JE/NEWS+SPN- "All's Chaos on the Eastern Front" (3/7)
“You’ve all been hunting,” Johnny tells them, when he gathers them together again, at the cusp of when the current year ends and the new one fast approaches.
NEWS hems and haws and doesn’t generally answer, because they’d known they weren’t supposed to, but they all did anyway, even Ryo by himself, hundreds of miles away.
“What, it’s not like I was getting any sleep,” he quips darkly, and Koyama pats his arm sympathetically.
“It’s something you chose to do,” Johnny amends, looking amused. “Despite everything.”
“Yes,” they all say.
“And um, we’d like to do it together again, soon,” Massu chimes in from the back. “Not just performing and being idols, but…everything.”
“It is safer that way,” Shige points out. “Numbers and stuff.”
“And with six of us alternating between work and hunting, we can use it as an alibi,” Tegoshi adds. “I can’t tell people I’m meeting with NEWS when there’s no NEWS.”
Looking at them like this, with their enthusiasm and their desire to help and their desire to be back together, Johnny can’t help but sigh. “Okay then,” he acquiesces, without much of a fight. “I suppose that all of you can be more than just idols again.”
NEWS prepares for a comeback.
~~*~~
2007 begins well enough for them in their newly reinstated capacity; there are simple salt and burns, a few exorcisms, a mischievous fox spirit or two and more purification rituals than anything else to help them all get back on the horse. Ryo’s nightmares continue with more frequency now however, with a kind of regularity that makes P wonder if the names freshly seared into his brain are wrong somehow, like Zachariah’s information is by nature tainted simply because it is not from the same source that God had intended, from the glorious voice of Gabriel who was meant to announce all the significant births.
More than that, P wants to soothe those awful visions from his friend’s mind, even if they provide valuable information on victims and hunts that are to come. He finds that the desire to protect his groupmates is a force that is surprising for how selfish and driving it becomes inside of him.
But there isn’t anything he can do to stop the dreams, not when he doesn’t even know where they’re coming from or when they will strike.
It is why he is forced to simply sit by and watch as Ryo’s dreams come to him again today, as the six of them are sitting in the van together, Koyama driving them to their next location.
They know it’s happening when Ryo starts to thrash in his sleep while he’s sitting in the backseat, leaning his forehead against the window and trying to catch whatever moments of peace he can. Soon he starts to yell as well, like he’s in pain, like he’s experiencing the pain of the victims he can see, and no one knows what to do when that happens, debating internally whether they should wake him up or let him ride it out for the sake of the people he’s dreaming about.
When Tegoshi can’t take it anymore, when Ryo’s voice gets too loud, he finally sits up and reaches out over the seat, grabbing Ryo’s shoulders and shaking the older idol awake forcibly. “Ryo-kun, wake up,” he says, and it comes out like an order.
Ryo’s eyes snap open moments later and he’s reaching forward and clutching fistfuls of Tegoshi’s shirt in his hands, panting and covered in sweat.
He looks a mess.
“America,” he coughs, after a minute, wrecked and breathless. “There are people with weird powers in America and I think they’re trying to kill each other.”
And then he closes his eyes again and leans forward, resting his head against Tegoshi’s shirt front, in an effort to regain his equilibrium. Massu quickly goes to dig in the first aid kit for headache medicine.
“I don’t know why they’re doing it. They were pretending to be friends,” Ryo croaks, and looks like he’s going to be sick.
For a while, everyone is silent. Ryo’s harsh breathing rasps in their ears.
But then Tegoshi reaches out, and puts his hand over Ryo’s heart, where it hammers hard and fast in his chest. “This is stupid,” the youngest murmurs, reproachfully, like he’s blaming someone for doing this to Ryo but isn’t sure who he means. “I wish it’d stop.”
The minute the words leave his mouth, Ryo convulses slightly under his hand.
“What the hell, Tegoshi?” Ryo demands a moment later, pulling away from Tegoshi sharply, like he’d been stung. He rubs at his chest, feeling like his bones are on fire. He gives Tegoshi an odd, thoughtful look. “That hurt, brat.”
Tegoshi looks bewildered. “Sorry…I…”
Ryo is still rubbing at his chest, but looks less angry about it at Tegoshi’s genuine contrition, the youngest member all shock and surprise and apologies. “Never mind. It’s just static, I think,” Ryo sighs, eventually, eyes going gentle again because there’s a special clause that says the group baby gets forgiven quick. “Seems like you’re all charged up today or something.”
Tegoshi looks sheepish and says he’s always been one of those people that generates a lot of static; he isn’t sure why.
Ryo reaches out and ruffles his hair a little bit, albeit tiredly.
“Um that’s cute I guess, but how are we supposed to do anything about stuff going on in America?” Shige says after they’ve had their requisite member-ai moment or whatever. “Are you sure it was America America? Not the military base here or something?” he asks Ryo carefully.
“Not unless the military base is a town named Cold Oak,” Ryo manages, after thinking about it for a bit. “Someone was trying to send a psychic message or something, I think. Maybe I just…intercepted.”
“Cold Oak?” Shige asks, and the English is strange on his tongue. He rolls his eyes. “Definitely not a base. Sounds more like one of those abandoned towns in the middle of nowhere they use in Westerns. Bell tower, Main Street, general store, lots of wilderness.”
Ryo blinks. “Yeah. How’d you…”
Shige shrugs, looking kind of smug. “I have a good imagination when it comes to this kind of stuff. So? What are we supposed to do about stuff happening in America?”
“Nothing,” P informs them, seriously. “America isn’t our job.”
Shige frowns. “I find it hard to believe that Nishikido-kun’s dreams suddenly have no meaning.”
Ryo just glares at the nerdy idol and finally snatches the headache medicine and water bottle Massu has been holding out to him since he’d woken up. “Yamapi’s right. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t a message for us. Just a… freak accident that I happened to tune into. The guy in my dream was trying to talk to somebody else. I think.”
Shige sighs and writes down the details in the notes section on his phone, just in case. “Maybe we ought to find a way to control this ability of yours so it’s more helpful, he suggests. Like in shounen manga, if you train it, you can level up or something.”
“Bite me,” Ryo answers, and curls back up in the corner with a frown, feeling strangely cold all of a sudden.
He doesn’t mention the final image in his dream to any of them, the one where a devastated man stands over the dead body of his brother, partly because he doesn’t think there’s anything they can do about that, but mostly because it haunts him when he thinks about it, makes him feel like the world is on the edge of ending.
He doesn’t know why.
~~*~~
Later that night, Ryo looks on, clearly weirded out, as Yamapi keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, like he expects Ryo to have disappeared every time he stops looking at him, like he can’t quite focus on him.
“I’m fine,” Ryo mutters, thinking it has something to do with the dislocated shoulder he’d endured after this afternoon’s encounter with a family of ghouls.
P knows. “Are you sure?” he asks, anyway. “Something is…different about you.”
Ryo glares at him. “Oh shut up. It was dark, okay? I didn’t see the second one. It was dark.”
P’s mouth is in a straight line, considering. “What else did you dream of, in Cold Oak?” he asks, because he is the king of not-awkward conversational segues. He gently helps Ryo off of the examination table.
“The same things as always,” Ryo tells him with a humorless laugh, walking gingerly to avoid jostling his injuries. “Demons. Dead things.” Pause. “Why?”
“I worry that something is happening.”
Ryo takes the trouble to smack him. “Something’s always happening with us.”
P allows the ghost of a smile before taking on most of Ryo’s weight. “That’s true.”
They head to the van together, and P only stops for a moment in the parking lot, to look up at the sky and study the storm clouds gathering there.
~~*~~
“Well, how about today? Would either of you like to try and salvage your class participation grade? Hmmm? There’s still a chance. Extra credit.”
Kusano turns away from Alastair’s smile, the demon’s warm, minty breath, the inviting gleam in his eye. Who knew demons would care about dental hygiene?
“Ah, Hiro, always such a disrespectful little brat,” Alastair tsks, when Kusano silently ignores him. “Johnny? What about you, little Johnny Winchester?”
John is ragged and shaken, looks as tempted as Kusano feels by the offer. “I…” he begins, and hesitates, and Kusano can see the anticipation in Alastair’s eyes, like this is what he’s been waiting for this past hundred plus years, this very moment.
“…love rock’n roll!” Kusano finds himself interrupting at random, singing at the top of his lungs before John can say whatever it is he looks like he’s going to say. “So put another dime in the jukebox, baby!”
Silence.
Then, much to Kusano’s relief, John starts laughing; it’s breathless and pained but laughter through and through.
“I love rock’n roll,” John murmurs eventually, and as Alastair goes to prepare the saws and the fires and the hot pokers with a look of controlled annoyance on his monstrous features, two voices start to rise up around him, screaming, “So come and take your time and dance with me!!” as loudly as they can.
It works this time, but Kusano wonders if it will again next time.
He hopes-prays- that something changes soon.
~~*~~
Things do change when the gates to Hell blow open days later.
When it happens it is in America, but the echoes are felt worldwide. It’s not all at once though, not in a collective moment of shock and horror like one might expect.
The night before, Ryo doesn’t dream, but as he showers and brushes his teeth before bed, there is a moment when his skin goes cold, when he freezes in his tracks and shudders because it feels like something is breathing right down the back of his neck in promise of things yet to come.
He blinks owlishly, and when his vision comes into focus again, when he can move again, everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be, windows fogged from hot clouds of steam and the smell of shampoo and lotion lingering in the air.
He sprinkles salt around his bathroom before bed just in case, but doesn’t think about it much after that; he’s been sleeping so well lately that he wants to take advantage of it for as long as it lasts.
Not far away, Koyama suddenly finds himself clapping his hands over his ears when the TV reception buzzes in and out unexpectedly; in a rare moment of crossness he yells at Shige to turn it down because it’s making his ears ring.
Shige gives him a strange look before simply turning it off; instead he writes in his journal about the strange headaches he’s been getting for the past few days, full of blinding flashes of light and high pitched ringing noises. He notes that he’s going to see the doctor about it just in case; he’d woken up this morning with a particularly bad migraine only to find his nose dripping blood all over his pillow.
Massu experiences a moment of lost appetite at the dinner table.
Tegoshi’s video game system freezes in the middle of a boss fight unexpectedly, and he hasn’t saved for hours. He pouts and goes to reset it when it’s clear it won’t magically unfreeze for his benefit, thinking that things like this haven’t happened to him in a long time. He wonders if it means he’s going to run into a spell of bad luck.
P throws his eyes skyward and hears it when the heavens begin to scream, feeling as if the fires of hell are burning his wings from his back.
Worried, he disappears in a rush of wind.
~~*~~
On the other side of the world, in a place the humans call Wyoming, P finds himself watching as all form of evil and filth crawls up through the open doors of the pit, reveling in their newfound freedom, some already plotting their next move. The few unlucky demons that happen to run in his direction are quickly wiped off of the face of existence upon coming into contact with him as he strides purposefully towards the crypt doors, preparing to help the humans close them.
But before he can, something familiar, something bright and pure stays his hand.
His eyes widen and he stops in his tracks, tilting his head forward, listening carefully.
For a moment he doesn’t notice the hunters, struggling with the demon in the graveyard, doesn’t feel the cold winds of hell or smell the sulfur of the monsters rushing past him.
Instead, he hears the voice of a friend.
And can hardly believe it.
But he’s forced to a second later, when there’s a familiar trill of laughter in his ear and the weight of a human soul jumping right into his arms in full, hearty embrace.
“Dude I knew you weren’t normal,” Kusano’s spirit chortles disbelievingly, as the hunters finally manage to shut the gates behind him, as the sound of a single bullet echoes through the lonely graveyard and ends a lifetime of grief and rage.
P doesn’t notice any of those things. He sighs and feels his arms come up in an automatic gesture that has taken a long, long time for him to learn. “Hi, Kusano,” he says.
Kusano grins back, all golden light and flooded relief. “Hi. How’s it going?”
P pauses and looks to the humans again, briefly, as they sit in exhausted wonder on the ground that had been the open portal to hell. “It is moving forward, I suppose.”
Kusano nods. “Yeah I guess it is.” Pause. “Hey… so…”
Kusano trails off and points up, looking sheepish. “I think I gotta go.”
P nods. “That’s probably a good idea.”
His former groupmate, his friend, reaches out and musses his hair. “Don’t be a stranger?”
The corner of P’s mouth curls upwards slightly. “We aren’t strangers.”
“No, guess not. Tell the guys I’m good.” Pause. “And tell them what’s coming, man. You gotta tell them.”
“I… will try.”
“Okay.” Kusano punches him in the shoulder once, still smiling, before he disappears.
P watches him go and feels a sort of peace he hasn’t in the entirety of the last year.
But it also means he has less time than he’d first thought, and he still has no orders to reveal the true nature of what is yet to come.
As summer descends on 2007 for NEWS, an angel starts to question.
Questions lead to doubt.
~~*~~
“The time is coming,” P tells Zachariah, the next time he is instructed to return to heaven and receive orders. “The deal has been made.”
Zachariah looks bored. “If I wanted you to report things I already knew I’d be as stupid as you sound.”
P blinks. “I want to tell my charges about the coming months. The gates of hell have opened and closed, as prophesied. There’s no time left to leave the humans in the dark.”
A snort. “Time is inconsequential to us.”
“I’m worried,” P admits, and it is difficult to say.
Zachariah arches an eyebrow. “Why? There’s still a chance nothing will happen. Free will is crazy like that. All that concern and fanfare for nothing. You’ll give your vessel wrinkles.”
“Even if it doesn’t happen, I think it would be better to prepare for the worst case.”
Zachariah laughs. “Ah, must be all that idol training. You boys do seem to like everything laid out neatly for you, step by step. I hear even the scandals are staged, is that true?”
“Yes,” P answers, but doesn’t understand what that has to do with the apocalypse or anything.
Zachariah doesn’t seem to care. “It isn’t your place to worry about this, Perpetiel, or Yamapi, or whatever it is you’re calling yourself down there. Just concentrate on the mission you were given. You have brothers and sisters aplenty fulfilling their own duties alongside your own.” Pause. “Unless of course, you don’t think they can.”
“No, of course not. I just…”
Zachariah holds up a hand to stop him, and P can tell that he is starting to lose patience. “To me, your concerns sound as though you are dangerously close to doubt, Perpetiel. That isn’t the case though, right?”
P hastily looks away. “I don’t doubt. I’m sorry for giving you reason to believe that.”
Zachariah smiles again, all niceness just like that. “Good. Then off you go. I hear there are some angry kappa in Saitama. Sounds like something right up your alley.”
“Yes.” P respectfully sets his jaw and bows as he leaves.
But deep inside of him, the questions continue to rage and time is running still out.
~~*~~
The demons that escaped the pit on the day hell’s gates opened spread throughout the world and thrive.
NEWS is busy in those months; the tour they schedule takes them around the country performing and it is almost as tiring as the tour that takes them around the country hunting.
They face a group of seven that models itself after a twisted version of the seven virtues first, at the beginning of October. The fight itself is not nearly as epic as it sounds on paper; it takes place in an old temple in Kyoto, and as it turns out, Chastity isn’t really a match for the Chirarizumu and Muraristo lyrics constantly floating around Koyama’s brain in the days leading up to concert rehearsals; similarly, the demon called Temperance loses a surprisingly epic battle with P’s unconquerable alcohol tolerance, Charity and Humility both succumb to the proud nature of Tegoshi’s selfish with no ill-intentions attitude, Industry can’t move Massu away from the table even at full strength, Kindness can’t stand Shige in general, and Patience takes one look at Ryo and gives up without much of a struggle.
For their troubles, they get a weapon.
It is a rather plain looking tanto blade, but as Massu pulls it from the limp body of Industry they realize the immense nature of its power. The interloping demon who had given it to Ryo a moment earlier holds up her hands and says she’s a friend.
“You’re a demon,” Ryo states, flatly.
“Who could have killed you a second ago,” she reminds them, and is, Massu thinks, very pretty. “But I didn’t. I’m here to help you.”
Her eyes flash black when Massu uses her own knife to kill her, and Massu thinks that’s a lot less pretty.
Ryo stares as the body crumples between them. “That was kind of ruthless,” he tells Massu, with a mixture of appreciation and apprehension. “What if she really did want to help us?”
Massu cleans off the knife and sheathes it before sliding it up the sleeve of his hoodie. “Demon,” he reminds Ryo, and to him, it really is as simple as that.
“Point,” Ryo agrees, and they get the hell out of there.
~~*~~
Most of their fights in the closing months of the year go something like that.
Which means that most of NEWS gets to congratulate itself on doing very well in that time, while P feels the ticking of the clock for the first time in his age old existence, wondering if he should tell them about what may come to pass during this calm, this lull.
More than the fact that he hasn’t received the orders, he feels that they look so content right now he can’t really bring himself to do it.
Part of him hopes that Zachariah is right, that Free Will can change all the things that might yet come. Maybe the end can be avoided, maybe the righteous man will remain that way, no matter the tortures of hell.
P prays for it and keeps his mouth shut.
At the end of 2007, P lets NEWS enjoy the relative quiet of the winter time.
~~*~~
In the beginning of 2008, the members find themselves in one of the more bizarre situations they’ve ever experienced (both as hunters and idols) when they arrive at a haunted house at the exact same time it is being used as filming location.
“Wow, aren’t you guys idols or something?” the man with the microphone asks, as the crew gathered around him look on in surprise and excitement at getting such high profile celebrities in.
“Are they the special guests you said might come?” a fat, bald man in brightly colored monk’s robes asks, looking impatient (and kind of sweaty despite the cold weather).
“N…” P starts, while Koyama hastily steps forward and says, “Yes!” instead, because they have to have permission to be here if they want to get rid of the ghosts before their next show. And if they get kicked off now, these people might all die.
The host looks pleased to hear it. “My agent didn’t tell me he knew anyone at Johnny’s Jimusho!” he explains with a grin. “I should call him and th…”
“So, what’s the itinerary again?” Shige cuts in quickly, before he can follow through with that idea. “We’re really busy, after all. We should probably start as soon as possible.”
The man remembers himself and looks cowed. “Well… we’re filming a trial segment for this new variety show we’re hoping will catch on with Fuji TV next month. It’s called Ghost Talkers, and every week, a special guest-or guests in your guys’ case-will come with us to a famous, haunted site in Japan. We’ll bring renowned spiritualists from around the country and try to figure out how to get these restless spirits to cross over through the course of the show.”
Shige looks incredulous. “And you think celebrities will agree to this?” he scoffs, right as Ryo jams an elbow into his stomach and makes him sputter. “Which…they will. Because we did,” Shige amends, hastily, one arm holding his aching side. “This is what we’re really here for. Yes.”
If the host notices Shige’s awkwardness, he is polite enough not to point it out. “Right, so shall we get started?”
“Sure,” NEWS agrees, and Ryo starts looking at everyone in that this sucks I can’t believe we’re doing this I’m so embarrassed I want to die and that means a lot considering I’ve worn fishnet and sequins at the same time before, kind of way.
But then the red light on the camera comes on, and because NEWS is a professional idol group, all that shows up on the screen when the camera is pointed in their direction is pleasant interest.
“Welcome to…GHOST TALKERS!” the host exclaims at the top of his lungs a moment later. He gestures to the foreboding house behind him and launches into a narration about the rumors surrounding it.
NEWS sighs.
~~*~~
“I see a ghost,” a psychic called Madam Choi declares in a thin, reedy wail some time later, as they sit inside the house. She clutches her hands in the air around her and throws a dramatic, borderline epileptic fit. “The ghost of a young girl named Takako-chan!”
The cameras flash to the NEWS members at that moment, who, to their best of their individual abilities, try to affect terrified expressions.
Except for P of course, who looks as ambivalent as ever, but at least that’s to be expected; Japan wants him to be cool, after all. As for the rest of them, they’ve never been considered the best actors the jimusho has to offer.
“I agree with Madam Choi,” the fat monk from before chimes in, sitting lotus style on the ground in the middle of the room with his eyes closed. “I sense a restless high school student who wants revenge for how she was treated in life!”
“Bullied and called names,” Madam Choi declares, forcibly snatching back the spotlight from the monk. “She hung herself in this very room ten years ago!”
Shige snorts. “Anyone who has google could have figured this out.”
The cameras swing back to them. The idols look scared witless again (except for Yamapi, because of the coolness).
“We must call down her spirit to ask what we can do to appease her anger,” the monk suggests, hands folded in prayer.
As if on cue, all the doors in the room simultaneously slam shut, trapping the entire cast and crew in the living area.
Screams all around.
Well, mostly.
Tegoshi yawns. “Two ghosts,” he clarifies before he can stop himself, and earns a scowl from Shige.
The psychics turn to stare at him. “Excuse me?” the monk asks, looking at Tegoshi like the youngest NEWS member is something he very recently scraped off of the bottom of his shoe. “Don’t tell me you’re psychic on top of an idol, Tegoshi-kun.”
Tegoshi doesn’t notice Shige’s scowl or the monk’s derision because that’s just how he rolls. “Oh, I’m not psychic at all. It’s just that while we were doing the external shots of the house the tree spirit in the front yard told me there’s two ghosts in here.”
Shige slaps a hand to his forehead. P considers this. “Is that who you were talking to?” he asks Tegoshi, thoughtfully.
Tegoshi nods. “The trees don’t like all the fanfare. They wanted us to get this over with as fast as possible so they can have some peace. Apparently I’m the only one that was listening to them.”
“Oh, irony,” Shige mutters.
Tegoshi doesn’t notice that either, mostly because the host is busy cramming his microphone right in Tegoshi’s face.
“It seems that NEWS’s Tegoshi-san has some ESP of his own!” the host exclaims, deeply intrigued. “Are you a medium?”
P considers that very seriously. “It’s possible,” he realizes, after a moment. “He does have a strange ability…”
The host doesn’t care. “Tell us about the second ghost, Tegoshi,” he urges.
He’s so excited by this unexpected turn of events that he doesn’t hear it when the rest of NEWS suddenly, simultaneously jump out of their chairs.
Except for Tegoshi, who stops to answer him obligingly before he joins his group in standing. “Sure. It’s Takako-chan’s mother, I think.”
Silence.
The monk and Madam Choi look incensed.
The host blinks. “How… how do you know?”
Tegoshi coughs and points over the host’s shoulder. “They look alike. Same nose.”
The host very slowly turns around.
And screams.
Luckily, NEWS is already out of their chairs.
From there, salt is applied. Iron is swung. Shige loses another janken match and has to investigate the basement.
~~*~~
When P walks by the camera crew and their equipment at the end of the day he receives some hearty pats on the back and thanks for NEWS’s quick thinking and amazing strength.
“This show might actually be a hit if we get footage like this every week,” one of the ADs proclaims, despite having been thrown into a few walls earlier that afternoon.
All in the name of duty.
P nods. “Anything could happen,” he agrees, and pats the cameras once before moving on to shake hands with the host.
Later, when the film makes it to the cutting room, all the editor is going to see and hear is white fuzz and static.
In the meantime, each member of NEWS stops to pay respect to the trees lining the boulevard before heading back to their hotel. Shige stops to give Tegoshi a strange look and mutters something that sounds like, “Spiritual medium? Really? That’s it?”
Ryo smacks him in the head and tells him to move on, so they can get back to the studio.
During the ride, they can’t help but laugh a little at how ridiculous show business is.
~~*~~
When Massu’s cell phone rings and he sees the UNKNOWN NUMBER screen he picks up anyway, expecting it to be the delivery guy from the Chinese place down the street. His cashew chicken was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago and he’s hungry and he hopes they are at least contrite about being so late.
“Hello? Just sign in at the security desk, they already kn…”
“Hello?” a voice asks softly, and it definitely isn’t the bored college student who part times at the restaurant.
It’s a voice Massu knows.
And it is so familiar it makes Massu want to throw up. He doesn’t answer right away because he thinks this is a dream. I fell asleep because I’m so tired and now I’m dreaming.
“Hello? Massu? Is that you? Please, if you can hear me man, just answer. Just say some…”
“It’s me,” Massu blurts, because the sound of Kusano pleading is enough. If only the demons and the monsters knew what it would take to break him. “What…what’s going on?”
A pained laugh. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I mean maybe, but you couldn’t… look. Look, I’m in trouble okay.”
Massu’s brow furrows. “In heaven? Yamashita-kun said… he said it was okay now. He said you were in heaven.”
“Yeah I thought that was the plan too. Look man, things are fucked. I… I don’t know, I got intercepted on the way, or something. And now I’m trapped. I just… shit I gotta go, they’re coming back. Just…don’t say anything about this, okay? It’s watching P and the others. I’ll try and call again.”
“Wait… wait don’t, just tell me what I can do. One sec…”
The other end of the line goes dead.
Massu stares at his phone and when his food comes ten minutes later, he forgets that he was even hungry.
~~*~~
Kusano calls again that night, when Massu is getting ready for bed, toothbrush halfway to his mouth.
“Kusano?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Look, I can’t talk long okay.”
Massu winces at the tired timbre of his friend’s voice. “Tell me what’s going on. How can I help?”
“It’s holding me in this…I don’t know, this thing. Keeping me from getting upstairs, you know? Draining the energy in my soul or something. I don’t know man, it’s bad. Feels worse than hell. At least in hell the bits they ripped out of me grew back. Now it’s like they’re emptying me out bit by bit.” A pause on the other end, and Massu can see in his mind’s eye, the way Kusano always runs his hand over his own face whenever something is getting to be too much for him. “Look, I know how to stop it. I know how you can set me free. I need your help.”
“And the others. I can tell the others…”
“No man, don’t. Just… can you just do this for me? I mean, they don’t have to know.”
“Why not?”
“Well, most of them are working on another case for one thing. Wouldn’t want to bother them.”
Massu frowns. “That’s not an excuse.”
A frustrated sigh on the other end. “Look. I just… the others, they all thought I was at peace during this whole time, you know? I don’t want them to feel guilty when they find out that I wasn’t. And you know they will.” Pause. “I’m sorry that you have to know too actually; I just thought… if it was you, then…well, you know.”
“It’s okay,” Massu says, and understands perfectly. The debt between them is huge and heavy and has been hanging over Massu’s head since the day Kusano was ripped apart and dragged into the pit. “Just tell me what to do, ne. I can handle it myself.”
“You sure, man? I mean, I don’t want to, if you don’t…”
“Anything,” Massu vows, voice edged with steel. “What do you need?”
“There’s a ritual,” Kusano whispers, talking faster now. “It’ll summon the demon to you. You just need to kill it. I mean, you’ve got that demon killing thing, right? You’ve got that?”
Massu blinks. “Yeah. How did you…”
“I told you, it’s been watching you. I know what it knows, okay? Part of the…soul eating process I guess.” He sounds shaky.
Massu huffs. “Okay.”
“It’s going to be tricky though. I mean, this demon, it’s not like the ones we’ve seen before. It’s got some nasty mojo going for it. The way it trapped me was, well, it pretended to be someone I trusted, and when I let my guard down, it nabbed me. Knew everything, like it had read my mind or stole my memories or something.” Kusano sounds embarrassed. “I walked right into its trap.”
“I won’t,’ Massu promises him. “Just tell me.”
Another shaky breath, another sound of Kusano’s hand brushing over his face, over his hair. “Okay. Here’s what you do.”
~~*~~
Meanwhile, across town, Shige examines the remains of a man who had slit his own throat two nights ago.
“Apparently,” Tegoshi says over the phone a little while later, from where he and P have hacked into the police records, “witnesses say the victim could be heard screaming in the middle of the night, like he was having a fight with his wife.”
“That’s not strange,” Shige snaps back dryly, as he examines the knife wound. It is a standard knife wound. It is not haunted at all.
“His wife died ten years ago,” Tegoshi fills in, after the fact.
Shige groans. “Of course she did.” He stands and slides the body back into the freezer so that he and Koyama can get the hell out. “I think Nishikido-kun cheats at janken. How does he never get any of these late night morgue parties?!”
“No one cheats,” he hears P’s voice say blandly from the other side. “Ryo said that is part of the bro code.”
“I think that was a lie,” Shige responds. “The bro code is more about what to do with girls, isn’t it?”
P doesn’t deign to answer.
Tegoshi just chuckles. “No one cheats, Shige. I mean, Massu never wins, but he did this morning, right? It’s all luck.”
Shige sighs. “Yeah, sure You can say that because you get the luck 99% of the time. Which is weird, by the way. Don’t you think it’s weird?”
Tegoshi shrugs. “Not really.”
Shige makes a face. “Fine, whatever. We’re heading back. Start looking into beings that call from beyond the grave.”
Tegoshi blinks. “That would make the history pretty recent, wouldn’t it?”
Shige sighs. “Calling doesn’t have to be with a phone. There are all sorts of monsters that mimic other things to lure in prey, aren’t there?”
“Shige is so smart,” Tegoshi chirps, and then hangs up.
Shige isn’t sure why, but he has a bad feeling about this.
~~*~~
Ryo startles awake at the sound of his apartment phone ringing in the middle of the night. “The fuck,” he mutters, and thinks that it better not be the others telling him they need him to get up and haul ass to help them with a botched investigation. How freaking hard is it to sneak into a morgue? They’ve done it what, five hundred times?
“What?” he barks when he answers, sharp and angry into the receiver.
There’s a soft laugh from the other side. “Hey there, huggie bear. Miss me?”
Ryo’s blood runs cold. He doesn’t answer.
“Yeah sorry this is so last minute, but I don’t have a lot of time, so you’re just going to have to trust me, okay?”
Ryo steels his jaw. “Who is this? What do you want?”
Whatever thing is using Kusano’s voice chuckles into the mouthpiece. “What, all it takes is two years for you to forget me? It’s like I’m no better than the psychic nightmares you used to have. That hurts.”
“You’re not who you’re trying to sound like,” Ryo growls.
“Look, you can believe what you want about me, but just listen to what I have to say, okay? It’s not like phone calls from heaven come cheap.”
Ryo snorts. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t phones in heaven. We’d be getting a lot more long distance calls.”
“I don’t have time for your trust issues, dude. I’ve been watching things, and something’s wrong. I mean, normally I can’t do anything, but something is really wrong.”
Ryo moves to hang up.
He stops when Kusano says three words that make his heart stop in his chest. “Massu’s been possessed. He needs your help.”
~~*~~
Massu stops and stares at the clearing he’s in, trying not to let himself feel freaked out by being in the middle of the woods alone at night, with a bag full of pig’s blood in one hand and some candles hastily pilfered from a gift basket his mother had gotten from their neighbors in the other.
He goes to the spot Kusano had told him about at the base of the mountain. “The mountain guardian will be able to protect you from some of the demon’s magic,” his friend had promised.
Suppressing a shiver, Massu kneels on the ground and pulls a stick of white chalk out of his pocket, drawing the specific symbols for the devil’s trap that Kusano had described to him before placing and lighting a candle in each of five significant directional points around him, so that they lie in the shape of a star. Then he moves until he is facing the candle sitting at the northwest point of the star, towards the mountain, and pulls both the bag of pig’s blood and his demon killing knife. He quickly uses the edge of the blade to nick the corner of the bag and holds it up over his head, in the soft glow of the waning moon.
“I summon you, Paimon,” he begins shakily, reading Kusano’s incantation from the paper in front of him as the first dark red drops of blood start to fall onto his forehead.
~~*~~
By that time Ryo is crashing through the underbrush looking for Massu, phone out of service in the middle of the forest and vowing that he’s going to kill the idiot himself, for letting something this stupid happen.
He doesn’t think about Kusano’s freaky heavenly phone call, or what it means to know that they’re being watched over; instead he trains his compass northwest, dodges foliage trying to eat his face off, and hopes he isn’t too late, that this isn’t another Uchi.
He crashes into the clearing just in time to see Massu sitting in a pentagram covered in blood, chanting the name of one of the Kings of Hell. After he finishes whatever it is he’s saying he stands and slowly steps out of the circle, bowing his head in the northwest direction and saying, “Appear.”
Ryo doesn’t think when he tackles the thing wearing Massu’s face in the middle of whatever it is he’s doing.
~~*~~
When Massu finishes the chant he expects there to be a poof of smoke or a gust of wind or something magical and mystical, the kind of showy things big spells like this evoke by nature.
Instead he’s tackled by the demon and sent tumbling into the undergrowth as the wind gets knocked out of his lungs.
He manages to roll to his feet though, supremely glad that he’d had his knife at the ready, like Kusano had told him. He raises it up and prepares to strike.
And stops instead.
Ryo blinks back at him, looking angry.
“I’m going to make you wish you were never born,” Ryo growls at him, low and dangerous.
Massu dodges the next punch and reminds himself that Kusano said this would happen. This demon steals memories, imitates loved ones, eats souls. It’s smart, so Massu has to be just as smart to kill it.
He can’t let the fact that it’s wearing Ryo’s face stop him from helping Kusano.
Massu sets his jaw and lunges at Ryo with the blade.
~~*~~
Ryo’s fumbling in his pocket for the flask of holy water there, dodging the fiercely precise maneuvers the demon is making with Massu’s weapon, maneuvers Massu would have made just as fluidly, just as perfectly.
He curses when one swipe gets a little too close for comfort, slicing open the sleeve of his sweater and grazing the skin underneath; he jumps backwards to keep it from getting any deeper than a bad paper cut but ends up dropping the holy water in the process.
He gets a knee in the kidneys for his troubles but manages to take it well enough to block the strike that matters; using his forearm to stop the demon’s thrust with the tanto before it can slice into his side.
He stomps on Massu’s foot, tells himself he’ll apologize later, and manages to push back and get enough distance between them that he’s out of reach.
“Tough guy, huh?” he wheezes, rubbing at his side and sneering. “You’re going to be sorry I’m the one who found you.”
“I’m sending you back to hell,” Massu’s voice answers firmly, and Ryo only has a moment to think that’s a weird response before the thing inside his groupmate’s body is trying slam a demon killing blade into his eye.
~~*~~
“Crocotta,” P says, after Shige has managed to lay out all the evidence on his breakfast table in some sort of order.
Shige blinks at him. “A what now?”
“Crocotta,” P answers again, obligingly. “A dog demon from Ethiopia. It draws victims to it by imitating the voices of other humans and luring them to a place so that it can feed on their life forces.”
Shige whistles. “And you decided this was definitely our monster of the week from a flash of inspiration?”
“Leader is very good at this job,” Koyama reminds everyone from the kitchenette, where he is brewing tea.
“Looks like it’s figured out how to use modern technology,” Tegoshi reports, equal parts impressed at the creature’s ability to adapt and fearful of the implications.
Shige blinks. “I wonder why they didn’t think of it before, to be honest.”
“Maybe they did,” Tegoshi answers. “We just don’t know about the other stuff yet.”
“Comforting, thanks. Next you’ll be telling me there are chat room demons too.”
Shige makes a face as soon as the words are out of his mouth. “Forget I said that.”
“We’ll have to trace the calls,” P says, as he accepts a mug of hot tea from Koyama. “Then we can figure out where it’s coming from. The crocotta can be killed with metal.”
Koyama looks at the clock. It’s four in the morning. “The phone company probably won’t want to help us this early,” he muses.
A moment.
Then, “Janken for who has to break in?” Shige asks, hopefully.
He ends up losing again anyway.
~~*~~
Ryo manages to kick the tanto out of the demon’s hands at one point and it goes flying into the bushes while the thing wearing Massu’s face grunts in pain.
It’s the grunt that throws Ryo off again, one more little thing amongst many that’s making him wonder if something bigger is going on here than he suspects.
For one thing, the demon keeps calling him a monster and telling him to get out.
For another, he hasn’t seen a flicker of even the faintest black over his groupmate’s eyes, not even when he’d punched him in the jaw.
And as tired as Ryo is getting, he thinks the demon is getting just as tired. Which, you know, it shouldn’t be.
Granted, he doesn’t have a lot of time to think about it, because this thing is trying to kill him so it can finish its ritual to summon whatever badass demon is waiting in the wings next.
It isn’t until he jumps on his opponent’s back that Ryo sees something really, really weird.
Massu’s anti-possession charm, hanging off his neck and whole, just as perfect and pristine as always (save for maybe some of the blood that had gotten in there).
He stops short at that moment, his arms around Massu’s neck as the demon grunts and struggles and elbows him in the gut.
Ryo sputters and stumbles backwards while the demon pushes forward, diving onto the ground for Ryo’s bottle of holy water.
Ryo, gasping for air, blinks in surprise. “What the…”
And then he gets hit in the face with a bottle full of holy water.
~~*~~
“According to the logs on the victims, the phone calls have been coming from this number,” Tegoshi reports from behind the console, while the security guard they’d jumped and knocked unconscious sits, slumped in the corner. In the meantime, P patrols the hallways outside for trouble and Koyama mans the getaway car across the street.
Shige frowns as he takes in the news. “Can you trace it?”
Tegoshi nods. “It might take a second though.”
Shige shrugs. “Whatever, we’ve got time.”
~~*~~
Massu stares as the demon sputters after it gets hit with the holy water.
There is a distinct lack of burning.
And the first horrible thought he has is that this is some sort of super demon.
He drops the half empty flask and searches frantically for his knife again.
In the meantime, the demon that looks like Ryo puts his hand out and screams, “Stop!!!”
Massu winces, half expecting to be thrown into a tree.
He isn’t. Instead, the demon is on its feet again, wiping water from its eyes.
“Cristo,” it says.
Massu blinks. Can demons even do that?
Maybe only super demons can. Maybe…
And then the demon looks incredulous, and Massu is pretty sure they can’t do that, no matter how super they are.
“Massu?” Ryo asks, tentatively. “Is that you?”
Massu doesn’t answer.
He starts looking for his knife again.
~~*~~
Ryo groans when things start to make sense. He wants to kick himself in the face for being a moron.
“You got a call from Kusano,” he explains, even as Massu eyes him warily, still prowling the ground looking for his knife. “He said something was wrong, or something. I don’t know. He called me too.”
Massu frowns. “He said you’d try to trick me.”
Ryo arghs. “Of course he did. Look, Massu, it’s me. I’m not possessed or anything.” He pulls his anti-possession charm out, from where it’s tucked inside his shirt. “See?”
“You’re an illusion,” Massu argues. “He said you’d steal my memories.”
“Oh my god you’re a moron,” Ryo growls.
Massu pauses, studying the look of disbelieving frustration on Ryo’s face. Then says, “You’re good. But you can’t fool me.”
Ryo slaps a hand to his forehead in a gesture he’s picking up from Shige that he really, really doesn’t want to. “Look. Whatever called you wasn’t Kusano. Kusano is dead.”
“So are a lot of the things I face,” Massu answers, reasonably. The two continue to warily circle each other in the clearing.
Massu’s eyes light up when he sees the glint of the tanto blade nearby; he makes a mad dash for it.
Ryo gets up in the meantime, picks up the flask of holy water. There’s a little bit left.
When Massu whirls on him, weapon in hand, Ryo simply raises both of his hands, indicating the flask. “Look, okay? Just look.”
He drinks it.
Massu is not as impressed as Ryo wants him to be. “You brought that stuff. It’s probably just pretend.”
Ryo growls and pitches the flask at his head. “Fine. Whatever. Kill me. Just know that if you do, I’m haunting your ass for the rest of time once you find out what a moron you were. I’ll be following around every day and every night whispering, told you so dumbass in your ear and I hope the guilt of killing a sexy idol like me drives you crazy.”
And then he plops down on the ground, crosses his arms, and waits for Massu to charge.
~~*~~
“It’s coming from here,” Tegoshi announces some twenty minutes later. “The calls originate…”
“Yeah, I figured,” Shige murmurs, voice shaking just a little bit and finally making Tegoshi tear his eyes away from the console.
It’s just in time to see the phone company worker burst out of his ropes and smile at them. “Hello, boys,” it says, and advances.
~~*~~
Massu doesn’t charge. He stares instead, as Ryo continues to mumble every obscenity he can think of at Massu while he waits, words and names Massu doesn’t even know the meaning to, has never heard until tonight.
He stays his hand. Then carefully, carefully, he asks, “N-nishikido-kun? Is that really you?”
Ryo’s answer is to fling a rock at his head.
Massu lowers his weapon.
~~*~~
Shige and Tegoshi stare with a kind of impressed horror as P slams the crocotta’s head into the switchboard console. “Your weapon,” he asks Shige, calmly.
Shige swallows and hands over the crowbar he’d used to break in.
P rams it through the crocotta’s back.
“Wow,” Shige mutters.
Tegoshi nods. “Leader is very good at his job.”
The crocotta dies.
~~*~~
The next morning at work, Ryo and Massu both look like shit.
“I thought you two were supposed to have the night off while the rest of us busted our asses with the hunt,” Shige quips, when he sees them in the hallway. “Don’t tell me you wasted valuable sleeping time partying at the club or playing video games.”
Ryo’s answer is to kick him in the shin.
~~*~~
On a warm spring night in May, after yet another round of raucous birthday celebrations and well wishes and perfect, flawless happiness, Koyama finds himself waking up in the middle of the night inexplicably, body wracked with shivers and eyes stained with tears that won’t stop falling. The righteous man is dead, the voices in the back of his mind mourn, and he curls up in his bed with his hands over his ears and doesn’t know what that means.
That same night, Ryo dreams for the first time in a long time but isn’t sure what about when he wakes up afterwards. All he knows is that it feels familiar, in that sickening sort of way; he feels exactly like he had two years ago, when he’d been forced to listen to Kusano’s shouts as the hell hound had ripped him apart.
Shige develops a migraine and can’t sleep at all. The only thing that seems to dull the pain is alcohol, which he sneaks from his father’s cabinet in the dead of the night, drinking quietly by himself in the dark kitchen of his home.
Tegoshi hears the whispers of devils in his sleep but doesn’t notice enough to wake up.
P closes his eyes and listens as the hands of fate drag another man into hell.
He prays that Dean Winchester somehow remains strong.
~~*~~
“You look like something is on your mind,” Johnny tells P over lunch one afternoon.
P nods. “Things are coming to an end.”
“An end? I thought these next few months were just the beginning. From what you’d said, of course.”
P frowns and eats perfunctorily. “My promise to you is ending. The end is beginning.”
“Ah, I see.” Johnny smiles. “Well, you have certainly come a long way, haven’t you?”
“We’ve killed all sorts of things,” P agrees.
Johnny chuckles. “What I mean is, you certainly almost look human from this angle.”
Part of P wants to be affronted, but he finds that most of him is not.
~~*~~
“The seal is already broken,” Shige mutters out loud at random during one of their Summer Time promotions one day, and makes P drop the cup he is holding.
It shatters on the floor in a million pieces, leaving the dressing room in silence.
“Are you okay, Yamapi?” Koyama asks, and hastily goes to get a broom.
P blinks, a strange feeling of foreboding washing over him as he turns to make eye contact with Shige, who is standing at the snack table, visibly confused.
In his hand is a bottle of orange juice, the safety seal very clearly tampered with.
Shige blinks. “What? It is. Why are you looking at me like that?”
~~*~~
Before summer’s end, P feels the prophet’s words as they finally become reality. Heaven and hell both shake and something in the seams of existence itself begins to unravel.
“I have to go,” P mutters without explanation when it does, and disappears from the dinner table before Ryo can protest that it’s P’s turn to pick up the tab and that he’s not carrying Jin out of the restaurant by himself if he passes out again.
P returns to heaven as quickly as he is able.
~~*~~
Across the city. Koyama is struck with a sudden high pitched wailing of sound that is so painful and inexplicable that he ends up throwing up all over Shige’s shoes.
~~*~~
“He’s broken the seal,” Zachariah notes as he sits at his desk, nonchalant as ever. “Who’d have thought, right? Oh wait… how funny.”
P frowns. “Then we didn’t find him in time. Our brothers failed.”
Zachariah shrugs. “Can’t win ‘em all, right tiger? Maybe I shouldn’t have sent Castiel, in retrospect.” He shakes his head. “He always did get lost so easily. I hope the little guy is alright.”
P isn’t sure how to respond to that, the dread settling heavy inside him as he stands before his superior at the start of the end of the world. He itches to do something.
Eventually, Zachariah grows impatient with his silent worrying and throws P an irritated look. “We’ll find him eventually.”
“Is there any way I can help?”
A snort. “Not unless you have a roadmap of hell conveniently handy.”
“I don’t.”
“Well then, back to your station, Perpetiel,” Zachariah responds perfunctorily, before shooing P off with a wave of his hand. “There are seals enough to defend in Asia, aren’t there?”
P supposes that his brother is right; there is still hope left if they can stop the seals from breaking.
~~*~~
Weeks later, P hears Castiel’s voice in his head, tired but triumphant.
I have him, it says. I am coming.
P hastily leaves Japan at that moment, taking flight over the busy streets of Tokyo. High above the clouds, he looks down and can see the bustle of the humans below, all clueless as to what has transpired recently.
He flies for the gates to hell.
The first thing P finds when he reaches the portal is his brother, exhausted and wounded as he limps through the threshold, wings covered in filth and Grace seeping like blood from the forty years’ worth of scratches and tears that cover him.
“Castiel,” he greets, and automatically reaches out with the offer of help.
Castiel gives him a strange look at the physical contact, and P remembers belatedly, that touch is crude, unnecessary and primitive to the likes of them. “Perpetiel,” Castiel greets P in return, and with his help, manages to stand up straighter. “Thank you.”
That is when P sees the tiny bundle cradled gently in his arms. It’s covered in black sludge and has been shred nearly to pieces. At first glance this makes it an ugly, dirty thing. But when he looks closer, underneath all the damage, P can still see the shine it has, the infinite brightness that had managed to survive in even the coldest fires of the pit.
Staring, he wonders how it must have looked when it was new; surely it would have been comparable to the brightest of stars.
He swallows, and is aware of how strangely human the gesture is, how strangely human he has become.
Castiel seems to notice too, but is too kind to comment.
“Castiel,” P begins, suddenly full of hope, “is that…is that really…”
“Yes. This is the soul.”
P sucks in a breath of air and reaches out without knowing he is. “He’s so broken,” he murmurs, strangely mystified.
Castiel’s brow furrows as he bears the soul out of P’s reach, a hint of proprietary annoyance to his posture. “I must mend him,” Castiel reminds P calmly.
P hastily draws his fingertips back hastily “Yes. Of course. Does this mean…”
Castiel nods grimly. “It has come to pass. The first seal is broken and there is much work for us to do. Return to your post, brother.”
P bows his head and wants to mourn for all that is about to happen and all that may yet happen.
Instead, he leaves Castiel to his charge.
He returns to his.
It’s time.
~~*~~
“So it must be time,” Johnny says even before P is fully through the door. P simply nods, no longer surprised by the old man’s keen senses.
“Well then. Let me get my coat.”
Johnny rises on surprisingly spry legs to join him.
As they walk down the hallways together, P grim as the day he’d first arrived here, Johnny takes a peppermint out of his pocket and as per usual, gets straight to the heart of the matter.
“I am sure,” he says, “they will not think any less of you.” Pause. “Or too much of you, either.”
P doesn’t bother answering.
~~*~~
“I am not human,” he confesses moments later, gathered in the room with his groupmates-his friends-as Johnny stands behind him.
A moment.
Then Koyama laughs. “Yamapi,” he says, “Yamapi, are we on a hidden camera show?”
P shakes his head; part of him wishes they were. It would be so much simpler if none of this was real. “It’s the truth.”
Johnny tsks at the other members, hand clamped on P’s shoulder. “A group as sharp as this must have noticed.”
A moment. P steels himself for the worst.
Then Shige blinks. “I guess that explains how he can run on 200% power without any sleep,” he realizes, like it’s the greatest scientific discovery of all time.
“And get across town in three seconds,” Koyama agrees.
They look almost relieved to know this. P blinks in surprise; part of it might be relief.
Then, Tegoshi raises his hand. “So, what are you?”
P stands up straighter. “I am an angel of the Lord.”
Silence.
Then Massu grins. “That kind of makes sense too, right?”
“It kind of does,” the others agree, helplessly.
“See?” Johnny laughs and squeezes P’s shoulder again. “Go ahead,” he says. “It’s time.”
P takes a deep breath. It should be a relief; soon he will be able to stretch out again, to feel the full charge of his Grace now that his promise with Johnny has been fulfilled. There is no longer a need to live in such a small existence, wrapped up in the gentle comfort of Tomohisa’s soul and cut off from most of his stronger senses, most of the abilities he has had since the beginning of time.
Somehow, it almost seems terrifying to let these people see him as he truly is.
P closes his eyes and lets his Grace overwhelm him.
~~*~~
The first thing Koyama hears is the whisper of a thousand voices, louder, stronger than he ever has, too real now to rationalize away as dreams, as his imagination, as stress or the wind or the voices of passersby.
The first thing Koyama sees is the shadow of wings behind Yamapi, spread out wide, dark and magnificent and strangely familiar to look upon.
Lighting crackles outside, the light bulbs explode overhead, the television sparks and shorts out, and all Koyama can think is that P is beautiful.
Belatedly, he wonders why this whole angel business hasn’t changed his opinion of their leader even just a little bit.
~~*~~
Shige wishes he had his phone out, wishes he could take a picture and write down what he feels when he sees Yamapi’s wings spread out on the wall behind him, awesome and terrifying as sparks rain down from the ceiling and the walls begin to shake.
It’s real, he thinks, and the logical part of his brain tells himself of course it is. Ghosts are real, demons are real monsters are real. Why wouldn’t angels be real too?
And then, a slightly petty part of himself starts to feel relief.
Of course the fans’ number one is going to be the angel. Who could compete?
Shige grins.
~~*~~
Massu’s mother always used to tell him that angels were watching over him.
Having known this all his life, he doesn’t feel particularly surprised when the one he’s known for the past ten years finally reveals itself.
He wonders what his mother will say when he goes home tonight and tells her that he’s been watching over an angel in return.
~~*~~
Ryo wonders if being the one to introduce an angel to alcohol and club girls and cigarettes over the course of the last few years is going to get him sent to hell.
At least Jin will be coming with him.
~~*~~
Tegoshi is the only one that doesn’t see the shadow on the wall.
Instead he sees wings, brilliant and enormous and bright, stretching for miles in either direction. They are sound and ice and chaos and they are somehow familiar to him, tugging distantly in the back of his mind. He wonders if he can touch them.
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