Dean stiffened, motioning for silence. His hand went straight to his silver knife, and it was out in seconds and held at the ready. Years of being under four inches in height had taught them to prepare for anything, whether it be an attack by rat or bug, or capture by a human.

Having a human catch them off guard down between the boxes wasn't likely, and they all listened with sharp ears for the tell-tale scrape of claws or the dragging of a thorax against the ground. The clicking of multiple legs approaching. All dangers that wouldn't affect a human, but could seriously injure or kill any of the smaller people.

With a motion to Sam, Dean inched forward to peer around the corner. It really did sound like the rustle of paper, like the long nights they'd spend with Dean trying to sleep and Sam up with his journal. They'd shared a room most of their lives, and the sound was a comfort when Dean couldn't sleep. Not that he'd ever admit it to Sam.

Sam came up behind Chase, his own knife held at the ready. The brothers were a perfect team after working together for so long, and now was no exception. Sam knew he was to keep an eye on Chase in case anything came from the other directions while Dean checked the sound. Chase, understanding the gravity of the situation, said no more and instead glanced silently between the two brothers. Dean's intense stare swept their surroundings diligently.

When he didn't see anything obvious, Dean stepped fully around the corner. "Hello?" he called out, cautiously walking a few inches from the others. "Come out, come out, whatever you are…"

The rustling paused, and then continued at the same pace. Chase watched the murky shadows with wide eyes, though the glints in his periphery tried to draw his gaze. Sam and Dean both had much bigger knives than they looked from his usual scale. Suddenly Dean's rule of No grab, no stab became much more vicious. By Dean's reckoning, a single slash with that knife could leave quite a cut. It was a wonder Jacob, who'd been taught very clear lessons with both weapons, hadn't needed stitches.

Chase could only see enough to know that a shape of some kind slipped out from a crack up ahead of them. It waited where it emerged, and then another shape popped out into the open. Chase squinted at the cautious approach.

For Sam and Dean's eyes, there was plenty of light to reveal the same strange people from before, silk shirts and round faces and all. The girl led the way, with the guy following closely. He sent the knives wary glares.

The woman paused several steps away, also respecting the blades held at the ready. She said something in her language, and Chase suddenly perked up. "Oh, Jacob was right," he said, almost startled to hear his first language spoken in such an odd place. Then, he smirked. "She said 'It's our persistent western friends.' I guess you guys made a lasting impression."

Dean let his bearing relax, lowering his knife down to his side. "Good to know someone out there remembers us," he said ruefully.

Sam relaxed his stance as well, but didn't lower his knife, staying at the ready. After having time to consider the situation, it was stranger than ever that they'd found people here. Before, they'd been distracted by the case and the language barrier, but now they could get some answers.

"Hope you're ready for this," Dean said, glancing back at Chase. "Ask them if they know anything about what's going on. There's been a killing here, where they live. Did they see anything?"

Chase smirked and stepped around Dean. Once he could see the two strangers better, he noticed their more traditional Chinese garb, right down to the silk shoes. He almost frowned in confusion, but instead offered both of them a greeting in Mandarin.

The guy said something exasperated but relieved, but the woman simply looked delighted. She launched into a conversation with Chase, who answered her rapid questions as concisely as he could. As he talked, the brief sounds of Dean and Sam could be heard amidst the otherwise Mandarin syllables.

After a few moments of polite answers, Chase finally found an opportunity to ask his own questions. He did, and the girl happily answered him. You'd think they'd met in some sunny park, not between stacks of boxes holding antique junk.

Chase paused and let the silence draw out before repeating the last thing the woman said. She nodded and said it again, and Chase replied with a gesture that politely asked her to wait, and turned back to the brothers.

"Well, okay," he began, collecting his thoughts on the matter. "They said they came from a long way away, and I'm pretty sure they're on the same mission you guys are. These guys are spirits."

Dean blinked at that, and assessed the two strange people they'd discovered in the building. In his periphery, Sam put his knife away but kept his hand in his jacket where, Dean knew, a pouch of salt they were each certain to keep on hand when they thought they were dealing with spirits.

If it came down to a fight, salt could ward off the spirits or form a temporary barrier between them, giving them time to regroup. It wasn't a solution, but it did buy time.

Dean didn't go for his own salt, not wanting to set off the spirits while Chase seemed to be making progress. "They're not like any spirits we've seen," he said slowly, remembering the spirit of the small girl that had tried to kill him and Melanie. She'd tossed them into a filling bathtub, dragging them down into the depths to drown. If it wasn't for Jacob, she would have succeeded, after her first attack knocked Dean out, leaving him helpless. These spirits were patiently communicating with them, a huge difference.

"What do you mean they're on the same mission as us?" Sam called from his place. "So far as we can tell, a spirit caused this death."

"Not that kinda spirit," Chase clarified. "Like spirit ... emissaries, I guess?" He scratched his head and shrugged. The case, already well beyond anything he ever expected, didn't give him any chances to catch up with the crazy. "They aren't ghosts of dead people, they were never people." He paused, and then stepped to the side so that the two pairs could face each other easier.

He relayed Sam's words to the woman, and she frowned distastefully while the guy huffed in frustration. The male spirit stepped forward and interjected in an irritable tone before his calmer companion quieted him once more. After a few more words with Chase, he nodded in understanding. The woman looked pleased and relieved to have their communication barrier knocked down. One hand absently twirled the end of one of her long black pigtails.

"I was right. They're here looking for the restless, twisted spirit of one of their master's descendants." Chase glanced between the two groups he was interpreting for, and decided to explain some background. "These two are zhi ren, which just means 'paper people.' There's sometimes this tradition to burn little paper effigies when someone dies, and then the paper people act as their servants, making their afterlife easier. Whoever they work for is at rest and couldn't come themselves, so they sent these two."

The male spirit spat out a few words, and his companion shot him an affronted glare. Chase adopted a flat look and whispered "Dude," before shrugging at Sam and Dean again. "He said they might have found their charge already if not for your interference ... and some not-so-nice names." The small Chinese spirit stood as tall as he could as he watched the brothers, not fazed at all that he had to tilt his head to meet their eyes.

Dean drew himself up in offense. "Hey!" he shot right back, not missing a beat. He stabbed a finger through the air at them. "Last I checked, we were only here for a half hour at the most, earlier, and that was hours ago!"

"Whoa," Sam said, putting a hand on Dean's shoulder to try and calm him down before he went on a tirade and upset the others more. It was sounding like they might get some answers at last, and might even solve the case without anyone in danger. "Calm down. I think we all reacted earlier." He remembered watching these… 'paper people' run from Jacob. At least they had an answer to how they'd slipped into passageways the brothers couldn't fit in.

"We're all here for the same reason," Sam said, torn between looking at Chase or the zhi ren. "If we work together, we might be able to find their… 'charge' sooner. And put them to rest. Do they know why the other spirit might be in this building?"

Chase relayed the question, but the woman held up a hand and answered in a flustered voice. Among her quick words, Sam and Dean's names stood out in contrast to everything else as she asked Chase something. He nodded and said something to the affirmative. Then, "She says they've both been horribly rude and she wants to apologize and get a proper introduction."

Once he finished, he nodded to her to continue, and the small woman drew herself up proudly. She indicated herself and said something long and eloquent, before gesturing to her companion and listing his names as well. Chase grimaced and asked her a question in a deferential tone, even bending at the waist in a shallow bow. She answered in a gentle voice. The other spirit looked away from them and pouted.

"Okay, they have a shit-ton of titles and stuff, but I asked if I could give you something in your own language to call them. She says it's fine, so this is Jade and, hmm, Gold." He gestured to the spirits in turn.

Jade indicated herself again and, with careful enunciation, said, "Jade." She nodded and then looked at Sam. "Sam," she began, before continuing her explanation.

Chase paused, and then began translating. " 'We're here on behalf of our master in his peaceful afterlife. A descendant of his line has died and their essence lingers where it should not. Their behavior has been atrocious and a terrible blight upon the family name. We know the object holding them here. We await their appearance.'

Sam nodded his understanding, his mind racing. "Okay. Okay." His lips thinned as he thought it through. Jade smiled softly at him and needed no translation from Chase this time while she waited for an answer.

It didn't sound overly different than the spirits they dealt with themselves, aside from the zhi ren being added into the equation. Someone was acting up, and the paper people had been sent out to deal with them. The spirit was attached to an object instead of their remains, like the girl they'd dealt with on their first case, but they could deal with that.

Sam turned to the girl. "Jade," he said, his voice warm now that he knew her name. "If you know where it is, and can show us, our friend Jacob might be able to help us out with this. Especially if it's in the boxes. We can take it to a safer place, somewhere we don't need to worry about any other humans interfering."

"Or we could just salt and burn it ourselves," Dean muttered in an aside.

Sam stomped Dean's foot, getting an affronted look in return. Chase made a studied effort not to snicker at them. "Behave," Sam hissed under his breath. "If they can take care of the spirit, we might not have to go that far."

By the time the brothers finished their hushed bickering, Chase had relayed Sam's words to the zhi ren and they were both mulling it over. Gold muttered something to Jade, and she argued back pointedly. Then, she asked Chase something else while her eyes flickered to Sam and Dean as well.

Chase chuckled weakly and answered, gesturing to himself and to Sam and Dean as well. Jacob's name appeared among his words, and there was the distinct sense that he was vouching for the huge human's trustworthiness the same as Sam.

Jade looked bemused, but put her hands together in front of herself with a smile. Gold snipped something at her in warning, but this time she didn't even acknowledge his bad attitude. She told them all something that sounded decisive.

"She says they'll show us the heirloom," Chase translated. "Then we can go get Jake and bring him up. They don't wanna go too far from it in case the spirit manifests."

"I think that works," Sam agreed with a slowly growing smile. It was rare to find people their size that were willing to accept humans. They would have trouble convincing Walt and their adopted mother, and that was after years of living with them. "Jacob will be glad to know everything is going to plan after all we went through to get here." A brief memory rose to mind of Bobby Loran, standing down at their height and shoved into Jacob's grasp by Dean.

Definitely a long road to get here…

"We're ready anytime," Dean interjected, taking over from Sam now that they had a plan. "The sooner we can get Jake, the better. Chances are, if this spirit's going to show up, it's gonna happen at night." He found himself unconsciously using the same name for Jacob as Chase, after hearing it so much.

Chase translated for the zhi ren and Gold nodded in exasperation, muttering out something that didn't need to be interpreted to tell it was snark. Jade chided him, but then smiled at the others and beckoned with a hand. The two paper spirits turned to lead the way, sure steps carrying them along with a faint sound of rustling accompanying every movement.

Chase glanced back at the brothers with a proud grin and raised eyebrows before he followed after them. For such petite little spirits, they could hustle along. They paid no mind to the looming shadows all around them, and their haste helped Chase keep his mind off of the fact that the entire party could probably fit on Jacob's hand.

Several steps later, Gold turned to the side, where two boxes had been shoved close together. Before he could disappear into the crevice, Jade snipped at him and he looked back. He blinked and shrugged unapologetically before they continued on a path that used spaces everyone could fit through.

Jade said something to them while they walked, and Chase raised his eyebrows. "She says she was trying to draw the heirloom to show you what they were here for. And good job for thinking of using pictures, even if it didn't work out." He smirked, bemused.

"Hey," Dean shot at Chase. "It was the best we had, and it was working fine. Your buddy Godzilla is the reason we had to scrap that plan. He came and crashed our party."

Sam shook his head as he once again followed at the rear of the group, resigned to being in the back. "Jacob came in right when Jade started her drawing, and they ran." Explaining to someone that the giant in the room was harmless was hard, but possible, if they spoke the same language.

Doing the same thing without a way to communicate without pictures? Nigh impossible.

"After they vanished, we figured we could get your help," Sam said. "Jacob recognized the Mandarin and we thought of the hexbag."

"It's working pretty well," Chase agreed. "Better than just kinda guessing." Gold looked back at him curiously, and he repeated their words for him in Mandarin. Gold snickered himself before turning back to the task of leading them through the maze of boxes. The zhi ren seemed entirely unconcerned with anything happening around them, despite the fact that a ghost had murdered someone days ago.

According to them, that was an embarrassment. As Chase followed along with the group, he realized just how detached the two of them really were. They had held back from the knives, but hadn't seemed overly concerned about them at any point. It had been more for Sam and Dean's comfort than anything else.

Jade and Gold turned a corner and suddenly the open floor was only a few feet ahead. They didn't stop, but Chase's footsteps faltered. He remembered the open floor well enough to know how exposed they would be if they stepped out there. It was lucky there was no one else around.

Jade reached the end of their makeshift corridor first and paused at the opening. She turned back while pointing at something that would be out of sight unless they leaned out to look at it. "Sam, Dean, Qi Shi," she said, adding something more in rapid Mandarin.

"She says it's in the room where the westerner was killed," Chase supplied helpfully.

"Okay, good," Dean said, his mind racing as he glanced into the open room beyond. His shoulders grew tense at the reminder of how tall they really were, and he found himself wishing that Jacob was closer.

We've handled more than this before, Dean reminded himself. We can manage a few minutes to find where the heirloom is before we grab him.

That didn't mean they wouldn't be prepared. "Make sure to hang back," Dean said to Sam. "Keep a watch out for us." Aside from Sam being the better lookout because of his ability, and Dean being the better equipped for searching with his ability, it meant that he could at least put his little brother further out of harm's way.

"If you get into any trouble, don't expect me to just sit on the sidelines," Sam said reflexively, pulling out his knife again. "I've got your back."

Dean nodded his understanding, though he could feel the stress from watching Sam get snatched up by Jacob during his foolhardy rescue mission flare up. Arguing about it here would get them nowhere.

Taking a few steps towards the zhi ren, Dean beckoned to Jade. "Ladies first?"


A/N:

Friends!

Next: June 21st, 2023 at 9PM


Adding in this author's note for all my followers here, and will keep it on all chapters going forward:

If the worst happens and fanfiction shuts down, you can find all my stories on both archive of our own and deviantart, posted under the nightmares06 account. You can also find our story tumblr, which contains a ton of information and answers that are only posted on that site, along with artwork for the stories and future plans we have. That can be found under the brothersapart tumblr account. I can't put links in chapters, but googling "Brothersapart tumblr" should bring it right up!