Rain, a shaman king fanfic

Hello everyone, this fanfiction is essentually a retelling of the battle between Faust and Yoh from Faust's perspective. I've incorperated elements from Goethe's Faust to make the charachter of Faust VIII more plausable in respect to the Faust legend which he seems to be based off of (the lines in itallics are lines from that play). Otherwise, in regards to Shaman King, the plot follows that of the manga. I, of course, do not own either Shaman King or Goethe's Faust, they belong to their respective creators.

Enjoy!

Rain

He hated rain. It had always been a taboo within his family, ever since the first Faust, and Marguerite, lovely, lovely Marguerite who tried to drown their bastard in a river. She was crazy then, ruined by Mephisto's magic, merely a shell of the untouched spinner girl she had once been. But that did not mean that she was not still beautiful, insanity had its way of making even the most deranged women look attractive, as their clouded eyes wandered up and down walls in a delirium.

She had done that, he remembered, as she lay on the floor, the blood leaking out of her, those eyes, once so lucid, simply empty and confused.

He did not like the think about his lineage, but his past was something much harder to shrug off, regardless of the pain it brought him when he recalled it. People told him that sometimes, when he seemed especially distant that the past consumed him. But what choice did he have? How could he not live in the past when there was no future?

"Abide, thou art so fair…"

The words echoed through his mind, and hastily, he shook them off. Such words haunted him as they recited the words of another time, another curse.

The rain once again seized his attention, and for the first time, he took notice of his surroundings. Curiously enough, he was in a cemetery. This did not take him by surprise of course, as he was always wandering amongst the dead. They seemed share a strange bond, him and the deceased, he required them to enact his will, while they needed him for the sensation of feeling human. He was certain that regardless of Demons and devils, that there was no Heaven or Hell. The dead and their souls remained, lost on the earth, and hungered for a chance to regain what they had lost. The dead had such simple carnal desires, and it amused him to see when they were occasionally satisfied.

However, he soon remembered that this cemetery was different than others he had been in before. For once, it was not in Germany, where he spent most of his time, but rather multi ethnic, and in existence halfway around the world. He recalled suddenly that he was in Japan. This reminded him further that he was not here without a purpose, and that he was not purely masochistic in his actions of walking out in the rain (although that was highly likely). This thought gave him a slight bit a pleasure, in finding that, at least for the moment he was not entirely insane, but that did not mean that he was not uncomfortably close.

Two figures caught his eye several feet before him huddled under hands and newspaper to block out the rain. He was amused that people did things like that, even though it provided no real protection against the weather. After their ordeal, the two would probably each end up with a lovely cold. The circumstances for such an illness were almost ideal.

His pace allowed him to slowly approach the pair, and cautiously, he observed them. The taller of the two wore an oracle pager on his right wrist, and with this fact established, Faust promptly came to a stop.

The tallest, being a boy, (he recognized the angle of the mandible, despite the subject's long hair) was entirely unobservant, and it took a few moments before his shorter counterpart noticed Faust's presence. He was almost certain that the smaller one was a dwarf (in regards to his over proportioned head) and this aroused an immense curiosity in him.

The shorter boy was about to speak a phrase of warning or alert to his lithe companion, but Faust decided that an introduction on his part was perhaps best to avert any confusion, or awkward pauses. He disliked it when he muddled over his words. Accuracy was something he treasured, and precision was his god. Such was to be expected of a master surgeon.

"Guten Tag. Yoh Asakura?" he asked in a quiet tone.

The tall boy looked up, his eyelids widening only briefly to give Faust a good look at the whiteness of his sclera. He was not as Faust imagined him at all, skinny and young. He had heard that this shaman was one to be reckoned with, and yet even that seemed hard to believe.

"I'm glad to make your acquaintance," Faust continued, pretending to ignore the boy's quizzical look. "You're not quite as horrid as I imagined. I hope you'll go easy on me?"

The confusion on the boy's face morphed into a mild case of confidence as he realized that Faust was simply exchanging pre game pleasantries; the doctor's variation of a polite taunt. The two seemed to reach a claming silence before a screech erupted in Faust's head. Or was that through his tympanic membrane? He was slightly off set.

"Do not trust him Lord Yoh!" The screech had morphed into a voice. "This one reeks of death!"

He narrowed his eyes. The voice seemed to belong to the spirit that hovered behind the tall boy. Judging by the garb that the spirit wore, he assumed that the spirit had been a samurai. Faust smirked. So the boy was not as stupid as he looked.

"I suppose that I would smell like death-"Faust began

"If ever to the moment I should say—abide thou art so fair!"

"I used to be a doctor."

"Put me in fetters on that day,"

…and in that profession you touch a lot of death."

"for I wish to perish then I swear!"

"But I no longer practice," he whispered, "I lost a battle to death."

The shaman Yoh nodded, but the samurai behind him simply narrowed his eyes.

There was a general consensus of silence for a few moments before the shorter boy spoke.

"You can't win against death anyways…"

It was just a side comment made to himself, but it had none the less reached Faust's ears.

At first, he realized the intent of the phrase was not to offend him, simply the wrong choice of words for the situation, but for a reason not even he could comprehend, a steady rage began to build. Of course he could win against death! He was in a fight that battled ghosts for Christ sake, how off could mastering death be? It's was just another combination, another sequence, another code, and once he found it, he and Eliza could be together again!

Abide.

Abide!

He suddenly realized that those words, "you can't win against death" insinuated that he, and all his life's work was simply a mockery, a sham. He was no greater than those cheap con men that sell water claiming it to be from the fountain of youth.

A sham. A lie.

Abide—thou art so fair!

His fingers curled tightly around the chains concealed under his coat. He could feel his frame twitching strangely, almost to the point where they portrayed pain. Not that he would know--the morphine had done an adequate job of eliminating that, years ago. Yet still…why could he feel the hole from her leaving?

The buttons flew away under his fingers, and before Yoh could say anything, he had shed his overcoat like a snake's skin, the grey fabric pooling around his legs. The chains that choked his arm began to ease as he slowly loosened them to release her.

He supposed that to most people, a human skeleton was the last thing one expected to emerge from under an over coat. But, there she was, her bones lovingly polished and assembled, unraveling now to reveal to the two younger shamans her full and glorious form.

So fair!

"I do not tolerate those who insult my research…" the words rolled murderously off his tongue.

The fear in both the boy's eyes was evident as they began to understand the extent of his madness.

"Perhaps, you'd like to meet my assistant?" he asked, attempting to regain his composure, yet his anger visibly leaked through. "Her name is Eliza, a delicate young woman, and a nurse…"

He rested his palm to her forehead focusing his shamanic energy. Her eyes flared with light, and he could feel her bones vibrating, tensing and pulling, searching for the energy that would replace the skeletal muscle once needed in life.

"You see," said Faust, "I can raise the dead. Such a skill would be useful to a doctor nein? Therefore, I am honored with this beautiful woman as my shamanic focus."

The pair remained dumfounded, the younger boy, who had so casually traded insults before now looked as if his legs were made of Jell-O. Faust smirked.

"Eliza." He whispered in to the skeleton's ear, "Seize him."

It had been quick work. But then, he had expected that, for a boy of such short stature. Eliza had quickly grabbed the small child and thrown him before a nearby tombstone in prostration. Faust quickly righted the boy and paralyzed him with the words: " Be still."

The other boy, Yoh, proved to be slightly more difficult. Faust had anticipated this as well, considering his larger size, and the intensity in of which his eyes shone when he spoke. Several skeletons, which he had summoned in addition to Eliza, now held Yoh in place. Yet, all the howling the boy emitted was making it quite near impossible for Faust to focus on the child who lay quivering before him.

"Unusual." He muttered, examining the dwarf's body up close. He reached for the holster on his thigh and pulled out a scalpel, trimming away the boy's shirt like loose flesh.

"Such a small chest cavity." He turned the scalpel delicately in his fingers, relinquishing in its cold touch, and how it felt like an extension of his arm. He had not felt such closeness with anything in a very long time.

The scalpel plunged into the boy quickly and efficiently, with skill that made him reminisce of his days as a top German surgeon. The cuts were thin, delicate, and just enough to peel away the skin to allow Faust a picturesque view of the dwarf's abdominal muscles.

A shriek erupted from the boy, akin to a mutilated wolf. Faust cringed at the noise, but his hands, unaffected (A surgeon must never let his hands slip) carefully pinned back the loose folds of flesh. He was slightly confused by the boy's pain at first, considering the dexterity in of which he had preformed the dissection (dissection, after all, meant to separate, not mutilate, and he'd done no such thing.) But was quickly reminded that not everyone had the luxury of a morphine habit.

The boy was still crying.

"Kinder must be careful," Faust muttered, "If you keep crying you shall bleed out, and we wouldn't want that would we?"

The boy's cries quickly became puppy whimpers.

There. Things hadn't been so hard had they? He glanced over the chest cavity once more, before a very loud din, the sound of bone being splintered, caught his attention.

The shaman named Yoh had finally managed to break through Faust's skeletons. Panting, he drew his sword, and stood before Faust with a look of rage and defiance.

"Let. Manta. Go." He whispered, and by the tone of his voice, Faust could tell that he had quickly shed his ditzy personality.

'You've interrupted my examination, and now time has run out." Faust grinned. The Oracle pager at his wrist signaled the fight would begin momentarily. His plan had worked. Now all that was left was to vanquish the opponent before him.

It was Yoh who struck first, his feet electrified by the pager's ring, starting the Shaman Fight. Faust took a few paces backwards, to lean against a grave marker. Yoh was obviously confused by the doctor's actions and complete lack of aggression, but never the less came forwards.

Faust grinned. Perfect.

His fingers snapped, the sound reverberating throughout the cemetery, the bones once shattered becoming whole men again.

"So you cannot cheat death?" Faust asked, amused. "I should think that my skeletons quite defy such a principle. Knochensoldaten, arise!"

The ground shook, and an additional plethora of skeletons crawled out from underneath the mud; their faces locked in a morbid grin.

Yoh was utterly surrounded. His visage grimaced in anger.

"Let Manta go." He said again. "This fight is between you and me."

"Agreed." Replied Faust. "I am not beating him repeatedly with a stick, am I? Such an exercise would be poor for both our heaths. I examine, not mutilate."

"Yoh…" the dwarf's voice trailed in obvious pain. "Save me Yoh…"

Faust wanted to smack the boy across the face until it was bloodied and his jaw could no longer move to create such words. He had forgotten the effectiveness of a damsel in distress. He should have cut his throat, he should have torn the chords, he should have…

Such thoughts loosened his concentration, and before he could blink, skeletons had begun to layer over him in protection.

His fingers had moved again with minds of their own, commanding the action, and he was thankful that he hadn't been reduced to slitting his wrists and tendons when he had been in his deepest pit of lonely agony.

"You shall not breach this shield Yoh Asakura!" He said confidently. The safe shell of calcium blotted out the light before him.

But when light came again how horrid it was! Bones again splintered with sounds that threatened to tear his cochlea in two. Specks of rotted white pierced his skin and sent him backwards, slamming his body through the grave marker, and into the arms of another. He moved to get up, only to find that he had shattered his tibia.

Schweinerei! How unfortunate.

Yoh seamed to glow with anger and rage, his eyes darting worriedly between Faust and his friend.

"I'm trying…" they said. "I'm trying… please don't go!"

He remembered that look on his own face years before.

"Abide—thou art so fair!"

He stood over her, the surgical tools bloodied, the dishes filled with bone fragment and bullet.

"Please…please…I'm trying! I can't do any more!"

Lie.

He could always do more. He could have done more.

Panic had made his hands slip, panic had made him unable to focus. Panic had….

The world was starting to blur.

Quickly he remembered the tibia in it's shattered state.

"Distract him, meine skelette," he muttered to his regenerating bone soldiers. I have work to do."

The dead are surprisingly obedient, and are as, if not more, capable at tasks than the living are. The dead have no fear. The dead are dead.

Yoh was promptly educated in this theory as Faust's skeletons once again held him at bay. The pre fight assault had achieved it's goal of draining him of energy, and the doctor assumed that it would not be much longer now before his spiritual energies ran out. Besides, that samurai was starting to annoy him

The scalpel, once again fused to his arm began its graceful task of cutting, although, this time, it pierced muscle and flesh to delve into the bone. Such a process of cutting out the bone was not only more efficient than casting it, but in regards to him, utterly painless. (It was, strangely, illegal.)

'Eliza!" he called. "Fetch me a tibia of my size and blood type!"

She nodded, and he could not help but to smile at the familiar bob of her head.

Such beauty…it was in the bones.

Yoh was still thwarted (almost to the point to embarrassment in Faust's opinion) by the skeletons, when Faust was finally able to sew his leg together and get more morphine into him. His vision was becoming increasingly sharper, and the dull throb of emotional pain was melting away into drug-induced insanity.

"Had enough?" he asked coolly.

Yoh simply growled, the fatigue not allowing him the luxury of words.

Faust raised his hand for what had to be the third time that day and snapped, disengaging the oversoul that held the hundreds of skeletons together. Their bones fell to the ground like dozens of rag dolls, arms flailing as they piled into the ground, returning to the earth from whence they came.

Eliza alone remained standing, her bones quivering as Faust began to work his magic.

First came muscle, the tendons wrapping lovingly around her, blending into porcelain flesh. Her hair, golden locks, snaked from her head and wreathed her body in physical manifestations of the sun. Her clothes were prefect recreations of what she had worn when she had worked as his assistant, and he was pleased to see that the bullet hole in her forehead had become seemingly non-existent.

Thou art so fair!

By this time, he had come to realize that he and the two boys were not alone.

A man had appeared, wrapped in the garb of a Native American, and adorned with several animals. A girl, no older than the shaman named Yoh, accompanied him. She had a determined, almost cruel look in her eyes, and Faust was suddenly filled with the desire to dissect either her eyes or her cerebral cortex, whichever he could get his hands on first.

'She has interesting eyes, Eliza." He purred unto her newly formed pinna, "But they are not so beautiful as yours."

He thought he saw her smile at these words, and if she did not, he convinced himself that she did. He pretended that she was herself again, and that for the moment her silence was only caused by her lack of need to say anything.

That was Eliza after all; she did not say seven words when only four would do.

"Your skills are impressive." Faust said, returning his attention to Yoh. "Manifesting your oversoul on a blade, I might have done the same thing with this…" He gestured to his scalpel, "If I was not gifted with such a lovely set of bones from Eliza."

"Shame though…" he muttered. "Your over soul's nearly done. Kaput. End of story."

Such an observation was, unfortunately for the young shaman, true. His once bold and cocky step was quickly reduced to a wobble as he walked forwards, free from the hold of the skeletons. He could see the image of the Samurai fade and sharpen in a fashion that resembled the hemorrhaging of blood.

He was finished. Only a few more moments now, and the boy would be finished. He was getting closer to reviving her. So close…

The girl with the cold eyes opened her mouth, and again, Faust was filled with the desire to batter her into silence; snap that pretty little neck. He could not follow what she was going on about, as such things obviously concerned Yoh's past, and his relationship with Manta. He did not care. He did not care about anything but her.

The girl was uncomfortably close to the dwarf, and quickly Faust strode over to her, his scalpel bared like a madman. He realized suddenly how deranged he looked, spattered with blood and dirt, and fighting the urge to kill the little girl for opening her stupid mouth, slit her lips to her cheekbones.

Instead, he simply muttered "Frauline, if you'd please, away from my specimen."

He had meant it in courtesy, but the morphine had loosened his lips and dulled his nerves so that it came out mixed with rising anger.

He could feel as the blade of Yoh's sword rested against his shoulder. So this girl, she meant something to him?

"I am your opponent." Yoh said coolly, "Anna talks too much."

Faust could see the girl roll her eyes, which he thought to be quite brazen in her predicament, but slowly retreated.

Besides, it was almost all over now. Despite Yoh's bravado, he was still panting like a dog and bearing the sputtering candle of his oversoul on the tip of his sword.

He was most certainly between a rock and a hard space.

Faust took renewed pleasure in this.

"Eliza," He spoke, the words rolling of his tongue, "finish him."

He had reduced that sputtering candle in half when Yoh suddenly spoke again.

"Faust, aren't you a little to old to be playing with dolls?"

The comment seemed strange to him at first. Of course he was, and besides, it's not like he had owned any. But a glance to Yoh's face proved that this question was far from random, and that it had a very specific purpose.

Of course. That was when it hit him, that he still owned one doll, at least in all the technical sense. She stood before him, her flesh glowing with the magic of his oversoul.

He meant Eliza, didn't he? Meant that she was a doll.

But Eliza? How could she be? How could the only woman he had ever loved be nothing more than a doll? He could see her now, looking at him with concern. There. That was Eliza, always looking out for him.

Or was that the morphine?

Put me in fetters, for that day-

"You wouldn't understand." He growled at Yoh, who stood there, cocky and slightly stupefied that his plan had worked.

"How could you understand? You're just a child!'

A child!

"How could a child understand a man's anguish at losing his wife?"

I wish to perish then I swear!

The Morphine must have been weak, he could feel his nerves as they were crushed by anger, no—rage. His body was now shaking in real pain. He could feel it, the hole, the small hole that he had hidden away was widening and engulfing him, immersing him in the pain from her loss.

He wouldn't understand.

He couldn't

He was a child, mere kinder,

And yet

To perish…I swear!

They had met as children, he remembered now, walking around aimlessly in the streets of Berlin. He'd been half blind with glasses the thickness of coke bottles from an over indulgence in reading. He really had been a pathetic thing, a creature that had miraculously escaped the cruelty of Darwin's theories.

Regardless of such physical imperfections, he was smart, intelligent far beyond any of his peers. If he could not see, then he would learn why this was, so that he might be able to fix it. Medicine was not only a tradition in his family, but a personal savior. Through medicine he could fix anything, but most importantly, it gave him power, control, and the ability to do things that very few others could. He could cheat death, and if this was not possible, he could give it a very long and hard run for it's money. Being involved in medicine was like dabbling in the activities of God.

So when they met, it was quite by accident, and yet as he looked back on it through the blissful fog of morphine the whole thing seemed pre determined by fate. He had just come from the library, loaded with books and charts on the human hand (a recent area of obsession) when he had, quite on accident, looked up to acknowledge the rain.

Rain had always, always been a bad omen for the Fausts, water in general for that matter. "You remember Marguerite." His mother would say to him, "She tried to vanquish her insanity in water, to no avail."

Her 'insanity' had been Faust II, who had survived his mother's wrath with no apparent explanation. Faust's mother told him it was an act of god's mercy, but Faust simply thought that perhaps it was another trick played by Mephisto to torment Faust.

If Johann Faust knew he'd had a living son, maybe he wouldn't have gone off to ruin Helen of Troy.

But that was another story.

But the rain that day! How on earth could it have been a bad omen? For, when he turned his head to heaven his eyes caught a glimpse of a seraph that had been trapped on earth! She looked at him with a kind smile, something not exactly common to Faust in those days, and with her hand, oh her perfect hand! Waved to him.

He could have died of joy.

If to the moment I should say,

Abide—thou art so fair!

Put me in fetters on that day

For I wish to perish then I swear!

That wave was the beginning of what would be an unlikely friendship between an anti-social bookworm, and an excessively social (albeit confined) invalid, as he would later find out. Her illness became his obsession, and he researched excessively to find her a cure so that he could free the fragile seraph into the heavens where she belonged.

He wouldn't tell her that of course, until much later. The thought of such words in his head often made the young student blush.

It would take him twenty years before he could answer the riddle that kept her motionless and locked in her room, but when he did, he came to her as soon as possible, and convinced her to try it with much zeal. She was understandably quite nervous about the whole thing, but his skills as a doctor (he had recently gotten his license to practice) were quite good, regardless of his young age.

To say the least, she was immensely pleased with the results.

The intimacy the two had grown to share during the length of his excessive research could only become deeper, more intense, and bloom into full-blossomed love. He could still remember her eyes when he asked her to marry him, wide with shock, but for the first time in a long time he did not see eyes as merely spheres composed of humors and lenses, but rather, gateways into the soul.

She had of course, said yes.

And he could not have been happier.

The rest flowed like a storybook ending. The house practically flew into their hands, his profession securing them a comfortable amount of affluence. Within a few weeks they had renovated it into a small clinic, he the physician, she his unwavering assistant. It was, to him, the literal interpretation of heaven. His seraph couldn't have agreed more.

Then things changed.

He would always have her love, there was no doubt of that, and he did not loose money or limb, rather, an outside factor collided into their lives that he could never have anticipated.

It had been late, and he had been out making house calls; some child had cut him or herself, or something of the sort. Back then he did not mind the late hours, and he was pleasant as he listened to the patients complaints, working to repair them quickly and efficiently. After all, he had no need to rush; Eliza was at home, closing the clinic and probably heading to bed.

His keys entered the door at around midnight, and to his surprise, the door pushed open, unlocked. Perhaps Eliza was seeing an emergency patient and had not closed up? He did not suspect anything, and so he quietly walked into the house, entering the back room of the clinic to clean his tools and retire for the night. As he finished disinfecting his scalpel, he placed it into the tray and turned to look through the clinic door, left ajar, and into the operation room. It was dimly lit, and for a reason he could not comprehend, he noticed that there was a cluster of spots on one of the far walls. He slowly walked towards the door and pushed it open, flickering on the lights.

There on the cold floor, lay the woman he had loved since a boy, blood and brains oozing out of her head. His seraph laid cruelly de winged, simply a broken human body barely breathing on the floor. He ran over to her, knocking over one of the medical trays and knelt at her side, his fingers running over her hair, her face, his eyes widening in horror as he realized that the spots on the wall were no more than the spatter of blood…

All was not completely lost, he realized in an intense fit of blissful joy; he could still feel her pulse as his hands ran down her neck, still feel the precious blood move through her jugular. He turned and grabbed the contents of the fallen medical tray, swiftly injecting her with an anesthetic, soothing her already unconscious mind into a painless sleep.

Now would be his real test as a surgeon.

It took ten hours. Ten long agonizing hours as he cut and trimmed away the damaged tissue, pulled out the bullet and shattered bones. He lovingly cleaned the wound, stitched together the hemorrhaging veins and brain cavity. And yet, it only took ten hours for her to slowly and miserably die.

To perish

I swear!

When he had finished, had done everything in his mind that applied to the situation, he sat down on the cold floor covered in her blood, and stared stupefied at the spots the bullet hole had splattered onto the wall.

She was dead.

She, Eliza,

Eliza

Now ceased to exist.

He could feel a small prick in his chest, a small war wound, stapled into his soul from the realization of her loss.

He could not think, breathe, nor even exist. His soul, Eliza, had vanished beneath his very hands, and now he was entirely unsure what to do.

He would remain in that state for the next week, turning away all visitors, and declining to answer any medical calls. It did not matter whether a patient needed something as simple as stitches or brain surgery. He had, quite simply, lost all faith in his medical skills. For seven days he sat, shut away in that house, hoping that he would perish, his blood mingling with hers on the wall, his soul with hers in heaven.

By the end of the week, it had begun to rain.

The whole thing seemed like a very cruel and ironic joke on God's behalf, and for the first time in a long time, Faust delved into his family's dark past; all the way back to the first Faust and Marguerite.

Johann Faust had not been a charming man, much unlike his later kin. However, like his ancestors, he was excessively fond of the pleasures that life had to offer, especially those in the form of a spinner girl named Marguerite.

Regardless of his lack of social appeal, Faust had been a keen academic (a trait that had obviously been passed through the family) and through the art of dark magic, summoned the devil Mephisto.

Overall, the whole experiment was a disaster, with Faust and Mephisto creating all sorts of trouble and ruining various lives; Marguerite was a splendid example, her mind rotted by the time of her execution.

However, Mephisto did bring Faust one important thing: the art of Necromancy, the ability to raise the dead. Faust VIII was unsure of the origin of this skill, in regards to time, but a complete list of notes on the function and procedure of necromancy had been rumored to be left behind by Johann.

These papers, long locked away by the Faust family, out of shame of their ancestor's actions had been kept as a secret amongst family members and to speak of it was considered taboo. Yet, by the end of that week, Faust found himself walking down the stairway that lead to the bolted door of his forbidden ancestor's study.

What he discovered was far more than he could have ever imagined.

Johann Faust had annotated, in perfect detail the art of necromancy, which as Faust quickly learned was the art of summoning the dead. He did not leave this study for three days, refusing himself food and water. He was determined to do absolutely anything and everything in his power to correct his mistakes in surgery and bring his beloved back to life.

When he was finished, he found that he could make the anatomical skeletons in his clinic dance to his liking, yet Eliza, his sweet, beloved, seraph remained immobile. He discovered that the flesh made motion much more difficult due to the stiffness of decay and rigor mortis. Such specimens required more Mana than he had. So gently, carefully, he stripped her of her flesh, and made her into the beautiful skeleton that now stood before him.

Yes, it was true she did not speak; she did not turn when he called her name. She had nodded to him when he asked for a new tibia because he had willed her to do so. But that did not matter to him; all that mattered was that she was there. He did not care in what form, talkative or no, and the only thing that brought him joy was the realization that one day she would be complete again, a real living wife.

It did not occur to him that he had voiced these thoughts aloud, and if he did, he did not care. There was nothing to hide or be transparent about, as his entire existence was manifested within the spirit before him. However, one thing still irked him, the young shaman's words: "aren't you too old to be playing with dolls?"

No, Eliza was no doll.

His senses, only previously fogged in memory, were now incredibly alert, and very aware of the anger that they had been feeling only recently. He could not understand it, for all his knowledge of human nerves, brain motion and behavioral patterns, but this rage within him was enough to drive him to murder, an act that he, as a doctor did not like to relish in remembering during fits of intense morphine withdrawal.

But this boy!

How he wanted only to cause him such pain of the most exquisite kind.

"I'll cut you…" Faust whispered "I kill you, carve out your wicked tongue and preserve it in formaldehyde!"

He now finally understood that he was truly insane, although that had taken place years ago.

But how to kill this boy? By shaman law he could not physically lay a hand on him, for fear of disqualification, which would end his dreams of Eliza's revival. But Eliza… She herself could do it, disprove that ignorant shaman's words. He looked at her, his eyes tracing the fragile silhouette of her hair.

"Eliza…euthanize him!"

She obeyed, swiftly running in to attack the panting shaman. Faust knew that this was risky, he was already expending far too much Mana in keeping up her form, and her strength was not much more than the obnoxious samurai's. Yet, he could not accept the role of reason in his current state, could no longer comprehend the cold hard truth when it came to the extent of things. So, he watched, watched as she hacked desperately at the thin blade that the Japanese youth bore. His mouth sputtered some things in German, but his brain did not process them. He could only stand, fixated in his rage.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, the boy was not such an idiot. His Mana, focused on the blade's edge managed to slice neatly through Eliza's popliteal region, severing the lower leg from her thighs. Her form, once so perfect and human, dissolved back into the bony reality that she was, ending Faust's illusion. He managed to catch her as she tumbled towards the ground; his poor, sweet, Eliza, broken again. He was about to turn on the boy, this time use actual physical violence towards him instead of threatening it in his head, but to his delight, the boy practically fell to his feet, all spiritual energy spent.

He was victorious.

But, this did not satisfy his anger. He knew he should be content, knew that this marked the end of things and that anything beyond this point would be excessive-- yet his rage would not be vanquished. He could not help but hate this boy, hate him for what he said, hate him for mutilating his Eliza.

"Embody my hate," he thought, "I want them to embody my hate, and seek my revenge."

The dead were, as always, obedient. Before he could blink, they had filled his command amassing themselves into a giant structure under his very feet. The face that they made was contorted in pain and anger.

Extract it!

He was laughing uncontrollably, and to his surprise he realized how good it felt. He had not laughed in a long time, at least not like he did now, a laugh of pure and complete surrender to the insanity of the mind, or at least to the drug that ruled it. He was laughing like a lunatic as the bones turned into an avalanche, threatening to crush the defenseless boy below. He could see the others move in to save him, but he knew that their efforts would be too late. The physics simply did not make sense.

So when the crash came, it took him completely by surprise.

Before he could comprehend what had just happened, he knew that he was falling. Knew that something had just completely and utterly destroyed what he had been in control of only moments before, leaving him in utter humiliation.

The rain began to pour, and the world went black.