"

"Now look here baby breath." Yusuke angrily cut off, "I'm running myself ragged over your stupid missions. I have a life!"

"Yes and it is because of us that you do so you should be grateful." Koenma pointed out imperiously.

"I am! But how long is it going to take to pay it back? A whole 'nother lifetime?" Yusuke whined. "You're gonna get me killed again, Koenma, I can't keep going on like this!"

Koenma paused, caught off guard by the detective's use of his actual name for once. "What are you saying, Yusuke? You want to quit?"

Yusuke let out an explosive sigh, wincing when the movement made him pull the thread through his skin more roughly than intended. "Ow, fuck!"

"Are you okay honey?" A voice called from off screen.

"I'm fine babe!" Yusuke called back, pulling a tissue to dab at the bleeding wound. Back to the screen he seriously said, "I don't wanna quit, but I will if I have to. I'm overworked. I get you want to limit the amount of collateral damage and not let any high power demons in human world, but could'ya at least let me take the inhibiter off for missions? Without my full powers I'm practically bait for these bozos."

"You seem to be doing fine." Koenma said flippantly.

"Does this look fucking fine to you?" Yusuke growled, showing the screen the full extent of his injuries. Koenma and Jorge cringed at the gruesome sight. "You're asking the impossible of me Pacifier Breath! If you can't give me my full powers back then give me some more hands! Kurama and Hiei are off of their paroles and Kuwabara was just doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Now that they've all gone back to their lives I'm all on my own! I can't do this! You either get me an assistant Diaper Boy, or get yourself another spirit detective!"

Koenma sighed and massaged his temples. "It isn't that simple Yusuke, I-,"

The prince of spirit world was cut off as a girl with brown hair made her way onto the screen. "Are you talking to Koenma, Yusuke?" Keiko asked.

He nodded, "Yeah, but the baby's giving me a hard time. I told you this would happen."

Keiko's face darkened and she turned to the screen, a vicious glint in her eyes. "I can't see you, Koenma-sama, but you better hope you can see me." She threatened to what to her lack of spirit awareness must look like a blank monitor. "I don't care if you're a god, if you don't give Yusuke some backup, so help me, I will come up there myself and slap you so hard you feel it in all your cheeks. Do you hear me? I am sick and tired of my boyfriend coming home in pieces." Keiko leaned back and turned to Yusuke with a winning smile. "So, do you think he got the message?"

The detective cracked up. "You should see his face! Atta girl, Keiko!" She smiled fondly at him and then turned a glare back to the monitor before taking care of the rest of Yusuke's wounds.

Koenma cleared his throat uneasily. "Well then." He sniffed, trying to regain composure. "I… suppose I could try getting you an assistant. Your next assignment could potentially fill that slot." The toddler turned to a file on his desk and opened it up. "Kagome Higurashi, a girl around your age, recently died of a genetic disorder, but we don't have it in our records that she was supposed to die until the ripe old age of ninety-one."

"Seriously?" Yusuke asked, "I thought that sort of shit happening was more uncommon."

"It is." Koenma huffed. "That's why I want you to look into it. Unlike you, whose character we misjudged, things like genetic disorders are under our strict jurisdiction. This shouldn't have happened."

"O-kaaay, so isn't that more of a you problem?" He asked. "Sounds like you messed up your paperwork. Nothing I can do about it down here."

"Yes, but that's not the only thing." Koenma continued. "We can't seem to find her soul." The prince sighed. "Her death was announced and a ferry girl was dispatched to escort her soul into the afterlife, only, when she got there, no ghost was to be found. It just wasn't there."

"Why not? What does that mean?"

"We don't know, Yusuke, that's why you're on the case. Talk to the family and see if you can pick up where the ghost might have gone." Koenma wearily explained. "And since you want an assistant so badly, while you're at it you can save her body from being cremated so when you find her soul you can help her through her ordeal to resurrection."

The phone rang exactly three times before being picked up. "Shuichi speaking."

"Heeey, Kurama old buddy! How's life? How's your mother? How're you doin?" Yusuke cheerily greeted.

Kurama sighed on the other line. "Hello Yusuke. What do you want?"

"Hehe, you read me so well." The detective sheepishly chuckled.

"You don't make it very hard, Yusuke." Kurama pointed out with a wry smile.

"Right, well there's no easy way to put this, so I'm just gonna get right to the point." Yusuke admitted. "Spirit world needs me to steal a corpse from a crematorium." Silence fell over the other line and Yusuke laughed nervously. "Um, if it's any incentive, I hear she was a real beauty when she was alive?" He could just picture Kurama rubbing his temples on the other end.

"Yusuke-,"

"Look, I get it." He interrupted. "I wouldn't be asking if it weren't my last option. Her name's Kagome Higurashi, died of some genetic disorder that Spirit World didn't have on file. We're trying to bring her back to make her my assistant so I don't keep getting outnumbered and pulverized by low class scum. If this goes well then I'll get the help I need and I won't have to bother any of you guys in the future. You can get back to life as a salary man or college kid or whatever it is you do." Another silence descended over the line. "Come on," Yusuke wheedled, "you know you want to. It's stealing something pretty~!"

"It's stealing a corpse." Kurama deadpanned. "No matter the beauty the woman possessed, dead bodies are not my kind of treasure. Besides, a crematorium is hardly a worthy challenge. You'll need to give me better incentive than that."

"Better incentive than helping out an old friend so that you won't have to help him in the future?" Yusuke asked.

"Yes. I have a busy life, Yusuke."

He sighed. "Fine. Let's see, what would interest and old fox like you? She started getting sick when she was fifteen, had multiple extended absences from school, she eventually dropped out and ended up dying at age eighteen." Yusuke listed off the facts of the mission. "Oh, I know. She was a shrine maiden. Lived at the shrine rumored to protect the some jewel of four souls."

"The Shikon no Tama?" Kurama supplied.

"Yeah, that." Yusuke grunted. "Her folks were grooming her to take over the shrine as one of the last modern day priestesses. Spirit world thought the sickness was just an excuse to ramp up her training."

"But then she died." The fox finished for him. "I guess you have piqued my interest. Besides, if I don't help and you get caught you'll only be coming to me for bail money."

"Damn straight I will." Yusuke grinned. "All right! Let's do this!"

Kurama sighed good-naturedly. "Send me the address of the crematorium and I'll meet you there tonight at midnight."

Kurama was right; breaking into the crematorium was child's play for him. It didn't take long for Yusuke and Kurama to make their way to the morgue where the bodies awaiting incineration were kept and find the box labeled 'Kagome Higurashi'. With both of them there it was easy to pull the body-sized drawer out of the wall and lower it to the floor. But when they opened the lid from the box, Kurama and Yusuke were met with a disturbing sight they were not expecting to see.

"That… does not look like a genetic disorder." Yusuke eventually commented.

"Not one that I've ever seen." Kurama agreed.

The body of Kagome Higurashi was covered with acid burns, lacerations; puncture wounds and old scars. The corpse lay naked and pale, her wounds meticulously cleaned and stitched back together, as if by some attempt to make her whole again in death. It did little to help. She looked to have been impaled through the heart and shoulder, bruising was apparent around her neck, and a set of deep parallel slashes ran along her abdomen, among myriad other injuries littering her person.

Yusuke whistled lowly. "And I thought getting hit by a car was a bad way to go."

Kurama stared intently at the body. "This was done by a demon." He assessed. He knelt and traced his hand over the abdominal wounds. "This was done by some sort of claw." He lifted the corpse's arm, inspecting the wounds there. "There seems to be a bite mark here." He indicated her forearm. "It appears to be humanoid in nature." Looking over the marks on her neck he said, "She was strangled by some kind of tentacle."

"Gross." Yusuke grumbled. "Didn't the jerk have some kind of safe word?"

"Quit joking Yusuke." Kurama chided. "This is no laughing matter."

"I know." The detective muttered. "But if I don't I think I'm gonna puke."

The redhead pursed his lips and gave his friend a sympathetic look. "You'll bring her back." He assured.

Yusuke took a deep breath and slid down the wall of drawers. He shook his head and leaned his face in his hands. "I can't-," He started, "I mean, should I? Look at her, can you imagine?" He gestured wildly at the corpse. "To go through all that, to fucking die, if I were her ghost, I wouldn't stick around either." He sighed. "And if I bring her back, what kind of life will that be? Make her an indentured slave to Spirit World just like me? Make her fight demons after what she's experienced at the hands of them?" He stood suddenly and slammed a fist against the metal wall. "Dammit!"

Kurama slowly stood from his crouch as well. "Yusuke, regardless of whether you resurrect her or not, this needs to be reported to Spirit World. We should take the body and bring it to Koenma for further instruction. I'm sure he'd want to know."

"How could this happen?" Yusuke asked. He tilted his head forward until his forehead brushed a random metal drawer labeled Satoshi Murakai. "I take missions constantly, fighting low-level bastards who want to kill humans. Is it not enough? I'm supposed to stop this from happening!"

"Yusuke." Kurama soothed. "It isn't your fault."

Yusuke didn't respond, only kept softly banging his head against Satoshi Murakai's drawer.

"She was a priestess," Kurama explained, "That probably made her more of a target. There was nothing you could have done." He looked down at the corpse once more. "We should get going. The longer we stay, the more likely it is we'll get caught." He was right of course, and the two of them soon took the body, replaced the drawer and made their escape. Luckily Kurama had had the foresight to bring clothes so they could at least dress the woman before kidnapping her corpse.

…

Yusuke raised an eyebrow at Kurama when he made to follow him in once they arrived back at Yusuke's flat.

"This case has piqued my curiosity." Kurama explained. "I'll leave if you don't need the help-,"

"No, no," Yusuke interrupted. "Stay. I'm sure you'll have much better questions to ask the toddler than I do. I just thought you had your busy life to get back to."

Kurama smiled. "I believe I can take a few vacation days."

"K-Koenma sir, you have to calm down!" Jorge urged.

"Calm down? Calm down!" The toddler raged, "Do you have any idea what this means? And you want me to calm down?"

"Er, no sir. I don't know what this means." The ogre timidly replied to the tantrum-throwing prince.

"It means that the Higurashi's have been having secret contact with demons! And for a long time considering those old wounds on that body!" Koenma wailed, holding his head. "Oh, we've been running calculations off of false data! I'm going to have paperwork coming out of my ears by the time this is done."

Yusuke looked up at last from the corpse lying on the office floor, (and how the hell did that work, a spiritless corpse manifested in Spirit World?), to scowl at the whining prince. "That's all you have to say for yourself?" He demanded. "Someone's died and all you care about is paperwork!" Yusuke ended on a shout.

Koenma merely rolled his eyes. "This is the underworld, Yusuke. If I got upset about every person who died, I'd kill myself." He deadpanned.

"I- I know that!" Yusuke spluttered. "But look at her! She got gruesomely mauled by several demons over an extended period of time, all of which could have been prevented if you were actually competent enough to realize what was going on! That could have been Keiko, god damn it!"

"Yusuke, calm down." Kurama told him, setting a hand on his shoulder. "We'll get to the bottom of this. However upsetting this revelation is, throwing blame on yourself and others isn't going to help."

"Kurama is right." Koenma agreed, nodding sagely in a way that made Yusuke want to deck him. "I want you two to infiltrate the Higurashi shrine and find out how this happened as well as look for other suspicious clues. You are dismissed."

"Yes, your royal diaper ass." Yusuke grumbled.

"Where'd you even get these?" Yusuke asked the next morning, picking at the shoulder of his own set of medical scrubs.

Kurama smirked. "A hospital, of course."

"Of course." Yusuke rolled his eyes, "Ya damned thief."

"I thought they might be useful." He agreed. "Back when mother was in the hospital for the first time. Before I decided to use the Forlorn Hope."

Yusuke could only respond with a huff. "Damn, what's with temples and shit tons of stairs? Are sweaty pits and a burning ass supposed to make you more devoted or something?"

Kurama chuckled in reply.

Five minutes later and not much worse for wear, the two were situated at the top of the steps, in front of the door to the shrine. Kurama knocked twice, and they waited until a slim middle-aged woman answered the door. She was dressed in mourning clothes; grief lined her face and bags hung under her eyes. "Hello?" She said softly.

"Hello Ms. Higurashi. I'm Shuichi and this is Yusuke. We're from the hospital and we'd like to talk to you." Kurama politely introduced.

The woman looked them up and down with a bit of a dubious air. "Aren't you a bit young to be working at the hospital?" She asked.

"We're interns." Kurama explained. "I speak for both of us when I offer our condolences for your loss. We have a few questions about your daughter's condition-,"

"I'm sorry but I'm not interested in talking about it." Higurashi cut in.

"Please miss?" Kurama cajoled, "Any information could potentially help us in the future to-,"

"I said no!" She snapped, beginning to close the door.

"Madam-,"

"Oh let's just cut the crap Kurama." Yusuke interrupted. "She obviously ain't buying the bullshit. Look lady, I'm a Spirit Detective and we're here on orders from Prince Koenma of spirit world."

Kurama sighed at his friend's usual recklessness and blunt admittance. "May we come in?" He asked the suddenly wary woman.

She nodded and stood aside, watching them both as they entered and closing the door behind them. As soon as she did, Yusuke whirled on her.

"How and why the hell did you hide the fact your shrine was having a problem with demons? I could have helped if I'd known!"

Higurashi seemed startled at Yusuke's earnest expression, but then her face fell into somberness once again. "While I appreciate your concern young man, there was nothing you could have done." She told him.

"The hell I couldn't have! This is my job and if I could do it right then she wouldn't have had to die." He exclaimed.

"Don't speak of what you don't understand!" Higurashi snapped, losing some of her composure. She sniffed, and turned her face away. "Kagome was destined to die. Everyone knew it but her." Higurashi admitted, tears of guilt prickling at her tired eyes.

"Ms. Higurashi-," Kurama began,

"Kun Loon. Call me Kun Loon." The woman corrected.

"Kun Loon," Kurama acquiesced, "You're right, we don't understand. But maybe if you tell us, we will."

Her shoulders seemed to sag and Kun Loon seemed to age before their eyes. "Come with me, then. I will show you the legend of the Shikon Miko." Ms. Higurashi led them down the hall to a set of stairs that went down to the basement. When she flicked on the light at the bottom of the stair, a vast mural appeared before them, etched into the bedrock walls of the cellar.

"Once upon a time," Kun Loon began, words practiced and memorized, "a priestess named Kikyo who protected the Shikon Jewel, fell in love with a hanyou named InuYasha, and he fell in love with her. But a crippled man, a once feared bandit who lay under her care, also loved this Miko. His anger, jealousy and frustration was so potent and great that it attracted a hoard of lesser demons. They offered him mobility and power in exchanged for his body. He agreed and was soon consumed by the beasts. Then he rose anew, taking on the name Naraku. Naraku tricked Kikyo and InuYasha, leading the hanyou to be pinned to the holy tree by his own lover's arrow and the miko to die by her own lover's claws. The Kikyo was buried with the jewel in hopes that she could protect it even in death. Then, fifty years later, Kikyo's reincarnation appeared. She came from the bone-eater's well and claiming to come from the future. She was attacked and by some happenstance she broke the Shikon Jewel that was hidden inside her body. The shards of the powerful jewel scattered, and she went on a quest with the awakened InuYasha to collect the pieces and put them back together. They faced many foes, including the evil Naraku who had lead to her predecessor's death. Long story short, they finished their quest, completed the jewel, and defeated Naraku, but at a price. The Shikon Miko once again died by his hand, her body thrown down the well to be sent back to her family in the future. InuYasha, aggrieved at the loss of his love a second time, built this underground memorial as a sort of warning for the future so that she could have been better informed and prepared, and perhaps she would not die. Alas, Time is not something that can be trifled with. What was done was done, and he could not change the past by hoping to influence the future." Kun Loon's face crumpled at the end of her story and her voice lost its performing quality. "Kagome-," She bit back a sob behind her hand. "Kagome was the Shikon Miko, the reincarnation of Kikyo." Kun Loon broke down, and Kurama awkwardly rested a hand on her shaking shoulder. Hesitantly Yusuke did the same. "Our only clue was that Kagome could never remember that story." Kun Loon continued. "It just went in one ear and out the other. It was like there was a mental or spiritual block against that knowledge. Then on her fifteenth birthday, Kagome fell down the well and five hundred years into the past… a-and we knew, that she was going to die." A keening wail broke from the trembling woman's lips before she slapped a hand over her mouth to quiet herself.

"It's okay." Kurama comforted. "You can let it out."

But Kun Loon mutely shook her head, determined to tell this story to the end. "W-we tried," she explained, "to warn her, to help her prepare. But she wouldn't listen. She couldn't hear. You'd say something and it was like she literally couldn't hear you. Or if she did, the next moment she had forgotten it again. Because we couldn't change the past. Our Kagome had already died five hundred years ago, and it was only a matter of time until her corpse would show up in the well instead of her happy, exuberant, lively self. We knew it would happen eventually, but that didn't make it hurt any less when it did."

Both boys felt their hearts clench at the woman's grief, thinking of their own mothers, of the mangled corpse of Kagome they had stolen the night before, and of the story Kun Loon had told them. What must it have been like, they wondered, to know your child was going to die and not be able to help them?

"Well… that certainly explains why her soul wasn't with her body." Koenma mused when they explained the situation to him. "If she died five hundred years in the past, it should already be in the pure land by now." He sighed, scratching his head. "Well bugger. And I'd thought she would be the perfect candidate to help you out, too."

"Why couldn't she still be?" Kurama asked. "According to her mother, she's already had years of experience hunting and being hunted by demons. Surely that would make her better qualified than some girl with no knowledge of the supernatural?"

Koenma sighed. "Yes, that's true, but if she really did die in the past and her body was sent to the future, then that means her soul has been unattached for centuries! She's been dead for five hundred years!"

"Oh yeah," Yusuke muttered, "and when I was dead I had to take a spin in my body every once in a while so the soul glue didn't dry out, right? But wait, her body's only been dead for a while, so would that still be a problem?"

"Perhaps not," the prince conceded, "but still that leaves whatever effect shoving a significantly older soul into a younger body would do." Kurama pointedly cleared his throat. "Your point is different Kurama. Your soul attached to a fetus that had the chance to grow around and into the old soul. Kagome's body is built for a soul much younger."

"Why does it even matter?" Yusuke grumbled.

"Kagome was the reincarnation of Kikyo," Kurama pointed out, "so wouldn't that mean her soul was already old?"

"Yes, but that brings up another issue." Koenma added. "If we bring her back, there will be no barrier between lifetimes. And unless we wipe all her previous lives from her memories, including her life as Kagome, then her personality will end up being a mixture of all her incarnations."

"Ugh, this just keeps getting worse and worse." Yusuke groaned.

Note:

So, what do you think? Should I resurrect her? It is seeming like more and more of a bad idea. What would I even call her since she'd end up as a mix of Kikyo and Kagome? Kagikyome? Kikyogome? Kikyagome? Should she remain dead but have this lead Yusuke to meeting other demons of Kagome's era? If so, who? Kouga, Sesshomaru, InuYasha? Who are some of your favorite demons of the series? I have honestly no idea where I'm going with this and if you want to use this as the set up for your own story then go ahead. If it sparks your imagination but you're too lazy to write something yourself then leave your idea in a review. Full disclosure the chances of me continuing this depends entirely on if I get any ideas- from you, or my brain, or the fairies or the muse. That said, I hope you enjoyed this (if not, I did write it all in under a day) and don't come hunting me down with pitchforks for leaving you hanging.

P.S. I realize Kun Loon is not a cannon name but it's a common fandom one so I'm gonna use it.