Disclaimer: Yu Yu Hakusho © Yoshihiro Togashi.

The Seibu Project

By Zelia Theb; © Zelia Theb.

Of course, these little events weren't exactly 'meetings' so much as more interrogations. This time, pertaining more to what we had seen and collected evidence on. Jack had called it a 'debriefing', but the look in his eyes was less than sincere or even professional.

I found out later, after the four us reconvened in my room just what was going on.

Kurama, Hiei, and Kuwabara knocked on my door, and I let them in easily. I was the last to be debriefed, so naturally it seemed as though they would gravitate to each other while I was missing. It wasn't as if we could visit anyone. Hell, I hadn't even seen Koenma or Botan yet, but Jack had said that we were supposed to be meeting them.

Kuwabara walked in first, his head somewhat down to hide his facial expressions, and definitely more than paranoid. Kurama and Hiei entered last, and Kurama quickly secured the door behind him, looking about my room before saying a word to me. They searched every crevice, every shadow, every container…Hiei was the most adept at this due to his dexterity and speed. Upon finding nothing, Hiei let out a chuckle that I only hear when he realizes just how stupid someone is, and the two demons came to join Kuwabara and I around a table in my room.

"Detective," Hiei started, reaching into his temporary clothing. "We found something you might want to know about."

My eyebrows perked up with interest. Of course I wanted to know what had gone on. But what could they have found under this house arrest? We were barred from even visiting outside of the wing we had been confined to.

"What kind of something?" I questioned with a knowing inflection. After all, it was Hiei, and he and Kurama have broken into the palace before.

"Hn," Hiei smiled, pulling out that folder we had obtained back in the archive at the base. "Something that Kurama found inside of here, Yusuke."

"Wait," I prompted him, "didn't they take everything from you when we got here?"

"Feh," Hiei laughed, "I'm not that stupid." And with that he pulled out our communicators and left them on the table. I stared at them before reaching for one and picking it up. Kuwabara put a hand over mine and shook his head as a warning not to flip it open.

"We did some diggin' Urameshi. I distracted the guards while Hiei and Kurama did a lil' research in the archives here."

"Don't tell me…Koenma?" I prepared myself for the worst, that my own boss had somehow set me up, but I couldn't yet figure out a reason why.

Kurama shook his head immediately. "No, Yusuke," he assured me. "Koenma doesn't even know that we're here."

"What?" I shouted, only to be calmed down by Kuwabara. "Is that asshole too busy to even realize that a crap load of shit is going down right beneath his very nose?"

"Amusing analogy, Yusuke, but Koenma is purposely being strung along so that he…" Hiei opened the file and pointed to a photo inside. "…Can get his way." The photo was unmistakable, it was Jack. And despite not being able to read English all that well, I damn well knew what it was, an employee profile.

Kurama soon explained to me the exact nature of the file, and what he found out in the archives. "Life and death dates, Yusuke. He was an employee and worked on the secret government project in the base. Jack had become a Spirit Guide during a time when Koenma was otherwise occupied…and immediately transferred his allegiance back over to the living."

"Wait, what? I don't understand." After all, what purpose would it serve? Betray an almighty being for what?

"Urameshi, even I can see it. It was part of their little experiment, to test the bounds of the planes of existence, and whatever. And that Jack guy found proof and had to say something." I looked at Kuwabara, who had just been my lighthouse in this abandoned-at-sea business.

"We found proof of his treason, Yusuke," Hiei continued. "And furthermore, there is evidence in those archives that he thought he could keep hidden from Koenma about his true intent. Files he thought he could hide in clever spaces. Of course he has no idea what Kurama and I are capable of, the fool."

"So, what is he trying to hide?" I asked them. "Is it the fact that he worked on the base, was responsible for things that happened there? What?"

"Unfortunately for Jack," Hiei explained. "He willfully committed suicide in order to prove this little theory."

"And that, Yusuke," Kurama finished, "is against Spirit World law. One cannot become a Spirit Guide if they willfully ended their own life." I was shocked, and yet, more questions began appearing in my head. How had Botan died? Was she ever a human to begin with? I was brought back into reality again, after having my hand smacked by Kuwabara, since I had absent mindedly began fuddling with a communicator again.

"Kurama checked those out, Detective. Seems as though the transmissions were being re-routed before they went to Spirit World."

"So this jerk's been playin' us and Koenma the whole time?" I remarked rather loudly, slamming a fist onto the table. "That bastard!"

"Indeed, Yusuke, so while the terror is over we still need to get out of here and inform Koenma."

I nodded in agreement with Hiei, as did the others. Pumping a fist into the air, I asked, "So, are ya guys all powered up, or what?" They smiled affirmatively, and made our preparations to reach Koenma's office. While Kuwabara and Kurama reviewed their own parts of the plan together, Hiei took me aside and let me in on the rest of the details.

I was rather surprised at his sudden articulate nature, but let him go on without a joke nonetheless. He told me that during their initial experiments, the team had discovered that there was a way to usher spirits into the afterlife. Their studies evolved then, from simple creature manifestation to time vortexes, and then planar travel. They couldn't succeed though, until they discovered that paranormal investigators were infiltrating their supposed secret base, and then began to use them as bait. When one of the psychics got a vision of another plane, that sent the institution into a frenzy, and suddenly Jack decided that he would visit this place and prove its existence.

Of course, the flaw in Jack's plan was that he didn't realize that everyone had a file somewhere. So he hid his file, even altered it, and made it possible to become a Spirit Guide. That way he could pretend that there was something wrong at the base, like no one was able to bring the spirits of the dead over. Even the base's own grunts didn't know about this project, which explained some of the malevolent apparitions we had encountered.

How he managed to break into his own file or even re-route the communicators was something I wasn't quite aware of. I can see it not being too difficult with Koenma being off-guard at the time, but still. I really don't know. But it seems like Jack sabotaged us from the very beginning, only he underestimated us, and was now trying to keep us quiet. Hiei seemed to think that due to Jack's idiocy, that in filtering our communications he might have missed something and maybe Koenma might have an idea of what's going on. Either way, Hiei said he spoke to Koenma directly, so at least he'd be expecting us.

Or so I mentioned to Hiei, only to have him counteract with, "Of course, but if a two-faced guide was responsible for hiding souls to begin with and blaming it on 'unknown circumstances,' who's to say that he didn't tell Koenma he could find no trace of our deceased bodies?"

Kurama and Kuwabara finished their review, and joined back in the conversation. "Yeah, who's to say, Urameshi," the tallest of the two said, "that he didn't just usher another bad guy back and that bad guy happens to be someone who handles the list that comes in to Koenma's desk?" He shrugged and adjusted his clothing. "I'm just sayin', is all."

Now that made sense to me. Which brought up another concern, so I had to step in and play leader again.

"Well, guys, we can't go busting into that ogre office thingy right away anymore. Gotta go incognito all the way." I mused to myself, placing my hand on my chin and wondering what my next words would be. I finally burst out with, "By the way, who knows their way around this place anyhow?"

"Kurama and I know certain sections very well, Yusuke, as you already know," Hiei told me.

Kurama then followed up with, "However, I procured a map in case we lose ourselves. That archive isn't as guarded as it should be."

"Right," I nodded. "So you two should lead the way. Ya think anyone would notice any spikes in energy?" Kurama shook his head 'yes,' so no doubt we would just have to be sneaky. But again, Kuwabara, being as brilliant as he was during this whole escapade, said something extraordinary.

"We only really gotta be careful 'till we're out of here, right?" he proposed. "'Cause what I guess I mean is, we only gotta get by the guys that are really workin' for Jack. S'pose that we did get caught or something, as long as we were in an area where Koenma would be aware of it, then he can just bust us out, right?"

"Good point, Kuwabara, but you fail to realize one thing," Hiei pointed out to him. "Our little adventure could be more rigged than you think. Who knows how deep this corruption goes."

"Yes, Hiei's right, Kuwabara," interjected Kurama. "We know nothing of the reasons that the people of this base desired contact with Spirit World. If their efforts were malevolent, and we can already judge that they must be, then perhaps they want to use the apparitions of this realm as soldiers, or something else similar. We must use caution the entire way."

Personally, I wanted to bust through the place and cause the loudest, most attention grabbing raucous I could. Who cared if some traitor baddies got caught up in it? Kuwabara was right, mostly. There was no way that Koenma wouldn't know we were here then…right?

"Yusuke," Hiei scolded me, reading my thoughts through knowing my personality, "don't even think about it. As much as I would love to slay those who dare oppose us, I am not in the mood to spend the rest of my lifetime in your city."

And that was the convincing point, right there. Kurama and Hiei had much more at stake in this case, their freedom. Can't screw around with Spirit World, because what Enma says goes, and his son isn't always gonna be able to bail everyone out. So we finally agreed to playing it stealth, and soon we were on our way through the palace, having used an unusual passageway that Kurama had found on the archived map.

It was rather ingenious, actually. Our wing was shaped like an 'L,' and a pair of guards were positioned at each end of the wing, but they were mostly there to protect against unauthorized entry. Two guards patrolled each length, meeting up every few minutes at the right angle joint before coming back to the other end.

Our destination was a passageway almost directly across from my room, and next to Hiei's door. Before leaving my room, Hiei took with him a pebble sized chunk of wood from the table, to use as a distraction. I went to the door with him, hanging out of it as I pretended to bid him farewell, hiding the others behind him. Luckily for Hiei, the guard knew we were there, but was already nearing the corner, so he would not have to fake a long good-bye just to wait for the guard to walk by him.

Our next move was simple. I shut the door for a sound effect, and then opened it very slightly, so that it looked like it was still shut. Hiei walked over to his door, and placed his hand on the handle. The guard spotted him, naturally thinking that Hiei was just returning to his own room, and that was when Hiei, faster than the guard could react, flicked the debris into the corner. It bounced off of the wall and fell to the floor, catching the guard's attention. He rushed to the corner, as did his colleague, and that's when Hiei pushed in a section of the wall, sliding the wall over and revealing our passageway out. The three of us quickly moved from my room to the passageway, and we waited for Hiei.

We could hear the two guards discussing what could have happened, and they seemed to chalk it up to the building falling apart. We were running out of time, but Hiei finished the job. He closed my door, creating the illusion that it was actually his door that had just shut, and then rushed into the passageway, sliding the door quietly behind us. Had any of us tried to do the feat, we might have been caught, so Hiei's speed was essentially a life saver for us.

Without the guiding light from our wing, the passageway was dark. Pitch black. I think the base was even brighter than this at times. Just as we did when fleeing, our hands came together, with Kurama at the lead, Kuwabara, Hiei, and then myself last, and we felt our way nervously through the narrow passage.

I ran into Hiei as the three of them stopped suddenly. Kuwabara was the one to halt us, and whispered ever-so quietly, "I think I heard something, guys."

And then, shocking all of us out of our skin, we heard a voice that belonged to no one in our core group of escapees.

"You absolutely did hear something, Kazuma Kuwabara."

"And that voice you heard belonged to Sir Koenma?"

Yusuke nodded at the blue-skinned assistant. "Yep. Saved us a lot of trouble. I guess he was on his way to the wing to greet the prisoners."

Jorge appeared shocked, and asked, "What? So you guys were prisoners all along?"

Yusuke looked irritated. "Yeah, that's what I said and kept implying the whole time. But Koenma didn't know that the prisoners were us. And he found us in his secret passageway. Not sure how he got around in the dark like that."

The ogre scratched his head. "Yeah, I'm not sure how he does it either!"

A fist was slammed down on the desk. The detective was growing bored. "Look, I know that you guys still gotta talk to us all separately about Jack and all that, but I'm kinda sick of being interrogated left and right. Can we go home now?"

Jorge motioned a positive response with his head, and pressed 'stop' on the tape recorder placed on the desk. "There, Mister Urameshi. You guys should be all set. Botan should be outside the room with your team."

"Yeah, thanks."

However, once Yusuke exited the office, he found only Hiei sitting on the padded executive bench, and Botan looking out into the chaotic main lobby of apparitions, waiting to wave over Kurama and Kuwabara.

"So," began Yusuke, plopping into the bench with his hands behind his head. "Where is everyone?"

"They're almost done, Yusuke," said the patient cerulean locked assistant. "Then the four of you can go home."

"Hn," Hiei grunted. "If you consider that my home." Botan merely apologized quickly, realizing that she would need to watch her words around Hiei.

"Well," said Yusuke, sliding next to Hiei, "either way, you can stop by or whatever."

"Maybe," was the curt response.

The teen bent over and gazed into Hiei's still eyes. He flashed the demon a charming smile, and remarked, "You still have somethin' to tell me."

A slight chuckle escaped Hiei's throat as he closed his eyes in remembrance of the mission. He replied, "You're right, Yusuke."

The End

Author's Note

A big thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed. I'm excited to finally have finished this work, and while it didn't end as intended, I'm still pleased with how it turned out.

For those who want to know, the original ending was going to place more of a shounen-ai theme on the work. However…it wasn't a romance fic. It was the wrong direction for this work, but I've found another one where Seibu's original ending would work well with (My fic Psychosis).

I hope everyone liked it! Please review, it is the final chapter, you know!

-Zelia