Bravery and cunning can be more deadly than any physical weapon.

As can a sword defeat a gun; it is a matter of who is behind it that defines how powerful of a weapon or tool something is.

A genius, given the proper environment, can overcome a small army on their own.

Unfortunately, in the end, there is one other factor that goes into fighting; it determines your skills at the time, the enemy, the environment, and all other factors to an unexpected extent.

Luck.

When your luck runs out, it's been said before, so does your life.

They landed without a sound, except perhaps the wind that blew out below them as they made their landing. However, no one seemed to have noticed. The intruder he'd seen before wasn't in sight, which meant he was likely already in the maze.

"Well, nothing to worry about then; he's not going to find his way through the maze and come attack us anyway." He thought.

The tall bushes used to make up the walls of the maze were over different types and such, but all in all there were two different kinds, both of which were seamless from the other. There were the ones that you'd need five minutes with a machete to be able to get through, and then there were the others where you could jump through it and make a safe landing on the other side, if your footwork was good enough.

"Who'd have thought some changes I made in the maze's design so Nathan and I could play a modified version of hide-and-seek would make it the perfect ambushing area should someone invade my home?" He thought almost rhetorically as they heard the door to his room being broken inward.

"Come on, getting down here silently won't be worth much if they spot us from up there." He told Diva. She nodded and they ran into the maze. Reeve estimated in his mind where the intruder would be in the maze and when they reached about the fifth corner he stilled them both.

Reeve leaned past the corner and gazed out down the "aisle"; the man was walking slowly, gun out in front, away from them. At the very least his mental prowess hadn't diminished, though he should have thought about them coming to attack his home directly.

"This Red Shield organization of theirs must not be official; no legitimate group would attack the house of the most powerful people of the city like this." Came more silent thoughts as he turned back to Diva.

"Wait here for thirty seconds, okay?" He whispered to her. Her expression grew a tinge of fear and she held one of his hands.

"Don't worry, neither of us will get hurt. But I'll need to take him down quietly if we don't want to alert the others to where we are."

It took her a moment, but she nodded, and let go of his hand. He gave her a grin, another reassurance, before turning away from her and leaping through the hedge out in front of him. Reeve's shoes landed rather silently on the path on the other side, but he knew the man had heard something. That was the plan though. He walked quietly down the path as the intruder turned around and began investigating the sound.

"About here."

Reeve thrust his hands through another "empty" hedge and grabbed the slide of the man's gun with one hand while jamming the hammer open at the same time. The intruder pulled the trigger on his gun out of reflex, but because of where Reeve's hands were placed, the gun couldn't fire. He stamped down on the man's feet with the heel of one of his shoes and then drove an elbow up into the hollow of his neck an instant later. It took about a second to drop the gun on the ground and then move forward and slam the man's head into the ground.

"Dead or unconscious, you're not going to be any more trouble." He thought while Putting the gun's safety on and sliding it into a pocket. All he could really do was hope the safety didn't get turned off and then shoot him in the leg.

"Diva?" He whispered, and immediately the girl came around the corner and ran quietly over to him.

"See, I told you it wouldn't take long."

She nodded and he took her hand again while stepping forward to keep heading through the maze. However, when she was about to step over the man's body, she halted him. Reeve looked back to see what was keeping her, and saw the girl looking down at the nonmoving intruder.

"What is it?"

"I can take care of them all for you." She told him, as if pondering doing him a small favor. But he wasn't liking this subject. Reeve knew what she had in mind.

"All it will take is a little blood, then I can get rid of them-"

"No."

She looked at him with a flash of surprise going through her eyes as he stared at her determinedly.

"We don't know what will happen to you if you drink blood again. Or if you kill. Not to mention if you did kill them and the rest of their group found out they would likely send all of their members after you and I, including your sister."

" But-"

"Look, we can make it without you having to do any fighting. The best way I can think of for this to go is with me doing all the damage. At least then if they find out what happened to these people they'll know it was me."

"You could get hurt though."

Her concern was actually a bit surprising. Usually she treated him like toy that she loved; she showered him with affection but didn't get overly upset if he got upset or anything. But right now it was obvious that she really didn't want him to get hurt.

"They only have the advantage over me in numbers. If I can take them down one at a time, it won't be an issue."

As she was going to disagree further they heard the door to the garden get thrown open and he knew that they didn't have time for this. She apparently did as well, since there was no resistance when he led her past the body. If they could reach the clearing at the end of the maze that would be all they needed.

"Numbers means nothing if you can't corner or surround your enemy. And how can you do either when the very walls you could use to do so may unknowingly be invisible pathways to another place?"

His thoughts might have been intended to reassure him, but he doubted that was the case. He wasn't afraid to die. Though the time he had spent with Diva and Nathan made him happy, without them he might as well be dead anyway. Really, was it better to die to protect them? Or to live, and let them die? It was hard to say either was "better" than the other. Perhaps a more accurate choice of words was "Which was worse?". To be honest, he didn't know the answer to that either.

Reeve pulled Diva through the maze and passed the complicated twists and turnarounds to the point where he was almost doing so out of muscle memory. Eventually, they reached the clearing, and heard no footsteps nearby.

"We still have enough time. Diva, after I get what I'm after I want you to go hide in the rafters of the pagoda."

"What?"

"It'll be the safest place for you to go. Plus they won't be able to see you from the edge of the clearing."

"And what will you do?"

"I'm surprised, for someone who's been alive since before this country existed, you don't seem to know very much about how it came to be."

She was obviously confused at the statement, considering it seemingly had nothing to do with what she'd just asked.

"Our first tactics were guerilla warfare. It worked on thousands of British troops, and it'll work on a few guys with black masks and clothes."

Diva seemed apprehensive as to how he claimed he would be able to defeat them, but by know she most likely knew that there wasn't really anything she could say that would stop him; he wasn't going to let her be in danger, whether she healed or not.

Reeve pulled the case down from its resting place and quickly pulled things out of it to get at the sword's section.

"It's a bit unfortunate that Nathan's not here. If he was it would have been interesting to see if we work as well together in things like this as we do in almost everything else." He thought, pulling his "friend" from where it lay.

"But I guess as long as I've got you to work with, I'll be fine."

"Reeve?"

He glanced up at her and stood, putting his sword into his belt.

"Sorry, I know talking to it can get pretty weird for people sometimes."

"It's alright. Just make sure 'it' doesn't let you down."

Reeve nodded.

"Can you help me up?" She asked.

Once again he nodded, and knelt down, facing the entrance to the clearing, and letting the girl get onto his back. Diva got a firm hold on him and he stood up, raising her high enough to grab a beam and lift herself up. It took the girl a few moments to secure herself into a decently stable position, but he still didn't hear anyone nearby.

"Don't get hurt, Reeve."

He grinned.

"I'll try my best."

Diva's personality seemed to be much more akin to the one he'd known before, yet hopefully it wouldn't be enough that she would come after him to try and help out.

"Don't go come down or go anywhere until I come back, alright?"

She nodded, and he gave her a quick smile.

"I'll be back, I promise."

She managed to smile as well, though he knew it was only a vain attempt, and he ran away from the pagoda into the maze.

Ten of them. That's how many of them there were by his count. At the very least, anyway. It was quite possible more still waited in the house in case they'd tried to escape that way.

"I can take them all down if I can manage to single them out. It's possible I could just pull them through the hedges while they're still in the group, but they'd figure out how I get them." He thought, waiting on the opposite side of the corner Diva and he had hid behind a few minutes ago for the other intruders to show up.

He noticed that somehow the hedge's corner still smelled like her flowery aroma. How that was possible, he didn't know; he'd never even seen her putting on or getting something to give her that scent. It made it harder to focus on his mission, but also strengthened his resolve to carry it out. After all, the scent reminded him of who would suffer should fail.

"I don't fail." He spoke out loud, though it was only a whisper.

Though Reeve could hear footsteps now, no one was yet in sight. He'd decided to leave the intruder's body where the man had fallen. It would serve as a distraction later on.

"Speaking of…"

As the footsteps grew louder he picked up a hardened piece of soil and tossed it high over in their direction. He could just barely hear it landing somewhere, but the footsteps ceased for a moment.

"Come on, it could be a threat after all."

Once again the footsteps began slowly making their way in his direction, but this time they sounded less numerous.

"That's right."

There was no way they would send just one person to investigate the sound. Which meant two people there and eight still coming. It wasn't much, but that was a fifth of their strength, and that wouldn't be all. Reeve checked the intruder's body and noted with mixed feelings that he was in fact still alive.

"Better off this way, I suppose. It means they'll most likely leave another man or two behind to guard him."

It was wishful thinking, but if they did indeed do that it would be almost half their strength lost.

Reeve darted through a "veil" hedge; one of the ones that was easier to get through than the more solid bushes, and ran like a ninja along a path that ran mostly parallel to the main one. Within a minute he'd passed the cautious group of men without alerting them, and continued on to where he estimated they had been before.

"This should be about right." He thought to himself while peaking through the hedge in the direction of the dead end where the clump of hard soil must have landed; the two men sent there were coming back to catch up with the main group.

"Sorry, not happening." He thought, backing away from the holes he'd looked through to keep himself from being discovered as they passed by. After they were several feet in front of him he crept out from the hedge and followed them. Luckily the bushes were maintained on a regular basis, so there was no dry stick to step on or some other cliché that would give him away.

Reeve put his hands on the katana and its sheath and slowly pushed the tsuba out enough to so that it was looser, before stamping forward and jolting it into the base of the left man's spine.

A shiver went out across his body as he dropped his gun and stumbled forward, gripping the back of his neck as the other man begun to turn around, surprised.

Reeve drew the sword back again and aimed the tip of the blade forward before plunging it through the other man's heart. He went through a single spasm as Reeve withdrew the sword and ran forward, cutting upward through the recovering man's chest.

The sword swept through the air one last time, as he shook the majority of the blood from it, and then re-sheathed it.

"Two down, eight to go." He thought to himself while running past the two dead men.

"I should be able to get to the next group soon. Then I can use the handgun I took to shoot

all of the last group before they can get to Diva in the clearing."

Six-to-one still weren't desirable odds. But he doubted any more distractions would work. It was a complete fluke that even the old "noise over there" one had worked.

Reeve ran so fast down the path that his feet didn't stay on the ground long enough to make a sound. Within seconds he had managed to reach the next group of three men who had been left behind to guard the unconscious intruder.

He placed a hand on his sword as he made his approach, and the men spotted him just as he had the chance to draw it and slice upward through the chest of one of them.

Reeve twisted his body, as well as his wrist, and then swung down through another's torso before the second had ended.

But the third man was drawing his pistol and if he hesitated for even a second he would die. Luckily, hesitation wasn't one of Reeve's numerous strong points.

He lunged past the last living man and cut his head from his body just as the corpse's hand got the chance to fire a single round from the handgun.

The bullet missed him, but it had made quite a lot of noise. Yet as he de-blooded the sword again and sheathed his katana, causing the dead bodies to fall to the ground, he realized that likely the entire group or at least another man or two would come to investigate. The unexpected development had turned to his favor.

Reeve jumped through a nearby hedge and then further down the path so he could get behind whoever spotted the grisly scene. Sure enough, he began to here footsteps quickly moving towards his last ambush and Reeve readied himself. He didn't give the man the chance to see his dead fellows before drawing his sword in a horizontal arc and cutting him in half through the hedges.

"I'm offended; we're considered worth killing and yet all we get is a bunch of goons with the intelligence of an enemy from a Super Nintendo game?" He thought with a bit of amusement while the bisected hedges fell over the dead man's corpse, covering up the majority of the gore.

"No time to clean up. They could be heading back here or they could be heading to the clearing for all I know."

It wasn't worth the risk of waiting here to find out just to possibly take out one more enemy, and he rushed down the path towards the clearing as fast as he could. The dozens of dead ends seemed to flash by as he rapidly closed the distance between him and the clearing.

When he turned the last corner Reeve discovered, to his chagrin, that he'd been right; one of the men stood guard facing out in his direction while the other three were searching the clearing. Apparently they had just arrived, and they hadn't even found Diva yet, but he wasn't about to just wait for them to leave. All it would take for one of them to spot her would be a curious look up into the pagoda's rafters and it'd be over.

Reeve once again ducked into an adjacent path and made his way up to where the single man remained guarding the entrance.

He slowly drew out the katana and aimed it in his direction with the blade pointing down. His eyes peered out through the natural holes in the hedges and then he thrust the tip through the man's neck, up into his brain, making sure to avoid the carotid artery so he didn't bleed too much. Afterwards he pulled the dead man over against the hedge he hid behind to hide both the blood and the sword in his neck and head.

It didn't take long for one of the searchers to notice the guard's strange posture and called out to him.

"Hey, what are you doing?! This isn't a time to be taking a nap!"

Obviously, the guard made no response.

"Hey!"

Still nothing.

"Stupid son of a…"

Reeve heard footsteps approaching the guard and he, according to his plan.

"I kill him and then I shoot another one before running away; the last man follows me and I pick him off somewhere in the maze, they'll never be the wiser to Diva's presence." He thought. Unfortunately, it seemed that now was the time that his luck decided to end, as through one of the parts in the shrubs he saw an edge of Diva's dress fall down into plain view, drawing the attention of another one if the searchers.

"Sir, over here." The discoverer said as he began to walk around the pagoda to get inside and see what he'd found.

Reeve scowled and didn't have enough time to see if the man who'd come over towards him was the man in charge before withdrawing his sword from the guard's head and leaping out of the shrubs at an angle, bringing himself into the clearing and rolling the last few steps before piercing the man's torso with his blade. It was a desperate move, but at the very least it drew the attention of the other two, which was the primary objective.

The teenager pulled both himself and the dead man down to the ground, using his size to make him a human shield for the moment as he pulled the handgun from his belt and shot to the side of the body, firing multiple rounds into the farthest man's chest.

As the rounds smacked into the body and he saw the last survivor drawing his gun, Reeve fired more shots in said man's general direction, though the bullets only succeeded in forcing him to get behind one of the beams of the pagoda for cover.

The gun clicked empty and Reeve withdrew his sword while spinning up and lunging over the new corpse's body, running like a predator trying to catch up with its prey.

Unfortunately, his bad luck streak seemed to be continuing- or, to be more specific, ending, as before he could reach the last one the man stood up and aimed the gun at his chest.

Reeve was too far away; even with a lunge he wouldn't be able to reach the armed man, and he stopped his charge.

His enemy- most likely his to-be killer, wore the same mask and black clothes as the others had. He wasn't even any different from the rest of them; he was about to be gunned down by someone that was just as untalented as the rest because his luck had run out.

"I've gotta say, kid, you did really well for a brat with a sword. I take it the rest of my team isn't showing up?"

His eyes betrayed no fear; Reeve wasn't afraid of dying. The only question was could he kill this man before he died?

"You'd be correct."

"Damn. You were smarter than I gave you credit for. I take it that thing we saw hanging from inside that gazebo is the girl's dress or something? That's why you did something that stupid?"

"Why should I tell you? You're just going to find out in a manner of seconds anyway."

"You're right. I am. Not sure what made you think you could take on an armed squad of men, but you're game's over now kid."

The man's grip tightened on the gun, and then a loud sound filled his ears