A/N - All right, only a three day gap between chapters, we're getting back on track! This chapter probably would have been finished earlier, but I needed a bit of time to plot out how exactly it would go. I wanted certain events to happen, but I wasn't sure how to get to them. But I've figured them out, so there we go! Plus, action scenes. Just... action scenes. So frustrating to write.
This is essentially a filler arc, save for those certain events that I mentioned earlier. This also takes place during episodes 7 and 8. God, was that an intense arc. This chapter is quite a bit shorter than the last one, I'll admit, but then again the last chapter was 6000 words. That was a rare occurence and will not happen often.
I'd like to thank Crona. ismyspiritanimal, Hetomi, Superhero17 for reviewing! In responde to Crona. ismyspiritanimal's review, I can say that I'm really glad that Alecto is relatable. Idealized hero-figures that are the most badass people to ever exist are all well and good (goodness knows that people don't give escapism fiction enough credit), there's also something to be said for relatable characters. To Hetomi, I say thank you very much, and I'll try to keep my schedule on a quicker, more consistent pattern, like it was before winter break. To Superhero17, I say that Tempus will not be meeting Kid until the arc after the next one. So, about 5-6 chapters after this one. A shame, I know. :( I am pretty excited to write them interacting.
Notes and translations of the Latin will be at the end of the chapter.
DISCLAIMER: Soul Eater is the intellectual property of Atsushi Ōkubo. I have no intention of monetizing my fanwork, and this is merely an enjoyable passer of time.
Chapter Seventeen - Temporal Resonance - The Vampire Who Eats Souls?! Part 1
"Any thoughts?"
"We could not go on any missions. That would be great."
"That option's not on the table right now."
"Really? What's gotten into you? You're not usually this bad when it comes to missions. Bad, yes, but not to these levels."
"It's just… not an option, Tempus." Alecto stared up at the mission board with flat black eyes, her gaze scanning over each and every mission with precision. She knew that Tempus was having his doubts, but she couldn't afford to sit about complacently forever. She'd already gone nearly a full month without having gone on any missions. She didn't want to wait any longer before getting back on the wagon. Besides, all of her other acquaintances were on missions of some sort or another. What better time to go on one?
"It's a shame we couldn't go help Maka and Soul in Europe," Tempus commented. He'd forgone his blazer and vest that day as it was particularly warm, instead just wearing a black tie and a white button-up with his dandelion-yellow slacks. "They went to Italy, right? Maybe we could have gone to Rome, see the sights! The Colosseum, the Roman pantheon, the cuisine! Ah, such a shame we missed out on that amazing Italian food..."
"Mm." Alecto didn't respond beyond that, but the truth was, she did kind of want to visit Italy. She always had, ever since she was a young girl. Chalk it up to her inner Latin, she supposed. "What about that one? That looks doable."
"...Ally, that's a three-star mission."
"Oh."
Tempus reached over her head. "Why don't we start with something a little low-risk. Not every missions has to be a life-or-death struggle, after all." He tapped a slender brown finger against one of the placards. "What about this one? This one looks pretty easy. Newly born Kishin egg in Vancouver, not particularly powerful…"
"We're not out of practice or the like, Tempus. And I'm not looking for an easy run. I'm looking to help people and get you the soul quota you need." Her eyes fell on a one-star mission near the bottom of the board, and a single word on it caught her attention. "Vampire?" she murmured.
"Eh?"
"Look at this one." She plucked the placard off the wall. "A mission to eliminate the 'vampire Nosferatu.' He was a man in Germany who developed a taste for not only human souls, but also human blood. He drains his victims dry and steals their souls after they're dead. He sounds like a problem that needs to be taken care of. Thoughts?"
"I, uh. I like my blood to remain where it is, thank you very much," Tempus said, shifting nervously. "You sure we can't go to Vancouver? I've heard it's really nice this time of year!"
"If you don't want to go, I'm not going to force you to accept the mission," Alecto said. "But like you said, Vancouver's easy. Someone else will pick it up quickly. This guy already sounds like he's done a fair bit of damage, and if someone doesn't stop him, he'll do even more."
Tempus chewed on his lip. "Okay, then," he said. " You've got a point, and Germany is pretty nice. But if I end up as some batty blooduscking bastard's breakfast, I'm holding you personally responsible, do you hear me?"
"I'll keep that in mind," Alecto said. She approached the receptionist desk, placard in hand, and cleared her throat. "Excuse me?"
The receptionist looked up from the papers she was looking over, dimples forming in her round cheeks as she smiled up at her and her partner. "Oh, hello, you two!" she said in that false saccharine tone that all receptionists seemed to share. "I haven't seen you two in a while. You haven't been up to any trouble, I hope?"
"Nōn, actually, we haven't been up to anything," Alecto said, laying the placard on the counter. "Can you tell us anything more about the vampire Nosferatu?"
"Oh, you're looking into taking on that mission? Hm, well, there's not much I can tell you that the card doesn't. He's a nasty one, been causing all sorts of trouble up in Essen. He's racked up a body count of six or seven already."
"Six or seven?" Alecto questioned. Usually, if a Kishin egg's body count was in the single digits it was pretty easy to pinpoint a concrete number. Subsequently, the unsure way the receptionist had stated the numbers was cause for confusion.
The receptionist sighed. "Seven people have gone missing in a local area of Essen in the past month, but only six bodies have been found," she explained
"That's… concerning," Alecto said, a chill of fear running down her spine.
The receptionist nodded. "Are you sure you wanna take this one on, Miss Bellatore? This may be a one star mission, but Nosferatu's nothing to sneeze at."
The receptionist probably meant it kindly, the way any adult would when talking to a kid about to take on a difficult task. But the innocent stirred up a whirlwind of self-doubt, and Alecto's voice was a little harsher than she'd intended as she pushed the card forward and said, "If I can't take on a single one-star mission, than I'd make a very poor meister. I'm taking the Nosferatu mission, so please mark this appropriately."
Looking a little taken aback, the receptionist nodded and wrapped a ribbon around the card that read "WORKING" in large, bold letters. When the mission was done, the card would be stamped to mark its completion. "You two be careful, now," she said.
"We will!" Tempus said. As Alecto placed the card back on the mission board, the ribbon clearly signaling its status as a claimed mission, she could feel his gaze boring into the back of her skull. "Right, Ally?"
"Don't you worry about me," Alecto said. "I don't intend on losing this."
Essen, Germany was the classified ninth-largest city in Germany, with over five hundred and sixty thousand thousand people, and yet as Alecto and Tempus were walking down the dimly moonlit streets, the two of them couldn't see a single person around. It was to be expected, Alecto supposed; All six of the known victims had disappeared from this neighborhood, and after the seventh person had disappeared no one wanted to be missing person number eight. The neighborhood was empty when Alecto and Tempus had arrived, and it was likely going to stay empty until Nosferatu was dealt with.
The only person that the two of them had seen was a short black woman with thick dreads and a piercing in her right brow who'd been watching the desolate road from the window of her small, . When she'd seen the two adolescents roaming the roads, the woman had thrown open her window and shouted out something in agitated German.
Tempus and Alecto had shared a confused glance. "Um, we don't speak German!" Tempus shouted back. "We're with the Death Weapon Meister Academy. We're here to help."
The woman scoffed. "You want to fight Nosferatu?" she had snapped in stilted, heavily-accented English. "You cannot! He is undying as long as there is blood to be spilled! Go back to your Academy and tell Lord Death that Nosferatu is far beyond two children! Go, and save yourselves before your blood becomes his!" With that, she had slammed the window shut and closed the blinds, obscuring herself from view.
Even hours later, with the sun having long set and the grinning moon looming over the city below, thinking about how matter-of-fact the woman had sounded chilled Alecto to the bone. She took a sip of her tea to try and calm her nerves. The tea was anhui emerald; a green tea, it didn't have the sweet morning taste of honeybush or the same richness as the vanilla tea. If Alecto had to put the flavor or the tea to words, she would describe it as the way grass smelled after a rainfall; a light sharpness that warmed her while still keeping her alert.
"Are you sure tonight's the night?" Tempus said.
"You remember what the authorities here had said. A week passes, and a body shows up and another person goes missing. There's no patterns in the victims, nothing connecting them except for the time frame and the noise that people here the night before a body shows up." The officer had likened it to hearing the screech of a bat and the howl of a banshee at the same time, a wicked cry that struck fear into the hearts of all who heard it. "It's been a week since the last person disappeared." She clenched her free hand, her right hand, into a fist to hide the faint trembling of her hands. "Vae. It's too late to save him. But at least we can keep Nosferatu from killing anyone else."
"Yeah." Tempus glanced around, the yellow irises of his eyes glinting in the dulled light of the moon and the streetlamps. "I wonder what Soul and Maka are up too. Probably having a much better time that we are. Enjoying the sights, eating the food, not having to worry about any impending death…"
Alecto stopped mid-step, the short heel of her boot hitting the ground with a resolute clack. "Why are you so worried, Tempus?" she asked. "I'm not going to allow myself to fail in my duties as meister and protector. You know that"
"I know," Tempus said. "But after Vegas, and Sid and Stein… Our last two fights have ended in technical wins that were also disasters. I don't want to go for three in a row." He glanced around. "Though, I don't think this will end up quite like Vegas. There's no fountain."
"Or any blackjack tables."
Alecto had to suppress a mean grin as she watched Tempus shudder in response. "God, don't even remind me. II don't want anything to do with the inside of a casino ever aga-"
His voice, and all other sound, was cut off by a loud cry. To say that it was a completely inhuman noise was a gross understatement. While short, it was loud and shrill, piercing straight through Alecto's eardrums and echoing throughout her very soul. She understood why the officer had likened it to a banshee's cry. "Pro di immortales!" she gasped.
"Gyah!" Tempus slammed his palms over his ears, his face contorting into an expression of discomfort. "What the hell was that?!"
"I think it was our target!" she replied. "Ugh, horribile erat."
"I have no idea what you just said, but I agree wholeheartedly," Tempus said, tensing up. "We need to go find him before he gets away, or else we'll end up having to track him down for another week, and I don't want to spend any more time hunting a vampire than is absolutely necessary!"
"I know," Alecto said, placing a firm right palm on the center of his chest. "Weapon form, sīs."
"Yup!" With a glow of yellowish light, Tempus shifted into his weapon form, latching himself to Alectos hand, gears whirring and clockwork spears spinning into their standard twelve-thirty position. "Got any plans for if we catch this guy?"
"When we catch this guy," Alecto said, "I'm going to drive you straight through his heart. That's how you kill vampires, right? Stabbing them in the heart?"
"I'm not a wooden stake, Ally."
"I don't particularly think it matters, you're still pointy and dangerous. Come on!" Tick. As Alecto and Tempus forced their personal time bubble to move quicker, slowing time around them, Alecto couldn't help but feel a little uplifted. She was doing something, she was going out and fulfilling her duty as a meister. She was hunting a Kishin egg who threatened the safety of civilians and she was gathering souls for her weapon partner.
She moved forward, her boots colliding the the sidewalk loudly as she ran, trying to determine just where the sound had originated from. The cry had seemed to come from all around, but the streets were clear. There was a small, wooded park nearby, with walking paths surrounding by thick brush and trees; was that where Nosferatu was? It made sense; the park was dark and guarded enough for an ambush.
She took a sharp right turn and ran straight for the park, alert for any signs of their target. The park was dark, the ink black silhouettes of the trees obscuring the moon and casting the winding pathways in a dark shadow that made navigation so much more difficult. I should have brought a flashlight, Alecto thought, slowing down to a quick walk so she didn't end up tripping on a darkness-obscured root.
Tock. "Ally, look!"
Alecto stopped, staring in horror at a dark shape on the ground. "That's…"
"The last victim."
A thin sliver of yellow moonlight had shone through the trees and illuminated the shape, revealing it to be the pallid corpse of who had once been a young man. The dark curly hair and sharp cheekbones had matched the description they had been given of the last person to have gone missing. Shaking slightly, Alecto moved closer, kneeling down next to the body. His face was contorted into a permanent look of dull terror, his glassy blue eyes staring into the abyss of dark purple that was the sky above them. He was as pale as snow, and his skin was dotted with small pinpricks, like the kind left behind by a needle and syringe. "He's been completely brained of blood," Tempus said, horror tinting his voice.
Another soul-shaking screech split the air, much louder and more human-sounding this time, and a previously obscured figure stepped into view. It was a man, tall with broad and hunched-over shoulders. His head was completely devoid of any hair, and his eyes were sunken beads of pure black His malicious grin revealed that each and every one of his teeth had been filed down to a sharp point. Blood dripped from his chin and splattered against the wool of his thick black trenchcoat. "Blood…" he hissed. "Blood and souls… bring power. Want more…" His voice wasn't anything like the mad screech that she'd heard previously. It was a quiet voice, with only the barest hint of a harsh undertone that usually characterized the madness that corrupt the souls of monsters like him. If Alecto didn't know better, she wouldn't have even been able to guess that he was a Kishin egg.
"Nosferatu," Alecto said, her voice hushed. She placed the thermos of tea down on the path as gently as she could, which was not an easy feat considering how much her hands were shaking.
The man only just barely seemed to notice her presence, his hungry eyes focused on nothing in particular. "Nosferatu… power. Blood and souls… delicious. delicious power."
"Killer Nosferatu!" Alecto was shouting now as she got to her feet, clenching her hands into fists. "Your soul is a Kishin egg and is a threat to all of mankind! I, Alecto Bellatore, meister at Death Weapon Meister Academy, have come to put a stop to your mad crimes!"
"Stop…?" Nosferatu tilted his head at this, his grin opening even further to the point where Alecto thought that the corners of his mouth were going to tear wide open. "Can't… stop. Want power… so much power… won't let you stop me!"
"A glint in the darkness caught her eye a millisecond before Nosferatu lunger forward, swinging something towards Alecto's throat. Tick. She threw up her arm. Tock. Whatever the bald man - if he could even be called a man at this point - had tried to attack her with broke with a small snap from the force as soon as it made contact with Tempus's buckler, and a thin needle fell to the floor, its metal point shining brilliantly in the sliver of moonlight that shone upon the scene.
Tick. "A syringe?" Tempus questioned and Alecto leapt away from the vampire. "What the hell did he try to inject you with?"
"I'm not sure. Probably some sort of sedative or something." She gritted her teeth. "Or maybe it was empty and he just wanted to take some of my blood with it."
"Ugh, that son of a bitch." Tock. "He means business. Let's get his soul quickly, shall we?"
"Gladly," Alecto muttered.
Nosferatu stared blankly at the broken remains of the syringe in his hands before casting it aside and drawing a long, thick kitchen blade out of his trench coat. "Doesn't matter… gonna take your soul!" He swiped at Alecto with the knife, the rusted tip missing the bridge of Alecto's nose by mere centimeters.
Tick. Alecto charged forward, bashing the face of Tempus's shield against the man's face as soon as time resynchronized with a tock, sending him flying backwards and crashing into the bushes on the side of the path. "I'll be keeping my soul, thank you very much," she snarled. "When I'm done here, you won't ever be able to kill another person again."
"How…" Nosferatu struggled to his feet, beady eyes as wide as saucers. "So fast…"
Alecto didn't answer. Tick. Instead, she ran forward again, thrusting her arm forward and piercing the flesh of his left shoulder with the tip of Tempus's spear. Tock. He howled, his voice reaching an impossibly inhuman pitch as he reached up and grasped the pole of the spear. Tick. She pulled away, twisting the spear as it left the gaping hole she'd put in his flesh. Tock.
Nosferatu doubled over, his face twisted into a grimace. "Y...You!" He hissed, crouching low to the ground. "You… you… you…" Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Alecto took an instinctive step back. "Where'd he go?!" she exclaimed. "Where did you go, you coward?!"
"Ally, look out!"
Alecto glanced down at her partner for only a split second, but it was a split second too long. Something large came crashing down on her shoulders, driving her into the ground. There was a stab of pain in her right leg that stood out amidst the general ache that the force of the blow had caused. A voice hissed above her head, "Your soul… will be delicious." The bastard had leapt into the air, using her confusion to ambush her from the sky.
Alect heard the faint sound of a blade moving through the air, and knowing that she couldn't desynchronize herself away from this predicament with Nosferatu's boot still squarely lodged between her shoulder blades, she desperately shouted out, "Tempus, help me out here!"
Tempus didn't respond. He didn't have to. Quick enough where Alecto wouldn't have even noticed it is she hadn't been, he was in his human form, shoving Nosferatu away. "Stay the hell away from my meister," he growled.
For what felt like the millionth time that night, Alecto pull herself to her feet. "Thanks," she said. The pain in her right leg continued, exacerbated by her movements. She looked down to see that she was bleeding from a shallow cut in her thigh. Vae.
"Don't thank me," Tempus said, moving to stand by her. "I'm your shield, I'm here to protect you in situations like this. Just.. when I say to look out, please actually look out, okay?"
"You don't have to worry about that," Alecto said. "Without that element of surprise he had the first time, he's got nothing." She raised her voice. "Isn't that right, Nosferatu?"
Nosferatu turned to face her. "You…" His gaze focused on the blood trickling from her wound. "Blood!" he exclaimed. "Heh...heheheh...sweet, sweet blood!" He ran his tongue over his sharpened teeth, mouth opened wide. "He ran out" He pointed a long finger at the corpse "I… want... more… blood!"
A/N - When trying to figure out just what Alecto and Tempus were doing while Maka and Soul were dealing with Crona in Italy, I had eventually come across the idea of maybe having them hunt a vampire-esque being, but discarded it because it seemed a bit out of place. But then I remembered that Mosquito had a pretty big vampire motif going on, so maybe it wasn't that out of place. So, here we are.
Some of you might be wondering why this arc is set in Germany if vampires are more associated in the minds of pop culture with Romania (specifically, Transylvania). The answer to that question is that the 1922 film Nosferatu was a German expressionist unauthorized film adaptation of the Dracula novel, directed by a German director and starring German actors. Thus, Germany seemed most appropriate. Isn't it weird what you can learn in a Wikipedia marathon?
Speaking of learning, it's Latin time!
Pro di immortales - "By the Gods!" Basically "Oh my god!"
Horribile erat - "That was horrible"
Hm, not much Latin this chapter. Mostly stuff I've already translated. Anyways, next chapter will be posted either tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime, please feel free to favorite and leave a review telling me what you think!
- Diana "Nocte"
