"You wanted to talk to me?"

Ziki looked up from the floor to see Pebbles. The writer tossed a stray hair out of her eye and examined Ziki curiously, waiting for her to respond. It took a while before she came to her senses and remembered what it was she wanted to talk to Pebbles about.

"Yeah." She started to stand up, but instead Pebbles sat down so that she was level with her.

"So...?" She waved her hand, prompting Ziki to continue.

Before she could stop herself, Ziki started talking. Where had her self-control, her quiet nature gone? She seemed to have discarded it aside, voice becoming cold and commanding. Rapidly the words tumbled out: "Did you kill my sister?"

"What the fuck?" Pebbles laughed. "No!"

Ziki shot a glare at her. How dare she laugh about something so serious as death? "Stop laughing, ok?! It's not funny!"

"Yeah, I know, but..." Pebbles covered her mouth with her hand, obviously trying to hide a lopsided grin at Ziki's question. "In case you've gone blind, the person who killed Zency was some wannabe of you."

"You could've ordered her to kill me!"

"I didn't." She suddenly became serious, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes. "Good God, Ziki, what in the hell gives you the impression I wanted to kill your sister?"

"You...you..." Ziki waved her hands around, wanting to start over in spite of herself. This wasn't going the way she had intended to, the way that she had taken hours and hours to run through in her head, picking out words that didn't sound right and adding explanations. Her mouth was betraying her.

Her voice hitched in her throat as she stumbled, "Okay. Let me rephrase that."

"Go ahead."

"...did you ever have any plans to kill off my sister?"

"Nope." Pebbles tossed her hair and started to stare absentmindedly at the carpet near her bed. "Just your parents."

"Why?!"

"Plot." She rubbed her closed eyelids with her fingers, sighing. "Just plot. If I had my way I wouldn't have shot them down."

Ziki's eyes started to fill. She didn't understand any of this, right from the beginning. She had assumed that Zency knew what was going on and had followed her, not really taking the time to think things out. Zency had always had something clever to say, but now she was gone.

"Besides," Pebbles added, "I don't think she's dead. Just somewhere."

Ziki rubbed at her eyes furiously. "Where?"

The last person she had expected to have any idea of what was going on drew a blank and didn't try to cover it up. She stared down at her feet, thumb running back and forth along the bare skin. Her voice dropped to a low mumble.

"I don't know, Ziki."

---------------------------------

Cricket shoved the note in Pebble's hand as soon as she emerged from the stairs of the cellar. She had brought Ziki down there so they could talk in peace, and after they had finished their conversation, they ended up simply staring at the DDR dance pads.

"I wish someone had taught me how to play," Ziki said quietly, to which Pebbles responded, getting up from her seat, "One day, Zik, one day."

Now Pebbles had to push Cricket to the side in order to get out of the way of the stairs. She had given her the paper so forcefully that both had nearly gone crashing down the wooden steps.

"Read it! Read it!" Cricket chanted, bouncing up and down in anticipation as Pebbles slowly unfolded the note.

She rolled her eyes and read it aloud. "'Giants orbiting.' What the-"

"I know, I know!" Cricket fished around in her pocket and yanked out a cherry lollipop. She undid the wrapper with trembling fingers and stuck the candy in her mouth, returning the paper back to her overstuffed pocket. "Weird, huh? Do you know what it means?"

"Does anyone else?"

Wordlessly the blonde pointed to the small note, scrawled in pencil, in the corner of the paper. Pebbles squinted, trying as hard as she could to read the small, neat print.

Pebbles-

None of us can figure this out. I have gone on a walk to clear my head for the moment in order to think more clearly later. Cricket should be handing you this in the meantime. Hope you know what it means.

-Shinobu.

Pebbles snorted. "Well, that was nice of her."

Cricket was close to exploding on the spot. Pebbles ought to go faster!, she thought. She gave a great leap in the air. "Well?! What does it mean?"

Pebbles tumbled the figures around in her mind. Hasn't she seen this before? She had, she was sure of it...in a book called-

She pointed a finger at Cricket. "You know that short brown bookshelf near my desk?"

"The one in the corner?"

"Yeah, that one. Second-to-last shelf, there's a book called Mirrormask. Can you go get it for me?"

As Cricket took the stairs up two at a time, Pebbles scratched at her head, staring at the words on the paper. It didn't make sense. The next initials on the paper were H.P., not H.C. Mirrormask didn't fit in here. Was it out of order?"

"I am your warning."

"Jeezy-weezy, Dr. Cid," Pebbles mumbled, head flopping backwards onto the back of the couch in exhaustion. "We've got some foreshadowing here."