Chapter Three:

The Hours Of Darkness

Lili opened the door to the small dorm provided to the students who attended Demure. Tessa and Zoe were behind her, all carrying there bags. (Zoe was practically buried under hers.) Lili sighed miserably as she stepped into the room she would have live in for the next nine months.

Tessa followed her, immediately eyeing her bed in the corner and flinging her suitcase more or less on top of it.

"Well, we're here." She said morosely while searching through her suitcase for her headphones. Behind her, Lili was taking a bed on the left side of the room and Zoe was shuffling gradually towards one opposite of her.

"Orientation wasn't too bad this year. I love it when those snobs ignore us." Tessa untangled the cord of her CD player and laid back on her bed.

"I don't." Said the muffled voice of Zoe over a large suitcase. Tessa raised her brow.

"You prefer being called fatty and pig and getting spit at?" Zoe glared at her.

"No, I just wish that I could become friends with some of them. Their really well brought up you know." She answered while finally dropping all of her bags and searching through several sets of her clothes.

"Well brought up?" Tessa questioned bitterly. "How is it well brought up to throw things and call people names?"

"I meant they were brought up to be and act wealthy." She said in a dignified manner.

"Yeah…so what? Me and Lili are rich and we don't act like that. And your family didn't even start out rich…if it weren't for your grandfather croaking you'd be going to some public school…and you act like that anyways. Just because someone's rich doesn't give them the right to be a jerk."

Zoe made a tiny noise of outrage (Particularly when her grandfather was mentioned.) and sat on the other side of her bed, facing away from Tessa.

Tessa rolled her eyes and turned towards Lili, who was laying on her bed and staring up at the ceiling, apparently lost in thought.

"Hey Lili. Whats up for your birthday this year?" She said, while sitting up. For a moment, the other girl acted as though she hadn't heard, then, finally she sat up and gave Tessa a weary look.

"I'm probably going to spend it here, around all of these losers." She said while searching her bags for her Pj's and something to put her hair up with.

"That sucks. Your dad's not going to be able to bring you home?" Tessa asked. Lili shrugged.

"He's suppose to, but he's on a really important mish…he has a lot of work to do back at the office…so I doubt he'll get back in time." Tessa gave her a weird look.

"Your dad won't be back from the office in two weeks?"

"It's far away…he's on an important case." She said quickly.

"Oh…" Tessa said.

At this point Zoe turned around, apparently forgetting that she was supposed to be angry at Tessa.

"What exactly does your dad DO Lili?" She asked curiously. Lili frowned and brushed at her arm absently.

"He…works for the government…"

"Yeah…I know that…but what does he do?" Zoe pressed onward.

"I'm not really sure…I just know he's really busy." She said uncomfortably. Tessa grinned.

"Haha, maybe he's a secret agent. And he's out saving the world right now." She said jokingly.

"Maybe…" Lili said, looking slightly distracted. She stood from her bed and gathered her Pj's. "I'm going to go change." She said quickly, before leaving. Tessa shrugged and turned the volume on her CD player up, ignoring Zoe as she complained That it was much too loud because she could hear it ALL the way from her side of the room.

The Hours Of Darkness

The Aquato Circus Put on shows every other day for almost a month wherever they were in town. They held two shows a day at noon and 8:00 on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, which lasted no more then three or four hours and then would always hold one large show on the last Monday before they moved to a new location.

They usually remained fairly busy throughout their stay…and were generally able to fill up half of the seats in the main tent on every showing, but the busiest night was always the last night they were in town. Unlike every other show, this performance was held at midnight and was called, "The Hours Of Darkness." It was a spectacular performance which lasted five hours until the sun rose and featured every act in the lineup. The performers put their hearts into the last show every single time and the result was magnificently dream like and wild. Many of the viewers sat and watched in awe as the circus people almost seemed to go beyond human capabilities.

It was 11:45 and the last show was going to begin in fifteen minutes. All of the seats were filled, the circus people were ready, and the ring master had already taken his place just outside the mouth of the large tent…and yet…they couldn't start, because all of the people in the first act were not yet there.

Outside of the Circus performers trailers, two men stood side by side bitterly, gazing out into the night and looking for any signs of the young performer who they hadn't seen all day. One man, tall, with greasy black hair and a face that tended to scare small children away looked to another…who wasn't much better.

"This is stupid…I don't see why Rafael can't stand out here and wait for his own son to come back…or better yet…why he can't just lock the little brat up so he can't go frolicking around while we got stuff to do." The man pulled a knife out of his belt and began to pick his teeth with it. The other man, slightly shorter, with a Mexican façade, nodded and spat off to the side.

"Debemos cerrar al mocoso pequeño arriba en una caja y lo tira en el río. Esto es la tercera vez él es corrido esta semana." The Mexican man answered wickedly. (Look to the bottom of this page for the translation . )

"Haha…good plan." The tall knife thrower replied.

Raz, who had arrived shortly after the stout man had said some rather unkind things about him in Spanish, was currently standing veiled behind a small tent about twelve feet away. He took a deep breath and then vanished entirely. Raz left his hiding place and tip toed over to the men, praying that his invisibility would not wear off before he was out of view.

Both men had gone silent, and the shorter one had lit a cigar and had begun blowing the fowl smelling smoke in Raz's general area. He blinked furiously due to the awful fumes drifting about his eyes and resisted the urge to start coughing. Five seconds later when he was behind another tent he let his wall of invisibility fall. He breathed in quietly and then ran off towards hisfather's trailer so he could change. He would be late…but not by too long.

Raz didn't hate the circus so much anymore…especially since his father had let him set time aside for his OTHER training, but he still wasn't particularly fond of all of the flashy lights and the crowds and having to put on so many shows a week. He found himself longing for the mental world whenever he wasn't there and for the pleasant landscape surrounding Whispering Rock.

This emotion was particularly strong in the night, at 11:00, right after a show had ended and when he was lying in bed, or in the trailer, when they were on their way to yet another location. Raz hated moving around so much, when you were constantly on the road it was very hard to make friends…and so, at Raz's age, he was dreadfully lonely.

Then, there was Lili. He hadn't seen her for over a year, ever since they had gone on that mission to rescue her father, Truman Zanotto. Raz missed her a lot. The longer he was away from her, the more she plagued his mind. It got in the way of both his circus training and his Psychonauts training. His father had noticed this on several occasions and constantly asked him what was wrong, but Raz didn't think it would do much good to talk about it…as far as he knew, his family and the Zanottos were never in the same state, let alone in the same general area. He feared more and more that he would never see her again.

Logic would say that their relationship had just been a summer fling…that it was puppy love and that they were too young to be so affected by it…but it certainly didn't feel that way. Besides, Raz had been taken to an abandoned insane asylum in the throat of a disfigured lung fish, had visited and fixed (Or in Boyd's case broken) several disturbed minds, had helped to defeat a mad dentist and had lost his brain which had intermingled with a deranged camp counselors,thrusting them both in a warped and combined version of both of their troubled childhoods…what the hell did logic have to do with anything?

Raz pushed these thoughts out of his mind as he hurried over to the small bed he slept on and gathered up his circus threads. When he wasn't wearing them, he had adopted a similar fashion to that of the famous Psycho soldier, Sasha Nein, a style which made him look a great deal more fashionable then his age suggested. He had even given up his helmet and had grown out his hair a little so that the similarity was unquestionable. He only ever wore his goggles anymore when he was on a mission into someone's mind, or in certain circus performances. His father often half joked about how Raz had begun to look more like the older Psychonaut then he did his own father. Raz would never say it aloud…but this came to somewhat of a relief to him. He loved his father…but he really didn't have any desire to end up looking like him.

He grimaced as he pulled on the leotardsitting on his bedand then hurried towards the main tent, hoping that he was not so late as to hold up the show noticeably.

Spanish Translation:

We should lock the little brat up in a box and throw him in the river. This is the third time he's run off this week.

Yay for more chapters! More to come!