A/N -- YES, I CAN WRITE FOR 9 NOW.

Some of you may know me from my rather popular Coraline fics, "The Forgotten," "Stiches," "The Sacrafice," "The Abandoned," and "Stitches Extended." I'm hoping that this will be as groundbrekaing and original as any of those. Oh, just one thing I'm doing differently -- I'm adding an OC this time.

But more about that later on...

The Seeker
I. Afterlife


"Wherever we are now, I'm still the leader around here…"

But even as the mechanisms of his eyes tightened into focus, the ring of doubt around his own words was growing. Because, after all, you can't be the leader of a group in a place when there is no group, and when it seems there is no place…

They'd called the machine-dominated ruins "the emptiness." But you couldn't truly know what emptiness was until you saw this place.

Because it was nothing.

No, he told himself. He was being absurd. A place couldn't simply be nothing at all. Places must have ground to stand on, sky above, a line of the horizon to define where they were. But wherever he was now, there was none of that. He was in a featureless realm that was utterly indescribable, because there was nothing to describe.

And then, from the nothingness, the shape of a hand condensed, followed by a face, then a torso, then an arm, and then…

"I can't believe you still want to continue on like that, 1."

1 blinked. "5? Where did you come from?"

A good-natured smile inched across the patched face, beneath the single eye-lens. "From here. Don't you understand, 1? We're free now! We no longer have to abide by the rules that bound us on Earth."

1 frowned. The metal plates that served as eyelids caused his glass eyes to narrow. "I think you're being too optimistic, 5."

5 laughed. God Almighty, he actually laughed, and in the very face of his leader. "No, you're being too pessimistic. There's nothing more to worry about. We defeated the beasts…" His grin faded a shade. "At least, we helped to. And in doing so, we've cleared the dangers of the world away for the four of us remaining."

Unconvinced, 1 merely scowled.

Once again 5 began to laugh, and from the surrounding nothingness, more peals of laughter accompanied him.

Appearing now in bits and pieces were the forms of more of them, light and ecstatic with the promise of freedom. All took up the appearances they had had in life, but carrying themselves with a much different gait than they had before. Clearly imprinted in their postures were the disregards of worries: no more missions, no more monsters, no more troubles. And 1 could only stare.

2 smiled knowingly. "Lighten up, 1. Things are different here."

"That's what I'm telling him," 5 remarked to the others. "But he won't listen."

8 grunted gently, as if he was trying to be persuasive in his nonverbal language.

"You…you really think that this is some kind of afterlife." 1 finally found his voice. "You really think that this is what should happen to us after being freed from the talisman."

"What else could it be?" asked 5, still smiling.

"Shouldn't there be something a bit more…fulfilling after death?" demanded 1. "And more importantly – don't we have to actually die to get there?"

There was a silence as the expressions of the others faded into blank confusion, vaguely disturbed beneath the skin…

A hand tightened around 1's arm.

"What – " He twisted himself to get a view of his pursuer, and found himself gazing into the fear-widened optics of 6.

"She's coming," 6 said urgently.

"That's very nice, 6," replied 1 dismissively. He returned his focus to the rest of the group. "Well? What do you make of this?"

"Didn't we die?" murmured 2 quietly.

"Our bodies were destroyed," said 1. "But that does not mean we're dead."

"She's coming," repeated 6, tugging on 1's arm sharply.

"But we were released from the talisman!" exclaimed 5 testily.

"Yes!" agreed 2. "9 reversed the coded sequence. Our spirits have been freed."

"And yet none of you seem to know exactly what that means," 1 pointed out.

"She's coming!" insisted 6 once more, shaking his handhold vigorously.

1 wrenched his arm away from the round-eyed stitch-punk. "Enough of that, 6!"

"1," piped up 2 cautiously. "Perhaps you should listen to him."

"He's been right before," added 5.

"I don't have time for these flights of child's fantasy," snapped 1. "As I've already established, there are more pressing matters at hand…"

Suddenly, he felt the cold fingers of a negative presence wrapping around him.

"She's here," whispered 6, terrified.

The eyes of the others all became fixated on a point behind him.

1 turned around slowly.

Her form appeared all at once, not in random chunks as his familiars had. But even though her entire body was there, it was only a vague shape, with the details still slowly fading into focus upon her. If it was a her, that is. It was difficult to tell this one's gender, or if it even had a gender. But one thing was extremely apparent, even in such an outline form.

"It's one of us," murmured 5.

"That's impossible." 1 hoped that there was still a shred of authority retained in his voice. "There are nine of us, and only nine."

"She isn't," said 6 simply.

"She isn't what, 6?" demanded 2.

No answer.

By now, the mystery stitch-punk was slowly but surely coming into more focus. It was tall, lanky. It had more metal pieces than were typical. There was a chain dangling from the left side of its head. But the eyes…they remained empty, lidless, as vacant as they were in the bodies of dead stitch-punks…

"She isn't," came 6's timid voice again, barely audible.

"Stay away from – " 1 began to warn, but then it – her – raised her long arms. They were bare, skeletal metal up to the elbow, and certainly looked like they could do some damage.

Then she spread apart her fingers. The rust-patched steel implements were hazardously sharp.

"What in the heavens…?" somebody breathed behind him.

But that was the last thing that 1 could lucidly hear, because in the next instant, he was abruptly cut off from the others. And then his vision went painfully green, and then it faded out to a void of black…