Blood decorated the pure white moon. Lika a broken doll, Gopher lay on the ground, the color slowly draining from her face. Noah stared in shock, in the corner of his eye he could see Kid speed off in a cloud of dust. The Kishen was close by, and his minions were distracted, it would be the perfect window to slip through. As a mere facet of a human being, Noah did not have a full emotional range or complete memory. He knew that Gopher wasn't supposed to die, otherwise all this effort would be for nothing. It wasn't fair.
The Kishen was stirring, only a few minutes remained until it awoke. He growled in frustration and helped Gopher to her feet, her arm slung over his shoulder. He began to guide Gopher towards the Kishen. He had a job to do, but if for a moment she started to fade...
"N-noah-sama?" Gopher's lit of surprise was all the more irritating. Why did she expect him to leave her in the dirt and still act with such devotion?
"Shut-up! Every time you talk, you bleed." He growled. "Don't die, that's an order."
In front of a cave a small clown sat, the smallest Kid had ever seen, with the stature of a cherub and the make-up of a mime. It stood abruptly a Kid's arrival, poised to fight. Slowly, it dropped its guard.
"You are looking for something, yes?" It asked him.
"What does it matter if I'm looking for something?" Kid eyed the creature with caution. It didn't just look like a child; it sounded like one too. The small thing seemed friendly regardless of it's cohorts fighting tooth and nail.
"Then I can help!" It bowed curtly. "I am Noir, finder at lost things; it's why I was made. What are you looking for?"
"Step aside shorty!" Patty bellowed from her weapon form. "We need to get through."
"Patty, calm down." Kid dared to play along. "We are looking for the Kishen." It bounced with such joy. A sickening sensation in Kid's gut at the thought that something soulless could act so alive.
"O.K. then, this way!" It pointed into the cave and stepped away. Liz glanced at the clown and trembled at the sinister shark-toothed grin it wore. "Onii-sama wants to talk with you."
"Kid, this isn't a good idea." Liz sputtered. "We don't have enough people to face the Kishen. We should go back and talk with Shinigami-sama."
"The Kishen is responsible for the clowns' revival." Kid whispered as they glided out of earshot. "We destroy it and we destroy the clowns."
"Onee-san's right Kid." Patty said. "I want to fight too, but back up wouldn't hurt."
"We need to at least try." Kid powered on ahead. "It's three against one, there's no way the Kishen's coming out unharmed." His skin itched and burned as he approached the dark corner the god of madness hid in. He'd anticipated such a vile foe to be angry. A moaning wail, tired a scared rattled the walls, Kid's heartbeat matching the vibrations. A vile, invasive feeling, like nausea wormed into his chest.
"I don't want to leave." His voice echoed through the cavern.
The Kishen was afraid.
Shinigami-sama paced back and forth. Minutes felt like hours with him trapped away from the battlefield. Finally his mirror flickered to life, and the interior of the airship rippled into view.
"I'm sorry sir." The mechanic said. "I told him, told him to come- back- but he- and-" Showing he was anxious would only make humans frightened, he had learned that long ago.
"Slow down, slow down." Shinigami said calmly. "Let me talk to Kid." The mechanic stood at attention; his voice gone. He tried to speak, then took a deep breath.
"I-I can't. He ran off to find the Kishen instead." The man babbled. "We're so outnumbered here- I don't know if we can send someone off to retrieve him."
"Then try." Shinigami said. "I don't want to hear from you until you've found my son." He ripped the image away and punched the mirror. It cracked only to mend itself.
"Shinigami-sama," Azusa sighed, "we'll find him. He has his weapons, he'll be fine..." Her boss hung his head, not falling into his joyful facade as quickly as she was used to. "Why are you so worried?" The Kishen fed on fear, to a dangerous degree. Shinigami-sama had avoided fueling the fire, by withholding information, but things were growing dire quickly.
"Kid stole Eibon's last magic tool." He said. "It can absorb madness, but there's no telling how much it can handle." The key around Kid's neck was pitch black and withered, far from it's original gleaming gold.. He needed to get Kid away from the madness on the moon before the tool broke.
The cave walls around Kid bleed. Sketchy white sigils of the Kishen danced around the corner of Kid's eyes. Like uneven bars in a cage, claustrophobic and cloying. A smell he associated with torn up hands made him gag.
"This is my home now, Lord Death is the one who should leave." Asura's voice echoed around the cave from all angles. "He's a beast in sheep's clothing."
"How dare you insult my father!" Kid growled. "Come out and show yourself!" Asura cackled manically.
"I'm surprised you still work for him; he's a very bad man." The cackling grew louder. "You of all people know this." As angry as he was at his father, things had only fell apart with the Kishen's release. An evil thing calling his father wicked wasn't unusual. Even if Asura was needling close to a kernel of truth.
"Sh-shut up!" Kid had to believe he was lying. "He's the god of order. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to uphold that order."
"Kid," Liz trembled, "what are you doing?" Asura's laughter grew louder. "Who are you talking to?" To the guns, the cavern was eerily empty, almost endless in the dark. Their connection was wavering, like a plug half out of it's socket.
"...the Kishen." Kid looked at his guns, "Who else?"
"Order is a made-up thing," Asura said, "he who makes order makes the rules."
"Don't you hear that?" Kid could feel the Kishen circle him. In the corner of his eye, a bed lay in shadows, the presence of a watchful mirror at his back. No light coming from the barred window far out of reach.
"The rules aren't fair." Asura wailed. "They took my mother and put her into a deep sleep. She won't wake up no matter how long I call for her." Trapped somewhere familiar, nothing could move, nothing could change. His breath was getting away from him, he felt weak. The same four walls for months, always grey and off center.
"Kid," Patty said, "there's nothing there." Her attempt to reach out was met with sharp sparks. Kid could feel the walls of the cave moving in. Eyes looked down on him from all directions. A mixture of concerned whispering and Asura's laughter filled the cave. No one was coming to get him.
"Your mother won't wake up either." Asura stated.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Kid shouted. Slowly he opened his eyes; the cave was back to normal and the whispers had stopped.
"Kid, we should get out of here." Liz said. "You don't look good." She had heard about the hallucinations Asura had put Maka and Black Star through. The fact that Asura was only targeting Kid was a bad sign.
"No." Kid commanded. "I know he's in here and I'm going to take him down."
"Why are you so mad?" Asura said to them all. "All I did was tell the truth. I don't understand!" Kid's hands were shaking. He could do this, if just fixed this one thing everything else would fall into place.
"Kid-" Patty began.
"He's further back in the cave." Kid said. "Let's go."
"Kid, this really-"
"Why are people so hard to understand?" Asura raged. "You want people to be honest, yet yell at me when I am."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Kid said. Hushed whispers flood the air once more. He was under a spotlight in a graveyard. Asura towered above dressed in rags, his silhouette inky and foreboding. Everyone was watching him, his hands felt empty.
"You don't remember?" Asura said carefully. "You should." A human skull that brought him to tears glowering down at him. "You were one of the few who saw what happened when the new world order was born." If he could just think of the right thing to say he could leave, but his mouth had gone dry. "Locked everything ugly away, but you got the key."
"Kid don't listen to him!" Patty encouraged. "He's just speaking nonsense. Let's shoot him now!" Kid didn't pull the trigger. Liz transformed into her human form and reached for Patty.
"If your mother saw you now, "Asura sneered, "it would break her heart." The key around Kid's neck snapped in half. The scenes from Kid's nightmares flooded him, only they weren't nightmares anymore, they were his memories.
Kid's eyes dragged away from the castle mirror when another explosion shook the temple. He began to run toward the double doors his disheveled mother left through. A loud, crisp voice boomed outside.
"I warned you witch," it howled, "never to cross my path again! Where is it?"
"Mortis, please I don't know what you're talking about!" Iroha cried. "These witches have done nothing to you, call off the attack! I-I don't want to fight you. Not again."
"Don't play coy with me. You have been building a deadly weapon behind my back, you used me!"
"I'd never do that, you know me!" Kid tried to push on the door harder, but it wouldn't budge. Kid dropped to his hands and knees to peak through the crack in the door. His mother clung to the front of a man in black with a skull face. Three white lines coiled around his head. "Mortis, I haven't done anything wrong...trust me." The witches wouldn't turn back to help her.
"You lost my trust long ago." The man swung his scythe through her with ease, traces of red remained on the scythe and the door. The man reached through her chest and pulled out a shredded soul, over half of it eaten by something else. The reaper cradled it in his hand, watching as fragments of it floated up and dissolved. When the last scrap of her soul vanished the man turned away. "Destroy everything." He with a hitch in his voice.
Kid stumbled away from the door, his breath reduced to stuttered gasps. Gradually, his shocked gaze drifted to his hands, spattered with the blood of his mother. A strangled cry ripped from his throat; he covered his mouth. He was told to hide away, no matter what he heard. He'd broken the rules.
Two members of the assault team broke down the door. Kid was frozen in place, bad men had entered the castle. Everyone else had left. His mother was dead.
"Hey look, there's a kid here." A man with red hair said with concern.
"Maybe it's the weapon Eibon was developing." A woman said. She stared him down with piercing green eyes, looking at Kid and somewhere far away at the same time. Her partner left her side as she grew pale. She couldn't look away, and Kid wondered if he looked just as scared.
"We can't just leave him here." The red haired man took Kid by the arm.
"Shinigami-sama won't allow it." His partner hissed.
"Well, make something up to get him to allow it; the man's not thinking clearly right now." He sighed. "It's going to be okay kid." The two of them took Kid away from Grimoire. Everything going by in a haze. He was hidden in one of the dungeons of Shibusen as a suspected Kishen. People argued about the nature of his soul while he struggled to calm down enough to speak. Anytime the man in the skull face tried to talk to him, Kid was inconsolable, they didn't know what he'd seen. He couldn't remember what was said, just that other people had to usher the reaper away.
The dungeon was dank and cold. The furniture was haphazardly shoved into corners, unlike his home, which was always neatly symmetric. He tried a number of times to move the furniture, but it was all bolted to the floor. He lost track of time, when he finally decided to venture to the other side of the room. All that was there was a bolted desk and a sink with a mirror. He knew he must have looked awful, mother always made him wash vigorously so he wouldn't. His heart sank as he remembered his mother.
'As long as my little boy is perfect, I'll be happy.' But he wasn't, he was dressed in blood-stained clothes. His hands blistered from his fight with the bolted decor. 'There are people in this world, who are very bad people.' His gaze drifted to the glass mirror. A sallow face reflected back at him with dull amber eyes. They widened when he saw his hair. 'Promise me you won't become one of those people.' Three white stripes covered half of his bangs. Just like the man who killed him mother. He wasn't like that man, he didn't want to see! 'Just look at you-'The mirror shattered under his fist as his mind broke. He didn't want to be like the bad man, he wanted his mother back. He stumbled away from the broken glass and fell at the corner of the table. He tried to lift himself, but was weakened from his sobbing; the memory of his mother leaving to her death, still fresh in his mind.
If he had just done what he was told, if he had been better, maybe things wouldn't happen this way. She wouldn't have had to hide him away and the bad people would have left him alone. It couldn't be too late. If he just put everything back the way it was, he could be perfect again.
"Kid, what's happening!?" Patty shouted. Kid had a death grip on them, the sound he was making inhuman. Electricity surged around their bodies from the touch.
"Let go!" Liz cried. Both of Kid's weapons had transformed back into their human forms and tried to pull free of his grasp. The whispers in the around them grew louder, clearer.
'Guess who's back, dressed in black, come to take her soul back.' Kid stalked toward Asura, his partners dragged along, fighting all the while. He was quite, too quite.
'He says come, let's have some fun, open the box, the game's begun.' Liz wrenched her hand free and pulled her sister away from him. Patty clung to her sister as Kid continued forward. Kid reached Asura, madness oozed from both of them. He tilted his head at the shinigami, confused by his silence. Tendrils of skin built a multifaceted barrier between the two.
"Stay away from me!" Asura skittered back against the far wall. Liz shrieked as it appeared that Kid's flesh and bones were melting away as he approached the Kishen. The guns remained fixed to the spot in fear. The Kishen jolted and took on a less human form in an attempt to scare off Kid.
'What an act, her blood is black, she'll never get her soul back.'
"You have something I need." Kid said low and quiet. "Shadow Skull Arms." Black Skulls broke out of the Earth and sunk sharp teeth into the demon god's flesh. Asura let out a mixture between a cackle and a howl.
"That doesn't work on me." Asura launched himself at Kid. Opening his mouth as wide as Kid was tall. "You disgusting little monster, get out of my sight." He regurgitated his weapon and shot at Kid point blank. Asura waited for the smoke to clear before moving. He didn't see Kid though, he saw Claudia with open arms.
"Honey," she cooed, "I'm sorry I had to leave for so long." Asura faltered at the sight of the albino witch. The hair was too white, the eyes too red, the smile too sweet.
"Mother?" Asura said slowly. "You...you look strange." He couldn't feel the life behind her gaze. How he wanted to believe it. Claudia would be able to hide them all away and scare off death for good.
"It's O.K. I'm here now. No one will ever hurt you again." Asura reached out to her. "I'll make sure of it." Her hand clenched around his throat. "Divine Sentence, she said in a voice not her own, "Sixth Degree!" The image of Claudia broke into shards as Kid took her place, the final line had connected. The Kishen's body sizzled under Kid's grasp, narcotizing the flesh. Soon all that was left was a skeleton coursing with black blood. Kid reached through Asura's rib cage, black blood crawled up his arm and constricted like a desperate snake. Despite Asura's feeble struggles, Kid pulled the soul free, with it, any animation left in the bones.
It was finally over.