Disclaimer: I do not own Rosario + Vampire

Chapter 5: "A Deal is a Deal"

A shadow set foot out of the torrent.

Grin set and hidden, the older onlooker stood firm in a cold feeling of accomplishment at the creature he had brought to the surface. His trusted pet, Selzix, was neatly perched at his shoulder.

The new Tsukune ambled out with the spray of water vapor clouding around him, no doubt a raw effect of his cataclysmic rebirth. Yet with any weakness he might have, like in his ghoulification, he was unharmed by the water. Now wading through the waves, his eyes were two specks of white in a silhouette, and they turned to spot something under the water near. He slowly reached in, and took out a fractured metal that could only be what was left of his blessed locket. On the familiar sight of its minuscule details, he seemed to be presented a state of calm, and the scarlet electricity around him slowly suppressed, the mad buzzing of his new aura with it.

Without much thought (if any at all), he continued his advance to the embankment to meet up with the two creatures that had brought him to this area to begin with. There he stopped. And stared. The mindless stare that had once frozen a group of monster girls in their tracks…as a ghoul.

A small blast of blue fog emanated out of Garandou's hood, the breeze revealed only enough to see the clear bottom of his face – or what was left of one. A long, horrifying row of teeth spread possibly from ear-to-ear, and the two shining golden orbs that made up his eyes hidden in shade of his veil. Just like the Board Chairman. At least from where anyone could see, the person was semi-decomposed of flesh; a true husk of a man, bound and mummified in a tall, hollow vessel.

Tsukune stepped out in front of him, one foot still in the river. His features were uncovered. For the most part, he looked completely normal. But his skin had become exceptionally pale, and the black jagged markings were sprawled infectiously from the fang holes in his neck up to the bottom corner of his face, the gnarled branches stretching as if in reach for his eyes.

His irises were depleted of their natural brown into a dull, faded crimson.

He had become a ghoul once more.

From out of his crouched pose he stood up tall. For a scavenger of graves, he actually looked quite ardent in form; a young lord with unspoken familiarity with death. An affinity for taking lives, as heard him by his female admirers when last he transformed: "Kill…kill…" His voice had haunted each witness of that incident for many nights, and now it tragically seemed that many more would follow.

But Garandou and Selzix showed no signs of fear around the reanimate body, and as the tall creature glided closer to Tsukune, he stuck out a skeletal hand from his impressively dark sleeve and wrapped his appendages carefully around the ghoul's jaw, and only then, firmly forced his head to turn a side, where he would thoroughly examine his face.

Shockingly, Tsukune did nothing about it. He showed no signs of aggression; didn't attack, didn't try to bite, didn't make a single further move on his own. It was almost as if something as mindless as a ghoul sensed inferiority to this man.

Garan's eyes gleamed coldly out of the hood on sign of the two burrowed holes rooted in the boy's jugular. Instinctively he recognized the mark, and withdrew his search with one word looming under his breath.

"Vampire."

In his whisper was hatred, but it was no matter. Vampires and ghouls weren't the same things after all. One was merely the catalyst for the other. Slowly, the wraith began to slip the pieces of the puzzle together in his mysterious mind, while Tsukune blankly surveyed his surroundings.

Of course Garandou wasn't stupid. He knew that Tsukune wasn't a ghoul to begin with, and almost completely doubted that he had ever been. Not long after he had decided this, as Tsukune's whimsical manners and caution for his own safety caught the cloak's eye, his true origin had long since been compromised. A human.

Though the kind of creature that Tragedy was would naturally feel just about as much animosity towards any human as he would a vampire, he was very different from his rare kind, and decided to take the wayward boy in. Perhaps it was that interesting little locket that he had with him, none could really say why. If he had sensed anything threatening towards himself, Garandou would have silenced it on the spot. But it had been a while since Paradise had had a pure human, and intrigue conquered suspicion.

But now Tsukune was just another one of them. Severed completely off of his former life, surely the knot of some vampire's twisted sense of humor. But as if Garan had any way to go about avenging this poor soul, with his feet sown completely to the soil of this wretched world. Even if Tsukune had a mind by now, the ominous lord's interest in him was dead-ended, and he no longer had any fundamental reason to know him.

"'A shell of a man is a stain on the earth, and the stain on the earth turns a scourge.'" Selzix flew off of his shoulder and flapped away swiftly as Garandou continued his tragic nursery rhyme, a scary foreshadowing on what was about to unfold for Tsukune. The dark master's draped arm stretched out at him, and black light began to crackle into a sizeable distortion that he effortlessly held. The ghoul cocked his head to the side as the miniature black hole in front of Garan enveloped more space. "'A scourge of the earth is an omen ill mirth, and 'ere the contretemps merge.' …Woe of greatest despondency that should I have to do this to you, Tsukune. The dead in this land walketh with blind retribution enough. We need no more grieving souls or grieving bodies with none to companion them."

The anomaly was massive – big enough to easily swallow two of the lochstress juveniles like the one that the other ghoul had previously disemboweled. The inverted vortex reflected murkily in Tsukune's new pair of eyes, and his mouth slowly completed a sadistic smile.

The spell was completely and flawlessly molded into a long, ever-rotating blade of cloud, radiating an enchanting ultra-violet, and with its caster, it brandished forward to obliterate the flesh-eater. Every now and again, a crackle of bright purple lightning escaped the creases in its brilliant structure. This would definitely destroy a ghoul.

Tsukune turned against Garan in that instant, slaughter blazing in his now colorless irises. Faster than he had ever been, he wrapped his hand into a knuckle and launched forth, prepared to beat his former host to death.

"Sepulchrum Veneficus: Maleficus Drill." The imposing wraith called to his incantation in Latin as Tsukune swiftly shambled his final advance. The phantasmal machine had completely materialized into a long, rotating beak of black metal with a buzz that, somehow, sounded more like the horrid scream of a woman being tortured. As long as the drill cranked, that scream continued to pierce. The violet lightning that had escaped it returned swiftly, wrapping around the spindle to add special spice to the impact. He threw the spinning lance out to the front of him to tear through Tsukune. The two neared each other quickly…

…But then something happened then that neither creature had intended.

The ghoul stopped short in his tracks. It was as if the wheels and gears had simply stopped working. Then Tsukune's shell form dropped its hands to its side, and hung its head up to gaze at the sky. All around him, a yet new aura rippled around him, and he was compelled to fall to his knees by an overburdening force. His would've-been executioner stopped the attack and held the humungous summoned tool off to the side. Only then, he observed silently.

Golden static, a new color, enveloped around the once-human boy. The scar cross-cutting his chest seeped with strange light. He clutched his broken holy locket tightly while the distorting aura continued in a violent reaction. Then, throwing his head up again, he let out a silent scream, and a powerful beam of lightning escaped his body, bursting for the heavens. It stretched into a great pillar, purging the sky of Paradise, tearing it into a great gap. Through the colored stars was the black of space.

The river seemed to sway away from Tsukune through the shock, and he finally ceased screaming and fell back down, taking all the earth around him into a crater with a twenty-foot diameter. There he lay in the center; eyes open numbly, his face emotionless. Yet despite his dead symptom, the golden lightning expanded around him in waves. Gold became scarlet. Scarlet became black. And into his body the black sank.

"What's going on down there, Garan no Danna, chuuuuu!" Selzix shouted from overhead, trying to keep from the wrong side of the lightshow.

The specter leaned to look down into the pit that his subject had created. His cold eyes flashed curiously, and then he finally concluded, "His body is rebelling."

More beams tore out of Tsukune's aura in electricity, and Tragedy was actually forced hold a free arm forward to make an impassible barrier around himself to keep from getting zapped too. Finally, the angry colors died down and left the boy alone.

The drilling mechanism that Garandou held dismantled spontaneously into various sprockets and gears, and he let the blackened metal fall and clank to the ground while his sight never left the motionless vessel below.

A sudden beat of life caused Tsukune's body to jump once with animation, and at last, he climbed out of the crater through clouds of dust, holding a hand over one eye in pain, or perhaps fatigue. No longer were his eyes emotionless or red. No longer had its iris a perfect sphere. Now, a four-sided star of a pupil peered out at the others, coated in the same refined color of the lightning that had surprisingly spared him. A faint gold glow beamed through at his onlookers, and if it wasn't inside of his head, the allure of it could have sold for a fortune.

"What…" His voice was quiet, but healthy. "What happened to me…?"

He looked up had his first sight; the torn garbs of the dark master. He received a cold stare back down at him in return. His face remained embedded safe and hidden beneath his cowl.

"My body…I can't feel it." His legs lost balance, and he fell to his knees again. It was like he was walking for the first time. "And then I can feel. I feel pain…constant pain. It's…unbearable! Unbearable. How do I stop it?"

"The remains of a human stripped of his merit of life, however keeping his mantle of flesh. They say that the status a ghoul must shoulder doomed to wand'r until Time and times are done is a pessimistic burden at best. Always in hunger, never in slumber. Because of the madness they were driven to, they hadst long since forgotten how to speak to the people that they once knew and were once like, and one by one, they each fell farther than any vampire would have ever dared to. Dost thou understand these words?" The greave clanked below his draped garments as he got down on one knee to get his face closer to Tsukune's, whose altered eyes glimmered with suspicion. Garan rested a skinless hand on his knelt knee and peered at his new friend very closely. "How one such as thee is able to speak still is a true blessing. It means that thou art not one of them. Not extensively. You still have…a ways to fall. Keep thy feet until that day comes." He spotted Tsukune holding his fractured locket to himself, and Garan grabbed the wrist that held it up.

"I…remember you. You were the one that dragged me out of…mmm…" Tsukune clutched his head in pain. He was suddenly given such a migraine attempting to remember any details from before the time he came. A high-pitched beep sounded through his mind, as if shocking him for ever trying.

"Tell me thy name." Garan pushed.

"My…n a m e . . ." He winced in greater pain yet. Pain that he never thought any person could feel. It was like his skull was slowly splitting apart. Fragmented images flashed in his thoughts, overheated and broken. Through the inner hell, he struggled for response. "I…can't…can't remember. My name… A name…I have forgotten… I hurt so much… So…much…"

"With me." Garandou tried to support him, clearly recognizing that Tsukune's dizziness was about to claim him. He grabbed him by the shoulders to steady his balance, and the boy swooned weakly. Still, he seemed no longer effected by the extreme chill that came crawling when those bony fingers touched him. "Tell me my name, then."

"Your…name…" His eyes closed with relaxation as the pain in his head dwindled ever so slightly. It almost completely drowned out the constant pain that he felt all over his body. "Ga-Garan…san…" He murmured peacefully. "Hai…hai, I remember…" He saw a double vision of the face shrouded in cloth in front of him. "Then why…can't I remember mine…?"

"Remember anything else? With me; let no fatigue claim thee so soon." He gave him a slight shake to keep him awake. And there Tsukune could have thought as hard as he had his entire life, but there was no avail. Everything up to the point he was in Paradise was gone. Not just his name. But everyone he might have possibly knew. Everything he might have possibly seen. It was as if he was just born into this world alone, but he knew deep down that there was something missing from him. In his heart and mind, he had lost everything in such short time, and more than anything, at whatever price to be paid, he wanted it all to be his again.

The only thing that he could bring himself to remember at the moment was, "…Two monsters. One monster walked as a man."

"Aye, aye marvelous. The lochstress and the ghoul…"

"The lochstress and the ghoul…" Tsukune confirmed the details. "The ghoul…" His starred eyes shot open. "The GHOUL!" He shot to his feet, forgetting temporarily about his body's condition. "Where is he?! He…he killed me!!!"

"Nay. 'Twas thy own hand. One ill turn deserves another, but you surely knew that. What was thy exact thought? What hast thou done?"

"I…did it…?" Another burst of headache came, this time striking him so hard that a short electric discharge escaped him. He crumbled down into the ground, pathetic, his head half met the ground. Sweat beads were glistening on his forehead while he fought back his blurring vision. "That's right…I did it…but to what end?" He shook to sit up, and glared at an invisible object off to the side. "The act had a purpose, why can't I remember it?! This is all so weird…" He looked up at one of the only people he now knew. "…You remember it, don't you?"

"…"

"…"

The two stared at each other for a bit longer.

"…Did I tell you my name, at least?" Tsukune asked again from the ground, quickly becoming impatient.

Instantly, a bat broke out in front of Tsukune's face, blocking all his view. "Remember my name, yosomono-kun?"

The reborn Tsukune seemed to lack the tolerance he once had, and he swatted Selzix out of eye line. With such tremendous strength used so effortlessly, the black bat shot into a hole at such fast rate that he just looked like a blurry bolt.

"My name!" He demanded Garan. "Two parts! A first name and a surname! If you know them, give them to me!"

"Or to what harm shall I come?" The wraith challenged.

Tsukune's four jagged ends in his pupil seemed to shrink. "You're joking. You won't tell me?"

"Never have I said that. I merely asked what would become of me if I refused. Or if I could give a title that was not truly thine. Hmmm…a good name for a pet, perhaps. I rather enjoy…Spark. It befits thy…" He looked upon the Youkai Academy student and stifled a chuckle at the effects of his many lightning discharges upon his now disproportional tower of hair. "…character."

Grumbling in a curse, Tsukune patted his hair back to normal shape and size, and looked at him in a scowl. "You and I do not share the same sense of humor." He concluded darkly. "Lend me my name."

"So austere hast thou personality become. That miraculous little renewal hath left more than just physical traits so violently tempered."

"Oh come now, Danna." Selzix flapped back to his perch in between two long spinal branches clinging to his master's shoulder. "Just give the poor kid his name. He's been put through a lot, chuu."

"Hark." He finally replied. "I shall do this for thee, child. I shall present to thee a name."

Tsukune got on guard. "What do you mean a name? I demanded my name."

"This thing, thy name, it contributes much to thy foundations. Do not make the assumption that everything I do is done without condition." His whisper had become a hiss. "Do not."

A light gleamed coldly through Tsukune's changed eyes.

"Besides, shouldeth thou thank of me? The name I offer thee is a name that held much of thy history before thou ended up here, with us. A name that may be the key to many more of the answers you might seek. If one's desire is to reclaim thy memory and severed history, then one must first know where to begin. And this is your beginning." The bones under Garan's robes crackled noisily as he stood up and completely covered the light of the distant sunset behind him. "Welcome to undeath."

Moka ran alone through the hallway of her dorm, her shoes clattering across the tiled floor. A way to see Tsukune again? There was hardly time to breath at a chance like this. Two days had passed already, and she felt dry without Tsukune's companionship.

She hustled passed a sizeable window as she descended a couple flights of stairs. If any of the other girls had awoke from the commotion of the clapping echoes she carelessly made as she rushed, they would be too slow to ever find out who or what had made it. She darted straight through the main floor, through the lobby, and out the door. Her rush to the Board Exorcist Chairman's office took her through a starry night out on the academy campus, past sizeable healthy trees and a well-tended yard. Her heart was thumping hard by now.

'Tsukune. Just wait for me. I'm coming.'

While she ran up the straight soil path to the largest building in Youkai Academy, she paid hardly any attention to the shorter witch that merged a path to meet up with her. She was huffing like crazy to keep up with the driven vampire.

"You must work out on your Saturdays." She gasped, holding up her hat to keep it from falling off. "Desu~ and Stalker-girl are already up there, but the Board Director said that he wouldn't start until everyone who was interested came. It's really weird that he would let people into his office this late at night."

"The Headmaster found Tsukune?" Moka asked for good reassurance.

"Uh-huh. He spent all of his free time staking him out. Whatever interest he has is beyond me."

Moka looked at her from the side and then looked on. They were up at the school headmaster's doorstep by now. Wasting no time, the elegant S-Class vampire grabbed both handles of his humungous doors at once, and with her incredible strength, she swung them outward with such force that a wave of wind nearly swept the petite loli behind her off to a distant land.

They ran inside, through a grand hall outfitted with glass chandeliers and ominous portraits that possibly involved Youkai Academy and its history. But everything was of little value to Moka's eyes, and she sped off to leave everything as it were. They climbed flights of stony spiral stairways until finally they reached a door with a translucent glass window; the name BOARD DIRECTOR stuck to it bold and neatly.

For the first and only time in her whole prompt trip, she stopped completely at the door, but strangely, even though she stopped running, her heart rate increased ever more. The anxiety made her almost feel like passing out, but she knew that fainting was for anemia, and she preferred to remain conscious for this.

Through her lightheadedness, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the door and slowly opened it. She stuck her head in and looked around cautiously at the sacred, hollowed ground that was the Headmaster's office. An unnatural bright green fire was going at his fireplace; the only source of light in the room besides otherwise the Board Director's ominous glowing eyes, now peering at the two knew guests as they walked silently through.

The room was enormous – an office even bigger than the entrance lobby, more space than anyone could ever need. As they watched the neat white marble ground, a rounded seal was already prepared with runes of some of the most advanced magicks. Layer upon layer, detail upon detail, it waited for Moka to approach it…seemingly it waited to serve its purpose and reveal the person of the hour that everyone wanted to see.

Around it stood all of his other admirers: Kurumu, Mizore, Ruby at her white superior's side. Even her sister, Shuzen Kokoa, who exhibited no personal interest in Tsukune at all, had come as well. Her presence unnerved the older of the sisters evermore, but compared to the exhilaration of seeing her closest friend again, it paled.

Following closely behind her, almost hiding, ambled the young witch prodigy Yukari to meet up with the others.

When they joined, the Director was the first to speak. Unlike Garandou, the Board Exorcist Chairman did not speak in whispers, but with a bold voice that carried an ominous air. "At last you have arrived. I can hardly recall the previous time you even saw the door of my abode. The surroundings are to your tastes, I hope?"

The two girls that had just entered both gave him one courteous bow, and Moka answered. "Yes, thank you. We heard the news. We got here as fast as we could."

"Well it couldn't have been fast enough." Mizore replied. "We were just starting to feel anxious."

"…But," the vampire responded, "I was the one who was rushing."

"Sometimes," the yuki onna stated, "It's worse to wait standing still than to wait while running."

"I'm sorry to inconvenience everybody, but I never suggested that anyone would wait for me."

"No, that would be me." The exorcist chimed in. "All of you have your unique ties to Tsukune-kun, therefore it seemed interesting to gather all of you here. And so we waited."

"Where did you find him?" Kurumu asked, staring into the seal on the ground. An ethereal black with white stars, floated around the giant plate. "Through this looking-glass?"

"That 'looking-glass' as you called is a mechanism entrusted to me by the M.W.M. of Youkai Academy."

"M.W.M…?"

"Ministry of Witches Magistry." Yukari informed. "A council board of the most sagacious witches, clerics, and oracles seeing to the magical use of all witches everywhere – in both the human world and the monsters'. They are also in charge of all artifacts and tools of magical property."

"Director-sama – you were actually entrusted a relic by the chamberlains of that court? That's quite the accomplishment." Ruby spoke in wonder.

"Yes…sometimes it's good to be me." The exorcist grinned. "Now let's see if I remember where Tsukune-kun was put…"

He turned to look down at the window that was supposedly going to reveal a location. The girls gathered around close and leaned their heads in; each pair of emerald, amethyst, and sapphire eyes shrank in wonder at the glowing lines of the enchanted seal.

"If this old memory serves me correct…the universal charter for his location was 666-8311000…aaaah yes…here we go."

"Work your magic, Director-sama." Ruby called from his side. "You've got this!"

The exorcist's smile deepened, and he held a hand forward to the eye of the window and chanted with holy tongue.

"Falsus fenestra , unus - pars speculum , commodo nos eyes amo vestri." The window came alive. A bright maelstrom shone through the middle, causing the girls to shield their eyes while the exorcist continued. The eye inside the gem of Moka's Rosario seemed to expand in anticipation. "Per vestri celestial vas sol solis quod luna , trado unto nos vestri specialis. Ostendo nos humanus ut eram quondam Monasteriense. In Paradise is socius. Take nos…"

A great ethereal flame burst asunder through the rounded frame, and all of the girls screamed as it roared past them. If it weren't phantasmal, it would have scorched everyone in the room. The Chairman didn't even flinch, and the invisible force blew at his robes viciously. The cross around his neck held resiliently. "That was…unexpected."

"What happened?! I thought for a moment we were gonna get our faces blown off!" Kokoa complained loudly.

"Director-sama…what happened?" Ruby asked timidly, not wanting to believe that the headmaster that she looked up to failed at something.

"Wh-where's Tsukune?" Kurumu asked as both she and Mizore had their hands rested against the glass.

"Now that couldn't be right. The Sukai Mirror couldn't possibly be that shy. Unless…oh my."

"What's wrong?" Moka already had worried tears welling in her eyes. "Tsukune's okay, isn't he???"

"There could be a…slight hiccup in the hymn. I could change it and see if it works…" His white star eyes turned to the girls darkly. "But everyone…I want you to pray that this will not work."

"Pray that it won't work? I don't like the sound of that." Mizore murmured.

"Director-sama," Moka was in such a state of concern that she was almost inclined to touch the man's arm to get his attention. He she looked him in the eyes as hardest as she could, and finished, "What happened to Tsukune?"

He shook his head from under the hood and proceeded to change the recitation, "Ostendo nos Monasteriense ut eram quondam humanus. In Paradise is socius. Sit requiro nobis." With a last draw of breath, everyone's hearts raced except his as he finished the final verse. "…Take nos ut him."

The mirror's light shined again. But this time, it raced across lands, from mountain ranges to the vast reaches of space, through colored dimensions, into a land with many colors. At last, it ended at a great river.

Standing next to it, speaking to a tall stranger in a tattered black cloak, was a boy not to be mistaken by anyone watching for anyone else.

"It's…" Kurumu and Mizore's expressions were still with shock, and their eyes trembled. While Yukari threw her witch's hat up with cheer, and Ruby revealed an accomplished smile, the snow girl and the succubus threw each other a half hug in extreme joy. "TSUKUNEEEEEE!!!"

"We found him at last!"

Kokoa, taking no part in the cheer, just crossed her arms and turned up her nose, facing away with closed eyes.

Moka covered her mouth with hands shivering with excitement and relief. "Tsukune…"

Almost everyone was shouting with enough volume to awaken both dorms around them. When two days had seemed like two months, they had found him, realizing how bland that school life really was when there was nothing to draw interest to. But without even questioning the person that their love interest was now speaking to, they were content to finally find him.

But the party crashed almost instantly on sign of the Board Exorcist Chairman's words:

"Just as I feared."

Everyone froze in awkward positions dance positions and turned their heads slowly to see the school's now brooding leader.

"Eeeeeeeh?"

"The spell chant was indeed misinterpreted."

"What do you mean?" They all asked almost simultaneously.

"I will explain. But first, Ruby-san, would you kindly explain to the other girls the Nature of this mirror?"

"I-I will." The eldest of two witches rested her hands in front of her and bowed once, concerned for why this lesson was needed. "The Sukai Mirror, founded by Sir Eldritch, a judge councilman that served the Ministry of Witches Magistry during a religious Reformation in the Middle Ages. It is a special artifact that answers only to Latin words spoken, and a base description of who or what it is that the person using it wishes to see, and a location of the desired scenario. Basically, the magic mirror from Snow White made real. Also, it only answers to royalty or powerful magic-users."

Board Chairman instinctively took over. "Thank you. Now here's the situation." Everyone had their ears tuned in toward him, even the once uninterested Kokoa. "What I said to the Mirror was in Latin. A verse of the incantation I first used was 'Ostendo nos humanus ut eram quondam Monasteriense', meaning 'Show us the human that was once monster.'"

"Wait, this Tsukune guy is a human?" Kokoa practically choked with the reality. Turning to a fidgeting Moka, she concluded, "You have sunk unspeakably low, sister."

Moka ignored her sister's unpleasant chides and silently pleaded to the Chairman to continue. He did.

"The way we actually ended up locating Tsukune-kun turned out to be the true complication. You see…when I changed the passage, I used 'Ostendo nos Monasteriense ut eram quondam humanus'. In short, I switched the words 'human' and 'monster' with each other when I was describing him to the window."

"'Human' and 'monster' were swapped…" Ruby pondered. Her eyes shot open in shock upon figuring out what the Chairman had meant, but before she could say, Mizore took it from her with a bitter voice.

"'Show us the monster that was once human.' …Oh no…"

"But it seems that it is in fact true. Who or whatever the Tsukune is that you all now have your eyes on is clearly not human. Has my little gift broken off from him so soon?"

"Wait…are you insinuating that he's a ghoul?!" Kurumu spat.

The exorcist crossed his arms. "I am not insinuating that he is a human. The Mirror never lies. However, often times have people deceived themselves by jumping to conclusion. If you wish, you may resume your watch over him and see. I have accomplished what I felt was right." (By 'right', he means 'interesting') "So I now depart to my room." He turned and lightly clicked in step towards the door. "For all of your own good, I recommend not overstaying here. Or you will be in no condition to attend class. Ruby-san, do keep a weary eye on the others so that they do not take anything with them that they shouldn't."

He closed the door behind them, and the girls got to their knees to continue peering at Tsukune, who they could only hope hadn't changed.

"This is such a disaster," they heard his voice clearly through the mirror. It was like watching television. "How can I be dead? If I were a ghoul, wouldn't I be…unlike myself?"

"Fromst thou personality tuned, I shall say yay."

From the window, Kurumu turned her head and whispered to the ice girl next to her in the dark. "Who's this guy?"

"Shh. Trying to watch."

"I couldn't have been born here. Tell me my name." Tsukune beckoned again.

Garandou was about to speak again, but a great rumble shook the land, and everyone about lost balance. Then Tsukune held the ground firm, and shouted, "Wh-what the hell is this?!"

They locked firm to the soil until the massive earthquake subsided. A great darkness slowly stretched over the sky, and a new moon with a bloody red ring soon hung high. An eclipse.

"Ah. They are…earlier than usual." Garan announced to himself.

"Ga-Garandou No Danna! We have to hurry from here! It's them, chuu!"

The girls each looked at each other from their watchpoint. Overhearing the name, some repeated to themselves curiously.

"From the boy's sudden awakening hast all of Paradise caught. It must have triggered a reaction. The Hills emerge. They come."

"Who?" Tsukune asked, his eyes shrunk with startle. "Who comes?"

"That is an excellent question!" Selzix shouted as he flapped furiously. "Folks I personally think you don't want to meet, chuu!"

"That doesn't entirely answer my question!" Tsukune yelled, but it was drowned out by the shifting of earth and the many cries and moans of something that made his heart drop.

Very, very slowly, Garan and his pet bat creaked their heads to face each other. And at the same time, they announced nonchalantly,

"Ooooooooooooooh my."

Several hundred arms instantly burst asunder from the River, and from the earth all around; some normal, some with tattered sleeves, some semi-decomposed, some completely skeletal. Water and soil alike flew up into the blackened sky, and everyone took to the tall trees around to keep from being clawed in by the army of corpses digging their way out of the surface.

All of the youkai girls watching from the window were now in jaw-gaping horror. "Oh my God! What's happening?"

"The ground!" Yukari shouted. "It's coming alive!"

Tsukune stood firm on one of the stronger branches of a tree, while the dark master seemed to levitate around another with his tiny companion.

"So now what happens?" Tsukune called over to the shroud.

"If thou seeketh the name I have to give thee, dispose of this rabble."

"What??! Me – take all of those things down below?? …There are hundreds of them!"

They waited in the trees a bit longer while the many, many ghouls down below were now scratching off the bark of the trunks that held their newfound pray. Almost every face had a horrid feature; from a missing eye to exposed jawbone. Some were wounded and bled grotesquely, while others were old and dusty. It was like finding yourself in the middle of a zombie horror flick – something that no one wants to star in.

"Wait…" Tsukune announced, looking down with his arms crossed in thought. The dead moaned and wheezed loudly from below. "I hear them. It's like I understand them."

"Eeeeaaah? You mean you can communicate what the Ones Beneath the Hill are moaning?" Selzix asked.

Tsukune nodded. "Not everything, but—"

"What do they want??!!"

They all gazed down as some of the front line corpses proceeded to claw up the trees. They reached up longingly for Tsukune. Snapping his head back frantically, he asked the two off at the side, "Do you want the long version or the short version?" He asked quickly.

"There's no time, chuu!!!"

Just as swiftly, Tsukune answered nonchalant, "Short version it is. They're very hungry and they want to eat us."

The closest ghoul to him cracked its incomplete jaw open, groaning painfully for him. Its opaque eyes dripped something like milk. With hardly any choice left, Tsukune snapped his head back to look at the creature that he knew had been the one to tear him from wherever he was from.

"You said that if I attack these things, you'll give me a name from the past I can't remember?"

"…'Tis the degree."

Tsukune's scar on his bare chest rippled with strange sparks. The once-living human took an empty breath and dove off the branch to crash into the many unsuspecting carcasses below. "A deal's a deal!!!" was the last thing he said on his way down.

"Tsukune!!!" Moka shouted over the mirror, watching her friend plummet to obliteration. But it was no use. No one would hear from his side.

"Has he lost it?!" Kokoa bursted after.

Tsukune's body glowed with a radiant red electrical build up, and upon impacting the first ghoul below, a shock wave blew the closest group into the water. The explosion of lightning flashed so brightly that it almost filled the girls' entire view of the mirror.

"Woah!" Yukari was first to express her astonishment. "Since when could Tsukune do that?"

Rising slowly off the gravel, Tsukune mumbled almost drowsily with something similar. "I didn't know I could do that."

An assailant limped in blind hunger for him, and in the slightest burst of scarlet around him, the attacker seemed to freeze. Acting quickly, Tsukune threw a punch towards the seemingly slow-moving creature, and lightning instinctively guided his fist. It collided against the broken being's ribcage, and thunder sounded out as it sailed off in a charged stream of light. As the static carried the body, it impacted a larger group of the Hill, and exploded in a brilliant flash, taking all of its friends with it.

"Ah." Tsukune sank to one knee. "I'm not used to fighting like this. I'm draining myself."

From the embankment, he saw at least half a hundred more ghouls rip out through the water and approach him with madness in their glassy eyes.

Tsukune looked mournfully down at the broken holy locket in this hand as they lumbered forth. Clutching the chain tight, he glared intently up at the undead crowd with his brand new four-tipped pupils. He held both hands off to the side, as if about to contain something. "A deal…"

White static crackled to his hands. He wasn't built to last long yet, but he wanted to make the last ounce of power always count. As the orb of power spiraled in his hands, he jumped high up in the air and threw it down at the River as hard as he could.

"Is a deal!!!"

The bright blue surge of raw power rained upon the many corpses below in one devastating streak, and the entire crowd flew to and fro with Tsukune's ruthless attack.

A beam of light streamed forth out of the Sukai Mirror from the attack, so great that all of Tsukune's admirers were rendered temporarily blind.

"His level of power is voluminous!" Ruby cried, covering her face with an arm. "Is this guy…is this guy really Tsukune-kun?!"

The one she spoke of was now down on two knees. As he was forced to all fours by his body, he coughed up a mouthful of blood. The River in front of him that he had once found so beautiful was now a tundra of complete ice; spikes and pillars of his attackers frozen and fused into it.

"I over did it…" Tsukune told himself. "…again."

He crouched down into a crumpled position to recover, but a shuffle of gravel behind him stopped his respite dead.

Looking back weakly over his shoulder, he spotted one more ghoul looming with its head hung to the side, staring blankly down at him with a half-exposed skull in his face, and an empty socket on that side.

With a perfectly human spare eye, he didn't instantly attack Tsukune, but instead moaned out something that Tsukune had just vaguely understood.

"Damn, kid. …You're good."

He leered back up at the corpse with a proud eye, and responded dryly, "Hehe…thanks."

In flash instant, the ghoul lunged for him with his jaw hung wide open to chew the hybrid apart, but Tsukune was faster by far, and he slung his entire body around with one arm to the ground, viciously kicking the final foe's head clear off of his shoulders. It flew far off, and Tsukune crumbled back down to the ground, his last ounce of energy spent.

Blood seeped out to the side of his face as his eyes stared emptily on with his head to the ice he created. He had accomplished his mission. He would finally learn the name that Garan had dangled over him.

Besides the tortured cries of lost souls wandering in the distant night unaware of his presence, everything around him was silent.

On the other side of the mirror that spied on him, all of the girls were absolutely speechless at what had just transpired. Like the others, Moka was frozen on the spot, gaping in absolute silence at her closest friend's now apoplectic body. The aura around him had depleted from him.

But amidst whatever shock there may be on the outside, a voice keeping quietly to itself from the relic around Moka's neck echoed from the slit pupil of her Rosario gem.

'Oh. Tsukune…' it giggled with amusement. 'You've picked up some new tricks…haven't you?'