Chapter Two: Darkness

First Floor: Dining Room

Time since arrival: 15 minutes

With all of us working together we got everything set up for our base of operations in no time. Thanks to the power generators the Remnants brought we had power for everything including the lights for which I was grateful. We decided to all sit down to eat dinner when Shig nudged me.

"Hey Aaron. You need to totally ask her now before anything happens. With these other kids things might get ruined." He was whispering in my ear. I decided he was right. These guys didn't look like they were fooling around and neither did Tomoyo. So I motioned her to walk with me and just as we got up to leave Tomoyo stopped us.

"Do you think this a good idea?", she said to us. Again that feeling was back and again I ignored it.

"Yeah." I replied. "I need the space." She looked at me and frowned then sighed as she handed each of us a crucifix, salt, a pocket bible, and some charms. We said thank you and pulled out our flashlights and began walking down the dark hallway.

The building was decrepit looking. Cracks in the walls were matched by cracks in the ceiling. The floor was littered with debris and holes. The hallway way seemed to extend forever and eventually we got to a point where we couldn't see the light from the dinning area anymore. I couldn't help myself anymore and grabbed her hand.

"Akane." I said to her. "These last two years have been the best two years of my life so far. I want to spend the rest of my life with you." I got down on one knee and fumbling through the act I pulled out a beautiful gold ring. "Akane Fuyjibashi. Will you marry me? I love you." As I said that to her I could feel my hands shaking. I knew I was sweating but I held firm.

"Before I give you my answer you need to know something." She said. I began to get really nervous now. "Ive known all week you planned this. You're not exactly sneaky hehe." She grabbed a hold of me kissed me then put on the ring. "I'll be with you for the rest of my life."

We went back to the dinning area and showed everyone the ring but no one was excited. In fact everyone seemed to be preoccupied by the monitors. Akio motioned for us to sit down.

"As you know we put a camera at the gate and at the entrance facing the gate." He said. "What do you see on the video?" Akane answered him. "The one at the gate shows the vehicles and the sidewalk. But the one at the entrance shows nothing but trees. Thats odd there were no trees here were there?" Haruka looked at her and shook her head. "There havent been trees here for about 70 years." At that moment Shig, Phillipi, Akio, and myself ran to the entrance.

"Wheres the door? I know its here somewhere." I said. All we could find along the floor were windows and a stairway. "Lets go back." said Akio. We walked back to the dinning area to find the entire room wrecked. It looked as though someone had thrown all of the table and chairs into a corner and slammed down all of the equipment. The girls were nowhere to be found but I did find Tomoyos bag.

"Should we see if anything useful is in there?" Phillipi asked. We all nodded in unison. Inside the bag we found four bottles of holy water, some charms, two crucifixes, four knives, a 500 Smith n Wesson revolver and two boxes of shells that read silver ballistic tip. We each picked up the supplies and since I had experience using guns I grabbed the revolver. We turned around and felt the building shake everything went black.