Some Stupid Supernatural Yami Crossover That Incidentally For Once was not Karasu’s Fault, Not That She Argued.
A/N: This is really all Slytherin Black’s fault for posing this question in the first place, but uh… yeah, random crack crossover.
Warnings: Massive OOC, crack, yaoi, stupidity, abuse of characters, abuse of the English language, abuse of Metallicar, and abuse of our audience. Oh, and the fact that at some point this turned into a halfway-reasonable casefic despite its inauspicious beginnings. Also, we planned most of this while sitting around the vet while our cat was dying, so if it doesn't make sense all the time, we plead sleep deprivation. It's surprisingly cheerful, given its origins.
Some brief notes: This fic requires one to make some presumptions, as pretty much any crossover would. The primary one is that Hisoka has, at some point, learned English. ^^;;; Hisoka seems like the type who would like learning, and given that he's been dead for a while, we just sort of pretended he learned English. We saw Tsuzuki's *marvelous* English skills in the King of Swords arc, so we'll just let that one go. It also requires the presumption that Sam and Dean wouldn't just try to kill the two Shinigami as soon as they met this. This is a rather large presumption, but you don't get the crackfic without it, so suspend some disbelief. ^_^
Other than that, this is just a standard case fic: Dean and Sam investigate a creepy crawly with the interference help of an incredibly snide Shinigami and his idiot puppy partner two Reapers. This makes Sam and Dean homicidal nervous. Especially because one of them is unbearably sarcastic empathic and thinks that Sam is an enormous boob not wise to not be learning how to control his visions.
PS: This is incredibly Tsuzuki/Hisoka based. We just start off with them as an established couple; no lines, no waiting.
Enjoy the crack!
Chapter One
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Dean said, grunting as he moved aside a large beam of wood that was blocking the door to the inner recesses of the hotel.
“I know it’s a bad idea,” Sam said. “It was your idea.”
“You coulda stopped me.”
“You just would have gone in alone anyway,” Sam said, adding his shoulder to Dean’s as they forced the door open. The hinges screeched, raising the hair on the back of their necks. “If it didn’t know we were coming before, it sure does now,” Sam said, shining his flashlight around the interior of the large ballroom. There were several tables covered with dustcloths, and not much else.
“No shit,” Dean said, taking out the EMF detector. “Let’s see where we’re going.”
Sam waited while Dean swept the room, idly pondering to himself that this was what he was doing on a Saturday night. The problem was, this was Dean’s idea of fun. The hotel was a local legend; he supposed he should just be glad that they hadn’t run into any stupid teenagers or tourists yet. “At least there are no dumb kids here,” he said.
“Yeah,” Dean said, not really listening. “Check this out.”
Sam cautiously made his way across the room to the wall that was emitting strange frequencies. “It’s a wall,” he said.
“Yeah, I hate that,” Dean said.
“You’re the one with the steel-toed boots,” Sam pointed out.
“Someday you’ll be a man like me,” Dean said, kicking the wall as hard as he could.
“God forbid,” Sam muttered, as a section of the wall caved in. The two of them managed to clear enough away to reveal a cobwebbed tunnel. “What is this, the Cliché Haunted Hotel?”
“Red rum,” Dean said, shining his flashlight down the tunnel and starting down it.
“Don’t be a jackass,” Sam said, keeping his gun at the ready as he made his way down the tunnel after his brother. He stopped after a moment. “Do you hear voices?”
“Yeah, from up ahead,” Dean said, in a low voice. They both stopped walking and listened for a few moments. “How’d anyone else get down here?” Dean hissed. “The door was blocked, the tunnel was a frickin’ wall.”
“There must be more than one entrance,” Sam said. He strained his ears to catch more of what the noise was, but it didn’t sound like English. He frowned. “I think that’s Japanese,” he said.
“Thanks, geekboy sidekick,” Dean said. “How’s that help us?”
“It was more of an observation than anything else.”
Dean edged his way down the tunnel, keeping his flashlight mostly muffled so the people ahead wouldn’t know he was coming. He reached a corner and paused before going around it.
“Who’s there?” the voice ahead of him called, in accented English.
“Oh, God,” Sam said, cursing himself for mentioning it and jinxing them. “Teenagers. Next time I say something like that, just hit me.”
“My pleasure,” Dean said, and turned the corner. They found themselves facing one teenager and one older man, both of whom were holding flashlights and looking a little surprised to see that they suddenly had company. “What the hell are you two doing down here?” Dean demanded.
“Same thing as you, it looks like,” the smaller one said.
Sam did his best to keep the gun out of sight without actually putting it away. He exchanged a disgusted look with Dean.
“Huh?” the older one said. The younger one sighed and turned to him, rattling off a string of Japanese. The older one brightened and said, in slowly halting English, “Nice to meet you!”
“Oh, God,” Dean said.
“Uh, yeah,” Sam said, shaking his hand. “How did you two get in here?” he asked.
“That would be kind of difficult to explain,” the younger one said. “By the way, I’m Kurosaki Hisoka. This is Tsuzuki Asato. Who are you?”
“I’m Sam. This is my brother Dean.” Sam continued to look at them, and decided he should at least put in some sort of effort to get them out of the line of fire. “Look, you two probably want to get out of here.”
Hisoka turned to Tsuzuki and said something in Japanese. Tsuzuki laughed, then covered his mouth, apparently realizing that he was being impolite. Hisoka said something else, sharper. Tsuzuki shrugged and made puppy dog eyes at him. “Tsuzuki doesn’t want to leave until we’ve seen the ghost,” Hisoka said to the brothers.
“Hey, that’s great and all,” Dean said, “but I don’t think you two don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with, and we’re here to get rid of this ghost, and then go home and get some beauty sleep. We can’t do that with a pair of tourists hanging off our legs.”
“Let me assure you that I have no intention to hang off your leg,” Hisoka said acidly.
“He’s not trying to be rude,” Sam said, gaining a look from his brother. “It’s just that you probably don’t really know what you’re in for here.”
“Yeah, okay,” Hisoka said. He pointed to Dean’s EMF detector. “What’s that?” he asked curiously.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Hey, Sam, why don’t you baby-sit these two while I find us a ghost to kill?”
Sam made a noise. “Why don’t you just scout around and let me know,” he said. Dean grinned and went around a corner.
“Is that a good idea?” Hisoka asked. “Splitting up like that?” He didn’t sound particularly worried; only curious about their battle plan.
“Trust me, Dean can take care of himself,” Sam said, almost laughing at this question from a boy who looked like he was fourteen. “So, uh, are you guys actually from Japan? Why did you come here of all places?”
“New York City is a big tourist attraction,” Hisoka said. “I figured I shouldn’t die without seeing it.”
“I meant here specifically,” Sam said. “And seriously, how did you get down here? Is there another entrance? Because if there is, the spirit or whatever this is could escape that way, and not come back past us.”
“No, we came in the same way you did,” Hisoka said. “We’re here because Tsuzuki,” he thumbed at the older man, “wanted to see a real American ghost. Because he’s an idiot.”
“You couldn’t have come the same way we did,” Sam said.
“The world is full of mysteries,” Hisoka said.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean, just find some bones to burn, please,” he said, watching Tsuzuki bounce around the room and poke his nose into everything while Hisoka stood impassively. He heard footsteps from the hall and turned to face Dean as he reentered the small chamber. “No luck?”
“Nah, there’s nothing down there.” Dean turned to Hisoka and Tsuzuki. He looked at Tsuzuki, who was peering behind a cabinet with far more enthusiasm than it warranted. “What’s with him?”
“He’s just a harmless idiot,” Hisoka said. “Ignore him.”
“He doesn’t understand English, does he,” Sam said.
“Not enough, although I’d say that in Japanese, too. He knows it’s true.”
“Look, seriously, how’d you get down here?” Dean asked. “There might be other places the spirit is hiding that we’re not seeing, because this tunnel dead-ends, but it’s been down here a lot.”
Hisoka sighed. “You really don’t believe that we came through the blocked off door and through the wall into the tunnel, do you.”
“Since it was blocked off when we got here, no, we don’t,” Dean said.
Hisoka said something in Japanese to Tsuzuki, and he nodded. Then the younger teenager disappeared into thin air. Both Sam and Dean startled, peering around the dark room for any sign of him. “Jesus Christ,” Sam said.
Dean turned to Tsuzuki. “Where’d he go?” he demanded.
Tsuzuki blinked at him. “Hm?”
“Aw, shit,” Dean said.
Hisoka reappeared behind him. “I’m over here,” he said, and Dean whirled and had his gun trained on him before he could say anything else. Sam did the same. “Oh, please,” Hisoka said. “Don’t shoot me. I’m just a tourist with the handy ability to disappear and walk through walls.”
“That’s not just a tourist,” Dean said, as the EMF detector wailed at them.
“For this week, I am,” Hisoka said. “I’m on vacation.”
“What are you?” Dean asked. He glanced over at Sam, who was letting him cover Hisoka while the younger Winchester had his gun on Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki saw the gun, looked worried, and lifted his hands. Hisoka snapped Japanese at him, and Tsuzuki protested back, which made Hisoka laugh. “What’d he say?”
“That he likes this outfit, so please don’t shoot him,” Hisoka said, still chuckling.
“What is wrong with you?” Sam asked. “What are you?”
“Seriously, put the gun down,” Hisoka said. “It won’t kill me, and we’re not going to hurt you. Honest, the only reason we’re here is because Tsuzuki wanted to see an American ghost while we’re on vacation.”
The lights flickered.
“Besides,” Hisoka said complacently, “you’ve got bigger problems coming.”
Sam backed towards Dean, training his gun on the entrance from the hotel. He could feel a cold wind coming from that tunnel. Hisoka sat down on a crate and prepared to watch the show. “These are consecrated rounds, right?” Sam asked Dean.
“Always, yeah.”
“Good, because I don’t think that’s a spirit.”
The demon burst into the room, accompanied by a round of gunfire from Sam and Dean. It dissolved into a formless black cloud and disappeared into a vent in the ceiling.
“That’s not a spirit,” Dean yelled. “That’s a demon.”
“A disembodied demon,” Sam said, looking around the room. The flashlights were still flickering, and it was clear that it was not gone. “It’ll be back in a minute.”
“I hate demons,” Dean said. He tossed Sam a flask of holy water, and Sam nearly dropped his flashlight in order to catch it.
“Do you want me to hold that?” Hisoka asked politely.
“No,” Sam snarled.
The demon came again, and this time howled in fury as Sam and Dean both splashed holy water in on it. It knocked Dean into a wall, where he fell with a grunt. Sam uttered something very profane and took another shot, but the demon had disappeared again.
Tsuzuki said something in Japanese.
Hisoka shrugged indifferently.
Sam stared as Tsuzuki pulled out a few pieces of paper and tossed them as the demon came back into the room. The demon was blasted back several feet just by the pieces of paper, even though the bullets had had no effect on him. Tsuzuki offered a piece of the paper to Sam, who gave him an incredulous look, wondering why he would take exploding paper.
“Tsuzuki says to take it if you want to live,” Hisoka said mildly from his corner.
“What?” Sam asked, and Tsuzuki forced the paper into his hand. Sam winced, but nothing happened. Dean was on his feet again, and Tsuzuki made him take one as well. Then he folded his hands in front of himself and began to chant.
“What the fuck?” Dean managed, as a phoenix much larger than the small room they were in somehow managed to appear.
“Jesus Christ!” Sam said.
The phoenix attacked the formless black cloud with ferocity. It was gone moments later, and the light from the flashlights stabilized, although it seemed rather feeble after the light of the phoenix. Tsuzuki turned and smiled and said something in Japanese to the Winchesters.
“Tsuzuki says thank you, this was a lot of fun,” Hisoka said, clearly amused.
Sam and Dean both stared. “What the hell?” Sam said.
“Whatever, I don’t wanna know, the demon’s gone, shiny,” Dean said. “But we’ve been all over this damned place and we haven’t found the kids.”
“Kids, what kids?” Hisoka asked sharply. Tsuzuki, apparently recognizing something in his tone, asked him something in Japanese, but Hisoka waved him off.
“Shit, you two really don’t know anything,” Dean said, apparently having no trouble insulting the people who may have just saved his ass. “This demon was kidnapping people, especially kids. We figured if we found its lair, we’d find the kids. But we’ve been all around here and they’re not here. So either it’s got a second lair, or it’s killed them and hidden the bodies somewhere.”
“Oh.” Hisoka shrugged. “Well, you two seem competent, so I’m sure you’ll find them,” he said, although he didn’t sound convinced in the slightest. “It was nice meeting you,” he added, standing up.
Tsuzuki asked something insistent in Japanese.
Hisoka waved him off again, and Tsuzuki pouted.
“Good luck,” Hisoka said, and the two of them disappeared.
~ ~ ~ ~
The door to the cheap hotel room slammed behind them, and Dean flopped onto the bed, trying to spend as little time looking at the bedspread as possible. It looked as if someone had eaten a bouquet of flowers and then vomited them onto the fabric. “Okay, we’ve had shitty jobs before, but that?” he asked, as Sam sat down at the desk. “That sucked.”
“Yeah,” Sam replied with something of a sigh, pushing his hands through his hair. “That was a little embarrassing.”
“That sucked, dude,” Dean corrected.
“Hardcore,” Sam was forced to agree. He took out his laptop and put it on the desk, flipping it open.
“So what’re we gonna do about it?” Dean asked.
“Hope that we never see them again?” Sam suggested. “And that no one ever finds out about it?” He pulled out the ofuda that Tsuzuki had given him, not that he knew what it was called, and set it out on the table next to the laptop.
“I’m not talking about the humiliation,” Dean said. “That’s bad enough. That’s between you and me. But what the hell, man.”
Sam shook his head, already typing rapidly. “I don’t know. There was nothing in that hotel to give us a lead on these kids. Do you think those two were just there in time to make me feel like I was four and on my first hunt, or do you think they might be part of it?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s a bit much of a stretch to think that they’d be involved. I mean, that tall one didn’t even speak English. I guess he could’ve been faking, but they seem pretty kick ass, though it pains me to admit it. If they’d wanted to kill us, they at least would’ve tried.”
“He summoned up a freakin’ phoenix,” Sam said, partly to himself. “I didn’t even think those actually existed.” He studied the ofuda for a moment. “Hey, does your piece of paper have the same kanji as mine?”
“What’s kanji, the markings on it?” Dean asked, pulling out the slip of paper. “They look pretty much the same.”
“It’s part of the Japanese . . . alphabet, I guess. Written language would be more accurate. Think of the English alphabet and make it about twelve times more complicated.”
“No, thanks.”
“I think these are written spells,” Sam said. “Or something like that.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t keep them, then,” Dean said, looking at them warily.
“Maybe,” Sam said, but he sounded somewhat dubious. “He had them already written, though. They weren’t made for us. I’m just nervous, you know, given that we don’t know who or what the hell they are.”
“So, c’mon, college boy,” Dean said. “You’ve got your fancy computer. Figure it out.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m trying. There are over a thousand characters though. I need to get a tablet to go with this computer.” He paused, then added, “And they can freakin’ walk through walls. How unfair is that?”
“So, they can go invisible, can walk through walls, can summon up giant firebirds,” Dean tallied. “Okay, except for that last part, sounds like a standard spirit, but I’ve never heard of a ghost calling down a phoenix.”
“Yeah, that part doesn’t fit,” Sam said, not bothering to add that he had never heard of anyone calling down a phoenix. “They had physical bodies, though. The older guy was moving furniture by hand.” There was a pause while he typed another few lines. “I think I got one.”
“Okay, what’ve you got?” Dean got off the bed long enough to peer over Sam’s shoulder.
“Something about a wall? A barrier?” Sam frowned at the screen. “Hang on, I have another site, maybe I can use it as a partial word or phrase. And you thought Latin was bad. Japanese might make our brains explode.”
Dean stared at the website. “Dude. What are you looking at?”
“Ah . . . fangirl websites,” Sam admitted, hoping that Dean would not press for further information.
Dean arched an eyebrow at his brother. “Somethin’ you wanna tell me, Sammy?”
“It’s not my fault,” Sam said.
“I’m sure.”
“Dean, you don’t know the meaning of the word obsessive until you’ve met an anime fan,” Sam said. “And let me tell you, there are rewards for going along with it. Ones even you would appreciate.”
“Uh huh,” Dean said, sounding bored and clearly unconvinced.
“Cat girls,” Sam said. “Often in pairs.”
There was a pause.
“Cat girls?” Dean asked. “Hook me up, man.”
“As soon as we’re done with this case, I know where there’s a convention and I even know people that are going. And there’s a match. Ofuda. It’s a protection barrier.”
“Huh,” Dean said. “So that guy really was trying to help us.”
“Seems like.” Sam continued to read down the page. “He’s pretty powerful too. It says here that these things often disintegrate after use, and ours seem fine.” He picked up a pen and started writing all of this into his journal.
“You’re trusting a website written by a catgirl?” Dean asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Sam said, not bothering to explain that the catgirl probably knew more about Japanese culture than could be reasonable. “Now, let’s try to find out who they are,” he said, and started with a new site. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get much on the older guy.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“It sounded like his name was Suzuki, but that’s a car company.” Sam frowned at the Google page and the links it had pulled up.
“So? It’s gotta be named after somebody.”
“Maybe if I combine it with his given name . . .” Sam typed for another moment, then sighed. “I get more cars.”
“Well, what about the brat, then.”
“Let’s find out.” There was a long pause while typed, then raised his eyebrows at the results. “And we might have a winner. It’s not that common a name apparently.”
Dean studied what Sam had pulled up. “His first name just sounded like ‘Soka’ to me. What’s the ‘Hi’ in there for?”
“Maybe we aren’t hearing it right,” Sam suggested. He had used an online service to translate the page into English, so there was a lot of room for error. “Or maybe this is someone else. It’s an obit.”
“Maybe it’s a nickname, too.” Dean leaned over his shoulder and read the obituary. “That’s kind of useless. Sixteen would be the right age, I think, even though he looks like he’s twelve. But this was ten years ago.”
“And he certainly didn’t seem sick,” Sam observed. “So we’ve learned almost nothing. We are not having a good day.”
“Well, if it was the kid’s ghost, he wouldn’t seem sick. If he died when he was sixteen, it wouldn’t matter that this was ten years ago, because ghosts don’t age.” Dean seemed proud of his conclusions, but then a problem presented itself. “Don’t ask me what the hell a Japanese ghost is doing taking vacation in the Big Apple.”
“Why would a spirit need a job or a vacation?” Sam asked, and Dean shrugged in reply to this rhetorical question. “And what the hell do we do about finding those kids?”
“Hell,” Dean said. “I guess we’d better concentrate on the kids. Weird as those two were, they don’t seem to have meant us any harm. We can figure that out after we find the kids.”
“Yeah.” Sam turned in his chair to look at their wall and its spread of information that they had gathered on the case. It was depressingly sparse. “So the hotel was a bust. It had a demon but no clues. And even if the demon wasn’t gone, it’s not like we could have interrogated it.”
“And we don’t even know for sure that the demon had anything to do with the kidnappings,” Dean pointed out.
“How many places around here do you think that many people could hole up?” Sam asked. “None of them showed any sign of struggle, so I’m betting they all went voluntarily.”
“Well, going without a fight isn’t always going voluntarily,” Dean pointed out. “And this is a city. There’s probably a million places like that.”
“And enough runaways that the police aren’t in a blind panic the way they should be.”
“Exactly,” Dean said. “And there may be more we don’t know about. Enough of the people are adults that there are probably a couple adults who have gotten taken without anyone really noticing.”
“Let’s not forget the possibility of them all being underground,” Sam said, trying to sound upbeat in the face of their growing obstacles. “We have sewers and subways. We haven’t thought of that. Do they correspond to any of the lines?”
“Jesus,” Dean said, disgusted. “This is like looking for a needle in all the haystacks in Kansas.”
Sam agreed. “Give me a homicidal poltergeist any day.”
“Hell, it’s late,” Dean said. “I need a beer or a girl or four hours of sleep, and since it doesn’t look like I’m getting either of the first two, I’m gonna opt for the third.”
“Yeah, sounds like a plan,” Sam agreed, “as soon as I finish getting all this new info written down.” He stood and stretched, then tossed his journal onto his bed. Then he crouched down to fish in one of their supply bags. “So how paranoid are we feeling today?”
“Pretty damned paranoid.”
Sam nodded, grabbed a canister of salt, and started spreading lines by the door and windows. “You want to catch the air vents?”
“They’re in the ceiling. I already checked. We’ll just have to risk it.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Hisoka was quiet as they left the haunted hotel and headed back towards the room they had gotten for the week. Tsuzuki trotted along beside him, pondering whether or not he wanted to interrupt his partner’s brooding. Finally, he said mournfully, “You’re mad at me.”
With the usual rolling of his eyes, Hisoka said, “I’m not mad.”
“Really?” Tsuzuki asked hopefully.
“You’re an idiot, but I’m not mad at you.”
“Oh, good!” Tsuzuki exclaimed in relief. “They took all that rather well for mortals.”
“They seem used to it. Although not to us. I think we confused them.”
Tsuzuki nodded. “It was a strange thing to see a mortal do. I mean, they usually don’t chase things that are likely to kill them.”
“They seem fairly competent at it, though.”
“Yeah,” Tsuzuki said. “Do you think they could have done it without us?”
“Not at that particular moment, but I think they could have gotten out and then gone back for it later with better supplies,” Hisoka said.
“Pretty brave of them.” Tsuzuki seemed to find the entire situation fascinating, so despite the fact that Hisoka would have rather gone to a movie or to get dinner, he kept pursuing the subject. “What did you think of them?”
“I think that I’m on vacation,” Hisoka snarled.
Tsuzuki smiled brightly and draped an arm over Hisoka’s shoulders. This led to a fierce glare, which Tsuzuki ignored. “I was just curious.”
“I know,” Hisoka said with a sigh. “I don’t mean to snap. More than usual, anyway.”
Tsuzuki nodded. “They said something that bothered you,” he observed. Hisoka gave him a look, a rather guarded one. “I heard it. They said something and the way you answered them . . . you were startled, upset. I couldn’t tell what you were saying,” he added, although he had the grace to look embarrassed. “But I could tell by your voice.”
“Uh huh. I thought your English was really good,” Hisoka said, with just a little sarcasm in his voice. “You’ve been doing really well at the hotel and restaurants and stuff. You must know how to order fifty different kinds of pie.”
Tsuzuki wrinkled his nose at him.
Hisoka arched an eyebrow.
Tsuzuki pouted.
Hisoka sighed.
“You’re trying to distract me,” Tsuzuki finally said.
“No, I was trying to make a point about your English,” Hisoka replied.
“Okay, and you were trying to distract me,” Tsuzuki said, and Hisoka shrugged, which Tsuzuki took as a confirmation. “Well, it won’t work.”
“They were just a little irritated because they were looking for some people that this demon had supposedly kidnapped, but they weren’t there,” Hisoka said nonchalantly, hoping that he could keep Tsuzuki from getting upset about this.
“It was kidnapping people?” Tsuzuki asked, concerned, and Hisoka cursed inwardly. “Are they sure it’s the same demon?”
“They didn’t seem to be sure, since none of the people were there.”
“Ah,” Tsuzuki said.
He fidgeted.
Hisoka sighed. “Out with it. You’ve got that guilty look. What are you thinking?”
Tsuzuki’s hand went to the back of his head and he rubbed at his hair sheepishly. “I want to help. If people are missing, I want to help.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Hisoka said. He looked very long-suffering.
“That’s because you know me well, and somehow love me anyway.”
“Somehow,” Hisoka agreed, and Tsuzuki beamed at him in the special, thousand-watt way that only Tsuzuki could. “But I’m still on vacation,” Hisoka said, and had to admit to some perverse satisfaction watching the glowing smile go to a hangdog look. “And so are you.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But?”
“What if they need help?”
“They seemed perfectly competent. I mean, they’re still alive.”
“Can we at least check on them?” Tsuzuki asked hopefully. “Make sure they find those people?”
“They won’t want our help,” Hisoka warned.
“They did seem a bit . . . standoffish,” Tsuzuki admitted.
“What, are you saying that just because they pointed guns at us, or something?” Hisoka asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“The older one sounded more cranky than Tatsumi,” Tsuzuki said.
“You have no idea what he was even saying.”
“So?” Tsuzuki pretended to be affronted, despite the fact that his bad English was the reason they were on this vacation in the first place. Hisoka had gotten sick of Tsuzuki insisting that his English was ‘good enough’ and decided they were going to spend their vacation in America. Tsuzuki had jumped at this, pleased that his partner was agreeing to something so exciting, only to realize upon their arrival that Hisoka had tricked him, and in fact planned to refuse to translate the entire time. “He sounded cranky.”
Hisoka sighed. He felt a migraine coming on. Given that he had been in Tsuzuki’s constant presence ever since waking up that morning, this was no surprise. “So you’re going to insist that we go offer them help they probably don’t want, when they’re clearly itching to shoot us because we seem like supernatural creatures, which we are. This is an excellent plan, Tsuzuki.”
Tsuzuki indulged in a full-on pout, complete with puppy dog ears.
“I’m waiting for some constructive input, Tsuzuki,” Hisoka told him.
“Do you actually think they’d shoot us?”
Hisoka wondered how this could be considered constructive, and decided to just be glad it was on-topic. “It looked fairly likely. If they think we’re a danger to them, anyway. Then when it didn’t work, they’d probably get even more dramatic.” He watched the set of Tsuzuki’s shoulders slump, and said, “Now you’re going to mope.”
“I don’t mean to,” Tsuzuki said.
“Your moping is integral,” Hisoka said, and poked him in the ribs. Tsuzuki let out a squawk and jumped away. “If we go offer our help, will you be content with that, even if they turn us down?”
Tsuzuki nodded eagerly. “Thank you, ‘Soka!”
“You promise that if they refuse our help, you won’t mope and ruin the rest of our vacation?” Hisoka persisted, and Tsuzuki nodded even more eagerly. “Then I guess it can’t be helped,” Hisoka said with a sigh, and slid his hand into Tsuzuki’s.
Tsuzuki squeezed it and gave his partner an honest smile that (reluctantly) warmed Hisoka’s heart. “What do you want to do now? They might shoot us if we bother them so soon.”
“Could we have some vacation?” Hisoka asked, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice. “Maybe go out to dinner, go back to our hotel for the rest of the night?”
“If that’s what you want,” Tsuzuki said. “It’s a very nice hotel room,” he added solemnly.
“I suppose, if we’re going to go attempt to help those two, there’s something else I should do first . . .” Hisoka mused. Tsuzuki blinked at him curiously, and Hisoka sat down on a bench, gesturing for Tsuzuki to sit next to him. “It’s a spell Watari gave me before I left.” After a moment, he added hastily, “Don’t worry, I made him test it on someone in front of me to make sure it did what he says.” He made a few symbols with his hands and then kissed Tsuzuki on the forehead.
The older Shinigami blinked at him. He felt a little bit dizzy and thoroughly confused. “What did you just do?”
“Taught you English. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Of course,” Tsuzuki said, clearly not getting it.
“I’m speaking English. And so are you.”
“Really?” Tsuzuki sounded fascinated. “How’d you do that?”
“I told you, it’s a spell. It transferred my knowledge to you.”
Tsuzuki beamed at him. “I love you,” he said, then paused as something a little less-than-nice occurred to him. “Ah . . . why didn’t you do this sooner?”
Hisoka raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I was under the impression that your English was fine.”
Tsuzuki nudged a pebble with his shoe. It was suddenly very interesting, needing one hundred percent of his attention.
“You know I love you anyway, right?” Hisoka asked, and Tsuzuki nodded and smiled. Amused, Hisoka said, “Then admit that the only English you spoke up until five minutes ago was ‘please’, ‘thank you’, and ‘more pie’.”
“Well, all right,” Tsuzuki said. “It worked fine until today.”
“Because I was doing all the talking for you,” Hisoka said, shaking his head at his older partner. “But if we’re going to help on a case, that won’t be good enough. Bad enough I’ll have to work on my vacation – I won’t spend half the time translating.” He stood up, tugging on Tsuzuki’s hand. “Now let’s go find something to do.”
“Something fun?” Tsuzuki asked, perking up.
Hisoka sighed, long-suffering. “With you around, I expect no less.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Sam glanced up from his laptop as there was a knock at the door. He frowned and put his hand on his gun. There was salt on the doors and windows, and demons didn’t generally knock, but they had been arrested enough times to be cautious. Sam edged over to the door and glanced out.
“Who is it?” Dean asked, from where he was flopped on the bed.
“It’s those two from earlier,” Sam said.
“Oh, hell,” Dean said, rolling over and burying his face in the pillow. “I suppose you’re gonna let ‘em in,” he said, as they knocked again.
“If I don’t, they’ll probably wake everyone else up,” Sam said, and swung the door open. “Why are you here?”
“Hello to you, too,” Hisoka said. “Can we come in?”
Sam glanced over at Dean.
“Do we get to try to shoot you this time?” Dean asked.
“Sure, if it really makes you happy,” Hisoka said.
“Then I’m cool with it.”
Sam sighed and stood back to let the two of them in. Tsuzuki smiled at them and said, “It’s nice to meet you. Glad to help earlier. You guys are okay, right?”
Dean blinked, sitting up. “I thought you didn’t speak English,” he said, half-expecting someone to pop out and say they were on Candid Camera. Tsuzuki just shrugged and continued to smile.
“He learned on the way here,” Hisoka said brusquely. “We’re here to help you.”
“Hell with that,” Dean said. “We don’t need help. Especially not from a ten year old and a – well, hell, I don’t know what that is,” he said, gesturing to Tsuzuki, who looked vaguely hurt at this comment.
Hisoka looked at Tsuzuki. “I told you.”
“I still want to help,” Tsuzuki said.
Sam closed their father’s journal and quietly put it away. “Uh, we appreciate the help there earlier, honestly. We were a little unprepared. But the demon’s gone, so now all we have to do is find the kids, so it’s not a big deal. Thanks for the offer. But we’re okay, really.”
Tsuzuki looked stubborn. “I want to be sure the kids are okay,” he said.
“You can read it in the paper later,” Dean said.
Sam thought about it for a moment. “If we let you help us, will you tell us who and what you are?”
“Sure!” Tsuzuki said.
“No,” Hisoka said.
They looked at each other.
“’Soka,” Tsuzuki whined.
Hisoka closed his eyes, looking as though he were in enormous pain. Sam steadfastly did not laugh at them. “Okay, fine, but you are making this up to me later. This is my vacation, for Christ’s sake, the first one I’ve had in five years. And you want to go ghost-hunting, child-saving – this is our job, Tsuzuki! Do you even know what a vacation is?”
“I’ve never taken one before,” Tsuzuki said brightly.
“That would explain a lot,” Hisoka said.
“Hey, guys, could you have your lover’s quarrel elsewhere?” Dean asked. “Some of us were trying to work.”
Hisoka sighed. “All right, yes, fine. We’ll tell you who and what we are, if you’ll agree to let us help you on your case.”
“All right, then.” Sam closed the door. “Here’s most of what we have,” he said, gesturing to the wall, which had the photos and histories of the kidnapped children posted there, along with a map. There was a new page that denoted what they knew about the demon, adding at the bottom that it had perished in holy fire, which a question mark next to that statement.
Tsuzuki began to study the papers immediately. “There’s a lot of them,” he said.
“Yeah, nearly thirty so far,” Sam said. “No bodies have been recovered. It’s been one every couple weeks for over a year now. Police haven’t been able to find anything. There’s nothing that connects the victims. There are a lot of kids, but they aren’t all kids, and usually teenagers. No really young kids. We heard that the hotel was supposedly haunted, and that teenagers like to go there a lot. It wasn’t a great lead, but it was all we had.”
“Seems strange that people are missing, but the demon is incorporeal,” Dean remarked.
“Possessing people often makes demons weaker,” Hisoka said. “They need the physical form to stay on this plane, but it comes with limits. Also, they sometimes wind up fighting with the host. So some of them choose not to.”
“Is this one demon, or do we have a pack of them?” Sam wondered aloud. He glanced sideways at Hisoka. “I didn’t know that about demons,” he said, hoping that this would open up a dialogue about more interesting things the two of them might know.
“Then you haven’t met as many as I have,” Hisoka said, studying the map and not looking at him.
“So exactly what do you do?” Sam asked. “You said this was your job.”
“Yeah. A lot of spirit-hunting, people-rescuing, demon-killing. Sort of like your job, it seems.”
“Except you seem to do it professionally,” Sam said. “I mean, if you have vacation time, it means you have a boss and get paid, right?”
“Yeah,” Hisoka said. He seemed honestly surprised as he said, “What, you don’t?”
“No,” Sam said. “How do you get that gig?”
“Maybe Americans don’t have it,” Hisoka said. “That wouldn’t surprise me terribly. This country is so poorly managed when it comes to the supernatural. You’re all so busy trying to not believe in it, even when it eats you.”
“Nothing’s eaten us, thanks,” Dean said.
“It was a general you.”
“And you can all do hefty magic like that?” Sam asked. “Or is that unique to you?”
“Me? I sat on a crate.”
“It was a general you,” Sam said, trying to keep his temper.
Hisoka let out a snort. “Tsuzuki is one-of-a-kind,” he said.
“’Soka, you say that like it’s not a nice thing,” Tsuzuki said, looking over at him somewhat pathetically.
“You know I love you,” Hisoka said, in Japanese, and Tsuzuki smiled at him. Switching back to English, Hisoka said to Sam and Dean, “He’s the only one with that sort of power. I can do the same things on a much smaller scale, but don’t think that Tsuzuki is normal.”
“You still haven’t answer the whole ‘what are you’ question,” Dean pointed out. “I think that one is kind of the clincher.”
Hisoka sighed. “I figured we would find the kids, then subject ourselves to your interrogation.”
“I’m not working with you ‘til I know exactly what you are, besides ten years old,” Dean said.
“Is he always this mature?” Hisoka asked Sam.
“Yes,” Sam said.
“I see,” Hisoka said. “The problem is, I don’t really know the English word for it. It doesn’t translate very well. Hm . . . guardians of death, maybe?” He looked over at Tsuzuki for help. “I heard death angels once, but that’s pretty hokey.”
“Gatekeepers?” Tsuzuki suggested. “Grim reapers!” he added cheerfully.
“Oh, please,” Hisoka said. “We don’t even carry scythes.”
“Reapers?” Dean asked, sitting up in bed. “You two are reapers?”
“Is that your word for it?” Hisoka asked. “Maybe you two should tell me what the job description for a reaper is.”
Sam was slowly edging over so he was between them and Dean. “Comes to earth and collects spirits of people who haven’t moved on properly,” he said.
“Oh! Yeah, that would be us, then,” Hisoka said. “Now stop looking like you’re going to shoot me. Or throw us out. What’ve you two got against reapers? We never did anything to you.”
“Wait, I thought you could only see a reaper if they were coming after you,” Dean said. “Which isn’t making us feel too comfortable right now.”
“I’m on vacation,” Hisoka said. “And we’re out of our jurisdiction, besides, so we’ve no right to any souls here, including yours. Anyway, that’s true of reapers unless they wish to be seen, which we have been, since it’s difficult to get things like hotel rooms and hot meals when you’re invisible. Remember how I disappeared earlier?”
“Not comforting,” Dean said.
“Disappearing from sight isn’t the same as walking through walls,” Sam said.
“Yeah, well. We can do that, too.”
“I thought reapers were creatures of pure spirit,” Sam said. “But you two are corporeal. You’ve been holding things, moving things.”
“Spirits can move things,” Hisoka pointed out.
“Yeah, but most of the time they just whip things at your head, not use their hands to move furniture.”
“If you wanted us to whip things at your head . . .”
“No, I’m good,” Sam said hastily. “Thanks.”
“It takes Shinigami – reapers – a lot of time and effort to learn mental control so that they can move things in the real world,” Hisoka said. “So most of us don’t bother to throw things around. It’s easier if we manipulate them the way we would if we were alive. What do they teach you in schools here?”
“Not this,” Dean said.
“It was a joke.”
“As if you were alive,” Sam echoed. “You were alive at one point, weren’t you.”
“Of course we were. Where do you think Shinigami come from?”
“Well – we kind of assumed they started out as spirits and went from there.”
Hisoka sighed. “Seriously. We can have the Q and A later. Right now, let’s find these kids before anything happens to them. I swear to you, we’re not here for you, in any way. We’re on vacation, and Tsuzuki has a soft spot for people in trouble. We just want to help.”
“All right,” Sam said. “I guess we’ll trust you for now.”
~ ~ ~ ~