Author's Note: Oh, hey, look, a Yami fic. This is my first one, so I may be slightly out of character with some of the guys. I've tried my best. Also, I'm working mostly off the anime and some general knowledge of the manga, so some things may be slightly inaccurate, and I've had to guess about some others.

This is also one of the few multichapter fics I've worked on; I'll try to get a new chapter up once a week, but I promise nothing.

I completely blame the fanfic muse; by the time I realized it had gotten out of the closet, I had most of the story worked out. This one's been percolating for a while, but I've only recently been able to work out how to make it not suck.

The fanfic muse feeds on reviews, so I would greatly appreciate them. It will help to keep the little rodent too distracted to focus on some of the really weird ideas that shouldn't be written.

Yami no Matsuei and associated characters don't belong to me. They belong to the wonderful people who created them. There are but two original characters in this, and they do belong to me. I make no money off this, and I have no money to be sued for. We clear? Awesome.

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"Tsuzuki, we're going to be late. You know what Tatsumi said about you missing another meeting." Hisoka pushed his partner ahead of him, hoping to keep him from running off again. Sometimes, he felt more like a babysitter than a shinigami.

"But I was going to go get some cinnamon rolls!" Tsuzuki wailed at the injustice. "Do you know how long I've been wanting one?"

"No," Hisoka replied irritably. "But you're broke and I'm not buying you one, and if you're late for the meeting, Tatsumi will dock your pay, and then you won't get one at all." Tsuzuki sniffled, but allowed Hisoka to manhandle him into the conference room. Chief Konoe and Watari were already sitting at the table, and Tatsumi nodded as Tsuzuki sat down dejectedly next to Hisoka.

"Glad to see you decide to be on time for once," the accountant said dryly. Tsuzuki muttered something that sounded like "meanie" at him in response. Tatsumi pushed his glasses up his nose, then cleared his throat. "In the past two weeks, there has been an odd increase in spiritual activity in the Nagasaki district." He handed around some photographs, which seemed to be of various alleys and street corners. There was something broken or flung about in every picture, and what looked like particularly bad graffiti in two. "Things breaking inexplicably or hurling themselves off of shelves, strange noises, that sort of thing."

Watari didn't look up from the pile of bits he was fiddling with. "A poltergeist, you mean?"

Tatsumi nodded. "Something like that. Naturally, such events are caused by lost souls for whatever reasons of their own. Sometimes it's malice, sometimes it's frustration, sometimes it's just an attempt to communicate with the living. However, usually, this activity is restricted to one specific area. In this case, these flare ups have been happening all over the city, but never in two places at once. I think it's safe to assume you're dealing with just one spirit who moves around."

Tsuzuki looked puzzled. "This has been going on for two weeks? How come we weren't notified when whoever this spirit is failed to cross over? I mean, why is this increased spiritual activity the first I've heard of it?"

Tatsumi frowned slightly. "This spirit isn't local, apparently. It's not listed in any of our records; we wouldn't know that someone hasn't crossed over if they weren't in our books. No other branch has contacted us about losing someone, so we don't even have a probable identity for this one."

"That's… really strange," Hisoka said absently. "Why come to Nagasaki?" He squinted at one of the pictures, trying to make out some detail. "Huh."

Tsuzuki turned to him. "What is it? Did you get something?" Hisoka got traces sometimes, from the spiritual signature of whoever had been involved, but usually he had to be there. Pictures didn't work very well for him.

"Not exactly…" He pointed at something in the picture he'd been examining. "This graffiti, are we sure it was made by this spirit?"

Tatsumi leaned down to look. "Reasonably, but, of course, not completely. Why?"

"Well, it just looks like it's written in English." He passed the picture to Watari, who left off his tinkering to examine it. "I can't read it, can you?"

Watari peered at it, then took his glasses off and looked closer. He whispered to himself as he tried to translate the poor scrawl. "St… Stop?" He sounded puzzled. "Of course, this isn't very good quality, and it's hard to make it out, but that's what it looks like."

Tsuzuki also looked confused. "Why not write a message in Japanese? Why English?"

Hisoka just glared at him. "I'd say that either the person who wrote it or whoever the message was intended for can't read Japanese, baka. Tatsumi did say this spirit wasn't in our records, it's possible it might be an American or a European."

"That's an awful long way for a spirit to come."

Konoe stood up, glaring mildly at the brown-haired man. "Why don't you," he growled, "Get out there and find whoever it is, and find out?"

Tsuzuki jumped up and saluted, spewing some nonsense about of course he'd solve this mystery. Hisoka just rolled his eyes and got up, waiting for his partner to follow him. As they left, Watari called after them, "I'll do some more research on this, and see if I can't find anything useful for you." Hisoka waved a hand to acknowledge him as he promptly got into an argument with Tsuzuki about lunch.

Tatsumi and Konoe just shook their heads in resignation.

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Of course, it was easier said than done. The poltergeist, for lack of a better term, had been showing up at random, in different parts of the city, with no discernable pattern. They visited one of the scenes where it had made itself known, but besides the mess (which, in most cases, had already been cleaned up), it hadn't left any clues behind.

Hisoka was able to feel some traces via his empathy, but it was too confused to be useful. "It was here, but either it's completely incoherent, or there was someone else here that overwhelmed the signature. Maybe I can get something at one of the other scenes."

But it was the same for the other places the poltergeist had shown up. Just a mass of conflicting and confusing feelings and images. And it was giving him a nasty headache. Tsuzuki looked concerned, so he must've let it show on his face. "Are you all right?"

Hisoka nodded, and focused on his partner's clear and mostly uncomplicated emotions, which helped him ignore the tangled mess. Not that he'd ever tell the great idiot. "I'm fine, but this is getting us nowhere."

Tsuzuki nodded. "It's getting late, let's go back to the hotel." The sun had set some time ago. "Maybe Watari can give us a lead tomorrow." They started walking. "There's this little restaurant on the way, they have awesome apple pie..."

"No."

"But Hisoka…"

"Not even if we had the money." They had had this same argument many times before; it was practically tradition by now. Neither one was paying much attention to the people around them. So, as they might have known it would be, it was just dumb luck that they found him.

They had actually walked past him before Hisoka turned around. He tugged on Tsuzuki's sleeve, interrupting his monologue about the wonders of this particular apple pie. "What's going on…" he cut off and frowned as he saw who Hisoka was looking at.

He was a teenager, a year or two older than Hisoka. He was even dressed similarly, in jeans and a t-shirt, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of a leather bomber jacket. He had brown hair neatly tied back into a short ponytail that reached to his shoulders. He also looked completely miserable. Hisoka could feel waves of depression and oddly enough, guilt coming off of him.

Hisoka had noticed it first, but both of them recognized him for what he was. Tsuzuki looked surprised, but he nodded. "That's him, it's got to be." They exchanged a look as they turned to follow the kid. This was not what they had been expecting a poltergeist to look like. Tsuzuki cleared his throat. "Um, excuse me…"

The kid stopped, and his head jerked up. He looked around, and finally his pale blue eyes settled on the two shinigami. "Uh… hello," Tsuzuki tried again. The kid looked to see if he could be addressing anyone behind him. Seeing no one, he silently pointing at himself questioningly. "Yes, you, can we talk for a minute?"

"You… you can see me?"