Chapter Five: Alchemy and Homunculi

Authors Note: I'm sorry! Here's my excuses for not updating;

school, tests, being ill for three months, Soul Eater and my fangirling over Death The Kid -_-

I don't know where I'm going with this fic, so I need some ideas, badly :)

Disclaimer: If I was able to own one of things that I write fanfics about, to be honest, it wouldn't be Skulduggery Pleasant, I'd muck it up, and besides, if I owned something like Bleach or Death Note, I could put in my favourite pairings :3

"Where are we going, Skulduggery?" Valkyrie asked as they drove down a dark dirt road in the shade of tall, beckoning trees and the thick layer of cloud above that blocked the view of the night sky. The road was pitch black, save from the beams of the headlights on the Bentley that illuminated the path a few meters in front of them. The scene looked like something out of 'The Walking Dead' or 'World War Z', you'd expect a shuffling mass of rotten flesh, covered in ulcers and caked in dry blood with long, hard nails as sharp as scythes to appear. Instead of that, however, there was two very strange people, a six foot brunette with long, graceful hair wearing plain clothes, the other was a sandy-haired man with visible arm muscles from under the sleeves of his long shirt. The man had a sharp jaw and angular nose, but his eyes were glassy, the eyes of a dead man. But this man, or whatever he was, along with the woman, were moving in a very non-zombiefied and rather undignified way. The man seemed to be bowing down to the woman as he walked in his strange way, muttering 'master' again and again. Skulduggery stopped the car in time so they didn't run the strange pair over. He lowered the window and asked if they were lost. The woman's eyes widened and she spoke in a voice that sounded like a mix of a deep, ragged male voice and a squeaky, stereotypically girly voice, like a teenage boy, but slightly more zombie-y.

"Thrasher. It's them. Distract them whilst I run away heroically screaming my lungs out." The woman instructed.

"Yes master." Came a simple reply from the deep voice of the male, whom bowed more so that his nose touched the dirty floor.

Valkyrie and Skulduggery had been watching the scene all along with amusement from the Bentley.

"Is that-?"

"Yes. I believe that's our great friends, would you like to talk to them?"

"No. Run them over."

If Skulduggery had been wearing his facade, you would've seen a smirk as he put his foot down on the correct pedal, the acceleration one. The car went forward at enough speed to send the two flying into the distance. Valkyrie was sure that she saw a little sparkle where they disappeared from sight.

"Satisfied?"
"Definitely. Now, where the hell are we going in the middle of the night?" She asked her previously queried question once more.

"Well, I looked around for some clues in the week, and I have a few suspects whom I shall reveal to you later. As for where we are going, we are visiting an Alchemist. He goes by the name of The Night Alchemist, and he's nocturnal, hence our nightly departure."

"What's his actual name? Please don't say it's another 'The', I don't trust people who call themselves 'The', they try and kill me." Valkyrie moaned.

"You've only ever met one 'The' who did that. In fact, you've only ever met one 'The', full stop." The living, not so alive skeleton stated simply, as usual.

"What, are we stating our punctuation now? But that's beside the point, technically, every 'The' I've ever met has tried to kill me. Full sto- huh?" Valkyrie stopped and stared in awe, they were out of the grubby dirt road and out on a normal road, in the bright sunshine. "What? How is this possible?" She said, eyes still wide at the plain house which was bathed in sunlight.

"You were too busy attempting to outsmart me, so you didn't realise that a few yards back, the air went hazy and almost shiny. Once we passed through that, it appeared to be sunny. It's called a light sphere. It's used for making movies and for nocturnal beasts that I won't mention by name."

"Vampires." Valkyrie spat. Skulduggery sighed.

"You said the word, not me." They walked up to the house, Skulduggery knocked on the door swiftly three times.

"Come in." Came a voice. It was a simple voice, simple tone, simple mannerisms, but very hard to describe. The voice was just that, a voice. No emotion at all, just a voice.

"Why is he letting us in, we could be anyone."

"I forgot to mention, the light sphere also stops non-magical beings from entering. But the cleverest bit is that if a mortal were to come into contact with the sphere, they'd be transported to the other side of the sphere, where it looks so similar that nobody would notice. It's a basic form of teleportation."

"That's pretty cool." Valkyrie admitted as she and the not-quite-living skeleton entered the house. Inside, they were greeted by a man with onyx eyes and hair, an angular face, wearing a long sleeved black t-shirt and black jeans. In his hands were a small bowl and a piece of chalk.

"Hello. I am Skulduggery Pleasant, and this is my colleague, Valkyrie Cain. We would like to see your Homunculi, if you shall."

"Homunculi?"

"An artificial human."

"Wait. Like reflections?"

"Yes." Came the emotionless voice of the alchemist as he led them into his workspace. "Reflections are the most basic Homunculi, but with a few alterations, such as magic, they can become their own person, they can become to powerful that only a handful of these 'Perfect Humans' could easily destroy the world."

"Our problem just got bigger then." Skulduggery stated, trying not to hint at his suspects.

"Wait, you think that... The Reflection was the one who tried to kill me?" They entered the workroom and looked around, there were hundreds of artificial bodies, all of them had a strange-looking tattoo-type thing of a snake eating it's tail.

"That's a... Ouroboros, it represents immortality or re-birth. A dragon or serpent eating it's tail." Skulduggery spoke with curiosity. "Say, would a reflection ever get one of these?"

"Yes, if it comes into contact with magic and absorbs it, then it will have an Ouroboros tattoo. If it does possess one, then the chances are that it can use magic." The plain man stated, no emotion still.

"So the reflection..." Valkyrie began

"There's a chance it's becoming a Homunculus. It could even be trying to raise an army."

"And if that happens?"

"Everything. Everything will perish. Cease to exist."

"Isn't there any way of stopping it? Killing it?"

"Well... there's one way, but it's almost fatal for the person whose reflection it is..."

Crappy short chapters for the win~

I suggest you go check out the third episode of Soul Eater immediately to see the frickinawesomelycutehotasymmetrical Death The Kid *fangirl explosion*

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~Misguided Shinigami, who's direction of choice leads straight to death~