A/N: Zack is a master of badass-itude. I wish I could be half the man he is. If you liked Haruki in the last chapter, don't thank me - thank the Belmont.


"We're here. Better get ready to answer a whole lot of questions, kid."

Fuyuki paused a moment to regard the structure that the gunman had motioned to. Something about it tickled at the back of his memory, as if he had been there once as a very small child, yet nothing about it struck him out of the ordinary other than the fact that it appeared slightly less antiquarian than the other buildings in Arkham. From inside, he could hear quite a bit of commotion in what must have been the common area.

He took a step forward, and was startled by the door suddenly flinging open and two figures striding out into the night. Neither appeared to notice him at first, but after a moment the one in the lead – a tall, shadowy figure with a commanding presence – turned to him, and for a split second his eyes made contact with those of the other man. In that instant, staring into those glowing, red eyes, he suddenly felt like a switch had gone off inside him; knowledge flooded into him like a dam breaking, a crushing tide of memories that threatened to sweep him under and suffocate him even after the pair had disappeared out of sight. He remembered everything now – everything he had done in his dreams, everything that he had learned about the King in Yellow and the peril they were in, everything that he and his father had been planning from the very beginning…

My father...

He suddenly gasped and staggered against a nearby wall. His stalwart companion immediately rushed to aid him, but he waved him away with a faint gesture.

"Don't… Julius…"

Private First Class Julius White, a former marine turned hunter of the supernatural. Fuyuki remembered that as if from someone else's life; he remembered everything about everyone inside that boarding house. Everyone was waiting in there for him, worrying about him. His mother, the sergeant, Natsumi…

No, not her! Not my sister!

He also remembered his responsibilities, the terrible burden that lay upon him as the last of the remaining Dreamers. He knew the unspeakable deeds he would have to commit, the pain he would have to cause, in order to save the human race. In the end, he might fail anyway.

And Momoka…

That last memory wrenched at his gut like a red-hot dagger; he bit his tongue against the sobs that were fighting to get out, and tasted blood trickling into his mouth from the effort.

"Julius," he said finally, not able to meet the man's eyes, "I need you to go inside and tell Maxwell… tell him it's happened." His vision blurred, and he felt tears stinging his eyes. "I… I also need you to bring my sister out. Don't tell them who I am, or what it's about. I can't answer any questions right now."

In a lot of ways, Julius had always reminded Fuyuki of Giroro. Dangerously lethal on the battlefield, but with an enormous depth of unseen character – a man who dedicated himself to fighting not for the sake of glory or power, but for honor. And then, of course, there was love: an unrequited and impossible love. He was a good man. Fuyuki didn't hear his response or see him walk away, but as soon as heard the door of the boarding house slam shut he sank to the ground and let the tears flow freely. The heat streaming down his cheeks made him acutely aware of the freezing night air as it caressed his exposed arms and legs, soaking into him with a chill that went bone-deep.

Cold. This city was always cold. If he hoped to ward off the horrors that lurked in its every crack and crevice, he knew he needed one thing.

He needed to be just as cold as it was.


Giroro swallowed carefully, feeling the razor-thin edge of the dagger against the soft skin at the base of his throat. A single hair's width in the wrong direction, and it would open his veins for certain. A single bead of sweat trickled down his forehead despite the cold and stung his eyes, but he didn't dare move. He hardly even dared breathe.

"Your two minutes are ticking, alien. Better start talking." The haunting red eyes inched closer in the darkness, the rasping voice now barely above a whisper. "So, what makes you think you're good enough for my daughter?"

He tried frantically to think of an answer that would satisfy this beast, but his mind was blank and the only thing he could think of was the truth. He knew it wasn't enough – the truth was more likely than anything to get him killed – but it was all he had.

"I…" He winced, feeling the blade dig further into him as he spoke. Silently, he wondered if it had broken the skin yet. "I'm not," he managed finally, forcing the dagger out of his mind. "I'm not good enough for her." He sucked in a deep breath and continued, not even caring about the words that were coming out of his mouth. He simply spoke the truth. "I must have gotten lucky, because I know I didn't do anything to deserve her. I don't think anyone deserves a woman like her." He squeezed his eyes closed, knowing that if he didn't there would be tears streaming down his face. "So that's it, I'm just lucky. The luckiest man in the universe, in fact. I got lucky just by meeting her, and fell in love with her as soon as I met her, and by the good grace of whatever gods are out there she somehow came to love me too. I'll never know why, but that's how it is. And as long as there's breath in my body, no matter how long that may be, I'm going to keep loving her because I don't know how to stop. She's got me tied up, beaten me, and I can't get away, I don't want to, because she's just so… so… perfect."

He stopped rambling and gasped for breath. Half of his mind was on the dagger, and the other half on his two minutes, wondering if they were up yet. Even if they weren't, he had said all he could; there was nothing left to say. Ten excruciating seconds passed – they felt like ten minutes – but finally the hand holding the dagger seemed to relax, and the piercing red eyes slid further back. After several more long minutes of silence, the man lowered his hand – the dagger receding into his sleeve as he did so – and turned away from Giroro. As soon as the eye contact was broken, Giroro felt the invisible bonds that had been holding him slip from his body, and he collapsed against the base of the tree. Panting, he reached one hand up to his throat and found, to his relief, that the skin was still intact.

"Why?" He gasped as he attempted to stand. "Why did you want to kill me?"

The Dreamer whirled around and revealed his face. It was covered in stange tattooed designs much like his hands, but otherwise he now looked like any regular Pokopenian. His large, red eyes no longer held the piercing chill they had just moments earlier; rather, he had the expression of a man tormented, driven by loyalty to the family he loved and his own terrible responsibilities. Had he not still been such a clearly dangerous man, Giroro would have found him pitiable.

"Because," Haruki hissed, "I saw you have sex with my daughter! My teenage daughter!" He stabbed one tattooed finger violently in Giroro's direction. "I'm being very generous, Corporal, by choosing to ignore the fact that you're an alien. Not just any alien, but one who came here for the purpose of invading – to enslave us, or worse! But no, no. Even that aside, you're a grown man. You've got to be, at minimum, twice as old as her! Now, let me ask you… if it was your daughter, and you witnessed something like that, how would you feel?"

Giroro chewed on his lower lip uncomfortably. The man had a point. "If it was my daughter… he'd probably already be in a trash bag," he admitted.

The man hunched over and massaged his temples with his knuckles. In the moonlight, Giroro could see a few grey streaks in his deep red hair; suddenly, he looked not so much a dangerous opponent as a tired old man. He really did feel pity for him.

"And it's not just that," Haruki groaned. "In doing so, you've done something worse. So much worse. And now she's fallen in love with you!"

Giroro frowned and shuffled his feet. "Hey, I'm not that bad of a guy…"

The Dreamer sighed. "No… no, I suppose you're not." He paused, looking skyward as if remembering. "Everyone else may see a grown woman in her. To me, Natsumi is still my little girl. She may not know it, but there were times I was there for her as she was growing up." He walked over next to Giroro and sat down with a sigh. "I was there on the day of her triathlon, you know. It meant so much to her that you were there to help her through the three-legged race. As such, it meant a lot to me as well." His red eyes actually held a degree of warmth as he looked over at Giroro. "You have taken good care of her, and I am appreciative. But… appreciation has its limits."

Giroro regarded him for a few moments, then sat down next to him. His mind was racing with questions – questions about his ability, about Arkham and Peppers, about Natsumi and the fate of Pokopen and a million other things – but there was one thing that bothered him more than anything. Normally, something like this would have seemed trivial in light of everything else that was happening around them, but at the moment it was all he could think about. "What kind of knife is that?"

Haruki's eyes jerked toward him as if surprised. He withdrew his right arm and watched as the veins broke the surface like the arms of a jellyfish, braiding together into a pulsing spiral which he gripped with his right hand. Almost instantly, the blade materialized at the end of column – a wide sheet of bluish-black metal which gleamed like glass in the moonlight. Giroro shuddered, but didn't take his eyes off it.

"I'm glad you asked," the Dreamer replied, turning it over slowly as if admiring. "This is a pugio. A pugio of blood, forged in Carcosa. If it so much as draws a single drop of blood for your body, that wound will never heal. You'll bleed out slowly, over the course of years if necessary, but nothing – not even supernatural healing – can close it." Giroro winced and unconsciously rubbed one hand along his throat; he was fine, but the thought that he had been so close to death just moments earlier was nerve-rattling. "Also," he continued, "when it touches the blood of another, its owner absorbs a bit of that person's power. If it drains all of their blood, the owner gains all of their power. The only downside is, if the owner is ever separated from the blade, they die almost immediately. The blade then seeks out a new owner." He grimaced and put away the blade. "It is an abomination. No one should be able to possess such a powerful and terrible item."

Giroro frowned uneasily. "How did you come to own it?"

Haruki shrugged. "I killed its former owner," he stated simply, then lapsed into an uneasy silence which Giroro didn't dare break. Finally he stood and stretched, his joints cracking painfully. Turning, he faced Giroro with red eyes that were, strangely, full of sadness. "Corporal," he said slowly, "you don't know it yet, but you've been chosen for a great honor. It is a great task, and a difficult one." Giroro felt a lump form in his throat – that sad look in the Dreamer's eyes made him nervous about what secrets the man knew. "What I need to know before I deliver you this task," he continued, "is how far you are willing to go. How far will you go for my daughter? Are you willing to die for her? Yes, yes of course you are. But will you be subjected to countless insanities, an abyss of horrors that man was never meant to know of? Are you prepared for the possibility of mutilation, or being reduced to a useless vegetable on her behalf? Would you be willing to have her widowed, helpless and alone, crying out for you in the night and never fighting release? Well, man? Answer me!"

Giroro stared, stunned by the sudden vicious interrogation. "Of… of course. I'd do anything for her."

The Dreamer's eyes narrowed and became hard once again. "Even if you had to hurt her to do it?"

Giroro frowned, then set his jaw resolutely and met the man's gaze. "What is it I need to do?"

Haruki's red eyes held his for a few moments more, then he nodded and motioned Giroro over to him. "Sit down, Corporal. There's something I have to tell you. And I'm going to warn you… it's not going to be easy for you to hear."


Tororo winced as the assassin next to him ran a long, metal claw across the floor next to him, producing a nerve-grating, high-pitched screech. It was a nervous habit of Zoruru's; ever since he had lost "scent" of his rival, Zeroro, he had been doing it almost non-stop, and it was about to drive the young hacker up the wall.

"Could you please not do that?"

The assassin turned and stared at him wordlessly with one large, cybernetic eye. Toruru sighed and turned back to his instruments – impossible to reason with one so single-minded. One of the meters before him flashed red several times and he groaned.

Stupid old ship… how am I supposed to work with this glitchy equipment?

He reached out a hand to reset the machine, then froze. There was no malfunction; the system was working normally, everything else displaying the proper readouts, except this one which was showing a huge abnormality. Should he try and fix it? No… probably best to let the lieutenant know about this. Just in case.

"Hey, boss," he drawled over his shoulder, "I'm showing a gravitational abnormality, about 1.37 AU's ahead, -56.7 degrees. Not big enough to be a black hole… to be honest, I've never really seen anything like it."

Garuru was on his feet and next to him before he could blink. Tororo couldn't help but shiver a little; even at ease, his leader possessed a dangerous grace. He would hate to get on his bad side. "Pull me up a visual, Recruit. Pururu, reduce speed less 0.1 AU's and maneuver -20.0 degrees starboard. Let's see if we can identify this… anomaly."

"Aye aye, sir," Tororo replied, and heard the medic echo him from across the ship. He reached out and activated a series of switches – to an untrained viewer it would have undoubtably looked complex, but he had done it so many times it had become rote memory – and a large screen slowly rolled out in front of him. The screen hummed to life and an image crackled into existence, and after a few moments Tororo became aware that his mouth was hanging open almost to his chest. He snapped it shut abruptly, hoping the rest of the crew was as bewildered by the sight as he was.

"Ah… hey, boss? What is that thing?"

Garuru didn't answer immediately, just looked at the image with an unreadable expression. On the screen was what looked like an immense, swirling ring of light, its boundaries framing an icy, barren landscape. It almost looked like some kind of portal. Or gate. "Tororo," the lieutenant finally said, "pull up our records. Find out what planet that is, and what star system it's in."

T he recruit didn't waste time. His fingers flew as he queried the vast Keronian star log, and finally found what he was looking for. When he did, he couldn't suppress a cry of astonishment.

"Whoa! Boss… according to the computer, we're near a planet called Yuggoth. Pokopenians have a different name for it – they call it 'Pluto.'" He looked up at the lieutenant, whose eyes had widened with recognition. "That's Pokopen's system through the gate!"

Without a moment's hesitation, Garuru whirled around and began issuing orders. "Pururu, set course for that gate – I want us in Pokopen's system within the hour! Taruru! Yuggoth is a nasty planet; I want the main guns readied in the event of hostilities. Zoruru…"

The ship instantly became abuzz with activity, the air of tension and anticipation nearly tactile as they prepared to jump through the gate. None of them was entirely sure what they would find once they were there, but there was one thing they were sure of, and it was enough to drive them onward.

They were one step closer to rescuing their platoon.