Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Living Shinigami ❯ Searching for... Hijiri? ( Chapter 6 )

Living Shinigami

Chapter Six

Searching for… Hijiri?

“Yes, that’ll be all for now. Thank you for your time.” Quatre hung up his phone with a heavy sigh, turning to the other two remaining former pilots. “No one of either Wufei or Duo’s descriptions have checked into any of the hospitals within a ten mile radius from where they were attacked. Heero, have you had a chance to question the two men yet?”

The Japanese man shook his head. “They’re both being treated for concussions. Une won’t let me near them until tomorrow morning. She’s as irritated by it as I am, but we all have rules to follow now.”

“You’d have had them hanging by their feet over a cliff by now if this had happened during the war,” Trowa said, worry for his teammates evident even on his face. “They may know who took Duo and Wufei.”

“From Wufei’s phone call, we know that Duo has at least one bullet wound, and it sounded as though Wufei was uninjured at the time of his contact with Une,” Quatre said, jotting down some notes. “There’s nothing much we can do until we’re allowed access to the prisoners except gather what information we can from the scene itself. It has been blocked off from the public, right?”

Trowa nodded. “The investigators are trying to leave it as intact as possible until we’ve gotten a chance to look at it.”

“Tell Une that we’ve gone to investigate the others’ disappearance,” Heero ordered a passing intern, who squeaked and quickly ran off to do as told once he’d noticed the identity of the man giving him orders.

“I’m sorry sir, but this area is a crime scene. We can’t allow you to enter,” a young police officer said as they reached the alley, stopping them.

“Preventors,” Heero said, showing his identification. “What have you noticed so far?”

“Well, we can pretty much tell that Agent Maxwell laid here for a bit,” the man said, pointing to a patch of dried blood. “The two attackers were found there and there, though it looks like they hit the wall up there.”

“What made those?” Quatre asked, staring at several deep gashes in the brick walls on either side of the alley. “They look almost like claw marks, but that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Inamodo from over at the bookstore doesn’t think so,” he said, pointing in the direction of the named shop. “Claimed to have seen a dragon, a big blue one, enter the alley and leave with passengers. While he’s the only one claiming to have seen the thing, everyone in the area agreed that there’d been a freak thunderstorm. It only lasted for a moment and then the sky was clear once again.”

“Heero, look at this,” Trowa said, holding up a burnt scrap of paper. Quatre clapped a hand over his mouth as he noticed the ink.

“Duo’s handwriting,” Heero said, taking the paper.

“But Duo doesn’t know how to write in Kanji,” Quatre puzzled. “I’m not familiar with that character. Can you read it, Heero?”

“Kijin,” the former pilot of Wing replied. “Duo was teaching himself to read and write in Japanese during the war.”

“Any ideas as to why?” the blond asked.

“The gift senders all had Japanese names,” Trowa pointed out. “It could be possible that Duo originated from a Japanese family before arriving on L2.”

Staring at the paper in his hand, Heero turned it over. “Then why is he also using Sanskrit?”

Wufei was kept in bed until the next morning when Watari allowed Duo to give him a tour, with a lot of help from Tsuzuki.

“You have a worse sense of direction than I do,” the older man teased, correcting their path once Dou had lead them down the wrong hallway, again.

“Hey, I was just a kid the last time I was here,” he defended. “I bet you still get lost in Gensoukai, and you’ve been going there for over two hundred years.”

“Gensoukai?” Wufei questioned. “What’s that?”

“It’s where the shikigami live,” Tsuzuki explained. “There are the four guardians of north, south, east and west. You’ve probably heard of them: Genbu, Suzaku, Sohryu and Byakko.”

“They used to baby sit me sometimes when I was little,” Duo added in cheerfully, grinning as the Chinese pilot paled and, cursing, backed away a step. “Something wrong, Wu?”

“The four gods babysat you?” Wufei’s eyes were wide.

Tsuzuki laughed. “A lot of different people babysat little Hijiri-kun when he was little. Those four just happen to be old friends of mine. Actually, you met Sohyru’s son Kijin the other day. He’s the one who brought you here.”

“The blue dragon?” Wufei asked. Both men noticed. “Wait, Hijiri?”

“Wait, you don’t really think they named me Duo originally, do you,” Duo said. “My birth name is Hijiri Kurosaki Tsuzuki. It’s actually on a birth certificate filed away in the Tokyo General Hospital. The poor people still don’t know how it got there, especially since my ‘mother’ is a boy who’d been dead since the old calendar days and my father isn’t even in their records.”

“He was named after a violinist we met on one of Hisoka’s and my first cases,” Tsuzuki said, slinging an arm over his son’s shoulders.

“Not Hijiri Minase?” Wufei asked, startled into forgetting his worry over deities as sitters.

“The one and the same,” Duo’s father said, grinning. “We knew him back when he was still in high school. Had a cursed cornea.”

“I remember Watari telling me about that case,” Duo said, nodding. “Did you really attack Kaa-san with a meat cleaver?”

“I was possessed by a demon!”

“You use that excuse when you’re caught stealing Konoe’s pastries. So, the spawn is back.”

“Uncle Hajime! Kannuki-chan!” Wufei blinked as his comrade left them abruptly to glomp onto a teenage girl with ribbons in her hair after her male companion had dodged the attempt. “Didja miss me?”

“Get your hands off of my partner, spawn,” the man growled, scowl making the markings under his eyes even more defined. “And keep them off of me. I don’t want to find out whether or not you inherited Kurosaki’s oddities.” (1)

“Long story,” Tsuzuki said when Wufei looked at him in question.

“But it’d be fun, Uncle Hajime,” Duo piped, eyes suspiciously innocent. “And if you do transform, you could give Wufei and I a ride to our house?”

“Oh, I just remembered something,” the girl said. “Now that you’re back with us, I figured that you’d want to go to the imaginary world and say hi to everyone. I have to open the gate anyway so Kijin can get back home.” (2)

Duo’s ears perked up. “Kijin’s still here? Where?”

“He’s with Hisoka,” Tsuzuki said. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

But Duo was already pulling Wufei down the hallway by the end of the first sentence, heading on a search for the younger of his fathers.

“They’re probably in the library!” Wakaba called after them. Giggling, she turned to her partner and Tsuzuki. “He’s just like the two of you rolled together.”

“No he’s not!”

-

1. Whenever a female besides Wakaba touches Terazuma, the shiki he’s possessed by (Kuroshungei) takes over and he transforms into it. Oddly enough, Hisoka’s touch does has the same effect.

2. Yeah, I know this probably isn’t true, but I needed an excuse. Poetic license, I say!