Hey guys, sorry about the super-long wait, but I've been going through my student teaching/unpaid internship to get my bachelor's degree/teaching license since January, and I am SUFFERING™ for it. The gap year I'm gonna take after this is going to be SO fucking worth it. That being said, I managed to slide in and write some stuff during the teacher's strike that's been going on in my host school's district these past few weeks. A strike essentially means that, since I'm a student teacher, I just sit at home and wait for them to be done striking, and since there's an awful lot of time on my hands...might as well use it, yeah? Sorry again about the update gap, I've not really had time to write anything at all, period, except the yearly Higurashi Month prompts here and there that I'm saving up for June.
And it's always best to double-down with your illegalities, WriterGreenReads. Why bother just being a Witch when you can also be armed and dangerous?
March 20th, 2022
Arya's POV:
"Nope." I turned a page in the latest textbook Rex and I had to try and speedrun-memorize.
"Why not?!" Blackstar yelled right next to my ear, at a volume that was quite frankly grounds for an assault charge.
"We've got stuff to do over the weekend." I said, and turned another page, more to make a point than anything else. Rex, more foolish –or perhaps still not wise in the ways of Blackstar– clapped his textbook shut and made to answer.
"We're trying to catch up on all our classwork during the week, and hunt Kishin Eggs on weekends." he explained, foolishly inviting further conversation, and I sent him a longsuffering look as I twisted my finger in the ear closest to Blackstar, trying to clear out the tinnitus.
"That's stupid." Blackstar said, crouched over us at our study table in the library as Tsubaki smiled behind him. There was something strained and vapid about her smile that made me think "customer service," and I winced in pity. "I mean, you guys just got into EAT like what, a week ago? You try to study too much and that crap's gonna leak right out of your ears, dudes. No way you can remember all of it."
"That's quitter's talk." I grumbled, removing my finger warily. After all, if he was gonna shout again, it'd be good to have the volume blockage. "And besides, even if we aren't studying frantically during the week, we've got monster-hunting on the weekends. That does not fit in with going to your place for…"
"A super-awesome 'Blackstar is Better than The Gods' victory party for kicking that Kid dude's ass." Blackstar said, somehow keeping a straight face while he did so. Since Rex and I were reasonable students that got to class on time, we'd missed the fight Blackstar was talking about, the big duel he and Soul and Kid had fought in front of the school a few days ago.
If I remembered my plot points correctly, though…Kid had gotten worried when watching Blackstar and Maka fight Stein and made to help them, and then, when Lord Death said that as a non-student, he couldn't help, ordered his father to enroll him. Blackstar being Blackstar, the resultant school-wide giddy rumors about Lord Death's own son becoming a member of our class had put a bee in his bonnet, and he'd roped Soul into teaming up with him in an attempt to assassinate Kid…who showed up to school three hours late, having obsessively made sure everything in his house was spic and span before coming to school.
Kid, naturally, had completely decimated them, but since one of Soul's attacks had nicked his bangs and sheared off what little hair symmetry Kid had (what with the three white stripes on one side and all), he'd spat blood and collapsed, which according to Blackstar's logic meant that he and Soul won the fight. Kid was allegedly still on bedrest, with intensive counseling sessions to follow, and Blackstar was bouncing off the walls in his smugness.
I sighed, though, remembering Stein's lackadaisical "Everyone study something…" as he wheeled off with Maka to proctor the fight a few days ago. You'd think a scientist (mad or otherwise) would have a more gun-ho attitude about learning…
It wasn't that I begrudged the extra time for me and Rex to catch up on lessons, but the lazy attitude still grated a bit, since Stein was one of the people who'd be teaching us to survive. Extra homework time did not make up for a lack of "how to fight monsters" lessons, in my humble opinion.
"Blackstar, quit making so much noise in the library!" a familiar voice came, and I winced, slouching a little more as I tried to bury my nose deeper in the textbook. "There are people trying to…study."
When I dared to flick my eyes sideways, Maka fucking Albarn was standing there, thick book in hand and a pensive frown on her face, looking at our little tableau. Soul was nowhere to be seen, but then, this was the library after school hours, and I was pretty sure the man wouldn't be caught dead putting that kind of effort into his education.
"Oh, hey Maka." Blackstar said, cheerfully oblivious to the mood. I grunted something that might vaguely be seen as a greeting, trying to figure out a way to exude 'please go away' vibes without being overtly rude about it. It wasn't that I disliked Maka, it was just that she reeked of plot and plot relevance, two things I was keen to avoid. Blackstar and Tsubaki were bad enough, but at least they weren't main characters with the capital M. Maka was a main main character, as in, the story was told largely from her perspective, the plot mostly followed her and Soul, and she was featured front-and-center in all the ensemble covers or artwork. She was fully A Main Character, and thus someone I definitely shouldn't be involved with if I wanted to avoid future plot-related shenanigans. Which I did, very much so.
"Are you bothering these two?" Maka asked Blackstar, raising her book warningly and putting one hand on her hip.
"Yes." I said at the same time Rex made a politely iffy noise.
"Ah, I'm just tryin' ta get them to loosen up." Blackstar said nonchalantly, reaching out to pinch and pull my cheek like a friendly grandmother as my skin distended cartoonishly and I grunted in annoyance. "Arya's, like, way too super focused on her work, she should learn to unwind and relax a little like the great Blackstar!"
"We have a lot of stuff to catch up on." I said, trying to fend him off without starting a tussle I'd inevitably lose. My years of fitness training had strengthened my arms a fair bit, but his muscles were like rocks. "Since we got into EAT at a weird time."
"Blackstar does have a point, though." Tsubaki said, looking at the piles of textbooks on our table. "If you guys study and train constantly, you'll burn yourselves out before too long. It's good that you want to catch up, but you really should take a few breaks here and there."
"Yeah!" Blackstar shouted, letting go of my cheek as it smacked back into proper configuration in a way that made me yelp. "So come to our place this weekend and party!"
"Setting possible workaholic tendencies aside…" I groaned, rubbing both sides of my face. "I'm not sure Rex and I could survive any parties you give. 'Specially not if there's alcohol involved."
Given the energy levels, lack of impulse control, and buffoonery Blackstar was generally working with when he was sober, the idea of the kind of smoking crater(s) he would create when he was intoxicated was a terrifying one. Forget about property damage, we were talking property annihilation. I had to wonder, if the businesses in Death City were explicitly warned against providing alcohol to DWMA students, that there wasn't an extra asterisk at the bottom that double-forbade Tsubaki and Blackstar specifically.
"Nah, we don't usually have any booze." Blackstar said, the 'usually' bringing with it dawning dismay from me and Rex both.
"Maka Chop!"
Blackstar faceplanted on the floor, his skull dented and smoking as his body gave a few spasmodic twitches. Maka held her thick textbook where his head had been, scowling down at the prone body of her friend.
"Sorry about that." she apologized, turning to us and tapping the spine of her book a few times against her palm, like a policeman might a baton. "You should know that even if we are DWMA students, minors definitely aren't allowed alcohol, and we stick to American drinking laws here. That means up until you're 21."
"Eh, I'm cool with that." I said with a shrug. I'd recently spent six months in a world –well, a time, more specifically– when drinking light alcohol was The Done Thing at most meals, so I'd gotten more than my fair share of wine and beer. And honestly, I wasn't enamored of it. The taste wasn't anything worth swooning over, and thanks to my hopefully-healthy-levels-of-paranoia, I especially didn't like the idea of being tipsy and vulnerable.
"Mmhm." Rex agreed, playing with the cover of one of his textbooks.
"Good." Maka gave a short nod, before her eyes drifted to our high stacks of books. "You know, if you guys ever need any help studying, I'm top of our class and I'd be glad to be of assistance."
"Oh yeah?" Blackstar asked, levering himself up from the floor with both hands. "What about Ox?"
Maka's expression spasmed into a fierce scowl.
"MAKA CHOP!" she roared, piledriving Blackstar into the ground with the spine of her book again, hard enough to cause a crater and an explosion of dust. Tsubaki knelt by the twitching corpse of her partner, worriedly holding out her hands to his evaporating soul as Maka turned back to us.
"Ignore Blackstar." she said with a cheerful and slightly ominous smile. "Ox and I are tied at best."
"Uh-" Rex raised his arm, and I grabbed his hand and pushed it flat to the table.
"That's nice." I said with the approximation of a sweet smile. After all, as fiercely competent and devoted to her goals as Maka was, she was also approximately three or four years younger than me. I couldn't remember if she was thirteen or fourteen or even twelve at this point, but still. I was eighteen and therefore had at least some form of marginal, specious seniority over her.
It was hard to remember that sometimes, though, perhaps because the first time I'd ever seen Maka it was when she was hacking up a Kishin Egg with curved claws as long as she was in a stunning display of scythe-twirling acrobatics.
My right eye twitched slightly, even as I held my smile.
I am not jealous of children. Ciel and Sieglinde were bad enough, I am not jealous of children. These guys are anime protagonists and they totally don't fucking count.
"So, would you like to come have a study session with me and my partner this weekend?" Maka asked, tilting her head as a friendly if still somewhat bossy gleam shone in her eye. "We have an extracurricular mission to go on, but it'd be no trouble at all to tutor you afterward."
"Uh…" My smile tightened into a ghastly rictus as I tried very hard not to look at Rex and he tried very hard not to look at me. It wasn't tricky to figure out what he was thinking: close contact with my fellow meisters might out me as a Witch, which if he wanted to achieve his dreams was something to be avoided at all costs. On my end, as much as it hurt and broke me in my fan's soul, I really, really did not want to get involved in a friendly manner with the protagonists of a shounen anime. That was a direct line to getting pulled into their adventures, which I wanted to avoid and especially wanted to avoid until I figured out how deadly those adventures would be. If it was the anime, at least, I could afford to ease up a little. "Well…"
Maka smiled encouragingly. What was left of Blackstar gave another spasmodic twitch on the floor.
"Rain check?" I offered. "Rex and I are actually busy this weekend, but maybe next time."
Rex blinked beside me and opened his mouth, and I stepped on his foot as quietly as I could.
"Busy, yep." he agreed, instead of whatever he had planned to say. He tugged his foot out from under mine with a slight wince. "Super busy."
***Time Skip***
"Um, Arya?"
"Shh." My eyes flicked over the boards tacked to the wall.
"Arya, this really isn't-"
"Rex," I drawled, reaching out and laying my arm over his shoulders. "We already told Maka and Blackstar we were busy this weekend. Right?"
"Right…" he said slowly, giving me a wary look.
"And if we weren't busy this weekend, that'd be a lie to get out of hanging out with them, right?"
"Right." he nodded.
"So by painstakingly sneaking back into school after they saw us off and frantically searching for a mission, we're actually avoiding telling a lie." I told him, patting his chest with my free hand. "If we find and sign up for a mission that goes on this weekend, we'll make it so we actually told them the truth the whole time."
"Yeah, but that doesn't negate the fact that we did lie to them to begin with." Rex pointed out, shrugging off my grip, and I raised my hands in a nonchalant shrug of my own.
"Doesn't it, Rex?" I asked breezily. "Doesn't it?"
"No." He had the audacity to roll his eyes a little as he reached up to adjust his glasses with one finger. "Seriously, Arya, this isn't…good. You shouldn't be operating like you're still in your family business."
"My family business is exactly why we're operating like this." I told him, glad to take the excuse that was being offered. Being afraid that my totally-real-Witch shenanigans would come to light was a good reason to be standoffish around the other meisters, and much more plausible than my real reason of wanting to avoid being directly involved in the future and all its attendant nonsense. "Now button up and help me find our excuse."
Rex sighed a little, but lifted his eyes to the wall of plaques and started reading with me.
"What about this one?" I finally asked, pulling the tiny board from the wall. "'Eliminate a mob boss in Italy –team effort.' It's applicable for one-star teams and it happens this weekend. Since it's a group mission, it shouldn't be too risky, and we'll have a good chance of snatching at least one soul. Plus, Italy! It's been a while since I've been there."
Rex rubbed his chin, trying and failing to look not interested. After all, his taste for opera meant that he had a decided amateur interest in Italy, and it wasn't hard to imagine the idea of taking a break while we were out. That meant that we could go see the sights, take in some architecture, maybe find time for some food, some culture, some souvenirs…
"Hey." I leaned in closer as my voice sank to an insinuating whisper. "Since we're trying to kill time here –you know, to avoid being dishonest and all– and to relax on weekends like Blackstar said we should…we could go see an opera."
Rex began to sweat.
"Th-this still isn't moral."
"A real opera in a real opera house. And not just any opera house, but, like, one of the Italian ones."
"I know what you're doing, a-and it's not working! It's not!"
"Didn't Italian people, like, invent opera?" I continued musingly. "Certainly they're one of the countries who has the most history with it, seconded by like, what, the Germans and French? Imagine how awesome it'd be to see an opera where the business was born. I bet it'd be a life-changing experience."
Rex was shaking faintly and sweating buckets.
"I mean, the history of one of those places alone would make it worth the trip! And I've totally got the money to splurge on tickets, since I won some pretty sweet bets back in-"
WHOOSH.
"I- we'd like to take this mission, please!" Rex blurted at Auntie as he slammed the bulletin down on her counter hard enough to make it crack. I looked down at my suddenly-empty hands in surprise.
When did he…?
I shrugged to myself, and then slowly moseyed on over, standing beside Rex as he steadily turned pink and Auntie complacently rummaged in her files for us.
"Not. One. Word." Rex squeaked through his clenched jaw, and I grinned, slinging an arm around his shoulders.
"Sure thing, partner."
***Time Skip***
There was a bit of stuff and nonsense with paperwork –not shots or passports, we were all up to date on those and apparently a DWMA student ID card was good for a lot– as the week drew to a close, mostly waivers to sign and schedules to arrange. After all, this was a group task, which meant other meister-Weapon teams to coordinate with and other arrangements to be made as far as travel was concerned. Excitement built in me, and Rex too, if the restlessness he showed in our apartment was any indication, as the weekend approached: I was used to fighting, but fighting with other people who would have my back was a novel experience, to say the least.
In the world I had just vacated, Sebastian would be happy to leave me for dead to say the least (demons being notoriously averse to magicians and also lacking in morals in general), and all the people I'd fought against and alongside in Hetalia could, without exception, physically pick me up and tie my body into a complex bloody knot without much effort, which made my participation in any fights…less than vital. But now this was real combat with real stakes and, for once, other people who were just as fragile and squishy as I was.
It made an enjoyable difference.
It also felt like –and I would not speak these words to anyone– a lot like a tour group as we all gathered in the airport near Death City, credentials in hand (or pocket) and hovering around a water cooler surrounded by paper cups, inscrutably thin black straws, and some indifferent packets of instant coffee. Some people were sipping nervously from the drinks they'd whipped up for themselves, others checking over their luggage, and a few paying rigid and tense attention to our coordinator –who was, apparently, a two-star meister that worked in Italy– as they waited for instructions.
As for me personally, I was engaged in a somber and not at all frivolous game of Go Fish with Tessa and Lukas on one of the airport tables, since they had by a very happy coincidence also taken the same mission as us. There were three more pairs, not counting the four of us (Rex was on standby, keeping half a nervous eye on the coordinator and half on our game), which made eleven people, all told, set to go and hunt down this mob boss and assorted mooks. I'd almost feel sorry for them, whoever they were, if not for the very simple fact that the list of crimes that got you put on a DWMA hit list was microscopically short and inversely threatening. "Attempting to become demon god" and "slaughtering and eating innocent people" did not a sympathetic picture paint.
"Arya, eights." Lukas said, and I glanced through my hand.
"Go fish."
"Arya, threes?" Tessa asked as he drew, and I made a face and flicked over the three of spades.
"Fuck you, you know that?"
"Hah! It's all skill." she replied proudly, dropping her pair onto the table.
"I'm seriously feeling outnumbered here." I continued, shuffling through what I had and musing on which number to ask. "I should pull Rex in so we can go partners against partners instead of two versus one."
"Please don't." Rex said distractedly, keeping his gaze fixed on the coordinator as the man paged through what looked like plane tickets and some kind of gridded checklist.
"And you have no proof we're conspiring against you." Tessa said smugly, and I gave her a flat look.
"Lukas, fours." I said by way of reply.
"Go fish." he answered, and immediately continued. "Arya, sevens."
I barely had time to hand the card over before Tessa hit me.
"Arya, fours."
"Fuck the both of you." I groaned, extending my fan of cards slightly to let her snatch one of their dwindling number. "This is a textbook conspiracy."
Tessa opened her mouth –probably to say something sharp, knowing her– but both our conversation and the game had to come to an end, as the coordinator spoke up.
"Alright, brats!" he said, his voice sharpening and deepening in a way guaranteed to draw attention. "Everybody's got their luggage and everyone's here, so onto the plane. Gimme your names as you go and hopefully we won't lose anyone before we even land in Italy."
The three of us collapsed our fanned cards and handed them to Lukas, whose deck we had been playing with, as he gathered up the discarded pairs and added them to the stack. We grabbed our bags and moved out with the others, walking in a straggling double-file line to the terminal that had apparently been reserved for us.
"Tessa Johnson, meister, and my partner Lukas." Tessa said ahead of us, before passing by the man and strutting into the echoing hallway, her travel bag over one shoulder.
"Arya Thompson, meister, and this is Rex." I said, jabbing my thumb at my partner as he gave a slightly nervous wave. This close to our coordinator, I was starting to have some trope-led doubts: the guy looked like a textbook copy of a noir cop, right down to the hardbitten expression and the cigarette dangling from his permanently-scowling mouth. It was something of a shock to hear an Italian lilt to his voice instead of the hard edge of a Chicago or Bronx accent.
More to the point: when dealing with mobsters, anybody that looked this much like a stereotypical chain-smoking hard-hitting noir cop got my hackles up. This guy was either trustworthy beyond reproach or so crooked that not even ten miles of curling tongs would straighten him out, and no way for us to figure out which until his sudden, mandated –and of course, completely unexpected– betrayal. Noir tropes were full of twists and turns like that, and even if I'd never actually seen a movie in my life, I knew damn well that they had very, very few genuinely honest people…and those that were honest tended to be the murder victims or innocent bystanders who instigated the plot.
He glanced us over, glanced at his clipboard, and waved both me and Rex forward, and I gave the man one last wary look before plunging into the echoing skybridge between us and the plane. We hadn't used one of these extendable corridors –an echoing, empty hallway that could be squeezed in and out like a massive accordion– to reach our plane before because it was so small, but in light of the amount of teams coming with and the apparent need for a private debriefing, we had a small passenger plane all to ourselves. Sure, we could have walked up a ladder, but the desert winds were picking up, apparently, and so necessitated this extendable enclosed gangway.
The heat of the faintly laughing sun overhead poked fingers into the thin corridor, the walls hinged in on themselves in several places so that they could collapse back together, and our feet clomped loudly on the plain, thin carpeting. The noise of the plane's engine got louder and louder as we approached, finally coming to the curved wall of the plane itself as the engine roared, sounding like the noise of a distant churning waterfall turned up to 1,000, and the warmth from the desert washed and fluttered over us from the bursts of wind that pushed through the inch-wide gaps between the skybridge and the plane.
We stepped over and inside as the roar muted, heading back with the other teams. Since this was a commercial plane (albeit a small one), there were rows and rows of passenger seats that we weren't using, and everybody, unsurprisingly, was gathered in the first class section as we stowed our bags overhead and got ready to take off. I waited with half an anxious thought that our coordinator would do something untoward as the last few pairs filed in, but no. Here he was, packing nothing away –I suppose, since he was going back to Italy and only dropping in Death City to gather us up– and finding a seat for himself as we all buckled in. Rex had window seat.
Our coordinator didn't say anything as the pilot went through a much-abbreviated safety speech, a few heavy clunks sounding as we detached from the bridge and began rolling down the tarmac. Anticipation began to tingle through me as we slowly swung onto the landing strip, and the engine roared. The plane began to shoot forward, faster and faster by the second, until it seemed like it was barely moving at all and a heavy force was simply pressing us back in our seats, with only the rapid flicker of movement outside the windows to let us know how fast we were actually going.
There was a soft swooping sensation deep in my stomach as we lifted off from the ground, soaring and groaning our way into the sky. I glanced past Rex towards the window, watching the landing strip drop away from under our feet as the glass soon showed nothing but clouds and open sky: craning my neck past him, I saw the rugged terrain and sandy rocks of Death Valley dropping away underneath us.
The most eventful part of our flight –aside from landing again– thus completed, I settled back into my chair with satisfaction, stretching a little and enjoying the plush comfort of a first-class seat. After all, I saw no problem with taking my pleasures where they were offered, especially when something as high-class as this was offered for free. Too bad there weren't any flight attendants, it would have been interesting to see how the treatment differed in first class…and as a DWMA student, come to think of it.
Our coordinator seemed impatient, and we had barely reached cruising altitude and been given the all-clear to move about the cabin before he stood, folding his arms behind his back and glaring down at us.
"Settle down and open up your ears." he said, drawing instant silence from our already-quiet group. "Your five teams signed up to help us on this raid, but make no mistake, you're here for the muscle, not heroics. Who's got a melee weapon?"
Tessa, me, and one other meister raised their hands.
"Type?"
"Nata." Tessa answered.
"Buster sword." I said.
"Sickle, sir." the third meister added. Our coordinator gave a look towards the other two.
"And you?" he asked brusquely.
"Bow and arrow." one replied.
"Shotgun." the other said.
"Shouldn't you already know all this?" Tessa asked, huffing a little and folding her arms. "I mean, Auntie definitely would have told you who signed up for this mission."
"I wanted to see if you were honest as well as an outspoken brat." our coordinator said flatly, making Tessa fume as I bit down a disloyal laugh. Friendly acquaintance or not, that was a good one. "And I do know how many missions you've gone on and how many kills you have to your name, which is all I care about. This is a joint mission and I don't want any heroics, any show-offs, anything but flawless cooperation. You mess up, someone dies, and if you're lucky, it'll be you."
"Lucky?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Lucky." our coordinator replied flatly. "On account of me making you wish you'd never been born if I get my hands on you after."
Someone gulped.
"We're after Cosa Nostra, the leader of the fiercest crime syndicate in Sicily. He's been reported as having his hand in plenty of murders, which the AISE were working out until last Friday, but then he and his men were caught with human souls, which makes it the DWMA's problem." The man adjusted his tie firmly. "Local branch has jurisdiction, but we figured reinforcements couldn't hurt, especially since reinforcements aren't known to Cosa Nostra and his boys the way we are."
I raised my hand, and he pierced me with an expectant glare.
"AISE?" I asked, puzzled by the unfamiliar acronym.
"Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna. Think of them as our FBI, if you're as American as you sound."
I was, but I also spoke Italian, so I just nodded.
"What we're looking at here isn't a smash-and-grab or a sting operation. You're EAT students, so you should know damn well what I mean when I say what we're doing here is an extermination." He surveyed us all with a jaundiced eye. "You're here to kill any corrupted soul working for Cosa Nostra, and if any of you are unlucky enough to get close, the boss himself. Unless anyone in his organization balked at eating human souls for power –which, according to our intel, none did– we are taking no prisoners and giving no quarter. You signed up for this mission as boots on the ground and a buffer between our forces and Cosa Nostra and his men, which means you're getting your hands dirty on this mission whether you like it or not. If you shirk, someone is going to end up dead –and again, you'd better pray to Death that it's you and not one of my men."
"Aye-aye, sir." I said, not at all sarcastically. The man had a point: my experience with Italian mobsters (or at the very least, a mob-adjacent person) was…unpleasant, to say the least. There was a scar on my shoulder and my hip from his throwing knife, and several more on my back from a car crash, and that was just when the guy had been trying to kill me as a casual obstacle to his ongoing schemes. I'd never had the misfortune to stand between him and survival, but I could easily imagine just how much nastier it would make his already-nasty self in a fight. We couldn't afford to have attacks of conscience in the middle of our fights with this Cosa Nostra guy and his mooks, no matter how innocent or scared they looked, because they had one and all been identified as soul-eating monsters, and, well…there wasn't really much coming back from that.
Was there?
To my admittedly distance-hazed memory, none of the characters in the anime or the manga had ever really…pulled back, from that edge. All the cannon fodder Blackstar and Maka and the others mowed down were usually of the "deranged cackling" variety of evil, but what about the people that served Arachne? Most of them were human, to the best of my memory, even if their souls also seemed to be unanimously wicked. What would have happened if someone who specialized in cult deprogramming got ahold of them? Would they revert back to normal?
Giriko, of course, was an absolutely-no-go as far as redemption went, but to the best of my knowledge he'd never eaten any souls, he was just a natural powerhouse with a complete lack of ethics. Everyone else that worked for or alongside the Witches were all Witches themselves, or at least, magical beings whose souls did not have that telltale red rot creeping up their crimson sides.
Crona?
Crona was a bit of a shaky ground, to be honest. Ragnarok's soul dominated his (hers? theirs?), and it was as red as they came, but Crona was a lot more passive, and if my memory served correctly, his (their? her?) soul was the same sort of magenta red-purple that Giriko's soul was colored, neither properly Witch nor fully Kishin Egg. In the anime, certainly, they'd pulled back from whatever edge they were flirting with, but in the manga…well…after Medusa had gotten her hands on the duo again, Crona had honestly seemed to subsume Ragnarok, who protruded with a few generalized screeches but never made any tangible comments again, and Crona had beep full-on warped by whatever mind magic she cast. Medusa had been killed, of course, and good riddance to bad rubbish, but then Crona had flown to the Moon and harmonized/subsumed the Kishin, and then…well, then Crona had taken the sacrifice to keep Asura locked away there, which you could argue was the right idea, but…
Well, the manga was in black and white, so that was a circular argument I wasn't interested in winning.
The main thrust of the story seemed to imply, in any case I could think of, that once your soul became a Kishin Egg, it would take a hell of a lot of human connection and empathy to someone you were close with to turn yourself back, if it could be done at all. Being mafioso, I doubted any of our targets would have someone like that to turn to, and I certainly wasn't interested in becoming that sort of savior to confirmed multiple-count murderers that I barely knew.
I could only hope Rex felt the same way.
10.56 AM, USA Central Time
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