Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned or used in this story, except for the one from whose point of view this story is told. Any and all of the other characters belong to Team Shanghai Alice.

Chapter 21: Poisonous Nightmares

A field of flowers. I was going to panic, but they weren't the same as before. Brighter, and in multiple colors. I calmed down. I wasn't going to be attacked.

A river ran in front of me. To my right was a forest of trees and bamboo. My left, a large lake. The sun was shaded by a thin cloud.

It was a realm of nothing but peace. A gentle breeze toyed with my hair and white robe.

An orb of light spawned to life, and a young girl appeared in front of me, across the river. The light shined down upon her in a way that seemed almost holy. Her hair was a short, beautiful blue, with two small pigtails out the sides. Her face was unlike any I had ever seen before. Her dress was as blue as her hair.

A slight shadow fell across her, and I saw wings. Big white wings, coming out of her back. An angel….

She walked at me, her wings folded behind her. I stood there, waiting.

With more ease than a water strider, she walked over the water. Her feet never disturbed the surface of the river.

Her steps went upward, and she was floating in midair. No longer walking, she wafted over to me. Just like an angel.

Eventually, she was above me, eclipsing the sun. All I could see was her face, and wings flapping slowly to hold her up. Her eyes were as blue as the lake, but to me, they glowed much brighter.

She smiled gently down upon me. Her mouth didn't move, but I heard a voice. "Thank you."

Thank you? What was she thanking me for? What had I done?

Again, the voice. "Do not speak." I obeyed.

She leaned down and held my face in her hands as her eyes closed.

Her lips felt strangely warm on mine.

When we parted, I saw she had tears in her eyes. I wanted to say something. To tell her not to cry. To tell her to not feel sad.

Suddenly, she began to disappear. Fade away. Blown by the wind.

No, don't go. Where are you going?

The sunlight turned away its gaze, obscured by clouds. Everything suddenly twisted itself into darkness. The river was dried up, the riverbed cracked. The trees were dead, the bamboo wilted. The lake was polluted and black. The flowers all around me were lifeless, gray petals on the floor.

What's going on? What happened?

An amalgam of black void swirled across the river. It took on the form of a young woman. Darkness swirled around her like an aura or shield. Her dress was a whirling cacophony of red and black, and her skin was no less chaotic.

She did not speak at all. I didn't want her to. What was she? What had she done to the nature around us?

The black woman walked over the empty river, stopping a few meters in front of me. Wherever her feet touched, puddles of black goop were left in her wake. She waved a hand.

A portal of black appeared on her left. When it died away, there was the angel, chained to the floor by coils of darkness. Pulsing red bindings held her wings shut. Her blue dress was tattered and ripped. She didn't look at me.

What are you doing? Why are you doing this? How could you do that to an angel?

The woman closed the hand, and the chains snapped shut. The angel was utterly broken, shattered into hundreds of white and blue pieces. A piercing sound, and the entire world cracked, gouges in the sky spider-webbing across my vision.

I felt like my soul had just been crushed. You killed an angel. How could you do such a monstrous thing?

The woman looked at me with blank white eyes. A manic white smile stretched across her face. She twisted her head to the side at an impossible angle; a sure sign of madness.

"You're next."

A pool of black suddenly spawned under me, and black chains shot out, trapping me in place.

She held out a hand. And closed it.

My vision fragmented. And everything fell to pieces.

"Gah!"

My breath came in shuddering waves. Those beautiful and terrifying images were burned into my mentality.

A startled cry. I turned left just in time to see a fairy dressed like a maid scurrying out the door. I could have been hallucinating, but I thought I saw a set of rabbit ears on its head, and a fluffy white tail out the back of its dress.

The surroundings were calm and old fashioned. Most everything was made of wood, and laid itself out in the way a hospital would, with several beds and tables accompanying them. A window opposite of my side of the room had slightly-open curtains, letting in a shaft of morning light.

What the… Where was I? And when did I change into this white robe?

A few seconds later, footsteps could be heard. Through the door came a teenaged girl with long light purple hair.

"Oh! You're awake," she said, surprised. "You woke up earlier than oshisho-sama said you would."

She walked to my bedside and gave me a once over. She was wearing a white dress shirt with a long red necktie, hanging free of the blue skirt below it. For the most part, she looked normal, but I didn't want to relax. Again, the red eyes struck, and I felt the need to run, but her eyes reflected concern, not insanity.

What I didn't quite understand, however, was her ears; while it didn't look like she had human ears despite her human appearance, the rumpled rabbit ears on her head looked like they had been tacked down with buttons.

"Where… where am I?" I asked.

"You're inside Eientei, in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. You're under Kaguya-hime's care right now. My name's Reisen. I helped take care of you."

I nodded. "I'm… Kaito."

"Are you feeling alright? You were in quite a terrible state when you came to us three nights ago."

Three nights? I'd been sleeping for three days straight?

"I…" I tried to say something. Suddenly, sharp pain stabbed into my chest. "Ack!" I blurted out, grabbing the center of my chest.

"Whoa!" Reisen gently pushed me back down. The bed felt soft, and the linens were thin, but warm. "Seems like you're not completely healed yet. You may be able to move around, but you should stay in bed for a while longer."

I grunted in response. I looked up at her worried face. Then her purple hair reminded me of something. Wasn't she the girl who had opened the door that other night?

That night….

I gasped as horrifying images flooded my mind: a flower field, laughter, poison darts….

"Nitori-chan!"

I shot up in my bed again. My legs could hardly move, but I shifted them anyways, drawing them out from under the covers to hang over the floor.

"Wait, take it easy," she pleaded. "You're not feeling that well yet."

I slid off the bed, nearly stumbling on my numbed legs. I barely managed to keep myself up, and grabbed Reisen by the shoulders. Half for balance, half for a stable location to channel my panic.

"The girl I came here with," I said urgently. "Where is she? Is she alive?"

"You really shouldn't be up like this!"

"Is she alive?" I was ready to cry. Had I saved her? Was my endeavor all for nothing?

My desperation seemed to be enough. She nodded her head, and pointed behind me. "O-oshisho-sama said she would live. She's about two beds down that way from yours."

I released my grip and began trying to move myself over. My legs refused to listen, and I fell face-first into the floor. Damn all that poison!

"Here," Reisen offered. "Let me help you."

She took one of my arms and slung it over her shoulders. Her other arm gripped my side, and she half-carried me over to the seat by the other bed. It took some effort, but she managed to get me to sit in the chair.

Nitori was resting under the thin layer of sheets. Her face had color once more, but she wasn't moving at all, save for the steady rising and falling of her chest. She was dressed in a white robe like mine, and her hat was on the bedside table.

"Reisen-san…" I murmured, pulling myself and the chair closer. "Sorry about that. My outburst was uncalled for, but… Your oshisho-sama… she said Nitori-chan would live?"

"Yes, but we don't know how long it will take for her to wake up. The poison took a large toll on her body. We almost weren't able to identify what she was poisoned with until we found out it was the same as what was infecting you."

The poison… I didn't know where the darts had hit me, but Medicine had said Nitori took five of them in my place, while three others got through.

"And… you were able to cure her?" I asked, aghast.

"That's right," came a voice from the doorway.

"Ah, oshisho-sama!"

I turned just in time to see Reisen bowing at her authority figure. When I saw who it was, I couldn't have been happier.

"E-Eirin-sama!"

"I must say," the silver-haired doctor said pleasantly as she walked over. "I'm quite astonished to see you awaken before the girl. She may have been stuck with more darts than you, but from what we observed, your darts were embedded in your skin for a longer period of time. Had we not pulled them out when we did, the poison would have completely overcome your body before we could do anything about it."

I looked away shamefully. So Eirin was Reisen's mistress? Now I was nearly sure that Nitori would live. That didn't really excuse my idiotic behavior, though. "M-my apologies, Eirin-sama. I wasn't thinking of my personal health. All I could think of was saving Nitori-chan."

"A noble notion," she agreed, smiling. "But that's beside the point. Aside from the poison coursing through your veins that claw slash on your chest was not easy to close up either."

"Claw slash…." I vaguely remembered Mystia slashing me with her nails. That had been that sharp pain that I felt; it still wasn't healed. A hand drifted up to my chest, and I could feel something rough underneath the robe.

"That slash cut all the way down to the body of your sternum, slicing off large parts of the origins of your pectoralis major, and very nearly missing the upper left section of your rectus abdominis. Had the slash gone much further on either side, then it may have hit your serratus anterior and left deltoid as well. Conventional medicines to heal injuries – like the one I gave you a week ago – would not have worked due to the size of the wound, so we had to give you sutures, instead only applying topical medicines to help speed up the recovery process. Also, you had lost a considerable amount of blood by the time we were able to treat you, and required several minor transfusions, which was difficult considering your blood type. Thankfully, however, we were able to restore your blood levels after some time. Too late, and you would have succumbed to blood loss."

I could only nod. Somehow, I was able to understand what she was saying nearly perfectly. I didn't know where the knowledge came from though. The outside?

The next part, I understood less so. "Also," Eirin continued. "You were apparently exposed to a moderate level neurotoxin that would have paralyzed your entire nervous system. Thankfully, you were not exposed to the toxin long enough, so while it did make quite a few nerve endings go numb, its affects went no further than that.

"However, the poison darts had been continually injecting you with a certain toxin designed to target and break down bodily tissues and organs, primarily targeting the lungs and heart in an attempt to force cardiac arrest. I had expected the poison to kill you on the spot, since it had been the poison of a suzuran flower. However, it seemed to have been diluted from its original state, and the darts had stuck into both your legs; a good distance away from any cardiac tissue. But that did not matter in any case; had the darts continued to do their job, you most certainly would have died. By the time I had identified the poison, you were already beginning to suffer from cardiac arrest. Surprisingly, your friend," she nodded at Nitori, "thanks to your actions, was not exposed long enough to experience the same effects, which makes it quite surprising that you would recover first when you were injected with considerably more toxin than her. On top of that, you're also human, so I had believed you would not survive the ordeal."

"Whoa… I didn't even know…"I said slowly. Then I grunted in pain, clutching my chest, but I shook it off. "But that means that if I survived, Nitori-chan will survive, right?"

Eirin nodded. "We're not sure how long it will take for her to awaken, but yes, she will survive."

Emotion completely overran all bodily processes when she said that, and I began to cry.

I had done it….

I managed to save her….

I promptly stood up, completely ignoring the fact my legs were still numb, and bowed deeply. Somehow, I managed to wrest back control just long enough to choke out "Thank you so much, Eirin-sama."

She nodded. Then she looked up into the ceiling, and said "I believe Kaguya-hime is calling me. If you will excuse me. Reisen, come!"

"Yes, oshisho-sama."

The two of them turned to leave (I noticed that Reisen, too, had a fluffy tail coming out her skirt). Before she exited completely, Reisen stopped.

"If you'd like, Kaito-san," she said. "You can choose to stay there for the time being, but please, go back into your own bed if you're not feeling well."

I nodded. She smiled, and left.

Nitori and I were alone.

I sat down (or rather, collapsed into the chair) and looked back upon her. She was in fitful rest, with nothing to disturb her here. She was going to make a full recovery.

A simple smile drew itself across my lips. What else could I do?

I sat there for what felt like hours. Occasionally, a stab of pain hit me, but I ignored it. I could have just fallen asleep, and it wouldn't have mattered.

For some reason, in a way I couldn't really understand, I thought she looked strangely cute asleep. Perhaps a little vulnerable too. Reisen's suggestion was pretty much completely forgotten; how could I rest in my own bed when I could rest here where I was close to Nitori, where she was safe?

I didn't feel like I had the strength anyhow, so any notion of returning to my own bed was more or less chucked out the window either way.

Suddenly, I got an odd picture in my head. That girl from my dreams… that angel… looking at Nitori's face, I realized they looked extremely similar. Perhaps even twins, maybe. Or even….

I shot up involuntarily, my face hot. Oh, no way. There's no way they could have been the same person….

… Right?

I shook my head. Geez, I sure jumped to some conclusions pretty quickly….

… But then again, I couldn't exactly deny the similarities. The same hair as blue as the sky… The same gently curved face… And were those angel wings I could see?

Wait, what?

I slapped myself across the face. I was drifting off into dream land. Thankfully, no one was around, so no one was able to watch my strange reactions to supposedly nothing.

Man, these are really strange thoughts. Come on, fate, you cannot be screwing with me like this. I hardly even know her!

There was no way emotions could evolve that fast. My brain was doing some pretty strange things if I was suddenly thinking about this kind of stuff so quickly.

Still, I could at least admit that the two of us had been through quite a bit together in one night.

Now that I thought about it, though… where had that spell card come from? As far as I could remember, no one else had been around to help, and Nitori had been hit with five poison darts all at once, though I didn't know exactly where, and was knocked cold almost instantly from the poison influx (how the hell did it not do that to me? Was it because I was hit with fewer darts?). She hadn't been able to help. And yet there it was, right when I wanted to take Mystia and Medicine out of the picture. And it had done an absolutely spectacular job at it. It had stopped time for a moment, and it had conjured up a hurricane to throw them away, all at once.

That wasn't the weirdest part, though. Aside from suddenly, conveniently being there, the incantation had been different. It wasn't the same as the languages everyone else, including me, had spoken before. What did that mean?

I sighed a little, resting my head in my arms on the bed. I stared at Nitori's sleeping face, in deep thought. That spell card had to belong to somebody, and whoever the person was, I'd have to thank them for giving it to me at that second.

But that still left questions unanswered. Like, why had the incantations been different? And why did it have two effects instead of one? It had used two different incantations all in one spell card, which shouldn't happen if my past experiences were anything to go by.

Then, something snapped me out of my reverie; a blinding flash suddenly emitted from my pocket.

"Whoa!" I yelped, trying to bunch up the robe to block the light.

It refused to remain hidden for some reason. What the heck was this?

A few seconds later, the light began to die down. Tentatively, I released the folds of the robe to allow the light come back as it receded. Once it looked like it had vanished completely, I reached into the pocket…

And pulled out a card.

It was pure white, just like the one from that night. Mild traces of light were still being emitted, and even as I looked at it, they were continuing to ebb away. Eventually, a picture began coming into view, taking up a large part of the center of the card. The rest remained white.

When it finished painting itself, the picture depicted a large white hurricane spinning against a background of two panes of broken white and black glass.

I turned the card over. Black words inked themselves into place. I read the name, uncomprehending – Time Storm: Split Second Hurricane.

My mind sort of broke.

Very flatly, I uttered out a simple "What."

This was the spell card I used last night.

No way….

It was mine?

I didn't have much time to process it. Something else took away my attention.

Nitori groaned.

I gasped, jammed the card back into my pocket, and threw my attention back to the stirring kappa. She wasn't giving any real sign of actually waking up; she was just stirring. Her eyelids twitched, as if she was concentrating, and her head was tossing.

I leaned in as far as I could without disturbing her, or letting myself topple unceremoniously out of my chair. "Nitori-chan. Are you awake, Nitori-chan?"

"Nngh…" she groaned again. It sounded like she was in pain. "No… Stay… Stay away. Don't…."

Oh man, she was having a nightmare. I leaned in a little closer. This time, I did fall out of the chair, but in a way that made little noise; instead of falling over like a tipped tree, the chair just slid back. I slipped into a kneeling position next to the bed. "Nitori-chan!" I called out urgently.

She paid me no heed. Her brow scrunched in pain as she continued talking in her sleep, drawing out the nightmare into reality. "Don't… Stop… N-not him… Please, no…." She started sounding desperate.

"Who?" I asked. I wasn't sure why, but I was afraid. Afraid of the nightmare she was seeing. Afraid of who or what was causing her pain. I just wanted it to stop. "Who is it, Nitori-chan?"

Her teeth clenched in apparent agony. "Not him, please… A-anyone but him… Me… Hurt me instead….

"Please, don't hurt him anymore!"

I recoiled in shock. The last statement had come out as a scream. A single, gleaming tear rolled down the side of her face.

I pushed as much strength as I could into my legs. They suddenly responded, and with the help of my arms, I sat myself back into the chair, pulled myself as close as possible, and leaned in closer to Nitori's face. One arm draped itself over her and pulled her closer into a hug. The other hand pressed itself onto her forehead.

"It's okay, Nitori-chan," I whispered soothingly into her ear. I didn't care who was causing the pain, and to whom. All I cared about was calming her down. It was hard trying, because I was almost ready to cry myself, seeing her like this.

I kept my cool as well as possible. "It's okay Nitori-chan, it's okay. They're not going to hurt him anymore. Everything's alright."

I gently patted her forehead reassuringly, slowly repeating myself. "It's alright now… Everything's okay… They won't hurt him…."

Slowly, but surely, her heartbeat, which had been quick under my arm, began to slow down. The strain on her face began to relax. I didn't let up until she was completely calm once more.

"There…" I said once she had mostly leveled out. "That's better now, right?"

Her breathing was heavy. While she may have been calm, the worry on her face was still apparent. She turned to me. "Is he… Is he safe?" she asked.

"Yes, he's safe." I replied, touching my forehead to hers. My hand was now behind her head, holding her there. "They can't hurt him anymore."

I was curious to know who 'he' was, but that didn't matter right now.

"Am I…."

"Yes… You're safe too. They can't hurt either of you now."

"You… Who …."

"I'm here to protect you. You're safe here with me."

Suddenly, her face grew hot. I tried to keep myself from doing the same. Repeating those words wasn't just to calm down Nitori; I repeated them to keep myself from panicking too. Now that I was no longer on the verge of a panic attack, I was reconciling the fact that I was really, really close to Nitori. Considerably closer than I felt comfortable with. But I didn't let go, nor did I draw away.

"W-will you… Will you stay… Here… With me?" she murmured.

I hesitated a moment. Now that I was more or less fully conscious of what I was doing, I wasn't sure how to respond.

Then I mentally smacked myself upside the head. What a stupid question to hesitate on.

"… Yes," I murmured back. "I'll stay here. With you."

She turned her body towards me. She drew one of her arms out from under the covers and wrapped it under my closest shoulder, placing her hand on my back. I thought I saw another tear slither down her face. "Please…."

I don't know why I did what I did next. I used all the strength I had, and once again, somehow willed my legs to move. I lifted up my left leg. Then my right. And I climbed into the bed next to Nitori. My arms tightened their grip and held her against me. I was no longer uncomfortable; just calm. All calm.

My legs were no longer mobile. I could feel my strength fading away once more. The pain in my chest was suddenly more apparent. I needed rest. My eyes were ready to close in deep sleep. I knew I was dangerously close to falling off the edge, but that didn't matter. I was here to protect Nitori.

"I'm here for you… Nitori-chan."

Her lips drew into a small smile. I heard her say one last thing before I drifted off into fitful rest.

"Thank you… Kaito-kun."

Author's Notes:

The general mood in this chapter seemed to flux around a lot, huh? Guess that was just the way it turned out...

Don't you just hate it when you're having a perfectly reasonable or really good dream and it suddenly just screws itself over at the drop of a hat? As in, you don't wake up, but the dream just practically throws itself off a cliff? That was basically the main "side effect" of the medicine I'm talking about in this chapter; bipolar dreams. And this is Eirin who made the medicine here, so it's not completely unpossible, considering it's Eirin.

You know, being in a physiology class helped with this. Aside from having the textbook at hand, prior knowledge of certain things - like, say, the anatomical positions of muscles - really did me a big favor.

This chapter, I personally like a lot. Sappy fluff moments aside, it lets me a bit more openly honest with myself. Why? Well, all that confusion with Kaito's emotions in the middle of the chapter? I actually do that in real life sometimes. I'm not kidding (well, this is getting rather personal, isn't it?). The mind works in very weird - and oftentimes completely awkward - ways, and this case is no different. Because as we all know, sometimes when the train of thought starts, it's hard to derail it. Anyone else who may have one way or another wound up running along a train of thought like the one in this chapter, raise your hands.

Yeah, that little spiel wasn't awkward at all, was it? Hehehe...

Anyways, the end of this chapter gives a perfect set-up for the beginning of the next one. Hope you enjoyed this chapter~

(Sorry, I did say the real story started a couple chapters ago, but it's going to take a while to get out of Eientei, and re-rail the actual story, so bear with. Sorry!)