Aw man you guys are making me feel bad for making you feel bad. This WILL get better though! Within a very few chapters, even. (This chapter also answers your question of how much worse it will get, Mitsuo the Universe jumper. The answer is "very.") I'm sorry about your cat, WriterGreenReads! Let them know that I love them dearly and never meant to disturb them with my evil mean writing.
January 17th, 2021
Arya's POV:
Halloween. All Hallows' Eve. To the ancient Gaelics, Samhain.
To Death City, apparently, some bizarre mix of Vatican City Easter, American football Superbowl, and normal Halloween celebrations. The city had been subtly preparing for weeks –a few more orange and black garlands here, some more bat motifs and jack-o-lanterns there, some posters, some decorations, apparently an absolute run on all the costume stores– but now, on October 31st, I had spent most of yesterday staring in dumb shock at the sudden explosion of decorations and holiday spirit as the entire city was transfixed by a whirlwind of festive mania.
Now, siting in 42 Icecream, I was trying to offer Rex an orange-sherbet and chocolate mix with little batty sprinkles on top for comfort, and failing miserably.
For a whole week, we'd been coming here after school, to the point where the owner practically reserved the window booth for us, and with enough devoted poking and prodding and get-to-know-you questions, I'd almost gotten us to the point where we were wary of each other, but still on cordial terms. Rex didn't look like he'd keel over if I threatened him anymore, and he no longer frantically checked the spot for contamination or poisoning whenever I accidentally brushed up against him. For my part, I knew a lot more about Rex and his various quirks, which would hypothetically help me in my quest to get him a new partner.
I wasn't sure I liked the idea of finding a different partner for me, though. Rex already knew so much about the stuff I needed to keep under wraps, it might just be easier to suck it up and tough it out with him by my side, rather than going to the potentially enormous risk of leaving him as a loose end when I found a new Weapon. The only way I could be absolutely sure Rex wouldn't talk was to kill him –obviously, a ghastly and impossible thought– or just stick with him like glue to make sure he didn't have a reason to out me. Aside from the blackmail and the impenetrable tangle of his past partner issues, I also liked Rex as a friend, and didn't want to leave with things half undone.
My concerns were not the problem right now, though, because Sid had been murdered sometime late last night, and Rex was understandably distraught.
Since I knew Sid was going to be coming back arguably stronger than when he'd died, obviously I was much less grief-stricken, but there was no way to express that without either making Rex accuse me of insanity or of being a heartless monster. I was instead left to made exaggeratedly happy noises with my ice cream as Rex stared dully at his artistic bowl, not once having set spoon to treat.
"Sooo…" I finally said, tapping a finger on the table. "Is this a "shut up" kind of grief situation or a "please fill the silence" kind of grief situation?"
Rex made a vague noise, palming his cheek and setting his elbow on the table, and finally he finally lifted his free hand to prod listlessly at the ice cream with the plastic spoon.
There was a bit of ambiguity there.
"The Death Festival is nice." I continued, mentally cautious but keeping my tone bright. "Halloween's an awesome holiday. I really like the gothic aesthetic, and dressing up in costumes is so fun. Plus there's free candy, and going house to house at night is kinda like an adventure to get free candy. It's a great holiday. Better than Thanksgiving, which is racist as shit, and Christmas got overtaken by capitalism ages ago."
I wondered if history had been changed enough that those weren't actually holidays people celebrated, and Rex thought I was talking about some weird Witch shit.
"Plus fall is a beautiful time of year. I lived up in Virginia, you know, so we get them fall leaves like aaaaaall up in the forest. Glorious. People fucking come as tourists to check out our leaves. Uh, not my family's specifically, just like- all the leaves."
Rex made another vague noise, swirling his spoon around and around in the ice cream and turning it into a sludgy, mud-colored mess.
Fuck it. I was ripping the bandaid off.
"You know, Sid's been at the DWMA for a while." I said quietly. "He knew the risk of what I was doing, and I bet he was glad that it was him rather than any of his subordinates who got killed. I know I would be."
"You don't know Sid." Rex said, his voice hoarse. "You don't know how he died, either."
Technically I did, but I couldn't exactly say that.
"No, but I do know how he lived." I said. "He would want us to be strong now, right? To keep soldiering on and avenge him, or at least live our lives to the best they can be. He's a teacher. He always wanted us to learn and be better."
"Yeah…yeah." Rex straightened up a little, and a bittersweet smile ghosted over his face. He was still sad, obviously, but he was no longer in a fetal ball of depression, and hopefully that state of mind would last for long enough for Stein to bring Sid back to life, and then, of course, the source of Rex's sadness would be fixed.
Sudden movement on the street made me glance over to the window, and I tensed and grabbed Rex by the collar, yanking him full-body over the table. Rex instinctively transformed –responding to my movement as his meister or to the rain of shards as the glass window exploded over our heads– and I was already rolling backwards out of the booth with Rex in tow by the time the Traitor straightened up, standing with a crooked head on our now-ruined table. It was some girl I didn't know, but the fuku and tiny Lord Death patch on her collar let me know that this was a fellow NOT student. She didn't have a finger-blade of any kind, but there was a large, pointed shard of glass clenched in her left hand. Her fingers were bleeding profusely around it, but she didn't seem to feel any pain.
Her right eye glowed with a lurid swirl of purple and red.
"Another of those Traitors?!" Rex gasped. "Wait –she's a NOT student!"
Ah, the expository speeches of anime. How I hadn't missed them.
"Rex, transform back and see if you can find some rope in the store or the kitchen or something." I said, keeping my eyes on her. "And tell the owner to call the police or the DWMA or something."
"What are you gonna do?!"
"She doesn't have a blade, so she can't poison me." I said. "I'm gonna tackle her and go from there."
"But-"
"Look, we can't fight as a unit, so just get the stuff and let me fight alone!" I snapped.
"I-"
But the girl wasn't going to give us any more time to argue as she jumped off the table, and I dropped Rex and moved into her lunge, grabbing her left wrist. If I controlled that, I'd win this fight, since she was a middle-schooler and I was larger and heavier.
The room flashed blue as I heard footsteps, so Rex must've listened to me, and I hooked my foot around the back of the Traitor's ankle and sharply jerked it towards myself as we both grappled for her makeshift blade. She fell backwards and I rode her to the ground, wincing at the crunch of glass beneath us both as her back hit the floor. Hopefully, she hadn't cut or stabbed anything important, and even if she didn't react to the fall like a normal person should by getting dizzy or even sparking out, I was still able to twist upright, practically straddling her ribs as I grabbed her "knife" arm with both hands. She strained against me, trying to bring the glass shard down on my wrists or stab it up into my torso, her expression blank and both eyes mindless. There was still some kind of intelligence in there, though, because when I proved strong enough to limit her movements she tried to grab her weapon and switch hands, forcing me to grab both of her wrists as we struggled together on the floor.
"I'm back!" Rex said as his footsteps crunched over to me.
"What've you got?" I grunted, the glass shard swaying and jerking dangerously as me and the girl strained to control it.
"Zip-ties."
"Great, I'll try to get her wrists together, and you lock 'em." I said through my teeth, then shifted and spread my elbows, slamming the girl's wrists together as hard as I could. In a normal person, the pain of that would've made her gasp and her grip weaken, but under the spell of Shaula's venom, the girl didn't even react. She just immediately started to try and pry them apart again, because whatever limited intelligence that was driving her either let her compute our words about tying her up, or she was just trying to resist whatever I was doing solely because I was trying to do it to her. It was kinda hard to tell.
Getting the spread zip-tie over her shard of glass and fists was equally if not more difficult, especially with all the little jerks and swerves that happened when she strained especially hard against me, and then we were presented with a new challenge as Rex got it down over them –to where my hands were keeping her from shrugging out of the tie. Rex looked at me with a question in his eyes, and I hissed out a thoughtful breath.
"Uh, get ready to tighten it." I said. "I'll slide my hands down an inch, and you can lock it then."
Rex nodded, and we did just that –he yanked the zip-tie tight just as soon as I moved my hands out of the way, clasping the NOT girl's wrists together as she continued to struggle and writhe beneath us. It was obvious that one tie wasn't going to hold her for long.
We didn't take any chances. We were practical, and zip-tied a dozen more over her wrists, all the way down to her elbows –after grabbing her shard of glass, of course– and then borrowing an apron from the ice cream guy and wrapping it around her arms before tying them to her chest in a makeshift straitjacket. We also zip-tied her ankles and used another apron to bundle her lower legs up, then dragged her over to a folding chair and zip-tied her ankles and upper arms to that, as well. The whole time, she didn't stop squirming, and we regarded even her bound form with worry as the storekeeper fretted in the dubiously safe recesses of the kitchen.
"You might wanna douse the power and then lock yourself in the freezer or something." I said to him in aside, staring at the girl. "At least until the DWMA gets here."
Rex nodded.
"Thank Lord Death the both of you were here instead of at the Festival." the storekeeper said, wringing his hands. "If you hadn't been-"
"The Festival!" Rex gasped in that anime tone of sudden realization, and bolted out the door.
"Oh, uh, shit, yeah lock yourself up somewhere safe until the day's over I guess -REX GET BACK HERE!" I yelled as I ran out into the street. He didn't listen to me, of course. What did a Witch know?
Eh, I probably knew a heck of a lot about what was going on right now, by Rex's logic. That was probably why he slowed down not even a block away, and turned to me with a glare when I caught up.
"Did you-"
"Nope, not on me, none of my plans or business." I said immediately, a little out of breath. "Also, those Traitors should be fuckin' everywhere, so let's not run off without any kind of a plan, huh?"
"You knew about this?" Rex said in tones of utmost betrayal.
"Eh." I answered vaguely. "Not really? I can, uh, sense the magic from the Witch controlling this, though. It's everywhere."
"Can you lead us to the source?" Rex asked, a gleam in his eye.
I did not like that gleam.
"Uh…maybe?" I said delicately. I couldn't actually sense Shaula's power, and all I knew was that she was in some kind of churchyard-like area, on top of the church, and Tsugumi and Anya had tracked her there by messenger bats. "You do realize, though, that we're both NOTs? And we're shit at fighting together, don't lie to me and say we aren't. I can barely wield you."
"But we're trying to hurt or kill our target, this time." Rex said, before his expression quickly shuttered and he took a step back. "Unless you have a problem with hurting another Witch-"
"I don't give a damn about her." I sneered automatically, which made him relax. And he did…kinda have a point. Hitting harder than I meant to was hardly a problem when I meant to kill this woman. We'd been steadily getting better at dealing with each other, too…it was just barely within the realm of possibility that we'd actually manage to take down a Witch.
And if we didn't work together well enough?
I had my Colt on my hip, in preparation for this day.
"Fine." I said with a short breath through my nose. "We'll do this. But we have to be careful of all the infected NOTs and regular people and whoever else is wandering around –they'll attack us, and we don't have time for detours."
"Can you disguise us with magic?" Rex asked as we started off down the road again, me looking up at the sky for bats.
"Not my speed." I answered absently. A flicker of movement –there, and I glanced ahead to an alley and turned on its corner. "Keep me posted if there's anyone ahead of us, I'm following her familiars."
Rex grunted in acknowledgement, and with his help, I managed to thread my way through the city, following the errant flapping of bats. Soon we were aided by the sound of explosions as well, and I slowed to a stop, holding out a hand to stop Rex as well.
"What is it?" he asked, looking at me. I looked down the thankfully-deserted street to the cross-section of another road and the rise of the familiar church and belltower beyond. It was there, behind a row of houses, that flashes of pink light and explosions were streaking into the sky.
"We're too late." I said. "Some of the other NOT kids are taking care of her."
"How can you be sure?" Rex asked as I saw a figure in a dark dress with vibrantly-patterned hair flip up onto the flat roof.
"That's her, Shaula Gorgon, and she is about to be fuckin' obliterated."
"How do you-"
A spear of pinkish light lanced up from the ground as, even from here, we heard the courageous yelling of Anya and Meme. That light drilled right through Shaula's side, and she staggered, half her body torn away, before withering into nothing as Anya and Meme skidded to a stop at the edge of the rooftop, Tsugumi's Weapon form held between them and no longer glowing.
"Oh." Rex said dumbly.
"Yup." I said. "First come, first serve, and we were too late. Oh well. We probably wouldn't have done that good against a Witch anyways."
"I guess…" he agreed, a little reluctantly. "Now what?"
"Well, if she's dead, then all her thralls should've stopped being thralls, so…I guess we can help with cleanup?" I said, scratching my cheek.
Rex shrugged, and we looked around the street for something to do. Thankfully, this street seemed to have largely missed out on all the rioting and stuff, and we meandered down towards the intersection, looking both ways for any disasters to clean up when we got there. Rex seemed a little disappointed that we hadn't gotten to duel Shaula, but also relieved –he likely knew as well as I did that Witches were tough customers, and assigned as the last part of soul-collection for a reason.
"At least we can help with that." he said, pointing towards some kind of storage building with the wooden shutters torn off on the ground floor, probably to be splintered and then used as clubs.
"Hey, disaster cleanup is a noble task."
"I know, it's just…I wanted to do more." Rex said as we reached it, leaning down to pick up some of the discarded bolts. "I wanted to help avenge Sid."
There was really nothing to say to that, and I looked away uncomfortably, my eyes skating across the dim interior of the empty storage room that this particular awning had protected.
There was a skitter of movement inside across the floor inside, and I froze.
That was a scorpion.
Maybe it was nothing. Death City was in a desert, after all. There was no reason for a scorpion not to be here, except for the fact that it was inside a building owned by someone, it was also widely considered a pest, and it was in the vicinity of a Witch who had two big sisters that had cheated death before by stuffing their souls or the fragments thereof into their signature animal.
I ran into the room. I had tough hiking boots on, and I could afford stomp that scorpion with them.
"Arya-?!"
Rex scampered in behind me, and I saw the scorpion rustling in the darkness and raised my foot and-
-was slammed back by an implosion of magic, hitting Rex as I flew across the floor and taking us both down to the ground as red-purple light swirled around the room. Despite being tangled so hopelessly together, we both managed to look up in time to see an enraged-looking Shaula, multicolored eyes dancing with fury, one hand outstretched towards us.
"DWMA filth." she snarled, and I gulped. I could feel Rex trembling underneath me.
"Don't you know squatting in someone else's storage block is rude?" I said as my mind temporarily shorted out. I couldn't think of what to do, and for lack of anything else to stall her while I came up with an idea, my brain apparently defaulted to "sarcastic quip."
Probably not the best decision, but my thoughts weren't really moving quickly right now. Or coherently. This was the closest I'd come to staring death in the face for a good long while, and the most helpless I'd ever felt while doing it. Facing Shaula while on our feet and in the open was one thing, facing her while we were gracelessly collapsed on the ground was quite another.
I quickly grabbed the cloth of Rex's shoulder and he transformed into my hand, so at least that obstacle was gone, and when Shaula reared back I scraped my foot around and hauled myself to my feet, lunging sideways as her braided tail of hair stabbed into the concrete where we had been. My heart slammed against my ribs as I kept Rex between me and Shaula and backed away from the wall I'd nearly run into, cautiously feeling my way towards the exit behind us.
"Arya…" Rex said, and I could almost feel his fear.
"Chill." I said, my mouth dry. "I've…maybe got this."
"Oh do you, now?" Shaula hissed, her braid pulling back. I wasn't sure if it was flesh or hair or something else entirely, only that it was the same poisonously vibrant shade of magenta and purple that her eyes and the eyes of her Traitors had been, and dappled all over in a weird, flower-like pattern. "I may have been defeated by those brats, but I've lost my patience with you scum. You'll die like the filth you are!"
"Or you'll die like the bug you are." I said. "Scorpions are bugs, aren't they? Like, arachnids, at least."
Before Shaula could reply to that somewhat disingenuous statement, I twisted my will in a familiar pattern, and a shimmering yellow wall appeared between us. I took a hand from Rex as his tip clinked to the floor and shoved, both with my mind and my hand, and the magic wall slammed Shaula back across the room, crushing her to the brick –and continuing to exert pressure.
"What?!" Shaula choked. "You-"
"Not interested in hearing the nani the fuck? anime bullshit today." I muttered, lowering my eyelids as I continued to shove, the brickwork starting to crack behind Shaula's body. "Just fucking die already."
She bared her teeth in a snarl as the bruise-colored glow of her magic suddenly seethed to life around the real Witch's body, and I felt pressure being exerted back against my wall. That was fine, I could just keep upping the ante. She'd just lost a fight, and whatever fakeout she'd used to survive it, she still had been injured in some way, or at least weakened and exhausted. I could beat her. I could totally beat her.
For a few seconds, the air thickened and shimmered with magic as we strained against each other. I eventually had to drop Rex and close my eyes, putting all of my concentration and effort into crushing Shaula into the wall like the bug I'd named her. It was fine, she was pinned there with my magic, I could totally manage this. Sure, she was strong, but this much magic being used was bound to alert meisters sooner or later, and at this point, I'd take being busted over Shaula winning out. I was obviously trying to kill her, and thus was on the DWMA's side, and Rex could vouch for me as far as that went. I therefore wouldn't be killed on sight if I was exposed as a Witch, and then maybe I could explain what I wanted and actually have things progress faster.
Something twinged at the edge of my consciousness, but I couldn't pay attention to that, because my magic wall fractured and broke at the same moment with a sound like shattering glass. Rex screamed my name as my eyes shot open, and I froze.
"Kh-!"
Shaula was standing in front of me, eyes burning with hate.
Rex was standing between us.
The point of Shaula's stinger was buried in Rex's chest, and he was already starting to twitch as foam leaked over his lips.
11.22 AM, USA Central Time