Yo guys, hope you all have been doing well. I have and I'm thankful for that now. Had the worst. Headache. EVER. Just some time ago and I'm so glad that it's gone. It really took the energy out of me to deal with and the fact that it occurred during a somewhat difficult class week for me (well difficult in part to an in-class essay I had to do that took some serious thought) made it hard for me to even think of what to do for this chapter. But that's now in the past. Then again, I have a bunch of essay to look forward to in the near future….

Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy.

Chapter 21

The others had gotten up not too long after Kohta did and now they were all downstairs, raiding Takashi's kitchen for anything to eat for breakfast. Takashi had stated that he could whip up some scrambled eggs since the stove didn't run on electricity and Kohta, Lady, and Alice agreed to this. The other girls though refused, going for some simple toast that Takashi managed to grill without burning and some milk that was still cold, a welcome surprise given that the power in all of the neighborhood appeared to be out. Dante, slightly grumbling still over the loss of his usual meal, settled for a bit of both scrambled eggs and a small slice of toast.

"Cheer up Dante. I'm sure you can make it through a day without pizza for once," Lady said as she took a bite of her eggs.

Dante sighed. "Yeah, yeah."

The others couldn't help but snicker slightly at Dante's situation. They never would have expected someone as strong as him to get down over being unable to eat his favorite food. And Kohta and the girls were as surprised as Takashi was when they found out just moments ago that Dante had wanted pizza of all things for breakfast.

The next few minutes were spent in relative silence as they all went about eating, the only sounds being their forks hitting the plates slightly as the poked away for small bites. That and Alice would slice off small bits of toast to give to Zeke, who would bark most joyously each and every time before chomping away at the food bits.

"Where to next, Komuro-kun?" Saeko asked the devil teen.

"I was thinking that it's time we might as well start leaving Japan altogether. Demons and Them sure have been swarming around lately and it's only a matter of time until they cover every yard of the whole country," Takashi said after a minute, slightly anxious to hear what the group will say to that.

He looked up from his plate at them. He first swept his eyes over Saeko, noting that she had a seemingly expressionless look about her, clearly thinking hard about what he just said. Looking over at Kohta, Takashi could tell that the gun otaku was in the same position as Saeko. Rei had a look of grudging understanding about her, Takashi being able to clearly tell that while she didn't want to leave, she understood the necessity behind this course of action. Saya had her usual glare face on, but it wasn't aimed at anyone in particular for she was merely deep in thought too. Alice on the other hand, was Saya's opposite in this situation; whereas Saya seemed almost stoic, Alice was expressing quite a bit of emotion, a look of complete nervousness about her. She knew that if they did agree to this, they'd be taking a risk getting off Japan given how many demons and zombies are roaming the streets and she didn't want to lose anyone. Shizuka, having an idea of what the little girl was thinking, moved her chair closer to Alice and gave her a light hug. Even Zeke was able to sense Alice's mood and so jumped into her lap.

The only ones that weren't deep in thought was Dante and Lady, the former being more focused on finishing his breakfast. The latter however, had her attention elsewhere. When Takashi had announced his intention to the group, Lady focused her attention on listening to any noise outside. And just now, she could have sworn that she just heard something.

At the now serious expression on Lady's face, the group fell silent, their eating of breakfast slowing considerably as Lady got up from her chair and moved towards a window nearby. It was covered by the blinds, but Lady brushed them aside slowly to look outside.

It still sort of dark outside due to how early it was, but the sun was rising a bit so Lady wasn't going to complain too much about visibility. "Something wrong?" Saya asked as she rose from her seat.

Lady didn't answer right away, peering out the window instead. "Heard something," she replied.

They fell silent at this and Dante and Takashi moved forward to get a look too. As they did, Lady's eyes narrowed as she heard something in that moment. Dante and Takashi heard it too.

"Shit," Takashi muttered, "something really is up."

Takashi then chose to make his way to the barricaded door and started to remove some of the furniture so that he can get outside to further inspect what the source of the sound was. The fact that this same sound was being repeated and he can hear it better only served to motivate him as it became clear that it was human in nature.

As he did this, Lady hefted her Kalina Ann and Saeko got up from her seat as well, her hand now gripping the hilt of her sword. The others stayed seated, but looked apprehensive. Dante was an exception to this, going back to eating his breakfast as casually as he was before, though if one observed him carefully, it was obvious that he was ready for a good fight.

"There we go," Takashi said to himself as he removed enough of the furniture to open the door, mindful of it not really being attached to the hinges anymore. He moved it carefully to his right and walked out once setting it against the wall.

Takashi walked down the path to his house and made his way to the street, his senses sharp as he tensed for a fight, unconsciously summoning Gilgamesh. He was right in doing so for as soon as he got to the street and began to walk to his right, he was rewarded with a sight that he has never seen before and most likely will never forget: a man, bloodied and heavily wounded beyond imagination crawling down the street towards him.

"Holy…" Takashi began, but trailed off. He brought up his left arm up to his mouth to cover it, unable to bear the sight. The man was covered in multiple claw marks that were so severe in nature that it made bear attacks look like love taps. Small pieces of his flesh were completely gone, exposing bone in the shoulder area, at least the bone that was still there.

It took all of Takashi's willpower to keep himself from puking; he had seen many things since this whole zombie outbreak started and seen even more when demons started showing up, but he has never before come across the handiwork of what had to be a demon getting its claws into a human.

The crawling man groaned, spitting whatever blood was left in his body out as he moved ever closer to Takashi. Takashi snapped out of his funk and began to quickly walk towards the down person, noting the rather long blood trail the guy was leaving. "He crawled all the way from around the corner," Takashi thought, amazed at this man's determination to get away from whatever attacked him despite his wounds.

The man raised his head as much as he could at the sound of Takashi's approaching footsteps. He groaned out a what Takashi assumed to be a cry for help and Takashi needed no further encouragement to try and do so. But as he bent down to the guy, he knew that the guy's chances of living were nil at this point.

No sooner had this thought crossed his mind, the man seemed to gasp, letting out his final breath before finally succumbing to his grievous injuries. His head hit the ground with a light thud, but to Takashi it sounded as though someone dropped a bomb. He had seen people die at his school, but he had seen them die from a distance, never up close and definitely not when he was literally standing right in front of them.

Takashi stood back up, trying to comprehend what he had just seen, but didn't get much of a chance for at that moment, an Assault, the same one that haunted down the man most likely, came rounding around the corner of the street. It spotted Takashi and growled as it charged down the street at him.

The teen listened briefly to any and all other noises that he could hear, trying to determine if there were more demons or if this Assault was just the only one to worry about. When it seemed that the charging demon was the only threat in the area, Takashi went from looking confused and sad at the man's death to burning with a rage that he had never felt before. He had just witnessed a man die, a guy that seemed to have crawled a very long way from somewhere all the way here just to find help of some kind and when Takashi had come along, it was far too late to do anything. And something about that angered Takashi greatly.

He focused his attention on the Assault and briefly recalled how hard a time he had just holding his own against one not long after leaving Saya's place. He flexed his gauntlet covered hands and instinctively knew that things were going to be different this time. "Come on!" he cried out to the Assault. The Assault responded with a roar. And then it came within several feet of Takashi and attacked.

Takashi had expected it to try and leap at him or go for some kind of vicious swipe, but the Assault surprised him by launching its signature seed-like projectile right at him. Takashi, rather than block the incoming object, sidestepped to the left while moving forward a bit in order to further shorten the distance between him and the demon. He raised his fist to attack, but the Assault had took the very brief split second it took for Takashi to move out of his projectile's way to get in close and actually try to grab the teen.

Takashi raised both of his arms to keep the Assault from enclosing its massive arms around him and he headbutted it to get away. The Assault let out a brief cry of surprise and moved back a step or two, enough for Takashi to attack now. Takashi took one step forward before letting loose a right straight at the demon. The Assault recovered fast enough for it to raise its shield arm a bit, but not enough to actually block the hit completely as Takashi's fist clipped the side of the shield only to move past it and connect with the Assault's chest. The blow, enhanced by the power of Gilgamesh, was strong enough to knock the air right out of the Assault and make it skid several yards back.

It began to recover as quickly as possible from the powerful punch, but Takashi wasn't willing to let that happen and so he jumped several feet into the air and once he was above the Assault, he brought down a leg in a wicked axe kick. The Assault leapt back just in time to avoid the incoming leg, if only barely, and it crouched low and thrusted out its arm at Takashi who was now wide open. Takashi gritted his teeth as he tried to do something to avoid or at least block what was coming, but his axe kick had been a wide one and so his current position didn't exactly afford him much balance, forcing Takashi to instinctively try to regain it. But this had left him defenseless for a second and that was more than enough time for the Assault's arm to slam right into him.

The teen coughed up whatever air he had in him due to the force of the hit and he fell onto his back. The Assault then took this as a chance to perform its own midair attack, jumping not too high into the air as it didn't want to give Takashi much time to do anything. Said teen was just barely able to bring up his arms in time to guard against the now incoming Assault, although the force of its intended jump attack still managed to hurt Takashi a bit.

Takashi pushed back against the Assault and it jumped off of him and as soon as it did, Takashi quickly jumped back on his feet and lunged for the demon, charging up his gauntlet covered fist. This time around, the Assault had enough time to raise its shield arm before the attack landed. Takashi knew this, but just gritted his teeth and tried to charge up his gauntlet even more right before the punch he just threw landed. In the instant before his fist struck the shield, it glowed twice very briefly, signifying that it had achieved a greater charge than before and this showed in the punch for when it connected with the shield, the shield first began to be dented slightly before it suddenly shattered. This took both Takashi and the Assault by surprise for neither expected the punch to be that strong and so they were both caught off guard by the resulting force of it, the Assault being knocked back a considerable distance while Takashi tumbled forward.

He cursed in surprise, trying to regain his footing while the demon struggled a bit to get back up; the punch had hit it square in its broad chest hard enough to leave a big bruise and the damage it inflicted was certainly nothing to shrug off. And this slightly slow recovery proved to be the Assault's undoing in that moment for Takashi, after getting his footing back, ran at the still down demon and came in low with a charged punch that connected solidly with the Assault's jaw. A crack was heard from this, but Takashi didn't pay too much attention to it and instead sat upon the Assault's torso and began to quickly pummel the demon's face in, in a manner similar to what he did to Dante when they fought.

Takashi didn't bother to charge his Gilgamesh fists anymore as it was near impossible to do so at such speeds, but despite this his assault was quite punishing, his fists bashing in the demon's face rapidly. The Assault offered up some resistance at first, its massive arms reaching out to knock Takashi aside or grab him, but every time it tried, Takashi would break away from his punches for a split second to swat the arms aside and then resume pounding the Assault. The demon tried a few more times at this, but several seconds later it stopped trying. A few seconds after that, it just stopped moving entirely.

Takashi was breathing heavily, partially because he was a bit tired and partially because of some kind of adrenaline rush that overcame him when he start pounding away. Standing up slowly, he looked down at his fists and saw almost the entirety of the Gilgamesh gauntlets drenched in the Assault's yellowish green blood. Sparing a glance at the now dead demon, Takashi noted that there really wasn't much of a head anymore save for some bone and bits of flesh that weren't mashed under his fists. He also noted large spider web cracks extending outwards from the large crater underneath the Assault's broken body, the result of Takashi's almost feral attacks.

"Man," Takashi mumbled as he dismissed Gilgamesh, the blood on the gauntlets sliding off before they disappeared. Running a hand through his hair, Takashi made his way back down the street to his house, pausing briefly in front of the dead man from earlier.

"Komuro-kun?" Takashi looked up to the pathway to his house and saw Saeko and Lady standing there. The others were still inside as they felt that the two would be able to help Takashi with whatever had come up.

Takashi didn't respond to Saeko, instead looking back at the corpse before him. Saeko and Lady approached him. "Takashi? Hey, Takashi," Lady said, trying to get his attention.

After a minute or so, Takashi responded. "Yeah?"

Lady hesitated for a few seconds, thinking of what to say. "What do we do now?" she asked, deciding to just get straight to the point. If one demon made it out here despite apparently coming from the city, then what was to say that more wouldn't?

Takashi looked Lady dead in the eyes and then back at the body. "First, we're going to bury this guy."

Saeko and Lady spared a glance at the body in question, Saeko being revolted by how mangled it was although she tried to hide it. Lady was disgusted by how the demon tore the man apart too, but it wasn't as great as Saeko's disgust; she and Dante were used to this sort of thing after all.

"Alright," Saeko said, her and Lady nodding to Takashi's words. "And after we bury him?"

Takashi began to make his way up the house path. "After that, we're leaving. Not just the city, but the country too."

Whew, this chapter proved to be a bit hard to write at first. Probably because I didn't really know how to make it work the way I wanted. I could have tried a few more times, but it was taking me too long so I went with the better of the scenarios I tried. Hope you guys liked it.

Anyways, this will the last of the reprieve chapters as we will now be moving into the final phase/arc/event of this fic! And I can assure that it will be great (well, at least, that's what I plan anyway...)!

Chances are though the next chapter won't be out for quite a while though as my classes are beginning to roll out quite a few essays for me to do and that will take up a good portion of time to do. That and I will also have some tests to look forward to as well so that's more time I will be focusing on my classes. I will try to hopefully get another chapter or two out before my semester is over though.

Thanks for reading and please be sure to review!