If Kom had one complaint about the beginnings of their alliance with the Acolytes, it was the location. Russia and he had not mixed well, it came with having the same cold-blooded physique of his reptilian theme. The cold had left him feeling off, he felt slow and sluggish and he knew that he was not at his best while they were in the northern reaches of Russia.

As long as he was alongside Kai, then he absolutely had to be at his best.

Whether being at his best meant being in top shape for a fight, or having his mind sharpened for whatever mixtures she wanted him to work on, he could not slack off, he could not be inhibited, and the cold of the land had left him as inhibited as could be.

That would not do, could not do, not when Kai had given him a job to do, and a big one at that.

A poison that could affect weapons. There were a lot of ways that he could go about this, a general poison was one thing, it'd attack the systems, kill slowly or quickly, painfully or painlessly depending on the ingredients he added. But she wanted something that targeted weapons specifically. Personally he thought it'd be better to target all of them, but what Kai said went.

Perhaps she wanted to get rid of half the team so that the remaining half would have to suffer more. That sounded like something Kai would for whatever her reasons, it didn't matter. He was going to get her that poison one way or another.

And Kom had been working hard at it ever since he had been given the job. Looking over his past notes and recipes for something to work off of—he could make one out of scratch, but that would take more time than if he modified an existing poison or used an existing recipe he had as a base to work off of. Time was of the essence after all.

So for the past weeks he had been working in one lab to another, moving every time Kai and the group traveled to a new place to either recruit more Acolytes to their forces or just to stay on the move to keep Death off their trail. Of course constantly being on the move was proving a challenge to making the poison, but it was a challenge he'd overcome many times and would overcome now.

There were already so many discarded failures that he had to toss out, and he yearned to return home to where his own stores and gardens were, where he had all the ingredients he might need. But he couldn't, right now returning to Hawaii was too dangerous since the academy was still thoroughly investigating the islands for any hint of where Kai had gone. He was working with limited and sparse ingredients, things that they were able to get their hands on while traveling. '

Of course the Acolytes were proving useful. All he had to do was provide them a list of names, numbers and descriptions and they'd get him as much of the list as they could. Sure none of them knew the first thing of alchemy and potion making, but they were trying their best to provide as much help as they could in whatever ways they could. All to gain Kai's favor, of course, but whatever the reasons, he appreciated the help.

Eruka and Free had tagged along and were providing help as well, though he didn't understand why the pair didn't take the chance they had to leave when they could. Maybe they just thought that it'd be safer working with Kai than getting stuck in the crosshairs of a war. They were probably going to face repercussions from the Witch Order for what they did with Medusa, trying to revive the Kishin and all that, the two might think it would be safer for them to stick around.

He wasn't going to question it, or try to figure out if that was their motives for staying or not. So long as they could help him (so long as they could help Kai, because that was more important in his books), he didn't care why they stayed.

"Let's see…" Kom murmured, flicking his tongue out and narrowing his eyes at the table before him. They'd managed to get out of Russia and deeper into Europe and were now in some European valley miles away from towns and staying in the farmland of a farmer who just so happened to have drunk the Acolyte Kool aid. They'd been able to set him up a decent enough lab in the empty barn, it wasn't too great but he wouldn't complain.

On the table he had a mortar and pestle resting on some crumpled paper, inside was a mixture of brown and green powder from a variety of leaves and herbs he had put in. His retort was hung above an open flame, the vapors coming out and running down the neck into a new bottle. Other vials and bottles were placed around the table, a scale on the side for comparing weights and in bottles, cases and even hanging from the rafters were ingredients he had been able to scrounge together.

Kom went to the bigger vial that was simmering on a burner next to an open notebook full of his notes. "Lion's hairs and… lets add some bloodwort to the mix," he decided as he took a pinch of the leaves and added them to the mortar, grinding them up with his pestle in a smooth rhythm. "Some lady's glove and may lily to give it a kick," he had to scan the different labels to find the flowers before adding them in.

When it was a fine powder he began slowly pouring the powder into the larger container, stirring it in as though he was adding the flour and sugar to the wet ingredients of a cake recipe. "I think some tongue of dog could work, or maybe some maypops?"

This is what he loved most about his work, figuring out what ingredients to put together to get the right result. It was like trying to solve a puzzle, find the pieces that fit the best and voila. Of course puzzles didn't usually kill someone like his poisons did, but not everything can be as fun.

Of course it wouldn't work if you didn't have an idea of what you wanted in the end. His poison, it wasn't going to kill the victims, he had something better in mind. Hopefully Kai would be impressed, hopefully it'd make her happy.

Kom just wanted her happy.

He knew for a long time she wasn't going to be happy with him, he couldn't make her happy and completed, no matter how hard he tried. But then Maleko came along and for the first time in forever, he was seeing her alive, she had a look on her face, as though she had finally found a reason to live, a reason to be happy.

It had been the most beautiful expression he had ever seen, he didn't want her to ever lose that.

But now Maleko was gone, and with him had gone Kai's reason to feel joy and reason to feel anything.

He couldn't replace the child, there was nothing on this world that could ever replace Maleko for her. But at the very least Kom could do whatever he could to make her feel better, even if it was just the satisfaction of defeating her enemies.

Maybe it wasn't really fair of him to work so hard for her sake, it wasn't as if she particularly deserved to be happier than others. She had done a lot of horrible things and worse over the centuries—they both had. Kai wasn't some saint who had only ever been given the short stick in life, she wasn't a good person, not when Maleko wasn't involved. Take right now for example; here she was raising an army of humans with no special abilities to them to wage a war against the DWMA, both the organization and the school—a school, might he add, was full of students, kids, who were only doing this because they thought it was the right thing to do or they didn't know better. Kai wasn't going to care how many of those kids got hurt, how many of them got killed, she wouldn't show remorse for the hundreds upon hundreds of dead bodies from both sides that would come from the war.

And yet Kom couldn't find it in him to care nearly as much as he should. Even knowing all this, he wanted to do what he could for Kai, just for the chance to see her smile, truly smile. It wasn't right, he knew this. But it didn't matter if it was right or wrong, nothing was going to change. He'd follow her through the gates of Hell if that's where she went.

Loyalty was a funny thing.

Kom snorted a little as he thought of it, letting his stick out between his pursed lips as he focused on the potions at hand. His scales itched under his skin.

"Bloodroot or beetle toe…. Bloodroot or beetle toe," he mumbled to himself as he held up the small Ziploc bags of the two ingredients, one in each hand as he weight them in his palms and locked back and forth between them. Decisions, decisions. Bloodroot might cause clotting, but beetle toe can cause vomiting. The enemy can't fight or transform if they're too busy puking up their guts.

But… he put the bags down and rustled through the other ingredients, "Devil's snare!" he grinned, a smile full of sharp teeth and ill intents. Nothing worked quite as well as a devil's snare when it came to killer cocktails, and so he quickly pulled a few of the dried white flowers out of the bag and tossed them into the emptied mortar, grinding them up into as fine a powder as he could get them.

As if Asclepius himself had come down from the stars above and had struck Kom with a burst of inspiration on just what he needed to do, though it wasn't quite a medicine he was making, poison wasn't too different when being created. But Kom found his mind whirling with things to do, ingredients to add and steps to take, and each pause between action was filled with him making notes of it in his notebook.

Kom was adjusting the temperature of the burner over one of his glass flasks, inside a bubbling lime green concoction that emitted a rancid stench, when he noticed the doors to the barn being pulled open, but he didn't turn around. His tongue had snuck out between pursed lips and he knew that Kai had come up into the barn.

"How're the meetings in there going?" Kom asked, not looking up from what he was doing. He had to make sure the heat was exact or else the result might not be what he wanted.

Kai shook her head as she took a seat on a hay bale across from him, heaving out a sigh as she leaned back. "Stressful. I'm remembering why I left them, that's for sure. Generations may pass, but the Acolytes still maintain some of their more annoying habits," she rolled her eyes as she spoke, "It's like now that I'm here they don't want to think for themselves."

"They want to make sure they do only what you want. You're their God, or something," Kom explained and smiled when he got the burner just right, now allowing himself to straighten up and look as his friend. She was dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, looking as comfortably dressed as could.

"You get magic that allows you to control water, and apparently that's the magic that's deserving to be considered divine," she shook her head again as if the whole concept was ridiculous, and honestly it was. "Humans worshiping a witch. It's just magic, not a divine blessing."

"Don't tell them that, you need them to worship you," Kom smiled wryly, but his smile fell quickly when Kai snapped her head over to look at him.

"I know that," she growled and then ran her hands through her hair, gripping the stands tightly in stress. She was stressed often, Kom noticed. Ever since they had left that first meeting, where she killed Medusa and the meister, she had been more volatile. She was sleeping less, too, drinking more… needless to say, it worried him.

He glanced at his work and decided that it'd survive him stepping away for a few minutes.

"So what's our next move?" he asked as he pulled his gloves off, leaving them by his ingredients before joining Kai on the hay. "Going to keep building up our forces? Start on the offensive?" he hadn't been present with the meetings Kai was holding with the heads of the Acolytes, too busy working on this poison for her to go out and socialize.

She shrugged, "Until you get this poison done, we're not doing anything against the school yet," Kai answered and glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "As much as I want to tear everything Death built brick by brick, blood by blood, I'm not doing anything when he has an army that's fully functional. The Acolytes have the advantage that they're human souls, Death will try not to kill them if he can, but that's about it. They don't have the same training or tools as the academy."

Kai had a point, he would admit. The Acolytes got defeated the first time they went to war against Death. There wasn't much to say this time would be any different. That's why it was important to immobilize the weapons somehow.

"I'm doing what I can, going a few nights of no sleep just to try and make some ground on this," Kom said gently, watching her face for any hint of change in her mood. "You gave me a pretty tall order."

With a scoff, Kai scowled and looked at him, "Now you're telling me that you can't do it?"

"I didn't say that," Kom responded, an air of offense in his voice. Can't do it? No matter the request, he can always find a way to finish a poison or potion. This wasn't going to be any different, it was just more of a challenge. "I can do it, it just takes more work, more time. Doesn't help that I'm working with limited supplies and a lab that has to be moved every time we travel."

She only hummed and got up from her seat to start looking around his workspace, picking up trial and error results of potions in colors that varied from dirty water to vivid green, all with it's own range of acrid smells. She tilted the bottles, let them splash about within their glass containers, weighed them in her hands with a thoughtful expression.

His workspace in this barn couldn't even compare to the one he had back home, though it was more akin to the shabby potion brewing station that Kai had kept in her basement and left mostly untouched. Though she was a witch, raised by witches and taught how to make potions like many of their kind, it had never been a skill that Kai had been particularly good at. Most of her attempts in alchemy such as this ended with disastrous results or with nothing but colorful water.

Yet even if she was terrible at it herself, Kai examined his work with an eye of criticism and appreciation, that even though it was not something she could do herself, she did not feel anger or jealousy at others who could. His work had always been appreciated by her, she respected what he could do, respected him.

Maybe she could feel more for him than respect. He knew it wasn't going to happen, yet Kom could always hope and wish.

"If you want to, need to, you are more than welcome to stay back from the main body to work on this. I do not intend to disrupt your work or make things harder for you, so if staying here to focus on making the poison will benefit you more, you are free to stay," Kai said finally as she put down the potions in her hand and turned to look at Kom, her eyes, once a sharp and vivid blue were becoming dull in color, the life leaving them more and more with each day that passed, with each passing hour since Maleko was declared dead.

She had nothing to live for. When Death was slain and his organization destroyed, Kom worried about what Kai would do then. She would be alone, and being alone was not something she needed, as much as she might disagree. And being among the throng of Acolytes who followed her, she would still be alone. If he could help it, he would rather not leave her like that.

Kom smiled, "You can't get rid of me that easily," he said shaking his head and giving a soft laugh. "Even if it makes things more difficult, I'm traveling with you guys. Besides, you need someone at your side who won't agree simply out of pure devotions, someone who'll throw in counterarguments and point out terrible ideas when you come up with one."

For a moment he thought he saw her lips twitch into the becoming of a smile, but just as quick as it appeared, her face became a wall of stone once more, "I suppose you're right. You are a voice of reason in an unreasonable place," she conceded. "As long as you think you can make this poison while on the move, then you're free to do so."

"You have my word, I won't let it interfere. You'll get this poison one way or another," Kom promised. Even if it took weeks, months… years, he'd make a poison that'd cut weapons out of the equation.

It wasn't as though they were in any real rush, right now the Acolytes, right now Kai had all the time in the world to gather her strength and prepare. Even if she wanted to destroy the DWMA and everything it stood for as soon as possible, now that there was no need to rescue Maleko—as terrible a thing as it was to admit—there was no rush to get things done as fast as possible.

Personally, Kom would like for them to take as much time as needed to gather what they need. From what he had figured out from their brief encounters with DWMA agents, it didn't seem as though Death really knew what Kai was doing, that the Acolytes were still around and growing stronger. Right now they needed to take advantage of that and use this time to make the Acolytes stronger. Buffer their defenses, charge their offense. Better weapons, better armor, better tools, everything had to be better if they were going to beat DWMA this time.

That's what Kom was here for, to make things better. Cut out the weapons, maybe make a potion that can make the Acolytes stronger in some way. Hmm… perhaps one that charges up the soul wavelength, some Meisters were able to shoot their wavelength into other beings, perhaps he can make a potion that'd affect the Acolytes to temporarily give them the same capabilities, or maybe a 'super soldier' serum like movies enjoy making. Anything that can give the Acolytes a better edge.

They were only human, after all, they'd need all the help they could get.

Kom pushed himself off the hay he sat on, stretched his arms high above his head and let his spine crack and pop as he bent backwards. "Well, Kai, as much as I love your company—and I truly do love being around you," he let his forked tongue slither out for a moment as he spoke, tasting the air as he looked at her, "I should resume my own work, and I'm sure there are things you want to attend to."

She stared at him for a long moment before nodded. Normally that would be it, but her stony expression had softened, had become… vulnerable. "There is," she said softly, her hand clenching into a fist. "We've been on the move for such a long time since Russia, going from one place to another… we've not had the chance to stop and…." She trailed off, emotion starting to make her voice grow thick.

Now this was… not something he was used to from her. Had Kom ever seen Kai like this? Not that he could remember. "Kai, what is it?" he asked, worried and scared. What was going on?

She shook her head and brought a hand to her face to discretely rub a tear away. "Kom, I want to…" Kai stopped to take a breath, collecting herself. A few seconds passed before she looked up at him, her face hard and certain. "I want to give him a funeral. I can't do a proper one, I have no body—I don't even know if there was a body left behind, but he deserves one. He deserved a whole lot more than what he got, but this is at least something I can give him."

And he understood what she meant, why she wanted to. Even with him gone, Maleko was still her weakness, still brought out humanity in her.

"A funeral," Kom whispered and then nodded. "Yeah, okay… yeah. He needs a funerals, a memorial, something we can do for him. Are we going to do it here or…?"

Kai's mouth twisted into a frown, "No. This place has no meaning to him, this farm wouldn't be important to him at all," she decided, taking another deep breath before looking out the open barn door into the horizon of pastor fields and grazing goats, "I want to have it somewhere that was special to him, important to him. It wouldn't have meaning if I did it just anywhere."

"I understand."

"I'll have to prepare things, I don't know all that goes into a funeral, but I need to get things ready, I need to… need to figure out how to get there without being caught on the way," she was mumbling to herself, almost as if she forgot Kom was there. "In a few weeks we can have it… can have everything ready by then."

"Whatever you need me to do to help, I'll do it," Kom offered. "Maleko was, he was important to me, too," maybe not as important to him as Kai was, but Maleko had been a good kid, a kind kid, someone Kom would have enjoyed seeing grow up, a kid he could have grown to see as a son of his own if given time.

Kai shook her head, "No, you focus on your task at hand, I should be able to handle everything on my own, and if I need help, well, that's what the humans are for."

And Kom could understand that, so he offered no argument as Kai made her decision. Whatever she planned to do for his funeral, wherever she planned to do it, she wanted to do as much of it on her own, and he would let her. He would let her focus on preparing for the funeral, and Kom would focus on making a poison to affect weapons on her behalf.

Even as they left the barn, traveled to another corner of the world before Death could pick up their trail again, and continued to travel, that is what they did. Whatever Kai planned for the funeral, she kept close to herself and let no one know while Kom kept all his progress in the open, updating the Acolytes and Kai about progress and setbacks in his poison.

Weeks later, he found her sitting beside a dirty window in the condemned building—once an office building by the layout—that they had taken refuge to this time. They had made great progress in building their armies, the Acolytes were rallying in secret, were preparing for war, and the war was drawing closer.

"Kai," Kom said, knocking on the wall to get her attention, she snapped her head to look at him, the bruises under her eyes a sign of the sleep she was forfeiting these days. But Kom only smiled triumphantly, and in one hand he held out a series of papers—ingredients and instructions—and in the other he had a vial of still bubbling black liquid. She raised a thin eyebrow at his gifts, and Kom's smile grew to show his sharp teeth. "It's a prototype, I need trial runs and data on the results to know for sure if this is on the right track, but I think I've done it."

Author's Note: Chapter Ten, we're getting into the double digits now, boys. Things are going to start picking up after this now, I'll tell you that much.

But, as always, let me know in the reviews what you thought. Any mistakes I made that you really think I should have noticed and need to fix, changes you think I could do to make this better, or just anything you wanna say. I love hearing what people think about this after all.