"Now I've got a REALLY bad feeling about this..." Brandon mumbled, the uneasy feeling in his stomach returning with a greater magnitude.
Fletch, who had stayed quiet all this time, finally spoke. "My family would not attack unless provoked. Do you know of anything that could have caused such a disturbance?"
"There has been an unusual increase in the death of Kishins recently." Sakura coughed out.
"When?" Alice asked. "When did this start happening?"
"When two ~cough~ mysterious academy students disappeared." The Hummingbird Wendigo replied. Alice's eyes widened in shock before she sent a telepathic message to Brandon.
'I think the academy is following us.'
'Shit. Why would they send someone after us?' he thought back, marking the page and putting the book away in his pocket.
'Maybe Maka heard us planning to see Medusa.'
'How could she have heard that?' Brandon thought.
'We were right in front of her apartment.'
'True, but why would've she been eavesdropping on us?'
'She did seem a bit... uneasy around me. Maybe she was trying to make sure I didn't try to convince any students to betray the academy. She obviously thought we were going to betray the academy and told Lord Death. Or, maybe the students we were tutoring got worried when we didn't show up and alerted Lord Death of our absence.'
'Oh shit. You know what that means.' Brandon thought.
'I do, but tell me anyway.'
'We gotta go out with a bang.' Brandon though, a small grin growing on his lips.
'Or get captured.'
'Well, either way we're not giving up without a fight.' Brandon thought, beginning to get ready to enter insane mode again.
Alice grinned. 'Damn straight.'
"Let's go." he said aloud, and began walking towards the door.
"Alec told us to wait here." Alice said, gesturing towards the two injured Wendigos.
"Lemmie patch them up quick." he said, and walked over to the two. He then changed his soul wavelength to match the healing wavelength and healed the two wendigos quickly, and began walking towards the door again.
"You can go, but I'm staying."
"Why?" He asked, turning around to face his partner.
"Alec told us to wait in case anyone else survived the attack."
"Ok. I'm going out to buy us as much time as possible, so they can escape." Brandon said, walking towards the door once more.
"Why risk getting killed?"
"Simple. Cause I can't die." He said with a shark toothed grin, entering insane mode. The familiar demonic wing appeared on his right shoulder blade, and his right eye started glowing red.
"...You have a Grigori soul?"
"Yeah. Surprised you never noticed it." he said, looking back at his wing.
"So am I."
"Tell me if anyone comes back hurt and needs immediate treatment." he said, walking closer and closer to the door.
"How will I be able to-" Just then, Lucian walked in carrying a nearly unconscious Alec over his shoulder. "What's going on?"
"The academy! They're coming!"
"Shit." Brandon said, and began sprinting towards the battle scene. When he arrived he saw hundreds of Kishin souls floating above the bloody ground of the dig site, the Spartoi(and Stein) standing in the middle of it all.
Alice ran to catch up with her meister. 'Damn... they had to send our own friends to kill us?'
Stein walked forward, pointing a tranquilizer gun at them. "By the order of Lord Death, you two are under arrest for treason and thievery " Maka said in a serious tone while Stein shot Alice with the gun. The tranquilizer hit her neck, and she collapsed instantly.
"Alice!" Brandon exclaimed, watching her fall unconscious onto the ground. He felt a stronger rage building inside of him, and he felt the power within him growing. Insanity material started crawling up his right arm and right side of his face, leaving a spike pattern on his face. He felt the wing in his back grow larger, and he clenched his fists tightly in rage. "You just pissed off...the wrong fucking guy..." he said, looking up at the assailants. All self restraint was gone. Any intentions of letting them live was gone. He wasn't going to be satisfied until he felt their blood on his fingers. A large sword of the insanity material appeared on his right arm, being nearly twice the size it normally is.
"I'm sorry, but that's not an option." Maka said, cutting Stein off from what he was going to say and getting into a fighting stance along with Kidd, BlackStar and Ox.
Stein put a hand in front of Maka, blocking her from attacking them. "Lord Death told us to resolve this peacefully. We will use violence only if we have to."
Brandon felt the insanity start to take over, taking over control of his voice. "Shoot me, I dare you." he said, the insanity material spreading over more of his body and face.
Stein noticed it hadn't reached his neck yet, so he shot the tranquilizer there. "It'll take more time for it to affect Brandon, since Alice was more animalistic."
"It's strange," Tsubaki said. "They were our fiends, but now we're hunting them down..."
"Hah! They deserve it for trying to oppose their God, even if they're not from this dimension. Yahoo!" BlackStar exclaimed.
"Maka told us everything," Kidd said. "Let us help you two."
Brandon stopped listening after Blackstar's insult. His rage boiling again, it spilled over his rage limit. Brandon was no longer Brandon. The insanity material began consuming more of his face and body, until there was only an 1/8th of his skin left.
His insanity now controlled his mind.
He chuckled and a grin then appeared on his face. He pulled the dart our of his neck effortlessly, and flicked it away. The dart hit the ground and became fully imbedded in the ground. "How can you help me when you can't even help yourself?" he asked in a low, satanic tone. He then ran behind Blackstar quicker than the eye could see. BlackStar turned and blocked Brandon's attack by hitting him with the blade of Tsubaki's Demn Sword mode, which sent him flying a few meters back.
"I enjoy when my prey fights back." Brandon said, and began charging at him again. He then jumped up and swung down at BlackStar.
"Professor, how much longer before the medicine takes effect?" Maka asked, watching the two males fight.
"A few more minutes and he'll be out." Stein replied as BlackStar slashed across Brandon's face.
"Hmph." Brandon chuckled, the torn flesh in his face quickly regenerating. He then swung a haymaker slash with his sword at BlackStar, an as the ninja deflected it, claws materialized on Brandon's left hand, which he stabbed into BlackStar's stomach. BlackStar slashed at him again, putting the blade through his stomach and attacking him with shadows. Brandon just grinned, regenerating all the parts of his body that are damaged.
"By the way, if you're waiting for the tranquilizer to take effect, it won't. I already burnt it out of my blood stream." he said, impaling BlackStar's stomach with his claws and lifting the ninja up off of the ground with ease.
Maka then decided to get involved. "Soul Resonance!" she yelled as Soul began to play his song. "Genie Hunter!" She slashed at Brandon expelling all the madness from his body for the moment while Stein shot him with another tranquilizer dart. Brandon felt the madness leave his mind as he regained control, but the felt the affects of two tranquilizer darts. He slowly fell to his knees, then onto his face, and then unconscious.
Alice was the first to wake. She noticed she was in a dungeon and that Brandon and Alec were there, too. Alec noticed she was awake and gave her a pathetically trapped stare. Then she noticed his eyes. They were a bright shade of green, and full of fear. He had no claws on his hands and, instead of gray skin, his skin was a tan color. He was chained to the wall.
He was human.
She turned to Brandon, who was right next to her and shook him awake. "What...?" he groaned, waking up to sore muscles.
"We're in a dungeon." Alice said quietly, looking around. "Alec is here. He's human now, but he seems really scared."
"What?" he asked a bit more seriously, snapping to attention. "Why are we..." he began, but the memories of what happened filled his mind and answered his question.
Alice turned toward Alec. "Alec, are you OK?"
Alec responded by shutting his eyes tightly and clamping his hands over his ears, shaking his head from side to side. "They're not real! They're not real! They can't be real!"
"Alec. What aren't real?" Brandon asked in an assertive tone, trying to punch through Alec's paranoia.
"They're just hallucinations, they're not real..." Alec muttered to himself. "Alice and Brandon are academy students, they're in class right now. These are hallucinations... the real ones wouldn't be wasting their time in here with me!" he hissed.
"He's in a state of shock. He's suffering from extreme paranoia and amnesia." Brandon said, trying to figure out was wrong with Alec.
"Oh god... I can't believe I forgot!" Alice exclaimed in horror. "When I first turned human, I started hallucinating and couldn't tell the difference between my visions and reality... I had to be sent to hospital a because I didn't eat!" She put her hands over her mouth. "And i-it's happening to Alec, now... This is all my fault! I should never have told you about the Magitechnology!"
"This isn't your fault. It's the bastard who took us from our dimensions and trapped us here." Brandon said, becoming a little pissed off.
"I hate whoever did this us..." she replied before noticing someone walk through the hall and sit in a chair in front of their cell.
It was one of the students they taught. She could tell from the hoodie that it was Alex. Brandon glanced over at the door and also saw the hooded boy.
"What the hell happened?" Alex asked, obviously confused as to why his teachers were in the dungeon.
"Maka didn't tell you?" Alice asked, turning away from Alex and focusing her attention on Alec, who was muttering to himself about shadows and nightmares.
"She did, but I couldn't believe it. Why would you help a kishin. A wendigo, nonetheless?" he asked, a bit of anger in his voice. Brandon didn't even bother to answer, instead he leaned up against the wall and began reading the book which put in his pocket earlier.
"Because he used to be our only way home. Alex, we're not from here." Alice responded.
"Then where the hell are you from that makes it ok to work with a wendigo?!"
"We're from different dimensions."
"What?" he asked, not understanding.
"In my dimension, I used to be a Wendigo, myself. Lord Death is dead there. Kidd turned into a Kishin Lord, but turned back into a Reaper when I turned human. He's Lord Death now, and the world is in ruins." Alice explained further.
Brandon glanced up from his book, and decided to explain his perdiciment. "Where I'm from, it's very similar to this one. The key difference in my dimension though, is me."
"What do you mean by that?" Alex asked.
"You see, I have madness in my soul. I live with it, an because of that I'm given extraordinary powers." Brandon explained. To both of their surprise, Alex suddenly ran off, trying to process what the two had said. Brandon just looked down and began reading again.
"That coward." Alice muttered darkly. Alec had fallen asleep.
"That was a lot to digest. Imagine if someone just told you what we told him." Brandon said, turning a page.
"I'd stay and face it." Alice said. "That's just how I was raised, y'know? 'Never run away, even if you're afraid. That's the worst thing you could ever do in your life.' That's what my Dad used to tell me."
"That's a good motto to live by." Brandon said, thinking it over.
"I hope he comes back," Alice said. "I hate it when people run away from me. It happens all the time in my dimension. Someone takes one look at me and runs away like they think I'm going to kill them... or they look at me like I'm a demon. You and Kidd are the only ones that don't run."
"Because we're in this together. If we didn't help each other, we would both have been stuck here." Brandon said, turning another page in the book.
"So if we weren't, you would have run when I told you what I was?"
"No. I wouldn't have run because I will always help someone, no matter what they are. That is, unless they hurt people I hold close or are told to kill." Brandon said, flipping another page.
"Were you scared when I told you?"
"Strangely, no. I had a feeling you wouldn't attack me." Brandon said.
Alice gave him a small smile before hearing more footsteps. "Did Alex come back?" she asked quietly.
"Beats the hell out of me." Brandon said with a shrug.
She peered into the hallway. "Yup." she smiled.
"How was your walk?" Brandon joked, seeing the hooded boy appear at the door.
"Uneventful. I did think about what you told me though." Alex replied.
"So, do you believe us?" Alice asked hopefully.
"I guess so. You both definitely seem...different." Alex said, pondering.
"Hey, do you know how long we've been in here?" Brandon asked.
"You were thrown down here yesterday." Alex replied, remembering back.
Brandon then took out his swiss army knife, took out the blade, and scratched a mark into the wall. Alice gave him a confused look. "What are you doing?"
"Marking the days we've been in here." Brandon replied, putting the knife away.
"Oh," Alice said before turning to Alex. "So, Alex, if you had a choice between going to my dimension or Brandon's, which would you choose?" she asked boredly.
"Brandon's, definitely." the boy said quickly, not expecting the question. "Yours sounds like a very depressing place."
"It is. It's a horrible place, you wouldn't want to live there. Kishins are everywhere, so many people are going insane... And then there's Kidd. Don't even get me started on that greedy asshole." Alice hissed.
"Why? Kidd isn't like that at all." Alex asked, confused again.
"Maybe not here, but in my dimension he is a selfish murderer."
"A murderer?!" Alex exclaimed.
"And a thief And a liar. He may be Lord Death, but he's no saint." Alice replied. "Punishment, it's funny. I didn't mean for any of those terrible things to happen but Kidd did and I get stuck with the bad end of the deal. But, I guess that's just life."
"That's horrible." Alex uttered, feeling a tiny bit of sympathy for the ex-wendigo.
"Hey, could you get someone to bring us some food? We're starving in here." Brandon asked, feelin his stomach rumble and growl.
"Uh, sure. I'll go get someone." Alex said, and ran off again.
Alice smiled, a tint of nostalgia in her gaze. "I was once the most powerful Kishin in the world. And somehow, Kidd reduced my status to just a simple maid." she chuckled. "I wonder, why did I let him do that to me?"
"Maybe because it all happened too quickly for you to realize." Brandon suggested, returning to reading his book.
"Possibly," Alice said. Then she thought of something and became curious. "Hey, Brandon. Y'know how your soul is half insane? Does mean you have, like, two people inside of you? You and your madness?"
"Yeah." he said. "It's a second person, the essence of insanity. He sometimes talks to me in my head, and is embodied in my second pistol when I resonate with Clair."
"Who is 'Clair'?" Alice asked, quickly growing defensive. "I thought I was your only weapon!" she exclaimed, a bit of envy evident in her tone.
"How would I fight in my own dimension without another weapon?" he asked, surprised by her sudden defensiveness.
"Oh, right..." Alice replied. "Sorry, I get like this when I go without my medication for a while. Now, as I was saying, can your madness take a humanoid form?"
"It can, but it only happened once before. It drained a lot of his power though, so I think he refrains from using it." Brandon explained, thinking back to that night during spring break at his house.
"Oh, well I was hoping it would be able take some form and somehow get us out of here."
"Unlikely. He wouldn't survive very long outside of my body." Brandon said, turning a page in his book.
"Would that hurt you, too?"
"No, but it makes me feel weak. Feel helpless." He said.
"I'm hungry. When's Alex gettin' here with our food?"
"I don't think it's gonna be him. I gotta feeling its gonna be someone else." Brandon said.
"Pfft! Darn it!"
"Heh, maybe its Medusa. Maybe she snuck her way back into the academy and she's gonna break us out." Brandon joked with a chuckle. Soon, they heard footsteps. Quickly afterwards, they heard "Yahoo!" and knew who was coming.
"Oh dear god, no." Alice whispered, a tear coming to her eye. Just then, BlackStar came in, with Kidd behind him telling him to shut up.
"Hello!" BlackStar bellowed as he arrived, carrying two plates of food. Kidd was carrying three, one in each and balancing one on top of his head. "You're God has arrived!"
"I hail to no god." Brandon said, turning a page in his book.
Kidd sighed, before carefully kneeling down and placing the three plates into the cell. BlackStar handed Kidd a plate of food and the two sat in chairs in front of their cell. "I suggest waking your friend." Kidd said.
Alice pushed one plate of food towards Alec before shaking him awake. Alec looked at it distastefully before pushing away. "Alec, you need to eat-"
"HISSSSS!"
"OK, fine, then. Looks like someone grumpy today." Alice said.
"They're not real." Alec muttered. "If I ignore them, they'll go away." He then fell back asleep.
"Oh, wow! Looks like all three of them are crazy!" BlackStar exclaimed, earning a snarl from Alice.
"Quiet, BlackStar." Kidd replied harshly. "It'd be better to try to understand them, and to do that we need to learn what they're dimensions are like." he said matter-of-factly, turning to Brandon. "First of all, Brandon. What's your dimension like?"
"My dimension? Not much different then this ine. There are a few key differences though. Chrona has a brother named Echuma, there's me with a half insane soul, I fucked up Medusa beyond recognition, and Ashura has a son." he explained, thinking back on it.
Kidd nodded. "And you, Alice?"
"Um, promise me you won't freak out."
"We promise," Kidd replied.
Alice took a deep breath. "I used to be a Kishin. YOU turned into a Kishin Lord. You turned back into a reaper when I turned human, but now you're sociopath, a thief a murderer and a casanova. You killed Lord Death and I'm ashamed to say I helped you. Maka is missing an eye. BlackStar is missing a finger and most of his ego. Chrona and Ragnorak have been seperated. Ragnorak is actually kind of hot. You're Lord Death now and the world is in ruins because of you." Alice said.
Silence.
"Oh, and I'm your maid." Alice finished.
"It's a lot to take in. Can I have my food now?" Brandon asked, his stomach growling again.
"Why is BlackStar missing a finger?" Kd asked.
"Oh, you kept taunting him, so he put his hand over your mouth. And then you bit his finger off. And swallowed it."Alice replied, making Kidd look at her like she was crazy.
"And you used to be a Kishin?"
"Yeah. I have to take anti-crazy injections now~! They also keep me alive."
Brandon became hungrier then he could control, and lost control of his kind for a minute. The right side of his face, which was away from Kidd and Blackstar began changing, his eye emitting a red glow, and his teeth becoming spikes and sharp. "Blackstar, you always say that you're a God. Now answer me this. Could a god be suffocated to death by his own entrails?" Brandon questioned in a satanic reverb tone.
Alice sighed. "Brandon, Kidd gave us our food when they first walked in. Your tray is right in front of you." she said, grabbing her own tray and eating a piece of steak that was on it.
The glowing in his eye stopped and his grin disappeared and he glanced down at his feet. He facepalmed in stupidity when he saw the plate with a piece of steak on it. He then began hungrily devouring it, and was satisfied when the meal was completely gone. Alice proceeded to facepalm.
"Goddamn I need to be more attentive..." Brandon muttered to himself, putting down the plate.
"I agree." Alice replied.
"I'm surprised you had no reaction to that." Brandin said, turning to face BlackStar.
"No, that's just his regular attitude." Brandon said, returning to his book.
"...Kidd slapping BlackStar upside the head?"
"No, BlackStar always daydreaming." Brandon said.
"The madness is affecting Kidd, though. Crazy Kidd, not good."
Brandon then glanced over at Kidd, who wore a lobotomized look of his face. "Kidd?" Brandon asked, waving his hand in front of the reaper's face.
Kidd's head snapped up. "Huh?!" he said loudly, waking Alec.
"I think you should go now." Alice said.
"I just noticed how asymmetrical Alec's hair is!" Kidd replied, taking out a pair of scissors, his eyebrow twitching with annoyance. "Need. To. Make. SYMMETRICAL!"
Alec saw the scissors, screamed bloody murder and hid behind Brandon.
"I really think you should go now, Kidd." Alice said. Kidd simply nodded before checking his watch.
"Our guard shift is up, anyways."
"Christ, I've never seen Alec so scared before in my life." Brando said, looking back at the boy cowering. Behind him. "What the fuck did you guys do to him?"
"We didn't do anything." Kidd said, putting the scissors away.
Alec relaxed a bit.
Kidd saw this and took the scissors back out.
The new ex-kishin tensed up again.
Kidd put the scissors away.
Alec relaxed.
Kidd took the scissors back out .
Alec tensed up again.
"It's just the scissors." Kidd said, putting the scissors down on the chair, making Alec duck behind Brandon fearfully. Kidd and BlackStar left to get the new guard.
Alec peeked out from behind Brandon's shoulder and ducked again when he saw the scissors.
"He seems to be afraid of the scissors. What could scissors possibly have done to make him this phobic about them?" Brandon asked himself, trying to figure it out.
"Hmmm..."
"It could possibly be mistaken for Stein's scalpel." Brandon suggested.
"Maybe." Alice said. "Or it could've been something his dad did when he was little. Or maybe Stein ran out of scalpels and used scissors instead."
"I'm doubtful of the second one." Brandon said. "Stein always makes sure he has all the equipment necessary."
"True, true."
"Wonder who the next guards gonna be." Brandon said, glancing out of the cell door window.
A few moments later Stein came in. Alec tried to look for a hiding place, but couldn't find one and just looked at the scientist with a pathetically trapped stare, whimpering in fear. Stein smiled lazily. "It seems the experiment is working."
"So, it was you." Brandon said, looking up from his book.
"What was me?"
"The reason Alec is scared shitless by a running leaf." Brandon said, nodding towards the boy.
"Oh, that." Stein chuckled.
"H-He's not real! He's not real!" Alec muttered fearfully, taking a necklace with a cross on it out of his pocket. He then muttered a quiet prayer while squeezing the cross in his hand.
"There's definitely signs of neural trauma. What were you doing that involved his brain?" Brandon questioned, wanting answers.
"Well, after hearing that Alice used to be a Kishin, I became curious." Stein said. "So I captured Alec and his family. I wanted to turn them human, so I reconstructed their DNA." he paused. "Everyone except Alec died."
"So you think he has a special trait that allowed for a successful DNA transplant?" Brandon queried, now interested as well.
"I believe that he survived simply because he was the only one directly descended from the first Kishin, while the other Wendigos weren't related to either Pandora or Alec at all." Stein explained.
"That could be a possibility. But then, if you successfully cross-planted his DNA, how does that affect his soul? Isn't the soul where the kishin egg is stored and incubated?" Brandon asked
"Unfortunately, it's a bit... scrambled right now, being the cause of his temporary schizophrenia. We'll just have to see what happens after that." Stein replied.
"So...that's it? We just wait?" Brandon asked, already fed up with waiting in the cell.
"That'll take months," Alice said. "And besides, he needs medicine to stop the hallucinations."
"I doubt they'll give prescription strength drugs to convicts." Brandon said, turning to face Alice.
"No, this particular medicine is made from a mixture of antibiotics, reaper's blood, human blood and insulin and injected into the skin." Alice said. "It keeps madness at a normal level, repairs any problems in his blood, keeps his blood sugar regular, ect. He'll have to take it for the rest of his life..."
"First off, I doubt they'll even give us Advil, so antibiotics are out of the question. Second, no reaper would donate blood for an ex-kishin, as well as a regular human would. Finally, the only way we would get insulin is if one of us was diabetic, and none of us are." Brandon listed, debunking all of the ingredients for the medicine.
"Dude, Stein's so scary he won't even need to ask." Alice said, completely serious. "Besides, he's a doctor, he should have all of that stuff."
"Fine, let's ask." Brandon asked in a sarcastic tone. "Dr. Stein, do you think you could get us prescription antibiotics, reaper's blood, human's blood and insulin?" Brandon asked seriously, expecting no to be the answer.
"Sure." Stein replied.
"See? I told yo-wait, what?" Brandon began but stopped, running over what Stein said in his mind but not being able to make any sense of it.
"I just won't tell anyone it's for you."
"But, why are you helping us?" Brandon asked, still confused.
"Oh, helping you? I'm simply only doing this for the experiment."
"I see. The scientific creed of experimentation always continueing, despite the costs." Brandon said, remembering one of the unwritten rules all scientists abide to.
Alice gave them freaked-out looks. "Damn, you guys are almost as creepy as the Kidd from my dimension. He has jars full of hearts somewhere, I know it!"
"It's not creepy. It's just an unwritten creed by which most scientists live by." Brandon explained.
"Well, you may not be creepy but Stein certainly is! At least he doesn't keep dead human hearts in jars-alive and beating as well." Alice remarked with a shiver.
"Wait, what?" Brandon asked, not thinking he heard her right.
"The Kidd from my world has severed hearts somewhere in the house!" Alice whispered harshly. "And somehow, they're still beating... I've ever actually seen them, but I can HEAR them! Kidd is a Reaper, so he doesn't have a heartbeat so I KNOW it's not him!"
"Maybe it's some girls he trapped in his basement or something." Brandon suggested with a shrug.
"No... I'd hear them fangirling if they were." Alice replied in disgust. "In my dimension, it's pretty much every girl's dream to be trapped in Kid's house. They don't know what it's like..."
"Maybe he eats them like potato chips?" Brandon suggested.
"Naw, he's on a strict diet: No people." Alice paused. "I'd smell it on him, anyway."
"I don't know then." Brandon said, shrugging his shoulders and giving up.
"Why did Maka force him on that diet?" Alice grumbled. "'Cause then he forced me on it, too! It's barely even a diet! Human flesh is one of the healthiest things one could eat!" she exclaimed.
"Depends on the person eaten." Stein replied.
"That's a good point." Brandon said.
"What's a good point?" Alice asked.
Alice just grumbled to herself. Stein looked at his watch. "Oh, looks like I have to leave. Funny how I have the shortest shift." he said, standing. "Oh, and before I leave-Alec may or may not develop a disorder as another side effect of the DNA transfer." he said, before walking off to get the next guard.