Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

Thank you to my wonderful Beta Kooriya Yui!

Welcome to the first Chapter! Please enjoy!

Beep beep beep.

A young Japanese girl rolled over and smacked her alarm clock. Sitting up blearily, she yawned and rubbed sleep from her eyes. As she stood, grabbing a coat and shoving on her slippers, she glanced down at the thermometer—it was really cold! She shivered, turning up the thermostat. Padding around, she prepared for the new day and managed to grab breakfast early; she switched on the TV to watch the news.

“This cold snap should last another two days,” an announcer was explaining. “In other news: two more people were found mauled in northern Ho—”

Disgusted, she turned the television off and dumped her dishes in the sink on her way out the door.

A chubby toddler sat staring at a large screen, slumping down beneath an overlarge hat declaring him king of the underworld.

“Oh boy,” he sighed, running a hand over his face wearily. “Ogre!” he hollered, sitting up. “I want you to find out as much information as possible on this! We need to figure out why and how he moved!”

“Yes, Koenma sir!” a blue ogre wailed as he rushed out of the room. Koenma leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes as his forehead creased in thought.

“Yusuke isn’t made for jobs like this.”

The young girl walked home from school with her friends, their heavy jackets all drawn tight over vivid blue uniforms. Stopping at a café, each ordered a different hot tea, but the result was the same: curling their fingers around the steaming plastic mugs, each girl sipped her drink slowly as feeling returned to her hands and she giggled about the latest gossip.

Akane looked out the foggy window. The sun barely penetrated the cloudy sky enough to show that it was daytime. Her attention was jerked back to the bustling café as her friend spoke to her:

“Hey Akane, have you heard about the attacks up near Wakkanai?” Sorano asked. Mari bounced in her seat, her blue eyes lighting up as she eagerly joined in.

“It’s been all over the news. They say the victims look as if a—some—some kind of huge animal tore them open!” Her high voice squeaked in excitement at the thought of something supernatural.

“No animal’s smart enough to do all that, Mari. It’s probably a psycho killer,” Sorano said, her long black hair falling into her face as she tipped her head back knowingly.

“That sounds SO much better,” Akane laughed.

A boy walked into the shop and viciously rubbed his hands together, his black hair soaking with melted snow. He pushed it up, trying to keep it slicked back and utterly failing. Akane spotted him and rushed up.

“Hey! Urameshi!” He looked at the girl and groaned. The only reason she ever talked to him was to bother him about school. Akane had been his partner for a presentation two weeks ago and then suddenly she and her friend, Mari or something, were his partners in some skit.

Akane was happy Mari was in her group, but having Urameshi was bound to be trouble. He didn’t work very hard and often wasn’t available, though she never knew why. “Urameshi,” she said sternly, “me and Mari are coming over to your house on Sunday, so you better be there. We won’t let you bring our grades down.”

He scowled at her. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there, don’t have a heart attack.”

“Hmph.” Akane puffed out her chest, preparing to yell at him, when another girl from school came out of nowhere and grabbed Urameshi and yelled at him for skipping some class or another. The girl pulled him back out into the cold and Akane fumed all the way back to her seat. “He’d better be there,” she snapped. “If he’s not there at twelve, we should just do it by ourselves.”

Mari gave Akane a strange, confused look. “Twelve? I thought you said two!” She shook her head. “I won’t be able to get there until two.”

“What? You mean to say I’m stuck alone with Urameshi for two hours?”

“Sorry Akane,” Mari said, shrugging, “but I have a tennis game at twelve. It’s a pairs match, so I can’t forfeit.”

“Tennis in the dead of winter,” Sorano deadpanned.

“It’s an indoor court,” Mari said matter-of-factly.

Sorano shook her head dismissively. “That sucks,” she said to Akane. “You should bring a bat. You never know, he might need a good beating.”

“Oh, Sorano, I don’t think that would do any good,” Mari said wisely. “I hear he’s the best fighter around here. The boys say he has inhuman skills; some even say he can manipulate his aura to—”

“Everyone is some sort of super human according to you,” Sorano interrupted. Akane watched them bicker, silently mourning an entire two hours alone with Yusuke Urameshi.

Akane curled up on the love seat, immersed in math homework as her parents watched the news. The monotonous problems had tuned her out of the sounds of the television, but suddenly the word “attacks” caught her ear and she turned to watch.

“The attacks still remain a mystery,” a newscaster was reporting woodenly. “A surveillance camera caught this attack, but no trace of the attacker is visible.”

“I hope Mari’s watching,” Akane thought. “She’d love this.” The tape played silently, and sure enough, there was no sign of anyone doing the attacking. Akane shivered; she’d never admit it to Mari, but ghosts scared the daylights out of her. The attack played again in slow motion, and for a brief second Akane thought she saw a large animal—maybe a huge dog, but it went by so fast thought she must be seeing things. All of the sudden, her head was shot through with a blinding pain. Shutting her eyes tightly, she stumbled to her feet and opened them to squint.

“I’m—going to bed,” she blurted to her parents, grabbing her math work as an afterthought as she tripped to the hall.

Her ears rang and her eyes were blurred. Pressing her palms to her temples, she tried to force the pain away; it only got worse and she fell to her back on the bed, closing her eyes again. Violent images flashed through her brain—a creature, the dog-thing, attacking some person, and something else, something like a tall man. Trying to focus her attention on the man, she found her mind abruptly clouding with sleep. With no desire to fight it, she passed out almost immediately.