Requiem of Evil

Disclaimer: Yuu Yuu Hakusho and its characters are copyrights of Yoshihiro Togashi and JumpComics. I am not making money by writing this fanfiction.

Chapter One:
Pictures on the Table

There was an unsettling silence. There always was right before something awful happened. It was as though everyone was waiting to see if that terror would be willfully unleashed, even though they knew it would. It was the silence of knowing they wouldn’t step in to stop it. Not that it didn’t matter, or that they didn’t care. They were afraid. While torture, while agony, sadism to its ultimate power was practiced they would stand by. There was no pleasure in it for them, but they were too scared to do anything about it. They could be next after all.

In this way years of brutality would last. Each peon clinging to the tiny hope that if they remained in line, it would not be their blood on the wall. In the summer it would start to smell. The blood warming, the stench of death absorbed by the humidity and pasted to whoever walked near. It was times like that; that he knew the blood was on them. Someone in the recesses of his mind said there was another way. He ignored it like the constant knocking on a door. He could get through another summer and he could forget again. But there was always the knocking.

Soon he was close to the killings. A front row seat to a macabre artist at work. The smell was undeniable here too. And it always clung to him for days afterward. The screams rang in his ears long into the night. Faces etched with pain and despair haunted his every waking moment. The insistent voice was louder now, more tenacious than before. There was another way, another path to take. He had a choice. He could be a murderer or a hero. Or, he thought, he could end up dead. Fear was his master, and his boss had mastered the art of fear. Still, the door was opening. There was a glaring light burning uncertainty away…

Or maybe that was the sun. A teen rolled over to avoid the tiny rays that persisted in waking him even on vacation. He stared at his wall willing sleep to come to him again, but all in vein. He could never sleep after one of those dreams. Someone, somewhere had suffered a fate worse than death. He had felt it. He had dreamed it.

It was vaguely familiar, in a way he didn’t understand. It was like a memory, but like a nightmare. This had been different than the other night terrors. The times his sister had come to chase the ghosts that haunted him away, and soothed his thoughts. No, this was not a direct result of phantoms. He had actually seen it happen, felt it happen. Something was very wrong, and he had a sinking feeling he knew exactly what, or rather who that wrong was.

He looked around the room as the cheerful sunlight lit his walls. What had G always said? “If bad is a sunny day, then get ready for third degree burns…”

………………

Deep in the heart of Spirit World, Koenma had a quandary of his own to think out. As the overseer of all things officially spiritual, a sea of paperwork containing nearly every conundrum had crossed his path. Billions of people had died, been reborn, gone to heaven or hell, or anywhere in between. Deals had been cut, every excuse had been used, every bribe imaginable attempted. It was not cold-heartedness that made Koenma so unaffected by the lives that passed through his hands on paper, but sheer experience. It had been a long time since he had really had to think about what to do with something. With Yuusuke it had been a simple matter of testing to see if he was worth more alive rather than dead. Alive had been a good choice. In Sensui’s case, alive had been a bad choice. Then again, every generation had a madman bent on the destruction of mankind. Not that it was a new trick for humans. The species had been working on itself for thousands of years… These individuals were just a little more enthusiastic about it.

In all these years, a pattern always arose. There was always reason to the crime, you might say, as spiritual crimes went. Instead of its usual pile of paperwork, Koenma’s desk sported various photos of individuals murdered in the last year. There were about fifty in all, which was far less than the actual stack next to the desk, obviously already sorted. These individuals themselves were not remarkably unique, though the description of their death was. Mostly female, young adults, presumably tortured to death, and about a liter of blood drained from the body. Most were mutilated beyond recognition, but there file told most of the horror story.

Koenma had puzzled over the pictures and files for hours, but beyond being young, and the process of death, there was no connection. Victims were mostly female, but not all. The killer had no racial or religious preference to speak of, no physical characteristics or even a preferred victim personality. If you were anyone on the street, anywhere in Japan, you might end up like one of these people. The murders themselves were not remarkable, but there were too many questions. Where was the blood going? How can the killer or killers work in so many places at once? Is there an organized effort? Where were the souls?

The last question was the most important for Koenma for two reasons. There were a few nasty demons, and even fewer nasty ghosts that stole, ate, or trapped souls. These creatures only became nastier as they gathered more souls, so it would be best to put them down quickly. The second reason was more complex however. An event such as soul theft or consumption is usually documented on the human’s file until the soul is completely digested or destroyed. At which point the file stops automatically updating itself. However the files mentioned nothing past the taking of blood. If the literal death of the soul goes undocumented, but the soul is never found then what has become of it? Souls, despite popular mortal belief do not simply vanish. At least not at such an increasing rate.

Once before in the last decade, a similar string of deaths occurred for about two years, and then suddenly stopped. However, those files had been purged by unnatural fire before he could study them. It occurred at the time to Koenma that who, or whatever was committing the murders had to be either extremely powerful, or extremely well connected to do such a thing. In either case, if that entity was coming back into power, there could be major trouble in store.

The demigod wrung slender immortal hands for a moment, considering his options. He had a feeling there was more to this than Urameshi’s team could handle. Certainly, Yuusuke and the others were more than effective in a quick fighting situation, but there were more delicate things at work here. The godling eyed the bottom left drawer of his desk. He had been told only to use it when there was no other way of gathering information. The warning had not been detailed, but clear enough for one who had meddled with mysterious devices before. There was never a pleasant outcome to such actions. He wondered why it always appealed so much to him.

No, he would exhaust all his resources, including the team before using that. After all, the world had come a hair’s breadth from infinite peril many time before, and he’d never used it yet…