Aftermath

Battle Trouble, Part 1

The door opened. Naru didn't even bother looking up.

"Mai, tea."

Naru listened to Mai mumble something about Monk and snowballs and she went to get the tea, dumping her soggy coat on her chair. He looked at it. He was right (as always) - there were marks of a snowball by the back of the collar. He sighed as she brought the tea.

"Mai, hang up your coat." She stormed off to hang it up, grumpy that she still hadn't managed to wring a 'thank you' out of Naru.

The door opened, just as Mai had placed her coat on a peg, and instantly she went into customer mode.

"Um, is this Shibuya Psychic Research?" Mai nodded, wondering how people managed to miss the name on their front door.

"Do you have an appointment?" The lady nodded. "Please sit right here, Shibuya-san will be here in a moment."

She knocked on his door, saying "Naru? There's a customer" She then left to make more tea. After placing two cups on the table she went to stand behind Naru.

"My name is Ichihara Hanayo. My family runs a small hotel right next to an ancient battle field. There are ghosts of the soldiers who fought there, still fighting the battle."

"Nothing unusual. That happens in lots of places."

"I know, and although the soldiers have come to our hotel before, it wasn't anything serious. Just knocks and that sort of stuff. But relatively recently, it has gotten worse. Much worse."

"Can you describe any of the things that have happened recently?"

"At first our furniture broke during the night, and our walls and doors were slashed. Then my husband was attacked; he was pushed into the small lake nearby and his room emptied of all furniture, including his bed while he slept on it. Also my sister was pushed down the stairs. Luckily she only sprained her wrist. Most of our guests have been scared away. We have called in a team of ghost investigators before, but they left after one of their members was injured badly. However before they left, they did say that was certainly a ghost or spirit of some sorts. Wanting it to be cleared up, we had someone exorcise the hotel. The activity died down for a while, but then..." She trailed off.

"I see" said Naru coolly. Lin shut the laptop slightly. It was the moment of truth. Will he take the case, or not?

"We need one room for a base to work from, preferably reasonably large with lots of sockets, and two large rooms for us to sleep in. Expect us to come at 4pm tomorrow."

"That will be fine" she stood and left, after leaving the address. Mai felt pleased, it was good when Naru took cases.

"Mai, tea."

Mai sat in the front of the van, lazily looking out at the snowy scenery pass. The chugging of the engine was slowly lulling her to sleep.

Mai was standing in a hallway. The style of the building around her was old.

"Where am I?" she wondered, wondering if they had already got to the hotel. Suddenly she turned around. There was Naru, smiling, and Mai realised this was a dream, and wished a bit it wasn't, because Naru should really smile more.

"Watch."

It was like someone had pressed a fast forward button, she saw people quickly walk by, and enter rooms, and leave rooms, about 4 times faster then normal. Suddenly, it went back to normal speed.

The corridor was empty. A door slid open, and a woman walked out. You could see that she was clearly pregnant. Mai smiled a little.

"Mai, if you don't move your head soon your face will get stuck to the window." Naru said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Don't be silly. Faces can't get stuck to the window." He raised an eyebrow, almost like he was saying 'I wouldn't count on that'. She felt that her best course of action was to change topic.

"Anyway, I had a dream." He silently beckoned her to continue. " It wasn't much, it was just this old hallway, and then there was a pregnant woman. Then I woke up."

He looked at her for a split second, then went back to his book. It wasn't a very helpful dream, Mai knew that.

The van pulled up outside a modest hotel. It looked quite old. The car behind them parked next to the van. Monk practically jumped out, followed by Ayako, John and Masako. They looked at the hotel.

Hanayo came out to greet the group. After everyone was introduced she led them inside.

"This room we thought was the most appropriate for your base. The other two rooms are on either side. The restroom is at the end of the hallway, you should be able to find it easily. If you need any help, please ask me, a member of my family or a member of staff. Dinner will be at 7. We hope everything is to your liking."

"Everything is satisfactory."

"Thank you." Said Mai, glaring at Naru. What was wrong with saying please and thank you?

She nodded and left.

"Bou-san, John and Mai get the equipment. Ayako and Hara-san walk around and see if you can sense anything." Naru said, and he left as soon as he had finished.

As they were unlocking the van, Mai had an idea. Payback time. She waited till Monk was looking the other way and then quickly made a snowball.

"Bou-san?" she asked sweetly.

"Yes, Mai?" he asked, turning around to only get a face full of snowball. Mai laughed.

"Aha! That was for yesterday morning!"

Monk glared at her, and then laughing quickly made his own snowball, launching it in her direction. Chaos reigned.

"Uh, guys don't you think you should stop?" John was trying, and failing, to keep the peace.

Just then one of Mai's snowballs strayed from its intended path and hit Naru in the middle of his back. He paused.

"Mai, Bou-san, I do not recall telling you to have a snowball fight." Both Mai and Monk sighed, and carried the rest of the equipment in.

"So, do you feel anything?" Masako nodded, her mouth hidden by the sleeve of her kimono.

"There are a lot of soldiers. Most of them are on the battle field, but sometimes a few will come into the hotel. They don't seem to realise that they are dead, and that the battle has ended."

"Are there any in the hotel at the moment?"

"No."

"Mai and Bou-san do a temperature check. John and Ayako set up cameras."

Mai and Monk wandered through the hotel, writing done the temperature of various rooms. Then they walked around a corner, and Mai suddenly gasped with surprise. It was the hallway from her dream earlier. Ignoring Monk, she quickly ran down, and stopped outside the room where, in her dream, the pregnant woman had come out of.

"Mai! Wait!"

"Hurry up Bou-san! Jeez, old people are so slow" Monk caught up with her, and slapped her head jokingly.

"Hey, who are you calling old!" She rolled her eyes.

"You, obviously. I think we should do this room next." She slid open the door, revealing a plain room, with a simple futon, and not much else.

She looked at the thermometer.

"The temperature is...hang on..."

"What?"

"It's dropping! Really fast!" Mai could feel herself starting to shiver. Oh great, not a ghost already...

Still the temperature dropped, until it was it was 6 degrees. Mai could feel her teeth chattering, and could hear Monk's teeth. The red liquid stayed put for a few chilling moments, and then started to rise again, until it was normal temperature again.

"What was that?" Monk asked cautiously.

"A spirit? Anyway, the temperature is 20 degrees. And we'll put a line under it so we remember this room."

They continued measuring and returned to base, handing the results to Lin. He pointed to the underlined room number and temperature.

"Why is this underlined?" he asked.

"Well, we were in the room, and then suddenly it dropped really fast." Mai could see Naru raise his eyebrows out of the corner of her eye.

"It only stayed like that for a few moments though, and then it went back to normal again." Continued Monk.

"Mai?"

"Yes Naru?"

"I want you to gather the Ichihara family. I want to question them. After that..."

"Yes?" She asked, although she could guess what it was.

"...tea." He turned back to the monitors, and she set off on her task. On the way, she came across to young children, one boy, one girl. They both turned and looked at her. Mai kneeled down to their height.

"Let me guess, you are Nunoe and Eikou, right?" She asked, smiling. They nodded.

"Are you one of the ghost team?" Nunoe asked. Mai nodded. She was friendly with children.

"Do ywou cat-ch tem inna net?" asked Eikou, the small boy. It took Mai a moment to decipher what he had said.

"No, not really, we just persuade them to move on into the next world when they are causing trouble, that's all. Have the ghosts done anything to you?"

"I saw one! We both did!" declared Nunoe proudly.

"Oh? Can you tell my boss all about it in our teams' base?" Mai noticed that Nunoe increased her grip on Eikous hand. But then she nodded.

So...

Thanks if you managed to get this far! We like you. ^^

Please review, etc...

(anyone else get stuck onto what to put into these bits sometimes? It's like when we write on our profile. We were both like errrr... what do we write here?)

Oh yeah, thanks to mytruthaboutlife. We got the idea of writing a story off you. (we read her story and were like "We should do one too!")