~Book Three~

X~63~X

"I certainly dreamed I was finite"

She walks. The ground is wet and the ground is cold. Her head spins. She stumbles. The rain is pouring now. It cuts her skin, like blades. She walks. The air is streaked with wisps of pink and orange. Red tints mar the blue infinities that had sailed above her whole life, the blue infinities she had wished to fly through. The ones that came to her in dreams and bathed her cell in sunlight through the bars and through the dirt smudged glass. It's gone now. The infinite, cloudless blue is gone, replaced with a canvass of reds and oranges. It looks like a toddler given only warm colors of crayons was allowed to paint the sky. She walks beneath it.

It's beautiful.

The ruined city scape, the ashes everywhere, and the hunger. The ravenous hunger. She doesn't want to be alone. She doesn't want to be left alone. She can't. They can't. What was it? What was it she had to tell him? She walks. She doesn't know.

The ocean. The ocean is beautiful still. She always loved the ocean.

It's beautiful.

It's blue.

Clasping the folded paper, the oddly shaped paper in her hand, the girl stops. The ground is wet and the ground is cold. The ruins beneath her teem with emptiness, screaming, waiting for her words. The presenters and everyone else are gone. Maybe invisible, but no, ashes. With the paper, with the paper and the ocean, she opens her mouth and says to the sky-

"Miku!" With a loud gasp, Miku snaps awake, sitting up and clasping her bony hands into fists. Her red eyes scan the darkness to find a mess of blonde and equally bright eyes scanning her face. "You alright?" The hands on her arms relax. With a pant, she nods. Len relaxes visibly. "Bad dream?" he asks her.

Miku pauses. She can't remember, so she shrugs. "I don't… remember," she trails off quietly, blinking heavy sleep from her eyes. It's still dark outside.

"Oh," Len simply says, moving so that he's now sitting next to her on the folded up blanket on top of the cement floor in the old warehouse. A finger taps at hers and she quietly takes his hand. "You looked really sad in your sleep. You looked like you were about to cry," Len says.

"Do people do that? Cry in their sleep?"

Len thinks for a moment. "Yeah. If the dream is sad enough."

"Any sign of Gumi yet?" Miku asks quietly, afraid of the answer.

Len sighs and runs a hand through a long tendril of Miku's hair. "No. That girl, Iroha, said she sent out the 'signal' but that Gumi hasn't responded yet."

"Did Rin…"

"Talk to her? Yeah. She won't really tell us much. Just that she's an old friend of Gumi's and that she sent her 'signal' and brought us to the rendezvous point like she was told. There's not much more that we can get out of her."

Miku looks around the floor of the warehouse. In the make shift bed next to them (an air mattress patched up with duct tape and a couple blood-stained hoodies) are IA and IO, curled around each other like puzzle pieces fitting perfectly together, as if that's the only place they were ever meant to be. IA has her thumb in her mouth and her other hand fisted tightly in IO's hair. His head is in the crook of her shoulder, buried there, and both of his hands are wrapped tightly around her, one pulling at the back of her shirt and the other draped lazily across her neck. His fit twitch ever so slightly in his sleep and IA murmurs incoherently every once in a while.

In the "bed" on the other side of Miku and Len is Yuuma, his hat pulled over his eyes and the other outstretched, as if he's waiting for Gumi to take it, wherever she is.

In the "bed" behind them are Oliver and Rin. Rin is flat on her back with one arm across her stomach and the other gripping Oliver's arm tightly, pinning him in sleep.

In the smashed out window in front of them, leaking in moonlight, is a silhouetted figure of a girl crouched on the sill, a very, very intimidating and massive hand gun in her lap. She seems to have dozed off too.

Miku's heavy eyes blink a few times and she yawns, swaying a little as cold October wind blows in to the empty warehouse. Water drips somewhere distant. Len's hand continues to smooth out Miku's wild hair and with every stroke her body feels heavier. Her eyes close and she hears his voice, "Go back to bed" and then she's gone.

~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~

"We need food, Len. I'm going on a run and I'll take Oliver with me," Rin barks, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her tattered and horribly ruined wind breaker. The strawberry headed girl Iroha chuckles bitterly.

"Looking like a poster child for homeless teens? Yeah, you'll totally be able to lift enough food to feed eight people without being seen no problem!" She raises a hand to high five Rin, who rolls her eyes, clicks her tongue and swats Iroha's hand out of her face.

"Got a better idea, Kitty-Ears?"

"Many, yes!" She chirps brightly, holding up two perfectly manicured fingers into a peace sign.

"I'm waiting," Rin snaps. Len gives her a warning glance that she ignores with a huff.

Iroha digs around in the pockets of her red jumpsuit before drawing out a bright pink wallet decked out with multiple key chains all of animated food like a milkshake and a massive strawberry and other charms including a particularly flashy one of a lucky cat with an actual bell around its neck. She leafs through its contents, dropping a few bills and about ten dollars' worth of change in the process. Rin groans as the clumsy girl brightens, drawing out a silver and blue platinum credit card.

"Aha!" Iroha grins, waving the plastic in between her glittery nails. "So, here's my plan. Me and… that one-" she points at Yuuma, "-go lift a car and pick out some clothes and stuff to clean you all up with and then we can go get food together!" She bounces a little on the heels of her massive and very frilly white boots. Rin rolls her eyes.

"You're gonna' go steal a car looking that that? You might as well be wearing a neon sign that says, 'street rat, street punk' I'd be able to spot you dressed like that from the moon," Rin hisses.

Iroha huffs. "People around here know me you ignorant piece of work. No one's gonna' care if a lift a car or not! My boys will cover for me!"

"Whatever. Just hurry up before I die of starvation."

"Rin!" Len finally snaps.

Iroha giggles. "You'd just come back anyways!" Rin utters a low growl and raises a fist but is quickly stopped by Oliver and Len. "You, pinkie, come with me!" Iroha says in a sing song voice, humming under her breath while beckoning Yuuma to follow her out the window. "Bye, bye!"

"I don't trust her," Rin huffs, moving a strand of filthy blonde hair out of her face.

"I don't care if you don't trust her, we need her to find Gumi. She saved us from… that, Rin. Get along with her for the love of…" Len trails off, scraping his hand through his hair over and over, a nervous tick.

A small whimpering noise turns the group's attention to the mattress where IO is now awake, frantically poking at IA's cheek as she twitches and mumbles in her sleep. Her leg extends frantically as if she's kicking and her small arm extends frantically, reaching forward. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, garbled sounds and words pour out in an incoherent stream. "P-p-p-p… pi-pi… P-Piko!"

"P-Piko….?" Len repeats at barely a whisper. Him and Rin exchange a glance.

"IA! IA!" IO frantically shouts, shaking her by the shoulders. She continues to shout in her sleep "Piko" over and over again.

"Len…" Rin warns at a low tone. "She hasn't dreamed about it since…"

"I know, I know…" Len moves over to IA and bends down to shake her awake. Her eyes snap open and with a gasp she lurches upwards, panting and gasping and with his name still on her tounge.

"IA… Are you okay?" Miku asks gently, crouching down.

IA continues to gasp as if she's run out of air and nods slowly.

"Bad dream?" Len asks.

IA pauses. "I don't… remember."

~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~

The pain is everywhere. It aches, it burns, it spreads. It's in her veins, under her skin, a vile kind of poison in the veins. It burns and throbs and her head pounds with a buzz like static that feels like it could split the world. It's death. Gumi screams. It's death. And she's not done yet.

Not know, not ever. She's not done yet.

This kind of a life, it wasn't good enough. She can't die here, she won't die here. This pain… the vile stinging the burning the aching the throbbing the blood in her lungs… her limbs won't move anymore and the buzzing is like a siren beckoning her to the end of the world. Calling her to oblivion, the buzzing pulls and pulls and she fights a battle like she never has before.

She's not done yet. Not know, not ever.

Gumi opens her mouth to scream and then- the pain releases her.

The buzzing fades to a soft ringing in the back of her mind. She opens her eyes. Dismayed but only momentarily to discover she's naked and hears footsteps, she starts to move forward. The space is white and also black and everything in between. There isn't a floor and yet she walks.

There are footsteps that aren't hers approaching. They sound like heavy shoes, clacking against the cold and hard and unseen ground beneath her. Gumi spins around. She can't see anyone approaching, there isn't anything. There's nothing.

"Hello?" She calls out loudly.

Nothing echoes back to her with its chilling voice. The footsteps continue. Frantic now, but a lulled kind of worry she's never experienced, Gumi starts to hyper ventilate. The ringing is so annoying. At least the pain is gone.

"Hello!" She shouts back into the void before her.

The footsteps stop.

Suddenly, behind her, there is a tall boy. He's maybe a foot taller than Gumi herself with chin length choppy pale hair, nearly white. His eyes are a purple so deep, so piercingly deep Gumi feels as if he's looking into her soul itself. He's dressed like a dealer at a casino, in a black, fancy vest and, as she thought, has heavy black dress shoes. He also has two earrings, one shaped like a silver cube and the other like a diamond. Gumi suddenly can't breathe.

"Hi, Gumi," the boy says.

"Hi."

"That was… exiting to watch, to say the least. I especially love how well you function on the battle field, you have grace to the likes I've never seen. Bravo. The ending was a little anti-climactic though, huh?" Gumi raises an eyebrow as the boy begins to pace. "Such a shame you're dead."

"What," Gumi deadpans harshly. "I am not dead."

The boy chuckles. It's emotionless, yet musical. "Yes, dear, you are."

"So, what're you supposed to be? God?" Gumi crosses her arms and huffs.

The boy laughs. This time it's full of humor. "I rather loved your performance tonight and well… everything you've done so far. Such a shame you had to die in combat… the roof just simply couldn't hold after all those explosives your buddies triggered. Wouldn't it be grand if you could… reset?"

Gumi cracks a smirk. "It would be a little… miraculous, don't you think? I 'die' and then a mysterious guy offers me a redo?"

"Oh, darling Gumi…" Suddenly the boy is sitting now, in a deep maroon squared chair that matches the color of his eyes. His leg is crossed over the other and he's resting on his elbow on one of the arms of the chair. "Who said anything about a redo? You gotta' think outside the box more… how about as many as you could dream of?"

"Sounds pretty miraculous, Mr. God, but I've never been much of a complainer," Gumi says, smiling.

"Good, good. You see, Gumi, that's... that's what I like about you. Always one to seize the opportunity at hand and run with it."

Then there was a blinding pain that spread through her entire body, a fire that rose in her veins, a sickness that blinded and danced with death, and then, there was an insatiable ringing, a buzzing, a crushing din in her ears that beckoned her to the end of reality, and then-

She breathed.

I'm alive! Hope you all didn't forget about me! Sorry this took way, way, waaay to long to finish, but things in my life have been crazy. Started highschool, moved houses, started writing a book (113 pages baby!), went to space (that one's a lie) and other various adventures I won't bore you with! But I'm back now, and that's all that matters.

Remember when I said that ATFO stood separately from the other songs in the series it's based off of? Well... I lied. Now I bet you're saying, "Whaaaat Tiruneko you monster!" but, calm yourself, it will be grand.
Go check out the other songs for spoilers of what's to come!

Happy Halloween, minna! (I'm going as Gaz from Invader Zim! Woop!)

~Tiruneko ;3