And, without further ado, here is chapter 14! *fanfare music plays* Dah dah dah….. heh, ok fanfiction.net is being nice now, so I can post a lot this weekend, seeing as how I can't during the week ^_^.

14. Terry~

Kinou was back at the door at the end of the dark hallway, this time armed with a candle; it was the most she could find to light her way. Setting the candle down carefully, she prepared to wrench the door open. She was sweating again, but this time she was set: she wasn't going to run no matter how scared she got. The door was shut, so she pulled with both of her hands and pushed with her foot as she had done before. She pulled it open wider than she had before so that she could actually walk through without too much effort. She picked up the candle, walked forwards, and halted in the doorway.

"Who's in here?" she called; her voice was steady, but her hand shook violently, throwing quivering shadows on the walls. No one answered, so she took a few small steps farther into the room. From what light the candle gave her, the room looked like a dungeon cell: the floor and the walls and ceiling were made of stone, and there was no furniture. Something was shining out from the darkness and she crept closer, holding the candle above her head.

It was a cage. Kinou lowered the candle and looked at it: the cage went from the floor to the ceiling, and the bars looked relatively new, but they had dents in a few of them, almost as though whatever had been in the cage had tried to get out several times. The floor had some food scraps strewn about and looked extremely dirty. Kinou stepped right up to the bars and lifted her candle again to try to see the whole of the cage, but there was a dark corner in the back that the light could not reach. Something made a noise behind her and Kinou whirled around to see a small mouse scurrying away with a crumb of food. Kinou let her breath out and leaned her back against the bars. There was nothing in here. Maybe whoever it was got taken out or something... Or, maybe the shouting was just a recording to keep people away... I don't know, the point is I was afraid of nothing, and I'm so glad I came back here to make a fool out of myself--

Someone grabbed her around the shoulders and she dropped the candle on the floor, making it go out instantly. Before she could scream, the person put their other hand over her mouth and held her to the bars with a grip of steel. Whoever was in the cage spoke into her ear with a hoarse voice:

"Listen, please don't scream! I don't want to hurt you; I just want to get the hell out of here. I'm sorry if that was you I shouted at earlier, but I thought you were the guys who originally put me here. Please, just don't run away like you did last time. Will you promise not to scream if I let you go?"

Kinou was a little bit confused, but she nodded. The person took his hand off her mouth and his arm off her shoulders. Kinou turned around to stare at him, but since her candle had gone out, there was no light for her to see what he looked like.

"Who are you?" she finally asked.

"My name is Terry Kohert," he replied, his voice a lot more calm.

"Terry? Why does that name sound familiar to me? I swear I've heard it before..." Kinou said.

"Well, you probably haven't because.... Well, you'll probably accuse me of being crazy if I tell you why..." When he did not go on, Kinou stepped forward.

"Believe me, I've had some crazy shit happen to me in the past few days, so just go ahead and try me."

Terry paused. "Ok, well, it's sorta hard to explain, but... I was originally a teenager in the 3-D world; I wasn't always an animé cartoon. One day, I was just sitting at home by myself, when this animé dude comes outta nowhere and takes me back here and pushes me through this portal thing---"

"You're kidding! That's exactly what happened to me!" Kinou cut in.

"Really? Whew! What a relief! I thought I'd have to explain for hours!"

"No kidding..." Kinou muttered. "Did you get the name of the guy who took you, by any chance?"

"I wasn't really sure, actually."

"What did he look like?" she urged.

"Well, he was really tall, with some really funky black hair--"

"Black hair? Oh, then I guess we weren't taken by the same person..." said Kinou sadly. "Wait a minute!" said Kinou suddenly. "I just remembered where I heard your name before! It was back when I was at home, right before I was taken... You were the missing teenager I heard about on the news when I was flipping channels--"

"They had a report on me?" he whistled in amazement. "Never thought my parents would care enough to file anything about me. I could have died and the only reason they'd ever even care is to get sympathy from friends and other family members. Sympathy presents more like..." he muttered.

"I'm sorry," Kinou said. She never quite knew what to say to people who had bad families, since hers was normal enough.

"It's ok, not your fault." said Terry. Kinou hated it when people said that to her. Whenever she said sorry, she meant she was sorry that things turned out that way for someone, not "sorry I put you there". "Hey listen, I really need to get outta here. Look over there, will ya?"

Kinou couldn't exactly see where he was pointing. "Where? My candle was kind of the only source of light..."

Terry reached out and held her hand, guiding it to her left. "There should be a bolt right over here; can you feel it?"

Kinou's hand felt an enormous lock. "Yeah, wow they must have really wanted to keep you in there."

Terry paid no attention. "Feel around it; there should be a small metal pipe leading away from it. Follow it with your hands and tell me when you reach a box-like thing."

He let go of her hand, and she found the small pipe. It went down to the floor, so she crouched and shuffled sideways along it until it reached the wall and turned upwards. "Ok, I have the box, now what?"

"There should be two large buttons and a small one. I'm absolutely sure one of the large ones is a security trigger, but the other one unlocks my door."

"You don't have any idea which one?" asked Kinou exasperatedly.

"No, they always stood in front of it when they pressed either one."

"Then how do you know it's the big ones? It could have been the small one that they were pressing!"

"I know because I watched their arm movements. The little one is towards the bottom, and their arms were never at a downward angle when they were pressing either one."

"Ok, but we're still taking one hell of a risk. You're sure you have no idea?"

"No, we'll just have to take our chances. Just.... pray or something! Go with your gut feeling!"

"Right, so no pressure..." muttered Kinou.

She didn't have any faith in praying, so she simply put her hands over the two buttons and tried to focus. But on what? Feeling energy? I guess the most I can hope for is the right guess. She closed her eyes.... and pressed the button on the left.

There was a loud clunk and then the sound of creaking metal: she had pressed the right one.

"Great! Whew, I was really worried," said Terry, and Kinou heard him open the door to the cage. "Well, we should probably get going."

"Yeah," she said. They walked out the door and out of the hallway. Terry groaned and shielded his eyes when they reached the top stair.

"Man, I never thought I'd hate light," he said. "I'd been down there for at least a week; I guess my eyes got used to it…"

Kinou turned and looked at him, and immediately noticed the resemblance to the picture of the real Terry she had seen on TV. His hair was ruffled and brown and his eyes were a pretty green. He was almost at her height, but slightly taller and he had his left ear pierced. He's even cuter in anime form, she thought. He glanced at her sheepishly. "That candle light really didn't do you justice."

Kinou blushed. "Thanks." She cleared her throat. "So, uh, we'd better find a place to hide you; we can't really escape since this place is huge and all the doors I've tried are locked."

"As long as it's a well-lighted place, I'll be happy," he said.

"I have a room a ways away from here, and a room in the hospital wing. We could go to either—"

"There you are! Why aren't you in your room!" someone shouted.

Kinou whirled around to see three guards approaching. She turned back to Terry, only to see that he had disappeared. One guard grabbed her shoulder and roughly pushed her against the wall. "You were strictly told not to go wandering about the mansion! We have orders to escort you to your new place in the guest suite. Now come this way." He held her arm and pulled her in the opposite direction of her temporary room; she looked behind her to see Terry peering out from the dark hallway. He smirked, gave her a little salute, and ran.

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*comes running in* Whoa! He left! Hee hee, ok I'm obviously in a semi-weird mood right now, so I'll just leave off here by saying that for those of you who want to see the oh-so-cute Terry, I have drawn a picture of him, so email me if you want to see him or any of the other scenes I have. My email addy is in the tailnote of chapter 11. Ja' ne!