The Three Kings: Strike

Disclaimer (1): Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Studios, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

Warning: Mentions of past minor character death, violence, gore, slut shaming, misogyny, pedophilia, hypothermia, drowning, suicidal thoughts, forced suicide, bombings, and murder.

Chapter 13: Point of No Return

Divine weapons do not work on each other. This is a simple, indisputable fact.

There is no known reason for why this is, only the theories and guesses that have been made since the first set was created. Aknadin believed that it was a fail safe created by the Great Gods themselves, who knew that one day he planned to turn the Millennium Items upon his brother and wished to quell some of the havoc he would wreap. But this turned out to be false, as those that survived his wars would discover, for the battles between the Item wielders nearly brought the Egyptian empire to its knees.

Others hypothesized that it was less so that the weapons could be used against each other, but more that they could never be used in conjunction with one another. However, the Peverell brothers disproved this theory, as they used their set of weapons, the Deathly Hallow in deadly synchronicity. The Peverells also proved that a single person could wield multiple weapons at the same time, though it would come a the cost of everything that they were. So that couldn't be it.

The only person who has come closest to the discovering the true answer is the Head of the Department of Mysteries, a timeless, ancient woman with blue eyes and red hair. She came to the conclusion, after a millennia of studying the divine, magic, and everything that the world had to offer, that gods sometimes created rules for no other reason than to watch humanity try to scramble about trying to figure out a way around them. Gods, she reasons, just like to fuck with us.

As it turns out, all of them are right.

The divine weapons, or at least the idea of them, were created by the Great Gods - all four of them. The Father of Light, god of the physical realm, wished not to see his world destroyed, and the Mother of Darkness, goddess of the mystics, did not want to unleash such an unstoppable power upon the earth, created the rule. But it was Zorc and his sister, Horakhty, that created the loophole.

Divine weapons do not work on. each. other. The rule states nothing about what divine weapons could do to the environments around them.

So while the Mother and the Father tried to ensure that we would never use the Millennium Items and the Deathly Hallows to help or hinder another wielder directly, the Destroyer and the Creator simply decided that it would be more fun to watch humanity do what it does best: find a way.

Bakura had talked with Atem briefly about the moments between when Ryou Andrews touched the Ring for the first time and when he and the Spirit had combined, about the nearly fifty years that the two of them had spent within the Ring battling the body of Zorc the Destroyer. He'd been fidgety in a way that betrayed how uncomfortable he'd been with the topic, but he'd powered through regardless, knowing that she was probably the only person alive who knew what he'd gone through. Atem had held his hand, listening closely as they'd lain next to each other in bed, but is ashamed to say that couldn't return the favour.

Maybe it's because she'd been so new to this state, this combined form where she was Yuugi Mutuo and the Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle and the Lady Pharaoh of legend. Maybe it's because she's always found it hard to talk about her feelings in a way that the King Commander never had. Maybe it's just because she's scared.

But she doesn't talk about the near half century that she - Yuugi - had spent clutching the Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle's hand, standing amidst the blazing power of the Destroyer's divine magic, being ripped apart and pulled back together. Yuugi had cried, Yuugi had screamed, Yuugi had pleaded for it to end, for everything to just stop and then-

Then the Spirit had cupped her face with withered, ashen hands and brought Yuugi's eyes up to meet her empty, hollow sockets, and kissed her with lips that tasted like death, tasted like life. And Yuugi had remembered the moment where she'd asked Duke Devlin to give her a knife, how she had been ready to set aside everything that she was for so that those that she loved could have a few more seconds of life, and knows that she could continue on, because Atem had work to do and people to save on the other side of this.

But then her grandfather was gone, and Atem is left in a world with no ties back to who she'd been as Yuugi. Solomon Mutuo and the Turtle Game Shop and the apartment that they'd shared above it had disappeared and there is nothing, nothing left of her, not in San Francisco - only a few cousins, from a city she'd never visited, from a family who'd never given her mother the time of day after she came back from Vegas with a swollen belly.

Yuugi has tried to be the better person and not to hate them, just as she'd tried not to hate her grandfather for never looking at her and seeing Yuugi. It's one of the few things that she'd failed at in her entire life.

And now Solomon Mutuo is dead.

Atem finds his body amongst the corpses that Maximillion Pegasus left in his wake, eyes wide open in shock, his jaw slack and his muscles lax. The power of the Millennium Puzzle flows through her, burning hot and freezing cold all at once, the blood and flesh and bones of those trapped within it screaming out for vengeance.

It shouldn't be shocking, she thinks logically. It really shouldn't be.

Yet it was.

She pauses, eyes glowing gold as a blood red cloak of magic surrounds her, and reaches down, gently touching his cheek. He's not too cold yet, she rationalizes. It's like he's only got a chill.

It's not the first time she's seen a dead body. She doubts that it will be the last. But the death of Solomon Mutuo, of Shimon… and Atem, she-

She screams.

At exactly 3:00 am SST, a series of events occur around the world.

A man frantically coughs into a napkin and stares at the blood stain that he leaves when he pulls it away, desperately thinking, There's not enough time.

A woman, very much alive, gasps and clutches her neck, lurching forwards as the car she's in skids to a stop. The driver, very much dead, parks the car with shaking hands and turns around to check that she is not hurt.

Albus Dumbledore's hand jerks and crashes into the inkwell on his desk, splattering the black liquid onto the robes of the Confederation wizard beside him.

A shattered mess of a soul screams and howls, and Quirinus Quirrell buries his face in his arms to keep from crying out in pain.

A diary belonging to a former Hogwarts student flips its way across the room and smacks itself against the wall.

A mystical ring jumps into the air and rolls towards the kitchen of the rundown hut, scurrying across the rotting floorboards.

A cup, hidden within a Gringotts vault, hisses and shakes, quivering it's way to the bottom of the pile it lays on.

A beautiful diadem leaps upwards, sending the books that it was trapped beneath flying into the air.

A boy with green eyes and a lightning scar yelps, his arms flailing, and he knocks the frying pan and sends the bacon he's cooking for his guardians falling to the floor. He closes his eyes, lips tight, and waits for his uncle to start shouting.

And finally, a woman with red hair and blue eyes holds up her hand, halting Trista Latner angry rant. "The island is lost," she says, and calls for Blaine Garrish.

Keith has no idea why he thought that he could kill the Thief King and has no idea why he continues to think that he might have a chance, because the island is crumbling beneath his very feet as he watches Bakura, the Lady Pharaoh, and Pegasus going at each other. They're impossibly powerful, so much so that Keith can feel their magic in his goddamn lungs, and he's standing there without a wand or a weapon of any kind.

The two Kings bare down on Pegasus, pushing him back with lightning and wind, ripping any defense he has to shreds before he can even get it up. The man that Keith had once thought to be so powerful is being pushed farther and farther back, his face so pale that it glows in the moonlight.

"Come on!" Mook pulls him out of his daze, dragging him inside the remains of headquarters and towards where he's praying the broom closet still is.

He'd gotten the idea after watching the mages fly over the horizon on their dragons and helicopters just now. The three wizard-born children from Ryou's cell had stolen a pair of broomsticks and used them to fly to San Francisco, so there was still a chance that they could do the same.

"We don't even need to make it to the mainland," Kitamori adds. "They're using a huge aircraft carrier as a base. It's only a few miles off the coast. If we can just make it to that-"

"You seriously think that they're going to just let us fly onto that thing?" Mook shouts over the unearthly sounds of the gods doing battle. "Green made it pretty clear that we weren't wanted."

"But they took wizards with them. The prisoners from the investigation," Keith frowns.

"Leverage. If they return US civilians that we'd taken as captors, they could probably negotiate a ceasefire with the American Ministry and pin the blame on us," Scott continues.

"Hey," Coppermine says suddenly. "Isn't the Millennium Spellbook somewhere on the island? Could we use that to buy passage onto their base?"

Keith honestly doesn't know if he's ever heard smarter words come out of Coppermine's mouth.

They divide and conquer. Mook, Coppermine, and Scott go off to find the broomsticks, while Kitamori leads the way into the lower levels where the Spellbook should be kept. Most of the hallways have collapsed in on themselves and it takes everything that Keith is to not scream in agony as his strained muscles pull out all the stops to get them to where they need to go.

Luckily, Pete's wand trusts Kitamori enough to let her use it to help them clear the blocked pathways and move the dead when needed. Above them, the earth cracks and crumbles, barely keeping itself together.

"In here," Kitamori says, kicking down the door to the room that holds their ticket out of her. Inside, the Millennium Spellbook is encased in glass, a simple leather bound tome of aging papyrus. A charm causes the pages to flip every so often, revealing ink scrawled in an ancient text that seemed to change every time he looked at it.

Keith breaked the glass rather than look for spells to disarm, figuring that it literally could not get any worse from here on out. He grabs the book, closes it, and lets his gaze linger on the Eye of Horus painted in gold leaf on the cover. It seems to stare back at him.

"Let's go," Kitamori says, but he almost doesn't listen. Keith opens the book and flips through the pages, until he stops on one written in complete English, what the fuck?

"Keith, come on!" Kitamori shouts against, raising the wand to the ceiling and casting a spell to keep the roof from caving in on them. "We've got to go now!"

"In the Labs… in London…" Keith whispers hoarsely, his eyes racking over the notes in the book, "There's a room dedicated to the study of time. There's a crystal Bell Jar, where they put living things in to watch the effects that repeated exposure to time has on them…"

Kitamori swallows hard, "It's said that the Spellbook contains every secret of magic that could and ever would exist, that it only shows its secrets to those with a question that cannot be solved otherwise."

"Did you know?" He asks softly. Then, when she doesn't answer, he shouts, shoving the Spellbook in her face. "Did you know?!"

Keith thinks that he's crying, that he can't take much more.

Kitamori reads, her eyes flicking across the pages, and then looks down. It's all the answers that he needs.

"Why did you fuck me?" He shouts, "Because of this? Because of who my mother is?"

Kitamori shakes her head, "No."

"You seriously expect me to believe-"

"Keith. I fucked you because I've got a thing for blondes. That's it. I promise."

"But you knew! You knew!"

"Keith, I swear to god that I'll explain everything once we get off this rock, but now is not the time," Kitamori grabs him by the collar and forces him down to her eye level. She's so much stronger now that she's not pretending to be some waifish little girl.

"How the fuck can I even trust you?" He pushes her away. Keith doesn't know what his plan is here, but he has to get away from Kitamori right fucking now.

"Because I'm the best chance you have of getting out of here," Kitamori tries to reason with him, but Keith honestly isn't sure that he doesn't want to go down with the island right now.

Then, before either of them can do anything, the room around them explodes in a blast of energy and magic. Together, they fall, the earth giving way to salt water that relentlessly rushes in.

Keith's lungs burn as he holds onto what little air he has left. He can't breathe. He can't breathe. He panics and tries to inhale, only for his lungs to be filled with water. His entire body seems to seize as his vision gives way to black as skeletal hands grab shoulders, twisting him around by a hook in his navel.

He wakes up just as Kitamori breaches the surface, holding him close and treading water to save their lives. Coppermine's wand is gone and Keith can barely comprehend anything more than how much pain he's in, the freezing water feeling like a million tiny knives stabbing at his skin. Kitamori is screaming at the top of her lungs for anyone to see them, to help them. There's blood in the water.

Something bright shines in the corner of Keith's eyes and for a moment he thinks that it's the sun. But when he turns his head, all he can see is the remains of the island, a molten pile of burning ash, the fires shooting so high that they pierce the clouds overhead.

I can see the stars, Keith thinks blearily.

Coppermine finds them a few seconds later, diving down on his broom and pulling them from the water. Keith's hands are turning blue around the Spellbook and his jaw is clattering with how much he's shivering. He watches as Mook and Scott work together to get Kitamori out of the water. Her entire left side is covered in blood.

"She must have splinched herself forcing her way through the wards!" Mook cries over the howling winds. "We have to get her to a healer!"

"Which way to the mage ship?" Coppermine yells, as darkness slowly encroaches on his vision again.

Mook says something else, but he can't hear her. Keith closes his eyes, lays his head on Coppermine's shoulder, and wants it all to end.

The island, much like every island in the Pacific Ocean, is located on top of a volcano. And the Puzzle was an amplifier, a modifier, and a dampener all in one. So Atem uses it to shatter the wizarding magic keeping this one from turning active, shoot her magic directly the lava pool that exists deep below the crust, and forces it up with the power of an atomic bomb.

The island is vaporized around her, but Atem shields herself by seeing the energy that exists between the neutrons within the magma and yanking it away, cooling the molten rock almost instantly. She does the same around Bakura, saving his life, and leaves Pegasus to fend for himself.

Solomon is gone, turned to ash with the rest the world around them, but Atem is nearly blind with hate.

She transforms into the Sky Dragon.

Not all the way. There's still a block on her, a leftover curse from Zorc, who refused to give back everything that the Spirit had been within the Puzzle for all those years. But it's enough. Atem's hair turns to bright, red feathers, her torso stretches upwards and outwards, coiling in on itself like a massive serpent. Talons sprout from her fingers and toes, black and predatory. Her mouth hardens into a cruel, hooked beak and massive red, feathered wings burst from her back, shredding her shirt. She tears open the falling bubble of obsidian in a shock of lightning and launches herself at the energy source she knows to be Pegasus.

Beside her, Bakura does the same. His skin sheds to reveal pale grey scales as fangs erupt from his lipless mouth. Black bat wings erupt from his shoulder blades as a pair of long horns sprout from his temples. The air around him swirls dangerously overhead as he becomes all of the Demon Snake that the Destroyer will allow, the Millennium Ring glowing ominously around his neck.

The part of her brain that's always analyzing things, that always manages to keep calm, takes him in, there amidst the flames and the night, and thinks, No wonder they thought us to be gods.

Pegasus floats in the middle of it all, a magical shield blurring the air around him. He opens his mouth and points his wand.

Atem banks right, letting the curse speed over her shoulder. She returns with her own barrage of lightning, opening her mouth and letting the crackling power within her free. Pegasus flies upwards, but is met with Bakura, who flies directly through him and wreakes his insides with his poisoned fangs and claws. Pegasus screams, his flying spell faltering. He catches himself before he fall face first into the molten furnace beneath them.

Together, they clashed, again and again, each pushing harder to see which one would break first. The waves hissed beneath them as they met magma, boiling and releasing steam that could render flesh from bone. Jets of lava spewed around them, red and yellow and gold, infinitely hot and burning. Thunder and lightning sang above them and wind rocked below. The storm raged onwards, spitting rain and hail from the heavens.

Pegasus was slowing down. With each bout, he got lower and lower in the sky, his moves a little more sluggish. He's feeling the weight of the Eye, she reasons. He hasn't stopped using it since he put it in.

"Give up," Bakura roars. "You know you can't last much longer."

"No!" Pegasus screams. "No! I was- I am- Do you know who I am? What I can do? I have the Eye! I can-"

"You are killing yourself with it, because you don't know what you're doing with it," Atem hisses, almost disappointed. From here, their enemy almost looks pathetic.

"I know- Aknadin used it to fight you," Pegasus spits. "He was unstoppable!"

"Because he knew when to turn the damn thing off," Atem shouts. "Give up."

"And do what? You'll let me live?!" Pegasus snears. "What did that whore Plant trade for you to do her bidding? Did she let you fuck her, too, the little slut?"

It takes everything that Atem is not to kill him, "Where is Gara Grindelwald's baby?"

Pegasus's face goes blank, and then he laughs, cold and maniacal, "Gara Grindelwald's welp?! Are you kidding me? That's what this is about? Don't be ridiculous?" He pauses, as if weighting for them to join in on the joke. "You're serious. You're actually serious. Merlin, the slut is as dumb as she looks.

"Gara Grindelwald's son is Keith Howard."

She sees Bakura flinch, a look of shock passing over his face before he clamps down on it entirely.

Pegasus continues to laugh, "If she'd just looked between her legs, she might have figured it out! Well, it's too late now. Keith drowned the moment you blew up this island. It's what he deserves-"

Bakura sends out a blast of wind that catches Pegasus right in the chest, knocking him clean out of the sky.

Together the shoot downwards, streaking towards the falling Pegasus, who screaming and crying and praying for mercy. Atem is faster so she reaches him first, opening her beak and biting into the meat of his torso, thinking the entire time, The gods don't care about you.

She flings him upwards for Bakura, who flaps his wings to form a great gale wind that slams into him with enough force to shatter every bone in Pegasus's body. Atem catches him with her taloned feet, claws digging into what's left of his shoulders, and shakes him until his wand falls from his grasp.

He's given up, she realizes when he doesn't even fight anymore. Atem can feel his life slipping away, feels the neural pathways in his body starting to shut down and refuses to let him go. The Puzzle blazes again, amplifying her own powers, and she forces life back into him. It's cruel. It's blasphemous. It feels so fucking gratifying.

Together, she and Bakura fly, screeching across the night sky towards the Cerulean. They crash down onto the deck, rolling with their momentum. Atem keeps a hold on Pegasus the entire time, knowing that if she lets go, he's going to die.

She is not done with him yet.

Bakura slams one scaled hand over Pegasus's mouth, keeping him from screaming as he reaches down over his face with the other. The man shakes uncontrollably as the Thief King shoves his fingers into the socket of his right eye and yanks the Millennium Eye from it's depths.

Then, Atem reaches into his body, into the very sequence of chromosomes that make up who he is, and sees what makes him a wizard. A single string of protein, tied together in a way that seems manufactured, gives him the ability to use a wand. Atem grabs hold of it and tears it to shreds.

"Keep him tethered here," she growls at him, watching viciously as Pegasus's blood runs down Bakura's wrist, how his fingers clench around the golden eye. "He cannot die yet."

People are congregating around them, whispering and watching, but Atem doesn't concentrate on them. She detaches her talons and lets Bakura take over, using the Millennium Ring to keep Pegasus alive better than she could. Atem walks forwards, awkwardly on two legs with inverted knees at first, then more steadily down on four, her elongated torso covered in the red feathers of the Sky Dragon.

Let him suffer. Let him writhe in pain. Then, when he is of no use to me any longer, Atem thinks viciously, staring at the three incoming dots on the horizon, Then he can die.

Reiko blinks awake and sees the white ceiling of the Cerulean's medical bay. She has no idea how she got here and everything hurts.

She sighs, It could be worse.

She does a quick inventory for her body. All of her limbs and digits are still attached, but there's an awkward numbness in her right ring and pinky fingers. Bandages are wrapped around her middle and when she presses gently, she can feel the indents of stitches along her stomach. Her legs are stiff and there is a pair of crutches leaning against her bed, clearly meant for her.

Sitting in the chair at the foot of her bed is Amanda Green.

"Where…" Reiko says, but her throat is so dry that it comes out as a gasp. Green makes no move to help her, which makes Reiko wonder if any of the preppishly-happy personality that she'd displayed in San Francisco had been real at all.

It takes her a few minutes to try and speak again, "Where is my team?"

"They're alive," Green answers, staring her down with eyes like green chunks of ice. She is still one of the most beautiful people Reiko has ever seen. "Keith Howard is in the brig, though."

"What do you mean?"

"Turns out he killed a family member of someone on our side," Green explains. "Also, he tried to kill Bakura when they landed, who is a lot more merciful than I'd expected he'd be."

"You got the Spellbook?" Reiko asks, knowing that it's probably the only reason why no one had been thrown overboard. Green nods.

"Why did you kill me?" Green asks instead. Reiko raises an eyebrow.

"Why did I kill Mala Pukar?" She snorts, "Because I was ordered to."

"And why did you try to save me on the cliff?" Green continues.

Reiko sighs, feeling like she's had this conversation already, "Because I like you. Against my better judgement."

"That's it?"

"That's it," Reiko repeats. Her head lolls to the side, "Why did you do what you did in India?"

Green pauses, looking a bit surprised, "I fought for my country."

"And I fought for the Department of Mysteries," Reiko rolls her eyes. "I mean, why did you use rope magic the way you did? To control people?"

Green looks down at her feet, wringing her hands and nervously tapping her heel to the ground. It takes her a while, but she does eventually answer.

"You knew… who I was? Who taught me? Before the fighting began?" Green asks. Reiko nods. "Do you know what happened to Tivra Dhebar?"

She does. Tivra Dhebar, daughter of the man who supposedly taught Mala Pukar everything she knew, had been a non-magical fighter in the Indian mage resistance. She'd died young, having been Imperiused into strapping explosives to herself and causing the explosion that killed twenty people, including her own father.

Then it clicks and all Reiko can say is, "Oh."

"At first, it was to avenge her. I tracked down everyone that had a hand in it and I bond them to me, so they'd know what they'd done," Green says, her voice hauntingly low. "But after awhile… it stopped being about Tivra. I did it because I was good at it. I did it because I liked it."

Reiko swallows, feeling hollow. You killed almost five thousand people for her, over the course of seventy-four years.

"I'm not sorry for what I did. I'm sorry that I was stupid enough to expose myself so that you could kill me before I was done," Green says, a crooked smile making its way onto her face. "What do you think of that, Reiko Kitamori?"

Reiko closes her eyes. She's so tired, "Honestly?"

"Please."

"It's a bit of a relief."

Green looks like she's been sucker punched, "What?"

"After everything that you've done, everything that you'd seen… After all that, you can walk away, even for just a moment, to live the life you do," with a family, a lover, a favourite shawarma place, an education, everything - "then there's hope for me." Reiko grins, feeling every ounce of pain that she's in, "You really are a legend, you know?"

Green just stares at her, mouth hanging open and eyes wide. Then, like she's fighting every moment, her shoulder start to shake and hysterical laughter works its way out of her and-

It's probably the first honest thing Reiko has ever seen out of her since they met.

"I hate you," Green says, with tears in her eyes. "I understand you, but, fuck, do I hate you."

Reiko thumps her head back onto her pillow as disappointment slowly curls in her gut. Amanda Green is unfairly attractive, "Oh. Good. I feel so much better now."

"I try," Green snorts. "Look, I've got to check on some of the others. When you get the chance, you should visit their majesties. They've got a present for you."

Present? Reiko blinks, and then a wave of dread falls down upon her. Oh. Pegasus.

They've got him. It's… She should have expected this. Of course Bakura and Atem would keep up their end of the deal. Reiko pushes herself up in the bed and Amanda still doesn't move, just watches her struggle to pull her feet over the side of the bed. The floor is cold against the soles of her feet, swaying slightly with the current.

She grabs the crutches and pulls herself up.

"Any hints as to where I should be going?" Reiko asks Amanda, who shrugs.

"No idea. I'm just the messenger," she answers before standing and walking away.

Figures, Reiko smirks and heads out.

The medical bay is filled to the brim, each bed containing someone who seems to be younger and more injured than the last. Reiko limps past Weevil Underwood, getting a nasty looking gash stitched up,, as well as Mokuba Kaiba, who seems to be in a post-op coma. There's a clean bandage wrapped around the stump where his lower leg used to be, the cut made just above the knee.

And on and on it goes, until a tall man with a kind expression stops her. Reiko recognizes him as Matthew Jacques, famed Spellcaster who'd brought down the forty-seven Unspeakables who'd tried to capture him in the middle of a university exam without even breaking a sweat.

"You must be Reiko Kitamori," he says, clutching the mobile IV drip he'd been provided like a cane. "My sister mentioned you."

"Sister?" Reiko asks, because there had been no record of any siblings in the file that the Department had provided on him.

"Amanda. And, well, we're half-siblings," Jacques tells her and, holy shit, two Spellcasters in the same family, especially of their caliber? That's absolutely terrifying. "It's nice to finally meet you."

Jacques actually holds out his hand for her to shake, which she does eventually take because she is not rude.

"I'm looking for Bakura and Atem," she stammers, still kind of taken aback by him.

"Hmmm? Oh, well, I think they're just this way," Jacques turns like he's going to escort her, Reiko is so not ready for all of this.

Jacques leads her out of the medical bay and down a series of hallways. Every so often, they take a break, leaning against the walls to catch their breath. On one of these breaks, Reiko just says, "Mahad."

And Jacques just takes it in stride, "Not many people know enough about the legend to even recognize that name. I'm impressed."

"Oh, I got it right? Good. Because my first guess was Seth," she laughs nervously.

"No. No. Seto's Seth, not me."

Reiko blinks, "Wait. Seto Kaiba?!"

Jacques nods and chuckles softly until they're ready to move again.

She gets why he's humouring her. Because in a moment, she's going to step into the same room as Pegasus, and she wants to take some form of joy with her.

"Here we are," Jacques says, all too soon. The door is made of sheet metal, like everything else on this ship. It's too ordinary, too simple. Reiko has never been more terrified in her entire life.

Jacques puts his hand on her shoulder and she looks up into the eyes of the Spellcaster that nearly sacrificed himself to keep as many people on the island alive as possible, "If you need anything, I am right outside. Alright?"

Reiko nods. As scared as she is, she doesn't think that she's had so many people in her corner in her entire life.

She grips the crutches so hard that the wood begins to squeak, and then she walks through the door.

Hello again!

I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: Tsuyomaru1a, Moonfirekitsune, Tz342, green lilah, dragomira, and Rita Mu. You guys are awesome!

And to the guest who left their anonymous review, I'd like to say that I'm glad that you're enjoying the story so far, though I can't say that I'm not enjoying your agony just a little bit. :) I hope to hear from you again!

Just as a warning, the next chapter is what I call the Kitamori Flashback chapter and will include several scenes that could be uncomfortable to some readers - hell, at one point, I was so uncomfortable that I had to walk away for almost a week before returning. There will be the standard warnings at the beginning of each chapter, so you will know what to expect in the chapter.

Until next time,

AlcatrazOutpatient