Chapter 12; Kai; Beating Against Ghosts; Trapped in the Eternal Maze? Pt. 4
For once, I was the one that was going apeshit while Black*Star let me lead the way through the creepy hall of mirrors. At one point, I whipped around a corner and smacked my face against another dead end. In violent frustration I pulled my fist back and plunged it into the glass without a second thought. Though Black*Star yelped when it shattered, I barely blinked, snapped back to reality by the dull ache in my knuckles. The black blood was already working through my system and healing up the cuts, but somehow the action had calmed me. For the first time since we'd entered into this part of the maze I didn't have to see the numerous reflections of myself.
"I'm good," I took a deep breath and place my hand on the empty back-side of the mirror, closing my eyes. "I just really need to get out of here."
"And we're gonna' get out, and beat Merle!" Black*Star assured me in his usual enthusiastically arrogant tone.
Grinning, I turned back towards him and reached out my hand. The familiar feeling of our wavelengths connecting did wonders for my emotions, and already I could feel myself stabilizing again. My kishin, who always got a little frisky in the back of my mind when I was too amped up, quietened down again, no longer straining to rise to the surface and change my appearance. In a flash of my own colored light I rested in Black*Star's hand, a claymore, and we set off again. This time our journey wasn't fuelled by my fury, but by our shared determination to best our opponent.
"Black*Star, pre-kishin ahead!" I alerted my meister as we turned the corner. Sure enough, my soul perception skills were getting sharper: ahead a figure stood with its back to us, hands hanging limply by its sides and its shoulders slumped – as if it were holding something heavy… I took a closer look. No, he didn't have hands, but he sure did have a nice pair of heavy machine guns at the end of his arms. "Watch out for those guns! We don't have very much room to dodge in here!"
Black*Star grunted, getting into a ready position. "Do you remember the Speed*Star technique we made in practice?"
"Well, yeah," I responded, my hesitation thrumming through my wavelength. "But I don't know if we're ready yet, Black*Star! We still haven't worked the kinks out!"
"We're ready!"
Shouting out in excitement, Black*Star pushed off the ground. The pre-kishin turned to face us – but was too slow. As we whistled past, I felt the edge of my blade slice into the soft skin of the back of his knee. He tumbled to the ground, unable to move one of his legs, but that didn't stop him from shooting. With a grace that he seldom did possess, the blue-haired assassin twisted mid-air and blocked a stream of bullets with my metal. Landing in a crouch again, I felt the urging of his wavelength and changed my shape, cutting down my size into the slightly smaller Scottish dirk.
"Let's go, Soul Resonance!"
The wind kicked up around us, knocking another stream of bullets askew as our souls collided. With the level of connection, I could practically feel his heart beating like it was my own. It was complete, body and soul, and we were one. In that moment, it was all I could do to focus. The growing power of Black*Star's soul wasn't something someone could just not be amazed by, and it was a good thing that I hadn't had the sensitivity to soul perception that I had now when I had met him. From within his soul, where I amplified his wavelength as all weapons do, I could see just how powerful he was. When his maturity failed, his determination was there to rally. Where his body might fall, the strength of his soul carried him on. So pure, so untainted…
As for my own soul, I had never seen it, so I couldn't tell you how strong or large it was. All I knew was that, no matter what, I wanted to be on Black*Star's level. No matter what it took, no matter how hard I had to work, I would stay by his side. In fact, other than Death the Kid himself, there was no one else I could accept turning me into a Death Scythe. I trusted him completely to lead me there.
I had faith that he could do anything.
Black*Star was right. We were ready.
"Speed*Star!"
In a blur we launched our attack, moving at a speed that I knew couldn't possibly be followed by the human eye. Moving in a star pattern around the kishin, we made hundreds of little cuts on its body, slicing and flitting away before it could follow. The success, however, came with a slight hiccup: a brief moment where Black*Star's foot slipped the slightest bit on the slick floor. For a moment, the kishin had an open line. His gun hand swung up like a club, barely missing my meister's face by an inch, but the speed and momentum of his swing carried his arm in the same direction we were moving – and the kishin noticed too. Just as the muzzle flashed, I acted on instinct, an urge screaming through my wavelength and down Black*Star's arm, raising my blade just the slightest bit and deflecting the bullets before Black*Star took care of the rest.
Then, it was over.
We were left panting, staring at the floating red ball and trying to regain our breath. Breaking the resonance, I wondered what exactly had just happened, but dismissed it as a miscommunication in the heat of battle. Obviously Black*Star had noticed the oncoming bullets as well, and had moved of his own volition. A weapon couldn't control it's meister.
"Yum!" I hummed in contentment as I hopped out of Black*Star's hand and picked it up by the little tail, dropping it into my mouth and swallowing.
Black*Star guffawed at my satisfied expression, asking out of the blue: "What does a soul taste like, anyways?"
A bit startled at the random question, I tried to come up with an answer, but couldn't. "It's hard to explain. It doesn't really have a taste…" Tapping one finger on my chin, I bit my lip. "It's just kind of… I don't know. It just makes you feel kind of full inside. And maybe a little bit more energetic."
Hopping back into his hand, as a Scottish dirk again, we chatted easily as we explored the maze. Though he was still hurried, a lot of our pent up frustration had dissipated. If we had taken care of the pre-kishin that quickly, there was no way Merle could be beating us.
Unless, of course, there were secret passages.
When I brought up the idea to Black*Star, he curse quietly and doubled his pace. Little did we know at the time, but we were actually doing quite well. Our completion of the maze had passed quickly, and suddenly… "Black*Star! Look ahead! It looks like an entrance to a tent!"
Whooping in delight, the bluenette raced forward, bursting through the flap and skidding to a stop. The room we had emerged into was dark, save two stand-up mirrors that glowed like all of the other portals had. Since this level was all about intuition, I went with my gut: "I think we should take the one on the left!"
"What about Merle?" Black*Star asked, "We beat her. Shouldn't we be collecting our debt?"
I scoffed, irritation flashing through me. "I'll be collecting – publicly. And it'll be accompanied by a fist in her pretty-ass little copycat face!"
Stepping forward, towards the mirror on the left, we were both so focused on our conversation that neither one of us saw the tent flap move. We didn't hear the footsteps, or register that someone was approaching. In fact, Black*Star didn't even turn until he was tapped on the shoulder, when it was too late. One roundhouse kick later and I was spiralling through the air, too disoriented to even change back into my normal form until I landed on the ground. All the air left my lungs as my left shoulder took the full brunt of the force. A small popping sound could be heard as my two halves met, the left dislocating. I groaned, unable to even coherently think with the pain, before I rolled carefully to my feet – alone.
"Black*Star?" My voice echoed, sounding empty.
"Kai!"
I spun on my heel, clutching my left shoulder, and gaped. Behind me stood a mirror, and on the other side stood Black*Star. I raced to it and pressed my hand to the glass, expecting it to go through, and was shocked when the mirror instead wobbled against the pressure. In a panic I steadied it and looked through to my meister's panicked expression.
"What's going on?" I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my tone. "What happened?"
"Oh, that would have been me!" Merle's face appeared at Black*Star's shoulder, smirking evilly. "I have to admit, I'm a sore loser. I'll be taking my prize regardless of your winning. And I want some time with Black*Star!" With one hand stroking his bicep, she pouted up at him while he recoiled in disgust. "You see, the mirror you went through was, obviously, the wrong one. And it's been rigged not to let anyone else through until someone walks through that door, which will be quite some time… so I'll make you a deal: your meister and I will go through the other one, have a nice long chat, and you can have him back at the end of the maze… if you can even make it!"
Without my prompting, the kishin rose up and my features began shifting, pupils turning to strange slits – one vertical and one horizontal. "I swear, Merle, if you do anything to him I will personally rip your soul to shreds." My voice sounded layered, with a deep gravely echo underneath the growling tone of my own.
"I'm quaking in my boots, Kishin Blade!" Merle mocked, before shrugging her shoulders. "I'll give you two a moment alone, ne?"
Watching her disappear, I could only stand there and tremble in rage. With no one to help me calm myself, all I was capable of was taking deep breaths and hoping that my rage would fade with a few moments of relaxing breaths. After a long second, my features returned to normal, and I was finally able to look into the eyes of my meister. He was stiff with anger, the fury of someone whose partner has been hurt. But I hadn't been hurt, and I wasn't planning on losing this sick game that Merle was playing. I would find the end of the maze, and I would kick her ass when I did.
"We're going to be okay," I whispered evenly, trying to persuade myself as much as him.
When he placed his hand flat on the glass where mine rested, I nearly melted. "Of course we are, we gotta' get outta' this and beat god!"
"I'll meet you at the finish line!"
He smirked, backing up with a cheerful nod. "Race you?"
"I'll win!"
"You can't hope to defeat the Great Black*Star!"
I rolled my eyes, stepping back. "I'll see you there."
Quite a distance away, Soul was watching Maka furiously chop the T.V. into pieces and wondering how exactly she was expecting to watch the games without a television.
And he had really liked that T.V. set too, damn it.
"Kid, we've been walking for hours!" Liz complained in his right hand.
"Look, there's a lot of me!" Patty giggled in his right.
Death the Kid could already feel his right eyebrow twitching, which in turn made his left eyebrow twitch. At least he could get annoyed somewhat symmetrically, but honestly, he was more than annoyed. After asking his father – who had appeared to explain the Eternal Maze after the 'basement' level – what place he was in (mistake number one) Kid found himself to be… in fourth. Fourth, the Shinigami's own son. He was a disgrace!
His second mistake, though you could perhaps count it as his first, was that he had forgotten to arrange the pots and pans symmetrically above the stove after breakfast, and now it was all he could think about. Death the Kid's obsession with those damned pots was his third mistake. It caused his eyebrow to twitch, which caused his other eyebrow to twitch, which in turn caused him to catch the movement in one of the many mirrors and turn to look. Then, of course, he saw his hair and…
"Look! Kid is crying again!" Patty cheered to her elder sister.
The sisters appeared beside the young death god, who was now curled up into a ball, and listened to his blubbering for the millionth time that day. If he hadn't gone through this same routine multiple times in the last hour, they may have been a little more sympathetic, but the fact was that they were in fourth because of his attacks.
"Kid," Liz said after a moment.
"I'm garbage! Asymmetrical garbage! Such trash should not be allowed to exist, let alone compete in a competition like this! Just take me out of my misery!" Though he was muffling his voice, somehow it could still be heard quite clearly.
Getting an idea, the elder Thompson sister spoke: "The sooner we get out of this damned maze, the sooner you can arrange the pots!"
Nothing had ever gotten Death the Kid up from an OCD attack faster than that.
It could be argued that, without Ragnarok's pestering, Crona would have been doing much better in the Eternal Maze. "I don't know if I can handle this silence!" The pinkette whimpered, rubbing his arm nervously. "I don't know how to deal with th - Ouch!"
"Quit yer whining, you pansy!" The demon squeaked furiously, trying to spur his vessel on. "What the hell you waiting for? It's not gonna get any louder if you just stand here!"
"I don't like it when you yell at me! I can't deal with people yel - Ow!"
"Just keep walking!"
Of course, it could also be argued that without Ragnarok, Crona might have never finished the Eternal Maze at all.
While his helpfulness was in doubt, there was no question that Ragnarok was the more motivated of the two, whether he would admit it or not.
Author's Note: This was updated at 12:30 in the morning, and my computer was having issues, so it took TWO times to get it all readable and stuff cuz it had issues at first... anyways. Love you all ducklings! Review, favorite, comment!