Mokuba

I didn't stop for Seto. My lungs felt full of jello or some other thick and unnatural substance. I wasn't tired, but I had already started panting. My Seto wasn't a killer. My brother couldn't do that.

"Mokuba. Stop."

I spun around, leaning on one crutch to propel and support myself, and keep from tumbling over. Kuriboh paused to my left, just past the end of our house. We didn't have any street lamps on our road, so I had to squint through the dim light coming from the open door.

"No, you stop. Just stop."

Kisara had followed him outside. She grabbed his arm, holding him near the house. She kept one foot inside, as if afraid to leave. Seto glared at the hand every couple of seconds, but said nothing about it.

"This is our only option."

He was talking down to me. It was the same tone he used to use when explaining a simple subject to an employee. Not just any employee, but the really dumb ones or the new hires. His gaze leveled on me in an unspoken understanding. We couldn't actually say anything about his sudden announcement. Although Kuriboh and Kisara were the least threatening members of our household, they still couldn't be allowed to know anything. I wished I hadn't been told anything.

"Find another way."

"This is the way."

"You can't do this."

Seto tried to step closer, but Kisara pulled him back. When he turned to her, she whispered, "I'm so sorry."

"Mokuba, stop acting like a stereotypical teenager and come back in the house."

"I'm sorry you think my feelings are cliché. I'm going."

I stepped back onto the street. My head began to shake while I continuing moving away. Seto wanted to kill the girl beside him. She was standing there, apologizing to him, holding him, and he wanted to kill her. My brother wanted to kill someone. Not just someone, but a bunch of someones. He wanted to kill someone who loved him. Seto wanted to kill.

"Please, Mokuba. It's dark and it's late. Come inside."

I couldn't remember a time when Seto had said please. It shook me for a second, but not enough to keep me from backing away even more. What he wanted to do to the monsters was wrong. Seto was wrong for one of the first times I could remember.

"Mokuba," Seto started, struggling in Kisara's hold. "Don't go."

By that point, I was almost far enough away that I couldn't hear him speaking. He didn't yell. His voice was loud, but not at a higher volume than he needed to make sure that I could hear. He pulled against Kisara, who continued mouthing apologies. She wasn't the one who needed to apologize.

Kuriboh flew next to me, silent. I figured that if he didn't grumble or growl, he was fine with me leaving the house so late. But moving down the sidewalk took a long time. My big exit wasn't as dramatic when I stayed within view of the house for about five minutes. I almost considered ditching the crutches, but stuck with them. Walking around my bedroom wasn't a good indicator of how I would do long distance. Not that I knew how far I'd be walking or anything. I didn't want to go back until I figured out how to stop him.

Our neighborhood bordered the edge of the main city. I thought about staying within the neighborhood, but then, if Krin and Kara got back, they might come looking for me. I couldn't let Seto convince them to drag me back. He would probably send Kisara. She would do it for him because she loved him. All he would do for her was kill her.

The main city was no brighter than the neighborhood. Almost every other street light was out or the poles damaged. It made the buildings and alleys dark. Everything was shadowed. With my slow speed and the darkness, I felt like I was skulking through the city. It was too quiet.

On a few corners, soldiers loitered. They used their guns for support as they leaned to either side. They were stationed in groups of two or three. I avoided the first few groups, but turned a corner and met with two of them.

"You shouldn't be out so late, kid."

The first spoke to me while narrowing his eyes at Kuriboh. One of the soldiers lifted his gun a little higher. Kuriboh didn't move beside me.

"Even if you do have an escort," one of them added.

Pointing ahead, I told them, "I'm heading home now."

"Get on that."

I nodded. "Yes sir."

Kuriboh moved closer to me, his hair brushing against my bare arm. I should have grabbed a jacket off the rack before I stormed out. It was still early in October, but the air had gotten cold. Kuriboh's hair tickled my arm, making my own hairs stand up.

I shrugged off. I took the first perpendicular street, just to get out of sight. My biggest goal, aside from deciding what to do about Seto, was to put distance between the soldiers and myself. They might try to kill Kuriboh if we stayed in the area too long.

Seto couldn't really want to kill them. Seto couldn't have murder in him. He was all I had. I knew that our situation, living with the monsters, wasn't preferable. And yeah, it would be nice to go back to how things were before the portal. I missed school and helping Seto at KaibaCorp. I knew that Seto missed being at KaibaCorp. He missed being important. He really missed technology. But that wasn't a reason to kill anyone. They might have hurt Seto, and me, but that was in the past. Kisara was trying to change. Kuriboh was being more cooperative. They didn't deserve death.

Pegasus kidnapped me and Seto didn't want to kill him. Maybe he wanted to, but he never made the plan to kill him. Well, maybe he had a plan, but Seto didn't follow through. He was going to follow through with the monsters. And Marik kidnapped me too, but Seto didn't kill him. He had every opportunity to kill him, but instead let him compete in a tournament. They played in a tournament together after Marik kidnapped me and hung me from a moving helicopter. This couldn't be any worse.

I paused to look around the area. We lived right on the edge of town, so the more I walked, the closer I got to the larger buildings. I expected to find extra soldiers toward the center of Domino, but the farther I walked, the less of them I saw. They shouldn't have focused on the edges of town. Most of the monsters stuck to the middle. The portal was in the old library, located right in the middle of the city. They couldn't protect us from the monsters if they cowered away from them.

Seto wasn't cowering. He was planning to fight them, like a fight to the death. Seto couldn't want to kill them all. I couldn't accept that. If he got what he wanted, when I went for walks, I wouldn't have Kuriboh with me. I would go back to having a room to myself. I would be alone all the time. As much as I disliked the things Kuriboh had done to me in the past, I didn't think the proper response was death. Death wasn't never the answer.

I heard something coming from somewhere far off to my left. I stopped walking long enough to listen for a more specific sound description. There was screaming. It didn't sound like frightened screams. The pitch was too low for fear. Celebratory was closer. But that wasn't it. I didn't know if screams could be classified as naturally wild, but these were closer to that than anything else.

The slave market last month had taught me a serious lesson. Although I was curious about the noise, I stayed away from it. Even if the screams were being created by a group of drunk people, it was best for me to stay far away. I glanced around, trying to figure out exactly where I was. I couldn't find anything familiar. Most of the time, I was glad that Kuriboh couldn't speak. He would be irritating if he could talk, but this was one of the rare moments that I needed his help getting home. I was probably only a few blocks from where I started, but I hadn't been keeping up with the turns I took since leaving the house. If there was a street sign around, that would help. I knew some of the streets in Domino.

I kept going forward, looking up for a sign and not at my feet like I had been. We were still in Domino, the city I had grown up in. I should know my way around much better. I supposed that was the problem with having a driver take me everywhere. I didn't have time to learn the city.

It was too dark to find KaibaCorp in the skyline. I usually used the building as a landmark. Right now, my only landmark was the screaming, and that was just a location that I didn't want to go anywhere near. I should have turned three, or maybe four times since leaving the house. And the time after bumping into the soldiers.

I wandered for a while, then more. The while turned into an hour, or something close to that. I had to stop a few times to rest. After all the time spent at home, I had gotten out of shape. My ankle hurt. The crutches pressed against my underarms, and they started bruising. I hadn't used the crutches for such an extended time before. It didn't take long for everything to start hurting.

"You don't know where we are, right?"

I had asked Kuriboh the same question every time we turned a corner. Finding the street signs didn't help. All the roads I knew were beside KaibaCorp. I hadn't gotten close to the office yet, or I might have recognized something. The darkness made it harder. Whenever the sun came up, I knew that I could find some marker to get me back. But having very little lighting, and trying to avoid the screaming, made it difficult to get any footing. The sun wouldn't be coming up for a long time.

Kuriboh growled something, but if he knew anything, I couldn't understand it. Sighing, I kept walking down the current street. I had gotten a little closer to the sounds, which I knew was wrong, both because it was dangerous, and because I was going the wrong direction. My attention must have slipped. I didn't remember when I turned onto the street I was standing on. I really needed to stop making turns.

I stopped and looked around.

"This is the wrong way. I'm going back."

When I did, I heard something else, closer than the screaming.

"-Six more of those matching humans."

I ducked back into an alley, trying to be quiet with the crutches. The alley was too wide, and was the one place in the entire city of Domino that felt well-lit at midnight. I had no shadows to melt into. The only way to get hidden would be to run, and I couldn't very well do that with the crutches. Even worse, I didn't know where the voice was originating. I had a vague idea that they were coming up from behind me. The constant screaming threw off my sense of hearing.

Kuriboh had followed me off the sidewalk. His eyes were wide, like he understood the implication of the new voice. The use of the word human made it obvious that it was a monster. The compromise meant that I shouldn't be afraid of them, but I was.

Using the wall for support, I leaned over, placing the crutches on the ground. In a few days, I would be cleared to walk without them. It was a bit soon, but I didn't have any choice. Risking damage seemed like the best option so that I could sneak away. The back of the wide alley didn't dead-end, so I walked deeper, hoping to connect to a different street.

But I could still hear the voice, joined by another.

"We've been scaring most of them away."

"They still linger about. It's funny watching them use those weapons."

I was almost to the end. I walked backward, so Kuriboh flew in front of me. He pressed against my chest, pushing me back, as if to hurry my process. I grabbed his hair to help steady myself.

"It's funnier watching them burn."

At the end, I looked in either direction and found that the path that I would have chosen, the one heading back in the right direction, ended with a brick wall. It wasn't super high, but there was no way that I could get over it. I had to go closer to the screams to get away from the voices approaching too quickly for comfort.

With a building between the monsters and myself, I wanted to feel safe. It didn't feel far enough. I couldn't hear them anymore, so I didn't know where they were. I kept moving, trying to open the doors on the buildings as I came to them, hoping to find one unlocked. The first was dead bolted. I spotted a second door on the adjacent building. Every time my boot touched the ground, it sounded like I was stepping on a gong. I knew that I was being quiet, but it was hard to convince myself of that. Kuriboh kept helping me move. I just wished that I was moving in the right direction.

The screams were getting louder. Along with them, I started picking out other noises: crackling, stomping, scratching, begging. And the smell that filled the air was smokey, but more than that, other, really bad odors mixed in. If I could press a hand to my face to cover my nose, I would have. It was like breathing in rotting eggs, or maybe rotting eggs that were being burnt. I turned my face down, like that would help, wanting the smell to go away. But the more I walked to get away from the voices, the worse it got.

I shouldn't have left the house. I could have stormed into my bedroom and locked the door. That could have been dramatic. It would have been much less stupid.

The alley I was walking in ended with exits to the right and left. There were a few metal garbage cans pushed together at the edge of the building, right next to the back door. I tried the door, but couldn't turn the knob. I peeked around the corner, then threw myself back against Kuriboh and the wall. My breaths welled up and stuck in my throat as tears threatened. Now that I wasn't moving, I could cover my face, against the smell and the emotion.

The source of the attacking odor was the bonfire built in the middle of the street. Dozens, if not hundreds, of monsters swarmed around it, both in human form and natural. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the fire, and the charred bodies dangling over it. A few bodies littered the ground, with monsters tearing into them. Even from yards away, I could hear the ripping sound of bones being rip from their joints. They had rigged some of the broken street lamps with a cable to hang the bodies over the fire that covered half of the street.

I had to get home.

When I tried to take a step, Kuriboh pushed me back. He stared up at me and lifted a claw at my face. With the sound the monsters were making, I knew they couldn't hear me. And the odor, although horrible, kept them from smelling me. I would be safe in that spot for now.

"We have to go." I still spoke under my breath, just to be safe.

Kuriboh shook his head, which was basically shaking his body. He used both clawed hands to hold me against the wall.

"Please, let's just try to get home."

Kuriboh pointed toward the bonfire and shook. Then he pointed the other way and shook, reaching up to touch my ear. I closed my eyes, as if that would help me hear better. It kind of did. The voices from before had returned. Since my back was against the wall, I slid down to hide behind the garbage cans.

I was trapped, surrounded by garbage and monsters who enjoyed eating people. When the tears pressed this time, I couldn't stop them from rolling out. I shouldn't have left. I just wanted Seto to be here. He would know what to do. He could get me out. There wasn't a way out, but Seto would still be able to find one. Seto was smart and rational.

I pressed my nose between my palms, squeezing it closed, and breathed through my mouth. When that didn't work to stop the smell from coming through, I held my breath and pulled my shirt up over my face. Then I went back to pressing my nose shut.

Kuriboh squeezed in next to me. I didn't look at him. If anything happened to us, it would be my fault for wanting to get out of the house so late at night. I just killed us. I was mad at Seto for mentioning killing them and I had done just that.

Counting the time felt too long. I stopped somewhere around seventeen minutes and three new screamers. I didn't want to think of where the monsters were getting the bodies from. They weren't bodies before being hung over the fire. They were alive. I could hear them begging as they died. If any one of them walked into the alley, I would be one of the burnt corpses.

I promised myself that if they found me, that I wouldn't beg. I had gone through enough degrading events in my life to let myself do that, but I knew that I was lying to myself. Of course I would beg, but I still made the promise. Seto wouldn't plead to his enemies for anything, especially the enemies that he hated the most. He would be strong like I should be strong. But I would end up begging to live, just like the few people I could hear.

Kuriboh rubbed my arm. His movements were slow and methodical. He couldn't speak, but after spending so much time with him, I understood his actions. He was comforting himself and me. I had stopped all movements, but Kuriboh still rocked forward and back. He was just as worried as I was.

If they would just stop screaming, I could hear if the voices down the alley had stopped. If those monsters were gone, then I could sneak back and go home. If I could just get back home, then I would never leave. I would stay at home with Seto, and Kuriboh, and Kisara, and Kara, and Krin, and I would never leave ever.

Kuriboh rocked too hard and bumped one of the garbage cans. The metal container bumped into the one beside it. The can teetered for a second, and then steadied.

"No, no, no, no, no, no-" I chanted under my breath. The wild, celebratory screams stopped. The dying screams went on, but all the others stopped. They had heard it. They heard Kuriboh which means that they had heard me. The monsters were going to come to drag me into the fire. I was going to die without Seto. Seto would never find out what happened to me. No one would know what happened to me. I was going to die in a fire and probably end up begging and humiliating myself. The last thing I said to Seto was-

I didn't even remember what the last thing I said to him was. We had argued. He asked me not to leave. I left like the stupid, stereotypical brat Seto had called me. They were going to burn me and eat me.

"I'll check it out."

One of them was coming over. It would find me, then drag me out. Maybe if I begged they would kill me first. I didn't want to burn alive.

I saw the shadow before I saw the monster. The shadow was human form, so I could talk to it and know it could hear me. Maybe Kuriboh could go, and he could find some way to tell Seto what happened. I had never heard of a monster killing another one. They probably did. But if they left Kuriboh alive, he could tell Seto.

Seto was going to be alone for the rest of his life. He wasn't going to have anyone because I was going to be eaten.

I leaned in to catch Kuriboh's eyes. "You have to tell Seto, okay? Tell him I'm so sorry." I tried to push him away, to make him leave, but he stuck his claws through my shirt and wouldn't budge.

The footsteps stopped. I looked away from Kuriboh, barely able to see anything through the tears I had quit holding back. Even through the blur, I saw two glowing blue eyes staring down at me. The blue was familiar. Blinking, I realized who I was staring at. The black in his hair let me know that I wasn't talking to Krin.

"Kray?"

Kray touched a finger to his nose, then pointed it at me. "Seto's brother?"

I nodded.

He shook his head and chuckled. "Do you two just go looking for dangerous situations?"

He had blood on his jaw.

"Who is it?" another voice called. I heard footsteps coming in our direction. I couldn't take my eyes off of Kray as he looked down at me.

"It's a Kuriboh. Why don't you join us, brother?"

Kray reached out to Kuriboh, leaning forward. He barely moved his mouth as he said, "You're clear to the left. Get lost."

"Thank you."

"Now."

Standing up with the boot and no crutches was difficult. I struggled to get up, especially without making any sound. Kray groaned and pulled Kuriboh toward him, bumping him into the trash cans to make enough noise that I could get to my feet. Kray led away Kuriboh without another word, leaving me to go home alone.

I edged around the trash cans so I wouldn't make noise. I stayed close to the brick wall where there was the greatest amount of shadow. The wall also helped for support since I was walking unassisted. There was no time to go back for my crutches, so I would have to make it home without them, if I could remember where home was.

Home. Home was somewhere. Home had to be somewhere.

I glanced out to one of the streets, making sure that it was empty of all monsters, not just the ones that ate people. Seto used to do this all the time. Before being chosen, he would go out almost every night to those meetings or to restock our kitchen. He would be able to do this. Seto knew what he was doing. He was smart. He wouldn't let himself run into a group of people-eating monsters.

Staying on the streets was my only choice. Home had to be somewhere in front of me. If I just kept on straight, I had to run into it. Before getting stuck near the monsters who ate people, I had tried this street before. I knew that it didn't lead to the house. I closed my eyes and tried to draw out a mental picture of the city. The city planners for Domino didn't lay it out in even lines. Some of the street corners met to form triangles. There were a few roundabouts with five exits instead of four. Since it was dark, I couldn't get any sense of direction.

I really missed having a cell phone.

I couldn't stop moving, even if I was going in the wrong direction. I walked toward an edge of town. Even if it wasn't the right place, maybe I could just follow a street out there to find home. My largest priority centered around distance. If those monsters ran out of bodies, they might go looking for more. I doubted that Kray would be willing to help me a second time. He was a part of that group.

Seto hadn't been told about Kray's group. The other dragons mentioned that there was a group, and that the group was dangerous, but they never told him exactly why Kray should be avoided. At least, they never said anything in front of me. Seto might not know.

I didn't do anything to help those people. They were just hanging there and I hid in an alley, planning what I would do if they found me. There were probably still people being killed. What if they started killing people rather than having a slave market?

I had to stop before I made myself sick. What if they turned the slave market over to those monsters? The slave markets were supposed to be shut down, but if this sort of thing was being allowed, then maybe they kept secret markets. I didn't get to leave the house much and after tonight I would never leave again so I could just be overlooking the markets because I never had looked for them. The monsters hadn't changed. The compromise hadn't made anything any better. This was so much worse than anything I could have imagined.

They were monsters, in every possible meaning of the word.

I heard something and almost fell to the ground. I didn't have anywhere to hide. There was no alley nearby or anything to hide behind. I had a wall to crumble against and wait. I pressed my hands to my face to hide my breathing. I didn't know where the sound had come from, so my focus couldn't focus anywhere and was worthless. My eyes squeezed close, forcing out a tear. I was never going to make it home.

It sounded like an animal running. Light footsteps moving at a heightened speed across the pavement, small clacks, like claws striking down. It ran toward me; the sound kept growing louder.

Please be a dog. Please be a dog.

The clacks slowed when it got closer to me. The pace turned into a walk. I made myself open my eyes to see a wolf staring at me. Its head cocked to the side. Nostrils flared as it smelled the air. It was too big to be a normal wolf, and its eyes were different colors. One was blue, but the other was red. Both glowed. Talons, or claws, or maybe horns grew out of one shoulder, and they were every bit as sharp as the yellow fangs surrounding the dripping tongue.

The air around its paws turned black, oozing upwards in liquid shadow. The blackness creeped over its body. Right before it was covered, I saw a tear in its messy, black fur where raw, bubbly skin showed through.

The blackness faded, leaving a child. The eyes were still mismatched, but rather than having fur, his skin was all the infected slime. Pieces of it fell from him as he walked forward.

"You're scared." His teeth were still yellow.

"A little."

He smiled, but when he did, his lips turned down instead of up. I pressed backwards against the wall, wishing that I was still standing upright. I didn't sit all the way down, but was partially collapsed against the bricks.

"I'm terrible," he said. The smile stayed on. "I'm always this sick. I die and come back, and I'm always sick."

A piece of decay fell from his elbow. He looked a little older now. Before he had looked younger than me, but now I would guess he was about the same age.

"You're scared of me."

"I'm scared of everything right now."

The teenage monster stepped closer. "Are you chosen?"

I nodded, then kept nodding. I didn't want him to kill me, and he was probably a dark monster, like Kuriboh. "A Kuriboh."

"I kill everyone I touch."

He reached out to me, bent and cracked fingers just inches from my face. Then one of his fingers fell to the ground, connecting with a muted plop. I broke my gaze from his hands and looked back to his face, now significantly older than me. I had to lift up my head to make eye contact.

"Where is your little Kuriboh?" His hand got closer.

"He left."

The movement stopped. The four-fingered hand froze right in front of my nose. The aging progressed much more quickly than it had before.

"Do you have family?"

I could see the appraisal in his eyes, the eyes which began to sink in his face.

"My parents are dead."

The hand moved back. His fingers curled in and another fell. It was his thumb this time. As he stared at me, half of his face started to sag, threatening to drip off, just like the rest of him. His body was so ruined that I didn't realize before that he was naked.

"You have no one?"

I pushed Seto out of my thoughts to lie. "I'm alone."

He was old by that point. The glowing eyes died, all light leaving them. He stumbled a step away.

The rest of the fingers fell as he lifted up his palms. His dead eyes looked tired. I found that I couldn't remember what his face looked like when he was young and smiling. It hadn't been more than a minute, but he was gone as he stood there. The darkness was reborn at his feet.

"No one should have to be alone."

His bones all broke at once, sending him crumpling to the ground. The blackness swam over his piled body and absorbed him. I slid around, scooting down the length of the wall to get away. I couldn't run. I ended up limp-jogging along the wall, pushing myself forward with a shaking hand.

I tried the handle of every shop door I came to. None of them were unlocked. They couldn't still be in business. I just needed one door to be open so I could hide somewhere until the morning. The next door I came to wiggled a little around the dead bolt. I stopped and shook the door, willing it to just open. I put all my weight on my good leg and used my entire body to force the door. The dead bolt held.

Falling forward, I hit my head against the glass door. I had been crying so much since leaving the house, but I couldn't hold back anymore. I hated crying. It was such a pointless reaction and would do me no good. But I just kept crying on the glass door. I shouldn't be here. I should be trying to convince Seto to quit working for the night or staying up late to do homework. I should be trying to find a present for Seto's birthday because he was so hard to shop for that it took a full month of planning to come up with a decent gift. We weren't supposed to be prisoners.

I ran my arm across my face to wipe away the tears. They keep falling out, but at a slower rate. I had to get back to Seto.

I started down the sidewalk again. I didn't have the strength to run anymore. My ankle felt like I had broken it all over again, except I could still stand on it. Hopefully I hadn't damaged it enough that I would have lasting problems. It had been broken badly enough.

The smell of smoke in the air dissipated. I had put several misshapen blocks between me and the pyre of dead people. I hadn't seen any soldiers since those original few that told me to go home and I ignored. But when I turned a corner, I saw one standing alone. He pointed the gun at me when he saw me.

My hands lifted. Even in the low light, I could see them shaking.

"Can you tell me where I am?" I asked.

"South Domino. Ford Street. Why are you out so late?"

We lived in South Domino.

"I'm lost. I can't figure out where my house is, which is stupid because I've lived here for years but I've always been driven everywhere or used the KaibaCorp building to find my way around and now I can't find it because it is dark and I just want to go home."

He lowered the gun to point at the ground rather than my face. "Where do you live?"

"Mell Street?"

Any balloon of hope I might have had at finally finding someone else who could help me popped when he shook his head. I walked closer to him anyway. I felt safer being near someone who didn't want to eat me or touch me to kill me.

"Are you stationed here alone?" I asked.

"Two guards per door. Partner's inside helping a nurse carry something."

"Is this the hospital?"

I glanced up. Through the dim light from one working street lamp, I could make out the outline of the building and the sign with a red cross. I was here the other day. Joey walked me from the house to here and back. That meant that home was only a few minutes away. I could go home.

I pressed my fingers against my eyes so I didn't cry again.

"I know where I am."

Home would be three streets down and one over. The hospital was recognizable in the daytime because of the lighter color of the brick. But at night, I had to pay close attention to make out the color. If he hadn't said anything, I would have kept wandering without anything to help.

"Thank you."

I crossed the street, feeling my energy coming back as I did. I knew how to get home. I just had to make it another few blocks.

It seemed easy enough. But once I took the right turn, putting me out of sight from the soldier at the hospital, I heard a voice. It was a harsh whisper coming from the road ahead. It came from an outlined shadow moving through the shadows. The street was all houses, but mine was a fourth of a mile down. There were no buildings to hide behind anymore, just the unkept landscaping in front of the nearest house. I stepped behind a small tree, less than a foot wide. Maybe the figure couldn't see at night either.

I waited, peering around the trunk, watching for the figure to disappear. But it didn't. It kept moving forward, calling out in the sharp tones.

As it got closer, I started to feel my heart beating in rapid pulses. It would be so unfair to die this close to home. I hated this world. Nothing it handed out was fair anymore.

The shadow figure was about three houses down when I started to be able to understand what it was saying. Not it, the voice was male. The shadow figure was walking down the street, calling out as quietly as one could call out, "Mokuba?"

"Krin?"

I stepped out from my hiding place and waited for Krin to reach me. When he was close enough that I could confirm that it was him, I fell forward and hugged him. He pushed back the moment I started to touch him.

"You had better not have been hiding there all night."

"I ran into Kray."

He let out an "Oh" of understanding. "Then you should get inside."

Krin helped me walk to the house by holding out his arm for me to grab. I shivered against him, which was embarrassing because I knew he could feel it. When we got to the front door, he pushed it open. I didn't know why it had been left standing ajar, but I could hear Seto and Kisara arguing. They weren't in the living room.

"You have to lie down, Seto."

"Let me up, Kisara."

"Krin said."

"I don't care what Krin said. Let me up and get your hands off of me."

"He's going to be okay."

Krin led me to Seto's bedroom door. It stood open. He shook my hand off of his arm before I walked inside. Seto couldn't see me at first. Kisara knelt over him, holding his shoulders to the pile of blankets they slept on.

"Seto?"

Kisara let Seto push her away. He started to push himself up, but I dove down before he got the chance. Our arms wrapped around each other and I burst into tears, worse than before. I buried my face against his neck and cried. I could hear my sobs, loud, which I hadn't allowed myself to be all night. Seto ran his fingers through my hair and waited for me to quiet down. I felt his breaths against my ear. I had made it home. I was okay. Seto would make sure everything was okay.

"I'm- I'm-"

I couldn't breathe. Now that I was safe, I just kept seeing those bodies hanging over the fire and the fingers falling off the rotting hand. That smell, I felt like it still clung to me, sticking in my hair and on my clothes. Seto would be able to smell it on me. I would smell it on me forever.

"I'm so sorry."

"Mokuba. You are okay. Do you hear me?"

"Seto, you were right."

Seto placed his hands on either side of my face and moved me back just far enough to look in my eyes. There was a slight tremor in his hands. He dipped his head once and touched his forehead to mine. His forehead was warm and sticky.

I heard Kisara and Krin leave the room.

"You were right, Seto. You were right. I'm so sorry."

Hello, All. I have bunches to say, but I'm not going to post it here. Go check out my blog (Link on profile) for review responses, chapter insight, and special information about when I am going to update next. Because I have a schedule now.

Preview: A new POV and a look at how the other side is taking the compromise.