24Heaven and Hell
By Amaranth Adanae
Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt; this is a work intended purely for entertainment, not for profit.
"Honestly, Naru, one day you are going to be the death of me," muttered Mai under her breath. "And then I'll come back and haunt you and make your life a misery."
"And how is that different from what you already do?" shot back Naru without even looking up from the monitor he was observing intently. "Besides, I thought you were planning to live for two hundred years. By then I will have died and moved on, so I won't have to worry about it," he continued with a shrug.
Mai giggled. "Are you so sure that you will move on like you are supposed to? What if you die in the middle of a really interesting case—do you expect me to believe that you'll stop in the middle, and leave it unsolved? I can just see it. Ghost Naru, interrogating all the other spirits, messing with the monitors, and haunting the footsteps of the ghost hunters that come after you, telling them all the things they are doing wrong. You'll put all the exorcists out of business—the other ghosts will flee just to get away from you."
Naru frowned slightly, and crossed his arms defensively in front of his chest. "I'm not sure I believe in some happy afterlife, some sort of cheerful heaven. I haven't seen any hard evidence of one. But if there is a heaven, I'm sure it has excellently equipped laboratories and competent assistants. Not to mention interesting cases to keep me occupied."
"Really, Naru, do you honestly think that you've been that virtuous? Heaven is for the meek and humble, isn't it? I can't see you fitting in. Besides, you can't be a ghost hunter in heaven—everyone is a spirit, and no one would be unkind or vengeful. What would you do, hunt for mislaid harps? That would be more like hell for you."
"I need to get John to sit you down for a lecture on Christian philosophy. Your grasp of the doctrine is pitiful," murmured Naru absently.
Mai rolled her eyes and flumped down into a chair. "Yup, you are definitely going to hell. I'm sure Urado and Ebisu are waiting for you, to catch up on old times. It's probably filled with endless cocktail parties of people just dying to hear all about the clever, famous Dr. Oliver Davis and his wonderful cases. And old people condescending to you, and calling you too young to know your stuff. Maybe it's filled with all sorts of incompetent paranormal researchers who are waiting to share their best techniques with you. No wait, you'd enjoy cutting them down too much. Maybe…"
"Maybe it's filled with chattering assistants trying to distract me when I'm working. Why don't you go take a nap, or something useful like that?"
"Humph," Mai pouted, and opened her mouth to reply, but she was distracted as Bou-san opened the door to the base. She jumped up to join him, her annoyance with Naru forgotten. Naru watched her go out of the corner of his eye.
He couldn't really imagine what a heaven would be like. He was pretty content with the way things were here.
-end-