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Shinigami (死神, literally "death god")

1. (Japanese mythology) A deity and/or personification of death.
2. Soul reaper; guardians of the souls who are going through the circle of transmigration

Not too long ago, Lord Shinigami became a father to two little girls. He named them Elizabeth and Patricia, but most people called them Liz and Patty.

Shinigami took great pride in the creation of Liz and Patty. He’d been the guardian of this world for over ten thousand years, and still, it could be argued that their existence alone was his crowning achievement. 

The daughters of Shinigami bore properties of both death god and mortal flesh. They were created to live as deities amongst humans in a human world. Someday, when they were ready, they would evolve into full-fledged shinigami. They would watch over humanity with love and understanding that only a demigod could experience.

Both girls were heirs to Death’s throne, and he had very high hopes for them indeed.

Since childhood, Liz and Patty shared everything. Toys, clothes, teachers, favorite ice cream flavors. They shared the master bedroom in the west suite of Gallows Manor. They shared all the same extracurriculars when they were enrolled in human school, and then they shared matching uniforms at the Death Weapon and Meister Academy. Even their souls shared three Lines of Sanzu: glowing haloes which provided them life and set them apart from mortals. They weren’t twins—Death had created them two years apart, actually—but people often mistook them for such. They behaved as if they knew a secret language that nobody else would ever learn to speak. They worked together as if they could read one another’s soul wavelengths. And maybe they could.

Their sisterly love was indestructible, but time quickly proved it to be their weakness as well. The girls, from a young age, demonstrated that they were neither prepared nor willing to begin training in combat with anybody besides each other. No weapon partner was ever good enough for them—they simply didn’t want one to begin with.

There were many reasons for their refusal to partner with a human weapon. Liz in particular lacked a proper respect for mortal souls. She knew she was meant to govern the universe someday, and she knew she would outlive all the friends she made in this lifetime—so there was no time to play nice with humans. She was too busy preparing herself to someday inherit her father’s work. It was her sole purpose in life, and a human companion would never understand that.

Meanwhile, Patty failed to treat anything with the seriousness expected of a budding shinigami. She laughed hysterically at even the gravest situations, and never seemed to truly process the danger that she and her sister often found themselves in. Therefore, she did not comprehend the necessity of a Death Scythe—or a weapon partner of any kind, for that matter. Her erratic personality and aggressive disposition had always been plenty to get by on. 

(Emotionally and mentally, Death’s youngest daughter had never quite been all there. He chided himself for the haphazard creation of her soul; he’d taken too many creative liberties with her conception, whereas Liz’s personality was structured to be less turbulent and better suited for a life of leadership and diplomacy.)

Sometimes Death considered dismissing the matter of finding a weapon partner. Perhaps his daughters would grow into impeccable shinigami even without one. They both demonstrated substantial skill in the realm of combat, self-defense, and death magic. Their souls were strong. And they were aligned with one another—which, perhaps, was the only thing that mattered.

But he worried as a father does. There were situations which required a shinigami to resonate with their Death Scythe. If a kishin were to become active, for instance. He hoped that nothing so catastrophic would ever take place in his children’s lifetimes, but he knew better than to become addicted to peace.

With each passing day, it seemed increasingly unlikely that any human would ever be able to keep up with his girls. Fortunately, Death’s worry would eventually be proven to be unfounded.

***

Worlds apart from Death City, a boy called Kid shared a lot less in common with his older brother.

(Kid had a real name, of course, but nobody ever took the time to learn it. In New York, it was easier to give him a kick and say, “move, kid,” than it was to ask for his name and wait for him to spell it out.)

Kid’s older brother, Asura, was a whole eleven years older—and quite resentful about it. As a high school dropout, he couldn’t relate with Kid about anything, and he most certainly did not enjoy the company of children.

Due to the age gap, he was expected to babysit Kid when their parents were not around. Which was often. Their father hadn’t come home in years, and their Mama was usually too stoned to tell her sons apart. Asura loathed this responsibility, and was one of the first people to decide that giving Kid a real name implied respect he didn’t deserve.

(Kid didn’t mind when Asura forgot to use his real name. It felt special to be called a kid by Asura. Like a nickname with secret meaning.)

Even without the difference in age, there had always been a stark contrast in the brothers’ personalities. Since Kid was old enough to walk and talk, anybody with eyes could have told you that he and Asura were literary foils of one another.

Kid was a quiet little boy who kept to himself whenever possible. Whether he was at school or home, he left no trace: he feverishly cleaned any mess left behind, to the point of near-obsession. He tip-toed through the apartment as if he was afraid that someone would notice him and punish him for being present. He did his best to get along with everybody. He complied with adults. He did his chores. He always raised his hand to speak. He was the sort of child that teachers described as “a pleasure to have in class.”

Asura, on the other hand, was a loud-mouthed teenager who was more likely to be called a “lost cause” or “bad influence.” In his high school days, he had a penchant for smoking weed, starting fistfights, and skateboarding on private property. He was a petty thief and a selfish bully. He had been arrested on multiple occasions (once for carjacking, once for bringing a gun to class). He was sent to juvie twice, and suspended from school more times than he could count.

He wasn’t sorry about it, either. He had never received a word of praise in his life, and so he had long since stopped caring what others thought of his lifestyle. In fact, his side of the bedroom was akin to a crack den, and he kept it that way to deliberately agitate his neurotic little brother.

If Asura ever came off as angry and vengeful, it was only because he was more afraid than anything. He lived in constant fear of some vaguely terrible thing befalling either him or his only brother. His world had proven to be a traumatic and unforgiving place. He had to stay on his guard to keep things from getting worse.

The overwhelming paranoia, coupled with excessive substance abuse and an undiagnosed misfiring of synapses—was enough to make his brain rot.

From where Asura stood, Kid always seemed to have things easy. He was only five, and somehow even he had experienced a lifetime of luck that simply eluded Asura for over sixteen years.

Namely, he had been born a Demon Pistol like their father before.

That, to Asura, was the most insulting blow of all. It was the biggest and most glaring distinction between him and his little brother. For whatever reason, Asura had been born a simple human, wholly powerless and untalented.

And he would never forgive Kid for being better than him.

Entirely unaware of Asura’s misplaced resentment, Kid loved his older brother fiercely.

Without exception, Kid could find the good in everyone. This included his free-loading, waste-of-space, lazy bastard of a brother (Mama’s words, not his).

Whenever Asura had bad dreams or sleep paralysis, Kid would give him his plushie Pikachu to sleep with through the rest of the night. If they were tight on money, he would let Asura have the last Capri Sun in the box. When he stumbled across coins in the sidewalk cracks, he’d quietly leave them in Asura’s pockets.

He couldn’t grasp why Mama was so mean to Asura. Asura misbehaved a lot, sure, but he was a good brother. He gave piggyback rides around the grocery store and laundromat, and sometimes he’d let Kid have the very first puff of his cigarette, the expensive Marlboro kinds he treasured so deeply. If he was in an extraordinarily good mood, he would even let him sit on his lap as he played Grand Theft Auto—or he’d let Kid take a turn on the old PlayStation.

So he couldn’t have been as horrible as Mama said.

By extension of his compassionate personality, Kid considered it his personal duty to keep Asura and Mama from fighting too much. He tried to explain to Mama that punching and kicking wasn’t an acceptable way to resolve anger—the teachers said this all the time at school!—but the last time he said anything, she threatened to beat his ass to a pulp. So he stopped trying to give her advice. 

Especially when alcohol was involved, Kid was too small to physically intervene during an argument. He’d learned his lesson after being pushed, shoved, and stepped on so hard that he broke a pinkie finger. He had never been properly taught to use his pistol form, either, so that had no bearing on his family’s power dynamic.

Sometimes the fighting spiraled so far out of control that all he could do was hide in the bedroom. Under the covers, he would pray for Papa to come home soon, since Papa was the only one scary enough to make Mama stop hitting people.

But very rarely were those prayers answered. Kid could probably count his father’s visits on one hand.

If he did happen to come home, Papa was even scarier than Mama in some ways. He never punched anyone, but he was a Demon Weapon—a gun, just like his youngest son—and he’d often threaten to shoot both Mama and Asura dead. Or he’d threaten to kill himself right in front of them. So far, he hadn’t followed up on the threat, but Kid was certainly concerned.

And so it went. Kid couldn’t remember it being any other way. It went on like this until the day Asura and Mama had a big fight. They had big fights all the time, of course, but on this day, they really, really fought.

Kid was too young to remember what exactly happened that night, but he could vaguely picture some parts, like fuzzy scenes from a VCR tape that had gotten all messed up inside.

He remembered Asura yelling so hard that he began to cry, and crying was something Asura never did. He remembered seeing dark spots of blood on the flea-bitten sofa. The blood had deeply bothered him, because he knew the stain would be permanent on the light-colored fabric.

He also remembered carefully packing his bag, the ratty old Jansport that once belonged to Asura. He remembered the Jansport was not very clean or fun: pockmarked with cigarette burns, and reeking of ash no matter how many times it went through the wash. It was also much too large for a kindergartener to wear on his back.

But at least Kid was able to fit lots of things inside. He couldn’t recall what he packed, though he did remember leaving most of his Pokemon toys behind. He had a very hard time discerning which ones to take along. In the end, he decided Pikachu deserved a spot in the Jansport—his symmetrical little face was the most aesthetically pleasing, anyway.

“Kid, you have five seconds to pack the rest of your shit or I’m givin’ you away to Goodwill,” Asura had said.

He remembered the blurry yellow streaks of the street lights, which passed by through the dirt-streaked car window. He remembered asking Asura why he was sitting in the front and not the booster seat.  He remembered Asura yelling at him for asking too many questions. He asked then if they could turn on the radio. Asura was so mad that he didn’t even answer that one.

He wanted to ask where they were going. But he didn’t.

Chapter Text

While Kid and Asura had their differences growing up, they had at least one thing in common. It was a very small thing, but it was something, and Asura thought about it a lot: 

The streak of white in their hair.

This single stripe was caused by a vitiligo birthmark on the scalp, a polygenic trait inherited from their father. It was unlikely for one parent to pass segmental vitiligo on to two immediate siblings, but here they were, against all odds, which provided Asura with some strange semblance of hope that genetics favored him and Kid equally.

On the other hand, Kid thought that the birthmark was annoying and ugly and just about the worst luck in the world. Since it marked only the left side of his head, it made him perpetually asymmetrical.

Asymmetrical was a big word for a kindergartener like him. He had learned about symmetry from one of Asura’s old math textbooks, shortly before he stopped attending public school. When he’d learned the word, it was almost like the heavens had parted to shine their light upon him: symmetry! What a wonderful word to describe the thing he had been obsessed with before he could even say his own name.

Kid did everything he could to become symmetrical. But it seemed impossible. Asura refused to pay for black hair dye, and he didn’t have a private bathroom to use it in anyway. Cutting his bangs didn’t help, since the white roots grew back within the week, and a choppy fringe was even uglier.

So he tried to let it be. As a workaround, he avoided looking in mirrors, store windows, and other reflective surfaces. But it was hard to forget when his brother looked equally horrid. Even worse, Asura didn’t seem to care that they were both asymmetrical. 

Indeed, Asura deeply loathed his brother’s random crying spells. It was borderline insane. Who the shit even cared about their hair? Or the “balance” of the world? They had more pressing problems, like homelessness, for crying out loud.

It was damn near impossible to ignore Kid’s emotional outbursts, too. He would throw himself to the ground howling, or he’d scream at the top of his lungs about how much he wanted to die. He’d bang his head on the concrete. He’d kick and bite if you tried to stop him from hurting himself, and then, he’d pull out his own hair, so often that there were little bald patches all around his head and eyebrows.

It was the same every time. Asura would have no choice but to watch helplessly until the crisis abated on its own. People would give him odd looks, like he was the crazy one, letting his child make a scene in public.

He tried to remember what Mama did when she was still around, but truth be told, she hadn’t ever done much. Asura recounted the first—and last—time that she had noticed Kid throwing a symmetry-related tantrum. It was a memory that made him angrier than the tantrums themselves.

Kid had been, at most, three years old. Mama was “cooking”—he didn’t count boiling instant ramen as cooking, but she was at the stove, at least—when Kid snatched a pair of shears off the kitchen counter. 

“Hey, kid, don’t play with them scissors. You’s gonna cut your fingers off one of these days,” she scolded.

Kid immediately scrambled out of arm’s reach. He clambered up onto a cushioned chair with scissors in hand. Asura was sitting directly across from him, copying homework answers off either Slader or Quizlet.

“Scissors,” Kid said.

“Mm,” Asura said absent-mindedly. “Don’t play with those, Kid.”

And then Kid cut a chunk of his bangs off. Bits of silver hair floated to the ground—which Asura would be told to sweep up later—and their mother craned her neck to see what had happened. She began to shout as if he’d gone deaf.

“Asura! What the hell are you doin’? Get your damn brother!”

Asura groaned. He slid from his chair, plucked the shears from his brother’s fingers, and tucked them away in a nearby drawer. 

“No scissors, Kid,” he said sternly.

But Kid had played this game many times. Without a word, he flung the drawer back open, reclaiming the shears and preparing to snip another strand off. Asura lunged across the table to yank the scissors out of his brother’s fingers, a lot more forcefully than he probably should have done.

“Scissors,” Kid insisted, pointing to the stripe in his hair.

“No scissors,” he said. He kept one hand on the drawer knob this time. “Scissors are dangerous. Besides, you look a mess. You gonna go to school like that tomorrow?”

Kid pouted. Asura attempted to tousle his little brother’s newly mangled bangs, but he quickly ducked out of the way.

“Scissors!” he repeated.

Asura shook his head. “I know, buddy, I know, but—”

“I know, I know!” Kid parroted back shrilly. He swiped at his brother, who avoided the blow with ease.

“Hey! Kid, no—”

Before he could conclude that thought, Kid screamed and kicked Asura in the shin, hard. Asura swore and the clumsy toddler tumbled off the chair in his hurry to escape.

Amidst his hasty retreat from the kitchen table, Kid crossed Mama’s path. He stopped to stare at her. Even he was intrigued by her infrequent sobriety.

He decidedly flung himself at her, continuing to scream his lungs out all the while.

Asura half-expected Mama to kick her youngest son away in annoyance. But today, she greeted him with open arms, and it was the most disturbing sight to behold.

“Oh, my sweet baby,” she crooned. “Come here, darling. Don’t cry.”

“I know, I know!” Kid continued to mimic these measly words of comfort, as if to point out just how cruel his brother had been to him. “I know! I know!”

Mama rubbed comforting circles into Kid’s backside, but the screaming didn’t stop. With a huff, she carried him back to the table, and lowered herself into a chair, where Kid sat pitifully in her lap. He pressed his snotty face into her raggedy shirt, squealing I know, I know! at recurrent intervals.

“What the hell, Mom?” Asura said, rubbing his bruised leg. “You’re spoiling him.”

“Sometimes you have to be patient with him, Ash.”

“But—”

“He’s just a kid, Ash,” she said softly. “He can only be a kid once. Let him be a kid.”

He remembered when she said that, very vividly, because he felt like he had been punched and gutted on the spot.

Let him be a kid.

As if he hadn’t given his brother the stupid nickname in the first place. As if his brother deserved a carefree childhood, but eleven years ago, Asura had not. He clenched his fists at his sides.

“No scissors,” Kid mumbled sadly, rocking back and forth in his mother’s arms. “No scissors. No scissors.”

“I’m afraid that’s right, baby. No scissors.” Mama tightened her embrace on him. Then she gave him a kiss—a kiss! —right on the birthmark in his hair.

Kid looked up dolefully.

“Ash-uh,” Kid said at last, pointing to the aforementioned’s head. He was becoming increasingly distressed with every utterance of his older brother’s name. “Ash-uh, Ash-uh, Ash-uh!”

“Oh, Asura needs a kiss too, huh? Alright.” Mama turned and grabbed at her son with a playful smile. “Get over here, mister grumpy-pants!”

“Do not fucking touch me,” he said. But he squatted beside his brother, and he allowed Mama to press one kiss into the birthmark in his greasy, unwashed hair.

Kid grinned from ear to ear, as if this was the best thing he had ever seen in his life. He began to applaud raucously, in the ungainly, heavy-handed way that toddlers had before they developed any fine motor skills. “Hoorway!” he shouted.

Mama laughed. “One kiss for my little boy, and one kiss for my big man. That makes two kisses. Right, kid?”

Kid nodded. By now, his cries had completely ceased. He popped both thumbs into his mouth, suckling contentedly and looking around the room in a sort of satiated daze. Asura had to admit, she had calmed the storm in record time.

“See baby, it’s gonna be okay. There ain’t nothing ugly about your hair,” she cooed. “Lookie-loo. You’re matching with Daddy and Asura.”

“Ash-uh,” Kid echoed.

“Hear me, boy?” Mama jostled him lightly. “The next time you look in the mirror, don’t you dare feel sad about the way you look. You look just like Ash and your Daddy. And they’re always gonna be there to take care of you.”

Asura scoffed and rolled his eyes. Their father definitely hadn’t received that memo.

***

But that had been years ago. Asura—who was way too old to be kissing anyone besides his girlfriend—sure as hell wasn’t going to try this technique anytime soon. Besides, he needed Kid to grow a thicker skin.

Teaching Kid to tough it out on the streets was downright torturous. He wouldn’t have been able to survive it without the drugs.

There wasn’t anything that a little bit of weed or alcohol couldn’t fix: enough THC, nicotine, or alcohol in his system and he hardly noticed Kid was there at all. 

Days turned into colorless blobs, dream-like impressions that he couldn’t quite get his finger on. Time moved by slow as molasses. But it was painless and surreal.

Asura didn’t consider himself an addict or anything. Weed wasn’t a hard drug, and he could always stop smoking cigarettes whenever he felt like it. He thought of it like taking antidepressants. They made him feel good, like he was himself again.

Unfortunately, all medicine cost money, and Asura did not have a lot of that.

The cash he had managed to scrape together on the way out of the apartment two weeks ago was running out quickly. If he didn’t figure something out soon, his brother would starve, and Asura would have to be sober while it happened.

But Kid had a gift, and it would be their saving grace. Hell, it was the only reason Asura had brought him along in the first place. Kid was a little shy about using said gift—he had always refused to use his weapon form for personal gain—but his older brother knew he could convince him otherwise. With time, he would. He would.

The week they left Mama’s apartment, it was hot and dusty and dry. The air in New York City always smelled dirty, but it was even mustier in the boroughs of Brooklyn.

As always, Kid awaited his brother’s return patiently, cross-legged and attentive by the opening flap of their tent. When Asura climbed through the entrance, he perked up, splitting into a toothy smile.

“Hiya, Ash,” he chirped.

Asura dumped his backpack onto the ground and collapsed in a sweaty heap on the makeshift bedspread. “Sup, Kid,” he mumbled.

“You took forever. I missed you. I was getting scared that you wouldn’t come back. What did you get for lunch? It’s so hot. You’re stinky. You shouldn’t wear long-sleeve shirts in the summer.”

Kid had very recently entered a “chatterbox” phase, and it made Asura miss the quiet boy he once knew. It was as if a flip had switched in him the moment they left the apartment, as if only now did he feel comfortable taking up space in a room.

“I’m really hungry,” Kid said. “Don’t mind me, starving to death over here.”

“Oh, pipe down.”

Asura reached into his backpack and wrestled loose a crumpled, oil-stained box of Chengdu takeout. He’d found it on a bench by the bus stop on the way back to the tent, so it was a little crusty and sun-baked. But Chinese had always been one of Kid’s favorite things to eat. He figured it was a safe option for a finicky child.

“Here,” Asura said. “Bon appétit. That means ‘good appetite’ in French, or something.”

Kid peeled open the box flaps, and his face fell almost immediately. Asura rubbed his temples.

“I don’t like this,” Kid said.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked, as patiently as he could.

“It’s yucky and asymmetrical. Look. Did you see it when you bought it? Look.”

Asura snatched the box back, prodding through the noodles with his fingers to reveal an uneven number of unevenly-sized broccoli. He could have torn the veggies into symmetrical pieces, but they were already shriveled up and tiny, and for the sake of his future self he didn’t want to enable this behavior further.

Asura handed the box back. “Yeah, yucky, my ass. It’s all we have, so please just fucking eat it.”

“I can’t. The broccoli is asymmetrical. Didn’t you see?”

“Take it off then,” he said coldly.

“No! The noodles taste bad by themselves. I’m hungry and I want the broccoli, it just has to be symmetrical first!” Kid shouted. He could feel his eyes stinging against his will; he knew Asura would say it was a silly thing to cry about, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I can’t eat it like this. You’re not listening to me!”

“I’m listening, I just don’t care. And frankly, I’m running out of ways to tell you that,” Asura replied.

Kid officially burst into tears. “I wanna go home!” he wailed. “Why are we here? It’s hot and dirty and smelly and I miss my bed. I wanna go home!”

“Oh, you wanna go home?” Asura said, his fingers curling into fists.

Kid nodded tearfully. “Mama cuts the broccoli into symmetrical pieces at home!”

“I’m the one who cuts your stupid little veggies into stupid little pieces!”

“Mama does it nicer!”

“Why, you—” Blinded by rage, Asura picked up and hurled the nearest object, a tin bottle half-filled with stale fountain water, at Kid’s head.

Kid was accustomed to having things thrown at him. He effortlessly sidestepped the projectile, scrabbling into a corner.

“You are such a fucking brat!” Asura bellowed. “Get over here! I’m taking you to CPS. I said get over here!”

“No!”

Now Kid was beginning to ugly-cry. He had the ugliest crying face Asura had ever seen on a child. Snot, drool and everything. Which was just too bad, because Asura had officially run out of sympathy. He’d been sober for twenty-four hours straight, and it was all because he’d spent the last of his cash on this ungrateful child.

“Oh, quit it with the waterworks,” Asura spat. “Your ass, over here, now.”

“P-please don’t take me to CVS!”

“It’s CPS, idiot, and that’s where being a brat gets you!”

“No! Please!” Kid begged, throwing himself at Asura’s feet and clinging onto his leg. “I l-l-like it here w-with you!”

“I don’t care,” he said between clenched teeth. “The government would treat you like shit, but at least you’d be out of my fuckin’ hair. Do you even hear yourself?” He gasped coarsely in and out, imitating the over-breathing pattern his brother exerted between words, before swiftly kicking the boy in the head. “That’s you, retard. You sound like something that belongs in a psych ward.”

“O-o-ow,” Kid choked. “I—can’t—help–it. Don’t c-call me—retard.”

“Calm down, retard.”

“Mama—ssss-says—that’s a—mean—word—”

“Well, Mommy isn’t here! You wanna be with her so bad? You’re free to go.” He kicked Kid again, spurring him on. “Go. Walk all the way back home. She’s just gonna drop you off at CPS, ‘cause she ain’t want you either.”

Kid’s sobs intensified and he pulled his shirt over his head. Asura could hear him spluttering and holding his breath, probably in an attempt to regain control of his breathing, but it only made him hyperventilate harder.

Asura sighed.

After what felt like an eternity, Kid’s spastic whimpering came to a gradual stop. He pulled his sopping wet tee back over his head and wiped his bleary eyes with a dry corner of the fabric.

“O-okay, I’m done,” he sniffled. “I’m sorry, Ash. I’ll get out of your hair, see?” He held his hands up as if to demonstrate that he had no intentions of getting into Asura’s hair ever again. “Just please don’t leave me with CVS. Or Mom. I want to be with you.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Asura dropped to his knees and put an arm around Kid’s trembling shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry, Kid. I didn’t mean to yell.”

”I k-know.”

”I’m just trying to tell you that I don’t have the money to make sure your food is all perfect anymore.”

“I really am going to starve to death,” Kid said mournfully.

“No, you won’t. This isn’t that big of a deal. We can get by in other ways.” He clapped Kid’s back. “If you let me use you in pistol form, we’ll just—”

“P-pistol form?” Kid repeated, alarmed. “Ash, stealing is wrong. You told Mommy and the police you’d stop stealing all the time. I won’t help you steal!”

“Stealing isn’t wrong if you have no choice.”

“But…”

“I promise we won’t steal anything besides the bare essentials, and we won’t hurt anyone, okay?”

Kid groaned nervously. He was thinking about it, he really was, but he hadn’t assumed his Demon Weapon form in the longest time. In fact, even when they still lived in the apartment, he had been heavily discouraged from turning into twin pistols. There simply wasn’t a need for it. And in double-fact, he had been told to never, ever let Asura use him as a weapon.

“Please, buddy?” Asura said. “I’ll feel much safer if you’re with me in pistol form.”

At last, hearing the desperation in Asura’s voice, Kid nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “If I do it, you won’t take me to CVS?”

“CPS? I’d never do that to you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. We’re partners from now on.”

He held out his hand, and after a beat, Kid shook on it.

Asura smiled to himself. All the weed and liquor he could now have—for free —was almost better than being intoxicated itself. He was never going to pay for a damn thing again! And nobody was going to push around the guy with two guns.

He was safe. All of his former anxieties, they were for naught. His brother was basically made out of titanium.

They were invincible.

Chapter Text

“You bring those books back any ol’ time you’re done with ‘em, dear. Don’t fret about the deadline stamped on the back there.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“Now you and your brother have yourselves a wonderful thanksgiving break. And make sure to eat as much as you can. Put some meat on those poor bones!”

Bobbing his head agreeably, praying to avert any further small talk, Kid tucked his newest book haul beneath one arm and hurried for the door.

He was never a fan of having too much attention put on him at once, but he had to admit, it was nice sometimes: to be recognized by the old lady librarian and her well-meaning overbearingness. She and the books made the county library his favorite place to go whenever Asura wanted alone time back home—home being the tent they’d lived in for the past five years.

In their time as unsheltered youth, Kid had never managed to cultivate lasting friendships with children his age. His peers asked too many nosy questions, and they were all big-mouthed tattletales whenever they found out about his living situation. But older folk were pleasant company. The librarian lady was the only person in Brooklyn he might have considered a true friend.

He’d grown to like her a lot, actually. She never asked pressing questions about where he lived. She never scolded him for taking things without paying. And she indulged his symmetry obsession whenever she could, gifting him random knick-knacks she stumbled across in her day-to-day (such as a symmetrical keyring he still wore on his backpack).

More importantly, she was the one who provided him with some semblance of an education, at least enough to save his developing mind from paralyzing boredom on the streets. She lent him books about math, science, history, geography—everything normal kids learned about in school. Whatever he wanted, she could procure. There were even whole books about symmetry. 

So he very much valued time with his elderly friend. She was a cornucopia of knowledge he could never access alone. She was way smarter than Asura, who hadn’t bothered to remember anything past fifth grade.

Speaking of his older brother, Kid was thoroughly excited to tell Asura all about what he learned today. With the librarian’s guidance, he had checked out several books about the pyramids in Ancient Egypt—specifically the Pyramid of Anubis, constructed in perfect symmetry in a society where balance was valued above all else.

Such beautiful architecture! He’d be lucky enough to visit the pyramids in person someday.

When he returned home, a complete stranger was making her way out of the tent, and it gave Kid a start.

Upon second glance, she wasn’t actually so strange. She was simply one of Asura’s smoking buddies, a grizzled woman who often kicked Kid out of the tent so that she and his brother could play with each other.

“Hello there. Nice weather we are having,” Kid said, as politely as he could manage—not because he wanted to be nice, but because that was how he’d seen other adults address one another.

She flashed a toothless grin at him, and the very air turned rancid with her breath.

“Hey, sugar,” she said. “Your brother said you’d be in school right ‘bout now.”

“I haven’t been there in years.”

“Ya playin’ hooky?”

“I don’t play any sports.”

She honked an ugly laugh at this, a reaction which he neither understood nor appreciated, though he could tell he was somehow the butt of the joke. Once she finally stopped cackling, he cut in irritably, “Do you need something from us?”

“Oh, it don’t matter, kid,” she sighed. “Your brother’s in one of his moods, and I ain’t got the patience for it.”

Kid peered suspiciously over her shoulder, craning to see if Asura was home, and if so, whether he was wearing all his clothes. Kid was plenty aware that his unexpected return from the library could be interrupting some…private activities.

He gave her a tired look.

“Well, Ash has been sick for a few days now,” he said, “so I don’t think he’s in the mood to talk much or get out of his bed. But I can leave, if you guys still want to see each other naked.”

Again, she burst into raucous laughter, amused by such childish straightforwardness, and again Kid could not find anything comical about possibly being sexiled by his horndog of a brother. He stood his ground until she realized he wasn’t being rhetorical.

“Nah, I’m done tryna get anythin’ outta of him,” she replied. “I’ll come back when he’s not bein’ a dickhead. Catch you later.”

She turned away, leaving behind the unpleasant stink of someone who hadn’t washed their hair in weeks.

Shaking off this icky interaction with a shudder, Kid crawled through the rotting tent flaps and began carefully stacking his library books beside his bedspread. He wanted to sort them by personal relevance while also maintaining a balanced aesthetic. It was a task demanding total concentration, so several minutes passed before he remembered to check on his ailing meister.

In the far corner of their tent, Asura laid on his side, lifeless beneath a pile of dirty clothes and tattered blankets. The powerful odor of mildew and marijuana indicated that he hadn’t moved all day from his makeshift bed, much less the tent itself.

Kid had witnessed countless hangovers of monstrous proportions, but this was altogether different. His brother had spent the entire week nearly catatonic. His eyes were dull and lifeless, fixed on the tarp wall, as if he couldn’t hear anything outside of his own head, and his teeth chattered in the chill of the stale autumn air.

Kid gently shook him by the shoulder. “I’m home, Ash. You feeling any better?”

There came no response, only a low, constant rumbling under his brother’s breath as he continued to mumble to himself.

Kid had no idea what could possibly be wrong. There was no fever, no cough, no visible symptom that indicated a physical condition. His only recourse was to wait out this undiagnosed bout of psychosomatic illness. If he went to the library everyday, maybe he’d come back to find Asura had magically popped out of bed and started acting like his old self again.

But that hadn’t happened yet, and the way things were looking, things would have to get worse first.

“Your ugly friend stopped by just now,” Kid informed. “She left already. I’ve never seen you say no to making out with an ugly girl.”

He’d hoped to stir the pot, as poking fun at Asura’s hookups usually did, but nothing happened.

“Do you want a cigarette?”

Asura stirred and shook his head weakly, which was a step up from the silent treatment. Kid was encouraged.

“No cigarette? That’s okay. How about…” Kid crouched down, scanning the heap of garbage until he uncovered a dirty Ziploc bag packed with peach-flavored gummy rings. It was one of his brother’s favorite snacks, an expensive brand of candy that he never seemed willing to share with anyone else (not that Kid wanted any; it tasted like a skunk and made him incredibly nauseous).

“Peachy-O’s might cheer you up,” he said, flapping the bag. “Want some?”

Asura grunted disinterestedly.

Kid rummaged further through his brother’s belongings, locating yet another Ziploc bag, this one filled with soft white powder resembling flour or baby powder. It also came with a doctor’s needle. He peeled open the plastic and removed the syringe carefully.

“What about your medicine?” he asked. “Did you remember to take it today? I can help you do the needle, and that way you won’t have to get up.”

Asura closed his eyes and groaned, but complied nonetheless. He extended a wobbly arm. Kid rolled up the sleeve, tied the tourniquet like he’d been taught, and released the plunger. By the look on Asura’s face, the painkillers worked almost immediately.

Even so, the silence was suffocating. He awkwardly returned the needle to its bag. Then he hopped to his feet.

The convenience store was just around the corner. Most things were five bucks or less, and Asura was friends with some of the employees, who would often sell alcohol and cigarettes to customers without a valid form of ID. Kid was going there now.

He confidently slapped Asura’s drivers license onto the countertop, along with a five dollar bill that he had kept in his jacket for emergencies like these. He was barely tall enough to see over the counter, but he tried to look as tough as he could.

“Uhh, can I do somethin’ for you, kid?” the cashier asked.

Kid cleared his throat. “Yes, actually,” he said, in his best important adult voice, “I would like to purchase one case of beer, please.”

The cashier stared blankly. Kid nudged the driver’s license, just in case they didn’t see it the first time.

“It’s not a fake. You can ask the manager,” he said in a normal voice. He pushed the money a bit closer as well. When the cashier ignored both prompts, he went on: “I won’t drink any, I promise. I’m just doing the shopping today for my older brother. He’s twenty-three, like it says on the card. See? His name is Asura. We come by a lot. Maybe you recognize us.”

“Kid,” the cashier said, “I don’t care who you or your brother is. I ain’t sellin’ beer to a child.”

“I’m ten,” Kid said, hurt.

“Get the hell outta here before I call the cops.”

Kid slipped away from the counter as quietly as he’d come. He could tell that he’d unsettled the cashier somewhat, and he felt guilty for the unnecessary scare; it wasn’t his intention to mug every single person he encountered, and he wished shopkeepers would stop assuming the worst of him.

Maybe something to eat would be suitable instead.

He had the perfect target in mind: the Japanese mini-mart down the street, a hole in the wall that saw little business on its busiest days, making it possible to shoplift without witnesses.

As an added bonus, the old lady running the store was kind of his friend, similar to the librarian. She always gifted him extra candy with the few legal purchases he did make, and she would heat up a bowl of yakisoba for him—for free —if it was ever cold out.

Today the old woman stood at the counter, carefully organizing coins and dollar bills in the cash register. She smiled warmly when he walked through the door. It flooded Kid with overwhelming shame at the thought of what he was about to do. He bowed his head at her timidly before ducking behind shelves of processed snacks and fruit-flavored sodas.

Rules were rules. All cash was to be strictly budgeted toward Asura’s needs first (cigarettes, alcohol, marijauha, and the like), while food took second priority. It was ideal if they didn’t spend money on food at all. It was one of the easiest things to steal.

Once the cashier averted her eye, Kid set to work. He slit open the plastic packaging on a tray of pre-cooked pork buns, tucking as many as he could into the his jacket. Everything else fit nicely inside his Jansport bag. Two cans of lychee-flavored soda. Spicy ramen noodle crackers. Hard guava candies. Mini seaweed sheets. Chocolate Pocky. Aloe water.

These were the comfort foods of his early childhood: cheap, processed snacks that Asura used to pack in his kindergarten sack lunch. Things that weren’t particularly nutritious, but were easy to consume, even when he was sick or sad. He hoped Asura would find the flavors and textures equally soothing.

At the counter, he reached for a box of orange-flavored bubblegum and slid it toward the register.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted, speaking in clumsy Japanese that he had picked up not from a proper textbook or older relative, but rather, from repeatedly watching Studio Ghibli films as a younger child.

She acknowledged his greeting with much more fluent Japanese, though her gentle smile implied that she did not mind his limited knowledge of the language.

His single purchase rang up to less than a dollar. She handed him his change and an extra two boxes of bubblegum.

“Oh, you don’t have to, miss,” he said.

“This is yours,” she said firmly. “Say hello and give good wishes to your big brother for me.”

He bowed his head hastily and promptly got the hell out of there, running as fast as he could without making the plastic in his backpack crinkle. 

“Hey, Ash. I’m back. And look what I have. Pork buns.”

He squatted down and laid the buns in a meticulous three-by-two array on the ground. He set the chips, candies, and drinks neatly in a row, allowing his brother full view of such generous selection.

“Look,” he insisted. “All this great stuff, and I didn’t spend any of your money on it. Not a single dime. Just like you taught me. See?”

Asura sat up and turned to face Kid, interest mildly piqued by the mini-heist his little brother had successfully pulled off alone. Kid felt a pang of excitement at the sight of his brother’s movement.

Even so, Asura did not look good at all. His dark circles were so prominent he looked like a Tim Burton caricature, the whites of his eyes bloodshot and his cheeks sunken. His breathing came in ragged whistles. Purple splotches and sickly green bruises ran up and down both of his arms, but when he caught Kid staring, he quickly pulled his coat on, concealing the needle tracks beneath baggy sleeves.

“Are…are you sure you’re okay?”

Asura nodded and rolled his neck. His eyes flitted about the room as if listening for a sound that was not there. Then he reached for the groceries, accepting the gift without thanks.

Kid tried not to look upset when Asura opened the cracker bag upside-down. Or when he sloppily wolfed down the pork buns. If he pointed it out, Asura would just tell him to shut up and read the room. At least he would’ve, if he’d been feeling well.

In an attempt to divert his compulsions, Kid wiggled out of his jacket and draped it around his shaking meister’s shoulders. Then he sat there, at a loss for words, knowing that he needed to stay in close proximity but otherwise utterly helpless in such a predicament.

Asura was noticeably out of breath from eating so quickly. He reclined again and pulled the jacket further over his bony frame. 

Kid lowered himself onto the ground. He rolled Asura onto his side—a practice he’d been trained to follow religiously, especially after his brother had taken his medicine—then pressed the bridge of his nose between Asura’s shoulder blades. It was his favorite hiding spot in the whole world. He hoped his presence would contribute body heat in addition to the layers of raggedy blankets.

Asura’s breathing continued to wobble and crackle, like he was dry-heaving after one drink too many. It was hard to ignore. And it was really hard to just lay there in silence. Kid had a million questions he wanted to ask, but he needed to work on becoming “less of a nuisance.”

Maybe he could be helpful still. Maybe he could find some leftover cigarettes in Asura’s depression nest—at least one more, enough to ease his remaining pain through the evening. Kid began to clamber to his feet.

Asura jolted upright.

“You!” he cried.

Kid froze, neither sitting nor fully standing, shocked by this unexpected recovery of speech. Asura looked utterly scandalized, as if Kid had just committed a deadly sin right before his very eyes.

“Me?”

“You! Yes, you! Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m just looking for a cigarette.”

“I told you I don’t want you to go out today. It’s too cold. It’s going to snow.”

“It isn’t snowing until December, and I’m not going out.” Kid caught his brother by the wrist and gently pushed him back into resting position. “You’re sick. Lay down.”

“I’m not sick. I can’t remember the last time I got sick. Hey, you! Listen to me when I talk to you. You’re making Mom upset with that kind of talk, you hear?”

“Mom isn’t here right now,” Kid said. The knot in his stomach tightened when Asura continued to talk over him with intensified volume and speed:

“Goddamn you, Kid, goddamn you! You make me so mad. We’re in trouble if the school calls home. Again. Again!”

“Okay, Ash, I hear ya. Here’s a cigarette. Where’s your lighter?”

“Cigarette-schmigarette. The end! Fairy tales have happy ends, but I don’t.”

“Yes, you do, Ash, you just have to wait for it.”

“I’m sick of waiting. Waiting tables. Tabletop tennis.”

“Lay down, please—”

“You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do!” Asura howled. He lunged forward to seize Kid by the sleeve, yanking so violently that the seams in the fabric popped.

Kid whined nervously. He couldn’t bear to have his shirt ripped at only one sleeve; this sweatshirt was the only one comfortable enough to sleep in overnight, and the logo on the front was perfectly centered. His eyes welled up at the thought of needing to replace such a precious belonging.

Asura gnashed his teeth in the sort of way that dared him to throw a tantrum. “You come back here,” he snarled. “I’m not asking again, Kid. Don’t make me count to three! One, two…!”

“Ash, stop! You’re scaring me!”

“Awww, ‘you’re scaring me,’ he cries! Wah, wah. I barely fuckin’ touched you. Are you gonna cry about symmetry now? Fucking retard. Fucking reta—”

“I told you not to call me that! Ow, ow!”

“I said come back here, you stupid—fucking—retard—! ”

His voice cracked toward the end of his sentence, as if expressing his desire for Kid’s company was the only thing humiliating enough to snap him out of his incoherent tirade. He released his grasp abruptly. Kid stumbled backward, panting, choking on panicked tears.

The two stared at each other in a daze.

Asura looked away first. And then his shoulders began to shake. First only a few times. Then enough that it became concerning.

It was hard to believe at first, especially in concert with his glassy-eyed features and thousand-yard stare, but it was true.

Asura was crying.

Kid obediently sank to the ground, hoping that’d make the tears stop.

It didn’t. His hands hovered uncertainly over his brother. He wanted to be of comfort, but the massive pain in his own chest and the stinging in his own eyes made him wish someone would have thought to comfort him first.

“I’m sorry,” Kid squeaked. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, Ash. Don’t cry. Don’t cry…”

Asura wept softly, unlike Kid, who seemed to experience his emotions with every fiber in his body. But somehow, silent tears were more alarming than loud ones. Kid almost wished he would just let it all out. 

He watched uselessly as Asura’s hot tears soaked through the moldy pillowcase. His lungs crinkled like cellophane, bronchioles giving way after years of relentless smoking.

Well, one of them had to pull it together. Kid sucked in a calming breath and reached out to hold his brother’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay, Ash. There’s no reason for us to cry.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Asura rasped. “Fuck up. Fuck up. You weren’t ever supposed to be born.”

Kid gave his brother an apologetic squeeze.

As he waited for the episode to pass, he stared at the tattoos on the back of Asura’s withered hands. The designs seemed, to most people, satanic in nature: three vertical eyes on each hand, mottled black pupils staring straight into the soul.

Kid himself had never found it creepy. It was the one symmetrical thing about Asura. He could understand perfectly why someone might want perfect balance etched into their skin.

Kid traced the outline of the tattoo with his finger. He did it over and over, soon losing himself completely in loops of perfect balance, counting all the while in his head—one, two, three…He needed to count to eight. Eight times on both hands, just to be even. 

One, two, three…

Kid’s body and soul relaxed in unison. He began to unconsciously extend his wavelength outward.

The signals were shaky, unstable, and characteristic of a Weapon that had not yet fully matured, but his soul was determined enough to establish a rudimentary connection with Asura’s.

Over the years, his meister’s soul had turned from pale pink to blood red, rotten scabs hanging off the edges and corrosive stains like plaque pockmarking its surface. It burned with rage and threatened to consume anything that crossed its path. At the same time, it was scared, fragile, and weak-willed.

But it was still a good soul. Kid knew where to find all of its soft spots.

Kid approached one of those spots now. His brother would normally balk at any act of emotional vulnerability, but today, his anguished wavelength nearly pulled Kid’s entire soul in on itself.

It hurt to establish the link. Kid told himself the pain was simply something he had to bear. He could deal with the strain. He would leave his soul wide-open any day if it meant that he could help the person he loved.

All at once, the effects of the soul resonance swept over them, and the two brothers were whisked away to another realm entirely. It was not a real, physical place, but a hidden landscape within Asura’s soul itself, impermeable to the rest of the world. It occurred to Kid that he was likely the first person to ever venture here.

As flattered as he was to be deemed trustworthy, his brother’s soulscape didn’t appear to be a particularly hospitable terrain. It was frigid and dark, full of creaking shadows. Emptiness yawned as far as the eye could see. In the distance, a low whisper of overlapping voices murmured like the constant rush of a foreboding mountain river.

The voices crawled in Kid’s ears like centipedes in mud, sending cold shivers through his body. They were mumbling all kinds of nonsense. He strained to pick them out from one another—

You!

Whallywoop. Whallywoop.

Who’s takin’ the dog to school?

Fuck it.

I slept for a buck and a half.

Despite it all, Kid wasn’t afraid. He couldn’t be if he tried. This space belonged to his brother, his only brother, and his brother would never hurt him.

“Ash? Can you hear me?”

His words barely cut through the growing cacophony of blurry white noise.

Asura’s voice came to him in a similar fashion, disembodied from his body and echoing eerily in ripples. It bounced throughout the space until it was inevitably consumed by the endless stretch of darkness before them:

“Hey, Kid. I didn’t think I’d ever find you here.”

“Ash…? Where are you?”

“I’m right here.”

Kid spun around, squinting, although of course, there wasn’t anything to see except more darkness, and it wasn’t as if Asura could see him either.

“Why can’t I see you?”

“The hell do you need to see me for? You know what I look like already.”

“Oh. That’s a good point,” Kid said. “Is it like this all the time?”

“What do you mean, ‘like this’? You got a problem?”

“It’s just lonely and creepy.”

Asura snapped. “I didn’t choose for it to be, okay, Kid? I don’t want it to be like this. I’d change it if I knew how. But it’s not that fucking easy.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

A ripple of heat washed through the space, pushing Kid backward for a brief moment. Amidst the darkness, the image of Asura emerged and crackled into clarity. His features were obscured by the shadows, but still distinct in shape, and with a little light it became clear that he’d been standing less than five feet away all along.

He looked as pale and sickly as he did in real life. But here, he wasn’t cowering beneath countless layers of clothing. He wore nothing but the dirty black cargo pants that he’d taken with them the day Mama told them to leave the apartment, and the scuffed brown sneakers he refused to ever take off.

“I didn’t let you in here so you could feel sorry for me,” Asura growled.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Kid said. “I mean, I’m not pitying you, if that makes sense.”

“Why did you come here?”

Kid thought about this carefully. There were a lot of reasons, but he had to be honest. He looked up at his brother with resolution.

“Because I don’t know how to help you anymore,” he said.

If there was a correct answer to the question, that certainly wasn’t it. Asura backed away, moving slowly as if the both of them were trapped within a layer of gelatin.

“So you do feel sorry for me.”

“I feel worried when you aren’t doing good,” Kid relented. “Like when you get sick.”

“I’ve always been fine, haven’t I?”

“But I don’t even know what’s wrong. What if you have a deadly disease? Like cholera? Or…”

“I’m not sick like that,” Asura interrupted. “I’m just losing my mind, I think.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I’ve been feeling it coming for a while now. It’s like I’m losing control of a car, but I don’t remember how to hit the brakes. Maybe this car doesn’t have any brakes at all.” He scratched his chin, realizing he’d found the perfect analogy to describe how he felt. “And maybe it’s not a car, it’s a bus, and nobody taught me how to drive something so big, and my little brother is in the bus with me.”

“We can figure out a way to stop the bus,” Kid said earnestly. “Buses come with emergency brakes. And even without brakes, the bus won’t stay in motion forever, ‘cause of something called friction. You could even crash it into something soft, such as—”

“That’s not the point, smartass. Why the hell am I even driving the bus? When did I get here? Who put me here? I don’t know. Nobody knows! It’s a miracle I didn’t wreck the bus sooner!”

“I’ll help you drive it, Ash. Just tell me how.”

“I never wanted to drive a bus! I can’t drive a bus! I deserve to crash and die!”

“Ash, stop,” Kid said, fighting to keep a level voice. “Don’t talk about yourself that way. You’re not going crazy. Let’s…let’s think about our options here.”

But he didn’t have a feasible proposal ready. What was there to say? When he thought of ‘crazy’, he envisioned the type of homeless people who walked around cussing at the air and ranting to themselves. Asura wasn’t like that. Well, maybe a little—but not until today!

Who was to define crazy, anyhow? That was just a mean word kids threw at each other on the playground. It was what people called him when he talked about symmetry or cried about something that others didn’t consider a big deal. The word crazy didn’t actually signify anything. 

But it did. It signified something was going very, very wrong in Asura’s mind and soul, and Kid was doomed in watching his brother succumb to it.

“We can always go to a hospital,” Kid said desperately. “Right? The doctors, they can give you more medicine to take home, even if we’re poor. They can help you. They—”

“Kid, if they keep me in the hospital, then what happens to you?”

“I’ll just wait for you to get better! I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can, but CPS won’t agree. They’ll put you in a foster home who knows where.”

Kid felt himself tearing up, which was especially frustrating because he knew Asura was the one who had every right to cry. This wasn’t about Kid. But he was so overwhelmed.

“Don’t have a cow, Kid,” Asura sighed. It was surreal how quickly he had snapped out of his downward spiral, if only to criticize Kid’s own. “Let’s talk about something else if you’re gonna be that way. Can you tell me about the books you read at the library today?”

“I dunno,” Kid sniffled.

“What do you mean, you ‘dunno?’ You were so excited to tell me about it this afternoon. C’mon now. I wanna hear all about the Ancient Egyptians.”

“H-how did you…?”

Asura smiled slightly. “I can read your soul just as much as you’re reading mine right now, Kiddo. Also, I can read in general. You left the books right between our beds.”

“Oh. Right. Y-yeah, it’s about Ancient Egypt,” Kid laughed, wiping his running nose with the back of each hand. “I read…that…the Ancient Egyptians worshiped Anubis, the god of death, and to thank him for taking care of their dead, they built him a perfectly symmetrical pyramid. Everything in it is symmetrical. The arches, the wall art, the tomb, the caskets of mummies buried there.”

“That sounds lame.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll show you pictures later. It’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful or whatever, but worshipping death is pointless. We don’t have any proof that gods exist, either. ‘Specially not death gods with silly dog heads.”

“Anubis has a jackal head, actually,” Kid said. “Jackals are in the canid family but look more like a mix between fox and coyote.”

“Same thing, nerd.”

“I’m just saying—”

“What I’m saying is that if Anubis exists, what happens to the death gods in other cultures and religions? Do Hades and Thanatos coexist with Anubis? Who makes up these rules? Certainly not the mortal men who invented religion in the first place?”

“Good questions,” Kid nodded. “…Surprisingly. I’m impressed you have the brain matter left to come up with all that. Does Asura actually remember something from his world civilizations class?”

“Ha-ha,” Asura said. “I’m not as brainless as you think I am.”

“I guess you don’t exactly need Harvard talent to read Percy Jackson.”

“Who the fuck is—no, I just think it’s stupid how quickly some people believe in religious garbage! If death gods were real, you think we’d have fucking seen one by now.”

They marinated in reflective silence.

“Maybe the death gods just don’t live in New York,” Kid suggested. 

Asura laughed heartily at this. Kid wasn’t trying to be funny, but he didn’t mind being a laughing stock when it came to his brother; it was simply a relief to hear him make any sound pertaining to joy.

The murmuring background voices had quieted down just a little bit.

“Ash,” Kid said, wiping his eyes, “I…I still don’t know what to do. When we go back to real life. How do I help you…?”

“You worry so much for a kid your size!” Asura draped his arms around him, squeezing Kid’s skull against his chest with just the right amount of pressure. “Just fuckin’ relax, bud. Everything will work itself out.”

“How can you know for sure, though?” he snuffled.

“When you become an adult, sometimes you just know things like that.”

“But you said you can’t drive the bus.”

“That was just a stupid metaphor, Kid. Don’t overthink it.”

As much as Kid wanted to hold on longer, his eyelids were growing heavier by the second. His mind, body and soul were thoroughly taxed from sustaining amateur resonance at such an emotionally trying time.

“Yeah. You’re a good driver,” Kid murmured. “I’m…really tired.”

“Go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“I’m gonna figure something out soon.”

“I’m sure you will,” Asura said, kissing him on the stripe in his hair—or maybe he imagined that part.

Chapter Text

Unfortunately, things were not about to go well for either Asura or Kid. 

The real trouble took place that same night, shortly after Kid stirred from his post-resonance nap. He first awoke to the sound of clothes rustling and footsteps shuffling. The sound of somebody talking to themselves. The murky dimness that came with nighttime in the city.

He must have slept through the evening, but what time was it? Where was Asura?

Overhead, the mumbling ceased abruptly, and that’s when a heavy shoe connected with Kid’s ribcage. He yelped sharply as the urgent and unforgiving kick knocked all air from his chest. 

“Get up!” Asura hissed. “We have to go, go, go. Now!”

Kid blinked the sleepiness in his eyes away and Asura’s shape came into focus. He was crouched over Kid with a crazed look in his bulging eyes. He was fully dressed, a lumpily packed backpack slung asymmetrically over his left shoulder.

Kid’s eyes snapped open and his blood ran cold as his brother’s earlier psychotic break came rushing back. He scrambled to his knees. He had been foolish to hope that sleeping it off would solve their problems, and now—

Asura had already resumed his packing frenzy, rushing about the tent in a frantic effort to cram their remaining belongings into Kid’s Jansport. He flung the pack at Kid’s feet.

“This one is yours, Kid. Get up,” he said. His words prattled off rapidly like bullets from a machine gun. “Get up, up-up-up-up!”

The zipper on the tent went schwoop, and Asura disappeared into the frigid night.

Kid swore. There wasn’t exactly time to pace back and forth on his one. He wiggled into the only coat he owned and hurled himself after his deranged brother.

The night air nearly froze him solid. It stung the tips of his ears and nose; he didn’t have a scarf or beanie like Asura. His breath materialized in mist so thick that he appeared to be exhaling cigarette smoke. He could feel the muscles in his legs protesting against being made to work in such inhabitable conditions.

Asura smiled back giddily at him as if they were simply embarking on a pleasant summer stroll.

“You’re coming!” he crowed. “Excellent. I like your company. A family company. Hey! Look! This is the real me, Kiddo! I’m not afraid anymore!”

He laughed so loudly and maniacally that a few of their homeless neighbors glanced toward them. Kid tried to ignore their judgmental stares as they headed further and further down the street—farther from the only place they called home.

“I’m going to be the king!” Asura announced. “I’m going to take over the world and burn it down with me and everyone will be free, just like me!”

“Slow down,” Kid panted, only just managing to catch up with his brother's feverish pace. “Ash! Stop! Where are you going?”

“We’re going to be free, silly! Bang the doldrums!”

Asura didn’t explain these odd proclamations any further, and he was so lost in his own world that he probably couldn’t have if he wanted to, anyway. He made an aggressive turn left, right, left, and then he skipped across the street, directly into an intersection. The arbitrary navigation seemed to make perfect sense in his mind.

Much to Kid’s dismay, there was currently a not-insignificant number of cars occupying the road—which was to be expected, even at such an hour, from the City That Never Sleeps. A speeding taxi cab flew by, missing them by an inch, and another car slammed to a dead halt only a split second away from plummeting into Asura. The driver honked ferociously, but for once, Asura appeared unfazed by the loud sound.

He whirled around to face Kid as they successfully cleared their first bought of New York traffic.

“My brother, my brother,” he said. “I need you to transform for me, please.”

“W-what? Why?”

He leaned in closer. “It’s life or death,” he whispered. “You know, Mom doesn’t want you to live with me anymore. She’s gonna take you back, a mile along a shack and sweet snack. Hey! Ho!”

“You aren’t making any sense,” Kid said, nearly shouting in his desperate need to be heard, especially over the rush of the nearby freeway.

“That’s because you aren’t listening! Listen with your heart! Listen—”

“No, you listen to me! Look, I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but I’m not gonna transform right now. It’s freezing. We have to go back, or you’re going to get even more sick.”

“Who said I was sick? We can’t go back,” Asura said. “We can never go back.”

“How about we go to a hospital instead?”

“Oh! No thank you!” Asura turned to run off again.

Kid seized the end of Asura’s scarf, the muddy beige one that had been worn down to the threads with overuse and miscare, and tugged with as much urgency as he could muster.

“I wasn’t asking,” he shouted. “We’re going to the hospital, now.”

“Pass,” Asura said. “Hos-pi-tal. Tall. Hall. Deck the halls, with…falala-lala, lalalala!”

He jerked out of reach—admittedly Kid’s fault for getting distracted by his song—and continued skipping down the street. He was coming dangerously close to the edge of the overpass, a crumbling bridge of stone that was not properly fenced off from the remainder of the sidewalk.

“Get down from there,” Kid said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital! I’m free! You don’t cage a winged bird!”

Asura swung his right leg over the concrete ledge and clambered to prop himself atop. He was wobbly, but smiling from ear to ear again, truly detached from any fear of falling to his death. He stretched his arms out and closed his eyes against the breeze of traffic below.

“Hey, Kiddo! I’m going to jump!” he sang.

“What?”

“I said, I’m going to jump! Jump with me! We’re going to fly like birds, far away from this shithole!”

Kid stood motionless, paralyzed by the scene before him. 

“You know, I was once scared too,” Asura went on. “I get it, I get it, I get it, man. But you don’t have to be scared. We’ll jump together!”

“No, we shouldn’t jump at all!”

“On the count of three!”

Kid had become faintly aware of the hot tears streaming down his face now, the salty liquid threatening to freeze solid where they stood on his cheeks. 

“One!”

“Ash!”

“Two!”

“Ash!”

“Three—!”

Kid threw his entire weight forward and wrapped himself as tight as he could around Asura’s legs. It felt and probably looked entirely pathetic, and he didn’t even know if this was the correct course of action, but it seemed like the only thing left to do.

“What are you doing?” Asura said, sincerely confused.

“We don’t have to go to the hospital!” Kid wept. “I’m sorry! I’ll transform! I’ll go wherever you want! I swear on Mom’s grave, just please, please —”

“Hey, all ya had to do was ask. Whup!”

Asura hopped off the concrete wall, thankfully in the safest possible direction, landing with a dusty thud at Kid’s feet. He brushed himself off then held his hand out expectantly.

“Transform now,” he said.

“But—”

“You promised me.”

Exhaling a shuddering breath, Kid took Asura’s hand with care, as if it were glass that might shatter. His brother’s arm felt comically limp. Like it belonged to a rag doll. Or a dead person. When he let go, his arm flopped uselessly at his side.

“Any day now,” Asura said.

“I know. I know.”

In a familiar flash of bright pink light, Kid’s body shifted from flesh to compact steel. Asura caught the first pistol soundly in one hand and promptly stuffed the other into his back pocket. It was their annoyingly asymmetrical routine, and it was never going to change—Asura argued it would be excessive to carry a gun in each hand, even for the sake of balance.

“There,” Kid sniffled, his voice muffled in Asura’s pocket. “I did what you asked. Happy now?” 

“Eca-static,” Asura replied cheerfully. “Left right, left right—red light!”

They were heading down the sidewalk again. Kid’s vision became partially obscured whenever Asura kept the other pistol concealed, but he could still hear the cars nearby.

He figured as long as Asura was content, and staying directly out of traffic’s way, things couldn’t get too catastrophic. Right? Eventually Asura would tire himself out, and he’d let Kid take the lead. Right? 

“You were too young to remember,” Asura was saying overhead.

“Remember what?” Kid asked.

“Remember? I hardly know her! HA!”

The sound of cars slowly dissipated to nothingness. Asura stopped hobbling across random roads, and instead approached a tall, metal gate. He rattled the bars dramatically like a desperate prisoner on death row.

“Looks like it’s locked,” Kid said.

“I can see that, smart guy. Key. Bee, free. Do you have the key?”

“What key?”

“The one to—shut up, shut up! Someone’s coming.”

Asura crammed the right-hand pistol into his coat, rendering Kid completely blind. A stranger’s voice came into dim earshot.

“Lock yourself out?” a young female inquired.

“Yes ma’am,” Asura said. “I’m going to climb to the roof and fly straight out of New York. They’ll talk about me on the morning news tomorrow.”

The stranger laughed politely at that. Kid prayed that she’d notice something was obviously amiss—but the mystery passerby performed no such miracles, presumably inferring instead that Asura was merely a drunk tenant who had locked himself out of the complex. The iron doors jingled briefly, and a swinging creak indicated that the stranger had left the gate open for them. Her footsteps echoed ahead until they melted away entirely.

Asura drew Kid again from his pocket and darted up the stairs, a flight of steps that wound around the building in a tight spiral. His shoes made booming, thunderous footfalls against the concrete. He came to a stop after about four floors (though Kid could have counted poorly), tumbling into a long stretch of hallway. He looked both ways before squatting beside a nearby doormat.

He checked underneath, cussed loudly, and then began to probe a nearby potted plant with his fingers.

“What are you looking for?” Kid said.

“Everyone keeps a spare,” Asura whispered back. “Except for this dumb bitch. She’ll be the first to go. I have a list, and she is on it, let me tell you.”

He stood up straight and gave the door one, two, three violent kicks, until something cracked loudly within the wooden frame.

“Ash, stop! Someone is going to hear you and call the cops,” Kid warned. “We’ll definitely get in trouble if they catch—OW!”

Without any warning, Asura cracked Kid over the door knob in a sloppy effort to loosen the lock. The sound of metal striking metal sent shivers down his spine, and would bruise his human skin later, but Asura didn’t appear to care. He struck the pistol repeatedly against the door knob, simultaneously delivering kicks to the wooden surface.

“I’m not made out of freakin’ titanium!” Kid shrieked. “Ow! Quit it!”

Asura jiggled something free and the door gave way.

“Check it out, Kiddo,” he said, creeping forward in awe.

“I can’t see anything when you hold me so crooked.”

“Oops! I forgot you were there. There ya go.”

Asura tossed the pistols haphazardly, and Kid shifted forms. He stumbled to the ground, relieved to finally be out of Asura’s pockets. He looked around the room in hazy stupor.

As much as he knew they needed to leave, he could appreciate a building with a central heating unit. His need for warmth combined with simple curiosity overrode any sense of urgency that a more responsible person would have retained. Just where the hell were they, and why had Asura brought them here?

The room was dark, lit only by golden street lights leaking through the glass door which led to the balcony. The colors made Kid oddly nostalgic.

Had it not been so filthy, it might have been a decently spacious apartment: the living room and kitchen floors were barely visible beneath a layer of trash, burnt out cigarettes, and broken bottles; the sink was piled to the brim with dirty dishes, leaving a smell like decaying food all throughout the apartment; and a small skittering sound suggested that either rats or roaches dwelled within these mountainous piles of garbage.

Kid gagged and covered his mouth, unable to tolerate such a powerful stench. He’d seen homeless encampments cleaner than this.

“It looks like nobody’s home,” Asura reported, emerging from an adjacent bedroom. “Dumb bitch.”

“Let’s get out of here before you break something more than their door knob,” Kid said. “This is way worse than shoplifting. Also, it’s absolutely foul in here.”

But Asura had already stalked off elsewhere.

Sighing defeatedly, Kid decided he might as well take a better look around. He trudged his way through fast food wrappers and glass shards, approaching the television set sitting in the back of the living room. It was an extremely old device with antennae and a knob, unlike the fancy flatscreens he saw in store windows. When he turned it on, nothing happened.

He ran his fingers over the dusty surface. TVs reminded him of pancakes and Saturday morning cartoons. When they were younger, Asura liked Voltron and Speedracer, but Kid had preferred SpongeBob and Fairy Odd Parents. They used to fight for the remote. They would spend so long fighting that Kid’s cereal would get soggy. And then he would cry, until Mama yelled for him to just eat the damn food.

He liked Kix and Cheerios. Plain cereal. He hated any colors or flavors that could leak into the milk.

He shook his head as if to physically rid himself of such a vivid memory. They hadn’t had the luxury of a television in years.

He drew an eight in the dust for good measure.

Behind him, the couch was too dirty to rest on in good conscience. He examined its bumpy surface, fingers hovering over multiple stains in the linen. The cushions were a sickly yellow that might have been white at some point in its lifespan, and he loathed it so much it made him nauseous.

He swept a half dozen empty beer cans off of the adjacent night stand. They clattered at his shoes to reveal a broken picture frame, lying face down on the table. He carefully propped up the fallen frame.

People with money ought to take better care of their belongings, he thought bitterly.

The wooden frame was adorned with a campy Hallmark font, some sappy platitude engraved poorly along the top and bottom edge. Kid ran his thumb over the quote like braille. ‘The greatest gift our parents ever gave us was each other.’

The glass was cracked and the photo beneath was speckled with cigarette burns, but Kid could still make out the contents: two young boys smiling together. The camera’s flash produced a red-eye effect on them both.

The first boy appeared to be about fifteen or sixteen in age. He was holding a toddler upside-down by the ankles. Based on the toddler’s gleeful expression, he was more than okay with being held in such a compromising position.

Kid brought the photo closer, and his stomach dropped.

“Ash,” Kid called out shakily.

“Whaaaat?”

“Ca—can you c-come in here?”

Footsteps and bottles clinking. In slow motion, Asura emerged again from the hallway, his coat pockets stuffed to the brim with miscellaneous valuables. He gave his brother an irritated look.

“Kid,” he clucked disapprovingly. “What are you doing out of weapon form? Didn’t you hear? We’re going to rule the world someday, and that day is coming now! It is upon us no less. That is my credo, and such is your forte. You—”

“Come look at this,” Kid interrupted.

But before he could extend the photograph, before Asura could even think to cut in with another burst of word salad, a burning light white light beamed into their faces.

“What are you boys doing here?”

Kid yelped and instinctively dove behind his brother. Between Asura’s legs, he could make out the silhouette of a middle-aged man in a generic gray uniform. He stood at the doorway, gripping an industrial-grade flashlight between two shaky hands. He wasn’t a cop, but he was still bad news—probably the apartment complex’s security guard, with a walkie talkie strapped to a holster at his belt.

“We live here,” Asura replied. He spoke with the confidence of a petty criminal who had been doing this for years, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that he was just as frightened as the security guard.

“No, you don’t. This might be a surprise to you, but this is private property,” the guard said. “We got noise complaints from a neighbor and a tenant on another floor.”

“Well, tell them there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You’re breaking and entering. I’ve already called the sheriff’s department. So why don’t we just—”

“My brother and I are going to be king of the world someday,” Asura blurted.

The startled look on the guard’s face was almost comical. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. This is my little brother. Look at him. Isn’t he so cute?” Asura pat him on the head kindly before his expression steeled again. “You’re making a big mistake. You’re on my list now.”

In the distance, the foreboding wail of sirens rang throughout the city. This man wasn’t bluffing about calling for backup.

“I don’t know what you boys are up to, but you’re coming with me until the coppers get here.”

“No thank you. Back off,” Asura said. “Hey. Hey. Don’t come any closer.”

“As for you, young man, where are your parents?”

Kid shrank further behind his meister, making a nervous humming sound that he was not fully aware he was making. Asura put a protective arm around him.

“I said back off!” he snarled.

And then, the security guard made a careless mistake. He reached for the walkie talkie on his belt.

What happened next was their own grave mistake, an indelible stain that Kid would never be able to wash out of his memory, no matter how hard he tried to forget.

If only, if only. If only he had jammed the trigger. If only he had stopped himself from firing a bullet at all. If only he had thought for himself, rather than placing blind faith in the hands of his older brother.

If only he had known better.

But Kid unfortunately didn’t know any better, and nobody had ever taught him to, and he had no idea how to control his strength in weapon form. It was instinct to obey Asura’s every decision without question in situations like these.

It was a reflex.

A reflex was something he had no control over.

Right?

* * *

When he came to, he was on his knees, back in human form, and he was covered in blood.

For the first time in his life, it dawned on him that he wasn’t just some fancy prop to wave around during gas station robberies. He wasn’t just a theatrical means to obtain shoplifted food or cigarettes. He was a Demon Weapon. And he could hurt people really, really bad.

Yes, his bullets were made from the compressed soul wavelengths, but those were still deadly, especially to ordinary humans who could not withstand such energy. There were pieces of ruined flesh and spattered brain sprawled across the floor. A puddle of crimson liquid had pooled beneath the security guard’s shattered skull, seeping into the crevices between kitchen tiles. His eyes were still open, mouth contorted in words that had died in his throat.

Kid could barely parse what he was seeing. These images were borne of a nightmare come to life.

Meanwhile, Asura was already in the process of patting the body down, pocketing a wallet and cellphone that would never again be needed by its owner. He determined aloud that the security guard was unarmed.

Kid repeated those words over and over in his head. He was unarmed. He wasn’t equipped with a firearm, or handcuffs, or even a taser. He was just a civilian paid by the landlord to keep drunk people from making too much noise on a Friday.

He had just been doing his job.

Kid made some noise that might have been a scream but instead sounded like strangled pain. “Oh my God,” he breathed, “oh my God!”

“Relax,” Asura said.

“You shot him! You shot him, Asura, you shot him!”

“No, you did,” he corrected, kicking the body aside. “Too bad, so sad. He’s going to fly over the rainbow now. We’ll join him in disarray someday. Hooray!”

Kid shook his head in horror, but Asura’s attention was diverted elsewhere. Something peculiar was happening to the dead security guard.

Simply put, his body was…unraveling at the seams. Turning into black matter. Disintegrating before their eyes.

There was a burst of light, and then—the body had disappeared entirely.

In its wake remained a pale blue orb of light. A soul.

An innocent, human soul.

It floated meekly above the blood-stained floor, the only remaining evidence that a life had been wrongfully taken that night. Asura stepped forward. With bloodied hands, he cupped the soul gently.

“What are you doing?” Kid croaked out, horrified at this supernatural altercation. “Don’t—don’t touch that, whatever it is! Asura—!”

Deaf to his pleas, Asura tipped his head back, jaw unhinged and mouth yawning wide open. The soul slipped between his lips.

With one clean gulp, it was gone. Kid could see it worming its way down his throat, as if unconsciously fighting against its inevitable fate.

His meister had consumed this life with such confidence and precision. And without any hint of remorse. Kid suddenly realized this was not the first human soul Asura had ever made a meal of.

It then hit him, too, that truly, Asura had gone mad. He wasn’t just having suicidal thoughts or a psychotic break. He wasn’t just schizophrenic or addicted to drugs. He had nonchalantly committed an evil, unforgivable sin, something that signified a moral failing deeper than substance abuse or mental illness.

Eyes wide, Kid stepped backwards.

The sirens outside had reached a peak in volume. Blue and red lights flickered through the glass door and off the rancid apartment walls.

“Yum,” Asura said, brushing his hands off on his pants, like he had simply gotten a bit of dirty yard work done. He craned his neck toward the glass door. “Oopsie, Kiddo. I think they’re here now. Should I go talk to them?”

Kid shook his head, unable to make his voice work, his mind tangled in an overwhelming onslaught of panic and shock.

“I’m going to talk to them,” Asura decided. “They might have questions. Eight, seven, six…”

Asura sauntered toward the glass door, prying it open and peering out over the balcony. He shouted something unintelligible, presumably at the police cars below. He turned and smiled at Kid.

In this surreal lighting, he almost didn’t look human. His teeth appeared impossibly crooked, rotten, as if they were going to fall right out of his skull. His pupils glowed a fiery red and the silver birthmark in his hair had spread into a mottled ring around his head. The pattern resembled the demonic eyes tattooed on the back of his hands.

“I got this under control, Kiddo,” Asura said. “I don’t even need you anymore! I’m free now, don’t you get it? Hey. Can you find your way home by yourself?”

Words wouldn’t come. Kid nodded numbly.

“Get the hell outta here, then,” he said. “Don’t let them catch you. I’ll meet you at home.”

Effortlessly, Asura slung his legs over the balcony rail, and in one swift movement he vaulted over the edge. It didn’t seem to matter that they were several stories off the ground. He disappeared so suddenly that Kid could hardly believe he had been standing there to begin with.

Maybe he hadn’t.

Kid didn’t think to check. In a way, he was too scared to check; he didn’t want to imagine a reality in which his brother did not survive such a fall.

Something—maybe the pulse of Asura’s soul wavelength, maybe the sheer adrenaline rush—screamed at him to finally move.

He wrenched himself free of his own paralysis, tumbling backwards into a sea of broken glass and discarded beer cans, jagged shards digging into his palms. He shakily regained his footing and lunged for the front door.

The stairs winded him almost immediately and the air outside set his lungs afire, but he had to run. There was only so much time his brother could buy him before the cops noticed a scraggly, orphaned boy fleeing an active crime scene. He ran and ran and ran, until the blood throbbed so loudly in his head that he couldn’t hear the sirens any longer.

He had lied earlier when he told Asura he knew the way back home. He had absolutely no way of knowing. He didn’t even know the name of the freeway ramp adjacent to their encampment. He had long since lost track of the twists and turns, and it all seemed meaningless, anyway, if his brother was going to get arrested tonight.

(Maybe that was for the better, though. Maybe they could help him in ways Kid certainly could never.)

He ran as far as his broken down body would take him. Once his legs began to buckle, he ducked into an alleyway behind a lonely deli store and collapsed on the asphalt. He pulled himself behind the dumpster for extra safety, even though it smelled terrible and was likely crawling with germs.

All at once, the cumulative trauma of the past ten years of his life crashed down all around him, and he heaved a dry sob. In the morning, wherever he’d find himself, he would still have nowhere to go; he would still have no shelter, no food, and no needy older brother to call him retarded. In fact, he would never have an older brother again.

He curled his right hand into a fist and smacked himself on the head, counting to eight and then switching to the other hand. It hurt but he deserved it. He’d lost his only brother. The person who had raised him and taken care of him. The person who had dealt with his countless tantrums and neurotic behaviors. His public meltdowns. His biting. His kicking. His unhealthy craving for symmetry.

Even now, the obsessive and selfish side of him was distressed, too, that Asura had casually committed homicide without thinking of the symmetry. He had only fired one bullet from one chamber. The right chamber. His left-hand pistol had never loosed the bullet that might have balanced that first shot.

And now he was going to be asymmetrical forever. Because no way in hell would he let another person use his pistol form ever again. The man they’d killed tonight was somebody’s father, somebody’s brother, and there was no way to bring him back to life.

Bruised and cold, Kid yanked his hood over his head, pulling the strings as tightly shut as possible. And then he continued to cry his eyes out like there was no tomorrow—like nobody was there to call him an ugly crier.