I guess it takes me months to come out with a chapter. I don't know, I just want it to be good, and paced right, and the characters to be fleshed out enough. I don't really know if it reaches that mark, it probably doesn't even come close to mediocre, but this is really fun to write. I should do more...after I finish this one. Whenever that'll be. But OK, it's time for Chapter 6: Spacing (I changed it from Sharing 'cause I left the whole 'sharing' bit to next chapter). Take it away, Natsu!
Natsu
Natsu couldn't place it. It was going on 3 weeks now, and nothing had happened. No word from Romulus, no unusual attacks, or missions, or anythings at all. Just 3 weeks of normal, uneventful, basic stuff. Day after day.
He HATED it.
Where was all the excitement, the battles over right and wrong, the near-death experiences, the last-second comebacks? Gone, apparently, without a trace. There was only so many days Natsu could go without being challenged by someone other than Gray, which happened on a daily basis.
And Natsu's boredom wasn't helped by the fact that HE showed up everyday to further rain on his parade. Calem, if he wasn't lying about his name, which wouldn't surprise Natsu, walked into the guild hall, hood up and scowl threatening, every day for dinner, a drink, and checking of the latest news about...whatever it was that would kill them all.
What the actual hell was this guy's problem? They were all in the same boat together, so maybe show a little friendliness every now and again, or anything besides the calm, unemotive state he keeps himself in the whole hour he stayed.
Natsu grit his teeth in anger as he stared at and thought about Calem and the recent events, or lack thereof. It was that time again, and Calem had faded into the guild hall and up to the counter for a bowl of stew to a deafening silence and multiple pairs of eyes attempting to disect him. If he was honest, Natsu wouldn't mind of they did.
"That guy," he grumbled into his sleeve while slouching on the table, his own black eyes among the many that stabbed through Calem, "he makes my blood boil." Happy just rolled his eyes, snacking blissfully on his raw fish in front of him.
"Just like Gray does? Or Gajeel? Or-" Happy snickered while munching on his seafood snack, but Natsu kept a lid on his fiery temper.
"Those guys are different. They're annoying, and crazy, and weird, but they're also Fairy Tail, so that means they're family. But Calem...there is something not right about this guy. Call it a hunch, but I don't trust 'im"
"Nobody does, Natsu." Lucy sat down in the booth across from him with a sigh and a plate of donuts, instinctively sliding one over to him, and it was gone as quickly as it got there. "But no matter what we think of him, all of us are in the same predicament, so we'll work with him."
Natsu simply grunted, unable to respond due to the entire donut still in his mouth. 3 weeks had passed, and all anyone did was go on simple, close range jobs as to be available, and wait. The presence of Calem didn't really mean much at all when he was around, besides making the entire place tense. Natsu was sure Fairy Tail could handle whatever threat there was without Calem's help...however he was helping them.
Then it hit him. Nobody cared about what Calem was doing at all. No questions, no curiousity, nothing. Calem was just there. He entered the guild once per day for a meal, but besides that they saw and knew nothing about him.
'Well,' Natsu thought as he swallowed a second donut whole, 'we are just gonna have to change that a bit.' Natsu stood abruptly from his seat and marched in his most dramaticly-angry/annoyed way possible. He felt that if he looked the part, that would surprise the sucker.
"What the hell are you walking like that for?" Natsu stumbled out of his intense focus of how to walk angry, internally and externally. Gray always screwed everything up for him.
"I'm walking angry, what else does it look like?" Natsu held up a defensive fist, a fire held in his throat, but Gray was unperturbed.
"Coulda fooled me. It looked like you had gotten a stick up your ass."
"I agree." Against Natsu's deepest hope, Erza had decided to join the conversation, which was starting to get a few watchers. "Intimidation through anger isn't in the walk, but rather the eyes." The scarlet haired woman finished the last bite of her strawberry cake and put down the plate. "Observe."
Natsu noticed Gray's face drain of all blood flow at the sight of the look Erza gave. He really hoped his face didn't look like that, too. It was unlikely, as Natsu felt himself shaking, sweating, and barely standing under his buckled knees.
"And that's how it's done." Erza pushed her hair out of her face, and anyone that didn't see the look she had given applauded lightly.
Natsu shook himself out of it. He had answers to find. So giving his watered-down version of Erza's glare, he strolled right up to the bar and moved to clamp his hand down onto Calem's shoulder. Calem kept right on lightly blowing at the steaming stew from under his hood, but Natsu felt the muscles in his shoulder tense.
"I've got a bone or three to pick with you, pal." Calem didn't visibly react to the threat, though Natsu didn't really care if he did or didn't. He was gonna get something, anything, out of Calem. If a fight broke out, and a few bones got fractured, Natsu certainly wouldn't mind.
"Can't it wait? I'm hungry, and I've got the feeling that my soup will get cold if I get involved with this conversation."
Natsu, out of shock more than anything, stepped back and blinked. This guy just thought of and fired back a dry remark without so much as a moment to blink. However, it certainly didn't help get him to calm Natsu down. 'The jerkoff. Who does he think he is?' Natsu's thoughts betrayed his objective, but the cryptic bastard wasn't helping his case.
"What are you implying?" Natsu's anger burned more intensely each second the exchange passed. Calem didn't flinch, as he held his postion, firm and unmoving.
"Nothing at all. I just want to finish my meal, which, by the way, is delicious. But I do have other things on my agenda for today."
"Like what?" Natsu's teeth grated in a mix of frustration, anger, and will to contain that anger. He moved his hand fast, slamming it down on the counter in an attempt to psych his verbal sparring partner out. Calem didn't waver, or move, for a second.
"Wouldn't you like to know." The straw broke the camel's back, and Natsu lost it.
"That's it pal, I'm sick of your shit!" With one hand striking flame, Natsu brought his Iron Fist down where Calem was sitting, easily shattering the wooden chair, but not Calem.
He had moved out of the way. Just out of the way, as embers singed the air around him. But Calem still didn't move a muscle. The only thing active were his eyes, as Calem stared with dark brown irises, watching carefully, ready.
Natsu gathered the fire of both hands into his right hand. No way was this asshole gonna beat him.
"Fire Dragon: Crushing Fang!"
Like a matador dodging a bull, Calem rotated his body away from the brutal strike, allowing it to go somewhat harmlessly behind him, splintering the floorboards in several different directions. Natsu growled through his teeth, his eyes fixated on Calem, who lost the coverage of his hood due to the last dodge.
Natsu took in each aspect of the calm expression he wore, despite being under attack. His face had wear beyond the age of 17 that Natsu smelled him at, and Calem's eyes held the hardest of neutral expressions. They had bags under them too, obviously sleep deprived.
'Why is this guy not sleeping? What is he hiding? Goddammit, I'm gonna beat all the answers out of this bastard!' Natsu had a relatively simple plan: Hit hard, hit now, hit a lot. He charged once more.
"Fire Dragon: Talons!" Natsu's heels blazed with bright dragon flames, but the two rapid kicks he swung still wiffed thanks to Calem's quick movements, ducking under a high horizontal and rolling under a diagonal. Natsu's frustration with him only grew, swinging a backhanded strike at Calem's rising body, sure it would connect.
It did in an unintended way. Calem, instead of getting his jaw bashed in, caught Natsu by his striking wrist. Afterwhich, he promptly yawned.
"Sorry, didn't get much sleep last night. None, actually." Natsu's eyebrows twitched, unable to fathom how much he wanted to break every bone in his sleepless foe.
"Sleep later, asshat! Now is time for some answers!"
"I...would like if that were the case, but I can't risk that. It would-" Natsu saw Calem's tired eyes widen. He had realized something.
'What're you thinking about?' Natsu's curiousity never wavered, and he stared directly at his face, as if if he looked hard enough something would happen. Calem avoided eye contact.
"You idiots!" Lucy piped up in the second of silence, interuppting the focus of both combatants. "Do you even know what you guys are fighting about! Natsu, don't be so forceful in getting people to talk about everything! All of us have skeletons in our closets! And Calem, for christ sake, why the hell are you so secretive about every detail?!"
The masses took a unanimous step back, not wanting this enjoyable show between the new guy and Natsu to turn into an intervention.
"Lucy, calm down. How else were we gonna talk to this guy?" Natsu looked from Lucy to Calem, who still avoided eye contact. "Let go of me, by the way."
"Would love to, but..." Calem said to the ceiling then his wrist clasped around Natsu, trailing off. Natsu looked down at the grab he was in, which was nothing but a hand around his wrist, as his curiousity melded into confusion.
"What is your problem?" Natsu noticed Lucy cock an eyebrow and sigh, Happy look ready to make an awful joke, and Calem return his glare, their eyes locking.
It lasted only a second, but that was long enough. Inky blackness began rapidly streaming up Natsu's arm from Calem's flattened palm.
"HOLY SHIT! What the hell is happening?!" Natsu panickedly screamed, an appropriate reaction of your skin slowly turning black, moving at a quick pace up toward his eyes. Most others had a similar reaction. Lucy and Happy kept trying to pull the grip apart, which was not completely caked in darkness, to no avail.
"I'm really sorry about this. Truely." Natsu watched as best he could as Calem looked up at the wooden ceiling with the same black virus crawling up his arm and neck, not panicked. His voice still held the same knowing tone, holding back secrets like always. But there was a difference. This time it was much sadder, as oppossed to the standard neutrality, whenever he did speak, that is.
Natsu didn't have much time to reflect on his observation. He didn't even know if he heard him right. All that he could gather was his vision blurring and blackening as his eyes were covered in the corrupt shadows. Natsu felt his mind fade right along with his vision, and he passed out.
Calem
'It's official. I suck at this whole teamwork thing.' Calem thought he was sleeping, on his back with the only thing visible the back of his eyelids. But that couldn't be the case, since he was sure that his eyes were open. Calem checked that he was awake by lifting and staring at his hands. Since he could clearly see and comprehend that they were in fact hands, there was only one remaining possibility.
'I'm in the aether again, aren't I?'
'That appears to be the case, oh unfortunate one.'
'At least this gets rid of my headache. What is it representing now?'
'Seems to be the soul of our firey opponent, Natsu Dragneel.' Calem huffed and pushed himself to his feet, getting used to the light feeling of moving around in an aetherial domain.
'If that is the case, I better start looking for him. Sooner we join up, sooner we get out of here.'
Calem closed his eyes, which didn't change his perspective at all, but helped allowed him to reach out into the endless abyss and find who he was looking for permiting him to began his awkward jog over in the direction he detected Natsu's aetherial image.
'This Natsu...his soul energy is ridiculously bright. In this realm, even a dope could detect it from a few miles away.'
'Assuming there are miles in this realm.' Calem sighed at his doubting-internal ego. Of all the things the soul had to be connected to, it had to be the mind. A mind that held some voice that contradicted, questioned, and joked about his every thought and action.
'I have an idea. Let's swap this vocal connection with one from my appendix. I bet that organ is quieter at the very least.'
The lighter-toned voice didn't respond, and Calem didn't give it a second thought. He had more important things to worry about, like how this affected Natsu's internal balance, mental state, and physical body, since this was his first trip to an aetherial realm, unlike Calem.
Also, he just wanted to leave and protect what remaining anonymity he had left. While he certainly was familiar with the void that the aether was, that didn't mean he enjoyed it.
"I should get moving." Calem spoke aloud to fill the silence as he peered through the shifting blackness, heading in the general direction he felt the other presence was in. Whether Natsu just had an amazing amount of magic power, a particularly strong soul and will, an unwavering mental state or some combation of the 3, Calem didn't know. The only thing that he could process was that his magical pressure was intense and growing with each step.
"I must already be close to him, or he to me." Calem took another glance about, squinting and scanning the vast, empty area. "But the real question in where the-"
"YOU!" Calem didn't need to turn to know who that roar belonged to. But he did it anyway. Through the inky blackness, Natsu was as visible as anything in the real world might've been, which was a good thing. The bad of this particular situation was the expression he held and the dragon fire surrounding his body.
Calem held up his hands, surrendering to Natsu's anger, though his fear was nonexistant.
"I know this looks bad, and I am really sorry this happened, but I can-" Calem watched calmly as Natsu, oblivious to his apology attempt, drove his flaming fist straight into, and through, his head. He felt the heat of his arm where Calem thought his left eye should be, and his lack of nose meant lack of smell. All ability to form words was gone as Calem's thoughts faded into simplictic phrases. It was the only thing his brain could manage, since there was only half of it.
'Heh. I'm a cloud.' Through his right eye, he saw Natsu's completely flaberghasted expression and Calem felt what should be the left side of his face float around in bits and pieces nearby, but failed to register anything about his situation.
Then Natsu ripped his arm away, and at speeds faster than light, each and every particle that was scattered reformed back into Calem's face. And with his face, nose, and mind returning, Calem could see, smell, think, and feel again.
So he promptly began to cough, doubling over onto his hands and knees in an extreme fit of hacking and wheezing.
"What the hell?! What was that?!" Natsu bellowed his questions in the void, but Calem stuck to his coughing, trying contemplate what to say in response in midst of his fit.
"This is the aetherial landscape of your soul. We are just projections, not physical beings." Calem managed to choke out a brief explination before returning to his wheezing.
"What does that mean?! Why is it so empty here!?"
"It means we are intangible. Essences of our minds, personalities, and spirits meeting here, in your soul, until I leave."
"SO GET OUT!" Calem took a breath. Obviously he wasn't familiar with how things worked on an aetherial plane. Of course, only he would be, but Natsu's ignorance still bothered him.
"Easier said than done, dumbass." Calem sucked his anger down. There was no use getting angry. "The only way for me to leave is for one of us to wake up. However, since our minds are preoccupied here, it would be like trying to wake up when you are already awake."
Natsu swore under his breath, and Calem wondered when the next question would come.
"So then how, Mr. Know-it-All?"
'Right now, it seems. This guy sure is taking all this well.' Calem tried to rub his nose, only to stop and remember that he was figmented, and put his arm down.
"You're taking all this soul stuff much better than expected."
"Nope, I just don't understand any of it. So I decided to think about it later, once we get out of here."
Calem sighed. There went his chance at a possible breakthrough. Not like it mattered, though. His business was his burden, and he would do what he must to keep everyone else ignorant to it.
"We should find the center of this place. We can jumpstart your mind from there." And with that, Calem tucked all his feelings back deep in his soul, locking them up, and throwing away the key. As soon as he did that, he began to walk.
"Well, come on Natsu of Fairy Tail. I invaded your soul, the least I can do is find the way out."
Calem didn't wait to see if Natsu was following, or for him to question anything he just said in the previous exchange. He just started walking. It didn't matter which direction he went, as they all led to the same place if you walked long enough. So Calem walked and let his thoughts travel elsewhere.
Calem felt his breathing suddenly quicken, his mind racing over the experience he just had. Thought patterns roped around him, and he had no idea how to calm himself down. His hands went to his knees and Calem blinked a number of times in an attempt to restore sight, to no avail. It wasn't until a gentle hand clasped on his shoulder that Calem finally began to regulate his hyperventilation.
"Calm down, Calem. You're in the real world again." Calem remembered that he nodded multiple times, blinking tears out of his eyes and rubbing the blur from his vision. "That'll happen sometimes. Don't wory about it, your vision will return quicker the more times you venture back from the aether. It was your first time after all" He recalled looking up to see the smiling face of his mother.
His mother was a beautiful woman, even sitting mirror his cross-legged positioning and in but simple sweatpants and a short-sleeved shirt. She had the same jet black hair and deep brown eyes that seemed to run in the family. But what was different about her from her son, and most others in Calem's immediate family, was that she smiled a lot, despite their clan's magic and self-proclaimed duty to protect society from the darkness, in the darkness.
And Calem could never help but smile back at her.
"Inside a soul is a dangerous place. As you saw, it's pitch-black, big, and everything looks the same. The longer you stay, the more mogic it takes to keep the visiting soul intact. You're on a constant time-limit, so once you get lost, it is next to impossible to get out." Calem continued to knead his left eye, not knowing when his sight would return. It had faded back in a little, but everything was still a dark yellow color with a bunch of black spots all over the place.
His mother, despite the grim topic, still smiled and continued to explain.
"The easiest way out is to find where the soul's center, you remember what it felt like, right?" Calem nodded through rapid blinking. How could he forget what felt like walking through fire with a splitting migrane while carrying a few tons of bricks?
"That's where the soul connects to the mind and heart. Once you find the mind, it's simple to work your way to and out the eye, where you will then be instantly wisked into your own body." Calem didn't really understand what she was saying. He would need more practice going in and out of an aetherial realm. Plus, he recalled, he was starting to worry about the sight in his left eye.
But one look at his mother through his good, right eye showed her still brilliant smile and striking features. She crawled over to him, moved the fist that was digging into his eye and planted a soft poke on said eye. Instantly his vision cleared, and so Calem returned the smile to show his clarity had returned.
"Of course, the whole 'wisking' bit has side effects." She began to laugh a contagious laugh, and Calem couldn't help but chuckle with her.
He shook himself out of the memory. He had to stay focused, keep together. Now wasn't the time for reminescening about his younger, better days. Now was the time to get the hell out of this place. So Calem extended his range, trying to detect the feeling of the soul's core.
And then he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited with as much patience as he could bear.
His range crawled farther and farther every second he waited, expending his supply of magic with each minute gone by. There was nothing, just vast emptiness with a strikingly powerful aura around this void.
Calem continued his magical investigation, ignoring the fact that the sheer strength of this soul felt a little unnatural. It didn't matter. What mattered was getting out. He must be close to his time limit by-
'THERE!' His eyes shot open, and Calem whipped around in the direction where he felt the center was, cutting off any previous trails of thought in exchange for an unwaverring focus on the spot he knew he must go.
So, once more, Calem started walking.
The more I read my own story, the more similarities to Bleach I find. I don't want to go that route, I'm not even the biggest Bleach fan, but it's just the way it happens. I say this every time, so everyone that reads this probably knows that it won't come to pass, but I'll TRY to post quicker. Christmas break is coming up soon, so during that week off I hope to get some things done. R&R if you so choose, and have a Merry Christmas (because I probably won't be posting anything beforehand).