I don't usually do this, but I'm opening this particular chapter with a quote (from the chapter) and another from my beta upon reading aforementioned quote.

"What do you want me to do with this?" –Asch 'Well, I don't know about Kairi, but I'm sure that Sync and Asch both want to burn it.' –Winx

Now then... Anyone have any idea what's going to happen here? I'll give you a hint. It has to do with the title of Chapter 2. -grins-

Now then... I'll be updating four days in a row again in an attempt to catch up, but Tea finally got some chapters back to me and hopefully she'll have more back soon. Also, I don't own anything other than my OC/As.

Enjoy!


Chapter 4.11 – Running from Daath
Part 29

I took a deep breath and let a smile cross my face.

We were right outside of Akzeriuth, now. This, I knew, would likely be my only chance to see it before the game events, by which point it would be covered in miasma only to be destroyed. Which would definitely suck.

"Hey, you coming or not?" Sync asked. I rolled my eyes.

"It's not a race, sheesh..." I grumbled. "Relax a little, that's one of the major points to being a nomad. We're not in a rush to go anywhere."

Both boys looked a bit sheepish. "Sorry..."

I sighed. "No, don't apologize. You two are used to the military, I'll just have to deal with it for a while," I replied. Then I stopped and frowned. Something was off...

I pulled an arrow out of my sheath and nocked it slowly. Then I turned slowly, adjusting my stance quietly.

"Kairi?"

I raised my right hand, motioning for him to be quiet, my left holding the bow and keeping the arrow in place.

Then I spotted the anomaly.

In a single smooth motion, I slipped my right leg back, drew the bow, and let the arrow fly into the forest ahead of and to our right.

A group of wolves ran out of hiding, one of them bleeding from a very fresh mark on its side. I scowled and started directing the Energies around me. These things were driving me up a wall.

"O demonic gate, burn to ashes! Sapphire Riot!" I chanted, unleashing the arte on the two wolves that were trying to catch Sync. Then, switching my bow into my right hand, I unsheathed my sword and ran over to him, attacking the wolves as they attempted to stand while he backed away. With just me and Asch, it wasn't easy to keep four wolves away from the replica. It hadn't been easy in the pass, but at least there the monsters had less room to sneak around us.

Angrily, I thrust my sword toward a wolf that was practically underneath me. I missed, but the drain that started in on my strength almost immediately told me all I needed to know, and I fed as many fonons into it as I could in an attempt to lessen the strain that the unintentional Guardian Field was causing.

Thankfully, it killed one of the two wolves, and a Havok Strike later, the other was also dead. Asch was standing nearby, having finished his own enemies off as I was unleashing the barely-controlled Guardian Field. I stood up out of my crouch, only to sway as the world suddenly started spinning.

Asch was already behind me, after watching me nearly collapse when my first two attempts at Raging Blast ended badly. I turned slightly to look at him. "Thanks..." I said. Well, 'whispered' would be a better word, but it's not like I was trying to do it.

Sync's eyes were wide as he walked over to us. "Are you okay?"

I turned to him and blinked in shock. Then I realized that he had never seen me collapsing like this before. I smiled. "I'm fine," I assured him. "My body just doesn't take well to me having anything less than total control over any artes I use. It just means I'm going to fall asleep sooner than usual tonight."

Sync's eyes stayed locked on mine for a moment, but then he nodded, accepting my reply. He turned to look out toward Akzeriuth. I looked over at Asch, and he jogged out to catch up with Sync. I followed along behind them, catching up quickly. Asch looked bothered.

"It's dangerous to use an arte like that without any training or research," he stated as we finally stepped into the town. I scowled, but didn't answer him. Instead, I looked around, scanning the area for the inn. This was one of the few places in Tales of the Abyss that I didn't have the layout completely memorized. Of course, that was to be expected, considering the fact that you only visit Akzeriuth once, and that's during the miasma crisis.

I spotted the trademark sign for the inn and made a beeline for it, Asch and Sync on my heels the moment they realized I was moving.

"Ah, good afternoon, miss! Can I help you?" a middle-aged woman asked. I smiled amiably.

"How many beds to a room, ma'am?" I inquired. She looked over my shoulder, noting the two boys that had somehow started arguing over fighting techniques... That made me frown. When did that happen? Seriously, I swear they were quiet when we were walking here... Was I just that zoned out?

The woman chuckled. "We have rooms with anywhere from a single bed to four," she replied, pulling out a sheet of paper. I'd taken the time to memorize my numbers, and was glad I did as I scanned over the paper.

"I can deal with them for a night. We need to conserve gald, anyway," I told her. She looked at the boys, who were now pointedly standing a few feet apart and ignoring each other, and giggled.

"What name shall I put that under?" she asked.

"Balfour," I replied simply before pulling out my gald pouch and paying. Once everything was finished and I had the key to our room, I turned to see Asch frowning. "What? You were too busy ignoring Sync to pay," I teased before heading up the stairs. "But you get to cover St. Binah!" I called.

Asch groaned and followed me up the steps. "If I didn't know any better, I would think you had done this on purpose!" he grumbled. I heard Sync chuckle as I unlocked the room and stepped inside.

"Yeah, and your point is?" I replied, lazily dropping my bag on the floor at the foot of the first bed I reached before flopping into said bed. Sync, upon entering the room, immediately walked over to and sat down upon the bed to my left. "By the way... when did you two start arguing, and what was it about?"

Sync sighed. "Please tell me you remember Asch making the comment about using an arte like Guardian Field being dangerous without training or research," he moaned. I nodded. He looked relieved. "Well, I told him that some people with mixed fighting techniques could learn high-level artes faster than the usual, but at the price of not being able to learn other lower-level artes. He told me I was being ridiculous."

"He is. It's impossible to learn something like Guardian Field at a low skill level," Asch argued. I blinked and thought for a moment.

"The first fonic arte I learned was Negative Gate. Believe it or not, it's a higher-leveled arte than most people would think. Then I went a step further for Sapphire Riot. But, I went backwards when I picked up Icicle Rain, because Splash is a lower level than Negative Gate," I stated. "Even with the jump from the relatively low-leveled Raging Blast to the much higher Guardian Field, they're still going in the right order."

It was quiet for a while. "You know, when you put it like that..." Sync started. Asch, who had been standing near the foot of my bed, bent down and pulled something white up. Huh, I guess my bag had opened when I tossed it.

"Hey, look at this..." Asch said, sounding teasing and unfolding the paper. Then I realized what he was holding in his hands.

"Oh gods, don't read that!" I ordered half-heartedly. "Just please don't read that..."

"'Would you give this to Kairi please? I wanted to make sure this would get to her.' Huh... and what might this be?" Asch wondered before his eyes wandered a little further down the page. "'Dear Kairi...'" Asch started. I groaned. "Oh, a letter?" he said mischievously, bending the paper so he could only read one line at a time.

I was seriously considering killing him, and he had barely even started reading it.

"'Oh Lorelei, that sounds bad. Don't get any ideas from it.' Hmm, not a secret lover then," he commented.

I looked over at Sync as Asch read the first line. Unsurprisingly, he had gone stone still and pale as a ghost. As Asch made his comment, he turned to look at me, eyes wide. 'Run,' I mouthed. He blinked.

"'I don't know how to thank you.' Aww, that's sweet. Maybe a crush?" Asch continued. Sync was crawling off the bed as silently as he could. Whether he was going to run like I had told him to or attempt to get the letter out of Asch's hands was beyond me, however.

"'Can you come here? I'm recovering quickly' ...No period? Looks like someone didn't feel like completing that thought."

Asch turned to face the door, and Sync deftly slipped under my bed...

While a disturbing thought at first, in retrospect, it made sense. Asch would think to look under Sync's bed before he looked under mine, if he thought to look under a bed at all.

"'Oh Yulia, I sound stupid.' No, you sound like a love-struck idiot..." Asch muttered. I heard Sync groan quietly while I let the goofy grin cross my face. I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a sadist. I do take delight in others' discomfort, especially when they bring it upon themselves... which Sync certainly did, in this case.

"'I'm not writing 'yours' at the end of this. That would just be wrong.'" Asch said, grinning with his eyes still looked on the paper. "Wow... Talk about a bad case of denial. Now let's see who this is from..." he trailed off, finally unfolding the paper completely.

His grin faltered, before being replaced by a completely flabbergasted look, at which point I started laughing.

It took maybe half a minute for me to get to point where I was having trouble breathing. Oh, and Asch was still emulating a fish. Actually, he was emulating a fish for about five minutes, by which time I had finally started breathing semi-normally (though my breathing was rather labored).

"Oh gods... Your face!" I cheered before the laughter returned full force. I heard Sync groan again from his hiding place before Asch sat down on the bed Sync had vacated.

"Please tell me I'm reading this name wrong..." he whispered. I managed to get my laughter somewhat under control.

"Nope," I replied, almost sounding too cheerful. "By the way, Sync... Cantabile is going to force you to start writing letters to her in an attempt to rectify this... um..." I trailed off.

"Failure?" he supplied. Asch's head turned slowly and looked down.

"Are you hiding under her bed?" he asked quietly, apparently still trying to find his voice. I grinned.

"I told him to run. He chose to hide," I replied. Then I sighed, my chest now sore from laughing so hard. "And now you know why I didn't want you to read that. Of course, your completely off-base comments are going to keep me entertained for weeks now," I added.

Asch's face turned as red as his hair. "There are not many moments in my life that I wish I could take back, but this is one of them," he stated after a while. I laughed.

"Somehow, I get the feeling that he-who-is-pretending-to-be-the-boogeyman agrees," I said, just as Sync started to crawl out from under the bed.

Sync and Asch both looked at me in confusion, and I blinked. "What? You've never heard of the boogeyman?" I asked. The two exchanged a look before their gazes returned to me and they shook their heads. I sighed. "Oh gods... I'll have to tell you guys the story of the Guardians one day... Just not today... Because I'm too exhausted from the combination of the Energy backlash and laughing..."

Asch's confused look immediately became worried. "Energy backlash? Like what happened when you were healing Sync?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Not exactly," I replied, sitting up. "There are two kinds of Energy backlashes. What happened when I was trying to stabilize his Energy Core was the passive kind."

I frowned and slipped the armlet off, holding it inside out and revealing the crystal woven into it. "What happened earlier is the exact reason why I need an Energy stabilizer. And I'm glad I had it, or Guardian Field could well have turned into a mutated form of Infernal Prison, considering my affinity for fire. That was an aggressive backlash. I was wielding Energies without meaning to, and the fonons in the area, aggravated by the Energies, formed into something familiar," I explained. "I usually realize it's happening, but if I don't have a stabilizer, I can't gain even some semblance of control..."

Asch frowned. "How often does it happen?" he asked worriedly. I sighed.

"It varies from person to person and from element to element. I have a fire affinity, so I deal with it often and can't regain control without a stabilizer. Wind affinities have to deal with aggressive backlashes often as well, but they can control it without a stabilizer. Earth and water don't have to worry about it as much, and water, like fire, needs a stabilizer," I replied.

Sync's eyes were round, and I couldn't pin down his expression until he spoke. "How do you know what affinity you are?" he wondered. I cringed.

"You find out when you unleash your first powerful aggressive backlash. Mine..." I trailed off. "I lit up a fire in a forest..." I admitted. I sighed. "Fire is the rarest affinity to have, but it's also the hardest to control. Lucky me, right?"

Asch sighed. "Just don't burn down the inn on us," he joked before getting up and walking over to the bed on my right side. He paused halfway to look at the paper in his hand. "Um... What do you want me to do with this?" he asked.

I grinned. "Give it to me, I'll show you guys a magic trick."