At first, he could hear nothing. He knew he dreamt about something, but whatever dream he had faded away into the abyss. His mind was still submerged somewhere between unconsciousness and consciousness when he felt something pull him towards the real world. Kimberly was starting to wake up. The last thing Kimberly vaguely recalled thinking about was where “that noise” was coming from, before slowly opening his eyes. Kimberly Rene “Fuzzy” Faye woke up in one of the many dorm rooms at Oakridge Military Academy. He spent the first few minutes of the brand new day staring blankly at the dimly lit room. There was nothing particularly interesting to be looking at, but his body refused to do anything else. When his brain was finally awake enough to do actual thinking, it started wondering why it was still kind of dark. To find the answer of this question, Kimberly’s neck gathered all of its strength to slightly turn the head towards the clock. “This is as far we can go”, the muscles of the neck seem to say, “go on without us.” The task was then passed on to the eyes. They locked onto their target. “No… No it could not be. It’s impossible!” [i]…Why am I awake at 6 in the morning after graduation?[/i] “No! Wait, false alarm,” the eyes focused on the clock harder, “it’s 5 in the morning.” [i]Oh. Phew. And here I thought I had gone completely mad. Good. More sleep for me then. Goodnight.[/i] Kimberly prepared himself for a second bedtime rest and would have succeeded had he done so a few seconds earlier. But no. It was too late. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard “that noise”. He thought that maybe it was the last few survivors of last night’s party still partying. Or perhaps no one alive had the strength to turn off the stereo. Either would have been possible, but Kimberly was wrong. The faint noise started to get louder with each passing second. Eventually it became loud enough for Kimberly to realize that the noise was actually samba music. Batucada, to be more exact. Then, after slamming the door open, a mob of singing samba dancers came flooding in, doing what they did best: dance and smile like they meant it. One by one, the performers danced their way further into Kimberly’s room, steadily taking over every free space the not-so-big room had to offer. That’s when he realized this was just one of those moments. Kimberly groaned as he hid himself under the blanket. “You know they’re not going to leave, Kim,” he heard his roommate say. Not that Kimberly needed the reminder. The dark blue mountain on the bed sighed in defeat. Soon after, a mop with a human’s body emerged from the cover and disabled the alarm clock. He didn’t even know why he bothered with the thing: these “people” always woke Kimberly up as early as possible. Kimberly looked up to see that some of the dancers moved onto the furniture, allowing even more dancers into the crowded room. His roommate was sitting on the last dancer free furniture, next to the bed, staring at Kimberly. He smiled, “morning Kim.” --- Kimberly quickly regretted heading for the shower. Why did he do that? He was going to do manual labor outside that involved dirt. He should have taken a bath after the job was done. More importantly, he was forced to shower in front of an audience. They may not be “real”, but they were real enough for any stripper to blush. Kimberly was cornered into the bathroom wall, surrounded by constantly smiling, never blinking dancers who continued to face toward Kimberly’s direction. When Kimberly stayed in the shower a little too long for their liking, the performers started to zero in on the giant. Some even managed to get into the shower with him. Not only were constantly smiling, never blinking dancers watching Kimberly every move, but now, Kimberly could not look anywhere without seeing them, except for the ceiling---… wait, he lied. NOW Kimberly had people dancing on the ceiling as well. Though they did not [s]say[/s] sing it, Kimberly thought they were upset that he was getting water on him while they died of thrust outside. [i]I doubt you would want to hydrate yourself with hot water guys.[/i] Kimberly turned off the water and managed to squeeze pass the dancers to get to the medicine cabinet. He ingested his well-needed medication, brushed his teeth, got dressed, and left the room with gardening tools, all while attempting to ignore his elaborate musical hallucination. Kimberly passed by the cafeteria kitchen on his way out. Although the cafeteria was not technically opened just yet, the kitchen staff worked diligently on preparing breakfast for the students and teachers of Oakridge Academy. The staff looked surprised that Kimberly came early, but once they saw his attire, they knew where he was heading. Kimberly paid for his bento, which waited to be picked up by him everyday, and went on his merry way. He could have simply eaten at the cafeteria if he wanted to, but that tended to create unwanted attention. The walk down the hallways was like a parade: the dancer’s movement became more energetic, more imaginary people joined in on the singing, and the music that literally came from nowhere started to speed up its tempo. It was more than obvious the performers were unable to contain their excitement. “Don’t worry… I’ll get there…” Two undergraduates, unfortunate enough to have been walking in the halls at that time, jumped to the side in fear when Kimberly suddenly mumbled something. The giant blushed faintly and continued to walk towards the doors. He had failed to notice the younger students walking when his hallucinations used up most of his senses. [i]Poor things.[/i] Of course no sane person saw or heard what Kimberly experienced. He was going to have to expect some new rumors about him for the next few days. --- He should have expected to see the imaginary carnival when he finally reached the school’s garden. Yet there he was, standing there, watching the non-existent attraction play out before him. It rained imaginary confetti, extravagant parade cars of various shapes and sizes scattered around the school grounds served as a stage for a number of imaginary performers, and thousand of imaginary beings danced and sang in perfect unison. From how they the show went on, Kimberly could tell this morning musical was at its climax. The performers gave it their all and when the show came to an end, they all posed for Kimberly. An awkward silence passed between Kimberly and the imaginary entertainers. The performer’s creepy smiles never disappeared from their faces, but their body movements indicated that they were not sure what to do next. They were waiting for Kimberly’s response. After double-checking that there were no real people around to catch him in the act, Kimberly finally applauded. The imaginary performers’ plastered smile shined brightly more than ever as they bowed to the only audience they were ever going to have. When their heads rose up, their eyes twinkled with anticipation, a hope that their show was enough to appease their gardener. For the first time that day, Kimberly took a good look at the damage the graduation party had actually done to the school garden. Messy… was an understatement. The garden looked like it was hit by a natural disaster. A warzone even. Garbage was all over the place; a number of plants were trampled on or were pulled completely out of the dirt only to be tossed aside; pools of vomit were spotted in certain areas; traces of urine dripped off some of the plants; some trees had broken branches; and a number of drunken bodies were found dead asleep across the campus. Kimberly sighed and turned his attention back to where the army of imaginary entertainers was standing. This time, however, there were no performers in sight. Whether the medication had finally decided to kick in or his brain was just tired of making things up, Kimberly knew not, but the fictitious carnival vanished from existence and was replaced with reality. It was the world normal people saw… with an added bonus of spirits that hovered in the air silently. “You know… what would be great?” Kimberly smiled at the spirits as he rolled up his sleeves. “For more people to think that Kim is even crazier by dancing to music that they can’t hear?” Kimberly’s “roommate” appeared out of nowhere only to disappear once again. Kimberly could feel the confusion emitting off of the spirits. Sarcasm was not exactly a spirit’s strong suit. Kimberly rephrased his roommate’s statement, “to listen… to some music while I work…” The spirit of sound was more than happy to oblige to the request. --- Despite working on the gardens for the entirety of the morning, and even getting assistance from the official gardeners and janitors of the academy, Kimberly was nowhere near completing his garden-cleaning quest when the school’s intercom summoned Kimberly and his friends. For some odd reason he never thought that the announcement was about the Special Warfare and Reconnaissance Group. In fact, Kimberly guessed that Roy had seriously messed something up last night that the old gang was called in for interrogation. He felt slightly guilty for making such assumptions about Roy, but then again, it was Royce “Punk---… Puck” Guyvers. No one could blame Kimberly for thinking Roy did something stupid… right? “Sure, Kimberly.”