Tokyo was a city of about fourteen million people.
There were twice as many spirits, maybe, or thrice if you counted the mindless ones. The balls of wandering energy that weren't good for much more than feeding to other spirits, or absorbing, if you were into that sort of thing. Matsuo, having sense, was not. You didn't fuck with your soul like that. You were what you ate and if you ate a mindless spirit then that was what you became, a mindless spirit…though the power boost was kind of tempting…
It would have made his job a hell of a lot easier.
"Where are you…" muttered Matsuo as he kept a hand on his belt. He could feel it, that thing he'd been chasing, the giant spirit. The living curse. He wasn't sure what to call it. He had never felt it anything like it before and he hoped to God he never felt anything like it after this. He'd been chasing this thing for years. It popped up, usually surrounding a series of mysterious deaths and accidents, and then disappeared once he showed up…once he got close. It liked big cities, places where it could hide, but it didn't hang out where spirits usually did. He would have expected that something that big would have hung out around a graveyard or a temple, not in the middle of a city. It should have gone where the food was.
Unless it was making it's own food.
A bad sign. Spirits ate each other all the time. It wasn't like they could just stop by a Family Mart, or course, if they got hungry but they were supposed to eat each other. The more powerful ones fed on the blobs, the people who hadn't fully passed on, or the people who had gotten stuck on their way to the other side. Choosing to stay on this side…well that was rare. Most of them got stuck somehow. Unfinished business, the horrors of their deaths, or just getting lost. Very few actually chose to stay and those usually kept their full minds, and those that did ate the weaker ones, and then his pets ate those. Spirits didn't make other spirits…or at least they shouldn't have. That was…spirits shouldn't have had that kind of influence on people.
He took his hand from his belt and pulled his coat shut.
A spirit had passed over him. To a normal human it looked like nothing, to an esper it looked like a grey blob, but to him…well he could see what it was. A person, an old lady, hunched over a walking stick. If he listened he could have heard what she was saying. Her words sounded like little more than wind to everyone else, espers included. He could tell, though. She was looking for her mother. They had either passed together or she had passed and forgotten her age. It happened. They usually forgot who they were, the pain of dying, of crossing over…not that he had ever felt that, of course.
Not that he ever would.
He reached into his coat and popped open one of his spirits jars. The smell of ginger briefly caught on the wind. This was a new one. He would call this one ginger candy or…or something else, something more creative. Toshiki would have probably been able to come up with something. They read a lot. The name mattered, without their names he had very little power over them, and that wouldn't suit his needs at all. The stronger they got the more difficult it became to control them. They fought against their bindings.
He couldn't really blame them.
He fed the old woman's spirit to his pet. He wondered how this one would turn out. You were what you ate and so far this one had done nothing but eat the random little neutral spirits of Tokyo. He needed to find something big, something evil, to really give this one a boost. The day was coming after all. President Suzuki had been recruiting like crazy for a while now and had even abducted Tokyo HQ to his oldest kid…his oldest female kid. Apparently that tech kid, Hatori whatever, had secretly been his son all along. It figured, a guy like that, or at least that was the rumor. Toshiki said that they weren't related at all but Matsuo had been around when Tsuchiya adopted Mukai. That guy wasn't exactly honest and forthcoming when it came to things like this. Hell, for all Matsuo knew HE could have been another one of the President's secret kids!
…he hoped to never have that thought cross his mind ever again.
He closed his spirit jar quickly before someone saw. He could swear he felt another aura, an actual one, not an Awakened aura or just a Talented one. Sometimes the Awakened left HQ, Suuzki Shigeko let them have more privileges than he thought they could actually handle, and that…well that wasn't good for anyone. Sometimes, though, he crossed paths with unaffiliated espers. Talented people who could just about produce an aura but nothing more. Sometimes bend a spoon or predict whether or not it was going to rain, basic things like that. The aura he felt, though, that was…an esper…not one he knew.
But then again this was Tokyo, a city of fourteen million.
He didn't pretend to be a social butterfly, or even a social normal fly, so of course he didn't know every single Claw member. Apparently Suzuki Shigeko did, or at least most people, but he wasn't that kind of hypercognate. He didn't think he was any kind of hypercogante at all. Just a normal guy who happened to be a medium. Not many mediums in the world, or in Claw, so the idea of crossing paths with one…he was supposed to be the only guy on the job. This job. The President, though, had been chasing this thing for a while. Something like this on Claw's side would definitely turn the tide in their favor.
He didn't get to fail.
He kept walking, his feet taking him through a neighborhood he felt like he was wasting a fortune just stepping foot in. The apartment buildings were tall, and gated. Some even had actual doormen. It was a far cry from the two rooms he'd grown up in. One for living, eating, and watching TV in and the other for sleeping. Just him and his parents in a six tatami room on thin futons…just the lobbies of one of these places could have held his entire apartment growing up. Hell, even the barracks he and Toshiki were staying in…well that didn't matter. He had his home back at the Seventh Division. The other half could live like the other half lived, it wasn't any of his business, and it wasn't like he was that kid anymore anyway. He wasn't walking around in shoes mom had gotten from the charity bin, a dress that he and his mom shared since they were so close in height, and a thing jacket that had belonged to three other people before him. He wasn't that kid anymore. He was someone now.
Someone who may have needed a new coat.
The patch on the arm was getting loose. Toshiki had gotten him this one. A fuzzy Totoro, the big grey one. Not his usual kind of thing but it had been a gift so he kept it. He'd have to fix it, or just add it to a new jacket. Winter here was much more brutal than it had ever been in Seasoning City. Maybe because he was so close to the water, now, or maybe God just really hated Tokyo. He'd get a new coat later, after he'd accomplished something. He knew that he wasn't actually going to find this thing today but he could at least get a good idea of what it's territory was. Spirits were, generally, very territorial creatures. So were people, really, spirits just didn't hide it. Spirits were supposed to stay in their territories, anyway, but this one seemed committed to being an overachiever…or maybe a delinquent.
That was what he could have called this thing.
A delinquent spirit. A delinquent spirit for Matsuo the delinquent. He hadn't been called that in years, not since high school when he refused to wear his uniform. He'd just stopped coming, it wasn't like he'd needed school after all, and eventually he'd fallen in with Claw. They paid better than any actual job he could have gotten. Hell, even working for the yakuza had been better. The work had been easier, too, even if the threat of violence had been much greater.
Something moved.
He turned around, his hand on his belt. Other espers would have shown their auras or some other display of their own power. He had very little power of his own and what he had went to his pets. In the grand lottery of powers he could have done worse, apparently you could only be telepathic with a single other person and there was one guy who's only power was turning things blue, but he could have done a lot better too. Toshiki was in the same boat, or so they thought, but they could at least defend themselves even in a concrete jungle. Without his pets he was little better than a normal person…and even with them it wasn't like he could do so much as put up a barrier…
There was no one there
He rubbed his bad eye, then his good eye, and then his bad eye again. Nobody. He could have sworn that he had seen and felt…maybe he was just tired. He'd slept like absolute shit last night. The barracks, if they could even be called that, were just a series of rooms with not enough bunk beds and way too many people. They were stacked three, sometimes four, high and were really only narrow enough to fit one person. He and Toshiki weren't exactly big people but it had been a squeeze. Apparently they had their own bed in their own room, all to themselves, in a house they shared with the other members of Suzuki Shigeko's inner circle. He would have killed for something like that, but of course he knew better than to even ask, there were certain people he didn't want to live with…he couldn't live with.
One certain person.
"Looking for me?" said a voice. There was a tap on his shoulder…and an aura right on top of his. He turned around and jumped back. He knew who that was…at least he thought he did…
He wished he'd been wrong.
"I'll take that as a yes." Said Shimazaki Ryou. Matsuo had only met him briefly, and that had been enough. He knew all that he needed to know about this guy. The thing with Suzuki Shigeko was inexcusable. She may have been the person who signed their checks…well the person who signed the person's checks who signed their checks…but she was still just a kid. He couldn't believe that Toshiki had ever seen anything in this guy worth being with…worth loving.
He didn't always understand Toshiki.
"What's wrong with you!? There are people around!" said Matsuo. Shimazaki cocked his head and spread his arms out…ok, so the street was obviously deserted at this time of day. People were either at school or work and it wasn't like there was a bustling day life in this part of the city. Just rich people's houses as far as his good eye could see…but still!
"Nobody that I can sense…there's a bird about to shit on your head, by the way. I'd get away from that tree." Said Shimazaki. Matsuo looked up and took a step to the side. He'd been right…of course he had. He could 'see' better than most people. He saw in all directions at once, Toshiki had said at once, though for some reason he couldn't see where the clothes hamper was. Of course he had probably just been purposely acting like an asshole towards Toshiki. That was all a person needed to know about Shimazaki Ryou. Don't let the blindness fool you, he was an asshole, and he would probably mess you up just for fun.
Matsuo didn't stand a chance.
"Thank you…now can you please tell me what you're doing here?" asked Matsuo. He had tried to sound intimidating but his voice had just jumped an octave. He cleared his throat and forced it back down to the tone he liked. If Shimazaki noticed he didn't seem to care. He just reached into his coat…Matsuo braced himself…and pulled out a shiny silver cigarette case and a lighter.
"Want one?" asked Shimazaki opening the case. Matsuo saw some short cigarettes both from a box and ones it looked like he'd rolled himself. He also caught sight of Shimazaki's tattoos peaking out through the neck of his t-shirt. You never turned down a family member's offer of food or drink or…that part of his life was over now. Shimazaki's too. They were nearly equals here, and anyway he knew better than to accept something from Shimazaki Ryou, you could never really tell with a person like him…
"No thanks. So did you come all the way out here to offer me a cigarette or is this a work thing?" said Matsuo
"Yes." Said Shimazaki. Matsuo tried not to groan.
"You were assigned to this job too?" asked Matsuo. His ability to sense people might have extended to spirits, and it was said that he had actually found a needle in a haystack once, so it would have been helpful to have him around but, honestly, Matsuo would have rather faced President Suzuki at his angriest and most disappointed than successfully complete the mission with this guy as his partner.
"Hell no. Right now I'm cleaning some shit up for Mob before it becomes a mess. Also walk dogs in this neighborhood. Rich people have no idea how much care a dog needs. They think that one walk a day is enough, and just around the block too. I swear…" said Shimazaki
"Wait…so you're also a dog walker? People are paying you to walk their dogs? You?" asked Matsuo
"They would if they knew I was doing it." Said Shimazaki
"Ok then…well I have to go now so…just…have fun with that, I guess." said Matsuo, taking a step back. Shimazaki took a step towards him. He reached for his belt…if these could even do something against him. Did he know how to exorcise spirits? He was a powerful esper…the President had exorcised his pets the second he'd called them out…though nobody was on the President's level.
At least they shouldn't have been.
"I will, but hang on. I've got something important to tell you…well to tell you and then you tell Toshi." Said Shimazaki
"If Toshiki wants to talk to you then they'll talk to you themselves. I'm not a messenger." Said Matsuo
"Yeah, I know I can talk to Toshi, but they need to hear it from you. Just tell them that I said that I'm happy they found someone like you and I wish you guys all the happiness in the world or some shit like that, ok?" asked Shimazaki. Matsuo as tempted to tell him to fuck off but he knew better. The last thing he needed was to get into a fight he had no hope of winning. Even if he didn't use his powers he could have just as easily picked Matsuo up and carried him away…or just done away with him right here…
Sometimes you had to pick your battles and this was one of those times.
"Sure…sure, I'll tell them next time I see them. I have to get back to work now so…bye, I guess. Have a good time walking other people's dogs…?" said Matsuo. He blinked and Shimazaki was gone. From the apartment beside him he could hear some very loud barking. That was…that had been something that he would unpack later. Right now he had to get back to work. He would have preferred to face a pissed of President Suzuki than to have to work with Shimazaki Ryou but now that working with Shimazaki was off the table and his options were make progress or get another scar…he was going to make progress.
Even if it wasn't much.
He let his feet carry him to where he needed to go. The feeling, the energy the spirit left behind, was concentrated most strongly along a path. He followed it. It all radiated out from a very fancy looking apartment building and down the road…a long way. A very long way…longer than that spirit should have been able to travel. It went all the way down to what looked like a giant glass shoebox, some kind of ultramodern mall…
Oh. A school.
"Gemini international Girl's Middle School….?" Muttered Matsuo. This building was too new to be where it had died, and the kids here were too young to host it if it had been possessing one of them…he didn't even want to think about what that would have been like. He had been possessed once as a grown man and it had nearly killed him. If it had happened when he had been a kid…maybe it was possessing one of the teachers? That would have made more sense…it would have had a building full of victims…though kid's souls couldn't have been the most filling…
Buffets didn't have big plates but they didn't stop you from going back for more…
He made a note of this. Finally, some real progress…at least for now. He was going to pass this onto the President, or at least whoever was serving as his right hand man. Not Shigeko, no, Toshiki had been very clear on that. She may have been his superior but apparently she had a lot on her hands and didn't need him adding this. No, the President was the one who wanted to control this thing…and now maybe he could. Matsuo was pleased with himself. He'd made progress and he had the perfect excuse to go back to Toshiki. He wasn't a kid anymore and it wasn't like he could just put on this school's uniform and sneak in to confront the spirit himself. Hell, he shouldn't have been standing out here.
There were fourteen million people in this city, one of them was bound to report the creepy man hanging out at the middle school.