Wow. It's been a while. I kinda lost interest in this fic for a while, but now that I've actually got a semi-plot for it, I've got my inspiration back. I'm gonna try to follow through with this fic for as long as I can- after all, it's like, the only YnM crossover in this section. I really need a Beta that will email me a lot and make sure I'm working, someone with good grammar skills who will discuss my ideas for plot with me, who's REALLY interested in the story and not just wanting to do it so that their username will show up in the story.

Also, I'm sure that people will be wondering why Usagi's so OOC in this story. Don't worry, I'm not just mindlessly changing her character without a reason. There is a real reason why she's so dark. Alas, I can't tell you now, but it will show up later and be a huge part of the plot.

That's all I've got to say for now. Without any further ado, I again present chapter three of After Death. Oh yeah! There's a divider like the one below this point showing the point where the old chapter three was changed. It's completely different now, so read on from there.

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Smoothing lightly tanned palms over the thighs of her jeans, Usagi followed Konoe out the door. Luna's tail wrapped lazily around her neck underneath her hair, settling on her shoulder as they made their way into the main workroom. The blonde bunny nodded at those they passed as they strode into another office, her former nervousness completely gone. She loved meeting new people- even if they were dead guardians of death that had reasons to hold onto their lives even after death.

The door of the office they were entering also had a name on the door (which our favorite blonde didn't catch as they passed) and was decorated similar to Konoe's. In the center of the room there was a desk at which sat a brown haired man who was staring into the whirl of cherry blossoms outside the window. His glasses flashed as he looked to them, keeping his eyes from view for a moment. When Usagi got a clear shot of the sapphire irises gleaming behind the lenses, however, the urge to clench her fists overcame her. The man's eyes were the exact shade of blue Serenity's had been the moment she forced Usagi to take this job.

"Tatsumi-san," said Konoe, "this is the new Shinigami, Tsukino Usagi-san." He stepped to the side, gesturing to the blonde. Usagi flashed brilliantly white teeth at the secretary, the clenched fists gone long before either of the men had the chance to notice them. "I'll trust you to take her to her temporary quarters and introduce her to her first mission."

The handsome brunet rose and bowed, nodding. "Of course, Konoe-sama." The elderly Shinigami left the room after returning the nod. Both his employees watched the door as it shut, the moment it closed turning to each other.

"Good day, Tsukino-san," Tatsumi spoke smoothly as he rounded the desk, "I am Tatsumi Seiichiro." Usagi stared at his nose to keep herself from looking into his eyes, afraid that her smile would drop if her eyes lighted upon those sapphire rocks again.

"Good day indeed, Tatsumi-san." Her voice was just as effortless; calm and emotionless and perfectly polite. Her gaze drifted to the back of his head as he passed her. Once again, she was being led out of one office into another- this was becoming somewhat tiring.

As they cleared the door, Usagi shifted her shoulder slightly to warn Luna so that she would know to raise her mental shields as the blonde bunny raised her own. They had been told that she would be working with an empath on her first job, and it's not like it was so hard to do in or of itself. After all, you had to have a lot of practice with things like that when working with people like Minako- and considering that they had been doing that for several years before taking on this job (girl and cat considered one Shinigami together), they did have quite a bit of time to work on it.

Usagi drifted several feet behind Tatsumi as she followed him into a side hallway lined with the doors of what could only have been the offices of the normal Shinigami. She ignored the doors and the names on them for the time being as they passed, pulling restlessly at the bottom of her black button-up shirt.

'I wonder what the people here will be like?' The thought drifted through Usagi's mind as the secretary led her and Luna into what would hopefully be the last office they entered this morning.

Several minutes ago

The sandy blond haired Shinigami ignored his partner as the brown haired man chewed quietly on a sweet of some kind. It was quite pointless, however, as after a few moments of going through paperwork that had piled up from their last mission, the gorgeous Shinigami at the other desk looked up and noticed his shorter partner's silence.

"Hey, Hisoka!" The aforementioned turned green eyes upon his friend, neither of them moving from their desks.

"Tsuzuki?" He asked smoothly, his eternally young voice slightly thick from hours of silence.

Across the room, the purple-eyed man stopped as he stared at his younger partner. Hisoka's thick, dark eyelashes hooded smoldering green eyes as the boy turned his gaze from his desktop to Tsuzuki. His face was smooth and unblemished, pale except for the slight pink hue over his nose and upper cheeks.

"You- you want some cake?" Tsuzuki choked out over a gulp, holding out a clean fork to his partner. The younger man stared at him for a moment before, in a moment of total out-of-characterness, he stood up and walked over to the other Shinigami. He reached out silently and took the fork with nimble fingers. Tsuzuki stiffened as Hisoka leaned over the desk, hair falling over his face, to cut off a clean chunk of the cake and place it gingerly in his mouth.

"So, h-how is it?" Tsuzuki squeaked out, face slightly red. Hisoka rested his side against the desk for a moment and thoughtfully swirled the cake in his mouth.

"It's good." He told his partner calmly, staring him in the face with a smirk as he put the fork back into Tsuzuki's hand (which was still open in the air where he had gotten it in the first place).

Gulping again, the purple-eyed JuOhChuOh worker stared at his green-eyed partner's back as the younger man returned to his own desk and sat down. Seconds later, the door opened and the well-known secretary of the Department strode through the door, a blonde head barely poking over his shoulder behind him. 'The new Shinigami?' wondered the sandy-blond haired boy to himself.

"Tsuzuki-san, Kurosaki-kun," the brown-haired man greeted, "this is the new worker, Tsukino Usagi-san, and her cat, Luna-san." Tatsumi twitched a bit at the lost part, Hisoka noticed dully as he watched the girl step from behind the man.

The girl was young, perhaps only a year or two older than Hisoka's sixteen, and the Shinigami could tell from where they sat she would only be an inch or two taller than him. Her hair was a lighter blonde than his sandy blond, and it came down straight to just barely brush her shoulders; cheekbone-length bangs were left to fall over her face, slightly covering her eyes. Those eyes were a sparkling cerulean blue. She wore black, round-toed boots, dark blue jeans, and a tight long-sleeved black button-up shirt left open a few buttons at the collar to reveal the round neck of a plain white t-shirt. An almost black, dark purple cat with a golden crescent moon carved into its head was perched calmly on her shoulder, surveying them with maroon red eyes.

"It's nice to meet you!" Usagi exclaimed, feeling her face began to tire slightly with repetitiveness as she flashed another brilliantly shining smile at her new coworkers. Luna flicked an ear at the blond boy sitting at the other desk, and Usagi shifted on her feet.

"Good morning, Tsukino-san!" Tsuzuki returned, standing and bowing with his own smile as he spoke, "I am Tsuzuki Asato and this is my partner, Kurosaki Hisoka-kun."

The two hyperactive Shinigami nodded cheerfully at each other (Usagi extending a nod to Hisoka) as the blonde bunny stepped back to let Tatsumi speak without looking him in the face.

"Now that we are all acquainted," Tatsumi said expressionlessly, looking from Usagi to Tsuzuki, "I'll tell you about the job you'll be taking on that required the help of Tsukino-san here." He gestured to Usagi. Tsuzuki and Hisoka glanced at each other as Luna and Usagi did the same.

"As the required six months of rest after a large, special-case mission have passed, Konoe-sama has found it time to assign you to another specially requested case."

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"So where are we going?" Tsuzuki asked, picking a pen off the desk in front of him and weaving it through his fingers.

"Tokyo." Usagi and Luna blinked. Hisoka, surprised, turned to Tsuzuki.

"Aren't there Shinigami for Tokyo already?" The sandy blond haired boy asked his tall partner. The amethyst eyed Shinigami turned to Hisoka, removing and replacing the cap from the pen in his hands repeatedly. The clicks echoed through the room. Just as he was about to speak, Tatsumi answered.

"As I said before, the three of you were specifically requested for reasons that you might better understand what's going on there." Tatsumi's glasses flashed as he pushed them up the bridge of his nose.

"What's going on there?" Usagi parroted, blinking owlishly.

"There's been a string of odd monster attacks lately in Tokyo." It took only a split second for the blonde to force the look on complete and total horrified shock off her face. Youma still attacking in Tokyo? But Chaos had been defeated- it was the last thing she could remember, the last thing she had seen-

a pale face close to her own, her mirror image, smiling a wicked smile, laughing a laugh that said it all; she had already lost-

Usagi turned a pale face and slightly wide eyes back onto the situation in front of her. No one had noticed her momentarily fading off. She watched as Tsuzuki's eyes widened.

"Monsters? As in demons? Coming through the barrier?" Tsuzuki asked, a scowl on his face. Hisoka narrowed his eyes in thought.

Tatsumi shook his head. "It's not something that we have any confirmed reports on yet. There have been sightings of strange creatures appearing and disappearing near a shallow section of the barrier between worlds somewhere in Tokyo." He paused to shift slightly to the side. As he opened his mouth to speak again, Usagi interrupted.

"So we're not sure yet if they're demons coming through or something else?" Her wide blue eyes reflected in Tatsumi's. A slight tilt to her head betrayed genuine curiosity.

"No," Tatsumi replied. He gave her an unreadable look. The blonde haired girl turned to the window and pressed her thumb to her lips. What to do, what to do... There was a chance that the creatures had been youma sent by some strirrings of Chaos, even though she was sure Chaos was gone- not for good, but for a while, at least. It was much to soon for the evil entity to be up and sending for power. Who else?

::BREAKBREAKBREAK::

"This is a little shabby, isn't it?" Usagi asked with a nervous laugh, surveying the dusty room around her with a raised eyebrow. Surely this wasn't the place Tatsumi-san had booked for their stay in Tokyo?

"It's Tsuzuki's fault." Hisoka said blandly from behind her. Usagi whirled around to question him, but by the time she had stopped he was making his way into the tiny kitchen off the first bedroom. She watched his back disappear behind the wall before turning to face said man with an inquisitive look. The brunet just shrugged and laughed, looking slightly embarrassed.

Usagi made her way across the room to open one of the doors on the opposite wall. It turned out to be the second bedroom- where she would be sleeping. Coincidentally, it was a fairly small room with only one window.

"We're going out for dinner," Hisoka said plainly as he made his way out of the kitchen. Usagi set down her bags on the bed and Luna jumped up next to them.

"A bit dusty, isn't it?" The precocious cat sniffed. Usagi rolled her eyes with a slight smirk before turning back into the other room.

"When are we leaving?" The blonde asked with a grin, feeling oddly cheerful.

::ONEMOREBREAKBABY::

Alllllllllllrighty then. It sure has been a good while since I updated this, hasn't it? Make sure you read the note at the top of the chapter to get what happened- I'm not explaining it again. And feel free to review if you'd like to give me the inspiration to update within ten months from now, lol. In any case, I'll try to get the real next chapter up a little sooner this time, if my muse ever decides to come back.