Oh my wow, are any of you Sherlock fans because… just… wow. I've been run over by so many feels over the past two new episodes, I just don't know how to cope. If any of you are a Sherlock fans, drop me a line and we can chitchat about the feels. If you aren't a Sherlock fan, still PM so we can chat. Hope y'all like this chapter!

Disclaimer: I own NOTHING!

Chapter 5: Short and Simple

"Hey, Monk, where'd you guys leave Nanari?" Yasu asked, leaning into the corner beside the window, his computer resting on his lap. Masako sat to his left, legs tossed carelessly over his while she leaned back against John's back, her classwork propped up against her legs. The priest was dozing, his head nodding as he tried to stay alert.

"With my parents over by Mount Koya. They wanted to have some quality time with their grandson or something like that, and Ayako needed a break. Plus, we didn't want to bring him on the case with what's been going on, yeah know?" Monk replied. He sat just beneath the window, a hand of solitaire laid out in front of him. Sunlight warmed his back, turning his hair a golden color.

Yasu grinned at him, still typing without looking at the screen. "No, I wouldn't know because I don't have a child, at least not one that I know of."

John snapped out of his doze, glancing at the ash haired teen over his shoulder. Masako's head shot up, her eyes narrowing. "You better not have any children. Especially ones that you don't know about. Don't go committing a Gene."

From the wall of monitors, Naru mumbled without much force behind his words, "Don't bash on my twin. He was dead."

"And I'd like to point out that he did know about them, he was just, as Naru pointed out, dead," Yasu said haughtily, pursing his lips at Masako, though there was an obvious smirk behind the face.

Monk groaned, rubbing at his forehead. "Yasu, don't be incorrigible. It's really not cute."

"Wow, that's a big word for you isn't it?" Yasu joked, grinning as Masako, John and Lin snorted with quiet laughter.

Flushing, Monk muttered, "Shut up. I know a lot of large words. I just don't use them."

Frowning, Kamin looked over at Naru. She lay on her stomach in front of Monk, watching him play. At times, she'd point to a place he could place a card, as if she was silently strategizing. "Daddy, what does 'incorrigible' mean?" she asked, looking back at Monk just in time to see him set down a card. She shook her head sadly, as if he'd already lost the game, sitting up and turning towards Naru. Tamaki lay just beside his chair, leafing through a volume of "Harry Potter".

In unison with the same monotonous tone, Naru and Tamaki replied, "It can mean 'impossible to change', or 'unruly and unmanageable'." They glanced at each other. Tamaki grinned at Naru happily.

The group went silent, falling back into their previous activities with a certain degree of sleepiness. Darkness slowly crept in at the window, a sinister eclipsing of the soft afternoon light. Naru had a feeling none of them would be getting any sleep that night. If they did, it would simply be a miracle.

As slowly as the disappearing light, the door squealed open revealing an uncomfortable looking Gene and a sympathetic Ayako. Sighing, Gene glanced up, catching Naru's eye. He jerked his chin back out the door, indicating without words that they needed to talk. He turned on his heel before anyone could say a word to him, marching back into the dark hall.

Naru was out of his chair and through the door just as quickly, worry tightening his stomach and making his body run on autopilot. Though logically, he knew Gene was residing in Mai's body for the time being and was perfectly capable of protecting himself, his body could only see Mai's face when his mind shut down, translating that into an instant need to protect.

"Wait, what's going on?" Monk asked, standing and raising his eyebrows at his wife.

Ayako shook her head. "It's not my place to say. If they want all of you to know, they'll tell you on their own time," she told the group before shutting the door firmly behind her. "We should probably go into one of the rooms as not to be eavesdropped on," she advised the twins in the hallway.

"It doesn't matter. The walls here are thin as paper. You can't sneeze without someone across the house hearing you," Naru muttered irately, crossing his arms across his chest.

Gene grinned. "Yeah, just imagine trying to masturbate in this place. That would really suck," he joked, laughing lightly, "Aren't you happy we got out of here long before a tweens and teens?"

Both Ayako and Naru groaned. "Gene, not the time."

"Sorry," Gene murmured, dropping his eyes to the hardwood floors that were stained with years of enduring the abuse of children, "I just thought we needed a joke right now."

"No. Right now, you need to explain what the problem is," Naru said, looking to Ayako sternly, "Is it bad?"

"Well…" she began, trailing off. She caught Gene's eye. "If you tell him this, I'll tell him the other thing. I don't particularly understand this situation."

Gene nodded, his shoulders sagging just the slightest bit in relief. "I can do that. I don't understand the other thing so much. So this is good. This is good. Just… let me gather my thoughts really quick." He closed his eyes, turning his back to the pair. He muttered quietly under his breath, ruffling his hair agitatedly before turning back around. "Okay, I've got it. Short and simple, that's the way to go, right?" He glanced at them. They just stared at him blankly. "Okay, so, um… yeah…"

"Just get on with it before I lose my nerve too!" Ayako shouted, jolting Gene out of his circle of procrastination.

"Mai's body is deteriorating," Gene squeaked, glaring at the offending red head. "That is not how I wanted to say it."

"That was short and sweet," Ayako countered, "Now, for the other thing-"

Naru cut her off. "What do you mean 'deteriorating'? How can her body be deteriorating?"

"My soul is not supposed to be here, Naru. This is not my body. Her body..." His eyes darted around the cavernous hall that seemed to be slowly closing in on him, searching for an answer. "It craves its original soul. It's a surprise that it hasn't ejected my soul already, but bodies have a build in mechanism that automatically fights for life. The only reason I haven't been ejected yet is because her body need something to keep it alive, I'm that something. It's biding its time until Mai's soul can return. That doesn't mean it can stand my presence though. Bodies are engineered for the soul, and the soul for the body. They aren't meant to be separated only to have something else shoved into it. It can't stand my soul, Naru, not for long periods of time like it's had to endure already."

Naru's eyes were wide, staring at his brother's scared face, his frantic eyes. "What… what does that mean?"

Gene's eyes locked on Naru. "It means that we have to get Mai back into her body soon. It hasn't started to deteriorate on the outside yet, but the moment that happens, we won't have much time left. If Mai's body, if this body," he spread a hand over his chest, "stops deteriorating before we get Mai back, then…" His throat closed with tears at the mere thought.

"Then what?" Naru asked.

The twins had completely forgotten about Ayako who was standing back in some of the darkest of the shadows, watching the exchange with wet eyes. She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to push back her tears. Gene had explained all of this to her before they'd come to get Naru, and they'd both started crying after he's explained the full, terrible extent of the situation.

"Then… that means the body has lost connection with the soul. It means that the soul has been destroyed."

Naru furrowed his brows, trying to find a loophole in the whole mess. "But if the soul is detached, doesn't it have a possibility of finding its body again?"

Gene shook his head, chocolate hair brushing the middle of his back and his cheekbones. "No. A body only loses connection with its soul once the body has died. If a soul is ejected from its body, the connection can only be lost of the soul is destroyed. That is when another soul can inhabit the body without worrying about rot. The body will have become an empty husk waiting for a new conductor. It may live for years after losing its soul, like a coma patient, but it will eventually die without a soul, whereas a coma patient whose soul has simply been ripped from the body will live until its natural life has been spent."

Ayako stepped forward before anymore could be said on either of the boys' parts. "Gene, darling, you just made it a little more complicated than it needed to be. Short and simple, remember?" she asked, her voice quivering with unshed emotions.

"No," Naru whispered, "I… I understand what he's talking about. We need to get Mai's soul back… as soon as we can. Short and simple."

"Short and simple," Gene agreed, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Geez, Mai's body was seriously emotional. He didn't know if he could take much more of this anyway.

They stood in the gloom of the hallway for a long moment, each composing themselves in different ways. Finally, Naru inhaled a deep breath, pressing hands over his forehead and eyes. "What was the other thing? It better be good news."

"Well…" Ayako started slowly again, looking to Gene for help this time.

Gene sniffled, rubbing at his nose with a finger. "It depends on how you take it. It can be considered good news. Actually, it usually is taken as fantastic news by most people, but in the current situation… It can easily be taken as bad news."

"Gods, Gene," Ayako groaned, slapping her forehead, "That was the most vague explanation I've ever heard."

Gene was immediately on the defensive, puffing out his chest. "What? It's the best I could do under the conditions! You haven't told him yet!"

"Told me what yet?" Naru asked, interrupting the growing argument smoothly, looking at the pair with glacier eyes. They slid from one woman to the next, waiting impatiently for an answer.

Gene directed a glare at Ayako, narrowing his identical eyes at her. "Yeah, Ayako, what haven't told him yet?"

"It's not my fault! Don't go griping at me about your situation! I wasn't the one who did the nasty!" Ayako shouted at him.

Gene raised an eyebrow. "Actually, technically speaking, you have-"

"Gene, shut up," Ayako snarled.

"Both of you, shut up!" Naru shouted, shutting up the pair easily. He turned his glare to Ayako. "News, now, before I lose my patients."

Ayako grumbled under her breath about stupid, tyrannical bosses and idiot boy-girls before sighing loudly. "Fine, whatever. You're boy-girl twin has gotten himself pregnant."

Naru's eyes snapped to Gene, but his twin was examining his nails, lips pursed.

"Now, there's no need to go getting your panties in a twist just yet. I can safely tell you that Mai's body has been pregnant for around three or four months. We need blood tests for a more accurate time frame, but my best guess is that Mai was pregnant before Ash took her soul," Ayako explained, running a hand through her hair. "The baby is not in immediate danger from Mai's body deteriorating, but it is troubling."

Both Gene and Naru's eyes snapped to her. Gene hadn't heard this part of her little speech. "What's troubling?" they asked in unison.

Ayako frowned, looking at the pair with a raised brow. "Well, with the corrosion of her body and the switching of souls that will most definitely take place, I'm worried if the baby will be able to take the stress the body will be under."

Gene and Naru looked at each other, worry deepening the lines on both of their faces. Sighing, they said together, "Mai is strong, and so is her body. The baby will be fine."

Her eyes tightening, Ayako kept her trap shut. She didn't want to scare them. She wanted to have hope, and for them to have hope. She couldn't tell them what she really thought about everything. All she knew was that more than one heart was going to be broken over the course of this case, and not all of that heartbreak would be centered on the pair in front of her. Sighing forlornly, she turned back to Base. "Let's get back. They've probably been listening at the door this entire time, or with cups to the wall."

"Right," Naru and Gene said, equally distracted by whatever was running amok through their clever little minds.

Whelp! There y'all go! Sorry for the late update. I've been very lazy over my vacation. Tumblr has been my best friend. Anyway, I'll try to get a new chapter up before school starts back up.