'A piece of important advice for increasing one's life expectancy: stop putting oneself in situations where all options are bad.'
Abigail Jones, The Xenophobe's Guide to Surviving North America
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Chapter 35: Screaming With An Already Sore Throat
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Kid sat in silence, knees up to his chest and head buried in his hands. Something crackled in the darkness: probably a manifestation of his frustrations.
Slowly unfurling from his position, Kid stared ahead into the abyss of what he had taken to calling his mindscape. How he'd ended up here, he wasn't quite sure. After returning to base camp with Liz, Patty, and Joe in tow, the Grim Reaper had simply retreated somewhere for a second's rest and closed his eyes. The next thing he knew, he was here.
A thick strand of a black, shadowy substance rose from the ground, the same material as Kid's cloak. As if being handled by an overexcited toddler, it stretched and twisted before finally shattering into a thousand tiny pieces and dissipating out of existence.
Kid shut his eyes. All of it was wrong. The Madness Relay — the assault — had been a complete failure. He had no idea what happened to Marie, Azusa and the others. And then there was Liz—
Other strands made up of the Grim Reaper's black wavelength manifested in his surroundings, each one writhing more chaotically than the last, each one eventually tearing itself apart with more violence than the last.
Kid took a deep breath. Around him, the shadows melted back into the ground.
He had to keep it together. That was why he was here, right? To relax, to recover his bearings and get his feet back under him. Somehow.
Honestly, what was there to work through? Kid was not confused about what had happened; he was quite the opposite, really. He was frightfully aware of how everything had gone straight to hell, of how Kishin Eggs had swarmed the Academy's forces, of how, in the ensuing activation of the Madness Relay, more than half their teams had lost contact, of how, despite killing so many soul eaters, they kept coming and coming, and of how one of those soul eaters possessed Liz's face.
To top it all off, Kid, supposedly the feared Grim Reaper who had only narrowly lost against the Kishin in a battle he could not recall, could do nothing about anything.
Hell of a Grim Reaper he was.
The tumultuous surface around Kid calmed once again, though this time it was not by his doing. Despite having his eyes closed, Kid sensed a presence approach him. In this place, the only other being he could technically call a being was…
Kid opened his eyes and looked up to regard the figure. As always, all of their body was composed of the same black material as everything in the strange space, the only exception being the jawless skull where their face should be.
"Hello," the figure said with a tilt of their head.
Kid neglected to respond. He closed his eyes again. He doubted there was anything he could talk about with this apparition.
"Something on your mind?" the figure insisted, further tilting their head.
Then again, the figure had helped calm him down on that first night, right after his supernatural nature had been revealed. They had also shown Kid how to create constructs, though he hadn't made any real progress in that regard. Perhaps now… guidance?
"What am I?" Kid let out before he could stop himself.
The figure tilted to the opposite side. "Huh? You're a Grim Reaper silly—"
"How?" Kid cut them off and the figure froze in mid-air. "How did I end up like this?"
In fact, if one was to get to the core of Kid's problems, it all came down to a deep uncertainty about what he was and subsequently what that entailed. His approval of the attack on the Madness Relay came because he wanted to free his friends and family, which itself stemmed from an inability to outright confront Theodore. This in turn came because Kid, despite technically being the de-facto head of the Academy, had no power to speak of, not the 'soft' diplomatic power obtained from building trust with the Academy's Council, nor 'hard' power, a self-explanatory concept.
And then there was Liz, her screams still haunting his mind like a persistent poltergeist.
He was well and truly clueless as to what being a Grim Reaper really meant. Was it ferrying souls to the other side? Was it ensuring the extermination of Kishin Eggs and eventually the Kishin itself? Was it about a general desire to keeps things neat and organized? Was it all of the above? None?
"What do you mean?"
"Like this," Kid gestured to himself. "Why do I look like this?" He frowned. "Why can't I remember anything?" His frown deepened. "Should I remember anything?"
"How would I know?"
"You seem to know a lot of things."
The figure gave Kid a long stare. "Well, you got me there, kiddo!" they said with a playful wiggle that only caused Kid's frown to deepen. "But, I'm curious, what do you think you are?"
"Lost," Kid muttered through gritted teeth. So, nothing had been learned on that front. At least he had tried. "I hope it's not amnesia." Because, if Kid were to be honest with himself, the scenario he feared most was by far the one in which all that was wrong with him was a simple case of amnesia. If that were the case, then how real was his own personality?
"Why not?"
"Because, as I'm sure you're aware, there are all those so-called legends of the Grim Reaper's bloody exploits. Gruesome tales. I'm not that kind of person." Or, at least, Kid desperately hoped he wasn't that kind of person. No matter how he'd fought those Kishin Eggs, the legends of the Grim Reaper invariably involved devastation inflicted upon simple, undeserving people. "But of course that assumes I know my own self, which, considering that I spent roughly sixteen years of my life thinking I was human, is apparently not something I'm good at."
The figure didn't respond and Kid's mood soured further. Of course the figure had no answer for him.
"You're not."
Kid looked up at the figure. "What?"
"The past Grim Reaper." It might have been Kid's imagination, but the figure's mask seemed to have twisted into a slight grimace. "With, uh, their exploits." They approached Kid and bent down to be at his eye level. "You're not them."
Kid managed to stare back at the stygian depths that were the eyeholes in the figure's mask for only a few seconds before looking away. "How do you know that?"
"Because that past Grim Reaper you're referring to is gone," the figure said with a tone of finality.
Kid flinched at the apparition's sudden coldness. This version of events, however preferable, was no more comforting than his worst case scenario. It simply meant that Kid's lack of knowledge would persist forever and that he had to trust himself to make the correct choices. His choices had all carried far too much weight as of late. "Because of my — their fight with the Kishin?"
"And a few other things, but yes," the figure said with a bow of its head. "You're your own person, and…" They hesitated. "I believe there is no need to look to the past for guidance. Especially considering what came of that."
Confronted by grave expectations, Kid swallowed. Sure, it was somewhat comforting to know that he was his own person, but, at the same time, it meant that the Kishin had the power to destroy a Grim Reaper, at least to the extent that whatever survived was a very different being.
Something extended out of the figure's frame, an elongated strand of soul wavelength, its end splitting into multiple sharp points.
Kid followed the extension as it moved behind his back, shoulders tensing. He looked back at the figure, still bent down at his eye level, about to ask what it was doing, when the shadowy appendage lightly tapped Kid's back and he shivered. Another tap came soon after, this one as gentle as before.
He glanced at the extension in growing surprise and realization. The extension was a hand. Kid was being given a pat on the back.
Huh.
It felt… nice.
Kid looked back at the figure. As always, he was met with an expressionless skull mask.
Were they expecting him to say something? Were they gauging his reaction?
Whatever. Kid was exhausted, and the pats felt nice.
He allowed himself to relax, tension easing from his shoulders. He hugged his knees and rested his head on top of them, taking slow, deep breaths.
Eventually, the pats stopped. Opening his eyes, Kid saw the figure staring at him, still bent down in front of him.
"Given that you're still here…" the figure began. "I'm guessing you have a few more things you want to talk to me about."
Ah, right. All the other issues that Kid had to deal with didn't magically disappear with an affirmation of his personhood.
With a sigh Kid stood up straighter, dropping his knees for a cross-legged position. "How… aware are you of what's going on outside? In the... physical world?" Kid was probably butchering any semblance of proper terminology, but at this point he was too tired to care.
"Hm..." the figure trailed off, their mask tilting up as if in recollection. "I can glean bits and pieces. You know, being a figment of your imagination and all that~"
Kid narrowed his eyes. So the figure was still insisting that fantasy was all there was to their existence, a notion that Kid was beginning to doubt. Any figment of his imagination would be nowhere near so calm at a time like this.
"And from what I understand, things have taken a turn for the worse, no?" the figure asked with a tilt of their head.
Kid huffed. "They've been doing that for a while."
The figure's form tilted slightly to the front. "Oh my."
"There was an attack planned in one of the Madness Relays. However, we were ambushed, and the whole operation turned into a disaster." There was so much more Kid wanted to say, about his secret plan to rescue the Deathscythes, but he held himself back. If the apparition was a figment of his imagination, then they knew that already.
"I see…" the figure hummed in thought. "There could be a traitor in your midst. Who had access to details of the plan?"
Kid scoffed. "Take your pick. The whole Council knew. Any of them could have divulged it to anyone." Not to mention Kid had also done said divulging to Joe and a few details of their position to Tezca so that he could coordinate his own extraction force.
"That makes it sound like this is cause for restructuring, no?"
"Initiated by whom? I don't have the power, and those that do would rather kill first and ask questions later."
The eyeholes of the mask turned downwards in a severe frown. "The Academy is yours."
"Technically. The Academy also thinks I'm dead and the one in charge of my body is the Death of old."
"Oh." Like before, it may have been Kid's imagination, but there seemed to be a hint of sadness in the figure's voice. "Hence your earlier questions…"
Kid rolled his eyes. "Well, let's just say that those in control have… expectations, and I'm currently falling short."
"I see…" said the figure thoughtfully. "Well, you're not falling short of my expectations." Upon receiving Kid's confused look, the figure's mask gave him a wink. "Just thought it'd cheer you up~"
Kid looked away, feeling the urge to hug his knees again and rest his head again. "My own self telling me I don't suck. Right…"
While he displayed nonchalance, Kid made sure to pay attention to the figure out of the corner of his eye. That strange behaviors from earlier had gotten him thinking that there was more to the being than what they were telling him. To be honest, he had found the 'imaginary friend' explanation slightly suspicious from the start, but the more time that he spent with the figure the flimsier this so-called explanation felt. A figment of the imagination could only do so much, after all.
The figure's cheerful disposition dropped as they hunched over and gave Kid a frown. "You still look troubled."
Ah, dammit. There was still everything else to think about. All these problems that he was expected — by Theodore, by the Academy, by his allies, by himself — to solve.
"What do I do?" Kid let out.
"What do you mean?"
Kid rubbed his forehead. "All this… I'm in way over my head."
The figure reached out to him, but this time Kid shot the forming hand a wary look. A pat on the back wouldn't solve this.
With a sigh, the figure withdrew their appendage back into their torso. "Trust me, you're not alone. All of us are in over our heads sometimes."
Ah, so no answer. Excellent.
"I'm trying to do different things, to do what I think is right, but…" Kid slumped. "Nothing seems to work, and I don't know if what I'm doing is right in the first place, let alone if it's what I should be doing. I'm lost."
"…I don't know what you should do either."
With a sigh, Kid slumped further.
"But I know what you shouldn't do!" the figure piped up.
Kid looked up, hopeful. Even a piece of advice as simple as 'don't do x' would help at this point.
"Don't give up~!"
Oh, you had to be kidding. This wasn't helpful at all. Kid had been trying, that's all he had been doing, and even then, Liz—
Taking a deep breath, Kid briefly shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the figure was staring at him expectantly. Could they sense that Kid still had more things on his mind?
Whatever. Might as well spill it out.
"There is one more thing I wanted to ask you," Kid began, looking away. "It's…" he trailed off, feeling a lump form in his throat.
Why was he hesitating? If his suspicions were nothing but suspicions, then he was essentially talking to himself. There was no harm done. There should be no harm done.
"It's about soul eaters," Kid continued and glanced at the figure. As always, they were giving him a blank look.
"What about them?" the figure asked, perfectly still.
"I know that once they consume enough souls they become a Kishin Egg, their soul appears a particular way. At that stage, they're too far gone, but…" Kid nervously rubbed his hands. "What about the soul eaters who haven't turned into Kishin Eggs?"
The figure's head tilted ever so slightly. "What about them? Once they start, they will eventually become corrupted."
"But what if can that be stopped?" Kid cut them off, hopeful. "Can a soul eater be prevented from becoming a Kishin Egg?"
It was a shot in the dark, truly, but the figure hadn't guided him wrong before. Perhaps even now there was a solution within reach.
"I suppose the change can be stopped, technically…"
"Really?" Kid leaned forward, taking the figure aback. "How?"
The figure stood up straight. "Why, by killing them of course!"
Kid's face fell. No, this wasn't what Kid wanted, this was the opposite of what he wanted—
Upon seeing Kid's distraught look, the figure slunk back down. "But I'm guessing that's not the answer you wanted to hear."
Kid bit his lip and rubbed his eyes.A direct question hadn't yielded good results. Of course, it could be that the figure just couldn't come up with anything, not that there was nothing that could be done. There had been an idea brewing in Kid's mind for a while, and all he wanted was just the slightest encouragement for him to try it out.
"Once a person eats a soul, an addiction of sorts is formed, right?" Kid began.
"Yes."
"And the addiction gets stronger the more souls are eaten," Kid continued, paying close attention to the figure. So far they hadn't shown any strong emotion to Kid's words, which may or may not have been a good sign. "It grows to the point that the person's mind is completely consumed by the hunger, and their soul becomes a Kishin egg." A phenomenon that was in the process of happening to Liz.
"Correct."
"And the eaten souls are what's causing the hunger."
"Also true."
Kid nodded at the agreement and took a deep breath. This was it. The moment of truth.
"What if we take the souls out?" Kid asked, managing to make his question sound somewhat nonchalant.
The figure gave him a long look. "…What if we do what?"
"What if we — what if I — manage to extract the eaten souls?" Kid asked again and placed a hand on his chest, this time unable to hide his nervousness. "Would that work? Would the…" — Liz's drooling face flashed in his mind — "Would the hunger then disappear?"
Kid gulped as he awaited the figure's response.
None came.
Kid gulped again. "Well?"
"You shouldn't do that," the figure eventually said, all humor gone from their voice as a shiver went up Kid's spine.
"…Why not?"
"Oh boy, I could start listing reasons all night!" the figure said with a nonchalant sway, and Kid felt a pit form in his stomach. "Overall, extracting a soul against one's will is very hard to do, especially if you want to keep the soul intact."
"But—"
"And to add to that, everything can go wrong, extracting the soul from a soul eater against their will like that," the figure continued, speaking over Kid. "The eaten souls could break apart, the soul eater's soul could break apart, the soul eater could die, etc…. Weapons do have the ability to extract the eaten souls, but that takes a very long time, and they can only do so many…" They looked down on Kid, their head tilted to the side. "It's not practical."
Kid listened to the figure in growing dread. They had to be wrong, Liz wouldn't…
"There has to be something," Kid softly muttered.
"As I said, you can kill—"
"I'm not doing that!" Kid shot back, finding himself standing up and leaning towards the figure, hands clenched in anger.
The figure refused to budge.
Kid drew himself back and looked away. He shouldn't yell. There was no point in it. There didn't seem to be a point in any of this.
"So."
The figure's voice echoed around Kid, its timbre lower than he ever remembered hearing before. Kid looked up and his eyes widened.
It was as if the figure swelled in size, for Kid found himself dwarfed by its frame, the thing's shadow engulfing him as if he was a convict awaiting the judge's verdict. He was captivated, unable to look away.
"What are you proposing you do then?"
It was like he was a specimen beneath a laboratory's blinding light and a scientist's microscope. A jewel in the desert sun.
Kid wretched his gaze away, heartbeat hammering in his eardrums. He had thought about this goddammit, and he wasn't going to give up the one good option that he had.
"You said, 'against their will'," Kid eventually muttered, not daring to look up at the figure. "You said there would be problems if the souls are extracted against the soul eater's will."
"Yes," came the figure's voice. It had lost some of its unsettling presence, and Kid was tempted to look up, if only briefly. He resisted.
Keeping his gaze firmly away, Kid nodded in confirmation. "But what if it's not?"
There was a pause.
"I'm not quite sure I understand," came the figure's voice eventually. Its tone was carefully blank.
"What if it's not against the soul eater's will?" Kid repeated, keeping is head low. He still didn't dare look at the other. "What if they want to be rid of the souls they've eaten? What if they regret their actions?"
In the corner of his eye, Kid saw part of the figure's frame sway. "Why would they do that?"
Kid shrugged. "There could be a hundred reasons for it. Like any person, a soul eater can be argued with, persuaded, and so on. I mean, if they became aware of what will happen to them as Kishin Eggs—"
"They will not give up the souls," came the figure's voice, some of its intimidation returning. Kid barely held himself still enough to keep from flinching. "They will never willingly part with the power that they're leeching off their victims—"
Teeth clenched, Kid finally looked up at the figure. "You don't know that."
They looked the same as any other time Kid had seen them. Absurdly tall and thin and wearing that same cartoony mask. Everything was just as it should be, as if that engulfing presence had never existed at all.
The figure tilted their head at Kid. "I don't?"
Kid raised an eyebrow at the figure. What was that supposed to mean? "Considering that you claim to be a figment of my imagination and that I've spent sixteen years raised and surrounded by humans, I'd say I know a thing or two about how people work." He narrowed his eyes at the figure. "You should too."
It was strange, technically arguing with himself like this. Well, Kid would be arguing with himself if the figure were as they claimed to be and somehow not implicated in the strange notions of past and personhood that became so bitterly complex when one was the Grim Reaper.
"…Well, I'd be surprised if you came across a case like that, kiddo~!" the figure cheerfully announced as if the last few tense minutes of conversation had never happened. "After all, the kind of person you're talking about wouldn't eat the souls in the first place, right?"
"Wouldn't they?" Kid asked back. "A lot of people do stupid things when they're cornered."
He hoped he wasn't one of them.
The figure swayed back and forth indecisively. "Hm…"
As Kid watched the figure he let out an involuntary yawn. His limbs felt heavy, as did his eyes. Out in the real world, he was waking up.
"One last thing before you go," came the figure's voice though blurred vision. "You are not the Grim Reaper that came before you."
If Kid's eyes didn't feel like they were weighted down by anvils, he'd roll them. "I think we've established that—"
"You'll be better."
Kid's blood ran cold at those words.
'Better'.
Maybe in the apparition's head it sounded like an encouraging statement. A hopeful, optimistic outlook. For Kid, it was just more pressure. He had to be better. It wasn't just that he had to try; he had to succeed, he had to be better, whatever that meant.
More expectations. More ways things could go wrong, more ways everything could just fall apart on him like the chaotic mess that—
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"Where are they?!"
As Kid's world came into focus, the first thing he heard was Theodore's oh so wonderful voice.
Rubbing his eyes blearily, Kid stretched his neck out and back as he got up from against the inside wall of a van.
His back was sore. That's what he got for sleeping upright apparently, even if it was only a nap. It wasn't as if Kid had much of a say in his choice of sleeping quarters, having only the trip back to the Academy to gather his thoughts.
"An outrage!" came the High Priest's voice as the divider opened and the man let himself into the small space.
Kid tilted his head at the newcomer. "Theodore—"
"This was a trap!" the High Priest announced, hand flying in the air for emphasis.
Joe entered the vehicle following Theodore, looking much less angry but equally disturbed. "The Relay was turned off. That's why everything was going smoothly until we were ambushed…" He paused and looked away. "The only explanation I can come up with is that we have a traitor."
"If we do, I want them found and hanged!" Theodore said, glancing at Kid. "With your blessing of course, milord."
Kid interlaced his fingers. "Are we certain we have a traitor?"
"I don't see how else anyone could have known!" Theodore said, pacing around the small area. "Yes, there were whispers of an attack, but the details of when, where and how were privy only to Council members…" Theodore mumbled. "And then there is the matter of the Deathscythes!" he announced shortly after. "We have no idea what happened to them! They could be dead, in which case good riddance," Kid had to bite his tongue to keep a neutral expression. "but if they were recruited—"
Joe cleared his throat, sparing a glance at Kid. "I don't think there is any point in worrying about that, sir."
"Of course because there is so much else!" Theodore grumbled, extending his arms in outrage. "We wouldn't have this problem if they'd simply been executed!" He looked at Kid. "Along with the Weapon that went mad!"
Kid barely held himself back from flinching. "…How is Liz faring?"
"She is restrained and under guard," Joe informed Kid, face neutral. "As instructed, Lord Death."
Theodore scoffed. "I don't see the point. She's already too far gone, she has been since I laid eyes on her."
"Liz has been restrained," Kid insisted. "She will not eat any more souls—"
"She already ate!" Theodore yelled back.
Kid opened his mouth to respond but shut it immediately. There was nothing he could say in response to that. It was a statement of fact.
So, he said nothing but held steady in the face Theodore's scowl.
Joe let out a small cough. "I think we're needed outside."
"I'll see to it," Theodore announced and headed to the exit. Before he left, he gave Kid a final look. "Do something, Lord Death." His eyes narrowed. "Or I will."
Joe looked between Kid and Theodore before finally following the High Priest and leaving Kid alone.
After the two men left, Kid leaned against the wall of the van and fell to his knees.
Damn everything. Now he had to worry about a traitor of all things. Theodore was out for blood, and apparently Liz was at the top of his target list. Liz, who was in prison with the only reason for her continued breathing being that the Grim Reaper had ordered it so, with his quickly diminishing influence. He believed that he could help her, but he wasn't sure.
Slowly, Kid got up. Now was not the time to fall apart. If he could just do… something, anything...
Squaring his shoulders, Kid took a deep breath and exited the van.
Better. He couldn't be better.
He had to be perfect.
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Beta'ed by riodoodle. Feedback is appreciated.