Chapter 17: Oni Tomodachi

I woke up in a strange room. There were only two beds, including mine, and a small study at the corner, along with a bookshelf that seemed to choke on many books. "You're awake." Someone said, closing a door.

I turned to see Nico wearing peculiar clothes sitting onto a chair beside me. "So, how are you feeling? Being in a week-long coma and all." He asked me. Coma? What was he walking about? Was this actually happening?

"What happened?" I groaned, though it didn't sound like me at all. I tried to get up, but only seemed to pull on one of my muscles. I yelped in pain. Nico noticed and quickly put me back in bed.

"You shouldn't be moving right now, Ash. You're still injured from before." He informed me. Ash? Did he forget my name? "Don't you remember? The three of us went to the woods to 'search for an adventure lurking in there.' At least, that's how Kit put it." Kit? Who are these people? And why am I Ash? I tried to ask him these questions, but nothing would come out.

Something rattled on my arm. I realized that it was a chain, tied to the bed. Nico looked at it with sympathy. "I forgot to tell you. You're going to an asylum soon."

I stiffened at the word. "Keith and I, we tried to stop them from taking you, since you only acted like this because of the venom, but they wouldn't." He chuckled, and a sad look appeared in his eyes. "Your father even went as far as choking one of them. He stopped when they threatened him to put you and him in here."

The doors burst open, revealing Vanitas in strange clothes as well. "Nico, it's been at least ten minutes you said it'd be only five minutes! Now git! I wanna see Ash too you know!" He hollered at Nico.

"Nice to see you too Van," I managed to say.

He stopped in his tracks and looked at me. "Ash! Thank God you're alive! I thought you were in a coma or some-"

"How long?" I interrupted him.

"What?" He asked.

"How long will I be there?" I asked again, the sternness in my voice growing.

No one answered. "Tell me! How long will I be there?!" Tears pricked Vanitas's eyes. He looked away from me.

"One year." Nico finally answered, not looking at me. I felt my head fall onto a pillow and squeeze my eyes shut.

"O…...Oni...On...Oni.." I heard someone call my name, but I didn't know who. "On...Oni..Oni!" Someone shook me quite hard.

I gasped, and jolted from my spot. "So the moron finally woke up?" A voice said to my left. I turned around to see Vanitas putting on a black sweater. "Morning." He said, glancing at me through the mirror.

"Hey Van." I replied. My eyes widened as I realized what I said. Oh shit what did I just say Vanitas will kill me for sure. I thought frantically. Nico looked at me with bewilderment.

Vanitas glared at me. "Don't ever call me that. Ever." He walked away with an angry look on his face.

"What in the world made you do that?" He asked me as I got up.

"I don't know, really." I answered, taking off the shirt I wore last night. "Can I ask you a question?"

Through the mirror, I could see puzzlement grow on his face. "Um, okay?"

"Have you ever met someone named Ash?"

Shocked exploded on his face. "Um, uh, no? Why? Does this 'Ash' know me too?"

"I'm not sure." I turned around to see him mumbling to himself. "Did you also know Vanitas before Grai introduced us?"

"....I don't understand. What are you trying to say exactly?" I went to the bathroom in our room.

"Nevermind." I shook the thought away as I splashed water onto my face.

"Uh huh," He looked at me in a funny way and opened the closet. "By the way, you have to get Grai from the training room. He's been in there since six."

"What?" I complained. "Why me?"

He threw a shirt at me. "Because you woke up late." He answered.

I scoffed at that. "No one bothered to tell me when to wake up."

He rolled his eyes at my excuse. "Just go to the training room and tell him to come, that's all. Nothing else." He told me, walking out of the room.

Great, I thought. Just when things couldn't get any worse, I have to go visit Grai. How wonderful.

~~~

Before I could even knock on the door, I dodged a hit from it and glanced at my attacker. Grai glowered back.

"Let me guess," He started. "The others told you to get me because you woke up late."

"How accurate." I responded, unimpressed. "So are you coming or what? I'm not waiting all day for you. I don't live on an empty stomach."

He ignored me and walked right past me. I followed him to the lunch room. "Go inside. I'll come back after I change." With that, he left.

I walked inside to find the whole elite group at their group and a few others from different groups having breakfast, including some of my friends. I ignored them at the moment and sat with my members. In each plate were eggs and bacon.

"Hey look, Iceberg's awake!" a voice shouted from our table. I glared at the culprit, Eli. He was grinning like he was high on weed while the others frowned at him.

"Is it necessary to call him that at seven in the morning?" Zane asked him, yawning.

"Of course it is, Kiwi!"

"Don't call me that."

"Besides, it's not like he cares." He pointed at me, ignoring what he said.

"Oh, he does. He's just too scared to say anything."

I turned to see Grai eyeing me before sitting with Vanitas and Nico.

"Look who decided to come and eat." Zane glanced at him before going back to poking his food.

"Look who forgot to erase his mouth again." He replied.

"And people ask why I'm so annoying." Eli commented as they bickered.

"Shut up Elastic." They said in unison.

"Hey!"

Vanitas just sat there, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did Grai ever act like this when he lived with you?" He asked me.

"Hmm? No, not really." I thought about asking him who Ash was, but shook the thought away. "He was more of an introvert unless you wanted to pick a fight with him."

Just as soon as our conversation began, it quickly ended when Yuuto walked in the room. He eyed our group before going back to doing whatever he had planned. Vanitas remained silent for a few minutes while everyone else chatted.

Nico waved his hand in front of him, but he remained unfazed. He pointed at him and asked Zane, "What's up with him?"

He's always like this whenever Yuuto comes by." He replied. "You see, Yuuto has this mind controlling ability that he always uses on Vanitas. He's just afraid that he'll use it on him, that's all."

"You know I wouldn't hesitate to tell him the most embarrassing thing that happened to you, right?" Vanitas asked, awakening from his trance.

He glared at him. "Just because you can see people's memories doesn't mean you can show them to the world."

"Same goes to you when it comes to me."

Silence hung in the air for a few seconds before everything went back to normal. "So, our first task today is that we need to look for a boy named Keith," Crimson began, pulling up a screen to show a boy that looked exactly like Grai, but wore contacts to make him look like he had green eyes.

"He's wearing contacts." I blurted out.

Everyone turned to look at me. "And you know how?" Zane asked, still upset from the fight.

I pointed to the rim of the eyes. "If you zoom in close enough, you can see there is a tiny wall on the eye." I tried to enlarge the image on the screen. "I recognize them from Mune. He wears his own during special events. Though this one seems different."

"What do you mean by different?" Crimson asked, curious. "I mean, it seems obvious but still."

"I mean with Mune's contacts, you can change your eyesight. But with these contacts, you can change your eye color."

Everyone nodded in understanding except for Grai. He just got up after whispering in Vanitas's ear. "Moving on, his location is later somewhere in Mexico, Sonora." He began. "And, the 'Day of the Dead' is coming up in a few days so-"

"Alright! This is gonna be awesome!" Eli exclaimed while interrupting Vanitas in the process.

"As I said," Vanitas continued, rolling his eyes. "We will be allowed to wear masks and face paint and whatnot. So here are the roles for each of us-"

I chose to tune him out and go back to that weird dream. What did it mean? I didn't understand at all. I closed my eyes and tried to forget, only to get another dream of me looking at a bunch of strangers.

"How much longer until we get to attack?" Someone asked me from behind.

"In a minute, Ash, calm down." I answered, turning to look at a girl with jet black hair and glowing teal eyes, a hint of pink sparking in them. So this was Ash? Did that mean- "Sometimes I wonder how the two of us became siblings." I said, interrupting my thoughts.

Ash rolled her eyes before going back to whatever we were doing. "Whatever helps this mission, Keith. Whatever helps this mission." She said.

"You could go home. That would help this mission." I bickered. Ash rolled her eyes and continued to stalk the strangers with me.

"One of them is leaving-" She began.

"You think I don't know?!" I whispered - yelled.

She raised her hands in defense. "Calm down, I'm just saying. Doesn't one of us have to follow him?" She asked.

"You stay here and I will follow him. Got it?" I answered and left before she could bicker with me again.

I chose to go through the rooftops as I kept an eye on the stranger. It was going swell until he stopped abruptly, causing me to almost fall off the building. I hid in the shadows when he turned to look in my direction.

Honestly, I had expected someone I didn't recognize, not Zane. His eyes glowed under his hood as he scanned the area. He looked back in my direction. "Are you going to just stand there or what?" He asked.

I ran to the edge and leaped into a haystack. I was still taking a few more straws out of my hair when Zane continued talking. "They're planning on having a ball next week from now-"

"A ball?" I interrupted. "Our planets are at war, and they are having a ball?" I laughed. "These people are idiots."

"Actually, they're smarter than you know." Zane disagreed. "They'll be having snipers around the palace, and they'll be having guards watching every corner."

I shrugged it off. "So? Who said we'll enter through the back door?"

Zane shook his head. "And that's why you and Ash are siblings." He silently chuckled at that. "Alright, so you go through the front. Then what? Knock out a few guards? Did you forget the princes? The second eldest, Ikama, is known for killing every foe unscathed. What are you going to do about that?" He asked me.

I smiled. "He obviously hasn't met me. Or Ash, for that matter."

"Oni!" Someone yelled. "God dammit! Wake up!" I snapped my eyes to Grai standing over me, a look of concern falling over his face.

I groaned. "I'm awake, calm down."

"What is going on with you, Oni?" Nico asked me.

I looked at him, confused. "What do you mean? I'm fine-"

"Quit lying already. Something is going on with you. First, you start to go deaf. Then, you start asking me questions about someone named Ash? And just now your eyes rolled back and you were mumbling strange things." Everyone exchanged looks of concern and glanced at me.

I got up and brushed myself off. "So?" I asked. "I got a bolt loose in my head. So what?"

"'So what?!'" Vanitas said. He gave a short laugh. "So what if this happens again? So what if you get killed? So what, right? Wrong!" He got up and looked me in the eye. The similar feeling of being a statue came back.

"We may take kids from their families, but we still try to keep them alive! So whatever problem you have, fix it! Before you end up killing yourself." He got up and left the room. "We leave tonight!" He hollered before leaving.

I turned to look at the others. Grai put his hand on my shoulder and pointed his head to the door. "Let's go see what's wrong with you." I hesitantly followed him to a room I vaguely remembered from our tour. He put me in a seat and placed a strange helmet on me.

"Um, what are you doing?" I asked out of curiosity. Grai began typing on one of the laptops furiously.

"You see bits and pieces of people's past every time you fall asleep, correct?" He stopped, and glanced at me. I said nothing. "I'll take that as a yes." He continued to type on for a while before stopping and shutting the laptop and dragging me out of the room after yanking the helmet off my head.

"Now where are we going?" I yelled through the sea of kids. He said nothing. We managed to make it back to our room. He finally let go of me and began rummaging through Zane's things. "Uh, what are you doing?" He didn't answer.

Instead, he pulled out a cloak from the mountain of clothes. "Does this seem familiar to you?" He asked me. I stood there in shock. That was the same cloak that Zane wore in my dream. But how…

"H-How?" I stammered. He smirked and threw it on Zane's bed. He then went through Vanitas's things. There, he found the same clothes he wore when he had burst into the room last night. "Where…?" I didn't finish. His smirk grew wider and he threw the clothes on his bed too.

Next, he rummaged through Nico's belongings. He pulled out the same clothes he wore last night as well. I was speechless. How did he know what clothes they wore? How did he find those clothes? "Impossible…" I whispered.

He dropped the clothes on his bed and pointed at the door. "Go and wait outside for me. Don't come in unless I say so, got it?" I nodded quickly and waited outside.

The moment I did, I was greeted by my friends. Mune spotted me first, his expression bland. "Look what the cat dragged in." He told the others. They all looked at me with the same expression.

I shifted nervously in my spot. "H-Hey guys." I replied. "How's it going?"

Jay raised an eyebrow. "Fine. What about you? You still going deaf? Or is fainting more entertaining?"

I stared at them, surprised. "Did I miss something?" I questioned them. "What is going on?"

Lina spoke up. "We got yelled at by Vanitas. Told us we had to go with you to Mexico-"

"Long story short were leaving home with you guys." Jay snapped.

I nodded slowly. "Okay. So are you guys going to pack your things right now?" I asked them.

Before any of them could answer, I was pulled into the room by Grai. The door slammed in front of their faces. I turned to face him angrily. "What the he-" I paused, and gaped.

In front of me was a girl, with jet black hair and bright teal eyes with sparks of pink glowing in them. I blinked a few times. "Ash?"