He supposed that he should be doing something more active than walking down the street, but with all the confusion lately, he didn't see that he had many options other than to entertain himself. After all, Ryouma was busy testing his limits on his own somewhere, and all his other playmates seemed to be wandering off in the wake of the Nationals.

"She's been trying to reach you Herself, she has," Mad Hettie said in lieu of a greeting. John had a bad feeling that he knew the 'Herself" Hettie was refering to. "She's been tryn' but you've been shuttin' her out the way you shut out everything so I'm here to tell you and you're here to listen, Johnny-lad."

"No one has done the triumvirate ceremony since before the first wars,"Noise said. Kurai made small sound of agreement. "You don't have to do this," Noise said, rather plaintively. "Besides, you have to be a triumvirate and you're just you."

It was the Witch's shattered realm that eventually drew her--with all its psychic pain and loneliness like a blackened mirror for her own.

She turned away from Noise's worried eyes to contemplate the perfect silver bubble that had manifested on the out edges of her realm. The bubble touched Assiah, butting up against so closely that it seemed to rub raw the psychic skin keeping the planes apart. Staring at it she thought she saw flickering images of a castle, a forest, a cathedral, and for a moment, and endless plain of horizons. She didn't really know how she was going to get from the here of Gehenna to the there of the not quite real place inside that bubble. Not knowing what else to do she placed her hands against the silver, misty edge and pushed forward.