Seemingly at peace, Gumi scanned the lab, moving just her eyes.

Molecular recombinant centrifuge. Used for matching DNA to cybernetic implants. Priority level low. Body image scanner. Used for mapping internal organs. Priority level medium. Dermis surfactant lipids. Used to prep tattoo interface insertion. Priority level high.

With a sonic blast from her guitar, Gumi destroyed the lab's stock of dermis surfactant lipids. Her eyes then fell upon the clean room where the injured scientist lay groaning in its doorway.

Bio-clean room. Used for synthesizing Powder of God. Priority One. Professor Tatu Hikari. Chief Science Officer. Priority One.

Gumi lined herself up with the entranceway to the clean room, amping her guitar to a volume capable of destroying living flesh.

It's been so long since I've obliterated anyone! Oh, this feels so good!

"No!" she boomed out loud, turning to face the exit from the cybernetics lab a split second before delivering the deadly note to the doctor. The door to the lab flew off its hinges and Gumi bolted through it. She headed down the passageway until she reached a service elevator.

She analyzed its access panel. Secure elevator to Captain's ready room. Keycode access Three-Two-Oh-Four-Nine.

She pressed the buttons that activated the code and the elevator doors slid open.

Captain's ready room—Level Six.

Gumi pressed the button for Level Six and the doors slid shut. As she ascended, she analyzed the bio-sheet of her next target.

Captain Bjorn Horace. Priority…

An alarm bell sounded, loud enough to be felt internally.

Ship wide security alert. Restricted access protocols in effect.

The elevator stopped moving immediately, leaving Gumi between decks. Swinging her guitar onto her back, she tore at the elevator's service panel, removing the screws holding it in place using just her fingers. She reached into its workings and clicked the manual override. Then, with all her strength, she pried open the doors. A half meter gap could be seen to the deck below. After disconnecting her guitar and laying it on the floor, she shimmied through the gap while holding onto the guitar's shoulder strap. As she did, she entertained a startling, personal thought.

What the Hell am I doing?

She pulled the guitar from the elevator, reconnected it to her body and surveyed her new location.

Main deck. She located a hidden stairwell. Ship's bridge—two decks up.

She raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, her breasts nearly spilling from her too-big bikini top. The stairwell ended at a reinforced steel door.

Access to bridge and ready room.

Gumi tried the latch, finding the door locked. She prepared her guitar to deliver a sonic blast strong enough to blow it off its hinges.

Inadvisable! The reverberations may kill me.

Emitting a frustrated, wordless scream, Gumi bolted down the stairs one deck and found that door unlocked.

Promenade deck. Secondary bridge access portside.

Gumi exited to an exterior deck of the ship. She found the portside stairs leading to the bridge. After ascending them, another locked steel door stopped her approach again. Screaming out loud at this door, she kicked at it until both her boobs fell out fully from her top. While tucking them back in, she analyzed her next option. A railing and walkway were two meters to her left, with a longer drop down to the promenade deck below between it and her.

Captain's walk. Tertiary bridge access.

Gumi strapped her guitar tightly to her back and climbed atop the railing to the stairway. With grim determination, she leapt for the far railing. After catching it with her fingertips, she scrabbled up and over, landing in a heap on the captain's walk.

She stood up and faced a bank of six full-sized windows. "Hello, boys and girls!" she boomed at the crew manning the helm of the ship on the other side.

Rather than bothering with trying the door, Gumi used sonic blasts from her guitar to blow out half the windows, spraying the bridge and crew with bits of safety glass. She leapt through one of the holes before anyone could recover, to stand atop a control panel. After knocking two crewmen on their butts by kicking them in the face, she sent the rest ducking for cover with more sonic blasts.

One of the crewmen she sent ducking for cover was none other than Captain Horace.

Priority One!

The Captain drew a service revolver, but before he could use it Gumi slammed him into a wall. His arm and shoulder bent behind him, through one of the broken windows, and the revolver fell to the walkway outside. He managed to throw Gumi off himself and to the side, and as the two crewmen she had kicked in the face regained their footing, a third one charged towards her.

Gumi stepped to the side and used the woman's forward momentum to toss her out one of the missing windows, nearly launching her over the railing and to the promenade deck far below.

"Get out of here!" Gumi boomed, shooting sonic blasts in all directions.

She barely missed the remaining crewmen in the room with her. They unlocked the steel door and exited the stairway to the promenade below, running for their lives. At the same time, Captain Horace locked himself in his ready room. This door, however, was not reinforced with steel.

In a matter of two seconds, Gumi had blown it off its hinges. She found the Captain inside with no way out, using the ship's internal phone line.

"Security alert!" he shouted into the receiver. "The helm is breached! Target is on the bridge!"

With a well-aimed sonic blast, Gumi shot the phone from his hand, rendering both unusable.

"Get out of here!" Gumi boomed. "Run away! Now!"

Instead, the Captain charged. Gumi parried with a well-placed knee to his midsection. The man crashed to the floor at her feet, and she sent another sonic blast his way, taking out a bookcase behind him filled with charts and maps. He scrambled through the debris on his hands and knees, searching for a spot from which to charge at her again.

Gumi shot off another blast, blowing out a window near the Captain's head. Before he could set his feet, she now charged at him, bellowing as she approached. With a firm shove and a sickening thud, she sent him through the broken window, crashing down to the promenade deck below. From the vantage point she had above him, she blasted out deck boards near his feet as he hobbled away.

Alone on the bridge, Gumi rendered the ship unsteerable. With a ring of keys she found in the Captain's desk now in her possession, she exited the bridge via the stairs leading to the promenade, heading below decks to destroy the ship's engines.

The bottom of the landing was blocked by a man facing Gumi with his palms exposed. He pursed his macaroon lips and bowed low, until only his cerulean hair could be seen.

"Why are you doing this?" T.O.P. asked plainly, his voice sounding concerned.

Priority One Plus One! Target for immediate obliteration!

"Get out of my way!" Gumi boomed from the top of the landing.

"I can't. Something's wrong. You're endangering my crew."

Gumi blasted everything near T.O.P., missing him by inches.

If her eyes still had tears ducts, tears would have welled in them. "Leave me alone!" she cried. "Run away!"

T.O.P. ascended the stairs towards Gumi, flinching at some of the blasts. His lips retained their fullness as his smile stretched ever wider. It finally stopped growing when the softness of his cheeks met the firmness of his eyes. She stood stock still and breathless, mesmerized by their cobalt steel blue glow.

"Gumi," he said from two stair steps away.

"Augh!" she hollered back.

Whirling on her heels, she put the ring of keys in her mouth and climbed onto the railing, jumping again for the captain's walk. Now on the other side of the ship, she lowered herself to the promenade and ran, tucking in her boobs for a second time.

Engine room, five decks down, amid stern.

The shortest way to get there was through the galley, and then storage. On her way, she chanced to read a nameplate on one of the store rooms.

Cooler Three. Unused meat freezer.

Gumi opened the heavy door that led to Cooler Three. The unkempt room was lit by two bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Upon closing the door with her inside, she beat the latch with the guitar until both were broken and unusable. She surveyed the room as her tortured brain immediately tried to find a way to escape the self-made prison.

What is wrong with me?

Using the neck of the guitar she still gripped in her hand, she leapt up and swung at the light bulbs, breaking both of them. Now in total darkness, Gumi wandered about, tripping over clutter and banging into walls and shelves. Her face smacked the cold diamond plate floor when she tripped over a crate the size of a steamer trunk.

A plum-sized lump on her forehead bought her to a brief moment of clarity.

What is wrong with me!?

In the dark, with her head aching from a mild concussion, Gumi hallucinated. Images of schematics and bio-sheets flashed before her eyes. She reached to her temples instinctively, trying to stop the images by removing the training helmet she no longer wore. Instead she found on her face the vocalizer she had stolen from the cybernetics lab. She ripped it off and flung it into the dark. She then tore at her Kool-aid green hair to try to stop the images.

What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me!?

Gumi spent uncounted hours sitting on the crate she had stumbled over. Although she was not in control of the analytical part of her brain, she discovered her creative side still belonged to her. She used it to sing to herself, mostly nonsense at first, until she mastered a way to think without using the damaged part of her brain.

The ship lurched from time to time, buffeted by the sea since no one could man the helm. Twice Gumi fell from her crate when it slid out from under her butt. After a third tumble to the plating that was particularly painful, she crawled about on skinned hands and knees while searching for her seat.

Someone help me! Please!

To keep her mind from analyzing ways to destroy the ship and kill its crew, she sang the same three stanzas of a song out loud, over and over and over. It was a song she had worked on with Miku long ago, before either of them had ever heard of VioLinja. It lay unfinished now for time eternal, buried somewhere in the papers Miku kept in her piano bench at home.

Gumi sang the song to herself as she searched for her crate in the dark.

"My mind fills up with worry as

"My heart uses up hope.

"I face each new uncertainty.

"I struggle hard to cope.

"Sometimes something puts us each

"At each end of our rope."

"When bad things happen to me.

"When words are not enough.

"My lover, my companion

"Is the one that I think of.

"In her eyes I see our laughter.

"In her smile,

"I see love."

"I often think about what falls

"On other peoples' ears.

"Our love's our best accomplishment

"In these important years.

"As your faith gives me confidence,

"Let my strength still your fears."

This was where the song lay unfinished until now, as Gumi worked out its final lyrics while crawling in the dark.

"While my heart fights off hopelessness,

"My mind wanders away.

"The sun at times gets lost behind

"The never-ending rain.

"And then the rain remains in me,

"Swallowing the day."

"We don't need rainbows,

"You and I,

"We don't need pots of gold.

"Just one more time…"

Gumi had to stop singing, for she was choking too hard on sobs. She found her crate and sat on it, wishing she was whole. She wanted to remember what it felt like to be happy, even for just one second. To remember what her life was like before becoming a winnower.

To remember how it felt meeting Miku for the very first time.

Gumi tried to hang her head more than it was already hanging, but her shoulders could not slump further. Gasping and gurgling while holding in slobber, she completed the long-lost and forgotten song, whispering the lyrics instead of singing them.

"Just one more time,

"Just you and me.

"Just one more time.

"Let's run."

Huge tears fell from Gumi's eyes and in the pitch black silence of her prison, she heard them hit the floor.

Splat. Splat. Splat.

Spit and snot were soon to follow, as Gumi bawled out loud. "What's happening to me?"

Suddenly, and with a snort, she leapt from sitting on the crate to kneeling on the floor. She groped for the spot where she had heard the teardrops fall from her eyes.

There they were. All three of them, wet and fresh and wonderful. She struggled to keep on breathing.

I'm crying!

Long ago, the necrosis eating her face had destroyed her tear ducts. Now in the depths of great despair, she wondered out loud if she had truly gone insane.

"I can't cry! It's impossible!"

Slowly, Gumi's hands moved from the floor towards her cheekbones, searching for further signs of wetness.

She never got that far.

A voice called out from what seemed to Gumi to be a nose-length away. In her insanity, it wouldn't have surprised her much to find herself thinking she had company. And the voice she heard was pleasant enough, soft and sweet and kind.

"Gumi?" the voice called.

It wasn't the fact that someone was with her that froze Gumi to the floor.

It was who it was.

"Miku? Is that you?"