#i have to make a niko sasaki appreciation post i HAVE to

[stormboundstars]

I absolutely adore that Niko Sasaki's contribution to the Dead Boy Detective Agency isn't any kind of special powers she could've gotten from being possessed by parasitic little gods, but rather it's just her— with her innate curiosity and kindness, her love of love, and the earnestness and sincerity in which she says or does something.... ooooh I love her so much my best girl !!!!

[onpointedfeetandbrokendreams]

Day 4 - DBDA Week

Day 4 of Dead Boy Detectives Appreciation Week: 10th-16th June by @dbdcentral

Prompt: Reunion

Relationships: Edwin Payne&Charles Rowland&Crystal Palace&Niko Sasaki

Tags: Post-canon, Paranormal Activities

TW: None

--

“Crystal, we have to tell you something,” Charles started one day out of the blue.

He looked giddy, mischievous, the expression you would find on a kid about to confess that they stole one of your freshly-baked biscuits. And while that in itself wouldn’t be such an unexpected image, what made the entire thing almost unreal - assuming a world like ‘real’ could even be applied to a psychic, living with ghosts, solving supernatural crimes - was that behind him, Edwin was wearing a matching grin.

Crystal raised a questioning brow as a form of reply, she had no idea where the conversation could possibly be going.

“Ok, so, you know we are ghosts, right?” Charles rambled.

Luckily, before Crystal could make a sarcastic remark, or curse at him, Edwin had mercy on them both and took the lead of the conversation:

“We have this little tradition. Every Halloween we go to a Haunted House in the countryside, where people pretend to be detectives of the occult, with useless equipment, and we… Well, there’s no other way to say it, we tease them a little.”

“You- what?” Crystal was having trouble reconciling the image she had of the other two with this new information. It probably struck her for the first time since she met them, that they were just two kids, trying their best in this cruel world they had been ripped out from too soon. Her gaze softened. “Why didn’t I know anything about this?”

“It’s your first Halloween with us, isn’t it?” Charles said, sounding a lot more like his usual, confident self.

“We used to have quite the nice reviews on the newspapers,” Edwin continued. “Then, they stopped writing those, but people still visit the house and they have a lot of fun when something actually happens.”

Crystal fished her phone out of her jacket’s pocket and looked at Maps for a while, searching for ‘haunted houses’ until she found it. 

“Is this the place?” She asked, turning the phone to Edwin so he could watch the screen.

“Yes, it is!” He said. Crystal had never seen him this excited before.

“Wow, this has so many reviews, I wonder why I had never heard about it. They love it.”

Charles preened. “Of course they do, we are professionals.”

Taking the phone back to read some more comments, Crystal had to laugh. It was probably the only self-indulgent thing they had allowed themselves all those years. One well-deserved night of fun without witches, or demons, or Death. She just felt a bit sad that she couldn’t join them.

As if reading her mind, Charles said:

“We were thinking that you could dress up as one of those ‘detectives’, so you could come with us, if you’d like?”

–

The outfit the three of them had put together was absolutely ridiculous. Crystal had a big yellow jacket with a stylized ghost on one arm, thermal goggles perched on top of her head, and a backpack with something similar to a vacuum cleaner attached to its side.

“Am I supposed to, like, capture the ghosts?” She said, while looking at herself in the mirror.

Edwin snickered. Full-on snickers. “Of course you know that it would be impossible, right?”

“But they like to think they can. You will blend in perfectly,” Charles finished for him. They were still doing that thing where they looked like they shared two halves of the same brain, but in that moment it was less like the usual dead married couple on acid, and more like two twelve-year-olds trying to pull a prank on their parents.

“Ok, I’m ready then,” Crystal nodded, unable to hide the fond smile in time before they could see it.

Crystal found out there was an actual tour bus taking people to the Haunted House and she managed to secure herself a ticket. It was painted in black and decorated with neon green and splashes of fake blood, and it was filled with similarly dressed people, carrying all sorts of weird equipment on them. Some people had laptops, others had devices that looked like small radios, and others that didn’t look like anything she had seen before.

Absolutely none of them had any drop of actual arcane energy.

When the bus started its way up the hill where the house stood, everyone went silent, anxiety and anticipation both equally filled the air. It required an extreme amount of self-control for Crystal not to burst out laughing, knowing that the very ghosts who supposedly haunted the house were riding on that same bus, elbowing one another and giggling, while making a list of what to do this time to scare-but-not-too-much the visitors.

It was a very run-of-the-mill paranormal experience, when compared to the much weirder and scarier things Crystal had already seen in her life. But Charles and Edwin were right, people absolutely loved it. Everyone took their time to set up their equipment and the ghosts patiently waited before starting to open some windows, slam doors, make pieces of paper fly. Crystal would lie if she didn’t admit that it was fun.

Until a second bus arrived, and time stopped. She couldn’t focus on anything else, other than the buzzing sound in her mind, her gaze fixed intently on the people entering the house. Or, more accurately, on the person.

“Niko,” she breathed out, running towards the white-haired girl like her life depended on it.

“Crystal! You’re really here!” Niko said, with tears forming in her eyes as she returned the hug and squeezed Crystal tight.

A few seconds later, she felt four other arms wrap around the two of them, followed by a lot of loud complaints from the people that came with the second bus that the haunting had stopped too soon and they wanted a refund.

When they separated, all four of them had matching glistening eyes.

“I came back to the mortal plane thanks to my sprites,” Niko explained. “I didn’t know how to find you, but then I remembered Edwin mentioning this Halloween tradition. So I thought it was my best chance. I am really glad you are actually here.”

“And she forced us to wear these ridiculous outfits too, which, for the record, should be a crime,” someone said from behind her.

“You tell them, Litty.” 

Crystal looked closely, and she recognized the faces of the two people, except in her memory they were a lot smaller.

“I don’t know what happened to them,” said Niko with a shrug, ignoring the former-sprites comments.

“We’ll start researching The Case Of The Grown Sprites first thing tomorrow,” interjected Edwin, taking Niko’s hand and motioning for the door. “For now, let’s go home, tell us everything.”

[princess-unipeg]

They better bring her back for season 2.

I absolutely adore that Niko Sasaki's contribution to the Dead Boy Detective Agency isn't any kind of special powers she could've gotten from being possessed by parasitic little gods, but rather it's just her— with her innate curiosity and kindness, her love of love, and the earnestness and sincerity in which she says or does something.... ooooh I love her so much my best girl !!!!