Chapter 14: Persona
Jaune began by charging. As he came to learn, this was not the correct choice.
He'd summoned his shield in time, taking the harsh smack of the Apex's tail as it came around. A surge of hot energy shot up his arm as he was sent flying, crashing into the wall and slumping onto his back. From good ground to bad and not even any time to lament about it. The Apex drove through the sea of floor, somehow dragging up foaming water along with it as floorboards twisted and snapped from its bulleting strength. Jaune hurried to his feet, put some strength in a leap and cleared the space, the shark just barrel turning and crashing into the wall, shaking the entire theatre.
"Whore! You've destroyed this family!" cried Puppet Lewis, one hand on the giant reins as he pointed a spear Jaune's way.
Jaune could only pedal back as the Apex came again, and suddenly everything was a haze of desperate movement. Massive jaws chomped into the floor where he'd once been, sending up a shower of wood. It wrenched itself free, Jaune raised his shield to ward off the falling debris, then dodged away as it came at him again. A spear stabbed in the path of the direction he ran. Then another. Lewis harpooned spear after conjured spear, Jaune forced to either knock them away or evade them.
The Apex reared up like a horse, water surging around its underside, violent sprays of geyser shooting up randomly out of the floor. Jaune barely got out of the way of one, backed away from another, but stumbled right into a third. The sheer power of it took him off his feet, shot cold saltwater up his nose, into his mouth, sent him tumbling like a food can across the floor. Plainly, dodging forever was not going to work. Only what could he do? Attack? With a shield?
Wasn't like he had any other choices. Jaune hurried up as the shark came at him, jumped toward the wall and kicked off it so he flew over the shark's head. It followed more readily than he expected, and he couldn't help but swallow as he sailed over its gaping mouth, a great black abyss preceded by teeth as big as his shield. He cleared it, thank god, and landed on the Grimm's back, Lewis already preparing to throw a spear.
Jaune smacked it away, rushed him, and got a clean hit across his face. There was a moment of victorious elation.
Before he realized Lewis had not so much as flinched.
"Destroyed this family!" Lewis booted him hard enough to send him rolling, he clawed for a grip as he flipped over the Apex's side, but found nothing to grab onto. Light burst into his vision as he hit the ground. A woman flashed before him. Beautiful. Then the real world came rushing back again, and he was forced to roll away as spears came darting at him. Once he managed to get to his feet, he backed away as the Apex struggled to yank around, while he groaned at the pain of his own injuries.
Well wasn't this just a shitty predicament. And he didn't even have Mystery here to help him. What kind of damage could he do with just a shield?
Again Jaune was on the defensive, dodging, rolling, staggering away. But it seemed like every hit on him piled on a great weight. He took a charge from the shark, and a hot rush burned through his body as he was thrown in the air. The world turned over and over as he came back down, crashing hard onto his back. Ocean waves lapped against the sandy shore of a cool morning and his feet were in the sand, looking smaller than normal. The shark was back again, and Jaune raised a Reflect to take its mighty bite, but knew it wouldn't hold. He jumped through the barrier as the jaw crushed it into splintering ethereal shards, while Jaune skidded away, his arms burning with effort.
"What am I… supposed to do?" Jaune gasped, even his very knees heavy like they were tied to stones. He felt so hot, something was burning inside and he wondered if it was the lightning spears Alter Neptune had talked about. Was his body just numb?
He fought desperately, now trying for another hit. He had more physical strength in this world, so maybe knocking over the shark was possible. It wasn't. His shield was little more than a love tap against the shark's hefty armor, and as if flicked by a giant finger, Jaune was sent crashing into the nearest wall, his head ringing as he slumped to the floor. No time to stay down, he staggered to his feet, every part of his body begging to rest, and he just barely got out of the way of a pair of falling spears.
What else could he do? Why was his body not responding the way he wanted it too? Now he was sweating, more than physical strain should have allowed. There was a furnace inside him, the flames hissing, surging, crying out like devils in hell.
Jaune fell to his hands and knees. He never should have disobeyed Aunt Peach. He couldn't win this on his own. He couldn't help Neptune.
Damn it. Why? Why wasn't he strong enough? He needed to be strong enough. Needed it now. He coughed as a surge of water bowled him over, and he went sliding in a shallow pool, his face in the floor, sucking up water with every precious breath. His body was numbing.
He had to win. He had to get through this. Who would help Neptune if not him? What was Jaune's existence if he couldn't use it to help others? He needed something to validate why he was here. He needed the strength to prove himself.
Any power. Any. He'd do whatever it took, take whatever he had to, fight whoever challenged him.
Lose? No. He wouldn't let this son of bitch beat him.
Jaune crawled to his feet, the tightness in his body slipping away as the shark came after him, Lewis yelling something he couldn't make out. He found… clarity. He saw everything so clearly. So focused. A long tunnel in front of him where everything else was blocked out and there was only the enemy. The energy inside came to the highest, most painful boil, as if his very blood was acid.
Then, he was cold. Cold as hell.
She was walking into the water, and she was so beautiful, and he couldn't feel anything. Why? Why could he move? Why didn't he move? Cold as hell. Death-cold.
All he could do was laugh.
Cinder hadn't found anything yet. The hallways she'd perused were little more than a bunch of rooms that couldn't be opened, and a long and tall window that took up the entirety of the left wall, letting her look out toward the bright and calm ocean. A lot of the museum was empty and led to nowhere. Which wasn't out of the ordinary for Heart Worlds, but in this case was particularly frustrating. She needed to get back to Cara soon and confront her Alter—she gained nothing by wasting her time here.
But of course, that'd leave her junior here alone. And the last thing she needed was him screwing up someone's heart.
She thought about him for a moment. Strange boy. At both times he seemed normal and right on the edge of insanity. Someone straddling that ever thin edge. She'd know all about that, of course. She wasn't sure she was off the line herself. She had no idea what the Knight was all about, but she couldn't deny that she was curious. But clearly the organization didn't know about him, or the boy himself would know about them. So who was training him?
"I suppose I should go find him…" Cinder sighed. Her overshadowing was about to end soon too. She could try and convince the Knight to put this mission on hold, maybe keep an eye on his mark herself so nothing bad happened. Cinder took maybe three steps in the other direction… before seeing the moon.
Just seconds ago it had been day. Calm and bright and warm. Now the sky was being swallowed up in dark, clumping clouds, boiling like a pot of water. They swelled and gathered, extinguishing every trace of light in the world, and the whole time Cinder could not help but feel like her body was getting heavier. That it was becoming hard to stand up straight.
The moon was a bright white eye in the sky, eerily brilliant, coldly luminescent. It was beautiful, it was mad, it was powerful. Cinder knew what this was. An overshadowing. But from who?
She did not trust this feeling in her chest. This weight. She needed to find the Knight and get him to safety.
Whoever was behind this overshadow was not to be trifled with.
When Jaune came to, he felt lighter, in less pain, the burning numbness was gone.
And the giant Apex was sheared clean in half.
It laid there withering away into tiny black wisps of darkness, breathing and struggling for its final dregs of life. Puppet Lewis was no better, his interrobang painted face was split in half like a cracked egg, the question mark on one side, the exclamation point on the other. His body was in no better shape. Arms and a leg hacked off, chest torn open. Some inky black substance oozing out of the wounds and being washed away by the shallow water. Looked like an animal had gotten to him. An animal that could still be near. He spun around, looking about wildly as he tried to find it. But all he found was more evidence of the beast's presence.
A gaping maw was cut so greatly into the wall that it dwarfed the size of the Apex's giant maw. It was the mouth of some edlritch titan, with splinters of wood as teeth, and crumbling stone buried into the floor. The scars stretched into the ceiling, down the opposing walls, through the floor, as if someone had taken a blade and dragged it everywhere, like a child coloring on the walls. Angrily.
What the hell had happened here?
Was there really any time to wonder? The point was that it was dead and regardless of what happened, he felt like he was in a much better condition to fight. The doorway where Neptune had left was still very much intact and no doubt he was waiting beyond. Jaune steeled his nerves, stepped away from the scene and headed off that way. He only then realized he was still holding his shield with a furious grip, but its weight was different. It was no longer evenly distributed. He had a distinct feeling that it was longer somehow.
But when he looked at it, the shield looked the same. White, wide, and back to its normal weight. Weird.
He hurried down the new hallway, where there were no rooms and no indication of where he was going, not even a source of light barring the one from the long windows. Outside, dark clouds were receding from the sky and the sun was poking through, as if it had been night and now was fastforwarding to morning again. Odd, last he remembered the sun had been out. But who was to say? It was hardly fruitful to assume Heart Worlds behaved with logic.
A flight of stairs came next, and seeing there was nowhere else to go, Jaune hopped up them two at a time. Followed the spiraling way higher and higher, breathing hard and fast. Light up ahead, coming from right above. He cleared the last of the steps, no door to pass through, but rather he'd climbed up and out onto the rooftop of the museum. At least that's what he assumed.
It looked just like the ocean, a stretching blue endlessness that reflected him, the white clouds, and the bright sun in mirror-like perfection. Alter Neptune waiting not far off, a trident slung over his shoulder. The Alter turned to face him, a confident smirk on his face. Strangely, there were tears in his eyes, his eyes were misted red, and his voice came out shaky. "Y-you beat my old man? I'm impressed, guy. I'd been meaning to get rid of him, but he's my dad, you know?"
Jaune thought about his own father. "I get it."
"So, I'm guessing you still want to murder me, huh?"
"Like I said, I want to help you."
"Help me with what?" The Alter chuckled. "No one can help me. I've got everything I want. Everyone loves me, my servants do whatever I tell them, and I can fuck any girl I want. I'm perfect. I have everything!"
Jaune frowned. "And its not enough, is it?"
The Alter looked insulted, as though Jaune had seen right through him, even taking a small step back before his eyes hardened. "Shut up. You don't know me!"
Jaune might have agreed, but then he spent time in his heart. And his expectations, while met, were also quickly surpassed. He couldn't look at Neptune the same way, and he had trouble deciding if that was a good or bad thing. He was a little full of himself, whiny, and indecisive. But he was kind, considerate, and not nearly as shallow as he pretended. He was trying to be brave when was just hurt. Neptune was no different than him.
He squared his legs and summoned his shield, heart beating furiously in his chest. There was nothing else he could say.
Lightning coursed around Alter Neptune, burning and surging and swirling from out of nowhere. The air around him was scorching hot, traveling far with the violent wind as grey clouds began to roll in. Even the water seemed to take to his command, violently spinning and rushing forward and back as if the waves were preparing themselves. Alter Neptune's eyes shone a bright burning gold, sparks searing around and through them. He raised his trident, pointed the blade toward the stars. A mighty spear of white shot down faster than Jaune could blink, struck the tip of his trident, buzzed and was absorbed by him, and suddenly the pressure of his Heart World, no longer overshadowed, was present again. Mighty storms, violent waves, crashing lightning, all rocking the precarious museum as if it might be destroyed any time.
Alter Neptune's voice came out deep and echoing, like a demon was speaking through him. "I will turn you to dust."
Jaune could only take a breath, hope he made it through this. But in case he didn't, he at least hoped Neptune would.
"Just talk to him, man. Look, we can talk to him tonight. You and me." Sun said.
Neptune shook his head. "I'm relying on you too much. I'll do it on my own."
Sun's eyes waned. "You sure?"
The last thing he needed was to feel more guilt for getting him involved in things that weren't his problem. Neptune gathered his things together and tried to keep a brave face. Tried to quell the burning in his chest. And yet the more he thought about it, the more he thought about being in the same house as his dad, the more it made him want to run away. Just go off somewhere and not even think about where he was going. Then he looked back at Sun, who watched him with those caring eyes. Such a tough, strong seeming guy, yet he wore his emotions as plainly as an open shirt. There was no weakness in that softness, and he wished he could be that way too. He could only ever let out his feelings with him… and Weiss.
Neptune picked his dirty shirt, stared at it. "I'm scared."
He heard Sun come up to him, put his hand on his shoulder. "I'll walk you home, that's the least I can do. Then, you can tell me how things went with your dad tomorrow. We'll get some tacos, alright?"
Tacos. That… sounded nice. He was too good a friend, beyond what he deserved. There wasn't anything he could ever do to pay him back. He wanted to tell Sun how much he loved him, but couldn't be sure why. It wasn't like this was the last he'd ever see him. Unless it was.
"Okay, tacos. That sounds good."
Sun wrapped his arm around Neptune's shoulder and they left together. Out in the dark and lamplit street. The world quiet save for the occasional breeze. His house wasn't far at all but it certainly felt like it. The lights of cars would sweep by, bright and indicative. Tempting. It reminded him of how fast his car could drive. When Sun and he went to the abandoned roads on Temple Street just to see how fast they could go. To chase the sun. Remarkably fast, so much so that they couldn't see anything.
Then they'd hit a bump, heard something crack. Going back, the wheel was fine. But the turtle he'd run over wasn't. The memory wasn't a fond one. But Sun had said the turtle probably died instantly. No pain. No suffering.
No suffering.
He couldn't help but watch the cars pass. It was busy on the road at this time of night, and they were all moving fast. Very fast. He imagined, if there was any living creature in their path, it'd die right away with no struggle. They'd be at peace.
Neptune couldn't help but feel relief at the sound of that.
Alrighty, we're coming up to the end of this arc, which I'm thinking will be 2-3 chapters. This chapter was pretty short, and I've been thinking about trying to hit the benchmark of shorter chapters. In my own writing and in previous fanfics, my chapters tended to be pretty long and I've wondered if I could stand to make my writing more concise, less rambly, and get right to the point. Nothing to do but try it out and see if it works. Anyway, hope yall enjoyed the chapter and see you in the next one.