Gakupo raced past the Kasanes on his way down the hall. Ted had a baseball bat and was being reluctantly led along by Teto who was pale and frenzied as she scurried into Gakupo's room murmuring something about Miku.
Gakupo reached the stairway just as Master shouted up to him "Look out, a few got through!"
He looked down and saw three people in black masks climbing the stairs. One of them stopped when it noticed Gakupo and the other two crashed into its back.
Gakupo snickered. "It couldn't be this easy?" he thought as he jumped down the steps and slammed his shoulder into the first masked teen.
The first teen fell into the other two and they tumbled screaming down the stairs into a heap on the floor.
Gakupo ran down the stairs two at a time until he came upon a hellish sight. The entire Vocaloid living room was destroyed, furniture was over turned and electronics were shattered. Their television was lying in shards of glass all across the room. And in front of the door dozens of black-masked strangers stood around or dodged around the Master and the Michael Myers android, trying to dart past them in order to get deeper into the house.
The Master was swinging a long plastic PVC pipe like a samurai sword and hitting the strangers hard in the stomach or head with pin-point accuracy.
The Michael Myers android was simply picking up people and throwing them back out the door into the night, where they would brush themselves off and run back inside.
"The hell is going on here?" Gakupo cried as two people tried to grab him suddenly. He beat them back with his sheathed sword and then cracked one randomly over the back of the head as it tried to dart past him to get upstairs.
Gakupo suddenly heard a child crying and he spun around to find that Kaai Yuki was being pulled out of a cabinet in the living room where she'd been hiding. She kicked and lashed against the stranger who pulled at her ankles and Gakupo finally and decidedly lost his temper.
He ignored everyone and everything else as he strode across the room. He was so angry he saw red and he didn't think twice about beating the stranger across the face with his sheath.
Blunt as the sword was, Gakupo beat the person so violently he drew blood. When he was done he noticed that a small crowd had formed around him. A group of people who wanted to confront him, but didn't want to meet the same fate as their friend, who lay bloody and unconscious on the floor.
Panting he picked the sobbing Yuki up in one arm and his blunt weapon in the other arm. He needed to force a path to the stairs open so that he could maybe find someone to get Yuki out of the house to safety.
"Gakupo onii-chan! Over here!" Like the answer to his prayers, Gumi pulled a frightened Kiyoteru down the stairs.
"Perfect!" Gakupo thought, swiping aside the wall of people with his sword but almost as soon as he began to hope, a large group of black masked strangers surrounded the two.
Gumi gave a shriek and Gakupo began to swing his sword wildly as his heart sank into his stomach. But he didn't need to worry. Gumi punched and threw her elbows making several people fly off into walls and into the living room.
Kiyoteru crouched down with his hands over his head while Gumi picked up strangers and tossed them away with disregard for their well-being.
Some people smashed into walls face first, while some landed on their backs and scurried out of Gumi's way. Some didn't get back up at all, while one landed right on Michael Myers who emotionlessly caught it and tossed it like a sack of flour out the door.
Gakupo made a path to Gumi and wordlessly passed Yuki to her. Gumi, to his horror, tossed Yuki into the air.
The little girl tucked herself into a ball as she summersaulted through the air and Kiyoteru dove off the steps to catch her. He made it just in time.
He pressed her close to his chest and she uncurled revealing her red face, shiny with tears.
"Get out, go!" Master yelled across the room. "Gakupo's room, down the tree, north on Elm, up the hill! Now!"
Kiyoteru nodded, still looking shocked and pale, and he stumbled upstairs. Six people tried to follow him, but Gakupo and Gumi together stopped them from getting up stairs.
Kaito rustled the back of her hair and she giggled as she pressed against him, longing for more of his flavor.
"You smell like vanilla." She said laughing.
"You know what they say," Kaito said stroking the sides of her face. "You are what you eat."
"So I'm pretzels, and you're ice cream?" Meiko wondered aloud as Kaito rolled her over and leaned over her. She tried to pull him down into an even hotter kiss, but Kaito suddenly jerked his head up and away.
Meiko perked her ears and she realized that outside her room there was some kind of cataclysm going on. Someone was crying, something was breaking and the thunderous pounding of feet was everywhere.
"Sounds like a fight." She said falling back into her bed. Fights were nothing new in the Vocaloid house.
Kaito however rolled off of her and made for the door to investigate. Meiko sighed and followed him solemnly, wanting to try and entice him back into her bed.
Kaito made his way into the hallway and with shock he found someone in a black mask slumped on the floor. Kaito kicked him lightly with his foot and the passed out person stirred briefly.
"Oh my God!" Meiko mumbled as Kaito wrapped his arm protectively around her waist. "Are there more?" Suddenly Gakupo swore so loudly it floated upstairs and Kaito felt a charge of panic as he realized that there was a roar of chatter coming from below.
Meiko followed Kaito as swiftly as a shadow as he suddenly flew down the hallway and down stairs. As he reached the bottom steps a small crowd of black-masked teenagers who were about to run upstairs turned and spotted him.
"OMIGAWDKAITO!" One of them squealed and Kaito winced as he tried to jump back and run to safety upstairs, but one of the faster reacting fan girls seized his scarf in one fluid motion and tugged hard, cutting off escape and air flow.
"Bleakh!?" Kaito grabbed onto the stair-rails as he was suddenly tugged downward. The four girls forced him over, making him fall down the last four steps.
He banged his knee painfully against the last step as four sets of hands pushed him to the ground. His face was smashed into the carpet and he felt the rug burn searing his cheek as somebody called for something called 'the plug'.
Meiko watched in numb horror for a moment as she absorbed the scenario in all of its unbelievable violence and magnitude. Then she felt her blood boiling.
Kaito felt a fifth pair of hands start searching down the back of his neck, making his hair stand on end.
"Damn it Kaito! Stand the hell up!" Gakupo screamed as he furiously swung his blunt sword like a tennis racket; trying to beat open a path to Kaito in panic.
Kaito bucked and twisted, but he couldn't fight the pressure pinning him to the floor. "Where's Meiko? Kaito thought frenziedly "Did they grab her too?"
Suddenly something shattered above Kaito and one of the bodies over top of him slouched over, crushing him beneath its weight.
"What the hell is your problem!" Meiko cried slamming another beer bottle over somebodies head. "We freaking sing for you people, we let you write and draw those nasty UNTRUE things! AND THIS IS HOW YOU THANK US?"
Meiko had darted back up to her room and grabbed an armful of empty beer bottles which she was not only using as clubs, but also pitching across the room to hit unsuspecting intruders on the other side.
Kaito wriggled out from underneath the unconscious fan and grabbed a bottle from Meiko's arms.
"Do you know how much I love you?" He said smiling as he smashed the bottle over somebodies head.
Meiko grinned mischievously. She had been itching for a fight since her last night of bar-hopping didn't end in a bar-brawl.
She stood on her toes and stole a quick kiss before officially starting to fight with all of the gusto she could muster.
Meiko slammed people into walls, kicked people in the face, and punched one person so hard that a shiny white tooth flew out of the mouth hole cut into the ski-mask.
Kaito took off his scarf, since he was afraid somebody would grab it and choke him again and he picked up a broken table leg and began using it as a bat. He took swipes at people's legs as they ran by and occasionally at people when they strayed too close.
After a little while, Master, Gakupo, Gumi, Kaito and Meiko had all fought their way together and they gathered by the staircase whispering rapidly as the last twelve or so members of the gang in black huddled just outside the open front door, barely hidden by the darkness.
Gakupo was exhausted. He hadn't realized how difficult fighting so many opponents would be. "What now?" he whispered watching the shadows move just beyond the door.
"Now… I don't know." Master glanced over to the Michael Myers robot which lay lifeless on the floor. Someone had jumped on his back and used what Gakupo called 'the plug' to knock him out. Master grimaced. "So much for the buyer in Florida." She thought sadly "He probably won't want him now."
"Hey, did anyone else notice that they were… grabby?" Meiko added as she rubbed her arms where fan-girls had roughly pinched her skin raw with their grubby little fingers.
Kaito nodded and held up the tattered hem of his overcoat. "They grabbed onto my coat and wouldn't let go…" he murmured sadly.
Gumi cocked her eyebrows confused. "I didn't notice any of that at all!"
Gakupo looked over his shoulder at where Gumi had thrown somebody so hard that her head had dented the wall . "Of course she wasn't touched!" he thought, "Nobody wanted to go near her!"
Master rubbed her fingers through her hair, as she was prone to do when she was stressed.
"Kaito, Meiko." She talked into the floor as she held her head in her hands. "I need you to go to the hill where all of the other Vocaloid are hiding. Go there and stay there until I send you a message on Hotaru via your phone."
Meiko stomped her feet. "What! Why us?" She exclaimed furiously.
"Because I said so." Master responded quietly, but Gakupo could hear the storm clouds of anger rolling in her voice.
Master shook her head and sent her fluffy ginger hair bouncing around. "No, I'm sorry. It's just because besides Luka, there are no other adults up there."
"There's Hiyami-sensei." Gumi interjected.
"No other adults." Master pressed in a slightly dangerous tone.
"There's Teto, and Ted." Gakupo said as Master's mood turned dark.
"As I said; no other adults. You need to make sure everyone's okay."
Kaito understood at once what Master's intentions were. He suddenly realized that the four Vocaloids were in more danger fighting together than apart.
"Come one, let's just go." Kaito said gently taking Meiko's hand in his own.
Meiko looked down at Kaito's hand for a moment in contemplation. Then, she reluctantly followed him upstairs.
Gakupo listened to them enter his room. He heard the door creak open and her heard their footsteps as they crawled out the window.
Gakupo rubbed one of the welts forming on his arm. He'd been hit with one of the legs of a chair when a fan girl decided to use it as a sword.
"Do you have a plan?" He asked "Truthfully."
Master caught his eye and quickly looked away. "Maybe; I don't know."
Gumi touched Gakupo's arm lightly. "Don't worry." She smiled and said. "It doesn't matter how many of them there are; I'll protect you no matter what!"
Gakupo forced a chuckle, though he wasn't in the mood to laugh "That's supposed to be my line" he said glumly.
He brushed one of her long green bangs away from her face. "I wish you could rely on your big brother to protect you."
"Would you—" Master started to speak and then her eyes darted over the disaster that was once her living room.
Master's eyes filled with tears as she saw all of the disaster that she had brought upon her precious Vocaloid.
"Please. Gakupo, Gumi; Unbolt the door to the basement and go inside and I'll re-bolt it behind you."
"No way!" Gumi shouted, balling her fists and shaking them ferociously. "We'll never leave you alone to face the enemy by yourself! All for one and one for all! Right!"
"Please!" Master begged raising her hands into the air like a prayer. "Please trust me!"
Gakupo took Master's hands in his own and gently lowered them. "No. What Gumi means to say is that we'll never leave you."
Gakupo let Master's hands go and they swung limply by her side; she looked lifeless.
"You made us who we are. Please trust US." Gakupo said firmly patting Master on the shoulders. "You can't do this alone."
Master looked into Gakupo's eyes and saw her face reflected in the pools of violet. She remembered when she was first making Gakupo out of wires and computer processors. She had just finished hooking up the optic center of the brain, which controlled his sight, when she had to stop.
"There is something about the eyes," She recalled telling Dr. Evil as she finished wielding a piece of metal in the back of Gakupo's head.
"Once you give a Vocaloid their eyes, even with nothing else; no skin, no brain; they really truly appear human for the first time."
"Hm," Dr. Evil remarked as he usually did while he overlooked work done on Vocaloids.
"One more thing," Master had stated proudly as Gakupo's eyes swiveled back and forth in his metal skull while Master controlled them with her keypad which was hooked into his brain.
"What's that doctor?"
"From this point on, he can see you." She said using her keypad to fix Gakupo's eyes right at Dr. Evil. He shuddered.
"Please don't do that." Dr. Evil said turning away from the half-formed android. "I don't see them as human until they have skin; the eyes only make them scarier for me! Please make him look away doctor!" Dr. Lucius Evil, a fully grown man begged the Master to have Gakupo look away. He felt his voice rise in pitch and he couldn't stop his heart from beating out of control.
"Frightening. Isn't it Evil?" Master said with a blank tone as she watched Dr. Evil cringe and shrink into the shadows of her own lab, like a poor sinner facing the horrors of hell.
"Yes, Kamui Gakupo can see us. But his mind is not yet developed enough to understand or comprehend—Heck, he probably won't even remember this.
"But in a way, this is even worse. Am I wrong?" Master made Gakupo's eyes look up at her, and she felt the familiar chill of eyes peering out of a metal-skull head.
"When he sees you, his opinions, his biases, his experiences—he has none of that. He sees you as you truly are, without anything blocking his vision, such as preferences, or society.
"And in return, you can see your own life; un-biasedly reflected in his eyes. Your true self, staring right back at you."
Master took a swallow of cool, damp air and looked down. She did this with every Vocaloid, starting with Meiko. She simply took a moment and looked into their eyes. Their cold, dead, curious eyes.
She thought that after all of this time she might have hardened herself.
She was wrong.
"HEY!"
Master spun instinctively in the direction of the sound. To her horror, twelve un-masked teenagers wearing black sweaters were filing into her house. It took her a moment to realize that they were the same people from before.
"We've got something to say!" One of the girls said boisterously while the others laughed manically.
Master felt the blood drain from her face, but she licked her dry lips and tried to make a snappy come back. "It better be that you or your parents can pay for this mess."
The showboating blonde at the front of the pack threw her long gold hair over her shoulders. "No, that's not it!"
Master didn't like the way everyone seemed to be laughing, as if in on a private joke that only she didn't know about.
"I don't know if I can accept an apology; but you can try."
"Nope, not it either." The blonde snickered turning to her friends.
"Then you better just shut up! Super freaks!" Gumi cried curling her fingers into fists.
"Shhh, Gumi." Gakupo warned her as the laughter died down. He wondered briefly if her should unsheathe his sword, and just fight to finish off all of the fans at once; but he decided against it, since he could probably fight them back into the black vans that they surely had parked out on the side walk.
Actually, most of the fans had disappeared, crawling out into the darkness; where, Gakupo knew they went either to get help, or crawl into the vans and hope to be driven home to their parents who will wonder how their children got concussions in the night.
"All… I…Want to say is…" The blonde said each word slowly, as if savoring the way they felt. The room was dead quiet and it seemed as though everyone was holding their breath.
Gakupo looked around briefly, and was shocked to see every eye was trained on him.
In a sudden burst of insight Gakupo leapt forward, determined to try and stop the blonde, but he was less than a second too late.
"Catatonically"
Gakupo collapsed to the ground suddenly. He stared wide-eyed across the floor in terror as he realized that he was paralyzed.
His breath caught in his throat as he saw an army of feet trample past him and two pairs of hands grab his ankles and elbows, but then his world turned black and he descended into a sleep too close to death for dreams.
"GAKUPO!" Gumi shrieked as almost ten people formed a wall surrounding her. One of them pushed her roughly and she picked her up and threw her across the room.
Master saw Gakupo fall to the ground and she became a tornado, whipping around, hitting people with her pipe and throwing junk she picked up off the floor.
Finally the last few people ran outside, just as Master heard the squealing of tires. Master stumbled over to the open door and watched one van peel out of the front of the house while people were still loading into two more.
One person ran out from the back of the house and shoved Master aside as she tried to jump into a van.
Master fell to the ground clutching her knees. Her secret worse fears had come true. All of them.
"Gakupo… Gakupo…" Gumi staggered over to the Master, calling out for Gakupo, though not daring to believe what she'd seen.
Master knew it. Gumi knew it. They both knew it. Just as they had been ambushed by a sea of strangers, many of them hiding out of sight; two people had grabbed him, unconscious and loaded him into a van; which was now lost in the night somewhere.
"That was probably the plan all along." Master realized as she picked herself up off her knees.
"Gakupo?" Gumi cried as tears began to spill over her cheeks.
"He's gone Gumi." Master said lifelessly.
Gumi wailed and Master noticed a pounding noise coming from inside the house.
"Come on Gumi, He needs you to pull yourself together!" Master yanked Gumi's elbow and Gumi reluctantly stood up.
"If you help me, we can get him back, but I'm going to need your help, no questions; alright?" Master shook Gumi reassuringly, holding her in a brief close hug.
Gumi nodded. "One question." She sighed as her short flow of tears came to an end. "Is he going to be okay."
Master didn't answer Gumi. She refused to answer Gumi. She didn't know.
Master flung open the door to the basement and Miku collapsed into the hallway.
"What happened to this place? Oh, it's a disaster!" Miku exclaimed as she examined the damage.
"Is everyone okay up there?" Neru Akita called up, not bothering to walk up the steps herself.
"No, it's Gakupo… I need to make a phone call." Master suddenly felt dizzy. She grabbed onto a swivel chair and saved herself from falling on the floor.
"Are you going to be okay?" Haku asked hovering over the chair.
"…m fine." Master gruffly replied as she dialed the number for Luka's phone on Hotaru's monitor.