There was just something about Ayanami that didn't feel right. Like Teito, he seemed to hold something hidden deep in the waters of his soul, and the eeriness of whatever he was hiding hung around the man in a cloying cloud. The best way to sum it up was that Ayanami's mere existence felt wrong. Labrador and Castor could sense it too.

He was no ordinary human, that was for sure.

The slight but definite smirk on the pale man's face as he passed by Frau had the bishop immediately running into the restaurant for Teito, who hadn't come out with Ayanami.

"I'm sorry, Sir, but as I have informed you already, the privacy of our customers is held the highest priority above all else. You will just have to wait in the lobby and one of our servers can…"

"No, I don't think you understand. When I said to show me the room Teito Klein is in, it wasn't a request." Frau bent into the desk man's personal space, using the advantage of his height to loom sinisterly over him, face shadowed under his hanging bangs. "It was an order. For the last time, tell me where Teito Klein is."

Maybe he exuded too much of his killing aura but it got the job done and when Frau left the front desk he was holding a small room key.

"Sir, wait! Please allow me to help you!" Frau raised an eyebrow as he stopped and let the employee catch up to him. A long wheat blond braid swung around as he skidded to a stop in front of Frau.

"You'll get lost if you don't know the layout of this restaurant," the young employee explained.

Frau tsked and said, "The guy at the front told me the room number was 15."

"Yes, but this restaurant was built for privacy." The boy swiped the key from Frau's hand before he could react. "See, the scorpion on this key? The room you are looking for is scorpion 15, and since it is facing west, we need to go to the east wing. Follow me, please."

Frau dumbly trailed after the young employee as he strode off in the opposite direction Frau had been heading.

"This restaurant is unnecessarily complicated," Frau grumbled and he didn't hear the employee mutter to himself under his breath.

"As are nobles."

When they got to the room in question, the boy stepped to the side and handed over the key. Sure enough, the small scorpion symbol engraved on the key matched the engraving on the doorknob.

"Not bad, kid. Thanks," Frau said appreciatively and the boy returned an incongruent combination of a smug look and a proper bow. Frau smirked back before he opened the door.

Inside was a small but elegantly furnished dining room, a table fit for two in the center. Frau only noticed the small figure collapsed beside it.

"Teito!"

The boy looked up and blinked as he rushed into the room. "Frau?" He looked like he'd just woken up from a dream. Frau quickly checked him over but he seemed unharmed, if a bit paler than usual but that could have been the lighting.

Letting out a breath through his nose, Frau closed his eyes briefly before he reached out and slapped Teito upside the head.

"Ow! What was that for!" The boy looked more startled than hurt as he held the back of the head and leaned away from Frau.

"That was for freaking me out while you were daydreaming away in here," Frau said unrepentantly. "Now, get up so we can go. This place gives me the creeps. It's not a restaurant, it's a fortress." The helpful employee had vanished, leaving the two to find their own way out, which was just fine by Frau.

Without waiting for Teito to do more than protest, "But you didn't have to hit me!" Frau grabbed the boy and dragged him out of the restaurant.

"So, what happened?" Frau asked finally as they were crossing the lobby.

Teito widened his eyes briefly before he looked away and said morosely, "Nothing."

Trying to pry information out of this brat was like trying to pull teeth, Frau thought as an annoyed tick popped up in his forehead.

"Of course it is," Frau said in an exhale. If he heard the discontent in Frau's tone, Teito made no notice except to walk a smidge faster. He cleared the front doors first and then stopped in his tracks when he realized what he was looking for wasn't there.

"Frau…," Teito said as he glanced up and down the street fruitlessly.

Frau dug his finger in his ear as he waited for it. "Yeah?"

"That's not our carriage," Teito said obviously as he pointed at the spot where the carriage and its handlers had been.

"Yeah."

Teito's eye twitched. "Where's the carriage?"

"I sent it away."

Small pause. "Why?"

"The damn coachman was giving me the evil eye. I got sick of it, so I told him to take it back to the manor and we'd catch up," Frau explained unabashedly.

Teito was starting to send Frau the same evil eye the said coachman had been giving him.

"And how exactly are we going to catch up?"

"What do you think?" Frau motioned with a nod of his head at the vehicle he had used to follow behind Teito's carriage to the town.

"The Hawkzile?" Teito barely avoided being hit when his hands reflexively shot out to catch the helmet lobbed at him. Before he could sigh in relief, a pair of goggles caught him in the face.

"Gah!"

"Can't have the little lord getting into any accidents, now can we? Get on," Frau said as he swung a leg over the Hawkzile, eyes dancing behind his own goggles.

"You could have warned me!"

"Just get on."

Teito had never ridden on a Hawkzile before but there was plenty of room on the great bike, so he settled in behind Frau without a word. With the way the seat was curved though, Teito fell closer to Frau then he expected and he had to make an effort to stay at the edge of the seat so he wouldn't lean against the bishop's back.

Frau said suddenly, "You do realize you're going to fall off unless you hold on properly?"

"Huh?"

Frau made a little noise of exasperation. "Here." He grabbed Teito's hands and pulled them forward so Teito fell against his back with a yelp.

"Agh, Frau!" the boy protested, face warming.

Frau ignored him and wrapped the boy's hands over his stomach, so Teito's arms were completely around his waist.

"There, now hold on tight," Frau said as he revved the Hawkzile to a start. His ears picked up a small gasp under the sound of the engine and then the arms around him tightened briefly. A small smile spread over the bishop's lips as he sped the Hawkzile up and out of the street.

Unnoticed, a pair of curious violet eyes followed them before its owner disappeared, melting seamlessly into the crowd.

Teito's small country town was nowhere near as large or diverse as the big cities Frau was used to. So it wasn't odd that Teito hadn't had the chance to ride a Hawkzile yet, which was more common to urban settings.

"Tch, the buildings here are so damn low, there's no wind cover at all," Frau groused. Teito didn't see the problem but maybe that was because he had a good wall behind Frau's broad back.

Teito bent his head back as far as he could without letting go of Frau. The sky was still a clear, cloudless blue that day. High above the bustle of the town, Teito felt like he could fly away from all his problems and the sky was an inviting blue ocean that promised just this.

Teito felt free. He forgot the thoughts of Ayanami and his confusing words, the past and its pain. He lost himself in the wind, the roughness of Frau's coat under his fingers and the all-encompassing blue.

Frau knew instinctively that this was Teito's first ride on a Hawkzile. He could tell by the way the boy's hands unconsciously loosened around his waist and the head-in-the-clouds look on his face when Frau glanced back with the corners of his eyes. A strange pride infused him for being the first one to give Teito this experience.

Which made it all the more disappointing when the Hawkzile suddenly began to slow down in midair. The engine must have run out of power and with nothing to propel the bike, the hawk-dragon flagged under the combined weight of the machinery and its two passengers. The bike started to descend, rapidly.

"Frau?" Teito cried.

"Hang on, kid!" Frau yelled as he tried to steady their descent.

The hawk-dragon squawked and flapped its wings frantically as it tried to regain itself but they were too heavy. If he didn't do something fast they were all in trouble.

Frau wrapped an arm around Teito and stood up on the seat of the bike. It tilted forward as it fell, and Frau struggled to balance on the bike until they were about twenty meters from the ground.

Then he jumped.

Teito screamed at him as they fell from a height of about six stories. "Frau, you crazy pervert-bishop! If we die I'll come back and haunt you!"

"Tch, I know what I'm doing, damn brat!" Frau said as he concentrated. They were lucky to have made it out of the town and reached the edge of the forest before the engine gave out. He landed hard with a crack on the uppermost branch of a tall tree and he quickly bounced off it to another tree as it fell away under his feet.

"Didn't I—hah—tell you?" Frau said as he tried to catch his breath. Beside him, Teito was clutching at the tree trunk like a lifeline and looking towards the ground with bulging eyes.

"That you're crazy?"

Frau gave him a smirk that was somehow only enhanced by his bedraggled appearance. "I was born to fly," Frau said smugly as he blew a sweat-soaked strand out of his eyes.

Teito rolled his eyes but secretly he thought Frau was a bit more heroic than he let on, even if he was too rough around the edges to be a conventional hero. Frau looked like an outlaw really, and it was with that thought in mind that Teito told Frau seriously,

"You must have been a pirate in your past life."

To Teito's surprise, the bishop abruptly choked on air.

.

.

When they found the Hawkzile, it was beyond the edge of the forest near the roadside. The hawk-dragon was able to make a safe landing without their weight hindering it and was unharmed but made irritated sounds at Frau as he fiddled around the bike's engine.

"Is it broken?" Teito peered over Frau's shoulder.

"Actually, it looks like we ran out of gas." Frau looked sheepish.

Teito narrowed his eyes at the bishop. "You didn't make sure you had enough fuel before going to town?"

"Ehh."

"Stupid pervert bishop!" Teito yelled.

The Hawkzile squawked in agreement.

"Et tu?" Frau said with a forsaken look at the Hawkzile.

Teito sighed and slapped a hand to his forehead. "The manor's twenty miles away!" he lamented.

"Che, looks like we're going to have to walk it," Frau said as he stood up and brushed off dirt from kneeling on the ground. "C'mon, kid. We've got a long way to go."

Teito sighed again and trotted after the blond but stopped in his tracks when he realized what direction they were going.

"Frau, wait," he grabbed the back of the bishop's duster to make him stop.

"What?"

"You're going the wrong way." Teito pointed west, away from the line of trees Frau had set off for. "The manor's this way."

"No, actually the manor is this way. It'll cut off two-thirds of the time if we just go straight through the forest instead of going all the way around."

"Wait a second, Frau! We can't go through the forest! It's dangerous, everyone knows that."

"Oh?" Instead of looking frightened, Frau just looked intrigued. "No one ever told me that. What do you mean dangerous?"

Teito scuffed his shoes against the ground. "It's just…I'm not sure exactly how to explain it. People just disappear in there and they never come back. I hear the servants gossiping about it all the time and a few people have even gone to my father about it." He threw a wary look at the trees, as if he expected the lost people to suddenly pop out of them.

"Hmm. The people here have never tried searching for them?"

"Of course they have! But everyone that goes in after them usually gets lost as well. It's not everyone that disappears but enough that people don't go in there anymore," Teito explained.

Frau ran a hand through his blond spikes as he thought about it. "But I don't get it. On the way to town, you passed through the forest. If it's as dangerous as you say…."

"That was just the outskirts though, and it was necessary to get out. It's what makes the manor so well-protected. It's really close to the forest and even partly surrounded by it."

"Heeh, must have been hell building the manor there." He cast a contemplative gaze on the forest, which looked dark and shadowy even in the sunny day. Beyond the first line of trees, one could see nothing but darkness.

"No one ever found out what was causing the people to disappear?" Frau asked.

Teito shook his head. "No."

He eyed the bishop carefully, who was slowly narrowing his eyes and absentmindedly rubbing at his right arm as if it were in pain.

"Frau?"

Frau blinked. "Ah, whatever. Let's get going and hopefully we'll get back before they start serving supper," Frau said and he not-so-gently pushed Teito up ahead of him so that the boy stumbled a bit.

The boy loudly protested this action, and Frau vaguely said something that he didn't remember once it left his mouth.

He glanced back at the dark line of trees and carefully gripped his right arm.

There was something in that forest alright, something bad. Frau could tell because of the abrupt pangs of hunger that came from his right arm.

The bastard's scythe was suddenly ravenous.

.

.

AN: I wasn't planning on continuing this story but I found this chapter from October 28, 2010 lying in my files. I think I wrote it and didn't upload it earlier because I had been planning another chapter until my vicious bout of writer's block hit me. I thought I might as well upload this chapter now since I don't know when I'll continue updating this story. Unfortunately this fic and my other chaptered fic are still on indeterminate hiatuses. =(