"No, no, don't worry about it," Tomo protested on the way home. "It was just a nightmare, no big deal. I'm right as rain now!"

She walked in the midst of Chiyo, Osaka, Yomi and Kagura, who hadn't left her side since she had awoken. Had it been some minor incident of course, she would have loved all the attention, but since she had been genuinely traumatized, their hovering was almost annoying.

"A nightmare," Kagura thought for a moment. "Is it worse than the one where you pull the fire alarm as a joke and burst into flame yourself?"

"You've had that dream too?" Tomo asked, wide-eyed.

"Who hasn't?"

There was an expectant pause. "Hey, Yomi. This is where you're supposed to pop in with some belittling comment," Tomo said, chopping into an open hand. "Don't let us down now, girl!"

"Huh?" Yomi shook her head. "Sorry. I was... thinking."

"Well, don't strain yourself. I know how tough that can be for you."

Ah, Tomo was already going back to her old self. Now was that a good thing or not? It was certainly an improvement over the frightened, sobbing state she had been in until recently.

"Hey, Osaka-san?" Chiyo asked.

"Yeah?"

"Are you sad?"

Osaka glanced at her oddly. "What are you talkin' about?"

"Like... I don't know. I was just thinking... ne-never mind."

"You sure are weird sometimes, Chiyo."

"Say," Kagura suddenly asked, "What happened to Sakaki-san?"

"She wasn't at school today," Yomi answered. "She was probably sick or something. Though come to think of it, that was a permanent marker we used..."

Tomo stopped dead in her tracks. "It was a permanent marker?"

"Um... yeah. I thought that's why you chose it."

"Holy... I thought it was one of those dry-erase thingies! Oh, my God, are we ever going to get it!"

"I don't think..."

"You don't get it, Yomi! With all the crap we drew, she's gonna come after us with a baseball bat!"

"I didn't think we put anything that bad. Or did you write something on her without telling the rest of us?"

"Er, no..."

"Thought so."

They continued down the street, members of their party being peeled off as their ways diverged. Finally they came to the corner where Tomo would turn off and stopped awkwardly.

"Don't even look at me like that," Tomo said. "It was just a dream, okay? I'll be fine. Really."

"I know. But you were so..." Yomi drew up short. "I mean, you looked like you'd had your whole life pulled out from under you."

"Well... some things may have to change," Tomo admitted. "Honestly, I'll be rethinking a few things."

Yomi hesitated, then kissed her on the forehead. It was a platonic, almost-but-not-quite-motherly gesture. "It'll be okay, Tomo," she said.

Tomo smirked at the irony of hearing the phrase thrown back at her. "I'm not so sure anymore. See you around, Yomi."

"Yeah, bye."

And so the girls had all returned home for a long, hard, boring day of struggling through Yukari-sensei's diabolical assignment. The next day they would find that only Chiyo-chan had finished it.

For her part, Kagura gave up pretty darn early. Leaving the paper to die on her desktop, she went for a two-mile jog and trained for a few hours. When she was too tired to move, she settled down and played an hour or two of video games before retiring for the night.

And so, in the dead of night...

She was running with all her might, straining, straining... and it WASN'T ENOUGH. The hard clay track streaked under her powerful legs, faster and faster, but as always, ahead of her, the towering form of Sakaki pulled farther away through a light fog.

At first it was a beautiful sensation, running, her muscles singing with exertion and the wind rushing by, but her strength ebbed monstrously fast. Before long, her breath was scraping out of a raw throat as her legs morphed into jelly.

Finally, she could go no further and dropped to her knees. Sakaki vanished into the mists ahead of her. "Damn it...!" she gritted. "I'm never gonna catch her!"

Sakaki's hand gently rested on her shoulder. She looked up and saw the poker-faced girl holding her hand out to help her up. She almost smiled for a moment—then roughly slapped her hand aside. "No! I'm going to do this myself! I can beat you! I can!"

Sakaki shrugged and stepped away from her. "If that's how you want it. You should hurry, though. The Covenant is coming."

"The Covenant?"

She jumped as an explosion burst right behind her. Kagura whirled about to see a bunch of strange, squat creatures toting large weapons charging towards her across a large, grassy plain. And in the sky behind them was more ground!

It took her a moment to realize that she was standing in the Halo, like from the game... um, Halo. She didn't stop to wonder how she got there. Blasts from the Covenant's weapons were streaking in all around her.

As she ran from the aliens, she saw Tomo and Osaka running back towards her. "Turn around, guys! The Covenant is coming!"

"Oh, we're ready for them!" Tomo yelled, and did something very strange. She moved her arm as if she was throwing something, and, completely separate from that motion, some kind of a gun spiraled out from her towards Kagura. She was so surprised she didn't even move to catch it, but though it hit her squarely in the forehead, it suddenly appeared in her hands with a reassuring click.

Okay.

"Are you ready?" Tomo asked.

"Bonkuras unite!" Osaka cried.

"Stop calling us Bonkuras!" Tomo barked, shooting her. All it did was make Osaka take a step away and go, "Ouch!"

And then the Covenant was among them. All three of their weapons blazed, hurling thousands of slugs through alien bodies. Dozens of the creatures crumpled to the ground in exactly the same fashion all around them. It was actually quite exhilarating.

"Let's roooooock!" Kagura shrieked, swinging her rifle about with abandon. Now that she noticed, the weapon didn't have any recoil. Was it possible that she was dream--?

A grenade burst right next to her and hurled the thought out of her mind. She saw Osaka go spinning through the air to flop down a few yards away.

"Osaka! Noo!" Kagura ran to her side and knelt next to her. "Don't go!"

"Hold out..." she said weakly, "Until I respawn..." and she coughed up blood and died. Kagura stood grimly and shouldered her rifle. "I've had enough of you alien bastards!"

Then the Covenant leader appeared before her. She turned her rifle towards it and pulled the trigger—clickclickclick!

"Umm..." she backed away. There was only one hope. Kagura knew that if she managed to circle around and physically strike it from behind, it would instantly die. The mighty creature roared at her... and threw out a mat between them.

"Huh?" she looked down at the mat. There were two sets of four arrows on it. It was... a Dance Dance Revolution controller? Before she fully registered it, Osaka came running. "I respawned!" She fired into the alien, which promptly stepped on her. "I'm dead again!"

Tomo shook her head. "We lose a lot of good men that way."

"So you're challenging me to a DDR duel?" Kagura asked.

The beast nodded.

"Well, let's get to it!" she leapt onto her end and the song 'It's Rainin' Men' started blasting from nowhere, and the arrows began scrolling up between them. Just as she started to get into the groove, though, she saw an eerie blue glow appear behind her.

"A plasma grenade!" Kagura jumped off of the mat and looked to her right. No grenade. And to her left. No grenade... come to think of it, the glow was behind her no matter where she looked.

She turned to Tomo. "It's attached to the back of my head, isn't it?"

"Yep."

BOOM!

Kagura snapped awake and stared around her room. After a moment of reflection, she walked over to her X-Box and firmly unplugged it. "And that's enough of that."

If only the other dreams of that night were as easily explained.

We now visit Osaka. No, not the city. We're visiting Ayumu Kasuga.

"Oh, great Mystic One," Osaka implored, "Grant me your wisdom!"

"What is it you seek, young one?" James Brown said benevolently, hovering cross-legged above his dias. "If it is within my humble powers, I will aid you."

An elderly monk walked up next to her. He was once tall, but age had sanded him down to about her height. "You may ask the Mystic One just one question."

Osaka shrugged off her heavy jacket and looked around the simple stone temple. She had climbed seven months through the Alps to get here, and now she could only ask the Godfather of Soul one question. Even as her mind spun with the possibilities, her mouth moved without her.

"Just one?" she asked.

"YES." James Brown pronounced. The monk started to lead her away.

"Now wait a second! That wasn't my question!"

Brown laughed. "Just kiddin'. Why don't you sit down?"

A pair of monks slid a chair up behind her and she sat. She glanced over to her Sherpa guides, who had prostrated themselves before the Godfather of Soul. Well, they could do that if they wanted.

"I guess..." Osaka looked down at her hands. "Mystic One, it seems like I'm bad at everything. Do I have any talents? Will I ever find a use for myself?"

"Hmm..." James Brown hovered a little higher. His brow furrowed in thought. "I can see your future, and I'm afraid it doesn't look bright."

"I expected as much."

"Be hopeful, young one. There is a chance, a small chance, that you will find your place in the world and be truly happy. You must remember that when the time comes, you must be true to yourself, first."

"But I don't know who I am!"

"Do not worry, Ayumu," Osaka's chest swelled as the Godfather of Soul himself used her real name. "I will be with you."

"R-really?"

"Of course. I have faith in you. Some day, you may just manage to get on up like the Sex Machine you are."

"Do you mean that in the perverted sense, or...?"

"No. I mean like the song."

"Ah."

She gathered her winter gear and sherpas, and they walked together out to the treacherous mountain pass outside of the Temple of Soul. As they mounted their yaks, the elderly monk bid them farewell. "Go with God and the Godfather, my daughter."

"Um... sure thing!"

But as they plodded through the whirling snow, something entirely unexpected happened. One of her sherpas suddenly pulled a knife and hissed, "You will never find your place!"

He leapt into her with the knife extended—and she drew a katana, neatly slashing him in two with the same motion. The traitorous sherpa sprawled across her, blood gushing all over. Osaka pushed the corpse away and looked incredulously at her hand, coated in slick, bright red blood. She smiled at the sight.

At this point her mother was setting down a basket of laundry in her room. She glanced over at her sleeping daughter and sighed happily. "She looks just like a little angel...!"

Osaka couldn't lay claim to the honor of weirdest dream, however.

"I'm flying!" Chiyo soared over Tokyo, her pigtails whirling like the blades of a helicopter. "I can't believe it, I'm actually flying!"

The sun blazed in a cyan sky, shining off the billowing clouds that formed another, beautiful city over the real one far below. Chiyo did loops, flips and barrel-rolls hundreds of feet in the air, giggling madly. This was the happiest feeling in the world, even if it was just a—

"Huh?"

--dream.

And suddenly Chiyo was plummeting towards the ground. She knew that it was just a dream now, but ironically, she couldn't stop thinking of how people could die from falling in their dreams because of fear. So as the rooftops rushed towards her, she had a really hard time convincing herself not to be scared.

Just as she started being able to see people walking around on the street below, a dark shape sliced across her field of view. Something splashed up into her, eliciting a startled yelp. Pink lemonade?

Meanwhile, Sakaki was also having a pleasant dream. She lay in a sunlit field, scratching to kittens behind their ears. A dozen more cats of varying breeds and ages cavorted and played all around her.

Just as she thought she couldn't be any happier, a shadow fell over her and pink lemonade started spattering all over her back. "Oh, no."

"I'm afraid so," half of Chiyo-dad said above her.

She rolled over, scattering the cats, and stared at the strange creature that was still bleeding on her. "What do you want now? And what happened to the other half of you?"

"I'm multitasking. You don't seem happy to see me..."

"I had kinda hoped you would stay out of my dreams."

"You know you're dreaming?"

She gestured at the cats that were now swishing all around her feet, lapping up the pink lemonade. "They weren't trying to tear me apart."

"Ah."

"And I can really only be with them in my dreams, so..."

"But I'm a cat."

"You're... different."

"Are you saying I'm not a real cat?"

"No..."

"You're saying I'm not a real cat, is that it!?"

"I—I didn't mean..."

"Never mind that. We have something more important to deal with than whether or not you know a cat when you see one. Come with me." The hallucination grabbed her arm and started to tug her into the air.

"But—the cats!"

"Don't worry about that... Chiyo will teach you."

"Chiyo-chan? But-! Where are we going?"

"I need you to put in a very special guest appearance."

Before she could ask any more, she was yanked into the air.

Chiyo, still dripping with pink lemonade, felt an extremely slender arm (or was it a tentacle?) catch her across her stomach and jerk her out of her fall. Her benefactor deposited her gently on the street and streaked away before she could recognize it.

"What was all that?" she said aloud. In the shock of her sudden rescue, she had forgotten that she was dreaming. Chiyo looked up and down the street. Though she had seen people from the air, the place appeared to be empty now. She wondered why.

The answer came in the form of a titanic armored figure that stomped around the corner in front of her. It was black from head to toe and moved stiffly, rather like a stop-motion figure from an old monster movie.

"Um... hi!" she called. "Can you tell me where we are, please?"

It didn't answer, instead lurching towards her with obviously murderous intent. She tried to get away, but this was one of those dreams where you can't seem to run no matter how scared you get.

The monstrous black form closed in, cracking the pavement with each terrible step. Chiyo stared up at it in absolute, paralyzed terror. It raised an obsidian fist high above its head.

"Oh, God..." Chiyo whimpered.

Then a soft, strong hand rested gently on her head. Sakaki walked calmly up beside her and looked at the ebon giant calmly. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm here to protect you. I'll be here for you always."

Sakaki was once again wearing a dark brown cloak with the huge sword across her back. Chiyo watched in awe as she slowly drew it and walked towards the black behemoth...

The next morning, Chiyo was walking to school along the usual route, humming tunelessly to herself. For some reason, she felt really happy today. It could have been a nice dream from the night before, but she didn't really remember it.

"Oh! Good morning, Sakaki-san!"

"Hi." Sakaki fell into step beside her. "Sleep well?"

"Yeah! I feel really refreshed this morning for some reason!"

They walked together in silence, enjoying the cool morning air. Their peace lasted right up until Tomo and Yomi joined them from opposite directions at about the same time.

"Hi, Yomi!"

"Hey, Tomo. How're you doing?"

You could have heard a pin drop.

"...what?"

"I just asked how you were doing."

Tomo stared at her in blank incomprehension. "In all the years we've known each other, all the way back to grade school, you have never once asked me how I was doing. Why the sudden interest now?"

"I'm not allowed to care how you're doing?"

"Are you still babying me over that nightmare?"

"I wasn't even thinking about it!"

Chiyo turned to say something to Sakaki, but she had vanished. "Hey, Chiyo-chan," Yomi asked. "How did you do on that assignment?"

"I finished it!" she replied proudly. "I don't know how well I did, though."

"Yeah," Tomo said, "I was going to ask you about that..."

"You want my assignment so you can copy it?" Yomi interrupted.

"Um... actually, I was hoping you'd help me with it. I... I think I almost get it, but there are some parts that just..."

"Sure. I'll help you out."

"Thanks, Yomi."

The three walked in equanimity before Yomi suddenly burst out. "WHAT did you just say!?"

"I, uh, I thanked you."

"But you never do that! And come to think of it, why are you asking for help instead of just copying?"

Sakaki rejoined them, rubbing her hand.

"Maybe I'm trying to be more responsible! You were always telling me that I should, and now that I am, you give me crap about it?"

Then they plowed into one another and tangled on the ground, pulling on each other's cheeks, punching, pulling hair, throwing knees and the whole bit. "Are they actually trying to kill each other or just playing?" Chiyo asked.

"It's not wise to get involved," Sakaki advised softly, and they stepped around the combatants. As they continued, Osaka finally joined them at a dead sprint (well, for her, anyway.)

"Oh, good. I'm gonna make it," she said, putting her hands on her knees and wheezing for breath.

"Good morning, Osaka-san!"

"Hey, Chiyo-chan, Sakaki-chan."

Chiyo cocked her head to one side. "There seems to be something... different about you today."

Osaka drew herself up. "The spirit of James Brown is with me!"

The other two stared for a long moment. "That's, uh, that's just great!" Chiyo managed finally. "But, seriously, you seem more... alive."

"I have Soul now!"

There was really no point in trying to figure her out. "Okay."

"Not a bad piece of work, if I do say so myself," Chiyo-dad said, laying the last strip of duct-tape across his stomach. He then turned to a large U-Haul box and said, "What do you think?"

"Put me together again, then we'll talk!" the Sombra growled. "Why did you have to give her such a sharp sword?"

"Well, we couldn't have you beat her, could we?"

"I would've folded!"

"Yeah, right."

"I don't think she even needed the sword! That girl is so badass, I'll bet she gives herself shivers!"

"I'm sure," Chiyo-dad agreed, thinking back to the field full of kittens. "Now that we're done with this lot, where do you want to go next?"

"Dunno." The Sombra thought for a bit, then suggested hopefully, "Starbucks?"