Sakaki thoroughly enjoyed the turnaround her young friend showed; now Chiyo just looked tired instead of on the verge of dropping dead. The bewildering uncertainty that had plagued her for years in the US had finally lifted. She'd found out some terrible things, but now at least she knew.

They returned that evening enveloped in a relaxed, happy vibe, though Sakaki's cheeks were still burning. Chiyo watched her for a few seconds while she was fiddling with the lock, then suddenly jumped up and hugged her. "Sorry about all that," she said, "I'm sure they meant well… you're just too easy to tease sometimes."

"It's fine."

"But honestly, Mr. Takeda sounds wonderful," Chiyo continued as they entered, "Say, I remember collecting those career survey sheets way back in High School… wasn't 'Florist' one of your choices?"

Sakaki shrugged. "I think."

"Mrs. Andrea Nanashi Takeda…" Chiyo tried it out under her breath, apparently quietly enough that she thought Sakaki couldn't hear, but the towering girl was quickly set to blushing again. It was kind of childish of Chiyo, but she took it into her head to be jarringly child-like at the weirdest times.

Oblivious to the discomfort she'd caused, she wandered across the living room and zeroed in on a spray of roses on the kitchen table. Her long, tapered fingers ran over them and she smiled as if meeting a friend's pet for the first time. "Did he give you these?"

"Yeah."

"They're very nice, but… forgive me, I think they've been watered a little too much."

"Oh?" Sakaki stared. Was there no end to this girl's talents? "You can tell?"

"I… I think," she slid the vase a few centimeters across the table. "It's not always that reliable, but sometimes I seem to be a… a sort of a Grass Whisperer, if you catch my meaning."

"Huh." Thinking of Chiyo and plants together brought back nasty memories. "That's… something."

"Isn't it? My roommate thinks I'm insane." She giggled. "Actually, quite a few people think that these days."

Before they could continue, though, somebody rapped smartly on the door. Apologetic but somewhat relieved, Sakaki excused herself to answer it. A familiar voice asked, "Oh, someone's here? Is this a bad time, Ms. Sakaki?"

The host glanced back to Chiyo, who grinned and spread her hands. "Not at all," Sakaki said, "Come in."

Osamu had gotten a little taller since high school, too. A long black coat swished about him, making his every move more expansive and dramatic… as if they needed any help. Black hair brushed his shoulders, just barely curling up at the ends. His dark eyes were mellow but oddly intense--and Chiyo almost thought he was wearing eye-shadow, but if so, it was very subtle.

"Good day," he removed his coat with almost the same sort of flourish Chiyo had and it fell neatly over the back of a chair. His turtleneck and jeans were black as well, naturally. "I didn't know you were back in town."

"How's it goin'?" Chiyo greeted casually, then caught herself and became Ms. Polite again. "You look well, Mr. Osamu."

"Agh, she knows all about it," Osamu thrust a hand towards Sakaki and sat down heavily on the arm of the couch. "I've only been here bitching about life almost every day for the past week. My Calling becomes more difficult to follow by the day."

"My Calling?" The audible capital letter intrigued her.

"Osamu is still a seeker of the Truth," Sakaki explained, her tone and expression so completely serious that there was no doubt she was laughing inside.

The prodigy glanced at him and he felt the need to qualify, "Er… not for a living. I also have this little design business with Kazuki, that, uh…" his eyes darted back and forth between them. "Look, I know neither of you are able to take what I do seriously. I can live with that. But if I'm going to be mocked here, give me some warning."

Chiyo blinked innocently. It honestly hadn't occurred to her to mock him however silly she thought his conspiracy theories got. (It was the one thing she really remembered about him from High School—well, that and the time he took out a light fixture in the gym with a basketball then tried to play it like that had been his intention all along.) Sakaki shook her head. "You know we won't."

"Yeah…" Osamu turned to the younger woman. "Do you realize how lucky you are to have her as a friend? She's the one person in all of Tokyo that I can trust completely. No matter how crazy and twisted the world has gotten, she still hasn't been warped by it."

Chiyo nodded solemnly. "I know it."

"Well look, if you have a guest, I won't bug you." Osamu rose. "I just…"

"You're fine," Sakaki said, putting a hand on his shoulder and gently pushing him back down. "Just relax."

"Thanks." His gaze was grateful, and… no, Chiyo was definitely imagining the other part of it. Sakaki didn't seem to notice. "Ooh… sorry, Ms. Sakaki, I have to try this. Hey, Chiyo, have you had any… strange feelings since you came to Tokyo?"

Looking back through the nervousness, shock, terror, anxiety, ecstasy, anger, depression, disjoint and bone-crushing weariness she'd been dragged through over the past day-and-a-half, Chiyo came this close to making a sarcastic reply. "Not really, why?"

"Some visitors get this weird, paranoid feeling," he seemed to enjoy the thought, "As if somebody unfriendly is watching them… from above. Like there's this malevolent eye looking right down at the tops of their heads."

"Is that so?" Chiyo pondered. Hmm, her imagination was probably (hopefully) just manufacturing the feeling from his description. "You know, now that you mention it…"

"Ha!" Osamu snapped his fingers and pointed to her. "That's Dimension Tide."

Sakaki sighed patiently and left to make some tea.

"Um, Dimension Tide?"

"It's a secret weapon the Americans have." Osamu dropped into the couch next to her and leaned close. "Why do you think the Gaijin stopped when they did, instead of taking the rest of Europe or the Americas? Get this… there's a satellite in geo-synchronous orbit above Tokyo, and its poised to shoot a black hole down on the city and suck up their mothership!"

"Er…" Chiyo paused, "I don't think that's quite… I… I mean, a black hole? Even if there were some way to generate one, wouldn't that destroy the whole planet? Wouldn't a black hole suddenly appearing here eat the whole solar system? It would at least mess up Earth's orbit…"

"I don't know, maybe they made it so it'll only take in so much mass and then implode or something."

"What would it implode into? It's a black hole. It's imploded pretty much as far as it can go. And once you made it, how would you fire it towards the Earth? Aren't black holes more massive than a, a thousand stars?" Her objections might have been more grounded, but the degree Chiyo worked towards so feverishly was not in Physics.

"Well, I don't pretend to understand the science, but…" he sighed and sat back. "Ah, never mind."

"I'm sorry, it just sounds like something out of a Sixties science fiction movie."

"That bothered me at first too, but…" Osamu grinned wickedly. "Look around, Chiyo-chan. We're living one!"

Chiyo laughed. That was exactly the sort of cracked logic that Ayumu would have used to… to… the prodigy sat up and checked her watch slowly, expression sickening. "Oh no…" she moaned. "I forgot to… I'm such a…"

"What's wrong?"

"I told Ms. Ayumu that I'd visit her again today, and… and visiting hours just ended!" She gripped her bangs angrily. "How could I forget? Oh, I'm such an idiot!"

"Damn, that sucks. Would it help if you went there now? I could give you a ride."

"No, I… they're pretty stringent. I don't think I could get through to see her anyway. Thanks, though." She looked to the ceiling and struck her thigh with a fist. "Idiot!"

"What if you bribed them?" Sakaki asked pragmatically, pressing a cup of tea into her hands.

"Holy…!" Osamu stood suddenly. "Did I just hear Ms. Sakaki suggest bribing someone? Did I ever misjudge you or what!" It was plain to see that he was mostly kidding. Mostly.

"Heh. It'd about time my name went to good use…" Chiyo took a long sip and when she spoke again, she seemed to have found her center. "This is very good, Ms. Sakaki, thanks for everything. Mr. Osamu, if you wouldn't mind…?"

"Sure."

Chiyo stood to leave without finishing the tea, though. A strange, vague notion had infected her on the same level as the "someone's watching me" feeling that Osamu mentioned. She couldn't dismiss this one so lightly, though… somehow, she knew that something bad was happening to Ayumu as they spoke. Something awful.


Seoul's presiding monster was known as Yongary. He was a generic, somewhat tubby saurian beast that breathed fire and (perplexingly) could fire a cutting laser from the great horn at the end of his snout. He had a number of strange habits, such as drinking fossil fuels for his supper and boogying down whenever somebody played music loud enough for him to hear. Unlike the cruel and rapacious Gigan, Yongary made it possible to believe that perhaps he was just a misunderstood giant making his way in the world.

The monster spent most of his time in the jungle, patrolling Seoul's borders and looming menacingly over its citizens. However, that unfortunate evening, Yongary's alien controllers ordered him into the city and he stomped down a wide street, heedless of the cars that careened helplessly around his feet and crashed into the craters left in his wake. Thankfully, his tail swung high enough that it wasn't sweeping them from the road as he passed.

What could be dire that they would send their forty-meter-tall behemoth tromping through downtown without warning? Why, the dreadful wanderer was paying them a visit. It sat atop the Haitai Building, jagged wings beating slowly and freeing a cloud of scales to drift in the air thus stirred. They were in the same pastel hues as its wings, but when light struck them at certain angles they shone brightly green, making their mass resemble a snowfall of flickering parachute flares. As always, its wedge-shaped head swung this way and that as if it were searching… but for what?

Zrack! Yongary's yellow cutting beam snapped up, aiming to saw those beautiful wings from that ugly armored body. Before it even got close, though, the beam struck a scale and burst apart like light in a prism, playing harmlessly across the bug's dark carapace. Those poisonously green eyes turned lazily on Yongary and dismissed him.

Not one to be snubbed, the saurian charged forward, smashing bodily through the Haitai Building and rending it to the ground in seconds. (It probably hurt—the building was a little less than twice his height.) Completely unfazed, his opponent took to the air and lifted clear of the carnage, watching the fire-belching monster's rampage without concern. Yongary roared a challenge… but he was already wobbling and swaying dizzily after catching a lungful of the strange, apparently narcotic scales.

Cloaked in choking, billowing dust, the wanderer seemed to consider flying away and letting the encounter go at that, but instead—

VOIP! (You knew it was coming sooner or later.)

A glowing blade arced out of thin air and carved up through Yongary's body, knocking him sprawling. As he struggled to rise, the bug descended towards him vampirically, extending its proboscis…


"Ma'am, I apologize, but visiting hours are ov…" the orderly stumbled to a halt when, instead of introducing herself, Chiyo simply whipped her checkbook out. "What are you…?"

"How much is it gonna take?"

"Um, ma'am? Rules are rules, and…" he choked when she thrust a check at him and he read the amount. "Homina…! Uh, uh, right this way."

"Thank you!" she said brightly, just as if he'd decided to let her in out of the kindness of his heart. Osamu gave her the victory sign and took his leave; he'd always wondered what had become of Ayumu, but when they came to this place, he realized that maybe he shouldn't be so curious.

Chiyo rushed through the creaky, gentle halls, heart in her throat. She's probably given up on me… shoot, I hope she isn't mad… it was better to be anxious about that; quite apart from having no proof, she couldn't bear to contemplate the creeping feeling that still assailed her.

When they came to the door, though, the orderly hesitated upon noticing a tag on the doorknob. "On second thought, I shouldn't compromise the integrity of the…"

"Hey!" Chiyo yelped, "I just gave you a ch--!"

"Shh! Shh! Alright, alright…" the orderly swallowed nervously. "Your friend… might not be herself, though…"

"I know. It's okay."

"And… uh, if you were to, uh… encounter anything…"

"Let me in." If any of Chiyo's friends were to hear that flat, cold command, they could never have recognized her voice. "…uh, please?"

So he unlocked the door and stood well aside for her… then swiftly shut it behind her without any further pleasantries. The room was dark, cool and full of a faintly sweet aroma. Jasmine? At first there was no sign of the Osakan, but then Chiyo caught sight of her on the couch, sitting absolutely still except for a slight, tense trembling. Her eyes were enormous, fixed unswervingly on a point in the air over the kitchenette.

"Ms. Ayumu?" She didn't respond. "M-ms. Ayumu?"

Ayumu twitched, and for a moment it seemed that she had heard. But she only inched sideways, eyes tracking across the ceiling, following something nobody else could see. And though it would have been a pleasant anticlimax, she obviously wasn't just watching the dust in her eyes.

Chiyo crossed softly to her and touched her arm. "Ms. Ayumu, what's-?" Ayumu screamed and jerked away, tripping on the edge of the couch and falling heavily. She whirled in a panic and crabbed away from Chiyo until she hit the wall, where she curled into a tight ball and cast about frantically until she found the point she'd been focused on, now hovering over the door.

Chiyo glanced back towards it, half looking to see if anyone was coming and half trying to find whatever it was Ayumu was staring at. No, there was nothing, of course. This was just… one of her problems. Chiyo suddenly wanted to weep. She minced forward a few steps, but then sat down on the ground and looked at her friend despondently. What now?

Imbecile! A voice within berated. Trained psychiatrists and doctors can't help her, so what are you going to do? What, do you think you're some kind of Goddess? All you can do is hurt her now! You should just-!

"Chiyo-chan?" Ayumu quavered. "Is that you?"

"Yes! Y-yes, it's me!" Chiyo was suddenly across the room and at her side. "I'm here!"

"Ehehehe…" the Space Cadet smiled a little, but she continued to stare above the door. Up close, dark circles under her eyes were apparent. "Sorry 'bout that. I'm… havin' a rough time here. It… do ya see it?"

Chiyo looked down sadly. "I'm sorry."

"S'okay, there's probably nothin' to see anyhow." she shifted uncomfortably and watched the mysterious spot move down past the door and towards where she'd been sitting before. "But I know… I'll die if it touches me. Even… even if it's just my brain messin' with me and hallucinatin', it'll still kill me…"

"What… what is it?"

"Oh, don't humor me," Ayumu chuckled bitterly. "It doesn't do no good to pretend like dangerous lunatics are makin' sense."

"Ms. Ayumu…!" Chiyo seized her arm. "Please, don't--!" But she was interrupted by a feeling like a knife of ice through her gut. When she touched Ayumu, the air where her friend was staring seemed to ripple. For just a brief, terrifying instant, Chiyo thought she saw the beat of a ragged wing. "—you aren't a lunatic!"

Ayumu slumped. "Ah'm afraid you're wrong… the way things are, even- even if that thing is real, I'm still delusional, I still get the nightmares, I'm… ah! Oh, thank God, it's gone…"

Chiyo realized that the smell of jasmine had faded. The icy blade in her stomach twisted. "You know," Ayumu commented, relaxing. "They never come any more."

"Who?"

"Doctors, attendants, zookeepers, whatever they got here. When ah have these… episodes… they don't come. Even when ah scream, it takes 'em 'least an hour." She hugged her knees and rested her chin on them. "Maybe they think it's catching."

"No…" At least, Chiyo sure hoped it wasn't. What had she seen?

"By the way Chiyo-chan, I'm glad you were here… it's a lot less scary with a friend around. Thanks for comin' up."

"Er… no problem." So it helped just to have someone there to hold her hand? Chiyo felt another sharp twinge of anger--what the hell did those doctors think they were doing by abandoning her like this, then? Something was seriously wrong.

Ayumu stood and dusted herself off. "Don't usually come that soon after, though. I usually get a few weeks before the next one… Oh! Yeah, there's something I was wonderin' about…" she turned on her heel and reached up to brush Chiyo's hair back and run a ginger finger along her jawline. "Ah… it really did happen. I'm real sorry… those're my fault, aren't they? An' yet, Yomi insists that she and Tomo-chan never had to fight off the army of mold monsters."

"Huh?" the prodigy was completely lost. What was her fault? It took a moment to remember the faint Biollante-root scars and how Ayumu felt somehow responsible for them. "Mold monsters?"

"Tomo told me this story once, an' it had the undeniable ring of truth…" Ayumu yawned cavernously, with such power and control that even Chiyo was awed. "Stupid episode kept me up. Sorry to angst on ya an' run, but I gotta get some sleep."

"That's all right." Chiyo stuck around for a few minutes after Ayumu dropped off in slumber, sitting on the bed next to her and thinking deep, disturbing thoughts. She almost didn't notice when the door opened and somebody entered softly. Turning to see if it was an attendant demanding she leave, Chiyo felt the knife again.

All she could see of the visitor was a silhouette, eyes glimmering in the fading light from the room's only window. A jolt of adrenalin shot through her when that unnatural gleam confirmed her fears: this visitor was not of the Earth!