Just when you think things couldn't get any more tense in this story, they do! So let's get right to the action, and I'll meet you with a follow-up at the end.
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"Tsuzuki, someone's coming."
The violet-eyed man looked up from the break room couch, where he was sprawled, reading a trashy magazine. Hisoka was sitting at the end of the same piece of furniture, leaning against Tsuzuki's knees, playing with a Rubik's Cube the Gushoshin had found somewhere. He'd completed all of the blue side, but could get nothing else.
"Someone? Hisoka, it's barely been two hours since Watari left. You don't think…"
The boy got up. "I don't know. That's why you and I should go out there and see. My empathy can't get a fix on whoever it is because you're projecting your emotions too loudly, as is everyone else here. All I can feel is worry. So we've got to go out there."
"What if it's…"
"Don't even suggest that, Asato Tsuzuki. But take a few fuda talismans, just in case."
The two partners threw on coats and Hisoka loaded the gun he carried for emergency occasions, like this one. They stormed down the hallway, Tsuzuki's trench coat billowing behind him as they hurried out the front doors. The wind was incredible, ripping blossoms from the sakura trees, charging the air with a thick pink cloud. A figure was discernable at the edge of the walk, trudging towards the front steps, carrying something in its arms.
"Hey!" Tsuzuki called out. "Stop right there! I'm warning you!"
"Don't you fucking dare talk to me like that, Asato Tsuzuki! Now get your ass over here and help me before I collapse!" a lilting voice punctuated with a thick Kansai accent shouted back.
"Watari?" Hisoka asked to his partner. Tsuzuki was already halfway down the walk, screaming in elation that the sunny blonde had made it out of a fight with Muraki unscathed. Hisoka stuck his head into the office building and hollered up to the makeshift medical team on standby before joining the two other men.
"I can't believe it, I can't believe you're really here and you're all right and how the hell did you manage that one you little bitch?" Tsuzuki babbled.
Watari shook his head. "Fought dirty, like you told me. I stuck my skinny little fingers in his wounds, ripped them open, and rubbed a half-ton of salt in them. And while I couldn't bring you back an ear, Bon, I did break Muraki's nose over a pair of cuff links. We've got to hurry, though, Tatsumi's really bad off and unresponsive."
"Unresponsive?" Hisoka murmured, his emerald eyes staring at the motionless form in Watari's slackening arms. The older blonde was tired, emotionally and physically drained, not to mention coated in blood.
"Mental rape," the scientist said, his tone grave. "His whole psyche's been run through the wringer and then jammed through a paper shredder a couple of times. I don't know if I can repair the damage."
"It's that bad?" Tsuzuki asked.
Watari nodded, his eyes starting to prick with tears. "He sort of recognized me when I first got to him, but after that he just blanked out. Of course, the blinding physical pain doesn't help at all."
The medical team hurried down with a stretcher they'd found in one of the infirmary closets and carried Tatsumi off to the ward, hurriedly giving Watari assurances as if they were putting things into the hands of another doctor. But Watari was the only doctor they had, and there just wasn't enough time to send to another department for one right now.
"You've got to be tired," Tsuzuki said, clapping an arm around his sagging shoulders.
"Wiped out," he replied. "But I'm needed. Just going to pop into the lab and take a shower under the emergency faucet, change into something less bloody, throw on the old labcoat and see what I can do to make everything better. Until I get there, will you go stay with Tatsumi? Please, Tsuzuki?"
"You don't even have to ask. Come on, Hisoka, we've got work to do."
"What about Muraki?" the teenager hazarded.
Watari shot him a weak smile. "He'd be pretty stupid if he tried messing with us any time soon. I might not have physical firepower, but I ripped into his consciousness and handed it back to him quivering. It's going to take him some time to sort out everything I threw at him."
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The crowd of "medical personnel" parted when Watari finally came in, an aura of composed determination surrounding him. His wet hair was piled on top of his head and pinned in place, though where he'd found the hairpins nobody knew or was going to question. He adjusted his glasses and walked calmly over to a cabinet, picking out a bottle, filling a hypodermic needle, and injecting the fluid into Tatsumi's arm.
"What's that?" Tsuzuki asked distractedly, too busy staring at the patient.
"His healing powers were shut down so Muraki could bleed him dry, this ought to serve as a jumpstart. But I'm giving him a transfusion at any rate. Go into the medical fridge and get me a bag of blood, dear. You know his blood type, I'm sure."
He obeyed, off on his little mission while Watari started an IV drip. Hisoka finished tying off the bandages on Tatsumi's crushed hand.
"Wakaba's calling around to the other departments, she said it'll be ten or fifteen minutes before we can get any hospital backup here," he informed Watari. "Have you eaten?"
"Told Yuma to go buy me some crap from the vending machines, she and Saya wouldn't hear of it so they've gone home to cook me a casserole or something. I'll eat after Tatsumi's been stabilized."
Tsuzuki came back with the bag and Watari merely stuck in another line, his expression as sterile as the white-walled room they stood in. Some of the more superficial wounds were already starting to close.
"There'll probably be some scarring, especially on the shoulder blades. Did you two see what he did?"
"Wings," Hisoka said with a shudder. "If it wasn't so disturbing, I'd say it would almost look pretty."
"What would look even prettier right now would be if those baby blues of his would open."
Tsuzuki nodded. "Remember the day you first came here, Watari?"
"Yeah, Tatsumi thought I was a Westerner, shook my hand and tried valiantly to speak in English. It took him five minutes of broken rambling before he realized I was Japanese. I've never let him live it down. What about the time you made him that birthday cake and he ended up getting food poisoning?"
"It was an accident! Hey Watari…why are we talking about him like he's gone?"
"Defense mechanism," he replied. "We're trying to make ourselves feel better about the fact that he's lying motionless in a hospital bed completely catatonic. We're trying to ignore that Muraki got him and we might not get him back."
"You're still in shock, Watari?" Hisoka asked quietly.
"Bon, at this point, I'm beyond shock. I'm running solely on autopilot now, otherwise I'd be a mess of tears and Tatsumi doesn't need me falling to bits on him at a time like this. I know what I told you earlier about sobbing hysterically, but I don't get to do that just yet."
"When will you?"
He sighed, stroking away a lock of hair from Tatsumi's forehead. "When he wakes up."
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Notes: Nothing much to say, I put the thing about Hisoka and the Rubik's Cube at the beginning of the chapter because we have one next to our computer that I'm always fiddling with. I can get all of any one color but that's it and it drives me mental. And for the record, Tatsumi's blood type is A. (Watari's is O.) Just thought you'd want to know that. See you next chapter.