Aki nearly pulled Yoshida's hair out. Her heart was stopped, or smashed into tiny pieces, or maybe gone altogether. Her sister was dead? Tiawanii was gone? From beside her, she could hear Yoshida's labored breathing hissing through clenched teeth.

"Yes, those bombs really are amazing, aren't they?" chuckled the creature. "I've got them planted all over this room, hidden under the floorboards, you see. They're special, you know. They don't burn away flesh." He scowled maliciously and thrust his hand in his coat pocked. "They burn away magic."

The monster pulled out his hand and flung an armored bomb straight for Yoshida's head. Yoshi slid sideways eerily (an angel's movements are often best described as "eerie") and the grenade flew past her, exploding against the wall behind her. Aki loosened her panicked grip on Yoshida's hair and sighed.
But too soon.

Something exploded from underneath Yoshida's feet and hurled them back in the direction from whence they came. She had stepped on one of the mines the creature had planted in the room! Yoshida and Aki were violently separated and thrown to the ground, ten feet from each other.

Akitoshi blinked slightly in a moment of deja vu. She was sprawled on the floor once again. But the henchman was there this time. He was there and he killed her sister. Aki shivered and hugged her knees. The turn of events seemed so much more frightening than it had before.

Across the floor, she could see Yoshida stretched out on the ground as well. Ren was kneeling at her side, helping her sit up. Worst of all, Yoshi's hair was black, and her eyes were purple once again. And slightly, just slightly, her skin was tinged blue.

Aki then realized she was no longer Aki-fairy. Just Aki-regular. The henchman noticed this too.

"Do you see what's happening?" the henchman gloated, both hands buried in his pockets threateningly. "I'm draining your magic! You know creatures like you can't stay alive without it! You..."

The monster trailed off, and its mouth hung open. Its expression of insane excitement faded. Its lidless eyes were locked on the back wall. Akitoshi put much effort into rolling over for a look.

Laid out on her back, still unconscious, was Tiawanii, and crouched next to her was a completely visible Beta. He was clasping one of her small hands in his rough, clawed ones and staring daggers at the henchman. Tiawanii's skin glowed a perfectly healthy bronze, no blue tint at all. And very slightly, her chest rose and fell as she breathed silently.

"Who are you?" the monster snarled at Beta. "When did you get here? What did you do to her?"

No one paid much attention to the henchman.

"She's alive!" shouted Aki, climbing shakily to her feet and clambering towards Tinii and Beta. Yoshida crawled after her (she didn’t bother standing up). Yoshi, Aki, and Beta huddled around Tiawanii like they were monitoring her vital stats.

The henchman couldn't stand to be ignored any longer. "What is happening?" he yelled, his hands rustling dangerously in his pockets. "This boy was not here before, this-"
The henchman gurgled unpleasantly as it stopped its commentary abruptly. Akitoshi turned away from Tiawanii and towards the gasping monster. There it stood, clenching and clawing at the arm wrapped tightly around its throat - Rengayakkai's arm. Ren stood behind it and squeezed his arm tighter and tighter (the monster squealed and kicked) with a fierce glare in his eye. Being the strategist that he was, Ren must have snuck up on the henchman while it was distracted by Beta. In a way, Aki supposed, Beta really had ended up as their secret weapon.

"This is it," Rengayakkai boomed over the creature's squelches. "I could kill you right now. You've been defeated. So are we in the right dimension or not?"
"The right...dimension?" the creature choked with a secretive grin (Aki had never seen someone in a choke hold be so smiley). "No, you are not in the right dimension." Ever so slowly, its hands crept towards its cloak pocket. "But you'll never get any further than this."

Aki screamed out to Ren as she saw the henchman's hand slip into its pocket. She waited expectantly for it to draw out an armored bomb and thrust it upward into Ren's face. But the hand stayed lodged in the cloak. Before the monster could carry his actions further, Ren tightened his arm and gave the creature's neck a jarring twist. The unconscious henchman slumped to the floor, still grinning, bony hand in its pocket, as Rengayakkai walked away darkly. It was over. He sat down next to Yoshida and sighed.

"One down, two to go," he said. "Fate wasn't on our side today." Yoshida rolled her eyes; she seemed to be feeling much better.

Aki smiled slightly and looked down at Tinii's sleeping face. Both of her sisters were okay, and that was enough for her. In fact, all of them were okay, and that was even better. Although next time they fought a henchman, it would be in their best interest to not lose their heads in the first five seconds.

"I wonder how she survived," Aki thought aloud, gesturing to Tiawanii’s sleeping form. Beta scoffed.

"She didn't," he replied. Aki's tired eyes flashed to life, darting up to meet Beta's. What did he mean, “she didn't?” She was lying right there, breathing!

"She wasn't alive when I got to her," Beta explained with a more serious tone than Aki thought she had ever heard him use. "She was drained. Completely gone. But then I heard what that creep was saying about the bombs burning magic, so I figured, if I just gave her some of mine-"

"You gave her magic?" sneered Yoshida. Aki could understand her disbelief. She had never heard of magic just being given away, like old clothes.

"Yeah, I gave it to her," confirmed Beta. "It was just like using it, except for I was using it into another person. Of course, I couldn't stay in my other form with all of my magic drained into her, so I changed back to my normal self. And then that thing saw me."

"Beta, that may have been the first clever thing you've ever done!" Ren cried jubilantly, patting his old friend on the back. Aki, for one, thought Rengayakkai might very well be right; nevertheless, she was grateful. Grateful beyond words.

There was a popular consensus that it would be best for their party to stay in the shrine until Tiawanii woke up. Aki was perfectly fine with that - those bombs had drained her energy as well. She laid back on the floor with her arms behind her head and took a few deep breaths, watching Beta stand up and close the room’s looming door (the dark, empty hallway outside was giving everyone the creeps). She closed her eyes and relaxed. Yoshi, Ren, and Beta provided low, murmuring background noise as they chatted about what was to come next. It was all very comforting. She could have just drifted off right there...

"What's that noise?" Yoshida interrupted the conversation tensely, jolting Aki to her senses. Beta and Ren quickly went silent. Akitoshi sat up slowly and met her friends' wide eyes. Barely audible over the crackling of the fire was a slow and steady beeping. It most definitely hadn't been there when they entered the room.

Aki barely breathed, squirming with uncertainty. Whatever that beeping was, it couldn't be good. Maybe it was an effect of the explosions? Suddenly, she was struck with awful idea. She knew what that beeping could very well be. But there was always the chance that she was wrong...

Akitoshi crawled warily towards the unconscious henchman. Yoshida called after her, but she didn't turn around. She stopped next to the creature and tried to avoid meeting its uncovered eyes, which were rolled back in the sockets, exposing the whites. With some hesitation, she grabbed its cloaked arm and pulled it out of its pocket painfully slow. Its hand crept out. Still held stiffly in its grasp was a short black metal stick, topped with a blood-red button. Its thumb was frozen purposefully over the button, holding it down as if it were a fatally significant action. And floating out of the device came a series of sharp-toned beeps.

"I know what that is!" shouted Aki shakily, crawling backwards away from the button as if it were trying to eat her. "We've gotta get out of here – now! That looks like a self-destruct button! This room's gonna explode!"

The effect of her words wasn’t exactly as she had hoped. Beta looked nonplussed, Yoshida looked dubious and Ren looked indifferent – very characteristic reactions, but nevertheless, Aki had been hoping for something more powerful.

“At least take a look at it!” she said, pounding the floor with exasperation – which turned out to be a very stupid move. Several feet away, the tremors from Akitoshi’s strike set off a heated blast of floorboards and dust. Aki scuttled sideways and stared at the settling cinders with horror, coughing and sputtering. She had forgotten about the hidden land mines. This only made things all the more urgent. She stared significantly back at her companions, waving her arm at the explosion as if it confirmed everything.

“Alright,” Ren said quietly, looking at each of his companions in turn. “The important thing is that we stay calm. I don’t know about this self-destructing button theory, but it is clear that we can’t stay here any longer. So now, we’re going to leave out of that door.” He pointed to it like a teacher instructing a lesson to a class of very stupid pupils. “And we’ll leave very carefully.”

The fact that Ren was acting so mollifying had, of course, an immediate and opposite effect on the group. As Rengayakkai crouched to scoop up Tinii, Beta and Yoshi clambered towards the hall door skittishly. Beta grabbed the door handle and violently pulled. And pulled. Soon he became so frustrated with it that he tried to yank it clean off its hinges, swearing at it unabashedly. Yoshida practically had to slap him out of it. There was no use trying that door anymore. It was locked. Aki cringed as she heard Yoshida backing Beta off. They had locked themselves in.

Aki, Yoshi, Beta, and Ren, with Tinii on his back, gathered warily in a tight huddle in the center of the closed room, searching the walls for an escape with one eye and sweeping the floorboards edgily with the other. Like the rest of the Shrine, it seemed to have been built with no windows whatsoever. It was all solid, reinforced brick wall. Aki clenched her fists. Well, if there are no exits, they would just have to make one.

By now, the beeping was growing undeniably louder, and the room’s occupants more distraught.

Aki, completely unexpectedly, dashed up to the wall next to the fireplace and screamed at it unintelligibly. It took her companions a while to realize that she had not, in fact, gone crazy; she was actually shouting what must have been every destructive curse she had ever learned at the Embassy. She was trying to blow a hole in the wall.
Yoshida quickly picked up on the incentive and came to her side. Rengayakkai shucked off Tiawanii to Beta and joined the effort. Soon the air was filled with flying curses and jinxes of all kinds, every one aimed at the wall. Beta watched with concern. They weren't even making a dent.

Aki's worries were along the same lines. They had limited artillery of incantations, and if they didn't find one that worked soon, they would run out. And even if their sources were infinite and they could go on yelling at the wall for hours, the room could explode at any time. Aki began to utter spells faster and faster, her tongue slipping on the thick, magical language.

The persistent beeping now almost drained out their yells.

No one was quite sure what had done it, but finally, one of their curses worked. A small explosion created a plume of dust and brick, and as it cleared, a large chip in the wall could be seen. The magicians gaped at the crack in silence, stunned that they finally had an effect. But their success soon rejuvenated their efforts.

"Whatever we just did, do it again!" Aki cried.

And so they did. After some experimentation, they found it was a curse of Rengayakkai's that was able to blow through the brick. Yoshida and Akitoshi picked up on it with some difficulty, but in time they were blasting through the wall with just as much effectiveness as Ren. The result was encouraging. A small hole was being bored into the wall and it was growing larger every second. After not much time it was large enough for an average-sized person to jump through. Rengayakkai motioned for the spell-casters to stop, and the dust cleared. Sunlight poured into the room - an inviting sight to a person who had been shrouded in darkness for an hour. No one hesitated to escape through the freshly formed hole. Yoshi went first, followed by Ren, then Beta (who had some trouble squeezing through the hole with Tinii on his back), and lastly, Akitoshi. It occurred to Aki just as she dropped out of the hole that they probably should have checked before they jumped what was on the ground below them and, more importantly, how far they had to fall.

They got lucky. Their hole was only a few yards above their landing ground, which was a spongy grass hill. Aki landed with a bump on the hill and rolled for a while. Her momentum was absorbed by Yoshida, who was sitting dizzily at the bottom of the hill with Ren, Beta and Tiawanii when Aki tumbled into her. Akitoshi sat up and cradled her head in her hands. She was nursing about her sixth pounding headache of the day.

"Watch the room," Yoshi whispered to her, pointing and nodding towards the wall from which they'd escaped through. Aki watched.

Almost as soon as she set her eyes on it, a series of booming explosions erupted from the room. Half of the wall was completely blown away. The murky smoke poured from the room in giant clouds, but there wasn't a spurt of flame. The five (four, if you consider that Tiawanii was unconscious) escapees watched the destruction solemnly.

The smoke finally dissipated.

“I told you it was a self-destruct button,” Aki muttered as she stared up at the gaping hole. Her companions had become mysteriously deaf.

The travelers found the hill they had rolled down put them near the front of the Shrine, with the city stretched out before them. Beta gingerly laid Tinii on the grassy ground. Aki was starting to wonder if her sister would ever wake up on her own, or if they would have to coax her into consciousness with electric shock therapy. Or something.

"I guess we'll have to wait it out until she's awake," sighed Yoshi. She held Tiawanii's hand in hers, and it pulsed eerily blue - she was implementing her healing magic. Ren watched on with interest.

A sudden thought occurred to Aki. "Hey," she asked quietly, "the henchman is dead now, isn't it? It couldn't have survived the explosion, right?"

"We can never be sure,” answered Ren mysteriously. "Those were strange bombs. They might not have affected it."

Aki nodded wordlessly. The thought that the henchman survived was disturbing. There was always the chance that it might come after them someday.

But for now, the fight was over. They might as well relax while they had the chance. Aki smiled widely and threw herself back on the hill, feeling the cool blades of grass prickling under her fingertips. Before she even had a chance to brace herself against exhaustion, she was asleep.