A/N: So it appears that, with this particular story, I have become a bit of an apocalyptic writer. Many thanks again to those who have read and reviewed this piece. You have my warmest and deepest thanks! And love. Yeah...you guys kind of have that, too. Now, if you don't mind. I now go worth with my sign because there's a a sidewalk corner with my name on it. See y'all on the flip side.

'Then I watched while he broke open the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; the sun turned as black as dark sackcloth and the whole moon became like blood.'

-Revelation 6:12

Through this hush that fell over them, a few drops of rain began their silent descent from Heaven to gently kiss the earth. Heralds to the impending tempest looming ominously above them. Or the very host of angels themselves weeping over this very moment, perhaps. Yet the two slowly gravitated towards each other, despite the growing threat of a terrible storm. And Tohru found herself welcoming this. This closeness with her deceased husband's partner, and the godfather of her unborn child. A closeness she had just lost. One that had been savagely ripped from her. Yet, this moment...it felt so natural. The two of them...drifting ever closer to each other. And she welcomed this. This closeness. His lips...against hers. Mere inches apart.

...and so very close to touching.

Thick lashes fluttered closed to veil her vulnerable gaze, the windows to her soul as Tohru now felt the closeness of his presence. Sensed it.

So close to her now...that she could feel his breath against her lips in this self imposed darkness.

"...Akito..." His name came the thready whisper of a shuddered moan as the warmth of her own breath mingled with his to fill up the small gap between their lips.

"Hey!" Lashes flew open with a small squeaked gasp as this shout startled Tohru to a sharp, jagged jump from where she knelt with Akito.

And the almost grotesque, twisted appearance of the far off intruder approaching on this moment between them frightened Tohru even more than his call. The man's body was thin and decrepit, a receding hairline with sunken cheeks and dark lifeless eyes. A long, dark trench coat loosely draped itself over him as if it were hung on a clothing rack. His wraith like, sunken features were shaped in an irked expression laced with an undertow of amusement at having caught the two of them in such an intimately compromising position as he spoke again. His voice ugly in its raspy hiss.

"We're running out of time." This disgruntled bark of a statement came forcefully directed at Akito, who gave himself over to a sigh of irritation and the small hang of his head towards this intrusion upon their moment, interlacing his fingers to curl almost possessively over the top of Tohru's hand.

"Akito..?" Tohru fearfully whispered as his dark, magnetic obsidian orbs lifted to meet her gaze.

"Don't worry..." Akito murmured back lowly, his voice a flat reassurance to her troubled expression. "He's with me." He slowly raised his lean elegant form from his haunches, his long legs stretched from his crouched position as Tohru's chin tilted to follow him up with a furrowed gaze. "Wait here." This came a gentle, yet firm command as he gazed down upon her, and Tohru simply gave the small bob of her head in silent reply.

As Tohru watched him stalk away towards the grotesque, wraith-like stranger a dark, deep sense of fear began to settle itself into the pit of her stomach. That same sense of awful dread she had felt when Akito had arrived at her doorstep earlier this day after his sudden, and still unexplained, absence. And when Akito finally met the man a distance away from her, Tohru could hear the faintest makings of an unintelligible conversation. A low hum, really, as he kept his back to her and the stranger peered over his shoulder. Those lifeless, ghastly sunken eyes staring right at her as she watched his lips move in conversation to Akito.

One she still couldn't quite make out...

"So..." Shigure murmured in a raspy cackle as he leered, beady-eyed over Akito's shoulder towards the woman huddled on the ground outside of the parked vehicle.

His unseemly human form masking his original, otherworldly appearance.

"Is she the one...?" This question floated curiously from his twisted lips as he continued to eye the woman over Akito's shoulder.

"She is..." Akito responded in a flat deadpan towards the man's open curiosity and amusement as Shigure gave himself over to a toothy grin in Tohru's direction.

"Woe to you, 'Woman of Sorrow'." He mused almost poetically through a raspy tone. "You...'Most Unfortunate Mother of the Apocalypse'." Shigure smiled to himself as his toothy grin widened, revealing a decaying smile as his sunken eyes drifted from the woman back to Akito.

"Did I not already made it abundantly clear that I don't enjoy hearing you speak, dog?" This came bit back in the hiss of an unamused whisper through lips held in a firm, taut line.

"Sorry." Shigure cackled a raspy laugh through a rotting, toothy grin towards Akito's vexation. "Sometimes I get a little...dramatic...in my prose. Force of habit." This came through a grotesque chortle of low, throaty laughter. "An occupational hazard, really." He mused. "I use to be a writer, you know..." He gave himself over to a toothy, pompous grin. "A novelist. Quite a good one, if I do say so-"

With unearthly swiftness, cold slender fingertips touched and gently grazed themselves along the man's bony, sunken temple. Halting Shigure's gloating in its tracks. The man's thin, wraith like body stilled and stiffened. Growing alarmingly rigid before his knees slightly buckled and he began to seize where he stood. Rocking and shaking on his feet, Shigure's sunken gaze rolled into the back of his head as his mind was forcefully flooded and overwhelmed with the horrifying images and physical sensations of Hell.

"This is but a taste of what waits for you..." This came a cold, frightening whisper from Akito's ghostly chalked, pale lips as the man's body continued to involuntarily convulse and shudder under his touch. "A glimpse." He breathed this in the man's ear before he finally lifted his fingertips from the man's temple.

And Shigure almost buckled and collapsed under the sheer weight of this dark premonition, a pained gasp escaping him before he fell into deep labored breaths. Panting in sharp, raspy gasps, Shigure's hollow sunken eyes widened in absolute horror. And as he trembled on unsteady feet, rich dark obsidian orbs peered threateningly through black lashes

"For all of this to work according to my plan..." He whispered. "To lay claim to what is mine." This came in a lowly murmured breath. "I must break the woman..." These words came a soft hiss as Akito held Shigure's wide frightened gaze. "...then build her back up. Get her to trust me as she opens herself to allow me in." His voice dropped dangerously with the darkness of his true demonic nature. "And if you do anything to jeopardize this preparation, dog..." This came a hiss with the full force of his threatening gaze. "...I promise you... There will be no end to your agony. Do you understand?" This came but a light, airy whisper as Akito drank in the fearful expression of his most willing accomplices.

As the two held each others gaze in this moment of heavy, oppressive silence that befell them Shigure remained speechless and at a strange loss for words. And this... The man's silence in the face of his eternal damnation. This made Akito smile.

"Good boy..." This came a low and patronizing whisper from Akito's lips, slightly amused with himself at having so effectively silenced his loquacious co-conspirator. "...now..." He murmured through a smug, condescending smirk as he held the rogue Soul Hound's sunken gaze. "Have you prepared the way for me, dog?" And to this, Shigure merely gave a wordless nod to the demon spawn as Akito smiled at the man's continued silence. "Very good..."

"But we are running out of time..." Shigure stated a little more seriously as he held Akito's gaze before those dark obsidian orbs drifted away.

With a soft sigh of irritation, Akito raised one of his hands, wrist upwards. Slowly furling slender fingers into his palm to make a tightened fist as he gazed upon the way this skin was gradually changing and beginning to look. A bit marbled and pallid. And sickly. As if the very color was fading from his flesh. Bleeding out into nothingness.

...like fine linen slowly losing its pigment...

"You think that I don't know this?" Akito quipped lowly in challenge to this statement, earning a small scowl from the derelict man before him.

"You should know," Shigure spat back sourly, his voice low and somewhat dramatic in its raspy tone. "that if I can sense this level of demonic disruption, then it's only a matter of time before the others are led right to its source." He eyed Akito seriously. "Which just so happens to be you."

"Your presence..." Shigure murmured lowly as he continued to persist in making his point. "...It's like a beacon. A big, bright flashing neon sign for the ones we hunt." He continued, his words grim. "Your 'impending arrival'...it's causing quite a scene." He whispered in a low, raspy voice. "The natives are growing restless."

Shigure's sunken, wraith-like eyes drifted from Akito's face towards the ground below. Subtly indicating the frightening increase in demonic souls flooding the plane of the living from the world below, and so many more tearing at the seams of the earth as they lied in wait, silently screaming to be released. Demonic spirits unseen by mortal eyes...yet felt...as the darker nature of man steadily began to strengthen and take hold, growing with their wicked influence. And Akito's dark magnetic gaze followed in understanding to the Soul Hound's intimation.

With the drop of his gaze, Akito's lithe body followed. Stooping to the ground as he braced himself on his haunches, a hand to the earth below him.

"I sense them..." This came a breathless sigh against the flutter of his lashes and faintest quiver of his lips before they formed into the smallest makings of a wicked smile. "They want to come out to play."

With these softly whispered words, Akito drifted ever closer to the ground. As if to lay his lips upon the earth in a lover's kiss. But just before the two met, Akito paused as his lips wavered mere inches from the ground. And through this hesitation began a soft whisper that seemed to emanate from him, though Akito's lips never once moved to make a sound. But it was there all the same. A faint, eery disembodied and almost inhuman susurration along the wind that seemed to grow and multiply. As if one mouth with many voices, all speaking at once in hushed, unintelligible words that grew louder in their hissed whispers. Yet Akito's lips never moved.

And then...the ground beneath the focal point of his stabilizing hand began to tremble.

Softly, at first. Giving itself over to a small shudder underneath his fingertips. But as the ghostly whispers continued, the shaking of the earth became more violent in its trembling and quaking. Growing into a terrifying seism that threatened to topple and claim the surrounding abandoned warehouse buildings as car alarms began to sound in the distance. And as the earth continued to violently shake, the stormy sky darkened and turned an alarming shade of dusky black. The heavens themselves seeming scorched as the sun was blotted from the sky.

And low in its rising to the northeast, the moon came through a haze of vibrant red.