Chapter Three
It took only a few minutes to discuss the results of both their investigations, given that neither pair had managed to uncover very much. When all was said and done, Sam sprawled into one of the horrible vinyl chairs. “So . . .” he said, and trailed off into a sigh. “Dude, this job is kicking my ass.”
Hisoka shrugged and stated matter-of-factly, “We can just wait for the next victim to be kidnapped. That’s probably easiest.”
“Okay, but a bad plan,” Dean said, frowning at him.
Tsuzuki paused, looking up from where he had been making an origami cricket hop across the table. “Why?” he asked guilelessly. “It shouldn’t cause any harm as long as we’re ready to follow.”
“What if the guy gets killed?” Dean asked. “Shouldn’t we be trying to prevent that?”
Hisoka shook his head slightly. “The more I see of this, the more sure I am that they’re taking these people for something very specific. As long as we get to them soon, it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
“I don’t know,” Sam said doubtfully. “We have no real way of even knowing how many are missing, since there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between victims that I can find. That we can prove, anyway. Given that, I don’t really feel comfortable just waiting.”
“I haven’t seen any American Shinigami around. Or at least not a lot of them, so people aren’t dying out of turn,” Tsuzuki said, trying to be comforting. He trusted Hisoka to be the strategist most of the time, and if Hisoka said that they may just have to wait, then they may just have to wait.
“I’m open to suggestion, but nobody else seemed to have a better idea,” Hisoka said.
“Is there any way you could ask the reapers here?” Sam asked, watching his brother quietly seethe at having someone trying to commandeer their case. “See if they have anything on this?”
“Can’t, really,” Hisoka said. “At least, not without bringing their attention to the case, which would bring their attention to you and Dean. Which I don’t think you want.”
“Hey, I can take care of myself, small fry,” Dean retorted.
Sam winced. “And by that he means no, we don’t want their attention on us.” He ignored the glare his brother was giving him. “We’ll have to find another way to track this demon, or whatever it is.”
Tsuzuki looked up at this, piece of origami in his hand. “A tracker,” he said with a grin. “We just have to find someone we’re sure is a victim.”
“Uh huh,” Hisoka said, and rolled his eyes. “And how do we do that, since finding the victims is what we haven’t been able to do?”
“’Soka, you know I’m better than that. At least sometimes,” Tsuzuki said, aiming the puppy eyes at his lover. “We can start from their home or something. I just need a signature then, to home in on the real thing.”
“How’s that work?” Dean asked, sounding mildly suspicious. Sam just looked curious.
Tsuzuki sensibly did not point out that if Dean had allowed him to continue with his explanation for his tracker spirits earlier, he would already know. “They’re just a little bit of magic. Sort of like . . . a . . . a . . .” After a moment of fumbling, he used the Japanese for ‘bloodhound’ and looked to Hisoka for a translation.
Hisoka blinked at him. “You know how that language transfer worked, right? If you don’t know it, it’s because I don’t know it.”
“Oh. Ah . . . one of those dogs you use for hunting. Big huge floppy ears. With some drool. Anyway, here.” He pulled out a blank ofuda and snatched up a pen lying on the side table and started writing.
“Bloodhound?” Sam suggested, watching Tsuzuki, and the Shinigami nodded vigorously. “A piece of paper with a sense of smell?”
“A magical sense of smell.” Tsuzuki dropped the pen and quickly folded the paper into a crane, then held it out on his palm like normal, and it changed into his three tailed bird which started flitting around the room.
“You two do some weird magic shit, you know that?” Dean asked.
“You’re welcome,” Hisoka said frostily.
“Hey, we didn’t ask for your help,” Dean said.
“Whoa,” Sam said. “Maybe we should try to not kill each other?”
Tsuzuki looked between Dean and Hisoka, not sure whether or not he had done something wrong, or why they were so cranky. Dean went back to seething; Hisoka looked as if he felt a migraine coming on.
“I’ll see if I can get a victim’s address right quick.” Sam took out his laptop and began to type rapidly. When the silence began to frost over, he hesitantly said, “Ah . . . topic change?”
Dean let out a snort. “Real smooth there, Sammy.”
“Yeah, so maybe lawyer wasn’t the best profession to pick.”
“Well, not everyone attains their life goals,” Hisoka said, clearly amused.
Sam shrugged, his eyes trained on the laptop screen as he typed, studiously not looking at either Dean or at the Shinigami. “It’s okay,” he said, his tone casual. “I made my choices and I’m comfortable with them.”
“I was more referring to my own,” Hisoka said dryly, “but death isn’t so bad, once you get used to it.”
Tsuzuki glanced over at him. “I met your family,” he said. “You’re better off this way.”
“Thanks, honey, that’s sweet.” Hisoka eyed Tsuzuki’s warm smile for a moment, then added, “If you smile like that for another nanosecond, I think Dean is going to throw up.”
Sam couldn’t help but snicker. Tsuzuki, meanwhile, seemed befuddled by the comment. The smile dropped away and he turned large, bewildered purple eyes on Dean. “Dude, what the fuck is that?” Dean asked, as Tsuzuki approached a wibble. “Tell him to cut that out right now.”
“Why, so you won’t give in and be nice to him?” Hisoka asked, watching Sam strain a rib as he tried to not laugh. “Get used to it.”
Dean took some papers and began to look through them. Sam burst into laughter, which gained him a dirty look. “Sorry, man, just . . . sorry.”
“’Soka, he doesn’t like me,” Tsuzuki said mournfully.
“That’s all right, Tsuzuki, I still love you,” Hisoka said, in a placating tone that years of partnership with Tsuzuki had taught him. He walked over and sat down on Tsuzuki’s lap, kissing him lightly on the mouth. He did this more to bother Dean than reassure Tsuzuki, but the older Shinigami didn’t seem to mind.
“Okay, you two,” Sam said, trying to rescue his brother, who was still ignoring them, “get a room, and not ours.”
“We just kissed,” Hisoka said, but moved out of Tsuzuki’s lap and back into his own chair. “So, Tsuzuki. Tracker spirit?”
“Tracker?” Tsuzuki looked terribly confused at the events of the past few minutes. He shook himself. “Oh, yeah, tracker. I should be able to just follow their trail from where they live. As long as it isn’t too old. This is a big city and you know that always confuses things.”
Dean cleared his throat and decided this would be a good time to “The last person who disappeared was about two weeks ago. Is that too old?”
“It’s hard to guess,” Tsuzuki said. “The more . . .” He searched for the word in English and failed. “The more reiastu the person has, the better our luck will be.”
Sam nodded and glanced to see if Dean needed a translation or if he could pick it up from context. “Reiatsu is what, the spiritual power and stuff?” Dean asked.
“Yeah,” Hisoka said. “We may as well give it a try.”
“Do you want to go now or wait until after dark?” Tsuzuki asked.
“Will those few hours decrease the chances that it’ll work?” Sam replied, and Tsuzuki shook his head.
“Do you guys want to come along?” Hisoka asked, rather politely. “You can’t be invisible.”
“I think we can manage,” Dean said. “Thanks.”
Hisoka shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“We might as well wait, then,” Sam said. “It might be faster if we show you the place.” He shook his head in frustration and added, “A vision would sure as hell be helpful right about now.”
“Then have one,” Hisoka suggested, amused.
“What?” Sam asked, blinking at him on confusion.
“Have one,” Hisoka repeated.
“I can’t just have a vision,” Sam said incredulously.
“Why not?” Hisoka asked, his tone reasonable in counterpoint to Sam’s disbelieving attitude and Dean’s bewildered look.
“I have no idea how all this works,” Sam said, laughing, a sick-sounding half-laugh.
“Look, it’s simple,” Hisoka said, a touch of impatience now coloring his voice. “Lie down so you don’t fall over, close your eyes, and concentrate on trying to see the future. We’ll see what happens.”
Sam glanced over at Dean, a dual look that asked both ‘do you believe these guys’ and ‘think I should give it a go’. Dean shrugged. “What’s the worst that’ll happen? A migraine?”
“I think a migraine might be preferable to what I usually get, but sure. What the hell.” Sam stood, walked over to his bed, and flopped down on it. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then looked over at everyone else. “Just, dude, guys, don’t stare. It’s creepy.”
Hisoka deliberately turned back to Tsuzuki and started chattering to him about random things in Japanese, so it would just be background noise. Dean glared, but at least turned his glare on Tsuzuki and Hisoka so he wouldn’t be glaring at Sam.
“Are you planning something?” Tsuzuki asked in Japanese, watching Sam as he tried to relax and take deep breaths.
“Maybe a little,” Hisoka said, also glancing at Sam out of the corner of his eye. The other man seemed to be attempting to apply the little he knew about meditation to the situation. It wasn’t working very well, and Hisoka felt his own body vibrating with the tension that Sam was feeling.
“He looks sort of worried,” Tsuzuki said, with an almost imperceptible nod towards Dean, not wanting to use his name and draw his attention.
“Mm. He does,” Hisoka replied.
“How strong do you think the ability is?”
“Not a clue,” Hisoka said. Sam seemed to have relaxed and was going into a light trance, so Hisoka stood up and walked over, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to him. “We’ll find out.”
“Hey,” Dean said, his voice clearly a challenge. “What are you doing?”
“Helping,” Hisoka said, changing back to English. He was glad to see that this wasn’t interrupting Sam’s trance; the other man seemed to be relying on Dean to make sure nothing happened to him.
“Don’t touch him,” Dean said.
Hisoka sighed. “I won’t hurt him. I’m just trying to help him get the vision without hurting himself.”
“Yeah, great,” Dean said. “Back off.”
“Do the visions really bother him?” Tsuzuki asked, trying to help.
“Well, yeah, but that’s not the point,” Dean said.
“What is the point?” Tsuzuki asked, not being rude or flippant, but trying to gain some actual information.
“The point is that I’m not letting any psychic dead guy that I only met two days ago lay a hand on my brother and play with his head,” Dean said. “You know?”
“He wants to help, not hurt,” Tsuzuki said, his tone soothing. “You’re going to need to find someone that can help.”
“Swell. Yeah. Touch him and I’ll blow your head off.”
Hisoka looked between the two of them. Sam still hadn’t twitched, and was going deeper into the meditative trance. In a disgusted tone of voice, he said to Tsuzuki, “If he shoots me, I’m divorcing you.”
Tsuzuki sputtered. “But . . .” he began, but Hisoka ignored his protest and laid a hand on Sam’s. He took a deep breath and immediately dropped into a psychic trance, using his empathy to try to relax Sam and find whatever was blocking the visions.
“Dude, I’m serious,” Dean said, his gun out and pointed at Hisoka. “Take your hands off him, right now.”
“He’s just helping,” Tsuzuki said, although his body was tensed, ready to spring into action if it was necessary. “Trying to figure out where the problem is. If this gift has only shown itself in the last year or so, that means there’s something blocking it. And at his age, it needs to be fixed.”
“Give me one damned reason why I should trust you,” Dean said, his finger tightening on the trigger.
“Why would we be out to hurt you?” Tsuzuki asked.
“You’re reapers, you’re supernatural, and that means I don’t trust you.”
“You’re not afraid of Shinigami, and you know that you can’t just blanket all supernatural as bad,” Tsuzuki said, although in truth he was not particularly sure of this. “After all, you trust your brother.”
“That’s different! That’s – ” Dean looked like he was about to come up with something particularly scathing, but then Sam gave a sharp gasp and rolled onto his side as the vision started. “Sammy?” Dean asked, hurrying over. He was not looking at Hisoka, so didn’t see the Shinigami bite down on his lip as the backlash echoed through him as well, or the trickle of blood down his chin.
Sam’s hand came up and pressed against his head for a moment, and then he exhaled heavily. His eyes still shut, he said hoarsely, “Dean.”
“Yeah, Sammy. You okay?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, prying his eyes open. He wasn’t sure how to explain the headache, which was something between the worst hangover ever experienced, and having been hit in the temple repeatedly by a brick. Hisoka lifted his hand off Sam’s and shuddered slightly, allowing Tsuzuki to guide him to sit down on the other bed.
“Did you have a, you know, thing?” Dean asked.
“Yeah,” Sam said, rolling onto his side and just laying there for a few moments, trying to not strain his mind. “It was a lot more coherent than they normally are.”
“What’d you see?”
Sam tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but that made his temples throb and he flopped backwards. Clearing his throat, he said, “It’s a cult. They’re summoning demons. Thirteen people and a circle. My head is killing me.”
“Okay.” Dean blinked. “Good, that’s good. You got a lot more than usual this time, huh.”
“Yeah. Tired, though.” He held out a hand to Dean, clearly expecting that Dean would help him up. His brother obliged, although he then made him sit back against the headboard.
“So we should go track down that last person, I guess,” Dean said, and glanced over at where Hisoka was leaning against Tsuzuki’s shoulder, his eyes closed.
“They have a glyph that they’re using,” Sam said, fumbling for the pad of hotel paper on the nightstand. Dean handed him a pen. He began to draw it, leaving a few parts of it unfinished, as was standard practice when you were drawing something that you didn’t know what it did. “Thirteen points. I think it’s made up of small parts, because I recognize some of them.”
“Yeah, yeah, looks familiar,” Dean said, glancing over his shoulder. He pulled his bag onto the bed and started looking through his books.
“’Soka?” Tsuzuki asked quietly, seeing that the Winchesters were focused on their books. He found himself wondering why Hisoka was so worn out, given that Sam seemed fairly lively. “Do you need to lie down for a while?”
“No, I’m okay,” Hisoka said. “Just . . . wasn’t expecting it to hurt that much. Would have been better if I’d been braced for it.”
“What were you doing anyway?” Sam asked, glancing over. “Besides getting my headache?” He was rather pleased to note that, although he still had the headache, it was not the same blinding pain, just what one would term an exceptionally bad headache. “Dean, can I have the journals?” he added, and Dean handed them over.
“I relaxed you,” Hisoka said. “You were so tense that you were blocking it. That’s probably what happens most of the time. You subconsciously recognize that one is coming on, and your mind clenches down on it. I just used my empathy to soothe the tension a bit; that’s why it was more clear than usual. But I didn’t know they hurt you so much. You hadn’t mentioned that.”
“I thought I had,” Sam said.
“Well, you mentioned that they hurt. Not that they gave you blinding migraines of screaming doom.”
“So you, uh, felt that?” Dean asked, not sure how he felt about this.
“Yes,” Hisoka said. “And thank you, by the way, for not shooting me.”
“You threatened to shoot him?” Sam asked.
“Only a little,” Dean said with a shrug.
“He really meant it, too,” Hisoka said, amused.
“Dean never jokes about shooting someone or something,” Sam said.
“But he didn’t,” Hisoka said, wisely not reminding them that even if Dean had shot him, it wouldn’t have had much effect other than him being really pissed off. “So that’s all right.”
“Yeah, uh, well . . .” Dean pretended to be absorbed in his book. “Sorry about that, I guess.”
“No, you aren’t,” Hisoka said with a sigh. “But I accept your apology anyway.”
“There will be no shootings,” Tsuzuki said firmly. “We can all learn to play nice.” He peered across to Sam and Dean and their books. “Are you finding anything we can use?”
“We could go do the tracker spirit while they worked on this,” Hisoka suggested.
“Yeah, it wouldn’t take a long time,” Tsuzuki agreed.
“Uh, before you go,” Sam interrupted, “any ideas as to why I can’t control these visions?”
Hisoka shrugged. “Not for certain. I think I know why you don’t have them often, though – you get so tense when you think one’s coming on, your brain probably can’t do much else.”
“So it’s because I can’t multi-task?” Sam asked, sounding somewhat dubious.
“Uh, sort of. That’s not really what I . . .” Hisoka frowned, trying to figure out how to explain what he meant in English. “It’s because you’re trying to not have them. That’s probably the simplest way of putting it.”
Seeing that Sam still looked confused, Tsuzuki stepped in. “It’s because you’re used to suppressing them. I’m willing to bet that you’ve been doing it for over twenty years.”
“Wait, you mean this isn’t new?” Dean asked, startled. “We sort of assumed it was. I mean . . .” He looked over at Sam, not sure how much they were willing to say in front of the Shinigami.
“What other kids?” Hisoka asked sharply.
“Jesus, kid,” Dean said. “Do you have to do that?”
“Sorry,” Hisoka said with a shrug, although he didn’t sound particularly remorseful.
Sam gave Dean a look, then shrugged. “There were – are others about my age, who are psychics as well. Their abilities all came out at about the same time as mine. And they all had some sort of tie with the Demon.”
“Huh.” Hisoka glanced over at Tsuzuki. “That’s odd. Demons can’t induce psychic powers, so I’m sure it’s singling them out. But why would their powers all surface around the same time?”
“If it was just Sam I’d have a theory, but the odds that it would work with all of you isn’t so great,” Tsuzuki said, somewhat apologetically. “Demons can do some weird things. I think we’d need a lot more evidence before we could really come to any conclusions.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Dean said. “That much we’d figured out already.”
“It’s just really unnerving,” Sam said. “The whole mess. I just want to get a hold of this. Before I get us killed.”
Dean interrupted rather abruptly. “You wanna work this case or what?”
Tsuzuki glanced between the two of them and said cheerfully, “Yeah! We’ll go see if a tracker spirit can pick anything up.”
Hisoka sighed and got to his feet. “Your enthusiasm, Tsuzuki, blinds me.”
“I know!” Tsuzuki said, clearly taking this as a compliment.
“Have fun, guys,” Dean said.
“We will,” Tsuzuki said, and bounced out with a somewhat beleaguered Hisoka in tow.
“I can’t imagine trying to live with that sort of enthusiasm,” Sam said.
“Yeah, no shit.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Hisoka had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity, as they entered the house of one of the missing teenagers, about how the Winchester siblings managed this. Since they couldn’t simply be invisible like the Shinigami, he was willing to bet their methods were different. It was somewhat fortunate that he wasn’t familiar with said methods, as there was no way Hisoka would ever be caught dead – or alive – in a fake priest outfit.
Tsuzuki bounced around the teenager’s room, inspecting things. There was no need to agree that the teenager was in fact a kidnapping victim; both of them could feel the demonic presence in the room. Hisoka yawned and stretched and wished that he was somewhere else, having an actual vacation or something zany like that.
“Let’s go,” he said in a low voice, tiring of Tsuzuki’s exploration.
“Hai!” Tsuzuki said, folding the origami bird. It circled the room once before taking off. Hisoka sighed and followed it.
“If we wind up walking across this entire city, I’m going to think up something very nasty to do to you later,” he huffed.
“We could fly across the city.” Tsuzuki looked at Hisoka’s sour expression and said, “That didn’t help, did it. I’ll shut up. I’ll give you lots of make-up sex later.”
“The thing about make-up sex,” Hisoka said, “is that you enjoy it, too. That makes it awfully – gee, what’s the word? Convenient for you, now doesn’t it.”
“Well, what do you want?” Tsuzuki asked.
“I’ll think of something,” Hisoka promised.
“Uh oh.” Tsuzuki wibbled.
“Maybe I’ll give you to Tatsumi-san for a week when we get back and take another week of vacation on my own. Somewhere quiet. By myself.”
Tsuzuki’s eyes grew impossibly large. “Don’t leave me with Tatsumi! He’ll give me to the Earl, and the Earl will grope things! Things that belong to you!”
Hisoka let out a snort. “Tatsumi-san wouldn’t give you to the Earl.”
“He would if he was angry . . .”
“I somehow doubt he’ll be that angry about you ruining my vacation.”
Tsuzuki thought that if this conversation was any indication of what Hisoka’s attitude around the office was going to be like in the coming weeks, then Tatsumi very well might be angry with him. “Wah . . .”
They bickered amiably for about another fifteen minutes before the bird chittered and sped up. Both Hisoka and Tsuzuki increased their pace to keep up with it, until it started circling around a teenager’s head, one who was nearly lost in the crowded streets. “Success!” Tsuzuki crowed, clearly quite proud of himself.
The teenager glanced up, frowned, and swatted the bird away.
Hisoka blinked. “Well. You don’t see that every day.”
“No,” Tsuzuki agreed. “So should we . . . try to rescue him now, or see where he’s going?”
“Given that he turned down an alley, I think he plans on dealing with us before going anywhere,” Hisoka pointed out.
“I guess we rescue him now, then.”
Hisoka didn’t bother to point out that from the looks of the way the teenager had handled the bird, he might not want to be rescued. He simply trailed behind Tsuzuki as the older Shinigami bounded into the alley.
“Who are you?” the teenager asked.
“Are you in trouble?” Tsuzuki asked first.
“Tsuzuki,” Hisoka murmured in a low voice. “You do realize that’s a demon, right?”
“Uh, well, I was sort of hoping that – yikes!” Both Tsuzuki and Hisoka jumped as the teenager lunged at them. Tsuzuki whipped a handful of ofuda towards the teenager, pinning him in place. Hisoka leaned against the alley wall and waited while Tsuzuki folded his hands in prayer position and started to chant.
A few minutes later, the demon erupted from the boy in a pulse of black smoke, which then began to take the shape of a huge lizard.
“It’s Godzilla,” Hisoka said, almost laughing.
Tsuzuki grinned and was about to start the chant to summon Suzaku, but before he could, the smoke dissipated and the demon was gone. His face fell. “Oh, she missed her chance to play Mothra.”
Hisoka let out a snort. “No more late-night TV for you, Tsuzuki.”
“You brought it up . . .”
Hisoka rolled his eyes and knelt down next to the teenager. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“I – what? No! Where am I? What the hell was that?”
“. . . Godzilla?” Tsuzuki tried.
“It was a demon,” Hisoka said, ignoring his idiot husband. “It had possessed you. You’re okay now, so don’t worry about it.”
“P-Possessed?” the teenager asked, in a tone of voice that clearly added ‘and you’re telling me I don’t have to worry about it?’
Tsuzuki decided to save the boy from Hisoka’s bedside manner. “It’s okay. It’s gone now. We’ll make sure you get home all right.” He laid a reassuring hand on the teenager’s shoulder, ignoring the sour look that Hisoka was giving him. “Can we just ask you a few questions first?”
“Sure . . . you saved me from a demon, so I guess you can ask me whatever you want.”
“While you were possessed, could you see what was happening?” Tsuzuki asked.
“Yeah, sort of . . . but it was weird, like being in a dream. I couldn’t really make myself move or act. I thought it was just some weird dream . . .”
“What’s the last thing you remember before that?”
“Nothing special, really, I was just at home studying for a test when there was this guy in the room all of a sudden. He said some weird words, like some old language. I was about to freak out, you know, this guy was in my house, but then I just . . . I don’t know. Didn’t care. So I went with him.”
“That’s nothing special?” Hisoka asked skeptically.
“Well – this is New York City.”
“Okay,” Hisoka said, clearly not understanding this at all.
“After that?” Tsuzuki asked.
The boy shrugged. “Nothing, really.”
“You don’t remember where they took you, or anything like that?”
“No,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Okay,” Tsuzuki said. “No problem. Let’s get you home.”
~ ~ ~ ~