A/N: What time is it? Early chapter posting time!

To the lovely ThalieXVII: it is pretty sad about Kilik, and I put both of them in this chapter, so hopefully it will kind of explain what happened while Sieggy was gone. :D

To the lovely 1wngdngl: Oh, don't worry, monk powers for the win. Kind of. To be honest, Xianglian reminds me of Superman from Holy Musical B tman (if you haven't seen it, you really should. Its on youtube and is simply amazing x3) when he's all upset like "This is what happens when you don't return people's phone calls!" Also, thank you so much for that offer to proofread for me and I'll definitely think about it; truth is, I don't want to bug you with really random and impulsive "I need this proofread noooooow O.O" things. xD

To the lovely WildMomo24: ERMAGHERD REVIEEEER! Also, no. Kilik is never allowed to have nice things. I hope I'm not murdering Siegfried and sorry about forgetting Sampson. 3

To all you lovelies who don't give two shits about any of that and just want me to get on with the chapter, thank you for your continued interest in my work, sorry for rambling so much, and I do hope you'll enjoy this chapter. :D

Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Calibur or any of the characters therein.

The Rude Awakening

The words on the computer screen were fuzzy, at first. They came into sharp focus faster than brown eyes had been ready for, and Kilik felt as though he was going to be sick because of it. He held back the urge to vomit. The things on the screen were moving faster than he could process. He knew that he was the one manning the terminal, but he wasn't in full control of his own movements. At the realization that he was not the one making himself work, his body slowed what it was doing, eventually coming to a halt. Feeling creeped back into his limbs a moment later. He was cold. So cold. Freezing.

Whatever he had been doing, it was finished. He didn't even really know what it was he had done. He couldn't even remember entering the room he was in. He hadn't even known where to find the computer that controlled the system. His brow furrowed as he struggled to recall where he was, what he had been doing, and how he had gotten there. It was more difficult than it should have been.

He was going to visit Xianglian. He wanted to tell her about his boss. He wanted to help her. She had been consumed by the evil. He still could not understand why it had happened in that six months, what had changed to make something that she had had contained take over like it did. It couldn't have been the medication. She would have shown signs of slipping into the darkness over the years he had been visiting her if it had been because of the medication. He couldn't understand it, almost as though the answer were obvious and his mind was refusing to supply it to him. As though it were safer not to know.

The monk gave a frustrated sigh as he straightened himself up from the computer he had been leaning over. From how much it hurt, he must have been there for some time. He looked around the room, his eyes adjusting from the brightness of the screen to the tired electric lighting that hung overhead. There was a series of screens lining the wall to his left- each one numbered, it must have corresponded with the rooms of the patients. To his right were more screens, these being the more public areas- the lobby, bathrooms, closets, several from outside, anywhere that wasn't a padded cell or the small rooms provided for the less troublesome cases. Of all the screens in the room, only the left side held blanks. He figured they must have been unoccupied rooms.

Brown eyes narrowed on the one that corresponded with Xianglian's room. It was blank. Quickly, his head snapped back down and he began working the computer again, looking up the registered patients. Again, he could not find her. He looked through backlogs of who was being given what medicine, who was scheduled to see what doctor, what was being done for and to the people who were staying in the New Institute. Xianglian was in none of it. He must have taken her out. That's what he must have been doing. But why...?

He could remember the men under his former sister's control attacking him, and how hard he struggled to keep from losing himself in the excitement of battle and the feeling of evil surrounding him. He remembered the stinging and... oh. They must have tried to sedate him. All that struggling, and he lost himself because of a few syringes of sedatives in his blood stream. But, it hadn't felt like that time at the Temple- what little he could remember of that, at least. It was cold. From his experience, Soul Edge did not make things go cold.

There was only one thing he could think of that could take hold of a person like Soul Edge. Of course. He growled to himself as he pushed away from the desk, stumbling back a few steps and almost falling back over the rolling office chair he must have pushed away before coming to and taking his body back from Soul Calibur. He knew that the holy blade could take over a person just as completely as its cursed counterpart- Zhange He had been proof enough of that- but he didn't understand how it could have taken him. He had never allowed it in. He had never touched the blade, much less been cut by it. He shouldn't have been able to be the flesh-puppet of a sword he had never truly come into contact with!

His head began to throb, his mind once again pushing what must have been an obvious answer out of his reach. It was some kind of defense mechanism of the mind. The same one that had kept him from being able to remember what he had done that night years ago, probably. Defense mechanisms and being possessed by an evil blade. Kilik gave his head a violent shake before rubbing a hand through his hair in an attempt to calm himself. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and counted backwards slowly.

When he felt calmer, his eyes slid opened and he looked around the room again. There were a couple bodies around him clad in security officer uniforms. His legs were shaky as he made his way over to them. The monk dropped to his knees by the closest body and checked for a pulse. It was feint, but there. He had a fairly good guess of what Soul Calibur had done with his body. He had purified the building and everyone in it. The realization came with a wave of exhaustion. Part of him was shocked his body hadn't already dropped from the effort of purification during however long it had taken him to erase his sister from the system.

It was much harder to stand up than it had been to drop down, not that that had been any kind of surprise. Still, he managed to rise to his feet and stumble out of the room he was in. His steps were unsure as he navigated the asylum, searching for anything familiar that might lead him out. He passed bodies in the halls and heard nothing from the cells or any of the rooms as he walked. It was impossible for him to gauge what time it was as he walked and he hated himself a little for not thinking to check the time on the computer when he had the chance. The lack of sound or movement told him that anyone who had survived purification was still knocked out and no one from the outside had gotten there. It must not have been time for a shift change yet and no one had called the police at any point, or visited. He didn't want to wait around for anyone to wake up or the police to show.

It was a small grace that he made it out without further incident and Kilik wasn't sure if it was pure luck or something else. No matter what had been behind his good fortune in leaving, he was grateful for it.

As he limped out of the asylum and down the lone driveway that separated it from the road, he allowed himself to focus inward. There were no threats to him and it was a good time to try and take inventory on himself. His face ached, something had happened to his cheek and his jaw still hurt from getting punched, his shoulder and chest were sore, there would probably be bruising where the needles had been jammed into his skin, his arms and legs were as sore as they ever got from overexertion, though no amount of training had ever worked him over so bad since he left the Temple. Overall, a fine trembling ran under his skin. He was no longer cold, but he couldn't stop shaking. It might have been shock. He wasn't sure if he would know if he was in shock or not, but after waking up to the knowledge that he had hurt so many people and without the knowledge of whether or not he had killed anyone he figured shock was the most likely reaction he would have.

It was cowardly, but he didn't check any more pulses after the first one. He told himself that they had probably survived. If that one could, why not the others? He hadn't checked on Xianglian, either. He couldn't bring himself to do it. It was shameful of him, but he couldn't face the knowledge that he had killed her just yet. Without seeing the body, without checking for sure, he could still lie to himself and say there was a chance she lived. That, maybe, he had somehow saved her from the darkness that he had allowed to infect her soul. With every step he took, he hated himself a little more for not even checking, but he knew that feeling was nothing compared to how much he would loath himself if he was sure of her murder by his hands. He would not be able to continue on after that. He would not be able to pick himself up and walk out the doors. He would not be able to save his boss from Soul Edge and, in the end, that was the mission he and his sister had been sent out to do.

Retrieving Soul Edge was, technically, their mission, but he would have to get the spirit out of Siegfried and back into the shard before he could really do that, so saving Siegfried had become part of the mission. Zhange He would have told him to simply kill the host body. Kilik knew he wouldn't be able to do that. He tried to tell himself that he wasn't a murderer, but he couldn't fully believe it. The whole situation dragged a frustrated sound from the normally quiet monk that broke the silence that had settled around him as he walked. It wasn't until then that he realized that even the normal ambient sounds of the outdoors- bugs, birds, or even cars driving by, airplanes, anything- were gone. No traffic, he could attribute to no one visiting the asylum but nature's lack of sound...

The monk froze, his heart suddenly beating faster than it had been. The lack of noise. It meant he wasn't alone. As much as he wanted to believe it was just the aftershock of purifying the New Institute, he knew that couldn't be it. Soul Calibur's- Zhange He's- presence had never disturbed nature at the Temple. The only thing that ever really caused that level of deathly quiet was...

The silence was broken once again, this time by a deep laughter that made the monk's hair stand on edge. Brown eyes shifted back into focus and found the source of the sound, his boss, standing a few feet in front of him, leaning casually on his beat up old car, hands in his pockets. He looked different in a suit instead of his usual outfit, with his hair pulled back in a low ponytail instead of falling freely around his face. His eyes, more red than blue, were trained on the monk with an appraising look. The demon in Siegfried's body pushed away from the car to stroll forward with an amount of self-assurance that Kilik would have expected from a demon.

Siegfried's lips pulled back into a predatory grin as red eyes traveled over the monk, taking in his current state, "I had thought you were the only stray piece of me outside of that damn Temple, but I was wrong, wasn't I? Someone had a little friend, didn't they?"

Even in his current state, Kilik glared defiantly at the demon. He knew he wouldn't be able to survive a fight, but that wasn't enough to make him back down. There was a very small bit of him, one that he thought had died when he was younger, that questioned whether or not he deserved to survive after hurting so many people. He chose to ignore the demon's questions in favor of one of his own, "What are you doing here?" Brown eyes narrowed, "You left in a hurry a week ago. To England, if your flight information is to be believed." The first thing he had done after his boss' departure was to use any means he could to find out where the other man was going, and he could only make guesses as to why.

The demon smirked and answered with a noncommittal shrug, "Awe... did someone miss me? How sweet." He took another step forward, "There was another around here who was..." He seemed to be searching for the right word for a moment before settling on, "Graced with my presence inside of them. I didn't even notice until you killed them."

Kilik's eyes widened and he couldn't stop himself from taking a small step back. As soon as he realized he had moved, he went completely still, as though that would somehow mitigate his moment of weakness. "...no..." He shook his head, "You don't know..." He growled, glaring at the possessed man before him, "You can't know for sure that she's dead!" The shaking of his body worsened and, for a moment, the world swam. To his credit, Kilik managed to stay on his feet.

The demon cocked Siegfried's head to one side, not unlike a cat who just saw his prey do something mildly interesting, "Her." A sly grin spread over his lips as he purred out, "She was close to you. Even better." Not one to overlook the monk's retreat, the demon took another step closer, close enough to be able to touch the smaller man if he so chose to, "Tell yourself what you would like, worm, but know this: I knew the moment you ripped my influence out of those puppets because I could feel it. Every. Single. One." Faster than Kilik could dodge in his tired state, a hand shot out and grabbed the monk by his shirt. The demon pulled Kilik forward, lifting the shorter man so they were at eye level with almost no effort, "It. Hurt. Worm! The only thing keeping me from destroying you right here, right now is that you murdering that wayward chunk of me saved me the trouble of having to do it myself when they got in the way of my plans. But make no mistake. Your death will be not only slow, but painful as well."

Kilik's hands gripped weakly at his boss' arm. He was so tired. Too tired to struggle. Almost too tired to bother responding. Almost. "Do you think it will hurt more or less than that when I finally take you out, too?" Even his voice betrayed him, sounding as feeble as he felt. Kilik could only hope that the demon didn't kill him as he passed out.

Nightmare would have offered up a retort to the monk, but the foolish little human was unconscious. There was nothing fun he could do with the man other than invade his dreams and try to manipulate- cultivate- the remaining taint in the monk's soul. The remaining bit of Soul Edge was drastically smaller- very nearly nonexistent- than it had been before Nightmare had left town to spread his influence the week before. At the time, he hadn't thought the monk capable of doing much of anything. Apparently, a week was more than enough time for the little worm to be a pain in the ass. The demon realized in the moment when he started feeling bits and pieces of himself being destroyed that the monk was stronger than he had given him credit for. That kind of strength could still be useful and the worm now owed him for the minions that had been destroyed. Sure, he would have killed them himself, eventually, but that was beside the point. He hadn't gotten the chance to kill anything and it was the principle.

Had he not just spent a week pushing his host body to the limit and bringing that strong-willed woman, Ivy, under his sway, he would have corrupted the monk completely right there, but he knew he would not be able to in that state. Hell, he hadn't been able to when the monk had been sleeping the night his host had met that dandy man. Not to mention that getting so much of himself purified because of that off-shoot bitch in the crazy house still hurt. The pain had started shortly after his flight landed him back in town and it only got worse from there as the monk worked his way through the part of the demon that had been so out of his control, yet still a part of him. Briefly, the demon considered sauntering into the building the monk had just come from and slaughtering anything that was left alive in there- there were, after all, a few who had had his influence ripped from them but did not succumb to death. If his host body wasn't so weak, and if his spirit hadn't had chunks of it ripped away and destroyed, he would have. Siegfried's body had been able to handle more than most human bodies, but a human was still a human. Pathetic. Nightmare dropped the monk and slipped back into the recesses of his host's mind. Siegfried could deal with getting them home and resting them while the demon took time to tend to the wounds caused by the monk. Nightmare knew it wouldn't take more than a few days- if even that- to recharge what he had lost from subjugating Ivy, but he didn't know how long it would take him to fix the gaping wounds left in his spirit from that damn worm ripping him out of so many people.

Blue eyes blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. It was dark out. Seemingly endless dark clouds above head made it difficult to tell what time it was. As if to emphasize the menacing nature of the clouds, the air smelt heavy. There was a storm coming. He remembered it being brighter out before. He had also been in his office. Not outside... wherever the hell he was. Siegfried looked around, trying to figure out where it was he had wandered off to while blacked out this time. He hadn't even been feeling the slightest bit stressed before hand. It wasn't right; it didn't make sense.

He froze when he noticed the crumpled body of the IT guy on the ground in front of him. "Not again," he muttered to himself as he knelt down and looked the man over.

Whatever had happened had been bad. Once again, Kilik looked beat to Hell and Siegfried felt fine. Not even a gash on his face. He couldn't remember what he had done to smaller man, but he didn't want to think about it. He was tired in a way that he hadn't felt since the last girl he had been dating and he... well, he hadn't been that kind of tired in a long time. He didn't want to spend much more time out in the middle of wherever he was examining his hurt employee, and he couldn't just leave the man there; especially not if he was responsible for Kilik's condition. Carefully, Siegfried picked up the IT guy, carried him to the car, and loaded him in the back seat.

Unsure of where to go from there, Siegfried decided it might be best to just drive forward. He wasn't familiar with whatever road he was on- it was long, narrow enough that fitting another car next to his would be tricky in a way that made him hope there wouldn't be on-coming traffic, and lined with large trees that had been trimmed to keep from growing over the road- and figured he might have been going that way for a reason. Had he seen Kilik on the side of the road while driving and stopped to confront him? Had he been picking up or dropping the IT guy off somewhere for some reason? He just couldn't remember.

As his car pulled forward and picked up speed, Siegfried realized that his radio was off. He never drove with it off. With a deep frown, he turned it back on and discovered it was also much louder than he was used to and on an odd station; the sudden onslaught of noise made him wince. He quickly messed with the dials to turn the volume down to less than deafening and changed the station back to his usual one. What the hell was going on?

It didn't take too long for the German to come to a large building. Large block letters proclaimed it to be 'The Ravensharp Institute for Psychiatric Wellness'. A smirk broke out on Siegfried's features as he snorted at the situation. Maybe he had been on his way to get help? Maybe Kilik had been trying to make him get help? He didn't know. What he did know was that, despite his usual stance that those doctors were quacks who didn't know what they were talking about, he did need more 'wellness' in his life. He also figured Kilik needed someone to look him over. He didn't know how he was going to explain it to the doctors inside- he could only hope there was at least one real doctor inside, the kind who knew about real medicine instead of that psycho-babble- but he would worry about that after he told them to get the injured man from his car.

Siegfried strode into the building and stopped dead in his tracks as the double doors to the facility closed behind him. There was no one up and doing anything. Instead, everyone in the building was... they were either unconscious or dead. Siegfried couldn't tell. He slowly backed out of the double doors, his eyes watching for any hint of movement from the people in the building. There were enough horror films that took place in asylums and more than enough that started with weird shit going on to tell him that going in there would be a very, very bad plan. The fact that he couldn't be completely sure without a doubt that he didn't somehow cause that- maybe he had attacked them before or after Kilik? He wished he knew- was also a damn good reason to leave, as far as he was concerned.

Whatever it was that had happened, he hoped Kilik would be able to explain whenever he woke up. That was if the man wasn't mad at Siegfried for whatever he had done to him. The chances of that were slim to none. The old green car turned around and was headed, at a much faster speed, away from the crazy house and back to a road Siegfried hoped would lead him somewhere he recognized so he could go home at a much faster speed than the German had approached the institute with.

Part of him considered dropping the IT guy off at his apartment, but that thought was squashed. He couldn't very well see Maxi again and drop off the man's room mate with no explanation of what happened. He also couldn't take Kilik to a hospital. They might see him and connect Siegfried to whatever the hell happened at the institute or something. It wasn't the most logical train of thought that convinced Siegfried to take the smaller man home with him, but Siegfried wasn't working off of logic so much as confusion, a very slim bit of fear, and a lot of wanting the Asian to wake the Hell up and tell him what the Hell happened or was happening or anything.