Since we're finally getting some interaction between the main characters I think I should give character profiles to explain the personality choices I made. I threw the Harry Potter epilogue out the window and created a character I think Harry could become after the last book.
He likes to think he's mellow and completely recovered from his childhood trauma but he's not. He is very sensitive to the well-being of children to the point of being too doting on people only a few years younger than himself (cough cough Kuroda). He has a subconscious distrust of other adults' intentions towards children, and he's as insecure about his usefulness as he is prideful of his Runemaster status. He's also hiding a very big inner mother hen.
I really like the characters of Ghost Hunt- in particular, Monk and John, but the principal totally screwed up hiring them all separately. They all feel pitted against each other, so the most competitive (Monk, Ayako, and Masako) won't be making friends for the first case. That said, John is a cinnamon roll and I could see him getting clingy with someone who was also an English-speaking outsider.
Kuroda is ridiculous (though I'll admit she grew on me a little when I was writing her). She's the epitome of obnoxious teenage girl- loud, needy, insecure and riddled with hormones. I'm not gonna throw her into traffic, but don't mix Harry's affection with my own.
The sun was high in the sky when Harry trot up to the old school house. He was fed and washed and ready to really start working on his case.
Shibuya's van was already parked on the curb and a small group of people were standing at the back of it. Harry recognized Shibuya and Taniyama, but the other three were strangers. A towering man with long hair that reminded him of Charlie Weasley, a redheaded woman wearing a sneer, and a blond boy about Taniyama's size.
"Oh, hello Harry!" Taniyama chirped as he walked over to the group hesitantly. None of them looked particularly friendly, a protest?
"Good morning Taniyama, Shibuya." He smiled to both of them, and received a bubbly grin and a dignified blink respectively.
"May I help you?" He asked the strange three, keeping his smile in place. It was only returned by the blond.
"These three are claiming to be spiritualists hired by the principal to solve the case." Shibuya explained and the two older ones bristled.
"'Claiming'? You just saw the principal yourself! If anyone is scamming people around here, it's the teenager in the back of a van." The man growled pointedly, while the redhead turned her attention on Harry.
"Another little boy? Should I be concerned over the principal's true intentions?" She snickered. Harry gave her an unimpressed look.
"I'm nineteen. Should I be concerned that's your immediate conclusion?"
"I'm nineteen as well! My name's John Brown." The blond bounced forward eagerly, smothering whatever barb the redhead delivered.
Brown's Japanese sounded a bit off, Harry couldn't place it. It might have been the very heavy Australian accent muddling his words. From the twitching lips around him, the others were picking up on it too. Harry shook the blond's hand and switched to English, the runemaster had appreciated bilingual locals a great deal when he first started traveling.
"Pleased to meet you, my name is Harry Potter." Harry was rewarded when Brown's smile widened even further.
"The pleasure is all mine. If I may, are you British? You have a very convincing Japanese accent."
"Thank you. And yes, I am. You're Australian, right? I've been there a few times, the heat was more than I'm used to but the people are wonderful." Harry had enchanted a few wizards' manors to be resistant to the weather and remain relatively cool in temperature there. He understood the desire for more permanent runes, the sweltering deserts, and deadly wildlife had been overwhelming the farther he got from the cities.
"Thank you very much, I'm proud of my home. Oh, I'm an exorcist by the way. That's why I was hired."
"Care to share with the class?" The woman sniped, eyes narrowed suspiciously as she studied their expressions.
Harry's smile faltered. "An exorcist, huh? You're the first I've met, I look forward to watching you later. I'm a runemaster, not very spiritual but I believe I was selected for my popularity." He spoke deliberately in Japanese but completely ignored the woman besides.
Brown didn't seem to mind, though his words were slower than before. "I hope to live up to your expectations! I've met runemasters before, but never one so young. You must be very talented."
Harry laughed. "Certainly not as talented as a nineteen year old priest, that's a lot more than just honing powers and memorizing runes."
"A runemaster? This principal's lucky he called me! He has no idea what he's doing if he hired a runemaster to chase out spirits." The man guffawed and caught his eye with a smug grin.
"Hoshou Takigawa by the way, I'm a Buddhist monk."
Harry had never seen a monk that looked like this man before. He had earrings and a bomber jacket and none of the quiet deliberance Harry expected.
"And I'm Ayako Matsuzaki, the shrine maiden." The redhead added proudly, as if her earlier remarks hadn't already been her failed first impression. He opted not to comment, she was itching for a fight.
"I see." Harry hummed coolly, he didn't bother introducing himself.
The group drifted into a tense silence as they shuffled into the schoolhouse together.
Harry distracted himself from the awkwardness by busying himself with the many disruption runes lying about.
None of them had been touched since he placed them on the ground, and every single one still contained full power. There had been nothing to latch on to besides the schoolhouse itself, but Harry had been careful not to pin them to the floorboards for that reason.
"Watch your step." He warned the others walking past him before moving on to his triad set by the bottom of the stairs.
"Looks like you were busy." The monk whistled, poking his head into every room curiously.
"Did you detect anything?" Shibuya asked, computer tucked under one arm and already heading to his room full of other computers.
"Nothing was set off down here." Harry confirmed with a sigh, brushing a hand lightly over the triad. It would be a pain diffusing all the disruption runes, he had hoped even if nothing was detected, something might have drained them while he was gone.
"That's because you're a runemaster. Of course you won't be able to catch any spirits." Matsuzaki sniffed, stepping delicately across the floor and following Shibuya to his room.
"Even so, this is very impressive, Potter!" Brown admired, also following Matsuzaki and Shibuya. "I know it takes a great deal of power and patience to make these many runes in such a short period of time."
Harry straightened out and grinned. "It's not that impressive, most of them are only single runes. But thank you. And please call me Harry."
He went with Brown up the stairs to check on his other runes. "Then you must call me John as well." The exorcist returned warmly.
"John." Harry agreed, and once he reached the second floor he began surveying the other runes.
The disruption runes were once again completely untouched, and his detection glyphs were finally ringing in his ear, the brief impressions of three male humans and two female humans flashing before him. It was just detecting these people and no one else.
"Still nothing." Harry huffed, allowing Taniyama and Takigawa to push ahead and into Shibuya's room.
"So we have an exorcist, an apostate monk, a ghost hunter, and a runemaster. Obviously this boneheaded principal doesn't have much faith in my unique cleansing abilities. Hmph, just watch. I'm going to cleanse this entire place myself." Matsuzaki stormed down the hall after she'd gotten a good look at Shibuya's tech, strutting into every empty room like she'd chase a ghost out with her impatience alone.
Not wanting to be outmatched, Takigawa ducked out of the room after her. "I'm going to do a walk-through. See you later."
Harry turned his attention back to the ground, a discouraging amount of diffusing awaited him. At least he'd learned more for it. He hadn't seen any proof of either human or spiritual interference over the school house for the past two days. For a case that managed to attract so many specialists, it looked like the result of simple rumors.
Harry bent and snatched a rune from the floor. He could feel the feeble power wash over him, a breath closer to chaos than he was before. Harry eyed the Hagalaz scrawled on the paper and carefully ripped the rune in half. The power fizzled and died, its effects neutralized.
The runemaster was glad he'd decided on weak runes, ripping was the quickest way to go about diffusing them, but if it was layered or pinned tight the rune would need to be carefully manipulated.
Harry stuffed the ruined rune into his pocket and reached for another one when a screech burst from down the hall.
"That sounds like Ayako!" John gasped, and Harry was already racing toward the noise, blindly taking corners. He didn't bother avoiding the runes littering the ground.
Harry skid to a halt before double doors shut tight, he could hear the wood splinter and groan underneath Matsuzaki's kicking and scratching but the doors wouldn't budge.
"Are you okay?" Harry demanded, yanking the door handle as hard as he could. The door groaned but remained stuck fast.
"Get me out! I'm trapped!" Matsuzaki wailed, but stopped beating on the door.
"Stand back, I'm going to kick the door down!" Takigawa shouted, arriving breathlessly before the commotion.
"Well hurry up and do it!" Matsuzaki growled.
Harry stepped away, the monk dwarfed him by far and would be able to break the door much quicker with physical strength alone. What had trapped the Matsuzaki in there to begin with? Had the spirit shown itself? He brushed his magic over his detection glyph once more, and this time they rang back with a report that didn't match the room's living occupants.
Four human men and three human women, one more woman than before.
The door snapped back with a thunderous crack and Matsuzaki burst from the classroom, her hair disheveled and her face blotchy.
"Are you hurt?" Harry pulled himself from his discovery, holding the redhead steady as she shook and shuffled like a wild horse about to bolt.
"Nothing touched me, let go. I'm fine." She stammered unsteadily, and a quick inspection confirmed it. Not a scratch or scrape besides the skin on her knuckles.
Takigawa led them into Shibuya's classroom and sat Matsuzaki down at the table with an air of professionalism. Harry supposed he often took the role of comforter during his cases, having such a towering form.
Matsuzaki took a deep, steadying breath and visibly calmed.
"I was looking around the classroom and suddenly the door slammed shut." She began softly.
"There's someone here." Harry interrupted, drawing their attention.
"My glyph detected a human woman just now."
"Well I should hope so." Matsuzaki snapped, gesturing to both Taniyama and herself. "As there are human women present."
Harry scowled. "I meant besides us. I counted one more person here." Shibuya and John's serious expressions soothed his ruffled pride a bit.
"That might be me." A girl spoke from outside the room and everyone spun around to see a blank-faced Japanese girl in a colorful kimono.
"Ghost!" Taniyama cried, clinging to her employer for protection.
"Relax, Mai. She's human. Masako Hara is a spirit medium." He sighed in a long-suffering manner.
The girl strode confidently into the room on wooden sandals, matching Shibuya's gaze.
"Oh, another one?" Taniyama mumbled under Takigawa's loud huff.
"Fantastic, now they're calling in a TV star?"
Matsuzaki leapt from her chair. "This is ridiculous, it's easy to fake results on television. The only reason she gets ratings is because she's pretty and wears that silly kimono."
Hara's face finally shifted to one of irritation as she blew her way past Matsuzaki's temper and made her way to Shibuya.
"Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't remember meeting you before." Their stares were oddly intense, did they know each other from something?
"Yes, we've never met. But your reputation precedes you."
Harry didn't know either of them very well, but Hara looked as though she didn't believe him. "Right."
Then, unexpectedly, she turned her attention on the runemaster. "If that glyph by the stairs is your work than you should also know there are no spirits present."
Everyone in the room quieted and listened for his response, tense and ready to disagree. It was clear Hara was the only one who thought the place wasn't haunted.
Harry blinked under the combined scrutiny of the spiritualists and squared his shoulders. It's true, he hadn't detected a single thing over the last two days, and nothing had tripped his runes, but was he confident enough to close the case already?
"I don't believe I have enough experience to rule out everything just yet. But if I have missed something, it's not common like a haunting or possession." He answered truthfully and immediately received two disgusted looks from the shrine maiden and monk.
"Well then I'm glad the principal wizened up before he settled on a runemaster of all things." Matsuzaki bit out. "In my professional opinion as a shrine maiden, there is a haunting here. I believe we're dealing with an earth-bound spirit."
"I believe it's a residual haunting, a traumatic event must have happened in this building in the past." Takigawa corrected.
"So you mean like someone was murdered here and they have to eternity searching the halls for their killer?" Taniyama asked eagerly and Harry tuned the rest of their conversation out.
It stung that three coworkers immediately tossed out his opinion, but he held to it. Harry was inexperienced and spiritualism wasn't his speciality, but he'd dealt with low-grade ghosts and spirits before and he didn't see any evidence that they were present in the building.
"John," Shibuya asked, drawing Harry's attention. "What do you think?"
Harry made sure not to look at the exorcist, he wouldn't pressure John into agreeing like the others had tried with him.
"Well to be honest, I'm not sure." John admitted. "But, usually a haunting does originate with the ghost or spirit occupying the structure."
He didn't hold anything against John or Shibuya, but he would much rather go back to diffusing the runes before he gathered enough disruption to get knocked into a wall.
Before Harry could edge his way to the door however, Matsuzaki beat him to it, stalking out with the impatience Harry was beginning to expect.
"I'm getting rid of this thing as soon as I get back, I don't know how long I can put up with you people."
She stopped abruptly at the door, and Harry leaned over to see a girl blocking her way. Harry tugged on his detection glyph again and found there was another human female in the building. So she wasn't a ghost.
"I wouldn't be so confident in your abilities. The spirit that haunts this site is incredibly powerful." The girl growled, but Matsuzaki was clearly done and shoved the girl into the door frame to get by.
The girl slipped down the frame and onto the floor like a wilted flower without another word.
"Kuroda!" Taniyama gasped, and Harry followed her to kneel at the girl's side.
"The spirit attacked me." She explained hoarsely.
"Are you injured?" He asked for the second time that day.
The girl looked at him and jolted, ram-rod straight against the frame. "You! You're a spiritualist too?"
Had they met? Harry frowned and pulled back to look at her for a moment. He didn't recognize her face at all, but those glasses...Oh! That girl he'd bumped into the night before. So she was a friend of Taniyama's?
"I'm not, but the principal hired me to help. Do you need medical attention?" Harry pressed, she was looking a little flushed, a fever maybe?
"I was walking down the hallway when suddenly my hair was yanked backward with amazing force, when I tried to flee it started strangling me." Kuroda didn't really answer his question, too caught up in storytelling, but Harry took what he could.
He carefully prodded around her scalp for tearing or bald spots, but wearing braids could protect against injuries like that unless the force was brutal. He thumbed over her neck too, but there was nothing to find. There wasn't any swelling and the skin wasn't even irritated. The only pinkness was centered solely on her cheeks. Was he making her uncomfortable again?
"You're fine." Harry comforted, and backed off so Taniyama could help the girl up.
"When did this happen?" Shibuya asked.
"A few minutes ago, on the second floor hallway." Harry tried not to let his doubt show on his face. There was no damage to backup her claims and though he knew spiritual injuries were unpredictable, there was no way such a violent and physical spirit could get past his detection.
"That's false, there are no spirits here." Hara had no such hesitations calling Kuroda out, but the girl was just as prepared to passionately argue her case.
"You said this happened on the second floor hallway?" Shibuya turned around and turned on his wall of monitors. They bathed the room in blue light before switching to footage from different rooms and angles throughout the school house.
Harry caught movement in the corner screen and saw Kuroda walk into the building and up the stairs from what must've been a few minutes ago. Then the single monitor crashed and displayed black and white noise instead.
"Did the camera break?" It wasn't supposed to do that, right?
"No, but it is quite strange. When a spirit becomes active electronic equipment will often malfunction, but here I'm not so sure. Is it a spirit or EM interference?" Harry couldn't answer the teenager's musings. He wasn't sure what the difference was.
"It's quite obviously a spirit. Interference doesn't cause someone to be attacked." Kuroda snarled, she looked completely different than the nervous girl he'd bumped into earlier.
"But Masako said there was no spirits here." Taniyama protested.
Kuroda gave a fearsome glare. "Well let's just say that I'm a little skeptical about her." She made no show of hiding her anger, turning to direct her glare at the medium.
"It's common for female mediums to be either exactly right or way off base. Even if she can't sense any spirits now doesn't mean the haunting isn't active. If what you say is true then it's possible that the spirit that inhabits this place is very intuned with your wavelength." Shibuya told her, and Kuroda relaxed enough for a gleeful smile to perch on her face.
That alone struck Harry as suspicious. If she were truly haunted and possessed by this spirit she should know it's nothing to be prideful over. Even Quirrell, who adored his master, was tortured and eventually killed by their connection. Harry rubbed against the chill that crept down his arms and shifted his thoughts away. He needed to go rip up his other runes, that would make for a good distraction.
Harry began right where he stood, and started plucking the runes out of the corners of the room and tearing them in half before stuffing them in his pocket.
It tickled a little to feel his own magic brush over him just to be wiped away when he destroyed the rune, but he could feel some remain like a cobweb barely clinging to his skin. The runes he stepped on to get to Matsuzaki were doing their job admirably, layering on top of each other and focusing on him instead of shifting whenever he moved. Harry should probably get away from the table corners soon.
"Are you going to destroy every single rune you made yesterday?" Taniyama asked skeptically, watching as he ripped three more and kneeled to get to one that fluttered under the table.
"Yeah, losing track of disruption runes in a condemned building would be pretty irresponsible." Harry mumbled, finishing the final Hagalaz in the room.
"These are all disruption runes? Do you want to bring the building down on us?" Takigawa yelped, eyeing the ceiling as though it would crumble at any second.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Relax, they're very weak and I scattered them just in case. Even if you gathered every single one and nailed it to the roof the worst thing that would happen would be shingles falling off."
Harry moved to the hallway and picked up another two.
"Do you need any help? I have many abilities of my own." Kuroda offered loudly, deafening the crinkle of paper being torn in half.
"They're weak enough that you don't need any abilities to diffuse them, but they are still disruption runes. Are you sure?" Harry cautioned, pausing to make eye contact. "They could still affect you if you aren't quick enough."
"I'm quick." She defended, and grabbed a rune of her own down the hall. Harry was on her in a second and snatched it away.
"Don't pick these up until you know what you're doing." Harry scolded, smoothing out the crumpled rune and showing her the symbol.
"You see this Hagalaz? You need to make sure you rip it in half, if it's just a corner than it might not work." He ripped it in half and handed her the two strips of paper.
"Got it?"
Kuroda nodded firmly and picked up two more, under his watchful gaze she tore the two papers in half and gave it to him to inspect. Harry smoothed out the paper and compared the four strips. They were a little uneven but clearly halved. Harry nodded.
"Good, just make sure you rip up every single one you touch before you stop."
Harry turned away from her and took the other side of the hallway.
With an extra hand he finished the first floor quickly and had to put the destroyed runes inside a dusty wastebin to burn later, they wouldn't fit in his pockets anymore.
He didn't know what riled Kuroda so much when it came to spirits but she was a likeable person besides. She worked hard and had no qualms crawling under desks and brushing past spider webs to find runes that fell a little farther than intended. The girl was also a great deal quieter when she had a task it seems, her stories shortened significantly anyways.
When Harry completed his side of the first floor, he went to find Kuroda. Every room he peeked into during his search was clear of runes until he came to the very back of the school house.
Kuroda was kneeling beside a rune that was only missing a small portion of paper on one side, not enough to destroy it. She was chewing on her lip furiously and hovering as though she could fix it on force of will alone.
"Here, I'll destroy it." Harry sighed and she nearly hopped a foot in the air, eyes wide.
"N-no, I've got this! I just need to...rip it again?"
Harry smoothed a hand over the rune, it pulsed back almost as bright as before, almost. The two strips of paper still held power. Harry shook his head.
"Not this one, it needs to be drained. Where's the other piece?"
Kuroda pulled out several tiny fragments of paper from her pocket and dumped them on the nearly whole rune. Her face was red again.
Harry didn't comment, he laid his hand flat against the pile and began tugging on the magic swirling inside. Kuroda twitched, she might have been able to feel it if the rune already latched on to her. Harry took a deep breath and carefully unravelled the rune.
It sparked and spit weakly at him, but it was his own magic and Harry knew how to handle it before it bit. He pulled it free and felt the magic lose focus and melt away into the air, shapeless.
"There." Harry murmured, and pocketed the pieces.
"How did you do that?" Kuroda demanded as they both straightened out and dusted off their filthy clothes.
"I'm a runemaster, it's my job." Harry replied, peeking into the last two rooms to make sure no other runes were on the floor.
"I-I've never heard of runes before, but it looks very impressive. I'm a psychic, you know. So I can sense that you're a powerful person." She blustered and Harry hid his doubt. He certainly hadn't felt any psychic energy brushing against his magic, but he wouldn't rile her up just as she'd finally calmed down.
"Thank you for your help, it made things go much faster. You should go get some lunch or something, you've done enough today." Harry nudged, but the girl shook her head vehemently.
"I saw the second floor, there are still plenty of runes left I can help with, I'll stay."
Harry looked over her dirty clothes and smudged arms, he wasn't comfortable making her do more. It was a Saturday, she should be hanging out with her friends, not lurking in an abandoned building.
"You've done more than enough, you're not even being payed for it. Go relax." He insisted but she only tensed again, fists clenched.
"I can do it! It was just one mistake!"
"Calm down, this isn't a punishment." Harry soothed, she was so high-strung. "If you truly want to keep ripping up runes, you can. But it's even dirtier upstairs."
The fire in Kuroda's eyes cooled, and she looked down at herself as though she just noticed how stained her skirt was. "Oh."
Tantrum averted, Harry let her decide for herself and hopped up the stairs. He could still feel the runes he'd touched earlier clinging to him, he'd handle that hallway first.
Harry destroyed the runes two at a time, making his way into the first classroom on the floor. He'd stepped on these on his way to Matsuzaki, he felt the tiniest bit lighter after tearing them in half.
"M-my name is Naoko Kuroda, by the way." Kuroda piped from the stairs, had she been watching him?
When Harry registered what she said he flushed. He'd just worked the girl for an hour and a half and he hadn't even introduced himself!
He gave a quick bow, face burning. "Pleased to meet you, I'm Harry Potter."
She smiled and brushed past him to pick up a few runes of her own. She made a show of slowly ripping them in clean halves and then moved to cover the room he'd been heading toward.
They drifted into an amicable silence, checking on each other every now and then after finishing a room. Nothing happened though, the doors stayed open and his detection glyph remained steady. Kuroda may hate him for it, but he was beginning to believe Hara.
By the time Harry and Kuroda finished neutralizing all the disruption runes, Matsuzaki had returned in full shrine maiden garb. In tow were the principal and vice-principal.
She'd set up a small altar filled with things Harry didn't recognize, and was completing some sort of ritual.
Harry darted to the back where the others were watching quietly and dumped the rest of the ruined runes into the wastebin.
"Hey Potter, come to watch too? She's finishing up." Takigawa whispered.
"What is she doing?" Harry had to ask, feeling a bit embarrassed.
"A Shinto exorcism." Taniyama chirped, not tearing her eyes away from the strange paper mop Matsuzaki was rhythmically flicking from side to side.
Her chanting came to a stop and she smiled proudly to the two men behind her. "That's it, now you'll have nothing to worry about."
The three chatted together as they turned around and started heading for the door.
Takigawa stretched and yawned beside him, nearly smacking Harry in the head with his elbow. "She's finally done." He groaned.
Harry checked on his detection glyph sitting next to the alter. Seven human men and four human women, no spirits.
A jarring snap tore him from his thoughts, the windows on the front door were filled with spiderweb cracks. Just as suddenly, the windows completely shattered, spraying Matsuzaki and the two men with jagged shards of glass.
Harry managed to catch the vice-principal before he crashed to the ground but could only soften the fall, he wasn't strong enough to support him. The harsh weight on his legs sent a vicious spike to his hip, and Harry clenched his fingers into the vice-principal's suit. The man moaned as he slumped on the ground and the other two weren't much better.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked, focusing on the vice-principal since Matsuzaki appeared miraculously untouched, if startled, and Takigawa was already hovering over the principal.
"I-I think so." He hissed, but Harry could already see where the shards had dug their way under his skin.
Reminiscent of Lin, his face was dripping with blood from a wound on his scalp, and his suit was staining with blood from his hands and neck. Harry tilted the man's head back to look closely at the glass sticking out of his throat like splinters. Nothing looked too big, and nothing caught his jugular vein, though he didn't dare remove one.
"Stay still." He advised, brushing glass off the carpet before laying the man fully on the ground. He moved on to the vice-principal's hands, and there were a few slashes across one wrist, but nothing deep. He tugged out the shards above his wrist and tied his arm tight with the man's tie just in case. He wouldn't bleed out, those cuts only killed people on television, but he shouldn't lose any more blood if those neck wounds became more serious.
"I'm calling an ambulance, how is the vice-principal?" John asked shakily, dialing even as he spoke.
"I'm fine." The man insisted, but Harry ignored him.
"I can't find anything life-threatening but he needs someone to look at his neck very soon."
John nodded bravely and turned to speak to the operator on the phone.
The ambulance came in record time, a small-town benefit, and the two men were loaded quickly. Within ten minutes they were back inside the building, pale and confused.
The pensive silence was shattered quickly, however, when Harry, Shibuya, Takigawa, Taniyama, and John reached the other two in Shibuya's classroom.
"Yes there are! I was nearly killed by one of them earlier today!" Kuroda roared to Matsuzaki, the three spiritualists were apparently already arguing again.
"Maybe it was a coincidence." John offered softly, carefully looking away from the volatile schoolgirl.
"Or there's something here." Takigawa put in, "Something too strong for Ayako to drive away."
"My glyph didn't pick up any spirits, and nothing with that much physical influence could hide from it." Harry told them both, and to his surprise, Shibuya backed him up.
"There would be more conclusive readings on my equipment as well."
So Shibuya was hedging the fence on an actual spiritual presence too, maybe it really was just coincidence and gossip.
"Hey!" Taniyama called, "That room didn't have a chair in the middle of it yesterday, did it?"
Harry looked at the monitor she was studying, there was a single wooden chair sitting in front of the camera. It hadn't been there when he and Kuroda had been cleaning up the runes, all the smaller furniture upstairs had been pushed up against the walls for more room for construction.
"That's one of the classrooms on the second floor." Shibuya noted, and Taniyama nodded.
"I set the camera up in there yesterday, just like you told me to. I swear it wasn't there."
"It wasn't there when I went up earlier either." Harry hummed, glancing at Kuroda.
"Did you move it?"
She shook her head, anticipation flashing in her glasses.
Shibuya stared at both of them for a moment, and Harry tried not to feel too defensive. He didn't move the chair and he wasn't a liar. Without another word, the teenager turned and rewound the tape to right after Matsuzaki's exorcism.
As the audio played the muffled crash of glass and screams, the chair slid across the floor in jerky jolts until it sat before the camera.
A chill crawled up Harry's back. How had his glyph not picked up on that? If the spirit was capable of knocking things around why hadn't it been exacerbated by his disruption runes? It only happened afterward, and still his triad rang back clean.
"It looks to me like a poltergeist." Kuroda announced, arms crossed and confident.
"A poltergeist?" Taniyama parroted slowly, more than enough for the long-winded girl to continue.
"It's a German word dating back four centuries that means "noisy ghost". They are manifestations that can influence and move objects at will." She explained seriously.
"That is correct," Shibuya acknowledged. "But I don't think that's what we're dealing with. Quite often objects that are manipulated by a poltergeist will feel warm to the touch, if we look at our thermographic image we can see the chair is not radiating heat." He pressed a button and the monitor was a range of blues coloring the chair and the walls behind it. Harry didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but he supposed the ultimate conclusion was that the chair wasn't warm.
"You can tell the temperature with a camera?" Harry asked, how did that even work?
"It's a special kind of lense." Taniyama explained, and the runemaster nodded thankfully. He still didn't know how a lense could sense temperature, but he supposed it was possible.
"But don't forget Tisane's criteria." John pointed out, and this time Taniyama didn't know what the priest was talking about.
"Who's that?"
"E. Tisane; he's a French policeman who was the first one to classify poltergeists. Throwing objects, strange noises, fires, doors closing by themselves, and so on. There are nine different criteria in all and so far we've seen a number of them in sight. We have doors closing on their own, inanimate objects moving, and glass breaking, which makes up three of the nine criteria." Shibuya listed expertly, even though Harry had known the criteria he certainly hadn't memorized all that other information.
"But what about Kuroda getting attacked?" Taniyama asked cluelessly, and opened up the fight once more. No one hesitated to jump right back in.
"I'm afraid it was just her imagination." Hara stated firmly, and Kuroda went on the offense.
"Stop playing games with me! Why can't you admit this place is haunted?" She barked, following Hara out of the room like she was itching to attack.
"Alright then," Hara sighed in a very put-upon fashion. "I'll try once more. I will sense them if there are any spirits here." And with that, she trod upstairs on wooden sandals to look for spirits.
"If we truly are dealing with a spirit here and Masako can't sense it, that would be quite a shock." John mumbled after her.
"There's no evidence suggesting there is one." Shibuya countered, and Harry nodded in agreement.
"No actual spirits have been sensed by anyone the entire time we've been here, it's all just been accidents."
"I've been sensing spirits here for years!" Kuroda whirled on him in an instant, face beet-red. Harry didn't appreciate being yelled at, but she continued before he could form a retort.
"You're just listening to her b-because she's pretty!" The tiniest tremor in her voice was the only sign she was feeling anything more than fury, and Harry tacked on a calming expression didn't match his panic in the slightest.
"I understand that, and perhaps you're seeing a spirit that has only attached itself to you, like Shibuya said earlier. But we're here to exorcise the school house and there isn't any sign something's haunting this building. And I'm not just listening to Hara, my glyph is supposed to detect any physical manifestations and hasn't found anything even with all this movement." Harry rambled, and was saved from Kuroda's response when the ceiling began to crackle.
The wallpaper warped and the supports cracked and splintered loudly.
"Creaking noises." Takigawa whispered, and Taniyama glanced at him, eyes wide with panic.
"Don't ghosts make sounds like that?" She whimpered.
The noises grew louder and louder until Hara's distant scream flew through the air followed by a nauseating thud.
"It's Masako! Someone call an ambulance!" John shouted, staring into a monitor with horror in his blue eyes.
"The portion of the Eastern wall that had been demolished was boarded up with weak plywood and was by no means structurally sound. She must've leaned on it, causing it to break under her weight. Miss Hara herself said it was an accident." Shibuya briefed the others calmly.
Harry already the medium's take on it, he'd been with Hara and Shibuya when the ambulance came.
"I was just being careless. There are no spirits inside." She had rasped, determined to put people in her corner while she was gone. Hara didn't have to, Harry was well on his way to calling this case a fake and moving on, it was only an exercise in stamina so far and he hadn't learned anything new.
"We can't deny it anymore, there's obviously a force here." Matsuzaki said, and Harry frowned at her in bewilderment.
"Didn't you just hear what Shibuya said? It was a complete accident that Hara fell."
"But accidents keep happening here, that's why they say it's haunted!" Taniyama snapped back.
Shibuya slanted a warning look her way. "That maybe true, but there are simply not enough readings on the equipment to prove it."
"There aren't any temperature fluctuations, no ionic polarization, and the EMF readings are normal. The proof just isn't there." He bulldozed.
"But Ayako was trapped in that room and I was attacked upstairs!" Kuroda rallied. "Something also moved the chair, broke the glass, and erased the video!"
"Like I said, I'm still not convinced." Shibuya declared, but Harry paused.
"How did you know about Ayako being trapped in that room?" He asked Kuroda suspiciously.
"W-what?"
"My glyph said there were only three women in the building while she was in there, and the other one was Hara."
Kuroda looked away sharply, clenching a dirty sleeve. "I pieced it together myself. Shibuya listed it as one of the criteria met and Ayako has been hinting to it since I got here." Those were both true, but Harry didn't believe her. He didn't really know what he was accusing her of, but she found out another way.
Poor Harry's not very useful during this case but I suppose he's better than Masako. She must feel crappy laid up in a strange hospital the same day she gets there.
Oh my god, it was so hard to get Tisane's name! I have no idea where the author found him, I had to look over the Ghost Hunt sub to figure out how to spell his name, he isn't listed anywhere online.
Someone asked why Harry can speak Japanese. He's had two years of traveling, and while translation spells are handy, he learned the languages of his favorite countries as a precaution. Wouldn't want the spell to end mid-sentence, right?
Thanks for the reviews! You guys are great!