A Tale of Two Brothers
IMPORTANT! Read this! DL, DR!
Pairings: NaruMai. My one and only Ghost Hunt OTP.
Genres: Supernatural & Romance
Disclaimer: I will never own Ghost Hunt, 'kay? All rights reserved by all concerned parties.
File 7:
Exorcisms
"Shounen!"
I saw Yasuhara-san smile weakly from his kneeling position by the wall. His forehead was badly bleeding, and he was as pale as a ghost. No pun intended. "One of them got me. Ow, it's stinging…"
April, day 3.
I winced. "Yasuhara-san, don't even try to downplay your injury. It's even worse than Gene's." He looked as if he had run into a wall so hard it gave him memory loss.
"I'll get some iodine," Ayako volunteered, and like the mother hen that she was, immediately procured first-aid things from her bag. I sometimes forget that she was a doctor, myself.
Naru was thin-lipped as he helped Gene onto a chair. The older Davis twin was very pale and his body was trembling, as if he had just ran a twenty-kilometer run and had not yet recovered.
"Are you alright?" Naru asked his twin gently, making me smirk knowingly at Bou-san, who smirked back. Ah, so this narcissist has a heart underneath that icy exterior, after all…
"I'm alright, please worry about Yasuhara-san," Gene said affably, dark blue eyes resting upon said Yasuhara-san. Wait, are they friends already?
"I'll take you to your room," Naru decided grimly. "I'll be back. Mai, tidy the place up."
"Alright," I sighed. Gene smiled apologetically at me as he passed.
Naru grimly marched Gene to the boys' room. His elder twin had finally surrendered his calm facade earlier, his face paling even more and his breathing getting erratic as he closed his eyes with a dizzy expression.
"Those spirits stressed him out," Naru told Lin with a scowl.
Gene opened his eyes and smiled wanly. "It wasn't a big deal, though—"
"Tell me that when you can walk straight, unsupported, to your room." Naru was unsympathetic as he guided Gene to the bed, while Lin stayed outside to keep a respectful distance from the twins. "Don't even attempt to go out without my permission, or I swear I'll sell you out to Luella."
"Boo," Gene pouted. "You're no fun."
"Someone always has to keep the idiots in line, Gene-nii-san," Naru said, sarcastic emphasis on the Japanese honorific, and with that parting shot, he smiled sardonically and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Gene grimaced as the stirrings of a headache began. "And now I'm stuck here without anything except a headache to solve this case." He slapped his forehead, frustrated. "Get better already! Merciless Noll…"
"Is he alright?" I asked Naru the moment he entered base.
"Yeah, if he doesn't do anything well below his actual IQ," he said emotionlessly, and gathered his notes scattered on the table. "We'll be attempting to do an exorcism tomorrow. Meanwhile, we can all call this a day. Hara-san, I'll go over the plans with you tomorrow. Now that Gene is incapacitated, you'll be our main stream."
"Alright," Masako said with a nod. "But are you truly intending to exorcise them all immediately? Julchen is rather violent, and with all those emotions in her, I think it'll be dangerous for us to actually do something…"
"I've sent for John," Lin-san said as he finally entered the room. "He'll be here first thing in the morning."
"I see," Naru muttered, then turned back to Masako. "And Hara-san, leave the plans to me. I'll think of something."
April, day 4. 9:48 am.
"Good to see you, kid," Bou-san greeted John Brown with a slap on the back as John descended from the cab, and to my surprise, along with a slightly flustered Mori Madoka-san. She took a look at the building, then demanded to see Naru. Seeing as we have no choice but to obey, we led them to base, John carrying his own luggage while Bou-san assisting Mori-san with hers.
"Naru, here's John and another someone who wants to see you," Bou-san said with a sigh as we took our seats around the table. John gave us a nervous smile, which we all returned amiably. He's just too kind-looking to resist.
"Madoka," Naru said with a kind of forced patience. "Why are you here? I don't remember asking you to help."
"Yes," Mori-san said, "but your Mum called and sent me to babysit you two. Honestly… I feel as if I'm more of an assistant to you rather than a boss…" She rolled her eyes, and Naru turned his back on her haughtily.
"In that case, pray take a seat and be silent for the rest of the morning." Naru went to check the soundness of the monitors, and we soon disengaged ourselves from the subject of the case as to not spoil the morning.
"Wait, where's Eugene?" Mori-san asked.
"Upstairs," Naru replied vaguely.
"What's he doing there?"
"Dunno."
Mori-san frowned at Naru's back. "I'll talk to him."
"Better not do that."
"Why?" Mori-san looked puzzled.
"He's sick."
"What!" Mori-san shot out of the armchair where she was seated.
"Don't fuss, he's okay. He was just lightheaded after the channeling session that we had conducted last night."
"Strange, Gene's never felt exhausted after a session before," Mori-san mused.
"Oh, it was a long story," Yasuhara-san said with a laugh, patting the bandages wrapped around his forehead. "But I do think that Davis-san is great fun."
Naru sighed (rather dolefully?) at this. "Doesn't everybody?"
We were all surprised when Gene went downstairs to base a few minutes later, impeccably dressed in a navy blue button-up shirt, blue argyle sweater vest, and black slacks. He still looked quite pale, but was otherwise dashing. I sighed to myself. Why did Naru and Gene have to look so fashionable…
"True Brits never shed their skin, huh," Mori-san said dryly. "Anyway, I thought you were sick?" she added cheerfully.
"And I thought you were already back in England?" Gene said as cheerfully as she, and twice as sly. He certainly did not appear to me to be sick.
"Your Mum told me to stay and check on you guys."
Gene's face fell, making Mori-san flash her signature goofy peace sign at him. Halo. She's got a halo. "Huh? But we're not—!"
"Kids anymore? Yup, I know that," Mori-san snorted, and the miraculous halo of St. Madoka disappeared. "But your Mum doesn't, so there."
Gene flung himself on a vacant chair and stayed like that until Naru finally paid attention to him.
"I thought I told you to stay in your room and rest," he snapped, sharply.
"Noll, that kind of lifestyle is for cute kitties." Gene rolled his eyes. "And here's a news flash: I'm not a cat! Okay?" Smart-aleck.
"I. Don't. Care." Naru's voice was as steely as his twin's. It's amusing how they can be so alike, after all. "Go."
"I'm older. I shan't take orders from you." —petulantly.
"Ha, right. You're just five minutes older than me, Gene. Go."
"I'm still older!" Gene assumed an adamant expression (it made Bou-san almost crack), and surprisingly, "His Highness" just gave it up when he saw Gene's face.
"I'm not participating in this childish argument, Gene," he said scathingly. "Fine. Be stupid." He turned away. "And don't forget to construct a mental barrier before we go."
Gene's scowl finally broke and he laughed. "Score!" he declared enthusiastically, making us all smile.
9:56 pm.We decided to do the exorcism phase little by little, when the kids are well already in bed.
"Naumaku sanmanda bazaradan kan."
We were in the base room, watching Bou-san, who was dressed in the traditional black clothing of the monks in Mt. Koya, on the monitors as he began his exorcism ritual in the haunted lavatory.
"On habahaba kiuta sabasaba kitsudokan…"
The two mediums of SPR were nowhere to be found, since both were watching separate locations. Masako was stationed in the dining hall, while Gene was positioned in the play room. The cameras were also focused there, so it was easy to track their progress. Gene was looking restless as he paced around, while Masako was just her usual calm self. From the look in Naru's eye, I knew that the behavior of our mediums were giving something away: That the still-unnamed dining hall ghost was apparently laying low tonight, while Gene was feeling the first stirrings of the violent Juliet.
"On data gatonaubebaya sowaka…"
"Lin," Naru was murmuring with a tense expression, "check the temperature in Bou-san's location."
"Normal."
"Dining hall."
"Comparatively normal."
"Playroom."
Lin-san let out a hiss. "Temperature dropped four degrees."
Naru frowned. "As usual… Gene is very accurate."
Gene stopped after a while, then resumed his pacing. Ayako, however, noticed something.
"Hey, what's with Masako?"
We all turned to look at the monitors. Masako had fallen on her knees, her head bowed as she kept still.
"I'm not liking this any one bit," John said quietly. "They might have sprung up something for us…"
"Lin."
"Temperature in the dining hall dropped five degrees."
Naru looked as if he had been expecting this. "Matsuzaki-san, John, please go. Matsuzaki-san, you're assigned in the dining hall. John, playroom. Hurry."
"Another drop in temperature in the playroom," Lin reported. "Another four degrees."
Gene was walking more briskly around the room, then stood stock-still, his eyes blank as he suddenly barged out of the room.
"What's that idiot doing?" Naru hissed, face paling as he watched Gene go out quite suddenly. I immediately knew from his expression that this wasn't part of the plan.
"I have a bad feeling about this, Naru," Lin-san muttered.
"On batamarinau habaya sowaka," Bou-san continued in the monitor that was stationed to the lavatory. Meanwhile, in the playroom, John had already strolled in, and after looking confused and undecided after seeing no one in the room, he regained his usual calm poise and started to perform his exorcism ritual.
"Priinceps gloriosissime cælestis militiæ, sancte Michaël Archangele, defende nos in prælio et colluctatione, quæ nobis adversus principes et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum…"
"I've never heard him utter those words before," I told Naru. "What language is that?"
"Latin," he replied simply, still casting anxious eyes at the direction of the monitor which was connected to the playroom's infrared camera. The temperature was steadily dropping.
"…Contra spiritualia nequitiæ, in cælestibusus. Veni in auxilium hominum, quos Deus creavit inexterminabiles, et ad imaginem similitudinis suæ fecit, et a tyrannide diaboli emit pretio magno."
"Should I look for that idiot?" Naru said quietly to Lin-san.
"Don't do anything rash yet."
"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen," John was saying, drawing the sign of the Cross in the air with an outstretched palm, while Bou-san, who was in the lavatory, was chanting, "On bazara magini harachi hataya… sowaka!" Their voices melded together, making a weird effect.
Naru was getting more restless, and his body language made no move to conceal the fact. "Madoka, hand me…" Naru cast around the room with a searching look, until he espied his prize: Gene's sweater vest, which lay discarded on the armchair. "That."
"—In the beginning was the Word…" John was beginning to read out loud, and I noticed that his rosary was entwined around his right hand. "…and the Word—"
"Quickly!" Naru snapped impatiently, making Mori-san throw the sweater to him with a grudging expression. Naru caught it gracefully and held it for the space of two heartbeats before casting it aside with a serious look in his face.
"Lin," Naru declared suddenly. "Let's go. Madoka, Yasuhara-san, Mai, take charge of the monitors. Contact Lin immediately when there's a new—"
"I'm going!" I told Naru, narrowing my eyes.
"No, it's too dangerous," Naru snarled, but I persisted.
"It's better to have two people by your side," I was insisting, when—
"Shibuya-san!" Takahashi-san, the head of the orphanage, suddenly burst into the room, her eyes huge. "It's started again…"
"What?" Naru said automatically, but before the lady could answer, we heard the first strains of the haunting melody.
"That piano sounds that we were talking about…" Takahashi-san said. "But this… it's seven hours too early…"
"Oliver!" Mori-san suddenly called, her jaw dropping as she stared at the monitors. We saw what was visibly alarming.
The monitor that was supposed to be showing the playroom was now suddenly focused on something dark that had obscured the view of the camera, making everyone in the room freeze.
Suddenly, the darkness stirred, and I realized that what we were staring at was the back of someone's head. The head turned around, and I let out a horrified gasp when it finally showed its face.
"Intriganten…!"
The bloodshot eyes, the lips bared in an enraged smirk, showing slowly rotting teeth. I recognized her, even as it showed features of extreme rage. It was the deteriorating face of the formerly beautiful Julchen.
I stole a glance at Naru to see what his reaction was, and saw him looking at Takahashi-san with an odd, thoughtful look on his face.
He glanced at me as if he knew that I was watching him. "Okay. You're coming with us."
"Gene!" I called. There was no answer.
"Where is he?" Naru asked in a highly agitated tone, keen blue eyes searching the darkness for his twin.
We had searched every inch of the building to find the room that Naru saw in his psychometric vision earlier when he touched Gene's sweater, and having found that room yet still seeing no sign of Naru's flamboyant twin, we quickly concluded that he was outside. The piano music had long stopped since, and Naru was already impatient.
"I should've realized that he had left his location already when the music stopped," Naru said with a tinge of irritation as we broke out into the mild night air, and I guessed that he was frustrated.
"But… then, it's Gene who played the piano this time?"
"Yes. He memorized the piece the first time he heard it in his mind."
"He can play the piano—?"
Naru looked away. "Kaa-san taught him."
"By 'kaa-san', you meant—"
Naru just nodded, and Lin-san, seeing the situation at hand, promptly saved him the expense of explaining.
"Taniyama-san, put it this way," Lin-san said quickly and quietly. "If Naru is proficient in the sciences and logics, Gene is as gifted when it comes to music. Most clairaudients have very refined sense of hearing, and most of them specialize in playing musical instruments. in Gene's case, he has mastered a total of fifteen different instruments in just the span of seventeen years."
"Amazing…"
"Lin," Naru interrupted, his face showing a kind of tired, soulful beauty, and Lin-san watched him attentively. "Find him. Please."
He said 'please'.
Our Chinese curse-breaker nodded uneasily at the quiet request and whistled shrilly, and I felt rather than seen it as something whizzed past me in a tremendously high speed.
"Still as troublesome as always, Gene," Lin-san said grimly. "For now, in this darkness, we can do nothing but wait."
"It's going to rain," I noticed with a slight tinge of worry when I felt the heavy feeling in the air. "Gene might get even worse…"
Naru gazed at me with a guarded look. "Don't worry. Gene could take care of himself." And even with the usual "I'm-lording-it-over-you" tone, I could have sworn that there was something reassuring me quietly in his voice.
"But what did he mean when he played the piano?" I asked quietly. "And wait… where was the piano located?" I was more confused than ever.
"I'm sure he'll tell us himself," he said calmly.
I felt Naru's smoldering blue gaze on my face as the first drops hit our faces. And for the second time in my life, I realized that Naru, even with his many smarts and his adult ways, is still in many ways a seventeen-year-old boy as we both stood in that dark rain, all other presences forgotten as we both thought of one of the persons who brought all of this about.
Gene was suddenly rushing along tall grass, and he immediately knew that he was in the vacant lot behind the orphanage. How the heck he came to be in there, he had no idea, but his mind had been a blank a few minutes after the beginning of the exorcism. And now, his heightened sense of hearing was suddenly hampering him, the agonized groans of the spirits attracted to him overwhelming his ability to think straight and making it hard to determine if he had already shaken off the feeling that someone was on his track.
He heard the rustle of grass behind him, then in front of him.
I'm losing my touch, Mum, he thought with a wry mental laugh. I should quit from the football team back in Cambridge soon after this… But hell, not even the best guy in the track-and-field team can outrun this someone! —Or maybe I was just really sick.
Not that I'll admit that to myself, Noll!
Diversionary tactics. Let's go!
Gene banked into a hard left and continued to sprint for his sanity, his pupils almost as tiny as pinpricks as he slowly ran out of breath.
"…!"
He cursed his bad luck as he slipped because of the sudden change of terrain. From wet soil, the ground became scattered with round stones. Gene lay with his cheek pressed on the ground, his breath coming in large gasps and his heart beating itself to death as adrenaline coursed through his body.
A rustle. Gene couldn't tell where it came from—especially at his mentally-deaf state.
"You insufferable medium!"
At the outraged shriek, spoken in Japanese, Gene looked up with shock and stared into the ghostly face of Julchen, who was smiling down at him like a malignant sort of fairy.
Gene was sure that he was going to die a horrible death at this instant.
Where is Noll when you need him? Bollocks…
His eyes widened, as Juliet suddenly swooped through him. The rush of memories overwhelmed his sensitive senses, making him gasp as he felt like as if he was suddenly doused with ice water.
"I'll kill you!" "I don't like her, Vati." "You're like Juliet." "But wouldn't we be happier without anyone else, Vati?" "I'll kill you, Julia!" "Julchen?" "Julchen!" "You're a selfish brat, Julia. You know I like him, and then you go and—!" "I'm sorry, Juliet, but I love him!" "I'll kill you!"
"I'll killyou!"
The last statement had been a scream from the spirit, but the medium's eyelids were already sliding shut over brilliant blue eyes as fatigue caught up with his mentally-tired state.
He never heard the high shrill sound as something flew past him at an alarming speed. One of Lin's shiki.
"Sie—!" was the angry screech.
At the same time, Masako finally opened her eyes and stared up into Ayako's face. The miko was looking extremely worried as she abandoned the exorcism to kneel beside the medium.
"Masako, are you al—"
"You've got it all wrong." Masako's dark eyes were blank and her voice raspy, as if she hadn't drunk for a long time.
"What do you mean?" Ayako frowned confusedly.
"She's not Juliet."
Ayako felt as if an ice cube dropped into her stomach at the medium's certainty.
"What?"
A/N:
Was it just me, or would Gene look really good in a Cambridge English football uniform? :))
Waka waka~
Please do review!
