Chapter 3: A Guardian of Ghosts

It'd been weeks since Suu came. I was relieved. I didn't seem I'd be receiving any more ghosts who'd be haunting me. Though that was the case, my adventure was still not done.

I was walking aimlessly – emo as ever. There was no point in life. I'd waited hopefully for almost a month for my sister to come back home, but she remained dead. There was nothing on the news about a zombie girl or anything. I was starting to feel like God, or the Embryo, or the Devil or whatever thing had answered my prayer was not going fulfill his side of the bargain.

I allowed my ghosts to haunt me to no end. Every night I woke up screaming my head off because of fucked up dreams. Every day people dared not look into my soulless eyes. My parents were afraid of me. They didn't let Ami near me. If I had any chance of having friends before, it was completely gone.

At least, that's what I had thought.

As I walked with nowhere to go and nothing to do Ran suddenly yelp with surprise.

"What?" I questioned.

"Ghosts. I sense the presence of tons and tons of ghosts."

"I do too, desu." Suu murmured.

"Yeah. This way, follow me!" Miki shouted at she flew through trees.

I followed my three ghosts. Eventually we came upon an old glass building. Some of the windows were shattered and it had the smell of dust and old things. Fitting. I thought to myself.

Ran, Miki, and Suu flew into the huge building. I ran after them. The place was magnificent, though layered with dust, spiders, and other things that signified abandonment. It looked like it had once either been a library or a greenhouse.

I walked through the broken library/greenhouse. Books were strewn across the floor and plant life had grown out of control. There was a small stream of water leading from somewhere, but I didn't care enough to pinpoint the location.

"What the hell?" a voice said from behind me. I turned around. A short boy with a kingly stature and prince-like blonde hair was leaning against a bookshelf.

"I think I should be the one saying that, bastard." I said to the kid. Heaven knows where I picked up my vocabulary.

"You're the trespasser here, scum-bag." he spat back at me.

"Tadase-kun, be nice." a boy appeared from behind another bookshelf. His voice was a bit high and he somehow had a girliness to him that I didn't like. The boy had a secret. In fact both boys had secrets, and I was going to find out what they were.

"Are you guys ok?" A small girl with light brown pigtails asked. There was an eerie howl of wind and the girl jumped back. Tears welled in her eyes.

"Yaya, are you ok? Don't worry. Don't worry. It's fine. It's fine." A tall brown haired boy with green eyes whispered as the girl named Yaya hid her face in his chest.

"She's mortified of all supernatural things."

"Then she should never have joined!" the boy named Tadase yelled.

"YOU KNOW HER REASON'S FOR JOINING! JUST LIKE WE ALL KNOW YOUR REASON FOR CREATING THIS PLACE!" the boy with long purple hair screamed. Much better. His girliness from before was suddenly completely gone. Was this guy schizophrenic or something?

"Are you going to join, too." the small girl sniffed.

"Eh?"

"You have ghosts too." she said simply. I noticed for the first time the girl's eyes were different. It looked like... ...she was blind.

"How would you?"

"I can sense them. I'm blind because of this sixth sense. To keep the sense under control I had to give up on of my other senses. This way the balance in the universe holds together.

"Is that why you... err... 'joined'" What is this place. Is it a club?

"No. I had a different reason." The blind girl named Yaya walked away. The boy with green eyes held out his hand to me.

"I'm Kukai! Nice to meet 'cha! That was my cousin Yaya and these two are my friend Nagihiko and Tadase. We are the Guardians. More specifically the Guardians of the Supernatural." So they were a club.

"I'm Amu, and I suppose if that's the case then I'm interested in your operations." It was a snap decision, but I was so terminally depressed and bored all the time. I thought, vaguely that this might help.

We walked to a picnic table with an old and whither awning over it. The awning had a big hole in it, as did the ceiling. The sun shown through as if this place were a sacred clearing in a cursed forest: which, to me, it was becoming just that.

My ghosts followed behind me. I looked around me. At first glance there was nothing, but when I looked closer I saw at least twenty ghosts floating around the room.

The ones that caught my eyes were an old Samurai and his apprentice, a small girl who looked like she belonged to a noble family from Europe in the 1800's, a clown, a soccer player, and a small child. There were others though. There was a mechanic, a bride, a genie, a ballerina, a magician, a puppeteer, an astronaut, a snowboarder, an artist, a florist, a baker, and a flight attendant.

"Uh... what's with all the ghosts?"

"That's what the Guardians of the Supernatural do. We protect the lost and wander souls like ghosts. We also protect the secrets of those with powers or knowledge that isolate them from the rest of humanity. We are friends of the night, and allies of the creatures of a small child's nightmare. We are the Guardians of the Supernatural! We are the enemies of stereotypes and the patronizing media that will attack us if the secrets were to be revealed. We will protect because we all have equal rights in this life! We will protect because it is our duty!" The Samurai's apprentice chorused.

"Uh... did you rehearse that?"

"Yeah, what did you think? Insightful, I know, but maybe a little over the top? What do you think?"

"I think you're insane." I backed away from the weirdo ghost, but my skirt got caught on a twig, and I fell, passing right through the Noble girl. A spiky bush sliced a deep cut into my leg and a twig impaled my hand, but that was just fine compared to the chill that sent an icy shiver through my entire body. The Noble girl stared angrily, and indignantly at me.

"Sorry." I whispered. The girl stuck her nose in the air and glided away in a huff.

"Don't worry about Rima-hime she's a little stuck up, but once you get to know her she's hilarious!" Kukai-sama told me helping me up and handing me some bandaids.

The Guardians were an interesting bunch. As I walked home I was seriously considering joining them. They seemed more than willing to take me and they all had their own quarks, with the exception of Kukai who seemed completely normal in every way. Tadase was bent on world domination – at least that's what I gathered from his several speeches about becoming king of the world. Nagihiko was definitely schizophrenic, and it had already been established that Yaya had a sixth sense. Also all the ghosts were dead, so there's something that separates them from the rest of humanity right there.

I was just passing an alley when suddenly tripped on the uneven sidewalk. I remembered tripping at the Guardians of the Supernatural. Suddenly over twenty visions of horror wreaked havoc through my mind. One of the most hideous was a knife plunging into a stomach. It sliced through the skin, digging out the intestines. I felt like barfing. Another vision was that of pitchforks and torches. Spears and crossbows and arrows flooded around the sides of my vision as blood pooled in the middle of the scene. The other visions were not so terrifying as those two, but each still held their own tale of horror.

I heard a strained voice. It was a beautiful and smooth voice, but sounded pained and dry.

"I'm thirsty. Your blood... ...smells good."

Author's Note: CLIFFHANGER!!! I bet you can guess who the voice belongs too! :D ok guess! AND REMEMBER TO REVIEW!!! I LIKE TO LOGIN AND SEE THAT MY # OF REVIEWS HAVE RISEN. Maybe its shallow, but I don't care. I like knowing people are reading what I'm writing. I like knowing my hard work is worth it.