Special thanks to those of you who reviewed since last time, with a shout out to FateBurn in particular, for leaving reviews on seven different chapters and providing the motivation to stop doubting myself and just get the job done. Reviews are love, reviews are life! :-D


Volume 1, Chapter 24:

Revenant

Part 4

"Where... am I?"

Stretching across his entire field of vision, a pure white landscape was the only thing he could see. And it wasn't like in some movies, where there at least discernible seams and differences in shade between the ground and the sky and/or walls, whichever was applicable; were it not for the small blur of tan in the center of his vision which represented his nose, he might have thought that he was experiencing some weird form of blindness. Still, he decided he had better check.

Lee tilted his head, and confirmed that he could still see when the rest of his body was where he expected it to be. What was unexpected, however, was his outfit: beneath the belt harness that Cloudburst attached to, he was wearing a designer, monochrome, viridian green dress shirt, and a pair of black slim-straight pants. Lee crouched, then frog hopped straight up, and then alighted with a grin; the pants were flexible, despite appearing to be denim.

Over the shirt was a dark, nearly black midnight blue bolero jacket, and while he couldn't see it, he knew that both the left breast and the back would feature a stylized storm cloud, Lee's choice of emblem. He also wore a midnight blue sash around his waist, but his favorite part of the ensemble were the boots on his feet.

They were mostly black leather, with some midnight blue accents, reached to just below his knees, and would easily fall into the ADV category. They featured some thin titanium plates covering his shins and metatarsals in addition to the customary steel cap around his toes. But what truly made them stand out, at least in Lee's mind, were the way they fastened; above the zippers running halfway down the backs, they also featured half a dozen small ratcheting straps that, when properly fastened, and combined with the designer fit, would secure a perfect fit, just as with the rest of his clothing.

Or so would be the case, once he actually had the outfit made. It had been a series of half completed sketches in Neo's sketch book the last time Lee saw it, but he knew that if Neo could see this, she'd be able to finish in no time.

Behind him, there was a small cough, and Lee grinned.

"Think of the devil, and she shall appear! What do think? Looks good, riAGH!"

Lee had finally decided to turn around, and proceeded to jump ten feet into the air; standing before him, resplendent in white, silver, and red, was Summer Rose. Though, standing wasn't quite the correct term; hunched would be a better fit, considering that she was currently busting her gut, the sound of her merriment resonating throughout the empty space.

"Oum Monty, your face right now!"

Lee scowled as Summer continued to laugh, but he remained wary, dipped into a defensive stance about about 10 feet away from her. He didn't have Cloudburst on him, so a pair of raised hands wer-

Never mind. As soon as he'd thought to wish for it, Cloudburst had appeared, and Lee felt just a little bit calmer; at least he had some measure of control over the situation.

Summer noticed. "I see you've figured out some measure of control over this place," she stated with a grin, even as she settled into a stance of her own. Her own weapons, Thorn and Bramble, appeared as she did so, causing Lee to become just a little bit more nervous.

"This should be impossible;" Lee frowned. "You severed the link before I could absorb you."

Summer nodded, even as she developed a scowl of her own. "Disregarding that neither of us have ever heard of something like this happening in real life before, that seemed to be the case. But in the couple of months that I've been here, I've had nothing to do but watch some of your old memories. There was a story where you came from: Harry Potter."

Lee blanched. "You're saying I turned myself into a horcrux?!" Through the horror, Lee supposed it could be possible; Aura was said to be the manifestation of the soul, so, having absorbed only part of Summer's, and so recently before her death that it hadn't had a chance to simply be consumed by his own (assuming it worked that way), it stood to reason that the detached fragment could have served as an anchor for Summer's consciousness; it became even more believable when one considered that he had physically been in contact with her at the moment of her death. With distance not being a problem, that killed at least a few different counter arguments... "So you're not just a subconscious manifestation of Summer's memories; you're a ghost, a revenant. Ye gods, what have I done?"

Summer nodded. "It certainly seems that way, though I would like to point out that even if I am just your subconscious manifesting my memories, it really wouldn't make much of a difference in the end; you're stuck with me either way. And before you even say it, I don't think that there's a way to get me a new body, or to otherwise get rid of me. Even if there was, your boss would just try to kill me again, and then I'd have to kill you all."

Lee closed his mouth; Summer had been spot on about what he'd been about to suggest. And so matter of fact about stating that she would kill him if he did. Of course, considering how their last battle had gone, he had absolutely zero doubts as to whether she could. But... He frowned some more, not even noticing that they'd both relaxed from their combat ready poses. "Well, then, why show yourself? What do you want?"

Summer grinned, and in a way that Lee knew that what she said was going to exasperate him; he'd dealt with Neo for long enough that he reacted to that look on an instinctual level. "What, a girl can't haunt the person who killed her?"

Lee's eyes lowered in shame, settling on his suddenly blood soaked hands; though it wasn't the first time he had killed, it was the one he felt the worst about.

"And that right there is why I'm not doing everything I can to make your life hell."

Lee's eyes snapped up, incredulous. "Then what the fuck were you trying to accomplish earlier?!" By 'earlier,' Lee meant the last time he'd been asleep, during which he had lived Summer's final moments.

Summer just shrugged... But not without letting him see a teeny smile on her face. "It was the best way to get you to accept that I'm not just a manifestation of your guilty conscience; scaring the shit out of you was an added bonus."

Lee wasn't quite sure he believed her motivations, but considering that it had been an effective method to convince him, he had no choice but to let it slide. Besides, there was still one very important question he needed to ask:

"Why even bother? If you've been in here since Fairbrook, then you know what my boss has planned for Remnant, and that I fully intend to support her in it."

Summer's expression hardened, and Lee gulped as she marched straight up to him. However, the conversation thus far seemed to imply that Summer meant him no harm, so he stood his ground, looking down to meet the eyes of the short woman scowling up at him.

"No you don't, not fully."

"Oh yeah?" Lee fired back. "How would you know?"

"Besides the fact that I literally live inside your head?" Lee winced at his own stupidity, but continued to stand his ground. "You wouldn't have hesitated at the thought of telling Cinder what really happened at Fairbrook."

Lee turned away from Summer's gaze, defeated; there wasn't really anything he could say to challenge that. "I... Wish that it hadn't come to that."

"And that right there is another piece of evidence for you not being onboard."

"I won't stop just because I don't like some of the things I'll have to do... The things I've done..."

Lee hopped back a step when Summer's grinning visage was suddenly in his face.

"I'm pretty sure you will."

"And if I don't?"

"You'll at least do what you can to lessen the collateral damage, such as you attempted while planning the attack on me. While I'm not quite sure whether I'd have preferred to be alive but crippled as opposed to dead, your heart was in the right place... Sort of."

Lee sighed; he wasn't quite sure he agreed with the statement pertaining to his morality, but he couldn't deny that she had his motivations pinned.

"...So by helping me, you might help Remnant. But what if I eventually decide to go all in for Cinder? Are you really willing to gamble with those kind of stakes?"

Summer frowned... But it didn't last long. A confident, amused smirk, complete with a raised brow, quickly took over. "I could always go back to haunting you."

Lee remained silent.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." She snarked, grinning as she did. However, her expression quickly became serious. "But just in case you still plan to be difficult about this, remember what I told you while I was dying; 'take responsibility for the path you choose to walk.' Is there a possibility that by helping you, I'll just be making your boss's plan that much easier to accomplish, and that much more dangerous for the people who'll be caught up in it? Yes, there is, and that scares me to dea- Well, I'm already dead, but you get the idea. I'm well aware that this is a risk, but I'm choosing to put my faith in you, Caerulean." Summer paused, and Lee tried to thin-

"Now stop being such a whiny little bitch and let me!"

Startled by the outburst, Lee blinked. And then, exasperation, and green-blue eyes rolling. "Well when you put it that way... Fine. It's not like you're giving me much option anyway."

A warm grin, mischievous silvers glinting. "Nope!"

There was only one appropriate response to that: "Ugh...

"So, just how do you plan on helping?"

"Oh, I already have been. Didn't you notice during your spar with your midget friend?"

Glare. "Don't call her that."

Scowl. "Focus."

Lee continued to glare for a moment, but quickly acquiesced with a grumble, recognizing that there were more important things to discuss than his best friend being fun sized. Such as Summer's memory helping him in his spar against Neo.

"So... Did you do that on purpose? Or did I somehow access that memory on my own?"

"Well..."


What, did you think I was going to tell you exactly what was going on, with absolutely no plot element to necessitate it? You should know me well enough by now to know better than that. For now, all I'm going to say is that Summer and I discussed the situation for a while; I'll let you speculate as to whether or not I got an answer to that last question.

Regardless of whether or not Summer and myself knew exactly how she had ended up inside my head, just how much she could help, and just how much either of us could control said help, the fact remained that my guilty conscience had suddenly become even guiltier; it's one thing to kill a person, but it's quite a bit worse to steal their soul while you're at it. It was enough to send me back to the third stage of grief (though I did go through brief versions of all five during this particular episode); maybe if I found a way to control that power, I could find a way to reverse it, to exorcize the ghost that was haunting me...

Did I ever succeed? Heh. I'm not telling you. Not yet; gotta keep the story chronological. That was the deal, remember? Otherwise, I might end up telling it half a dozen times and still end up leaving out something important. Patience, my friend; the story will get there eventually. But in the meantime... Well, next time, seeing as we're almost out of time for today. Next time, I'll tell you about the next important event, at least as far as I'm concerned; the Kuchinashi qualifiers for the Mystral Regional Tournament that year...


Once again, thank you for reading this far! The main difficulty I had with this chapter (besides playing so much Overwatch that I'm solidly within the top 1000 Mercy players on PSN, that is) was trying to figure out how to bring some sort of closure to the situation, without outright telling you guys what was going on and thus ruin some potentially dramatic reveals somewhere down the road. I also had to decide what I was going to have Lee and crew do during the next arc, seeing as my next definite, major pre-Beacon plot point, Torchwick, is still nearly a year out in terms of this story's timeline, and while I'm okay with skipping a month or three at a time, or maybe even a full six if I decide to end Volume 1 and then go to Volume 2, I'm not about to skip out on nearly a whole year. So we're looking at either two to three more arcs before we get to Torchwick, or one and a timeskip. Lol. Whichever route I go, I am going to go ahead an promise that I'm not gonna make you guys wait another couple of months for it.

Until next time:

CeruleanSorbeltz