"Hey, has anybody seen Koyomi?" Mr. Ogawa called over the heads of his gaggle of students. "Is she missing again? Guess somebody doesn't want their extra credit…" Though his tone was light, he was grinding his teeth on the inside. Yomi was one of the very few students that actually had anything useful to offer, and certainly the only one that he was honestly glad to have signed on.

The students, High School and University alike, bustled about him doing tasks that he was becoming certain had been more trouble to assign and explain to them than it would have been to just do himself. He was fortunate, though; while they weren't first-class scientists, the kids were fairly smart, and none had managed to hurt themselves yet.

"Mr. Ogawa?" A mousy little HS student tugged at his sleeve.

"Hm, yeah?" Ogawa turned, trying to recall the boy's name.

"There's something… er… strange going on at my table."

"Strange?" He followed the student to a workbench nearer the back, where a row of vials containing soil treated by micro-oxygen waited. The plan was to see what sorts of plants could withstand the stuff, and to what degree (none had so far.) One of the firmly stoppered vials, he noticed, had turned a little cloudy. "Is that it?" he asked.

"Yeah… it happened all of a sudden. And look…" the student pointed, indicating a few grains of dirt on the table beneath it. "That's new. Is it leaking?"

Ogawa donned a thick rubber glove and took the vial gently in hand, turning it in his clumsily encased fingers until the two of them saw a tiny hole in the bottom of the vial. It wasn't chemical damage, he could see; it was far too focused. Almost as if something had been stabbed through the plastic from the inside… or… chewed it away?

A knock came at the lab's door, but he was distracted.

"What could have done that?" the student asked, mystified.

As Ogawa looked up to answer, he saw a University student pointing him out to a couple of police officers. "The micro-oxygen fairy," he blurted, thrusting the vial into his student's fumbling hands, taking three great strides and leaping out the window.

Many perplexing things happened in Osaka's dreams, but this was definitely in the top ten. "But how…? He, Gathra… you know… died? Oh, but then he was protectin' me from the killer green beans… is he, like, a zombie moth, then?" she watched, fascinated, as her shadow leapt towards the Shobijin. It seemed that dreamland shadows weren't concerned with unimportant matters like the direction that light actually fell from.

"Well, you died," the fairies reminded her. "Are you a zombie Osaka?"

"The, uh, the notion crossed mah mind," she admitted. In truth, she'd lie in bed and wonder if she was, in fact, decomposing and covering the blankets with her rotting undead putrescence. "Why couldn' I see…? He- he was there!"

"In this plane, Gathra appears to people in a truer form; whatever he means to them is made physical reality." Righty broke off with a delighted cackle. "That's one dream George Lucas won't be forgetting any time soon!" After Lefty shot her an admonishing look, they continued together. "Gathra is, and ever shall be, your baby, and that's how he wants to appear to you."

"But… y'said he's not really my baby, jus', I was thinkin' of it that way…"

"As it turns out, he thinks of it that way, too."

The tiny women started to sing their soaring, exhilarating, beautiful melody that filled Osaka to the brim and left her slowly swaying without a thought in her head, borne on the its mighty current. A rush of salty air came down on her, as from the beating of titanic wings…

"Not you!" Righty snapped. With a disgruntled chirp, Mothra wheeled about above them and flew away. "Come on," Lefty called encouragingly, "We'll need you too, Ayumu."

"Oh—r-right!" Osaka tried tentatively to sing along, but again found that she was compelled to accompany them with her own tune, humming softly and deeply. The whole took on a bitter, mournful quality with her addition, a song of loss rather than glory, but still every bit as lovely.

And then the sun was blotted out. As the music faded, Osaka opened her eyes slowly and looked skyward. Not a meter above her in the air was none other than Gathra, evidently travel-sized for the occasion, though his shadow still fell over all of them and about forty meters of the surrounding beach.

"Oh my God…" she quavered in English. Gathra's wings were a festive pattern in somber, twilight colors, fluttering unevenly as he descended and pelting her with little puffs of wind. She held out her arms and his sleek, warm, dark-furred body settled into them, the wings folding improbably as he turned one jewel-like eye up towards her. "Oh… my… God…"

Time has little meaning in these strange realms where dream and reality swirl together like the syrup in a blueberry and lime Italian soda (yum!). There was no telling how long she stood on that imaginary beach, transfixed by that astonishing blue eye, trembling in a storm of emotions that she had no name for.

"He has his mother's eyes," the left fairy commented teasingly.

"Yeah…" Osaka agreed, a giddy smile slowly spreading on her face.

"Isn't that sweet?" Lefty sighed. Righty rolled her eyes.

But then, all too soon, a mysterious shadowy ovoid faded into being behind the Shobijin and tapped at its ropy wrist impatiently. The visit was over, it seemed. Rather than separate metaphorical mother from figurative fawn forcibly, though, the fairies eased Osaka gently awake, giving her a happy, muzzy twilight before she was returned to the waking world.

"Whu…? Where…?" Osaka mumbled. Awake, but only barely, she was just aware that she was warm, on a hard seat, and her face was mashed into something soft. Reality came rushing back as a hand lightly swatted the top of her head. "I thought you were gonna sleep forever!" Tomo said, voice humming through her chest and into Osaka's cheekbone.

She lifted her head groggily, surveying the area. It was the early evening, apparently, and clouds had rolled in at some point to make the day surprisingly cool. Someone had spread a light quilt over her and Tomo, which must have made for a disgustingly cute scene. "Sorry."

"Nah, don't mention it."

"I mean, your shirt must be covered in tears n' drool n' snot…"

"I'll cop one from Yomi."

"An' how long were you stuck here?"

"Tell you the truth, I caught up on some sleep myself."

Osaka released her friend's waist and sat up, staring at her wide-eyed. "What's gotten into you? Aren'tcha usually more…" for a few seconds, her mind pawed through a pile of adjectives, most of them fairly impolite, "…uh bouncy?"

"Can't be my usual wonderful, effervescent self all the time, right?" Tomo asked lazily. "'Sides, I'd've had to ditch you to do anything interesting, and you're injured. Wouldn't be sporting if I threw you around like we both know I could."

"Oh, this?" Osaka smiled, starting to shift her weight. "It's noth-ah-ah-ah-ah!"

"Hey…!" Tomo put a shockingly ginger hand on her back. "Careful!"

"I'm dreamin'… Tomo just told me to be careful…"

"I'm hurt," Tomo complained, not sounding overly so, "What, don't people think I care when they're hurt?"

"Well, ya punched Yomi in the mouth when she had the toothache…"

"She was askin' for it! What can I say?"

Maybe it was just a spillover of happy feelings from her dream (visitation? Dream? Visitation? Dream?), but Osaka was suddenly finding herself completely charmed. "Aw, c'moff it! Why ya bein' so nice t'me?"

"Biding my time… yeah, just… biding my time."

"Y'know, I always felt safe around you, Tomo…"

Tomo threw her head back with an annoyed sigh. Safe? She rather preferred hearing people say, 'Boy, I'd better keep on my toes around you, Tomo!' or 'Nobody is safe around you, Tomo!' or, even better, 'We bow before your radiance, o great one. We are unworthy of your grace, Queen Tomo.'

But safe?

"Just wait," she warned with a forced chuckle. "And I'll get you so good, your head'll spin!"

"Ooh, you're gonna get me possessed? That would be somethin'…"

"I was being rhetorical."

"Rhetorical? Waugh! It's like a plague! Ya can't trust what anyone says anymore! The fabric o' society's tearin' apart as we speak!"

"Um…"

"Sorry." Osaka lowered herself back down, snuggling into Tomo again. "Goin' anywhere?"

"Not now," Tomo grumbled, laying her arm across Osaka's shoulders and lacing her fingers. Was this what she herself did to Yomi? Imposing herself in such a way that it didn't seem like there was any alternative to accepting her? Damn, but it was incredibly annoying! With this soul-shaking realization, Tomo made a resolution then and there… to do so twice as much.

"Your antiperspirant's holdin' up, 'case you were wonderin'," the space cadet murmured, already drifting off again. By the time the 'e-e-e-e-er…' pause had run its course, she was snoring gently, lulled by Tomo's strangely deep, steady heartbeat.

Yomi reemerged into the backyard with a lawn chair and a book and set it up next to them, smiling an unbearable, smug smile at her best friend's predicament. "Not… a… word!" Tomo growled. She just giggled (since when does Yomi giggle?), which wasn't technically a word, but would still earn her a Takino-brand smackdown in the near future.

"Get up, Chiyo," a distant voice said.

Chiyo wasn't sure just how to do that; it didn't seem that she had a body at the moment. Her mind had drifted in absolute darkness, perfectly content right up until that mysterious voice hailed her.

"We haven't got all day," the voice insisted, "Come on."

And then came the weirdest sensation Chiyo had ever experienced. The thoughtless, sensationless, painless darkness slid away from her like water disappearing down a distant drain and she found herself lying in a shallow pool of actual water, dressed in her school's summer uniform, which was somehow completely dry. She sat up, looking around in stupefaction.

"There we go. I knew you had it in you, luv." The speaker was walking around her; she only caught a glimpse of white pants and wingtips before he passed from her field of view.

"Where… am I?"

The non-wet-making water she sat in stretched all the way to the horizon, becoming a greenish sea by the time it reached the rising (or was that setting?) sun. Behind her a range of deep orange mountains clawed towards a sky full of twisting auroras. And not two-hundred meters away, rearing into that bizarre sky to an impossible height, was the same hateful tower of vegetation that had attacked her and her friends.

"The easy cop-out answer is that you're nowhere, but that's probably not what you're looking for. You're also slowly dying in a hospital bed, and trapped inside of your own head, but I'm sure those don't help you either."

"Er…" she turned to face him, but she only saw a flash of white suit before he was again behind her.

"Uh-uh-uh! That's not how it works when you talk to me. Don't worry, you're not missing much… there's nothing of me to see."

"But then what do I see before you're behind me again?" she asked innocently.

"He warned me you were one for awkward questions…"

"I'm sorry, but who?" She instinctively turned again, but there was a patter of nonexistent feet and she was looking over an empty expanse of sea. That time, she was sure she caught sight of a red carnation peeking out of a snowy lapel.

"Case in point. I'll pretend you didn't ask. Now, then, as for what this place is, those things behind you there are the mountains of Karrot-o, and what you're sitting in is the sea of Kabage. And this big flower is you, evidently."

"What?"

"Or sort of like you, or a part of you, or you're a part of it. I'm not sure myself."

"O-okay…"

"That's all academic anyway. After all, you're here on a quest. I'm sure you don't want your cousin there to hurt anyone else, right?"

"Er, cousin?"

"Whatever. In any case, the solution is really quite simple. You've got to scale the thing until you find its soul and then kill it."

"What?" Chiyo whirled in spite of the fact that she really knew better.

"Oh, you're not really the violent sort, are you? Well, you've got to figure something out… maybe you can talk to it, I don't know. And don't be intimidated by its height… you'll find that climbing and other physical things are easier when you don't have a physical form."

"Can't, er, can't you do anything, Mr.…?"

"I don't have a name. Strictly speaking, I don't really exist, not even in your head. And I honestly wish that I could do something to help you, other than offer useless advice, but I can't. It's the way of the world, sadly."

"I… I see."

"Oh, I hope not. By the by, you seem to be taking this pretty well."

"Well… I thought I'd be dead. And I guess I'm still in shock."

"That's good, that's good. Stay in shock, if you know what's good for you."

More out of morbid curiosity than anything else, she tried to catch him with her gaze again, but was only rewarded with a flicker of white pantlegs and shiny dress-shoes. "You must exist on some level, unless I've gone insane."

"Oh, don't worry, you have. It's the only way you can save the world, after all… in this place, a sane person would go crazy trying to figure things out. Well, I'm off. Up you go, luv, and good luck!"

Chiyo looked up at the towering mass of Biollante and shook her head. "But… this is mad!"

"And so are you, at least for the time being."

"And I'm saving the world?"

"That's just what I said, luv. No pressure."

"But, wait! How could it destroy the world?"

"By destroying its only protector, of course. Wish I could stick around, but she'll be noticing you any minute, and I don't wanna not be around."

"Not be…?"

"Hey, I'm a pretty courageous chap, but I don't take threats to my nonexistence lightly! I'll come back if there's any way I can help. Cheerio!"

"But--!" She turned to him one last time, and this time, when she saw nothing, she knew that it was because he was gone. Er, more gone than normal. Blinking back an astral headache, Chiyo faced the towering plant being and cracked her knuckles. "Just… don't think about it," she decided. "Climb the plant, see what's up… um, there… just don't think too much…"

Though she was normally very quick on the uptake, this little escapade was going to take some getting used to.

Her father was also very quick on the uptake. When, sitting in conference with a group of scientists and military men in the main room of his summer home, he noticed ominous ripples shooting through his glass of bourbon, he instantly knew what was happening, even before the distant kettle-drum footsteps reached his ears.

"There goes the property value," he muttered glumly.

(A/N: I don't care too much about most of my OC's, but Mr. Doesn't-Exist-Not-Even-In-Your-Head is mine, mine, MINE!
Ahem.
Here, try and say, "ropy wrist" ten times fast. Easy? Well then how about, "metaphorical mother from figurative fawn forcibly"?)