Thank you for all of the reviews!

Dark Angel Nerissa – Well I certainly hope it will be great, but one can never tell. As it is, this story presents quite a challenge for me in trying to bring together two arch enemies. I always hate it when a writer completely skips over that part and just leaves it where all is hearts and flowers. That's the easy part. Getting them to like each other is the hard part. If the guy/guy starts to really bother you then don't read. I won't be offended. Stories are supposed to be entertaining. When it stops being fun, stop reading.

I suppose this answers mystery 93's concerns as well. As for Dark Angel of Hatred, Alice the Insomniac, ;D and Kaimei thank you again for the reviews.

Possession – Chapter 3

"Hao!" I hissed at him, I felt my stance change naturally in preparation of a fight. "Leave. Now." I ordered.

Reflection Hao raised his eyebrows at me in surprise. "My my, don't we feel brave. What happened? You think because I've been dead for almost a decade you can take me now? Is that it?"

"I'm not afraid of you Hao. Dead or alive." I stated firmly. He just laughed that annoying arrogant laugh of his at me.

"Liar." He said once he had his mirth under control.

"What are you doing here? How long have you been following me?" I demanded. Not that the answer mattered. I was going to get rid of him the first chance I got.

My reflection regarded me with a cool, flat stare. "Well I see you're still as dumb as ever. Funny, you'd think with all of the studying you do you'd be at least a little bit smarter." I just stared back at him refusing to rise to his bait.

Seeing that I wouldn't react to his juvenile name calling he rolled his eyes at me and then gave me a look of complete superiority. "Well isn't it obvious? I've been here the whole time." A cruel grin spread across his face as he added. "Inside you."

I tried not to let him see my surprise, but I knew I gasped in shock. Inside my head I was screaming in denial. Hao… He couldn't… he wouldn't… but no matter how much I tried to deny it, that… that… thing… was inside of me. Worse, now that I could see him, I could feel him also.

"How long?" I hissed between my teeth. He'd said the whole time, but that was still rather vague and I needed to know definitely.

"Since you and my traitorous brother and all of your traitorous little friends killed me." He snarled at me. I couldn't control my little bit of pleasure at seeing him off balance any better than I could my surprise at finding out he was inside me. It looked like he still had yet to get over that whole 'being dead' thing. Well good. He deserved it. The creep.

Wait. Did he say he'd been with me since then?

"Bullshit."

He shook his head admonishingly. "Tsk tsk, such language. Of course that's not the first time you've been so vulgar. Why, I still remember that time at Ren's home when you got so excited because Yoh was sleeping near you that you ended up-"

"Stop!" I yelled I didn't need to be reminded of that particularly embarrassing moment. Which is of course why Hao brought it up.

He grinned at me with a smile showing more teeth than humor. "You were so worried about the mess that you stayed awake the whole night so you could get up before everyone else and hide it."

Oh god, that meant my worst enemy had been with me through every awkward moment from my teens to now. Watching me through my own eye while probably having a great laugh at my expense. I was tempted to kill myself right then and there.

"Oh no, we can't have that now can we?" he said. Showing that he could clearly pick up my brief thought about suicide.

Oh that's right, my body. Hao mentioned something about it being his. "Never."

"Do you really think you can stop me? Remember that I am the greatest shaman that ever lived. I'll admit that dying did take something out of me and it's taken me this long to regain enough strength to start taking over your body. But soon I'll be strong enough to absorb you and take you over while you're awake. Once that's done I'm going to pay a little visit to all those annoying friends of yours."

His plan had a brilliant simplicity to it. Everyone thought Hao was dead, and no one would expect him to show up wearing my face. Even his own former followers didn't believe it and they'd died for it.

"Why me?" I asked. I know it was a stupid question, but it was all I could come up with. Again he rolled his eyes at me.

"Really Lyserg, I've been planning to become Shaman King for a thousand years. Of course I'm going to have contingency plans in case I fail." He stated as if I was being the densest person in the world.

"Actually," he continued almost companionably, "I hadn't planned on using you at first. Originally, I'd wanted to use that Tao first, but he proved to be difficult." He made a grimace and I knew he was talking about when Ren had refused to join him. Then almost as quickly as the expression appeared, it was replaced with the more familiar manipulative one.

"But then right at the last moment, you and that little runt pixie of yours surprised me by actually showing some real power and that's when I knew you'd be perfect."

I glared at him with all the hostility I could muster. "I guess you couldn't exactly use one of your little groupies. We all kept pretty close tabs on them for a few years after the tournament. We would have noticed if one of them was trying to keep your memory alive and we would have stopped them."

Hao waved that off as if he'd only expected something like that. "You see, in order to rebuild most of my spirit, I would need a shaman with not an inconsiderable amount of strength, who I had a bond with and who had somewhere in their own soul for me to conceal myself until I became stronger."

"You and I do not share a bond!" I yelled. A bond with Hao! Double blech.

"Don't we?" he speculated. "Didn't your obsessive hunt for me forge something between us? Didn't your feelings for Yoh and regret at forcing him to kill his own twin reinforce that bond?"

Gooseflesh rose up allover my skin like someone had walked over my grave. He was right. For weeks after the tournament I was stung with guilt every time I looked at Yoh. Hallmark doesn't exactly make an 'I'm-sorry-your-brother-was-a-complete-psycho-but-you-had-to-kill-him' card for the occasion.

Still I remained stubborn as to how he could stay in me all this time even though it was obvious he did. "No part of your spirit would be welcome by mine."

He laughed at my stubborn denial. "How naïve. Everyone has some dark spot in them they don't want to acknowledge, a spot where they hide their deep dark secrets from themselves. Ren would have been perfect because his dark side was constantly in battle with his gentler nature. But you… you hunted me down, rejected all of your friends, even kidnapping one of them for bait and rejecting your own spirit ally in your quest for your revenge. You call me murderer when you are just as guilty of the same sin as I, and still you think of yourself as a good person?" his grin became all the more malicious. "All that darkness made the perfect place to hide and grow stronger."

"Like a fungus." I retorted. It was a week comeback, but having my nemesis throw all of the things I never wanted to admit about myself in my face had thrown me off balance.

The Hao reflection took on a stance like a stern parent and started shaking his finger at me in a most annoying fashion. "I have no more need for you at the moment. You go eat your dinner young man. After all, you need to build up your strength." He disappeared leaving me staring at my regular reflection and hearing an echo of that taunting laugh of his.

"Arrrrghhh!" I screamed at myself in frustration.

At first I was tempted to ignore my dinner and thereby his command all together, but that would have been foolish. If I was going to beat Hao I really would need my strength and starving myself wouldn't accomplish anything more than speeding up the time he could take over my body.

Never Hao. I'll kill myself before I ever let you use me like that. Never.