All over GensouKai central, the Divine Commanders experienced that rush, some able to buffer it, others collapsing under the strain. The worst off were Tenkou and Kijin, who simply lost consciousness, while Genbu, Taimo and Daion were able to shake off the effects without much trouble.

°

Rikugo lay curled up on the ground, trembling hard, his energy lines overloaded with the power rush he had experienced and was still suffering from. Something was coming through from Tsuzuki that was far beyond normal and possible.

So dark.

So harsh.

So sharp.

"Rikugo!"

He tried to concentrate on the voice and blinked his eyes open, gazing at Sohryu, who looked a lot worse for wear. His hair was mostly undone, his robes wrinkled, and he was pale as a sheet. He was trembling, too.

Rikugo managed to sit up, but he almost collapsed again. Sohryu grabbed him and held him upright.

"Tsuzuki," the astrologer stammered.

"Yes." The other dragon sounded just as shaky.

Servants were rushing into the room, stopping as they saw the two on the floor, shaken and radiating the remnants of the rush. Above Rikugo, the roof now featured a new sky light.

"The others..." the blond whispered. "Your children... Go..."

Sohryu's eyes widened in shock and he stumbled to his feet, pushing off helpful hands. "Where are Tenkou and Kijin?" he demanded.

There were voices, answering his sharp questions, and Rikugo started to drift off again, totally exhausted by the rush. He still felt the almost painful thrum and if it was painful for him, it must have been hell for the children. They might be a part of Sohryu, had been born from his and the Emperor's energy, but they were still young.

Closing his eyes, concentrating on simply how to breathe, Rikugo drifted off. He was so damned tired all of a sudden.

° ° °

In the Palace of Candles, the giant hell serpent started awake with a howl. The large head shot up, crashed into the roof, and the tail smashed into a just repaired wall that immediately crumbled under the impact. Ryu, who had been tending to their still unconscious second patient, raced into the demolished hall.

Touda's wings were fully spread, leaving deep grooves in the wall, and his eyes were holding an unholy fire. His jaws clicked dangerously.

The hell serpent hadn't been aware of Tsuzuki's loss of control because, as if someone had timed it, he had been in Limbo the second Tsuzuki had freed his innate powers. And he had been close to unconsciousness immediately afterwards. Now, startled out of his exhaustion, he reached for the bond and ran into a wall of such proportions, he howled in rage.

:TSUZUKI:

He wound and twisted in the confines of the building, wings beating frantically.

:NO:

The darkness was free, the power was running unchecked, and he had no access to his master's mind from here.

"Touda!"

The voice was small compared to his hisses and roars, but the moment a cold, sharp slice of black shadows slapped him, he whirled around, snarling. His attention was on the so insignificantly small shinigami who dared to challenge him.

Ice blue eyes met fiery red ones. Shadows danced around the man, black and hissing and snapping, like Touda's hellish aura.

"Tsuzuki is in the world of the living," the Shadow Master called. "Watari and I can take you with us, but you have to change into your human form!"

Touda snarled again.

"Do it or you'll be stuck here!" Watari added.

And he did. Eyes now golden, alive with that unholy fire, he allowed both shinigami to touch him, tolerating their auras encasing him.

Then there was the rush of a transfer.

°

Ryu gazed at the Palace, sighing deeply.

Total wreck, he decided. Again.

Well, it could have been worse.

The building would repair itself and he had something much more important to take care of. Terazuma was still unconscious and very weak.

The master of the Palace of Candles walked back into the guest room where Watson was still holding the first aid kit that would make any surgeon weep with appreciation. He settled down on the mattress next to the shinigami and looked at this patient.

Terazuma Hajime, the way he had looked before his possession. Round ears, the stripes were gone, and when he had checked the eyes there had been dark brown ones instead of red. All signs of his possession had disappeared for now, but the moment he and the black lion were reunited, things would be back to what they had been.

"Prepare some light soup," Ryu told Watson. "I think our guest will be hungry when he wakes."

Watson bowed briefly and waddled off.

° ° °

Sohryu looked at his children, now sleeping in their beds, Tenkou curled up close to her older brother. She had cried herself into sleep, suffering from the overload that had brought even their father to his knees. The dragon stroked over the dark blue hair that was a mirror of his own.

Tenkou whimpered softly and he whispered her name, humming tenderly. She quieted down and Sohryu sighed.

All of them had suffered from the blast and they still were. This wasn't something brief, some kind of surge.

Something had happened.

Something terrible.

None of them had been Summoned by their master and Sohryu feared for Tsuzuki. With Touda absent they didn't even have a link to him.

Darkness, he thought. Tsuzuki's darkness.

He had only felt it once, when he been bested in the challenge he himself had begun, and that had been a tiny fragment of what had washed over him now.

A tremor passed through him and he grit his teeth. Tenkou whimpered again and Kijin moved restlessly. They felt the surges all the more acutely because their resistance was so low.

"It's okay," he calmed them. "It's okay."

The door opened and Sohryu didn't have the strength to glare at the possible intruder. Byakko, pale as a sheet, and Suzaku, who didn't look much better, looked tentatively inside.

"How are they?" Byakko wanted to know.

"They feel what we feel," he answered, voice rough.

"Something has happened to Tsuzuki," Suzaku murmured.

"And we don't know what because Touda is gone. Maybe I should go to Meifu," Byakko offered.

Sohryu raised his head again from his vigil over his children, meeting the pain-filled, red eyes. Byakko was suffering like all of them.

"I can make it!" Byakko added, as if answering the dragon's silent thoughts.

"We are in no shape to go anywhere," Sohryu answered. "Not like this."

"Sohryu...!"

"Byakko, no."

"But Tsuzuki is in danger! We all can feel it! Something happened and Touda... Touda's not here, and we haven't heard from Meifu, whether he arrived or not! Let me go!"

"Byakko, I can't."

The aura flared briefly. "Then stop me," the tiger snarled and whirled around, stalking away.

Sohryu slumped a little, his hand still resting on Tenkou's small body. He felt her vibrate with the echoes from Tsuzuki. He couldn't stop Byakko and he wouldn't.

"Can I stay?" Suzaku whispered and came carefully closer.

He nodded wordlessly and she settled down beside Kijin, stroking over the unruly blue hair. No words were lost between them as they guarded the youngest of the twelve, and Sohryu actually prayed that Byakko would find an answer.

°

For the tiger, the problem wasn't finding Tsuzuki. It was getting into Meifu. The constant bombardment of power had weakened him and the moment he tried to jump, he crashed into a wall and was repelled. He mewled softly as he fell to his knees, a headache flaring into a migraine.

And then the next power surge from Tsuzuki nearly eradicated all thought.

° ° °

Muraki gazed into the once human eyes of his opponent. He lay on the ground, looking up, the gray sky above him, promising rain.

He smiled.

Rain.

He liked the rain.

Clean and cool against his skin, washing away the pain and blood and scars, washing away his sins and his past, leaving only what had remained unchanged from the day of his birth.

His soul shivered under the cold, calculating eyes of Tsuzuki Asato, or what had remained of the man. Muraki knew what he was facing. This was what Enma had wanted; this was what could be shaped by the Lord of Hades into what he so badly needed.

"Tsuzuki," he whispered, ravaged lips moving slowly.

He tasted blood.

His blood.

And he smiled.

The black coat snapped like ethereal wings around the slender form, and Muraki thought he saw those shadows spread, become real wings, but maybe it was only his imagination.

Somewhere in this chaos was Hisoka. His doll. His puppet. His toy.

Like he had been the same, Enma-Daiou's plaything. From the day of his birth he had been cursed to end like this. Because of his grandfather's experiments, because of his parents' madness, because of his cursed family and their search for immortality, for power, for everything humanity should not ever consider having.

Muraki had no regrets.

His soul wept softly.

Yes, maybe one regret. Oriya. He had said good-bye to his oldest friend already, the only one who had never judged him, who had tried to be a friend, who had been a friend, who had been loyal.

A friend.

Sometimes more.

Sometimes not even that.

Looking into those cold eyes, regret washed over the scarred soul.

To see you like this... I wish I hadn't triggered you, Muraki thought faintly. Because there is no going back. Because he has won now. He will shape you. He will take away what you were, Tsuzuki.

"Kill me," Muraki whispered out loud.

The hair was moving in the magical wind, stirred by the sheer energy the darkness created. The cold amethysts flickered a little as the old Tsuzuki pushed forward.

So beautiful. Tsuzuki had always been beautiful.

"Kill me, Asato. Please."

"Why?"

"Because I want to finally be free."

I'm a fallen angel, a faulty product. I should not have been born, but I was. I should never have existed, but I do. I cannot die. I cannot live. My life was just an experiment.

Muraki smiled more. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, his mind was free of the madness. This was him, his true self. This was what he could have been.

"Please, Tsuzuki, save me. Release me!"

Give me peace.

For years his mind had been controlled, filled with thoughts that were as mad as they were cold and terrible and logical, and he had been like possessed. Now, at the end, for the first time in this unplanned and ungodly existence, his thoughts were clear. They were his own.

I'm sorry, Oriya. You were right. You were always right. And you were my friend. I wish I had that moment now with you, to tell you what you meant to me. You said I existed like a mechanical doll. I did. I always did. It was obsessed and possessed. It was my family curse.

"Please," he pleaded softly.

Tsuzuki knelt beside him, the pale finger caressing his bloody face. The amethyst eyes showed this strange mixture of absolutely dark power and human compassion. Soon the latter would vanish.

"Why did you do this?" Tsuzuki asked.

"I had my reasons."

He gazed into the face he had dreamed of, a face he had imagined when someone else had taken his body, had possessed and claimed him as his. Tsuzuki had been his hope and his light and he had been his unreachable dream. Now this dream touched him gently and tenderly for the very first time.

Muraki chuckled and a gurgle escaped his chest. "You don't know how I dreamed of you touching me this way," he whispered. "You kept me alive."

"Why did you do this?" Tsuzuki repeated, eyes fixed on his.

"Because I had to." Blood covered his white teeth, making them look grotesque. "We are so much alike, Asato. I was an experiment of my family, of madness. You were an accident of a demon raping a human woman, and fathering an impossible child. Neither of us should have been able to exist. You were a freak occurrence. Demons rarely, if ever, father hybrids. I was genetically engineered by my own grandfather."

Muraki coughed again and blood frothed at his lips. Tsuzuki wiped it away, his thumb ghosting over the bloodless lips.

"We are the same," the scientist murmured. "It's why I ask you to release me from this parody of a life. Give me a chance to repay."

Muraki had no illusions as to where his soul, should it even survive death, would go.

Tsuzuki's hand rested on his torn and cut chest. He felt the power contained in that touch.

"Do it," he managed.

Free me.

"Who saved you?" Tsuzuki asked.

Muraki laughed, then coughed again. "My master."

"Who?"

He smiled more. "Give me freedom, Tsuzuki. I cannot tell you more."

The amethyst eyes bore into him. "You will die with that knowledge."

"Yes."

And the power consumed him as he gazed into the violet crystals that were Tsuzuki's eyes. He held that look, clung to that beautiful color as his body finally returned into the nothingness where it had always belonged, as his unholy life ended.

Thank you, he thought.

You're welcome, Kazutaka, a voice whispered, filled with such sadness that he could almost see tears.

And then there was nothing but the eternity of darkness and even that was reduced to nothing as he allowed himself to let go.

tbc...