It'd been a month since Dani and I left as planned to check out the newly appearing halfas, but I hadn't heard from Sam once. I knew she was okay or mom and dad would have said something, but she still hadn't contacted me.

I shouldn't have left while she was still that pissed at me.

It wasn't like I decided to suddenly leave to go check things out, Danielle and I had been planning it for days before the incident, and when Lily got hurt, I considered putting it off, but for some reason I thought leaving on schedule and letting her cool off might be a good idea. It's become clear since that that was not my brightest idea.

Maybe Dani's right and I am punishing myself more than Sam ever will, but that doesn't change the fact that my wife was royally pissed off at me. I'd never seen her that pissed off before, the closest I'd seen had been when I may or may not have nearly gotten myself killed when she was pregnant. I screwed up; I wasn't paying attention in that fight, I didn't keep Lily out of it when she decided in her three year-old wisdom that she could come help me, I didn't make sure she went back to the house when I told her to.

I didn't keep her from getting hurt.

Lily didn't get any injuries her ghost genetics couldn't fix, but it was a close call. She broke her arm when she fell from the sky after the blast that burned a good chunk of her torso, the skin was pretty much gone where the blast hit. When I first saw the damage, I thought it might be too much for her to heal on her own. Considering that she isn't fully half ghost like me, her ghost part is pretty strong and can take care of most injuries, but I know there has to be a line somewhere. When I nearly got myself killed fighting off an escaped Dan, mom and dad had some serious work to do to put me back together enough for my ghost powers to take care of the rest. It's almost like there comes a point where my powers just fail because they don't know what injury to take care of first. If I have a line at which it becomes too much to heal on it's own, I know Lily has to have one too, one that doesn't cover nearly as much damage as what I can take.

I don't ever want to find out how much Lily can take on her own; I'm not sure I'd be able to live with myself.

I sighed as I laid down for the night in the latest hotel Dani and I had checked ourselves into. Right as I closed my eyes in an attempt to sleep, three things happened.

My phone went off, I saw the sky flash green again, and I felt it as my ghost half finally found the signature of the latest halfa.

If Dani hadn't been out grabbing something for us to eat, we would have gone to find to the halfa right away, even though it was the middle of the night, but we'd agreed not to go chasing down the new signature on our own almost as soon as we left. We didn't know what the hell was causing it, so it was best not to go investigate on out own in the event that it was trap; we had a better chance of getting out of there alive if we were together.

Dani would have killed me had I gone to investigate on my own, so I did the only thing I could and checked my phone.

Call me. -Sam


I remember staring at the mirror for several minutes in a mini freak-out. What the fuck just happened?

This freak-out was only heightened when the same flash of light appeared moments later and I found myself looking at exactly what my reflection should look like. I let out a sigh of relief; whatever the hell just happened wasn't permanent and therefore something I could deal with.

Except for the fact that I found myself switching back a minute later as my bewildered mind tried to figure out what that transformation thingy had been. This time, it didn't go away on it's own though and the part of me that had just stopped freaking out about it instantly began freaking out again.

Eventually, I managed to calm down and force myself to think this through. What had caused this? As soon as I got my head on straight again, I realized that that wasn't actually that hard of a question. Nothing even remotely related to anything like the transformation that had taken place before the rest of this weird crap started up, therefore it probably was connected to the night vision and disappearing limbs.

I calmed more as my mind started working things out, solving a good puzzle often relaxed my mind. Logic was good, logic could be explained and what I liked to go back to when nothing made sense. This fixation on logic was also probably why I hated deciphering emotions so much.

Once I realized that this sudden transformation was probably related to the rest of the odd things I'd been facing lately, I was rewarded with the memory that I had managed to get to a point where I could almost pretend I had control over the disappearing limbs. If I was learning to control that, then shouldn't there also be a trigger thing that controlled my transformation?

I tried focusing on being myself again, but after several minutes I realized that wasn't going to work. If that wasn't going to work, then perhaps I needed to find a less conventional way of doing this. I took a different approach, working on the idea that whatever was making me transform and everything else would leave some form of a trail in the less visited regions of my mind that allowed me to take control over normally unconscious actions.

If they didn't, then I was fucked.

Really, I didn't know what the hell I was looking for, but eventually I came across something that didn't feel normal as I forced myself to become conscious of some of my normally unconscious functions. As I took a conscious control over my breathing, I noticed there was another feeling tugging on me, almost as though it had become closely connected to my breathing. I didn't know what that meant in the long run, but I focused on it in an attempt to see if that was the trigger I was searching for.

I nearly did a cartoon-style victory screech as I felt the unfamiliar rings of light form again and pass over my body, returning me to my natural state. Then, I felt a wave of exhaustion hit me and literally fell onto my bed as I barely made the two steps it took to reach it before I completely collapsed.


One day, I shall keep up with my writing...but not today.

Let's see...holiday, then unexpected guests, then expected guests, then I felt all sentimental and didn't actually get around to writing. So...there's my latest excuse for my laziness...

By the way, the song Auld Lang Syne has this habit of making you feel all sentimental... WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME, FISH?

Ahem, sorry about that. Comments and feedback are as welcome as always! :D


Invisible One