Morg: Heyo! I hope you guys really like the ending to this story.

Ikuto: You know what'll make me like it.

Amu: You should just write 'The End'. Everyone will be happy.

Morg: I don't think so.

Ikuto: Yeah, no.

Amu: I think it's a good idea.

Morg: I think me owning the two of you would be a good idea.

Ikuto: What.

Amu: Nope!

~At the Water's Edge~

Amu noticed when things changed. The air around her no longer felt cold. That and the statue that she had been standing in front of was no longer a statue, but a mermaid that was clearly distraught. Turning, Amu found the rest of her companions frozen where they'd been before she pulled herself onto the island and looked into Mirene's eyes. "What happened?"

Looking at the mermaid before her, Mirene smiled a small, sad smile. "Hello, Amu."

"You know my name?"

Nodding just slightly, Mirene lifted her hand but didn't touch Amu's face. "We're almost like sisters, you and I. I can feel the same power surging through you."

Talking to someone that she had thought was only a statue was a bit strange for Amu. She had known the moment they'd entered the cave that Mirene definitely wasn't dead, but this definitely wasn't what she had expected. "What happened to the others?"

Looking past Amu's shoulder to the others in the cavern, Mirene gave another sad smile. "Nothing. You're the one that has entered into my domain."

"The island?"

"Why are you here, Amu?"

That question made Amu fidget a bit. Mirene sounded tired. She sounded as though she didn't want Amu and the others to be there. "My friends… they would like to use the Tear. We've heard about the powers of it."

Mirene was silent for a few minutes as she studied Amu's face "Only your friends, Amu?"

Swallowing hard, Amu nodded. "Yes, Kairi is that merman there. He wants to be with Yaya, who is that human there. Yaya would like to be a mermaid so that she can be with him. And that's Utau. Utau wants to be human so she can spend time with Kukai."

"And those other two merpeople?"

"Oh!" Amu turned back to Mirene with a smile. "That's Rima and that one is Nagi. They're already married and quite happy to be in the form they're in."

Mirene pinned Amu with her eyes as she spoke her following words, "There are still two more males that I see. One merman and the other human. What are they were for?"

Amu dropped her gaze. "The merman is Tadase. He forced some of the others to come at first because he wanted the Tear for the power. The rest of us are determined to make sure that he can't have it."

"And yet you brought him?"

"Well, it was better to have him with us rather than not know where he was."

Nodding at that, Mirene looked back at the human. She noticed how his eyes were pinned to Amu. There was something within the gaze that Mirene had not seen in a long time. "And the human boy?"

Amu didn't have to turn around to know that Mirene was talking about Ikuto. "He… Ikuto owned the boat that helped us get here."

"Is that the only reason that he's here?"

"The others are his friends, too."

"Amu."

"I'm not sure what you want me to say, Mirene!?"

Sighing now, Mirene lifted her hand once more. This time she did not hesitate to touch Amu's cheek. She knew that her fingers would feel like ice. "You are here to ask me for something that you don't fully understand how you use it. You're asking me for a power that can only work when all the elements are working together."

Amu didn't pull back from the touch. She looked into Mirene's eyes and met her gaze with determination. "You said it yourself that you could feel the power flowing through me."

Letting her hand drop, Mirene turned away from Amu to look off into the distance. She was remembering a time long before. "I can feel your control of the earthly elements, yes. Fire, water, air and earth. You have control of those. What about the fifth element?"

Amu felt stunned. There was no fifth element. Whatever Mirene was talking about, she didn't have control over it since she didn't know what it was. "What fifth element?"

"Think Amu," Mirene said as she looked back at the pinkette before her. "I made this Tear with the elements and something else. A fifth element that you must have to be able to use it. Otherwise this Tear is just a pretty rock. That boy, Tadase, would have come all this way for something completely worthless to him."

Thinking hard, Amu turned to look at her friends as she bit her lip. What would she tell them when she returned and couldn't do what they'd come all this way to do? They'd be heartbroken. Yaya and Kairi especially. They loved each other so much. And Utau wanted to be with Kukai to see where that went. And then there was Ikuto… Amu hadn't had a chance to talk to him about what happened on the island. She didn't know if he also wanted to use the Tear. She hadn't asked if he loved her like… "Love. The fifth element is love. You created this Tear because of your love for the human that you couldn't be with."

That sad smile was back on her lips as Mirene presented her hand with the Tear shining within it. "And do you have love, Amu?"

That was an easy question for Amu to answer.

XXX

"Amu?"

Ikuto wasn't sure what was going on. Amu had warned them not to get closer. She had said that they weren't supposed to touch the island and that they should get out if anything happened, but this was not what he'd thought would happen to her. She was frozen as if staring into Mirene's lifeless eyes had put her into some sort of trance. "What happened to her!?"

Rima looked back at Ikuto before moving slightly closer to the island. Nagi's hand on her arm stopped her from getting too much closer. "I don't know! She didn't say this would happen!"

Cocking his head to the side, Kairi studied the situation before turning to those still in the boat. "Mirene isn't dead. She isn't just a statue either. From what it looks like, Amu has entered into her dimension."

Kukai let out a low whistle. "Another dimension?"

"How does she come back?"

Ikuto's question was a good one, but Kairi wasn't sure if he could answer it. "I'm not sure. We can't join her because we aren't like Mirene and Amu. We don't control the elements the way that they do. So we can only wait and see if Mirene sends her back or if Amu figures out how to return to us."

Shivering slightly in the boat, Yaya wrapped her arms around herself. "Yaya wants to know how long that might take."

Kairi thought about taking Yaya's hand into his own before changing his mind. He was soaked with cold water. He didn't want to make her shiver even more. "I don't know that either. We just have to have faith in her."

Ikuto had more than just faith in Amu. Whether it took minutes, hours or days, he would be there when she returned to them. To him. "So we wait."

Waiting was harder than any of them had expected. Mostly because it didn't look as though Amu was even breathing as she stared right into Mirene's frozen eyes. She looked like a statue herself, which was rather unnerving for her friends.

Then something happened. There was a vibration in the air and the water rippled. Cracks appeared in the walls of the cavern and chunks of ice began to fall.

Grabbing the oars, Kukai moved their small boat just before a large piece of ice could fall on it. "We have to get out of here!"

Rima was torn for a moment as she looked back up at Amu. "But!"

Shaking his head, Nagi grabbed his wife and pulled her towards the exit. "Amu has control of the elements, remember? She'll get out of this just fine!"

Ikuto wasn't as confident as his friend. He didn't like that Amu was still frozen on the island as everything else seemed to be falling to pieces around her. She still wasn't moving. "Amu!"

Utau helped Kairi as the two of them pushed the boat so that it would move faster as more and more of the cavern started to break down. "Come on! We have to get out now!"

With one last look, Tadase gave a huff before swimming out.

Ikuto looked too, but he wasn't about to leave just yet. He could still get to Amu and wake her up. He knew that he could. He just had to get to that island. Only, their boat was going the wrong way. "Amu!"

Kukai had to give up on rowing so that he could grab Ikuto and hold his best friend and captain in the boat. "You can't jump in the water, Ikuto! It is too cold! You'd go into shock the moment you'd touch it!"

Ikuto struggled, but he was trapped in the boat as Nagi and Rima helped Utau and Kairi to push it. They were almost out of the cavern and Amu was still inside of it. "We can't just leave her!"

Once they were clear of the roof and no longer in danger of anything falling on top of them, Rima pulled herself up so that she could look into the bottom of the boat where Ikuto was still struggling. "We aren't leaving her! We're waiting for her and trusting her and Mirene to be okay. Amu is strong, Ikuto. You should know that by now."

That made Ikuto freeze. He panted in the bottom of the boat with Kukai still on top of him. "I know she's strong. I just… I love her."

The words were uttered so softly that the rest of them almost missed them.

Kukai had heard him though. Kukai had known the truth of that for quite a while. "And she'll return to you, Ikuto. I know Amu. I know that she might be in trouble right now, but I also know that throughout this entire trip, danger has never kept her from her friends. That mermaid dived into the ocean during a terrible storm to save you. A little cave in won't be the end of you."

Utau pulled herself up on the edge of the boat like Rima was. "She rescued Kairi, Tadase and I from a tribe of sea sprites that would have made us slaves. And she saved a giant sea monster."

"She fought a sea monster to help me."

Rima gripped Nagi's hand as her husband spoke up from down in the water.

Ikuto knew what his friends were doing. They were trying to make him feel better about what was happening. In a way, it worked. In another way, it just reminded him how many times Amu had almost died already and he still hadn't told her that he loved her. Not properly. "She has to be okay."

The cavern was still falling in on itself. Bigger chunks fell off into the ocean, causing waves that made all the inhabitants nearby move up and down in the water with them. Sooner or later, all of it would end up in the ocean. If they had stayed, everyone would have been crushed or pinned at the bottom of the freezing ocean.

Ikuto could feel his hope that Amu would survive dying in his chest. "I love her and I didn't get to tell her. I had my chances and I let them go by thinking that I'd have another one, a better one. And now she might not come back. I'm such an idiot."

All anyone could do was turn and look back as the last of the ice cavern that they'd all gone into sunk into the sea. There was no sign of Amu or Mirene or of anything but themselves.

.

Morg: I'm a cruel person.

Ikuto: Yes, you are.

Amu: The end?

Morg: Not quite! I'm thinking at least one more regular chapter and an epilogue. So we'll see!

Ikuto: You know what I like to see.

Amu: You know what I hate seeing.

Morg: Then it is a good thing I don't write for either of you.