(AU in which Ooga is a ghost that has way too much fun messing around with Klik's head.)

It started, as many things do, in the early afternoon.

Klik didn't consider himself to be alone at the time. After all, he was less than two hundred steps away from Booga, who was busy restocking the firewood pile. Klak was somewhere within five hundred steps, checking the snares, and Dooby was down by the coast meditating. He could find any one of them within seven minutes.

No, he didn't feel very alone as he sat in solitude, deftly repairing the mesh of their little-used fishing net. He was with the tribe, no matter where they were - linked not only by the island they lived on, but the gemstone that kept them alive.

Pop!

Or stopped them from dying, at least.

Klik glanced up to see Nooby sitting on the ground with a strange look on his face. "What happened?"

"Nooby see other pygmy," Nooby said, blinking at him.

"Other pygmy?"

He nodded, and the familiar goofy grin spread over his face again. "Nooby hear crying down by beach, so Nooby go to out-vestigate. Nooby out-vestigate lots of things! Nooby out-vestigated moving plant, and Nooby find very angry bird -"

"The crying?" Klik asked. "What was it?"

"Nooby find blue shiny pygmy!" said the simpleton, beaming. "Nooby ask, why is shiny pygmy crying? And shiny pygmy turn around, then poof!"

"Poof?" he prompted, when he didn't continue.

"Poof!" Nooby agreed.

Strange. Certainly worth investigating for himself -

His train of thought was cut off as Nooby shot into the air, screeching. For one brief moment he thought his friend was being dragged off by a dodo again, but several important factors - notably that there wasn't a dodo picking him up - forced him to discard that conclusion.

"What the -" he heard himself say, as if from a distance. He was busy staring and trying to match this up with anything he had seen before.

It didn't match. At all.

"Nooby not want fly!" Nooby shrieked, almost as high up as the treetops by then. "Nooby want back on ground!"

Whatever it was obliged, releasing him and allowing him to plummet back down to earth. Nooby, after a few moments of pinwheeling his arms and screaming in a very high pitched voice, landed with a bone-shattering crunch.

Klik stared at his body, then scanned the skies again. No signs of anything.

Strange.

Pop!

"Nooby back!"

"What was that?" Klik wondered, mostly to himself.

"Was thing," Nooby said. "Nooby go flying before, too. Fly sideways, into tree!"

A blue pygmy, a mysterious force, and 'poof'. Whatever that meant.

Don't jump to conclusions. Don't cloud your judgement.

"We haven't had anything overly strange happen to us for a while, have we?" he murmured. "I suppose we're overdue for a visit from whatever chaotic madness we seem to encounter every few months."

-:-:-

Explaining the situation to the others had been too exhausting for something so supposedly simple.

Klik slumped down in his bed, sighing deeply. If they were skeptical, fine. They'd come around soon enough, and if they didn't, whatever it was must be leaving them alone. That's what he wanted.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

"Oh, for crying out loud," he muttered.

That was the sound of stone hitting stone, none too gently. It wasn't too far off, either.

Crack. Crack.

Getting closer.

"Klik, dude," Dooby called from outside. "We've got floating rocks out here."

Great.

He sat up, pushing himself to his feet -

Crack. Crack. Thunk.

That was followed by a gurgle, then a thump. Dooby was probably dead.

Klik sighed, shaking his head.

Then someone tapped on the wood of his hut.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you? What do you want?"

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap...

"This is incredibly immature. You know that, right?"

It just kept right on tapping.

Fine. The mysterious force wanted to act like a petulant brat? Klik would treat it like petulant brats should be treated.

He settled back down, envisioning the tapping as rain and blotting it out. Now was when his weariness came in handy.

Six minutes later, the tapping stopped. Apparently the force didn't like being ignored much.

Thirty seconds after that, Klik was rubbing his neck and hoping the hut would still be standing when he got back from his untimely death.

-:-:-

The mysterious force that seemed to be related to an equally mysterious blue, shiny strange pygmy did not let up.

His data was getting all mixed up. Booga reported being attacked by a ten foot tall invisible monster, who had thrown bananas at him until the monkeys ripped his face off. Dooby had been accosted by a fierce pressure that left no footprints and drowned. Nooby had been devoured by ants, thrown into a dodo nest, pushed into two snares and probably a lot of other things. Klak had been impaled on a spear.

[He wasn't sure how unnatural the last one was, but he gave it the benefit of the doubt.]

He himself had not been killed after the incident with the tapping and the rocks, but he had not gotten off unscathed. Whatever it was seemed intent on irritating him to the point of no return.

Over the course of three days, he had become incredibly fed up with being tripped, lifted into the air without warning and being dropped from a non-lethal distance, having things he was working on yanked out of his hands, having things thrown at him, finding ants in his bed, being kept up at all hours of the night by tapping, scratching and - once - unholy screeching that sounded vaguely like it could come from the throat of a pygmy, having his glasses stolen again and again, and - the last straw - finding graffiti on the Totem of the Gem.

Klik had threatened to perform a full-on exorcism and summon whatever illicit powers he needed to get rid of the jerk at that point, and it had left him alone for a couple of blissful hours.

Those hours of peace had given him time to think, and he had put together a few important points. Namely, whatever this thing was, it could only be in one place at a time. And it was also not particularly patient.

All he had to do was wait it out.

-:-:-

It didn't take long for the force to show itself again.

"Klik!" Klak yelled. "The fish are attacking!"

He looked closely at the floating fish skewers that were advancing on his tribesmate. Four of them, sharp ends forward, hovering in midair.

...They were in two bunches, and those bunches were about the width of a pygmy's arms apart. He had been thrown off by the height, but now...

Klik stepped closer, between the invisible thing and Klak. "Who are you? Why are you attacking us?"

The thing didn't answer, instead pointing two of the skewers at him.

Fish skewers were nothing compared to the past few days.

He frowned, reaching out to take hold of them and pulling. "You know well that I can't die. Behave."

It resisted, for a moment, before releasing the fish and backing up.

"Klik?" Klak asked, voice wavering. "What's going on? What is that thing?"

"Someone invisible," Klik explained. "And they don't seem to feel like talking."

The floating skewers clattered to the ground.

"Is it gone?" Klak asked eventually, getting back to his feet.

"Not for good, if they are," he said.

"Oh, so it's a 'they' now?" his tribesmate demanded.

"I think this thing is a pygmy," Klik said, staring at the skewers still in his hand. "Some kind of invisible, floating pygmy."

"What, like a ghost?"

"Maybe."

"Why is it haunting us, then?" Klak frowned. "I don't think we've done anything wrong. Have we?"

"I don't know," Klik said, offering him the fish. "I don't think this ghost is all that hostile."

"Not hostile?" his friend sputtered, though he didn't turn down the offer of food. "It's been killing us and tormenting us for days, and it's not hostile?"

He shrugged. "They haven't gone after the Gem of Life. If they really wanted to harm us, they could kill us permanently with ease."

"This is ridiculous," Klak mumbled, stuffing a fish into his mouth. "Absolutely ridiculous."

Klik was inclined to agree with him.

-:-:-

The invisible pygmy seemed to have found another hobby over the next four days, because Klik only had a few stray pebbles thrown at his head. They weren't being thrown as hard as before, either - it seemed less hostile and more like a semi-friendly greeting, letting him know that they were there.

The others hadn't had many attacks, either. Booga said he'd been pushed, but not into anything lethal. Klak said that he'd bumped into something that wasn't completely solid, and promptly been thrown into a tree. And, most interesting of all, Dooby claimed that he'd seen a flicker of blue before he had a coconut bashed on his head.

Nooby had all but vanished. The few times that Klik saw him barely counted as seeing him at all - he caught a glimpse of him laughing and running in the opposite direction, but no matter how he tried, he couldn't track him down.

He was almost completely convinced that the invisible pygmy had something to do with it.

At the end of the fourth day, around dusk, three taps sounded on the wood of his hut.

"Come in," he called, not looking up from his task. His glasses had taken a battering, and mending them didn't take long. It wasn't worth the walk and the body disposal to regenerate another pair.

The flap of the tent opened, then shut again.

No one came in.

[No one he could see, at least.]

For a moment Klik paused, unsure of what to do, before resuming his work. "Hello. Are you here to talk?"

"Might be," said the invisible pygmy.

That was definitely a male voice.

"What's your name?"

A pause, and then a blue figure shimmered into visibility. "Ooga."

Klik blinked, taking in the translucent pygmy before him. "Are you a ghost?"

"Obviously," Ooga said. "I had thought you'd have figured that much out."

"Well, yes," he said. "But if you're a ghost, then were you alive once?"

He nodded.

"How long have you been here?"

"A long time," he said. "I don't know how long exactly."

"But you only started haunting us a little over a week ago." Klik frowned. "Why now?"

Ooga shrugged, settling down on the edge of his bed. If he looked closely, he could see that his wispy ghost tail sank a few inches into the ground. "I was kind of stuck in some sort of ghostly repeat sequence that I kept replaying. It got broken around a week ago."

"By what?"

"I don't know."

Ooga. That matched the naming pattern of their tribe.

"How did you die?" he asked. "If you don't mind me asking."

The ghost shook his head. "I'd rather not talk about it."

"Alright." Klik glanced at the door, then at him. "So you've been messing with the tribe for a week."

Ooga did not look particularly guilty. "Yep."

"Why?"

"I was bored," he said.

"Bored?"

"That's what I said, yeah."

"You put ants in my bed because you were bored?" he demanded.

"I only did that once," Ooga protested.

"You put ants in my bed because you were bored?"

"Look, I worked hard for that. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to transport those little monsters when your hands aren't always solid?"

"Oh, poor you," Klik snapped. "I'm overwhelmed with sympathy. Here I was thinking that we had somehow disturbed your rest, or you had unfinished business, or something like that. You know, actual reasons for doing this kind of thing?"

"Well, one of you probably did disturb my rest," he interjected. "Or whatever that thing I was stuck in was."

"But no, I have been going mostly without sleep for the past week because you were bored. Of course that makes perfect sense. You know, if you had come up to me on the first day and asked me, we could have worked something out!"

"Uh, hello?" Ooga gestured to himself. "Ghost? Normally we can't just wander in and strike up a conversation. It's always 'holy crap you're a floating transparent non-corporeal thing', and sometimes screaming."

"You could have wandered in and talked to me," Klik said. Inhale, exhale. Breathe, focus, observe. "It would have been fine."

"Yeah, well, I didn't know that."

"The others aren't going to be too happy with you."

Ooga winced. "Yeah, I figured as much."

"And I'm going to venture a guess that I'm going to have to be some sort of mediator, because you've completely alienated everyone else."

"Almost everyone," the ghost corrected. "Nooby and I get along pretty well."

"Nooby - is he alright?" he asked. "How is he?"

"He's fine. We've been hanging out." Ooga frowned. "He took me to see his personal graveyard. It was creepy even for me, and I'm already dead."

"Graveyard?"

"Yeah. The guy collects dead bodies. He introduced me to some of them."

"I was wondering where all those bodies went," Klik said thoughtfully. "I suppose it's one way of keeping the island clean."

"You guys are so weird," Ooga said with a laugh. "Is it true that you play free-for-all sports with a murderous squid?"

He nodded. "Last one standing wins."

"Who usually wins?"

"Booga."

"Come again?"

"Booga," he repeated, noting the look of surprise on his face. "Your names are rather similar, aren't they?"

"Do you think we're all from the same place?" Ooga asked. "I mean, was I supposed to be"

"Part of the tribe?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know," Klik said. "All I know is that we need to find you something to keep you occupied as soon as possible."

"Like what, chores?" he demanded.

"Well-"

"No."

"I could -"

"No."

"You can float," Klik said. "That's an incredible asset."

"I would rather die," he said, crossing his arms. "Again."

"Saying that doesn't have a lot of impact around here, you know."

Ooga shrugged.

"I'm going to get some uninterrupted sleep," he said. "Don't kill anyone, alright?"

"I make no promises."

Rolling his eyes, Klik blew out his beeswax candle and watched as Ooga vanished in a swirl of blue.

Overdue bouts of weirdness did sometimes yield positive results.