The three closest to the desk looked to eachother and back at Koenma only to say in unison, "Supposedly too late?"
"According to these, the Christian apocolypse began a little over a year ago..." He waited for a response, but when nothing but shocked and confused faces came, he continued. "As I can tell by your faces, you all understand why that is so strange. At first, at least in America, there were some of the begining signs...but then it just seemed to stop. This lead me to see if anything else strange has happened there, and it not only helped me to discovered that several Gods have gone missing, but many ancient creatures and even, every now and then even, a Spirit World informant."
Finally Yuusuke spoke back up, placing him back in the role of "the leader of the pack", "So...where do we come in?"
Koenma sighed and stood, picking up a previously unseen file and walking over to them all, "I was getting to that...I need all of you to investigate what has happened, stop or begin...or just resolve all of this. Here are plane tickets as well as keys to various homes and cars...I am sending Botan with you, she will not only be your contact with me, but she will be able to act as your money source...of course she will not be with you all the time."
He paused long enough to take a much needed breath and hand Yuusuke the file,"You leave tomorrow from Narita Airport at 12:00pm and will be flying into JFK Airport in New York...I'm not entirely sure what time, but when you do get there, a car will be waiting to take you to your first home and investigation spot, a small town in upstate New York by the name of Worcester. I know some of you can just as easily travel there without plane, but please, this just makes things easy to keep track of. You all have tonight to get what you need in order. I will be in contact with you, goodnight...and...I'm sorry..."
Unnoticed by most of them, Botan had been chanting another spell while Koenma spoke, and by the time he had finished, they were all placed neatly back into place at Sora's apartment left with nothing but the file, frustration and confusion.
"Well that was informative..." Sora began but was cut off when the air fled her lungs courtesy of a pair of arms that latched tightly around her waist. She stumbled but didn't quite fall, the same grip that stole her breath saving her balance.
Upon noticing who it was, the brunette quickly wrapped her arms around the youngest and softly spoke to the girl. "It's alright, I'm back now... I didn't mean to vanish on you..." Brown eyes flickered up to shoot a dirty look at the reaper but she was no where to be seen.
Meanwhile, Kurama had crossed the short distance to stand beside Yuusuke but his attention was focused more on the file than the male. "If we have no choice in taking this case the least we can do is know what we're up against." It was an indirect request for the file, accompanied by a more obvious one when he held out his hand to take the documents.
The man in question shrugged and gratefully handed over the burden of the file to the wanting hands in front of him. "Take it man, I really don't want to be responsible for not loosing it. Besides, I have to go and make sure Keiko doesn't leave my ass over this..." Obviously not wanting to deal with the task, Yuusuke shuffled out of the apartment, only pausing to wave to everyone.
Shortly after the tallest red head followed, mumbling something or other about his cat and missing Yukina.
The newer woman of the group, who still didn't completely grasp the idea of personal space squeezed into the little space between Kurama and the file to read along. "Heh...it does say Worcester...well I guess we are in luck..." She mumbled quickly before "tching" at the fact that they would all have to assume different identities in the different areas they would be going. Soon enough though she forgot this as her mind delved into the case, picking up small things that others might not, connecting others, giving her notes.
Kurama too had dug into the case files, moving himself and Sakura both to the table that had hosted a card game what felt like an eternity ago. The space made for room enough to spread out the papers without having anything too far out of reach.
And that was where Sora found them when she came back after showing the young girl to her bedroom. She slipped into a free chair and picked up some papers the other two had already gone over, talking to herself softly as she went. "New York huh? Haven't been there yet... New names too, that'll be fun." Green eyes met brown across the table and Sora just smiled before looking at the next paper. "Hm, I know a guy who could help with that..."
The trio hung out for a few hours before anybody noticed the time and by then it was late so Sora offered for the other two to spend the night, which they accepted to do so no one overslept. The lights were turned out soon after, once they'd re-collected all the case information and it was stashed to bring with them, but for at least half an hour Sora's voice could be heard through the bedroom door. The words were muffled but she seemed to be on the phone, making various arrangements. Eventually though, she too headed to bed.
Twelve rolled around and the group, including a strangely out of character scared fire demon, settled into their uncomfortable pleather seats and readied themselves for an exhaustingly long trip.
"Stupid Koenma couldn't get us better seats...I swear if they're showing some Rob Schnider gets turned into something movie...I'm jumping..." To his displeasure, a stewardess heard him and made sure to reprimand the brunett punk about even joking about such a thing. His plight had earned him a few giggles from the others around him, but Yuusuke had failed to see the hilarity in it and attempted to begin to fall asleep, only to be warned that he will suffer jet lag if he should fall asleep now. The warning fell on deaf ears and almost instantaneously, Yuusuke was in dream land, quickly followed by Kuwabara, who had the window seat.
In what felt like for ever, they all finally were dropped off at a small but beautiful one level blue house. More interested in the outside than the inside, Sakura wandered around after having been told that they had about an hour and half before Botan arrived with their new identities. She soon learned that they had been at least lucky with the place they were staying...unlike the plane they had to ride where even she became scared. Not only was the land huge and well kept, but on the property was quite the cute pond with a bench and small tree next to it. In the distance, she could hear horses, roosters, cows and dogs.
"It's just like it was when I came here..." She spoke out to no one. From inside she could hear arguing, and rather than risk her ears in that mess the woman plopped onto the bench and watched the water as she quietly sung.
"I already called that room Urameshi!"
"Too bad, there's only three rooms and six of us...and only one bed in each room...I am NOT sharing a bed with you, take the couch!"
"As if I want to share a bed with YOU, I have someone else for that. YOU take the couch!"
The two, seemingly constantly arguing boys continued their spat, not caring about how tired they were nor how they were affecting the other occupants of the small house. They stood in the living room which was complete with a flower print couch, a tv, a long brown lounge chair and a firplace. Connected to that was the kitchen/dinning room which held a glass slidding door that lead to the back porch, all of which was directly across from the front door and front deck. From the kitchen there was a small hallway that served as the laundry room and held yet another door and another porch, though significantly smaller than that of the front and back porch. The room they had been arguing over happened to be the largest room complete with it's own bathroom (with both a shower and very large tub), large closet and big window all of which connected to the living room directly. Across from them was a short hallway with another bathroom, a plain room with a large window facing the back, and a small room with a small window and a door to another small side porch.
It wasn't the home's small size that made it easy for everyone to hear the two, but the fact that the walls were quite thin, so even if they had been arguing on the back porch, someone in the small room would hear every word. Of course, the fact that they were both incredibly loud didn't help...
After a quick walk-through of the whole place, Sora removed herself from the bedroom debate. "It's too warm to be stuck inside without air conditioning and the porch couches look soft enough so I'm going to take one of those."
Kurama, possibly the only one to hear her, offered a smile before she vanished. He would have followed but someone had to be sure the arguing duo didn't decide to make the fight physical. Hoping to delay such eventuality, he spoke to those still inside. "That room's big enough to accomodate at least two people so if you two can't agree then neither of you can have it."
He wasn't looking for the space himself. After Sora's suggestion he wholely agreed that stepping out of the fight was a smarter idea. Unfortunately he wasn't so lucky as to be able to avoid the conflict entirely. Hiei had vanished too, sometime between touch down and arriving at the house but he didn't have time to wonder about him.
The voices trailed after Sora once she'd stepped outside and started making her way towards Sakura but she paid them no mind while speaking into her phone. As she strode over her own voice mingled with the somewhat fading notes from the house. "...address would be great, thanks."
The phone snapped shut a few moments later and the brunette took a seat beside the girl on the bench. "Same idea huh? Avoiding the fighting too so you can't be blamed for the demolished house either?"
At the sound of her friend's voice, the young woman came back down to Earth, "Oh! Ahaha, sorry, I think I must have just spaced out this entire time...I didn't even realize they were fighting..." She let herself stop talking long enough to hear the arguing voices, it was quite harsh to her poor ears.
"I have an idea, come on!" She grabbed her friend's hand and pulled her with the short distance next door and up the little hill until they were knocking on a horse barn door.
A small, kind looking woman with greying hair and eyes popped her head out and smiled. "My, my, if it isn't Miss Powers, I haven't seen you in YEARS! How have you been?" Her thin arms quickly encircled the woman she spoke of in a tight hug.
Sakura giggled and hugged back just as tightly, "Hello Mira, yes it has been. I am fine thank you and I hope you are too." She stepped back a little and gestured to the brunett next to her, "This is my friend Sora, she and a few others are staying with me next door...but we have a bit of a shortage of room...so I was hoping I could bug you into lending us a tent for a little time before we go and buy our own?"
Mira smirked and pulled Sora into a hug, "Of course dearies...but I do need a favor from you both...I have two new horses that are just dying for a ride, and I was hoping that you two would satisfy that while I looked for a nice enough tent?" Before either one of them could protest they were grabbed and thrown into the necessary gear, handed the reins and sent up the path to the corral.
"Aha, she hasn't changed in years, she's still so energetic! Well...I guess we can do this for a bit, we still have a little while 'till Botan arrives." With that, Sakura lept on top of her horse and began a light gallop into the fenced in area.
Back at the house, the two bickering boys had calmed enough to allow themselves to sit down on the couch to watch TV, each with a glass of water. Apparently they had agreed on kicking someone out of the other larger room, and taking those two rooms themselves. It took a while, but Yuusuke relented the largest room to Kuwabara, but not before cracking a joke about how his friend deserved that room, after all a girl does need her own bathroom.
A commercial had just come on when the sound of air swishing about, almost like a non-existant wind, reached their ears, and the friendly blue-haired reaper stood there, blocking their view.