(23 Skidoo hotel, Nevada USA)
Maka had the thousand yard stare, this condition best known by military men around the world, obtained after you've been in the front to long. its like you've truly seen beyond the earthly realm, its not natural for a girl Maka's age to have such an unsettling condition, but what do I know, when people turn into weapons and animals why not have a seventeen year old girl who looks like she belongs in the VA psyche ward, Maka's probably tougher then those guys in Full Metal Jackets anyway. Giriko was handcuffed to the radiator of the hotel lobby used as base camp, the handcuffes were to thick for him to cut without attracting attention, he didn't feel like trying to escape anyway, "hay." he said trying to get the attention of Maka siting in a chair starring off into space, "hay, can I get some water er something?" but Maka ether didn't hear him or was ignoring him. He grunted, he hadn't had a fix in almost a day and smoking high end meth lead him to quick withdraw sickness, he already had a migraine and it would only get worse. "why didn't you run?" Maka asked him still staring at the wall. Giriko shrugged "i duno...can I have some water?" "we could have just killed you. So why didn't you just run?" Maka was about to stare a hole through the wall. Giriko "you crazy or def? I said I don't know. Now can I have some water please? I'm dieing over here." "you don't even know what dieing is you stupid junkie!" she screamed at him, Giriko raised his eyebrow. Across the room soul looked over his shoulder at them. "crazy flat chested cow." Giriko said under his breath. "what was that?!" Maka sat forward in her seat "you herd me!" Maka shot up from the seat and tackled Giriko, wailing on him with her fists, Giriko definded himself well considering he only had one arm to work with, he thought the assault wouldn't end until Maka was suddenly pulled away, soul pulled her away kicking and yelling. "you better pray you scum! Ill unscrew your head and shit down your neck!" soul grimaced, he had never heard Maka use such language it upset him but he understood. He pulled her into the hall. "come on Maka, come on this is guna end right now, this ain't you!" "ill beat the tar out of him!" "i know you will that's why I'm not going to let you!" Maka slumped against a wall and slid down until she sat on the ground "its over Maka, were done." Maka hid her face in her knees "we're never done soul, we're never ever done." "its going to be okay, I promise one day everything guna be right." Maka's face was red. "i just want to go home, I want to see Crona and my dad." soul crouched next to her, "then were going home. Get your stuff and we'll catch the next ride home. Okay?" Maka nodded "okay." soul helped Maka up, she went to the room were they stored some personal belongings, soul went into the lobby were Giriko still sat, he walked past him and grabbed a bottle of water, he went into the kitchen and pored half of it down the drain and went back to the lobby, he tossed it at Giriko, it hit the wall and bounced off and rolled just out of his reach. "aaah y-you llll-little bastard..." he slurred as his vision began to spin and everything went black. Stien watched across the room, "Evan's?" he looked at soul "a word please?" "sure what is it?" soul approached "I'm letting everyone know that Cthulu has been on the attack all over the world, Washington DC was hit this morning, the attacks are organized and devastating, then there are riots over half the united states and Europe" (excluding the Ukraine which was Already on fire) "great, it keeps getting better doesn't it?" Stien nodded "I'm heading home, lord death needs all of us." soul scraped his foot on the floor "Maka's had it we'll go with you." "just so you know, things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better."
(the lab of Franken Stien)
The big eye stared back at Crona from the inside of her own head, when she closed her eyes it was there bekening her to come to it, let it in, embrace it, the mad beat of an unheard castrophony of screams without mouths, rivers of tears without eyes, black blood seeping from the back of the mind dripping into infinity of murderous night terrors plaguing her every moment of rest. She needed anesthesia, she needed her angle to save her, she would look to the sky and reach to the heavens but but heaven was to far away. The Wavelength machine was almost finished, one last component was needed the positive wavelength coil, a self explanatory piece responsible for manipulating a wavelength into positive energy. All that was needed was to install the piece and it would be complete. But the eye, the eye spoke to her, it whisperd a devious plot to Crona, it knew that a slight modification would cause the piece to have a reversed functionality causing it to emit negative wavelength energy. "why would I do that? That doesn't sound very nice." Crona resend "Maka wouldn't want me to do something like that." it laughed "but Maka wants you to be brave, you must be brave to do something so bold correct?" it talked so sweetly down to her. "your father would do this, a true scientist only cares for observation, now lets observe the chaos of a world turned upside down." Crona didn't say anything, she held the coil in her hand, it was a one and a quarter inch rod of hallow metal coated in rubber then wrapped in thin copper wire with electrical neutral and hot wires on both end, it would be connected to a sophisticated signal reception device converting the signals of a negative wavelength into that of a positive energy, it would then be sent into a transmitting device, a large satellite. As all living things are naturally susceptible and impressionable to wavelengths modifying this device to have negative effects could be devastating and if it didn't take a genius to build one we'd all be dead. She looked at the piece pondering the implications. She layed it down and took out a pair of Cline pliers and twisted the neutral and hot wires on both sides together. "if..its really what she would want.." she got up and knelt next to the machine and began to install the part "the world will feel your pain, let them know what suffering is, their world burning will pail to the chaos in their own heads. You are the true victor." Crona didn't speek. She screwd the panel into place covering the internals, all that was left was to switch it on. She got off of her knees and herd the lab door open behind her. It was spirit, he tilted his head and looked at her. In the lab it looked like a bomb went off, tools laying everywhere, Chinese food boxes, incomprehensible words written on the walls. "whater you doin?" he asked with a hint of lonesomeness in his voice. "the device is complete, I'm beginning activation now.." she shuffled around to the side of the machine. She put her hand on the large lever and pushed up ward. The machine began to hum, the air became thick, the machine along wit the entire house began to shake, the lights flickerd and dust shot out of the air vents. Compressed air seeped thought the valves of air tanks in the back of the lab, the mettle expanding making a metallic groaning. She ducked down and dragged spirit down with her as they exploded, the back of the lab was engulfed in flames, the back wall was crumbled and destroyed, papers flew out into the graveyard around the house and smoke bellowed from the fire that was spreading. Soon the fire prevention system kicked in and water gushed from the overhead sprinkler system dosing the flames. Crona scrambled up and over to the control panel. "whats happening?!" spirit yelled wile grabbing a fire extinguisher. "i accidentally created a high pressure wave, its beginning to stabilize!" "is it working?!" spirit blasted a patch of fire with a white fog from the extinguisher, Crona blinked, the eye was gone and she didn't hear the voice anymore, she made a breath of releaf "it working."
(Cafe Blue, Death City)
"this is a long shot I understand..but" Kid was always so nervous around Erika, he would always forget what he was trying to say. "we usualy have a guy for this but hes not here at the moment.." Erika knew how hard this was for him, she nodded and try'd to sort through what he was saying and what it had to do with the coral he held in his palm. "do you think you can tell us where this may have come from?" she raised her eyebrows "the sea?" kid laughed even though she didn't expect him too, he pulled his collar to the side to vent some of the heat trapped under his coat, "i mean specificly, do you think you can narrow it down with some research? Maybe some testing..." she plucked it from his hand and looked at it for a minute. "huh..yeah this came from way down deep." She held it up to the light of the Cafe. "yeah, bottom of the ocean for sure." She pointed to it holding it in front of kids face, he was astounded that she deduced all of this by just looking at it. "those sudel ridges are from the oceanic pressure." she held it in front of her face "you have some volcanic sulfur residue so defenetly comes from somewhere with volcanic vents, typical of a place so deep." She looked at it even closer "this family of coral is what would be found in the pacific, its not rare. But I think if you look in the places I specifyde you'll find the rest of it...somewhere." there was silence after she finished. "i think I love you." kid said turning red. She sighed "Kid.."
(somewhere in California)
You have not experienced the full range of human emotion until you've ridden through the high dessert at night in the freezing cold in the back of an M3 halftrack. This world war two era has no heating or air conditioning and some models don't have a roof, for our friends returning from the field they had such luck. Rather they had constructed a makeshift roof out of a few spare shelter half's they half haphazardly tied to the outside, it kept the wend and dust out but not much else. Stien took the wheel though he had never driven such a machine, and if you don't know a halftrack is when a tank and a truck have a baby. He had the hammer down blowing though the dust like a rocket sled of rails, everyone and a wile he would slip out of focus from his lack of sleep Medusa would quickly turn his screw and keep the steering wheel steady. it Was on the last stretch to Death City in the first moments of sunrise after Stien's eyes had gone bloodshot, he had to close them they inched shut and water pored out from his dry tear ducts, her wiped his his eyes when suddenly there was a loud thud at the front of the halftrack the chassy rocked from side to side. Medusa and Stien looked at one another. "that was a cactus right?" Stien said still with his foot on the gas. "uuhh" Medusa looked in the rear view mirror. One of the black beasts lay on the dessert floor shrinking in the distance "yep." she nodded.
The beast twitched and writhed and then layed flat, after a moment it sat upward, its hand griped the black membrane concealing its body and tore it away like tissue Revealing the paper white flesh underneath, its ripped the black cocoon from its body and for this first time felt of its features. It was a humanoid type being, it hod no hair on its body and a human face but void of any scars or blemishes, its eyes with sunken Dark sockets and orange pupils with reptilian corneas, its fingers were all the same length and stood six feet tall, its body almost sickly thin. It had no cloths but in the sun it would not burn. It picked its self up off the ground. It began to walk and walk and walk through the endless desert repeating words to itself in its forgotten language, its chant of victory and of hatred. "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even Death may die."
Book Three: The Three of us
