There's no answer, however long Ban pounds on the door of Maria's shop. He'd just break the windows, but he knows better than to smash a witch's glass, even with his strength and the Evil Eye. She's not here, and no telling where she might have gone, or how many days or weeks or years before she returns. Maybe her cards told her something. Or maybe he's just unlucky.
He leaves a circular dent as wide as a dinner plate where he smashes his fist into the brick. Shoves his hands in his pockets and strides back to his car, thinking. There are others in the city, not just witches and mediums. It takes him a little while to dig the name up out of his memory--there's too much clutter there, Maria took him too many damn places, introduced him to too many people. But it's a chance. If he's still alive.
The house is just as he remembered, Western, white clapboard and green trim, tucked away in the corner of a quiet Nerima neighborhood. The cat on the stoop--indecently white, not the traditional witch's black--yawns at him, doesn't bother to so much as twitch its long tail out from under his feet. He steps over it, rings the bell.
The person who answers is so old and stooped it's hard to tell if it's a man or a woman, the features so wizened that they could be any race. "Midou Ban," Ban says. "Maria introduced me to you once. I need your library."
For a good minute he only blinks at Ban, the murky eyes behind the thick glasses swimming like mudfish in an aquarium. Then, sudden and sharp, the bare head nods, and he turns, beckons Ban inside.
Crawd is not a warlock per se, not of any of the witch bloodlines, with no magic to speak of. But decades of obsession with the occult have made him an indispensable expert, a specialist even with no skill. In all the world there are perhaps half a dozen others with his breadth of knowledge, and his collection is unmatched in Japan.
"Demons," Ban says, and Crawd leads him down wooden steps, well-lit and carefully swept, to a low-ceilinged room humming with an air conditioner's dry cool. There's more files than books, wedged in long gray drawers with meticulous hand-lettered labels.
"Please describe the specimen, Midou-kun," Crawd asks him, measured and sure as a doctor, with a clipboard before him.
He does, as well as he's able, but even pausing to order his thoughts there's too much that there aren't words for. He begins sitting, but soon he's pacing, his shoes squeaking on the polished tile, the walls pressing him into a single circling route. The tone of Crawd's questions does not change, his reedy voice too dry for any expression, but when Ban slams his hands down on the table hard enough that his pencil skitters across the clipboard, one eyebrow rises. He gets to his feet slowly. "It is time for supper, Midou-kun. Shall I order you something?"
"I don't want any damn--" He cuts himself off. Can't risk insult. "No, thank you. If you've got any reference books or anything I could look at--"
The little old creature sidles to the drawers, his gnarled fingers flipping through the files with surprising dexterity. He withdraws a few sheaths of papers, sets them down on the table before Ban. "Six accounts. Read them and determine how similarly they describe your own experience. I will return within an hour."
"Yeah. Thanks."
Three of the accounts are in Crawd's hand, the characters formed with the precision of a foreigner's unconfidence, dictations annotated with detailed footnotes. The other three are also hand-written, one on pages with ragged margins, torn from a book. The stories all tell are fantastic as any fiction, ghost stories, appropriate for any summer night around a fire. But there are details that ring too true--the pain of that intrusion, the blackness where humanity should be. Two tales in particular, and the final one leaves him sick. No happy endings, and the grief is as tangible as the black on white words which describe it--saving a soul does not mean saving a life, always, and something in him knots up cold and hard, like he's inhaled ice instead of air.
But Ginji's still alive. He knows that as certain as he ever does. It's not something he's ever had to question, that certainty. Faith never came easily to him, trust not part of his serpent nature. But this isn't blind belief. Just truth.
When Crawd enters he springs up, waving the folder at him. The wizened old man shakes his head, however, halting his questions, and gestures Ban to follow him. The room upstairs is small and cramped, as dusty and cluttered as the library is austere. The TV is so old it's black and white, lines of static shivering across the picture in irregular forays. He has to blink to adjust his vision to the screen before he can make sense of what he's seeing. News reporter, flickering strobes, broad side of a fire truck. White flames leaping from a black outline, and the scrolling text identifies the address.
He had parked on that street corner this afternoon. They had entered that building together not twelve hours previous.
"--explosion appears to be an accident," the reporter babbles over the wail of sirens and the crowd pushing close to the camera. "It's unknown how many people were currently in residence, but the majority seems to have escaped, with only one reported casualty. Also unknown are the whereabouts of Ikura Rikudo, leader of the--"
The camera pans over the mob gathered at the disaster, and Ban is broken from his momentary paralysis, curses as he spots the lone figure at the crowd's fringe. Taller than most, and the bandana is visible even in the grainy pixels. No way it's coincidence. The monkey trainer's too damn smart for his own good. And if he wasn't alone...
Ban spits out a garbled insistence that he'll return, but he's not sure Crawd's old ears hear it, and by the time the ancient would have a response he's already pounding out the door.
The building looks innocuous enough. But no one who dwelled in Mugenjou judges by immediate appearances.
Natsumi was worried, that was obvious the moment they set foot in the HonkyTonk, but Kazuki was more alarmed when Paul told them where the GetBackers had gone, before he or Shido could ask. "They went this morning," the cafe owner said, flatly. "Ban came back two hours later with the retrieval."
"Ginji-san wasn't with him," Natsumi said. "Ban-san--he didn't say what happened, he just left. But he was...really upset."
It's so little, a thin thread indeed to follow. But Natsumi's eyes looked as if she might have been crying, and Paul, who had watched them all leave for Mugenjou with only a blithe farewell, offered them no smile. Instead of his ever-present newspaper he was busy with his laptop, although Kazuki couldn't see the screen.
There's no one to hire him or Shido, but when Kazuki left the HonkyTonk and headed for the bus stop, the Beastmaster accompanied him. Without Midou, the community building housing the cult Paul mentioned is their only lead.
They don't need a client; this isn't a job. They aren't kings anymore, but some loyalties continue even after the titles have been abandoned, and some debts always remain unpaid.
Amano Ginji saved him, Kazuki knows. In Mugenjou he might have lost himself, given himself to that cruel chaos believing in its beauty. But that boy with lightning at his fingers and strength in his eyes showed him something better, revealed to them all the truth of the darkness by reminding them what light was again.
Footsteps behind him, and Kazuki turns as Shido approaches. "Anything?" he asks.
The Beastmaster shakes his head. "There're no animals inside. Not a single mouse. And none will enter." He's even tenser now, balanced on the balls of his feet.
"It's a new building," Kazuki says. "There aren't many chinks for my strings. But I haven't heard any people on the first or second floors. We can go through one of the windows."
He threads a strand under the frame, raises the latch and draws open the window. Once inside they move silently, in easy synchronization. The Beastmaster adopts a creature's aspect, exploring the long corridors with a bat's keen ears and directing them down a flight of stairs.
They know their route is the correct one when they're set upon by a dozen men, armed with baseball bats and truncheons. Not fighters, though, and their assault makes Kazuki hesitate. It's a coordinated rush, but to a man they're swinging with blind, unfocused ferocity, and their blank faces remind him of Makubex's wire dolls. Puppets, even if he sees no obvious cords, and he casts his strings to trap, not hurt. Shido does the same, avoiding calling on his beasts' strengths, relying on his fists to defend Kazuki's back while he weaves his net.
Fighting with Shido is not like fighting with Juubei and Toshiki. Toshiki's grace makes him easy to understand, but one perfect response to every assault. And Juubei he doesn't need to construe; any action Juubei takes might as easily be his own. He relies on them as he relies on the strength of his own limbs, as he counts on his strings. But Kazuki has fought with Shido before, against him, and beside him. He comprehends the wildness of Shido's battle, though he cannot himself follow that feral path well enough to predict him. But he trusts Shido, and that can be enough.
His strings and Shido's guard make short work of this skirmish. When all their attackers have been secured, Kazuki stares down at them. Not one of them touched him, and Shido didn't get more than a couple bruises. Hardly a battle at all, only a waste of time--and he pales as he realizes it. "They were just delaying us."
"But for what?"
He's running down the hallway, his bells ringing in time with his strides, Shido moving panther-silent beside him. Before he can wind his strings through the lock at the other end, Shido has raised his arm and slashed the door aside with a bear's powerful blow.
The rows of dark heads give him pause, but before Kazuki can wonder why no one is turning to observe their intrusion, he hears, "Shido! Kazu-chan!" Familiar voice, but not bright in greeting--he hasn't heard that tone in a long time, but it snaps him to instant attention. "Get out of here now!"
"Ginji-san!" Beside him, Shido plants his feet against the automatic impulse to obey that ringing imperative. As Volts they followed Raitei's orders unquestioning, but this is not Mugenjou. Across the room he can see Ginji, on his knees, and even from this far away his eyes are wide in panic, his face pale with pain. The man in red standing over him has his fist buried in those blond spikes, wrenching back his head.
"Ginji!" Shido charges forward, but the people move, closing ranks in perfect concert, as if they're all tied to the same cord, aligning shoulder to shoulder to form a living wall between the door and Ginji. And still they do not look at them, do not even turn back to face Kazuki or Shido.
There's a sharp smell in the air, a chemical rankness. Shido coughs on it, and Kazuki glances past the motionless crowd. On the tile floor he sees the rainbow sheen of oil spreading.
"Just get everyone out--" Ginji's cry is choked off. Past the dark heads, the leader's hand comes up, and the lit match between his fingers gleams, trails an arc of light as he tosses it. The spinning flame vanishes for a split second as it hits the gasoline-slicked floor, drowned, and then with a roar like wind through a canyon, it erupts into a yellow-bright field of dancing tongues.
And still the people do not move. Drugged, or something worse, no more than breathing mannequins, kindling to feed this pyre. "What's wrong with you? Run!" Shido cries, but not a single man or woman takes a step. The Beastmaster curses, his dark eyes narrowed against the toxic smoke, shoving against their flesh blockade. "Ginji!"
"Shido--Kazu-chan!" Kazuki can't see Ginji, but his voice is strained, strangled. "Help them!"
Amidst the heat and the panic Kazuki feels a different prickling, his hairs rising in a field as insistent as an ocean current. He recognizes that sensation of static, well enough not to be surprised when the fire's poisonous brilliance is for an instant dimmed by flickering veins of pure luminance.
But the electricity's expected thundercrack is echoed by a wordless, agonized scream that stabs through Kazuki. "Ginji-san!"
"Ginji!!" Shido bellows.
Around him, heads lift, eyes widen, and suddenly the singular body of the people is a mob of shrieks and flailing arms, wailing and shoving and staggering. The flames licking the walls leap higher, as if aroused by that terror.
Water will not put out an oil fire, but his rivers are not of liquid. Kazuki casts all his strings out in a shield, weaving a blanket over the entire crowd. The fire is too great for him to extinguish, but he can protect them from the worst of the flames. There's only so much oxygen, however, and he's already lightheaded from the smoke.
"That way!" Shido shouts, a lion's earthshaking roar, and then he's herding the crowd toward the door. It should be a stampede, but they're corralled in the limits of Kazuki's web, and before they can trample one another Shido has shoved into their midst, directs them with terse commands and deliberate pushes, a sheepdog managing a human flock.
Fire is already blazing in the hall. Kazuki shifts his strings to umbrella the moving crowd as Shido prods the last of them through the door. Then stops, his arm before his face to block the worst of the heat as he stares back into the burning room.
"Shido!"
"I don't see him, Kazuki!" The Beastmaster's voice is hoarse with smoke and stress. "Ginji, or that bastard in red--"
"There must be another exit," Kazuki pants. "That man wouldn't have burned himself alive--Shido, I can't keep this shield up in here!"
"But, Ginji--"
Kazuki's eyes are tearing up, but he has no free hand to wipe them clear. He squints to peer through the shimmering heat and smoke, sees no motion but the dance of the flames. But Ginji told them to help these people. And Ginji had not been helplessly paralyzed as the others were.
He pushes that scream from his mind. "He must have escaped--now we must!"
Shido curses again, dashes over the threshold as Kazuki withdraws the last of his strings and slams the door shut. The fire's gone too far to be contained so simply, however, flames already devouring the walls as they run down the corridor. They've spread too far, too fast; oil must have been poured elsewhere, or there were others lighting it.
Kazuki remembers how quickly a building can burn--this is a modern construction, plaster and steel, not paper and wood, but the flames are just as ravenous, consuming what they can. He blinks, and the screams around him are not strangers', and the walls blackening behind that raging orange are those that surrounded him for fifteen years.
For an instant he reaches for Juubei's hand, only to close his fist over his strings instead, and he recalls himself, shakes his head sharply, and smoke obscures the vision. Mugenjou is kilometers distant, his birthplace further still, and more lives than his could burn here if they don't move fast. This fire is as vicious as any, and there will be even more to fuel it if there's gas lines in the building.
A flick of his wrist frees the men he bound earlier; the vacant aggression is gone from their faces, no longer attackers, just as terrified as the others as they join the herd. One is unconscious; Shido grabs him and slings him over his shoulder without hardly breaking stride. The stairwell is filled with smoke, blinding their climb, and there's no safety at the top, an inferno raging in the corridor which would lead to the exit. Over the roar of the fire he can hear sobbing, frantic wails.
But there's a window on this wall, just a little ways down, he remembers. So they're not so far from freedom after all. "Shido, when I give the signal," he says, and gathers a few of his strings, forces them into the wall, winding through chinks in the plaster and cement. The fire's heat is stifling and it's hard to maintain the shield when he's concentrating on this; he's half-blind and his long hair is caught in the zippers and buttons of the people pressed close against him, crowding under his protection. But he draws his strings taut without hesitation, calls, "There!" and points.
Shido's fist slams into the wall with the force of a charging rhinoceros, vibrates along the lines of weakness the threads have outlined. The wall crumbles away, and cool evening air blows through the dark gap. He can hear, faintly, the shriek of sirens, and then that's drowned by the wail of the people as they press past him, towards their escape. It's a few feet above the ground and Shido blocks the way, cautions them and begins to help them out, siphoning them two at a time through the narrow hole.
Nearly all of them are out when there's a percussive, thunderous boom. The floor bucks under their feet, everyone screams, and Kazuki only just has time to raise his strongest shield when a chunk of the ceiling above them comes crashing down, slides off the shell of his strings. There's no order left, just terror, and as the final people shove towards the exit they crush him back. He staggers, drops to his knees, fighting to maintain his hold on the trembling strings. They're biting into his fingers; his grip on the bells is slicked with blood and gritty with ash.
"Kazuki!" he hears Shido shout, over another deafening explosion. "Get out of there!!" Through the blur of tears and heat he sees the Beastmaster, beckoning to him from the dark safety beyond the broken wall.
All their charges must have made it, then, and Shido as well. Kazuki smiles. Above him, the shriek of tortured metal pierces the roar of the fire, and the last of the ceiling gives way, a giant blazing brand plunging down toward him. It tears through his strings like a torch through a spider's silk. There isn't even time for pain, much less fear, just a moment of regret, and then nothing at all.
to be continued...