~Chapter 6~

"Coming with us? I was not born yesterday!" Shade exclaimed at the request. He gained his feet, ignoring the slight weakened feeling from his near-faint, and glared right into Lunara's strange orange gaze, "You ambushed us. Next thing you know you'd of duct-taped us all up and throw us off a cliff."

Lunara's eye twitched, "I'm not asking. I'm telling you that I'm coming. And I did just say for you not to say anything, didn't I?" she snapped.

"Tell us," Shade growled, "Why you want to come? After all, you did just say you didn't need some band of 'amatuers' with you?"

"I know what I said." Lunara hissed, "And I'm going with you because..." she faultered, much to Shade's surprise.

"Yes?" he inquired.

"...because there's safety in numbers..." she finished lamely. Honey came up next to her, glancing at Shade,

"Why not just tell him the truth, Lunara?" he said, "About her..."

Lunara stopped him, and suddenly Shade realized his team were assembled behind him, almost defensively, "Who her?" Berry prompted.

Lunara looked at Honey with annoyance, and perhaps the faintest of glints of grief in her eyes. She looked at Shade, managing her surperior air, "My sister." she said, "I..."

Honey went on for her, "Lunara had a sister named Stara." he said, "She was part of our resistance."

"Resistance?" Shade asked. Honey nodded.

"Yeah...you see...the DVoid that has taken over the Gardens is a new phenomenon. It's been around for..." he looked at Lunara, and she met his gaze,

"Maybe...three or four months?" Lunara guessed, "A slow-spreading void...it started in the Canyons, where Honey, Stara, me and the rest of the team came from..."

"You were in a team?" Blossom asked.

Lunara nodded, "Yes. We are still unsure if we were the first to be struck by the DVoid, but...when it did strike, we knew we had to form a team of the survivors to find out more, and hopefully end it."

Honey went on, "In the end, we fled the Canyons, with us only the two of us, Stara, another known as Alcatraz and our leader, Clovius."

"But what exactly is the DVoid?" Shade asked, feeling the hatred toward the two attackers begin to fade, replaced by a sense of sympathy and perhaps respect? More survivors...and they knew more about what was happening.

Lunara replied, "From our studies, the DVoid is some sort of malicious dark matter that operates like a virus. We've identified it as some sort of spacial thing, our assumption is a form of black hole affected by an abnormal radioactive wave...altering it. We named it the DVoid, and apparently when it comes in contact with living beings, it seems to absorb their life force. They become nothing more than a shell of former existance..."

Shade blinked, and shuddered, "So...a mutated black hole disease?" he asked.

Honey nodded, "One way to put it." He said, "But it also seems that affected persons aren't completely dead or...nonexistant either. We've seen victims grab onto other victims, and they becomes infected instantly."

Shade sighed, remembering Karu and Kurai.

"But we were forced out of the Canyons before we could fully identify the DVoid. And things just went downhill from there..." Honey said.

Lunara sighed, "While we ran, we were caught in a forest fire. The DVoid was nearly upon us there. Honey, Alcatraz, Clovius, and I managed to escape with minor injuries, and...though a hard descision...we had to keep going. By morning the DVoid would have taken the forest, and anything and anyone in it." she sighed mournfully, "I had to admit defeat. Stara was gone."

"Then..." Honey went on, "Alcatraz became rebellious. When he realized how close the DVoid had gotten to us, he questioned Clovius's leadership abilities. They began quarreling often, and finally...one morning after a paticularly bad fight, Clovius and Alcatraz were gone. We weren't about to risk our pelts again, for the DVoid was coming closer. We fled, the two of us...we haven't seen them since."

"But..." Shade began, "You said you wanted to come with us because of Stara?" he said, looking at Lunara, "Didn't you say she was dead?"

"I don't know." Lunara sighed, "Even if I admitted it back then...I still believe she escaped. Survived. She's not a weakling, despite her age."

"So..." Blossom said, "Say if she was alive. Where would she know to go?"

"She knows." Lunara insisted, "We all know. If we ever seperated, we'd all head for Galactic Peak." she said.

Shade glanced at his lot, never knowing of the name.

Honey explained, "Galactic Peak. That's the tallest mountain in the world. It is the place where the most astronomical discoveries were made. We figured if the DVoid is a spacial phenomenon, we'd go someplace helpful in astronomy."

"I just know...Stara could be on her way there." Lunara said, "And...to be honest...we've been making slow progress with just the two of us."

Shade crossed his arms, "I don't know..."

"What if you met something?" Lunara growled, "You wouldn't be able to beat it off with your skills. We could learn from one another." she offered in a hard, yet diplomatic manner.

Everyone looked at Shade.

The young Dark Chao was surprised at how everyone already were waiting on his descisions. They automatically saw him as leader, and he wasn't sure what he had expressed or done to give them that hint.

He sighed, "Fine." he stated, "They can come."

Lunara, "Okay..." she murmured, "now, we should be heading toward the mountain range over there..." she pointed in the direction Shade was planning to go in, and he nodded in agreement.

The group began their way toward the mountain range as the sun began to roll overhead in the sky.

Shade was still wary of the newcomers, not forgetting hurridly about their ambush. He wondered if they truely meant to cooperate, which seemed unlikely. For Lunara, anyway. Shade wondered if they would secretly backstab them, attack them while their guard was down.

Well, Shade decided, they'll have to wait a long, long time.