Mikau: Hello everyone! It's been a trying week. I had musical rehearsal almost every day after school this week. I'm completely drained. I had to get a flu shot yesterday; it wasn't really a big deal since I get tons of shots everyday, but I made a big deal out of it so that my mom would buy me some books that I wanted. It didn't even hurt at all, but I still complained, and my mom took me to Border's to get a Chinese to English/English to Chinese dictionary, and a Japanese grammar book. We all know how much I love grammar in English, so now I can study grammar in Japanese! I'm so happy about my new books!

Dedication: It's been forever since I've done one of these. This one is for Shamanbabe! Happy Birthday! I know I'm a bit early since your b-day isn't until Monday the 24th, but I don't think I'll be able to post a chapter in between then, so…let's all sing happy birthday!

Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King, but I am wearing my own socks today! (It has been soooooo long since I've talked about my socks…)

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Meeting At The Crossroads

"No Danny…. I said NO…. You will NOT be getting any more 'little favors' from me…. Oh what do I care that your girlfriend is pregnant with some biker guy's kid!... Why do you always come running to me when you screw your own life up!... No! Don't you DARE 'but Hoshi' me! I don't give out free-bees, and I don't take IOUs…. I said don't you 'but Hoshi' me! I don't care if you're flat broke. I'm not cheap. However, I can give you the numbers of some newbies if you want. They're not very good, but they're cheap…. Yeah…. Yeah, Cookie, Candy, CoCo, Chocolate, and CeCe are all pretty cheap if you want something quick…. Yeah, that's right…. Goodbye."

"Damn those stupid males. All of 'em." I slammed down the kitchen phone and undid my tightly pulled up chocolate-brown hair.

Thorn looked up from the other side of the table at me as I combed out my brown locks. "Who was that Hoshi?"

"Just some, like, totally stupid guy in need of a quick fix. It's, like, nothing you'd be interested in."

"A costumer?" She took a naïve guess. I was surprised my younger sister had even figured out what line of work I was in. I nodded, giving in to her inquiry. "Hey Hoshi? About how much money do you earn?"

I slapped her hard across the cheek. "I don't earn money. People like me don't earn anything. No amount of money makes what I do right. If you are having any thoughts whatsoever of entering into my sort of profession, abandon them now. It's not fun, and the money doesn't make it worth it. It hurts, and it's dangerous. I will NOT, under any circumstances, let my baby sister mess up her life like I did. Do you understand me Thorn?" I watched my little sister cower in fear of me. She vigorously nodded her head, showing she had understood me completely.

"I was just curious. I didn't mean that I wanted to become a…a…. Just how much money do you make?" Thorn regained her composure and re-asked about my financial status. I found it cute that she couldn't bear to call me for what I was, a whore.

"Oh. Well if that's all, then I don't suppose that it would do any harm to tell you a little about it." I shrugged off my previous fierceness and my harsh tone returned to a conversational one. "I get a ridiculous sum of money for work that almost any woman could do. The exact sum depends upon the man, and like I told that sleaze-ball Danny, I'm not a cheap woman, so I get paid especially well. As I said before, my job is not fun, I do not in any way enjoy it, and it doesn't add any meaning to my life."

"What do you do with all that money?" The inquisitive youth pressed further.

I smiled in a sort of embarrassed way at her. I had hoped that she wouldn't find out. What I did with the money did not fit my self-centered appearance at all. "There are four banks: one out West in the US, two in Tokyo, and one in Hong Kong. I have four separate savings accounts: one under my name, and three under yours. I put a minimal balance into my account. I'm really only saving enough for myself to buy a mansion, a nice car, and some money to live on when I get too old for my line of work. It's an early retirement fund. The money in your three is for your education, money to support yourself when you get older, money to pay for baby things for your kids, and just basically money for whatever else you could possibly need. You're pretty much taken care of for the rest of your life, but I'm the one with the papers for the accounts and stuff, and you're not getting a cent of it unless you go to college, and don't screw up your life like I did." I tried to ignore the sappy look on my sister's face, but it was so hard to do when she was hugging me tightly yelling 'Oh my God! Hoshi! Thank you so much! You're the best sister ever!' and other junk of the sort.

I pried her off of me and tried to convince her that nothing had changed between us, and we were still sisters and therefore enemies. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I am NOT going soft! I'm still the same, annoying, self-centered, cold, heartless, Hoshi!"

"Riiiiiiiiiight." Thorn's toothless grin called my bluff.

"Exactly. I am right." I took pleasure in out smarting my little sister.

"Wait…what!" My little sister stared blankly back at me.

"Hey girls; what's up?" The disembodied voice of Hana, our slightly older cousin, wafted into the room, followed by his shirtless form.

My twin completely forgot about our conversation and turned to greet the male Asakura. "Hey Hana. Nothing's going on today."

"Hana, like, where's your shirt?" I readopted my Valley-girl accent.

Hana walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out the milk carton. "I just got up and haven't gotten dressed yet." Was his quick explanation.

"It's twelve o'clock on a Saturday morning." Thorn informed the carefree shaman.

"Exactly." The blonde Asakura poured his milk into a glass and took a big sip, virtually chugging the entire glass, finishing it off with one gulp.

"You soooo should have been, like, totally up by now. It's, like, only normal." I raised an eyebrow at my lazy cousin.

"I'm a shaman. I'm not supposed to be normal. Sleeping in on weekends, getting up at twelve, and running off to various places with my friends. For me, that's "normal". Today we're going to Tippy's. It's great. Half the place is an arcade, and the other half is a café; wanna come Thorn?" He shoved the now empty milk carton back into the fridge, and placed his dirty glass into the sink.

"Sure! What time? Wait; will Akira be there?" I couldn't tell if Thorn wanted the Tao boy to be there or not. It was hard to tell from her tone of voice.

"Yeah, why?"

My far more innocent reflection seemed a bit disappointed by Hana's affirmative answer. "No reason. I'll come; what time?"

"Well, it's 12:13 now, I was planning on leaving in seven minutes. If we walk fast, we can arrive by 12:30." Hana moved about the kitchen, eating whatever he saw fit for breakfast.

"Great. I'll go get changed and meet you in the living room at 12:20." Thorn rushed out of the room to change clothes, but stopped just short of entering the hallway. She called back over her shoulder, "Oh, Hoshi, have you seen Valerie? I haven't heard anything explode all morning."

"She, like, fell asleep in the lab last night. I'm pretty, like, sure that she's still down there." I offered off-handedly, going back to the magazine I had been reading before I was rudely interrupted by the phone call from Danny.

"Thanks. I gotta talk to her later." With that my little sister was gone.

"You do know that you're reading that Cosmo Girl magazine upside down, don't you?" Hana sat down across the counter from me, seating himself on a barstool. He snatched the magazine away before I could stop him, and read the title of the book I had been hiding behind the teen magazine. "You know that's the oldest trick in the book, hiding one book behind another. Why would you be embarrassed to be caught reading… wow…I can't even pronounce that."

"It's a college level science text." I supplied "I want to be a doctor, but I really have no chance at it since I doubt they'd want someone like me. I could be a carrier of HIV or any other number of STDs and not know it, so I'm settling for the next best thing: a scientist. Rocket science is usually something not associated with me, so I tend to play dumb. I know a lot more than I let on." I paused for a minute before adding. "Like totally."

"So…I suppose you're completely aware of Thorn and Akira's relationship?" He leaned forward on his stool, supporting his chin on the palm of his hand.

I looked up from my book to reply. "I'm aware that they have a bad one, that is, if they have any relationship at all. Which I do believe is a shame; they would be cute, and even if Akira is a bloody pervert, Thorn could use a man, and she's bound to do him some good."

A cat-like grin appeared upon my cousin's face. "Precisely what I'm talking about. You really look out for your little sister don't you?"

"What kind of big sister would I be if I didn't keep one eye on her at all times? I know all. You're looking out for your friend even though you too have feelings for the girl. I find it very admirable that you refuse to act on your feelings for his sake even if you could easily take her. You know that she'd only resist you a little at first, but that's only because you're her cousin. All you'd have to do would be to kiss her and she'd follow you to the end of the world. She's very innocent, and subsequently, very easy to take advantage of."

"It sounds like you're supporting incest." His eyes filled with extreme interest at what I was saying.

"I might be. I also think that the two of you are cute together. I have no extreme objections to Akira, but I have no objections to you either. Let Thorn pick whoever would make her happiest. I know how badly you want her, Hana." I smirked as he raised his eyebrows at me. "You're fighting within yourself. You want her, but you want her to be happy. You're also afraid of what the others will think; in love with your own cousin…."

I watched as the confused gazed turned to one of utter horror. "How did you…"

"A little party trick I learned from my father." I returned to my book.

"That's no party trick; you were picking sentences right out of my head." I looked up at him as he towered over me, giving me a suspicious look.

"I inherited a limited amount of Spiritual Sight from my dad. I can pick peoples' brains to tell if they're lying and can also pick up a few phrases running through their heads to give me a general idea of what they're thinking and feeling, but I'm nowhere as good as my father. Hao can read peoples' minds like books. Anyway, you wanted to talk to me about setting up Thorn and Akira."

Hana blinked several times before regaining his focus. "Oh, yeah…right. Are you doing anything later around three o'clock?"

"No. I'll meet you at Moon and Stars Café and Bakery. You're familiar with the place?" I barely looked up from my science text to speak with him.

"Yes. I'll meet you there at three." Hana nodded.

A big explosion sounded somewhere underground, and the smoke drifted up the stairwell, setting off the ceiling sprinklers in the kitchen. A loud clap of thunder and a burst of lightening exploded in the sky and it started pouring outside.

I covered my hair from the sprinkler water with the teen magazine I had been pretending to read. Hana just stood there and grumbled to himself about his aunt's lousy timing. "It looks like Valerie's up." I shrugged off the water dripping down from above.

"Looks like." My cousin sarcastically echoed.

"Does it always rain when Ivy is upset?" I waited with baited breath for his answer.

"Yeah, she usually has a dramatic breakdown every three or four weeks. Let's see…you guys and your dad have been here about a month now, right? So she's overdue for a complete meltdown. I hope Hao is at home today to calm her down. She usually starts crying, then she gets edgy, then all the demons in hell break loose when she gets violent." The sprinklers finally shut off and I threw my now soaked magazine into the nearest garbage can. Hana looked back across the counter at me. "Look Hoshi, I gotta go change. It looks like I'm gonna be driving Thorn and myself over to Tippy's. Are you gonna need a ride to our three o'clock at Moon and Stars because of the rain?"

"No. I have my own car. I'll be there. You can go now; I've already got all the information I need from you." A dash of lightening peppered the darkening sky. "Shame about the rain…it was such a lovely day before hand."

Hana disappeared off to change, and, minutes later, left with Thorn to go meet up with their friends. I was walking past the living room when I heard two voices arguing about something or another. I was going to go up to my room to change clothing, but one of the voices was my father's, and the other was one I knew I had heard before, but I couldn't remember the name or face of the guy that the voice belonged to.

"Checkmate." That voice unmistakably belonged to my father. "Pay up Lucy."

"There is no flippin' way!" 'Lucy' screeched. "How the hell did you do that!"

"It's a trick my old buddy Yukio showed me." The smirk on my father's face was evident in his tone of voice. "You remember him right? I believe he passed your way when he died."

"God I hate you. Yeah, but your friend has reincarnated himself again, so he's no longer under my jurisdiction. Unlike you wife." Suddenly I knew who my father was talking with: Lucifer, that evil demon, the Devil himself. "You know Hao, I can bring her back to you. I'll take the girl in Ivy's place, just say yes. This is your last chance."

"Leave Thorn alone." Hao's voice was determined and deadly. If it were I in Lucifer's place, I would be shaking in my boots. "Ivy is perfectly capable of putting herself back together. I don't want you interfering."

"Fine. Be that way." Silence took precedence over the two rivals. "Don't you want to ask me something Hao? About yesterday maybe?"

Hao basically ignored the man sitting across the chess table from him.

"I know from experience that you're no idiot, Asakura. You were bound to notice that she was gone all of yesterday, and when she came home you probably were interested enough in her to ask where she had been. She probably told you that either she had gone out with a friend or some other lie since she didn't want you to know she was with me. Come on Hao, I know you know it was me with her the entire day. Aren't you the least bit jealous that I spend all that time with your wife, but she never seems to have the time to spend with you?"

"That's enough Lucifer." Hao's reply was a sharp, stiff snap, much like an angry dog about to bite. "How did you ever get her to go with you anyway?"

An eerie calm filled the room again. I pressed my back up against the corridor wall and listened in on the conversation through the open door.

"Actually, I don't know why she finally agreed. I suppose she just felt sorry for me. Ivy really does have a big heart." The tone of Lucifer's voice mirrored my uncle Yoh's carefree, lazy one.

"Stay away from her. Stay away from Thorn, and stay away from Ivy—"

"—You're just jealous that she hasn't told you yet." Lucifer taunted, cutting Hao off. "Have you considered that she doesn't want to come back to you? That she enjoys being finally free of you? Maybe she's trying to run away from you again—"

"—I told you to shut up, you bastard!" This was clearly the last straw; I peeked around the corner into the room as Hao lunged at Lucifer. The two grappled, gripping at each other's clothing, hair, and throats. Thankfully nothing got broken, or Anna would have taken it out on the nearest person to her, and that probably would have been Yoh.

My train of thought was broken as Valerie walked briskly down the hallway. She sent a meager smile my way as she passed, headed with a look of urgency into the room where Hao and Lucifer were at each other's throats. She must have heard the commotion from wherever she was stationed in the house beforehand, and had come running to stop the two adversaries before one killed the other.

"What are the two of you doing! Hao! Lucifer!" The scuffle in the other room immediately desisted.

"Hello Valerie." Lucifer's all too innocent voice greeted the woman first.

"You shouldn't be here." Her reply was too quick. Her words were meant to be soft, informing the trespassing party kindly that this was not a place for him to be. She had meant to be kind, but the rapid pace at which the words had flown out of her mouth had dashed all benign meaning out of them. "What I mean to say is…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound harsh. I only meant that if Anna finds you here, she'll severely injure you or force you to do manual labor." Valerie tried to redeem her failed attempt at softly letting the demon down; it didn't fair much better than her first.

"You're too kind Val. I'll have my conversation with Hao at a later date. I appreciate it though." The heavy air in the room was instantly lifted as soon as the devil left. He had understood the chemist's underlying point, and did not want to witness Hao and Valerie together, so he had left quickly and quietly without much fuss. He truly was being a good sport about losing Valerie's affections to Hao.

"Valerie…I—" Hao started, trying to explain what the devil was doing in the living room.

"It doesn't matter. He hangs out around here to annoy either Anna or myself a good part of the time. I wish I could just tell him how I really feel about him, but I can't hurt his feelings like that. Especially since he's been such a good friend to me sometimes when I needed to verbally abuse someone to get rid of frustration. Actually, in some way I believe he really is trying to help sometimes, but other times, he really is trying to make my afterlife a living Hell. He wants me to forget about my husband and come with him and be his queen, but I can't forget. That's why I've been working so hard for the past sixteen years to make a new body. I want to go back to my life. I want to be a wife and a mother, and who knows what else…" Valerie seemed to drift off into her thoughts, of course I had gotten use to that along the course of the month I had lived under the same roof as her. "Oh! I'm sorry I have to go!" The silver-haired beauty burst back to life. She also had a bad habit of fading away and then coming back to earth suddenly. "I was making a breakthrough when I came up here, and I really need to get back to it. See ya Hao?"

My father smiled back at the love of his life and nodded, placing a quick kiss on her cheek. "Hurry and get back to your work; you've kept your husband waiting for too long, and if it were me in his place, I'd want you back as soon as shamanly possible."

"See ya." Valerie blushed and made her way out into the hallway.

"See ya." Hao answered back, smiling broadly.

I caught Val by the sleeve as she walked pass me on her way back down to the lab. "I need to talk to you about something important.." I dropped my Valley-girl, hoping that she'd take me seriously like she did my sister.

"Do you want to follow me down to the lab and we can talk there? It would help me out and save me time. Okay?" I followed close behind her, on her tail as she disappeared down the basement stairs into her lab. She walked over to one of the numerous counters and pulled out several vials of sickly colored liquids. She dropped some sort of metal into a green solution and stirred it with tongs. I tried not to gag as the dark green turned bright blood red and the smoke choked me up, depriving my lungs of air. "So what did you want to talk about?" She tossed me a fleeting glance, clearly oblivious to my need for air.

I finished my coughing fit before I could answer her. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm trying to create a stabilizing chemical." She skillfully dodged my question.

I took a seat across the counter from her and glared. "You know what I mean. Why haven't you crossed over yet?"

"You're very observant, a terrific spy," She looked up from her experiment and gave me a sly grin. "And you're a lot smarter than you let on."

"Well, duh. It's physically, mentally, grammatically, and acumentally impossible for anyone to be as stupid as I pretend to be." She was silent for a while, and we traded stares, sizing each other up. "You're not what I expected." I finally broke the staring contest.

"HA! Hoshi, I'mnot what I expected. I'm surprised that I haven't gone insane yet. There are too many voices arguing with each other in my head, and I'm not the most stable of the three of us. Judo tries to be reasonable, but Ivy's too rash. Valerie is too depressed to do anything about it, and I don't know who I am anymore. I wish I could invent something to split myself into three separate bodies just so I can think straight!" The silver-haired woman before me openly laughed at her sad situation; she smiled as she commented on her decreasing sanity.

"You really are falling apart…you're not the Ivy I grew up thinking my mother was." I wasn't disappointed in her after waiting so long to meet her, but I had to admit, she was definitely different from what I had envisioned.

Valerie set down her test tubes on her chemical racks and sat down to talk with me. "I'm not Ivy anymore. What you see before you is a chopped up, blended, distorted image of who your mother was. I have so many things floating around in my head, and it's very hard to keep the personalities entirely straight. I'm losing myself to the others. Ivy is going to take complete control of this fake body soon. I can't suppress her much longer. Judo has no will to be the main personality, and has teamed up with Ivy to overthrow me, Valerie. I truthfully don't know how I've managed to hold her in for so long already. I'm weaker than Ivy, and am a poor representation of her. Valerie is a shallow shadow of who your mother is, so don't be too disappointed in me. I'm working hard to make a new body for Ivy, and after I accomplish my purpose, I will fade into the bliss of anonymity. I'll escape into the deep recesses of my mind, and I'll never return unless Ivy summons both Judo and myself for advice."

"So you're not my mother." I bluntly stated what I had interpreted from her speech.

"Correct." Valerie didn't bother denying anything. "I'm but a facet of her. I was created to hide her from her husband so that she would not be distracted and fall behind in her work. As soon as the new body is complete, I will be obsolete. Ivy and I have no friendship like the one she has with Judo, her younger persona, so I will simply fade away never to be heard from again. I am of little use to the other two."

"So you'll just vanish, and I'll get to meet the real Ivy?" I didn't like not knowing, so I was determined to milk her for all that she was worth.

"Yes. Once the body is finished, Ivy will become the main persona yet again, and you'll meet your 33 year-old mother." Valerie turned her back to me and mixed some oddly colored things in a beaker.

"Why can't I read your mind?" It was a pretty random question, but I had been trying to pick up at least a few lines of thoughts from her the entire conversation, but I had gotten nothing.

"There's nothing to read. Or maybe it's that I'm thinking too many things at once? I don't know why you're not getting a reading on me. It could also be that I don't really exist, so there is nothing for you to read. You can take it any way that you like." I didn't like this person. She was too aloft and didn't seem to care about anything. She was dead. That woman was no longer a part of the world I lived in, and she wasn't my mother. I didn't like her even in the least.

"What of my father?" I didn't bother masking my disliking of her with my voice. "What do you think about him?"

"I love him."

"And what does Ivy think about this?" I cruelly brought my mother into the discussion.

"She absolutely hates me. She wants me to keep my dirty paws off of him, and to get back to work on the body. Ivy wants to come back to you all so badly, and she thinks I'm trying to take you for myself. She's about ready to strangle me. She's so jealous that she's missed so much time with you and your father. She doesn't want me wasting anymore time. She wants to go home." Valerie's tone completely shifted. The dry, depressing words that had been spilling rigidly out of her mouth up until then exploded with feeling and her voice completely changed. Valerie's voice rose in pitch, and the dull look in her eyes was washed away and replaced by shimmering, glinting, gleaming pools of liquid fire.

It was as if the quiet, sadistic, and depressed Valerie was suddenly replaced by someone completely different. The dried-out husk that had seconds earlier been Valerie was dashed away by a lonely, discouraged soul, fighting to regain her once-treasured life. "I just want to come home! Is that too much to ask! I want my family, my friends, and my life back! I know I've said it so many times before, but now that I've said it again, it doesn't mean it's any less true. I want everything to go back to the way it was! I want my daughters, I want my servants, I want my friends, and oh GOD, most of all I just want my husband!" The silver-haired chemist broke down into sobs. She fell to the floor on her knees and let it all out. Even though she was crying, she seemed so determined to come back and again have the life she had once lived.

Even though she was crying, she came across as strong; she didn't crumple up on the floor as I would have imagined Valerie would have done. She lowered herself into a stiff, yet comfortable kneeling position with her face in her hands and her hair streaming down, tussled about by the woman's quick movements. She sobbed yet kept talking. "I'm sick of this two-bit slut making out with my husband while I patiently wait for her to finish my body! I'm about ready to dispose of her, but I need her to complete the body for me since I have no knowledge of the subject what so ever. I'm fed up with waiting things out, and I don't see why I can't just tell him now! I want to come home so badly…." She drifted off into thoughts and sobs.

I surrounded her in my embrace, freely letting tears slip down my own cheeks. She took her hands from her face and smiled ironically, but lovingly at me. "I'm sorry, we never really got properly introduced…I'm Ivy Kyôyama."

She hugged me back, and I buried my face in her clothing. She was everything I had thought she would be, so much better than that disappointment, Valerie. I was so happy to finally meet her, and I was even happier to learn she was exactly who I thought she was. "Hoshi Asakura. Nice to finally meet you, Mom."

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Mikau: I think this chapter was a little choppy since I did some parts at different times over the week. Sigh…oh well…I'm sure I'm just being paranoid or something again. I was going to write more in this chapter, but it didn't really fit. I suppose I'll have to work it in next chapter. All right, see you all later!

Thanks To: MaiValentinefan, Andrea Nefisto, Danny, glitter galz, yo wuz up, HAO-Addictive, Hemila-Rose, haoxivy 4 eva, Sonseray, DarkPisces33, IvyAsakura13, Firebane5, Kiva Kyoyama, LisaTheHedgehog, and Katiejuliett.

To MaiValentinefan: Hello! Yes, the Ivy that was in Hana's flashback was a ghost. He was really young back then, and didn't really get the concept that she was dead, so now that he's older, he doesn't realize it. I believe I put in somewhere that Hana said that he wasn't really sure what happened to Ivy's body.

To Andrea Nefisto: I will never like pink! NEVER! Glad you liked the chapters! I wish that I had an all anime channel…there's too much American junk on my TV channels. I really wish I got at least the Spanish channel or something. I need something in a different language, and more Japanese cartoons. American shows just aren't as good.

To IvyAsakura13: Hao the cat, Hao the dog, Hao the monkey, or the bear or the bunny! Lol! I actually have a picture of Hao as a cat. I found it yesterday online somewhere. So, Hao knows that Valerie is Ivy, but Ivy doesn't know that he knows. I really like YohxAnna, but this is sort of a HaoxIvy centric thing, so don't expect much. Sorry! I'm happy that you found my words encouraging. I'm not a very good motivational speaker, so…yeah. For Halloween each year my three friends and I go dressed to a theme. We've done Goth gang, gangsters, and this year we're doing seventies. I have a platinum blonde wig, a black tube-top cut dress, boots, and other seventies ornamentations.

To Firebane5: Well, the backwards 3 has its origins way before I had even thought of Ivy, Shaman Runaway as a fanfic. I was drawing an eye, and my pencil slipped when my brother threw a pillow at me. I was about to erase the marks, but then Jordan said, "Hey, what's up with the weird tattoo? It's kinda cool looking…" I looked at it, and decided it kind of looked like an ivy vine tattooed to the side of the eye. I played with it for a while, and finally decided that a backwards 3 with two dots on the inside, and one on the outside looked best. It just kind of happened. I'd really like to see Lyserg try and catch Lucifer. Ha! I wish the poor green-haired guy luck. I don't plan on killing off Lyserg any time soon; there would be no point to it. Basically Hoshi's hatred of men comes from Lucifer, but there are other reasons too. Thorn doesn't have the 3 on her; Lucifer didn't rape her, so he didn't mark her. Lucifer really has a thing for Asakura women though… The cat thing is just sort of a weird obsession, though Hao did put some of his furyoku into Matamune's physical body after Matamune first died so that he could have a physical body again until he used up all of his furyoku, but that's a little off subject. Anyway, Hao was sort of in a depressed mood when he forgave Yoh, so when he cheers up later, he might bash his brother's face in. I really liked Hao and Yoh's relationship better in the manga. The manga completely robbed Hao of his kindness (and sanity), and they made Yoh hate his brother. In the manga, they went out for coffee together, hung out together, Hao took a bath in the Onsen with Yoh and his friends (Opacho came too, and it was adorable!), Hao and Yoh even had a sleep over together and slept in the same room, mere feet from each other and didn't kill one another! Why did the anime and manga have to be sooo different in such a bad way! Sure Yoh wanted to stop his brother from becoming Shaman King, but he would have never gone so far as killing him like he did in the Anime. I like representing the manga version of the HaoxYoh relationship. The Anime is just too harsh. Sorry, I kind of got a bit off topic there. I'm going to try and bring Hao's followers back into the story because I really miss the comedy I could get from them, and God knows that this fic could use all the comic relief it can get. A pregnant Anna could either be really funny or really scary; it depends upon how you look at it. Anna giving people group hugs would definitely be a scary aspect of the deal. I'm planning on centering the next chapter or two on Thorn and Akira and Hana and Hoshi. I'm trying to shift the focus between the couples because if I center on one too long, then I get accused of forgetting about the other set. So complicated is the life of an authoress…Oh well, I love writing, and today I just got a new idea for a story that I've been thinking about for awhile. Whenever I get to that story, I feel it will be really great. And funny. And sad. Thank you for your review!