I'm so sorry for how late this is. A bad case of writers block, procrastination, and changing and retyping this halfway through is what caused this chapter to be posted so late. A month and 8 days, to be exact.

So here it is, chapter 5 of Ruined.


My hands became black and white blurs as I stabbed, jabbed, and tore through wave after wave after fucking wave of zombies. Left and right rotting body parts and black blood sprayed and spread, coating me, my keyblades, and my companions. They too were fighting the creatures with their own techniques. Namine was blasting heads open and bodies in two with a shot gun to my right, while to my left, axel was pouring gasoline all over the zombies and the ground, then setting them alight with a pocket lighter. The flaming zombies ran into other non-flaming zombies, spreading the fire around the fully infested park.

"Reloading!" Namine yelled, a signal for me to move closer to her and stand guard as she reloaded shells into her gun.

I stood in front of her when a zombie jumped from the crowed and landed in front of me. Surprised, it took me a second to finally stab it in the head and pull Oblivion all the way down, cutting the zombie in half and watching as its slimy dead organs spilled upon the ground.

Namine turned around and we fought back to back, protecting each other while still killing the zombies. Soon though, more and more zombies joined the fight and things started going downhill from there.

"Guys, we gotta go!" Axel yelled to us, and Namine and I looked over; Axel had created a clearing between the zombies lined with fire. They wouldn't cross the flames to get us.

We escaped through the road of fire and made it to the center of the city. Axel poured some gasoline in circles around us, each circle becoming larger as it went out more. Once he lit them with a lighter we made a camp in the middle of circles (Axel called them the 9 rings of hell because there were 9 circles in his "design") and rested, fully aware that we had to go back through that park the next day where the zombies would be waiting for us. The park was the only way out of the city.

For once we had a nice, relaxing day just sitting in a circle and talking. Axel and Namine shared old home stories with me. They laughed and acted as if they had never been separated. I told them some stories too, mostly consisting of Christmases with my older brother Ven. It was a good time and really refreshed us for what was to come later that day.

It was around sundown when I wanted to talk with Namine alone.

"Hey Nami, can you come with me for a sec'?"

She looked up at me (I was standing above her) and smiled. "Sure."

I took her in silence behind one of the buildings in whatever city it was that we were in. When I stopped walking I turned to face her.

"Uh…I wanted to give this to you." From my pocket I pulled out a blue lily. Its leaves were a light aquamarine at the edges and a darker indigo in the center, quite like her beautiful eyes.

As gently as I could possibly be, I put the lily in her hair and secured it from falling. The whole time this went on her expression was unreadable. And then, softly, gently, calmly, I bent down and kissed her forehead.

When she didn't have a reaction I thought I was in trouble, but she smiled a small smile with tears evident in her eyes. Maybe it was at that point that she started feeling something for me.

"Roxas," she whispered "thank you."

And she hugged me tightly around the waist. I put my arms around her soft shoulders and held her close. Somewhere near us I heard Axel snickering, but Namine didn't and instead she kept up the hug.

We didn't say anything after that, our actions said it all.

When it finally ended we walked back to Axel, hand in hand.

"Hey you two." he called as we walked closer to the fire. He had a smirk on his face, but he didn't say anything.

Namine finally let go of my hand as she grabbed her bag and gun from our makeshift camping ground.

"You ready?" I asked the resident pyro.

"Yup!" somehow he had two flamethrowers (how he got the second one I still don't know) and he was priming them for our fight. I made sure my keyblades were in good condition and slung them on my back, criss-crossing them and making a badass X.

After nodding to each other, we ran to the park ready to fight for a way through.

Immediately the zombies noticed us as we stopped in front of the park. The whole park was filled, or at least most of it. Growling and twitching ran rampant throughout the anxious crowd waiting for us. As slow as possible I pulled out my keyblades and Axel and Namine followed suit.

"RAHHH!" I yelled as I ran forward and thrust both my blades into the chest of a zombie. When it collapsed in a heap to the ground, all hell broke loose.

I could hardly see my friends as we were flooded with zombies. I got a few scratches on my face, but I wasn't sure if anyone else had any injuries. Deafening gunshots blasted in my ear while heat warmed my skin from Axel's flamethrowers.

After a while we reached the middle of the park. Things were getting a bit harder because we were all getting tired. My arms ached and Namine was running out of bullets fast. Axel didn't have much napalm left either. I was covered in zombie blood. Heads and arms and charred body parts littered the ground while bullet holes were scattered in corpses.

Finally, after even longer, we reached the end of the park. I could see the sun coming up through a clearing in the trees in front of us. There were still some zombies left, but nowhere as many as when we started.

When I pulled my blade out of the last zombies' head we all sighed in relief. The three of us were spent; we had just cleared around, like, 500 zombies or something. It was hard.

Until things got worse.

Namine was flung to the side by something we couldn't see just yet, as it was dark. She slammed into a nearby tree and slumped down, totally unconscious. I went crazy.

RAHHH! The beasts screamed. It turned out there were two of the tank monsters that were so hard to take out. Fuck!

"Axel." I whispered. "Take Namine and get out of here."

"But-" he tried opposing me, but I shot him down.

"Take her and if I don't come back in an hour, come and find me."

Axel looked from me to Namine to the beasts and back again before nodding his head. He picked up Namine in his arms and ran off into the next town.

With whatever strength I had left in my body, I picked up my blades and faced the monsters. They stared at me and sneered. So I ran to them and began the struggle for my life and the lives of the ones I loved.

Axel's POV

It was well over an hour and I was pacing the rundown apartment I took Namine to. Roxas hadn't come back and Namine was still unconscious.

With one look back at Namine, I left the apartment to look for Roxas. I feared the worse and wondered what would happen if he was actually dead. Would Namine breakdown? Would we survive? But my train of thought was cut short when I saw him laying there.

He was on the ground, blood pooled around him and unconscious. Looking back now, I thought he was dead.

The zombies were unquestionably dead, though. One had a keyblade stuck in its chest near its heart while the other one had another keyblade sticking out of its head. Cringing, I pulled out the keyblades and hung them on my back before walking over to Roxas and picking him up bridal style to take to the apartment. He was breathing, but it was very weak.

Namine's Pov

I woke up sometime after the sunrise. The last thing I remember was getting thrown into a tree and blacking out. When I didn't hear any noise, though, I started getting nervous.

"Axel?" I called out "Roxas?"

There wasn't an answer.

"Guys?"

There still wasn't an answer. I heard a rattling at the door and immediately got scared. I was in no condition to fight anything off and both Axel and Roxas were gone.

"Namine, are you awake?" It was Axel.

"Yeah why-OhmyGod Roxas!" when I saw him defeated, broken, and wrecked I almost collapsed.

"What happened, Axel?"

"He saved us both."

Axel put him down on a couch and ran into the kitchen, wetting an old dishrag he found with cold water. He wiped much of the blood off of Roxas' face. There was an almost calm look coming from Roxas' sleeping form.

"We need to find somebody for help." I spoke out to Axel.

"What are the odds that somebody, especially a doctor, would just be wandering around?"

I just stared at him before running out of the apartment.

I sat outside in vain and waited and watched for a doctor to come along. And, somehow, by the most unlikely odds, a doctor did come along. He walked from a distance, a gun in one hand and a first-aid kit in the other.

"Hey!" I called out. The man ran towards me and I saw how old he was.

"You called me? I'm Vexen, a doctor. Do you need my services?"

I explained our situation and brought him up into the apartment.

With one look at Roxas and a couple of prodding fingers near his ribs, the old man stripped off Roxas' shirt and started working. He wrapped gauze and some medicine around Roxas' sides and across his right shoulder from his waist. He wiped some medicine on cuts along Roxas' face and arms and finally placed a cold, wet cloth on his forehead.

"Let him rest. He'll wake up soon enough. Now, about my pay."

"Are you kidding me? What are you going to buy? There's no one here to buy anything from!" Axel yelled at the doctor.

"I want pay. Now give it to me." Vexen pointed his hand gun at Roxas' head, and both Axel and I recoiled.

Vexen looked down at Roxas and noticed the necklace.

"I want that."

"No, we can't-" I tried reasoning.

Axel looked to me with a stare that said "shut up" and started talking.

"Take it and get out."

And so Vexen slipped the necklace off of the sleeping boy and left.

That necklace, as Roxas had repeatedly told me, meant more to him than his life.

At that point I wondered how he'd take the news.

Now that I know, I wished I could've changed things.


How was it? Was it worth the wait? i really liked it, up to the end at least. The parts with Vexen.

The song for this chapter is Hero by Nickleback. It's probably their only good song, lol.

So review please!