Living on an airship, the sunrise came early, and everyone learned to either sleep through the light or rise with it. Belnika, unaccustomed to the Resistance's ship, had not yet settled into either group. When the sun fell on her face she stirred, squinted, and threw her pillow at the window. Neither the sun nor the window cared enough to stop light from shining on her, however, so after a few minutes of trying to sleep in spite of it, Belnika got up.

Almost instantly, she regretted it. Not only because she'd had so much trouble getting to sleep the night before and still felt dead tired, but because the problem keeping her up was still there and, in fact, felt worse than before.

Ruby was the sort who slept in, but Elie was up, energetic as ever despite the early hour, and twirling her tonfa's around. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Belnika walked over to her roommate and tapped the girl's shoulder.

"Does anything feel off to you?"

Elie paused, thinking a moment. "Julia isn't yelling yet?"

Their last roommate was still sound asleep. She hadn't been the reason Belnika had been up so late, but she'd likely woken most of the ship in the middle of the night, bursting into the boys' room and yelling for them to stop sparing because the noise was pissing her off. That had been past midnight. Julia would probably sleep in.

"You don't sense anything? Any magic?" Belnika prompted.

Elie thought about it again, and nodded. Since meeting Belnika, she'd been getting better about detecting magic. Last night she'd mistaken the sense for some aspect of her new roommate's powers, but now that she focused on it, she could tell that the strange magic drifting into the room was distinct from Bel's.

"Does anyone else here know magic?" Belnika asked.

"Not that I know of." Elie shrugged. They'd beaten the bad guys, so whatever it was, it couldn't matter too much. If there was anything her Etherion couldn't handle, then Haru could no doubt take it.

In fact, Haru was taking it, though not in the way Elie imagined.

Across the hall Haru, one of those strange people who rose with the sun completely energetic and ready to take on the day, was getting out of bed and noticing that, despite his having literally rolled out of the bed and crashed to the floor, no one in his room, not Let, not Musica, not Shuda, had stirred. Let would be up soon, but Haru hated to disturb the other two. Still in polka-dot pajamas, he crawled around their beds.

Their room had gotten stuffy last night from their sparing, and the door was left open so it could air out. He crawled past, not noticing that where his hip should have clipped the door he instead passed through the solid object.

He rose to his feet after crawling a few doors down and crept along the hall, trying to keep quite. His intentions were forgotten when he spotted Elie and Belnika exiting their own room, and he waved eagerly to them.

"Elie! Bel! Good morning!"

Without glancing his way, they both walked down the hall towards the kitchen.

Baffled by the blow off, Haru chased after.

Why had they ignored him? Had they heard he'd peeped on them bathing the night before? But Musica and Lazenby had been involved in that too. It had even been there idea. He considered telling them he'd only gone along with it to keep the others from getting carried away, but as he caught up with them and tried to start a conversation, they acted as though he wasn't there at all.

Finally, as they reached the kitchen, Haru gave in and said, "Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spied on you."

No acknowledgement. Belnika opened a fridge and pulled out a juice carton. Elie grabbed eggs and a pan and began to scramble them.

They must have been too furious for words. Haru slunk to a table on the far side of the room and waited silently, head bowed, for one of them to acknowledge him at least enough to let him know how disappointed they were in him.

But they never did. Elie finished making her breakfast, which she split with Belnika, and the two sat beside Haru and ate without so much as glancing his way. Even when Let came an joined them, he ignored Haru.

"What are you mad at me for?" Haru asked.

Let didn't respond.

Well that made no sense. He might be annoyed on behalf of Julia. Haru vaguely remembered her coming into their room and yelling about something the night before, but he'd felt so tired he'd hardly had time to undress when he saw his bed. It was amazing he remembered anything after hitting the mattress at all.

By the time even Musica and Julia had gotten out of bed—Musica still being treated like a good friend despite peeping as well—Haru was certain the cold shouldering would drive him insane. But just as he opened his mouth to demand an explanation for his treatment, Musica said something that revealed a much greater issue then everyone pretending he isn't there.

"It's kind of weird for Haru to be the last one up, isn't it?"

Haru's mouth hung open like a fish's as he tried to process that. Deciding that Musica was messing with him, he said, "I was up before you, idiot."

Musica ignored him completely and went on. "Maybe we can draw on his face."

"Don't even think about it!"

"Me first!" Elie cried, racing up from the table and down the hall.

Haru scoffed and looked away. They were all messing with him, and he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing him try to perused them of his presence.

He began to suspect they truly didn't see him when Elie screamed. Haru, his friends, and everyone on that side of the ship all jumped to their feet and ran to make sure she was alright, which was when Haru noticed that not only did no one act as though they saw or heard him, but also as if they didn't feel him. That wouldn't be too impressive if people weren't running right through him. Shocked, he came to a stop in the middle of the hall, staring out the crowd gathering around his bedroom door as Elie screamed from inside.

"He's dead! Haru's dead!"

-o-

Lucia woke up feeling like the air was too thin but, upon thinking about it for a moment, decided that it felt more like he was too thin to breath. Was he sick? Everyone was always on his case about that. Don't overwork yourself. You need to rest. Don't eat that, it's junk. It was like they all thought they were his parents, rather than subordinates.

His least favorite was, "Are you sure you should be getting up so early? The sun isn't even up yet." If he had to hear about his unhealthy habits on top of coming down with a cold, he'd stab someone. And Lady Joker told him that was bad for morale, so he should try to avoid anything that would piss him off so badly.

He rolled over in bed and resigned himself to waiting for the sun. And waiting. And waiting.

He took a deep breath, grimacing at how the air seemed to slip away before it even reached his lungs. He suspected it wouldn't even matter if he stopped breathing and, bored enough in bed, decided to test that theory. Much to his surprise, he turned out to be right.

That… was unnerving. Now consciously reminding himself to breath, Lucia got up and went over to his balcony. The sky was only just beginning to get light and he doubted anyone might see him just then. It grated on his nerves to be hiding like a misbehaving child, but the whole of Demon Card seemed to think it would fall from greatness again without a leader, and thus was very careful about their new leader's wellbeing. And if he beat every person who reminded him to be health conscious he'd have no followers left.

Although he suspected that Reina had only ever mentioned that he should take better care of himself to get on his nerves, but it was too late to punish her for that. At least she hadn't been around to join in the crowd of worried voices when he came back from fighting the Rave Master so bruised he needed Megido to help him stand. But that was an unpleasant memory, so he locked it away and stepped outside.

Usually, the cool breeze that always passed by his room would soothe him, but that morning he felt nothing. Scowling, he stepped back into his own room, glanced at his bed, and decided his eyes were playing tricks on him in the dim light. His whole room was making him anxious, and if catching a cold was so awful then he could only imagine how everyone would react to him having a breakdown because his room was scary. His image as an unshakable, imposing monster was one of his greatest protections. A helpless child was easy to abuse, but no one double crossed a monster. Truly being one helped maintain the image, but knowing the image needed maintaining made every little slip feel like a total unmasking.

He reached for his doorknob, but paused, noticing his armored arm. He had no memory of getting dressed that morning and, not that he thought of it, no memory of undressing the night before. He'd felt tired earlier than normal and, too irritated by Megido's speech about wearing yourself down and giving the enemy an easy opening, had stopped sword practice early, gone to his room feeling like the walk upstairs had taken more energy than scaling a mountain, and almost forgotten to turn his lights off as he hurried to get into bed before he fell asleep where he stood.

And he'd slept all night in armor? Lucia knew he had a high tolerance for pain, but it seemed like he ought to be aching a bit more.

The lack of breathing was weird. The lack of pain or wind was weird. What else was weird?

The bed.

Hesitantly, Lucia turned and looked back at the bed. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, and his eyes had long adjusted to the lighting anyway. There was no mistaking what he saw there. He definitely saw himself still lying in bed.

People would understand if that unnerved him. Lucia grabbed for the doorknob, but his hand passed right through.

A memory of a door he could never get open, a door that kept him separate from the rest of the world for ten miserable years, surfaced. Panic seized him, and Lucia lifted a foot to kick the door down. Just like his hand on the knob, his foot passed right through. Unable to stop his momentum, the rest of him soon followed.

Now he was beyond grateful that no one else in the whole place seemed to realize the merits of rising before the sun. If the halls had been as busy then as they were at noon, a few dozen people would have seen him stumble clumsily to the floor.

Pulling back to his feet before anyone could see him sprawled out in the hall, Lucia ran over the list of strange happenings again, now adding intangibility. Intangibility? He raised a hand and cautiously felt for the wall, and saw his hand pass through yet again. Definitely intangibility.

So now what? Had he died? Was he a ghost? Wouldn't the Sinclair have warned him if something were fatally wrong? He'd died days from getting to Star Memory? Lucia bent over and clutched his stomach, taking a moment to realize his muscle memory was acting as though he'd been hyperventilating. He was too panicked to even register how disastrous that would look if someone saw him just then.

He leaned against the wall and tried to take deep breaths, then nearly panicked again when he remembered he wasn't breathing. He shut his eyes and started counting instead, reaching four digits before he could stand and face the situation.

His body. His body was still in bed. Was his body still breathing? If he was dead there was no helping it, but if it was only a curse causing this strange morning then he could have Shakuma fix everything.

He reached for the doorknob again, then remembered he could walk through walls now, and then realized he had leaned against a wall anyway. But when he tested the wall again, it was as intangible as before.

Giving up on thinking it out for the time being, Lucia went back into his room and leaned down on his bed and watched his body's face, looking for signs of… ah. Still breathing. He breathed his own sigh of relief, or at least went through the motions of it.

Now where was Shakuma? The old bat usually hung out in the attic, didn't he?

Lucia stood to go look, but found himself unwilling to start his search just yet. Shakuma might not be there, considering his orders. Besides, he wasn't dead, so there was no need to panic. He'd pulled out of much worse situations than this. This was just being a little ghostly. Temporarily, he assumed. Hoped. It seemed most likely that it could be undone. What harm could it do to try and figure things out first? He'd leaned on the wall and the bed, but passed through the wall before, and had yet to touch the door.

Taking a seat on the bed, Lucia started feeling the headboard and the wall behind it. as well as his own body.

His body was always solid, impenetrable no matter what he tried. There would be no walking back into it. But the wall, unless he really willed it to be solid, wouldn't hold his hand. So did the floor only hold him up because he felt he needed it to?

Or maybe it only held him up because he never thought of it, because Lucia suddenly found himself falling through the floor.

-o-

While Lucia was the one actually falling, Haru certainly felt as if he was in free fall, waiving and crying and shouting, desperately trying to get someone to notice that he was right there. He was fine. He wasn't dead, so stop crying, Elie.

No one listened, and Haru tried to shove his way to the front of the crowd to get to her. He walked straight through them instead, which wasn't the means he'd meant to use, but got him the ends he wanted.

Elie was collapse on his bed, wailing. Beside her was… Haru gulped. He was beside her was his own body. So what did that make him? A spirit? Was he dead?

Belnika squeezed through the crowd and ran to his bedside, leaning down and pressing an ear up by his face. "He's breathing!" She stood and held her hands over him, then frown. "I can't tell what's wrong with him. It feels like a curse, but I can't break it."

Haru, along with everyone else, breathed a sigh of relief. It was still bad news, but at least he wasn't dead.

"So what do we do?" Someone asked. "Demon Card has Hardner's Dark Bring now, and we're still one Rave short. With Haru under a spell…"

"Maybe Sieg Hart could break it, poyo," Ruby suggested.

An awkward silence, the sort that can only follow the dumbest person in the group having the good idea that no one else thought of, echoed through the halls.

"Change course!" Yuma roared.

-o-

Lucia hissed in pain and clutched his ankle. Was that bone pressing against his skin? Did spirits have bones? However serious an injury it was, it fucking hurt.

He tried to stand, but his armored boot poked into the wound and his leg gave out beneath him. Lucia tore it off, and the rest of his armor with it. The gear fell off him and slipped through the ground, and Lucia tried not to think about that. He'd fallen three stories before managing to stop himself, and had no desire to drop all the way to the basement. He still had a thin fabric undershirt and pants to protect his modesty, and he'd rather look under-dressed than wear something that caused him pain.

Unhindered by armor, he inspected the injury more closely. Definitely a broken ankle. The idea that a spirit could break their ankle felt absurd, and it was just his luck that he'd find a way.

He stood again and tried to limp. It was manageable, but he sorely wished he had something to lean on. The walls were intangible again, as was any other object that might look like it could support his weight. Lucia gave up and started to crawl. Anyone he encountered would understand. And if they didn't, they could die.

Shakuma had speeded his recovery after his loss to Haru, and if anyone could get him back into his own body, it would be the world's greatest sorcerer. But Shakuma had been sent out on a mission three days earlier. Would he be back yet? Lucia hoped so, and resigned himself to crawling all the way to the attic room that Shakuma had taken residence in.

The trip took two hours, during which time Lucia discovered he was invisible to anyone else. That helped him maintain his dignity as he crawled, but he also worried that Shakuma might not be able to see him either. How could he get help if no one knew what was wrong?

In the end, it turned out that wouldn't matter for a little while yet. Shakuma wasn't there and Lucia, tired and sore, didn't have the energy to go and search for Megido or anyone else who might be able to help him. He sat on the floor and stayed there.

Lucia didn't know how long he sat in the attic, sulking and massaging the area around his injured ankle, but the sun was high when two men walked in.

"Not here. I told you he wasn't here."

"Yeah, but if you were wrong and we hadn't checked, it would be our heads."

"Gonner doesn't remove heads over something so small."

"Yeah, but Lucia might."

The shorter of the two men snorted, and Lucia added the man to his hit list. Whoever he was. "It wouldn't get back to Lucia."

"Yes it would. He's supposed to be heading the attack."

Attack? What attack? Lucia thought about it, and realized there was an attack planned for that day. He was going to go retrieve the Dark Bring that Haja had left in the sorcerers' city. But he sure as hell wasn't going now, and without Shakuma either and these idiots on the team, Lucia wondered if his army would succeed. Probably not.

"If Lucia were gonna come, he'd be at the ship by now. Don't know what's up with him today. Usually he's already in the training grounds by the time everyone else gets up. 'You! How do you expect be any good if you sleep through half the day!' Someone needs to teach him when the day actually starts."

Lucia moved the man up a few places on his list. Did his men usually talk of him in such a way when they thought he couldn't hear?

The taller one shuffled his feet nervously. "Don't talk about him like that. We should head back and report that Shakuma hasn't returned yet."

"Lucia'll never know." The shorter one walked across the room and peered out the window. "Nice view. No wonder the geezer likes it."

"Chet!"

"Relax. They're checking every last corner of this place. They won't need us back for a while." Chet turned back to the taller man and walked his way. Lucia eyed him curiously as he did. Human beings were one thing he hadn't attempted to pass through yet, and Chet was on course to pass through him. "Why not hang out up here and take a nice earned break while Lucia takes his sweet time getting to—"

Lucia wasn't sure if it was more startling to suddenly find himself a few feet higher up, or to have Chet stop talking so suddenly. He blinked and looked around, trying to reorient himself.

"Chet? You okay?"

The taller man was looking right at him. Lucia looked down at his hands, too pale to really be his, then back to the taller man. "What?"

He winced. That wasn't his voice.

"Shakuma's probably got weird spells floating around this place. Let's just go."

The taller man turned and walked down the attic stairs. Lucia hesitated, then followed. Needles of pain stabbed up his leg with each step, but it no longer caved. Someone was holding it up. Making walking even more uncomfortable, Lucia felt half a foot too short, and it effected his gait. He lost his footing over a dozen times following the taller man.

Why he followed, Lucia couldn't quite say. He tried to reason that possessing Chet, for he realized now that he'd done just that, had given him the opportunity to move with his injury and he simply didn't know what to do with it, but the truth he wouldn't admit was that he'd been too stunned to disobey.

The idea of disobeying became tempting when he reached the ship. A man who might have been named Gonner nodded to the two and gestured for them to get on when the taller man reported that Shakuma wasn't in the attic.

"Get on," Gonner told them. "F-team's in the back of the ship."

F-team? Lucia tried to resist, but the taller man grabbed his arm and pulled, and the body he'd taken over was too weak to do anything but be dragged along. F-team. Lucia didn't want to fight with F-team. He only admitted recruits who were destined for F-team because sometimes numbers alone were all it took to win.

What would happen if his host body died in battle? Would he die as well, or would he exit the body and be free to take a new one? He could only guess, although that his host was going to die was a sure thing.

The F stood for Fodder.

STA: I'm redoing this. I hate having abandoned stories on my account, and this is one that, lately, I've felt like I might be able to rework and finish up. I have an actual beginning, middle, and end all planned out, and have enough written that if I stop again, I'll at least be as far as I was before.

The old version is being replaced, but if you want to read it, it's still available. There's a PDF version I've uploaded to google docs. The link is in my profile. There are some pretty significant changes. Like the viewpoint. It's not first person now. Thank God. Also, it's not in present tense. Praise the lord for that one too. I hate both those things. I can only imagine what possessed me to employ both at once in the old version. I also avoided looking at it (save to see if it was Haru or Lucia who had the 'air too thin' line) while hammering out the full plot and writing what I've got up so far, so while all the main events should still be there, although not necessarily in the same order, very few lines or jokes should carry over. There will be no baking cookies for Sieg in this version.