Case 1

(Terror Rate: *** of five stars, **** if you hate bugs...)

IV

"Mummy Won't Wake"

Normal POV

From now on Shibuya Psychic Research would now and forever be the, "Ghost Butters," courtesy of Hayato. In the morning before breakfast, Hayato, no longer possessed, ran down the stairs into the kitchen and jumped up and down in front of Mai. His eyes shined with curiosity and naïveté, but also with innocence. "You're like the Ghost Butters from America, right?!" He kept shouting, much to Naru's annoyance. Akira apologized over and over again, explaining that Hayato had once seen the Ghost Busters and had taken a liking to them and all things supernatural very quickly. Unfortunately, Hayato had always taken to giving people nicknames and purposefully saying things wrong.

Mai had to admit; she really did like Hayato when he wasn't possessed.

"Mi-Mi-chan." Hayato latched onto Mai's arm and pointed to Ayako. "Who's that?" Is that my nickname? Mi-Mi-chan? Mai thought with confusion. Hayato tugged on her arm again to grasp her attention.

"That's my friend Ayako. She's a priestess." Mai smiled when Hayato's eyes widened, and he let out a gasp. In a split second, he frowned, and tilted his head to the side, obviously confused.

"Priestesses preach things, just likes priests, right?" Hayato inquired, then went on without giving anyone a chance to answer. "Then they're kinda useless, aren't they? I mean, I could preach things easily, but making it my job? Complete waste of time." Mai nervously laughed when five tick marks appeared on Ayako's head. That's the worse thing you can say to her, Mai thought, besides insulting her beauty.

"Hayato, don't be mean." Kazuo scowled and turned to Ayako. "Please forgive my little bother, as he has no filter." He bowed and shot Hayato a glare. "Besides, being a priestess doesn't mean you preach things, neither for a priest, either."

"I'm going to trust my instinct and say they preach things." Hayato blew a raspberry. In response, Kazuo sighed, but perked when Mai let out a small laugh.

"So, did anything happen while dad and I went fishing?" He inquired.

"Mom can fill you in on it, Kaz-Kaz." Hayato grinned. Ayako stifled her giggle by covering her mouth. Kaz-Kaz? "Please don't get upset, Kaz-Kaz! I know I'm not supposed to use my nickname for you around people, but these aren't just ordinary people!" Hayato dramatically gestured to Mai and Ayako. "They're the Ghost Butters! Gotta catch 'em all!"

"That's Pokémon, Hayato."

"It's Ghost Butters!"

"That's not even their name. They're Shibuya Psychic Research."

"Well, it's time for them to change their name!"

"It's also time for you two to weed the garden." Hayato and Kazuo stopped their quarrel and looked at their mother with owlish eyes. Hayato opened his mouth to say something, but his mother cut him off. "The garden's been a mess, and I haven't the time to weed it. You two boys be a dear and weed it for me, will you?" And with that Akira handed them each a pair of gloves and two garbage bags. "Watch out for the centipedes, they're getting large. Now get along. I don't want to bring out the socks again, do I? After all, it took such a long trim to get them off last time, hmm?"

"Why does she remind me of Naru, in a way?" Ayako muttered to Mai. In response, Mai shook her head and shrugged.

"Maybe it's the way they're cowering in front of Akira-san?" Mai volunteered. In a flash, Kazuo and Hayato had bolted off into the garden without looking back. There was a loud "thump", as if one of the boys had pushed one another over in their attempt to run away. Akira clapped her hands, smiled, and turned around to face the girls.

"I never had the chance to say good morning to the both of you. Did you sleep well?"

"I didn't really sleep," Mai admitted sheepishly. "Ayako and I took the monitor watch."

"More like I was forced to." Ayako grumbled under her breath. "Mai insisted on Lin-san getting some sleep. She went as far as to almost threatening him with Madoka, and of course Mai insisted on me doing monitor duty with her once Lin-san gave in." Akira laughed.

"If it makes you feel better, I used to have a job on a horse farm when I was little. Well, it wasn't really my job, it was my brother's, but I always tagged along. One time, he wanted to hang out with his friends, so he tricked me into cleaning up all of the stables. He didn't come back until sunset, too!"

"How in the world did he trick you into doing that?" Mai exclaimed.

Akira shrugged. "Maybe he said something about being a, 'good little sister,' or something along the lines of that. Well, after that, I wasn't the nice little sister he was used to," she said sweetly. "Let's just say he'll never approach a frog at night ever again." Even though Akira saw that Ayako and Mai were waiting for an explanation, she continued to smile sweetly and stayed silent. "So, what do you girls want for breakfast? Toast? Eggs? Pancakes? Pancakes it is." She went off to make breakfast, leaving a (if possible) even more confused Mai and Ayako.

"Does she seem more...open with us, now that we've been here longer?" Mai inquired. Ayako shrugged and shook her head.

"Definitely."

Naru's POV

I flipped through the notes from the interviews Lin and I had conducted yesterday. It seemed that the father would always feel something pushing him wherever he was; on his bed, in a chair, standing up, etc. Of course, we only got that information out of him after he persistently asked about my relationship with Mai. Very persistently. And aggressively. For too long of a time. To be honest, he was quite annoying. Why did the Juba-sans want to know our relationship so badly?

Besides that, the interviews had gone smoothly. The only person we had left to interview was the youngest child of the Juba family, and he was due ten minutes ago. My eyes flickered to the door when they were slammed open. Hayato-kun stood in the doorway, panting heavily. Kazuo-san soon emerged, also panting heavily, but not nearly as much as his brother.

"Sorry we're late." Hayato-kun straightened up and hopped over to the couch across from me. "Haha-san* threatened us with socks since we were late, so Kaz-"

"Don't even finish that sentence." Kazuo-san hissed and a small smirk tugged at my lips. He was a lot more cautious around me after I found him flirting with Mai last night. Needless to say, he won't be doing it anytime soon. "Anyways, tell everyone about your experience here, alright?"

"Okay!" Hayato-kun sang. "Well, it all started when we moved in, ya see. I felt like the house was reaaaallly weird when I first stepped in, and that's when I first saw them. I think their names are Kaniji and Noberu?" He tapped his chin in thought. "Anyways, that's their real names, but who wants to get called that? So I started calling them Kanj-Kanj and Nob-Nob. Handy, isn't it? They weren't the only people I saw, too. Sometimes, I would hear people talking about stuff that happened a looooong time ago, even though no one was there. I could tell they were from a long time ago, because some were talking about the Ansei-Nankai Quake*, which happened a really long time ago, too! Sometimes I'd hear screams in the middle of the night, but no one else would, or I'd hear someone shout, 'Where is my Netanya?!' With a really weird accent, but Nob-Nob and Kanj-Kanj protected me from everyone. They even protected from Mr. A."

"Mr. A?" I repeated. Kazuo-san looked as if he had never heard the name before, either.

"I call him Mr. A or Mr. T. It stands for 'Mister Angry' or 'Mister Trouble Maker' or I just call him, 'Mister Meanie.' He likes to move stuff around and turn the appliances on at night. He also likes to mess up all the rooms, too, even after I clean mine! And for your information, I never clean my room. I clean everything else, but never my room. Anyways, he messed my room all up, even Kaz-Kaz's room! So one day I yelled at him to stop after he threw everything from our room into the hallway one evening, and he said I would regret it." Hayato-kun suddenly stared down at the floor, his excited energy gone. "And that's the day where haha-san lost the baby. I saw him standing over her, too, except he had red eyes instead of his usual brown eyes. After that, Kanj-Kanj and Nob-Nob brought over their mother Anju-san, but I call her Ju-Ju. Anyways, she had protected me from the other ghosts that showed up, too."

"What other ghosts?" I inquired.

"Well, I wouldn't call him a ghost, cuz he doesn't give off the same vibe, but there was a man here. He was just walking around in front of my room one day. I asked who he was, and he just looked at me and I froze. He snapped his fingers, and then I saw a new girl that looked reaaaally angry. Like, more angrier than someone who steps in dog poop, ya know? Or when someone falls out of a moving car on a highway. Or when your girlfriend cheats on you with your cousin. Anyways, she disappeared and I was still frozen. I couldn't even breathe!" Hayato-kun pointed to his throat and puffed out his cheeks dramatically. "He said that he needed to use my body for a while, whether I liked it or not. I told him to go-"He said some words which a kid shouldn't even know of, which made Kazuo-san nearly fall off the couch-"and that made him angry. I guess watching MTV while haha-san was gone wasn't a good idea."

"How does he even get MTV? Why is he even watching it?" I heard Kazuo-san mutter under his breath. "I swear, this kid gets into everything these days..."

"Anyways, I realized that he sounded like that guy who kept shouting for his Netanya. After that, things get a little blurry. I don't really remember this past month. Whenever I would get a clear head, I'd see Mr Meanie with his really creepy red eyes, and then Mr Even-More-Meanie-Man-With-Strange-Accent would show up and everything would turn fuzzy again. Sometimes, I'd just see Mr Meanie show up if I had a clear head, and then things would get fuzzy after that, too. But ever since I woke up, I haven't really been able to see anyone. I can kinda feel them and see their outline. I can catch a couple words, too. I have to really concentrate, though..." I nodded. So, Hayato-kun has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Could that be one of the reasons why he was possessed?

"Have you've seen the man with the strange accent since?"

"Nope! In fact-" Hayato-kun suddenly paled. Kazuo-san raised a brow.

"Is there something else?"

"...I wasn't supposed to say any of this. Like, he specifically said something very bad would happen to someone if I did." Lin and I exchanged looks. An understanding passed between us, and he nodded.

There was definitely more to this case than what meets the eye.

Normal POV

"Matsuzaki-san, have you given out the charms to each of the family members?" Naru inquired later that evening. Everyone had gathered at base after Masako had looked over the house again while the Jubas were at a restaurant.

"Yeah, I did." Ayako answered and leaned on the back of the couch. "After the parents kept asking about my relationship with that idiot monk," she muttered under her breath. Mai piped up a little bit.

"I asked Akira-san about why she kept asking stuff like that, and she said she always like entertaining things."

"It's not entertaining, it's annoying!" Bou-san exclaimed exasperatedly. "It's like we're being interrogated or something! Seriously, they need to find some new form of entertainment-"

"Are we done here?" Naru glared at everyone (with the exception of John, Masako and Lin, of course). Everyone else shrunk back in their seats. After all, only Yasu and Madoka could stand Naru's glares. "I pay you to work, not to mess around."

"So what did you call us for?" John quickly cut in before another argument could break out.

"It seems like Hayato-kun told something he wasn't supposed to today. He was told that, if he revealed what happened to him while staying here, something very bad would happen."

"Wouldn't it happen to the family?" Ayako asked.

"He didn't say it would happen to the family, only that something bad thing would happen." He corrected. A heavy silence fell upon the group until Bou-san spoke up.

"So what do we do? Prepare for the worst?"

"Everyone's been assigned partners. Matsuzaki-san will stay with Hara-san, and Takigawa-san with John-san. Mai, you stay with me or Lin." Naru already felt a head ache from tea deprivation, he didn't need it to grow with Ayako's and Bou-san's constant bickering. Even though Masako and Ayako didn't get along, their bickering was nothing compared to Ayako's and Bou-san's.

"Why is Jou-chan always with you, Naru-bou?" Bou-san smirked.

"Now that you mention it, Mai's almost always been placed with Naru or Lin whenever there's danger." Ayako added. "Why is that?" Naru looked up from his notebook, unfazed, and then turned to Mai. Their eyes met, and they both were silent. Mai could easily see that Naru was guarding himself. After all, she had known him for such a long time that it made sense for Mai to pick up on what he was feeling. However, she felt less proud and a lot more angrier when she received the answer, "Because with Mai around I can call for tea whenever I want to, and she would actually hear it."

"YOU NARCISSISTIC LITTLE-"

"Can't we all calm down?" John attempted to pacify Mai as Masako watched with her kimono sleeve over her mouth. Really, Mai got worked up over nothing sometimes.

"Speaking of tea..." Mai felt her anger spike. Don't you even- "Mai, tea."

Needless to say, Mai slammed the door as she left.

Mai had her arms folded as she stormed to the kitchen. "Narcissistic jerk! I'm not soke kinda of tea girl girl who can magically make tea. I hate his gigantic ego and-"

"And what, Mai?" Mai nearly jumped ten feet in the air. She put her hand over her heart to calm herself.

"Naru! Don't do that!" She exclaimed, which only made Naru's smirk grow. "What're you doing here, anyway?"

"Didn't you hear me, or are you losing your few brain cells that you have?"

"I can hear fine, jerk!"

"I didn't say your hearing was bad, Mai, I just said you didn't hear me," Naru replied, and he could have sworn there was steam coming out of Mai's ears. She opened her mouth to ask again, but Naru cut her off. "You're not supposed to go anywhere without me or Lin, Mai. Your memory is terrible."

"It's not my fault I got so angry and stormed off!" Mai huffed as she walked into the kitchen. "I don't even know why I'm making tea for you..."

"Because I'm your boss, Mai."

"Right, Mr Boss." Mai rolled her eyes and set the kettle on the stove. She scratched her arms once, twice, then a third time. I feel like there's bugs crawling over my skin... She scratched the back of her neck, and froze when she felt something crawl over her fingers. She looked at her hands and shrieked as the large, fat, centipedes roamed over them. A large spider crawled out of her sleeve, and then one more, then two, then five more...

She screamed and fell backwards as more bugs crawled out of her clothes. Some were even coming out of her socks. So many wasps and moths started flying through the air that they looked like thick fog. There were spiders crawling down the walls and hanging in the air. One landed in Mai's hair, and she slapped it away and backed into a corner. A scorpion climbed over her foot and she kicked it away. Beetles crawled up her arm and flew onto her neck. They bit at her clothes and skin until Mai slapped them away.

"No...no...no more..." She could faintly hear someone calling her name, but she was too panicked to pay attention to it. Black widows and beetles crawled to the center of the room and started to form into a person. Mai recognized it as the person who had caused all the damage in the base room yesterday. Even with all the loud noise, Mai could still hear a chuckle from her that sent shivers down Mai's spine.

"He warned the boy not to say anything. It's not our fault, is it, Yuina?" The figuresmiled. "Little children have to be punished, you know, but not yet. This is only a taste of how terrifying our little 'event' will be when it happens..." The figure disappeared, and more bugs started to appear. A wasp flew into Mai and stung her, but she barely acknowledged the pain. A hornet flew into the middle of the room, one so large it was as big as a hand, and turned to Mai's direction. With astounding speed, it bolted towards Mai, and she closed her eyes as something slapped her cheek.

"Mai!" She lifted a hand to her cheek, and blinked twice. She was in the corner, but all the bugs were gone. Her clothes weren't ripped and the figure wasn't in the middle of the room. There was, however, a broken tea kettle and a very concerned Naru kneeling in front of her with his hands on her shoulders. A sob threatened to break through, so Mai lunged forward and hugged Naru as tight as she could, not caring that he didn't like physical contact. To her surprise, he didn't push her away, but put a comforting hand on her back. "Mai, what happened?" Naru asked in an impossibly gentle tone.

"B-Bugs." Mai's voice was shaky, and it was evident that the medium was going to cry. "They w-were everywhere, a-all over m-my s-skin and c-crawling off t-the walls." Her voice cracked, and she tightened her grip. "Didn't you see them?"

"The only thing I saw was you having a panic attack." Mai lifted her head up to meet his eyes.

"What?" She breathed.

"You were making tea and you started freaking out is much that the kettle fell over. You backed yourself into a corner and refused to even let me come near you." Naru frowned. "There was no bugs at all. You must have been hallucinating."

"I wasn't, it was the ghost," Mai barely said above a whisper. "She must have caused all of...this. She was standing in the middle of the room with all the bugs, and she said that it was only a taste of how terrifying the event they're planning will be." A small sense of relief washed over Mai once Naru struck his famous thinking pose.

After all, if Naru couldn't find a solution, then no one could.

A/N: Well, that was fun writing the last part in pitch black darkness late at night. Yeah~! I flipping love writing Hayato. Seriously, he's one of my favorite OC's ever XD I felt like the ending was kinda rushed, but meh *shrug* For anyone who's wondering why there's a "Terrorr rate", it's a little personal experiment of mine ^^ But I wouldn't always trust it, cuz what I may consider something boring might be pretty scary for you guys...yeaaaaaah I ran into a lot of stuff as a kid, and this is the result. Woo! I apologize for any OOC Naru, too~ I'm still not used to writing from his point of view TT-TT By the way, updates will be slow! I don't write at a constant speed, which sucks. I write a little for a day or so, then a little more for maybe...3 days, and then I get a huge desire to write which often last a day or so, and then usually I'm done with the chapter. It sucks TTATT Because of that, weekly updates aren't my thing, if anyone didn't notice...so yeah, I'll try to get at least a chapter a month!

Last but certainly not least: Thank you, everyone! I've never received such a positive reaction for a story in my whole life. Soooooooo to

bewitchedquill

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Guest número uno~

Guest número dos~

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You guys are flipping amazing! And to everyone who has not reviewed, but is enjoying the story, you guys are awesome, too! ^=^ Alright, I need to go get some sleep because holy crap spending the day with two four year olds, a nine year old, an eight year old, and a two year old wears ya out, man. Thank goodness cookies give you energy...sometimes. That, and the slight weirdness and/or cheesiness or whatever the heck it is in the author note is also due to lack of sleep/energy. Or maybe I'm imagining things.

Gah, this is getting way too long. R&R, s'il vous plaît!

*Haha-san is what you call your own mother. Okaa-san is used for someone else' smother, and is used to be polite.

*The Ansei-Nankai Quake was in 1854, I believe, and killed over 10,000 people.