Disclaimer: I own very little within. "One, two, three, four, tell me that you love me more..."

I'm sorry about the 'fuck the heavens' line. I didn't mean any offense.

And now, some much-needed shout-outs...

Props to my co-writer avatarjk137. I don't think he comes in this chapter at all, but he does sporadically throughout the story. If he does, it's either to do a scene he really wants to do (he gets a real kick out of doing a cool fight scene, and his almost always come out well) or it's to work me out of a block, which I am ever so grateful for.

More props to all of you, my readers, for frequently reviewing and giving me your compliments. Don't ever feel like you shouldn't give me tips or criticism, though. Also, I noticed some of you putting up your own fics like this. This is great, but it's also bad for me because I can no longer brag that mine is the best on the site simply because it's the only one on the site. Now I have to share best-fic-spotlight. (;

And even more props go out to the Boys themselves. I watched the VMAs on Sunday. They kicked ass performance-wise (I just started liking "Shut Up and Drive") and snagged a pretty, much-deserved award.

Bleh ANGST.


One-and-a-half hours later, Pete had 'woken up'. He was out of his trance from before, he had stopped shaking and crying. But now he sat on the edge of his makeshift couch-bed. Pete's knees were pulled up to chest, his light gray jeans standing out against his thin black hoodie and collar of his navy blue-and-red tee. His arms were hugging the tops of knees with his head bent down and resting on his kneecaps, his face hidden away. Pete hadn't even bothered to pull his hood up.

He sat alone, refusing to let anything else from the world in. The fear and loneliness he felt in the illusion and for the last hour or so made him want to stop bothering with the world, especially if the illusion was going to be true… if that's how things were going to end up. He didn't want to lose them; he didn't want to be alone. But, hell, he already was alone.

With the recent finding of a recipe for a cure, the world suddenly seemed to reflect hope. But there were too many people fighting them on their way to find the cure. And their friends from the junk yard getting killed… did they provoke getting killed at all? Or were they just killed for the sole purpose of mentally torturing Pete and the other three? By Amy Lee… the Baron's sister. Just when he was sure The Baron was gone, he came to Pete again, and now his sibling wanted him dead, too. She pursued him just to see him squirm. And so did Sorel. They both would want nothing more than to pull off his legs and watch him writhe, just like the bug they always knew they could crush.

And they will. Pete was finally feeling defeated… after all these years. His friends couldn't do anything to help. Pete knew his world was destined to become darkness, full of death and… loneliness. No, God, not the friggin' loneliness!

And here Pete sat, half-conscious, his head a whirl of dark thoughts… dark, but in his opinion, true thoughts that it was time to come to terms with…

"Heyyy, Pete!" Andrew stuck a thick, hot, white mug around Pete's head. The oversized, black lettering of a web URL was a dead giveaway that the Junk Yard Heroes got it for free at a promotional event. "Looooook. Cocoa. Cocoooaaa. Please come out and say hi." Andrew waved the hot chocolate at the side of his head.

"That isn't working," Patrick shook his head, glancing at his watch. "It's 11:05 P.M… we don't have to take him to the hospital or anything, it isn't serious, but, Pete… you're still starting to get us worried."

Pete didn't respond or move in any way.

"Uh, hey Pete!" Patrick smiled. "If you stop brooding, I'll buy you a new hoodie when we get back into a town!"

Joe stopped the RV as they pulled over on the side of a tree-surrounded road. "Yeah, this is getting old. And besides, Patrick, you manage our money. You have to buy us new clothes anyway!" He smiled.

Andrew put the cocoa on the table in front of Pete. "Maybe bribery would be working better if you guys didn't keep whining 'stop brooooooding' and 'Ugh, this is old!'. You're probably making it worse."

"I'll give you a waking method. This always worked before…" Joe got up out of the driver's seat and walked over to Pete. He turned him around, grabbed his shoulders, and shook him violently. "PETE! WAKE UP!"

After a good six shakes, Patrick started to step in. "Okay, okay, Joe! That's not working!"

Joe stopped shaking Pete. The second he did, Pete pulled his knees back to his torso, turned back around, and let out a little grunt/sigh. "…Uh."

"OH! He made a noise! We're making progress here!" Joe clapped his hands once.

"Pete, there's a porn mag in the cupboard!" Patrick exclaimed, pointing to the overhead cupboard. "Do you want me to get that out for you?"

"Look, Pete! The internet!" Joe shoved the laptop towards Pete.

"Mountain Dew!" Andrew opened a can and thrust it towards Pete.

"You're the only one who likes that stuff," Patrick made a face.

"Pete, do you want to drive? Would that make you feel better?" Joe offered.

"Why would he want to do that?" Andrew asked.

"Dunno. I just wanted to offer. 'Sides, I don't wanna drive. Hey Pete, if you don't come out of hibernation, I'll noogie you. Noogies suck. You know that?"

Patrick bent down more to Pete's sitting level. "Pete? Do you want to talk about what happened? Did that girl, like…" He searched his mind for what it could've been. "Hurt… your eyes? Your head? Like, burn? Or electrocute?"

"I don't think that's working… he doesn't want to talk to us," Andrew popped open the Mountain Dew. "Maybe we should leave him alone,"

"You want us to leave you alone?" Patrick asked him. He sounded like he was offering to take a three year-old who was just disappointed out to ice cream.

"Uhhhn," Pete's grip around his own knees tightened.

"Is that a no?" Andrew asked. He had already downed half the soda.

"Well, do you want us to leave you alone or make you happy or stay and talk to you or WHAT? Tell us!" Patrick was getting frustrated.

Tired of Pete being closed up, Joe rolled his eyes. But at the end of his blue eyes' journey, they came across a rock lying on the ground. Must've come in when I was tossed in here by that crazy chick. He picked it up, still rolling his eyes. "Hey look, Pete… a rock…" He haphazardly tossed it towards Pete without looking.

But he didn't realize that he hit Pete in the head until it made a 'clonk' noise. Pete fell out of his curled-up state and flopped onto the floor from the impact.

"JOE!" Patrick yelled at Joe. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!"

"We-well, I didn't think I would hit him! I didn't mean to-" Joe scurried about frantically.

"Owww…" Pete stirred on the ground and rose himself up. "That hurt!"

"Hey! You're out of your cocoon!" Joe pointed to Pete.

"Uh… yeah. It's kind of hard to keep in one position with people throwing rocks at you."

"Sorry…"

"No problem," Pete waved his hand, as if shooing a fly and turned to Patrick. "'Trick, do we have any food?"

"Yeah, check in the mini fridge, there's some left-… -o-… -ver… wait, what?!" Patrick asked Pete instead of fully answering Pete's question.

"I said, is there food?!"

"No, no, what you called me."

Pete raised one eyebrow. "…Do you not like 'Trick? I know you don't like Pat that much-"

"Which is why we say it…" Andrew interjected.

"-And I'm not going to take the time or the tongue to say two syllables all the time. Pick one."

"No, it's no problem!" Patrick raised his hands up to defend himself. "You just haven't called me 'Trick' since we were kids."

Pete shrugged. "And you don't want me to?"

"N-… no! I mean, yes? Or… no! I… just… am… wondering..." Patrick would like to buy a vowel, please. "We were… kids, and-"

Joe interrupted him. "Yes indeed, kids at one point or another, unless we were created in a lab more recently than we thought and someone injected memories directly into our brains."

"Uh… never mind, you can call me whatever you want to," Patrick sounded fatigued. "So, what happened with you and the girl back there?"

"Long story. No big deal. We got a working microwave in here instead of just a hot plate?" Pete had a frozen miniature pizza box in one hand (with processed meats on top) and a bottle of the bloodlust-curbing mixture that he put in Patrick's potion in the other.

"How can something be a long story and no big deal at the same time?" Andrew chuckled and crossed his arms.

"The dictionary's long… no one ever makes a big deal out of the dictionary. Nobody ever takes into account how great a dictionary really is. Almost any definition you want, right there, at your fingertips!" Pete explained. "And 'Rolling Stone' magazine. Have you seen that thing lately? Compared to other magazines, it's huge! And not just in terms of using a ruler to measure its length and width. Lots of pages. But Rolling Stone's no big deal. Same with the Bible."

"To hundreds of millions of people, the Bible's an extremely big deal," Patrick interjected.

"You're taking away from my point. So how about that microwave?"

"Wait. What about that girl? She made you cry." Andrew brought it up again.

Now this pissed Pete off. Why couldn't they just leave him alone about it? It was none of their business, even if he was too hysterical to stand… right in front of them. The fact that Andrew had to join nosey Patrick in badgering Pete about this made Pete so pissed that he wanted to just kick Andy in the shin…

"Ouch!"

And Pete just couldn't resist the temptation, and kicked him in the shin.

"OUCH!"

Twice.

"Pete, don't take it out on Andy. He didn't do anything. We're just worried." Patrick insisted.

"Why don't you be worried with my foot up your ass?"

"Touchy, touchy!" Joe commented.

Pete shot a glare at Joe. Why the hell were his friends so annoying today? Why couldn't they let this be and accept their first idea of him getting shot in the eyes by The Baron's sister or something?

And as Pete absentmindedly fiddled with the box, pretending to read the directions and look back and forth at the beat-up, secondhand microwave and the pizza box, he decided that the current situation called for a quick mental Q&A:

Q: Why are they so annoying today?

A: They're being nosey.

Q: Why are they being nosey?

A: They saw you cry.

Q: Why do they need to know so badly?

A: Answer not available. No idea. Maybe they're just nosey. Maybe Patrick's got OCD and we never knew. Would explain a lot.

Q: How do we solve this?

A: Duh, lie.

"Do you honestly need to know?" Pete growled/whined to the others.

"Yes!" Three simultaneous answers. They honestly needed to know.

"She has some sort of weird power to cast illusions," That part's true.

"That would explain a lot!" Patrick jumped up from his sitting position to look at Pete.

"Yep, it does. Does this microwave even work?" Pete opened the door and peered inside, occupying his hands and eyes by poking around inside.

"What did she have you see?"

Fuck you and your details, Patrick. Now, Pete was having trouble…. Details were when the lying came in."I don't even fully remember. It was really weird, though. Kind of like a dream or something." More like a nightmare. "More like a nightmare," Well, at least I told them that part. Now it's not lying, it's absence of truth. A lot of truth.

Silence for a minute. Thank the heavens for finally doing something for me after all these years.

"Okay, what did you see?" Joe demanded.

Fuck the heavens. And fuck Joe, too. But Pete finally gave in, suddenly tossing the microwavable pizza (beginning to thaw now) aside. "She made me see that you were all getting killed and crap!" he whined and then plopped down on his makeshift sofa-bed.

"ME?!" Joe shouted in shock, pointing to himself.

"NO! All of you!"

"Ohhh, okay. Wait, that's still bad."

"Yeah," Patrick agreed. "Who was killing us?"

"I don't know," Pete knew that if he told them he saw himself killing them, they might be freaked out from just being around him. And he was meaning to tell Patrick about his bloodlust lately too, so he could fix up the mixture to make it stronger or something… now that idea was out the window. "Just some guy was doing it,"

"Who was killing us?" Andrew repeated.

"ME! I saw myself killing you! It was so SICK!" Pete shouted, scooting farther back into the seat in an attempt to make himself comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. He grabbed a pillow, squeezing and shaking it halfheartedly, then buried his face in it and brought his knees up to his chest... a familiar position as of late. "N iwshindndytft n eh wshlfn-"

"WAIT. What?" Joe yanked the pillow away.

"I was in a Dandy outfit! And I was laughing! As if I was enjoying, or maybe it was an order, or maybe I was hypnotized in the dream. I don't know!"

Pete stared back at Joe, but wasn't getting a verbal reaction. He was just getting Joe looking back at him, looking shocked and a little scared.

Pete looked at Patrick and Andy, too. They were scared as well.

And now, the vigilantes would learn why the Holding it In rule was a bad one.

Pete put his fingertips up to his forehead. It appeared to be some worthless attempt to bring comfort and security to his mind through his fingers. "Why... are you guys scared of me?"

Patrick swallowed, then looked behind him at Joe and Andy and realized they were leaving the speaking up to him. "We're not scared of you, dude, we-"

"I thought you would understand," Pete kept his fingers on his forehead, not looking at Patrick, but at the ground. His voice was calm, but far from controlled. It sounded foreign, not a happy calm, an almost demented or possessed calm. Unsteady to the point of being almost rhythmic. "I thought you would know by now that I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to, so even if I did, I would never... think to..."

"Pete! C'mon! You know we don't mean to..." Patrick searched for the right words. "We're not SCARED of you! We're just worried-"

"About yourselves," Pete was pushing on his forehead and the small joints in his fingers were turning pale.

"No!" Patrick sounded a little bit panicked and was desperate to get something good or at least something non-destructive out of this whole scene. "Listen to me!"

"YOU listen to me," Pete hissed, his voice still weirdly calm. "You're not even listening to the whole story, to MY side of it!" His voice was losing its calm waver.

"Pete! I'm trying to get your side of the story, but you're just freaking out!" Patrick swallowed again, wondering if his next set of words was a good idea. "If... if you don't want us to be scared of you, don't act like you're... totally..."

"I AM NOT-"

"GIVE ME A CHANCE TO SPEAK!"

Andrew stepped forward. "Stop yelling, you guys! You're not going to accomplish anything by-"

Joe physically yanked Andrew back. "Andy! Stay out of it!"

"YOU JUST WON'T-" Pete was cut off by a dripping off his forehead. He pulled his hands away. Four little fingernail-shaped, red marks in his forehead dripped down four little streams of blood onto his eyes and face.