Case Closed Fan Fiction / Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction / InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ CHIBI EVIL! ❯ Chapter 1

~CHIBI EVIL!~
a fic by Mel the Redcap
caught from Dogmatix (it's infectious, I tell ya!)

THE USUAL DISCLAIMER
I don't own any of the mangas or animes that have been
dragged into this mess, or any of their characters.
The situation is Dogmatix's idea, and It's Not My
Fault. I'm not making any money from this, and quite
frankly I'd be astonished if anyone was willing to pay
to publish it...

THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
Edogawa Conan / Kudo Shinichi is from 'Meitantei
Conan', and so are most of the minor characters that
are going to start turning up. Brad Crawford and
Schuldig are from 'Weiss Kreuz'. Sesshoumaru is from
'Inuyasha'.

THE WEIRD WARNING BITS
Chibi assassins. Chibi youkai. Chibi detective. Chibi
scientist. OOC. If you think this is gonna be serious,
I've got a bridge to sell you... Fluff. Weirdness.
Major crossover and AU. Humour. Put the soda DOWN and
back away slowly with your hands up. Violence.
Occasional innuendo. Farfarello gets a scene and YES
that deserves its own warning!!!

CHAPTER 1

[A few weeks earlier...]

Cool, dusty air puffed across Sesshoumaru's face, and he gasped, feeling a stabbing pain in his lungs. Breathing _hurt_, but it wasn't exactly something he could stop, so he did it again... though a faint, nagging memory was nagging at him, telling him he hadn't been doing that much breathing lately...

...what had happened? He couldn't remember... no, wait, there was that fight... a lot of fights, they were running together in his mind but _that_ one stood out... the only one where he'd been helping his brother instead of trying to take the Tessaiga from him.

*Why?! Oh... Naraku's fault...*

The baboon-pelted youkai had gone too far when he defiled their father's grave, searching for the last Shikon shard. Not that Sesshoumaru cared, really, he'd barely known his father except by reputation, but the insult had to be avenged... and it made a good excuse. Meant he didn't have to admit he wanted revenge on Naraku for what he'd tried to do to Rin.

*Didn't care about _her_ either. No. Not a human, don't care about humans... but she was _mine_. My property. Insult. Yes.*

And then... what? They'd defeated Naraku, but he had the full Shikon jewel, and had been trying to use it at the moment when that girl his brother trailed around with hit it (and him) with an arrow, and... He couldn't remember what happened next. He'd been standing at the entrance to a cave, he remembered that. Perhaps that was where he was now? It smelled like a cave...

...a cave that had been shut up for a long time. The air smelled _bad_, stagnant, lifeless, except for that cool gust of air that was intermittently fanning his face...

This didn't bode well.

----------

"I said the company was headed for trouble," Kenji groused half-heartedly, following his partner into the cave. "I said they should've paid for the full ultrasound map before they settled on the location. I _said_ this area's riddled with caves, they can't be sure there isn't one just because nobody can find an entrance right here..."

"We know, Kenji," Migaki said, switching on his torch as they approached the point where the floodlights outside didn't reach. "You've been saying this site was a bad idea from the start, and it looks like you were right. It's going to take one hell of a lot of concrete to make _this_ hill stable enough to hold foundations!"

"Then why didn't anyone listen to me?! Huh? Tell me that. Why didn't anyone think 'Hey, maybe Kenji's right about this'?"

"Because you say _every_ site is a bad idea."

"...Do not," Kenji muttered sulkily.

"Do too," Migaki snorted. "No, sorry, you liked that site up near Sapporo. The one where the groundwater level was so high, the bulldozers started sinking before they even finished clearing the underbrush, remember?"

There was an offended sniff from behind him, then a curse as Kenji tripped on a rock. "And why do we have to check this cave out in the middle of the night, anyway?!"

"You should watch out; changing the subject that fast can give you whiplash, you know," his partner chuckled. "It's not even six-thirty, how does this qualify as the middle of the night?"

"It's bloody dark, that's how it qualifies!"

"It's early spring, it still gets dark early, and it's cloudy," Migaki said patiently. "That doesn't make it the middle of the night. Now can we hurry up and finish our preliminary look before that storm rolls in? I don't want to get soaked on our way out of here... or while we're still in here, if the runoff goes the wrong way."

Kenji muttered something uncomplimentary-sounding under his breath, but hitched his bag full of equipment a little higher and followed. "We're going to be giving the same recommendation no matter what we find down here; 'halt the digging and do a full ultrasound survey', right? So why are we even _in_ here?"

"Because the boss won't listen if we don't at least pretend to look."

"Right. He hires us for our professional expertise and then won't pay attention to it. Wonderful. Can we work for someone smarter next time?"

"I'll hand over an I.Q. test with our résumés. Gimme that hammer."

They settled in to making measurements and taking rock samples, and Kenji stopped complaining. For perhaps fifteen minutes. Then:

"Have we pretended to look for long enough?"

"Nope."

"Damn."

"But we've done enough _real_ looking and picked up enough chunks of rock to back up what we were going to say anyway, so I declare a meal break. Did you bring the sandwiches?"

"Of course. Did you bring the tea?"

"Naturally. Here... and don't hog all the tuna salad this time!"

Settling down with their backs to a conveniently-shaped mound of rubble, they unpacked their dinner and started munching.

"The situation's not as bad as it could be," Migaki said optimistically through a mouthful of bread and fish. "It's a dry cave, so there won't be water or erosion problems... looks like the last time the formations in here were 'live' was at least five, six hundred years ago. And unless you saw something you aren't telling me about, there's no sign of it extending deeper."

"Doesn't mean a thing," Kenji sniffed, automatically playing devil's advocate. "This could just be a detached pocket of a larger cave system, that lost its connection to the main complex through subsidence... or else the entrance to the rest of it is buried in _that_ mess," he suggested, waving his own sandwich at the way they'd come in. "I'd say there used to be an entrance on that side, until something brought half the mountainside down over it. An earthquake, maybe," he went on gloomily. "And what if it happens again?"

"The whole thing's going to have to be properly quake-proofed to pass code," Migaki soothed, poking absentmindedly through the mess of rock chips and dust he was sitting on. "This area doesn't get the big ones, anyway, though I'd say it was a microquake or three that brought this stuff down from the roof... hey, what's this?"

"Mmf? Wha'?" Chewing, the other man leaned forwards to peer at his hands.

"There's something under all this... hey, I think it's a _sword_!"

"You're shitting me! What would a sword be doing in here?"

"Lying under a bunch of crap waiting to be found, looks like," Migaki grinned, sandwiches forgotten as he clawed rubble away from the pile. Metal and lacquered wood glinted dully in the torchlight, and he rubbed dust away from the slender length of a scabbard. "Don't wanna break it... it's gotta be old, maybe fragile..." A gentle tug didn't move it, and he started clearing the rock again, moving up towards the hilt.

"Think it's valuable?" Kenji asked in a hushed voice, stuffing the last of his dinner in his mouth with one hand and pointing a torch helpfully with the other.

"Yup! I _also_ think this just became an archaeological protected site, at least temporarily. Boss is gonna be pissed," his partner chortled.

"Ha! Serves him right for cutting corners."

"Exxxxactly. Hey, it's tied to someth-- whoa. There's _two_ swords... and they're still stuck through a sash on a full set of armour," Migaki said uncertainly, hands slowing. "I, uh... I think there might be a _body_ here."

"A _body_?! Eck!" A sudden scuffling sound and the changed angle of the torchlight told him Kenji had scuttled back several feet.

"Eh, eheh, um, I think it is." A few more careful pokes uncovered the smooth curve of a backplate, a jagged edge showing where something -- the attachment point for a shoulder guard, maybe? -- had broken away, and he didn't really want to touch but that looked like fabric under that layer of dust... and maybe hair? "Must be pretty old! I've never seen armour like this in a museum..."

"Don't touch it! We should call the police!"

Pale hair, and really long... Almost without meaning to, Migaki reached out to brush it aside as he answered. "An anthropologist, you mean! Or some sort of historian, anyway. Even if this guy was murdered, his killer's been dead for hundreds of yeeeEEEEAAAARGH!!!"

Migaki tumbled backwards, tripping over his equipment bag in a whirl of flailing arms and legs as the 'corpse' sat up and snarled in his face, wild white hair and luminous gold eyes and FANGS the only things he could see for a moment. There was a rush of air, and rock chips flying, and Kenji yelped and the torch went out and the light from outside flickered as _something_ dashed through the gap where the diggers had broken into the cave--

"Migaki?" The torch came on again, wavering wildly around the cave before it settled on him. "_Migaki_?! Are you okay?!"

"...Yeah. Um. Yeah, I think so."

"Wha-wha-wha-whatthefuck was that thing?!"

"Tha... that... That was an animal. Has to have been. Yeah. An animal that wandered in here, and, and we disturbed it. Yeah. That's all. Nothing else down here but us chickens."

"What about the body?"

Migaki flinched. "What body?" he asked, voice rising half an octave. "It can't've been a body because bodies don't get up and run away, and it can't've been a live person because people don't have _fangs_ like that... so it must've been an animal. Right?"

"Animals don't wear armour!"

"And we're not going to think about the armour."

"Right," Kenji said in a tiny voice, and the light bounced as he shuffled closer. "Um... Migaki?"

"Yeah?"

"While they're doing the ultrasound survey... d'you think we can get them to have the site blessed, too?"

"Hell yeah. I'll pay for it myself if I have to."

----------

Staggering through underbrush that slapped and tore at him, Sesshoumaru followed the sound and scent of water to a tiny stream and collapsed, half-in and half-out of the cold trickle as he gulped it down desperately. He _hurt_, all over, muscles cramping and shivering, so thirsty and dry-mouthed all he could think of was drinking. He stopped only when he couldn't swallow any more, and dragged himself onto the bank, listening for any sounds of pursuit. There had been bright lights and the stink of metal and sweating humans, freshly-dug earth and bitter smoke, a sharp-scented oil... He'd bolted without thinking, running into shadow and leaping a fence made of metal netting with an effort that made him wince to remember. There had been a couple of shouts, but if anyone had tried to chase him they must have been left far behind.

*Now what?* he thought finally, rolling over and draping his wrist across his eyes. The cold air on his wet clothes made him shiver, and he automatically tried to raise his ki to deal with it, then pulled his tail closer, frowning as the matted fur didn't warm him as usual. *I'm so _weak_! What happened?! Was I badly hurt? I don't seem to have any injuries...*

*I'm still thirsty. And _hungry_!*

Dragging himself to his feet, he picked a random direction and began to limp downhill, following the stream. *There should be a place where the stream crosses a trail... a pool... somewhere animals come to drink. I can catch something, get my strength back... then hunt something other than food.* His eyes narrowed fractionally, the closest he'd allow himself to come to a true frown. *There should be something left to tell me which way my cursed younger brother and his group went. I didn't expect -- or _want_ --any sort of consideration from them, but what about Jaken and Rin?! Why did _they_ leave me in there?!*

Absorbed in devising a suitable punishment for Jaken when he finally caught up with his toad-like servant, he didn't realise that the sound of the water had changed until he pushed his way through a clump of bushes and found himself on the edge of a cliff, with the small stream splashing down in a thin waterfall. It wasn't a particularly high cliff, but it was still more than he wanted to jump in his current state, and flying would take more energy than he had to spare right then. Swearing internally, he raised his head to look out over the broad valley below him... and froze.

They'd fought Naraku in the mountains, in youkai-haunted territory, far from anywhere humans would go without a damn good reason. There hadn't been a human village for miles, let alone a city. There _definitely_ hadn't been a city like the one that filled the whole valley, lapping up the hills in waves of bricks and wood, glowing with light and buzzing with sound even from this distance...

A high, faint whining sound above him dragged his attention upwards, and he gaped as _something_ soared over towards the city, lights flashing on stiff wings and thin clouds trailing behind it. Following the line of its flight with his eyes, he blinked dazedly at the sight of another stiff-winged bird-thing gliding in to land at a broad field, with more flashing lights and little boxes buzzing around on fat black wheels everywhere.

"Where am I?" he whispered softly, looking around for something, _anything_ familiar. The trees and bushes were the right sort, showing the right leaves and flowers for spring; the hills were still hills--

The hills were still the hills he remembered. The shape of them against the dark sky was the same shape he'd seen as he and his brother faced off against Naraku. It was just the city, the huge sprawling gray stone and blinking lights monstrosity, that was new.

*...New?!*

A muscle in his hand cramped, and he looked down at it, really _seeing_ for the first time how thin and wasted it looked.

*And I'm hungry,* he realised dully. *And thirsty. And weak, and sore, as if I've been starved and not moving for too long...* The wind changed slightly, gusting into his face, and he shivered as the scent of untold thousands of humans reached him. *From that city. Humans, and the same smells as at the cave, metal and smoke and oil...*

*I know where I am. _When_ am I?!*

* * * * *

Crawford frowned, paper propped in front of his face like every other morning but not being read. Something was off... something felt _wrong_, and for once his precognition couldn't get a handle on it. All that week, he'd been waking up from vague dreams full of uncomfortable imagery, ticking bombs and countdowns and hourglasses with the last sand trickling through; the only thing he could work out from them was the obvious, 'time is running out'. But running out how? What was going to happen? He hadn't seen a clear cause for whatever-it-was, a single moment where he could interfere to prevent disaster, so all he could assume was that this incident didn't have a point cause.

*Such a useful deduction,* he snorted to himself, turning a page without having read a word. *And since I haven't seen exactly what it is that's about to happen, I suppose whatever-it-is could happen in various different ways, and doesn't have a single form for my power to show me. Wonderful.*

Running footsteps pelted down the hall, and Nagi skidded to a stop in the doorway. "Brad!" he gasped, holding something out in his cupped hands. "We've got trouble!"

*I've known that since Tuesday.* "What sort of trouble?" he asked sharply, flicking the paper to one side as he stood up. One eyebrow lifted as he noticed what Nagi was wearing, frilly flowered apron and oversized rubber gloves; *That's right, it's his turn to clean--*

"Farfarello's room,* Nagi gulped, pushing his hands further forwards. "I moved his bed to vacuum, and found _this_.*

A grubby tissue... full of crumbled, half-dissolved tablets.

*Oh... _shit_. It looks like he's even been picking the bigger fragments out of his food when we hide them... and that's got to be at least two weeks' worth! Three tablets a day for two weeks, right, I suppose that doesn't count as 'one event', and _no-one_ can predict what Farf will do when he loses it completely!*

"Where is he now?" Crawford snapped, heading for the door.

"Basement rec room watching TV," Nagi supplied promptly, trotting alongside him. "But Schu just went to take breakfast down to him--"

*And he's been having overload problems lately, so he he'll be doing his best to block Farfarello _out_ and won't have any warning if... _shit_!* Crawford broke into a run.

----------

Schuldig juggled the tray from hand to hand as he bounced down the steps, humming a song by Nagi's favourite band. His head was throbbing, shields tight-stretched like a drum from the pressure of all the thoughts in the city around him, but that was no reason to stop acting the way everyone expected him to, now was it?

As he balanced the tray on spread fingertips and reached to open the door with his other hand, half his attention was on keeping his shields up and the other half on his own thoughts. *Ugh, Farfie's watching Gundam Wing again,* he realised, sighing under his breath as he recognised the opening theme, turned up loud enough to make the door's panels vibrate. *Looks like I won't be having breakfast down here! It's a fun show, but the sheer bloodlust coming off him every time that Relena chick shows up on screen is enough to pop my shields when I'm having a _good_ day...*

*I hope we're mission-free for the next few days,* he continued to himself, toeing the door open and walking over to the couch. *Long enough for me to get a bit more grounded again... or at least no missions where we end up against Weiss. Aya's been getting way too good lately at punching back at me with sheer focussed rage; for somebody without any psionic talents whatsoever, he's got one hell of a will!*

The door crashed shut and the tray went flying as Farfarello hit him from behind like a battering ram, body-slamming him into and through the coffee table. One hand fisted in his hair and hammered his face into the cracked wood underneath him, again and again and _again_--

"Pretty red spiders," Farfarello crooned, one finger wiping gently at a trickle of blood on Schuldig's cheek as his other arm wound lovingly around the telepath's neck and began to squeeze. "Pretty red spiders in your hair and in your veins and they want to come out to plaaaa~ay..."

----------

Crawford made it down the basement steps in three long bounds, easily outdistancing Nagi and slamming through the door without bothering to turn the handle, ripping the lock plate right out of the wood. The white-haired assassin was sitting on the small of Schuldig's back, pulling the limp German up by an elbow crooked around his neck as one hand pulled a knife out of the back of his pants.

He didn't bother saying anything, or going for an incapacitating blow; Farf would just ignore any strike that was less than truly crippling, and in his current state undoubtedly wouldn't care about anything he said. If he heard it at all, given the volume of the anime explosions being blasted out by the TV! So Crawford never broke stride, taking a flying leap over the end of the sofa and landing a solid kick to the side of Farfarello's head, trying to knock him out. He caught a glimpse of Schu's face as he landed and spun to kick again, wide blue eyes staring at nothing as blood trickled down from his forehead and nose--*Damn, no wonder he hasn't made Farf let go -- he's not unconscious, looks like, but he's not all there either--*

Farfarello's head snapped to one side under the second kick, then twisted back to stare gleefully at the blood, knife coming up--

--and he abruptly spread-eagled and slammed back against the wall as Nagi skidded to a halt in the doorway, breathing hard. Schuldig slumped down bonelessly, landing flat on his face without lifting a hand to save himself.

< < Heeeeeeeee~ero! > > a voice wailed from the TV, and Crawford grimaced, automatically straightening his shirt cuffs as he bent over the redhead's limp body. "Turn that damn thing off!" he bellowed in Nagi's direction, making a 'cut!' gesture with one hand. The sound died, TV screen making a quiet pinging noise as the power button flicked into the 'off' position, and his ears popped in the echoing silence. "No wonder he went homicidal if he's been watching _her_ again..."

Schuldig's lips moved as Crawford turned him over, hands quickly searching for any injuries other than the obvious, and the black-haired man bent closer, expecting to hear something along the lines of the German's normal wise-ass comments. He didn't expect the high, insane giggle and sing-song tones:

"Pretty red spiders," Schu whispered, eyes still wide and blank. "Pretty little red spiders..." And he giggled again, mouth twisting up into a strained grin.

"What the-- where the hell did _that_ come from?!" Crawford muttered, then froze, chill prickles crawling down his spine as he heard the same sing-song voice from behind him.

"Pretty red spiders," Farfarello giggled, staring fixedly at the limp redhead. "Pretty red spiders, crawling up the spout... down came the blood and washed the spiders out... can the spiders come out to plaaaaa~ay?"

"...come out to plaaaaaaaaaay..." Schuldich echoed, and both hands came up, clawing for his eyes.

----------

Some hours later...

Crawford heard Nagi come into the living room, tired steps dragging, and cracked one eye open a slit. "How's Farf?"

"Rolling around happily in his straitjacket, still singing about 'pretty red spiders' and blood," the short teenager sighed, slumping into a chair opposite him. "Goodness knows where that came from... The tune's actually quite nice, if you overlook the subject matter."

"Wonderful."

"How's Schu?"

The fingers of Crawford's left hand twitched, tangling in strands of red hair. Schuldig was curled on the sofa next to him, hands occasionally twitching and breath hiccuping as he slept. "I had to sedate him. Even after I got him snapped out of it and sort of able to shield against Farf, he couldn't shield against anybody _else_... I've been treated to a high-speed monologue on the inner mental lives of any number of our neighbours, in _entirely_ too much detail thank you very much, and I don't know which of us was going to snap first if I didn't find some way to stop him. Oh, and if you don't stop hacking into Weiss's computer system and leaving taunting messages for Omi, I'll spank you."

Nagi jumped, looking horribly guilty. "How did you--Oh. Schu."

"Precisely. I also got chapter and verse on quite a number of my own private thoughts, and Schuldig's personal opinions on what they mean. _Really_ mean, that is, not what _I_ think they mean." He sighed, letting his head fall back on the sofa cushions again. "And then he'd skip off to the secret fantasy life of the woman in the corner grocery store-- remind me to never buy milk there again, just in case-- the number of times the kids two blocks down have cheated on tests and which times the teachers suspected it, and an assessment of the percentage level of 'free-floating existential guilt' that the mousy girl next door wakes up with every morning. And _then_ he'd click back to reading Farfarello, and start singing about the little red spiders and trying to claw his skin off."

"Ewwww." The telekinetic looked rather queasy at that. "Do you think he'll be okay when he wakes up?"

"I don't know. I don't think so." Crawford frowned, fingers unconsciously combing through Schuldig's messy hair again. "His shields are down as far as they can go, just about, and he's oversensitive... sort of like he's got a case of mental sunburn, and everybody's radiating heat. I'll see how he is once the dope wears off... but I think I'm going to have to take him out of town until he gets some control back. _Way_ out of town. Which leaves you looking after Farf, sorry."

"Ah." Nagi grimaced, then shrugged. "I'm probably best suited to it, I suppose."

"Well, since he was the trigger for this little collapse, I'm not leaving the two of them in close contact even if Schu wakes up with his shields in perfect working order. I can wrestle him in and out of his straitjacket if necessary, but not without risking serious bodily harm to both him and me in the process. Besides... do you honestly think you could go camping alone with Schuldig, for however many weeks he needs to get his head back together, and _not_ end up trying to kill each other?"

Nagi thought about it for a moment, then made a little moue of agreement. "I think I'm getting the easy side of this, actually..."

"...True," Crawford sighed fatalistically. "Can we swap?"

"Too late," Nagi said smugly. "You talked yourself into that one!"

"I _must_ be tired."

END CHAPTER 1
TO BE CONTINUED

Author's Note: And the victims-- errr, characters--
are in motion! Tune in next chapter, to find out some
of the things that happen to them before the main act
starts...

On to Part 2

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