K: Midnight: A K Project Fan Fiction

Chapter Two: Colorless

December 19, 2012

"When all is said and done, we couldn't have asked for a better king."

Izumo and I watched Mikoto vanish out of sight, leaving us alone, surrounded by the broken fragments of Ashinaka Tower. Night had come, and with it, a silence furthered chiefly by the muted showering of snowflakes dripping lightly from the sky.

"Come on, Anna. Time to go," Izumo said to me, and I took his hand to leave. Though comforting and guarding as he was, I felt it starkly nonetheless: the hand I held was not Mikoto's. It was living, sure enough, but not so full of life, not like the warmth of red I loved so much. It didn't matter who it was. No one — not Izumo, not anyone — could stand against Mikoto in my eyes. The thought of this both soothed and saddened me.

Our steps crunched atop the newly fallen snow, our breath a hollow echo in the air. There was a vague uneasiness: we thought it was the tension of events, and partially it was; but then Izumo twitched and sent his arm protectively before me, his shoulders hunched, his body shielding mine. "Wait," he breathed, peering through his glasses, keen eyes shifting one way, then the other through the dim illumination of the frost.

I realized I was cold all of a sudden, colder than the winter air allowed. It sent a little shiver up my spine. Even Izumo, little warmth that he was compared to Mikoto, went stone frozen and I found us both immobilized, strained and overladen by a force we felt approaching like a viper circling its prey, slithering covertly, inching its way in before the final pounce. Blearily woven into thick, lackluster mists, we heard it whisking through the air, first a gentle breeze, then rising like a gale: a diabolical giggle twiddling around us.

A instant fog rolled in, thick, harrowed, sinister. I knew it all too well. From its inky blackness — the fog more like a fume of toxic sludge — three darkened figures loomed, one on every side. The Shadows had come, and they were not alone.

"Going somewhere, are we?" Toyed the giggle, circling the mist. "But where's the fun in that? Why don't you stay and play with me!"

Without command, the Shadows drew katanas in a parallel alignment, the blades themselves the basis of a barrier that locked us in a trifold beam of stunning midnight power. The giggle hovered over us, humming all the while.

Izumo, hardly one for rash actions, calmly swept his hand across the field. A single, graceful flick released a blaze of sparks, a thousand darts of fire, shattering the barrier with one concussive boom. The enveloping fog lay interspersed with reddish fumes of ash.

The Shadows cowered back a pace, coughing through the smoke. Their weapons, rendered useless, clinked in broken shards atop the snow.

Izumo turned to me. "Anna, go!" He ordered, and though I thought to run, my little shoes turned to lead and I froze, my urge to help commanding me to stay; however, a stern, insinuating glance from Izumo said that I was stupid if I thought I had a chance. He was right. What help could I have been? Against a normal enemy, the fact that I was useless was a strain; the fact that this was my enemy made it even worse. Knowing that what I needed to defeat them was the power they possessed had made me hesitant to leave; but of course, that was pointless. Thus weighed by the practicality of the moment — and Izumo's threatening stare — I forced myself to once again withdraw from what I knew I couldn't win. I tore reluctant fingers from his hand and started full-speed toward the largest gap between the Shadows.

I didn't make it very far: perhaps three steps at best before my foot collided with a sudden outstretched limb that brought me tumbling to the ground. Without thinking, I extended both my hands to break my fall and watched as one of my marbles flew up out of my grasp and balanced in the air before my eyes. In the brief instant that it held itself mid-air an inch or two apart from me, I stared intently at it, seeing as I did, the spirit of a fox, as purely white as snow, reflected in its core.

I whipped around to see a fourth Shadow standing over me. He wore a fox's mask, and while I knew that outwardly, this was indeed a Shadow, the image of the fox inside the marble made it clear: this man was but a vessel, and what this vessel harbored was none other than the Colorless King. It was he who tripped me, venturing out of nowhere through the fog, as though he knew that I would seek to run through that specific gap in his defenses, thereby trapping me exactly where he planned. It made me angry at myself that I was fool enough to fall for it.

On hearing the commotion, Izumo spun to view me cornered, at the mercy of the fox. Alarm flashed in his eyes. His impulse was to run to me, to save me, yet in doing so, relinquishing his guard for but a fraction of a second, the others overpowered him with three concurring blasts of midnight aura aimed and fired all at once. Together, they struck with unimaginable might, forcing Izumo down with what appeared to be a horde of slinky coils winding round his form. Cleverly, he thrashed about, searching for a weakness in the coils. He tried to slip away, to blast them off, yet every move he made, the coils themselves — alive, it seemed, and finely tuned to motion — quickly multiplied and dug into his skin. He was trapped.

"Come, now, is this really the best you can do?" The Colorless King degraded us. "This is going to be easier than I thought! What a shame, for I simply crave the excitement of a chase! Don't you?"

Turning back to me, he leant his head, observing me with a quizzical twist of his mask. "At last! Sweet, innocent Anna! How very hard you tried to run, but here we are again!" He twittered mockingly at me. "Silly girl. I can almost feel the last of your power coursing through your tiny little veins! Too bad I didn't get it all the first time. I'll just have to fix that, now won't I?" He reached a hand to touch me, but I cringed and slunk away. "I'm so very hungry!" He whined, his fingers crawling out for me. "Won't you give it to me?! I'm just dying for a taste!"

"Hey Dumbass!" Came a blatant voice behind him, and with it, a ball of fire zoomed through the air, smacking the king in the face.

The fiend keeled over sideways. His mask went flying off to reveal a sly visage contorted with a manic sense of glee, the features giving evidence to something less than human lurking under the skin. Meanwhile, his body zipped about with a dexterity eerily unachievable by man. His abstract form, wedged inside a solid, palpable physique, distorted human inclination into something far more vulgar. Then, like a ghoul, he churned his mangle face and form to view the newest member on the scene.

Several yards away, facing him, was Misaki, bearing a look of annoyance. He cocked his head with an all-too familiar irritability, his bat propped nonchalantly on his shoulder. Snubbing his nose at the Colorless King, his sharp, degrading holler broke the air. "No one defeats Homra that easily," he declared, "'specially not a freak-show like you!" And with that, he slammed his skateboard to the ground, shoving off on a wave of fiery combustion.

He landed hard, his red colliding with the Colorless King, who blocked him well enough this time, his ego-maniacal manner sending twisted fingers in construction of an aura, brightly lit to parry pandemonium with ease.

Rising to hysterics, he let out a delighted squeal. "What's this? Someone willing to play?! Well, do come closer, then! Come and join the fun!" He dipped into a sickly bow and gave a little twirl, producing his own colorless aura in one hand and the midnight aura of his vessel in the other, using both to issue forth the rumbling tornado of blackness and the fluid spirals of translucence to Misaki's ever darting figure bounding through the fog.

He struck at him again and again, sending darts and lightning bolts and cutting gusts of wind. Misaki dodged them all, fending off the blasts with neither board, nor bat, but with evasive cunning, ducking, diving, weaving with an adroit capability until at last, grown eager in his game, the Colorless King released a stream of static bolts like branching fingers through the air. A single line of tension found its mark and knocked the sturdy vanguard off his board.

The Colorless King proclaimed a victory chortle, snatching hold of Misaki with a fist-like beam of power, slamming him against the frosty side of Ashinaka Tower tapered in the dirt.

"I can't defeat you, you say?" He chided gleefully. "Well that's too bad, because it looks to me as though you've already been beaten! Or do I have to kill another one of your precious friends to make you realize?" Just then, I saw Misaki's face convulse. "Maybe I'll just kill the little girl as soon as I'm done with her — when there's nothing left! What do you say?!"

"Shut up!" Misaki thundered. His hand, weakly fingering his bat, tightened in a violent rage of passion. He gripped the worn-out handle once again and sent the barrel through the air, issuing a burning line of fire at the king.

The blast gave birth to a mere moment of confusion, allowing him to wrangle himself free and whip back into place atop his board.

Commencing another rash onslaught — this one full of vengeance more explosive than the rest — Misaki's board came crashing down against the Colorless King, engulfing him in flames.

A piercing cry rung out as the king, returning to his spirit form, escaped his willing vessel in a flourish. The Shadow, then released, received the brunt of the burst instead, his body toppling limply like a doll into the mud and upturned pits of grass at my feet.

Following the blow, the giggle zoomed around again. "In the end, your efforts are meaningless against me!" He cried. "Because, you see quite clearly, it is you who cannot defeat me! You're merely puppets dancing to the rhythm of my fingers! What a lovely dance it is, wouldn't you say? And so much bigger than your small, pathetic minds can even realize!" His maniacal laugh erupted, ringing shrilly through the clearing. "It won't be long now. Soon, I'll have taken everything! You won't be able to resist!"

He fluttered about, relishing his confidence. His overwhelming triumph gave him zeal enough to take it one step further. Winning wasn't enough for him. He had to prove that we had lost. With this in mind — his twisted, horrid mind — he sought to steal another victim, making straight for Izumo, but he was too late.

Overpowered by my urge to do something, I leapt forward, blocking his path, and — though I swore I'd never revert to it, I could not think of any reason not to — I released my power of phenomenal projection.

The effect was instantaneous. Frantically, he cowered with a pitiful shriek. He sprawled and wriggled through the air in a tumultuous frenzy, the sight of which was wicked and grotesque. He reminded me of a parasite clinging desperately to its host — to any host: to feed, to suck the life from every living creature it could find; but I would not allow it, particularly when that creature was a person I adored. He was not to touch Izumo. He was not to go anywhere near him, not while I was there.

In that brief spans of time that I had seized him, Misaki struck the other three, their power spliced between sustaining Izumo's struggling form and defending their foul leader quickly falling from his former place of triumph. Swooping in, Misaki gained the upper hand and pounded them before they could defend themselves.

"Oh yeah?! Well how does this feel!" He yelled out, his indignation throughly mixed with an eagerness to burn. Bat in hand, he spun himself about, using his momentum to invoke his aura fully in one colossal swing. It was a direct hit. The Shadows' power rapidly deteriorated, the force of Misaki's aura weakening their hold around Izumo.

This temporary lapse allowed Izumo one swift, spark-filled thrust that snapped the snake-like coils into nonexistence, at which, he rose, drew his lighter out, and calmly clicked it open. A brief contraction in the air brought forth a minute silence, a transitory void of motion, and after, an explosion lit the scene, thrusting the still-writhing Colorless King, along with the remaining Shadows, out of sight into the fog. Then all was quiet.

Breathing heavily, Misaki stepped off his board and kicked it up to snatch it. It made a hollow echo that was muffled into silence, the lull of winter snowflakes sucking in the sound. "What the hell…" he groaned out. "That dick's really askin' for it."

Lighting a cigarette, Izumo rose his chin, inhaled, and flicked the lighter shut. "Well he's right about one thing: it won't be long now." He turned to me. "You alright, Anna?"

I stood up, dusting off my dress, and strolled up beside him, nodding once in answer. I was all-too eager to take his hand this time. It didn't seem so lifeless anymore.

"Those bastards," Misaki snarled. "Why'd they keep it such a secret they were working for the Colorless King this whole time? Don't they have any pride in their clan that they'd just come out and say it?"

"It's because they're not his clansmen, anyone can see that," Izumo answered. "Their auras are different. But it's obvious he's controlling them."

Misaki scoffed. "Yeah, but to do what?"

"It doesn't matter right now. We've got to keep Anna safe. That was a lot closer than I wanted it to be."

Misaki, still pissed, scanned his board for scorch marks. "Well if you hadn't'a told me to keep an eye out over here, you really would have been screwed." Finding his possession satisfactorily in one piece, he slid it under his arm, a hard look on his face.

"Speaking of keeping an eye out," Izumo indicated, his underlying tone infused with his infamously vague, yet no less jarring emphasis on ripe intimidation, "you better get going to that other thing I told you to look out for."

Misaki flashed a momentary look of distress before easing back into his natural scowl. "Yeah alright, I'm on it, Mr. Kusanagi." He waved a casual salute and started off in the direction of the trees.

"I think Midnight's gonna come a little earlier next time," Izumo added quietly, almost to himself.

At this point, Misaki stopped, looking over his shoulder, thinking he might have heard something. For a moment, I thought he had, though luckily for Izumo and I, we too had turned to leave, no longer facing our vanguard, and Misaki simply shrugged and disappeared into the mist.

Unperturbed, I stole a glance up to Izumo, watching as he plucked the cigarette from his lips with a steady inhale and twiddled the butt between his fingers. On exhaling, he caught my eye and gave a little smirk. "Just a hunch," he said.

Chapter Three: Tatara