Cross Ice

by Crimrose-A-Bee

Snow Hisayuki moves to the mysterious "Lost City" of Akutetsu in search of closure for a damaging past she could never truly overcome. When she becomes faced with pure magic, friendships she feels she doesn't deserve, and the burden of her first love, she realizes just how much of her life she lost to despair. However, she soon realizes that she holds a deadly mystery of her own...

23. Chapter XXI- Resolve

You know what's weird? Finally being the same age as Snow. I can vote now. I can't drive, though (which is probably a good thing, considering that I can't even walk properly on a good day).

Sorry again for the late chapter - at least it was sooner than last time! I know some of you are getting impatient, and I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND. Please, don't feel reserved about telling me to hurry. Pressure is good sometimes.

Anyway, DON'T FORGET TO VOTE ON THE POLL! It's important - very important, depending on how high characters kissing ranks on your 'want to see' list.

ANYWAAAAAY, ON WITH THE CHAPTER!

~Crimrose

Chapter XXI

Resolve

Save Ikuto.

That was all Utau Hoshina ever cared about, and she'd do anything to fulfill that goal. Even if it meant sacrificing the hearts of others. She had to repeat that mantra – save Ikuto, save Ikuto – over and over again every time she sang at a concert and extracted X-Eggs from her loving, loyal fans for Easter's scheme. Otherwise she wasn't sure she'd be able to continue doing so. She cast aside her own heart and beliefs for the man she loved, and she was perfectly fine with that. So long as she found the Embryo.

The stage lights were always incredibly hot, but she'd long since gotten used to them. An area on the small of her back beaded with a light sheen of sweat as she danced with graceful expertise around the stage, the microphone slightly slick in her hand. That was the life she'd wanted – to sing for others, and for them to enjoy it. Judging by the ecstatic screams and thunderous music pounding in her ears, her goal was being achieved. The stage lights burned afterimages into her eyes, making her vision dance every time the flash of a camera went off in the crowd. Her heart pounded with the knowledge that the time was coming soon. Sanjou-san's bounded around in her head like the pounding of the drums behind her: "Listen, Utau. You're collecting those Eggs too slow. You need to collect more and more – or you'll lose to Snow Hisayuki."

Utau's fist clenched around the microphone until her knuckles went white, and her neutral expression turned into a determined glare. There was no way in hell she was going to lose to that Albino floozy. The music in her song swelled with the oncoming chorus, and she summoned her little devil Shugo Chara, Il, out of her Egg and into a Character Change. She seemed more than a little enthusiastic – "Yes, let's grab all of the Eggs, Utau! Leave none behind!" she cackled – but Utau could never bring herself to share the excitement. As she pointed at the innocent fans in the crowd and summoned up Il's dark Shugo Chara magic, she observed in complete emptiness as they glowed red for an instant around the edges of their frames, and then an X-Egg emerged from them. Utau didn't really understand the specifics of how she did it – all she had to do was think about it, use her voice as a siren's song to lure the Eggs from their bearers, and then they turned dark completely willingly, surrendering themselves to the song.

She finished her concert with a standing ovation from the audience. Her Character Change with Il came undone, the leathery bat wings adorning her back fading into oblivion once more, and her manager, Yukari Sanjou-san, was waiting eagerly backstage. As Il cheered for their haul that day and encouraged her to do work like that more often, Sanjou-san gave Utau a towel to wipe the sweat that had erupted slightly on her forehead and down her back. "Great work today!" She sang, completely sincere. "Did you see how many Eggs we got from a crowd that small? This might be one of your best hauls yet."

Utau didn't thank her, but just gave her a simple nod. So long as it was for Ikuto, she'd extract as many as she needed, regardless of what stood in her way. Her memory automatically flitted to Snow Hisayuki standing below her on the stairs of the Easter Headquarters, calling her a hypocrite, and her stomach seized with contempt. She wouldn't go around shouting accusations like that if she knew what was really going on, but Utau didn't want her to know; she just wanted her gone. She reflexively clutched the plastic water bottle she drank from tighter in her hand, making it crackle and pop like bubble wrap.

"You were awesome today, Utau!" Il snickered loudly, fluttering around in her red bat two-piece and matching black wings. "Keep collecting those X-Eggs! More and more and more!"

"Stop!" Called another voice, smaller and more feminine than Il's. Il's sister and counterpart, El, popped out from her pink and white laced Egg, holding her hands together almost as if she was praying. Though her eyes never opened, it was clear to tell that she was feeling quite emotional by the draw of her eyebrows and the shaking of her small frame, her golden halo quivering above her head. "You know that gathering those X-Eggs is wrong, Utau. You're taking their dreams away from them!"

El's bearer completely ignored her, having been on the receiving end of this lecture for years now. Why hadn't El gotten the message that it just didn't matter anymore? That Utau had sold herself to Easter, all for the man she loved? El was an angel, Il's complete opposite, with white fluffy wings fluttering from her back and soft white robe adorning her tiny body, so she had to understand how important love was. Utau took a seat in her dressing room, drowning out both El and Sanjou-san's voices, focused on getting her edge back.

Il clearly didn't have the same qualms – she frowned deeply at her sister, displeased with her goody-two-shoes personality. "El, just go back to your Egg and shut up," she spat, but if there was one thing to be admired about El, it was her stubbornness.

"No way, Il," she cried, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the stage. "Everyone came here to enjoy Utau's singing, and we repay them by stealing their Eggs? That's just too cruel!" Utau didn't hear anything besides the crackling of the water bottle in her hands, the ringing in her ears from being on stage. El pushed forward nonetheless. "We have to fix this, before it's too-" She was cut off by her devil sister delivering a swift kick to her side and sending her flying back in the general direction of her Egg, attached to Utau's belt.

"Just get out of here, you annoying brat!" Il chortled, holding her bare stomach from laughing so hard at El's pain and pathetic state. "Utau doesn't need you, anyway – you can't even Character Transform! You only know how to flap your lips!"

"Utau…" El murmured, looking up pleadingly at her bearer, silently begging her to deny Il's words.

But Utau said nothing. She simply stared at her own eyes like pools of liquid amethyst, chanting her mantra to herself. Save Ikuto. Nothing else matters.

El's lip quivered, her tiny little hands shaking at her sides. Then she snatched her Egg away from Utau's belt and screamed, "I'm running away!" with tears streaming unabashedly from her eyes. Il crowed and cheered, and called after her, "And don't come back!".

Sanjou-san huffed in impatience as El made off, out of the room, the building, the area. "Don't mind her, Utau. She didn't do much, anyway." Utau knew that, but couldn't bring herself to respond. A warm hand was placed on her shoulder, finally cooling down after all that dancing under the sunbeam stagelights. "You want to save Ikuto, remember? You don't need her for that."

Utau remembered the sparkling tears wailing from her eyes like a tempest, the lack of extra weight around her belt with just Il's Egg. Slowly, she nodded in response. She didn't need anything weak holding her back from what was important.

---

"No," I whispered as I stared up at my newly X'd Egg, floating harmlessly in the sky in a case of black ice. "Nononono…"

"Get a hold of yourself!" Lilith cried while she and Vivian each pulled on one of my ears. "You need to catch it and purify it, now!"

They had a point. Though something told me it was pointless to do so, I still found myself Character Changing with Lilith and leaping from the ground in a spray of snow, hair clipped up and neck tied with the long crimson scarf. When Tadase-kun and I had gone to the aquarium and I'd pursued that X-Egg, iit had evaded me evenly until Ikuto showed up. Now I was on my own, and it was my Egg running from me, so naturally things did not work out in my favour. I leaped from tree branches as deftly as I could, still somewhat unused to this uninhibited body supercharged by Character Change, but it kept dodging just out of my reach. I wasn't even slightly concerned that someone would look out of the windows of the school and see me, because it just didn't matter. I had to get my Egg back and purify it again, before I had to tell the Guardians what had happened and officially become the worst Joker in history. Shame blurred my vision as fury also turned it red. This didn't happen to Guardians, and I was so sure it wouldn't happen to me since I already had three perfectly fine Shugo Chara. Yet it had, and my Egg was beginning to rocket towards the sky, out of my reach.

I leaped to the tallest branches of the tallest tree on campus, fully prepared to propel myself after it before it got too high and I couldn't reach it anymore. Why it was running from me in the first place, I didn't know, but I wasn't about to let it keep fleeing for much longer. I braced my legs beneath me in a spring, and vaulted upwards from the branch, surrounded by drifting white flakes and a seamless slate sky, reaching for the Egg that was just right there. But my head crashed into something small, hard – a bird? Had I fucking crashed into a bird?- and before I knew it I was pitching towards the ground, my hand still outstretched as if the Egg would come back to me itself. Something else fell to the earth like a meteor next to me, composed of colours I'd never seen on a bird, so it must have been something else. Before I could hit the ground with a jarring impact that most likely would have broken a few bones, Lilith took control of my body and righted it herself, using me like a puppet to turn my feet towards the ground and land in a smoothly executed crouch. The object I'd hit fell into the snow beside me, making a crater in the deep white with a dull puff.

My hands, feet, and legs were buried in snow, the heat of my body melting it and making the water seep into my tights and jacket. I hadn't gotten it. My Egg was just gone, to God-knows-where, and who knew if I was ever getting it back. Lilith's Character Change came undone as I sat in the snow, mute and numb again, blood drying on the corner of my mouth. What the hell was I going to do now? Everything that was good in my life was literally falling apart, and I was completely unable to stop it or even slow it down – events just kept piling up one after another, the losses increasing with them. To distract me from my very foundation falling to fragments, Satsuki went to go investigate the crater in the snow, and reeled back from it with a shocked gasp. "There's one of us in here!"

If it wasn't mine, then whose could have fallen from the sky after I'd slammed my head into it? With caved-in shoulders and a deep frown, I stuck my hand into the snow to fish it out, and came back with a little angel Shugo Chara with her Egg strapped to her back like a sack used for running away. She was shivering, her tiny body racked with shaking, and I stuck her beneath my scarf. I didn't know what I was going to do with her, but I couldn't just let her freeze. I'd have to find some way to get her back to her owner once she woke up – it was more than likely that she was dearly missed. I thought of my Egg, running from me of its own free will, unwilling to come back after I'd lost faith in it and myself. With one final sigh that made me feel like my chest was collapsing inwards, crushing my heart and bones, I tilted my head up to stare at the sky, and only the falling snow looked back.

---

Sanjou-san refused to allow Utau to help her haul X-Eggs into the trunk of the Range Rover – something about how she didn't want to risk her hands getting blistered or getting injured, effectively causing her performance to suffer. But Utau still felt slightly guilty about watching her lift all of those heavy boxes overflowing with Eggs into the trunk, grunting with each stretch of her legs, but it was what she wanted. Utau's eyes dazedly strayed to the sheer number of boxes they had overflowing with X-Eggs, and since she hadn't yet, she asked, "What are all these Eggs for, anyway? I thought we only needed the Embryo, and not all this flotsam."

"Well," Sanjou-san grunted as she pushed the box to the back of the trunk, wiping her forehead with her the sleeve of her beige business suit. "I'm kind of taking a page from Yuu's book-" it still kind of threw Utau off when they used each other's first names, Yuu being Nikaidou "-and doing a bit of a recycling project." She finished the sentence with a giggle that made Utau think she was enjoying this more than she should. "I obviously won't make the same mistakes as that little idiot, though."

That brought an expression of confusion to Utau's face. "Didn't you two used to date?" She didn't understand why Sanjou-san just harped on him all the time, as he did to her when he still worked for Easter. That was something else that baffled her – what could have caused Nikaidou-san to abandon his perfectly good and stable job? Had a few kids pretending to be heroes actually convinced him that he was in the wrong? She thought back to Snow Hisayuki and her desperation to get her Eggs back, and figured it wasn't that much of a surprise.

"Oh, stop!" Sanjou-san squalled as she slapped her back playfully, yet still hard enough to knock the breath out of the thin idol. "That was ages ago – all water under the bridge." From her reaction, Utau certainly didn't think so. Yet Sanjou-san easily diverted her from the topic when she said, "Besides, the Embryo is all that matters right now. You want to save Ikuto-kun, right?"

Utau didn't respond, because she didn't need to. Sanjou-san knew that was the only reason she put up with all of Easter's nonsense; if it wasn't for Ikuto, she wouldn't have been there to begin with. They lapsed back into silence as Sanjou-san continued her lifting, and Utau noticed that an Egg had escaped from a box, and that it looked slightly disfigured. She wandered over to where it had rolled in the dimly lit parking garage, cautiously as if it would strike her, then crouched down before it. She blinked in shock – the Egg was frozen over, encased in a thick layer of jet and violet faceted ice, a distorted X lost in its surface. Though she had never seen anything like it, and it could have possibly been dangerous, she gingerly scooped it up with cupped palms and cradled it close to her chest. How had it gotten that way? Had it been outside, in the cold, for that long? A very ill feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that the reason was much more sinister than that, that this X-Egg had a story to tell. Almost unconsciously, as if possessed, she slipped the Egg into the coat of her winter jacket, making sure that Sanjou-san didn't see. She felt as if she was committing a crime, keeping this Egg from her. Perhaps it could have been a key to finding the Embryo – no one had ever seen anything like it, after all. If that was the case, however, then all the more reason for her to keep it to herself.

"Utau? What's wrong?" Sanjou-san asked. Utau whirled around to see that she had finished loading up the Eggs and was tapping her manicured fingernail impatiently on the roof of the car.

"Nothing," Utau responded point-blank, and briskly walked over to open the back door with her heeled boots clicking on the pavement. She slid in gracefully and shut the door quietly behind her, waiting in somewhat anxious silence as Sanjou-san twisted the keys in the ignition and peeled out from the parking spot.

Il was snickering at the thought of her bearer performing yet another bad deed. "It's so much better without El here," she sighed contentedly, to which Utau didn't respond. She barely even noticed that the only piece of her that remained good had left. But it didn't matter – she didn't need El to succeed. She could do it all on her own, because she was strong.

Utau may have imagined it, but she swore she felt the Egg in her pocket give a little rattle, as if reacting to her thoughts. She placed a comforting hand over it, attempting at a soothing touch, and felt the cold seep right into her bones.

---

It was that dream again. I hadn't had it for a while – the first time was after my Shugo Chara were stolen. But it had always lingered in the back of my mind, especially since I was faced with that demonic hallucination of myself on my journey to Hell. The screen of pure white, that soon separated into individual flakes to let me identify it as a heavy snow. The figure in the distance with long, flowing hair. Soon enough, the snow would part to reveal the five-year-old version of myself, smiling up at me like I was her favourite person in the world (which couldn't have been further from the truth).

I knew that it was a lucid dream when I thought to myself, next she'll have blood stains on her white dress and start bleeding from her eye. And sure enough, it happened. I expected to see her lips move and hear nothing come out, see a devastated look of utter destruction on her face, but it was different this time. She just kept smiling at me, though her eyebrows drew down slightly, as if she might start to cry. The red tear slipped from her eye, sliding down that pure white cheek until it flowed into her mouth. My mouth moved to say something, though I wasn't sure what, but my voice was nowhere to be found. She opened her mouth to speak, and that time I heard every word.

"I'm sorry that I died."

Why was it that those words absolutely ripped my heart out from my chest, even though they didn't make the slightest bit of sense? I was still alive. But this was the child version of me, so if she was saying that she died, then…

My lips formed around the word "no", trying with all my might to scream it out. It couldn't be true. I'd just lost one of my Eggs, my friends, my normal human life. I couldn't lose her, too. She was all I had. As I stared at her in petrified shock, reaching out my hand in a futile attempt to keep her from leaving, I dimly noticed that something red and green had began moving behind her, something with long strings, an almost shell-like middle. Red spider lilies, falling from the sky by the thousands, almost like a fountain of crawling red spiders behind her. Then they were red spiders, with long spindly appendages made of blades covered with crimson, crawling over me, pricking my skin. The flooded over me, carving out my scars anew, until nothing was left except for my hand clawing at the snow, forgotten and alone again.

Naturally I woke up sweating and panting in pure terror. My Shugo Chara had miraculously accomplished to stay sleeping for that one, since I'd managed to restrain my screams. I was glad for that; after all, that angel Shugo Chara we were currently keeping as our guest probably wouldn't have appreciated it an awful lot. I would have felt horrible if I'd woken her up, especially after the bad crash we had today.

I was a firm believer in the idea that dreams were your subconscious trying to tell you something. I believed that one could be attributed to my 'abandonment issues', but it felt like there was something else, as well. Something so obvious that my overanalyzing was just gliding right past it. It didn't matter; all that did was that it was over. I needed a glass of water, so I shucked off my duvet and dragged myself into the kitchen. While I was gulping it down, I felt a tickling down the top of my lip, and swore when I realized my nose was bleeding again. I shoved a small piece of tissue into my nostril and that was the end of it; I was not in the mood to be putting up with demon-induced bleeding. I finished off my water in seconds while pinching the bridge of my nose, then made my way back to my room, being careful of the creaky parts of the wooden floor. When I reached the threshold to my room, I froze midstep in the doorway, because a figure was moving right outside my window, lingering on my balcony.

Sure, I was scared – terror made my blood run quick and my nose start absolutely erupting. But there was a small irrational hope that had my heart beating in a different way that it was Ikuto outside, come to apologize for being an aloof asshole and to tell me that we could still be… whatever we were. But a closer inspection of the figure told me it wasn't. The hair was far too long, curly, two lumps on the chest indicating breasts… "Deryn?" I whispered, and I knew for certain it was her when her head whipped up in focus despite how quiet I was: vampire hearing. I rushed to the door in a mixture of relief and disappointment, and unlocked it to slide it open and invite her in. I didn't know if that was actually a thing that had to be done, but she seemed grateful all the same and cautiously edged her way inside.

"You scared me," I told her, not in a scolding way but more as a statement of fact.

She seemed repentant all the same. "I'm… I'm sorry. I just wasn't sure if you'd be awake."

I shrugged, causing the thin strap of my shirt to slip off my shoulder. "I just had a bit of a nightmare, actually, so it's fine. It hit me that she was trying her hardest not to look at me, and I couldn't see her shoulders moving from the motion of breathing. Then I remembered: my nose. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry," I gasped as I hurried to the bathroom to flush the bloodied tissue down the toilet and scrub my nose clean of any remaining blood.

My apology only seemed to upset her all the more. She snorted in the most self-depreciating way possible and gently murmured, "You shouldn't have to apologize for bleeding, Snow." I detected her hidden meaning without her saying it: she detested that she couldn't be around anyone that was bleeding, a natural human function. Because she wasn't natural, nor was she human. Just like me. I twisted off the tap, remained standing over the sink for a few seconds to gather my thoughts, then pulled my strap back up to make sure she couldn't catch a glimpse of my back.

"Is something wrong?" I asked her as I came back into my room, trying to be friendly and concerned at the same time. She shifted uncomfortably, and I sat down on my bed and patted the space beside me, but she only shook her head. She was trying to keep her distance from me. Instead she opted for just standing close to the balcony doors, as if ready to flee at any given moment. I couldn't see her face in the dark, but the way the shadows were cast on it made me think that she looked agitated – which, given her posture, must have been true.

"I just-" She began, then seemed to struggle to find the right words. "I wanted to apologize again. For what happened with Cyrus. I don't know what…" She shook her head. Without making the conscious decision to do so, I put my fingers to my neck, to the already healing bite marks left by Kenneth. They'd grown more hideous over the past couple of days, bruising intensely until it looked like someone had smushed a plum onto my neck. He'd really bitten down hard; the marks Ikuto and I had seen on the girl were clean and quick, not meaning to give much pain, but as if they were just thirsty and desperate. A shudder shook my entire frame just thinking about it. And it didn't go unnoticed. She closed her eyes, almost as though she was going catatonic, and said, "It must have hurt."

"Yours must have hurt more," I said without thinking, then clamped a hand over my big mouth. But her mouth only twitched upwards, like the thought was amusing. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and she finally decided to swivel out my computer chair from its resting place under my desk and sat down so gracefully it was like she floated.

"Snow," she began, folding her hands into clenched fists in her lap. "I know that what I'm asking of you is… immense. Especially after what happened. But…" She took a deep breath, shook her head clear of any lingering smells of blood, then pushed forward. "I would like to tell you my… our story. I'm not so naïve to hope that you'll understand, but… I don't want to keep secrets from you. I don't have that right any more."

"Deryn, I really don't-"

"Please," she cut off my protests that she'd done anything wrong. "It's more than that. It's just hard for me to… say how I feel. William always bitches at me for that." She caught herself for cursing, like it was an old habit, and her knuckles turned white from the strength she was using to clench her fists. "I want us to be… closer. Though I hardly deserve to have a friend like you, it's just lonely sometimes. I have Will and Cyrus, but that's all. Which is one of the drawbacks of immortality." She let out a wry smirk, one that would never reach her frozen eyes that always looked so disconnected, so sad. I wanted to reach out to her and comfort her, but something told me that doing so would only make things harder for her.

Instead I steeled my shoulders and looked straight at her when I said, "Of course I'll listen. I'd be happy to know."

While she looked grateful yet again, she wasted no time. She was quiet only for a few beats of my heart, then began with saying, "At first I thought I was just sick. After I was bitten, I mean. I barely registered what was happening at the time. All I saw was a figure, then… nothing. It was on my way home from school, about two weeks or so after I'd met William for the first time." She smiled fondly at the memory. "I probably liked him since the first moment we met, but anyway. Later my… creator, for lack of a better term, told me that what caught his attention was my hair." She absently captured a curl between her fingers and played around with it, most likely as Will had done a hundred times before. A flush of envy spread through me but was gone almost instantly, more intent on listening to her and trying to understand.

"My parents were extremely religious, as I'd told you before." I nodded in confirmation. I also didn't miss how she referred to them in past tense. "Vampirism… is a demonic disease that mutates the human body once it's carried up from Hell by lesser demons. It transforms your very heart into a parasite that consumes and rots all the human blood in your system, so you need to constantly replenish it by drinking the blood of humans before oxygen can no longer reach it and you suffocate. It begins with a fever, some vomiting – we figured it was just the flu. Then I started vomiting up my own blood, expelling it in every way possible; my heart was rejecting it. They rushed me to the hospital – they couldn't lose their prodigy daughter, after all," she added snidely, her expression completely unremorseful and blank.

"William paid me a quick visit in the hospital – one look at his face told me I was dying. And I did, that night. The pain was so excruciating as my body started to mutate that I was glad for it. But then my heart started up again, stronger and hungrier than before. I woke up different, and my parents noticed. Especially when I went without blood for those first few days, then tore into a raw steak like a rabid animal." Deryn actually snorted at the memory. "They thought the Devil himself had possessed me. They took me to the local priest of Sol – my hometown to the far west – who kindly confirmed that theory, and tried to perform exorcisms on me. But I was losing my mind to thirst. I really was suffocating every second, and it would only have been a matter of time before I started to attack people. But then Cyrus found me.

"He was a science professor at my school at the time, and he'd been a victim of human experimentation way back in the early 1900's. He'd only survived because he'd been Turned, and he took me under his wing, taught me how to hunt without killing and whatnot. But then more and more people in our town started getting sick, and more people started dying from being completely drained of blood. It was around that time William figured out the truth about us, and…" She had to clear her throat before continuing. "And chose to be with me all the same. It didn't take long for Cyrus to piece together that my creator was trying to turn every person in our village into a vampire, or have the rest die as sacrifices for the cause. Allegedly he was a disciple of Vlad Dracul, and chose to Turn me first because I'm one of his descendants-"

"Sorry," I cut in, eyes wide and awe stricken. "You're a descendant of Vlad the Impaler?"

She shrugged. "More or less. History says that one of his wives threw herself from a tower when the Turks stormed their castle and died, but according to our family history, she didn't. She gave birth to a son after being saved by a village woman and the line continued on from there, until I was the first daughter to have been born in the family. Regardless, my creator wanted to turn the world back to the vampires, because apparently those were the good old days. We told William to convince his parents to move out of town, but he stayed with us as we did our best to hunt them all down until there were none left. The spear you saw me with earlier is a family heirloom that I used to destroy the majority of them, my creator included. But by that point, nearly our entire village was gone. Only my parents remained, and my mother killed my father then herself, because they would have much rather been dead than become a demon like their daughter. We set the village's remains aflame, and have been moving around ever since."

I couldn't even think of what to say to her, let alone force the words to come out from my mouth. She saved me the effort of trying by adding, "Those vampires that were created were mad. They went insane from thirst and the changes their bodies were going through. We had no choice but to kill them… I know it seems hypocritical, considering that I'm still alive even through all that, but it's only because I had Cyrus. I would have ended up just like them without him. A mindless monster – because that's what I am." She turned to me then, to stare straight into the depths of my soul (or whatever the hell it was that I had in there) and I noticed she looked slightly strange. Her eyes glowed that same strange violet colour as they had when she rescued me from Kenneth, and it seemed like two crimson isosceles triangles were forming underneath her eyes, as if they were old wounds reappearing.

"It will never excuse what he did," she said, her tone bordering on pleading. "But Cyrus was… out of sorts the day he attacked you. We went with him to his great-niece's funeral a couple days before – that's why I was dressed in all black when you saw me – and his niece's husband is still alive and recognized him. Recognized that he hadn't aged a day since he last saw him in the fifties. He caused a huge scene, called him the Devil and whatever, and we had to leave. Cyrus can't be around his own family ever again, so naturally he isn't happy, though he has one of the best happy masks I've ever seen. And I have to admit that your blood does smell particularly appealing… regardless, it doesn't change the fact that he violated your trust, and I completely understand if you don't want to associate with us anymore."

"Deryn," I tried, then had to swallow down the burning lump in my throat. I knew that I had a pretty good life in comparison to a lot of people despite what had happened in my childhood, but hearing a story like hers was a punch to the gut. She'd lost everything and had no one but a guardian and lover. And from the looks of it, she didn't consider her parents as such even before she became a vampire. How lonely this girl must have been all throughout her life, and she must have been even more so after she was no longer human. All because she couldn't help who she was related to. I knew that feeling all too well. I took a deep breath and made my way across the room, knelt before her on the swivel chair, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "It doesn't matter to me. What you and Kenneth are, or what he did to me. I'm a monster, but not… a monster, you know? I would never just send you out of my life because of something like this. I care about you, as a dear friend, one of the only people who can understand me. I want nothing more than to be closer than this, for you to trust me. And…" I cocked my head to the side, a sad smile on my face as I felt her shoulder tremble beneath my hand. "I hope I can trust you, as well."

"Of course," she said without hesitation, though her gaze was still uncertain. "But I…"

"Let's look at it this way," I suggested, taking my hand off her shoulder and crossing my legs. "You know of Will? Sweetest human being on the planet? I don't think he'd love someone completely evil, or who was a total monster." Her eyes glittered in the moonlight, and I took notice of how they'd become more burgundy. I supposed she was trying to show me how she really looked – even vampires had a 'true form', apparently. "So you can't be as bad as you think. There's no way in hell." I smirked a little. "And that's something, coming from me."

"I appreciate it," she said, and while she remained expressionless as always, there was something about the way her jaw was set, or the perk of her eyebrows that suggested immense relief and joy. How I could have ever thought of her Kenneth as malevolent was beyond me – they were still people, and they were just trying to survive. Though I couldn't imagine regular humans having the same train of thought. To try and lighten the mood, I broached on a slightly different subject.

"What are those?" I asked, indicating the triangles beneath her eyes, she touched them almost absentmindedly, her pupils shrinking like those of cat's, and sighed.

"Cyrus and I aren't totally sure. Every vampire has them – they come out when we feel immense emotion or when we're feeding. He thinks it's a side effect of the disease, perhaps a stain left by the blood that trailed from our eyes when we were Changing. William thinks they're neat, so I don't mind them too much."

I found myself grinning widely at her. "You really love him, don't you."

She let out a snort. "How could you not? They do say that opposites attract, and that's exactly what we are. He's everything I always wished I could be, just to make my life a bit easier. He freed me, accepted me for what I was. I don't know what I'd be without him." Her eyebrows slashed down at the thought, her eyes full-on crimson, and clenched her fists so hard her nails drew blood from her palms – black, just like the first time I saw it. "I don't want to know."

"Let's make a deal," I proposed, holding my hand out for a shake. "We both work our hardest to protect each other, and the people important to us. And we stick together from now on – no more secrets."

Deryn actually smiled at me, her full mouth stretching into something beyond beautiful. "Deal," she whispered back, grasping my hand firmly with the one that wasn't bleeding. Her nails had grown long, more like claws than anything, and they scraped the back of my hand with a chilling sensation. She took that as her cue to leave, and stood up with incredible speed and was opening the balcony door with a smooth motion.

"I'll see you at school tomorrow," I said to her, not in the slightest hesitant or questioning. I saw her mouth twitch again in the glass' reflection before she nodded once and leaped from the balcony as Lee had done with me in his grasp days before. I closed it after her, but not before letting a nice breeze inside. She'd left a slightly strange scent behind, almost like sugar and rotting fruit. I supposed that was because her body was far different than those of humans. The wind washed it away, letting a light dusting of snow inside, and I felt none of the chill that my friends did. I looked to the sky, remembering with a sinking horror how my Egg had disappeared into it mere hours before, and every positive thing I felt about making peace with Deryn washed away like the blood from my nose had down the drain. Even if we were really friends now, it didn't change the fact that I wasn't worth anything. I shut the door quietly, making sure not to wake the girls and our guest, then slid down it until my bottom hit the floor with a hard thud. I pulled my legs up to my chest, buried my face in my knees. I was as lost as ever.

I'm sorry that I died. What a timely dream that was. Though, I supposed that was the point. How much time did I have left with the human part of me? How much more did I have to lose? I knew, I knew so well that I wasn't the least well-off person out there. I knew so many more people were suffering more than me. But I was selfish, and that only made my self-pity grow and sing, resonating throughout my whole body until it felt like it was breaking down. All that ran through my mind were images: Kukai-kun hugging me goodbye, Nadeshiko-chan keeping a hold of my hand as we fell asleep, Ikuto's back walking away from me. I felt something wet delicately touch my knee, and looked up to see snowflakes cascading down all around me. Powers were still sealed, but immense emotion could make them well up.

Here I thought I couldn't get any sadder. I wanted to cry, so, so badly, but I couldn't. It wasn't in my nature anymore. So I remained like that, huddled into a small ball as I had hundreds of times before, until I saw the sun throwing shadows onto my wall from the glass door, and I heard a knock on the apartment door. I sighed and struggled to stand, unprepared to face another day.

---

"There's absolutely nothing," Lee growled later that morning, pacing back and forth in front of me as I curled up on the couch with a tea in hand. "Nothing about how to unseal one's powers. I'm certain my father would know, seeing as he's done it thousands of times before, but I don't even want to mention you. Who knows what he'd do."

The thought sent a chill skittering down my spine. "What else can we do? Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."

He whirled on me, eyes flaring black. "How could you say that? What happened to all that spirit you showed me a few days ago, in the face of your father's tomb?"

I shrugged and tried to conceal myself with the couch's cushions, to no avail. "A little dose of reality, I suppose. There's nothing we can do. Let's just face the fact that I'm not gonna survive past my birthday."

"Absolutely not," he growled immediately, collapsing in the armchair beside me. "There has to be something we can do. It has to be so obvious…"

I decided to ask him something that had been weighing on my mind since the first night he appeared in front of me and told me the whole story. Something that I was terrified to hear the answer to. "Why do you care so much, anyway? Even if I am your niece, I am still only half demon. You have to be thinking that I'm… wrong."

"Please," he snorted, crossing one leg over the other. Any other time the gesture might have been considered feminine, but it only made him look more dangerous, like a coiled up snake. "What an asinine question. It doesn't matter what you are – I've loved you as my own from the first time I met you."

"Wha-" That was unexpected. It actually brought a bit of a flush to my cheeks. "What do you mean, since we first met? When you called my by my dad's name?"

"No," he shook his head. "We met once before, when you were very small, so you most likely don't remember. Glaziel wanted me to meet my niece, since I was immensely reluctant to do so. I still wasn't happy about his relationship with a human, you see, and even less pleased about the half-demon spawn they brought into the world." I looked away from him at that, into the steaming surface of my rust-coloured tea. "But then I saw you, just peeking out from behind my brother's leg. You were beautiful, innocent. I came to realize that you didn't belong to either of their worlds, but rather encompassed the best of both. You smiled at me." He grinned fondly at the memory, a suggestion of fangs poking out from his mouth. "The biggest one I'd ever seen. Demons don't smile far too often, you see. It was the first time that, besides my brother, I felt a true familial connection to someone." He took a hold of my hand suddenly, clenching it until the bones ground up against each other. His black eyes bored into mine, inhuman yet tender, and he said harshly, "So I can't lose the only real family I've got left. It's for me, you see? Not for you."

"You've been just fine without me all this time," I pointed out, but he only shook his head.

"No," he muttered, letting go of my hand and heading towards the front door. Most likely to head off to this office and do whatever it was the mayor did when they ran a city full of demons. "Not fine. Empty. Nothing could fill the void my brother left, except for you. So you see," he called behind his shoulder with one hand on the open door, "you have more worth than you know. Don't give up just yet." With that, he calmly swung the door shut behind him, leaving me alone with both hands clutched around my mug and a muddled mind. It was the first time I'd felt that my existence actually mattered to someone, and it made me feel slightly ill in the sense that my chest ached and stomach clenched.

I shook my head, trying to chase the thoughts away, and started to get ready for school. The girls were up at that point, yawning and complaining about being woken up by me bustling around last night, and I merely stuck my tongue out in response. While I was tying my tie as best as I could (since I'd never been taught), Satsuki made a valid point: "What are we going to do with her?"

We all looked in unison to the angel Chara snoozing away without a care in the world in her own little basket filled with the fluffiest cloths I could gather. Her pink and white laced Egg lay nearby, only further reminding me of my lost one, and I had to look away. "I'm not sure. We have to find her owner eventually, but for now she should just stay resting. I don't want to leave her here alone, though…" I looked to the three of them, pondering over our options, and heaved another huge sigh. "Satsuki, would you mind staying here in case she wakes up to explain things to her?" I wanted either Lilith or Vivian to do it, but I didn't trust them alone with our guest – that is, I believed that they'd scare and intimidate the living hell out of her. Thus, while Satsuki was the one who grated on my nerves the least, she'd have to be the one to stay.

"Of course," she sang easily, and floated back into her own basket to sit in seiza and watch over her.

"Relax, please," I chuckled as I pulled on my tights. "Meanwhile, the three of us should use what free time we have to search for the… the other Egg." I couldn't bring myself to say 'my Egg' – it was like admitting I'd lost her all over again, and the very idea of reaffirming it sent my heart into a frenzy. "I don't want the Guardians to know just yet. Good thing I put off telling them in the first place."

Vivian grunted and swung her rabbit around, a habit I realized she developed when she was irritated or worries. "All these secrets are piling up, one by one, and it's getting a bit too much to handle."

"You're one to talk," I scoffed. She scowled at me while her redheaded sister just laughed in response, and I finished gathering up my things with the last notebook shoved into my bag. The eldest girls made their way to the door with me, Satsuki trailing a bit further behind, and I threw on my coat and boots while tying up my hair into its usual braided style. Braiding it that way always reminded me of home – it was how Mary did it in the mornings when I was younger, and the memory made my knees go a bit weak. I missed them dearly, and the phone call I'd received from Mao only made it all the worse. How could I tell them that I would… would never be able to come home again? I couldn't just call them up and say, "Oh by the way, I'm going to die in January! But how have you guys been doing?" Just then I had an idea. I wrote a quick reminder on the kitchen island to myself to start keeping a diary – that would be the best way to tell them that I could think of. I'd sent it in the mail so that it would arrive in time for them to understand what had happened, and I'd keep an entry each day so they'd know I didn't go unhappy. At least I hoped I wouldn't.

"Have a safe trip," Satsuki said cheerfully as we made our way out the door, and we said our goodbyes and made our way to the elevator. Though I knew it was pointless, I kept my eyes trained on the sky while we walked to school, hoping that my Egg would just come flying down and there would be no more fuss about it. My attention was jerked away from doing so only when Lilith grabbed my by the hair and redirected me, since I'd started losing my way into an unknown neighbourhood. We were already arguing about my shitty sense of direction when we reached the gates of the Academy, and I had to tone it down before too many students saw me hissing angrily at thin air. Tadase-kun arrived about the same time and jogged up to me.

"Morning, Hisayuki-san," he greeted me, and I smiled in return, though it was hard to look at him knowing what had happened to my newest Egg.

"Good morning," I said. "How did your hunting go yesterday?"

He shrugged in response. "Nothing unusual cropped up. But I heard you left early. Is everything okay?"

"Yes," I told him, suddenly remembering why I'd gotten upset in the first place: Mashiro-san had smashed an X-Egg without a trace of hesitation. "It went fine. We… did manage to find one."

"Oh," he gasped, his expression a mixture of worry and delight. "Did you purify it?"

Before I could tell him anything else, a familiar low voice chimed out behind us: "Morning, guys." We turned in unison to greet them, and then our jaws dropped in shock. It was Deryn, with her snapping aqua eyes and neutral expression. But something was very different.

"Your hair," I choked out, reaching out as if to touch where it once was. Her beautiful, flowing golden locks, once reaching all the way below her butt, were now chopped to the bottom of her ears. The gorgeous colour remained, sunshine locked away on her head, as did her luscious curls, but it kind of broke my heart to see the absence of its length. She seemed happier, though, her once cold expression a bit lighter, an almost-smile on her face.

"I thought it might be time for a change," she said simply, nodding respectfully to Tadase-kun. "The burden was too heavy." That was what made me understand. She said it was her hair that caught her creator's attention, the gorgeous golden curls resembling Rapunzel's from the fairy tale. Chopping it all off was the same as truly accepting what she was. With one fleeting grin at us, she kept walking briskly ahead, punctual as always.

"That surprised me," Tadase-kun muttered, staring after her almost wistfully. "It's so strange to see her without long hair; she's had it like that since she first came here."

"Yeah," I mumbled, then steeled my resolve to tell him about Mashiro-san. I said it so quietly that he had to ask me to repeat myself, as I forgot that he couldn't hear as well as Deryn or I could. That gave me time to edit the story carefully in my mind, so I chose to omit some details: namely the fact that she'd destroyed the Egg, and not purified it. He seemed pleasantly surprised to hear that she could Character Transform, so I was glad that I'd had that chance. The bell chimed before he could say anything more about it, and we promised to continue the conversation at lunch. Though I was dreading to see the culprit herself again, especially after I'd yelled at her like that. I didn't care if she didn't like me; I cared about what Tadase-kun thought. I didn't want him to know I'd reacted so violently – what if he resented me for it? I couldn't stand the idea, and rushed into the classroom to distract myself, only to walk in on a distressing scene.

Mashiro-san was sitting serenely at her desk, surrounded by guys yet again, with many of my girl classmates fuming in the background. But there was one guy in particular – Kohaku, I thought his name was – that wouldn't take a step near her, and was actually looking quite upset about something. Mashiro-san flipped her curls over her shoulder and stared him down, and it almost seemed as if he might have caved under the weight of it. "That's ridiculous," she told him, continuing the conversation I'd missed. "Eighth grade is over, kid. Why don't you go spout your nonsense to someone else?"

"It…" Kohaku-san paused and took a deep breath, his already wide nostrils flaring. "It isn't nonsense. It's as real as you or me."

"Get lost, chuunibyou," another guy told him, to which the rest snickered in response. To his credit, Kohaku-san didn't falter. His eyebrows merely approached his eyes with devastating slowness, and I chose that as the time to intervene. My classmates looked up as if they'd been caught committing a crime when I walked in the room, messenger bag swinging from my shoulder and white hair falling in my eyes.

"What's going on?" I asked, tilting my head to one side, and some of the guys actually took a seat. Mashiro-san, however, bored her eyes into mine, as if trying to make me kneel and submit. While I was sorely tempted to do so, wanting to avoid conflict for Tadase-kun's sake, I held my ground and stared right back. Kohaku-san remained quiet, though examined me with a curious look, like he wasn't expecting someone to come to his aid.

"Nothing special," Mashiro-san responded with a delicate shrug. "He just asked if I believed in ghosts and whatnot, and I gave him an honest answer."

I squinted. "Sorry, what?" It really did seem like a ridiculous conversation, but only because they were apparently making fun of him for asking a simple question. "I don't see the problem."

She actually almost laughed at that. "You wouldn't. Both of you need to grow up." She said that last part with a very pointed look at me, most likely referring to the X-Egg incident yesterday. I glared at her, and there was a noticeable temperature drop in the room. Kohaku-san's eyes, the colour of the crispy brown leaves that still tried to cling to the trees despite the snow, snapped up to meet mine, as if he knew the source. I saw something in his gaze, something that sent warning bells singing in my head, a look I'd caught on Maika-san and Ayame-san before. I'd have to get to the root of the problem before I did anything too hasty. But at that moment, I simply sighed a little and took my seat, signalling for everyone else to do the same. The bell chimed only seconds after, though I was the furthest I could be from ready to work in class – I was wondering how to go about getting Kohaku-san to trust me enough to tell me his woes before his Egg got X'd. Perhaps Mashiro-san was on to something, and he was having trouble growing up? Or was it something more about the supernatural things he'd been asking about? As I had the thought, I turned to glance at him and caught him staring at me, not in a creepy way, but in a way that suggested that he was suspicious of me. So earning his trust would be quite difficult after all.

It would take more than just one lunch break, but that was where I was going to start. I didn't know where to start looking for him, but he found me instead, wandering around the cafeteria. He tapped on my shoulder as I was examining the lunch tables, looking for him, and I flinched at the touch. When I turned around, he had that same speculating glare as he did in the classroom, like I was an organism under a microscope. "Mind talking with me for a sec?" He asked, jerking his head in the direction of the doors leading to the courtyard. I finally noticed that he was fully prepared, with his jacket, toque, and a scarf on, while I had nothing. I nodded nonetheless, putting an easy smile on my face while Lilith and Vivian kept a close eye on him.

We found a place beneath one of the awnings where snow hadn't touched the ground so as not to ruin our indoor shoes. His breath fogged up the air as he looked at me, and I decided to start the conversation since it was clear he wasn't going to say much. "So what was that back up in the classroom?" I asked him, and he merely grunted while pushing more of his hair back into his hat.

"Same old, same old," he told me, shoving his hands in his pockets. "People have always made fun of me because I'm superstitious about… well, everything. Mashiro-san just seemed a bit different from everyone else – as all the Guardians are – and I figured I'd ask her about it. Then that's the reaction I got, the same as I always get. Kids calling me a chuunibyou or whatever." To my surprise, he pulled a pack of cigarettes out from his jacket pocket and lit up in front of me. I continued to stare at him, bewildered. "You're even more different, you know. There's something eerily cold about you – and I'm not talking about your personality. Sometimes I swear I even see… things… around you and the other Guardians." He glared at me, the cigarette flaring orange at its smoking end, as if to dare me to prove him wrong. And I couldn't risk doing so, lest he be in even more danger of having his heart's Egg turn into an X.

"But something else is wrong, isn't it?" I persisted, since while that did seem like a problem, it still wasn't exactly clear what his dream could be and why it was at risk of being ruined. He continued to scowl at me, for so long that I feared I wasn't getting any more information, until he removed the cigarette from his mouth and puffed a cloud of smoke into the air.

"It's just that this can't be all there is," he muttered, holding his smoke too roughly between his fingers. "Humans are naïve if we think we're all that's out there. I want my life to be more interesting, is all."

I stared at him, my temper sparking like a stone hit against a flint. "So you're saying you don't want to be human anymore?"

"That's one way of putting it."

Even though I knew I should be encouraging him, since that was my job as the Joker, I was still unable to restrain my evident anger at his blatant disregard to the value of being human. "You should be careful what you wish for," I mumbled harshly, unable to meet his eyes. I wondered if I would have taken the chance to be completely human if I could – that certainly would make things a bit easier, but who knows what kind of person I'd be. I rubbed my temples with two fingers, trying to focus more on the matter at hand, and confirmed: "So that's your dream? To be something else inhuman?"

"That's what I said, yes." He was obviously starting to get immensely confused, probably because of how specific I was asking him to be, but I couldn't have the slightest doubt in my mind about what his troubles were, because then I wouldn't be able to save him properly. I pursed my lips, unsure of how to proceed. It was unlikely that his dream would come true, but who was to say? There was probably plenty of ways to become inhuman – being bitten by a vampire, for example. My mind briefly flashed to Deryn, the way she'd walked away with the ends of her hair tickling her neck, a burden lifted from her shoulders.

"What can I do to help?" I asked him, looking him straight in the eye. I, myself, may have been unable to grant his wish, but there had to be something I could do for him. Something to prevent his heart from being tainted, or torn from his chest. Anything.

He was quiet for a long time, staring dully into space with the smoke hanging lazily from his mouth. The smell was starting to get to me, and I desperately wanted to head back inside soon, but I had to give him my undivided attention. "Tell me I'm not crazy," he whispered finally, the smoke falling from his mouth and to his feet. It flared bright red as a breeze swam through the air before he stomped it out, leaving it black and smoldering.

"You're not crazy," I murmured, the words leaving a strange taste in my mouth. I'd thought I was crazy for the longest time, thought that I was seeing things, and a freak for creating messes of ice out of nothing. To learn that I probably wasn't was a huge relief, and to share that with someone only furthered the feeling. Though he clearly didn't feel the same; his dark eyes were blank, dead, all hope already lost. He didn't believe that I had faith in what I was saying, and that had only hurt him. Yet I couldn't prove anything to him, since it would put us all in danger. All I could do was watch as he shook his head and went back inside, my mind already racing through solutions.

Normally, the best thing to do would be to consult the others Guardians – however, considering that it was one of them that made him that way, it probably wasn't the best course of action. I stared at his squashed smoke, decrepit and useless on the ground, and had to laugh a little. That earned me some worried looks from Lili and Viv, but I began walking towards the Royal Garden before they could ask any questions.

"Snow," Vivian said quietly, oddly sheepish. "It's the other way."

I turned on my heel and began heading in the opposite direction, already dreading what awaited me there. It was only natural that I still felt uncomfortable towards the new guys, but I had nowhere else to go. Eating anywhere but with them came off as suspicious, like I was running away. And I'd had enough of running, already, so I was just going to have to grow a pair and face them. Tadase-kun and Yaya-san were still there, anyway; I wasn't completely alone.

Despite that, it was still unbelievably awkward. Mashiro-san didn't even bother to look at me, as if she couldn't spare the time. Souma-san yammered on and on about rules and how to improve ourselves, which I did listen to, but couldn't help but feel like he was just pointing out all my flaws. None of them noticed me sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of liquid darkness, slowly drowning and suffocating, the memories of people's backs as they walked away from me flashing through my mind. And finally my X-Egg, beaming away at the speed of light, wanting nothing more to do with me. I stared into my reflection of the hot chocolate steaming away in my hand, unable to even tell Tadase-kun that I loved the Japanese tea he made.

Everything was changing. Disappearing. Soon, I'd disappear as well, swallowed whole by that inky blackness I called a heart.

"Whoa, Rima-tan can Chara Transform?!" Yaya-san exclaimed suddenly, shocking me so hard a bit of my hot chocolate sloshed over the side of my cup. Tadase-kun graciously passed me a handkerchief (how adorable was it that he carried those in this day and age?) and I accepted it gracefully, dabbing water lightly on the spots it left on my skirt.

"I was surprised, as well," he said with his usual grin. "Now we have two people that can Character Transform on our side. That evens out with Easter." Ikuto and Utau-san. I wondered if we'd ever get into a two-on-two battle. The thought made my hand fsqueeze the fabric of my skirt into a fist. Fighting X-Eggs was one thing, but I absolutely didn't want to fight with them. Even though we were enemies, I still…

"This is excellent news," Sanjou-san added, pushing his glasses up his nose until they gleamed in the light. "Now our X-Egg hunting speed should increase exponentially, considering how much the Joker is lacking." Another arrow straight through my chest. This kid knew how to talk spank.

"Hisayuki-san is doing her best," Tadase-kun snapped, and I looked up at him in a flash, startled to see how defensive he looked. I didn't deserve him coming to my aid like that. Not when an Egg of my own became an X only yesterday.

"Maybe that isn't good enough," Mashiro-san muttered into her cup, almost low enough for the human ears to miss it. But certainly not mine. Not good enough. Not good enough. Amazing how right those words sounded to me, how easily I could accept them. I couldn't even make Kohaku-san believe me when I told him the truth, because I didn't believe in myself. I finally let go of my skirt, numb all over again, wishing for that darkness to just drag me down already.

---

Kohaku-san was usually in my last class of the day, science, off in a corner by himself, most likely thinking about how unbearably mundane the whole education system was. However, he wasn't that day; the lack of his presence set me on the edge of my seat. What if I'd been too late in talking to him? Was he that far gone already? If just the incident today was what set him off in the first place, then he must have been dealing with bullying of that sort for a long time. Not having anyone believe you, or having them look at you like you were crazy, was one of the worst things imaginable. The negativity must have been eating him alive for a while, so it was no wonder just a few cynical words from Mashiro-san made him finally break.

What else could I do but look around for him? Not only was it my job as a Guardian to help him solve his problems in whatever way I could, but I felt personally responsible for the rejection he must have felt, as well. I wouldn't be able to call myself a Guardian for much longer if I kept that kind of behaviour up. But as I aimlessly wandered the campus after the final bell chimed, admittedly a tad bit lost, the first person I ran into was Mashiro-san, on her way to the Royal Garden.

She scanned me up and down with her amber eyes that were as cold as the snow surrounding us. "What's your problem?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow sardonically.

I couldn't help but narrow my eyes at her. "Oh, nothing, really. Just trying to prevent Kohaku-san's Egg from becoming an X because you felt the need to treat him like an idiot."

To my surprise, she flinched a little at that, the guilty and sheepish look on her face oddly satisfying to me. "It's his fault for saying something dumb in the first place," she all but sang defensively, a cruel little smile on her face. "Like I said, if your Egg's just going to become an X, then you don't-"

"That is enough," I hissed at her, towering over her a bit too much for her liking, judging from the way she shrank away a little. "You can honestly just choose not to say things that you fully know will hurt other people. What could you possibly have to gain from humiliating someone you don't even know, and making them lose faith in themselves? Who gave you that right?"

"All I said was that he should just disappear if he didn't want to be around us so badly," she muttered under her breath, and I stood there staring at her for a moment, nostrils flaring like a raging bull's and making awkward eye contact with her chagrined Shugo Chara, but then it hit me. That wasn't what she said back in the classroom. I took a few steps back, away from her, having to restrain myself from shaking.

"What did you just say?" I asked her very quietly, and it only furthered her confusion.
"That Kohaku kid? I ran into him just now. He said something about hating us all, I dunno, and that you were the only one who remotely believed him. I called the pair of you freaks-" she paused to give me a pointed look, "- and he got all defensive, saying that you had way more right to be a Guardian than I did." She finished off her recap with a little snort, throwing her hair over her shoulder clad in a heavy white winter jacket. "So I told him to just… go away, then. He doesn't have to be here if he doesn't want to be."

"Are… are you completely insane?" I demanded softly, looking at her in bewilderment. I was met with a frozen glare and snickering from Kusukusu-chan, accompanied nicely with the very ladylike snorts of my Shugo Chara. "What did he even do to you?"

"Nothing," she answered simply. "I'm the Queen, now, and he should know his place. He should be grateful if I even save him along."

She was saved from being shaken very vigorously and furiously by me by two of the other three Guardians – Tadase-kun and Souma-san – sprinting out of the Garden as if it was on fire. "Hisayuki-san, Mashiro-san!" The former called, the look on his face easily recognized by me but only setting Mashiro-san more on edge. It was his game face, as severe as his expression could get, with the deep set of his golden brows and those smoldering maroon eyes. "We just got word from Yaya-san – an X-Egg has just been born, over near the science department."

Judging from the knowing look on Mashiro-san's face, that had been where she'd met up with Kohaku-san and exchanged a few kind words with him. My hands balled into fists until they bled white, my body practically vibrating, which didn't go unnoticed by our kind king. Before he could mention it, however, Souma-kun cut in, "This is the perfect chance to show us your skills, Mashiro-san. You lead the way."

She let out a haughty little huff that burst a cloud of steam into the air, and the two of them began walking before I could protest. If I said anything about her methods now, it would make it seem like I just had a vendetta against her, but things would only get worse if I let her go about her usual methods and destroy Kohaku-san's Egg. My head swam, unclear and full of doubt, the darkness I felt boiling within me seeping through my bloodstream and poisoning my every thought. Only one person observed my dilemma, and the new Queen and Jack whirled around in shock when they heard a slapping noise behind them.

I blinked in utter astonishment, my cheeks stinging slightly from where Tadase-kun had clapped his hands on them. He was staring into my eyes so fiercely it felt like he was trying to dredge up my very soul, every trace of his usual kindness wiped away with such an intense sadness and anger that I was left speechless. "What is wrong with you nowadays?" He demanded, and I nonsensically thought about how adorable it was that he used the term 'nowadays' in a sentence. "It's like every ounce of that passion you had when you first heard of our mission is gone. Has something so horrible happened to you that you can't even tell me, and choose to just force me to watch you fall apart?"

My breath came out in a startled huff, Vivian and Lilith's jaws unhinged and hitting the ground. Mashiro-san and Souma-san's expression were identical, the latter's glasses fogging up with his quick, hot breaths as they observed in completely stunned silence. I had to swallow down a massive lump in my throat, trying to prevent myself from choking on a hard candy, and tried to say, "Tadase-kun," but it came out warbled and smushed from his hands on my cheeks.

"I've tried being nice about it," he continued, so close that his angry breaths stirred my bangs. "I've tried hinting at relying on us more, and then I've said it 'til I was blue in the face. Yet you still continue to torment us." He shook his head from side to side incredulously, his soft bangs dusting over his eyes and making my heart pound roughly in my chest.

"That was never my-"

"I know," he cried gently, his touch on my face becoming more gentle and tender – enough to bring a flush to the very cheeks he had his warm hands on. I swore I caught the sight of our newest members blushing slightly in my peripheral vision, and became about ten times as mortified. "And that's the worst part. This was never just a job to you – you've said it yourself. You truly wanted to save people, and improve yourself, and now your sitting on the sidelines just because some changes have happened. Do you think we don't need you anymore?" That, I couldn't respond to, nor look him in the eye for, because it was exactly what I thought. His hands fell to his side, fingers red and a little chapped from the cold, and I would have sworn on my father's tomb that my heart actually broke a little at the sight of his crestfallen expression. "Hisayuki-san, you have powers that I've only dreamed of, powers I've wanted since I first learned of Shugo Chara. You have the power to heal people. Don't you understand how important that is? How special it is?"

I was at a loss for words, my mouth opening and closing like a disoriented fish. I was important? And special? Then again, he didn't know everything about me… I looked to my Shugo Chara, saw them looking more sure and confident then they ever had in their lives, and decided that it didn't matter. As long as Tadase-kun accepted me for who he thought I was, that was enough. He never had to know that I was a half-demon, or that I was a petty, sorry excuse for a person. I could put on a brave face for him. For our brave King who always put others before himself.

"Thank you, Tadase-kun," I told him, and he smiled at me in return. Then we nodded at each other, and made off at mach speed to where Yaya-san had said Kohaku-san could be found.

Surely enough, when we arrived, his body was lying completely sack on the ground, and X-Egg floating high above it. Yaya-san was barely holding it off in her Character Changed state, swatting aimlessly with the rattle as it continued to dance just out of her reach. Mashiro-san made a step forward, as if to approach it, but I held a hand out in front of her. "I've got this," I said, much to the chagrin of her and Sanjou-san. With that, I called upon Vivian, and we Character Transformed for the first time in a while.

"Dancing Pierrot," I muttered under my breath with a smile to myself. I didn't look back to see the reactions of our two newest Guardians, since they weren't what mattered. What did matter was saving Kohaku-san's Egg from being tainted or destroyed forever, because if there was one thing I wanted to do with my burrowed time, it was that. I calmly strode in front of Yaya-san, Tadase-kun's words ringing in my head: "You have the power to heal people. Don't you understand how important that is?"

No matter how small it was, in that very moment, I had a purpose. And that was enough to stay alive for just one more day.

"I know it's hard," I began to the X-Egg all while dodging its swipes through the air to bruise and batter my body. It was different from the others; its moves weren't strategic in the slightest, winging itself around willy-nilly in a last attempt to defend itself. It reminded me of how adults always said to never approach a dying animal, because you wouldn't believe the lengths it would go to, just to stay alive. Being Character Transformed made me about five times more flexible, so it was easy to throw myself out of the way in time in a combinations of turns and rolls, but I didn't have time to play tag with it. "Everything can get unbearably mundane and difficult to deal with, especially when you're being victimized as you are, Kohaku-san." I heard a small noise of guilty irritation from behind me, and could only assume that it was Mashiro-san. "But that doesn't mean you have to give up. Giving up means you've wasted everything you've ever done. Believing in something, no matter how ridiculous, may make you sad sometimes, and may only hurt you." I thought of the way he was teased mercilessly for making the smallest comment, thought of how Deryn hated herself for being what she was, thought of my X-Egg flying far away from me, perhaps lost forever.

"Things will get better," I told the X-Egg as it darted right by my ear so quickly my hair blasted away from the heavy wind in its wake, the crowd of Guardians behind me scrambling out of the way. "But only if you make them better yourself." Deryn's hair, cropped to the bottoms of her ears, and her million-watt smile. "It's not the situation that defines you, but the way you react to it. Only you can define who you are." It occurred to me at that moment that I wasn't speaking to Kohaku-san at all, but that didn't matter. I was on a roll, and Vivian's swell of positive emotions within me only made my adrenaline shoot through my veins as if injected through a needle. I leaped in front of it in one powerful burst of my legs, right before it could smash itself into Mashiro-san's delicate porcelain face, and slammed my fingers down the chords of my bass-ax to release a deafeaning, powerful sound that shook the core of my chest and had the Guardians covering their ears.

The X-Egg was literally vibrating in the air, its small, squealing voice increasing to an ear-shattering volume to accompany the strong strum of the chords. Before long, the smooth, black surface it boasted shattered into the thinnest little fragments, leaving a pure, white Egg with a golden heart in its place, floating peacefully until it popped in two. Kohaku-san's Shugo Chara was transparent yet still with a form, various colours running through it like an oil spill. I supposed it was because he wasn't really sure what he wanted to be yet, but knew he wanted to be something more. "Thank you," the spoke softly, their voice no more than a whisper, before they retreated back into the safety of their shell and the chest of their owner. I approached his thin, lanky body, strewn awkwardly on the ground, and slammed my bass-ax into the snow.

"By the way," I whispered to him as I formed back and wrapped my scarf around his face, an angry red and chapped from lying in the snow. "Monsters hate the smell of smoke. So there's your first step."

---

"I never knew it was so boring alone," Satsuki sighed to herself as she laid haphazardly on her bearer's computer desk, her only company the unconscious angel Shugo Chara that just wouldn't awake. Ever the shameless Chara, Satsuki even tried kissing her cheek to awaken her, but nothing had worked. Things were only fun when Snow was around, and without her little siblings there, there was no toys to keep her preoccupied. She knew there was a little toddler in the apartment next door, but she couldn't leave this room. So she just kept to saying and lazing about in different positions, fixing her kimono or repositioning her pigtails occasionally.

Eventually Satsuki began to worry. She had been sleeping for more than a whole day by then, and Snow was at work at that point. She glanced at the clock beside her bearer's bed – nine p.m. So Snow would most likely be on her way back by then; she might know what to do. Frantically she began nudging their guest slightly, desperate not to make Snow think ill of her for being unable to take care of their guest, and even began singing in her heavily off-key voice to attempt at awakening her. Soon enough she heard a voice congested with sleep mutter "Shut up", and she beamed, the beginnings of tears in her eyes. "Oh, thank goodness you're awake!" She cried, thanking every god above at the same time as wailing at the top of her lungs.

"What the hell?" The angel chara asked, ironically enough. Though anyone would be surprised to be awoken by a normally poised woman in a shortened kimono and pigtails scream-crying at full volume. "Where am I…?" Her eyes seemed to finally focus, despite the fact that they remained shut, and she gave Satsuki a full-on heart attack when she shot straight up from her makeshift bed like a rocket, screaming like a banshee. "Oh, god, I've been kidnapped! They've sullied me! I'll never be pure again! I can't get married! Oh, I may as well be de-"

"Please, calm down!" Satsuki pleaded, her fragile little heart fluttering like a frantic bird in a cage. While consistent yelling wasn't anything new (her sisters and bearer to blame), a complete stranger doing it for no reason was enough to make her have a panic attack. "I won't hurt you, I swear! You're at the home of my bearer, Snow Hisayuki-sama, and she'll take good-"

The angel Chara stopped zooming around in frightened circles to invade Satsuki's personal space by getting right in her face. "Did you just say 'Snow Hisayuki'?"

"Yes," Satsuki repeated slowly, carefully, as if trying to communicate with someone who spoke a different language. "She's my bearer, and a very kind person, so you've no need to worry. My name is Satsuki, by the way."

However, this only seemed to further the angel's anxiety. Satsuki's level of worry shot up into the danger zone as she watched the angel slowly start convulsing and muttering something to herself along the lines of, "oh no, oh no", before she moved as swiftly as a cheetah with its tail on fire and locked herself in her Egg.

"Oh, goodness," Satsuki muttered, pressing her fingers to her temples. Even her patience had its limit. She sniffled, snot running down her nose from her consistent crying, and began tapping lightly on the shell of her guest's Egg. "Hey, why are you hiding? We mean you know harm. We're trying to help you."

"My name isn't 'you', it's El! And leave me the hell alone!"

Why would you tell me your name if you don't want me talking to you? Satsuki wondered in slight aggravation, her breath coing out faster as she watched the minutes on the clock tick by. It took her a moment to realize that, surprise, surprise, the angel was screaming again. "I can't believe I've been captured by Snow Hisayuki, Utau-chan's worst enemy! That means I can't trust the Shugo Chara, either. They must all be planning to torture information out of me…"

"No, we're not, El-chan," Satsuki murmured soothingly, rubbing a tender hand against the smooth surface of the Egg.

"Don't call me that so familiarly!" Which is it?! Satsuki demanded mentally. Her little head popped out of the Egg, her platinum locks bouncing along with her as she continued to rant on. "From now on, my lips are sealed! If it gets out who my bearer is, that's nothing but bad news. So don't talk to me, got it?"

Satsuki was silent for a few moments, squinting in confusion. "Utau Hoshina-san?" She guessed from the way the angel had said it earlier, only to be met with a shocked gasp and more screeching.

"Oh, lord above, they're telepaths! You can read my mind! You monster!"

That was what finally set Satsuki off. That word was sensitive in their household, and she was yelling back before she even realized it, her face a tomato with anger. "Don't use that word so lightly! Now sit down nicely and shut up for a few godforsaken minutes while I go make some tea!"

The angel had the grace to look a bit sheepish as she floated out from her Egg and sat on her legs formally in seiza, and Satsuki went to press a button on the coffee machine to let out some hot water to make green tea. Snow had bought a few things to cater to their needs, such as small place settings normally meant for a doll house, and she filled up the plastic mugs just a bit too big for their hands and carried them back carefully to the room, where the angel remained waiting in silence. After a few sips and Satsuki sitting in the same position in front of her, she was spinning quite the tale of her woes, about how Utau's second Shugo Chara was so unbearably mean to her, and her bearer herself ignored her in general. So she'd cut her losses and run away.

"It just hurts that they don't even care anymore," she sobbed delicately, very graciously honking her nose into the small handkerchief Sastuki offered her. "It's like it would be better if I didn't exist. And then there's all the horrible things Utau-chan's doing…"

While Satsuki was the nicest and best-mannered of Snow Hisayuki's Shugo Chara, one could also argue that she was the most cunning. Two-faced would be the best phrase to describe her, and she sidled up to her new companion, rubbing her shoulders comfortingly, all the while with the ulterior motive of getting her to spill the beans of the 'horrible things' Utau was doing. "There, there. It's alright now. What exactly do you mean by 'horrible things'? Maybe I can help."

El let out a bitter little laugh as Satsuki heard the front door to the apartment close. Her eyes quickly flicked to the clock: nine eighteen p.m. Snow was home. As El very quietly and humbly explained the things Utau had been doing ever since Nikaidou had left Easter, Satsuki listened for her bearer's footsteps right outside the door, and then exclaimed the words El had just said so she could hear: "What?! Utau-chan's been stealing countless Heart's Eggs at once?!"

The footsteps stopped dead, and Satsuki knew Snow had heard. She focused the rest of her attention on El so as not to attract her suspicion, and almost felt a bit guilty when she saw crystalline tears falling from the angel's eyes. "It's true. I fear Easter has something horrible planned after gathering all of those Eggs at once, something far worse than what Yuu Nikaidou had been planning. And Utau-chan's just going along with it like it's nothing to her, when I know better. I know she doesn't want to be this way anymore! I just wish… that there was someone out there who could save her!" As she began to descend into sobs, her tea set aside and forgotten, Snow figured that was the best time to enter. Instead of bursting the door open as what either Lilith or Vivian would have done, she opened it normally, almost with an eerie slowness, and set her aurora eyes on El, who froze under their frigid gaze.

"Please," Snow Hisayuki began, expression severe and eyes ignited like cold fire. "Explain that in more detail, Miss Angel." She stood tall and strong, an Amazonian warrior lit up by the golden light coming from the hallway behind her, and while El was intensely afraid and ashamed of spilling her bearer's secret, she couldn't help but think that woman was the key to saving her from the chains of Easter… just as she'd done for Nikaidou before, and just as she was certain she could do again.

Crimrose: "Everyone give a round of applause to Tadase to stepping up his game!"

*Everyone actually claps*

Tadase: *blushes* "Oh, stop, you're embarrassing me!"

Crimrose: "With me, kid, you have to know by now that it can only get worse. We'll make a man out of you yet."

Tadase: "But am I not already-"

Crimrose: "You know what I saw today? The new Jungle Book. I LOVED it - Christopher Walken and Bill Murray were just PERFECT IN IT UGH."

Snow: *cocks head to side* "What's the new Jungle Book?"

Crimrose: "Oh, yeah, I guess you guys are, like, perpetually stuck in 2012 or something. My bad."

Ikuto: "So you're, like, from the future. Whoa."

Crimrose: "Someday, kid, someday. WE'LL ALL GET THERE SOMEDAY, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT."

Snow: "It worries me that you're an adult now."

Ikuto: "Regardless, don't forget to vote on the poll, kids. I want me some sugar."

Crimrose: *starts giggling hysterically* "That fucking reminds me of Vampire of Spring, oh my god."

Everyone: "What. Is. That."

Crimrose: "SOMETHING WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT'S WHAT ASDFGHJKLLKHU."