"Tenpou? You okay?"

Again, he didn't hear it.

Suddenly something roared in his ears: wild, vicious and unrestrained. Tenpou tried to stagger back, but found that he couldn't move. His hand was paralyzed, locked palm to palm with that of his mirror image which seemed to oscillate before him...from youkai to that other form. From gentle to malicious, delirous and ripping at the seams.

He felt pain rushing through his abdomen like a claw being dug into him, felt the rain when he was nowhere near water. It drove him half mad and he cried out, tried to, but no sound emerged from his throat. Rain, hisses, and growls. Grim innocence and the smell of blood. Pouring rain and pouring blood. He hated it and hungered for it, pounding rain and blood pounding through his ears. Then...

Soft rain, a soft bed, and a voice. "Did you want to die?"

I don't want to die...it was his last thought.

The mirror shattered. Now a broken piece of nothing with a bullet hole.

Five-hundred years later, on a road heading west...

The jeep screeched to a halt, its driver leaning forward over the wheel, his skin growing pale and his eyes dimming with extreme fatigue.

"Oi, Hakkai!" Sanzo's harsh tone woke him up.

"Sorry...Sanzo." Hakkai apologized sheepishly. "I guess I'm just tired, that's all...but I'm fine now. Really. The next town shouldn't be more than ten min-"

"Just shut up and drive. The faster we get there, the better." He paused, then added in a softer tone, "Sleep later, not now. I'm not in the mood to be road kill."

"I understand." And so Hakkai continued driving.

Then...in the midst of an ever so rare and ever so awkward silence that permeated the air, he heard a voice.

"You okay?"...and it echoed.

"I'm fine, Gojyo, really."

The halfbreed lifted a slender brow. "But I didn't even say anything..."

Chapter 2: Strange Times

"The other shape, If shape it might be called that shape had none

Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

For each seemed either; black he stood as night;

Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;

And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on."

- Milton on Death

Tenpou sharply shut the book, pointedly ignoring the ache of doubt that had planted itself in his chest. And for a while, the field marshal of the Western Army just sat there, staring blankly at the chaotically colliding dust motes illuminated by his dim desk lamp. His vision blurred, but he squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head and all returned to normal, if only for a while.

More silence and more dust motes. He blew smoke at them. The cigarette was on its final centimeter.

Like all heavenly nights, tonight was quiet, a gentle wind blowing at his nape and a glass of sweet wine by his side. Should have been blissful.

After a moment of thought, Tenpou reached into his desk drawer and pulled out two old reports from the Western Army.

The first one read like this: "Report to Tenpou Gensui, Field Marshal of Heaven's Western Armies: (the handwriting was Kenren's) The twenty first regiment of the third division, comprised of thirty soldiers was sent to Earth on a surveillance round to investigate possible threats of dormant ice youkai. Not one man of the thirty ever reported back. Permission to organize a rescue mission."

Tenpou's response: Denied.

Cold. Yes, he knew that, and had to deal with Kenren's silent treatment for a good week. He truly did care for his men, but something nudged Tenpou's intuition and bid him stay quiet. Think before you leap. Then again, don't leap at all because there's a pit of spikes on the other side...And so he waited as his own relay report filtered its way through the bureaucracy, passing from hand to corrupted hand.

This is the same report as Konzen had received it several days and departments later:

"Report to Konzen Douji: The twenty first regiment of the third division, comprised of thirty soldiers was sent to Earth on a surveillance round to investigate possible threats of mobilizing water youkai. Not one man of the thirty ever reported back. It is most certain that the division had strayed away from heaven and the army's leaders have decided to view the situation as abandonment. No drastic action need be taken. Forbidden re-entrance to heaven is sufficient." (He could not decipher the writer of the altered report)

Like a game of telephone...and dammit his eyesight was wavering again. Eyes were necessary for research, for this tedious handwriting analysis since he couldn't trust anybody's word on who the mysterious author was. But surely, one with enough influence to push this trash all the way up to Konzen who gave the correspondence back to Tenpou.

"The handwriting's too neat to be yours. Too much flourish to be your dickhead general's."