Angela: I seriously love Matt(and Near!) in this chapter. x3; Also, anyone wanna do fanart for us? I seriously wanna see what you guys can come up with. Especially for Near, when he shows up. x3;;;

ShaCha: 'Here lies poor Shacha; she's quite off her head; wrote too much and keeled o'er, and now she be dead.'

ComputerFreak101: With every review you send, 10 cents will be donated to the CF foundation to buy this sick little writer a Playstation and Guitar Hero 3. Bless your hearts. (GIMME YOUR MONEY!) --Angela wishes to inform you that Compy is lying through her teeth because none of us are giving her cash for each review we get. Silly Compy, money is for real writers! x3

We have our first official fanart, done by Bonzai-Bunny. Go look: http: / / i155.photobucket(dot)com/albums/s318/eknova/Bmadhatter(dot)jpg


"How is a magpie like a bookshelf? "

"Huh?" Light looked up from where he had been stirring his tea, a little startled by the question arising from B. The madman had been unusually quiet for a few minutes and Light had been taking advantage of the peace in his otherwise quite frantic day, but - "What sort of question is that?"

"It's a riddle, dumb-ass." Mello stole some more chocolate biscuits from a nearby plate, crunching them up in a few bites. Matt squeaked in agreement as he absentmindedly munched on the falling crumbs, having come out of from under the teacup now it looked like nothing was going to be spat his way. "Now answer it already."

"I know it's a riddle," Light glared at the blond, not amused, "but shouldn't it be 'why is a raven like a writing desk?' If we're going to plagiarise, we should at least do it correctly."

"Does Light-kun know how a raven is like a writing desk?" B started adding more sugar to a fresh teacup, upending the teapot to try and get some nonexistent liquid out of it - they'd drunk the teapots near them dry.

"Well no, but -"

"Move along!" Rather rudely B put a hand in Light's side, pushing the teen out of his seat and onto the floor with a loud bump. B then perched in the now empty seat, Mello taking B's old place. Matt remained beside his teacup, immersed in his video games.

Light glared from his newfound position on the ground. "What the hell was that for?!"

"We were all out of tea." B smiled placidly as Light got to his feet, glowering, taking the next empty seat along from the lunatic. "Now if Light-kun would be so kind as to pass the sugar -"

Mello let out a wail, just as Light stretched out for a sugar-bowl levitating just out of reach... "There aren't any more biscuits up here!"

"Move along!! " Yet again, Light found a hand in his side, this one sending him hopelessly off-balance and crashing into the tabletop, upsetting tea, biscuits, sugar and jam all over himself. And the tea was hot.

Yelping, Light leapt away from the table, tripping and stumbling into the nearest chair -

Which just so happened to be occupied.

B looked utterly delightedat the intrusion upon his personal space. "Light-kun has reconsidered giving me his eyeballs then?"

"No!" Light scrambled out of B's lap and onto the floor, pulling himself up into the nearest chair. "I am never going to give you my eyes, you sadistic creep!"

"But Light-kuuuun!" B whined.

"No buts!"

"What if we run out of jam?" The very thought made B shudder, and his eyes filled with tears. "Light-kun, we can't run out of jam!"

"Then I'll leave!" Light stood up. "I'll leave right--"

"I'm out of batteries!" wailed Matt from inside the teacup.

"Move along!" All depression forgotten, B shoved Light to the next chair, as Matt screamed that he no longer had any reason to live and started beating his mousy head against the teacup he resided in. Mello took him out once the cup began sporting cracks and shook him when Matt tried to hang himself with his own tail.

Mello stared at Matt as if he was losing all the common sense that a mouse could have. "Matt, we don't have time for this," said Mello. "We'll just have to get you more batteries." He was getting this huge headache from the entire situation and he wanted more biscuits now.

'Thank goodness he forgot about me,' Light thought. He'd really rather have as little attention on him as possible.

Matt immediately stopped struggling at the mention of batteries and looked up hopefully. "Batteries?" he squeaked, lifting his goggles from his face. "You have them, yes?"

"Yes, you idiot." Mello set him down and put a pack on the table, and Matt gleefully ripped the pack open and carted two over to his gameboy, inserting them into the back while Mello took a new seat.

Light rolled his eyes at the battery-dependent mouse-boy and his weary biscuit-munching 'manservant', shifting a little in his seat to get more comfortable. When he turned his head to check what B was doing (keeping an eye on some deranged lunatic that wished yank both precious eyeballs out of your head seemed like a good idea) it was to meet the sight of an empty seat. Light frowned - B gone could not be good. At least when the weirdo was there Light knew what he was doing - if he was skulking in the shadows he could be doing anything from playing tea-parties with teddy bears to sharping his knife-spoon-cutlery into a hazardous weapon he would later use to impale Light, to stab the brunet through the stomach -'Okay, now I'm just getting paranoid...'Light tried to calm himself, drawing up the wonderful composure he was so well-renowned for. Turning back to Mello and Matt to ask if they knew where their lime-bedecked idiot had run off to, Light -"ARGH!"

Light found B perched on the arm of his chair like some overgrown mutant monkey, leering right in his face brandishing a sticky spoon.

"That's it!" Light shoved at B, taking great pleasure when the oddball wobbled and hit the floor with a tremendous thump. Standing up Light made sure his chair screeched sideways and smacked into the now groaning B - revenge was sweet was it not? - storming out with all the flounce his girly magenta dress afforded him. Rather unnecessarily: "I'm leaving!"

"Well, duh." Mello looked up from where he'd found another plate of biscuits. "You're at the door, aren't you?" Matt was too busy bleeping and blooping, already lost in his game.

Light sniffed and disdainfully left, and slammed the door behind him.

Light stomped away from the tea party, praying to God that he never had to see B or another biscuit ever again.

...That was two hours ago.

Now, Light was - once again - hopelessly lost. Hopelessly lost, still in a dress, and coughing.

"I just had to get lost in a place that's never heard of clean air," he grumbled, eyes starting to water at the heavy smoke that was in the air.

"Clean air is but an antonym to dirty air. Yet air cannot be "dirty"; only "full"; of smoke, of dust, of scents. And since "dirty air" does not exist, it cannot have an antonym. Therefore, your theory, my transvestite traveler, is unfounded."

What. The. Hell. Light looked up, mouth opened to retort, and choked (on both his words and the smoke). A long, anorexic looking caterpillar was perched on a giant leaf above him. While its body was definitely all bug, it had the face of a human; a pale, youthful face with white hair and gray eyes. A long pipe hung from his mouth.

The caterpillar blew smoke rings at Light's face. "Whooooo are yoooou?"

"My name is Light. ...And what are you?" He coughed again at the rings being blown at his face. A talking, smoking caterpillar. Wonderful.

The caterpillar-human? Humanillar?- sat back, and blew out more smoke rings. "I am Near."

"Well I certainly wish you weren't," was Light's retort. "Wouldn't you much rather be far? It'd be easier to breathe then."

The bug-boy looked down at him rather imperiously. "My nameis Near, though since we are so ill-acquainted, you can only call me N."

Hell no. Light scowled; he'd had up it to here with people with single letters for names - what was this, some kind of mass conspiracy against him intended solely to annoy? "Do you people have no originality?"

"'Near' is a common name where you come from?" A raised eyebrow, another puff of smoke in Light's face that had the brunet coughing. "...I suppose it must be," Near contemplated, "if someone can name their...'son', " (a rather scathing glance to Light's clothes at this point,) "after the applications of a run-of-the-mill household bulb."

Light began internally calculating just how high he'd have to jump to knock Near off of his leaf, and if he could climb up instead to spare himself the indignity.

"Better than a letter," growled Light. "Your parents - I supposed they smoked too?"

"How ever did you know?" asked the caterpillar. "So, what are you thinking about doing? I don't suppose you're annoyed with me, are you? Not that I'd care."

"Actually, I was just thinking about how to get out of here. I'm late for something," said Light.

"Late for?" asked Near.

"Late for a very important meeting away from here." Light sighed. This was a very bad time for dealing with more maniacs, after he'd narrowly escaped B asking for his eyeballs yet again. He quickly backtracked, to find another direction.

He returned a few moments later, much to the boy-bug's?- amusement. "I seem to be lost."

Near puffed a little more smoke down at him, somehow curling the wisps into the shape of a giant question mark. "Do you know exactly where it is you're planning to go?"

"...Um..." 'Away from here' wasn't really that specific so - "not really, no."

"Then wherever you go you're always in the place you want to be. Only if you have some destination in mind will you ever reach that destination - otherwise you'll just keep wandering in circles and end up Nowhere at all."

That...actually makes a weird sort of sense. Light twitched. The roundabout sanity was possibly even more irritating than the total lack of all sense Light had received from other quarters. "But -"

"If you have no place to go," Near insisted, interrupting him, "when you walk and end up in no place you've fulfilled what you set out to do."

"But I want to go somewhere!"

"Then find somewhere to go."

"How can I 'find somewhere' if I don't know where I'm looking for?"

"Simple." Another puff in Light's face, the youth coughing and choking. "You ask someone for the directions."

Light felt like banging his head off of the nearest wall, he really did. Unluckily - or perhaps quite luckily for his braincells -, there appeared to be a distinct shortage of walls and wall-like things in the nearby vicinity. "That's what I'm trying to do, you stupid bug!"

Near looked down at him rather stonily. "Being rude will get you Nowhere."

"Since I'm 'Nowhere' anyway, what difference will that make?" Light irritably snapped.

"You are indeed misguided." A sniff. "We are not Nowhere but Somewhere, and until that has been established you'll not get very far at all. Nowhere is at least some distance from here."

Light inwardly groaned, sick of the white-haired caterpillar-boy. "Just tell me the quickest way to the nearest lunatic asylum? In this madhouse I might find the sane people there."

"I'm not telling you anything until you give me a rhyme."

"What?"

"A rhyme," the caterpillar insisted. "You know, those brief little bursts of speech that sound very similar to each other? Usually ending with the same sound, such as bat and cat, and toybox and Xbox, and gender confused, and--"

"Nothing rhymes with that!"

"Tell that to your new appendages."

"My--" Light looked down and groaned. "Good God, what did I do to deserve this?"

"Whatever criminal behavior you've indulged in is no business of mine."

"I haven't indulged in any criminal behavior!" Okay, so that was a lie, but like hell he was about to tell that to a stoned bug.

"You sound defensive. 70 percent sure that you're--"

"Stop with the percentages!"

"Give me the rhyme, I don't have much time."

"..."

"See, it's quite simple. Well, for me, anyway, I have no idea what your mental state is."

"You stupid bug, go to hell, and when you're there, say hi to L!" Light rattled, glaring daggers at Near. "There, you happy!"

"I do not appreciate being told to go to hell," replied Near.

"Just tell me what I want to know," said Light.

Near pretended to think. "I want a more positive rhyme. If you don't give me one, you can't pass."

"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I gave you your rhyme!"

Near shrugged in response. "It was an angry rhyme. I dislike emotional rhymes. Give me a better one."

Light growled, but conceeded defeat if only for the sake of what was left of his poor sanity. He wracked his brain for an appropriate rhyme and, finding none, was forced to make another one up. "As you can see, bug, from way up on your leaf, I'm looking up at you, and I'm standing beneath, I'm lost in this place where all the people are mad, where the outfits are weird and the puns are quite bad. But now I must ask you, there's one thing I must know - if I'm looking for sense, which way must I go?"

Near looked down at him, deeply unimpressed. "That way," he pointed in the direction that was south to Light's current standing, if he took ahead of him to be north.

Light strongly felt like hitting him.


Angela: We totally apologize for taking so long to write these chapters. The next one hopefully won't take as long, but ShaCha is going to Mexico for a while, so it may take even longer, no idea. Enjoy anyway?