I'm falling down. I'm sitting up. There's a cigarette stuck in between my teeth.

It's funny, cause, I don't really smoke. But it makes me look cool. Hell, it makes me look awesome. Clenched in between my teeth, the deathstick is unlighted, just suspended in the air while the other end is being coated by my tongue in wet and sticky saliva.

The air of the Naganki shrine is as peaceful as always, I can just taste the scent of summer sex in the air through the use of my cig filter. I'm sitting alone on the bench right by the jungle gym, it's the time of day where the sun's up on high in the sky and the kids are just out of school. Some snot nosed little kids are playing soccer on the black tarmat, while they laugh and play and generally ignore the boogie man sitting a couple feet away.

Kids used to make me smile, until I met Ken. Boy did that tiny bastard throw my sentiments on kids out the window.

And that's when it starts. Medea starts speaking to me. I know it's Medea, even though she uses Chidori's voice. Medea always claims she's Chidori but I know better. Heh, I guess you could say that I'm just gifted in discerning one person from another, even if they are phonies.

Medea doesn't really speak to me, she screams and shrills and demands offerings placed at her feet.

Sometimes the requests are simple, like to eat something. A growing boy needs his nutrition after all. Gotta keep up your strength young man. I laugh sardonically at requests where she tries to be motherly; I know the bitch doesn't really care about me in that way. I'm just a vessel she's inhabiting while Hermes is asleep, lying dormant until the dark hour so that three souls can fuse into one.

The only reason she cares cause, if something bad happens to me, then what will happen to her? If I die, she's erased. Gone. Kaput.

Yes, her requests are quite simple; just take care of yourself moron. But there are times when they aren't. Where they are just the opposite.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she'll wake me up by screaming in my ear for sex. She wants it. She needs it. Medea wants to use 'her' vessel to take it up the ass.

Ever since Medea started to inhibit my body, I've been noticing the boys more often. My heart starts to thump harder whenever Akihiko is around. I can taste the lingering scent of his sweat in the air after his runs. When his chest is heaving up and down and he smiles at me and asks 'what the hell are you staring at?' with those eyes of his and I just want to.

Stop. I have to stop. I'm breathing hard already. It was never like this when all I had was Hermes.

And it's not only Akihiko. All boys in the school and at the dorm are starting to get to me that way. I can't even hang around my old posse, cause I'm aroused by how they smell. How they act. How they look.

And I hate it. It's wrong. I know that it's Medea's fault, her influence. Medea just wants to make me suffer. She wants to make me scream and cry and know the suffering woman feel when they are at the hands of men.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg; she'll also ask for morbid things that she can use to brew her magics. She'll demand the penis of men who betrayed their wives, or the blood of bastard children.

My head's pounding as she makes her stupid demands. Rubbing my temples, I spit my cig out on the ground. The metallic color of the sticker that sperated the filter from the tobacco happily advertises the Junes brand. Things are damn near expensive these days.

And Medea. Keeps. Bitching.

She wants life.

She wants me to kidnap one of the children on the playground, to keep forever in place of her dead children.

She wants death.

She wants me to kidnap one of the children on the playground and slit its throat, so as to join her children up in Tartarus.

Boing. Boing. I look up as I hear the sounds of a bouncy blue ball jumping off course and heading straight for me. It's up on high, as I reach up my arm and catch it. I put it on my lap as I watch as a group of kids look at me apprehensively. They then huddle together and start bickering to each other over who was responsible of going over and asking for the ball back. Eventually one of the little kids, who had straight black hair and was dressed in your atypical elementary school uniform, disbands himself from the little group. They watch as the kid walks towards me, head held down as if he was an inmate walking to the electric chair.

"Hhey, mither," the kid, looked to be about seven and had a gap in between his teeth, whistled to me when he was in distance enough for me to hear, but nowhere near close enough to where a perv can reach out and grab him "c-can we hafe our ball back?"

Medea screams into my ear, this is the perfect opportunity to gut the kid and have his friends watch as his bowels spill and paint the dirt a lovely red color. I laugh inwardly at this; I don't even have my sword on me.

The kid, putting his hands in his pockets nervously, watched as I palm the ball in my right hand, fingers digging into the blue plastic. I raise it up in the air, like if it's some priceless artifact. Then I say something really stupid.

"Chidori's talking to me," I don't realize I've said until I actually said it. The kid looks incredulously at me as he backs off a little bit. Probably for the best.

"I just want my ball back," His voice is shaky as I taste his fear. Medea laughs a little. I feel like spiting her. I give the little kid an honest smile, then toss the ball back to his little group of friends. A little girl happens to catch it.

The little kid glares at me for a second or two, before he runs off to join his friends.

"Jerky weirdo!" he whistles over his shoulder as he runs away. I smile at him as Medea screams death over and over again.

Bitch wanted blood. The kid is soon at the center of the group, describing the ordeal that he just went through to his friends before they break apart, and play soccer as if nothing had ever happened.

I take out a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket, carefully slide one out, and stick it in between my teeth. Medea's screaming at me, warning me not to light it. She feels threatened and over the edge cause of the deathstick.

It gives me a thrill just to cause her distress.

I'm standing up. I'm walking away. There's a cigarette clenched in between my teeth.

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