Chapter eleven commences at 11:00. I made a point to do that. Independence Day is an awesome movie. So is War of the Worlds (epicness going on there). Transformers is okay. So you could say I've had an alien packed day.

Will Smith with a lightsaber: I have GOT to get me one of these!

Will Smith with a wand: I have GOT to get me one of these!

Will Smith with a Pokémon: I have GOT to get me one of these!

Will Smith with a flying pair of Chucks: I have GOT to get me one of these!

Me with a love life: I have GOT to get me one of these!

See? It never changes. So anyway, who's been having a fun summer? I have, and it's been quite eventful. Well, not lately, you see, because I've dedicated my time to movie watching and fanfictioning for the last couple weeks and the only time I stopped my lazy streak was to go to an epic concert. But it is what it is, and once summer is over, it's over, and then I'll be like, "Be seein' ya, summer! I've got some college credits to earn!" even though college is a long way away.

Review please!

I won't die here, Cassia thought as her lungs were ready to burst. I WILL NOT DIE HERE.

Suddenly, there was a huge sucking sound that Cassia could hear even under the paint. She was being tugged towards the wall and suddenly she was tossed around and spit out of the wall. She regained her sight and her air as the paint poured out into this second room and dispersed through holes in the ground. Cassia lay flat on her back, savoring every breath of air she breathed, until all that was left of the paint was drained out and there was only about an inch of it covering the floor. The she realized with a heart wrenching pain that Holly was on the floor next to her, and she wasn't moving.

"Holly!" She cried as she tripped over herself to get to her. She crawled over and flipped Holly on her back. Paint was dripping from the sides of her mouth and she was completely covered in it, like Cassia was. She made her sit up and she shook her hard as the paint dripped out of her throat. "Oh God, Holly, come on baby, please live. Come on, breathe Holly, breathe!"

Suddenly, a whole lot of paint came from her at once and Holly's eyes fluttered open as she tore away from Cassia and retched up the paint next to her. He coughed and sputtered, and she began to sob heartbrokenly. Cassia held her close as she racked with tears and buried her face in Holly's golden hair, now caked with paint.

"Shh, it's okay. We're okay now, Holly. You're alive. We made it," Cassia said.

"I want to go home!" Holly sobbed. "I want my mom, Cassia, and I want to go home!"

"We're going to get out of here," Cassia said. "I promise we'll get out of here. We'll find your brother, we'll get your mom, and we'll get out of this damn place. Oh God, Holly, I'm so glad you're okay."

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"There's another staircase," Ib pointed to the right once they were up the first set of stairs and into another room. "But what's that written on the wall?"

Ib was right. Garry moved closer to the wall and the light clearly illuminated the word CHOOSE.

"Why would they make us choose between staircases?" Adrian asked. He pointed down the blue steps they'd just come from and said, "We just came from that way."

"There's something here on the floor," Toby said as he knelt down and pushed the dust away from the words. Written in drying and chipping paint was: BLUE IS WHAT YOU NEED, RED IS WHERE YOU NEED TO GO. "This doesn't make sense. Why would they tell us this if we already know the right answer?"

"Because," Garry said, the revelation dawning on him. "we weren't the first ones here."

"What?" Ib asked.

"Think about it," Garry said, pointing to the back wall. "Doors reappear and disappear from this place like clockwork, so if a door was over there and someone came through it, they would have to choose between what they needed and where they needed to go."

"I was in that room," Toby's voice was trembling. "It had to have been Holly who came through here. But she would have come to save me. It's the only thing she would have known to do, and it could have lead to a dead end or the stairs would close behind her. The door in that room disappeared, so there would be no way out of there. We would have died. So… who told her not to?"

"It had to be the girl I met," Adrian said. "She would know to avoid the temptation. Somehow she must have known there would be other people passing through to save you."

"So should we take the red stairs?"

"Seeing as that's our best option," Garry led the way up.

They climbed the stairs, and lining the staircase were more paintings, all ones of Guertena's hand. Garry tried his best in their year in the real world to track down some leads on Guertena's life and his gallery, but found nothing but catalogues for his paintings before they were destroyed in the fire. Come to think of it, Garry thought, that painting – Whimsy World or Fabricated World or whatever it's called – may well be the last surviving painting of the Guertena Gallery. Garry couldn't help but know that Ib and he probably started the fire that consumed the gallery. Mary's fire could have spread into the real world after Ib and Garry left. If it burned Mary's painting as fast as it did, then it would have put the gallery up in flames in minutes.

But Garry was still confused. If it destroyed all of that other art, he thought, then why is Mary not dead?

They reached the top of the staircase and they found themselves in a room. The room was empty except for repeated words stamped across everything: PAINT THE WAY.

"We're getting closer," Adrian pointed to the far side of the wall. "Look at that, over there. Someone painted a door out of here. They must have used the paint from that crack over there."

"Let's go through it," Toby supplied, and one by one they filed through the door, and what they saw in the next room shocked them to their cores.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"We have to keep moving," Cassia said, helping Holly up from the slippery ground.

"Do you still have Guertena's diary?"

Cassia looked around her and saw that she'd dropped it when they were flushed out. She picked it up and brushed some paint off it. "Here it is. This could help us along the way. Come on, let's go."

She held Holly's hand as they went up to the door. As soon as Cassia turned the knob, a sudden wind picked up. The cool breeze was unfamiliar on Cassia's skin, but the air shimmered nonetheless and as the wind spun the paint lifted off the floor and off their clothes and whisked into a hole in the wall. All the paint was gone from Cassia's clothes and hair, and Holly smiled as she twirled in her paint-free dress.

Cassia put her hand back on the knob, but when she jostled it, she found that it was locked. She pulled at it several times, even braced her foot against the wall as she yanked, but nothing would budge the door. Something began to shimmer on the pane of the door, and Cassia was half angered and half relieved to see that the handwriting was Belle's:

I'd wait if I were you.

"Wait?" Holly asked. "Wait for what?"

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The floor was covered in blood. No, it wasn't blood. It was sopping wet with paint. The pain dripped from the ceiling and the walls, like at one time this entire room was filled with the stuff. Garry's heart nearly stopped as he saw the dripping hatches that opened in the walls. The place was littered with manequin heads, some broken, some intact, all covered in blood.

"This whole place was submerged," Ib whispered.

"Holly!" Toby called out. He cupped his hands over his mouth and called out again, "HOLLY!"

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"HOLLY!"

Holly's head turned around, and her face twisted into a confused look. "Toby?"

"Holly!"

Her face lit up, and she tore away from Cassia. She ran back through the hatch, her shoes kicking up red paint behind her, as a few figures came into view. They were… people? Yes, they were people! There was one tall guy with strange light purple hair and a long jacket, and one small girl with long brown hair and red eyes like Cassia. There was also another guy with them, with black hair and purple eyes. It's that guy from the museum! Cassia thought with a jolt. In front of them all was a boy with chocolate brown hair and deep blue eyes, and Holly flew into his arms.

"Holly," He sobbed while he buried his face in her hair. "Oh Holly, you're okay. You're okay…"

"I was so scared," she whimpered. "I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead."

"I would never leave you," He pulled her back an arm's length and still held onto her shoulders. She looked her in the eyes and said, "Not now, not ever."

"I…" Cassia felt like she was intruding on this moment in saying, but she had to. "Do any of you have roses?"

They all looked at her like they just noticed she was there.

"That's a strange question," The violet haired boy said. "But yes, we all do. Or… we all should."

Cassia breathed a sigh of relief. "Good, because I was beginning to think I'd never find you. Someone told me to find people with gold, purple, and blue roses, and I could get out."

"I've got a blue rose and Holly has a gold one," Toby said.

"And I have a purple one," The boy from the museum said, and when he locked eyes with Cassia he gave her a little smile.

"Are you the one who was traveling with my sister?"Toby asked Cassia.

"Yeah. I found her and she was frantic about finding you. She's a brave little girl," She smiled at Holly and Holly beamed back. "She put in just as much effort as I did to getting this far."

"What happened to you guys?" The other girl asked.

Holly's face lit up again when she saw the other girl and dislodged herself from her brother's grip to run over and hug her tightly. "Ib! Oh Ib, how in the world did you get here! I missed you! I should have listened to you when you said not to come."

"It wasn't your fault," Ib squeezed her back. She let her go and looked at Cassia. "Who are you?"

"My name is Cassia," Cassia said. "I'm fifteen."

"I'm Ib, this is my brother Garry, and this is Adrian," The girl named Ib said. "The boy is Toby, and I guess you know his sister Holly. We could tell you how we got here, but that would be a long story."

"I've got time," Cassia said. "Hell, we've got all the time in the world."

And so their tale began.