Apocalypso (follow-up to DoaG)

[3kul]

((Basically this is a short series of stories to explain what exactly my large number of characters are doing now that the world is coming to an end. Just because I'm 100% certain that the Dojo will be saved in the end doesn't mean that they will be, so I decided that this might be a good idea to try out.

If you're struggling to get an idea of the timeline for it, the stories begin with HollowEyes leaving Ensichrys and co. with HisLordship and going off to sort out other stuff.))

[3kul]

HollowEyes left the Cave quickly and quietly, leaving things up to HisLordship for now. Not something that the Parasitian Second-in-Command felt very comfortable doing, but it couldn't really be helped. HisLordship had some good plans, and HollowEyes had some secret friends that needed help. What he was about to do was not something he wanted the Council to know about, but hopefully the impending total annihilation of Blackstar would serve as enough of a distraction for him to slip away unnoticed.

Caton was following his master, silent and obedient as always. He did not ask where they were going, nor did he ask why, he simply trusted that because it was something his master wanted it must be important. That was the kind of creature that Caton was, though he only displayed this kind of subservience to HollowEyes - his loyalties lay with his master, not the Council or the Dojo or anybody else.

"How are your powers coming along, Caton?" HollowEyes asked his minion. "Good Boss, thanks to you." Caton replied. HollowEyes had set him the training regimen from hell, but he completed it faithfully and found the grueling exercises worth it in the end - he was coming to grips with his new powers very quickly, and he could feel himself getting stronger day by day. "That's good to hear. We'll need a ride to the Wilds." Caton nodded and used his powers of pyromancy (magnified by the Ruby Dagger) to draw up a small amount of lava from the ground. There wasn't too much left, as the magma was flowing out into the voids that were appearing in the world, but thankfully they didn't need very much as it was just for transport.

Several small rocks shifted to the middle of the lava blob, providing a safe seat for HollowEyes. "We'll be walking once we get there to avoid any unwanted attention, but for now let's go as quickly as we can." "Yes Boss." Caton replied, and the lava snaked it's way across the land. Every now and then they had to make a few sharp turns to maneuver around the gaping holes in Blackstar but aside from that they didn't run into too much trouble.

Once they reached the Wilds, Caton released the lava back into the earth, and they continued on foot. It wasn't a very long walk, but the terrain was very difficult. "We're lucky another hole hasn't opened up to block us..." HollowEyes mused, coming to a stop at a large metal dome. "Open up!" He said loudly to the dome, kicking it.

"HollowEyes? I was wondering when you'd be arriving." A young male voice replied, and a door in the dome opened. "Please wait outside Caton." "Yes Boss." HollowEyes entered the Observatory, and Caton stood guard. Not the first time that this sort of thing had happened, and it certainly wouldn't be the last, that was why HollowEyes had made Caton the way that he had.

"It's been a while HollowEyes, I was hoping that it wouldn't take the world ending to get you to visit me." Eugene Serpells greeted one of the few people that he could consider a friend here with a weak smile. He was obviously very concerned about this, and not knowing any of locals or what exactly was going on would have made it all the worse. "I'm right, aren't I? The world does appear to be coming to an end and all, or is that just something normal that happens here?"

"Oh no, the world is quite doomed. The resident God's gone and died on us, kinda hard to plan for that." Serpells scoffed slightly at this, and HollowEyes only now realized that there was quite a distinct possibility that Serpells did not believe in Gods and such. Indeed, this was the case. "Very funny HollowEyes, and the real reason is...?" HollowEyes frowned, not understanding how somebody could deny the existance of Gods. "Ah, well, if you don't like that reason, let's just say that the force keeping this very unstable place together has run dry, and there's not too many ways to get it fixed."

Serpells was about to respond indignantly, seeing as how obvious it was that HollowEyes was patronizing him, but the Parasitian cut him off. "Why it's happening doesn't matter, that doesn't change the very distinct possibility that Blackstar will disappear and take most of the current residents with it, unless they have a way of escaping." As he said this last part, he turned away from Serpells, focusing his attention on the scientist's spaceship, the Observatory. "I see..." Serpells didn't really wish to argue on the details if that was truly the case, and he did trust HollowEyes to be truthful to him. "So, what is it you want me to do?"

"I shouldn't need to tell you, it should be obvious. You need to get out of here whilst you still can." HollowEyes said in a deadly serious tone. "Ah, and what of the other residents? Should I help them to evacuate or-" "When I say 'you' I mean 'you', Eugene. Anybody who hasn't left by now couldn't be forced from the place, the locals are quite determined to keep their home and avoid dying." Serpells thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, no, if there's anything I can do I'd like to help."

"I'm not asking you to leave Serpells, I'm telling you to leave." HollowEyes said, now taking a much more threatening tone than before. Serpells hand moved quickly, but HollowEyes' moved quicker - three charms, flipped out of his twirling arm blades, each hitting their marks. Sao'tal suddenly lost one of his legs to a jellyfish charm and fell to the ground, spraying steam everywhere; Pilelia suddenly found herself split in half as her body turned to stone thanks to a well-aimed beetle charm and Tausk was now being strangled by a charm-summoned vine.

"You don't belong here Serpells - you might be safe locked away in your spaceship but your research is going to waste with you cooped up in here, and if you knew anything of the kinds of people that lived here you'd never want them to find out about what you're doing." He spoke out of concern for the scientist, for HollowEyes was speaking to a most naive and idealistic character here. He knew that the doctor wouldn't last a day out in the Dojo by himself, even with his 'Protectors', the kind of research that he'd done would be considered highly valuable to most people here if they knew about it, and HollowEyes knew that some of them would do just about anything to get their hands on it. "Don't you remember what you originally wanted to do with your work? You can't help people here Serpells, there's just no need for it."

Serpells smiled a little, realizing that HollowEyes was doing this for his own good. He had believed that there was a chance that he could make a difference here on Blackstar with his research on the applications of Parasitian cells, but his friend didn't want him to risk his life to do so. "Even if you say that, my ship's been broken since we crash landed here. The engine's will never get enough power to take off..." Serpells said, a sad, defeated smile on his face. "Ah, I thought you might say something like that." HollowEyes replied. "Leave the engines to me, you just go start the ship."

Serpells looked rather strangely at HollowEyes, not knowing how the usually technologically-incapable Parasitian had suddenly acquired an understanding of how the Observatory's engines worked, but he saw no harm in doing as he said. Assuming that HollowEyes sought to do this alone, he called the Protectors along to join him, as they'd finally freed themselves from HollowEyes' traps (though Sao'tal was still short one leg).

"Follow me Caton." HollowEyes said aloud, leaning out the ship's door to address his minion. "Yes Boss." The Nekomata responded, wandering behind HollowEyes as they made their way to the engine room. "Alright then, let's give this a shot." Caton gasped a little as his master yanked the Ruby Dagger from out of his back and rammed it straight into the engine - to anybody with even a basic understanding of how machinery worked, this seemed like a horrible idea. HollowEyes, however, seemed blissfully ignorant to this fact, and began to focus his energy on the Dagger. "Channel as much heat as you can from the Dagger to the engines please Caton." HollowEyes commanded, and his loyal servant had no choice but to obey.

Amazingly enough, the engines suddenly roared to life almost as soon as Caton began to force heat energy through them. "They're usually powered by steam, but this should be better." HollowEyes said in a manner-of-fact tone, although he was speaking of an incredibly stupid kind of logic. "Engines are... functional! We're ready for take-off, HollowEyes." Serpells was amazed that this had worked, and a little worried that it might only be temporary. "You can take off with us inside, if it's not too much trouble I'd like a ride somewhere. There's a temple floating above Blackstar that I need to visit, and it's best that I go there in a way that's not too obviously 'me'." HollowEyes replied through the ship's intercom. "As you wish HollowEyes..." Serpells responded. He may have said something else, but his voice was drowned out by the roaring of the engines as the Observatory shook itself free from the earth.

Jolting out of the ground, the Saviour's Observatory soared upwards, making a beeline for the Temple of Nothing.

[3kul]

"Everybody into the suspension chambers."

"Why doesn't she have to go?"

"You know how it is, she's the Divine One after all."

"Screw that 'Divine One' crap, I'm not leaving myself in such a vulnerable state with that murderous nut-job running this place!"

"Don't worry Kappa, I don't eat pieces of garbage like yourself."

The worshippers of Noten suddenly spun around to find Little Sister was now with them. "My apologies, Divine One, she merely meant-" "Into the pod, Buggane." Buggane wasn't even granted the chance to speak, as Little Sister could see that even he didn't want to enter the suspension chambers. They were all concerned about leaving her in charge, for they knew that she didn't give a damn about them. None of them could understand it, but she seemed to have some sort of control over their God, and she'd been abusing that power more and more often since arriving here in Blackstar.

"There's no need for us to enter the chambers, Divine One. As long as we leave Blackstar now we will be in no danger." Tengu cut in, hoping that her logic was not lost on the terribly illogical Little Sister. "Well, I was planning on sticking around for a little myself. It's no fun denying people a boat if you can't watch them drown, after all." "That's as stupid as it is sickening! I'm sick of taking orders from you, Divine One!"

"Then perhaps I should be the one to give the orders?"

Noten appeared behind Little Sister, his faceless visage gave no hint of emotion, though the tone in his voice suggested that he was annoyed to see his worshippers disagreeing like this. "I say that, and yet it seems that a ship is closing in on us quite quickly. Perhaps it would be best to delay the suspension of my worshippers." Noten thought aloud. "A ship? Who the hell is it?" Little Sister snapped back, wondering who on Blackstar had the cahones to attempt to board her Temple (by which she meant Noten's temple, but to Little Sister it was hers). "I don't recognize it, it's just a round metal ball that is flying."

Little Sister didn't know anybody who had a ship like this, and so she began to puzzle over who it could be. Of course, as she spent this time thinking the ship was able to get close enough for HollowEyes and Caton to jump out so that they could land on the Temple of Nothing (not without the Ruby Dagger of course, as now that the ship was flying they could leave Sao'tal to power the ship with his vast amounts of steam), and even have a short goodbye with the rest of the passengers aboard the Observatory. Serpells had suddenly realized that he'd forgotten all about Kumo, so HollowEyes had been forced to lie and assure him that his friend was safe (though truthfully HollowEyes had no idea as to Kumo Jinrui's whereabouts).

"You sure we okay by ourselves, Boss?" Caton asked, suddenly feeling quite wary. It seemed as though his master was underestimating his sister quite a bit, not to mention the fact that there was a God here who could wipe them out without breaking a sweat. "Don't worry Caton, I'm not entirely unprepared for this. My sister's taking her time in greeting us though..."

"Byule! I should have known that it was you! Who'd you hitch a ride with?!"

Little Sister had finally decided to screw thinking about it and come up on top of the Temple to check out who was here herself. Noten and his worshippers accompanied her, all of them instantly readying themselves for a fight the moment they spotted him. "Caton, take out the worshippers. I'd like to speak to my sister alone." HollowEyes said, tossing his minion the Ruby Dagger. "Yes Boss." Caton said, the fear and caution disappearing from his eyes. There was no other way now, he had to do as his master commanded, and if HollowEyes believed this to be possible then he had no reason to doubt him.

"Ha! A little talking cat fighting all three of us?! You've got to be kid-"

A torrent of flames suddenly slammed into an invisible wall in front of the over-confident Kappa. If she could see Buggane's eyes beneath his mask, she'd see that they were wide open with surprise - this creature was far more powerful than anything he'd encountered, and he'd only just barely stopped his flames from incinerating Kappa.

"A barrier? Ho..."

Tengu didn't waste any time, and darted towards Caton with blinding speed as he was marvelling at Buggane's abilities. She rammed her twin daggers into his tiny frame, sending him flying off the side of the Temple. "Surprisingly weak..." Tengu muttered to herself, having expected him to block her attack somehow. Still, there was no doubt that he was dead, as even though her daggers weren't charged she'd pierced most of his vital organs.

"Tengu, look out!"

Another river of flames slammed into yet another of Buggane's walls, though this time Caton was expecting it. The nekomata himself slipped around one way as the flames went the other, and Buggane, not noticing Caton's tiny body, sent his wall along to continue blocking the fire. Tengu moved just in time to avoid Caton's lunge as he attempted to skewer her with the Ruby Dagger, but was too confused to avoid being swallowed up by a sudden burst of pale blue flames. How had he survived?

Kappa was simply standing there with a slack-jawed expression on her face, having not moved since almost being burnt to a crisp. Just what the hell was this little creature? How was it on par with the Sword and Shield of Noten? "Snap out of it, Kappa!" Buggane shouted to his fellow worshipper, now very concerned for their safety. Caton, exercising his shape-shifting abilities, had turned himself into a human, and hurled a lump of pale blue flames at Kappa. Buggane instinctively directed his invisible barrier to block it, and realized his mistake seconds too late. A burning Tengu slammed into the barrier with a dull thud, collapsing to the ground and groaning in pain as Kappa quickly moved to try and put the flames out.

"He's very skilled, keeping us moving with high-speed attacks so that we end up tripping over ourselves." Buggane muttered to the other two, trying to figure out how they could beat this crafty opponent. "But do not forget that we are worshippers of Noten, our almighty lord who is watching over us as we fight here on our Temple." Tengu nodded at this. "As long as we believe in his infinite strength and wisdom, we cannot lose."

"Seems you've got a pretty decent helper, Byule." Little Sister laughed, merely watching the fight taking place only several metres from her. "Ah, but it's a pity Noten doesn't have more worshippers than this, it's not quite as much as the training that he usually does." HollowEyes said, frowning a little. Both Little Sister and Noten found themselves feeling insulted with this comment. "Keh! Forget them then, what did you want to speak with me for?"

[3kul]

Caton and the Worshippers of Noten continued to fight furiously with each other, though their blazing battle was little more than background noise to HollowEyes and Little Sister. "So Byule, enlighten me - what did you want to speak with me for?"

"Ah well, seeing as how the world's coming to an end and considering that I might not survive it, I figured that I'd like to finish things up between us." HollowEyes said. He spoke in a serious tone, emphasizing heavily on the word 'finish'. He had grown tired of their long-standing feud and he wished to see an end to it before he died.

"So you've come here to let me kill you?" Little Sister laughed, drooling a little as her eyes lit up with a lust for her brother's power. "You are welcome to if you can," HollowEyes responded. "But first I'd like to make sure that your powerful friend doesn't interfere." He added, nodding towards Noten. Having a God on her side didn't just tip the scales in Little Sister's favour, it crushed the scales completely, there was no chance that she'd lose.

"Well, of course..." Little Sister answered with a sly grin across her face. "That's just not going to fly." Two giant arms flew towards HollowEyes, seizing the helpless Second-in-Command and preventing him from moving altogether. "I can sense that you're growing tired of this endless fighting between us Byule, so it should be no surprise to you that I feel the same way. Normally I'd prove that I'm more deserving of your power by beating the crap out of you, but seeing as how Blackstar's set to go down the tubes at any time now, I won't be too upset if I cut some corners in getting what I want." HollowEyes seemed oddly unfazed by this, and Caton appeared to be far too busy to come to his master's aide. "It would appear that I am about to die." HollowEyes mused, a curious smile creeping across his face. His bizarrely upbeat attitude to his own impending doom pissed Little Sister off to no end, and she gritted her teeth angrily, hissing. "Your god-damn right you are."

"Looks like there's no helping it. He's really going to die if we don't step in."

Noten's arms were suddenly severed by an invisible force, much to the God's surprise, and they came crashing down to the ground, releasing HollowEyes. Little Sister was about to boil over, screaming with rage as her eyes frantically scanned about for her brother's hidden allies. Once again, the sweet taste of victory had been snatched away from her woven fingertips, and this time she would not stand for it.

"Tell us HollowEyes, how long have you known?" A large sheet of the Temple of Nothing peeled upwards, revealing Ayame, the Spirit of Paper. "Indeed, you've manipulated us quite splendidly." An almost impossibly skinny creature turned about, his metal claws scratching his head in a confused manner. This, HollowEyes assumed, was the aptly-named Scissors, Spirit of Cutting. "I haven't really got the time to explain it, so for now just call it a lucky guess." HollowEyes replied in a slightly cocky manner, keeping his eyes on Little Sister.

"Noten! Crush them out of existence!" Little Sister shrieked, furious that HollowEyes had, as always, an ace up his sleeve. "As you wish, Liyao." Noten obliged her, also eager to wipe out these strange creatures that had made light of his all-powerful self. "If I may make a request of you two, can you please delay the God of Nothing for just a few minutes?" HollowEyes asked the two Spirits, not that they really had any choice in the matter. "Consider it a bonus for tricking us like that." Scissors replied, slicing open a hole in the fabric of time and space to hide himself from Noten's attack. "I'll want to hear an explanation later though, Hollao." Ayame whispered, turning sideways so as to be too infinitely thin for Noten to touch. "I'm in your debt then." HollowEyes replied, leaping towards Little Sister.

"This isn't over Byule, it's just barely getting started!" Little Sister spat, hurling herself at her brother with woven claws ready to tear into him. "You have no idea..." HollowEyes laughed back, doing nothing save for dropping a single charm behind himself. As Little Sister ripped into her brother, making certain to first tear out his artificial third eye, the charm burst to life - long red jaws extended upwards, aiming to swallow both HollowEyes and Little Sister whole. Little Sister was too preoccupied with causing her brother as much pain as possible until it was too late to avoid the jaws, and HollowEyes was quick to grab her the moment she tried to escape. Her furious howls mingled with HollowEyes' laughter as the two Parasitians fell into the storage charm, a special variety of charm that led to an alternate space created entirely by HollowEyes.

"Liyao!" Noten shouted, rushing towards the charm in an attempt to free her from it. His two opponents took advantage of his forgetting all about them, and he was quickly diced into an uncountable amount of pieces by Scissors as Ayame snatched up the storage charm. "Sorry Noten, no Gods allowed!" Scissors laughed, overjoyed with the ingeniousness of his descendant. The enraged God attempted to smack the impudent spirit to one side, but Scissors slicing his newly reformed arm clean in two. "You're getting sloppy there, God of Nothing. I heard that you were wet behind the ears, but this is just embarrassing."

Noten couldn't understand what was going on, so he simply blurted out the obvious question in his mind. "Why can you cut me? I am Noten, God of Nothing!" Scissors smiled, revealing a series of neatly pointed teeth. "There's nothing my blades can't cut through Noten, meaning that they can indeed cut through Nothing." The Spirit's bizarre logic threw Noten a little, and Scissors leapt up to behead the God. "Gods like yourself, with confusing powers, have a lot of trouble coming to terms with them. A lot of believing is involved in keeping them in peak condition, though you haven't found the right set of 'rules' that apply to your powers yet." He noticed that Noten was really struggling to keep up with this conversation, so Scissors stopped moving about and attempted to explain things in a more simple fashion - he wasn't the sort of spirit to cut somebody down when he could lecture them. "Simply put, my belief in my own power has never been proven wrong, whilst yours has, so you naturally doubt it, and it in turn naturally fails you."

Noten, though interested with what the Spirit had to say, was suddenly feeling a deep-seated hatred for the wretched creature's impudence. Was he suggesting that he was the stronger between them? He, a mere Spirit? The God, now furious, suddenly disappeared from sight, and Scissors was very quick to get moving. "Damn it, why did I give him advice?!" The Spirit of Cutting lamented, losing his legs to the God as he sliced through to another dimension.

Ayame too was quick to hide herself, this time laying down flat so as not to be spotted. As she lay on the Temple she held the storage charm that contained HollowEyes and Little Sister, and using her own powers she slipped another charm inside of it. ~HollowEyes, this is a gift from Scissors and myself. It is called the Charm of ∞ Blade, and it contains both of our powers. It has the power to turn anything that it touches into a sword, so use it wisely, for we can only give you one.~ She then folded the Storage Charm into herself, so that even if Noten killed her he would never find it. Now the only way HollowEyes and Little Sister would get out of there would be when HollowEyes told Ayame it was okay.

EDIT: Fixing typos -_-...

[3kul]

Little Sister and HollowEyes both landed rather roughly inside of the storage charm, though Little Sister was quick to leap away from her brother in case he had any more bizarre tricks up his sleeve. She looked around and much to her horror realized that she was in the worst place that she could ever fight her brother.

The roof, the walls, the floors - every part of this place was absolutely plastered with charms. The only thing that wasn't covered with paper was a large tree in the middle, though Little Sister was hesitant to approach it in case it was a trap of some kind. Ripping a woven fistful of charms off the ground, she discarded the temporary limb as it was rendered useless by a combination of beetle and locust charms, thus giving herself a small clearing to land on.

~This is bad... I need to kill Byule as quickly as possible.~ Little Sister thought to herself, noticing him slipping something away beneath one of his arms. "This is more what I had in mind when I said that I wanted to finish up business between us, Little Sister. Not just you, but me also at my full strength. That way there will be no arguments about the winner, right?" Gritting her teeth, Little Sister attempted to calm herself down. As much as she was pissed off about this, it was something that she'd been curious about - between them, who was truly the stronger?

"Keh, whatever. It's not like it's a huge advantage for you, I know that your charms can't distinguish between the user and the prey, you'll have to watch where you step just as much as I will!" She laughed back at him, building up a bit of confidence with this. "Ah, you think so?" HollowEyes smiled back at her. "In this place, there are exactly 6,730 charms, excluding the few that you just wasted. Unlike yourself, I know what and where each and every charm is." Now it was Little Sister's turn to smile. "Your knowledge is my knowledge Byule, don't foget that I'll be fighting with my Seventh Eye pinpointed on your puny mind."

Damn, I forgot about that, HollowEyes thought to himself, realizing that this place was now far less advantageous than he'd initially thought it to be. "Still, just knowing what they do often isn't quite enough." He responded, though it wasn't quite with the same sense of confidence that he'd had moments earlier. Indeed, many of the charms and his tactics were now quite useless because of the Seventh Eye that had once belonged to him. This meant that the first thing that he had to do was- "Disable it? Not going to happen, stupid Byule." Little Sister laughed, reading his mind like it was no trouble at all.

"We'll see." Was HollowEyes unemotional reply, and he stomped on a charm behind him. It was a vine charm, which whipped into another charm activating that one, which was also a vine charm. In fact, he'd set up a line of charms that would continue this chain all around the room, though the vines occassionally broke from their straight line domino-effect to activate some different charms. "Ah, now you're planning on using... What the-?!"

Dozens of large eyes had sprouted from the walls, roof and floor, all focusing on Little Sister. "Just as you can predict my movements through my mental actions, now I can predict your movements through your physical actions. Charms of the Parasitian 'Eyes': All-Sight" Little Sister looked about, seeing that the eyes were indeed watching her every move. Hissing angrily, she turned back to confront her brother. "Damn it, when the hell did you get..." "What? Did you think that they'd just disappeared into thin air? I rounded them back up one by one, though as I used up all of their spirits in making these charms I decided it would be best to save them for a very important fight." Little Sister was suddenly forced to view HollowEyes in a very different light - killing the idiots that spent their days wandering about this realm was nothing, but killing his own kind... HollowEyes had gone "too far? You really think so? Why is it that Parasitians are so much better than other lifeforms? We're more primitive than most, much stupider, we don't live for very long, and we don't even know of anything beyond our own planet."

"We're better because we're born that way!" Little Sister yelled back, regaining some of her lost confidence. Damn straight Parasitians were better! This was something that HollowEyes had forgotten a long time ago, but that Little Sister had adhered to ever since she was born. That would be what would ultimately cause her to win and him to lose.

Her hair shot outwards, her many tendrils sharpened to a fine point and aiming to skewer each and every one of the eyes pointed at her.

[3kul]

Meanwhile, atop the Temple of Nothing...

Kappa, Tengu and Buggane were all panting heavily. They were not only physically exhausted, but also mentally - there seemed to be no way for them to kill this opponent.

Before them stood the two halves of Caton, who's only inconvenience seemed to be a difficulty in keeping balance. Which, considering that he'd been sliced clean in two well over several minutes ago, was quite a feat. He was not in any kind of pain, though he expressed no pleasure in his enemies' confusion. Whilst his master may revel in such things, Caton was simply satisfied to be doing a job well done, and as this job was not done just yet he saw no reason to stop to gloat.

"Wait." Buggane held up a hand to stop the next wave of attacks from Caton, though the Nekomata could sense that there was no invisible walls behind this hand movement. Tengu and Kappa both went to leap forward to take advantage of Caton's hesitation, but Buggane stopped them both. "I don't understand how, but you seem to share similar abilities to us." "I doubt that." Caton replied rather bluntly. Buggane shook his head, not satisfied with this response. "No no, I'm quite certain. How else could you be standing before us when you should be dead?"

"Ah, I'm already dead." Caton treated this as no surprise, but Buggane cocked his head to one side. "So it's delayed magic? You'll feel the effects of our attacks once it wears off?" "No, I can't feel." Caton said, getting a little irritated. He didn't like that he couldn't speak properly, and it was most annoying to be probed by the enemy like this. "I don't understand then... What do you think Tengu?" "He is lying." Tengu replied, her slit eyes glaring at the nekomata. "I don't think that HollowEyes' minion would be too eager to reveal his secrets to us." Buggane took this into consideration, but didn't really like what it left him with. "Kappa? Any ideas?"

Kappa, having already spent a bit of time in the EC (having been sent to do menial tasks that Little Sister had been ordered to do), could make a more accurate guess. "He's a zombie, totally unkillable." "Preposterous." Buggane scoffed. Such a thing was impossible without Noten's power. "Ridiculous." Tengu muttered angrily. In her opinion, no mortal should be able to simply waltz into the realms of power reserved exclusively for Gods.

"Correct." Caton said quite calmly. "Though not zombie. Resurrected Nekomata." Flames began to circle his two halves, and he forced himself back together, the searing heat cauterizing the huge wound. Goron had been the first to slice him down the middle, so the scar that this created didn't really show too much. "No more talk. Boss tells me to fight, I fight." Tengu and Kappa were quick to get back into action, each grabbing one of Tengu's daggers and stretching the wire between them, though Buggane remained where he stood, continuing to contemplate Caton's words.

"Why?"

The word rang like thunder throughout Caton's ears, and made him freeze up. In his moment's hesitation, he was decapitated by the wire pulled taut between the two worshippers that had moved in to attack. A faint mark appeared in the flames above Caton, a twisted and evil symbol that flickered into existence for mere seconds and then faded away. Cutting his head off didn't cause Caton too much grief though, much to the annoyance of Tengu and the amusement of Kappa, he simply leaned over and picked it up. He'd become quite strange though, his mouth opening and closing as if he couldn't think of what to say.

And so, unable to put his thoughts into his clumsy words, he relied on mindspeak. ~Eternal damnation is my reason. I was trapped in a place of horror beyond your wildest nightmares, every second of every minute of every hour of every day I was forced to endure agonizing torture...~ His eyes were wide with fear, as merely saying this was forcing his mind to relive the moments that he'd tried so desperately to forget. ~I have no idea how long I was there for, but on that one fateful day my master ripped my soul right out of there and forced it into this body...~ His eyes suddenly hardened, and he reattached his head to his body with fire to cauterize the wounds once more. Flames shot out behind him, engulfing both Tengu and Kappa. They were already distracted by his mental tale of woe, so much so that they barely had time to avoid his attack, their only option was to leap from the Temple of Nothing, so they did.

~When somebody rescues you from a place like that, words can't describe the endless amount of gratitude you feel towards them, and so when my master tells me to fight...~

He hurled himself at Buggane and slammed his head into the worshipper's mask, shattering it.

~Then you better damn well believe that I'll fight.~

Behind the mask was a thin creature, his black and white swirling eyes widened with shock at the sudden turn of events. His face however, was smiling. "That explains everything then..." He laughed, unable to believe the sheer co-incidence that he'd been confronted with. Truly, this had been an act of Noten.

With a sudden slick movement, his palm was pressed against Caton's chest, and a short burst of 'nothing' separated the two. "I understand how you feel completely. I too lived a hellish life before meeting Noten, and nothing runs deeper than my sense of indebtedness to him. Thus even if he doesn't order me to, I'll protect him against any and all intruders."

Caton dragged himself to his feet, panting heavily. He mightn't have felt any pain from that attack, but his body still suffered from it, and he didn't have the energy to go on much longer. Fortunately for him, it seemed that his opponent was the same...

"I'll end this. One strike."

A massive amount of small blue flames began to appear about Buggane, the tiny but dangerous balls of fire quickly converging upon the Worshipper of Nothing.

"An interesting challenge. Let's see who's gratitude is greater."

Ten invisible walls appeared around Caton, moving in rapidly to crush the Nekomata as Buggane closed his hands into a pair of fists.

[3kul]

The eyes were pierced simultaneously, their juices spilling out onto the floor below. As they were made of no-longer-living material, they did not activate the charms, though they'd now been rendered quite useless. "Well Byule? Planning on bringing out the rest yet or are you saving them for later?" Little Sister grinned cockily, confident that she'd just shattered one of her brother's defenses against her. "You focus on your own strategies and I'll focus on mine." HollowEyes replied, more than just a little annoyed that these new charms had been disposed of so easily.

And so, casting strategy to the wind, Little Sister leapt upon HollowEyes, and they fought.

It was obvious to both of them that their constant fighting over the years (whether it be against each other or any of the other skilled fighters that the Dojo and the Council had to pit against them) had honed their skills to become far more finely tuned than when they'd first left the Homeworld. Back then they'd mostly relied on instinct, now they both moved and fought with much more finesse.

Little Sister's style had evolved to become faster, more accurate, and all in all far deadlier than she'd been back when she'd last fought HollowEyes. He saw that she still struck like a snake, which in his opinion matched her venomous attitude perfectly. Her piercing eyes saw through almost any attack of his, and her endless amounts of shapeshifting hair whipped through the air, slicing at anything within her reach. Her tiny body was a defensive measure within itself, making her a smaller target able to move at quite a decent pace. If one was of the considerably dated 'elemental' mindset, they might consider Little Sister as a creature holding a great deal of similarities with the Wind.

Little Sister however, noticed that HollowEyes had been changing his style over time, until it had become something completely different to how he first fought with her back in Forumopolis. His arm movements were far more fluid, the arm blades twirling about as they released charm after charm at his sister. She could catch their subtle movements, but it was still difficult to predict his aim, as it was almost as if he could control the flight path of his charms even after they'd left his hands, although she knew this to be beyond his abilities. Annoyingly enough, charms were no longer his only trump card either - HollowEyes had toughened up considerably over the past year or so, and he now used his horn and legs as formidable weapons as well. Even without beetle charms, his kicks were incredibly powerful, sending the lightweight Little Sister flying across the room a number of times, and he'd learnt to use his horn as a shield very well. Were one to consider the elemental alignment of HollowEyes, perhaps they'd feel that the 'Earth' had been tempered into 'Metal'.

The fight had gone on for the better part of an hour, with torn up charms, dead locust fiends, shreds of hair and Parasitian blood all over the room. The charm tree still stood, though it too had suffered damage from the battle - it's trunk was scarred and stained with blood, and many of it's branches had been stripped bare. The two combatants were both breathing heavily, taking a moment's rest at opposite ends of the room. Each one's eyes watched the other, waiting for the slightest movement to signal the start of the next assault.

Little Sister suddenly vomitted up a huge amount of blood, the result of massive internal injuries, though nothing lethal for a careful Parasitian like herself. She was always careful to conceal her vital organs, and had been moving them about throughout the fight. The Minuteman eye and Memory eye were now encased in stone, and the Mimic eye had been chewed out by a group of locust fiends that had burst up right in front of her. Her left three legs were broken from a well placed beetle-reinforced kick by HollowEyes, and her right three were all jellied and useless, though she was still able to move about just as easily using her hair.

What irritated her the most was that her voicebox had been crushed mere minutes into the fight, most likely an intential maneuvre by her brother to make her shut up. She had enjoyed the ability to tell everybody and anybody what she thought of them, and now missed it terribly. However, despite all of this, she was still confident in the fact that she'd won. It had been one hell of a fight, but HollowEyes was now as good as dead.

~Give up, Byule! With only one leg you're nothing more than a cripple! You can't possibly hope to beat me!~

HollowEyes grimaced at his sister's mental taunting, for cocky though she was she had certainly picked up her game in the later part of the fight. The more charms that HollowEyes used, the more free space he gave Little Sister had to move about in, and she'd utilized this well. In the last attack, he'd sealed off two of her most dangerous eyes, but at the cost of his left leg, which she'd managed to hack off after a few massive cuts with a woven axe or two. It wasn't a clever trade, though to be fair he would never have predicted that she'd be able to slice through his bones so easily. Of course, for Little Sister it was simply a matter of using her Red Eye to pinpoint the location of the joint, and in hindsight HollowEyes realized that he'd been too eager to shut down her more troublesome abilities, unwittingly ignoring her older abilities in doing so.

"You're probably right in thinking that..." He said, leaning back against the charm tree. "If it was just the leg I could probably go on, but the massive blood loss resulting from it really isn't helping me." In this kind of situation, he had to admit that it was awfully hard to see him winning. They'd been evenly matched throughout the fight, trading one blow for another, but it seemed that in the end, she just wanted it more.

He waited a few more moments to see if she was planning anything further, though as she continued to wait she was surprised to see him shake his head. "Alright, I give. I guess you're the stronger one now." His words didn't register at first, Little Sister thought that maybe she'd imagined it, maybe she was in some sort of illusion. This was the moment she'd been dreaming of for so many years, it seemed far too good to be true. And yet, after seeing that HollowEyes was not moving to attack her, she knew that it was.

~Y... Yes! Yes! I won! I'm the strongest! MWAHAHAHA!~ She mentally cackled away, allowing herself to lose her cool and drop her guard entirely for a few moments. As soon as she realized this though, she quickly jumped back. ~Ha! Thought you had me there, eh? The old 'tell her she's won and then get her when she's celebrating' trick, hm? Nice try Byule, but I'm always one step ahead of you!~

"You think so?" HollowEyes replied in an amused tone, having not moved so much as an inch from the spot that he was standing in. Little Sister frowned angrily at his mocking attitude, determined not to let him ruin her possible moment of victory. She cautiously moved closer to him, as if to make sure that this really wasn't a trick. He made no effort to react to this.

Finally certain of her win, Little Sister made her way over to her brother, wanting to make his final moments of defeat worth her savouring. ~All out of tricks, are we? Any final words?~ HollowEyes smiled weakly and shrugged, not really able to come up with much of a response. Little Sister grinned, revealing rows of fanged teeth - she didn't really care what he had to say in the end, this was all about her finally getting what she wanted. ~Well I guess this is goodbye forever then Byule, enjoy being a part of me!~ He tongue whipped out, latching on to HollowEyes head to began the lengthy process of consuming him. It was difficult for her to do, considering his unusual shape and the fact that he was twice her size, but the initial discomfort was a price that she was more than willing to pay.

~You know Little Sister, for somebody who should be able to read my mind like a book, you sure are terrible at it.~

Her eyes widened as she felt something going horribly wrong, something that most definitely should not be happening right now. ~No! No! I won, damn you Byule, I won! You said so yourself!~ ~Your fault for ignoring your own advice - it's the old 'tell her she's won and then get her when she's celebrating',~ Her tongue was shrinking around HollowEyes, allowing him to squeeze out of the otherwise inescapable digestive prison. "Pretty predictable if you ask me." He was holding onto something as he emerged, some kind of handle, as though he were drawing a sword.

~WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!?~ Little Sister mentally screamed, feeling that the problem here wasn't limited to her tongue. "It's a special gift from the spirits who've been stalking me for the past few months, the Charm of ∞ Blade. Turns whatever it touches into a sword, which in this case should be your entire digestive system plus most of your internal organs, muscles, et cetera... The Parasitian tongue is connected to an awful lot of our body parts, isn't it?"

Little Sister screamed in pain and fury as the charm forcefully ripped her insides out, which caused HollowEyes to wince a little in disgust (as it was pretty gross to watch). "Try not to feel too bad about it," he said in a reassuring yet entirely out-of-place way. "You had no way of knowing about it considering that I really wasn't planning on using it in this way until the very last minute."

Little Sister collapsed as the last of the sword formed itself, a hideous mess of organs, muscles, metal and digestive acids. "Without these, I'd guess that you've got maybe ten minutes or so." He said, sticking the sword in the ground a little ways from where she lay. "Well, it's probably more like seven if you want to avoid risking any permanent damage."

Little Sister was in blinding agony as she writhed about on the ground at her brother's feet. She was experiencing both the pain of having most of her body ripped out as well as that of having her victory snatched out from right under her nose. Yet again. She wanted to scream, wanted to wring her dirty scheming brother's neck, but she lacked the strength to do anything as satisfying as that. Not even Parasitians can last very long when they're missing most of their internal organs and such.

((Sorry if you felt that this outcome was predictable The next few posts will be wrapping things up.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the elemental thing is just for my own amusement. My characters aren't going to be adhering to that sort of thing anytime soon.))

[3kul]

Even though she knew that HollowEyes had won this fight, Little Sister waited. Waited in excruciating pain as her body began to turn on itself, unable to cope whilst she was missing so many organs, and yet she waited all the same - her pride demanded it.

After just over 5 minutes, she finally conceded. ~Fine. You win. Again. You can have your damn truce or whatever, now give me my organs back.~

"And what's to stop you from killing me if I do?" HollowEyes replied. To Little Sister this sounded like he was mocking her, but to HollowEyes this was a life-or-death question. He only had one charm like that, and he'd just used it on her then. If she swallowed him once more, he was done for.

~Come on! Does that seem like something that I'd-~ "Yes, it does." HollowEyes cut her off with a blunt response. Little Sister gritted her teeth for a few moments, she could practically hear the seconds ticking by as her body's digestive acids wreaked havoc on her without her heavily-lined stomachs to contain them. ~Fine. You hold on to this.~ With one swift movement, a thin lock of her hair scooped out her Seventh Eye. ~If I try to kill you, you can crush it. Neither of us can make it again, so it'd be a huge loss for me.~

HollowEyes held the delicate orb between his claws, frowning. He'd wanted to be wrong about this, but it looked like he wasn't. "Answer me one thing though..." HollowEyes said calmly, flicking his Third/her Seventh Eye up into the air.

"Where is my real sister?"

He sliced clean through Little Sister's head, cutting it diagonally with the sword created from her own organs. He didn't need to worry about killing her though, simply because this was not her. Close, but not quite.

"Very good HollowEyes, when did you see through my trick?"

Little Sister's voice had become deeper, and she was once again speaking despite having her voice box crushed. This was easy to understand though as she melted into the ground, reforming into an ambiguous white blob. The 'Seventh Eye' drifted back into it's body, fusing with it once more. Noten stood before HollowEyes, for once displaying a face of his own, grinning like a madman.

"Handing me the Eye clinched it, she'd have never done that. I grew a bit suspicious at the whole reaction to the organs too, the real one would have kept fighting." HollowEyes said, his face now showing grave concern. Mortally wounded as he was he had no way of even hoping to defeat a God. "But this has probably been going on for a while, hasn't it?"

"How long do you think?" Noten responded, immensely amused with himself.

"Quite a long time, I suspect." HollowEyes didn't even want to guess how long.

Certainly it was before this fight had started, as he knew that his own spirits would have appeared at the first sign of Ayame and Scissors spotting him, and Ayame herself would never skulk around hiding behind his back, so they probably hadn't shown up at all...

"Keep going." Noten laughed, the sword in HollowEyes' hand dissolving into a fine white mist.

The tiniest of worries suddenly wriggled it's way into HollowEyes' mind, nagging and nagging at him as he attempted to work this out. How long had Noten been pretending? He's been doing it all along! Since DP died? He's been doing it all along! Since before then? He's been doing it all along!

"Correct." Noten replied to HollowEyes' subconscious fears.

HollowEyes head was spinning, he simply couldn't understand this at all. How? How the hell had Noten tricked him so thoroughly? Was this the difference between Gods and men? Was he really little more than a plaything in the God's eyes? His head buzzing with too many questions to ask at once, HollowEyes said the one thing that he wanted to know the most. "Why?"

"It's what your sister wants. And what she wants, I want. She's part of something much bigger than you, something that concerns me greatly. Not something that you could ever hope to understand." Noten began, having not really planned to explain this to HollowEyes. "You've never actually seen me and your sister together, not once. I've never let her encounter you, out of fear that you may kill her." "That's ridiculous, I'm the one who doesn't want to kill his sibling." HollowEyes didn't understand, he had no idea what this was all about. Noten already knew that was the case, but it didn't please him to have to deal with it.

"You've heard that some Gods know everything, so just go with that. It's not a matter of 'if' you should kill your sister, but 'when'. It happens, but I'm not going to let it happen, if that makes any sense." It didn't, but neither did many of the other revelations that had revealed themselves to HollowEyes today. "The idea is that I beat you to the point that you simply can't fight back, and then replace myself with the real Little Sister. Unfortunately you caught me out before I could do that."

"But... Why?" HollowEyes asked, feeling like that was all he was really capable of saying right now. "Why couldn't I just beat you until you lost consciousness as a God? Because that kind of thing attracts a lot of attention, whether I want it or not. And knowing your mind as well as I do, you would have totally accepted defeat if you'd been faced with it. The end of the world does bring about that sense of futility in some folk, even yourself HollowEyes."

"That sounds wrong... She's not like that..." "Don't kid yourself HollowEyes." Noten laughed, though not with quite as much enthusiasm as before - this was becoming just sad now. "I offered her an easy way out of this and she chose to take me up on it. Sure, she's got her 'nobler' moments every now and then, and she treats some people well enough, but in the end she's just a Parasitian. Brainless killing machines almost entirely driven by their own instinctive desires for domination and self-completion. There's no escaping nature, and there is not a Parasitian around who would ever stick their neck out for another."

Now, finally, it was HollowEyes' turn to laugh. Noten had unwittingly given HollowEyes hope, and the realization that it was impossible for him to meet his end here.

"Oh come now, what could you possibly have to laugh about?" Noten asked in an irritated tone, his facial features disappearing now that he was no longer smiling. "I've never once considered myself to be a Parasitian, not after I realized what that kind of thing meant." HollowEyes said, leaning himself against the Charm Tree. "And it kind of makes me wonder why other people do the exact opposite - that is, clinging so tightly to that part of their identity when they really aren't very well suited to it at all." "Are you going somewhere with this?" Noten asked, trying to skim through HollowEyes' mind for answers. "You're awfully narrow-minded for a God Noten, haven't you yet realized where we are?"

"Is that some kind of trick question? We're obviously in the Blackstar Dojo..." Noten replied, continuing to browse the contents of HollowEyes' mind in hopes of finding out what he was on about. "No, this isn't Blackstar. It's somewhere that only I can access... Which means, of course, that I am not the only one who can access it." He tapped a Storage Charm to the Charm Tree as Noten tried to figure out what HollowEyes was babbling about, and the precious plant was sucked away into another pocket dimension.

Noten got the distinct feeling that HollowEyes intended on escaping, though try as he might Noten could not figure out how the Parasitian would accomplish such an impossible feat. He never would have guessed, mind you, for as far as Noten knew, there was no such thing as a Parasitian who would ever risk their life to help out another.

Unfortunately for Noten, he had never been to or experienced the mirrorverse before, and so when HollowEyes was suddenly ripped out of this pocket dimension by what appeared to be Little Sister's hair, he assumed that she was cutting to the chase and did not act. HollowEyes didn't give him any final taunts, no hint or clue to let Noten realize how terribly mistaken he was. All he did was stand there quietly as he was rescued from the Storage Charm by the owner of the Storage Curse that matched it.

"Thanks for the save, Silk."

((I editted this chapter significantly because I felt that it wasn't interesting enough. Now it has more twists than... something really twisty.

For those of you confused, Silk is the mirror version of HollowEyes, meaning that she is the opposite of him in every way.

Oh, and also, this trick would not work on most Gods/Goddesses. Noten's simply never experienced the mirrorverse before, and so he'd never know how to find it.))

[3kul]

Noten, confident that his job here was done, tore his way out of HollowEyes pocket dimension. The Storage Charm, not able to exist in such a state, collapsed inwards, destroying itself (fortunately for HollowEyes his fight hadn't left much intact in there anyway). "A satisfying outcome, I think." Noten mused, looking for Little Sister. As he turned about, he suddenly found himself skewered with a seemingly uncountable number of fine woven blades. The pain was nothing to him, but the knowledge that Little Sister didn't approve was a surprise.

~That was my fight! Meddling moron!~ She shrieked horribly as she mindspoke, spitting blood everywhere. She was lithe with rage, furious that Noten had interfered against her wishes. "You might have died if I didn't step in. That charm was for real, even if the Spirit of Cutting was not." He looked over to where the Spirit of Paper lay, pinned down by a set of burning white spears. Scissors was nowhere to be seen, it hadn't taken Noten long to realize that he'd never been here in the first place - his appearance was the result of a powerful charm of Ayame's, which had quickly been disposed of once Noten had figured it out. "It's unfortunate for you, God of Nothing, that you can't understand why she's so angry." Ayame spoke, her voice raspy and weak. "Hollao is not here, nor has he been eaten by her."

"What?!" Noten exclaimed, not believing the insolent spirit. ~You let him escape, idiot!~ Little Sister mentally screamed, lashing at the God relentlessly with her many tendrils. He felt nothing from this punishment of course, but the knowledge that he'd made such a blunder struck him as an impossibility. "No! But... I saw you! I saw you pull him out of there, I'm sure of it!" Little Sister rage would not be calmed so easily though, as she'd been dragged out of what was meant to be a fight to the death to gain absolutely nothing. ~You complete imbecile! How could you mistake somebody else for me?~

She continued mentally and physically punishing the God for his most grievous mistake, and Noten continued to try and figure out how he could have been tricked. It had seemed so similar to Little Sister, it was impossible for it to have been somebody else...

As her two foes were distracted, Ayame attempted once more to free herself from the Noten's spears. Try as she might though she couldn't escape - the spears were designed to allow nothing to get free. Noten's powers were bizarre and seemed paradoxical in their nature, but she had unwittingly taught him how to better use them during their fight. It was obvious now that using her mortal enemy's powers wasn't exactly the smartest choice she could've made, as his cocky attitude had ultimately been her downfall. ~Looks like Scissors cuts Paper after all...~ She thought to herself, sensing her strength fading. This was the end for her, though she was at least able to take solace in the fact that she'd managed to protect HollowEyes one last time.

~Please don't die so easily, Master's friend...~

Her eyes widened with surprise as she heard an unfamiliar voice, one she didn't recognize at all. Caton, in his human form, was slowly dragging himself up the side of the Temple of Nothing, and could sense Ayame's power dwindling. He knew that HollowEyes would be upset if his subordinate allowed his dear friend to die, and so Caton mustered up every last bit of his remaining strength to come and rescue her. Ayame did not feel that he'd be able to help her, but as he heaved himself up onto the Temple's roof that went from a sense of uncertainty to a sense of impossibility. Were Caton a living creature he would be dead from the injuries that he'd suffered - broken legs, one of his arms totally missing and his face half burnt off.

And yet, as HollowEyes undying servant, Caton dragged himself onwards, stabbing the Ruby Dagger into the Temple to drag himself along. ~You should rest! You are already so gravely injured...~ Ayame thought calmly, appreciating his efforts but being forced to accept that this was where she was meant to die. ~Heh, you think I look bad?~ Caton mentally laughed. ~You should see the two who are following after me.~

Two humanoid figures suddenly clambered up the edge, burned beyond recognition. They were both quite tall, and seemed able to move about just fine despite the fact that they were quite obviously devoid of life. ~Master tells me that I'm a Nekomata, a mythical creature with an affinity towards fire...~ He explained, pointing his one hand towards the spears sticking out of the spirit. The two people nodded and moved towards them, their hands awkwardly outstretched as they seized up the white hot rods. ~As well as a knack for using corpses as puppets.~

Noten, suddenly realizing that something here was off, spun about to see the two dead folk removing his spears from the Paper spirit. "What is thi- You!" He shouted, noticing Caton. Eyes appeared on Noten's head, so that he could narrow them menacingly. "What have you done here? Nobody can touch those spears except for myself and..." Noten's voice trailed off as he realized who the corpses were, and his face disappeared. ~Keh! How useless! Three of your disciples can't even take down HollowEyes' pet!~ Little Sister sneered venomously, further unimpressed with Noten's string of failures. "Better luck next time." Caton said, grinning at Little Sister. As much as he loved to see his Master's enemy in such a foul mood like this, he knew that he had to go if he wanted to avoid a gruesome death here.

The two corpses moved with an alarming speed as Caton willed them to, one of them scooping up Ayame and hurling her over the side of the Temple as the other one booted Caton with enough force to send him in the same direction. Noten rushed to his disciples' aid, immediately setting about healing them, whilst Little Sister looked over the edge. ~Oh yes, of course, they've already disappeared. Why am I not surprised.~ She thought sarcastically, bitterly disappointed at how things had wound up. The only deaths were on her side, and the world was still about to end.

Little Sister snarled, returning to the inner parts of the Temple to vent her anger on something. This was a very strong contender for the worst day of her life, it would seem.

[3kul]

"Don't thank me..." Silk said wearily. HollowEyes was on the verge of passing out, and so couldn't make out his mirror-self's figure, though she sounded much wearier than she'd sounded the first time they'd met.

This was indeed the case - HollowEyes and Little Sister had both coped very well with leaving the Parasitian Homeworld (even though Little Sister constantly expressed her desires to return there), and so conversely Silk found it incredibly difficult to be away from her home for so long. She felt like she was losing parts of herself, and had lost her edge. She'd become scatterbrained and weak, no longer having any desire to fight, save for when it was absolutely necessary. It was something that Scary harassed her about often, and the two had come to avoid each other whenever possible as a result of this.

There were two reasons that she'd rescued HollowEyes - the first was in hope that he might be able to make sense of what was happening to her, and the second seemed to be fast approaching her.

"This is him? Are you sure?"

Mirror-Serpells snatched HollowEyes from Silk with a massive hand, his fearsome visage a huge contrast from his meek and mild mirror-self. He was barely human anymore, having seen fit to 'improve' himself with his research into Para-Kumos. Pounding down the dark metallic hallway with his six legs, he dragged the half-dead and bleeding HollowEyes behind him. As the only professional on Parasitians in his universe, he knew that this one could still take a bit more rough treatment before dying, and time was of the essence anyway.

"Ah, I was wondering if I could speak with him..." Silk managed to say, clearly intimidated by Mirror-Serpells. "Knock yourself out," he growled back in a gravelly voice. "Though I don't think he's going to say much in reply." Silk was quite dejected by this, but couldn't do much else. She knew what Mirror-Serpells was doing, and though she didn't necessarily agree with it she knew that they couldn't avoid it.

A small drone flew down through what appeared to be a ventilation shaft, flashing several bright lights at HollowEyes before drifting up towards Mirror-Serpells. "Subject Identified as Pure Parasitian, Female. Identified as: Silk." "Stupid thing..." Mirror-Serpells snarled, swatting the orbular mechanoid aside with his free hand. Unfortunately for him, his machine's could not account for mirror-duplicates, but it still served as confirmation nonetheless. Even though he'd already attempted to explain this to Silk a number of times, he wouldn't put it past her to try to betray him now.

Mirror-Serpells moved with a grave sense of purpose. He had no idea what kind of consequences would result from what he was about to attempt, but a maddening sense of curiosity drove him towards it. "This is the test subject, take him to a lab." He ordered a nearby scientist. "Security level 6, minimum, I'd prefer better if we've got the energy to power it." The man obeyed, even though it was not his job to do such menial labour - when Mirror-Serpells asked the staff here to do something, they knew that disobeying was an extremely undesirable option. "... Silk, you go with them. If he wakes up, ask him as many questions as you like." Silk hesitated for a moment, then quickly scurried away. There was something very strange going on here, she could see that she was being left out of the loop and she didn't like it, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Mirror-Serpells flicked through several files on his personal computer, re-memorizing the processes illustrated by the many simulations he'd made of this operation he was about to perform. Hardly necessary as he'd gone over them a thousand times before, but as Mirror-Serpells was not a careless man he didn't want to leave anything up to chance. Even for him, an expert on Parasitians, this kind of operation would be a first.

A small indicator blinking on his computer alerting him to the fact that a room had been prepped for him to use. "Security Level 8... That's going to need a lot of juice." Mirror-Serpells thought aloud with a frown. His ship was powered in a rather archaic way, which on the one hand prevented any interference from enemies but on the other it was terribly inefficient. He swept down the hallway towards the prepared lab, nearly knocking over a bunch of Para-Kumos headed for the engine room to help charge the turbines.

His personal computer drifted after him, activating it's recording function. "Dear diary," the self-proclaimed 'doctor' began. "Here I am about to make history, doing what has never done before. Seems I say that a lot to you, but I guess that just makes me a revolutionary kind of guy. If it all blows up in my face, be sure to publish my story and live like a virtual king." He ended most of his 'diary' entries with this little quip - his own personal joke to himself, as the computer did not possess the artificial intelligence required to do such things (and it never would, as if it did he wouldn't trust it to keep track of his post-it notes, let alone his innermost thoughts and dreams).

He and his personal computer entered the room, where an unconscious HollowEyes lay on an operating table, closely watched by Silk. "Hey, didn't I ask that minion to sedate you?" "Why do I need to be-" "Must've slipped my mind." He said lazily, ignoring her as he turned about to prepare his tools. Silk silently slunk up to Mirror-Serpell's back, weaving several long blades from her hair. She would not allow him to harm either her or HollowEyes (especially as she didn't know how harming her mirror-self would effect her). "Oh Silk, how many times must we fight over such trivial matters before you realize that even if you're amongst the most dangerous and unpredictable of creatures, you're still no match for the sharp intellect of a genius like myself." Mirror-Serpells turned around to face Silk, wearing a gas mask. Silk managed to swear in Parasitian before collapsing, the invisible toxins in the room having already invaded her body.

"Set the pace for me Computer." Mirror-Serpells began his work at a lighting fast pace, wielding his many surgical implements with incredible skill as his computer whistled 'Sweet Georgia Brown' (also known as the Harlem Globetrotter's theme music ).

[3kul]

Having finished repairing HollowEyes broken body, Mirror-Serpells was ready to start what he'd been waiting for. In unifying these two mirror-identical bodies, he'd be creating a paradoxical creature the likes of which had never been seen before. What would happen after that? He looked down to see that his hands were shaking with excitement at the mystery of it all, and he took a few moments to calm himself down.

Unlike the original Serpells, who dedicated his work to others, Mirror-Serpells was a much more selfish kind of man - everything he ever worked for was for himself and himself alone. The scientists who worked below him were only informed of the research that he wanted them to know about, and in his mind they were nothing but peons who existed to do whatever he told them to.

He had satisfied himself with his Parasitian and Kumo series research quite some time ago, and feeling bored with it, he had decided to turn his attention to the next 'big thing' - the universe that mirrored his own. He quickly learned how Silk had met her duplicate, and had managed to travel to his universe to monitor him, only to discover some incredibly shocking things. The existence of Spirits, Gods, and a plethora of other ridiculously powerful life-forms, things that he'd never seen before all flaunting their existence at him as if they were saying 'what's the big surprise? You thought you were the biggest fish in the pond?'

He had. With his work on Parasitians and the Kumo series incorporated into his own body, he had not hesitated to call himself the ultimate lifeform. And yet on that fateful day the place known as the Blackstar Dojo had come into his view, he saw countless others far more worthy of such a title. This he could not allow to stand, and so he had begun to pursue a different path in his search for power.

Mirror-Serpells had learned very early on in his research that Parasitians were quite capable of eating each other, though they had an in-built instinct that told them this was wrong. It would be incredibly easy for him to combine one with another, which would logically result in a more powerful creature, but this alone was not enough. Yes, he could create a Parasitian that would gorge himself on every creature on the planet, or alter himself to do that, but the problem was consciousness - Parasitians were physically strong, but mentally weak. If he tried to absorb that many minds... It would never work out well.

Ruling out that possibility, he began to dwell on the unusual nature of the mirror universe. Each and every person was reflected, sometimes to be exactly the same, at other times, shown to be perfect opposites of each other. What happened when one person died however? Or when one became stronger than the other? He began to see this in Silk. Though she was trying to hide it, she'd obviously been getting weaker over time, which led Mirror-Serpells to the conclusion that her double was getting stronger. If this pair of beings were the kind that needed to be in perfect balance with each other, what would happen if they were to be fused together?

According to Mirror-Serpells calculations, this would create a paradoxical creature, god-like in nature, free from the laws and limits of the mirror universes, and yet still bound to it's Parasitian origins. A fatal flaw in an otherwise perfect creature, and one that Mirror-Serpells fully intended to exploit. Once the new creature was born from the fusion of HollowEyes and Silk, it would be confused - two consciousness being forced into the one body without their knowing, it'd be too bewildered to defend itself as soon as it awoke, and so Mirror-Serpells would quickly devour it and gain it's power.

A faint beeping from his computer brought Mirror-Serpells back to reality. He shook his head a little, reminding himself not to be so foolish as to daydream mere moments away from achieving his goals. Striding over to his computer, he examined it to see what the problem was. "Increased mental activity... They're dreaming? That's not so... Hm?" The fact that the two Parasitians were dreaming whilst unconscious was indeed no surprise, but what Mirror-Serpells' computer was alerting him to was the fact that their brainwaves were syncing up perfectly. He frowned, not understanding what this meant, and paused for but a moment. He hadn't though this possible, but if their minds unified too quickly... "Not good." Mirror-Serpells snarled, resuming his work.

[3kul]

~Well, that's the last of it...~ Silk sighed, having transfered the contents of her mind over to HollowEyes'. ~You sure have a lot of stuff here, way more than I do.~

Indeed, HollowEyes' mind was crammed full of all sorts of knowledge, ranging from his understanding of various magicks to Council matters to locals around Blackstar. Taking the centre floor was a large blackboard, riddled with scribblings that attempted to solve 'The Blackstar Problem' (referring to the realm's imminent destruction).

For now, he and Silk occupied the non-physical realm created within HollowEyes' own mind, for he was used to sharing his mind with others (his sister and the spiritual being Ayame had both dwelled in parts of his mind, to different degrees), and being mirror duplicates they did technically share a mind (though this was only possible due to the fact that they were currently existing in the same universe).

~So, got a plan?~ Silk said, drifting about in HollowEyes' mind. Despite the fact that this process may 'kill' her, she didn't really seem to care - she was more interested in exploring HollowEyes' mind, a much neater place than her own. ~A little help might be nice, considering that I don't know much about anything of your mirror-verse.~ HollowEyes responded bitterly. ~Myah, well, I was more speaking generally.~ Silk replied, pulling a book labelled 'private' from a shelf and quickly prying the lock open. She'd quickly discovered one of the interesting loopholes in sharing minds with HollowEyes, that it was very hard for him to keep secrets when allowing others into here. ~Like fighting your sister - if you'd won, what were you planning to do after that? Convince her to help the Council escape Blackstar? And then what?~

HollowEyes realized that he didn't know what he intended to do after that, though he didn't see why he should have to know. ~What about you? You dragged me here and then got knocked out!~ ~Yeah, but I'm the mirror version of you, everybody expects me to make dumb mistakes like that.~ She stuck her tongue out playfully at HollowEyes, clearly indicating that she'd be of no help to him in escaping this. ~So what? We just sit back and wait until our minds are fused together? We both just cease to exist and some 'new guy' takes over for us?~ ~It's probably not as bad as we're making it sound.~ Silk responded in a bored tone, having already explained this. Essentially having their bodies fused together would mean that their minds would be forced to fuse together, creating a new consciousness from the two old ones. Both HollowEyes and Silk would effectively cease to be. ~Oooh, this looks interesting...~ She mused, finding a large filing cabinet labelled 'to forget'. ~But yeah, this is probably the end of the line, since we're both unconscious. I'm looking forward to living here! <3~

~But you won't even exist here! Well, technically part of you will, but you know what I mean.~ HollowEyes responded in a less-than-friendly tone. Why the hell had he let Silk drag him into a mess like this? ~So this is how it ends, huh? Spending my final moments trapped inside my own head with an idiot...~ HollowEyes hated that he'd be going out like this, it was not a manner befitting a member of the Evil Council like himself. He at least wanted to go out with a bang, rather than just handing the keys over to a new owner (so to speak).

~What are you complaining about? If you're against it that much, just turn yourself into a spirit weapon and let me have your body.~ It was as she said this that HollowEyes noticed a very familiar glint of greed in Silk's eyes that were not unlike the kind that so very often frequented the eyes of Little Sister. He might have read a little more into that if not for the strange comment that she'd made along with it, as transforming his entire spirit into a single object was not something that he was capable of. Seeing his confused expression, Silk laughed. ~So you messed up on that one? Finally being a mirror-version of you pays off!~ The Parasitian SiC realized that Silk was talking of being able to do something he could never pull off, and the mere thought of somebody so monumentally annoying being better than him was a bit irritating for HollowEyes.

He wanted to ask her all sorts of things about how she'd managed such an incredibly difficult bit of spirit manipulation, but realized that they were out of time - he could feel himself waking up. ~Oh, looks like the show's about to start!~ Silk said, suddenly sounding very enthusiastic about it. ~How about leaving this one up to me then, hm? <3~ HollowEyes didn't even want to think what kind of weird things Silk was planning on doing, but as she knew their opponent quite well it was definitely the smartest choice (he hoped).

[3kul]

"... Looks like this won't be so easy after all."

Mirror-Serpells was most displeased to see the bizarre creature that now saw him. Paradoxical in nature, it should have been a complete stranger to him, and yet it greeted him in a most friendly manner. "Yo, Galavan, it's your lovely servant Silk here! <3"

HollowEyes had quite willingly surrendered his body to Silk, allowing him to remain as a seperate entity for a very brief time. If they were to remain together like this such an act would result in HollowEyes' personality being overwritten by Silk's, but as things were now, HollowEyes was a bodiless entity. ~It's called the Soul Smoker. Pretty cute name, don't you think?~ Silk elaborated, using mindspeak so that Mirror-Serpells wouldn't hear her. ~I can make a little bit of my spirit into a new smoke-based spirit, except instead of using my own spirit I just used all of yours! Clever, right?~ It certainly was clever, and this was what had HollowEyes so amazed.

The 'weapon' itself was tiny, a small twisted pipe that allowed Silk to exhale a thin whispy smoke that in turn formed HollowEyes' spirit. HollowEyes didn't understand much of the details, but he understood enough to know that it was damn smart of Silk to create such a thing. He was actually feeling a little jealous that he hadn't thought of it first, but then again, it was much better suited to Silk than it was to him.

~Time to go, HollowEyes. You should be able to drift right on out of this ship and anywhere you like, though unfortunately you'll have to leave whatever you brought with you here.~ ~As much as I appreciate the help, I can't possibly just-~ ~It's fine, just leave this up to me.~ Silk responded, smiling. The fact that she appeared to be smiling at nothing in particular caught Mirror-Serpells' attention, wondering what kind of strangeness she was playing at. ~Well, off you go then.~ She said, her pipe disappearing as she waved a large woven hand in his direction. The fan-like motion was enough to blow the smoke spirit through the nearby wall, forcing HollowEyes out of the room. He realized that it was incredibly difficult to move like this, and that he had to concentrate a lot more on not dispersing than he did back when he was in his old body. On top of that, even if he did leave the ship, he'd just find himself somewhere in the multiverse, drifting through space.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) somebody had been waiting a long time for HollowEyes to be caught up in a conundrum like this. The cold black metal wall in front of him split in half as a thin blade sliced through it, a sharp voice beckoned to him as the knife withdrew itself.

~Come, Descendant.~

------------------------------------------

"Ah, so HollowEyes is gone then? And here I thought you were the dumb one." Mirror-Serpells said, his voice filled with malice. "Everybody always does." Silk replied in an amused tone. They had both undergone a number of transformations to become ferocious predators, and now, with each hungry for the power of the other, they found themselves locked in a room together.

It would be several hours before one emerged from the room, though nobody aside from that individual would ever know who was the victor. It could be Mirror-Serpells, it could be Silk, or they could have even been 'overwritten' by a new consciousness. The creature that emerged naturally shared aspects of both Mirror-Serpells and Silk (and even HollowEyes), though at the same time it would not allude to being either of them. "If you've got to call me something, then I guess Dox will do."

Dox, short for 'Paradoxian', was now a very select group of organisms populated by Dox alone. Dox's body now had enough Parasitian cells in it for at least two fully grown adults, if not more, and yet they were able to move about and speak and think as if they were the only entity in charge of the body. It should never have come into existence, and yet by a bizarre twist of events it had. It did not fully comprehend what this meant for now, but it did have an interesting place in mind for it to go to.

"There is a place called the Blackstar Dojo that I have heard quite a bit about. Let's go have a look see, shall we?" A sinister smile graced it's slender face as it said this, and it's eyes glimmered with greed. It liked the power that it had now, and it knew that there was plenty more where that came from.

[3kul]

"<Long time no see, ancestor.>" HollowEyes greeted his ancestor spirit, figuring that Parasitian might be the best tongue to use. He hadn't met with or seen him since the day he was born 21 years ago, but from what he knew about Parasitians in general, they all hated talking in any language but Parasitian. Scissors did not reply, and instead led HollowEyes down a long and narrow corridor. HollowEyes had never been here before, but he could tell just by being here that he was no longer dwelling in a mortal realm.

Eventually the pair came to a living room of sorts. There were bookshelves all over the walls, but the books themselves (and just about everything, now that HollowEyes looked about properly) had been slashed to pieces. "Look." He said in English (much to HollowEyes' surprise), pointing a slender metallic finger upwards. Carved into the roof was a massive family tree, though HollowEyes could only recognize two names on it - that of his biological mother and father.

"... Where is your name?" The slender metallic figure didn't speak, and simply pointed up to the very top part of the family tree. "Oh, of course, 'Scissors' isn't your real name." HollowEyes said, feeling a little stupid having asked such a question. He looked over the family names, spotting a number of particularly boastful ones, which was hardly surprising considering that they were all Parasitians. "My name isn't up there." He stated, not entirely sure what to make of this. The metallic spirit extending an arm upwards, pointing towards a name at the bottom of the tree. "That is neither my name nor my sister's name." HollowEyes responded disapprovingly. It was an interesting combination of the two though, he didn't realize that the names went together like that.

"That is the problem." Scissors responded, folding his knife-like limbs together. He had no face to speak of, but his voice sounded concerned. "You're only delaying the inevitable." HollowEyes laughed, well and truly sick and tired of being told he was wrong by a bunch of people who thought of themselves as superior to everything else. "If that's all you plan on telling me, I think I might just leave."

"Being half a Parasitian means half of everything." Scissors said, a sharp leg slicing the ground in front of HollowEyes, gesturing that he shouldn't leave just yet. "Half of your power, half of your potential... Half of your life." This last part caught HollowEyes completely off guard. He knew that Parasitians had placed a lot of stock in this 'being whole' philosophy, but he didn't realize that any of it was actually true. "The average Parasitian can live to be about 100. You can only ever live to be 50." HollowEyes had no idea how to respond to this, for it meant that he'd was almost halfway through his life. "I will not tell you what to do, I will merely tell you the consequences of what you do." Scissors said calmly, sitting himself down. A small fire lit up as he did so, and the metallic being unintentionally reflected the light of the flames about the room.

"Naturally, you are incapable of reproducing as well." He added, gesturing with a slender knife-like hand that HollowEyes should also take a seat, even though such a thing was impossible for him to do in his current spiritual state. "I'd prefer not to see my bloodline die out so quickly, but unfortunately you hold all the cards. You are my only living relative, and I don't want to do anything that would make you resent me." He didn't sound lonely as he said this, though HollowEyes could sense a kind of fear in Scissors' voice. He was truly concerned about his descendants, though HollowEyes didn't appreciate how Little Sister was totally ignored when it came to this. "Well, kids aren't exactly on my mind right now..." HollowEyes replied, though now that he realized he was nearly middle-aged, he suddenly thought that maybe they should be.

"Well, both your life expectancy and your sterility seem moot points now, I see that you no longer inhabit a physical body?" Scissors was unsure what to make of this, but figured that there'd be a story behind it. "I'm... Between bodies at the moment. My old one got... stolen from me, and I need to... go find a new one, I guess." It sounded like a ridiculous story now that HollowEyes said it out loud, but Scissors nodded a little and waited for him to continue.

"Well, truth be told, I kind of expected that I might die young, so I had a few back-up plans arranged... It's just a tad irritating that I have to go through them so soon." "We can only ever plan for so much." Scissors replied knowingly, then allowed HollowEyes to elaborate. "I suppose Serpells is my best bet, I asked him to clone me a year or so back, and he hasn't mentioned any problems to me." "Science is an interesting thing, I can't wait to see it develop on the Homeworld." Scissors remarked, not in the least bit surprised at HollowEyes revealing that he had multiple bodies stashed about. "And as an added bonus, that would allow you to extend your current life expectancy by about 20 years or so."

"Yeah..." HollowEyes said uneasily. Now that he knew he'd be dead twice as soon as he'd previously thought, he didn't like to think about it very much at all. "If you could do me a favour, I'd like to go to where Serpells is." "If I do, you must promise to meet with me again in a year's time. I'd like to speak with you a little more." HollowEyes had no idea why it would be such a long time before they'd speak again, but he supposed that immortal creatures like spirits had a different kind of understanding to mortals when it came to time.

"Alright then." He agreed to Scissors' demand, not seeing the harm in it. Scissors had, up until now, seemed much less insane than he'd been led to believe. "Goodbye for now." Scissors said cheerfully, slicing a small hole beneath HollowEyes. He felt it suck him through, forcing him to leave before he could say or do anything else.

Before HollowEyes knew it, he was back in Serpell's ship, the Observatory.

[3kul]

"HollowEyes? What happened to you?" Serpells was obviously quite shocked to see HollowEyes here once more, especially in such a ghostly form. ~Ah, lots of things...~ The Parasitian SiC replied, not really wanting to go into the details. ~I've come to collect that clone I asked you to make of me.~ "I can see you need it, but I'm a little busy at the mo-"

The Observatory suddenly shook violently, knocking Serpells out of his seat and onto the floor. He quickly picked himself up and jumped back into his seat, typing away at a number of keyboards to prepare a counter-attack. "Space pirates seem to have decided to take advantage of our rather unfortunate situation, and it's damn hard to keep them from getting to us. You remember where my lab is, don't you?" HollowEyes could see that Serpells was freaking out, and he remembered how terrified the scientist was of any real combat... That was why he'd assembled a team of Protectors, wasn't it?

~Where are the others?~ "Down by the entrance. They decided that being boarded was pretty much inevitable so they've gone to wait for the pirates to board... I didn't think you liked them very much, did you want to see them?" ~No, no.~ HollowEyes responded, a little hastier than necessary. ~I was just wondering...~ The Parasitian trailed off, finding himself distracted by the ships flying about outside - they were quite literally flying circles around the Observatory. HollowEyes could understand how the Protectors felt that they'd be boarded soon enough, the pirates were really just toying with Serpells right now. ~Wow, you're really bad at flying this thing.~ "I'm a scientist, not a pilot! Leave me alone!" He was clearly frustrated with his inability to fly the ship properly, and didn't want to have to deal with HollowEyes mocking him. "Your body's in my lab, you know where it is!"

HollowEyes drifted on through the Observatory, his mind travelling back to the years he'd lived here. The cold empty mechanical halls, the twisting corridors that never seemed to lead anywhere, it was so familiar and yet at the same time it seemed a little strange. There was no wall slime, no piece of Cornelius littering the room or half-finished doomsday devices (their levels of completion varying from 'scribbled-on napkin' to 'biohazard' depending on who was actually building them) that the Corrupted Cave had.

Before he knew it, he found himself outside Serpells' lab. He drifted through the door, thankful that he didn't need a password or ID, because he no longer possessed either. It didn't take him long to find the chamber containing his clone, now just over a year old, though as HollowEyes hadn't changed a bit since the day he was born nobody would be able to tell the difference. Not wanting to spend a moment longer without a body, he quickly possessed it, causing the chamber that the body was contained in to release it's precious cargo.

HollowEyes spilled out onto the floor, landing badly with his barely-used leg muscles and bending his arms backwards. He screamed, anticipating immense pain, and yet experienced none. He looked down at his arms, which certainly should have been broken, but weren't. Serpells had taken a few liberties with this body, adjusting his arm blades so that they were only stiff blades from the elbows down. It felt strange to be able to bend them, and HollowEyes was sure that it would take some getting used to.

The other thing he noticed was the presence of a Third Eye. HollowEyes knew that Serpells wouldn't have been able to mimick that complex piece of Parasitian biology in such a short time (as Serpells himself had said so), but it seemed that the self-proclaimed Saviour had decided to stick something else in there instead. HollowEyes tested it out, finding that it was a much weaker version of his original Third Eye - it could only focus on one mind at a time, and gave him very vague readings of what that person was feeling.

Ultimately though HollowEyes had very little to complain about - having a body that wasn't quite what he expected was infinitely better than having none at all.

~I'll be leaving now, Serpells. Good luck with those space pirates.~ "Would it be too much trouble for you to lend us some help?" Came a nerve-wracked voice over the speakers. Clearly Serpells had expected HollowEyes might do him a favour in exchange for his building him a clone. ~Come now Serpells, I'm meant to be a member of the Evil Council - helping others in need isn't terribly evil.~ He searched about the lab, finding the stash of Dojodian items that the scientist had planned on keeping for himself. He felt a little less guilty about abandoning him now that he knew Serpells had tried to make off with a bunch of his stuff.

~You, unlike Blackstar, will probably be fine without me.~