Slouching towards BethlehemPatch City
by
Deborah (KosagiNoLegion) Brown

ObDisclaimer: Much as I might regret it, Shaman King does not belong to me. Neither does the other character who shows up here.

"Oh, I shall certainly be dislocated. But with all the morphine in my system I won't feel a thing and I'll just put myself together"

The young Ainu – Horohoro, I believe – stared as I continued to fall. I laughed, hearing him gasp "Zo..zombie" as his oversoul buoyed him upwards, leaving me to drop like a rock. There's nothing quite so lacking in aerodynamics as a wheelchair and I had every confidence that I was going to make quite an impression on the ground soon enough.

"Woof?"

I patted Frankie comfortingly. I honestly don't know how much he really understands about all this. For that matter, I'm not sure he even realizes he's dead, a mere skeleton held together by my oversoul – my first semi-success in necromancy. If only I'd had as much success with Eliza. "It's all right, Frankenstein," I told him. "It won't hurt us." Nothing could hurt him or Eliza again and as for me There's only one real pain left to me and that one is far and beyond anything mere morphine could alleviate. Not even magically augmented morphine such as I use. I chuckled, wondering exactly how badly damaged Yoh and Ren were going to be, my only real regret being that I was going to miss it.

Glancing upwards, or rather downwards, since I was still falling head first, I noted that I'd be hitting soon. It was quite exciting, actually, the wind whistling past, the cold air sweet and refreshing after several hours aboard that plane. In the moonlight the ground below had an unearthly appearance, dusty, lifeless and empty. It was hard to believe anyone could live in such a desert. I reached out with my oversoul, just enough to test matters and was pleased to note that there was more than enough dead for my purposes. I was likely to land in a deserted area, which meant I would have to put a lot of effort into getting to Patch city. Which is, no doubt, the intention. Yet another attempt to thin the competition. Very well. They could do what they liked to stop me. I would be there. I had to be

My thoughts were interrupted at that point by the sudden, sharp impact of my body into the roof of a truck. Now that was unexpected. Intentional effort couldn't have landed me so precisely. Not that I was in a position to consider the matter. Morphine doesn't prevent unconsciousness, after all, and there was only so much impact even my skull could take without my being knocked cold.

***

"I don't know where he came from!" The voice I heard was male, excited and more than a little hysterical. "I heard the thump and when I stopped the truck" The voice choked off.

I allowed my eyes to open ever so slightly. Black plastic covered my face and a thin beam of light delineated the edges of a zipper. Oh. A body bag. They thought I was dead. Well, I could hardly blame them. My body isn't exactly normal anymore – not after everything I've done to it. I barely breathe now and I'm not certain my heart has bothered beating in years. I grinned, started to reach upwards to free myself.

"Well, from the looks of things, they must have been dropped from a height. This is going to make quite a story." The other voice was calmer, bemused. "All the bodies taken care of?"

"Yep. I'll head 'em down to the Treeton right away. One body and two skeletons." The third voice was female and a little shaken. "I think it's a hoax of some sort. Medical students, maybe, stealing bodies from the school morgue. There's no way that guy could survive the kind of surgery that's been done on him, anyway. Man. Think of the headlines, Flying Corpses Crash Freight. The Enquirer would have a field day."

Hmmm. I paused, visualizing the map I'd been given when I'd boarded the plane some hours ago. Treeton was to the south, the direction I wanted to go. Why waste the chance? I noted that Frankenstein was stirring and sent a thought his way. ::Frankenstein play dead.::

The ride was a long and quiet one and it gave me more than enough time to think about my plans. Patch City was in New Mexico, far to the south even from Treeton. I'd have to make my way there, somehow. Before I did, though, there was a bit of repair I'd have to do. Frankenstein and Eliza's bodies wouldn't have been damaged in the fall, my oversoul had seen to that, but mine Well, let's just say that I was going to be needing new bones to replace the broken ones. Fortunately, I was sure to find what I needed at whatever hospital or morgue they were taking me to.

I listened to the voice of the driver singing to the radio. Apparently she was alone and more than usually bored. "Baby don't fear the reaper" she sang, voice a mellow contralto.

Hmph. I hate that song. Not that I'd have been so impolite as to tell her that to her face. I sighed inwardly and concentrated on Eliza, on my beautiful sweet wife. Somehow I was going to get her back. Somehow

"Poor puppy. I wonder how you got there," the woman said suddenly as the song ended and an advertisement for some sort of banking service started. "What kind of sick jerk throws a bunch of bodies off a plane, anyway?"

The sound of my dog whining made me wince. Oh, Frankenstein, I sighed inwardly, having a feeling I knew what was about to happen.

"What the hell" The woman's voice sounded startled and when she shrieked, I knew she must have looked around to see Frankie looking back at her. People can get so silly about bones when they start moving around and responding to them. I can't imagine why.

The ambulance swayed from side to side and I heard swearing. I had time to think, Oh dear, just before it crashed.

***

This time I wasn't knocked unconscious, just thrown around a bit. Once things had quieted down I listened for the driver. All I could hear, though, was the advertisement for some nightclub on the radio. I took a deep breath and undid the zipper, sitting up amid the piles of medicines. "Frankenstein," I said reprovingly to my dog as I noted the driver slumped over the wheel. "Bad. You scared the nice lady."

Frankenstein whined as I crawled out of the body bag, no easy task when you're missing half of your lower extremities, I might add. Damn Yoh anyway. If he hadn't hurt my beloved Eliza I wouldn't have had to take my legs off to replace hers. I shrugged off the annoyance in favor of handling the current situation and pulled myself over to the driver.

Black eyes with thick eyeliner, set in a face almost as pale as mine, looked back at me as I turned her head. She was starting to come to, I realized, but there was a great big gash over her forehead. "Wait here," I told her. "You have sutures in the back, I'm sure."

My search for equipment took a few minutes, long enough for the driver to get herself woken up enough to start screaming in earnest. "Oh, do stop that, young lady. I apologize for my dog's behavior but you really need to calm down if I'm to help you." I pulled myself back into position and settled down for a nice bit of needlework, injecting the area with a bit of painkiller beforehand – not to mention taking a shot or so for myself. When I was done, I sat back. "There we are. A very nice job, if I do say so myself."

The woman was staring at me and I wiped her face with a hankie. It was a pretty enough face, sharply pointed and pale under jet black hair. From her expression she was getting ready to hyperventilate again. "Please do calm down. This is a bit embarrassing, but I need your help and I can't have you getting all upset when I need you to drive."

"Ddrive?"

"Why yes. You don't think I really want to take a wheelchair all the way to the hospital, after all?"

She swallowed, seeming to force herself to stay calm. "Does does the other skeleton walk around too?"

I glanced over at Eliza, at my beautiful wife and said slowly, regretfully, "Only when I help her." Strictly speaking, I had to help Frankenstein too, but that took a tiny amount of oversoul compared to what I needed for Eliza. I felt a sharp surge of pain at the thought. Damnit. What in the hell was I missing anyway. The other Shamans had their dead guides. Why couldn't I bring her back? "Don't worry, love. I'll put you back together soon." I realized I was talking out loud and frightening the girl. "Er sorry. I suppose it's a bad habit, but I don't usually have anyone living to talk to."

"I see" She took a deep breath. "Er are you dead?"

I blinked at her. "Well, yes and no," I admitted. "I'm not sure what category I'm in, now." I shrugged. "Does it matter? We still need to get to – Treeton, wasn't it?

"The ambulance is wrecked though. I don't know" She sighed. "Uh, what's your name?"

"Faust the Eighth," I replied. "And before you ask, he was my ancestor." I've had enough people ask if I was related to that Faust in my life to know what was coming.

"Didi." The woman took a deep breath and undid her seatbelt. "Okay. I'm going to treat this like it's really happening because I really don't want to know what's going on with the real me if this is a hallucination." She glanced at Frankenstein, who had been fetching supplies for me. "And this is?"

"Frankenstein. Named for obvious reasons." I patted my dog on his bony head and he panted happily at me. "Good boy."

"I see." Didi climbed out of the ambulance slowly and brushed off her black jeans. It occurred to me she was oddly dressed for an ambulance driver – black jeans and a string top

T-shirt. I always have found Goths amusing. I watched her walk slowly around the vehicle. I wondered if she was going to make a run for it. It wouldn't have been wise, I could fetch her back easily and the desert wasn't really a good place to be walking around anyway.

I was sort of relieved to see she was just checking the condition of her vehicle. I heard her swearing in a most unladylike manner as she came back to the window and looked in at me. "You know," she commented, "I sort of hoped you nightmares had disappeared. Oh well. Anyway, we have a problem. The left rear tire's blown and the jack's gone. I don't know how I'm going to change the tire without it."

I whistled for Frankenstein, who shifted himself into legs and feet to replace the ones I'd given Eliza. Climbing out slowly so as to allow my damaged body to handle the effort and going around to look at the damage, I saw what she meant. The spare tire was kept on the back of the vehicle and the jack had been mounted alongside it. Unfortunately, the latter had been removed.

Didi looked at me, then at my spare legs and winced. "If it weren't for the fact that it would mean I was lying half-conscious in a wreck I'd wish this was a hallucination," she muttered. "You are one scary man, Faust."

"Thanks. I try," I answered, using my oversoul to search around the desert. Most of the bodies buried under the sands were old and a bit fragile, but enough were there to accomplish my task. "You may want to go back in the ambulance, by the way. If my legs bother you then you aren't going to like what I'm about to do."

"Thanks, but better the devil I can see" She paused as the skeletons pulled themselves out of the dirt and sand, gathering themselves together into a larger form. "Er then again, I think I will." She hurried back to the drivers seat and I could hear her whimpering under her breath.

The tire change took a bit of effort since I'd not changed one in decades and styles had changed immensely since that old Daimler I'd owned before Eliza's death. Still, I finally got it on to my satisfaction and dismissed my skeleton assistant. "Thank you," I added as it dispersed itself back into its many parts. There was, after all, no point in being rude – even to the dead.

When I climbed into the passenger seat and allowed Frankenstein to return to his normal form and sit in my lap, Didi looked at me. "Buckle up," she sighed, obviously trying very hard not to show how upset she was.

"I don't really need"

" Even dead bodies buckle up in this vehicle. Now do it or I'm not moving." She was apparently taking refuge in mundania, so I shrugged and did what she ordered. Frankenstein jumped up in my lap and licked me, the fact that he had no tongue to do so with not fazing him in the slightest.

Didi started the car, avoiding looking at the two of us. "You're pretty messed up," she commented after a moment.

"Yes, well, it was a long drop," I answered, watching the landscape go by. "But I'll fix myself up when I get to the hospital. I'm probably going to need some replacement bones. Probably some skin too," I noted, checking out a particularly gory segment of stomach muscle. "Oh, and quite a bit more morphine."

She shuddered. "That's not what I meant. You are a sick, twisted and crazy man."

"And you are a very rude young lady," I informed her in return. She was, I realized, so far past terror that the only way she could deal with me was by a total lack of manners. "But I will excuse you since you aren't experienced in these matters."

Frankenstein whined and pushed his face up to the window. "Roll it down," Didi muttered. "You might as well. If he's like any dog I've ever known, he wants to look out."

I grinned at that, memories from years back and long drives in the country returning to me. He always had loved car rides. A sharp pang hit me as I rolled the window down, he hadn't been the only one to love those rides. "Eliza" I muttered and felt like crying again. "Don't worry, my dear. I'll have you up and about soon!"

Didi winced. "Not just now, though, please. The mutt is bad enough." I patted Frankenstein, who'd stuck his head out the window happily, the wind whistling through his empty skull. He barked, causing Didi to flinch. "And could he please not do that?"

"Frankenstein, shhh. Don't upset the nice lady driving us." If such emotions were left to me, I suppose I would have felt sorry for her. As it was, it really wasn't polite of us to scare her so badly and I knew it, even though I felt an irresistible urge to unnerve her at every occasion I could think of. I was beginning to feel the effects of too much time without magicked morphine and she was a distraction. There was a dull ache down my spine that would have been agony without the morphine still in my system. I paused, looked at her. "Didi. I must apologize. You have been dealing with this as best you can, considering you've no experience with magic or shamans." I vaguely remembered a time when I probably would have been as upset as she was and reminded myself that I needed her.

"Magic. Shamans. Great." Didi took a deep breath. "So, can you tell me? Or is it some dark secret?"

"Probably," I admitted. "I'm sort of on the edges of the community, though, so I don't know for certain." As she glanced curiously at me, I continued, "I'm self-taught. Powerful enough to manage the magics without help, but" I hated to admit it, "Ignorant, too. Eliza should be a complete soul. Not just a skeleton controlled by my oversoul." I clenched my fists, remembering how Yoh had called her my toy. She wasn't a toy. She was there, I knew she was, I just couldn't figure out how to contact the living soul that had once been Eliza and join with her the way I should. The way the others did. "Eliza"

"Man, you must love her a lot, but has it ever occurred to you that people should stay dead?"

I gritted my teeth. "NO. Death is the enemy. Death is the destroyer of hopes. The destroyer of dreams. The destroyer of lives."

A faint smile crossed the girl's face. "Yeah, all that and more. But everything ends, even the universe. You get what you get, don't you? Why expect more?" She glanced at me again and sighed. "Hey, Faust, you're getting hot under the collar. Don't be so upset. I'm trying to understand, really I am."

"I just want her back" I whispered. "I just want her back." The morphine was wearing off too fast. I was beginning to feel too much, both physically and mentally. I wanted to rail at death, to get my hands around its throat and make it give Eliza back to me. "Please" I turned away and buried my face in my hands. "Leave me alone."

"Tell me where you need to go after the hospital," Didi said after a moment's silence. "If it isn't too far I can take you."

"I" I turned, blinked at her.

"There are places I can't take you, of course. You're out of my jurisdiction, really, but I'm making an exception." She grinned at me suddenly. "You're scary but I sorta feel sorry for you too and I don't think you're going to make it there on your own."

"Patch City."

"Bit of a drive, but I think I can do that much. We might run into trouble on the way though. There's some rough territory – and people – out that way."

I felt a sudden smile take over. "I can handle that part," I told her. "I won't have a chance at winning the contest I'm heading towards if I couldn't."

"Mmmm. Confident sucker, aren't you?" Didi shrugged. "Okay. Hospital first to get you some supplies, then Patch city here we come."

***

I looked around the hospital with a critical eye. It was late at night and Didi had taken me in through a back way, explaining that she really didn't want people knowing she was borrowing stuff. "I'll probably get into some trouble for running off, but in a lot of ways I'm my own boss. Business takes care of itself, most of the time. Still, it'll be better if you weren't noticed, 'kay?"

I nodded, pulling myself into my recreated wheelchair. Recreating non-living physical objects was easy enough, after all. It's death I can't fix. "Will you wait here, then?"

"I've got a few rounds to make, first. Come back and I'll meet you here."

It took me almost an hour to find all the supplies I needed. Blood and morphine were easy. Bones compatible with mine were a bit harder, especially since I didn't want to make it obvious what I'd done. It upsets people so much to have their dead loved ones used that way, after all. Finally, broken bones replaced, torn flesh sewn up and dislocated joints reset, I wheeled up to the ambulance and found Didi sitting in the back talking to Eliza. Well, more precisely, talking at her.

"I feel sorry for him, really. It's too bad he had to take it that way. You must love him a lot" she said, then paused and looked up at me. "Ahhh, there you are. All fixed?" She eyed the IV bags I'd set up and shook her head. "I guess so."

"I apologize for taking so long," I told her, ignoring her behavior before I'd arrived. After all, she'd been talking to Frankenstein earlier before she even knew he was 'alive'. "Are we ready to go?"

"As ready as we can be. C'mon. Get in and let's go."

***

Patch city was over six hundred miles to the south of us. Several days drive and agonizingly slow for my impatient nerves. I wanted to get there as soon as possible. Admittedly, with Didi driving I was going to be there weeks earlier than I'd expected had I had to use my wheelchair the whole way, but I still wanted to finish matters.

Didi apparently was anxious about getting things over with too, but she needed to rest. We stopped at several towns on the way, Didi getting a hotel room and leaving me to my own devices out in the ambulance, since I didn't sleep. Instead, I spent those dark hours putting the finishing touches on my self-repairs.

It was when we reached a small town – so small I missed the name when we entered it – that I noticed at least one man I recognized. He'd been aboard the plane, a follower of Voodoo, unless I missed my guess. I shrugged it off. So they were other Shamans headed towards the contest. That wasn't my business unless they were part of an official challenge.

Except he apparently didn't agree. I noted the way he was watching me as I lowered myself into my wheelchair to take Frankenstein for a walk. So. I suppose he hopes to pick off challengers before the contest. I glanced at Didi, who was headed for the hotel and figured she'd be all right, then rolled my wheelchair out towards the desert surrounding the town. They probably knew some of my powers – every official challenge had been watched at the stadium after all – whereas I hadn't had the opportunity to see his.

Out in the shadows, I tested the grounds with my oversoul. Skeletons and bodies lay deep within the earth and I set them to pulling themselves out. Then I waited, feeling Eliza's sweet comforting presence under my arm, if not within my soul. "Let me see what I can do without imperiling you, my dearest," I murmured to her. There was no point in risking damage to my lady unless it was necessary. He was just one man, after all.

I heard his approach not long after. A big man, dressed in a pair of white trousers that reflected the dim light from the gibbous moon. He was carrying a straw doll in one hand and had a malicious grin on his face. "Well now. Faust VIII, I believe?"

"We haven't been introduced," I murmured, "But indeed."

"We won't need to be. We're going to finish you off so quickly it won't even matter." I blinked at that. We? Did he mean his familiar or My question was answered when the other two men stepped onto the plain. All three wore face paint of varying stripes and symbols. "Prepare to join your precious dead, Faust VIII."

I smiled. "Ganging up or teaming up," I wondered aloud. "Either way, you're a very rude young man."

"Don't you know? The next stage of the competition is team-based. You can fight alone if you'd like but" The leader of the group held out his doll and an image of something that might once have been human formed around it. "Come on, Faust. Fight. It's time to die."

Teams. The next stage is team based How could I have missed that fact? Yet again I had a feeling I was running into a detail that I would have been told if I'd been trained. My self-taught background usually didn't cause me problems, but this was going to be a big one. Never mind that, Faust, I added to myself, summoning Frankenstein to be my legs. If you can't deal with these three you've got no chance against the big players.

Power flung itself at me, needles of energy that drove their way into my arms as I dodged. I think it worried my attackers that I didn't seem to notice, but being high on morphine most of the time does have its benefits. Releasing Eliza, I twisted out of the way of another wave of energy, even as I used my oversoul to guide her in the attack. I hated having to use her, to risk her, but I had no hope of defeating three without her help – even if it was the fairly limited help that she could provide with her soul so dissipated that it couldn't join with its focus.

Scalpels flashing, I ripped into the closest of the three. I wasn't going to waste time on this fight. I couldn't afford to play on their emotions the way I had with Yoh. For that matter I didn't really have a way to do so. They didn't have a friend for me to injure and force them to expend their energies over. I was going to have to do this the hard way. Then I realized they were turning from me to Eliza.

I examined my attackers with my oversoul's sight. Individually they'd have had no chance against me. Even teamed they didn't have quite the level of power I did. The problem was that I was having to defend myself and Eliza from three directions, a much more complicated process. I'd have to use part of my oversoul energy to keep Eliza defended and another part for myself Or will I? I was noticing they were concentrating on my sweet lady and it occurred to me that they knew the value I placed on her. Knew how wretched I would be if they harmed her. This meant two things. One, I was going to have to protect her. Two, and almost more importantly, it left me able to set my own defense aside – a thing that disturbed me not at all.

As the three Voodun moved at Eliza, trying to break past the skeletons I was using to protect her, I moved backwards, as if trying to avoid the fight. Somewhere, deep beneath the earth, were exactly the bones I needed. They were old. They'd been dead for millennia. And they were huge. Very slowly I raised them up through the darkness, using every spare ounce of energy to do it.

"Yes! Waste your energy on her. Waste it all," the leader yelled triumphantly as a circle of skeletons fell away and I drew another out of the ground. They didn't realize how little energy it took for me to raise them. Dead bones have a history of life in them to tell them how to move, and I didn't need them to be strong, just in the way. Eliza swung her blade, nearly cutting off one man's arm.

The last of my skeletons were falling when I finally drew It to a spot just below the three. I wasn't going to get them all with it, I realized, but I had enough oversoul to manage the rest of the fight in a one on one with the last. As they shouted in triumph and prepared to use their blades on my beloved I leapt into the way, using my arm to block, even as It rose out of the dirt, mouth wide to swallow the two closest to it. The knife laid my arm open, then swung further to slice through my chest.

My attacker's eyes went wide as he realized what was behind him. Not a tyrannosaurus rex, but one of the giants that had made that dinosaur look like a kitten. Two screams were cut short, then my lizard swung its head down toward the third man.

He stared only a moment, then turned and grabbed me by the throat, squeezing hard, "Call it off. Call it off or it'll take you too."

I grinned. "All right," I said. As he started to relax I let my lizard swallow us. I felt a sudden impact against my skull from one of its teeth, then I was unconscious again.

***

"Faust? Hey, man. You okay?" I opened my eyes and stared death in the face. The fact that she was hiding behind the human shape and behavior of a girl called Didi didn't matter. My oversoul sight, what little remained of it, was still functioning and I could see who she was. What she was.

My hand snapped out and I grabbed her by the throat. "YOU! I KNOW YOU NOW!" She'd played with me. Pretended to be human for some twisted game of her own.

"Hey, cut that out." She pushed me away so easily. After so many decades and I still couldn't wrestle with Death. Couldn't even fight her to a standstill. "Calm down."

"GIVE HER BACK TO ME."

She sighed, pushed her dark hair out of her face. "I can't, hon," she said with honest sympathy that only made me hate her more. "That's not my part in the cycle of things. You'd know that if you'd been trained properly. You really ought to be."

"Shut up." I forced myself to a seated position. "Go away, you bitch."

"Now who's being rude?" Didi no, Death went over and picked up Frankenstein, setting him in my lap. "Here, puppy. You sit with your master and make him feel better." She sat on her haunches and gazed out at the field and the scattered bones. "What a mess. That was quite a feat, though, pulling ol'bigmouth up like that. You really are powerful despite your lack of training."

"Not powerful enough. Not powerful enough." I groaned angrily as I scanned the area for Eliza and found her lying amid the wreckage. Without my oversoul to animate her all she was, was a bundle of bones. I felt tears stream down my face.

"I told you before, hon. There's a cycle to these things. Things are born. Things die" She looked at me regretfully. "Sometimes they come back but that's not something I can do anything about."

"I hate you."

"Yeah, I know. Lot of people do." She rose to her feet. "I don't think it does any good to say I'm sorry, it's my job, so I won't. I will say this much. You're not going to make it alone, Faust. You've put yourself out of my jurisdiction with your magics. You've twisted up your soul so much that I suspect you may well be there when I turn out the lights in the universe and shut the door. You may be here even after that, but you still can't win this fight on your own."

"I don't care," I growled. If I had the strength. Any strength at all "I won't give up. I will bring Eliza back."

She sighed. "Yeah, you might at that. But not without help, I think. You'd better start considering your options, hon, because you haven't a hope of winning against a stronger team – and believe me, the others are teaming up even as we speak."

Shaking my head, I pulled myself back into my wheelchair and inserted a couple of IVs. I'd lost a lot of blood and even if it wasn't going to kill me, my oversoul wasn't going to recover very quickly without my body being at least somewhat repaired. "I don't have to listen to this"

She rose to her feet, knelt in front of me with that pretty little face smiling so damned gently. "Of course you don't. You'll do what you think you have to. I know that. I may not like watching you twist around on your self-inflicted hurts like you do, but they're yours to do with as you like." As I glared at her, she smiled. "Eliza loves you, little necromancer. Never forget that. Okay?" She stood up, touched Frankenstein, who nuzzled her appreciatively.

"Traitor," I muttered at him as she patted me on the head in much the same way.

"Don't be that way, hon. Frankenstein, you take good care of your master, okay?" She turned and walked away, fading into the darkness without another word.

I sat there in the night, staring up at the moon exhaustedly. Then it occurred to me. I had no oversoul left to keep even Frankenstein going. How in the hell was he moving around? Then I realized what SHE had done and I felt the tears begin to stream in earnest now. Damn her anyway. Someday I was going to win. Someday and somehow I'd wrestle my love away from her grip. I moved my chair over to Eliza and pulled her up into my lap beside Frankenstein. I still had a few miles to go to get to Patch city. I'd wait until then to fix myself up. Wait until then to decide what to do and who to ask for help.

The End

Author's Notes: Didi was the name Neil Gaiman's Death used in "High Cost of Living". I couldn't resist giving Faust a chance to tell her exactly what he thinks of his situation and give her a chance to respond.