http://clampfix.fanworks.net/guests/holy-g6.txt </head><body><pre> You can believe Or at least you can try And you may see That the truth is just a lie... You only feel The things you think you know Your mind of steel Won't allow the truth to grow... You can believe... --Cause & Effect, "Something New" Holy Ghost an X-Files/Yuu*Yuu*Hakusho/Tokyo Babylon crossover by Sionna Klassen Chapter 6 Kurama woke up and realized that someone was carrying him. He remembered instantly what had happened, and cursed himself for his carelessness in the split-second before he moved. He twisted free of the loose grip, landed on the floor and bolted. He was in some kind of corridor, so he ran for the end of it, unwilling to stop to try any of the doors. He heard shouts from behind him and was just about to create a plant to keep them back when someone hit him in a flying tackle that made both of them crash to the floor and knocked the breath from Kurama's lungs. He tried to get up, but the man who had tackled him grabbed hold of Kurama and wouldn't let go. He struggled, seeing other men running closer just before they grabbed him too, pinning his limbs to the floor. Kurama saw at least six of them standing, aside from the four who were holding him down. His eyes narrowed and plants started springing up around him. "Hurry up!" the one on Kurama's right arm yelled to one of the standing men, who was pulling something out of his pocket. The tiny plants reached for him, growing larger every second, but he still held on, only changing his grip slightly so that one hand was on Kurama's wrist and the other pushed his sleeve up, holding his arm at the elbow. And exposing the skin of his lower arm. <Oh no--> Kurama realized what was about to happen too late to stop it. The standing man lunged forward and slapped a slip of white paper onto the bare skin of Kurama's arm. Kurama screamed as the demon-ward touched his skin, setting his arm afire. He lost control of the plants as his power failed, and they withered and died around him. Kurama writhed against the restraining hands, to no avail. "Hold him still!" a voice ordered, and another ward touched his other arm. The pain increased by what felt like a hundredfold. Kurama's back arched, his body convulsing as the two wards crackled and fought each other, feedback arcing between them in sparks of blue lightning. Then suddenly the feedback ceased as the wards stopped interfering with each other. Kurama's body went completely limp, his scream of agony cut off as abruptly as if a vise had been clamped around his throat. Although he tried, he couldn't move a muscle, not even to open his eyes. He lay helpless as the hands released him, unable to make the tiniest whimper of pain. All the ward allowed was the completely involuntary trickling of tears from his closed eyes. Then at last, mercifully, he blacked out. Tokyo, Japan Saturday, September 23, 1993 9:26 A.M. Shuichi was late. Now although Tanaka was probably happy about this, and under different circumstances Mulder might possibly have been pleased, the fact was that he and Scully were almost completely reliant on him. Japan just wasn't the type of foreign country where you could get around on your own without a guide, especially if you happened to be working on a federal case. Considering Shuichi's earlier punctuality, being late was rather unlike him. "Maybe he's sick," Scully suggested with a shrug. "Which means we do what?" Mulder asked. "Although it would give us an excuse not to listen to Tanaka..." "If that's the case, they'll probably assign us a temporary guide," Scully said. "We just have to wait for him to show up. I could use a chance to type up my preliminary field report anyway." She retreated to her room for a moment and then came back with her laptop, while Mulder picked up the reports and started leafing through them. After a few moments of silence except for the tapping of keys, Scully announced almost absently, "I'm surprised at you, Mulder." He looked up. "Why?" "I expected you to have been bombarding me with theories, and instead you're being quiet as a mouse." "Is that an invitation?" Scully made a face at him but didn't contradict the statement, so Mulder felt free to continue. "I admit the fact that the victims don't appear to be entirely human is interesting and it confuses the issue somewhat, but I still think that the culprit - or culprits plural - is some cult or another. Which means we aren't exactly the best qualified to be on this case, considering our lack of knowledge of Japanese religion, much less cults, but..." He shrugged. "At any rate, it just means that they have a taste for a certain kind of victim." She raised an eyebrow. "And just how do you explain the lack of bruises or other indications of confinement?" Mulder leaned back in his chair. "There are various ways to keep someone from struggling, ranging from drugs to hypnosis." "No toxins were found in the toxicology blood tests." "Especially in this age of synthetic drugs, a lot of things break down extremely rapidly. Now I'm surprised at *you*, Scully, you sound like you're arguing *my* side of this conversation." She sighed. "Boredom." "Right," he said with a grin. She glared at him and he quickly continued. "Anyway, I actually think that the cause of all these victims' deaths is something in the ordinary and mundane for once." "It does happen occasionally," she agreed. "So what about what that psychic said?" "That's the one thing that's bothering me," Mulder admitted. "I wish he'd told us more." "You're accepting him as a real psychic?" "Oh yes," Mulder said, turning to look at her. "I did a little research. The Sumeragi family is the most powerful family of mediums in Japan, and their powers are well-documented even if you don't speak Japanese. *Everybody* here believes in them. They've even done service for the Emperor himself, and you know how highly the Japanese regard their Emperor. Not just anybody would be allowed to serve him personally. I also looked up soul-eating things and came up with an almost bewildering variety of monsters in Japanese mythology. But somehow I'm just not seeing a plausible connection between this soul-eating business and the murders." "I wasn't aware you required plausible connections." "Ha ha. Of course I do, my definition of plausible is just a bit different from yours, that's all." "In which case, we could be looking for a cult that somehow devours souls?" "I'm not so sure about that whole soul-eating thing. I mean, the victims were killed through ordinary means, not by having their souls sucked out or something. I wouldn't think that would leave a lot of identifying marks." Mulder fiddled with his pencil, twirling it between his fingers. "Something here just isn't fitting together," Scully agreed with a sigh, rubbing her forehead where she could feel the beginnings of a headache starting. "As far as I can see, there are only two possibilities for how the cult and the soul-eating might fit together - assuming the latter even exists." "Lay on, MacDuff," Mulder said, his head cocked as he waited. "Either the damage is done to the bodies *after* the soul is removed, to confuse the issue--" "The question then is whether the bodies would bleed," Mulder muttered, almost to himself. Scully finished smoothly, used to Mulder's interruptions. It was sometimes as if he was afraid of losing track of his thoughts if he didn't say them immediately. "--Or the soul-eating whatever took advantage of the murders, but isn't directly related." "In which case, we could solve both problems by stopping the cult," Mulder said, brightening. "No more murders, no more soul-eater." "Good, that gives us something solid to work with instead of some nebulous monster," Scully said, then glanced at the clock. "Mulder, we've been waiting for nearly an hour. What do you suppose is going on?" "Koenma, what the hell is going on?" Yuusuke demanded, glaring at the thin young man in front of him. Koenma seemed agitated. He kept fiddling with his long coat and going through the pockets with his fingers. "What'd you drag us out here for?" Koenma looked around the park for the hundredth time, checking for observers like a nervous twitch. Geez, Koenma was practically the picture of a criminal, and they weren't even doing anything. "Will you stop that twitching? Someone's gonna arrest you just for looking like a suspicious character," Yuusuke complained. "I'm leaving," Hiei growled, gathering himself to leap out of view. Koenma's head snapped around. As if desperate to prevent Hiei from leaving, he blurted out, "Kurama's gone." "What?" Hiei asked, straightening again. "What do you mean, gone?" Kuwabara asked. "Just what I said. I can't find him anywhere, looking here or from Reikai. All I can tell you is that I think he went off on his own looking for clues, even though I told him the case was closed." "And he got caught," Hiei surmised. "Stupid fox should have known better." "So what do we do?" Yuusuke asked. "We've gotta find him." "You're sure you've tried everything?" Kuwabara asked. "What about all those youki-detecting things that Botan had?" Koenma shook his head. "Useless. We knew that from the start. Whoever is behind this either masks youki entirely, or drains it off to such a low point that it just doesn't show up." Yuusuke didn't like that second option. Draining youki to that extent would be enough to keep Kurama on the brink of death for as long as they wanted... until they finally killed him. He swore under his breath. "There's gotta be something we can do!" "Hey, you said you were leaving this up to your dad," Kuwabara reminded Koenma. Koenma shook his head as if pained. "He can't help. It's all up to us." "Looks like we'd better start working with those FBI guys," Yuusuke said. When Koenma looked at him oddly, Yuusuke challenged, "What other choice do we have? We're all in trouble now thanks to your politics." Koenma winced at that, but Yuusuke continued. "We're all on the same side, right? And it's not like any of us have a secret identity or anything, except you and Kurama." Koenma looked down at his feet for a long moment, then raised his golden eyes again. "There's one other option," he said finally. "No." Koenma slammed his hands down on the table, startling the psychic into staring at him, green eyes wide with startlement. "I'm getting sick of this! You can't just shut yourself up in here and pretend that the world will go away! Whatever happened to your desire to help people?" "*He* killed it!" Subaru almost screamed at him, then buried his face in his black-gloved hands. "Just leave me alone!" "No. I won't leave until you promise to help me." "Why should I?" "Because you're the only hope I have. What's more important, hiding or stopping this madness? How long are you going to sit here, knowing that you *could* do something to help, but you're too obsessed with your own misery to *try*? Are you going to just shut out the world and let people get killed... again?" Subaru's head snapped up, his eyes blazing. "You have no *right* to say that," he hissed. "Prove that to me!" Koenma insisted. "Go ahead, prove I'm wrong! But until you do, I won't leave you alone!" "I won't listen," Subaru snapped back. "I don't care what you say!" Koenma stepped back, his face set. "Then maybe you'll listen to someone else." He took out what looked like a pager from his hand and pressed a button. Almost immediately two girls faded through the wall, giggling together as they carried several packages and bags full of clothing. The one with blue hair up in a ponytail waved happily to Koenma, then noticed Subaru's shocked expression and hurriedly returned her attention to her clothes. The other girl turned to look at Subaru, putting her bags down so she could fold her arms and glare at him sternly. "Subaru, just *what* have you been doing to yourself?" she demanded. "Hokuto...chan..." Subaru whispered in shock. ***************** All right, I know this is short, but it's starting to annoy me, so I'm going to post it as is. Oh, and something that might be of interest: I have FINALLY settled on a fairly coherent timeline for the universe(s) in which this is set. It wasn't so important when it was just XF and YYH (they don't often give specific dates...), but now that TB/X has been thrown in, it gets a little more confusing. So here is the official TB/X/HG timeline, unless of course someone points out a giant inconsistency with canon and I decide to change it. Which I might not, even still. ^_^;; But for the moment... February 1993 - end of Tokyo Babylon July 1993 - Ankoku Bujutsukai August 1993 - "Anasazi" September 1993 - Holy Ghost October 1993 - Dark Angels storyarc March 1994 - Yuusuke leaves for the Makai March 1997 - End of YYH anime February 1999 - Beginning of X I assumed March for YYH because when Yuusuke leaves and when they're visiting the beach three years later it seems to be spring. I assumed February for TB and X because the cherry trees are blooming both at the end of TB and the beginning of X. If someone who has lived in Japan has a better idea of when the cherry trees bloom, please correct me. I'm also assuming that X actually begins in 1999, but this way it all fits! :) </pre><p><a href="./">Back</a></p><p><a href=http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=216><img border=0 alt="Donate towards our web hosting bill!" src=https://secure.newdream.net/donate1.gif></a></p></body></html>