Well, I think we might have a delay for a day or two, as I have not finished chapter 11 yet and already here's chapter 10, plus I'm going to a party tonight, so no late night writing, and tomorrow might be a family night (If it's not I SWEAR I will write all night long, I give my word.)
Well, this chapter is actually a little angsty, and I'd like to warn that it's got a bit of language, (Ragnarok is introduced so that's pretty much a given), extreme sadness, (*Tears up* Eh, it's not too bad...) and some nudity (Yep. I totally said nudity. Though nothing is described its just, the fact, you know? I'd never get dirty and actually describe anything.).
I'm happy everyone seems to be enjoying my story so far! Hopefully while I'm at the party tonight (I was actually thinking about cosplaying as Kid just to scare everyone but instead I'm going in a black dress with combat boots. I can never be normal, you know?) I'll think of some awesome ideas for Kid's story, as I should also start figuring out what THATS gonna be about (Well, we know Crona is the inspiration for it, but the plotline has to be a little bit different.), damn, now I've got two freaking brains I need to think with. Not as easy as you'd think, I'm gonna get so darn confused.
Also, I don't think I've added anything to the story that would qualify as a spoiler so far, since I have seen the whole series and tend to throw in random tidbits when talking to people whom haven't seen it all, then they get mad at me and whack me in the head with a book, so I will admit there is what some may call a spoiler if you haven't seen past season 3 or so. Just warning yeah! Don't wanna get chopped for revealing too much...
Well, here is my next chapter, the title of which is based upon the title of an original book of mine about a psycho who thinks he's a monster when really he's in an insane asylum...
~8*Flashback Effect*8~
Crona stepped into his apartment and slammed the door behind him, frightening a white X faced black cat whom was sleeping soundly on the couch until the usually quiet boy arrived.
"Crona! What the hell, man?! You've been gone since yesterday! I thought you were gonna get a computer!" Ragnarok yelled, his beady white eyes focused upon the boy who was bending over the kitchen counter, covering his eyes and shivering. Ragnarok realized that he wasn't responding, so he furrowed his brow in aggravation and tried yet again to trigger his attention
"Are you ignoring me? Have you forgotten that you now have a responsibility as a pet owner thanks to SOMEBODY, A.K.A. one of your dumbass friends, and that responsibility includes, but is not limited to, NOT IGNORING YOUR CAT WHEN HE'S HUNGRY AND THIRSTY!"
"Shut the hell up, Ragnarok! I left you with food, leave me alone!" Crona shouted, extremely aggravated with his X faced kitty cat.
"It's really pissing me off that I can't just beat you into submission the way I did when I was in your blood. You were so much less, independent. I hate this new you! You're getting all bitchy and irritating and stuff!"
"I can't be bitchy since I'm not a bitch, you jackass! Shut up and leave me alone!" Crona yelled at the black ball of fluff before turning around and heading towards the bathroom.
Ragnarok just sort of sat there, entirely surprised that his meister would yell at him like that. Sure, Crona has said things like Damn and Hell before, but only when he's very, very upset. Blowing up on him and calling him a Jackass was entirely new. He must really be upset.
Since being a jerk to the pink head obviously wasn't going to get him any food or water, he resorted to turning on his new found charming tool, Cute Kitty. It's worked on Crona many times, but for the sake of his own dignity and self-respect, he only used it in dire circumstances.
This seemed like a very dire circumstance.
Ragnarok made his way over to the bathroom door and lay down in front of it. He saw from underneath the crack that Crona seemed to be just sitting there in the corner, shivering still and weeping softly.
"Is he really crying? That pansy." Ragnarok put his little white mittened kitty paw underneath the crack and waved it frantically, trying to catch Crona's attention. So far, it wasn't working, the boy still had his knees brought up to his head and his arms engulfing his face.
Ragnarok needed to catch his attention audibly first, and then visibly.
He got up and took some kitty steps backwards, then he sprung forward and shot himself into the door full speed, making a loud "BANG!" sound, and then he quickly slid his paw underneath the door again, still waving it viciously.
He saw Crona's eye peep up from over his black jacket covered arms and stare at the waving paw for a moment, lilac spheres wondering why the Cat-Sword would want to try and cheer him up by putting on a playful attitude even though he just acted like a total jerk no more than a few minutes ago.
He saw Crona lower himself down so that he had his belly on the floor and his head closer to the kitty on the other side of the door. He then placed his own hand on top of Ragnarok's paw to make it stop moving so frantically, and he gently played with it and felt the soft, micro-fine hairs of the cat in front of him.
"What's on your mind, Crona? Why won't you feed me?"
"I left food out for you, didn't I?"
"I ate it all! You know I have a stomach bigger than the state of Texas!" Crona playfully laughed at the statement and then gloomily sighed as his droopy eyes looked down to the side.
"Come on, Crona, I haven't seen you this depressed in years, cheer up already!"
"I can't just cheer up, it's not that easy for me!"
"Then go outside and piss on some old lady's flowers, that usually cheers me up!"
"Ragnarok, stop." Crona said calmly before flipping himself over and staring up at the ceiling.
"Dammit, quit being depressed and feed me, you insolent little bastard!" Ragnarok whispered, trying to let his anger out but also trying to avoid another shouting match with Crona.
"Ragnarok, have you ever been in love before?"
"Love? Yes, yes I have." The almost purely black cat nodded his head matter-of-factly and began waving his hand lightly.
"Who with?"
"Well, she kinda looked like a can of tuna fish, mostly cause she was one. Man did I love her more than anything, haven't seen her in a while of course… You do see where I'm heading, right pansy?"
"Yeah, yeah. But if I give you food, you have to promise not to bother me anymore, okay?" Crona placed himself into a sitting position, ready to stand up and unlock the door the moment the black cat said he would comply.
"Yeah yeah yeah, sure sure sure, yadda yadda yadda, FEED ME, DAMN YOU!" Ragnarok's paw movements got stronger and faster as his words picked up speed as well.
"Ragnarok, that's not nice language. Apologize to me." Crona wagged his finger at the feline and then crossed his arms, refusing to give any food to the rude animal until he learned his lesson.
"Not nice language?! You're one to talk about nice language calling me a jackass earlier!"
"You made me upset, it was justified." Crona turned his head away from the fuzz ball and fake pouted, feeling like he might actually be able to bribe the vulgar mouthed feline into using a more polite vocabulary. He knew he was hunting for clouds, but it was also fun to torment the little villain in the same ways he had tormented poor Crona since almost the beginning of his already miserable life.
"YOU *** ***** ******* IDIOT! GIVE ME MY ******* FOOD RIGHT THIS ******* MOMENT OR I WILL ******* MAIM YOU IN YOUR ******* SLEEP!" Crona laughed hysterically and arose from his place on the ground, much to the satisfaction of his awful tempered housecat.
"Looks like somebody finally got a brain and realized who really runs this house." Ragnarok said as he pridefully sat straight up, his white tipped tail dancing around behind him in happiness.
Suddenly, Ragnarok saw a shadow of something fall to the ground in the bathroom. He placed his head down to see what exactly it was, and realized Crona was taking off his clothes.
"Why the hell are you getting naked?! Come out here and feed me before you do any freaky stuff with yourself in there!"
"I'm taking a bath, I'll feed you when I feel like it." Crona said as he undid the last tiny silver skull button on his dress shirt and let it slide off his slender arms onto the ground to meet the jacket. Crona turned around to meet his own gaze in the mirror that took over the entire left side of the bathroom. There was no mirror above the sink, which was on the right side, but the bathroom didn't need another mirror either.
Crona looked at his bare chest, wondering why a lot of girls find a skinny guy's chest appealing. Crona didn't find his body very appealing at all, in fact, he found it more appalling than anything. Below his chest lay the long indentions of his ribs, not a single spec of fat or meat or muscle could be found on them if you looked with a magnifying glass, a result of years of starvation from his cruel mother. Going down towards his hips you could see ever so slightly the shape of his bones, and since he had no meat to flatten him out and make him less curvy, this gave him a very feminine shape, which caused much confusion towards those who didn't know him well enough to realize his gender.
Crona undid his pants and let them fall off of his skinny, bony, skeleton-like legs. They looked like porcelain, so white that you could barely tell that they weren't covered in powder, all the way down to his tiny little ankles and long, thin, bony feet.
He turned around and began to look at his backside.
Straight from his neck down you could see his spine protruding slightly, bumpy shadows bouncing ever so slightly down his scrawny back. His shoulder blades looked like wings when he'd move his arms, flapping in and out like a bird almost.
He hated his body, loathed it, because it was a reminder of how he'd be left in that room, hours, days, weeks, however long Medusa felt like keeping him in there, very little to no food or water at all, and if he ever did get a scratch of food from that wicked woman simply to keep him alive a little longer, Ragnarok would gobble it down.
But then of course, when he'd do as she'd ask, when he'd go mad and kill innocent beings with a smile on his face, it was then that she'd treat him well, giving him his favorite food, Pasta. Any type of pasta, spaghetti, macaroni, lasagna, bowtie, rigatoni, any that he wished for, and she'd let him have all that he could eat. And of course he'd eat almost all of it, his poor little stomach almost consuming itself from the hunger, and then he'd get sick from it, spending the night throwing up what could have been digested and used to make him bigger and stronger, so he could please his mother more and have more pasta.
But the moment he displeased her, the moment he stumbled and sanity hit him and he didn't want to kill another rabbit because it never did anything to deserve it, she'd do her worst to him, beating him until he either submit to her orders or was so close to the bridge of death that she'd have to stop herself just so that he'd live on and she wouldn't have to get pregnant and raise another worthless child into becoming a warrior.
Crona many times wondered about who his father might have been. He'd have to have the same pink hair and lilac eyes as Crona, because he obviously didn't receive those features from his mother, thank goodness, because if he did look like his mother then he'd probably end up punching his own reflection everywhere he saw it.
Crona snapped out of his thoughts and took another look at himself, his naked, ugly self. Maka says he's okay, that his body is fine and that he shouldn't feel so harshly about it, but she doesn't see what he sees. She doesn't see the emotional scars that his body has, scars that only he can see. She doesn't see the wide open gash upon his shoulder from when Medusa forced him to fight and kill a tiger, but before he could get the upper hand on it, it bit him severely and made him cry out in pain, to which his mother only shouted "You can do better than that, you worthless brat! Kill him, dammit!" She doesn't see the giant cut that leads from the middle of his forehead down to his right cheek, from when Medusa threw him into a fight with several mafia men at only seven years old, and when one grabbed him by the throat and slid him into a motorized log splitter. Nor does she see the bruises and cuts and scrapes all over his body from the daily beatings, being thrown into the walls, dragged across concrete while screaming at the top of his lungs "No more blood! I don't want to see any more blood! I don't want to see things die anymore, I don't want to kill anymore!"
Or the emotional confusion when she'd take him in her arms and kiss his cheeks, manipulating him into believing that this was what love felt like, this is what it felt like to be a meaningful person who did good things and listened to his mother and obeyed his mother and appreciated the things his mother did for him and enjoyed the discipline his mother gave because he knew it was for his own good.
Crona again returned his gaze to himself, staring himself down, trying not to picture his mother standing behind him, holding his head close to her chest as she played with his hair gently and softly.
"Bitch." Crona whispered as he broke himself from the imaginary image's grip. The words felt so satisfying as they floated off his tongue, a sweet chill of victory sweeping over him as he said it again.
"Bitch." A little bit louder this time, the sugary satisfaction leaping from his lips and out into the open air.
"Bitch!" Again he called, a smile rising onto his face as he pictured his mother directly in front of him, and staring into her eyes he said the word again.
"You are a bitch." His mouth seethed with anger as he stared into her eyes, an eerie, disappointed glare being shot straight back at him.
"Did you hear me? Did you hear what I said, bitch?" He began to chuckle, and then laughed manically. He held onto his stomach and hunched over, laughter still teasing his insides and making him smile devilishly as he looked up at the invisible image of his mother.
"Bitch, bitch, bitch… I'd like nothing more than to slide a blade right into your throat again and again and again." He stood back up and looked the invisible woman up and down, almost as if trying to judge her body.
"You know mother, you once told me I was an ugly, worthless child…." He said as he placed a hand to his chin and rested his elbow upon his other hand.
"I admit you were right, I am quite ugly, but at least now I see where I get it from. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, now does it?" Crona shot his hand up towards his mother's face, attempting to grab it and prove to the imaginary image how strong he had gotten since he developed the courage to leave her. But strangely, the image seemed to grab hold of his arm before he reached her face, and she successfully prevented the attack. Crona couldn't move his hand at all.
"Oh, my worthless son, you aren't even stronger than your own thoughts. How the hell do you think you can defeat me?" She raised him up a bit and then threw him down onto the ground before disappearing back into his mind. Crona felt lost for a moment, and he decided that it was simply a lack of sleep.
Instead of taking a bath as he had intended, he walked out of the bathroom, lightly placing his hands in front of the parts of himself that he'd rather Ragnarok not comment upon right at this moment, and headed for his bedroom where he put on a simple, airy tank top and tried to rest upon his greyish blue bedspread.
His room was small and therefore easily crowded by his brown dresser, matching armoire, metal desk and simple square bed, which was placed perfectly in the corner so that he could both feel safe and comfortable.
Almost as soon as he began to drift into R.E.M., Crona's eyes shot wide open as he thought of all the strange dreams he'd been having lately.
'What if I have another one? What if it's about… Patty… I don't think I could deal with that.'
He rolled over onto his back and tried thinking of things that might take his mind off of Patty and his mother so that his dreams wouldn't be fueled by thoughts of either one.
But his fatigue was getting the best of him, and before he could come up with one mind numbing thought, he had drifted into a peaceful sleep.
And awoke several hours later to a very disturbed kitty cat who was about to maim a very loud, obnoxious sleeper…
"What's wrong, Ragnarok?"
"You're what's wrong, Crona." Ragnarok pointed a white paw at the tired boys face.
"How long did I sleep?"
"You were sleeping?! I thought you were trying to impregnate your pillow!"
"Very funny, it's called cuddling, it's something I do for comfort, not that you'd understand that." Crona hugged his pillow as though it were a teddy bear and rested his head above it. He must have instinctively grabbed it once he had fallen asleep.
"I know what cuddling is, Crona, and that wasn't it. Anyhow, you slept from 1:00PM until about 3:00, and at that point you stopped sleeping and began making a bunch of annoying noises. Sounded like you were fighting a bear in your sleep. Then around 4:00, you began "Cuddling" your pillow like your life depended on it, making annoying noises as you did that as well, and then around 5:00 you finally stopped the stupid cuddling thing and went back to normal sleeping, and just now, at 6:30, you began doing it again until I clawed your face."
Crona touched a part of his cheek that felt sort of sore and realized he was bleeding a little from the cut.
"Ragnarok, you could had just tapped me or something if I was disturbing you."
"Crona, the French Circus could have had opening night in this room and you wouldn't have woken up. I tried everything from slapping you across the face with an old dirty fish to blasting hard rock on the radio. Making you bleed seemed to be the only way to make you wake up."
"Well, I'm sorry if I was being annoying. I've just been having these dreams lately where I'm in a dark room with Patty, and I start to feel really nice inside, and then a wave of happiness comes over me and I feel very relaxed. But now, so much as thinking about Patty makes me depressed." Crona sat into an upright position, holding his pillow in front of him as he kept his legs crisscrossed.
"Why does it make you depressed? If dreams of her make you feel like that, then thinking about her must feel pretty great too, right?"
"Well, it did until I found out she didn't feel the same way." Crona sat his chin upon his pillow, sulking into his words.
"Who gives a damn if she feels the same way? The lady cat who lives across the street can't stand me, but that doesn't mean we don't have fun on occasion behind the dumpster. Just tell her that all you want is some action every once in a while, she'll understand."
"I don't even know what you're talking about, okay?"
"You don't know what action is?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, action is when you, you know…" Ragnarok began to go on and on about the wonders of "Action". Crona's eyes widened at the parts that sounded kind of scary, and then widened more when he'd ask "What does that mean" and the fluffy cat would explain it to him.
"… well, now that you know what that is, you're all ready for life, young Jedi."
"I'm a young what?"
"Star Wars reference, super scary movie, you wouldn't understand."
"Well, now that I know all about that "Action" stuff, how does it, you know, happen? What makes two people want to do that stuff to each other?"
"Some might say love, but I think it's all hormones. Anyhow, to fix your girlfriend issue, just ask her to do some of that stuff with you."
"I don't think I will."
"What? Why?!"
"I respect her too much to do that weird, nasty stuff to her. I don't care how good it feels, I don't want to do that with her."
"Trust me, pansy, some day you will want to do it. And she will too."
'Ding Dong!'
"The doorbell?" Crona got up from bed before heading towards the door of his room.
"You might wanna put something on to cover up your slightly manly parts, Crona!" Ragnarok warned as he jumped off the bed and headed towards the couch. Crona looked down and realized he wasn't wearing any pants, and so he decided to run back to his room, the delay initiating another ring from the doorbell, grabbed some shorts from the hamper and slid them on before running back out into the open and opening up the door.
"Hi, Crona!" The puppy dog eyed girl said as she held his laptop out for him.
'Oh dear goodness no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!'
Oooh, Cliffhanger! Who could be at the door? Why is she there? WHY AM I ASKING QUESTIONS THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER TO?
Sorry about that, I'm just so angry with myself that I stopped right HERE of all places. I mean, seriously Brain? You couldn't come up with ANYTHING to happen after this? A number of things could happen! ANYTHING could happen, and yet you decide to throw a writers block my way?
Damn you, brain.
So yeah. Crona was pretty much naked for the majority of this chapter, and he was screaming "Bitch"... which was awkward, I think. But it wasn't so bad, now was it? I actually cheered him on for that, it was entertaining for a while. That is before his brain decided it hated him and made his imaginary mother throw him onto the ground.
Don't you love kitty cat Ragnarok? I hated how the little bastard would just randomly pop out of Crona at the most embarrassing moments, and I also figured he deserved to be put below Crona for once, even if he is still demanding and annoying, at least now he can refuse to give in to the little Kitty-Sword.
Describing what Crona's skinny little body looked like without trying to make him sound like a gargoyle was hard for me. I wanted everyone to see his pain through his skin and how starvation lead to him being such a malnourished little boy, but Crona is cute, adorably cute, so I couldn't get as graphic as I wanted to for fear that I'd ruin my own image of him. I'm sure he must have gained at least a few pounds since he came to the academy though, right?
Well, I'm off! This will be my last authors note for a while, so I'm trying not to cry... Sigh, this is gonna be a hard night...
With greatest love and best wishes and things that fly from windows...
-The Symmetricalist
:)