Ren Amamiya heard Makoto's scream, felt her pulled off the horse behind him, her arm slipping off his waist. He frantically reached behind him, but his forearm collided with a ghoul's face as the creature scrambled in the water at the horses's flank- it bit down on Ren's wrist, its teeth entirely impotent against the plasteel armor plates embedded in Ren's clothing. But it forced Ren to abandon the reins with his other arm and smash his fist into the offending ghoul, crushing the creature's skull. It sank lifelessly into the water, and in an instant, several more ghouls were thrashing over the corpse.

In growing panic, Ren spun his head, trying to locate Makoto, his dark vision revealing the night in greyish, monochromatic clarity. At least a thousand ghouls were pouring from the forest, stacking up and hesitating at the water's edge like some great gawking festival crowd of gleaming-eyed corpses. Some few were looking at him, fewer still were floundering in the deeper water just behind Ren to join the ones that, at this very moment, were clawing at the horse's rear flank.

A much greater majority of the ghouls were focused intently on a patch of splashing and turbulent water, a tangle of ghoul limbs, human limbs, and Makoto's desperate gasps for air before one of her several ghoul attackers incidentally pulled her under. Ren saw a gleam of steel from the blades in Makoto's gauntlets and one of the ghouls in the deep water near her suddenly went limp. But there were two more, and some of the spectators in the ghoul crowd were already becoming excited enough to flounder forward into the shallows. If enough of the swarm herded forward into the water, they would quickly and literally walk atop their fellows to get to Makoto.

Ren realized he could blow down most of the ghouls, and perhaps shove Makoto further downriver and out of reach. He reached out his left arm, palm out: "Morgana! Magarudyne!"

Nothing happened.

Because Morganna was back in Tock-Yo. In a cat's body. Teaching two teenagers how to use persona.

Fuck!

"R- Reee-gggghn!" came Makoto's frightened cry. Water in her mouth as she came to the surface again, slipping quickly downriver, but alarmingly closer to the ghoul-side of the river.

"Get to deeper water!" Ren shouted.

Ren drew his pistol and urged the horse forward, forcing it to complete the fording of the water to get to the otherside. It would not help Makoto if he got swarmed by the ghouls who were after him. Ren's blade and Ren's strength meant nothing if he was at the bottom of a pile of frenzied ghouls with no point of leverage. Ren aimed his pistol, and fired a careful shot.

POP!

The most daring of the shore ghouls, a lanky creature which had wandered in thigh deep after Makoto, fell limply into the water and began floating downstream. The ghouls just behind it sprang backward in instinctive fear- hopefully thinking, if they even did think, that the water somehow killed the leader. The entire swarm backed off a bit, but shuffled downstream, making focused effort to parallel Makoto's floundering progress in the deeper water.

Ren had never known ghouls behave in such a way, but then again, he'd never encountered a swarm this large. Hadn't his Mother taught him and his siblings about ghouls? Ren's mind raced backward in time, trying to pull out useful info from the homeschooling he'd barely attended to- meanwhile, he felt the the hooves of mechanical horse miss the bottom of the river as it began swimming mode. He kept his eyes on Makoto's position. She wrestling one final ghoul in the deep water, but she seemed well enough. Ren could not smell her blood, and he knew no single ghoul was a threat to her. He would finishing crossing the river and ride along the other bank and pick Makoto up when she made it over the other side.

Makoto's entire world was a pitch black mixture of icy water and clawing limbs. Her armor pulled her down, the chaotically floundering ghouls pulled her down, their claws and teeth occasionally scraping on her boiled leather, her chainmail scarf, her masked helm. In return, she pummeled them with stabbing punches with her fist blades, her motions feeling sluggish in the water. And with a frantic leap from the stony buttom of the water, she could pop her head out for a wonderous brief moment of air- but her heart was thundering in her head, she could see an ocean of gleaming red eyes staring at her in the darkness.

She was going to die! Where was Ren? She pushed herself to the surface.

"R- Reee-gggghn!" she attempted, but a ghoul arm pulled her back under.

She heard Ren yell back, his voice muffled by the water in her ears. "..to! …eeper…!"

Makoto found herself entirely submerged, and she could feel a flailing body next to hers. She stabbed it and pushed it away, finally free of attackers. She thrust her arms upwards, but did not feel the expected break of night air on her face. She kicked with her legs, but her feet did not touch anything at all. She floundered, realizing she had accidently shoved herself deeper into the river, and now her armor was pulling her down. She panicked in the darkness, in the swirl of water, not even sure which way was up.

Her lungs began burning. A quick logical thought entered into her mind like lightning: ditch the armor and float! She slipped out of her gauntlets, and as unwilling as she was to leave them, she cast them loose. She pulled frantically at her boots, armored and filled with water as they were, and slipped them off, abandoning them to the current. The chainmail scarf, cast away. She tried to swim, felt the movement of water over her face, and kept trying in the direction she thought was up, and with lungs bursting with desperation, finally broke the surface and sucked in a desperate gulp of air. She had a brief vision of a darkness filled with hundreds of gleaming red eyes just off to her left, there was a new roaring of moving water, and then she was sucked underwater in a sudden rapid.

Dark water suddenly churned around her, she collided with some rocks, but they were too slippery to grasp and the weight of water shoving her much too strong. She fought to the surface again, gasped, red eyes leaping along behind her, and then she was under again, tumbling. Her head slammed into a stone, dazing her a moment, she raised her arms reflexively to protect her skull as she tumbled through the water. Her forearms absorbed a heavy blow and she tumbled along. She surfaced, gasped. Was sucked under. And suddenly, stopped with a hard tug on her waist. The water pulled at her powerfully, but she could feel some part of her legplates was stuck on something in the darkness. She tried to pull her upper body to the surface, but it was too far out of reach.

Makoto frantically untied the fasteners of her trousers, but with a recent lungful of air, she had presence of mind to slip out her gunbelt before she withered herself out of her tangled pants. She would abandon every bit of equipment she had, except Father's hand cannon. The icy water felt silky on her now bare legs, and the new lack of weight brought Makoto to the surface easily. And allowed her to stay there, taking a few breaths.

She was rapidly going downriver, and she could hear the rapids behind her. There was new roaring in front of her. To her left, a angry swarm of red fireflies kept pace with her progress. The ghoul swarm had not given up. And to her right, she heard a wonderful sound: the precise thuds of galloping horse hooves. But it was strangely higher, like atop some ridge over the river.

"Makoto!" yelled Ren, his voice clear in one of Makoto's ears. "Makoto get towards me! There's a big stone! Ahead and right! Get to it!"

Didn't he know she couldn't see a damn thing?! But she sputtered and swam in the rightward direction as best she could. That was the direction away from the red ghoul eyes, so it seemed like a good idea regardless. Her limbs were starting to feel stiff. Her lips were vibrating with numbness. The cold was getting to her, she knew. Just staying above water was going to become difficult.

Whether she found the stone or the stone found her, it was unclear, but she slapped into it wetly, and grasped the hard surface in the darkness. It was indeed a big stone. The top of it was even dry, and Makoto instinctively scrabbled to climb up onto the dryness. But to her left, the legion of red eyes surged toward her. She yelped and her body froze in a moment of contradictory instructions: she desperately wanted out of the cold water, but she also wanted desperately to flee those eyes.

Then, Makoto drew her Father's gun from the holster she was clutching. This was HER stone now. And no ghoul was gonna take it from her! She aimed the gun at the approaching swarm of eyes, their number narrowing down into something of single-file line coming towards her. She pulled the trigger.

Click.

Shit! The water must have gotten to that one! She pulled the trigger again, the large cylinder rotating in the darkness.

KOOM!

A flash of thunder roared. Makoto had long since been able to keep her eyes open when she fired this massive pistol, so the flash of its discharge revealed an instant of her surroundings. She saw the steep stony walls of a river canyon, maybe twenty feet high. She was grasping a stone in long line of stones that more of less created a breakwater of calmer rapids in the middle of the narrow river. And a horde of ghouls was funneling down onto said breakwater to come eat her. She pulled the trigger again.

KOOM!

KOOM!

With each flash, the line of ghouls was a little bit farther away from her. Red eyes in the darkness were collapsing into the water to flow off into the night. But she had two shots left and she needed perhaps two thousand more after that.

Suddenly, dust puffed into Makoto's eyes, and something landed on the stone next to her head- it sounded like boots on rock. And in the next instant, Makoto felt something terribly strong grasp onto the back collar of her tunic, and hauled her out of the water like a kitten.

"R- ren!" said Makoto, feeling a flood of relief and warmth, and passion for this wonderful, wonderful person. Her bare toes felt dusty stone beneath them, quickly wetting with the cold water running down her bare legs.

"Get to shore!" Ren barked, all business. "Quickly!"

Makoto's warm emotions evaporated in the stark reality of an ongoing crisis. The only thing in the opposite direction was just black nothing.

"Ren! I can't see anything!"

Ren cursed. Makoto turned to look in his direction. Red eyes were practically on top of them. She heard him grunt with physical effort, there was the sound of a blade moving through the darkness, and the closest pair of red eyes abruptly sprang into the sky, spiraled around, and then fell into the water with a plopping noise.

But another pair of eyes was quick to take its place. Ren grunted again, and these eyes simply went out, and something large flopped to a stone. But again, another pair of eyes sprung forward immediately.

Ren roared out words that Makoto did not recognize: "Encheena te!" he shouted. "Sklaveh!"

As one, every glowing red dot in the night suddenly lowered and went back, as if a gentle wind had blown them all slightly, like real fireflies. In that moment, Makoto felt herself snatched up like a bag of grain, her pistol and gun belt clasped in one arm, her other flailing abount until it hooked around Ren's neck. His hat was gone, she noticed for some reason. Then her heart flew into her throat as she flew through the air, brief windy moments punctuated with the sound of Ren's boots hitting stone. Then a crunch of gravel and sand. The shore!

Makoto was beginning to shiver in the cold night air, her body drenched in river water. She still had her boiled leather breastplate on, but it felt like a icy stone wrapped around her body, and she couldn't really feel her feet. But Ren wasn't in a hurry to set her down. He kept running, her body bouncing against his chest, his breath hot against her face. She could hear the splashing and thumping of many more attempts to cross over to this side of the river behind them.

"There's ghouls-" Ren huffed as he ran, "Up this ridge, too. All drawn to excitement of the ones following us."

More ghouls?! A whole other swarm on this side of the water, too? They -had- been lucky in their first few days! What were they going to-?

Makoto saw red eyes above them on the ridge. "Ren! Above!"

Ren cursed. Ran faster for a moment. Then skidded to a stop.

"Makoto! Cave!"

She didn't have time to even question the concept when she felt herself set to the ground, and then slid forward like waxing stone over smooth stone, her armor hissing as Ren's shove sent her scooting into a cooler, echo-filled darkness. She heard Ren's boots on stone behind her. She heard a terribly loud snapping sound, like stone breaking after a long drop, and again. Then rock scraped around on other stone, hit other stone, with Ren grunting all the while. Then all was quiet for a brief moment. Then hundreds of footsteps crunching through stone and gravel could be heard, but very dimly, they slowed, meandered about, stopped- far too many to really discern separately, until after a long period of tense silence in the dark. They moved away and vanished altogether.

She heard a small breath of relief in the darkness.

"Makoto? Are you all right?" said Ren, softly. His voice echoing a bit in the pitch black.

Amazingly, she was. Other than a knock to her head, she had come through all of that unscathed. Oh, there was the multiple doses of mortal terror; however, after the first few times, one came to recover from it quickly. In some ways, it was exhilarating in a some sort of primal way: she'd faced her own death and beaten it! Yet again. With Ren's timely aid. Makoto pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms about them, the wet leather of her tunic less than comfortable on her bare legs, but it was better than nothing. She shivered, physically and spiritually.

"I'm fine. Just cold," said Makoto to the point in the black from whence Ren's voice emerged. Her teeth were audibly chattering, "and blind."

There was a long silence. "I can help with that."

And after a few seconds, a cube of soft blue light shone in the darkness, held in Ren's palm. Their cave was quite a small hollow in the stone, perhaps only ten strides wide in any direction. A tiny pocket of softer stone that the river had chewed into and eddied within at some point in the past, or perhaps during annual flood seasons. A few pillars of stronger rock remained, and one of these was what Ren had somehow struck down with his bare hands for material to clog up the entrance, which was hidden behind a pile of large stones.

The sharp features of Ren's face gained a marble-like cast, and his eyes gleamed silver in the light as he looked into Makoto's eyes. Something about the blue light made that gleam seem more… angelic. Wherein it usually reminded Makoto of Ren's monstrous heritage, suddenly tonight, after all the times he had saved her: it wasn't strange at all. It was… right. She felt a twinge of… something. There was a feeling, deep in her core, that she needed something. She wanted Ren to come closer to her and-

"Makoto. Don't-" said Ren, averting his gaze suddenly.

Makoto felt a lightening of her strange feeling, but only slightly. Was something wrong?

"Don't what?"

"-... look too long into my eyes, right now."

"What? Why? Oh, are you hungry again?"

"Not-" Ren hesitated, then walked towards her with his eyes averted. He set the blue cube down in the middle of the cave. "Not really. It's just- I can….."

Makoto shivered in her cold, wet leather armor and became suddenly frustrated. "You can, what? Ren? You just saved my life. Again. So don't you think I am well disposed to learn some secret of yours? Just say it!"

Ren glanced at her in surprise, his eyes gleaming silver in their movement. "I can hypnotize. A little. I'm not sure how it happens. It just does. I start to… influence you.. Towards me. And I could feel it starting just now."

Makoto scoffed for a moment, then a memory came to her. She was coming down the stairs in her house after Ren came through the door, and she'd felt.. Something. Something very similar to what she was feeling right now. And Ren's eyes had gleamed so strangely. That was interesting. Makoto immediately recognized that, with such an ability, Ren could theoretically force her to do things. But she knew from experience that he would not. In the same way he did not use his greater physical strength to force anything upon her. While at some point in the past, she might have thought this new ability an alarming threat- Ren and Her were well beyond fear, in Makoto's mind.

"Does it work when you are not looking in my eyes?" asked Makoto. She was curious.

"No."

And yet. Makoto thought. The feeling was not entirely going away from her. So, either Ren was wrong that it only worked when he looked at her. Or: whatever she was feeling had nothing at all to do with whatever latent hypnotic ability Ren might possess. But what was she feeling, exactly? She wasn't entirely sure, but in this dark cave in the middle of nowhere, she would feel a lot better if Ren were just… closer to her.

"I need to dry this armor," said Makoto suddenly. And without catching Ren's eye, she unclasped the buckles along the front and pulled the heavy, wet thing off her body and tossed it aside. As the tunic went over her head, she caught Ren staring at her with that intense look he'd had a few times before. A few, very exciting times before. Perfect.

After a moment of shock, Ren averted his eyes and then stepped towards her. He was taking off his cloak, obviously to drape it over her shivering, nearly naked form. That was the obvious, logical solution to Makoto's current predicament- but something inside Makoto desperately didn't want just that. She tried to think of something else. Anything else.

"Um- Ren," she said, looking up as Ren was about to drape his cape over her.

He glanced down at her again, his eyes still gleaming, a worried yet intense look on his face. "Y- yeah?"

"The stone floor. It's too hard. C- could I sit on your armor?"

"Uh-" said Ren. "Sure."

He began unbuckling his own armored tunic, his being made of more supple and soft fabric than her own of boiled leather. Ren pulled it off over his head, revealing his lean, cut stomach and chest. More than once, Makoto had thought about what Ren's body might be like to touch. And after all this time… why shouldn't she indulge herself? When might she have another chance? And with the very real dangers of their journey now firmly asserted by the events of tonight- could she afford to not live now, when she had the chance?

But Ren was much too afraid of her boundaries. He was careful to keep her safe from himself. She greatly admired that in him, and from that, he had earned her trust. But that meant it would be up to her to drag him over that line towards her. So be it.

"Thanks," said Makoto, softly, looking up into Ren's gleaming eyes. "And could you sit behind me, against the wall? So I- don't have to lean against the rock?"

Ren looked at her intently for a moment. "Y- yeah."

After a second of thinking, he placed his folded tunic near the wall of the cave, flung his cloak around his bare shoulders, and sat down against the stone. He sat there, with an expression on his face that Makoto wasn't quite sure how to interpret, but she felt slightly giddy in having now exactly what she wanted. She moved over to him and sat down just in front of Ren's lap, and scooched backwards against him. His chest felt pleasantly warm and firm against her back. And smooth against her damp skin.

Ren flung his arms around her slowly and over his own knees, enveloping Makoto in his limbs and his black cape. She felt immediately warmer. And… safe. She was used to providing her own safety. But there was something that was… very satisfying about being here, now, and feeling safe and wrapped up by someone who had become so important to her life.

They sat in silence for a time. Makoto enjoying the still firmness of Ren's chest on her back, that faint coffee smell that always held close to his skin. But in a short time, the feeling of Ren against her, smelling Ren this close, feeling his warmth. Her heart began beating harder. This wasn't enough. She wanted something more. She wanted him to do something more. If she was ever to be in one of her romance novels, this moment was surely it! And she wanted that!

Makoto turned towards Ren, rolling into his lap slightly. He grunted softly, and Makoto felt something stiff against her hip. Ren's face was in her shadow, but she recognized Ren's steel-jawed look of forced self-control. She leaned backward and kissed him, his lips were surprisingly hot upon hers...

**the camera fades to black**

((Author's Note: Due to FanFiction's rules, the full scene cannot be posted here. If you wish to read the unedited version of this chapter, please head to the story over on Archive of our Own))