I know Lord of Shadows and Judgment are both sore points for fans, but I watched a video of LoS. That night, I had a dream where I was LoS Dracula. For some reason Dracula was in a cold iron prison that he couldn't get out of. He was apparently inside a building with a forest inside. Then LoS Alucard turned up and said that Dracula needed to get out because Alucard was going hunting with his friends inside the building they were in and Dracula being there would embarrass him. Alucard was wearing a tartan hat and had a gun. So somehow Dracula got out of that prison and started wandering around the city. There was a little girl that he picked up and carried around with him and tried to protect for some reason. The dream ended when he went to McDonalds and wanted to buy a Bacon Churro and a hotcake, and maybe an Oreo Blizzard. He was trying to pay for them without using a credit card (he didn't have one) and under a fake name. For some reason, even though I was Dracula, I was trying to avoid using any names that were similar to my real one, and at first I wrote my actual signature. It's probably because I don't know cursive. The thought never occurred to me that you don't need to give your name to pay for stuff.

The rest of the dream delved into swim teams, the fact that Terra in Final Fantasy VI really did want to help the Returners, and my love for climbing ropes.

The headcanon about Leon's soul and the Vampire Killer was cooked up alongside LuciferXIII Trollkaiger Green.

Not many wacky antics this time. More next chapter!

Wow, this chapter really needed a lot of corrections. Mostly because I made up so much stuff. Here's from most important to least important.

In my first version, I said that Leon could not enter Castlevania because anything that dies in there becomes corrupted and taken over by the castle. The idea came from the description of the Ghost enemy, which said that it was doomed the wander the castle forever. However, I forgot about Wind, who clearly is sentient and not corrupted. So in my next draft, I said that Leon's spirit was so heavily aligned with light that he was weak against Castlevania's dark magic. Had he entered, his energy would be sapped away, leaving him paralyzed and eventually found and Dominated by Dracula. This was my explanation for why the Valkyries and Erinys enemies work for Dracula. But then Heika said that Wind was not corrupted because he cast a spell on himself before he died. I haven't played PoR, so I looked over the script to check. Now I changed it back to something like the original, ironically enough.

I also made a mistake with Leon's descendants. I said that Trevor was Leon's great-great-grandson; if that's the case, then there are not enough generations to bridge a 400 year gap. I also said that Leon's granddaughter was named Sonia, but I also said that Trevor's mother was Sonia (and that contradicts the great-great-grandson part, unless there was some funny business in the family tree). So now Leon's granddaughter is Sofia and his great-great-grandson is Gordon.

Other minor mistakes include saying that Juste killed Dracula (he killed his shade), Leon sometimes slipping and calling Dracula by his chosen name and not Mathias, and Soma saying that Mina's parents sealed Castlevania (it's not impossible, but it's more likely that it was her grandparents).

Leon

"Um… hi?" said Soma. "Nice to meet you?"

"Do you recognize me?" asked the ghost.

"Are you… by any chance, Leon Belmont?"

The ghost looked apprehensive at first, but then gave a bright smile. "Well, I guess you don't remember me. I am Leon, yes, but judging by your reaction, you don't know me. I'm very happy to meet you, Mr. Cruz. I would offer you some tea, but I can't make any."

Leon held out his hand. Soma took it gingerly. "Um… what exactly is going on?" asked Soma. Soma's 'Dracula knows this but I don't' sense was tingling like crazy. Leon's diary didn't have a single picture of its owner, but the second he saw the ghost in front of him, he knew him to be Leon. Okay, the diary did have pictures. But Leon was a terrible artist.

Leon cleared his throat, a gesture that was pointless for a spirit but probably retained out of habit. "As you probably know, I am Julius's ancestor."

"And I've been reading your diary for the past several weeks," said Soma.

"And you have been reading my diary," confirmed Leon. "I've been here since Julius moved in."

Soma felt a blush creeping up his face. It was one thing to read the diary of some long dead knight. It was another to be sitting right in front of him as his friends were picking apart the phrases. Not to mention that he was probably right there when they were laughing about the horrible poetry and the time he slipped on horse poop in the stables.

"I don't mind, really," said Leon, as if he were reading Soma's thoughts. "I'm actually quite flattered that you would spend so much time trying to translate it. And yes, the poems were rather poor."

"But what are you doing here?" asked Soma, trying to avoid the subject of Leon's misspelled poetry. "Aren't you…?"

"Dead?" offered Leon.

"Romanian," said Soma. "Well, Wallachian. Transylvanian? Wherever you're from. Why are you here, in Japan?"

"I am, but that doesn't matter," said Leon. "After I… how far have you gotten in my diary? I wasn't with you the whole time."

"The last thing I remember reading was about how rats were edible if you just avoided the green wobbly bit."

"Did you know that I was the first Belmont to hunt the night?"

Something about that phrase rang a bell in Dracula's memories, but Soma couldn't access them. "I did know that. Trevor was the first to kill Dracula, but you're the one who started the tradition. Julius said that he knew about you mostly because Trevor mentioned you a few times in his diary and said you were important; we still haven't gotten to why or how you started the family business. But what does that have to do with anything?"

Leon took in a deep breath. "It's a very long story, and I suggest that you return to your body before I tell you. I suspect that they would be worried if you stayed out for too long without doing any work."

"Oh. Right." Soma had forgotten about them. Mina was focusing on translating her sentences, and Julius was on his computer trying to translate her words. At least, he should have been; Mina was slower at translating Latin to Japanese than Julius was at Japanese to Romanian, so he was playing Pokémon.

Soma returned to his body. "Hey, Julius?"

"Yes?" said Julius, not even looking up.

"There's a ghost sitting right next to you."

Julius didn't even blink. "Hang on; I need to evolve my Magikarp …"

"Having trouble reading today?" asked Mina.

"No, I got distracted by the ghost of Leon Belmont inexplicably appearing in Julius's apartment," said Soma. "Read anything interesting?"

Mina put down the book. "What did you say?"

"Leon Belmont. He's a ghost. I think he wants to talk."

Mina looked at Soma, wondering if he was serious, hallucinating, or just being sarcastic. "All right. Can you get him to translate this page?" She flipped to the next page, which none of them had even looked at.

Soma exited his body. "It looks like they don't believe me."

Leon shrugged. "If I were them, I wouldn't, either. Ask your bat to type the following letters…"

Leon dictated the next page in Romanian. Soma just ordered his bat to obey Leon until further notice. Soma hadn't thought about the amount of effort put into typing since he was in middle school. You had to know where all the letters were, how to spell every word, and hit them in just the right order. That wasn't even getting into the Shift key. Soma considered making another bat to hit the Shift key, but then realized that the process would be much more confusing.

"Hey, Julius?" Mina said as the bat jumped up and down on the keys. "Take a look at this. Is this Romanian?"

Julius looked up. "Yes… it is. The spelling's abysmal, and there's no capitalization or question marks, but it's definitely Romanian."

Soma returned to his body. "See! I told you so!"

"But… for all we know, you could have gone on the internet and translated a bunch of likely phrases. We'll have to wait until Mina translates that page and sees if it matches up."

Soma sighed. "Come on. Do you really think that I would go to the trouble of coming up with relevant phrases that cannot possibly be misconstrued or mangled by online translators, then memorize them in an alphabet that I hardly ever use? All that, just to convince you that I can see the ghost of your ancestor?"

"Good point," said Mina, and not because she wanted to dodge out of translating an entire page of Latin with no help. "But at the same time, how do we know that this is Leon and not some random Romanian ghost who happens to be fluent in Latin?"

"I think he's telling the truth," said Soma. "It's strange, but this guy looks exactly like how I imagined Leon. I think that's because Dracula knew him."

There was a long pause. "Or… we could ask him a lot of questions about what happened to Leon," suggested Julius. "If it checks out, it's Leon. Or someone who knew him very well…"

"Still don't believe you," Soma told Leon after exiting his body. "Any proof?"

Leon sighed. "All right. I can't remember everything I wrote in my diary, but I can tell you that I survived the Crusades, my first commander was named Stanley, the first meal we had in that company was deer that Mathias shot, I became a commander of my own knight company that never had a loss, I ran into the Forest of Eternal Night after my betrothed Sara Trantoul after giving up my title and my sword so that I could kill the vampire Walter Bernhard, and Mathias Cronqvist became Dracula."

"I believe you," Soma said without thinking. Then he replayed Leon's words. "Yes. I believe you."

Soma returned to his body. "It's Leon. It's definitely Leon."

"How do you know?" asked Mina.

"What this guy just told me matches up with Dracula's memories. Dracula knew Leon very well."

Julius gave Soma a look of worry. "You have Dracula's memories?"

"You don't have to worry," said Soma quickly. "They're gone now. Well, mostly gone."

Soma took in a deep breath. "All right. After I killed Graham, I absorbed Dracula's power and memories. I was still in control, but I could feel myself slipping away. Don't worry; after I killed Chaos, Dracula's memories were sealed along with his power."

"But you still remember stuff," said Mina.

Soma nodded. "This might not make sense, but when I had Dracula's memories, they weren't exactly 'life flashing before my eyes'," he explained. "They were memories like any other memory. They required either external stimuli or an effort to recall. Like when you look at an apple and you remember that you forgot to go to the supermarket. Or when you're trying to remember what you put on the list. Except in my case it was more like looking at a skeleton and thinking, 'oh, that's Stanley from my old company,' or trying to remember what my original name was."

"Sure," said Mina, not actually sure where this was going.

"And every memory that I accessed while I was Dracula ended up going into my own memories as Soma," explained Soma. "Even when I lost Dracula's memories, the ones I looked at were still there. It's like printing a page off the internet and then getting the connection cut."

"And while you had the power, you remembered Leon?" asked Mina.

Soma nodded. "At least, I hope that's it and not Dracula's memories leaking in. That happens sometimes. Remember that really bad earthquake we got when we were little? When the teacher told us about the Richter Scale, I remember running to the basement and hiding for no reason."

"And now we know it was because of Richter Belmont," said Mina.

"To be honest, I'm surprised that I don't run screaming every time I hear the name Simon," said Soma. "Nowadays, I get dreams where I find that I turn up to my alchemy exams naked, find that I hadn't studied for my Algebra test and I'm trying to remember formulas that as Soma Cruz I learned in middle school but Dracula learned as an adult, and then I get chased by a pair of redheaded men in black leather. Or I'm hugging my mother, except she's Dracula's mother, and we're speaking in Romanian. Then I have to use my credit card, and I sign using Dracula's name. Or I'm caught drinking blood by my roommates and then we go eat breakfast with my old friend Leon… wait, I guess that is how I remember Leon."

There was a pause. "Fine then, this is Leon," said Julius. "So… can we get him to translate his diary for us?"

"Actually, I want to hear why he's here in the first place," said Soma. "But I'll ask."

"I'm happy to translate," said Leon once Soma left his body once again. "I never actually left, you know."

Soma shuffled a bit. "Er… it's hard not to talk about someone like they're not there if you can't see or hear them."

"No matter," said Leon. "You were wondering why I'm stalking Julius? Ah, Julius… always the cynic. When he was four, he said that there wasn't a monster under his bed because his family would have killed it by now. You know, his parents were distant cousins. Arvis was a member of the main line. Both of them are my descendants; their latest common ancestors were Simon's parents, Titania and Kurt. I figured that three hundred years of separation was enough, so I didn't intervene. Arvis and Deirdre… they made an adorable couple. Arvis tried to propose with a huge bonfire on Deirdre's lawn, but she was busy in the Belmont mansion setting up Christmas lights in the words 'will you marry me?' Arvis ended up in jail, while Deirdre spent days locked up in the dungeon. I was very impressed with how she managed to find out where the Belmont mansion was, and how she managed to finish the first two words before being caught and tazed by Julius's uncle Azel."

"Back on the subject of stalking?" Soma asked.

"What? Oh, right… So, I'm the first of the Belmonts to hunt the night," said Leon. He explained the incident with Walter to Soma.

Soma choked at the end. "I… need to tell this to the others."

"Just, wow…" said Mina once Soma finished Leon's story.

Julius looked at the Vampire Killer. "I may never coat it… I mean her in Vaseline again. It just seems too… rude for me to cover her in lubricant."

Soma looked at the whip and bowed very deeply. "Um… I'm sorry, Miss Sara?"

Then he left his body and started talking to Leon again.

"After I killed Walter and my friend renamed himself Dracula, I swore that my descendants and I would kill the night."

"You said that three times," said Soma, still reeling from the explanation about Sara.

"Anyways, hunting is a dangerous profession," said Leon. "I trained my sons… I remarried twice, by the way. The first thought I still had money from being a Baron, but nope, I was broke. My family didn't exactly cut me off, but I didn't want to take more than I needed. The second alleged that I loved my 'long thin whip' much more than I loved her. She wasn't wrong, you know."

"You had better be talking about Sara," said Soma.

"Why wouldn't I?" said Leon, genuinely clueless.

"So, anyways, your sons?"

"Ah, yes, my sons, Viktor and Cedric," said Leon. "They were the only ones I got from the custody battles. One son from each wife, and the only ones who wanted to kill vampires. I trained them hard. I passed the whip to Cedric. However, we soon found that in his hands, the whip didn't work nearly as well. Viktor tried it, but he couldn't do it, either. I tracked down my other sons and daughters, but earned a frying pan to the head when my exes saw that I was trying to bring their children into a dangerous life of monster hunting. I tried talking to Sara, and she said that she wasn't blocking any of them. Then I tried to talk to Rinaldo, but he was dead. Long story short, we found that the blood contract I made with Sara was made out to me and only me. The user of the whip needed both my blood and my soul."

Soma gaped. "What? Your soul? But your ghost is right here, and Julius can use the whip just fine!"

"The user only needs a part of my blood, and only a part of my soul," said Leon. "The soul is required to unlock the whip's true power. The blood is needed to protect the user from the whip's life drain effect. Long story short, we found a witch who had the power to split a soul. She made it so that when I died, I would wander the earth as a ghost. After that, I could bestow a piece of my soul upon anyone I deemed worthy. I can revoke it as long as the rest of my soul—in other words, the ghost you are seeing right now—is close enough in distance."

"And Julius has a piece of your soul?" asked Soma. "As someone who owns the souls of legions of monsters, I don't think that's how souls work."

Leon nodded. "Julius has my soul. I can't speak for how souls work; but it somehow worked out. I didn't want to die, and I wanted to spare my sons the pain of losing a loved one, so I lived to a ripe old age and then gave the Vampire Killer to Cedric. Viktor married that witch's daughter, Christina. She looked an awful lot like a duck, but she was the sweetest daughter in law. Remembered my birthday and everything. I told Cedric that just because Dolores was pretty doesn't mean…"

"And since then, you've been following your descendants, testing them and allowing them to use your whip?" asked Soma, more interested in Leon's vampire hunting exploits than the soap opera that constituted most of his life.

"Pretty much," said Leon. "Any other questions?"

"First, what constitutes 'a descendant'?" asked Soma. "I heard that the Morris Clan was a branch family, which insinuates that you're also their ancestor. But Jonathan Morris was cursed by the Vampire Killer because he wasn't a Belmont? And since Simon only had daughters, it doesn't have anything to do with the line of males. I thought at first that the whip only worked for a single line of descent, but Julius said that Richter broke that tradition by holding a competition."

"You're right, the Morris family is descended from me," said Leon. "But… you're half right about the single line. You see, Sara is still alive in the Vampire Killer." He sighed. "So the blood contract also depends heavily on Sara. She judges the wielder's worth like I do, but she also has to judge their bloodline. As you know, wielders must be descended from me."

"We established that," said Soma. "They need your blood? But after several generations, you can't possibly expect them to have much of your blood left."

"Apparently, it didn't matter what percentage of my blood they had, only that they were related to me. Otherwise, the clan would have died out from inbreeding."

"Good, so magic doesn't depend on genetics?"

"What was that?"

"Never mind, science," said Soma.

"Ah. Science. Never got the hang of it. Anyways, what mattered was that Sara could acknowledge that the person in question was one of mine. My descendants had to prove it by dripping some of their blood onto the handle for Sara to test. By the way, this really is the only way to prove it. Even if I vouched for them and Sara believed me, she required rock solid proof."

"Kind of morbid for a holy object," said Soma.

Len shook his head. "The Vampire Killer is not a holy object. It's a weapon made to kill creatures of the night. Just because fire or a gun can be used on monsters doesn't mean that they're holy."

"Regardless of holy status, my question remains," said Soma. "If your blood thinned to the point where you couldn't use a DNA test—never mind what that is—then how could Sara tell that these people are your descendants?"

"Because she knows that my grandchildren are my descendants and that their grandchildren are also my descendants…" Leon traced his finger on the air between him and Soma. A pinprick of light hovered in the air where Leon's finger left it. "All right, say that this bit of light is me." Leon traced two more dots, and two lines connected the dots to the first ones. "These are my sons, Cedric and Viktor."

Leon waved his hand, and many lines and dots began branching out from Cedric and Viktor. "These are all my descendants. It's not really how it all went, because I lost track of how many descendants I had after my great-great-granddaughters married off. But for this explanation, this will suffice."

Leon pointed to the Cedric light. "So, Cedric gave his blood to Sara, and so she could tell that he had my blood. Cedric's daughter, Sofia, inherited the whip after him. Sara knew that she had my blood as well. But since she knew that the blood was thinning, she memorized the… taste? Feel? Attributes of Cedric and Sofia's blood. So by the time my blood was almost erased, she could tell who my descendants were because she could tell that they were descended from Cedric and Sofia. Sara found that Sofia's grandson Gordon was mine because he had Sofia's blood, and anyone she could see Gordon's blood in had mine. She repeated the process for everyone."

"C is descended from B, B is descended from A, therefore C is descended from A," said Soma. "Makes sense. Still doesn't answer why… oh, I get it."

Soma pointed to the branches. "Their blood thinned in turn. It became almost like a single line. All of these people are your descendants, but Sara only ever tasted one line of descent. She can only identify the descendants of the last wielder as yours even if all those people-" Soma waved at the branches "-are also yours."

"Exactly," said Leon. "Viktor had my blood, but his great grandchildren needed Cedric's or Sofia's. Sara's senses are only good up to great grandchildren, by the way, and even then that's pushing it."

Soma nodded, but a nagging fact worried him. "What about Richter? He brought the clan into hiding, and gave the whip—er, Sara—to the Morrises. There was a two hundred year generation gap. How did Sara judge that Julius was… wait… did they…?"

"No, they didn't," said Leon firmly. "That wouldn't work. Two hundred years of it would be punishing. Doing it in the last generation would be too late. No, my descendants took the obvious solution that I never would have thought of. Every one of Richter's descendants had a pint of blood taken, labeled, and stored. When Julius was chosen as the heir, they poured the blood of his line onto the whip before pouring his."

"That seems like cheating," said Soma.

"Well, it worked," said Leon. "On a semi related note, Julius didn't have any children. So this is pretty much the only way the next wielder can be approved. I just hope that they didn't throw away the blood in celebration after Julius killed Mathias for good."

"Next question," said Soma quickly. "What led you here to Julius? Why couldn't you have told his family where he was, and saved him decades of amnesia?"

Leon sighed. "First, it is only on very rare occasions when I can speak to my descendants. And even if I could speak with them, I had no idea where Julius was. I thought Julius had died in Castlevania."

"And…?"

"I cannot enter Castlevania. You see, anything dead inside Castlevania-"

"Gets taken over by the castle," said Soma. "People who die inside fall prey to the dark magic and are forced to become zombies or ghosts. It does that wandering spirits that enter, too. That's one reason why so few people come in at a time; if they sent lots of people, then they would have to deal with their dead comrades as well as the zombies that were already there. Not to mention that many knights deserted in the face of eternal damnation. Julius's military backup was the exception to the norm, and even then they had to bring only people who did not believe in the afterlife."

Leon shrugged. "Of course you know. You're Mathias's reincarnation, after all."

"Just out of curiosity, how long have you known this?"

"The fact that Julius's army backup was composed entirely of atheists, or that you're Mathias?"

"The last one," said Soma. "Well, the former sounds interesting, but not now."

"Can I finish my explanation first?"

Soma nodded and gave the floor to Leon. "So, after Richter set up his hideout in… well, you know it's in Romania, but I don't think it's a good idea to tell you where exactly. Nothing personal, just…"

"I'm the Dark Lord and it's not safe for you to tell me where my mortal enemies are hiding?" said Soma blandly.

"Exactly," said Leon. "Mathias attacked Richter's hometown, which was the main reason why Richter moved. Anyways, where was I? Oh, yes…I went with Richter and his family. I've been in the mansion ever since, watching my descendants grow up. I went with Julius as he walked up the road to Castlevania, but I couldn't go with him. I waited for him around the area, but I couldn't find him. Eventually, I gave up."

"And he came out anyways."

"Yes. Not one of my finest moments… poor Julius. So I returned to the house, and watched the family… separate. Richter was wise to force our descendants have lives outside of hunting. With the Vampire Killer lost and Mathias gone for good, my descendants felt like they had lost their purpose. Some of them kept on killing monsters, but most abandoned the hunt and resumed ordinary lives. Many left the house that was their home and haven for generations. I do not fault any of them for their decisions."

"Just out of curiosity, has it been like that for long?" asked Soma. "After Dracula dies, the family doesn't know what to do? Is that normal, or did that start with Richter?"

Leon shook his head. "It actually started with Juste. Trevor was the first, so he and his children thought Mathias was dead for sure. Christopher was caught by surprise, but everyone thought twice would be enough. Simon caught on to the resurrection cycle, as well as the fact that Mathias could be brought back prematurely, but after killing him twice he was fed up. His family was actually rather paranoid about some madman resurrecting Mathias. Juste was the first to wonder about his future after he killed Mathias's shade (even though he did not kill Mathias himself, a trek through Castlevania still counts). In the end, he decided to train his children as hard as his father did to him, so that there would be no slackness when his descendants would kill Mathias. He allowed some of them to quit the business, though. Richter was the same way, except he took Mathias's defeat harder than Juste. But yes, from Juste's exploits onward, my descendants did have a problem with ending angst. It's normal for there to be a lot of tension right up until Mathias's defeat, and then everyone feels flat afterwards. At the same time, it is not as if Mathias is the only evil out there. My family had killed plenty of vampires before Trevor came along."

Soma nodded. When his adventures were over, he was just relieved that everyone came out alive and sane. He supposed that it must have been different for a clan that was only still alive so that it could kill one man.

"May I answer your original question?" asked Leon. "You asked why I was in Japan."

"Oh, right," said Soma. "I forgot about that. Carry on."

"One day, Julius came returned to the hideout. You have no idea how relieved I was. My descendant… descendant is correct, but I think of them more as my grandchildren. My grandson, saved from one of the worst fates to befall… well, anyone. You wouldn't understand."

"And when Julius returned to Japan, you came with him," said Soma. "Last question. How long have you known that I was Dracula?"

Leon shifted his weight on the couch. "I can't say exactly. The minute I saw you, I saw my old friend in you. Your expressions, the way you walk, small habits… they're almost exactly the same." He shifted again. "But, I figured it out when Julius said outright that you were Mathias's reincarnation."

"That would certainly explain it," said Soma blandly.

"Anyways, you wanted me to translate my diary? You can just leave me with your bat."

"Can it hear you when I'm inside my body?" asked Soma.

Leon shrugged. "No reason why it shouldn't. I mean, just because you're out of your body doesn't mean that they're not…? Am I making sense?"

It turned out that Soma's Bats could still hear Leon for some reason. So then they left him to transcribe his work. Julius was going to correct the capitalization and punctuation later.

"Do you think we should do something for him?" asked Mina. "I mean, he's doing all the work for us."

"I think he just wants to be heard," said Soma. "He's been alone for almost a millennia. He watches his descendants, but he can't speak with them. Here I was, thinking that all immortals were allergic to telling people about themselves. Guess you can't just go by Arikado."

There was a pause.

"Arikado is immortal?" asked Julius testily.

"You mean you didn't know?" asked Soma.

"I knew, but I didn't want to fall into the trap where you trick me into confirming your suspicions," said Julius. "Yes, Arikado is immortal. He trained me to fight Dracula, and he looked exactly the same as he does now. Other than dyeing his hair at some point. I'm still not sure if he dyed it blonde before meeting me or if he dyed it black after I killed Dracula."

"Makes sense," said Mina. "He hasn't aged at all in the ten years that I've known him. You would think that he'd be a bit more careful."

"How did you find this out?" asked Julius.

"Like I said, I used to have Dracula's memories," said Soma. "Arikado confronted me immediately after I received them. For a split second, I saw him the way Dracula did. I know who and what he is. But I was too annoyed with him at the time to act on Dracula's feelings, and after that the subject never came up. This tea is really good, by the way. And Mina, for his sake, I won't tell you who or what he is."

There was another long pause. "Do you think that there are any souls that will let you see Leon without leaving your body?" asked Mina.

Soma shuffled through them. The Peeping Eye let him see Leon perfectly, but he couldn't hear what he was saying. The Ghost Dancer soul gave him a shaky image, but he could hear Leon clearly. He was just telling Soma's Bat which letters to press.

"Aren't you getting bored?" asked Soma.

Leon shook his head. "It's no trouble at all. Really, this is the most variety I've had in centuries. When I was in the hideout, I either watched the kids or watched television. And my descendents kept on changing the channel when I wanted to watch my cage wrestling matches."

Leon sighed. "But, you're right. I had forgotten what it was like to be listened to. To have someone who can actually talk back to me. Someone new. Someone who isn't dead and awaiting their eternal reward. For the most part, I've only had Sara for company. And I get to speak with my descendants when they die. But other than the odd medium who conjures me for no reason, that's it."

Leon sadly looked into the distance. Despite his youthful appearance and energy, Soma could see that Leon really was an old man. The old knight mulled around the scenery, doing his duty. He picked up jobs that no one else wanted just to feel needed. And his descendants didn't come to visit him, even though he loved them dearly. Well, that last one was excusable if they had to die to see him.

Suddenly, Soma had an idea. "Leon? Do you want to talk to Julius?"

"Well, you can relay what I say to him," said Leon.

"No, actually talk to him," said Soma. "Face to face."

Mina caught on, despite only having half the conversation. "Soma, don't do it," she said. "He may not be malevolent, but what if you can't get him out?"

"We can exorcise him," said Soma. "Can you do those?"

"I've been practicing ever since I came back from Castlevania," said Mina. "I've gotten pretty good at them."

"That's settled, then," said Soma. "Even if you can't, we can call your family. If they could seal a gigantic hell castle inside an astronomical event, they can get a ghost out of me."

"You didn't ask my opinion on this," said Julius.

"Do you not want to talk to your ancestor?" asked Soma.

"I do, but the least you could do is consult with me beforehand."

So then Soma set the computer so that he could catch up on his anime, and left his body. "Go ahead, Leon. Take my body."

"Are you sure?" asked Leon. "I've never done this before. I'm not sure if I could come out on my own."

"It'll be fine. We can get an exorcist."

And so Leon possessed Soma's body. Unfortunately, the old knight hadn't been physical in over a millennium, so he fell over. He spent several minutes twitching every part of Soma's body on the ground, moaning, choking, and trying to get the hang of using vocal cords, which was rather disturbing to watch.

"Don't forget how to breathe!" Soma called. "And please don't kill my body. I'm still using it."

After a while, Leon managed to gain enough control over Soma's body to sit up. "Julius?" he said. Then he said some stuff in Romanian that Soma didn't know but somehow broke down the awkwardness immediately. Julius responded in Romanian, and the two had a tearful and enthusiastic chat.

"I'll be in the next room, ordering pizza," announced Mina to no one in general. After doing that, she took out her purse and started playing Fire Emblem.

Soma found that even when Leon was in his body, Leon could still see and hear Soma. When the pizza arrived, Soma told Leon that Leon should be the one eating. "You haven't eaten anything since you died," said Soma. "And I don't think you've had pizza before."

Leon tried to hug Soma, but forgot that only one of them had a body and fell over, much to the confusion of the onlookers.

Leon enjoyed the pizza immensely. He started crying, and not from the peppers. He did not, however, like the soda. A lifetime where the sweetest thing he ever ate was fruit or honey did not endear Leon to hypersugared drinks.

Late that night, Soma said that they should be getting back to campus. "We have class tomorrow," he told Leon, and Leon relayed that to Mina and Julius. "Please get out of my body."

Leon nodded, and closed his eyes. Then he muttered a Romanian curse. "It's not working," he told Soma.

"Let me try," said Mina. She did her magic.

It didn't work.

With a sinking stomach, Soma remembered something. He ordered the Bat to change computer screens to a word processor, type in what he wanted to say, and then get the attention of the two living people by jumping on their heads.

"'when I first saw Leon, he was immune to julius's holy water'?" Mina read. "Oh… I get it. You're immune to holy magic?"

Leon nodded. "It appears so. Even after I died, I was never hurt by the crosses and water that people who could see ghosts threw at me. Perhaps it's because I spent so much time with holy objects? Probably not; plenty of dead vampire hunters have been hurt by those. Pious life? Something to do with splitting my soul? Drinking too much Holy Water? No, that would be too material. Maybe it was because…"

Leon realized that he wasn't helping and reddened. There was a long pause. Then Soma's Bat typed in another sentence.

'what are we going to do.'

No one had an answer.

TO BE CONTINUED!

The bit about the Bat typing has a bit of my own subtext. I used to type very slowly. As in, 'look at the keyboard and hit one letter at a time' slowly. Typing game software didn't help me at all, even though the school invested lots of hours and money into them. Two things helped me type quickly. One was the bank escape game on Neopets, which required me to memorize the location of six letters, and the other was writing fanfiction. Now I am a very fast typer. Don't say that fanfiction never did anything for anyone.

Leon does not know about Wind because he was watching the Belmonts at the time. Wind's case was exceptional in this version, rather than Leon being extra holy. I felt like Wind got a boost from possibly being Dracula's descendant, if the fanon that Maria and Alucard founded his clan is true.

I was considering making Leon innocently and casually racist, but decided that I wasn't comfortable with that.