Well, here's the next bit

Well, here's the next bit. Sorry if the beginning is slightly confusing, but Tsuboya doesn't exactly have the most clear thought process…

Anyway, enjoy!


The Bait

Tsuboya blinked.

He stared blankly at the darkness all around him, not really seeing it. He was trying to figure out what was going on.

The last thing he really remembered… was… fire. Fire and… burning… and pain. Unspeakable pain. And darkness… ash, clogging… scratching his lungs… burning in every breath. Dying. He had died. He was dead.

What was he doing here?

Tentatively, afraid of what he would find, he told his arm to move, and it moved. Digesting this information quickly, he reached out at the shadows around him and moved through them easily enough. He pulled his arm back to him and watched in relief as it slipped back out of the shadows it had disappeared into, falling back to his side.

Optimistic, he stretched out his legs and found they too melted through the shadows, but after a certain point they vanished completely from his field of vision. Startled, he pushed his arm out farther and found it also got cut off after an allotted distance.

Was he in a hell? Some sort of eternal blackness surrounding him, like a cage?

No, he remembered being there. The lines, and the clipboard woman asking him… questions. And then there had been a calm, compressed coolness. A short bliss, and then, nothing. Like a white wall in his mind.

And just then, there was a face. Grey, ashen eyes, pallor, skeletal grin. Scythe, and a whirling gash in the air…

Stupid, he thought scornfully. No such thing as wounds in the sky.

Carefully, he tried to move forward and discovered he glided. He frowned slightly, puzzled, and continued the drifting motion until his extended arm started to disappear again. He waved it back and forth for a while until he was sure it was still all there, then pushed his head slowly forward.

Tsuboya shrunk back when he was met by a blinding light, rubbed his eyes thoroughly. He blinked until the white spot in his vision faded, then launched himself out of the dark box.

He had not anticipated the low wall laying in wait for him. He winced and put his arms up, bracing for a solid impact… that never happened…?

Tsuboya lifted his head and opened his eyes, finding himself in another darkness. He scowled and turned, gliding back the way he was sure he had come. He entered the light again, and turned around.

In front of him was the same wall; maybe four feet tall, made of wood, with a gleaming lip protruding above his head. He stretched in an attempt to see the top, but instead lifted off the ground entirely and overshot the edge. He wound up inches away from what looked like a ceiling, and he now had a bird's eye view of what appeared to be a kitchen.

The fire was getting closer, but one of the assistants was still in the scullery. He tried to reach him, save him, but the flame was like a monster hell-bent on swallowing both of them whole. It attacked his skin, set him ablaze, closed around him, billowing and roaring in his ears.

Tsuboya blinked again, shocked by the violent memory. Vivid, lively, but now hidden behind that blasted wall once more.

Perplexed beyond all reason, he lowered himself to the counter that faced opposite a large box pushed against the wall. The ledge provided an inviting spot to sit, which he planned to take full advantage of. When he was about to come to a stop against its clean surface, he kept going into darkness again.

Irritated now, he shot out again and glared back at the black shadows only to see, instead, the counter. He got a weird feeling in his gut, looking at that seemingly innocent countertop. It hid a darkness beneath its shining exterior he was sure counters weren't supposed to harbor.

He reached out to run a hand across it and watched it fade straight through. Something finally clicked into place in his mind.

It isn't fully substantial, he thought. It isn't really there. It's like the ghost of a counter.

Proud of his realization, he beamed at himself in the vague reflection of the counter. He saw something else in the background, something darker, and whirled.

There was a door.

He glided over to it more quickly now that he had gotten used to the feel, and reached down to open it.

His hand passed through the handle.

So there was a ghost door, too. Was everything here a ghost of something real? He decided to find out.

He shot through the door itself and stopped himself before he ran into another wall, this one actually leading all the way up to another ceiling. He was sure they were ghosts as well, and moved along to the left, absorbing everything around him.

The place seemed almost normal, except for the fact that there was no sign of life. No presence made itself known to him, no one to be seen. A sound, though, reared up on him suddenly: slightly raised voices, arguing fiercely and yet quietly.

Turning a corner, he drifted to a stop and cocked his head to one side.

There was a girl, except her feet didn't touch the floor, and instead of hands protruding from the ends of her sleeves, there were ribbons. Ten ribbons, five per sleeve, which seemed to act as fingers.

What was even more odd was that he could see right through her, and was thus able to see the person she was arguing with. He was tall – too tall – and he was blue. Literally. His skin was blue and his face was graced with beady eyes, sharp teeth and gills. Gills! What kind of person had gills?

They had been arguing over something, and the girl continued to do so, but the blue man had spotted him and faded from the conversation, openly staring at him with obvious confusion. Eventually the girl turned as well, and when she noticed him her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open a little.

It wasn't so much the fact that they stared at him that bothered Tsuboya; it was the way they stared at him, like he had two heads. Even if he had grown an extra head, he still felt he couldn't have compared to their own strange features.

The silence survived while they continued to stare at him and he remained motionless, watching them carefully.

"You're a ghost," he blurted suddenly, almost tripping over his tongue in the process.

The girl scowled back at him. "You're one to talk."

"What?" Then her words sunk in. "I'm no ghost."

"I beg to differ," she retorted immediately. "I can see right through you."

Tsuboya looked down at his hand and was startled to find that he could see through himself, too. He could see the floor through his hand.

And suddenly everything made a lot more sense. Now that he actually thought about it, it was much more likely that he was a ghost than the alternative, which meant everything else was a ghost.

"So… I'm not dead?" he asked the girl.

"Not quite. But you're not alive, either. We walk a fine line, you and I."

He remembered something, a question, something he had always wondered about as a child. "Do we… fade though each other, or can I actually touch you?"

The other one, the blue one, made a strangled sound reminiscent of a laugh. The girl scowled at him intensely. "You have that capability, but that doesn't mean I'll let you," she sniffed.

He realized he must have worded something incorrectly, which he amended with a quick duck of his head. "I'm sorry."

The girl turned her head back to the blue man. "What a novel approach, Kisame: he actually apologizes when he does something wrong!"

"I apologized," the man grumbled insincerely, shooting Tsuboya a short glare that demanded, "What are you trying to do, make me look like a barbarian?"

He ducked his head again in contrition, which seemed to surprise the one apparently called Kisame.

"Shouldn't we tell Sir Leader?" the girl asked snidely of Kisame.

"Oh yeah, you go do that."

"What? Why me?"

"Because you don't have to stay in the halls, genius."

"…Fine!" she snapped in surrender, darting away through a wall. "See if I care!"

Tsuboya was still staring after her at the wall when Kisame interrupted his daze.

"Why don't you follow me." He made it sound like an order, not a request.

He followed the blue one silently, not missing a single opportunity to observe something new. In time they entered a room much larger than anything he had expected, and Kisame settled down to wait, not giving him a second glance. Tsuboya floated long the walls and ceiling, looking at everything, making note of it in his mind.

And then people started filtering into the room.

First there was one that startled him, with a large triple-bladed scythe. It was the scythe that scared him more, because he remembered a scythe. But the man didn't match; his eyes were purple, while the eyes burned into his mind were dead grey. There followed a man in a mask, whose eyes were green, but instead of being surrounded by white, the sclera was black.

What kind of freaks were housed here?

Next came someone with something resembling a venus flytrap around his head, except the concept was so ludicrous Tsuboya couldn't bring himself to believe it. Then the ghost girl returned, leading two people, one with a poof of bright orange hair and covered in piercings, and the other with a flower adorning her blue hair.

And then there was someone else he could see through, a red-eyed man who drifted in with a girl possessed of paper-white skin and solid black eyes. He could tell they were together just by the way they moved, shifting slightly as they automatically adjusted to the other's changes in position.

Then came another two. One more girl who didn't touch the floor, except he couldn't see through her. She had small black wings as well, but she didn't appear to use them in any way, shape or form. With her was one with a soft shock of wine red hair and lazy, half-closed eyes. He seemed the most normal of the bunch.

"Well?" the pierced one demanded. "What is it we're supposed to find out?"

Smugly, the ghostly girl Tsuboya had first met pointed straight up to his position near the high ceiling of the room. Everyone followed her finger and inevitably found him, and when they did they stared.

He recognized one of the upturned faces; the girl with wings and long hair that perpetually shimmered somewhere between blonde and black.

She had found him in the ashes, badly burned and barely breathing. She was crying, salty tears stinging his raw-cooked skin like acid. She tried to fight for him, breathe some of her own precious life into him, but he stopped her. She was worth more than him, in so many ways…

Eris? Sweet, sweet little Eris, who had always been such a huge help? …But what was she doing here? …How long had he been gone…?

And who was everyone else? Who was the other ghost man, and the girl? Who was the red-haired boy she was with?

But apparently the pierced one had questions of his own.

"Where did you come from?"

"I'm not quite sure," he replied politely, "but I think it was the odd box in your kitchen."

This sent them all muttering. Shouldn't they know what he was referring to? After all, it was their own box.

Eris tore her eyes away from him and got their attention, drawing them all in closer, glancing quickly up at him once before she began speaking. Tsuboya couldn't hear her, though, and began lowering himself until he hovered right above her.

But by the time he reached his new position she was done, it appeared. They lifted their heads to look up at him again and were startled to find him closer than before.

"What the fuck?" the one with the scythe exclaimed. Then, looking at him more closely, he smirked and nudged the red-haired one, nodding at Tsuboya. "Dude, seriously; notice any similarities?"

The nudged looked up and examined him closely, eyes widening very briefly before an impassive scowl made its home on his face. He turned and used it on Eris, who smiled widely back at him in a very forced and panicked way.

"Everyone," she said, taking control of the group, "Master Tsuboya." She looked up at him and grinned. "Master Tsuboya, everyone."