Mai's eyes flickered open a second before Johns. Base was dark, and they were still lying on the floor. Sitting up they noticed the sun had set.

"You've been out for hours." Naru said from the couch. "What happened?"

"I was able to pull him into my astral plane, Gene sent us back from there" she said getting to her feet, Naru rose with her.

"Well, it's been a rough night; I'm going to bed Kazuya." John said slipping from the room.

Naru glanced at Mai questionably; John was not an assertive person. She only shrugged "It was a bad memory, Gene says you're next on the hit list" she said glumply.

Naru nodded and silently followed Mai from SPR, out in the hallway he stopped her. "Mai, please don't do anything like that again without telling me." He said sternly. She couldn't see him in the dark hallways but she could feel his nerves in his grip on her wrist. She smiled and touched his face.

"If I was well collected and thought everything through I wouldn't be Mai." She kissed him in the dark, it was meant to be a light kiss but Naru wasn't having it. He gently pushed her against the hallway walls and deepened the kiss. She ran her hands into his hair as he ran his tongue across her lip.

"It's been a while." Naru said traveling kisses down her neck.

"We're on a job." She reminded him smiling. "Did you even hear me at the apartment? Got to work, chase a skirt. After this job is over we'll go home." She said smiling; she was going to tease him.

"What are we going to do?" he asked still kissing her neck, slowly heading south.

"We're going to walk in to the apartment *kiss* we're going to take off our shoes *kiss* go back to the bedroom *kiss* and change the sheets" she finished smiling. She heard something like a growl in his chest.

"You're forgetting something." He said smiling, bringing his kisses back to her lips. "The ghost is targeting me, which means I can't go to sleep. This means I have nothing but time."

"You have a filthy mind Oliver." She said laughing.

"What are you talking about? I was asking for tea."

She shoved him and slapped his shoulder. "You never change."

"Well we better go together" Naru said slipping his hands into his pockets

"For safety reasons?" she teased leading him down the hallway.

"Of course Mai, I'm nothing if not professional at the work place." He said with the emotionless face she'd come to know so well over her stay at SPR.

"Is that why you keep trying to do it on your desk?" she whispered seductively into his ear, she was being a tease and she knew it.

He said nothing, just sighed exasperated. "And look what my efforts have gotten me." He muttered just low enough for himself to hear.

Mai just rolled her eyes and looped her arm though his as they entered the kitchen. With Naru sitting Mai set straight to work preparing his tea, after a moment she sat down next to him placing the tea carefully. "So do you want to talk about it?" he asked sipping his tea

"Talk about what?"

"What you experienced in your dream, the things you astral projected…."

"Naru, I'll talk about it when I'm ready." She whispered running her finger around the lip of her tea cup.

"Mai….just…..don't hold it in alright? If you can't talk about it find some way to vent."

She scoffed rolling her eyes. "Is that what you did? Vent?"

Naru sighed and put down his tea cup. "No, worst, I didn't and now I'm a narcissist." He pointed out carefully. "You don't want to end up like me"

"Oh and why not? What's so bad about you?" she said turning her cinnamon eyes onto him.

"Besides the extreme lack of not complete nonexistence of my social skills?" He mocked rolling his eyes.

"It's just difficult for you to open up Naru, it's no big deal. Some people are more open than others."

He sipped the last of his tea, deciding he was done with this conversation. "So, any theories on this spirit?" Naru asked.

"Actually, I do have one idea." Mai said after a thoughtful moment. "Maybe the spirit feeds on people's fears and worst memories because it has fears of its own, things it want to forget. So it soaks itself in other people's pain to forget why he was feeling it in the first place. What if we find out what it fears and scare him?"

Naru nodded "That's a thought, or it could just be a kind of spirit like the lemurs was. Just feeding, so old the past wouldn't matter at this point. But I'll think on it."

Mai sipped the last of her tea before rinsing out the mugs. "Well, we should…well….I was going to say get to sleep but." Her words wandered off.

"I'll stay at base with Lin Mai, you go get some rest." He said leading her out of the kitchen towards the girls room.

"Are you sure?" Mai asked pausing her hand on the door knob. "I don't mind staying up."

"No, you should get some rest." Naru insisted pushing the door open for her gently.

She kissed his cheek and dipped under his arm into the room, closing the door slowly. Naru walked straight past base, if Mai thought he was going to cower from a fight then she was dead wrong about him, even if she had asked him to. But after seeing what Mai had to relive, what in his past could possibly be as bad? Other than Gene's death of course. No, he was going to meet this beast head on. And he was going to destroy it.

It took three minutes to fall asleep after Naru found an abandoned room, it would take SPR a while to find him that would give him time until Mai jumped into his dreams.

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