[ Fragmented Memories ]
"You live in a Bullhead?" She emphasized questionably on the vehicle itself.
"Uh, well, no. It's an Eaglehead." The blonde pointed out as they entered, as Summer seemed fixated on questioning his life preferences. He had left to go make some coffee when Ryuu came in a step behind Summer, "He also has motion sickness." From across the room, they could hear him dropping a cup and fumbling to pick it back up.
He glares at Ryuu with a frown, settling the cup back onto the counter, "You don't just tell her that so casually! It's a common thing people let off!" The Black Knight complained while finishing up the coffee. Shaking his head with grief, "Sheesh." He mutters.
The two females laughed lightly between themselves, "He's quite nice and casual." Summer had pointed out when the dragoness nods, "Mhm. Strange sometimes too. But if he wants to tell you his personal history, then he'll tell. I wonder sometimes but… you don't mind that I'm a wyvern faunus?"
"Oh, no. Why would I? I don't have anything against the Faunus, and I believe that everyone should have their equalities." She smiles while taking a seat, letting her hands rest upon the folded white scythe on her lap.
"I…" The wyvern became slightly stumped as she took a seat on the other side, "Thank you then… I'll try not to be a bother too much to you."
While the Black Knight's back was turned to them, he was grinning from the brief conversation the two behind him had. When the coffee was done, he turned around to hand them the cups. They nodded in appreciation as they took it, taking their constant sips from it.
"Oh!" The amber-tipped brunette glanced up to the blonde, "Wait, do you have cookies?" He flinches, "What..? Cookies with coffee..? Does that make sense?" The black knight rose an eye at the blue-haired wyvern, who seemed to absolutely do nothing but nod with the same expression as his.
Summer glared at the wall beside her, "Fine! Be that way." She pouted, sounding absolutely disappointed with the light tint of red over her cheeks. The white-cloaked woman was suddenly greeted with a plate of chocolate cookies just near her face. Causing her to widened her sparkling eyes with a large smile. A small waterfall of saliva coming down from the corner of her mouth as she hovers her hands over the plate menacingly.
"I don't mind, really. Here, have some then." He'd headtilt with a sheepish grin towards her, as she took the plate and mowed them down with her coffee. It was a strange mix, but if that's her preference, then that's her preference, the blonde and the dragoness had guessed. Eitherway, the two spectators would smile at eachother and chuckle.
It only took her a few minutes to get halfway done with the plate and an entirely empty cup of coffee. With that now being partially aside, the scythe-wielding white reaper glances up to the blonde, "Thank you for your hospitality. Also for your help. I must repay you somehow." She stated humbly with a light bow of her head and a smile.
"Pft. I said it was no problem. Me and Ryuu were just lucky we got to you on time if it wasn't for the Eaglehead's auto-piloting system. Aside from my motion-sickness, I'm good to go!" Summer suddenly began entering a fit of giggles, covering her mouth and trying not to cough out some cookie crumbs. "Y-you have one now?" The silver-eyed girl winced an eye closed, leaving her other eye open with a smirk.
"Hey, hey!" He caught on quickly, "Motion sickness is common!" The blonde reminiscences like earlier with Ryuu in an exaggerate armflail. "If I didn't have it, then I'd be the fastest person to fully travel across Remnant!" The black knights claims with a 'matter-of-fact' tone, now leaning against a wall of the Eaglehead. Head lulled back to rest against it.
Ryuu shrugs to Summer, "He's right about the motion sickness atleast. It was a surprise to hear that he has it, right?"
Summer nods in return, "Yeah… I was about to call him vomit-boy." He glared at her. She'd laugh, but looked up to the blonde with a raised eyebrow, "But that aside, she said her name was Ryuu… but you said to call you 'Knight' because you forgot your name…" It became a frown, "… if that's what you want me to call you, I'm under the assumption you're…"
"The Black Knight." Ryuu would confirm for the blonde before he could speak, as the vermillion irises would stare into the silverites, "Aside from all the fakers… he sounds like the real deal." Summer reached into her pack to take out a small handbook, as she narrows her eyes upon the cover, "… Things are said about you, 'Knight'." The white reaper looks up to the Black Knight. "Is it true that you let… villages burn, people die, and worked with the 'shady' ones..?"
He returned her stern look with his own, causing his mismatched ocean-blue and violet eyes to look away, "… If I told you those were true?" He asked with a frown across his face now, head slightly lowered. This kind of conversation brought the atmosphere to a darker extent for him. Ryuu, being left to stare at the ground between her feet for a moment. What surprised them next was the mere response.
"That you really are a 'black knight', as the tales describe them as…" She holds up the handbook titled 'THE TALES OF THE BLACK KNIGHT'. "… whoever published this book of you, you cooperated with them and told them your story. You may have done horrible things, but you regret them, or you thought you did it because you thought it was right. I… no… it pains me to read that someone as great as your deeds make you a hero, but at the same time, it makes you a villain. So a 'black knight'… it's generally going to be easy to see you as then."
She smiled, as it was heartfelt when she looked up, "But even then, you saved those who were in dire need. You were there for the Faunus even when they rejected you for being human, to try and help those who lost hope, and bring back what Remnant really needed to cherish in order to work again. I'll think of you as a hero. You saved me back there, and so did Ryuu. I'm grateful for it."
Summer set the plate of leftover cookies aside, pulling her legs to tuck against her body, letting her chin press down against her knees, "I want to help you find your name." The white reaper smiled and returned a headtilted look at him, which caused him to blink at her, taken completely aback. "My mission can be done some other time… otherwise, someone else out there will be more than capable of doing it for me."
The wyvern Faunus grinned thankfully, "You're a hard read."
"People tell me that." She admits with a shrug. "I don't mind. It makes me for who I am afterall." Summer stood up from her seat and takes a few steps towards the blonde knight, stopping only when they were a foot away from eachother, "So, how about it? Mind if this small girl in a white cloak and scythe accompany you, the 'Black Knight' and Ryuu Havensheer, on your extravagant journey?"
"Hm…" The Black Knight started off with verbal thought, cupping his chin with one hand and glancing off to the side. Breaking eye-contact with Summer's, "… well, that depends. Am I going to expect this white-cloaked reaper to call me 'vomit boy' every day or would she be a kind ally who refers to me as 'Knight' instead?" He smirked, his eyes travelling to the corner of his peripherals to look down upon her. "… and not eat all the cookies in this Eaglehead within one go?"
Summer rose an amused eyebrow with her little smirk and emulated the same gesture he did, "What if she said she'd accept calling him 'Knight'… and does promise not to eat all the delicious cookies on this vehicle?"
He fully paid his attention upon her, nodding with a fist raised halfway to her, "Then he would gladly let her join him and his blue-haired wyvern faunus companion on this 'extravagant' journey." Unexpectedly, Ryuu had also bumped her fist against the side of his. The amber-tipped brunette would laugh, "What a childish thing, but I will promise us a good start and do my best to help you find your name!" She rose her own little soft fist to meet knuckles with Ryuu and the Black Knight's.
Ryuu gave off an amused sigh and closed her eyes, only opening one of them to peer towards the smaller woman, "… Ryuu Havensheer."
The white reaper was quick to catch on as she nods, "Summer Rose."
The two females gave an expected look up to the Black Knight. It was strange for him not to have said anything for the past two minutes now. They were still waiting too.
That was…
… until they realized he had a book about the Ninjas of Love open infront of his face and wasn't even paying attention. "HEY!" They both would yell simultaneously before raising their free arms and punching the book from the cover to slam the pages of it against the blonde's face. Thwick!
"Ow!"
Talk about a printer.
The trio begun walking through the snow-biome land, as their destination was set by a particular reaper in the team. "Hnngh. If only there wasn't much snow…" He practically complained after an hour of dragging his feet through the snow. Shaking some of the snow off his legs and jacket.
"You had motion sickness. I'd feel particularly bad for letting someone vomit on the ship while we made our way to the village—especially people who saved me. Afterall, it isn't too far." The reaper claimed as she lounges her scythe over her shoulder within a folded mode. "I have to repair Crescent Amber afterall."
"That's what you named your scythe?" Ryuu asks with a raised eyebrow.
"Mhm! I'd like to consider it my baby sometime." Summer rubs the side of her folded scythe, causing the other two to sweatdrop at the sight. It was ended from its awkwardness by the time the Black Knight had made a cough.
"If… you say so." He decided to shrug it off. The male noticed that she had her arms cupped, as if she were trying to warm herself up within the tunic. The Black Knight begun to take off his longcoat before tossing it over the wyvern's head.
"E-eh?!" Ryuu pulled the coat off from her head, but had it gripped around her, "Y-you don't have to! You're going to freeze to death if you're just wearing your—" She immediately zipped her mouth upon seeing the tight muscle shirt, as she couldn't help but notice his slimly buff build. He seemed quite strong, and not the kind of muscleman whose every inch of the body had some kind of superbly huge hill of flesh.
Ryuu bit the bottom of her lip, hiding a blush as she gazed back forward with bewildered eyes. Oh boy are these eyes going to be hard to control. Summer—on the other hand—had stared at him and continued it with her jaw slightly dropped and leaving her mouth agape. That was, before the reaper shook it off her mind, "O-okay!"
She armflails, "No, but seriously, you're going to get a cold if you just wear that… turtleneck muscle shirt." The amber-tipped brunette poked one of the abs, causing him to give her a strange stare down. "… I'll be fine, besides, Ryuu needs it more than I do."
"Oh? Aren't those exposed arms of yours going to get cold though?"
"Eh, maybe. But I don't know, what happens if you get cold?"
The two females stop in place when he took two steps ahead of them before stopping. He turned around, blinking several times in puzzlement, "What?"
"You've never—" Summer tilts her head with an eyetwitch.
"—gotten a cold before?" Ryuu tilts her head the other way, her eyebrow raised.
"… Uh. No?" He sweatdropped. In that response he gave, they were left to wonder for the few minutes until silently walking by him, their heads remaining cocked to the side. He turned around to follow behind them, quickly hurrying to catch up, "Wha—hey! Come on, wait up!"
"So… what can you remember?"
This caused the Black Knight to stop suddenly, making the two female companions trip and tumble into the snow as they tripped on their toes. As they gradually got up and shook the cold snow off them, the blonde crossed his arms to think for the moment and scratched his chin in thought. Staring up to the clear amber skies with a raised eyebrow.
"How do people do that? I mean, they somehow lose their velocity entirely without even a warning of slowing down!" Ryuu whines, getting up and brushing the snow off her borrowed coat's shoulders.
"What I can remember is…" The knight started off, immediately grabbing the attention of the other two as they look up to him with awaiting looks.
"… can't remember." They both crash right back into the ground with a loud thunk! as they sigh and get back up.
The blonde looks down to them with a smirk and chuckles, "I'm only kidding. I remember a few things, but most are just fragments of what I could recall."
Summer rose an eyebrow while shaking the snow off her head, "I'd be interested in atleast hearing some of it. Especially after the whole story ordeal of your memories being lost mysteriously, it always did strike me curious as to how much you can bring back to you."
He takes a glance over the white sword strapped to his side, "Well, I think this sword might bring some old ones back, but I feel as if it has a name. Maybe even some history to it."
Given some curious looks, the Black Knight couldn't help but notice it and sigh with a grin. Shrugging, he'd nod and proceed walking forward, "Come on. I'll spare you guys a few stories when we make a camping site."
Their camping site made, it was simple, to be exact. Using the exterior wall of the Eaglehead for the three to lean on and setting up a campfire just infront of them, the Black Knight, Ryuu and Summer sat down and relaxed for the moment. 'I wonder if they ever packed marshmallows in the storage closet.'
"So, you said you'd spare a story?" The dragoness gave him a glancing smirk, obvious enough for him to notice she did become heavily interested with memories long since forgotten. Summer pulled her cloak over her front, using it as a blanket with her head slightly turned to focus on the two individuals adjacently sitting from her.
"Oh, right." The blonde pokerfaced, sounding as if he lost interest in telling it before Ryuu lightly punched him in the shoulder. A frown plastered over her lips.
"Hey! Come on, I was really excited for this!"
"Right, right." The knight sweatdropped, rubbing his shoulder. Looking up to a sky filled with stars, he closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall to find his fragments...
"… The few things I remember, huh?" The flashing image of a silhouette man with a green scarf wrapped around their neck came across his mind, "Someone… someone with a green scarf, I get the feeling that… they seem to have an addiction to coffee, but they're always so wise, as if they were a wizard." He brought back the slightest of details he could remember, until the image of the silhouette pans out to become microscopic. They now stand as a dot on a large pathwalk, infront of a statue of some familiar figure while around them, a series of buildings and a high prestigious seeming clocktower.
It felt too fast in terms of motion, as if his mind was lightning itself. The blonde knight had winced, leaving Ryuu and Summer to don worried looks as they listened to his recallings.
"I can make the details of the land it was on. A cliff, specifically… I…" His voice begun faltering.
The dreaded feeling of weight and fatigue came over him suddenly.
Like a flickering lightbulb going on and off repetitively, it was like some classical slideshow horror film speeding up twice as fast than it usually should've been. But it wasn't a nightmare, as far as the drowning blonde sees it. He is drifting to the bottom of an endless black void, almost as if he were sinking to the very surface of an ocean's flooring. There was nothing but black, and the pieces of thousands of bones that floated upwards, past him. Skulls, to fingers, to legs and ribcages. They all dissipated to the black.
There was someone. No… 'something', that sunk down with him. A white-gleaming blade, a sword. That wore no rust, and gave no ill thoughts. It almost seemed simple, save for the blue hilt it wielded in compliment with its white blade.
Instinctively, his hand reaches for the blade's hilt and grips around it firmly. His feet suddenly dragging down faster than the rest of his body until he landed upon imaginary ground. The mismatched pair of eyes slightly widening as he looked up to see an ocean-sky filled with Nevermores that flapped their wings and ruled the air. Here, within this void, there was no such thing as sound. Only the darkness, and the faint light that emanated from the white blade.
His gaze locked upon the sword, the blonde looked up again to see that the horde of Nevermores were gone, and that he was seeing some kind of strange fragment of a memory. A wide screen that filled the entire sky, and left no ending sides or corners for him to see from the peripherals of his vision. There, he saw the green-scarfed silhouette, holding a horizontally parallel blade within his hands. It was similar to the one the black knight had been holding.
"… Find him, and find the truth."
The distorted male voice of the silhouette echoes within the empty voidal chasm. Once again, the screen flickers into static rapidly, giving off split-second images that became foreign to the blonde. But yet familiar to his mind.
The multiple buildings and the clocktower that made up the 'academy' he once sought.
A shield of two crescent moons that rested upon a wall.
The silhouette of a figure kneeling before one who wore white armor.
A silhouette baby held up in the air by bloodied hands.
Burning hills of debris, the smoke and ashes of chaos.
"A hero can't exist without a villain."
A chapel that sits peacefully upon the grassy hill, broken and beaten, the cracked bell that rocks back and forth without a chime.
"The colors won't collide."
One who was smiling to him, their eyes of crimson, their hair of straight and spikey long auburn hair.
"This world only needs one hero."
The world around him is made of flat water; as he stands upon the water surface. Peerless, as the skies are filled with clear clouds, and the watery surface merely reflects its image. He hadn't known why, but the blade itself begun raising to the air, with his arm moving it.
The tip of it aims towards the figure far ahead in the horizon-line, one who wore white armor and held a blade similar to the one he held. Only that its blade was black, and the hilt was gold. The attention the two gave eachother, it was hostility, and hatred for one another. One that he never understood as to why, and that he needed to fight.
Now, this world seemed upside-down along with them. As the water beneath their feet slowly begins to take on gravity, drops of water and puddles begin falling downwards, as if it were slow-motion. Where the upside-down view was the natural view, and that reality needed to take its time to readjust to it logically, leaving only the other two to stand upside-down with the water cascading back downwards and through them.
They charge forward.
With every step they make, the water jumps downwards.
Their blades brandished, a light of white trailing down the edges of their blades when they came closer to one another. Eyes to helm, they connect.
'Clang!'
The liquids around them burst outwards, and their blades meet from black to white, creating a spire of frictional sparks to emit from contact and the continuation of it. The Black Knight grits his teeth, and the White Knight slightly tilts their head down.
As the blades withdraw from one another, they prepare their next attacks, cutting through the rippling water of the world and causing the clouds below to divide, one by one. Their swords swing forward once again, clanging against one another. The air whirring loudly in response, as large tidal waves go up before going back down.
Again, they retract from one another. Repelling eachother as magnets of the same ends. At the same time, their hands leave their blades' hilts, keeping one hand firm and connected to it. In their inoccupied hands; small spheres of light spark from beneath their palms.
Swinging forward simultaneously, their orbs connect, and a flash begisn to overtake the world.
The Black Knight narrowed his eyes, as his white scabbard smashes against a white shield donning two crescent angled moons on it. The White Knight stomped a foot forward and parried off his enemy's scabbard, causing the two to separate.
The water begins to fall completely downwards as they remain high above the sky. Soon, gravity catches the two of them breaking its laws and forced them to descend down to where the water was. As the two begun to fall, the White Knight bursts forward, leaving a stream of a white aura to linger in the air as he charges towards the Black Knight, shield first. Their golden scarf flickering through the air.
He responds immediately by kicking a foot out first and meeting with the front of the shield, then redistributing his force backwards by pressing against it roughly. Allowing him to stand sideways upon the shield until sliding off of it and going around the White Knight's defenses, soon spiraling and sending a foot down upon the knight's side.
Sending the armored foe crashing first into the water, the droplets spike upwards into the air and come back down as steaming rain. Recovering with a quick roll and then a kneel before slowly standing back up. Shield and sword by their sides. Fifty yards infront of them lands the longcoated Black Knight, who held a scabbard in one hand, and a white blade in the other.
A crack in the skies above them appears before spreading out even further. With the skies now cracked and distorted like mirror fragments, it comes raining down upon them slowly. The world falls to black again, and the now helmless white knight stands back to back with the black knight, swords of opposite colors. Shield and scabbard lined up perfectly with the other in their hands. The mismatched iris'd individual steps forward, and fades, leaving only the blonde haired white knight with ocean-blue irises to stand alone in the void silently…
"—wake up!"
His eyes open slowly, as he felt something soft beneath his head and caught himself staring up into the vermillion eyes of a familiar wyvern faunus, "Hnngh… Ryuu?" He winces.
"Jeez, you had us scared. If you were that tired, then I wouldn't have asked! You had us worried too!"
The silver-eyed reaper soon hovered over, also looking down upon him with Ryuu. The Black Knight chuckled sheepishly, poking her forehead and sitting upright. She squints at him and blushed lightly, soon backing away.
"Sorry… but, I had a strange… 'dream'." He frowned, scratching his temple.
"Dream?" Summer inquired when leaning back against the Eaglehead.
He nods, "But… I know what I have to do with this blade now, and why I have it." The blonde looks over the blade and nods. The wyvern faunus and reaper raise an eyebrow to him, as they felt the sudden twist of a cold in the air.
"I have to find and return it to the rightful owner."
Quack! Sorry for not posting for a while, folks! Had a trip to a few places here and there, especially secret places that I'm not going to disclose like Illinois. Wait... no I accidently-
Quack! Eitherway, hope you guys enjoyed the chapter so far, and I'll see about writing a few more that comes up to the top of my head. I think I may do a Q&A later or something similar to it if you guys want, just let me know in the reviews so far and I'll figure out how I should probably start it up so you guys can enjoy. As for the reviews, thank you guys again for them, I enjoy rereading all of them and it keeps me motivated a lot for what I write. So until then, fanfictionPenguin aborting thread!