Diclaimer: I think you can guess.
Note: This story takes place about one year after Talpa's defeat. Due to instances of graphic violence, language, and sexual innuendos, I'm rating it PG13, so don't say I didn't warn ya.

"What's happening?" Sage repeated, the stabbing pain causing him to double over. Then suddenly, it stopped altogether. He looked up, confused, and was just in time to see an electric streak of blue racing to the earth.

Everyone felt a shudder beneath them as the light impacted with the soil. Sage broke out into a full sprint straight for it without a moment's hesitation, the others stumbling behind him to keep up.

They'd ran almost 100 yards when Sage skidded to a halt before a nice sized crater in the ground. Before the others had even caught up, he let himself slide down the steep drop into the crater, and found himself faced with an incredible sight. Rowen lie in the center of the crater, stark naked. His eyes lighted briefly on the faces of his friends as he drifted into oblivion. His body was caked with blood encrusted on wounds and there was severe bruising all over him.

Sage exhaled sharply, unaware of how long he'd held it for. "Kuso," he cursed. "Guys, get down here and help me right now!"

He crumbled to his knees next to the body of his best friend, which seemed more akin to a corpse in its present state, checking his vitals. His pulse was weak and his breathing dangerously shallow, but he was still alive. That still wasn't to say he would be for long.

Ryo and Kento were at his side when he sat back up, both clearly as horrified as Sage by Rowen's grave condition.

"Come on, we have to get him back to the house," Sage urged the others as he bent to pick Rowen up. Sage was surprised and suddenly alarmed by how easily he held the injured boy. 'He's so light. Was he always so light?'

With the help of his friends, Sage managed to lift Rowen out of the crater, grateful that it wasn't too deep. With only marginal difficulties, they handed him off to Dais, who took Rowen into his arms.

"Gods, there's blood everywhere!" Dais exclaimed. It was making him highly uneasy, even despite the fact that most of the blood wasn't fresh. Maybe that was why.
����They rushed back to the house, moving as fast as they possibly could without hurting Rowen even more, several of them - Sage and Ryo included - weeping openly.

Once they were back at the house, Mia took charge. "Dais, bring him up to my room. Cye, go get the First Aid kit and bring it up. Ryo, get a large bowl of water and some rags. Kento, get as many bandages as you can find. And hurry! And, uh, Sekhmet, come with me. The rest of you stay down here and out of the way." Dais was already at the top of the stairs and heading down the hall as the guys went to fetch what she needed. Mia turned to follow him, Sekhmet in tow.

Dais peered into a room and assumed it to be Mia's. Before he could enter, however, she slipped in ahead of him. "Come on, Dais. Get him on the bed," she told him, ripping the fluffy covers off of the bed.

The moment Rowen's body was resting on the mattress, she set to work, re-checking his vitals, searching for any broken bones and determining the extent of his injuries while Dais and Sekhmet stood by, waiting for something to do. Cye rushed into the bedroom with the white and red First Aid kit, with Ryo speedwalking behind while carefully juggling the bowl of water and a bundle of dishrags.

"Here's the stuff you needed," Cye informed Mia, who was still trying to get a grip on Rowen's condition, or the extents thereof.

Not wanting to stop for a moment, she kept going, mumbling, "Put 'em on the bed next to me. Doumo." After a moment, Cye asked uneasily, "Um, don't you want to cover him up with something while you're at it?" as he noticed how...well, nude Rowen was. Mia barely looked up long enough to throw a dishrag over Rowen's...manhood before resuming. Grabbing another towel and dipping it into the water, she began to delicately wipe away the blood caked on his ivory pale skin, barely stopping the nausea building in the pit of her stomach. Immediately, she focused her attention on the enormous wound in his side that looked like it should have been dressed weeks ago. The skin there was red and swelled, filled with puss caused by a growing infection hiding just beneath the flimsy scab that was struggling miserably to heal the injury.

Then Kento ran in with a bundle of cloth and bandages and plopped them down next to the other things. "Somebody'd better get down there before we have to rebuild a wall again!"

"Why? What's going on?" Dais asked.

"Sage and Kayura are about to go at it. Sage wants to use Halo to heal Rowen, and Kayura's insisting that he doesn't have enough strength or power to pull it off himself. They're gettin' really pissed at eachother and I think they're gonna kill someone pretty soon."

"Just great!" Ryo seethed. "I'll go handle it." He turned to leave, but Mia stood up.

"No. I'll take care of this. Cye, Sekhmet, take over here. Just work on cleaning him up. Forget about bandages for the moment." Taking a look for a second, she added. "And why is everyone crowding up the place? I want everyone out of here except Cye and Sekhmet. Move it! Now!" she ushered them all out. Looking back as she went out the door, she called. "Sekhmet, if things get too critical, you know what to do." Sekhmet just watched her go, wishing he could be just about anywhere else right now.

Ryo could hear the shouting almost as soon as he stepped into the hall.

"Dammit, Kayura! You have no right to tell me I can't do this! Now move outta my way!" Sage screamed.

"You won't help anyone by putting yourself at risk to perform a hopeless task you can't possibly accomplish, Halo! I'm not going anywhere until you see that!"

"You know what I see? I see a bitch with a mental problem who doesn't know when the hell to get out of someone else's frickin' business! Might you happen to know who that'd be, Miss Queen of the Psychopaths?"

"Sage! Kayura! Stop this nonsense, right now!" Mia ordered, her eyes ablaze. "What's wrong with you two? It's fine with me if you two want to sit here and argue all day, but take it outside! Neither of you are doing any good by carrying on and distracting everyone from the important thing here, which is getting Rowen's condition to stabilize! Now are you done, or not? Because if you want to waste all of your energy fighting eachother, then go ahead! But if you want to help me save Rowen's life, then choke down your pride and help, for Gods' sake!" She stared them down for a few moments, but no one met her gaze. "Now when you decide you've got something to contribute, I want you both upstairs." Without another word, she spun on her heel and raced back up the stairs.

Reentering her bedroom, she asked, "How is he?"

"Not good," Cye sighed grimly.

"Some of the wounds reopened when we cleaned them. We've managed to minimize blood loss so far, but he's lost too much as it is." Sekhmet added with a sigh of his own. "I've seen a lot of injuries on the battlefield before, and I honestly don't know if there's anything we can do for him. The truth of the matter is that his body just can't handle the stress. His imune system is all taxed out, and there's barely enough blood for his heart to shove through his veins. He can't afford to lose any more, and he's bound to during the work that has to be done on his wounds." He sat back on his heels while Cye cautiously cleaned more of the blood up.

"I just can't believe it!" Sekhmet declared.

"What's that?" Mia asked.

"We must've been with him back in the Dynasty for more than a half an hour, and I don't think he ever gave us a clue that he was this seriously injured. He looked a bit ruffed up, but not like this!"

"Maybe most of it happened afterwards?" Cye guessed, making a face as puss escaped from the wound he was cleaning out.

"No, I don't think so. The only injuries that look fresh enough are ones that were probably reopened or intensified by the fighting it took for him to escape," Sekhmet rationalized.

Mia twitched as if she was shaken out of a trance. Meeting Sekhmet's gaze, she asked him, "Well, I think we both know what has to be done. Are you ready?"

Sekhmet hesitated, letting reality sink in. He nodded, rising to his feet with an air of confidence that was only partly truthful.

"What are you going to do?" Cye asked, stopping to watch them curiously.

"Exactly what Sage wanted to do. Sekhmet's going to use his powers to try to heal Rowen's injuries enough to stabilize him."

"You can do that?" Cye asked Sekhmet.

"Yes, though I haven't tried in centuries. My powers as Venom are really just the opposite of Sage's as Halo. The reverse of any venom is the proper anti-venom, so using my abilities in a positive way rather than an evil way has the same effect as Halo's healing powers. In any case, I'm willing to try it."

"And we're helping," Kayura's voice sounded from the doorway, where she stood next to Sage.

"Fine, but you will do it together, as a team," Mia emphasized, singling out Sage, who would act on the impulse to do it himself in a second if they let him.

"That's wonderful, but will it work? The only one with their armors are the Ronins. Ours were taken from us during an ambush," Sekhmet wondered aloud.

Kayura addressed Sekhmet. "I believe it will. I still have the use of the Staff of the Ancients, and your's and Halo's powers are just as much your own as your armors'. All it takes is enough well-focused power and concentration, and you should have the full use of your healing abilities. That's what I'm helping for, to give you two that focused power." Turning to Mia, she added, "Are we ready, then?"

Mia nodded. She stepped off to the side, with Cye following suite, and watched as the three healers arranged themselves for the task that lay ahead. Sage and Sekhmet stood on either side of Rowen, holding hands across the bed, and Kayura stood at the foot of the bed, her arms raised high above her head. She summoned the Ancients' Staff to her. Its rings clanged with a fervor that she'd never seen, and she knew in that instant that lives hung in the balance of what they did from here on.

"By the powers of ametsuchi and chinchii, I call upon the oodobi. By the powers of jimen, kuuki, hi, ekitai and seishin, I bid thy power to rise up within us and give us the power to heal this man. Hear our plea, O spirits, and give mercy to your children! Hear us!" Kayura cried in prayer.

Everyone's eyes windened when a light breeze began to circulate in the room. The only one who didn't pause was Kayura, who launched right into an Ancient Japanese chant that outdated her by centuries, maybe millenia. As she reached the end of the chant and started it again, a deafening crack of thunder clapped, heightening the shock accompanying the shaft of light that streaked from the sky straight to a tree on the outskirts of the forest beyond the house, frying it in an instant's time. After the third time she'd finished the chant, Sage and Sekhmet joined her, chanting the all but foreign words which stumped even Sekhmet.

The breeze that had picked up in the room began to whip into a whirlwind, though invisible, and its strength was so great that Mia found it hard to stand up right, holding onto the wall next to her as she was.

The wind whipped her hair all around her, but Kayura felt only power circulating in the room, pushing them to test their worth, then passing through them when it was satisfied. She stroked the currents with her mind, feeling along their smooth, flowing tendrils like a slithering serpent, only this serpent was soft and warm, and it exuded with power and life. She sensed this, and stroked it with her mind and her soul, willing its favor to her. As she poured her being into the air with the serpent of power and let herself dance with it around the room, twirling and looping in perfect harmony, she forgot about the other people in the room, forgot about the boy who had once been her enemy that was lying near death on the bed before her. She felt only the presence of power that she felt was nothing less than the beating of her own heart, the sweeping breeze on a hot summer night, the delicate descent of a cherry blossom from a tree to the dewey grass. This was the oodobi, which held all life in its hand, and chose what prospered, and what withered. And she was in harmony with it. She lived within it, and it in turn gave power and life to her.

With a mild stab of sorrow, she felt it dissipate, spreading its particles throughout and about again. Coming back to herself, she jerked with the reawakening of senses and realized that she'd stopped chanting and was just standing there like an idiot. Sage and Sekhmet watched her with wary eyes, but kept on chanting. With a quick glance, she saw Cye and Mia doing the same.

Kayura dismissed the Staff she held at her side and, reaching out, placed a slender hand on each of the men's shoulders, feeling the power she'd recieved be passed onto them, who could use it better.

A light, not so bright as a star, but warm and inviting like a candle, enveloped the pair of healers. At first their expressions were priceless masks of shock, but they realized immediately what was happening, and welcomed the power she filled them with, actually pulling the light into their bodies.

Tentatively, Sage reached down and placed a hand on the gash above one of Rowen's eyes. He closed his eyes in concentration, curiously prodding the new load of power floating around inside him. He grabbed a bit of the strange energy, and pulled out a string of it from the bundle. After examining it a little, he grabbed onto a bit of his own lifeforce and pulled out a string of that too, and twined the two together into a rope. Though the rope was only in his mind, he could see it as clear as day.

Sage carefully and tenderly took the string of intertwined powers and wrapped it around the infected gash. He pressed on it gently, and was mildly shocked to see it healing right before his eyes - he'd never healed anyone like this before. The infection withdrew immediately, breaking up the puss in the injury and returning the skin surrounding to a more normal color. As the wound began to heal, he could feel a little bit of energy leave him. Sage released the pressure and frowned pensively when the healing almost completely stopped as soon as the pressure was released, not yet halfway healed.

He looked over the bed and his eyes fell on the nice sized pile of bandages lying next to Rowen. Taking a long strip of cloth, he gently tied it around his head, directly over the "healing rope".

With a nod to Sekhmet, who'd been watching closely, they set to work bandaging all of his visble wounds that way. Of course, Sekhmet hadn't been able to see the "healing rope" anymore than the others - Kayura, Mia and Cye - and yet he worked like he'd seen it done hundreds of times.

After a short time had passed, no more than 10 or 15 minutes, Sage crashed to a sitting position on his knees, his energy gone. Sekhmet looked ready to collapse himself, but managed to do little more than sway a bit.

"That's the last of the flesh wounds," Sage announced.

"He has some cracked ribs and a lot of minor internal injuries along with the bruises," a relieved Mia told him, even though she was still thoroughly concerned for the unconsious Ronin.

"I know. But as you said, they're minor injuries, and he won't be waking up for a long time, so we'll have plenty of time for that later," Sage concluded.

"Yes," Sekhmet agreed. "And I believe that before either of us even attempt to strain ourselves that much more, we'd better get some rest."

"Agreed," Kayura declared, all ready to leave at that.

"Um..."

"What is it, Torrent?" Kayura asked exhaustedly.

"Well, first off, I think we all deserve to get our stories straightened out, as the mystery has been tearing at us all for nearly two weeks now and I know none of us really want to wait any longer."

Everyone gave Cye a look of agitation, but didn't argue.

"And besides, we don't really have any sleeping arrangements worked out for all of us, and you guys can sit down and eat while we get it all straightened out. What d'ya say?"

Sage sighed and climbed to his feet. "Sure, why not."

"Great! Then it's settled," Mia proclaimed. "Cye, would you go and get some boxers or something for Rowen so he isn't so exposed?"

"Sure," he said with a glance back at Rowen as he left to fetch some clothes for him.

"Okay," Mia feigned perkiness. "If everyone could go downstairs to the den, we'll get this over with and everyone can get some rest. I'm sure the others are dying of worry and anticipation, so we'd better go update them on his condition."

Kayura, Sage and Sekhmet silently filed out of the room, all three looking ready to pass out on a moment's notice.

Mia watched them while still attempting to let all of the new events to sink in fully. Rowen was back. Everything was going to be okay now. They were all together again.

"I've come, my lord. What task do you have for me?" the low, raspy voice of a hunched over, ragged old woman croaked.

�"Mandilyn, you are aware of Strata's escape with the traitors?"

"Yes, master."

"And of the particulars involved in his little magic show?"

"Yes, master."

"Then, I suppose you could tell me just what happened? His disappearance was not a part of my plans. He was only to attempt an escape, not leave just when we had him!"

"Please, my lord! I assure you that we could not have known of this, nor could we have prepared for it if we had!"

"Well," Talpa threatened darkly. "If you're so certain of this, then I assume that you know the cause of all of it?"

"Yes, master. It was not entirely the spirit's fault, as I originally thought. I've examined the trails of power left on the astral planes, and the signature was none other than Rowen of Strata's. It does appear that his brother's spirit was present at the time, and even perhaps spawned the act, but the interference to our plan was none but Strata's, sir."

"What?? How can this be? None of the Ronins are capable of that amount of power unaided!"

"Well, it would appear that our trick to transform him has backfired in a rather dangerous way. As you well know, master, the....changes we made in Strata's armor - and the way we tainted it - should have been more than enough to force him to work for you. All that was required was that he called on the armor, and he should have been yours. He did call on it, but instead of transforming him completely, his subconscious will to survive took over and he acted accordingly. In short, sir, we gave him unbelievable power, and he's using it. So in truth, this Ronin is capable of that amount of power, master."

Talpa stared down his servant, contemplating her words. If they were true, then his situation looked far more critical than he had imagined. "Mandilyn....what do you suggest?"

"Well, lord, I can only see one option left," she paused. "The ghost took him into the yumekai, and even established a visual ground for Strata's standing position. In a very real way, this means that winning him over there, in any way, is winning him for real. It provides a battlefield where we have all of the power, and his friends cannot intervene. The only obstacles would be his brother's spirit, which can do little to us directly, and his own strength of will. And as we've witnessed, that too has grown quite weak over time. It would be remarkably easy to draw him there and attack. He'd never stand a chance."

"Excellent. I will expect you to be ready shortly. The longer we wait, the more strength he gains, and the harder it will become for us to crush the last remaining bit of will in him."

"Yes, Lord Talpa."

That wraps up this chapter! Hope ya liked it, this is actually about where the real plot begins! And it's already the eighth chapter, too... Let me know if you liked this chapter or the story in general by emailing me at [email protected].

For those who've been dying of anticipation, there're a lot of explanations (I really mean it this time!!) coming up within the next two or three chapters, so hang on...

Oh, and the translations of the Japanese used in this chapter are:
kuso - shit
doumo - thank you or thank you very much
ametsuchi - Nature, the universe, or all existence
chinchii - the three powers (heaven, earth, and man)
oodobi - "Water of Life", from the French "Eau de Vie", which I'm sure doesn't have the same meaning as I implied here, but hopefully I kept the general meaning intact, sorta
jimen, kuuki, hi, ekitai, and seishin - earth, air, fire, water and spirit/soul, respectively