Dark Adaptation – Dead Men Working.

DISCLAIMER: Yami no Matseui and its' affiliated characters, concepts and locations belong to Yoko Matsushita and I am earning nothing but the sole satisfaction of telling this story to you fine people.

A/N: Some disturbing imagery in this chapter but nothing too extreme. Thanks as always to my readers and my reviewers; I always appreciate your support! Thanks especially to those anonymous reviewers whom I cannot reply to personally but whom I'll acknowledge here:

WorkingClass: Glad you found the background info interesting. I was expanding on what was already provided by Yoko Matsushita, who created simply a wonderful world to explore and develop. There were a number of things left unanswered in the series however and this was merely my way of trying to answer a few of those conundrums. Thankyou for your support and I'm glad you are enjoying the work!

Firiat: I also agree that it was a little odd that a psychiatrist never makes an appearance in Yami. I mean, a workplace full of dead people, working with tragedy day after day after day... surely there are a lot of issues to be dealt with! Oh well, at least Tsuzuki finally got to talk to someone about his feelings. Even if his interpretations of the inkblots was really messed up! Oh, and when I was mentioning Tsuzuki's physical age, I am actually aware that he is supposed to look as though he hasn't aged more than 18 years or so but I didn't agree with that at all. I thought he did actually look as though he were in his early twenties. (But he had a baby face). And it's a personal preference thing too, I suppose. I don't find teenagers appealing in writing and I think that trying to pass Tsuzuki off as looking perpetually pubescent is cheapening the appeal of grown men. So... I made him look a little older but without making him appear his actual age. Just letting you know that I wasn't remiss of that, it was just a personal issue! XD Thanks for a great review and I hope that you continue to enjoy the story!

Anonymous: Cheers, I'm glad I haven't disappointed with this story! Good to see you are enjoying it! Thankyou for your kind words of praise and I hope you continue to enjoy the updated chapters as they trundle along!

Kitkat: Are those fingernails still attached? Try not to chew on them too vorociously now, dearie! XD Thanks for the support, I'm happy to see you are enjoying the brand of Tsuzuki I bring to the Yami no Matsuei world of fanfiction. I'm actually a little surprised to find that you have read this work before being familiar with Dark Adaptation... Ah well, I guess it's nice that now you have enjoyed this work you have 31 more chapters of the related story to go onto when this one is finished! I'm very happy to be sharing my writing with you. It makes it worthwhile when I see that kind persons such as yourself are enjoying the work so much and getting real pleasure out of connecting with the characters and becoming involved in the story through them. Try to pace yourself with the reading my dear. Drink plenty of coffee and try to get some sleep here and there. All the chapters of DA are huge, just like this piece so it'll probably take some time to get through them all. Don't chew those nails down to the quick! And thankyou for the lovely reviews, I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

~ X ~

"Nor crown nor coin can halt times flight

Or stay the armies of the night

King and villein, lad and lass,

All answer to the hourglass..."

~ Unknown

~ X ~

Melancholic Confine's

Tsuzuki

We checked out a few of the other rooms but found nothing but more of the same. Upon entering the last room in the hall, which looked to be storage space, we immediately saw the hooded boy lying on his back upon the floor, his body contorted into an odd snake like position. I gestured for Watari to approach and we did so with deliberate hesitance, weapons drawn but angled downward. He had not yet observed our presence and this was preferable until we found an advantage point. The boy was writhing from side to side, as though his limbs were bound by invisible bonds at the joints. His head thrashed madly and he gabbled unintelligibly to himself, making neither rhyme nor reason that I could comprehend.

"I'm… who… I'm me… I'm myself… I am him… he is me…we are one but we are two…" His eyes darted about madly, taking into account things that were of significance to no one but himself. It was as though he were observing the flight path of swarming insects, moving about his head with reckless disregard. "One hand beckons to the light… the other ushers in the darkness… who are you…"

Watari and I stepped into the light cast by the overhanging bulb above what looked like a stage area, for library productions or some such thing. We raised our weapons together and aimed them at the writhing boy. I could hear blood pounding in my ears, like war drums echoing in the distance. Seething fury for what this entity had done to the souls of the Tachiagari that night very nearly ensconced my senses but I forced myself to remain calm and act in a rational manner, befitting a Shinigami.

"Underdweller, for the taking of human life we, the Shinigami have come for your soul." There was a hint of cold, familiar recital to my voice. I had made this speech many times and I thought it rather corny but it was standard procedure. It was really no different than a cop reading a wayward individual their Miranda Rights.

The boy's head twisted unnaturally towards me. The shadows continued to steal across his features but now his eyes, wide and ice blue were revealed to me and they continued to roll about, unfocused upon anything tangible. "I am… I am… I am…" Those eyes then bulged unnaturally and his entire body sweltered as a red snake like symbol cut across his flesh. I recoiled, as steam rose off of these marks, as though the boy were being branded before our very eyes. There was a strong scent of burning hair and flesh permeating the air. "… I am… the 'END'!" The boy screamed hysterically as his body starting to spasm wildly. "No! I can't… you won't!!" A different version of his own voice, deeper and somehow more authoritative, took over. "STOP DAMAGING THE BODY!!" He thrashed from side to side, chest heaving and spine arching to form an almost perfect half circle shape in alignment with the floor. " I'll kill it!! I'll kill the vessel! I won't let you…!!" And now the voice became suddenly childlike. "No, don't! I'm afraid!" Again the voice changed, deepening to a sinister degree. "You can't… you mustn't! I won't allow it! Every cell belongs to me… with every breath I grow stronger and your resolve weakens. Dominion is soon at hand, your erstwhile resistance shall come to its' end, once and for all!" An agonizing scream ripped through the boys' body as though his skin was being slowly peeled from the bones and I fought the instinctive urge to smother the dangerously high pitch by bringing my hands up to my ears. "HELP ME, PLEASE!!

"Tsuzuki… what's going on?" Watari asked, eyes never straying so far as a hairs width from the boys' twisted visage. I don't suppose he really expected me to answer; after all, if he didn't have a clue, I sure as Hell didn't. It was simply a means of distracting ourselves from the unfamiliar horror playing out before us. The way the boy thrashed… it reminded me all too greatly of the sorrowful character's in the Western film Jacob's Ladder. How the skull rolled and bucked and quaked upon the neck, as if the spine had cleanly serrated and allowed no constriction to these unfathomable movements… The mind verily boggles, even to those of us whom you would think long accustomed to such abnormalities.

"… I don't know…" I confessed, unable to convey my thoughts on the subject in a neat, comprehensive package that was somehow relevant. "It sounds like… when I tried to resist Saagatanasu." My eyes widened of their own accord because it suddenly, unexpectedly made perfect sense to me. The internal struggle as the host revolted against the invading organism… the demon. "But you know… I don't hear only two voices fighting. There's more than just the repressed host and the Underdweller… that's what I think. And they're all fighting one another… his entire body is at war with itself… and the vessel is starting to crack."

I jumped back in fright and Watari made a nervous tittering sound as the boy suddenly lunged to his feet, foregoing the physical struggle of pushing himself aloft and instead nominating to impossibly swing upward like a drawbridge pulled into a vertical position by winding chains. He came towards us, gesturing wildly with hands speckled by drops of blood, from where the boys' fingernails had pierced the flesh of his palms in several places.

"At last… look Shinigami!" He screamed in triumph. "The time has come… for all whom have suffered to be released from their shackles!"

My patience had been whittled to a barely discernible vapor and I conveyed this in so few words by aiming the barrel of my gun directly at the boys' hooded forehead. "No. The time has come for you come willingly into your shackles, Underdweller. If you still insist on being a smarmy chatterbox, we shall have no other choice than to resort to more forceful means to earn your compliance."

I saw those slender lips hitch upwards at the side, as though the boy were barely repressing an overwhelming urge to laugh. However, he came no closer and simply swayed on the spot, surveying me with what I took to be something of a meditative posture.

"It seems as though you still need some time, boy… until your darkness has returned to you."

I all but screamed in ever mounting frustration, dropping the rifle as purple enflamed mana flared up from between my fingers. I had to actually snuff it out before any damage was caused but it wasn't easy. I was tired of using a weapon I didn't understand. All I wanted was to make this irritating whelp go away, using the natural weapons of my body. Those abilities I had been born with and shunned for. "Not this again!" I pointed my finger at him boldly; a finger still enshrined by intangible flame. "Why do you speak of darkness as though it's something I should understand? If I want nonsense babbled at me, I'd cast an illogicality blight on your sorry ass and since I'm not, you should take it for granted that all I want to hear out of you is a cogent, logical explanation!"

The boy did not respond immediately to me but moments later, raised his head so that one blue eye shone out from under the dark overhang of the hood and met my own. The sharp ringing that had cut through my head upstairs returned in full force, accompanied by a scene that played before my minds eye. I saw, from the point of view of an unknown observer, a hospital bed with an unfamiliar occupant. Reclining beneath sheets so white my true eyes would have hurt to gaze upon it, the sickened figure stirred slightly, one eye blankly staring into nothingness, the other eternally closed to all external images, covered by a wide swab and bandages…

"Where is this…?" I questioned, though to whom I can't say I'm sure."Is that… is that the boy I saw…? … No, it's…"

A man in a white coat appeared before the bed, sucking on the end of a pencil before then using it to jot down a note upon the clipboard he was carrying.

"… A doctor…?" Whiteness dominated my senses just as darkness had when we had first entered the library and I could no longer discern what else might have been happening within the hospital room. The vision faded into the light, bringing the dim, hard-edged clarity of the Waking World back into focus. "No! Wait!"

"OI!" Watari's sharp, twangy accent vanquished the last of the white glare from my eyes and my cheek stung from where he had apparently slapped me. "You still with me?"

Slowly coming to my senses, I found myself kneeling upon the floor, looking up at Watari who was staring at me with a concerned expression. The boys words continued to ring in my ear however, just as surely as that hospital room remained imprinted upon my mind like the vivid ink of a fresh tattoo.

"The darkness… returned to me…?" I pondered, eyes prickling with tiny hints of white as I looked down upon the floor. Watari huffed indignantly, seemingly annoyed.

"What the heck are you blabbing about? While you were out of it, our new friend made a run for."

I followed the line of his arm as it extended upwards towards the ceiling, showing a large gaping hole in the woodwork. I felt a drop of sweat roll down the side of my face, physical proof of the intense exasperation I felt.

"Really… can't he use a door like a normal person?" I muttered, climbing to my feet and brushing off my knees. I don't believe the props area had received a thorough cleaning in the past few months. The dust was at least an inch thick.

Watari picked up my rifle and tossed it to me. I caught it one handed and holstered it. "If he's back upstairs now, there's a good chance the backup could head him off. But I don't think I wanna risk it."

"Talk about overtime!" I groaned, following Watari as he leapt off of the stage and displaced mana energy beneath his feet in order to propel himself up through the hole. We burst up out of the ground floor and landed a little unsteadily in the main area of the library again. I pulled the map out of my pocket; mind racing as I tried to discern where exactly a demon possessed boy might go next. "Watari! He might have gone straight out through the front doors and into the crowd outside! He could kill them all!"

Watari shook his head, looking vaguely panicky as he glanced about the surrounding area. "Nuh-uh. There's no way he could without us knowing. I activated the security senses on the building when I was in the security booth. If he tries to force the doors in any way shape or form, the alarm's go off and the emergency shutters fall into place."

I bit my lip, a little unconvinced. "You're banking a lot on him not being able to break through the shutters then."

"It'll buy us enough time to catch up to him at least. That's what I'm banking on." Watari glanced at the map over my shoulder and then, with a groan, indicated a large, open area with his finger. "Rear of the building, second floor. Atrium space. It has a large glass ceiling. If the kid can fly he can bust straight on through and escape without any hindrance."

I tossed the map aside and charged for the staircase with Watari hot on my heels. "Which way?" I screamed as we emerged onto the second floor, my ankle twisting jarringly as Watari ungainly pivoted about to face the open area around the other side of the staircase.

"This way, come on!"

We both booked for the rear of the library, moving very quietly and carefully once we came within close proximity to the atrium. A sound was emitting from somewhere between the shelves and I slowed my movement considerably as we encroached upon it.

"Watari… do you hear that?" I asked, glancing off towards the right. Watari, eyes locked stalwartly into the forward facing position, looked in the direction I was facing and cocked his head to the side, apparently straining to hear what I was hearing.

"I don't hear anything… what does it sound like?"

I tilted my head back, having no such trouble picking up just what the sound itself was. "Like… somebody crying…"

We rounded a corner and I was once again confronted by the image of the sickly boy, crouched down behind one of the shelves, crying despairingly into his arms.

"You… you're the boy I saw downstairs…" I approached him carefully, the gun barrel directed away from his face. His sobbing increased in velocity until the entire room seemed to reverberate with the sound. "Are you lost?"

"Tsuzuki, who are you talking to?" Watari called from behind me. I turned toward him, entirely nonplussed that he could possibly miss this child's dismal display. I knew that Watari's eyesight was poor but to pretend as though he couldn't hear those loud pitiful cries was beyond ignorant. It was cruel.

"Have you taken leave of your senses? There's a boy sitting there by the shelves. Can't you see -" I pointed back towards the shelves and felt my skin grow numb. The boy had disappeared, his keening cries fading away as though he were receding into the distance. " – him…?"

Watari was once again giving me that same look of concern I had been subjected to all night. It made me wonder if perhaps I was a little touched in the head. "Tsuzuki… are you feeling okay?"

"I… I don't know." I murmured, scratching my chin, trying to avoid making eye contact. I was so flushed by shame and irritation I could actually feel the part in my hair burning.

Watari's eyebrows kneaded in the center, expressing an almost cartoon-like look of concern. "Look… I don't mean to sound insensitive, mate… but you'll have to save your mental breakdown for later." I glowered at him unappreciatively, quite hurt by his reference to my presently unstable mental constitution. Sometimes I think Watari could be inadvertently cruel. "We gotta keep moving or we'll lose the suspect."

I nodded, brushing past him with my gun arm set back into the original defensive position. "Mmm. You're right. Come on."

We pushed on ahead, moving towards the atrium and finding a bloodied trail leading up a small set of steps into a wide open area housing a number of astronomy related texts and a large telescope aimed towards the glass ceiling, used for planetary observations and the like. As Watari had guessed, the boy had already made his way there and stood in the center of the room, stroking the head of what looked to me like a Seeing Eye dog. I assumed this must have belonged to one of the people in the library. The dog itself remained seemingly docile despite what must have been a traumatizing chain of events and stood quite still, body rocking slightly with the force of its' breathing. Watari and I approached quietly, ducking behind the wall caused by the addition of the upper floor, just close enough to bear witness to the rapid, illogical murmurings of the strange, veiled creature we'd pursued from one end of the library to another.

"N-not en-uh-nuh-ough yuh-yet… st-sti-st-still nn-not enough." I glanced over the wall, perhaps a little daringly and saw the boys' hand stray away from the head of the golden Labrador. He knelt on the floor, one finger outstretched. It was shaking, I noticed, as though the boy were in the advanced stages of Parkins's Disease. His whole body, in fact, seemed now to be operating out of his control. "We m-muh-ust start the chuh-chu-chain again…" His trailed his finger across the floorboards as though drawing something. "The su-su-suffering is p-p-power… the more pain, the-the-the m-m-more potent the hosts energy! That is n-nuh-nature's way, of c-c-course… M-m-more is nuh-nuh-needed… bring me m-m-more power, my children. My four luh-luh-limbs within the Wuh-wuh-waking W-w-world… on this anniversary, re-v-v-vive that which has luh-l-lain dormant. … it's still nuh-not enough to sus-suh-sust-tuh-tAIN muh-muh…" He jerked his head as though shooing away a persistent bug and I recognized the irritation present in most individuals whom stuttered. The exasperation of not being able to get across the words they wanted to say. "Me. Nuh-not enough t-to sust-tuh-tain me. F-FUH-Fuck I-I-it a-all. Not yet… not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet…" His finger started moving with hastened effort, so quickly I could actually hear the joints cracking as it twisted unnaturally from side to side. "B-b-begin with huh-huh-her… proceed f-fro-from th-th-there… bring mu-mu-me their d-duh-darkness… allow me t-t-to sup of their t-t-torment… more, more, more, more, p-p-power…"

Watari and I exchanged a look and nodded at one another, seeming to understand without words that this unnaturalness had gone on long enough. Wordlessly, we stepped as one onto the short stairway and, with weapons raised, ascended into the atrium area proper.

"That's quite far enough!" I snapped. "This ends here!"

The boy's finger gradually slowed in its' swiveling movements and he glanced, with great difficulty over his shoulder. It was quite pitiful to watch, to see the frustration. The inability to hold his head still enough to make eye contact. His jaw clenched tightly, lower lip sucked in so far that the skin of his chin was pulled tight across his lower row of teeth. "M-mu-my, m-mu-my… you c-c-certainly are p-pu-p-persistent creatures. But th-th-then again, so is a c-c-cockroach."

Watari smiled in almost a nasty manner, licking the corner of his lips in order to wet them I suppose. "You really mustn't lather on the praise like that, or you'll make us blush."

The boy smiled, his head jerking back, around, up and down. His eyes kept straying upward, as though there were something irksome digging into his scalp and these spasms were simply his attempt to dislodge it. "Are you q-q-quite certain it is only y-y-y-your ch-chu-cheeks that are b-b-burn-in-in-ing, W-Wuh-W-Watari-s-san?" His eyes darted down towards Watari's arm and I too looked finding, not just to my alarm, that my blond companions entire arm from the shoulder down to the gloved fingers, was aflame. Watari's eyes grew wide and regardless of his previous caution in remaining alert, he dropped both Berettas' in his panic.

"JESUS!" He cursed, thrashing his arm back and forth through the air, attempting to snuff out the flame. I was able to think faster, on account of my not being the one on fire and whipped the thin jacket from around my waist and tossed it over Watari's arm, patting it fervently in order to extinguish the unnaturally invoked flame. As soon as he was sure it was out, Watari, cringing, threw the material aside and with a tremulous expression started to examine his arm. We were both surprised I think to see that not so much as an inch of his skin had been blistered.

The boys' smile slid upwards into a truly demonic countenance. "It is in d-d-darkness when our imagin-n-nations give sh-shape to our deepest f-fears…" That smile became an outright snicker, his lips curling up until they seemed to cut directly through the rounded cheeks. "Tell me, Shinig-g-g-gami… is there s-s-something about fire that fuh-frightens you?"

Panting, eyes distended slightly, Watari didn't seem able to reply. He continued to clutch at his arm, seeing without seeing and he made no effort to retrieve the discarded weaponry. I moved in front of him, focusing on the mana accumulating within my body, preparing myself for the inevitable squirmish. The boy continued to smile but he was now shaking so wildly that his features were almost a blur.

"Huh-hmm. So… Tsuzuki-s-s-san is ready to t-t-take me on by himself?" With a disproportionably loud 'Thunk' one of the shadows fell free from the boys face, revealing…

Oh shit.

The skin of his face was peeling away, as though each layer were a sticker coming loose from a glass surface. Unlike a snake shedding its' skin, the boys face was filled with deep, blooded crevices, as though chunks of flesh had been torn away. It seemed as if some hideous disease was eating him alive from the inside out. One of his eyes was wrong… it swilled about in the socket, leaking a thick, grayish substance. As I watched, another thick chunk fell free from the boys' neck and splattered wetly onto the floor, splashing blood liberally across the wooden paneling.

I felt dizzy and the room started to spin. My lips drew back tightly, fighting back the meaty gag reflex threatening to spill over onto my tongue. At the last second I managed to pull myself back together. I prayed that this would end quickly, one way or the other.

The boy seemed to be enjoying the reaction he was receiving from me and to aggravate this further, retrieved the piece of flesh from the floor and forced it back into the gap from which it had fallen.

"What a sh-shame your d-d-d-darkness is cuh-closed off to-to muh-me…" He distended his fingers from his throat so that droplets of residual blood flicked outwards and connected with the flesh of my face. I wiped it from my cheeks with my sleeve with more nonchalance than I actually felt. "I s-s-so w-w-ould have enjoyed giving rise to the d-d-elusions of your ano-ano-mal-lous m-mind."

I focused on directing my mana to internal kinetic friction, displacing energy to cause the books in the shelf beside the Underdweller to explode outward. A particularly thick volume flew by so close to his face that it almost cut it off his ear. "Enough talk! This is the end of the road for you, Underdweller! Interfering with the living is in direct violation to the Interdimensional treaty, forged by the great Celestial, Intermediate and Underdwelling establishments." I composed a series of flames into my left hand, holding them outward so that the boy would have felt the heat generated against his mildewing flesh. "By mine authority, judgment be done!"

The Underdweller lifted his brow in a curt gesture, dislodging a fraction of his eyelid in the process. "I c-c-c-c-c." He growled irritably to himself and shook his head like a dog trying to get water out of its' ears. "Can see th-th-that you are s-suh-serious this tuh-tuh-t-time… that look in your eyes… you m-m-mean to s-summon, d-don't you?"

This had of course been my exact intention and I felt it wise to do so before our irksome child made another hearty break for the exit.

My particular Shinigami abilities were as a Summoner, able to call forth 12 Celestial beings from the Imaginary World known as Shikigami, to come to my aid in times of duress. As far as my understanding goes, I am the only Guardian of Death to have in my service so prodigious a number of these demi-gods. Whence enforcing their powers in battle alongside my own, I was a formidable force and at that moment, after a long night of feeling embarrassed, idiotic and frightened, I was in the mood to be the intimidating one for a change. Holstering the insignificant mortal weapon, I freed my hands and brought them into the summoning position; index fingers placed together, middle fingers looped around them, with the rest laced tightly together. This signature was representative of piercing the Imaginary World; all summoning gestures involved the distension of the fingers to some degree, for precisely this purpose.

I focused on the mana within, inserted my wavelength through the barriers of the Interdimensional layer. "I humbly call upon the 12 gods that protect me-"

I was interrupted by Watari suddenly grabbing my arm and wrenching my fingers apart so roughly they almost twisted. I shrieked, bringing my left hand about and having to actually prevent myself from slapping Watari's face. He gripped my wrist, staring at me as though I were mad.

"In this confined space?" He cried, disbelief etched across his features. "With civilians nearby and the media swarming about the place?! Why not just waltz outside on Byakko's back, wearing an 'I'm an Undead T-shirt?!'"

I yanked my hand away, aggravated. It was all very well for him to question my actions when he was doing nothing to try and resolve the situation. Unless you counted squirming about on the floor like a bedraggled moth, waiting for its' wings to dry as being useful. "Well, what do you suggest then?"

Watari, having retrieved his Beretta's, aimed them at the Underdweller as a means of preventing any further action. "Try a fuda restraint spell first." He suggested, thumbing back the safety, just to show he meant business. Feeling a little embarrassed that I hadn't thought of this sooner, I retrieved an always present and always useful fuda slip from my pocket and hurriedly scrawled some spell signature onto its' surface. "To the cardinal directions; guide my hand… open to mine humble eyes the barriers between worlds… ensnare thy target –" I extended the fuda slip between my index and middle fingers. "– go forth – Vector Arrest!"

A number of golden cords expelled out from the fuda, becoming sharp points that shot down towards the boy, whose eyes both seemed to be closed. As the barbs came close to ensnaring his body, he opens his eyes and with a strange double armed swooping gesture serrated through each of the needles. They fell to the floor, soft and as ineffective as if I had hurled tendrils of ribbons at him.

"Your p-p-powers are qu-quite wuh-w-wonderful…" The boy simpered, turning the remains of the Vector Arrest to dust with a sway of his hand. "B-but you st-st-still need more tuh-time… some time to th-th-think and some time t-to evolve. And s-s-soon… the day shall arrive when Y-Y-YOU will awaken." He climbed unsteadily to his feet and with a constantly shaking hand, ran his fingers down over the guide dogs face, caressing its' snout and ears a few times before turning to walk away. "Confine? See that they suffer a little, won't you? There's a good girl."

Watari moved around me and stalked after the boy, his face so blotched with red spots it looked like badly mixed raspberry ice cream. It seemed I wasn't the only one who was sick and fed up with being treated as a negligible nuisance.

"Last chance you son of a B! DON'T MOVE!" He roared, because the boy wasn't taking the slightest bit of notice. Watari flashed me a helpless look over his shoulder, asking silent permission for what he was next about to do and then, every muscle creasing with tension, he squeezed the trigger of the right hand Beretta. The bullet might have made contact; I can't say so with any surety. Because at the same moment the bang echoed around the room, the boy disintegrated entirely, going up in a puff of feathers that swirled into a vague vortex before streaming upwards and out through the libraries glass ceiling, smashing it into shards in the process. Watari and I covered our heads until we were sure nothing was going to cut us.

Watari ran into the center of the room and stared up at the shattered ceiling, cursing as he kicked a book aside. "Dammit all to Hell! He got away!"

My eyes were still at ground level, so I was able to see what Watari had missed. I swallowed deeply as I edged around the shelves, pulling on his arm as I reached him, forcing him to back up a couple of steps. "Yeah… but it looks like he left us a present." I indicated the dog and Watari uttered a strange noise that sounded like 'Yark.' We both took a step back, guns aimed at the pooch, which was started to mutate at a phenomenal rate.

"What the Hell did that creep do to her?" Watari hissed and even at a moment like that, I couldn't help but admire his insight as to the gender of the dog.

"I don't know…" I whispered back. "Looks like it's not only humans he can mess with."

Watari growled, so infuriated his forearms started to tremble. "Fucking bastard! I can't stand someone that's cruel to animals!"

The doomed creature whimpered as its' features melted together like candle wax; bones cracking as its' internal structure was reconfigured. A bloodied line appeared directly down the center of her face, cutting deep through her muzzle and into the vein lines of her neck. With a sickening, squelchy rip, the poor animal was divided in half, all the way back to the tail, held together by only stringy strips of flesh, muscle and arteries. Her spine extended, causing the shoulders to expand and hunch over. It was as though something was growing inside of her, forcing the canine flesh into rapid, bloodied disfigurement in order to make itself known. This presence shortly thereafter presented itself.

From the bloodied hole in the dogs' neck, a woman's face appeared, pressing against the tendrils of flesh and veins as though they were bars of some grisly prison cell. The face was featureless, except for a wide, awning mouth, cut vertically above the chin, rather than horizontally and fringed with sharp, needlelike teeth. There was something vaguely suggestive about it; about the way the tongue thrashed about the lining of the mouth, that made me feel as though I were intruding upon something I ought not to. Two long, pale arms, deeply etched with black and blue vein lines, came scrabbling out through the neck hole, one finding contact with the ground, the other scratching mindlessly at the air, as though determined to reach us. I noticed that the nails on the woman's hands were long, immaculately maintained and painted bright, seductive red.

The dog howled mournfully as its' fur seemed to catch alight and burn away in a matter of seconds, leaving what flesh that remained, knotted, bubbling scar tissue. The woman inside redoubled her apparent efforts to escape the horrific confines, a pair of long slender legs ripping free from the dogs' ribcage, curling delicately around to clench its' molten sides. The flesh of her feet appeared to have been melted directly into a pair of red stilettos, the sharp points adorned by the sinewy flesh of the hellhound. The dog snarled, turning its' deformed muzzle to snap at these new, seemingly useless appendages, before her eyes, as red as her dripping hide, came to focus on us.

Watari's lower lip dropped, revealing his teeth clenched tightly together. "Oh god… don't think I'm gonna have much of an appetite for dinner now."

"Just have a vegetarian dish." I flashed Watari a weak smile, fighting back nausea in an attempt to be brave. This was not a manner of beastie that I was at all familiar with. "Hey, don't think you and I have fought side by side before. Try not to slow me down, okay?"

He grinned back at me, though he still looked rather green around the gills. "Don't mind me, old geezer. You just try and keep up!"

It came for us, growling and snapping, the woman's legs jerking in a wild spasmodic dance as they battered against the dogs rotting side. Watari and I broke apart, him diving to the right and unloading three rounds into the side of the dogs split face in quick succession. I went to the left and 'Confine' veered with me, the nails on the woman's outstretched arms as bright and as dangerous as the jagged teeth in the dogs' eviscerated maw.

Backed between two sets of shelves, I harvested energy from the mana pocket inside of me and hurled the black and purple tinged blight at the offensive horror as it approached. The angle was wrong; the hex splintering the wooden floor between Confine's feet as the beast lurched at me, both faces screaming from deep in their throats.

She hit me in the thighs, slamming me painfully against the wall, the canine maw gnashing to get its' teeth at my skin. The scent of burnt flesh washed over me and I wanted to fire another blight but I wasn't able to get my hands free. The woman's fingers scrabbled at my neck and I was forced to hold them back with one arm, whilst using the other to fend off the drooling, salivating jaws of the dog. The woman's heeled shoes scrabbled desperately at the floor, pushing me further against the wall until my head was forced up at a painful angle, constricting my spine and bringing my face even closer to Confine's ravenous mouths. I struck out with my legs, barely aware that I was moaning in fear and disgust, a sound as guttural and primal as the infuriated, bloodthirsty shrieks that came from the canine abomination.

I gasped as the pressure was suddenly lifted away from my chest and Confine emitted an almost puppyish yelp as she was yanked away from me by the scruff of her neck and liberally tossed from one side of the Atrium to the other. Watari fired five shots after her, three punching round black holes into the canine's withered, burn pocked barrel chest, sending foul smelling fluid splattering against the telescopes by the enclosing balcony. Confine groaned almost humanly, as she staggered back to her feet, jaws snapping together as she came bounding towards us again, snorting furiously, the vertical mouth in her chest expositing its' vile, flickering tongue like a snake tasting the air.

When she was in range, I snaked out my right hand, directing energy towards one of the gore-splattered telescopes. I opened my fingers and the instrument came sailing across the room to me, bludgeoning Confine over the head as it came. It scraped off only the smallest amount of skin but the injury made her pause and she cocked her head uncertainly.

I displaced energy beneath my feet and rose upwards, Watari mimicking my movement, curling backwards gracefully to position himself on top of one of the bookshelves. His eyes were on the ceiling, on a particularly long and jagged shard of glass that hadn't yet fallen loose from its' bonds. I could see what he was thinking and nodded, letting him know that I had cottoned on. I freed one hand and extended it towards a packed book cart, resting idly nearby. At my summons, it rolled into motion, gradually building momentum as it zoomed along towards' Confine, who yipped in acute pain as the metal trolley collided with her hindquarters knocking her off balance. One of the stiletto donned legs lashed backwards, pushing the offending cart aside and the canine atrocity locked its baleful gaze on me again, spittle foaming at the corners of its' unhinged mouth.

"Come on." I urged, trying to goad her a little. The bookcase immediately behind me wobbled from side to side and I turned my head to see Watari leaping along the tops of the shelves like an anxious bullfrog, trying to get himself in the perfect position to exercise our unspoken plan.

Confine took the opportunity to attack while I was distracted. Faster than my eyes could follow, she crossed the room and leapt upward, sinking her teeth into my ankle and dragging down hard on my legs. I kicked at her, but using the woman's hands protruding from her chest, she latched her long nails into my calves and scurried up towards my waist. I screamed as her nails pierced my flesh, feeling the hot, wet rivulets of blood trickle down into my shoes. My altitude decreased. The woman's vertical mouth snickered, reaching out for me through the cage of entrails stretched across her featureless face.

Her weight was too much for me to pull against and with a pained grunt; I collapsed to the floor, landing jarringly on one side of my ankle. Confine was thrown loose by the jolt and I used a blight to send her backwards, lashing out with my uninjured foot for extra measure. Her stiletto'd feet went skidding across the carpet, her rear end colliding bodily with the side of the bookcase Watari was preparing to leap from. His arms wind milled wildly for a second and he looked as though he might regain his balance, until Confine stumbled sideways in an attempt to find her footing and slammed her shoulder against the base of the shelf. Watari toppled over with a yelp, smacking his temple against the neighboring ledge with a crack that echoed throughout the room. I could see his eyes roll upwards in his head, a trickle of blood worming down out of his ear.

Confine was on him before he could regain his footing. Her split canine maw clamped about his outstretched leg. She bit through the denim, through the skin and into the bone. Ripped her head left and right, as though breaking the neck of a lesser beast. Watari yelped as he was lashed about from side to side, his fingernails scrabbling desperately at his waist, trying to get a hold of his Beretta's. There was a muffled snap – like a branch breaking under a blanket and Watari's lower leg simply came away in Confine's mouth, blood gushing from the serrated flesh. Watari, free from his mauling so to speak, stared in open mouthed disbelief at where his foot once was and then up at Confine, still clutching the severed appendage in her mouth.

"Hey!" He snapped accusingly, the timbre of his composed voice causing Confine to cease her death maul and blink down at him over her blood drenched chops. "I have a date tonight, so I'm gonna be needing that foot, thankyou!"

And this, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself. Watari, with a frown, swung himself onto his knees, bit his lip against the pain and grabbed Confine's muzzle in one hand, her chin in the other and literally prized her jaws apart, forcing her to relinquish his leg. It fell to the floor with a wet thunk but Watari didn't move to retrieve it yet. Instead, he swung Confine about as best he could, holding her mouth open towards me. He gestured wildly, his forehead soaked with sweat.

"Shoot!" He screamed.

I didn't need to be told twice. I charged towards them, slipping sideways in Watari's blood and landing hand on my hip, sending sharp pain up through my spine. I forced back the ache with a sharp bite to my lip and scrabbled back to my feet, sliding a fuda out of my pocket and imbuing it with serration blight.

A few muttered words and then, taking careful aim, I hurled the charmed paper down the beast's gaping throat, past sharp teeth with Watari's flesh still caught between them. Watari released her jaws and snatched up his foot, rolling away between the shelves as Confine's human arms lashed out at his retreating backside. I got a good distance away and made the invocation rights with my hands, murmuring the release spell.

Thick, heat infused waves of white electricity scorched Confine's body from the inside out, causing the human portion of her to scream just as loudly as her outer canine form. She was greatly injured, one of her rear legs made lame by the spell, blood gushing out from the splits in her body. She fell to her side, whimpering, choking as hot fluid spurted up out of her throat. She collapsed in a heap and I shouted with glee, believing that we had felled her.

The cry of triumph died in my throat. The woman's long, neatly manicured hands came sliding out through the tendrils of the dogs thick barrel chest and moved to stem the blood flow of the split in the crown of Confine's head. My heart sank as the wound closed over before my eyes, the blood reversing its' flow and returning to inside the grotesque form. The woman's vertical mouth clicked together eagerly as Confine climbed unsteadily back to her feet, staggering sideways like a newborn foal teetering about. She was shaken but very much alive.

Fortunately, demonic creatures are not alone when it comes to healing oneself. While Confine was recovering, Watari was busy repairing his severed leg. He reattached the foot by focusing on the limb returning to its' proper place, using fast paced finger gestures to spiritually 'sew' the muscles, sinews, bones and veins together. Reattaching limbs is not a simple process and can be quite painful. It was most likely Watari would not be able to put much weight on it for the remainder of the fight.

We didn't give Confine a chance to recover. Watari tested his reattached foot by gingerly shifting his weight onto it, maneuvering the ankle from side to side and up and down. And then, with a slight wince, he charged at Confine, leaving both Berettas's holstered. The beast snarled at his approach and lunged but Watari ducked his arm under its' snout and drove his fist up into the concave of the lower jaw, sending its' vibrantly red tongue smacking against the roof of its' mouth. He used his preternatural strength that all Shinigami are possessed of to deliver punch after punch after punch into Confine's degenerated face, glands and throat, driving the possessed creature awkwardly back. There was no style to it; just straight and dirty street fighting 'king-hits'. Watari had no martial arts experience and was simply making use of his kinetic mana generated physical power. He shifted his weight backwards, shoving his foot down into the gaping barrel chest, colliding with the screeching face of the featureless woman, knocking out at least half of the needlepoint teeth lining the vertical mouth.

The dog reeled backwards, swishing its' long head from side to side as though attempting to dislodge water from its' ears and I took advantage of its' stunned state. I used kinetic energy to quickly close the distance between us, slinging the carbon rifle around my torso and slapping the deformed canine across the face with it, drawing black viscous blood. The woman's long hands tried to reach out and wrap themselves about my neck but I ducked out of the way and whipped the metal rifle down over my shoulder, bringing the rifle chamber against Confine's knobby skull. With a forward kick, I knocked the canine's long muzzle upwards, clearing a space to then drive the barrel point into the gap of her chest, directly between the bloodied, splintered mouth of the blank faced woman, the heart of the beast. I held the grip tightly as I unleashed a volley of bullets directly down this obscure manifestations throat, sending strips of pink flesh and rotted chunks of singed fur splattering down from the canine's eviscerated stomach. She squealed in a puppyish fashion and managed to wrench herself free, snagging a hold of my ankle between her ghostly white teeth, dragging me backwards beneath the shattered, awning roof of the auditorium. I screeched in pain as the creatures jaws gnashed down through my skin, penetrating to the bone and tearing through my trouser leg.

Despite the pain, I allowed myself to be towed along, the transition eased by the blood flowing out of my leg, making the wooden floor slippery beneath my hind. The limbs of the interior woman had fallen completely limp, her arms trailing along the floor beside my legs. Confine's ability to regenerate herself apparently rested with this portion of her disfigured body and now that this had been destroyed, killing her would hopefully be possible.

Watari came limping after us, nursing his leg and looking questioningly at me from my upside down vision. I waved my arms hysterically, my hair soaked through from the bloodied floor beneath my head and screamed; "What the Hell are you waiting for?! Shoot you brain-dead bimbo! SHOOT!"

Watari's eyes widened at my insult and then he exclaimed with surprise as though only just noticing what was happening. He reloaded the bullets of the expired Beretta (completely ignoring the other with a full clip at his waist) humming what sounded like 'Ghostbusters' as Confine continued to drag me away. I slammed my free foot into the side of her face, trying to buy some time as I heard the expired bullet casings clack to the floor behind me. I swiveled around onto my stomach, staring at Watari with mounting panic as he nonchalantly slotted the pistol's sliding magazine back into place, looking it over fondly. If I could have bitten his leg off myself, I would have done it!

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHOOT! SHE'S GONNA EAT ME!!" (1)

"Shoulda thought of that before ya went and called me a bimbo." Watari said with a pleasant smile. I responded with a string of considerably more creative names and he got the hint that it was time to stop messing about. "A'right but stop pressurin' me! Ya know my aim goes wonky when I'm stressed." He muttered, aiming the Berretta skyward, tongue clenched between his teeth and eyes narrowed into slits. Stressed? He was stressed?

I was on the cusp of swearing again, when he fired off two well-aimed shots, serrating my advancing tirade off cleanly at the neck. There was a high-pitched ping and then a second, groaning creak that said the bullets had found their mark. I ceased my struggling and instead, crossed my mental fingers and threw my arm up, shielding my face and praying to all that was Holy that I would not be the one to suffer for this.

Confine had tracked the direction of Watari's arm, suspicious that she had not been the target and had time only to raise her eyes before the thick shard of glass impaled her directly through the center of her neck, driving her chin down into the ground with such force I felt the physical vibration rattle through my lower torso. She emitted a pitiful half-howl, half-scream that offered me room enough to yank my tattered leg free. Thankfully, the only damage I had sustained were several deep teeth marks, which would heal in a matter of moments. I staggered to my feet, limping a little on account of my injury and shot Watari a shaky smile.

"A plus in dramatic timing. You okay?" I panted, hands pressed to my knees.

"Think I just lost some weight." Watari said, leaning against one of the bookshelves. At that precise moment it tilted backwards, like an old drunk man sliding off of a barstool and upended all its' contents onto the floor. Watari managed to right himself at the last moment and stumbled ungainly away from the wreckage he had caused. He cleared his throat rather peevishly and straightened up, wiping the sweat off of his forehead with the sleeve of the jacket about his waist. "I haven't had a fight like that since my time as a street urchin." He shook his head sadly as he looked down at the carcass of what had once formally been a loyal, companion animal. "That bastard… how cruel!"

My throat felt stiff and tight. I was very much a dog person (in more ways than one) and having to put one down for a hallow point naptime was low on my list of ways in which I would have chosen to spend my evening. Even if I tried to convince myself that what we had done had been in the beast's best interests, it still didn't lessen the heartache. "I know. And to serve what purpose? We weren't even able to get a straight answer out of him!" I bit my lip, giving the bookshelf beside me a small kick as a means to vent my frustration. A couple of books fell off of the upper most shelf and conked me on the cranium, which didn't nothing to appease my bad temper. "Dammit… what a complete balls-up."

"Tsuzuki, come take a look at this." Watari said in an awfully low tone of voice. I obediently wandered over to find him examining something on the floor, precisely where the boy had been scrawling not a moment before we burst onto the scene. A strange circular symbol that looked oddly familiar had been drawn in blood, done, I suppose by cutting or pricking his fingertip.

"Is that… a sigil?" I asked, referring to the signature mark left by demons to mark their activities or seal the deal of a specified contract. Watari nodded.

"Mmm-hmm. I think so." He took out a small disposable camera from a compartment of the holster belt and snapped a couple of shots of the sigil, adopting a new angle with each snap. "I can't translate this as of right now but I'll get a shot of it for later." He said as way of explanation.

I sighed, cracking my neck from side to side in order to alleviate the tension accumulating within the muscle. "I guess we're done here… maybe we'd better do one final sweep of the library; just to make sure that Underdweller hasn't conjured anything else." I shuddered at the thought that perhaps more of the corpses we had bypassed on our way here may have been at that moment twitching to some semblance of life and crawling towards us from between the shelves. I just about sprained my ears listening for the sounds of their dried fingers scraping along the floorboards but heard nothing.

Watari climbed back to his feet with a groan and checked his watch. The glass face was covered with dried blood and he had to whet his finger in order to clean it away, so that the time would be legible. "This didn't even take as long as I thought it would. I might even make it in time for appetizers." He put the camera away and turned to follow me back out of the atrium, neither of us noticing that the mutated pooch had one left in it. I saw the shadow fall across us at the last second and spun about, a warning cry on my lips that was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot ringing out from behind one of the shelves. A bloodied hole appeared directly between the pooches' eyes, causing it to topple immediately. Watari, having finally noticed its' reappearance, dove out of the way into a clumsy sideways roll that must have bruised his shoulder and drew his gun, aiming not at the dog but instead at whomever was shooting from between the shelves.

"ASS RIGHT THERE, FREEZEHOLE!" He screamed and I almost laughed at hearing his words so badly tangled on account of his nervousness.

From between the shelves stepped a thin, almost malnutritioned boy, with mousy brown hair, straight leg jeans and a beautiful, if currently petulant expression. He made his way immediately over towards the body of the mutated pooch and fired an additional shot into the side of its' skull, just to be sure it wasn't about to spring to life again. After this he turned to us.

"That's the thanks I get for saving your life, Watari-san?" He said, in response to Watari's leveling of the gun in his direction. I laughed, feeling my nerves settle drastically as I brushed my disheveled, bloody hair back out of my face.

"Oh hey, Hisoka." I said, waving an indolent hand at my partner. "Don't mind Watari. He's learning to be combatative."

Hisoka looked at Watari skeptically, saying with one doleful expression what some men might have said in a half dozen words. "Oh, right. Well… you're doing a bang up job, Watari-san." He made his idle way over, using his fingertip to lazily push the barrel of Watari's gun down and away from his face. Watari, rather red in the cheeks at being treated so disrespectfully, responded by spinning the weapon about on his fingers in a classic show off maneuver, before then sliding it back into its' holster.

"Oh, don't patronize me, bon." 'Bon' was the name Watari used for Hisoka. It was a kansai (2) term meaning 'kid' or 'boy' but had an affectionate twang to it. "I know a psycho-geriatric-commando-headlock that'll send you reeling for a week."

Hisoka gave a very small smile. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to step on any toes." He shook the pistol barrel at the dead poochy, whose skull juices were currently leaking across the linoleum at an alarming rate. "Is this the culprit?"

"Unfortunately, no." Watari said, who was using a loose page from one of the surrounding books to scrape the aforementioned cranial matter from the sides of his shoes. "The true culprit high-tailed it and left this little sweetie for our enjoyment."

I toed the remnant, obviously not so concerned with dirtying my perpetually grubby shoes. "I think it's really dead this time." I swallowed back another gag reflex as the organism squelched wetly beneath my ministrations. "Just what the Hell is this thing anyway?"

"Like nothing I have ever seen before." Watari admitted, screwing up the wad of paper and tossing it aside. I caught a glimpse of what looked like Latin text as it sailed through the air and wondered just how much the original volume had been valued at.

Hisoka knelt down, examining the monstrosity from every angle. "Most parts of it are canine but these…" Here he indicated the bizarre feminine limbs and the pulpy bullet riddled mass that had once been the mutated woman's face. "Correct me if I'm wrong but it almost resembles human features, doesn't it?" We all looked at one another uncomfortably. "You don't suppose…"

"I wouldn't rule anything out, bon." Watari knelt alongside Hisoka, ruffling in his holster again, which I gathered had more items than Batman's utility belt. "It's an uncertain world we live in."

Out emerged a scalpel and a sealed container, with which Watari peeled away a skin sample from both the canine and human torsos and stowed. "Maybe with a bit of elbow grease I can figure something out… I mean, the spinal cord, skull configuration… all symbiotic of homo-sapien skeletal structure."

"You mean this… animal… was intentionally fused with a human?" I asked, feeling slightly nauseated by the thought.

"I don't suppose we could readily discount it." Watari said almost sinisterly. I fought back the urge to swat him on the back of the head. Why on earth was he compelled to speak in a manner conducive only in sustaining this repugnant air?

"But how is that even possible? Saying stuff like that Watari…" I chastised, glancing about with mounting anxiety. I felt my legs beginning to throb from the knees down, on account of the strain I had put against them during the night. "Are you trying to frighten me?" It would not have surprised me if of course this had been his exact intention.

Watari looked at me over his shoulder, with a far too innocent expression. "Just rendering my opinion, big fella." He glanced down at the sample in his hand and then let out a high-pitched yelp, falling backwards onto his butt. Hisoka leapt to his feet and we both looked down at him, questioning his strange behavior. It became obvious however, when, with an ever increasing hissing, the body of the canine oddity, collapsed suddenly into a big, hunk of black viscous goo, not unfamiliar to what we had encountered upon the doorway before entering the Tachiagari.

"Oh-ho… what's this?" Watari commented, with an air of almost offensive nonchalance.

Hisoka groaned with distaste, holding his jacket sleeve over his nose to block out the acrid smell the degenerative blob was now oozing with such abundance. "What the Hell is happening to it?" He questioned, slightly muffled from behind his sleeve.

Watari caressed his chin, twisting his lower lip from side to side as though it might aid in his speculative musings, hmming and 'hawwing' to himself.

"Apoptosis…" He finally declared, though he didn't sound entirely certain.

Naturally, I didn't catch the gist of this at all. "Apop-what?"

"Apoptosis… cell suicide." Watari translated, edging backwards in order to escape from the increasing black pool of muck. With a throaty grunt, he reverse rolled onto his feet and stood upwards, swishing his hair over and out of his face in an admittedly cool gesture. "And at such an unusually accelerated rate… This is almost the exact counter-aspect of a Shinigami's molecular structure."

"In standard Japanese, professor?" I asked sarcastically, prodding the side of his face just to express my irritation with his relentless psychobabble. He grabbed my finger to prevent the continued poking and held it tightly whilst he continued his explanation.

"Shinigami heal rapidly because we possess an additional chromosome within our DNA configuration. DNA, the abbreviated term for deoxyribonucleic acid, is the base most contributor to nucleic development, conveying genetic instructions in the advancement and functioning of all known living organisms, including viruses even. Chromosomes store information within something of an invisible blueprint that maps the development potential of our bodies. A DNA strand is an organized structure of chromosomes. A chromosome is a singular piece of DNA. Human cells have twenty-three pairs of large, linear nuclear chromosomes. However, studies of Underdweller tissue have found that they have more in common with the genetic structure of a virus, if they are of the parasitic type, such as Saagatanasu."

I felt myself starting to go cross-eyed. Even Hisoka, who had no objection to the development of personal knowledge, was starting to appear glazed and continued listening, I assume, only to serve as an example to myself of how a Shinigami should behave.

Watari continued to waffle on, entirely absorbed in the sound of his own voice and the vat of steaming erudition that came with it. "Demons possess twenty-five pairs of chromosomes, which enables their advanced use of immaterial energy, accelerated strength, speed, reflexive energy, healing capabilities, distension through the air and so forth. Shinigami, as I previously mentioned, are revived by Enma by the supplementing of an additional chromosome pair, giving us twenty-four all up. As such, we fall somewhere between humans and demons."

Unable to help myself, I leaned over and grabbed the top of Watari's nose between my thumb and index finger, giving it a good hard pinch. "If you're going somewhere with this Watari, I'm eager to know. Today."

I felt a sharp pain in my ankle and looked down to find Watari's shoe connecting with it. I jumped back, swearing and felt his fingers press against my forehead and push hard, sending me backwards onto my rear with such force I actually bounced. As I previously mentioned, all Guardian's of Death have advanced preternatural strength but what I failed to explain is that our physical constitution is elevated by the amount of mana in our bodies. The more mana that is stored within the vessel, the more it lends itself to the Shinigami's corporeal structure. Watari rarely used his powers and as such, his physical strength was considerably greater than most other Guardian's, simply because of the latent mana in his system. Though he didn't look particularly stocky, I'd fought with him enough times to know just what could happen when he got particularly worked up.

"Following its' metamorphosis," Watari continued, maintaining a dignified expression as he rubbed the red welt on his nose and I the burgeoning purple bruise on my shin. "This creature, whatever it is, must have devolved, metabolically speaking that is. Upon seizure of the blood flow, it demonstrated a complete metabolic breakdown, reducing its cells entirely to the lowest graduating degree."

"Thus, goo." I simplified, feeling it would have been easier to have said this from the word go. But then again, that was Watari for you. If it could only be said in two words, he would find a way to stretch it into twenty-five.

He rolled his eyes, just to demonstrate how insultingly simple I was. "Yes, goo. Where all life on this planet first began, believe it or not. Our beastie here would have to possess an overall chromosome count of less than any other biological organism." He looked at me expectantly and I gather I was supposed to be floored by these words but as usual they made about as much sense to me as green tea flavored rice crackers.

"Well, I guess your little tissue sample will tell you." I said, having nothing better to offer him than this. Watari held up the small jar and stared in dismay at the fogged surface and predictably empty interior.

"Unfortunately, it too has deteriorated." He sighed with much melancholy, as though his Christmas gift had been plucked out of his hands and given to another child. "So much for that…"

"Indeed. I was so enjoying your nerdy, totally irrelevant scientific lecture."

Watari lugged the now useless sample jar at my head. I dodged out of the way at the last second and it bounced off of the bookshelf behind me and landed with a disproportionably loud thud on the floor. Geez, he had a head of steam up that night!

"Irrelevant, my ass! A little knowledge of our enemies might in fact benefit us in the long run! I should think you would learn to appreciate that, considering your 'barrel in, guns blazing' approach causes you to make the same mistake every year in Karuta!"

'Karuta' to those of you who aren't familiar (though I'm sure you all have a good idea) is a card game played with the Ogura Hyakuninisshu, an anthology of 100 poems by 100 poets, composed centuries ago in the waka style. (Five lines of 31 syllables arranged 5, 7, 5, 7, 7). To play a game you use two decks of 100 cards; one deck has a complete waka, whilst the other deck contains only the last two lines of the poem. There are usually two players or teams of players and one reader. Each side lays out 25 of the fragment cards, the reader reads the first lines of the waka, and each side tries to find the fragment that completes it and take it off of the table. If the card is taken from the opponents' area, a card from the finder's side replaces the gap. The first player or team to clear all twenty-five cards wins.

The Summons department staff always came together of a New Year's to play Kurata and much fun was had. Though, as Watari had correctly declared, I more often than not got into trouble on account of my forthright nature and ended up snatching the wrong card off of the table, thus earning a penalty for either myself or my team. It was a sore point and something of a shameful flaw in my personality; lacking insight into a situation and simply barreling on in, without thought to the consequences. Watari liked to remind me of it whenever I made fun of his tendency to be a nerd.

And don't scowl at me. If you didn't want to be called a nerd, you'd buy smaller glasses. You've got no one to blame but yourself.

"Why should I need to use my brain, when you're here?!" I whined back, picking up the sample jar and hurling it back at Watari. My aim was predictably overshot and the jar gaily sailed over the atrium balcony and down into the archive of books below. Hisoka followed its' path through the air with a slightly amused expression and I internally dared him to say something about my shoddy throwing skills. Believe it or not, we once had an hour-long argument about my inability to throw him a mandarin from about a foot away.

"It's not my job to think for you!" Watari snarled back, looking for something else to throw at me. He seemed to consider the still evaporating pile of goo at his feet but thankfully came to his senses. Instead, he wadded up a piece of paper and hurled it liberally in my direction. It spun off of the tips of his fingers and went straight up into the air before coming directly down into the congealing gunk, sinking with a squealing hiss beneath the surface. "All I'm saying is, try dusting off that frontal lobe every once in a while, you might be surprised what happens!"

I lifted up one leg and started tugging on my shoe, determined to send it hurtling his way before this conversation was at an end. I almost considered leaving my smelly sock inside of it as well, so irate I was. "That's the last thing I need to hear from someone who twists his ankle and falls over whenever a demon attacks, you woman!"

"You dirty son of a- How dare you call me a woman!"

"How dare you take offence at it! What, are you a sexist or something?!"

Hisoka stepped between us, having traded his amused smile in for that familiar, dangerous yakuza (3)expression, most readily adopted when someone was disturbing his reading. "Guys, stop fighting for a sec and tell me what this here is." He was standing beside the bloodied sigil, which he tapped once with his foot.

"This here?" Watari said unnecessarily. He was still a little flushed in the face and it was with some degree of hesitance that I approached. "A sigil, bon. Any more than that, I couldn't say."

Hisoka cocked his head to the side as he crouched down to examine it. "It looks kind of similar to the contract Saagatanasu left on Hijiri's cornea, don't you think?"

Now I knew why it looked so familiar. "Those were my thoughts too. Watari, are you sure you can't read it?"

Watari could read and even speak a number of Underdweller languages, though sometimes he had a little assistance in this department. I'm sure he'll tell you about it when it's he takes over.

The blond shook his head. "Not offhand. It's a very old dialect. And the writing is messy." He scratched the crown of his head, causing his hair to stand up on end. "I'd need more time than we've currently got to decode it."

"Well, I'm sure you'll crack it. You always do." I gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder, our previous irritations well forgotten as they always were. Watari and I could fight like beasts when the urge took us but our confrontations usually lasted less than four minutes and were quickly forgotten about thereafter.

Hisoka had climbed to his feet again and was wandering around the sigil, examining the room from all sides. "Hey… there's a book over here." He suddenly exclaimed, moving towards said 'book'.

I rolled my eyes, indicating an opened novel beside me. "Yes, Hisoka and there's a book over here. It is a library. And I know you like books but nows really not the time to be browsing. Let's keep our focus, shall we?"

Hisoka hadn't seemed to take a word of this in. He leaned over the book, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear to prevent it from hindering his sight. "There's something written in it."

"Who would have thought?" I said sarcastically. "A book with something written in it." I picked up the book beside me and opened it directly down the middle, flicking through some of the pages. "Hey, look! This book has writing in it too! Of all the freaky coincidences!" I dropped the book and kicked it aside. "Most books have things written in them, Hisoka! I've known this for years!"

"Weeks, more like." Watari said with a teasing dissonance. He smirked at my surly expression as he made his way around to where Hisoka was standing and glanced over his shoulder, down onto the pages of the volume. "And I think what the kid is getting at is that there's something written in here that shouldn't be there otherwise. Plus, this is an occult novel and there's only supposed to be astronomy texts in this area." He jabbed his finger against the pages, leaving a grubby fingerprint behind. "Look, it was left lying open, just here beside the sigil. And a number of words have been underlined with a black marker."

"Well, what does it say?" I asked impatiently.

Hisoka examined the book from every which way, finger pressed to his chin thoughtfully. "I'm not sure…" He finally confessed. "It's in English. I can't read it."

I plucked the book from Hisoka's hands by the tips of my fingers, holding only one corner as though it were contaminated. I gingerly steered it towards Watari and relinquished it to his custody. "Watari? You're the halfie."

"Just give me a moment…" He murmured, holding the book close to his face and then further back, to allow his eyes to focus. His lips moved as he read, first in English and then, when he had re-read the paragraph; he translated out loud in Japanese.

"In the beginning, there was nothingness. Vast emptiness, unknowingness, endlessness. The existence of man was void, lifeless. They wandered in darkness, blind and ignorant, their bodies wrought by unfelt pain. They squalored amongst themselves, fearing death and yet longing for it, trapped as they were in the formless chaos from whence all life sprang. The God of the Waking world took pity on these formless wretches and so vowed to deliver their tortured souls to salvation. The God drove the eternal darkness into the abyss and brought light to the desolate landscape and granted mankind form and instilled them with a sense of purpose. But to this end, those that formed the earth were unable to remain and their great sacrifice was ignored. Driven from light, they dove deep within the wen of the earth, mourning the loss of flesh and life, as they once knew it. And so, it was their time to pray and await the coming of one whom would recognize their plight and bring them out of darkness, into the light and to reclaim that which was so long ago, taken from them…"

Watari wandered over to a writing station and pulled a piece of paper towards him. He started writing down the words that had been underlined, using the Japanese alphabet so that the meaning would not be lost on us. A minute later he stopped scrawling and held the scrap of paper up in order to survey it. His forehead crinkled in the center, making his face appear aged and expressive. "… how very obscure."

"What?" I asked, coming up behind him.

Watari held up the piece of paper for our inspection, revealing the completed sentence.

"The darkness is coming."

~ EC ~

(1) Yes this was a line from the Lion King. I went for the cheap laugh, so sue me.

(2) Kansai: I feel like I'm just telling you guys' stuff you already know I'm sure. But for the sake of being thorough; Kansai is the region of Japan where cities like Osaka and Kyoto are situated. The dialect is often described as Japan's answer to 'cockney', hence the abbreviations I use when writing Watari's speech. Since Watari was born and spent his younger years in Kyoto and the rest of his life in Osaka, he uses variations between each cities vernacular when speaking. (Osaka-ben and Kyoto-ben.) Hence the reason he describes his dialect as being 'inaccurate Kansai'.

(3) Yakuza: In an attempt to be as simplistic as possible, I will say that the modern day Yakuza are something like the Japanese mafia. The word yakuza itself means 8-9-3. Ya means 8, ku 9, za 3. it comes from Japans counterpart to Black Jack, Oicho-kabu. The generally difference between the both card games are that in Oicho-kabu the cards' objective is to be 19 instead of 21. As you see, the sum of 8, 9 and 3, is 20, which is without any worth in Oicho-kabu. It's from there the name, yakuza, comes from; they are without worth for society. This doesn't mean that they have no use in society; it means that the members are people who somehow do not fit into society - society's misfits. They speak in a certain, brash, almost classically over stereotyped manner and practice 'Irezumi', which is 'ink insertion', an incredibly painful tattooing technique. It is considered an elegant art process and often used as a mark of the yakuza, who tattoo their entire bodies in a pattern known as Utagawa Kuniyoshi's "Tsuzoku Suikoden Gôketsu Hyakuhachinin", visual story telling, often depicting old yakuza tales, Kabuki plays or animals such as carp, dragons, sakura, elemental properties, etc. All symbols have a specific meaning and it would take an entire essay to explain the tattooing process. My initial point in referring to Hisoka's expression, as 'yakuza' is simply a way of saying that he looked frightening and intimidating. Often, when angered, his manner of speech even switches to yakuza type slang, making him seem even more ferocious and merciless. Tsuzuki usually backs down from it pretty quickly.

A/N: Only two more parts to go and then I'd better hop right back into Dark Adaptation! Thanks as always for reading! Please leave a review if you are enjoying this, even if it's only short I appreciate all the support I get! See you all in part 6!