Another cliffhanger! I'm on a roll! And, uh, I know the middle of this chapter seems kinda pointless... but I was having fun.

Chapter Six

"It appears we have company," Muraki says. His smile is back now, but it's feral. The I'm-about-to-hurt-you smile. But I'm never one to unnecessarily skulk in the shadows, so I step forward. And ignore Muraki entirely.

"Akimiya, you don't want to do this."

Akimiya won't look at me, which is a very, very bad sign. "You can't make my decisions for me, Hisoka."

"Akimiya, are you suicidal or just plain stupid?!" Now I'm yelling, but I can't help it.

"Listen to him," Rika says. "He's right."

Akimiya glares at me. "And let's say that it was Tsuzuki instead. What would you do?"

"I'd go," I admit in a grating voice. "But I'd sure as hell bring every able-bodied Shinigami within the entirety of the JuohCho with me! I'm not idiotic enough to tackle this maniac alone!"

"But you did," Muraki says calmly. "On our last encounter."

I shoot him a venomous glare. "That was different."

"How is it different?" Akimiya asks, his voice rising. "You think you can do whatever the hell you want, Hisoka? You would've died last time if I hadn't been there!"

"Exactly! It was stupid, and I'll admit it! Which is why you shouldn't go alone! Don't repeat my mistakes!"

But I know what he's thinking, and there's nothing I can do to stop him. The idiot is trying to get himself killed. I don't think he's doing it consciously, but he's definitely doing it. He won't answer me. He just turns away from all of us.

"I'm going," he finally says in a cold voice. "You can't stop me."

"The hell I can't." I glare right back. "I heard where he said they were. The only question is which one of us can get there first."

"I'm already on Chijou."

"Oh, yeah, and I can even that out in about two seconds. And I'm the empath. I'll find Muraki before you do."

We're standing nose to nose now, practically shouting.

"You won't beat me." His voice is quiet. "I won't let you."

He disappears abruptly. The rest of the room goes with him, including Rika and Muraki. I'm left standing in what seems to be utter blackness; there's not even anything underneath my feet. There's a moment of bewilderment before I try to wake myself up.

Nothing happens.

I try again.

That bastard locked me in!

I know Akimiya pretty well at this point, and I think it's safe to say that he'll probably let me go as soon as he's found Rika and Muraki. But not if he's DEAD, God damn it! The worst thing about this is that if I wasn't so damn tired after everything that happened, I'd probably be able to break through it. Though maybe not; dreams are Akimiya's specialty, after all.

If he locked me in, it pretty much stands to reason that he locked everyone else out. Which means that I just have to wait until morning. He's not enough of a bastard to make it last so long that I can't wake up at the normal time. He wouldn't want to scare Tsuzuki like that, for one thing.

I can't believe I'm trapped here! Damn! I'm going to kick his ass when I get my hands on him!

If I get my hands on him.

~~~~

Alarm. Awake! I'm out of bed and pulling my clothes on before Tsuzuki's even opened his eyes. "What?" he asks sleepily.

"I know where Akimiya's going! Get up, quick!"

Tsuzuki sits bolt upright. "Huh?"

"There's no time to explain! Just get dressed!"

Tsuzuki gets out of bed and puts on yesterday's clothes, which he has left in a heap by the foot of the bed, while I grab the phone and call the office. There's hardly anyone there yet, but one of the secretaries takes my message and promises to deliver it to Konoe-Kachou and Tatsumi when they get there. Tsuzuki's dressed by the time I hang up the phone.

"Where are we going?" he asks.

"Shinjuku Highrises." I take his hand to help guide him, and we're on Chijou within seconds. Oh God, I think we're too late. I can feel Akimiya and he's panicking. I start to tug Tsuzuki along, running near top speed, explaining what happened in gasps as I go. Akimiya must have started looking as soon as he left the dream, because without any empathy, just knowing it was in the highrises would've taken him hours to actually find them.

I'm out of breath by the time I reach the correct building, but unfortunately I have to take the stairs. Empathy works on the hot-cold principle; I won't know what floor they're on until I get there. I stop for a minute to catch my breath. I can feel all three presences, so no one's dead yet.

"You okay?" Tsuzuki asks. He's gasping for breath himself.

"Yeah." I start up the stairs, going as quickly as my sore muscles will allow. Damn bastard would have to be on the seventh floor, wouldn't he? Fortunately, the hallways are straightforward and I'm able to find the correct room within minutes.

The door's locked. I rattle the doorknob angrily for a minute before Tsuzuki moves me aside and kicks it open. It's a rare moment that I get to see him be so manly, and I really wish I had more time to enjoy it. Instead, I dart into the room.

It looks the same as the one in the dream last night; I guess that makes sense. Rika is huddled in a corner, looking far worse than she did in the dream. Akimiya is kneeling beside her, staring up at Muraki. He doesn't appear to be hurt, but . . . there's something about the look in his eyes that's terrifying.

Muraki turns to look at Tsuzuki and I, and he smiles. "Tsuzuki-san," he says, nodding gravely at him. "I believe I'm done here."

And he vanishes. Just like that.

What the hell? He just . . . left!

"What did he do to you?" I ask Akimiya. He must have done something. Muraki doesn't set up plans like this for nothing. There must be something I'm missing. But my empathy seems dull, dim. I realize that Akimiya probably didn't take the potion that morning. I suppose I'm lucky that the last dose lasted long enough for me to find them. And for me to have the little empathy I have now.

"He didn't do anything." Akimiya's voice is very quiet. "He didn't even touch me."

"Then what did he say?" I snap. "I know how Muraki works. What happened?"

"Nothing happened!" Akimiya gathers Rika in his arms. Her face is smeared with blood, but I can't see where she's wounded. "We have to get her to a hospital."

"All right," I say. "But don't think you're getting off the hook so easily."

He lifts her up and the group of us slowly make our way downstairs. I'm practically agonized with curiosity. I've got to know what happened! What the hell could Muraki have possibly said to him? Muraki wouldn't have left unless he considered the battle won . . . which means that something very bad is afoot.

Fortunately, Rika is going to be fine. Muraki must have a knack for making people bleed a lot without actually harming them. God I hate him.

Tsuzuki and I wait outside while Akimiya sits with her for a while. We don't want to rush him.

"What do you think happened?" Tsuzuki asks as we sit there.

"Hell if I know." Okay, so I'm cranky. I think, under the circumstances, that I can be forgiven. "Muraki doesn't just give up on fights like that. Not so easily."

"Which means that for whatever reason, he thinks he's already won," Tsuzuki muses.

"Akimiya was already there when we transported to Chijou," I tell him. "It couldn't have taken less than about ten minutes for us to find him. And God only knows how long he was there before we got here. There's something very wrong about all this and I don't like it."

Tsuzuki thinks about this for a second. "He's not going to tell us."

"I know that," I say impatiently. "He's being a stubborn idiot."

Tsuzuki sighs. "He'll come around. It just happened. We have to give him time."

I don't want to give him time. I want to give him Muraki's head on a silver platter. Something tells me I shouldn't say that in front of Tsuzuki, though.

Akimiya walks out before we can discuss it further.

"Once we leave, you can't come back," Tsuzuki says quietly, because he knows that I won't. "Have you said goodbye to her?"

"Aa." Akimiya's voice is dull. Dead. "I have. It was a week ago, and I won't do it again. She knows."

I want to ask if he's all right, but I know that my question would be ignored at best. At worst, I think he'd pick up one of these hard hospital chairs and throw it at my head. "Okay then . . ." My voice trails off into silence.

He looks at me. "Until . . . until I've managed to put myself back together, I think it might be best if I didn't take any of that potion . . . I don't want to hurt you again."

I have to agree, as much as I don't want to. It might be best for me in the short term, but I also won't get any advanced warning if he's going to freak out again. "All right," I finally say.

"How do we know that Muraki won't hurt her again?" Tsuzuki asks tentatively, gesturing to the room Rika is in.

Akimiya laughs bitterly. "He won't. He got what he wanted."

Tsuzuki and I both look at him questioningly.

"Just let it go," he says impatiently. "I don't want to talk about. It's nothing you two need to hear anyway. Now come on."

He stalks away without another word, leaving Tsuzuki and I no choice but to follow.

~~~~

Tatsumi and Konoe-Kachou try to give Akimiya a week off to recover, but he won't even think about it. He says he'd just sit at home and mope and that's not what he needs. He's right, too. It'll be good for him to get out and do things. The only question is: will it be good for me?

A spaced-out partner is the worst kind to have.

Well, at least one good thing came of this; while we were all so distracted, Watari found a way to separate Akimiya and Rika empathically. It won't affect his actual skills as a yumemi, but he'll no longer feel the draw from her. Without that, I think I trust him to stay away from going to her purposely.

Does life settle back to normal? No. Things are tense between Akimiya and I; I'm still pissed about him locking me in the dream like that, and he knows it. He did apologize, but he didn't mean the apology. So it wasn't really worth anything. I don't know why I don't want to bring it up. I just don't.

In a way, I know that he's beating himself up enough over the whole deal. But it's driving me crazy that he won't tell me what happened. And in a way, it hurts that he doesn't trust me enough. I mean, we're partners, right? Maybe I make too big a deal out of that because Tsuzuki did.

// "Why . . . would you do something like that? For someone like me?"

"Because you're my partner."//

We try to carry on as normal. It seems something we're all pretty good at doing, if you think about it. How many problems have we ignored, because it just seemed for the best? How long did Tsuzuki wallow in his own pain because no one could, or wanted, to help him?

// "But . . . I'm just . . ."

"You aren't just anything, Hisoka." //

Small wonder, really, that I fell in love with Tsuzuki. He was the first person in my life to ever take the time to help me with my problems. The first person to acknowledge the fact that everything was not okay. The first person to reassure me that I was worth anything at all.

// "You don't know anything about me."

"That's because you don't tell me. Do you tell anyone?" //

And now I love him so much that I could never let him go. Not for anything in the world. Not even for my own life. But would that be selfish of me, to consign Tsuzuki to live without me? I don't know. Love is so complicated, really.

Akimiya has closed himself off to me completely, and there's no chance I can help him until he chooses to open up to me again.

// "Maybe I don't want to tell anyone."

"And maybe you'll hold it all inside until you explode." //

Fortunately, the weeks are busy, so it's hard to sit down and do much serious thinking. Tsuzuki and I occasionally toss around our theories, and sometimes share them with Tatsumi, but the fact remains that whatever happened between Akimiya and Muraki is going to remain a secret until he sees fit to tell us.

That pisses me off.

"Sakamoto-san, Kurosaki-kun," Tatsumi says, sticking his head into our office. "We've got a new case. Staff meeting in ten."

"Watch me leap for joy," I mutter, and go to get some coffee before the meeting.

I know there's been some talk at the office of changing around the partnerships again. Tsuzuki is, for all intents and purposes, probably ready to go out on assignment again. And if Akimiya and I keep sniping at each other the way we have been, we may kill each other. But for now, we're stuck with each other, because they wouldn't have anything to do with Akimiya if I teamed up with Tsuzuki again.

"It's pretty routine." Watari is explaining the case today. "There's been a series of disappearances in the downtown Tokyo. I know that's probably not too unusual for Tokyo, but their names are all in the Kiseki. The first one who disappeared turned up yesterday, with no memory of anything that had happened to him . . . so that's all the information we have."

I roll my eyes. "And you call this routine?"

"Routine is different from easy," Watari says, and gives me a friendly whack on the back of the head. "Get going, you two."

I give Tsuzuki a hug and promise to be home soon. I know he's been keeping an eye on me during all my assignments now; he's worried because Akimiya's been acting so strange. I don't blame him for worrying. I'm pretty worried myself.

"If you need anything, just call for me," he says, holding me tightly. "I'll know."

"Okay." After a moment, we let go, and then I'm gone before I can hesitate any more.

~~~~

All weekend long, Akimiya and I have been interviewing the families of the disappeared people to try to find a common links. That is, he's interviewing them and I'm standing invisible in a corner, because there's just no way to explain a sixteen year old cop to distraught families.

All part of the fun and games of being a Shinigami, boys and girls. Don't miss your chance, sign up today!

Right. Color me bitter. Not that I would give up being a Shinigami for the world, but sometimes the job itself just sucks.

"So what do we have?" I ask on the evening of the third day, sitting in the hotel room with interviews spread out all around us on the bed.

Akimiya pinches the bridge of his nose, looking like he's got a migraine. "Nine disappearances, both male and female, all between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. They all live within the same five-mile radius, so whatever it is, it's local. That's all I've got."

"Well, I was asking around, and there've been more disturbances than the disappearances," I tell him. "Apparently it's been going on for a while; there's been vandalism of the worst kind -- sacrificed animals and pentacles and stuff. Someone's playing around with dark magic. And the missing people we're looking for aren't the only missing people -- there are six others, but their names aren't in the Kiseki. Technically not our business."

"Six." Akimiya considers this for a minute. "You think it's a coven of some sort?"

"That's the best I can come up with," I agree. "They're trying to find a seventh member, because seven is very important mystically, and whenever someone doesn't measure up, they . . . do something. Not sure what yet."

We look at each other. "You thinking what I am?" he asks.

"Yeah." I sigh. "I'd better do it. I've got more 'jitsu and that's probably what they're looking for. But how are we going to find them?"

"Well, a lot of people seem to be mentioning that club downtown," Akimiya says doubtfully. "Uh, what's it called . . . Ethereal. It seems to be a hang-out for the local magic users."

I give him a look. "You want me to go to a club called Ethereal?"

"You've got a better idea?" he retorts.

I sigh. Again. "No. But I'll have to get clothes for it." Oh, this ought to be rich.

~~~~

"I can't believe you're making me go out there in this," I hiss, trying to tug the mesh down to cover more of my stomach. It isn't working. The mesh shirt wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that a) it's only mesh, so I may as well be naked, b) it only covers down to my mid-stomach, and c) the pants I'm wearing ride so low that I feel like they're going to fall off. I'm wearing black leather pants. Maybe the world really is ending.

The mesh has some red threads woven into it, so I'll admit that it would look pretty cool, you know, if it was on anyone except me.

"And why the hell did I have to wear eyeshadow?" I ask. "Are you trying to make me look more gay than I already am?"

"It's a goth thing." Akimiya shoves me towards the line. "Go get yourself picked up. I'll be following."

I give him a look that conveys quite plainly that I hate him with the fire of a thousand suns. Then I go into the club. It's dim and crowded, lit mostly with blue and ultra-violet light. I'm glad Akimiya's with me, dampening my empathy, otherwise the bustle of this place would probably hurt.

I get a drink for the hell of it -- no one's checking IDs anyway -- and look around, hoping I'll be approached. I'm not. I jump as Akimiya mutters into my ear. "You'll have to dance."

I look around to make sure no one's watching, then glare fiercely at him. "You've got to be kidding me."

"You're the one who volunteered for this," he replies.

So I dance, and hope that I'm not making a total fool out of myself. Akimiya doesn't come on the floor with me, and my empathy starts to kick into gear again. I scan the crowd, searching for anyone interesting. After the first three people who are planning how best to get me drunk and drag me into the alley (apparently my dancing isn't that bad), I run across an extremely attractive dark haired boy who's giving me a speculative eye -- but not in the same way. So I go over to him. "Wanna dance?"

"No thanks," he says. "Straight." He gives me a look as I blush over my mistake. "You're new here."

"Aa. Just moved in." We're practically having to shout to be heard above the music.

He's still looking at me speculatively. "You were looking for a group?"

I blink at him. "How'd you tell?"

"Hey." He reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. "Like calls to like. Come on. I've got just the place for you."

I follow him out a back entrance, hoping that Akimiya has his eye on us. He's not with us, because my empathy is still functioning, but he must be watching. I end up in an alley with five other teenagers dressed in a like fashion. "I've got our new guy," the boy says. He introduces all of them, and his name, Masai, is the only one I remember.

There's no malice in their intent. Not yet, anyway. I let them bring me to their hideout, which is a dilapidated warehouse. How original. Masai says something about an initiation ceremony, which I agree to -- but I'm sure as hell going to keep a close eye on the proceedings and make sure they're not doing anything permanent.

"First we just make sure you're suitable," Masai tells me.

I raise an eyebrow at him. "You been having a lot of trouble with that?" I ask, trying to sound casual.

"Well, if you're not someone who can link in with the rest of us . . ." Masai shrugs. "No biggie. Just close your eyes and concentrate."

I do so. A few minutes pass.

"No good," Masai says. "There's something funny about you, that's for damn sure. But sorry. We don't mesh at all."

Somehow I'm not surprised. "So I just go?" I ask skeptically. I'm beginning to see what happened to the disappearing people.

"Well, no," Masai said. "Sorry. Can't allow our dirty little secret to get out, can we?"

I stand up. "You should warn people before recruiting that they'll be killed if they don't fit in."

"Oh, we won't kill you," one of the others speaks up. "We just erase your memory . . . and, well, take all your power."

Ah. Of course, sucking the entirety of someone's power is probably enough to put them in the Kiseki, but not to actually kill them. Questions answered. Now to get out. Problem: six against one. Odds are bad. Akimiya, now is when your help would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, Akimiya isn't putting in an appearance. Damn him, this was not the right time to get scatterbrained on me! He probably ended up getting drunk at the club or something. Right, take out the ofuda and attempt to fight. I'm . . . losing. Deja vu, anyone? I seem to be losing quite often these days.

There's a sudden flash of purple light and they all freeze in place. I turn around to see Tsuzuki (not Muraki this time, thank God). "Thanks. Did I call?"

"You were panicking loudly enough," he says, and turns back to them. "Those bonds won't hold them forever. What now?"

Now is why I'm wondering why I ever stopped carrying a gun on missions. Really. Of course, the last time I did, Muraki stole it and then attempted to shoot me in the head with it. Well, to give credit, he most likely intended to miss. "Now we get the hell out of here before they try to suck my soul," I say. "We'll have to do something about them later."

Tsuzuki nods and we leave the building. Just as we exit, Akimiya comes running up. "Sorry," he gasps out. "Lost sight of you."

"Sure you did," I snap. I'm too pissed off at him to go into it right now. "We'll have to finish dealing with it tomorrow. Let's just go back to the hotel and go to bed."

"You two will be all right?" Tsuzuki asks, giving me a questioning look.

"Aa, we'll be fine," I grumble.

"I like your outfit," he says with a sudden smile. "It's very cute on you."

Okay, I think steam just started coming out of my ears. "Arigatou," I manage to mutter. Akimiya is snickering, which only reminds me that I'm furious with him.

"Take care." Tsuzuki kisses my forehead and then vanishes.

I wait until we're back at the hotel to rip into Akimiya. "What the hell did you think you were doing? You went off by yourself somewhere at the most critical of moments and I nearly got killed because of it! I'm just damn lucky that Tsuzuki was paying attention! I hope you're fucking proud of yourself!"

He gives me a long look, and I can see his anger is nearly equal to mine. "Shut up."

"Oh, fuck off." Vulgarity is the tool of the incoherently furious. "If you don't want to be my partner anymore you'd better God damned say so, but you're being an idiot. I don't know what Muraki said to you, but -- "

"You want to know what Muraki said to me?" he yells. "Fine, then."

And before I really see what he's doing, he launches across the room and I end up pinned to the wall with a knife at my throat.

Silence.

"He told you to kill me." How on earth am I remaining so calm? "And promised not to harm Rika if you did."

Akimiya nods.

"Well." I lock eyes with him. Akimiya is many things, but he isn't a murderer. "Go ahead then. I dare you."

~~~~

Um.... I'll have the next part out soon, if that helps ^_~