Fushigi Yuugi Fan Fiction ❯ Fushigi Yuugi: Daydream's Embrace ❯ Episode 17: Awakening Memories ( Chapter 17 )

Episode 17
Awakening Memories
By: Nyan Nyan and Mrs. Tasuki

Tamahome walked into Miaka's room wearing a small black tunic over a pair of white pants and long sleeve top. Miaka dropped her mouth in awe at how nice he looked in his new attire. "Does this look okay?" Tamahome asked uneasily, looking down at the clothing. Her admiration was beyond words, and she just nodded.

"If you'll excuse me, your eminence," Nakago interrupted. Miaka and Tamahome quickly turned around, startled at his presence. "I thought you might be interesting in hearing an amusing story. One of the Priestesses of Suzaku has gone blind," he said with a smirk.

"Blind?!" Tamahome said in shock, his eyes growing wide with concern.

Showing no emotion on his face, Nakago continued, "It seems that her sight has been damaged by the plague. It is incurable and leaves its victims to die a slow, painful death."

"That's horrible!" Miaka exclaimed while clasping her hands over her mouth.

"Don't you see, Lady Miaka," Nakago started, lightly grasping her arm. "If one of the priestesses dies, then Konan cannot summon Suzaku. This tragedy will work in our benefit."

"Nakago, how can you say such terrible things?!" Miaka shouted as she pulled away from his grasp, not believing how cruel he was acting.

Getting down on one knee with his hand over his heart, Nakago apologized in a regretful tone. "I'm terribly sorry, Lady Miaka. My own ambition caused me to not see the suffering of other people. Thank you for reminding me."

Desperately wanting the details, Tamahome asked anxiously, "Do you know which priestess it is?"

"I did not acquire that much information," Nakago answered, getting up and walking out of Miaka's room.

*

Shoka was in her small house, sweeping the dirty floor with an old broom, trying to make it look at least slightly clean. The wooden door suddenly flung open to reveal several newcomers. A young man in a long red tunic walked in carrying a girl wearing strange foreign clothing. "Please help her," the man pleaded as the foreign girl gasped for air. Shoka looked around the man to find a purple-haired woman, another man with orange hair, and a second strangely-dressed girl.

"We believe she caught the shikkonki," Nuriko stated.

"Please lay her down over there," Shoka replied, pointing to the single bed in the room.

"This must be torture, living like that," Nuriko stated as Hotohori laid the priestess down on the bed.

"Katherine, you better not die on me!" Christina shouted at Katherine. She was always at a lost for words when something serious happened to her.

"Wow...you're so nice," Katherine joked in a weak voice, looking at her friend. Hotohori silently kneeled by Katherine, covering her with a white sheet.

"Can't you do anything?" Nuriko begged, turning to Shoka.

"We only have one choice," Shoka solemnly started. "We must kill her." Everyone quickly looked at her, hoping they misheard what she had just said. "I can use my power to revive her. She will be perfectly healthy afterwards," she explained.

"Do you really expect us to do that?!" Tasuki yelled in disbelief. Slamming his fist into his hand, he continued, "Dammit! There ain't nothin we can do?!"

"Nope, not gonna happen," Christina countered while crossing her arms. She knew the reason why killing Katherine would not end well. Shoka's way of reviving people was a bit overrated in her mind.

In between her gasps for air, Katherine asked, "Can you guys...try to find that...hermit guy?"

"Yeah, we could go get him!" Christina shouted excitedly. "But one of us should stay here with Katherine," she reasoned, not completely trusting Shoka.

"I will," Hotohori volunteered.

"So, does that sound good to you two?" Christina asked, turning to Nuriko and Tasuki.

Looking at each other, they replied in unison, "Sure..."

"Great! See ya later!" she shouted as she walked out of Shoka's house, followed by Nuriko and Tasuki.

"Katherine, is there anything I can get you?" Hotohori asked, turning to hold her hand.

"No, I'm fi-" she started but was cut short by a sudden fit of coughs. She sat up in the bed, covering her mouth. Hotohori sat behind her on the side of the small bed and started to rub her back. He hated to see her in this condition. She finally began to relax and leaned into him. He rested his back on the headboard of the bed and lifted his legs onto the bed next to hers. She nestled her head on his chest, listening to his heart-beat, as he gently brushed some of her hair out of her face.

*

Christina made a quick stop by their room before setting off to find the hermit. "Katherine?" a muffled voice called from a corner of the room. Christina looked around for where the voice, which she quickly recognized at Joan's, was emanating from. She moved the piles of bags and luggage that belonged to the group. "Christina?" Joan called. Christina picked up Katherine's little black bag and searched through it for the dollar bill.

"Keep talking," Christina yelled into the bag. "I'm trying to find the cash."

"Will you hurry up already?!" Joan anxiously shouted. Christina finally fished the dollar bill of the bottom of the backpack and held it above her head. Her smile grew with delight as she looked up at the connection. She walked over to the other side of the room and flopped down on the bed.

"Hey there Joan," she said happily, almost as if she was talking on a telephone. "What's up?"

"Lemme talk to Katherine," Joan ordered quickly, completely ignoring Christina.

"Ummm...she's sleeping..." Christina answered, too quickly for it to sound calm.

"Are you telling me she caught the plague?!" Joan asked angrily. All she had read was that the Lady Katherine was not feeling well, but she knew by Christina's tense voice that Katherine was in trouble, and her memory of the original Fushigi Yuugi plot only increased her distress. "I KNEW this would happen!" she yelled heatedly. "You are both coming home RIGHT NOW!"

"EXCUSE me?" Christina asked, not believing what she just heard.

"You heard me! This is too dangerous for both of you! I want you back here now!"

Nuriko and Tasuki were walking up to the room wondering what was taking Christina so long, when they heard her yelling from within. Knowing that no one else was in the room with Christina they nervously glanced at each other as they opened the door and walked into the room.

"And just HOW am I supposed to go home!?" Christina yelled, unaware of Tasuki's and Nuriko's presence, "And WHY would I want to go home?!"

Tasuki and Nuriko stared at each other, thoroughly unnerved out by her obvious insanity. "Are you feeling okay?" Nuriko asked her. Christina waved her hand dismissively at him, as though he was interrupting a conversation.

"Oh, I have ways of making you come home," Joan said threateningly.

Hearing a strange female voice from the sky, Tasuki yelled, "What the hell was that?!" He saw a strange piece of green paper floating above Christina's head.

"Okay, where are you, Kutou agent?!" Nuriko shouted at the ceiling as he raised his fists, remembering the time an assassin was hidden on the ceiling in Tamahome's room.

"Can you two please be quiet?" Christina asked Nuriko and Tasuki impatiently, "I'm talking to Joan." She turned back to the bill and glared at it. "And what 'ways' are those?" she asked ominously, putting her hands on her hips.

Knowing he had heard the name somewhere before, Nuriko asked, "Isn't Joan Katherine's sister?"

"Yes," Christina simply answered. Nuriko was still confused, since talking to paper clearly had nothing to do with Katherine's sister.

"If you two don't come home, I will single-handedly ensure that Hotohori's kingdom is utterly devastated," Joan stated.

"And what do you mean by 'devastated'?" Christina asked, "It's not like you can burn the b-" she said, but cut her statement short before she said 'book'. She wasn't exactly in the mood to explain to Nuriko and Tasuki that the book in question was a portal to Konan. "It's not like you can burn The Universe of the Four Gods."

"It's true that it can't be burned," Joan agreed. "But the cover can be beaten."

"You mean..."

"The pages can be torn. The binding-"

"Don't TOUCH that binding!" Christina heard Diana's voice scream angrily. Diana was very touchy about the binding on any books, especially her manga.

"Hi, Diana!" Christina greeted happily. Meanwhile, Nuriko and Tasuki stood watching, dumbfounded and confused at what was happening.

Cutting Christina short again, Joan yelled, "As I was saying! The BINDING could be broken! And you know that Konan 'reflects' the condition of the book."

"But that would mean that..." Christina retorted in disbelief. "You wouldn't really destroy it, would you?"

"I can't destroy it." Joan said, "But I CAN wreak a lot of havoc." Truthfully, Joan didn't want to resort to anything of the sort. But, if she had to choose between threatening Konan and leaving Christina and Katherine in life-threatening danger, the choice was simple.

"You know if you did anything like that, Katherine and I could get caught up in the cross-fire," Christina pointed out, barely speaking above a whisper. "I mean if you screw around with that, and there's all this chaos and destruction...Katherine and I could get killed." Nuriko and Tasuki looked worriedly at each other, not sure what Christina meant at all. "Joan," she sighed, "I have this feeling that neither of us can escape The Universe of the Four Gods until we finish it. I don't think we have a choice anymore. It's been out of our hands for a while now, and none of us can do anything about it, so all we can do is ride it out."

"Christina..." Diana began, "You have to come home. And you have to bring Nuriko with you!" Before Christina had time to react, the dollar bill emitted a loud smack, accompanied by Joan's holler.

"Baka! How can you think of something like-" Joan screamed at her friend before being interrupted once again.

"Seriously, though," Diana continued tenderly, "Christina can't you please come home? It's too dangerous. Katherine's sick, and you know as well as I do that it gets even worse from there."

Nuriko stared at the green paper and raised one eyebrow. "Who is that?" he whispered to Tasuki, noticing the plaintive voice didn't sound like Katherine's sister.

"How the hell should I know?" Tasuki shouted. "Whoever it is, she has an awful taste in men," he continued, curling up his lip. He was promptly answered with a strong punch into the wall.

"Diana, I'm not coming home. Sometimes I do just wish I could, just because that would be the easy way out. But there are people here who depend on us. And that's more important than anything else now."

"You are coming home now!" Joan bellowed in a last, desperate effort to bring them back.

"Joan, I'm not leaving. Not now. That's the end of it. I know what you mean, but if you don't stop this, I'll burn the connection. I'm serious." Christina's tone was such that neither Joan nor Diana doubted her one bit.

"Christina..." Joan pleaded. But Christina ignored her, folding the dollar and carefully placing the dollar back into the bottom of Katherine's knapsack.

Christina said, "I'm not leaving." She turned back around and faced Nuriko and Tasuki, then walked past them, out of the room, still not speaking. Tasuki and Nuriko followed her out of the chamber, sure she would not say another word about the inter-dimensional conversation she had just had.

*

Nuriko, Christina, and Tasuki finally set out to find Myojuan's house. Christina immediately took over as the leader. They walked around the outskirts of town, Tasuki and Nuriko looking for shacks in the forest, while Christina was looking for a fisherman selling his wares. "Fish!" a voice called down the dirty, narrow lane. Christina turned around to see where the voice had come from. "Fish!" he called again. A man ran down the street, carrying two buckets of fish on a pole that was resting over his shoulders. "Buy some fresh fish today!" The man completely contrasted his surroundings. He was energetic in a town where all of the inhabitants seemed to have had the vigor sucked out of them. The lively man rounded the corner, still advertising his goods. He accidentally dropped a small fish as he turned down the second street and kept running.

Christina looked around the shadowy corners, waiting for someone to jump out and take the fish. She was rewarded by a tall man, wearing discolored tan pants and a brown shirt, who grabbed the fish and then ran out of the city's gates, towards the forest. "Who wants to bet against me that that guy's Myojuan?" Christina whispered to her friends.

The trio hurried to where the hermit had disappeared, and followed a small, well-worn path into the trees. At the end of the trail was a tiny, run-down hovel.

"That must be it!" Christina said excitedly.

The group walked over and peered in through one of the open windows. "So many medicines..." Nuriko said in complete awe of the jars that were littered around the floor. The man from before was sitting in the middle of the floorboards, surrounded by the jars of medication. "Do you think this could be the Myojuan person we heard about?" Nuriko whispered to Christina.

"I'd bet my life on it," she replied.

"Hey, Mister!" Tasuki yelled, flinging the old door open. "Are you Myojuan?" A small white cat sat, happily munching on the fish on the left side of the room. The man turned around, wondering who had intruded into his home. He had long scraggly hair, and an untidy beard and mustache. Even though his appearance was much less than refined, he had kind eyes, but they were nearly wholly hidden behind a mat of hair. He turned his back on the group in an uncaring manner. "If ya are, could ya take a look at our friend? She's back in the city."

"She's very weak from the plague and couldn't even walk up here to see you," Nuriko explained.

Still not facing them, Myojuan quietly mumbled, "I gave up being a doctor long ago. Now leave."

"What?" Nuriko asked, not believing his ears. "But you examine animals, don't you?"

Myojuan turned around, quickly and glared at the intruders. "I don't give a damn about people! Now leave!" he bellowed furiously.

"Sure, sure. Whatever pal. Man, ask a guy a favor!" Tasuki complained as they left the house. Christina stopped in her tracks. She was not going to relent on this one. She was going to go him a piece of her mind. She turned back around and marched into the shack. Tasuki and Nuriko looked around when they realized that Christina had left. They spotted her angrily stomping towards Myojuan's house and had no choice but to follow in her wake.

*

"Don't worry you guys, I'm coming," Tamahome thought as he ran down the palace hallway. He had to get back to Christina and Katherine, before something horrible happened to one of them. Even though his reaction would be the same, regardless of which one had caught the plague, he hated not knowing.

"Tamahome..." Miaka started uneasily, coming out of a dark hallway. "Are you going back to the other priestesses?"

Hoping that Miaka would permit him to leave, Tamahome pleaded, "I'm sorry, but I have to go to see if I can help. Please, let me go."

"That's okay," she started, looking down at the floor. "You don't have to explain. I understand," she replied, glancing up at him with a fake smile, even though tears were forming in her eyes.

Tamahome walked up to her and looked into her green eyes. "Don't worry, I'll come back," he muttered as his lips moved closer to her mouth. Miaka closed her eyes and felt the warmth of his lips upon hers. He wrapped his arms around her waist as she draped her arms on his shoulders. "I love you," he whispered in her ear as he slowly pulled away and wiped away one of her tears from her cheek. He turned around and continued to run. He turned around and continued to run. She watched him leave valiantly, but suddenly she saw a flash of blond hair.

Tamahome felt something wrap around his ankle causing him to fall down. Looking behind him, he saw a thick leather whip around his leg. "I anticipated this..." Nakago, the holder of the whip, greeted him with a sly smile.

Running up to the general, Miaka yelled, "Nakago, what are you doing?!"

"Lady Miaka, this man is a hostage and he must be punished for disobeying orders," Nakago explained with a cold tone. "Take him to the dungeon!" he commanded several guards who were nearby.

*

Hotohori looked down at his priestess, who was now sleeping peacefully against his chest. He remembered when he was a little child and how he dreamt of the Priestess of Suzaku, but the girl he had imagined was different than Katherine. He thought she would be sophisticated, much like his courtiers, yet Katherine didn't care what people thought about her. She was always cheerful and optimistic, with a happy-go-lucky smile on her face, yet she knew when to be serious. She showed him how to be himself, not the emperor of Konan. Katherine was nothing like his image of the ideal priestess when he was young; she was better.

Hotohori's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by soft mumbling. He rapidly woke up from his daydream to find Katherine gasping for air. She muttered something under her breath between her gasps of air, but no matter how hard Hotohori tried, he couldn't understand what she was saying. He placed his hand on top of her forehead and found that it was definitely feverish. He quickly moved out from under her, so he could look at her face. His hair draped down unto her face as he hovered over her. He saw her eyes were tightly shut and sweat was forming on her forehead. "Katherine! Please wake up," he desperately whispered into her ear as he gently grabbed her shoulders, but her eyes remained shut. He was about to turn around to find Shoka, but she had just entered the room to see what was causing so much commotion.

Shoka composedly approached the bed, having seen this many times. She placed her hand on the priestess's forehead and left it there for a moment until she came to her conclusion. "I'm terribly sorry," she started remorsefully, "but it appears that she is slightly delirious. The only thing we can do is wait," she continued with her eyes focusing on the wooden flooring.

"Wait for what?" Hotohori replied anxiously, his eyes filled with worry, hoping she meant to wait for her to wake up, but he knew by her silence that chances were Katherine wouldn't open her eyes again.

*

Christina angrily flung the door open. She burst back into the small one- room shelter. Myojuan turned around to see who had stomped into his house.

"Oh. You again," Myojuan said exasperatedly, not believing she had the nerve intrude once again.

"I will do ANYTHING to help Katherine! But I WILL NOT do it Miss Shoka's way!" Christina yelled angrily, placing both of her hands on her hips. Nuriko and Tasuki stared at her, taken aback at how frightening she was when she was angry. She looked as though her gaze alone could burn the house down. She impatiently waited for Myojuan to turn back around in surprise. Myojuan shakily turned around, not believing what she had just yelled.

"Did you just say...Shoka?"

"Yeah..." Nuriko answered, wondering why Miss Shoka had anything to do with this. "Katherine and Hotohori are with her now..."

"That...that's impossible!" Myojuan shouted in disbelief. "Shoka's dead! She died a year ago!"

~*~ Katherine sat down in her black computer chair. She let out a long sigh while untucking the white blouse from her uniform skirt. Her mother forced her to go to an all-girl, Catholic, college-preparatory school. This was her third year there, yet she felt like she was still a visitor. She never acted like herself, instead behaving quiet, shy, and withdrawn.

"So this is what loneliness feels like...huh, Hotohori?" she thought, looking at her Hotohori wallpaper as she clicked on the blue AOL icon. She signed on-line under her usual screen name and watched her buddy list and the welcome box appear. Suddenly, in front of it all, she saw two unfamiliar boxes emerge. She read the one that was in the center of the screen first. It told her that she had an hour to spend on the internet and that after that time it would sign her off. Katherine let out an agitated sigh as she began to read the second box.. The top of the small purple box was labeled 'AOL Guardian'. "This can't be good..." Katherine muttered as she continued reading. 'Your parent or guardian will receive an email about your online session,' it read in small black font. Katherine became enraged; she pushed her chair back with all her might, causing it to tip over.

She ran to the family room and found her mom on the couch petting their dog and her father on the blue chair watching Seinfield. "What the hell is going on?!" she screamed, not believing that they were doing this.

"Don't use that word," her mother scolded, referring to 'hell'.

"'Hell' isn't a swear word," Katherine explained, rolling her eyes at how naïve her mother was.

Upset at the lack of respect Katherine was showing, her mother replied, "Well, in this household it is."

"Fine! But why are there time limitations and a stupid guardian thing on the internet?" Katherine asked through her teeth. She hadn't anything to make her lose her parent's trust, she was sure of that.

"You spend much too much time on the internet talking to your friends and not enough time on your schoolwork," her mother rationally explained.

Her father put the T.V. on mute and entered the conversation. "If you want to get a scholarship at an out-of-state college, you are going to have to get a 3.5 GPA or above."

"Last quarter I got a 3.429!" Katherine hollered, not wanting to hear her father's college speech once again.

"We both know you are capable of more than that," her mother calmly replied.

"And the 'A's' you did get were in the less important courses, such as religion and art. Colleges don't look at those classes as much; they look more at the Math and Science courses," her father continued.

"I did get an 'A' in Science!" Katherine screamed back. She knew that yelling at them would only get her into more trouble, but she couldn't stop herself.

"And what did you get in math?" was her father's only reply, knowing that his daughter did not do as well in math.

"A 'B'..." she muttered. "But I'm in Probability and Statistics and I'm the only freshman in the whole school that is taking that class!"

"Would you stop screaming at us?! Don't you see you have lost complete structure in your life?!" her mother yelled. "You have no respect for us anymore, you've started swearing, and your grades are slipping"

Katherine took a couple of deep breaths. She felt like she was going to explode; her body couldn't take it anymore. She rubbed her face with her hands and tried to massage her temples. "First of all," she started with her voice extremely low, "I know I was yelling, and I know that that is wrong. But I believe that right now I have the right to yell considering it's the only way for you guys to listen to me. Second of all, 'hell' once again is NOT a swear word. Thirdly, how can you expect me to keep my grades up when I'm stuck in a never-ending hellhole," she suddenly paused, realizing she had 'sworn' once again. She glanced over to find her mother glaring at her. "HECKhole for a school," she corrected mockingly.

"That is no excuse for your behavior lately," her mother responded. She was going to say more but she was interrupted by their dog barking at the patio door. Her mother pointed to the door, "Could you?" she politely asked, oblivious to how angry Katherine truly was.

Katherine let out an agitated sigh; she hated being interrupted. She walked over to the sliding glass door and opened it, letting her dog out. When she turned around she realized that she was going nowhere with her parents. Her father turned the sound back on the T.V. and both of them were intently watching it. "That's it! I'm changing it myself!" she exclaimed as she stomped out of the family room. She knew her mother's password so changing the parent controls would be simple.

She was halfway through the kitchen when her mother called out after her. "I changed my password," she simply said.

These four words set Katherine over the edge. "WHAT?!?!?!" she hollered as she quickly turned around. "Why in the world did you do that?!"

Acting like she was being completely reasonable, her mother replied, "I didn't like that fact that you knew it."

Katherine marched back into the family room. Glaring at her mother, she muttered, "What do I have to do to earn your trust?"

"Tell me yours," her mother answered.

"Now, you see, I have a reason not to tell you mine," Katherine started through her teeth. "I've caught you reading my IMs."

"Well, I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

"YOU GUYS ARE IMPOSSIBLE!!!" Katherine shouted at the top of her lungs.

Her father quickly turned off the T.V. and sat up in the blue chair. "You are blowing this completely out of proportion!" he bellowed.

Katherine just glared at him and bit her bottom lip. She wanted to so much to tell him exactly how she felt, but she couldn't. She couldn't do anything. They were always right and she was always wrong. All that she could to was storm off to her room. She sprinted up the steps as fast as she could. As she was running she heard her mother say, "What did I tell you? She has lost complete control."

Moments later she finally reached her room and slammed the door shut. It was pitch black but she didn't care. As she jogged over to her bed, she accidentally tripped over the blue inflatable chair in the middle of the room making her to fall on her side. Even though her floor was carpeted, it was thin and old, causing an instant headache when her head hit the ground. She was inches away from her bed, but she didn't bother to stand back up; she just laid on the floor of her messy room, letting the tears roll down her cheeks.

~*~

"So, when you were living in a neighboring town, Shoka took ill and died?" Nuriko asked skeptically, trying to sum up the former doctor's story.

Still in shock, Myojuan replied simply, "She did. I was the town's doctor."

"Then that means we have to hurry up at get to Katherine!" Christina finished angrily, her hands still anxiously resting on her hips. Nuriko, Tasuki, and Christina ran out of the shack.

"Shoka..." Myojuan murmured as they hurriedly shut the door. "It just couldn't be..."

*

Katherine abruptly woke up, finding herself in Shoka's house and lying on the soft bed. She was breathing heavily partly from the shikkonki and partly from the horrible nightmare. It was strange; she had never had a dream about something that actually happened to her, especially one that detailed. Frankly, she didn't want to have one like that ever again. Even though she loved her parents, she had a hard enough time dealing with them in her world. She didn't want to start dreaming about them in this world.

She turned her head to the side and saw a shadow before her. She tried to focus, but she couldn't. Right when she was going to ask who it was, the shadow started to speak. "Katherine, thank goodness you're awake," Hotohori said, sounding relieved as he gently placed his hand on her cheek. "You scared me for a while there..."

"H...how?" Katherine asked still slightly gasping for air as she laid her hand over his.

"You were delirious," another voice answered. Katherine assumed that this voice must be Shoka's, knowing that it belonged to a female but definitely not to Christina. Hotohori looked at Katherine worriedly. "Hotohori, maybe you should get something to eat," said Shoka, seeing the look on his face. "You haven't eaten anything since last night, and the last thing I need is you getting sick." She gave him a quick smile, as if reassuring him that Katherine would be safe in her hands.

"Don't go," Katherine pleaded, knowing that if he left her Shoka would try to kill her. She looked at the shadow in front of her with large puppy dog eyes and a pouted lip.

"Don't worry, I'll never leave your side," Hotohori replied tenderly, looking deep into her eyes. Shoka stopped still, remembering those words were once said to her. She started to back into a far corner, desperately trying to control the demon within.

"Shoka, what's wrong?" Hotohori inquired, noticing her peculiar reaction.

"Leave...now..." Shoka muttered under her breath as she sunk to the floor.

*

The trio sprinted towards the city, running at full speed and too distracted to notice the eerie gray fog that had settled over the town. A loud whistling sound filled the air, causing them to stop in their tracks. They looked around confusedly, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Nuriko turned around in the direction where they had come from, and his jaw dropped as he stared, completely transfixed, at the cloud of butcher knives and daggers flying towards his head.

"Get down!" Nuriko yelled as he quickly ducked to the ground. Tasuki and Christina quickly obeyed and jumped to the ground, just in time to miss the flurry of whirling blades.

"What th' hell?!" Tasuki swore, surprised by the attack. They scrambled to their feet as a mob of zombies closed in on them. These monsters were different from the zombies that had attacked them earlier; these looked like normal people, besides the blank eyes and pale skin. Their eyes had rolled into the back of their heads, and the pallor of their skin seemed mottled and gray.

The horde of monsters pressed in on all sides, forcing Christina, Nuriko, and Tasuki to retreat until their backs were pressed against each other.

"What's with these guys?" Tasuki asked.

"They're all zombies," Christina answered in amazement.

"I bet it's that fog that's doing it to them," Nuriko said. The zombies pounced on the trio, grabbing at their necks in an attempt to suffocate them and pulling them towards the ground.

Clawing at the rotting arms that were wrapped around her neck, Christina shouted, "Let me go!"

"Cut it out!" Tasuki yelled angrily, "You guys want me t' burn you down!?"

Christina struggled against the zombies, trying to get enough breath. "No, Tasuki!" she gasped, knowing that some of the zombies were innocent people.

"Easy fer you t' say!" he angrily disagreed, but didn't use his tessen. "Then what should we do!?" Tasuki's question was answered by Nuriko, who was now wielding an abandoned wagon. Nuriko knocked the zombies away easily and then stuck the cart into the ground, forming a barrier against the fiends.

"Christina! Leave this to us and help Katherine!" Nuriko ordered. Christina nodded quickly and ran towards Shoka's house.

"Hold on!" Tasuki objected, not wanting her to run off alone, "I'm comin' with you!" He looked up and saw a zombie standing above him, smiling fiendishly and wielding a machete. As it moved to attack, the monster was struck down to the ground by a tall dark silhouette.

"Wh-who th' hell are you?" Tasuki asked the shadowy figure.

To Be Continued...