In the days (or however long it was) following her first encounter with Bunny, Tomoe did the perhaps unwise thing of visiting the Clear every time she felt remotely stable enough to do so, pushing back her full recovery bit by bit in favor of keeping up with life, which had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. She cycled between checking up on Kotetsu, Bunny, and Kaede, managing each time to only get a few minutes' glimpse of their lives before having to retreat. Kaede, she was relieved to see, was more or less fine. Certainly there were negative emotions swirling around her, such as aggravation with homework (which smelled like barbecue coming from her for some reason) and asphalt resentment towards her father, and even a bit of loneliness, but all of those feelings were gently cushioned in grassy contentment and overall stability. Mama Kaburagi was taking good care of her little girl.

(Tomoe also didn't fail to notice the posters, pictures, and other paraphernalia of a certain blond Hero all over Kaede's room. Was attraction to that man a genetic trait in the Kaburagi family or something?)

As for the two men in her not-life, she usually found them in the middle of various work-related things, such as but not limited to office duties, saving civilians, eating lunch, arresting crooks, conversing with colleagues, and doing photoshoots. Well, okay, that last one was mostly Bunny: Kotetsu had been abandoned at a table in a darkened corner of the photo studio, looking entirely put-out and smelling like car exhaust as a result. Tomoe couldn't help but giggle at the sulky expression on his face before coming over to join him. Then she had to giggle again when Kotetsu took Bunny's phone (it was red, who else's could it be in this situation?) and started playing around with the camera on it, taking silly pictures of himself. Tomoe tried posing behind him as he did so, flashing a pair of bunny ears behind his head for irony points and wondering if she'd show up — she'd heard lots of stories before about ghosts randomly appearing in pictures. But Kotetsu had framed himself in a way that would've cropped her out even if she had showed up. Oh, well. There was a reason she never let the man handle the camera whenever things needed to be photographed.

(Speaking of things that needed to be photographed, she still hadn't managed to catch Bunny in the shower. Alas.)

Against this backdrop of mundanity (well, for Heroes, anyway), Kotetsu and Bunny's basic relationship with and feelings towards each other were shifting, slowly but surely. The sulfur and smoke of Bunny's darker side was starting to bleed into the pine-scented focus of his professional demeanor, and Kotetsu's onion jealousy towards the younger man was fading away in favor of lavender concern. In addition to the basic taste of cream of mushroom dotted with tiny blooms of cinnamon, she'd begun to detect the hint of an asiago cheese baguette in their relationship aura. But the mixing of Bunny's two very different selves disturbed her. She figured that the concern on Kotetsu's part meant that he'd started to notice that something was not quite right with Bunny, and she wondered how he was going to handle things from here on out — or hell, how Bunny was going to handle things, if the friendship between him and Kotetsu was developing to the point where she was tasting fresh bread between them.

When she realized that she was starting to forget very obvious facts about herself like the name of her high school or what instrument she used to love playing, Tomoe realized she was pushing herself way too hard with this back-and-forth between the realms. She sank into the phantasmal memories of Sternbild from more than a century and a half ago and steeped herself within its numinous energies, musing on what she could remember: namely, the information she'd gleaned from her reconnaissance of Kotetsu and his new friend.

If there was one thing that she liked about a potential relationship between the two of them, it was that she thought that it would benefit Kotetsu to be with someone who was in his line of work (issues of personal compatibility and workplace romances aside). That was one of the weaknesses that she felt she'd had in her relationship with him: that she couldn't endure the trials of the lifestyle by his side because she wasn't a NEXT like he was. Tomoe had confessed this insecurity of hers to him multiple times, and every time he'd reassured her that he saw nothing wrong with her arrangement.

"Don't be silly!" he'd exclaimed once. "I like being able to come home to you to forget about some of the shit I have to deal with as a Hero. Besides, if you were a Hero too, what would happen if we both died in action? Who would take care of Kaede?"

And Tomoe had to admit that he had a point there.

But there would be times when her husband would return home, beaten up and broken down, and she could only hold him and cry with him, barely beginning to comprehend the true scope of the weight he shouldered in his vocation. She'd known for a while, of course, of the less savory aspects of the HeroTV world, like dealing with persnickety sponsors, handling media appearances, or even just more general issues of being unable to save everyone while on Hero duty. Those sorts of things were obvious to any person who stopped and thought for a moment about the implications of something like HeroTV.

Actually seeing the battle scars on Kotetsu, however, was a more painful story. Even as he gave himself over to Tomoe in his more despairing moments, he'd retreat within himself, reliving some glimpse of hell that he'd seen earlier that day. Sometimes he'd tell her what it was: that he'd seen people jump to their deaths from a burning building because they'd been scared that a Hero wouldn't save them in time, or that he'd made a fatal blunder in trying to talk down a shooter and it had cost him the lives of two children. But typically he kept his sorrows to himself, saying he didn't want to worry Tomoe with such things. This, of course, only led to her worrying more, and sometimes yelling at him about how they'd married each other for better or for worse, and didn't this fall under the "for worse" category? The issue had ignited some spectacular arguments between the two. Tomoe knew that she couldn't be a part of everything in his life, but dammit, they'd bonded over their mutual interest in HeroTV, plus she'd started falling for him when he saved her from that burning factory after his fight with Antonio. How could a shared love produce moments in which she felt the most estranged from him? It just didn't seem fair.

None of the above would be an issue with Bunny, though. Not only was he a Hero, he was Kotetsu's partner, and not a rival like the other Heroes. He could easily support Kotetsu through the more trying times of their job; he could be there by his side apprehending criminals or saving innocent bystanders or even just fielding intrusive questions from the press.

And if Bunny himself fell into his own abyss of misery? Kotetsu could catch him. That much Tomoe was sure of.

...though she wondered why she found it easier to imagine things the other way around.

T-&-B-T-&-B-T-&-B

Her next visit to the Clear after a full, or at least substantial, recovery caught the two of them in action again for HeroTV. Sort of. They were in an alleyway, with Kotetsu kneeling next to Bunny's body on the ground, shaking him and demanding to know whether he was okay.

Tomoe floated closer, concerned. Both of them were in their armored Hero suits, and didn't seem to be too severely damaged or hurt. Kotetsu was swathed primarily in lavender worry, accompanied by pine focus and smoky irritation. Bunny stank of chlorinated water, which meant that he was unconscious. She didn't know how that worked, since she'd never been aware that unconsciousness could be an emotion, but that was the Haze for you, throwing fastballs when you'd just gotten used to its curveballs.

"Damn you, Bunny, will you wake up already?" Kotetsu grumbled. "If you're going to be sleeping on the job, I'm not gonna have one much longer!" He sighed and opened his HeroTV commlink screen. "Hey, Agnes, do you know how long Beatrice's NEXT power works for?"

"Depends on how close her victims were at the time they got hit. Why?"

"She got Bunny."

Agnes swore. "How close was he standing?"

Kotetsu paused for a moment of thought. "Twenty feet away, maybe? We were trying to surprise her along Abrams Avenue by taking a shortcut through an alley, but she actually ended up running into the alley before she realized we were here. Bunny charged her with his Hundred Power on, but somehow she managed to swipe him with that sleep wave thingy that she does."

"Hrm, if he had his Hundred Power activated when he got hit, he might be fine in about two to three minutes. Beatrice has already run into Dragon Kid, who I suspect will keep her busy for a while." She narrowed her eyes. "What happened to the smelling salts I gave you for something like this?"

"Uh..."

"You lost them, didn't you. I knew I should've given them to Barnaby." Agnes sighed. "We'll send Saito's van over to your location. In the unlikely event that he doesn't wake up before then, we've got smelling salts there."

"Right." Kotetsu shut off the commlink, then glanced down at Bunny, who was still snoozing peacefully. "Well, up we go!" He scooped Bunny up in his arms and turned right into Tomoe, who had been standing next to her husband —

— and she blanked for a moment before she found herself looking at the inside of a helmet, its interior viewscreen flanked by multiple holographic projections of data. She was drowning in alien sensations that she faintly remembered had been normal to her once: empty stomach, slightly sweaty skin, tired muscles...breathing. She registered the feeling of being carried by someone, and blinked.

I'm...inside Bunny?

That seemed like a more-or-less reasonable thing to conclude, based on the facts she had at hand. Except for the part where she hadn't planned for this at all, hadn't even known it could actually happen. Of course she'd heard the spooky stories before of spirits possessing the bodies of the living, but the thought hadn't occurred to her to try it out for herself — Tomoe had accepted her death long before it had actually happened. Even as she visited the Clear on a regular basis to see what her loved ones were up to, she'd had no desire to really cross back over. The thought was akin to wanting to live in a mansion: a nice thing to daydream about every once in a while, but unlikely to happen.

But somehow the ghostly equivalent had happened, and Tomoe's mind was tripping over the implications. She had a body again, which meant that she could breathe. She could move.

She could talk to Kotetsu.

Now didn't seem like a very good time to do it, though, considering he was in the middle of filming an episode for HeroTV. Trying to explain the impossible thing that had just occurred was going to be headache enough without also having to deal with other people watching the exchange. And what in this world or the next had happened to Bunny's spirit, if she was in his body?

She remembered something then, which was amazing considering how her activities over the past week or so had torn at her memories. It was a remark from an old friend of hers who had been into the occult and the supernatural. He'd said that people could only be possessed if they'd agreed to it first. But Bunny was out like a light at the moment, which meant that — if her friend were right — he couldn't have consented to something like this.

Tomoe suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Accident or not, whether her friend were right or not, this didn't sit well with her.

I have to get out of here.

But how? She was pretty sure something had happened when Kotetsu collided into her spirit form with Bunny's unconscious body, but that didn't shed any light on how she was supposed to leave. Could she even leave? God, she hoped so, otherwise this was going to cause a myriad of problems all around.

Though...it felt really, really nice to be physically close to Kotetsu again. Even if the effect was ruined somewhat by the layers of armor between them.

Don't think about that, Tomoe scolded herself, swallowing a lump in her — Bunny's — throat. You're not supposed to be here, you're not supposed to have done this, start thinking of ways to fix this situation —

Everything around her suddenly flashed white for a few moments as she experienced the dizzying sensation of being violently yanked backwards. When she regained awareness again, her vision was stained sepia with the Haze as she saw Kotetsu trying to calm down a rather frantic Bunny, his words faintly garbled as though she were listening to them underwater.

"D-did something happen?" Kotetsu asked. "I mean, besides the whole 'suddenly falling asleep' thing."

Bunny glanced around him, wary. "I thought...it just felt like..." He shook his head slowly. "Never mind. It might simply be an aftereffect of getting hit by that NEXT power." He drew himself up straighter, all traces of discomposure vanishing. "Let's go track Beatrice down again."

"Y'know, she might've already gotten taken down by Dragon Kid," Kotetsu said as the two of them trotted towards the end of the alley.

"Why didn't you go after her?"

"Are you kidding? I couldn't leave you behind!"

"Tch. You could've used the points from her arrest, you know."

"Yeah, but Lloyds would yell at me if I just up and abandoned his star Hero...!"

Their chatter dimmed as they disappeared around a corner. Tomoe remained where she was, feeling disconcerted and a little guilty.

I need to apologize. Somehow.

She probably technically didn't need to bother. The young man likely didn't know she existed, and he seemed just fine after he'd somehow kicked her ghost out of his body. But Tomoe still felt bad for scaring him like that. And — if she had to be honest with herself — she was also more than a little intrigued with the possibilities suddenly unfolding before her now that she knew that she could borrow the body of someone in the Clear.

She melted back into the Haze, musing as she waited for nightfall.