Author's note: With the Lines of Sanzu and Kid's connection to Death still something of a mystery, this is my take on what Kid might have experienced during his 'power-up' scene at the end of the anime. I may have taken some slight liberties with the order of events, but I don't think it affects the story too much. Anyway, let me know what you think.
"I'm the star of this show!"
Even in the face of Armageddon the foolish boy wouldn't back down. If we mess this up there won't be an audience to applaud you! Kid wanted to scream, but they didn't have the time. Black Star wanted all the glory for himself? So be it. If the kishin was defeated then the kishin was defeated – whoever got all the accolades afterwards seemed like a rather petty concern with the thing squatting right in front of them.
And so as Black Star launched himself at the kishin's monstrous, leering form, Kid started his resonance sequence. It was something he, Liz and Patty had done a thousand times before but now, with so much riding on it, it suddenly felt unbearably slow. Did it always take this long? Come on, come on! His soul swelled around him, azure and bright, lending his vision a blue tinge as he looked out on the chaos around him, at Asura smiling at him, ignoring the charging Black Star entirely (and didn't the boy look so small compared to that huge thing?)… pointing at him?
Kid had just enough time to wonder why Asura was doing that before something slammed into his chest.
It didn't hurt. There was no flare of crippling agony, no debilitating pain. Instead, there was simply numbness, an unpleasant coolness and the vague sense of his insides not quite being where they ought. He felt slightly confused, wondering what was going on.
(But he knew what was going on. Confusion, numbness, no pain at all – classic symptoms of shock. It was always the ones that didn't hurt that were the most serious.)
There was a sense of removal, of something sharp and cruel being dragged out of something soft and pliable, and he tasted the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to speak, but no words came. He heard a quiet gurgling noise, and wondered idly if he was making it. His vision started to grow dark. A faint sound – screaming? – reached him briefly before being snatched away.
The strength left his legs in one go and he slid to the ground, collapsing in a small puff of dust. He had just enough time to try and choke out an apology (I tried, I did my best, I swear) and to realise he was slightly afraid before a rushing, swooping darkness fell upon him, consumed him and took him for itself.
And there was nothing.
There was nothing at all.
Well… not quite nothing.
There was the thread.
He didn't know what else to call it, but the name worked well enough. It was all he had left now, that single golden wisp that stretched up and away from him. He followed it with his eyes, up, up, into the empty void in which he found himself floating. He didn't know where it went. But he knew where it led.
It led to his father.
This was the thread that had connected them since the moment of his conception. This was the link they shared, the bond that made them who they were. This was the strand that had birthed his life, and would one day end his father's. And it was all he had left now, a tiny, frail stretch of gossamer reaching out from him into oblivion.
Slowly, as if moving through the thickest treacle, he reached out and let his fingers brush the thread.
It sang as he ran his fingertips along it, a sweet melody, high pitched and fragile. He felt like a virtuoso tuning a violin. Again he stroked the thread and again it made its song. Some small corner of his mind tried to remind him that he was, technically, dead, but he ignored it.
And suddenly the thread came alive.
Its cool, glassy harmony faded and became a furious electric buzzing noise. The violin was gone, seemingly replaced by a power station turbine. The golden thread turned a violent, harsh white that pounded his eyes mercilessly, made him gasp and turn away. The tuneless noise moved up a pitch. The thread seemed to swell, becoming wider, thicker.
Something barrelled down along it and smacked straight into him. He reeled, feeling he'd been hit over the head, and briefly saw stars. He blinked, stunned, and then another thing just like it came down and collided with him again. Stars danced before his eyes, a whole galaxy of them, arranged in a curious globular shape. And then came another, and another, buffeting and pummelling his body, snapping it this way and that.
He abruptly realised that he wasn't seeing stars at all.
He was seeing souls.
And he wanted to laugh, but he couldn't, couldn't do anything except watch in awe as the thread grew and a blizzard of images flashed across his mind. Power surged down it like water from a breached dam.
What was it Maka always said?
"A sound soul…"
Souls, souls, millions of them, billions, uncountable…no. Not uncountable at all. Seven billion, maybe just a bit more. The array of souls that made up the human race was displayed before him like one of those satellite pictures of the Earth at night. Swarms, herds of blue danced and moved over the surface of the world. The great cities shone like beacons. The oceans were dull, almost devoid of life, the crews of ships shining like the searchlights of their vessels. More soared through the air, like fireflies around a campfire. Highways and roads shone like arteries with their precious cargo. Conurbations swelled and shrank like breathing things as day and night continued their eternal exchange. The empty deserts and shivering ice lands were dotted here and there with blue flecks, like some artist had shaken his brush and accidentally populated the world.
He zoomed out, seeing the whole world. A gleaming beacon in a dead system. The other planets were empty, dry desiccated husks. Only one world (his world) pulsed and oozed with the blue of life.
And here and there amongst the blue was the tinge of red, muddying and dirtying the pure. Like the spread of a disease highlighted on an anatomy chart, he could see streaks of red flow and coil around the fortresses of blue. Individual pixels of colour would wink out, others would burst into life, but the balance seemed to remain no matter what efforts were expended by either side.
Somewhere outside himself he though he heard a great, creaking crash, as of a door being slammed violently closed (or open?).
"…dwells within a sound mind…"
The channel widened. A single strand became a bundle, pumping more and more into his head. Power surged around him, and knowledge through him, barely having enough time to take root before it was erased to make room for more.
With the wider view now afforded to him, he desperately looked for order in the universe. Where was his beloved symmetry? Was there any?
He zoomed down the sub-atomic and recoiled in horror. The world of the quantum danced around him, a jittering madness. The fabric of reality twitched and spasmed around him. Tiny particles were born from nothing and returned to nothing in the same instant. Infinitesimal chasms opened and vomited out sprays of matter, only to have their works undone by yawning pits that swallowed up what they produced. Quarks span around him, building atoms and tearing them apart. The fundamental forces intertwined and became each other, incestuous unions that birthed microseconds of impossibilities.
He felt sick. This couldn't be the world, could it? Was everything built on this foaming insanity? He pulled back, widening his gaze to the macroscopic. He gazed across an ocean of galaxies, stately and ponderous, making their slow and steady journeys across eternity. Planets span around their stars, stars around their galactic hubs, galaxies around each other. Everything was suddenly logical, ordered, quite safe and predictable. Nothing here happened upon the whims of random chance.
But he couldn't forget the twitching mess that this all became if one simply looked closely enough. How could such a thing exist? And why? What reasoning was there behind it all?
Symmetry.
Oh, of course. He understood now, although he wasn't sure if it was his own realisation or one fed to him by the connection between him and his father. There was symmetry in all this, symmetry to spare. For every piece of order, of logic and reason, there was one of madness as well. Order and chaos went hand in hand, building the universe together.
And with this realisation, another great crash reverberated throughout his head (anther door?).
"…and a sound body."
The channel blazed brilliant now, a howling torrent of power. And still it grew. Wideband, ultra-white.
Yes.
His body, what was it? Nothing more than a cloak of flesh, a convenient box to put his soul in. You could impale it all you wanted, it would take more than that to kill a Reaper. He was not one of the seven billion blue souls that draped this planet. He was something else, above and beyond. A shepherd to a flock? Not quite, but not a million miles off.
He suddenly became aware of a strange background noise, like the hum of a badly-tuned radio. He tried to focus on it, to listen to it properly, but every time he did it seemed to slip from his grasp. For a second now he managed to get a hold of it.
It was the chatter of his race.
For the tiniest fraction of time he was made aware of an impossibly old people, powerful beyond imagining. He suddenly saw how they descended upon lesser species and fed off the passing-on of their souls. How they farmed the inhabitants of the universe, benevolent and wicked, wise and foolish, fattening their flocks and letting them starve. They shot between worlds, staking their claims to pastures new, squabbling and agreeing over the most fertile lands. They built mighty monuments and ramshackle huts, towering cities and nomadic civilisations. And they called to one another, though the darkness between the stars, an endless chatter of greetings and farewells, warnings and welcomes, offers and commands.
All of that flashed before him and was gone, the tiniest hint of the mantle he was to inherit.
The final door slammed and the channel went dark.
And all of a sudden he was back in the real world, on his feet now, Asura still towering over him with a look of confusion on his ragged face.
The power had been fed by external sources but now, with those suddenly cut off, it began to feed on him. He screamed as it tore into him, consuming him, but still under his control for a few seconds longer.
I've started, so I'll finish.
Resonance sequence initiated, completed in the blink of an eye. Liz and Patty marvelling in astonishment, but he simply smiled. Black Star to one side, eyes wide. Maka still tending to Soul somewhere behind him. And Asura right before him, impossible to miss.
I've just seen galaxies and dodged mesons, he wanted to say, but speech was beyond him at the moment. Watched as the world continues on regardless of what you try. I've catalogued the nature of reality and watched a potted history of my species. Do you honestly think you could scare me anymore?
And with that, he fired.
The power, the knowledge, all left him in an instant. He knew not where it went, only that his aim had been true. The constructs in his mind collapsed, and so did he, hitting the ground once more.
I did my best.
Your turn.