a/n: Thanks for the review! A'ight, a reader!! *does the Safety Dance...whatever that is!* And so I write...

~

Blackness surrounded Aren, clung to his body, a cold nothing as vast as infinity. He breathed it in, felt it coarse through his veins, and escape through his pores in nervous sweat. The dark was something he knew too well, and dispised all the more.

"Trey!" he heard, a voice from behind him. A child's, a young boy's. It was a distant call, but its volume shook through Aren's head with deafening force. He groaned, and reached to clasp his ears, and his black-gloved palms punched hard onto the sides of his aching head.

Where was his hair? His long black hair, it was gone. His fingers ran across bald skin, and the ice-cold of steel. Aren threw his hands to his sides.

The boy called again. "Trey! Wait up! I wanna drive this time!" The sound was immense, he felt his head ready to explode. He turned, perhaps to face the boy, to quiet him. Enough to get his bearings, to find a way out.

But the voice still came from behind. No, another voice, another boy. "You know the rule," it mocked. "First one to the Millie-Car gets to drive!"

Aren felt the rush of wind pass him on the right, and two young boys raced by. How could they see? How did they know where to step? They could have been upside down, or running on the wall, if a wall was even there, for all Aren knew. But they knew where they were going, and he did not.

Perhaps they did not see the darkness.

One of the boys was tall and thin, pale-skinned, and with red hair. His clothing was torn to shreds that barely covered his naked body. Flesh was torn from him in massive chunks, an arm hung from threads. But still, he was running. Running quickly, as his melted and shredded body bled, and taunting his friend.

His friend, the loser, the smaller boy who struggled to catch up...he seemed unharmed. His fuzzy blue shirt and baggy jeans, they were intact, and clean of blood. The white-pale skin of his arms was whole, and they pumped furiously to catch up with the running corpse.

"Tuh...Trey!" he panted. "That-that's not fair! You know I'm...slower than you!"

The bloodied boy stopped, and laughed, as the dark liquid formed in a pool that seeped into the darkness. "Alright, slowpoke, here's your chance!"

Even harder ran the little loser, to make the most of his opportunity. But he began to cramp, or so Aren thought, because he grasped his heaving stomach with an arm. He grew close to the laughing dead boy, growling with determination.

But as he readied to pass, he lost his balance, and bounded through the black abyss. He collided with his mangled friend, and the two toppled over in a spectacle of blood.

Aren heard the red-haired child shout again. "Hey! What'd you do that for?!" rang through his head like a bullet.

"Sorry, Trey!" said the second boy. A grossly disfigured hand shoved at his chest, and he fell free of the accidental tackle. Quickly he stood, and offered a helping hand to his angered friend, but the still-attached arm waved him off. So he shrugged, and waited, rubbing the short black hair on his head.

And he turned. For the first time, Aren was able to see this boy's face. Not unharmed, as he had thought. The poor child's face was gashed open at the forehead, and dried blood was spattered about the wound. Behind two swollen, purple eye sockets, dark crimson blood poured, and ran down his cheeks in a constant stream. The boy looked up from his friend, and his gory eyes stared deeply at Aren.

But the corpse of his friend stood, and brushed off his mangled body with shattered hands. "Look what you did?!" he snapped, "you tore my pants! Way to go, Aren!" His dangling arm swung up, and thumped the bloody-eyed boy in the stomach. "Just for that, I'm driving next time too!"

The gaze was broken; the dead boy once again ran off. But his comrade hung behind, and no longer tried to catch up. His head hung low, and blood streamed from his eyes, and disappeared into the blackness.

Wait! called Aren. Don't go! Hurry, get away from the car! He strained himself to move in the darkness, but it held him back. At every inch of his body, the abyss detained him. He could only watch, and shout, and so he did.

Come back, please! Call Trey! Tell him it's not safe! Listen to me!

The bleeding boy did not listen. Perhaps he could not hear. But he shuffled his feet through the darkness, the darkness that held Aren so tightly. And the boy sighed.

"I'll never beat Trey to the Millie-Car..."

The phrase pounded at Aren's head like a powerful punch. He fought the darkness to cover his ears once more, but to no avail. And so he watched, as this little boy's friend disappeared in the distance, and shouted taunts that echoed from so far away.

Aren could move his head, he knew it. He was not sure how, or why, but all of the sudden, his head was free. Perhaps if he saw where he was held back, he tought, he could free himself. He turned it right, to see his arm. But there was no arm. No arm, and no shoulder, merely darkness.

Panic overcame him, and he swung left. Nothing, only darkness. His chest, his legs, all were gone. And a cold numbness began to coarse through what moments ago, he swore he felt. Hands, feet, his entire body, felt only cold death. He could not fight it, he could not feel to fight. Were his arms even there? What was this?

He knew, he knew exactly what it was. His darkness.

The bloody-eyed boy stood before him. And his mouth moved, but the child spoke nothing. But his swollen sockets widened, and blood-caked eyebrows raised in instant surprise, as he gazed frozen at the point where his friend had disappeared. He flung backwards, his head nodding toward the sky, and a spray of bright blood poured into the darkness.

The falling child faded into black, and once again, Aren saw nothing. But he felt. He felt the sharp, powerful sensation of pain, the sense that never dulls. And he felt the steady trickle of blood over his face.

~

"Aaugh!"

Aren woke with a jump, and fell hard onto a cold surface. His head pounded hard. Slowly, he opened his thin eyes, and a blur of sweet vision lay out before him.

My quarters, he thought. And indeed it was. His living room, to be exact. A small, square room, fitted with a loveseat and television, and a small desk with a computer. The bright lights and white-papered walls added to his headache.

He stumbled to his feet, and plopped back onto the loveseat. Gloved hands rubbed at his sweat-soaked hair. Damn, he nodded, that really needs to go away.

Rubbing his face, he let out an angered sigh. "Computer on!" he snapped. At the little desk, the computer screen flickered to life. Aren hopped to his feet, and stepped carefully over the piles of paper laying about the room. He sat at a small stool, and made a few taps at the keyboard.

Don't think about it, just let it go. Great, I've been out for hours. Look at the time I've lost.

He leaned back a little, and folded his arms. "Computer," he drolled, "bring up file marked 'Trabia Stratagem,' please."

The computer cranked out a strain of funny noises. It's never taken this long before, wondered Aren. Stupid thing's probably broken.

The computer finally replied, in a tingy, artificial-sounding voice. "Cannot process request. Multiple files are named 'Trabia Stratagem.'"

"What?" Aren cocked an eye.

"Cannot process request," repeated the computer. "Multiple..."

Aren smacked the screen. "Yeah, I know! I know!" He rubbed his chin. "That's odd. How can there be two files with the same name? Computer, list files you've found."

"Listing files," said the computer. Two names appeared on the screen, both of them "Trabia Stratagem," and each had a small description. Aren read the first, it was familiar to him. This was the file he had been working on for weeks, and saving his progress on every night. The information confirmed this; it was saved on his local hard drive, and had last been accessed only six hours ago.

But the second file was not saved on his hard drive. Its location was the Galbadia Garden main database. That's not even supposed to be open to the public, thought Aren, as he read on. The file had not been accessed since a year ago. And the file size and type were exactly the same as that of Aren's.

"This is unbelievable," he thought aloud. "Computer, open number two of list."

"Opening file," the computer replied. More grinding sounds came from the aged system, and soon, the screen flashed to life with a three-dimensional model. The model of a rocket.

Behind a set of black sunglasses, Aren's eyebrows raised.

~

a/n: If anyone has information regarding the procedure involved in the Safety Dance, please email them to pyrover@yahoo.com. Thank you. =P