Hello minna!

God am I sorry! It has been forever since I've updated last but I'm out of school for the summer now and for sure my updates will get back on a regular schedule now! I know, this chapter is ridiculously short but it's for a good reason. It's a pretty... powerful and important chapter with a bunch of key events.

In this chapter... well, I don't want to spoil anything, but, we say goodbye to one of the groups very own! And you'll all probably hate me for it... *cringes*

Anyways, enjoy!

And, I bring you, Miki.

~Tiruneko ;3

X~57~X

Can someone tell me how it got to this? I just can't seem to remember a time before… before the world came to this… I just want to go back…

"Take me back to those days!" The girl screams for the thousandth time at the emptiness around her.

No answer comes except for the suppressing and daunting darkness and emptiness. The girl pushes her back against the wall and covers her ears.

She can't close her eyes, because she'll see her. She can't listen to the silence, because she'll hear him. Every day that's passed, every second that's gone on, is like an eternity stretching across the universe. Light at the end of the tunnel? Such a lie. Rainbow after the storm? Are you kidding? Warmth after the rain? Don't be stupid.

Even death won't accept her. Even though that's all she wants anymore.

Miki opens her mouth and screams. She kicks her legs every direction and screams with all of her lungs against the darkness. She screams and screams and strikes the wall. She screams because it's all she can do anymore. She screams.

"Please hear me!" Her voice is inhuman. She screams for him. He saved her once, he'll have to come again.

Oliver will come again.

She screams.

He'll come for her.

He has to.

Because if he doesn't…

The darkness will.

Just then the door to the cell opens and light falls into the room no bigger than a bathtub. Miki is bound to the walls with chains of the heaviest iron, her hair spilling out behind her like a stream, her eyes large and fearful, her pupils consumed entirely by a swimming ring of red. Her skin is paler than death, her body more fragile than a feather, than paper. Her bones protrude and her ribs stick out of her naked skin like mountains in a field. She looks like a skeleton.

With a body too weak to move, lungs too weak to scream, eyes too strained to cry, she turns her head up to face the small square of light in the ceiling almost twenty feet high. She can barely make out the flash of light on glasses.

Her mind bends for his face, his eye, burned and grey, skin shriveled and long dead compared to his other swimming amber one, filled with so much pain.

He had grabbed her hands by the wrists, the blood falling like rain on the two. Then he collapsed and spoke, his voice raspy and dead.

"As long as you're here… I'd die again and again to see you smile." His other eye, his now, only eye filled with tears and he collapsed.

She raises-raised-will raise- her hand, and grabs his wrist, she squeezed it and buries her face into his shoulder. The memory bends and burns until nothing is left. That was it… it's gone now. It's not him. Miki screams, and no sound comes.

I'm so close… how many times is a million?

The starvation, the insanity, the dehydration, it all crashes like a wave, eating her eyes until the only thing left is a chasm in her heart. And in that last second before death at the hands of this man, yet again, a voice reaches her on the last moment of oblivion.

The panel to the top of her cell twenty feet up closes and once again the insatiable darkness consumes her in the last moment before the dark oblivion of death…

"L-let's play again…"

How soon is again?

Haku covers her mouth to keep from throwing up as Hiyama closes the panel in the floor leading to the cell far underground shrouded in the cold and dark.

"That was…"

"Marvelous?" He finishes, throwing his arms out on either side of him and grinning madly, his glasses flashing.

"…Disgusting." She narrows her eyes and Kiyoteru's face turns dark.

"Let's go to my office, now, Master Yowane." He gestures to a few Watchers and the two walk down the long hallway to an office in a corner of the building with glass walls looking over a gentle country side. "Have a seat." Kiyoteru says, sitting in his large plush chair behind a giant oak desk.

Haku stays standing.

"How rude." He says curtly.

"I've come here for a reason." Haku says in a deadpan.

"Of course… to… renew our promise, I suppose." Haku nods, gulping. Hiyama stands and walks past her, locking the door and standing just behind her, his breath running down her neck. Haku shudders in terror.

"I must ask… as I always do," Haku starts, "if you've told."

"If I've told what you've brought into this world?" His lips trail down her neck. "No. Oh, and how is the little Akuma? I hear you took it into your new facility?"

"It's gone, now."

"That's unfortunate. Why have you come for mine?" Haku gulps and takes a step forward away from him.

"Because I have a plan."

"Oh?" Kiyoteru leans against his desk, crossing his arms. "This will be interesting."

"I know how to bring them all down."

Just then a Watcher thumps on the door and, sighing angrily, Hiyama stands and opens it for a female watcher with red hair.

"Master Kiyoteru, a message from the Disciples." She bows her head and Haku gasps slightly. "A message from the lips of The Servant of God." Kiyoteru adjusts his tie and pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

The squeamish looking Watcher awaits a command. "Well, get on with it." Hiyama barks.

"Master, well, a sacrifice has been demanded in the name of The Lord."

"Of how many?" He asks.

The Watcher shifts on her feet. "Ten thousand."

~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~

The curtain on the changing rooms swish open and Gumi walks out, flipping her goggles down over her eyes and tossing Gumo out of the palm of her hand and catching it repeatedly. A black tank top is under a heavy leather jacket and army green skinny jeans, purposely cut at the knee, swish against her legs as she moves.

"Let's go." Len says, nodding at the group, scattered in various places around the department store. Steadily, everyone picks their way through the clothing rack and just as the sales clerk shouts something, the group bolts out of the door and into the immensely crowded city streets illuminated only by the lights of cars and the moon.

"There!" Rin cries, pointing towards a decrepit and abandoned apartment complex looming over the city a few blocks away.

As the group takes off running, IA grips IO by the wrist and the two quickly catch up to the front of the group where Len is leading. He glances down at her to see his reflection thrown back at him from square rimmed glasses much too big for IA's face with zebra stripes on the frame. She frowns like she's impersonating some important business man and Len can't help but snicker at her. IO is wearing huge and thick sunglasses rimmed with fake gems that practically look like they're about to fall off of his face.

A cop car's siren explodes not far behind them and Len diverts into an alley, the group bounding at his heel. Easily, the group completely avoids and loses the police and soon find themselves panting outside of the building, the cold night air stinging them.

Gumi then drops her backpack on the ground and rights herself, panting.

"I'm ready to go." She declares, her face emotionless.

"What?" Len pants, expecting some witty joke to follow.

"I said, 'I'm ready to go.'" She repeats like he's an idiot.

"We just got here." Oliver says, grumbling something under his breath bitterly.

"I said I'm ready. Implying one person, Eye-patch." Everyone turns to stare at her, even IA and IO who are still playing with their glasses.

"What?" Yuuma asks, eyes widening.

Gumi slaps herself in the face and groans loudly. "Do you not speak English! I'm leaving."

"What?" Everyone asks at once.

Gumi sighs deeply. "This has been a long time coming, guys. I've thought it over, there isn't much left for me here… I'm a little tired of the running required with a group. I'd rather go back to the running on my own." She places a gloved hand on her hip and frowns darkly. Before anyone can protest, she turns around and begins walking the direction they came, back towards the towering skyscrapers of the busy city. "Good luck with the 'not killing the world' thing." She calls behind her.

Yuuma lurches forward and grabs her by the shoulder. She whips around instantly and the sound of a slap echoes painfully through the empty lot. Her eyes are narrowed in a rage he's never seen before and in her obscured eyes is a fire too big to put out. Her voice is commanding, deep, harsh, and so unlike her.

"Don't touch me."

"Gumi, you can't just leave!" Rin shouts, jogging forward.

"Rin, I've made up my mind."

"You aren't really leaving, are you?" Len asks, his voice dripping with his apparent confusion.

Gumi nods her head. "This isn't comedy hour, I'm going, Len, you guys don't get to stop me from doing that. I do better on my own… this group stuff is getting a little difficult…" She mutters, putting her hand behind her head.

"Is that meant to be an insult?" Rin hisses through a clenched jaw.

Gumi chuckles emotionlessly. "No. Take it as it is, blondie. I'm going, really, going, now." Gumi gives them a smile that shows no sadness or weakness of any kind, as if she isn't even sad. Walking out of Rin's grip she passes Yuuma and doesn't spare anyone one last glance before moving off into the distance, everyone too shocked to make a move to stop her. At the very end of the street, standing at the base of a four story building, she calls out. "It's been fun!"

She raises Gumo and hooks him on a low rung of a fire escape ladder, pulling it down to herself and climbing up it with surprising ease. She doesn't look back. Not even once as she passes the end of the building and disappears into the dark night sky.

"Did… did she really just go?" Lapis says softly, her voice cracking. Miku whimpers something and Lapis puts a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. After all they've been through, for someone to decide to up and leave hurts more than anything to the teal haired girl.

"Y-yeah… I think she did." Len puts a hand on Rin's shoulder.

At the edge of a skyscraper not too far away, Gumi looks down at the city streets bellow and places a hand on the handle of Gumo, feeling a new emotion wretch up into her throat. She sighs, almost contently, and casts her eyes to the moon lingering in the black abyss stretching over the world.

"Just you, and me." She mutters, running her hand down Gumo's edge.

Then, she cracks her neck and flips her goggles down over her gleaming green eyes, smirking devilishly.

"Oh how good it is to be back."

And with that she throws herself over the side of the building and slides down the side, off into the night, off to fight who knows what in who knows where.

'Cause that's just what she does.

My name… my name is Gumi Megpoid… and… I think, I think this is just fine. Because I've met the people I was meant to meet. And boy, did we have a hell of an adventure.

Maybe I'll live to tell it.

Ah, who am I kidding?

Of course I will.

I know, I know! I'm a terrible person! Don't hurt me!

Why, you ask? Why Gumi? Well, because she's the only one strong enough to walk away. And it was going to happen sooner or later, but I think everyone assumed that if anyone was going to bail, it would be Oliver.
So... SURPRISE! I know, it's a bad one.

Chapter Pole:

About that... mind resending your favorite chapters? I'm too lazy to go find them in your reviews, heheheh~!

~Tiruneko ;3