As the darkness gradually receded, John found himself once again lying on his couch, with his eyes closed, and with strange voices talking around him. This time however, he was prepared. Clearly opening his eyes had been a bad strategy. This time he would try the more appealing path of keeping his eyes shut until they all just left. As he tried very hard not to move in any manner at all, John simply listened to the tones of the strange voices, vainly searching for an indication that they would give up waiting for him and just decide to go home and take all their strangely appearing waffles and dirty shoe marks with them. Good Riddance!

The voices continued, however, with no indication of leaving, and so John settled down to the rather dangerous seeming task of actually listening to their words. It seemed risky, but as any avid follower of The Indepth guide to Efficient Blinking and Eyelid Movement would know, the best way to convincingly not move was to focus on something else. As the book was firmly out of reach, John settled down to listen.

"-what do you mean it isn't here? The location was exact. The mistress is never wrong."

The voice was clearly female, yet cold and without excitement. Quite frankly it was John's kind of voice, yet there was a dangerous edge that made John immediately regret his decision to listen to it. It was the kind of voice that would calmly relate that your tea was getting cold while doing something utterly bloodchilling. Like removing the Do not remove labels from mattresses. Oh, the fiends! Clearly this voice was a reddish-grey one.

"I don't think he knows what we're looking for. If ....Well, If you had seen how scared he had been, maybe you'd think so too. He was terrified."

This voice he knew already. It was synonymous with the woman who had confronted him in his living room the last time he had attempted being conscious. For the sake of John's mental filing purposes not knowing the meaning of the word 'assumptions', he replaced 'Tifa' with 'Miss Yellow.' It was safer that way for now.

"Perhaps he has been consorting with the enemy and did not wish to be found out. A spy of some sorts."

This most recent speaker was male, yet not the male he had encountered earlier. Certainly more sophisticated and noble sounding, with almost a British tinge to his accent. Blue was certainly the colour for this one.

"Nah, the guy's a wimp. And a nutcase. He actually thought we were after his library card or something."

This was the voice of the waffle man. His laid back offensiveness certainly hadn't faded. He would now be 'Mr Maple', the colour of the dastardly syrup on that evil monstrosity the man had left in his lounge. John's sense of security was recovering as he logically sorted these dangerous encroachments into his else wise safe reality. Colour coding made the problem seem much more manageable. You know, as long as he kept his eyes firmly shut.

"Oh come on, that's a bit harsh." Miss Yellow was defending him it seemed. John did not know what to make of that.

"Has anyone else considered the possibility that it's not an item we're looking for after all?"

This was a new voice to John's ear, another female. For the sake of rainbow completion he labelled her 'purple' and left it at that. A small silence followed her question before she started to speak again.

"... I guess not then. Well, what if, instead of an ITEM that will solve all our problems ... well, that is, what if it's HIM that will do this?"

Another silence followed this proposition, before everyone decided to speak at once.

"What?!"

"Him?!"

"No way!"

"Nahuh! I was the chosen one! Not this crack job"

"To be fair, we don't know that-"

"SHE CHOSE ME!"

"QUIET!"

It happened too fast for John to catch any of the colours of the sudden outburst, but he could easily pick the following voice as being the reddish-grey one. The one that spoke of cleaning and throwing knives in the same tone. The scary one.

"The matter is a simple one. We simply take this John back with us and get the mistress to confirm. She will know the answer."

As the other colours considered this, Miss Yellow poised a soft question. "Leon?"

"Yeah?" Two voices had responded, yet after a snort of amusement only one continued, "What?"

"What if this guy really IS the chosen one? He doesn't look like he can fight. He can barely handle two strangers before passing out."

"He doesn't exactly seem the exciting type. I mean, look at this." There was the sound of hands handling a book. The waffle fiend was touching his books again! "All the juicy bits have been edited out!"

"That book wasn't exactly interesting to begin with," Miss Yellow replied. Clearly she had twisted concepts of what was 'interesting' and what was 'enjoyable'. This reminded John of the time where someone had suggested the Bible as a nice, monotonous read. John had quite frankly never encountered so much violence and murder in a single book in his entire life! You simply did not find lions eating people, bears mauling teenagers and gods smiting all living things with a deadly flood in Norbet Fingleberry's Guide to Effective Spelling and Punctuation. Nobody got eaten in THAT book, oh no, not ever. Mister Maple, however, seemed to share Yellow's taste in horrifying literature.

"My point exactly! The sex was the only thing that redeemed it! Editing it out is like putting food in plastic containers because the wrappers are too exciting."

"Ah. I see I'm not the only one who's seen this guy's kitchen," Sir Blue added quickly.

"I think we are missing the fundamental problem here." The mysterious Purple voice was talking again, with the faint sound of blocked noses and broken glasses. "If this guy is the chosen one, then how exactly do we hypothesize a method of bringing him along without him losing consciousness again?"

Silence followed her question again. Purple seemed to inspire this rather well.

"Suppose we could just make everything seem REALLY boring?" Miss Yellow again. The proposal seemed rather appealing to John's mind. Well, apart from the prospect of actually going with these crazy people at all. Yet as things were, the mere mention of 'boring' in this situation was just plain alluring.

"I'unno," Blue interjected, "We'd need someone actually smart to pull that off."

"HEY!"

"That's not really helping Leon," Yellow was talking once more. After Maple carelessly snorted as a reply, Reddish-Grey contributed with her emotionlessly intimidating voice.

"We should all just return to the mistress and sort this out there."

"Do we take him with us?" Oh no. No they couldn't. John squeezed his eyes tighter shut with the faint hope of willing them out of existence.

"Well, we certainly can't let the enemy get to him first. You know ... vampires and the like." Maple actually managed to sound rather like he was thinking this time around. This was a surprise to John. He hadn't seemed capable of anything but smug retorts earlier. Apparently Blue was baffled by his suggestion, however.

"What would a vampire be doing all the way here?"

"Shut up!" The angry hiss seemed to come from Reddish-Grey, yet all emotionlessness had been abandoned, leaving just the scary intimidating part. It would've been enough to make John cower had he not instinctively started recalling book passages to calm himself down -language performance is the externalization of competence, and through the rules of language the essentiality of composure can be attained­-

"Ah... my sincerest apologies, Miss Sakuya."

"Let's just go." Maple's suggestion was followed by the distinctive sound of a chair creaking in the manner of one standing up.

"No, wait!" The creaking sound occurred again as Yellow continued talking. "We should wait for him to wake up first. He may panic if we just kidnap him."

"Oh?" Purple enquired in a rather confused voice, "But he already IS awake. His breathing patterns became irregular any number of moments ago. See? Right there. He's listening."

A short silence fell as John's mind raced with panic. Apparently keeping his eyes shut wasn't going to work either, and now he was going to have to open them. As the sound of footsteps told him someone was swiftly approaching him all John could do was think the most objectionable language he could ever remember using. Oh darn! OhdarnohdarnohDARN!

Don't you love how stories rapidly spiral out of small ideas into pieces of writing far longer than even you first expected?

No?

Well in anycase, you've made it chapter four! This calls for a celebration does it not? I would suggest something malty. Perhaps those cookies. On the topic of the story however, the cast is rapidly expanding, with many more gratuitous references just around the corner. Seriously, if you get them all, you'd need a medal of some kind. Even I don't get them all.

And you know, if you've made it this far without being utterly scared away, I'd like to hear what you think of it so far. Hint! There's a button! Just below! RIGHT THERE! Yes, That's the one!

=D