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Again and again, the pearl offered no sign of life as she held it out to one motionless body after another. Klara's curse was now her own - who knew just how many bodies she'd have to check before finding the right one? Would she let another oppertunity slip through her fingers?

Or maybe another possibility would occur to her....that she had the perfect man, right in the palm of her hand.

He would never grow old. He would never die. He wouldn't come home drunk and demand sex, or get into fights and need to be patched up, both egotistically and physically. He'd never toss his blood-stained clothes about the bathroom, or walk through the house in muddy clothes, ruining thousands of dollars of decor in the span of a few seconds. He'd never look away with that far away look as he heard the crash of danger and look back to her to smile with a hint of sadness and clutch her closer. He'd never grow angry at her, or tired of her, or say she was fat, or make her do whatever she didn't want to do...

He'd always listen. He'd always be there...and, as long as she didn't lose him, she'd always have him by her side.

After all....wasn't this what he'd promised her? To be with her eternally? After all, eternity was what she was potentially facing her...and he'd stayed true to his word.

But then, before something like this would worm its way into her mind, something else would happen that might remind her just how frail and vulnerable the soul of John Tomorrow still was.

There was a doctor working in the same ward as Hono'o. As she moved amongst the invalids, so did he. He seemed to be doing the same thing as her - checking vitals, adjusting medications, making notes on patient's sheets. He was not an overly tall man, actually closer to Hono'o's size, and almost clinically thin. His fingers almost seemed bony as they curled around the pen, which scratched at the paper on his clipboard dryly, audibly, within this living tomb.

When he looked up to Hono'o, he didn't react like most men would - instead of his eyes lingering on the curves on her body, they swiveled straight up to lock onto hers. His eyes were gray like cold slate, and as he stared at her, he lifted his pen to his lips, his thin tongue sliding from his thin lips to lick the tip of his writing scribe before resuming his work. When he looked at her, his eyes bore into her like her mind was completely naked, and for the slightest of moments, she would feel something. Not a feeling in her mind, not even a physical feeling - but something, like the faintest wisp of silk had gently brushed against her soul.

"Bussssy evening?" He asked her quietly, looking down at his notebook to pull a page up, double-checking his work, before resuming his scratchings. He didn't smile, nor look at her again. He seemed completely absorbed in his work.

"Aren't they all?" He replied with the practiced measured tone of a man who was used to making polite conversation. "Longer then mossst, right?"

It sounded almost like a lisp, the way his tounge held on the ess' in his words, but his lips moved freely. He didn't seem to notice it either. He moved a little closer, placing the clipboard containing one man's chart down as he picked up the one she was examining. "What issss hisss condition?" He asked her as he flipped the paper up, checking the man's records.

"Hmm." The doctor said as he looked over the chart, confirming what she had told him, taking no heed from her joke, before beginning to scribble on the chart. "The infection isss from hisss bedsssore...intravenousss Imipinem ssshould take care of it..."

He continued to write down instructions, most likely for the day nurses to make sure his bedsores are treated properly, his body well washed and moved every day. As he wrote, his pen scratching against the dry paper audible in the quiet ward, he spoke up, not looking up from the chart as he did. "Ssso, how long have you had the hunger?"

"Pleassse." The doctor said with obvious annoyance, his bony fingers clicking his cheap pen closed with a press of a thumb before slipping it into his pristine white doctor's coat breast pocket.

He replaced the chart into it's holder before looking over to Hono'o, his slate grey eyes boring into her with that intensity that she'd felt before, and if she was being aware - which she most likely was now - she'd noticed that he'd never blinked since she'd seen him.

"There isss no sssuch thing as ignoring your hunger. In time, asss it growsss, you will come to know thisss. Asss your tassstesss change and mature, you will come to know thisss.

The little man clasped both his hands in front of him, seeming to stand in quite a relaxed fashion, almost as if talking to a college, and asked a question so calmly, so casually, you could almost hear the words bursting with the hidden meaning behind them, like an elephant in the room that nobody would talk about. "Ssso fledgling, how long hasss the man in your pocket been dead?"

He asked as if asking a butcher how long before his meat would spoil. There was no care or sympathy in his voice - it was like he was asking for the age of a fine wine before sampling it.

The doctor simply stood before her. He was a small man, visibly thin, and he held his hands folded within each other at his waist easily, as if he was speaking to a child. Looking at him a little closer now, he actually looked quite old - not decrepit or ancient, but pushing seventy at the latest. He had whispy white hair and a few little moles with single hairs growing out of them, like most old men had. If it wasn't for his cold stony eyes, overlarge hooked nose and thin lips, he'd almost look like someone's grandfather.

"Your anssswer betraysss your youth. You think you can sssssimply ignore the hunger? Clearly you have no idea what hunger isss."

If the man seemed sinister before, then now Hono;o would begin to feel his true malevolence, even though he'd not moved a single muscle except to speak. It was like a fog was lifting around him, and behind him flowed the inkiest black that lived, blacker then anything the shadow priestess could conjure or control. The longer he stood there, the longer she looked at him, the more she would realize that she was not just neck deep in his darkness, she was swimming, drowning in it. It flowed over her like oily eels of grease, leaving a dirty and repulsed feeling at the same time....even though, to the outside observer, the room was utterly empty save the patients, the doctor and the nurse.

This man....this evil...the poisonous, venomous being...pernicious in the highest order, noxious and malefic to the point of making the weak of stomach gag and vomit at this truth that was him, as a body is only able to handle so much registration of wickedness before being physically and mentally repulsed...

"Hunger isss not a feeling in your ssstomach, ssslowly driving you mad, ruining all preconceived notionsss of morality or ethicsss. He said in that flat, toneless voice, his eyes boring into her. "Hunger issssss need. The mossst bassse of all need, assside from procreation, and even then, procreation cannot happen with hunger presssent. All life consssumesss other life to sssurvive...it isss the will of the universsse."

If one could describe him in a single word, it would be rotten. Not like an apple core rotten - like a decomposing eyeball, burst from the heat of the sun, maggots crawling in the slowly cooking jelly which was growing a shade of color which could only be called brown in the broadest stroke.

Hono'o, quite possibly, would never have faced such evil alone before. Possibly not so weak, either. The feelings washing out of him, now she could sense his true self, would compound these factors tenfold. And, his next words might also compound them further.

Darkness was growing around them, enveloping them, the blackness seeping from behind him beginning to grow thick and heavy like tar around her, his own evil force smothering in it's omnipresence.

There was no reaction to her laughter, nor to her obvious attempt to pull a weapon. He simply stood, those -

- still bare with his rictus of a grin.

"The force is free from it's shell...it is nothing but the Universe's now." The little man said softly, the shadows around his face deepening, his white doctor's coat beginning to lose it's brightness as the light around them, even Hono'o's own light blade, began to dim. "It was locked in that thing, trapped....all I shall do is set it free. Free for the will of the Universe to send it to it's rightful place...in me."

There was that slightness in Hono'o now. The feeling of something that was nothing. It had returned, but not. It winked into existence, then vanished. Then winked at her again, like a star peeking through storm clouds on a pitch black night for the span of a microsecond.

For the first time since they spoke, he moved. Unclasping his hands, he spread his hands wide, his

parting to reveal a serpentine tongue which flowed like fabric in the wind as he spoke. Indeed, if given time, she would have noticed that his adam's apple had never moved since they'd begun speaking - it was all coming from the tongue, as if it was playing the air to create sound.

"Come to me, childe....face your future. Overcome it, and know you are damned...be defeated, and understand lament."

The darkness was swirling around them, like they were standing in a room full of ink. The light above them had dimmed to the point of uselessness, any light from the hall was now non-existant. He stood before her, tiny and frail, his outline only made by the faint markings of the doctor's coat and his

rictus grin, which seemed almost as luminescent as his eyes, which she would see now were not gray, but so blue they seemed gray...

His rictus grin grew wider as he watched her drop her cover, revealing the skin-marking on her flesh, and as she drew her hand up, that glimmering shard of light gleaming brightly in the inky blackness swarming around them, his

twisted

glinted with a dull brown hue as he opened his arms wide, spreading them open as his coat suddenly billowed apart, that distant white expanding out to reveal a blacker then black interior which seemed to erupt out from around him like the sail of a great black ship.

Those shards of light, elegant and beautiful within this void they currently stood within, flew straight and clear, and in their wake were trails of reality, sliced into being by the light's path, revealing the crisp glow of the ward's fluorescent light and a bed or two of supine coma patients, sleeping straight through such a defining battle.

The light-shards flew straight towards the doctor, his coat billowing out around him like the blackest cloak, and they flew forth into the billowing mass....and vanished without a trace, their trails slowing seeping shut behind them as he lowered his arms, the cloak/coat draping shut around his frail frame once more.

"You have power - but thisss isss nothing to me." His tounge said as it whipped through the air slowly, like a snake being charmed, his voice low and heavy within her ears.

"I have lived eonsssss...."

As he spoke, his form seemed to slowly melt, the fog surrounding them enveloping him, swallowing him....perhaps accepting him into it's folds.

"...I have fed on millionssss..."

His voice was all around her, surrounding her from within the void. She would feel that feeling again, stronger now, something like a pin-p***k on her mind...

Before she would feel the tendrils surrounding her ankles, the darkness beneath her feet slowly sliding up under her pant-legs onto her flesh, the darkness chillingly cold and slimy, like a group of giant slugs was beginning to worm their way up her smooth legs towards.....

"....Much sssstronger then you."

There was a soft hiss as the slimy, greasy tendrils smoked and cracked, darkness rivalling darkness...but heat surpassing cold. The hiss was not just from the tendrils - the hiss came from all around them, from the darkness itself, and as she lunged, she would see before her his twisted visage, his true form, gnarled and warped and leathery -

It looked at her as she moved, it's eyes like oil, black and shining. They narrowed as she approached. There was no fear in them - for a being like this knew no fear - but there was a dot of interest in them. A rare event was unfolding before it - darkness begetting darkness. A power greater then itself had been cast upon this fledgling, soaked into her flesh, evil saturating her when there was no true evil intent within her...

It had to know. Even at the risk of its own life, the interest was too great.

When you've lived for thousands upon thousands of years, living vicariously off others, destroying all that you come across, you learn to appreciate new things. Even one as single minded as the creature that stood before her was intelligent. Intelligence breeds curiosity. And curiosity bred downfall. It knew this. It understood this.

But intelligence was a hunger unto itself. And as much as it wanted the deitous soul in the female's pocket...this hunger needed to be sated.

So as she lunged at him, blade of light cutting the swarming darkness around them in a thick trail of reality, it unfurled it's claws, razor sharp, pitted, jagged claws upon long, thin, bony fingers, and held it out before it. As she approached, it threw it's arms wide, wider then what would've appeared possible before, accepting her lunge completely...