The girl known to everyone as Lucy jolted awake, hearing the voices and shufflings of people in a room.

She tried to look around, but quickly realized that she could see nothing. There was something covering her eyes, blocking her vision entirely. Some kind of fabric, perhaps gauze?

No. That was impossible. She's ensured that those soldiers would hit her directly during the battle. She should be dead now.

But she saw no light at the end of the tunnel, felt nothing but the fabric pulling on her head and the dull aching where her horns had...

That's right. She had them shoot off her one remaining horn. She distinctly remembered the sharp pain of the bone being severed from her skull.

She had underestimated the pain. She had lost her other horn only hours before, but she'd forgotten how destructive it was on her mind, and she'd lost control.

Exactly as she'd planned, she had intended from the start not to return to the Maple House. She didn't deserve to be with Kohta anymore, not now that he knew what she truly was.

Still, that didn't tell her where she was now. Was this the institute? It had the same disgustingly sterile atmosphere she knew all too well.

She hated that smell. It only served to remind her of the horrors she'd been forced to go through in her time there.

No. She would not accept being brought back to that place. She blindly struggled to sit up, and was about to start clawing at the bandages when a voice stopped her.

"Woah, there, calm down." said someone, a young man by the inflection, who couldn't have even been even old enough to drink, much less work at the DRI.

The tone in his voice only served to anger her. How dare he speak so casually, as if she was no longer a threat! She may be unable to see under these god forsaken bandages, but she still had her famed weapons!

She felt one of her invisible Vectors creep out from behind her. Good, they were fully functioning. That meant she could teach this impudent boy a lesson.

The Vector shot forward, and she grinned madly, ready to savor in the choked screams she usually heard from her victims-

The grin dropped as she felt a resistance, and her Vector was stopped entirely. What had happened? She was certain nothing had blocked it, he was just too close, and she had plenty of length left in the limb.

The boy just laughed again. "Calm down there, I'm not your enemy." he said calmly, far too calmly considering he was inches away from his body being ripped in half.

She grit her teeth, sending another Vector out, but that too was stopped by the same resistance. This time, however, it was accompanied with a bolt of pain spiking through her head, like a lightning strike hitting her skull. It felt like her brain was on fire, and she quickly retracted the arms, not wanting to damamge her obviously injured body any more.

It was odd. She had no desire to live anymore and by all rights should be dead, but this child's insolence overwrote that with a burning anger at the sheer amount of pluck he mustered in his voice. It was as if he wasn't afraid AT ALL of her!

She spoke her concerns with a voice covered by her closed teeth. "Why are you so casual?" she spat. "Do you know what I am?!"

The man chuckled, only serving to anger her more. "Of course I do. You're just a girl who happens to have a special characteristic."

The utter honesty of the answer silenced her, and she stared at the boy, not that she could see him over the bandages. She reached to remove them, and felt a hand on hers.

She jolted back, lowering her hand with a jerk. "I suggest that you don't do that." he said quietly. "You'll have to wear those for a little longer while the marks heal."

"M-Marks?!" Lucy asked incredulously. "What did you people do to me?"

"We saved your life, that's what we did. Your horns. They were gone, and the wounds were turning rancid, so I had the doctors here smooth out the remaining bone to your skull level. In other words, your horns are gone."