The brute’s quick adaptation gave Kouga pause as he looked to the intense face of the operative.  Perhaps he held some potential, after all.  Perhaps he would be selected, or maybe even more.  Gennosuke had watched before as others had failed the symbiosis and Xelas devoured them.  He was the first, the first to endure Xelas’ unending gluttony.  Before him, Xelas was a being able to walk on its own, but the price of the creature’s sins were surely weighing down on it.  He watched as someone tried to forcibly bond a god to Xelas, and how it devoured him in this realm.   

Dionysus was far too proud, and far too stubborn.  He had not heeded Gennosuke’s urging and the rain devoured him.  Forge was different--he listened, but that wasn't enough.  Forge was not of a sound mind far before being inhabited by Xelas.  He also remembered that the man was of unfortunate circumstances--the rift likely would have caused any man to go mad, but Forge already walked the path.  Mzadech, however, he was unmolded potential.  He had a strong mind, and a strong body; he was willful.  Perhaps he could survive the tax of Xelas.

“If you insist,”  Gennosuke acquiesced.

He could sense Mobius relaxing, and Gennosuke exhaled a long, drawn-out breath, then closed his eyes.

[center]***[/center]

Mobius lowered his fists and unballed them as he watched Gennosuke’s shoulders sag and his eyelids draw shut. Something in the back of Max’s mind told him what to do, [i]Relax[/i].  He complied, and did his best to force some of the tension out despite the circumstances.  He did not, however, shut his eyes.  Two minutes passed by and Max was beginning to wonder what the point of this was.  Meditation hardly seemed like the solution his problems.

That was when Gennosuke’s eyes shot open--concentric rings of yellow and red veined with strange green ripples.  His eyes glowed and the roomed darkened--or perhaps his eyes contrasted with the ever-present darkness to give that effect.  Mobius felt a force hit his body, but he was unsure what it was, and then all the sounds of the reactor came to a standstill.  In fact, all the noises he had previous heard were gone.  The room was dead silent.

He couldn't move.  Max’s limbs were frozen in place as the environment around him began to change. 

The reactor’s light cycled like a rising sun through the sky, taking position at high noon.  He could feel its lambent light shining down on him, but that feeling would subside.  The radioactivity naturalized into ambient outdoor light, and bathed the murky, changing landscape into something different, something he had never seen before, personally, but knew what it was. 

Gennosuke, too, at this point changed.  His skin tightened around his skull, and his cheeks sunk in, like some sort of horrific malnourished ghoul.  His sockets also sunk in and his lips receded around his jaw and mandible creating a visage of a human skull.  His eyes remained fixated on Mobius, and Max felt compelled to look back--he was unable to turn his gaze from the hideous mummy that stood before him.

The landscape rapidly changed around them.  Below, the tainted waters bubbled and boiled, sprouting into tributaries and solidifying into what looked like a canopy of cauliflower, which fell thousands of feet below them.  Trees, one would recognize--a forest.  A vast, expansive forest.  The untamed wilds smashed the barriers of the room and ship, and soon they were overlooking a forest that spanned a thousand miles.  As the reactor, now a setting sun, settled just above the horizon he could see it, where the wall used to be behind Gennosuke’s grinning skull.

The skull changed, once again.  Like some horrible time-lapsed photo Gennosuke grew younger, but all too rapidly.  His skin expanded, and ballooned as it filled with flesh and meat once again.  Health returned to his face, but in a method that appeared artificial and all too unhealthy.  Color returned to the Kouga ninja, but his eyes remained the same--through death and to life.  Hair grew atop the patchy skull of the man, and fashioned itself into a messy ponytail oriented towards the back of his head.  After the transformation Gennosuke appeared less haggard than he had ever been.

The environment was not done, yet, though.  The steel catwalk that they once stood on solidified and dusted up, as they found themselves standing on a narrow mountain pass. Thousands of feet below the forest stretched on.  He could tell they were near the mountain's peak, as an eagle passed by, screeching before it flew out of sight.  It was daytime, he guessed, and with the setting sun’s position in the sky it now appeared to be around six o’clock.  His eyes were fixated on Gennosuke’s, even though his back was to the mountain wall.  Gennosuke stood on the edge of the cliff face, as the world began to slow to a stop.

[i]You must take it,[/i] Gennosuke’s voice demanded in his head.  [i]In my place you will take it.[/i]

In front of him he could see the yawning opening to a cave that plunged into the depths of the mountain.  Finally regaining his ability to move again, Max noticed Gennosuke had faded away, but the operative intrinsically knew what he had to do.  He approached the entrance of the cave and could hear woeful wailing of a man inside. Almost as if he were in a trance Mobius stepped inside the cave.  The sun’s light did not reach inside, the interior of the surprisingly cramped quarters was dark, mournful, and reeked of death.

As his eyes adjusted to the level of light within the cave, he could see a small camp perhaps a hundred yards in front of him.  He wasn't sure what would happen, and was unarmed save for his fists, so he decided to take this one stealthily.  Hunching low to the ground, Max prowled forwards like some sort of hunting predator.  The dismal moan once again filled the cave; this was the wail of someone bereft of something very valuable to them.  A depressed cry at a funeral, a sob of shock, Max wasn't sure what was happening, but he could see a figure hunched over at the camp ahead, as well as a few tents.

The figure never seemed to notice Max as he snuck up to the camp, but he still couldn't clearly see who it was at the camp up ahead.  However, he could see them crouched over what looked like a journal.  Perhaps thirty feet in front of them, and at the dead end of the cave there was a pedestal with a prism poised atop of it.  This prism created the only source of light throughout the cave, and it entranced Max much more than the bodies and journal that absorbed the attention of the young man and his now-revealed small group of compatriots.  The light shone rays that visibly divided the cavern in multicolored prismatic light.

Max drew his attention back down to the figure who, moments before, had furiously flipped to the back of the journal.  Suddenly the man shrieked and threw down the journal, jumping to his feet.  Something within the journal had psychologically assailed him with grief, and the young man, who Mobius now recognized as the wild and tearful-eyed Kouga he had seen moments before.  His eyes were different however, this time.  They were the eyes of a normal man, and Gennosuke was showing the emotions of a normal man, as well.  Things seemed to move in slow motion for Mobius as Gennosuke lumbered forward in grief-filled rage like some sort of Frankensteinian monstrosity, unable to cope with whatever revelation had just changed his life.

[i]STOP HIM![/i] Gennosuke’s voice screamed in his head.

Breaking his stealth, Max shot forward like an olympic runner from a runner’s stance.  He was much farther than Gennosuke, but he was also much faster.  The men at the camp, startled by the intrusion drew their weapons, but they would never catch Max at his top speed, not unaware as they were.  They yelled something at their leader in a language he understood to be Japanese, but in an archaic dialect that made it difficult to transcribe just exactly the phrasing of their warning.

The men charged forth with their blades raised, but they were behind Max and he would not pay them any attention.  His feet pounded against the rough ground of the cave, as he could feel stones and sharp gravel piercing through the arches of his feet.  He fought through the pain and blazed forward, one arm in front of the other, chopping through the air, exhaling furiously.  He could see Gennosuke, screaming and swinging his arms as he trudged another step towards the pedestal, and what Mobius felt was his ultimate doom.  Less than a second passed, but to Max it felt like an eternity of wondering whether he would make it before Gennosuke.  His chest burned as he pushed everything into every step he could manage.

“Don’t!” Max roared with the ferocity and warning of an impending tsunami.

Charging forward he watched as Gennosuke’s right hand passed just inches from artifact.  It was now or never.  Max outstretched his arm and leaped--this was the only way to escape, to free himself.  He felt as if he were about to take off and fly as he cleared the dais.  The operative twisted his body, kicking the back of his calf into Gennosuke’s side just as the grief-filled man knocked the podium again, dislodging the prism and causing it to fall over. Mobius planted his foot in Gennosuke’s back as the initial impact had not yet caused the ninja to fall over, then he pushed off, which sent the Kouga flying off the dais and into his men.  Max rocketed forth, his arm outstretched and his palm facing up.  With his body parallel to the ground he found the prism falling into his open, waiting hand, as if destiny had ordained this union.

When he landed, it was not a soft landing.  Max plowed into the stone pedestal, uprooting it, and smashing it as he tumbled over the dais and into the wall behind it.  He rolled over, ignoring the pain, and shot to his feet to witness the shocked sojourners behind him.  “Live your life, Gennosuke,” He said as he presented the prism to them, “in a way that would make your brother proud.” Max said, feeling as if he were channeling the extra-planar essence of Gennosuke back aboard the Red Technocracy ship.

Just then his eyes drew to the prism, which he could see started to crack in his very hand.  The gem could no longer contain the light and power within, and it shattered like a grenade, radiating its blinding light throughout the cave.  Mobius was blinded, and felt like his eyes were being burnt out of their sockets.  Pain shot through his entire body, and his scream of pain was drown out by the waves of roaring energy that might just cause the mountain to crumble, and the forest to burn, below.  

Max fell to his knees, and blacked out.

[center]***[/center]

Gennosuke had stood there staring at Max back in the engineering room.  He could see trails of blood beginning to tear around the corners of the operatives eyes.  [i]It’s happening.[/i] He thought to himself.  He watched as Mobius’ eyes changed.  The man’s pupil’s dilated and expanded, then shrank, then the iris warped into different colors.  His mouth gaped, and seconds later prismatic light shot from every orifice of the man’s body. 

Gennosuke shielded himself from the artifact’s power as he witnessed hues of red dominate they yellow and green.  Mobius was obtaining the Kouga doujutsu, and he was seen as worthy by the artifact that Gennosuke had obtained long ago.  He was sure there would be some repercussions in the meddling of time, but Xelas was recreating history as he knew it.

Max fell to his knees, his eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouth smoking as if he had a round on the electric chair.  Prostrating himself in unconsciousness, Max was out, but deep down, Gennosuke knew he had succeeded.

He was not done yet, though. 

There was much more for Mobius to do.