It was a repugnant sight. Not the messy state of the room, which by comparison looked like royalty, but the imaginary being that lay cozily on the medium-size bed, it's unconventional bent position covering it near-whole - it's pink clothing covered by the pile of multicolor fur, it's neatly steamed condition ravaged into snaky wrinkles by the massive weight, and it's smooth scent replaced by an extremely unpleasant stench that perfectly matched her's at the moment.

And then Goo's eyes met his face.

It was barely visible from his position. But somewhere, deep within the lowest bowels of her rapidly bleaking heart, there was a pure but numbed sensation that was thankful for such - because what she did see terrified her to nary an end. All she could do was glaze her eyes, withdraw her breathing and lower her voice to a grave rasp.

"...Karoshi."

The ape could only chuckle mockingly as he sprung himself into a normal seating position.

"Awww, so I'm no longer your 'special K'?"

Goo did not answer. Her mouth hung fairly wide open for a few seconds, lips softly quaking as they reach for the proper combination of words, because she wanted to - but the only thing that arose were desolated hisses so that that they were instantly engulfed into nothingness by the piercing silence that ensnared the room. All the ape's pierced eyes could see was a curiously empty expression.

Noting this, Karoshi leaned in closer, his rear still consuming a very large portion of the bed--

And, quite boldly, allowed his right hand's large index to fiddle with her messy swoon of hair.

"I don't have a problem calling you 'Goldy', even after all that's happened between us recently..." Karoshi said, while taking a good look at the girl's deteoriated features. "Or even the fact that you look like complete shit right now."

Again, Goo couldn't bring herself to respond - but the words this time ignited lines of hellish furor across her pallid face. They didn't intimidate the friend; on the contrary, he derived a sick glee from it.

"Where have you been?" he asked, his face abroad in a wide sneering smile. "And what are you doing here?"

Goo bristled. "What are you doing here?"

"Good question," the ape was quick to quip. "I'll just let that redhead babe explain it to you, if she isn't still angry at you for flooding the house with imaginary friends."

Karoshi took a brief blink to wash his sore eyeballs, returning the gaze with a smug face... which quickly deteoriated into a grim scowl when she saw the girl's withering expression contort into an angry glare.

"No. She explained it to me already." Goo said, her tone barely able to suppress the emotion, her nostrils now flooding with seething bursts of air - and her eyes moistening to the point that the ape's body blurred into a nauseating sea of colors. "Everything."

"Everything?" Karoshi explain, at last rising from the bed and inching steadfastly onto the child. "What are you talking--"

CRACK.

All of a sudden, Karoshi sprung back to a standing position, his legs wobbling in spaggheti mode, right hand huddling to get a reach of his face--

THUD.

A brief but chillingly potent quake filled the room, causing the spilled CDs to teeter, some of the wardrobe in the locker to wrangle and items in the nearby shelves to collapse, the fur pressing against the floor to shrivel - and the fur on the upper side to arch straightly in fear. With head buried on both of his arms and beefy legs sprawled wide open, Karoshi realized that he collapsed to the floor.

He slowly re-revealed himself, to garner a closer look--

TWACK.

And felt his cheek throb sharply.

When he at last recovered, he cocked his wounded head towards the girl that now stood over him, mouth hanging wide and brimming with profanities; only to clamp right back shut upon seeing the unvarnished anger in her face - which burst into an earsplitting shriek.

"THIS IS YOUR FAULT!"

"What the--"

"YES, IT'S YOUR FAULT! YOU AND BLOOREGARD, FOR WHAT YOU PUT FRANKIE THROUGH! YOU STOLE HER UNDERWEAR AND KNOCKED HER DOWN THE STAIRS! HE CHANGED HER RINGTONE TO BLACK EYED PEAS AND SET THE RECEPTION LOUD!"

"Wait--"

"AND YOU LIED TO MADAME FOSTER SO THAT YOU'D GET OFF FREE AND THAT FRANKIE WOULD GET ALL THE BLAME! THE GIRL, THE POOR GIRL! SHE DOES ALL THE GODDAMN WORK! SHE KEEPS THIS PLACE RUNNING, AND THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT HER? WHAT DID SHE DO TO YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE?"

"Uhh--"

"BEFORE YOU DECIDED TO INVADE THIS BEDROOM AND MAKE HER LIFE MISERABLE! HUH? HUH? I KNEW IT! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF! FRANKIE ISN'T THE REASON WHY LIFE HAS BEEN SO HARSH--IN FACT, SHE'S LONELY JUST LIKE BOTH OF US!"

"Goldy--"

"WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOU? WHAT HAS BECOME OF US? YOU USED TO BE MY BEST FRIEND, BUT YOU'VE BECOME A HEARTLESS MONSTER! AND I--"

Very abruptly, the sea of screaming would halt. The ape was barely able to soak in the shock; but nonetheless noticed the sudden streak of blank spoiling her furious expression.

"And I--I..."

Goo repeated, but would again trail off, alongside the last rung of echoes. Words stalled her. Her pallid tongue fumbled deep inside, awash in a congested mess of letters and half-baked sentences, struggling to yank out the right words and say the right things - but all that ultimately emanated were fresh lines of tears from her pair of eyes, it's cristal cleariness perfectly contrasting her swarthy face.

She didn't close them. She wanted to, but it was too late - the vision's blurriness subsided, revealing that the ape sat up and stared right back, his face heavied and dark. "And how do you know?"

"I already told you, you dumbbutt." the girl sobbed harshly. "Frankie told me."

"Frankie?" Karoshi was very taken aback. "What the hell do you mean?"

Goo allowed a few silent seconds to pass - each one of them further feeding to the hatred that consumed her soul. "You don't have any clue of what's happened, do you?"

With that, she miserably hung her head, gazing onto the floor; it's messy status symbolizing the current state of her affairs. It was hopeless. The shadow grew and the vision darkened. Just perfect, Goo thought as she braced for what she knew was going to be the fatal blow--

And instead heard, quite simply and sadly: "No, I don't."

"...what?"

Goo processed those last few words through her mind, recalling his voice. And completely different it was. Rough, shaky, dreadful; so sincere and so, so... so remorseful?

Numbed, her head hurried upwards to meet the gaze of her imaginary friend. Doing so would only serve to stun her even more.

Everything she previously saw of Karoshi was non-existant, and all preconceived notions swirling her mind were shattered: his fist wasn't clamped tightly shut in anger, they were wide open - the tip of his plump fingers quivering in fear. He wasn't on a firm offensive position, as if about to attack savagely; he slumped and cowered to the point that he was now kneeling, to stare into his creator. His eye was gashed in purple and his facial fur flatted onto the skin, revealing a crimson throb - but these wounds were negigible compared to the deep frown and psychological scarring his expression now heavily bore.

"Goldy," he said. "I suppose you're going to tell me what happened...?"

Goo didn't respond for a while. She was, to put it shortly, shocked. Her spirit(and lungs) still reeling from the vicious verbal tirade she just doled, she lingered on Karoshi's suddent change of heart, trying to make some sense-- but after some seconds, she just quietly gave up, and exposed her fountain eyes to the ape--

And dropped it back down, and exhaled a very, very heavy sigh. Afterwards, she recited the entire tale as briefly and as directly as she could: "Frankie snapped. She attacked Mr. Herriman, slapped Madame Foster, and broke into a vicious tirade against the rest. I've never seen so much outright fury in my life. She wasn't just a little ticked off, Karoshi - she was a demon."

"I arrived with Mac at the entrance right in the midst of it. I experienced it all: I saw the anger, heard the screams, smelled the tension, tasted the panic - and felt the hatred as she, in front of nearly a hundred others, had the gall to call me a 'stupid retarded girl'."

"I ran to the nearest empty I could find, curling myself to the covers of the bed, and spent much of the night crying like the little insipid, pathetic, friendless loser I was... or the insipid, pathetic, friendless loser I thought I was. You see--Mac has been there for me, the whole time. His presence, ever since I've arrived here, has been a blessing. He saw me for whom I actually was; he convinced me to stop making so many imaginary friends, and for me to stick around for what I thought would be my new friends in life. He was there as I cried on that guest room... and he convinced me that Frankie wasn't such a bad person."

"And so, I left the confines of the room and went to look for the girl. It took a while; I checked as much of this place as I possibly could without getting caught by the other residents, but she was nowhere to be found. So eventually... I left the house. I ventured directly into the harsh rain, with an umbrella taken from the house. And there she was. She hid in a public bus; ill, weakened, battered. And crying."

"I felt very bad for Frankie; so much that my heart instantly forgave her for what she did earlier. In the hours leading to sunrise, the two of us were engaged what I'd call a seesaw of emotions: I would be crying and Frankie would be comforting me one moment, and I'd be the one comforting her the next. Amidst it, she'd tell me what really happened that afternoon, as well a bit about her life in general. And I'd tell her about myself in return."

"Eventually, I convinced her to return to Foster's. We returned to the house in the morning; we met with Herriman and Madame Foster in the office. The meeting wouldn't last very long before, out of sheer exhaustion and stress, Frankie collapsed into unconsciousness. With nary a word, they loaded her onto their personal car and hurried to the hospital. Left behind, I chose to visit her bedroom."

The only thing that stirred sonically across the room at this point was Goo's voice - itself weak, brittle and muted. The silence left in it's wake was proverbially loud. Karoshi sat back on the bed, eyes staring contemplatively onto the girl's eyes for a little while, vulnerable and grizzled all at once.

At last composing some words in his mind, the ape opened his mouth to speak--

But the girl's voice arose first. "And that's where we are at the moment," and her tone went utterly fatal. "Kinda reminds you of somebody else we used to know, huh?"

Goo turned her back on her imaginary friend, head still stretched to lay a half-glance. "And if you're still wondering, I came here to see if I could find something pertaining to Frankie's past... but never mind." With that, she left through the opened door in a huff.

Somebody else we used to know. These last few words denied Karoshi from responding with anything beyond a shocked whisper: "Marvin."

- - -

"I heard screaming coming from Frankie's room," a breathless Mac said as he brushed into Goo across the nearby hallway. "Is everything okay?"

Right next to the boy was the azure blob named Bloo; his once smugly sarcastic self searing with genuine guilt. "If I haven't said it yet; I'm sorry. I really didn't intend for my prank to go thzt far--"

Goo raised a gentle but firm hand, silencing both of them. "I'm alright. "I just want to be alone for a while."

Mac was surprised. "Alone?"

"In the guest bedroom. I'm very tired, Mac. Not just physically; but from everything that's happened in the last twelve hours." she sighed. "I need to get a nice, long sleep... and an even longer cry."

- - -

A/N - Yeah, quite a bit shorter than you were probably expecting... but that's how this chapter demanded to be. Next one will be quite a bit longer. At last, I've FINALLY reached the point in which I'll dwell on Goo's past. BUT that won't last long; like I said, there are only a few chapters left.

And in that case--I'm planning to post a new story which will be a companion to this one. Since this story is told from Goo's POV(Chapter 4 was essentially Frankie TELLING Goo what happened), the upcoming one will be from Frankie(As well as Mr. Herriman and Madame Foster)'s POV and will pick off from their departure to the hospital. That's all I'll say for the moment.

See you next chapter!