Hey guys, here are the next three chapters! Guess what happened to me yesterday? My laptop died! I swear I have the worst luck in the world. Good thing I keep all my stories on a flash drive. I'm updating this from my moms computer and for now I'm just gonna have to keep working on the next story in a journal or something. Thanks for sticking around and I hope you like the chapters! Enjoy!

Once we were safely on the other side, and heard the explosion, I leapt up and hugged the living daylights out of him.

"I'm glad you're okay." I whispered into his chest.

"Me? You're the one who almost got sliced in half." He said with a light chuckle, but I could detect the seriousness hidden in his tone.

I pulled away. "Yeah… thanks for that." A thought suddenly crossed my mind and I smirked at him. "But you know… you could have just picked the first option and made things a lot easier for the both of us."

He sighed and stepped back a step, as if he could read my thoughts. "Yeah, well I have a feeling you would have just gone with me anyways."

I shrugged. "Probably."

"See?" His voice lightened considerably. "Now come on. I have a feeling this is almost over."

We began walking up the hill when all of the sudden, Leon pulled me behind a large cargo box and put his hand over my mouth. I looked up at him quizzically and he removed his hand to place a finger on his own lips. I understood and hushed immediately. By the sound of it, there was a numerous amount of Ganado in the area behind us.

Suddenly, a blinding white light came shining down from above. Leon pulled out a headset and began speaking into it at what I now realized was a helicopter.

"Hey… it's about time." He said, the relief clears in his voice.

"Sorry, bad traffic." He joked. "I'll cover ya'."

The man flew the helicopter around and began knocking over a large water tower, making it fall and kill only a fraction of the men standing around, but he wasn't done; he pulled out Gatling guns and began firing away. In mere seconds, almost everyone was dead and we stared up at the helicopter in awe.

"Now that's what I call backup." Leon spoke into the headset with a large grin on his face.

"The name's Mike. If you're looking for firepower, you've come to the right place."

We started running and three guys popped out of a fort. One was on top with a gatling gun, and two inside with crossbows making me wonder where they got that stuff—the merchant certainly didn't sell them. Leon and I ran and hid behind a wall a few feet from the fort, dodging their attacks and reloading our guns. Before we could make our next move, Mike had blown up the fort along with the people in it.

"Okay, I'm starting to really like this guy." I said smiling up at Leon.

He smiled back. "Me too, come on."

Once again we had begun sprinting forward. There were a couple of people up a ladder and standing on some sort of lookout balcony. Leon shot them all down with his TMP and we ran over a metal bridge and into a vacant building and out a door to our left. There was a large, locked shutter and a lever above it a few feet away. To get to said lever, you had to run up a flight of wooden stairs and go down a short zip line.

"You stay here, I'll go pull that." He said, but before he could leave, a Gatling gun guy jumped down right in front of the lever. Leon didn't even need to do anything; Mike shot him down for us.

"Be careful!" I called after him as he began running for the stairs.

Those few seconds I was left alone, I kept thinking about the kiss and how he avoided talking about it every chance he got. He had kissed me back, but what if that was only because he thought I needed comforting?

Before my thoughts could progress, I heard Leon call my name from in front of the door. I quickly ran down to him but before entering, we took quick glances at the newly exposed area. There were two levels; the ground, of course, which was cluttered with mini forts and two giant Gatling guns, and walkways all around the walls. There were doors on the back wall and two levers on opposite sides of the walkways.

I turned to Leon who was contemplating his next move beside me, but I had already figured out what we needed to do. "Give me your TMP." I said holding out my hands expectantly.

He looked at me like I was insane. "What, why?"

"There are two ladders over there." I pointed to the left. "The one in there goes to the right lever, and the one next to it goes to the left one. Now I'll need your TMP because my puny little Blacktail isn't enough to take out all the guys over there." I pointed to the right upper level. There was a guy with a gatling gun, and a guy with a bow gun. I kept my hands out and my eyebrows raised.

He sighed and handed me the gun. "I thought you said you didn't like leaving me."

I looked at him and, without blinking, said, "I didn't. I said I didn't like leaving you if I could help. But this time I'm leaving to help. Get it?"

He looked as though he were about to tell me not to go, but shook his head. "Sure. Just be careful."

I grinned at him as we were walking to our ladders. "You too."

I didn't do much. Just took out a few guys on the upper half of the shelter covering the ladder, and once I stepped out, I saw Leon and Mike had already taken out most of everybody. Once I got to the barred doors blocking the lever, another muscled man with a gatling gun jumped down from some place I couldn't see. I began shooting him in the head with the gun Leon had loaned me, and once he was stunned, Leon shouted from the other side of the area. "Get back!" he yelled. I did as I was told and Leon threw a grenade at the guy. Once he recovered from that, Leon began shooting him with his semi-automatic rifle as I shot him with the TMP. He was dead within seconds, and we both ran over to the levers and pulled them, opening the doors below.

"Nice job." He said, nodding slightly when we met back at the bottom of the ladders.

"Thanks… even though I barely did anything."

"You did enough."

After we opened the doors, we began walking up stairs onto the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean we traveled across to get here from the castle, which, if you squinted hard enough, you could just make out in the distance. We kept running up the stairs and didn't stop until it was too late; we had run straight into a mass of the parasite controlled freaks. They were armed with lightning rods, spiked sticks, and scythes.

As soon as I reached for my gun, we heard the sound of helicopter blades, and Mike flew up in front of us, guns raised. "Take cover!" He shouted, and Leon quickly pulled me out of the way, behind a large stone pillar.

Mike was shooting everyone. There were body parts flying everywhere, and dead bodies all over the ground. He only stopped shooting when there was one guy left; but a falling pillar took care of him. Leon quickly hopped up and stood out in the open, facing the helicopter, but I stayed put, leaning against the stone.

"Thanks," he said. "When we get out of here, drinks are on me."

I never got to hear Mike's response. Before anybody moved, a missile was fired straight for the helicopter. The aircraft was engulfed in flames and metal parts were flying everywhere.

"MIKE!" Leon bellowed and sprinted to the edge of the cliff where his friend had fallen to his death. All I could do was stare in shock.

Just then Leon got a transmission from Saddler, but the only thing I heard him say was "Saddler, you bastard!" and then something about insects.

After he hung up, he walked slowly over to me.

"You okay?" He asked, holding out a gloved hand. He spoke the exact same way he did before I kissed him. I took his hand and he helped me stand up. I could feel his eyes on me, but I couldn't stop staring at where the helicopter had once flown. That wasn't even two minutes ago, but now he was gone.

"I-is he really gone?" I asked, looking up at the blonde in front of me with water-filled eyes. I know we just met him, but realizing how little time it took death to do its job sent an uncomfortable wave of emotion spiraling through me.

"Yeah…" Leon kept looking at me, his eyes glazed with sorrow. "But come on. There's nothing we can do now, except get these parasites out of us."

As we were walking towards doors in the distance, I couldn't help but notice he still had his hand wrapped around mine, but—hey, I wasn't complaining.