Chapter XXV: Sound

A Chapter by Oran

Pride.

It's what makes a man be a man. It drives him to do things that only he can do and create things no one else can. It's what he lives and breathes every day of his life. That's how dangerous it is.

When a man builds-up too much of his pride, neither good nor evil is justifiable if it's against what he's chasing after. Not even logic is enough to make him change the way he wants to take if it means giving it up. This certain affinity that afflicts sanity and reason, this senseless reason to exalt oneself, what else could it mean but a means to an end?

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The Whitelight Chamber in Purgatorio echoes to the sound of Luno's voice as he concludes the plan that he was conveying to Solis. What? He's concluding it already? But I haven't even discussed it with the readers yet!

"You have any questions, kid?"

"Just one." He averts his eyes from Luno's empty stare which was cover by stitched eyelids as his life sentence. "Will all of us make it?"

"Beats me...", he shrugs, "I can't really ask Him everything yet, you know?"

"How long is your term in Purgatorio?", Tenenbaum asks.

"Probably two more lifetimes."

"That's a pretty long time", Solis comments. "How'd you end up here, anyway?"

"It's a long story... but basically, because of pride."

See? I told you pride was a means to an end.

"Will you ever get to Heaven?"

"It's not for me to decide, but I'm hoping to pay for my sins while I'm here", he points at his eyes with two fingers. "Oh yeah, that reminds me. Speaking of sins, I have something to redeem them with in the Living World."

"You want me to kill [1]Edgar Ross?"

"No, [1]Jack Marston already killed him. I was talking about my daughter."

"You... have a daughter?"

"Right after some bad debts and premarital sex, yeah, I have a daughter. You two are the same age."

"Yeah so? [2]liligawan ko ba?"

"You can do that after your job's done. I'm telling you to find her since she's one of the keys."

"Where can I find her?"

"Tenenbaum knows where she is."

"You do?", Solis looks at Tenenbaum.

"I do?", Tenenbaum looks at Luno.

"Don't worry. You'll figure out what you're capable of, eventually."

"This is too much to put on a cute sixteen year-old's shoulders", he palms his face.

Suddenly, a pair of white glowing wings shine at the side of the chamber.

"Time's up, kid. I gotta go now." As he fades from visibility, his hand reaches out and pets his head. "Save the world for me, will you? You've done your best so far, and with that you've made me very proud. You've made us proud. Everyone here in Purgatorio. All you have to do now is finish the job I was supposed to take care of."

Some tears well up from his eyes. "What the hell are you doing to me, man?", he affectionately insults.

"Be sound... Solis."

Those were his last words as he vanishes from the chamber along with the pair of wings.

"That... was beautiful", Tenenbaum remarks while wiping her tears with her paw.

"Man, that sucked...." Solis wipes it off with his wrists. "So... now what? We just get revived back to the Living World or-"

Before he could finish, he felt like his levitation powers are gone. He falls, dragging Tenenbaum along with his umbilical chord as they fall off the clouds. They plummet down to earth until....

Thud.

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It's dark. Maybe if Solis would open his eyes... there we go.

Our main character is back to the land of the living. First thing he sees is a wooden ceiling painted blue. His body felt heavy as he lays on a bed back at Quinholm. He looks to the right and sees a Frost Elemental sitting on a chair parallel to the bed while munching on a raw tomato that Lanette gave him earlier.

"Welcome back", he greets after swallowing the rest of the fruit. Yes, tomatoes are fruits.

He couldn't answer to that. His throat felt rusty enough to make his voice unable to bounce on his trachea. The left part of his body; however felt unusually heavier than the rest of it. There was something bulging from the sheets that's pulling him; and no, it's not a boner. He couldn't pull out his left arm as if it were latching onto him.

With that, he pushes up his torso and reaches for the sheet with his free hand. Lifting it up, he sees a girl peacefully resting her head on his shoulder, devotedly waiting for him to wake up . Her hair used to be tied to a side-ponytail, but now it's all down, trickling over and under her neck. She was wearing nothing but her trunks and a green shirt that was small enough to make her chest cleave on the cloth. The scars on the surface of her skin looked more visible this way.

Neither her scars nor her ability to kill was familiar to him; but her face that's pressed against him as her body is sprawled up beside him, it feels like he's seen this sense of affection before, roughly ten years ago.

"We were supposed to take shifts on watching over you while you were passed out so that you'd have someone to talk to when you woke up." He takes another tomato from the bowl on the table. "But she felt responsible for leaving a child unattended."

"Damn...." His voice comes back.

He taps his forehead to feel a warm towel placed over it.

"How long was I out? Wait, why am I still alive even?"

"Two days ago we found you on Mount Madre", he chomps on the tomato. "You had a stab wound on your lower abdomen, but luckily the spider fluid you ingested helped control the damage done."

"What? How?"

"Maybe... you should wake her up first", he stands and finishes the tomato.

Solis takes a look at Mea then sees Credo headed for the door when he looks back.

"Where are you going?"

"Bathroom."

"Hey, wait-" The door slams shut.

Well then....

Let's review the situation here: Solis is helplessly immobile on a bed; Mea isn't waking up to realize how terribly embarrassing what she's doing is; Tenenbaum and Lux are in the same position on the coffee table; it's just the two of them aside from the Anima; and apparently Solis has to scratch his a*s.

Not knowing what to do, he attempts to do it by simply poking her face.

No response.

He then tries to pinch her cheek, this time there's a response.

"Nani o, [3]Yami-oneechan?"

Solis gets pissed off of her sleep talking and flicks her forehead with his finger.

With this, she opens her eyes easily despite the rude awakening.

Her face was really close to his. His blue eyes, staring with befuddlement, and golden locks sparkled clearly in front of her. And then it hit her.

Her eyes widen to the first thing she sees giving off some kind of "Oh, f*ck!" look on her face. Evidently, her face shines with a bright shade of red.

"Na... Nani yattenda! Kono baka!" She exclaims as she lets go and violently juts around the bed. It feels like that atmosphere you get in a [4]Harem Anime when the main character achieves an over-the-top ecchi situation with the tsundere. Kinda like [5]Haruhi's reaction when [5]Kyon woke her up.

"What the hell do you think you're making me do!", she questions as she covers her chest with her arms.

Solis realized that her cleavage was poking out from her shirt and embarrassingly looks away.

"I was u-unconscious for two days so uh... you know, I don't really understand how you got there, Mea."

She was about to slap him because of such a [6]cherry-boy answer, but then she notices something strange about what he said.

"You... said my name."

Come to think of it, he's never once called her by her name. It's already been 25 chapters, but he hasn't called her Eve even though he asked for it, has he?

“What… where did you hear that name?” she asks, perplexed by what Solis said.

“Don’t you recognize me at all, Megumi Raya?”

The instant she hears that name, she grabs one of her hidden blades under the bed, straps it on her left arm, and pulls the trigger connected to her index finger to unsheathe the blade. Her other hand then grabs him by the neck and lifts him up. She stands on the wooden floor with one hand cradling his chin and the other armed with a dirk that was pointed at his throat. He helplessly tries to loosen her grip with his still frail hands, but it won’t come off.

Her hair was down with the bangs covering her left eye while the other is intently looking at him with utter astonishment and annoyance.

“Nobody… nobody calls me-“

“’Nobody calls me that!’ I know, you've said it like a hundred times before”, he utters with his voice stuck.

“How do you know that?” Now, both her eyes can be seen as she whips her hair back, revealing her eyes which were exclaiming at Solis with nostalgia.

“Who are you?” Her grip loosens slightly, but not enough to let him go.

He changes his voice into one like [7]Aoi Sora’s: “Onee-chan!”, he growls cutely.

“Lis-kun?” As she says this nickname, she slowly puts him down and hides the blade. Her hand lets go of him and covers her mouth.

He replays an old expression he had when he was a kid: “Onee-chan, daisuki!” :)

“All this time… you were right by my side”, she says as she lands on the bed to sit. “Demo… nande….”

“Solis!” Anna barges in with Rylai biting on a doughnut. Along with her was Credo, his Anima, and Nash who was also biting on a doughnut while holding a box with half a dozen of it.

“Miss Anna.”

“Thank God, you’re back. You caused quite a commotion around here.”

“Me?”

“They thought their only hope just got stabbed and died out of nowhere”, Credo explains.

“Wow”, he rises from the bed, only to fall back when a stinging sensation resonates from his abdomen. “Ouch. Damn that hurts…” He felt a bandage wrapped on the wound when he tries to brush off the pain.

“Don’t strain yourself, Solis. A major artery got ruptured when you got stabbed. It’s best not to move around while your system’s still healing.” Nash hands him a chocolate-coated doughnut. “Here, you should eat up. We were injecting you with supplements the other day, but you’d still be pretty hungry without proper food.”

Solis takes the treat and takes a bite.

[8]“Tastes like happiness.”

“Glad to have you back, Solis”, Anna pets him on the head.

“What about me?”, Tenenbaum complains.

“Shut up, Tenenbaum”, says Solis.

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1. Edgar Ross and Jack Marston are from the game, "Red Dead Redemption".

2. Means to "court" someone by traditional means, e.g. serenade.

3. A character from "To-Love-Ru". This is also where the name Mea was taken from since Mea is also a character from To-Love-Ru who is supposedly Yami's younger sister.

4. Anime genre where there is either a male lead with more than two female love interests or vice versa.

5. Kyon and Haruhi are from the Anime, "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu".

6. Means a gutless "virgin" as said in Japan.

7. The male lead of "Aki-Sora"(R-18).

8. Quoted by Sakurano Kurimu from the Anime, "Seitokai no Ichizon".

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