Hey everyone! It's chapter four, and I think you'll be quite glad to finally have 'Dashi conscious again! The only question is, how is he going to handle things now that he's finally cognizant? Well, dear readers, I'll leave that up to you to find out ;) See y'all at the bottom!

0o0

Tadashi awakes with a start to pitch blackness. He has no idea where he is or what's going on, but he certainly has his doubts as to whether it's anything good. His lower body is strapped down to what feels like a cold slab of metal. He can feel something weird attached to his neck, and the clothes that he's wearing certainly don't feel like any that he owns. Above and around him, he can hear panicked voices calling out something about a blackout and trying to stabilize the patients until the backup generators kick in.

"Am I in a hospital?" he wonders, his brain still very foggy as he tries to make sense of it all. What is he doing in the hospital? Then his brain grabs hold of a passing through his consciousness. The fire-the fire at the exposition hall! He'd gone in to try to save someone who was trapped in the burning building. But who? His brain calls up another memory-Honey Lemon! She'd fallen into the burning building! Was she still in danger? Was she safe now? He desperately needs to find out. Suddenly he finds that he can't stay where he is any longer. He struggles against his bond, but he's strapped down too tightly to escape.

"Consarnit!" he cries under his breath. Curse this stupid power outage! How is he supposed to get to Honey if he can't even manage to get free? If only there was a light so that he could see what he was doing.

Suddenly, as if in answer to his prayers, everything in the room starts glowing a dim green. "The emergency lights?" he wonders. For a moment the vision in his right eye seems to go in and out of focus, almost like a camera lens trying to adjust to the best setting. "Weird," he thinks, and then quickly forces the thought out of his mind. He has more important things to think about than his vision going wonky. As it is, he's finally able to see to undo the thick straps that are holding him down. It turns out that the weird feeling things on his neck are electrodes-nothing too difficult to deal with. He peels them off carefully and then swings his legs over the side of the bed. As soon as he stands up, he realizes that something's not quite right. About half of his body feels weird-heavier than he remembers and vaguely numb. he almost trips over his own feet as he tries to move forward and catches himself by grabbing onto a nearby tray. It almost instantly dumps its contents onto the floor with a loud "clatter", but as least he doesn't face plant. He forces himself to be still for a moment, wiggling his fingers and toes to try to get circulation going, assuming that he's just stiff from lying in one place from too long. His body seems to finally be waking up and before too long he's feeling almost completely back to normal. But just as he begins to take his next step towards finding Honey Lemon, he's suddenly confronted with the sound of two voice coming from nearby. Instinctively, he ducks behind a counter near the closest exit, not wanting to be seen until he knows what these people want.

"Did you hear that?" the first voice, masculine sounding, says.

"Yeah," a female agrees. "It sounded like someone knocked something over in the lab."

"And we were both out here, so unless it was Doctor Elephun-"

"Which we know it wasn't-"

"Do you think-do you think he could finally have woken up?"

"'He'?" Tadashi wonders, and then guesses that they must be talking about him.

"It could be," the female says, flipping on a flashlight and just barely missing tripping over Tadashi as she passes him. Tadashi forces himself to remain well-hidden and breathe as quietly as possible as the two strangers finish entering the room and take in the sight of the empty bed and tipped over tray.

"Oh my gosh, he's gone!" the male cries in an unusually high pitched voice that would ordinarily made Tadashi laugh if the situation weren't so serious.

"How did he escape?" the female asks, her voice becoming dark and sending a chill through Tadashi's already cold body.

"I don't know! Maybe the lighting that stuck the hospital was enough of a shock to finally wake him up."

The female mutters something under her breath and then says fiercely, "We can't let him get away! He's far too valuable, and we're not even sure if everything's functional. We need to find him and bring him back-alive."

"But what can we do?"

"You try to get ahold of security and have them lock down all of the exits if they aren't already with the power outage. I'll start searching the hospital for him. He can't have gone far, and we cannot let him escape."

Tadashi feels a slight stab of fear at her words. What's going on? Who are these people, and what exactly do they want with him? Why are they talking about him as if he's some sort of prisoner? Well, he isn't about to stick around and find out. As quietly as he can, he slips out into the corridor. Everything's still pretty dark out there, but at least the green light he'd had back in the lab seems to be on out in the hallway as well. He uses the dim illumination to navigate the passage as quickly as he can. About halfway down the hall, he realizes that he's only dressed in a hospital gown and that if he wants to evade detection, he'd better get on some regular clothes. Ducking into a closet marked "Scrubs", he ditches the thin paper garment for a hospital uniform, feeling somewhat bad about taking them without permission but promising himself that he'll return them as soon as possible. Then he heads back out into the main hall, only to find that the main lights had come back on. That's good in that he can see his way more clearly now, but not so good in that other people can now see-including the two crazy people who seem to be after him.

As if on cue, he suddenly hears someone shout, "You!" He spins around to see an angry looking blond running towards him. "Get back here! You're not supposed to be-"

Tadashi doesn't stick around to hear what he's not supposed to be doing. Instead, he takes off down the hallway again. Ahead of him, he sees the emergency exit. As much as he dreads setting off the alarm and drawing even more attention to himself, he decides to chance it and hits the door with marathon runner intensity. As he'd expected, the alarm starts blaring as soon as he does, startling the few people out in the parking lot this late at night. He winces, but doesn't stop to apologize. He keeps running, barely feeling the cold pavement below his bare feet. By the time that his pursuer reaches the door, he's on the far side of the parking lot and out of her range. Still, he hears her calling after him, "It doesn't matter where you run-we will find you!"

Tadashi tries to brush away the eerie warning and instead focused on his original mission of finding Honey Lemon. At first he travels somewhat aimlessly through the streets, trying to get his bearings. He isn't quite sure where he was in the city, having never really spent too much time in this part of town. He also isn't sure where to go first to look of Honey. His first instinct is to head to the university where he remembers last seeing her. But another, stronger part of him, is telling him to head to her apartment. He doesn't know why, especially since it makes more sense that she'd be back at the scene of the fire or, even worse, possibly in the same hospital he's just escaped from. But it's like his odd inner certainty that he'll find her at home is overriding everything else. He finds himself heading in that general direction before he even had much of a chance to think about it. After a little ways, he suddenly realizes that he's been unconsciously following a small red dot that had appeared in his field of vision. He blinks, trying to clear it away, but it won't leave. It gives him an uncomfortable sense of foreboding, but he tries to just ignore it as best he can and concentrate on finding Honey.

After a good 45 minutes of walking, he finally find himself in Honey's neighborhood. He still doesn't know what the dot is, but he's grateful that it had led him where he needed to go. The closer he gets to Honey's home, the stronger the sense he has of her presence. It's slightly uncanny just how strong the feeling is, but he's too focused on finding his girlfriend and making sure that she's alright to care. He turns the corner that leads onto her street, full of hope-

*System Error*

What? Tadashi looks around for the source of the voice. Was there a robot nearby that was malfunctioning? If so, was it in need of help?

*System Error* *Low Battery*

There it was again, so close that it almost sounds like it's coming from inside of his own head-

He freezes as he sees the little red dot start flashing, and then the words, "Warning! Warning! Low Battery!" scrolling across his field of vision.

"What...the...heck?" he murmurs, not believing his eyes. There was no way that he could be seeing this. The only ones who got "System Error" messages were robots and computers, neither of which he was-right?

Suddenly he isn't so sure. He thinks about the red do in his vision that had led him to Honey's neighborhood. He remembers the weird way his body had felt when he'd woken up in the hospital. And then the words of that girl who's been chasing him earlier come back to him: "We can't let him get away! He's far too valuable, and we're not even sure if everything's functional."

"What the hey did the do to me?" he cries under his breath. He doesn't have much time to consider this, though, as a sudden wave of exhaustion hits him. His vision in his right eye starts to blur and it feels as if his limbs weigh a ton each. If the warnings he was seeing a few moments earlier are any indication, he's running out of power-a thought that he really doesn't like to entertain, as the concept sounds too much like something out of a sci-fi novel, not real life. But he even more so doesn't like to entertain the idea of passing out in the middle of the street where who knows what can happen to him. He's only a little ways from Honey's now. Gathering up all of the strength that he has left, he forces himself to keep going, even though it feels like he's dragging the weight of an entire truck with him. If nothing else, he needs to make sure that Honey made it out of the fire okay. This thought is enough to spur him on the last leg of the journey. He finally reaches the stairs that lead up to Honey's home and he drags himself up them, more crawling then walking at this point. With his last bit of energy, he reaches up and pushes the doorbell. He allows his head to rest on the doormat until he hears the sound of footsteps approaching. A moment later the door swings open and he hears a high pitched scream.

He forces himself to look up. "H-Honey Lemon?" he manages to get out, staring up into the beautiful green eyes he'd been afraid he would never see again.

"T-Tadashi?" the girl stammers out, looking like she's seen a ghost.

Tadashi doesn't have the strength to try to figure out why she seems so shocked to see him. From what he can tell, she's okay. There isn't a scratch or a burn on her. She's safe, and that's what matters.

*Mission Complete* *Force Shutdown*

Tadashi closes his eyes, and the world goes peacefully black.

0o0

Wow! Talk about a crazy chapter! Tadashi's out of the hospital, but is he really any better off now that he's out in the world with no idea of what's happening to him? At least he made it to Honey Lemon's, but will things really appear much brighter when (if?) he wakes up again? Well, on that terrible cliffhanger, I'll leave you until next week! (Sorry, I know I'm a horrible person, but you'll just have to be patient.) Mint chocolate chip cookies to all of my reviewers, and I'll see y'all next weekend with chapter five! God bless y'all, and have a wonderful week ~Bonnie