Malice Judgement Chapter 4
Abashiri, Hokkaido

For as long as he could remember, Michael Hyuga had been haunted by a voice named kaphael in his head. He had never thought that this was unusual, when he was young, and by the time he realised that not everyone was like that, he was far too accustomed to Kaphael to be bothered. Well, he was not bothered about the fact that Kaphael was there- but Kaphael seemed to be rather bothered about the fact e had to reside in Michael's head. Kaphael was clever, sarcastic, and from an early age he had seemed to enjoy torturing Michael. It hurt whenever Kaphael spoke, which suited him. But, probably much to kaphael's annoyance, it didn't hurt half as much as harmonixing.



One night, when he was twelve, Michael had woken up with a headache worse than anything he'd ever felt before. He had, at first, assumed that Kaphael was in a bad mood, but no message came. He shut his eyes tightly, and didn't notice any difference from the two o'clock blackness. Decidedly not crying, he hugged his knees, rested his head on them and arched his shoulders against the pain; half-shrouded in bedclothes. When he opened them, and raised his head to the ceiling, he expected darkness, but instead he saw a dark blue sky.

Michael looked around him, not believing, but going along with the illusion. It was only a dream, after all. He was in a grassy, open area. Unlike most dreams, nothing was happening, so he put his head back on his knees and tried to go back to sleep so he could wake up in the right place. The pain in his head was gone now. He sat with the burnt out, resigned feeling o being about to go to sleep, but never quite managing. Michael only opened his eyes when he felt a light brushing of air around him, as if something was moving. He stared up at the creature with curiosity, but no fear. It was like a tiger, or had used a tiger as its jumping-off point: the limbs were elongated and it stood upright, it was strangely coloured- greens and browns- and i could speak in perfectly coherent Japanese. It sounded female.

The tiger stalked around him a couple of times. Michael could feel it staring at him. It was a disturbing feeling. Eventually it stopped, in front of him. It knelt down and, slipping its fingers- unusually long for a tiger's- under his chin to lift his head out of the way, inspected his neck.

Not even got the talisman yet?' it sighed.

So this was fusion. Michael didn't know a lot about it, but he had heard a bit, put together from obscure references overheard at family gatherings, and from one memorable occasion when his father, drunk, had given him a long monologue on how the entire family was cursed, doomed, and largely totally insane to boot. Just as he was getting to the interesting part, Michael's mother had intervened, asking his father what did he expect, if this was the way Hyuga children were brought up. She told him not to fill Michael's head with nonsense, and he might have a chance of growing up comparatively normal. It had been a nice thought, but not much of a help. Michael's head was quite capable of filling itself with nonsense. Nonsense called Raging Tiger. She wasn't quite what he had expected from a fusion soul. he'd expected it to be more dramatic, demonic, shadowy corners of his mind filled with twisted, storybook devils. He hadn't expected a talking green tiger, and he wasn't sure if this was better or worse than the demons. In retrospect, it was probably worse.




Harmonixing turned out to be a complex web of rituals, malice, and strangely coloured animals. Michael was glad his father had been there to help him get used to it. He had given his son the family talisman, saying that, by now, he was getting so used to what malice felt like, he hardly needed the talisman himself. Malice was invariably the hardest part of harmonixing, and Michael was eternally grateful that his father had explained it to him before the fusion soul had- she seemed to view malice as some kind of a sport. Malice, apparently, was different for every harmonixer. How quickly it built up and how much trouble you got from it depended on how sane you were when you started. Malice for him measured, Raging Tiger informed him, his built-up anger, all the things that he was angry about but ignored at the time. Michael thought that it would be easy to avoid getting malice: simply deal with emotions when you get them, and there'll be no built up anger. But it's never than simple. If it had been as simple as that, then harmonixing would have been a gift and not a curse.



Kaphael was, predictably, unsympathetic. He seemed to be constantly present, even when Michael was inside his own head where the fusion souls resided. Well, that made sense, Kaphael was in his head as well. Where in his head, Michael wondered. That place wasn't all of his mind, just a centre for harmonixing. It was permanently twilight there; it looked like some kind of park, a round, grassy area lined by trees that were always leafless. The autumn leaves gathered in mounds around the place, never quite in the same position as they had been the last time he visited. Michael always came into the park at the same point, at one end of the path, and, always facing him at the other end,, there was a strange building- like a hut,, white walls, wooden roof, wrought iron carvings on its gates. It had gates, instead of doors. Inside it was pitch black.





Whatever happened in that place, whether it had been to do with the malice, or fusion souls, or anything else, Kaphael would later inform Michael that, had it been up to him, he would have known better than to do whatever Michael did. So Michael would get angry, but not be able to do anything about it, because what could he do to Kaphael? It only made him angrier if he argued with the voice. So then he would get malice, and then, of course, Kaphael would have known better than to get the malice in the first place, or he would have fought better; and then the malice would get worse. Then, once he had returned from clearing it, Kaphael would start up again, almost immediately. it got so that Michael was visiting the inside of his mind twice a day, sometimes even more. It was almost too much for him, he was wearing down, his mind was breaking. He couldn't concentrate on anything, and, as it worsened over the years, he would find himself muttering out loud to Kaphael in anger. Sometimes, the malice would get too much before he could clear it, and he'd lose his temper, lashing out at anything around. And all the while, the cycle of malice would get worse and worse, spiral deeper and deeper. It was never going to be simple, he should have known that. . . .













Do I exist any more? Oh well, never mind if I don't, it's my own fault. How long has it been since I last wrote anything?Twenty-five vigintillion years by the looks of things. I could make up a lot of excuses but that is just inexcusable. *sweatdrop*

And because of all the idiot things I have stated doing, which add up to five SH fanfics (one of which needs enough research to kill a brain) , two original fics (one of which needs twice the amount of research because I''m being annoyingly historically accurate with it) and one idiotic misguided website about Edinburgh ghosts ( shudder at the amount of research) I have decided to downsize. So I'm only going to do one SH fic at a time.

First I will finish the Malice Judgement.
Then I will (maybe I actually WILL this time) finish Malkovich.
Then I will start again on the idiot Bacon thingy.
And sometime in between all that I'll get the last chapter of Death Letter. . . . and maybe do a one-shot thing which I'm almost finished writing anyway now so I might as well. Poor Margarete keeps getting shunned for the manic harmonixers.



Thank you, first, to anyone who is actually reading this chapter. I don't deserve it after all that skiving- off-time.

And thank you for reviewing last chapter, Leels (Shadow Hearts was far too good a fandom for Mission/Rev mentions not to have at least one in somewhere! ) and Kim Grasshopper (Yuri... Er, no... I never even thought of it being Yuri. I was just sticking it in cuz the icons said so. It symbolises that he heralds news or some random thing like that. Heaven's Fiend is based off my brother, and I'm not even joking. I think he's said everything in there at one point or another.)



O.o;;;;;;;;;;

I just realised I have COMPLETELY FUCKING FORGOT the plot of this fic. *cries* It had a lot of dead harmonixers and squelchy Lovecraftian things but WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY DOING THERE?

What a hoobledoobledooper question for Hoob news! What are the fucking random shoggoths doing in my head? Let's go and ask some tiddlypeeps.

Er, what does that prove? That proves I watch way too much kid's TV at six o clock in the morning. The Hoobs are genious. They're very dodgy for a toddler's programme. My brain has clearly melted in my absence. What do the Hoobs have to do with ANYTHING?

*shuts the bloody hell up for once*