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The Calling (10) : A beautiful melody drifts on the air from somewhere far away. The vocals are in a language you don't quite recognize, but feel somehow familiar to you. Something about the song calls to you, but no matter where you go, the song seems to sound the same distance away. The longer it goes on, the more emotional the song becomes--and the more emotional you become. Something about the song is possessive and consuming, like it's all you can think of. Something resonates in you as the song crescendos, and the feeling is at its strongest--be they good, bad, anything, but suddenly the song fades, and there's only an emptiness inside of you. The feeling of loss is strong, and can leave someone feeling emotionally numb. Someone out there was calling to you, and you couldn't find them.

When he first started out as General Amazonite’s Lieutenant, working with his little pumpkin bucket to find his sea legs, Cryptomelane had worked alone. He’d found the solitude calming, in its way. Facing the city on his own had come on hard and strong, a hot rush coursing through him, even as he’d gotten beaten into the ground by those whose skills and power had outmatched his own. In the quiet of each night, walking by himself amidst the alleys and the parks, Cryptomelane had felt strong in a way that he hadn’t known before—at least, not one of his own qualities.

Relative silence on his patrols had only served to enhance that feeling of power, of potency.

Nothing at all like tonight. Weaving through the alleys, no matter how much Ympe chattered at him, Cryptomelane would’ve sworn that he heard

something else. A song on the wind, perhaps, and if so, then he couldn’t place it worth a damn. One moment, he would’ve sworn that he heard “Un bel dì vedremo” from Madama Butterfly, for all he couldn’t identify the singer. The next moment, turning a corner out of the alley and onto a street he didn’t recognize offhand, he couldn’t identify any lyrics, nor any tune for that matter, beyond the feeling that he’d been very wrong to guess that Puccini had had any hand in this.

Through it all, the sense that he should have known this melody twisted through Cryptomelane’s chest.

At least venturing away from his usual paths had meant encountering plenty of people, each and every one waiting for him to drain their energy. Several had had other donations to offer as well, even though they likely hadn’t realized it until Cryptomelane’s hand had penetrated their chests. The rhythm of such familiar work came to him easily. Soothed his nerves in the face of such odd surrounding circumstances. If he somehow found the source of this mysterious music, he would bring down on them the same fate that befell so many of the hapless civilians whose paths he crossed tonight. Fitting punishment for inserting such a radical deviation from the norm into Cryptomelane’s otherwise pleasant evening.

That was a big “if,” though. Considering how things in Destiny City went, the source of the music was unlikely to be anything good. Cryptomelane didn’t necessarily favor his chances against an unknown enemy of unknown power. So, as he moved through town, he tried to steer himself and Ympe in the opposite direction from where the music seemed to be coming.

If he really thought about it, though, chasing the distant noise wasn’t that different from what Cryptomelane had more recently called “normal.” Patrolling hadn’t been a quiet experience for months. Really, the fact that the music felt so far away was the biggest change from his usual pace, these days.

Even before he’d brought Industria into the Negaverse—or, more accurately, ever since Desiree had confirmed that Industria had a senshi starseed and Cryptomelane had asked General-King Jet to do the actual work of Awakening her—Cryptomelane had often had Ympe with him when he went out to face the city. Nothing about his youma companion easily lent itself to quiet. How he could produce such loud sounds with such a petite frame eluded Cryptomelane, but asking too many questions about it felt rude. Might have discouraged Ympe from speaking his mind as honestly as possible, or made him feel like Cryptomelane didn’t value him as a partner.

Tonight, same as on so many other nights, the little youma had clawed his way up onto Cryptomelane’s shoulder and gotten himself comfortable. Had insisted on his right to ride along as such rather than gamboling beside Cryptomelane (and in fairness, Ympe had a good point: it was easier to stick together if he sat on Cryptomelane’s shoulder). Balancing with him sat there hadn’t gotten easier with practice, which Cryptomelane had gotten more of than ever since the battle against the Calamitous Hollow. Whatever had happened out there that night from the youma’s perspective

well.

Cryptomelane remembered the strikes of black lightning.

He remembered the pain screaming through his body as he fought to stay standing, to keep doing what damage he could to the world-eating beast and its delusions of grandeur.

He remembered the taste of something sweet, and rousing to find himself sprawled on the ground with Ympe in absolute hysterics above him, only for another burst from the Hollow to crash down on him.

Then, he didn’t rightly know what he remembered.

Crushing darkness all around him. A throbbing heart at the center of it, something neither alive nor dead, cracked open at its surface and pulsing with purple energy. What else had come from that Dark Star besides the Calamitous Hollow? If it needed a Herald, then what was the beast meant to foretell? That the Dark Star was coming for the universe where Cryptomelane and everything he’d ever known resided? Or tidings of something else, even more mysterious?

Cryptomelane didn’t know, and none of the times since April when he’d dreamt of that night had helped him any.

Whatever he’d seen when he’d gone down, Ympe had taken Cryptomelane falling as he’d done

in a word, badly. Even now, a good three months on, the youma’s own memories of that night kept him clinging to Cryptomelane however he could, as often as he could get away with. As Cryptomelane made their way through town, draining energy off unsuspecting civilians here and pulling a couple starseeds to go with that orb, Ympe kept one arm looped behind Cryptomelane’s neck. The other hand, he balled up in Cryptomelane’s jacket as if holding the reins on a horse. Every so often, Cryptomelane felt Ympe’s little fingers trembling.

“If you want a starseed,” Cryptomelane told him, more gently than he ever managed for most people who were not Industria, Brassite, or Jupiter Butterfly, “then you know that you need to ask for it.”

“Nuh uh, Ympe’s good.” As he shook his head, Ympe’s delicate, flexile horns bumped ever so slightly into Cryptomelane’s hair. “Melly oughta save more ‘uh those for himself anyway. And stop holdin’ onto them so long! Starseeds is for eating, so eat, why not!”

Letting that statement hang in the air between them a moment, Cryptomelane paused beneath a streetlamp. Desperate for something to do with his hands, he fiddled with the little blue star charm he’d picked up earlier.

Damnation upon everything, he still heard that music. If anything, moving away from it had helped it grow even louder. Yet, as he combed his eyes over the buildings around them—a little flower shop, an independent bookstore, an antiques shop with an obvious apartment on its second floor—Cryptomelane couldn’t identify any potential source. Apart from the halos of light up and down the street, it seemed as though the entire block had gone dark, so there likely wouldn’t be anyone around to be playing the music.

The more it played, the more intense the melody felt. Deep breaths didn’t help Cryptomelane’s nerves at all. Normally, he welcomed the experience of music getting under his skin and making him feel things so much, but tonight

?

Something felt off, tonight.

“Mellyyyyy,” Ympe groaned, thumping one of his heels against Crypotmelane’s chest more intently. “Come onnnnnnnn. Ympe says they’s good for you. So next one you get, Melly’s gonna eat it, right? Not go puttin’ it away for laters?”

“You sound like human doctors when you talk like that.” Cryptomelane chuckled, keeping his eyes trained on the streets around them no matter how much Ympe amused him. Somebody had to look out for both of them, and Ympe was never going to do it. Not in this specific way, at least. “It’s always like that with them when I go in. ‘Oh, you need to take this supplement, your vitamin D is terribly low. Oh, you should also take this supplement, did you know that you’re iron-deficient. Oh, wait, with your history, you need to take this supplement as well. It’s for your immune system, but don’t take this other version of a supplement, it’s mostly sugar and almost no actual vitamins.’”

Seething, Ympe let slip a snarl. “Eugh. Doctors,” he groused, kicking at nothing so he could thwack his heels into Cryptomelane’s chest, which always seemed to entertain him. “What’s all their dumb vitamins got in them that isn’t better gettin’ it from a starseed? Those lil’ guys really keep you healthy, not vitamins. Melly oughta know better, bein’ a Captain an’ all.”

Cryptomelane frowned, trying to think about what the training handbook had said on this matter. He hadn’t consulted it for anything in ages. Hadn’t needed to bother when he already knew well his duties and saw to it that he performed them to the best of his abilities.

But he vaguely recalled that the handbook hadn’t seemed especially positive about the idea of eating starseeds. Obviously, despite putting it out there that one could eat starseeds if one so desired, the Negaverse couldn’t entirely endorse the idea. Those precious gems were meant as either offerings for Metallia, or fuel for the Negaverse’s mission and operations. Sometimes, that did mean a single officer eating a starseed so they could gin tease their own individual power for a moment. Using them too frequently, when one would obtain a mere temporary boost in power that only helped oneself and not the greater Negaverse, was a waste of resources.

Cryptomelane sighed softly. “Ympe, you wouldn’t tell your person anything that got him in trouble with superior officers, would you?”

Giving Ympe a moment to consider how he wanted to answer that question, Cryptomelane crossed their current street and ducked into a park. How the Hell was that blasted melody still on the wind? It hadn’t changed; Cryptomelane could hear, he felt certain, pieces of it repeating themselves now, leitmotifs carving themselves out as worthy of his attention. But how was this the case when he’d come so far from where he and Ympe had been when he’d first heard the song?
 With so many city blocks between them and that starting place, if Cryptomelane still had to listen to music that he couldn’t identify, then couldn’t someone have changed the record already?

“Ympe,” Cryptomelane needled, uncertain why he hadn’t already gotten an answer from his companion. Usually, Ympe couldn’t be bothered with dithering about things. “I asked: you aren’t telling me lies about the benefits of consuming starseeds because you think it might get me in trouble with some General, the General-Sovereigns, or the Queens, and that this happening would be very, very funny, right? Miscreant though you may be, you would only do that to other people, yes?”

“Yeah, yeah, other people. Course, course.” Making a thoughtful little noise, or at least one that sounded like it wanted people to believe he was putting quite a lot of thought into the situation, Ympe uncurled his one hand so he could pat Cryptomelane on the shoulder. “Ympe dun lie to Melly. And Ympe dun lie to Tria, ‘cause Melly says not to, ‘cause Tria’s important. Dun lie to Brassy or the Boss either, b’cause of it’s not respectful and all.”

Although Ympe said “Boss” to refer to several people, Cryptomelane felt reasonably certain that he currently meant General Amazonite. She, more often than the General-Sovereigns, got referred to exclusively as “Boss,” rather than some more intricate heap of adjectives and nouns that more or less described any of the General-Sovereigns. Hessonite, for example, Ympe had more than once referred to as “the pretty-pretty Boss with the big shiny cuttin’ sliceys.” Said moniker usually came accompanied by Ympe miming some idea he had of how the General-Queen might have wielded her enormous scissors.

“And Ympe can’t lie to the big bosses,” Ympe pointed out, sounding incredibly pleased with himself about it. “Always gotta do what the big bosses say, that’s why they’s the big bosses!”

Tautological reasoning, but Cryptomelane didn’t feel like dismantling it at the moment. Not when everything around them felt so uneasy.

Nothing in the park around them felt out of place. Yet, as Cryptomelane moved them deeper into the grassy fields and further away from the street, somehow, everything felt out of place. Hardly anyone occupied this particular park right now—probably quite distracted by the parks hosting the lantern festival and the wishing tree, among other pieces of this year’s star festival—so where in the world was the music coming from? Could he drown it out by

something? He didn’t know? Maybe talking more with Ympe?

Except now that he needed something to say, Cryptomelane struggled more than usual with putting his mouth around the words. Leaning back against the pedestal on which sat some bronze statue of the Marquis de Lafayette atop a horse, Cryptomelane fought to keep his hands and mouth from trembling. It wasn’t even cold, and some music he couldn’t identify had no right to make him shiver like this.

“Ympe,” he managed to say, voice soft, “do you remember anything

about where you came from?”

“Huh?” Ympe blew a raspberry. “Ympe came from the Rift. All youma come from the Rift just like humans come from the city. Melly knows that.”

He tsk’d in disapproval, once more shaking his head and knocking his horns into Cryptomelane’s hair. At least it was better than Ympe’s usual level of carelessness with his horns. Any day, Cryptomelane would take mild annoyance but no harm coming to his little companion over Ympe doing something wildly dangerous with no concern for how much he might hurt himself until he’d already done so and started wailing about the pain.

“No, Ympe, I mean

” Letting slip a sigh, Cryptomelane rolled his eyes. Why the ******** was the English language even allowed? Why hadn’t human beings evolved to communicate telepathically yet? “Yes, youma live in the Rift. You know that, I know that. But youma can come from different backgrounds, right? Maybe one youma used to be a Knight or a senshi, but some other youma used to be a normal human who owned a little cafĂ© or something like that. Do you

remember any of that? Any of who you were before?”

Ympe rewarded the mental labor of finding those words and stringing them together with a long hmmmmmmm. While it did sound a touch performative, so did most things with Ympe, not due to any fault of his own but rather due to human civilization only teaching its children to accept some forms of emotional expression as valid and earnest. However affected the hmmmmmmm sounded, Ympe probably was putting in his best efforts to think about that question.

Then, he blew another raspberry, louder and wetter than the previous two.

“Nah, got nothin’,” Ympe decided, and resumed kicking at nothing, batting his heels into Cryptomelane’s chest. “But why would Ympe wanna know stuff about that? Bein’ Ympe’s better than whatever ugly, stupid thing Ympe was before. Imagine if Ympe was a Knight or something?” Sticking out his whole tongue, he made a sound like retching. “Gross. Knights don’t even get to eat starseeds! Can’t get any for themselves! How’s they supposed t’get strong if they don’t eat starseeds? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Who’d ever wanna be like that?”

“Well, no denying how right you are there,” Cryptomelane supposed. As if on cue, he felt another aura flare up somewhere nearby. Order, less powerful—not a threat if they kept to themself, then. For tonight, Cryptomelane wouldn’t trouble them unless they sought it out. He had other things on his mind. “You’re certainly more charming than any Knight I’ve ever met.”

Only Sonora came close to Ympe, in terms of how much Cryptomelane liked them personally. Every other Knight he’d tangled with before had left much to be desired.

“Yuh-huh, Ympe’s great. Sooooo much better as Ympe than some stupid Knight. Or whatever.” Another hmmmmmmm soon followed, but this one came out softer. Less like a show Ympe intended to put on. “Why’s Melly askin’ ‘bout all that? Never did before.”

Cryptomelane waved a dismissive hand in front of his chest. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

This time, when Ympe thumped one of his heels into Cryptomelane’s chest, actual intent came through. The blow hit pretty hard, considering Ympe’s size and general lack of fitness for battle. Not that he didn’t try his best, but

well. Some youma were huge, imposing, obviously meant to be in a combat scenario because they had the means of defending themselves and tearing apart their enemies. But other youma, like Ympe, were small enough that that wasn’t feasible.

“How’s it fair for Ympe to always tell the truth when Melly dun’sn’t,” he snapped, making a technically valid point with all the grace and tact of a bear-trap. “Melly’s thinkin’ ‘bout somethin’.

”

Although he didn’t enjoy going silent when Ympe felt this matter quite important, Cryptomelane didn’t entirely know what to say. First of all, he felt inclined to point out that he was always thinking about something. Didn’t usually matter what; Cryptomelane simply struggled to shut his mind up. Struggled to ever get a moment of mental silence from himself, like he suffered from some incurable illness that kept his brain trying to fire on all cylinders as often as possible. Secondly, he felt as though he could’ve pointed out that the odd music still hadn’t gone away, and blamed his strange questions on that somehow.

But before Cryptomelane could speak, Ympe cut in with a question of his own, “Where’d Melly come from? Since it’s so important where Ympe came from?”

As had been the case since he’d first heard the strange music, Cryptomelane got nothing helpful from the deep breaths he tried to take.

“I don’t know where I came from either,” he admitted, after a longish, silent moment. “Know where I grew up. But not where I came from. Even if I’d come from the Rift, knowing that would leave me with more than I know now.”

“What about those, uh? The things? The people-things?” Gesturing his little hands helped exactly not at all—at least, not in the way Ympe currently did, waving them around in circles while making moves toward nothing in particular—but Ympe carried on all the same. “The big, old people-things who make the tiny human people-things

?”

“Oh, wait—parents?” Cryptomelane paused just long enough for Ympe to clap his hands and nod. With a sigh, he added, “I never met my parents. Never knew their names, either. Had to take my birth certificate when I left my brother. It didn’t have my father’s name at all, and the name listed for my mother was too common to help me find any leads.”

Jennifer Williams.

Hundreds of women with that name in Virginia alone, never mind the rest of the country or the rest of the world. In all likelihood, it wasn’t real—or at least it wasn’t the name of the woman who had actually given birth to Cryptomelane. Even if it were, how on Earth was Cryptomelane meant to trace it when he had no idea which specific Jennifer Williams might have been the correct one?

On top of that, who could even say if they were a woman? Maybe Cryptomelane had come from a transgender man’s womb, or a non-binary person’s. Maybe that was why the name Jennifer Williams would never lead him anywhere, because his actual parent had long since changed their name to better reflect their gender. Maybe having Preston around would have only caused them pain, reminded them of a former self forced upon them by people who hadn’t had the right.

Still tormenting him in the distance, the music grew louder. It picked up its pace as well, striking chords that sounded familiar but slightly to the left, as if the progressions from earlier had been put into a different key. Something darker and more unsettling, and dimly, Cryptomelane wished that he understood anything about composition or music theory, so he could have explained better what he was hearing. But perhaps putting words on things didn’t matter as much as the emotions raging inside him that the music insistently whipped up, trying to make a raging squall out of something that he wanted to keep tamped down.

As he stared up at the night sky, lit up by another rainbow meteor shower (******** inescapable this time of year), Cryptomelane didn’t think he could blame whoever had given birth to him for being rid of their son. Surrendering him likely hadn’t been an easy decision. Even if it had been, there were probably good reasons for that. Without trying, he could imagine several quite easily (his parents may not have been able to afford a child, perhaps they had wanted him but had fallen on such hard times and wanted better for their son than suffering with parents who couldn’t provide for him; his mother might have had her own dreams, ones that did not include room for a screaming infant who would grow up into a sickly child; his father might have violated his mother while someone else denied her access to any other means of handling the unwanted pregnancy).

“My brother never told me anything about them, either.” Pushing off the statue’s pedestal, Cryptomelane felt cold. Around him, physically, he felt the heat and humidity that he expected from summer in this city. But a deep chill permeated his chest regardless, starting in his heart and ebbing outward. “Every time I asked, he said he’d tell me when I was older. He’d tell me when I’d earned the right to that knowledge. He’d tell me when I deserved it.”

Ympe spat at the ground. “Melly deserves it plenty. Melly deserves everything.”

“Not from his perspective,” Cryptomelane said, his voice barely above a whisper. He felt the music ramping up to something big. He felt the Page’s aura closing in on him. “Truthfully, I don’t even know if he really is my brother. He certainly said so often enough, but for all I know, he lied as a means of keeping me under heel.”

As the music swelled to what felt like a final crescendo, the Page finally appeared. Saturn colors and screaming their head off about Negaverse scum and their evil schemes as so many little Knights before them must have done to so many Negaverse agents. Cryptomelane didn’t listen. Didn’t need to when, excluding the special exception of Sonora, these people never managed to say anything original.

He only waited for them to get within arm’s length. Then, while they charged, he made a grab at the Page’s starseed.

As their corpse collapsed to the pavement, Ympe kicked at his chest. “Eat it,” he urged. “Melly’ll feel better, eatin’ it. An’ then he’s less likely to die like some other useless human.” A firm pat landed on Cryptomelane’s shoulder. “Melly’s better than that. Better’n all of them.”

While he recognized multiple flaws in Ympe’s argument, Cryptomelane couldn’t deny the truth of his companion’s central thesis. He knew what he’d feel if he listened to Ympe and ate the starseed. Indeed, as soon as he crunched into it, a rush slammed into him. Power, as if he could have taken on anything that came his way. As if nothing in this or any other universe could touch him. As if he would never again know fear.

“Let’s go back to Negaspace,” he told Ympe. “Someone ought to go restock some of the way station supplies, and the Rift sounds much more peaceful than the city tonight.”

As Cryptomelane teleported them away, Ympe clapped his little hands and cackled in delight.


wc: 3,920.