I am a god among mortals! (Okay exaggerating there a little Oo)

I did most of this chapter in a single night, and topped up something else enough to make my word count for that single stream of writing over 4k. Yes, I feel accomplished. So enjoy this, it is mostly the spawn of my muse :P

Natsume screeched to a stop a street away from his destination and got out of the car, the keys jangling in his pocket as he went to the trunk and got out his equiptment: medi-kit, firecrackers, some low grade explosive, wire and a flick-knife.

He shut his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, as he brought his Alice into full-blooded circulation and figuratively brought the sparks to his fingertips. He needed to be quick-witted for this, so he would need to be able to use it at any given moment without a single second's hesitation.

He picked up the last item and held it up before him – his mask, and slotting it over his face he felt the edges grip to his skin all too familiarly, and with that he slammed the boot shut and began the walk to the AAO headquarters; sticking as he should to shadows and by-streets so he wouldn't be noticed by potential witnesses.

Eventually he came around to the back of the assumed AAO Headquaters, which had a shop front, but he'd been informed that the levels above and below it were all squatted in by the AAO. He had been told there wasn't a back entrance or basement loading area, so he would have to get in through the front unless he could find a window to get through.

Luckily he spotted a wooden-framed window on the first floor up that was conveniently positioned right above a large dumpster, which he climbed up and edged towards the wall on, reaching for the shabby fixture. He tried it first to check it was locked, which it was, and then took a few short breaths as he used his Alice to start burning away the old wood of the window frame, whlie the smoke crawled up the glass and made it sooty. He stopped the burning and waited a minute or so for the glass to cool, and then reached up and drove his hand through the weak charcoal.

He burnt away the rest of the frame and pulled the entire lower pane of glass out, and then carefully dropped it in with the rubbish below him, taking care not to break it as the sound could give his presence here away. He now scrambled up the wall and through the opening, dropping to the floor quietly and freezing as he listened for any signs of being found out.

He used the time to consider whether he would try to go to another room to lay the explosives, and if so then upstairs or down? If he used enough he could probably get part of the building to collapse, but then again he wasn't sure if he wanted too many lives on his conscience.

Since moving into high school he'd tried his best not to kill anyone on missions like these, because for one Mikan gave him hell for it, and for two no one liked being a murderer. However, he also thought about how these people had killed that poor little girl in cold blood, and his resolution gained force.

He would try and go for the bottom, he decided, and then creeping along the floor he started to make his way towards the door of the room he'd broken into.

He pressed his ear against the door and listened for the sound of humans, and thinking the corridor to be empty pushed open the door and started to slink down the hall. However half way down the corridor he heard the sound of light footsteps approaching, and haphazardly dashed into the nearest room; secluding himself behind the door.

"Aki?" A woman's voice called out, and Natsume realized it was one he vaguely recognised – it might've be Yuka… Mikan's mother, and he started to dread the idea of what he'd was about to do here.

Could he kill her?

Natusme remained quiet, and his heart pounded in his chest as he heard the steps come by the door he was behind, and crept cautiously into the room.

"Who left this open?" The woman said to herself, and Natsume wanted to look around the door and catch a glimpse of this notorious woman, and to see if it was who he thought it was. But he knew that was reckless and remained perfectly still as she reached in and pulled the door shut: he'd escaped this time, but with a lot less bloodlust.

Perhaps he'd just go up and set off a small blast there, he considered, as that would only take out the top floor and he was almost sure no one used the very top level either. A message… instead of boody-handed vengeance.

Natsume rubbed the front of his mask and remembered he was wearing it, and what the boy in this mask had done in the past, and he thought in passing that perhaps Mikan had made him go soft. Although he didn't really want to kill anyone... but they killed her… and he was the only person who could right that.

(Was it right?)

As he tried to dwell on this Natsume bounced a little on his heels, and it was only as a floorboard creaked that he remembered not to fidget. He crept to the door and listened for Yuka(?) again, and picked up what sounded like her walking down the stairs; he breathed a sigh of relief and gently twisted the door handle, but as he peered out into the hall he saw something he hadn't expected to see.

"…Hello there," said a man with a bandana over the lower half of his face, and behind him at his shoulder stood the very recognisable Yuka with a look of disgust, "lights out, kid." His fist shot out and before Natsume could get away it was quite literally 'lights out'.

Mikan spent the rest of that Saturday after she'd argued with Natsume feeling miserable and trying in spite of that to keep her chin up, but with Hotaru still away she found it much harder than she would've with her best friend here.

When it got late and Natsume didn't show up, which she hadn't really expected him to so much as she'd hoped he would, but the two of them (being as bad as each other) had parted on such terrible terms he'd probably gone and put himself at risk just because he didn't want to give in on their argument.

"Stupid Natsume!" she yelled suddenly and punched her pillow, "this would be so much easier if you weren't such a jerk!" Not for the first time she wondered why she had to go and start liking him of all people; why couldn't she have liked Ruka instead?

As it got late she tried to concentrate on her newest Alice and follow a link to Natsume, but she couldn't seem to reach him by choice: only at random.

It was about eleven o' clock however, when she heard in her mind the eloquent word 'shit!' and then a searing pain struck her in the middle of the forehead.

"Ahhh!" she screamed and fell back on her bed, "Natsume?! What happened?!" She realized that he couldn't hear her yelling in her room, and then as much as she tried to feel for his presence – something she'd sometimes been able to sense on a low level – there was just nothing.

She started to panic, and began speculating all the horrible things that could've happened to him – he said it was an easy mission, but he might have lied about that and got himself into trouble: worst of all he could've gotten mixed up with gangsters or the police... or the AAO.

At least she thought that if her mom was there they wouldn't kill him… right?

"Oh no…" she said worriedly, and got up and started pacing the room, "what if something awful has happened?"

When Natsume came to, he was a couple of kicks to the ribs worse-off and had his hands bound behind his back with the wire he'd brought. Trying to struggle against it he only felt the thin strands of metal dig into his wrists.

'Shit…' he thought for the umpteenth time since he'd screwed this up, and tried to think of a way that would get him out of here alive, and not like that poor girl.

Although… he reasoned as he saw his bag thrown in the corner of the room, there were still the explosives: he had a little bargaining power, and the option to take them all out with him.

"So you're awake?" a voice announced, and Natsume peered up in the dark room to the same woman he'd encountered before – Yuka 'Sakura'.

"…" he didn't say anything, as he knew it wouldn't change a thing.

"The Academy should stop sending kids into dangerous situations, don't you think so?" she remarked coolly and looked at the back of her hand aimlessly, "how long has it been now, Black Cat?"

Natsume still didn't respond: he was probably dead already, so indulging this woman in idle talk was simply a waste of time leading up to the inevitable.

"Not much longer now," he bit resentfully, not able to hold back just one snide comment, "am I right?"

Yuka laughed dryly and Natsume pulled against his bindings another time, feeling his skin wear raw with the sharp contact.

"Ah, Natsume-kun…" she sighed, "it didn't have to be like this."

"Of course it did." He hissed, "But I expect it won't bother you, there's enough blood on your hands already." He could hear her anger and a sharp-toed boot quickly presenting itself in his throat told him that antagonising her hadn't been one of his smartest ideas.

"That was nothing to do with me!" she snarled, and kicked him again, softer, in the ribs, "That little girl was an... accident," if the capability to speak had still been in Natsume he would've shouted 'bullshit' or something else appropriate, but he was winded and his throat was half-collapsed.

"We weren't going to hurt her!" Yuka protested, "but with you lot snapping at our heels some of the guys panicked, so... keep that mouth shut you arrogant little shit... and pray we show you mercy." She appeared to calm herself down, and retreated back across the room, "if you could be persuaded to join us, perhaps…" she remarked, and Natsume provided his answer by setting fire to the curtains.

"How mature." Yuka said flatly and beat the flames out with his bag of all things – very nearly blowing them both up herself, and Natsume realized at that point that if either of them died it would make Mikan sad: even though they were technically not on speaking terms he'd still never want to do that.

'What I wouldn't give to be in bed with that idiot now…' he mused, and wondered if perhaps his attitude towards sleeping with her (non-sexually) had become just a little more than 'necessity'.

"How is my daughter?" Yuka asked after a few minutes angry silence, and loathed as he was to acknowledge he heard her he found himself replying.

"Stupid." He said shortly.

"Still? Figures," Yuka mused, "her father was just like her." Although he was a little surprised to hear Yuka appear to know anything about Mikan, Natsume was even more startled to hear her father of all people mentioned.

"I'm only telling you this because you're going to die," she added in a kind of explanatory way, "so I might as well find out how she's doing since she refuses to leave the Academy." Try as he might Natsume found it hard to argue with that logic.

"She made the football team," Natsume said unenthusiastically, while half hoping that perhaps by plying her off with information about Mikan he could somehow bargain for his life… or at least get his hands untied, as working at them furiously now he was pretty sure he'd made himself bleed trying to tear himself free.

"She did?" Yuka replied almost contently, "what about her grades?"

"They suck."

"Oh, well she does take after me then…" the young woman who it was hard to believe gave birth to Mikan said thoughtfully.

"Not really, Uunlike you, she's not a callous bitch," he said spitefully, and hissed through his teeth as he managed to drag a thin cut wider with the damn wires around his wrists.

"Watch that tongue you shitty brat," she reprimanded him, "in a way I'll be glad to see you dead, because then I won't ever worry about her ending up with you."

"Ending up with me?" Natsume echoed instantly, "What the hell does that mean?"

"Are you thick or something?" Yuka scorned, "she's been in love with you for years, she wouldn't leave the Academy because she couldn't leave you, she told me that." The fair haired woman explained as she walked over to Natsume again and put her boot against his face, "I expect your death will make her sad, but you've caused her enough trouble you'll probably be saving her heartbreak in the long run." All at once the foot was gone and a gun was whipped out and pressed against Natsume's temple, and he remembered how very serious this situation really was: he was going to die, and he'd been acting like it was all a game.

"Y-you…" he stuttered as the cold metal against his temple sent alarming messages to his brain, "I wouldn't do that if I were you!" He blurted, "not if you care about your daughter at all!"

"To the contrary," she said icily, "I do care, so I won't let a dangerous kid like you hang around her anymore." Natsume heard the hammer on the gun click and felt a horrible blade of fear tear through his insides.

"Kill me and she could die too!" he rushed hesitantly, and thankfully Yuka paused, "I…she…look," he panted, "there's a new Alice…"

"Another Alice?" Yuka snapped curiously, "what the hell do you mean?"

"Me and her," Natsume confessed as he tried to save his life – for once he really didn't want to die, "we have… an Alice."

"Of what?"

"Of…well, it's hard to explain." He wavered, "but if you hurt me you'll hurt her!" Yuka stated at him incredulously.

"What Alice does that?" she asked sceptically.

"It's… like a bond… or something," Natsume replied, "she can even read my thoughts... and find me… she could be on her way here right now…" This he knew to be a slight dramatisation of events, but Natsume was trying to wheedle for his life, so a little embellishment would hardly hurt that. Yuka sat quietly for about thirty seconds and seemed to process this information, and then turning to him with a sick grin said.

"Yeah, right," and whipped the barrel of her gun across his cheekbone, and everything went black for Natsume again. "String him up, boys," she told a man who had been quietly sitting in the corner the whole time – gun pointed on Natsume from the very beginning – who got up and then grabbed Natsume by his heavily bleeding wrists.

Mikan started to panic when the welts showed up.

Across the inside of her wrists long red marks formed, along with more kicks and stabs of proof that Natsume needed help and soon, and Mikan was about to run out the door when she realized she had absolutely no idea what to do or where to go… she was useless.

"Natsume…" she said faintly as she stared at the marks on her forearms, and brushing a fingertip against one of the particularly swollen and pinky ones screamed suddenly when the top layer of skin tore as if it was fine tissue paper and dark viscous blood poured out of the legion.

"Oh my god!" she screamed and started to cry, and then in a panic fumbled for her phone.

"Natsume!" she sobbed as another bone-crushing hit got her right across the face and she nearly lost consciousness, "oh no… oh my god no!"

Ruka Nogi answered his phone on the first ring, and even though he couldn't get a single word of what Mikan said he could tell she was crying and didn't waste so much as a minute as he blasted out of his room and sprinted across to hers.

"Mikan!" He roared as he burst through the girl's dorm and found her, curled up in a tiny blood-streaked pile on the floor, "what's happening!"

"Ruka…" she sobbed, "Natsume is in danger, really big danger."

"You're the one in danger!" he cried in distress, but knowing that he would continue to fuss over her unless she pulled it together (for Natsume's sake) Mikan picked herself off the floor and snatched her thickest and darkest coat out of her closet.

"No, trust me on this," she replied, "Natsume is in it really deep, we have to go now." Ruka saw how resolute and frightened Mikan looked, so didn't have to think a second time.

"Go where?" he questioned.

"I don't know," she mumbled as she grabbed his arm and started to steer the two of them out the door, "but I know I can get there somehow…"

"F--ck…." Natsume hissed as he woke up a second time, and this time suspended from the wall by his backwards-bent-up hands with blood running down his forearms, "you people are sick…"

"Sick?" Yuka and her companion echoed: this was a different guy to the one who'd put him up on the wall: the AAO appeared to have stationed a number of different guards to stand watch with Yuka, "he calls us sick? It's your school that are sick," Yuka said spitefully.

"Yeah, the Academy is the bad guy here," the man said, "We're trying to help,"

"Help by killing little girls?" Natsume spat, and the next instant Yuka had slapped him hard and full around the face.

"Count your minutes, brat," she said sinisterly, "they will be your last."

"Do I get a phonecall?" Natsume jeered, and Yuka nearly hit him again.

"Don't mess with me kid!" she threatened, but Natsume felt he had to get just one piece of unfinished business dealt with if he was going to die with any conviction.

"Look, you're going to kill me, I get that," he ground out resentfully, "but can I have a last goodbye? A call? Like Aikawa Shoko never did?" Yuka looked quizzical but also tired, as she had been on double shifts for the sake of Natsume, and thought in a moment of weakness that it might just give her a little kick to let him have his call before his brains were blasted out.

"…Alright then," she smirked, and pulling his phone and her gun out of the pocked held the phone up to his face and the gun to the side of his head, "but you even sound like you're gonna give the goods away and it's bye-bye, who do you want to call?"

"Mikan," he said gruffly, but a shove of the gun barrel against his head told him to choose differently.

"Definitely not," Yuka snarled, "no way you're calling my daughter to die." She opened up the 'recent callers' menu and saw another girl's name.

"Here, talk to 'Reira-chan'," she chuckled as she pressed auto-dial and set the phone onto speakerphone. It rang twice and then a feminine and girly voice answered.

"Natsume-kun!" Reira gasped, "you better be sorry for doing that to me yesterday! You can't just go around kissing girls and expecting to get away with it!"

"Now that's interesting…" Yuka whispered and Natsume glared at her, and then decided that seeing as he was most likely going to die anyway – and he was in so much pain right now that it almost sounded tempting – he could at least manage to make one person happy… even for a little while.

"I'm sorry," he said meekly into the phone, and heard Reira's muffled sounds of shock at his willingness to back down, "and… I did it… because I like you…" he continued semi-dramatically, and then as the loss of blood hit in and started to make him light-headed (and hearted) ventured into bolder territory, "no…" he said, "I love you. Go out with me."

"This is a joke isn't it!?" Reira screamed suddenly, and Natsume very nearly smiled, but he was brought back down by the fact that he was about to f—king die.

"It's not a joke, I just realized it at last… I love you," he repeated with an almost-smirk of silliness; feeling a kind of freedom at this totally ridiculous situation, "be my girlfriend?" there was a few seconds pause and then just as Reira made a high-pitched sound that was very probably a 'yes' of some kind Yuka dropped the phone to the floor, and then promptly stamped on it.

"So now you don't die single I guess," she chuckled, and moved the gun so it was resting under Natsume's chin and pointing up through his head, "Mikan was right, you really are a jerk aren't you?"

"Better than being a murderous bitch," he hissed as he felt one of his shoulders pop out and somewhere in the back of his head he heard a scream that wasn't his own, "I've never murdered someone who could've been spared," he proclaimed, and found his neck twisted as Yuka shoved the gun upwards.

"Oh yeah?" she accused, "what about that night? Last week, when you pulled your superman act? I hardly think trying to burn each and every one of us to a crisp is 'sparing'!" Natsume had forgotten that night, and felt just a little bashful at having been revealed as a hypocrite right at the point of his death – but at least he reasoned that no one else had witnessed it, as the other guard had gone outside to meet a guy called 'Kyou' about 'a package'.

"And I hardly think all those explosives in your bag were 'sparing' either," Yuka added coldly, and in that instant Natsume used his Alice to burn straight through his bag in the desperate hopes of surviving the blast better than a bullet. But Yuka only laughed.

"I chucked that shit out of the window," she sneered and tested her finger against the trigger, "you're out of luck, kid." Her finger seized and the trigger sprung.

"Wrong kind of shop to hide in." Came a voice all of a sudden, and the door to Natsume's mortuary burst open and a tide of cats, dogs, rabbits and even reptiles flooded in, a lone parrot flying straight into Yuka's arm and knocking her hand away from her gun as budgies flew at her face.

"Ruka!" Natsume moaned for joy, and saw his angel of mercy stood proudly in the doorway as all the inhabitants of 'Kokoko's pets' ran amok among the members of the AAO.

'Natsume!' He heard in reply, but this voice was not spoken.

'…You…' he answered.

'I… I'm in time?' she said timidly.

'Just about, you cut it pretty f—king close.'

'Hey! I found you in all of Tokyo so be glad we made it here when we did, and I spent all my allowance on a taxi and…'

This sub-vocal conversation ended when none other than Mikan stumbled into the doorway and met eyes with Natsume; before it had been much fainter and...unreal, but on seeing one another the Alice took on a whole new level of strength.

"Natsume!" she cried and ran towards him, wrapping her arms around his middle and easing the horrific pressure on his arms, which of course she had been suffering through as well.

"Oh god…" he groaned, while she got out the pair of pliers from her coat pocket (for cutting Academy fences) and reached up to cut him down. He fell to the floor in a messy, bloody heap and as soon as she'd freed his wrists from one another he didn't hesitate to fling them around her shoulders, spattering her clothes with his congealed and clotting blood.

"Mffnnn," he murmured into her shoulder as he buried his face in it, and as Yuka was pushed into a corner by angry dogs and a furious Ruka, she suddenly realized who the other person was.

"Mikan?!" she shrieked as she identified the young teenage girl clinging to Natsume as if her life would end if she let go, but her daughter didn't seem to hear her.

"You better run. Now." Ruka said stonily: no one messed with his friends, "I've called the police." Fear took hold in Yuka's eyes and she heard the sounds of her comrades fleeing under the tip-off.

"Mikan-chan?" she yelled one last time, but Mikan was glued to Natsume and it seemed as if nothing else existed to her any longer.

That was what she got, Yuka thought bitterly, for not being around her daughter as a mother should.

"Fine." She hissed as she scrambled to her feet and swung a leg out to kick at the dogs surrounding her, "you'll understand soon enough anyway you poor brat," she jumped past Ruka and bolted out the door, not even able to take one last look back at her child as she fled.

His blood stained her back, and hers in turn stained his; Mikan and Natsume held each other close in an embrace more pain than it was pleasure. Every shock and stab he'd experienced she felt, and now, this close, he felt her feeling it, and it became a kind of echo where they drove each other further and further into collapse.

'It hurts… it hurts so much…' she cried to him.

'Sorry' was the only thing he thought of, and then, 'But you came for me.'

'I'll always come for you, stupid' she replied and he tightened his arms around her, feeling her fragile bone structure pressing against his aching body and the familiar scent of her skin surrounding him like a protecting aura.

'Thank you.' He buckled and let out a small sob against her neck, and one of Mikan's hands instinctively rose and twisted through his hair soothingly.

'There, there…' she cooed, "there, there," her lips mimed. Ruka stood a meter or so back staring awkwardly at this intimate moment between his best friend and his crush, and wished that he could've felt normal about something: jealously, relief or anger… but instead he just felt like he missed something, although he still wanted to hold Mikan just like Natsume did now.

"It's all right now, Natsume," Mikan whispered as he stifled a thin line of moisture that just so happened to have come from his eyes spontaneously against the exposed skin of her neck, 'you're safe.'

'Not until we are away from here' he insisted and hiccupped briefly, still refusing to accept the fact that he might've very possibly just cried on Mikan.

And for some strange reason, that didn't really bother him.

Lots of action in this baby (well by my standards, action/drama etc)

For fun facts, I had no intention of bringing Yuka into the story until this chapter, but I'm glad I did!

Reviews for making Natsume cry?