"Don't keep me waiting, Mae." It was the year Mae was meant to go off to college, and she wasn't equipped to handle the impending pressure unless she had a bubbler in her hand and some of its payload in her lungs, such as right now. "I bought the stuff you're smoking and I made the brownies. The least you could do is pass it to me within this century." It was all up to her. She had to be the one person in her family who wasn't a complete screw-up.

"Earth to Mae. Is there anyone home?" Casey waved his hand in front of Mae's face, and she finally seemed to register that he was there again, groaning and rubbing her eyes as she passed the bubbler.

"Sorry, Casey. Guess I spaced out."

"Don't worry about it. That's kind of the point of all this anyway." Casey shifted his focus as Gregg returned with another six pack of hard cider, snatching one up before inhaling more smoke and passing the bubbler to Gregg.

"I'm not sure which will be worse," Mae bemoaned, "not seeing you guys anymore or dealing with my new professors."

"What's wrong with professors, dude?" Gregg asked before lighting up, already high as Hell. The brownies always seemed to hit him first, as if he just had a faster metabolism than the cats.

"I've met exactly one teacher I actually liked, and I don't expect professors to be much different. They're just like, teachers who are even more full of themselves."

"Someone is in a sour mood."

"Shrooms would help with that, if you little kitties weren't so scared to try them."

"Eff off with that," Casey rebuked, chugging some cider. "I tried 'em at prom."

"You had half of one, scaredy cat."

"I'm the real premo pussy," Mae interjected, the marijuana and alcohol clearly starting to effect her more drastically. "'Cuz I ain't even tried it at all y-" she hiccuped, "yet. Uuugh."

"Dude, don't get the hiccups." She did it again as soon as Gregg finished talking. "God damn it."

"I could go for some premo pussy, honestly." Casey was smacking his paw into Mae's back, as if that would help the hiccups stop somehow. "I haven't had any in awhile."

"If "awhile" meant "ever" then I'd agree with you," Gregg added unhelpfully, Casey glaring daggers at him while Mae giggled at them between hiccups. She was terrible at handling alcohol, so Casey just let her take the occasional sip from his drink so he could keep her from drinking too much. He may have failed in his mission.

"I love you guys." Mae fell over against Casey's chest, purring softly as the drugs in her system carried her to a state of unconsciousness. She breathed in the scent of him, the scent of home, no longer worrying about the fact that she'd have to leave, but simply enjoying that she hadn't yet left.

But her memory trance showed her something she hadn't been aware of when she'd first experienced it. In her mind she heard and understood what had been white noise when she'd first experienced it.

"You should tell her before she leaves, dude. Cole is already out of the way." Gregg's voice was serious and sharp, as if his years of partying on hard drugs allowed him to handle the lighter stuff with ease, and he just pretended to be intoxicated for the sake of the others.

"I told you not to keep on with that, man." Casey was stroking her head gently, holding her to his chest so she wouldn't fall to the ground. His voice was shaky, like he wasn't sure of anything. "I'm not smart enough for her. Cole is. I never thought her father would suddenly shape up. I never thought they'd be able to send her to college. As soon as they could I gave up, because she deserves to live that life with him."

"Oh come on, he's got nothing on you! You're a hot drummer with a skateboard. What does Cole have? Glasses? A lack of interesting hobbies? Mae wrote a whole song about how terrible he is."

"Because he didn't want a long distance relationship. And who convinced him those were such a terrible idea?" Casey's voice grew angrier and more firm, his claws lightly scratching Mae's skin. "Who convinced him to dump her, Gregg?"

"Who asked me to, Casey?" Gregg was indignant, flailing his arms in Casey's direction.

"That was years ago. I was a selfish kid, and instead of just telling her how I felt-"

"So tell her now."

"I can't, you asshole! I can't ruin her chance to meet someone who is actually worth a shit outside this town for garbage people like us!"

Mae groaned as her senses started to return, her paws pushing weakly at Casey's, his grip having become unbearably tight. "Leggo, fuckhead."

"Oh shit, sorry." Casey's voice dripped with worry and regret as he let go and stared at Mae, Gregg and he both waiting with baited breath to see if Mae had heard what they were talking about. Edibles, smoke, and beer was just too much, and Casey internally reprimanded himself for getting so intoxicated with Gregg nearby.

"Could you two, like, not scream so effing loud next time? You're making my head hurt." After she said it she watched them closely, their gradually relaxing postures accompanying her growing smirk as she zeroed in on Gregg. "Give me some shrooms."

"I thought you'd never ask!" Gregg was ecstatic immediately, reaching into a hidden pocket on the inside of his jacket like a professional drug-dealer to deliver a small handful of mushrooms. That's how Mae saw the situation, anyway; she snatched them up and had them inches from her mouth when Gregg hastily pulled her hand back down. "Careful! Jeez, dude. You were about to eat enough for all three of us on your own!"

"What can I say," she said, tilting her head and staring at him with a massive grin. "I'm crazy. AWOOOOOO!"

"AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Hahaha!" Gregg portioned them out properly, but Casey was still under the impression that there were a few too many for them to handle.

"This is a bad idea." He shrugged, frowning while staring down at his hand, reflecting on the long failure that was his life. "But what the Hell," he declared with a hollow voice, the others following his example after he ate the handful of mushrooms. With the deed done and his friends smiling at him Casey let his past disappear behind the haze of marijuana once again. "This is gonna be dope. What are we doin' until the trip hits?"

"Just chill, dudes. You don't wanna get worked up before it starts."

Several minutes passed without further incident. Mae managed to keep her eyes open, and they talked about nothing in particular incessantly. The longer they spoke, the more Gregg laughed, the more Casey's country drawl became apparent, and the more Mae spoke in a deadpan. Her eyes were becoming difficult to look at, as if murder and carnage brewed in their depths, and her friends were having a hard time masking their discomfort.

"Guys, do these shrooms even do anything? How long has it been, anyway."

"Dude, chill. It'll hit, okay?" Gregg began to fidget his thumbs together, gazing around at the trees all around them, looking to the swaying leaves, the gently glow of Casey's fur, which he was sure was the start of his trip, but he couldn't stop glancing back at Mae's burning eyes. "Could you stop staring at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Borowski! Get the Hell up! What the fuck are you doing!?"

"Aaaaugh!" Mae gripped her head in her paws, bending forward in inexplicable agony. Even though he was starting see flashing lights and twisting, walking plants, Casey pushed past his own delusions and held onto Mae, stroking her arms in an attempt to comfort her in spite of whatever she was seeing. It wasn't enough. Mae was staring into Hell.

"Anselm! What the fuck!?"

"He's still alive, Hartley!"

"We are completely out of medical supplies! Drop him and let's go before we're buried in mortar shells!" Anselm did as instructed with an angry growl, lifting his M1 Garand to a ready position and turning his back on the unconscious wolf. Their unit had been cut off from extraction for almost a week and their radios were busted. They'd run from skirmish to skirmish with no real idea of why the fighting had escalated so much since they'd first landed. The Sergeant wasn't one to question orders, so he hadn't spent much time trying to guess at the motives of his superiors, and Anselm just wanted to survive long enough to find out for certain. Their chances were looking bleak now that they were the only two left.

"Flamer kill team on our right, real close." Hartley peeked up after Anselm called it out to judge the distance, barely getting back down before being spotted. He twisted his left ear to get a better read on the mortar fire, confirming his suspicions. Before voicing his concerns he had to get rid of the Nazis on approach. He exchanged a few tense hand-signals with Anselm before they both readied their weapons and stood a little taller, aiming over the trench.

Hartley fired his BAR at the flame canister while Anselm fired on the escort from right to left. In a flurry of bullets all five Germans were dead and the cats were huddled in the trench once again. "They're sweeping the mortar killzone further down our trenches and sending those kill teams after to burn out the survivors. So, we can try to link up with command by walking directly into mortar fire, or..."

"Or we can stay here and stop the kill teams from making it very far, at least until one of them shoots first." Hartley smiled back at Anselm, and it was clear the option they both favored. "It's been an honor, sir."

"No, it's been terrible. This unit was my responsibility and I failed all of you. I just hope my son grows up to be half the man you are."

"I just hope my brother stops taking LSD." Their ears shifted to a new sound and the jokes ceased, their steps muffled by the meat of corpses as they worked their way to their next target.

The amount of bodies they'd stepped over had hardly registered in Anselm's consciousness, but Mae had never been to war before and it was making her stomach turn. The vision was as vivid as if she'd been there in his place. She could feel the blood on her paws. Casey's blood, to be exact. "O-oh my God! I'm so sorry, I completely spaced out and-"

"It's fine, Mae. I'm fine." She had scratched up his chest while experiencing her relative's hypothetical past within her mind, but it wasn't really as bad as it seemed while she was tripping on shrooms and high and drunk to boot. His red blood danced in her vision, expanding rapidly, threatening to drown her in the hellscape of war once again, but Casey was fine. He was petting her head and muttering nonsense into her ear, and that kept her with him in their present weirdness.

Yet, it kept gnawing at her. The feeling that she was still reliving the past, until she blinked once and returned to the all too familiar terror of her dream. She hadn't had the faintest memory of the first part of her shroom trip until that moment when it came flooding back to her. Something about seeing Casey in her dream had triggered the memories, or maybe it was his all too familiar worried smile, the same one he'd given her that day, and just as vivid.

"Thank you for saving me." She felt that applied to so many things he'd done that she couldn't possibly decide which she was actually thanking him for, but he seemed to think she was talking about how he'd cracked a skateboard in half on Eide's face and shrugged casually.

"Thank you for finding me, and with most of my soul still intact, too!" She didn't waste any more time, wrapping him in a tight embrace and taking a deep breath through her nose.

"Wow, you even still smell great."

"Uh, thanks," he replied awkwardly, patting her back. "You smell nice too."

Mae pulled back and stared directly at him with a blank expression. "I smell like sweat and failure."

"That makes two of us. Come on, I want to show you something."