FicWad

After Midora had told a few shinigami what Ryuk had said, she’d gone back to Justin’s to wait and see what he was going to try and pull off next. Apparently, the shinigami she’d told had gone on and told more shinigami his story, and soon dozens of them were gathered by Justin’s throne, chattering away as they waited. It was the last place in the shinigami realm you’d expect Nu to be, but she was waiting too, silently and motionlessly. Strange…you’d think she would have moved off somewhere quieter a while ago. They only had to wait a few days before Sidoh came winging his way down.
“Look, one came back! What did you do with everyone else, Sidoh?”
“Where’s the dead shinigami?”
“Did you bring her back to life, after all? Hee hee hee…”
Sidoh looked surprised to see so many shinigami waiting. He looked at every single one very carefully, and sighed with relief.
“Good. The King isn’t here,” said Sidoh. “That means I can just wait until everyone else catches up.”
“What is it, Sidoh?” Justin asked. Midora was confused…why did Justin sound…worried?
“If the King was waiting here, I was supposed to turn back and warn everyone not to come. We’re bringing Rem.”
An excited murmur ran through the crowd.
“Yeah, right.”
“Whaddya think they’re up to?”
“This oughta be good.”
Meanwhile, Ryuk had already set off. The plan was to have a shinigami flying about a mile away from each of Rem’s four sides, so if the King was still out looking and heading her way, they could stop him before he reached Rem and send him off in the wrong direction. Ryuk was bringing up the front. He’d made it about halfway when he saw exactly what he’d been hoping not to, coming straight at him. Ryuk put on his game face…time for round three.
“Hey, Moloch!” he called, having carefully remembered the King’s alias.
The King paused in midair, but didn’t say anything.
“You wanted to find Rem, right?”
“Yes, I did,” said the King.
“You’re not going to believe it, but…she’s alive! You should see her…she’s really beat up, spouting sand all over, missing her eye…and she says the King did it to her, after he faked her death!”
“What?” said the King, sounding genuinely disbelieving.
Ryuk smiled inwardly. The King was almost as good as he was at the deception game. “If you don’t believe me, she’s over that way, hiding under that really big tree with the weird pod things,” said Ryuk, pointing in a direction away from Rem’s line of flight. “If she asks, though, you didn’t hear it from me. She made me swear not to tell because she’s afraid of the King finding her or something.”
Surprisingly, the King laughed. “So why are you telling me?” he asked.
Ryuk grinned back, mischievously. “Why not? Keeping secrets is boring. Letting them out to do their worst is way more of a riot!”
“Good thing you don’t know any of my secrets,” the King grinned as he flew off in the direction Ryuk had indicated.
Ryuk desperately hoped that the King thought his own statement was true-that Ryuk knew nothing.
Fifteen minutes later, Ryuk arrived at Justin’s throne.
“Hey, Ryuk!” said Sidoh. “The King isn’t here!”
“I know,” said Ryuk. “I ran into him. Rem’s plan worked, though-he’s off on a wild goose chase for a bit. If everything happens like it should, Justin, Rem should be here next. Deridovely and Gukku will show up at about the same time after that, and Zellogi’s bringing up the rear.”
Sure enough, minutes later, Rem touched down…definitely alive, and although she’d healed quite a bit in the last few days, still visibly scarred. A small dot of yellow had just become visible in her mostly empty socket, and it was evidently enough to allow her to see, because she turned to face Justin. Several shinigami gasped when they saw the four dripping wounds on her back that had reopened during flight.
“Do you believe them now?” she asked. Justin had no reply as he looked back at her. No doubt about it, then. As unbelievable as it was, he’d been expecting to see Rem, alive and looking like this. He’d accepted Ryuk’s story a few hours after he’d heard it, not because of Ryuk’s promise…but because if it weren’t true, it wouldn’t be tugging at deeply buried memories he felt he had, but couldn’t quite dig up...a tall tale simply wouldn’t cause him to feel such overwhelming dread. It made sense to be sceptical about anything Ryuk said, but if Justin couldn’t believe his own brain…well.
“You knew something about this, didn’t you, Nu?” he asked the rock behind him that hadn’t budged.
Every single shinigami fell silent as Nu opened her many eyes, one by one. “I know everything. I wondered how long it was going to take before the truth came out,” she said.
“What!? You knew all along what the King was up to!? Why didn’t you tell anyone!?” Deridovely shouted at her, his sudden arrival having gone unnoticed until now.
Nu winced, and her eyes all snapped shut. Justin shot Deridovely a furious glare, and held up a hand to silence him.
“My apologies. Why didn’t you tell anyone, Nu?” Justin asked gently. He was the only one who knew how to talk to Nu without making her clam up and go silent.
“There was no reason to,” said Nu.
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t have done any good. Without proof, whomever I told would have reacted just as you did when Ryuk told you. After that, the King would have killed me for exposing the truth, and he’d kill whomever I told for good measure. Now that he’s going to kill us all anyway, I can tell you what happened; but before, I needed to keep myself alive, because I am the only one who remembers, and if I die, the truth dies with me.”
As Nu spoke, Justin seemed to be concentrating very hard on something within his own mind, as though trying to think of something he’d forgotten, and he went from looking merely worried to absolutely terrified. After a long pause, he finally spoke.
“No. You might not be the only one who remembers…these past few days; there have been half-formed images in my head…this all sounds familiar to me for a reason, doesn’t it?”
“You were just a few years shy of your hundredth birthday when the last of the adults died. It’s possible you may have a few early memories that the King has given you no reason to recall since then. Think back as far as you can.”
Justin slouched over in his chair and held his head, lost deep inside his own thoughts. “That name you said earlier…Armonia Fedor… I’ve heard it before.”
“He was your brother.”
“…my twin brother,” said Justin.
“Yes.”
“What? You remember stuff too, Justin?” said Ryuk.
“Nothing’s clear…they’re all very faint…”
Justin had never bothered to think about much besides the rules of the shinigami realm, but as he steadily thought backwards in time, all these memories he didn’t know he had flashed before him…another shinigami who looked a lot like him, only black, less jewelled, decorated more with bits of metal…and a terrible memory of looking for this shinigami, unable to find both him and another…
“Nu,” said Justin. “Who was the golden, skeletal shinigami…she was embossed, and she had golden chains hanging from her head…”
“Armonia Denzai,” said Nu. “I’m not surprised you remember your mother. She doted on both of you in extremity.”
Justin sighed. “You say you remember everything…how?”
“I’m older than the King thinks I am, and I have a long memory. That’s why he considers me dangerous, and calls me the most powerful in the realm after himself…he suspects I remember more than he’d like, but he knew I was smart enough to remain silent. Until now, that is.”
He asked the next question reluctantly. “…Do you know what happened to Fedor?”
“He was killed by the King. I witnessed it myself.”
No one had ever seen Justin look more pained. The entire crowd sat for a long while, in silence. Finally, Ryuk spoke up.
“What are we gonna do, Justin? We’re counting on you for a plan.”
As Justin sat up straight, it was easy to see that something in him had changed. There was energy in his posture that had never been there before, and instead of bored and absentminded, the look in his eyes was grim and determined. “We’re taking on the King here, and it’s not going to be easy. If I’m going to come up with a plan, I’ll need a while to think of all the details. But I can tell you one thing right now…the King is a danger to every single shinigami in this realm, and it’s going to be either him or us. We have no choice but to get rid of him, one way or another.”
“Excellent,” said Nu. “I’d like to finally see him regret everything he’s done.”
Then, something happened that no shinigami had ever seen before, and it made the gravity of the situation crash over them like a tsunami.
Justin stood up.