Kami no Matsuei (the Yami/Cain crossover fic)

[S-C.net RP Board Admin]

Transplanted from
www.hostboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2075&t=74

[RisuChan]

[editor's note: don't kill me for the pun! It just suddenly smacked me over the head that taking Yami no Matsuei and shifting one character gives you something that works out to mean something pretty close to 'God Child,' so what else could I call it? ^^;;]
-----------------------------

The meeting had been going for twenty minutes already when the door to the darkened room swung open.

All heads swiveled to stare at Tsuzuki, who walked in with a mouthful of cinnamon bun and a perplexed expression.

"Fwa' gw'n ahhh?" he said.

"What?" Hisoka asked, more resigned than exasperated by this point. He kicked a chair into the back of Tsuzuki's knees so that their perpetual latecomer got himself seated with a bit more alacrity than usual; the rest of the assembled shinigami turned their attention back to the irritated speaker.

Tsuzuki chewed and swallowed hastily, and said, "What's going on?"

Hisoka said, "We're all getting reassigned."

"What, ALL of us?"

"Everyone they can pull off patrols, as soon as we can get them," Hisoka replied. "Apparently there's been a real mess going on."

"...So that concludes the briefing," the speaker said, with a particular glare at Tsuzuki. "You have your assignments; report to your section leaders as soon as possible."

"But I just got here!" Tsuzuki protested.

"And how is that my fault?"

By the time Tsuzuki had thought of an adequate response to that, the speaker was gone. With his jaw still hanging open, he turned toward Hisoka, who buried his face in one hand quietly.

"All right, come on, I'll give you the fast-forward version."

"Come on to where?"

"The University of Tokyo's costume design department."

Tsuzuki blinked several times in a row. "The where's what? Huh? --I need more sugar..."

"No you don't," Hisoka said, and took the box of remaining cinnamon rolls out of his hands. Tsuzuki made a whimpering sound and reached after it.

"Give those back!"

"Not until you listen to me. --First of all," Hisoka said, holding the cinnamon bun box at arm's length and dodging the occasional frustrated lunge, "we're all getting English lessons subliminally. Second, we're getting clothes for Victorian England. The costume department thinks we're going to be performing 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'"

"Give me my cinnamon buns..."

"...And then we're getting sent back in time about a hundred and twenty years."

"Do they still have cinnamon buns?"

"I doubt it," Hisoka said dryly.

"Then I don't want to go! The rest of you go without me."

"Not a chance. This is an all-hands call."

"Why?"

Hisoka stopped in the middle of the hall and glowered up at him. "NOW he asks..."

Stopping was a tactical mistake; Tsuzuki promptly reached over Hisoka's head and seized the box of cinnamon buns. Hisoka groaned aloud and said, "I've just lost you, haven't I."

"Mmm rrrmph rrrk mmmMMMmmmglk!"

"I'm going to pretend that was something job-related," Hisoka said, half to himself, and took Tsuzuki's elbow in order to drag him along toward their target.

"RRmph..." (gulp) "Of course it was. I said, 'if they don't have cinnamon buns...'"

"ANYWAY," Hisoka said desperately, "there was a person named Cain Hargreaves who seems to have made a habit of warping the line between life and death just by walking down the street. There were so many unexplained deaths and people getting poisoned without dying and people dying but not staying dead and people who were dead coming back from being dead that the local British shinigami have completely given up on correcting the lifelines and the descendants' lines."

"Of course they have," Tsuzuki said.

Hisoka blinked. "You've heard of this person?"

"No, but how could anyone take on a job like this when they didn't have cinnamon buns?"

Hisoka shook his head sharply, rapped the heel of his hand against an ear to try to shake the echoes of that statement loose, and attempted valiantly to continue as though he hadn't heard a thing.

"So in any case, we're going to try to salvage the mess before the aftereffects start spreading through the rest of the space-time continuum. At this point we don't know who's supposed to be alive and who's supposed to be dead. So our first priority is determining who should be in which state. The second priority is getting them into that state. And the third is determining what exactly makes this Count Hargreaves such a magnet for blood, death, tragedy, angst, and general life traumas."

"And cinnamon buns?" Tsuzuki asked hopefully.

Hisoka considered four or five potential answers for a long silent moment. Then he surrendered his battle with his own morals and said, "Yes, and cinnamon buns. After all, someone has to invent the things sooner or later, and we should go back in time to make sure that the timeline gets corrected, in order to make sure that cinnamon buns DO get invented. Right?"

"Where do I sign up?" Tsuzuki asked happily.

God, what did I ever do to deserve this? Hisoka thought as he led Tsuzuki toward the Tokyo University costume department.

-------------
(mwahahaaaa! So who wants to go next?)

[BrezesGhost]

"No," Hisoka refused flatly.
"But it will look so good on you!" whined the woman he had now identified as a complete and utter nutcase. Then again, the whole room was filled with nutcases, himself excluded.

"It's pink."

"Yes, and the colour matches your eyes so well, don't you think?"

If that was true, the blonde thought dryly, I would have dyed my hair pink, let Tsuzuki dress me up in a pink tutu and screamed 'pink sugar heart attack!' whilst skipping around Meifu waving a stupid bell. Since that has yet to happen, Hisoka concluded that the day he succumbs to the nightmare would be the day he wears that pink monstrosity.

“No, I don’t think so,” he answered flatly.

His assistant’s face fell somewhat, but managed to recover before he could blink. “Wait, I know! I have the perfect outfit! Don’t go anywhere!” With that, she dashed off, pink streamers from the dress shirt she was holding trailing behind her.

For a minute, the Shinigami could only stare with a cocked eyebrow, an expression of disbelief clearly etched on his youthful features. Tokyo University, huh? And he thought this was where all the top students in Japan gathered. Obviously, either studying has fried their brains and turned them into scrambled eggs, or geniuses really do think beyond the norm. Not in a good way, either.

Waiting for his clothes, he scanned the room idly, finally resting them on his partner, and fought back a wave of giggles. Whilst the violet-eyed baka may wear the same suit seven days a week, even he manages some resemblance of fashion sense. But then, no one in their right mind could possibly appreciate a leopard-print vest over a high collar shirt with frills rolling off the sleeves, right?

Hisoka managed to smirk instead. Tsuzuki caught the look on his partner’s face, and tried very hard to scowl at him. But all too soon, he too was struggling in a vain attempt to suppress his own laughter as his own assistant, a man in his early twenties, consistently drooled and ‘tidied’ up the outfit. Laughing at whom, however, was a mystery.

“Here we go!” The woman returned, displaying the designated attire proudly. Hisoka blinked. And blinked again. Surely, it was a much better piece than the one before. Made out of a soft lavender material, with minimal lace, frills, and other unnecessary adornments, there was no other word for it. It was . . . pretty.

The blonde youth took a deep breath. And another one. And tried very hard to contain his rage. “Are you implying I look like a girl?!”

From a distance, Tsuzuki collapsed into helpless laughter as his partner’s assistant began to point out the finer points of the selected garment. He had to admit, the young empath would look perfect in the dress. And lavender, he mused, was definitely his colour.

~~~~~~~

[Is this okay? A little pointless, I admit, but I want an excuse to torment Hisoka. ^o^ Who’s next?]

[RisuChan]

Breze: Wai! ^______^ And after all, "The Importance of Being Earnest" has got a lot more girls in it than the shinigami do, so they can't protest TOO much, can they... ^_~
Grabbing editor's reins for a minute to make sure Muraki gets taken along...
-------------------------------------

"WHAT?" Watari asked.

"You're taking Muraki with you," Konoe said.

"I heard that. Let me amend. WHY?"

Rubbing his temples, Konoe said, "You're taking him because if I send him with Tsuzuki, he'll spend the entire trip molesting him and/or torturing him and forget about the job entirely."

Watari reached over, grabbed Konoe by the lapels, and said very distinctly, "You're missing my point. Why is this psychotic bastard coming along with us at all?"

"I'll have your problem solved in thirty minutes," Muraki said calmly, examining his nails. "They all end up dead sooner or later, right? I'll go kill the lot of them. Problem solved."

Watari and Konoe looked at him for a moment.

"You see?" Watari asked.

Konoe said, "There appears to be an improbably high concentration of homicidal psychopaths gathered around this Hargreaves person. You need someone who can provide you with an intimately accurate grasp of what makes a homicidal psychopath tick. Therefore..."

They looked at Muraki again. He'd taken out a knife and was quietly inscribing something horrifying-looking in the surface of Konoe's desk.

"Give me a different homicidal psychopath."

"This one knows about us."

Watari glared at Muraki, then at Konoe, then at the ceiling. "I don't care. Give me a different one anyway."

"Try out some of your personality drugs on him. After all, you need to keep a leash on him somehow."

Muraki looked up at that, and shifted his grip on the knife to a considerably more lethal one, and said, "Try it and I kill you first."

"I'm already dead, you nutcase."

"Has that ever stopped me before?"

Konoe said, "The sooner you go, the sooner you can come back, you know."

Watari considered that for a moment, then nodded sharply. "Come on, freak boy."

"Why?"

Watari knew how to bait a hook when presented with one. "Because Tsuzuki's going to be there, of course."

"Ah." Muraki stood and put away the knife and bowed rather elegantly. "At your service, then."

"Don't forget your costumes," Kanoe said.

Fortunately, Watari's reply to that was partially muffled by the distance his long legs had taken him down the hall already.

-----------
Okay, Crisis, we've got you tied in now... ^__~

[MikoChansGhost]

England Arrival [before the scene at Cain's house]
Hisoka landed with a clatter and an extreme swish of frills and lace in a what smelt like a victorian back alley dumping ground for trash. in fact he landed on something quite hard and bony, and the "oof!" that came from the said object, ensured that it was at least alive, if not human.

the first thing Hisoka saw when he opened his eyes was blood. PLENTY of blood. Lots and lots of blood. Blood was everywhere in fact, strewn and splattered all over the alley walls as well as coagulating in puddles about him. So much blood that a vampire could have cried for the enormous wastage of life-sustaining food. It was almost inconceivable that the all blood could have come from the dismembered single lady who lay nearby with her intestines thrown over her left shoulder.
But then again, Hisoka had had his fair share of seeing dead mutilated bodies that he managed to survey the scene without throwing up.

"What the--? Tsuzuki!" Hisoka grabbed the black coated man he landed on and aqttempted to shake him to his senses. "Tsuzuki! Who could have done...such...a....uh oh...."

The insanely grinning and not to mention rather bloody man Hisoka had in his grip was definately NOT Tsuzuki.The man grinned. Brought up his bloodied scapel and said, in the refined Insane Doctor Way of Speech that was commonly used by such figures as Muraki and Dr. Jezebel, "Die, whore."



Hisoka angrily slumped down in yet another stinky back alley. Whore! Whore indeed!

He had spent the last few hours evading a scapel wielding maniac who was intent on carving out his kidneys to use in some obscure evil rite, or even to satisfy his cannibalistic tastes--Hisoka wasn't sure which, but he did not intend to lose any of his vital bodily organs. With a certain amount of skillful application of martial arts, he had managed to toss the insane guy into the River Thames. Why is it that the medically trained ones seemed always to be insane?

Speaking of which, Hisoka badly needed a cahnge of clothes. The Victorian frilly dress which he had worn here had been stained with dirt and blood and torn in several places. Hisoka frowned at the memory of the shopkeeper saying that male Victorian costumes his size was out of stock and would he consider one of the previously shown frilly dresses instead? With the help of Saya, Yuma and Tsuzuki, he was eventually forced into what had been reduced into the rather sorry item he was wearing now. Bet it regretted looking so pretty and frilly...Hisoka thought with a certain amount of vengeful glee.

But first things first. He had to find some other clothing. After which, he would have to look for Tsuzuki and the others--the time travelling device seemed to have been designed by Watari--which could explain the sudden seperation of Hisoka from the group. More likely than not, the others were all in different places. If that was the case, this case was already doomed before it even started.

hisoka looked around and spotted in the corner of the alley a convenient plot device placed stragetically by the author--that is to say, it was a gorgeous lacy,frilly, ribbony dress in the corner, completely untouched by the dirt.

Hisoka face-faulted. But considering the extremely ripped up and bloodied condition of his current dress, he had no choice. It was either that, or get arrested by the victorian police.

A few minutes later Hisoka strode carefully out into the streets. He felt somewhat dizzy, and the memory of the blood made him feel slightly sick. It reminded him of his occasional nightmares of the night of his own murder.

All of a sudden, he tripped. and was caught around the waist by a strong arm. By chance or by fluke, the sunlight was in just so a position thyat the man who caught him could not see his face, and he the man's.

"You...are the demons of nightmare torturing you at night?" asked the man softly.

hisoka's eyes widened. How did he know? Muraki? No, Muraki's smell was different...not Tsuzuki either.

Hisoka opened his mouth to speak, and at that moment felt soft, frim lips on his.

Window panes shattered as a loud scream echoed through out London. A little figure in black was seen flying over chimney tops--a case which would be thereafter be known and the "Black Spinning Angel Incident"

[River Thames]

Jack the Ripper grinned insanely as he hauled himself out from the murky waters of the Thames. IwillkillyouIwillkillyouIwillkillyou--

His thoughts were cut off when he was once again forced back into the Thames, by the sudden appearance of the Black Angel.

Count Cain C. Hargreaves used the head of Ripper Jack as a spring board from which he flipped elegantly on one of the banks of the river. He touched the spot on his face where the enigmatic lady had hit him. He grinned. This could turn out to be interesting...

========================================
Ugh...sorry for what i did to cain and Hisoka! Don't kill me! [ducks blows from various enraged fans] well, that's all from me...

[TsukiyamasGhost]

Write something you say? Oh, alright then…
I’m afraid I’ve, erm, borrowed a chara that hasn’t yet appeared in the s-c net scanlations, Cashain, that creepy little knife throwing kid who seems to be part of Delilah and hangs
out with Jez quite a bit. As for the initial location, check out Godchild book 4.

--------------------------
Cashain gave a sigh of resignation as he knocked on the door to the Dr’s office-cum-laboratory. He was there to deliver some information about goings on at the Hargrieves resididence. Another excuse for the Dr to go pay his hated unofficial step-brother another visit. It was well known among the major arcana that Jezebel took his interest in Alexis’s son significantly beyond the call of duty.

...

Delilah’s head executioner had received a report from one of the organisation’s sources on the staff at the Count’s London residence. Something about a party of foreigners. Of course, this was a strictly unofficial reconnaissance, Delilah’s head executioner having been told emphatically by Alexis to Leave Cain Alone, for the time being at least. His argument that simply removing someone’s eyes had no reason to prove fatal had met with similar resistance.

As it happened, however, the Count had already gone out when Jezebel arrived. Not that that was a problem, as it gave him chance to check out these new guests. He was met at the back door by Delilah’s resident spy, an upstairs maid. After checking the hallway to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard she ushered her superior inside and began to tell him the little she’d been able to find out about the count’s strange visitors.

...

“Thank you, you’ve been very useful.”
“Thank you , Doctor.”
“By the way, has anyone ever told you…you’ve got beautiful eyes.” Jezebel headed for the door and the stairs beyond.
“Oh erm…thank you, Doctor. Oh, that was another thing, one of them, Tsu…Tsuzuki, I think his name is, he’s got really unusual eyes, violet coloured, they are.
“Really?”
----------------

Oops. Just realised I'm supposed to be somewhere. :Tsuki disappears in a puff of smoke having advanced the plot not one iota:

Sorry such a short post, guys XP

[RisuChansGhost]

Okay, here's a whack at dropping them into Cain's lap so to speak... ^__^;;
---------------------------
"It's called a receiving room," Tsuzuki said patiently. "We wait here until the lord or lady of the house is ready to receive visitors."

"Why don't they call it a waiting room, since that seems to be all we're doing?" muttered an anonymous voice in the crowd.

"Well, they call it that too sometimes."

"So when do we get done waiting?"

"If the Count's out riding or something, who knows? After all, we could hardly sent a fax ahead to set up an appointment."

"How did anyone get anything done?" Watari asked, in complete bemusement.

"Er. Slowly, I suppose. There also weren't any cars."

"And you put up with this your whole life?" Hisoka asked, in a more respectful tone than any of them were accustomed to hearing from him when addressing his lazy sugar-addicted slacker of a partner.

Tsuzuki laughed, and scratched behind an ear sheepishly. "Well, nobody shouted at me for being late, since everybody was usually late..."

"You know, this explains far too much," Terazuma said quietly.

* * *

Cain pulled back from looking through a crack in the door at the far end of the hall, and turned an eloquently skeptical look on his butler.

"Riff, who or what are these people?"

"I don't know, sir, but they did bring a letter of introduction--" Riff held it out as though it might serve as a sort of shield.

"'Criminal investigators from France?' If they'd said 'wandering freak show' I might have believed it, but..." He shook his head tiredly. "Aside from the fact that I think it's a boy, the little blonde in the lavender dress seems to have the best grasp on something resembling sanity; but the silver-blonde in the handcuffs and gag... Riff, why do these things keep happening to me?"

"I'm quite certain I don't know, sir," Riff said with a sigh. "If I did, I assure you, there would be something done to correct the situation. Promptly."

"Well, I suppose there's nothing for it, then..." Cain pulled open the door and strode into the room.

* * *

The introductions were considerably complicated by the fact that none of the shinigami had thought to create plausible French aliases for themselves, or to agree on any more of their back story than that they were foreign criminal investigators. Their new host looked a bit more skeptical with every word spoken.

"Let me see if I understand this," he said, rubbing his temples delicately. "You would like for me to believe that you are French criminal investigators from a place in France which doesn't speak French, names its people in a linguistic mold bearing no resemblance to any continental language ever spoken, and dress like side-show refugees because it is the custom of your people to put teenage boys in girls' clothing and blondes in gags and handcuffs?"

The shinigami traded a collective look of discomfort, except for Muraki, who was busily trying to break his thumb joint in order to slip a hand out of the handcuffs.

"Why don't you try again?" Cain suggested.

"If you'd just let me--" Tsuzuki said.

"NO!"

"Oh, but why not?" Cain asked, standing to wander over toward Tsuzuki with a disturbingly feline sense of 'new plaything to be caught and pinned' radiating out of every inch of him. "His story can hardly be less plausible than yours, after all."

"There, you see? I told you," Tsuzuki said, and turned a bright smile on their host. "The truth is we're from Tokyo, Japan, a hundred years in the future."

Cain blinked twice, and then turned to look at Hisoka, whom he had long since identified as the least insane of the lot. "All right, so I was mistaken. My apologies. Please, a more plausible version this time."

"I'm sorry," Tsuzuki said earnestly. "That wasn't very honest of me. The whole truth is that we're undead souls from Tokyo a hundred years in the future, assigned to straighten out the tangled-up mess of who ought to be alive and dead around here. We're called shinigami."

After a moment, Cain said to Hisoka rather desperately, "Would it help if I begged?"

With his face stained bright pink with humiliation, Hisoka managed, "We're investigators. From... France. --Bonjour."

"Vraiment? Comprenez-vous ce que j'ai dit? Rien? Pas du tout? Ne pas un seul mot?"

Hisoka stared at him blankly.

"Merde alors..." Cain ran a hand down his face, and said, "The next time the lot of you try to impersonate foreigners, at least teach one of you the language, all right? What's your next try?"

"If you don't want us to be French investigators and you don't want us to be time-traveling shinigami, what else is there?" Tsuzuki asked.

Cain looked at him through half-lidded eyes, and said, "At least half a thousand things more plausible, including the thought that you're all refugees from a sanitarium."

The shinigami traded another long look.

"Well, in this guy's case..." Watari said, jerking a thumb at Muraki.

"Here, look," Tsuzuki said, pulling out a cell phone. "I can prove it. Watari, why don't I call you?"

"You idiot," Hisoka said raggedly, "nobody's going to invent a cellular base station for a hundred and ten years!"

Cain took the phone from him, pressed a button, and was startled when it lit up; the sounds it made were also intriguing, but he handed it back with a sigh. "A fascinating toy, to be sure, but hardly proof you come from the future."

A flashlight was met with considerably greater fascination but matched resistance to the thought of proof -- "if you come from the other side of the world, how am I to know what advances in technology are typical there?" The hand-held computerized dictionaries were pronounced illegible but equally fascinating; after another bewildered look, Tsuzuki's face lit up.

"I know! Why don't I just summon something?"

Two elementals later, they managed to coax Riff out from under the side table and Cain down from the top of the mantlepiece as Hisoka shouted, "We keep telling you don't do that around humans!"

"Well?" Tsuzuki asked Cain expectantly.

Still shaking all over, Cain managed, "I am a scientist. The future I might possibly be persuaded to believe. Freak sorcery I refuse to accept. This is the nineteenth century and we've progressed beyond such medieval superstitions. --I suppose I could grant you a truly staggering skill in mass hypnosis..."

"All right, damn it," Hisoka said, and tore a frill of lace off his sleeve. "You're a scientist? Give me a candle."

A candle was duly produced, and Hisoka said to them, "You know how natural fibers burn, don't you? Watch this."

He held the lace in the candle flame; rather than burning, it began to melt and curl up. Cain made a sound of shock, and bent closer to stare.

"What is that?"

"Polyester," Hisoka said flatly. "A man-made substance based on petroleum, which won't be in common use as clothing for at least forty more years. And completely unrelated to any natural fiber you can name." He pulled it back out of the flame, pinched out the smoldering and curling ends, and handed the remnant to Cain to examine.

After a few minutes' investigation, Cain stumbled over to a chair and folded himself into it carefully, and said, "All right, this I'll believe. What did you say this substance is?"

Offended, Tsuzuki said, "You won't believe cell phones or summoning elementals, but you'll believe in polyester?"

"Welcome to the wonderful world of plastics," Hisoka said dryly. "By the way, I don't suppose I can convince you to lend me some clothes that aren't designed for girls?"

"You're not dressed that way because you want to be?" Riff asked delicately.

"Polyester convinced you we're from the future, right?" Hisoka replied. "You know the saying 'I wouldn't be caught dead wearing that'? Well, now I have been."

Cain and Riff traded a long look.

"Oh, why not," Cain said, a little giddily. "After the rest of this, why can't you be undead to boot? --Please tell me you don't sleep in coffins; we haven't enough of the things lying around, you know."

"No, we don't sleep in coffins," Watari said loudly, and kicked Muraki in the shin at his sudden display of interest.

"Well, then," Riff said, quite calmly considering the rest of the day's events, though he was still a little white around the eyes. "Shall we see to arranging rooms for each of you?"

"And different clothing," Cain said. "And a more plausible cover story."

"Much more plausible," Hisoka agreed. "Thank you."

"It could hardly be less plausible, you realize..."

"Yes," Hisoka agreed, glaring at Tsuzuki, "I'm well aware of that, thank you."

-------------------
Okay, folks, jump in! ^____^ (please? ^_~)
Pardon the likely somewhat goofy French, I've studied three other languages in the six years since then and I kept trying to come up with Welsh and Japanese components in the middle of it... ^^;;;

[editor's note during reposting: tired of logging out and logging in as me or someone else! ^^;; Also slightly resequencing the order of things to make them fit the time flow as I repost them...]

[RisuChansGhost]

One more small snip just after the "getting everyone to the manor" bit 'cause it smacked me over the head and I couldn't resist...
-------

"This is the corridor leading to the west wing," Riff said, carrying a lantern at the head of the procession and trying not to let his shoulders twitch at the fixed stare being planted between his shoulderblades by the pale-eyed doctor. "We'll provide rooms for each of you here; the precise arrangement... er..." He glanced over his shoulder at the pale-eyed doctor who still seemed intent on removing a thumb so as to escape from the handcuffs, and amended, "The precise arrangement can be decided amongst yourselves."

Behind him, Cain said, "A few house rules, people. It seems as though they may be necessary. Those of you whose sanity checks have bounced: feel free to froth madly to your hearts' content, but your right to be a raving lunatic extends only to general nuisance value. Therefore, no sharp objects or lethal toxins applied to anyone but yourself, and if you feel it necessary to commit suicide, I keep a stock of poisons in the basement; I'd be much obliged if you availed yourself of one of those rather than cutting your wrists or throat, since the maids get quite cranky when they have to remove bloodstains from the carpet."

"Er... Master Cain..."

"What?"

"...Never mind." Riff pulled open the door at the end of the hall, and stopped short.

A pair of luminous eyes were hovering three feet above the ground; the rest of the figure was hidden completely by shadows.

"Gaaah--!" Tsuzuki jumped onto Watari's back, and almost knocked the man on his face. "What's that?"

"That's my question," said the voice associated with those eyes, and a small blonde-haired girl slowly walked out into the light, her eyes narrowing as she examined the motley assemblage. "Big brother, what are these?"

Cain, Riff, and Hisoka exchanged a brief, completely panic-stricken glance. They hadn't had time to come up with a cover story yet.

"These... ah..." Riff looked around for some spark of inspiration, and the gray stone walls completely failed to provide it. "These are our new guests, Miss Merryweather. They'll be staying for some time. --Miss Merryweather is Master Cain's younger sister," he added, for the benefit of the shinigami.

"I can see that much," Merry said, rolling her eyes. "What I asked is, what are they?"

Tsuzuki took a breath to explain, and found four hands clamped over his mouth in unison.

"They're... um..." Riff cast another desperate look at his master, who gave a small helpless shrug. "They're... investigators. From... er... France..."

Cain made a small desperate choking sound, clamped a hand over his mouth, and turned away quickly, his shoulders shaking.

"Big brother--?"

Leaning on the wall, he waved a hand vaguely, coughed and wheezed a little, and managed to gasp, "Cobwebs...! Riff... get somebody to dust..."

Merry's eyes narrowed again, and she walked over to Hisoka, looking up into his face. "Investigators from France?"

In a tiny voice that he tried to force higher, Hisoka squeaked, "Bonjour..."

Desperately, Riff said, "I'm sure they're very tired from their journey, Miss Merry, and so if we might give them a bit of privacy to rest and recover--"

"Whatever." Merry planted her hands on both hips. "Investigators from France, is it?"

"Yes," Watari said, struggling to keep a grip on Tsuzuki. "And we're really tired."

"He's wriggling too much to be _that_ tired."

"Well, the rest of us are tired from keeping him under control!"

After a moment's consideration, Merryweather was willing to accept that one. "All right, I'll be good. --But you're going to tell me all about this later on, Riff!"

"Yes, of course, Miss Merry," Riff said, and shooed the pack of them into the west wing hastily, and closed the door firmly behind the madcap little procession.

Investigators from France, my foot, Merry thought, sighing to herself. The French may be odd, but they're not restless undead spirits reembodied and still wandering the planet. I wonder how big brother and Riff are going to try to squirm their way out of explaining about this one...

[YuesGhost]

I'm sorry, I just -had- to do this... XD
okay, so it's the shortest stupid stuff you'll ever see, but if I -ever- finish my hmworks...okayokay,noexcuse. WeEll, at least I wrote something ^^;;;;
_______________


After a restless night filled with odd screams, whimpers, and bed squeeks, it was only natural that Merryweather slept in.

It was almost noon when she woke. she screamed and dress quickly, fuming.

/onii-san! you are SO gonna die! I bet you didn't wake me on purpose, not wanting to answer my questions about those... err... those "people"!/

And so That's how she ran for the kitchen, and Bumped Into Someone.

Of course, it had to be one of the visitors.

...

And, of course, it had to be Terazuma.

--------------------

[RisuChansGhost]

^__^ hee hee hee! Going to bounce the ball right back at you, Yue-san... ^_~
-----
Standing with a half-eaten scone in her hand, Merry blinked suspiciously up at the tall sober-faced stranger. Either the night's ruckus had kept him awake too, or someone had hit him in the face; there was no other way to explain the shadows under his eyes and the general air of "the world is out to get me so I'd better get it first."

He blinked down at her just as suspiciously; either that or he was having trouble focusing. He seemed not to be much of a morning person. Or even an early-afternoon person. If "person" could be said to apply at all, of course.

He took a cup of tea from the sideboard, looked at it, made a peculiar face, and carried it over to the table.

Because "hi, how long have you been undead?" didn't seem like the best way to start off a conversation with someone that cranky-looking, Merry picked up a cup of tea and followed him. He looked even less enthused about being followed.

Merry ate her scone in analytical silence, watching him stare ferociously at his plate as though he thought she might vanish if he ignored her hard enough.

When she'd first started seeing changes and visitors in her Tarot readings, she'd tried to foresee as many details as possible. The readings had been distinctly peculiar, though -- for all the foreseen visitors but one, the Death card -- reversed -- had shown up in their life paths. And it had always been in the past. Merry always double-shuffled her deck; something like that never happened by coincidence.

From this one's general expression and air of world-weary exhaustion, she was certain he was one of the undead rather than the strange lone living member. Nobody who was still alive should look that put out at the universe.

He sipped at his tea slowly, still not looking at her.

Merry decided to take this as a conversational opening theme, since it was apparent she wasn't going to get a better one. "Are you the one with the problem with girls?"

He sprayed the tea across the table. Apparently undead still needed to breathe, because this one spent a while hacking and choking. "Who... how... who told you...? --what did they...? --Was it Tsuzuki? I swear I'm going to wring the little bastard's neck! --I mean..." He thumped himself on the chest to try to clear the tea out of his lungs, gasped for air, and scowled down at his plate, his face burning crimson. "Might I ask who told you about that?"

"Nobody," Merry said, letting a tone of petulance creep into her voice. "Nobody tells me anything. Which is why I have to rely on my psychic insights and womanly intuitions."

"'Womanly--'?"

Merry glared at him.

Terazuma coughed again, and waved a hand sheepishly. "Whatever you say..."

He doesn't blink at the idea that I'm psychic but he chokes on me calling myself 'womanly'? How rude! I'm going to have to educate this one...

"So anyway," Merry asked, with a maliciously sweet smile, "how is the weather in 'France' lately?"

And she sat back to watch him try to wriggle his way out of that one.

----
So, Yue, what have you got in mind for Terazuma's interactions with (gasp) the only regular female member of the cast? ^____~

Ed: @_@ sorry, my brain's on cold meds at the moment. Was it Yue or Miko who had Terazuma? ?_? bewildered now... anyway, sooner or later he'd have to deal with it, right...? Going to go fall over now...

[MikoChansGhost]

[this is both a previous point in the timeline and used as a flashback in the breakfast conversation...]

Terazuma did not get much sleep the night before. Tsuzuki had annoyed him to no end in picking rooms for the party, and when they had finally settled the problem and when he thought he could actually REST for what remained of the night when a horrible, bloodcurlding shriek tore through the night.
there was the normal chaos of the moment--getting your clothes on right for one, and trying not to think of what could have produced such a scream.

As terazuma FINALLY made it to the hallway, something travelling at what was probably 80km per hour crashed into him. Suffice to say, the blow was enough to make a terazuma shaped crater in the opposite wall.

~P~A~I~N~

Terazuma slowly pealed one eyelid open. he met the gaze of a pretty but familiar face. he realized that that person was actually tangled up in his arms and legs.

[smooth skin]

urk...

[girlishly pretty face...]

uppp.....

[small waist]

*gurgle*

Hisoka looked up at Terazuma from the folds of yet another lacy, frilly, ribbon decked dress.

"Hisokaaaaaaa-chaaaaan!!!"

"Where are youuuuuuu?!" came another voice.
Terazuma had just had time to hear Hisoka's terrified screams of "SAYA! YUMA! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" before he transformed into the shikigami lion, affectionately known to wakaba as 'Kuro-chan'.

[RisuChansGhost]

Miko-chan: ROTFL! ^___^ Here's the revised tag scene for that...
----
Merry looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. "Wow," she said. "I guess you really did have a worse night than I did, then."

Terazuma, who had been leaning his head on his hand to keep himself approximately upright, jerked back like she'd tossed a bucket of ice water at him. "What? ...huh...?" He blinked, shook himself all over, and asked, "Did I say that ALOUD?!"

"Oh, don't worry about it," Merryweather replied, munching on her scone. "I knew you lot were too weird even for France. I suppose I should let you go and get some more sleep, shouldn't I." As an afterthought, she added, "Do the undead sleep?"

Looking rather as though she'd smacked him over the head with a cast-iron cooking implement, Terazuma managed, "Er, yes. I mean, we do, anyway. There are different kinds of... er... 'undead.' We're called shinigami. --How did you know that anyway? --Should I be telling you any of this?"

"Yes," Merry said promptly, under the suspicion that he might well be tired enough to believe anything if it was said with enough conviction. "Besides, I told you already. I had you lot pegged before you even arrived. I'm a verrry gifted psychic, you know."

He seemed just as unfazed by that as the previous time. Since she still hadn't forgiven him for being less than impressed with her womanly charms, Merryweather decided more drastic measures were called for.

She finished her tea, put down her cup, and stretched elaborately. "Well, I'll go and let you finish your breakfast, and then go take your nice restful nap, Mr. Terazuma, sir. Sleep well..." And she flung both arms around him and kissed his cheek.

Much to her disappointment, he only looked at her sidelong through sleep-hazed eyes, patted her head vaguely, and picked himself up to meander back towards the staircase.

Merry stared after him in complete bemusement.

"What...? --WHY...?"

"It's psychological," said an entirely too amused voice from behind her. This one was the tall blonde with the ponytail, and he appeared to be trying not to fall on the floor laughing.

"Why didn't he transform for me? I wanted to see what his monster-self looked like!"

"Because it's in his mind," Watari said. "He's scared witless of Hisoka despite the fact that Hisoka's a boy, because he looks so feminine."

"So was he just too tired to notice me?"

"I told you," Watari said, struggling with a manic grin. "He sees Hisoka as feminine. But there's more than two types of people in the world, you know. It's not just male or female -- it's men, women, or little kids. In other words, hon, you're just too young and flat to make a blip on his radar."

Merry blinked. "You -- you --"

"That means he sees you as less womanly than a teenage boy," Watari said, and the grin was taking over. "Wow. That's really sad."

"WHY, YOU BLIND, HEARTLESS, CALLOUS OLD--"

Riff stepped back from the entrance to the kitchen just in time for the flung teacup to miss his head. He started toward the door again, then jumped back to avoid being run down by a long-legged shinigami running for his life while laughing his head off. The third try at making it through the entrance to the kitchen was interrupted by the incandescently furious Merryweather, hot on the cackling shinigami's heels.

"JUST YOU WAIT! Just you WAIT until I get my hands on you! I'll pluck your head BALD! I swear I will! You insensitive, muscle-brained--"

"Good afternoon, Miss Merry," Riff said to her back very cautiously; she paused on the stairs for a split second.

"'Morning, Riff. --YOU! YOU COME BACK HERE..."

Riff carefully peered around the corner of the door and counted to five, waiting for the next stampede; since no more were forthcoming, he sighed to himself as he carried the dishes in.

One can never say that it is in any way possible to grow bored on the job around here, Riff told himself firmly. Challenge. Excitement. Anticipation. These are... these are...

No, they're NOT things I look forward to. They happen whether I look forward to them or not. But they're certainly things I can look OUT for. Just be content with that...

[YuesGhost]

***
Merryweather was still shouting at him -hours- after.

" WHERE are you?! you people can disapear too? come ba~~~~~~ck!!!"

Quietly sitting on a nearby pointed rooftop, Watari giggle loudly, mimicting what Merryweather -should- be. Spotting him, she fumed more and tried to jump to reach him. He blink a couple of times, pondering how she thought she could jump ten meters to get him but finally burst on laughting ...

and fell off the roof, on the other sde, thank God.

BUT, since we all know this is part Kaworu Yuki's world, things couldn't be -that- easy.

So, Watari fell on someone.

Someone that was spying the Count's house, actually.
~~~~~~~~~~


Watari blinked.

And blinked again.

" huh... who are you?" they both asked at the same time.

/... my reflection have different glases then me, how weird!/

so they poked each other's eye to see what was wrong with this mirror.

" ouch!.. hey! that...hurt?
..
WAHHHHHHH!!"

And that's how Dr Jez and Watari met each other.

[BrezesGhost]

Hisoka didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Perhaps he should be grateful that Wakaba was within close proximity, and managed to stabilize both Terazuma and the overly affectionate Hokkaido duo before too much damage was done. Then again, he had just been mauled, groped, molested and it had been barely an hour since he woke up. He was tired, jet-lagged (if you could call it that), and it would seem he was destined to be Tsuzuki’s roommate from the duration of their stay as well. Worse yet, he is currently drowning in another sea of laces and frills.

All Victorian dress designers, he sulked silently, belongs in asylums. The sort with straitjackets, shock treatments and inescapable dungeons. Not that he could say much about Englishmen during this era, either. How can women stand wearing this . . . this *thing*? Worse yet, how can men find women attractive in them? It’s not like they are particular easy to strip off either.

He gave the slightly rumpled dress another yank in an attempt to straighten it, before stalking off to the sanctuary of his room.

Slamming the door after he entered, he proceed to rummage through the large built-in closet in search of a suitable outfit aside from the one he was currently wearing, and all the other dresses present in there. He pointedly ignored the fact he had already spent most of the night previous searching endlessly to no prevail, and tried his best to pay no attention to the sound of bedsprings protesting against the figure currently bouncing on it.

“Ne, Hisoka! Did you get me breakfast?” Tsuzuki inquired, a pair of fluffy year sprouting on his head out of nowhere.

“I’m not talking to you.”

“But why not? I didn’t *do* anything . . . “

The blonde empath pretended not to hear him.

“Hisoka ~ “ He tried whining.

No answer.

“ ‘soka-chan ~ “

Again, no reply. Tsuzuki tried a teary approach. Sniff, sniff.

Hisoka didn’t even turn around. “Donn’t even bother trying, baka. That trick may work on Tatsumi, but it sure as hell won’t work on me.”

“But I wanna know why you’re mad at me!”

Slender hands momentarily paused, then resumed their search. “You already know.”

Brows furrowed in concentration, before a light bulb appeared over raven strands. “Because I told them we’d sleep in the same room?” He frowned. “But we room together all the time! And you know Muraki will try to get me when I’m on my own! Or you, for that matter. Besides, you were the one who told me to pick a room!”

Hisoka scowled. “I know that, but did you have to pick *this* room?”

“What’s wrong with this one?” Tsuzuki waved a hand in a familiar gesture. “You said you wanted a big, comfy room, and this is the biggest room I could find!”

“Tsuzuki, this is a suite. And what’s worse, it’s . . . “ he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words. “Do you even know how much you snore?”

The elder pouted. “I don’t snore!”

“Yes, you do, and do you know you move during your sleep? One minute you have you head on my . . .” Turning around with indignation, he finally caught sight of his partner. Somewhere, somehow, Tsuzuki managed to find a large plate of bagels, which he is now munching on with vigour. On the only bed in existence within the room.

Technically, the king-sized bed suitable, or rather, created largely for the purpose of . . . let’s call it a certain type of ‘rendezvous’ . . . should be coined the term, ‘their bed’. But Hisoka is a very possessive person, and a sequence of undesirable events had caused his mood to turn very sour.

He slept on this bed. Therefore, it was his bed, no? It’s bad enough he had to endure Tsuzuki’s sleeping habits, but to have food crumbs on *his* bed . . .

“TSUZUKI NO BAKA!! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO EAT ON THE BED!! DO YOU WANT TO BE BITTEN BY MICE?!!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cain blinked at the loud crashing noise from upstairs. Sipping his coffee, he commented to Riff, the other’s face wide agape. “My, they’re certainly active, aren’t they?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[TsukiyamasGhost]

[[[[Can I borrow Merryweather?.Only, I’ve got a cute interlude here I thought I’d drop in the mix. I just thought I’d give the Shinigami another problem to solve XP. As for the cinnamon buns, they were bound to become a major plot element sooner or later…]]]]
“What are you doing?”
Yet another undead guest, this one holding a dripping spoon, looked down at the forthright little girl who had just joined him in the kitchen.
“I’m inventing cinnamon buns.” He happily informed her, indicating the culinary debris littering the table.
“Oh, baking? I’ll help!” Merryweather had been left to her own devices since her brother had been preoccupied with those strange visitors. She had a ten year-old’s enthusiasm for dessert and about the same level of cooking ability. She was in good company.
“Umm, do you know if there’s any cinnamon around here?”
Merry paused, looking around at the various cupboards and shelves. Standing on tiptoes she opened the nearest cupboard, revealing a selection of jars and tins, which she began opening and peering into. She returned to the table with a jar of cinnamon sticks, which went into the mixing bowl, whole.
“What next?”
“I thought you were inventing them. Don’t you know? I think cook usually using baking soda when she’s baking things…”
Tzuzuki shrugged, and eyes the concoction in the bowl. “Worth a try, I suppose.” Merryweather hunted around again and found a tin containing a fine, odourless white powder. Close enough. The words on the handwritten label, Sodium flouroacetate, meant nothing to her.
Tsuzuki added a generous amount to the mixture.

He was just taking their rather strange looking experiments out of the oven when the door to the kitchen opened and a blonde boy came in. He was wearing a dress, but it wasn’t as pretty as Merryweather’s, so that was okay. Another “French investigator”.
“How did I know you’d be here?” He scowled at Tsuzuki. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”
“But, Hisoka, we’ve nearly perfected the recipe.” Tsuzuki protested, brandishing the tray of malformed cinnamon oddities under Hisoka’s nose. Hisoka backed away from them.

And so Tsuzuki was dragged away and Merryweather was left alone in the kitchen. She eyed her morning’s work suspiciously and decided against tasting them herself. She might not be particularly womanly, but she wasn’t stupid, either. Instead she left the tray on the messy table and went off to see what her brother was doing.

Some time later she was sitting in the library idly drawing moustaches and other embellishments on some former member of the Hargrieves family’s collection of ‘artistic’ female nude photographs. She got up, though, when she heard raised voices down the hall.
“-appears to be a body in the kitchen.” Lief passed on an urgent message, sotto voice to his master. Merryweather stuck her head around the door.
They both looked at the various assembled shinigami in the room, who looked back equally suspiciously at the count. Merryweather, remembering her and the shinigami’s culinary experiment removed herself swiftly from the doorway.

[[[[Okay, I know Sodium flouroacetate usually takes longer to kill someone, but it is easy to mistake for baking soda. I suppose I could have used thallium – damn, Cain’s not the only poison fan around here. Anyway, death number one. Just a servant but it was caused by a child and a dead man. Is this too ~wrong~ ‘cos I can change it? Okay, Risu, baby, you can have her back now. Oh and the 'real me' is has already met a shinigami? all practise for muraki's appearance I suppose]]]]