Author note: This is a continuation of a previous story of mine, Damaged, which can be found here on this site and AO3. Reading it first will probably make this make more sense. Standard disclaimers and YnM warnings apply. Natsume and K are pulled from Matsushita's own sketches, though extrapolations of character are entirely my fault. Chapter titles are lines from the song of the same name, "Gone to Earth," by David Sylvian. Enjoy!

Gone to Earth

Not for the first time that night, Hisoka cursed his slowness. For all the abilities that he had gained in his time as a shinigami, the power to run significantly faster than when alive was definitely not one of them. And, unfortunately for him, his levitation skills were still fair-weather at best, and teleportation would be counterproductive.

And—damn it—he was dead, so why did he feel so out of breath?

He slowed his pace just for a second—just long enough to feel the ache spread through his legs, and the subway tunnel rumble beneath him. A tremendous roar echoed down the pipes, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

But it wasn't that alone that made the ground jerk like an earthquake. It was the massive body of his quarry, and Hisoka could feel its approach. It was following him, like a dog on his scent.

Scratch that: like a flood of dogs. Like a raging torrent of bloodthirsty hellhounds pounding through the Fukuoka subway system. Maybe it shouldn't have been as frightening as being chased by a relentless, self-aware sword bent on his destruction, in the grand scheme of things, but somehow it was. It was equally terrifying—just in an entirely different way.

He picked up the pace again, running as fast as his legs could carry him. You're doing great, almost there, a voice whispered in his ear, just as he was thinking the same thing. The trap lay just ahead, and so far his mark was making fast for it without even a clue as to what awaited it. Hisoka could see its pale glow up ahead as he rounded the corner—

And was nearly bowled over by a black, shapeless mass exploding from the service tunnel doorway.

Instinct kicked in. Throwing his hands up in front of his face, he dematerialized before he could be overtaken, and re-entered above the containment circle he had drawn on the tunnel floor. In its faint light, he finally got a good look at the thing in its entirety.

For all the good that did him. A clear view was more terrifying than mere glimpses and guess work. The thing had no concrete body, no skeletal structure or muscle definition. It was a flood of black goo, constantly reshaping itself before Hisoka's eyes into something vaguely approaching a velvet worm, only far more massive and angry and loud than any worm he'd ever seen.

And worst of all was the hunger. It rolled off the creature as bad as its stench, threatening to bowl through Hisoka's mental walls. There was nothing else it felt. No fear, no hatred. Just . . . hunger.

"Ugly son of a bitch, innit?" Natsume said, appearing beside him. He suppressed a shudder. "Now comes the hard part."

"On the contrary. This part I can handle." The creature was moving closer to the trap. "Any second now. . . ."

If the creature had eyes, it either didn't know what the circle was for or didn't care, as it moved its bulk onto the glowing lines. Now I've got you, Hisoka thought. Any second now, the bonds written into the circle would flare to life, the creature would be trapped, and the two of them could work on figuring out a) what in Enma's good name it was, and b) how to go about neutralizing it.

But the circle did nothing to stop it. The creature just ignored the markings as if they didn't exist, and Hisoka and his partner had no option but to throw themselves out of its way or be swallowed up in one of its constantly reforming, gaping maws.

He heard Natsume's curse echo off the concrete walls as the thing split itself in half to go after them. "I had a feeling that wasn't going to work!"

You had a feeling? "You had a feeling?" Hisoka yelled back. "Why didn't you tell me!"

"I thought you wrote the spell wrong on purpose!" the other said, before a close nip from behind shut him up.

Hisoka swore under his breath as he rolled and dodged the hungry mouth coming after him, six sawtoothed jaws unhinging the better to grab him with. So far, nothing had worked to subdue the creature, let alone injure it. His sword was useless; it just reformed around the blade. Some of Natsume's fuda gave it pause, but only as much as a tummy tickle, and the two of them hadn't a moment of peace in which to put their heads together about getting rid of it. The circle had been Hisoka's last hope. He'd thought that if he could just ensnare the creature long enough, he could perform an exorcism spell and banish it to whatever realm it had oozed out from.

And what was this about inscribing the circle wrong? There was no way, Hisoka thought. He wasn't a newbie at this; he'd written a dozen circles before, he knew how they worked. Could he really have messed it up, and not even been aware of it?

It's okay! Natsume shouted over their neural connection as they ran. I had a back-up plan just in case. There's a station up ahead about five hundred meters. Hang a left.

A map of the tunnels flashed clearly across Hisoka's inner eye. One thing Hisoka had to give his new partner credit for, he was just as strong a telepathic communicator in the field as Tsuzuki. When it came to the communication of visual information, even more so. Perhaps that should have been no surprise: Natsume made it quite clear to anyone with ears how much he loved maps, and judging by the notes he took in their briefings, he seemed to be more of a spatial thinker than Tsuzuki ever was. All things considered, at least it was a welcome change to have a partner who didn't get lost on his way to the konbini around the corner.

Do you think you can hold out until then?

A glance over his shoulder told Hisoka the monster was staying close, but not closing the gap. At least not very quickly. Either it was toying with him, or it took time to move all that mass; and Hisoka sincerely hoped it wasn't the former.

No problem, he sent back. You think your back-up plan can deliver?

A nervous chuckle was all he got in response. Real encouraging.

It had better work, was all Hisoka had to say to that. He was tired of this thing breathing down his neck, with its fetid vapors, its overwhelming appetite. The light changed up ahead, and he was relieved to see Natsume emerge from an adjacent tunnel, his half of the monster gushing close behind.

Hisoka looked down at the center of the chamber and his hopes sank. "A box. That's your big back-up plan? It's no bigger than a toaster!"

"Ever heard of big things in small packages, my friend? Now, if you please, Kurosaki, be a lamb and hit that thing with a binding spell." Natsume cracked a knuckle. "Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown."

Hisoka complied—and just in time, too, as oily appendages crashed against his shield bubble and oozed around the two of them, encircling them—but he didn't see what good that was going to do for more than a few seconds.

Apparently that was all he needed. Natsume activated a switch on the box at the same instant Hisoka spoke the last syllable of the spell, and something unexpected happened. A violet light shot out of the box and encircled the viscous monster, as if grasping it with a dozen hands of pure electricity. And then it pulled.

The creature stood its ground—for about two seconds, before it was stretched and sucked meter by incessant meter into the box. No amount of struggling or self-dividing could save it. Every last piece of its oily, sludge-like mass was soon neatly packaged and secure. The box shut its lid, and, job done, sat there on the concrete and hissed.

Leaving a dumbfounded Hisoka wondering what had just happened.

"Phew!" Natsume made a show of clearing the air. "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside."

Now that Hisoka could breathe a little easier, without a giant worm trying to devour him at every turn, he didn't mind a little stink. It was the lack of warning ahead of time that irked him now. If Natsume had had this device on him the entire time, he might have said something, oh, before they entered the subway and saved Hisoka the trouble. There were two in this partnership, and if one of them wasn't willing to be a team player—

Hisoka pointed at the box. "Mind explaining what the hell that was?"

"Beats me," his partner said, "but I've got a few ideas. Think Watari will appreciate us bringing him our leftovers?" He drew a plastic bag from the inside of his suit jacket, shook it out, and prodded the box experimentally. He snatched his hand back with a start. It was like touching liquid nitrogen.

"I meant that device! Are you sure it can hold that creature? Because I'm pretty sure if it was that easy to capture and secure ghosts and demons, all shinigami in the field would be issued those things by now."

Natsume looked up at him over the rim of his glasses with a crooked grin. "Maybe they should," he said, entirely missing the skepticism in Hisoka's comment. "It's the twenty-first century, for chrissakes. Why is Summons still using eleventh-century technology? Now, the bigger question is, why are they sending the Summons Division to clean up monsters?"

Because the Peacekeeping Force is all out searching for Tsuzuki. But Hisoka kept his mouth shut. If it hadn't been a rhetorical question, the last thing he needed was to get into it about Meifu politics with this guy.

He still wasn't even sure if he trusted Natsume. He was told when they were assigned the same desk that the guy used to be Tsuzuki's partner—once upon a very short time in the 1980s—before he was transferred to the accounting office, where he had been working in Billing for the past decade or so. (Naturally, he was the apple of Tatsumi's eye, not least of which for his uncanny ability to stretch a yen.) He had been young when he died, a university student no older than twenty-one, and sometimes his maturity level showed it. Other times, the bespectacled young man struck Hisoka as a happy medium between Tatsumi and Watari—professional and polished when he needed to be, well-read and a genius with numbers; but a tad crude in the lingo, and annoying with the endless quotes Hisoka did not understand. So far they'd gotten along well enough, except . . .

Well, Natsume's tendency toward absent-mindedness when it came to sharing crucial information before it became a matter of life and death was one area where there was room for improvement. Too many years spent working solo in front of a computer screen back in Juuohcho didn't exactly nurture the kind of communication skills necessary to a partnership.

"Maybe they didn't know what we would be up against when they sent us out here," Hisoka said. "We were told to find out what was causing the weird quakes and sink holes because people died as a result of them. That's perfectly within our division's duties, even if they weren't directly targeted for death."

"Well, I guess you have a point there. In any case, crisis averted and another mystery solved, eh, Watson? At least where the quakes are concerned." Natsume looked at his watch. "What d'you say we get out of here, Kurosaki? It's late, we smell like a sewer, and K's not going to be happy if I'm not back in the next ten minutes to give her her dinner."

"I think she'll live," Hisoka said, rolling his eyes as his partner went about securing their catch. "She is already dead."

Fifteen minutes later found them back in their hotel room, where Natsume's calico cat had been waiting restlessly for their return. Maybe it was Hisoka's imagination, but he thought he caught a bit of a glare in K's gaze, as if to say, What kept you so long? He couldn't be sure, though. For some reason, his empathy only rarely worked on animals, and never on house cats.

Natsume immediately started apologizing for being late. "You would not want to see what we saw today, believe you me. You'd never eat eel again, that's for sure."

He opened a can of cat food, sniffed its contents, and grabbed a small plate and fork.

"I know it's been a while since I've been out in the field like this," he said to Hisoka, "but ghosts, demons, kami—I ain't seen nothing like this in my career."

"Tsuzuki and I have experience dealing with a wide range of monsters. That's probably why Tatsumi felt, whatever it was, we could handle it." Where this unconscious need to defend the man came from, Hisoka couldn't be sure, but everyone around the office had become more like family since Tsuzuki disappeared and the chief went off on his mysterious leave of absence. Tight, defensive, secretive among themselves. Closer. A slowly shrinking family. . . .

It was only natural for Hisoka to want to protect those whom he had left. And the decisions they made.

"But I bet you never encountered anything like that."

"No. No, we didn't."

A smug smile from Natsume—and, unless Hisoka was just imagining things, from K as well. His partner rooted around in a plastic grocery bag and produced two cup ramen. "That's because you've never encountered a shoggoth. Chicken and onion, or extra spicy kimchi?"

"Shoggoth?" Hisoka raised an eyebrow. Now he was just making terms up.

But Natsume nodded wholeheartedly, helping himself to the kimchi cup in lieu of no answer. "That's right. Or blob monsters, semi-sentient slime molds, giant shape-shifting amoebas. Truly primitive creatures, whatever you want to call them. Like, the titans before the titans. I'm talking chaos monster type of shit. At least, that's my working theory until we can get that thing to a lab and learn more.

"But I don't see why they even have us out hunting the likes of them to begin with. Granted, Tatsumi probably didn't even know what we were dealing with when he handed us the job. Not that Konoe would have had any better intel. For all anyone could tell, it looked like the work of a demon or possibly some low-level kami—but even that is more of a job for Peacekeeping. We've got real human souls to take care of, we don't have time to run around slaying giants on top of everything else. Maybe if they stopped to ask themselves whether hunting down one of our own for simply abandoning his post is really the best use of the available resources, we wouldn't even be here tonight.

"Then again, we were finally able to see our sweet little demon-trapping machine in action, so overall I'd say it was time well spent—"

"I'm going for a walk."

The words just kind of slipped out before Hisoka really had a plan together, but just like that, he was grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair, and slipping on his shoes in the entryway. "Without dinner?" Natsume said as he poured hot water into his instant ramen.

Food was the last thing on Hisoka's mind, and thinking about those artificially flavored noodles only turned his stomach. "Maybe later. I'd rather get some fresh air right now."

"Suit yourself. We'll be here."

It wasn't anything personal, but Hisoka just had to get out of that hotel room. He hadn't realized it until the idea presented itself. He just had to be alone. He needed some peace and quiet—so he could deal with his own screaming thoughts.

Alright. Maybe it was personal. But nothing Natsume could help. Hisoka found his personality a bit grating, but after all the same could be said for Tsuzuki on the first case they worked together. He was an OK partner, Natsume, as far as partners went—Hisoka didn't have much to compare him to aside from Tsuzuki, just the few brief cases he had worked with Terazuma and Wakaba since Tsuzuki's disappearance, and Watari hardly even counted—but he just wasn't Tsuzuki.

Stop it, he told himself. Natsume's not here to replace him. And thinking like that, resisting his help, even resenting it, was only going to make their working relationship more tense and awkward than it already was. He's a sub, Hisoka repeated to himself like a mantra. A temp, just holding Tsuzuki's place until he comes back. Nothing more.

But when was Tsuzuki coming back? That was something no one was able to answer. And the longer his absence went on, the more that "when" began to look like an "if."

He couldn't allow himself to think in those terms. But at the same time, he knew Tsuzuki, and knowing him, having been there through his dark periods, knew what Tsuzuki was capable of. What he was capable of doing when there was no one around to stabilize him.

Damn it, but Tsuzuki had been right after Kyoto. Maybe Hisoka didn't always want the responsibility, but somehow, through all the years and all the cases they had worked together, he had become Tsuzuki's center of emotional balance. That was why Tatsumi and the chief relied so heavily on him: not to keep Tsuzuki focused on the job, but to keep him from going off his rocker, doing something insane. Something like destroying a building—or himself.

Granted, Hisoka's influence hadn't always worked, but it had been better than nothing. However, after the last case. . . .

I should have seen it coming, he thought, his fists clenching at his side as he slowed under the cool spring air. I blamed him for not being there for me when I needed him, but I was just as blind, and selfish. I had no way of knowing what Muraki said to him, but I should have seen how extensive the damage was. I should have done something. I could have—

What? Stopped him from running away? It was easy for Hisoka to say that now, but the truth was, he didn't know what would have happened if he'd reacted to their last case differently. Maybe he would have only made things worse. Maybe they wouldn't have changed at all.

But maybe—how could he not think it?—maybe he could have prevented this mess they were in now.

Hisoka hadn't given much conscious thought to where he was going. A faint sound of music made him stop, and try to catch it, hold on to it. It was a melody, sensual and melancholy, the tenuous vibrations of a violin, and the source seemed to be close by. It pulled at him, gently, but not taking no for an answer. But it was the familiarity that made Hisoka so curious to follow it. He knew that piece of music, though now it felt like something he had heard in a dream. Or another lifetime.

He followed the music to a school auditorium, and slipped inside. A crowd had gathered for a late night concert, a small chamber orchestra playing a piece that Hisoka remembered. More like he couldn't forget.

He couldn't forget that face, either, though it had been nearly six years since he last saw it. Time enough for things to change. The solo violinist was taller than the last time they met, and the two of them no longer looked so uncannily alike; but there was enough there for Hisoka to wonder if this was what he would have looked like himself if he'd lived beyond his sixteen years.

Minase Hijiri.

And playing the Devil's Trill, sounding better than ever. With the specter of the shoggoth still looming over Hisoka's mind, the piece washed over him like a vague premonition, though not nearly as ominous as it once was. Like Hijiri had said himself about the piece: Underneath the darkness of the story, there was a hope, a very human sense of peace and optimism by the music's close. This time, the demon was already exorcised; there should have been nothing to mar Hisoka's appreciation of the music in its pure form.

But he couldn't be sure if this peace was genuine, and not only the beginning. The moment of stillness between the first slight rumblings and the moment the land gave way beneath their feet.

He watched, rapt, as the number came to a close, and the players bowed to the audience's applause. Hijiri beamed—that was one expression they would never share in common—and then started, just slightly, as his eyes alit on Hisoka.

He recognized him instantly. But then again, how could he not?

"You haven't changed a bit," he said a little later, after the show, when the two had found one another.

It hadn't been Hisoka's original intent to approach Hijiri—something about shinigami limiting their contact with the living unless they were part of the case—but his own curiosity led him around the side entrance, where it turned out Hijiri had been looking for him all along.

"And you've . . . grown up," Hisoka said. There was no other way to put it. "You look good."

He meant in the sense that Hijiri seemed to be in good spirits and health, no devils after him for blood now; but he had turned into a handsome young man as well, with poise and confidence that suited him well on stage. For a brief moment, Hisoka envied him for it. "What brings you to Fukuoka?"

"Just touring with some university friends of mine, doing the high school circuit, trying to get kids interested in classical music. We met through a Baroque music club, if you can believe that luck. What are the odds, huh?"

Yeah. What were the odds? That thought was on Hisoka's mind as well. What were the odds of meeting someone from a past case like Hijiri's on the same night, in the same city as a rampant ancient monster?

"So, what are you doing here?" Hijiri seemed to have read his mind. "This a courtesy call, or . . . I'm not on anyone else's shit list, am I?"

"Not ours. I think I would know if you were. So you can rest easy about that." Whether he was on Hell's was another matter, but as long as Hisoka knew nothing, he wasn't about to bring it up. "Just a case. Nothing to do with you or your club, though. Big slime mold loose in the subway, but we cleaned it up."

"Oh," Hijiri said, but Hisoka could see it going right over his head. Which was just as well. The less he concerned himself with the matters of the dead, the better. He looked over Hisoka's shoulder. "Is Tsuzuki around?"

Hisoka's heart sank. It would come down to that, wouldn't it? It wasn't him Hijiri had felt close to while the two of them were on his case. But what was Hisoka supposed to tell him? He had to deal with Tsuzuki's disappearance on his own; discussing it with Hijiri, making him worry, fielding the questions Hisoka had already asked a hundred times, wasn't going to bring Tsuzuki back any faster. "He, ah, didn't come with me—"

"Hijiri? You ready to hit the road?"

Hisoka couldn't say he didn't welcome the interruption. Hijiri turned as another young man came to join them: about the same age, wearing the same jacket and tie—though his a little undone—a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers.

Hijiri grinned when he saw him. "Just about. Come on over here, there's someone I want to introduce you to." He turned back to Hisoka, eyes alive as he said to the other, "This is Kurosaki. He saved my life six years ago. Hisoka, meet Yamada. Our brilliant harpsichordist."

"Six years." Yamada chuckled, though not in any mocking sort of way. "Wouldn't that make you . . . what? Eight back then?"

Hijiri started, having forgotten, but Hisoka was quick to offer a cover. "Ten, actually. I'm older than I look."

He caught Hijiri stifling a laugh out of the corner of his eye. Well, the last part was hardly a lie.

"Well, in that case," the other musician said, "I owe you a debt of gratitude." He extended his hand to Hisoka, who took it after a moment's hesitation. There was nothing at all threatening coming down through Yamada's touch, much to Hisoka's relief, and his gratitude was definitely genuine, much more so than his casual, somewhat aloof manner would make it seem. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Kurosaki. Hijiri, I'll see you in the van?"

As he walked away, Hisoka noticed a bit of a flush to Hijiri's cheeks. "Nice guy. I'm glad to see you've made some good friends since the whole . . . Well, since the case."

"Well, Yamada's a little more than just a friend. . . ."

Not sure if he'd caught Hijiri's meaning right, Hisoka blinked. And Hijiri blushed deeper, as if he couldn't believe he'd actually said that himself. "Don't look at me like it's such a shock. You had to have some idea back then—"

"Actually, I hadn't given it any thought." The way Hisoka remembered it, he'd been too busy fighting off the advances of a devil in Tsuzuki's body to worry about Hijiri's take on the matter.

So, did that mean Hijiri had had a crush on Tsuzuki while the case was going on? Or had that only come later, a revelation reached in college? Was he with this Yamada guy because of something that reminded Hijiri of Tsuzuki?

And why was it any of Hisoka's business? He never showed any interest in these kinds of matters before. It was just . . . with Tsuzuki gone . . .

"Sorry, I've really gotta run. But it was great running into you, Hisoka. Really."

Hisoka snapped back to the present to have a card pressed into his hand. It was for the Baroque club, their name in fancy scrawl with plain-type e-mail address below it. "When you guys have some free time between cases, look me up, okay? I can catch you up on everything that's happened since you helped me. And of course, I want to hear what the two of you have been up to in the meantime, too."

"Oh—of course," was all Hisoka could say. Where to start—with Muraki's grand plans and the fire in Kyoto, Tsuzuki's various attempts at self-destruction and Hisoka's continued battle with his memories?

"I mean, if that sort of thing is allowed, that is. Tell Tsuzuki I send my best regards."

Hisoka told him he would—if not in so many words—and with a wave, Hijiri was gone.

Leaving Hisoka in the dark, empty school yard, alone with the first blooming plums and Hijiri's last words to him. Give Tsuzuki his best, huh? Hisoka would if he could. If he only knew where Tsuzuki was.