Title: Paradigm
Author name: Ruaki
Category: Adventure/Romance, BlazBlue
Keywords: Ragna, Hazama, AU
Spoilers: Let's just say through Continuum Shift just to be safe.
Summary: She knew that removing Terumi's favorite failsafe was guaranteed to cause a critical system failure.
Notes: In case you missed it, this story is AU. Canon is Jayoku'd to the sky with a big smile. Though one could more accurately call the story an "alternate timeline," I've taken a few liberties in a number of areas, especially concerning a few things that were revealed in Phase 0.
The story features mainly a pairing of Hazama & Ragna. There's some other minor ones in there too, but that's the big one.
If any of the above just made your face resemble a piece of Cubist art, then I invite you to read one of the many other fanfics available for this series.
For any of you still present and willing, please enjoy the show.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, Ishiwatari Badguy-sama would be the one doing a lot more than just music for this series. So obviously I don't.
0. integral body & imperfect soul
It was done.
Ragna exhaled, air whistling past torn and bloodied lips. The last slivers of green-tainted energy clinging to him dimmed and faded away. Slowly, his arm dropped. Everything felt so numb. The disconnection that allowed him to keep fighting was still in place: there was no regret or guilt or compassion. This had been necessary. What did any of that mean? It had been his choice and there was no turning back. Not any more. Curiously, Ragna flexed the fingers of his hand, staring at it with an empty gaze; he could feel the Grimoire stirring inside that artificial limb, its power thrumming in tune to the Gate. Each pulse of the Grimoire's power plunged into the emptiness filling him, reminding him of what—who—he was, and the promise he made: that he would face the end of the world as a human being.
With a shuddering breath, he reach down inside himself for the emotions he had carefully locked away for that battle, dragging them up one by one. The detachment and ambivalence to destroying something important to him—no matter the illusions that had built it—slid away and everything he had been holding back hit him at once. Physical agony stabbed at his body and drowning emotions clutched at his heart. He choked, slumping against Bloodscythe for support as he retched, globs of dark blood splattering to the ground. Gulping for air, the battle replayed over and over again in his mind, this time accompanied by everything he had locked away: the hate and love and all those damned annoying feelings...!
The echo of his name, screamed with so much hatred and rage, trembled through his body with all the force of a curse and he gagged on a second wave of bile. "Fuck," Ragna snarled in between gasps, struggling to calm himself down. He couldn't break down yet.
Because it was done, but it was not over.
Another part of him, that new part which was alien and thick and black but still felt so much like him, lurched and shifted, uncoiling with an equal measure of fear and disgust to the approaching wavelength of the Boundary.
Sensing that the new threat had finally decided to show itself, Ragna knew he had to take the risk of using seithr to heal himself. He would not be able to face his greatest obstacle half-broken as he was, Grimoire or not. Steeling himelf, Ragna pulled at the seithr swirling in the darkened hall and pressed its invisible tendrils at his many wounds—a dislocated shoulder, a shattered shin, a missing right eye and ear, burns and gashes and exposed pieces of bone and muscle. Flesh and sinew knotted together, mending most of his wounds with only an echo of pain as a memory of their existence. And all the while, the Grimoire eagerly lapped up the seithr absorbed into his body, and it became more pervading, pressing against the wall which protected Ragna's consciousness and seeking entry. A spasm jerked through his empty eye socket as a bit of the Grimoire seeped through the cracks in the wall. With a hiss, Ragna staggered, double vision suddenly criss-crossing before him. It was as if he was watching everything around him rewrite itself over and over, a bit different each time, overlaying atop each other and with the fabric of reality.
The stentch of the Boundary was cloying now and the body of the beast clawed at the wall.
"Susano-o," Ragna spat through gritted teeth, pressing a palm over his now-healed eye to rid himself of the disorientation. But he could still see through his hand, see the ghosts of all the world lines and the sum of all possibile states. Was this what he had been talking about?
The fabric of time parted, a surgical incision which bled the large Sankishin into reality. Ragna struggled to make sense of what he was seeing—two, three, four, a million units, some white and black, some black and white. He squinted, concentrating, willing himself to only see this CTC. Everything came into focus with startling intensity and only one Sankishin remained: the black and white Susano-o, its faceless mask gleaming in the dirty light emitting from the Sheol Gate.
Waves of hate and fear hammered into Ragna's mind, dropping his concentration and the world fractured momentarily. How much of that was from himself? How much of it was from him? Scowling, Ragna pushed back the surge of emotion, lowering his hand from his face to grip Bloodscythe's hilt with both fists and drawing himself up to his full height to face his judge, jury, and executioner.
As Susano-o stepped forward, large cracks splintered across the lower half of its blank face, brilliant blue spilling forth. Ragna braced himself instinctively, even though he knew the power of the Boundary had no effect on him.
With a sickening crack, the bottom of the mask split open in a hideous approximation of a mouth, filled with jagged teeth jutting from blood-red gums. A dark, thick tongue ran over the exposed edges of its mask as the Sankishin methodically worked kinks out of its jaw with pops and snaps.
Then a hiss of breath: "Aberration."
The power of the Boundary changed the word into a command and briefly, Ragna could see the Mouth of the Azure obliterate several world lines from existence and could see new ones fracture from the emptiness. That was the power of the Azure, to measure the nether state of all possibilities, though the Mouth was limited in its blindness, relying on the Master Unit to observe.
Ragna bared his teeth in a grin. "Still haven't learned my name, asshole?"
The unit did not rise to the taunt. "Aberration," it repeated. "The end has come." There was no malice or arrogance in its tone. "I will eradicate the entropy caused by your existence." There was no emotion at all; Susano-o was simply speaking the truth as given to it by the Master Unit.
"That's what we're here for, isn't it? Round two." Ragna hefted Bloodscythe, the cleaver extending, slimming. Gripping the shaft, he swung the scythe around as the glowing blade flared out in a burst of visible red seithr.
The ruddy glow bloodied Susano-o's mask as the unit watched impassively with blind eyes.
"But listen to me, you fucking drone. This isn't a battle between the Black Beast and the Sankishin. It isn't even between Professor what's-his-face and Subject U-235." Ragna lifted a hand and stabbed a finger in Susano-o's direction with the cold fury he couldn't display in his earlier battle against him. "You're gonna understand the truth," he spat out the word like something foul, "that it's gonna be Ragna the Bloodedge who'll destroy what remains of Yuuki Terumi." In his eye, world lines converged as his observation collapsed the wave functions of various states of possibility.
The Mouth was silent, but a claw twitched.
Ragna raised his right arm. The seithr could not heal the long green burns seared deep into darker-than-black flesh, horrible marks of desperation from a shrieking, dying soul. "Restriction 666, released." The Grimoire slithered eagerly against the gap splitting through the wall guarding Ragna's ego. "Dimensional interference field deployed." The words were low and deliberate, hiding the overwhelming rush of energy and primal emotion swirling inside him as he stripped away the barriers and embraced the integration of the Grimoire's power.
Red-tinged shadows seethed over Ragna's form and flickers of white electricity arced along his arm. "There ain't gonna be any resets or closed loops or self-fulfilling curves. No bullshit." Several more wave functions collapsed; fewer and fewer possibilities remained.
"You will have the world suffer in despair—"
"No!" Ragna snarled, cutting past the power of the Mouth's words, past its ability to generate CTCs. "You're spewing about shit you can't even see, you bastard." Ragna raised Bloodscythe, pointing the blade at the last remaining proof of his existence. Once he was gone, then Ragna will seek out and destroy the Master Unit, and all the sins of the lost soul he held would hinder the people he loved no more. The scythe flared in response to the growing amount of seithr emitting from its wielder. "But I'll make you acknowledge the destiny only I can see."
Susano-o's answering breath seemed impossibly amused. "You Observe the fate of the world, thus you are aware there is no destiny which has not been determined by Amaterasu. This is the Truth."
Ragna closed his eyes; behind the darkness of his lids, he saw the remaining possibilities. He saw his destiny in each, but it meant nothing to him: Ragna the Bloodedge, who existed outside the possibilities, because his soul was the fatal exception in the Master Unit's programming since the beginning. He had known that, but Susano-o, still tied wholly to the Master Unit, could not see what the Master Unit did not comprehend.
"Engage SSC," he began, voice rising, eyes opening to glare at the Sankishin—and only the Sankishin, with no probabilites other than what will be born from here and now. By the end, Susano-o will realize exactly why Ragna's existence was an 'aberration.' "Code S.O.L... BlazBlue—activate!"
The release of power was audible, the sonic boom sending surrounding debris to smash against ruined walls. The red darkness around Ragna frothed and writhed, a thousand tendrils swirling to braid together into veridian rings of aura which constantly spun around him, humming with energy. Behind the circling barriers, the Black Beast no longer Observed his impassive opponent—he merely watched him.
The rings slowed and stopped, before suddenly reversing with renewed fury as the green darkened into a brilliant Azure which purified the dirty light of the Gate, christening the world blue.
Now, for the first time, Susano-o could see, and it saw itself and it saw the reflection of its Observer within its mask, a face so twisted with raw human emotion that it lost its humanity—that single green eye which spoke more powerful than the Mouth of the Azure and that single blue Eye which Observed the Truths of which the eye spoke. No... Susano-o realized. The Eye was not Observing... What was it doing? The Master Unit received the data and calculated the possibilities but could not solve the algorithm, its programming constantly cycling over the information yet constantly coming up with a fatal exception.
Susano-o's hideous mouth moved, grinding to twist into a rarely used shape. Breath hissed past the crescent of teeth.
For the first time, Susano-o feared the Truth.