Welcome, kind readers, to my first Skullgirls narrative fanfiction. I do hope you enjoy this.
I do not own Skullgirls. Skullgirls is a creation of Lab Zero Games, and Autumn Games, and is published by Konami.
Ch.1:The Briefing
The Canopy Kingdom: the epitome of Western civilization on the planet, rich in cultures from around the globe. One of the most vibrant of the Canopy Kingdom's cities is New Meridian. Located on the [No Data] Longitudinal point of the planet, New Meridian is the quintessential melting pot of ethnicities, religions, and cultures of the world. This even includes non-human beings: Human/non-human animal cross-breeds collectively known as "Ferals"; a generally large, very sturdily-built, densely-boned people with horns and sometimes tusks, called Gigan; and relative newcomers to terrestrial civilization, the fish-people known as Dagonians.
In the Canopy Kingdom, the foremost religion hails the High Power as a "Great Mother", alongside two "daughter" deities. New Meridian is no exception; its Cathedral of the Divine Trinity sees many worshippers every day. It is here our story begins.
The Skull Heart: an artifact capable of granting one wish to any girl or woman who obtains it. However, this comes at a price; the user's own body, and eventually, her very soul is forfeit, as the Skull Heart gradually takes over, transforming her into a monster of terrifying power: The Skullgirl.
A new Skullgirl has risen. Who will be next to attempt to defeat her, and claim the Skull-?
Whack!
"Augh!" The speaker shoots her pupil-less eyes open, noticing a little rock on the floor. She lifts her head, and rises from the front-row pew she has until now been seated in. "Who threw that? Who here hath struck me?" she yells in a demonic voice. To be painfully hit on the head anger of anyone; having lost a wonderfully ad-libbed soliloquy doesn't help.
As the demon looks left and right for someone to get mad at, her features become more apparent. From head to toe, she is adorned in navy-blue nun robes, with a matching habit reaching down to her waist. Her skin is a light peach color; a small tuft of yellow hair can be seen on her forehead.
A sardonic chuckle echoing from fairly far behind her brings a light start to the nun, who then gives a low, annoyed grumble.
"Lady Valentine," the nun says calmly but firmly, now in a (mostly) recognizable human voice, "Wherever you go, irreverence follows."
Another chuckle resonates through the massive chamber, as a Ninja-slash-Nurse Valentine leaves her cover and struts towards the nun. She has sickly pale, slightly grey skin and dark-blue hair in a ponytail. She wears a disturbingly tight nurse's garb, with a white mask over the bottom half of her face and a white eye patch on the right.
"Poor little Double," Valentine teases, "All that strength and shape-shifting prowess of yours; entire armed drug cartels and their Mafia escorts ripped to shreds… and you throw a fit about a pebble at the head," she continues, slowing to a halt.
Double lets the challenge go unanswered, retaining her expression.
"You know, for someone with as big an arsenal of spare limbs and copycat weaponry as yours, you seem awfully afraid to defend yourself," Valentine persists. Double lets out a small growl.
"Oh, lighten up, Double," Valentine says, rolling her eye, "It was just a joke. Geez, get your panties out of the twist they're in."
"Such crudeness!" Double scolds, "and in Our Cathedral of all places!"
"What can I say? It's what I do," Valentine says. She continues, "What are you going to do about it? Turn into my mother and spank me?" slapping her thigh for emphasis. Double growls as the nurse enjoys a hearty laugh. "Anyway, the boss told me to come get you. She won't tell me why until you're there."
Having heard this, Double turns around and starts on her way out of the chamber, toward the door to the Grand Cathedral's catacombs. She passes Valentine, who follows suit.
The trip down the catacombs is not, by any means, a pleasant one. Aside from the low visibility, the thickness of the air, the nerve-wracking slickness in the stone, the feeling that all the skulls within the cubbies are staring, and a general lack of washrooms on the way down, the staircase one must descend is long; very long, the first floor down being around twenty meters below the entry point.
One could hypothetically hop off the unprotected, leftward side of the staircase, but common sense does not recommend this. Even Valentine, trained in the Ninja arts, doesn't dare jump a ledge like this on her best day. This frustrates her beyond measure; one of her main hobbies (apart from vivisections) has long been acrobatics, stealth, roof-running, and letting her milk dispensers fly without the fascism of gravity. You know… the core aspects of Ninjutsu.
Thus, Valentine went down the steps like everyone else, one foot at a time. Unfortunately, this left Double with an incredibly bored nurse.
*poke*
"Hehehehe…"
Valentine has taken up a new hobby: poking her colleague in the back continually with a Popsicle stick. Strangely, this is quite entertaining for the ninja. Not so much for Double.
*poke*
"…Please stop," the nun pleads, as they continued to descend. Valentine stifles light laughter, enjoying every gram of patience she can abuse in her prudent coworker.
*poke-poke*
"In all solemnity, desist at once," Double says again, this time, much more firmly. Valentine is now snorting with laughter. The perturbed priestess picks up her pace, hoping Valentine won't keep up. Sadly, she does, and so does the Popsicle stick from Hell. Thankfully, with the next floor down in view, Double won't need to put up with this much long-
Crunch-Squish!
"Augh!" Double yells in pain, while Valentine now roars with laughter behind her. She reaches a hand behind her head, dislodges the source of the pain, and brings it into her vision to inspect it. Valentine just stuck her in the shoulder with a scalpel! She turns around, glaring daggers at the sadistic, scantily-clad scamp leaning on the wall for support while cackling up a storm. Double's pupil-deficient eyes glow red. "That is it!" she roars demonically, retracting her humanoid nun guise to reveal her "true" self.
Hearing this, Valentine's shoots her eye open and stops laughing. Double reaches out with her strong tentacles. Quickly, Valentine uses one foot to push herself back. This normally-efficient move only gives Double better leverage; she grabs the leg still close to the ground, then the rest of the nurse. From her sixty-centimeter vantage point Double looks at Val with her own eyes- now complete with proper irises and pupils- then pulls the Nurse into a giant, Canine-filled mouth embedded, for the moment, in Double's torso.
Valentine struggles in vain as Double squeezes the life out of her with incredibly strong cheeks and tongue, while also pricking her lightly with those aforementioned teeth (After being poked and stabbed in the back after politely asking her to stop, wouldn't you?). Feeling she's gotten her point across fairly well, Double spits out a damp, bruised, and lightly bloodied Valentine at the wall she'd been leaning on for support not even a minute ago, watching as she slides down, leaving a trail of saliva.
*Right now in an Anime club somewhere:*
"This fanfiction is complete BULL$#!%!" yells an overzealous fan of Japanese culture, leaping up out of his chair and pointing an accusatory finger at the screen of his laptop as his face goes pink, "No one out-reflexes a ninja! No one! Especially not some American-drawn-and-animated, English-voice-acted, non-ninja-or-samurai-themed…!"
The obsessive, angry boy continues ranting as he brings his fists down on his keyboard, closing the story in the process… and nothing of value is lost.
*Back to our fanfiction:*
Double returns to her nun form. With a satisfied smirk, she turns around and resumes going downstairs. "Consider this a lesson in karma and respect," she remarks calmly as she continues downward.
"Karma and respect, my ass!" Valentine suddenly spits from behind. Double gets a feeling about this, and turns around just in time to be tackled by the ninja and pushed down the stairs. Even in her surprise, Double manages to grasp Valentine's fists and feet, and pulls her down with her.
What proceeds is what one may describe as a wheel, with two lovely women as the tire, and a flurry of arms, legs, hands, feet, teeth, scalpels, and tentacles as the spokes.
Speaking of "spoke"(s):
"I'll teach you to masticate me, you freak!" cries the nurse as she gets a hook in. She brings up her other fist to follow up.
"I could have bitten you in half; you -oof!- should be thankful!" spits back the nun, grabbing Valentine's own fist with a spare tentacle and forcing it into her jaw.
"Ha, you wish-" Valentine replied with a kick to Double's stomach.
"-You uptight hag!" she adds.
"Stone-hearted Abuser!" Double retorts, and so on:
"Ugly freak show!" says Valentine.
"Hypocritical charlatan!
"Weakling-Coddler!"
"Hippocratic charlatan!"
"Intestine-head!"
"Wolf-!"
*whistle*
The two women freeze in place and look to the source of the whistle. They've landed at a point at which the steps branch off to flat stone- in other words, a new floor- to the right. Leaning against the nearest wall of this level is a teenage, dirty-blonde-haired boy with a small envelope in his coat pocket. He eyeballs the ladies with glazed-over peepers, an incredibly stupid grin on his face; he was inching his left arm toward somewhere no person should send them in others' company- and certainly not in a church.
"…Well hey, don't stop on my account," the teenager says, trying to come off as irresistibly alluring, "I'm just enjoying the scene. A lot," he added, clicking his tongue, flaring his eyebrows and slowly adjusting his shirt collar with his free hand.
*Up in the Grand Cathedral Narthex…*
Two regal figures stand in the center of a service chamber: one, a young, pink-haired girl in a yellow rain coat and hat with red buttons; the other, a vibrantly red-haired young woman dressed in a black suit with a matching short skirt. They're speaking with an old, but strong figure of dark complexion. Seven meters from either side of the young woman and her comrade are Canopy Kingdom's royal bodyguards, the Black Egrets.
"It is no trouble at all, Your Highnesses," says the tan-skinned, elderly priestess to the two sisters in front of her, bowing respectfully with one hand over her heart. "I must pray you for your patience, though; the gate to the Queen's resting place remains locked," she explains, starting to head off to the priests' quarters, continuing: "I shall summon Daniel to unlock the gate for you."
"Ewww, 'Daniel' is a boy's name; Boys are gross!" says the younger of the two girls the priestess is addressing, named Umbrella. "I don't want some stinky, perverted boy going with us! Can't we just unlock it our-?" Her mouth is presently covered up by her older sister's hand.
"Thank you, Mother Esperanza," replies Princess Parasoul politely and, ignoring her little sister's muffled rambling into her palm, adds, "We understand."
The moment is shattered by a loud scream suddenly echoing throughout the church, followed by an audio hodgepodge of yelling, hitting, and wet crushing and tearing sounds. Parasoul lets go of Umbrella- now silently pouting, though clearly curious about the sounds- and signals two of her Egrets to spring into action at once, running to the sounds' apparent source. Suddenly, with a sound that could only be described as the lovechild of a thunderclap and a leather boot kicking cardboard, a figure flies in from out of the west wing, arcing to the Cathedral Main Gate like a curveball, wailing bloody murder. He crash-lands on the Narthex floor, tumbling along until his back slams into the massive stone gate, flattened out along it like a bird on a window. He slides down onto the carpet.
The two Egrets sent by Parasoul a moment earlier shake off the surprise and resume their order to investigate the source. Everyone else present stares wide-eyed at this kid- a young, dark-blonde boy, hog-tied with cuts, bruises, squid-like sucker-tooth marks all over his body and face, and a syringe sticking out of his neck.
As a squad of Egrets wearing red crosses scurry to the sorry sod's side, Umbrella breaks the silence: "Whoo-hoo, that was awesome!" she yells, "Do it again, do it again…!"
"On second thought," Mother Esperanza says slowly as she picks a set of keys out of the battered victim's pocket, ignoring Umbrella's continuing encore pleas, "why don't I just escort you there?" They all head out to the East Cemetery, Umbrella singing happily about the Divinely-assisted rebellion against boys and men everywhere, and of her own agenda to enslave and neuter all males who surrender. The resulting "thwack" from her older sister echoes throughout the whole Church.
Back down in the catacombs…
Valentine strokes her bone saw furiously with an alcohol wipe, while Double slowly recedes back into her nun form, drawing the various appendages back into her robes. However, one arm stays behind for a moment, operating a turnstile-like mechanism that seals the door far behind them, before departing said machine and joining its friends.
Valentine chuckles as she places her saw back into its scabbard. "That was fun," Valentine says. Double remains silent and of stale expression as Valentine adds, "You should have let me finish him off, though."
"Repulsive as his behavior may have been, he is but a child- if he lives, he may see the error of his ways and repent," says Double.
Valentine scoffs. "Did you see the way he was ogling us- even you? If that loser can shape up, I'll cover up my girls in a frou-frou dress and volunteer at a soup kitchen," she replies. Her colleague, offended at having been implied to be ugly, lightly sneers but says nothing. Val continues, "Besides, you're the one who's always, 'humans are the real monsters' and 'I'll take your tithe in blood', yada yada yada…" making quotation marks with her gloved hands.
Says Double: "T'is only for the unrepentantly wicked, those who would lay siege to the needy and condemn the innocent, that I…"
As the nun rants on, Valentine mutters under her breath, "Whatever, you damn tumor."
"Excuse me?" Valentine hears. The question's offended tone of voice resonates throughout the catacombs- music to the nurse's ears.
Feeling lucky, Valentine snidely says, "You heard me, you leper-loving hippy!"
"By the Divines… Know when to hold your tongue, tramp!"
"Peh, you wish. What are you going to do-?"
"Enough!" her company demands, raising her voice greatly.
Valentine turns to her colleague. She yells: "And since when do I take orders fro-o-!" only to see Double tight-lipped and bowing to a light radiating from just a few degrees shy of Valentine's nine-o'clock.
Nervously, the nurse's eye moves leftward, her neck steadily following. There… she is. A tragic maiden- the Tragic Maiden- consumed by fear and hate. The Demon of Destruction; The Harbinger of Horror. Public enemy #1; Valentine's former sworn enemy, now her boss. Passer of judgment unto the wicked, and unto the innocent; and recent champion speed-knitter:
The Skullgirl, Marie. She is in her usual attire: a French maid outfit (a fashion choice no one of sound mind could possibly explain), with her silver hair kept in shoulder-length pigtails. She stands elevated on a tombstone, looking down upon her two servants. She is, to say the least, not happy; her red eyes are trained on Valentine, along with a Gigan skull, ready to put her in her place. The threat "kill" emanates from the Calcium-clad monster, in a deep voice magnified with echo both by the room and by its own mystical properties.
Valentine puts her attitude away as best she can, swiftly drawing her body in the proper position to show subordination. "… Sorry, Marie."
Marie looks down with an ever-so-slight sneer, which she then mercifully softens. "Just don't do it again," she says calmly. Valentine keeps her head down, but lightly nods to confirm her understanding.
Marie waves away the Gigan Skull she had made ready for Valentine. It stares at her for a while, a spooky growling sound coming out of its jaw, to which Marie gently looks back. After a few seconds, it lowers its head (well, itself actually, being a skull and whatnot), turns around, and floats into the darkness. Marie makes a very light hop off the aforementioned slab of rock she stood on, gently drifting down to the floor.
"Now then, you are both here. Good," says the Skullgirl as her toes touch the stone floor. "There is a…"
Klonk!
Marie stops mid-sentence and looks worriedly to the distant sound, accompanied by the resonance of things falling over and hitting the floor. The otherworldly voice that formerly growled for blood, now calls out: "I'm okay!"
Marie rolls her eyes, returns them to her subjects and continues, "…There is a task to be completed…"
"Wait, no it's not okay. I dented my horn!"
"…th- that will require the abilities…"
*Crunch-crack!* louder than before:"Yee-ow, my other horn! It's ruined- both horns are ruined, and I am stuck in a wall! Why, Great Mother, Why-hy-hay…?"
"…of both of you." Marie finishes at an interval when the sobbing sounds are at their least loud.
Her servants remain silent, but nod. Marie waves her hand upward, producing a blue flame in her palm. The light reveals a large mural on the wall the trio is standing next to. Upon close observation, it is clearly a map of New Meridian, with the Cathedral of the Divine Trinity in the center.
"Bring your eyes up to this mural," says Marie. Double and Valentine do as instructed. The Skullgirl hops over from in front of the lower-left corner of the map, to the right side, and bringing her fingers up to the map, continues. "Here in the Northeast quarter-"
"Free! Free, I am free now… but I am now lost in the dark. *sob* "Lost in the dark!"
"- of the Little Innsmouth District, there is a facility wherein one may obtain a… an item of value. You must obtain it before midnight tonight, and bring it back to me."
The two vassals nod. There is a moment of silence, showing that Marie has finished her summary. Valentine raises her hand. "Permission to speak?"
Marie nods. Valentine proceeds, "What is this item?"
"Alas, I do not remember the name," says Marie while she paces slowly away from the map, "It has been a long time since I last went there," she confesses. "Indeed, much of your mission will revolve around trying to locate it."
Valentine is silent, and mostly remains stoic, but her eye's little flickers give away her confusion.
"We need only know where 'tis within Little Innsmouth," Double chimes in at last, much to her colleague and boss's surprise, "I am sure we would be able to discern it using common sense."
At this, Marie clears her throat. "Aha, yes, concerning that…" she says. Double falls silent, clearly listening, as Marie continues, "I do not know the exact location of the facility, either," blushing lightly.
Suddenly, tension fills the chamber. An awkward, deafening silence fills the catacombs, save for the distant sound of-
"…~Lonely, I am so lonely~ I have no body, for my o-o-o-o-own~…" *sniff*, my beautiful horns!"
…That.
"I thought I had a reliable source." Marie says somewhat defensively, breaking the awkward silence and stopping her face from flustering further from embarrassment. She looks down and reaches her hand into a pocket in her maid outfit, and continues speaking. "Yesterday I hypnotized a young church-hand to scout out the location. He was to write it down, and drop off the transcription down here…"
Double and Valentine's eyes shoot wide open, briefly exchanging nervous glances, not liking where this is going. Not noticing her servants' expressions, Marie manages to grasp what she was reaching for, and pulls out a small, square piece of glazed paper, and lightly tosses it to the ground in front of her two hench… people. She turns away from them to continue her pacing, quietly muttering something about being glad she still had the receipt for "Hypnotism for Dummies".
Double and Valentine both look at the small parchment. It is a monochrome photograph, with "Daniel" in print-script in the border underneath. The two kneeling women analyze the photo: judging from the picture, the boy has blonde hair and blue eyes (decipherable via the shades of grey), pretentiously arched eyebrows, an over-emphasized smile, is about one-and-a-fifth meters tall, and apparently attempting to flex his muscles; their worry is confirmed. Double cringes ever-so-slightly, and Valentine looks off nervously, biting her lower lip underneath her mask.
"…However, he hasn't shown up; he must have overcome the trick." Marie continues, "I thought he was weak-minded and basal enough to remain fully hypnotized. Clearly I underestimated his intelligence and willpower."
As the Skullgirl goes on to clarify how very few options they have, and the pointlessness of fretting over the "escaped" contact, Valentine stifles a chuckle, managing to keep it in her throat. Double, on the other hand, curls her upper lip a little further, but quickly recovers. Again, Marie remains oblivious, now turning around to face Valentine and Double again, going on about who to ignore, who to keep an eye on, who it's okay to kill, and who not to kill. Double's been listening silently, but Valentine just manages to get over her suppressed laughing fit as Marie concludes, "…unless they are Mafia. Am I understood?" Her servants nod, Valentine's tears lightly heading down her face. Marie tells them to rise to their feet, and they comply.
As they turn around to leave Marie reaches into her pocket once again, this time keeping her gaze upon her servants. "One more thing," she says. Her hands achieve their goal, and pull out a small burlap sack, about three-quarters of the size of one of Valentine's orphanage reserves. She tosses it to the two servants like she did the photo; this time the item lands right in Valentine's open palm with a combination of metallic chiming and soft, paper-like rustling sounds.
With that done, Marie hops off of the floor, and levitates back into the darkness, the light from her back disappearing as she turns a corner. If one didn't know better, one could swear to hear the voice of the mighty Skullgirl calling: "Heeere, Gig-ey-Gig-ey-Gig-ey! C'mon boy, who's a good boy! You want to play, little Gigan skull?" An ethereal panting sound resonates throughout the halls as the light and sound from Marie fades completely.
The two women are speechless for a moment, remaining so upon shifting their gaze to eye the small, burlap bag intently for a few seconds. Valentine undoes the drawstring keeping the opening shut. She reaches in, and pulls out a mound of the contents. She stares in clear surprise as little brass discs minted with King and the late Queen Renoir's likeness, and thin greenish-grey cloth with similar imaging, slides and flutters out of her hand, back into the bag. "Huh," she says, returning her eye to normal size with a blink, "never took Marie for the buying type. I thought she was all assault and assassination." She starts to put the back into her pocket, saying, "This won't be as fun as usual."
Suddenly the bag is snatched from Valentine's hand. The nurse sharply turns to her colleague, yelling "Hey, what the hell!?" Double simply brings the back to herself, and as she deposits it in her own pocket, explains sternly, "I do not trust you with this. Knowing your… interests, some of these contents would probably go toward a bar if you were its keeper. Or, for a gigolo." Valentine blushed at that last suggestion, a sneer still on her face from the first. Double spoke up again, now in a patronizingly gentle voice, "Besides, any more extra items' weight on you, and your outfit will slip right off."
The two begin travelling up the staircase, making a note to take an alternate exit from the one now being investigated by Black Egrets. Valentine grumbles as she follows her colleague, her flirtatious strut now reduced to a very mechanical sort of walk. "Correction," she muttered under her breath: "This won't be fun at all."
Something to know: I'm going to try focusing on Words of the Matrix for a while. That story is long overdue for an update. In fact, my whole profile is littered with stories I love, but haven't updated in years. That's right, years. So I want to try focusing on those more- so this story, like most of my others, could go a long time without update. I hope it doesn't turn out to be entire years at a time like with Shades of Grey, Words of the Matrix, and the like but, well... we will see.
Anyway, thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think- especially if you can provide specific input; Please cite what you like, what you don't; How the makes you feel, what is and what isn't interesting; If I made a grammatical error, please tell me so I can fix it; So on and so forth.
Thanks, and God bless.