Chapter Ten: Blind Escape

"Stop fidgeting, Ruka," Hotaru ordered, poking him. "Don't think there won't be repercussions if you don't stop." He shifted uncomfortably around on the bed, and she threw a camisole at him, a scrap of peach-pink lace and silk. He ducked it and sat stone-still when she gingerly lifted up a thong and waved it warningly at him.

Persona—now out of his disguise—shook Mikan awake. Behind him stood that Chiaki student, the one from the high school. Ruka leaned in close to the monitor and speakers, determined not to miss a single word or gesture. He wasn't disappointed.

Mikan mumbled in her sleep. "Nat—"

Lip curling, Persona lifted her up by the collar of her shirt. Her eyes flew open in surprise.

"Dreaming about my little protégé?" he sneered, barely controlling his loathing. It was this girl, the one Natsume had made into his little pet kitten. She had a different aura. But that didn't mean that she could just come along and ruin the Academy's finest undercover agent. He glanced at the student behind him. "Chiaki, what time is it?"

"It's exactly twelve o'clock."

He bared his teeth in a wintry smile. "Good. That's technically afternoon." He put his hand on Mikan's forehead and drew it back hastily as though he'd just been burned. "I thought Natsume said that you weren't sick."

"I'm… not…" she protested. Now that the initial shock of Persona practically wringing her by the neck to wake her up was over, she was starting to feel terrible. All she wanted to do was get back to sleep.

Persona tapped his chin with a finger. "I see. And the fever?"

She avoided his piercing gaze. "Just the heat. Hot in here, isn't it?"

He raised an eyebrow behind the mask. "You do realize that it's the beginning of November, don't you?" He wasn't wrong; a cold breeze was blowing in from her open window, and it looked as though it was going to snow later that night, despite the prickly heat that climbed up and down her body.

She was starting to feel cold all over, but the freezing hand that he put to her cheek made Persona tsk-tsk about how sick she was. He had a bizarrely paternal smile on his face—she could only assume that it didn't bode well.

"Here," he said, handing her a bottle of pills. "Take two of those. You'll feel much better afterwards."

She eyed them warily. "Are these things okay?" At his incredulous look, she added, "I just, you know… don't want to…"

"Come with me," he said, gripping her tightly by the arm. Ruka and Hotaru followed at a discreet distance.

The thick wooden door was locked—something most Alices almost never did unless they were engaged in something private, like dressing up and so on. But it seemed as though there was no one inside. Persona smirked and touched a long fingernail to the keyhole; it opened easily. "That's Natsume's room," Ruka said, astonished, as they went inside

"This is Natsume's room."

Mikan looked around her. The room was neat and expensively furnished. So this is how a special-class student lives, she thought, dazed by both Persona's strange attitude and her splitting headache. "Why'd you bring me here?"

Persona pointed at a row of bottles, each one containing a different type of pill—some were full of liquids bubbling sluggishly, and others had huge tablets the size of her pinkie. "See those?" he asked casually. She nodded. "Those are the pills he has to take every day."

She stared at the large array. "All these…?"

He smiled. "What did you think? Twice a day, everyday. Sometimes more. Hasn't he told you?"

When she shook her head, he let out a laugh. "I didn't think he would have," he said. "He forgot to take his medicine last night after his mission. He should be feeling the effects in awhile. Do you realize why he forgot?"

Again the shake of the head, again the laugh. "That's because he was busy convincing me that you were fine and didn't need to take your own medicine. Drink them down."

Her eyes swept across the row of bottles with a little shudder. Reaching out, she took the container from Persona and drank two of them down. That was all she was able to do before she let out a gasp and the bottle fell to the floor. She covered her mouth with her hand.

"What's going on?" Ruka whispered softly to Hotaru, leaning close to the monitor. Both of them were crouched just outside the door, watching what was going on with Hotaru's camera. He saw Mikan fall down as though in a faint, her fingers twitching. "Those things aren't poison, are they?"

"Of course not," she said. "She's one of the undercover agents, there's no reason for him to do that. That would be a waste of a valuable tool. And besides, he knows that he'd have to deal with—"

She broke off as Natsume charged past them, not even bothering to stop and ask them why they were posted right outside his bedroom door. "Persona!" they heard him yell through the heavy oak. Hotaru winced as his shout was echoed through the speakers.

"I thought I told you to stay put at headquarters," Persona said dangerously. He gestured at Chiaki, and the student threw his hands up.

"A barrier?" Natsume sneered. "How quaint. That's not enough to hold me back." He conjured a blue flame in the palm of his hand. It clearly took him a lot of effort, and he winced at the barrier's rebound. But he held his ground.

"You're in no condition to fight," Persona said. "Not even counting the marks on your back, there's still the fact that you forgot to take your pills and you're still fresh out of an assignment. It isn't worth it."

Natsume looked down at Mikan's inert form. There was a look on it—one that Ruka knew well. It was the sort of pained, dull expression that often filled his best friend's eyes. "It's worth it," he breathed.

"Is she worth it?" Persona asked.

His pupil was silent for a moment. "It's worth it just to put an end to all this."

And with that, the room erupted in flames.

"Mikan? Mikan!"

She heard voices around her. She felt as though she was being strangled, and a prickly heat was all over her. It was nothing compared to what she first felt when she'd had downed the pills, though. She'd been sure that she was going to die.

"She has to be okay," she heard a distinctly male voice. "She just has to be."

Her eyes opened. "R… Ruka?" she stammered. "Hotaru?"

They were bent over her. Hotaru's blank face flickered for a moment, giving way to relief, but then she went back to indifference. "Are you okay?" Ruka asked. He had a scratch down the side of his face, and his arm had an angry burn mark on it.

"Yeah, thanks," she said shakily. "What happened?"

"Natsume," Hotaru said shortly. She had a thin wound on her left cheek too, and there was the unmistakable smell of scorched skin around her, although she didn't say anything. Mikan noticed that the sleeve of her shirt was dark with blood. "His room's a mess. He burned everything up in it."

"He what?" she said, horrified. "Natsume—where is he?"

Ruka looked away. "He's gone," he said hopelessly, trying to keep his tone perfectly even. "After the explosion, he just… vanished." His fingers balled up into fists. "I don't know where he could have gone."

"What happened to Persona, then?"

Hotaru's mouth twisted up into an ironic smile. "He's just fine. That Chiaki student concentrated all her powers on him and defended him at the right moment. Of course, she's in the hospital right now. She got the worst of it all. We were okay, seeing as we were outside during the time, but we still got a little of it."

"Then… why wasn't I…?"

"Maybe it was your Alice," Ruka said. "Or Natsume could have manipulated his powers so that it wouldn't touch you. That's possible too."

Her eyes filled up with tears. "Don't start crying now!" Ruka said in alarm. "What's the matter? I'm sure Natsume's all right—"

"No, he isn't," she said, looking blindly around her. She realized that they were still in his room, Persona and Chiaki now absent. It was filled with the smell of smoke and burnt cloth. She saw the shelf where the bottles had been neatly stored before, now smashed. She saw pools of noxious-smelling liquid and charred bits of pills on the floor.