Aria of the Ascending Soul
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
A/N: Plushy. Just tons of Plush.
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Simon sat on the counter, watching this small gathering fracture even further once Soma had left the apartment. Though Kazuaki stayed in his seat with Yoko staying close to his side, their parents had gotten up and moved to the other side of the couch. Not that Simon could blame them, the air was thick with apprehension, confusion, sadness, even a hint of anger. It looked like the set of some type of anime or television drama where something cataclysmic had happened. Even the colors felt exhausted of any type of energy, almost numb.
Then there were those two floating lion/dogs, he didn't know what they were, that floated about the room freely. They were rich brown and red, like redwood trees in color, with gold lines marking their bodies. Their movements implied they rode on some type of wind, a mixture of dragon kites and birds.
"Those are the 'Shishi', guardian spirits that Kazu took in since their original temple is gone and the pair were left with no where to go. They were getting a bit frisky so Kazu brought them here to help him," Trevor explained. He looked up at the pair of spirits before looking back at the room in general. "So... Alucard is off on an assignment, huh?" Trevor asked, planting his pup backside down as he also studied these members of the witches clan.
"Yeah, Yoko was talking about those the two cults. The female LeCarde is already undercover with the Grahams' group, but Alucard went under as well. Seems like these cultists have been performing Black Masses in an attempt to see if Dracula 'really' is dead." Simon explained while behind the pair, the rest of the Stuffy Clan were struggling to get on the counter top.
"Can't they tell that he's been reincarnated?" Juste asked as he finished pulling out yet another drawer in their 'stairway'. Richter was already tugging open the next step with his soft felt mouth while Christopher was positioned to help pull once Richter was done. There just wasn't enough strength in their plush limbs to climb up the tied up cloths that Simon or Trevor used with abandon. The kitchen looked pretty average to all of them, for what they knew of 'modern' kitchens.
A Japanese apartment seemed designed to save space; it was a strange sense of being cramped into four small walls yet there was all this empty space. The kitchen was just as neat and packed away, save for these few wash clothes that seemed to just be hanging around. One on the drawers close to the ground, and several from the higher up drawers.
"No, since they were absent from Soma's debut in the Castle there's a dispute on if he's the 'real deal'." Simon answered with an ear twitch.
"Though how did that Fortner woman figure out who was Draculas' modern incarnation...? That's a good question.." Trevor mused aloud as his pup paw rested itself against the corner of his mouth as he thought.
"Because he has white hair, pale skin, considers a long, white, trench coat with a 'fur' collar 'fashionable'? Could that be it?" Simon asked turning to look at Trevor his voice was one of pure sarcasm. Even his right ear dipped down to flatten itself against his plush head.
"Actually, you grumpy old bear, no. Kazu goes to the same college as Soma and I've been to the campus myself. As strong as Soma's presence is 'now'? I can't fathom how I've missed the guy the whole time. I didn't even realize it until he and Kazu started talking while we were waiting for Yoko to bring you over. Yet now... Soma's presence is impossible to ignore." Trevor countered, remembering that Soma had recently been admitted into the same college that Kazu was already established at. How could Soma, who was already awaken, be able to move about 'without' setting off the usual flags among them? Was it a distance thing, after all?
"Well, how about you Simon? You've seen Dracula before now right? You mentioned it when he cut off that Cardinals hand. Did you sense anything?" Christopher asked as he peeked over the counter and planted his two 'paws' on said counter and worked his way up.
"I only saw him after he had been taken into custody, but that holy oil that Sophia concocted blurs a lot of what I see." Simon replied with a small teddy bear type shrug as he pondered that thought, how 'did' anyone find Soma? He wasn't stupid enough to get online and post on something that he was Dracula. After today, Simon was sure that no matter how young he looked. Dracula was no longer 'just' a stupid teenager, there was a knowledge and cunning that could be seen in flashes of the guys' eyes.
"Uh, what did they do with Sophia's oils?" Trevor asked, truly perplexed by the statement and tilted his head to the side in curiosity.
"They burn the oil as a means to cleanse the air, since the normal routes obviously aren't going to work against Dracula," Simon explained as Christopher walked over and sat down sandwiching Trevor between himself and Simon.
Meanwhile; Richter looked at his Husky bodied grandfather and pondered why the arcane Belmont had stopped trying to get on the counter. The Husky body had nothing, but, that overly friendly expression on its face, leaving Richter in the dark on the thoughts of his grandfather. Finally he reached up and lightly poked the Husky with his light brown paw.
"Is something the matter Grandfather?"
Juste blinked and turned to look down at his grandson, his thoughts interrupted by the touch, and just the idea of how it felt. "No, I'm fine. I was just thinking about what they're talking about, how Trevor never picked up on Soma until now. Or how these two cults could know what Soma looks like despite never having met him."
Richter nodded before climbing up further to the counter top, it was worrisome that someone could do that. If the Dark Lord was looking to just live a peaceful life, it was rather imperative that they ensure that it 'was' peaceful. It was also worrisome that Alucard had joined the undercover work along with the female LeCarde. Did either of the two cults have something truly dangerous up their sleeves that he felt his presence was required?
Juste followed his grandson up, just in time to see Trevor get up and start walking off to the right. The Labrador type plush began showing off how skilled he had gotten living in this place with the form of a toy dog. He grabbed a tied up wash cloth with his mouth and began climbing up until he reached the cabinets. With a push on the bottom, Trevor swung the door open and climbed into it.
But in doing so he provided a view as to 'why' those towels existed. It seemed everything was pushed back, providing Trevor with the room he needed to travel. The cabinets formed a type of tunnel for the hunter.
"What are you doing Trevor?" Christopher asked, his head tilted to the side in curiosity as Juste and Richter joined he and his fellow Bear at the counter.
"Sake. Kazu isn't much of a drinker, but right now? I think he needs some," Trevor explained before he poked his head out. "Come here Simon, I need to pass something down to you."
Grandson and grandfather both looked quizzically at Christopher before turning to look at Simon. The bear had gotten to his feet and started walking over towards where Trevor had gone off to when Kazu turned to look at all of them.
"I'm fine, Trevor. Thank you but I don't need a drink."
For which he was rewarded with Trevor sticking his head out of the cabinet with his mouth wrapped around the neck of a large bottle of sake.
"What's 'sa-ke'?" Juste asked, while Simon reached up and took hold of the bottle before clutching it in his arms. While the bear was busy setting down the bottle gently, Trevor went back into the cabinet. He momentarily disappeared to the right before he jumped out of the cabinet with a large glass in his mouth covering his upper muzzle completely.
"Think Asian wine," Simon stated as he went back to his seat, let the Labrador do the rest of the work. If Simon couldn't drink it, he wasn't going to help pour it.
"Yes, Europeans use grapes, Asians use rice I've been learning a bit about this culture, its interesting to see how different and the same things are at the same time." Trevor commented as he put down the glass next to the bottle and set about opening the bottle up.
"Wait, how are you talking if you're using your mouth to grip things?" Juste asked, though Simon 'spoke' just fine as did Christopher despite having no open mouth. But when Richter or he was opening the drawers he found he 'had' to use his mouth and couldn't talk.
"Simon and I both learned, right now it feels like being trapped in those bodies completely, believe us we know. But over time we learned how to.. well I guess the best way to say it is that we turned our plush bodies into puppets. We learned how to make the bodies move without us being 'in' the bodies so to speak." Trevor explained all the while opening the bottle, gripping the neck in his mouth again, and pouring the liquid in the glass. His ear twitching to indicate he was using his hearing to gauge the speed for which the glass was filling up.
"I see, so how long until then? A teddy bear body is strange enough but I can't imagine what it feels like for Juste or Richter," Christopher asked. They watched as Trevor stuck the top back on the bottle and flatten himself a bit and did a belly crawl to maneuver the glass to the edge of the counter.
"Kazu, get the glass!" Trevor called out, and when Kazu just shook his head in refusal of the drink, Trevor went to a silver bell sitting on the counter. Allowing the rest of the Belmonts to watch as he sat down and began banging the top of the bell with his paw. Between the loud chiming and repeated 'Now Kazu', Richter had to smile in amusement.
Being trapped in the form of a stuffed toy didn't inhibit or seemingly damage anything about Trevor. Clearly having adapted to his situation and found a purpose was encouraging for the youngest of the Spirits. But also the expression made Richter aware that Kazuaki could hear all of them quite well. Which must have been awkward to do, since it meant he was listening to two different conversations. While anyone else would only see one group that could have a seemingly 'real' conversation.
But despite not hearing Trevor, Yoko looked over at them before getting up, her eyes going between Trevor and the clear glass by his side. Trevor may not have been able to talk, but he could give a clue about the nature of the glass and when he pointed to Kazu, she nodded and delivered the drink. Freeing Trevor to return to them with a casual, "I wish I could say it will happen soon. But it took me roughly eight years to master this."
He settled down next to Christopher watching to make sure Yoko got Kazu to drink the sake, only to suddenly be grabbed and dropped kicked by Simon who had innocently, or so he thought, walked over.
"BASTARD!" Trevor shouted as he soared through the air and was caught by the kids father in surprise.
"Trevor?"
"Use this body like a puppet?!" Simon growled back, as Trevor rushed out of the grip, hit the ground running and made his way back to the kitchen. "Speak for yourself! You got with a medium who could maybe teach you to do that. I sure can't!" Simon shot back in an angry huff as Trevor went up the 'ladder of shelves' to pounce his way back onto the counter.
"I'm done with tonight."
Was the only thing Juste muttered to Richter before shaking his head and laying on the counter watching the living.
Christopher could only nod sympathetically; while a fist fight 'could' be a good time to watch between two grown men, fight between a stuffed teddy bear and a stuffed dog? Not at all.
"So what happens now? Sure I've always gone by father's name rather than Yoko who went by yours. But I've lived my whole life with this ability that's caused me more problems than anything else and now I find out there's a whole clan that can do this?" Kazu spoke into the air after another sip of his forced upon drink. Ahh liquor, the quintessential method to make Kazu speak his thoughts.
"No, since your skills don't qualify as magic. No one that I know of can see ghosts outside the Castle even when we or they want to see them," Yoko corrected. "I'm sure Simon would have let me know from the start that he was trapped in Snuggywuggy if he could."
"Indeed, in fact from our joint histories, Simon was the 'only' pure warrior among the Belmonts with such heighten awareness of the supernatural world. No training at all, he was just born naturally gifted to it." Valencia explained, her eyes drifting over to the two combatant plush toys having a fight on the counter.
"Wait... 'pure'.. But all the clans can see the supernatural right? Ghosts and trapped spirits and stuff?" Kazu asked feeling a particular thought trying to worm its way to the front of his brain. But he just couldn't put his finger on what that thought was.
"No. But I guess we're going into semantics here," Yoko inserted before growing thoughtful. "To us, the Supernatural are just spirits, ghosts and such that you see... We call anything physical a Monster, though they themselves want to be called 'Dark Children'."
"So," Kazu took a sip of the Sake before continuing incredulously, "a hippie werewolf walks into town and he gets automurdered for just being a werewolf?"
"Exactly," Richter commented from his seat, "by my time that was how it always had been, and probably a bit after my time as well. Humans can't help but find reasons to not get along with each other by nature. Make them live alongside monsters that are stronger, faster, capable than them? Humans would see it destroyed in a heart beat, and back then we saw it that way as well. There was no communication, we just killed anything that wasn't human or was a servant of evil. Your ancestress brought witches into the fold, or we would have killed them just as out of hand as anyone else."
"Dracula didn't make things easier for us though, his castle was a refuge for monsters rejected by the world around them. It made sense that they would serve him in gratitude for a roof over their head and food in their stomachs. But when Dracula started wars against humanity every century, well, they all had to be put down."
"I was kidding when I said 'werewolf', but you make it sound like they're 'real'.. So if Sophia didn't marry Trevor, at any point in time one of you would have murdered one of my ancestors for not being a powerless human?" Kazuaki asked growing alarmed, his whole body posture now focused on the plush toys on the counter.
"Not.. necessarily," Christopher began, realizing how all this must have sounded in retrospect. "We respect the other clans we're aligned to, there's Alucard, so its not like we're completely slaughtering everything not 100 percent grade A human."
"And generally, when his father isn't around the more... I guess you could say 'civilian' minded, of the monsters are prone to listen to him more. Generally he just makes them go into hiding and over the centuries since my time it seems that they've figured out methods for blending in." Richter continued, folding one paw over the other as he laid down on the counter. "Of course this is mostly speculation, we don't get to visit our esteemed Vampire Prince after all."
"'Vampire' Prince?" Kazuaki blurted out, ignoring his mothers' concerned comments about too much information being shared.
"Yes, Alucard? Your sisters' partner is Dracula, or rather Soma's son."
Richter couldn't fathom for all of a second why he was being stared at with such shock and disbelief. Then his ears started to droop as it occurred to him that maybe there had been far more than he expected in withheld information.
"Ahh... hmm.. Yeah too much information there Richter," Trevor commented, looking away from Simon and their tussle.
"The power of Dracula compels you!" Christopher commented in a sarcastic jab as Richters' ears flattened in growing dismay.
"Its fine, he's met Dracula, and attends the same institution as the Dark Lord. It would be for the best that he knows there 'is' a chain of command he can go to, in case Yoko is out of range." Juste came to his grandsons' defense.
"I suppose you're right," Trevor didn't sound perfectly confident, and Valencia heard absolutely none of it.
