SlippingSanity : I'm sorry for not updating this story! It's been on mind, but I've been caught up in Kai/Max Rei/Tyson fics and...well...I'm so sorry and I will try to update this story as common (yeah right) as I update my other stories!

Disclaimer : I do not own...

Chapter Two

Rei and Kai remained fear-struck, not one of them moving, breathing, or even thinking. Whatever was going on...No! Nothing was happening! Nothing was going on!

...So why does Max and Tyson stand right there...right before them?

Movement and breathing slowly seeped into the two boys. Slowly, hesitantly, they turned away from the two boys smiling happily at them. Their eyes landed on two deathly pale, near-dead, fragile boys laying on two bloodstained hospital beds. Rei shakily turned his head towards the team captain, silently asking if what he was seeing real, and did the other see it as well. Kai never met his eyes, but from the way Kai's crimson eyes were opened, no reply was needed.

"Hey Rei, are you okay?" The nekojin heard a voice from behind him ask.

"Max..." Rei whispered lowly, almost inaudibly.

Said boy walked foward, nodding in responce.

"Yes?"

Rei didn't answer him. He only repeated the blond's name, voice dropping lower and lower with each repeation. Max blinked at his friend, a sad expression replacing the smile he'd worn a few seconds earlier.

Tyson turned away from Max and Rei towards the team captain. He placed his hand on Kai's shoulder, recoiling as he saw the other shiver slightly from the contact.

"You're not gonna freak out on me, are ya Kai?" Tyson asked in a joking tone, a forced smile on his lips, sad eyes giving away the fact that he was far from joking.

Tyson stared at the slate haired teen for a bit, hoping beyond hope that Kai wouldn't freak out like Rei. He hoped that Kai would turn towards him and talk to him, heck he would have even prefered it if Kai yell at him or even cuss him out! Kai, however, did none of those. Kai didn't do anything at all. He stared at the body on the stretcher and...stared. It was as though Kai had turned away from him and turned himself off.

Tyson looked towards the side, sadly staring at the polished floor, listening to the overlapping words and saying of the still arguing doctors.

Rei opened him mouth slowly, slightly, and whispered. No one noticed, and no one heard. He opened his mouth and repeated his words.

"Max...is that...really you?" Low, broken, but still heard.

Max nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Yeah Rei, it's me."

"And Tyson, is that you too?" Kai questioned in the same tone and Rei.

"Yep!" Tyson laughed, "in the flesh!"

Kai and Rei shook their heads in disagreement.

"What?" Max questioned the action

"No you're not."

Tyson and Max locked eyes with one another, nodding at the other before walking and looking down at their own bodies. Max inhaled sharply, placing his hand over his mouth, lest he threw up...somehow.

"What!" Tyson yelled, shaking his head in disbelief at the picture before him, "This...This can't be us!"

"Yeah!" Max yelled removing his hand from his mouth and clenching it into a fist, "I agree with Tyson! These people are't us!"

"Yes. They are," Rei responded, trying to ignore the sadness in the other boys eyes, and trying to ignore how it hurt himself, created an empty feeling in his chest.

They two boys continued to argue, yelling and tossing their arms. Just what were Rei and Kai trying to pull! These two boys, no, corpses were them? Yeah, very 'likely', especially since Tyson and Max were right there! Yeah, these corpses most certainly not them.

"Quiet!" Kai yelled at them, "Stop actiong like toddlers!"

"You've got some nerve!" Tyson yelled back.

"Yeah!" Max agreed.

"Nerve about what?" Rei asked, although his loud and harsh tone made it seem as though he joined the others in yelling at one another.

"Us acting like toddlers!" Max argued.

"Who comes up with some sick joke like this!" Tyson demanded, his tone very, very angry.

"This is not a joke!" Kai yelled back, pointing at the bodies, "You two are dead!"

No one spoke after that. No one blinked. No one breathed. The last four words out of Kai's mouth seemed to echo off of the walls and bounce back into everyones ears. The silence of the room seemed to further help the echoing, though the words were gone.

"Y-you're k-kidding...right?" Max squeaked softly, looking towards Rei, silently begging for it to be a joke. The raven haired boy closed his amber eyes, turning his head away. Any trace of hope that filled the younger boys' face vanished.

"Us? Dead?...Kai?" Tyson asked, only to get the same reply from Kai as Max did Rei.

Rei and Kai stood still, a deep, empty pit of sadness filling within. It hurt to tell two people you knew closly such a thing, and to be on the recieving end of it must be even worse. One question still filled them though : How is it that they can still see Tyson and Max, even though they're gone?

One question arose many others. Was that even them they saw? How is such a thing possible? The two older boys even began to wonder if Max and Tyson were right, and they were never dead at all...

"Are you two okay?"

Crimson and amber eyes opened, only to see the nurse that brung them to the room and doctors surrounding them.

"Yeah..." Rei answered.

"Where are they?" Kai asked noticing the bodies of Tyson and Max missing, slapping away the hand of a doctor that felt his forehead.

"We removed them from the room," A doctor answered, "during the short minute you two passed out."

"Passed out?" Rei rose an eyebrow. A nod was his responce.

"Are you sure you two are fine?" another nurse asked.

"Why do you keep asking?" Kai moreso demanded than asked.

"You two were talking, yelling even, at, well, a wall" A random doctor replied.

"No." Rei spoke, waving a hand lazily as if he were dismissing the doctor's words, "No, we were talking to Max and Tyson, weren't we Kai?"

Kai didn't speak, only nodded his head in reply.

The doctors began to murmur amonst themselves, before addressing the teens once again.

"Talking to Tyson Granger and Max Tate?" the nurse asked, looking at he clipboard for the names before returning to the seated teens.

"Yes" They answered in unison.

"I don't see what you mean."

"They were right there" Kai pointed at a vacant spot where the two bladers once stood. The murmuring began once more before the nurse turned to them.

"I'm sorry to tell you ...but no one was there."