I know, I took an unnecessarily long time, but I had a huge project due for school, and a whole bunch of other stuffs. Please don't hate the story for it.

Thanks for reviewing. Sorry about the Maniwa thing.

The sun shone brilliantly on the metallic objects that occupied the very out-of-area park. A slide made entirely of steel would have blinded anyone who glanced at it. Swings were tossed carelessly in the wind that spewed dust across the area. A little before the swing set, a long trail of chalk-drawn equations was also being disturbed by the wind.

This didn't affect the one writing out and solving the problem. His practically photographic memory kept everything in his head. After he finished writing the long string of numbers he topped it off with a pair of parallel horizontal lines that symbolized for someone to write the solution to the problem.

Mitsuhiro Maniwa dropped the chalk and pushed himself up into a kneeling position. He wiped the sweat off his brow, and stared at the numbers in front of him. His eyes widened as his pupils shrank. Quickly, Manwa ran his finger along a few trails of numbers. He couldn't be right. There was no way that-

He was right.

In a flash, he stood up, and stared up at the sky. He was back. The Golden Shoes was back.

Tsukiko sat up in her bed as the sunlight began to shine through the window of her apartment. Was it all a dream?

Night had fallen. Tsukiko walked towards her apartment building, careful not to wander down any alleys. As she reached the building, a feeling of foreboding came over her. Something was wrong.

The climb up the stairs seemed to take no time at all, but it seemed to take a while for her to get her keys out. The fight with her pocket to retrieve the keys ended with them falling onto the carpeted floor. She reached down to grab them, but instead came up with a piece of paper.

Maromi seemed to stare at her from the paper.

Tsukiko gave a sharp cry, grabbed her keys, and shoved them into the lock. She got the door open, practically jumped into her house, and slammed it shut behind her. As she circled around to sit down on her couch, she saw something that caused her to drop her bag onto the floor.

A Maromi doll was sitting on the couch. It looked up at Tsukiko.

"Tsukiko," Maromi said. "He's back,"

Tsukiko sat up in her bed, and let her feet touch the cold carpet beneath them. Maybe it had been? Maybe things were still normal.

She stood up and stretched a little before she heard it. A faint tapping noise. Tsukiko turned to face the source of the noise, and saw something tapping on the glass of her window. Something pink that was looking intently at something else on the pavement down on the street. Tsukiko couldn't care less about what its vision showed it. The pink dog was enough to make Tsukiko scream.

Tsukiko had collapsed onto her backside as Maromi turned around and ran over to her. Her screams almost completely drowned out the small voice of the plush animal.

"Tsukiko! Stop!" exclaimed the animal. "It's okay! I'm here to help you!"

"I don't need your help!" shouted Tsukiko. Her voice was hysterical, and she'd scooted back a few paces. "Please, leave!" Maromi jumped off the bed, and looked at the manila folder Tsukiko had knocked over in her shock. Opening it, the dog saw a whole arsenal of other drawings. His eyes narrowed.

"These have been telling you I'm a bad person, haven't they?" whispered the dog in an evil voice, not once bothering to look up at Tsukiko. "Go away!" he shouted as he ripped Tsukiko's drawings into shreds.

"Stop it!" cried Tsukiko, starting to cry a little. "Why don't you go away?" Maromi stared at her with his large eyes. Those damned eyes. Then he jumped up on top of Tsukiko as she screamed again.

"What's wrong, Tsukiko?" asked Maromi. "We need each other to beat Lil' Slugger,"

"You're wrong!" Tsukiko exclaimed. "He's not back! Go away!" With her last words, she grabbed the doll off of her, and threw it against the wall opposing her bed, just above the TV. She got up as fast as she could, and ran out of her room, closing the door behind her. She slid back down to the floor and panted.

"That wasn't nice, Tsukiko."

Tsukiko looked up in horror to see Maromi sitting on her couch.

"Get out!" She cried again. She wasn't going back down this road again. Last time, she had almost gone completely insane. Without even thinking this time, she grabbed the dog, and a knife.

"Tsukiko, what are you doing?" asked Maromi. "Aren't we friends?" Tsukiko stopped in mid-air as she was about to plunge the knife into the cotton filled dog.

"What?" Tsukiko was now crying without hesitation as she stared at the small stuffed creature sitting in her hand.

"We are friends," Maromi said. "We need to be together," the dog began to climb up her arm and head towards her neck. He wrapped his arms around it in a gentle hug. "Just me and you. We can beat Lil' Slugger again. After all, it is not your fault,"

Tsukiko's eyes widened, and then slammed shut as she continued to cry. "It is my fault. I accepted that, and that's why he left! All you did was try and hide the problem until it grew worse…and…worse," she was starting to hiccup a little. She repositioned the knife so that it was pointing at the head of the dog, and at her throat.

Janyce walked happily around her morning. It was another beautiful day, and the world seemed to be smiling. He long green dress was neat, and her whole apartment shone with a brilliance that matched her chestnut colored hair. She'd even rented a great movie! The case that was laying on her kitchen table was labeled "Solitary Confinement."

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Everything was perfect. She looked out her window to get a perfect view of the city.

Her intent gaze was rewarded with the sight of a woman in the apartment building across the street from her holding a knife to her own throat.

"Oh my god!" she cried. She ran over to the phone, and picked it up off the charger. Before she dialed 911, she looked out the window again and saw the woman drop the knife and sit down out of view of the window. Janyce hung up the phone, and tried to push the strange events out of her thoughts.

Tsukiko knelt on the carpeted floor of her apartment. Maromi stood beside her, and next to him was where the knife had landed when Tsukiko dropped it.

"I couldn't do it," she whispered. Why? Why couldn't she destroy the one thing that had tormented so much of her life?

"It is not you fault, Tsukiko," Maromi whispered again. "Just rest for know," soothed Maromi. "Take the day off," As much as Tsukiko didn't want to listen to the dog, she shook her head, and sat down on the couch. Looked like she was going to be taking the day off.

Maniwa ran up the steps of the apartment building he knew was Tsukiko's. If Lil' Slugger was back, that meant that Maromi was back, and He had to get to her before the dog did. A few more steps, and he reached the second floor.

He knocked on Tsukiko's apartment, and waited for a response. On the other side of the door, Maromi was holding himself up with the deadbolt and looking out the peep hole. Seeing Manwa, he shifted his weight to lock Tsukiko's door, and said "Go away!"

Maniwa knocked a few more times before deciding Tsukiko must have gone to work. Good. That meant she was safe for another day. Maromi wouldn't want to leave the apartment. He slid a note under the door, and walked away from the apartment.

When Tsukiko awoke, it was night again. Maromi seemed to be holding a piece of paper. She immediately shot up and walked over to the dog. She made a grab for the note, but Maromi jumped aside.

"This note is nothing but a bad thing," said Maromi. "It tells you more bad things. That stupid old Maniwa wrote it,"

Tsukiko's stared blankly for a few seconds, and then made another lunge at the note. If Maniwa wrote it, the detective who realized the truth before anyone else, then the note was definitely important.

Maromi jumped again, and walked over to the open window. "This is where it belongs," Tsukiko ran over to the window, and leaned out the window to try and get it.

"Tsukiko, what are you doing?"

She needed that note. Maybe it would explain what was going on. All she saw before the wind took it away from the perch it had landed on was "Meet me in the old park at eleven tonight."

Janyce was careful to avoid looking out her window all afternoon long. She didn't want to be a peeping tom. It was the off-chance that she gave in to her urge to look when she saw it. The woman across the street was now dangling dangerously out her window. This woman was trying to kill herself!

Janyce didn't look twice this time when she picked up the phone and dialed the three digits.

Tsukiko practically ran out of her apartment once she changed into the clothes she usually wore for work, and grabbed her bag. She did run when she was on the dark night streets. Maromi had immediately objected, but Tsukiko didn't even listen this time. Thankfully, the dog didn't follow her.

Maniwa was, luckily, waiting in the park like the note said. He had changed from when Tsukiko met him, and she didn't understand how only two, almost three, years could make someone look so much older.

"Tsukiko!" he exclaimed. Tsukiko panted for a little while, and then responded.

"What is it you needed to say?" Tsukiko asked. This had better be important.

"You can't let Maromi back in," Maniwa said. That was it? That was all he had to offer? "The dog will only worsen the situation! The golden shoes is back, and you yourself have no power over his existence this time,"

"What?" asked Tsukiko with a blank look on her face. What else could cause Little Slugger to come back?

"The victims who felt salvation," began Maniwa. "The people who first felt his temporary escape into happiness from their usual disturbed states couldn't forget it once they slipped back into their paranoia. Their minds combined in effort to receive his help once more gave him life again. This rebirth grew with each old victim, and he finally gained the power to attack random people again,"

Tsukiko just stared. They had called him. Lil' Slugger and Maromi were back because they had called him. Called out to him, and hoped for salvation. They still needed to rely on him.

"Maromi will do nothing but lead you into madness," Maniwa said. "Do not let him take advantage of you," Maniwa began to sweat. "We have to stop him, we have to find a way," he started to ramble.

Tsukiko just stared as he dropped to the ground and began to write out equations furiously on the hard dirt. He wrote faster and faster, and just kept mumbling. She backed up a few steps, and then she heard it.

It was a sound that had haunted her dreams for the past two years, and one that made her paralyzed with fear. The sound of roller blades and the occasional scraping of a metal bat. Tsukiko whipped around to see Lil' Slugger racing towards her.

She was going to become a victim. She was finally going to feel the wrath of the cold, golden steel. Tsukiko shut her eyes and waited, but she never felt the blow. She only heard it, and turned to face Manwa, lying face down on the dirt.

Lil' Slugger swung the bat up onto his shoulder and skated towards her. His grin revealed his large teeth, and the red cap he wore in combination with the street lamp near by caused his eyes to be invisible in a cloud of darkness.

"Did you kill him?" gasped Tsukiko. Lil' Slugger, keeping his usual taciturn manner, responded by shaking his head symbolizing 'no'. "Why are you back?" Silence met her ears.

"Society doesn't need you!" Tsukiko said with a tone of defiance. "All you do is cause problems and claim that you're helping people. I needed you because of my mistakes. But I don't need you anymore! You don't exist without me, and now I don't need you!"

Little Slugger pushed himself towards her, and stopped only a few inches away from her. He forced his neck upwards, and stared deep into Tsukiko's eyes. He whispered only a few words, but they immediately sent chills down the woman's spine. "And I don't need you,"

He lifted the baseball bat above his head.

Tsukiko ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction. The initial swing he took missed just a little, and he was already preparing for another strike. She just kept running back towards her apartment. She didn't much care for having to return to the dog, but at least Maromi wasn't trying to kill her.

She just kept running-a difficult task in the small heels she was wearing-and didn't even stop when she saw a police car and an ambulance with their sirens on nearby. In only a few seconds, she had pushed open her front door, and closed it behind her. Maromi sat on the couch, as usual.

"I told you not to go, Tsukiko," said Maromi. Tsukiko lost her temper on the dog.

"This is all you're fault!" cried Tsukiko. "You're the reason this is happening again!" Tsukiko charged at the creature. She grabbed the same knife she had tried to destroy Maromi with earlier. "I'm going to kill you before you kill me!"

Tsukiko slipped, and all the police on the other side of the door of her apartment heard was 'kill me'. When Tsukiko realized she had cut her wrist in the fall, the police burst into her house.

Tsukiko was growing dizzy from loss of blood. She thought she heard someone ask why she did this to herself. All Tsukiko could say before she passed out was "Maromi…fault…"

When Tsukiko woke up, she was in a hospital gown. He wrist had been bandaged, and she couldn't move. Was she being held down by Maromi? No, she was strapped to the stretcher she was laying on.

"What's happening?" Tsukiko's voice was hysterical.

"She's awake," said one of the people pushing her stretcher. "Should I sedate her?"

"No," said another one. Probably a doctor. "We're almost at the solitary confinement rooms. Don't want to waist the sedative,"

Tsukiko screamed as the stretcher squeaked every now and then. Just this morning her life had been normal again. Now she was being pushed to some solitary room in a building that she didn't know. Tsukiko cursed Maromi, and screamed again.

Okay, everything's all set now. Sorry about before, and please review.