A/N: Hello my lovely readers! Sorry this took a little while to get up; I've been working on the third Fusion installment! But now you may read on!
BTW, for anyone who is NOT simply continuing this from my other story Admiration, you should go at least read the author's note at the beginning of that story. It explains what's going on, and you are about to be VERY lost if you don't get that information. Also, you may decide you would like to read Admiration since it is in the same compilation and written in similar style. You'll see what I mean when you check it out.
So now: onwards!
Meister: Black*Star, of the Star Clan
Weapon(s): Tsubaki Nakatsukasa
Weapon Type(s): Magic Dark Arm (Kusarigama, Shruiken, Ninja Sword, Smoke Bomb, Katana/ Enchanted Sword)
Resonance Form(s): Chain Star Formations
Special Meister Ability: Black*Star Big Wave
Let's go!: "Assassin's Rule #1 - Silence: Dissolve in the darkness and erase your breath.
Assassin's Rule #2- Transpositional Thinking: Analyze the target in order to predict his thoughts and movements.
Assassin's Rule #3 - Speed: Take out the target before the target notices your presence."
"Let's go."
"Right."
…...
"YAAAHHHOOOOO!"
Black*Star #1: More Than Meets the Eye
It's obvious that you're dying, dying
Just living proof that the camera's lying
~Fences; Paramore
Tsubaki sighs. She's already wondering how she's going to deal with this outrageous kid. She isn't sure she can use him the way she's been planning; he's incredibly strong, but doesn't have enough sense to really make any use of that power.
I didn't have much choice, she reminds herself, only the weakest meisters were still available by the time I got inside.
She was the only one still standing there on the abandoned walkway. She should have left long before, she knew that, but she couldn't find it in her to forsake this yelling kid like everyone else had. She had already left Masimune behind to realize, by himself, that he had no admirers, despite the weapon forms that were his birthright. It had been a terrible mistake, one she wished with every fiber of her being she could take back.
She knew she should be inside, finding the strongest meister in the building so that she could defeat her brother as soon as possible…but…
As he stood, addressing a crowd of fans that no longer existed—if they ever had—she could not help but see the similarities between him and her elder brother.
She'd go once this boy finished screaming about how "big" he was. Perhaps he had an inferiority complex or a contorted view of himself: he certainly didn't look fat to Tsubaki, but maybe that was the way he saw himself.
But that explanation didn't fit with the rest of his speech! What was with this boy?
"HOLY AM I ALONE THROUGHOUT HEAVEN AND EARTH!" He glanced at the ground as he punched his fist in the air, and then paused when he realized that only one person was left out of his entire audience.
To warn him that she planned on vacating as well, Tsubaki clapped a little. He jumped off the spike where he'd been standing and obliviously—or maybe strategically—placed himself between her and the door.
In an attempt to subtly inform him she was finished listening she commented on his speech in the past-tense. She wasn't sure she could stand listening to anymore when she knew her older brother whom she loved so much was out killing people for power.
"Wow. That was...amazing." Truthfully, she wasn't really sure what it was. She managed to take exactly one-and-a-half steps toward the door before there was a mass of energy and spiky blue hair up in her face.
"Yeeaaahhhh….?" He hesitated. "You're the first one to recognize my greatness," he admitted. "Good for you. You'll go far."
And somehow, by the end of the short dialogue, she found herself talked into staying outside to watch the rest of his "performance."
They're walking out of the hallway to tour the rest of the school when she makes the mistake of wishing aloud that she had eaten something earlier. She hasn't eaten more than a bowl of rice all day.
"I'll give you a Black*Star Special Tour!" her new meister yanks her down a different hallway so quickly that she's certain her feet leave the floor for a full ten seconds.
"Wait Black*Star! What are you doing?"
"Giving you my version of a Shibusen school tour. Don't worry, it starts with the cafeteria!" He continues to pull her at break-neck speed down the hallway.
"That's not what I'm worried about. Black*Star, please listen to me for a minute!" But the weapon girl's pleas go unheeded and her meister just laughs ridiculously.
"Hey, Black*Star, please calm down for a minute! Black*Star, you have to sign the form. BLACK*STAR!"
"Ya-hoo! I'm too big for paperwork! That stuff's for little people!"
"Black*Star, I—"
"So, you're going to be Black*Star's weapon?" Tsubaki spun to face a man she hadn't noticed before. He had dark hair and toned arms, and anyone could tell he held the students' respect from the way they all waved and greeted him. None of that was what lit the frustration in the girl's heart, though. None of that was what caused her stomach to churn a bit too hard, making her just slightly nauseous.
Tsubaki's sixth sense was whispering that this man was a meister, and an exceptional one nonetheless.
She had wanted a meister like that, but all she got was this loudmouthed child who was balancing and screeching like a moron high above their heads. She bowed to the meister standing in front of her, a little out of respect, but more because she wanted to hide her face.
"Yeah…" she swallowed hard. The meister next to her gave a short, deep laugh.
"Well, good luck. I've known that kid since he was an infant, and he's always been an obnoxious, self-centered, single-minded, wild little brat." Tsubaki's heart sunk even further. All she could think about is how much she did not want this boy to be the one to wield her when she took on her brother.
Tsubaki thought they were going to the cafeteria for her benefit, but her plate isn't the one heaped with food. Black*Star, though, is stuffing his mouth full of chicken and pork and fried rice and everything else he was able to get his hands on… and he still has food left on his plate.
"Are you going to eat that?" he asks, voice muffled as he speaks around the food in his mouth. He points to the little bit of salad still in her bowl. She shakes her head.
"No, I'm done. You can have it."
"Yahoo!" He takes the bowl and dumps the remainders into his mouth, and not only does he forgo a fork, but he doesn't even bothering to use his hands. She giggles a little, but stifles it quickly; she doesn't want to encourage him.
He flips his fist up, jabbing his thumb into the sky as he did when he met her this morning. The only difference is this time, it's more personal.
He really means it; he's pretty sure this partnership could work.
And she's actually amused to see why the kitchen staff cowered behind the counters when they saw him coming.
"I should probably let you figure this out on your own, but I'm going to tell you flat-out; that's the kind of man I am." The man in front of her smiled slightly. "Black*Star's everything I just called him and more, but that kid's got guts and the power to back him up, and once he decides to do something there's no stopping him."
"The problem is just getting him to do it?" Tsubaki asked quietly, eyes following the boy as he paced back and forth up on a wall of some sort. The man laughed again.
"Exactly," he confirmed.
"Hey, all teachers are supposed to be up front helping organize," a red-haired man—Death Scythe, Tsubaki remembered—told the man who was speaking with her.
"Yeah, I'll be there in a minute. Just let me help this kid out real quick." Death Scythe nodded and shrugged.
"Sure; better you than me," he threw over his shoulder.
"Black*Star, where should I put my things once they get here?" She barely knows the boy she's sitting on the roof with. She just hopes he hasn't moved here for the orientation like she has; it will be bad for both of them if neither can provide a place to live.
"Oh, you don't have an apartment or anything?" Black*Star laughs brashly. "That's okay; you'll just have to stay at my place!" She's relieved that they'll have somewhere to sleep tonight; somewhere for her to unpack and prepare for her new life.
"And where do you—" she begins to ask about where she'll be living for the rest of the time she's in school, but he cuts her off, dragging her back into the school to continue their tour.
"Black*Star, all these people are signing up for their partners! Are you really going to be the only person lacking one?" The teacher called up to the boy still prancing around his "stage."
"I don't need a weapon to beat them! I'm going to surpass God, remember? And gods don't need anyone else!" But despite his words he leapt down and, with his hands behind his head, strutted over with exaggerated self-importance.
"Now it's time to look at the training rooms! Come on, Tsubaki, this is practically the best part! This is where I train to surpass God!"
"Why do you want to surpass God?" she asks, concerned. He just keeps dragging her along, ignoring her for the millionth time that day.
"I'll sign the paper so that she can be my weapon. I'm generous to my followers. Pretty big of me, huh Sid?" The man ruffled Black*Star's hair absent-mindedly. He isn't looking at the boy; he's looking past him to where all the teachers have gathered.
"Sure, kid."
"Pretty good turn-out for my performance today! Right?" But Sid was already walking away. He didn't hear the cocky child behind him seeking approval.
Out of habit, Tsubaki spoke up to make sure the blue-haired boy wasn't feeling ignored. It was in her nature to care for people with hurt feelings.
"Of course!" she chirped.
Black*Star spun around at her words. His intense, shocked amazement was visible for only a split-second: so short a time he could have stayed like that ten times longer, and if Tsubaki had blinked once she would have missed it completely. She couldn't quite figure out why her words meant so much to him, but she filed the phenomenon away for future reference.
"…And this is where all the bad people that I defeat are going to be held, so you should learn its halls really well."
They're in the dungeons now, and it's dark and damp. There are no rats like in the movies, but this place has an acutely depressing aura. Tsubaki ghosts silently along behind the slightly subdued Black*Star. She doesn't know why he's getting quieter and quieter as they near the rectangle of light at the end of the corridor.
For a few minutes, she's actually grateful for the break. At least, she is until she realizes the reason his feet are dragging more the closer they come to the window.
He opens the door closest to the window and steps into the room behind it, gesturing for her to follow him. When she does, she's confused. There are pictures of Black*Star all over the walls, documenting his life from infancy to now. In the beginning, each one has Sid in it, but he shows up less and less as the years pass.
"Black*Star? What is this?" Why are there pictures of you all over these prison walls?
"This will be our…base." I can't bear to call it a room, much less a home; it's so disgraceful.
Tsubaki doesn't cry; she won't let herself. This boy in front of her—she's beginning to understand him now. She never believes, even for a second, that she'll ever fully understand him. But she's seen enough, now, to trust him to do things for a reason.
He has lived his life with a teacher and a dungeon cell, and when you think about that you realize he could have turned out worse. Sure, he's got some issues to work out. Who doesn't?
She'll stand by him no matter what stupid mistakes he makes while he works them out.
"Alright, the star is here! Give me that dinky little piece of paper." He snatched it away from her without giving her the chance to hand it to him. She watched the line of newly paired weapon-meister teams, looking over his pointy blue spokes of hair.
"Here! Have an autograph!" He shoved the meister-weapon agreement form back in her face. She looked at it, only to find his name is scrawled across the entire page, covering her careful lettering and the school's preprinted words. The weird thing was, Tsubaki noticed, that his name was written in the same ink as her precise responses; but she never gave him the pen.
She looked down at the hand she had been holding it in as she took the paper from him, just to check and make sure he didn't have a duplicate that he had used.
"Oh, yeah, and this is yours too." He tossed her the pen nonchalantly, as though he didn't realize how hard it is to swipe something, anything, from a member of the Nakatsukasa family.
Tsubaki was stunned. Not only had this loud, ostentatious boy managed what she would have believed impossible, but he did it while he was still in her peripheral vision. She stared at him as he grinned and threw her a cocky thumbs-up.
Maybe there was more to this meister than met the eye.
A/N: So since you all read the author's note at the beginning of this chapter and/or went back to Admiration and read the info at the beginning of that story, you are all familiar with my habit of talking about the chapter after it's over.
I got this idea from the anime episode where Tsubaki says she joined the academy because of her brother. With a mindset like that, there's a REASON you take on the meister you do, I figured, but something just didn't fit. The smile we see on her face when they met, her willingness to take on a partner that's so difficult to control, just didn't seem to make sense to me. So this happened!
So that's it! I hope you all enjoyed Complexity chapter 1! I will now be updating regularly once more, since the story is up.
I wish you all happiness and awesome weeks until we speak again!
~Rhythm Weaver~
