"Such a large group!" Number 12 gasped when he saw them. He was the only racer still there since most of the others were busy and some were simply downtrodden. "The tickets must have been expensive."

Black Mist smiled secretively. "I prefer not to announce my spending habits. In any case, they were all very excited to meet you."

Number 12 crouched down and smiled at the children through his mask. "Well, hello!" At his greeting, the orphans chimed a "hello" politely. He couldn't help but smile wider. He looked up at Mist. "Where do they all come from? Surely you can't have married this young lady and gotten this many children out of her; most couples stop after two." His smile turned into a knowing smirk. "You two are together, yes?"

Black Mist and Anuenue's faces burned bright red from being put on the spotlight, and they both tried to stammer explanations until Anuenue finally forced out, "We work together in an orphanage, technically. He runs things with his foster father, and I help them with anything they need me to do." As she was explaining things, Mist busied himself with counting the children to make sure they were all there.

"Ah, they're orphans. That answers one question, and your blushes answered my other." He smirked but laid off now. "How many do you have?"

"Two hundred twenty-five," Anuenue answered, earning an impressed whistle from Number 12. 

"How do you keep them all together? It seems like a large task."

"The older ones share some responsibility with making sure everyone is together."

Just as Anuenue spoke this fact, Mist got to the end of the group. He wanted to be wrong, he really did, but he only counted two hundred twenty-four. Heart racing, he blocked out Anuenue and Number 12's conversation to look for the missing child.

It wasn't hard to find the child. There was only one wandering around the dismantling arena.

~.~.~

Hachi wandered around the wasteland, stepping around the seemingly crumbled and odd structures. They were supposed to be something, but he couldn't remember what they were supposed to be. All he knew was that sometimes, they fell from the sky.

To him, the wasteland was long, sunny, and sandy. The two bouncing things seemed to move very slowly above him, as though admiring the floating structures before they could fall, which seemed to take a very long time. They seemed to spend as much time as they could with the structures because the bouncing figures only left when the structure they were visiting fell down with a loud boom! 

He sat down in the sand and simply looked up. He was sitting directly under one of the structures, the beings flitting around it. While Hachi knew this meant the structure would be next to fall, he wasn't worried about it. After all, the other structures took a long time to fall, and when they did, it looked like it was in slow motion.

Something was wrong, though.

Almost as soon as he sat down, the structure began falling, and the flitting figures didn't move on to the next. The falling wasn't in slow motion, either. It was falling fast.

Frozen in shock, Hachi only sat there, staring wide-eyed at his impending doom.

~.~.~

Black Mist watched Hachi wander around shortly before sitting down as he raced to push him out of harm's way. As luck would have it, the moment his baby sat down amid the dismantled racing course, the Number 7 and Number 96 finished disabling the device that kept the course materials afloat. He took off in flight as his heart raced, arms out to push Hachi out of the way even if it meant he got hurt instead.

"Oh my goodness!!" he heard the Number 7 exclaim in horror while the 96 uttered "Shit!" as he, too, raced to pull Hachi away.

"He's going to die," one of the children giggled.

"He's going to die!"

"He's going to die!!"

The three remaining children's voices overlapped and echoed in Mist's mind, threatening to paralyze him with despair, but he didn't let them get to him. The thought to use his tentacles came to mind, but his stress kept him from actually summoning them. Either that, or the demon children were keeping him from bringing them out. 

His theory was proven right when he saw the other 96, who was still too far away to physically grab Hachi with his arms, struggling to whip out his tentacles. One demon child, glitching and black, sat on his back. He saw another one holding Number 7's hand, which was why she was frozen in place instead of using her inherent luck to save Hachi. The third one was most likely sitting on Mist himself.

Shit, shit, shit!!

The structure was almost upon Hachi. Mist dived just in time to push his little baby out of the way. Hachi yelped, but Black Mist couldn't hear it over his own pained screams and the crack of his bones.