Before I post this... I'd like to say, thank you. Thank you all for being with me over the years, and thank you for reading my story. And an extra special thanks to my Betas,
@The Zog,
@Mizu, and
@Ridiculously Average Guy. It's been three years and three days since this story was posted, and you've been awesome.
That said, let's do this.
-x-
Medusa's Story
I looked around me. Colors had washed out of the world, leaving behind greys and blacks and whites that clung to everything. The palettes vibrated, as though the images were layered wrong. It reminded me of the moon, in a way. Not the round lunar structure that Ars knew so much about, but the grinning one.
Exhaling a breath, I noted that it echoed throughout the world. BG-X was retreating. The broken building around us repaired itself, brick by brick and board by board. I forced myself to stand and watch as the doors shut.
There were footsteps above me. I felt him before I saw him as something deep within my being thrummed. I felt his emotions, as erratic as they were, and I felt his Madness. It was easy holding on to that thread.
I heard the whirring of BG-X's gun, turned, and fled. Chants flew from my lips with such rapidity that they blended together. Leaping through a window, I watched as BG-X stared at me from the top floor of a now-pristine house.
The other houses around us were rebuilding themselves. "Welcome," he said, "To the empty place."
Echoes resonated throughout the streets, but only to a certain extent. I could see where the sound reverberated back to the center of the bubble. The walls of the world were clear and reflective, like glass. I could hear water as it struck the roof of this world, seeped through, and then turned to mist and descended.
BG-X's soul had a song of putty. Not in the sense that it was malleable, but in the sense that it was melted and spattered over a rough surface. It was hardly the only soul of its sort that I'd put my fingers in, and twisting it in just the right way was second nature to me.
His footsteps were weighty, bending floorboards as he walked closer and pointed his gun at me. "Ah, but you know this is the empty place, don't you? How~?" He sang, "How'd you do it, darling~?"
I answered, "I wrote it down." But that failed to please him. I watched as he shook his head and made his gun spin. Bullets soared through the air, and I ran the opposite direction. My feet took me up a wall and over a roof as I slid behind and then between buildings.
Fragments of rock and dirt exploded around me as I fled for cover. "Not that~!" He crowed, "How did you activate my ability? It is mine, not yours. We should not be here!"
I shrugged from where I sat behind a wall that stopped rebuilding itself. "Madness is an external expression of a mental state, made corporeal through the soul." I explained, "Your powers as a Quincy are as fundamentally identical to that as they are to a Stand's properties."
None of what I said was false, to be clear. My time with Lust had given me access to Quincy abilities, and my years of studying Madness had paid off. Stands were manifestation of the soul, and thus an expression of pre-existing powers within that soul, and I had already been studying Stands and their operation from the moment I first saw them… But the answer was far simpler than all of that.
Is it ironic that this Soul Resonance be so similar to what I used to do before I met Ars? No. Just an old hat – a parlor trick among Witches, and the most experienced of Meisters. Tuning my soul to the soul of someone suffering from such advanced Madness was easy.
He "ahh'd" a sound of comprehension, then fired at me again. This time, I leapt out of cover and began running towards him. BG-X's lantern eyes blinked in surprise when I threw a rock at him. He was too slow to dodge, and as he recovered from his lenses being shattered I slid beneath a building's supports and began chanting.
"Stands, Madness," BG-X breathed, "What is this nonsense you're uttering? Mine is a power from Yhwach himself!"
"No. It's not." I replied without leaving room for argument. I knew I was right, and even as he startled and spun to strike at me, I let my arrows pierce his arms. The roof collapsed and he fled from me as I fell–
–There was a click, and a whir as the gun began firing at me again. I swung my arm and forced a wall to collapse in front of me and block the incoming bullets. The Quincy bow I had taken for myself formed on my arm. I pulled back and aimed for the topmost barrel.
An arrow flew straight and true and exploded inside BG-X's weapon. His composure slipped and he cried out in fear. My feet slid across a frictionless ground towards him, and I propelled myself to move faster.
[["Vector Arrow!"]]
He gasped as my fist struck his chest and threw him away from me, an arrow firing from my knuckles–
–and through a pair of houses. He rolled and stumbled through shattered walls that rebuilt themselves as the hole in his chest began stitching itself up. I could see a multitude of arms reaching out to pull his ribcage back together again.
My eyes narrowed at the sound of his gasping and wheezing. "Well?" I asked him, "Aren't you going to use it? Your Quincy: Vollstandig?" I waited for him to heal as I listened to oil and liquid spiritual energy drip from his form. He glowed, his gun rebuilt itself, and he propped it up on an unfinished wall.
"You are unworthy!" The barrels spun once more, and he began to fire. I sighed and held my palm up. His attacks were technically stronger, but my Madness and my soul were stronger, and older, than his. But even if the defense was a formality…
"Ga-gana, nana, ga-gana, naga-naga," seven arrows spun a circle around my palm and expanded outwards. The bullets bounced away from me as I stood, unfazed. Skin peeled from my hand, but still I stared at BG-X and waited. And when my palm and fingers were only strips of thinly-held together flesh, the gun stopped whirring–
My arrows vanished and I let my hand fall as I began to walk over to BG-X. My pace was slow and controlled, and I was sure to measure every step. I lifted my uninjured left hand and pointed at him.
"If I'm unworthy, then you're a fraud. Show me your Quincy: Vollstandig." He was silent. "Well? You are one of Yhwach's chosen, right? You and the other Quincies who came here – and you
are Quincies. That much I'm sure of."–
–Cold, seeping hatred filled me as BG-X began searching for some kind of escape. For the first time in ages, I'd felt excited from a battle… and this was what it amounted to. I knew things were going too easily – or perhaps, they were supposed to be this easy.
I did not doubt for a moment that BG-X was a newer model than BG-9, which meant that he had to have come after the Sternritter invaded the Soul Society. From a timeline perspective, that meant that Earthland was either ahead of Soul Society, or the surviving Quincies had found somewhere else to flee to after they lost – and they did lose, of that I had no doubt.
"You made me waste my Soul Resonance on something this useless?" I asked as the world regained color–
–and I could finally see the damage left behind. "You create a bubble. All things within that bubble cease to exist in the outside world. Within that bubble, time becomes elusive. Past, present, and future are artificial except to its occupants." I looked around me and pointed towards buildings that only minutes ago had been nothing but rubble, and other buildings that were once standing.
There was no harm in telling him how out of his depth he was. I knew from the confusion in his soul that he had no understanding of what
Soul Resonance was – in that sense, I knew he was defeated.
"You can rebuild anything that is destroyed," I continued, "And after a certain period of time… the bubble pops. We return to the outside world. To others, it would look like we vanished for several minutes, then reappeared in completely different places… and the damage, or repairs, done to the world in the meantime will become apparent. Victims of this ability have no recollection of what took place inside that bubble."
I stared at him. "Your body is largely artificial. Thus, you can even rebuild
yourself in this world. But if I hurt you here, that damage stays. I can see why I had difficulty with you at first… but you were a paper tiger, nothing more and nothing less."
Deep breaths. I needed to calm down–
and he wouldn't let me as the world became colorless once more. He charged, swinging his repaired weapon at me as if it were a club. To his credit, it forced me to step to the side in order to dodge it. But it did nothing to prevent me from lashing out with my good arm, an incantation for two Vector arrows on my lips.
One touched him and pulled his body towards me. The other flew from my palm and forcibly inserted itself into his body. There I could feel it writhe and slither as it constricted internal parts. Machinery that doubled as organs pumped and burst as I held them in place. He gagged.
I could feel tiny screws twist as they tried to rebuild the damage, but my arrows held still. He reached for me with dozens of limbs and so I severed them. "You don't get it. I didn't understand either at first, but…" I felt my gaze grow colder, "I'm out of your league."–
–"It's only fair," I supposed, "Being a big fish in such a little pond… I'm the pox to your natives. You've never had to fight someone like me before, have you?" Another exhale, "It's my own fault for jumping the gun. But you must understand… I
need a source of stress relief. So please," I watched the light in his lantern eyes die a little. "Stay still for me."
BG-X died as he lived.
Screaming.
-x-
I washed my hands with water that poured from an uprooted pipe. It never ceased to amaze me what comforts this society had. At times, it seemed deceptively medieval. But then there were the examples of indoor plumbing, which had only really become a thing in the mid-eighteen hundreds, and post-nineteen-nineties style advertisements in magazines that were formatted as if they belonged in the nineteen thirties.
Now, I knew that was how the magazines were formatted because those were the only thing available for use as bandages. It was hardly sterile, but my body was only physical in the strictest sense. Infections were beyond me.
People were gathering at a distance. A key dangled from my hip as Mushi that only I could see flittered and dispersed. Their purpose was finished. Now, they would inhabit the land – I'd have to come back and take a soil sample in the future, just to make sure things were running smoothly.
My hand twitched. Nerves reconnected themselves, forcing new skin to grow and graft itself. I clapped my hands, pulling at and altering the wood pulp in the news print and drawing on carbon from the ink. Sparks dripped from my damaged hand, but it was well on its way to being repaired.
A few hours would be sufficient.
I surveyed the damage and sighed. What a disappointment.
Yet still the people gathered. Some mourned the loss of their homes and families, others wept at the sight of their destroyed city. It really wasn't my concern. I hadn't even spoken to any of these people, so how they felt really should have had no impact on me.
…It was time for me to leave.
A child pointed at a tower that had collapsed atop a half-eaten guard and screamed. I pinched the bridge of my nose and hissed. Not my problem. None of this was my problem. I had a mission; there was a mage I needed to find, he wasn't here, and he was actively being pursued by a group of walking gimmicks.
Priorities, I reminded myself. I had priorities…
More crying and wailing… Something pulling…
Oh for fuck's sake – I walked up to one of them and pulled out a bag from one of my dress's many pockets. "Here," I offered. "You look like a responsible… person." I confess, I could not tell if they were a man or a woman, and it was not my problem. "Take these seeds. Plant them three feet below ground at equal distances from the center of the town and from each other, in as circular a shape as you can possibly manage. There are five, so it should look like a pentagon. Water them once a day, every day, at noon, for a week. Understand?"
"…" the person replied. I… couldn't make out their face, exactly.
"Hold that thought," I raised my uninjured hand, "Hello! I'm looking for whoever is in charge of this town!" My eyes flitted across the crowd in search of any more dark mages… but it seemed that they had either been killed, or they had fled because of course they had.
Eventually, someone stepped forward and I repeated my instructions.
All distractions aside, it occurred to me that this was a massive waste of my time and effort. But at least I managed to cut open a Quincy to see what made him tick. But that was something for another day.
-x-
How long had I been walking?
The town was at least a mile behind me, but it felt like I hadn't traveled all that far. The world felt washed out. I blinked and searched for signs of color.
…Nothing? How strange. But it's probably nothing of note – no. Stop.
I stopped walking, and then I looked in front of me. I was at one of the town's gates. I looked behind me. Another of the town's gates, leading to another town, and that town was the town in front of me, and I grit my teeth and watched the moon bleed.
My head turned. I looked up. Water turned to mist as it touched the bubble above the town. "How?" I heard BG-X ask as rubble crumbled away from the side of a broken building and he stood by its side. "Is every trap of my starless world truly incapable of trapping you~?" he chortled.
Of course the trap was bound to fail, I didn't say to him. Our souls were linked, and thus his power was an open book to me. I could feel his Schrift… or… wait… that was a Schrift? No… it was something else…
"You don't reverse time in this place, do you?" I faux-realized, "You record space-time. And then you can rewind and replay it, over and over again."
Whatever the case, if he hadn't understood what Soul Resonance meant when I told him the first time, then I wasn't about to explain every detail of it to him.
He clapped with too many hands, "Granted! To the outside world, only six minutes will pass. But in here, time is fluid as you said… space as well. Even when you leave this starless world, you'll find yourself entering it again. We haven't been fighting for minutes, but for hours."
I flexed my hand and felt no pain. It was healed. Time and space did not reverse here. It was inherently recursive, which meant that injuries I suffered were as temporary as his. "So all those people who gathered, they were already dead. Weren't they? You're not limited to recording immediate events. You can record any inanimate entity and replay them, and while you're at it… you can play reactions to those entities." I nodded, "If memories of this place are erased upon its departure, then it only follows that the memories and reactions within this place are subject to some limited control…"
Stepping towards an open door, I pulled out a fallen chair before it could rise and sat myself down. "But once the target becomes aware, mental manipulation within this place becomes limited."
"A bleeding heart and a talker~?" BG-X crowed, "Truly, O' Yhwach, I am blessed…"
"You locked yourself in a pocket dimension with an eight hundred year old witch and mad scientist." I drawled, "Blessed is not the word I would use in your situation."
"Perhaps not," he conceded. "Yet surely we have reached a stalemate. I can keep this world alive for as long as I want. Centuries could pass. I merely need to wait for you to starve."
"It takes great patience to wait an eternity. I envy you."
"…Pardon?"
"Food and drink are luxuries for me now. It would be a great annoyance to go without them, but as I am," I gestured to myself, "It matters little."
"…"
"You look perturbed. Was this your final strategy? To wait?"
He looked around as though in search of another weapon or tool he could use.
"I've given you an ultimatum of sorts," I informed him. "It is admittedly irrational of me, but I'd rather not watch any of the people who lived here die – at least, any more of them. You know that. But the only way you could threaten them is if you closed this world and let us return." I pointed my finger at him, letting a Vector Arrow curl around my arm. "You also know that I can open this world as easily as you can and pull us both in. It is thus reasonable to assume I can do the opposite."
BG-X lifted his gun, and then reconsidered firing it. His lantern eyes flickered. "I…"
"You have no plan. The moment this world collapses, I will kill you. But before it does, assuming we truly do have a nearly infinite amount of time, there are two things I aim to learn from you." I raised a finger, "First, where did you get your powers? And second, tell me everything you know of Ivan Dreyar. No matter what you say, or do, you will not survive." I felt his soul. "I will know if you are lying."
-x-
One Foot on the Platform
OR: One Foot on the Train
End-318
