Trick looked up at Matt in alarm and confusion, his eyes filled with tears. "What's going on!?"

"...Who the hell took that...where's NEAR!?" Matt pulled open the back door and checked B's pulse. "Trick, did you see anything? Course not, you were with me!"

He growled.

"Shit- shit- shit!" Matt screamed.

He jumped in alarm as the lights flickered on. Trick jumped in alarm as Matt winced and began to look around, before pulling a spare pair of goggles from the glove compartment and handing them over. "Matt!"

"Thanks." Matt pulled them on quickly and waited for his vision to return. "...Near took off in the bus."

Matt sighed.

"Unless Beyond has another accomplice and we won't know until he wakes up." Matt groaned.

"I don't think Near was himself," Trick whispered, weakly. "When he splashed Next... he was standing all wrong... he was leaning differently... Zero told us to keep track of the way people stand. He wasn't... does that make any sense?"

"...I think so." Matt sighed before he moved over and leaned down to Trick. "Will you help me?"

He nodded, slowly, trying to put on a brave face.

"Okay, just stay buckled in and then stay close to me." Matt nodded. "We're going after that ambulance and Near, okay?"

"Okay!" Trick cried, moving back into his seat and buckling up.

--Scene Change--

Near wasn't entirely sure how he wound up in the old grave yard on the other side of the forest behind Wammy's... he couldn't really remember stealing the ambulance or ditching it a few blocks ago, nor could he remember walking through the snow in his socks.

But somehow he had wound up inside the gated place, standing in front of a grave marked only as 'M'.

"Why did you leave me?" He found himself asking, but it wasn't as if he was asking it. It was like he was watching someone else do it... like a scene in a movie. "Why did you go...?"

The images flashed before his vision like a grainy movie reel rolling in front of him. In it, he could see him and Mello, standing face to face and talking softly.

"You're not just some tool...why do you put up with it?" Mello asked him and suddenly Near realized he was no longer watching it third-person, but from his own perspective now, through his eyes. "It's so stupid."

'When did he say that to me?' Near wondered to himself, frowning at the memory.

"He never said I was a tool," He replied in the memory, but the voice seemed strange to him. "He isn't like that..."

The shock was just now beginning to settle in while Mello blinked- looking shocked as well.

"...He's what!?" Mello breathed.