Disclaimer: I do not own No.6!

Chapter Summary: "Heh. Trust the stupid airhead to not respond. I doubt he even got the letter. It was all wasted effort on my part. Why do I even bother?" A noise pierced the overpowering roar of the rain. Squeak!

Yuki talked me into doing these…
I normally don't write chapter summaries, disclaimers, etc… I'm really not into them myself.
Damn you Yuki.
I cave it too easily when you ask me to do stuff...
Maybe that's just 'cause I love you babe, no homo! 3 Iprobablywon'tdothisonanythingelsethough :P
Please enjoy!


Cold water dripped onto Nezumi's nose, making him flinch, and he sat bolt upright. His head swam, throbbing from long and sleepless nights. The cold from the floor still tingled deep in his bones. Every muscle ached. His eyes felt heavy, watering profusely. Or were they tears?

Tears of anguish? Frustration? Nezumi didn't even know anymore. He could barely remember who he was anymore, let alone how he felt about…

What was he so torn over?

White hair. Deep red eyes.

Shion

Shion.

Sense suddenly returning with a snap, Nezumi grabbed the sleeping Moonlit Night who lay curled up in a tiny black ball beside him, quickly placing him on the table and pressing the hidden button that was covered by his fur. Protesting loudly at being disturbed but complying, he projected an image on the far wall from his eyes.

Numbers and letters flashed on the screen, finally showing the message:

-RMOUSE2-
ERROR, OUT OF RANGE: LOCATION UNAVAILABLE.

He gritted his teeth, rubbing at his heavy, stinging eyes. Dark dots blotted his vision. How much sleep did I get…?

Nezumi had been constantly checking on Cravat after he'd sent him. It didn't feel right, sending such a sappy message to the boy who had haunted his thoughts for weeks to get him out of his head, but he couldn't take the action back now. No matter how many times he told himself he shouldn't bother thinking about it, not get so torn over a scrap piece of paper, but he'd ended up using the tracking device he normally spared for emergencies to find out if his precious letter had found its destination.

According to the tracker, Cravat had arrived in No.6 only an hour after Nezumi had sent him off, but since arriving there the signal had cut off and not returned. It had been a week since the incident. Like he expected the data to suddenly return, Nezumi stayed up countless hours every night, checking the tracker every few minutes.

He wished he hadn't been acting so pathetic.

His heart was blackened with lost hope.

Despite his looming weariness, a coercing presence weighing down his shoulders, a dry snigger sounded in his chest.

"Heh. Trust the stupid airhead to not respond. I doubt he even got the letter. It was all wasted effort on my part. Why do I even bother?"

Somehow, these words of harsh humour saddened him. Tears threatened to show, and he laughed them away.

"That's right," he whispered, struggling to form the words that caused such agony on his tongue. "Why should I bother?"

Biting his lip, he flicked Moonlit Night's furry, black body, and the flickering projection on the wall faded away. Not wanting to stay in the room that had harboured his feelings of nothing but false hope for the last dragging seven days, he grabbed his shabby coat and stepped outside. The door swung closed and locked with a familiar click.

More water trickled from the cracks in the ceiling, leaving puddles as wet doormats by the peeling doors of other tiny apartments. No sounds came from the rooms, the only noise Nezumi's slow and deliberate breathing and the constant drip, drip, drip of water hitting the cold concrete floor.

Nezumi trailed his fingertips along the coarse bricks and cracking paint, the rough wood catching slightly on his skin. As he moved closer to the stairs leading to the bleak and impure world beyond, the drumming of tiny water soldiers became increasingly more rapid and noisy. The grey-haired male stepped out into the torrent of water, feeling the rain drum powerfully against his skin.

The cold and icy water, the tiny projectiles hitting his cheeks as he turned his face toward the sky, ran down his neck and into his shirt. Within seconds the flow soaked him to the bone. Every inch of his skin glistened with pure, fresh rainwater. Seemingly of their own accord, his feet took him further into the shower. The cool liquid made him shiver a little, but Nezumi didn't mind. In fact – although it was a little masochistic – he loved the feeling. It made him feel alive. It reminded him of pain, agony, bitter emptiness that envelopes you when you have lost the will to live, but it also reminded him of hope, a shining chance at redemption that shone through the bleak void marking a miserable future that was destined to be his.

Shion.

The night that boy and his open window had saved him had been a rain-blessed one like this.

He could almost feel the burning agony in his arm where the bulled had pierced his flesh. Stinging tears pricked his eyes at the sensation.

He stood there for uncounted moments, arms spread, and rain soaking and weighing down his heavy clothes. His eyes remained closed as he savoured the sensation of the drumming water. For reasons he could not comprehend, warm tears slipped under his sealed eyelids and mixed with the rain trickling down his face. He barely noticed them fall. They weren't joyous tears, nor melancholy.

They were just tears.

A wave of exhaustion washed over him and he fell to his knees. Mud splattered up his legs, soiling his already completely drenched cargo pants. He caught himself before he fell face-first to the ground, but his arms quivered beneath his weight. Stones dug into his freezing, soaked palms. Nezumi felt light-headed and confused, as though waking from a long and mysterious dream. His wet grey bangs stuck to his forehead. Heavy eyelids threatened to close, his vision blurring each time he blinked. When he closed his eyes for too long, it stung but felt strangely pleasant.

"I'm tired…" he muttered quietly to himself. "Why am I so sleepy…?"

He remembered his long, disturbed nights keeping watch for a return message. In his hazy state, he had almost forgotten his short but emotion filled letter. He slowly got back to his feet, weary fatigue weighty on his limbs. His feet suddenly felt as though they were enclosed in shoes of solid lead. Nezumi began dragging himself through the quickly filling puddles scattered across the muddy ground, shoes sloshing in the water.

The grey-haired man struggled to keep his eyes open. Ever constant, the drumming of the rain filled his thoughts and his ears. A tiny noise pierced the over-powering roar.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeeeaaak.

Nezumi stopped, blinking away raindrops that fell into his eyes. He listened carefully for the noise, verifying it was real and not just a figment of his drowsy imagination.

Squeak… SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK!

It was real. That noise was so familiar, unforgettable. There was no way his head was playing tricks on him.

That was the squeal of one of his robot mice.

Nezumi spun around in the direction of the distressed peeps, trying to ignore the lethargy in his limbs. He could see hunched figures crouched in corners, those without the gold to spare for a room from the cold creating what shelter they could from an old box or an outstretched ledge, their only heater the warm of another's flesh. The soft weeping of an infant hummed beneath the howl of the torrential downpour. The looming, cracked buildings seemed even wearier and more unsound in the blackness of the night. Piles of rubble and lumber leaned against every possible surface and littered the muddy, usually dusty streets.

Squeeaak!

Fur that remained sleek, refined and tidy even when covered in grime stuck out from a pile of discarded timber scraps, twitching violently every time water struck it. The wet brown tufts clumped together, sticking up at odd angles.

"Cravat!"

Nezumi hurried to his little adventurer's side, carefully pulling him from the mess. The robotic mouse convulsed in his hands, obviously malfunctioning. There was a dent on the side of its delicate head, and a deep tear on its back. The circuitry and precise details Nezumi had incorporated to protect it had been exposed and therefore damaged, almost enough to destroy the tiny, lifelike machine he had put so much care into. He clutched the android to his chest, shielding its internal structure from the harmful water. Something crisp brushed his finger, and he gasped.

Spasming violently but still full of unbreakable will power, Cravat clutched a small strip of paper in its mouth with every ounce of energy it still held. Nezumi thought he felt his heart skip a beat.

No, it didn't. I'm imagining things.

Even still, something swelled in his chest, an unidentifiable emotion that Nezumi wasn't sure if he wanted to look further into. He just let it warm his cold and shivery limbs, tingling gratifyingly in his tired muscles. Two words that could mean so little but right now meant so much spun frantically in his head:

Shion replied.

Nezumi now held Cravat even more tenderly, shielding not only him now, but the precious words he clutched in his jaws. He turned and sprinted for home, aching to be there.

It felt like eons, but his dash back to a dry familiar room soon ended. He almost kicked open the door, but thought twice about it and opened it carefully. Two soaking rats, he and Cravat left muddy puddles all through the floor, but that didn't matter right now.

He carefully placed the shuddering robot mouse on the table, affectionately stroking Cravat's head before gently removing the amazingly dry scrap of paper from its mouth.

"Cravat… Your persistence will not be in vain," he vowed.

Nezumi unfolded the strip of white paper, and his message which now seemed somewhat embarrassing flashed back at him.

Did he not even write a response?! Is this some kind of joke? I went through all of this for nothing?!

Cravat squeaked softly, before something fizzled loudly inside him and he fell limp, red lights in his camera eyes fading to dull black. Even though Nezumi knew his companion, spy and messenger could be repaired, it seemed somewhat sad, like the death of a close friend.

Had Cravat meant something by his tiny proclaimation?

Nezumi turned over the strip in his hand absent-mindedly, fiddling with the paper. He gasped when he saw a message in handwriting different from his own scribbled on the other side.

-Too long, can we meet again?-

"…Oh…"

Nezumi clutched the paper tightly in his hand, crumpling it slightly.

"Oh…"

His chest tightened, dangerous, potent emotions swirling beneath the surface. Nezumi pushed them back, not wanting the feelings he kept locked deep inside to be exposed. He didn't understand them. He didn't want to understand them. And things he didn't understand scared him. No… They didn't scare him. He didn't know how to handle them. These unidentified sensations that lingered in the very heart of his being were to wild and untamed to be brought to light. He had deduced that doing so would be his downfall. They were a part of him that would surely tear him apart.

Nezumi blinked back tears that began to well in his eyes. No. I'm not crying. My eyes are watering.

Six innocent words from an innocent boy had wormed their way into his unstable heart. Nezumi didn't know how to react. The stray thoughts forming in his head were too chaotic and disordered for him to make any sense of them.

I want to see Shion. I want to see him so badly.

I hate No.6. No matter what happens, what damage it caused me can never be undone. I don't want to go back.

It's changed! The world is different!

Soul-deep scars remain forever. They never heal.

I need to see Shion! I lo-

Nezumi crushed the paper, letting it fall to the floor. Cravat remained lifeless on the table, damaged circuitry lying exposed to the cool air. He gritted his teeth.

"I can't believe you, Shion. You're making it so I can't even understand myself anymore."

Nezumi had an impossible mission. Write a letter that summed up his feelings that could not even be summed up in his head. How could these wild emotions possibly be formed into legible words on paper?

He didn't know.

"…That's just it…" he whispered, tearing a piece of paper from the empty notebook that lay beside him. The notebook would normally be filled with detailed prose and flowing poems, but it was as blank as Nezumi's face as he scrawled three words onto the strip with slow and deliberate movements.

-I don't know.-

"Moonlit Night." The robot scuttled to his side and carefully took the paper from Nezumi's outstretched hand, then hurried away with it held tightly in its jaws. Nezumi kept his eyes fixed on Cravat's body as he pulled a toolbox out from a box that sat beside his piano, took out the necessary utensils and began to restore his fuzzy companion.

A small smile pulled at his lips as he sealed the faux skin to cover the now repaired circuits.

"Thank you…" he whispered, to nobody in particular. Nezumi didn't really know who or what he was thanking.

"Thank you."


Hello again! What did you guys think of this chapter? All the ANGST. T^T Don't worry, it (hopefully) will not be depressing the entire way through this first story, and highly likely to not be sad in the coming-up sequels! More action and drama, probably. Wait, I'll stop now! I'll ruin it all!
Okay, Yuki. I CHALLENGE YOU. This chapter is a lot longer than our introductory chapters (which weren't really intended to be long anyway…) but I challenge you to write something as long as this for Shion's chapter, without rambling or writing stuff in pointlessly! And I'll be the just of that. :P

Reviews please! Even the small amount of support we've received so far is encouraging us to keep going. Your comments mean so much to us both!

~kitzabitza