-Nano-

Early one morning, Nano was zipping around in the air above Panda Labs using the rainbow shooting jet-pack that Lalna had built for her. She loved flying, it made her feel free from all the quiet insanity that was Lalna Coffee.

Nano loved the present of the jet-pack from the scientist. After all, he had essentially gave her an infinite amount of rainbows. And not only that, but the rainbows made her fly! How cool is that? Well, technically he built one for each of them, but she preferred to think of it as a special gift for her. She was funny that way.

Besides, flying helped to take her mind away from the muttering of the flux in the back of her brain. When flying, the muttering subsided to a whistling whisper, not unlike the wind whistling through her hair and past her ears. Other than those reasons, it was just plain fun. Who wouldn't want to fly around using a jet pack that shot rainbows out of the back? She couldn't think of anyone.

The fluxy girl leaned back did a few quick loop-d-loops in quick succession. She grinned and flew straight up into the morning sky. Promptly she flipped over and dived towards the Lab and cheered in excitement. As she neared the porch area to the front of the building, a shout of distress issued from inside the building.

This shout caused the ravenette to be distracted for a few moments, and in those few crucial seconds she lost the focus she had to flip around to land feet first on her boots which would have displaced the shock of falling from that height. Instead, she barely managed to not completely break her face on landing by awkwardly tipping forwards at the last possible moment.

She yelled and pinwheeled her arms around(which doubtlessly didn't help all that much)so that instead of landing on her head she landed on her back with an impact that forced all of the breath from her body. Her armor absorbed must of the force of the impact, but doubtlessly her back would be black and blue in the morning.

"Ow... That's gonna hurt later..." Nano rolled over onto her hands and knees and groaned out an irritated curse "Or now. Or it could hurt now."

She clambered to her feet shakily and stomped towards the door and slammed it open. "Lalna!? You better be in a lot of trouble or I just went through all of that for nothing!" She stomped across the small entrance and was about to step onto the teleport to go find the blonde, who was doubtlessly messing around with something sciencey that would hurt her brain, when said scientist appeared on the teleport, crouching down on it and with a wild grin plastered on his face. Anyone else who looked at the scientist would think he was his normal, mad self. But Nano had known the scientist for a while now, and behind his mask of a grin, Lalna was worried.

She examined the scientist a little closer and it was clear that he had been tinkering with some machine because his hands were covered in machine oil, and a wrench was stuck out of the top pocket of his lab coat. This looked like normal Lalna, but the ends of his hair were singed and blown back, as if from an explosion of some kind.

Nano had to know what was going on. She didn't waste anytime in asking him about it. "What did you do? Lalna what did you do?!" She demanded of him. Lalna wasn't easily scared of anything short of a red matter explosive, whether that was because he was brave, crazy, or just plain old oblivious, nobody was really quite sure. If he was worried, you better believe everyone else with any good sense should be running for the hills.

"Oh boy. Oh boy. Nano! We have to get out!" He had noticed her now. He rushed for the door grabbing her hand and pulling her along behind him. As they ran, well Lalna ran. Nano was dragged. As they ran and Lalna sprinted out the door with Nano in tow, she thanked herself for the pressure plates' quickness. Otherwise they would surely have ran smack dab into the cherry door.

She glanced backwards towards where the scientist had appeared on the teleport to notice that a low humming was issuing from the floor, or under it. It was steadily rising in pitch and an alarm had started to blare from somewhere.

Alarm? Since when did they have an alarm?!

Before she could fully register all of this, the scientist had dragged the confused girl away from the building and was preparing to take off. "Lalna!? What is going on?!" She was scared now, and her natural instinct when scared was to become irritable. She stared at him, demanding an answer of him.

He glanced over at her, gave an exasperated sigh that said we-don't-have-time-for-this, and then pointed up into the sky at...something. The ravenette's eyes followed his hand to where he was pointing at - what the hell?

-Lalna-

'What the hell have you done now?' he chided himself. He shook the thoughts from his head and began to start up the engines on his jet pack. "Lalna?! What is going on?!" came the irritated shout from the fluxed girl behind him.

He glanced back at the ravenette to see fear reflected back to him from her eyes. She was scared, but as was her personality, she was acting irritated. As per the norm. He sighed exasperatedly and concluded that she was not going to give up the question until he gave her an answer.

He pointed up towards where he knew that the orb was. The blond had no idea how it had gotten outside, but he concluded that it was better to not question it. Besides, they wouldn't be hanging around here for long enough to find out how.

Nano gave an audible gasp at the sight of the slowly rotating orb. It had positioned itself above the two smokestacks, and remained there rotating slowly in all its alien weirdness. Its color shifted from a deep orange to bright green to icy white and back again.

They were running out of time! "Nano! Nano!" Lalna tried to get her attention, but she seemed transfixed by the orb. They were going to get blown up! Or worse! Well, on second thought, not much was worse than getting blown up.

The scientist could tell that it was getting close to doing...whatever it was going to do. The humming had increased ten fold, and the light from it had started to pulsate. "Nano! We have to get out of here!" he repeated in a panicked voice. All pretense of calm was gone. What was the point anyway? He grabbed the small girl's upper arm to prepare to drag her away, but at that point all hell broke loose.

The orb gave of a blinding white light that stabbed into the pair's eyes. This snapped Nano out of it, but it was too late to do anything at that point. A bang as loud as a thunderclap issued from the orb and a wave of swirling white mist issued from the orb.

It surged towards the scientist and apprentice. As it reached them, Lalna felt a peculier tingling sensation in all his extremities. An incredible feeling of vertigo swept over him but he managed to stay on his feet. What was that all about?

Nano simply gasped in shock before her eyes, one brown and one purple, rolled into the back of her head and she promptly crumpled onto the planks. She was sprawled out like someone had killed her, and her black hair was strewn all over her face. Lalna tried to push this thought out of his mind. She wasn't dead. Just unconscious. He repeated this to himself.

It was starting to take an effect on the blond as well, but not nearly as strongly as it had been for his apprentice. 'It effects some people differently then' the blond thought blearily as he sunk slowly to his knees and fell forward on to the cherry planks below him. 'I hope everyone else is okay...' he thought before he closed his eyes and succumbed to the calming white Mist and sank into darkness.

-Mist-
The Mist had claimed its first victims. If it had a voice, it would surely be laughing at the pair of them. Then it glided off to find more unknowing people to inflict. This was going to be fun, or it would be if it had any emotions.

To any onlookers, it would seem as if the Mist had an almost glee about it as the scientist within its midst collapsed forward onto the ground. It spun happily above their unmoving forms and then glided off silently towards its next victim.