I run my fingers through my grey hair. Then I grip my head, applying pressure to the surface of my skull, trying to push the headache back into wherever it came from. It’s a terrible time for a migraine. It’s always a terrible time for a migraine, but with a massive keshin bearing down on me…
No, not a keshin… I shake the ice picks from my consciousness and expand my awareness outward. Five. Five? How can there be five keshin eggs in a single soul?
“Ah, Stein, are you going to do something?”
I feel the cold of the stone on my knees as my awareness pulls back in. I place my hand down for support, sense the scythe nearby, then adjust my reach to grip it. I lift, feeling the weight of Spirit in my hand.
“Any time now, Stein.”
I look up. The cloud of black throbs, then cephlapods burst from all angles. The appendages snap back as fast they shoot out, and the mass pulses. It grows in size, then rises as eighteen legs push from its bottom. As I stagger to my feet, the thing – no, it’s far too large to call a thing – as the behemoth crouches. A tail shoots out its rear, then twitches as if it’s an ebony cat the size of a two-story cottage. I steady myself as I hold Spirit at the ready.
“Maybe we should run.”
I consider his words. Spirit runs from only the most trivial trials, like confronting the hostess at the Chupacabra about an error in his drink bill, or the very serious. Perhaps he is right.
Not!
I feel a wicked grin slice my face as I deepen my stance. Bring it on.
The amalgamated keshin launches itself. I shift in unison, aware that it has crushed the stone where it last stood. Six strides to the right, just outside the perimeter of its body, duck to miss the three new bladed arms it grows midair to cut me down, plant my right foot and pivot into an underhand MIDGET REAPER. A precise cut at 66.6 degrees starting 6 inches off the ground, targeting all 18 kneecaps.
Spirit unleashes his war cry as I force resonance with him. I feel the ballet of the move, cut-cut-cut-cut-cut the first group of legs, cut-cut-cut as my arms rise higher, cut-cut-cut-cut-nothing.
Spirit slips out of my hands as he jams into the remaining dark flesh. A five-keshin. Too much to take out with a single slice. I’ve underestimated it.
Carried by my momentum, I keep spinning as the beast screeches across spectrums. I hear Spirit cry out. I look over my shoulder to see the keshins towering over me. Toppling.
Crap.
I reach for my glasses and fling them away before they can be crushed. Then tons of bone and flesh pound over me as ruthless as a crashing wave, slamming me into darkness.
YOU ARE READING
Stein-The Early Days
FanfictionSet back in the early days when they were just students themselves, Stein and Spirit face Legion, a terrifying foe who can meld keshin eggs together into monsters that may be impossible even for Death to kill.
