Castlevania: Aria of the Ascending Soul
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
A/N: noticed a few flub ups, good thing I found them and fixed them. One day I'll find the others!
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Sophia glided over the city towards the apartment, noting the lights were on so signaling Kazu was up late. No reason to be quiet then!
"Right, so let's try this again, focus on your hand..." Trevor was saying.
"Honey! I'm hooooo... Hi Trevor, Kazu, Simon, Juste, Richter, Christopher wow there's Yoko..." Sophia floated into the living room a little shaken at how many family members were here. She couldn't recall a reason for all of them to come crashing at Kazu's. Since the young man was often quite diligent to keep her informed when there was a situation. Much less one that involved the family.
Yet Kazu had made no mention of such a large family meeting, his schedule for the day had been clear. More over with each Belmont now alerted to her presence each turned to face her with an incredible amount of fixation. Almost like everyone was waiting for her...
"Sophia, we need your help," Trevor looked over his shoulder up at her, waving a paw to invite her closer to the ground with the rest of them. "Alucard is in trouble, we need you to find him."
"Like yesterday," Simon grumbled, while Sophia dropped to the ground like a rock, ready to catch up on what she clearly missed. The atmosphere was tense all around and she couldn't be sure just how long everyone had been in the apartment waiting for her. But if Alucard was in trouble...
"I take it Sophia is here," Yoko noted aloud as she took in how all the Hunters and Kazu suddenly turned to face the wall that divided the interior apartment from the outside world.
"Yes, and Trevor and the others have begun informing her of the situation," Kazu confirmed softly. Leaning a little closer to his sister while he watched the eternally bizarre set up the Plushy Patrol now created in his life.
"Of course, I'll go see his Ghost Familiar," Sophia replied without complaint turning to return to the outside world.
"Wait!" Trevor called out standing up in concern. "You need to know something!"
As Sophia paused almost at the wall, Christopher's' voice called out, "Alucard may only be asleep when you find him! We fear they're keeping him subdued as a way to be able to move him around! That when you saw him last time sleeping, he was already their prisoner and that it was the method they moved him!"
Sophia blinked in alarm as she turned to face the group, recalling how he had been asleep before and she had thought nothing of it. He had been in danger even as far back as then? She left a comrade in the hands of an enemy unknowingly?!
"Understood, I'll be back as soon as I can with news!" She replied before flying out of the house and back into the night. She flew off focusing again on the method necessary to find Alucards' private estate. Given his ties to Dracula and too many movie nights giving her a long list of possible thing that could end up being done to Alucard if not found soon..
Without Kazu and his ability, normally she wouldn't even care, since she wouldn't have been actively leaving the After Life like this. Only Kazu bridged that gap, meaning she 'could' do something and despite being a ghost with access to anyplace she 'still' felt restricted.
The shapes of buildings melted into shadows that turned into trees completely lost to shadows of the night. Finally in the distance she could see a lone light shining like a solitary star off in the distance. Meaning it was probably Soma somewhere, probably sleeping, in the estate. She flew onto the grounds trying to think of where the Ghost might be hanging out at the moment. Since it lacked the ability to communicate verbally with the other Familiars. She was pretty sure it just went where ever, but she didn't have the time to search 'where ever'!
"Ghost! Ghost I need you!" She called out as she searched room after room. Flying past the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, offices with Soma in one reading a book, she scoured the whole estate growing more worried as she realized she couldn't find Ghost anywhere. "Ghost I'm serious!" She cried out in frustration as she faced an empty work out room, whirling around in mounting worry to check the rest of the estate again. Just in case Ghost 'had' left and was drifting back in...
And came face to face with a glowing skull, twin bright, hellish red flames for eyes.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Her first instinct was the cast an ice spell against the fire in her face, only to passively remember that she was dead. No ice spells, fire spell, or any form of magic for her dead self. As she jerked back in reaction her eyes finally processed that she was looking at the flaming red eyes of the Ghost! Had it been following her? If so, for how long? Why hadn't she noticed it?
Why couldn't it have a jaw bone so it could talk to her and let her know it was right behind her? Or fly ahead of her so she wasn't flying all over the place!?
She could think about that later though, she had a reason to be floating along like a chicken with its head cut off. "Ghost, where is Alucard?! I 'need' you to go to him right now!" She ordered and waited as the flames for eyes blinked out then back... It began to turn in a circle as it began to zero in on Alucards' location. Spinning in a circle over and over several times like a thief cracking a safe with those rotary dials, before it stopped and faced her. A question mark forming from the flames it was aflame with.
If she still had a stomach it would have dropped out of her body.
Ghost wasn't moving.
Ghost. Wasn't. MOVING!
"You understand me, right? You understand that I want you to find Alucard, right?" She asked in mounting worry, hoping that it was just that the ghost was incredibly stupid. She could handle stupid, what she couldn't handle was the other option.
The Ghost answered with a nod, the front of its skull dipping down and up over and over the question mark still displayed over its head.
Which was justified, after all she was asking where its master was and it didn't know. It, a being that was bound into servitude towards Alucard, a bond that transcended a simple leash and collar on living animals... DID NOT KNOW WHERE ITS OWNER WAS! How was that even 'possible'?
"I want you to come with me," she finally ordered deciding it was time to go to Kazu. The room felt like it was closing in on her and she had to get out of there. Every minute floating around was just giving this group longer access to Alucard. She took off checking behind her to ensure the obedience of the Ghost. Only there was no flicker of light indicating the Ghost was obeying. "grrr..."
She returned to the room to find the Ghost drifting to the wall on the right of the door where she had entered from. "Ghost!" she called out, watching it swing around to face her again. "I need you to come with me!" She repeated the order only to have the ghost begin to shake its skull 'no'. "Why?!" She demanded, despite the fact that Ghost couldn't speak, at least not to her hence why she wanted it to come meet Kazu.
It was a long shot after all, he could see her, maybe there was something between the type of ghost 'she' was versus the type of ghost the Ghost was? Something that was creating a language barrier? Yet as she pondered that, it caused her to calm down enough to let her training take over. Returning her to her calm state and remembering that this wasn't 'her' Familiar. It was bound by the duty given to it by Alucard himself. When she came here the last time, she had merely wanted to see Alucard, leaving to follow its master wasn't considered a violation. Or at least it wasn't a violation Alucard would reasonably put into effect on the Ghost.
She was asking it to leave, not to find its master, but to go meet with someone else and that 'could' have restrictions on it. Sophia shook her head as she took off back to the apartment, realizing they may 'have' to bring Kazu to Alucards' estate. If it even came to that, she didn't have enough information so maybe they wouldn't need to bother the Ghost. Or maybe all they needed was for Soma to bring it with him, since he was being attended to by the Familiars.
Soma... no that wouldn't do at all, the Familiars referred to Soma as 'Great Master', acknowledging him as the father of their master. Regardless of if Kazu came to the mansion or Soma brought them with him. There would be no reason for the Familiars 'not' to update Soma on what had happened. Perhaps if Soma didn't 'know' there were visitors, but honestly Sophia lacked any hope of 'that' happening. The reincarnation was young, emotional, but not stupid, all he would have to do was ask a Familiar after all. He was also to be kept in the dark due to that very emotional nature he possessed in an effort to keep him from worrying over Alucard.
What was this group though? How could they have the power to cut off a magical link between Owner and Familiar? If they could do this, what else had they been doing while she had been bumming around watching old videos on the internet with her husband? For all the times she had, lovingly, teased her husband about his uselessness in the current world revolving around Yoko. Now 'she' felt that pin prickling uselessness herself.
"Alucard, don't give up on us!"
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"So... you know this is silly?" Yoko asked as she sat on the couch watching as her cellphone was being towed off by Christopher and Simon into Kazu's bedroom.
"I'm not too sure, I mean it works for us, but Trevor isn't good at lying," Kazu argued lightly, then amended it with, "now 'misdirection'..."
They watched as Trevors' ears dipped down in embarrassment while Yoko resumed her argument, "I just can't imagine that the phones make that kind of noise during Face Time. I was in the room sleeping when they made that call and it didn't wake me up."
"Yes, and that was actually more scary than the noise," Richter noted as he walked over and jumped up to sit next to Yoko. "But its true, when we do this 'face time' thing you two speak about, we heard the most unholy of sounds."
The phone began ringing, diverting everyone's attention to it as Trevor began swiping and activating it. Yet there was no sound on the other side once the phone was answered, which Trevor expected. He swiped and poked the Face Time app to start and watched as program sprang up, waiting for a reply on Simon's end.
"Well? When do you think the shrieking will resume?"
Trevor heard Christopher ask, his ears growing tense as he stood up. "Christopher? Simon? Can you hear me?"
"Trevor?" Christopher called out in answer, the room was dark, neither Plushy's bothering with the lights. Save the light from Kazu's birthday gift from his mother, bathing the room in a soft shade of warm reds that highlighted the pair. Ear wiggling commenced.
"Wait... Why can we hear you?" Simon blurted out clearly shaken up as well by the clear sound from the phone.
Juste looked up at the two humans with them, and while Kazu's awareness of the conversation was a given, Yoko still looked clueless. So while the Belmonts could hear each other and, by proxy Kazu, everyone else would only be able to see them. Only... there was no noise? Where was the earth rupturing hell spawned noise that happened the moment that the 'app' thing activated?
Yoko, meanwhile, though unable to hear the Belmonts 'could' pick up on a few very obvious clues that there was a conversation going on. The moment that Trevor had hit the app on Kazu's phone, each of the Belmonts snapped into a ridged posture. Bracing for whatever noise it was that they had heard earlier when they tried to use Face Time as a faster form of communication.
She could feel Richter's soft, plushy body grow tense and both he and Juste had their ears flattened down as though to avoid some unspeakably bad sound. Even Trevor's ears were flipped back and down to avoid it. So when Trevor caught sight of something and slowly began lifting one ear only for both to flip up. It sent a signal to the other two who responded in much the same way, the tenseness that Richter had was suddenly gone as he stood up, ears erect.
"So its safe to say nothing happened huh?" She asked looking over at her brother for confirmation. Which came in the form of a nod and a shrug.
"They're just as confused as we are, insisting that there's supposed to be noise," Kazu informed his sister only to have the Belmonts turn on him.
"We did hear it!"
"The worst sounds you can imagine!"
The door to the bedroom slid open as Simon and Christopher inside the room came walking out, the phone still connected to Kazu's phone. Tucked under Simon's arm like a folder, Christopher already protesting the suggestion that the Belmonts were hallucinating the whole thing. It was off putting to be sure that men who had faced Dracula would be considered 'lying'.
While at the same time being worried over how what they experienced in the Vatican didn't happen here.
"Could it have been Soma? Maybe his presence causes this, he may have still been in the Vatican when we made the call..." Juste suggested, as the pair of bears walked towards them.
"And our corpses 'are' there, too... so maybe?" Trevor answered, one ear dipping down as he tried to think of the logic of that. Could their corpses be creating a type of interference to keep Soma's influence from spreading when he was on the grounds? Having never gone to see the situation in person, Trevor couldn't be confident on if he was right or not.
This really wasn't 'his' thing after all, possible more Sophia's observational ability.
But no, even 'she' could never come onto the grounds and she wasn't evil...
More over the one Belmont who was the past master of seeing the supernatural and closest to what Kazu actually could do... Was that belligerent, grumpy bear Simon. He surely would have reacted to anything evil when he arrived.
The phone Simon was carrying began shaking under his arm, causing him to go over to Yoko while she leaned over to accept it. She turned off the Face Time app, her heart skipping a beat in a hope that maybe it was Alucard, reporting in as safe. Only to see Julius' name projected on the screen, disappointing, but at least he was safe.
She accepted the call, even as she stood up in case she had to leave the room, "Hey Uncle Julius what's up?"
"Yoko? I came to see you since your mother mentioned wanting Soma to get out of the Vatican. Wanted to see what that was about, but since you're not here..." He explained, causing Yoko to count her lucky stars that she had brought the Plush Patrol with her. They may have tried to get Julius to know who they were and uh... no... not yet... maybe after they were both dead she would out what she had done.
"Yeah I'm out visiting..." And she caught herself 'just' before she said 'my brother' since to Julius' knowledge she an only child. "A friend, so when's the next time you'll be available?"
"I'll have to see what the boys say, but in the meantime. I found a book on the floor in your room, mind if I keep it for a bit? Seemed a bit interesting," Julius inquired as he examined the tape covered book in Yoko's chamber. That Yoko had a book stuffed under a shelf was strange enough, but maybe it fell down and she kicked it there by accident while in a hurry? Though the ridiculous amount of tape he found around it was eyebrow raising.
Why would Yoko have a journal from Pope Dionysus wrapped in tape and hidden under the table? Julius recalled the Pope as the one in charge when he first arrived to deal with the Prophecy regarding Dracula. Like his predecessor, who he took the name from, Dionysus had been very good in dealing with the administrative side of the Vatican. So what was the deal with this book?
"Everyone!"
Everyone, sans Yoko, looked up in surprise as Sophia arrived in such a hurried manner, it alarmed everyone who could see her. Thus they gave her their instant attention while Yoko stood in the center of the living room oblivious.
"I went to see the Ghost and it couldn't find Arikado either. Last time it brought me directly to Arikado, yet this time it didn't leave. Not because it doesn't want to, and I'm sure Arikado gave no counter order. So where ever he is, its blocked off so completely that even Ghost can't get a fix."
The room was silent beyond Yoko saying 'good bye' to someone, turning to see the room's rapt attention to the wall.
"Well we're fucked, was nice knowing you family," Simon grumbled.