I can't take it anymore! I threw my cards down and laid down on the floor, turning away from the others. How long has it been now? If I play another game I'm sure to burst. Calm down Neuman, call down. Even though I knew sleep was impossible in this world, I still closed my eyes and tried to shut down my mind.

Instead, quite the opposite happened, and my senses became overwhelmed by familiar sensations.

I was standing in my room, and at first glance it was exactly how I remembered. Am I hallucinating? Daydreaming? A little bit of both? I knew not the answer to that question.

Wait, something isn't right. I looked at my desk. There was my pen and some papers, but the pen was at a slight angle compared to how I left it. I walked over to it and looked carefully. There was writing on the paper:

You know what must be done Neuman.

I quickly turned around. What's going on? Is there someone else here? I turned back and looked at the paper.

Ha! Made you look! No, but seriously, pay attention.

Someone's... messing with me? I once again checked my surroundings but by the time I looked back the paper was already blank. I noticed quiet, but still audible, voices of children behind me. There was a soft white light leaking into the room from under my door.

I slowly and carefully walked to the door, opening it an inch at a time. Behind it was a scene from my childhood. I stepped all the way through, but the door and all that was with it no longer existed by the time I reached out behind me to close the door.

"Well, what are you going to do Neuman?! If you don't give it to me we're through!"

Oh, this moment. This was quite a long time ago.

"Please Neuman! It's mine! Make him give Sparky back to me!"

There was a younger version of me, only about three feet tall, being confronted by my best friend and a girl I had hardly met. The boy was holding a stuffed dog.

I really struggled with this decision. It was originally the girl's, but she lost it, and it went unfound for several weeks before the boy picked it up and got attached to it. At this point the girl had given up on the toy, but when she saw the boy playing with it she freaked. At this point I thought that they both had equal right over it, but I didn't want to ruin my friendship.

The girl cried. "My daddy gave him to me before he went off to fight bad guys! He's my special doggy! Give him baaaaack!"

I felt my heart sink. Then I knew that the toy meant far more to her than it did to him. I was once again at a stand still on my decision.

"You lost it but didn't find it, so he gets it."

That was my final decision. It was a selfish one. All I wanted was to preserve my friendship. "You're such an idiot, Neuman," I said to myself, both to the me of now and the me of the past.

The past stopped playing, as if it was a recording that had run out of film. The me of the past turned around and looked up at me, and just stared at me for a moment.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Talking to myself now am I? If I had to guess it would that I'm hallucinating or going insane, maybe both."

The little me stuck his tongue out at me. "Wrong! You'll certainly go crazy if you don't stop yourself though."

That smug little brat. "Then where am I, little boy?"

"You're in your subconscious of course! Well, I guess I'm your subconscious too, but don't worry about that!"

"What, like in the movies? There's no way that's true. I'm hallucinating."

"How would you know, dumby! You've never been pushed to the point of no return before."

"...I guess that's true. So what am I supposed to do now, smarty pants?"

Did I actually just sass myself? The whole scene around me except for the little me melted away, leaving behind darkness. I looked around to confirm my surroundings, and from far away I could see a cylinder of light approaching at a speed far faster than I could run. In fact, I wanted to outrun it, because it came directly at me. I braced for impact. The cylinder of light hit, but didn't hit at the same time. I put my arms down and properly assessed what was happening.

The cylinder was actually lots of small, flat fragments that were flying past me. The fragments each had something projected upon them: memories of my past. Occasionally a fragment would stop, send out sparks to others around it, then replay its memory.

"What do you see, Neuman?"

"I see lots mistakes. Lots of mistakes that I wish I could do over."

"There were definitely a lot of mistakes there, but I wouldn't say all of them were." I don't know when it happened, but the little boy beside me had grown up a little, at looked to be about ten or eleven years old. "That's what your problem is, you don't trust yourself to make the right decision. There were many places where there wasn't a right decision, like there, there, or there! You just always look back on them and think you did what you shouldn't have."

I stood in silence. Maybe I was being too hard on myself. "What about those times that I definitely made the wrong choice?"

"You should accept them of course! There's no changing them now, but you certainly can change how you look at them."

"...Why tell me this?"

"Because you were about to make a decision that you wouldn't have been able to go back from, that you would never be able to accept. You were going to vent your anger. As your soul's immune system, I couldn't let that happen without trying to stop it."

Silence welcomed me back. I looked at all the memories pass me by. I guess there wasn't a right answer there. You know what, it might have been wrong, but I'm glad I did that, otherwise I wouldn't have met them. Or did that. Heck, I totally stand by that situation.

"Now all you need to do is accept who you are now."

"What do you mean?"

"You're accepting the you of the past, but you haven't accepted the you of now." The other me was now as old as I was now, but looked like the me from the real world. "You're not letting yourself be yourself. I know you totally want to mess with the others right now. Do it!"

"...But I don't want them to get mad at me and for this whole adventure to fall apart. I'm starting to truly treasure it, both its ups and downs."

"They're always messing with you, and you don't think they'll let you get a joke or two out of them? They're waiting for you to find yourself, for your soul to get strong. They don't just believe that you can do it, they know you can."

"...I suppose I already knew that."

The other me smiled. "Well of course you did, I'm you and I knew that. You just needed it told to you."

He started to glow, and as if an electric current was running through him, quickly flashed into a new and final form, the me of Insomnia Wake. He started to fade. "I guess I've done my job, good work me. Be you, be more you than you think you are. I won't be coming back for you now."

I just sort of looked at me, like I was looking in a mirror. "Hey, why don't I ever hear people having a moment like this?"

"Because most of them don't turn themselves around, and those that do tell others are made out to be crazy anyways." Obviously happy that his last words were somewhat of a joke, my subconscious once again closed up and I found myself lying on the cold hard cement.

I had a diabolic idea. I sat up and picked up the cards, then turned once again away from my friends. I pulled my knife out. Just a few more games.

-----

"What the heck! How are you doing this Neuman!" Ariel was quite flustered. "We're even working together to try and beat you and you're winning!" She slammed her losing hand to the ground.

"Look at the reflection of the light on the back of the cards," I said. They held up the cards.

"Heeeey! There are scratch marks on the backs of the cards! You cheated!"

"Yep, and it was totally worth it." I was laughing like the madman I almost was. "Well, time to try this out." I could feel the new level of power that I was capable of outputting in every move of my muscle.

Buddy grinned.

Ariel's face lit up.

I put my hands on the door, and gave it a huge push. The door gave out, and everything behind it was sent flying back.

"Holy crap," uttered Buddy as both of their jaws dropped. "This training somehow worked?!"

"Piece of cake," I said, stretching my muscles.

Ariel started giggling. "You knew what? No matter how strong you get, you will only be able to exert .001 kilo-Neumans of force." She burst out into laughter.

"You just wanted me to have a power level under one didn't you?"

"Yep!"

"Figured."

"What's going on up here?!" Masamba rushed to our location, and saw the wreckage. He struck his pose. "I haven't the slightest clue how you did it in only five days, but, let me tell you, you must be quite the special guy! Hey, you want to try out that scythe now?"

"Na." I pulled out my knife and looked at it. "I think this'll do. Hey, actually, can I get more of these?"

"You sure can! But before that, I just received orders from higher up and was about to come and pull you guys out early! Your first mission is to track down the Passing Wind!"

Buddy looked relieved.

That's strange, a call for us? We've barely joined this organization and we are already going on a mission, and the exact one we wanted to too. This is too good to be true.

"It might take you guys several days to finish it, but when you do, be sure to come back so I can give you a proper debriefing and introduction into the group... errr... what's your squad name? Have you decided on one?"

"The Odd Squad of course!" Ariel blurted out. "Even though I'm pretty sure there are a lot of odd squads, we get to be the odd squad!"

"Wait, do we not get a choice in it?"

"I'm fine with it."

"Close enough I guess. It's settled then."

Masamba nodded. "All right, Odd Squad, head out!"

-----

"Quick! Get Juno!" Helen spun around in her chair. "The Passing Wind has his tenth kill!"

***

A/N: Was that just a super cliche way to get strong? Was it me parodying all those "find yourself" moments that appear everywhere?! Or is there more than meets the eye...? Muhahaha :D