And Then There Will Be None

Heeeey, legal issues. None of the characters portrayed in this story are mine. They are all copyright of their respective owners.

Darkness.

What greeted his enhanced vision was pure darkness. Or it would have been to a human. With his vampire eyes, he could make out much more from the extremely low light. But the low light still meant one little problem.

He had no clue where he was.

He was freshly awake from a bout of assisted unconsciousness, which came about thanks to a blunt force impact to the back of his head. But weren't vampires practically immune to that? Whoever hit him must have been incredibly strong.

And now here he was, in some dark room trying to make heads or tails of the situation. Where were the others? His Bella? If the person who did this to him did anything to any of them, especially Bella...

He rose to his feet, and his ears picked up the faintest sound-a girl's voice singing in a language he did not recognize. It sounded like it could be one of the Asian languages, and he was still able to make out the pronunciation.

Ringo to hachimitsu
Koucha no jamu wa apurikotto

The girl couldn't have been much older than a child, judging by her voice, but something about the voice, for some reason he couldn't fathom, sent chills of dread racing down his spine. He involuntarily scoffed at the notion of being afraid of a girl, but it did confuse him. Scared? Of a girl? Of a hu-wait. He listened more closely, and failed to detect a heartbeat.

Gin'iro no tiisupuun
Kabe ni houri-nageta

Was it a recording? No, it didn't have that mechanical quality that all playback devices had. And he could now hear footsteps...

What came around the corner made him question his feeling of apprehension even more. A young girl, no more than ten years old, skipping happily while singing that song. How absolutely absurd that this girl could cause fear in him, who had gone toe-to-toe with his own kind and won. However, it was readily apparent that she wasn't normal, and probably not human. The lack of a heartbeat aside, she had these...wings that looked like metal wire with a rainbow of crystals hanging off of them. In her hands was some sort of metal wand that had emblems resembling playing card spades on either end. Then she stopped singing, and looked in his direction, showing...

Red eyes.

'Oh, no,' the thought flashed through his mind, 'she's an immortal child.' And as an immortal child, she would have to be-

"Anata dare? Soreha asobi desuka?"

She noticed him. He would have to act quickly. Out of sheer force of habit, he attempted to take a peek into her mind, only to meet the telepathic equivalent of white noise. This, of course, astounded him. Was her mind so chaotic that only static could be determined?

Still, he had to do the unpleasant. Immortal children were far too dangerous, and not knowing where he was, he couldn't just go fetch the Volturi to do it.

"I'm sorry," he said with a low voice, apologizing to the universe itself as much as the girl, "but I have to..." He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

The girl's expression turned to one of confusion. "Waka rima-" then comprehension flashed across her face. "Ohhh! You speak Een-guh-lish!" The inflection was a bit struggled, as though she knew the language but hadn't had to use it for a long time. "Okay then! My name is Fuh-landre. Will you play with me?" Sounded like she smoothed out the bumps to her use of English fairly quickly. This hardly surprised him; in fact he was more surprised that she had to remember how to speak English, since vampires had nearly photographic memories.

How sad, though, that she wanted to do something so innocent as playing. Damn it, how did the Volturi manage to put down these children? Maybe rationalizing? He decided to give it a try, and started thinking. 'She's extremely dangerous to humans, even to our own kind. If she caused us to be exposed to the humans...or worse, brought attention to my family, brought danger to Bella...'

And that was all the rationalization he needed. He would destroy this immortal child to protect Bella. And he thought of a way to do it without the child catching on to the danger.

"Okay. Let's play." He didn't bother giving his name in return. What would the point be, after all? "What would you like to play?"

The girl bounced excitedly, before spectacularly spitting in gravity's face and launching upwards into the air. "Danmaku!" Now, stronger than before, that feeling of dread returned.

Before he even had a chance to question what "danmaku" was, his field of vision exploded into color, with magnificently glowing red.

What madness was this? She was throwing out orbs of light-what was this, magic? Instinct took hold, his vampiric speed allowing him to move between the waves of...what could these be called? Magic bullets? Yes, that would do for the moment. But he needed a plan. How was he going to retaliate when she could throw out this barrage? At least the waves were somewhat easy to dodge...

Suddenly, all the bullets disappeared, and the girl called out the words "Taboo: Cranberry Trap!" Two hexagrams inside circles appeared on either side of her, and started to move around and around to form a box, all the while launching slightly larger versions of the earlier magic bullets. More hexagrams appeared, adding to the barrage. Again, his vampiric speed allowed him to hold out. More than once he could feel a bullet graze against him, and he could feel the power in those bullets.

After what felt like an eternity of dodging, the bullets and the hexagrams vanished into nothing. And like before the Cranberry Trap, the girl once again released several waves in a tighter and denser pattern.

She looked confused now. "Why don't you shoot, mister? Or fly? Can't you play danmaku?" He wasn't sure if she was being innocent or condescending; it was a bit hard to tell while dodging for his life. He didn't want to find out what would happen if one of those bullets hit him.

When the bullets disappeared again, he began to wonder if there was a pattern to this danmaku thing. Sure enough, the girl called out "Taboo: Lævateinn!" Okay, if this was anything like Cranberry Trap, he'd just have to-

He didn't get to complete that line of thought when the wand she was holding glowed, and she swung it, creating an enormous wave of energy that neatly bisected him at the waist.

As he fell to the ground, he could distinctly hear her saying "Aww, you broke already? You're no fun to play with!"

How...

"Wait, you're still awake? Oooh! You're tougher than the other dolls, then. Maybe we can play something else!"

No...he had to...

"I wonder what will happen if your eye gets crushed..."

Suddenly he felt the strangest sensation, like his very soul was being moved. By the time he realized what was happening, it was too late to scream.

And then there was nothing.

Not quite what I planned for a first release, but one-shots like this are a lot simpler to cook up than epics.

Review if you like. Don't hold back on the criticism, unless you're just going to scream "OMG EDWARD CULLEN WOULDN'T LOSE" at me. Trust me. Against Flandre Scarlet, he would. For that matter, don't pile on mindless praise for Flan, either. Unless you have something intelligent to say, don't say anything.

The lines Flandre sings are from the song "Sweets Time", by the way. The Midnight version in particular. Look for it on YouTube.

And yes, Twilight Sucks.