Logan stared at the ground as he made his way through the narrow corridor of the Ra dorm building, watching the repeating pattern of yellow crisscrossed on top of slightly darker yellow pass by his vision underneath his feet. He was deep in thought about what Zachary had said to him the previous night, about how much of a coward and 'little bitch' he was. The latter thing didn't bother him so much, since it mostly sounded like vaguely sexist nonsense, but Logan never realized that that was how other people saw him before.

He guessed Zachary was right, especially when he contrasted the two of them. Logan prided himself on being mild-mannered and even-tempered, but maybe bravery and the ability to stand up for oneself didn't have room in that mindset. Conversely, Zachary was confrontational to a fault, but at least he was willing to stand up for himself and other people — okay just Kylie Tanaka, but the point still stood. He had been willing to risk his personal safety to find out who was in the woods, while Logan wanted to avoid it and pretend it wasn't happening. In the end, nothing did happen, further proving that he was, in fact, a coward. Afraid of a whole lot of nothing.

He stopped in front of the plaque hanging in the entrance to the student lounge. His eyes scanned the rows of names, searching out the section for Ra Yellow students, until he found the one he was looking for among the names of people who never returned from the other dimension. It was misspelled and the engraving was chipped, but it was there.

Bastion Misawa.

Bastion hadn't stayed comfortably in the middle of the pack. He went against the Ra etiquette and rules book and became a hero of sorts. First, being one of the holders of the Spirit Keys and again when he helped prevent the twelve dimensions from uniting and destroying the world. He may not be well remembered, and he certainly wasn't if his placement on the plaque near the bottom was any indication, but he was a Ra who made waves. He made a difference.

Looking at the plaque, Logan thought for the first time in his life that maybe he wanted to be a hero too.

His phone rang from in his pocket. He checked the caller ID to see that it was Evan Suzuki. Of course he'd call instead of text like a normal person. "How did you get my phone number?" Logan asked warily by way of a greeting.

"Oh… I found it on one of the forms I got from your room."

"Can I have those back?"

"No…"

"Evan, it's late and I want to go to bed. What do you need?"

There was a long silence before Evan spoke again. "There's a cockroach in my room," he almost whispered.

"You stayed in Slifer, right? Obviously there are cockroaches." Evan had, indeed, for some reason opted to continue living in his dorm room at the Slifer building despite being offered an empty room in Obelisk. Logan had no idea why anyone would turn down an opportunity like that, especially when it apparently housed large disease-carrying insects and whatever germs could give someone permanent food poisoning. Logan was surprised the school board even let him stay, considering the construction crew that had initially been brought in to tear down the Abandoned Dorm had yet to make any appreciable progress in repairing the damage done to Slifer.

"I'm going to need you to kill it."

"What? No!" Logan was not good with bugs. They freaked him out almost as much as spiders and dolls and sticky substances he couldn't identify and naked—

"It's looking at me and deliberately trying to intimidate me, okay?" Evan did sound scared. Logan's resolve to not get involved with awful things wavered. He had just been thinking about how he needed to make a change, improve himself, and here was someone who needed help. It wasn't glamorous or particularly valiant, but it was a start and he needed one of those.

"Fine," he agreed, already hating himself for it. He got Evan's room number and made his way across campus toward what remained of the Slifer building. Approaching the dorms, he could see scorch marks etched into the wood unevenly along the entire front wall of the formerly staccato yellow siding. The cafeteria on the far side was roped off with yellow tape and had a sign hanging in the empty doorway where the sliding door used to be that read 'Closed due to safety concerns' in large block lettering. A pile of burnt wood sat on the cement patio underneath a blown-out window of a dorm room.

Evan must not have been the only one to decide to stay, if the lights on in the windows and muffled sounds of music were any indication. He was, however, evidently the only one on the second floor and for good reason. The stairs creaked underneath Logan's feet so loudly that he wondered if they were structurally sound enough for human use. The bottom four stairs were blackened, and were the most visibly damaged from the fire, while those nearer the top seemed safer. The gaping hole where the balcony collapsed was inexpertly covered up by plywood hastily thrown down to join the two sides together. Logan gingerly stepped on it, feeling it sag under his weight slightly. He took a few large steps across, holding his breath until he was safely on the other side, right in front of Evan's door.

Already annoyed at the dangerous inconvenience of just getting here, Logan slammed his first on the door. Evan opened it immediately, his large round eyes even larger and rounder with fear. "Don't you have a roommate that can deal with this for you?" He asked the Slifer, putting off going inside the room known to house a cockroach.

"I did but he transferred out a while ago."

Evan opened the door wide enough to let Logan inside. He took a single step in when he saw it: a very large brownish yellow cockroach perched on a desk that was completely bare. "That's huge!" He backed up into the wall, hitting the back of his head painfully.

"Not that one," Evan gestured vaguely toward the bunk beds across the room. "The one I called you about went under the bed."

"So now I have to kill two cockroaches the size of guinea pigs?"

"I don't know, I thought we'd play it by ear."

"Play what by ear?"

"Whether we kill the second one."

"What's the point of just killing the first one? You don't even know where it is."

"I know where it is," Evan snapped. "It's under the bed."

"I don't know what you want from me."

"The first one is personal. What don't you understand?"

"I don't know where to start."

Suddenly, a cockroach emerged from where Evan had indicated and skittered onto the round, worn blue rug in the center of the room. Logan was paralyzed with disgust and fear for a moment before snatching one of Evan's red shoes from the entryway, fully intending to smash it as soon as his willpower would allow. With a deep breath, he moved forward and raised the shoe above his head.

"Not on the good rug!" Evan reprimanded.

"Do you want me to kill it or not?!"

"Not on the good rug!"

The cockroach's antennae moved around its small horrible head for a moment before it was on the move again, jerkily coming within a few feet of where Logan was standing. "Jesus Christ can I kill it now?"

"Oh god it's doing it again."

"What?"

"It's judging the company I keep."

"Evan can you focus?"

"It's off the good rug just smash it."

"What if I miss and it crawls up my arm?" Logan felt himself lower the shoe with uncertainty.

"Hurry up before it gets back on the rug!"

"Will you stop worrying about the rug!"

"It's my favorite rug—"

"It's your only rug!"

"Just make it stop being alive!"

"I would but you keep putting arbitrary restrictions on when I can!"

"The good rug is like a magnet for them, kill it!"

"Fine!" Logan brought the shoe down on the cockroach, feeling its small body squelch underneath the rubber sole. His stomach lurched as its visible hind legs spasmed violently as though they were trying to crawl away from the destroyed parts of its anatomy.

Evan stared down at it at length. "You have to finish it," he said seriously.

Logan looked up at him, abjectly refusing to stop putting pressure on the insect lest it was only pretending to be crushed in a puddle of sickly colored goo now seeping onto the exposed floorboards. "Finish… what?"

"You have to destroy all of it, otherwise it'll grow back."

"Evan," Logan let his grip on the shoe lessen; his hand was starting to cramp up. "Cockroaches are not Wolverine."

"I know that," he replied, wrapping his arms around himself protectively. Something in his voice told Logan that he didn't actually know that.

Logan looked over his shoulder at the desk against the opposite wall, seeing that the second — and hopefully last — cockroach had not budged from its place. "Am I allowed to kill that one now?" He asked, very much not looking forward to having to go through that emotionally taxing process all over again.

Evan followed his gaze. "No. That one is more relaxed; he doesn't stress me out so much."

"Fine," Logan closed his eyes and shook his head. He stood up, leaving the shoe to rest on the floor where it was, not wanting to look at any more of the dead thing than those gross twitching legs. Actually, he didn't even want to look at those. "Do you have a towel or something that I can put over that?"

"Did you learn nothing from Zachary's mistake? Don't give that thing ghost powers too!"

"… I'm going to go."

"Wait!" Evan held out a hand to stop him. "I want to give you something for helping me." He walked over to the desk, opening one of the top drawers and riffling through it. The cockroach got annoyed and scurried behind the furniture, preferably never to be seen again.

"Are you going to give me my rules and etiquette book back?" Logan asked hopefully, watching Evan pull out handful after handful of folders, loose papers, and notebooks all with different handwriting across the covers. Now that the immediate crisis had been resolved, Logan allowed himself to look around the room. The mattresses on the bunk bed frame were bare except for a single uncovered pillow, and other than stacks of boxes along one wall with creased and partially crumpled papers hanging out, there weren't any personal possessions that indicated Evan's personality or interests. Even the walls were bare, except a frankly disconcerting map of the Ra dorms that was very detailed, with Post-It notes stuck to it. There was tiny, spidery handwriting next to some of the rooms that Logan couldn't make out from this distance.

"Here. I made you a mixtape."

Logan took the object the Slifer held out to him and looked down at it. "This is a store-bought Scatman John CD."

"He's my favorite."

Logan turned it over in his hands. "I don't know English."

"You don't need to understand it," Evan told him solemnly. "It's about the experience."

Logan pursed his lips together. "Okay. Thanks, Evan."

After Evan made him wash his hands twice and listen to the first few songs of his new CD on his beat-up laptop, Logan was finally allowed to leave the Slifer dorms the same very dangerous way he had come from. When he arrived at the bottom of the stairs, he took a look behind him, wondering how much worse off the building was before it was unceremoniously set on fire. It had to be pretty bad for someone to even think that was a viable solution. Right when he was about to turn back, the railing his hand had previously clutched for dear life as he made his way down the stairs toppled over into the grass with a heavy thud.

Part of him expected Miss Hibiki to emerge from one of the lower rooms to blame him for that too as he quickened his pace away from the building. He was in a paranoid mindset when his phone chimed, indicating he had a text message.

Behind you, it read, from a number he did not recognize. He spun around to see a figure seated on the ground against a tree, shrouded in darkness. His eyes adjusted enough to see a long Obelisk Blue blazer, messy black hair.

"Zachary!" Logan exclaimed, surprised to find him in such a strange place. "You scared me. I didn't know who that was," he indicated his phone.

"What, you mean — You don't have my number saved?"

Oops. Logan sat down next to his friend and started typing away on his phone. "I do now," he said, showing the screen where Zachary's contact information was now displayed. "What are you doing out here anyway?"

Zachary shrugged. "Just wanted to get away from Obelisk for a while. Didn't know anyone was still living here."

"Just a few," Logan replied, taking another look at the damaged building. Most of the lights had gone out of the windows and it was much quieter now than when he arrived.

"You visiting Evan?"

"Kind of. He wanted me to kill a cockroach for him."

"And you did?" Zachary's voice sounded amused but he didn't press for more information, nor did he openly mock Logan's fear of insects. Logan appreciated that. The two sat in silence for a while, Logan trying to find various constellations in the sky and Zachary keeping perfectly still. Logan could sense nervous energy coming from his companion, but chose not to say anything about it in case he went on the defensive. It was so rare that the two of them could enjoy one another's company, without their very different personalities colliding.

"I don't know why you humor him," Zachary finally said, more to himself than Logan.

It was Logan's turn to shrug. "He's harmless."

"Sure," Zachary stood, brushing dead leaves off the back of his blazer. "Let's go. I'm done here."