Blessed Crusade (CC/DtbB RP)

[Meryck]

Ran patiently took the chewing out. He flinched at being called out- correctly, too- at being the Prince, but remained calm.

Selfish?! Ran's tail twitching was the only sign of his aggravation, of his royal pride being stung. SELFISH?! With the rate of sanity for the Rites?! With how unstable I am as-is?! WITH THE FACT THAT I WIPED OUT A TOWN WHEN I WAS BUT A CHILD?! SELFISH?! Every-goddamn-thing I do is for her!! How DARE he call me selfish when he's only known her for a few days?!

But he didn't yell. He didn't scream. Only the twitching of his tail showed his internal, hysterical rage.

"You're...aware of the low rate for keeping sanity during the Rites...aren't you?" Bitter as his tone was, there wasn't a hint of rage in his voice. "I'm unstable as it is. To hell with what I could put up with physically, I know my mind wouldn't hold up to it...and..." His breath hitched briefly here before he calmed again. "And I can't make her suffer for it if I completely lose it. I'm afraid...I'm too much of a coward to attempt it, whatever..." Her smiling face flashed in his heart. "...The reward..." A brief glimpse of what he once hoped for his future- HER future- clutched at his heart, painfully. "...May be."

Then, everything once again fell numb.

"So, no", he responded flatly, evenly, emotionlessly, closing his eyes. "I do not."

[Elf]

Whatever emotion had caused Chrono to hide his eyes with his hand--whatever memory--seemed to have lost its grip as Ran began to speak. And as the low, bitter tone streamed steadily from the younger demon, Chrono studied him, and scowled.

His bitterness meant he thought he was in the right. Ran thought he knew himself well enough that the outcome of the Rites was an inevitability, an absolute.

Chrono knew better. He'd seen enough to know that nothing was absolute, not even death.

"Then you're the worst kind of coward."

Those words should have been spoken with utter disappointment, with deepest contempt. Such emotions had a presence in Chrono's voice, but they were not the most prominent ones. It was what flashed across his face--a jolt of intense, unshakable faith--that resonated the strongest.

"Meek as you are normally, you are a Prince, and you still have your pride. Don't think I don't see that; I wasn't born yesterday, you know. It's because of your pride that you think you know what's going to happen. The truth is, you have no way of knowing what the future holds. All that's really going on here is that you've decided what the outcome is going to be--you've made the conscious choice. And if you stick to that choice, what you think is going to happen, will happen."

"Listen to me, Ran." Chrono gripped the younger demon's shoulder, capturing his attention in a vice. "It doesn't have to be this way. You're mentally unstable; I understand that, and what that means to you. Believe me, I do." His voice quavered on that last syllable, but only the slightest bit. His next words were quieter, holding an echo of a far-off sadness, but were no less resolute. "I was in love once, too. When I lost control, I hurt the one I loved in a very real, very permanent way."

"That's why I want to help you. You can go through the Rites. You can succeed at this. You can come out of the ceremony with all your faculties intact." The intensity in his voice swelled again. "But you have to want it. You have to choose it. You have to work for it, to run toward it with all your strength. And you know this is something too important to give up--you love her. Don't you want to be there for her? If you died and left her all alone, you'd be hurting her just as much as if you attempted the Rites and went insane!"

"Let me help you, Ran. Let me teach you to master yourself, to get control of your power and your emotions. You can't say it's not worth trying--you'd be doing it for her. Please."

[Meryck]

Ran's pride stung and throbbed, enraged by the elder demon thinking he could just say he knew what the exiled prince was having to carry on his shoulders. His common sense told his pride to shut up. His heart listened with more and more dread, horror, and-- and--

Chrono was right.

Chrono was absolutely right, and it would be the biggest mistake of Ran's life to ignore him. Not to mention the last one.

His pride fumed about how much he had fallen, listening to a Viscount. His common sense told his pride to shut up again. And his heart- His stupid, cowardly, weakling heart...

Ran's sulfur eyes briefly met Chrono's, horror, trauma, and acceptance in his unnatural orbs.

"For her sake, you better be right....."

[Elf]

There was no answer to that. There didn't need to be. Ran had done something with more meaning than anything Chrono could have said or done--he'd taken the first step. He'd made the choice.

A smile slowly spread across the older demon's face, shining with a different kind of pride. He gave Ran's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

Chrono straightened and took his hand back. A sigh ran through him, sliding from his scalp down to his toes, leeching the tension away from his body and letting it bleed out his feet. "I think it's only fair that Reggie get her turn, right?" His shoulders gave a resigned shrug as he shot Ran another encouraging look.

The doorknob to the infirmary turned, the door opening just a crack. "Hey Reggie? You can come back in now."

[Meryck]

Ran gulped lightly.

The door opened fully. Reg took one calm step in. Paused. Bit her lip. Then rushed forward and hugged the hell out of the young demon. He blinked, blushing so very heavily.

"...Oh, Reg...." He gathered her up in his arms and held her close. No words could fit what he wanted to say.

And no words needed to.

[Elf]

Chrono’s smile widened and softened, its warmth growing as it overtook his whole face. The sight of the blushing young demon holding the girl close sent a pang shooting through his heart—another of those things he should have expected, but didn’t: remembered longing, and jealousy. Oh, to hold the one you loved in your arms, to lose yourself and your sight of the world in the curves of her shoulders and the scent of her hair…

He thought it best to leave the two of them alone. A part of Chrono reminded him that Ran was still Unchained, but that paranoid little voice was countered by the very sound logic that he was still too injured to go off on any sort of power rampage. Chrono slipped out the infirmary door, but left it cracked open just in case.

In any case, he needed to talk to Crysta, and urgently, too. A lot had happened at that warehouse that she would be personally interested in. She needed to know what was going on with her ward.

But as he made his way down the hall and toward the living room, Chrono grimaced as his body reminded him why he rarely used that much Astral power anymore. Fatigue clawed at him, pulling at every inch of his body with vice-like hands, trying to drag him onto the floor—and he actually considered for a moment the prospect of just curling up on the carpet where he stood.

The elder demon paused, closed his eye, pulled in a deep breath, and let it out in a short, frustrated sigh. Stupid body. This had been happening ever since the Pandaemonium incident. He was able to channel Astral without any problems, and he could use his powers to their fullest extent, but as soon as he powered down, not only did the lost arm fail to stay regenerated, but he felt three times as drained by his power usage as he should have. He was also convinced that his tendency to sleep like a rock, and the serious difficulty he often had waking up, had its roots in the same source. Sometimes he felt like the Geas had aged him, unbelievable and fanciful as that seemed.

Opening his eye was more difficult after closing it, and Chrono mentally cursed at himself again. Willing away his fatigue with a boundless supply of annoyed ferocity, Chrono made his way into the living room, droopy eye and all.

“Crysta.” He let out a relieved sigh as he spotted the woman. “We need to talk.”

[Meryck]

"We most certainly do." Crysta's face was set in a grim look, worry reflecting in her eyes and eyes alone. The fact that Ran had been carried into the infirmary was worrisome enough, but the fact that he was bleeding in his Unchained form was unheard of.

There was only one instance of a demon with horns or Contractor not healing that Ms. Valentine could think of, and she didn't like it, not one bit. She sat down on the couch, eyes still pinning Chrono to the spot. "Come on. Sit down, and tell me what happened."

[Elf]

The demon gave a moment’s pause as the detective’s eyes bored into him. Her grim countenance possessed a no-nonsense quality that could have given Sister Kate a run for her money, but Chrono spotted the worry in her eyes easily enough. She had every right to be worried, a fact that Chrono’s own grave expression betrayed as he lowered himself onto the couch.

He let out a sigh, an irritated twitch flashing across his face as his tired body nearly overwhelmed him with the desire to sink into the couch cushions. Chrono leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and resting his hand comfortably over the stub of his other arm.

“We went down to the warehouse on Westwood, as dispatched,” Chrono reviewed by way of prelude, “but when we got there…” His eye and expression closed; he pursed his lips at the grisly memory. “There were no survivors, only about fifty low-level insectoid, reptilian, and dragonoid demons, none of them of a high enough domain to be able to speak.”

“We engaged the enemy,” he continued with a sigh, switching to a flatter, less grim tone, trying to separate himself from the stomach-turning recollections. “They tried to swarm us all at once, and at one point I lost track of Ran…” Shame colored the words, and he pursed his lips again.

“When I came back to myself…Reg was shouting for me.” Chrono turned his face away from Crysta. It ate at him inside, twisted his intestines into knots, that he’d sunk into a rage, that he’d nearly lost his mind, right at the moment when Reggae and Ran had needed him the most. If only he’d been more diligent, more aware, maybe what happened to Ran could have been prevented… “Ran was conscious, but weak. He was bleeding from marks all over his body…eleven in total, according to what he said. They were shaped like upside-down Pentagrams.” When he raised his gaze, his face was unreadable, his look guarded. “I didn’t know he was sixty-six already.”

Another sigh rattled through the demon’s chest. He continued in a guarded tone, keeping his eye on Ms. Valentine. “Someone had drawn a symbol on the ground next to Ran, in his blood. A heraldic crest, one only used by the royal family of the Dragon Court. Now I don’t know about Ran’s family, but I can’t imagine he’s on good terms with them if one of them would forcibly bring him this close to...well.” He looked away. He figured Crysta would know enough that he wouldn’t need to finish, that he wouldn’t have to elaborate on the idea that Ran was a month away from death unless he completed the Rites.

But when he raised his gaze to meet Crysta’s look once more, his expression was solid. “I’m going to work with Ran over the next few weeks to help him prepare for the Rites.”

[Meryck]

Her face had fallen into a grimmer darker state at each insight. By the time Chrono's report was done, Crysta's face was unreadable, save for a trace of gloom on her lips. She sighed, resting her elbow on her knee and her head in her hand. "Honestly, I had no idea he was anywhere near sixty-six, either; he never told us. I figured he was abut fifty, but...Dammit....I was hoping the Rites weren't involved in this...." She had heard the stories of the absolute pain the Rites produced as the flooding of Astral Power overloaded a young demon and turned them into their final forms.

Her poor little Ran.

"....Eleven Marks....That means he only has a month, right?...Yeah, okay. Get him ready as fast as you're able to, alright?" She knew he would, but...right now, she needed to hear the brief assurance.

No one wanted their son to die, after all.

[Elf]

Pity overtook Chrono's face. With a heavy sigh, he heaved his tired body off the couch and crossed the living room.

A comforting hand landed on her shoulder. When she looked up, it was to see a gently smiling face, a vision of resolute encouragement.

"I'll do everything in my power." He knew they didn't have much time left. He appreciated all too well what that meant.

[Meryck]

She looked up at him. Blinked once. And smiled, gratefully.

"Thank you." Crysta stood, sighing, and ruffled his hair. "Go get some rest. It won't do us any good if you're dead tired."

[Elf]

He didn't even bother to shrug away from the gesture this time, but it did elicit a soft, contrite 'humph' and a gentle smile from the demon.

"Guess I can't get anything past you," he admitted, his rueful grin again making an appearance. Chrono didn't know whether to find that disconcerting or comforting, so he settled somewhere in between with gracious acceptance.

He straightened, took a step back, and gave Crysta one last nod. "Goodnight...or...good afternoon." He let out an embarrassed chuckle.

Chrono turned and headed back up the hall with absolutely no intention of going to bed. He couldn't, now. Their time--Ran's time--was all too short; there was not a minute to spare. He could almost hear the seconds counting down, as if the clock of Ran's life were slung around his neck--

Stop that.

A few minutes of wandering later saw Chrono in the doorway of the Chi Detective Agency's library. It was a good-sized collection, filling the spacious room's shelves from floor to ceiling with stacks of books to spare on stray tables here and there--a most valuable tool for an agency like this. He seized a ladder at once and rolled it along the shelves, perusing the volumes.

Research was the first, and possibly the most vital, step on this journey. In order to help Ran, Chrono had to know absolutely everything that the younger demon could expect to face during the Rites, down to the most minute of details. True, Chrono had age and experience qualifying him as a teacher, not to mention an uncanny set of similar circumstances betwixt him and his pupil, but one major detail separated them: Chrono was of a different species of demon than Ran. The coming of age ceremony that Chrono had gone through--the Day of Tuning--was completely different than the Rites of the Dragon Court. And while Chrono knew of the Rites, he didn't know enough about what they entailed to be able to give Ran all the help the boy needed. Yet.

So he grumbled to himself as he climbed the steps of the ladder to reach the upper shelves, wondering somewhat aloud why all the important books had been stashed all the way up here. He spotted a volume with the Dragon Court seal emblazoned on the spine and pulled it off the shelf without bothering to read its title, tucking it under his right arm before moving on to his next book. After a good half hour of wandering around the library, Chrono had acquired three more books on the life cycles of demons, a book that looked like it had an extensive section on just adolescent demons, a few books about Draconic demons in general, and a book exploring the life cycle of Pandaemonium's demons--for comparison.

He'd run out of space under his right arm by the time he made it to a table. Chrono brushed off a few stray papers before dumping his payload on the table, wincing at the kerthunk of books onto wood, and blessing his forethought in closing the library door beforehand. He wasn't too worried about Crysta catching him awake...the most he could expect was another hair-ruffling and a few prodding words...he hoped. But still...he'd bid her goodnight and not gone to bed...what he was doing was dishonest.

Chrono's research hadn't even gotten past two pages before he got up to acquire a few sheets of blank paper and a pen. He wasn't exactly prolific at this studying thing, being that he'd only ever been to school once in his life--he attended a college lecture once, on a dare, for an hour. Which had been over thirty years ago. But still, he knew how this sort of thing worked: writing down information was a much more efficient and reliable way of absorbing it than reading alone. And besides, this way he could quickly reference what he'd learned without having to go leafing back through all the books.

The demon's eye plowed through the first two books in under an hour. He skimmed most of the text, only slowing down to read those chapters and pages that actually had the information he was looking for. He felt wide awake by the end of that first hour, his brain buzzing with all of his new knowledge and hungering for more.

After half of the second hour, he'd begun to slow again. He wasn't writing as fast, as if the motor in his hand was running out of juice, and though he kept right on reading, he couldn't keep up his earlier pace.

At the end of the second hour, he was lagging something awful. The clock seemed to be conspiring with his fatigue, dragging his eyelids down against his will and forcing his eyes to slide out of focus.

C'mon, he growled at himself, scowling at the handwriting that, over the last twenty minutes, had been getting tinier and tinier as he wrote slower and slower. Don't give in. There's still so much to do...and you have no time...

His head drooped. Chrono's eye widened as he snapped it back up again, startled. He kept right on reading.

Until it happened again. And again. Cursing at himself, the weary warrior finally conceded that he should rest his eye for a bit.

Just for a bit, he snapped at himself as his cheek found a comfortable spot on the text. Just to let it moisten up and give my neck a break, and then I'm back at it...there's no time to rest...have to run forward...

Sleep stole his consciousness and left his body slumped into the books.

[Meryck]

Crysta found him a couple hours later in the library. She sighed, instantly granting impunity for the dishonesty and smiling in mild amusement. She figured he was going to look up the Dragon Court Rites. She had done the same years ago when Ran was first established as part of the family.

He could have just asked her.

The Rites, she remembered, were a brutal, painful thing, and yet incredibly simple; all that had to be done to a young Dragon Demon was have their horns literally forced- bloodied- to their full length, and the new influx of Astral took over the rest of the job, forcing the young body into its final shape.

She had despised the idea the moment she learned about it. Oh, if only she had been right, if there was more time....

She heaved a sigh, walked over to Chrono, and shook his shoulder. "Hey, sleepyhead. I'm pretty sure your bed would be a more comfortable place to rest."

[Elf]

Sniff. “Uwhuh…?” Chrono felt like his skull had been replaced with lead and his brains with wet cotton as he tried to raise his head—it sagged on his neck as if it weighed ten tons. He turned his face upward, blinking blearily at Crysta.

Oh crap. Crysta.

“M’sorry,” he groused, hefting his tired form upwards and slumping back into the chair with a grunt. “No time to rest…”

His wandering eye caught sight of the notes beneath his hand, and he let out a sigh. “I found out a lot, but nothing of what I really needed to know,” he muttered wearily. “These books are more concerned with killing demons than talking about how they live. Should’ve expected as much…still…I need to know exactly what the Rites entail…the Tuning isn’t the same, so I can’t teach from experience…” The elder demon let out a defeated sigh, scrubbing his hand across his face.

[Meryck]

She sighed. "Yes, I guessed as much when I caught you sprawled out all over the books." Crysta ruffled his hair, per already-tradition. "You could have just asked me, you know. I've made Dragon Demon's my speciality, considering...."

Considering my sort-of-adopted-son is one. "In any case, like I said earlier, you need to rest, at least for a bit. Don't have me make that an order."