"But that…" Saya spoke in a whisper after she'd heard Joel's plan.
It was a very good plan, or at least it would do what he said it should.
They were to take the elevator down to the second basement of the hotel, one that had been designed as a sort of bunker should the building ever come under attack.
From there, they would make their way through it until they reached, cliché as it may be, an escape tunnel.
The tunnel led directly to the city sewers, which they could take to virtually any street in the whole city. That way they couldn't be tracked.
However, there was no way of knowing that there weren't already enemies down there.
Though the majority of the people who had "defected" from the Red Shield cause and now simply wanted to kill Diva were mostly unknowns a few of them seemed to have come from within the Red Shield organization.
And some of the more higher-ranking members had apparently not contacted Joel since Diva's presence in the building had become common knowledge.
Which meant that anyone who might have so much as overheard a mention of the second basement could know what they were up to.
"Still," Saya thought.
", we don't have much of a choice."
"So, Saya, what do you think?" Joel asked her, still holding that confident, happy smile he usually did.
"It sounds like a good plan." She managed to say before her mind could go into a full mental debate.
Though Riku had come back into the room, there was still a certain uneasy feeling and silence that occupied every second where they weren't in active conversation.
"Diva?" Joel asked her little sister with a still-startling lack of hate.
She bit her lip in nervous thought and despite the situation, the way in which Diva acted made Saya want to chuckle a bit.
"The sewer-places sound icky. But…sure."
Joel, as if being Saya's avatar, chuckled at her mention of the word "icky".
"Well, hopefully they won't be that…ha…icky."
Diva blushed, having her funny word repeated.
Saya smiled and put her hand though Diva's hair to try and make her feel better.
In response, like a cat, she pushed her head against Saya's hand and rubbed against it in attempt to make the "petting" continue.
As Saya began to chuckle herself though, they all heard the elevator in the other room arrive and Luis picked up his gun while shoving the remains of his latest snack into his mouth.
Riku just stared at the door as it opened.
When they all saw who they were there was an unspoken collective sigh; Kai and David came through the doorway.
"We should get going." David said in his usual stern-but-calm manner.
"Those guys ya knocked out are up and tussling again. They'll be here in a few minutes." Kai added in a much blunter way.
Diva moved herself and her chair closer to Saya and she had to reassure her sister that nothing would happen to her.
"It's okay, remember, we're going to get out of here."
Her little sister nodded but didn't move away.
"Sir, we're going down to the second basement, correct?" David inquired, surprising Saya at how he instantly knew what the plan was.
Joel nodded and got up out of his chair, walking around the desk
Kai walked over to Riku and put his hand on his little brother's shoulder, eliciting a nod from the boy as well and everyone moved out of the room and into the second one.
However, David stopped in the doorway and looked back at the literal Red Shield on the wall.
Saya imagined that many of his friends and his father were part of it, she could understand his reluctance to leave it behind.
"Don't worry, David. We'll come back some day soon and it will still be there." Joel assured him.
"Yes, sir." He responded before closing the doors to the office behind him and walking over to the elevator, where everyone else was.
Lewis gazed at the monitor within the elevator panel, apparently it was a view of the inside of the elevator wherever it was; so that they could tell if someone was in there.
She could see that there wasn't and Lewis told them it was empty before pushing the button that would ascend the elevator to their floor.
"Sir, I've already called. They should be there by the time we arrive."
"Who should be where?" Riku inquired, before having an arm attacked by one of Diva's unusually intimate hugs, causing him to turn pink, Kai's fist to clench, and Saya to worry about what would happen.
Thankfully, Joel broke the uncomfortable situation by replying in an amused voice.
"Red Shield headquarters. We'll take the sewers to a pier where we'll exit them and get on the yacht, then sail away into the sunset and live happily ever after. Hopefully anyway."
"How do you know there won't be any of those defecto-guys on the boat?" Kai asked, still in a bad mood for Diva being so close to Riku.
"Except for David and Lewis, the Red Shield members on the boat are the most loyal to my family, if I don't want Diva to be harmed, they won't try to hurt her. Of course, it would still be a good idea if we put all of them through a lie-detector test just to make sure."
The elevator arrived and they all got inside. Thankfully it was a large elevator, so Kai was far enough away from Diva that Saya didn't worry...too much.
She sighed internally, wondering if it was okay for him to be around her like this after such a short amount of time had passed since she came here.
"The sooner we get moving the better." She thought.
"Yay!" She thought happily while hugging Riku's arm.
This whole "crazy murder people" thing was worth being able to be around her little Riku this much.
Kai still seemed to be a bit upset but that was okay, she liked snuggling up with Riku more anyway.
The elevator kept going down and down and down but it didn't matter to her, all the longer she got to nuzzle the increasingly pink boy.
Finally the elevator reached whatever floor it had been heading towards and she heard the doors beginning to move apart.
"Diva, I think you're starting to embarrass him." Diva said in a strangely-worried tone.
She just deepened the hug, rubbing her head against his shoulder now.
"But he's so cute! Like a big teddy bear only different!" The doors started to open up and she saw that it was really dark in this basement, despite how it was supposed to be a bunker.
"It makes me all happy when I get to hug him like this!"
The lights in the elevator dimmed and David explained it was just because the electricity on this floor couldn't sustain the same voltage throughout.
He and the big snack man, Lewis, exited the elevator and started to part.
"Besides, if he's supposed to be your brother that means he's supposed to be mine too-"
She saw two things splitting in half out in the room, one thing rising and one thing lowering.
"Divaaaaaaaaaa?" She heard a familiar and entirely unwelcome voice say from the constant shadows of the basement.
"No!" She screamed, finally parting from Riku only to cower in a corner of the elevator, everyone looking at her like she was crazy.
"It's horrible!" She thought while slamming her eyelids closed.
"I always look weird when I see it and no one else does!"
She felt Saya come over to her but it didn't matter, the darkness of the other room wasn't subsiding and she was too afraid to open her eyes, even with Saya here.
"Diva? What's wrong?" Her sister asked.
"It's "Smiley"." She said, trying to hint at what she was talking about instead of just saying "freaky smiling scary thing".
"Who the hell's Smiley?" Kai asked in an insensitive tone.
She opened one eye a bit and saw that Saya herself seemed to be having a hard time understanding what she was talking about.
"Aww. What's the matter? No one taking care of you? Why don't you come over here? Heheh. I'll keep you nice and snug. Hek hek hek." It cackled.
Diva grabbed Saya's shoulders so tight it actually seemed to hurt her; her sister gasping in pain.
The next thing she knew, Saya was out of her reach, she was thrown back against the back elevator wall and Kai was aiming a gun at her.
It hurt her feelings when she realized all three had been Kai's doing.
"I knew it! You're not different at all!" He yelled.
"Kai! Stop it! She's just scared!" Saya said while trying to get over to her, held back by Kai's free arm.
"Yeah! Besides, we can't do this right now! Kai, there're people who are trying to kill her!" Riku said in her defense.
But she didn't care.
He could shoot her and it wouldn't matter to her.
She just wanted the voice to go away.
Diva got down on all fours and grasped at his leg, but he kicked her back up against the wall and cocked the gun.
"Yeah right! I bet she just got tired of doing everything the same way all the time so she came up with this little game to keep herself busy!"
Riku got in front of her and she looked down at the floor, holding the bruised shoulder where Kai had kicked her. It wasn't healing.
"Oh, owee. Come on. I'll kiss it and make it all better."
"Riku, move!"
"No Kai! You've got to stop this!" He yelled back.
Though her shoulder hurt, more than that, Diva felt her whole body starting to feel bad; her skin tingled and she felt cold. Here and there little sensations of feeling came to her and frightened the girl out of her mind each time, like when you pack something away in a dark place and think every itch or feeling you have is a spider crawling on you…
"She's evil! She's a freaky little monster! Get out of the way!"
There was a slapping sound…
…And then the lights in the room outside the elevator turned on.
It took a few seconds, but Diva finally got the courage to gaze up and saw Kai wide-eyed and with a mark on his cheek, the gun-arm down by his side, unclenched.
Riku, breathing heavy, was holding his hand like it hurt.
Kai looked back down at Riku, and she noticed only the four of them were in the elevator right now, Saya looking as surprised as Kai.
"Riku…"
She couldn't see his expression, but it looked like the young boy was furious for reason she didn't understand.
"I don't care what you say Kai! She's not at all like she used to be and I wish you could just grow up and accept that!"
Diva didn't know why, but she was surprised that Riku had gotten so upset for her.
Saya walked past Kai and Riku, helped her up, and then slowly the three of them walked out of the elevator, Kai still standing in the doorway looking where Riku had been.
She was grateful that Kai hadn't killed her and that Riku liked her now, but the only thing she really cared about was the fact that the thing, or "Smiley" had gone away.