Chapter 12. You may want to re-read Chapter 11, as I've updated it since when I first put it up.

"I don't like it," Wizikute mumbled. He, Shao-lin, and Katou stood on the pier, but they were looking at the tree and the ground around them. Guyart had been gone for three days. He hadn't called back to the Order's sanctuary, he hadn't been seen by any of the locals in the surrounding doors, and the last person who had been in here hadn't seen him. But he had discovered three fishing poles, some bait, three ghost-guns and signs of a battle, and he had contacted the Order over those last two issues. They had already gathered up the poles, the guns, and the bait, and now they were surveying the battle scene.

"Lots of footprints on the ground," Wizikute bent down and felt one of them that looked like a boot had left it, "Whoever Brice was fighting, they didn't fly around much."

"They used swords," Shao-lin pointed out several spots of torn-up grass and Earth. The shape of the tears and the look of several of them could only have been made by a blade.

"Someone apparently took offence to this tree," Katou observed dryly. He had wandered up to the tree and had spotted a deep carving in it, as though someone had stabbed the trunk.

"I don't like it," Wizikute said again, "Whoever was here left the fishing poles and the bait. Why didn't they leave anything else behind?"

"'Anything else' was probably something they didn't want found," Shao-lin sighed.

"But that wouldn't explain the guns," Katou said. He had walked off on his own, following some of the tracks that were on higher ground. There was definitely something missing to all of this. The attacker – or attackers – obviously weren't careful over what they had left behind and what they had taken. If someone like Guyart went missing like this without a trace, it was safe to assume that he lost the fight. But that was another thing that made little sense. Guyart wasn't the most skilled member of the founding council, but he was one of the best warriors in the Order. They had all trained themselves to fight against ghost-guns and other weapons that the Family employed. He knew better than to walk right into a fight, like what appeared to have happened. And the Family had no idea on the way in which the Order thought and worked. For them to have as much success against Guyart as they appeared to have had, they'd need someone from the Order on their side…

He felt his foot come down on something that wasn't ground, and he bent down to see what it was. A tattered grey fedora with a black band and a torn-up red flower lay on the ground before him. It was pushed in on itself from Katou's stepping on it and it was covered in dust. Katou reached down and picked it up. He felt the material the hat was made out of. He looked inside it. He tried it on. And, as he examined this seemingly trivial piece of evidence, he began to become more concerned. He tried not to get ahead of himself – after all, it could be a mere coincidence. But the size of the hat, how it looked, where the flower was positioned on the hat…it looked like Vlad's hat. And, now that he thought about it, the footprints left by one of those pairs of boots resembled the ones Vlad wore. The shape of the cut in the tree was curved like a samurai blade – the kind he had given to Vlad. He hated where this trail of thought was leading him, and he could have been getting ahead of himself, but given the circumstances…

"Katou?"

The old samurai snapped out of his trance and looked up at Wizikute's call.

"Is anything wrong?" Katou looked back down at the hat, his fingers unconsciously tightening along the felt brim.

"Maybe," he muttered, his eyes narrowing. He stood back up, the hat still in his hand, and headed back to his two companions.

---

Vlad stood in the middle of the marble floor in a fighting stance. Seven ghostly targets drifted around him, and he followed them with his eyes. They weren't real ghosts – just figments that Katou had conjured up for the night. For some reason, Katou wasn't going to spar with Vlad or teach him anything new tonight. He was going to have Vlad go through a new kind of drill. He had to take down all of these ghostly figments in less than fifteen minutes. Katou was off to the right, standing on the ships' masts and surveying the scene.

"And…go!" he gave the signal, and the drill began. Vlad got off to a very good start – with one wave of energy sent out from his sword, he took out the first figment within seconds. The other six charged in towards him, but he just jumped up and flipped over them as they crashed into one another. As he landed he whirled around, taking out a second figment with his sword. One of them recognised the sword as a significant threat and rushed Vlad, knocking it from his hands and pushing him to the floor. Undaunted, Vlad just smiled up at that figment. He flipped onto his feet and fired off a spectral blast, reducing the figment to smoke.

The battle went on, and within two minutes it was very clear who was going to emerge the victor. At the speeds he was moving, Vlad was often an indistinguishable blur, difficult to see and nearly impossible to follow. He was certainly more than a match for a handful of imagined figments. They had been created as fast, able warriors on Vlad's skill level and with a chivalrous mindset, but Vlad had many advantages over them. One; he had a greater variety of ghost-powers for attack and defence. Two; Vlad was not following their idiotic, foolish code of chivalry. Three; while these figments were meant to regard this little exchange as what it was – a drill, Vlad was treating it like a full-on battle. And he was enjoying it.

Vlad had pulled himself together since performing his little deed. He had thought about it over the last few days, especially after he had gotten some sleep the night afterwards. As soon as the initial shock of the deed passed on by, it was very easy for Vlad to grasp his feelings over the matter – he didn't care. There was no longer any question about that. He was completely indifferent to the entire thing. And he now felt that it was best that way. Killing Guyart was something he had to do. If he hadn't, his alliance with the Family and all that he had gained by it would be ruined. He had no need to regret the decision, and as it was something that had to be done, not a choice, there was no sense in getting joyous about it. It was almost like a business transaction. He was perfectly at right to feel this way about it.

There was another thing he realised. Being caught up in the fight at the time, battling Guyart was dangerous. It was threatening. He had plenty of close calls. But he had recalled the adrenaline. He remembered the voice that urged him on as he relished the fight. He remembered how it felt to strike out and hit his opponent, to make him suffer. On some level, in some corner of his mind, the idea of fighting and hurting a foe, no matter how they were hurt, was an enjoyment to him. It was a thrill. And all of this came forward as he duelled with Katou's figments in this drill that night. He took out a fourth figment with ease, perfectly relaxed and at ease. He had nothing to fear from this little exercise.

What he was worried about was Katou. There was something about the way the samurai was watching the fight that put Vlad at unease. He had the same calm expression as always and seemed to take everything in as usual, but there was something in the old man's eyes as he followed the drill around the marble floor. He seemed to be taking more note on how Vlad was reacting and what his feelings were rather than the fight itself. It was almost as if he were suspicious of something. More so than ever before, there was something unfamiliar and uncomfortable about the samurai that night, and Vlad found himself anxious to get away. He curled up, formed a spectral ball around him, and shot it out, finishing off the last three figments in a flash.

"Excellent," Katou applauded as Vlad went to retrieve his sword and caught his breath, "Just over five minutes. Very impressive," Vlad analysed those words very carefully inside his head. There was no hidden message or sign of suspicion that he could detect. But there was still that look in the samurai's eyes.

"Is that all for this evening?" he asked, annoyance all over his voice. He really wanted to get back home.

"No, not yet," Katou said simply, jumping off the ships' masts and walking towards Vlad, "I wanted to ask you about that hat you were wearing a few days ago," a freight train seemed to plow through Vlad's mind as he was led back to that fateful night – his hat. His hat, the guns Tony and his boys had dropped, the fishing poles, the bait…they had all left them behind. And there were plenty of tracks and signs of a battle left on the scene. If it didn't incriminate Vlad personally, it would at least prove the Family's involvement and the use of a sword. Blast it, he should have known this would happen! Guyart was on the founding council of the Order and one of their best warriors – if he went missing, it should have been obvious that a search party would go out after him! How could he have been such an idiot?

'Steady, Vlad,' he thought, 'Let's just see what he wants. You may be in the clear after all,' still, he couldn't stop a flicker of fear from moving up behind his eyes.

"Yes?" he said as calmly as he could, raising one eyebrow.

"Have you lost it?" Katou asked.

"No," Vlad managed to get the word out fine, but he felt that he waited a bit too long before he said it, "Whatever would make you think that?"

"I found this lying around," from his robe, Katou drew out Vlad's tattered, dirty, trampled grey hat. The flower was pretty much gone and it was more than a bit worn out, but it was definitely Vlad's hat. And Vlad couldn't stop a gulp from making it down his throat.

"I'm sure many ghosts around this realm have hats such as these," he said simply, making a light gesture towards the fedora, "What makes you say that this one is mine?"

"I found it behind a door in the north-west corner of the Order," Katou's voice suddenly took on a serious and slightly dark tone, and Vlad felt a trickle of sweat slip down his neck.

"Brice Guyart has been missing for four days," the samurai went on, "And we know that the door I mentioned was the last place he had been. Save for tracks, we found neither him nor any trace of him. But we could tell a lot by those tracks."

"Is that so?" Vlad felt himself getting very tense. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.

"Yes. He was fighting someone. They were engaged in swordplay, in fact. There were tear marks all around the area from the blades, and one tree looked as though it had been stabbed by a samurai sword," for a brief moment, Vlad could have sworn that the samurai's eyes flickered over to eye Vlad's blade.

"And we found several fishing poles, some bait, three guns belonging to members of The Ghost-Zone Family, and this hat," Katou held the hat up higher. Vlad couldn't suppress a snarl as his face twisted into a hateful grimace. No one talked to him like that. Regardless of the fact that he was guilty of whatever charge Katou seemed to be implying, he wouldn't stand for this kind of disrespect. Who did this pompous, overblown, self-righteous old fool think he was dealing with?

"You wouldn't be accusing me of being involved with old Guyart's disappearance, now would you?" he said, threat and challenge lining his every word.

"If I was going to make an accusation, I would have said as much," Katou replied simply, "I merely state the facts. Guyart is gone, evidence was left behind, and among it was this hat. It reminded me of yours, and I want to know if it is,"

"No," Vlad shot back at him, though a bit too quickly, "And I know nothing of this little skirmish. I will say that it seems that Guyart had to have been weak for this to have happened to him!" venom seemed to spew from his mouth as he shot those words out. Other than a slight scowl, Katou gave no sign that he had been affected by his words. Their eye lines locked together, and a surge of lightning seemed to run between them. Vlad felt himself fingering the handle of his sword, and he could hear a voice in his head urging him to draw it out and settle this now. It took more than a bit of will to suppress this impulse.

They remained like this for what seemed like a small eternity. All the while Vlad kept tense and on edge, while Katou seemed as serene as ever. Eventually, his scowl faded back into his typical tired face.

"You still haven't gotten over Jack and Maddie, have you?" he said out of the blue. Vlad again raised an eyebrow. He had to admit – he had lost his plans for tracking down Jack and Maddie amidst all that he had been doing for his own life since striking his deal with the Family. Nevertheless, Katou's words were true, and at the root of his deal. Ye he found himself so confounded by the samurai's brining up something they had discussed together only once that he couldn't bring himself to answer. Katou paid this no mind.

"I don't know what you'll do to find them, and I'm not entirely sure of what you've been up to lately," he said simply, "I do know that you have other alliances – ones that you are slightly more pleased with," Vlad felt himself take a step back at this. How much did Katou know?

"Vlad – be careful," the samurai almost seemed mournful now. He tossed the hat to Vlad and floated down towards his living chambers. Vlad followed him as he went, hissing in his breaths through clenched teeth.

"We'll see who'll need to 'be careful' once I'm done with you," he muttered under his breath. He let his fist close in tight around his hat, scrunching it up almost into a ball. He tossed it onto the marble floor and flew out of the cave as quickly as he could.