Fear, it seemed to be a living breathing entity of late. It surrounded her, suffocated her, tormented her with hellish nightmarish visions of blood and pain and screams of agony before death. It was a terrible thing to live with everyday of one's life.

And right now, in the close quarter's of the train station in downtown Tokyo- the bombardment of everything from sound, to smell to the vision's in her mind's eye were making her damned head ache. To be perfectly honest she should have expected something like this to occur.

After all she was a famous medium from the U.S. whom had moved overseas in the hopes of escaping everything. However Japan appeared to be just as horrible as everywhere else she had ever live.

It was full of spirit's and ghosts too.

Some of which she had seen throwing themselves off of the platform in front of ongoing trains in a bizarre parody of their final moments, only to crawl up from the tracks again with their twisted and disfigured bodies. Dripping organs and blood everywhere- just to do it all over again several minutes later.

And the one's who weren't too busy throwing themselves off of the platform were wandering through the crowd of bodies, getting up in people's faces to see if they reacted any to their presence.

And if they did... Well, usually when that happened you wound up with a new best friend. Albit an unwanted one, but still. The spirit would automatically latch on to the person who reacted to them, and follow them.

That was how hauntings occurred.

It didn't always have anything to do with the house you live in or some crap like that, sometimes it was the people who were haunted.

They were just either too stupid of senseless to realize it.

But she knew it. Hell she even understood it to a degree that would put most people in mental hospital's where they would then have a very intimate relationship with a nice comfy straightjacket. God knew that she had been there once or twice in her life thanks to a few nervous breakdowns caused by her ability.

But that was neither here nor there right now.

Right now she was simply trying to distract herself without giving herself away to one or more of the spirit's wandering close by.

Mentally touching her fingertips together while counting to a million, she must have gotten to about a hundred before she paused for a moment to look around the crowd and blinked when she could literally see a bunch of zero's in flashing red lights hanging over the heads of at least thirty or so people.

Tilting her head to the side ever so slightly since she had only come across this phenomenon once before and that was a vague recollection at best due to how old she had been at the time, she stared. At first puzzled.

And then, one of the people with a zero hanging over their head bumped into her and nearly knocked her off of the platform. Or at least the guy would have knocked her off of the platform if not for the fact that a person (she assumed was a young woman with near waist length long red hair and vivid emerald eyes) hadn't have reached out and grabbed her to prevent her fall, and hauled her back against... Uh... Note to self stop assuming that every guy with long hair is a woman. She mentally chided herself as the young man carefully maneuvered them back away from the edge a little bit before releasing her.

"Thanks." She muttered awkwardly as she cast a brief glance in his direction and nearly did a double take when she could have sworn that he had golden colored eyes instead of green there for a minute. But then again, perhaps it was merely a trick of the light.

He said nothing, though she got the mental impression that he smiled. If only for a moment.

Resuming her earlier distraction of counting as she ticked off random numbers on her fingertips, she felt her mind being tugged sharply in another direction. One far from numbers, and distractions and safety and sanity- and right back into the vision's of hell.

A train crashing. People being thrown into the seats and sides and windows. The glass breaking and cutting people to ribbons while others were simply impales through the eye, neck, chest and stomach.

Limbs were torn off as the train slid across the ground, because those unlucky enough to hit that particular side of the train wound up being dragged, their arms and legs ripped off and their insides falling out of their skulls and torso's from all the damage.

What few didn't automatically die on impact or from being dragged, slashed or impaled were alive enough to scream and wail and cry until they either died of shock, the fire that would roast them once it consumed the train, or from blood loss.

Her breath coming out in short quick bursts, her stomach lurched, and bile burned the back of her throat as she closed her eyes trying to will away the nightmare in her head quietly.

But she must have made a sound, however small, because suddenly the person whom had saved her before had her by the upper arm and was pulling her back, back, back away from the platform and over to a nice, sturdy looking bench where he gently pushed her down onto it and then knelt down in front of her so that they were eye to eye and asked in a soft voice, "Are you alright?"

Again she got the impression of gold eyes watching her as she looked him in the eye and bit her lower lip and let out a whimper as she felt the tears that she had been trying to hold back for some time finally slip down her face.

Frowning at her behavior, the young man started to ask her questions.

Things like, Could he call anyone? Did she have any friends nearby? Did she need to go to a hospital?

Because obviously she must be mentally ill in some way to be acting as she was instead of acting like a normal human being. Why if she wasn't a medium and about to have a damn nervous breakdown right here and now, she'd possibly slap his pretty face for daring to suggest that she was mentally ill.

Sighing because he was clearly growing frustrated from her lack of a response, he slowly began to stand as he turned his head and noted that the train that they had been waiting for had finally arrived. Silently debating on whether or not he should leave the distraught woman by herself and simply leave, he was about to do just that when he took a small step in the direction of the train and felt a sudden tug on his arm.

Looking down at his wrist, he blinked when he noticed that the woman's small, delicately boned hand was tightly grasping his wrist in a white knuckled grip. Sighing again, he placed his hand over hers and made an attempt to carefully pry her fingers from him when he just happened to glance at her face.

She was a pretty little thing.

Petite and delicately boned, her body was slender but nicely curved in all the right places. However it was her eyes that were his main focus at the moment, wide, frightened, hysterical looking- they were a lovely deep teal color that almost seemed unnatural to him.

And they were silently beseeching him not to leave her alone.

Damn. He thought in slight irritation. Today was the beginning of his second semester of collage. And if he knew one thing for certain it was that medical student's didn't become doctors by missing even one day of school.

Still, he couldn't just up and leave the woman as she was now.

What is she attacked someone? Or attempted to end her life?

God, now he felt really mad at himself for losing patience with her. He was usually so much better with people than this. However between being late to get a start on his day, and the earlier phone call with his step father about having him participate in several arranged meetings with some women looking for a husband, honestly he was at his wit's end.

Sighing again, he put his hands up in surrender and silently moved to sit down beside the woman whom slowly uncurled her hand from around his wrist and seemed to relax a little bit although she still looked as if she were going to be sick or something.

He leaned back on the bench and fixed his eyes on the train full of people as the doors to all of the cars closed and then the vehicle lurched forward with a loud screech of metal on metal before quickly disappearing from view.

The second it was gone, he started to turn to the woman to say something when she slowly, almost as if she were wary of something happening, got to her feet and took a moment to look around. Noting that there were less than a dozen people present on the platform now, she appeared to be searching for something as she quickly ticked numbers off with her fingers.

Something that he was beginning to realize was a little bit of a nervous habit for her.

Finally after several seconds, she made her way back over to him and held out her hand for him to take. The look on her pale face was determined.

Never one to let his curiosity go unsated, Kurama slid his hand into hers and let her pull him up from the bench and begin to drag him along behind her. Ignoring any protest he might have spoken or any argument that he may have made in lieu of dragging him out of the subway and above ground where upon reaching the final step to the subway, she turned and gripped his shoulders and manhandled him.

A woman actually had the audacity to manhandle him! He thought for a moment in amusement as she backed him up to an alley before letting him go and saying cryptically, "Stay here for ten minutes. You should be safe here."

He blinked at her before giving her an well practiced, 'oh' look as it dawned on him that this woman must be very sick in the head indeed if she thought that she was saving him from something. Still, nevertheless, he gave her his word that he would stay put.

And he would, if only to appease his curiosity a bit more as the woman moved back away from him and went to the opening of the alley and peeked around the corner before slipping out and taking off running like a bat out of hell towards the local park.

He frowned and might have dared to attempt to follow her since the woman was obviously deranged, however a strange loud sound suddenly split the air and he could feel the ground shake under his feet as people began to run by him screaming in terror.

Peeking around the corner to see what was going on, he blinked his emerald eyes when he saw that a good portion of the road was missing and in it's place was a fiery pit.