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Rae Kissed John on the forehead and pulled the quilt from the foot of Sam's bed off to drape around the big man with a worried look in her eyes before she headed out into the kitchen and put the kettle on the burner to make some tea.

Samantha snuggled in under her blanket again, patting John's hand as she decided to relax, or perhaps nap for a few minutes... she was still quite tired, and just couldn't seem to keep her eyes open at the moment. sweatdrop

**Several weeks after Samantha's incident**

John awoke slowly.

The room was dark. They'd used to have the drapes open in the morning, so the sun would wake them....but when he got sick, the light first thing in the morning would trigger a massive migraine. So they'd kept them drawn when they'd gone to sleep.

He wondered what time it was. Hono'o was not around. It was quite possible she had gone to the clinic, or to any one of the tens of jobs she didn't need to do, or had simply gone shopping. She did like to keep busy. Especially these days. It stopped her mind from wandering, apparently.

Slowly he drew himself up from the bed, swinging his legs over so they rested upon the carpet. He raised his hand and rubbed it through his hair, and winced as the act of sitting up set off a sizable headache right behind his left eye. He looked down to the bed and realised his arm had fallen off whilst he'd been asleep - that was not good. It meant the scarring was beginning to affect his powers.

Leaving the arm in the bed, he got up and walked slowly to the ensuite, somehow managing to get his massive frame into the tiny room and turning on the light, gasping in pain as it seared down into his eyes. Shielding his eyes from the light with his hand, he looked into the mirror over the sink - his eyes were very red, the left having blown a vessel in his sleep. Already it had begun. He hadn't even gotten dressed yet.

He showered slowly, leaning his head against the wall and letting the cold water thunder down on his temple. The cold was soothing to his burning brow, and when he got out he almost felt normal again. Then blood began to seep from his nose, and he had to lie on the bed with a box of tissues beside him, changing them out and tossing them into the waste-paper bin besides the bed until it stopped.

Once that was done, he took some of the pain medication Hono'o had given him - some sort of morphine derevitive....Vicodin or something, he found it hard to read small print these days...and went downstairs dressed in his boxer shorts.

Nobody was home. Samantha was probably doing whatever she did, Hono'o was out, and Bren was hopefully in school. He stood in the kitchen, looking down at the fridge, and wondered if he could handle making himself some breakfast. Instead, he turned and walked into the garage, flicking on the light to reveal the tarp-covered object in the center. Approaching it, he gripped the edge of the tarp and pulled it off with a flourish, revealing his Thunderbird beneath, untouched for weeks.

He ran his fingers over the clutch and sighed heavily. If only he could ride it without giving himself a migraine...

His jaw clenched. This would not do. This would not do at all. Not for him.

With a shaky hand, he wrote a note to Hono'o and left it in the center of the kitchen where she would find it, dressed in his riding boots and jacket, and roared off down the road, the wind in his hair and an empty pills bottle in his jacket.











He would not return for two days. And when he did....he would be completely changed.

The first day would have dragged. John's condition had not gotten to the point where he was completely useless, but he still struggled to do even simple household tasks - bright lights caused him immense pain, his body had grown so weak he could barely walk at times, and he slept for hours and hours even after a full night's sleep. A simple act of making and eating a sandwich would exhaust him....

The second day was when the earthquake hit. The entire city seemed to shake on it's very foundations, cracks appearing in the roads and floors, powerlines bursting in brilliant sparks. Not many people were injured or killed - as soon as it had struck it was over, and there were no after-tremours - but it would have shook a lot of people up.

Just as the sun was beginning to set on that last day, he came home.

He'd landed on the balls of his feet just outside the condo's front door, drawing in a small breath as he looked over the neighbourhood. The hammer felt heavy in his hand then - he tucked the haft of it into his belt at the small of his back, where it would not get in the way.

He was dressed in strange clothing - he wore no shirt, his bare chest exposed for all to see. A shoulder brace sat on his right shoulder, thick metal bound with leather, strapped to his shoulder by leather straps which were hung around his chest and neck. His pants were made of dark leather, his boots made of wolf-hide, tied together by dried cat-gut, and thick leather bracers adorned his wrists and forearms. He wore a shining silver helm that glinted orange in the setting sun, the helm masking his face slightly via the nose and cheek guards enclosing the face, ribs of flat serrations fanning out from around the sides of the helms like wings. On his side was a simple-looking broad-sword sheathed in wolfskin, ancient in nature, the handle carved in Runes.

What was more interesting beside his clothes was his appearance. His hair, which peeked out from beneath the edges of the helm, was a shining gold, the type of gold that had been polished to a mirror sheen. His eyes, which peered inqusitively out from within the helm, were no longer a simple light blue - the irises held within them pure static which jumped and sparked within the cornea out into the whites, contantly moving, constantly squirming and snapping.

His body had changed dramatically - he'd lost almost a whole foot in height, and was no longer the behemoth peope could recognise from a hundred meters away - he was still quite heavy set, but his body was taut, the body of a panther or a lion, the skin hugging the muscle like a jumpsuit. Not only that, but the immense scarring that had once covered his entire body was completely gone.

Not that he did not have any - his body was covered in small gashes and cuts, little wounds that bled for a moment then sealed themselves by themselves. All in all, he looked like an ancient warrior that had just come home from a fierce battle....and the look in his eye said it all.

"...Hono'o..." He breathed as he reached out knocked on the door, hoping that she was in and not out...

"Hey baby."

It was the voice, though it lacked a bit of baritone. It still sounded like distant thunder rumbling powerfully, but it missed just a touch of the bass.

"Its me."

The man lifted his hands and drew off the helm, his golden hair spilling out around his face, which was covered in grime and stale sweat. It looked like him, like John Tomorrow - but he looked almost ten years younger and much, much, much more healthy. Compared to what he'd looked like the last time she'd seen him, it would be like comparing a dry, grey piece of meat to one that had just been cut from the cow's flank.

John lifted his hand to curl his finger around some of his golden hair, brushing it out of his face as he smiled to her. "Wow....you look like s**t..." He said with a cheeky grin as he dropped the helm and immediantly approached her, throwing his arms around her as he kissed her passionately, tenderly, one hand cupping her cheek whilst the other pressed her body to him.

To anybody else, she might stink of that antiseptic smell of the clinic, puke and sweat and blood....but to him she smelt divine. his senses had been tuned back to zero - everything was new to him. And she smelt sensational.

He pulled back and smiled down to her, lifting a metallic finger to wipe a tear from the edge of her cheek. "...I went to see Maximos...he showed me a lot of things, things about himself, about his past....I spoke to Nocturne....he gave me a message to tell you - that he would be coming soon. I dont know what it means...but Maximos was pretty upset by it." He said, his smile fading a little as he waited to see if she would have the same responce...

The Thunder God blinked as the little shadow priestess began to laugh and dance, looking her up and down with a bemused yet worried smile. "D-did I just break you? I think i just broke you."

He laughed heartily as she leapt up on him, wrapping his arms around her to kiss her back, closing his eyes as he drank her in...all throughout the ordeal, it was her that had kept him going, kept him driven, made him come back...

"Oh baby..." He said as he stepped back, reluctantly releasing her body with one arm so he could stoop down with her still wrapp around him, scoop up his silver helm, and place it back on his head as he smirked down to her with those lightening blue eyes. "...I'm going to make you the happiest woman in the world."

They were outside now, the dawn sun now having peaked the horizon to glow warmly upon them as he leant forward to kiss her gently through his helm, the metal cool upon her skin as it pressed against her cheeks, a slight wind ruffling her gorgeous yet knotty red-and-black hair as they began to float off the ground...

Yes, float. The condo began to shrink beneath them as gravity released it's grip upon them, John's arms wrapping tightly around her and keeping her close to his body as he kissed her, murring softly with each passionate kiss before pulling back and smiling to her, waiting to see how she would react to them floating several hundred feet in the empty Latent sky...