A/N

Hey people. Whoever may be reading this now or in the future. I can't guarantee that I will finish this, I can't even guarantee I'll get the next chapter out. I normally lurk over in a different fandom, but I watched the anime, read the manga, watched the two live action movies of this story, and then set my sights on the fanfiction... only to find that there were so few fics, and the law of quality percentage reared its head at the number of good pieces from there.

So, I started this. I have a general outline in my head. I refuse to let the dreaded plot ramp hit, I have an ending in mind even. I'm aiming at 50K words, and not for NaNo.

This is a fanfic for Parasyte. I have primarily based this off of the anime, mostly for the technology update as the original manga was written in the early nineties. Starting the next chapter I have multiple Ocs, this was unavoidable. I am sorry. None of the Ocs are romantic interests, and I tried to have them all have a reason for existing. Where I can, I have used the cannon characters, with luck, believably.

There is one change to the timeline of cannon for this fic. From Migi burrowing into Shinichi's arm, up until the fight with Gouto, was about 21 months. His encounter with Uragami at the end of the show was about a month after that.

Please enjoy.

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"Yes, yes of course, Please tell him I'll be there shortly." Inspector Hirama said into his cell phone before closing it.

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He noticed that the teenager was just as unfazed at the world as the last time they had met inside of an interrogation room, blank stare off to the distance and not a shred of visible emotion. It was almost supernatural and if not for Izumi's reaction to Uragami just weeks ago, he would have thought that the kid was almost a serial killer as well.

His left arm was bandaged up, photos of the stab wound showed the knife had gone straight through the gap between bones. No doubt it would scar. Inspector Hirama looked at the half lidded eyes, noting a new scar bisecting his right eyebrow. With a deep breath, the aging detective prepared himself for the upcoming interview, one that he was certainly not looking forward to.

Brown eyes snapped to the small mirrored window faster than Hirama could imagine, now staring expectantly at the heavy metal door like Shinichi Izumi knew he would open it at any second. Compared to the last time he had seen the kid, right before the monster Gouto had jumped away, he was calm, although not happy about something.

Hirama opened the heavy door. Shinichi piped up from across the table, "Before you shut that thing, I want to talk to you in private. No recording devices, no listeners, off the record."

With that said, Hirama almost said no to the school aged boy, against protocol and everything. Until he made eye contact with Izumi. He gasped when there was a hint of something lurking just beneath the human exterior telling him to just acquiesce or else. The detective thought back to the obvious connection this kid had to the parasites, the reason for the visit, and Uragami's reaction to him. Against all better judgment, Hirama nodded.

"You heard him. If I need something I'll yell."

Shinichi smiled a brief sad grin. "Thanks." he said after a few seconds.

"What is this about Izumi? If it was just Urugami's attack you could have just given a statement and left." he demanded of the student in front of him, knowing that he still had a lot to account for with just the serial killer's escape.

The kid sighed heavily, the sigh of a fighter resigning himself to peace after long and hard boughs of war. "Before, you asked me if I knew a Private Investigator named Kuramori."

Hirama shut his mouth and sat in the opposite chair.

"He was hired by Tamura Reiko to spy on us. We caught him doing so and confronted him about his client's nature as a parasite. After that, we told him everything about the parasites. From what I gathered, he made his way to you and gave you as much information as he dared, just as I told him to do."

He stayed silent, although the revelation was a profound one. The 'we' was unusual, perhaps indicating a third collaborator. Hirama shuddered briefly before waving a hand to hopefully egg on the kid's story.

"Ah, sorry. You look confused. I should start at the beginning." Shinichi looked down at his right hand, guilt plastered all over his face. He sighed again. "There's a few things that you should know about parasites, first off, they don't have emotions per-say, secondly, they have very strong instincts to survive at any cost, third, once they take the brain of the host body they enter into a cycle of pseudo cannibalism, forcing the host body to eat others of its own kind. Fourth, if they don't eat the brain they don't have the instinct for cannibalism. And finally fifth, they are just as intelligent as humans, and often more so. I think that you are already aware of most of the rest of the details."

All he could do was blink in surprise. This was unexpected. Shinichi had his full attention, and even though the kid was talking in a hushed voice with little to no inflection, the detective hung onto every word he could remember.

"Anyways, the night before the mincemeat murders began, a parasite burrowed into my right arm, I stopped it from eating my brain by cutting off the circulation at my shoulder. His name is Migi."

Hirama almost missed the sadness in Shinichi's voice in lieu of needing a double take on what the kid had just said. Instead of addressing it he stammered out, "Migi?"

Shinichi nodded, distantly the detective noticed tears in his eyes. "Yeah. He picked it, after a bit of an argument dealing with him not wanting a name and me foisting the concept and need for one on him. It means, get this, Right. For right arm. At that point Migi didn't have a sense of humor, he was just too logical. Parasites suck at names." the kid shook his head, "I'm sorry, it's been hard to adjust without him awake anymore, I've been a bit scattered since he went dormant." at that he trailed off, lost in thought for a moment.

"Dormant?" Hirama asked, suddenly utterly fascinated by what he had been proven was a know-nothing witness. Another sigh from the high school graduate punctuated a lackluster nod.

"Dormant. Otherwise he would have tried to kill you by now if he caught me speaking to a human like this. Spilling our secrets, especially to a cop. You reminded me of Kuramori, and a little of Kana, I told both of them everything too, neither listened to me, us, and they just kept digging, although Kana was just, what's the phrase... blinded by infatuation, she could sense the parasites at a distance and kept on thinking that every single one of them was me." There was more guilt coming off of him in almost tangible wafts of sorrow. "So, I decided to tell you everything in hopes that you might be able to use some of the information, or at least be smart enough to not be caught by one of them."

By this point the detective wished that he had kept a recording device on him. Hirama seriously doubted that he would ever hear any of this again from the kid. So much information.

"Kana, could sense them?"

Shinichi nodded again, "Migi said that she even started to emit her own signal near the end. I wouldn't know, I was never able to pick up on them on my own. She was killed right in front of me by a parasite. So I ripped out its heart and threw it through a wall. Our kill count is at eight."

His face spread into a lonely half smile, shrouded in a ferocity that Hirama hadn't expected of the teenager before this very one sided conversation. It was a feat to avoid reacting to what was coming out of Shinichi Izumi's mouth, they had assumed that there was a second parasite in that scene, but the way the kid had phrased it, made it sound like it was an independent action from his parasite Migi.

"Including Gouto."

Inspector Hirama gasped lightly at the monotone statement, fifty six men slain in under five minutes, and the monster was supposedly taken down by one kid who was terrified out of his mind when that thing even looked at him? He shivered at the thought.

"You want to know how, I know you do. It took three encounters with it, tactics, luck, and blatant underestimation on Gouto's part. Migi was utterly phenomenal at tactics, he's the one who taught me how to fight. There's other stuff involved that I don't know if I want you to know about, but suffice to say it, I took down Gouto alone, without my right arm, armed only with a machete, a metal rod, and a wooden stick, on fire." The far away look came back, he was obviously lost in thought again, scattered couldn't begin to describe whatever this was. "Even after the fight, killing him was hard on both of us, I almost didn't do it, Migi wouldn't."

Shinichi's brown eyes looked down expectantly at his right hand, as if it would start moving on its own and talk back. "Anyways, burnt cyano acrylates forced into the central host body is deadly. Took me forever to get Migi to tell me something like that, not that I could ever hurt him on purpose, and after he healed me when I got pierced through the heart I think that stuff would just end up killing me too. I don't know, if anybody tried to take my arm away at this point, I think I would actually kill them. It would be so easy to do it too, compared to parasites, humans are slow and made of wet toilet paper."

The kid grinned like what he said was funny, Hirama jerked back in surprise, not expecting that sort of response from the teenager, especially not said in that eerie dead monotone half whisper that barely seemed human. His heart beat faster and the detective had to stamp down on his fight or flight response as something in the kid changed. The ferocity from earlier came back enforce and seemed to shrink the room.

"Wh...What?"

"Heh, sorry about that Inspector Hirama, didn't mean to scare you there." Shinichi blinked and the effect was gone as fast as it had come, the detective took a deep shuttering breath. "Parasite humor and all. You spend long enough with them and well..." the kid laughed good naturedly, a winning hearthrob smile plastered onto his face like tape to a wall. It disappeared without a trace and suddenly Hirama was truly wary of the eighteen year old kid in the same way he was around Uragami. "You pick up tricks."

"S-" Hirama gulped, "So. Burnt plastic kills them?" he asked, although he also wanted to ask about a million other things as well.

Shinichi nodded gently, sadness potent in his eyes. Hirama wondered if that expression was faked, or if any emotion that he had shown was true, the kid was turning into headache material. "It made Gouto explode anyways, exposed the host body underneath everything. Migi explained what happened after he came back to being my right arm, telling me about the poison. Yuko recently told me about paint thinner, based on what Migi was relaying me during Shimada's massacre, it kills off their surface cells and creates fractures in their mind. Ahh, you're probably wondering how we killed Shimada. We threw a rock through his heart from the roof of the business building a few blocks off."

"Chemical weapons sound like a definite option should we hunt down any more of the shape shifting things." Hirama mused quietly.

"Just… just don't bully them." He pleaded, actually putting emotion into the statement. After the dead monotone through most of the conversation, it was just as disconcerting as the lack of it before.

"What?"

"They're fragile, they need us to survive, most importantly, they are intelligent and just trying to live here same as us." He sighed again, the passion seemed to drain out of him, as if putting that much effort into emotions was difficult to maintain. "As far as I'm concerned Tamia Reiko was the only decent one of the bunch aside from Migi and Joe, but she's dead and her son is apparently in foster care. She wanted me to take care of him, being what she said was halfway between the parasites and humans. Migi and I are, in her words, conjoined."

Hirama knew that he was staring at the kid at this point, both of his hands were in fists, and he got the sense that he was just hearing the surface of everything. If it weren't for the fact that the kid had correctly stated the suspected means of death for multiple parasites while taking credit for the impossible feats of strength, none of his story would be believable. It felt like he was ten steps behind on everything Izumi was saying, falling back on his training from years ago just to barely keep up.

"Could you elaborate more on that?" he asked, just going on auto pilot and trying to remember as much of everything as possible. His fists were shaking from who knew what at this point, and suddenly Uragami's statement about the something inhuman lurking just beneath the surface made a whole lot more sense.

Shinichi's eyes darted back and forth, trying to figure something out before settling on his right hand. "Yeah, yeah. Migi said that it was due to the shared network of nerves and blood vessels between us, that we were both contaminating each other. That was before I was, um, stabbed through the heart, by the parasite that took my mom's body." It was obviously a sore subject, for good reason too. He had mentioned it earlier, how his parasite had healed him. He closed his eyes briefly, grasped the front of his shirt with his left hand and took a deep breath.

The detective watched the nervous ticks leech out of the kid in front of him as he exhaled, bringing Izumi back to a quiet monotone and unreadable expression. Hirama almost gasped at a realization that would have let him in on a lot of this stuff far earlier. The kid calmed down by taking deep breaths, of course it seemed to be far more effective than anybody else he had ever seen, and it seemed to last a while before his emotions could get the better of him. But it was the tell that would allow better reading of Shinichi in the future.

"When that happened, Migi detached himself from my arm and filled up the void in my chest with himself, retaining organ and nerve function, apparently my spine had been severed as well, along with four broken ribs, and a sliced lung. I don't know much about biology, that was Migi's thing, and what happened was complicated to say the least. He decided to return to my arm through my bloodstream, but something went screwy and he lost contact with the bits and fragments, which were under orders to integrate with, heal and strengthen the surrounding tissue before passing to Migi's main mass. I was only out for a couple of days, and my first memory after the fact was waking up on the floor in a dried puddle of my own blood. That was the last day I needed glasses, and the day I picked up more than a few parasitic tricks and abilities." Shinichi looked Hirama straight in the eye, making full eye contact for the first time.

To his credit, the detective didn't cry out in shock, although he pushed away from the table in an unconscious backpedal and screamed without noise until the eye contact was broken.

"I have some control over that, not much. It still shows up when I'm frustrated, mad, or feeling any emotion particularly strongly. Kana said it reminded her of red glitter and ferocity. Murano says stuff about blankness and cold logic. I'd actually like to hear what you saw out of curiosity. You are the last person I'm going to tell about this."

He had to take a second to calm down, try to relax, do the breathing thing like the teenager in front of him. That was what the killer had seen, or some version of it. Whatever it was, was gone now. Hirama took a rattly breath, all it accomplished was to get rid of the shaking in his hands. The second one was more effective, and managed to let him think clearly enough to acknowledge the question. What had he seen?

"D-death and yellow eyed demons staring through my soul as if it needed to be rendered into food." came pouring out of the detective's mouth unbidden, and despite that, once it was out in the little room, he couldn't think of a better way to put it.

Shinichi nodded, a slight smile forming on his mouth before he started chuckling. For the life of him, Hirama couldn't figure out what was funny. "Migi's eyes are yellow."

The detective gulped as a shiver ran up his spine, he froze.

"Look Inspector Hirama, I am not going to hurt you, or kill anybody if I can help it. Actually, the exact opposite. I know you have an anti parasite task force. I know how the parasites think, I know their patterns, I can go up against them one on one and win. I don't have a lot of skills sir. This is something I can do."

"The task force has been disbanded until another nest has been located."

"You know they prefer the term colony." Shinichi replied quickly, hoping to nip the term in the bud before it irritated him. "Nest implies family. They're more like insects. Absolutely no sympathy..." he trailed off, lost in thought again, staring dejectedly at his right hand again.

Hirama paused a second, if more ever reared their ugly heads then the kid would be a dam good person to have on call. Insights like that were invaluable, not to mention being dropped onto his lap for practically free. If he could stand to work with and deal with Shinichi Izumi for any length of time after this though... Hirama didn't know.

"Oh Migi, is this really the right choice? I mean... I would be killing off more of your kind. Without your help sure, but everything still deserves to live." Shinichi whispered downward, trying to talk to his hand covertly.

"Kid, go to university." Hirama said, Shinichi looked up at him suddenly, eyes nearly a perfect dead match for a parasite's. "Get a degree, focus on social sciences and forensics. You pass, I'll try to get you hired under me as a detective. I figure if you know this much about those dam monsters, you can figure out human crimes too."

Shinichi smiled, and the detective was unsure if the new grin was fake or not. The expression looked happy, but it was plastered on, almost as if it was an afterthought. "Thank you sir. I have one more request of you before I leave."

Hirama nodded cautiously.

"Please don't tell anybody about everything I told you today. If put into the situation where I am going to be turned into a labrat, I will fight. I will show no mercy to anybody trying to take me down. I may not have as many tricks as Gouto, but I have enough to make my way through obstacles."

The older man paled considerably as Shinichi stood up calmly from the metal seat on the other side of the table, face deadly serious. He sat in the chair for a minute, staring into space as he contemplated the decision he was about to make.

"I agree on two conditions. I can release the tip about poisons to the government, and I reserve the right to bring you in if I find you are a suspect in any investigation."

Shinichi firmly nodded, "Thank you for agreeing Inspector Hirama." he said while holding out his right hand to shake.

Knowing what he did now, Hirama's hand trembled as he shook the supposedly parasite infected hand to finalize the agreement. With one last parting grin, Shinichi Izumi casually walked out of the interrogation room.

Hirama took his glasses off and rested his head in both hands, thinking about everything that he had heard from the original source. It made Kuramori's report sound sparse.

An hour later and he was drunkenly meandering back to his apartment.