I'm alive! I swear I am! Not writing as much as I would like but life is crazy right now. I hope to update Dangerous Souls soon I just don't know how soon. Anyway enjoy!

31-Babysitting Part 2

"That's right, Gene-chan, just sleep and then Mama and Papa will be here," Ayami said softly as she pushed the stroller with the sleeping infant.

Now this wasn't the first time the young adult had watched the child. No, it was actually quite a common occurrence for her to watch him at the office when Mai needed a break or Naru needed his wife's opinion. However, those times were typically ten to twenty minutes at a time, never for more than thirty and now she was in charge of a tiny human for almost three hours? Why did she say yes?

"How long do babies nap? Or supposed to nap?" They were about thirty minutes in and Gene slept through half of it. She let out a groan and pulled out her phone from her jean pocket. "Google, I hope you can help me!"

"The term 'psychic' has many different meanings in today's world," Yasuhara explained as Mai and Naru quickly set up a small part of their presentation. "Once it was used to simply describe someone who could see the future, now it's used to describe someone who can have one or more incredible abilities that are unusual to say the least."

"From clairvoyance to empathy to psychometry to PK, there are many subcategories that psychics belong to," Mai continued, hitting a button to bring down the electronic screen for the projector. "We'll get to that more in a bit, but first let's talk about the two types of psychics regardless of their ability. Latent and active."

"Anyone want to take a crack at what the difference between the two are?" Yasuahra asked with grin on his face. A boy in a sweater and glasses raised his hand. "Yes."

"Latent would refer to the ability being suppressed or not developed. Active would mean that the ability could potentially be controlled and trained," he said putting his hand down.

"Excellent, that's just about right. Does anyone know if it's possible for a latent psychic to become an active one?" Mai asked, seeing a girl with a pink scarf raise her hand. "Go ahead."

"Professor Yukibara said some sort of trauma could bring out psychic abilities."

"Do you know what type of trauma?" Mai asked further earning a shake of the girl's head. "Sorry, that was a bit of a trick question, any sort of trauma has the potential to bring out abilities, physical, emotional, or mental, really makes no difference. But one thing that is often overlooked is what can bring out a latent ability. Stress especially in teenage girls around puberty can trigger poltergeist activity and other abilities."

"Typically, these abilities are considered latent until the person is able to use the ability without a sort of trigger, other than their own will," Naru added.

"Of course you don't take a long nap when I'm in charge," Ayami sighed as she parked the stroller and sat down on a bench. Gene fussed and cranked as she pulled him out and checked his temperature and diaper. "You're not warm and your diaper is fine, you better just be hungry or I'm in big trouble."

She placed the four month old in back in his seat, which only seemed to piss him off further, as she reached into the undercarriage of the stroller.

"You shouldn't need more than one bottle while we're in there, but I packed two just in case,"Mai's voice echoed through the young woman's ears. "They are in the lunchbox with an icepack. There's an insulated jug of warm water, too. Just place the bottle in the just and wait a few minutes. Swirl the milk and test in on your arm. It shouldn't be cold but not too hot either. Just warm enough to feel it. Whatever he doesn't eat you can put back in the lunchbox."

"Okay, that's pretty simple instructions," Ayami said to herself as she set up the bottle for Gene. The infant continued to crank in the stroller. "I know Mai told me there was a way to calm you down, but what was it?"

"Here,"it was Naru's voice this time in her ears. "If he starts to get too fussy just place this over him like a blanket. It's Mai's scarf, he should start to calm down with it."

"That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard him say, but you're his kid so there must be something to it," she said with a shrug as she found the scarf and placed it over the boy. Almost instantly his cries softened to cranks and then to grunts. "Well, I'll be," she said with a raised brow. "That should last at least until the bottle is ready."

"Before we get into the different abilities a psychic might possess, there was a reason why I brought up the difference between a latent and an active psychic," Mai explained leaning against the desk. "Because both can be responsible for paranormal activity that claim to be 'hauntings.'" A hand went up. "Yes?"

"You mean people can be behind hauntings and it not be a hoax?" the young man in the back asked, scratching his head.

"That is exactly where I was going with this," Mai replied with a grin. "To answer your question, yes and no, but let's go with the yes first. Yasuhara-san?"

"Latent psychics can be behind poltergeist activity," the bespectacled man began. "More specifically pubescent girls under a great deal of stress can cause activity such as lights going out, knocking sounds, even objects moving. Though that's not to say boys can't be the cause of it either, it's just more common for the psychic to be female in these cases."

"We ran into such an occurrence on the case where I met my husband," Mai began flashing a look to Naru. "I was in high school at the time and he was investigating the old abandoned school building. Due to unforeseen circumstances-" She could have sworn she heard her husband scoff. "I was recruited to help him out, and while all evidence gathered pointed to the building being empty of spirits, we were still getting activity that couldn't be explained."

"During such cases, I've learned there is an experiment that can be done to test the theory of a human caused poltergeist." Naru removed the cloth that was over an object on the desk. It was a lamp with a red bulb. "This device can be used to put a suggestion into the latent psychic's mind to prove whether or not they were the cause of the activity."

Several hands went up and they went down as soon as the speaker made a motion with his own hand. "It's a form of hypnotism and while I'm sure you would all like to see how this works, I'd rather not take any chances of any latent psychics in here. Mai?"

Mai had moved to sit at the desk where the computer was waiting ready for the presentation to begin. "Yasuhara-san, the lights," she said as she turned on the projector. "Once a human source is suspected, even if only one of the parties involved is suspected of causing it, all parties are gathered into a dark room for a suggestion to be placed. We actually have a video from that case and some faces have been blurred to protect their privacy."

"So how's the babysitting going?"a familiar voice echoed through the speaker's of Ayami's phone.

"Don't you have work to be doing Makoto?" Ayami replied as the baby started squirming and cranking. "C'mon, Gene, work with me here, I'm new at this."

"Sounds like it's going well, as for work, not really it's pretty quiet right now. Lin stepped out to run some errands so I'm here just making sure batteries and other equipment are running smoothly."

"Fun fact, college restrooms don't have baby changing tables." She managed to wipe down the infant and pulled out a new diaper.

"Considering most people don't plan to bring babies to class, I can understand why,"Makoto remarked dryly. "Mr. Meany and Mai are still in their lecture right?"

"Why do you call him that again? Oh crap! Ah!" But it was too late, as a golden stream shot through the air and landed on the young woman's shirt. "I forgot boys can spray…"

The baby seemed to smirk as Ayami cleaned him up and wrapped the clean diaper around him. "And you thought this was going to be easy."

"Oh shut up." She rolled her eyes as she placed Gene back in the stroller and grabbed her jacket. "I never said that and if I recall, you wanted to play babysitter first."

"Yeah, then I realized how long I'd be babysitting and babies are completely different from the kids I watch at camp." Ayami scowled at the phone. "Besides I have to leave for exams as soon as Lin gets back."A distant jingle could be heard in the background. "Speaking of, that's him, talk to you later Ayami, good luck with Gene and say 'hi' to Mr. Meany for me!"

The phone beeped signaling the end of the call. "She still didn't explain why she calls Davis-san 'Mr. Meany.'"

Beep. Beep.

Ayami looked down at her phone to see a text.

I called him that when I was seven because he was a jerk. I also said that he was going to marry Mai-san and have a million kagillion kids. I wasn't entirely wrong. ;p

"As you can see, the room had been completely boarded up but the chair moved from the center of the circle to the other side of the room." Mai flipped from the video of the chair to the picture of her and John's signatures on the boards. "The suggestion was not only a success, but it also proved that the haunting was caused by a human poltergeist. A fellow student of mine to be exact who had been struggling with some bullying issues and fitting in and truly wanted the old building to be haunted so that stress manifested in activity."

"Now if we back track to the question mentioned earlier," Yasuhara began adjusting his glasses. "Can people with psychic abilities be behind hauntings and it not be a hoax? Yes, as we've all just witnessed. However, the girl in question in this case was a latent psychic, when you have an active psychic it can go both ways."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?" A student in the front row asked. "I can understand how a latent psychic could unknowingly cause activity, but surely an active psychic causing activity would be doing it to frighten people or whatever other reason for a hoax."

"If everything were black and white, you would be correct," Naru answered as Mai set up the next set of videos and photos. "However, very few things are. An active psychic, especially a newly active psychic can cause poltergeists and not be aware it is them. Think of psychic abilities as a skill, something that the more you practice the more control you gain and sharper the skill you possess. When you learn to ride a bike, finding your balance can be easy one day then very difficult the next. The same is true for psychic abilities."

"For the sake of argument and what we actually have prepared for the presentation we will continue on the grounds that an active psychic can cause a hoax with their abilities," Mai decided, saving the students from further confusion. "We have dealt with several cases like this, but today we will focus on two. They both focus on hexes, which can be performed by anyone, however they are more powerful when performed by an active psychic."

"The first case was a high school in which multiple students and faculty were targeted," Naru explained. "It all centered around a student who had the ability to bend spoons and many were asking her to prove it."

"She had been verbally harassed and bullied for quite a while before she said that she would curse them all," Yasuhara added. "I was not there for this case but if I recall correctly the accidents the students and teachers faced happened shortly after the girl's outburst."

"That's right," Mai affirmed with a nod. "A vast amount of the accidents centered around people who had questioned and even harassed her about her ability to bend spoons, however there were still some accidents that happened to students who weren't involved. Several students who were seated at this specific desk," the screen flipped to show a picture of the seemingly ordinary desk, "had terrible accidents involving getting caught in a train door. What was interesting was only the first victim had a connection to the girl we mentioned earlier."

"Meaning the incidents were connected directly to the desk," Naru continued. "Upon further inspection of the desk we found this." The slide changed and showed a wooden doll with some writing on hit. "A hitogata designed to curse whoever sat at this specific desk. Our next step was to go through the school to the most active locations and search for these dolls. During this time, some of the activity began to focus on Mai and myself. Once all of the dolls were found we understood why, two of them had our names written on them. The castor didn't want the curse broken nor did they want to be found out."

"Just about all evidence pointed to the student who claimed she could bend spoons, but she had a difficult time trying to show her ability to us, so her being able to cast such a large scale curse was unlikely," Mai added, throwing a nod to her husband. "After he decided to do some research we found out that one of the teachers also could bend spoons and had dealt with something very similar to the student when she was a young girl. The curse was her twisted attempt at revenge and while she spent quite a bit of time and even stood up for the student, she ultimately set the student up to take the blame."

"This second case took place at an elementary school that had, at the time, unfortunately lost one their students due to an illness," Yasuhara began as the slide changed to show several hitogatas, though the writing on them was blurred significantly. "The school had already called upon another investigator, who unfortunately was a conman, but not just any ordinary conman. He possessed abilities of his own."

"You're a pretty happy baby when you want to be," Ayami commented as she walked around the hallway of the college with the boy in her arms. It had started to rain, otherwise she would have been walking him outside.

She held him up to a window as droplets splashed against the glass. He tried his best to reach out for them. "That's called rain, it's kind of like a bath but it comes from the sky," Ayami explained as he continued reaching for the window. "You have no idea what I'm even talking about, do you? Did Mama pack you any books? I guess that's something we can do."

She turned away from the window and headed for the stroller, earning a whine from the babe. "I know, you want to touch the window, but with my luck you'd start licking it and I'll never hear the end of it," Ayami muttered as she sorted through the items in the diaper bag. "Here we go." She pulled a book out and made a face. "Never mind, my English is not that great." She put it back and grabbed another one. "I guess we're gonna learn about colors and numbers."

Pushing the stroller over to a nearby chair, Ayami locked it in place and took a seat with the babe. She opened the book to the first page, "One red rose."

Gene blinked at the picture and Ayami turned the page. "Two orange books."

Blink.

"Three yellow stars."

Blink.

"Are children's books always this monotonous?"

Blink.

"You're enjoying it anyway?"

Blink.

The sitter heaved a sigh and flipped the page. "Four green buttons."

"As you can see there are many ways for a haunting to be caused by a human and not necessarily be a hoax," Yasuhara said flicking the lights on and adjusted his glasses. "We still have a bit of time left so we'll continue onto the different types of psychic abilities. We've briefly mentioned PK or psychokinesis earlier, a poltergeist caused by an overly stressed pubescent girl is an example of latent PK."

"PK is split into categories of its own," Naru continued. "ST, static targets, MT, moving targets, and LT living targets."

"ST would include spoon bending, while MT would refer to say rolling a die and willing a five to be rolled five times in a row," Mai explained, taking to sitting on the desk. "LT, would include affecting plants, healing, and animals, it's the rarest form of PK."

"Another ability is psychometry, or the ability to know previously unknown information about a person or event by simply touching an object," Naru continued. "It's similar to clairvoyance, however a bit more specific with it's trigger."

"We've found through years of research that psychic abilities needs some sort of trigger to 'activate,' if you will," Mai explained. "Triggers are more common with latent psychics, especially those who are becoming active psychics. Active psychics in general can be their own triggers by merely willing their abilities to work."

"Just about anything can be a trigger," Yasuhara added. "Emotional stress, trauma, touching certain objects, in some cases spirits can trigger a psychic's abilities. Think along the lines of a medium."

"But mediums are not the only ones who can have their abilities affect by spirits," Mai interrupted. "They can trigger clairvoyant visions for example."

"Weeee!" Ayami cheered as she threw up the infant into the air. Only slightly, of course, just enough to get the infant to giggle. "Yeah? You like that?"

The baby giggled as he was thrown into the air a few more times. "Man, babysitting is a workout-"

And that was how the young woman learned that you could really only jostle babies so much.

Blech!

"Of course." With a grimace on her face, she looked down at her spit-up stained jacket. She glanced back at the babe to see his toothless grin staring smugly back at her. "I'm starting to understand why parents blackmail their teenagers with baby pictures."

"There you two are!" A rather eager voice chimed from down the hallway. Ayami was once again holding Baby Gene while being much more conscious of any sudden upchucks. She turned around and as the babe saw the owner of the voice he immediately got excited and squirmed. "Did you miss me, Little Man?"

Practically leaping out of Ayami's arms, Gene reached for his mother and Mai happily took him. "I take it you didn't have any issues?" Naru asked as he and Yasuhara approached the ladies.

"Issues? No way! I told you that you could count on me!" Ayami said with a grin. Sure, there weren't any issues, but babysitting an actual baby is a lot harder than I thought,she told herself.

"Excellent," Naru replied with a pleased look on his face. "If that's the case, would you be interested in watching Gene Saturday night? Mai and I have tickets to a play." At those words the young woman's eyes went wide.

"I-uh-"

"Calm down, Ayami," Mai said with a roll of her eyes. "He's just kidding. Of course, if you are interested in babysitting more often, we'd be happy to have you."

"I'm sure Kiko wouldn't mind if you wanted to watch Hiroshi once in a while too," Yasuhara added.

"I-well-I-" the young woman stammered, unsure of what to say. She truly wasn't expecting to become the team's personal babysitter, but that's what it looked like she was becoming.

"Would you look at that?" Mai said in an amused tone. As if to answer Ayami's internal question of what she should do, Baby Gene started to reach for her. "I think Gene had a good time."

Ayami took the babe out of his mother's arms and gave him a look as he blew a spit bubble. "Maybe hanging out with you more won't be so bad," she said with a smirk, then looked at the parents. "I think I need a little more time before date night sitting. Maybe some more time with him in the office?"

"That sounds like a perfect idea!" Mai grinned. "We also have two more lectures coming up next month. Think you can watch him then too?"

"I think so."

"Oh yeah, that lecture we're going further about demonic possession and affects on spiritualists," Yasuhara said crossing his arms in thought. "We'll need John, Monk or Ayako, Kiko probably would be a good idea to have, maybe even Madoka or Lin. Ayami can watch the kids for the five hour lecture."

Ayami's eyes went wide again and her face grew pale. Mai rolled her eyes and gave the man a gentle nudge.

"He's kidding, Ayami, for the most part."

That really didn't make her feel any better.

I thought I would do another chapter on Mai and Naru's lectures. This time including Yasuhara and Ayami because, who else would watch Baby Gene? Lol hope you enjoyed and leave a review. Thanks!