For They Shall Be Filled

By: Vain

__________________________________________________________

Remy: I can' believe dat you convinced me ta go inta a sewer.

Osamu: This was not how I wanted to spend my weekend either, Cajun.

Remy: I just can' believe dat Ken managed to tie Kai up wit his own whip . . .

Osamu: *shrugs* I'm sure that there's something deep and Fruedian about that, but I'm not gonna go there.

Remy: When do ya t'ink dis one'll be wakin' up?

Osamu: Soon, I hope, because I refuse to give him a sponge bath!

Remy: Um . . . Vain n'a rien.  R & R, sil vous plait !

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

~ "And in the morning 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' 

Hypocrites!  You know how to discern the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times!"

-Matthew 16: 3

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part Twenty-Seven

Simplicity and Complications

So?

So?

Did I do okay?

 . . . Not bad.  How do you feel?

Not bad.

Nobody likes a smart ass, Davis.

Says you.  Wow, is that me down there?

Yeah, that's you.  Do you feel the pull?

It's strong.

Good.  You're ready then.  Well, go on.

Uh . . . What do I do?

*snort* And here I was almost beginning to respect you, Motomiya.  Just go down and touch your body.

But—

GO! 

. . .

Bye, Davis.

Wait, where are you going?  Hello?  Are you still there?  Hello?  . . .  Oh, well . . . here goes nothing.

People have often been quoted as saying that when their spirit leaves their body, they see a bright light at the end of a long tunnel.  They're all wrong.  They're not lying, exactly, merely confused because they are still trying to see things as they would exist in a three dimensional, or physical, reality.  Limbo—the area to which all energy forms and spirits, living and dead, are drawn when they forsake their bodies—has no physical form.  It has no dimension.  It has no substance.  Limbo is the essence of thought and reality.  It is the Alpha and Omega, end all and be all, of all things and dimensions.  All forms of matter and energy—because they can never be destroyed, only recycled—are drawn out of and return to limbo.  The soul is aware of this journey in a way the human mind cannot comprehend, so to alleviate cognitive dissonance, the mind invents things that aren't really there.  It is a perfect case study of Gestalt psychology at work: the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Therefore, when Davis's body jerked his spirit back into place, it briefly phased totally out of synch with the Digital World and back into limbo, so he saw the light at the end of the tunnel.  What he did not expect, however, was for the light to coalesce into four separate shapes, a tiger, dragon, bird, and turtle, and reach out towards him.  Davis had seen the entire "Poltergeist" series at least seventeen times.  By all accounts, he knew that he was supposed to move away from the light.

Then the animals began to speak to him.  He blinked.  This hadn't been in any of the movies.

You have been found worthy.

Um . . .?

We are pleased with you, Child of Courage and Friendship.

Uh . . . thanks.

Rest, Child.  You have been Blessed.

Then the light that outlined the creatures flashed over Davis and a deep warmth settled into his bones.  He smiled, not a smile so much as a Davis smile, and closed his eyes.  And then the light washed him away.

**************

Gennai started slightly as the lights flickered off and on.  He looked up towards the high ceiling and stifled a sigh.

Let it never be said that Ken Ichijouji lacked for style and taste (despite his predilection for whips, torture, enslavement, and a definite lean towards sadism).  The bedroom to which they had been directed was the same one that Ken had occupied during his courtship with insanity and megalomania.  It was large, functional, tasteful, and had just a hint of sterility, fittingly enough, an almost sensual and warped version of his apartment's décor.  The walls were the same dark silver steel that encased every room in the base and were windowless.  Digital World runes and computer code ran along the top of the walls and could have easily been mistaken for a decorative border by someone unfamiliar with the codes.  The lighting, even when they weren't on auxiliary power, was dim and ambient, but lacked any sort of warming or comforting appeal.  A large black circular table was near the hissing electronic door and two night tables of the same color were on either side of the bed.  The bed itself was an enormous round affair clad in dark, dark navy blue sheets, silk—Gennai was sure—and a black comforter that looked so big and thick, you could have gone for a swim in it.  Davis, who was actually a rather petit individual once he shut up, looked like a baby doll lying in daddy's bed.  He looked like he could have drowned there.  On the boy's chest, Demiveemon slept, a curled up ball of furry blue.  Crying was apparently exhausting work.

TK's blue eyes studied the traveler's profile and caught the other man's attention.  Gennai turned to where he sat in a functionally comfortable chair in the far corner of the room.  "Yes?" he asked the blond.

Patamon blushed under the intensity of Gennai's gaze and fluttered down to his human's lap, but TK was undeterred.  "So just what happened between you two anyway?"

Gennai blinked and looked a bit startled.  He knew what TK was referring to, but it was strange to hear the younger boy as him the same question that he had demanded of Osamu Ichijouji just a few short hours ago.  "You mean Ken?"

The blond closed his eyes and nodded.

"Everyone's just dying to know what's up," Patamon chirped helpfully.

Demiveemon shifted his position and Gennai looked away from Hope to stare at Davis again.  "It isn't really you concern," he said not unkindly.  He suddenly understood why Osamu had balked at his earlier inquiry.  Questions like that were ticking time bombs.

TK's azure eyes opened.  "If it affects the team, it's very much our concern, Gennai."

Hazel eyes rose to regard the boy again.  Damn logic.  "I . . ." he stuttered a bit and then waved a hand at through the air in front of him as though clearing away clutter.  "It's . . . complicated."

TK lifted an eyebrow and Gennai quickly decided that that was his absolute least favorite expression in the world.  Matt did it, Osamu did it, Ryou did it, Cody did it, Ken did it, and now TK was doing it.  Yeah.  He was really beginning to hate that look.

"Complicated," the Child of Hope repeated as though tasting the word for the first time.  "Why does everyone seem to think that things have to be so 'complicated' with Ken?"

"Because," the traveler responded dryly, lifting an eyebrow of his own, "Ken is a rather difficult person to interact with."  He shrugged then as he tried to soften those words.  "Given everything that's happened to him, that's rather understandable to a point, but Ken just seems to thrive off of misery.  His own as well as everyone else's.  If he's not happy, then nobody else within a thousand kilometers in any direction will be either."  Gennai let loose a bitter and deprecating snort.  "Well, you can't say that he doesn't share."

TK scowled slightly and ran an absent hand over Patamon's furry hide.  "That doesn't sound very fair."

"You disagree with me?"

"No, it's not that."  TK shook his head.  "But something had to make him that way.  Yeah, there're people and digimon who're just plain evil, but no human, at least, is born that way.  I mean there has to be some reason they turned out that way."  A sudden thought occurred to the boy and he eyed the other human speculatively.  "You know why he became the Emperor, don't you?  That's why he hates you—he blames you."

Gennai shifted a bit in his chair, uncomfortable with where this conversation was heading.  TK was getting close—far too close for comfort—to things that Ken didn't even know and would hopefully never be aware of.  There was a lot riding on the Digidestined and the last thing that they needed was to put more on their proverbial plates.  He nodded.  "Sort of.  Ken doesn't hate me, he's just . . . murderously angry with me.  But that has nothing to do with his whole Prince of Darkness Phase."

"He said that you got someone killed.  Is that it?"

Gennai looked away.  Way to pour salt into the wound, kid, he thought sourly.  "Yah.  He blames me, perhaps rightly so, for the disappearance of one of his old friends."  His only friend . . .

"So you mean to say that you knew nothing about the Emperor?"  TK shook his head and Gennai added the motion to his growing list of body language that he hated.  "I don't believe that.  You could have easily stopped Ken before he gained so much power—before the control spires, rings, and Kimeramon," the tow-headed Keeper of Hope declared.

The traveler frowned at him.  Somebody must really hate me . . . "We underestimated him.  Never," he leaned forward a bit to accentuate his point and shook his finger at the boy, "never did we predict that he would be capable of such mass destruction or cruelty.  We never imagined that he was capable of wreaking such havoc."

An accusatory finger lifted to ward off Gennai's previous gesture. "But you knew that it was possible!"  

"Yes," the other man acknowledged, "but they—" He cut off abruptly.  There was simply no way in hell that he could possibly make this sound good.

" 'They?'  Who's they?  And they what?" TK asked, unappeased.

Gennai looked away and mumbled something.

"What?"

" . . ."

"They what?"

A defeated whisper.  "They wanted to see what would happen."

Patamon squeaked as though he'd been stuck with a straight pin and TK blinked and sat back heavily, shocked.  He vigorously rubbed his face with both hands.  "So you just let it all happen?" he whispered.  "Everything . . . You knew and you let it all happen."

" . . . Yes.  It was just supposed to be an experiment.  Nobody was supposed to get hurt.  We—I underestimated him.  Horribly.  And there were other . . . variables that were not taken into account as well."

TK and Patamon both stared at him with a kind of bemused horror.  He looked away from their biting blue eyes.

Suddenly Davis scared about ten years off of all their lives by yawning, licking his lips, sitting up (much to Demiveemon's surprise and discomfort), and frowning at Gennai.  His chocolate eyes absorbed the young man in disapproval.  "And here I thought that I screwed up."

Demiveemon promptly leapt off of the bed and wrapped his little flippers around his partner's face, nearly smothering the boy.  "DAVIS!!!!!!"

Strong hands reached up and peeled the excited in-training off his face.  He held the digimon out at arm's length and grinned.  "Miss me, little guy?"

The creature beamed.  "I was so worried."  Suddenly he twisted out of Davis's hands, hopped up into the air and soundly whapped his human over the head.

"Ow!"

Ruby eyes glared up at him through a thin layer of tears.  "Don't you ever do that again!!"

The boy pulled his little partner to him in a tight embrace.  "Oh.  Okay."

"So, how are you feeling?" a gentle voice inquired to his right.

Davis looked over at Gennai with serious eyes.  "A lot better than you'll be when Ken hears about this," he said matter-of-factly.  His wild hair trembled as he shook his head and his goggles flashed.  "Wormmon's gonna spend the next two weeks cleaning your stain off the wall."

Gennai looked away.  "I didn't even feel it when you re-entered your body.  So how much did you hear?"

"Oh, around: 'I don't believe that.  You could have easily stopped Ken before he gained so much power,' " he said as he stroked Demi's head.

"So, why did you tell us all this stuff?" asked Patamon from TK's lap.

"You're not learning anything new," Gennai said with a shrug.

Davis blinked and TK lifted that damned eyebrow again.  "Huh?"

"To get Ken to bring us here, I agreed to tell you some things a bit later on.  So that you'll know what's going on—what you have to do—to face the Dark One."

Demiveemon frowned.  "What are you going to tell us?"

"Everything."

**************

"DINNER!!!"

Ken jumped and banged his head on the metal panel above him as Yolei's sharp voice cracked through the speakers.  "Damnit . . ." he muttered, rubbing the offended area.  How the hell did she find the P.A. system?

"Are you alright, Ken-chan?"

Still muttering curses under his breath, the dark-haired boy pushed the gurney he was laying on out from beneath the computer panel which currently occupied his attention.  "Fine."  He sat up and squinted a bit as the light invaded his eyes.  He glared at the cold ceiling lights with a black expression.

"I take it that that didn't work," Stingmon stated from the far side of the room.

"I'm not done yet," his human replied through a sigh.  "Did you finish up in the control room?"

The Champion nodded.  "Yes, but I think you should take a look at the navigation system yourself."

The youth nodded and lay down again to finish his work on the panel.  He had forgotten how much help Wormmon had been in the layout and organization of the base when he had first built it.  Other than himself, his partner knew the structure better than anyone else.  He grunted as he touched two wires together and bright sparks flew into his face.  There was a loud whirring and comforting static noise of electricity flowing.  The ceiling lights popped, then flashed, then settled down to a bright florescent glow.

Stingmon's voice drifted to him from across the room.  "I see you fixed the problem."

Ken pulled himself out from under the panel again.  A satisfied smirk was pasted on his face.  "It was the subsystems.   I doubt that there'll be any more problems for now."

"Ah."  Stingmon replaced the panel he was working on and dedigivolved.

"Is it a good day today, Ken-chan?" Wormmon asked as his partner lifted him up in his arms.

"Today could never be a good day, my friend."  He hugged his digimon closer. 

"Is it because of Osamu?"  He felt Ken flinch.

"Osamu, the base, the Dark World . . ."  He shook his head.  "Or it could just be me.  I got into a . . . discussion with little Hida."

"He's a nice boy," offered the virus. 

Ken snorted noncommittally.  For a moment the two were silent, merely enjoying one another's company.  Then: "Thank you," Ken whisper to his digimon.

"Hmm?"  Blue eyes blinked in confusion.

"For coming here." He lifted the caterpillar up to his usual perch on his shoulder and started off towards the control room.  "For helping me.  I know how much you hate this place."

Wormmon said nothing, choosing to snuggle closer to Ken instead. 

The boy chuckled.  He lifted his friend off his shoulder and put him on the ground when they reached a four-way intersection in the hall.  The left hand path led to the kitchen, the right hand path led to storage and the minimum security holdings, and the front hall lead to the control room and the observation room.

Wormmon looked at him curiously.

"Go eat, Wormmon," Ken said, pointing down the left hall.  "I don't really feel too social right now.  I need to—"

"Get your head together?" the digimon supplied helpfully.

"Yeah." The boy cast him an almost painful smile.  "I'll be in the observation room."

"Okay," Wormmon said.  He waited until Ken vanished up the hallway before heading towards the kitchen.  It surprised him, but the little insect found that he actually missed this place a bit.  The work that they had done today reminded him of when they had first built the base before everything went bad.  The two of them had built this structure together.  Occasionally, an airdramon or gazimon would help them out, but the two of them had always been together.  Ken taught him about computers and how to make minor repairs.  Wormmon told Ken everything he knew about the Digital World and the Digidestined, which was actually quite a bit.  Other than their days with the Tamer, it had been the most fun he had ever had in his life.  Odd, how something that had been the cause of so much joy and laughter had ended up being the instrument of such destruction and misery.  Wormmon had long ago concluded that Fate had a severely warped sense of humor.  He had once told Ken this and his boy merely shrugged.  "She's a bitch," he'd said without bothering to explain what he meant.  Note to self, thought the digimon, ask Ken what a 'bitch' is.

"Oh, wow, Yolei," a voice exclaimed from the kitchen, "You guys really outdid yourselves.  This looks great!"

Ahh, so the Davis boy was up.  Ken would be happy to hear that.  Wormmon puttered into the kitchen, his pods making their odd clicking / suction noise against the metal floors.  He was the last one to arrive, everyone else had already found seats around the dining table, leaving two chairs for him and Ken. 

"Hello," he greeted as he made his way into the room. 

"Hello, Wormmon."

"Hi."

"Howdy."

"Hungry?"

"You look tired."

"Everything all right?"

"Wormmon."

"Good evening, my good fellow."

"Hey, dude!"

"HI!!"

"Oh, hi, Wormmon.  At least we don't have to feed a Champion.  No offense, Gatomon."

The number and enthusiasm of the greeting startled the digimon and he momentarily shied back, almost ready to flee before Gennai suddenly scooped him up in one arm.  "Where's your master?" he asked as he set the caterpillar on the table.

Wormmon blinked his large eyes several times as he tried to get his bearings.  "Observation deck."  He eyed the enormous steaming pot in the center of the table with a mix of curiosity and healthy wariness.  His antennae twitched.

"Why's he up there?" demanded Yolei as she filled the bowl Kari handed her and gave them to Gatomon to pass out.

"Head clutter," the digimon said wisely as he glared suspiciously at the bowl in front of him.

Davis stared at virus, a slice of half-buttered bread frozen in his hand.  "Is that like lice?"

"What's a lice?"  Wormmon shook his head and then peered into his bowl curiously.  "I'm sure it's nothing like that," he said into his soup, "but Ken is always going off to clear his head, so I guess it must get pretty cluttered up there.  Maybe it's 'cause he's so smart."  Wormmon looked back up, acutely aware that he was being stared at.  He tilted his head in confusion and looked at Cody who was perched on the edge of a chair.  "You're smart.  Doesn't your head get cluttered?"

Cody blushed.

"Should we set him a place?" asked Patamon from his seat next to TK.

TK frowned.  "I don't know, Patamon . . . If he wants to be alone—"

"No!"  Yolei slammed a bowl down at Ken's place and the hot soup leapt out onto the table.  "I did not nearly chop off my fingers on garlic and parsley so that he could pretend that he doesn't need food like a normal human being and go off and pout somewhere!  He wants head clutter, I'll give him clutter and I don't care if he is the amazing and astounding 'Ken Ichijouji!'  I said 'dinner' and I meant now!!"

They all stared.

"Calm down, Yolei," said Cody.

Demiveemon leaned over to his partner.  "I think that someone left the gas on in the kitchen."

"It's the garlic," Hawkmon confided.

"Ah."

Gennai, Kari, Davis, and TK stood at the same time.  The elder cast the other three sharp glances and frowned.  "I'll go get Ken.  You guys just keep the pot warm."

He turned and left, cloak flaring in his wake.  Davis and TK traded knowing glances.  Somehow they were both very happy not be participants in this conversation.

**************

The wind blew through his hair, toying with it before dancing away again, light as a mischievous child.  His slender hands wrapped around the bars that blocked off the edge and kept him trapped.  The grip was so tight his hands hurt.  Below him, the city of Tokyo was spread out like an enormous doll set, painted blood red in the twilight.

"Look at them," he half-hissed, half-growled as he stared down at his fellow man, "Running about their meaningless lives like rats running through a maze." The wind took his words and flew away with them, ruffling his hair in its wake.  " Not one of you is worth half of what I am."  He ground his teeth and yanked viciously at the bars.  He wanted to scream.  He wanted to cry.  He wanted to wrench the bars free of the cement wall and hurl himself down eight stories and into the pavement of the street.  He wanted to show them.  "NOTHING BUT FOOLS!"

**************

Gennai found the young genius in what appeared to a large observation room.  One pale hand rested against the glass of an enormous window and his eyes stared out at the drab landscape without really registering it.  If he noticed the traveler's intrusion, he gave no signs of it and kept his back to the door.  Absently the older man wished that the former Emperor had had the foresight to put a chair in here.

"There's something wrong with me, isn't there?"

Gennai blinked, startled, and looked at Ken's back.  This was not how he had planned on this conversation being initiated.  Accusations: yes; demands: yes.  Perhaps he would have even eventually gotten around to getting Ken to dinner.  But that?  "What do you mean?"

Ken tilted his head and closed his eyes wearily.  He did not turn around.  "I'm not normal, am I?"

"You are Digidestined," the other responded, dreading where this conversation seemed to be heading.

"You know that that's not what I meant."

Gennai sighed and walked over to the window to stand next to the boy.  They still did not look at one another.  "What would you like me to say?"

"The truth."

A dismissive shrug.  "There's no such thing as the truth."

Ken made a small sound of agitation and turned his head, blue-violet eyes glaring murder at his companion.  "Then the reality of the situation!"

"Reality?"  Gennai turned his head and lifted an eyebrow.  "There's no such thing as reality."

For a moment it looked as though the boy was going to hit Gennai—something the man definitely felt that he could do without—but then he merely shrugged, wrapped his arms around himself, and closed his eyes.  He tilted his head to the side again before bowing it to his chest.  Gennai wondered if Osamu was there now—if he could see the obvious pain his brother was in.

"Do you enjoy this?" Ken murmured, sounding sleepy and detached.  He shook his head, eyes still closed.  "I am growing weary of this game, traveler.  I want answers.  I need them.  Please," he looked up into Gennai's eyes, "what's happening to me?"

The man shook himself and unconsciously mimicked Ken's defensive posture, arms tight around him.  He looked away from those angry, pleading eyes.  "I don't enjoy this Ken.  This is not my idea of fun . . . But I am bound—"

"Bound!" Ken spat the word contemptuously.  "You and your bondage!  What is that to me?!  What about my shackles?  I am being drawn towards a destiny that I neither want nor understand, yet all you do is tell me not to worry about it!  You tell me that everything is going to be alright."

Gennai reached out to comfort the boy.  "Ken—"

He jerked away.  "No!  This is not right!  It's not going to be alright!  There is no alright."

Gennai dropped his hand and turned back to the window, shaking his head sadly.  "I know that."  Ken looked over at him sharply, brow distorted by confusion.  The older man shrugged as he continued.  "All there is is what will be.  That is alright."

"But it's not!" the boy snapped angrily.  He resisted the urge to stomp his foot in protest.  "Who says so?  Who makes it that way?  I am nobody's puppet—"

"It is hard," Gennai interrupted softly, ignoring the boy and looking out the window, "to bear the burden of two destinies.  Particularly when their natures and the personalities are so different.  It won't bring him back, you know."  Gennai looked down at his companion.  The Child of Kindness looked like he had just been punched in the stomach.  With a sledgehammer.  Gennai continued anyway.  "Leading the life that he should have lead—it won't bring Osamu back."  The traveler stooped slightly so that they were at eye-level and gently placed his hands on Ken's shoulders.  He softened his voice.  "Put it down, Ken.  If it's too heavy, just put it down."

Ken was shaking under his hands and tears further magnified his already-large eyes.  He drew a painfully shallow breath and his voice trembled.  "I don't know how."

Gennai stiffened, unsure how to react.  Ken's tremors continued until he was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.  Gennai was afraid that he would shake his entire body apart.  So he did the only thing he could, he pulled the trembling child into a gentle embrace.

Ken gave a small cry and struggled briefly.  He fought like a bird, heart thundering, arms pushing, nails clawing—it lasted nearly five seconds.  Then a massive shudder left Ken's body and he collapsed against the taller man's frame.  He didn't cry, though.  He simply lay in the traveler's arms and trembled, and for the briefest moment all that mattered was that he didn't have to support himself and, for the first time in years, he was almost warm.

"What's happening to me?" he whispered into Gennai's robed shoulder.

". . . You're still learning, Ken."

The boy pulled away from him suddenly and went to stare out the immense window.  "Yeah, well, it sucks."  He raised a fine boned hand and pressed it against the window as though he could push through the glass, reach out, and scoop the desert up in the palm of his hand.  "I want answers, sir."

The traveler started.  Ken hadn't called him 'sir' in years.

"I need them."

Gennai studied the ground.  "When can we move?"

". . . I did a patchwork job on the system, so it still needs a lot of checking.  After dinner I'm going to get things rolling."

"The let's go eat."

Ken spun around and watched the traveler's back as the other man headed towards the door.  "Gennai!" 

He didn't stop.  "After dinner, Kenny-boy.  I'm hungry."

The door slid shut with a hiss behind him.

**************

A world away, a dark figure paced in his chamber.  "She failed me.  Of the three tasks I gave her . . . she completed not one of them!"

A tall, slender figure shrugged in the shadows.  "What did you expect, beloved?  She wasn't even human . . . or even a digimon, for that matter."

"I am not in the mood to deal with you now, my dear."

"That's just too bad then.  Gennai's found allies."

"Gennai?"  The figure stopped pacing and assumed an almost pensive air.  "Ah . . . so you've grown a spine after all, my little one."

The female approached him.  If anyone had seen her, they would have noticed that she bore a striking resemblance to Lady Devimon, save that he hair was teal and her eyes were empty sockets in her head.  Her abnormally large hands were on her tiny hips in a startlingly human gesture, the long cruelly tapered finger wrapping around her body until the tips of one hand touched the tips of the other.  "Little one?" she spat in contempt, her mouth twisting a face that was both horrifying and beautiful.  "You underestimate him, beloved!  You always have!  Time has passed.  Gennai is no longer the child that he once was.  He is dangerous."

"Nonesense," the dark figure rumbled in something close to a laugh.  "We can claim Gennai as easily as we did Ichijouji."

She glared at him with nonexistent eyes.  "Counting chickens now?  In case you haven't noticed, Ichijouji still fights under the banner of Light and every moment we lose him a bit more.  Your failure with the Arachnemon has only brought them closer together."

"My failure?  Have a care my dear . . . I love you, but one day you will push me too far."

"There are spirits at work here!"

"The first born Ichijouji?"

"Yes . . . and there is another helping him."

"What do you mean?"

"Another spirit . . . living, yet not.  It is a young spirit.  It has been in limbo for a very long time now."

". . ."

"You were unaware?"

"The cards have been dealt."

"We must destroy Ichijouji."

"The cards have been dealt.  Let the game play out."

She clenched her enormous hands into fists.  "Why will you not heed me?  The Child has a Dark Seed within him!  If they rediscover the key to the Golden Radiance, we are through!"

"Light is their weakness.  And Gennai's loyalty to those fool Guardians wavers everyday.  We must gather our strength for the coming battle."

The female looked down at the ground.  "And what of these spirits?"

"Who is the other?"

"I do not know; the Guardians protect his soul from my eyes.  He is to be the next one, I think."  She looked up, the cavernous holes in her skull seeming to be eerily animate.  "He is beyond our grasp."

The dark figure nodded absently.

"Then you will persist in continuing your attempt to bring Gennai back to you?"

"HE WAS MINE!" the Dark One thundered in a voice so loud that the very earth seemed to shake.  "THEY TOOK HIM FROM ME—TURNED HIM FROM ME!"

The female merely nodded.  If the outburst had frightened or startled her, she gave no sign and turned to go.

"Stop."

She turned back around regarding him coolly for a moment.  No matter how high she stood here, He ruled, and she never once forgot that.  She lifted an eyebrow, sensing doubt in the immense silence that stood between them.  She shrugged.  "I followed you into hell, my love.  Why doubt that I'll go with you back to heaven?"

He said nothing and she left.  There were preparations to be made.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*