Kara cradled Danny's still warm face. "Goodbye, Jasper," she murmured. "Goodbye, D-Danny..." She became hysterical at the mention of his name, burying her face in her arms. Everything was quiet. Foster appeared beside Kara, startling her. "Oh, Foster, it's you," she gasped. "I thought that you had run off and left me here." Foster looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, Kara. I was just helping Lily. I would never leave you all alone on purpose." Foster wrapped his arms around her in a hug, then kissed her forehead, moving strands of her red hair away from her face and behind her ears. "Are you alright?" "Y-Yeah. I think so." Kara rubbed away her lingering tears and tried to smile. "Foster, has this all been a dream? Some crazy chocolate or drug induced dream?" Foster laughed. "No. If it was, I wouldn't of had to help Lily get medical help or have this on my leg." Kara looked at him, puzzled. "Wait, what happened to Lily? And what's wrong with your leg?" "Here, look." Kara obeyed, her hazel eyes looking at his right leg. It had a long cut across it, put there by sharp claws. Jasper's claws, she knew. The cut was covered in bandages. "I went to the nurse's office and got her to patch it up for me. Lily had a hurt leg too, but worse than mine. I got her to call 911. She's probably headed to a hospital now." Foster smirked. "I made up a sort of lame story for the nurse so that I wouldn't be asked too many questions while I was there." Kara smiled. "Really? What did you say?" "That I fell off the bus steps this morning."

Now it was Kara's turn to laugh. "You're not that clumsy. Well, maybe a little bit." "Thanks. Wait, hey!" The couple both laughed at each other, fooling around. Kara was brought away from Jasper/Danny's lifeless body as Foster took her hand and helped her to her feet. "You know, you're really good at cheering a sad girl up," Kara told him, hazel eyes aglow with happiness. "You're welcome," Foster replied, blushing. Kara kissed his cheek. Foster kissed hers back, then glanced at JD's body. Kara had decided to call him that because anything else would have been too confusing. "Is he...dead?" "Yes." Kara tried not to get upset. "Did you kill him?" "No...well, yes. But it was unintentional..." She started to cry again. "Danny's dead, a human being is dead, and it's my fault!" "Shh, Kara, it's okay..." Kara seemed to hardly hear her boyfriend. "And Danny's dead too...two people are dead because of me...no, make that three, counting Shade...what have I gotten myself into?" Foster continued to shush Kara. Her grief was making her babble. A groan interrupted their tender moment. "What was that?" Kara asked. "I don't know. I'll go check it out." Foster let go of her, standing up and searching for the source of the noise. The groan came again, and Foster's eyes widened. "Um, Kara..." Her name had been drawn out as his voice rose in terror. Kara saw what he was looking at, and she froze in confusion and fear. Smoke was rising up from Danny's body, forming the demise beast's full form that he had shown her when he had tried to kidnap her, in all its horned, cat eyed, gray scaly glory. Kara saw it tilt its head towards them both, and look directly at her for a second. The thing vanished as it rose farther into the air. Had that been Jasper's ghost? We'll never know, I guess, Kara thought. All the while the frail body the beast had inhabited was trembling violently. Its shaking ceased, and the body rolled over to show the bare, torn open chest. Kara had seen it before, but Foster hadn't-his face turned green as he tried not to throw up. As they watched, Danny's heart trembled and started beating again, shrinking and looking like a normal heart. This was enough to cause Kara to nearly puke. She held a hand to her mouth and turned away, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. The hole in the heart's center closed up, and muscle and skin grew back over the wound. Danny's fingers twitched a little, and he gasped for air, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He sat up and looked in Kara and Foster's direction, his brown eyes wide with bewilderment. "Now your death count's gone down by one," Foster commented. He was as breathless as Danny.

"Danny!" Kara cheered, going up and hugging him. A twinge of jealousy went through Foster, but he was still too dumbstruck at seeing a dead person come back to life to scold Kara. Had she done this? Foster changed his mind and decided not to think about it too much. Danny barely reacted as she hugged him, suddenly looking very distant and frightened. When she let go, Kara saw his expression. "What? What's wrong, Danny? Danny...?" The sophomore looked horrified now. At first, his mouth moved, but no sound came out. At last, he seemed to remember how to speak again. "Th-There was this thing..." he began. "This...bug on the wall in the hallway. It was like a small c-centipede, with tons of legs. It had wings t-too, like a dragonfly. No, more like a...like a wasp. It got me to stay still in the locker room during gym by shooting sticky white web stuff out of its mouth, at m-my arm..." Kara tried to stop him. Words seemed to tumble out of his mouth, and he was acting like he was in a trance. "Danny, stop, you're in shock-" He interrupted her, continuing to talk. "My arm was stuck to the wall, and before I could do anything, it flew up to my face, buzzing like a hornet. It l-landed on my...m-my ear." Danny looked even more petrified than before, grabbing blindly at Kara as if he were a little toddler that needed to be held by its mother. Foster came up to his girlfriend and swatted the other boy's hand away, his eyes narrowed behind his broken glasses that had been damaged earlier. When he noticed the almost hysterical look in Danny's eyes, he stopped trying to push him away and listened to what he was trying to tell them. "It c-crawled into my ear, inside of my h-head." The couple listened in terror, trying to understand what he was getting at. "I tried to get the evil thing out, but it was too far inside. I couldn't r-reach it with my fingers. There was a tapping noise of its feet carrying it s-somewhere. I felt pain like someone cut me, then...nothing. I blacked out in that r-room. Are you guys somehow involved in this?"

"Involved?" Kara exclaimed, trying to sound inconspicuous. "Of course we aren't! How would we be involved with some creepy bug?" "Yeah," Foster added, going with it. "Are you okay, dude? We could bring you to the nurse's office if you want-" "N-No," Danny interrupted. "No, I'm fine. Fine. I think." He stopped, then spoke again. "On second thought, maybe I do need that. I'm not...feeling so...good..." With that, Danny fainted, falling onto the rooftop in a heap. Kara and Foster were at his side immediately.

They decided that since he'd passed out, they would bring him to the nurse and she would wake him up and call his parents. There wasn't much they could do to help him now, anyway. He seemed a little...off. Kara took the ladder back inside, Foster following right behind her. They had missed a lot of their classes, so they had work to make up. Although they weren't thrilled about that, they had battled a monster on the roof of their school! It was pretty incredible, but who would believe their story? Lily had to say that she had fallen on the way to school and had torn open her leg that way. Kara had some bruises around her neck from Jasper choking her before. She told her dad that she must've slept in a weird position. It didn't matter, however, because the bruises faded quickly. Foster's cut healed too, and he stuck with his fell off the steps story. Somehow, people believed them, or at least didn't question them about it. Danny was still shaken up by his experience with Jasper, and he would sometimes rant about bugs being after him. When his parents began to seek a mental health care specialist, he stopped mentioning it, slowly recovering from his mental scars. Everything was returning to normal, except for the fact that Shade had not returned. Her class didn't note his absence, and this terrified Kara. It was like he had never even been in her school, but he had, and she was determined to find him. She asked around, but no one outside of her group of friends knew anything about him. Kara refused to believe that he was dead, but when he didn't show up again after a wekk, she solemnly gave up on searching for him. Shade was gone forever. The only thing she had to remember him by and to realize that what had happened to her wasn't a dream was his magical sword. She kept it in a secret place in her bedroom where she hoped that no one would ever find it.