A/N: Okay, yeah, about four weeks or more of nothing. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...

I was off at camp. At a creative writing camp. Happy? It'll make this story better.

Supposedly.

"Who are you?" Miyoko asked.

"What kind of question is that?"

"Who are you?" she repeated.

"I'm, uh, Katsu. You didn't know that?" He looked uncomfortable.

"You're not just Katsu. I don't want a name. I want an identity," Miyoko pressed. Katsu sighed.

"Katsu is one of my names. I'm also known by other names,"

"Is Katsu an alias or your real name?"

"Alias."

"I don't think your going to tell me your real name," said Miyoko. She wasn't asking, just saying.

"That is correct."

"Why are you being so formal?"

"Just because."

"…"

"So, what do you do? I mean, it seems like you're up to something, and getting away from Kazuo's palace… To me it seemed like you were setting something in motion." Miyoko said after a while.

"Maaayyybe." Katsu's voice turned playful. Miyoko pinched her clasped hands in an attempt to not lose her temper.

"Is it a resistance?" Katsu nodded and Miyoko gaped. "Are you serious. You're not serious. No way. Oh, my – how do you think you're going to pull this off? How? Kazuo has the backing of the entire world against any rebellions, nothing's worked for the past thousand years, –"

"I have plans," Katsu interrupted coldly. Miyoko opened her mouth to say something, but the look on Katsu's face, so disdainful, prevented her from saying it.

Amaya was surprised. From one sentence to another, from one breath to another, the young man – boy? – could change from playfulness to condescendence. His mood swings, Amaya thought, are definitely a sign that he's not stable.

"Um," Miyoko said awkwardly to break the moody silence that had settled over them. She was afraid of asking something else that would make him angry. "How old are you?"

"I – sixteen, I think." Katsu looked surprised at the question. Silence again.

SNAP. Miyoko jumped, while Katsu just turned around to look out the door. Amaya hovered to get a good view, just in time to see a large tree tipping over. All three of them hurried outside to see what was causing the ruckus.

"Ah!" cried the dark boy whose body had just been pinned by the felled tree. There was a waxy, twenty-foot tall thing with scythes for limbs hovering over him. It was gray, had no eyes or any type of such features. Everything on it sagged, as if it were melting.

"Augh! What is that?" Miyoko grimaced at a pungent odor the mutation was expelling. Even Amaya wrinkled her nose.

"A mutant… something produced by nightmares," answered Katsu.

"A nightmare come to life? I've never heard of that."

"Of course you haven't, with such a rich, sheltered life you led," Katsu smirked. Miyoko glared at him.

"Well, Mr. Know-it-all, would you be as kind as to show us how to defeat the thing?"

"Me?" Katsu looked surprised. "Why should I?"

"Because it's going to eat that boy up over there if we don't help!"

"'We'? Why don't you just do it?" And with that, Katsu leaned back against the cold stone wall of the church and folded his arms in a gesture that plainly said, 'Not a snowball's chance in hell I'm gonna help you'.

Miyoko flung him one disgusted look before turning to the crisis at hand. Amaya hovered over to her head.

"Ready, Amaya?"

As I'll ever be.

"Enthusiastic as ever," Miyoko said sarcastically. She searched her pockets and everywhere on her body, then looked up. "Oh, crap."

What?

"I don't have my Oversoul weapon."

EHH???

"I'm sorry! I must have left it at home when they came and dragged me away!" Miyoko said.

Aren't you supposed to keep it on you at all times?!

"We weren't allowed to bring it to that stupid party, remember? Then I had no time afterwards to go get it!"

"Ahem," said Katsu from behind. He was grinning as if watching a comedy. "While you two are busy debating, the target of your aiding is currently about to die."

Both looked up and saw the boy struggling to get out from under the tree while the monster was tugging on the boy's shirt, trying to catch the boy in order to eat him.

Miyoko caught Amaya in her hand in spirit ball mode and immediately she thrust Amaya into her body.

"How old fashioned," Katsu laughed. Miyoko and Amaya turned around as one and told him to shut up. Then, they jumped up and landed on one of the monster's oily shoulders (was it a shoulder? The thing was so misshapen) only to sink up to the ankle into the monster with a mushy sound.

"Oh, disgusting," Miyoko's voice said.

The monster seemed irritated at the intrusion that it felt on its shoulder. It took a swipe at its shoulder and accidentally lopped of a tiny bit of its head when it missed. Miyoko, with difficulty, pulled her feet out and tumbled off. Thanks to her heightened abilities, she landed softly on her feet.

Got it?

Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing.

They leaped to the other side of the monster and pulled off a large branch of the tree. They shoved it into the monster's side, as hard as they could. The monstrous blob quivered as they pushed it in even further. The sickle arms started slashing at the wood, but as much as it tried, it ended up slashing itself twice as much as it was dislodging the branch. It started oozing and sinking to the ground. One of the arms became dysfunctional as the shoulder that supported it was slashed right off. Miyoko jumped up, grabbed the sharp edge, and drove it into the monster's center. With a final, feeble attempt to kill its attackers, it sank to the ground and became one nasty puddle.

Miyoko stepped over and used the scythes to cut through the tree on either side of the boy, rolled the cross-section off of the boy and helped him up.

"Are you okay?" She asked solicitously as Amaya flew out to hover still next her. The boy nodded once. He had dark, bronze skin and dark brown hair, but he had golden eyes. "What's your name?" The boy shrugged. He stood up and – ran off so quickly Miyoko didn't even react. He immediately vanished from sight.

"What a waste of effort," Katsu started laughing again in the background. "I'll admit, though, that was a good idea for such a lopsided head."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Miyoko growled. "Look, you didn't even help, so shut it!"

"Hm…" Katsu stopped. "Well, I think you're naïve."

"What –"

"If that were a scarred old battle veteran, would you have saved him?"

"Well, of course. But there hasn't been any battles since centuries ago, so there wouldn't be any around –"

"Oh, believe me, there still is violence in this world, and not just by Kazuo's hands. Now, what if you helped that old veteran up to his feet and suddenly his weapon is suddenly sticking out of your stomach?"

"Why would anybody do that if I just saved them?"

"If they were an assassin. Or if they wanted the bounty on your head."

"Bounty?!"

"Oh, yeah. You're an escaped convict, remember? Don't worry, though, a bounty hunter might target me first, because I definitely would have a much larger bounty on my head. You know what's funny, though? You still don't trust me, but you did something as stupid as this."

"Well, since that's the case… we're in this together, right?"

"Huh?"

"You have allies, don't you? Supporters, whatever, you know. I mean, what's down in those mazes anyways?"

"Skeletons?"

"Ske – what?"

"Yeah, those are catacombs."

"I thought they were escape routes?"

"They're not officially catacombs; they just hold some dead people. The monks made them so hard to navigate that they themselves got lost."

"And they died there?"

"By starvation and dehydration, yeah."

"That's a horrible death to die."

"I suppose so."

"You suppose so? What kind of tone is that? I suppose you would like it if someone locked you up in a tomb and left you there to rot."

Katsu didn't reply. Miyoko saw his face darken before he turned away. Then he started walking.

"Hey, where're you going?" No answer. Miyoko trotted after him, intending to grab and shake him. She couldn't catch up enough to reach him, though. Katsu had started to practically fly on his feet. She broke into a run. Miyoko soon started panting as they went into the doors of the church into the labyrinth. Katsu turned left, then right, then left right left straight, and Miyoko could do nothing but try to keep him in sight so as to not get lost. Katsu seemed to know where he was going. She did not.

Twist and turn and turn and dip. There were even stairs going up and down, and Katsu took each fork in the road with a subconscious confidence that was the only thing that comforted Miyoko. She was tired, hungry, thirsty, and she could hardly keep up to save her life.

Amaya followed easily and Miyoko watched her flitting nearby, ahead of her. She felt frustration swell inside her. It was so easy for the both of them, because they were so imbibed with special abilities. Amaya could fly and go through walls, and she was a spirit and she couldn't feel tired and Katsu was just so strong and so effing buff he couldn't feel tired if he ran for three days without stopping and what could she do if she was just an ordinary shaman who couldn't even match up with her cousin –

She turned the corner and bashed her nose into Katsu's back. Katsu looked back at her and walked forwards, so that the frame of his body no longer blocked the entrance to a huge, centralized cavern.

Wooooww… Amaya murmured, and Miyoko couldn't help but agree.