"A Heavy Loss"

"Ahh," Lance breathed, rolling his eyes. "The tourbus. Home sweet home."

Justin, throwing his suitcase on his bunk, picked up on Lance's sarcasm and had to agree. "Yeah," he sighed, "it's gonna be hard being on this little, stifling bus after experiencin' the Orlando air."

Tammy and JC glanced at each other. JC sent her a smile that said, "Just deal with their complaining; it's gonna go on for a while." Tammy nodded and sat down on the couch. Sitting down next to her, JC asked, "How do you feel?"

"What do you mean 'how do I feel'?" Tammy asked back with amusement.

"Well," JC continued slowly, "when we got to Orlando, we never saw you. Everytime we called you never answered. Justin said when he went to visit you, you looked so tired."

"So?" Tammy countered.

"So…" JC grinned. "I was worried. As usual," he added, pinching her nose between his index and middle finger.

"Ow!" Tammy cried, smacking his hand away and laughing. She glared at him with a smile on her face. "Why do I like hanging around you?"

"'Cause I'm so good looking," JC replied smugly.

"Whatever," Tammy rolled her eyes, getting to her feet. "I gotta find my boom box." She went to her bunk and rummaged through her suitcase. With a triumphant shout, she pulled out her boom box and her CD carrier. Carrying the goods back to the front of the bus, she called, "It's party time!"

"Already? Don’t wanna wait 'til tonight? Club time," Joey grinned wolfishly.

"Tonight?" Chris questioned. "What are you talkin' about, Joe? We're gonna be on the bus all day. We gotta get to D.C. then New York in the next three days."

"Exactly," Tammy chirped. "Since we can't go to the club tonight, we'll have a club on the bus."

Justin chuckled, and started to reply just as a cell phone went off. All six of them reached for their phones, then groaned at the same time. "That was sooo predictable," JC moaned.

"That was so dumb," Joey added.

"That was so 'Clueless'," Justin rolled his eyes.

"I don't know why you're complainin', Justin," Lance asked. "You looked the dumbest."

"What do you mean?" Justin asked, frowning.

"I mean," Lance chuckled, "that your cell phone has music on it as opposed to a ringer. Why did you reach for your phone? Dumbass," he added as Justin blushed.

"What a group," Chris smirked. He leaned over and flicked on Tammy's radio. "Oh gag me," he said, as a Backstreet Boys' song came on.

"It's hard to believe how well you guys hide your dislike for them," Tammy remarked, answering her phone.

"That's just part of our natural charm," Joey shrugged.

Tammy covered her other ear to block out the music and spoke into the phone. "Say what?" she scowled. "Man, I don't fuckin' believe this… hold on a sec." She looked up at the other guys and said, "Pardon me, but I gotta go talk to Serena right quick, aight?" With that, she walked to the back of the bus.

Justin gazed at her as she walked off and chewed his bottom lip. "What's her deal?" he asked his groupmates.

"What do you mean?" Chris asked, browsing through Tammy's massive CD collection. He suddenly grinned, "Wow! The Goo Goo Dolls! Who knew?"

JC glanced at Justin, then back out the window, replying, "I know what you mean, J. There's something about her that she's not telling."

"Should we ask her?" Justin asked.

"Nope…" Lance jumped in. The other four looked at him. "Tammy respects our privacy, and she's always nice to us and never disrespects us. The most we can do is respect her privacy. Besides," he continued, his green eyes lighting up a bit with some laughter, "she'd beat us senseless if she suspected we were in her business."

"I guess," Justin reluctantly agreed, shrugging, "I mean, it's not like she's speaking to me, anyway."

"Yeah, what's up with that?" Joey asked. "She hasn't spoken to you in over four days. Is she mad at you?"

"I guess," Justin sighed. He went on, "I mean, I asked her about it, and she just glared at me and walked away." He smiled ruefully at his friends and added, "I took that as a yes."

"What did you do to make her so mad?" Lance questioned, quirking an eyebrow.

Justin scowled. "Why is it that I immediately had to do something to her? Why can't she just have a stick up her ass about something and she's taking it out on me?"

"Let me answer this one," Joey told the others with a small laugh. He turned to Justin, "First off, Tammy never just gets sticks up her ass about something. And if she does," he added, "she too big of a person to take it out on just one of us."

"Yeah," Chris agreed with a laugh, "she'd take it out on all of us."

"Or none of us," JC added.

"Plus," Joey continued, "you're Justin… you had to have done something to her, 'cause you're the only one that annoys her to the point where she actually wants to harm the rest of us for no reason."

The entire group busted up laughing as Justin sat back and pouted. Suddenly, he sat up. "Hey guys," he said, "you think it might have something to do with the fact that I threw her in the ocean?"

"You threw her in the what?" Lance asked, alarmed.

"Oh," JC laughed, "you totally missed it." He turned to Chris, "Remember when we were at the beach the day after J and Tammy won the b-ball competition?"

"Oh yeah," Chris drawled. "What a time that was…"

"The next day," Justin frowned, "she wouldn't even talk to me. I don't know what I did wrong."

"You really threw her into the ocean?" Lance asked with a look of shock on his face.

Justin shrugged uneasily. "I mean, it was all good. I knew she could swim, and I mean, even if she didn't come up, I'd have jumped in after her."

"But what about the currents? The Atlantic is known for it's wicked undertow. She could've been killed," Lance scowled.

"But she wasn’t," Justin snapped. "Besides, you're missing the point. For some reason, Tammy won't speak to me."

"Can you blame her?" Lance muttered, looking out the window. He was pissed that Justin threw her over the dock, true, but what annoyed him more was when Tammy seemed unhappy. He shot a quick glare to Justin, who merely stared straight ahead, seemingly in thought. It always has to be about Justin, Lance thought with a scowl. Tammy could've been hurt, yet I'm missing the point, which (as usual) revolves around him. He got up to go look for Tammy. When he walked to the back of the bus and didn't see her, he immediately assumed that she was in her bunk, which was where he headed.

While Justin relayed the story to the others about the beach, Tammy was laying in her bunk talking on the phone to Serena. "Man, what's goin' on?" she whispered.

"You can't talk, huh? Think the boys might here ya?" Serena questioned.

"They might," Tammy answered.

"We figured that," Serena sighed. "Come to the spiritual plane with us right quick, aight? This is important."

Tammy agreed and hung up her phone. She immediately started the obligatory breathing sequences to get her body and mind relaxed. With that out of the way, she focused her mind and spirit on where her friends were. Seconds later, Tammy walked through a fog into what appeared to be a living room decorated with black leather and monochrome tables, chairs, and electronics. "Isabella's dream world?" Tammy questioned, sitting next to Michelle on a leather love seat.

"You know it," Isabella replied with her trademark devilish grin.

"So what's up, y'all?" Tammy inquired.

"We've got trouble," Michelle answered. "We just found out that Rakshiki has unleashed three of his workers in the New York, D.C, and L.A. area. They've apparently decided to cut the BS and are completely gung-ho about finding the child."

"Are they any closer?" Yasmine asked, a worried frown on her face.

"Not from what I know," Michelle answered. She pushed her brown hair out of her eyes and said, "Me and Isabella quickly convened with the Elders. They gave us some clues…"

"And?" Serena asked.

"We couldn't decipher 'em," Isabella sighed. "That's why we need Tammy so badly. They'll show you more than they'd show us."

"Okay," Tammy said, "let's do it."

The five girls sat in a circle and focused their attention so that they minds were in the state of nothingness. No thought, no feeling, just the state of not knowing, which is hard to do. For the next thirty seconds, the girls saw and felt nothing, but suddenly, all five saw a crying baby boy of eight months being bathed by brown hands. The scene panned outwards, and the three saw a lake and a tree, but not who was with the baby. Then, the scene shimmered and the girls were thrown back to their spiritual awareness.

"What the fuck was that?" Isabella scowled. "We still got nothin'."

"Not true," Tammy replied pensively. She smiled softly at her friends. "You guys didn't feel it?" she asked.

"Feel what?" Yasmine shrugged.

Tammy looked her in the eye. "That was the child. You didn't feel the peace he radiated, even as he was crying?"

"I felt it," Serena nodded. "But what about the other stuff? We still don't know where he is."

"Once again," Tammy replied, "that's not true. Did y'all see what kinda tree that was?"

"I saw the tree, but I couldn't identify it if my life depended on it," Michelle said.

"Too bad," Isabella chuckled, "since our lives kinda do depend on it."

"That tree," Tammy said, glaring at Isabella, "was a Ginko Biloba… they're extinct except for one area that they are found."

"And where might that be?" Yasmine asked Tammy.

"It might be in Timbuktu, but it ain't," she answered. "They're found only in Japan."

"Japan?" Isabella yelped. "What is that brown skinned child doin' in Japan?"

"Cryin'," Yasmine answered. She looked at her four friends. "So, in the words of Deborah Cox, where do we go from here?"

"We go to Japan," Tammy shrugged.

Isabella sighed. "I knew it was gonna come to this. When do we leave?"

"After we wipe out Rakshiki's henchmen," Tammy frowned. "Who knows what havoc they can reek in three major U.S. cities? Or," she finished shakily, "what info they can let slip about us."

"Good point," Isabella said. She turned serious. "But on to some more important news…"

"What's more important than this?" Serena asked.

"'NSync," Isabella answered.

"Figures," the other four girls replied in unison. Michelle went on, "What do you wanna know, Belle? Justin's shoe size?"

"Lance's favorite color?" Serena volunteered.

Yasmine joined in the fun. "Who's single? And remember, Chris is taken."

Isabella rolled her eyes. "No way," she said, looking at Tammy. "I wanna know what's up with you and Justin, dog. You've been iggin' him for quite some time now. I thought y'all were unstoppable after that victory over BSB."

"We were," Tammy frowned, the mere thought of Justin enough to put her in a crappy mood.

"So what happened?" Michelle wanted to know.

"You guys know how he threw me into the ocean, right?" Tammy asked.

"Yeah," Isabella laughed, "that was funny. So? You didn't seem to have a problem with it."

"I didn't at first. Then," Tammy sighed, "I went home and changed. That's when I noticed it."

"Noticed what?" Yasmine frowned.

In reply, Tammy pulled the collar of her shirt away from her neck. "Notice anything strange?" she asked.

Isabella picked up on it immediately. "Where's your necklace?"

The necklace she was referring to was the only piece of jewelry Tammy ever wore. Two years prior, Tammy's best friend was shot once in the neck and killed instantly. Tammy went to the morgue to view the body, and on a whim, morphed into a snake and slithered into where the body of her friend was just to say one last goodbye. She didn't know where the man performing the autopsy was, and didn't care to know. She figured she only had a couple of minutes before he came back, though. After she morphed back to her original form, she noticed a single, bloody bullet on the counter. Looking quickly around, she picked it up and after saying her final goodbye, morphed back into a snake and left as the coroner came back in. Later that night, Tammy drilled a small hole into the bullet and put it on a pure gold chain. The bloody bullet directly contrasted the beauty of the chain that it hung from, a constant reminder to Tammy of how beautiful, precious, and fragile life is, and how easily it can be stolen by something no bigger than her pinky finger. Tammy never once took off that necklace, not even in the shower, for it carried great sentimental value.

"The necklace is on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean," Tammy replied, as a single tear slid down her cheek.

"Oh no…" Michelle breathed, brushing Tammy's tear away. "Can't you try to find it? I mean, when you focus, you can see up to one hundred miles away. All of us can. Our senses are that good."

"Nope," Tammy sighed. "It's gone. Forever."

"I know you were crushed," Serena scowled.

"Crushed?" Tammy replied. "I cried all that night."

"Damn…" Michelle whispered. She spoke up. "Does Justin know?"

"Nope," Tammy answered. "I won't speak to him. I can't speak to him."

"Uh-oh…" Isabella said suddenly.

"What?" Yasmine wanted to know.

Isabella appeared to be looking at the floor. "Lance is looking for Tammy. He's going to her bunk now, and since she's on the spiritual plane, I don't think he'll be too comfortable with what he sees." She gestured downwards, and Tammy saw her body floating a few inches off the bed, a common side effect of leaving one's body. "Uh-oh," she said, jumping to her feet. "I gotta go. I'm outta here y'all. I'll see ya when I see ya."

With that, she focused her mind back on her body and could feel herself flying through the different densities faster than the speed of light. She could see Lance talking through her curtain and knew that if she didn't respond, he was gonna open the curtain to see if she was okay. As fast as she was travelling, though, that still wasn't enough time to head off Lance. She jumped back into her body just as he pulled back her curtain, resulting in her third density body dropping to the bed just as Lance opened the curtain completely.

"Are you alright?" he looked at her strangely.

"Sure," she replied. "I was just turning over. Wassup?"

Lance knelt down at her bed and rested his chin on his hands, his elbows on the edge of her bed. "I noticed what's been going on between you and Justin. Wanna talk about it?"

"Do you wanna hear it?" Tammy asked with a sad smile.

"Of course," Lance replied with a smile.

"Okay, here goes," Tammy said, taking a deep breath, and started to talk.