Soul Eater Fic: Center of Brilliance, Core of Darkness Part 1
This has been in the making for about a week. It's more or less a Kidd/Chrona anthology, which I may make more of along the lines of canon. But this was a ton of fun to write and I really enjoyed writing it. So, anybody who finds this, enjoy!
Title: Center of Brilliance, Core of Darkness
Fandom: Soul Eater/Homestuck
Rating: T
Pairing: Kidd/Chrona
Summery: He’s a god in a nest of demons, she’s a murderer in a hall of worship; he finds the reversal of their situations extremely ironic, and she feels that they’re both just all the wrong colors. A Kidd/Chrona anthology.
= = = = >
She can never deal with anything, even after her freedom is given to her and they succeed and free her from madness’s hold. Even though the Kishin had disappeared again, everything is so perfect it’s too good to be true.
It is too good to be true.
Under the guidance of Liz, she takes part in their fall, not meaning too, but it’s the only thing they can do. Everything is triggered and it all falls into place so smoothly it’s just a clear path for her now that she doesn’t want to travel down.
But she doesn’t know how to deal with being dead.
(It’s just a quick flick of her wrist that brings the black sword comes down and she’s spirited away.)
XXXXXXXXHe can’t think about it immediately cause his ears are still ringing from Liz howling at him over the phone to move cause everyone will die if he doesn’t. Tsubaki had woken up to connect with him and now he waits for salvation, for the go ahead to leave it all behind.
Two agonizing minutes later he realizes it’s taking too long. They either have to leave half of Death City behind or everything is lost.
Shinigami-sama springs from the mirror. Their destruction stops moving and the city’s preservation is secured.
He lifts up their ticket to safety, and as he holds it over his head, ready to smash it, the god holding back the source of demise vanishes from the world.
Kidd feels part of his soul being ripped away.
The Shinigami mask in his hands cracks in half precisely in the center and it all flashes white.
(In the aftermath, he’ll realize that everything he’d been taught had been worth nothing, but they still have to start forward and he quietly fights the urge to just give up, like he’d been doing all his life.)
XXXXXXXXWhen she first wakes up it’s a whiplash of being asleep and then clawing again for the surface of consciousness almost automatically, falling into nothing but darkness and not knowing how to deal with it. Deep, almost black plum burns into her eyes upon opening and everything feels different, new.
Her head is silent and clear. It’s just her. She can’t feel Ragnarok anywhere and it’s scary to be alone so suddenly. The urge to find someone comforting and familiar takes hold of her and she approaches the window, only to scamper away from it once her eyes adjust to the light outside. She knows now to be dreaming, but why her dreams would contain a city of gold was beyond her.
Once she calms her rapidly beating heart Chrona comes back to the window. It is indeed a city of shining wealth and it almost feels like a holy place. Above, a blue, blue sphere of clouds and wind and light in the deep black of space floats. She’d never been afraid of heights, so it’s easily a matter of climbing onto the windowsill and standing up straight to get a better look.
She slips.
She falls.
The goldleaf streets below approach her rapidly as her screams echo and she twists and writhes in mid-air and tries to remember the rule of waking up before you hit the ground.
It never comes into contact with her because space bends and breaks and it all feels right and for one fleeting second she’s one with the universe. Her plummet stops.
Her body is still several yards from the shining street below and when her eyes open it’s easy to see her screams had attracted attention.
Many sets of black eyes stare up at her and watch her and are looking at her with concern. She floats and can’t deal with being stared at by strange carapaces in knight’s armor. They call concerned words up to her and their tones are worried and excited at the same time and she can even hear a bit of worship in there.
It’s overwhelming because even more gather and she’d never been stared at so reverently before. Not really thinking about it she turns and swiftly glides back up to the window, darting inside and plopping down in the corner.
(Later, Tsubaki will come to her tower from the next one over, dressed in royalty gold and with excited eyes, and coax her out of her hiding spot. Chrona will be taken to the streets below and guided by the weird looking but ever friendly people and she will meet a beautiful queen in armor of shining silver. She will learn things about the blue sphere above and the war and the dark twin to this planet of gold and hallowed halls, and about the other princes and princesses that sleep there. And things start to get better.)
XXXXXXXXThe structures of deep, royal purple and the whispering of Eldritch beings not far at all from their rooms irritate him all the time. After waking up Kidd refused to leave his tower on account of the disorganized and chaotic mass of demons that seek to destroy their center of limitless creative potential, favoring to stay in the almost suffocating black décor of his room.
Initially the Shinigami wasn’t sure at first what the others were getting at when they spoke of dream selves in comparison to waking selves. But then exhaustion from level grinding finally got the better of him and he took what he hoped was a short nap.
He finds Derse to be a rather odd place for a god-like being such as himself to be situated in. Soul and Maka are always chatting about their time on the planet’s twin of goldleaf streets and white knighted carapaces and the kind queen that had a tone of ice when mentioning the dark planet, and often times Tsubaki and Liz would talk animatedly and compare the two warring worlds.
Black*Star is the only one not awake yet, and Kidd finds that it isn’t surprising at all. He’s always pushing himself, and an intervention to get him to sleep was possibly imminent.
Patti loves the flight given to a dream self, and spends her time soaring around the towers and buildings and irritating the Agents that live there. Liz would either spend time in her room, fly around with Patti, or listen to the whispers of the dark gods living beyond the incipisphere in the tears of time and space.
Derse doesn’t fit him at all; he can’t stand it.
He’s sure Prospit is no better in terms of being aesthetically pleasing, but finds himself, not too long after waking up, drifting out of his tower and through the thick blackness of the Medium, seeking the small, blue glowing speck in the blackness so very far away. The Eldritch gods beyond the Ring sometimes whisper to him on his flight, but he shuts their foreign words out.
Skaia is almost like earth, save for the lack of ground for the majority of the giant sphere’s depth. He knows what’s in the center, what he will find if he travels within, but he feels that’s for another tim.
Prospit is nothing like Derse, save for the blatant and annoying asymmetry. But the goldleaf streets shine instead of hide deathly Agents and the carapaces there play freely and happily and for one second it reminds him of Earth.
(There’s nothing left for them there, he knows. Everything has been or will be gone in some way or another and his duty is over.)
The towers on the chained moon are the same shape as the ones on Derse but the opposite color. Dreams of Prospit are always good ones, while the ones on the darkened streets are nightmares of Old Ones that he never knew existed.
Nobody’s awake, from the looks of things. He turns away from the asymmetry of the city and intends to fly back through the Medium when he hears soft calling from behind.
Peering from one of the towers is one of the three princesses that sleep here, dressed in bright clothes and blinking in curiosity to the splotch of purple in the middle of a mass of gold.
“W-what are you doing here?” He’s sure that he’s not the first one to fly from Derse to see the city of gold, but he must be the first one she’s seen.
“Quite simply the asymmetry of Derse irritated me and I came here to see if Prospit was any better.” He answers promptly.
“O-Oh.” She looks like she’s been accused of a crime, to which he just sighs.
“Sadly neither planet seems to fit my standards of pleasing aesthetics and I will take my leave, and keep sleep to a minimum.”
“Ummmm…” Chrona tries to suggest something but can’t speak. Even with his gentlemanly output he can’t help but get a little impatient. She opens and closes her mouth three times before speaking again. “D-Do you like chess?”
“Why wouldn’t I? The orderly pattern of black and white is always a pleasure to see.”
“Skaia has a chessboard.” She floats out her window, and his hope childishly grows that there may be some kind of order to this chaotic incipisphere.
They pass through the blue sea of clouds and wind on their way, flying from the chained moon to see the battlefield. In the clouds are many things, they find. Images of meteors striking Earth and ones that had struck before and even images of more recent past events.
The chessboard is spherical and with rolling hills and if he looks at it from directly above he finds it aesthetically pleasing. Chrona can’t understand the beauty of symmetry.
(At this point in time he can’t expect her to. It’s a strange turn of events that ensured that they ended up in the places that they are. She sleeps in a gold tower on a planet of hope and worship and near the centerpiece of their goal. He sleeps in an obsidian tower high above those that covet the destruction of creation and below the dark, whispering gods. He has yellow eyes that contrast to his purple, princely pajama’s and she’s clad in gold to compliment her blue, almost lavender eyes. It’s really funny.)
XXXXXXXXHer world of fire and stone and heat isn’t the most unpleasant thing in the world, far from it, especially concerning various events in her screwed up lifetime. In time, after experimenting with various object combinations and an Ocarina of Time Nintendo 64 game pack she makes herself a wearable shield for her body, grows accustomed to the unbearable temperatures and slowly learns to thrive. Often times the monsters she faces are huge and ugly and upturning villages and she can’t deal with them. It’s only through Maka’s guidance can she actually understand what to do, what the game’s goals are.
Most of the time she keeps to herself. She works around the land freeing those imprisoned by the Agents and passes through her gates. The guide provided to her at the beginning of the game keeps her safe while she sleeps, whenever she can get sleep, that is. When she’s awake Ragnarok would hit her and complain about the heat and how the monster’s leave behind grist instead of souls for him to eat. She finds no use in trying to reason with him. And for this reason she tries to sleep as much as possible.
Prospit is something that she can’t associate with herself. It’s clean, it’s pretty and there is a feeling of safety and strength on the planet and her flights to Skaia are just the icing on the cake. She can talk to the others and learn about how far they’ve gotten. Two weeks into their session and everything’s going smoothly.
Kidd often times comes to Prospit, if only to see Skaia. She tags along whenever everyone else is awake and working.
It’s so strange that the Death god, a being of strength and power and authority, would have dreams of a den of monsters. Derse just doesn’t fit the prince of Death City.
(Why would a monster like her dream of a place like Prospit? She’s not a princess, or anything like that. She’s an androgynous looking girl who can’t deal with anything, a corrupt being that sat in dark rooms and corners and was beaten and starved until she could learn to kill. She’s nothing.)
It’s while sitting on a rock and watching the lava flows destroy (and create) whenever it can collect does she feel the black stone move underneath her with magma and heat and energy in a steady rhythm. She knows of its energy, causing death and fires and burning and destruction and
Doom.
(If she’s not a princess, then she will be a knight. Princesses don’t wield swords, she knows, and they don’t defend the princes or do anything. Knights do. They defend and defeat.
She can’t defend, but she can defeat. Meeting the requirements halfway is enough, isn’t it?)
XXXXXXXXWhen they first met he was the superior one, the one to take her down, bring the vile thing to justice and punish her for her crimes. He was the god out to destroy a lowly demon, the executioner triumphing over a victim in his own sick manner. Even after her initial introduction to Shibusen he was still above her, having never cruelly taken the life of an innocent soul. He was a flawed being, yes, because of those accursed stripes, but in terms of status, far, far better than her.
Now it’s all been turned around and he finds it funny: a prince in a nest of monsters and a murderer in holy halls.
His compulsive symmetry problems still get in the way of everything. Liz yells at him over the phone to get his ass moving because fuck symmetry you have to build me up to that gate, he goes into a rampage over particularly asymmetrical looking monsters that he needs to strike down and the consorts don’t help his mood at all.
None of the other worlds are any better. Maka’s world of clouds has a sky of clarity and a ground of storms, Black*Star’s is filled with broken clocks and annoyingly uneven ticking that drives his hearing and thinking pattern bananas, Soul’s has rivers of red and black and the sky is littered with music bars, every planet he reaches upon passing a gate always finds some way to rub him the wrong way.
Skaia is a respite from this chaos. The battlefield is something monochrome and soothing for his eyes so long as he stares at it from the right angle. When he wakes up, he disappears, though, back to his tower.
(Every video game has a final level. The one that they’re in has its ending on this very chessboard, but it will be stained with blood and littered with carapace corpses and be hammered with fiery wrath from far above.
And it will be during that final battle that he will see what his purpose is.)
“U-Ummmm…Kidd?”
“What?”
“You have a frog in your hair.”
He scowls and swats it off his head. It lands with a splat on the floor of the Japanese style living room and Tsubaki picks it up, placing it back in the tank it had hopped out of.
Kidd decides that he hates frogs.
Especially genetically enhanced frogs.
Chrona in particular seems afraid of them. He guesses it’s due to Eruka, but really, he can’t blame her for being rather unnerved by the amount of different colored amphibians hopping about Tsubaki’s transported home.
“S-so, what do we h-have to have so many frogs again?” She asks the chain-scythe weapon, who shrugs after grabbing some more nets and jars, fresh off the alchemiter.
“Well, according to gA, we’re supposed to breed frogs to win the game.”
“You really believe that whole ‘We-need-to-breed-a-special-frog-to-create-a-new-universe’ crap?” Soul responds upon reentering the room with a large net full of frogs. Tsubaki nods.
“I don’t think she’d lie…”
“Can’t wait to see how this turns out.”
“Where’s Patti and Black*Star?” Kidd asks him after taking two nets for himself. “They need to cover the east side of the area.”
“Apparently, the presence of genetically enhanced frogs calls for boxer hockey for them.” He sighs. And according to the laws of the universe, something goes flying through the window to prove his point. This frog happens to be an unfortunate blue one and somewhere outside the two trouble makers howl with laughter.
(Soul’s face is priceless when she finally does breed the frog they need. In the middle of Skaia it will grow, they will take down the king in a checkmate.)
XXXXXXXXSand get’s in her shoes as she treks across the desert and the winds try to beat her back. The heat is tame compared to LOSAF, with it’s lava flows and bubbling tar pits and the smell of brimstone. It’s something she learned to live with. But this world is an explosion of pastal color and bright light and technicolor sandstorms.
Kidd, wrapped tight in his Shinigami cloak, leads the way. He wants to reach his next gate, she knows, but they don’t know where it is in this desert.
When the sand suddenly shifts under her feet and there’s the rumbling of a deep growl she springs from where she stands on reflex, yelping upon her clumsy impact to the ground. She draws her demon weapon and Kidd draws his guns. A basilisk of sandstone breaks from the sand like a whale would the ocean. It swims with terrifying speed and heads straight for them both.
They split in different directions, forcing it to choose it’s target so the other can strike. It decides that Kidd is a tastier morsel, and he begins a tactical retreat while Ragnarok’s screams hit it again and again.
She eventually blows it out of the sand, it hits the ground on it’s side and explodes into grist. As Kidd collects it Chrona lifts her hood over her head again, eyes stinging from the sand in the howling wind.
“I think we’re getting the hang of this.” The Shinigami comments casually, brushing himself off.
(Kidd, a monochrome figure, is a striking image against sands of red and pink and yellow and green and blue and so many other colors inbetween. She is often subject to listening to his rants about how much he hates the lands they were destined and how nothing in this stupid game makes sense whatsoever.
She can’t understand symmetry, but honestly wonders if there is any order in the universe. At all.)
They continue on their way, and eventually the blur of color drowns Kidd’s black cloak and erases it from her vision. She can’t tell if he’s gone on ahead or he’s still in front of her. She tries calling out for him but her voice is lost in the roar of the storm.
Chrona gropes through the thick color, trying to find him, and she sets her jaw against the wind and trudges on in the direction she thinks he’d gone in. She can’t deal with being lost, despite the fact that she’s been lost nearly all her life.
The desert storm teaches her to pick a direction and keep walking in it. She can’t turn back unless she wants to possibly go in circles. It’s something she can’t relate to life, though.
She’s always in a constant state of understanding and not getting it. It’s never been this way before, when ignorance was bliss and darkness was all she knew.
Now she knows color and she knows what goes with what.
When a hand grabs hers from nowehere she tenses and fights the reflex to retaliate. Kidd pulls her in a completely different direction and they find shelter in a cave, sitting under lime green sandstone.
The storm eventually disappears, and Kidd spends the time they wait for that to happen scolding her for getting seperated, you could have been killed there are underlings everywhere and be careful! He also tries to get a signal to report back to Maka. Chrona leans back against the cave wall and listens to his faint cursing.
(Maybe she’s just stupid for thinking it, but he seems lost. She can’t tell for sure, though; all she has going is that the look in his eyes mirrors hers, back then.
Back during her days of darkness.
Is this forgiveness? Are the halls of Prospit and the light of Skaia a sign? Their god is dead. No longer does anyone have a hold over her life. Her visions of dead bodies rising up, englulfed in power and strength are something she doesn’t know how to deal with.
But what does it mean for him?)
XXXXXXXXThat bitch is back. He doesn’t know how the hell she is alive or even how she got into Death City without detection but she’s responsible for a lot of shit.
Black*Star comes back with a catatonic Maka one day. She’s shaking and her eyes are wide and she’s sweaty and her adoptive brother is more or less grieving.
“Black*Star?” Kidd asks him after dropping Maka off at Nygus’s infirmery. He’s sitting in the cafeteria with the others, taking a short break from working to get a proper meal. “What’s happened?”
The ninja sits and the table and Patti quickly takes his hand, softly inquiring what’s wrong cause he didn’t seem to hear Kidd.
“...Soul’s dead.”
The silence in the room is stifling. Kidd’s thought process ceases and he doesn’t know what to say. It’s Liz who breaks the quiet, almost immediately.
“H-how did-“
“Medusa’s alive...”
Beside him Chrona starts shaking and almost instinctively he takes her hand. It’s an obligation for them both because he needs something solid to hold as well, else he be ripped from the ground and tossed into the depths of blackness.
“What happened?” Kidd prompted him. He’s not a leader, but he can take some authority to keep everyone as calm as he can while their captain was grieving.
“She chased them and killed Soul. Would’ve killed Maka too if I hadn’t gotten there in time...”
It’s silent, silent as they take this all in. Kidd feels anger boil up in him. They were doing so well up until this time. They can’t fail now, they have to keep going-
And in another cosmic turn of events, it’s Chrona who’s the one to speak first. Apparently physical contact had calmed her down significantly.
“But...that’s not what I learned from the clouds...”
“Excuse me?” Liz says, blinking.
“The clouds?”
Chrona shrinks down when all eyes turn on her, but she keeps going.
“I saw Soul dying, yesterday, and-“
“Why didn’t you tell us this?!” Black*Star snapped, causing her to immediately lapse into fearful silence. “We could have prevented this-“
“Black*Star, let her speak.” Liz tells him firmly, though her voice is shaking. “Go on, Chrona.”
It takes a moment for her to get her voice back, but she does.
“A-and after that, he was OK.”
“OK?”
“Mmmm.” She answered, nodding slightly. “H-he should be coming here any minute now...I hope...”
Soul arrives clad in dark gray clothes not 8 minutes later. He’s alive and smiling and soaring down towards them from the pink lemonade sky and they all know that he’s been reborn a god. The irony just keeps getting richer and richer for Kidd, with each and every happening.
(He’s not a god anymore, he’ll realize later. Shinigami are supposed to protect the world, protect society and keep order.
The world is gone.
Society is gone.
Order is gone.
There’s no purpose left for him.)
XXXXXXXXShe waits, anxiously, for them to come back. This Medium feels wrong and it feels twisted and sick and it hides a demon. Kidd sits beside her with equal amount of tension in his posture, eyes scanning the thick black, Soul Perception on full power, seeking what could possibly be their demise.
Chrona wishes to break the silence, have something else to think about other than what’s out there hunting for victims, but she doesn’t want to break Kidd’s concentration and she wouldn’t know how to deal with it.
“Are you alright?” Comes his voice suddenly after another two minutes of silence. It makes her squeak and jump, on edge far more than she had been in a while.
“Y-Yes.”
“Sorry for scaring you.” He murmurs, and rubs his forehead with a sigh. “...talk to me.”
“Huh?”
“Just...say something, it’s too quiet.”
“B-but don’t you need to-“
“Chrona, for once, I just want to hear what anyone else says.
She fidgets, and starts speaking about something random, mainly talking about her progress in their session. She’s already neared her final gate. They don’t know how much time is left before they need to go on full throttle, but at least they’ve made some progress, especially concerning the fact that they alchemized an interstellar star cruiser with cloaking and radar. She tells him about the fire world, and he promises to help her get to her denizen once she reaches a high enough level.
(Long after the dust settles, they’ll talk about other things. This time, she’ll be the one listening.)
Kidd’s focused, yellow eyes on her, after a good ten minutes of speaking, suddenly dart towards the sky once more. He stands before the controls of the ship and makes sure that cloaking is on. She waits in almost frightened silence.
“...he’s out there. Close, but moving away from where we are.”
“Good...” She murmurs, glad that they’re safety and mission success is ensured, for now.
He urges her to keep talking, despite her anxiety. It comes somewhat easier for her now that they have a general idea where the demon is.
Kidd asks about Prospit, and she tells him about that, too, about the halls and the people and she tells him about the things he doesn’t know because he refuses to go near Prospit because of the asymmetry. When she’s done all he’ll do is chuckle and murmur ‘it’s all just so ironic, isn’t it?’ to himself.
They’re both all the wrong colors. And she can’t figure out how to deal with that.
(Their mission is a success, rescuing fellow players from certain doom and possibly ensuring the recovery of four others at an even higher risk mission. It’s too late for some, but the ensurance of the safety of eight is enough for them all.
Chrona watch’s them exit the ship towards the prospect of sleep without dreams, a home with food, water, and a better future.
They call themselves soldiers.
But all she see’s is a group of 13-year-old kids who’ve been to hell and back.)
XXXXXXXX
- symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] began pestering blackPoet [BP] -
sS: Chrona, it has come to my understanding that you have awakened powers given to us by the game?
bP: Ummm...
bP: I guess...
sS: I suppose my theory on these powers has been wrong all along.
bP: What?
sS: Remember how Soul was killed by Medusa last week prior to our rescue mission?
sS: It appears that after he rose to God Tier he’s discovered an ability to manipulate blood, in addition to flight and practical immortality.
sS: Though considering this is a video game a hypothetical god mode would be expected to be achievable.
bP: OK...
sS: And if you’ve awakened powers, yet not risen to God Tier, then that possibly means that you don’t have to reach such status to discover the powers that this twisted game has granted us.
bP: OK...
sS: Apologies for interrupting your work, the others are asleep at the moment and you’re the only one I can ask about this right now.
bP: It’s OK...
sS: Would you so kindly tell me about your powers?
bP: Ummm...
bP: Well...it’s not something that I’ve understood completely...
bP: It’s like...I feel.
sS: Feel what, might I ask?
bP: I don’t know what it is. It almost feels like...energy.
sS: You’re being quite vague on this matter, Chrona.
bP: Oh, sorry...
bP: I don’t understand it, myself...
bP: And I don’t know how to deal with it...
sS: I suppose I was expecting that kind of answer.
sS: But it is interesting that it can pertain to a physical sensation in addition to a mental one.
bP: Oh...
bP: OK...
bP: Why do you ask, Kidd?
sS: Discovering the powers the game has given me is more or less a rather slippery feat that keeps eluding my grasp.
sS: Perhaps there’s something I’m missing here.
bP: It’s something that, well, I found out for myself.
bP: I was never looking for it...
sS: I see.
bP: ...
bP: Is something wrong, Kidd?
sS: No.
sS: Yes.
bP: There is?
sS: I shouldn’t burden you with my personal conflicts.
sS: I’m sorry for bothering you.
bP: Kidd...
sS: I’ll be there shortly to assist you with reaching your denizen.
sS: Until then, Chrona.
bP: Kidd, wait
- symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] ceased pestering blackPoet [BP] -
(Part of her wants to reach out and help him, the other doesn’t know how to deal with it. For now, she’ll have to keep going and hope he will attempt to keep up, because she knows how painful it is to be left behind.)
XXXXXXXXHephaestus is a hulking mountain of flame and lava, looming over an iron anvil and the fires of the forge inside his lair are sure to set his hair and clothes aflame. Every Shinigami instinct in him screams to run or fight, but he pushes it down and keeps back as Chrona attempts to find the courage to step closer as he commanded in a booming, almost earth-shaking voice.
“You are a rather peculiar knight.” He tells her, and Kidd can almost see her body quivering with fear but still standing tall. “One so thin and weak in appearance, yet you easily defeat my underlings with almost no effort.”
“I-I am a Meister.” She tells him, struggling to keep her voice steady. “All my life I have fought.”
“Both innocents and evil beings, I can assume.”
She flinches in shame. Kidd starts to step forward to try and defend her but his next words make him freeze in shock.
“Little Shinigami. I knew your father well.”
His mind draws a blank and he misses Hephaestus’s next words before it turns back to Chrona, speaking again but the entire conversation isn’t audible to him anymore.
He hadn’t thought about his father for weeks.
Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to.
He keeps his eyes lowered as his mind tries to work again and before he knows it Chrona’s shaking his shoulder.
“Kidd, ummm, are-are you alright?”
“Huh?”
“...nevermind.” She murmurs, turning back to the Denizen.
“I have a bargain for you to consider, Knight.” He tells her, before turning away to retrieve something from behind him.
Both can’t help but gape when they’re presented with a huge hoard of grist. The Denizen leans back and looks down at them again.
“My skills require access to the Forge in the Seer’s land.” He rumbles. “Grant me this access and I shall give you this hoard.”
Chrona agrees, and the grist is stored away for ‘The Ultimate Alchemy’, as their guides tell them.
“I can also create a weapon for you, if you so desire, Knight.”
Chrona tries to speak, but Ragnarok bursts from her back and starts shouting obscenities at him.
“Back off you burning hunk of shit! She’s already got a weapon, ME!!”
“Ragnarok, knock it off!” She tries to get out over his shouts.
Hephaestus chuckles darkly, and Kidd has to grab Chrona and pull her out of the way when a huge hammer attempts to come down on her.
“You are barely more than a little, worthless creature.” The Denizen tells him, lifting his hammer higher up. “Prove to me you are a weapon!”
Both turn tail and flee for the 7th gate behind them, but the rumbling footsteps of the giant behind them keeps making them stumble.
Hepaestus catches up to them and attempts to smash them both.
Chrona screams, and Kidd turns just in time to see a pulse of energy come from her hands, hitting the Denizen directly in the face and knocking him back, dazed.
Wasting no time Kidd grabs her hand and they leaped through the exit.
No sooner than they had exited did Ragnarok appear again and slam his fists on Chrona’s head.
“YOU DUMBASS!! WHY THE HELL DID YOU RUN!? WE COULD’VE TAKEN THAT ASSHOLE IN AN INSTANT!!”
“S-Stop it, that hurts!”
“Listen up, pansy! Ever since this bullshit game happened you’ve been doing nothing but run around and kill monsters to get lousy Fruit Gusher knockoffs!! When the hell are we gonna’ get some tasty souls!?”
“Are you implying Kishin souls?” Kidd asks him, raising an eyebrow and giving Ragnarok and angry look.
“Of course I am!” He rants. “Now that I can’t have human souls anymore-“
“There are no Kishin Eggs left.” The Shinigami tells him, his voice sounding rather hollow, but his mind races with admitting this to both the annoying blob and himself. “Earth is gone, humans and Kishin alike are dead. We’re all that’s left.”
Ragnarok does nothing but glare daggers at him, before shrinking inside Chrona’s back and falling silent. Now that she isn’t being assaulted, her eyes turn to him. He isn’t aware of his fists tightening to the point of pain until his fingernails dig into his palm and start to bleed.
“...Kidd-“
“Let Tsubaki know that she needs to light the Forge, soon.” He tells her, turning away and descending down the blackened rock, away from the gate.
The pattering of footsteps behind him tells him that she’s following, and in the corner of his eye she can see him walking right at his side. She doesn’t speak, just keeps her eyes forward as the travel.
(The five stages of grief are unpredictable, he’s heard. He doesn’t really know what he’s grieving for though, his father, for their lost planet, for his lost purpose. It’s one or the other or it’s all three or something he can’t grasp yet.
But he knows the first stage of denial reaches its end when they’re met with a wave of underlings trying to get back to another gate that would take them to Death City. He takes one look at them, the Denizen’s words echo in his head and it all explodes out of him like a shaken soda bottle.
Not a sound escapes him as he swiftly cuts them all down using guns he’d alchemized, deadly and slick, he’s driven by anger and frustration and he can’t do anything to stop himself. He’s showered with grist and other elements and long buried emotions ooze from his soul.
Kidd doesn’t realize how far he’s gone until he’s hit with a painful concussive blast, knocked flat to the ground. Chrona keeps apologizing for not knowing how to grasp her powers as a Knight of Doom and attempts to help him to his feet.
The second stage passes as quickly as it had come and he moves to the next, but he refuses to acknowledge it. He’s just grateful she let him lean on her shoulder as they headed back, even if she couldn’t deal with it.)
XXXXXXXXThe timer ticks down, and each second strikes another nerve in her. This rescue mission is more dangerous than the last, she’s aware. In addition to being hunted by the demon, they have to escape a hard reset, else they be caught in green flames and only have memories through dreams.
They turn to the Ring beyond the incipisphere, their work in The Veil done and Chrona feels nervous from where she sits in their star cruiser. Liz speaks of those that live in darkness all the time, listening to their words, but she’d been warned by the queen that such words were never for the ears of Prospit dreamers.
It’s about five minutes later does she understand why.
The first sign of trouble is Black*Star cursing violently from where he’s typing away rapidly at his computer. He shudders for a brief second and goes completely limp.
Chrona, who’d been keeping an open connection with Kidd and Patti via a webcam, feels sleep suddenly come over her and then passes out.
And then she realizes that her worries are gone.
It’s beautiful, she realizes. The sky is beautiful and streaked with all the colors there are and she’d never seen such vivid color before.
She reaches out to touch it all and falls through space and time. She’s unhurt, she’s invincible and immortal and everything is wonderful.
There’s laughter and shouting and Chrona hears happy music mixed with singing. It’s all wonderful, she glides through the starry worlds and dances.
Then she hears whispering. She realizes Liz was right.
VULGTLAGLN SHAGG N'GHFT, ULN ORR’EOR N’GHFT
She is loved. They will not hurt her and they can all live here and sleep and there would be no more burdens.
Everything is wonderful, everything is OK.
(It’s not OK everything hurts it all hurts make it stop please stop STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOOOOOOP!!!)
No more knowing how to deal with things, no more universe building tasks, no more Medusa, no more Ragnarok, no one anxiety, no more pain or fear or anything.
NOG NLGUI PHLEGETH, SGN’WAHL GRAH’N
She never wants to wake up.
PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH CTHULU R'LYEH WGAH'NAGL FHTAGN
But she does.
And when she does her head hurts and her ears ring and she yelps and shoots up from where she’s hunched over on the controls, shaking.
Maka jumps awake a second later, screaming. Black*Star comes to much more slowly, but when he does he let’s out a string of ‘Fucking…tentacle monsters…’ and ‘Holyfuck’, among other obscenities.
Soul’s been spared the visions of terror and hurries over to Maka, pulling her close to him.
“Maka, are you alright?”
“Ohmygodwhatthefuckwasthat!?” Is all she can get out.
There are more sleeping passengers in the ship, among two others who are awake and coherent. The rest are slumped where they were strapped into their seats.
“D-did we make it?” Chrona shakily asks Soul, who looks sweaty.
“Fucking sun wasn’t there!” He growls. “That bomb goes off in two minutes and we couldn’t find the damn thing!”
“W-what-“ Black*Star attempts to get out, speechless for once.
“I don’t have time to explain!” Soul jumps back in the captain’s seat and pushes it to full throttle. “We gotta get out before we’re sucked into the reset!”
(They make it out, but not without cost. The demon finds them before they reach the exit from the doomed session. She only had one second to look at him, but remembers him with frightening detail.
He’s a black carapace with a halo of green fire and lightning dancing all around him, crow wings spread wide and sword glinting in the crackling energy. His face resembles that of a savage jackal and he bears a predatory grin and is out for death.
He moves in a flash of omnipotent power and stabs Maka.)
XXXXXXXX“I see.” It’s all he can really say, honestly, as Chrona finishes recounting the events that took place in the other session. His blood boils at the thought of the fact that they nearly failed, and that the risk of venturing beyond the Furthest Ring, where the dark gods dwelt, was all for naught. He hadn’t seen Chrona in a while, both in the waking world and in sleeping.
One aspect of this is that now that the doomed players’ safety has been secured they are back to level grinding. Tsubaki’s nearly finished with breeding the Genesis frog, and they’re nearing Skaia, in addition to everyone being sick of this game. The other is that it appears that Chrona’s afraid to sleep.
Kidd makes a mental note to have a talk with Liz concerning her relations with Lovecraftian horrors.
“…I’m glad I’m not a Derse dreamer, now.” Chrona says after a good few minutes of silence.
“What?”
“The Old Ones are scary…they hurt me.”
Kidd just rumbles his disgruntled disgust at the mention of the den of monsters, and continues staring at the pristine gold floor of the balcony they sat on, cross-legged with their backs turned to each other. He really doesn’t want to visit Skaia anymore, due to the battles between Prospit and Derse getting exceptionally bloody. Even so, the former is a thousand times better than the latter, a place for a prince.
(Kidd’s not a prince anymore. He never was. Everything his father taught him about being a Shinigami, about souls, about weapons and resonance and being immortal was for nothing. He lost earth and he lost society and damn it he’s a selfish brat but it’s something they all lost.
He knows that his grief is no longer directed at his father, but their world and his lost purpose.
He won’t cry.
He can’t cry.
He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.)
“Kidd?” Comes Chrona’s small voice from behind him. He turns around, getting an eyeful of lavender hair as her gaze continues to remain locked on the clouds of Skaia.
“What?”
“…to be honest, I’m glad this game happened.”
“…what?”
She can clearly sense the tension, the hidden anger, and the incredulous belief in his tone and shuts her mouth tight. From the movement from her body she’s about to get up and flee, fearful of his wrath like long ago, years ago it feels, when they dueled on a ghost ship and tried to take the other out.
He grabs her arm before she can run, a wordless message of telling her to stay put. She starts to splutter apologies and he snaps at her to stop apologize cause dammit he’s not angry with her.
She reluctantly sits back down, back still to him, but he shifts where he is and stands up, pulling her up with him so they could look each other in the face. She cowers, and he stands steady.
(He wants to know if Paradox Space is really playing with him, so maybe he can find an excuse to give up, or keep going, or just find a way to just fucking let go because he’s tired of feeling useless.)
“I-I know M-Medusa is here, and she’s trying to stop us, but…it’s the first time I’m able to start over. I can’t deal with society, and I can’t deal with this game.” She sounds like she’s confessing a crime, her voice shaky but honest. “But Maka tells me that I don’t have to be what my mother made me…and playing this game, it’s…it’s made me believe that it might be true.”
(She can let go of her past because society is dead and she doesn’t have to fear it anymore. The goal given to her was to destroy society. She lost her purpose when Maka saved her, and was as lost as he is right now.
But now society is gone. She is a Knight here and she has a purpose given to her.
She can move on.
He can’t.)
XXXXXXXXKidd’s eyes are wide and his body is tense, and she knows that she’s said the wrong thing to him and he surely must be angry. His anger scares her, like it did before on the Niddhogg. She wants to apologize but when Kidd moves she flinches with a squeak and can’t speak.
Instead his hand takes hers, she looks back at him and see’s how truly lost he is.
It’s only for a second, though.
Chrona doesn’t feel it happen for whatever reason. Maybe because dying in your sleep is painless and a lot less scary.
Kidd stares at her with wide, wide yellow eyes. Hers travel down to where he’s looking.
A black stain blossoms on the front of her chest, and then it continues to bleed, changing to a deep, candy red color.
But then something else changes and she doesn’t know why it happens. It’s a hyper awareness that frightens her and fascinates her.
She feels the molecules and the energy of everything around her. They spin and they move and the faster they move the more destructive and powerful they become. She knows where there are protons and ions and electrons and they simply roll across her skin and they always have done so but she’d never noticed.
And it’s something she suddenly understands how to deal with. It’s no different from the energy of Ragnarok and of her own soul channeled through a sword, just something that others can’t understand.
She realizes the energy of the universe is hers to command.
And she rises.
(The clouds show her dead body, originally napping near a consort village and then killed her sleep by her mother. What purpose this pertains to, she can’t understand. It makes her afraid of what she could be planning.
Medusa let’s her bleed out black blood onto the stone of her bed high on a pillar, and it remains there, unmoving.
Ragnarok melts into nothing, and an unknown fury burns through her, one that scares and empowers her.
She is a Knight clad in dark purple clothing, not a hero of legends or anything like that. She is one that cause destruction to her enemies, one that protects her friends.)
XXXXXXXXAs Chrona rises to godhood he stands there on the golden balcony staring and his head spinning like a top.
To his own annoyance he finds that his first thought is about how jealous he is of everyone. Envy is a poisonous sin, but for a minute it fills up the long empty cavity of his chest and it burns his soul.
Well, that's it then.
He's insignificant to everything, isn't he?
He can't find himself to care, really.
As Skaia glows with power above him, a beeping sound echoes in his ear, far and distant, but then he blinks and suddenly his eyes are impossibly heavy when he tries to open them again and then he feels the irritation of sand in his shoes.
Kidd's computer beeps insistently in his ear, informing him that he's being messaged.
Shaking off the gnawing anger in the back of his mind Kidd opens the chat window to find a wall of yellow text waiting for him.
- yellowGiraffe [YG] began pestering symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] -
yG: Kidd!
yG: Ummm, I guess you're not there, but this is really important.
yG: I've found Medusa! She killed Chrona!!!
yG: I was passing through a gate and saw her put Chrona on a stone up on this pedestal!!!
yG: I'm not sure what she's up too but it can't be good, Kiddo!"
sS: Patti!
yG: There you are, dummy!
sS: Where the hell are you!?
yG: I outta be asking you that!
sS: I happened to be getting some sleep, but that's not important.
sS: Chrona's reached God Tier.
yG: Huh?
sS: If what you say is true and Medusa did kill her...
sS: But it doesn't make sense.
sS: God Tier only gives more people power, not kill them.
yG: I'm heading back to my world and Imma let Big Sis know to be careful!
sS: I'll be returning to Shibusen and informing Stein, then.
yG: I should let Soul and Maka know, too.
yG: Oh hey! Speaking of which, I've been getting really lucky with Grist lately. I'm almost to my Denizen, too!
sS: Hopefully we won't have to be in this place much longer.
sS: Everyone in Death City is getting fairly restless.
yG: Haha!
yG: Anyways, I'll see you next
- yellowGiraffe [YG] has ceased pestering symmetryytremmyS [SS] -
sS: Patti?
sS: PATTI!
He curses and summons his skateboard and soars over the multicolored, Pixistick dunes, making for his fourth gate.
Patti's land is a practical paradise of grasslands and bight skies and pretty much mirroring the savanna's of Africa. He hates it as much as any of the other worlds but for once ignores his compulsions and races to find his weapon.
By the time he makes it to her land he's too late. He's always too late for everything. Kidd stares at her mangled, bloodied body lying on bright orange rock in frustration and anger and he brings his hand to his portable computer once again, uncertain of who is next on Medusa's killing spree.
- symmetryytremmyS [SS] began pestering brooklynDemon [BD] -
sS: Liz?!
sS: Medusa's appeared again!
bD: what?
bD: kidd, i can't see patti.
bD: what's going on?
sS: What do you mean you can't see her?
bD: i've been able to see patti through her eyes.
bD: and suddenly she's gone.
bD: she just went dark and i can’t feel her.
sS: She's dead.
sS: Medusa killed her.
sS: That witch is going on a killing spree!
sS: Liz?
sS: Liz are you there?
- brooklynDemon [BD] ceased pestering symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] -
(He's always too late, isn't he?)
Liz's land of crystal and water and Aurora Borealis is covered by black skies and a violent storm of dark clouds, shooting lighting from their depths and it dances across the sky. It's ominous and it speaks volumes of anger and despair and black rain, almost like oil, falls from the clouds and they smell like acid and stick to his skin and almost burn it.
As he flies to it at top speed, following the core of the deathly storm, something in the back of his mind tells him who is responsible. He holds out hope that Liz is still alive and he can save her.
The storm proves to be too thick for him to see more than five feet in front of him, trying to navigate through the lightning and calling for his weapon, his voice drowned out by echoing thunder. It’s suffocating and he chokes on the darkness and burns his eyes and skin and throat like acid. But he keeps going forward.
The battle is over when he gets there, but red blood along the ground leads him to the pedestal where a quest bed would be.
She's already laying there, not dead yet and struggling for air, but her skin has changed to dark gray and the power of thousands of Eldritch gods writhe about her body in the form of spiked black tendrils, slowing their movement as her life depletes.
The Shinigami hops from his skateboard and rushes to her side. Her chest heaves and blood mixed with the oil rain oozes from her body.
"Liz?" His voice is soft, hesitant. Her eyes, bloodshot and pupils diluted to their maximum, flicker over to him at his voice.
He leans over his dear demon pistol and takes her hand. "Listen to me; you're on your quest bed. You're going to die, and you'll wait up on Skaia alive, alright? It'll be OK."
His voice shakes and he takes her hand, squeezing it and swallowing back bile. Dammit he knows she’s going to be OK but seeing her this way just kills him. Her mouth moves, and then she lets out a scream, chanting out words he can't understand.
"YA-R'LUH SHAGG STELL'BSNA YA NOG ILYAA ILOIG YA KN'A I'NAUR LW'NAFH'MNAHN-"
"Liz, Liz it's me!!!" He shouts over her screaming, trying to hold her down as she writhes and pushes more blood from her system. She's only making her suffering worse. "It's Kidd!!"
Slowly, she calms, hand squeezing his tight. The storm above begins to disappear, returning back to the starry aurora sky, but the lakes collected in the indents in the crystals littering the land are already stained with black.
"You are Elizabeth Thompson, you're dying, but it's going to be OK. You’ll wake up on Skaia and your sister will be there with you. She’s alive, OK?" He tells her, desperate to reach her through her half-sobbing.
"T-Thompson fhtagn...Liz fhtagn..." She murmurs, her voice hoarse and she coughs up blood violently. Her hand clings to his and her tears streak her oil rain soaked face.
“Just let go…it’s going to be OK…” Kidd whispers, even though watching her die and feeling her soul slowly disappear is tearing him apart and it’s all he can do not to beg her not to disappear. Liz hears her, manages the smallest of nods, and breathes something intangible to him.
She shudders once, her body jerks and her breath fades.
(Later he'll hold them both in his arms, Liz sobbing erratically and apologizing over and over to her sister while Patti will just laugh and squeeze her back. Kidd will sigh and just let them cry themselves out. He also learns that Medusa’s spree had ended. She’d taken five lives on the Quest Beds, unexpectedly forcing the Thompsons, Chrona, and Tsubaki to ascend.
It’s after that do they learn that Soul and Maka had disappeared.
They’re the first of 6.)
Part 2
Title: Center of Brilliance, Core of Darkness
Fandom: Soul Eater/Homestuck
Rating: T
Pairing: Kidd/Chrona
Summery: He’s a god in a nest of demons, she’s a murderer in a hall of worship; he finds the reversal of their situations extremely ironic, and she feels that they’re both just all the wrong colors. A Kidd/Chrona anthology.
= = = = >
She can never deal with anything, even after her freedom is given to her and they succeed and free her from madness’s hold. Even though the Kishin had disappeared again, everything is so perfect it’s too good to be true.
It is too good to be true.
Under the guidance of Liz, she takes part in their fall, not meaning too, but it’s the only thing they can do. Everything is triggered and it all falls into place so smoothly it’s just a clear path for her now that she doesn’t want to travel down.
But she doesn’t know how to deal with being dead.
(It’s just a quick flick of her wrist that brings the black sword comes down and she’s spirited away.)
XXXXXXXXHe can’t think about it immediately cause his ears are still ringing from Liz howling at him over the phone to move cause everyone will die if he doesn’t. Tsubaki had woken up to connect with him and now he waits for salvation, for the go ahead to leave it all behind.
Two agonizing minutes later he realizes it’s taking too long. They either have to leave half of Death City behind or everything is lost.
Shinigami-sama springs from the mirror. Their destruction stops moving and the city’s preservation is secured.
He lifts up their ticket to safety, and as he holds it over his head, ready to smash it, the god holding back the source of demise vanishes from the world.
Kidd feels part of his soul being ripped away.
The Shinigami mask in his hands cracks in half precisely in the center and it all flashes white.
(In the aftermath, he’ll realize that everything he’d been taught had been worth nothing, but they still have to start forward and he quietly fights the urge to just give up, like he’d been doing all his life.)
XXXXXXXXWhen she first wakes up it’s a whiplash of being asleep and then clawing again for the surface of consciousness almost automatically, falling into nothing but darkness and not knowing how to deal with it. Deep, almost black plum burns into her eyes upon opening and everything feels different, new.
Her head is silent and clear. It’s just her. She can’t feel Ragnarok anywhere and it’s scary to be alone so suddenly. The urge to find someone comforting and familiar takes hold of her and she approaches the window, only to scamper away from it once her eyes adjust to the light outside. She knows now to be dreaming, but why her dreams would contain a city of gold was beyond her.
Once she calms her rapidly beating heart Chrona comes back to the window. It is indeed a city of shining wealth and it almost feels like a holy place. Above, a blue, blue sphere of clouds and wind and light in the deep black of space floats. She’d never been afraid of heights, so it’s easily a matter of climbing onto the windowsill and standing up straight to get a better look.
She slips.
She falls.
The goldleaf streets below approach her rapidly as her screams echo and she twists and writhes in mid-air and tries to remember the rule of waking up before you hit the ground.
It never comes into contact with her because space bends and breaks and it all feels right and for one fleeting second she’s one with the universe. Her plummet stops.
Her body is still several yards from the shining street below and when her eyes open it’s easy to see her screams had attracted attention.
Many sets of black eyes stare up at her and watch her and are looking at her with concern. She floats and can’t deal with being stared at by strange carapaces in knight’s armor. They call concerned words up to her and their tones are worried and excited at the same time and she can even hear a bit of worship in there.
It’s overwhelming because even more gather and she’d never been stared at so reverently before. Not really thinking about it she turns and swiftly glides back up to the window, darting inside and plopping down in the corner.
(Later, Tsubaki will come to her tower from the next one over, dressed in royalty gold and with excited eyes, and coax her out of her hiding spot. Chrona will be taken to the streets below and guided by the weird looking but ever friendly people and she will meet a beautiful queen in armor of shining silver. She will learn things about the blue sphere above and the war and the dark twin to this planet of gold and hallowed halls, and about the other princes and princesses that sleep there. And things start to get better.)
XXXXXXXXThe structures of deep, royal purple and the whispering of Eldritch beings not far at all from their rooms irritate him all the time. After waking up Kidd refused to leave his tower on account of the disorganized and chaotic mass of demons that seek to destroy their center of limitless creative potential, favoring to stay in the almost suffocating black décor of his room.
Initially the Shinigami wasn’t sure at first what the others were getting at when they spoke of dream selves in comparison to waking selves. But then exhaustion from level grinding finally got the better of him and he took what he hoped was a short nap.
He finds Derse to be a rather odd place for a god-like being such as himself to be situated in. Soul and Maka are always chatting about their time on the planet’s twin of goldleaf streets and white knighted carapaces and the kind queen that had a tone of ice when mentioning the dark planet, and often times Tsubaki and Liz would talk animatedly and compare the two warring worlds.
Black*Star is the only one not awake yet, and Kidd finds that it isn’t surprising at all. He’s always pushing himself, and an intervention to get him to sleep was possibly imminent.
Patti loves the flight given to a dream self, and spends her time soaring around the towers and buildings and irritating the Agents that live there. Liz would either spend time in her room, fly around with Patti, or listen to the whispers of the dark gods living beyond the incipisphere in the tears of time and space.
Derse doesn’t fit him at all; he can’t stand it.
He’s sure Prospit is no better in terms of being aesthetically pleasing, but finds himself, not too long after waking up, drifting out of his tower and through the thick blackness of the Medium, seeking the small, blue glowing speck in the blackness so very far away. The Eldritch gods beyond the Ring sometimes whisper to him on his flight, but he shuts their foreign words out.
Skaia is almost like earth, save for the lack of ground for the majority of the giant sphere’s depth. He knows what’s in the center, what he will find if he travels within, but he feels that’s for another tim.
Prospit is nothing like Derse, save for the blatant and annoying asymmetry. But the goldleaf streets shine instead of hide deathly Agents and the carapaces there play freely and happily and for one second it reminds him of Earth.
(There’s nothing left for them there, he knows. Everything has been or will be gone in some way or another and his duty is over.)
The towers on the chained moon are the same shape as the ones on Derse but the opposite color. Dreams of Prospit are always good ones, while the ones on the darkened streets are nightmares of Old Ones that he never knew existed.
Nobody’s awake, from the looks of things. He turns away from the asymmetry of the city and intends to fly back through the Medium when he hears soft calling from behind.
Peering from one of the towers is one of the three princesses that sleep here, dressed in bright clothes and blinking in curiosity to the splotch of purple in the middle of a mass of gold.
“W-what are you doing here?” He’s sure that he’s not the first one to fly from Derse to see the city of gold, but he must be the first one she’s seen.
“Quite simply the asymmetry of Derse irritated me and I came here to see if Prospit was any better.” He answers promptly.
“O-Oh.” She looks like she’s been accused of a crime, to which he just sighs.
“Sadly neither planet seems to fit my standards of pleasing aesthetics and I will take my leave, and keep sleep to a minimum.”
“Ummmm…” Chrona tries to suggest something but can’t speak. Even with his gentlemanly output he can’t help but get a little impatient. She opens and closes her mouth three times before speaking again. “D-Do you like chess?”
“Why wouldn’t I? The orderly pattern of black and white is always a pleasure to see.”
“Skaia has a chessboard.” She floats out her window, and his hope childishly grows that there may be some kind of order to this chaotic incipisphere.
They pass through the blue sea of clouds and wind on their way, flying from the chained moon to see the battlefield. In the clouds are many things, they find. Images of meteors striking Earth and ones that had struck before and even images of more recent past events.
The chessboard is spherical and with rolling hills and if he looks at it from directly above he finds it aesthetically pleasing. Chrona can’t understand the beauty of symmetry.
(At this point in time he can’t expect her to. It’s a strange turn of events that ensured that they ended up in the places that they are. She sleeps in a gold tower on a planet of hope and worship and near the centerpiece of their goal. He sleeps in an obsidian tower high above those that covet the destruction of creation and below the dark, whispering gods. He has yellow eyes that contrast to his purple, princely pajama’s and she’s clad in gold to compliment her blue, almost lavender eyes. It’s really funny.)
XXXXXXXXHer world of fire and stone and heat isn’t the most unpleasant thing in the world, far from it, especially concerning various events in her screwed up lifetime. In time, after experimenting with various object combinations and an Ocarina of Time Nintendo 64 game pack she makes herself a wearable shield for her body, grows accustomed to the unbearable temperatures and slowly learns to thrive. Often times the monsters she faces are huge and ugly and upturning villages and she can’t deal with them. It’s only through Maka’s guidance can she actually understand what to do, what the game’s goals are.
Most of the time she keeps to herself. She works around the land freeing those imprisoned by the Agents and passes through her gates. The guide provided to her at the beginning of the game keeps her safe while she sleeps, whenever she can get sleep, that is. When she’s awake Ragnarok would hit her and complain about the heat and how the monster’s leave behind grist instead of souls for him to eat. She finds no use in trying to reason with him. And for this reason she tries to sleep as much as possible.
Prospit is something that she can’t associate with herself. It’s clean, it’s pretty and there is a feeling of safety and strength on the planet and her flights to Skaia are just the icing on the cake. She can talk to the others and learn about how far they’ve gotten. Two weeks into their session and everything’s going smoothly.
Kidd often times comes to Prospit, if only to see Skaia. She tags along whenever everyone else is awake and working.
It’s so strange that the Death god, a being of strength and power and authority, would have dreams of a den of monsters. Derse just doesn’t fit the prince of Death City.
(Why would a monster like her dream of a place like Prospit? She’s not a princess, or anything like that. She’s an androgynous looking girl who can’t deal with anything, a corrupt being that sat in dark rooms and corners and was beaten and starved until she could learn to kill. She’s nothing.)
It’s while sitting on a rock and watching the lava flows destroy (and create) whenever it can collect does she feel the black stone move underneath her with magma and heat and energy in a steady rhythm. She knows of its energy, causing death and fires and burning and destruction and
Doom.
(If she’s not a princess, then she will be a knight. Princesses don’t wield swords, she knows, and they don’t defend the princes or do anything. Knights do. They defend and defeat.
She can’t defend, but she can defeat. Meeting the requirements halfway is enough, isn’t it?)
XXXXXXXXWhen they first met he was the superior one, the one to take her down, bring the vile thing to justice and punish her for her crimes. He was the god out to destroy a lowly demon, the executioner triumphing over a victim in his own sick manner. Even after her initial introduction to Shibusen he was still above her, having never cruelly taken the life of an innocent soul. He was a flawed being, yes, because of those accursed stripes, but in terms of status, far, far better than her.
Now it’s all been turned around and he finds it funny: a prince in a nest of monsters and a murderer in holy halls.
His compulsive symmetry problems still get in the way of everything. Liz yells at him over the phone to get his ass moving because fuck symmetry you have to build me up to that gate, he goes into a rampage over particularly asymmetrical looking monsters that he needs to strike down and the consorts don’t help his mood at all.
None of the other worlds are any better. Maka’s world of clouds has a sky of clarity and a ground of storms, Black*Star’s is filled with broken clocks and annoyingly uneven ticking that drives his hearing and thinking pattern bananas, Soul’s has rivers of red and black and the sky is littered with music bars, every planet he reaches upon passing a gate always finds some way to rub him the wrong way.
Skaia is a respite from this chaos. The battlefield is something monochrome and soothing for his eyes so long as he stares at it from the right angle. When he wakes up, he disappears, though, back to his tower.
(Every video game has a final level. The one that they’re in has its ending on this very chessboard, but it will be stained with blood and littered with carapace corpses and be hammered with fiery wrath from far above.
And it will be during that final battle that he will see what his purpose is.)
“U-Ummmm…Kidd?”
“What?”
“You have a frog in your hair.”
He scowls and swats it off his head. It lands with a splat on the floor of the Japanese style living room and Tsubaki picks it up, placing it back in the tank it had hopped out of.
Kidd decides that he hates frogs.
Especially genetically enhanced frogs.
Chrona in particular seems afraid of them. He guesses it’s due to Eruka, but really, he can’t blame her for being rather unnerved by the amount of different colored amphibians hopping about Tsubaki’s transported home.
“S-so, what do we h-have to have so many frogs again?” She asks the chain-scythe weapon, who shrugs after grabbing some more nets and jars, fresh off the alchemiter.
“Well, according to gA, we’re supposed to breed frogs to win the game.”
“You really believe that whole ‘We-need-to-breed-a-special-frog-to-create-a-new-universe’ crap?” Soul responds upon reentering the room with a large net full of frogs. Tsubaki nods.
“I don’t think she’d lie…”
“Can’t wait to see how this turns out.”
“Where’s Patti and Black*Star?” Kidd asks him after taking two nets for himself. “They need to cover the east side of the area.”
“Apparently, the presence of genetically enhanced frogs calls for boxer hockey for them.” He sighs. And according to the laws of the universe, something goes flying through the window to prove his point. This frog happens to be an unfortunate blue one and somewhere outside the two trouble makers howl with laughter.
(Soul’s face is priceless when she finally does breed the frog they need. In the middle of Skaia it will grow, they will take down the king in a checkmate.)
XXXXXXXXSand get’s in her shoes as she treks across the desert and the winds try to beat her back. The heat is tame compared to LOSAF, with it’s lava flows and bubbling tar pits and the smell of brimstone. It’s something she learned to live with. But this world is an explosion of pastal color and bright light and technicolor sandstorms.
Kidd, wrapped tight in his Shinigami cloak, leads the way. He wants to reach his next gate, she knows, but they don’t know where it is in this desert.
When the sand suddenly shifts under her feet and there’s the rumbling of a deep growl she springs from where she stands on reflex, yelping upon her clumsy impact to the ground. She draws her demon weapon and Kidd draws his guns. A basilisk of sandstone breaks from the sand like a whale would the ocean. It swims with terrifying speed and heads straight for them both.
They split in different directions, forcing it to choose it’s target so the other can strike. It decides that Kidd is a tastier morsel, and he begins a tactical retreat while Ragnarok’s screams hit it again and again.
She eventually blows it out of the sand, it hits the ground on it’s side and explodes into grist. As Kidd collects it Chrona lifts her hood over her head again, eyes stinging from the sand in the howling wind.
“I think we’re getting the hang of this.” The Shinigami comments casually, brushing himself off.
(Kidd, a monochrome figure, is a striking image against sands of red and pink and yellow and green and blue and so many other colors inbetween. She is often subject to listening to his rants about how much he hates the lands they were destined and how nothing in this stupid game makes sense whatsoever.
She can’t understand symmetry, but honestly wonders if there is any order in the universe. At all.)
They continue on their way, and eventually the blur of color drowns Kidd’s black cloak and erases it from her vision. She can’t tell if he’s gone on ahead or he’s still in front of her. She tries calling out for him but her voice is lost in the roar of the storm.
Chrona gropes through the thick color, trying to find him, and she sets her jaw against the wind and trudges on in the direction she thinks he’d gone in. She can’t deal with being lost, despite the fact that she’s been lost nearly all her life.
The desert storm teaches her to pick a direction and keep walking in it. She can’t turn back unless she wants to possibly go in circles. It’s something she can’t relate to life, though.
She’s always in a constant state of understanding and not getting it. It’s never been this way before, when ignorance was bliss and darkness was all she knew.
Now she knows color and she knows what goes with what.
When a hand grabs hers from nowehere she tenses and fights the reflex to retaliate. Kidd pulls her in a completely different direction and they find shelter in a cave, sitting under lime green sandstone.
The storm eventually disappears, and Kidd spends the time they wait for that to happen scolding her for getting seperated, you could have been killed there are underlings everywhere and be careful! He also tries to get a signal to report back to Maka. Chrona leans back against the cave wall and listens to his faint cursing.
(Maybe she’s just stupid for thinking it, but he seems lost. She can’t tell for sure, though; all she has going is that the look in his eyes mirrors hers, back then.
Back during her days of darkness.
Is this forgiveness? Are the halls of Prospit and the light of Skaia a sign? Their god is dead. No longer does anyone have a hold over her life. Her visions of dead bodies rising up, englulfed in power and strength are something she doesn’t know how to deal with.
But what does it mean for him?)
XXXXXXXXThat bitch is back. He doesn’t know how the hell she is alive or even how she got into Death City without detection but she’s responsible for a lot of shit.
Black*Star comes back with a catatonic Maka one day. She’s shaking and her eyes are wide and she’s sweaty and her adoptive brother is more or less grieving.
“Black*Star?” Kidd asks him after dropping Maka off at Nygus’s infirmery. He’s sitting in the cafeteria with the others, taking a short break from working to get a proper meal. “What’s happened?”
The ninja sits and the table and Patti quickly takes his hand, softly inquiring what’s wrong cause he didn’t seem to hear Kidd.
“...Soul’s dead.”
The silence in the room is stifling. Kidd’s thought process ceases and he doesn’t know what to say. It’s Liz who breaks the quiet, almost immediately.
“H-how did-“
“Medusa’s alive...”
Beside him Chrona starts shaking and almost instinctively he takes her hand. It’s an obligation for them both because he needs something solid to hold as well, else he be ripped from the ground and tossed into the depths of blackness.
“What happened?” Kidd prompted him. He’s not a leader, but he can take some authority to keep everyone as calm as he can while their captain was grieving.
“She chased them and killed Soul. Would’ve killed Maka too if I hadn’t gotten there in time...”
It’s silent, silent as they take this all in. Kidd feels anger boil up in him. They were doing so well up until this time. They can’t fail now, they have to keep going-
And in another cosmic turn of events, it’s Chrona who’s the one to speak first. Apparently physical contact had calmed her down significantly.
“But...that’s not what I learned from the clouds...”
“Excuse me?” Liz says, blinking.
“The clouds?”
Chrona shrinks down when all eyes turn on her, but she keeps going.
“I saw Soul dying, yesterday, and-“
“Why didn’t you tell us this?!” Black*Star snapped, causing her to immediately lapse into fearful silence. “We could have prevented this-“
“Black*Star, let her speak.” Liz tells him firmly, though her voice is shaking. “Go on, Chrona.”
It takes a moment for her to get her voice back, but she does.
“A-and after that, he was OK.”
“OK?”
“Mmmm.” She answered, nodding slightly. “H-he should be coming here any minute now...I hope...”
Soul arrives clad in dark gray clothes not 8 minutes later. He’s alive and smiling and soaring down towards them from the pink lemonade sky and they all know that he’s been reborn a god. The irony just keeps getting richer and richer for Kidd, with each and every happening.
(He’s not a god anymore, he’ll realize later. Shinigami are supposed to protect the world, protect society and keep order.
The world is gone.
Society is gone.
Order is gone.
There’s no purpose left for him.)
XXXXXXXXShe waits, anxiously, for them to come back. This Medium feels wrong and it feels twisted and sick and it hides a demon. Kidd sits beside her with equal amount of tension in his posture, eyes scanning the thick black, Soul Perception on full power, seeking what could possibly be their demise.
Chrona wishes to break the silence, have something else to think about other than what’s out there hunting for victims, but she doesn’t want to break Kidd’s concentration and she wouldn’t know how to deal with it.
“Are you alright?” Comes his voice suddenly after another two minutes of silence. It makes her squeak and jump, on edge far more than she had been in a while.
“Y-Yes.”
“Sorry for scaring you.” He murmurs, and rubs his forehead with a sigh. “...talk to me.”
“Huh?”
“Just...say something, it’s too quiet.”
“B-but don’t you need to-“
“Chrona, for once, I just want to hear what anyone else says.
She fidgets, and starts speaking about something random, mainly talking about her progress in their session. She’s already neared her final gate. They don’t know how much time is left before they need to go on full throttle, but at least they’ve made some progress, especially concerning the fact that they alchemized an interstellar star cruiser with cloaking and radar. She tells him about the fire world, and he promises to help her get to her denizen once she reaches a high enough level.
(Long after the dust settles, they’ll talk about other things. This time, she’ll be the one listening.)
Kidd’s focused, yellow eyes on her, after a good ten minutes of speaking, suddenly dart towards the sky once more. He stands before the controls of the ship and makes sure that cloaking is on. She waits in almost frightened silence.
“...he’s out there. Close, but moving away from where we are.”
“Good...” She murmurs, glad that they’re safety and mission success is ensured, for now.
He urges her to keep talking, despite her anxiety. It comes somewhat easier for her now that they have a general idea where the demon is.
Kidd asks about Prospit, and she tells him about that, too, about the halls and the people and she tells him about the things he doesn’t know because he refuses to go near Prospit because of the asymmetry. When she’s done all he’ll do is chuckle and murmur ‘it’s all just so ironic, isn’t it?’ to himself.
They’re both all the wrong colors. And she can’t figure out how to deal with that.
(Their mission is a success, rescuing fellow players from certain doom and possibly ensuring the recovery of four others at an even higher risk mission. It’s too late for some, but the ensurance of the safety of eight is enough for them all.
Chrona watch’s them exit the ship towards the prospect of sleep without dreams, a home with food, water, and a better future.
They call themselves soldiers.
But all she see’s is a group of 13-year-old kids who’ve been to hell and back.)
XXXXXXXX
- symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] began pestering blackPoet [BP] -
sS: Chrona, it has come to my understanding that you have awakened powers given to us by the game?
bP: Ummm...
bP: I guess...
sS: I suppose my theory on these powers has been wrong all along.
bP: What?
sS: Remember how Soul was killed by Medusa last week prior to our rescue mission?
sS: It appears that after he rose to God Tier he’s discovered an ability to manipulate blood, in addition to flight and practical immortality.
sS: Though considering this is a video game a hypothetical god mode would be expected to be achievable.
bP: OK...
sS: And if you’ve awakened powers, yet not risen to God Tier, then that possibly means that you don’t have to reach such status to discover the powers that this twisted game has granted us.
bP: OK...
sS: Apologies for interrupting your work, the others are asleep at the moment and you’re the only one I can ask about this right now.
bP: It’s OK...
sS: Would you so kindly tell me about your powers?
bP: Ummm...
bP: Well...it’s not something that I’ve understood completely...
bP: It’s like...I feel.
sS: Feel what, might I ask?
bP: I don’t know what it is. It almost feels like...energy.
sS: You’re being quite vague on this matter, Chrona.
bP: Oh, sorry...
bP: I don’t understand it, myself...
bP: And I don’t know how to deal with it...
sS: I suppose I was expecting that kind of answer.
sS: But it is interesting that it can pertain to a physical sensation in addition to a mental one.
bP: Oh...
bP: OK...
bP: Why do you ask, Kidd?
sS: Discovering the powers the game has given me is more or less a rather slippery feat that keeps eluding my grasp.
sS: Perhaps there’s something I’m missing here.
bP: It’s something that, well, I found out for myself.
bP: I was never looking for it...
sS: I see.
bP: ...
bP: Is something wrong, Kidd?
sS: No.
sS: Yes.
bP: There is?
sS: I shouldn’t burden you with my personal conflicts.
sS: I’m sorry for bothering you.
bP: Kidd...
sS: I’ll be there shortly to assist you with reaching your denizen.
sS: Until then, Chrona.
bP: Kidd, wait
- symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] ceased pestering blackPoet [BP] -
(Part of her wants to reach out and help him, the other doesn’t know how to deal with it. For now, she’ll have to keep going and hope he will attempt to keep up, because she knows how painful it is to be left behind.)
XXXXXXXXHephaestus is a hulking mountain of flame and lava, looming over an iron anvil and the fires of the forge inside his lair are sure to set his hair and clothes aflame. Every Shinigami instinct in him screams to run or fight, but he pushes it down and keeps back as Chrona attempts to find the courage to step closer as he commanded in a booming, almost earth-shaking voice.
“You are a rather peculiar knight.” He tells her, and Kidd can almost see her body quivering with fear but still standing tall. “One so thin and weak in appearance, yet you easily defeat my underlings with almost no effort.”
“I-I am a Meister.” She tells him, struggling to keep her voice steady. “All my life I have fought.”
“Both innocents and evil beings, I can assume.”
She flinches in shame. Kidd starts to step forward to try and defend her but his next words make him freeze in shock.
“Little Shinigami. I knew your father well.”
His mind draws a blank and he misses Hephaestus’s next words before it turns back to Chrona, speaking again but the entire conversation isn’t audible to him anymore.
He hadn’t thought about his father for weeks.
Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to.
He keeps his eyes lowered as his mind tries to work again and before he knows it Chrona’s shaking his shoulder.
“Kidd, ummm, are-are you alright?”
“Huh?”
“...nevermind.” She murmurs, turning back to the Denizen.
“I have a bargain for you to consider, Knight.” He tells her, before turning away to retrieve something from behind him.
Both can’t help but gape when they’re presented with a huge hoard of grist. The Denizen leans back and looks down at them again.
“My skills require access to the Forge in the Seer’s land.” He rumbles. “Grant me this access and I shall give you this hoard.”
Chrona agrees, and the grist is stored away for ‘The Ultimate Alchemy’, as their guides tell them.
“I can also create a weapon for you, if you so desire, Knight.”
Chrona tries to speak, but Ragnarok bursts from her back and starts shouting obscenities at him.
“Back off you burning hunk of shit! She’s already got a weapon, ME!!”
“Ragnarok, knock it off!” She tries to get out over his shouts.
Hephaestus chuckles darkly, and Kidd has to grab Chrona and pull her out of the way when a huge hammer attempts to come down on her.
“You are barely more than a little, worthless creature.” The Denizen tells him, lifting his hammer higher up. “Prove to me you are a weapon!”
Both turn tail and flee for the 7th gate behind them, but the rumbling footsteps of the giant behind them keeps making them stumble.
Hepaestus catches up to them and attempts to smash them both.
Chrona screams, and Kidd turns just in time to see a pulse of energy come from her hands, hitting the Denizen directly in the face and knocking him back, dazed.
Wasting no time Kidd grabs her hand and they leaped through the exit.
No sooner than they had exited did Ragnarok appear again and slam his fists on Chrona’s head.
“YOU DUMBASS!! WHY THE HELL DID YOU RUN!? WE COULD’VE TAKEN THAT ASSHOLE IN AN INSTANT!!”
“S-Stop it, that hurts!”
“Listen up, pansy! Ever since this bullshit game happened you’ve been doing nothing but run around and kill monsters to get lousy Fruit Gusher knockoffs!! When the hell are we gonna’ get some tasty souls!?”
“Are you implying Kishin souls?” Kidd asks him, raising an eyebrow and giving Ragnarok and angry look.
“Of course I am!” He rants. “Now that I can’t have human souls anymore-“
“There are no Kishin Eggs left.” The Shinigami tells him, his voice sounding rather hollow, but his mind races with admitting this to both the annoying blob and himself. “Earth is gone, humans and Kishin alike are dead. We’re all that’s left.”
Ragnarok does nothing but glare daggers at him, before shrinking inside Chrona’s back and falling silent. Now that she isn’t being assaulted, her eyes turn to him. He isn’t aware of his fists tightening to the point of pain until his fingernails dig into his palm and start to bleed.
“...Kidd-“
“Let Tsubaki know that she needs to light the Forge, soon.” He tells her, turning away and descending down the blackened rock, away from the gate.
The pattering of footsteps behind him tells him that she’s following, and in the corner of his eye she can see him walking right at his side. She doesn’t speak, just keeps her eyes forward as the travel.
(The five stages of grief are unpredictable, he’s heard. He doesn’t really know what he’s grieving for though, his father, for their lost planet, for his lost purpose. It’s one or the other or it’s all three or something he can’t grasp yet.
But he knows the first stage of denial reaches its end when they’re met with a wave of underlings trying to get back to another gate that would take them to Death City. He takes one look at them, the Denizen’s words echo in his head and it all explodes out of him like a shaken soda bottle.
Not a sound escapes him as he swiftly cuts them all down using guns he’d alchemized, deadly and slick, he’s driven by anger and frustration and he can’t do anything to stop himself. He’s showered with grist and other elements and long buried emotions ooze from his soul.
Kidd doesn’t realize how far he’s gone until he’s hit with a painful concussive blast, knocked flat to the ground. Chrona keeps apologizing for not knowing how to grasp her powers as a Knight of Doom and attempts to help him to his feet.
The second stage passes as quickly as it had come and he moves to the next, but he refuses to acknowledge it. He’s just grateful she let him lean on her shoulder as they headed back, even if she couldn’t deal with it.)
XXXXXXXXThe timer ticks down, and each second strikes another nerve in her. This rescue mission is more dangerous than the last, she’s aware. In addition to being hunted by the demon, they have to escape a hard reset, else they be caught in green flames and only have memories through dreams.
They turn to the Ring beyond the incipisphere, their work in The Veil done and Chrona feels nervous from where she sits in their star cruiser. Liz speaks of those that live in darkness all the time, listening to their words, but she’d been warned by the queen that such words were never for the ears of Prospit dreamers.
It’s about five minutes later does she understand why.
The first sign of trouble is Black*Star cursing violently from where he’s typing away rapidly at his computer. He shudders for a brief second and goes completely limp.
Chrona, who’d been keeping an open connection with Kidd and Patti via a webcam, feels sleep suddenly come over her and then passes out.
And then she realizes that her worries are gone.
It’s beautiful, she realizes. The sky is beautiful and streaked with all the colors there are and she’d never seen such vivid color before.
She reaches out to touch it all and falls through space and time. She’s unhurt, she’s invincible and immortal and everything is wonderful.
There’s laughter and shouting and Chrona hears happy music mixed with singing. It’s all wonderful, she glides through the starry worlds and dances.
Then she hears whispering. She realizes Liz was right.
VULGTLAGLN SHAGG N'GHFT, ULN ORR’EOR N’GHFT
She is loved. They will not hurt her and they can all live here and sleep and there would be no more burdens.
Everything is wonderful, everything is OK.
(It’s not OK everything hurts it all hurts make it stop please stop STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOOOOOOP!!!)
No more knowing how to deal with things, no more universe building tasks, no more Medusa, no more Ragnarok, no one anxiety, no more pain or fear or anything.
NOG NLGUI PHLEGETH, SGN’WAHL GRAH’N
She never wants to wake up.
PH'NGLUI MGLW'NAFH CTHULU R'LYEH WGAH'NAGL FHTAGN
But she does.
And when she does her head hurts and her ears ring and she yelps and shoots up from where she’s hunched over on the controls, shaking.
Maka jumps awake a second later, screaming. Black*Star comes to much more slowly, but when he does he let’s out a string of ‘Fucking…tentacle monsters…’ and ‘Holyfuck’, among other obscenities.
Soul’s been spared the visions of terror and hurries over to Maka, pulling her close to him.
“Maka, are you alright?”
“Ohmygodwhatthefuckwasthat!?” Is all she can get out.
There are more sleeping passengers in the ship, among two others who are awake and coherent. The rest are slumped where they were strapped into their seats.
“D-did we make it?” Chrona shakily asks Soul, who looks sweaty.
“Fucking sun wasn’t there!” He growls. “That bomb goes off in two minutes and we couldn’t find the damn thing!”
“W-what-“ Black*Star attempts to get out, speechless for once.
“I don’t have time to explain!” Soul jumps back in the captain’s seat and pushes it to full throttle. “We gotta get out before we’re sucked into the reset!”
(They make it out, but not without cost. The demon finds them before they reach the exit from the doomed session. She only had one second to look at him, but remembers him with frightening detail.
He’s a black carapace with a halo of green fire and lightning dancing all around him, crow wings spread wide and sword glinting in the crackling energy. His face resembles that of a savage jackal and he bears a predatory grin and is out for death.
He moves in a flash of omnipotent power and stabs Maka.)
XXXXXXXX“I see.” It’s all he can really say, honestly, as Chrona finishes recounting the events that took place in the other session. His blood boils at the thought of the fact that they nearly failed, and that the risk of venturing beyond the Furthest Ring, where the dark gods dwelt, was all for naught. He hadn’t seen Chrona in a while, both in the waking world and in sleeping.
One aspect of this is that now that the doomed players’ safety has been secured they are back to level grinding. Tsubaki’s nearly finished with breeding the Genesis frog, and they’re nearing Skaia, in addition to everyone being sick of this game. The other is that it appears that Chrona’s afraid to sleep.
Kidd makes a mental note to have a talk with Liz concerning her relations with Lovecraftian horrors.
“…I’m glad I’m not a Derse dreamer, now.” Chrona says after a good few minutes of silence.
“What?”
“The Old Ones are scary…they hurt me.”
Kidd just rumbles his disgruntled disgust at the mention of the den of monsters, and continues staring at the pristine gold floor of the balcony they sat on, cross-legged with their backs turned to each other. He really doesn’t want to visit Skaia anymore, due to the battles between Prospit and Derse getting exceptionally bloody. Even so, the former is a thousand times better than the latter, a place for a prince.
(Kidd’s not a prince anymore. He never was. Everything his father taught him about being a Shinigami, about souls, about weapons and resonance and being immortal was for nothing. He lost earth and he lost society and damn it he’s a selfish brat but it’s something they all lost.
He knows that his grief is no longer directed at his father, but their world and his lost purpose.
He won’t cry.
He can’t cry.
He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.)
“Kidd?” Comes Chrona’s small voice from behind him. He turns around, getting an eyeful of lavender hair as her gaze continues to remain locked on the clouds of Skaia.
“What?”
“…to be honest, I’m glad this game happened.”
“…what?”
She can clearly sense the tension, the hidden anger, and the incredulous belief in his tone and shuts her mouth tight. From the movement from her body she’s about to get up and flee, fearful of his wrath like long ago, years ago it feels, when they dueled on a ghost ship and tried to take the other out.
He grabs her arm before she can run, a wordless message of telling her to stay put. She starts to splutter apologies and he snaps at her to stop apologize cause dammit he’s not angry with her.
She reluctantly sits back down, back still to him, but he shifts where he is and stands up, pulling her up with him so they could look each other in the face. She cowers, and he stands steady.
(He wants to know if Paradox Space is really playing with him, so maybe he can find an excuse to give up, or keep going, or just find a way to just fucking let go because he’s tired of feeling useless.)
“I-I know M-Medusa is here, and she’s trying to stop us, but…it’s the first time I’m able to start over. I can’t deal with society, and I can’t deal with this game.” She sounds like she’s confessing a crime, her voice shaky but honest. “But Maka tells me that I don’t have to be what my mother made me…and playing this game, it’s…it’s made me believe that it might be true.”
(She can let go of her past because society is dead and she doesn’t have to fear it anymore. The goal given to her was to destroy society. She lost her purpose when Maka saved her, and was as lost as he is right now.
But now society is gone. She is a Knight here and she has a purpose given to her.
She can move on.
He can’t.)
XXXXXXXXKidd’s eyes are wide and his body is tense, and she knows that she’s said the wrong thing to him and he surely must be angry. His anger scares her, like it did before on the Niddhogg. She wants to apologize but when Kidd moves she flinches with a squeak and can’t speak.
Instead his hand takes hers, she looks back at him and see’s how truly lost he is.
It’s only for a second, though.
Chrona doesn’t feel it happen for whatever reason. Maybe because dying in your sleep is painless and a lot less scary.
Kidd stares at her with wide, wide yellow eyes. Hers travel down to where he’s looking.
A black stain blossoms on the front of her chest, and then it continues to bleed, changing to a deep, candy red color.
But then something else changes and she doesn’t know why it happens. It’s a hyper awareness that frightens her and fascinates her.
She feels the molecules and the energy of everything around her. They spin and they move and the faster they move the more destructive and powerful they become. She knows where there are protons and ions and electrons and they simply roll across her skin and they always have done so but she’d never noticed.
And it’s something she suddenly understands how to deal with. It’s no different from the energy of Ragnarok and of her own soul channeled through a sword, just something that others can’t understand.
She realizes the energy of the universe is hers to command.
And she rises.
(The clouds show her dead body, originally napping near a consort village and then killed her sleep by her mother. What purpose this pertains to, she can’t understand. It makes her afraid of what she could be planning.
Medusa let’s her bleed out black blood onto the stone of her bed high on a pillar, and it remains there, unmoving.
Ragnarok melts into nothing, and an unknown fury burns through her, one that scares and empowers her.
She is a Knight clad in dark purple clothing, not a hero of legends or anything like that. She is one that cause destruction to her enemies, one that protects her friends.)
XXXXXXXXAs Chrona rises to godhood he stands there on the golden balcony staring and his head spinning like a top.
To his own annoyance he finds that his first thought is about how jealous he is of everyone. Envy is a poisonous sin, but for a minute it fills up the long empty cavity of his chest and it burns his soul.
Well, that's it then.
He's insignificant to everything, isn't he?
He can't find himself to care, really.
As Skaia glows with power above him, a beeping sound echoes in his ear, far and distant, but then he blinks and suddenly his eyes are impossibly heavy when he tries to open them again and then he feels the irritation of sand in his shoes.
Kidd's computer beeps insistently in his ear, informing him that he's being messaged.
Shaking off the gnawing anger in the back of his mind Kidd opens the chat window to find a wall of yellow text waiting for him.
- yellowGiraffe [YG] began pestering symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] -
yG: Kidd!
yG: Ummm, I guess you're not there, but this is really important.
yG: I've found Medusa! She killed Chrona!!!
yG: I was passing through a gate and saw her put Chrona on a stone up on this pedestal!!!
yG: I'm not sure what she's up too but it can't be good, Kiddo!"
sS: Patti!
yG: There you are, dummy!
sS: Where the hell are you!?
yG: I outta be asking you that!
sS: I happened to be getting some sleep, but that's not important.
sS: Chrona's reached God Tier.
yG: Huh?
sS: If what you say is true and Medusa did kill her...
sS: But it doesn't make sense.
sS: God Tier only gives more people power, not kill them.
yG: I'm heading back to my world and Imma let Big Sis know to be careful!
sS: I'll be returning to Shibusen and informing Stein, then.
yG: I should let Soul and Maka know, too.
yG: Oh hey! Speaking of which, I've been getting really lucky with Grist lately. I'm almost to my Denizen, too!
sS: Hopefully we won't have to be in this place much longer.
sS: Everyone in Death City is getting fairly restless.
yG: Haha!
yG: Anyways, I'll see you next
- yellowGiraffe [YG] has ceased pestering symmetryytremmyS [SS] -
sS: Patti?
sS: PATTI!
He curses and summons his skateboard and soars over the multicolored, Pixistick dunes, making for his fourth gate.
Patti's land is a practical paradise of grasslands and bight skies and pretty much mirroring the savanna's of Africa. He hates it as much as any of the other worlds but for once ignores his compulsions and races to find his weapon.
By the time he makes it to her land he's too late. He's always too late for everything. Kidd stares at her mangled, bloodied body lying on bright orange rock in frustration and anger and he brings his hand to his portable computer once again, uncertain of who is next on Medusa's killing spree.
- symmetryytremmyS [SS] began pestering brooklynDemon [BD] -
sS: Liz?!
sS: Medusa's appeared again!
bD: what?
bD: kidd, i can't see patti.
bD: what's going on?
sS: What do you mean you can't see her?
bD: i've been able to see patti through her eyes.
bD: and suddenly she's gone.
bD: she just went dark and i can’t feel her.
sS: She's dead.
sS: Medusa killed her.
sS: That witch is going on a killing spree!
sS: Liz?
sS: Liz are you there?
- brooklynDemon [BD] ceased pestering symmetryyrtemmyS [SS] -
(He's always too late, isn't he?)
Liz's land of crystal and water and Aurora Borealis is covered by black skies and a violent storm of dark clouds, shooting lighting from their depths and it dances across the sky. It's ominous and it speaks volumes of anger and despair and black rain, almost like oil, falls from the clouds and they smell like acid and stick to his skin and almost burn it.
As he flies to it at top speed, following the core of the deathly storm, something in the back of his mind tells him who is responsible. He holds out hope that Liz is still alive and he can save her.
The storm proves to be too thick for him to see more than five feet in front of him, trying to navigate through the lightning and calling for his weapon, his voice drowned out by echoing thunder. It’s suffocating and he chokes on the darkness and burns his eyes and skin and throat like acid. But he keeps going forward.
The battle is over when he gets there, but red blood along the ground leads him to the pedestal where a quest bed would be.
She's already laying there, not dead yet and struggling for air, but her skin has changed to dark gray and the power of thousands of Eldritch gods writhe about her body in the form of spiked black tendrils, slowing their movement as her life depletes.
The Shinigami hops from his skateboard and rushes to her side. Her chest heaves and blood mixed with the oil rain oozes from her body.
"Liz?" His voice is soft, hesitant. Her eyes, bloodshot and pupils diluted to their maximum, flicker over to him at his voice.
He leans over his dear demon pistol and takes her hand. "Listen to me; you're on your quest bed. You're going to die, and you'll wait up on Skaia alive, alright? It'll be OK."
His voice shakes and he takes her hand, squeezing it and swallowing back bile. Dammit he knows she’s going to be OK but seeing her this way just kills him. Her mouth moves, and then she lets out a scream, chanting out words he can't understand.
"YA-R'LUH SHAGG STELL'BSNA YA NOG ILYAA ILOIG YA KN'A I'NAUR LW'NAFH'MNAHN-"
"Liz, Liz it's me!!!" He shouts over her screaming, trying to hold her down as she writhes and pushes more blood from her system. She's only making her suffering worse. "It's Kidd!!"
Slowly, she calms, hand squeezing his tight. The storm above begins to disappear, returning back to the starry aurora sky, but the lakes collected in the indents in the crystals littering the land are already stained with black.
"You are Elizabeth Thompson, you're dying, but it's going to be OK. You’ll wake up on Skaia and your sister will be there with you. She’s alive, OK?" He tells her, desperate to reach her through her half-sobbing.
"T-Thompson fhtagn...Liz fhtagn..." She murmurs, her voice hoarse and she coughs up blood violently. Her hand clings to his and her tears streak her oil rain soaked face.
“Just let go…it’s going to be OK…” Kidd whispers, even though watching her die and feeling her soul slowly disappear is tearing him apart and it’s all he can do not to beg her not to disappear. Liz hears her, manages the smallest of nods, and breathes something intangible to him.
She shudders once, her body jerks and her breath fades.
(Later he'll hold them both in his arms, Liz sobbing erratically and apologizing over and over to her sister while Patti will just laugh and squeeze her back. Kidd will sigh and just let them cry themselves out. He also learns that Medusa’s spree had ended. She’d taken five lives on the Quest Beds, unexpectedly forcing the Thompsons, Chrona, and Tsubaki to ascend.
It’s after that do they learn that Soul and Maka had disappeared.
They’re the first of 6.)
Part 2