Disclair: I own nothing, this is purely a fanfic for enjoynt.
Cross-over from various gas, books, ani, manga, and movies.
The familiar characters you see here belong to their respected authors and owners.
"Speech"
Arc 6: Drama In Life - 16
"Good morning, Makima and Sho! Did I get that right?" Jack Fenton bead at us with a grin as wide as a billboard.
"Yup." I muttered dully, barely suppressing the sigh in my throat. He still said my na like ’Show,’ this ti instead of ’Shoe,’ which he had done for a couple of weeks, despite my correcting him a couple of tis beforehand. And yet, sohow, he got Makima’s na right on the first try. I didn’t have the energy to wonder why. I had long since given up trying to untangle the selective accuracy of other people’s tongues.
"It’s been a month now, hasn’t it? Since you two have moved into Amity Park." Maddie, Jack’s ever-smiling wife, leaned forward with warmth in her voice. "You two are the sweetest, youngest married couple I’ve ever t. And I must say, I’m in awe of how fluent you both are in English. With your accent, I’d almost believe you were born in the States."
Her words spilled like honey over rusted gears. Sothing about her smile shimred at the edges, not malicious, but oddly static, like a looped gif playing in the corner of my vision. I nodded faintly, unsure whether she was complinting us or making a polite observation wrapped in embroidery.
Not to ntion, I was still adjusting. If such a word even applied anymore, to this whole new perception. This impossible, expanding awareness that ca with being The Heart of the Eldritch pantheon.
Reality didn’t sit still around anymore. It pulsed, breathed, watched. Every second was an eternity and an eyeblink, and people’s voices ca with aftershocks that lingered in the air long after the words themselves had died.
"It has. And thank you, it took so effort on our part to learn English." Makima replied with her usual practiced grace, flashing Maddie a smile that could disarm a nuclear warhead.
Her words wove through the air like a silk ribbon dragged across the surface of a deep ocean, calm on top, but sothing beneath stirred and took notice.
"What are you two doing on this fine day?" Makima asks the Fenton couple.
"We’re going to be hunting down ghosts!" Jack shouted, practically bouncing with excitent. "In fact, we just saw a couple this very morning!"
His voice hit like a hamr dipped in glitter, cheerful, but too loud, too dense, the sound warping the space around it. His excitent was real, but shallow—ghosts, to him, re specters in need of containnt. To , they were echoes caught in the folds of ti, old griefs with teeth, or whispers born from mory rot.
I smiled faintly, trying not to let my perception bleed too far through my face.
"So where are you two going for the day? Also, where’s your maid: Blake, was it?" Maddie glanced around, her eyes scanning the sidewalk with a hopeful flicker, as if Blake might suddenly manifest from the cracks in the concrete.
"We’re heading out to have lunch. As for Blake—she’s back at ho cleaning the place." Makima replied smoothly, her voice as polished as ever.
The air around her curled slightly, responding to the rhythm of her speech or perhaps that was just , watching language distort like steam on a mirror.
"By the way, how are the kids? Doing well in school?" Makima added.
"Jasmine is doing well, as always." Maddie answered, though her tone faltered at the end, like a violin string pulled too tight. "Danny, for so reason, is starting to slip a bit. I don’t know what’s going on with him." She sighed, a soft exhale carrying more worry than words.
"It’s a good thing you can tutor him whenever you’re free, Makima." Maddie continued, offering a grateful smile. "Otherwise, his grades would’ve fallen even more. Thank you for this."
Makima accepted the thanks with a gentle nod, her expression unreadable to most. But I noticed the subtle curve of satisfaction in her smile.
"Well, I’ll leave you two be! We’ve got so ghosts to hunt. Co on, Jack!" Maddie called out, already moving with purpose. In her hand was a device shaped like a twisted tal insect, its blinking lights twitching in rhythm with the air—definitely ghost tech.
"Right behind you, honey!" Jack bellowed, barreling after her like an overexcited golden retriever in a lab coat.
Their departure left behind a faint trail, not of footsteps, but of emotional static, joy mixed with obsession, fading like perfu in a burning room.
"They seem to be having fun." Makima remarked, her tone casual, almost amused. Her gaze lingered for a mont longer, as if watching more than just their retreating forms. She turned toward . "Co on. I’m curious to see if the chef managed to recreate the food I wanted."
Sothing in her voice thrumd against my spine. Not excitent. Expectation. The kind of curiosity that pulls apart threads to see how a world is stitched together.
I nodded, stepping forward. The sidewalk rippled ever so slightly under my foot, like it rembered a different shape.
I blinked, forcing myself to choke down the tidal wave of perception clawing at the edges of my mind. Worldly was too small a word for it. This was sight, sound, touch, taste, and thought filtered through sothing vast and alien, yet spoon-fed into in mortal language my human brain could just barely tolerate. Every mont brought new terms, new shapes of aning, as if a dictionary for an entirely different reality was being carved into the at of my mind.
It took ti, seconds that stretched like years, before I wrestled my senses back into so kind of alignnt. One heartbeat, I was standing in the street, Makima’s hand coiled around my arm, dragging forward; the next heartbeat, I was... elsewhere. Already walking away from a restaurant.
I felt the weight of a al in my stomach, comfortably full, but my mind was a clean slate where the mory should have been. I didn’t recall entering the place. I didn’t recall sitting down. I didn’t recall eating.
Another blink, and I plunged into the River of Ti, letting its currents strip away the gaps. The visions ca quickly and sharply; I had been there. Eating. Drinking. Talking with Makima in asured, unhurried tones. Every mont had happened. And yet, it had been taken from . Not erased; no, more like sealed away and hidden in so place where my conscious mind couldn’t reach.
I surfaced from the River of Ti with a tight breath, glancing at Makima. She walked beside as though nothing had happened, the picture of composure. If she noticed my silence, my disquiet, she didn’t show it.
And that, more than anything, made uneasy.
To think I had let my guard slip, just a little, after a month of quiet, and now this. Peace was never ant to last. Not for .
Makima turned her head toward , lips parting to speak, but no sound ca. Her expression moved naturally, yet the world delivered only silence. My first thought was that she was toying with . Then, several seconds later, her voice arrived, fractured and sluggish, each word falling like a stone through syrup.
"Jin... How... about... we... visit..."
The sentence trailed off into nothing, as if soone had cut the wire between her and reality before she could finish.
My brow furrowed. She noticed. Her own smile faltered, replaced by a mirror of my frown, then that, too, crumbled into sothing closer to disbelief. Her lips moved again. No sound reached .
And then, from sowhere not here, a voice seeped in. It didn’t push through the air; it blood directly inside my skull.
"She is unworthy..."
The tone was neither male nor female, ancient nor young; it simply was—a truth spoken without breath.
Makima showed no reaction. Her face, her posture, her eyes told she had heard nothing. Which ant this ssage was for alone.
And that realization left a cold weight in my chest.
I watched as Makima’s form began to distort, not slowly, but with the abruptness of a tear in fabric. From the center of her chest, an impossible vortex blood: colors that had no nas. These shapes defied geotry, a spiral collapsing inward as though the universe itself had decided she was being pulled through the eye of a needle.
It wasn’t movent in any normal sense; it was as if reality was drinking her down through an invisible straw, folding her into a place that didn’t exist.
She didn’t fight it. She didn’t even notice. Her gaze stayed locked on , perfectly calm, right up until the mont she was gone. No flash. No sound. Just absence, sharp and sudden.
What the fuck?
Pain lanced through my skull without warning, not the dull ache of injury, but the jagged, electric stab of sothing rearranging itself inside my head. My knees nearly buckled as I clutched my temples, the world around saring into streaks of color and half-ford symbols that whispered anings I didn’t want to understand.
I grit my teeth, scanning the world around , but there’s no one. Not a single face, not even the faintest echo of a presence. It’s as if soone had wiped existence clean, erasing every living thing but .
The silence is too complete. It isn’t the absence of sound, it’s the absence of witnesses.
Instinctively, I reach into the River of Ti, hoping for answers. And then I rember. Since the Heart of Eldritch’s awakening, the future is no longer a fixed thing for . Seeing it is not only unreliable, it’s a weakness. An open door for things that should never notice .
Still, the River of Ti hasn’t beco entirely useless. It still holds the power of Perfect Timing. But now, it’s... different. Wilder. More extre than I fully understand. The current shows only the present and the past.
The present, however, has grown stranger. In it, I can touch the threads that anchor monts together, twist them, bend them, and in doing so, alter my own past. A thought planted now can ripple backward, reshaping what was, and letting the outco settle into permanence.
The headache flares again, sharp enough to turn the edges of my vision white. I tear a gap into reality, the edges writhing like sothing alive. Forcing my feet forward, I step through, each movent dragging at my skull like a hook buried behind my eyes.
I erge into the house that Makima, Blake, and I have stayed in for the past month.
"Lord Heart. A letter for you." Blake’s voice ca from nowhere, and then she was simply there, the air bending for a heartbeat before snapping back around her. She held an envelope in both hands, arms extended in formal presentation, as if it were so sacred relic.
"From who?" I asked, pressing my fingers to my temple. With the use of Boundary Manipulation, I pressed the headache into nonexistence. Blessed relief washed through like a tide pulling back from jagged rocks.
"I was not told." Blake replied evenly, her eyes steady, unreadable.
I took the envelope. The mont it touched my fingers, its shape convulsed. Folding, twisting, spinning in rapid, unnatural contortions until it collapsed in on itself and was gone. Not destroyed. Not discarded.
Absorbed.
The contents didn’t wait for to read. They detonated directly into my mind, raw and unfiltered, bypassing all the comfortable chanics of language. Information blood in my thoughts fully ford, sharp enough to cut, as if the letter had never been ant for my eyes, only for my existence.
"Drag the world into the abyss and you will be forgiven." A neutral voice spoke, making my very being cold.
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