Although ghostly hearing was not exceptional, Pandora did overhead Sidey's remark, and looked rather alarmed. "(L-look, Sidney, Ginger started it, and Cassius only snapped at her because he was in a bad mood, and I'm sure he didn't really mean it, or if he did you really couldn't blame him 'cuz Ginge is super annoying, and speaking on behalf of his pokemon we'd really, really appreciate it if you didn't break our trainer.)"

He sounded quite nervous, and was keeping his distance, aware that some humans couldn't tell different members of a pokemon species apart, and he looked a little too much like someone she apparently wanted to smash for his own good.

Sidney hissed as she rose to her feet, and took her bowl of rice elsewhere before she said anything mean or offensive, far away from where a purple haired trainer had gone. Men are such jerks, she thought, still very angry. I knew I stayed away from them for a reason. Growing up being tormented by Shade had given her a negative image of men in general, and she thought she was over it too, especially after meeting Cassius and Michael...but now she was certain they were both just as bad as Shade.

"(Great. You made her leave,)" Ginger said sarcastically. "(I wanted to see her turn Cassius into a pretzel. Or a girafarig, like a balloon pokemon.)" She giggled to herself. "(Hehehe. Girafarig Cassius. Funny.)"

"(At least whatever's happening is giving her a short attention span, or Cass'd be in real trouble)" Pandora looked warily after Sidney, to make sure she wasn't going off to find the ghostly trainer, instead of get away from him. But they seemed to be steering towards opposite sides of the forest, which would keep them from physical violence a little while longer.

The younger ghost turned to Suzaku, and spoke in a slightly scolding, matter-of-fact sort of tone. "(Suzzy, I respect you as a pokemon, but that's an awful idea. We need to interfere right this minute before somebody loses a limb. Or)" he added, for Ginger's benefit, "(gets smashed by a shadow ball, Cassie was looking a little bloodthirsty too.)"

"(Oh, really? Then what you suggest we do, little spirit dude?)" Suzaku said with a touch of sarcasm, tilting his head in mock interest. "(If he's really bloodthirsty, then why not let him at Ginger? I'm sure the world would be a much more pleasant place without her.)"

"(Hey! Take that back, you walking feather duster!)"

The ghost paused to consider this. "(Say, that's a thought. But, on the other hand, he's not exactly easy to aim when he'd embittered, and... well, I wasn't really around for it, but I've heard he can get... well, dangerous.)" his voice was a near whisper, and he sounded almost serious for once. "(I dunno what, but we have to do something)"

But Pandora didn't have time to make suggestions. Cassius had finished his secluded meal, and returned to camp, packing away his bowl with rather more force than was strictly necessary for the poor porcelain container. "(Douse the fire, Pan, and pack up the rest of our things)" he said, rather more snappish and commanding than usual.

"(Good luck,)" Suzaku muttered to Pandora, getting up to gather his own trainer's belongings before he got yelled at too. Ginger decided to stay by the fire so she could keep an eye on Cassius. All of this talk about how close the haunter was from going into a violent rage made her nervous, especially after she was hospitalized the last time he lost control of his emotions--and that was just a panic attack. The uneasy little absol wondered if she should say something to him, something reassuring, or maybe just come flat out and ask Cassius what his deal was. She openned her mouth to speak, but was cut off by a gruff old man's voice.

"I can't believe I overslept," Koga said, cracking his back as he wandered over to join the others. "Looks like I missed breakfast too. That's a shame, but it's nothing compared to when I was stranded on Mt. Moon for twenty-four days and nights without food or water. It got so bad, I almost considered eating my own two legs." He laughed a little, but immediately turned serious when he realized they were one group member short. "Hmm, where's Sidney?"

Pandora looked chastened, and set to work, glancing nervously over his shoulder at Cassius, who was pacing off the other side of camp. "(Erm, Sidney walked off with her breakfast when she woke up)" he said tentatively, hoping Cassius wouldn't go ballistic.

Fortunately, Cassius maintained enough respect for his fellow gymleader not to yell at him. "Sidney walked off, she's around here somewhere" he translated, teeth clenched.

"That's strange." Koga may have been old and senile, but his ninja senses were still fully functional and tingling that things were out of the norm. Sidney had been acting unusually since her return shortly after the finish of his story, and Cassius hadn't been himself either, wearing a chip on his shoulder all morning. He had seen something like this before, and he knew just how serious it was. "Uh...p-perhaps you should go talk to her," he suggested to the ghostly gym leader, giving a comforting smile. "You'll be amazed what a little exchange of words can do."

Cassius momentarily glared murder at Koga, though his gaze softened a smidge after the initial instant of wanting to lunge at the ninja for the mere suggestion (which wouldn't have been all that smart, anyways. The guy was old, but probably still the stronger of the two.) He soon stopped glaring altogether, and looked away.

"Pandora, are you finished packing?" The younger ghost nodded wearily, having rushed to finish his jobs for fear of wrathful consequences. "Good, then we can head off as soon as she gets back."

It was just as he thought. Something had happened between the two and they were now not on speaking terms with each other. This really was serious. Koga was about to say something else when he caught a glint of something yellow out of the corner of his eye, flying through the air towards Cassius and hitting him loudly on the back of his head.

The object immediately fell to the ground and Ginger moved closer to inspect it. She recognized in instantly as the azure jewel that Sidney had started wearing after her short trip back from Cassius' mansion. "(Hey, isn't that that broach you...gave.....oooo...)" She scrunched up her face in a 'not good' expression, turning away.

At first, Cassius didn't have time to take notice of what had just been thrown at him, or by whom, he was too busy hissing and clutching his head. He felt bleeding, and turned around to find the cause of his pain just as Ginger spoke.

He removed his hand from his head and used it to snatch up the broach, getting it out of Ginger's prying reach as soon as he could. His other hand went to apply pressure to the cut (which was, thankfully, not that deep. Sidney must've been a fair ways off) as he examined the missile.

One would have, perhaps, expected some sort of ballistic explosion, but the look Cassius gave it was a mournful one, and he looked for a moment to be on the brink of tears. And then it was gone, and he was back on his feet, shoving the slightly bloody broach into his pocket and starting to pace again.

The blaziken pretended to be too busy packing to notice what was going on, rolling up Sidney's sleeping bag while casting quick glances in the others' direction. But his trainer soon appeared, briskly walking over to him. "Suzaku, are you finished packing?" she said, avoiding eye-contact with everyone except the bird pokemon.

Suzaku stood up quickly, erect like a soldier. "(Yes, ma'am, I just--)"

"Then let's get going." The trainer turned to walk away again.

"(Uh, okay.)"

"Ah, yes. We should probably head out now," Koga said, also trying to act like he didn't see anything. Getting involved in a personal fued between two people risked him getting seriously injured in the crossfire--but it was clear that something had to be done soon.

With Sidney thus taking the front of the group, Cassius took the back, leaving last from the campsite and staying behind, leaving all present third parties in the middle to keep apart the volatile pair. Pandora, not particularly pleased with getting stuck next to Ginger, pilfered Maiden's pokeball for company, releasing the kind misdreavus and catching her up on the events of the evening.

"(Oh, dear, they're really very mad at each-other, aren't they?)" she said, her voice soft and concerned. "(And neither one has said a word about what happened?)"

"(If you ask me, Cassius probably did something stupid again to tick her off,)" Ginger said, kicking a rock along as she followed the group. "(He's such an airhead sometimes. Must be all that noxious specter gas clouding his brain--no offense, Pan, my man,)" she added for the sake of the purple gas-like ghost floating beside her.

"(Sidney doesn't get angry easily,)" Suzaku sighed, still exhausted from rushing to pack everything. Sidney hadn't bothered to return him to his pokeball, so it looked like he was tagging along for the long walk. "(I think only that Shade dude was capable of making her agg like that. Maybe she and Cassius just had a killabrenda.)"

"(A killawhosa?)" the absol said, raising an eyebrow--well, if she had eyebrows.

"(A killabrenda. Y'know, a misunderstanding,)" Suzaku said matter-of-factly, as if everyone should be able to understand his unusual lingo. "(It's possible, considering the two are too good of buds to suddenly start not talking.)"

"(Suzaku does have a point)" said Maiden, putting herself between Ginger and Pandora without bringing too much attention to the movement, to prevent bloodshed. "(Sidney and Cassius are very close, but from two different cultures, nearly two different worlds. It was nearly inevitable that there should be, at some point, a misunderstanding between them.)" She sighed, and looked at the ground. "(I do hope it was nothing more than that, they were getting along so well and Cassius has never shown interest in a human before.)"

"(Whadda ya mean?)" said Pandora, blinking. "(He's always interested in humans. Confused, sure, but he was interested in why Mr. Fuji was such a nice guy, and he studied the history of a lot of the old mansion owners. Sure, maybe they're not as interesting as ghosts, but it's not like he completely ignores them!)"

Ginger blew a raspberry. "(Pan, you're as dumb as your trainer sometimes,)" she told him. "(But thanks for helping prove my whole 'poison gas brain damage' theory.)"

"(Well, then someone should talk to them and help sort things out,)" Suzaku suggested, turning his gaze up towards the sky as he pondered this. "(Y'know, explain where the other's coming from. You can count me out though. I'm never good about handling these sort of things.)" He held up both clawed hands to emphasize his point. "(But Sidney's starting to scare me, so the sooner, the better.)"

"(Cassius gave Sidney that broach, right?)" Ginger said quietly to Maiden, only mildly paying attention to what the blaziken was saying. "(I wonder if he knew what it meant to give a human female a shiny object like that?)"

"(It's a little different from that in this case, Pan)" said Maiden gently, consoling the confused and rather irked haunter. Her voice did seem to calm him down, and instead of throwing a shadow ball at Ginger he just made a face, sticking out his tongue and pulling his eyes down with his claws.

"(Cassius has never placed much value on jewelry, with the possible exception of his own broach. I doubt he understood exactly what it meant when he gave her the broach, though I suspect he understands the gravity of her giving it back.)" She glanced back at him, worried.

"(But the real question is why she returned it so... forcefully in the first place. And why Cassius is so angry with her. When we were recently dead, Cassius tried to take ghost yearmates for awhile, despite being stuck as a human. His last... ended badly, in midwinter at that. But this seems to have upset him far more than that, and surely they've not become that close yet...)"

"(Cassius has had previous mates?)" Ginger laughed out loud. "(And all this time I thought he was too much of a martyr to find someone on his own. That's why I tried to help him and Sidney as much as I could--except he kept getting angry at me, telling me it was dangerous. What's dangerous? Was he afraid Sidney would use one of her ninja moves on him if she found out he liked her? Did something happen in his last relationship to make him super cautious?)"

This seemed to surprise Maiden, who hesitated in her reply. "(Dangerous? It... shouldn't be. Well... the average ghost yearmating is more of a close friendship than a matter of true love, you see. Cassius isn't exactly open on the subject, but as far as I know he had one yearmate with whom he was really in love, nearly two hundred years ago. She was captured in one of the earliest trainer raids on the old tower, and he never saw her again. It's a curse on all ghosts, you see, to keep them from love, often ending such courtships in tragedy. So, yes, it could be dangerous, but... Cassius must really, really like her for him to be worried about it.)"

"(That depends,)" the darkling replied. "(Do yearmates usual show affection?)" She grinned a little. "(I saw them kissing back at the pokecenter, after Cassius was back in his body again. But this horrible ghost curse that you speak of sounds a little hard to believe. I mean, how do you know it's not just coincidence? When I was captured, I didn't know it at the time, but it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Stuff happens, you can't just pin it on some silly old superstitious curse.)" She giggled. "(Cassius doesn't really believe in it, does he? Because if he does, he'll probably do some stupid self-sacrificing move like the idiot he is and--)"

The absol halted speaking all of a sudden, her pupils nearly shrinking to pinpoints. "(Oh, snap...)"

"(KISSING?! Like with the human mouths and little tiny human tongues and arms and stuff? EEEEEEWWW!)" Pandora, of course, was the source of the outbreak, which was shushed because Cassius, at the back, was glaring murder at the hushed conspirators, one of whom didn't yet have the whole "hushed" part down yet. "(I always knew Cassius had weird tastes)" he added, in a whisper voice that he would likely soon forget about using.

Maiden was unphased, and smiled at Ginger's first comment, then frowned as she went on. "(Yearmates don

"(Pan, you moron,)" Ginger hissed, trying to keep her voice low under the scrutinizing watch of the wroth undead spirit behind her. "(If Sidney wasn't already angry, I'd sock you in the mouth with a shadow ball.)" She glanced back at Cassius as well, then immediately turned to look forward again, afraid that the ghost was capable of melting her with his glowing red eyes. "(But I have an idea. We'll need to somehow pull them off to the side--separately, because if we stick them together, they'll get too heated to think rationally--and ask them what happened, and then try to help them make everything right again.)"

"(Brilliant idea,)" Suzaku replied sarcastically, slightly irked since that was his suggestion from the beginning.

"(OOOOH! I C- I mean, ooooh, I can help with that)" said Pandora, remembering his quiet voice just in the nick of time. "(I'm great at speaking to people and telling them about stuff, like how it's really weird that Cass and Sidney wanna be yearmates but I guess if they really want it then it's not really as gross as it sounds at first and they should try anyways because one of them's already dead so what's the worst that could happen?)"

Maiden smiled a little, and replied in all possible warmness. "(Perhaps not this time, Pandora. I will speak to Sidney, she needs someone with an understanding of a specter's perspective on the matter, and also I think a female. Cassius, on the other hand, needs as close to a human advisor as we can manage.)"

"(Human advisor? Who? Suzaku?)" Ginger asked, tilting her head. "(He's horrible with cheering people up.)"

"(She means you, you donk,)" the blaziken retorted, rolling his eyes.

"(What?! Me?!)" Ginger said loudly, immediately forgetting to use her quiet voice and ducking her head in case Cassius decided to shoot lasers from his eyes. "(B-b-but Cassius...I-I'm the last person he'd want to confide in. H-he'd eat me alive before he'd tell me anything.)"

"(That hasn't stopped you from prying into his personal business before, has it?)" Suzaku pointed out.

"(It is perhaps a dangerous task if Cassius is feeling particularly moody, and it will require a certain amount of tact, which is... not always a trait you emphasize in your speech, Ginger, but I'm sure you've the talent within you to succeed. Please do remember the gravity of the situation, though, and how Sidney will feel for months to come if the misunderstanding is not properly sorted out.)" Maiden's confidence in Ginger was not echoed in Pandora, who looked very skeptical at this new plan.

"(If Cassius blasts you to pieces again, can I have your share of dinner?)"