The whole town was in disarray. Everyone was looking for the boy that they couldn't seem to recall. Hayner, Olette and Pence seemed to feel lost. Picture frames held pictures that seemed to have lost something even though no one remembered what it was. Seifer, Fuu, and Rai seemed to feel the gap too. It seemed like it had happened recently but all they had was a lingering feeling of loss and familiarity. What bothered the teens most is the fact that no one except the people who the missing person seemed to be closest to, noticed that there was something missing.

Seifer

Normally I antagonize Hayner's little group every day. We have to keep him and his little gang in check; it is our responsibility as the disciplinary committee of our fair town. Truth be told though, lately I can't even stand to look at the chickenwuss and his little group. They are just fragments, ghosts, empty shells of the loud mouth brats they used to be. I don't know who it was but their "friend" deserves to get socked in the face. The only person who has the right to tease any of them would be me. It's my right as the protector of this town to look after the people and as much as I loathe admitting it, those guys fall under the category of "people".

"Help. Sad. Loss." Fuu gave me a stern look letting me know that I had no hope of wiggling out of talking to them.

"Even I know they need help yo." I glared at Rai. If he had backed me up I may have been able to put it off at least a little longer. Talking to those idiots was not an idea I relished.

"I know we should talk to them. You both know how I feel though, I don't exactly like those twerps." I sighed and leaned back against the wall and looked at the sky. "Even if I don't like it, I will go talk to them, though they need someone to whip them back into shape. Getting them out of this little mope spell might even shake us out of our own little downward spell here."

"Go." Fuu nodded in the direction of the group who had just been lazing about looking broken, waiting for the tram. Every day the trio made the trip to the lookout on the outskirts of town and watched the trains. Like a wartime widow waiting for the husband that would never return. Hayner was always the last one to leave; it seemed that Pence and Olette seemed to have found a little comfort in each other. Hayner with no one to cling to just stared off into the distance until it got too late for him to be out anymore. Even if his mother had noticed, she probably would have enjoyed his misery.

"When the other two leave I want you guys to talk to them. I'm gonna stay and try to get Hayner to perk up on my own. He hates me but I suppose, other than the nobody who left them, I would be the closest thing to a friend he has right now." As much as I hated to admit it, we had wound up fighting all of the time but in a way that was how we balanced each other out. Hayner and I fought constantly but in my mind that little action in its own right was a strange, broken sort of friendship.

"We got this yo. They gonna be perkier than an intern hopped up on coffee!" Fuu smacked Rai and nodded in the direction of the street Pence and Olette always used to get back to their houses. As the two walked off preparing to help the shattered friends, I couldn't help but think to myself. "How the hell am I going to do this?"

Hayner

It was just a nagging feeling that we had. Every day we all felt the urge to sit and wait. Like someone was missing… but they would be back soon. A person we couldn't remember, who had been there through the best and the worst of times. I seemed to feel it more than the rest of them. I must have been closer to whoever it was than they were. That's not to say that we weren't all affected by them being gone. Pence and Olette had found a way to deal with it on their own though. They found comfort with each other, they were interested in each other before this whole thing happened but the pain of loss seemed to close the gap even more. They spent every waking moment together; they shared classes and had the same homeroom. They lived right next to each other so after leaving the house they barely had to put any effort into staying together throughout the day. I on the other hand had a different class, lived on the other end of town and only saw them when leaving school.

I had no one. The loss stung even more when the loss of my friends was added to it. It seems that whoever left held us together in a way that we couldn't manage without them. I always end up thinking like this here now, and I was so lost in thought that I didn't even notice the person sneaking up behind me. By the time I did he was practically on top of me. It was Seifer. Alone.

"Stop moping around. You're a fighter, not a damsel in distress. You need to get angry at the person who left you, not sit around hoping that you'll hear from someone who you don't even rightly remember." Seifer had two struggle bats in hand. Apparently he had given this a little thought. I was impressed even if I did hate the guy.

"I will do whatever I want. You may push around the town but you have no right to control my feelings and even if you did its not like people just suddenly become happy when you tell them to." I turned away. He didn't deserve to push me around, he had no right. I never beat him, sure, but I wasn't going to roll over and be his plaything either.

"Well since you feel that way." Seifer threw himself forward, throwing the extra bat in the air and charging in for a quick attack. I dodged him and grabbed the struggle bat out of the air.

"You fell for it. I can control you and now I want you to stop. Get a hold of your emotions, pick yourself up and get the fuck over it." Seifer glared down at me "Now fight me. It's been a while since I got to beat the crap out of you and I'm feeling a bit bored at the moment. Set down the bat and I'll keep going anyways. There is no way you're getting out of this."

To prove his point Seifer charged in swinging like a madman. He wasn't trying to hit me with that little tactic, just trying to get me to react. I wish I could say that I didn't fall for it. That he didn't win, that I was in control of myself entirely and that he had no pleasure in seeing me do just what he wanted. I was never a good liar though, so I will admit I rose to the challenge. Maybe hitting him in the head a few times would help me feel better. Help me get over whatever it was that was bothering me, just like when we were kids.

Seifer made the first move. He charged in at me and changed his direction to move behind me so he could swing around and get a hit in from behind. I reacted quickly enough to roll out of the way and swing at the feet of my rival. Seifer jumped back and charged in again this time feinting to the left and ducking to swipe at ground and my feet. I almost dodged him but then, I tripped into Seifer, Knocking us both over, and ended up falling right next to him on the grass and just laying there.

"It's good to see you still got some fight in you." Seifer looked into my eyes. "You owe me big time though for having to deal with all this mushy crap." Seifer punched me in the arm, got up and started to walk away. "See you at school tomorrow, lamer. Be in a better mood though or I won't hold back next time."

Seifer

Seeing Hayner come back to life was almost worth having to deal with the mushy, gushy feeling crap today. Hopefully it stuck because once was too much for me. It reminded me of when we were children. We were always close but we tried to be more macho than the other. I, of course, being the finely chiseled, exemplary embodiment of a man that I am, had no problems besting Lamer. He always used to act tough and start fights with me but we got along. Then it happened, the one thing we could never look past. My father the arrogant jerk that he was thought he was the worlds gift to women. He seduced anyone with boobs and … lady parts. Hayner's dad was in the army fighting, so his mother had been left home all alone. She was getting, shall we say, needy?

My father had been going over there to have adult meetings for a while and none of us had figured it out. Hayner and I had been playing outside during one of their meetings when Hayner's dad came home from the war. He walked right up to Hayner and they started to talk about how they missed each other and all of that crap. Hayner's dad finally wandered inside, we could hear the screaming from my yard on the other side of the street. His dad ran out and walked back the way he came as Hayner's mom, with a blanket wrapped around her, sobbed and begged for him to come back.

At first we didn't have much of a change in our lives Hayner was upset, but he started to work through it. It didn't take long for things to change though. His mom came to blame the whole household for what had happened. Everyday Hayner would come to school "you're a mistake, your mother never had you it was probably some girl at the bar. Your dad can't keep away from anything he can screw". Slowly things like that started to come from Hayner and the gap between us started to grow. Also, my mother found out and left me with my father. She said she couldn't look at me because she would think of the monster that made me. She should have thought of her son, leaving me with the very same monster was not the best thing for me. I mean I turned out all right but that because I had Fuu.

In one fell swoop my father had destroyed two families and a friendship. Hayner, at the time, was the only one who would put up with me, so I became violent and resentful towards anyone who had a normal life. Fights and detention started to become the new norm for me. Fuu and Rai moved into town a year later and the three of us, with nowhere else to turn, started to spend time together. Eventually Fuu whipped me back into shape but by that point no one wanted anything to do with me and my only other friend wanted me dead more than anything else.

To make matters worse, our parents started to self-destruct. My father started to hide himself away from the world. He became a recluse barely eating, or functioning at all. In fact he couldn't give a rats ass about me in any way shape or form. It's because of this that I had to leave; I got my own apartment a little ways down the road. My father didn't even notice I was gone. Without him to remind me of the past, the future is what I make of it. Hayner's mother on the other hand got much worse. After work every day she would come home and hit the bottle. She turned her rage on men in general by the time he was in junior high and it only got worse from there. In fact every night I can hear the two of them fighting, she's become so angry with what happened she's even turned her rage toward her son. She even gets a little violent with him when he gets home. She's never actually hit him, but if the screams and sound of shattered glass are anything to go by, she usually comes pretty close. Which I have to say is good for her because I wouldn't let something like that happen under my watchful eye. She would never get away with hurting him.

Now there's also the fact that he had to face being broken again, having another person who mattered to him just up and leave. I have to be honest here; it's for that reason that I hate the other person for leaving. Hayner has so few good things in his life, it's a miracle he's even fought to make it this far. To just up and leave someone like that is cruel, this person better have had a damn good reason.

Hayner

When I got home my mother was in her usual spot. Sitting hunched over the kitchen table, hair all over her face, glaring at the door. "Sleeping around, are you? You should know better, I oughta cut it off if you think you can act like that dick across the street." My mother had turned her hate towards all men after that day. She believed they wanted to sleep with everything they could see or they married just to say that they had. She thought that the ones who married wanted to run away, that all men were cowards, that we had no hope of being loved because we didn't deserve it. I know it isn't true, but after hearing it for so long you begin to doubt yourself.

"I was doing homework at the library, mom, I swear." I gave her the same excuse night after night but she drank so much she always forgot by the next morning. "We started a project today and I wanted to get a head start on it." Our parts are always the same. She always says, "What is it about how men are good for nothing except misery?" She throws the bottle of whatever she has at me and spends the next few hours going through her opinion of men. Every night I rise to the challenge even though I know I shouldn't.

"Men are good for nothing except running with their tails between their legs like the worthless dogs they are. The only reason they come home at all is because they can't get anyone to look at them and they know that they're families will. The only do what they feel like doing."

"If that were true I would have left long ago, Mom. The only thing you're good for is your fish impression, gasping for air in the bottom of the nearest bottle." We always end up arguing like this and running around screaming until she gets so fed up with me she goes to bed. Luckily, I only have to see her at night. She sleeps all day so I get out of the house before she even opens her eyes, and she just restarts the whole thing.

As I turn in bed I think about the missing nobody. No one remembers anything about them. No name, house, picture, nothing. I would have thought I was going crazy if Pence and Olette hadn't had the same problem. Then my mind started to drift to Seifer, thinking of all the weird contests we would do as kids. Who can climb this tree faster or who can throw these rocks further, stupid things like that. As kids we were always together. Seifer's mom would watch me while my mother worked and Seifer was seen as an extension of the family. I wish it had been different. Over the years I had forgiven him but he was distant, he wanted nothing to do with me except to fight. He always had to push me to my limits. Today was different though. He seemed to be genuinely concerned. With him though you never know sometimes he acts nice but only to make you fall for some trick. As I started to drift off for the night he was the only thing on my mind, and for the first time in a while I was happy.

Seifer

I woke up and started to get ready for school, taking a quick cold shower, grabbing my beanie, and putting on my clothes. I actually looked forward to today. I hated school don't get me wrong but I always liked being the big fish. All of the other kids stayed clear of me. I was a punk who they didn't want to screw with. I liked that feeling of power it made me feel strong, Manly, macho, like the big cheese. Even the teachers would avoid me. If they had to call on someone in class they skipped over me, if there was a problem they would just let me handle it. After all I am the head of the Twilight Town Disciplinary Squad. I can't let people behave like animals, I beat the crap out of anyone who does.

Today, I decided that I was going to wait to walk to school around the same time Hayner did. I wanted to make sure he was doing all right. I didn't care for him or anything because that wouldn't be anything like me. I do have to admit that I was getting sick of his private pity-party though.

Just as I stepped out the door I heard a sharp inhalation of breath. I turned to see Fuu and Rai standing there waiting.

" Yo, why are you leaving so late?" I couldn't help but wonder why they had waited for me.

"Why are you still here? Shouldn't you have left? Waiting for me is going to get you in trouble. As the head of the disciplinary squad I'm the only who can break rules."

"Fuu told me to leave late today. She said you were going to be late coming out. When I asked her how she knew she just said 'Predictable'".

Even I was a little shocked that she had guessed that I would leave late. I didn't even know until this morning. I always wonder what goes on in her head. She never really says anything but she always seems to know. Her eyes are always watching and she knows most of the people in this town like the back of her hand. In my case, she probably guessed that I couldn't sleep last night.

"Late." Fuu grabbed me and pulled me outside while pushing Rai in front of her. She had never been late to school. You wouldn't know it by looking at her, but Fuu put school above almost all else. Her family had ingrained her with the belief that she had to go to college and find some way to overcome her speech. Rai on the other hand only ever showed up early because Fuu did. He never cared for school and his grades mirrored that.

"I forgot something, Fuu you take Rai and go on without me. I'm going catch up later." She shook her head and smiled, which by the way means, if you fight I am going to bury you.

"Left early." she pointed ahead to a boy skateboarding down the street rushing to school like he did every morning. Although for once he seemed like he was holding his head high. I guess I did help him out after all. Just the thought of helping my old friend brought a smile to my face. Rai just gave me a puzzled look and shook his head. He knew not to ask though it always blew over and things settled back into the hum drum routine.