Nihil Credo
Chapter Two: The Bureau
Miroku lay in the hospital bed, the thin sheets tucked around his body, the rising and falling motion of his chest almost invisible. Worried about his partner and friend, Ranma had stayed with him throughout the night, and was curled up on a nearby chair. His eyes were half-open, but other than that, he showed no sign of being awake. He was as still and quiet as Miroku.
So it was quite a surprise when Ranma suddenly screamed. He had screamed because, without warning, Miroku's whole body had suddenly spasmed. Miroku's eyes shot open and he sat up straight in bed, letting out a strangled scream. Ranma, at first startled, recovered in the blink of an eye and he lunged for the bed, clasping Miroku's hand tightly.
"It's okay, Miroku! It's okay! You're safe!"
The other boy put a hand to his heaving chest, as if feeling for something. His hand groped up and down from his pectorals to his waist, and he seemed confused when he couldn't find whatever it was he was looking for, as well as a little relieved.
"I… I'm alive," he side finally, his blue-grey eyes still wide. He turned to Ranma, puzzled. "I was sure I was dead."
"We all were," Ranma admitted, frowning from puzzlement. "You had a seizure right at the start of the modern Germany midterm." He suddenly growled a little. "What was that, Miroku? I mean, honestly, what was it? First you had a seizure, and then you went into a trance, and then your heart stopped in the fucking middle of the trance!"
"Um... heartburn?"
"I ain't so stupid as to buy that. Guess again." The threatening tone of Ranma's voice was getting thicker and heavier. Miroku looked away from him. He clearly didn't want to talk about it. "I've seen you go into your trances before, Miroku, but you've never had anything like this before…"
"Because I'd never experienced anything that… intense before," Miroku said, in a shaky and awed voice. His hand was still clutching at his chest and he was still shaking. His expression was faintly surprised, but serious as he looked up at Ranma standing over him. "Not even an orgasm."
Ranma looked at him incredulously, wondering how Miroku could have come so close to death and be such a pervert after he had just woken up.
"No, really! During the late, oh, seventeenth century… no, wait, late sixteenth, early seventeenth century, right around Shakespeare's time, people thought you died during sex from the intensity of orgasms. The puns about death in Shakespeare's plays are all about orgasms… or possibly about catching syphilis from a hooker," he shrugged.
"…you history majors are fucking weird," Ranma noted.
Miroku merely shrugged in response. The color was slowly returning to his face, but he still continued to run his hands down the middle of his chest. Miroku noticed the IV attatched to his arm and pulled it out. He hated the drugs that they gave people. Normally their hospital tried more natural remedies, but sometimes the only way to get something into someone's body was through and IV. He hear Ranma shudder and turn away.
Miroku thought a moment, gently rubbing his arm. He then jumped out of bed, peeling off his hospital gown without the slightest hint of modesty for the naked body underneath.
Ranma merely crossed his arms and looked exasperated. "What the hell are you doin' always feeling yourself up like that? Get the hell back in bed, Miroku! Can't you just relax and take it easy? You nearly died!"
"Are you really sure?" he asked out of the blue, sounding a little odd. His voice sounded a little hollow. "I can't believe I didn't die. I was so sure… I was so sure I had died. I was waiting to wake up and find myself in a place with fluffy white clouds and lots of women willing to sleep with me."
Tossing the gown on the bed, he looked down at his chest. His skin was unblemished, and his hands slowly felt the taught skin, making sure he was still whole. His face was puzzled, his voice still hollow as his hands rubbed up and down the smooth muscle of his chest. "I was so sure… God, it felt like I was being ripped open, from side to side, like, like… like I was undergoing mitosis."
Ranma merely looked confused.
"Like I was a wishbone being pulled in two."
"Oh," Ranma said, understanding. Then he just looked plain worried. His deep voice covered up the sound of the door opening. "What did you see, Miroku? What…"
"I wouldn't answer that just yet," a cool voice said from the doorway. It nearly sounded monotone. Miroku immediately felt eyes roaming up and down his naked body. He didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
'Hell, I don't even need to be psychic to know who it is.'
He could feel the eyes move down his legs, his back, and his legs, ending at the tips of his fingers. He swallowed hard, trying to repress a shudder. The sensual tension in the air was enough to make his head swim, but his own skills were fighting back against Kagura's. Miroku wasn't so stupid or so weak as to be drawn in by a bit of psychic pheromone. Ranma, who lacked any psychic powers completely, practically needed a bucket to catch the drool.
"Urgh," Kagura groaned, disgusted. She wheeled her chi back in, and Ranma snapped back to himself. She watched, still disgusted, as he wiped the back of his mouth with his hand and seemed surprised that he couldn't remember what had just happened. 'Imbecile.'
She threw Miroku's clothes on the bed, landing beside him. "Ferio called you. He wants to see you two as soon as possible. Word is he got a call from Sesshomaru asking about you, so he's supposed to report to Sesshomaru as soon as he gets briefed from you two."
Miroku turned to face Kagura. Her red eyes stared back at him from underneath her black bangs, and she winked at him. Her smile was disturbingly sweet for Kagura. As he thanked her for bringing him his clothes, she checked him out once more.
"It's a pity you have to cover it all up…" she sighed, staring at him.
'…Oh, the irony. The one girl who actually wants to get into my pants is the one girl who is so insane I don't know how anyone can get close to her…' He was disturbed from his thoughts when the door shut and Ranma nearly burst out laughing at Miroku, finding everything highly amusing. Miroku growled and threw a balled up sock at Ranma.
"I don't stick it in the crazy," Miroku hissed before putting on his pants. He did up the belt buckle with shaking hands. "And she's got the most perverse bedside manner out of anyone I've ever met! Even me! God, I hate hospitals!"
Ferio de Forest was the only Frenchmen who worked in the Japanese branch of the IBSP—the International Bureau for Studies of the Paranormal. He was more than certain that was why he had gotten stuck working with the people he did. Did Sesshomaru know how much of a pain in the ass it was trying to control Ranma Saotome? Or how many times Ferio had to cloister Miroku to keep the man focused on work and not on the derrieres of passing female interns?
No, Ferio could guarantee it. He still had to admit, however, that as much as Ranma and Miroku were a pain to control, they did their work, and they did it to the best of their abilities.
That still didn't stop them from having only ever solved one case. But if that was the best of their abilities…
Ferio hung his head, his scarred face falling into his hands. He had given them an easy assignment: go to school. Even that had failed. They'd missed their exam because of Miroku's powers. Were they hopeless? Maybe he could use the sudden seizure of psychic power Miroku had displayed to his advantage and convince them that working for the FBI of the supernatural world wasn't for them.
The problem was: it was for them.
Sure, they had only ever solved one case. Sure, Miroku had a tendency to flirt whenever a girl was involved. Sure, Ranma had a bad habit of sending to the people to the hospital if they called him a girl or a wuss, but that was all because of emotion. The two of them didn't have control of their emotions and they were supposed to.
The IBPS always worked in teams of two. They began training as soon as they were children, when they began to display powers of either psychic or physical prowess. Each team had one psychic or magic-user, and the other team member had skills in the physical, especially fighting.
There was, as always, exceptions to this rule, but he tried not to think of them. Those girls weren't in his care, so why should he worry about them?
The teams were supposed to balance each other out, like yin and yang. But they weren't supposed to be opposites. It was more like they were half of the same soul, that one governed the physical and the other the mental.
The problem with Miroku and Ranma was that they got into trouble too much, and often goaded the other person into it. If they would grow up and show just a shred of the maturity that Ferio could see in them, he was certain that they would be a wonderful team, maybe even one of the best... If they could just control their emotions!
"Like you're one to talk of controlling your emotions," Fuu said gently from the doorway. She smiled at her husband, fluffing her blonde hair. "Weren't you the one who asked me out on a date during the orientation week? It only took you two hours to get up your nerve," she pointed out.
He grinned at his partner, lifting his face from his hands. His gold eyes were laughing, and drinking in the sight of her. He still didn't know just how lucky he was for being able to find the woman of his dreams, be married to her for twenty years, and still feel like a schoolboy with a crush whenever he saw her.
The color rose to his face, making the scars on his cheek and nose stand out more. How she was able to unsettle him just by pointing something out in her soft voice still confused him as much as it did amaze him. Ferio smiled at Fuu.
"That I did, but I still managed to do my job. And look at me now, love. I'm the boss and..."
"And you get to make all the decisions," she finished for him, smiling and rolling her eyes. She had never rolled her eyes before she had met him. Fuu smiled at Ferio. "Miroku and Ranma are here," she said to him.
In a flash, with the speed for which he was famous, Ferio was up and out of his chair, and had grabbed his wife around her waist, scooping her up into his arms. "Let them wait outside for a moment," he purred into her ear before nuzzling her neck.
Fuu giggled and easily slipped out of his arms. She steadied herself on her feet and planted a gentle kiss on his neck. "As I said, like you're one to talk about emotion. I'll send them in so you can talk to them. If you want a woman's touch, just think it. I'll be right outside of the door."
"Yes, M'am," he grinned, flashing his white teeth and looking suddenly as old as the boys outside his office door. The smile that Fuu gave him was enough to make him feel like he was floating.
Stepping out of the office, she shut the door. Miroku and Ranma sat uncomfortably in chairs in front of her, their expressions sullen. Or mostly sullen. She sighed when she noticed the way Miroku's eyes stayed attuned to certain parts of her anatomy. To Fuu's delicate psychic sense, his thoughts were as loud as a jackhammer. Even if she didn't have the gift of telepathy, she would have been able to know what he was thinking, anyway.
She surprised him when she bent down to his level and took his chin into her hand. His eyes went immediately from the part of her anatomy at which he had been staring to her eyes, which were very serious. "I'm a married woman, Miroku," she pointed out to him, "and I'm too old for you."
"You're only fourteen years older than I am," he retorted, his hand suddenly landing on her derriere and rubbing the curve of her body.
"Miroku! Get your hand off of my wife and get your ass in here this second! And drag that good for nothing Saotome in here too!" Ferio hollered from his office.
Quick as bunnies, Ranma and Miroku were off to Ferio's office. Fuu, once she had gotten over her shock of having a good looking young man grope her with the widest, cutest grin she could imagine, smiled and straightened.
Don't be too hard on him, she told her husband, taking back her seat at her desk outside of Ferio's office. It's a defense mechanism. He keeps people away to keep them from getting too close to him. The only one he'll let close to him is Ranma, and even that doesn't go too far. Miroku likes his privacy. He's still pale and shaky from the visions. Even his shirt isn't done up properly, and poor Ranma is too kind to tell him. I'd let him bring up the vision on his own.
"You called for us, sir?" Ranma asked. His back was stiff as he regarded his teacher, who was sitting calmly behind his desk with his nose in a folder. The two boys glanced at each other when Ferio didn't respond. Miroku motioned for Ranma to go on. "Uh… sir?"
"Ranma," Ferio said slowly, "I'm not going to start until Miroku is ready to deal with this. Are you ready, son?" he asked cautiously, his suspicious eyebrow vanishing into his green bangs. The boy in front of him looked positively frightened, and Ferio knew that it was going to get worse. He smiled from pride when Miroku nodded.
They might not be the best of all the detectives working within the Bureau, but as far as he was concerned, they were the bravest. It didn't take much to wander into a house full of angry spirits and exorcise them when you knew you could do it, but to wander into a building fearing your own death or the death of your partner and fight through that fear?
Now that was bravery.
"Very well," he continued. He got up and began moving around his desk, hearing Ranma's hidden snicker when the martial artist noticed their boss was wearing running shoes. Ranma still couldn't get over seeing their boss look like a normal guy, wearing jeans and a pale yellow turtleneck and sneakers.
"Miroku, it has been a long time since anyone in this institution ever had a vision as forceful as the one you had this morning. Hm, Fuu?" He stopped again, and then nodded, smiling at his students. "Fuu will bring in some sandwiches for you from the cafeteria. You both must be very hungry. It's almostnine o clock in the evening. You've been asleep all day, Miroku."
As Ferio continued to talk, Ranma got distracted and began looking around the office. It looked like the office of any normal businessman, save for Ferio's casual attire. There was a wood desk in the middle of the desk, with a flickering computer screen and a mug full of pens sitting at hand. The room was windowless, but the softly hanging halogen lights gave the impression of sunlight, as did the large painting by Monet hanging behind the desk like a window to a world of blurred, bright colors. He stopped when he heard his name.
"Sesshomaru wants to see us?" Sesshomaru. Ferio's boss. The head honcho of the Japanese district of the IBSP. "Why?"
"Weren't you listening?" Ferio demanded.
Miroku snorted. "Ranma never listens… ow." He rubbed his arm where Ranma had punched him, and he scowled. "I had an intense vision, okay? They think that possibly my powers could be expanding faster than I can deal with. They just want to meet with me to make sure that I'm okay, and to ask me what it is I saw… I think Sesshomaru knows that this was the second vision I had in the past twenty-four hours, and both of the same thing…"
"You had another vision?" Ranma roared. Miroku nodded, and Ranma subsided to muttering bad words under his breath, something about Miroku doing something to dreams which most people would have thought was impossible, given a dream's incorporeal nature.
"What was the vision about?" Ferio asked gently.
"Death."
There was a moment of silence in the room, which was broken when Fuu came in carrying a tray of sandwiches and drinks. She stared around at everyone staring back at her, and then smiling sweetly. Their thoughts were laid out for her to see.
"Miroku," she said soothingly, handing the tree first to Ranma, "you can tell us. You don't even have to use words. You can tell me. Open up your mind to me, and I can see your vision. You won't have to repeat it to anyone. I will tell Sesshomaru-sama for you."
He looked panicked at the idea of opening up his mind to someone, even the wife of the man who had taught him everything he knew about fighting and the IBSP. His skin turned white, his dark eyes so contrasted that he looked like a deer in the headlights. It was an expression of full out panic…
And then he considered going up in front of Sesshomaru, the head boss of the district, and fainting as he remembered his vision, fainting from the way the pain would wash over him again and the fear that he had felt.
And then there was always that damned necklace to consider…
He let Fuu into his mind. He didn't just open up his mind, he practically threw the vision into her mind. He couldn't get rid of it. The memories were still there, bleeding painfully away in his mind, but now she would know too. She would help him through this.
Her chest stopped breathing. Her face turned as white as his. Ferio was dutifully by her side, helping her to stand when her shaking legs threatened to give out. Fuu raised a hand to cover her mouth, and when she lowered it, Miroku could see tears in her eyes. She wrapped her slender arms around him. "Oh, Miroku. You poor thing! No wonder you reacted in such a manner… and to think that I only experienced a fraction of that…" She stood behind him as he sat, nibbling on his sandwich, feeling it turn to sand in his mouth. She looked over him at her husband. "It was a vivisection, Ferio."
Ranma then chose the most inopportune moment to speak up. "What's a vivisection?"
Ferio answered slowly. "It's usually cutting someone alive for the purpose of studying their anatomy. It was normally done on animals, but it's been done on humans before too. Miroku experienced a vivisection in his vision…"
Ranma felt his sandwich turn to dirt too. He barely managed to swallow the piece he was chewing. He stared over at his pale friend. "Fuck, Miroku… no wonder you passed out. So, in the room, when you kept looking at your chest, you were trying to find…"
He nodded wearily. "Cut down the middle, from esophagus to my belly button, so realistic I have expected that Kagura or Amy would have had to have sewn me back up."
"So, he was right," a new voice said. It was strong, but lightly muffled. When they turned, they realized why. Another member of the IBSP's senior staff was leaning in the door way. Kakashi, the most respected teacher in the entire branch of Japan.
According to rumor, it was he who had trained Sesshomaru, and it had been Sesshomaru in one of their combats who had disfigured Kakashi to the point where the lower half of the man's face and one eye was covered by a cloth mask. Kakashi was also the only member of the entire Bureau who had no partner, and rumor said it was because he had no need for one, that he had a special eye which could see through time and space and see anything.
"Who was right sir?" Ranma inquired.
Kakashi slid into the room. He took up little space, and seemed to have no presence what so ever. He was as invisible as a ghost. "Sesshomaru was right. Miss Fuu, please shut the door, and remain with us here. This is all top-secret information."
After Fuu had shut the door and pulled in two more chairs into the room, they all sat down, and began to talk.
So spoke Kakashi.
"Two years ago, we found the very first victim. It happened in Hokkaido. A young man was found in such a state of decay that the police couldn't figure out what had happened to him, not at first. As the investigation went on, it became clearer and clearer that the man had been dissected. The body had been found in the sea, and so at first they had thought it had been a shark attack. When it became clear that somewhere, the man had been dissected, the man began to immediately start preparation for a search of all of Hokkaido, trying to find the missing family of the unidentified man, and trying to find the missing body parts, and the missing blood. However, the government of Japan secretly intervened. To have such a heinous murder become public would not only cause panic, but also interfere in the tourist industry, and so on… so the case was closed.
"Then, last year, another body was found. This time it was female, and this time, we were the ones who arrived on the seen. It was slightly different than before. This time it was in Tokyo, in the University. We assume that the killer was unable to remove the body from the scene of the crime, and so they left it there, taking certain body parts again… and all the blood. There was no one drop of blood in the body, or in the room.
"At this point, it's still too early for the Bureau to start making any guesses about what the killer wants, who it is… but we do have a few hypothesis based upon deduction and superficial evidence. We have a group in Hokkaido continuing to search for any evidence left in the city, and we have another group currently in Tokyo U. They are my students. This was supposed to be their big case, the one that would get their names into the Bureau, but as it now seems like your young psychic has somehow become connected to the victim, I'm proposing that these two teams join up, if only temporarily. Perhaps Miroku's vision may give my students insight into who the killer is."
Miroku suddenly leapt up from the chair. "Kakashi, sir! I didn't really see anything in my vision," he protested. "I didn't see anything about the killer, but I know who the victim is! She was alive and well when I saw her this morning in my exam!"
Kakashi seemed to have caught his excitement. He stood up, his single eye looking excited. "Who, boy? Who was it?"
The name seemed to catch in his throat. "Eve."
"How do you know this, boy?" Kakashi demanded, ignoring Ranma's sputtered sounds of shock.
"She had on a rose quartz necklace," Miroku said, his voice clipped. He was trying to remain focused, but his head was buzzing. He was starting to feel dizzy. He wondered if maybe he had eaten too fast, or not enough at all. His words began to slow. "It was very pretty… tied with a black cord… hung like a cho… choker around her neck… there was a wire design keeping it tie… tied down… it was supposed to stand for… love… I saw it… on my throat…."
He managed to get out the last word before the vision struck him for the third time. His stomach rolled, and he fell to his knees, clutching his throat. Ranma was at his side in a heart beat, trying to support Miroku as the man's mind swam about in nothingness, and then in infiltrating pain. Fuu was scared for Miroku. She was one of the strongest mind-readers in the branch, and yet she felt nothing. There was no psychic power in the air, not even Miroku's. If it was a psychic bond which bound Miroku to the victims, it was such a deep bond that she could not sense it.
Only Kakashi seemed able to react in a way without concern. Ferio was trying to climb over the litter of chairs in his small office to reach Miroku. Kakashi was in front of his desk, calmly dialing a telephone number.
Miroku vomited up a bit of blood. Ranma remained from saying anything impolite, instead trying to coax Miroku back into the world of light…
There was light everywhere. He was hot. He felt like he was on the surface of the sun, bound down to a blistering rock. He was scared. He wasn't picking up on Eve's fears, they were his own. He was terrified. He knew what was coming, and he was trying to prepare himself for the pain, but it wasn't helping. Nothing prepared him for the pain of suddenly being ripped into two pieces.
And when the time came, he screamed, and he would not stop.
Author's Notes:
I am glad to see that thus far everyone like the chapters. A lot of you said that you were nervous about reading crossovers, but that you liked this one. I think the reason why is that this isn't your average crossover. The story is completely AU, so you don't need to know anything about the other animes involved. I just needed the characters… I wasn't familiar with enough of them in IY.
Anyway, Fuu and Ferio belong to CLAMP and Magic Knights Rayearth, and I don't know who is the author/artist of Naruto, but Kakashi comes from Naruto.
Oh, yes, and obviously captioning within these things is supposed to display Fuu's telepathic powers.
To Eve… yeah… sorry! I was trying to go one way, and my muse was going the other!
Hououza: Exams are indeed going okay thus far. The exam that I am facing tomorrow will no doubt be my hardest one, as it covers historians and how to exam history from Herodotus in Ancient Greece to Fukuyama in the twentieth century. But… I can do it. I have to.
Tsuki: Hey, I think your grammar was just fine.
Siren: Sorry again… Really, really sorry… But hey, Miroku had a crush on you, so maybe that counts for something? And no, Margo didn't give me your profile. It just… happened. That's how I saw her, and how I thought she should act. I mean, if she was a pushover, she wouldn't be standing up to Miroku and giving him cause to steal her panties now would she? So I wanted her to be tough, and a little witty to challenge him. (Psst, I got Ukyo in for chapter five… I like it.)
Furyou: No, it doesn't. I have not seen Constantine, but I have heard that it's about the end of the world. There is no eschatology here.
Bright Star in the Sky: Being in University, let me tell you something: some teachers are so completely involved in Academia that they have lost their ability to relate to the rest of the world. Luckily, this isn't the case here. He's not yelling at Ranma to stop CPR, just to stop swearing, because that isn't polite.
Ninalee-chan: As always, long reviews as questions force me to examine what the heck it is I'm writing, so I look forward to them. : )
In other news, I tried deleting all my temporary internet files and cookies to see if that would let me access new chapters and reviews, and it did nothing. If someone wants try IMing me a link to reviews (looks at Margo) to CiA or LR, it would be much appreciated to see if that works.
Anyway, read and review, and have a great weekend, and hopefully I will update CiA after this History and Historians examination!
