SHINJUKU WILD, CHAPTER THREEby rukia
Chapter 3: Broken Chain
The worst mistake they made was to try and leave the building through the main lobby.
No one warned them that a crowd was gathering outside Police Headquarters within the past few hours. Nor were they warned that everybody in the crowd had a united purpose:
“CO~ME – BA~CK!”
Ichigo froze as soon as he stepped out of the elevator. He stared out of the glass front doors in mixture of surprise and disgust. Luckily, the doors were tinted; it wasn’t likely that any of the people outside could see him. He doubted many of them even knew what he looked like, unless…
“Remember, my lovely devoted fan base!” In the crowded courtyard outside of the building, Don Kanonji stood on a makeshift podium and spoke through a megaphone so he could be heard over the chanting. “Remember that my dear pupil has orange hair, brown eyes, is 177cm tall, and a Cancer with Mercury rising!”
…Kanonji tipped them off. Ichigo uttered a curse under his breath, but it was a mere ripple against the surface of his thoughts as his rage boiled deep beneath. He backed away from the tinted doors, resisting a wild urge to run out there and bash Kanonji’s face against the –
“Hm…” Tatsuki leaned her elbow on Ichigo’s shoulder and surveyed the chanting mob as security guards tried to keep them away from the entrance. “If there wasn’t an alternate way to reach the car park, you’d be a dead man.”
Ichigo tilted his head slightly and looked at her, “Can I –”
“No,” she cut him off.
“But I –”
“No,” Tatsuki insisted. “As much as this world would be better off, you’re not allowed one until you go through the proper training.”
Outside, the crowds were being instructed by Don Kanonji to perform some kind of ritual prayer that the pseudo-psychic was making up as he went. Ichigo could hear his name being called out several times, interspersed with many of Don Kanonji’s usual grunts and gibberish.
“Tatsuki,” Ichigo growled. He was never the sort to beg, so this was as close as he ever got to that. “For the good of humanity, it’s the only way to stop him! C’mon, dammit!”
“Screw you. It’s too much responsibility, so you sure as hell ain’t borrowing mine – Capt. Kagine would have my head,” she stopped leaning on his shoulder and turned around, walking towards the rear stairs that led into the underground car park. “Go do your 3 months of training like the rest of us and then you get issued your own damn gun. Moron.”
~*~*~
The Shinjuku area is one of the busiest and most crowded places in Tokyo at either day or night. The apartment complex itself is in one of the small, dingy corners of the Shinjuku ward. It’s a wonder that an old lady lives here.
Pardon… lived here.
The grey building, nestled between a pachinko parlor and a Thai restaurant, was squat and nondescript. Tatsuki pulled up in front of it despite the no parking sign. She turned off the engine, “We’re here. You sure you want to get out? There might be some Kanonji-fans around that’ll ambush you with toy ‘super spirit sticks.’”
“For the last time, Tatsuki… shut up,” Ichigo climbed out of the passenger side with an irritated scowl.
He paused in front of the shoddy metal door, waiting for Tatsuki to lock the car and catch up. Ichigo took the opportunity to get a feel for the place. He closed his eyes, leaned against the rough wall, and spread his mind out.
Ichigo had worked for Don Kanonji long enough to know that anything he says is 95% nonsense; while the other 5% is mundane phrases such as “Hurry, boy! Get the hairstylist! I’ve got a split-end and it’s only 2 minutes till the show starts!” Ichigo was careful to avoid learning anything supposedly ‘useful’ from Kanonji, especially when it came to his special abilities.
However, after years of constant mental training and thanks to the help of some interesting people he encountered in the course of his former career, Ichigo picked up more than his fair share of tricks. One of said tricks is how to ‘feel out’ an area and pick up traces of spiritual auras. It was a useful way to find ghosts nearby – especially those who don’t wish to be found. It was a difficult task and took all of his concentration to perform.
First, he mentally reached out through the ground level of the building and slowly worked his way up. Unfortunately, most of the apartments were still occupied. Too many lives clung here – on the first floor alone, he could sense a young construction worker arguing with his girlfriend in one flat, a family of 4 crammed into another one (6 if he counted the souls of their grandparents, who putter around the room’s ancestral shrine), and then there was a middle-aged man sitting in the apartment on the far left.
The aura of the man caught Ichigo’s attention immediately. There were such overwhelming waves of grief rolling off of him. Apparently, the man recently lost his wife, but her spirit was long gone from this place and only the faintest traces remained.
Ichigo recalled a rainy day when he held hands with his mother, but he immediately shoved the memory down. His mind recoiled from the man’s grief. He didn’t need the distraction, nor did he need the unexpected reminder of his old guilt. He spread his senses elsewhere in the building, towards the victim’s flat.
All of this occurred within a few seconds of actual time, so it was by then that Tatsuki reached his side and asked, “What’s wrong with you? Got a migrane?”
“Shh,” he muttered without bothering to open his eyes. “Give me a second.”
Tatsuki snorted and crossed her arms. She still couldn’t believe that Ichigo, of all the sane people she knew, actually bought into this paranormal crap –
“I didn’t buy into anything. It’s just something I can do,” Ichigo interrupted her thoughts. “I’m not like those hypocritical, sell-out fortune-tellers – I just happen to know what’s real.”
“Shit!” Tatsuki jumped back. “Stay out of my freakin’ mind, you –”
“Sure, I’d love to stay out of that screwed up head of yours,” Ichigo cracked his eyes open and glared at her, annoyed that she broke his concentration. “So quit radiating your emotions in every direction – it’s damn distracting!”
Tatsuki didn’t know a good come back for such a weird comment, so she switched gears. “What did you find?” she asked.
Ichigo frowned thoughtfully, “Something that I don’t quite believe. I need to go in and see this for myself.”
“Well, that’s what we came here for,” she reached for the door, but at that moment it swung open from the inside.
A tall, thin man with a white streak through his hair and a thick black moustache stood in the entrance way. His slumped posture and the dark rings around his eyes helped to give off an air of misery that surrounded him in a nearly tangible aura. This was the same grief-stricken man that Ichigo sensed a minute ago.
“Detective Arisawa? I could hear you talking from inside. Please come in,” the man said in a high, creaky voice. He shuffled back to allow them entrance.
“Good morning, Mr. Nakata. This is my associate, Detective Kurosaki, a professional spirit medium,” she glanced over her shoulder, uncertain if she said too much. “Ichigo, this is Mr. Nakata – the landlord.”
Mr. Nakata bowed and Ichigo returned the gesture stiffly as he fought down the urge to flinch and draw back. He didn’t like being near those who wore their broken hearts on their sleeves. The unconscious outpouring of emotion from such people gave him terrible headaches. He kept his distance from the sad-looking man as he led them upstairs to the victim’s apartment.
“No one lived on the 2nd floor other than Mrs. Tachibana. It’s rather drafty up here, but she seemed to like it… when she was, um, alive, you see,” Mr. Nakata hobbled down the hallway, leading them to RM 202.
“C’mon, Ichigo,” Tatsuki moved passed the soft-spoken man and pushed open the old door. “Let’s get started.”
The landlord idled by the doorway for a moment as if there was something he desperately needed to ask. “Um… Mr. Kurosaki, sir… Detective Arisawa said that you were a s-spirit medium…?”
Before Tatsuki could ask the landlord to please leave them to their work, Ichigo stopped her and looked the man straight in the eyes. “She’s gone,” he said solemnly. “There’s nothing I can say or do to bring her back. Not even for a moment. She’s somewhere else now, so you’ve got to find a way to keep going on your own.”
The man’s jaw went slack for a long, dumbfounded moment. Disappointment and sadness spread over the man’s face to the point that the detectives were afraid he would break down in tears. The last thing either of them needed was to see a grown man cry.
Finally, the moment passed and Mr. Nakata composed himself a little better. As he backed away, he said to Ichigo, “Th-thank you, sir… I mean, I don’t know how you knew but… ah, right, well I should go. Take as much time as you need here.”
When Mr. Nakata disappeared down the stairwell, Tatsuki turned on her partner, “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“What else could I have done?” Ichigo turned away defensively. “I don’t claim to be a hero, but you can’t blame me for trying to help people who are right in front of me.”
“You didn’t need to say that stuff – whatever it was about nearly sent that guy to pieces,” she shot back.
“He was already in pieces and I told you already, I couldn’t help something like that! He really needed to know the truth,” he explained testily as he took a good look around the victim’s living room. “If he wanted to hear sugar-coated lies, I would have told him to get lost. The worst thing I could do would be to tell him to keep waiting for his dead wife.”
Tatsuki sighed and walked by him, “C’mon, the kitchen’s over here. That’s where she was found.”
“By Mr. Nakata?” he asked as they slipped through a narrow doorway to get into the closet-sized kitchen.
“Nope,” Tatsuki squeezed around the kitchen, carefully avoiding the white marks on the floor to indicate the placement of the victim’s body. “The housewife of a family living on the ground floor would come up here occasionally to chat. This time she got an unpleasant surprise.”
“I see…” Ichigo didn’t like the looks of this. When he did his preliminary reading from outside, he thought he made a miscalculation since Tatsuki distracted him. However, there was no mistaking his senses now. The challenge was how to explain this to his skeptic partner.
“We’ve got a small problem,” he studied the area where the body had lain. There were bloodstains there, but not as much as he expected to see.
Tatsuki crossed her arms again, “How small?”
“Huge,” he said shortly. He glanced up at her, “The victim’s soul is gone.”
“Huh? Wait, didn’t you say earlier –”
“That was then and this is now,” Ichigo said. “The part that bothers me is that she didn’t leave any trace of her soul behind. It’s like she just vanished.”
“So I guess she went off to heaven after all?” Tatsuki suggested hopefully. “Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing for her?”
Ichigo shook his head, “Spiritual traces remain weeks, even months, after a person’s death. They especially cling to the places they spent the most time in, such as their home. From the looks of this place, she didn’t go out much either.” His frown deepened, “People always leave pieces of themselves behind… so why aren’t any pieces of her left here?”
Crouching down on the tiles, he laid his hand flat on the marked off area, “I don’t think her soul went willingly, either.”
“Yeah, well forensics could have told you that one,” she arched a brow and crouched down with him. “So without any spirit-talking to help us out, I guess we’ll do this the old fashion way.”
“I guess so,” Ichigo glanced around the small room and noticed a large paper bag on the countertop, with the name ‘Hanayaka Pan’ printed on it in flowery letters. There was a dark stain that spread out from the bottom of the bag. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Mrs. Tachibana’s uneaten lunch. I wouldn’t open that if I were you – it stinks to high heaven,” Tatsuki made a face. “I think the stain is from the leaking milk carton.”
His eyes flicked back to the tiled floor, “How about that thing over there? Why wasn’t that taken in as evidence?”
Tatsuki followed his gaze to the far end of the kitchen, “What thing?”
Ichigo pointed at the small space between the fridge and the counter top. “You don’t see it?”
She squinted harder, “What? Food crumbs? Cockroaches? I don’t see anything important.”
He shot her a skeptical look from where he crouched, “You don’t see–”
Tatsuki balled up her fist and let loose a well-aimed punch at the back of his head, “Quit messing around! If I say I can’t see it, then I can’t! What, are you deaf!?”
“Ow! That hurt, dammit!” Ichigo rubbed the newly-forming bump on his head, as he got up and walked over to pick up what he saw in the small space. “Weird…” He weighed the heavy gray object in his hard thoughtfully before raising it to Tatsuki’s eye level.
Tatsuki glared flatly at the empty hand he held up to her. “I swear, if you’re trying to be a Mime, I’ll kill you and dump your body in the canal,” she snorted.
Ichigo frowned in confusion and silently stuffed the object into the pocket of his long overcoat. Apparently, it wasn’t something of this world, so maybe it was a clue about the Next world. He certainly wouldn’t file it for evidence if no one else can see it. “Never mind,” he grumbled and turned away.
Suddenly, Ichigo’s vision wavered dangerously and he nearly fell over from the sense of vertigo that overtook him. He looked around desperately as his head began to pound in synch with his heart beat. Something was terribly wrong, and it wasn’t the curdled milk on the counter. Something else had suddenly appeared in this flat, and it wasn’t some old hag’s ghost. “Tatsuki, don’t move,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked irritably.
“Just… don’t,” Ichigo managed to say before the rising nausea caught him unguarded. Bile burned the back of his throat as he stumbled out of the kitchen and searched the living room desperately. He couldn’t see anything there – but he could feel something there. Something huge that was emitting some damn evil vibes was nearby, but just outside his line of vision no matter where he looked. It stood there somewhere in his peripheral vision, as if mocking his abilities.
This didn’t make any sense to Ichigo. Seeing ghosts is what he does, so how can this heavy, vile presence be so elusive?
He knew only one thing for sure: he had to get out of this room before he painted the dilapidated walls with his breakfast.
~*~*~
“Shit! I can’t believe this!” Tatsuki stood on the sidewalk, close enough to yell at him but far enough to pretend that she had nothing to do with someone so embarrassing. “I mean, I’ve heard stories about rookies getting jittery on their first day, but this is freaking ridiculous! You didn’t even see a dead body yet and you’re a mess!”
“Shut up! You don’t,” Ichigo paused to heave painfully into a pile of garbage on the street corner, “you don’t get what happened in there! I had to get out! There was a – urk! Ugh… oh, hell…” He heaved again.
“Forget this!” Tatsuki turn away from her sickly partner and stormed back to their car. She climbed into the driver’s side, turned on the engine and flipped on the digital radio. With the speakers blasting on an uninterrupted hard rock channel, she rested her head and arms against the steering wheel. She was starting to get a headache too, and her partner was turning out to be the source of all her troubles.
It took several minutes before he opened the passenger door and stepped inside. Tatsuki didn’t move from her position and Ichigo did nothing to disturb her except turn the radio volume down a few decibels. He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. Neither of them moved for a long time.
Eventually, Tatsuki reached over and muted the radio. She didn’t look up from the steering wheel as she spoke, “In the old days, it used to be a lot easier. If I ever got pissed with you, I would just beat the shit out of you until I felt better.”
Ichigo cracked an eye open for a moment. “Why don’t you?” he wasn’t challenging her, simply curious. His eye shut again, wincing at the sunlight on his face.
“Can’t kick you when you’re down… I guess it’s called ‘maturity,’ or some shit like that,” she sighed. “Listen… I don’t know what got into you back there with the miming and the vomiting... I’m not feeling up to hearing about it either.”
“So we’re even,” he said. “I don’t feel up to talking about it right now.”
“How about we just find a place to rest first?” Tatsuki raised her head to look at him, making a peace offering. “We can’t go back to Headquarters, though. I don’t want to deal with Don Kanonji and his Army of Deadbeats.”
“Agreed,” Ichigo groaned.
“There’s a bakery two blocks away,” she suggested. “We could go there and talk to –”
“Ugh,” Ichigo cringed as he forced open his eyes. “Don’t even mention food to me, Tatsuki.”
“Okay…” she tried to keep her temper from flaring up again. “Where do you suggest?”
“Hand me your cell phone,” he held out his hand.
She eyed him suspiciously, “Why? Don’t you have one of your own?”
“Used to,” Ichigo said, “but then I cancelled it to keep Kanonji from stalking me.”
“Ah, I see,” Tatsuki reached in the glove compartment, where the phone was connected to a built-in charger. She unplugged it and handed it to him, “So you know a place where we can crash for a few hours?”
“Maybe,” he flipped open the phone and punched in a number that he knew by heart.
~*~*~
Ishida Uryuu had a rather satisfying day. Work was slow; simply a matter of finishing paperwork he had left piling up. Afterwards, he spent the afternoon at the community center with his regular sewing circle. Then he used the coupons he had collected over the weekend at the grocery store and saved a total of 684 yen. Overall, the day had met his needs very well.
It all went down the figurative toilet when Ishida opened the door to his apartment.
Kurosaki Ichigo was lying on the couch with his feet crossed on the armrest. He looked up when Ishida entered, the icepack on his forehead nearly slipping off. “Hey, look who’s back,” Ichigo said.
Ishida froze in the doorway, the groceries dropped from his slack grip. “What are you doing here?” he bit out coldly.
“Trying to sleep,” Ichigo’s head sunk back into the comforter. “By the way, we moved my boxes out of the living room, like you asked.”
Ishida picked up his groceries, stormed past the couch and headed straight for the kitchen, yelling, “Sado-san! What is he doing here?”
Chad was leaning against their fridge, talking to a short-haired woman sitting at the kitchen table. Chad looked up in bewilderment, “He called… they needed a place to crash…”
Ishida tossed the groceries on the counter and addressed his roommate, “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”
“…You already left the office…” Chad then added, “…you would have said no anyway.”
“Of course!” Ishida paused and tried to stay calm. Yelling wasn’t his style. “I thought I made it clear last time that I did not want Kurosaki Ichigo to darken my door again.”
Chad frowned and was about to reply, when the woman at the table looked up in surprise and said, “Well, I’ll be damned! You’re Ishida Uryuu, right? I didn’t know you were Chad’s roommate! Hell, I didn’t even know you were on the Force!”
Ishida looked uncomfortable, trying to place her face somewhere in his memory, “And you are…?”
“Arisawa,” the outspoken woman said. “Arisawa Tatsuki from Karakura High School. I won the National High School Martial Arts championships –”
“–three years in a row,” Ishida nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I remember you now. We had the same class in freshman year.”
“Wait, how is that possible?” Ichigo, who had been listening to the conversation from the living room, managed to get off the couch and make it to the kitchen doorway. “I mean, I was in that class and I don’t remember –”
“Priceless!” Tatsuki burst out laughing, “Ichigo’s faulty memory strikes again!”
“What?” Ichigo demanded.
“Ishida Uryuu was one of the two top graduates in our high school and you don’t even remember him!” she kept laughing. “You never change!”
Ichigo grumbled and asked Chad, “How come you never told me we went to high school with him?”
Chad shrugged, “…I thought you knew.”
“Whatever! Anyway, how come you never knew that Chad and Ishida worked on the force too?” Ichigo accused Tatsuki to avoid further scrutiny.
“Heh, how could I? I worked at a police box in Shinjuku up until last week. I only dropped by Headquarters a handful of times in the past 4 years – and that was always for paperwork,” Tatsuki got up to get a beer from the fridge. “Want one, Ishida? We went to all that trouble to buy a 6-pack on the way here,” she tossed one over her shoulder to Ichigo, who caught it easily from where he was still leaning against the doorway.
“I do not partake,” Ishida remained standing in the middle of the room.
Tatsuki looked up at Chad, but he shook his head, “…just a soda, please.”
Ishida sighed impatiently, “Listen, Arisawa-san, I do not approve of – what is that?” He interrupted himself when he spotted a foot-long length of chain sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, “Who put that on my table – I just cleaned it this morning!”
“‘That’ what?” Tatsuki traded looks with Chad, but he didn’t know what Ishida was talking about either. “Ishida… there’s nothing on the table,” she said in a tone usually reserved for talking to over-imaginative 5-year-olds.
“What? Quit messing about,” he reached over and picked up the linked chain. The gritty, rusted metal felt too smooth to be real. He realized what it really was and lifted it up to take a closer look. “Oh…”
Tatsuki frowned and muttered under her breath as she popped open her can of Asahi beer, “Great, another damn Mime …”
“What a surprise…” Ichigo walked up behind Ishida, chuckling, “I’ve listened to you bitch and moan countless times about how ridiculous the paranormal is, but you’ve been a part of it all along. Of all the people in the world, I never suspected that you could see ghosts.”
“I guess that makes you the greater fool,” Ishida turned to face him, nudging his glasses up higher to glare at him properly. “I knew of your abilities since freshman year. Skilled psychics can sense details like that, didn’t you know?”
Ichigo scowled, making it obvious that he hadn’t known that.
“Uh, excuse me?” Tatsuki waved a hand between the two guys, gaining their attention. “Back up a second – Ishida is a psychic? Hell, how come he wasn’t given Ichigo’s job?” she wondered aloud.
“Because I, for one, do not wish to profit from death,” Ishida tossed the chain back on the table and moved towards the kitchen doorway.
“That’s going too far, Ishida,” Ichigo stepped in front of him, angrily cracking his knuckles, “Take that comment back before I beat the shit out of you.”
Ishida laughed cynically; such an opportunity to get Kurosaki riled up was too good to pass up. “Are you trying to intimidate me, Kurosaki Ichigo? I can sense right now that you’re so weakened by some Hollow attack you can barely stand!”
Ichigo paused, momentarily forgetting his anger, “…‘Hollow’? What the hell is that? What attack?”
It was then that Ishida realized he finally made one slip-up too many. “Nevermind,” he pushed aside Ichigo and headed straight for his room.
“Wait one damn minute! Is that what got to me today? This ‘Hollow’ thing? Is that what ‘attacked’ me in Mrs. Tachibana’s apartment?” he demanded, following Ishida down the hallway. “What do you know about this, Ishida!? This is serious!”
“If what I know could actually do you any good in your investigation, I would have told you by now,” Ishida paused at his door and turned to Ichigo. “But if that broken Chain of Fate on the table and that attack you received today is any indication of what you’re facing – neither you, nor Arisawa-san can handle this case.”
“Chain of Fate? What the hell are –”
“Kurosaki,” Ishida interrupted him. “If you’re lucky enough to find out where that ‘murderer’ strikes next – your best course of action is to inform me, so I can destroy it for you. Whatever this case you’re working on is about – it’s already way out of your league,” he disappeared, slamming the bedroom door behind him.
Ichigo looked over to trade confused looks with Tatsuki and Chad, who were standing at the mouth of the hallway.
Tatsuki sipped her beer, “Should we tell him that we moved all of your boxes into his room?”
“Nah,” Ichigo turned away as an enraged yell was heard behind Ishida’s door.
~*~*~
“2 days, got that!? I’ll allow 2 days, but after that – it all goes in the dumpster! Now, get out!” The door slammed shut as soon as the trio made it into the hallway. Tatsuki jumped out of the way before the doorknob nearly rammed into her from behind.
Tatsuki spun around and glared at the door, “Why that anal retentive, obnoxious, sonnuva –”
As she began to rant at the locked door, Ichigo glanced up at Chad, “How come he kicked you out too? Don’t you live here?”
Chad shrugged, “…He forgets, sometimes…”
“Oh,” Ichigo didn’t know what to say to that. “Want to walk to the train station with us?”
“…Sure…” Chad said.
“C’mon, Tatsuki,” Ichigo called out to his partner as he and Chad headed down the stairwell.
“Ishida sure knows a hell of a lot,” Tatsuki caught up with them, grumbling. “We should report him for withholding evidence.”
“Yeah, I can imagine the look on Captain Kagine’s face if we tell him that someone’s withholding paranormal evidence which no one else, except me, can confirm,” Ichigo said dryly as they stepped into the busy shopping street. “We’d get fired for accusing a fellow officer so fast that Ishida won’t even have time to gloat.”
“Point taken,” Tatsuki sighed. “He could have at least let us finish our drinks though. Man, what a grouch…”
Chad subtly changed the subject, “…You still look tired, Ichigo.”
“Yeah, despite that long nap you took, you still look like crap,” Tatsuki agreed. “Maybe you really are suffering from a ‘Hollow attack’ or whatever Ishida said it was.”
Ichigo wasn’t ready to admit that Ishida Uryuu was right about anything, “I didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.”
“Why? Nightmares?” Tatsuki asked. “Y’know, I had this weird dream once that I was wearing scuba diving gear and then my friend, Orihime, came into the room riding a giraffe – I’d like to see Freud explain that!” she chuckled. “How about you, Chad?”
The trio stopped at the main crossroad in front of Shibuya station, waiting for the traffic lights to change. It wasn’t even 9pm yet, but the streets were teeming with bar-hoppers, gangs, and pleasure-seekers of every kind. Shibuya was known for its nightlife.
“…Mm…” Chad craned his neck, looking up past the neon-lighted sky scrapers to peer at the vast black stretch above their heads. “…dreamt I had wings,” he paused and then asked, “Ichigo?”
The street lights changed and they followed the herd of people going towards the train station. Ichigo looked away from his companions, thinking hard. Eventually, he said, “Snakes… I dreamt of snakes.”
~*~*~
Chapter 4: Transitions
Ichigo runs into a stranger who knows more about him than even he does. A not-so-mysterious woman from his past shows up. Plus, work on the case goes off-track as he goes on a hunt of a tamer kind – apartment hunting. :P
----
(funny how no one noticed that Kagine is an actual Bleach character... <_< >_> o_0)
Chapter 3: Broken Chain
The worst mistake they made was to try and leave the building through the main lobby.
No one warned them that a crowd was gathering outside Police Headquarters within the past few hours. Nor were they warned that everybody in the crowd had a united purpose:
“CO~ME – BA~CK!”
Ichigo froze as soon as he stepped out of the elevator. He stared out of the glass front doors in mixture of surprise and disgust. Luckily, the doors were tinted; it wasn’t likely that any of the people outside could see him. He doubted many of them even knew what he looked like, unless…
“Remember, my lovely devoted fan base!” In the crowded courtyard outside of the building, Don Kanonji stood on a makeshift podium and spoke through a megaphone so he could be heard over the chanting. “Remember that my dear pupil has orange hair, brown eyes, is 177cm tall, and a Cancer with Mercury rising!”
…Kanonji tipped them off. Ichigo uttered a curse under his breath, but it was a mere ripple against the surface of his thoughts as his rage boiled deep beneath. He backed away from the tinted doors, resisting a wild urge to run out there and bash Kanonji’s face against the –
“Hm…” Tatsuki leaned her elbow on Ichigo’s shoulder and surveyed the chanting mob as security guards tried to keep them away from the entrance. “If there wasn’t an alternate way to reach the car park, you’d be a dead man.”
Ichigo tilted his head slightly and looked at her, “Can I –”
“No,” she cut him off.
“But I –”
“No,” Tatsuki insisted. “As much as this world would be better off, you’re not allowed one until you go through the proper training.”
Outside, the crowds were being instructed by Don Kanonji to perform some kind of ritual prayer that the pseudo-psychic was making up as he went. Ichigo could hear his name being called out several times, interspersed with many of Don Kanonji’s usual grunts and gibberish.
“Tatsuki,” Ichigo growled. He was never the sort to beg, so this was as close as he ever got to that. “For the good of humanity, it’s the only way to stop him! C’mon, dammit!”
“Screw you. It’s too much responsibility, so you sure as hell ain’t borrowing mine – Capt. Kagine would have my head,” she stopped leaning on his shoulder and turned around, walking towards the rear stairs that led into the underground car park. “Go do your 3 months of training like the rest of us and then you get issued your own damn gun. Moron.”
~*~*~
The Shinjuku area is one of the busiest and most crowded places in Tokyo at either day or night. The apartment complex itself is in one of the small, dingy corners of the Shinjuku ward. It’s a wonder that an old lady lives here.
Pardon… lived here.
The grey building, nestled between a pachinko parlor and a Thai restaurant, was squat and nondescript. Tatsuki pulled up in front of it despite the no parking sign. She turned off the engine, “We’re here. You sure you want to get out? There might be some Kanonji-fans around that’ll ambush you with toy ‘super spirit sticks.’”
“For the last time, Tatsuki… shut up,” Ichigo climbed out of the passenger side with an irritated scowl.
He paused in front of the shoddy metal door, waiting for Tatsuki to lock the car and catch up. Ichigo took the opportunity to get a feel for the place. He closed his eyes, leaned against the rough wall, and spread his mind out.
Ichigo had worked for Don Kanonji long enough to know that anything he says is 95% nonsense; while the other 5% is mundane phrases such as “Hurry, boy! Get the hairstylist! I’ve got a split-end and it’s only 2 minutes till the show starts!” Ichigo was careful to avoid learning anything supposedly ‘useful’ from Kanonji, especially when it came to his special abilities.
However, after years of constant mental training and thanks to the help of some interesting people he encountered in the course of his former career, Ichigo picked up more than his fair share of tricks. One of said tricks is how to ‘feel out’ an area and pick up traces of spiritual auras. It was a useful way to find ghosts nearby – especially those who don’t wish to be found. It was a difficult task and took all of his concentration to perform.
First, he mentally reached out through the ground level of the building and slowly worked his way up. Unfortunately, most of the apartments were still occupied. Too many lives clung here – on the first floor alone, he could sense a young construction worker arguing with his girlfriend in one flat, a family of 4 crammed into another one (6 if he counted the souls of their grandparents, who putter around the room’s ancestral shrine), and then there was a middle-aged man sitting in the apartment on the far left.
The aura of the man caught Ichigo’s attention immediately. There were such overwhelming waves of grief rolling off of him. Apparently, the man recently lost his wife, but her spirit was long gone from this place and only the faintest traces remained.
Ichigo recalled a rainy day when he held hands with his mother, but he immediately shoved the memory down. His mind recoiled from the man’s grief. He didn’t need the distraction, nor did he need the unexpected reminder of his old guilt. He spread his senses elsewhere in the building, towards the victim’s flat.
All of this occurred within a few seconds of actual time, so it was by then that Tatsuki reached his side and asked, “What’s wrong with you? Got a migrane?”
“Shh,” he muttered without bothering to open his eyes. “Give me a second.”
Tatsuki snorted and crossed her arms. She still couldn’t believe that Ichigo, of all the sane people she knew, actually bought into this paranormal crap –
“I didn’t buy into anything. It’s just something I can do,” Ichigo interrupted her thoughts. “I’m not like those hypocritical, sell-out fortune-tellers – I just happen to know what’s real.”
“Shit!” Tatsuki jumped back. “Stay out of my freakin’ mind, you –”
“Sure, I’d love to stay out of that screwed up head of yours,” Ichigo cracked his eyes open and glared at her, annoyed that she broke his concentration. “So quit radiating your emotions in every direction – it’s damn distracting!”
Tatsuki didn’t know a good come back for such a weird comment, so she switched gears. “What did you find?” she asked.
Ichigo frowned thoughtfully, “Something that I don’t quite believe. I need to go in and see this for myself.”
“Well, that’s what we came here for,” she reached for the door, but at that moment it swung open from the inside.
A tall, thin man with a white streak through his hair and a thick black moustache stood in the entrance way. His slumped posture and the dark rings around his eyes helped to give off an air of misery that surrounded him in a nearly tangible aura. This was the same grief-stricken man that Ichigo sensed a minute ago.
“Detective Arisawa? I could hear you talking from inside. Please come in,” the man said in a high, creaky voice. He shuffled back to allow them entrance.
“Good morning, Mr. Nakata. This is my associate, Detective Kurosaki, a professional spirit medium,” she glanced over her shoulder, uncertain if she said too much. “Ichigo, this is Mr. Nakata – the landlord.”
Mr. Nakata bowed and Ichigo returned the gesture stiffly as he fought down the urge to flinch and draw back. He didn’t like being near those who wore their broken hearts on their sleeves. The unconscious outpouring of emotion from such people gave him terrible headaches. He kept his distance from the sad-looking man as he led them upstairs to the victim’s apartment.
“No one lived on the 2nd floor other than Mrs. Tachibana. It’s rather drafty up here, but she seemed to like it… when she was, um, alive, you see,” Mr. Nakata hobbled down the hallway, leading them to RM 202.
“C’mon, Ichigo,” Tatsuki moved passed the soft-spoken man and pushed open the old door. “Let’s get started.”
The landlord idled by the doorway for a moment as if there was something he desperately needed to ask. “Um… Mr. Kurosaki, sir… Detective Arisawa said that you were a s-spirit medium…?”
Before Tatsuki could ask the landlord to please leave them to their work, Ichigo stopped her and looked the man straight in the eyes. “She’s gone,” he said solemnly. “There’s nothing I can say or do to bring her back. Not even for a moment. She’s somewhere else now, so you’ve got to find a way to keep going on your own.”
The man’s jaw went slack for a long, dumbfounded moment. Disappointment and sadness spread over the man’s face to the point that the detectives were afraid he would break down in tears. The last thing either of them needed was to see a grown man cry.
Finally, the moment passed and Mr. Nakata composed himself a little better. As he backed away, he said to Ichigo, “Th-thank you, sir… I mean, I don’t know how you knew but… ah, right, well I should go. Take as much time as you need here.”
When Mr. Nakata disappeared down the stairwell, Tatsuki turned on her partner, “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“What else could I have done?” Ichigo turned away defensively. “I don’t claim to be a hero, but you can’t blame me for trying to help people who are right in front of me.”
“You didn’t need to say that stuff – whatever it was about nearly sent that guy to pieces,” she shot back.
“He was already in pieces and I told you already, I couldn’t help something like that! He really needed to know the truth,” he explained testily as he took a good look around the victim’s living room. “If he wanted to hear sugar-coated lies, I would have told him to get lost. The worst thing I could do would be to tell him to keep waiting for his dead wife.”
Tatsuki sighed and walked by him, “C’mon, the kitchen’s over here. That’s where she was found.”
“By Mr. Nakata?” he asked as they slipped through a narrow doorway to get into the closet-sized kitchen.
“Nope,” Tatsuki squeezed around the kitchen, carefully avoiding the white marks on the floor to indicate the placement of the victim’s body. “The housewife of a family living on the ground floor would come up here occasionally to chat. This time she got an unpleasant surprise.”
“I see…” Ichigo didn’t like the looks of this. When he did his preliminary reading from outside, he thought he made a miscalculation since Tatsuki distracted him. However, there was no mistaking his senses now. The challenge was how to explain this to his skeptic partner.
“We’ve got a small problem,” he studied the area where the body had lain. There were bloodstains there, but not as much as he expected to see.
Tatsuki crossed her arms again, “How small?”
“Huge,” he said shortly. He glanced up at her, “The victim’s soul is gone.”
“Huh? Wait, didn’t you say earlier –”
“That was then and this is now,” Ichigo said. “The part that bothers me is that she didn’t leave any trace of her soul behind. It’s like she just vanished.”
“So I guess she went off to heaven after all?” Tatsuki suggested hopefully. “Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing for her?”
Ichigo shook his head, “Spiritual traces remain weeks, even months, after a person’s death. They especially cling to the places they spent the most time in, such as their home. From the looks of this place, she didn’t go out much either.” His frown deepened, “People always leave pieces of themselves behind… so why aren’t any pieces of her left here?”
Crouching down on the tiles, he laid his hand flat on the marked off area, “I don’t think her soul went willingly, either.”
“Yeah, well forensics could have told you that one,” she arched a brow and crouched down with him. “So without any spirit-talking to help us out, I guess we’ll do this the old fashion way.”
“I guess so,” Ichigo glanced around the small room and noticed a large paper bag on the countertop, with the name ‘Hanayaka Pan’ printed on it in flowery letters. There was a dark stain that spread out from the bottom of the bag. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Mrs. Tachibana’s uneaten lunch. I wouldn’t open that if I were you – it stinks to high heaven,” Tatsuki made a face. “I think the stain is from the leaking milk carton.”
His eyes flicked back to the tiled floor, “How about that thing over there? Why wasn’t that taken in as evidence?”
Tatsuki followed his gaze to the far end of the kitchen, “What thing?”
Ichigo pointed at the small space between the fridge and the counter top. “You don’t see it?”
She squinted harder, “What? Food crumbs? Cockroaches? I don’t see anything important.”
He shot her a skeptical look from where he crouched, “You don’t see–”
Tatsuki balled up her fist and let loose a well-aimed punch at the back of his head, “Quit messing around! If I say I can’t see it, then I can’t! What, are you deaf!?”
“Ow! That hurt, dammit!” Ichigo rubbed the newly-forming bump on his head, as he got up and walked over to pick up what he saw in the small space. “Weird…” He weighed the heavy gray object in his hard thoughtfully before raising it to Tatsuki’s eye level.
Tatsuki glared flatly at the empty hand he held up to her. “I swear, if you’re trying to be a Mime, I’ll kill you and dump your body in the canal,” she snorted.
Ichigo frowned in confusion and silently stuffed the object into the pocket of his long overcoat. Apparently, it wasn’t something of this world, so maybe it was a clue about the Next world. He certainly wouldn’t file it for evidence if no one else can see it. “Never mind,” he grumbled and turned away.
Suddenly, Ichigo’s vision wavered dangerously and he nearly fell over from the sense of vertigo that overtook him. He looked around desperately as his head began to pound in synch with his heart beat. Something was terribly wrong, and it wasn’t the curdled milk on the counter. Something else had suddenly appeared in this flat, and it wasn’t some old hag’s ghost. “Tatsuki, don’t move,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked irritably.
“Just… don’t,” Ichigo managed to say before the rising nausea caught him unguarded. Bile burned the back of his throat as he stumbled out of the kitchen and searched the living room desperately. He couldn’t see anything there – but he could feel something there. Something huge that was emitting some damn evil vibes was nearby, but just outside his line of vision no matter where he looked. It stood there somewhere in his peripheral vision, as if mocking his abilities.
This didn’t make any sense to Ichigo. Seeing ghosts is what he does, so how can this heavy, vile presence be so elusive?
He knew only one thing for sure: he had to get out of this room before he painted the dilapidated walls with his breakfast.
~*~*~
“Shit! I can’t believe this!” Tatsuki stood on the sidewalk, close enough to yell at him but far enough to pretend that she had nothing to do with someone so embarrassing. “I mean, I’ve heard stories about rookies getting jittery on their first day, but this is freaking ridiculous! You didn’t even see a dead body yet and you’re a mess!”
“Shut up! You don’t,” Ichigo paused to heave painfully into a pile of garbage on the street corner, “you don’t get what happened in there! I had to get out! There was a – urk! Ugh… oh, hell…” He heaved again.
“Forget this!” Tatsuki turn away from her sickly partner and stormed back to their car. She climbed into the driver’s side, turned on the engine and flipped on the digital radio. With the speakers blasting on an uninterrupted hard rock channel, she rested her head and arms against the steering wheel. She was starting to get a headache too, and her partner was turning out to be the source of all her troubles.
It took several minutes before he opened the passenger door and stepped inside. Tatsuki didn’t move from her position and Ichigo did nothing to disturb her except turn the radio volume down a few decibels. He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. Neither of them moved for a long time.
Eventually, Tatsuki reached over and muted the radio. She didn’t look up from the steering wheel as she spoke, “In the old days, it used to be a lot easier. If I ever got pissed with you, I would just beat the shit out of you until I felt better.”
Ichigo cracked an eye open for a moment. “Why don’t you?” he wasn’t challenging her, simply curious. His eye shut again, wincing at the sunlight on his face.
“Can’t kick you when you’re down… I guess it’s called ‘maturity,’ or some shit like that,” she sighed. “Listen… I don’t know what got into you back there with the miming and the vomiting... I’m not feeling up to hearing about it either.”
“So we’re even,” he said. “I don’t feel up to talking about it right now.”
“How about we just find a place to rest first?” Tatsuki raised her head to look at him, making a peace offering. “We can’t go back to Headquarters, though. I don’t want to deal with Don Kanonji and his Army of Deadbeats.”
“Agreed,” Ichigo groaned.
“There’s a bakery two blocks away,” she suggested. “We could go there and talk to –”
“Ugh,” Ichigo cringed as he forced open his eyes. “Don’t even mention food to me, Tatsuki.”
“Okay…” she tried to keep her temper from flaring up again. “Where do you suggest?”
“Hand me your cell phone,” he held out his hand.
She eyed him suspiciously, “Why? Don’t you have one of your own?”
“Used to,” Ichigo said, “but then I cancelled it to keep Kanonji from stalking me.”
“Ah, I see,” Tatsuki reached in the glove compartment, where the phone was connected to a built-in charger. She unplugged it and handed it to him, “So you know a place where we can crash for a few hours?”
“Maybe,” he flipped open the phone and punched in a number that he knew by heart.
~*~*~
Ishida Uryuu had a rather satisfying day. Work was slow; simply a matter of finishing paperwork he had left piling up. Afterwards, he spent the afternoon at the community center with his regular sewing circle. Then he used the coupons he had collected over the weekend at the grocery store and saved a total of 684 yen. Overall, the day had met his needs very well.
It all went down the figurative toilet when Ishida opened the door to his apartment.
Kurosaki Ichigo was lying on the couch with his feet crossed on the armrest. He looked up when Ishida entered, the icepack on his forehead nearly slipping off. “Hey, look who’s back,” Ichigo said.
Ishida froze in the doorway, the groceries dropped from his slack grip. “What are you doing here?” he bit out coldly.
“Trying to sleep,” Ichigo’s head sunk back into the comforter. “By the way, we moved my boxes out of the living room, like you asked.”
Ishida picked up his groceries, stormed past the couch and headed straight for the kitchen, yelling, “Sado-san! What is he doing here?”
Chad was leaning against their fridge, talking to a short-haired woman sitting at the kitchen table. Chad looked up in bewilderment, “He called… they needed a place to crash…”
Ishida tossed the groceries on the counter and addressed his roommate, “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”
“…You already left the office…” Chad then added, “…you would have said no anyway.”
“Of course!” Ishida paused and tried to stay calm. Yelling wasn’t his style. “I thought I made it clear last time that I did not want Kurosaki Ichigo to darken my door again.”
Chad frowned and was about to reply, when the woman at the table looked up in surprise and said, “Well, I’ll be damned! You’re Ishida Uryuu, right? I didn’t know you were Chad’s roommate! Hell, I didn’t even know you were on the Force!”
Ishida looked uncomfortable, trying to place her face somewhere in his memory, “And you are…?”
“Arisawa,” the outspoken woman said. “Arisawa Tatsuki from Karakura High School. I won the National High School Martial Arts championships –”
“–three years in a row,” Ishida nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I remember you now. We had the same class in freshman year.”
“Wait, how is that possible?” Ichigo, who had been listening to the conversation from the living room, managed to get off the couch and make it to the kitchen doorway. “I mean, I was in that class and I don’t remember –”
“Priceless!” Tatsuki burst out laughing, “Ichigo’s faulty memory strikes again!”
“What?” Ichigo demanded.
“Ishida Uryuu was one of the two top graduates in our high school and you don’t even remember him!” she kept laughing. “You never change!”
Ichigo grumbled and asked Chad, “How come you never told me we went to high school with him?”
Chad shrugged, “…I thought you knew.”
“Whatever! Anyway, how come you never knew that Chad and Ishida worked on the force too?” Ichigo accused Tatsuki to avoid further scrutiny.
“Heh, how could I? I worked at a police box in Shinjuku up until last week. I only dropped by Headquarters a handful of times in the past 4 years – and that was always for paperwork,” Tatsuki got up to get a beer from the fridge. “Want one, Ishida? We went to all that trouble to buy a 6-pack on the way here,” she tossed one over her shoulder to Ichigo, who caught it easily from where he was still leaning against the doorway.
“I do not partake,” Ishida remained standing in the middle of the room.
Tatsuki looked up at Chad, but he shook his head, “…just a soda, please.”
Ishida sighed impatiently, “Listen, Arisawa-san, I do not approve of – what is that?” He interrupted himself when he spotted a foot-long length of chain sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, “Who put that on my table – I just cleaned it this morning!”
“‘That’ what?” Tatsuki traded looks with Chad, but he didn’t know what Ishida was talking about either. “Ishida… there’s nothing on the table,” she said in a tone usually reserved for talking to over-imaginative 5-year-olds.
“What? Quit messing about,” he reached over and picked up the linked chain. The gritty, rusted metal felt too smooth to be real. He realized what it really was and lifted it up to take a closer look. “Oh…”
Tatsuki frowned and muttered under her breath as she popped open her can of Asahi beer, “Great, another damn Mime …”
“What a surprise…” Ichigo walked up behind Ishida, chuckling, “I’ve listened to you bitch and moan countless times about how ridiculous the paranormal is, but you’ve been a part of it all along. Of all the people in the world, I never suspected that you could see ghosts.”
“I guess that makes you the greater fool,” Ishida turned to face him, nudging his glasses up higher to glare at him properly. “I knew of your abilities since freshman year. Skilled psychics can sense details like that, didn’t you know?”
Ichigo scowled, making it obvious that he hadn’t known that.
“Uh, excuse me?” Tatsuki waved a hand between the two guys, gaining their attention. “Back up a second – Ishida is a psychic? Hell, how come he wasn’t given Ichigo’s job?” she wondered aloud.
“Because I, for one, do not wish to profit from death,” Ishida tossed the chain back on the table and moved towards the kitchen doorway.
“That’s going too far, Ishida,” Ichigo stepped in front of him, angrily cracking his knuckles, “Take that comment back before I beat the shit out of you.”
Ishida laughed cynically; such an opportunity to get Kurosaki riled up was too good to pass up. “Are you trying to intimidate me, Kurosaki Ichigo? I can sense right now that you’re so weakened by some Hollow attack you can barely stand!”
Ichigo paused, momentarily forgetting his anger, “…‘Hollow’? What the hell is that? What attack?”
It was then that Ishida realized he finally made one slip-up too many. “Nevermind,” he pushed aside Ichigo and headed straight for his room.
“Wait one damn minute! Is that what got to me today? This ‘Hollow’ thing? Is that what ‘attacked’ me in Mrs. Tachibana’s apartment?” he demanded, following Ishida down the hallway. “What do you know about this, Ishida!? This is serious!”
“If what I know could actually do you any good in your investigation, I would have told you by now,” Ishida paused at his door and turned to Ichigo. “But if that broken Chain of Fate on the table and that attack you received today is any indication of what you’re facing – neither you, nor Arisawa-san can handle this case.”
“Chain of Fate? What the hell are –”
“Kurosaki,” Ishida interrupted him. “If you’re lucky enough to find out where that ‘murderer’ strikes next – your best course of action is to inform me, so I can destroy it for you. Whatever this case you’re working on is about – it’s already way out of your league,” he disappeared, slamming the bedroom door behind him.
Ichigo looked over to trade confused looks with Tatsuki and Chad, who were standing at the mouth of the hallway.
Tatsuki sipped her beer, “Should we tell him that we moved all of your boxes into his room?”
“Nah,” Ichigo turned away as an enraged yell was heard behind Ishida’s door.
~*~*~
“2 days, got that!? I’ll allow 2 days, but after that – it all goes in the dumpster! Now, get out!” The door slammed shut as soon as the trio made it into the hallway. Tatsuki jumped out of the way before the doorknob nearly rammed into her from behind.
Tatsuki spun around and glared at the door, “Why that anal retentive, obnoxious, sonnuva –”
As she began to rant at the locked door, Ichigo glanced up at Chad, “How come he kicked you out too? Don’t you live here?”
Chad shrugged, “…He forgets, sometimes…”
“Oh,” Ichigo didn’t know what to say to that. “Want to walk to the train station with us?”
“…Sure…” Chad said.
“C’mon, Tatsuki,” Ichigo called out to his partner as he and Chad headed down the stairwell.
“Ishida sure knows a hell of a lot,” Tatsuki caught up with them, grumbling. “We should report him for withholding evidence.”
“Yeah, I can imagine the look on Captain Kagine’s face if we tell him that someone’s withholding paranormal evidence which no one else, except me, can confirm,” Ichigo said dryly as they stepped into the busy shopping street. “We’d get fired for accusing a fellow officer so fast that Ishida won’t even have time to gloat.”
“Point taken,” Tatsuki sighed. “He could have at least let us finish our drinks though. Man, what a grouch…”
Chad subtly changed the subject, “…You still look tired, Ichigo.”
“Yeah, despite that long nap you took, you still look like crap,” Tatsuki agreed. “Maybe you really are suffering from a ‘Hollow attack’ or whatever Ishida said it was.”
Ichigo wasn’t ready to admit that Ishida Uryuu was right about anything, “I didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all.”
“Why? Nightmares?” Tatsuki asked. “Y’know, I had this weird dream once that I was wearing scuba diving gear and then my friend, Orihime, came into the room riding a giraffe – I’d like to see Freud explain that!” she chuckled. “How about you, Chad?”
The trio stopped at the main crossroad in front of Shibuya station, waiting for the traffic lights to change. It wasn’t even 9pm yet, but the streets were teeming with bar-hoppers, gangs, and pleasure-seekers of every kind. Shibuya was known for its nightlife.
“…Mm…” Chad craned his neck, looking up past the neon-lighted sky scrapers to peer at the vast black stretch above their heads. “…dreamt I had wings,” he paused and then asked, “Ichigo?”
The street lights changed and they followed the herd of people going towards the train station. Ichigo looked away from his companions, thinking hard. Eventually, he said, “Snakes… I dreamt of snakes.”
~*~*~
Chapter 4: Transitions
Ichigo runs into a stranger who knows more about him than even he does. A not-so-mysterious woman from his past shows up. Plus, work on the case goes off-track as he goes on a hunt of a tamer kind – apartment hunting. :P
----
(funny how no one noticed that Kagine is an actual Bleach character... <_< >_> o_0)