Out of Sight

Entertainment

Author's Note: The reason it took me so long to update is because I

A. was debating on rewriting it to include face offs

B. Have had seriously bad anxiety lately over my writing and making use of it

C. anxiety disorders kill your brain stamina

11

I would have much rather not dreamed, but Gene appeared to me all the same.

"Sorry, you'll be seeing me for a bit," he said, his look of apology completely alien to Naru's face. "Mental defenses down and all that. When you stop seeing me will be a good sign that you've healed."

I just mentally sighed, too tired to think. Even as I looked at him my awareness faded in and out.

When it faded back in he knelt beside where I lay, his hand was once more on my face, warm with intentions.

"I'll keep you safe," he murmured. "But, in the meantime...want to do some snooping?"

I shifted drowsily.

"Sleepy..." I whined.

"Oh, but it's Naru. He's narrowing in on his foe who dared to harm his woman."

I laughed weakly.

"Come on," Gene tugged gently on my hands, pulling me up as though my body were a sheet in the wind. "This will be fun. You have plenty of time to rest."

So, giving my consciousness a mental shake of thoughts, I focused and allowed him to pull me along.

The darkness about me blotched and blurred with colors that cleared to images. I saw snow. A streetlamp. Stars. A high-rise, ritzy apartment complex I didn't recognize, but which I instantly knew was in the more well to do part of the city.

Finally, we stepped into a hallway, lined with white doors boasting gold numbers and shiny mail slots. I couldn't make out the carpet, though I got a heady impression that it was clean, colorful, and relatively new.

Across the blured rainbow of the carpet, my eyes fell on dark shoes and legs that led up to none other than my professor, an arm held out against the frame of an open doorway I had somehow missed before.

"This is...weird..." I said. "Everything feels so different and..."

"Dreamlike?" Gene filled in, tugging me closer to Naru. "The spiritual plane. Since you don't have eyes of flesh, the way you are perceiving things now are through your spiritual senses, which I imagine you're not use to, being alive and all. It's not like having eyeballs."

That would explain why I felt like I was 'seeing' emotions and textures, while having a hard time making out details like the exact colors and patterns in the carpet.

"...it wasn't me, I swear on my life..."

Masako Hara's voice sounded different as well, as though it came straight to my chest rather than to my ears.

My vision cleared and focused on Naru's face with hyper clarity.

What I saw made me flinch back.

He was pale, yet livid with an ice-hot fury that curled back his lips and sharpened his eyes to obsidian slits. Not a trace of blue could be seen.

"I find that hard to believe from a professional like you who just sat back and watched her get possessed several times in the space of a half hour," he said with steady venom.

"Ooo, he's mad," said Gene from the peanut gallery.

Without moving, I could see Masako Hara, as though the doorway had become transparent.