Oh Arya is just going into this kicking and screaming, WriterGreenReads.
Also, since the author of Soul Eater created his Kishins and monsters almost purely based on pop culture, urban legends, monsters, and historical figures, I decided to carry on that noble tradition by having most of my…OC Kishin?…be based on urban legends, historical figures, pop culture, and my own heaping knowledge of monster lore. I'll explain what each Kishin is based on at the end of every final chapter regarding them. Also, a number of these monsters are very much not American, and the books I have that mention them were written by Americans. If I do something wrong that's obviously not an artistic license to gel their transformation into Kishin, please do not hesitate to school my ass. I always like to learn more about supernatural creatures. In fact, if you know anything about a creature that I don't cover in the fic or note and you would be pleased to share, don't hesitate to do so. I may occasionally repeat this plea for monsters I don't know that much about (since again, usually there is only ONE entry in ONE book, bad for fact checks) or am interested in.
May 19th, 2021
Arya's POV:
It was a decidedly odd thing to be traveling not only with the DWMA fast-pass paperwork, but with another person who'd never been on a plane in their life. The plane we were assigned did not help –in the back of my mind, I'd been wondering about the whole "travel whenever" ticket thing and how they could possibly fit that into commercial flights full of other people, only to learn as we were ushered past security and onto the tarmac that we wouldn't be going in a commercial flight –we'd be going in the small, dinky, airplane equivalent of a Volkswagen Beetle. You know, the kind of thing you'd expect to have been phased out around WW2 but was somehow still kicking around. The kind of plane that was probably outsized by the average school bus.
That did make sense though. Why waste space and airplane fuel on taking us in a big honkin' commercial jet when we basically just needed a taxi service from Point A to Point B? We were just flying across the continental US, too, which meant the flight was probably less than seven hours. Using a twelve-seater plane made a lot more sense than diverting an entire flight –and possibly rearranging the landing schedule of the whole airport– solely for our specific convenience.
I'd expected Rex to be jittery when he saw the small and somewhat uninspiring plane, but he merely gulped and pushed his glasses up his nose.
"You gonna be okay?" I asked, glancing sideways as I made some small adjustment to my apocalypse bag that I held over one shoulder. It had everything I needed, right down to emergency rations and magic tools. Worst came to worst –though I wasn't quite sure how that would happen– I could function on my own in the wilderness, for limited periods of time.
"Yeah. It's just a plane, isn't it?" Rex said, grabbing the brim of his hat to hold it down from any strong bursts of wind as he started towards the rollout stairs. "I trust whoever's flying it."
I don't. I thought automatically, then shook my head. I had no reason not to trust whoever would be flying us out, and even if worst came to worst, I was reasonably certain that I could jump out of an airplane and land safely, though it would involve the use of magic. Hypothetically, I had the runes at my disposal to summon a parachute, but first I would have to know where said parachute was, and even if I did…I didn't actually know how to use one, other than "pull the cord before you die." It'd be much safer and easier to use my magic walls to slide to the ground, or create a series of platforms that I could run down like stairs.
Anywise, point was, I could theoretically survive jumping from an airplane with only my wits and magic to guide me, so there was no reason to worry about a traitorous pilot, or any reason for the pilot to be traitorous. Why bother? We weren't important enough to warrant someone ordering a hit, not yet at least.
Paranoia held firmly in check, Rex and I boarded the plane and put our stuff away, me ignoring the slight novelty of such a tiny flight as we were given an abbreviated safety lecture, before the plane rattled to life. It was so narrow that the seats were one behind the other, with me taking the spot in front of Rex as a matter of course. He'd be less stressed if he could keep an eye on me, in case I randomly started doing something nefarious, and I, personally, didn't really care either way about the seating arrangement. In front of him was as good as behind.
I had my first opportunity to see the area around Death City –the mountains and the desert and such– as the plane chugged off into the sky. I knew Death City was in Death Valley, obviously, and it was in Nevada, but the exact schematics of the surrounding area had been somewhat variable by scene and adaption, like many anime backgrounds were. It was nice to see what the real, concrete version was, especially since mountains looked so very scenic from up in the air.
A deadpan shadow crossed my face as we arched over the peaks, and I saw a series of mountains with huge, cartoonish letters painted on them. If I remembered correctly, that was the practice range where DWMA students with flight capabilities honed their skills…
Once we reached cruising altitude, which was a lot more noticeable in such a small plane, Rex handed up the folder, and I settled back for one last readthrough. We'd already scanned the folder and its contents at length, of course, but there was no harm in checking over everything one last time, especially if it meant we had the information fresh in our mind when we landed.
This was a civilian commission, by which I assumed it meant that someone outside the DWMA had phoned this call in. Apparently, there had recently been a murder –which had been nice and neatly solved, the culprits caught, arrested, and currently serving time. The problem was, the dude that had commissioned us was pretty sure that the graveyard the victim had been buried in had spawned an evil spirit. Apparently, falling into the path of darkness and eating human souls wasn't the only way for souls to become Kishin Eggs: souls that were corrupted by other means still counted. Hence, despite our target very probably being an evil spirit rather than a monstrous former-human, it was still a Kishin Egg, a seed of evil. If left unchecked, it would slowly grow and fester, and certainly take lives.
A few days after the funeral was concluded, our report read off, residents near the churchyard began reporting disturbances. Late at night, long past when anyone would be visiting, their front doors would be tried. These were locked, and the perpetuator would rattle at the doorknob for perhaps five minutes, before leaving. Police were summoned on several occasions, and found scratches, but no other evidence of the perpetuator.
Several young children witnessed a "white shape" drifting across the street from their upstairs bedroom window, describing it as tall and thin, like a person. They also reportedly felt a great dread at letting it see them. So far, no fatalities have occurred, but one officer responding to a disturbance call was attacked and narrowly avoided crashing his car in an effort to escape. The spirit is obviously hostile.
Inspecting the pattern of houses visited, it seems that the visitations have all occurred in the residential area closest to the graveyard, in a rough ring around it. The cause of these disturbances is therefore very probably located somewhere within the graveyard, and are caused by a spirit of some sort. Residents have been strongly advised to lock their doors and windows at night, and many have temporarily relocated to hotels in the area. The situation may be stable, but it is likely only a matter of time before the spirit causes real damage. DWMA aid is requested ASAP.
This did seem like a very good first mission. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the lack of detail about what the spirit looked like or what it could do –I especially didn't like the lack of notes on how it fought– but it seemed like almost all of the detective work had already been done for us. We knew roughly when and where our target would show up, so all we had to do was wait there with blade in hand. It was fairly straightforward, so long as the Kishin Egg in question didn't pull any bullshit powers straight out of its own ass. Soul Eater didn't seem too egregious in that regard –except maybe the "punch of courage" at the end of the anime– so I felt reasonably certain that the enemy we were about to fight wasn't going to suck us into a personal hellscape or suddenly develop mind control or endless regeneration or something like that. That would suck.
Thankfully, there was also a map of the church and surrounding area in our folder, and I spent at least of the flight reviewing both this and the rest of our information obsessively, trying to absorb and memorize as much as I could. Forewarned was forearmed and all that jazz, an attitude that had saved my neck several times in the past.
Then I handed it back to Rex, telling him to do his best to commit it to memory as well, and hunkered down to nap as best I could in the rattling and very noisy plane. I planned to be well-rested by the time we touched down, and ready for the fight ahead.
***Time Skip***
North Charleston was…nice.
I dunno, I didn't really have much but the blandest of platitudes to say about it. It was nice, a pretty average American city –even for this world, where at least a few of the buildings on the skyline sloped and sagged like they were made of marshmallows. It wasn't too cold, wasn't scorchingly hot, wasn't soaking wet or skin-splittingly dry. Pretty average, all things said and done.
We were met on the first publicly-accessible part of the airport by a guy from the neighborhood council, which I guessed was the selfsame one that hired us. Handshakes and greetings were duly distributed, before he chivvied us along to a car he had waiting outside.
"Nothing yet since I sent out our request –no fatalities, no more injuries." he explained briskly as the engine turned over. "The situation's still holding up."
"When you say no more injuries…" I said, frowning.
"He means the police officer in his report." Rex said, and I glared at him a little.
"I mean, what kind of injuries did he get?" I asked our guide, making Rex wince a little. "Did he see what attacked him? How?"
"Scratches, mostly." the man said as he turned a corner, pulling out of the tiny airport. "He said that he barely had time to notice something –possibly someone– standing next to his car, right behind the front left door, before a hand burst through the side window. He floored the gas pretty much the same time the window broke, luckily, so he got away, though if he'd actually hit some of the trees he almost careened into…"
Our guide/commissioner shook his head, as if lamenting someone's fate. I could see it too, a smoking car with a crumpled front hood and a man slumped over unconscious in the driver's seat as that "white shape" drifted closer and closer towards him…
I shivered. Rex, apparently imagining much the same thing I did, shivered too.
"Okay, so whatever it is, it probably can't match the speed of a car." I said, thinking aloud and banishing my shivers. "And it reached for him with a hand, so it probably doesn't have any extra appendages or power it can use without touching someone."
"Most evil spirits don't." Rex told me, fidgeting with his tie a little. "A lot of whatever abilities they have are tied up in how they died, or the environment they're in, if its saturated with enough magic to warp them."
I tried not to cringe guiltily at the mention of magic.
"So, we're assuming that this is the ghost of that murder that happened just recently?" I asked towards the front seat, including the driver in our conversation again, and the man hummed affirmatively.
"Charlotte, her name was." he said, shaking his head again. "One of the last members of a good old family that's been here since, oh, I don't even know how long. Since she's the oldest of the surviving lot, her inheritance is worth quite a bit."
"Always a bad thing when you have greedy relatives." I said when he paused, as though to invite comment.
"Yeah. A few months back, she started acting –odd. Turns out, her cousin was planning to steal the inheritance by getting her committed to a psych ward –uh, gaslight, isn't that the word?" He shrugged his shoulders dismissively. "Anyways, Charlotte started acting all kinds of crazy, only we didn't know that the poor woman was being manipulated. Just saw her screaming, raving all the time. Well, it turns out she finally happened across her cousin plotting, and put two and two together, and really went berserk. The lady that comes by to do for the family –the house is one of those huge old antebellum places you need a professional to clean, or else all the history just rots away– anyways, that same maid came in to start her work and found them both struggling in the kitchen, and before she could say or do anything, Charlotte's cousin took her head off with a cleaver."
"So she ran?" Rex guessed, and our guide nodded sharply.
"Ran like a bat out of hell for town! Of course, with the body still there and blood all over her clothes, Miriam –that's the cousin– was taken up on the spot for suspicion of murder, and investigation showed later that she had a doctor on her payroll, a man that was gonna fake the documents to get poor Charlotte committed somewhere."
"So you think the evil spirit is Charlotte?" I asked, palming my cheek as I leaned my elbow against the bottom edge of the window. "Makes a bit of sense, I guess…I'd be haunting people like that too, if my cousin killed me."
"It might not just be that." Rex piped up. "We know she knew her cousin was behind whatever, um, insanity she was seeing, but dying confuses people. She might still be a little mad, only this time the disorientation is real. She also might be lashing out against her neighbors because she thinks they didn't help her."
"Boy's got a head on his shoulders." our guide said. "You been at the DWMA a long time?"
"Five years." Rex said. "But I was born in Death City, so…"
"Ah, that'd do it. What about you?" His eyes flashed back to me in the mirror. "You been in school long?"
"Itinerant." I said. "And uh, I got into the DWMA a few months ago."
The man hummed, and I pushed away the irrational irritation I felt at the idea that Rex and I were being somehow compared. So what if we were? So what if Rex knew more than me? That was good, because we were a team now, and the more collective knowledge we had, the better our chances of survival were. Feeling lesser than was a strictly me problem, one I shouldn't let spill over into Rex, and one I shouldn't have in the first place, pride and ego be damned.
I shook my head a little and tried to focus. We'd headed out practically at the crack of dawn, so it was just after lunchtime.
"We should stop somewhere for food, and then can you take us to the church/graveyard?" I asked. "I wanna have a look around before night hits."
"Sure thing." our guide said. As a not-insignificant member of the neighborhood watch, I figured he'd know exactly where to go for both of those requests. "You got any plans for tonight?"
Rex glanced at me, because if we did, it'd be news to him. I shuffled a little and straightened my shoulders, trying to think fast and think well.
"We'll see what we find when we go over the scene today." I said. "Uh, obviously we don't want anyone else to stick around in the danger zone tonight –if we could have someone's house key, we can maybe break in and use their phone to call you or whoever when we need a ride back. If we don't take care of things tonight, we'll find a room in a hotel and figure things out from there."
"Sounds like a good plan." our driver said complacently. "Got any preferences for lunch?"
"Nah."
"Not really."
***Time Skip***
We left our bags in the car, something that gave me a little twinge as Rex and I stepped off the parking lot and into the grass that led to the graveyard. Pretty much everything I owned in the world was in my apocalypse bag, and a lot of the stuff in it was literally irreplaceable, both sentimentally and literally. I didn't like leaving it with other people, even if there was no reason for anyone to steal it, and probably a lot of ways for me to get it back if they did.
Ngh. I really needed to talk to the school counselor about what was and was not a reasonable level of paranoia –and then maybe add a little for safety's sake in regards to my meta knowledge and the various enemies attached to that.
When we got to the plot where the murder victim had been buried –Charlotte's plot– I dug idly at the dirt with my sneaker. One of the things we'd recently learned about in science class was the business of burials, wherein a mound of dirt was left on top of the grave to accommodate it sinking and settling. The ground was level now, and more importantly, the earth was packed and solid –no disturbances.
"Looks like she didn't claw her way out." Rex noted, crouching down by the headstone and stirring the dirt with his finger. "If it is her. Professor…Professor Sid always said that going into a mission with prior assumptions is just about the worst thing you can do."
"Mm. Think we should check the other graves?" I asked, looking at the silent rows of headstones and the occasional statue around us. Spanish moss dangled from a lot of the trees, which was a very reminiscent sight: my part of Virginia was southern enough that we had some of it, sometimes, though not as much as the deeper south. "Just to make sure that no one else rose up from their grave and dragged their body with them."
"Should we split up?" Rex asked as he got to his feet again, and I made a face.
"Nah. Besides, the graveyard's not really big enough to need that."
Thus suiting actions to words, we started off amidst the rows and rows of headstones, looking for any freshly-turned earth. It wasn't hard to find, since most of these graves were weeks or months old, and practically every bit of the graveyard was covered in grass or artfully placed banks of hedges. I spread the branches of some particularly suspicious ones and peeked inside, as Rex tapped some of the larger bits of stone with his knuckles, sounding them out for suspicious hollow areas. Obviously a sarcophagus was meant to be hollow, but some of the other blocks were just monuments and obviously meant to be solid stone.
While we were investigating the graveyard for any suspicious patches, I also took some time to build up a mental map of the place, assessing things like easy paths or convenient hiding spots. The entire graveyard, parking lot included, was surrounded by a ten-foot iron fence, plastered thickly in places by paper that ranged from pinned-up notices to straight-up litter that had blown there and not yet been cleared away. This didn't seem like a particularly upscale part of town.
The church itself was front-and-center by the parking lot, of course. It was a small building, painted white, with a peaked roof, and like the rest of the slightly overgrown graveyard, it looked like it needed a bit of spit and polish. When we pushed open the front door, the hinges creaked, making me wince –not so much for the bad sound, but from how painfully predictable it was. Next thing you knew, there'd be cobwebs in the corner of the church and mice scurrying around the edges of the room.
Thankfully, we were spared that.
The room was mostly wood, and the floorboards creaked underfoot as we went in –the chapel was echoy and empty with it, bringing on an overpowering sense of abandoned vastness, like a huge stage that was bereft of anyone else. It was cooler than it was outside too, just enough to make us shiver and pull our respective jackets a little tighter. The smell wasn't anything particularly alarming –wood, wood polish, bits of green from the plants outside, a bit of frankincense or some other churchly incense, and that weird-musty-sweet scent you got from any place commonly frequented by old people.
In short, a fairly normal church, all things considered.
"Seems fine." Rex said, and gave me a baffled glance. "So…what are we looking for, again?"
"We're not looking for anything in particular." I explained to him, pulling a LED flashlight from my jacket pocket and clicking it on as I stepped into the center aisle. "We just need to have a firm grasp on the lay of the land for when things go wrong."
"Don't…don't you mean if things go wrong?" Rex asked tentatively.
"Nope." I sighed, swinging the flashlight around as I bent to look beneath a pew. "I'd love to, but no, no I do not mean that."
"Is this a, uh…" Rex hesitated for a moment, before he selected a euphemism. "…a family thing?"
"That's what we're going with?" I snickered, glancing up at him briefly, before continuing in my investigation. "And, ah, no, not really. At least, I don't think? I wasn't much in 'the family.'"
Though he clearly didn't quite understand what I was on about, Rex shrugged and joined me in peering beneath pews, keeping a step behind and looking at the other side of the aisle.
"This is more of a practicality thing." I explained. "If something goes wrong, I want us to know exactly where everything in this place is, right down to the nearest hiding spot or escape route. And worst-case-scenario aside, if we have a thorough grasp of what this church and graveyard are supposed to look like, it'll pop that much faster if something weird happens tonight."
Rex hummed, apparently mollified by my explanation.
"So, um…" His fingers drummed over the back of the pew he was currently leaning over. "You know the counselor mentioned your, ah, trauma to me, so I could help you keep track of any emerging maladaptive behaviors? Is that…I mean, did you…"
"Yeah, it actually happened, and no, I wasn't making that up for kicks or a cover story." I said, scowling a little at the very idea. "I left some bits out, though, as you imagined. Me, my mentor, and that other guy were all in the family business, as you'd say, so it was all a bit hairier than you might imagine."
"You don't have to tell me." Rex said hurriedly, very much in a 'I put my foot in it and know that and now I'm yanking it out as fast as possible,' placating sort of tone. "I just- I dunno, it seems weird that you of all people would get caught by surprise."
"Flattery will get you nowhere." I muttered from where I crouched by a pew, then, louder, "Anyways, aside from memorizing the lay of the land, we should also actually be on the lookout for anything that looks sketchy. So far, we haven't seen any kind of evidence for where the evil spirit might manifest from, and I don't know about you, but I don't want it to sneak up on us."
Rex shivered in agreement, and we moved on, me noting aloud as we did that the spaces under the seat of the pews might make for a good emergency hiding spot, if we weren't expecting to move anywhere fast. The rest of the tiny church checked out as normal as normal could be –the vestry and bathrooms were just about the only rooms that existed beyond the main chapel, with the even tinier offices for –I presumed– the priests and/or groundskeeper found on the balcony above the entrance door, where the choir or the piano used to be. We had the keys for everything, but they weren't really needed except to unlock the offices: when I used the master key to unlock a cabinet, it just had birth and death records, and Charlotte's didn't tell us anything that we didn't already know.
As we swept back and forth throughout the building, retracing our footsteps several times and never moving more than a few meters away from each other, the afternoon sun started to edge towards the western horizon. Despite the still-bright sunlight, I peered into every nook and cranny I could find with my flashlight, tossing it over to Rex whenever her asked to borrow it for the same reason, but neither of us found anything but dust, wood, and the occasional creaky floorboard. The whole place seemed disconcertingly normal, and it was with consternation that we went to sit on the curb outside, while the dude that had called us in read a magazine in his car.
"Nothing seems out of place." Rex said finally, and I groaned in response, propping my chin on one fist.
"Yeah, but that's kinda a problem, isn't it?" I asked. "I mean, we have no idea when or even if this thing'll show up, or where it'll come from if it does."
"We think it's from Charlotte's grave." Rex stressed, absentmindedly adjusting his glasses. "So what if tonight, we wait just inside the church for it? It'll be warmer than waiting for it outside, and safer, too, if it comes from somewhere inside the church, somehow."
I didn't really like such a vague plan, but I didn't have grounds to dispute it –or any ideas that were better.
"Okay…" I said slowly. "But I want to park myself with my back to the wall and have you keep an eye out behind me, alright? I'm not getting jumpscared to death by a ghost."
Rex blinked a little, but nodded anyways.
"So we'll hide out in the church tonight, until either the spirit shows up, or the sun rises." I said, ticking off various sections of our loose plan on my fingers. "Nothing happens before the sun comes up, we drag ourselves to that house the dude gave us the key for, call him in, and then ride off to a motel. After we get some sleep, we can discuss our next steps. Sound okay?"
"Sounds perfect." Rex said, before setting his jaw firmly. "Let's do this."
9.02 AM, USA Central Time