Hey guys,

So, not so funny story about all of this, so the night after finishing the last chapter, I just kind of sat back and reflected on all of this. And I came to the realization that I was pretty frustrated with Kimiko and Tsumi at hand, the both of them being rather uninteresting, at least to me. And I began to think about what would happen if I just up and deleted them, burned their book and just got it over with, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much that might mess with the sort of balance that I have going here. I just feel like I could be doing better, at least for the people that were reading DBR, but although I think you deserve better than Kimiko and Tsumi, I know that knocking them out would make everything a lot more complicated. Mostly when it came to the subject of kinghood, when I tried to figure out just who I would want to have take over the title of "leader" and guide them through the final arc and ultimately win the crown, but nothing came through that worked well. So, yeah, I'm going to try my best to get the rest of this sorted out so I can at least try and enjoy this story even though I'm not the biggest fans of Kimiko and Tsumi personally.

When you've got no way out, you do what you can, you know? Well, what's the point in making a big deal out of this? I wrote these characters, I should have to deal with them as well I guess. But yeah, I'm sure you came here to read, not to have to read a little rant about my own dislike of my protagonists, so without further ado, onto the chapter at hand. I hope you guys all like it and I'll see you later!

xKiha

"Something about this just doesn't feel right."

Amera frowned as she followed behind her bookreader, looking around the almost ghostly appearance that came with Otaru at night time. It looked empty and abandoned, but the earieness mostly came from how unsettled she felt about the subject at hand. "Going out to investigate the statue demon's whereabouts by checking out her creation, is that really a good idea?"

"We have to!" Kyo said, although the fear in his own voice was too powerful to ignore. "I mean... it's not like whoever put that there was doing it because she thought that it was some kind of way to show her appreciation for Otaru. This was put here for some reason and I just have to know why! At least we should try to find out... you know, before people are put into danger or something."

Amera lowered her head, cupping her left hand over the sword's bottom. "I know... but going alone doesn't exactly feel like it's the best course of action."

"I know it isn't..." Kyo said. "But I promise you, I'll text the group if something shows up."

"And if we don't have time to stop it from coming?"

"I don't know what we'll do then." Muttered Kyo, looking at his feet. "But we'll think of something. It's better than ignoring the situation at hand, right?"

Amera wished she could disagree, but the both of them knew that ignoring what could be a major threat to innocent people just couldn't stand. They had to do whatever they could, even if they didn't want to do it some of the times. She bit her lip slightly before smiling to her bookreader. "You're right, we have to do what we can to make sure that this statue demon doesn't turn her hand to innocent humans."

He didn't want to put Amera in danger either, but that wasn't as much of an option as keeping civilians out of danger. "You got it." Each step feeling a little bit heavier with anticipation as their conversation diminished into silence, leaving them without anything to say to one another.

And just as Kimiko and Tsumi had done before them, the two halted immediately at the sight of a huge stone structure sitting tall and menacing beside the statue of a demon child, her face frozen in fear with arms in a position where it looked like she had attempted to cover her face right before she was encased in the stone cast. It was sickening, Amera's grip growing tighter on her sword's handle. "It's disgusting, that this demon's way of keeping her enemies out of her way is by trapping them in a place that they cannot escape from and then separating them from their partners."

"Well, I mean, maybe they can get out of there? She just hasn't done it yet."

Amera turned to Kyo, confusion frozen on her brow. "What do you mean?"

"It just doesn't make sense to me, why a demon would be allowed into this game if she could trap demons in stone and they couldn't get out no matter what they tried. That just seems a little... inhumane to me, you know?"

Amera thought it over for a moment, before shrugging. "I guess you're right... there should be some kind of way out of there, one that the demons trapped inside just aren't seeing."

"But I wonder what it is then." Mused Kyo as he thought it over, not wanting to touch the trapped demon woman under the slight fear that she could come back to life at that very moment. Hopefully whatever was trapping them wasn't something that required external help.

"I'm sure it'll come clear to those trapped inside of the statues in time." Amera said, before turning her attention back to the huge stone labyrinth. "But, don't you think this is enough of a problem that we should alert the others to it?"

"Yeah, you're right." Kyo nodded, pulling out his cellphone and taking the time to do his best to explain everything that was going on while Amera walked towards the door, placing her hand on the huge stone item to see that it wouldn't move. She traced her fingers on the markings, the familiarity of the symbol making her frown.

"Kyo, can I see our book?"

Her bookreader looked up from his phone, nodding to her as he pulled their yellow book out of his bag and handed it to her before going back to his typing.

"There has to be some kind of trick to this..." Amera mused, however when she got closer to the door, her book began to give off a powerful yellow glow. And she couldn't help but note that it only got brighter the closer she got to it, the tall demon woman lifting up her spell book and to her amazement, this brought the door to begin to open.

"Alright, finished. Should we just wait for the others to show up th-" Kyo said, looking up from his phone only to notice Amera holding their book as it gave off a powerful yellow light, the door beginning to open because of it. "How did you do that?"

"I guess it just reacts to spellbooks, that way it'll only open if a demon and their bookreader are trying to enter." Amera mused, taking a step closer to the now open stone door. "No humans can get in, only those participating in the demon battles."

"That's actually kind of admirable." Muttered Kyo as he placed his phone back in his bag. "Well, if the door is going to open itself now, we might as well go in."

"Shouldn't we wait for the others?"

"I'm sure they'll run into us once we get in there." He said, looking around. "It was built just tonight, it can't be that big, can it?"

"No, I suppose not." Amera replied, handing him back the book. "Alright, let's go."

Kyo smiled to her, tucking their yellow spellbook under his arm as the both of them began to enter the stone labyrinth in front of them. Neither really paying much mind to the closing door behind them and the lack of a symbol that could help them escape. They were just prepared to do whatever it took to make sure that this situation was handled.

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From: Kyo Yakage

To: Kimiko Isahowa, Kenja Sedai, Aislinn Akihira, Michael Whatley, Yumi Gems, Flynn Fukisa and Setsuna Yuuki

Guys! I know it's late, but everybody needs to get down to the western outskirts of Otaru. I don't know how many of you guys saw the statue on the news today, but it's not just one of those demon statues anymore, now it's this huge stone maze. I know that we're not all exactly getting along right now, but we can't just ignore what's happening if the enemy is going to build something like this right by Otaru. We need to forget about being angry about each other for a second and just go into this place, it's our job as bookreaders and demons to deal with this before people who aren't involved get hurt. I know we can get this done if we just work together, so please, let's do this at a team together!

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"This is stupid... I don't want to be out here this late at night... can't we do this in the morning?"

Kenja Sedai could only shake his head at the sound of Kesai tiredly complaining, the kitsune's ears flatly against his head in dislike. "You saw Kyo's message, we can't just ignore it for the sake of ignoring it."

"But we're ignoring Setsuna."

"Yes, but that's different." Kenja muttered, not wanting to dwell on the subject. "We can't ignore something when we are one of the people that can help it, not when it's about this statue demon."

"But we have no idea about what she can do besides the whole statue thing!" Kesai shouted, folding his arms across his chest. "What if that's just some party trick for her? Or maybe she turns the bookreaders into statues too, but she enjoys smashing those right before she turns the demons into statues that Japan just loves seeing because of how magically life like they are!?"

"...You're really scared about this, aren't you?"

"...No..." Kesai lied, diverting his eyes so he didn't have to look at his bookreader. "I've just thought about what a ruthless brute this demon would have to be for putting these statues everywhere for no reason other than to scare those who knew what they really were."

"We're going to be fine, Kesai, I promise."

The kitsune continued to pout, but nodded quietly. He wasn't exactly looking forward to what was about to happen, mostly because it looked like they were going in all by themselves and that wasn't exactly something that they were looking forward to. "You better promise... I won't forgive you if you get hurt."

Kenja felt himself snicker as they reached the spot that Kyo had detailed in his text, the bookreader noticing the same labyrinth as before and taking a moment to be shocked before noticing something that caught his attention just a bit more.

Standing before the statue of a terrified demon stood Yumi and Roku, the girl looking timidly about before noticing Kenja and giving him a hesitant wave.

"Yumi's here too." The blond mused, waving back as he walked towards them. "Might as well enter with somebody we know and trust, shouldn't we?"

"Wait... isn't she partners with that creepy clown guy?"

"Be nice."

The fire duo soon caught up with the other two, Roku's face still plastered in that same old grin that sent shivers down Kesai's spine as Kenja brought himself to smile for the rather terrified looking Yumi. "Well, you're a sight for sore eyes."

"Oh... uh, yes." Yumi muttered, although his name was completely escaping her.

"Kenja, remember?" The sickly sophomore said, trying to keep her feeling comfortable. "I guess this is only our second meeting... and since our first one didn't go over all that well thanks to Michael, maybe we'll be able to get off on the right foot this time."

"Oh, yes, I'd... I'd like that." Yumi said, letting her guard down a bit as she brought herself to smile a bit. "I'm Yumi, you know, in case you forgot too..."

He hadn't, but Kenja figured he would nod as if he had, just to keep her from feeling less about herself. "But, I guess you got Kyo's message as well."

"Yep, we did and we figured that we should try to help... you know, if we could help."

"Of course we can help!" Roku snickered. "I'm not that weak or anything."

"Neither are we." Huffed Kesai, ears lowering.

"I'm sure that nobody here is weak." Kenja said simply, before looking around. "But, I guess Kyo already went in, otherwise he would be around here by now."

"Yeah, I guess he did." Yumi mused. "But, I can't find any way for us to get in... so I don't really know how he could have done it."

"Don't worry." Kenja brought himself to smile to her, trying to do his best to reassure the new member of the group about all of this. "I'm sure that we can figure out what to do together, we'll get in there and help the others out in any way that we can, alright?"

"Alright." Yumi said, looking down at her demon partner who only smirked somewhat. "I know that we can do this, together!"

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"What do you want us to do? We should go help them... shouldn't we?"

Shura frowned as he peered down at the message from Kyo, reading through it and frowning to himself in a bit of concern and worry. "Everybody is probably going to count on us, you know, because we are part of the Alliance and everything."

Michael sighed, reading the message and diverting his eyes. "I know we should... but this whole group thing, can we really still trust all of this? How do we know that Kyo isn't trying to convince us to go there and then have him and Kimiko attack us?"

"Why did you listen so much to Azura and Lamia anyways?"

Michael frowned, turning his attention to Shura, the lightning child curling his hands into fists with frustration. "Why would you listen to Lamia more than you would listen to one of our friends? It's not like we've known her all too long and her whole goal was to prove to us that she was stronger by herself than with other people helping her! But, not only did you not show her why being in the Alliance is good, but you also listened to her and hurt our friends."

"I know..." Michael muttered. "But she did have a point, how do we know that nobody in the group is ever going to back stab and hurt us? How do we know that Kimiko just won't up and decide one day that she wants to take the rest of us down so winning the crown is easier for her? She could decide that, you know she could."

"You're right, I do." Shura nodded. "But, I don't think like that, because I'd rather focus on how they're our friends. About how much it means to me to have friends that want to help me instead of just taking me out because all they want to do is think about winning. We all became friends so we could help each other, didn't we?"

"Yeah..."

"Then we can't ignore one of our friends when there is danger in Otaru, can we?" Shura asked, shaking his head in frustration. "I mean, we were recruited by Kimiko when we helped her out, weren't we? If she wanted to, she could have threatened us, lured us into a trap and tried to destroy us, couldn't she have? Why would she decide to turn face now and attack us when we had an entire group of friends to help us, to side with us and take her out if she was causing problems? I know that you're worried about me, Michael, but we can't just ignore Kyo and the others because of this.

"Trusting them is what we have to do, because that's why we all fought together in the first place. We never would have all helped fight Xenolith if we didn't care about each other and keeping everybody safe, would we have?"

"No." Michael said, gazing over at their black spellbook and biting his lip. "We wouldn't have gone there if we didn't care about Kimi and the others..."

"Exactly!" Shura nodded. "Remember when we had to fight with Kyo and Amera in the castle? When we had to team up with them to help take out one of the trials? We all made a pretty good team, didn't we?"

"...Yeah, I guess we did." Michael said, sitting himself up from his bed. "We can't ignore Kyo... not after all he did to help us out back with Xenolith."

"We can't ignore any of them." Shura stated, watching his bookreader reach for their book. "Come on, Michael, we owe it to them to be there for them when they need us, don't we?"

"I guess you're right." Michael mused, standing himself up with their black book tucked under his arm and heading for his backpack. "We should get going then, if we're going to be there in time to help everybody. Especially if they're going to need our help."