[center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKAgo-g5V2E]Apollo Sunshine - We Are Born When We Die[/url][/center]

Johnny wandered off soon after Aquamarine healed him, something about the gathering seemed out of place for a human like him. Somehow he found The Van right where he left it, untouched by both lasers and looters. [color=0054a6][i]"Silver lining."[/i][/color] he thought to himself, mirthlessly and drained. Sliding the door open to a monumental mess, Johnny let out a long and tired sigh, everything just slipping through his lips and into the open air. There was nothing for him in The Van for him, or, at least not for now. It might has well have been a strangers, how everything was thrown about and disorganized...fracturing his very home. Eventually he couldn't look at it anymore, he would have to clean up eventually but for now he would leave it. For another day.

Moving on, Johnny moved about the town in search of anything to occupy his mind. Idly he found his hands on the rock in his pocket, the one he picked up when he first met the Gems. At the time it seemed special, like it meant something. But now, now it was just a cracked, useless, good for nothing waste of space. He wanted to throw it, to smash it against the next car with all he could, but instead the fury melted away and the rock just slipped through his fingers to clank against the ground. This morning everything was grand, he was soaring on cloud nine and life was in his palms. Now, now it all seemed a little empty. The colors seemed a little less, well colorful. He walked on in a haze and it was hard to explain how he felt, helpless was a good word but it didn't quite reach it. Numb sounded better but yet again, that wasn't the right word. In the end, his brush with helplessness and death left Johnny feeling empty, like the void between galaxies.

Within minutes he was back to square one, at the little grocery store where the Mayor tried to patch him up. The little blood stain on the ground was still there and everything. Ignoring it as best he could Johnny walked into the store and found the two things he was looking for, cheap beer and cigarettes. It was funny, you'd think that with how close he was to deaths door that he would stay away from those two items as much as possible, but here he was. In total it was twenty bucks, leaving the money on the counter for the owner to find. Taking out a lighter from his back pocket, Johnny lit the tab and gave it a deep drag. With a slow exhale the air around Johnny became thick with smoke, the bittersweet smell permeating the air. In no time at all Johnny was at The Van, using it as an improvised chair as he sat in the back with the doors wide open. The snap-hiss of a beer can could be heard in the air as a second cigarette was christened into the world, silence dominating the air soon after.