Mikau: Hello! I'm happy that I can update so soon after my last update! Yay! Okay, well, I have tryouts for Beauty and the Beast tomorrow, so wish me luck!

Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King.

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Evil Intervention

I sat dejectedly on the couch, moping. Iwore a plain pair of gray sweat pants and a tight fitting white T-shirt with some cute saying on it. My hair was done up loosely in two braided pigtails, lying limply against my shoulders. Sure I looked okay—at least I looked more like a girl since I had started wearing Valerie's old clothes—but my simple beauty was nothing compared with my sister sitting next to me.

While I was dressed for a night at home, lounging around the lonely mansion, Hoshi was arrayed in a spectacular midnight blue ball gown glittering with diamonds and other such gems and jewels. The dress showed off quite a lot of skin, but my sister didn't seem to care as usual. Her hair was also in pigtails, but her pigtails, unlike mine, were done up high on her head, flowing down her back, and resting somewhere around her shoulder blades to swing freely in the wind. Strands of diamonds were entwined in her hair to make it glow and shimmer in the moonlight. Her makeup was oddly simple for such a night. She wore only a thin layer of blush and eye shadow, but her overuse of cerulean blue lipstick was enough to offset the bright blue of her eyes, and the darkness of her dress.

When I questioned her about her use—or lack thereof—of makeup, she simply replied: "Oh my gosh, like, Thorn. I'm gonna be wearing a mask, so the amount of makeup doesn't matter as much. The only thing the boys will see will be my eyes and lips. Make those two parts stand out as much as possible, and use neutral colors on the others. God. Don't they teach you anything?"

Hoshi held out her mask for me to look at—more like be jealous of. She held it up to her face and modeled it for me. It was the same dark velvety blue as her dress, but the mask had several different shades of the color blending together to make a beautiful scene if you looked closely. On the mask was an ocean scene during a storm complete with seagulls being blown in the wind. In the midst of studying the mask, Hoshi's bright blue eyes stood out suddenly among all the other blue. It startled me.

I hadn't been expecting to see her eyes. Wait…that didn't come out right…I knew her eyes were there, but then again I didn't… What I mean to say, is that looking at her mask was like looking at a painting. Wouldn't it scare you to find a pair of eyes staring back at you from out a painting? I think the startling effect was the one she had hoped for when originally choosing to wear the mask. It was quite an effective way of making people notice your eyes…hiding them in a field of same color.

In addition to the sea scene, a silvery diamond in the shape of a pentagram, was ingeniously placed in the corner of her left eye. It looked like a beauty mark, and fit in well with the rest of the mask.

My thoughts were interrupted suddenly by my father's voice entering the living room. "How do I look?"

My mouth dropped to the floor at my father's appearance; I knew he was handsome, but now even I had to admit what a hunk Hao was.

Hao wore a black tuxedo, white gloves, a button-up shirt with collar, and instead of his usual huge star disc earrings, he had on plain silver studs; a single red rose was tucked in his chest pocket. The outfit really wasn't much, but it looked really good on him. His crimsony-brown hair hung freely down by his waist; it was newly washed, so it glimmered when hit by light. I next allowed my eyes to wander to his face. His mask wasn't as showy as Hoshi's, but it was still very ornate. It was a plain black mask that only covered the upper half of his face leaving the lips and the lower half of the cheeks exposed. On the black surface, diamonds and rhinestones came together to form a picture of the night's sky complete with constellations. So that his dark eyes wouldn't blend in as much with the ebony of the mask, around the eye slits were small flames, giving the mask a slight red accent.

"OH MY GOD! DAD! You're like such a hottie! If you were a girl then you'd be considered a total babe!" Hoshi voiced my opinion in her own messed up way.

"Uh…Thanks…" Hao smiled nervously at his older daughter. "What do you think Thorn?" He turned towards me, eager for my approval.

I opened and closed my mouth several times before I was actually able to speak. "You're getting awfully dressed up for Valerie don't you think?"

"Who's Valerie!" Hoshi glared at me as if I had been withholding vital information from her.

"She's Ivy's cousin." Hao replied for me. "Now, what do you think Thorn?"

"You look great…Can I please come with you?" I begged.

"No." Hoshi answered before our father could. "Time to go Dad, you have to leave now so that I can sneak out in thirty minutes and still arrive fashionably late to the party." My sister practically shoved Hao out the door.

"All right, all right…" Hao shook his head. "Just be sure you make it home before five o'clock. I'll check in on you then, and if you're not home in bed, I'll be forced to have to pretend to be disappointed in you."

"Yes Dad!" Hoshi smiled brightly, already plotting to sneak in at five, tell Dad that she was home, and be right out of the house again at 5:05.

My father was about to leave when he suddenly remember something. "Oh, and Hoshi, no boys in the house. If you must, go to their houses, but keep them out of mine."

"Yes sir." Hoshi began mentally compensating for the fact that she would have to go from some man's house, back to the mansion at five, and then be out of the house again at 5:05. She did some quick mental math on the time she needed to leave the man's house to get back in time to make her five o'clock check in.

"And Thorn?"

I jumped slightly, not expecting him to have anything to say to me. It's not like I was going to the party. What would he say to me: 'Don't burn the house down while I'm gone.'? "Yes Dad?"

"Be careful." He placed a light kiss on my forehead. "Be home by twelve o'clock, and no boys what-so-ever. Understand me?"

"But…I'm not going to the party! I have no way of getting there, or a dress, or a mask, or—"

"—Hush…you want to go don't you?" I nodded. "Then be careful, be home by twelve, and no boys. Okay?"

"O-kay…" I blinked several times. What did he expect me to do? I had no ride, dress, mask, or anything at all…There was no way for me to get to that Masquerade, and yet he gave a strict set of rules like he expected me to be there. It was as if he would be disappointed if I didn't show.

"Oh, Hoshi! Here are the car keys; don't wreck the convertible, and have fun." With that he was gone.

"How does he expect me to get to the Ball?" I looked desperately at my older twin.

"I have, like, no idea how you're getting there, but I'm taking the convertible." Hoshi smirked evilly at me. "Good luck; I'm going now."

"But it's only been thirty seconds since Dad left!" I argued.

"Thirty minutes, thirty seconds. I never was any good at math." Hoshi gave me one last dirty look before disappearing out the door.

I heaved a gigantic sigh before slumping down into the living room couch yet again. "Now how am I going to get from here to there?"

"Well, the shortest distance between two points is through Hell, so maybe I can be of some assistance?"

I jumped at the new voice in the room, falling head over heals off of the couch onto the floor. Sitting right behind me on the armrest was a man.

He wore a black tank top like jacket with a hood but no sleeves. He left the jacket unzipped and wore no undershirt, so it showed a good deal of his muscular chest. The jacket was trimmed in orange, and had a weird character on the left side over his heart, but I couldn't tell what the strange orange symbol meant. It was long and wispy made out of many different lengths of broken lines. It sort of looked like Native American artwork or writing, but I still couldn't make it out. I gave up trying to decipher the coded message on his shirt and moved on to looking at his pants. They were black with an orange waistband, and on the left side the same odd symbol ran up the length of his entire leg. Still not able to read any further into the markings and getting rather frustrated with trying, I looked up at his bare arms. They were just that—bare—except for the fingertipless gloves spanning from the end of his fingers to somewhere up on his arm between his elbow and his wrist. The gloves were black except for the wrist part. Two orange bands wrapped like shackles around his strong wrists.

He had an evil looking smirk on his face, yet his delicate, chocolate brown eyes held no look of malicious intent. Instead they looked kind, inviting, warm, seducing, and lustful…

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. "Who are you!"

He ran a hand through his short mahogany hair, only an inch or two shorter than my shoulder length hair, and he smirked at me, standing to his full height. "My name is…unimportant. All you need to know is that I am the Devil. I'm here to help you Thorn." He looked as if he could be my father's twin brother.

"How did you know my name? You can't really be the devil…he's not real! That's only a stupid religious superstition!" I pointed an accusing finger at the man now towering over me.

He grabbed my outstretched arm and pulled me to my feet. "Great…she's not superstitious or religious…I'll have to speak to Hao later about bringing his daughters up right…"

"How do you know my dad, and who are you really!" I glared as I pulled away from his tight grasp on me.

"Your father and I are old rivals. I wanted his fiancée, and she turned me down for him. So in a sense, I'm here to help you because I'm still in love with your mother." He smiled wryly at me. I didn't let up my death glare at him. "Don't worry I won't hurt you. I have no reason to. Please, I just want to help…"

"How can you help me Demon?" I stepped back, creating further distance between the two of us.

"I can get you a dress, and a ride to the Masquerade Ball free of charge." That annoying smirk found it's way back to his lips.

I was still suspicious of him. "So you don't want anything from me? Nothing at all?"

"Nothing, I assure you. This time is free of charge; I told you that already. What did you think I meant?" Satan's smile warmed into a friendly one, and he offered a welcoming hand out to me.

"Fine. I'll take your offer, but first, what does that thing on your shirt and pants say?" I agreed, taking the offered hand.

Amusement covered every centimeter of his face. "It says 'Prince of Darkness'. I have another outfit, sort of similar to this one with the character 'Akuma', devil, on the back." With that he teleported us somewhere in a heated inferno.

I held tightly to his body as we landed in an all too familiar room. He didn't seem to mind my infringement of his personal space. "What the Hell was that!"

"Just a simple teleportation. Don't you see your father do those all the time?" He tilted my chin up to look him in the eye.

"Yeah, but I've never done anything like that before…" I let go of him and glanced around the room. "Why did you bring me here? This room is off limits; we're not supposed to be here. That's why it's called the Abandoned room. It's supposed to be ABANDONED! My father would be really upset if he knew that the Devil had been in here!"

"Oh chill…It'll be fine…He just doesn't want anybody in here because it reminds him of her." The demon smirked happily at me, making his way over to my mother's old closet. He slid it open and browsed through it, looking for something only he seemed to know about. With one quick jerking motion and an 'Aha!' he pulled out a stunning forest green dress laced in small emeralds and diamonds.

He tossed the dress at me, and I caught it with accuracy. Satan snapped his fingers and in an instant the dress was on me, my hair was done up in banana curls, and a smooth layer of emerald lipstick was applied to my pale pink lips.

"What do you think?" He circled me like a hawk, inspecting his handy -work.

"I look…wow…but I need a mask." I couldn't find a word for my beauty, but I tried not to think too highly of myself, for I knew that this would only last one night.

The demon pulled out a velvety green mask from behind his back and placed it gracefully on my face. "Don't worry, I have everything covered." The strange man winked slyly.

I stood starring in the mirror at a reflection that couldn't possibly have been mine. She was too beautiful. The mask was the perfect touch to my silky green dress. Like my sister's mask, it had a faint background scene on it made out of soft silk and light velvet, only my scene was of a forest covered in thorns and ivy. It was truly beautiful with little birds flying high in the air above the forest. In the corners of my eyes, there were small emeralds accenting the mask in the shape of a minuscule rose.

"Thank you…it's wonderful…" I could hardly contain my smile.

"Oh, wait, before we leave for the Ball, here take this…" He picked up a key off of my mother's vanity and handed it to me. It was a small key, like one that you might use to open a diary with, and it had a small heart on its handle.

"What is it to?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Ask Valerie. She knows, and if she says she doesn't, she's lying. But for now, let's put this little key in your room and then get you to the Masquerade."

There was no time to argue before he grabbed me and we disappeared together in a cloud of flames. He dropped me off in front of Funbari Onsen, and gave me a quick wink before leaving again in another burst of fire. "Good luck Thorn. Have fun."

I took a deep breath before heading into the party. 'Here goes nothing…'

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Mikau: Well that was fun. Okay, I saw the last episode of Shaman King on Saturday, and I don't really like how 4KIDS ended it, so I watched the Portugese version. It was much better. I only wish that I could get the English translation of the original Japanese episodes scripts for the last three episodes…sigh…oh well…I have found English translations for the manga chapters 235 to the end, and I even found raw manga scans 233 to the end, so all I'm missing is chapters 154 to 234 in scans, and some odd number of translations. If anyone could tell me where to find any of those scans (even if they're not in English) please tell me.

Thanks To: Kiva Kyoyama, y0ur-w0rst-nightmARee, morgan000, HAO-Addictive, glitter galz, Hemila-Rose, yo wuz up, Danny, Andrea Nefisto, ChibiAzn3, and DarkPisces33.

To DarkPisces33: Actually, I really don't think it's strange at all that Hao and 'Valerie' kissed when they first met. Ivy knew it was Hao, and she hadn't seen him in so long, and they were married, so I think it's natural for her to kiss him. As for Hao: he doesn't know that Valerie is really Ivy, but still he's attracted to her because he's still so in love with Ivy. In other words, he isn't consciously aware of the fact that it's Ivy, but his subconscious does. Moving on, about Shaman King, are you talking about them putting it back on in the US? Because if so, it's already over with; episode number 64: Epilogue was the last episode. If you missed the last couple episodes, I can tell you where to download them for free.

But, you know I did hear a rumor about a SK movie coming out in the US sometime toward the end of September or the middle of November, or sometime in October…anyway, before Christmas. It's just a rumor, but I'd really like it if it were true. It's a USA only movie made by 4KIDS and Funimation. Like I said, it's only a rumor, but it would be so cool to have it be true.

PLEASE REVIEW!