The four technicians run through the underbelly of Death's School, ever closer to the sack of skin that wrapped around a contagious blood-thirsty craze. The consequences of Madness resurrecting would be unimaginable with the current captor, Lord Death himself, unable to leave the sight of craziness' imprisonment.
The air was growing heavy with the enormity of the task ahead. It made Black*Star anxious.
"Hey, Maka, can't you sense these witches with your soul?"
"They're using Soul Protect, so right now…"
"That's all you can sense? I thought that was your strong point," he teases. He laughs at her immediate anger as her face contorts into a pout and she spat about his rudeness. Her eyes widen suddenly as Maka, Kid and Stein all skid to stop. Black*Star, confused, figures something must be ahead that he couldn't sense.
"This obscene horrible sensation… Dad!" Maka's shock gives way to disappointment and mild disgust. Black*Star puffs his cheeks out to stop from laughing at her description.
Stein starts to explain their plan while Spirit pouts and transforms.
"Until the end, protect only one thing: your own life. Understood?"
The three young technicians answer affirmatively, but Black*Star doesn't meet Stein's eyes. Tsubaki rides along the edge of his soul, questioning, but Black*Star's soul is bigger and the extra volume lets him hide the thought that errantly floats through his brain. Maka. Black Blood.
Medusa is standing casually at the end of the hall and Stein is telling them to run straight at her, not to anticipate, but to simply react. Stein and Spirit will handle her. Kid to his right and Maka to his left, Black*Star engages Tsubaki's Dark Arm mode and breaks from the volley of arrows second. He's sweating, but doesn't look behind him to see Maka's progress. He tries not to feel responsible for her, but it's a battle he always loses.
He's supposed to take out the Cursed Sword, the one that hurt Soul in Italy. He's supposed to because he's the only one who can, because he can attack with his soul directly. But when he actually comes to toe to toe with the Demon Sword, Black*Star feels all the unluckiness of his thirteenth year and the Letters branded on him flash to the forefront of his mind. He's cracking his knuckles and showboating, but he has no idea what words are coming out of his mouth, so preoccupied with what Death has planned for him.
When a Maddened face overtakes his opponent, Black*Star is ripped back to the present and slips a foot backward. He's unconsciously gone on the defensive. Tsubaki is telling him to be careful, but he can't stop running his mouth because he's scared. Scared that his Words are meant for this fight. Scared that this may be his end.
He doesn't get the chance to follow this train of thought when Maka arrives, yelling his name. Any hesitance he holds in his stance drops when she arrives next to him.
"I'll fight them." Maka's gaze is clear and verdant. His squawk of 'what?!' is overrun by Tsubaki and Soul's interjections about Stein's strategy. The Demon Sword's black blood floats in a horrific aura around their blade. Black*Star thinks back to Maka coughing on the bridge in London and Soul, slashed in Italy, laying on a hospital bed for weeks.
"Idiots! Don't ruin my superb scene entrance!" Don't fight them; this is my destiny. Let me fight them; I don't want my Words for you.
Yet as he takes a step forward, Maka casts Soul's blade out in front of him.
"Hey, Mak… don't get ahead of yourself or I might take you down, too…" He threatens, but Maka is not looking at him. She has only eyes for the Demon Sword. He's impressed and a bit sentimental; those same eyes were once pointed at him before she punched a tiny fist into his face at the age of four. "Ooh, the model student disobeying a direct order from her favorite teacher? You reach that rebellious age, eh?"
Her eyes don't clear, but her frown quirks back up into a smirk he knows well as she tells him to shut up. He feels each Letter printed on his wrist as he tells her she can have this fight. Unable to resist in his wave of nostalgia, he tells her to call for him is she needs to be rescued. Her cheeks flush as she tells him to go.
Black*Star leaves, knowing that she does understand his message. That he would protect her if she asked. But they already know she won't ever ask.
Maka is held together by the tightness of her pigtails, the steel plating of her boots and sheer willpower, an unshakeable Faith in her own abilities. But now, with ribbons instead of elastic and leather for steel, Maka clings to her third glue, willing it to stick to her bones. Her physical protection is at its lowest just three days before her thirteenth birthday, having been dressed for a party and not combat.
It's a stupid wish, but she fools herself into thinking that those extra three days would have helped somehow. Now she's watching the erratic movements of the Demon Sword as Black*Star (and all of his thirteen years) fades into the darkness of the next corridor. Soul's demonsteel is cooler than she's used to in her hands. Gloves, she thinks. I'm missing my gloves.
Nearly thirteen year old Maka has zero ideas on how to win this fight as she tells Soul. She will though. Because she has Faith and Death is her guide.
Each footfall in dress shoes feels heavier as Black*Star runs from Maka and the biggest connection to his Words that he knows. The heaviness creeps up his legs, through veins, every capillary, and hangs like dead weight in his ribs, gut twisting under the burden.
Kid is standing in front of him, sister pistols locked and loaded but hanging low at his sides. What was he doing just standing there? A knee to the back and an earful of complaining knock Kid out of his stupor and Black*Star from the sluggishness dragging his feet. The werebeast before them waits, not attacking, barely having a presence. Black*Star lunges forward and makes contact with all the ferocity and intent he should have displayed against the Demon Sword.
He's in range. He's in range and he isn't hitting anything. He knows Tsubaki's tanto blade should have pierced flesh, hasn't, but he doesn't let up. He has to get this one right.
It's only when Kid walks past him, a dull look on his face, that Black*Star lets up and accepts the werebeast turning man uses spatial magic. He takes the butt of Patti's gun to the head for continuing his attack and laughing it off. Kid rushes ahead into the final chamber in the dungeon, shooting a pillar instead of their quarry.
"Black*Star! Be careful, the Madness of the Kishin makes people hallucinate."
Black*Star just scoffs. "My sixth sense sucks! I can't feel any Madness!"
He charges forward to the sound of Kid's laughs, Tsubaki's tanto changing into the Dark Arm as he flips through the air. He really doesn't feel any Madness, never has. Even the Demon Sword, arguably the second most Mad opponent he's ever (not) faced, did not feed him ribbons of Insanity, beckon him to Madness. He was frightened, but not close to giving in.
This assurance flows through him now, ready to strike the polka dot witch from above. Her tadpole bomb hits him in the chest, but the backlash sweeps through the hall, knocking her off her feet and the syringe of Black Blood rolling across the floor. A giant tadpole knocks the plunger away as he moves to shatter it, so Black*Star takes the opportunity to vent his anger on the creature.
The moment of vengeance lets the little witch press the tip of the needle into the massive skin bag sealed in the back of the chamber. He rushes forward, already feeling the fatigue creep in from use of the Dark Arm combined with Speed*Star, his chest ready to explode from exertion.
He strikes, the dark fluid splattering and seeping into the grout. His wrist pulses painfully in time with his heart.
Tsubaki disengages to a tanto and Black*Star is hunched over, panting.
"Haa… ha... I did it. The Kishin won't resurrect now… I stopped the Black Blood."
His sense of victory filled him to the brim, giving him that last burst of endorphins to keep him aware and awake. In a few minutes, he'll crash.
So when the air around the fleshy bag stagnates and then suddenly ejects the most malicious smelling gases from within, Black*Star is confused. The terrible eyes etched into the skin sizzle away as he continues to try and catch his breath. He can swear the shadow under the bag is staring at him.
"I sliced the needle in half—I stopped her from injecting the Black Blood!"
Kid's response is quiet, resigned. "What you sliced was the statue. Look closely… How ironic that you hallucinated in the end, so concentrated on breaking the needle that you used your sixth sense."
Black*Star's eyelids feel heavy. He is pressed into the ancient floorboards, unable to even pick his head up anymore. His admittance of failure is muted, denied, and smothered by dusty grit rising from the rough plane his face is against. His endorphins and adrenaline have fled and he feels like the floor is coming up to press against him while gravity doubles to hold him in place.
But the needle is there, penetrated deeply into the shifting mass hanging a foot above the ground. He failed and Black*Star hazily wonders if he just fulfilled his Words. His red Words are abnormal; no one has red Words, only black as deep and dark as Death's cloak. Was he always meant to destroy the balance Death worked for? Meant to bring back the Madness?
The last of his strength leaves his neck and his whole face is in the dirt; he can feel at least one splinter pressing into the flesh covering his cheekbone. He can only see a sliver of what is going on, rumbling the floor and crackling in the air. His eyes are unable to focus but the flesh ball is growing, glowing, floppy strips are peeling off and there are eyes. There are eyes everywhere. The chains buckle under the load and Black*Star thinks he can hear Kid screaming over the gray noise in his ears. There is definitely a big explosion, though, because it sends him flying back and between the change in vantage point, the buzzing noise, the blurred vision and the smoke, Black*Star can't see what's happening anymore.
There is scream bordering on the decibel of nails on a chalkboard and Black*Star tries to get back up, the fog slowly lifting. Tsubaki is humming in the back of his mind, trying to assess his injuries. The smoke is cleared enough that he can see a naked man, emaciated and at least a foot taller than Stein. The wavelength pouring off the man is something even Black*Star can feel and recognize. This is the Kishin.
"Tsubaki… Dark Arm Form…" he huffs. "I'm going to kill you, ya droopy-eyed bastard!" He's managed to kneel, but Tsubaki is admonishing him as soon as the thought crosses his lips.
"Black*Star, you're already at your limit with so many injuries! If you continue using my Dark Arm, I'll devour your soul…"
His Words itch and pulse and Black*Star finds himself yelling at Tsubaki, but she is yelling back, refusing her technician's order. He slams her tanto form onto the floor, using his anger as a springboard, the itch in his wrist as an anchor.
"Then you stay here and watch!" He can hear her voice, altered by speaking through demonsteel, calling for him, but Black*Star is already a step away from the gaunt figure in the center of the vapor. He shoves an elbow and a hand into the spine of the creature- not a man, never a real person, just a thing of evil- and forces his soul outward. He feels the pulse through his veins and every capillary, ready to burst from his skin, the potency of his soul expanding beyond his mortal shell.
The backlash is expected. He can feel the rupturing of blood vessels and the tearing of muscle in his left arm, his elbow cap feels shattered. The opposite hand is tingling and numb, the feeling trickling down into his wrist and lingering over his Words, taunting him. He is at his most extreme, unable to withstand even his own soul wavelength.
The Kishin's blank face stares back without real eyes, impassive and unharmed. The tingle in his wrist is cast aside in Black*Star's mind, "Once more!" As he brings his arm around, the Kishin does something with its hand, whipping it through the air in front of his face. Something in Black*Star's head feels runny and all of his movement is brought to an abrupt halt. He finds himself flung back, through the air, bouncing harshly off the floor.
Everything is black and silent for the next few seconds, but when he opens his eyes again, long flesh-colored ribbons are floating up through the air and a figure in a purple dress and pigtails has grabbed a hold. It all disappears through the enormous hole in the ceiling- was that always there? -before everything returns to a blessed black.