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yuus-sentient-teddy · 1 year

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"Yuu-Yuu hurt." Part 7

Part 1 | Part 6 | Part 8

'You can't stop death from doing their job,' something inside of them whispers. 'It doesn't matter what he or anyone says. Death will do what it will and it will take him away. He may be gone right now, and you couldn't even say good-bye to him.'

'Stop,' they hiss back at the thing. The first time it reared its ugly head, they thought it was a voice in the back of their mind, another scary thought that would pop up sometimes like their other thoughts. As it began to grow and twist around their heart like a boa constrictor, they realized that it wasn't just another thought. It was something worse.

'That good-for-nothing headmaster hasn't done a single thing to help you. He left you to figure it all yourself when you don't even know what sources can be trusted.'

'I've had help. We've made progress.'

'But no solution. Hasn't it occurred to you that even if you're running through the dark, you might not be running towards anything because there's nothing to run to? That there's no light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe that's why the headmaster hasn't helped you since you enrolled.'

'I. . . I don't know that.'

"Yuu!" They blink rapidly, pulled back to the warehouse in the forest. Around them are concerned faces.

"Are you okay? You were staring and not saying anything." Grim is gazing up at them, paws on their thighs. They then realize that their teddy bear had been tugging on their shirt and pat its head, noticing their hand trembling.

"Y-yeah. I just. . ." They falter, their heart being squeezed. "How much longer am I supposed to wait until I can go home?"

There was a moment of silence. The teddy bear moves in to give them a hug. "I can't imagine what it's like to miss your family like that. I'm sorry you're feeling that way," Kalim says quietly. "And your dad too. You both must miss each other so much."

They don't say anything. Kalim puts a warm hand on their shoulder, even though there are short dark wisps outlining their body that Kalim thinks is just his eyes tricking him. "If you need a hug or help in your search for home, we can do that. All you need to do is ask!"

"And you always found a way, Yuu, even if things seemed against you." Deuce smiles encouragingly.

"It's definitely been a big help when the Overblots happened. You keep freaking out about a lot of things, but you're actually tougher than you think and have the brains to go with it," Ace says.

"Yeah! And you have me and your teddy bear. Nothing went wrong when you had us by your side, but especially your benevolent boss, the Great Grim!" He puffs out his chest with a proud grin.

Yuu wants to accept Kalim's hug. They want the reassurance that everything was going to be fine, that a solution would be found soon, that they will see their dad again. They want to be held warmly like they would hug their teddy bear, but a voice inside of them freezes them in place with its whispers.

They all say this, but the next time someone Overblots, you might not come out alive. You barely survived the last one after all.

It might not be an Overblot, even.

Your friends and classmates, they have something that enables them to survive better in this world. The battles have proved that.

What would have happened if your teddy bear hadn't been with you? It will only be a matter of time before something goes wrong.

You would not have a chance to say good bye.

Yuu takes a shaky breath in. "It's so easy for all of you to say that."

Yuu's head rises, a wry smile on their lips. "You're right, Kalim, you can't imagine that because your family is a phone call away. I can't even send a letter to my dad."

(For a moment, they feel regret upon seeing Kalim's hurt face. He was only trying to help.)

The squeeze in their heart had slowly strengthened as their friends talked. At this point, it felt like their heart was a fruit in a hydraulic press; things were starting to spill out, but very soon, it would burst into a million pieces. "And I'm not tough. I'm not strong like all of you. You're better than me. I'm. . . I'm scared."

There. They said it.

"You don't know how terrified I am of the Overblots. It's more than you can imagine. I still get dreams about Riddle's and Leona's and everyone else's, and I sometimes see one of you guys getting impaled or lose an arm or just straight-up die." Their voice warbled at the word. In the corner of their eye, they notice Jamil grimacing. Their face feels hot and tears are regathering, blurring their vision once more.

"I miss my friends. I wonder if they'll still be there when I go back. I'm afraid of never being able to say good-bye to them or my dad. . . and my dad being gone already."

"Hang on, we don't even know if he's dead or not!" Ace swiftly points out.

"Did you already forget what I--huh?" Ruggie wonders if the wisps have gotten longer or if it was just him. Anyway, he doesn't like what he's seeing. "Hey, Yuu--"

"Yuu-Yuu!" the teddy bear yells, finally getting their attention. Their face crumbles when they see its worried face. They pet its head.

"You're the only thing I have from home, but people keep pretending to hurt you. I wish you would be more careful and I wish they would just stop. I don't know what I'll do if you die. And you all!"

They glare tearfully at those surrounding them. "I don't have magic to protect me when someone shoots something from their pen! I know one of these days, I'll catch on fire because I wasn't looking and. . . and. . ." They take a breath, but it sounds more like a sob. "Brains and toughness doesn't matter if I can't protect myself from magic spells."

"I just can't understand," they say, their voice deep with grief. "We're in a world of magic, anything can happen! Multiple Overblots happened and it's supposed to be a rare thing! I could fucking die!"

"Wait, this aura!" Ruggie recognized it now. He saw it surround Leona and Azul right before they Overblotted.

"It can't be. . . !" Kalim says almost breathily, eyes wide in fear and concern.

"Everyone, get back!" Jamil yells. He pulls Kalim away by the arm while the others hurry to their feet. Ace snatches the teddy bear out of Yuu's hands and doesn't look to see their reaction. The awoken survivors and his schoolmates and friends had been watching with concern when Yuu started yelling, but now were scrambling to move away.

"Why can't the headmaster--of all his god damn graciousness--understand how much it's all killing me?"

A shockwave sends everyone in the room flying towards the walls. Thankfully, no one gets too close to hitting the hard surfaces, but in exchange, they get scraps and bruises from the floor.

When they look up, an ink monster in the form of a bear towers over the Ramshackle Prefect, its glass-container head missing the cork. Their outfit is a patchwork of the clothes they had been wearing when they got whisked away and pieces of ink-stained fabric. It's impossible to tell what the patterns are, if any, and accessories hang on like hastily glued random objects on an art project, incomplete and the purpose only assumed. The lining where their clothes and fabric meet are covered by thick, solid blobs of ink.

They breathe in and out heavily, droplets of ink running down their forehead as though someone had dropped a bucket of the liquid on them. Their eyes are wide and gaze ahead at nothing specific.

The ink monster snorts and twitches. It suddenly throws its head back as Yuu opens their mouth, and together, they let out a guttural roar and scream.

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The dorm leaders were stunned silent.

"Oh my." Malleus whips around and glares at the kidnapper.

"What did you do to them?" he growls.

"Nothing more than what I did with the other orphans, and you can see that those orphans are fine. Most importantly, aren't they supposed to be magicless?" The kidnapper spoke lightly and conversationally, a small smile on his lips and eyes wide, hinting of madness.

"Whether they have magic doesn't matter. Tell us what you did," Riddle demands. At the same time he spoke, the kidnapper continued.

"Although--and this is what amazes me--aren't they also a student at a prestigious magic school? There's magic abound and I'm sure there will be amazing, rare phenomena as a result of powerful people attending at the same time."

"Are you suggesting this is our fault?" Leona cut in.

"Oh, no, only speculating. But..." The kidnapper slyly tilts his head. "If you want to acknowledge anything. . ."

"How dare you insinuate such a thing!" Malleus roars, smoke beginning to plume out of his lips. The dorm leaders beside him lean away.

"Malleus, wait." Lilia touches his arm, body relaxed and tone unbetraying of anything. "We need him alive to face the consequences."

"Perhaps you may not have done anything," the kidnapper says, "but the rest of the student body might. Usually, those with magic are revered for just that. Ego is bound to be stroked, and it must be baffling or downright ridiculous that a magicless nobody was accepted with no issue. Someone like that doesn't belong in a prestigious school like Night Raven College."

"From the way you describe them, you don't believe they have a spine," Vil observes, crossing his arms with a glare. "It takes more than just magical capabilities to stay at this school."

"Whether or not they do have a spine--and I am sure they do if they can get through their school days surrounded by chaos without fail--doesn't change the fact that something has been haunting them to make THIS happen. If I'm not mistaken, emotional distress can catalyze Overblots."

"Wait a moment, all those times their teddy bear told us that they were hurt. . ." Riddle murmurs.

"They must have been keeping something to themself," Azul quietly says.

"That still doesn't explain why they--a 'magicless nobody'--Overblotted," Leona says. "So? Are you going to tell us or not?"

He turns his head, as do the other dorm leaders, after another shockwave pushes them, coupled by a roar and a scream. Some of the others are carrying or holding up survivors, in the middle of bringing them out of the warehouse, and the rest are standing by remaining survivors or are lifting their pens to cast another spell.

"Perhaps that can be saved for later. You all have much bigger and badder things to contend with and I certainly don't mind waiting and watching."

The kidnapper is knocked out with a punch.

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Fireballs, lightning strikes, sparks of void or light, and icy projectiles. Sometimes, the boys thought Yuu was mimicking their spell-casting movements. The worst attack, though, had to be when the ink monster roared: though protection spells have kept them from flying away, the sound shakes them to their core. It steals the breath from their lungs and dredges up a feeling of dread.

It doesn't help that Yuu screams with the monster. They're stressed, that much is clear, and their tears are mixed with the ink that dribbles from their forehead. But the single cry at the end of some screams sounds like a cry of sadness, like you would hear from a lost child. One of the survivors even began to cry, and it was the same person who was holding onto Yuu's panicked teddy bear.

Finally, all of the survivors were brought to safety. At the same time, Idia's tablet finished rebooting, having been affected by the first shockwave. "Ortho! Are you there?"

"I'm here, Nii-san!" He lets go of the tablet.

"Perfect timing," says Vil. "Idia, can you search up anything about magicless humans that have Overblotted?"

"Wait, what? Hang on, did I just hear you say 'magicless human' and 'Overblot' in the same sentence? Shouldn't you know by now that that's imposs--" Vil huffs and turns Idia's tablet towards the battle, just in time for someone to hit the ink monster with wind magic. ". . . What the actual fuck?"

"Nii-san, I tried searching on my own, but I haven't been able to find a single reliable source that can help with this," Ortho explains. "Can you try finding something on your end?"

"I don't think there will be anything. Overblots happen because a magician goes way below the MP bar, like fantastically below, while having a mental breakdown. Average people like Yuu don't have MP bars, so there's not going to be any results if I search."

"Can you please try anyways?" Ortho begs. "There might be something that can tell us how to safely handle this."

After a brief moment of silence, Idia sighs. "All right. I'll look."

"Has anyone noticed that they haven't said anything?" Grim asks.

"You know, that is kind of weird," Floyd remarks. "But then again, this isn't a usual case."

He and those around him put up a barrier when the ink monster roars. "Ughhh, this is getting old! When can we stop holding back? Sea lion and some of the others sure aren't."

"We don't know the effects of casting magic on Yuu in this state. It's possible that the reason they're like this is because they gathered magic from being around us," Azul says.

"I get that, but the last times we fought an Overblotted person, we used magic on them and they came out fine."

"We can't take any risks. . ." But Azul knew that not giving their all also had the same risks. It was absolutely frustrating!

"Nope. Nada. Zero results."

"Then. . . all that's left is to fight them?" Ortho says.

"It worked on the other problem children, it might work on them."

"If that's the only way to bring them back to their senses, then there's no point in hesitating. Come, we must let the others know," Vil says.

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As the spells intensified, so did the spells Yuu sent out. The ink monster began to get more aggressive too, leaping away from Yuu to pounce on the boys or claw at them, but it immediately returned to Yuu's side whenever they got hit, growling angrily. Strangely, the number of scream-roar shockwaves didn't increase.

But suddenly, in the middle of a scream, Yuu coughs. Ink spills out of their mouth, and more comes when Yuu doubles over into a hacking fit. At the same time, the ink monster spasms and slowly hunches over, covering its head like it was trying to hide away from the world.

When it is finally over, Yuu slowly looks up. Their eyes are clear, and they take in the faces around them silently. Despite hope that Yuu has come back to their senses and wanting to check on them, no one moves from their spot.

"Yuu?" Grim calls. Yuu locks onto him and they blink.

"Grim. . ." they all but mouth, starting to sway.

Their eyes suddenly roll to the back of their head.

All at once, they fall to the side and lie motionless. Ink starts dribbling out of their mouth like blood from a stabbed victim.

The silence, taut like an old sailing rope that was beginning to unravel, had made their fall louder than it should in such a large space. It seemed to cement the horror that had just happened.

Then multiple cries cut through the air, almost at the same time.

"YUU!"