Chapter Nine


Whoa, how can he start? So, Antauri, my fake dream mom told me to off myself and, yep, there were times when it seemed like a good idea because I had a standard tragic childhood and I thought listening to her would make me feel better. I have a daddy complex and a mommy complex and a school complex and a hero complex and an I wanna die complex.

"She, my mom, told me that if—" He stops because he doesn't want to face the repercussions.

"Yes, Chiro?" the black monkey prompts.

Trust. Trust. "—if I d—if I wasn't alive anymore, I could have a family." There's an uneasy silence. Antauri peers at him without any explicit emotions written on his visage.

"That wasn't on purpose, Antauri. The crashing, I just fell asleep."

Antauri nods and clasps his hands into his lap. "I know that, despite how reckless some of your actions can be interpreted as, you would never seek to alleviate your sorrows at the expense of many other lives."

"But I almost did." The chain grows heavier. When was the last time he cried, anyway, besides briefly after that one dream? Not when Sprx was kidnapped because of Chiro's own stupidity. Not even when the team (except for Gibson) was captured.

Wait. When they were captured—

Gibson says, "Somehow I don't think the Skeleton King will fit into that."

"It's not his. It's mine, all of this stuff, from a long time ago."

The room is littered with toys. In the center, Chiro's school costume from when he was younger rests on a mannequin.

"Well, that's extremely disturbing."

He shivers. Why would Skeleton King need stuff like this—Chiro's stuff?

"Tell me about it."

"Chiro." The boys snaps away from her remembrance. "I need you to face what is plaguing you. You need to go into your dreams and defeat it."

"How, I—" He's scared.

Antauri smiles. "I'll be here with you."

Chiro thinks for a moment. He needs to trust Antauri. More than that, he needs both strength and fear. The strength to move forward and the fear of death. The boy stretches out his legs and leans back, staring at the white ceiling and his resolve dwindling as shadow hands force the boy down into himself.

He opens his eyes up to a gray plane of existence, his vision obscured in darkness and mist and white sky. The boy's mother rises from the shadows and strolls toward him. Her arms are folded to where the teenager cannot see her hands.

"Chiro." She smiles widely. Ooze seeps beneath her pink dress, pooling on an invisible earth.

The boy shakes as he says as vehemently as he can, "I won't come with you."

She giggles and tilts her head to the side. Her neck is obscenely thin and her face becomes gaunt. "Don't you want a family?"

"Yes, but not with you." Part of him wants to apologize, but he refrains. Then, her eyes grow dimmer and his energy drains. He lifts up his hands, and Chiro's eyes widen when he can see through them.

Everything beneath him seems to buckle. The ooze begins falling into nothing.

"I love you, Chi-Chi," his mother chirps, her voice a hideous growl and her appearance an unnerving resemblance to a corpse. Chiro stares below. The cloud-like surroundings grow into a harsh shade of red. The whiteness vanishes completely. Below there's a living darkness, the chasm like a maw, the abyss blacker and sinister with dark tendrils snapping like gnashing teeth.

"Fine," it seethes, clutching onto the front of Chiro's shirt, clawed and smelling of sulfur, "then burn!"

And now the leader of the hyperforce is whistling as he falls to his doom, that noise almost sounding like a mournful howl, or one long wail. The boy swears that he hears hollow chuckling miles above his descending body.