Yoh walked in slowly into the room Eliza directed him to. The room was lighted by several lanterns placed in strategic points. Faust was sitting on the bed, propped up by many pillows. He curled up in his blankets some more, moving carefully to not hurt himself any more.

"Hi Yoh." Faust smiled.

"Hi." Yoh answered with a small tremble to his voice.

"What's wrong?"

Yoh stood there quietly.

"Yoh, is it because I got hurt?"

Yoh winced a little.

"Yoh, it's not your fault. It could've hit anyone. I think I was a little out of the circle." Faust laughed sheepishly.

"You're wrong." Yoh said.

"What do you mean?"

Yoh repeated the old woman's story to Faust. Faust then sat quietly for a while, thinking what he had heard over.

"Still, it's not your fault." Faust sighed a few minutes later.

"Why not! I promised you that I wouldn't let anything happen to you! I'm surprised Eliza isn't mad at me!"

"Look, this happened because that thing has a grudge against "my kind". I'm sure a spirit that angry would've been desperate enough to find a way to get to me, even if I was in the middle of the circle. Now you stop worrying about me, because if the others see you like that, they'll be discouraged."

Yoh blinked in surprise.

"Don't worry about me, Yoh. Eliza's here to take care of me." Faust smiled softly.

Yoh smiled, feeling a little better about what had happened.

Several days passed, and eventually Faust recovered to the point that he was able to get around, but not as quickly as he would have liked. However, Ren had just about enough of sitting around in the cabin, waiting for, as he liked to call Faust, "the weakest link to get his ass into gear".

"Yoh, when are we leaving?" Ren growled as he curled up closer to the fireplace.

"When Faust is a little better." Yoh answered, "He's okay, but if something came along, I don't think he'd be able to run away from it."

"Ever heard of natural selection, Yoh? The weak animals always get eaten."

"But he's not an animal."

"Could've fooled me."

"It's just a day or two more, Ren."

"I'm sick of sitting here! We're just wasting our time while tons of other Shamans are probably at Patch Village by now!"

"If you were in the same condition, I would've waited for you too!"

Ren rolled his eyes. Suddenly, Faust came out into the living room, dressed in his overly large raincoat and hat. Eliza came from behind him, with a slightly worried look on her face.

"You think we should leave now?" Faust smiled with an unusually large grin on his face.

Ren looked ecstatic, but Yoh did not.

"...Are you okay, Faust?" Yoh asked.

"Sure I'm sure!" Faust smiled some more, "I've never felt better!"

Yoh was not sure if it was Faust himself or the morphine he had probably injected into his system that was talking.

"So you want to leave?" Yoh asked.

"Yes I do! We have a long way to go, you know!"

Eliza looked up at him pleadingly, but her concern for him was overshadowed by his sudden fit of giggling.

"You look cute like that!" Faust giggled as he suddenly slithered an arm around her back, "Oh, I really wanted to say thank you for watching me! So thank you thank you thank you!" Faust gave her a quick, but rough kiss, and scampered off to another area of the house.

Yoh and Ren stared as he ran by them. Eliza started to walk away.

"Hey, Eliza, uh...is your husband okay?" Yoh said reluctantly. It was hard getting any sort of conversation from her, much less if her beloved was not around (and was probably trying to get on the roof to dance on it).

She stopped, but she only sighed.

"If he isn't, we'll stay one more day. He looks a little...out of it anyway."

"More like stoned." Ren snarled.

Eliza forced a smile, and then made a sniffling sound.

"It was his idea." she finally said.

"What was?" Yoh asked.

"Leaving. He said he didn't want to hold you guys up any longer. I told him that you'd probably wait for him, but he didn't want to listen to me. So today while I was checking him, he asked me for some water. The water pitcher was empty, so I went to get some more. I should've known better, because as soon as I came back, he was injecting himself in the arm. To be honest, I'm really trying to make him quit his addiction, so I yelled at him. He got mad and said that he didn't want to be dead weight to the group."

"Why would he think that?"

Eliza bit her lip as soon as she noticed Ren looking at her.

"Well, last night I found him looking really depressed. I was worried he was going to do something stupid, so I sat with him." Eliza continued, "All of the sudden, he asked me 'you don't think I'm weak, do you?'. I told him that he wouldn't have gotten this far in the Shaman Fight if he was."

Ren interrupted with a sneeze that sounded like "bullshit".

"Then he said that 'he knew that deep down everyone else thought differently'. I told him that he wasn't in any condition to think about that, but he refused to listen to me. Then he said something weird to himself, like 'I hope I'm able to fight it'."

Yoh looked scared. Did Faust want to face the spirit in combat? He wished Faust did not have any desire to, because he knew it would only make things worse. Why would he want to anyway? To prove he was strong? This wasn't like Faust at all. In fact, many of the things Eliza was talking about weren't like him.

"I don't know what's wrong with him, if that's what you're wondering." Eliza muttered.

"He sounds bitter," Ren said, "for being an easy target. He probably wants to redeem himself."

"He isn't like that!"

"You'd be surprised what people do when things happen to them. For instance, you didn't think he'd be a psychotic junkie when you met him, but when you died, look what happened."

"Maybe he doesn't want it to hurt anyone else!" Eliza screamed as she stormed off to the room Faust had been staying in.

Ren rolled his eyes and sighed heavily as he started to sharpen his gwan dao with a stone. Yoh knew what was going on. The wound Faust suffered hurt him more than on the surface.

Suddenly, Horo Horo ran in.

"Yoh! Ren! You gotta help me! I was coming back from snow boarding, and then all of the sudden, I saw Faust jump off the roof and run into the forest!"

Yoh knew that this was going to be a long night.