Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except for Rumiko and Rika. Any names for parks or places that happen to belong to actual locations are accidental. So I apologize if I used someone's name or whatever. But don't sue me over it! Go after the muse! points to fiendish looking black creature with piercing yellow eyes Though I wouldn't recommend it.

Rika finds herself in an alley backed against a wall with her brother standing in front of her, trying to protect her from some unseen danger. Suddenly, Rumiko's body is on the ground, his head rolling soundlessly across the concrete. There is no blood from his body, but a sword stained red is now coming for Rika. She cannot make out the swordsman, as she ducks under the swipe that was meant for her neck. Rika rolls away from the wall and comes to her feet running. She has no weapons, and doesn't know what else to do. Her brother had died.

"He's dead. He's gone. What do I do? What do I do?"

Rika chants these words over and over as she darts down deserted streets. All the buildings are boarded up, and there is no where for Rika to hide. She can hear the killer gaining on her, his feet pound in rhythm to her heart as she races around yet another corner. Only when Rika come around this corner there is a flash of green, closely followed by red, black, and blue. She's being held against the wall, someone's arms wrapped around her slim waist as she feels her body give out. The person behind her takes a serrated knife and slashes across her abdomen with it. As Rika falls forward, trying to hold her entrails and keep them from hitting the dirt, she hears her brother call out.

"Rika! Wake up!"

She sits up on the bed, panting slightly and look up to see Rumiko with his arms crossed.

"If you keep having these stupid nightmares, you'll never get any sleep. Are you sure you don't want to tell me what it was about?"

Rika shakes her head no and climbs out of bed to get dressed. As she showers, she thinks about the dream. The young woman has been having nightmares since her mother passed away. Rika's own mind plagued her with horrifying images of her last living relative dieing, and she never really has had a good night's sleep. Rika thinks about how she has learned to read people. Before she had a sixth sense as to whether or not she could trust someone, but now she could easily tell if they were lying, or if they had other intentions.

Rika steps out of the shower stall, dries off, and gets dressed still thinking about how things have changed since her mother died. Her pictures have improved greatly, and her love for the artistic nature that being a photographer brings has increased as well. Rika walks out into the rest of the room to see that Rumi already had everything by the door and ready to go.

"So when are we going to change our money over?" Rika asks.

"We don't have to; I have everything on these credit cards. Well, they're like credit cards anyway, and they're accepted just about everywhere. So we don't have to worry about that."

Rika nods, smiling that Rumiko has thought of this and picks up her bags. The camera bag she keeps with her all the time, the rest can be thrown where ever. As Rika leaves the room, making sure it was as neat as when they had come in, she follows her brother down the street to the bus stop they had arrived at the afternoon before. The twins get on the bus that shows up ten minutes later and Rika seat next to her brother.

"I'm so glad they have these buses. We'd be screwed if we had to drive."

Rumiko nods in agreement, "Yeah. Besides you were never a very good driver to begin with. And now that you've had someone else to drive you everywhere you probably couldn't move a car three feet without hitting something."

Resisting the urge to slap her brother, Rika settles for a deadly glare which only serves to make him laugh. Not the effect she was going for. A few minutes into the drive Rika gets lost looking out the window. There are so many people here, and they have trees planted in the sidewalks, like in New York, except she is surprised to see that there are almost no white people. Knowing that she looks decidedly white, and that she would stick out in this crowd no matter what she did to blend in, Rika starts to think about how different everyone looks despite this. They wear different styles of clothing, or different hair styles. Each is still individual despite the similarities they all share. Rika wonders how her old friend could have been so racist against the Asian population. She claimed they all look alike, grains of rice in a bowl. You can't tell them apart without wasting the time to look for the differences. Rika stopped being her friend shortly after she told her these things. Rika told her about her Asian heritage, and she never treated Rika the same afterward. Rika was so hurt that she would be that way, but decided that it was for the best. After all, not everyone can be as accepting as her parents had been.

An hour and a half later, the bus comes to their stop. Rumiko helps Rika gather the bags from the luggage compartment in the side and they catch a cab to a hotel. Once again, her brother sets up the room in Mushiyori Estates. It was larger than the last one, and she supposed that it must have been more expensive. The decoration was tans and whites, very simple yet not cheap or unpleasant to look at. Rika set her bags down, put the cards she needed in her camera pack and carefully sling it over her shoulder as Rumi set his stuff down too.

"You ready for a day on the town sis?"

Rika shares Rumi's grin as they head to the door, careful to have her card key with her, and lock it.

"Where do you want to go first?" Rumi asks.

"Do they have a park here? If so, I'd love to get some pictures of the people. And I hear they have the most beautiful parks in Japan."

Sending her a knowing smile, Rumiko nods and leads the way to the entrance of the hotel. Rika steps out into the bright sunlight and smiles as the people walk past. They were polite, even if they were isolated in their own world they walked around you, careful not to bump anyone. Rika is starting to like it here.

Rumi leads her to the park, following the road signs. She is not disappointed in the park. It's surprisingly large, with sakura and cherry blossom trees. They aren't in bloom, but they're still beautiful. There are paths lined with flowers and couples walking side-by-side. Rika has noticed that they don't hold hands or anything like that, but her father had been that way too. He showed their mother affection at home, but when everyone was in public, he was careful not to hold on to her or anything. It's just the way the people are, and there really isn't anything wrong with that. Rika's always been leery of public displays of affection anyway, somehow it made her feel too much like a trophy.

Rika snaps pictures of the small pond and its ducks and geese. She takes landscape pictures of the paths, careful to keep the faces of people out of them. She approached one young woman and her child, asking if it would be alright to include them in a landscaping shot. After a moment of deliberation she agreed, and Rika managed to get a beautiful picture of them under a tree with the sun coming in from behind the branches. She thanked them, and told mother she would send her a copy if she liked. She gracefully declined, mentioning that her son was married to a photographer so she understood why Rika had asked.

Two hours of laughing with Rumiko and taking pictures passed before she finally talked him into being in one of the pictures himself. He declared that she would have to go through the same torment later on, and he would be the one telling her where to stand. Rika laughs and packs away her equipment, having used three rolls of film already.

"Let's go get something to eat," she says as her stomach quietly grumbles.

"Thought you'd never ask!" Rumi exclaims as he leads her over to a small noodle stand. After eating lunch (or brunch rather) they decide to head back to the hotel to rest a bit.

"Come on bro, I know your feet are killing you too!"

Rumiko only grins as he takes off walking down the sidewalk. He turns to go down an alley and Rika grabs his sleeve to stop him.

"What's wrong? This is a short cut," he explains as he turns to face her.

"We shouldn't go down here though," Rika says quietly as she glances around, "No good will come of it brother."

He looks her in the eye, to read her expression. It's something he does sometimes, to see if she's just being paranoid. He shrugs, "Come on, it will cut some time off our walk. And it isn't a long alley, only ten or fifteen meters. You can see there isn't anything there, so we're going this way. Everything will be fine, alright?"

Rika sighs, knowing that it would be pointless to try and argue with him and walks closely to him as they head down the alleyway.

Halfway to the end someone steps out from behind the dumpster, "Hey bud. You got any cash on you?"

Rika steps back, it's supposed to be fairly safe in this area. I mean, the law around here isn't exactly lenient on thugs, but to have one step up like this in broad daylight changed her opinion on how safe this place was.

"None that you can have. We don't carry cash," Rumiko states. He seems cool, and he carefully stays in front of Rika to keep her shielded from the thug.

Suddenly someone grabs Rika from behind and she feels something cold press against your neck, "Come on yank, give us some money or the lady here might have to come as payment instead."

Rika's heart leaps up into her throat and her breath catches in her chest. She is very careful not to move or say anything, and watches as her brother slowly turns around. His face is hard to read as he takes in the situation. The first thug starts to walk up behind him and Rumi suddenly wheels around and punches him in the face. Rika's captor loosens his grip on her. She turns around and kicks him in the knee cap as hard as she can. As the thug collapses Rika backs away and then runs up to her brother.

Four more men appear from around the dumpster, only they don't look like men. Their skin is discolored and their eyes are too large for their heads. All of them look the same, big yellow eyes, green skin, and claws. They remind Rika of some sort of lizard, but at the moment she's too shocked to figure out which one. Two of them lunge at Rika; she dodges them to find that they are still after her. Rumiko pushes her behind him, careful to keep all four creatures in front of him.

"On count of three, we run for it. Got it?"

Rika nods, and squeezes his arm to let him know she understood.

"Alright then, one….two…." the four lizard things leap on him, pushing Rika back to the ground. Her heart stops as she sees them rip her brother open, blood going everywhere. Once they kill her poor Rumiko, they look up at Rika. Panic and adrenaline take over her mind and she scrambles to her feet. Running out into the open sidewalk, she sees that there are people all around. Thinking as quickly as she can, Rika hides herself in the crowd and tries not to run. She doesn't want to draw attention. Rika turns the corner, following some guy she's never seen before then bolts down the street.

"What do I do? He's gone! I'm all alone! What do I do? What should I do now?" Rika doesn't realize that she's crying as she darts in and out of the crowd. She doesn't pay any attention as she runs across the streets angering many drivers. Finally she makes it to a bus, and gets on. Rika doesn't care where it's going, as long as it's away from here. She has to find someone that can help her. Rika has to figure out what to do. But all she could think about was Rumi. Her brother is gone. What does she do now? Where does she go?

A/N: Alright, I just one question that I'm hoping you wonderful readers will answer for me...blushes What's a "Mary-Sue?" I've heard the termanology before, but I have no idea what it really means. Perhaps one or two of you would be so kind as to tell me? I would greatly appreciate it.