A/N: I came to a conclusion about a certain hinted at pairing in this chapter, and I hope you guys aren't too mad at me about it. I try to make sure that my characters stay in character, and that also means making sure that all their relationships feel natural. If they don't, then that relationship clearly needs some looking at, and after thinking about it some, I decided to take this particular pairing down that path. Note that this doesn't preclude any possible developments in the future, it's just where they are now. ^^ Hope you aren't too disappointed, but I think this works better. (Don't worry, it's not Reiame or any of the original cast :P)
That said, I think some of you are really going to enjoy this chapter, for reasons that will become clear at the end.
There's a lot of stuff to get through here and I'm still determined to end on Chapter 50, which means we're probably going to get long chapters until this is done. Enjoy!
Review Responses:
Sabian-Asher, no worries! Just wanted to make sure I was clear and not offending anyone, but I didn't mind the question. Thanks for reviewing!
cherrishish, she's technically related to him, since Morgana and Arthur are half-siblings. So he's her uncle. Thanks for the review!
Ynot7, he should be. Unfortunately, I didn't finish the manga until I was already about a third of the way into the story, and by then I had the story already mapped out and had already written Annie in. So just count that as another manga/anime crossover/alternate universe thing. Thanks for the review!
Ultimate Student, you can, technically, but personally it was messing me up. I had to keep stopping (you'll see the scene where I tried it in this chapter) to read over things and edit them, so that scenes that normally took me 30 minutes to write took way longer and felt stilted and awkward. I figured it was easier to do what the manga was doing and just use 'he'.
Magyk-Foal1, yeppp, sorry about that but with everything I was doing with Arthurian mythology, it would have been hard not to include Excalibur. Thanks so much for your review!
Arcane Student, glad you're enjoying it! The other team members are going to be in the spotlight a bit today. Also excited to cross post on AO3, because it means that if anything happens to (which hopefully it doesn't), this story lives somewhere else. Thanks!
Wisteria, tell the bunny he makes a compelling argument, but unfortunately I'm on vacation~ Enjoy the chapter though!
skullcandyklive, I can't comment too much on plot points, but I really enjoyed your review, and hope that you enjoy the coming chapters! I'm really glad that you like the characters, their development, and the story. I'm sadly not working on a manga, but if I did, it would be called Soul Eater: ZERO~
pokelover01, I apologize in advance, because I wasn't able to work the creepy doll in as much as I wanted to, but she'll definitely come up in the Annie and Cori one-shot series/spinoff thing that I hope I'll have the energy to produce. Glad that you're enjoying the story and the plot, and Bright Star will hopefully be explained by the end of the story! Enjoy!
SlightlyOff7, thank you so much for your review. I'm very glad that you enjoy the story, and in particular, I'm glad that you noticed Cassie's development, since it was definitely (for a good reason) more subtle than any of the other characters in the story. I've tried to pay tribute to the original as much as possible, and I'm glad that you think I've succeeded. Hope you enjoy where this story is going next.
karma88, sorry, I didn't have space to include Free. Although I might be able to work him in before the end...maybe. Thanks so much for the review, and I'm definitely sure I'm not planning on writing more chapters. Just making them longer! Enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Lunacy Pt. 2, Anima Sana
The airship swayed beneath her, a ripple of motion in the floorboards of the deck that was disturbingly familiar. Cassie, placing a hand on the wall for support and looking out through the bridge's great windows, felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. It was hard to believe that she was on this airship only yesterday, heading to battle, and now she was on this airship again. Heading to battle.
She exhaled, feeling a wave of tension move through her, washing over her from her head to her toes and exiting out of her trembling fingers. One day, twenty-four hours, the same situation. Nothing had changed. And yet it felt like everything had.
She eyed Shinigami out of the corner of her eye. He stood on the bridge next to the airship's controls, an air of power and command arrayed around him like the frayed black cloak that he had slipped onto his shoulders. If he was thinking at all of the conversation they had had, he didn't show it. He had been tense since stepping off of the airship last night. Quiet, commanding, purposeful. She knew that all of his attention was currently focused on the battle ahead, the clash with the Morrigan, and the possibility of another battle against the Kishin.
Against Asura.
His brother.
Cassie drew in a deep breath, staring down at her hands as she remembered the words she had said last night, the words that had convinced Shinigami that she needed to be on this airship. She'd meant them at the time, even though they terrified her. All of her life, people had been trying to use her, to force her to use her abilities to bend the world to their will. They didn't see her as a person, with her own thoughts and feelings and dreams and ambitions. They saw her as a thing. The Grimoire, the Book, a powerful artifact, a relic of power. If they acknowledged that she had a will of her own at all, they acknowledged only that her will was just the book's power given form. She was its Index, its keeper, nothing more than a glorified computer program. She was the Grimoire of Reality first, Cassandra Crane second.
At Shinigami's orders, Mifune had saved her from that life, but even then she had been afraid. Because she knew that she was unexpected. Shinigami had said it himself when they spoke. He hadn't expected her to be a Demon Weapon, a person, a child. Didn't expect that what people knew of as the Grimoire of Reality was also a weapon form, handed down from generation to generation, and she was just its newest, most unlucky vessel. And whether he'd wanted the Grimoire to use for himself or had wanted to keep it locked away so that nobody could use it didn't matter. The point of the matter was, he hadn't expected her to be human. And because she was, because she was both human and inexperienced and very scared, she was a complication to him. She'd known that from the beginning.
When Mifune saved her, she'd half-expected to be locked up again, to be moved from one cell to another. She had been twelve years old, on the edge of turning thirteen, and that had been all she expected from her life. She didn't expect to be taken to the dispensary within twenty minutes of her arrival at the DWMA, didn't expect to be poked and prodded and examined by a scary-looking doctor until a tiny blond woman with an eye patch hauled him off of her and pushed him out into the hallway, then came to sit in front of her, took her hands in her own, and asked her if she was alright.
Just that. Just that one quiet question.
Are you alright?
She didn't expect to break down into tears. To just burst out crying right there, sitting on the edge of a warm bed in the dispensary, while Marie Mjolnir looked at her with concern and Mifune, still leaning against the door, still covered in blood, said quietly that her name was Cassandra. Didn't expect to be given a bed to sleep in and food to eat, to be allowed to roam the grounds and the city at will. Didn't expect to be given a small allowance so that she could buy clothes of her own to wear, so that she didn't have to wear Angela and Shelley's old clothes and whatever clothes Mifune and Marie could scrounge up from somewhere. And when Marie had taken her shopping and she saw the pink headphones that had become her signature, she certainly hadn't expected Marie to tell her that it would be okay if she wanted to buy them.
Marie had taken her to get a haircut, understanding, even if Cassie hadn't at the time, that she needed to look different, to be different. Marie had even helped her dye her hair.
When they gave her the enrollment packet for the DWMA and asked her to fill it out, Cassie's first question, asked in utter seriousness, was if joining the DWMA was an order. She hadn't understood the heartbroken look Marie had shot Mifune then. She understood it now. But she remembered sitting there, perplexed and confused and still feeling a little afraid, when Marie handed her the pen and explained to her, very kindly, that while she had to enroll at the DWMA for her own good, she didn't have to enroll in the special class. She could join the N.O.T. class, and if she did, all she would learn at the school was how to control her powers, so that when she graduated, she could live a normal life.
A normal life. Marie had offered her a normal life, right then and there, and Cassie had thought it was some kind of trick. But trick or not, she'd still been tempted to take it. She hadn't done it in the end. She'd signed up for the E.A.T. class. Maybe that was because using her powers was all she knew how to do, but maybe it was also because she wanted to learn how to fight. Because if she fought, then maybe she could continue being different. So Cassie enrolled in the E.A.T. class and met Morgan, and the DWMA gave her an apartment and allowance and everything, and she could choose her own missions and go to class and go anywhere in the city she wanted. And Morgan never tried to make Cassie give her more than she was willing to give, because Morgan had a secret too, and Morgan was afraid too, and Morgan knew how it felt to be pushed around too.
Life was great. Life was fantastic. Cassie was the happiest she had ever been. She had friends, then a boyfriend, then an ex-boyfriend. She had classmates. She went on dates, she went to the arcade, to parties, to the movies. She had an allowance big enough to allow her to buy books on a regular basis, and she used it to the fullest, until her room was so full of books and music and movies that it was hard to move around in it. She fell in love with Morgan, platonically, because it was impossible to share a soul with someone, to pour yourself out so completely and to receive their soul in return, and not love them on some level.
She lived her life and yet through it all, she kept her head down. She buried herself in the rhythms of life, in books, in parties, in music, in shopping. In elaborate fantasy worlds of her own creation, and however many of those other things she could combine together at the same time. She spent all of her days doing her best to ignore reality, because she couldn't shake the looming sense that the shoe was about to fall, that sooner or later Shinigami would call for her and demand that she use her abilities for him and her life would come crashing down.
She hadn't expected to go to him herself. Hadn't expected to volunteer. Hadn't expected to willingly reveal the one secret that she had managed to keep from all of her previous handlers—she used that word because she knew what it was like to have a meister now, a real one, and none of the ones that had used her previously could compare. The secret that could be her undoing.
Even now, she didn't know why she had done it.
Probably because Morgan, when faced with the choice between the life she had built and the lives of those she loved, had chosen to sacrifice herself. Twice. Because she knew that what it had cost Morgan to leave with her uncle that day at Rei's house had been harder than anything else Morgan had ever done, including going to the basement of Fata Morgana to die. And if Morgan had done it for these people, how could she do any less?
After all, Cassie loved them too.
She eyed Shinigami again, her hand resting on the airship's wall. So far, it seemed as though the DWMA's leader had been as good as his word. He wouldn't make her do anything that she wasn't already willing to do. But it mattered, she thought, that she had given him that information, that license to tell her when it was time to use her last, most final secret. It mattered even if he never used it, even if he pretended the whole conversation had never occurred.
It mattered to her. It seemed like a turning point in her life, the first moment that she had chosen for herself, pledged her service instead of having it be demanded of her. And it was a moment from which she could never go back.
She turned away from him, looking through the bridge's windows at the outer deck. Her teammates were waiting there—Rei standing with his mother, Ayame with her parents, Clark and Vayne leaning against the railing near the prow. They weren't far from the moon now, to judge from the mounting tension in the air. Maybe it was time she went and joined them.
She took a deep breath and stepped outside, drawing her coat tighter around herself to guard against the wind. Almost as soon as she did, Clark looked up, meeting her eyes. He nodded at Vayne and broke away from his partner, striding purposefully in her direction.
Cassie shifted in place, uncomfortable. Clark looked like a man on a mission, his face set in a look of grim determination. Kimial Diehl had done her job well—it was practically impossible to tell that he had been in danger of bleeding out all over the airship floor just yesterday. She had a feeling she knew what Clark wanted, and she felt the familiar twinges of uncertainty and guilt in her gut that she always felt when faced with his (frankly obvious) affection for her.
"Cassie," Clark said, coming to a stop in front of her. "Can we talk?"
Cassie sucked in a breath, her fingers nearly making a reflexive grab for her headphones. She stilled the impulse just in time, her hand trailing alongside her coat instead. Clark was her friend, she told herself, making herself look at him. He deserved an answer from her.
"Sure, Clark," she said, forcing herself to smile, to pretend like she didn't know what he had come here to say. "What do you want to talk about?"
He led her over to the railing, his expression growing nervous. He was trying to keep his cool, but Clark wasn't that collected, and his eyes seemed to settle everywhere except for on her. She waited for him to speak, keeping her hands firmly at her sides, and tried not to fiddle too much with the hem of her coat. There were butterflies in her stomach for all the wrong reasons, and when he finally spoke, she did her best not to look away.
"Look," he said. "This is—probably going to be kind of awkward, but this is going to be a tough battle, and—just in case we don't make it out, I wanted to tell you something. I know I haven't been really straightforward with my feelings, but if we don't make it out of here, I just want you to know—."
She felt something sink in her gut and looked up at him, trying to arrange her face in an expression of sympathy. "Clark, I—."
"I don't like you, Cassie," Clark blurted out.
Cassie stared at him.
"Come again?" she asked.
"I don't like you," he repeated. "Not—not like that!" he added quickly, as she arched an eyebrow at him and opened her mouth. "I mean, I like you. A—a lot. You're nice, and funny, and one of my closest friends, but I don't actually—I don't actually like you."
Cassie felt like her world was spinning. "But, you—," she began.
"I know," said Clark, holding up a hand to cut her off. "I know. I've been making an ass of myself since that first Combat Arts class. I even really, really thought I liked you. But I kind of…realized something, I guess. Since—since Ophelia. I realized that after everything that had happened with—with my mom and all that—I just wanted somebody to like me. And the person that I thought I liked wasn't actually you. She was this—this fantasy version of you that I had in my head." He flushed as he spoke, looking away from her and raising a nervous hand to the back of his neck. "The real you is a lot cooler than her. I figured you—you deserved more from me than what I gave you, so I wanted to let you know. To—clear the air…in case one of us doesn't come back."
"Aww, Clark," Cassie said, reaching forward and taking his free hand in both her own. "I do like you." Clark looked up in dismay and her eyes widened. "Not like that!" she said quickly. "I meant as a friend! I love all of you—as friends. To be honest, I'm not really sure I can like someone that way, right now. I'm going through a lot of stuff on my own."
"Ethan—."
"—was a distraction," Cassie finished, releasing his hand. Now it was her turn to feel embarrassed, and she looked away, feeling warmth spread across her cheeks. "A nice distraction, but that's all it was. I didn't want to think about some things. I just wanted to be normal, and he was—there. You know what I'm saying?"
"Yeah," said Clark and then the pained expression on his face eased and he chuckled softly. "I guess we're really not that different," he said, leaning against the railing.
"Yeah," said Cassie, smiling. "I guess we aren't." She held out a hand towards him. "To friendship?"
"To friendship," said Clark, smiling back. He took her hand.
The ship lurched suddenly to the side, the engine letting out a high-pitched, screaming whine as a ray of power tore through the air, sizzling through the space where the ship had been. Cassie screamed as the deck tilted beneath her, the wind whipping at her and pressing her against the railing. Alarms blared and she reached for the railing as she tried to make sense of what was going on, the moon filling up her vision.
The ship banked hard before she could grab onto it, avoiding a second blast. The railing slipped just past her hands as she overshot it, falling over the side of the deck.
"Cassie!" Clark screamed, one of his hands on the railing as he leaned forward and reached for her. She grabbed at him, frantic, but his hand slipped just out of her reach. His eyes narrowed in a snarl and he leaped over the side of the ship, stretching a hand out towards his partner.
"Vayne!"
Vayne appeared in his hand in an instant, the curved blade materializing out of the sudden flash of light. The blade's chain formed beneath Clark's fingers as power sparked around him and he tossed it at her, the chain wrapping itself tight around her waist. He tugged at it, snapping her up towards him, and pressed her tight to his side as he whirled around, preparing to toss Vayne at the airship.
He didn't throw Vayne. Instead, Cassie felt him tense around her and she looked up, her eyes widening when she saw what he did. The airship had moved. While he was leaping after her, it had started climbing, avoiding the bombardment of magic that was coming from the dark moon. The chain wouldn't reach.
Before she could even open her mouth to panic, a dark shape leaped from the airship, soaring towards them. The shape unfurled large black wings, and Cassie's heart leaped in relief when she recognized Rei. The wings pressed close against his back as he dove, flaring out like a parachute as he caught up to them and grabbed onto the back of Clark's shirt. Their fall slowed and then stopped abruptly, Rei letting out a grunt of effort as he struggled to hold on.
"Are you crazy?!" he asked Clark, shouting over the roar of the wind and the barrage. "You can't fly!"
Clark didn't answer, breathing hard, his eyes wide as he stared down at the clouds beneath them. Rei looked up at the airship, his face pulling into a scowl. The airship was still climbing, still twisting and turning in the air as it tried to avoid the blasts that were coming from the surface of the black moon. A sole flyer was zipping around the airship, trying to break free of the bombardment, but the blasts were coming so fast now that she couldn't do much more than stay close to the ship. Cassie recognized the flyer as Maka-sensei and looked up at Rei, who was watching her with a grim expression. He raised his free hand, signaling that they were alright, and Cassie watched as she turned around, disappearing back into the tangle around the airship.
She looked back at Rei, who stared at the airship for a few moments longer before looking away.
"Well, we're not getting back that way," he said. "Let's try to find our own way in. Cassie, can you transform? Clark's heavy enough and Vayne's not much better."
"No problem," said Cassie with a nod, transforming into her weapon form. Clark caught the grimoire in mid-air, clutching it tight to his side with his free hand as Rei spread his wings, grabbing onto Clark with both hands and making for a quieter side of the moon.
Rei collapsed onto the ground after releasing Clark, propping himself up with his arms and taking deep, gasping breaths. He felt a weight lift off of his back as the wings faded, Ayame taking on her human form. She appeared on the ground beside him, tilting her head back and looking up at the sky. He gulped down a few more breaths of air and coughed to clear out the metallic taste in the back of his throat, then sat up and whirled onto Clark.
"Are you out of your mind?" he asked.
"What was I supposed to do?" said Clark, frowning at Rei. "Let her fall?" He gestured at Cassie, who had also taken on her human form, and was sprawled out on the ground a few inches away from Vayne.
"Of course not," said Rei. "But there's a middle ground between letting her fall and jumping off a moving airship."
"Even if we hadn't jumped, you wouldn't have been able to get back on the airship," said Vayne, lifting his head and turning towards Rei. "Give it a rest, man. At least we're all together."
Rei scowled at Vayne but relented, falling back into a seat and rubbing some life back into his arms. They felt numb and rubbery, which wasn't a good sign. He glanced at Ayame out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting up now, her arms wrapped around her knees as she caught her breath, but she looked alright. His eyes moved past her, surveying their landing spot for the first time.
He had managed to put them down on the backside of the moon, on a patch of stone littered with craters and ridges. The ground here was as black as if it had been painted, an oily sheen covering every available surface. A shiver crawled up his spine, and he pulled his hand away from the rock next to him, wiping it on his pants. It didn't help. His eyes tracked back towards his companions, turning towards Clark.
"Hey, Clark, you feeling okay?" Rei asked.
Clark looked back at him in confusion. "Um, yeah," he said. "I'm feeling fine. Why?"
"Nothing," said Rei. "Just…keep an eye on yourself. And let me know if that changes. That goes for everyone else here too."
For a second, they all looked at him in confusion. Clark was the first to understand. The color drained from his face as he looked around, taking in the darkness that tainted the moon's surface.
"The black blood?" he asked.
"I think it's dormant right now," Rei said. "At least, that's what Mom was saying. But we don't have anyone with the Anti-Magic Wavelength on this team, so…watch out for each other. If anyone starts showing any signs of madness—."
He paused. What? What could they do if someone started going crazy? They had too many problems right now to start suspecting each other.
"—we'll deal with them," Ayame finished for him, her expression grim. She looked around at all of them, picking up the slack for Rei. "Anyone got a plan?"
"First question," said Vayne. "Where are we?"
"Dark side of the moon, by the looks of it," said Cassie, looking around. She frowned, holding up a hand for silence. "Do you guys hear that?"
Rei listened. From far off, there was a low rumbling sound, a series of staccato pulses that seemed to travel through the ground.
"Fighting," he said. "Probably on the other side, where our main forces are."
"So that's where we've gotta be," said Ayame, getting to her feet. "Alright, let's do this."
Rei nodded, moving to stand up after her. Across from him, the others stood as well, looking around them warily.
They had just started walking when a low wail rose up around them, reverberating across the stones. Rei spun to face the sound, eyes narrowed, as a dark shape moved in the corner of his vision, too fast to track.
He was still trying to follow it when something came at him from out of the darkness, slamming him to the ground.
It happened in a second. One moment, Rei was standing there, directing them over the rise towards the other side of the moon, the next a low wail had risen up around them and a dark shape had tackled Rei to the ground. Clark had a second to glimpse a wraith-like figure shrouded in shadow, an emaciated female face with grayish skin and wide, dark eyes and an open mouth, before Ayame surged forward with a shout of rage. The shadow jerked away from Rei, too fast to track, its keening wail reverberating off of the rocks around them as it vanished into the distance.
"Ayame!" Rei said with a grunt of pain, already getting to his feet. He held out a hand towards his partner. Clark held his hand out towards Vayne, mirroring him.
"Vayne," he said.
There were twin flashes of light as Ayame and Vayne transformed, Ayame taking on the form of a slender katana, with a hilt wrapped in strips of black fabric. Tendrils of that same black fabric wrapped around Rei's arm as he took hold of the hilt, his eyes narrowing as he held the sword in a defensive position. Clark let the familiar weight of Vayne's pendulum form settle into his hand, his eyes narrowing as he and Rei turned their backs to each other, putting Cassie between them as they searched for the source of the sound.
The wail seemed to leap from location to location, making the hair on the back of Clark's neck stand on end. He looked from left to right, heart pounding, feeling Vayne's readiness in the steel beneath his fingertips.
Faster than lightning, something leaped at Rei.
Clark barely had enough time to turn around as the hag appeared in the air, claws extended towards Rei's face. Rei had managed to turn, eyes wide, had managed to raise his sword to protect himself, but shadows exploded out from under the hag's cloak like a flock of dark birds, slipping through the gaps in Rei's defenses. He let out a cry as he was thrown back, slamming into one of the upright boulders behind them. The whole thing happened so quickly that by the time Clark managed to turn around, all he felt was the wind of Rei's passing. The hag leaped back into the safety of the rocks, and in an instant she was gone.
The unearthly wail continued.
"Rei!" Clark said, turning towards his friend.
"I'm alright," said Rei, gritting his teeth. He wiped at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes widening suddenly in alarm. "Clark, behind you!"
Clark spun quickly, managing to catch the hag's attack on the flat of Vayne's blade. He leaped backwards just as she attacked again, shadows rushing past him as he landed on the ground beside Rei. The other boy had staggered to his feet, eyes narrowed as he turned his back to Clark, head turning left and right as he tried to keep track of her opponent.
Rei scowled. "She's too fast," he muttered under his breath. "I can't keep track of her."
A thrill of excitement ran through Clark in spite of the situation, the thrill of challenge. His eyes moved to the blade he was holding in front of him, to Vayne's reflection in the blade's flat.
Vayne was grinning.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Clark asked.
"Oh yeah," said Vayne. "It's about time."
"When you two are finished chatting, maybe you can fill me in?" asked Rei dryly from behind them.
Clark's answer was to step forward, grinning. He could feel his soul wavelength rising up around him, light gleaming off of his glasses as he held Vayne's pendulum form out to the side.
"Leave this to us," he said. "We'll take care of it."
"What—?" Rei began, starting to turn around.
Clark didn't give him time to ask the question. Instead, he reached for Vayne's soul. Light glowed around the pendulum blade as his partner's soul wavelength rose up to meet his, their souls swelling to envelop him, to fill the space around them. He raised his hand up to his face to adjust his glasses.
"Soul Resonance," he intoned.
Light spread outwards from him, a circle of light appearing in the floor beneath him. In that circle, Clark saw the outline of gears, an endless number of clockwork mechanisms turning in sync. Electricity crackled over the circle, pouring out of his soul, out of his Paralyzing Wavelength. As the power spread over the gears, they stuttered and began to slow. Then, just as the hag launched herself at them a fourth time, they stopped entirely.
Clark smiled, closing his eyes and drawing in a breath. He savored it, exhaling slowly. He waited until the breath was done before opening his eyes, looking up.
He was standing alone in the center of a glowing circle, the gears frozen at his feet. A cylindrical wall rose up from the circle's edge, a line of golden light that surrounded him. Outside of that wall, to his left, he saw Rei frozen in place, his eyes wide and mouth open as he started to ask Clark what he was doing. On his other side, he saw Cassie watching them with alarm. And in front of him, he saw the hag hanging suspended in midair, her claws extended towards him, shadows rippling beneath her cloak. Frozen like this, he could see both where she had leaped out from and where she would land, had some idea of what she would do when she reached him.
"What do you think?" Clark asked, glancing down at his partner. "Hit her from behind?"
"Hmm…nah," said Vayne, looking up at him from his soul space, which was now filled with images of clocks. An infinite number of clocks gleamed from the void around him, each of them displaying a different time, each of them frozen in place. Vayne was grinning, one of his hands extended towards the nearest of the clocks. "She's still feeling you out. She doesn't have enough momentum built up yet. Might need to get her riled up a little."
"Good point," said Clark. He shifted his grip on Vayne to a two-handed grip, then shuffled a few inches to the right, nearly at the edge of the glowing circle. Carefully, deliberately, he raised the blade in front of him, holding it in a defensive position as he crouched down behind it. "Alright, release."
Vayne lowered his hand and time began to flow again, the clocks in his soul space and the gears in the circle starting to move even as they faded. The wall vanished and the hag surged forward, flying through the space where Clark had been standing a moment ago. Rei completed his turn, mouth moving again.
"—are you—?" His eyes widened as he saw the hag. "—what the hell?"
The hag let out a shriek of rage at having missed, spinning towards Clark and extending her claws towards him. They skittered over the flat of the blade, and Clark jumped back before she could follow-up on the attack, shifting Vayne to one hand and placing a hand on the ground as he landed.
The glowing circle flared up again as the hag rushed at him, time coming to a stop. He took a moment to take stock of her position, then shuffled over to the left. This time, when he released his hold on time, the hag charged straight through, claws extended, before hooking back around to come towards him. He leaped and she followed him into the air, slashing and hissing incoherently. Clark dodged her a third time as he landed. A fourth. A fifth.
On the sixth time, she darted straight past him, snarling in rage, claws extended as her momentum carried her forward, exposing her back.
Clark swung Vayne in a wide arc, the blade slicing her open from shoulder to waist. The hag shrieked one last time, her cry echoing over the stones before she vanished, shadows dissipating in the bright sunlight as her soul remained behind.
He released Vayne as his partner took on his human form, coming to stand next to him. There was a flash of light as Ayame transformed beside Rei, staring at them open-mouthed. Rei and Cassie, on either side of her, wore the same looks of dumbfounded shock.
"Uh—what just happened?" Ayame asked.
"Whatever it was, it was definitely electrifying," said Vayne, shooting him a grin.
"I know," said Clark, grinning back. "It's almost like time literally stops when I resonate with you."
The two of them bumped fists.
Rei groaned, slapping his face with the palm of his hand.
"Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?" asked Cassie, tugging at her jacket with one hand and fanning at her face with the other.
"Yeah, seriously guys, I kiss my partner and we're not that sappy," said Ayame.
Cassie blinked, turning towards Ayame in surprise. "Wait, you kiss Rei?!" Cassie asked. "Since when?"
"Ayame!" said Rei, blushing furiously.
Cassie rounded on to him. "You weren't going to tell us?" she asked, "Come on, Rei!"
"Guys, focus!" said Rei, his face still a deep red as he looked up at them. He gestured wildly at the scenery around them. "Imminent end of life as we know it here, or am I the only one that remembers that?"
"Right, right," said Cassie, sighing in disappointment. "Get back to the airship, join the battle, no apocalypse selfies. I understand."
"How many followers do you think we would get for an apocalypse selfie?" Ayame asked, looking over at Cassie in interest. "I mean, you know—#savingtheworld, #moonlanding, #shinigamiFTW?"
"That's like, instant viral image material right there," said Vayne.
"Right?" asked Cassie. "Not to mention, the historical value of a picture like that."
"Oh my God, can we just get moving?!" Rei asked, already several feet ahead of them. "We're like our own abridged series!"
Clark sighed, stepping forward. "Our glorious leader has spoken," he said. "Shame. I wanted to take that picture."
"Maybe later," said Cassie with a reassuring smile, moving to follow him.
"Yeah," said Ayame, grinning. "Later. When we win."
Ahead of them, Rei groaned, continuing to march forward. Clark smiled as the rest of them hurried to catch up with him, enjoying the rare moment of lightness. He had a feeling they would need it in the hours ahead.
Maka leaped off of Soul with the ease of long practice, landing lightly on the deck of the airship. The ship rolled under her feet, the air crackling with energy as blasts of power exploded around them. She kept her knees bent and her legs apart, managing to keep her balance as the ship bucked and rolled beneath her. With her free hand, she scooped up Soul's scythe form from where it was hovering over the floor, holding it in front of her in both hands.
An explosion rang out from overhead, loud enough and close enough to send her ears ringing. The force of the blast threatened to press her against the deck, but Maka managed to stay standing, trudging forward. She shouldered her way past the door that led into the bridge, grabbing the rail that ran along the side of the inner wall as the ship lurched to avoid another blast.
Kid shouted for them to climb higher, his voice sharp and clear even over the proximity alarms that were going off in the small command area. Maka felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as the airship climbed, engineering pouring all of their power into the thrusters to get them higher up in the sky. He spun towards her as they rose up out of the cloud of smoke the explosions had caused, a question in his golden eyes.
"Did you find them?" he asked.
Maka shook her head. "They were too far away," she said. "They didn't seem hurt. Rei managed to catch them."
At least, that was what she had gathered, what her Soul Perception had been able to tell her. But this close to the moon, even her Soul Perception was having difficulties. With all the black blood around, it was hard to sense anything that wasn't Asura.
Anything that wasn't Crona.
A frown came onto her face even as she thought about that, her hands tightening their grip both on Soul and on the railing. What she had felt of Asura's soul wavelength had been thankfully dormant, the same sensation of fear and power that she had once felt beneath the DWMA, in the time before Asura's awakening. What she had felt from Crona had been different. Dormant, so tangled up with Asura's wavelength that it was almost impossible to tell it apart, but slightly more awake.
She thought about what Rei had told him about his dream and wondered if Crona wasn't fighting too.
Kid frowned at her answer, but didn't have time to respond to it, quickly turning back around to look out of the ship's front window. They had risen over the barrage, and in the moments before the Morrigan's defenses locked on to their new position, Maka saw the moon. The Morrigan had set up her defenses on the outskirts, a little perimeter of floating rocks around the moon's blackened surface, but the moon itself was exactly how she remembered it. It looked exactly as it had the last time she had been up here that day, the day they had left Crona behind.
Carefully, in case the ship rolled again, she released her hold on the guard rail, walking up towards Kid. From beside him, she could see their other flyers moving alongside the ship, shooting towards the encampments around the moon. Black Star, shadows wrapped around him, made his way towards the Morrigan's cannons to disable them. Angela, sitting astride Shelley's spear form, made her way towards a bright presence that Maka recognized—Micah's.
A new army had begun to assemble in the sky in front of them, a host of translucent greenish spirits, all arrayed like soldiers in front of their commander, a frightening spirit in a dark cloak standing on a floating chariot, its head tucked beneath its arm and a whip in one of its hands—the Dullahan, one of the Morrigan's servants. She didn't need to consciously use her Soul Perception to feel the evil that wafted off of the creature. A shiver ran down her spine as the Dullahan's wavelength brushed across her skin, and she pressed her lips tightly together, glancing at Kid out of the corner of his eye.
He wasn't looking at the Dullahan. His gaze was drawn higher, just above the moon, where the Morrigan's Soul Wavelength waited.
"Do you think she's really there this time?" Maka asked, glancing at him.
"She's there," Kid said, his expression grim. "We'll end this this time."
His lip curled slightly as he studied the scene, hands closing around pistols that weren't there. Maka wondered what he was sensing, of the Morrigan and of Asura, wondered what he felt about what he did sense. Wondered what he was truly planning on ending.
But now wasn't the time to ask. Her eyes moved back to the scene in front of her, to the army that awaited them. "You're going after her?" she asked. Kid didn't answer, not out loud, but his silence was answer enough. Maka nodded. "Soul and I will handle Dullahan. We should be able to clear you a path."
"I appreciate it," Kid said, although he didn't glance her way. He had eyes, it seemed, only for the moon. To either side of him, Liz and Patty continued to shout orders to the crew, orders that he barely seemed to hear.
She turned to leave.
"Good luck," Kid said abruptly, before she could get very far away. He still wasn't looking at her.
Maka nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder as she passed him.
"Luck to you too," she said.
She had a feeling that they were going to need it.
The ground sloped upward gently ahead of them, the path taking them up a seemingly endless rise to the top of the moon. Rei climbed steadily onward, drumming his fingers on his leg in an attempt to diffuse some of the frustration. He could feel the battle drawing steadily closer, but from this side, he couldn't see it, couldn't do much more than listen as the sounds drew nearer and feel out with his Soul Perception, trying to get a handle on the combatants and their position. This high up, the air was cold, stinging the inside of his nose and mouth. He paused as he reached the moon's crest, unhooking a canteen of water from his belt and taking a swig.
Then he looked up, seeing the battle for the first time.
"Whoa," Ayame said from beside him, her eyes wide as she looked out at the sky.
Rei had to agree with her.
The battle had been concentrated on the forward side of the moon, just above the moon's grinning face. The Morrigan's forces had assembled on the surface of the moon itself, and on a series of three artificial islands that floated in the air around the moon's surface. One of those islands—the one that had housed the cannons that had attacked the airship earlier—had been torn completely in two, both halves hanging in the air in the grip of the moon's gravity. A blue and black figure—Black Star—was already leaping from the remnants of the cannon's island, shooting towards the airship like a rocket.
The cannons were silent.
The DWMA's airship hung suspended in the air, a nexus of activity. A cluster of bright spectral lights attacked it, humming like wasps, and it took Rei a moment to realize that they were spirits, ghostly figures swarming around the airship and letting out a chorus of wails that made his blood run cold. Their attack was halted by what seemed like an endless amount of gleaming blades, all whirling around the airship at the behest of a figure who stood on the airship's top deck, legs spread slightly apart and hands resting on the hilt of a katana pointed down at the floorboards. What looked like Shelley and Angela were heading towards one of the remaining two islands, and his parents had landed on the moon's surface, tearing their way through the Morrigan's forces. His father's scythe form moved through the air like a storm of steel as the two of them moved closer to the shrouded figure that stood in command.
That left the Morrigan. Her wavelength pulsed, steady and strong, from the highest of the three islands, hundreds of feet over Rei's head. And another wavelength, one powerful enough to drive the breath from his lungs, was rushing up to meet her.
Shinigami himself. Rei's mind swum as he tried to make sense of the forces at play here. Given all of this, it was hard to see what he could do, what he had come here to do.
Ayame's hand slipped into his, squeezing tight. Rei glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, drawing in a deep breath.
Insecurities later. He had a job to do now.
He looked behind him at Clark, Vayne and Cassie, who had reached the crest and were staring at the battle with the same looks of awe that he knew had been mirrored on his own face. Vayne in particular looked pale, his eyes fixed on the spirits swarming the airship, the color draining steadily from his face. Rei turned towards him first, slipping his hand out of Ayame's.
"You alright there, Vayne?" he asked.
Vayne paused for a moment, then nodded, pressing his lips tightly together. He wet his lips with his tongue, tearing his eyes away from the battle with some difficulty as he looked back at Rei.
"Fine," he said, stiffly. "Just fine."
"If you're scared—," Rei began.
"We're all scared," said Vayne, cutting him off. "Let's get this over with."
"We have a plan?" Clark asked, his arms folded as he looked back at the fight.
"Join the battle," said Rei, gesturing at the scene in front of him. "Try not to die. It probably isn't a good idea for us to split up in case we have to resonate, and you and Vayne can't fly. We'll take the forces on the ground, try to help my parents wherever we can. Clark, can you wield Cassie?"
Cassie snorted, cutting Clark off before he could answer. "Barely," she said. "But don't worry, Rei. Cassie can wield Cassie."
Rei turned towards her, brows raising. "Have you ever fought autonomously before?" he asked.
"Nope," said Cassie, "But there's a first time for everything."
"Cass—," Rei began.
"I'll just distract Clark," said Cassie. "And that's not something we can afford right now. Don't worry about me, Rei. I can warp reality. I'll figure something out."
There wasn't any time to argue. Rei held her gaze for a moment before letting out a frustrated sigh. "Fine," he said. "Just try to stay out of the worst of it. Find some cover and give us support from there."
"Can do," said Cassie, nodding.
"Vayne," said Clark, extending a hand towards his partner. Vayne nodded, light engulfing his body as he took on his pendulum form. Rei did the same to Ayame, fingers crooked in one of their hand gestures. He felt the weight of her Cloak form—now the winged Zero Star form Nocturne—settle over his shoulders and back as he looked at the others, ready to signal them forward.
He stopped as he felt a wavelength shooting towards them, coming from the side of the moon.
"Look out!" he said, reaching out and grabbing Cassie by the arm as he leaped into the air. Clark did the same as a figure shot towards them, pink light gleaming around her like a storm as she landed in the space where they had been standing. Blades sliced into the earth beneath her feet, kicking up a cloud of dust and black blood. The dust cleared, revealing the slight figure of a blond woman, her face pale and eyes empty as they searched the sky for her opponents.
Elaine.
Rei looked around from where he hovered with Cassie and Ayame in the air, looking for Clark and Vayne. The two of them had landed on the stones several feet away. He saw Clark look at Elaine, saw the emotions play across his face. Surprise, then grief, loss and longing. All those feelings appeared on his face, then faded into a look of steely determination as he came to a conclusion. Rei's eyes widened as he felt suddenly, with cold certainty, what Clark was about to do.
"Clark!" he said, shouting in alarm. "Don't do anything drastic! We can fight her together—."
He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. Light gleamed along the length of Vayne's blade as Clark and Vayne's souls came together again. The other meister kicked off of the ground, shooting towards Elaine like a rocket. Rei stretched his hand out towards Clark, trying in vain to stop him, but a circle of gold appeared on the ground beneath Clark's feet, engulfing both him and Elaine.
Time came to a stop.
"What do you expect to do, idiot? You don't even have a body."
"…Body?"
"Don't tell me you forgot. Did your brain turn to mush while we've been trapped up here?! Your body is the only thing still stopping the Kishin from killing everyone!"
"…Kishin…"
"Yeah, dimwit! So if you wanna help them, you're going to need a vessel."
"…A…vessel…?"
"That's right, loser. You need to find a body that can take the black blood."
"Black…blood…"
The words brought some amount of awareness back into itself, thoughts crystallizing and bringing with them memories. Black blood, black blood, black…The presence stretched out its awareness, brushing against the Soul Responses of the assembled combatants, thinking, searching.
Its attention converged on one point, a Soul Response that seemed familiar. The response brought with it another memory. A girl, blond hair, pig tails. Green eyes. What was her name?
"Her name was Maka! Keep it together, you idiot! Don't space out on me again!"
Maka. That was right. Her name was Maka. Maka was a friend.
And the presence…it…they had a name too, didn't they? What was their name…?
"Oi! Crona! Pay attention!"
That's right, they thought, a sense of giddiness passing through them. Their name was Crona.
And if they were Crona, and Maka was Maka, then…
Awareness burst from somewhere deep inside of their mind, the fractured pieces of their consciousness coalescing together to form something else, something whole, complete.
"Ragnarok," they said.
"Yes," said the annoying voice. "Yes, it's me! You remember me, don't you, Crona?"
Another search, conscious this time, aware. Scanning the Soul Responses of the outsiders assembled, looking for the one they needed.
There. That was it. Their awareness converged on that single point, that small, infinitesimally tiny soul.
"Ragnarok," Crona said, their voice soft despite the fact that voices couldn't be soft when one didn't have a mouth to speak with or ears to hear with.
"Yeah, what is it?" Ragnarok asked. "Did you find something?"
He focused in again on that soul, that small, uncertain soul. He thought he could feel something about that wavelength, something that reminded him of his own, carelessly discarded form. He honed in on it, that tiny pinprick of light. What was it that was so familiar about it? He didn't understand, and then suddenly he did.
"My blood is black, you know…"
A flash of light and then he was somewhere else, somewhere that almost had physical form. Memories flashed into his mind—a desert, a beach with water—but this wasn't a desert. It was sort of the same thing, he thought, or maybe it wasn't. It was something very similar.
Except it was a room. A small, circular stone room. The room wasn't dark like the room that Medusa used to keep him in as a child, but neither did it seem to have any door. It had a window though, Crona noted as he glanced at it. He could now—glance at it, he meant. Something about this space had given him his body back. It wasn't really a body, not the same way his real body was, but it looked and felt a lot like him. He thought that was because this room's owner probably couldn't comprehend the abstract reality of a free-floating consciousness and felt a twinge of sympathy for her. He hadn't been able to either, back when he had a body. It was something he'd had to learn when he'd had to do without.
The window seemed to show scenery in the distance, stretching as far as his eyes could see but seeming very far away. It took Crona a moment to realize why that was, it being so long since he had seen any sort of scenery. When he understood what he was looking at, he felt another strange of giddiness, a sense of mad, childlike pleasure at putting two and two together and finding that it meant four again. The scenery looked far away because they were very high up. On top of a tower.
He looked around at the room. It had probably been a very pretty room at one point, the sort of room a little princess might find herself in, except somehow it had become a mess. Someone had gone through it and cut everything to pieces. There were slash marks on the drapes and on the huge four-poster bed, gashes torn into bookcases and toys scattered all over the floor.
Something black and oily pooled in the corners of the room, oozing slowly towards its one occupant. Crona was careful not to step in it as he walked towards her, towards the girl curled up against the stone wall of the room, her arms wrapped tightly around herself and her face buried into her knees. She was young, couldn't be more than eight, dressed in a black dress that had probably once been very pretty. Her hair was long and white, the color of snow, and stretched out across the floor around her. She was shaking.
A doll lay on the ground in front of her, long porcelain limbs sprawled out on the floor. The doll lay face down on the ground, unmoving, its bare feet resting in the pool of black liquid. It was dressed in black, long white hair on its head the same length and shade as the girl's. Its hand seemed to twitch as he approached. Crona edged warily around the doll, moving towards the girl.
"I can't go outside…" Crona heard her mutter to herself as he neared her, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She was murmuring in a soft, feverish pace he recognized, the way someone spoke when they were in the grip of madness. "Cori's not here. Rei's not here. Mama's not here. Papa's not here. I'm all alone. I can't go outside. I can't go outside. I can't…"
"Hello," he said, crouching in front of her. "Can I help you?"
She sucked in a breath of surprise and fear, turning away from him and drawing her legs up closer to herself. "Go away," she said, still muttering. "Go away, go away, go away, go away—."
Something about her was familiar. Not the way she was muttering to herself—that was something he understood—but something else. Something in the shape of her soul, something in her voice, something in those—he noticed—green eyes. He understood, felt his eyes widen slightly with that understanding—he couldn't have been gone that long, could he—and then he remembered the desert that became a beach and he smiled, reaching tentatively for her.
"It's okay," he said. "You can trust me. I know your mother."
That got the girl to look up. "M-Mama?" she asked hesitantly, rubbing at her eyes. "You know Mama?"
A wave of bitterness rushed through him as she blinked up at him, eyes the same green as Maka's, a wave of regret and guilt and old pain. "Yes," he heard himself saying. "We used to be friends."
She drew in a breath, blinking up at him, and seemed to come to a decision. "I'm Anima…" she said, still shaking. "But everyone calls me Annie. What's your name?"
"My name is Crona," he said, and he couldn't help the surge of elation at having a name, at remembering that he had a name. He let his arm come back to himself, folding his arms together on top of his own knees. "What did you do to your pretty room, Annie?"
She looked around the room, her eyes widening in fear and—Crona thought—a little bit of shame. Her shoulders started shaking more and she looked away from him, drawing her knees up close to herself again. "It wasn't me, it wasn't me, it wasn't me," she said. "It wasn't me, it wasn't me, it wasn't—."
"It's okay," Crona said, reaching for her. He let his hand fall tentatively onto her shoulder. "I understand."
Her muttering stopped, and she blinked tears out of her eyes as she looked up at him. "You do…?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. On a hunch, he added. "My blood is black, you know."
She stared up at him and then tears filled her eyes again. Her shoulder beneath his hand kept on shaking, but she didn't look away. "Bad things happen when Cori isn't here," she said, speaking quietly as if she was confessing a secret. "I do bad things…I don't like to be alone."
He nodded sagely. "It's hard, isn't it? To be alone?"
"I want Cori back," she said, looking back down at the ground. She sounded like she was about to cry. "I want Rei back."
He didn't know what a Cori was or what a Rei was, but he thought he understood. She had a Cori and a Rei. There was a time when he had had a Maka.
"I don't know where they are, so I can't find them for you," he said. "But I think they might be here." Wherever here was. "Somewhere. Do you know if they're here, Annie-chan?"
"Rei is here," said Annie. "But he's far away. He can't hear me. I don't know where Cori is. I want Rei…"
Rei. He remembered vaguely reaching out for Maka and finding someone else instead. Rei, Rei, ray of light…if that was the case then that person was definitely here. He frowned, his expression growing solemn as he watched the little girl.
"If Rei is here, then I need you to help me," he said. "I need you to go outside with me, Annie-chan. Can we do that?"
"No," she said, shrinking back from him and shaking her head. "No, no, no, no, no. I can't go outside. I can't…bad things happen when I go outside. I can't. I can't go. My…my blood…"
"…is black," Crona finished for her. He tilted his head, smiling at her. "That's alright," he said. "Mine is too. Sometimes that's a bad thing. But right now…right now I think Rei and Maka and all of those other people need it. I want to help them, but I can't do it without you."
She blinked up at him, still sniffling. "Rei needs me…?" she asked.
"Probably," Crona said.
"Mama too?"
"Maybe."
She sniffed, looking back down at the ground. "But if bad things happen—if no one's there to stop me—."
"I'll stop you," Crona said. "You just need to trust me, Annie-chan."
"But…" Annie began.
"I know," Crona said. He spoke without realizing he was speaking. He didn't know where the words came from, but they came from a place that felt natural, a place that he didn't have to think about. He thought it was a little bit like madness, except it wasn't.
Maybe it was bravery.
"I know it's scary to go outside, Annie-chan. I'm scared of the outside too. I know it feels like inside is safest. But there are people outside that need you, and that need me too, and I really want to go and help them. It's alright if you don't, if you want to stay in Mr. Corner, I understand. But I'm going to go, and I'm going to try to help them. I probably won't be able to without you—I don't have a body right now, you know, but I'm going to try anyway because I…because I think there's people out there who I want to protect."
She stared at him, taking it all in, then slowly raised her hand, wiping at her eyes. "You…can help me help Rei?" she asked.
"I can try," Crona said. "We can help him together."
She took in a shaky breath, looking from him to the room around her, to the steadily spreading pool of black liquid on the floor. Her eyes landed back on his and she slowly extended a hand.
"Okay…" she said.
