Title: A Little Twisted
Characters: Miyazaki Nodoka, Jennifer Minindry
Genre: Friendship Through Weirdness
Rating: T
Timeframe: During Chapter 24, Catching Up
Spoilers: None, really, just information on Jennifer and Nodoka
"Hey, Nodoka-chan. Are you ready?" Jennifer asked, her eyes shining as she held up a DVD and grinned.
Nodoka stood just outside the doorway of the apartment Jennifer Minindry, former mage of the American Division, shared with her fellow American Division mage Max Linell and Nodoka's old friend and classmate, Okochi Akira, her intense curiosity warring with her sense of proper etiquette. "Y-yes, of course," she said, smiling back at the friendly American woman while her hands fidgeted with her bag.
"Come in," Jennifer said, stepping back to give Nodoka enough space.
Nodoka took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. She paused a brief moment to slip off her shoes in the entryway and took the opportunity to look around. As with most of her old friends and classmates, the inside of this particular apartment was a mystery, though there were plenty of rumors of course. Most were about the adult things that simply must be going on at all times within, with the supposed explanation for such speculation inevitably being something along the lines of 'because you know how Americans are'. Nodoka didn't know what she expected to find as she went further into the apartment, but evidence of the trio's latest orgy was not one of them. Nodoka's lips quirked upward. 'Paru will be disappointed,' she thought in amusement. Everything seemed fairly neat and clean; much less suspicious, in its own way, than if everything had been absolutely perfect. The apartment looked lived in, and that helped her relax a little.
"Here, just sit down on the couch, and I'll bring out something to drink right away," Jennifer said, directing Nodoka toward the aforementioned piece of furniture. She grinned brightly when Nodoka had seated herself, and skipped off toward the kitchen. Left alone for the moment, Nodoka took the opportunity to look at things more closely. The couch was soft and comfortable in the way only a good couch that had been used for years could be, much like the one in Nodoka's own apartment. In fact...Nodoka paused to give the room a more thorough once-over. It was a great deal like her own apartment, if much larger; there was even a piece of tape holding the battery cover in place on the back of the remote control for the TV, much like her own. She grinned ruefully. Whatever Haruna had led her to expect, this wasn't it.
"Sorry, Akira drank the rest of the tea," Jennifer said as she bustled back into the room, carrying a bottle of water and a cup of some soft drink. She handed over the cup and Nodoka thanked her, eliciting another big grin from Jennifer.
Nodoka took a sip of the drink and looked at it in surprise. "How did you know I liked this flavor of coke...?" she asked, looking at the American woman.
Jennifer made a crooked little grin. "I asked Yue-chan what you liked when I knew you were coming..." she said, looking away to hide the cute blush that had sprung up on her cheeks. "But anyway! Are you ready to watch that movie?" she asked, pointing to the DVD case she had left lying on the coffee table.
Nodoka eyed it for a moment. She remembered seeing advertisements for it when it was still in theaters; critics had called it 'sappy' and 'poorly thought out', but she recalled Misa saying it was alright. "Okay."
"Great!" Jennifer said, lively as ever as she picked up the DVD and knelt down to put it in the DVD player set up under the TV. She looked back at Nodoka a few seconds later and smiled, and stood up. She made her way over to the couch, took up the remote control, and plopped down next to Nodoka, crossing her legs.
Nodoka looked down; Jennifer's knee was poking her in the leg. She decided to ignore it, however, as Jennifer worked her way through the previews and up to the DVD's main menu. A few seconds after that, the opening strains of the movie's forgettable theme filled her ears.
"That was pretty cool," Jennifer said, her eyes shining as she recalled the movie's climax, which involved a drastic confrontation between the heroine's lover and the man who had been blackmailing her.
Nodoka had thought it rather dull and typical herself, but nodded her head in agreement anyway. She liked Jennifer; the woman was friendly and seemed to crave physical contact in a way that was, in spite of the absurdity of a grown woman behaving in such a manner, oddly endearing...almost like a child who wanted a hug. All throughout the movie, Jennifer had been touching her in some way, whether by excitedly grabbing her hand during the action parts or leaning against her during the sad parts. It was something she had forgotten about the woman: she was a very physical person, and seemed to need to touch others constantly. Nodoka wondered if Jennifer did the same thing with Max-sensei and Akira, but quickly made herself think of something else, something safer. Like puppies. And kittens. And not Jennifer dressed up in a playboy-esque kitten suit, such as she had seen in a certain other friend's sketchbook.
"Damn it..." Nodoka muttered under her breath. Haruna would pay for this...!
"Did you say something?" Jennifer asked, her eyes shining as she smiled at her, clearly still excited over the melodramatic ending of the movie.
"Ah, er, I mean...that sure was an...an interesting movie, wasn't it?" Nodoka said lamely, trying her best to smile back at her friend. They had been friends for a long time, in fact; Jennifer had always been friendly and talkative, and the two of them had gotten along almost from the start...the ease with which Jennifer could go into others' dreams via magic had always fascinated her as well. Nodoka could manage such a thing as dream walking herself, but the spells required were difficult. The odd little magical artifact Negi-kun had given her years ago, the so-called 'Dreamgazer', helped, but it still required intense concentration to activate, and remaining in someone's dream wasn't exactly easy.
"Yep!" Jennifer said as she reluctantly tore herself away from Nodoka and moved toward the TV. "How are the others?" she asked as she knelt down in front of the DVD player.
Nodoka couldn't help but grin. "Haruna's the same as she ever was, only..."
"Only more so?" Jennifer helpfully supplied as she popped the DVD back into its case.
"Yes, only more so," Nodoka said, nodding. "She draws one weekly manga and two monthly ones, and also draws doujins she sells at the summer and winter Comiket." Nodoka's face went red as she recalled the contents of those particular doujins...'Dog Boy Kojirou' and 'Magical Teacher Onion-sensei' had quite the...er... 'friendship' in the alternate universe Haruna's doujin works took place in. 'Magical Girl Misa' only complicated the matter. One of Haruna's first doujins had also included the character 'Bookstore-chan', but Nodoka had quickly put an end to that. As for the others, well...Misa didn't seem to mind, and as far as Nodoka could tell, Negi and Kotarou were both unaware of their dopplegangers' roles in Haruna's doujins.
"Sounds like a lot of work," Jennifer said as she put the DVD case on top of the television set and moved back to the couch. She plopped down on the cushion next to Nodoka.
"It is," Nodoka replied. "But she has a lot of assistants, and she's always been fast at drawing." Jennifer smiled at her, and Nodoka couldn't think of anything else to say. She had gotten used to small talk long ago, but at times it still gave her trouble. This seemed to be one of those times.
"I know it's been on your mind for a while... Want me to teach you about dream walking now?" Jennifer asked.
Nodoka breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes, please!" Jennifer giggled in reply, and Nodoka was again struck by the fact that, even though the other woman always seemed so open and friendly, it seemed there was a wall up in Jennifer's mind, keeping others from getting too close. Nodoka had known her long enough to understand Jennifer really liked her and the others, and yet that wall...she wondered if Jennifer was intentionally keeping others at a distance, or if she even realized she was doing it.
"Okay," Jennifer said, scooting around to face Nodoka. Nodoka scooted to face her on the couch, and Jennifer smiled. "Now," she said, leaning close and looking Nodoka in the eye. "This is very, very important! What happens, you must not lose sight of yourself," she said. "This will be dangerous, more dangerous than any other time you've gone into someone's dream."
Nodoka frowned, puzzled. "Why? Nothing in a dream is real, it's only a representation of—" she cut herself off, a little offended when Jennifer burst into laughter. "What? What are you laughing at? Are you saying that's wrong?"
When her laughing fit was over, Jennifer grinned and wiped her eyes. "Yes! Yes that's wrong! What you just said is what they want you to think. It's safer when you think about it that way, but it's also the just about totally wrong, and it's weak, too. That's what they call Dream Walking, and it's pretty much just peeking in the back window of somebody's soul, you voyeur, you," Jennifer said, grinning even wider at Nodoka to show the last part was only a joke. "What I'm going to teach you is way more effective and up front! I'll teach you Dream Diving. It's way less creepy, and a good person like you can help a lot of people that way," she said, grabbing a throw pillow, decorated with cute little embroidered cats all around the perimeter, and placing it on her lap.
"So," Nodoka said, a little miffed at being called a voyeur despite the fact that both her meager dream walking skills and her pactio artifact seemed to point in that direction, "you're telling me that all the research I've done is based on a lie?"
Jennifer nodded as her fingers poked and prodded at the edges of the throw pillow. "Yep!"
Nodoka just looked at her. How could Jennifer be so sure of that? Dream Walking was a centuries-old technique, its origins lost in the mists of time. It was considered an excellent tool for mage-psychiatrists in Mundus Magicus and in the magic centers of Earth who were well versed in mental-based magic, with a well known set of rules and a strict code of conduct. Many, many books had been written on the subject and they even taught college courses on it in Mundus Magicus, and she had seen it in use and even used it herself many, many times since the incident with Gaze six years ago, the one that had resulted in Negi giving her the Dreamgazer, a powerful little magic charm on a thin gold chain. Gaze had been a shapeshifter of some sort with a grudge against the Springfield family for actions apparently performed by Negi's father Nagi during the war two decades ago. Negi had told her the Dreamgazer allowed Gaze to manipulate others' dreams, but she had never been able to figure out how it worked as anything but a sort of booster to her own abilities. "Then what is the truth?"
"And that's where it can get scary," Jennifer said, nodding at her. "When you go Dream Diving, you can do a huge amount of good in a very short time, but you're also vulnerable. Not in any kind of physical way, but in your soul. The damage will heal, but until then you're not whole. Understand?" she asked, still smiling.
Nodoka hesitantly nodded, wondering how Jennifer could smile while talking about something so horrible. She had heard of dream walkers who had been 'burned out', for lack of a better word, rendered mindless by some horrible accident while dream walking. Had they actually been dream diving instead...?
"Good," Jennifer continued. "In Dream Diving, protecting your soul is everything. Different people manage it different ways, through building walls, speed, or even an iron will, but make no mistake: any injury you receive in a dream dive is real, only it's a wound on your soul, not your body."
Nodoka was confused and a little shaken at that; it went against a great deal of what she had read and been taught, but...
"Go ahead, look in your book," Jennifer told her, still smiling.
Nodoka took out her pactio card. "Adeat." She opened her book and said Jennifer's name, and sure enough, Jennifer's thoughts were laid bare on the page before her.
'It's all true, but it's a little more complicated than that. I wonder if cute Nodoka-chan can handle it? I think so, she's a good person, and she's strong too, way stronger than I am. Too bad she can't handle the whole thing yet~'
Nodoka looked up at Jennifer, cocking an eyebrow. Jennifer looked away, her cheeks coloring slightly. "Why didn't Negi-kun tell me about this?" Nodoka asked.
"He probably doesn't even know," Jennifer replied, poking the tips of her fingers together as she looked down at the pillow in her lap. "Most mages don't. If everyone knew you could go so far into someone's dream and meet them soul to soul...it's a very intimate thing. Oh! Look what you made me say!" she said, covering her face with her hands.
Nodoka quickly looked away. Unfortunately, her gaze landed on the open pages of her book-
'—more intimate than making love—'
-and she quickly snapped it shut and looked away. She liked to think about that sort of thing—what healthy young woman didn't, from time to time?—but that didn't make it any less embarrassing when it was brought up in such a way. But...another thought dawned in her mind and her expression turned to one of horrified realization. 'What if the wrong sort of person gained this skill? What would happen if someone like that Chigusa woman from the Kyoto trip in Negi's first year as a teacher gained an ability like this? What if Fate did?' The thought was chilling. The idea that someone could just jump into your mind and rearrange things was terrifying, even more so when she realized such a thing might not even be noticeable to the victim. How would you know if someone reached into your mind and fixed it so that you would fall in love with only that person? Nodoka shivered.
"Are you sure you want to continue?" Jennifer asked.
Nodoka looked up at her nervously, then away. What did she really know about the other woman, anyway? Jennifer had shown up six years ago, after the incident where Akira had almost drowned half the city. Jennifer never seemed to last more than a month at any particular job before making some mistake that got her fired. Jennifer was always acting friendly and smiling at everyone...but was that real, or just an act? No one but Max and Akira were really close to her; even Yuuna, Makie, and Ako didn't seem to know much about her, and they had all spent a lot of time together with her and Akira and Max, solving various incidents back in high school. Nodoka shivered again as her mind finally worked its way around to the question she had been wanting to avoid: Had Jennifer ever changed anyone? Had Jennifer ever changed her? Would she even know if she did? Her gaze drifted over to Jennifer, who chose that moment to look up at her.
Jennifer seemed to wilt under Nodoka's expression. She looked back down at the throw pillow with its little embroidered cats, her fingers fumbling with the edges; she hugged it to her body. "You're thinking I've done bad things, aren't you?" she said, her voice distant. She didn't wait for Nodoka's response, but continued on. "I've hurt a lot of..." she trailed off for a second, shook her head as if to clear it, cleared her throat, and soldiered on. "I've hurt a lot of people, but not like you're thinking, not with Dream Diving. But as scary as it is," she said, hugging the pillow more tightly still, "I think it's important that you learn how to do it and how to defend against it. Things are different in Mundus Magicus...it's a whole different place than Earth, and you'll need every edge you can get. Who knows...it could even save your life."
Nodoka swallowed the lump in her throat from Jennifer's hesitant admission of hurting a lot of people, hesitated, and finally nodded. "I-I think you're right...I don't think I'll be able to get a good night's sleep until I learn more about how it works," she said. 'So I can defend myself against anybody trying to change my mind, especially you,' she thought. She felt bad for suspecting Jennifer in something like that, but she was rapidly realizing that Dream Diving, far from the way its milder variations were commonly presented, was quite possibly one of the most dangerous and corrupting skills she had ever even heard of.
Jennifer nodded. "That's good, cute Nodoka-chan..." she said, seemingly a million miles away. She abruptly snapped back to the present and looked Nodoka in the eye. "Look in your book and ask me my name."
Nodoka gave her an odd look, but opened her mind reading book and did as she asked. "What is your name?" She looked down at the page and her eyebrows shot up. "What..."
"Go ahead, say them out loud," Jennifer said, looking away and holding the throw pillow loosely against her chest.
"The...Mad Witch of the Wastes?" Nodoka asked as she looked up at Jennifer.
Jennifer nodded. "Go on."
"The Berserker Girl of the Wastes, the Sourge of Whitefall, The Blood Splattered Witch, the Bone Eater, The Soul Stealer..." Nodoka felt as if she was about to faint as she looked at the long, long list of names. The list covered the first page, then filled the second, and started in on the third before Nodoka snapped her book shut, thankful she hadn't been standing up as she leaned against the back of the couch. She felt like she was going to be sick.
"I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of," Jennifer said softly after a moment, seeming to not even see Nodoka as her eyes focused on something in the far distance, as if recalling old memories. "Open it back up."
Nodoka reluctantly opened her book again and gasped at the mishmash of images and words scrawled haphazardly across the pages, filling each page with a jumble of unconnected ideas. "What is..." She was dumbstruck. Never had she seen a mind so fractured as this...!
"I'm probably crazy, you know," Jennifer said, seemingly coming back to the present. She made a rueful grin. "I don't remember my real name or my parents or my birthplace, only blood and violence and killing anything that came my way." She looked down at her lap as she hugged the pillow to her chest.
"But that's—!"
Jennifer cut her off. "Terrible? Impossible? All you need is a glance at that," Jennifer said, pointing at Nodoka's book, "to see it's true. I earned each and every one of those titles. This isn't even my real body," she said, putting a hand on her chest.
"Then you...with Dream Diving..." Nodoka said, eyes widening in horror as understanding dawned.
"That's right," Jennifer said, her smile completely gone, her expression neutral as her eyes again focused on something in the far distance. "I stole this body from a little girl, years ago. I...I reached out and found her as I lay dying, and back then I didn't know any better. I was saved, eventually...but it was far too late for that little girl," Jennifer said.
Nodoka shivered at the distant look in Jennifer's eyes. She wanted to run screaming from the room, but...would Jennifer let her? She didn't know what to think, and now that Jennifer herself had told her she was insane, little bits and pieces of memories from the past six years came to mind that reinforced the idea. Times when Jennifer reacted to events differently than the rest; times when she wandered off, times when she stared off into the distance like she had done seconds before...times when she had stood and fought, unafraid of enemies that had left everyone else shaking in terror. A sense of shame crept over Nodoka as she began to recall all those times Jennifer had helped her and the others, both in normal day to day living and during the many, many incidents they had had to resolve. Despite, well, everything, Jennifer had always been there somewhere, beating up an enemy or supporting Nodoka and the rest, a constant figure in the background when not actively taking part in combat herself.
Jennifer had done everything she could for them for the past six years, through good and bad, victory and defeat, suffered injuries and supported the injured the best she could, and yet...
Nodoka shivered. This would require a lot of thought to deal with. "Who...who saved you?" she finally asked.
Jennifer grinned, fully in the present again, and it was so real Nodoka wanted to grin along with her. "The first time I was saved by a young man I was later told was called Nagi Springfield," she said. Her grin widened at Nodoka's surprised reaction to that. "He stopped me, and he and his friends defeated my 'Keepers'." Her grin abruptly vanished. "I believe you would recognize one of them...his name was Gaze, and he used that tool in your pocket."
Nodoka nearly jumped out of her skin at that. As it was, she drew her collapsible backup wand as she scrambled off the couch and stood, legs spread in a stable yet mobile stance, shakily pointing her wand at Jennifer, who lunged to her feet as well, the coffee table between them. "You...! You're in league with Fate! How could you? How could you?!"
The look in Jennifer's eyes terrified Nodoka more than the admission that one of her keepers was Gaze, the shapeshifter from six years ago who had been friends with Fate. The look in Jennifer's eyes was like that of some great predator, a dragon or a griffin perhaps.
After a few seconds of tension between the two of them, the look in Jennifer's eyes faded and she grinned. "Nope! And could you please not point that at me? It makes me nervous."
Nodoka blinked and lowered her wand slightly, and that moment of hesitation was all it took. Jennifer darted forward over the coffee table, grabbed both sides of Nodoka's head, and slammed their foreheads together.
Everything went dark.
"Hey...hey pretty lady. Are you okay?"
Nodoka just lay there on the hard ground for a moment, wondering where she was. It took her a long, long moment to recall that she had been watching a movie with Jennifer, and then...
She scrambled to her feet, reaching for the collapsible wand she kept in her pocket at all times, but it wasn't there. It was only then that she realized something was wrong with her surroundings.
Gone was the couch she had been sitting on with Jennifer. In fact, that entire apartment was gone, replaced by a barren wasteland like nothing she had ever seen before. The sky was covered in roiling blood red clouds, the ground was black and charred but for the occasional clump of dead gray grass, and what looked disturbingly like great splotches of blood dotted the landscape of rolling, rocky hills. A fine gray mist hung in the air, hindering her sight.
"Hey lady, who are you? Not many people come here, you know? Not for a long time."
Nodoka turned to look at the speaker, and paused. There before her stood an oddly familiar child, painfully thin. The poor thing was all skin and bones...! Something about the young girl's face grabbed at her attention, as if she had seen the girl before somewhere...and then it occurred to her that, in fact, she had. She gasped out the name. "Jennifer...!"
The girl cocked her head to the side. "Huh? Who's that? I'm the Bone Eater," she said, grinning to show a mouthful of pointed teeth that would look more at home in a shark. Nodoka scrambled back, trying to get some distance between them, but the girl didn't try to follow; instead, she simply cocked her head to the side again in a gesture Nodoka was quickly becoming familiar with.
"Are you scared?" the little girl asked. "You don't have to worry; I won't eat your bones. Big bro Nagi would be sad if I did!" she said happily, nodding to herself. "You're lucky you saw me first though; if it had been my big sis Blood Splatter, well...it's a good thing you saw me first!" the little girl said, beaming at her.
Nodoka dragged her gaze away from the little girl's pointed teeth and looked her in the eye. "'Big sis Blood Splatter'...?"
"Yep!" the little girl said. "The Blood Splattered Witch is her real name, but we all call her Blood Splatter!"
Nodoka looked around nervously, trying to get her bearings in the bizarre world in which she found herself, but there was nothing familiar, no way to even tell direction, not that she could see. There seemed to be some sort of ambient light source, but she saw no sun or moon in the sky, only those same blood red clouds, covering every inch of sky...there wasn't even any prevailing wind direction, just gusts blowing at random from every direction. "How many of you are there?" she asked at last.
The Bone Eater grinned. "Lots!"
"I-I see..." Nodoka said. The whole place just felt so...so off that she found herself looking over her shoulder to see if anything was trying to sneak up behind her.
"Come on!" the Bone Eater said excitedly as she took Nodoka's hand. "Let's go see big sis Scourge, she'll know what to do with you!"
Nodoka flinched when the little girl reached for her hand, but the girl grabbed it anyway, and she let herself be led along. "'Big sis Scourge'?" she asked. "The Scourge of Whitefall?"
The little girl looked at her, wide eyed in surprised admiration. "Wow, you're smart!" she said, a look of wonder on her face. "That's so cool! How did you know her real name?"
Nodoka hesitated for a moment. She didn't think for a minute she could trust someone like The Bone Eater, but she had to answer the ghoulish little girl's question before she made her angry. "...a friend told me," she said hesitantly.
The girl gave her a strange look. "...you have some pretty strange friends, pretty lady. Anyway, let's go!"
What followed was one of the strangest walks Nodoka had ever taken. Time seemed to flow strangely; she couldn't tell how long it took the two of them to reach the odd gravel road or even how long it took her to realize that what she was walking on wasn't gravel, but as soon as she did, she stopped. The Bone Eater walked on a few paces before turning around to give her another curious look, little puffs of white dust coming up from the ground with each step.
Nodoka frowned as she looked down at the roadway, unable to understand just what she was seeing. She knelt down and scooped up a handful of 'gravel' for a closer look. Something about it was odd in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. The gravel was composed of little lightweight chunks of some chalky grayish-white material, porous, almost like—Nodoka shrieked as she flung the handful of gravel away and scrambled off the road.
"Haha! You're funny, pretty lady," The Bone Eater said, pointing at her as she grinned her horrible grin.
"Th-they're bones!" Nodoka managed after a moment, pointing at the road.
The Bone Eater tilted her head to the side, for all the world like a curious eight year old. "Of course they're bones, this is the Boneway, silly!"
Nodoka shivered as she looked at the smirking little ghoul. What had she gotten herself into...?
Nodoka allowed the little girl to lead her on. It was difficult to tell time in such an unchanging world, but Nodoka thought that perhaps ten minutes might have passed before she began to notice the landscape changing around them. The blood splattered nightmare they had been walking through before had slowly changed into a nightmare of a different sort before she realized it. Gone were the blasted, charred hills from earlier, replaced by a world of bones. What at first glance appeared to be a distant forest of leafless white trees became millions of millions of bones, so big they couldn't have come from anything that had ever walked the earth, all jutting out of the ground in a macabre mockery of a forest.
And, Nodoka realized to her mounting disquiet, the roadway and the forest weren't the only examples.
Bones were everywhere, making a disgusting mockery of anything and everything one might find on Earth, from grass and trees to fences and even, if her eyes didn't deceive her, a picturesque little house a fair distance from the road. Nodoka shuddered.
"What...is this?" she asked, looking around.
"This is my kingdom!" the little girl said, running out in front of Nodoka with her arms out to the sides like an airplane. She paused, facing away from Nodoka, as if waiting for her reply.
"It's very..." Nodoka said, trailing off when she couldn't think of anything to say. 'Appalling'? 'Disturbing'? 'Nightmarish'? Hardly appropriate to the situation. One did not call their traveling companion's 'kingdom' appalling or disturbing or nightmarish when said traveling companion had a name like The Bone Eater. She quickly discovered it didn't matter.
"You don't have to lie," the little girl said, her voice sounding strangely mature. "I know how messed up it is. A pale shadow of what is real..."
Nodoka hesitated. The little girl sounded so lonely, as if no one else in the world could understand her.
"I will not lie to you," the little girl said, turning around to face her. Nodoka was taken aback by the distinctly un-childlike, neutral expression on the girl's face. "My earliest memory is of blood. Blood on the floors. Blood on the walls. Blood on the ceiling... Blood on me," she said, looking at her hands as if she could still see it. "Old and dried, but blood all the same. Blood. And bones."
"But..." Nodoka said.
The little girl made a small cynical smile that hurt Nodoka's heart to see on such a young-seeming face. "They were my parents, you know?" she said, looking away. "But I did it anyway. Nothing there but bones. When Gaze and the others found me, I was chewing on a bone. Someone started calling me the Bone Eater, and the nickname stuck. It wasn't until later that I actually earned it, though."
"But...but you didn't have a name? A real name?" Nodoka asked, horrified at the little girl's story.
The girl shook her head. "No. The ones who found me were more interested in what I was rather than who. I was weak then; Gaze caught me in the dream and made me into his slave. They gave me my name. Though I may have gone by a false name from time to time, I am and always have been The Bone Eater." Something changed in her expression and she looked like a happy little girl again as she looked at something behind Nodoka. "Oh! Hi big sis Blood Splatter!"
As soon as the little girl said the name, Nodoka's sense of smell was overwhelmed by the stench of blood, strong enough to make her stomach turn. She desperately wanted to run away, but she forced herself to turn around and face the being standing behind her. As she caught a glance of that blood soaked form, however, she had to bite back a scream.
Judging by her long, pointy ears, the woman was an elf, though Nodoka couldn't make out any other details; the woman was covered in blood from head to toe but for the whites of her eyes. A puddle of red stained the bone gravel that made up the road under her feet.
"Bone Eater," the elf woman said, her voice low and husky. "You know they wanted her brought before them as soon as she arrived."
The Bone Eater started to speak, but 'Big Sis Blood Splatter' shut her up with a flying kick to the face that knocked the girl sprawling, then turned her attention on Nodoka and had her up and flung over her shoulder before she could react.
"Wait!" Nodoka demanded as the elf woman took off at a run. "What about—"
"The Bone Eater will recover; that monster won't be hurt by one such as I," the elf woman replied as she took a great bounding leap. Nodoka's stomach shot up into her throat and she yelped in surprise as the bloody elf woman flew through the air for a hundred yards or more before touching back down only to run along a few paces and leap again. She noted with some disquiet that the blood coating the woman was getting onto her skin and clothes, though it seemed to fade away after a few seconds.
Nodoka, ever a hardy soul, quickly got used to the sensation of being launched crazily through the air and began to pay some attention to her surroundings. Being a veteran dream walker, the thing she found most shocking was the sheer size of Jennifer's dream world, for that was the only explanation for where she was. Soon, the boneyards of the Bone Eater's 'Kingdom'—unusually large itself—dropped behind them, replaced by a sandy desert, which was in turn replaced by a volcanic wasteland. Nodoka jerked in surprise as she caught a glimpse of something else moving. "I saw something!"
The elf woman glanced over her shoulder and shrugged, not once breaking stride as she hit the ground, ran a few steps, and again launched the two of them through the air. "That is only the Burning Witch; she won't bother us."
Nodoka looked back curiously at the ashen shape moving among the lava flows; it was quickly lost from sight. "How many live here?" she asked.
The elf woman landed, ran a few steps, and launched herself off a boulder before the took the time to answer.
"Lots."
Nodoka fell silent again. Everything about this place was strange, from its ridiculous size to the fact that many individuals seemed to live within the same dream world...it went against everything she knew, everything she had been taught about dream worlds and the way they worked. Dream worlds couldn't be so big...some people had the occasional secondary personality or two hidden away somewhere, but they were never so...so developed as what she had seen here, and dreamworlds were never a patchwork of individual realms like this...!
As Nodoka had noted before, time seemed to pass strangely in Jennifer's dreamworld; the Blood Splattered Witch ran and jumped for what must have been miles and miles, and Nodoka distinctly remembered looking around at all the scenery, taking in every confusing and disturbing detail she could, from the various inhabitants to the lands they had created for themselves, and yet it seemed only a few minutes had passed before the elf woman spoke again.
"Look ahead," the bloody elf woman said. Nodoka craned her neck to look in the direction the elf woman was running, and found herself staring.
"...what is that?" she asked, almost fearing the answer.
"The Core," the elf woman replied.
Nodoka watched the huge jagged upthrust of shiny black rock looming in the distance like some story book villain's evil lair as they approached. Nodoka, in six years of dream walking, had never seen or read of anything approaching the size of it; the sheer scale of the thing was enough to give her a headache, which only intensified when she realized that what she had first taken to be small jumbles of stone here and there on the enormous black mass were actually massive castles and towers, each built on the same dizzying scale as the mountain itself. "What is it...?" she found herself repeating.
"It is The Core," the elf woman repeated. "The center of our world. This is the monument we built, each of us adding to it as we saw fit." She paused to land, run, and jump again. "What you see before you is the heart of a hundred million souls."
"A hundred million..." Nodoka repeated, horrified. "How? How are there that many of you?!" she demanded. The number was simply unthinkable; she couldn't work her mind around it. "That's impossible!"
"Time," the woman said simply. "Lots of time. Every time we find another body, our number increases; that is the only constant here."
The woman seemed disinclined to speak any more on the subject, and Nodoka, overcome by the oppressive size of the structure and the insane numbers being thrown around, didn't pry. Before this day, Nodoka had thought she knew what it meant to call something 'big'. To her, Library Island's underground tunnel system was 'big'. The pyramids of Egypt were 'big'. The World Tree was 'big'. They were all as playthings beside the monstrosity she found herself staring at. Tiny details she had barely noticed grew into massive structures as they approached; her eyes couldn't figure out what to focus on.
Eventually, she spotted a set of doors that must have been huge, and yet from her perspective they appeared too small for anyone larger than the youngest of children to use; a tiny figure stood in front of them. The figure quickly grew into a sizable statue as they approached.
Nodoka couldn't help but stare at the familiar face on the statue. She supposed the elf woman must have sensed her interest, for she slowed to a stop and finally set Nodoka down on her feet.
"How...?" Nodoka managed to say, leaning against the blood covered elf woman for support. Looking at that statue's face, she had no doubt as to the identity of the man it was meant to honor.
"Nagi Springfield saved us," the elf woman said simply as she looked up at the statue. "He saved us when the Bone Eater was still a child, before she could come into her power."
"But...but that's Nagi Springfield!" Nodoka said, her excitement coming through in her voice. "Jennifer never said she knew him! She just told me he saved her, but I thought..."
"The Bone Eater was a child at the time...she remembers little. Others among us, however..." The elf woman seemed content to leave it at that and walked around the statue toward the enormous double doors set deep into the side of the enormous black structure behind the statue. Nodoka blinked in surprise as those doors, though each door was easily five hundred feet tall, they swung open with smooth and silent ease, revealing an equally large hall behind them, its vaulted ceilings a mind boggling distance away even for Miyazaki Nodoka, who had faced bottomless pits and gaping chasms in the great secret caverns of Tibet. She followed in awe, taking in every detail as the elf woman led the way. Portraits hung in rows upon the walls, stretching in some places all the way to the ceiling, while statues of various sizes were placed almost at random here and there upon the floor, though none were so large as the one outside.
"Who are all these people? Is...is this more of you?" Nodoka asked. There were thousands...no, millions of portraits on the walls
The elf woman stopped walking and shook her head, a slight smile breaking her neutral expression for the first time Nodoka could remember since first meeting her. "These are the ones who were precious to us in life; our siblings, our lovers, our victims...our killers. They're all here," the elf woman said as she turned to Nodoka and held her arms out to the sides as if to take in the entire hall. "Our siblings because they were with us, our lovers because they were close to us, our victims because they were closer, and our killers because they were the closest of all; they tried to set us free," she said, looking fondly at one of the statues.
Nodoka stared at the woman, whose smile had turned slightly cynical.
"All that any of us want is to be set free, outsider. Set free from this endless cycle of death and rebirth and be allowed to soar. Set free from the madness that killed us all in the end. Set free from the tragedy of our existence among the living." The elf woman started walking again, only to pause at another, smaller door, which was 'smaller' only when compared to the massive double doors of the entryway. She turned back to Nodoka. "All any of us ever wanted, outsider, was the peace of death. But now, that is no longer an issue. Now..." the elf woman paused while the door behind her opened. "Now, we don't have to worry; he broke the cycle."
Nodoka was left speechless, staring at the massive statue of Max Linell that dominated the room on the other side of the door. It easily dwarfed every other statue she had seen thus far; a hundred feet high, it was incredibly lifelike in spite of its size. "But...how? What did he do?"
And, much to Nodoka's surprise, the elf woman made a genuine smile, the hardness in her eyes softening. "He saved us all. While Nagi Springfield saved The Bone Eater from her masters, Max Linell saved us all from our own personal hell. He came here of his own choice, drew out our personal demons, and set us free. The blood drenched cycle of death and rebirth is over; we are free. Freed from the cursed need to flee to an unborn child's body upon our death. Freed from the violence and suffering. Because of him, and his actions; because he is who he is. When the Bone Eater's body dies, it will be over, and we can finally rest."
Nodoka's eyes went back to the statue, then the three figures standing below it. She realized with a start that they had been there all along; she just hadn't noticed them with the statue occupying her attention. The tallest of the three, a stunningly attractive woman with long black hair and an olive complexion, stepped forward, followed closely by the other two.
The elf woman stepped forward as well, motioning for Nodoka to follow. The five women met halfway between the door and the statue. Nodoka looked from her guide to the other three nervously as they looked her over.
"So...you are the Dream Diver we have heard so much about?" the beautiful woman said. It wasn't a question so much as a statement of fact.
Nodoka nodded hesitantly. "I...I think so. I asked Jennifer to train me." Silence followed her proclamation while the three women looked at each other before turning their attention back to her.
Finally, the tallest one spoke again. "Are you crazy? That kind of thing is dangerous."
Nodoka just gaped at them as the three grinned at her. "What...?" She turned to her guide and found the elf woman wore a faint smile. "I don't understand..."
"Don't worry," the youngest and shortest of the trio said. She had long blonde hair and looked as if she hadn't made it out of her teens before her death. "We don't bite."
"Much," the last of the trio said. She was by far the oldest looking woman Nodoka had seen in this place; she was probably in her early fifties if Nodoka was any judge. The woman was of average height and build, and had a face that seemed youthful even through the wrinkles and hair that had gone mostly silver. Everything about her, from her eyes to the way she carried herself reminded Nodoka of those who had seen much combat. The older woman noticed the way Nodoka was looking at her and nodded at her, one ally to another.
"They call me the Scourge of Whitefall," the woman said. "You may call me Scourge." Seeing her take the lead, the other two offered up their names as well.
"I'm the Berserker Girl of the Wastes," the pretty teenager said as she curtsied. "You can call me Berserk, if you'd like."
"And I am called the Soul Stealer," the tall woman said. "You may call me whatever you wish."
"Ah...I am Miyazaki Nodoka," Nodoka said, bowing politely.
"Excellent," the oldest one said. "Now that we have completed the formalities, I believe we have some mistakes to clear up." The other two nodded in agreement.
"What do you mean?" Nodoka asked nervously. Out of all the strange people she had seen in this place, these three set her most on edge. It wasn't any overt act on any of their parts, but more a general feeling of tension in the air, as of power barely kept under rein. She had sensed much the same thing when traveling with the Blood Splattered Witch—who, she noted, had quietly exited the room—and the Bone Eater, but much more powerful.
"Many things. But first," the middle one said, "you must understand something. Jennifer is...unique. While each of us are our own person, trapped here after our deaths, Jennifer is something else."
"What do you mean?" Nodoka asked.
"She is like a child, playing house," the oldest one said. The other two nodded.
"She knows what is expected of her, but the existence known as Jennifer only came into being fifteen years ago, thrust into a maturing body, completely ignorant of everything around her," the youngest one said.
"The Bone Eater's former body was run by an amalgamation of feelings, channeled by the three of us," the middle one said. "She didn't solidify as the Jennifer you know now until she met Max Linell. We can only offer our wisdom to her, such as it is."
"She is still fragile," the oldest one said, giving Nodoka a stern look. "She always will be, but as long as Max and now Akira are beside her, she will be fine."
"Why are you telling me this?" Nodoka asked
"Because she loves you, the middle one said. "As she loves Max and Akira and Makie and the rest. She trusts you, so your betrayal hurt her in a way that shook even the foundations of this place."
Nodoka frowned. "Betrayal? I don't—" The youngest one moved so fast she didn't have time to defend herself before Berserk was on her. The young woman grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, lifted her up with surprising strength, and slammed her into the ground, driving the air from her lungs.
"Jennifer is everything to us," the teenager growled into Nodoka's ear as she straddled her body; suddenly Nodoka began to understand how the youngest one had gotten her title. "She trusted you and you hurt her."
"Now now, it seems the fool doesn't even realize what she did," the oldest one said as she and the middle one moved up to stand on either side of Nodoka's head. The youngest one sneered at her.
"Jennifer is like our child, Bookstore. And you hurt her," Berserk said, her voice a growl. Nodoka noted to herself, absurdly, that Berserk had pointy canine teeth.
Nodoka focused very carefully on not agitating the Berserker Girl of the Wastes any further. "I'm sorry, but I just don't—"
"Accusing her of being in league with the averruncus," the oldest one said, clearly irritated.
The middle one knelt down and took Nodoka's head in her hands as she looked down at her, a patient but cold expression on her face. "You hurt her by thinking she could betray any of you. You are lucky the girl is gentle; otherwise, you might have received something worse than a headbutt."
Nodoka looked from face to face, from the Scourge of Whitefall's disgusted sneer to the barely contained rage that had given The Berserker her name to the cold distance in the Soul Stealer's eyes. "...I'm sorry, I didn't know. She never told any of us about her past, and when she said she had worked with Gaze—"
"'Was enslaved by'," Berserk said, looking down at Nodoka's face almost idly as she started playing with Nodoka's hair.
"Enslaved?" Nodoka asked nervously. She wanted to tell the girl to let go of her hair, but she thought it would just make her more angry.
Berserk nodded. "Enslaved. By Gaze and the averruncus at the orders of Dynamis and the Gravekeeper. They wanted to harness us—US!—and use us as their own personal guard dog! Tch! Idiots, all of them...the Bone Eater should've torn out their throats before they could even..." Berserk trailed off when Soul Stealer put a hand on her shoulder. She stood up, dragging Nodoka back to her feet. "But hey, now you know, right?" she asked as she made a show of dusting Nodoka off and then walloped her on the back.
Nodoka let out a startled grunt and staggered at the blow, but nodded in response to Berserk's question.
"Good. Now we'll have to cut this little lesson in Dream Diving short; it's time to go back, someone's at the door," Berserk said.
Nodoka blinked and found herself lying on the couch, looking up at Jennifer's worried expression. The words of the three came back to her an instant later. "Ah...I'm sorry. For earlier..."
Jennifer smiled, looking a little ashamed as she helped Nodoka up off the couch. She stood back, wringing her hands nervously. "It's okay...I knew you didn't know about it...I owe you an apology too..."
There was an awkward moment when the two of them just stood there, unwilling to meet each other's gaze, but it was quickly broken when Jennifer cocked her head to the side. "...I think someone's outside the door."