A/N: Okay yeah. This chapter is short. Had to split it when it almost reached 9000 words! But I'm kind of glad because it just means Ooyama's weekend gets lots of chapters, which he deserves because I love him. …And Chapter 35 is one-third fairytale reading. Ehehe, not as bad as it sounds!

Thanks to ZainR and Cha0T1cPeace for the reviews!
ZainR:
They sure can, from my experience! They can certainly feel it when it's radiating powerfully from a lovestruck ninja! And Mitsuo is my favorite new recruit (no offense Ooyama).Glad you liked the humor as much as I liked writing it :D And that roommate proposal bit? 100 percent intentional... once I started writing it. As for the power thing, good connections actually! Keep that in mind as you prepare to be surprised.
Cha0T1cPeace: While for Yuri to be 7 months pregnant she'd gotta be knowingly hiding it for some reason just like (*insert frantic background shushing here*), I seriously love your theories for this story! When I read your review, I'd just finished outlining an AU plot from Saturday where Yuri is pregnant after all so I like the way you think. You've honed in on key points - maternal Yuri, Rumple interested in something a bit more convoluted than a pretty locket - so definitely keep it up. Meanwhile now you've given me more NaYuri ideas to daydream about, thank you for that. XD

Enjoy!


[Chapter 34]: Shadows of the Past


Since they'd found Ooyama, and were in the park anyway, the Battlefront unanimously agreed that this called for a reunion picture.

They took their traditional poses: Yuri beside Kanade, eyes closed and sleepy-looking; Otonashi to Yuri's right staring fondly at his wife from afar; Ayato to his right as the divine attention-grabber. Matsushita the Fifth settled on a simple crossed-arm stance this time. Yui was attacking Hinata's arm on the other end, her devil tail swinging so fast it was a blur in the photo.

The main difference was new addition Ooyama appearing beside Hinata. He had Fujimaki's arm draped comfortably around his shoulder, while Shiina stood to their left with the honor of holding Mitsuo reverently in her arms.

Since Yuri was tired, especially of walking, they headed back to Ayato's. There was a brief group-wide debate on whether or not they should go out to eat, as that was arguably another tradition of theirs. Some of them had already eaten earlier, dogs wouldn't be allowed, there was food at home, topics of that ilk. Hinata was craving a burger and Kanade a very particular smoothie, Fujimaki didn't want Ooyama to be the first one they didn't honor with a restaurant, and Ooyama was stuck between not wanting to be left out and not wanting to be a bother.

He enthusiastically made the deciding vote when he found out there was a huge bag of potato chips waiting for him. Eating out could wait until Sunday, provided everyone stayed for the weekend.

While Ayato unlocked the front door, Ooyama had a thought as he carefully wrangled the dog by his leash.

"Wait, should I take Mitsuo home first?" he asked, holding him back when the door opened. "I wouldn't want him to be any trouble."

"He's perfectly welcome," said Ayato, his decision not at all influenced by Shiina's baleful ruby glare. "Just keep an eye on him."

Ooyama and Shiina looked happy. They slipped past him to chase the dog inside, with Hinata and Yui following close behind them. He had to admit – the sound of small paws skittering across the floor was an endearing one.

As soon as she made it into the TV room, Yuri collapsed on the couch and sunk into the cushions. She grabbed a pillow, punched it a few times, and nuzzled into it with a sigh. "Man, I'm beat…"

"How long were you guys out walking around?" Ooyama asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway with some chips in hand. Mitsuo, who'd been doing some investigative sniffing of the new environment, padded over and looked up at him hopefully.

"Not very," said Matsushita the Fifth, nodding towards the couch. "Yurippe's just been running on fumes all day."

"Really?" Ooyama blinked. He peered at Yuri in concern. "Hey Yurippe, why are you so tired?"

"Yeah, seriously – tell us." Fujimaki came up behind him with a drink in hand. "Whatever it is, it's been bothering you." He considered the safety of the distance between himself and the couch, then continued, "Turned you into a real cranky-pants today."

Ayato snorted. Cranky-pants? Ten minutes around Ooyama and the guy had gone child-friendly. But then, God help anyone who called her anything worse when she was in this kind of a mood. He could see the shoe imprint on Fujimaki's face already.

Yuri glared briefly at Ayato for some reason (what? he didn't say anything!), then closed her eyes.

"It's nothing," she muttered into the pillow. "Just a bad dream I had last night."

That caught his attention. Since dreams in this life – some of them, anyway – occasionally held glimpses of a forgotten past, he couldn't help but feel curious. And even annoyingly hopeful. But she had said it was a bad dream, so he held that thought with caution.

Otonashi and Kanade joined her on the couch, Kanade's hand resting on Otonashi's arm as she leaned past him to see Yuri.

"What happened in the dream?" she asked gently.

Her husband added, in that wise doctor voice he liked to use, "It might help if you just talk it out."

"Careful, Otonashi," said Hinata, sitting down on the floor with Yui like he was about to hear a good campfire story. "Yurippe's subconscious is a real mess."

Yuri tried to swing out her leg and kick him in the face, and was thoroughly dismayed when her foot couldn't reach. So, in a momentary lapse of judgment, Ayato passed by and swatted him for her.

"Hey!" Hinata snapped, jerking his head around to search for the culprit. He rolled his eyes when he spotted him. "Oh, sure, defend your woman…"

Ayato back-stepped to swat him again.

"She's not my woman," he clarified, finding himself preemptively annoyed by the puzzled intrigue that had crossed Ooyama's face. In an effort to keep that conversation at bay, he nodded over at Yuri. "Tell us about the dream, Nakamura."

"Fine. Whatever." Yuri stared moodily at the ceiling, leaning into the cushions and holding the pillow to her chest. After a moment, she heaved a sigh. "Otonashi, Hinata, Kanade… do you remember how you found me in the Guild? The first time, I mean."

"When you were getting devoured by shadows?" Otonashi guessed.

The Battlefront members who hadn't been down there made the appropriate choked gasping noises for such a discovery (Ooyama dropped a chip in his shock that Mitsuo quickly snatched up). Still, the specification felt unnecessary to Ayato, who crossed his arms and scowled at the ground. It seemed like a purposeful exclusion.

"Right," said Yuri. She closed her eyes again, thinking. "It was just like that. Like the vision I had. Except I was in my house and not in a classroom, but there was still a desk and I was wearing the Afterlife school uniform. Then this crow flung itself through my window, and there was this surging river of shadows that poured in through the hole in the glass and just swept over me. Knocking me off my feet like it was nothing."

She shuddered, digging her nails deeper into the pillow.

"I swear, it was so real I could see the bits of computer data. I could feel them all trying to suck out my soul, it was really draining." For a moment, she paused to inhale deeply. Blissfully unaware of how green Ooyama had gone at this point, she finished with a tired grimace: "The shadows were thicker than water. Felt like I was actually going to drown. I woke up gasping for air, and then after that I was too afraid to go back to sleep."

Fujimaki winced, wrinkling his nose. "That's some awful stuff, Yurippe."

"You had to go through that in the Afterlife for real?" Ooyama cried, wringing his hands nervously at her.

This earned a slight frown from Yuri, who opened one eye to glare at her probing spectators. "Haven't you guys had shadow dreams too?"

Otonashi shrugged. "I guess, but nothing that vivid!" He turned to share a look with Kanade, who gave a confirming nod.

But hearing her dream, as intensely as she'd described it… for Ayato, it brought back a few unpleasant memories. One of them all too recent. If he closed his eyes now, he could probably see the little flecks of data dancing around behind his lids. The sea of red and black, the crushing weight of a demon fog, and the cold dread of slowly being depleted and invaded all at once…

"I had one a couple of weeks ago," he admitted.

And just like that he had every pair of eyes in the room fixed directly on him. The most intense of all being Yuri's.

"Yeah?" said Hinata, dumbfounded. "How'd yours go?"

He decided upon brief reflection that they didn't need to know context, so he skipped out on the prologue. "I was standing here in this room when everything went dark and it appeared behind me." Rubbing his chin, he turned and gestured toward the space between the TV and the kitchen doorway. "In fact, it showed up out of nowhere right over there!"

Ooyama yelped in great fear and leaped away from where he'd pointed, straight into Fujimaki's arms. The latter caught him unsteadily while Mitsuo made a fuss, then he rolled his eyes heavily at Ayato. "Oh come on, be serious."

Ayato scowled, squinting back at him. "I am serious."

"You just can't pass up the chance to make fun of Yurippe, can you?" Fujimaki said with a disapproving snort.

What? Did he think that was his sole purpose in Battlefront, to terrorize his ex-wife? Stupid underling. How dare he trivialize God!

"I'm merely telling you what I dreamt," he replied. "The shadow appeared in the darkness and lunged at me. Just like in the Afterlife. Wrapping around me and trying to…" He paused, glancing at Hinata and then at Otonashi while he wondered how to word this delicately. "Trying to burrow into my body."

"That's not how he put it the first time," Hinata said aside to Yui with a cheeky smirk.

But Yui just looked fascinated by all this. She'd been gone by the time the shadows came to the Afterlife, so of course it wasn't too surprising that she held detached curiosity towards the creatures.

"What was that even like?" she asked in a soft voice, welcoming the dog into her lap without dropping her gaze.

"Like bleeding out, I suppose." He played absently with the cuff of his sleeve, looking at his wrist and trying not to think of Yuri's deep red hand emerging from the shadows. "In a whirlwind of murk and black fog. It seeps into your skin and then deeper still, and you can feel it feeding on your soul while it trickles inside. And somehow you're being drained and filled at the same time."

He glanced up, shifted a stern gaze to Yui.

"You can't move when it's got you," he added, knowing by the gleam in her eye that she was imagining herself trying to get a shadow in a headlock. "All you can do is try to find enough willpower to resist the darkness."

Most of the Battlefront stared wide-eyed or open-mouthed, shifting uncomfortably in their spots. Ooyama, whom Fujimaki had lowered awkwardly to the floor, looked too sickly pale to mind or even notice.

"Cool," said Yui, mollified. She shrugged it off and gave Mitsuo a few scratches under the chin. Ayato shook his head at the woman, harrumphing under his breath.

Meanwhile, Otonashi blinked as if something had suddenly occurred to him.

"Hey, I get it…" he said, looking from Yuri to Ayato with gradual realization softening his brow. "You two must have the most intense dreams about it because you're the ones who've had the closest encounters with the shadows!"

"Besides Takamatsu, of course," Matsushita amended for him.

For once, Yuri regarded Ayato with more interest than thinly-veiled spite. She uncrossed her legs, leaning forward and resting her chin on her fist as she studied his face for the truth.

"You were almost consumed by a shadow?" she pressed, a sharp but wary glint in her eyes. She hesitated then, pursing her lips in thought. "Did you... did you wake up in a classroom or anything like that?"

What a strange question. But then he thought of Takamatsu, and recognized what she was really asking. He couldn't help himself. The comment danced off his tongue before his lips could barricade it.

"Sorry, Nakamura," he joked with a bright smile, "I think the NPC experience is all you."

The last thing he saw was a flare of anger marring that pretty face of hers before the couch pillow slammed into his forehead and knocked him backwards.

"Stop calling me that!" she yelled.

He landed head over heels with a loud thud – luckily on carpet, so the déjà vu hit him much harder. But somehow, beneath the pillow, she had not managed to wipe the grin off his face.

To think, before she woke from that coma in the Afterlife, she had been so difficult to rile up. For him, at least. No matter how much he baited her. But then she'd been a real treat at the graduation ceremony in all her uncharacteristic (or so he'd thought) girlishness.

And now? Honestly, now she was just making it too easy for him.

"Anyway," Yuri muttered, as Ayato sat up and petted the inspecting Mitsuo (who'd come over to give him a few worried sniffs). "I don't want to make today all about this one stupid dream. It just seemed so real, is all."

"What are you worried about?" he asked, a little chuckle at the back of his throat as he scratched the dog's chin. "Didn't you destroy the shadow program when you were down in the computer room? You said you destroyed the entire system, Angel Player and all."

"I know that!" Yuri snapped. "It's not like it could reach me from the Afterlife anyway."

Ooyama leaned against the door frame, cocking his head slightly.

"Wait, so… Naoi has his hypnotism. Yui has a functioning devil tail…" He looked over at the couch, speculative. "Kanade, you don't have Angel Player? You can't use any of your old guard skills?"

"I don't," said Kanade, blinking owlishly. "I think its technology is something that only worked with that world's system."

Yui's head popped up from Hinata's shoulder, very much tuned in again.

"You sure?" she asked, devil tail swishing. Mitsuo watched it with interest. "What if Yukine has a way to recreate it with the stuff in her charm books? Naoi got his hypnosis powers back from reading books."

Well, certainly there was a bit more to it than that. But he didn't care to correct her or go into it much, since the abilities weren't entirely the same. Charms and mind tricks were one thing; altering a person's form was another matter entirely.

As if reading his mind, Kanade swiftly shook her head no. She was undeterred, and even genuinely uninterested by the idea.

"The system is too complex to be found in a book," she told Yui – an immense simplification, in Ayato's opinion.

"But you did have a software manual," Yuri considered after a thoughtful hum. "Didn't you find it in the school's library?"

Kanade stared blankly, like the question had confused her.

"I didn't," she said. "It was in my room."

Yuri and Otonashi startled beside her, turning to gawk at the former Angel with multiple jumbled questions in their eyes. Even Hinata jumped to his feet, while Yui and Shiina exchanged surprised glances on the floor.

"So Angel Player's creator was a girl?" Ooyama squawked. With more melodrama than was necessary, Ayato might add. He himself had assumed for most of his Afterlife years that Kanade had developed her own abilities.

The shadow program, on the other hand…

"No he wasn't," Yuri said knowingly, her tone reminding him briefly of their conversation at the bookstore back in late April. "Somebody from that dorm room must've used it before she did."

"But it was called Angel Player!" Matsushita the Fifth pointed out.

Hinata laughed, moving to the couch so he could reach over and muss Kanade's hair. "Guess Kanade wasn't the first Angel in that world," he said with a lazy grin. "That's kind of weird to think about."

Yuri looked thoughtful.

"Yeah," she mused, going kind of quiet. "I guess so."

While Yuri went off into her own little world, leaning her head against the couch's armrest, Kanade mulled over all of this with mild regard. She held the same level of interest as a person going over their graduation photos.

"Well, Angel Player doesn't matter to me." Fond solemnity flickered behind her eyes. "I don't need it anymore."

There was a tension in the air Ayato didn't think he could measure. Something like guilt, sorrow, curiosity, and warmth all blended together in a fine energy contained to this one room. Mitsuo hopped up on the couch and settled on Kanade's lap. He didn't feel much like scolding him for it.

It was Fujimaki who broke the silence.

"You don't want the power?" he asked her, affection barely hidden under furrowed eyebrows.

Kanade gave him a mellow smile, one she turned towards the rest of the Battlefront members. Lacing her fingers with Otonashi's, she used her other hand to calmly stroke Mitsuo's fur.

"There are more important things," she said.


A/N: Lucky that I split it here - filler or not (however you take it), this subject kinda felt like it deserved its own chapter anyway. Next part will be twice as long, I swear!


Preview:

"Funny boy here has jokes!"

"You only bought it for me."

"Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

"You are welcome to stay tonight."

"God, shut up!"

"You can actually be pretty cute sometimes."

"Is this your boy?"

"I protected what belongs to me."

[Chapter 35]: Evening Enlightenment.