Chapter Four: Monster-Part One

This was a huge mistake. Freaky mind controlling powers or not, I was never meant to be apart of this in the least bit. I wasn't cut out for this end-of-the-world fiasco that I was somehow sucked into, yet here I was, cornered like a feral cat with the noise of the Makai insects buzzing closer and closer. Panting furiously I looked at my surroundings with nothing to use other than a potted plant, windows, and an elevator. All I could do was pull at my hair and panic.

Let me help.

The voice didn't scare me, because I've heard it a thousand times before. This voice was not my voice, but little did I reject it when it came around. The panic kept rising, the bugs were now in view and looked as though they were catching speed. I was under immediate threat.

I'm here, don't worry anymore.

I couldn't stop worrying though, the scream built in my throat and released in a savage split of my voice box. They told me to scream if I needed help, but I did not scream for that. I screamed because I lost this fight, and the only help left was myself. The last thing I remember were the insects inches away and then finally nothing.

Infestation.

We had just arrived home, Mushiyori City, to see that it wasn't even my home anymore. An energy thick with something vile, and now only to see that it was covered in strange insects that flew, squirmed, and slithered around the civilians of the city. As for someone who is disgusted at the thought of any bugs near me, you could say that I was having a hard time adjusting to this. My city was engulfed in demonic creatures.

"How can everyone be so calm with all these bugs everywhere?" Yusuke inquired.

"Ordinary people can't see them."

"They don't have the awareness that we do, Yusuke." I added to Kido's answer. As the bugs drew closer toward our area it was an automatic flinch to cling to Yanagisawa, who grasped my hand that was around his arm. Looking up he gave a reassuring smile while speaking.

"They wont get near us; our energy will drive them away."

"Let's keep the chatter to a minimum; as you can see we have no time to lose."

In silence we agreed and started on with our journey. The sky above was nothing but a treacherously brooding crimson with lightning flickering here and there. To those around us without the awareness of what was happening, I'm sure it looked like a normal thunder storm approaching. Passers by looked so normal with their tedious, every-day-life expressions and movements. It was hard to believe our near apocalypse was right at the door and no one could catch a hint.

"So," Kido was the first to speak up, catching all of our attention to him. "what do you think of our home town, Yusuke?"

"Great, but it's hard to get pass the bug problem..."

I giggled a bit and rolled my eyes. "I promise it's not that great. There's nothing to do around here except to get into trouble."

"Oh, yeah? You always get into trouble, Montgomery?" Looking over his shoulder, while giving a playful smirk. Scoffing out a small laugh I nodded my head in an animated fashion while holding a thumbs up. "I was born to cause trouble, Urameshi."

"I can relate-"

The entire group stopped in their tracks thanks to the strange feeling that washed over us. I shivered and shook my head, inky black locks of hair shaking from side to side in my vision as the power of the familiar territory came over us in a wave.

"You sense that?"

"Yeah," Genkai's question was answered almost immediatly. "Lemme guess; we just walked into someone's territory?"

It wasn't hard to forget what a territory felt like, and with Yusuke's question it almost sounded sarcastic at the most. Nodding to myself I looked around in search of where it could possibly come from as the others chattered. The energy felt closest to our left, which led down to a little cafe that I wasn't too familiar with.

"There," I pointed with my free hand. "down there is where it's coming from."

Yusuke stepped forward and surveyed the stair case leading downward. With a tilt of his head he spoke.

"Well gentlemen, these stairs look happy enough."

"You remember your lesson, Yusuke?" Looking at the back of his head I listened to him reassure us that he had this under control. I hopped for all our sake's that he wasn't pulling the macho, hey-look-at-me-I-kick-ass-for-a-living bullshit that most guys try to pull off.

We ventured down the stairs and opened the door to be greeted by the only two staff members there. Looking around I only spotted a man sitting by his lonesome, and a group of younger kids chit-chatting away. I scanned each and every one of them while trying to decide who could be the best possible lead. The person wouldn't just give themselves away on purpose, if they were smart, but the bigger question was; how can we sniff this guy (or girl) out if he plays a guessing game.

A chuckle, from the loner, caused me to directly stare at the back of his head.

"If you guys want something from me, just ask."

Gotcha.

The man chuckled again while standing up and faced us directly. He was older, tall and had a nasty look to his features. Not to mention the fact that his wardrobe game was terrible.

"You must be some more power freaks." Narrowing my eyes it was always a sensitive thing to be called a freak other than by myself. Don't get me wrong, I know that the shit that I can do is beyond normal or even rightfully sane, but that didn't mean some random mother fucker could look at me and declare that.

As the staff members begged for no trouble, the random man tried his best to mockingly assure them he wouldn't be any trouble at all. He noted that he knew of their lack of insurance that this place had. I tilted my head, looking to the boys who weren't paying attention to me but to the man himself. He seemed to have a lot of knowledge on things, which I found quite unusual unless he was a regular.

"We're looking for the tunnel digging type," Yusuke was the first to speak to him. "So you wanna help us out, or not?"

"Tunnel?" The man questioned. "Hm, you must mean the one to Demon World."

There was no way this guy could've possibly known something so classified, this did not seem right at all.

"Wasn't this information only told to us? How does he possibly know that?"

"How'd you know?!" Kido echoed my words in less than five of them to the older man. Another mocking chuckle came from him before he spoke again.

"Don't act so surprised, you're the ones who told me. It's been runnin' through your minds..."

I tilted my head, my mouth slightly ajar and eyes narrowed from his words. It wasn't hard to guess what this meant, if I was sure where he was taking this. That Polly-D wannabe was scanning through our minds like Airport Security.

"That must be the power he's got. He must be a Mind Reader." Yana's words suddenly struck me with irritability at the obviousness or the situation. The man practically told us what he could do, and with my dear boyfriend-thing spouting off his theories I nearly wanted to say: 'Fuck it' and let them deal with this in their own narrow-minded ways.

"Let's not jump the gun yet," Yusuke mumbled to us. "He might've known about the tunnel before hand, and he's now just trying to play us. He could be pretending, and instead have some other ability. It could be that he is friends with the guys we're lookin' for..."

I raised an eye-brow at Yusuke's theories, coming to the conclusion that he wasn't doing a bad job at being cautious and actually using his brain. Maybe he wasn't such a dick-for-brain as I thought he was.

"Allow me to test him, if you would." I leaned over to watch as Kido and Yusuke exchanged words. They were planning on testing out the theory of this guys mind reading ability. I tugged on Yana's arm and waited for him to lean down to listen to my suggestion.

"I think it's best if these people didn't actually pay attention to what's happening, right?" He nodded before quirking a brow at me.

"You're gonna do something about it?"

"Always." I rolled my eyes while silently cursing my group for the sticky situation they put us in. How we ended up in this, I'll never know. The only conclusion I could think of was that trouble just slithered it's way to us like a Boa Constrictor, and tried it's best to squeeze us until we fed in.

I let go of Yana and slipped passed Yusuke and Kido as quickly as possibly, and with no warning I opened my territory within the room.

"Hey-!" Yusuke started to protest, but I quickly shushed him and waved him off. The cowering staff memebers begged and pleaded for me to stop whatever I was doing, saying they didn't want trouble in the least bit. I ignored them and stretched my influence out to both of them. The man and woman both stood frozen, mouths open, and eye's wide with hardly any emotion radiating from them. They were under my control now.

"Ignore whatever is going on, imagine this as a normal, boring day and head to the back for fifteen minutes. No matter what, stay in the back."

As soon as I was finished I retreated my territory back and watched as both of the employee's obeyed everything I said. Slowly but surely they walked to the back where the kitchen, I'm assuming, was.

"Nice going, Natalie," Genkai commented as I turned around. "The other civillians left before anything could be done."

"You... got some freaky powers there, ya know?" Glaring at Yusuke and raising my middle finger I watched as Kido stepped forward in a show down with the man who kept a cocky smirk on his face the entire time.

"We're just showin' off all our powers today, aren't we?" He questioned while looking back and forth between Kido and myself. I kept my stance, eye's narrowed and unwavering. Guys like him didn't scare me, they pissed me off to end.

"What do you want? You want a go at me?"

Silence on Kido's part it was quite bothersome how neither of them were reacting quickly enough for my short-ish attention span. This was important, don't get me wrong, but I needed Kido to get this guy out of our way so we could finish with the big picture.

"You're going to answer us," he finally said. "even if I have to force it from you. I'll bet my life on it."

Just like that Kido's familiar territory expanded in a similar fashion to what the man and I did. When you have your own territory you never realize how thick it can consume. The stronger you are, the stronger the atmosphere. I'm not underestimating how strong Kido actually is, I however, find it to be a dull suffocation when his territory is awoken.

"Kido has extended his territory."

"Thank you, babe. We weren't aware of that at all." I ignored Yana's displeased glance toward my direction and focused on the fight at hand. Within seconds Kido sprang forward and hurled himself at the man, foot extended to hopefully catch the shadow that was connected to the man. With a single movement, the man stepped back, causing our dear friend to lose balance as quickly as unfortunately possible.

"Kido!"

Out of my daze of contemplating how badly this could end, I watched as the Polly-D wannabe went straight for Kido and punched him within his stomach. Slow movements of punches all around, I clenched my fists and sneered at what the man was doing to him. One final upper-cut to the jaw and Kido was sent landing on his back on the ground. Both Yana and I went to his side, I immediately looked at the wounds that were on his face to see how badly he was beaten. All the while my anger boiled at the continuous chuckle of the man before us.

"Too bad for you, huh? Not being able to step on my shadow, and all."

I looked up at him, jaw clenching out a string of curse words while helping Kido sit up.

"H-He made me... He could tell what was on my mind..."

I looked between Kido, Genkai and then finally Yusuke. Yusuke kept a stern, cool face but when he finally looked at me I saw it within a split second. Kido would be okay, injuries not too bad, maybe a bruised ego if anything, but Yusuke would handle this.

So, he did.

I inhaled as deeply as possible, holding my breath and then finally releasing the nicotine cloud. Even the amount of cigarettes I was smoking at this point wasn't helping me relax at all. The man, who is known as Murota, was confirmed to be a mind reader all along. At that point in the fight I wasn't so sure how we were going to win, until once again Yusuke Urameshi proved me wrong. He was able to con Murota and with the help of Yana's power, figured that he wasn't apart of the destruction of the Human World at all.

He's just a dick with powers, no big deal really.

We were now in the middle of a resting place just outside of a park in town. We gathered here after the incident with Murota to also interrogate him, and to keep a look out for the rest of our group we would soon be joining. Botan had called us to inform that there was nothing to be found at the center point, and a theory that it was underground. At this point it was safer to just join everyone together.

"About thirty meters in radius, I'd say."

I looked to the side to watch the sweat drip down the side of Murota's face. He spoke solomly, knowing that his pride had been hurt and realizing that we meant business, he agreed to come with us and help in a way.

"I can hear the voices of people within the area..." His words left us hanging, all I could possibly imagine was him listening to everyone around us, invading their most deepest secrets and inner thoughts.

"The same as if we were holding a conversation."

I then watched the people, the pedestrians, walk by us. Normal people out there with their thoughts exposed to him solely to him. Murota explained that the stronger the thought, the louder it sounded. To me, I wondered what kind of power he could possibly hold over anyone with that kind of ability. I knew with my own, it would've been deadly had it fallen into the wrong hands.

Instead if fell into a fourteen year old who's moody, sarcastic and likes cats.

"Alright, that means you can check everyone that passes by here."

"Let us know if there is anyone thing anything strange, but don't show it on your face, and don't meet their gaze, either. The enemy has some ability, too."

Both Yusuke and Genkai were not fooling around, it was plain as day written on their faces. Almost instantly Moruta gasped and kept his gaze downward. I was startled enough to drop my half finished cigarette and turn directly to Murota from his right.

"Is someone there? Who is it!?"

"Th-that girl...!"

I looked from the side of my eyes, maneuvering away from Yana to watch her intently. She was a harmless looking bird, though that could've been what she wanted to present herself as.

"Th-That girl is thinking of getting it on with her homeroom teacher, dammit!"

I didn't even try and stop Yusuke and Genkai from taking a hit out on him, instead I merely shook my head, picked up my cigarette and sneered in the direction of Murota while mumbling 'Pervert' to him.

And now we waited.

After having a little talk with Murota and how serious this was, he seemed to understand that we didn't have a lot of time. I kept a constant look out for strange looking people, for normal but perplexing looking people, and just in general for something out of the... normal, really.

Yana and Kido were also on scout-look-out mode with me, pacing back and forth along with myself in search of someone we could pin point. I stood next to Kido and Yana this time.

"Any sign of anything?"

"Nope."

"Na-da."

I sighed while stretching and pulling out two cigarettes, handing one to Yana who I lit for and then myself. "This is fuckin' ridiculous right now-"

"Wait!" Yana was turned toward Yusuke, Genkai and Murota, and after moving around him I watched a terrified Murota sweat bullets, looking straight down at his hands, mumbling about a terrible person. He shut his eyes tightly, hands over his ears and started to shake violently. I didn't even try and hide my own fear of what our enemy was doing to this new ally.

He screamed, causing our group to be on more of an alert now. The other's tended to Murota, but I turned away and started looking through the crowd.

"He's to the right. A tall man, with his hair all black, wearing black clothes."

I followed the direction, scanning quicker through the crowd and checking off those that didn't fit the description. Then, in seconds flat, I found him.

I found him, and I knew him.

That face wasn't unfamiliar to me, because I had seen it once before. The shock of this revelation caused me to stiffen, gasp lightly and drop anything that was left in my hands. He turned to us, a distorted split smile was sent directly toward out group.

Was sent directly toward me.

It happened so fast I didn't even know what to think. I felt the wind of something fly by my cheek and a grunt of pain from behind me. I couldn't look at this man anymore, I couldn't look at this man anymore. Everything was corrupted now.

When I spun around I was greeted mercilessly with the sight of blood running down Murota's face. An open wound right between his eyes, almost lifeless form being held by Yusuke caused a shrill to escape unexpectedly. I lost my shit, I lost my cool in that moment.

I was met with strong arm wrapped around me, and I embraced the body while burying my face within Yana to hide from this. We had been made a mockery in front of our enemy, and I was sure that he wouldn't forget it.

Because I know he didn't forget me.

"We'll dig a grave for all people. The seven of us will dig the hole."

I played those words over and over in my mind while sitting next to Moruta in the hospital. The wound he acquired came simply from an eraser, coated with energy from someone who had an amazing talent for shooting things at a far enough space. After Moruta came out of the shock he had to ask him more questions, and I had to figure out if he knew anymore about the man in black.

"Dark Angel, Gatekeeper, Sniper, Gourmet, Gamemaster, Doctor, Seaman-the seven of us."

"What does that mean?"

"Are those seven people the ones who are attempting to open the hole to Demon World?"

I sighed while shrugging and looking up to answer Yana.

"That's our best lead. It'd make sense for it to work out that way, but... I don't know something doesn't seem right with that."

Yusuke looked from me to Murota and asked the obvious question. A disgruntled Murota couldn't possibly answer the question at this point. He was too frazzled to be bothered by us.

"That Gourmet and Doctor business," Kido spoke up. "Couldn't that be their nicknames, right?"

"Probably." Stated Genkai. I looked up at her as she finished explaining herself. "No question that it also has something to do with their abilities.

"But you know, Yusuke, you didn't pretty well, not going after him."

Praise for Yusuke on keeping his tail tucked between his legs.

"I couldn't go after him. I could feel it at first glance. There's something... something dangerous about him."

Praise for Natalie for being right.

"If Tuguro was a fastball pitcher, this guy felt like he threw knuckleballs."

I let out an exasperated sigh and stood us, wanting to stretch my legs. I didn't listen too carefully, because I decided to pull out my phone and text my sister to see where she was. I watched the screen to see if she'd be typing back when I heard something that startled me a bit.

Looking up I narrowed my eyes and let my mouth hang open for a bit before placing my two cents.

"What the Hell do you mean he didn't try and attack Murota?!"

"That's right. He didn't do anything."

"Bull-fucking-shit he didn't! We were right there!"

"Then you should've payed more attention, Nat." Yusuke answered, though no cocky attitude in his voice. He was genuinely trying to teach me a lesson.

"So you noticed as well. The eraser came from directly ahead, his looking over us was nothing more than a signal."

In our disbelief Genkai held up the small, meaningless eraser while explaining that it still had Yoki from the person who shot it. They had probably coated it to make it as hard as a BB bullet and shot from lengths away.

In more words or less, we were fucked.

Author's Note:

Yeah, that just happened my fellow readers! Sorry for the delay, you can now call me an official student of a college! :D Anyway, thank you to the anons and OwlLoveYou and Counting Sinful Start for the kind and lovely reviews of the last chapters!