A/N: Dammit, this thing needs an ending. I'm sorry I fell off the bandwagon. Summer vacation for the win. Read, review if you're still out there. In other news, I'm considering rewriting this story like I did for CoS. Contemplation. What do you think of an overhaul?

By evening the headaches had started, and Jun was relegated to lying helplessly beneath the stairwell where he had waked less than a day before. It had seemed for a time that the youngest trooper had been making strides toward recovery—he spent an hour after lunch testing the strength of his atrophied muscles, feeling pleasantly surprised that things were not as bad as they seemed on the surface—but that had ended when he collapsed suddenly, clutching his head and writhing. In the moment he could not describe the pain, he could not produce even the simplest of words, and every attempt he had made at articulating what was wrong came out as a helpless squeak.

Most of the pain lasted no more than half an hour and though it decreased in intensity it never faded altogether. By dusk Jun was able to speak and uncover his eyes. The whole time Chiharu never left his side, and Seiji was present for most of the ordeal, but by the time he was ready to explain what he had felt he was surrounded by the concerned faces of friends that did as much to unnerve him as they did to reassure him.

"It's throbbing," Jun said quietly as he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. "That's all right now, but earlier it was easily the worst pain I've ever experienced. It was like someone was shoving a hot knife in my eye and twisting it around." He shivered slightly, a reaction that did not go unnoticed. "I—I'm sorry to worry you all, I don't know what happened."

If the others were honest with themselves, they had no idea either.

"Either way, I want you to stay down for a while," Chiharu ordered. "I thought you were stroking out or something, I don't want to run the risk of you hurting yourself any more than you already have."

Initially Jun had been angry at the order, but recognized that it was for his own good and Chiharu genuinely meant well. He accepted her command with little hesitation, took dinner beneath the steps, and grudgingly agreed to allow Shin and Chiharau to monitor him as he slept.

The two came and went in shifts throughout the night, reporting to Jun the tentative plans that Ryo, Seiji, Toma, and Shu were making by the campfire. The troopers were planning to sit tight until Jun could get back on his feet, at which point they would raid the spire and free the captives that Ryo and Seiji had found. That was all Jun heard of the briefing, however; he was too preoccupied by the constant dull ache in his head and had to struggle not to panic any time Shin entered the room. Despite his best efforts to control his emotions he still felt a pervasive fear, an anxiety that twisted his gut and warped his sense of safety. More, he was afraid for whatever was happening to him and afraid that he might be summoned by the Arbiter at any minute.

Sleep came in fitful bursts, never restful, and several times Jun woke to see Chiharu or Shin staring at him with deep concern. Eventually he gave up on the venture altogether, deciding much to the chagrin of his keepers that he would sleep whenever his body forced him to and no sooner. His dreams had been full of the Arbiter and his many methods of torture, both psychological and physical, and Jun knew that if his mind was capable of producing dreams they would be terrifying. Intrepid as he tried to be, there was no way he could relive the horrors he had experienced without complete breakdown. He had been there all too recently.

"At what point are you going to explain what's going through your mind?" asked Shin in the predawn hours as Jun was in the midst of picking one of the scabs developing on the burns on his chest.

"What do you want to know?" replied Jun candidly, but he did not look up. Truth be told he had been waiting for someone to ask him to explain. He had scarcely been able to understand what had happened himself, and he wondered if perhaps he explained it to someone else his experiences would become clear.

"What do you want to tell me?"

"I'm terrified."

Jun examined Shin's expression carefully after the admission, reading it for signs of judgment. There was nothing. Not even eye contact. The warrior of water simply stared ahead, his eyes locked on some point in the distance.

"As long as the Arbiter has my kanji orb he can summon me at will. Did you know that?" Jun continued quietly. "That's how he got me to Nasté's that night; he manipulated me into showing up there. Those four men that were with me—" Jun choked on the final word, remembering the way that they had died. "They were manipulated as well."

This drew Shin's undivided attention, and he looked to Jun with a blank expression, nonjudgmental.

"I resisted the Arbiter then," Jun said. "I don't know how I did it, but it was just the one time. I was so scared. It was when I told you that he had taken me, and then he pulled me back. When he pulled me back he—" Jun removed his hand from the scab and regarded his chest achingly. The blisters from the Arbiter's white hot energy bolt had just begun the process of healing; the skin was still ugly and rough and tender. He swallowed hard, glanced at Shin shyly, and then returned his eyes to the ground. "All of the men that were with me that night were struck dead on the spot. It was like he melted them, and by the time it was said and done all that remained of them was this putrid pool of…body… Flesh and bones and blood. That was all. Meat."

Shin did not know what to say but knew that the story could not go without response. "Are you okay?"

At once the torrent recognized how stupid the question sounded, but Jun seemed not to mind. He shrugged. "I still think about them sometimes. Whenever I close my eyes I see them, or some variation of them. Once in a while it's you, and Ryo and Toma and the others. The Arbiter made me see a lot of horrible things and the images won't get out of my head. I don't know how to get them out. Any time one of you guys sneaks up on me or I wake up and you're there I have to fight against panic. And then when the panic is gone I get angry, always angry, I don't know how to get rid of it. I hate myself for acting like a child—I can't control myself. The emotions just won't stop; they're beating at the inside of my head like machine gun fire, bang bang bang all back to back to back, one after the other. I feel like I'm going insane."

By the end of the monologue Jun's voice was quavering, teetering again on the edge of madness, and his hands had once again found their way to his head.

"Jun?" Shin said quietly, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Are you all right?"

"This damned headache won't go away," he said with a wince, his voice full of fear and frustration, and Shin recognized the glisten of wetness on the boy's face. "It's killing me—"

Jun doubled over, face between his knees and clutching his head in his hands. He trembled so violently that his teeth chattered. He tried suppressing one cry that came out regardless of his efforts, sounding more as a sob than an expression of pain, and then Shin was there as always, hands pressed firmly on Jun's back in the only comforting gesture he could think of.

"Do I need to get Chiharu?" Shin asked and Jun shook his head. "Are you going to faint?"

Again Jun shook his head. He hadn't even understood what Shin had asked; he only knew to respond in the negative. His ears were ringing, head was swimming, and even when he closed his eyes all he could see was blinding white light. Deep in the recesses of his mind he felt an odd compulsion to move but could not tell for certain what it was, and the sensation soon faded against an overwhelming wall of self-pity and self-loathing and rage. He tried to speak and failed, he felt Shin press his hands more firmly against his shivering body, and he focused on simply breathing. If he could get his body under control he could suppress the pain.

Two minutes later Jun was unconscious.

Ϫ

The Arbiter fumed. He clutched the fractured kanji orb in his hand, holding it so tightly that it was small wonder it did not shatter. Since the loss of the boy he had been able to summon forth the armor with ease, but could not summon Jun to his side even after many forceful attempts. There had been no response at all, as though the connections between the armor and those bound to it had been completely severed, and he could find no explanation.

So the grand spirit had humbled himself enough to seek reasoning from the one person he had hoped not to need: The Guardian of Souls.

The benevolent spirit sat on a comfortable chair in a small but well-furnished cell, its hands folded in its lap and a blank expression on its face. The Guardian seemed no worse for the wear, considering the length of his imprisonment, but still the Arbiter worried that the Guardian would hesitate to provide any information after its maltreatment.

"Why won't the shade come to my command?" demanded the Arbiter, rolling the kanji orb in his palm.

The Guardian shrugged, noncommittal. "There is no good explanation to come from the information you've provided. If the boy is alive and unharmed he should be forced to heed the call."

The Arbiter glared at his counterpart scornfully. He had made neither mention of the psychological torture to which Jun had been submitted, nor the weakness of his body upon his escape. He had not been concerned with such things because he believed that as long as Jun was alive he could be summoned through the power of the orb.

"What if the boy was harmed?"

"As long as he exists in physical form he should respond in some way," the Guardian replied. "You should have sent him to me for evaluation prior to joining yourself to the armor."

"That's none of your concern."

The Guardian shrugged. "The boy as a whole is my concern. He is my chosen, after all, and I can't let him die until the moment is right. You know that."

"What would cause him to disregard the summons?" The Arbiter said, his anger renewed. There could be no deviating from the topic, not now.

"The call is telepathy," said the Guardian. "The only reason that he would not receive it and would not respond to it was if there was some blockage. An inhibition, static, something keeping his mind from receiving the message."

It had been so long since the Arbiter had inhabited a physical body that he could scarcely recall the sensation of emotion. Still, in retrospect he could imagine the hell that he had wrought on his prisoner and regretted it in no small capacity. The last time he had seen the boy Jun had been almost completely unintelligible, mumbling and scarcely realizing that the Arbiter had even been present. He had not responded to questions and any time he was touched Jun would recoil frantically. Could it be that there had been nothing left?

"How easy would it be to ruin him?"

Again the Guardian shrugged. "Mortals have a reputation for weakness."

The Arbiter cursed, turned, and left the cell, slamming and locking the doorway behind him. He had no choice now but to find the boy manually, but until such a time as the search was successful he would simply have to continue bombarding him with commands. With luck, something would get through.

Ϫ

"We can't just keep sitting here," Ryo said hotly. "Eventually the foot soldiers will get over their fear of this place and when they do we're going to be swarmed."

"But we can't go anywhere," Toma replied, and he looked to the other troopers gathered around the campfire for support. Only Shin nodded his approval. Shu and Seiji made no move to indicate who they supported, if anyone.

"Jun is in no condition to go anywhere," Shin added. "He can barely get to his feet—not two hours ago I had to help him go to the bathroom. He's a wreck."

Ryo furrowed his brow and glanced toward the ruined stairwell where Jun had been all but incapacitated for two days. Shin had explained that the cause of the problem was headaches, but if the others were left to judge by the occasional cries of pain and distress they would have concluded that something much worse was wrong. More than once they had heard the boy yelling incoherently, madly, which was even more disturbing than the sounds of agony.

"What do we do, then?" Ryo asked, genuinely at a loss.

Shin shrugged. "I don't know. Sit tight and hope that Jun continues fighting off the Arbiters advances, I guess. Hope he gets stronger."

"Not to sound rude, but that's a horrible idea," Shu remarked. "If we sit around and do nothing then nothing gets done. Simple as that."

"And what do you suggest we do?" Seiji asked.

"I think we ought to go find the Arbiter and get rid of him."

Shin scoffed, upset. "We can't! I've already explained that as long as Jun is so intimately connected to the spirit and the armor we can't know what will happen if we kill the Arbiter."

"Has anyone asked Jun what he thinks we ought to do?" said Toma wisely. "Seems to me that he should have some say in the decision."

All eyes turned to Shin and he shrugged. "I haven't been able to get a lot out of him. I can try to talk to him again if he's awake, but the last few times I've tried for conversation he just works himself up to hysteria."

Shin's reluctance was not unfounded. Jun's episodes had been intense, though during the space between the boy could speak lucidly. All the same he was prone to panic at the slightest insecurity and drive himself back to pain. It was difficult to ask him questions, so much so that Shin had nearly given up. He had left the task of caring for the wounded warrior to Chiharu, who was infinitely more patient and more of a comfort to Jun than any of the troopers could hope to be.

Chiharu had found that the key to alleviating Jun's stress was to keep his mind away from his current predicament. As a result the two of them had spent hours talking about mundane things. Most of the conversation revolved around school and work, though Chiharu had taken time to talk to Jun about her family, her future hopes, and her past. In return, Jun explained in full detail how he had become involved with the armors and the story behind Arago's initial invasion.

If anything the conversation had seemed to lighten Jun's spirits, and he had laughed openly several times.

"I can see why you'd want to keep to yourself," Chiharu said coolly after the conversation had died down. "But all the same it's a little bit sad. You're a good guy."

Jun smiled and shifted positions, propped himself up against one of the support beams. "I'm glad I've explained myself sufficiently for you."

"All you had to do was tell me you were a superhero."

Jun laughed at that.

"I'm being serious!" Chiharu protested, but she was laughing as well. "If I had known that you were busy saving the world I would have left you alone!"

"Well now you know, and you're still bugging me."

Chiharu blushed and leaned back. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

The two fell into comfortable silence that lasted a while, and it seemed for a time that the two were content with the company alone. After a time Jun's expression changed, and he seemed forlorn, contemplative, and Chiharu touched a hand to his shoulder.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry that I underestimated you," Jun said. "I didn't know that someone outside of…this…could ever understand what it's like to be involved with armors and demons and sorcerers."

"Well, if it makes you feel better I'm still not sure I quite understand," Chiharu replied, and she moved close to Jun. "But the good thing is that it doesn't really matter, does it? You're still you, regardless of whether or not you've got armor, aren't you? And I like who you are."

Jun didn't know what to say.

"What? Why is that so hard for you to believe?" Chiharu asked. "Look at me, silly!"

Jun looked at her sheepishly. She was closer to him than before, so close that he could smell her hair, a mix of sweat and the remnants of expensive shampoo. Immediately he felt self conscious: If she had begun to show signs of filth he couldn't imagine how he must have smelled after all he'd been through.

"I'm sorry if I smell bad," he stammered dumbly, feeling awkward and uncertain.

She kissed him, and everything stopped. In a moment all the pain was gone, the fear, the nether realm, lost in her. He pressed into her, felt his heartbeat speed up, felt the sweet rush of adrenaline. This was what he needed to forget. This was what he needed to block it all out.

A year of tension was broken.

He felt his hands on him, pressed against his stomach, pressed against his face, exploring. All it served was to draw him in. How long had it been since he had last felt this way, he wondered, how long since he'd taken the time to focus on a girl? Too long…and now was as good a time as any.

Endorphins granted him enough strength to pull her atop him. His hands crept around her waist, up her back, holding her in place.

Neither noticed that Shin had entered their space.

"You have got to be joking me."

Chiharu jumped with a start, pressed her hand against Jun's chest, and Jun cried out and winced in sudden pain, clutching at the place where his shirt had pressed into the wounds. He couldn't bring himself to look at Shin, both for shame and agony, but Chiharu stared at him doe-eyed and horrified, until she realized that Jun was hurt.

"Oh, God! I'm sorry," she cried and practically fell from Jun's lap. "Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

"I'm sure he'll be fine," Shin said, irritated. "Sorry to interrupt your procreation, but I need to speak to Jun. Alone. Why don't you go get some air, it seems a little hot in here."

Chiharu nodded and stood, made her way to the exit while keeping as much space between herself and Shin as she possibly could. When she was gone Shin rounded on Jun angrily.

"Nasté said that you had a reputation as a bit of a man-whore," he said, "and it's not a wonder why. Are you even capable of being around a girl without wanting to—"

"I'm sorry," Jun replied, embarrassed. "I don't know what came over me. She started it, I just—couldn't stop?"

Shin waved the stammering explanation away. "We have pressing issues. We need a plan." He paused and examined Jun closely. "Are you okay? How is your head?"

"I had honestly forgotten all about it," Jun replied. "Right now it's all quiet."

"Good to know. All you need to clear your mind is a girl."

Jun glared at Shin, and the warrior of water knew he had crossed a line.

"At any rate, I need your input. We're a bunch of sitting ducks here, we have to move, but we're not sure where to go or what to do. Our original plan won't work, not with you in your condition. There's no way we can storm the spire and take the Arbiter down. We don't know how to proceed, and Toma suggested that someone come get your opinion."

Jun seemed momentarily contemplative, but responded almost immediately. "I need to find the Guardian of Souls. He's the Arbiter's counterpart, a good spirit, he's helpful. I met him once—well once that I remember—and he advised me about the use of the armor. I think he healed me."

"Where is he?"

Jun shook his head. "I don't know. The Arbiter told me that he had gotten rid of him. But I don't think the Guardian is dead—you can't kill a spirit, can you? They're already dead."

Shin sighed. "Then how do you suggest we find him?"

"He came to me," Jun explained. "A year ago, when you were trapped in the spire. I was fighting one of the Arbiter's henchmen and fell into a pool of…stuff. I don't know. Thick liquid, I don't know what it was. But I think I drowned. And I think that the Guardian brought me back."

This was a story Shin had not heard before, and he found himself intrigued. He knew that Jun had gone through quite the ordeal during his rescue efforts, but for him to have died and come back was entirely new.

"So what you're telling me is that you've got to die before this thing will come out?"

Jun shrugged. He recalled his last encounter with the Guardian, when the spirit had explained his saving Jun's life once before, when he was a child, when his parents died. Indeed it seemed that the only way to lure the Guardian out was to flirt with death.

"You're right," Jun said. "That's a stupid idea. I feel okay. I've felt okay for a couple of hours now. Maybe the Arbiter has given up trying to get in my head. I don't hear him calling any more. Maybe I've just got to be emotional as hell to block him out. I'll be okay. Let's go track him down."

Shin leaned against a support beam and crossed his arms. "You're sure you're not planning anything stupid or irresponsible? Nothing heroic?"

Jun shook his head, though a plot was beginning to form in the back of his mind. "I'm sure."