AUTHOR'S NOTE: Flash, you're just too cute. Okay, I rewrote this one about three times. Now, I've read over it a dozen since then to make sure that I got it all right, but if you see anything that looks disconnected, random, or just generally out of place, please let me know.

Ari stood in the center of a slowly swirling mist and looked around. The mist liked him; the mist was his friend. It would not yell. It would not command him. It would not ignore him. He realized that it was whispering the very things he was thinking, and some part of his mind rose up in alarm. It frantically tried to shake him out of this hypnotic state, but it was overpowered.

I am your friend, the mist whispered soothingly. A tendril of it reached out to brush his face. I am your only friend.

"My only friend…?" Ari whispered.

I will give you whatever you want.

"…whatever I want…"

Those others…they hate you. They ignore you. We can make them pay.

The part of Ari's mind that knew what was going on made a last ditch effort to wake him up. They were his friends! Sure, Stan was loud and bossy, but he did care. Rosalyn always stood up for him, even if she was a little overzealous about it. Illisaith was strange, but he meant well. And Star-

Even now, they control you, the mist interrupted his train of thought. It knew he was trying to resist; it also knew just what to say. It knew everything about Ari: his fears, his hopes, his dreams, his nightmares…

It knew what he was thinking.

Even now, here, in my place, they reach out to control you, it whispered. You must not let them. They only want to use you. They don't care for you. They don't even pay attention except when they want something.

But Star had forced them to pay attention. Star was his friend…

An ancient demigod would deign to be friends with a human? the mist responded scathingly. It is like all others of its kind. It seeks to use you for its own benefit, just like all the others.

…but she paid attention…

Of course, it did, child. It wants you for its follower. And when it has finished with you, it will toss you aside. But I will never use you. I will never leave you. You will always be part of me. Only let me in, and we can make them bleed.

Ari was no longer paying attention to his better judgement. He couldn't. The whispering filled his mind until he couldn't even hear his own thoughts. The mist was his friend. The mist loved him. He smiled. "Make them bleed…"

The creature known as the Incubus opened green eyes onto reality for the first time. He found himself in a white room that he did not like very much. Perhaps he had been wrong to yearn so for something real if this is what it was like. Then he realized he could move, a process both laborious and joyful. This was not the entirety of the world, merely a very boring part of it, and he could move to go see the rest.

He reveled in sensation and movement. In his true form, he could move, but it wasn't the same. This was fun. It took a great deal of concentration at first, but if he could convince billions and billions of completely separate entities to move in the same direction at once, he could certainly convince a single entity to do the same. After a few false starts, he finally figured out how to get all his limbs going in the same direction, only to realize that humans don't move like that. Obviously, he was going to need some help. Fortunately, he had exactly what needed right at hand.

It did not take much to convince Ari to help him. They were friends, after all. Incubus turned his head to the right to see Rosalyn. Ari had fond memories of the female human, so Incubus would not kill her yet. He turned his head to the left to see the window and the wall beyond it. Ari informed him that this was strange and rather pointless. He wouldn't know himself. All human mannerisms seemed strange and pointless.

The doctors had connected Ari to a network of tubes to aid in the healing process; Incubus simply removed these. He was perfectly capable of simulating whatever energy the boy might require until his body finished healing. For now, he needed to leave. He conferred with Ari for a few moments to figure out how to accomplish "moving quietly," then quietly moved past Rosalyn and out the door. There was no one about; Ari informed him that this was strange as well, and that it must be late. After a few seconds spent going through Ari's memories, Incubus concluded that "late" was a time designation representing the darkest hours of the day when humans slept. Further inquiries revealed that not all humans slept during "late," and that there would be some still awake in the building. Incubus did not wish to meet them.

Natasha had told Incubus that Ari had power. He had been one of the Ignored, once, and, due to the strangeness of circumstances, had come out of that ordeal with the faint ability to convince people to forget about him. Sifting through the boy's memories again, Incubus learned that he considered this ability a burden. It was not something he wanted or had any control over, or even realized he had as such. Still, if there was one thing Incubus did well, it was that he could convince anything to do whatever he wanted. His patience was limitless.

After almost thirty minutes, a nurse walked by and completely ignored him. Deep inside his mind, he felt Ari begin to panic and spent a few moments to convince him that everything was under control. He contrived to make the human expression called "smile." Although he was uncertain how well he managed, Ari said that it felt more or less correct. Then, they were off.

Stan paced around like a caged wolf in the mercifully quiet hospital lobby. Something felt wrong, somehow. He wasn't sure what it was, or even if it was real. It could have been nerves, after all. He was not in a good mood. He had been attacked, his slave had nearly been killed again, the Hero woman had accused him of being human, and nine people had been staring at him for the last two hours.

At first, there had been more, all talking and chatting. It had gotten on his nerves very quickly, but he had been too depressed to do anything about it. He felt somehow responsible for Ari's state. In fact, he couldn't be sure, but he might even have been feeling guilty, which was ridiculous. He was Evil King Stan; what did he care if some useless human whelp got himself killed?

It was at that point that Stan decided he had heard enough. The luckless people stuck in the lobby with him had been cowering in terror ever since. It made him feel better. He had lost track of the number of times he had roamed past the reception desk, but the girl behind it was beginning to relax. He'd have to-

He stopped and looked around. Something was nagging at him, something he had seen that didn't register. He replayed the last few minutes again in his head and realized that he had unconsciously stepped around…what? It was a familiar feeling; he had occasionally done that when Ari was…

He cursed colorfully and sprinted in the direction of Ari's room only to crash headlong into Rosalyn, who was coming back from there. They both went down, but Stan recovered first. He hauled Rosalyn to her feet and shoved her against the wall. "Where is he, woman?" he growled.

Rosalyn stamped down hard, forcing Stan to let go and tend to his now injured foot. "I don't know!" she shot back. "I fell asleep, then something woke me up and he was gone. How do you know, anyway?"

Stan choked back the desire to cremate the Hero alive. "I think I saw him," he replied as he rushed towards the exit with Rosalyn in tow.

"You think you saw him?" she repeated. "How do you think you saw him?"

"Because he didn't me want me to," Stan explained heatedly. "Haven't you noticed that sometimes your eyes just slide right over him when he wants you to forget about him for whatever reason? He does that to me quite frequently; that's probably the only reason I noticed at all. Now…" They carefully scanned the deserted streets of Madril's upper level.

"Do you see him?" Rosalyn asked in a hushed voice.

Stan shook his head. "He didn't take the elevator, or we'd hear it," he muttered. "So he must have gone the other way."

"Maybe if we hurry, we can catch up to him," Rosalyn said optimistically. All disputes momentarily put on hold in favor of the common goal, she and Stan rushed for Madril's upper level exit. Behind them, the subject of their temporary truce stepped out from around the corner of the building and blinked once, slowly. He had expected them to come running as soon as they noticed his absence, but he had not expected to be perceived. Still, this miscalculation could yet be fortuitous, he decided. He smiled, an expression that would have better suited a hungry crocodile, and followed.

"Maybe we should have gone and got Star and Illisaith," Rosalyn muttered, distracted by something. She looked back as though searching for something, then shook her head as she looked forward again.

Stan scoffed. "Why? So I can watch you and that wannabe-me make puppy dog eyes at each other again? I think not."

"Okay," Rosalyn tried to laugh derisively. "First of all, there is nothing between us." Stan muttered something that sounded like "whatever," but Rosalyn continued as though she hadn't heard. "And second, he does not want to be you."

This was something Stan had noticed, although he was still uncertain whether to be pleased or insulted; but having the Hero woman point it out to him grated on his already strained nerves. "What's wrong with me?" he demanded. He regretted it almost immediately.

"What's wrong with you?" Rosalyn started to laugh as she ticked items off on her fingers. "Well, let's see. You're egotistical, insufferable, arrogant, stupid…"

"Annoying, loud, rude…"

Rosalyn started to agree, then remembered who she was talking to and gave Stan a suspicious glare. He grinned. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, not sorry in the slightest. "We were talking about you, weren't we?"

"…Remind me why I haven't vanquished you yet?"

Stan gave a low, dark laugh and said nothing. In truth, he was rather too distracted to continue the squabble. He could not seem to shake the feeling that they were going the wrong way. Judging by the way Rosalyn kept searching around for something behind them, she must have agreed.

"All right, Pink," Stan sneered. He had had enough. "What do you know?" he demanded.

Rosalyn stopped and sighed heavily. Only a small part of her reaction was due to Stan. "I don't…it just…it just feels like we're going the wrong way." She was hesitant to go on, but he just looked at her expectantly. "Oh, I don't know…I've just had this feeling where evil is since I became the Great Hero. And right now, not counting you, it feels like it's behind us. But that doesn't make much sense. Does it? I mean…we're looking for Ari…not…"

She trailed off as she realized what Stan was thinking. "You said he didn't turn," she reminded him.

"He didn't," Stan returned angrily. "…At the time."

"At the time?" Rosalyn yelled. "What do you mean at the time?"

"If someone's going to turn into a vampire, it's almost immediate," he explained. He was shouting himself, now. "There's something we're missing. He's not a vampire! He can't be!"

Rosalyn took a breath and forced herself to calm down. Letting this turn into an argument was not going to get them anywhere, and Stan was only going to calm down if she did first. When she finally trusted herself to speak rationally again, she said, "So what are we missing, then?"

Stan glared for a moment more. His voice, when he replied, was clipped but reasonable enough. "If I knew, I would say something. I don't." He glanced around as though an answer might leap out of hiding, then sighed. "Fine. We can either keep going and hope we find the slave, or we can go back and hope we don't."

Rosalyn decided not to dispute Stan's terminology in the interests of keeping the tenuous peace. She shook her head. "Maybe he's not the source of the evil," she said hopefully. "I think we should go back. He might have been kidnapped or something. I mean, you don't for certain you saw him, right?"

Stan ground his teeth at the implication that he did not know something, but also chose not to challenge her. As much as he hated Rosalyn, he wanted his slave back. And as much as he hated to admit it, that evil sensing ability of hers might come in handy. He gestured ironically for her to precede him.

Incubus saw the pair of adversaries long before they saw him. He hid again to consider. He was not ready to meet them, but as long as they continued to search for him, they were a threat. He searched inside himself for Ari, but the boy was little help. He was far too hypnotized to care what Incubus did now. It really was a shame, he thought. Ari had put up more of a fight than most and proven himself a worthy adversary. But everyone bowed to the whim of the Nightmare King in the end.