Chapter 2 - You Might Fall…
Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt, if I did the series would never have ended and Mai and Naru would have little paranormal grandbabies for Martin and Luella running around by now.
Author's Note: So as you read the next installments, keep in mind Naru might seem a bit OOC at times here, but take into consideration the sequence of events in this version I am presenting you. I fully believe the glimpses we see of Naru's kindness and his emotional intelligence in the anime and print versions would be more evident earlier if some events were re-arranged or altered altogether. Edited: 9/25
The crackling of ozone in the blue-tinged air was the only sound left in the audiovisual classroom besides the steady breathing of the two unconscious teenagers on the floor near the door or the room. Neither of them aware as the boy shifted slightly to cradle the girl almost tenderly in his arms as she unknowingly nestled closer to him and smiled softly, both of their minds occupied by their sudden visit to the astral plane.
Mai was the first of the two that became aware of their surroundings, and the position they were in when she woke up and she shrieked as she tumbled off of the still unconscious form of the boy she had just met. The movement and noise caused by Mai's reaction jolted into Shibuya-san as he also awoke and became aware of their new surroundings.
They were on a seemingly endless plane of darkness; the twinkling foxfires that drifted lazily through the area provided the only illumination available to the two as they stared wide-eyed around them. The drifting foxfires glowed with a soft blue hue that was familiar to both teenagers for very different reasons seemed to emanate slight warmth that brought comfort to the two as they took in their surroundings.
A familiar voice with an affinity for mischief spoke from the darkness surrounding them, "Well, well little brother. This was fast even for you." Shibuya-san glanced around sharply as he began to search for the location of the voice that was a duplicate of his own in every aspect but tone. As Shibuya-san looked around them, a ghostly pale figure came striding out of the darkness towards the two, the newcomer's visage was a replica of the other boys, exact in detail other than the expression on his own beautiful face. Mai stared in wonder as she took in the sight of two identical boys in front of her, understanding of the relationship between the two falling into place within her mind, but not of where they were yet, as she frowned.
"Eugene," Shibuya-san breathed out, sounding almost desperate as he fell to his knees in front of the other boy, "Eu… Eugene…Gene! Where have you been? I saw it happen, the green flash… and I couldn't reach you! Gene you stupid medium answer me!" Shibuya-san ranted, forgetting about the feminine audience momentarily in his excited anguish at meeting his missing brother, his cold calm façade slipping to allow him to show true emotion.
Mai, momentarily forgotten off to the side, noticed the carbon copy Shibuya-san, named Gene she assumed from the first one's address towards him, had a slightly ethereal glow surrounding him, making him appear brighter than his replica. She watched the two with interest as the one now known as Gene, copied Shibuya-san's posture, kneeling and embracing his brother with a nearly inaudible sob, making Mai turn her head in embarrassment at witnessing such an emotional reunion unintentionally.
As Gene embraced his younger twin brother, he couldn't control the sob of relief. He was so glad that Oliver found him; so glad Oliver found her. He had been so sleepy and he couldn't reach Oliver and could barely stay awake even on the astral plane until a few weeks ago. Gene knew that must have been when Oliver arrived in Japan to search for him, but even then he couldn't activate their telepathic connection, so Gene had searched for someone to help with no luck. As a medium during his lifetime, and even in his own death, he could communicate with other spirits so he even tried to find one who could connect with Oliver with no luck. But Oliver, the brilliant, obstinate, idiot scientist, genius that he was, found an untrained astral walker by sheer accident and accidentally transported them both to him! He could kiss this girl, or better yet he should get Noll to kiss her instead, he thought, grinning internally. Inner monologue done, Gene pulled back slightly from Oliver, and gazed at him in bemused wonder before saying, "So Noll, it's been a while."
The flippant answer from his twin cleared the anguish from his eyes in an instant, and Shibuya-san, or Noll as the other twin called him snapped, "You're a perfect medium. I know you are stupid but even you should be able to find a way to talk to us stupid medium or not." Gene chuckled seeing his twin finally snapping back into some semblance of his usual personality, and shrugged helplessly before replying, "I tried. I was asleep most of the time since the….incident. When you reached Japan I became more aware, but even then I couldn't reach you no matter how much I tried, so I started following you around hoping you'd find a way to hear me. And you did Noll! You found her! This girl here….hey beautiful, what's your name?" he said turning to her, and apologized, "I'm sorry for our rudeness, but it has been a while since I saw my little brother here and I owe it all to you…" he trailed off waiting for a reply.
"Mai Taniyama," the girl replied even though she slightly flinched at the familiarity of the one called Gene to call her beautiful as a placeholder for her name. Her mind was busy taking in the details of the conversation between the two brothers and she silently understood the situation, a new understanding of the lack of a smile behind the eyes of the boy she met earlier blossoming as her empathy took hold of her emotions. Mai, being no stranger to loss, resolved to offer as much support as he would accept from her for as long as they knew one another, and she continued, "And you are Gene and N.. Naru….like narcissist? I guess that makes sense if you're so handsome my friends couldn't look past your face to your manners."
Gene let out a laugh at the honest reply from the girl, and said, "Mai, you really do have him pegged! He uses those good looks he got from me to his advantage," and Gene grinned, his smile lighting up not just his eyes, but his entire countenance before he continued, "but it's Noll, short for Oliver in English. I know we're in Japan, and although Noll and I speak Japanese as our first language, we were adopted and have resided in England since we were 8 years old, so we speak and use mostly English. Didn't you notice we're all speaking in English right now?"
Mai looked confused and stammered, " B..b..but I don't know this much English yet!"
Oliver rested his right hand against his chin, appearing deep in thought and said, "I have a hypothesis about that. You must have some sort of untrained psychic ability, and as a latent psychic in the astral plane it is possible some of the skills other spiritualists that are in close contact to you can be used by you. Eugene is a perfect medium, meaning he can flawlessly speak the language of any spirit he channels instead of his own preferred language. Perhaps the proximity of all three of us here is allowing you to speak a language you are not completely familiar with…" he trailed off as he noticed both Gene and Mai staring at him as if he grew another head.
Mai shrugged off his explanation, since she hadn't asked any question to begin with, and stated, "Never mind that, are we stuck here now? When we fell down… did we get so injured that we both died?" Mai looked genuinely worried at this thought, and went on, "And if so and you're here for your brother then where are my…," Mai's voice faded into a scarcely perceptible whisper as she shivered and collapsed to a sitting position on the ground, curling into herself and wrapping her arms around her legs as they pressed against her chest.
Gene glared reproachfully at Noll, dragging his brother by the arm until they were both at Mai's side and Gene sat down beside her hugging her gently and brushing the tears from her cheeks, and said, "No, little sister. You're not dead, you just brought my little brother to me, and I will be eternally grateful, and so will he even if he never admits it." Gene patted the girl affectionately on the head as he stared balefully at his brother, as if urging him to say something to help. In response, Noll sighed and added, "He's right, you… gave me my brother back… and I feel I need to alleviate your concerns. When your silly little friend hit you with her bag, I saw you stumble and tried to catch you but I wasn't quick enough. I used my psychokinesis to pull you closer to me and turn us so you would not be harmed as we fell. I didn't count on my hand touching the skin on your arm and activating my psychometry at the same time. Both of these influxes of energy must have activated your latent psychic gifts and brought our slumbering minds to the astral plane where my brother was waiting for us," Noll looked to Gene for affirmation.
Gene smiled at the two beatifically, and pulled all three into a group hug before exclaiming, "Right Noll! Brilliant as ever little brother! It just so happened at the same time I was trying to reach out to you myself after noticing Mai's receptiveness to my presence near her. It was a perfect storm of conditions that brought us all together," Gene smiled at this and then added slyly, "I think you should write your next book on this Dr. Davis, especially after you guys get a load of what I am about to show you!"
Mai glanced over at Noll and asked, "You know I think of the two of you, he might be scarier. What does he mean to show us something? And what does he mean Dr. Davis, isn't your name Shibuya?"
Oliver shook his head as he responded to Mai's statement, "You have no idea, and actually I don't know what he means, but I trust him with my life… and would you believe both are my names," he dismissed her as he turned once more to face only his brother.
Gene interrupted quickly as he saw Mai's face started to turn red at the rudeness from the younger brother, and he said, "It seems Mai has a few latent skills that are just waking up from our proximity, and her visit here into the astral plane. Noll, your girl here is an astral walker with the ability to receive post-cognitive and precognitive visions or dreams. With her abrupt and total understanding of a language she doesn't know and her awareness of my presence I believe she could also be trained like I was into a perfect medium. But the most interesting detail I have noticed is that she is amplifying my reception, and she may even be able to amplify you in the future like I used to and become your PK seeder. I will act as your spirit guide Mai while you explore your gifts if you wish, and right now there is a vision that is hammering at my mind. I can't see what it is, but I know it includes both you Noll, and you Mai… and I think I can show you both at once with you augmenting my powers Mai-chan." Gene let out in a rush as he looked beseechingly at the two with him in the darkened plane.
Mai, feeling very sympathetic to the two brothers considering her own family situation, nods her assent quickly, and turns to Gene as she says, "Ok, Onii-san! Let's go for it!" She glances at Noll almost as if daring him to deny his brother this request only to see a slight nod of his head, and a small barely there smile lifting the corner of his lips. Mai blushed, and squealed internally as she thought the smile on his face made him even more beautiful than before, and it truly transformed his expression into one that was matched by an actual gleam of ease within his eyes and Mai couldn't help it but fall for him just a tiny bit right then.
With a feeling of relief Gene clasped one of both Mai and Oliver's hands and directed them to join their free hands as well, and then to close their eyes as he opened his sight to the vision that was calling for them all. All at once, all three found themselves as participants in the vision, each playing as versions of themselves, or as observers when they were not involved. The events in the vision sped past them quickly as though they were experiencing them in real time, although with the time in the astral plane only mere moments had passed.
The images started from the moment Mai and Oliver first met in the AV classroom of her school, and continued on through her injuring his assistant, being coerced into working for him on the case of the old school house through its conclusion. They saw Oliver offering Mai a job, and her accepting, and working for him through several cases, and several close brushes with death for both of them until the day they finally discovered Eugene's body. They see Mai confessing to Oliver, and his heartbreaking reply, as the, unseen at the time, spirit of Eugene tried to punch his idiot scientist brother to make him see sense as he left Mai weeping by a copse of trees near the lake where Gene's body was discovered. The revelation of his true identity and reason for being in Japan caused some unrest with the rest of the group, except for one blackmailing medium who only saw an end to her hold over the ice prince, "Naru" as they had all come to call him.
The vision shifted to Oliver in England with the twin's adoptive parents, fading into a poor imitation of the man he had been in Japan, until it was decided he needed to return if only for the sake of his work. Mai was there waiting with tea, and the Noll in the vision smiled for the first time since finding his brother's resting place. After a few more cases, and one more exceptionally close brush with death for Mai, she was finally able to respond to his question; the question that broke her heart in that copse of trees, and she told him he was an idiot scientist because it would never be anyone else but him, and it would certainly never be her onii-san, Gene. The Noll in this vision world slowly loosened up and willingly started participating in the group activities Mai and the other spiritualists at the office planned for them, and like Mai started to view the rest as a semblance of a family there in Japan.
More cases and more close calls, a year of dating and living together sped past until they saw Mai and Noll, arriving in England to be married at the estate of the twin's parents, the entire Japanese branch with them, each in their own pairs by this point with families of their own. Mai finishing her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Todai, then the skip in time as she starts graduate work in the parapsychology department at Cambridge University, under the twin's adoptive father Martin Davis, and then the project the two started where Noll worked on a new treatise based on his new wife's gifts and how the interacted with his own, with her as his research partner.
Then a tearful goodbye as Gene, who had been sleeping more and more as time passed pulled the both of them into a vision version of the astral plane to offer one last lesson. This lesson was on how to mentally project the visions he always shared with them, so that Mai could use this skill in the waking world to increase the efficacy of her strengthened visions for their cases. Gene also had another reason, he wanted to tell his closest loved ones he was going to move on and reincarnate, and he also wanted to congratulate the two for the arrival of the infant they should expect in several months. Gene was not planning to leave them, he promised he would be back with them, but it was up to them to know which one he was when he finally showed up.
At this point the vision snapped to a close, it had encompassed 5 or 6 years of time easily, if not longer. It was hard for them to tell without seeing specific dates the farther in the future all the events occurred. Even though there was no need to breathe on the astral plane, all three were gasping as if they had each run a marathon, their eyes wild with wonder at what they had all just experienced. The connection where each held hands was sparking with energy like a fully completed circuit and it soon became apparent that while not a single person was speaking aloud, they could all hear each other clearly as their thoughts all raced through trying to make sense of whether that was a true precognitive vision for them all or not. Gene and Noll were used to this phenomenon, having a twin form of telepathy their entire lives but neither was used to having a third person in their mind, much less a female one.
Mai was unused to anyone but herself in her head, and she started to glow red with embarrassment, worried about what they might overhear by accident, especially as she was suddenly even more aware of the male presence of Naru next to her. All of her memories referred to him as Naru, until later when she called him Oliver at times, so even though she knew he wasn't really much of a narcissist and often considered himself inferior to his elder brother because of his lack of noticeable emotion, she decided it was now Naru, his special name would always be Naru for her. She also knew that after experiencing life with him in the future through the several years of their shared vision it was still true and he would always be her idiot scientist because it would never be anyone else but him.
Noll's face was also bright red, and he would forever proclaim it was from exertion and not embarrassment, but Gene could tell the difference. They both heard Mai's thoughts, and on some level felt them. She loved them both, so quickly and so differently, and they both knew their lives, or death in one case would never be the same again.
A contributing factor to Noll's blush was the influx of memories with attached emotions he had never felt before in his life. Yes, he loved Gene, they were two halves of one whole after all. He loved Martin and Luella, they were exceptional parents and always encouraged and treated the two boys as if they never belonged anywhere else but with them. He knew this familial love, they were his inner circle, but everyone else were only pumpkins, just background. That was how he originally dismissed Mai and her classmates, but now… now he felt an urge to clasp her to him and breathe in the scent he knew from the vision that was solely hers. It felt to him like it had been years, millennia even, since he had held her close and felt the reverence of the love they shared. Mai was no pumpkin, she was his partner, his mate, his very heart and soul and he had no idea what to do about it. He didn't even know that he knew what those feelings were, and in loss he looked to Gene who he knew heard every thought as if it was his own.
Gene smiled gently at his little brother, so happy that he could witness Noll's awakening in this sense even if his brother felt a bit lost so far. Gene knew these two were perfect for one another and he would do everything in his very limited scope of power to help them arrive at the point of the visions they all shared. Suddenly extremely tired, Gene knew he would need to sleep soon, until the next time these two needed him on this plane, or until Mai discovered she could summon him as a medium herself. He yawned with his exhaustion, and told them both, "That was a very intense experience, and I think we all need some rest. Not this rest you two will have gotten while trapped here on the astral plane with me, but real actual sleep. Don't argue Noll, I know you rarely sleep but how else can your big scary brain process all this information, hmm? You know I'm right," he said triumphantly as he noticed Noll's head nodding his acquiescence.
Gene smirked, a poor imitation of Noll's death smirk, and put a forefinger on both Mai and Noll's foreheads pushing them backwards, the action shoving them both off of the astral plane and back into the waking world. Oliver woke up first, his mind cataloging the fact that the light in the room was still on, but outside it had darkened considerably, and he hoped it wasn't too late for the girl still resting in his arms to get home. Then he realized he knew she lived alone, as she was also an orphan and worrying about whether she would miss a curfew was silly of him at this point. He gently shook Mai, waking her up as she blearily took in their surroundings and her face turned red again as she realized she was curled up and had been asleep on the chest of the boy she just had a really intimate and crazy dream about.
"Mai," Naru said and shifted slightly to make them both more comfortable, and continued, "We both had the same dream, or not dream. You returned my brother to me, and I will be in your debt forever for that alone… but it seems we are entwined in other ways. I can hear you telepathically now, just like I could always communicate with my brother… and I am pretty sure I am just as in love with you as you are with me although this morning I had no notion I could even feel that emotion." He shook his head as if to clear out troublesome thoughts and went on, "We need to compare notes, and write down everything we can remember from that vision Gene showed us, and we should compare what we remember from this case to what actually occurs while I am at your school and decide together where to go from there." He disentangled himself from Mai, and pulled her gently to her feet so they could actually take in the sight of one another in the entirety and he smiled down at her with a loving expression.
Mai looked back at Naru, a feeling of intense affection welling up inside her in ways she hadn't experienced since she was last with her mother, and she nodded at him while smiling brightly. "Naru, you better call Lin-san though, he might be wondering where you are. I don't know how late it is, but you need some tea, and we both need some sleep," she said cheerfully and wrapped her arm around his as they started to leave the room that altered both of their lives.
Naru laughed, actually laughed and said, "Good point. I'll call him on our way home. Let's go, we can compare notes after we get some rest." In a gesture completely uncharacteristic of the Oliver Davis of just 12 hours ago, he pulled the petite girl closer, dropped a kiss on the top of her head and pulled his cell phone out to call his assistant Koujo Lin.
As he waited for the call to pick up, he reflected on the day he had and smiled in a way only those who were a part of that vision of the future had ever seen him do, with complete contentment. As the call he was making was answered he replied to his assistant's greeting, "Lin, I have some news…".
I will try to update as soon as I can get the words out of my head, in between studying for entrance to law school and work. Please give me any feedback about how you see the story. Thanks to the ones who have followed me so far, I never expected that, thank you!
