Smile Time 2: Smile Wider, for alethiometry
We've hit the halfway point, folks! And OMG, there have been so many awesome things to devour this summer, and trust me when I say there are so many treats yet to come. :D
Title: Smile Time 2: Smile Wider
Recipient: alethiometry
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,000 words
Warnings: canon-typical violence and gore
Author's Notes: a prompt involving a Japanese urban legend seemed to demand Bobby's involvement somehow!
Summary: Something is killing tourists in Little Tokyo, and an old friend of Bobby's asks for help.
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California
"A sushi bar, Bobby?" Dean looked around the restaurant Bobby had chosen for their meet. "Seriously?"
Bobby let out a long-suffering sigh. "Some of us eat things that aren't hamburgers or pizza."
"Yeah, but sushi? Isn't that raw fish?"
"You're thinking of sashimi, ya idjit." He picked up a piece of something circular and green and popped it into his mouth. Dean couldn't keep his face from twisting into a grimace.
Bobby rolled his eyes. "For you two, I'd recommend starting with the California rolls."
Dean held up his hands. "Pass, thanks."
"Sure," Sam said.
"Suck-up."
"Bobby -- are these your friends?"
They looked up to see an Asian woman in her sixties. Dean took a quick, appreciative glance as she walked across the restaurant. She held out her hand. "Susan Akimoto."
Dean took her hand and gave her his best smile. "Any friend of Bobby's is a friend of ours."
Sam kicked him in the ankle, and reached out to shake Susan's hand as well.
"Susan works for the Koban -- the tourist bureau," Bobby said. He smiled at her. "When she's not teaching Asian religion, mythology and folklore at UCLA."
"You the one who called us in?" Dean asked.
Susan glanced over her shoulder at the open kitchen, as if she was worried about being overheard, and slipped into the seat across from Bobby.
At 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, they had the place to themselves. Still, Susan pitched her voice low. "Recently, we've had a few attacks that seem to be related to a contemporary urban myth."
"What, like that Hook Man job we worked in Iowa a couple years back?" Sam asked.
Dean frowned. "Or that tulpa in Texas. If those freaking Ghostfacers are out here -- "
"I hadn't even considered the possibility of a tulpa," Susan said, frowning. "Though I suppose it could explain the kuchisake-onna appearing here, when it had been previously only seen in Japan and South Korea."
"Sorry," Sam said. "A what?"
Bobby opened his mouth, but then gave the go-ahead gesture to Susan.
"There have been reported sightings of the kuchisake-onna, or slit-mouthed woman, for about the past forty years. She is described as wearing a face mask; it's fairly common in Japan to prevent the spread of illness. She will approach someone walking alone and ask them if they think she's pretty. If they say no, she'll kill them on the spot."
"I'm assuming," Dean said, "that 'yes' isn't a safe answer either."
"If the person says they do think she is pretty, she'll take off the face mask, exposing her facial mutilations; her face has been slit open from the corners of her mouth up to her ears. She'll ask again if they think she's pretty. If they say no or otherwise react with horror, she'll split their face open the same way."
Susan glanced around the restaurant again. "So far," she said, "there have been reports of three people with the same facial mutilations. No one has caught the person responsible."
"So it's like when Gozer asks if you're a god. If she asks if she's pretty, you say yes."
"No. If you do so, she'll follow you home and cut you in half with her scissors. There have been five deaths so far."
"And you said there were similar reports in Japan?" Sam asked.
"The kuchisake-onna was first reported in Nagasaki Prefecture in the late seventies, but the myth spread throughout Japan. Some schools even had teachers escort their students home."
"By the time I looked into it," Bobby said, "there hadn't been a sighting in decades. I figured it either was just an urban legend, or some local hunter had taken care of it. But a tulpa might explain it, too."
Susan nodded. "Pre-internet, beliefs tended to develop distinctive local variations. That might have been enough to disperse a tulpa."
"But for a tulpa to manifest in the first place," Bobby said, there would have to be a nucleus of belief."
"Most colleges have an anime club," Susan said.
"I remember there was one at Stanford."
Susan nodded. "A lot of anime fans end up branching out to live-action horror movies. And, of course, horror websites."
"Freaking civilians just love to scare themselves. How many dim bulbs have we had to rescue from haunted houses, Sammy?"
"I've lost count," Sam admitted. "Anyway, I'll do a quick sweep of the paranormal blogs, see if anything similar has been reported that could account for an upsurge of belief. Why don't you tell me about the attacks themselves?"
"The victims have been tourists," she said. "The attacks haven't been in the Plaza itself, probably because it's too busy, but in the surrounding areas. Usually late at night, either walking back to parked cars or public transportation. The most recent was in the parking structure adjacent to the Plaza. But the actual deaths were happening at the victims' homes, so nobody realized the connection.
"Then on Sunday morning, a body was found locally. A young man from Milwaukee was found dead just outside the hostel he was staying. The police are blaming the homeless, but his mother is a lawyer and she's kicking up a fuss."
She fidgeted with the gold band on her finger. "Once we knew what to look for, it was easy enough to find other victims. It took my granddaughter less than fifteen minutes on the computer. There have been deaths in Westwood, Reseda, Pico Rivera, even one down in Anaheim. But since it's easy for people to just hop in their cars and come to Little Tokyo... "
"The police have no way of connecting most of the victims to the area." Dean sighed. "You realize they're gonna make the connection sooner or later. And when they do, it'll just make our job harder. What's the timeframe on the attacks?"
"They've happened on Friday and Saturday nights."
He nodded. "So we've got a deadline. Of course."
"We should start by interviewing the locals," Bobby said. "We'll split up, cover more ground. Sam, you and Susan check out the hostel, since that was the only local killing. Dean, you're with me."
*
The first store was a hardware store. Dean picked up what looked like a machete. "It's a saw," Bobby said. "Traditional."
"Handy if we run into any vampires."
"Shush," Bobby said, and then, "Konnichiwa."
"Konnichi-wha?" Dean asked, and Bobby rolled his eyes.
"Konnichiwa," said the middle-aged man who came out from the back.
Thankfully, once the formalities were past, they went back to English; Dean was already feeling useless enough without adding a foreign language to the mix. The man hadn't seen anything, so they moved on to the next shop.
They spent the next several hours going in and out of increasingly claustrophobic stores, filled with knicknacks and tourists. By the time they met back up with Sam and Susan, Dean was working on a headache.
"Is there anything to eat around here?"
Bobby rolled his eyes, but Susan gestured to one of the restaurants. "They serve burgers. And beer."
"Now you're speaking my language," Dean said.
They ordered and took a seat in the restaurant's patio. Once Dean had his beer and some personal space, the knot in his neck muscles started to untwist.
"You find anything?" Sam asked.
"Nobody's seen anything. You have any luck at the hostel?"
"According to his roommate, the vic went out a little after midnight to have a cigarette before he went to bed. The roommate dozed off, when he woke up it was close to one, the vic still wasn't back, so he went out looking, and found him on the front steps."
"We can pay a visit to the coroner's office tomorrow," Bobby said.
"I think Sammy's fed suit could probably use a dry clean after its recent adventures on the floor."
Sam gave him a tight-lipped smile, but before he could say anything, the waitress came out with their food. Dean gave her his best smile. "Konnichiwa."
Her answering smile was professionally friendly. "Enjoy your meal."
"Ooh, shot down," Sam said, smirking. "Not even in a blaze of glory."
"Shut up."
The burger was decent, Sam seemed happy with his salad, and Bobby and Susan enjoyed their weird compartmentalized dinner boxes. Dean watched the people as they drifted by. But then his eyes landed on one of the advertisements. "The first killing -- was it about the tail end of January?"
"Yes," Susan said. "Why?"
He pointed at the sign he'd seen. "The Japanese American National Museum is hosting a special exhibit from the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum."
"It opened right around the time the killings started," Susan confirmed.
Sam rubbed his forehead. "So we could be looking at remains or a cursed object that were brought over as part of the exhibit. And of course, it'll be heavily guarded. Where's Bela when we need her?"
Dean almost reminded Sam that she was still in the Pit, but he didn't want to have to deal with his pity-face.
"Susan, you and Sam go to the museum tomorrow. Dean and I will take the morgue. Both of you can get your suits dry-cleaned; there's a shop right around the corner from the motel where I'm staying." He glared at them as if daring either of them to argue.
*
Sam dropped the fed suits at the dry cleaner's while Dean checked them into the motel. By the time Sam got to the room, Dean had already skimmed the police reports from the surviving victims. "They all report the same thing. Asian woman, tan trench coat, face mask. They screamed and she jumped them, sat on them to hold them down while she cut open their faces with a large pair of scissors, just in line with the legend. The cops have been rounding up the homeless, but it hasn't seemed to do any good."
"The suits will be ready at eight tomorrow." Sam sat down on the edge of his bed and opened the laptop. By the time Dean had finished updating Bobby on the the next morning's timeframe, he was busy pointing and clicking. "A few of the fringier sites have picked made the connection to the kuchisake-onna, but none of the major sites have anything on it." He clicked the mouse again. "The Ghostfacers still think we're dicks."
"We must be doing something right." He pulled out the bottle of whiskey and decided to be at least a little civilized. He poured it into the water-spotted glass. "You think Bobby and Susan had a thing?"
"Maybe," Sam said, pointedly not-looking at the glass in Dean's hand. It didn't matter; Dean could see the disapproval in the set of his shoulders.
"I mean, she's still hot now. Back in the day... "
"You did notice the wedding ring?"
"Doesn't mean I can't look." He swallowed the whiskey in one defiant gulp and went to brush his teeth.
*
"I'm Agent Rogers," Bobby said, "And this is my partner, Agent Simmons."
"Dr. Rena Nazarian. I'm the pathologist who performed the examination on Christopher Wawrzyniec." She pulled a bag of candy from the pocket of her lab coat. "Jelly baby?"
"Pass, thanks," Bobby said, but Dean popped one into his mouth.
"What can you tell me about our victim?" Bobby asked.
Dr. Nazarian held up the file. "Short version, he was cut in half."
"Long version?"
"He was cut in half by two opposing blades, approximate length 30 centimeters."
"Foot long, give or take," Dean said, around his mouthful of candy. That's a pretty big pair of scissors."
"Yes." She pulled out a purple jelly baby and a pair of manicure scissors. "But not big enough to do it all in one go. There were two cuts; the first opened the stomach cavity -- " she cut 3/4 of the way through the unfortunate candy figure, "and the second severed the spinal cord."
She scooped both halves of her jellied victim up and tossed them into her mouth, first the feet, then the head. She flipped to the next page of her report. "Cause of death was, not surprisingly, blood loss. Nasty. And it would have taken a whole lot of strength to do it."
"We talking superhuman strength?" Bobby asked.
She held out her bag of candy again, but Dean waved it away. "Off the record? I'd say PCP strength."
*
"The problem isn't that there's no leads," Sam said later, when they gathered at the coffee shop. "It's that there's too many."
"And most of them," Susan said, "are priceless cultural treasures."
Dean dug his fingers into the back of his neck; his headache was back with a vengeance. He and Bobby had spent the afternoon interviewing the victims. All of them had told the same story they'd given in the police. None of them had remembered anything new.
But it wasn't the waste of time that had Dean's neck and shoulders in one big knot; it wasn't even the hours sitting in traffic.
Looking at the pictures the night before had been ugly; seeing the victims in person had been worse. Staring at the still-healing wounds, he'd imagined that it was his hand on the razor, slick with the man's blood, Alistair's voice in his ear --
He dragged his focus back to the table. The people. The case. He pressed his hand against the flask in his pocket, and imagined the burn of whiskey sliding down his throat, the warmth settling into his belly and spreading through him.
They spent the next few hours reviewing the museum's catalog, trying to narrow down the possibilities. By the time the purple-haired barista started to glare pointedly at them and then at line of people who were waiting for a seat, they still hadn't figured out which was the cursed object.
"We can't just destroy all of these," Susan whispered, as she put the catalog in her shoulder bag.
"Don't worry," Bobby reassured her. "We'll figure it out."
"In time?" Dean asked. "This thing is busy on Friday and Saturday nights. It could be out there, stalking its next victim, right frigging now!"
Sam gave him a calm-down look. "We'll stop it. But you can't just go tearing off -- "
"If you find anything I can do, call me. Until then, I'll be looking for this thing."
*
Three hours of walking around, and there still hadn't been any sign of the kuchisake-onna. Which didn't mean it was out there; for all he knew, it had already latched onto its prey, was even now following some dumb civilian home.
He pulled out his phone, considered calling Sam. Or maybe Bobby. But then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Dark hair, tan trench coat, face mask. Walking toward a young man who was poking at his phone.
He shoved his phone back into his pocket, and broke into a run. He intercepted the woman before she could reach her target.
"Hey there. Konnichiwa."
She turned to him. "Do you think I'm pretty?"
The stupid civilian who thought he was cockblocking tried to step around him. Dean grabbed him by the front of the shirt, slapped a hand across his mouth before he could say something stupid and paint himself as a target.
"Yes," Dean said. "I think you're very pretty."
Her hands went to the mask. Pulled it away, showing a slit-open face, white bones poking through red flesh, and Dean wanted to vomit, because the last time he'd seen a face that looked like that was in Hell and he'd done the cutting.
The civilian screamed against Dean's palm.
"Do you still think I'm pretty?"
"Yes."
And then she was gone, blinked out of existence. Dean let the civilian go; he staggered back, crossing himself. "Dios mio, man, what the hell?"
Dean ignored him and pulled his phone out. "Sam? I know who the next target is going to be."
There was a long moment before Sam spoke. "Dean, what have you done?"
*
Forty-five minutes later, Dean was sitting on the bed in the motel. He'd changed out of the fed suit and arranged his weapons for easy access; he had to hope one of them would work against the kuchisake-onna.
Sam and Bobby and Susan were still back in Little Tokyo. They'd be talking their way into the museum as fast as they could, and Bobby was hopeful that he'd narrowed it down. All he had to do was hold on.
There was a flickering in the air, and then the kuchisake-onna was in front of him.
Dean smirked up at her. "That is a big-ass pair of scissors. If you were a guy, I'd think you were compensating for something."
The kuchisake-onna opened the scissors, and Dean rolled backward and kicked her in the stomach with both feet. She staggered back a step, but then lunged toward him. He scrambled to his feet and grabbed his shotgun.
A chest full of rock salt didn't even slow her down.
The .45 round punched right through her as if she wasn't there, and lodged in the doorframe.
"So much for the deposit."
He grabbed bowie knife. Stabbing, no-go. Clocked her with an iron fireplace poker, nada.
She shoved him to the floor, and straddled his hips, pinning him.
"Normally I'd be all for the whole take-charge thing -- "
She brought the scissors up, and he grabbed the handles. His hands sunk through hers, and the cold burned. He gritted his teeth and wrestled her for control, and the twin blades turned away.
The tip of one slid across her forehead, and drew blood, and she screamed.
"Gotcha, bitch."
He got one knee up and put his foot down, and used the leverage to roll her. The burning cold in his hands intensified, pain bringing tears to his eyes. But he had size and weight on his side.
He brought the scissors down, forcing them through her flesh, before bringing the blades together. For one moment, he imagined the world flaring hellfire-red around him as he pulled the blades apart and then closed them again, shearing through vertebra and then spine.
She gave one last scream, and then she and the scissors were gone, and he was kneeling on the floor of his motel, between the two beds.
He had to claw the phone out of his pocket and use his teeth to open it; his fingers were stiff and numb, and even though he couldn't see blood on them, he imagined he could feel it, hot and slick. "Sammy?"
"Any sign?" He sounded anxious.
"Killed her. With her own scissors. Now get your ass back here." He tried to close his hands again, and grimaced in pain, and he would not even consider the possibility that they would stay that way.
Right now, he needed to be drunk. "Gonna need someone to open the whiskey."
*
By the next morning, his hands were mostly better; they still tingled but he had no problem holding the fork for the breakfast -- good old American bacon and eggs and pancakes -- that Susan had bought them to celebrate.
"Any leads on you-know-who?" Sam asked Bobby.
"Nothing since the last time you asked. Where are you two headed?"
"Sam found some rumors about hikers disappearing back in Maine. Could be a wendigo."
Susan looked at them. "Are you leaving so soon?"
"We should stay at least one more night," Bobby said. "Make sure the kuchisake-onna really is dead."
"Good," she said. "That means I'll have time to give you a proper tour of Little Tokyo."
"I'll be fine in my motel room," Dean said.
"What, watching pay-per-view?" Bobby scowled at him. "You'll accept the lady's offer and you'll say thank you, and if you think you're gonna get out of here without trying at least one item of Japanese food, you've got another think coming!"
Dean knew better than to argue. "Okay, Bobby. But I draw the line at raw fish."
Title: Smile Time 2: Smile Wider
Recipient: alethiometry
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,000 words
Warnings: canon-typical violence and gore
Author's Notes: a prompt involving a Japanese urban legend seemed to demand Bobby's involvement somehow!
Summary: Something is killing tourists in Little Tokyo, and an old friend of Bobby's asks for help.
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California
"A sushi bar, Bobby?" Dean looked around the restaurant Bobby had chosen for their meet. "Seriously?"
Bobby let out a long-suffering sigh. "Some of us eat things that aren't hamburgers or pizza."
"Yeah, but sushi? Isn't that raw fish?"
"You're thinking of sashimi, ya idjit." He picked up a piece of something circular and green and popped it into his mouth. Dean couldn't keep his face from twisting into a grimace.
Bobby rolled his eyes. "For you two, I'd recommend starting with the California rolls."
Dean held up his hands. "Pass, thanks."
"Sure," Sam said.
"Suck-up."
"Bobby -- are these your friends?"
They looked up to see an Asian woman in her sixties. Dean took a quick, appreciative glance as she walked across the restaurant. She held out her hand. "Susan Akimoto."
Dean took her hand and gave her his best smile. "Any friend of Bobby's is a friend of ours."
Sam kicked him in the ankle, and reached out to shake Susan's hand as well.
"Susan works for the Koban -- the tourist bureau," Bobby said. He smiled at her. "When she's not teaching Asian religion, mythology and folklore at UCLA."
"You the one who called us in?" Dean asked.
Susan glanced over her shoulder at the open kitchen, as if she was worried about being overheard, and slipped into the seat across from Bobby.
At 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, they had the place to themselves. Still, Susan pitched her voice low. "Recently, we've had a few attacks that seem to be related to a contemporary urban myth."
"What, like that Hook Man job we worked in Iowa a couple years back?" Sam asked.
Dean frowned. "Or that tulpa in Texas. If those freaking Ghostfacers are out here -- "
"I hadn't even considered the possibility of a tulpa," Susan said, frowning. "Though I suppose it could explain the kuchisake-onna appearing here, when it had been previously only seen in Japan and South Korea."
"Sorry," Sam said. "A what?"
Bobby opened his mouth, but then gave the go-ahead gesture to Susan.
"There have been reported sightings of the kuchisake-onna, or slit-mouthed woman, for about the past forty years. She is described as wearing a face mask; it's fairly common in Japan to prevent the spread of illness. She will approach someone walking alone and ask them if they think she's pretty. If they say no, she'll kill them on the spot."
"I'm assuming," Dean said, "that 'yes' isn't a safe answer either."
"If the person says they do think she is pretty, she'll take off the face mask, exposing her facial mutilations; her face has been slit open from the corners of her mouth up to her ears. She'll ask again if they think she's pretty. If they say no or otherwise react with horror, she'll split their face open the same way."
Susan glanced around the restaurant again. "So far," she said, "there have been reports of three people with the same facial mutilations. No one has caught the person responsible."
"So it's like when Gozer asks if you're a god. If she asks if she's pretty, you say yes."
"No. If you do so, she'll follow you home and cut you in half with her scissors. There have been five deaths so far."
"And you said there were similar reports in Japan?" Sam asked.
"The kuchisake-onna was first reported in Nagasaki Prefecture in the late seventies, but the myth spread throughout Japan. Some schools even had teachers escort their students home."
"By the time I looked into it," Bobby said, "there hadn't been a sighting in decades. I figured it either was just an urban legend, or some local hunter had taken care of it. But a tulpa might explain it, too."
Susan nodded. "Pre-internet, beliefs tended to develop distinctive local variations. That might have been enough to disperse a tulpa."
"But for a tulpa to manifest in the first place," Bobby said, there would have to be a nucleus of belief."
"Most colleges have an anime club," Susan said.
"I remember there was one at Stanford."
Susan nodded. "A lot of anime fans end up branching out to live-action horror movies. And, of course, horror websites."
"Freaking civilians just love to scare themselves. How many dim bulbs have we had to rescue from haunted houses, Sammy?"
"I've lost count," Sam admitted. "Anyway, I'll do a quick sweep of the paranormal blogs, see if anything similar has been reported that could account for an upsurge of belief. Why don't you tell me about the attacks themselves?"
"The victims have been tourists," she said. "The attacks haven't been in the Plaza itself, probably because it's too busy, but in the surrounding areas. Usually late at night, either walking back to parked cars or public transportation. The most recent was in the parking structure adjacent to the Plaza. But the actual deaths were happening at the victims' homes, so nobody realized the connection.
"Then on Sunday morning, a body was found locally. A young man from Milwaukee was found dead just outside the hostel he was staying. The police are blaming the homeless, but his mother is a lawyer and she's kicking up a fuss."
She fidgeted with the gold band on her finger. "Once we knew what to look for, it was easy enough to find other victims. It took my granddaughter less than fifteen minutes on the computer. There have been deaths in Westwood, Reseda, Pico Rivera, even one down in Anaheim. But since it's easy for people to just hop in their cars and come to Little Tokyo... "
"The police have no way of connecting most of the victims to the area." Dean sighed. "You realize they're gonna make the connection sooner or later. And when they do, it'll just make our job harder. What's the timeframe on the attacks?"
"They've happened on Friday and Saturday nights."
He nodded. "So we've got a deadline. Of course."
"We should start by interviewing the locals," Bobby said. "We'll split up, cover more ground. Sam, you and Susan check out the hostel, since that was the only local killing. Dean, you're with me."
*
The first store was a hardware store. Dean picked up what looked like a machete. "It's a saw," Bobby said. "Traditional."
"Handy if we run into any vampires."
"Shush," Bobby said, and then, "Konnichiwa."
"Konnichi-wha?" Dean asked, and Bobby rolled his eyes.
"Konnichiwa," said the middle-aged man who came out from the back.
Thankfully, once the formalities were past, they went back to English; Dean was already feeling useless enough without adding a foreign language to the mix. The man hadn't seen anything, so they moved on to the next shop.
They spent the next several hours going in and out of increasingly claustrophobic stores, filled with knicknacks and tourists. By the time they met back up with Sam and Susan, Dean was working on a headache.
"Is there anything to eat around here?"
Bobby rolled his eyes, but Susan gestured to one of the restaurants. "They serve burgers. And beer."
"Now you're speaking my language," Dean said.
They ordered and took a seat in the restaurant's patio. Once Dean had his beer and some personal space, the knot in his neck muscles started to untwist.
"You find anything?" Sam asked.
"Nobody's seen anything. You have any luck at the hostel?"
"According to his roommate, the vic went out a little after midnight to have a cigarette before he went to bed. The roommate dozed off, when he woke up it was close to one, the vic still wasn't back, so he went out looking, and found him on the front steps."
"We can pay a visit to the coroner's office tomorrow," Bobby said.
"I think Sammy's fed suit could probably use a dry clean after its recent adventures on the floor."
Sam gave him a tight-lipped smile, but before he could say anything, the waitress came out with their food. Dean gave her his best smile. "Konnichiwa."
Her answering smile was professionally friendly. "Enjoy your meal."
"Ooh, shot down," Sam said, smirking. "Not even in a blaze of glory."
"Shut up."
The burger was decent, Sam seemed happy with his salad, and Bobby and Susan enjoyed their weird compartmentalized dinner boxes. Dean watched the people as they drifted by. But then his eyes landed on one of the advertisements. "The first killing -- was it about the tail end of January?"
"Yes," Susan said. "Why?"
He pointed at the sign he'd seen. "The Japanese American National Museum is hosting a special exhibit from the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum."
"It opened right around the time the killings started," Susan confirmed.
Sam rubbed his forehead. "So we could be looking at remains or a cursed object that were brought over as part of the exhibit. And of course, it'll be heavily guarded. Where's Bela when we need her?"
Dean almost reminded Sam that she was still in the Pit, but he didn't want to have to deal with his pity-face.
"Susan, you and Sam go to the museum tomorrow. Dean and I will take the morgue. Both of you can get your suits dry-cleaned; there's a shop right around the corner from the motel where I'm staying." He glared at them as if daring either of them to argue.
*
Sam dropped the fed suits at the dry cleaner's while Dean checked them into the motel. By the time Sam got to the room, Dean had already skimmed the police reports from the surviving victims. "They all report the same thing. Asian woman, tan trench coat, face mask. They screamed and she jumped them, sat on them to hold them down while she cut open their faces with a large pair of scissors, just in line with the legend. The cops have been rounding up the homeless, but it hasn't seemed to do any good."
"The suits will be ready at eight tomorrow." Sam sat down on the edge of his bed and opened the laptop. By the time Dean had finished updating Bobby on the the next morning's timeframe, he was busy pointing and clicking. "A few of the fringier sites have picked made the connection to the kuchisake-onna, but none of the major sites have anything on it." He clicked the mouse again. "The Ghostfacers still think we're dicks."
"We must be doing something right." He pulled out the bottle of whiskey and decided to be at least a little civilized. He poured it into the water-spotted glass. "You think Bobby and Susan had a thing?"
"Maybe," Sam said, pointedly not-looking at the glass in Dean's hand. It didn't matter; Dean could see the disapproval in the set of his shoulders.
"I mean, she's still hot now. Back in the day... "
"You did notice the wedding ring?"
"Doesn't mean I can't look." He swallowed the whiskey in one defiant gulp and went to brush his teeth.
*
"I'm Agent Rogers," Bobby said, "And this is my partner, Agent Simmons."
"Dr. Rena Nazarian. I'm the pathologist who performed the examination on Christopher Wawrzyniec." She pulled a bag of candy from the pocket of her lab coat. "Jelly baby?"
"Pass, thanks," Bobby said, but Dean popped one into his mouth.
"What can you tell me about our victim?" Bobby asked.
Dr. Nazarian held up the file. "Short version, he was cut in half."
"Long version?"
"He was cut in half by two opposing blades, approximate length 30 centimeters."
"Foot long, give or take," Dean said, around his mouthful of candy. That's a pretty big pair of scissors."
"Yes." She pulled out a purple jelly baby and a pair of manicure scissors. "But not big enough to do it all in one go. There were two cuts; the first opened the stomach cavity -- " she cut 3/4 of the way through the unfortunate candy figure, "and the second severed the spinal cord."
She scooped both halves of her jellied victim up and tossed them into her mouth, first the feet, then the head. She flipped to the next page of her report. "Cause of death was, not surprisingly, blood loss. Nasty. And it would have taken a whole lot of strength to do it."
"We talking superhuman strength?" Bobby asked.
She held out her bag of candy again, but Dean waved it away. "Off the record? I'd say PCP strength."
*
"The problem isn't that there's no leads," Sam said later, when they gathered at the coffee shop. "It's that there's too many."
"And most of them," Susan said, "are priceless cultural treasures."
Dean dug his fingers into the back of his neck; his headache was back with a vengeance. He and Bobby had spent the afternoon interviewing the victims. All of them had told the same story they'd given in the police. None of them had remembered anything new.
But it wasn't the waste of time that had Dean's neck and shoulders in one big knot; it wasn't even the hours sitting in traffic.
Looking at the pictures the night before had been ugly; seeing the victims in person had been worse. Staring at the still-healing wounds, he'd imagined that it was his hand on the razor, slick with the man's blood, Alistair's voice in his ear --
He dragged his focus back to the table. The people. The case. He pressed his hand against the flask in his pocket, and imagined the burn of whiskey sliding down his throat, the warmth settling into his belly and spreading through him.
They spent the next few hours reviewing the museum's catalog, trying to narrow down the possibilities. By the time the purple-haired barista started to glare pointedly at them and then at line of people who were waiting for a seat, they still hadn't figured out which was the cursed object.
"We can't just destroy all of these," Susan whispered, as she put the catalog in her shoulder bag.
"Don't worry," Bobby reassured her. "We'll figure it out."
"In time?" Dean asked. "This thing is busy on Friday and Saturday nights. It could be out there, stalking its next victim, right frigging now!"
Sam gave him a calm-down look. "We'll stop it. But you can't just go tearing off -- "
"If you find anything I can do, call me. Until then, I'll be looking for this thing."
*
Three hours of walking around, and there still hadn't been any sign of the kuchisake-onna. Which didn't mean it was out there; for all he knew, it had already latched onto its prey, was even now following some dumb civilian home.
He pulled out his phone, considered calling Sam. Or maybe Bobby. But then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Dark hair, tan trench coat, face mask. Walking toward a young man who was poking at his phone.
He shoved his phone back into his pocket, and broke into a run. He intercepted the woman before she could reach her target.
"Hey there. Konnichiwa."
She turned to him. "Do you think I'm pretty?"
The stupid civilian who thought he was cockblocking tried to step around him. Dean grabbed him by the front of the shirt, slapped a hand across his mouth before he could say something stupid and paint himself as a target.
"Yes," Dean said. "I think you're very pretty."
Her hands went to the mask. Pulled it away, showing a slit-open face, white bones poking through red flesh, and Dean wanted to vomit, because the last time he'd seen a face that looked like that was in Hell and he'd done the cutting.
The civilian screamed against Dean's palm.
"Do you still think I'm pretty?"
"Yes."
And then she was gone, blinked out of existence. Dean let the civilian go; he staggered back, crossing himself. "Dios mio, man, what the hell?"
Dean ignored him and pulled his phone out. "Sam? I know who the next target is going to be."
There was a long moment before Sam spoke. "Dean, what have you done?"
*
Forty-five minutes later, Dean was sitting on the bed in the motel. He'd changed out of the fed suit and arranged his weapons for easy access; he had to hope one of them would work against the kuchisake-onna.
Sam and Bobby and Susan were still back in Little Tokyo. They'd be talking their way into the museum as fast as they could, and Bobby was hopeful that he'd narrowed it down. All he had to do was hold on.
There was a flickering in the air, and then the kuchisake-onna was in front of him.
Dean smirked up at her. "That is a big-ass pair of scissors. If you were a guy, I'd think you were compensating for something."
The kuchisake-onna opened the scissors, and Dean rolled backward and kicked her in the stomach with both feet. She staggered back a step, but then lunged toward him. He scrambled to his feet and grabbed his shotgun.
A chest full of rock salt didn't even slow her down.
The .45 round punched right through her as if she wasn't there, and lodged in the doorframe.
"So much for the deposit."
He grabbed bowie knife. Stabbing, no-go. Clocked her with an iron fireplace poker, nada.
She shoved him to the floor, and straddled his hips, pinning him.
"Normally I'd be all for the whole take-charge thing -- "
She brought the scissors up, and he grabbed the handles. His hands sunk through hers, and the cold burned. He gritted his teeth and wrestled her for control, and the twin blades turned away.
The tip of one slid across her forehead, and drew blood, and she screamed.
"Gotcha, bitch."
He got one knee up and put his foot down, and used the leverage to roll her. The burning cold in his hands intensified, pain bringing tears to his eyes. But he had size and weight on his side.
He brought the scissors down, forcing them through her flesh, before bringing the blades together. For one moment, he imagined the world flaring hellfire-red around him as he pulled the blades apart and then closed them again, shearing through vertebra and then spine.
She gave one last scream, and then she and the scissors were gone, and he was kneeling on the floor of his motel, between the two beds.
He had to claw the phone out of his pocket and use his teeth to open it; his fingers were stiff and numb, and even though he couldn't see blood on them, he imagined he could feel it, hot and slick. "Sammy?"
"Any sign?" He sounded anxious.
"Killed her. With her own scissors. Now get your ass back here." He tried to close his hands again, and grimaced in pain, and he would not even consider the possibility that they would stay that way.
Right now, he needed to be drunk. "Gonna need someone to open the whiskey."
*
By the next morning, his hands were mostly better; they still tingled but he had no problem holding the fork for the breakfast -- good old American bacon and eggs and pancakes -- that Susan had bought them to celebrate.
"Any leads on you-know-who?" Sam asked Bobby.
"Nothing since the last time you asked. Where are you two headed?"
"Sam found some rumors about hikers disappearing back in Maine. Could be a wendigo."
Susan looked at them. "Are you leaving so soon?"
"We should stay at least one more night," Bobby said. "Make sure the kuchisake-onna really is dead."
"Good," she said. "That means I'll have time to give you a proper tour of Little Tokyo."
"I'll be fine in my motel room," Dean said.
"What, watching pay-per-view?" Bobby scowled at him. "You'll accept the lady's offer and you'll say thank you, and if you think you're gonna get out of here without trying at least one item of Japanese food, you've got another think coming!"
Dean knew better than to argue. "Okay, Bobby. But I draw the line at raw fish."