I couldn't hear a thing. My ears felt like they were being sucked out from the inside. I knew I had woken up, and I knew I wasn't anyplace normal. Had I finally left the bland town of Mabase behind? If so, where was I?

The empty space where my brain was supposed to be finally transferred some shred of memory to the front of my thoughts. I panicked. Where was Haruko? What had happened to Eri? WHERE HAD RAHARU TAKEN ME TO?! I opened my eyes and could almost feel the thick black mist all around me. This definitely wasn't Mabase. It wasn't even earthly. Was I dead? Or was this some strand of space that had no stars and no clouds? How very strange...

"Wondering where we are, huh, Tak-kun?"

The noise startled me; until now it had been completely silent.  It was only then I saw Haruko. She was completely different. She was Raharu now. She was dressed in an Evangelion-style suit, except it was made all of what looked like radioactive platinum. She was standing on that Rickenbacker again. I don't know how those things took so much abuse from her -_-*. She was looking at me. She was different from when I'd ever seen her before; she seemed like Julius Caesar, a benevolent dictator who had overthrown my system of life several times and then come back with the best policies for a new one. She addressed me, and I sat/stood/lay there dumbfounded. I wanted to ask her where we were, and what had happened to Eri.

"Don't worry, your girlfriend's fine. See, she's right there." I turned around and saw that Eri was sitting behind me and sleeping, her arms around my waist. We were sitting on the yellow Vespa. "Flying through space, yeah?" Haruko—Raharu—said. "You wanted out of that old dump of a town, and here's your ticket. Hope you enjoy the ride."

I nodded dumbly, unwilling to argue with her. Anyplace was better than Mabase. At least this was somewhat exciting. I'd never been in space before. Though, I suppose, neither have most earthlings. I wanted to ask Raharu something, but I opened my mouth and may as well have been yammering like a mute. Raharu smirked. "Sorry, you can't talk until we're in an area with some atmosphere. I could try to teach you telepathy—that's how you can hear me, yeah?—but it'd take longer than the time it's taking for us to reach our destination."

TELEPATHY?! I would have face-faulted if there was gravity. I knew Raharu was an alien, but honestly...

She sat down on the edge of her flying guitar and swung her legs around. I just decided to go back to sleep. It wasn't fun, much less fair, to be in a black hole where the only sound was Raharu's telepathic yada-yada.

"Meow?"

"I know, Tak-kun, I'm sorry, you'll just have to be hungry until I'm done with this roll... just a few more pictures..."

"Meow."

"Don't give me that... this takes time, ya know. And I really want to find out what that picture is of."

My little black cat jumped off my shoulder and curled up on the floor of the darkroom. He was very hungry, but I had my priorities in order before he had come in. I needed to get the photo done. I had a hunch, a suspicion, but it wasn't a sure thing. If it was what I suspected, it would make a great story for the papers. Maybe I'd be in the Times again; that'd be nice. The picture would cover the top half of the front page, and they might even interview me. "I am just glad I had a camera at that moment. It was such a great thing, and I'm so happy to have gotten a shot at it." That's what I would say. After all, it didn't matter to me personally what the meteor might have been. I had left whatever mattered behind six years ago.

Now I watched the picture carefully as the colors and outlines began to form inside the white frame. It was definitely red; there had been no mistake about that. It was less streaky than usual. The shot had been perfectly lined up. I cleaned off my glasses and pushed them back on the bridge of my nose, watching the lines. I gasped when I finally could make it out. It was in the shape of a Vespa. There was something hanging off of it... a girl with long hair. It looked like Ninamori-san, the daughter of the mayor of Mabase back in the old country. And where she was, Tak-kun was bound to have something to do with it.

"My name is Naota! Don't ever call me Tak-kun again!"

I started to cry. The teardrops all just missed the edges of the photo. I went out to the balcony and looked up into the sky. The tears were freezing on my cheeks. "You finally got away, Naota. Congratulations." I wiped the water off my face. "I promise I won't put anything in the papers about you. Nobody else knows."

"Meow!"

I turned around. "Okay, it's time for lunch, chief."

I woke up and my limbs felt heavier than lead. I was on the Vespa, but I fell off in a second. I felt a hand grab my head and pull it up. My eyes could barely lift themselves up at the person. "Uhhhh....." I groaned. Raharu was standing there, a wide smirk slapped on her face. Her hair was tied back, and I was surprised it hadn't fallen out of its own accord. It was so heavy here! My jaw was dropping involuntarily. Raharu lifted me and placed my arm around her shoulders. "Relax, Tak-kun. There's nothing wrong. You just haven't gotten used to the gravity yet since you just woke up. You'll be able to walk around in no time at all, though."

Eri was behind us. "See, Tak-kun, I'm up and just as fit as a fiddle!" She flashed me a V for victory. I knew at that moment that Raharu had brainwashed her. I took as best a breath I could and wheezed out, "Whahidyoudodamuhgelfred? (translation: what did you do to my girlfriend?)" After that, I could barely get a breath. I started making noises like an old dog who's too excited about something.

Raharu and Eri both stared at me and then laughed. "S'nahfunny!" I gasped.

"You're hilarious, Tak-kun! That was a good one!" Raharu punched me and I keeled over onto the ground. I could have sworn I made a dent in the concrete floor on which we stood. I got mad. Raharu was still calling me Tak-kun, and now she'd gotten Eri into it too.

"Do... do..." I coughed, meaning to say "don't" but never finishing.

Raharu and Eri looked at me for a minute and then looked at each other. There was an awkward silence. Then they burst out singing. "DOE, A DEER, A FEMALE DEER, RAY, A DROP OF GOLDEN SUUUUN!"

I shook my head to the best of my ability as I lay pinned to the ground and watched them skip off arm in arm singing at the top of their lungs. "This... is so... not... funny... someone... help... me..." I wheezed before letting the gravity push me into the ground. I felt like Inuyasha after someone said "SIT!"

I woke up later and found myself able to stand. It was a little shaky, but I could do it. I looked around. Raharu and Eri were gone (I hadn't expected them to be anything other than that). It was also, surprisingly, night-time. Comparatively. The sky was a deep shade of burgundy, as opposed to the light pink I thought I had glimpsed before. I looked out across the landscape. There was green trees and grass and gray concrete, just like Earth, but the sky was red.

A man passed by. Or at least he looked like a man. He was sweeping the concrete in the empty building behind me. I took a few steps forward with not too much effort and called out to him. "Hey, are you from here, too?"

The man looked up. "Yeah, aren't we all?"

"I'm not. I don't even know where I am. What is this place?"

The man grinned. "A-ha... you must be one of the humans that Raharu-san brought from earth! You must be the one whose head works!" He ran up, dropping his broom and extending his hand. "It's an honor to meet you, Nandaba-san. I'm Hiromu, the janitor at the hangar."

I forgot to shake his hand because I freaked so badly. "HANGAR? What hangar? You still haven't told me where I am!"

Hiromu laughed nervously. "Oh, right. You're on Jupiter."

I swallowed hard. "J-j-j... Jupiter?"

"Yeah, and we are in the city of Muhuri, one of the main resources for Medical Mechanica exports. Atomsk was in your town, right? He's the new—"

"You'd better come with us now, Tak-kun."

I turned around to face a very angry-looking Raharu. Her eyebrow was twitching, and Eri was standing by, awaiting her orders. I didn't have time to say anything before the Vespa-riding alien grabbed my wrist and tugged me off to who-knows-where. Really. The place we went to was called Who-Knows-Where café. Once there, she turned around and started yelling in my face. I couldn't understand any of it. It must have been an alien thing. I asked, "Could you repeat that in a language that I speak?"

Raharu, after meditating on her floating Rickenbacker for a few minutes, took a deep breath and started yelling again. This time, I shrank to the wall in utter fear. I won't repeat what she said, but it had something to do with her not being able to find me anywhere, me not supposed to be wandering off in a place I don't know, and me not ever calling her Tak-kun again.

But wait, wasn't that my line...?

"Hey, this is pretty good." Eri was sipping a drink.

Raharu and I both looked at her. "What's that?" I asked.

"Bloody Mary. Want some?" She offered me a sip. It tasted really good, but kind of fermented at the same time. "It has tequila," Eri said. "We can do grown-up things like drink now, because we're at that age where it's okay."

Raharu sulked on her floating guitar again. "Think it's okay now, huh? You two sure grew up fast. You're probably all fooly cooly all over the place now too, aren't you?" Her mischievous grin appeared as she watched us. I didn't care. I just sipped the Mai Tai that I'd just ordered and felt my head slow down.

"Hey, Tak-kun—"

"My name is Naota. Don't call me Tak-kun; I'm 18 now."

"—we finally got a ship registered for use."

I looked up at Raharu. "What did you say?"

She pulled a strand of hair as she talked. "A ship. We'll be out of here by tomorrow afternoon."

That's when I forgot the Mai Tai. "Where the hell are we going? WHY DID YOU TAKE US HERE?"

She wasn't even fazed. "I didn't even mean to bring your girlfriend, you know. She hung onto the back of my bike when we took off."

"AREN'T YOU GOING TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING?!"

"You should know by now, you idiot!"

The silence that followed was long, and Eri sat behind me the entire time sipping her 5th Bloody Mary. She finally swiveled on the barstool. "Iss all gone, Naota. All gone. But ishure as 'ell was good." She fell on me, smelling like tequila, and wrapped her arms around my neck before passing out on the floor. Imagine that, the class president and valedictorian getting so drunk. It was only her 5th one, jeez... she couldn't hold her alcohol.

As promised, we were out of the clouds of Jupiter by early afternoon the next day. Eri was bent over the toilet in the back, having her first hangover. I was there beside her while she rid herself of the fermented junk she'd consumed the night before. I held her hair back and got a wet rag for her face. It was okay to stick around for people when they went through something like that.

At one point Eri leaned back against the wall. We heard the humming of the electric light above, and her hair was sticking to her face with sweat and tears. She looked at me, and she looked weak and pale. But she told me, "This is why I hung onto that bike. I knew that no matter what happened, I would do something stupid because of you."

I smiled. "I'm glad I was here."

She smiled at me a little. "Naota, do you still like Haruko?"

I shook my head. "Haruko's gone. Raharu is the one who's at the front of the ship right now."

Eri groaned. "Ohhh... my stomach..." She leaned over the toilet again.

I laughed. "You're still sick?"

"It's just the stuff in everyone's stomach! There's nothing left!" she cried as she rocked over the bowl. I tucked her hair inside the back of her shirt before she convulsed and vomited again. Her head fell into my lap and she gasped for breath. "I'm glad... you're... here, Naota." Then she went limp, falling asleep faster than anyone I've ever known.

I flushed the toilet and took her to her bed. She slept without trouble for the rest of the day.

I have a weird sense of humor, so sorry if I lost you... Please review! All you have to do is click on the little box in the corner and tell me what you think! I will have another chapter up very soon! ^-^

With love, Neko-sama=^-.-^=