Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is purely a fanfic for enjoyment.
Cross-over from various games, books, anime, manga, and movies.
The familiar characters you see here belong to their respected authors and owners.
"Speech"
Arc 6: Drama In Life - Chapter 17
So, hey, crazy voices. I know I haven't talked to you in a while. In my defense, I've had… a lot going on. That said—SEND FUCKING HELP!
I duck low, the warped air screaming in my ears, as the Knife of the Disgraced One cleaves a ghost straight down the middle. Its form splits like wet paint smeared on shattered glass, unraveling into ribbons of shrieking color and rancid sound.
15 minutes. That's all it took—15 damn minutes before the world collapsed—no time for Danny Phantom's heroic character arc, no witty one-liners, no triumphant growth. Just… ruin.
Everything bled into chaos. Shapes of people became hollow echoes, streets bent like broken spines, and the sky sagged low with the taste of burnt sorrow. And that voice—oh, that fucking voice—whispered its bargain again: Drag the world into the abyss, and everything will be forgiven.
Forgiven, my ass.
I haven't seen Danny since yesterday. Not that it matters, I could track him through the River of Time with a single glance, but what's the point anymore? After everything that's happened, I'm just going to leave him be. After all, he is highly more trained compared to his canon version, thanks to Makima.
Another ghost lunges, its body a smear of translucent oil dripping with broken faces. I carve it apart with a sharp flick, sending it back to the afterlife or whatever pit waits for things that die twice. A second death for a soul that didn't pass through the next life or into an afterlife.
"Blake!" My voice cuts through the shrieking air as I twist the knife out of another phantom's hollow chest. "Any new letter or whatever?!"
Blake moves like a shadow slipping between views, never once allowing a ghost to touch her. She exhales a sharp, frosted breath; the air crystallizes instantly, locking shrieking spirits in jagged ice before shattering them to glittering dust. Her expression doesn't change, as if this chaos is nothing more than a tedious chore.
"No, Lord Heart." Blake replied calmly, her voice steady even as she backflipped away from a lunging ghost. In midair, she exhaled a plume of frost so cold it sang against my ears. The ghost froze solid mid-snarl before hitting the ground, shattering into a spray of brittle shards.
"Great." I scowled, snapping my fingers. Boundary Manipulation rippled outward, reality itself warping like wet glass as I forced every ghost within a mile radius to reappear in the Ghost Zone. One moment, the air was thick with wailing spirits, the next it was clean, sharp, almost too quiet—like holding my breath at the bottom of a frozen lake.
Honestly, I should've done that earlier. Instead, I let myself get distracted—letting random ghosts nearly smack me across the face or claw their way into my body. And with Makima's sudden disappearance gnawing at the back of my mind, thinking clearly had become… complicated.
"Okay, new plan." The words slipped out of me, half-mutter, half-command. Blake's amber eyes shifted toward me as she stood silently at my side, waiting.
"Show thyself to me, Amore." The longbow shimmered into being in my hands, carved from some impossible material that pulsed faintly in rhythm with my heartbeat. "I'm going to be shooting down a couple of troublesome targets."
With a surge of strength, I vaulted onto the nearest rooftop, my shoes cracking tiles as I landed. Another leap carried me higher, then higher again, until I stood atop the tallest building in the district. Blake followed without effort, her movements weightless.
Through the River of Time, the world unraveled before me. Threads of possibility stretched out like constellations scattered across a black ocean, each one trembling with the possibility that might never live to see the future. And within those threads, I saw them—the troublesome ones, sparks of ruin that would ignite if left untouched.
I raised Amore, the longbow without a string, and pulled against the invisible tension. The bow hummed with inevitability, the air tightening around me as if the act itself bent reality. Then I released.
Each shot ripped through the threads of fate like a knife through silk, collapsing a life into silence. Wherever the arrows struck, the sky answered with thunder, and a gale tore through the streets, carrying with it dust, whispers, and the faint cries of futures denied.
The air grew heavy, sharp with the taste of iron and ash—the flavor of inevitability manifest, of a world reshaped one arrow at a time.
"Blake, do you have any way to contact anyone in the Eldritch pantheon?" I asked, dismissing Amore as the last arrow found its mark. The bow faded from my hands like smoke unraveling, leaving only the echo of thunder in the distance. Another troublesome thread severed.
"Yes." Blake replied without hesitation. "But that would require pulling my heart out and crushing it to complete an incomplete ritual. By doing so, I would turn myself into a physical device capable of communication with someone among the Eldritch pantheon." She said it as calmly as one might explain preparing tea, as though ripping her own heart free was nothing more than an inconvenience.
"Okay, let's not do that unless it's a last resort." My tone was flat. Then I blinked, an idea blooming. "Actually… I've got a better way."
I stepped closer, lifting my hand and placing it firmly against her left breast. Blake simply blinked, but she didn't move.
"Alright." I muttered. "Now just focus on completing the ritual—to speak with one of the Eldritch pantheon."
Boundary Manipulation flared outward, the air warping in jagged ripples, while Glitching twisted the process itself. No torn flesh, no shattered heart. Instead, reality bent to my will: all it required was my hand against her breast, a crude but efficient anchor for the ritual.
The world stuttered for a moment, colors bleeding in and out of themselves as the line between flesh and invocation blurred.
Suddenly, I saw Yui—her form drifting just above Blake, weightless, as if the air itself had chosen to cradle her.
I blinked.
Yui blinked.
For a long, heavy moment, we simply stared at one another in silence, the world around us holding its breath.
"Hi, Jin!" Yui waved at me with a bright, unshaken smile. "Do you need something?" She tilted her head, perfectly cheerful, ignoring the fact that my hand was still pressed against Blake's left breast, that ghosts still howled in the distance, and that the town outside our mile-wide boundary was filled with screams.
"Yeah." I said flatly. "Can you find out who gave Blake the letter and have her deliver it to me? I absorbed it, then some entity spoke into my mind. Told me I should drag the world into the abyss… and I'd be forgiven."
Yui's smile faltered, then disappeared. She frowned.
"Is that so?" Her voice turned cold, and in that instant, the world followed. Frost bled into the air, the temperature plunging in spirit if not in truth. It was as if the entire world had suddenly entered an ice age, yet I knew it was only the feeling of it—the atmosphere bending under her tone.
"Give me a moment."
She reached out slowly, deliberately, and placed both her hands against my cheeks. Then, leaning forward, she pressed her forehead to mine.
The contact was electric. Reality flickered, as if bracing for whatever she intended to uncover.
"That bitch!" Yui shrieked, her voice sharp with unrestrained rage. She lashed out with her fist, striking to her right. Reality itself shattered—thin cracks spiderwebbing through the air like glass under too much strain.
From within the rupture, something stirred. A pale, translucent figure slipped into view: a doll in the shape of a little girl. Its short, messy brown hair hung in uneven clumps. Its round black eyes swallowed the light, endless and hollow. Where the mouth should have been was nothing but a gaping void, an absence that pulled at the edges of perception. Its frail body was draped in a patchwork brown rag, tattered and stained, as though sewn together from forgotten nightmares.
Yui seized the doll without hesitation, her fingers digging into its fragile form. She bared her teeth, and a snarl erupted—not in any language mortals could recognize, but in sounds that clawed at the mind. A chorus of syllables broken and reversed, like voices echoing backward through time. To mortal ears, it was incomprehensible—an affront to sense itself.
The world quivered in response, as though the sound alone was enough to wound creation.
Afterward, Yui hurled the doll back into the crack of the void as though discarding trash. The fissures in the air slowly sealed, each jagged line fading until reality knitted itself back together. When it was done, the world stilled. Yui gave a sharp, unladylike snort, and the atmosphere itself shifted as though bending to her mood.
Beside me, Blake swayed. Her strength failed in an instant, and she collapsed into my arms, her body unnervingly light, her breathing shallow.
"Jin." Yui said, her voice no longer bright but resounding with the weight of authority and might—a tone that felt as though it was carved directly into the bones of existence. "You don't have to worry about the entity behind that letter. Someone attempted something far beyond their limits, and they will now face the consequences for it."
"That's great." I nodded, though the words came out more hollow than I intended. Then, another thought pressed against my mind, sharp and unwelcome. "By the way… what happened to Makima?"
I began recounting everything: her sudden vanishing act, her explanation, and her cold suggestion—that I should allow the Heart of Eldritch within me to devour this world as if it were nothing more than a morsel.
"I was wondering why I kept sensing Makima's presence in this world." Yui muttered, almost to herself, her gaze distant as though she were listening to voices beyond the veil. "I'll look into this once we're done here. As for your heart devouring this world? The answer is both no… and yes. You're not yet at the stage where you can simply consume entire worlds. However—" Her eyes sharpened, glinting with cold knowledge. "—you can grow stronger by having your heart devour the essence of the world itself, rather than the whole of it."
"And how do I do that?" I asked. For all my power, the Heart of Eldritch remained a mystery—a loaded weapon with no clear instructions.
"I don't know." Yui shrugged, her shoulders rising with casual indifference, as though ignorance about an apocalyptic force was a minor inconvenience.
I stared at her in disbelief. "…Seriously?"
"Hey, everyone has their own unique method." Yui replied, her tone clipped but not unkind. "The paths differ, but the result is the same—you grow stronger. That's the only constant. Anyway, technically, you shouldn't even be in this world. You're dangerously close to the worlds owned by the Ghost pantheon. And those bastards…" Her lips curled into a sharp grin that didn't reach her eyes. "…are possessive. Greedy to the point of madness."
"Aren't we greedy as well?" I pointed out, narrowing my eyes.
Yui giggled, the sound bright but edged with something unsettling.
"No, you silly goose. We're not greedy—we're unreasonable." Her eyes lit with a strange gleam, and her laughter deepened. "Being destructive, being lustful… those things are simple. Easy enough for others to barely comprehend, at least for a few of us."
She leaned closer, her presence pressing down on me like the weight of a storm. Her hands cupped my cheeks again, cool and steady, as her voice dropped into something intimate and terrifying.
"If anything, I'll let you in on a little secret, Jin." Her breath brushed against me. "We don't follow logic. We were born from the pure madness of nothingness itself. You don't need a reason to do anything. You do it simply because you can. If you desire it, then you act. That is all. We require no excuses."
Well, shit.