Hey, Lichant here. I just want to make it clear that if I disappear for a couple of weeks or a month after this chapter, it's not because I'm dead, but because a certain game I've been waiting for for over six years is coming out soon, and I doubt I'll be able to concentrate on writing anything until I've completely finished it.
Just that.
Enjoy the chapter~.
♧♧♧ Sandy's POV ♧♧♧
Sighing, a little soberer, the smile that had inadvertently spread across my face faded and I stared at the crab I'd stabbed with my spade, making sure to keep pressure on the wound so the idiot wouldn't bleed out. Things had gotten way, way more complicated than I expected when I broke away from the guys to find a solution to my 'closet issues', but it was too late to cry over spilled milk.
At first, I just wanted to give Mr. Stupid a short but intense beating. Hit him a bit and then heal him with Heal Pulse, using the experience to improve one of my most important moves while, at the same time, punishing the berk a little for his transgressions.
It was a win-win; I was practicing with the move I wanted to use to heal Pincitas, and Kingler was paying for his crimes and maybe learning a thing or two. A foolproof plan, one could say… but I didn't count on Mr. Stupid being able to piss me off so much.
As I listened to his screams, before I knew it, my Ghost instincts had kicked in. Fueled by the energy of the Gems that I'd been eating like candy before he arrived, the most twisted part of me thought it would be justice to get to this point. That my anger could only be sated if the idiot in front of me experienced firsthand the pain he'd caused to others. That the perfect retribution could only be offered by me.
Nonetheless, the truth was that I had gone too far.
Mind you, I didn't regret what I'd just done at all. I hadn't crossed my line yet, and at some point I'd have to deal with what to do with him anyway, but this was precisely why I didn't want to get involved with the punishment in first place. Because I already knew that there couldn't be true justice if I started acting as judge, jury and executioner.
Now that I thought about it, was that the reason Yezalel hadn't interfered with this? Did her own moral code prevent her from doing so? I didn't think it was just that, since she'd been serving as Guardian for centuries, at least, and a person hasn't been in the 'helping people' business for that long without having made a few morally questionable decisions… Or at least that's what superhero comics always emphasize.
I'd have to ask her, if only to satisfy my curiosity. It was always good to try to see things from someone else's perspective, as well as interesting.
Sighing again (I'd been doing that too much lately), I returned to the present and reinforced my Phantom Stare on the crustacean, trying to stop him from shaking and prevent the wound from tearing further. I was afraid that I didn't know if I would be able to heal that mess, not without a moment of supreme enlightenment that would trivialize everything and take Heal Pulse to a new level, at least.
It wouldn't be so strange; it had already happened a couple of times that same day with other moves, but I shouldn't get used to taking it for granted, and with the gaze activated, a part of what my instincts had whispered to me a few moments before gained some weight.
I'm ashamed to admit that my first thought upon seeing his soul earlier was 'it looks delicious, I want to take a bite', but the second thing that came to my mind was that, with all that pent-up potential, I could try to do a Capy trick and turn him into what he hated most; a Ghost.
It was the perfect revenge, wasn't it?
Almost poetic, you could say.
Becoming a 'member' of the group of people he hated the most could only lead to two things: either he would start hating himself, descending into a deep depression that would force him to confront his own demons and prejudices, or he would begin to truly understand the Ghosts and see that they weren't the straw man he had formed in his mind, having become one and all.
There was also the remote possibility that he would just ignore it all and continue hating the Ghosts without being affected in the slightest, but as much as I loved to mock him by calling him Mr. Stupid, I preferred to think that there was something inside his head and that I wasn't in front of an ameba.
Someone hating another being for having an exotic, unchanging attribute that this same 'someone' also possessed would be the height of stupidity, and would earn him an even more degrading name upgrade… though I suppose there must be people that stupid in the world.
I could only hope Kingler wasn't one of those cases.
A low groan pulled me from my thoughts like a whiplash. Frowning, I saw that the crab had fainted a while ago while I was distracted. There was no more time to waste if I wanted to do this; every second counted. Kingler was dying and I was in a daze, not giving a damn about his welfare.
It wasn't the right moment to dissociate, it was the moment to act.
Transforming part of my aura into Psychic-type energy and molding it into the increasingly familiar patterns of Calm Mind, time dilated and stretched around me like a hair tie, slowing down. Keeping that going at the same time as my Phantom Stare would quickly take its toll, I knew; even more if I started messing with souls too. The headache I'd get afterward would be legendary, though unfortunately, both moves were essential for what I had to do, so I could only grit my teeth and keep going.
Peering into the depths of my self-proclaimed archenemy's soul, my eyes soon located the enormous, misshapen sphere that represented his potential at its center. It was immense, larger than Cap's and mine combined, but also much more compressed. That was the result of accumulating it for who knows how many decades without ever actually using it, either because he was unaware of its existence or because he didn't know how or what to use it for.
I couldn't deny that I was a little envious.
The most insidious part of me whispered to hell with everything, to eat his essence and let the poor bastard die. I deserved it, right? And he definitely deserved it too. Give and take; he'd forced me to use a good portion of my own potential to save Cap from the wound he had given him, so it was only fair to take what was due to me, right?
Who was going to blame me, anyway? A corpse?
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed that tiny part of me and kicked it so hard that it flew to the moon. The moon of my world, to be precise.
Doing so would not only go against everything I believed in, forcing me to break my 'no killing' code and setting frankly repugnant precedents, but it would also be comically suicidal. I didn't need to feel it to know that the Will of the World (I still didn't dare to even think of its true name) had been there since the madness of the previous day, watching me, perhaps judging my steps, or maybe just enjoying the spectacle.
At the very moment I began 'farming exp.', I wasn't sure what this being would do, and I had no desire to find out. What I was about to do was selfish enough, I didn't need to make things worse by making enemies of a cosmic entity along the way if I could avoid it.
Calming myself, letting the pressure slide off my psyche, I delved deep for a second into my soul to collect a spark of my own potential and plunged it into the crustacean's chest, using the shovel still lodged in his guts as a channel. The wisp was tiny, less than I'd won in that same battle in fact, but with Kingler having so much juice to work with, all that was needed is just a little catalyst to start the reaction…
Also, to be honest, I didn't want to spend more than necessary on this either. Call me greedy, but I wasn't going to spend too much of such a valuable resource on an enemy of all things, no matter how redeemable that enemy might or not be.
Focusing my mind on that spark, I masterfully directed it toward the ocean of potential, beginning to resonate with it so I could wield my will, and the Will of the World responded. Its presence wasn't antagonistic, but it wasn't seeking to help me either. It seemed more like thinking 'what the hell is this girl doing this time?', like a father coming home to find the kitchen in shambles.
I tried to reason my motivation with the divine being, sending it my intentions and the context of why I was doing this (just as I'd done the last time, but in a slightly more organized way). My efforts earned me a conceptual shrug and a symbolic thumbs-up, only for its presence to disappear immediately, leaving me alone with this mess. With Kingler passed out, that meant I couldn't merge my will with his own like I had done with Cap, so, effectively, this time it was all up to me.
This was going to be a pain…
I'm not sure how much time passed, let alone how long it actually was with Calm Mind on, but little by little, my intention sank into the ocean of potential, infusing into it and spreading like a plague. The waters slowly turned my color, resonating with the faint, remnant will of the unconscious crab and mixing with his own survival instinct, dyeing everything a sandy brown with purple highlights.
Thinking about it, I couldn't say if having Kingler fainted sped up the process or slowed it down, since while he could have helped me by synchronizing my will with his own, there was also the possibility that he would oppose everything I tried and make the already difficult task of saving his ass more though for some stupid reason. He was that proud, and that was something that could have easily happened, unfortunately.
Anyway, after an indeterminate amount of time I managed to subdue all of his potential under my will, and it creaked like a rusty gear that refused to turn, unable to consolidate into a new evolution. Shrugging, I squinted and applied more pressure, trying to force the mechanism, but there was no way to budge it.
There was a piece that didn't fit.
Was I missing some hidden requirement? Maybe I needed his approval to continue? Perhaps he needed to be conscious to evolve? If it was one of the last two reasons, I'd have to awaken him first, something I wasn't sure I wanted to or even could do, seeing his condition.
More concerned now, I took out one of the Ghost Gems I'd stashed in my jacket pockets and shattered it in my hand, releasing the extremely pure Ghost-type energy it contained. With a flick of my wrist, I wrapped that energy with my own to prevent it from dissipating and injected it into the dying crustacean's soul, which did nothing except replenish his aura reserves a bit.
Frowning, I increased the intensity of my Calm Mind and began to think seriously. This wasn't working. Trying to figure out the hidden requirements that may or may not exist using a brute-force method would take too long, and the pool of blood beneath Kingler was growing larger and larger.
Perhaps I would first need to stabilize his condition a bit before continuing with this, since I thought this would be something quick, but it was becoming clear that it wasn't. I also seriously doubted that a hidden condition to trigger his evolution was to actually die.
Clicking my tongue, with a slight snort that made me question my sanity for finding humor in this situation, I removed my foot from the shovel head and began treating the wound with Heal Pulse.
It was somewhat ironic, since that was my original plan, but twists and turns sometimes are necessary, and I wasn't going to complain about improving something I'd already intended to train for. The only downside was that I had to work around the same issues that had led me to try evolving Kingler to 'heal' him, rather than actually trying to heal him.
Heal Pulse was capable of becoming an amazing move, but its main problem was that it only restored the target's energy and repaired their Defense layer, making it pretty useless at the moment. However, with my mind much more relaxed and with everything I'd learned that day, adding regenerative effects to the move was not as difficult as I feared, let alone as impossible as it seemed the first time I tried it.
It also didn't require a universal cosmic magical moment of enlightenment as I'd expected. I didn't even need to delve into my soul. I just had to visualize my 'Move Column' in my mind, trace some strokes from the Shore Up tile onto the Heal Pulse tile, do a little trial and error by biting my arm and healing it to make sure that this set of strokes was the correct one and… that's it. That was all.
Somewhat disappointing, but pleasantly disappointing. The good kind of disappointing. Shaking my head, I refreshed the Heal Pulse I was using to stabilize the crab, and the effects were immediate.
The tears in the shell around the wound began to close at a visible speed, seeming as if thousands of tiny purple threads were sewing the damage, repairing and regenerating everything in their path. Focusing my Phantom Stare, I saw that, thankfully, my attack had been much more superficial than it seemed and hadn't damaged any organs, so I only needed to guide my threads to repair the torn muscles and what appeared to be severed tendons, one by one and carefully.
It was fascinating, though it was also exhausting.
I couldn't complain; I was literally creating matter in the areas where I couldn't just put things together and 'sew them', even if it was in almost negligible quantities. My hard-earned experience and knowledge from creating my sand body were invaluable in this surgery too, and yet, I felt like I was cheating, although that didn't mean that Heal Pulse combined with Calm Mind and Phantom Stare weren't going to knock me out as soon as I finished with this.
Maybe if I'd withdrawn my will from his soul the mental burden would be less, but I also didn't want to risk his ocean of potential running wild while I was tending to the wound and this screwed everything up. That could be disastrous, and it was something I preferred to avoid. Uncertain variables in delicate operations only led to mistakes, after all.
Lifting the shovel bit by bit, I continued to repair all the damage I'd made. Simply pulling it out would only cause Kingler to bleed out faster, so I had to heal the wound slowly as I withdrew the spade. Once the sharp object was removed and his insides repaired, I sealed his shell and began cauterizing his left stump as well, prioritizing closing the wound over recovering his limb.
I could have tried reattaching his large claw (it was right there, and the cut had been frighteningly clean), but I didn't have the confidence to attempt it, nor the mental energy for such an operation. Perhaps I would do it in the future, once I'd experimented more with the move and in exchange for a generous pile of berries, but I had a hunch that his missing limb wouldn't be a problem for long anyway.
It was tedious, more frustrating than boring and very exhausting. I was also sure that Kingler was half a minute away from bleeding to death, dying because I was unable to control myself, but I made it. His shell had turned from orange-red to pink from how pale he was, but he was breathing, his heart was still beating, and he was no longer bleeding.
That was enough for me.
Once I made sure nothing was missing, I took a few steps back and fell backward onto the floor, taking the opportunity to deactivate all my moves. Like a rubber band stretched too far, all the mental tension hit me at once and I almost fainted, but I forced myself to stay conscious because I felt something changing in the environment, making me raise my head.
The gears that refused to move in his soul began to turn, and the unique light of evolution enveloped the Kingler, starting a familiar process. His size expanded slightly, his figure slimmed down. A massive beard made of what looked like spectral energy mixed with foam sprouted from his face, covering his entire torso with it, and his chitinous horns broke off, replaced by a ghostly crown resting on his head.
Nonetheless, the most important change occurred in his large claw. It began to hover off the ground, shedding the parts of the arm that were attached to it and transforming with that ethereal energy, emitting the same blackish-purple glow as his new beard and crown. Its shape vaguely reminded me of a Clawitzer's claw, and it wasn't attached to his body, but levitated where it should be.
The evolution was over, and I had to admit the idiot looked pretty good like that. Lulling in my ear, the lilting laughter of the Will of the World echoed from what felt like my side, making me thing that I'd just passed some kind of test that I didn't even know I had signed up for. It was likely that what prevented Kingler from evolving was this entity too, forcing this whole 'hidden requirement' of resurrecting the Kingler from the brink of death to evolve, but I didn't even have the energy to bother with Azelf.
I'd worry about that later, when I had the energy for it…
Seeing that things were over and that everything was fine, I took one last look at the crab who was still unconscious, I got comfortable by burying myself a little, and let my mind be carried away by the sweet waters of dreams.