Hey people. The silver hair is here.... I must say, this story is longer than I thought it would be. I only expected it to take ten chapters or so... at the moment, I believe that fifteen will be the final number of chapters. That may change, of course, but hopefully I'll be done with this story soon. I probably won't start on my next BR fanfic until next year- I know I said this winter, but a lot of stuff has come up, and I hope to finish at least one of my other fanfics (probably Harry's Madness) by then. Truth be told, I'm getting bored of writing HM.... you can only rip people apart in so many ways before you get immune to all the blood and gore. That, and the storyline actually goes against what I myself personally believe... evil wins in the end in HM. Truth be told, evil never wins in the end (in stories or real life) so that kinda throws a monkey wrench into the works.

But! That is beside the point at the moment. The point is YOU, my lovely BR fanfic readers! So, here we go....

Reviews....

Soundwood: No! I love long reviews! Argh.! (sniff)

Oh well. I'm eagerly awaiting your letter. And I really did like your character, although her last name struck me as funny (an overweight character whose last name is Tuubifor... perfect!) So that's good.

Tiger5913: You've probably affected me, what with all the AKS reading I've been doing lately... the horniness just flowed over :).

Actually I admire your fanfic- I have something of a mental problem when it comes to sex in my own stories (the voices in my head make jokes along the lines of " Little boy's sex drive is freaking out!") so I rather admire those who can put it in their own stories while keeping a mature outlook on things. Kudos.

Me, when I do have sex in my fics, find that once the voices in my head leave me alone, that it's funnier than hell. Henceforth, Bakuryu's groping tendencies. :)

As for banishing you to hell.... I thought we dealt with that? (And if I could just find my cross.... :)

VGuyver: Yo, fellow FM3 fan! Thanks for the review. And as for ol' Baky- he's both :).
Okay then, that's settled. Let's go straight to....

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 10

Machine and Death

Streets outside Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, near heart of Tokyo, Japan. 2:55 p.m., Night of the Mark.

We flit down the alleys like some sort of invisible birds on the wing, silent and more stealthy than even the Ninja before us has ever been. As he changes from beast form to human form, his upper body shrinks and resumes normal proportions with his body. Claws now hands, he gently takes the unconscious Uriko into his arms (not fondling her this time; she's starting to come awake, and much as Bakuryu would love to get his hands on her, now is not the time) and checks out the alley. No one there, but the sirens are getting louder, and the police will arrive soon. If they look in the alley, they will see a human male carrying what looks like a human female (until they get close, at least, and notice the furry paws, not to mention the tail and ears). Every human in the area will be taken in and locked up for blood testing. The tests will reveal who is a Zoanthrope, and then that person will be summarily arrested by the government, taken to labs in the north, and then tested on until they die. Such is the way of life for Zoanthropes in Japan.

Bakuryu looks around for a way out of the alley (preferably on the rooftops) and sees a handy fire escape. Putting Uriko on one shoulder, he leaps up, grabbing onto the small metal fence that surrounds the fire escape. Using his strength to the fullest, he manages to lift his shoulder up and dump Uriko onto the escape. That weight gone (and she and Kenji weigh almost the same amount; neither of them are big people) Kenji flips over with ease. Uriko mutters a groggy question.

" Don't know," Bakuryu says, having no idea what she just said but confident his answer will suffice. It does and Uriko goes back to a semi-doze. Bakuryu hoists her up and walks up the fire escape's stairs. The stairs clang and creak like hell, but that's okay- the sirens are beginning to drown out all sound in the area, even those Bakuryu is making. We float up, needing no cover for our sounds, for we make none at all.

Bakuryu gets to the top and begins calmly walking to the edge of the roof. A helicopter is whirling in, and it's searchlight is scanning the buildings nearby. It's still on the other side of the street, however, and Bakuryu is confident he will be long gone by the time it searches this roof. Everyone's still busy at the hospital, where unbeknownst to Bakuryu, Alice is frantically searching for her sister. The entire fight being short and brutal (as most Zoanthrope battles are) Alice does not know if her friends are alright. No one knows Alice's secret at the hospital, and she will lose more than her job if anyone finds out. As it is, Alice is questioning the survivors, pretending to be asking for the hospital's sake but really wanting to know what happened. As she hears the details of the battle between a werewolf (as someone calls Yugo) and a tengu (a long nosed Japanese goblin that someone else thought Kohyru resembled), she keeps her face clear of any emotion save frightened curiosity. The sick dread in her heart does not appear on her face, a skill she learned over long years of telling parents that their children were dead, over long years of realizing that you can't save everyone, and that more often than not trying will kill you too, if not physically than in your soul. The bystanders later say that a representative of the hospital asked a bunch of questions, but Alice is good at this too, and the really important ones- like where the Zoanthropes were now- are lost in a flood of questions whose sole purpose is distraction. She is quite skilled.

And scared, of course. But that's to be expected; after all, the ones she loves are now being hunted all across Tokyo. And she can do nothing but stand by and watch. She can't leave the hospital; to do so now, when it appears that her loved ones are dead (killed by those horrible Zoanthrope things) and that the hospital she both works at and loves has been damaged will arouse terrible suspicion in the minds and hearts of Japan. Truth be told, Japan is deeply paranoid about Zoanthropes, and anyone even suspected of having Zoanthrope tendencies or ideas is immediately blacklisted- unofficially, of course. The men who make this list and pass it out in small black letters (without realizing, of course, the significance of the color they chose) have already placed Yugo on it, along with Gado and Jenny. Shina, Alice, Long, Kenji, and Uriko have all been declared "suspect" by the makers of this list (a council which contains some very powerful Japanese officials, including a few on the Mishiyama Corp. payroll) and are under watch even as we speak. Already, a big man with dull eyes (but they look sharp, too, like knives that have been dipped in oil) is watching her, wondering what her reactions will be, watching them to see if they will tell him if she had any part in the goings-on of tonight. It is hard, for those who fight for the coming of the dawn. Very hard indeed. One cannot even let tears fall, for fear the world will lap them up like a greedy dog, hungry for more...

Coming back from our philosophical musings, we see that Bakuryu has disappeared from this rooftop. Shaking ourselves and flapping off, we find him again, in an alley nearby, slipping past the police and whistling. Having come to the realization that 1.) there is no such thing as coincidence, and 2.) life is a lot like a Charles Dickens novel, we are completely unsurprised that the tune he is whistling is "One Headlight" by the Wallflowers. That is a marvelous tune, but it's getting rather old. Following the assassin as he packs the still morphed Uriko (her tail tucked firmly in his hand; it kept rubbing against his face, and it was tickling the shit out of his nose) over his shoulder and out of danger.

Of course, he doesn't know that the real danger is near the park, where a powerful machine called the Heaven Breaker by the company that built it (and guess which company it is? Why, the Mishiyama Corp., of course) and the Big Gun by the police who drive it is currently beginning a scan search of the area, where a strange creature was recently reported. But he can find that out when he gets there.

We fly off into the night, looking for friends.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Park in Tokyo, about five blocks from Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, 3:15 a.m.

We fly through the night sky, easily overleaping the buildings in our way and leaving Bakuryu and Uriko far behind. We wonder uneasily if that's such a good idea, especially considering Bakuryu's behaviour earlier tonight, but there is nothing we can do but watch and record, and our senses tell us that something is happening here, not where Bakuryu is at. Besides, now that the danger is over, Kenji will soon resume control and Uriko will be completely safe. Until he lets Bakuryu out again, anyway.

As we return to the park that we visited earlier tonight, we see Yugo leaning against a building, panting hard, his hearing slowly coming back to him. He is in human guise now, having staggered over building after building until he finally leapt down an alley and was able to resume his human form. The cops blazed past him, not recognizing the beat-up youngster in their haste to get to the hospital and find out what the hell happened. Even if they had realized that he was the blacklisted Yugo, they might not have cared anyway. The police may be the only governmental organization of Japan who do not hate the Zoanthropes with that total, fanatical hatred of the near-insane; in fact, the police are rather calm about the matter. The head commissioner of the police recently released a report stating that "Zoanthropes are human, like everyone else. Treat them no worse than you would any ordinary subject- just be more careful when dealing with them." The police have actually been kind to the Zoanthropes (relatively), and have been honest and true in upholding the justice which they serve. Police are special creatures, in that regard; not makers of the law but its executioners nonetheless, doing their job with as much dignity and honor as they can muster. They serve the community, and get nothing back but disrespect and anger. It is hard, to be an officer. As one officer in Europe put it, heaven is completely beyond the grasp of the imagination- but hell's in easy reach for anyone who has worn a badge.

Maybe that's why the police do not go out of their way to abuse the Zoanthropes. Because they feel a little kinship with them, in this world that has grown cold to both their causes. Maybe. Just maybe.

Whatever the reason, Yugo managed to get from the hospital to the park unmolested. Now that he is here, away from all the noise and bustle of the city, he can take a breather and wait for Kenji and Uriko. His body is healing now, and the terrible wound inflicted on his eardrum by Kohryu is starting to heal itself. What little hearing is coming back to him is in the middle range of hearing- not the low bass grumbles of the earth or the high-pitched soprano screams of whistles, but the trebles and altos in between. As he leans there and pants, he thanks God and all the saints (Alice is Catholic while he's Protestant, but her method of praying has bled over into his thoughts) that he's healing. For a while there, he had been afraid that he would be rendered deaf forever.

It is Yugo's one weak point, because his ears, fine-tuned though they are, are fragile, and it takes very little to bust them. This is not the first time he's been attacked like this; during the first days of the Zoanthropes ("the Awakening", as Stun had termed it), Jenny had pierced his eardrums in the same manner, when all of them had been running from Tylon's lab. He had been packing an unconscious boy on his shoulder (one he knew only as Bakuryu, but would later come to know as Kenji Ohgami) and had just defeated a great lion-like creature (that had been Gado, who had freaked out when the lightning storm destroyed the power of the labs and freed them all) when something flew over his head. Looking up, he'd seen a thing straight out of nightmare flapping past him on leathern wings. He'd let out a gasp that in his wolf form had sounded like a growl, scaring Jenny and causing her to react instantly with a scream of her own. That scream had not deafened Yugo like this one had, but it had hurt him all the same, and any sounds he heard seemed to go through a wall of cotton before reaching his mind. Both times, it had taken him several days to recover. The more delicate and intricate a body part is, the harder it is for a Zoanthrope to heal that part. Gado had once gotten his good eye gouged quite badly in a fight with Busuzima, and it had taken it a month to heal, though in the end it had been as fine as ever (his other eye had been wounded before that, and so would not heal- wounds received prior to becoming a Zoanthrope were considered "natural" by the healing factor of the body and would not be recovered like normal wounds).

As Yugo leans panting against the wall, he hears something that he should not have heard- a grating whining sound, like that of a ball bearing turning in too little oil. The sound is extremely high-pitched, and he should not have been able to hear it for days yet. So why is he hearing it? His healing has not increased, and save for that one whirr, he hears nothing more from that end of the auditory realm. Why?...

As Yugo turns to look towards the source of the noise, his eyes widen and he steps back in surprise and not a little fear. We turn around, wondering what in the world could have shocked him. We've been hearing something for a few minutes now, like a large truck passing by on the nearby road, but we have not been paying attention to it. As Yugo steps farther back into the alley and behind a dumpster, leaning out to watch the thing passing him, we turn and stare full on at the thing rolling up the small road of the park.

It is huge, this thing, easily twelve foot tall, and as it passes us we hear the tree branches groaning and creaking as they snap upon its metal frame. It has four wheels that resemble tractor tires, each in its own suspension carriage to give the crew a smooth ride and guarantee the gun a sure aim even while driving. Coming up from the tank-without-treads undercarriage is a large, disk shaped body that is clearly the "main" thing on this machine; it even has eyes of a sort, two searchlights that pierce the darkness before it. It is dark blue, and blends in eerily well with the surroundings; this is a machine that could, with the engine off and searchlights dim, bleed right out of normal sight. It has two arms of a sort, looking weirdly like the mecha that populate the world of Japanese anime (this is something that has not escaped the notice of the police who drive the thing; they call it, in alternating terms, the "Gundam", the "Macross", or, in a term gaining popularity, the "Big H", although they mostly just call it the Big Gun) but on a pissed-off, personal level. The two arms end in guns, the one on the right a chain gun of some sort, judging by the long bandolier of bullets coming out from it's right side, and the left a weapon of unknown designation, though the fact that it is larger and is aimed at a slight diagonal suggests that it is an artillery piece of some sort. Two long, claw-like things that resemble spider legs are folded up in its front, presumably to flop down and dig into the ground to provide support for this ponderous thing when it fires its big gun. This is the Anti-Personnel/Heavy Weapons Model HB5912, or as the Mishiyama Corp. calls it, the "Heaven Breaker". The weapon even sports this name on the side, along with a diagram of a cloud pierced by a sword from below. And knowing what we know of the Mishiyama Corp., we can take this to be more than just a fancy name an executive thought up; this is foulness and evil.

Of course, we ignore all that at the time. After all, we're staring at a raging, swarming, screaming field of ghosts, a field that surrounds the machine and makes it glow.

That make it glow a very fiery, very dull red, the red of suppressed hellfire.

-R & R please!