A/N: Regarding the kiss, I have been struggling and struggling for weeks to try and figure out how to write the moment you were all waiting for with Rei and Ayame, which isn't normally a problem for me with a pairing. I've written romantic first kisses time and time again, in the dead of night after a battle, in front of a sunset, on a rooftop, beneath the stars, but every time I tried to apply those tried and true formulae to Reiame, it just felt wrong somehow, like I wasn't being true to the characters. Rei and Ayame feel strongly for each other, but it's not (just) the slow sappy build-up of the usual romance novel team.

Then it hit me. Ayame isn't the type of character to even want a sappy first kiss like that. Ayame is a fighter and a thrill-seeker more than anything else. Ayame would want her first kiss to be in the middle of a battle, guns blazing, heart pounding, adrenaline in her veins and her partner by her side right before rushing off to do some madcap scheme with low chances of success or survival. So that's what I gave her. Hope you guys don't mind it too much…and seriously, we always knew Ayame would make the first move.

Review Responses:

FanOfKings, neither did Rei, lol. Thanks for the review!

Arcane Student, thanks, glad you liked it! That chapter was a bit of an experiment for me, because heist-style stories are something I've always loved, but never been able to write the way I want to. To answer your question, it really varies, but I enjoy writing emotional/dramatic scenes and pivotal moments for characters (so the aftermath/cooling down portions after big heated events).

pokelover01, maybe I will, and maybe I won't. You'll just have to read and find out~ And yes, re: the kiss, it was mostly Ayame, but Rei may find himself having to think about what happened in the near future. And Cassie was holding back in a lot of ways, but now that her partner's gone, it looks like she's stepping up to the plate. Thanks for the review and enjoy the chapter!

Diana Raven, Kent/Wayne and the kiss yes, but I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with Guys and Dolls, so if there is a reference, it's accidental. Kent and Wayne are references to Superman/Clark Kent (incidentally Clark himself is a Superman reference) and Batman/Bruce Wayne.

skullcandyklive, Rei didn't see it coming either, haha. Poor guy nearly got his brain fried at a crucial moment. I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter. As I mentioned to Arcane Student, I love love love heist stories/espionage stories…etc but have never been able to write them well, so while this isn't perfect, it's a step up for me (incidentally, it was writing fanfiction under a different account that taught me how to write action scenes and fight scenes, so I'll take any improvement I can get). Alternate!Rei was definitely getting married, although I didn't point that out in the previous chapter. It was exactly what I had in mind, so good catch. Glad you like the chapter, and thanks for reviewing!

fanficlove2014, glad you liked the chapter, the kiss and Vayne! I really enjoy writing Vayne because he always keeps his cool (sort of) and bounces back from adversity like he's made of rubber. It's a nice contrast to the other members of the team, who tend to stay depressed when they get depressed (notice that I tend to shift to Vayne's POV to lighten the mood during heavy moments). Thanks for the review!

karma88, haha, Ayame making the first move was always sort of a given (although for a while I toyed with Rei actually figuring it out before she did). Glad you liked the chapter and thanks for the review!


CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Lady Luck Pt. 2; What Happens in Vegas


Ayame raced away from Mordred's office, heart pounding for two entirely different reasons.

Alright, she thought, her eyes fixed on the door to the stairwell in front of her. How are we going to do this?

She could already sense herself beginning to change, an illusion overlaying her as Cassie worked her magic. There was no turning back from this point, not even if she wanted to. After all she had said, after what she had just done, she would die of embarrassment if she had to turn back and face Rei without seeing her task through. Which was all well and good, because Ayame didn't want to turn back. Electricity and adrenaline crackled in her veins, a thrill coursing through her that made her grin in spite of herself. Ayame wasn't the most subtle of people, but she'd been holding herself back for a while, trusting Rei to make good choices and following along with his decisions. She had stuck to the plan because it was the smart thing to do.

But now the night was wearing on. They were running out of smart things to do. Which meant it was her time to shine.

It was time to make a scene.

With a grin on her face, Ayame launched herself the remaining few feet towards the door, crashing into it feet first.

It swung open with a loud clang that might have been heard all the way back in Death City, the steel door reverberating against the wall and heralding her arrival. Ayame soared through the opening she created and had a split-second glimpse of Mordred standing on the stairs below her, staring up at her with wide eyes as if he was surprised that she had revealed herself so easily, as if he couldn't believe that anyone would have the audacity to reveal themselves like that. It was an expression so at odds with the look of smug superiority he had worn that night in Rei's house that Ayame couldn't help it.

She laughed.

It was a loud, madcap laugh, coming straight from her belly, and it echoed in the narrow stairwell. The voice that left her chest was both hers and not, a slightly lower timbre than her usual high-pitched cackle, but she had a feeling that her friends would know who she was. She suddenly found herself wishing that this stairwell had a mirror, wondering what she must look like to Mordred.

Like her father, probably.

The laugh still hung in the air as she kicked off the far wall, just a few feet over his head. While Mordred was still standing there, stunned, she redirected the momentum of her fall, pointing herself at the ground through the gap between the winding stairs. As she fell headfirst towards the ground, she passed him, their eyes meeting for half a second as she plummeted.

Security would be waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. An army of goons, probably armed to the teeth. And Mordred would be following from above, a thousand-year-old sorcerer cloaked in powers beyond her imagining. On every front, she was outnumbered, and with the addition of Mordred, heavily outmatched.

Her dad would call those decent odds.

She flipped over in the air as she neared the ground, bending her knees to prepare for landing. And in the instant before she landed, she couldn't help herself. She looked back up at Mordred, head tilted towards him in challenge, a grin on her face.

"Catch me if you can!"


The lights flickered in the grand ballroom, drawing murmurs of alarm as people's eyes flicked upwards to the ceiling. Clark, standing near the blackjack table with a glass of something amber in his hand that he was carefully pretending to drink, glanced over at the bar, shooting Vayne a concerned look as something rumbled above them, the patrons near them whispering to each other in concern as their eyes also flicked towards the ceiling. To his left and right, he caught sight of members of Mordred's security raising hands to their ears, frowns on their faces as they attempted to subtly slip through the crowd and head towards the stairwell door.

The device in his ear crackled to life, and as Clark glanced over at the bar, he saw Vayne with a hand up to his ear, turned away from the crowd on the pretense of cleaning up a spill.

"Rei? Ayame?" Vayne asked. "What's going on? You guys okay?"

"Kinda busy at the moment," said Rei, his voice sounding strained. "Is it important?"

"Yeah—kind of," said Vayne. "Looks like all of Mordred's goons are heading your way. Something must have tipped them off."

"Yeah, that would be Ayame," said Rei, not sounding surprised at all.

"Ayame?" Vayne asked.

"We'll be out of here soon," Rei said, as if he hadn't heard. "One way or another. Start looking for a way out."

"Roger that," said Vayne. "Come to think of it, security's kind of light on the floor. We could extract now."

Rei grunted in response, as if to say that it was up to them, and then his line went dead. Before Vayne could speak more though, a different voice came onto their channel. Male—Clark jumped at that—but with a quality behind it that was unmistakably Ayame. She (he?!) sounded out of breath, as if she had been running.

"No," she said. "Don't extract. Stay right there. I might need you to cover me."

"Ayame?!" Vayne asked. "Is that you? Wait—what do you mean? What are you—?"

There was another tremor, the chandelier above them rattling and causing concerned murmurs to erupt from the crowd around him. A young woman seated at the blackjack table started to stand, then swayed unsteadily. He caught her by the arm, carefully setting her back onto her feet with a smile and a nod. As she turned away, looking around the room in concern, he raised his glass to his lips, using the motion to hide his mouth as he started speaking.

"Understood," he said. "Do what you have to."

"Owe you one!" Ayame said, sounding breathless. There was a desperate quality to her voice that might have made him more concerned, that might have made him want to rush towards her and make sure that she was alright, but there was something else in her tone that made him stop, that made his lips curl into a smile over the rim of his glass as he slowly lowered it again.

She was having fun.


Rei stared down at the safe, aware of his heart beating and his breath in his ears, aware of the shouts coming from outside and the tremors moving through the floor, aware of the sweat beading steadily across his brow and beneath his clothes. Each moment was a precious second lost, each moment brought them closer and closer to discovery, to destruction.

Them. All of them. Awareness crackled around him, and he could feel their presences around him as easily as if they were standing in the room with them, not the bright light of their souls or the steady pulse of wavelength that he could see and sense with his Soul Perception, but something else, a weight that settled over his shoulders as he stood there, staring at the safe that he had no hope of opening alone.

Responsibility, he thought.

He had brought them here. If things went badly, if they fell, he would only have himself to blame.

Doing his best to calm himself, to slow his breathing and his heart, he reached his hand up to the device in his ear, switching himself and Cassie to a private line.

"Any luck?" he asked, keeping his voice down. He spread out his Soul Perception to the space just beyond the door, waiting for the guard, but none came. Whatever Ayame was doing, he thought, listening to another distant thump, she must have been keeping them well and truly distracted.

"Nothing." Cassie's voice sounded strained, as if she was struggling to lift something heavy. Five illusions, he knew, more than they had planned for her to maintain. And on top of it all, she was frantically scanning realities, looking for one in which he found the combination, looking for something that could get them out of here.

Time, he thought, clenching his fists. He could hear it in her voice—they were running out of time.

"You're starting to dial down on it," Cassie said, her voice a soft, far-off murmur as if she was half in danger of becoming a part of those other realities herself. "The yous that are left anyway. The careless ones are all gone, so now you're starting to think. The address of the casino, the year in which Mordred first appeared in Arthurian mythology, the number of Knights of the Round Table twice over. The best guesses you have, but they're all wrong…"

Silence. Rei stood there in the shadows, listening to the sounds of distant chaos, to the soft hum of music coming from the revelry below.

When Cassie spoke again, her voice was grim, her tone even more distant, as if she was floating.

"You're running out of time…"

"Don't you think I don't know that?" Rei muttered to himself, feeling his fingertips dig into his palm through his gloves. He stared down at the safe, feeling his heart pounding.

Best guesses.

Was that the only recourse left to them? To make their best guess in the hopes that they would be right somehow, that even if they were wrong, they might be bringing some reality, somewhere, some version of Rei closer to the truth?

He couldn't accept that. He couldn't imagine what Cassie was seeing, couldn't begin to fathom how many times she was watching him die, but it didn't matter. He wasn't that selfless. He wanted to win in this reality.

His heart pounded, blood rushing through his ears. He tilted his head up, staring at the ceiling, trying to work past it, to work past the urge in his body and skin and every inch of him to just run, to forget about everything and everyone and hide.

Think, Rei, he told himself. Think.

Thoughts raced past him, fragments of memory and feeling flitting through his mind, behind his eyes. Ayame, rushing out the door. Ayame's lips on his, a brief touch that set his skin ablaze. His decision on the rooftop, choosing to find Morgan. Waking up in the dispensary and finding out that his sisters were gone. Lying on the floor of the twins' room and watching Morgan leave. Time rushed backwards, honing in on that single point, that awful night, that singular memory.

Mordred, who up until that moment had been willing to kill Rei and Ayame both, who showed no remorse for anything he had ever done, who had been willing to hurt children to fulfill his mission—Mordred had stopped for Morgan. And before, when Rei had encountered him for the first time, during that attack on Death City, hadn't he been trying to convince Morgan to come back of her own free will? He could have overpowered her, could have demanded that she return, but he hadn't. He could have killed Rei in front of her when he found them, but he hadn't.

Morgan.

His breath caught in his throat, and without speaking, he knelt down in front of the safe, pressing the keypad four times before he lost his nerve.

1113.

The light blinked red for one long, terrifying moment, then transitioned to green. The safe clicked open.

"Oh…" Cassie said in his ear, sounding breathless. "Something's changed. Rei…what did you do?"

"Opened the safe," Rei muttered under his breath, feeling numb. He reached into it with nerveless fingers, moving past the money and jewelry inside and reaching for a large, folded up sheet of paper. He opened it and glanced down at it, using his cellphone as a flashlight.

Flight plans, exactly what they needed. Afraid to breathe, or to do anything that might shatter this illusion or bring the guards rushing into this room, he quickly snapped several photos with his cellphone, then shoved the plans back into the safe and shut the door.

"…What was the combination?" Cassie asked as he pulled himself up along one of the shelves, fiddling with the grate to an air vent that he had noticed in the ceiling.

"1113," Rei said, around a mouthful of screws. He hoisted himself up, shimmying into the air vent and swinging the grate closed behind him.

November 13. The day that Morgan was born.

Cassie went silent at that, not saying anything more. Rei raised his hand to his ear, shifting himself back onto the general frequency.

"I'm out," he said, and his voice sounded like it was coming from someone else, a stranger. He wondered if it was the adrenaline that was making him feel this way, the sheer disbelief that he had made it out in one piece. "Ayame, try and get out of whatever you're doing. I'll meet you down on the floor. Clark and Vayne, you know what to do."

"Roger that," Ayame said a moment later, sounding breathless. Clark and Vayne didn't reply, but he thought he heard a sigh of relief. Rei shut off his microphone, beginning his long, slow crawl through the vents.


The path back down to the ground floor through the ventilation shaft was narrow and harrowing, and Rei, who had expected to have Ayame's help to work through the most difficult of the drops, felt his heart leap into his throat at the experience. He managed somehow, following the sound of music, but by the time he reached a vent that let out into the party, he was a nervous wreck. He kept one ear trained on the chaos above him the entire time, sure that at any moment they would discover the ruse and the break-in in Mordred's office, but luck was with him. It seemed like for the most part, Mordred's security had been mostly concerned about Ayame.

The possibility of a second DWMA team already inside the establishment crossed his mind and he wondered if his group had already been discovered by them or if the second team was taking advantage of the same chaos that he was, using it to get what they needed. This whole plan was balanced precariously on a knife-edge, and it wouldn't take much more than a breath to send everything crashing down around him. He wondered, not for the first time, what on earth he was doing, how he had gotten tricked into this, but it was too late for second thoughts now.

Propping himself up on his elbows, he shimmied over to the mouth of the vent and peered through the grate at the party on the floor, still going on as if nothing untoward had happened. There were a few concerned glances at the ceiling, but for the most part, it seemed like Mordred and his crew had kept the chaos expertly contained. He felt a bit of grudging respect for them as his eyes swept over the group, looking for Ayame.

She appeared suddenly, like a flash of light, and when she did it was impossible to miss her. First, the door to the stairwell burst open, and a blue-haired boy emerged from the shadows, shoving people aside and darting into the crowd amid alarmed shouts and screams. Security poured into the room after him, filtering into the crowd, but Rei saw Ayame dart behind a pillar and emerge, on the other side, as the black-haired woman in the shimmering red dress who had arrived at the casino on his arm a few minutes earlier.

She was out of breath, a shimmer of sweat across her skin, but in appearance, she was so far removed from the boy that had ducked behind the pillar that the security guards moved past her without giving her a second glance. He placed a hand on the grate, about to loosen it and join her, when a sharp voice in his ear stopped him.

"No!" Cassie said, sounding strained. When he froze in place, he heard her take several shallow breaths. "I'm spent. I can't handle another illusion. You'll have to leave separately, and soon." She didn't say 'please', but it was implied. He heard the desperation in her tone. Rei nodded, drawing his hand back from the grate and raising it to his ear.

"Ayame, I'm here, but Cassie's drained," he said, keeping his voice down. "You'll have to get out separately."

He saw Ayame tense as his message reached her, but she didn't reply, instead lowering her head and nodding twice. He saw her look around the room, eyes darting from left to right as she looked for an excuse to leave that wouldn't tip off the security that now clustered around the door, still watching for the intruder. Her eyes landed on Clark standing a few feet away, happily regaling a group of brightly dressed ladies with some story or another.

Ayame strode towards him, an angry set to her shoulders. When she reached him, she grabbed the glass out of his hand as he blinked at her, startled, and proceeded to dump it over his head.

Conversation slowed to a standstill as the ladies around Clark gasped, people's heads turning towards her. "I don't believe you!" she screeched. "Here you are, with someone like me, and all you care about is talking to other girls! How do you think I'm supposed to feel, huh? What is wrong with you?"

A murmur of agreement moved through the crowd, a few people hiding laughs behind their hands. Rei realized with some dismay that the crowd around Ayame was completely buying the story, as if they had completely forgotten that she had walked in with him. He knew that next to Ayame he was more or less unnoticeable, but somehow, seeing it in action still stung.

Clark blinked at her, bewildered. "But—," he began. "B-But—."

"Don't 'but' me, Kent!" Ayame said, her voice rising in pitch another octave. "It's over, you hear me? Over! Don't bother to call!" She glanced at the girls around him, her eyes darkening. "Have a nice night."

The crowd parted for her as she strode from the room, heading for the exit. It closed ranks behind her, the ones nearest to Clark looking at him with expressions of sympathy as he stared after her, crestfallen. Rei noticed the girls around him slowly edging away, melting back out into the crowd. Someone patted him on the back, someone else handed him a handkerchief. Multiple people laughed, a low murmur of mirth moving through the room.

Nobody looked twice at Ayame as she stormed out the door.


"She dumped me," Clark muttered to himself, staring at the bar in disbelief and clutching a glass of water to himself. Vayne watched him, frowning in what he hoped was a sympathetic way. He patted the air around Clark.

"There, there," he said, wiping the glass next to him.

"I can't believe she dumped me," Clark said, still looking shell-shocked. He lowered his gaze to the countertop, shaking his head as one of his hands reached beneath his glasses to rub at his eyes. "I thought she was the one, Wayne. I thought we had a future together…"

Vayne frowned at him, setting down the glass and reaching for another one. He looked around at the crowd, then lowered his voice. "Dude, you know you two weren't actually dating, right?" he asked.

"We were for a second, and then we weren't," Clark groaned. "Is it so hard to mourn what might have been?"

Considering it's Ayame we're talking about, probably, Vayne thought, but didn't say anything. Instead, he looked around the room, studying the crowd and trying to find a way to exit. The watch he was wearing had buzzed twice already, a sign that they were running out of time. All around him, the crowd had gone back to the usual business of drinking and gambling, but Vayne noticed a few people still watching Clark with looks of concern as they passed him, a few murmuring in sympathy.

He looked back at Clark, weighing his options. Mordred still hadn't appeared, apparently dealing with another disturbance, and he didn't much like his chances of making a clean getaway if the boss was on the floor. And Cassie's time was running out. The last time she had checked in with him, she had sounded as though she was barely holding on.

Nothing else to do but go for it, then. Vayne drew in a breath, then walked around the bar towards Clark, crouching down next to him and placing Clark's arm around his shoulders. When Clark tensed, turning towards him in alarm, Vayne muttered "Play along," under his breath. Louder, so that the crowd could hear him, he said, "Alright, buddy, I think you've had enough. Time to get you home."

Clark slumped against him as Vayne stood up, his head hanging, but whether he was acting or actually depressed was anyone's guess. Vayne groaned against the weight but managed to stand, wrapping an arm around Clark's waist to steady him as Clark's arm swayed, limp.

"Come on, bud," he said. "Not much farther."

"She dumped me…" Clark murmured. "She actually dumped me…"

"Yeah, yeah," Vayne said, starting to walk. "I know." He shot the crowd around him a reassuring smile, and they smiled back, knowing smirks on their faces as Vayne edged Clark around the bar, towards the back door that led into the kitchens. Cooks and waiters moved aside, none of them moving to stop him as he made for the back entrance.

Near the exit, a young man in a bartender's outfit was doubled over towards a bucket, being violently sick. Vayne paused to glance at him as he came up for air, taking in the man's pale face and the way his arms were wrapped tightly around his stomach. "Hanging in there, Jack?" he asked.

"Yeah," Jack groaned, giving Vayne an exhausted look. "Thanks, man."

"Anytime."

He edged Clark past Jack as the other man bent down over the bucket again, feeling a pang of pity for what would happen to him when 'Wayne the bartender' failed to return, then moved Clark around the corner towards the rendezvous point. Once they were out of sight of the casino, Vayne paused, loosening his hold on Clark.

"Alright, you can walk on your own now," he said, but Clark still swayed against him, sniffling.

"I can't believe it's actually over," he muttered under his breath. "How could she do that to me, Vayne, how?"

"Oh, for the love of—will you give it a rest?" Vayne asked, shoving Clark away from him. "You were not dating Ayame, Clark. It was all an act. Snap out of it!"

Clark blinked at him, and then slowly his eyes started to clear, a little bit of sanity returning to his expression. He shook his head, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I—you're right, Vayne," he said. "You're right. Sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"It's fine," Vayne muttered, rolling his eyes. "Just make sure it doesn't come over you again." He raised his hand to his ear, turning his microphone on. "We're good, Cass. You can drop the mask."

Cassie let out what sounded like a sigh of relief, and then the illusion around him and Clark dropped away, leaving them as their younger selves again. They were still too close to the Round Table for Vayne's liking, so he grabbed Clark around the upper arm, pulling him into the streets behind him until he reached the meeting point. The whole time, he listened for the sound of pursuit behind him, but none came. If they hurried, if all went well, they could make it back to Death City tonight, with none the wiser. He hoped that Rei and Ayame had been as successful as they had been and had managed to get away cleanly as well, or all of this was about to become a lot more complicated.

And he hoped that Clark hadn't actually drunk anything, because he was their driver.


Micah Cole wasn't a fan of babysitting.

He had done it enough during his time at the DWMA, looking after younger students, and he didn't particularly like it. He didn't like it now, with Mordred asking him to look after his niece, but he did it anyway because it wasn't really in Mordred's nature to ask for anything. He didn't even mind it really. Morgan Fay kept to herself, and had hardly left her tower room since her uncle's departure.

What he didn't like was having to babysit Elaine.

The worst part of it was that it wasn't as though anyone had asked him to do this. In fact, Mordred had warned him away from her enough times, once it was clear that his meager medical knowledge couldn't really do anything for her. But for some reason, he found himself here time and time again.

It was her soul, he mused, as he looked up from his seat at her bedside, marking his place in the book he was reading with a finger. He could see the way it hung in her chest, still pulsing with a faint light. It was still tethered to her body, still encased by her flesh, so he knew from that that she was alive, but it didn't seem like life. There had been a life in her for a moment, when she had returned home, when she collapsed on the floor calling for her son, but whatever life had existed then was gone now, possibly forever.

Her soul looked like something caught between the living and the dead. An undead soul, and not even undead in the same way that Sid was. With Sid, it was his body that had died, whereas his soul continued to live on, alive, strong, and everything it had once been. Elaine was something else entirely.

It was like her body was still alive, like it went through the motions of life, but her soul was dead.

An empty husk, except for the moment that she hadn't been.

It was a mystery. What had made her awaken then? What power had brought her soul back to life?

"Who were you fighting?" Micah asked, his voice soft, but incongruously loud in the quiet of the room. "Who did this to you?"

He was sure that the key to understanding this mystery was there. If she would only wake up and tell him, he might be able to understand. His eyes moved across the space where her injuries, now healed, had been. An open would from shoulder to waist. A wide slash.

In theory, it could have been anyone. But now that he was thinking about it, there was only one person who made sense.

Maka-sensei.

The Anti-Magic Wavelength.

A thrill ran through him as he sat there, the pieces of the puzzle coming together. If her soul wasn't dead, if it was only buried beneath her power, then—

—Then that made sense. Then everything was starting to make sense. There was no mystery here, nothing that couldn't be understood. Once again, the order of the universe had reinstated itself.

He stood up, his chair scraping against the tiles and making a sound like the wind rustling through the trees. He had his answer, and there was no point in him being here anymore. He had to head back up to the library, to read, to think, to decide what he should do with this information, if anything. There was no point in him being here. She wouldn't wake.

He had just turned away from her, just started to head towards the door, when Elaine opened her eyes.


Omake

"And then once I fought off those guards, I came back around to make sure Angela and Shelley made it into the building," said Spirit Albarn with a grin, leaning back against the couch behind him. "They didn't recognize me then, of course."

"Wow, Death Scythe-san, you're so brave," said Risa on one of his arms, cooing at him from inside the darkness of Chupa Cabra.

"So awesome," Arisa echoed from the other side of him, letting out a breathy giggle. "And all that after being retired?"

"They asked for me specifically," Spirit said, puffing up his chest and preening under the attention. He feigned a sigh of exasperation, slumping back onto the couch. "I guess they just can't do anything without me."

"Is that so?" Risa asked, leaning closer to him. "I guess your granddaughters are as good as rescued, then."

Spirit went tense at that, his eyes widening. Across from Risa, Arisa looked up, shooting the other girl a warning glance.

"Don't say things like that," she said. "You know Death Scythe-san is still upset about what happened."

"Hmm?" asked Risa, before her eyes widened in realization. "Oh, that's right! You were here the night your granddaughters were kidnapped, weren't you?"

Spirit paled from between them, his eyes on the door.

"What was that you said?" Arisa asked, tilting her head back as she tried to remember. "You said that your daughter wanted you to babysit them, but you said no because your grandson was old enough? Is that right?"

Spirit was sweating now, his mouth hanging open.

"You must feel so awful," Risa said. "I bet if you were there, nothing would have happened, Death Scythe-san."

"I'm sorry!" Spirit yelled suddenly, bolting upright. He ran towards the door, kicking up a trail of dust behind him. "Annie! Cori! My precious, beloved granddaughters, don't worry! Grandpa's coming to save you!"

His shouts faded away into the distance as he ran, leaving Risa and Arisa blinking in their seats behind him.