A/N: Wow, just reread the first chapter and facepalmed at my terribly inconsistent POV. I've decided to correct this 6 years after the fact! It is now uniformly in a first-person narrative. Other than that, I've left the rest of it untouched - it's fun reading stuff I wrote so long ago! BTW, find-and-replace is amazing.

A/N deux: Hokay, so, this chapter made nearly no sense in conjunction with the rest of the chapters. So, I took the liberty of retroactively fixing some of my poor writing, and it's a little better now. Any new readers, hopefully you read the rest and enjoy! Any old readers, well, thank you for your continued support and I appreciate you sticking with me all these years. I plan on updating this story soonTM, so keep posted! Also, REVIEW! I love that shit.

I knew I wouldn't see Haruko again. Looking out after the pink-haired beauty while she road her vespa into space, I had known that. Why and how, I didn't know, but that didn't bother me one bit.

What did bother me, was the plain fact that I would never lay my eyes on her slim, curvy figure, her short pink hair that hung down her head and met her shoulders, those glowing yellowish-green eyes that gleamed with mischief, those supple red lips I yearned to kiss, all gone, and never to come back.

I wished it wasn't so, but I can't deny what my heart tells me. I really did love her, and that was one thing that could never go away, no matter how much I convinced myself otherwise. After trying everything else, I decided to put up an illusion that it was only a childish crush on an older, more developed woman.

In the end, I ended up falling for that illusion, and soon enough she had vanished into the deepest recesses of my mind, buried behind everything else. It did the job, and I got on with my boring, average life. After a few years, as far as I was concerned, Haruko was just a long forgotten dream I had when I was young. Nothing more, nothing less.

It began like every other day had; boring and annoying. After graduating from High School, it's been one tiresome day after another. Even though I had finally escaped the hell that was grade school, I just ended up entering into a different hell called college.

I currently live in an apartment I bought with the money I got from my father's book, which had gotten sudden popularity and gave us a good amount of wealth. It was of medium size, with the rent pretty average and the initial cost cheaper then most.

It had a small bathroom that was connected to a reasonably sized bedroom, and a living room that doubled as a kitchen. Not too bad compared to the other ones I saw, which had pretty much everything combined into one small space.

I decided against a dorm room for the sole reason of the fact that I would have to share. I hated sharing with anyone, and I decided that I wanted something that I myself owned. Plus, I really don't want to get to know and live with people who go to a robotics college in this shit town - hell, I can barely stand myself.

So why go to college when I knew I'd hate it? Well, sadly, my desire to learn about the one thing I do love overpowered my hate - robotics. I became interested in robots after that weird dream I had when I was twelve, and began to study them ever since. I gained quite a bit of knowledge of them from the robot-maid that stayed at my house. I don't quite remember where the robot had come from, but I never really thought about it for long.

It taught me a great deal about how robots work and what working designs looked like using text and pictures that appeared on the t.v screen that doubled as its head. After finishing high school with honors, I decided I would pursue my passion for robots, stay in this garbage-dump of a town, enter its one scum-filled college and, well, I can safely say I regret it.

Now I was here, in my apartment, laying down under the covers on my bed and trying to get some sleep. Though it was a only a young Friday night, I was feeling abnormally tired. Even so, I couldn't seem to drift off into that euphoric state called sleep. Apparently, shutting my eyes as tight as humanly possible and screaming at my mind to turn off didn't work as well as it used to.

After an hour of trying to force sleep upon myself, I got up off the bed and went to the kitchen, taking out one of five glasses I took with me to the apartment and filling it with water. With one swift gulp, I swallowed down the tasteless liquid and set the cup onto the counter. Opening the small window above the sink, I looked out into the night sky.

I felt an odd tingling sensation run up my spine, but I just shouldered it off as a reaction to the cold air that came rushing in. Staring intently at the full moon that floated in the sea of black, I began to drift into my thoughts that seemed to attack me relentlessly.

Closing my eyes, images of a vibrant pink-haired woman appeared beside a younger version of me, with her holding said person in a headlock and grinning devilishly, came suddenly and seemed like I was actually looking at it in real life. I felt my head burning up and started to see a huge horn pop out of the forehead of my younger self. It turned into a hand, which in turn turned into a body, and then it started to become the pink-haired girl.

She pulled out of younger-me's head and had a wild grin spread across her face. She held a guitar in one hand and wore a bunny outfit that looked oddly out of place. She suddenly turned around and swung the guitar in a wide arc, hitting him square in the head and sending him far back. A few moments later, a giant flaming bird rose into the sky and pierced the air with a sharp screech.

The sudden vision had frightened me and I ripped open my eyes, the moon glaring brightly in my sight. I slowly turned my eyes away from the night sky and moved back to my bedroom, not bothering to close the window. I moved stiffly, not paying any attention to my surroundings. I dropped onto my bed, forgetting my covers, and fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.

I tore my head to the left, hearing a loud screech that sounded as if it was escaping from death. I stared wide-eyed at a large, flaming red being that rose to the sky as if pulled by strings. It had large wings that was the size of a skyscraper, and had fiery feathers that seemed to reach out to the depths of space. I squinted my eyes and tried to make out what the thing was, and soon made it out as a falcon molded out of lava.

The wings suddenly flicked down towards the ground and swiftly rose high into the sky, shaking the ground violently. I struggled to keep my footing while the earth rumbled and continued to stare after the creature that had caused the world to spin. After the last light of the giant bird left the sky, I heard a female voice curse not to far away from me. I turned toward the voice sharply, wondering who it could have been.

I laid my eyes on the source of the voice – a young woman sitting on a large, floating motorcycle – and gaped openly at what I saw. She was beautiful, with her short light-pink hair stopping at her shoulders and mischievous yellow-green eyes looking out after the giant falcon that had disappeared into the universe. She turned her head towards me and looked at me sharply, as if blaming me for its escape. She then closed her eyes and let out a sigh, parting her lips slightly. I felt an urge to kiss those lips, but knew that she wasn't for me.

"Well, thanks to you, Ta, I've lost that bastard again. You want to come with me? No, it'd never work out. You're still a kid, after all." She started up her vehicle and drove through the air, going up over the clouds. I didn't know why, but at that moment I felt like a lost, abused puppy. A shimmer atop a flat rock caught my eye, and I maneuvered my way over to it. It was a Rickenbacker Bass. I wasn't sure why I knew its name, but all the same I lifted it up off the rock and held it up. I felt moisture build up in my eyes, but I blinked it away and gave a little smile. It was a smile of resignation.