Kamen Rider Bloodstone, Book 2: AGES of Darkness

Chapter 12 – Faces in the Crowd

The sky seemed to go dark above Moka, Kurumu and Yukari's heads. They covered their ears as an ear-splitting shriek washed over them, rattling the windows in the classroom building nearby and sending crows flying up away from the stunted trees around the edge of campus.

"WHERE ISSSSSS HEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!"

Towering over the girls was a thick-limbed troll, his grotesque muscles lined with throbbing veins and knife-like teeth sticking up from his rock-hard lower jaw. "You were there with him!" he roared at the girls, raising his enormous fists and bringing them down on the ground leaving craters two feet deep. "You helped him fight! You're his friends! You know where he is!"

Kurumu spread her dark wings and took off, fingernails flashing out into hot pink foot-long claws. "Even if he was around, why do you think he'd have nothing better to do than get in a fight with a big sweaty loser like you?!" she called tauntingly.

The troll roared and wrenched a tree, roots and all, out of the ground and chucked it at her, but Kurumu darted out of the way and it went sailing past her, crashing into something noisily out of sight.

"Because I challenged him!" the troll screamed up at her. "If he fought the leader of the Student Police, why is he too scared to fight someone like Chopper Rikiishi?!"

Moka glared up at the troll. "Maybe he doesn't care about something so stupid!"

For a second Chopper Rikiishi stopped his bellowing and looked down at Moka. "…stupid?"

She started in surprise, not sure how to follow up on what she just said. She stammered out, "W-w-well yeah…why does he have to fight you to prove something? Aren't we supposed to be learning not to do stuff like that?"

Rikiishi's face twisted with anger and Moka felt an urge to turn and run before he had a chance to lash out at her. He roared suddenly and threw his huge arms into the air, almost blowing Moka off her feet with the force of his voice. "BECAUSE I HAVE TO BE STRONG!" Rikiishi thundered. "BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE TO BE! WE HAVE TO BE READY!" He swept his massive arms, digging trenches out of the ground with his fists, and Moka squeaked and ran for all she was worth out of his way just before she would've been hit by one. But then he got to his massive feet and chased after Moka, swiping at her and trying to grab her.

"WE HAVE TO BE READY WHEN THE HUMANS ATTACK US!" Chopper screamed.

All of a sudden Yukari appeared in midair in front of him, brandishing her toy-like wand. A cloud of cards blasted from the tip into his face, knocking Chopper off-balance for a second and a brass wash tub bounced off his head, dazing him. Then a second clanged as it slammed into his head, and he staggered back drunkenly. A third tub slammed right into his forehead over his eyes, and Rikiishi reeled. Kurumu swooped in and raked her claws across his chest. He finally fell and sank ten inches into the ground as he landed.

"Not bad," Yukari smiled up at Kurumu, who grinned and made the peace sign with her gigantically long fingernails. "For a girl with more boobs than brains, anyway," the witch added with a smirk.

"Why you little—" Kurumu yelled and swooped at Yukari, long fingernails reaching out for the witch's head.

"Eeep!" Yukari squealed and hid behind Moka, but before Kurumu could have her revenge Rikiishi suddenly rolled over and swatted her away with his massive hand without even seeming to realize it. Glaring at them though squinting eyes thanks to where Yukari's last tub had hit him, he grabbed Moka by the legs and hoisted her into the air.

"WHERE'S THAT BOYFRIEND OF YOURS?!" he howled at the top of his lungs.

"Boyfriend?" was the only reply Moka managed.

Kurumu clenched her fist in anger at hearing that question directed at Moka, not realizing that meant raking her own extended fingernails over her own chest and shoulder until it was too late. "OWW!"

Rikiishi snarled at Moka and then bellowed, "YES! WHERE IS HE?! WHY DIDN'T HE ANSWER MY CHALLENGE?! IS HE AFRAID?"

"What makes you think Nigeki has nothing better to do than get into a pointless fight with a bully?" Moka heard herself retort.

"A BULLY? IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SEE IN ME?!" Chopper screamed, almost deafening her.

Yukari aimed her wand. Kurumu went into another dive at Rikiishi's head.

But then a thundering sound filled the area, and it took a second to realize it wasn't Chopper screaming his frustration at them again. It was the sound of Moka smacking him on the cheek hard enough to jerk his giant head into his shoulder.

"Yes," Moka said with an angry frown. "If you're this obsessed with getting to fight someone, that's exactly what I see."

Yukari and Kurumu stopped in their tracks and exchanged an uneasy glance. When had this Moka ever had the nerve to say something like that, let alone hit somebody? Let somebody as big as Chopper Rikiishi, who was holding her off the ground with just one hand?

But Chopper himself didn't answer her. Instead he suddenly dropped Moka and reeled backward, holding out a hand to catch himself against one of the many dead trees ringing the school. He shook his head to clear it of the cobwebs of the hit he'd just taken, then fixed Moka was a look of blinding hatred. He was getting to his full height to attack again…

"Is there a problem here?" asked a tall, lanky woman with a thick red ponytail and an eyepatch over her left eye. They hadn't noticed her coming with all the noise Chopper had been making, but how the hell could she be so calm about it?

The giant troll growled down at her. "Unless you know where Nigeki Hitoribo is—"

"Never heard of him," she interrupted.

"…then you'd better butt out before you get hurt."

The next thing any of them knew the woman had grabbed Rikiishi around the waist, which looked absolutely impossible with her thin frame, and suplexed him, his head and two feet of his shoulders disappearing into the ground with a horrible crash. She rolled out from under Chopper, whose hand twitched for a second but then fell and stayed silent. She easily dragged him back out of the ground by his feet, and after she made sure Chopper was still breathing, she gave the girls a last indecipherable look before she walked away.

"Who the hell was that?" Kurumu asked as soon as the woman was far enough away not to hear.

"I can stop her, then we can interrogate her," Yukari suggested and started to brandish her wand to bring a wash tub down on her head, but Moka stopped the young witch with a shake of her head.

"No. She's really strong, and we shouldn't be getting into fights anyway, remember?" Moka said, surprising the other two after just finding the courage to hit someone like Chopper Rikiishi in the face. "Besides, I'm sure we'll find out who she is soon enough."


As the two of them rode the empty bus down a forest road, the setting sun's dark orange light flickering through the treetops, Nigeki got an urge to get up and stretch, but Mizore had fallen asleep leaning on him. And even though it was a weird sensation and he was trying to stand firm on not worrying about dating yet, he realized he didn't want to move away even more.

Instead he killed time flicking through social updates on his phone. Most of them were from cousin Laura, who seemed to be having a similar experience to his in that she was at school with other monsters her age for the first time. Unlike Nigeki, she hadn't been constantly getting into fights, at least.

Almost all of it was things she did with her friends, her boyfriend (the brown-furred basketball player who'd been holding her in his arms in the last picture she'd sent to Nigeki), and her cheerleading exploits.

One that caught his eye was of two girls waving to the camera, grinning. One was tall and green with a head like an alligator's, but she also a head of blonde hair twisted into pigtails, and pink lipstick on. The other one was short and chubby with purple fur, black hair with a blue streak and a cat-like face. The tag Laura had written underneath it was "they keep telling everyone their names really ARE Bratty and Catty". Nigeki's knowledge of American slang wasn't that great, but he was pretty sure he understood. Weren't those insults?

He scrolled down to another one she'd reposted from someone else. The picture showed Laura and one of her friends, a girl with green skin, zebra-striped hair and eyes with mismatched colors each hugging a strange cat-like creature with white fur but also thick black hair atop their heads, and wearing striped t-shirts. The one in Laura's arms appeared to be winking at the camera.

Behind them another girl with streaks of gold in her long black hair and wearing an outfit that looked like yellowed gauze bandages was running for her life from a tidal wave of those same cat-creatures.

Was striping their hair something American monster girls were really into?

The tag under the picture read "hOI! temmie am finist cooleg, nou mov unta HAH-skoo an cumpLEE AHchoo-kayshun! AL di grls lub TEM!"

In her repost underneath Laura added: "except cleo X3".

Cousin Laura had sent him another update, though, a personal one: a picture of the back wall of her school apparently, where someone had written the message "BEWARE OF THE MAN WHO SPEAKS IN HANDS," in perfectly even grey type, made in something that looked more like metal than paint.

According to the message she'd sent along with it someone had taken that before school officials suddenly painted the rest of the wall grey to cover it up. The letters could still just barely be made out through the paint, but two friends of hers had gotten detention and conferences with their parents for being caught just looking too closely at the wall.

What could a weird message like that mean, Nigeki wondered, especially if the people who ran the school were so desperate to keep anyone from finding out?

He was distracted from his deep thinking as Mizore leaned on him harder all of a sudden and curled her arm around his, smiling gently in her sleep. For a second he thought her eye flick open at him to see how he reacted, but he decided to take things one step at a time. He was doing a service to his people by finding this witch, and while he was doing it he had the chance to find his younger sisters who'd been missing for months.

That was enough for now.


An hour later the bus finally stopped next to a small seaside town. Mizore had seemed annoyed when Nigeki had woken her up and insisted it was time to get off, even with as stoic as she usually was. As they got off and walked into town she grabbed his hand, laced their fingers together and refused to let go. The cool of her touch felt surprisingly welcome, though, and he supposed that despite her being so forceful it was better than having to carry both of their luggage.

Still…

"Mizore, you don't have to hold so tight. Are you afraid I'll run away or something?"

"Just making sure no-one gets the wrong idea about us," she answered casually.

"What wrong idea?" he asked, and Mizore looked at him quizzically. "Look, you're pretty and everything—," he said, and she blushed. "But I must've said ten times already I'm not dating. I have to find my sisters, and that's plenty, don't you think?"

She answered by giving his hand a squeeze and smiling around the stick of her lollipop, then saying, "No."

He sighed and just kept walking, getting a giggle of amusement from Mizore. But the sun was getting low after their long bus trip and he didn't see the good in dragging Mizore around in the dark trying to find the witch, let alone expecting the witch to be happy to see them when she was found. He glanced around at places to stay the night, but also tried to think of how to keep Mizore from getting any ideas.

Then it seemed to jump out at him: a small restaurant with the name 'DAPHNE' written above the front window in metallic gold paint. Sitting in the window were a pair of signs, 'ROOM TO RENT' and another saying 'HELP WANTED', and underneath had been hastily written, 'URGENTLY!'.

"Why don't we go in there and see about some dinner?" Nigeki suggested. Mizore smiled and nodded, like she would've followed him anywhere. "Then maybe we can ask about a place to stay." A back room place seemed ideal; Nigeki had felt wrong bringing a bunch of money on this trip for some reason. It was like the distance from home, finally being allowed to be out on his own made him want to handle things on his own now. It sounded so idiotic, but instead of hiding he wanted to face the world, and without relying on his family's influence like he always had…

They went inside, and almost immediately a willowy girl in an antiquated black and white lace maid's dress stepped in front of them to greet them. "Welcome to Daphne!" she said graciously. "Would you care for a seat by the window?"

"I've been sitting by a window most of the day. I'd rather have something by the corner, if that's all right," Nigeki answered.

"Of course! Right this way, please," the girl smiled and turned to lead them past a few occupied tables, nobody sparing the two of them much attention as they went past. Despite what he'd told Mizore about holding off on dating, Nigeki found himself unable to look away from the waitress. She had long silvery hair setting off her slender build, and behind a pair of cute glasses were a pair of deep, shimmering eyes that were a light pink in color. She smiled more deeply as she noticed him looking more intently, but right then Mizore clung to his entire arm tightly, silently glaring frosty daggers at the girl.

As soon as she'd sat them down, someone called, "Excuse me! Can we get refills over here?"

"And over here!" a teenage girl sitting by the door with her friends added. "And could we see a dessert menu?"

The waitress sighed slightly and forced a smile before she turned around to hurry off and help the other customers. Nearly five minutes later when she finished rushing back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen and got back to Nigeki and Mizore, her feet shuffled and there were dark circles forming under her eyes Nigeki hadn't noticed before. "Now…what can I get you?" she asked.

"Actually, we saw the sign—," Nigeki started to say.

Her face erupted into a relieved smile and she immediately pointed at the kitchen door. "Talk to the owner. Just go right in. Please."

"Um, all right," Nigeki said and got up to do as she said, with Mizore getting up and grabbing his arm, shooting the waitress another sharp glare as she went. Nigeki pushed open the door to the kitchen like he'd been told and inside working over a wide grill was a lanky dark-haired man.

"Sorry, no diners in the kitchen! This is a controlled system!" he exclaimed.

Nigeki shook his head. "The girl outside told us to talk to you. We saw the sign—"

"Great!" the man said. "Look, thanks for the interest. Practically our whole wait staff quit a while ago, and we're a little more shorthanded than I thought we'd be with my nephew away at culinary school.
"Oh? Why did they all quit?" Nigeki asked.

"They were all in love with my nephew but he picked the girl out there. She's my daughter, Takano" the chef answered, then whirled and faced the two young monsters with a smile. "Ryosuke Aoyama, owner and operator."

Nigeki held up a hand and shook his head. "Look, I think you're misunderstanding. We're only going to be here for a little while. We're trying to find someone, and we're looking for a place to stay while we're here. That's it."

Ryosuke's face fell, but Mizore leaned over and whispered to Nigeki. "Why don't we stay for a little while? They look they really do need the help. Besides, maybe he'll let me keep the uniform after we're done."

He looked at Mizore in surprise, and she grinned subtly back at him, and before he knew it he was imagining her in a long, lacy black dress like the girl out front had been wearing. She seemed to see it in his eyes and her cheeks turned pink even as he watched.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. They looked like they really did need the help. Besides, he tried to reason, wasn't he away from home to try to broaden his horizons and keep the Tear under control by experiencing life? "Well, for a little while, I guess."

Ryosuke sighed in relief and Mizore slipped an arm around Nigeki's shoulders and kissed his cheek. Had this been a good decision after all…?


School had ended the next day, and with no other maniacs attacking her trying to find out where Nigeki had gone, Moka gently flicked another page in her book. She smiled and gave off a quiet sigh of pleasure as she enjoyed some quiet time to herself as the air started to warm. Summer would be coming before too long. She wondered what they'd be able to do over the break in classes. It would be her first time out on a trip with friends, and she was looking forward to the chance to go out and do things with Yukari and Nigeki, and she had to admit, even Kurumu. Kind of.

Nigeki. Moka had tried to find out what had happened to him when he missed class that day; she supposed she'd gotten a little protective of him after he'd run out on her and then avoided her for days after she found out about his Kamen Rider-like alter ego. Toriel hadn't known anything, neither did Nigeki's friends at the Drama Club, but Felicia had told her off-the-record that he was running an important errand for the school.

What could it be? Nothing too dangerous, she hoped. Moka almost expected to hear the voice of her deeper self in her mind telling her that a weakling like Nigeki couldn't handle it, whatever it was, but none came.

Then again her inner self, her brutal self, had been quiet lately. Ever since the fight with the old Security Committee, actually…what could've made her decide to go silent?

But while Moka was thinking, someone was thinking about her. In the trees at the edge of the girl's dorm, for just a second a shaft of sunlight caught on the long-distance lens of a cameraman crouching in the darkness.

It was Ginei Morioka, her senior at the Newspaper Club and more than occasional peeper, smirking at the gentle smile on Moka's beautiful face. She was easily one of the loveliest girls on campus, and if anyone had an eye for the girls, it was him. But as he snapped a picture of a soft smile of pleasure on her face, he sighed inwardly. He was a serial peeper, but even he'd felt a desire to connect more emotionally with a beautiful woman. Like San…oh, San…Was this all there could be between him and an exquisite beauty like Moka Akashiya? Him staring at her through the lens of a camera?

Didn't it always work out in the shows that the guy with the terrible secret that pushed him apart from the world, and the beautiful girl who was his only friend always found love in each other's arms? Had Ginei already lost a chance, however slim, at connecting with this girl?

Then suddenly he saw someone looking straight at him from behind Moka. A figure in black with a bone-white face, glowing eyes of different colors…

Ginei gasped loudly in alarm, and before Moka had even looked all the way up from her book he'd dropped his camera and was bolting through the trees. Not to escape Moka, who he didn't fear even if she did find out someone had been spying on her. But to get away from him…

He'd, or it, had only been there for a split-second, but Ginei could still remember the long black coat he wore over a white turtleneck sweater, making him look rather dignified. But it was all undone by his face.

Oh god, his face. It had looked more like a mask, a smooth white mask whose most prominent feature was the bizarre grin, haunting and mocking, gaping in his face as if it could've sucked Ginei's soul right out of his body. Eyes that seemed to glow two different colors in the sockets, but it had been so sudden Ginei couldn't even remember what the colors were. In one hand he'd held a thin black cane…

His hands. In spite of everything else about him, Ginei most remembered his hands. The black holes in them, with small flecks of light flying down into them. Like some kind of black hole in deep space sucking in stars that passed too close.

And Ginei could swear he had sworn something else was looking back. Looking back at him, talking to him, from inside of that man's hands.


Another day of school passed, and Moka spent her free time wondering gently where Nigeki had gone and if he was all right. As soon as classes were over, though, she was surprised when everyone was called to a sudden assembly in the campus theater.

As she found a seat in the second row, she spotted a few teachers taking seats as well in the back, including Toriel, who gave her a smile and a friendly wave, and Moka felt her cheeks going pink and had to look away. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the new groundskeeper take a seat next to Toriel with a hopeful smile on his face, but she frowned, got up and took a seat in the row behind him.

"Hey, Moka!" Yukari said with a grin as she took the empty seat at Moka's side. Kurumu took a seat a few chairs away from them and gave Moka a silent glance of acknowledgement.

"What do you think this is about?" the witch asked.

"Let's hope it's not about that fight from before," Moka whispered, and Yukari nodded. The trickle of students in slowed, and after another minute Moka froze as she saw the woman in the eyepatch come in. Toriel knitted her brow as their eyes met for a second, and a look of surprise came over her face as she seemingly recognized the woman. The groundskeeper smiled and waved to the one-eyed woman, who jumped in surprise as she spotted him, but then grinned a saw-toothed grin and waved back, actually blushing a little at the groundskeeper.

The Headmaster, looking eerie as ever in his white robes and with a ghostly smile seeming to float in the darkness of his hood, came onto the stage and tapped the microphone a few times to get everyone's attention. "Thank you all for coming. As I'm sure you all know, the School Security Committee was disbanded recently after proof of misconduct had been brought to light. But we want you all to know our highest priority is keeping all of you safe, and we've appointed a new head of campus security some of our…newer faculty members recommend very highly." He gestured offstage and the woman with the eyepatch walked up to the microphone.

"Hi everybody," she spoke pleasantly. "Like the boss said, I'm the new head of security here at Youkai Academy. My name's Undyne…OR GOD AS FAR AS YOU'RE CONCERNED!"

The entire room shook as everyone jumped out of their seats in surprise and landed at the same time.

"I am not here to be your friend!" Undyne went on completely undaunted. "I am not here to tell you things are fine when they aren't! I am here to keep this school safe, and all of you better make sure you remember that, or pay the price!"

The groundskeeper smiled in gentle approval. Toriel nodded and chewed her lip uncertainly. But Alphys was actually bouncing in her seat and shaking with glee.

"I'll be filling out the new Security Committee after I've had a chance to get settled," Undyne went on, more calmly now. "But that doesn't mean troublemakers get the run of the place until then. Don't think I miss anything because I don't have as many eyes as you."

The auditorium went totally silent as Undyne stopped talking for a second. A few students exchanged uneasy glances, most of the rest seemed too scared of the new head of security to risk making anything that seemed like a sudden move. "I'm going to be reforming the Security Committee soon," Undyne went on. "More selectively than the last one, but I've already gotten some very compelling recommendations. Watch for us, because we'll be watching for you. I don't care how tough you think you are, nobody's above the rules with this many kids around trying to learn how to blend in safely. Nobody."

After that stiff warning Undyne went on to announce some changes to the rules: curfew was being shortened by half an hour, penalties for skipping class were being heightened, and anyone caught going to the nurse's office for makeout purpose with another student would wish they hadn't. Most of the students left looking nervously over the shoulders, Moka, Kurumu and Yukari among them.


As the students cleared out Undyne was a little surprised to see a short, chubby woman with glasses and swooped-back blonde hair slink out of the shadows on one side of the stage. She wasn't surprised to see the woman's cheeks covered with a flaming red blush.

"Hi, Undie," Alphys said, not quite able to meet her eye.

"Don't call me that in public," Undyne whispered in irritation. "I'm supposed to be an imposing authority figure, ya know?" Once everyone else was gone, though, she grinned and bent over to kiss Alphys on the mouth and run her long fingers through the squat woman's hair. Alphys squeaked in surprise and her blush got even brighter. "Hi, Alphy! You're looking even cuter than before…" Undyne murmured.

Alphys gently pushed her away. "You could've come when I got hired in the first place."

"Pffft," Undyne replied, dismissively waving her hand. "Alphy, you know how I feel, but we had a whole brand new world to see. Some of us actually want to see it in person, not just on the internet. Teaching isn't my thing, anyway. Busting troublemakers, that I'm really good at."

"I'm kind of surprised Papyrus didn't come with you," Alphys remarked.

Undyne sighed, resting a hand on the back of her head at the remark. "He's really not cut out for this, and you guys already have a gardener, looks like."

Alphys nodded and looked over at the groundskeeper as he lumbered out of the room, his eyes on Toriel, who scowled over her shoulder at him. "Yeah, and I don't think he's planning on leaving by himself, if you know what I mean…"

"Besides, Papyrus and that creepy brother of his are doing something 'REALLY BIG' right now. Although knowing him that means they're making a sidewalk mural or something and calling it a 'puzzle'."

She turned toward Alphys and grinned then playfully mussed her hair. Alphys laughed awkwardly and replied, "Yeah, that sounds really big, doesn't it?" She looked away, not willing to look Undyne in the face for just a second, knowing what she knew now about Papyrus's brother.

Suddenly Undyne seized her under the arms and lifted her up to Undyne's own eye level, grinning that saw-toothed grin. Alphys squawked and struggled in surprise, but Undyne only seemed even more amused. "You're so cute when you're a flop-sweating nerd," she grinned, single eye twinkling.

Then without warning Undyne pursed her lips and pressed them full against Alphys's.

After a second Undyne broke the kiss with an audible *POP* and sighed happily. "I missed you too, Alphy. There were people who had as much as passion as you, but none of them were as cu…oh, you can't hear me anymore. You fainted again."

Indeed, Alphys dangled limply between Undyne's powerful arms, eyes rolled back into her head and glasses hanging off one ear.

"Guess I need to take you back to your nerdhouse until you wake up," Undyne mused. "Hope it's not as hot as your old nerdhouse. God, I haaaaaaaaaated your old nerdhouse."


"…anyone ever tell you you're the cutest girl in town?" the boy said with a grin.

"I'm a yuki-onna. We use our beauty to lure in prey," Mizore replied conversationally as she picked up his dishes.

He laughed. "You sure lured me…when do you get off?"

Suddenly a dark shape with angry glistening eyes loomed up from behind him, then reached out and grabbed him by the ear. "This is the last time I let you take me here," his girlfriend growled as she dragged him out the door. "Cute waitresses but I'm cuter than any of them!" Everything seemed to shake as she slammed the door behind her.

But as soon as it was closed Takano stepped forward and quietly turned the lock. She smiled at Mizore, who now wore a uniform like her own. "Come on, the dishes can wait for right now. Let's go upstairs and I can show you our room."

"Wait…'our' room?" Mizore asked. She of course had assumed she'd be sharing the spare room they'd advertised with Nigeki. It was why she'd been in a mood to celebrate when he agreed to stay for a while.

Takano grinned. "Of course! It's been so empty here since Koji and the other girls left…he'll be back eventually but it'll be nice to have a friend for a while."

"But…but…!" Mizore sputtered and tried to pull away helplessly as the obliviously smiling Takano hauled her away. "Wait, who's Koji?"

"Oh, he's my fiancé," Takano answered with a smile and a blush. "He's off taking cooking lessons from a friend of my dad's…he could've picked any of the girls who used to work here, but he picked me."

Mizore regarded her silently for a minute as she realized she'd wrongly identified this girl as competition. "What happened to the other girls?"

Takano's smiled faded a little at the memory. "They moved on. I'm very happy with Koji, and they seem to be doing well when we see them now and then. But I do feel a little sad about it sometimes…"

The ice claws Mizore had been planning to form melted away from the back of her wrists. This girl was no threat to her plans for her future, but she painted a very vivid picture. Before Takano could finishing dragging her away she glanced out at the window as Nigeki looked over a list of things the owner wanted him to pick from the restaurant supply store. What if that future didn't happen, could she stand being turned down? But…what if it did? Could she deal with seeing the disappointment of everyone else who'd been interested in the guy when they realized they'd lost?

What was being around other people her age doing to her?


The haze of colors she last remembered after Undyne had picked her up faded and changed into the familiar white of the plaster ceiling of her room on campus. Her vision was a blur, but Alphys rolled onto her side and flailed around at her nightstand for her glasses, felt their familiar shape and put them on.

Then she froze. Who had brought her back to her room?
"Hey, sunshine!" called a voice, and she whipped in its direction to see Undyne standing there wearing a tiny red apron with the face of a beloved anime character on it.

And only wearing a tiny red apron with the face of a beloved anime character on it.

Alphys stumbled out of bed and over to where the grinning Undyne stood. "Where did you find that?" Alphys demanded. "It's part of my collection!" She stopped as she realized something; she wasn't in the clothes she wore to work, but one of her Mew Mew Kissy Cutie t-shirts and hot pink pajama pants with sock monkeys all over them. "Wait, did you bring me home? And—"

"…and change you into your pajamas?" Undyne finished for her, grin widening. "You're really into Mew Mew, huh? She was all over your underwear."

Mortified, Alphys's entire body turned red and she covered her eyes with her wide hands. "Oh em eff gee…"

Then Undyne came over and placed her hands on Alphys's soft shoulders. "Alphy, what's wrong?" she asked, her voice no longer amused but concerned. "I'm just trying to make tonight special since we're back together. Plus you looked so uncomfortable with how you kept tossing and turning in the clothes you had on. Are you really that upset I saw your underpants?"

Still covering her eyes, Alphys nodded silently.

"Really?" Undyne asked.

A second passed and, still covering her eyes, Alphys shook her head.

Undyne smirked. "Just wait til you find out I'm your new roommate!"

That made Alphys look up at her in shock. "What?!"

Undyne shrugged and kept smiling. "The year's already started and every place was full. Well…there was where the old gym teacher was staying, but hell if I'm moving in there after what he was doing!

"So, Alphy," she went on, hooking her hands under the smaller woman's arms again and hauling her off the ground, "Are you really embarrassed at seeing me again?"

Alphys looked Undyne in the eye and shook her head, buck teeth poking out adorably. Undyne leaned in, lips puckered, and Alphys leaned forward as well, meeting Undyne in a lingering kiss as she dangled awkwardly from her lover's arms…


The orange rays of sunset poured over a field of massive sunflowers swaying in the wind.

The place was known as Witch's Knoll, as according to local legend an old witch secretly lived at the spot and took care of the flowers. Once in a while a kid snuck up to the field to spend the night on a dare. All of them came back intact, and a lot claimed to have seen the witch. Most of their friends and parents laughed it off, the first thinking it just a cheap trick and the second simply glad to see their children safe and sound.

It was just a silly story to the people of the town, something to joke with people passing through.

After all, a witch didn't live there.

Two witches lived there.

A crow as black as the night glided over the field of sun flowers on the edge of town, stretching out of sight like an endless ocean of yellow. As the bird neared the edge it passed over an ugly black sign with yellow lettering on the front reading 'FUTURE SITE OF NISHIMURA WASTE PROCESSING CENTER.' That one of the last locations of natural beauty in the area was to be cleared for such a thing…it was a crime against the world.

But a plan was set to deal with that. The crow flew on, over the rooftops of the town, looking down at the people as they drove their filthy vehicles to wherever their crass business took them. They thought they were the masters of the world. But they were wrong.

As the crow flew over one small truck, the back loaded up with boxes and bags of vegetables and bottles of cooking ingredients, suddenly a churning sickness flowed into the crow's senses and it struggled to stay in the air. There was something wrong with the driver of that truck…something darker and more malevolent than even a human mind.

The crow flew lower and as the truck signaled a turn, swooped around the corner and suddenly morphed into a young, dark-woman in a pink and black dress. She pretended to collapse in the middle of the empty street, clutching her head. The truck stopped a few feet away and the alarmed driver got out and crouched next to her. It was Nigeki Hitoribo.

"Are you okay, lady?" he asked and tried to help her up, but she pulled away.

"No, not yet, I'm still kind of dizzy," she answered. "I'm a little surprised you stopped at all…"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why wouldn't I stop when someone was in the middle of the street?" Nigeki asked.

She smirked faintly. "…but then it really shouldn't surprise me, vampire."

He jumped back. "What are you talking about?"

In the blink of an eye she was on her feet, skirts billowing from suddenly jumping up, and a triumphant smile on her lovely face. In one hand she was suddenly brandishing a hook-shaped wooden wand with a small pink orb floating in the curve of the tip. "Wait," he spoke up. "Are you Oyakata?"

"No, I'm not, but you're obviously the one we were waiting for," she answered. "Thought I don't know why the head of that school of yours sent you to us, not with what's lurking inside you."

Nigeki bristled at her accusation. "I'm doing better at keeping it under control than I have in my whole life, thank you."

She smiled, but there was a subtle malice to it. "It's not an insult. That kind of force could be exactly what my mistress and I are looking for," she said quietly. "It would be a fine way to pay us back for the knowledge you want from us. Those two young vampires you're looking for, wasn't it?"

He fought down his temper before it could get the best of him. "Where are they?" Nigeki asked slowly.

"I don't know," the witch answered. "But the mistress does. If you'll help us, she'll probably be all too happy to tell you."

"All right, fine. I have to drop this stuff off, but after that we'll go see your mistress," Nigeki replied. "Hop in."

The witch looked at him aghast. "I am not getting into that filthy machine, even if we are expecting you." She whirled and shrank into a black crow that took to the air and circled the street as Nigeki shrugged and started the truck up. When he started back toward Daphne he saw her flying after him in the rearview mirror.


A young man and his date walked out of the path leading around Witch's Knoll, both smiling from ear to ear at the walk through the flowers that had marked the ended of their day together. His fumbling hand stretched out and he laced his fingers together with hers. A look of surprise covered the girl's face for a second, but then she smiled up at him.

"Thanks for today, Taro," she giggled.

"Um, you're welcome, Miko," he replied. "Say, um, maybe this is kind of sudden, but do you think you'd be okay with coming to my house tomorrow night to meet my fam—"

She gasped suddenly in surprise, and he'd been so focused on the question he'd been working up the courage to ask all week that he hadn't seen what was right there in front of them.

Coming up the trail was a blonde girl wearing a bright red dress and lacy white apron, the dress matching her hooded cape. In her hands she carried a wicker basket, the contents of which were hidden by a white napkin. Behind her were a group of four hulking men in dark suits and sunglasses, a weird rubbery shine to their skin as they followed behind the girl in perfect synch.

"Oh don't mind us!" the girl grinned, and her canines seemed unnaturally sharp to Taro's eyes. "You guys make such a cute couple, we don't wanna ruin the moment!" She then walked past the young couple, skipping and swinging her basket melodramatically. The men behind her walked past too, not even sparing a glance at the two youths, who wasted no time in hurrying away, the boy's question forgotten.

The girl in the hood led her entourage up the trail through the sun flowers, toward the highest hill on Witch's Knoll. She reached into her basket and pulled out a pair of binoculars with strange heavy lenses and studied the top of the hill for a second, then put the binoculars away, grinning at the confirmation of her objective.

"All right boys, drop the masks!" she sang.

Immediately the men behind her seemed to explode, their suits flying to pieces and their faces flipping down into their torsos to reveal flat metal faces with glowing yellow eyes.

They didn't even seem surprised when the nearest flowers suddenly expanded into green monsters with masses of teeth and angry red eyes before lurching to attack.


A new chapter, finally up. Maybe more content in that I really should've included, but I really wanted to give more of the characters time to shine on their own while getting some new ones among them settled in, like another Darkstalkers character and not a very nice one and we'll see. As I kind of implied in the way some of the characters acted, this is when the real clash between human and monsters starts picking up. Hope you'll look forward to it.

Happy Halloween!