Theme Song: 'Through the Night' - Outlaw Star


The man stood in the shadows – watching the beautiful woman in the bed as if she were on a television screen. He knew that she knew he was there, and that was all that mattered. It was pathetic; she was a shell of her former glorious self, but even now as she lay quietly on her death bed, gazing up at the sculptured ceiling with her icily condescending eyes, she seemed to wastefully breathe out life itself.

She had the appearance of a young woman – the age of his sister or younger, but the flowing white tresses of hair and the fact that her body was slowly giving out on her told another story. One ivory skinned hand with pale pink fingernails methodically stroked the head of the Nidoran on the bed-sheets, whilst the other lay limply hanging down at the side of the bed.

"Lillith," rumbled the man, with no emotion evident as his chiseled features highlighted faintly as they moved with speech. "You should get some sleep." The woman sighed melodically, and her fingers momentarily ceased pampering the downy hairs that covered the lilac, bony structure of the Poison Pin Pokémon.

"Is that you, Lorelei?" she murmured, her hand delicately flipping upwards onto her pillow, as her brandy coloured eyes flitted around in the darkness. The man grunted in annoyance, and the Nidoran squeaked a high-pitched call and scrambled off the bed in the wake of his irritation.

"No," he answered harshly, his eyes narrowing menacingly as he realised she was even worse than he had thought – if she could not distinguish his voice from that of his younger sister. "Go to sleep," he commanded, authority booming from every syllable. The old woman sighed and pouted like a child.

"But I'm already having the most wonderful dream…" she murmured to herself, as she gazed up enraptured at something wonderful, that only she could see. The man in the shadows turned to leave. "I'm sorry…" The words from the bed froze him suddenly, before he realised that they weren't directed at him. Lillith's golden brown eyes were closed, and her beautiful features, frighteningly unravaged by time, were contorted up in emotional pain.

The man scowled to himself as he left the room, and the nursemaid scurried in to replace him. He knew that she was sorry, for everything she'd never done.

~*~

Trish groaned as she stripped the sheets from Karlie's vacant bed, and passed them on to a dutifully folding Brock.

"I'm worried about Karlie," she confessed to the nearest specimen of maturity. "I just find it hard to believe is all – it was mainly just a fever now… nothing I couldn't handle… plenty of cold water and those tablets and she would have been fine when we arrived. But now… we arrive at Valencia the day after tomorrow-" Brock flinched. "Sorry. We arrive at THAT DAMNED PLACE the day after tomorrow, and there's been no word from Kaz or the doctor. What will we do if she's too sick to travel?" Trish asked, worriedly biting her lip.

"I know, we can't just leave her here…" murmured Brock, as he built the sheets up into a neatly cornered pile. Erin lay draped backwards over the central pile of cushions, taping her front teeth with the cyan blue fountain pen.

"This is driving me crazy," she murmured under her breath. "Yes, she was sick, but with her medicine she probably would have got a decent amount of strength back by now!" She sighed in exasperated annoyance, and threw a crumpled up piece of notepaper at Ash's head – he didn't notice; he was locked in a deadly duel with Misty.

"Trainer Card – ha!" gloated Ash, but his exaltation soon fell when Misty pointed haughtily at the Trainer Card provoking Pokémon Power on her holographic Muk card.

"Give up yet, girl?" sneered Gary, as his pointed elbow dug deeply into the thin cabin carpet. Mia smirked and flexed her fingers even tighter.

"That's quite scary, I was about to say the exact same sentence to you," she retorted, her facial features encased with concentration, as she lightly twisted her mouth to blow back a piece of shiny brown hair which had come loose from the clips.

Jesse and James sat cross-legged at the sidelines of the arm-wrestling match, which was basically an all-out war, with vaguely bemused expressions on their faces.

"¥5000 on the girl," whispered Jesse, and James whimpered.

~*~

Jacqui edged towards the desk, feeling repulsive energies washing from the simple wooden structure, or rather the remarkable piece of stationary lying atop it.

She grabbed the pen, and closing her eyes against the act, scribbled on the paper underneath Karlie's name. After the deed, she flung the pen to the side and breathed heavily. But it had had to be done. She really had no choice.

She only hoped that she would be forgiven.

~*~

Without her medication, and with the dampness of her confinement, she was a burning sea of fever. It washed over her relentlessly, until she was dripping with sweat and sobbing with the nausea that it brought.

Was this death? Was she dying? She only seemed to be getting worse with every harrowed breath she laboured. It wasn't fair, she thought, distracted in some obscene way; if Rin had been totally engulfed in the flames, she would have died in an instant - and there was no doubt the fall itself off the cliff for her poor partner must have been terrifying, but it was over for him quickly enough.

And now that it seemed her turn to die, it was unfair that hers was so laboured out – so painfully, painfully unfair that she had to be tortured by something as stupid as a fever, to the point where she was begging for death.

And that simple pot of capsules would have made everything better.

But the killer of it all was that the whole scene replayed over and over in her collapsing mind – Rachel's unholy crimson eyes, that showed that the body was an empty vessel, and everything evil that she feared was residing in those eyes.

It really was the stuff of fanfiction, Karlie thought wearily to herself. The goody-two-shoes character has a tragedy fall upon them, then gets eaten away inside by resentment and anger. It seemed that they were the only emotions left in Rachel's shell now.

But did it have to be Rachel? Deranged Pokémon, or natural disasters she maybe could have come to terms with, but the fact that she was surely being killed by 'one of the gang' awoke new fears in Karlie's rapidly pumping heart. For a start, Rachel was still out there with the others…

~*~

Grunting, James handed over ¥1075 to Jesse, that being all he had, as Mia whooped and threw her arms up in the air.

"Ye-eaah, I wo-on! IN YOUR FACE, OAK!" she gloated, as Gary, with a bruised ego and forearm, skulked off somewhere to sulk. Rachel watched the revelries from a prominent place at the side of the room, trying hard to keep a look of disgusted exasperation off her face; how stupid they were all acting.

"You only arm-wrestle him to be that close to him, Mia," Michelle smirked, raising an eyebrow at the younger, sweatdropping girl.

"I've had enough of this," spoke up Tracey quietly. "I don't know about you guys but I'm going down to the doctor's quarters."

"You mustn't!" gasped Rachel, immediately.

"How do you know if the doctor who said that to you wasn't a fake, Rachel?" Duplica agreed, standing up and combing a finger through one of her shaggy, turquoise bunches. "Tracey's right."

"I don't feel right either…" Sarah spoke up, decisively. "I can feel her aura in all the walls of the cabin, and the walls of the corridor… it's creepy."

She's not dead then, thought Rachel.

"We shouldn't all go," noted Brock. "Some of us have to kinda… guard the cabin just in case."

"Besides, we'd attract the wrong kind of attention in our large group," agreed Todd.

A few minutes later, Rachel slowly followed the rest of the group, laughing and joking boisterously down the thin white corridor: Sarah, Tracey, Mia, Erin and Duplica.

~*~

"Sarah, we're walking around in circles!" snapped Duplica, worry evident in her harsh tone.

"Never been admitted…" Mia repeated the doctor's words in a daze. "Oh God, poor Kaz… she could be anywhere! She could be dead!"

"No," murmured Sarah, her lips set in a grim line. "She's not dead. Can you feel that prickling sensation on the backs of your hands? That's the pain she's emitting. She's alive, and on the ship, but she's in great pain – great enough that we can pick it up." Rachel scowled, but had no choice but to keep walking, cursing Sarah darkly as she realised that the little witch was leading them straight to the disused boiler room in which Karlie was fading.

~*~

Something snapped straight through Karlie's heat abused body, and she felt a sudden wonderful detachment. About time, she thought happily, as she felt the pain slip away from her, and her body remained, cold and still on the hard floor.

~*~

"It's stopped!" cried the three girls at once.

"What's stopped!?" cried Tracey and Duplica in earnest, whilst Rachel smirked to herself at the good timing.

"The aura! It's totally gone!" murmured Sarah, staring around in disbelief at the many doors around her. "She must be in one of these rooms though, quickly!"

Where to start? Rachel made a show of rushing around checking inside rooms, and then approached the one she knew Karlie was in. She slid back the rusty bolt and opened the door a crack, before turning her head back to the others.

"Not in this one either," she said in a fake mournful tone.

"That's all of them!" screeched Duplica, high-pitched in terror. "If she's not in this corridor she could be anywhere on the ship!"

"I'm here." Rachel hissed like an animal as she saw a flailing arm reach out through the crack and labouredly push the heavy door open.

"Jesus CHRIST, Karlie are you okay?" screeched Erin, when she saw how pale yet flushed her friend was, her hair and clothing saturated.

"My fever just broke," Karlie answered, smiling slightly, although never taking her eyes off Rachel, who looked like a rabbit caught in headlights. "I've never felt better – of course that's a complete lie but anyway." The group smiled nervously – Karlie was definitely back and okay, but she was gazing at Rachel with nothing short of pure contempt.

"Evil DEMON," Karlie suddenly said, mustering all her strength and slapping the petite blonde so hard that she fell backwards and to the floor. "She locked me in there," she murmured tiredly, as Tracey caught her and lowered her carefully to the floor as her knees buckled. Five pairs of shocked eyes stared at Rachel, who was on the floor on her hands and knees – one clenched fist pressed up against her chest as her short blonde locks fell around her face. Her eyes flickered crimson, and everyone gasped.

"Karlie…" came a voice from Rachel's body – it sounded like her in a sad and miserable tone, but there was an unearthly, hissing echo to the words. Suddenly she inhaled sharply as her eyes truly seemed to bulge, and the red leaked out of her irises, to form a blood-like puddle on the corridor floor.

Rachel opened her mouth to wail, and a thick black cloud seeped out from it, preventing any sound. As the light hit it, it seemed to disperse and disappear, until there were only a few dark flecks of a dust-like substance floating down the corridor. Rachel grabbed in terror to hold her black pendant in her hands, and the black coating cracked off it, leaving the crystal-like gemstone intact and left remnants on her palm, like flakes of chipped off varnish.

The gem encased Rachel in a blinding white light, which made everyone avert their eyes. When they looked back a split-second later, Rachel was lying on her front of the corridor floor, her cheek submerged in the puddle of blood that had leaked from her body. The thick red liquid was staining her pretty features and blonde hair, but Rachel didn't move.

Like she was asleep.

Or like she was dead?

~*~

Jacqueline…

Jacqui winced as her velvet-clad counterpart whispered her name.

Jacqueline. You altered my ordained.

(I'm sorry. Forgive me. I couldn't let her die… )