One of these days, I'll get my schedule fixed up. I've finally gotten everything recorded in Excel, so that should help a little, but...

Anyway, I had to edit the end note of Part 1. Once I get the CR chapters up to date, there's one that lines up with Part 1, and I'd forgotten about it. Whoops.

Well, on to the next thing, while I figure out what method of torture I'm going to inflict on Dark.

Conversation between myself and Tea:

Tea: I need a sarcastic character.
Me: Here, have Dark for a little while. Between him, Jade, and Reighn, I'm drowning in sarcasm over here.
Tea: Are you sure? Okay...
(A few minutes later...)
Tea: You can have him back.
Me: Aw... And I was just starting to get Jade and Reighn under control...

So, yeah. Whenever we get to Part 20? (Or that general area, at least...) You've been warned.

Enough of me rambling. Enjoy!

"Enter, the fluffy doomsday bunnies." –Dark

Chapter 1.3 – A (False) Peace
Part 3

Dark's POV

"Fuck!"

"Oh my..."

"Uh... Do I even want to know?" Luke asked tentatively. And it was no wonder. He'd never seen me this... aggravated... before.

"I was taking a break by one of the storehouses, and I bumped into someone and dropped the pendant Kairi gave me. Apparently, the merchant I bumped into picked it up and put it down in the storehouse, intending to come find me later, only for the storehouse to be raided. In other words..."

"The cheagles took the pendant along with the food?" Tear guessed. I clenched my fists.

"Yeah. I told the guy I'd pick it up on my way through the Cheagle Woods, though. But then he asked me to get something of his that had been stolen as well. As if I really needed to argue with cheagles all day. I can't even understand cheagles. I'd need to have a liger as a translator, and they hate ligers..." I rambled. Tear blinked.

"Wait... You can understand ligers?" she asked. I groaned, picking up my guns and shoving them into their holsters.

"Let's just get going. The sooner we get the mess with the cheagles over with, the sooner I can get to the Northern Forest and relax," I said, already walking out. Luke sighed, following me quietly.

"Um, can I ask you something?" he piped up before we could leave the inn. I turned with a frown, and he pulled the wooden sword out of his scabbard. "I can understand not wanting me to have something really sharp, but..."

I shook my head. "No, you need a proper blade," I agreed, looking at the merchant near the other wall. He seemed to have a few weapons on him, so I walked over to him to ask after a sword. He only had one, though, and after a moment of looking over it, I decided it would do just fine for Luke's sword style. It wasn't that expensive, either, now that I was running a little shorter on money. I'd have to be more careful about funds from here out. I was the only one of the three of us who had any to speak of.

"Here."

Luke turned around in surprise from where he'd been talking to Tear about cheagles and spotted the sword immediately, wasting no time in replacing his practice sword with the real one. I held my hand out for the wooden blade, and he handed it over carefully. I couldn't blame him. It was the one with the mark on the blade where Kairi had hit it, hard.

I was also the only one with a wing pack, apparently, so I slipped the practice sword into it and then turned around. "Let's go..."

Luke and Tear were on my heels. It wasn't such a big deal that we had to make a detour to the Cheagle Woods. We'd have had to go through part of them anyway to get to the Northern Forest. It took us almost an hour of walking to get to the tree line, though. Luke kept stopping to stare at birds or animals on the way, and I ended up loading a few monsters up with fonic bullets a few times.

Once we reached the tree line, I noticed a slightly worn path and stopped, crouching down to get a better look at the prints. Tracking wasn't one of my best skills, but at least I could track. And what I saw concerned me.

Plenty of little cheagle prints, but there were also human footprints that were about the same size as... Sync. And it was one trail of them, too.

"We're not alone," I said, looking up and already getting to my feet. "And we might be picking up someone else along the way."

Tear frowned. "What do you mean?" she asked, looking at the trail with the same confused expression Luke had. I sighed and shook my head.

"I'll explain after we catch up to him. Hopefully before he gets hurt," I replied, my walk becoming brisk. My eyes darted around, and I brushed hair out of my face more than once, becoming more and more irritable as we went. Then I heard the growling.

It was a little off from the liger language, but I could understand bits and pieces of it well enough.

"...tasty...helpless...fun?"

I clenched my jaw and started running toward the growls. Normally, I'd advise someone to head the other direction. In this case...

"Stay back..." Ion ordered weakly as he came into sight. I drew my guns, took aim, and fired.

"Get back!" I yelled as the green-haired boy turned to look at me in surprise. It irritated me, knowing that Ion couldn't fight. Sync had been prepared to do anything to keep himself and his friends alive, and Ion...

Luke grabbed Ion and pushed him toward Tear, who managed to get the boy out of the line of fire while the two of us went to work. Luke and I had sparred before, one time when Van had decided that it would benefit Luke to face off against a long-range fighter, but we'd never gotten the chance to fight together.

Luke wasted no time laying into one of the wolves, while I kept the other two preoccupied. I wasn't trying to kill them, just keep them away from Luke while the redhead fought his own enemy. Once the first wolf had fallen, he turned and helped me take care of the last two. Already weak, they fell even faster.

I hesitated before putting my guns away, looking around for a moment and listening carefully to be sure that nothing was going to jump out at us.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked as Tear and Ion joined us. Ion smiled.

"Yes, thank you. I was worried I might have to use a Daathic Fonic Arte... Hey, you're the three from Engeve yesterday," he said. I blinked. Well, he might look like Sync, but I had to give the other replica credit for managing to at least sound different. I could hear the similarities in voice perfectly, but the way Ion spoke, as opposed to Sync's rougher dialect...

I took a deep breath and smiled a little. At least Sync succeeded in sounding unique. It gladdened me to know I'd always associate that rough attitude with the older replica.

"I'm Luke," Luke said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Luke... That means 'light of the sacred flame' in Ancient Ispanian. That's a nice name," Ion told him. Then the kid turned to Tear, who sighed.

"Locrian Sergeant Tear Grants, First Platoon, Oracle Knights Intelligence Division, under Grand Maestro Mohs' command," she recited.

My first thought was of victory, because I had successfully guessed her rank and division the day before. The second was of reserved defeat, because I'd been hoping I was wrong and Tear wasn't Van's sister.

"Ah, you're Van's younger sister," Ion said, oblivious to me and Luke now. "I've heard of you. This is the first time we've met, isn't it?"

"You're Master Van's sister?!" Luke practically exploded. I blinked and stared at him, wondering just what had warranted that kind of a reaction. "Then what was with you trying to kill him?!"

"Kill him...?" Ion echoed. I saw the look on Tear's face and wasn't sure whether to smile encouragingly or just gape. On the one hand, she'd tried to kill the bastard I suspected had hired my original. On the other...

I knew what it was like, having a family member who hated you and wanted you dead. Worse, I knew the feeling of harming said family member, knowing that it was kill or be killed. Well, I'd never cared for Danté like that, really, but I called him my brother more often than not.

"Sorry, it's nothing, just something between us," Tear tried to excuse herself. I nodded.

"I can respect that."

"Dark! You're just going to let her avoid the question like that? She's his sister, what reason could she have for trying to kill him?!" Luke cried. I leveled a look just short of a glare on the redhead.

"What reason could Danté have to leave me bloody and dying in the factory?" I asked. "What reason could he have to want to take everything I care about away from me?"

Luke's eyes widened in horrified shock. "But..."

"Tear likely has a good reason for wanting Van dead. If I had the evidence to confirm my suspicions, I might have reason myself. But I don't have any evidence, and Danté has never had any reason to kill me other than 'I live.' So next time you want to scream at someone over wanting to kill someone, remember that. There's always someone with a worse reason."

Luke shut his mouth and looked away from me. I'd always been blunt with the redhead. It sickened me, seeing how pampered he was in that manor, how little they bothered to teach him of the outside world. There were things he needed to hear.

"Hey, it's a cheagle!" Ion broke up the tense silence. I followed his line of sight, and wasn't surprised to see a yellow fluff ball standing not far off. Once all four of us had turned toward it, it seemed to realize we had seen it and ran off. I sighed.

"Enter, the fluffy doomsday bunnies," I muttered. Luke gave me a look.

"What was that?"

I shook my head. "Nothing, Luke. Let's just get going."

Ion was already heading after the little monster, so I followed him. He looked up at me after a few minutes. "By the way, I never caught your name," he said. I sighed.

"Dark Daemione," I admitted, waiting for the surprised outburst I knew was coming. He'd find out sooner or later, anyway.

"The assassin who tried to take out Mohs?!"

I blinked. I hadn't expected Tear to be the one protesting.

"He was tricked into it! It was a trap Mohs set up," Luke said, immediately defending me. I couldn't help but smile a little bit.

"True, but I'd have killed him anyway, pissed off as I was when I found out. I wouldn't have minded dying if it meant taking the bastard down with me... And I'm not going to apologize for my attitude toward Mohs," I added, seeing the utterly scandalized look on Tear's face. Ion blinked a couple of times before sighing.

"If that's true, I can't really blame you. You just yelled at Luke about having reasons to want someone dead. If Mohs almost caught and killed you, then I suppose that's an acceptable reason," he said. I shrugged.

"I don't really care, anymore. That life's over, finally. I'm not going back if I can help it," I told him. Then I sighed and jogged up ahead to kneel and check the path. I frowned. Even a cheagle like the one earlier would have left some of this dirt more disturbed... "Damn. Looks like the cheagle from earlier slipped into the underbrush a ways back."

"How can you tell?" Luke asked. I pointed to the trail.

"Earlier, when you asked about how I knew Ion was here, I'd seen his footprints. He's about the same size as Sync, and believe me, I know his footprints. They were fresh, the dirt still too loose to have been in that position long. Now... None of these tracks are less than a few hours old. The dirt's loose from the irregular use of this path, but it's firm enough that we don't notice it right off walking over it," I explained. Luke blinked, and I sighed, expecting that the whole thing had gone right in one ear and out the other. It wouldn't surprise me.

"So, now what?" Tear asked. Ion sighed.

"Cheagles are peaceful and intelligent creatures. Regardless of what you three do, I'm continuing. I need to know what's going on. They wouldn't normally steal food," he said. I frowned.

"What has most of the food been?" I wondered. He looked at me oddly.

"About half of their meat has been taken... Lots of tomatoes, cheese, milk... And eggplant. I remember one farmer complaining that his entire crop of eggplants had been stolen," he said after a moment. I stared at him for a moment before that list morphed into something else, another memory.

"Oh, eww!"

I laughed, folding the mixture again before giving up on using the spoon and sticking my bare hands into the mess.

"Yuck! Dark!"

I just grinned. "Believe me, it looks disgusting to you, but it tastes really good cooked... Or raw, considering that I'm giving half of it to Koran for his dinner tonight," I told the blonde. She held a hand to her mouth, looking like she wasn't sure if she was going to be sick or not. I didn't blame her. Raw meat was gross to stick your hands into if you weren't used to it.

"Damn..."

"What is it, Dark?" Luke asked. I stood.

"Ligers," I answered. "Ligers like meat, but throw in tomatoes or dairy? They'll be in heaven. And eggplant is an especially good way to make a liger happy. I'd know, I used to make a mash for Koran whenever I could. The ingredients? Ion just listed them all off... Well, minus sage. But then, Koran was always a little strange. Most ligers avoid sage like the plague."

Ion's face contorted into a strange expression before he made a hiccupping sound, and I realized that he was both confused and amused. I smiled, and he gave in and laughed. His laugh was different from Sync's, too.

"Why would the cheagles be stealing food that ligers like?" Tear wondered, bringing our attention back to the matter at hand. I sighed.

"Who knows? But the fastest way to find out would be to ask them..."

"The cheagles or the ligers?" Luke asked. I smirked.

"That is a question that would have gotten you a very enthusiastic thumbs-up from Kairi," I told him. "As for the answer... Well, it'd be easier to talk to the ligers, since I can understand them, but we'd have to find liger tracks and follow those to their nest, and... It's not really worth the trouble, with you three involved. So, the cheagles... and hope that we can find some way to communicate with them."

Ion nodded. "Their nest is probably just ahead, anyway. The ligers would be further away, if they're even in this forest at all," he agreed. "I'm still trying to figure out why there would be ligers here at all."

I frowned. "There was a fire further north, in territory I usually avoid. I usually make the crossing to the eastern territory on the Cheagle Woods side of the river, because the southern liger clan is touchy. Even a single pack would be more than enough to wipe out Engeve if they felt like it. Let's hope it's not them."

Fun Fact: Koran's mash? My mom made meatloaf like that one time. It actually tasted pretty good, despite not looking at all appetizing when she put it in the crock pot. (She hasn't tried it again since, but oh well.)