A little way down the hallway they came to a halt for a brief rest, not only because of the apparently impassable chasm ahead leading to a curve in the hall, but because of the trap they had just escaped that turned a game of Jacks into a lethal experience and to tend the shrapnel wounds Kira had suffered from the small explosions.

"Are you alright my lady?" "Yes George, thank you. You did manage to protect me from the worst of it and for that I am grateful. Ouch! Dante, be careful, those little shards have barbs on them."

"Sorry Kira, but with these we have only three options and each one is painful. Let them explode, ending the problem and your life in the same motion. Quickly and painfully tearing them out and causing more damage to your flesh, which would not be looked upon favorably by your family or your family's healer. Or easing them out individually slowly and painfully but causing the least amount of damage to anybody within ten feet of these nasties."

"Alright, do it. Damien, I need something to distract me, could you tell me one of your stories?" He looked at her as if studying her to determine whether he could do what she asked safely. "All I can think of to distract you isn't a story that can be told, but something that can be experienced and felt. Something that will hopefully be remembered favorably after this crisis."

Dante wiped sweat and hair out of his eyes and continued to gently pry the spiked balls out of Kira's back as quickly as he dared and threw each one over the edge of the pit to release small cracks and pops as they exploded when hitting objects down below. Damien stood before her, his blue eyes locked upon hers. His spiked hair made him look taller than her. Now that he stood this close to her, could smell the remnants of her light perfume, he grew absurdly afraid of taking the small liberty she had inadvertently granted permission for. Steeling his resolve before he could give up and damage his image in her eyes he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently, deeply and with no urgency.

With a small chuckle Tinker spoke quietly to George. "Now that is a distraction. It is about time too. He's been wanting to do that for a long time. It is the humble opinion of this Gummi that they make a good couple. I just hope that her family sees it that way. But I see no problems, he is a knight, and you would be hard pressed to find someone better suited than a knight to marry that girl."

"Indeed. Knights have virtue, honor, wisdom, respect and chivalry on their side. And most are loyal and truthful as well. Her family should count themselves lucky were he to ask her hand in marriage."

Dante put a reassuring hand on Kira's shoulder as he pulled the last one free from between her shoulder blades. This one, having penetrated deeper than the others caused a pained gasp to force itself out of her into the kiss. Only then did Damien break it off, though he still held her close. Dante used a small Cure spell on Kira to seal up the holes in her back.

She nodded to him gratefully and because he hadn't released her yet was forced to take Damien with her as she leaned against the closest wall. To everybody's surprise, once she had settled most of her weight upon the wall it flipped back, putting the two of them on a slide to who knew where. Once they were clear the wall silently rotated back into position then they heard it lock into place, not to be moved again.

They landed in a heap at the bottom of the slide. Damien landed first taking the full force of the collision and loosing consciousness for a few minutes. When he came to he found his head softly cradled in Kira's lap. Her slippers, which were now thoroughly ruined, had been replaced by a pair of boots.

The boots inexplicably matched the gauntlets and the belt, and of course all three had apparently been left behind by different heroes after different adventures in which they found the equipment useful. The man who had left the boots behind didn't know their name, nor indeed if they even had one and used the same dialect used in those other letters to leave them to the one who found them in a time of need. They were cunningly crafted and a lot lighter than they looked, weighing only a couple pounds total when they looked like they should weigh about twenty pounds each. Spiked plates of an unknown metal armor, which he remembered that Tinker had called Moonsilver whatever that was, were attached to supple yet hardened Dragon hide in such a clever way that nobody could figure out how it had been done. The chrome sheen of the metal plates, though each only as big around as a silver dollar and about as thick, seemed to intensify the colors in the scales of the Dragon's hide showing that there was blue, silver, and a very light shade of pink mixed with the black, giving it the odd slick rainbow effect of a pool of oil.

Her hair had been pulled loose from its binds and now tickled his nose. "Welcome back sleepy. Perhaps now isn't the time to tell you this but our path back to our friends is gone. The slide we came down lowered and the room rotated, pointing the door in the same direction the hallway had been going. Now there is some sort of weird tunnel out there that seems organic."