Hello loyal readers!

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post! Time flies when you're working.

Before we get into any more chapter notes, I want to announce that I'm posting the first story in a Skip Beat one-shot series entitled ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE. This series will be a collection of one/two-shots focusing on mostly AU RenxKyoko fics. So if you're craving more Skip Beat goodness after reading this chapter, go check it out! Thanks fam! *hearts*

Today, we have a LONG chapter: Lory puts on a show, the Vie Ghoul are terrified, Yashiro's power is made manifest, Maria-ex-machina saves the day, and our two favorite agents finally reunite!

Thanks for being so patient! Don't forget to review, fave, and alert! (We are almost to 100 faves, and I'M SO EXCITED!)

See y'all in a month!

-x-

CH40

- 1:17 until revote -

"Hurry up, Kiyora," Miroku hissed. As much as he hated to admit it, Mu was on edge. Sure, at first there was slight resistance getting to the LME's server room, but after the bulk of the LME agents had retreated, it was such a smooth operation that it was making Mu nervous. Things never went this easily in their line of work, and if they did, there was always a catch.

Laptop open, Kiyora crouched on the tile floor amid a tangle of wires. Like a mess of unruly vines, the wires snaked back to one of the room's many tall, metal server banks. Fingers flying over his keyboard, the Vie Ghoul's techno-assassin shot Mu a nasty glare. "You telling me to hurry up every fifteen seconds isn't exactly helping."

Instead of answering and wasting more time, Miroku ground his teeth and did another quick walk around of the room's perimeter. Each of the room's four walls were lined back to front with large computer servers and several rows of servers inside the interior of the room itself. Each bank was two heads taller than the lanky assassin and blinking with random lights.

Other than the main door that Dasuku and Shizuru were guarding, there was no other way in or out… Simple. But with Reino suddenly deciding he wanted to disappear off into the LME HQ – following some spiritual energy or something – Miroku felt even more jumpy about the whole situation.

"Almost in," Kiyora muttered, mostly to himself.

Trying not to hover, the Vie Ghoul's co-founder supposed that, in all fairness, hacking into a databank that housed the identities of hundreds of super secret government espionage agents who were not supposed to even exist was going to be a whole lot more difficult for Kiyora than cracking into some old millionaire's electronically-controlled pacemaker for a hit.

"Dasu, Shizu," Miroku barked into his earpiece. "Check-in."

"Door is clear," Dasuku reported from just outside the room, clearly bored.

"Hall is clear," Shizuru replied, his alert voice slightly higher pitched than the monotonous Dasuku.

"I'm in!" Kiyora exclaimed, his fingers still typing furiously. "Damn this thing was tough. But I wonder why they only had one layer of encryption–?"

Thump. If it hadn't been for his years and years of experience in the field as well as his current heightened sense of awareness, Miroku wouldn't have heard it at all. Then another soft thump. Miroku ignored his teammate babbling on about levels of security. His hand strayed to rest on the handle of his sheathed katana as he started forward slowly, head cocked, listening.

Another two thumps. Something that sounded like a muffled yelp.

Instantly at attention, Miroku's hand flew to his ear as he drew his weapon with a metallic shnek. "Dasu, Shizu. Report."

"Door is still clear, boss," Dasuku noted wearily from his post.

There was a pause.

"Shizu!" Mu barked.

"Ah, um, ahem. Hall is still clear." Shizu's voice finally came over the earpiece. Miroku let out a sigh of relief. But Shizu was continuing. "But for some reason, the lights have gone out in the hallway. I'm going to investigate. Dasu, can you back me up?"

"Copy that, Shizu," Dasuku noted dully.

Per protocol, Miroku began to move up to cover Dasuku's post at the door. Wielding his katana in a lowered ready stance, Mu saw the team's firearms specialist flick on the flashlight above his assault rifle and shuffle through the door, down the hall. Miroku peeked out into the hallway, but it seemed that Shizuru was correct. The lights at the end of the hall had indeed cut out.

"Shizu?" Dasuku wandered farther into the inky darkness until Miroku could no longer see him. The man's bobbing flashlight seemed to get swallowed up in the dark, reflecting more and more dimly as Dasuku walked away. "Shizu?"

Mu tried to squint and crane his neck, but the blackness was so unnaturally thick that there was nothing he could see. His hand nervously strayed to the radio's button in his ear, but he hesitated, listening.

A muffled exchange of voices… Then silence…

Suddenly, there was a blood-curdling scream. Shocked, Miroku watched Dasu burst out of the darkness, back up the hallway. Flashlight whipping every which way in frantic motions, the normally calm and collected gun-wielder was firing recklessly into the dark behind him, so intent on stopping or slowing whatever lurked in the blackness that he at one point tripped over his own feet, faceplanting into the cement floor, before righting himself and scrambling away.

Eyes peeled, Miroku could see nothing at the end of the hallway. Not Shizuru, or anything else. As Dasu finally made it back to the server room, Mu grabbed him by the scruff of his collar.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Miroku demanded, his long blonde hair flying. "Are you trying to give our position away?"

Nose bloodied from his earlier fall, Dasuku squirmed trying to get away from Mu's iron grip and hide further in the room. "A-A-A m-m-monster!"

"A monster?

"It came out from the dark!"

"What the hell–?"

"It stole Shizuru's voice!" Dasu howled out. Surprised, Miroku released his underling, unsure how to react.

"Are you crazy–?"

"Kzzzhhhhhht – Mi…ro…ku…"

The hairs on the nape of Mu's neck stood up.

"– Da...su…ku – Kiiiiyooooraaaa – Shhhaaashhhh"

Shizuru's voice – albeit laced with heavy static – echoed hauntingly over the headset. Behind him, Miroku heard Kiyora curse, "What the f—!"

Meanwhile, Dasu merely whimpered and aimed his rifle at the doorway, hands shaking uncontrollably as he backed up, step by shaky step.

"I… have… Shizuru – Pssshhhhhttt – And… I'm… coming… for… YOU!"

The overhead lights just outside the hall exploded in a shower of sparks, dousing what remained of the hallway in the same impenetrable blackness.

Cursing, Miroku tuned his radio to Reino's frequency and tried to hail their leader. "Rho! Calling Rho! Come in Rho! Pick the fuck up!"

Trying to regain control of his wildly beating heart, Miroku saw Dasuku fidgeting with the light on his gun until it lit up again. The assassin tried to point it without much effect into the pitch-black hall. The man's hands were still shaking.

With wild, wide eyes, Dasuku gazed out into the blackness and whimpered back to Miroku, "It's here…"

There was a high-pitched whir in the air, and then Dasuku's hand – Miroku lacked a better word for what happened – exploded. Blood splattered across the doorframe and the firearm specialist screamed in agony, collapsing to the floor and clutching his broken appendage. Panicked, Mu could only think to drag his teammate away from the doorway, further into the room.

Batting away the man's flailing limbs, Miroku examined his fellow assassin's hand. Dasu's trigger finger – all his fingers, actually, were broken in multiple places, bones sticking out from the skin. The impact of the blow – whatever it was – must have sent the blood from the wound flying. Honestly, the effect was more dramatic than the wound appeared, Mu noted from some far corner of his mind.

"Kzzzzt – Dasuku… I'm so hungry – pshht – I...WANT…food…"

"What the hell is going on, guys?" Kiyora screamed from farther inside the room.

"Just keep uploading!" Miroku yelled back. Where the hell was Reino! There was something weird about this, but the panic was keeping his brain from processing on a logical level.

Not helping the amount of hysteria in the room, Dasuku struggled away from Miroku. Almost weeping now in fear, the burly dark-haired assassin tried to scramble to his feet. "W-We gotta get out of here!"

Mu was opening his mouth to protest when another zip sounded through the air, then a clunk by the door, then an invisible something struck Dasuku square in the forehead. The assassin's head snapped back on impact, smacking the back of his skull against the sturdy metal casing of one of the server banks. Miroku could only watch as Dasuku crumpled to the floor, knocked out cold.

"Dasu!"

Scrambling for cover, Mu quickly grabbed his fallen comrade under the armpits and dragged him behind a metal server bank. While Kiyora shouted in the background, Miroku's slender fingers deftly found his teammate's carotid. Mu sighed in relief. There was still a pulse.

"Mu!" Kiyora was shouting from the back of the room, now barricaded behind a row of servers. "Screw this! Let's bounce! I already uploaded like 27%!"

"No, 100%." Eyes sliding off to the side, Miroku caught sight of something small and black on the floor. "All or nothing."

"Kiiiiiyyyooooraaaa~!" Now Dasuku's deep baritone came over the line, heavily layered in static. "You… are… kzzzhhhttt… NEXT!"

Whimpering, Kiyora swore and banged on his laptop screen. "Hurryuphurryuphurryup–!"

Only half paying attention to the eerie voice over the headset, the blonde assassin knelt and picked up the black object that had caught his eye. The small black cylinder was the same diameter as his pinky finger, but had a flat bottom and a rounded top. The assassin hefted it in his hand – dense, but – he pinched it between his fingers – still flexible.

Then his eyes widened.

"Phhhssshhhhttt – Ki…yo…ra…!" Dasuku's stoic voice came over the headset again, laced in eerie static. "Let me feed – pzzzttt – on youuuuuu…"

Kiyora let out a girlish shriek. "What the hell is that thing!"

Now wise to their assailant's tactics, Mu merely rolled his eyes and tossed the techno-assassin the rubber bullet. "Not a monster. That's for sure. How close are you?"

Catching the small projectile, the Vie Ghoul assassin turned the object over and over in his hands. "What is this? Monsters don't use rubber bullets!"

"Kiyora. How. Close. Are. You."

"Only 42%. Sheesh!"

"Well, hurry up!" Mu whirled and snatched up his katana that had been accidentally dropped on the floor amid all the chaos and took cover behind the server bank, crouching low. Though he was certain now that this enemy was a man and not a supernatural creature, the blonde watched the doorway closely, his tension rising. This man had out-fought Shizuru, their hand-to-hand specialist, and had out-shot their marksman Dasuku.

Maybe this man… maybe he was a type of monster after all. Gazing out into the darkness beyond the door, Miroku swallowed hard.

"Kiyoooooraaa—!" The disembodied voice moaned over the frequency.

"Hey, you bastard!" Miroku snapped, shouting out into the darkness. "I know you're just some guy! Show yourself already and cut the crap!"

The voice over the headset cut out abruptly, leaving the assassins in unnerving silence.

Suddenly a single gunshot rang out. Mu ducked instinctively but heard the bullet zip wide. There was a loud clang as it struck a fire extinguisher on the far wall. Thick, white smoke burst out in a rapid stream, filling the room with an impenetrable fog.

"So you have discovered my ruse at last! Well done, assassin!" A booming voice suddenly echoed through the enclosed room. "But fear not small children! And evil-doers beware!"

A movement inside the doorway caught the assassin's eye, and he whirled back around just as a strangely dressed man burst out of the artificial fog. Miroku could only watch, shocked and bewildered as the 60-something year-old man dressed in the garb of a nineteenth-century French musketeer complete with bright red, wide-brimmed hat and ostentatious feather whipped his red cape back, sending tendrils of smoke billowing dramatically.

"For it is I, Lory Takarada!" The man assumed a theatrical pose, raising his hand in the air with a flourish. "Master of Disguise and Mimicry, Knight of Light, and Ambassador of Love. Now I challenge, thee, vile assassin, to a duel of honor!"

The strange man whipped out a narrow European rapier, point raised expertly at the stunned Vie Ghoul. Katana now drooping, Miroku just continued to stare at the man blankly. This sudden shift in tone was too much. Mu just couldn't deal. Finally after a couple of seconds, he reached behind his back and pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants.

Now it was Lory's turn to stare blankly. "Well, that's not very honorable at all."

-x-

His plan was going so well, too. Lory pouted to himself as he returned fire from behind one of the metal server banks. He should have seen it coming though. These younger assassins nowadays were so lazy. Where was the pride in their finely honed crafts, their weapons specialties, their trademark M.O.s?

"Just whip a gun out to solve all your problems," Lory grumbled sarcastically as he turned back around to reload his pistol with a clip of rubber bullets. "No challenge. No struggle. No thrill at all."

A burst of gunfire broke through part of the metal paneling of his cover, and the master spy had to quickly dodge and roll away to a new server bank, bullets nipping at his heels.

"57% up!" The Vie Ghoul member typing away furiously on his laptop in the back of the room called.

Lory frowned. That hacker was probably the reason why the Henshin servers had given Yashiro so much trouble. And it sounded as if the hacker was in the process of uploading all the LME's data back to that same impenetrable server. That was all well and good, as long as the hacker hadn't found –

"Mu, there's actually a second layer of encryption here!"

Cursing under his breath, the master spy tried to peek around to aim at the back corner where the assassin hacker was crouched. The angle was all wrong, even for a well-aimed ricochet, and –

A burst of opposing gunfire made Lory whip back around.

"64% up and almost through the second layer."

"Well, hurry the hell up!" The gun-wielding assassin yelled back.

After a moment of silent calculation and contemplation, Lory sighed and admitted defeat. There was no other way out of this situation.

There was only one way to ensure that this hacker was shut down immediately. So he made the call.

-x-

"Yashiro-kun!"

The tech support blinked, surprised to hear the President's voice over his headset. "President! Are you safe?"

"No time," President Takarada growled. Yashiro paled. He could hear gunfire in the background. "Can you do a repeat of Osaka– but on purpose this time?"

"Please excuse my indiscretion, President Takarada. But… have you gone completely insane?"

"Their hacker found the second layer." Lory cut off for a moment or two, as Yashiro heard him running and then a couple of shouts and thuds as if someone had been punched in the face and then judo thrown across the room. The President came back over the line, and barked, "Just do it, Yukihito!"

Then the President's line cut out completely. Yashiro felt the blood drain from his face; his fellow techies turned to look at him, aghast. The situation really was that dire.

Finally Matsushita spoke up, his voice grim. "I'll contact all the LME agents worldwide and let them know that all systems are going down. Hopefully they'll have time to backup their investigation data to external servers."

Yukihito nodded then turned back to his screen, keying his mic for the three agents in the Henshin hideout. "Agents T, K, and A – Please be advised, we are shutting down our communications network. In about thirty seconds, you're going dark and blind. Not sure for how long."

Yukihito heard the two women exclaim in alarm before Ren's voice came over the line, terse with concern. "Yashiro! What's going on?"

"No time to explain," Yukihito muttered, as his eyes grew wide with inspiration and wild thoughts. "God speed, agents."

Cutting off the link, Yashiro turned to furiously type for fifteen or so seconds on his keyboard. Finally, he hit the Enter key, sending the string of code through. Then he sighed a deep breath out, muttered a small prayer that this crazy plan would work, and looked around the room. At his gaze, the other tech supports and strategists nodded solemnly at him.

Gritting his teeth, the tech support reached forward and gingerly peeled the latex gloves off both his hands. At this point, the other people in the room warily began to remove their personal phones and other electronic devices from contact with their desks.

And with that, Yashiro Yukihito placed his bare palms on the computer screen in front of him.

'One…Two…Three…' He counted in his mind, wincing back in anticipation. 'Four… Five!'

There was a moment of pause, and for a second, he was afraid it wasn't working. Then his computer screen started sizzling as sparks flew up from the motherboard, and the LED display fizzled with static as gibberish text scrawled in increasingly rapid flashes across the screen. Suddenly, his computer screen let out a splash of sparks before fading out forever. All around him, wires overheated, computer monitors caught fire and died, and storage drives exploded in small pops inside their consoles' metal casings.

Apparently after a moment or two, his handiwork had made it to the server room.

Yashiro could almost hear the cheeky grin in the President's voice as Takarada came back over the line and mused, "Those hands of yours ought to have a military patent. Good work–" before all the comm links died.

-x-

Smoke poured into the room, curling out from the small, multiple fires that had cropped up around the server room. Kiyora cursed and batted at the smoke as the servers sparked and fizzled. Another second and his own laptop began to overheat. Illegible gibberish text scrambled across the screen until the software finally crapped out into a blue screen of death.

To make matters worse, overhead the fire alarm began to blare and automated sprinklers popped out from the ceiling to douse the entire room in water. Slamming his laptop screen down in anger, Kiyora quickly made his way over to Mu.

Taking a break from suppressing gunfire to preserve ammo, Miroku was keeping a wary eye out for the strange man on the other end of the room.

"Did you get to 100% before the servers blew?" Mu asked, clearly agitated.

Kiyora could only shrug. "Yeah. Delta should have all 794 terabytes of data, just like he asked."

"Good."

The techno-assassin hedged, "But I couldn't get down into that second layer–"

With a sudden movement, slightly obscured by the sprinkler rain, their assailant across the room leapt up, loosed a single shot, smacking Kiyora directly in the forehead. In a repeat of what happened to Dasuku, the hacker's head snapped back into the hard metal casing of a smoking server bank. The hacker quickly lost consciousness.

Letting loose two rounds of return fire, Miroku cursed and sprinted amidst a hail of rubber bullets to change cover. This was very bad. The whole team of assassins had been taken out by one man. His hand pressed the radio button on his earpiece.

"Rho! Come in, Rho!" Miroku shouted, desperate. The blonde hissed to himself, "Where is that guy!"

-x-

Several floors up in the residential wing, Reino balked at the small, blue object on the desk. He had been following a nicely scented trail of that girl's hatred and fear, but it had all turned out to be that accursed rock. Disappointed, the assassin glanced around the room. It was far too masculine to be Kyoko's quarters, and besides…

Reino shivered at the aura in the air. It felt too much like that guy's darkness.

Stepping away from the desk, the assassin mused with a tinge of regret that perhaps his prey was off the market. Why else would her precious (but dreadfully accursed) talisman be in his room? But Reino quickly dispelled his remorse. Fighting over a delicious morsel of hatred like Kyoko was certainly not worth the inevitable violence of facing off against him. One run-in had been quite enough for his tastes.

Speaking of which, Reino thought, it would probably be best if he weren't caught in that Lion-guy's bedroom. He turned to leave.

The assassin was just about to open the door back into the main corridor when he heard a small sound in the hallway. Instantly on-guard, the trained killer quickly but silently ducked to the side of the door and drew a long throwing dagger from his belt.

Another soft shuffling sounded from behind the door. Eyes narrowing, Reino clutched the doorknob then flung the door open, leaping out into the hallway. A flash of maroon caught the edge of his vision, and on reflex, Reino threw his knife. However, his eyes widened as his brain processed that he had just thrown his poisoned weapon in the direction of a little girl wearing a burgundy dress and a mound of brunette ringlets.

"Hey!" With a shout of surprise, the girl shockingly drew her own weapon – an intricately engraved, baroque three-pronged sai – and masterfully deflected his knife. She turned to glare at the assassin. "Watch it, creepo!"

With that, the girl used her free hand to pull down her lower eyelid and stuck out her tongue in a taunt before darting down the hall in the opposite direction.

The Vie Ghoul assassin was tempted to just ignore the small child and instead to continue down to the lower levels to support his team – who had been yelling at him over the radio for a while before he finally turned the infernal thing off. However…

Reino's spiritual sense perked up. There was something very intriguing in the air trailing off the girl, and before he knew it, he had followed her through a maze of hallways and caught sight of her just before she dashed into a room. The placard on the door read, "Maria Takarada," in elegant typeface.

Before Reino could decide whether he wanted to knock or just barge in, the door flew open. Reino scarcely had time to move his head to the side to dodge the sai thrown at his face. He glanced behind him as the weapon wiggled with its retained kinetic energy in the wall.

"S-Stay back you creep!" The young girl snarled from within, brandishing the other sai of the twin pair. "What do you want? Onee-sama's not even in headquarters!"

Oh. That would explain quite a bit. But that interesting sense from earlier had gotten stronger as soon as the girl – Maria, he supposed – had opened the door to her room.

"You're Lory Takarada's granddaughter, I suppose," Reino mused flatly. He had no interest in conversation. Really, he was just trying to stall to try and peek around her into her room.

Maria froze before she snarled, "Yeah. So what? You here to kidnap me or something?"

"Not exactly…" Reino muttered, utterly distracted. Then he saw it. His eyes widened a fraction in an uncharacteristic expression of surprise. "A level four curse circle?"

Maria glanced behind her, then turned back to the assassin, fists planted on hips. "Uh-huh. What's it to you?"

Brushing past the girl and her feeble protests, Reino strode into her room and bent forward to examine the arcane chalk markings on her floor gathered around a small pile of bloodied bandages. "Hmm… Intriguing… You even added a bypass for the target's DNA?"

"Yeah," Maria snapped defensively. "I didn't have a blood or hair sample so I had to use a proxy."

"And it worked?"

"For five weeks!" The young girl bragged, her chest puffed out.

"Hmm," Reino mused, cocking his head to the side as he examined the cryptic scrawls along the edge of the circle. "Elegant work-around."

As if remembering her present situation, Maria shook her head violently and raised her weapon again. "Hey! You're still the enemy! You tried to attack Onee-sama!"

"It's alright," Reino said nonchalantly as he pulled out his radio. He clicked it on. "Mu. We're surrendering. Stop fighting."

"WHAT! Rho! What are you talking about? WHY?"

"I've grown bored and found something else to do," the silver-haired assassin said simply before clicking the handheld unit off again. He turned back to Maria. "Now, tell me how you got a level four to last so long. Three weeks was the longest I'd ever heard of without a blood sample to keep the curse bound and contained…"

-x-

Three white, unmarked vans revved up the sidewalk and rammed through the flimsy metal police barricade, sending protesters screaming and scrambling in a mad panic. Tinted windows gleamed as the vans screeched to a halt on the asphalt of the road, engines steaming in the cold December air. As the dust settled, protesters and police alike peeked out from their hiding places by the rear entrance of the Diet.

People were slowly standing to their feet, clutching signs and fearful of a terrorist attack, when the rear doors to two of the vans suddenly burst open. The public grew very confused, watching a small army of black-clad stage hands flood out, carrying large concert speakers and setting up a flashy Goth-Punk stage on the roof of the final van.

All together, this took around two minutes, and when the first of the shocked police officers had finally made it to the van to confront this new form of protester, the sunroof of the third van opened theatrically. Thick dramatic smoke from a fog machine rolled across the makeshift stage on the roof of the van. Rising slowly on a lift from the depths of the vehicle, her metal studded arms posed coquettishly and her luxurious black hair slicked-back in an edgy ponytail as she clutched a bejeweled microphone was–!

"Mimori? Is that Mimori?" The rustling started. Then people who were filming on their phones began to zoom in on her face. "It is! It's Nanokura Mimori!"

The rustling became a veritable hurricane of human fervor as all the young protestors rushed forward in excitement.

"MIMORI!"

"I heard she was having a concert here! It was on her Twitter!"

"I told you! She's really here!"

"Hey! Come out to the Diet RIGHT NOW, Mimori is having a concert!"

The police officer, now struggling to get through the surging crowd finally made his way to the stagehands who had formed a protective human barrier between the masses and the stage. The officer, his cap knocked askew, gestured wildly to the cars blocking the road up to the government building.

"What are you doing?" He yelled over the screeches of the crowd. "You have to move! You're blocking the employee entrance to the Diet!"

But before the stagehands could feign ignorance, the masses of screaming humanity had pushed past the officer, surrounding him and shoving him away.

From inside the van, Sho could hear Mimori outside on her microphone, her voice cutesy and pert. "Hello~ everyone~! I'm so excited to see you all!"

Worried, Sho continued to scroll through his video messages for the third time, as if that would change the fact that Delta's people hadn't sent him a new video of Kyoko in over five hours. Maybe that was a good sign? Maybe it meant that Tsuruga-bastard had gotten her and she was safe…

"You've all been so, so good!" Mimori exclaimed from outside as she hyped up the crowd. "As I promised, I have a hu~ge surprise for you! Are you ready?"

There was a thunderous roar of applause and screams from the audience. Clicking his phone off and tossing it onto one of the van's seats, Sho reached for his guitar. He stopped. His hand was shaking.

"He's a very, very good friend of mine–!"

"Stop it!" Sho hissed, rubbing his hands together and trying to ignore his hammering heart. He could hear the thousands of people clamoring outside. "Why the hell are you nervous now?"

"So make sure you give him a big~ warm~ welcome~!"

"I can do this…"

"He's the best – the coolest – the most drop-dead gorgeous musician I've ever met!"

Kyoko beamed up at him, her eyes brimming with confidence. 'Of course I'll go to Tokyo with you, Sho-chan! You're the most talented musician I've ever heard! You'll make it in Show Biz for sure!'

"I can do this." Clenching his hands into fists, Sho let out a soothing breath. His eyes flashed open and he reached for his guitar, hand steady. "I'm fucking Fuwa Sho, baby."

"He's Fuwa~ Sho~!"

The musician stood up and confidently strode over to the electric lift to the roof of the van. His eyes narrowed as he assumed his Cool-Guy expression. "It's Sho time…"

- 0:51 + 30 minutes until revote -

-x-

Kanae sheathed her tonfa in her side belt loops, pausing to smugly dust off her hands over the unconscious bodies of her enemies. These guards were a joke, more used to brawling than a proper tactical fight. Agent K guessed by the colorful tattoos snaking up the sides of their necks, the three guards were probably appropriated from some yakuza group or other.

She snuck a glance at the guard's cap she had thrown over the security camera protruding from the top corner of the wall. Since she'd been cut off from HQ and any techies, she'd made it a priority to snatch one of the guard's hats and toss it over the security camera when the fight first started. It still hung in place. Hopefully, the people watching the security feed were more inclined to think the darkened camera a technical error than sabotage. No alarm had been tripped yet – to Kanae's knowledge – so that was a good thing.

Briskly, Agent K turned to face the locked door that separated her from her best frie—er, Agent M. The guards hadn't exactly been very subtle when they were giggling about their good-looking prisoner. Kanae scoffed at them. Amateurs.

Three solid kicks to the door right above the handle, and the wood splintered. Kanae burst through the door. "Agent M!"

Her voice died in her throat. It wasn't Kyoko.

A familiar voice asked, clearly bewildered, "Kotonami-san?"

Mind still reeling, Kanae heard a soft thmp behind her. She whirled, thinking that maybe she hadn't knocked out one of the guards well enough. However none of the bodies had moved. The only thing different was that on the floor in the corner lay an olive green guard's cap.

The dark-haired agent blinked at it. Then her head snapped up toward the open-faced security camera, a curse forming on her lips.

Down the hall, an alarm began to blare loudly.

-x-

How did this happen? Realistically, Kyoko knew that she was hiding from the guards who had chased her here. And the guards had chased her into the dusty overhead vent system because when they'd demanded her employee ID at the heavily guarded exit, she hadn't been able to produce it. And she would've gotten away with the excuse that she'd left it in her other janitor's uniform – she was so sorry for the inconvenience – except her excuses had fallen flat as soon as the intruder alarm started sounding, over the loud speakers, causing the guards to turn on her in suspicion.

But why on earth would an evil organization like Henshin even have an employee ID system anyway, Kyoko groused mentally. It was so… mundane. She paused for a moment, mid-army crawl. Actually, Director Konoe seemed like the type to institute something like that, Agent M mused.

Kyoko sighed as she began to yet again to crawl forward bit by bit on her belly and arms. The only light guiding her way was from the occasional ventilation grate that linked the overhead vent shaft to the outside. She had been so close to escaping, and now who knew where she'd pop out or if the guards at the exit had sent out an organization-wide message on her physical description.

The junior agent no longer even had the benefit of Ito-san's handheld. She had tossed it in the trash of a random bathroom just in case someone thought to track the signal from it to find the person who had pilfered the unit off Ito Himawari's unconscious body.

Creaaaak. Snapping out of her train of thoughts, Agent M realized that while pondering, she had stopped moving. The metal walls of the vent groaned anxiously at her weight.

Silencing her frightened squeak, Kyoko scrabbled forward, pulling herself along with her forearms and pushing with her knees against the hard metal floor. The creaking slowly decrescendoed into a fragile silence.

With bated breath, the auburn-haired agent waited. No metallic groans. Kyoko huffed out a quiet sigh of relief. Thank goodness… That was the last thing she needed right now was for the vent to –

The metal sheeting dropped out from under her with a great grinding shriek. With a yell, Kyoko found herself falling through the air. For a brief millisecond, she wondered how far up she was and if she'd break anything when she fell. However, her fall was much shorter than she'd anticipated.

"Wahhh!" CRASH.

Kyoko hit a solid surface, tumbled off, hit something else, bounced off the large flat object, and finally fell another decent distance before connecting painfully with the unforgiving concrete ground.

"Ouch…" Kyoko whimpered after a moment of stunned silence. She just lay there in shock, letting the aches and pains from various bodily appendages wash over her. Glancing up, she saw the traitorous duct, dangling at its fractured joint around two or three meters off the ground of what appeared to be a medium-sized warehouse. Luckily, it seemed that several stacks of wooden crates had broken her fall, otherwise she could have hurt more than just her dignity.

"Who's there?" A deep voice growled. Kyoko froze. There was a guard in the room.

Scrambling as quietly as she could, she rolled to her feet, ignoring the various bruises on her arms and legs. She paused, listening for his footsteps. Though he was clearly trying to muffle the brunt of his step, he sounded heavy – a soft metal snick sounded as a gun's safety got switched off – and armed.

Swallowing hard, Agent M cast about herself for a weapon. Wooden crates – Forklift without keys – Coil of rope – ROPE!

Swiftly, with cat-like quickness, Kyoko darted behind another stack of crates and silently lifted the rope off its peg on the wall. It fit snugly in her palm and was short enough to heft with her spare hand in two coils. Behind her hiding spot, Kyoko scanned the room. There was an exit in front of her, but the door was closed. An electronic keypad blinked with an ominous red light next to it.

Slowly, she peeked around the corner. Across the warehouse was a large industrial door, its horizontal metal panels rolled up in the open position. Nearby, a shadow moved across the floor from behind one of the stacks of crates.

Kyoko whipped back around behind her cover. The guard was between her and the only available exit. Her mind raced, trying to come up with a solution or a viable diversion that would allow her to sneak past him without a fight.

"I know you're there. Show yourself!" The male voice demanded. Agent M's heart skipped a beat. The man was definitely a pro. His last series of steps, she hadn't even heard! He was right behind her stack of crates now. Kyoko tried to quiet her panicked breathing.

Moving slowly and silently, Kyoko crouched, lowering her center of gravity and minimizing the target of her body. The young woman gripped the rope with white knuckles. She would only have one shot at this.

The gun appeared around the corner of her hiding place. Then the guard's hand.

'NOW!' Agent M sprang upward, her legs powering her strike. The heel of her hand shot up, knocking the stock of the pistol upward just as a shot rang out. Gripping the pistol barrel with a hand that jammed the slide, she pulled the gun off to the side, trying to jerk the man's solar plexus down to meet her knee strike.

With a yell, her opponent's knee came up to meet hers, effectively blocking the strike. Kyoko fought off panic as his leg tried to kick out at hers, throwing her off balance. Instead, Kyoko used his momentum to twist her body around to his other side and throw all of her weight onto his hand with the gun. At the same time, her other hand whipped out with the coil of rope, catching a loop around the guard's airborne ankle.

She jerked on the rope hard and twisted on his hand in the opposite direction. The gun went skittering across the floor behind the guard. Kyoko's hands flew up almost on instinct to block the punch to her chest and she dove to the side, pulling hard on the rope still attached to the man's ankle. With a shout, the man almost tripped, but righted himself at the last moment and used that forward momentum to try and roundhouse kick her in the side of the head.

A chance! Kyoko dropped the rope, slid under the kick behind the man, somersaulted across the floor, grabbed the gun, spun around while cocking it and –

The barrel of another pistol stared back at her.

'Oh. He had two guns,' Kyoko thought belatedly. However the majority of her mental processing power was focused farther up.

For holding the second gun, a stunned expression on his handsome face, was not a guard but Tsuruga Ren.

- 1:02 until revote -

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Notes:

Kiyora, Dasuku, and Shizuru are the other 3 members of Vie Ghoul. Kiyora is the keyboardist, so it would make sense that he's the hacker, right? Keyboards? (LOLs by herself then cries)

Also, I always had a feeling that Reino and Maria would share similar interests haha

MAILBAG: (If you want me to respond to your comments, theories, or questions leave a review in the box below!)

Kikoune – Thanks so much for reviewing so many chapters! As for your comments about Chiori being a double-agent, for a while I was considering making Kyoko a double-agent (how's that for a twist!) but I just couldn't see how I could logically fit it into the story. It was dropped but maybe in another fic! Thanks again! Let me know what you thought of this chapter!

Aikori Ichijouji – I agree! Kyoko, if only for her occasional clumsiness, is always extremely dangerous! Just kidding, I love her hard-working attitude and combined with her natural talent, she's a force to be reckoned with indeed! Thanks for popping by to say hello!

Brennakai – Lory is definitely on his home turf, and he really used that to his advantage in today's chapter! Not shown here but behind the scenes, Ruto (a.k.a. Sebastian) was helping Lory hack into the Vie Ghoul's communications and cut the lights off in the hallway so he could start his attack.

Guest – Thank you so much! I really appreciate that you took the time to leave multiple review! I'm so grateful! Leave a unique name next time so I can do a shout out! Also, I love that you're enjoying the dynamic between Kimiko and Ren! You're the first one to have commented on that!

H-Nala – Yup! Today's chapter was a lot of jumping back and forth between the two HQs.

MWEH – There was another Skip Beat FB fan page that was created recently. It's called "LME" and even though there's only like 1 post per week, it's all in English. I think it's a Closed group, so I don't know if you can do a general search and find it on FB. And maaaaan, last manga chapter, the way Ren looked at Kyoko and the way she looked back at him on that last page where he gave her the ring… GAH! So good! But for serious, the manga does seem to drag at times… I'm just dreading the day where Nakamura-sensei is too frail to actually keep up with her page count and the series gets passed on to one of her assistants or gets hurriedly discontinued. Ugh. Well, hope you enjoyed seeing Lory in action this chapter, even if it was more from the shadows! Thanks again for reading and reviewing MWEH!

Guineapigs1 – Bingo! Your hunch that her homing beacon activating was a trick was absolutely correct. But… it was also a little more than that. We shall see, though. ;) As for a Lory-Reino interaction, sorry but it seems as though the world will have to continue to wait. Reino ended up ditching the rest of the Vie Ghoul before Lory could take them out. Better for Lory though. I have a feeling that Reino would have seen through his plan from the very beginning. Thanks as always Guineapigs1!

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Please don't forget to leave a review, fave, or alert! We are just a handful away from 300 reviews (!) and 100 faves (!). And don't forget to check out the first of my one-shot series, ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE. Thanks loyal readers, I feel so blessed!