A/N: This 'fic isn't scary. Not even a little. (It isn't fearless either, sorry MU fans.) So, why am I posting this on Halloween? Well think of it like this: you trick-or-treat on the street of NewUpdates (lame name) and instead of candy, I give you this! Which is better than candy. Or not, take your pick...
Psyche
"Alright... A little more..."
Turbo was experimenting in the code room, with a blank code box he created, since what he was doing was too dangerous to do to an already-existing code box, at risk of corrupting it irreparably. Now, he was deleting the code box so it wouldn't clutter up the already stuffed code room. It was a complicated process, deleting a code box. You don't just yank wires.
Turbo gave a satisfied smile as the box blipped out of existence, and made his way to the exit. Because he spent a long time in the code room that night, he didn't ask one of the twins to hold the rope for him, instead opting to tie the rope to the rail of the stairs to the code room, which TurboTime had instead of an elevator because it wasn't very advanced.
Before Turbo made it halfway to the exit, he heard the telltale electrical noise of a loose wire. He looked around for it, before locating it in the worst possible spot. The giant cord at the very top of the code room, the one that branched out into every code box in the code room, was slightly loose. Turbo immediately made his way up to fix it. If that cord fell out, it would glitch and kill-screen the whole game, possibly permanently freezing the game, rendering any hope of a fix nonexistent.
Turbo worked his hand to the loose side of the wire, suddenly nervous. The wire was connected to an electrical source that came straight from the plug, and that source was dug into the code room's ceiling an inch or so, which meant that Turbo wouldn't be able to see what he was doing with his hand when he was fixing the wire, and it was too thick for Turbo to wrap his arms around it and push it in. He took a deep breath and eased the wire in, his hand out of sight.
"Almost... There..." Turbo gasped out, straining on the wire's size and subsequent weight. What he didn't know was that his hand was slowly slipping towards the electrical source, millimeters away from receiving a paralyzingly agonizing shock.
It happened so fast. Turbo wasn't used to blind reattachments, and consequently his hand slipped that extra little bit, thrusting it right on the electrical source. Instantly, tens of thousands volts of electricity surged through him, rendering him unable to move. He couldn't even scream in pain. He was simply suspended there, with electricity coursing through him for a good ten seconds, before the power source gave his body an extra jolt, sending a little bit of his hand to the cord, sending a power surge down the cord to one code box. It was relief as he blacked out from the jolt, his hand fused to the power source, electricity still shocking him.
Meanwhile, the twins just finished racing against each other, placing their usuals, but it was a very close race.
"I'm telling you," Throttle was saying to his twin, "you're getting better."
"Thanks," Piston answered. Suddenly, he spasmed like someone shocked him, then fell unconscious immediately, crumpling to the ground.
"Piston?" Throttle called, lifting Piston's head off the ground and shaking him.
"Piston?!" He called, louder this time, getting more concerned. When that failed to produce a response, he rushed to the garage to get a bucket of water, to try and wake him up that way.
Electricity sparked through the air as Piston's pixels tried to form a body, finally succeeding after a minute, which is considered unusually long for a spawn, and Piston was formed... And he fell face-first into some water. He coughed and sputtered, lifting himself up. Piston slowly stood up, and found that the water only came up to his knees. He looked around and began to take in his surroundings. He was in a dark place, with a high ceiling, dwarfing Piston. He noticed that there were many cracks on the curved walls, some big and deep, and some so minuscule that it seemed that they would heal, if walls had healing powers. There were cracks all over the walls, even under the water, though it didn't drain out. When Piston ran his hand on the wall, he found it was made out of some sort of glass, like if he hit the wall a few times it would shatter, cracks or no cracks. There was a faint light in the distance, so Piston decided his best course of action was to head there. Granted, he was in awe, and quite scared, but as far as he knew, he was the only one here, so he couldn't afford to panic. He gingerly made his way to the light, acting like he was walking on eggshells, which wasn't too far off from the truth. He stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a familiar voice echoing off the walls.
"So, this is what this place looks like," it was saying. "Good, the water only comes up to my knees." There was a pause. "Wait... This is it?! I tried so hard to keep it contained! I don't want to know what'll happen when this stuff hits the ceiling!"
Piston's eyes widened as he recognized the voice.
"Turbo?" He called.
"What? Who said that? Who's there?" Turbo yelled back. Piston could hear water splashing around, meaning Turbo was trying to locate him.
"It's me, Piston!" He called back. Silence. Then, more water splashing around.
"Where are you?" Turbo called.
"I can't tell! Everything looks the same!" Piston then took it upon himself to advance forward and locate Turbo with the aid of the water splashes. It seemed like Turbo was doing the same thing, since he could hear the splashes getting louder faster that if he was the only one moving, and slowly at that.
"I'm over here!"
Turbo's voice snapped Piston out of his thoughts, and he turned to the side, to see Turbo running towards him. Piston instantly panicked.
"Turbo, what are you doing?!" He yelled. "Don't you see the cracks on the floor? It could give way any second!"
"No, it won't!" Turbo proclaimed, now a foot or two away from Piston. He began roughly stomping on the floor, without it breaking or even another crack forming.
"See?" He said triumphantly. Piston was staring with a mixture of awe, fear, and confusion.
"... How did you... How did you know?" He breathed out. Turbo scoffed.
"I know everything about this place. Ought to, also, given-" he broke himself off. "I know everything about this place," he repeated.
"How?"
"I just do, alright? Just leave it at that."
Piston thought about this for a moment. "So, that means I can ask you anything about this place, and you'll know the answer?"
"Exactly," Turbo confirmed.
"Alright," he said without missing a beat, "how did you get here? How did I get here?"
"Well," Turbo explained, "I'm not really 'here' per se, it's, well, how do I put this... My consciousness. My body is still being electrocuted by the power source of our game. For your second question, see previous answer."
"But I didn't get shocked!" Piston protested. Turbo mulled on this, then a look of understanding crossed his face.
"Right before I blacked out, I was hit by an extra-powerful shock, and the one code wire that branches out to the others was close to my hand. If my hand or some other part of me hit it for a split second, it could've sent a power surge down the wire. If that happened, it must've hit your code box, shocking you too, and sending you here along with me."
Piston nodded, taking it all in.
"By the way, where are we anyways? Why are there cracks everywhere? What's with the water, and why doesn't it drain out the cracks?!"
Turbo rubbed the back of his neck. "The water is actually produced by the cracks. When a crack is formed, a little more water pours in. The amount depends on the cracks. If it's like that one-" Turbo pointed to a large, jagged crack on the wall, "-then a lot of water pours in. If it's like that one-" he pointed to one of the minuscule cracks "-then only a mere drop gets added."
"Oh." A pause. "How do we get out of here?"
Turbo leaned close to Piston. "There is no escape," he said dramatically.
Piston was confused. "But I saw light right over-"
"ISAIDTHEREISNOESCAPE!" Turbo interrupted.
"O-kay." Piston found it to be more difficult to contain his fear, yet he managed anyways. It was just him and Turbo here, and Turbo wasn't exactly the most caring program ever created.
"Wait!" Turbo yelled out of nowhere.
"What?"
"There is a way out after all!"
Piston's face lit up tenfold after hearing this new development. "Really? How?" He asked excitedly.
"Since we both got electrocuted, and we're here, that means you're bound to me, at least for the time being. If I get disconnected from the power source, I'll wake up, and since you won't be bound to me anymore, you'll wake up too! I mean, Throttle's still awake, given he's not here, and I know he's going to check the code room for me, to help him with you, and he'll notice I'm fused to the power source. He'll pull me free, and since this is my game and I'm the main character with the ability to regenerate when the game isn't being played, the burns I know my body has will heal, and everything'll be back to normal!" He smiled like he just discovered the secret of life.
"So, don't worry," he concluded, "we will certainly escape." The smile faded from his face.
"Wait…" he muttered to himself, too quiet for Piston to hear, "There's only two hours until my hand permanently fuses to the power source, and Throttle usually spends an hour and a half fussing over Piston before looking for me, and then he's going to spend another half-hour looking for me in other games before even considering to check the code room!" He looked back at Piston.
"We will maybe escape!"
"Maybe? Why maybe?" Piston asked.
"We-ll, how do I put this… In two hours, my hand will permanently fuse to the power source. If Throttle doesn't find me- my body before then, we'll be trapped here... Forever."
"F-for-fo-for-forever?" Piston stammered, twisting the fabric of his jumpsuit where his heart was.
"Yes, forever," Turbo said, trying to be dramatic, though it just came out harshly. His gaze softened when he saw that Piston was shaking a little, fear evident in his eyes.
"Well, maybe not forever," Turbo said, trying to backtrack. "I mean, Throttle'll check the code room, right? And he'll find me- my body, and pull it out of the power source." He offered an obviously forced smile of reassurance.
An awkward silence followed, with Turbo and Piston nervously smiling at each other.
"So, uh," Turbo started, trying to lower the awkward, "where did you see that light you mentioned?"
"Well," Piston answered, then faltered. "Uh, there-, no there- uhh..."
You see, with the little bit of movement Piston made to find Turbo, the light disappeared from view.
"I don't know," Piston confessed.
"Well, when did you see it?" Turbo asked, hoping that searching for the light would be a good way to pass the time.
"When I spawned," Piston answered.
"Then we have to go in the direction you came from," Turbo remarked, sidestepping Piston and heading in that direction, Piston following behind him.
The two racers walked in silence, for how long, neither of them knew. The light was gradually getting brighter, though it was difficult to follow it, due to the structure of this place. It was as if it was divided into sections, many small, with one about double the size of the others. Each one had four curved doorways to another section, but eve though it seemed to be one thin wall dividing the sections, the cracks on the wall were inconsistent.
"Do you even know where we're going?" Piston piped up, after Turbo led him to the wrong section, only to hastily correct his mistake and drag him back, for the fifth time in a row.
"Yes!" Turbo answered, seemingly offended. "Well, maybe, I, uh… No." Turbo confessed. "But," he added after a moment's hesitation, "I know where the light is. The center."
"And, where is that?"
"... The center."
Piston playfully rolled his eyes. It was obvious that Turbo didn't know where the center was exactly, but they didn't get lost yet.
"Which section do you think has the least cracks?" Turbo asked out of the blue, as the twosome walked into a new section, this one about one fourths the size of the others.
"This one," Piston answered immediately. The cracks in this smaller section were barely visible, and there were only a few. Piston happened to glance at the wall, and he reached out and grabbed Turbo's arm, stopping him.
"Look at this," he started.
"At what?" Turbo asked, turning around.
"There's a mark here that looks like one of your trophies- I mean exactly like a trophy!"
"Wait, really?" Turbo asked, inspecting the mark, which did look exactly like a TurboTime trophy. "A trophy?"
There was something strange about the way he emphasized that sentence. It was as if he wasn't surprised to find the mark, but surprised it was in the shape of a trophy.
"Did you know there was a mark here?" Piston asked. Turbo scoffed.
"'Course I did! As I said before, I know everything about this place. Except the way around."
Piston chucked weakly at the last line, then fell silent, lost in thought.
"Um..." Turbo tried to break the silence, "there are marks in every section..." His face fell to an annoyed expression when Piston produced no response.
"Piston?" Turbo said with a little singsong, waving his hand in front of Piston's face.
Nothing.
"Earth to Piston!" Turbo yelled, gripping Piston's shoulders firmly and shaking him.
"What?" Piston said, startled. "I'm sorry, I just got lost in thought."
"What thoughts?!" Turbo yelled. "What could you possibly be thinking about?!"
"How long were we here?" Piston firmly asked, causing Turbo's angry expression to morph into a poker face.
"I don't know," he admitted. "It seems I know everything about this place and what goes on inside it except what we need to know. But I'm certain it hasn't been two hours, so there's no need to worry." He smiled.
"...yet," he muttered under his breath, too quiet for Piston to hear.
"So, now where do we go?" Piston asked, and Turbo steered him towards a doorway.
"Here," he proclaimed. They ventured forth, only for Turbo to spin on his heel and drag Piston by the wrist back to the tiny section, and into another doorway.
"Turbo, do you really know everything about this place?" Piston asked quite some time after he saw the 'trophy mark', trying to make conversation. At this point, the light was so bright that the twosome were sure that the source world be in the next section they ventured in, only to be proven wrong.
"Just about," Turbo answered. "Why?"
"I just wanted to ask some questions," Piston answered.
"Sure..." Turbo agreed uncertainty.
"Where are we, anyway?"
"Well, we're somewhere in TurboTime..." Turbo said.
"Where in TurboTime?"
"It has to be somewhere small, 'cause we still have our bodies back outside, and they aren't glitching. We'd feel it."
Piston eyed him. "Are you trying to avoid giving me a definite answer?" He accused.
"Maybe," Turbo muttered. Piston sighed. He tried to think of the most outlandish place possible, then it hit him.
"Are we in one of our subconscious's or something?" He asked.
"No," Turbo denied, not in the tone he lied in. This one was believable. When Turbo lied, it was usually in a... Grander tone. Either that, or he'd launch into a long explanation on how his lie was undeniably the truth, only the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him Creators.
"What are the walls even made out of, anyways?" Piston asked. "Glass?"
"No, not glass," Turbo said. "But, it's a lot like glass."
"What's it called?"
"It doesn't really have a name."
Turbo and Piston continued walking forward. They didn't continue on in the wrong section anymore; the light was bright enough for them to be absolutely certain which section it was coming from.
"Why do you even want to know what this light is?" Turbo asked Piston, because, truth to be told, that question was bugging him.
"Two reasons," Piston answered. "One, it's in my nature to be curious, and two, it's a way to pass the time. Time... How long has it been?" Piston forgot about the two-hour time limit, but once it was brought up again, he couldn't help but panic, especially due to the fact that it reached the point where too much time passed for him to be sure if they went over the time limit or not.
"I'm not exactly sure," Turbo admitted. "But," he added, trying to take Piston's mind off the time limit, "I think the light's at the next section..." He led Piston in, only to lead him into the wrong doorway. "Nope."
"Alright, it's this one, then," Turbo proclaimed, steering Piston towards the section across from the incorrect one, only for it to be another wrong section.
"Alright, this one, for sure," Turbo proclaimed, walking into the only other section that wasn't the one they came from. In all honesty, Piston thought the light would still be a ways off, but once they entered the new section, he saw it. The center.
It, of course, was by far the largest section, thirty times as big as a regular one. It also sported the deepest, thickest, and most cracks on its wall, along with streaks that looked like there were cracks there once, but they, for lack of a better word, healed somehow. And, in the center of it all, the dead center of this strange place, there was one- no, Piston saw when his eyes adjusted to the brightness, two floating, glowing balls of light, with beams reaching everywhere. Piston watched in awe as one of the beams hit a medium-sized wall crack, and as it covered the crack, a noise was heard, like when you set two pieces of broken glass back to their correct position. The beam of light dispersed, and where the crack was, there was one of those dark purple marks in its place. The walls could heal. The light could make walls heal. This place already seemed abnormal and mystic to Piston, but now it was ten times so. Piston slowly turned his head towards Turbo, who was standing next to him, smiling proudly at the light, like he was the one who built this place.
"You want to go take a closer look?" Turbo asked casually, and Piston nodded. He slowly walked up to the lights, with Turbo next to him the whole time. When he was right in front of the light, he was aware that his legs felt a little different, so he looked down at them, to see that the lights were also repelling the water that was spread out through the whole place. Piston thought for a moment, then reached a hand out to try and touch one of the orbs. Once his fingertips came in contact with one, a tingle rippled through his entire arm. He stuck his whole hand in, and the tingle intensified and spread. He didn't notice Turbo sneaking up behind him, arms up. In one swift move, Turbo pushed Piston forward, so his face hit the light orb, and he was pulled in the light!
Everything looked white, outlined in darker shades of white. Piston floated in the orb, observing everything around him. Turbo was staring at the orb that held him, smiling. An odd feeling overcame him, but in the good way. He smiled and closed his eyes, never once questioning why his eyes didn't burn out from the sheer brightness, or how his eyelids could block out all the light.
"Piston. Piston, hey Piston, come out now."
Turbo reached his arm in the light orb and felt around until he felt Piston's arm. He grabbed it, and started shaking it.
"Hmm... What?" Piston muttered. Because he was in one of the light orbs, his voice was amplified and it bounced around the section. He poked his head out, and stared at Turbo through half-lidded eyes. Turbo pulled on Piston's shoulder, and he tumbled out of the orb. Luckily, Turbo caught him before he could faceplant on the floor.
"I just wanted to make sure you weren't dead in there," Turbo muttered. "Not that you would die, I was just getting bored, and lonely." Turbo muttered that last part, but Piston caught it anyways.
"Aww, you do care!" Piston cooed in a saccharine-sweet voice, just to tick Turbo off.
"Shut up," Turbo whined, making Piston chuckle.
"Now that I think about it, I kind of like it in here," Piston admitted.
"Really?" Turbo asked incredulously. Piston only nodded in response. The two racers stood in silence for a few minutes, then Piston spoke up.
"Turbo," he said, "if we don't escape, and we get stuck in here forever, what are we going to do when it breaks?"
Turbo raised a nonexistent brow. "What?"
"I mean, whenever one of these cracks shows up, water comes in, right? And, these corals don't show any sign that they're going to stop coming. So, when the water rises up, and this place breaks under the strain of trying to keep itself together, with the cracks and the water bursting from the seams, what's going to happen to us?"
Turbo's gaze turned stone cold. "It'll never break."
"But," Piston argued, "the walls-"
"It'll. Never. Break." Turbo spat. "I made sure of that before, and I'm going to keep making sure of it. Even when the water is 'bursting from the seams' as you put it, and the cracks are so frequent that there doesn't seem to be a wall anymore, it'll never break."
As Turbo proclaimed this, Piston swore he could hear the wall cracking, over in another section.
"Now what?"
That question rattled around Turbo's mind ever since the twosome found the light orbs. They were currently sitting with their backs propped up against the wall, staring at the orbs.
"Come again?" Piston said.
"We found the source of the light, so now what are we going to do?"
Turbo smiled. "We'll think of something, alright. But in the meantime-"
He cut himself off and stood blot upright.
"What?" Piston asked.
"Again! There it is again!" Was Turbo's only response. He held his hand up and looked at it, then broke into a wide grin. He chuckled, and a small glitch rippled through him, though Piston swore that the whole place rippled along with him.
"What's happening?!" Piston asked, his panic resurfacing.
"Don't you get it?" Turbo asked, jubilant. "I'm glitching!"
"Isn't that a bad thing?"
"Not now it isn't!"
"Why?"
"I'm glitching! That means something's happening to my body! Maybe someone trying to get it unstuck from a power source, perhaps?..." He hoped Piston would catch on.
"Throttle!" Piston exclaimed. "He found you!"
"Yeah!" Turbo yelled, right as he, and this strange place, glitched up once more.
"I can feel it!" Turbo shouted at the top of his lungs. "I'm nearly free!"
Piston was so relieved that he would be getting out of this place, though the two racers and the whole scenery were glitching uncontrollably, almost fading away.
"Don't move for a minute after you wake up!" Turbo called, right before the two were zapped away, both of them falling into a brief unconsciousness.
And that was that.
"Turbo?! Turbo! Turbo wake up!"
"Huhhh?"
Turbo slowly and painfully opened his eyes, to see the familiar blackness of the code room around him, and Throttle's worried face.
"Oh, Turbo, thank the programmers, I thought you were dead!" He exclaimed. "What happened?!"
"Nu... No... Noth..." Turbo found it quite painful to talk, but he had to.
"I... Ne... Ed... You... To... Guh... Go... My... Co- code..." Turbo rasped out, before calling it quits. Thankfully, Throttle understood him and floated over to Turbo's code box, moving himself with his feet, while cradling Turbo in his arms. The code box was already open, probably due to the teleportations and whatnot Turbo recently partook in. His theory was further supported when he looked across and saw that Piston's code box was open as well.
"Wh... White... Icon... Picture... Of me..." Turbo tried to give clear instructions to Throttle while talking the least.
"Okay, I see it," Throttle informed Turbo after a few seconds. "Now what?"
"Dis... Con... Nect..."
Throttle did as he was told, and disconnected the icon.
"Put... It... Back..."
Throttle put the icon back on its wires, confused. "What was that for?" He asked.
"Resets... Code... Compo... Sition. Heals... Burns..."
"Burns?" Throttle repeated. "Turbo, that's the understatement of the century. You're charred!" He held one of Turbo's hands up, and Turbo's eyes widened from half-lidded to one-fourths lidded. It was blackened, charred like Throttle said; not even the rope he tied to himself had been spared. It, too was charred, up to about two feet away from the knot, and it looked ready to snap.
'Oh well, I could just use the back-up rope,' Turbo thought. 'Wait, no, I chopped that up one night when I was drunk and I tried to make wings and turn into a bird.'
He came out of his thoughts right before Throttle exited the code room, and therefore, thankfully, wasn't unpleasantly surprised by the sudden rush of gravity.
Turbo couldn't use his legs, or any part of him besides the vocal cords, so Throttle had to carry him up the stairs in some weird way, which wasn't easy, given Turbo was heavier than Throttle himself, and, speaking of Throttle, he wasn't exactly the strongest program ever spawned. Once they reached the outside of the code room and all affiliated architecture, Throttle put Turbo down on the grass to catch his breath.
"Leave... Me... Here..." Turbo requested. "I'll... Come in... In half... An hour..." Granted, Throttle did feel bad about leaving Turbo on the grass like that, but he learned to trust Turbo when it came to the code, and he guessed half an hour was how long it took for his code composition to reset. He slowly walked back to the house behind the stands, occasionally looking behind him.
"You're awake too? Convenient."
The first thing Throttle did upon entering the house was check on Piston, who was laying on the couch, still wet from the water he splashed on him. When he saw that he was awake as well, he wasn't sure to think of it as coincidence or something that happened in the code, that would certainly prompt a long-winded explanation from Turbo.
"Throttle…" Piston muttered, "You'll never believe what happened."
"What? What happened?"
"This is going to sound really strange..."
"We live with Turbo," Throttle said matter-of-factly, "ninety-nine percent of the things we do sound really strange when we're telling other people about them."
"Alright..." Piston said, and then he started to explain. "When I fell unconscious, I woke up in this place... It's kind of hard to describe. But, Turbo said he knew everything about it, but he wouldn't tell me where we were, even though he said he knew. He also said our codes were joined, which I think is different from a link, since I didn't feel anything Turbo felt."
"Oh, uh... Wow, that does sound strange, even by our standards," Throttle commented. "So, this place... What did it look like?"
"Well... The walls were red, thin, and cracked, and when I touched it, it felt like glass. And, it was covered with water, and it came up to my knees. The whole place was divided into sections, and in the center, there were two big, really big balls of light. Turbo pushed me into one, and there wasn't anything in the center. It was just pure, undiluted..." He trailed off.
"You don't know what that light was, huh?" Throttle guessed.
"I figured it out," Piston whispered.
"Come again?"
"I figured it out!" Piston said, now audible. "I know where I was!"
"Really?" Throttle asked. "Where?"
Piston didn't seem to hear. "Where's Turbo?"
"Outside, in front of the code room door; he told me to leave him there." Piston was out the door before Throttle even had a chance to finish his sentence.
"Turbo! Tur~bo!"
Turbo looked up to see Piston barreling towards him, calling his name unceasingly.
'What does he want?' Turbo thought. 'Or was he just worried about me?'
"Turbo!" Piston yelled one last time, before abruptly stopping in front of the racer in question.
"Turbo, you look horrible!" Piston exclaimed, temporarily forgetting why he ran to Turbo in the first place.
"I'm well aware of that," Turbo said flatly. "Now, can we talk about something else?"
"Oh, right! I figured out where we were!"
"Oh, did you now?" Turbo asked incredulously. "Whisper it in my ear." Piston knelt down and did so, and Turbo's cocky smile fell, and his features displayed pure shock.
"How did you know?" Turbo whispered, in awe.
"I just guessed," Piston replied. "Actually, what cemented it for me was the fact that you refused to tell me where we were."
"I guess I underestimated you," Turbo admitted. "I thought you'd never figure it out."
Piston awkwardly chuckled and smiled. Turbo smiled back, since that half of his face was reset. A code composition reset was a tedious process, and was preformed in segments, which was why Turbo wasn't a quivering mass of pixels. Piston started to walk away, since he couldn't think of anything else to say. Nevertheless, he thought of something else anyways.
"Hey, Turbo!" Piston called over his shoulder.
"Yeah?"
"Take care of that place, okay?"
Turbo nodded. "I will."
~THE END~
A/N: Okay... Why are you staring at me like you're still waiting for something... Oh! I never told you where Turbo and Piston were in the first place! That was intentional. What, of course I knew where they were! And no, no I'm not going to just announce it to the world! What do you take me for? Anyways... I'm willing to let you take as many guesses as you want, through PMs and the like. Goodbye... *turns into a bat*
EDIT: I'm holding a contest on DeviantART to see who can find out where 'that place' was first! Winner gets an actual prize! Link to my DeviantART profile in my... profile. But if you came from DeviantART, hi! *waves*