Psyche blinked several times, his eyes wide in shock. One hand rose to clutch at his head, the same hand that was in contact with Hugo's fist. Theo did a double take. He didn't' see any signs of injury despite seeing smoke from that hand. It was almost as if the near chaos earlier didn't even happen. Soon, he found that it was his turn to be stunned to silence.

"S-Sorry..."Psyche said. "Sorry for that... I am not... not the best at conversations and... and remembering things..."

Theo's heart smacked itself. The way he spoke, so innocent, so naïve, it gave him a good wakeup call as he remembered Breanne mentioning that Psyche used to be timid. Perhaps he still was but it was difficult to tell with that hard-to-get aura.

Still, the shy side of Psyche left a warm and fuzzy feeling to grow in Theo's chest.

He was just about to assure him that all was well and his apology was accepted, when he heard something akin to an explosion and the ground beneath him rumble. Alarmed, he turned and saw huge ball of fire belching upward, leaving a series of smoke rings to float after it.

That fireball flattened, then spread to form the mushroom head of a column of incandescent gas that mounted to overtake it, engorging the smoke rings as it rose. What's worse, the explosion occurred a few meters away, meaning it was close. Theo heard Psyche curse under his breath and all of a sudden, cold hand wrapped around his wrist and yanked him up to his feet.

"Let's go, Theo." Psyche said, running to the opposite direction of the explosion.

Confused and somewhat scared at the same time, Theo allowed the shorter male drag him through the thick mist and trees as he tried hard to figure out what was happening. He felt a cold presence, the same comforting and familiar kind. Soon it turned foreboding. It came from behind him and he was tempted look back but then, Oracle's words rang in his mind.

"No matter what you do, never look back. That's a rule you must never break in Arcadia, got that?"

Even if he said that, questions still remained in Theo's mind and he did not like the feeling of powerlessness from knowing too little.

"Hey!" Theo wheezed, still letting Psyche drag him about. "Explain why we are running?"

"There is a Shadow chasing us." Psyche answered. The two of them almost tripped over when the ground rumbled beneath their feet again and Theo heard the most gruesome noise ever. It was a mixture of a groan and cry of pain, like thousands of people suffering something all at once.

"It's too close." Theo said. "We can't outrun, whatever the heck is chasing us."

"Then climb." Psyche said, his voice full of authority. Theo blinked. The shorter boy pointed to a nearby tree.

"Climb you klank!"

He didn't need to be told thrice. He picked up a high tree and began to climb. It was somewhat agonizing for someone who don't climb trees as a hobby but he was fast. When he looked down, he knew he was about fifteen to twenty metres up.

Psyche was at the opposite branch, his breathing just as shallow as Theo's own when the ear splitting noises started to grow louder. When whatever that was chasing them reached the base of their tree trunk, Theo couldn't believe what he saw.

A huge lump of black ooze was lurking about. It resembled a lot to Shadow Alazne seconds before she took a human form and attacked him in the carnival. However, this one was larger, bulkier and had no human figure. It was a large boulder of those black substances, pulsating with groans and other blood curdling screams. As it moved, black substance left a trail of black ooze behind.

"What on earth is a Shadow?" Theo gasped, his voice just below a whisper for he feared that it would hear him. Beside him, he heard the shorter male sigh.

"There is no explanation." Psyche said. "The best I could say is that it's a mass of the distortion created by everyone. They don't know how to look back at the past and how to deal with their regrets. What's broken, stays broken and no one knows how to fix it. Shadows are an existence that swallows these regrets and abandoned pasts."

"That's..." Theo said, his body growing cold and stiff as he stared at the lump in horror. "That monster?"

"Yes." Psyche said. "Usually, it collects one shadow after another quietly in this forest. But when it becomes unable to deal with all of mass it holds, it goes unstable and berserk."

Theo couldn't believe it, yet at the same time he could. It made sense, more than it should have. He found himself accepting it but a horrible feeling was still nagging inside him, gnawing in his stomach.

"But it shouldn't be berserk this early..." Psyche hummed, a deep frown settling on his face.

"It shouldn't?" Theo repeated. Psyche nodded while concentrating back on the black lump below.

"I should know because I deal with Shadows. What made it become unstable this quickly? What's triggering it?" Psyche muttered, his voice getting softer and softer. Theo wondered what was going around in that short boy's head when there was another groan. This time though, an inhuman voice called out.

"AaAaLLiiIcCeEe."

Theo stilled, terror wrecking inside of him as he stared at the black lump in shock. Just as he was recovering, the black lump let out a roar and slammed straight into the base of the trunk of their tree. Theo almost fell but caught himself. The tree started to slant sideways. Beside him, Psyche started swearing in another language like a fiend.

The black lump slammed into the tree again and the tree started slanting even further to an unnatural angle. This time, Theo did lose his balance and slipped. He shut his eyes as he prepared himself for a very painful fall when he felt someone yanked him back. In shock, he opened his eyes to find he was safe on Psyche's branch.

"AaAaLLlLLLiiIIIiiIIcCCcceEeeeEE." The black ooze growled, slamming into the tree again. The tree shook in protest. Theo was still amazed that their tree was still standing from the amount of force it dealt so far. However, he knew that it wouldn't stand forever and sooner or later, it would break.

"I got an idea." Psyche said out of the blue. Theo turned to him in desperation when the black lump attacked again. This time, the tree jerked downwards, stopping to an abrupt halt. On the way, Theo bumped his head on a branch and grunted in pain.

"But, you are not going to like it." Psyche said, turning to him. "In order for it to work, you have to stay safe in this tree and not follow me." To this, Theo stared at Psyche in incredulity.

"What? No. What?"

Theo objected when Psyche flashed him that demented, crazed like smirk again. Theo swallowed all his words that was at the tip of his tongue. As he was trying to comprehend what Psyche planned on doing, Theo felt his whole surrounding grew silent when Psyche did something he didn't expect any sane person would do.

He jumped and dived straight to the black creature.

Theo felt his jaw drop when the boy disappeared within the lump. He stared at the creature in disbelief, looking elsewhere for any signs of the boy only to feel his body grow heavy with dread. Psyche was gone.

All was silent, which was a surprise in itself since the black monster was causing quite a racket a while ago. It was as if swallowing the boy calmed it down, but after a while it was back to ramming on the tree like an angry goat on Animal Planet again. Theo felt all the blood drain out of his system when he heard a loud snap.

'I gotta save Psyche before I die.' Theo thought as the tree started leaning more and more to the side. 'But how?'

Once again, his instincts won.

"Give Psyche back!" He yelled which earned him an even louder groan. He ran to the edge of his branch while thinking, I am a maniac, and jumped. He dove straight to the monstrous creature and he heard a loud crunch. It didn't take him long to realise that he was inside the belly of the monster.

What he couldn't comprehend though, was that he had the impossible feeling of falling and floating at the same time. All around him, it was pitch black, but once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he managed to make out vague shapes.

Chairs, books, tables, beds, umbrellas, bicycles and so on. Most of all, millions of torn up, scribbled papers were everywhere, some cutting itself to paper butterflies which fluttered around him. Some papers disintegrated away to dust. Through it all, he felt like he was falling into the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. He almost chortled at the irony.

Only then did he realised that he had no plan on how to save Psyche whatsoever, making him almost groan as the same way as the lump.

'Where is he?' Theo wondered, looking around as he fell. About that time, he felt a sharp twinge of pain in his chest. He grunted in surprise. His whole body felt like it was shrivelling up, making him curl up to a ball. He looked at his hands and almost whimpered in horror to see black patches.

It burned as it spread through his arm and through his whole body. It was like someone lighted a fire inside of him and watching it grow intense without any means to distinguish it. His blood felt like lava and he screamed in anguish. He was now falling, accelerating at impossible speed.

"What's the right story?"

"Where are the chapters?"

"Who stole the papers?"

"When will it end?"

"ARE YOU ALICE?"

Theo's throat started to constrict as voices started to chant, overthrowing his sense of hearing. His mouth tasted burning aluminium foil. His mind was swirling to the point of nausea and he felt pathetic of himself.

As he continued to fall deeper and deeper into the abyss, Theo struggled to hold onto the last string of consciousness but he was failing. That's when felt someone cupping both his cheeks. It was cold and nebulous, throbbing beneath Theo's cheeks like a second pulse. He opened his eyes, not recalling ever closing them and saw glowing red eyes accompanied by a warm smile.

Psyche didn't look any better than he was for he too, had black splotches all around his face and skin. Apart from the fact that his clothes were smoking, he didn't seem to show any signs of being in pain or suffering from asphyxiation. He continued to smile, a very delicate smile and brought their foreheads together as he closed his eyes.

Theo felt his eyes almost bulge out of its sockets at how gentle Psyche made their foreheads touch. He gasped when he could breathe again. The burning pain started to fade away. The darkness around him started to shatter. Fragments of broken objects started raining down and white light burst through the gaps of the cracked abyss, blinding him.

Theo blinked back the glare of the light and once colour started filling his vision again, he let out an embarrassing, girlish shriek. He was thousands of feet up in the air. How he got teleported there, he had no clue. A few feet away from him, he saw Psyche falling too but unlike him, the boy was unconscious and accelerating to the ground much faster than he was.

Theo wasn't scared of heights, but he feared for the other's wellbeing. He didn't know how to save him from an inevitable death as he figured he hadn't accomplished anything except for dying along with Psyche, but he tucked in his arms and plummeted headfirst. The clouds in the sky raced past like a film on fast-forward. His face felt like it was peeling off.

In a heartbeat, he caught up with Psyche, who woke up a while ago, looking disoriented and confused. He tackled the boy's waist and closed his eyes, waiting for death as the wind whistled in Theo's ears. He wondered what dying would feel like and thought, not so good. He wished somehow, they could never hit bottom.

All of a sudden, he felt something raw and powerful inside of him awaken and Psyche let out a strangled gasp. The moment he felt impact, he thought they were dead but was shocked to find that he was still breathing.

When he opened his eyes, his heart skipped a beat. He found that the two of them were cocooned inside tree vines woven over each other in a messy fashion, acting as some sort of safety net. The vines itself was odd for it was striped with millions of bright colours.

It even had dozens of flowers wrapped around the vines, closing the bigger gaps between. The net was sturdy, but Theo knew it wasn't well made. One quick jerk would sent them toppling down.

That was the least of his worries. Theo felt his heart ram against his chest. He realised he was hugging Psyche and during their fall, Psyche must have repositioned himself so that he was hugging him too. They were nose to nose.

Psyche's heart beat so hard, Theo could hear it. He gulped and felt his cheeks flamed at the sheer awkwardness of it all. He then heard something creak, which was followed by a snap and they dropped straight into a small river below.

Theo shot up when he felt something slimy swim past him, screaming fish and darted out of the water as if the world was on fire. Psyche soon followed at his own pace, soaking from head to toe. He had one eyebrow raised as Theo shivered and hugged himself to conserve what little heat he had in his body. 

"I take it that you don't like fish?" Psyche asked, pushing the wet fringes of his hair back. He said it in such a casual tone, Theo chuckled in hysteria.

After all, they were ambushed by some Shadow, they were in the gut of the shadow, fell from thousands of feet from the sky and landed in a river full of fishes. Yet, Psyche was acting they were on a Monday stroll in the park.

"Don't like it? More like don't even think about getting those monstrous beast near me!" Theo said. Psyche raised one eyebrow.

"You plunged straight into the Shadow after me even though I told you specifically not to, and you can't stand being around fish?" Psyche asked. Theo had to admit that when he worded it like that way, it did sound silly to him as well.

Even so, Theo ignored it. He then noticed something about Psyche that made him stop. From the way his clothes were sticking close to his skin, Theo could make out Psyche's figure. It was odd, weird. It didn't look natural for a boy who seemed to be going through his teen phase.

He blushed furiously when he realised why.

"Psyche..." Theo spoke in a wary tone. "Are you by any chance... a girl?" Psyche blinked at him.

"Wasn't it obvious?" Psyche asked. Theo didn't respond, which turned out to be a very bad idea.

"You thought I was a guy?" Psyche asked, scowling at Theo who almost swallowed his own tongue. He panicked, and his natural defence?

He blabbered.

"Sorry! I didn't mean, not that I really thought of that but everyone was saying you were a guy and well... I had my suspicions and uh..." Theo felt all his nerves screamed in horror as Psyche looked like he was going to behead him with her axe again.

"I-I promise I don't have a death wish!... uh... Zwiebel is German for onion!" Psyche stopped and stared at Theo with the most bewildered expression, he started admire it since that was the closest thing she expressed other than a scowl and glare.

"What?" Psyche said, snapping Theo back to focus.

"I... Uh... Sorry about that. The talking I mean. I usually try not to annoy people. I am panicking and if you haven't noticed, talking is kind of my defense mechanism. I try to shut up but I say stupid things. Then I try to cover up all the stupid stuff by saying even stupider stuff. It's a curse I tell you. When life gives you lemons, chuck them at people you hate."

Psyche raised both eyebrows and Theo took it as a bad sign. He knew he should shut up but he kept on talking.

"If your canoe is stuck in a tree with the headlights on, how many pancakes does it take to get to the moon? My world is where everybody is a pony and we all eat rainbows and poop butterflies. Banana error. SpongeBob ate Britney Spears."

Psyche blinked at him in confusion and Theo had to turn away in order to hide his face, which was now deep red, in his hands.

"Oh klank. Just dig me a grave, kill me now and bury me alive... wait if you kill me, how would you bury me alive? Gah just bury me alive and then kill me... No wait that doesn't sound right either!"

For the first time in all day, Psyche broke into laughter. Theo gawked at her who continued to laugh for the sheer ridiculousness of the turn of sudden events. Psyche laughed so hard, her eyes began to water. Theo felt weightless as Psyche's laughter reduced to giggles, and then she burst out laughing again. Theo too, found himself chuckling.

"I'm sorry" Psyche said, forcing her voice out through gasps of air. "I feel like my laughter is inappropriate."

Theo gaped at the girl in disbelief.

"Inappropriate? I think the contagious is the word you are looking for." Theo said, his eyebrows knitted together to a frown.

"Contagious as in the good kind. Not the bacteria and virus kind you know. Contagious as in you are happy, I am happy too and-

"Oh shut up you klank." Psyche said but she was smiling, revealing a dimple on her left cheek. She splashed some water at his way where Theo yelped which, succeeded in making Psyche laugh even harder. Theo watched as Psyche hugged her sides, giggling away and felt the corner of his own lips tipping up.

He decided seeing Psyche laughing was more breath taking than seeing crystal like tears spilling out from her eyes.

Author's note: Woo hoo! Who saw that coming? Anyway, many thanks to Contrariwise who always gave good feedback and beta read this chapter. I hope you enjoyed this chapter though! If you see any mistakes that we may have overlooked, please notify!

Oh and don't forget to vote! =)