Well, here it is. Finally. I know this chapter is shorter than mine usually are, but if I didn't manage to post *something*, I was set to give up on the whole damn fic.

Chapter Two

Watari had fallen asleep, sprawled out on his desk, with 003 nestled into the mess of his hair that was strewn everywhere. She hooted welcomingly when Tsuzuki and Hisoka walked in, and then nipped at Watari's ear. He sat bolt upright. "Ohayo!" he said enthusiastically, immediately one hundred percent awake.

"Ohayo," Tsuzuki greeted cheerfully, and plunked into a chair. "We just saw the Gushoshin. They don't have anything yet, but they're still looking. Did you find anything?"

"Aa . . . I actually did, right around dawn." Watari yawned and stretched. "The files are still pulled up on my computer. Feel free to look while I get myself some coffee." He wandered out of the lab without another word.

Hisoka shook his head, and seated himself at the computer. "This is odd," he said, his eyes rapidly scanning the screen.

"What is?" Tsuzuki asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"This could be the same case that we're working on right now," Hisoka said, frowning. "It's the exact same set of circumstances. Loss of memory, loss of personality, and eventual death."

"Just one person?" Tsuzuki asked.

"No . . . a string of them, same as this time." Hisoka pushed back from the computer. "What do you think it means?"

Tsuzuki looked blank. "When was it?"

"Fifteen years ago."

Tsuzuki looked thoughtful at this. "Who do you think went back and entered all the centuries-old casefiles into the computer?" he wondered aloud. "That job must have taken years . . . the JuohCho is as old as the human race, though somewhat less organized in the beginning." He caught Hisoka's scowl and shook himself. "Ah, never mind."

Watari bustled back in, carrying a styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand. "So!" he said, snatching up his hair tie from where it was lying on the desk and yanking his hair back into its usual ponytail. "Isn't that interesting?"

"Enlighten us," Hisoka said dryly. "Any idea what it means?"

"No clue," Watari said. He plunked into his chair, drinking his coffee at a rapid pace. "But what you might find interesting is that it's not the only one. There's an identical case every fifteen years, back until about the turn of the century. After that, the records are too fragmented to search."

"Every fifteen years?" Hisoka asked, startled.

"Like clockwork," Watari said with a nod. "Always the exact same thing. And there's always been a Shinigami pair dispatched to look into it, but no one has ever figured out the cause of the deaths."

Tsuzuki was frowning, pinching his lower lip in thought. "Every fifteen years," he said thoughtfully. Then he brightened. "So we ought to know how long we have, if they're all identical!"

Watari nodded. "In every case, there are thirteen deaths. They each take place about four days apart, evenly spaced. So the whole thing, whatever it is, doesn't last any longer than two months."

"How many victims have there been so far?" Tsuzuki asked.

Hisoka gave him an annoyed look and muttered something about a certain someone not paying enough attention to the details of the case. "Seven," was all he said out loud.

"Eight," a voice corrected. The three Shinigami looked up to see Tatsumi standing in the doorway to the lab. He walked over and handed Hisoka a sheet of paper. "There was another this morning."

Hisoka swore creatively, under his breath.

"So only five left," Tsuzuki said. "That's twenty days. That's not even three weeks!"

Tatsumi seated himself in a chair and gave Watari's dishevelled state a look that bordered between amusement and annoyance. "Were you here all night?" he asked.

Watari pushed a hand through his hair, loosening several strands of it from his ponytail and letting them drift down around his face. "Aa . . . I kept meaning to go home, but then I kept finding more stuff." He shrugged a little.

"What could cause a pattern like this?" Tsuzuki asked, seeing that Hisoka was absorbed in studying the file on the new death. "A demon? A cursed artifact of some sort, maybe?"

"If I had to venture a guess," Watari said, "I'd say it was some sort of living thing. And that every fifteen years, it needs to . . . rejuvenate itself, for lack of a better term. Like this is some sort of meal for it. But it's not a demon. I mean, that's the first thing the Gushoshin would have checked -- if it was one of the Makai, they would have found it."

"Well, at least we know it isn't Muraki," Hisoka remarked absently, his eyes glued to the file. "Since he isn't that old." He glanced up, suddenly worried, "He isn't that old, is he?"

Watari smiled a little. "No, the last time we went up against him I did enough research to get a definite date of birth on the good doctor. As miraculous as it is that someone could become so evil so quickly, he's only in his mid thirties."

Hisoka nodded a little and went back to the file. After a few moments of silence, he put it down, scowling. "It just feels like there's some huge piece that we're missing," he complained.

"That would be the 'what the heck is doing this?' piece," Watari said helpfully.

Hisoka gave him a withering look.

Tsuzuki had to bite back a smile. "Can we have the files on the other victims? The more we have, the easier it'll be to spot some sort of common thread. Or, well, the more likely it'll be that the common thread is actually correct."

Watari nodded. "Just let me print those up for ya . . . it'll be a lot of paper, though."

"I know," Tsuzuki said complacently. "But Hisoka does all the paperwork." He winked at his younger partner, who gave him an affronted look. "Kidding, Hisoka," he assured him.

Tatsumi cleared his throat. "I'll be getting back to work," he said. "Inform me if there's anything you need."

"That doesn't cost money," Watari said in a low voice. The other two Shinigami couldn't help but snicker. Tatsumi gave them all the evil eye before leaving the room. "Saa, he needs to relax," Watari sighed. The printer whirred busily for a minute, and then he picked up the stack of papers and handed them over to Hisoka. "Here ya go, Bon. Don't do all the work for Tsuzuki!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," Hisoka said dryly.

~~~~

They had piles of paper all over the room. They had sorted and resorted, stacked and restacked, and still had yet to find anything that might be remotely considered useful. They had organized it according to which set of attacks, organized it according to first victim, then second, et cetera, organized it by gender and age. Tsuzuki had even 'organized' it by tossing the entire pile into the air and snatching pieces at random.

What was most telling about that misadventure was that Hisoka was so frustrated, he hadn't even complained. It seemed as good a method as any.

They ordered pizza and continued to read the files. Hisoka was beginning to feel like he had them all memorized. "There are really only a few basic correlations," he said, for what seemed like the hundredth time. "All the victims were between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and all of them were reasonably healthy."

"But that makes perfect sense," Tsuzuki said, flopping on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. "If you consider that this whatever-it-is seems to be sucking out their life force. Pick young, healthy people, and you get more life force."

"Right." Hisoka stared at the pile of papers. "No gender bias, nothing as obvious as co-workers or relatives . . ."

"But it can move," Tsuzuki said, sitting up and folding his legs underneath himself. "Because not all the sets of attacks are around here. Sometimes they'll be up in Hokkaido, or even as far away as Tokyo. Which is probably why no one noticed the repetitve strings of them before -- if it goes from region to region, it won't get the same Shinigami team twice."

Hisoka sighed in frustration. "We're not getting anywhere. What kind of thing can do this?"

"Suck life force?" Tsuzuki clarified, then shrugged when Hisoka nodded. "All kinds of things. Demons, spirits, whatever. It doesn't even need to be something supernatural -- a human could do it, if he had the right spell."

"But every fifteen years?" Hisoka asked skeptically. "For so long?"

"If he used the life force to enhance his own life, sure," Tsuzuki said. "There's not really anything we can rule out."

"Well, it's not a demon," Hisoka said. "Or else there would be records of it, and the Gushoshin would have let us know. So, some sort of spirit, or a human sorcerer."

"Every four days . . ." Tsuzuki said thoughtfully.

"Hm?" Hisoka looked up from the papers. Before Tsuzuki could answer, there was a knock on the door of their hotel room. Tsuzuki bounced over to answer it and get their dinner. After paying the delivery boy and chowing down an entire slice whole, he got back to what he'd been saying.

"Someone dies every four days," he said. "And from what the relatives said, the process of first losing their memory to finally dying takes about four days." He picked up another slice of pizza and started to munch on it. "So," he continued with his mouth full, "whatever this is, it can't concentrate on more than one person at a time. It 'infects' someone, for lack of a better term, then waits until they're dead to get someone else."

Hisoka nodded, picking up his own slice of pizza and scowling at it thoughtfully. "That doesn't really help us," he remarked.

"Well," Tsuzuki said, fishing a can of soda out of the pack he'd bought earlier, "it points more to a human sorcerer of some sort than a spirit. Spirits have more power, and they're . . . thinner, for lack of a better term. They can do more things at once. Also, spirits have a tendency to be tied to a place or an object. Humans have more mobility."

"So it's probably a human sorcerer," Hisoka surmised.

Tsuzuki nodded. "That would be my guess, anyway."

"Great," Hisoka said with a sigh. "That helps us . . . not at all."

"Eat your pizza," Tsuzuki said, nodding and smiling. "That'll help. You need your energy."

Hisoka mumbled something and began to nibble on the slice. He was far too frustrated to really feel hungry. It wasn't as if the pizza would go to waste; Tsuzuki would eat whatever he didn't. "By now, it's infected a new person," he said slowly. "Since the eighth victim died today."

"Yeah," Tsuzuki said.

"So . . ." Hisoka stood up. "Let's try the hospitals in the area. See if anyone's reported a case of amnesia today. If we can find the newest victim, we might be able to track it back to the killer."

"Wah! Hisoka, you're so smart!" Tsuzuki bounced to his feet, finishing off his third slice of pizza. "I don't know what I'd do without you . . ."

Hisoka allowed himself a rare smile. "Flounder, probably. Now let's get going."

~~~~

Hisoka flopped face first onto his bed.

"Come on, Hisoka," Tsuzuki said, "you couldn't have known that it wouldn't work. Don't be so hard on yourself."

"I should have known," Hisoka said stubbornly. "There was a basic flaw in my logic! Let's go see the people with no memory and ask them if they remember anything weird that happened that day. What a good idea."

Tsuzuki gave him an exasperated look. "Well, you didn't know if there would be a . . . a psychic thing of any sort. You know, like a mental presence or something."

Hisoka sighed. "Well, all we learned is that the victims don't have a psychic presence before they die. Because I couldn't feel anything from him. He was just . . . blank, like the soul had already departed but the body was still alive."

"You think that's it?" Tsuzuki asked thoughtfully.

"I don't know," Hisoka said. "Because that doesn't make any sense. The souls are turning up in the Meifu when the person dies. But if the soul departs as soon as the body is infected, where does it go for those four days?"

Tsuzuki sat down on the edge of the bed, contemplating the cold pizza. "I don't know," he finally said.

"Ugh," Hisoka proclaimed, and buried his face in the pillow.

"But you're all . . . tense and unhappy," Tsuzuki tried. "Something's bothering you, and it isn't just that we didn't make any progress today. Cases have gone slower than this before and you've been all right. What's wrong?"

"I don't like hospitals," Hisoka said shortly. His words were muffled in the pillow, and he turned his face to one side to make for easier breathing.

Tsuzuki considered this. "Oh," he finally said. "Because of . . . how you died?"

Hisoka nodded, unconsciously curling in on himself, hugging one of the pillows to his chest. He was unaware of how childlike the posture made him look, and he would have been horrified if he realized. "Yeah . . . three years there. No visitors . . . no one knowing what was happening to me. All the confusion of the doctors, and the other patients . . . their despair and pain as well as my own. Half the time I didn't even know whether or not I was the one hurting."

Tsuzuki stood up and settled on the edge of the bed next to Hisoka. He was completely at a loss as to what he should say; he didn't think there was anything that would help.

"But when it was me . . ." Hisoka closed his eyes. "It hurt so much. Muraki made it so that it would hurt. So I would suffer unbearably before I finally gave in and died. And I . . . I didn't understand then. I didn't know what was happening to me. I just knew that it . . . that it hurt, and that someone was slowly killing me. Even then, I knew that I was being murdered."

Tsuzuki reached out, not thinking about empathy or telepathy, only thinking about finding some way to comfort him. His fingers gently brushed through Hisoka's hair. Hisoka tensed, at first, then relaxed under Tsuzuki's touch, under the warmth of Tsuzuki's concern.

"So," he concluded, after a moment, "I don't like hospitals. It's like pain and suffering just hovers in the air, and I can't help but feel it."

"I don't like them either," Tsuzuki admitted.

Hisoka opened his eyes, glancing up at Tsuzuki curiously. "You were in one, weren't you?"

Tsuzuki nodded. "For eight years."

"Eight years . . ." Hisoka sighed a little. "And I thought three was bad."

"I don't remember most of it," Tsuzuki told him. "Just snatches of clarity here and there. Looking out and seeing the butterflies in the spring. But the rest of it . . . it's blurry. I don't remember dying. I don't even remember why I was in the hospital."

"Maybe some things are better left forgotten," Hisoka suggested. "I think I was happier before I remembered Muraki . . . and what he did to me."

"Maybe so," Tsuzuki agreed thoughtfully.

Hisoka sat up, leaning against the headboard of the bed. For a few minutes, they regarded each other seriously, and a thousand things passed between them, unsaid. "We should get some rest," Hisoka finally sighed. "It's late."

"Aa," Tsuzuki said, and stood up. They got ready in silence, and got into bed in silence. Hisoka turned off the light and both of them lay awake, remembering, trying not to remember.

~~~~

"Watari-san?" Tatsumi rapped on the door to the labratory. When there was no answer, he pushed it open and went inside. Watari had again fallen asleep on his desk. Tatsumi rolled his eyes. "Watari-san, wake up."

Watari stirred and mumbled something in his sleep, but otherwise made no response. Tatsumi sighed and shook him by the shoulder. "Ehh . . .?" Watari asked, peeking out from underneath his hair. "Is't morning already?"

Tatsumi rolled his eyes. "No," he said. "It's only about nine o'clock at night. You fell asleep again. Shouldn't you go home?"

"Most likely." Watari let out a wide yawn. "But I'm trying to . . . figure out this thing, still."

"You told Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun everything you know," Tatsumi said, surprised to find that he was still working on it. "Is there something more?"

"I think I might have an idea." Watari pushed his hair out of his face. As usual when he was working late, the hair tie had been discarded hours before. 003 was sitting on it. "But I'm not sure. I fell asleep."

"I see that," Tatsumi said dryly.

Watari sat up, shedding his lab coat and leaving it in a pile on his chair. This left him in a plain black turtleneck and torn blue jeans. Tatsumi raised an eyebrow; even for Watari, those clothes were a bit casual for the workplace. Watari caught his glance and shrugged. "Didn't want to wear yesterday's clothes all day," he said. "Found these underneath the desk. They were pretty dusty!" he added cheerfully, picking up a stack of papers.

"What's all this?" Tatsumi asked, looking at the papers. "They look like old newspapers."

"That's exactly what they are," Watari said. "It occurred to me that maybe this thing isn't just sucking up power for its own needs -- maybe it's doing something with it. Or maybe there's a side effect. Something. So here I have the newspapers for the day after the last death, back for the last four attacks. Also . . ." He picked up some more papers, "I have the JuohCho's records for the days."

Tatsumi looked at the newspapers. "And . . .?" he asked.

"And we're going to have a slumber party and read them!" Watari said.

Tatsumi's eyebrow twitched. "I notice your use of the word 'we' in that sentence."

"Very astute of you." Watari offered him a newspaper.

Tatsumi sighed and accepted it. "If I make a single error tomorrow in my budget calculations, you'll hear about it," he threatened. "Staying up all night to read newspapers . . . it's a wild goose chase."

"Geese are better than nothing," Watari said, settling Indian-style on the floor. "Especially wild geese."

Tatsumi sighed and examined the newspapers. "Is that your way of saying that since we don't have anything so far, looking for a lead anywhere is better than not looking at all?"

Watari grinned. "You're so perceptive!"

"Watari-san?"

"Hai?"

"Sometimes I really don't like you."

~~~~