My Calling

Author: Cornell Valentine Gainsborough

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

MAKAI! Seperates Paragraphs

A/N: This is it, the very last chapter for this story. I just want to thank HellFire Blackheart, for helping to submit ideas and characters pertaining to this story, and to everyone who read and/or reviewed this fic.

Final Chapter: Becoming Whole

"You're... me?" This was getting rather strange.

"To be more precise, a part of you. When Sirea conjured up that seal, to seal away your power so it could be taken from you at a later time, she unknowingly split our soul into two halves." Nelius scowled at that thought. "Unfortunately for her, a person's soul cannot be simply split into two like that, as they will draw toward one another, like the opposite poles of a magnet. With what little willpower I had left before succumbing to the seal's strength, I confined myself into this very gauntlet, a testament to our father's work. It took me a while, but I eventually gained my own sentience, and began to set my plan into motion."

"So, I take you're the one who roused my father's four team members to draw me into this place?"

"I did precisely that, also creating two temporary guides to give you the keys to release me."

"...Those strange orbs I received. But, I only met one guide..."

"You catch on. When you first escaped from the castle, I felt the hold over the seal begin to weaken. That was when I created the first of the two, a representation of darkness power." The beast that gave Nelius the Black Orb then appeared next to the power self. "It was only after you'd removed the ink seal from your body that I felt the mana seal begin to slip, and thus I bided my time, working to create a temporary representation of light power, the one who stole the second key, and personally delivered a special message to Sirea." A small, wispy light filtered into the area before being absorbed alongside the darkness beast into Nelius' sealed self. "And, now that you are here, the final piece of a grand puzzle shall fall into place."

"Just what part do I play in this?"

"At first, when I couldn't contact you, I'd begun to believe I'd been forgotten, and my own jealousy and anger took hold of me. All I could think of was placing you here, while I took over your life." Hearing this, Nelius prepared himself to battle. "But, after having witnessed your battles above, I realized something when I heard you speak with Nevan." He relaxed a bit. "Even if we did battle here, the winner would never become the true Nelius, as we are still seperate beings, never truly a whole."

"When you put it like that, the only way would be for us to join again as one."

"There is one last seal placed upon my body, which helped to seperate us." The seal showed itself, looking precisely like the ink tatoo Nelius had gotten rid of, though it showed much wear and tear, having been seperated over a large distance. "I'm powerless to do anything to it, but since your seal is already broken..."

"Where to begin, though. Seals can't be physically broken so easily."

MAKAI!

Brad's ship made a forceful landing outside Laharl's castle, and the Neko-Succubus immediately jumped out of the ship, running straight into the castle without a second thought. The next few minutes were followed with the sounds of cursing, screaming, and someone getting a beatdown.

"How does she do it?" Tikal, who'd finally recovered enough after her makeshift flight across the bridge, stood up and gazed at the carnage one monster was creating.

"That kid never ceases to surprise me." HellStar commented. "Though, the way she's acting, you'd think something was stolen from her." She put a hand to her chin. "I could wonder..."

MAKAI!

"Huff...huff... Okay, it's tougher than I first thought." Nelius had tried smashing his fist against the seal, but was equally repulsed each time. "If not by purely by physical force, then we need to add something extra. There's gotta be something that'll work." His answer came in the form of a painful landing on something hard and metallic. Feeling around where he landed, he found the same gun that had saved Brad back before the whole expidition began, now crackling with mana energy. 'It's the same kind that Nevan transferred to me... wait! She told me..'

Flashback

"Well, I think there's a way to nullify and remove the fragments from your body. I remember your father talking about it sometime ago. He said there was a mana type that held a dominance over other elemental mana, even those of light and darkness, the two toughest elements to control."

End Flashback

"A kind that can control and nullify other elements. Well, I still hate firearms, but here goes nothing." Raising the gun upward, he pulled the trigger, releasing a mana-charged bullet that struck the seal. For a moment, the bullet seemed to meet resistance, until Nelius fired another shot right into the back of the first bullet, shattering the seal into thousands of spell fragments.

"Amazing. To think your mana power could dispell seals." The area began to crackle as the formerly sealed portion of Nelius' soul was finally freed. "Thank you."

"No, I should be the one to do that." The room began flickering as it began to crumble. "What's going to happen now?"

"Simple." The power half began walking toward Nelius, holding out one of his hands toward him. "This room's purpose of holding me has been spent. Now we can finally become our true self." Nelius, catching on, caught his counterpart's hand, like two friends or brothers, then all went white.

MAKAI!

Etna was in her room, having freshly gotten out of a much needed shower, running a comb through the lengths of her dark pink hair. The Shatter Gauntlet lay on her desk.

'First he runs off, now he sends a freaky Nekomata-Succubus hybrid to come after us...' She put the comb down and headed over to her closet, where she picked up the Longinus Spear she'd been entrusted with. 'Ah well, I've been in need of a good battle.' Mere moments after leaving the room, a glow eminated from the gauntlet, and, lo and behold, Nelius appeared from it.

"What a trip...huh?" Noticing that his voice sounded a bit deeper, he looked into a mirror on his right.

His hair, which was normally a dark brown, now had a red shine to it and slicked backwards some, though it still concealed his ears. He was also a few inches taller, but what surprised him the most about the merge with his other self was that his eyes had changed to a neutral orange color.

"This is what I was supposed to look like? Oh, here it... what in the?" Apparently, he wasn't the only one to undergo a transformation.

The Shatter Gauntlet had slimmed down a bit, but at the same time appeared all the more deadly. As he picked it up and reattached it to his left hand, he noticed that his A. Knuckle glove on his right hand was missing, and in its place was another gauntlet similar to the Shatter Gauntlet, but it still had the capital A on the middle finger knuckle.

"They've changed, just like me. All right, now to..." He trailed off, feeling something stuck on the side of the left hand gauntlet. Picking it off, he noticed that it was some emerald green stone. 'How very strange, I can feel... something pulsating from this stone.' Simply deciding to take it with him, he began to walk out of the room, only to realize... "Wait a minute, where the hell am I?"

In another part of the castle..

Vassals were being tossed around like mere toys as the Neko-Succubus continued her rampage throughout the castle for reasons beknowest only to her.

"Etna! What the hell are you doing?!" Laharl was furious. "Why are you just watching? Get her!"

"Eh, don't sweat it, Prince." Etna just watched as more vassals went flying through the air. "She's bound to tire out sooner or later."

"That's it?! You're just going to watch as she destroys everything? What kind of vassal are you?!"

"Simple. A smart one." Seeing that this was going nowhere, Laharl decided to just jump into the fray himself. "Gets him off his lazy ass every time." She grinned.

Back with Nelius...

"What's going on? I can hear fighting." He raced down the halls of the castle, hearing the sounds growing louder as he approached. "Sounds like someone got royally pissed." The stone he found began pulsating again as one of the copy Etnas came nearby.

"Man, she certainly is pissed off."

"Who's pissed off?"

"This weird hybrid monster. Looks like a cross between a Nekomata and one of Priere's Succubi. Dunno how she got in, but she'd creating a ruckus."

"Aw, damn it, you two!" He took off, and the stone began pulsing even further, though he was oblivious to this. "What could they be going on about this time?" As he rounded the corner, he felt as though something had yanked him back. Looking behind him revealed nobody, but he noticed that his hand that was carrying the stone had stopped. "Oh, shit!" He knew what was coming next.

In the ship...

"Ohhh, wha 'appened?" Brad finally woke up. "Hey, where are we?"

"Just outside Laharl's." Juno calmly replied as she filled another syringe. Predictably, he began bugging out again.

"H-how'd we end up back there again?!"

"Calm down, you." In a corner of the room stood the humanoid Brad. "Turns out that after that Neko-Succubus pummeled you to death, she hijacked the ship's controls and led us back here."

"WHAT?!! WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP HER?!"

"It wasn't really my business to begin with, and you really need to get over your fear of... what's that?"

"Hey, you've got to take a look at this!" Tikal had hijacked each of the screens on the ship, showing a quick broadcast of Laharl's castle. From one of the sections of the castle, up rose a ball of energy, which began interfering with the transmission, eventually cutting off the broadcast.

"Wha--how?" Brad was rather speechless. "The systems aboard the ship were already far ahead of their time, how could they get cut off?"

"I could only wonder what could generate that much power."

Back at the battle sight...or, what's left of it...

The fighting just ceased all together as the figure of Nelius (though nobody at the time knew it was him) became encased in an energy sphere, which floated through the roof and outside.

"Welp, life as I know it ends here." The copy Etnas, who'd been enjoying the battle up to that point, began dissolving one after another until only the black Nekomata was left.

"There go my conversation partners." She simply got up and left.

MAKAI!

Nelius immediately remembered this sensation. Somehow, that stone had enough power to tear open a dimensional gate and sucked him into it.

'Where will I end up now?' He could feel his body flying around as if he'd been strapped to a rocket powered roller coaster set to the top speed of Mach 6. When he finally found himself coming to a complete stop, he landed face first on solid dirt.

Meanwhile, a pair of robotic eyes opened up. Data quickly began flashing across them.

"Processing commands... investigation of demonic life form commensing."

MAKAI!

After I'd told Hellfire about this being the last chapter, we had a small discussion between ourselves before coming to an agreement. As I'm writing the next story about Nelius' new adventure, he was going to be writing a seperate side story which details what Brad and his cohorts would be up to.

Until Next Story,

Cornell Valentine Gainsborough