Work Text:
Not all cases the ADA ends up with are dangerous, sometimes they just turn out to be annoying. That was what Atsushi thought when he got the task to go investigate a supposed cult called Order of the Infinite One in the slums with Kenji. A couple of civilians had also recently gone missing in a particular area of Yokohama, it didn’t take a Ranpo to realise the cultists and the kidnappings were related. It was supposed to be a simple investigation that could possibly turn into a one-sided confrontation against some cultists.
It was definitely not supposed to be whatever this is. The moment Atsushi entered the abandoned warehouse he could feel the surrounding temperature steeply drop.
In an abandoned warehouse that the cultists used, Atsushi could clearly see a ritual circle of some sort, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. His attention was on the humanoid black glowing thing in the middle of it, it was stroking the head of one of the missing civilians with its hand. If it weren’t for the tell-tale rise and fall of the chests of the unconscious civilians surrounding the being Atsushi would’ve thought they were dead.
The civilians appeared to be unharmed, Atsushi couldn’t say that about the robed cultists outside of the circle. They were encased in cold blue ice.
The being raised its head and Atsushi could see its unnaturally blue eyes. A wave of fear washed over him, the tiger was telling him to run, to run because whatever this thing was was not natural, not even Shibusawa made him feel such immense fear. Kenji wasn’t doing so well either, they were both frozen on the spot.
“Are you here to bring them home?” The being spoken and there was an undertone of static beneath the speech. It gestured towards the civilians.
Atsushi realised that the being was talking to them. There was only one way to answer. “Yes. Yes, we are.”
The being’s mouth twisted into an all-too-wide smile with too many teeth. “I’ll leave it to you then.” Then it melted into the ground leaving nothing behind.
Here he was once again in the middle of a summoning circle. It was a good thing that Danny was already in his ghost form due to him taking care of some ghostly business prior to the summoning, the ghost form just adds a layer of anonymity to him considering how cryptid-like it was.
Danny looked around to see the cultists that had summoned him and the very freaked-out people bound and gagged at his feet. Danny sighed, he ignored whatever bullshit the cult leader was spewing out and immediately encased them in ice. He turned his attention towards the most likely kidnapped potential sacrifices, he pulled a little trick he learned from Nocturne to put them all to sleep. Death and sleep were very close after all.
He undid their bindings and sat himself down, trying to figure out what to do next when a couple of people entered the warehouse. He locked eyes with the white-haired one, gauging their intentions. They didn’t appear to be involved with the cultists.
Danny opened his mouth and spoke, “Are you here to bring them home?”
It took a few seconds for the white-haired one to answer as both the white hair and the yellow-haired ones appeared to be paralyzed with fear. Right, Danny forgot that his ghost form was less human now and had certain effects on people.
“Yes. Yes, we are,” the white-haired one answered stiffly.
Danny smiled, inferring the truth from the white-haired one’s words. “I’ll leave it to you then.”
Then he left.