Disclaimer: I own nothing. The Devil owns Sky High. I mean Disney.

The Unseen

It was weird waiting at the bus stop without Will. For as long as she'd been riding the bus, Will had ridden it with her. Layla sat in the window seat on the bus, watching the clouds pass with her head leaning gloomily against the pane of glass. She didn't know how she would get through a week of this. Once, in second grade, Will was out sick for two days with poison-oak. Over the weekend, on a Saturday, she and Will had decided to go on an "adventure" through the woods (Which was really just a bunch of trees clustered together; everything had seemed so much larger when they were younger) behind Mr. and Mrs. Kibbitch's house. She had walked through it once before with her mom, on a hunt for a squirrel that refused to stop singing Moon River loudly in the middle of the night, according to Layla's mother.

Will had allowed her to lead the way, since she was the nature expert of the two. Unfortunately, with Layla's biological relationship with plants, she was, at that age, unaware that they could be harmful to people who didn't have her body chemistry. When the two of them spotted a rotting log that could potentially be hiding a fairy (or a goblin, Will had insisted repeatedly) she'd led Will right through a patch of poison-oak to get to it and investigate. Then she'd led him through it again on the rapid trip out after they discovered a hornet's nest stuck to the top on the inside of the log. Will had been particularly freaked out, she remembered, having just watched My Girl with his parents the week before.

That Sunday, Mrs. Stronghold called her mom to make sure that Layla wasn't covered in a rash like Will was. The poor kid had been up half the night, trying to get his body to stop itching. When her mom was off the phone with Will's mom, she sat Layla down, and told her that she and Will were different. Layla was special, in a different way than Will was. Layla's powers had manifested when she was unusually young, and she called her daughter (pun intended, Layla was sure now) an "early bloomer." She told her that Layla had a connection with nature that, most likely, no one else would have, not even Will. When Will didn't come to school the next day, she blamed herself for making Will sick, as much as she blamed the plants in the woods. That afternoon, she went back into the woods, and killed the nest of poisonous leaves that had infected her best friend, making them shrivel up until only a bad memory remained. That was the first time she'd ever used her powers to destroy.

Will was gone the next day, too. Murderingthe plants in vengeance hadn't helped anything. Will was still sick, and now she felt even more guilty. That afternoon, she had snuck into Will's room with the help of a tree and the roof over the first floor bathroom that Will liked to relax on. He was lying in bed, looking pretty pathetic, and she'd apologized to him, but stopped short of pouring her heart out and telling him about her homicide in the woods the day before.

But Will wouldn't have any of it. He apologized to her, taking the blame for his condition (of course). He told her that his doctor said he could go back to school tomorrow, and he would see her in the morning. She had been so relieved, she'd hugged him from his half-sitting up position, and he had panicked. He was afraid that she would catch the rash too. So she calmly repeated to him what her mother told her the day before, and Layla remembered how relieved he looked at the news. "That's cool. You're like, immune to dangerous plants. Even my dad can't say that." Will returned to school the next day and Layla put some of the worst three days of her life behind her. She hadn't stepped a foot inside those woods since.

"Maybe we'll go after he gets back..."

"What?" Magenta, who was sitting beside her asked, giving her a weirded-out look.

"Huh?" Layla asked, remembering where she was. "Are we there yet?"

"The school? No. And by the sounds of it, you're not even here on Planet Earth." Magenta shook her head, and turned to Zach who sat on the other side of the aisle. "Layla is having Will withdrawals, and it hasn't even been twelve hours since he left. Isn't that disgusting?"

Zach assumed an all-knowing face, and regarded Layla. "I think it would be even more disgusting if Will were a gold digger. 'Cause Layla ain't messing with no broke-broke. I ain't saying he's a gold digger, er-eh-er-eh, but she ain't messin' with no -"

"Stop," Ethan piped up, from beside Zach. "He has been doing this all morning. If he doesn't cut it out, I'm gonna throw myself down his throat and drown him." Ethan sent Zach the most threatening glare he could muster through his thick glasses.

"Whoa, relax bro, we're here." Zach pointed to the floating campus in the sky, as the driver landed on the ground.

Layla only vaguely listened to her friends as they engaged in their usual banter. She didn't notice the concerned glance that Magenta threw her when they exited the bus, because she was too wrapped up in the melancholy derived from missing Will. Layla hated to be a pessimist, but she was afraid that the week would go by at a miserable crawl, forcing her to wallow in her loneliness.

If she had any idea how wrong she was, she would have hoped for the solitude.

"Crashed? What do you mean, crashed!?" It was later in the afternoon, after lunch, and Mr. Boy was making a scene in the hallway, to the bemusement of Principal Powers, and the embarrassment of his students who were crowded behind him.

Mr. Boy had scheduled the sophomore Sidekick class to have access to the computer lab, but when he led the group there, he was met with the Principal, and several technicians dressed in gray overalls who were gathered in the computer lab, hovering over the PCs.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Boy, but the head computer technician told me that sometime earlier today, we were attacked my a malicious computer virus that is infiltrating our network as we speak. There's nothing we can do but let them work." Principal Powers was known for her infinite patience, and by the way this day was going so far, it looked like she would need it.

"But, but how am I supposed to teach my Hero Support class basic hacking if we don't have any computers to use?! It's, it's madness!" Mr. Boy exclaimed exasperatedly, waving his arms around.

Principal Powers, as unruffled as ever, merely stared at him with her arms crossed over her chest. "I'm afraid you'll just have to make due, Mr. Boy. These technical difficulties aren't easy on any of us."

Before Mr. Boy could resort to whining, one of the technicians came out of the lab and approached the Principal. He had on blue overalls instead of gray, which distinguished him as the lead technician. "Principal Powers?"

She turned to him quickly, thankful to be spared any tantrums by Mr. Boy. "Yes? Is everything going all right?"

The man shook his head wearily. "I don't know what hit this place, but I have never seen anything like it. This bug is eating through everything it sees, and it's coming out the other end looking like ancient Sumerian - not literally," He amended, when one of the Sidekicks in Mr. Boys' class eagerly stepped forward, his one and only superpower happening to be that he inherently understood ancient Sumerian. The student sadly walked back behind his teacher, and received sympathetic pats on the back from Layla and Zach.

"Do you have any idea how long it will take for you to clear it all up?" The Principal asked graciously, watching Mr. Boy struggle to control his emotions from over the technician's shoulder.

The computer expert shook his head ruefully. "Ma'am, as it is, me and my boys are fighting a war just keeping this thing out of the mainframe. If it gets in there, we could have some major problems."

The class erupted into whispering from behind Mr. Boy's back, Ethan in particular standing out, as his hysterical whispering kept cracking his voice, and causing tiny screaming noises to issue from his throat.

Sensing the tension rising in the children, Principal Powers smiled thinly at Mr. Boy, and nodded towards the students standing behind him. "Mr. Boy, would you mind returning your class to your room? The repairs may take a while."

Taking the hint, Mr. Boy glumly ushered his charges back to their classroom, ignoring the hushed murmers of the group as they speculated just how bad the damage to Sky High's computer network could be.

As he and his friends re-entered their room, Zach turned to Magenta with a conspiratorial grin. "Hey, maybe if we're lucky, the school will decide to go hurtling towards the Earth during school hours this time. At the very least, we'll get out of class."

Magenta tried not to grin back.

There he was. As usual, Warren was seated after school on the steps leading into Sky High, with his nose in a book. He ignored everyone else around him, the milling students, the suspicious teachers, even the hyper freshman flitting about. Warren was lost in his own little world, crouched over a book, the ends of his long dark hair brushing the surface of the page he was concentrating on.

Layla slumped down beside him, and grabbed a hold of the book he had in his lap to flip it up for a second and read the title.

"Neo-Freudians? So, I guess I'd better not tell you about that dream I had where Will and I were playing football, but I was a goal post." Layla greeted Warren in her characteristically irreverent way, heedless of her friends' exasperated sigh as he put aside his book for another round of, "Struggling to Understand Layla."

"Did he ever score?" Warren asked her, his face blank.

Layla smacked him on the arm.

"Where were you at lunch? We missed you," Layla said, switching into what Warren had patented her 'contentious observer' mode. Layla always seemed to notice the things that were going on around her, be it by monitoring the direction of the breeze, pinpointing the position of the moon during the day, or, irritatingly, following his well-disguised mood fluctuations like they were the tides of the sea.

"I was-, " Warren stopped instantly when he felt a tingle run down the back of his arms and shoulders, and the hair on the back of his neck stood at attention. The sensation was unmistakable. He was being watched. He looked to Layla, and saw that she too was spooked. She was scanning the various students loitering around them in trepidation, her face flushed, and her eyes wide.

"You felt that, too?" Warren asked her quietly, out of the side of his mouth. He made sure to stay hunched over, assuring that his position didn't give on that he was shaken to whomever may still be spying on them.

Layla reluctantly focused her eyes back on Warren, and nodded vaguely. "Yeah. Weird..."

Warren covertly shifted around a bit to observe his schoolmates, hiding his searching gaze under his blanket of long bangs. The eerie shiver had subsided but he had no doubt that whoever the little voyeur was, they were still around.

"Maybe we just imagined it," Layla rationalized, giving an embarrassed wave to Larry, a redheaded Hero Classer, as he walked past them, winking at Layla lewdly, and making hand-motions like his fingers were pistols. "Or maybe it was just Larry again. He does tha-"

"Yeah, he does do that," Warren interrupted, scowling. Larry shot him a glare before scurrying away when Warren pointed a finger at him like he had done to Layla, only Warren's "gun" was flame tipped.

Layla sighed again and leaned her head on Warren's shoulder. "Will is gone. Gone away..." Layla bemoaned half-jokingly. "Awaaayy-ay-ay..."

Warren snorted, and stood up suddenly. "Come on hippie, you're gonna miss your bus." Whether Warren's deflection was due to his compulsion to maintain a straight face at all times, his rejection of anyone's affection but his mothers' (aside from his icy ex whom we do-not-talk-about, of course), or his frustration over still having to play couples counselor to Will and Layla, even after he got them together in the first place, Layla didn't ask. But she obeyed, following behind him as he headed for the outer edge of the school, where the busses hovered in wait.

As they walked across the campus, Warren tried not to let on to Layla what was bothering him. When he'd run Larry off, his eyes had caught a brief flash of billowing black lurking behind a column - but he'd blinked, and then it was gone.

"What do you think? Is that a bad idea?" Layla asked him, her voice breaking into his thoughts.

"What? No. Whatever." He knew the moment he saw the part-shocked, part-relieved, overwhelmingly ecstatic expression on Layla's face that he had just said something he might end up regretting.

"Thanks so much, Warren. I was afraid I would go crazy without him." Layla breathed, waving to Magenta and Ethan, who were following Zach to the sophomore bus. "So then, I'll just ride my bike, okay? My mom's Hybrid is environmentally friendly, but any carbon monoxide is too much, you know?"

No, Warren didn't know. "What?"

Layla broke apart from him, to approach Magenta who was waiting for her outside the door to the bus. "I'll see you around 7:30, okay? And I promise, no talking about Will. Your house is a Will-talk moratorium. I'll bring some music, we'll have fun!" Layla called back to him, talking very fast.

Warren stood dumbfounded. "What?"

Just when Warren was sure that Layla was going to just leave him standing there, staring after her green clad back, she opened the window in the seat she'd taken on the bus and finally answered him. "When I come over to hang at your place tonight. That is okay, isn't it?" She asked, in a painfully vulnerable voice.

Oh. Crap.

Warren shrugged helplessly at Layla. "Whatever you want, hippie. Just bring food. My mom hasn't been shopping, and we're down to frozen chicken, and lunchmeat."

From beside Layla, Warren heard Magenta's voice float out the window. "You're going to Warren's house?!" Layla ignored her inquiry, and made an "ew" face at Warren.

"Got it."

Students were rushing to the busses now, but Warren still wasn't convinced that Layla visiting him at home was the best course of action to take to kick the Will blues. "You sure you wanna come over? My house can be kind of... boring." Layla had never been to Warren's place, none of his friends had, and he tried telling himself that was the reason he was so nervous about having a houseguest, and not because of whom that houseguest happened to be.

Layla smiled brightly at him through the window, and chuckled. "It'll be fine, Warren. You're talking to someone who actually finds it exciting to watch the grass grow."

Warren raised an eyebrow in response, and Layla waved him goodbye as the sophomore bus was about to blast off towards Earth. A split second before the bus shot off, Magenta's question to Layla reached his ears.

"What would Will say?"

Choosing not to brood on that concept, Warren jogged towards the junior bus. The driver was already honking, as he was one of the last students to load up. Warren entered the bus and took a seat, completely ignoring everyone around him.

What would Will say? It didn't matter. Will wasn't here. Which was exactly why Warren suspected that the dark shadow he had seen (and felt) earlier wasn't just some random occurrence of a student's powers going a little haywire on them, as superteens going through puberty happened to experience. The knowledge that Will was absent only made him more paranoid.

That figure hadn't been watching him, it was watching Layla.

Author's Notes: This chapter was a pain to write. I got stuck a few times. I'm trying to find a balance between keeping it (and all of my stories, to varying degrees of success) paced well enough so that I don't give away too much, too soon, or slog through it to the point where it becomes... boring. So, does this need more killer, less filler, less exposition, more humor, more exposition, less dialogue, or just more time? And if anyone reading this falls into a plot hole, please let me know. Anyway, thanks for reading, and reviews are greatly appreciated! School's almost out for Summer! Yatta!