Even after Tyson's food, he ate two servings of hospital fare and the thickest chocolate milkshake they would give him. It was calories he craved, and some floating little person in his head, that he always imagined looked a lot like Tyson, wondered if this was what it was like to have pregnancy cravings.

Afterwards, he passed out, barely having the energy to make sure his blade was held tightly in his hand. He had slept holding it many times before and knew he wouldn't let go, no matter how much he may toss and turn.

When he woke up sometime in the middle of the night, he at first didn't know what had woken him. That was, until he saw the dark figure doing a poor job at hiding in the shadows of his darkened hospital room.

He slowly clenched the launcher he had hid beneath his pillow.

"Leave or die," he said, forcing his voice calm and steady.

"Come willingly or unwillingly," the other said, even quieter than him.

Kai narrowed his eyes. "Sorry, but I don't feel like walking anywhere."

The man's arm jerked into motion at the same time Kai did. In one move he had Dranzer on and his fingers on the rip cord, but what the man pulled out wasn't a blade. He threw his fist to the floor, faint white smoke vanished half-way through the air, and Kai's vision went opaque. He caught his breath, clung to his consciousness, desperately felt out for the muscles that would set Dranzer free...but it all slipped away.

When he came to, not only was he once more ravenous, but his arms, legs, and face throbbed in great burning waves of pain, though it was especially pronounced in his tightly bandaged right leg where the assassins had cut him days before. It was almost as though his burns had been returned to him.

He saw a utilitarian, cement ceiling, lit by blander naked bulbs. Gagging at the taste in his mouth, probably whatever leftovers of what they had used to knock him out, he rolled over and retched.

"Disgusting."

He reeled himself back, beating control into every spasming muscle his focus could reach, and rolled to a sitting position to see the speaker.

And found himself staring at a rather unremarkable man. He was of the usual Japanese breed, with dark hair, slanted eyes, and pinched, olive colored skin. The strange bulky cape thingy he wore on his back like some elongated turtle shell was new though. He wore the perfect uniform Kai would have picked for breaking into the mansion: a tight fitting, long sleeved turtle neck, well-fitted cargo pants, and flexible skin tight shoes, all in black. Against the pale gray surroundings of the cement basement they were in, his captor, as he presumed he was, stood out like a great gash into space.

The dark man gave him an ugly, twisted grimace. "I'm not going to be able to talk to you with that noise still in my ears. Please, if you're going to puke, let me know so I can leave in time."

Kai wiped at his mouth, more to get a feel for the state of his body without looking away from his foe than to clean anything from it. He was still in the hospital gown, which was demeaning. His skin was cold, so he hadn't been in contact with someone else for a while, so how long had the other man been standing there? Knowing would tell Kai precious information about his personality.

"Go on," said the man, flapping a hand at him. "Ask me what I want. We got to do this right, don't we?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, the usual script. 'Who are you, what do you want?' I say something diabolical, give you my evil plan right off the back, maybe cackle a bit. Or would you rather we cut to the chase?"

Kai didn't answer that. He thought his death glare would do good enough.

As expected, the dark man was unfazed. "Alright, then. I know what you are and what you can do, and I want you to kill whoever I tell you to without getting caught or I kill all your friends. Now that that's covered, will I leave you in there while I go and slaughter all of your friends—and take pictures, of course, can't do without pictures—or will I let you out of this pen and give you your first assignment? Oh, and if you were thinking about running," he tapped at his neck.

Confused, Kai lifted his hand to his own throat to find, with some level of chagrin, a thick, black collar, not unlike the one he had cut from Ayah's throat. In his case, however, it was made of rubber coated metal and not plastic.

"So, you're the one who tried to kill Ayah?" Kai said.

An ugly spasm crossed the other's face. It narrowed his eyes to slits and curled his lips back to reveal unnatural, sharpened teeth. The first shock of color flared to his cheeks.

And then it was gone. It had come and left so quickly, anyone would have suspected they saw nothing at all.

What was left was a certain level of irritation. "I would be the last being to kill her. She is the reason I'm using animals like you in the first place. But, being familiar with her collar, I suppose that saves me the effort of explaining to you why running away from me is useless. And, if you want to stay alive, you will forget all about her. So, death to the top spinners or obedience?"

"Not much of a choice," said Kai. Despite the knee-jerk hatred he held for this man, he felt a level of relief that he was proving to be efficient and business-like. Those sorts were always easier to deal with than the mad explosives that men like Boris proved to be. Though that flicker of passion he had seen spoke of someone not so different. But, then, Kai was use to these types of people. You could only have so many variations to evil overlord.

God, he really was in some children's cartoon.

"Great." The man flicked a hand over his shoulder and a figure dressed in the same dark clothes as him scuttled over to pull Kai to his feet. Kai barely had the time to recognize the pale features of an old Abbey mate. "Too bad I don't have a cage down here for you. A good set of bars can be fun."

A shiver crawled over him, as though someone had slipped something icky down his shirt. Had he interpreted that glint in his eye right? What kind of man would feel the need to slip in a perverted joke in a situation like this?

Kai remembered he had mentioned Ayah and white hot heat curled dragon-like in his stomach.

"What have you to do with Ayah?" he asked, ignoring the man's warning to forget about her.

Lucky, he didn't seem too offended. Just bored now. "Oh, everything," he said with another flippant wave of his hand. A rather gesticulate man, then. "Consider her Eve and I am Adam. Last of our kind, all that, but hurry up. I don't want to waste more time on this than I have to."

The dragon within Kai gave a heated roar. He instinctually reached for his launcher and blade, but, of course, reached nothing but air. The empty spaces gave his brain the needed time to catch up with him and ask the rest of him what the hell was going on. So the girl had a partner or lover of sorts now, what of it?

The man had started walking away, expecting him to follow, unafraid of giving Kai his back. Kai would have taken this as a chance to jump the guy foolish enough to think he needed a beyblade to kill someone, but seeing as he had others like Kai working beneath him, it was likely he would know of Kai's trick. Not to mention Kai had a gimp leg and still healing limbs. As Kai got a closer look at the weird humped cloak on his back, he became engrossed in a new confusion that put murder out of his mind for the barest of seconds.

Feathers. Whatever it was on his back, it was made of feathers, and reached nearly to the floor.

"Oy. Move."

Despite the swollen throbbing which was his leg, he pushed himself up and limped forward, the slaps of his bare feet against the cold concrete echoing like applause about the chamber. The black feathered man led him to a door with a single window that Kai hadn't seen before, due to the position the other had been standing.

"It's really not such a bad gig, if you think about it, all the dramatics aside," he told Kai as he opened the door. On the other side, two others also dressed in the same black uniform snapped perfect, mint salutes. Kai didn't recognize these two. Recruits from the days after he had left? Beyond them, a continuation of the concrete basement went on in the form of a hallway that opened at the end. "You kill some people like the shadow you are and you get to live. I mean, that's more than the rest of the humans get."

"Humans?" The word had slipped out of him before he could catch himself.

"Of course." And right as he said this, the feathers on his back shifted, rustling like some living creature of their own.

Kai froze, breath catching. That wasn't a creature he had on his back.

This man said he was like Ayah. Ayah had hollow bones. Like a bird.

"Anyways," the man continued as though nothing had happened, stepping through the door as another black dressed, masked assassin opened it for him. "Three meals a day, you all sleep in the same room, the others will show you where you're fed and you'll get your assignments there. Do them successfully, yay you. Fail, it's the usual punishments: flogging, torture, death—I'm not particularly picky on where said death falls either. Could go anywhere, really. Like a splash."

"Who are you?" he asked as he stepped through the door. The other black assassins followed after him to line up behind the man as he continued his way up some stairs.

"Cain. But to you, Master, unless you're feeling suicidal."

"How original."

"This isn't a really original situation. Though, I guess coming from me, the to-be forefather of my entire species, everything I do is original. Shakes up how you think about it."

"Sounds like you just like the sound of your own voice."

"One would have to after living most of their existence alone on a deserted island." The man flashed him another sharp toothed grin over his shoulder and feathers.

Kai just glared. It was these normal, casual sounding ones you had to fear the most. It would have been preferable if the man had been obviously evil right off the bat. Some blood wouldn't have gone amiss.

"Is there anything I'm forgetting?" The feathers shuffled again. "Death. Threats. Food. Sex...no, I think that's it, unless you need some proof that I'm serious?"

And just as he reached the top, the black feathers snapped out, broader than the whole staircase could contain. A sharp pitched screech, like nails on a fingerboard, rent the air and the one assassin out of the three that Kai had recognized suddenly dropped back. Scarlet burst out from a thin line up his chest like spilt wine, slow and glass-like.

The assassin tumbled down the stairs, blood bursting from him with each hit in an impossible manner. The blood hung in the air, glittering in dew-like beads.

The body hit the floor with a final thud and didn't move. Streams of blood finally fell from the air like rain, sprinkling a trail down the stairs to his final resting place.

The alarm from the other two assassin's told Kai that this hadn't been planned, nor did they have sufficient reason to think themselves safe.

Cain half turned to point down the stairs. "See that? Dead. You can check if you like, but I'm pretty sure he's dead. You're probably wondering why I would even need you if I can do something like that. Truth is, I don't. I just, you know, like listening to the sound of my own voice and I'm not one for patience. It's quicker when you have some help. But I also am super into paying someone for their work, so if you just do as you're told, when all of this is done you'll get whatever patch of land you want and women or friends or whatever, I'm not entirely picky. The earth is pretty big, after all."

Kai couldn't help the crack in his words as he croaked, "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I'm killing humans." That fanged smile spread out, wider than ever. "All of them."