For a while, Tenten kept her glasses on. She would have none of it when Neji would try and take them, giving him an icy glare that stopped him in his tracks and allowed for her to reclaim her spectacles. He seemed to be sulking now, getting annoyed at her persistance. Whatever; he's been stubborn over many things before and will have to get over it.

But that's not what began tormenting Tenten. There were two things. The first was that she could now see little things go missing. A piece of scrap paper during Arts and Crafts. A bit of food from someone's lunch when they are not looking. She even watched as a tiny book seemed to vanish before her eyes. And every day when she walked home from school, something that was not Neji began tugging at her plaits and nudging off her glasses. They would follow her to her room, and even when she buried herself underneath her thick bedcovers she could hear the contents of her room dance around her. The stuffed animals she owned would switch places. Her rolling chair would scoot closer. Something felt like it would hover over her bed, watching her as she shakily tried to deposit her glasses onto her nightstand, eyes scrunched shut and praying for sleep.

It was if a poltergeist or a ghost had begun playing tricks on her, and though she was restless more and tired during the day, she dare not tell anyone. Grandpa told her that ghosts weren't real, and if she told Sakura or Ino it'd spread to the class that she was afraid of things that weren't there.

Tenten quickly tried to get over her mind playing tricks on her. It was childish to believe that there was a monster in the closet, or that something huddled underneath her bed. She would not succumb to an overactive imagination no matter how much she thought something was rattling at her window, begging to be let in.

"You look tired," Neji said plaintively, nose still held high. He had to, considering they were in middle school and girls hit puberty before boys. But the fact that he had to look up to see Tenten's eyes made her self-conscious of her height and him very vexed about his. To make matters worse, Lee hit puberty as well, the Springtime of Youth he declared, and while his voice didn't deepen he did grow taller. When Lee challenged him to a height competition and won, Neji didn't bother hiding his annoyance.

The brunette girl shrugged to her friend's question, focusing on the matter at hand: Arts and Crafts Day. She reached for the scissors and pieces of paper, but frowned when she realized the object was suddenly missing. Worry streaked through her chest, but she merely raised a hand and requested another pair from the teacher. Naruto, the one tasked to doll out all of the supplies, complained loudly that he did give them the scissors, but finding that none existed on the table he begrudgingly went to get another pair. Tenten calmly thanked and accepted the item, even if she was still nervous as to where the other ones went.

Something tugged on her braids, and she sent a hard look at Neji. "What?" he asked, surprised and innocently holding a half-folded piece of paper in his hands.

Tenten shook her head and grabbed a rose-colored sheet herself, folding it with a sharp crease. This Arts and Crafts Day was special. It was for Valentine's Day, which was still a ways off by a week, and Iruka had made it clear that you had to make one for each of your tablemates.

Lee had specifically requested green and orange paper for his cards, and Neji made his out of plain printer paper. He wasn't even going to add stupid hearts, already writing down commonly-used words of this foreign thing to him called 'friendship'. Tenten looked sadly at her own red card, still empty and full of hope as she looked at Lee.

"If Sakura does not accept my Valentines, I will run a hundred laps during recess!" he boasted, eyes glimmering as he turned to Tenten. "What words do you know that will rhyme with 'beautiful'? I want Sakura to know just how I feel in the most youthful way possible!" Suddenly a sad panda, Tenten shrugged uselessly.

"No one's ever called me beautiful; I wouldn't know," she said truthfully as she discarded her empty red card and pulled out two pink ones. She felt another tug on her braids. "Neji! Stop pulling my hair!"

Neji looked up from his writing, a ballpoint pen held regally between his smooth fingers. "I didn't pull your hair," he said, his mouth pulled into a frown and brow slightly scrunched. "You're tired. You must be hallucinating." Tenten rolled her eyes.

"No I'm not. It's just that someone is pulling my hair." Neji's frown deepened.

"It's not me."

Tenten's eyes narrowed. "It's certainly not Lee." She didn't even need to gesture to the goofy boy beside her, clashing vibrant green with saturated red and dolloping little orange hearts all over it. It made her sick and jealous at the same time.

Now turned directly towards her, dove-hued card left on the table and ballpoint pen clenched in a fist, Neji said darkly, "I haven't pulled your hair since last week." Tenten stiffened at this, recalling the weird snake-bird thing that also reminded her of all of the peculiar happenings since then. It was easy to piece two and two together but Tenten really didn't want to know what lay beyond her glass walls. "It's not me," Neji repeated, looking awfully offended that she would accuse him. His eyes even did that creepy thing where little veins would appear at the sides, almost too subtle to be seen but he did so whenever he was particularly upset Usually he never even noticed, and his glares were the main reason he only has two friends.

"Fine," Tenten admitted, jerked slightly when she felt something pull at her braids again. Neji's hands were still balled up, so he was truly innocent. His eyes lost those veins, and were now confused as he looked at her and her gritted teeth.

"What was that?" he inquired.

Suddenly reminded of little things going missing, Tenten turned to her blank cards and mumbled, "Nothing." She saw Lee put down the scissors, tiny scraps of paper littering his side of the desk like autumn leaves, and reached for them. Her eyes widened when the scissors disappeared right before her eyes. Lee was busy looking at Sakura from across the room dreamily, and Neji had returned to writing in his graceful cursive. In her moment of suspicion, the scissors returned right in front of her.

Grabbing them dubiously, Tenten looked up in front of her. There was nothing there.

Something tugged at her hair and then nudged her glasses. Maybe from lack of sleep, or morbid curiosity, Tenten pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose. From nothing emerged something.

Something hideous.

It was as if everything took on a greyer, moodier tone. Around the room, Iruka's warm voice turned into a muffled warble. Sakura and Ino's vibrant shining hair lost their luster. The blush on Hinata's cheeks seemed to disappear. Sasuke's black eyes began to flicker crimson with dark windmills inside of them. Even the temperature appeared to be dropping. And it scared Tenten as she looked beside her.

On Lee, he was smiling but his teeth weren't shining like they used to. His bowlcut hair was void and dull, no blaring light bouncing back to blind her. Even the determined furrow of his caterpillar brows seemed to have lessened. For Neji, his already-pale skin turned ashen and dead. His eyes became chips of jagged ice, and an odd jade-green mark appeared on his forehead. It was surprisingly clear in her world of sudden monochrome. But before she could scrutinize it, whips of black smoke lingering at the corner of her eyes made her turn her gaze back to in front of her. Tenten stopped breathing.

It was tall enough that it was leaning over her, shoulders pressed against the plaster ceiling. Its entire body seemed to be made out of black metal rings, reflecting light like a black hole. An oval ring for a head, linked to a wide circle for a torso. Its arms and legs were chains, and black mist seemed to surround it, wafting between its limbs eerily.

"Hello," it said, almost as if it spoke through the dark fog that ensconced it. "I have been waiting for you."

What are you? Why are you here? Why me? Tenten wanted to ask, but she felt as if a bucket of ice had been chucked over her, turning her entire system frigid and cold. Undeterred by her muteness, and as if they are the only things in the universe, the creature continued.

"I was sent here to protect you. But I can't do that if you are unable to see me. Tenten - " How did it know her name? " - do you believe in shadows?"

She wanted to say no no no. It's just like Santa Claus of the Easter Bunny, right? Whatever she is hearing and seeing doesn't really exist, right? Tenten closed her eyes, but with her glasses slipping off her face when she opened them she could still see the chain-creature. It was actually towering over her now, closing in. And she was too scared to cry out.

"I didn't think you would," it said, voice seeming to echo off into the distance. It was if three people were speaking at once, all ambiguous and discombobulated. It made things scarier, knowing that what she was seeing wasn't human at all. "I have been trying to get your attention since I first found you, but you wear those glasses all the time. They block your true sight, and though you live in ignorance, you are at risk. I cannot let anything harm you, Tenten."

Finding her voice, if only barely, she squeaked, "Why are you here?"

Then, to her horror, the creature seemed to get even closer. Thick black lips sprouted from its 'face', wide blunt teeth filling its gums.

"Because you sent me here," it answered before something pushed her glasses up and everything was given its light and color again. Surprised, Tenten let out a squeal that earned their teacher's attention.

"Neji, are you trying to take Tenten's glasses again?" Iruka asked, ready to admonish the young boy.

Neji shook his head sternly, looking over at the girl for confirmation. His jaw was set, but his looked at her uncertainly. What was he so afraid of? He hadn't been the one to be approached by what appeared to be death itself.

Shakily, Tenten said, looking down at her two pink cards, "N-no, I was just startled. I thought I... saw a mouse." Her excuse was lame, and she felt like she was shivering despite it being a rather warm February day. Iruka was thankfully taken, peering around the room for any signs of a rodent. Glancing over at the white-eyed boy, making sure to give a peek at his smooth, unmarked forehead, Tenten asked, "What happened?"

Neji had the decency to appear as puzzled as she was. "You were zoning out," he explained, "she were mumbling to yourself and looking like a deer in the headlights. Your glasses were falling off so I thought I'd push them back on." His gaze held the most surreptitious amount of concern, but otherwise he spoke as usual in an almost bored, astute manner.

Feeling the warmth come back to her at her friend's worry, Tenten gave him a watery smile and told him, "Thanks, Neji."

And when his shoulders slackened, which she didn't notice had been rigid as posts, and when those little veins, the ones she didn't see before, disappeared from his eyes, Tenten truly meant what she had said. For even if she didn't have Lee's affection the way she would have liked, she could always rely on Neji's for some reason she didn't know of yet.


Tenten went to sleep that night like she always did: huddled underneath her thick blanket knowing that something's watching her as she pulls off her glasses and sets them on her bedside table as quickly as possible whilst impatiently waiting for slumber.

The only thing that changed is the knowledge of who was watching her. The chain-creature didn't even try to mask its presence when it loomed over her prone figure.

"I supposed I will start from the beginning," it informed her, the only voice in the house. Her grandfather's raucous snores seemed no louder than a faint wheezing in the room over. "We have been here from the beginning. We are there in the corner of your eyes. We are there in your blind spots, the demons that play when your back is turned. Because we are unseeable, we exist."

Tenten shivered, but tried to sleep. Hopefully when she wakes up, it will all be a dream and she won't feel so cold.

"We used to be seen by everyone. But they regale us in their folk tales only as monsters. The multi-headed dog of hell. The bloodthirsty one-eyed barbarian. The wailing temptation of the horror women's songs. Because man did not want to see us, we disappeared except for when they cannot lay eyes upon us. Even we do not know why we exist. We simply are here to feed."

Stricken, Tenten clenched her eyes shut and curled into a ball. What did that mean? To feed?

As if sensing her sudden discomfort, it told her, "We do not take what is not necessary. All of us have a certain object we must eat, but it is never a living object. Discarded food or broken tools, things we deem people no longer need. We have lived this way since the beginning."

She found it almost... funny how the monster in her room was treating her. It was an intimidating alien being, and yet it was trying to sound as comforting as possible. Maybe it really was here to protect her. But... from what? Despite feeling as if all the heat in her body had been lost, Tenten said aloud, "Why do I need protection then?"

There was a small silence that followed, and the creature, which Tenten decided to call Chain for lack of a better name, seemed surprised that she even spoke to it. Finally, it did continue, but what it said put Tenten back into that terrified panic. "Not all of us are... happy with the shadows. They are going against the ways we have followed, and want to be seen by humans once more. While we have all wished for a semblance of understanding by your kind, their ways of garnering attention has been found to be most... abhorrent." Chain paused for another moment, and Tenten really didn't want to hear what it would say. "They have begun hunting outside of their diets. They are eating children."

Tenten almost screamed then. She was so scared, because if what Chain is telling her is true, then she had become a target. Trembling more than she ever had, tears nearly obscuring her vision, Tenten blubbered, "W-wh-why me?"

Chain's suffocating aura seemed to have receded, as if knowing that she wanted space. It was so Neji-like to do that, a part of Tenten remembered, and was earnestly thankful for it. "The Maenads, as we have come to call them, do not have the power to take on a well-bodied human. Many of us cannot lift even a rock, and I have been used all of my strength to get you to notice me. But the Maenads have learned that through many attempts, they can acquire enough strength for sentient beings. Within the last decade, three infants and a five-year-old have been devoured, and we do not know where any of them have gone. That is why we have come for you." If Tenten knew any better, she would have thought that Chain had taken in a breath to prepare itself for what it is about to tell her. "Only a few people are able to see us on their own. Many of them, from a young age, can detect us, and many wear glasses such as you to obscure their abilities. Very few acknowledge us as they grow, and are thankfully out of reach of the Maenads when they become adults. Of all of the victims though, they were still young enough, and we have found that they also possessed your sight."

It was a little hard to understand. How come Tenten of all people had this special sight? It was more like a bloody curse!

"We have split to find children such as yourself. Our theory is, that because you can see us, you will be able to stop the Maenads' invasion, and they are trying to eliminate all opposition. If you agree to help us, Tenten, you will be able to pave the way for a future generation that will not only destroy the Maenads, but bring upon a further understanding between our two races. The reason I tell this all to you now, is that a girl such as yourself has personally asked that you be protected. She is the only other one of your potential who has listened, and I beseech for your assistance."

Oh, now this was just crazy talk. It must have been pulled straight out of an Japanese cartoon, Tenten decided as she shot up from her bed to tell Chain how ridiculous it sounded. Her words died on her tongue though when she saw the entity still standing in her room. Chain remained as threatening as it did in school. Tall to the point where it was forced to hunch over to properly stand. Thick coiling body made up of ebony chains. Its black lips were gone, but mist surrounded it like a swarm of bugs Shino was so fond of.

And when Tenten tore her gaze away from it, she found eyes everywhere. Many smaller creatures similar to Chain were huddled in her room. Each of them were just as dark, mashed into odd, inhuman shapes. Some had eyes or appendages resembling beaks, wings, or claws, and none were bigger than the palm of her hand. Tenten was able to recognize the first one she had found, the one-eyed snake-bird thing as it peered at her from its resting place on top of her folded glasses. She stared at it. Its body was no longer than a night crawler's, and it had wrapped itself around her spectacles in such a way that she could see its head and its tail coiled around, but when she tried to see its body from behind one of the lenses it had disappeared.

Swallowing, Tenten was suddenly reminded of how Neji is a genius. And like all geniuses, he had been right.


Despite all of the tugging and rattling, Tenten kept her glasses firmly on. She ignored all of Chain's attempts to take her glasses off, and knew now that Neji wasn't the one grabbing at her hair. She was still losing sleep due to all of the nightly sounds getting louder, more urgent, but she declined all of their meanings in favor of getting her grandpa to help her with baking some Valentine's cookies.

On Friday this week, they will have a great big party, and though Lee will try to woo Sakura with his card, she will try to woo him with her cooking. A path to a man's heart was through his stomach, right?

"You must be making these for someone special," Papa, as she often calls him, remarks as he watches her stir the batter fervently. "You didn't put so much effort into your confections last year. Schoolgirl crush?" He didn't smile or chortle like other grandpas, but he still has a small grin stretched upon his worn face.

"Hmm, not really," Tenten lied, trying to sound casual. Her grandpa looked up from the newspaper he had been reading, lying there in the big red chair he liked to use. He could always tell when his little girl was lying to him.

"It's not that white-eyed boy, is it?" he questioned, sounding very disapproving. "He's the one who tugs on your braids at school, right? He's a bad boy."

"No way, I don't like Neji!" Tenten shouts, but suddenly feels guilty about it for some reason. "Neji doesn't pull my braids, and he's not a bad boy! He's really smart and he helps me with my homework! He's more like my best friend." Papa stares at her for a bit, looking as if he was glaring at her, but his eyes are gentle and the crags in his face are not as deep. He rests back down and continues reading as Tenten continues baking. She is a good baker, mainly because Papa never lets her near anything sharp and making cookies doesn't involve the big shiny knives she likes to hold whenever Papa isn't around to scold her.

Tenten stops her incessant stirring to reach for the spoon so she can scoop the batter onto the pan. She feels it for half a second before it is gone. Frowning, Tenten turns, her twin plaits twirling in the air as if they are supposed to smack something, and goes over to a drawer with the other utensils. Tenten feels that something is looming over her, but she ignores it and goes over to attend to her cookies.

She is trying too hard to make everything evenly spaced that her glasses have no problem creeping down her button nose. A swift yank that is really not too powerful sends them clattering to the floor. She lets out a yelp as everything is plunged into greyscale and her Papa is looking at her with surprise... and terror.

"Put your glasses back on!" he roars, throwing his newspaper. "What have I told you time and time again, Tenten?"

"Yes Papa!" she exclaims, bending down quickly to scoop up her specs. To her chagrin, she sees the snake-bird thing knock into her glasses as fast it can, sending them careening further from her. She quickly tries to grasp it, but a spider with twelve eyes and twice as many legs grabs on and throws them into the air. Turning her head up, Tenten's eyes widen when she sees Chain looking down on her, her treasured glasses dangling from one of its many linked appendages. "Give it back!" she shouts, standing up. She does not see how white her Papa's face becomes, watching his precious granddaughter speaking to air with her wide brown eyes barred to the world.

"You cannot hide from this," Chain tells her, unable to move much in their cramped kitchen. It is almost humorous if it isn't terrifying, a feeling Tenten is finding all to familiar by now. "The Maenads are already here, Tenten. They cannot touch you yet, but we need you to fight back. I am sorry if I gave you a choice before, for now it is clear that you must fight."

"I don't wanna!" Tenten exclaims, uncaring when she reaches out for her glasses. Chain is unable to do anything but let her reclaim them, the strangling fog and many eyes vanishing when she shoves the glasses back onto her face. Turning to her Papa, Tenten pouts and puts her arms akimbo. "Papa, I think we have mice in the house." And though her excuse is lame, her grandpa rolls with it and tells her that he will check the walls. Tenten puts her cookies into the oven and hums a tune, but she cannot deny the tension instilled into the air. Her movements are stiff and her grandpa's grip on the newspaper turns his knuckles paler. It is like a thousand eyes are watching them, and Tenten can feel every single one.


A/N: Um, turns out the story is going to be bigger than only two parts. Wait for it.