The Source of Power
By: Yamiko #7
Welcome to Chapter Five, also known as Chapter Four Part Two! I'm actually going to go through all the plot and explanation that should have been in Chapter Four in this chapter, so be sure to let me know if I miss something or if there's something you don't understand.
Thanks for reading and reviewing and here's Chapter Five!
Chapter Five: Power Sharing
"Are you feeling better?"
"Yeah." Rosette nodded. "A little." She and Chrno were sitting side by side against the wall of the hallway. They hadn't gone far after her crying session. Nobody was around to overhear them anyway: why bother moving?
Well, Joshua was there, standing next to her and looking wary. After his part in the "test," he deserved to know what was happening.
She scooted a little closer to Chrno. He blinked. If she does that again she'll be in my lap.
Getting burned by holy water scared her a lot more than I thought it would.
"Rosette." He took a deep breath, let it out. This would not be easy. "I need you to tell me what you've been doing."
"I..." She shook her head, buried it in his shoulder. "I...I just...I..." Her breathing shortened.
Oh, please don't get hysterical... He put his arm around her shoulders. "I'm not angry," he said quietly. "I just want to know so we can figure this out."
Her breathing deepened, evened. Crisis averted, at least for the time being.
"Okay." She looked up at him and proceeded to tell the whole story, from the arm injury that had started it all to the man in the woods and their daily meetings.
"How is the wound on your arm?" Chrno asked quietly when she had finished.
She blinked. "I'd forgotten all about it." She rolled up her sleeve to expose the flesh where the wound had been. "Gone. Not even a scar."
Chrno fought to stay calm. That wound had been a deep claw wound from an exorcist job. It should have taken weeks, maybe months to heal completely. For it to be healed and to have left no scar... They've gotten that far already!
Rosette saw the look on his face. "I'm in trouble, aren't I."
"That," Chrno sighed, "is the understatement of the year." He met her eyes. "What you've been doing with this man is called Power Sharing. Not only is it inherently dangerous, it is also highly illegal both here and in Pandemonium."
Rosette gasped. "What? You're kidding! I...I had no idea!"
Another sigh from Chrno. "Obviously."
"Wait a minute - what's Power Sharing?" Both Rosette and Chrno jumped - they had forgotten Joshua was still with them.
"It's..." Chrno paused, getting to his feet. How to explain this... "It's a kind of trade between a human and a demon. A contract, of sorts."
Rosette stood, shivering slightly. That was the last thing she needed.
"The demon shares their Astral with the human," Chrno continued. "Since the Astral has already been processed through the demon's body, it carries a demonic taint when it travels into the human. As long as the contract continues, the human gains slight demonic abilities: increased speed, stamina, and-" he looked at Rosette. "-healing. The energy from the demon only lasts for twenty-four hours, hence the need for daily meetings." He left out the part about the possibility of the human to gain other demonic powers, namely the ability to channel energy into attacks. He didn't think Rosette needed to hear that right now. Plus, she hadn't been showing any signs of that sort of ability. Not really.
That reaction that I had to our kiss...that doesn't really count...does it?
"So if it's supposed to be a trade, what's the demon get out of it?" Joshua questioned.
"The demon can demand a price of its human partner. Normally it's some sort of favor, something the human can do that the demon cannot." Chrno caught Rosette's gaze, the question clear in his eyes.
She shook her head. "He didn't want anything."
"Did he say that, or did he just not mention it?" Chrno demanded, his tone changing from gentle to grave in a matter of seconds.
"He never brought it up." Rosette took a small step backwards. Chrno was definitely not handling this well. She couldn't tell if he was angry or scared. Maybe both.
"You do realize he can still demand that price." Chrno's tone had changed again - accusatory.
"Damn it!" She returned his glare. "How the hell was I supposed to know that?"
"That's not the question!" Chrno snapped. "The question is, how could you even think of doing something like this with somebody whom you know nothing about! I bet you haven't even seen his face!"
Rosette took another step backwards. "Shut up," she whispered.
"Don't you get it," Chrno continued, oblivious to her quiet protest. "In doing this he's created a bond between you! You have no idea what he could be doing with that right now!"
Yet another step backwards. "Shut up."
He grabbed her shoulders roughly, put his face close to hers. "What makes you think he hasn't already messed with you somehow? He could be controlling you! What makes you think he's not in your head right this second!"
Lost thoughts flashed through her head. The missing ideas were all about him...
"What makes you think you're safe!"
"SHUT UP!" Rosette screamed, putting her hands against Chrno's chest and shoving with all her strength.
Startled, Chrno stumbled backwards.
A sound pitched between shattering glass and cracking rock split the midafternoon air.
Chrno leaned against a pillar, now in his full demon form. He glanced down at his appearance, sent a shocked look to Rosette, hissed an empathetic profanity in a language she couldn't understand -
And vanished.
Joshua looked to his sister, wide-eyed. "What just happened?"
She looked back at him, panting heavily from her outburst. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Shader." Chrno knocked on his friend's door for the second time that day, wondering whether she had ever seen him like this. He doubted it.
"I'm coming," Shader called groggily from inside the house, physically awake but - THWACK! Thump. "Owwww! What's that chair doing there?" - mentally still lost somewhere in her afternoon nap.
Chrno's appearance would come as a nasty shock. Hey, the voice from earlier nudged a corner of his mind. Maybe you should warn her, brainiac.
As much as Chrno hated to admit it, the voice was right. Again. "Hey, Shader," he called. "Before you open the door, you should know that-"
Too late. Shader had finally managed to make it through the furniture-laden obstacle course that was her kitchen (with minimal bruising) and had opened the front door. She gasped in surprise, dropping the ever-present coffee mug that had taken up residence in her hand.
Well, that definitely answered his earlier question. She really hadn't seen him like this before. This had certainly been a day for firsts, none of them pleasant.
He swooped down and caught the mug before it reached its inevitable, gravity-driven end of becoming nothing but broken shards of ceramic spread pell-mell across the tile floor. He winced as the coffee, still unaware that its fall had been abruptly halted, sloshed over the edges of the cup and scalded his fingers. I thought she told me she liked her coffee cold.
He straightened up, met Shader's gaze. "-my glamour is broken," he finished lamely.
"...So I noticed." She took the mug from him and stepped back into the house, allowing him entrance. He made a beeline for the sink and stuck his hand under the faucet, turning the water on as cold as it would go. Burns were a pain to heal, pun not intended.
"What I can't quite figure out is how," Shader continued slowly. "Who did this to you? Who could possibly be strong enough to break your glamour?" In addition to being a show of brute strength, breaking another demon's glamour was also a grave insult for which death was not an uncommon form of retribution.
"Who broke my glamour?" Chrno gave a bitter laugh.
"Rosette did."
Shader repeated her performance at the door, gasping and allowing her mug to fend for itself against the forces of gravity. This time, Chrno let it fall. Between sprinting halfway across the kitchen, making a spectacular diving catch, and simply being burned again for his trouble or letting the damn thing break...well...
He kept his hand under the faucet's steady flow of water and watch the mug meet its aforementioned, inevitable, gravity-driven end, shattering into tiny ceramic bits and allowing the coffee that had been enclosed within it to spread its Rorschach pattern across the tile.
Chrno looked at the puddle of coffee at a few more seconds, wondering if you really could see shapes in those weird little blobs, then turned his gaze to Shader, who was still frozen in shock. "I don't think you need any more coffee today."
Shader finally broke out of her trance. "That's crazy!"
"No, not really. You're jumpy enough as it is."
"No, no!" Shader shook her head and waved her hands in front of her as if to clear the coffee jokes from the air. "I mean the thing with the-the-the, y'know, and the yeah, a-a-and the..."
"Thank you, Shader." Chrno turned off the faucet and moved to sit in one of the chairs in front of the table. "Your eloquence astounds me." His lip curled in frustration as the chair, which had been so cooperative only hours earlier, now decided it simply couldn't accommodate its occupant's wings and nearly dumped that selfsame occupant unceremoniously onto the floor. Only a balancing act worthy of the circus tightrope kept Chrno's rear perched, however precariously, in that seat.
"But...but..." Shader wound down slightly and sat in the seat across from Chrno. "How could Rosette have broken your glamour?"
Chrno sighed and put his head in his hands, causing him to teeter dangerously in his seat. He wrapped the bony tail that grew from the base of his skull tightly around the back of his chair, careful not to cut into or through the wood. "It's nothing good," he began.
"No kidding," Shader replied. "I thought it would take some sort of disaster to break your glamour. Instead, all it takes is your girlfriend."
"Same thing," Chrno muttered, looking up at Shader. She was sitting and the mug, being smashed on the floor, was absent from her hand. It was the perfect time to drop another bomb.
So he did. "Rosette has been Power Sharing with another demon."
Shader gasped again and fell sideways out of her chair.
Chrno jumped slightly in surprise at this completely unexpected reaction. The small movement caused him to lose his already delicate balance, and he promptly toppled from his seat to the floor, pulling the chair over with him.
And gave a frustrated sigh. He was about level with his mood right now...maybe he'd just stay down here.
"I can't believe Rosette would do something like that!" Shader exclaimed, climbing back into her seat. Realizing he would look rather stupid if he remained on the floor, Chrno righted his chair and followed suit. "I had a hard time believing it too," he replied, "but with the proof staring me in the face, what else was I supposed to think?"
"She just doesn't really seem the type," Shader continued, seemingly oblivious to Chrno's reply.
"I know," Chrno said quietly. "Getting hurt like that must have really put a dent in her self esteem. I thought she'd gotten over it." I was wrong.
"Hurt like what?" Shader was finally paying attention.
Chrno sighed. "About a week ago, Rosette went on a solo mission. Some demon had gotten ahold of an artifact that amplified demonic powers...something like that. I don't really know the details. The demon was rabble, far too weak to have any sort of rank, but using the artifact...I could feel the power waves at the order, almost a mile away."
Shader whistled. "Amazing."
"Amazing, sure, but definitely not a good thing." Chrno paused for a moment - he wasn't sure how to continue. "I have no idea how Rosette managed to kill it. It ripped into her arm before it went, however. I could tell she was upset that she got hurt that badly by a Rankless, but she acted like it was nothing. I thought she realized the artifact had a lot more to do with her getting hurt than the demon itself did. I thought she knew that it wasn't a sign of weakness on her part." He crossed his arms on the table and buried his head in them. Much to his relief, the chair decided to cooperate and allowed him to remain sitting. "I thought she would come to me if she were upset," he continued sadly. "She didn't."
"Well, of course not," Shader said matter of factly.
Chrno looked up in surprise and had to grab the table in order to keep the chair (whose cooperative streak was decidedly over) from spontaneously depositing him once again upon the floor. "What makes you say that?"
"Well, she loves you, right?" Shader didn't wait for an answer. "I'll bet she looks up to you, too -" She held up a hand to silence Chrno's protest "-at least a little bit. People never want to admit weakness or failure in front of the ones the love. To Rosette, admitting weakness to you would be like admitting that she wasn't good enough to be in the Militia."
A shocked silence followed this speech. Then-
"How...how did you..." Chrno shook his head slowly. "I thought you were a scientist, not a psychologist."
"True." Shader nodded. "I am, however, a girl."
A slight grin crossed Chrno's face. "Touche," he said tiredly. Today's mess had gone from spill to overflow, and "today" wouldn't be over for a good five or six hours. "So," he continued, "now that we know what the problem is, how do we fix it?"
"Well.." Shader drew out the word, obviously thinking rapidly. "Power Sharing is like any other addictive drug. The only real cure..."
I'm ending the chapter now. How many of you hate me?
(A multitude of hands go up)
Yeah, that's what I thought. It's late, I'm tired, I have homework to do, and this chapter is five pages long. I think I deserve a break of sorts. Chapter Six should be here by the end of the month. (No promises - I have to have two gigantic papers written by the end of the month as well.) I am insanely jealous of those of you who have the time, energy, and talent to update once a week.
(Sigh)
No ranting down here...I'm too tired. Good luck with whatever is going on in your various lives right now, have fun if you can, and please don't kill me. As always, I am actually trying, believe it or not. n.n If you have any questions, leave them in your reviews and I'll try to answer them. Thanks again and again for reading my story.
By the way (and slightly randomly), I've decided I need a beta for this story. (I do have my terminology right...a beta is a happy little editor-person, right?) I'd like somebody to check it not only for the spelling/grammar errors that my laptop overlooks, but also for style and content (what haven't I explained, whether or not I've repeated words, awkward phrasing, etc). Any volunteers? (Hopeful smile) Just let me know.
'Til next time!