Disclaimer: Nope, don't own. Couldn't handle the pressure.

Placement: Manga five. Manga five, now – manga doesn't have Priscilla giving instant death to everybody within range.

Girl Talk: Buried

Sophia awoke to pain. Her body was wracked with it, throbbed with each passing pulse. Her eyes crept open.

And kept opening in amazement. I've never seen a sky so blue before…

But there it was. It didn't matter that craggy rocks were poking into her back, or that three points of numbness were slowly consuming her body; all that mattered was the vast ceiling of blue above her.

She heard a weak voice near her. "Sophia?"

She realized how parched her throat was as she croaked, "Noel?"

"What were we fighting about?"

"Oh, you mean Priscilla? Or Teresa?"

A tired sigh came from near her. "No. Not that…I mean before."

Sophia's brow furrowed as she thought of what Noel was talking about. "We were fighting about rank."

"Why?"

A moment passed before Sophia finally said, "You know what… I can't remember."

A low chuckle answered her. "All that fighting…and we can't remember why. Pretty dumb, huh?"

"Yeah, dumb."

"Sophia…sorry for giving you so much grief…bury the hatchet?"

The numbness wrapped Sophia in a cocoon, and bore her up so that she felt like she was flying. She said one last thing before the world went white:

"Consider it… buried…"

Author's Note: Much props to Sideris for the preread.