(HI. This Chapter shall conclude the long, long struggle between Miro and Hugh(chan), but that is all I shall say at this moment. By the way, with the addition of this chapter, the word count for this story has finally reached the 100,000 mark! This makes it the second HM story in this site to do so! And, in lieu of this, I would like to give out a big THANK YOU to people who stuck through the whole thing, and to any new readers, and to anyone who read only one or two chapters, and to people who accidentally clicked the wrong link one day, opened the page to this story, and quickly pressed 'back' without a second thought, and to people who read a little bit of this on a dare for 10-20 bucks, and to people who read the title of this story on a list, said 'pssh, that sounds stupid', and continued merrily along thir way! But I'd especially like to thank YOU! Yes, you. The one I'm pointing at. No, no more salutations are needed. No gold or gems or marriage proposals or contracts to your life/soul, just read this Chapter and promise to enjoy it!)

A smile painted on his face, Matthew grips onto the handles of his saddle and watches as the Nazgul clamps its mouth shut, Hugh lost within its jowls. Smiling, he pats the creature's back.

"I'm pretty stupid, you say; I shouldn't kid myself thinking I can beat you, you say. Oh, but wait, look who's in the dragon!" He shouts triumphantly. Miro smirks, watching him fly around in triumph.

"Good job, Matt." He says. "Now how about having the thing swallow so we can end this?"

"Huh? It hasn't swallowed yet?" Matthew replies, looking at his creature in some concern. "What's the matter, boy? Too sinewy?"

The Nazgul kept its teeth clenched, almost seeming like it was having trouble with doing so. After a few moments, its mouth began to open against its will. Miro narrows his eyes. His hand glowing blue, he lengthens his icy sword by another foot. Also, he causes his left hand to glow brown and creates a short sword of smoothed rock for it.

"Huh? What're you doing that for?" Matthew asks, unable to see the creature's face from where he was.

"Just in case…" Miro replies.

Suddenly, the dragon's mouth is pushed fully open, with Hughchan seen doing so with his clawed hand. Growling, he pounces out of the creature, letting go and only narrowly avoiding the teeth on the way out. He makes a quick movement for Miro, who dodges and watches as Hughchan stops himself a few meters past him and turns slowly, brandishing his weaponry threateningly.

"So, somebody thinks they can play with the big boys, huh?" He states, looking at Matthew on his mount. "Keep out of this, or you're next!"

"Hey, I don't care." Matthew replies, circling around the two. "I can be in this fight if I want to, let's see you stop me!"

"Hm… I'll just ignore you." Hughchan says, shrugging and turning to Miro. He rushes at him, clashing weapons and quickly forcing Miro into defensive fighting. After a few seconds of flying blades and swift movements that the two of them may have picked up from the various action shows and movies which are a staple in the teenage diet, Hughchan catches both of Miro's blades between his own and performs a forceful head-butt, sending Miro back to the ground. However, he recovers before he crashes and flips himself so his feet were facing down again, landing as such on one knee. Quickly, Hughchan launches himself downward with his weaponry in front of him, to which Miro only barely blocks by catching all of his blades between his own, the momentum causing him to slide backward slightly. However, Hughchan smirks, as he quickly spreads his arms apart, forcing Miro to do so too. Daachan's power quickly causes all of the blades of Hugh's broom-ish pole-weapon to form together into a single, large blade, which Hugh holds up in preparation to strike Miro down with. Just before he could do so, however, the large blade of the weapon is torn cleanly off of the rest of it by the jaws of Matthew's Nazgul, which had come down in a deep dive and flew off immediately after.

"Gah…" Hughchan growls, forgetting about Miro for a moment and watching the creature fly away. "That thing's getting annoying…"

Before Miro could do anything to stop him, Hughchan had leaped up and taken to the skies again. Matthew turned his head, noticing Hughchan coming at him, and wheeled the creature around quickly to meet him. However Hugh simply flew by him at a blazing speed. Matthew turned his head once more to follow his movements but, after a moment of searching behind himself, realized that he was out of his sight.

"Where did he go…?" He mutters to himself, still looking behind him. The sound of something influenced by evil clearing its throat in front of him caused Matthew to look forward again. Directly in front of him, standing on the dragon with unnatural ease, was Hughchan.

"Well, well…" He begins. "Too bad your dragon's not flexible enough to get me now, hmm?"

Matthew, after a moment of sweating, notices something and smirks.

"Says who?"

Hughchan gasps and quickly turns around, seeing the dragon turn its head around completely with its long neck and open its maw, lunging forward at him. He narrows his eyes… or at least he would have, if Daachan's weren't in front of them.

"Not twice!" He yells, holding the remaining stick-part of his left handed weapon out vertically, the creature's mouth forced to remain open because of it. Brandishing the claws of his right hand, he holds them out to the creature's face. Matthew watched helplessly, unable to stop him since it took both of his hands just to keep a grip on the creature. Quite subtly, Hugh pulls his claws toward himself by closing his palm, and then, with sudden ferocity… flicks the creature on the nose with the broad side of one claw.

The Nazgul shrieks, releasing its grip from Hugh's staff and thrusting its head forward. Yipping, it goes into a sudden spin, Matthew losing his grip on the handles and falling off of it while it was upside-down. Hugh is also thrown off, but stops himself easily in mid-air.

"Oh no…" Mary gasps, watching his child falling helplessly.

"Someone catch him!" Gray exclaims. Nobody does anything for a moment, and once Miro notices this from a distance, he sighs and gets up to his feet.

"Fine, I'll do it…" He mutters. Lowering his weapons to the ground for a moment, he holds out his hands, which begin to glow green. A large bush of brambles appears below him. Matthew looks down and notices this. He looks to Miro.

"NOT THAT!" He yells.

"What?" Miro asks, his voice carrying so that Matthew could hear due to his own power. "It'll catch you fine. What's wrong with it?"

"I'D PREFER NOT TO BE LANDING IN A BUSHEL OF POINTED OBJECTS!" Matthew replies.

"All right, fine…" Miro mutters. Holding out his hands again, he causes the bush to become the gaping maw of a huge Venus Flytrap.

"…MIRO!" Matthew yells again in frustration.

"…What?" Miro asks.

"Call me picky, but I DON'T WANT TO BE EATEN!" Matthew shouts.

"Oh, don't worry. I was just kidding." Miro reassures him. Once more, he holds out his hands and this time creates a large mushroom below Matthew.

Mary, among the rest of the group, studies it for a moment. She widens her eyes slightly and looks worriedly at Gray.

"I know that species of mushroom…" She says to him. Gray sighs.

"Look, I don't care if it's poison or regular: we're not taking it home." He states. "The house already looks like a fungus farm."

"No, no, that's not what I mean…" Mary replies, grabbing his sleeve in an attempt to make him listen. "That isn't a species of soft-shelled toadstool, it's-"

Mary is cut off by a painful-sounding crunch and a quick statement from Matthew.

"THAT… was not squishy…"

"…As you can see." Mary concludes. Gray nods, cringing a bit.

"Woah… Um, not my fault…" Miro says, shaking his head a bit. He begins to reach down for his weapons again, but pauses for a moment, as does everybody else, to look up at the Nazgul. It had regained itself and turned a direction in mid-air, proceeding to fly off into the distance.

"…I wonder where it's headed?" Cliff says, watching it.

"I dunno…" The Jacks and Kai chorus.

"I don't, either…" Nami says. She suddenly seems to remember something and thinks for a moment.

"Wait… I do know." She states. She smiles slightly and laughs dryly. "There's a town in that direction, I remember going there…"

"Really? What's the name?" Jack asks.

"I don't know…" Nami admits. She sighs, shaking her head a bit. "I just hope they can save their homeland…"

"…Matt, are you going to be okay?" Miro asks, tilting his head a bit as Matthew lifted himself to a sitting position on the mushroom.

"…Yes, yes…" Matthew replies, trying to shake the stars from his head. "I've had a number of bad landings recently…"

"You know, your dragon ran away." Miro informs him. Matthew grumbles, beginning to slide himself down the side of the mushroom and back to the ground.

"So, I'll just be another secondary in this again?"

"Yep," Miro says, nodding. "But hey, at least you did more than the rest of them."

At this, the nearby group muttered certain things to themselves, one of those being Kate mentioning that she helped the opponents create a cool catch-phrase. Matthew, pausing a moment to shake off his saddle-weary legs, proceeds to walk to and re-join the useless spectator group.

Just then, Hughchan lands a few meters directly in front of Miro, crouched but calmly raising himself to his feet.

"…Ready?" He asks quite patiently. Miro crouches down to pick up his weapons, stands back up, and nods.

"Good…" Hughchan says, chuckling a bit. Holding out his broken left-hand weapon, he calls for Daachan's power and causes it to mend itself, a new batch of blades forming onto it. "Now, let's end this…"

"This time," Miro adds.

"…This time, yeah…" Hughchan says, shrugging a bit.

In unison, the two opponents spring forward and crash into one another, weapons clanging and heated sparks flying in different directions. The intensity of this traded flurry between them caused the nearby grass to shudder, and the people to step even farther back than they were, eyes widened. Miro finally breaks off, taking a couple of steps back and quickly releasing a large gust of wind in Hugh's direction. Hugh stumbles back, but gains a footing and keeps himself where he was until the wind subsided. Once it had, Hugh paused for a moment to let Daachan build up its power. The group watching this looked to each other, wondering what was going on.

Suddenly, Kate gasps. She looks to Jack worriedly.

"Do you remember?" She asks him.

"Remember what?" He asks.

"How Daachan fought before…" Kate begins to explain. Turning to the battle slowly, she continues to talk. "As… As a teddy bear, Daachan was too weak to hurt anyone normally, so it always fought in those quick bursts…"

"So it's trying that with Hugh…" Nami says, worry present on even her own face. Quickly she and Kate yell. "Miro! Watch out!"

Hearing that, Miro also remembers how Daachan formerly fought against him, and raised his weapons to ready himself. Hughchan launched himself forward with blinding speed, its claws coming down to meet Miro's icy sword and shattering it to pieces. Then, with a vicious swing of his pole-arm weapon, he breaks the stone sword in half and sends either end of it flying from his reach. To block a third strike, Miro creates a sheet of ice to divide them, but it is easily destroyed with another swing of the pole-arm. Hugh charged through the broken pieces of it before they had even fallen and Miro, finally, faltered. Unsure of what to do, he holds his arms out to do something defensive, but his action was proven to be far too late.

All of what had happened during this burst occurred within three seconds.

The ice fell to the ground, clinking silently. There was a moment of dead silence as the people watching came to realize what had happened. Miro, eyes wide, looked down at himself, and then went completely limp. He was, however, held up by the very thing that struck him down. All five of Hughchan's claws had pierced into, and quite some way through Miro's stomach and lower chest. Smiling in contentment of his hard-earned triumph, Hugh slowly raised his claw up higher, Miro along with it, until it was directly above his head.

"Ahh…" Hughchan sighs, smiling and looking up at Miro's paling, shocked-looking face. "Miro, Miro, Miro… Looks like I win, huh? Good run, pal, but you're still the Beta. If that."

Hughchan then lets his arm fall behind him, fingers flexed so that the claws would point down. At a grossly slow pace, Miro slides down the ends of the blades and falls off, landing on the ground, completely still.

"M… Miro…" Kate chokes out, breathing in sharp gasps as the realization of what had happened sank in. She shuts her eyes, attempting to steady herself. "Oh god, today sucks…"

"It… had to happen…" Lumina says, almost sounding like she was trying to convince herself. "I mean, at least somebody won, right? Today doesn't really suck…"

"First, first he's alive, then he's dead, then he's alive and then he's dead and then…" Kate stammers out, shaking her head quickly.

"Stay calm." Nami instructs her. "We'll have to take this in stride. Just be ready for what he does next…"

"What else does he have to do?" Matthew asks. "If the battle really is over, then-"

"Hugh's goal might be set," Nami begins, "but I don't think that Daachan's done just yet."

Hughchan slowly walks toward the group, smiling a bit. The blood on his claws give off a dark shine in the high sunlight.

"Lumina," He says, holding his arms out as he walked. "I won. Now you'll have no regrets to be with me."

"…Of course," Lumina says, sounding very unsure of herself. "No regrets…"

Slowly, Nami begins to step toward Popuri.

"Think. We'll be together, and with no boundaries, no limits." Hughchan says. "With this power we can do whatever we want."

"…Like what?" Lumina asks.

Kate, opening her eyes, looks around and notices what Nami was doing. Nami looks back and nods. Kate begins shuffling toward the blue-hatted Jack.

"Like anything!" Hughchan exclaims, "Anything at all! We could fly! We could swim the ocean! We could burn garbage!"

"Really?" Lumina says, her eyes widening in awe. "Could we even… point at random people and snicker for no reason?"

With a swift movement, Nami reaches into Popuri's hair for something. She pulls out a chicken feather, a harmonica, and a small rat before finding her needed item; a hairpin.

"Yes!" Hughchan says happily, stopping in front of Lumina. "We could even… rule. Rule the world! Think about it; we could go to fancy restaurants every day, eat caviar and truffles, and spit melon pits at the butlers! It would be the easy life!"

"Wow, yeah…" Lumina says, smiling a bit.

Quickly, Nami throws the hairpin across the crowd, to Kate. Kate catches it, but Hughchan notices the glitter of the hairpin as it traveled through the air (how he missed all of the other suspicious stuff that Nami and Kate did, nobody knows). Quickly, he dashes forward and stops in front of Kate, glaring.

"What's going on in that little mind of yours?" He hisses. "You're not planning to pull something, are you?"

Kate glares back for a moment, considering what to do. However, something that she suddenly notices removes the need for any decision. Calming down, she stares at him normally, red eyes showing their trademark evil gleam.

"Not this time, wittle Hugh."

A rope-thick vine lashes at Hughchan from behind and wraps around his neck. He attempts to grip it with his hands - but quickly finds it impossible to do so due to the attached weaponry they had - as it pulls him slightly back, away from Kate. After a moment, Hughchan turns around to see where the rope had come from, and finds, to his surprise, that its source was none other than the guy he was pretty much completely positive he had just offed.

"Say what you want about me, but don't you call Kate's brain little." Miro says, tugging at the vine he had caused to come from the ground and finding this to be the perfect excuse to try a heroic smile. "She's smarter than I am, so that would make my brain almost microscopic."

"What… the hell are you doing alive?" Hughchan asks angrily, flexing his neck to keep his airway open.

"Loopholes, Hugh. Loopholes." Miro explains, keeping his smile.

"What?" Hughchan replies.

"While I was on the ground dying, I got to thinking." Miro began. "I know it's tough for my body to heal itself, but I had to remember the perks of the abilities. It gives me power over nature, right? Right. Well, I had a thought cross my mind. You see, you had given me several major puncture wounds, broken three of my ribs and did something odd and painful with my spine when you kabobed me. After a few moments of thought, I decided to give life one last shot. So, I used bone, being a power of nature, to un-displace and mend everything you messed up."

"But… what about your blood?" Hughchan inquires, sounding more frustrated than interested.

"Well, I figured 'if bone is an element of nature, then so must be blood, right?'. And, I was right. I just re-filled myself and patched myself up with these."

Miro lets go of the vine with one hand and reaches down to his shirt, pulling it up to reveal some of the puncture wounds he had suffered. Each of them were covered by small lily pads, which were taking the role of makeshift plasters ('bandages' for those not into the semi-British semi-slang). Lowering it and smoothing it out, he smirks.

"…Gah. I should've thought of that…" William mutters to himself.

"You could've done that, too?" Ricca inquires, looking at him.

"Uh, yeah…" He admits. "Never crossed my mind, though. You know, I was all for getting the objective done, and not, umm, keeping myself from dying."

"Rrr… What about your insides?" Hughchan questions.

"I'm pretty sure you missed anything too important." Miro replies. "I might spit some blood for a while, but hey, I'll be fine."

"Says you…" Hughchan growls. Once again, Daachan's energy begins to build up within him, the heat causing the vine to burst into flame and wither away. Kate narrows her eyes behind him.

"I think not." She says. Suddenly, she grabs the hatted Jack by the neck and shoves the hairpin into his static-ey tuft. The electricity in the hair is quickly absorbed into the hairpin, somehow conducting into it completely and ignoring the boring, complex laws of electro-static physics for the moment. Quickly, she pulls the hairpin back out and throws it at Hughchan, the object landing and sticking to his shirt. In an instant, the electricity surged through the cotton fibers of his shirt and began shocking Hughchan a huge amount, to the point he was unable to physically move his body. Daachan itself loses its focus, its eyes dimming to a less intense red as it waited for the electricity to pass.

"This won't be enough…" Kate mutters. She then yells. "Miro! This is your chance!"

"Yes…" Miro says. An amazing idea suddenly crosses his mind, and the smile vanishes from his face as he dropped his end of the vine to the ground. Planting himself to the ground firmly, he clenches his hands into fists and holds them out to his sides.

"This… is the end, Hugh!" He shouts. "Prepare for my ultimate attack!"

The ground surrounding Miro began to quiver as he started to charge up a frightful amount of power. One other thing that seemed to be quivering was Miro's rucksack, which his father had taken the responsibility of lugging around for the past while. Cautiously, Jack pokes the backpack, and upon it not striking at him, he looks to the others surrounding him for instruction.

"Try opening it…" Kai says, the people surrounding nodding in agreement. Jack also nods, and looks back at the rucksack, holding a hand out to undo the zipper. With one, or rather several stumbling motions, the pack was open, the thing within it shooting out in an explosion of old food and unused underwear.

Hughchan made an attempt to move, but was numb from the electric attack. He regained just enough movement to turn around and see the source of the noise and the ball of old socks that bounced off of the back of his head. There, hovering above the group and the rucksack like a great beacon of triumph, were the ridiculously tight pants that Miro was forced to wear to get through the toll both at the forest several days ago.

"Stare into the chafing face of your doom!" Miro yells, his eyes, rather than some other part of his body, glowing a blinding white. "LEATHER CLENCH OF DEATH!"

With that, the pants come flying toward Hughchan, and before he do more than issue a scream, they had caught him and ridden up his person until they were properly on, the zipper zipping and the button buttoning on. Hughchan issues a yelp of agony, shaking his head violently and clawing at the pants to try to get them to release him. He found no success in this, and instead lifts his head to the sky, screaming with the dark influence of Daachan warping his voice into a demonic howl. A ferocious, ethereal wind surrounds him and the button eyes of Daachan pulsate and glow an incredibly fierce red, the ground around it and even low-hanging clouds seeming to reflect the crimson light.

"We have to do something to finish this!" Nami yells over the noise, her and the rest of the group bracing themselves against the wind.

"…The …The eyes!" Kate shouts. "Someone has to get the eyes off of Hugh!"

"I can't! It's taking all I have to keep him in place!" Miro informs, his own eyes still burning white.

"We need someone capable of getting them out quickly and effectively!" Mary states.

"We'll have to take a term literally, then!" William adds. "We need someone to… scratch his eyes out!"

"Well, don't look at me!" Ricca says. "I'm not that girly!"

"Me neither!" Kate shouts. "I don't think any of us are prissy enough for the job! Unless…"

Quickly, she looks to Lumina.

"Lumina!" She continues. "It's up to you! You're the only one that can do this!"

"Me…?" Lumina mutters, her voice reaching few people other than Kate. "But… Hugh promised me so much… If I do this, we'll never get to do all of those fun things…"

"You don't need them! And you don't need Daachan to do fun things!" Kate yells to her. "You'll still have all that you need!"

"But…" Lumina begins.

"If you do it, I'll give you a lighter to burn your own garbage with!"

"Ooh, fun." Lumina says, smiling. "Okay, I'll do it. Here goes…"

Slowly, Lumina walks toward the mid-chaos Hughchan, struggling to keep the wind from pushing her back. Her hair blows out in several directions, the band on top of her head only barely hanging on. Slowly, after some struggle, she came to be in front of Hughchan. He lowers his head, a desperate expression on his face.

"Lu…mi…na…" He stutters out.

"…I'm sorry, Hugh." Lumina says. Then, with a screech, she raises her hands and claws at Hughchan's face, each hand forcefully removing one of Daachan's eyes. They fall to the ground with two clinks, and slowly go dark once more.

Hughchan, or rather Hugh, gasps. He becomes still and silent. Finally, after a moment, he fell to the ground in front of him, Daachan's eyes lying beside. His nails retract and his pole-arm returns to being a normal hand, all power completely vanishing from him.

Miro's eyes return to their regular selves, and he lets out sigh before speaking.

"…Is it over?"

"Not just yet." His father states, walking out from the crowd and toward Hugh. Stopping next to Hugh, he kneels down and scoops up Daachan's two eyes. He walks back to the crowd, whistling. Miro follows loosely behind him. Once they were both there, Jack spreads his arms to motion for a clearing to be made in the middle of the group. They all comply, forming an empty circle. Carefully, Jack places the eyes in the middle of said circle, and then looks to his brother. This Jack, seeing the other Jack's plan, nods, pulls several hammers and axes from his rucksack, passes them to Jack, Miro, and a number of other volunteers, and they all enjoy a thorough and complete smashing, crushing, and shattering of the two beady eyes that had caused them so much grief.

In the deep cave beneath the corridors of the Mall, the ever-old, ever-hacking and sputtering Galen paces his usual three o'clock pacing around the dark path he beat into the thin sand after several years. However, breaking this usual routine, he stops for a moment. Something felt funny. He looks at his knobby old wrist for a moment, and then shuts his eyes, heaving a sigh.

"Finally…" He grumbles. And then, just like that, Daachan's hold on him breaks. His body catches up to what it should be, instantly becoming a fine sand and settling to the floor below, allowing him to re-join Nina after far too long.

Once the dust cleared several minutes later, there was little left of Daachan but mashed shards that a field mouse wouldn't even bother to pick up. After wiping the sweat from their brows, the group returned the tools to their rightful Jack and enjoyed a good, full, collective sigh of relief.

"Phew… Well, I guess we should head off." Cliff says.

"Yep," Jack says, his son making no sound of agreement or disagreement.

"...What about Hugh?" Lumina asks, glancing at him for a moment.

"Let him walk by himself. He deserves it." Kate states. After a moment of thought, Lumina nods, though she takes another glance at his motionless person before doing so.

"It's a long road. We'd best be going now." Nami says, beginning to walk away. Some of the others follow along as well. However, Miro, Jack, Kate, and Lumina straggle behind for a moment to look back at the patch of well-beaten grass housing the almost-unnoticeable remains of Daachan.

"…And STAY dead!" Jack and Miro chorus, glaring at it for a moment. Kate and Lumina nod, smiling, and they proceed to catch up with the rest of the group.

They all walk for a moment before hearing a sound from behind them. Turning, they see a strange object heading toward them. After a second moment, they notice it to be a large, pleasantly yellow object heading from the Mall's direction.

"What's that?" Kai asks.

"It looks like a…" Popuri begins.

However, the need to explain was removed, as the object came launching to them quite quickly. The group braced themselves, but it slows down once more, turning left, out of their way and coming to a lurching stop beside them. The object was, indefinitely, a school bus.

"What the…?" Elli begins.

The bus' door opened, revealing a cheerfully-smiling Anna at the wheel.

"Hey guys!" She says. "I found this in that big warehouse. Are you all okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine…" Ricca states. "But you came pretty close to crushing us there."

"Yeah, sorry…" Anna says, putting a hand behind her head. "I was checking for quarters under this seat and my foot slipped…"

"Well, whatever." Kate says, shrugging. "Let's hop in. But… someone else please drive."

Hand clenching the grass below him, slowly raising his head, eyes filled with shock and denial of what had just happened, Hugh looked out to see the group a distance away, the bus right next to them. With unwavering determination, he attempts to lift his chest from the ground, placing his arm underneath.

"I… N-no…" He growls, clawing at the ground in an attempt to crawl his way forward. "I can't… lose… I am… the Alpha male… of Forget-Me-Not Valley!…"

At about that time, he notices heavy footsteps coming from behind him. Once they had stopped, Hugh noticed a large shadow over top of himself. His head turning slowly upward to it, he sees the gigantic, powerful figure of Cody staring down at him, arms crossed in discontent.

"Are ya, now?" He inquires, tapping his fingers on his huge biceps. Hugh's face pales and all determination drains from it, eyes widening and a small, whimpering sound coming from him.

"Oh… crap…"