The Blue Crush wasn't exactly an upscale club, but it was at least a semi-permanent fixture, unlike most of the roving raves that got busted up by the police and rebuilt over the course of a week.  A former industrial plant closed down due to pollution concerns (being as it is in close proximity to the school) when Kirijio Group moved in and built Gekkoukan, it's hardly posh or polish, but it has been effectively refurbished to convert the old factory manager's overlook into a stage, with the production floor serving as a mass dance floor/moshpit.  The place certainly wasn't Mimiru's first choice, but most of the upscale clubs in the teachers actively enforced age restrictions due to having teachers among their clientele; no amount of fuck-me boots was going to get a visibly underaged girl like herself on stage anywhere better than Escapade.<br/><br/>The night's a bit slow since the semester's just starting--there aren't as many poseurs and thrill-seekers out for their first club experience as there would be midway through the year--and the wide-open factory just seems too big for the crowd.  The acoustics are terrible, of course, kicking back some wicked echoes whenever she tries to go low, and the drummer and bass for the night are wash-outs from last year's crop of wannabes and never-wills who only know a half-dozen songs between them.  Even so, it's better than pissing the night away studying, right?<br/><br/><em>Now let's go back to the middle of the day that starts it all,<br/>I can't begin to let you know just what I'm feelin'<br/>And now the red ones make me fly,<br/>And the blue ones help me fall<br/>And I think I'll blow my brains against the ceiling<br/>And as the fragments of my skull begin to fall,<br/>Fall on your tongue like pixie dust, just think happy thoughts!</em><br/><br/>Midnight came and went.  The crowd thinned out even more into the morning hours rather than growing the way it sometimes would on better nights.  A few people had shown interest...  but not in the music, and she was more in the market for a permanent drummer than she was looking for a<em>sarariman</em>to engage in "subsidized friendship" with.  Not that she figured anyone worth playing to was even in the audience; even in Japan the industrial rock days were long gone, anyone coming to a blown-out factory was probably more interested in a DJ spinning packaged tracks than live music.  Truth be told, she wasn't really hoping for a record executive to fall out of the sky with a contract, anyway, but it would have been nice if someone at least looked like they were<em>listening</em>for a change...<br/><br/>Mimiru ends up closing out her set a bit early--though it's still frightfully late--and bids the bartender adieu, shrugging off a final few thinly-veiled attempts by "gentlemen" to "walk her home".  True, it is a bit of a dare to go walking the streets this time of night dressed the way she is, but Iwatodai isn't exactly a bad town; they get more trouble with school-age thugs and "old man hunters" than with real criminals or psychopaths.  Besides, doesn't it just seem awfully calm tonight, anyway...?<br/><br/>About halfway back she begins to realize that is isn't just calm, it's<em>preternaturally</em>calm.  Normally, she won't see many--if any--people on the streets this time of night, but she can't even heard the distant sounds of automobiles, or spot any lights across the water.  As a matter of fact, there aren't any lights at all: the street lamps are all conspicuously out, she simply hadn't noticed because the moon--god, does it ever look huge tonight!--is casting everything in a glow she wouldn't describe so much as pale as she would "sickly", as if the satellite itself were tinged the faintest shade of putrid green.  The quiet is unnerving; not merely a lack of "ciity noise"--honking car horns, distant trains, water running through storm drains--but even the ambient noise is completely stifled.  Even the buzz of electricity, that constant near-infrasonic hum that permeates virtually the entire modern world, has gone completely mute.  The water in the fountain, no longer arcing and splashing merrily, seems to sit stagnant under the open air, looking for all the world like aging, spilled blood...<br/><br/>Mimiru pauses, placing her palm to her forehead and closing her eyes for a moment.  "God, someone must have slipped me some shit at the club.  Mother fucking sicko perverts.  Ha, I should thank the bastard, this is some pretty metal shit right here..."  At that she reopens her eyes, staring through her splayed fingers with a manic grin, and moves on ahead.  Even as she begins to move forward again, though, something undermines that determined facade; there's something making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck, some flitting thing in the shadows just at the edge of her vision, some quiet whisper that she can almost tell herself she just imagined because of the unnerving, deathly silence.  That strange, undeniable sense of being by yourself, but unfortunately not being alone.<br/><br/>The normally unflappable punk quickens her pace a bit, heading back to the dorm at a steady jog.  There's a moment of panic when she almost forgets the way--she's only been there once, after all--but fortunately the building looms darkly over the horizon by sheer size alone.  The moment she makes it onto the stoop she throws open the door, slamming it shut a bit over-dramatically behind her and pressing her back against it to make certain that it's closed firmly.<br/><br/>...  and blinks in confusion, as she looks around to find the lights on--not many at this time of night, granted, but they're there--and the soft buzz of the air-conditioners has returned.  The resurgent ambient noise drowns out the sound of her own heartbeat and the gentle swish of blood shooting through her veins, which had grown almost deafening in the absolute silence, and outside the safety of the dormitory walls she can even hear the distant sounds of cars working their way down the streets.  Raking her fingers through her hair, she writes it off as a bad trip and starts heading upstairs.