Chapter 4

Then everything changes…

The next day…

"How much farther must we have to go?" Ace asked as he looked at the map Noriko had placed on the ground. After leaving the castle of The Digital Queen and freeing her from something, they had to move their camp. In the middle of night, a whole bunch of boarmon tore through the place. This meant everyone had to wake up and move their whole camp. This caused everybody not to have the best sleep in a long while. And they have had a few sleepless nights. Actually since there adventure started, they really haven't slept that well.

"It's about a 30 minute walk to get to our final destination." Noriko answered as she looked right at him. They were now in a slightly open forest but the trees offered some protection from attacks and the elements. "Also I heard about what happened last night."

"However, right now it doesn't truly matter for the time being." Ace responded as he looked at his mother. For some reason, he couldn't comprehend all that had happened the day before. He still had many questions. Questions that are hard to answer in a short period of time. However, those questions can wait for an entirely different time. At that moment, only Ace and Noriko were the only ones who were up at the moment.

"I'm going to get breakfast started." Noriko explained as she lit a fire up and pulled out a frying pan.

"If I piss you off you won't hit me with it, right?" Ace asked curious and she whacked him lightly with the pan. "Why did you just do that to me?!"

"To keep you on your toes, silly!" Noriko responded as she looked at her child. She knew Ace was a little pissed at her at that very moment, but she knew he would calm down eventually. "I didn't even whack you that hard."

"However, it still sort of stings." Ace answered as Rukia finally decided to wake up and leave her sleeping bag.

"What time is it?" Rukia asked drowsily as she approached Ace and Noriko.

"It's 8:00 am." Noriko answered as Rukia rolled up her sleeping bag and placed it in her dimensional pocket. A dimensional pocket is a pocket that allows its user to carry infinite items. To learn how to do it, one must find a tanooki that runs a shop. Then you must bring him 21,000 bells and say please when you ask him. Moving on, Rukia then decided the logical way to wake to wake up Claire was to magically summon a waterfall that was centered on her head. Claire was not a happy person after that. I don't think anyone who has a waterfall dropped on there head would be happy at all. Because of that, Claire chased Rukia all round the camp for a good half hour before both were exhausted from their chase around the camp. Weirdly, for the amount of noise that they truly both made nobody else woke up during that period of time at all. Breakfast finally woke everybody up somehow. This is probably because the breakfast smelled really good.

"Well, that worked." Noriko added as Ace nodded in agreement of that statement. For the amount of time required to make the breakfast, they gobbled it all up in matter of minutes. This is a good thing because they're really going to need that energy for later. After finishing breakfast, they cleaned up their camp and headed off. "Today is only going to be a short walk, hopefully."

"I hope you're right about that." Ace responded as they walked through the thin brush of the forest. As they walked, Nina could tell the dynamic of the group was different. After a betrayal and the revealing of the truth, the group was on edge of the next crazy twist in all of this. She couldn't blame them. After all that had had happened over the past "week" they kind of expected anything to happen to them by this point in time. Soon the trees of the forest started to get farther and farther from the path until they were out of the forest. All that stood in front of them was a medium-sized gothic style mansion.

"Well, we finally made it here." Katherine shouted as she looked around.

"I'm betting there's some sort of twist that's going to happen." Angel added as the rest of the Hunters looked at him. "Around this point, it just seems that it was too easy to even get here."

"You have a point, Angel." Claire said. "But you never know until it happens."

"Agreed." Celestia answered. She wasn't happy about the potential of a new twist occurring. She had finally gotten used to the last twist The Author had thrown at them. But they continued on, ready for anything to occur to them.

"So who owns this place?" Rukia asked as she looked back at the mansion.

"Mara's mother owns it." Noriko explained as they inched closer to it.

"Speak of the f****** devil." Katherine nonchalantly added as they now noticed Mara, Yuki and a woman in a cloak were standing before the mansion.

"Time to fight." Ace shouted as they approached the three figures.

"We've been waiting for you." Mara responded as she glared at the Hunters. They really weren't in the mood to see her at all.

"Hand her over." Noriko demand as she dashed towards Mira and knocked her back.

"Why you little…" Mara whispered as she glared at Noriko. It was obvious now that neither liked each other at all. The Woman just watched and laughed at the two fighters.

"Welcome, Hunters." She greeted eerily as the Hunters looked right back at her. "What's wrong? Are you mad at me?" The cheerful way she said it only made Ace even more pissed off. She acted as if everything was all right in the world when it wasn't at all. This woman was the one who brought them together.

"You used us!" Nina responded. "That's why were mad at you!"

"So you're mad at me because you were used?" The Woman asked, acting clueless. "So you would have preferred to have been killed by Angewomon?"

"Enough talk." Katherine growled as she launched a Summoner's Slash at her opponent. The Woman reacted by summoning a curved longsword and threw it right at Katherine. While that was happening, Ace ran over to Yuki and started to untie her.

"Thanks." Yuki responded as she looked at Ace. She could tell that from the blank look he gave her showing that he forgotten all about her. "Don't you remember me at all?"

"No I don't." Ace answered as he looked at his younger sister. He wanted to remember something about her but he couldn't. As they were about to get up, an explosion rang out and everything went all black.

An Unknown amount of time later…

"Where are we now?" Yuki responded as she and Ace looked around. They were in the basement of some unknown building.

"Let me guess, we're now another year in the future." Ace taunted as he noticed a glass cylinder in the back of the room. There was a body in the tube but he couldn't tell who it was.

"Nope, that would be sort of copycatish!" The Author taunted, pissing Ace off even more. However, what year that it was now didn't matter at all at this point in time.

"Look what we have here." A familiar voice taunted. Ace turned and was shocked to by what he saw. Standing before him was Aerith. However, she was dressed differently than before. She wore indigo t-shirt and a pink skirt. She had braided her hair now but something about her just seemed off in a way. Her white skin looked much more pale than before but was pretty shiny.

"Hello, Traitor." Ace responded. "I hope you're happy with yourself about what you did, Aerith."

"Yep." Aerith answered. "I fine with my decision 100%." Ace only glared at her as an anime angry symbol appeared on the left side of his forehead. He kind of expected that answer from her, but it still pissed him off. Yuki then fired off a shot from her gunblade.

"Why did you just do that?!" Ace shouted as he looked at Yuki.

"I'm testing a theory." Yuki answered as Aerith just stood there as the bullet passed right through her body and creating a gaping hole in her body.

"Did you really think that would affect me?" Aerith taunted as she came closer to Ace and Yuki. The gaping hole in her body revealed all sorts of wires, metal and mechanical versions of body parts.

"I think it's quite obvious now that we were sent much farther than a year later in the future." Ace added as the gaping hole closed itself up a few seconds later.

"This is what almost all humans are now." Aerith explained as both Yuki and Ace looked at her.

"So almost all humans are robots?" Yuki asked as she looked at Aerith. "If that is, how would they have babies?"

"It's a funny story." Aerith answered. "The only humans left are the rich and some members of the government."

"Really?" Ace asked as a clueless look appeared on his face.

"I guess I have to explain it to you then." Aerith responded as Yuki and Ace sat down on the floor.

"We'll see about that." Ace responded as he noticed a giant glass cylinder right behind them. Inside of it, floated Yami.

"Yami, are you alright?" Ace asked.

Notes:

And there you have it.