Blink and You'll Miss It

hey there demons, it's us. put em up

 It took Sanha ten minutes to stop crying.

At least most of her questions had been answered. There were tear stains on her notepad amid her hastily scribbled notes, but she'd at least come up with a semi coherent story. There were a few lingering questions, but most investigations had a few loose ends you could never quite tie up. Besides, it would be enough to get Jackson back, and that was her only goal at the moment.

Youngjae knocked on the doorframe, snapping her out of her thoughts. "Hey, we were going to. . . are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just. . . had a lot of information dumped on me all at once." She half heartedly raised one of the broken picture frames. "Window to the past~!" she sang.

"It works?" She could tell he was excited.

"You bet." She smiled tiredly. "I'll tell you what I figured out in a hot sec; I'm gonna wash my face real quick. I'll be right out."

"Take your time!"

Immediately after relaying most of what she'd learned from the pictures, Sanha had passed out on the couch. That wasn't really an unexpected thing; she'd been going going going without enough sleep for too long. Mark took her notepad and covered her with a blanket and they tried to talk quieter.

"Is she always like this?" Yugyeom wondered aloud after a little while of working in silence.

"Sometimes." Jaebum flipped through her notes, trying to find extra clues he may have missed. "She'll get really into investigations sometimes and forget everything else. Stuff like her health."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I haven't unlocked her tragic backstory yet."

"She doesn't usually go this hard, though." Youngjae kept his eyes on the computer in his lap.

"Maybe it's because of Jackson?" Jinyoung suggested. "They seem really close."

"Could be." Jaebum flipped back to the page with her investigation questions on it. "Do we have any lingering questions to look into?"

"If the spirit was flinging people around left and right in the beginning, why doesn't he do it now?" Youngjae suggested.

"Oh, that one's easy." BamBam spoke up. "He's using a lot of energy on the glamour, so he's not as strong as he used to be." Jaebum wrote both the question and answer down underneath her other notes.

"Doesn't she mind that you're looking through her things?" Yugyeom asked.

"Not really, no." Jaebum clicked the pen again and set the pad next to him. "Sanha's usually pretty open about her notepad."

"So why do you always ask her what notes she has in it instead of reading them yourself?"

Youngjae stifled a laugh. "You guys know Sanha's American already, right?"

"I guessed," Mark mumbled as the rest shook their heads.

"Anyway, her notes are a complete mess, and it's not just because of her handwriting. She'll write using Korean grammar with English or French words stuck in because she thought of it in that language first," he explained.

"Jackson's usually the only other one who can decipher them without getting a headache." Jaebum clicked into a new tab to hammer out a search term. "Usually we just don't bother."

"I translate the best bits anyway." Sanha's sleepy voice caused some of the boys to jump in surprise. She stretched her way into a seated position. "So you guys just gossip about me while I'm asleep?"

"We worked for a while first." Jaebum had noticed she was awake and wasn't fazed.

"Sure you did."

They headed out with two hours until the spirit's deadline, for no real reason except it was harder to sneak around the dorm monitors at any other pre-midnight hour. Sanha wasn't exactly sure what he'd do if they didn't show up in time. He'd kind of lost his leverage. After all, it was impossible to hurt Jackson while he wasn't in control of his own body, and the spirit didn't have another body to use for that. Unless he--

"Sanha?"

She dropped abruptly out of her thoughts to see BamBam looking at her, a slightly concerned expression on his face. "Yeah?"

He fidgeted slightly as they fell to the rear of the group. "Thank you again."

That startled her a little. "For what?"

"Not mentioning the closet thing. Ever."

"Oh." Now she remembered. "Yeah, no problem."

They took a few steps in silence. Yugyeom fell into step with them, directing a question at Sanha. "Are you nervous?"

"Oh definitely." She laughed wryly, almost at herself, speaking sarcastically. "I don't know if this is obvious, but it's my first time handling anything this serious."

"Actually, it isn't."

And she thought she was shocked before.

"You've kind of been leading the whole time," Yugyeom said. "I was shocked when it turned out Jaebum and Jackson were older than you."

"That's a terrifying concept." She forced herself to laugh. "Me as the leader?"

"You've been doing a pretty decent job of it," BamBam noted lightly.

She didn't want to waste her breath arguing, mostly because she couldn't come up with a compelling argument. Was that conceited of her? She shook her head slightly. Now wasn't the time for misplaced self hatred.

As they approached the dorm building, Sanha debated blasting Back In Black or some other hero walk song, but eventually decided not to. There was no point in stealth, but there also wasn't a point in waking up the whole country.

They hesitated in the doorway, so Sanha pushed forward, not wanting to wait any longer.

"Hey spirit dickhole!" She shouted the words in English, hoping that would keep the others from understanding she was cursing. Obviously, it didn't work on Mark, being a native speaker himself, but the rest looked blessedly confused.

"Kim Sanha." Her attention turned to the stairs at the side. "It's been a while. What, twelve hours? Thirteen?" Jackson's body leaned against the railing leisurely, eyes locked on her.

"Try seventeen and a half." She studied him. "By the way, Jackson if you're listening I'd like you to know that you do not look good with blue eyes."

"He's offended." The spirit's voice was smooth, and she really hated the sleazy way he was talking. It felt weird to hear Jackson's voice like that, even though she knew it wasn't him.

"I'm sure he is."

"To jump to the point, we want you to get out of bodies which aren't your own," Jinyoung cut in.

"And maybe go fuck yourself while you're at it," Mark mumbled.

"Interesting." The spirit admired Jackson's nails. "And you're willing to fight for that?"

"Yes." Jaebum sounded more bold than Sanha felt, but they hadn't stockpiled magical items for nothing. He'd even practiced a couple spells.

"Good." Jackson's eyes glowed. "Then fight."

He fractured into tens of Jacksons, spreading around the room and blocking all exits. The teens clustered back to back into a circle, caught off guard.

"You take the ones on the right I'll take the ones on the left?" BamBam suggested, his voice tinged with fear even as he forced a joke.

"No holding back." Jackson's voice hit them from every angle. "Time I fought with my true power."

"Oh, zip de dee doo dah and all that." Sanha prepared her minimal knowledge. "Just get on with it."

"As you wish."

The Jacksons charged.