Chapter 3 "Are you absolutely sure that he's the guy you saw that night?" a teenage boy asked his female friend, whose name happened to be Misty, as she acted innocent and pretended that the conversation that had just taken place said never existed. "There's no doubt in my mind," she assured her masculine companion christened Ash, whose dumbfounded look that had deteriorated over the years in frequency showed once again for this new amazement. "I'm positive that Vesper was there two years ago and that I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for him, so he's really not that bad a guy for his roguish deeds, but a good person for his assistance." Ash still acted like he didn't have a clue, which Misty had grown quite accustomed to, so she pressed two fingers upon his lips, signaling for him to act somewhat normal, and he caught on and executed a straight face. "What are you guys talking about back there?" a curious Sora questioned to the two Pokemon trainers, who had just regained their senses of the animate surroundings, and they both smiled, which was designated as an answer. She just shrugged as considered it to be a rather personal conversation or a tender subject, or possibly both, and she casually landed twin high-fives on their palms and joyfully skipped along the way, not knowing what was to come. They continued walking, which seemed strikingly familiar and had become totally monotonous to all but Vesper, who didn't mind the mile-long promenade to a destination already determined by him and non-subsisting in the minds of the others. Only fifteen minutes separated him from the next point of interest and need, and he urged the rest of them on in the overwhelming darkness and the slightly starlit night, which started to transform its nearby blackness to somewhat of an indigo shade. Ten minutes had passed between that moment and the time when they actually saw something obtrusively sticking out of the landscape, and though it was only a tree, it was much more lively than the rocky roads they'd seen too much of. Misty investigated it under the less-than-ample light for a split second only to realize that not only was it as dead and inanimate as can be, but the only thing it could have been possibly used for in its deteriorating state is a secondary lookout station. Seeing the halted group, Vesper darted over to the trunk and tapped on its base with his knuckles and, noticing that it was still quite sturdy, he swiftly and adeptly climbed the hardwood until he reached its crest. The oldest human, despite his true inexperience in account of total years, used his sense of direction and familiarity with the land to guide his finger, which eventually pointed the rest of the group to the correct region with a very small margin of error existing. He hopped down from the twenty-foot act of nature in three leaps, and his feet squarely found some of the sturdiest branches accessible by the descending Vesper as he plummeted with control to the ground. His boots flashed along with the rest of his compacted body during his tailspin toward the center of gravity of this gigantic rock, and they practically bore no sound when they struck the soft terra firma. His hair collapsed limply across his forehead when he touched down, and he once again pointed in the direction of said interest before moderately running off, leaving the others to put through a decent effort to keep pace. Misty was left behind for a second, since she was caught thinking about something else while the others sped along away from her, but her reminiscing was halted when Ash tapped her on the shoulder just before he passed by, and she also started running. Matt looked behind him to make sure that the young trainers were following him, though he not only didn't know that they were Pokemon trainers, but he had never heard such a word containing any likeness to Pocket Monsters brought up in any conversation. He saw them and was relieved, so he turned back to the direction the five were traveling, but became rather shocked when Sora, who was previously in front of him, took a forty-degree turn to the left as suddenly as imaginable. Due to the darkened state of the terrestrial sphere, the other three couldn't see far enough to spot Vesper, so they obviously continued in the same direction, but Sora was close enough to catch a glimpse of his cloak as he turned portside. Attempting to keep up with his shadows, which were getting more and more difficult to visualize, she greatly increased her speed to an outright dash in order to follow, in such a manner like she were trying to escape death itself. "Where are you going, Sora?" her dear friend Matt shouted into the darkness as he lost her, though he knew where in direction she was headed, and he also turned his strong jogging into an immediate sprint after his comrade. The rather experienced children from the world of Pokemon also saw that Matt had disappeared just a few seconds after the honest redhead had, so they darted off to where they concluded their friends had gone. The chase continued for about half a minute until Matt saw someone's lucky hat hovering about two feet from the ground, and he slowed down but still progressed forward to find Sora kneeling over with Vesper, their eyes fixed on some unknown thing resting below their heads. Spontaneously and without reason known to anyone, Sora quickly removed her jewel and placed it directly on the white X she spotted, and she backed away with the rest of the kids to watch all the land within ten feet of the imprint collapse through the presumably solid ground. "Why did I just do that?" she asked herself as she lowered to a knee, puzzled by her own actions more than what had resulted from them, but her mental trance was broken when Matt placed his hand on her shoulder, ceasing her deep thoughts. "Sora, are you okay?" came the concerned words from his mouth as he knelt down to meet her at eye level, and she cocked her head right to unwillingly encounter the worried gaze that searched her pupils for reason. Had she any reason or motive for what had just taken place, or had she the slightest thought that her gleaming jewel would react to the landmark, she would have responded, but all she could do was stand up and walk away. This seriously troubled Matt down to his core, seeing such a person with so much meaning holding his heart intact just falling apart at the seams, but as she could only do, he became one of four bystanders watching her exit. As she walked off a few feet further, she unconsciously shivered despite the fact that the wind had died considerably over the past few hours, and this stopped her and persuaded her to turn back toward her traveling companions. "Anyone have a clue as to what this hole's for?" the returning owner of the Emerald Jewel of Remedy asked no one in particular, and even though everyone around that hadn't been asked listened, no one could present any logical answers. She peered down the hole, which looked to be endless since a bottom wasn't visible, and she mentioned to Vesper to toss her a rope so she could descend down the side of the cliff, much to the chagrin of everyone. He tossed her a line and held on tightly, which was certainly packed with enough force to keep her steady, and she saluted the group in a mocking fashion before tying it around her waist and leaping into the arcane pit, landing six feet under the surface of the land. "Let out the rope some more," she advised him, which he promptly did, but a violent shaking caused her to lose her footing and sent her plummeting into the darkness below, leaving her future unknown. "Hang on!" the inky-threaded man screamed into the gloom, and though he was thrown to the ground in front of the valley's brim, he still held onto the rope as tightly as ever, using his body weight on his arms to keep the rope from slipping. "Fine time for an earthquake!" a voice yelled from deep in the pit, at least eighteen feet below the surface, and the gang identified it to be Sora's, so Vesper immediately struggled to his feet and pulled in an attempt to reel her in. "Hey, don't pull me up right now: I think I found something," she stated much more calmly, and so the makeshift fisherman lowered the human bait about two feet further down, and he used his might and experience to remain in this position. "Are you hanging down there or are you on some kind of ground?" Ash called down, not sure of what kind of response he'd receive, and his obstreperous query bounded off the walls of the gorge, which had been slightly widened by the tremor. "I'm definitely swinging, but I see some ground about eight feet below me," Sora yelled back up as she tilted her head toward the brightening sky, and she removed her celadon jewel from her pocket and shone it in all directions. Sure enough, her instincts were correct, and below her she spotted something a few feet below her, something completely different from the stone walls that surrounded her on all sides. "There's a door on the side of the stone, and if you let go I can just drop down to the ground and make it in," she continued once the gleam of her illustrious jewel more than proved its purpose. "Are you entirely positive you'll be all right for the landing?" her digitally-destined friend said after he dropped onto his stomach to make himself more audible, and many thoughts about Sora raced through his mind at the time. "I'm pretty sure that eight feet is all that's down from my feet right now," she responded, looking squarely at him, and his eyes wavered for a split second, as if they were trying to explain to her all the reasons why she shouldn't be doing this. "Trust me," she reassured him while repocketing her jewel, and he melted to her words and okayed her dangerous undertaking, so on the count of three, Vesper released the rope, sending Sora falling quickly into the blackness. Upon hearing her land moderately on the ground below, Misty's keen ears received a second sound on the ground followed by an eerie silence, and she couldn't help but trumpet down the basin, "Are you all right?" With extreme misfortune, she was not granted with even the slightest answer, so she repeated the previous inquisition with a pleading tone, and this time she was blessed with probably the last thing she would have expected to hear. "This stupid door is locked!" came the startling scream of disappointment that crashed upon the quartet in a wave of relief, and Vesper, with the help of Matt, rolled over a huge rock onto the scene. Sora untied herself and tossed the rope back up, and the two guys placed the rope under the rock so that, one by one, the rest of the heterogeneous club climbed down, with much less of a drop to a flat, rock-solid landing. "How do you suppose we actually get through this door, since it's locked and keyless we seem to be?" she asked as soon as everyone had made it down safely, slightly irritated at her unsuccessful attempt to find another pathway. "Well, it probably isn't the best thing to say right about now, but it looks like if we smash that window," Matt said, pointing to the window near the top of the door, "in all likelihood, we all could fit through. I mean, us kids could slink right through that window if we make the hole wide enough, and Vesper really isn't that big for an adult, so if we could breach the broken glass then he shouldn't have much trouble." "You were right the first time, Matt," replied Vesper, ironically agreeing with him, "when you said that it wasn't the best thing to say, because the last thing we want to do at this time is make ourselves a floor covered in shattered glass." Just as he finished his sentence, a furious aftershock rampaged across the landscape, and sheets of dust and smaller rocks came careening onto the group in synchronization with the oscillating of the ground. "Well, you had better start wanting, pal," Matt retorted without the intention of insulting, but since the planet had obvious digestive problems and was letting them know, his outburst had no meaning of cruelty. "My guess is that with shakes these bad, that massive dinosaur of a rock we rolled over near the edge to fasten the rope isn't holding, and it's got a really good chance of coming down after us!" With that, he quickly grasped Vesper's sword from its hold and used it to carve himself a crisp outline of the window, and he exclaimed, "Stand back, everyone!" and let the window fracture into a million pieces onto the tough granite. He dived headfirst in through the window, and once he got past the door he unlocked it from the inside of wherever he was, and the kids started filing in. Ash and Misty ran right through, followed by Vesper, but as soon as he passed through the doorway the stone toppled directly over the edge and careened horribly down toward the vulnerable Sora. She reacted with a terror that propelled her to completely freeze in harm's way, and it took a second to get her legs moving, and when Matt realized that she wouldn't make it alone, he grabbed her hands and pulled with all his outer and inner strength. Her body dodged the smashing quarter-ton of hard creation by not even a fraction of an inch, and due to both the force Matt exerted pulling her in and Sora's overwhelming happiness of surviving, she practically flew into him and embraced him in a hug of thankfulness. Matt was overjoyed to return the hug with what he thought to be sufficient emotion, and for the same reasons that she was clinging to him in such a wave of affection, he squeezed extra-tight for a split second. "Thank you, Matt," she said as she backed away with her head for only a moment, and Matt acknowledged her words with a simple nod, so she finished the fond display with another two seconds of gratitude and broke it off. All had been watching for the last few frames of time; with helplessness and fear when Sora's life looked to be ending rather messily, with relief and happiness when Matt assisted her in dodging the rock, and with big grins and racing minds when she thanked him. Vesper in particular was fascinated by her friendship and endearment of one another, through the good times and the bad, and obviously this strange but favorable relationship required more than everyday activities to develop. In an instant, his mind flashed back to when he was trying his best to develop such a friend in someone who was truly bonded to him, and he sighed in realization that this bid was unsuccessful. "I assume you wanted this back," Matt said, snapping him back suddenly into the real world, and he held Vesper's sword about two feet in front of him, and Vesper graciously extended his arm and grasped the sword, promptly relocating it. "There's no point in stopping now that our only known exit is blocked," Sora spoke out, "so let's go exploring in this weird place and possibly find something that we can use, okay?" She saw no objections, so she once again utilized the jewel of hers for its most practical use - for light - and led the way towards complete boredom, amazing discovery, or absolute disaster. As far as they could see, this place didn't have the overwhelmingly hostile environment like The Raven's Spire had, but this mysterious setting still gave the chills to some of the members of the band grouped by powers other than coincidence. The walls were rather bare compared to the tower, with no carvings of monsters or anything like that, but this seemed to be more of an inhabited, modern-day household with a large size improvement and items of value than anything else. Many lit candles, at least forty in the first room, took up most of the space on the walls' shelves, along with some other oddities the group didn't care to identify, and furniture and a piano also took up some floor space. The carpet was a mysterious shade of green, sort of an intensely dark tint, and this caught the eye of Vesper and the others even though the holy jewels were the lone supporters of the existence of light. "Shall we proceed?" a voice in Sora's head asked, and this startled her enough to force her a step backwards, and she almost bumped right into Matt, who was trailing directly behind her in case anything should happen. He supported her retreating figure with a soft support around her waist, not sure of how to approach a person who suddenly backed up for no apparent reason, and she turned her head to him to cock her head in the direction of what seemed to be a doorway. Matt shrugged his shoulders and told her she could go if she desired, and that the rest of them would be backing her up wherever she may go, so she promptly turned on her heel and strolled right through the archway. Matt didn't miss a step, as he was again directly behind her, and the rest followed in a group a couple of steps to his rear, but when they all entered the next room no one could believe what their eyes were telling them was there. "Didn't we just come through this exact room?" a troubled Misty asked, and upon looking back she saw nothing, since the light of the jewel was so far ahead of her it didn't affect the objects so far behind. She again stared forward, and everything that she had seen in the last room they exited corresponded perfectly to everything in this room, including the carpet, the piano and even the number of candles in the room. "Doubtful," Vesper answered, pondering what she had said, "since the path we just took seemed awfully straight and simple, but what you say about congruent rooms is apparently true from what I've seen." He took another look around to try and justify his theory, and then a strikingly interesting thought came into his head, and he returned through the doorway that he perceived upon approaching it into the room he left earlier. Without a word spoken by anyone, Vesper continued alone into the other room and promptly wandered over to one of the shelves with glistening candles on it, and he decided to blow one of them out. He did so, and then he reentered the room where the others subsisted, and he made his way with the help of his jewel back over to the analogous shelf, where he discovered that this candle, and only this candle, was out also. Not satisfied, he went back to the first room once again, took a nearby sledgehammer that had probably been used to nail nails into the wall, and he immediately threw it and destroyed an entire shelf of fifteen candles in one shot by. "Holy cow!" came the resounding scream from the room next door that emanated from Misty, who had stepped in front of the group and was closest to the shattering structure of hard wood, and satisfaction hit him square in the face. "Vesper, you'll never believe what just happened while you were gone," Misty spoke to him as he came back, temporarily out of breath and still trying to overcome the shock of suddenly seeing something attached to a wall come tumbling down. "I saw a shadow appear over by that side, and it threw a big hammer that hit the shelf of candles and knocked it over, but I guess you scared him off when you came back because he disappeared right when you came back in the room." "Exactly as I suspected, Misty," he replied, knowing full well what she had seen, and then he continued with, "Do you suppose that you could put any similarity between that shadow you saw come by and myself?" "Come to think of it, whoever that was had looked to be basically your size, and I bet I could match you two even closer if I saw how he had been dressed ... but how did you know that and how do you have anything to do with this totally weird situation?" "Let me try to explain this in words that you could all understand, meaning so you won't take everything the wrong way," he commented on the possibility of every word he spoke of being turned into something that wasn't true under any conditions. "Everything that happens in this room here occurs precisely the same way in the other room: for example, if someone were to walk into the other room right now, we'd also see a copy of them coming through that doorway over there. Definite proof of this is when I dismantled the shelf next door with a simple fling of the sledgehammer, and I suppose that not only did you see that, but you also saw some strange figure throw that. As a matter of fact, through the light of the candles that fell rather easily after my actions, I could make out you, Misty, and the rest of the gang without much trouble, so I guess what I'm saying really is true." "All right then," Ash said, "if everything that happens in here also happens somewhere else, isn't that something from a parallel universe, or at least one of the more outrageous episodes of someone's dreams?" "That sounds about right, but in this case there aren't any dreams involved, so we should really be on our guard every second that we're in this place, because I have no idea where we actually are." He definitely would have proceeded with his attempted explanation of the mystery, but a small sound emanated from something down the caliginous corridor, and Vesper alertly drew his sword in the direction of the noise. He slowly approached the source of the reverberation, not exactly knowing what to expect, and after a few seconds he could make out the figure of a female organism that strongly resembled a human. Despite her awkward appearance, which included waist-long violet hair, circular ivory eyes, and most noticeably a transparent blue film surrounding her figure, she truly did look like a young woman of twenty-five or so. She carried no apparent weapons such as swords or arrows, but the spherical film of bluish nature was treated as a dangerous device, so Vesper and the others decided to keep her distance, since this wasn't likely to be someone friendly. "I'm not going to hurt anyone, for my only purpose is to converse with Sora," the voice that seemed to come from Heaven spoke, and for some reason it seemed so innocent that even Vesper himself put away his cutter. He and the rest of the gang backed up a few feet, while Sora, who didn't know why she trusted this near-human but did nonetheless, stepped forward five steps so that she could see her beautiful frame more clearly. With the thinness of a Barbie doll and the assumed affection of a mother to her child, she also took a mere three steps forward and reached out her milky hand to her right shoulder, and prepared to speak again. "My name is Vinera," she said so that everyone could hear her, and then she leaned into the younger person's vicinity so that her mouth was only a few inches from her ear, and she whispered, "and you are going to die." Sora's eyes widened to the size of watermelons and all the blood flushed out of her face, but since the others couldn't hear the last remark made by the newcomer or see Sora's changed expression, they didn't react. Therefore, Vinera took the initiative by causing the orbiting blue blob to stop dead, and the back of the room sloped backward, sending the four bystanders careening into the first room. She felt the presence of the sliding humans behind her, and a few seconds later she and Sora watched them pass by behind them, but without warning, the entire room straightened up again and the blue orb began to rotate once again. The once-horizontal humans propped themselves up to standing positions, and they all called upon their weapons through the amazing magic of the jewels except for Vesper, who just had to take it out. "Leave my friend alone!" came the shouting voice of Matt, who charged forward only to see Sora instead of the two of them, and his pace slowed to a walk as he came behind his cherry-haired pal and turned her around. He was caught in the horrified gaze of Sora, just as she had portrayed it when she heard the promise from Vinera, and he melted inside and tried to drag her away, but a force unseen to him kept him from such an action. Matt rarely played a game of tug-of-war with a person as the object of desire, and never had he competed in this game against something he couldn't see, so although it was quite awkward for him he still focused his energy to pull on her left wrist. Despite all the muscle and will he poured into pulling her away, he was no match for the overpowering psychic abilities of the opposing force, and he was sent flying back into the wall as Sora was yanked into the dimness. "Where'd that thing Vinera go?" the befuddled Vesper wondered, letting himself talk it out in language that no one could understand but he, and then he came up with a small decision as to where Vinera was. "For some reason, either she can't be seen on this side like everyone else can, or she's using her powers to block everyone's view of her but Sora's, since the actual her is in the other room!" Upon saying that, he was up in a second and tearing through the air, racing into the darkness after her, but it seemed as if he ran directly into a brick wall as he stopped and fell to the scabrous floor. "All right, that really wasn't funny, but if that entrance is blocked and it's the only one we could possibly see," he scrambled to his feet and paused for a moment, "then how in the world are we going to find Sora?" Matt thought for a long while, about the possibilities of another path to reach his friend, about defeating Vinera using a trick, and about just grabbing her and taking off as soon as she appeared, but he finally answered dejectedly, "I don't know." Sora eventually became aware of her monotonous surroundings, which consisted mainly of blackness and inky fog wherever she turned, but just as she was getting used to staring at nothing, a nasty punch to the right cheek toppled her. Though she winced in pain as a result, she attempted to shake it off by getting back up again and trying to find whatever caused her discomfort, and was then able to actually see her attacker, who was certainly Vinera. She allowed Sora to reach her feet, and then attacked with three left-hand shots to the ribs of the underdog of this fight, and she bent over with the first shot and yelled out with each successive blast, finally falling to her knees. Vinera laughed when she saw Sora's pain, and then spun on her heel and sent her a roundhouse kick to the face via special delivery, and Sora froze from the shock for a second before crumpling into a spread-eagle form on the ground. "I always thought you were stronger than this," Vinera laughed as she used her amazing power to completely overcome the bewildered girl, and she slowly and cockily strutted over to deal out some more damage. "You haven't seen the half of it," Sora retorted as she glanced up for a very short amount of time, and she countered with a sweeping kick that caught Vinera off-guard and sent her to the ground. Sora saw this second as a grant, a gift of time to allow her to escape, and she threw herself into a standing position like she'd never done before and split the air as she ran toward where she thought she heard the others calling her name. The good news was that she was traveling in the right way and did find a section in the invisible wall that had been made in which to pass through, but the bad news was as soon as she found her friends, the blue orb began to approach rapidly. She turned her head once to acknowledge the incoming fire, and continued her running at the same speed as before, but the psychic attack was much too fast for human speed, and it struck her brutally in the back and propelled her halfway to the other side of the room. "You little brat!" she shouted across the room to her victim, and as the girl struggled to her feet Vinera was again on the chase, having absolutely no intentions of letting her leave, neither dead nor alive. When Sora had finally found a vertical base on which to hopefully run on, the pain she had received from the previous attack caught up with her, and she dropped to her knees and attempted to crawl to the doorway, past her carbon copy friends. Since Vinera was so far away, she made it to the doorway on all fours and used the sturdy doorframe as support to regain a standing position, but then the whirling blue orb again began to work its evil magic upon her. Vinera summoned a sledgehammer with the use of the colored, revolving film, and Sora turned weakly around to meet a right-handed swing with the sixteen- pound weapon squarely in the forehead, knocking her out like a light. "I really should destroy your inferior body and soul right now," the looming Vinera said, standing over her and ready to crunch the raised sledgehammer into her heart, "but that just wouldn't be fair, would it? As a matter of fact, instead of taking you out when you can't defend yourself, I'd rather test what kind of real person you are, and whether or not you can defeat me in an outer-body experience." With that, she flung the hammer into the wall, creating a rather large bang, and knelt to place her hand on the head she had just given a mighty blow to, and the energy flowed through her palm and throughout Sora's body. Instantly Sora seemed to become electrically charged, except that the electricity was white, crackling, and doing no apparent damage to her, and then the white energy removed a transparent her from her body, levitating her inner self over her physical self. The new Sora awoke from unconsciousness and immediately felt the feeling of weightlessness, and looking down she saw herself, eyes lightly shut and completely anesthetized, sprawled out on the floor with no indication of getting up soon. Next, she spun around in the air with no trouble at all, and she witnessed four sets of eyes alternating with sadness and awed silence at both parts of their pal, and a single tear dropped from the conscious Sora and landed on the comatose one's forehead. Finally, she performed a one-eighty in supernatural elevation to face the hovering Vinera, and the larger being approached the other without menace, and explained something to her telepathically. She told Sora to pour everything that she held inside her heart into the space in front of her, which she assured the young girl was possible, and also promised that she would do the same, and the possessor of the stronger heart would survive and the other would not. With lack of striking a pose, Vinera reached into heart with her mind and soul, freezing solid for about five seconds, and then a flash of twisting white and black light, shaped like a Twizzler, appeared and formed a sphere in front of her. "In this circle lie all my memories, my loves, hates, wonders of the world, regrets, and everything else that's supposed to fill a heart that's supposed to be the key to yourself, but over time I've learned to doubt that theory. In there you can find all about the time when my parents, my only family, were killed as civilians during a war, a slaying that I had to watch about ten years ago, and every just thing that I used to stand for as a decent being slipped away. Then I converted all my powers into being evil, and that power has been growing and growing ever since you, Vesper," she said, looking directly at him, "stumbled upon the Book of Prophecies and decided to bring them back. While we're on the subject of probing thoughts, let's drop off myself and show you two, Ash and Misty, my real powers that I've developed over those long years," and the blue orb joined them together and came back with the copy of one of their shared feelings. Reading aloud from what she saw in her attachment, she proceeded to say, "'Even though Vesper seems to be a nice enough guy, with all good in himself, he's not a person that isn't capable of killing to achieve a purpose. About two years ago he stormed the headquarters of a criminal operation and stabbed and killed Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket,' by the way I've got no clue where such a ridiculous name came from, 'and rescued Misty.' Well, that seemed interesting enough, so let's find out what exactly your heart hides, Sora, and remember if you don't reveal it, you're probably going to die anyway, so why don't we give it a shot and discover what kind of person you really are?" As Sora looked down at herself, the hands that you could see the ground through, the same process performed itself on her, and the contents of her spirit rolled into a ball and presented a world of things to Vinera. "According to my psychic readout," Vinera continued, "there are three parts to the real you: on the outer shell I see friendliness with a combination of protection of others and hope for the future, so I guess you're the ideal human so far. Underneath that, the second layer contains all your memories, which I see you've got a lot of, and since there's such a mix of happiness and darkness, and since I'm rather lazy, I won't elaborate to the pleasure of your friends. Now I'm getting the picture of what ought to be quite a revealing center, and it's full of two loves: I see a common love, which I assume to be your family and your friends, and a romantic love, and that affection is apparently unknown to everyone." She looked shocked as she looked at her personal sensors, and said in disbelief, "You have chosen to retain a part of the center of your heart, the most powerful part of yourself, and you don't even know you have it." Slowly, Sora's jewel began to glow from inside her transparent pocket, and when it revealed itself to her the portion of her heart that supposedly held her strongest quality also glowed in synchronization. The two phosphorescent things began to create a common force between them, as if it were a combination of the two, and then all the lustrous gleam that the two had just a moment ago was transferred to the new creation. It in turn shot after Vinera, making rapid circles around her head, and then it grew larger and larger until it totally engulfed her, but when the light disappeared entirely its prisoner, Vinera, was completely nonexistent, as if she had been swallowed up. A sigh of relief came from all but Sora, while her spirit began to descend into the body that had yet to move through all this, and then the two parts of the lovable girl came together in total silence. The gang immediately rushed to her side, with Vesper and Matt standing by her head and Ash and Misty on opposite sides, and Matt lightly shook her shoulder once to try and revive her from the nasty blow she had received. When he first got no reaction, he looked up once at Vesper, who shared the same kind of hope to awake her, and then he shook her a little harder, which also didn't seem to be very constructive. Vesper removed her hat and clenched it tightly in his hand, and while the others rattled her body around and spoke urgent words of hope for her to awake, he looked from the hat to Sora and thought for a few moments. Meanwhile, Sora didn't even flinch even after Matt had grabbed her wrist and pleaded for her to get up and finish this expedition to wherever, and though it pained him to do it, he backed away and presumed her dead. "I'm positive she's alive, Matt," Vesper said, still deep within his thoughts, and he placed her hat on her stomach and went to grab her hand, but her opened fist was so frigid that he jumped away in surprise. Trying to overcome the shock of such overwhelming coldness, he looked at Matt, who still wasn't sure whether his companion for life and after was still with him, and he ordered, "Believe that she's alive and she'll come back to us." Matt began to protest, prepared with all the reasons why he shouldn't believe that she survived, and with all the reasons why that's probably a pretty stupid idea, but a single nod from Vesper eliminated those thoughts, and he forced himself to think her to still have some life inside. When Vesper was sure that he had convinced Matt enough that Sora still had a chance, he brushed back the red locks of hair that had fallen upon her face, and he softly spoke, "We can't do it without you." As soon as the words came out of his mouth, she began to stir, and after a few seconds her eyes opened to find Vesper staring at her, his blue eyes full of happiness that she'd rejoined him. She tried to speak, but he shushed her and urged her to take a little nap, so she readily complied, since she did have a mighty headache that she kept to herself, and he picked her up as she prepared to finish the sleep a little more comfortably. As Vesper took her out of the room, with the others following right behind her, the tear that had struck her from above trickled off of her forehead and landed without a sound on the ground, permanently leaving her mark on the world. "How did you know that she was alive, and more importantly, why did she only wake up when you spoke to her?" a confused Misty asked, for she really didn't understand the events that had just transpired. Vesper stopped dead in his walk, turned around to face the others, with an exhausted Sora completely asleep in his arms, and he replied with great confidence, "She can always hear her big brother." End of Chapter 3 Well, now that you know what Vesper has to do with a lot of the characters in this story, I bet you're feeling that you're not so much in the dark now. As of now, I'm planning to have you figure out what happens when Misty decides to take a swim - and doesn't find what she expects - in Chapter 4, which I hope to have out soon. Just to juice it up a little, I'll probably throw in a couple of unexpected events to make Chapter 4 something you'll want to read. As a matter of fact, my e-mail address just happens to be David8285@aol.com, and I'd really appreciate some kind of response to this story, even if you thought it was the biggest waste of time you've ever encountered! Until our paths cross again ... au revoir!