Note: This story shall be special to me, this chapter in particular. It's the first thing I've written since moving to Canada :D. I've been in a slump since I got here but then I was hit by the DGM inspiration. OH and I haven't read/watched DNAngel in a while so correct me if i'm wrong in anything plz.

PROLOUGE : SOUL

Lost soul, cursed life, shadows soaring; the devil's master grins in darkness.

But new hope gives life new meaning; under my wings, love's sweet caress.

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Web of lies, mask of innocence, child of prophecy; my destiny paves a path to abolish heresy.

In my future stands the Earl of Millenium; my symphony, will turn back his pendulum

Everything was wrong. He thought he could live without him. That maybe life would go back to the way they were. Daisuke Niwa had lived once without wings, magic and Kaitou Dark. But his world had been changed; there was nothing he could do about it.

Hands running through his crimson hair in frustration, the young teen sat in his basement, where the fruit of his previous work was stored. He was surrounded by artworks, from statues to paintings to artefacts. Every one of them brought back a memory of the thrill of the heist...and along with it the sorrow of his loss.

Today marked the anniversary of Dark's disappearance from the world. A full year ago, he had been sealed away in the Koku Yoku and all Daisuke had to remember him by were these artworks and a tiny shard of the Black Wings that had been both Dark's cradle and his grave.

But was he really alive? Daisuke thought to himself, as he stared at the black-purple shard strung through a necklace. If he was always just a curse that was put on the Niwas, did he really have a soul? The red head shook his head and cleared his mind. Of course he had a soul. He had emotions. He felt pain like everyone else I know. He was more than just a curse, he was my other half.

And as Daisuke came to this epiphany, a strong and fervent wish came to his mind. He closed his ruby red eyes and sighed, "I wish he had never died."

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if he really hadn't~?"

Daisuke snapped his head up to the source of the eerily sugar-frosted statement. He looked around the basement and his eyes found a laughing face under an overly large top hat. The former Kaitou squinted into the darkness of the room and watched as the face stepped out of the shadows. In better light Daisuke saw that it belonged to a rather tall, bespectacled, and round pointy-eared man. He wore a purple rimmed, light gray, loose and billowing overcoat over a green pinstriped pair of clownish pants. But it wasn't the eccentric outfit, or the fact that this stranger had popped up in his basement, that scared Daisuke. It was the fact that this stranger had made Daisuke believe something that he'd thought impossible for the longest time; in just one simple string of words.

"Who are you?" Daisuke managed to ask.

"It doesn't matter who I am, does it?" the stranger trilled in his sing-song voice. "All that matters is that you want your dear friend back."

"What does it matter if I want him back?" Daisuke shot back uncharacteristically. "What can you do about it?!"

"Oh Daisuke, I can do so much for you," the stranger crooned as he crept closer and closer to where Daisuke sat propped up against the wall. He bent over until their eyes were level and Daisuke could see that his skin was a dark shade of gray. "You see Daisuke, I can bring people back to life."

"But he wasn't a real person." Daisuke burst out as a tear leaked from one of his eyes. Some unknown force was driving him to bear his raw emotions to this stranger. "He was always just a soul who never had his own body.... How can you bring back someone who wasn't really there in the first place?"

"I have a new body to put him in!" the gray stranger exclaimed excitedly. Then out of nowhere a mechanical looking skeleton appeared. The grey stranger grasped the skeleton by the neck and presented it to Daisuke, as if he were in a commercial selling a vacuum cleaner. "If you can give me a part of who he was, then I can bring him back. I've only ever done this with real people you see. So I'm going to need that precious shard of yours around your neck."

At this Daisuke was hesitant. This person had apparently never done this with someone like Dark before. Of course he hadn't. There was no one else like Dark on Earth...except maybe for Krad. Was it really worth giving the only thing he had left to remember his other half by on a gamble?

"Come on, Daisuke~," the stranger coaxed, a little irritation seeping into his voice now. "Just shove your little shard into this star on its head if you don't trust me to do it for you. Don't you want him back?"

The sound of the necklace breaking echoed in the room as Daisuke snapped it off his neck and crawled towards the skeleton. Taking one last look at the shard Daisuke gently pressed it into the center of the inverted star engraved onto the skull's forehead.

The white bone of the skull liquefied around the shard and pulled it in, gently glowing.

Seconds stretched into minutes as the two waited as the glowing intensified, solidifying into a bright amethyst color. The skeleton threw its head back and arched, its jaws open in a wordless scream. Its spine contorted as twin spokes jutted out of the shoulder blades. They stretched and thinned out; jerking along their accelerated growth until they were twice as long as the skeleton's arms. Finally, the skeleton fell to its knees, drooped over with what looked like exhaustion, its extra appendages hanging at its sides. With what was unmistakably a pair of skeletal wings at its back, the akuma skeleton looked completely like a fallen angel.

By now the stranger had stepped back, quite a ways away from Daisuke and his experiment. The Millennium Earl gazed at the akuma questioningly. This one was different from the rest. Never before had a soul managed to transform or alter the akuma skeleton into anything other than the grotesque body of a level one.

All at once, the Earl knew that this had not been a waste of time. It had been worthwhile to come to where the rumoured `Living Painting' was supposed to have been. But...this angelic akuma seemed to be a bit slow. It hadn't even killed Daisuke yet. Maybe it needed a little push, "Go on, my toy. Get rid of that human in front of you and take his skin as your own."

Its downcast head snapped up with an audible click and turned slowly to face the Earl. Then it slowly stood, wings spread out behind it, and started towards Daisuke. With every movement it made, a strangled, choking sound escaped its non-existent throat. As if someone were choking it and preventing it from making any sound. But once it knelt in front of Daisuke, the red head noticed something; the skeleton was trying to speak.

"D-dark?" he asked timidly. "Is that you?"

"Dark?" it replied.

Daisuke paled. It was obviously Dark's voice, but something was wrong with it...something wrong and unnatural. It sounded like Dark was being tortured a hundred times over; and he couldn't do anything about it.

"Dark?" it repeated. Then after a few seconds it peered right into Daisuke's eyes, so that all the red head could see were its empty eye sockets, and continued; "Dai-su-ke?"

"You remember who I am?" Daisuke asked luridly. There was hope.

"Dai-su-ke, run, now," If it were possible, Dark's voice got even more pained and the hope was lost. "This man will...kill you. He will make me kill you. Dai-su-ke, run, now."

"Dark...I-I don't want to leave you again." Daisuke declared. "I've trapped your soul in that terrible body and I---"

But Daisuke was cut off as Dark uttered a high pitched scream to end all screams. Its waves reverberated through the room as the Earl stepped forward, his smile just a teensy bit more strained. "Now, now, Dark; you must do your job as an akuma."

Dark cut off his screaming as he lunged at a bent over Daisuke, slashing deep gouges into the poor teen's back. Scarlet blood stained Dark's skeletal clawed hands as he carved line after line into his former host's back.

Finally, when Dark seemed satisfied with his job he stood up right, towering over the still conscious Daisuke. The Niwa managed to turn his head, enough to aim one eye at what was now Dark, and tried to speak. But no words came out as black crept into the sides of his vision, threatening to knock him out. All he managed to do was mouth two words: Live on.

A single, black-colored drop poured from Dark's akuma eye as he saw his other half lying on the ground surrounded by his own blood. As soon as the liquid fell, a crack followed, splitting Dark's skull head into two. The crack ran right along the side of Dark's face as smaller cracks branched out from the main one.

Dark took one look at Daisuke and reached inside himself; into the hollow cavity where his heart would have been if he were human. From here he pulled out the very shard that Daisuke had saved from the Koku Yoku. But it was changed. No longer was it a jagged hunk of rock that had just chipped off the art work. Its sides had been smoothened and its lustre had returned as it now glowed with a gentle purple light.

He bent over his fallen friend and planted the now-amethyst-like gem into the bloody mess that was Daisuke's back. Dark then made sure Daisuke could see him as he choked out a response: You live on.

Dark stood quickly as the cracks scurried wildly throughout his body. While he still could, he decided to go out with a bang. He was Dark Mousy after all, the famous Phantom Thief! So Dark strode over to Duke of Destruction, The Millennium Earl and flipped him a quick middle finger, before disintegrating into dust.

Then everything turned black as Daisuke slipped into the warm embrace of unconsciousness.

Note: Review please, coz I acutally have a plot in mind for this :D:D:D. Oh, and I dont know if I'm getting the emotions across right...concrit is appreciated but no flames.