Chapter Text
They’re still drifting, struggling, when a voice calls out to them- No, not them. To Nero. To Nero who isn’t Kyrie.
A voice calls out to Nero and a bright piercing light comes shooting into the darkness of their cocoon and they go from barely cognizant to completely aware in the span of about two seconds. Neither of them are sure what’s happening exactly but they both know instinctively they need to get out.
In perfect sync their hand shoots out of the opening that the ‘a Sword?’ ‘Yamato!’ has made, gripping the hilt and using it to tear a way out.
They emerge in a shower of slime, toppling knees and elbows first onto something neither flesh nor stone. A deluge of some sort of liquid follows them out, as though they weren’t already soaked. The puddle of gore and other mystery fluids they’re sitting in is disgusting, but being free of that half-dreaming state is worth the discomfort.
Nero glances around for Kyrie but doesn’t see her.
Where is she?
Kyrie looks for Nero but can’t see him either.
“Kyrie-?” Nero shouts in alarm, or tries to, but his voice croaks out weak and congested. She had just been with him, he was sure of it- he can’t lose her, not when they were so close to escaping!
‘I’m here Nero!’ Kyrie responds, and relief floods his body, ‘Where are you?’
And just like that, the relief is gone. Confusedly, he looks around again. They should be in the same place, right? Now that he thinks about it, they couldn’t have gotten separated, so where…?
A wet slap comes from behind them and they turn to see a wet pile of clothing. That’s their clothing, so wait are they-
He’s not sure how he failed to notice, but yeah, he’s definitely naked. His entire face goes scarlet. His left arm instinctively wraps around his chest as he hears a ‘Yeek!’ from Kyrie that makes his ears ring.
‘Wait,’ thinks Nero, ‘what?’ as he purposefully unwraps and unclenches his hand.
‘Wait,’ thinks Kyrie, ‘how?’ as she looks at her right arm, Yamato firmly in its grasp- but it’s not her right arm. It’s Nero’s, glowing blue cracks running down the red carapace, exactly as she’d seen it earlier, but it’s attached to her.
It dawns on Nero that his hair feels longer than it was, sticking wetly to his bare back. The feeling makes him shiver. Kyrie’s center of balance feels off, she’s weirdly top heavy. Nero’s chest feels strange.
Something is wrong with their bodies, they don’t feel right.
Something is very, very wrong.
Nero and Kyrie catch their eyes reflected in Yamato’s blade.
Their eyes.
The right one is Nero’s steely blue, the left one is Kyrie’s amber brown.
Sanctus’ words come back to them, “Within the Savior your mortal bodies shall combine, melting into one-”
‘He wasn’t fucking kidding,’ thinks Nero, as he stares at the sliver of their reflection in horrified fascination. His hand shakily lifts to press along his- their cheek.
‘He- was right!? Nero? Nero you’re in here with me, right?’
‘Kyrie? We’re… There’s no way, there’s just no way-!” But there is. They’re seeing, feeling the same things, sensations overlapping. Those are their hands, their skin is pale and new, devoid of marks or scars. Their free hand grabs a handful of hair, bringing it into their line of sight- and it’s white. White as Nero’s in spite of everything in Kyrie’s mind telling her it should be auburn.
They both try to speak at once, but the tongue trips over itself as their heartbeat races and breathing picks up. They can’t force their mouth to cooperate, bones and tendons feeling loose and strange, strangled little sounds are all they can make. Tears start that neither of them can stop.
Confused and terrified, they sit there on their knees, gasping for air as they try to understand what they’ve become.
What they’ve been made into.
Every time they try to shift, to get up, their body freezes, actions stalling as they tremble in place. The same thing happens when they try to move their arms.
Nero tips straight into hysteria as their bodies- body disobeys them, or rather, tries to obey both of them at once. Neither one of them knows who’s breathing but short panicked sobs are all they can manage. Lack of air makes their vision start to go spotty.
‘If we keep hyperventilating, we’re going to pass out,’ Kyrie realizes, half swept up in Nero’s panic. ‘If we pass out…’
If they pass out someone’s gonna put them back into that thing.
She tries to wrestle down her own horror as she forces them to take the deepest breath she can and holds it, counts, releases the air slowly, takes another- and feels their body, new and foreign from her teeth to her toenails, skin too tight and the proportions all wrong, like waking up wearing the clothes of a stranger but so much worse- and- and-
She can’t do this.
Kyrie starts screaming.
Nero is screaming right alongside her, her singer’s lungs (theirs, their lungs, oh god) used to full effect. Their combined shrieking reverberates throughout the statue, bouncing off the walls, ringing in their head until it feels like their world has become nothing but noise and their thoughts fade into static. Their hands (not right, too long, too soft-) clench tight on the hilt of the Yamato, stabbed into the floor in front of them. The sword is the only thing keeping them upright.
They scream and scream and don’t stop until their throat goes raw and they start coughing and wheezing instead.
They hear a voice again, the voice from outside. ‘Dante,’ Nero recognizes him, or maybe Kyrie does, through Nero.
Their head hurts. Everything they remember from today is jumbled together, memories and thoughts rolling around together like loose marbles.
“Kid, listen to me! Kid- Nero! You gotta breathe! Whatever’s going on in there you need to breathe!”
Breathe. The Dante voice is right, they need to do that. If Nero can’t, Kyrie can, she has to, she knows how. Push aside everything else, refocus, breathe. Breathe.
Everything else can wait.
It hurts, but she draws in the deepest breath she can, again. Their lungs feel almost stiff, forcing the air in makes their throat close up, setting off another coughing fit.
Okay, steadier, firm but controlled, she can do that. Somewhere in their head Nero’s still in the throes of panic, whenever he gasps for air it half chokes her and it’s really distracting. Already she can feel her head swimming. …Their head.
Not helpful.
When she was little, she was warned about trying to save drowning victims, that if you don’t bring a floatie they’ll drag you down, too, whether they mean to or not.
The similarities are not lost on her.
Kyrie has no floatie. All she can do is keep calm herself, try to soothe Nero, and hope he starts ‘treading water’ on his own. The tears won’t stop, but that’s fine. They can cry as long as they need to.
She starts running through her breathing exercises once again, steadily, purposefully. Ignores the feeling of her ribs (theirs, their ribs, their lungs-) expanding to focus entirely on the rhythm.
Then she does them in reverse order, then evens and odds, until their heartbeat is no longer all they can hear, and the tears slow. Their hands still tremble and Kyrie knows that if she loses her concentration they’ll fall right back into the panic threatening to drag them in.
No thoughts then, just breathing.
‘Easy as can be, Nero,’ She coaxes him, ‘breathe with me, you can do it!’ Slowly, she feels him stop struggling against her and hesitantly start to follow her lead. Their breathing syncs up, Kyrie no longer has to brute force their lungs into cooperating, which is a relief. Once they calm down properly they can figure out what to do next. Maybe make a to-do list.
“Listen kid, I don’t know if you can hear me, but it’s up to you from here! An opportunity to save the world doesn't happen every day, you know! Don’t make me have to save your ass a second time!”
To-do list made.
The man that did this to them is still running amok.
Still destroying buildings and hurting people and lying to everyone and probably plotting to put them back in the place where they couldn’t think and their tissues and sinew was rendered down into sludge and they would absolutely NOT go back.
They need to stop him. They’ve got to.
‘Right… I remember,’ Nero’s clearer and calmer now, refocussing at the reminder that they have a job to do, ‘I promised you we’d get out of here together. We’ll figure something out, but first we need to send that bastard straight to hell.’ Nero’s determination and rage burns like fire in their chest, and Kyrie feels her own anger and resolve meld together with his.
Goal decided.
“G’tta stop ‘m. Won’t. Lose.”
— — — — — — — — — —
To send a man to hell, they first have to deal with the nightmarish reality of suddenly being one when once they were two.
Moving is nearly impossible unless they move in sync. If they don’t, they just end up trembling in place as their brain misfires, sending conflicting signals to fawn weak limbs.
So step one becomes dragging themselves through getting dressed. Neither of them are willing to fight naked, but it is deeply unpleasant. Figuring out which set of clothing fits is bad enough, but adding that it’s soaked with what they’ve concluded is whatever bits of them didn’t fit takes it to a whole new level of disturbing.
Wearing the wet clothing isn’t exactly enjoyable either.
It’s lucky Nero’s pants were loose fitting; they easily agree that they’re not going to be able to fight wearing Kyrie’s dress, but their hips are now wider than Nero’s- though not as wide as Kyrie’s. They end up having to ditch his hooded vest, it just doesn’t fit their shoulders and chest comfortably, which, again, are averaged between them. The less they think about undergarments, the better. They haven’t exactly had the chance or desire to examine any of those changes in detail yet (one crisis at a time), but whatever they’ve ended up with is irrelevant; it feels exactly as weird as the rest of their body.
Although, they’re getting used to the body the more they (sluggishly, Nero feels like a turtle) move in it, even if they keep coming to a jerky halt whenever one of them twitches wrong.
Like Credo says, “adapt, overcome.”
Nero doesn’t think he meant this to be where his advice was used. At least, he really hopes not.
They find Red Queen and Blue Rose jammed inside the pod they were in (not gonna think about that, they’d barely pulled themselves together…), only a little worse for wear- still very much usable, thankfully. Nero’s gonna give them a deep clean the minute they get this mess sorted out.
They’d be able to fight with just Yamato and the bringer, but having his personally modified weapons back soothes Nero like a very lethal security blanket. Kyrie is soothed by proxy, though she doesn’t quite understand why. It seems like something of their muscle memory carried over, or at least his did; now’s not a good time to test Kyrie’s embroidery skills.
The path forward is obvious, though the construction is strange. Arcane portals that require specific dice rolls for entry? Fuckin weird. Nero already dealt with this board game trial once and he hated it then, too. Their board game piece, though…
Is that what they look like now?
Fascinated, Nero and Kyrie search the face for familiarity and find it.
Yes, those are Nero’s cheekbones, almost his nose though it’s slightly snubbier, the shape of his mouth and brows. Fuller lips and the downturned slope of the eye is all Kyrie, their face isn’t round exactly, but soft. Kyrie thinks the person they’ve become has a sweet face. They’re cute, even.
To Nero’s dismay they realize their height evened out between them, leaving them a couple inches shorter than he once was. The hair is the least surprising part, choppy and spiky as though the lengths of both their hair had mixed.
They tilt their head to the side and stare for what is probably a little too long before shaking themselves and refocusing.
Nero recalls what this game was like last time for Kyrie’s benefit, and yes, that’s very weird. To have something like that blocking the entry to a laboratory? She follows the memory further, curiously, and feels Nero trying to draw her away from it.
Something bad happened there, just remembering it is painful. She agrees to leave it for later, but eventually she wants to know everything.
She can feel Nero’s reluctance.
‘Everything, Nero.’ She projects her thoughts more clearly for emphasis. He’s been bearing so many burdens all alone, and it’s been hurting him. She’s not going to stand idly by anymore, not when she can share them.
‘I… okay. Later though, later.’ Fine, later, but Kyrie’s going to wheedle it out of him one way or another.
It takes a couple circles around the board before they get the hang of the timing and manage to get through the portal. The red spaces summon all manner of strange demons who immediately try and murder them, and they take a few hits before Kyrie figures out how to repress her reflexes and let Nero be the ‘pilot.’ Riding backseat in what both is and isn’t her body is utterly bizarre.
‘When we get out of this you can be “pilot” til we figure this out.’ Nero offers.
‘Absolutely not, if we’re stuck like this for long, we’ll take turns or something. Like on the swingset.’
‘Like on the swingset?’ The thought startles a laugh out of Nero in spite of himself.
‘Well not exactly, I promise I won’t make you swap every time I count to ten.’ Satisfaction blooms in her chest. She can’t fight or heal, the least she can do is make him smile.
— — — — — — — — — —
Watching Nero fight is a far different experience while seeing from his eyes, hearing from his ears. Yes, technically theirs, but Nero’s captaining the ship at the moment, and is being a knight always like this? Dizzying flipping and jumping, strikes dodged by a hair?
The portal of the first tier had them facing down some armored knights- Nero took them out with a bit of dodging around followed by a single well placed shot to some sort of magical orb they fired, which sent it rebounding back to destroy the knights in a cacophony of clattering metal.
They move up a tier, do the silly board game and come face to face with something between a centaur, a lion, and a dragon. The demon is easily five times their height, and just being in proximity to it makes sweat bead on their skin from the oppressive heat. Is Nero going to be able to beat this thing? Kyrie has faith in his skills, but…
‘This guy again?’ Nero thinks, and Kyrie reels.
‘Again!?’ she squeaks.
It’s a memory easily shared, Nero stands against the beast in their mind and in reality, though he sassed the creature the first time they clashed. Of course he did.
Nero knows the demon’s moves already, but just because he can see the blows coming doesn’t mean he always dodges them. There’s a starburst of guilt every time he fails to dodge, because now getting hurt means that she gets hurt, too. He slays the demon in the end. As it dies, it dissipates into a burst of flame with a roar.
Nero doesn’t remember it doing that before.
Kyrie is in shock at how easily he bested the thing, but pleased they don’t get hit as many times as Nero had, alone. They might be slightly charred, but in his first fight he’d barely made it out alive.
‘Last time I didn’t have you with me.’ Nero thinks, and their face stretches in a lopsided grin. Making expressions feels just as weird as everything else does.
‘I wish you’d avoid getting hit for your own sake instead of just mine.’ She’s still content with the outcome, and she knows he can feel it. Their right hand comes up to rub at their nose, a gesture that’s all Nero.
‘It’s not just that.’ He protests, ‘I’m not sure you can tell, but you notice things I miss- or we notice…? I notice because you notice…? Man, this is confusing...’
‘Oh! Well, I’m glad it’s helping!’ She knows that if she were piloting during a fight it would be a disaster, so it’s nice to know that something she’s doing is actually useful to him.
‘You always help me, Kyrie, honest. Now let’s get the rest of these guys!’ Determination fills their body.
Bring on the next challenge.
— — — — — — — — — —
The next challenge is awful. Nero hadn’t been kidding when he had told this asshole he wasn’t a fan of toads. Hell, even if he had been he would’ve still hated this guy.
Fighting him a second time promised to be an exercise in frustration, he could already feel Kyrie’s mortification at the weird behavior of the lures on the antennae. Plus the stench off him- Their eyes water from the intensity of it. This is gonna suck so bad.
‘Eww, he smells like an outhouse!’ Their face scrunches into a grimace as the odor reaches them properly.
‘And mouldy socks. I remember him stinking the last time, but not this bad.’ Nero almost hesitates to rev up Red Queen, for fear that burning this thing would worsen the ungodly smell. He grits their teeth. ‘Gotta do what we gotta do.’
‘I really hate to rush you, but please make this fast!’ Kyrie has a decently strong stomach, but this is testing her limits.
‘Your wish is my command, I don’t wanna spend a second more around this guy then we have to.’ They hold their breath and attack.
— — — — — — — — — —
The less said about Echidna the better.
— — — — — — — — — —
Nero is the one to insist they take a break before the next fight. At first, Kyrie doesn’t understand why; they stop the die a single space from entry, and Nero hesitates, going to sit on the step before the portal.
‘Nero?’ Questioningly, she probes at him. ‘Are you tired? Do you need a rest?’
‘Yeah, but that’s not why I stopped… it’s just, these have all been the most challenging enemies I’ve faced up until now.’ He lets the thought trail off, clearly nervous.
‘Yes, but I don’t- oh.’ She realizes, ‘Credo.’
Who Nero lost to, last time. The man who taught Nero how to use a sword, who practically raised both of them after Kyrie’s parents died.
Credo is likely next.
‘We can take a minute,’ Kyrie decides, as an uneasy anticipation fills their heart. ‘Just a minute.’
‘Just a minute.’