Creation began on 01-21-14
Creation ended on 12-12-14
s-CRY-ed
Order and Chaos
A/N: My take on what mistakes were made in the anime that could be corrected, and who it is that can undo those mistakes. Deaths will be undone, losses will be undone…and then…only he can tell you what may happen. Let's do this.
As Straight Cougar slumped in his chair whilst Kazuma and Ryuho continued their final battle, the Alter User with the philosophy on life and speed was looked upon by a stranger that very few had seen and lived to tell about. He was often viewed as the strangest man that had ever lived…or will ever live, simply because of the power he wielded for the good of others. Dressed in blue jeans and a faded, green shirt with a tan-colored coat, this dark-skinned man could've fit in among the people that lived on the Lost Ground were he of Asian descent. But he didn't come here to live in such a harsh environment that these people had no choice but to thrive in. No, he came to remedy certain casualties that were never meant to be to begin with.
"Straight Cougar," he expressed, picking up the man's limp arm, "Heaven does have a space set out for you…but not right now. So breathe again. Breathe again."
He squeezed the arm…and then felt the fading pulse return as Cougar coughed up, just in time to see him leave.
"Huh?! What?!" Cougar gasped as he calmed down. "Who was that?"
-x-
"…You will lose!" Ryuho told Kazuma, forming a small piece of his Alter on his right hand in the shape of his blade.
"No way in Hell," Kazuma retorted, forming only the upper part of his Shell Bullet over his fist.
As the two combatants prepared to face off in one, final assault, from a safe distance, the dark man saw that the victor was clearly obvious, even if they didn't know it. The rivalry, however bitter, however resentful, wouldn't end until the victor had claimed his victory.
"Just a small sight," he told himself, and then saw the atomizing of the combatants' Alters as they fell to the ground…and then saw Kazuma's hand rise up and closed into a fist, signifying him as the victor. "Now to undo the rest of the tragedies."
-x-
He stood over the water where the deceased (and still-preserved) Ayase Terada, and made the water part as the remains of the young woman were lifted up. He raised his left arm and a glowing sphere of pink energy generated from his palm, which he then pressed to the woman's chest.
Ayase's flesh turned bright and whatever wrinkles or missing tissues regenerated until it was a healthy pink. Even the lines that formed on her neck from the severity of he refined abilities were removed. Her eyes slowly opened and she saw him.
"Who…who…are you?" She questioned, a little weak.
"Someone that despises a heartless authority, a cruel government…and broken hearts," he answered her, and the parted water beneath them smashed back together. "Can you tell me where you think your brother's remains can be found?"
"I…I don't know where they might be," she responded, wondering how it was so that this stranger brought her back.
"It's okay. So long as you still have a memory of what he looked like, it'll be a simple task to bring him back to life. But he'll have to wait until I resurrect Kimishima, since his remains are much closer to where the Shell Bullet used to reside."
-x-
Feeling like he was awakening from a haze of grief, the seventeen-year-old boy opened his eyes and found himself in his car, recalling that he wasn't there before. His last memory was of being carried away from the battle with the Dars by Kazuma.
"Ugh…what happened?" He asked.
"Kimishima," he heard a female voice, and saw Ayase, who had been captured by HOLY some time ago. "You're alive again."
"Huh? Again?" He was confused, and then saw the stranger she was with. "Who is he?"
"He's…a tormentor to some people and a savior to others," she explained; there was no other way she could identify the man.
He saw the dark-skinned man raise his left arm up into the air and a ring of light formed over his head. Then, a little boy with a sickly complexion and brown hair, fell slowly from the ring and onto the ground in front of them.
"Akira!" Ayase gasped, picking her brother up and holding onto him.
"Ayase…" The boy uttered, looking as though he were more sleepy than sickly. "I…saw people with wings…and they told me it wasn't my time to leave yet. Where was I?"
Ayase simply cried in happiness over having her brother returned to her.
-x-
GASP! A muscular glutton of a man awoke from what had felt like an eternity of a dark slumber, surrounded by debris.
"Huh?! Wha…what happened?" He wondered, then recalling a battle with Kazuma. "I am…Biff."
"Yes, you are," he heard a man say to him, and saw the man sitting atop a pile of debris. "Do you remember anything else?"
"I was experimented on…and brainwashed…and all I could say was the name of my Alter."
"Could you summon your Alter for me? I need to make sure you're yourself again."
"But who are you?"
"I'm the man that brought you back to life."
Biff got up and focused on summoning his Alter. His body glowed in the rainbow outline and made several large chunks of debris atomize into dust, reforming into a large, mecha-like construct. He was afraid that he wouldn't recognize his own Alter, recalling the memory of what his Hammer looked like after it was refined and couldn't take the thought of his Alter being deprived of its pride. But the mecha's solidifying shape showed four legs instead of a top-like bottom that Hammer possessed in its refined state. When the Alter was fully formed, the mechanical monstrosity was revealed to Biff's original Alter, restored to its true form.
"Hammer!" Biff cried out; even if it was just an unthinking extension of himself, he was happy to see his Alter returned to normal.
"Well, it looks like you're gonna be alright," the man expressed. "Say, you think you could get as far from here as possible? I'm not asking you to leave the Lost Ground, just this place that used to be the city. I wanna restore it, but without the wall and other meaningless constructs. Although, there's another person that died here that I need to revive from the afterlife. It's nothing personal, but unnecessary deaths are what they've always been: Unnecessary."
"Yeah, sure, man," Biff obliged, and made Hammer atomize into nothing and run off, leaving him alone in the devastated city that was once a metropolis on this ravaged island.
-x-
"…This is where Eternal Devote was fully summoned for the first and last time," the stranger told himself, standing over the scattered clothing belonging to the Alter User Scherice Adjani. "Traces of her essence still lingers here, enough to summon her back to this plane through her Alter."
He raised up both his arms and unleashed a stream of white liquid from his palms. White blood cells, drawn from his own heart, enriched with his supernatural energies, falling onto the girl's clothes. Once he had shed enough to fill an entire mold shaped like an adult human body, the small holes in his hands sealed up.
"Return to existence, Eternal Devote…and bring back your master!" He shouted, and the large puddle of white blood cells rose into the air in front of him in the large chamber, becoming a swirling vortex with the clothes.
Within it, a see-through apparition started to form. A large, pinkish woman without a face, wearing a strange sort of helmet or visor, dressed in a flowing gown like she was to attend a special ball to find a suitable spouse for the future, and she had large wings like an angel's. She looked down at the dark man, unable to show any kind of expression, but demonstrated it by bringing her hands together, filled with Scherice's clothes, and lowered them down in front of him as the inside of her enclosed palms started to glow brightly. This made the man step at least four steps backwards to provide room for the Alter's hands to touch the floor. She then opened her hands and revealed a small girl, now dressed in the clothes that were discarded, with short, bluish hair and a delicate face.
Then, just as he looked up at her as if to give thanks, Eternal Devote began to atomize. He viewed this as something usual; Eternal Devote was one of the most unusual Alters encountered…and wasn't truly fit for anything beyond healing, but would come back if her master desired her to. Even though the Alter wasn't like a person, the stranger shed at least one tear for her, something he normally never did for anyone unless there was a good reason to, like a self-sacrifice in order to save someone or a whole number of lives.
"Thank you, Eternal Devote," he praised the angelic-looking Alter, just before her head atomized completely into nothing.
"Hmm?" The young woman, Scherice, mumbled as she came to, opening her blue eyes up at the man. "I…I'm alive?"
He lowered to his knees and held out something to her in his left hand. A triangle-like ornament, made out of two smaller, triangular pieces, golden-yellow on one end and whitish-silver on the other end.
"I believe this is yours, Ms. Adjani," he offered it to her, along with his right hand to help her up. "Eternal devotion is a powerful force, strong enough to even ensure that no degree of pain that lingers…stays with those that feel it."
Scherice accepted both her hair pin and his hand, and was brought up to her feet.
-x-
Kazuma awoke to the next day, doing something he didn't think he'd ever do again after all the time spent either fighting HOLD and HOLY, rogue Alter Users, Kyoji Mujo and Ryuho: He opened his right eye.
"Huh?!" He gasped, finding himself inside one of the small buildings that had been recently built, and looked at his right arm, seeing it looking like it did before his Alter's enhanced power started causing physical deterioration to it. "My arm's all better?"
"Kazu-Kun!" He turned toward a nearby doorway and saw Kanami, who showed up with a jug of water in her hands. "You're awake!"
In another recently-built house, the Master of Zetsuei had awoken to find his scars inflicted by overuse of his Alter abilities were no longer present on his face or hands.
"It's good to see you awake, Ryuho," he heard that female voice he never thought he'd hear again after what happened back in the city with Sigmar and Kyoji Mujo.
"Scherice?" He uttered, seeing the Alter User with Eternal Devote.
"I know, I'm surprised to be here myself," she explained, "but it's hard to explain without the guy that showed up to undo much of the tragedy that occurred on the Lost Ground."
"A guy? Who?" Ryuho asked her, wondering if he was just dreaming and this conversation wasn't really happening.
"He's out doing what he claims is his blessing and curse, or his cross to bear or something like that, undoing certain mistakes that were made. If you and the other guy, Kazuma, wanted to meet him, you'd be able to find him at the city he restored." She answered.
"A man can't restore an entire city…unless he's like Mujo or something else entirely."
"Oh, this guy's no Alter User…but he might as well be to do what he does. It's almost like he's a god of some sort; he can bring the dead back to life without any sort of tribute and restore entire towns."
-x-
He wasn't entirely sure if bringing back Martin Sigmar was a good choice, or if even bringing back Sou Kigetsuki was the right thing to do, despite the fact that both had agendas that weren't entirely beneficial to the needs of others. But he was convinced that neither needed to die the way they did, regardless of what the power-hungry or money-hungry desired in the past with them. He was, however, comfortable with one of the choices he had decided on: Kyoji Mujo would not be resurrected, not with his attitude or the power he demonstrated, even if he could remove them permanently and leave him an ordinary man.
Martin Sigmar was left in his office, returned to his previous age before his battle with Ryuho, and Sou was dumped in an apartment in the city with his Alter powers reduced to just creating the Tokonatsu Sisters, removing Burning Summer, but he added an additional trait that was unlike anything that would ever be exhibited by any Alter yet to come: He gave the Sisters enough independence to develop spiritual energy, which was what related him to everyone, and now they were spiritually related to him.
Sitting on the sidewalk, he waited for the two Alter Users he knew would be coming to see him, wanting answers to the questions he had answers for.
SLAM! He turned to his left and saw the orange and red, armored figure that was Kazuma in his final form of the Shell Bullet, perhaps reveling in the fact that it no longer caused deterioration to his body thanks to his careful manipulation of metaphysical energy.
SWISH! He then turned to his right and at the blue and purple knight that was Ryuho in his final form of Zetsuei.
"You know, there's nothing wrong with walking or driving," he used common sense on them, and then they reverted out of their shining, armored forms and back into their regular guises. "I'd take it you both have the same, first question you want to ask me, so go ahead and ask it."
"Who are you?" Ryuho asked first.
"What he said," added Kazuma.
"A man with an edge to him and a cross to bear for eternity," he told them, getting up. "Brother Correction, and not because of my appearance. I'm a spiritual relative of every soul-possessing individual that has ever lived or ever will live."
"Brother Correction?" Kazuma uttered his name. "You sound like a wannabe hero or a cult leader."
"But with an alias like Shell Bullet, you sound like you should be in a street gang. Heh! What's your next question?"
"Why?" Ryuhou asked him, wanting to know why he was undoing much of the devastation caused to the Lost Ground.
"Because much that has happened has been completely unnecessary," he answered them. "Families broken up because of HOLD and HOLY, friends turned into enemies, homes lost and so on. I am an eternal servant of a greater authority that has charged me with the responsibility of undoing as many mistakes that were made as possible. I've been doing this for a long time, so I understand the damage situations like war, greed, corruption, apathy and other such acts or motives can cause to people. Some people will want for selfish reasons…while others will do all that they can for selfless reasons."
"But won't what you've done just make the people from the mainland come here again?" Ryuhou asked, as he was certain they would send another armada of their Alter Users to the Lost Ground.
"Not when they are made to see that their efforts to control and exploit a supernatural power for economic gain are in vain," Brother Correction revealed. "You and Kazuma are the only ones that will ever have the power you obtained from the other dimension where your Alters originated from. The crystallized form of energy that you defeated along with Kyoji Mujo would've given the mainland people with delusions of grandeur all the power and wealth they don't really need, but now that it's returned to the other dimension, the metaphysical door between the two realms has been sealed permanently. Not even you two can open the door with your abilities. Natural Alter Users will exist for another generation of two, but by the time of the year Twenty-One-Ten, Alter Users will be a race of people that had existed only once in the history of mankind."
"So, now what happens?" Kazuma asked him.
"You go on living," he told him. "Fight for what you believe in…and protect the helpless until they can protect themselves. Tomorrow is a new day…and it's a whole new world. Though, I would suggest that you fight on some terrain that is disposable and uninhabitable. The canyons and ruins outside this city are good for such conflict. Destabilize the order, but control the chaos."
-x-
With the sight of a city restored to the Lost Ground without the wall surrounding it, the island's population either returned home or moved in. Friends and families found solace in the peace they found in rebuilding their lives. Some prejudice still existed against Alter Users, but it wasn't as big as it used to be after seeing that most of them were more interested in just trying to make a decent living than to express any measure of would-be superiority towards regular people.
-x-
The people of the mainland were at a loss when they found that none of their artificially-created Alter Users were able to get them any closer to their goal of exploiting the power of the Alter dimension. Despite their abilities and progression, none of these Dars could demonstrate the same level or measure of power that the two Alter Users that defeated their armada showed. Instead, they seemed to spending too much of their money in an attempt to make more money, and no results were achieved. There was even a wave of feeling that there was no chance of achieving any success with the Dars except as disposable soldiers for war, but the only flaw that they had with that possibility was that the accelerated growth of the Dars resulted in the shortening of their life expectancy; some of them lived no longer than three months while others lived for less than a month.
-x-
Last night, I saw him again, Brother Correction listened to the mind of Kanami Yuta, who slept peacefully in her room, watching her through a hand mirror he had picked up from another dimension. The man that returned people that were taken, healed Kazu-Kun and made the island a haven. He was a solitary man, almost a silent guardian, but he had a kind heart, caring for the good people. He spoke to me, said that I would live a long and happy life with Kazu-Kun. I thanked him.
When the mirror stopped showing the girl and showed only his borrowed face, he smiled and knew that the Lost Ground would be okay. The ground was rich in nutrients that would enable crops to be bountiful, the bodies of water that provided the people with drinking and cleaning water was laden with fish, squid and other aquatic organisms that were edible, and there were several cows and chickens on the agricultural areas, so there was a good measure of beef and poultry to go around.
"Destabilize the order," he told himself, "but control the chaos. Light and darkness, right and wrong, yang and yin."
Fin
A/N: To think that it took this long to finish this story. My first s-CRY-ed story, and probably the only one I'll write. What do you think of it? Love it? Hate it? Please, review it. Peace out!