Rise the Berserker
			LH-chan! 2000

*	*	*	*

	Darkness...pounding pain in my head.
	Where am I?
	I know my eyes are open, but there is only an empty void
before me; darkness too deep for my eyes to penetrate.
	I close my eyes again.  Staring wide-eyed into nothing is
unnerving.
	I try to think back to the events that brought me here.  My
aching body will not yet allow me any action.

	I was standing behind John as he fought another immortal.
	Evenly matched, they struck and parried rhythmically; their
motions set to the song of swishing trenchcoats and humming
katana.  A dance of death I've seen many times before.

	Then a sharp pain in my head and endless darkness.

	I open my eyes once more, straining them against the
inexorable darkness to no avail.
	Little has changed.

	Suddenly, a door I didn't know existed slides open beside
me, flooding the room with light.  Unaccustomed, my eyes struggle
to adjust to the light, as I am set upon by a group of men in white
lab-coats who drag me to my feet and hold me strongly against the
wall of the room.  My resistance is futile, my injuries have made me
weak.  My head is pounding.  And the men who hold me are strong,
perhaps trained for just such a purpose.
	Another man comes into my, slowly improving, field of vision,
wearing a white lab-coat like the others, and holding a large
hypodermic needle.

	I fight harder to escape; I do not like where this is 
going.  But the men holding me are still stronger, and the man with the
needle presses it into my arm and injects the contents into my body
before I can move in the slightest.
	It's tranquilizer?  Perhaps...
	That was always the way I was given tranquilizer...in the past.
	At least it will be better than pain and darkness.

*	*	*	*

	No, something's wrong.
	I can feel the injection moving through my body now, but where
muscles should relax they are tensing.
	My breathing is quickening.  I can feel my heart pounding in my
ears, like I've been running.  The pain in my head is almost unbearable.
	"What did you put in me!"

	Adrenaline perhaps.  Everything is looking clearer...moving
faster.
	My heart has never pounded this fast before!  This will kill me!
	The men in white lab-coats are still holding me...as tightly as
ever.

	No!

	"No!"

	I'm going to die!  The world is turning black around
me.  Darkness creeping further into my vision.

	Black...turning to gold.  There are shadows all around me.
	My heart is still racing.  I know I must be screaming.  But I
can't hear my own voice.

	There is only the golden-darkness, and the shadows.

	The shadows...

	My enimies!

	I must defeat them!  I must destroy them!

	I must survive!

	I must survive!

	I MUST SURVIVE!!

****

	The golden-darkness slowly recedes from my vision.  The
shadows are already gone...the enemies are gone...
	The room is red now.  I feel as though I've been in such
a room before.  A red room...

	My heart is still beating quickly, but slowing to
normal.  My breathing is ragged, but stabilizing.
	I feel as though my strength is being drawn from my hands
into the floor.

	Why are my hands on the floor?  I don't remember falling.

	Through half-closed eyes, I see the light s from the ceiling
reflecting off the sterile white floor...off the blood running in
rivulets across it.

	Turning the room red.

	Footsteps echo in the silence, and a voice calls out from
far away: "Omi?"

	"Omi?"  The voice again.

	My strength is gone.  It seems a titanic effort to lift my head.

	When I do it is to look upon what seems to be a sea of bodies
strewn around me.  Broken and dismembered...a massacre like I've
never seen.
	An unexplainable feeling tells me I'm responsible for all this.

	How can it be?  I don't remember.

	Beyond the carnage, a single living figure stands framed in
the doorway.  Shuffling a boot as though unsure of what to do.  He is
the one who has been calling my name.
	I reach a trembling, blood soaked, hand out to him.

	"Boss...John...help me..."

*	*	*	*

		Owari.