Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt and never will
Chapter 6: Just too Smart
"That was a very loud conversation you three were having in the hallway," Yasu commented, his eyes focused on his computer screen as Ayako, Gene and Naru pushed into Base. His fingers stilled on his keyboard. He glanced up at the trio from under his bangs, assessing the situation. The air around the three had subtlety changed over the course of the fifteen minutes they'd been gone. It wasn't exactly a good change either.
Naru shot Yasu an annoyed glare, dropping down into a chair and turning towards the monitors. "Has anything happened?" he asked Lin, ignoring the rest of the room.
Ayako dropped down beside her husband, laying her head in his lap. Her red hair slipped across his legs and only the floor like a waterfall of blood and fire. Monk sighed through his nose, setting down his already lost solitaire game and running his fingers through her hair. "Are you feeling alright?" he asked her in a quiet tone.
"It was… a heated discussion," Gene muttered wearily as he dropped down on Yasu's right side beside Monk, tossing his legs over Yasu's beside Masako's. He dropped his face into his hands as his fingertips simultaneously pressed together.
"I could hear that," Yasu said, dropping his eyes back to his computer screen. He couldn't remember what he'd been typing into the search bar. His mind couldn't focus on the virtual world. It could only focus in the legs slung across his.
Gene peeked between his fingers at Yasu, a light flush heating his cheeks. "Oh shit, you didn't hear what we were talking about, right?" he asked.
Yasu shook his head. "We could only hear you three when you got really loud. Like 'wake up the babies across the house' loud."
Gene frowned. "There are no babies in this orphanage."
His eyebrows drawing together, Yasu stared at Gene. "Are you sure? I thought I heard crying earlier. Don't most orphanages have at least a few babies in their care, even with all of the children and teenagers running around?"
Gene shrugged. "Sure. There's still a nursery, but this orphanage hasn't had babies in it since… well, it wasn't pretty."
"You talk like you were here when they stopped having a nursery," Yasu said. Slowly, he was starting to tape the piece together in his head, but he needed a few more before he had the entire picture.
"Um…" Gene muttered, catching Naru's eye. His twin shook his head, eyebrows furrowed. "I just have a hunch. Usually, it's not pretty when you have to stop caring for babies. Something bad usually happened." He stared off into a corner of the room, seeing something that the rest of the group wasn't privy to.
Crawling towards them, Tamaki curled into Gene's side, startling the other out of his thoughts. Gene smiled down at Tamaki, pulling him closer into his side. "Do you like the book?" he asked, pointing towards the 'Harry Potter' book still lying open on the floor. Kamin leaned over the book, flipping through the pages at a much slower pace than her twin had been.
Tamaki nodded, looking up at Gene with sparkling eyes. "I like Harry! I want to be able to do magic just like they can do!"
Gene laughed, ruffling the boy's hair. "Well, in our world we do a different kind of magic that takes a lot longer to do than their magic, but sometimes, it's more affective."
"Really?" Tamaki asked, excitement ringing in his voice.
"Of course," Gene said, "Everyone can do magic in their own way. They just have to figure out what way that is."
Tamkaki looked down at his hand, small and soft before looking back up at Gene. "Like you or Mama or Mommy?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Gene asked, his brows furrowing in confusion. At first, he thought that maybe he meant their psychic abilities, but then he remembered that Christina hadn't had any psychic abilities.
Tamaki explained, "Making a baby."
Sharp breaths were sucked in all around the room. Naru jerked around, staring at Tamaki with a look akin to horror. Ayako's head snapped up fast enough that she could have given herself whiplash.
"Um…" Gene muttered, not knowing how to respond to the six-year-old.
"Are you pregnant, Dad? You are, right? I heard you guys talking about it," Tamaki explained further.
Gene looked up at Naru with wide, helpless eyes, searching for something, anything to tell his kid. Naru looked as lost as he did. "Well, I can't make babies, Tamaki. I'm male," he tried, but he was almost positive that the rouge wouldn't work.
"But you're in Mommy's body. That makes you a girl, right? That means you can make babies," Tamaki told Gene earnestly.
Kamin crawled towards them at warp speed, stopping at Gene's feet. "Are we going to have a brother or sister? Or maybe we'll have both!" she asked excitedly, looking at Tamaki who nodded.
"This is all your fault, Noll!" Gene shouted, glaring at his twin, "You are raising them to be too smart!"
Naru's hands shot up in defense, shaking his head. "Don't go pinning this one on me. You were the one who thought it'd be a grand idea to make children with your genes," he countered.
"You have almost the exact same genes as I do!" Gene shouted back, covering his eyes with a hand, "Trust the children to notice first. We couldn't even hide it for thirty minutes."
"The point is that they're not the same," Naru shot back before wheeling himself over and snatching up Kamin.
She struggled against his arms, laughing lightly. "Daddy, let me go," she giggled.
"Only if you promise to leave your other Daddy alone. He's not feeling well," Naru told her sternly.
She looked stricken. "Daddy Gene isn't feeling well? Is he sick?"
"No, he's making a baby like Tamaki said, but that takes a lot of energy and can sometimes make that person sick. So you have to calm down so he can rest, alright?" Naru explained calmly, ignoring the wide-eyed looks he was getting from the rest of the SPR group, "That goes for you too, Tamaki. Do you both understand?"
"Yes, Daddy," the twins said in unison.
Tamaki moved to crawl away from Gene, but was pulled back into his lap. "You don't have to avoid me. Just be quiet and calm, alright," he compromised, smiling softly.
"Okay," Tamaki whispered, kissing Gene on the cheek.
"Okay, I understand," Kamin told Naru, her eyes trained on her twin and Gene. When she was set back on the ground, she hurried over to Gene, kissed him on the cheek and sat in the crook of his arm. "I'm sorry for being loud and making you not feel good."
"Thank you, but you weren't the one who is making me feel bad," Gene told her, pulling the pair closer to his torso. He'd missed six years of this, six years of love and play and family. He wondered silently how much longer he would have with his twins. Not much longer, he knew that much.
"Um…" Monk muttered, staring between Gene and Naru with wide eyes, "That was a very quick switch, but…"
"How is Gene pregnant?" Lin asked, looking at Naru skeptically. He wasn't sure if Naru was using it as a ploy to get the twins to behave while on this case, or if it was a serious situation.
Naru sighed, rubbing his temples. "Mai was pregnant before Ash took her soul. Her body has only started to show signs of pregnancy now."
"Are you sure of that? Gene might have been showing signs this whole time," Lin replied, turning back to his computer.
Gene and Naru exchanged looks with each other and then the rest of the group. "Did he just call us stupid and unobservant?" Masako asked, narrowing her eyes at the Chinese man's back.
"Just unobservant," Lin answered, then corrected himself, "And maybe a little stupid."
…..
"Those twins that I always see your body and that black haired guy with, are they your children?" the teenager with the red eyes asked, sitting across from Mai on her swing again. It was around ten at night in the mortal world, the teen had informed her as she'd climbed back up onto her swing hours after Ash had dragged her from the cage again.
Mai looked up, immediately seeing the twins in her mind's eye. She grinned stupidly, thinking of them. "Not biologically, but they consider me their mother now. And that guy with black hair? That's not their biological father either. Is Ash going to use you again?"
The teen frowned. "Really? But they look just like him." She shook her head. "No, he's got other plans apparently. Something about none corporeal screwing around."
Mai nodded, storing the information about Ash for later use. "His identical twin is their father."
"Well, where is he then?"
Mai sighed, looking off passed the bars of the cage into the blackness of the spirit world. "He died before they were even born. He had no idea that his girlfriend was pregnant when he came over here." She sighed, rubbing at her eyes.
"Oh no, that's terrible," the teen whispered.
"Yes, but he helped me develop my abilities and for now, he's getting to spend some time with his children, until I can come back," Mai told her, smiling gently as she managed to get the swing swaying.
"How's that?"
"He's in my body." The girl gasped, pressing a hand over her mouth. Mai frowned, her eyebrows furrowing with worry. "What? What happened? Is something wrong?"
The girl shook her head quickly, a small smile pulling up the corners of her mouth. "No, nothing is wrong. It's something really, really good, but I don't know if I should ruin it for you. I don't think you know."
"What?" Mai cried, grabbing the teen's swing and pulling their faces close together, "What is it? Tell me! I need good news!"
"Your body, the one that other twin is in, it's pregnant. You're pregnant! When you get back to your body, and I know you will, you'll be expecting a child!" the girl whispered excitedly so the others below them wouldn't hear her, "Isn't that great?"
Mai's eyes were wide. She stared at the girl, her fingers still wrapped around her companion's swing ropes. "Are you sure? I'm actually pregnant?"
The girl nodded vigorously. "They were talking about it in the hallway. They said that you'd been pregnant before Ash took you."
"What? Are you sure?" The girl nodded. Slowly, Mai started to put the pieces together. "That means that… when Tamaki asked if I was pregnant… I actually was. Oh no, I lied to a child," she groaned, falling back off her swing, catching herself with her crooked legs.
The girl laughed, copying Mai and grabbing her wrists. "We're stuck here with an asshole of a master, and that's what you're worried about?"
"Well, of course that's what I'm worried about! I hate lying to them. It feels wrong. I'll have to apologize when I get back.
"You're weird," the girl giggled, swinging herself back into a sitting position.
Mai followed suit, rolling her brown eyes. "Like you aren't? I'd have to say that you're weirder than I am," she commented, pursing her lips.
"That might be true."
Carefully, Mai ventured, "How long have you been here?"
"In this cage?" the teen asked, frowning, "A couple more months than you've been here. Nearly a year now. I never gave into him. He thinks that I'm loyal now, but he's not sure. That's why he keeps me here. If you're talking about the orphanage, I've always been there. I was there when your two friends were there, and I was there after they were adopted."
"My two friends?"
"Your boyfriend and his twin, they were there from before. They were a few years older than me. They had abilities too, but they got adopted by a pair of British professors when they were seven. I've been there ever since I was a baby," the teen explained, rubbing at her arms self-consciously.
"What about your body? Is it still there?" Mai asked, hope rising in her chest. She might be able to get both of them out of there and safely back to their bodies.
The teen nodded. "Yes, but I'm almost dead. My body won't last much longer."
Suddenly, the swing slid out from under her, and Mai went plummeting towards the cage floor.
*evil laughter* So, I hinted at something in this chapter that will be very big later on in the story. If you can guess the endgame, I'll figure out a prize for y'all, but it might be buried very, very deep in this chapter. And it probably won't be the first thing you think it is. Anyway, hope you liked it. See y'all next time!