Disclaimer: I don't own Baten Kaitos. Although I did say that in the last chapter...

Chapter One: Beginning of the Fall

"What happened here?" Vera asked her new partner. They were standing in front of a ruined building, possibly a home. Kalas kept his hood up, and had spoken to her only in whispers since they had come to the town, even though it was still in the middle of the night and no one was out. The wreck of the building looked fairly recent, as if it had only happened a few days before… "Kalas? You haven't said anything to me in over an hour. You've just been standing here, looking at this wreck. Please tell me what's wrong?" she begged.

"I think it's safe now."

"Safe for what?"

"Safe enough to try and find his body. I want to give him a decent burial."

"…this was… your home, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

They searched for several hours. The wreckage was horrible, as the building had been ravaged by some sort of fire. The second and first stories had fallen into the basement, leaving a depression in the back half of the house. Kalas spent the rest of the night moving wreckage, talking only sparingly to Vera. In turn, Vera only made two or three attempts to start a conversation. She felt uncomfortable, trying to strike up a discussion about anything with this stranger whom she knew nothing of save his name. Kalas hadn't said much to her in the hours since they had bonded. And, upon seeing the wreck of his once-home, she could understand why.

Halfway through the night, the sky clouded, for which Vera was silently grateful. The clouds made it harder for her to see the devastation.

About two hours before dawn, it started to rain. This didn't bother Vera at all, but she wasn't so far gone from humanity that she had forgotten what it was like to be cold and wet and miserable. "Kalas…"

"Not now, Vera. I have to do this."

His rejection stung, and why Vera was not certain. She was used to rejection, why did the rebuke of someone she had known for not even twelve hours sting so? Perhaps it is because he is handsome, and I am unused to being on cordial terms with good-looking teenage boys? No, that wasn't it; it was something unfamiliar and infinitely more complex. What was it?

Dawn came, and the rain did not slacken. Kalas moved another blackened beam with a weary grunt, he was exhausted, but he couldn't finish. He must truly love whoever died here…

Kalas let out a strangled sob, and Vera took a closer glimpse at what he had unearthed.

It was a charred human hand.

Kalas threw himself at the wreckage like a man gone mad, pawing his way through the rubble. His hands became bloody from splinters and shrapnel and jagged pieces of what had once been machines, but he ignored the pain in his fervor to get to the bottom of the pile.

What Kalas unearthed was a man (At least, Vera thought it was a man, his face was so badly disfigured that it could have belonged to either a man or a woman), his body badly burned by the blaze that had consumed his home. Vera could distinguish on his corpse several gunshot wounds and a long slash that ran from his left shoulder to his right hip, a neat, diagonal slash that could have been left by some sort of sword or spear or scythe. When Kalas hoisted up the mangled body, several metal things fell from the ashes of what had possibly been a belt. They were partially melted, but looked like they might have been tools at some point in time.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Kalas screamed into the morning air. He rose up, his wings flaring out as he screamed his rage and despair at the uncaring gray sky before crumpling around the body and started to sob. Vera felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes, a sensation that set off alarm bells in the back of her head, and she knelt down and tried to pat Kalas on the shoulder. Her hands went right through him, of course, but his sobs quieted slightly, as if he could sense the gesture and was grateful for it.

"I… I didn't find anything for so long, I had hoped that he had gotten away somehow. Even though I saw that bitch shoot him, even though that bastard with the scythe got him across the chest… I had hoped, maybe, that he had gotten out…" He choked back another sob and continued, "but he didn't. He's dead, just like Fee. They're both gone, and I'm all alone.

"Um… I know I'm not worth much… and I'm not as good as a living person, who can be touched, but… for what it's worth… I'm here. As long as you don't leave me, I will stay by your side."

"Vera… ah, I'm sorry, I forgot you were there," Kalas said. "I've sort of been ignoring you…"

"Hey, from what I can tell, you've had a hectic night. Maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on… later. You need to bury him first. Bodies decompose faster when they're wet."

"R-right," he murmured, still seeming badly out of focus. Probably having a breakdown. Hell, if my whole family had been murdered in one night, I'd be a wreck too…

"Hey, it's the one-winged freak!"

Both of them whipped around. Kalas's screams of anguish had drawn a small crowd, inhabitants of the town, mostly children and the shifty, ill-clothed and/or mean looking folk that every town is plagued with: the troublemakers.

"How come you didn't die when those two Imperial freaks came in and burned the house down?" someone else shouted. Kalas visibly flinched.

"It's your fault Georg's dead! People with only one wing are bad luck!"

"One-wing! One-wing!"

"Malformed wings mean a malformed heart! You're nothing but trouble, Kalas!"

Red started to tint the edges of Vera's vision, as she flashed back to a place both a long time ago and far, far away…

"...such a shame… they're such nice people, and that girl is such a burden…"

"Really? I think that's what they get for taking risks on such experimental drugs. Some people just aren't meant to have children…"

"She's nothing but a useless drain of the family assets… She's lucky her father's such a successful lawyer, or they never would have been able to afford her upkeep…"

"Vera's sick again? But, Mommy, we were supposed to finally go to Disney world!"

"Not that I believe this, but …they say that she can shout command words and funny things happen…"

"…Vera's always sick! Something like this always happens, whenever we're about to do something fun!"

"…unnatural things… like some boys were talking with her, just playing, mind you, not picking on her…"

"You're never there for me! You always have to rush off and take care of her!"

"…and she shouted 'wind!' A nearby tree was struck by lightning a moment later…"

"She's the worst big sister ever!"

"…almost like she's a witch, no?"

"I wish… I WISH SHE'D NEVER BEEN BORN!"

"Shut up!" Vera screamed, trying to clutch her head to drown out the voices. "All of you, shut up and go away!"

And as she screamed that, the gathered townspeople heard her voice for the first time. And a few thought they saw flickers of a girl dressed in blue, tearing at her black hair and screaming silently in pain…

Words sprang into Vera's head, as they always did whenever she truly called upon the magic. "I am the Water, the Dispeller of Fire!" Blue light gathered around Vera and Kalas, and the water that was all over from the rain started to gather into energy. "Sacred Spring!"

Water erupted from the ground. If it had gone off directly beneath the feet of the townsfolk, it surely would have killed most of them. However, Vera's blind rage had ruined her aim, and the water bust up in a frothing fountain directly between the startled townspeople and the bewildered Kalas.

"I'm only here to bury Gramps!" Kalas shouted at the shell-shocked townsfolk. "And I swear, after this, I will never set foot in Balanicore again! So just leave me alone, you hear? Or next time, I'll kill you!"

Some of the townspeople nodded at him numbly, others seemed too paralyzed by what they had just seen to do even that. They all left in a hurry, though. "I'm sorry I took credit for…"

"No hard feelings," Vera responded numbly. "Probably easier for them to believe that you did that than a dead girl trying to kill them, eh?"

"That was amazing, though," Kalas said, managing a tiny half-smile. "You really are powerful."

Amazing? Maybe… it's also the closest I've ever come to really killing someone…

Four hours later, a little outside of town, they buried the man named Georg, who Vera learned had been Kalas's grandfather. Kalas said a few words. Vera sang Amazing Grace. Kalas cried some more.

"Alright, I'm done," Kalas sighed, angrily wiping the last of the tears off his face. "No more crying. Tears are for the weak."

"…" Vera wasn't quite sure she agreed with that, but now didn't seem like the right time to tell him.

"Vera. I suppose you might have wondered why I wanted a Guardian Spirit?" Kalas asked.

"Well…" Although she had been too delighted to question why Kalas and the other girl were doing in an area that she could tell hadn't been inhabited by humans… ever… she had begun to question once given time to think.

"Vera, I need your help." He looked right at her when he said this, but there was no way he could see her. She couldn't see herself. It had to be simply a lucky guess. "I want you to promise me that you'll help me."

"…" she didn't want to say yes, not without knowing what was required of her, but how could she say no after everything that had happened? "Very well. I will do as you ask."

"Do you give me your word?"

"…Yes."

"Alright. We're going to have to lay low for a few days. Maybe I'll show you Reverance. Most people who aren't from Mira think it's a really weird place. After that, we're going to have to head back to Balanicore for one last time."

"Why?"

"We have to meet that girl. The one who was there when we bonded. I made a promise to her, too," Kalas said.

"What's her name, again?"

"Melodia."

Phoenixfire: Wow! I updated!

YamiPhoenixfire: You're lazy.

Phoenixfire: No! Go away! You weren't supposed to interfere with this story.

YamiPhoenixfire: Too bad.

Phoenixfire: (Presses button. YamiPhoenixfire is ejected into the closet.) Okay. First of all, thank you for reading the second chapter of White Shadows. I think the next chapter or two are also going to be about what happened before Kalas and the Spirit go to Celebari and meet Xelha. I'm not interested in doing a retelling of the whole game (cause I'm waaaaay too lazy for that) so I'll probably skip from Celebari to the Lava Caves and Kalas's betrayal. Because it's only after that that things start to get really interesting

For everyone out there who is also a fan of Crimson Rain, I don't think I'm going to be able to get another chapter up before the end of the weekend. However, I'm dressing up as one of my characters from that story this year… stupid Wal-Mart, if they'd just had ONE ghost costume left for me to cut up, I wouldn't have to resort to this…

I would like to thank chise, Katrina Ice Angel of Darkness, Karina Gomez, Fan Fan Girl, and Luna-Starr for reviewing. I hope you will continue to read in the future.

(wow… and to think that this entire chapter was inspired by one short scene in the opening…)