Chapter 15:

One fate, many strings

Fantaschiel!! The Legendary Rom-Com without Romance or Comedy in it


The dance of blades begins. Fantastasia clearly has the edge over Hans von Lederkuchen- he’s a baker by profession, after all.

The fight only lasts a couple of seconds before the immensely more skillful demon girl drives her spear through the villain’s abdomen. Hans topples to the floor without much resistance.

“Let me tell you a story, Fan-Fan,” a puppet from the surrounding crowd jumps up on the pedestal, speaking in Lederkuchen’s voice.

“Having you call me that is kind of disgusting, hehe,” the pink-haired girl grinds her teeth and decapitates the doll in but a single stroke.

“There once was a boy whose sole passion in life was baking,” another replacement takes the stage, once again not holding out for more than a few moments.

“He decided to become the greatest baker to have ever lived.” The third puppet hits the floor.

“But, the world’s greatest chefs-”

“-have many more chefs working under them, right?” Two more bodies to add to the heap of trash.

“However, the boy had no friends…”

“...and only got so good within his lifetime.”

She’s gonna dull her blade real hard this time around.

An unusually cheerful wooden doll stands in front of her. “So he had a brilliant idea! Two birds with one stone, indeed!”

Even the cheerful one falls apart all the same.

“So,”

“He,”

“Forsook,”

“His,”

“Humanity,”

“And,”

“Became,”

“A,”

“Puppet.”

The girl’s moves are starting to slow down. Her lack of stamina is now more than evident.

“He made a lot of puppet friends too!”

“And they all baked together!”

“And they all became the world’s greatest baker-”

“-together!”

Fantastasia laughs, a bit more unnerved than she’d like. “That’s the single worst villain origin backstory I’ve ever heard.”

“What’s so bad about following a dream?” a wooden doll formed after a child walks up to her. “Isn’t a dream something to make real?”

The pink-haired girl has no mercy to spare though.

“Weren’t our confections the best you’ve ever tasted?” the puppet she killed first rises up from the ground, ignoring the massive hole in its stomach.

Fantastasia stops in her tracks. “I mean, I guess they were, yeah.”

“Then our purpose is being fulfilled!” the tens of thousands of marionettes all roar at once.

Ahahaha. This is really bad.

“Soon, we’ll bring our cakes to everyone across the world!” the head she cut off earlier speaks to her. A single stomp takes care of that issue.

“Wait, that actually doesn’t sound that bad!” she blurts out.

A sharp pain in her abdomen. She looks down to see a blade poking out of her gut. Biting her tongue to power through the world of hurt and humiliation, she swears to never lose focus like that ever again.

“But what if someday we perish?” the murderous puppet behind her talks right into her ear. “What if a greater baker comes to replace us? Then we won’t be the greatest baker to have ever lived!”

Ignoring the immense pain, she manages to remove the weapon from her back, then crushes the marionette to pieces.

“So, we’ll simply become the best AND THEN wipe out all of humanity!” a group of dolls sings together, only to get crushed by ice spikes moments later.

’What’s with this sudden world domination plot?’ she thinks to herself, freezing the wound in her stomach shut.

She keeps decimating the oncoming marionettes one by one, but there’s no end.

This is a battle of attrition. And she’s very clearly losing.

“To you, it might not seem like much,” a lone puppet walks up to her, catching her spear in its hand for the first time, “but to us, not being the greatest was hell.”

A slight change in the wind. For a brief second, Buddhapest becomes the coldest place on earth.

A gust of frigid air turns every doll in the park to shaved ice, finishing off anything left of the once present vegetation.

In the frozen wasteland stands the demon girl dubbed as The Ice Queen.

“How dare you talk about hell,” she weeps under her breath, “without knowing what it’s like?!”

Her victory was instantaneous. There is no way mere puppets could fend off such a wave of cold.

But the puppets will triumph over the demon girl.

For the puppets have numbers.

The sounds of creaking wood get closer and closer. Into the frozen wasteland, puppets flow like a never ending waterfall, falling over as they slip on the ice and getting back up again.

Fantastasia seethes with anger.

\\

The two men face off in the church filled with wooden carcasses. Dezechiel, still wielding his blade, stares down the bloodsucking monstrosity only known as Sefure Netori.

The vampire cracks his knuckles. “Well then, Dezechiel, do you have what it takes?”

The angel’s blade lets off a light glow. “Yeah, I sure do.”

Sefure smiles. “Then go save her.”

“Eh?”

The mysterious man casually walks past the surprised Deze, going right for the altar.

“Huh? Weren’t you supposed to kill me?”

The vampire turns his head around. “And why would I do that?”

The angel panics. “Well, you took Fan-Fan to Hans and all that…”

Sefure nods. “Ah, yeah, I did. She’s the only one who can stop him, after all.”

Dezechiel gulps.

“Neither of us has what it takes to defeat that man… if you can still call him that. Without your wings, you are not much more than an average demon. But if it’s her, she can do it.”

The angel smirks. “Just how much do you know about her?”

“Well then, who knows?” Sefure smiles, removing the constraints on the sleeping Lysterinn with his claws. “But I’m afraid of one thing. That she’ll go way overboard.”

Deze bites his lip.

“I’ll go stop her, you take Rin-Rin and get out of here. There’s no way to tell how far she can reach.”

The long-lived vampire, who also happens to be the only resident of Buddhapest besides Hans von Lederkuchen, wipes the sweat off of his forehead. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Good luck out there.”

The angel merely nods, then dashes out of the front door, hoping to make it in time.

\\

Every story has to come to an end someday. Provided it’s not Two Piece.

Centuries running away from that tragic night, refusing who you truly are. You can read however many self-improvement books you want, change your personality beyond your wildest imaginations, learn how to act in every social interaction and reconstruct every piece of nonverbal mannerism that makes you you… and you still won’t manage to run away from your past.

Denial and cowardice are some of the greatest causes of pain out there.

Running away from your past won’t change it.

Neither will facing it.

But if you decide to face it, at least you’ll be able to live with yourself a little more.

Pushed to the brink of her limit, Fantastasia is barely managing to stand up straight at this point. And the puppets? Looks like she barely made a dent in their numbers.

Hans von Lederkuchen, having occupied yet another wooden doll, walks up to her.

“All that effort, all those tears… and for what? In the end, it’s all the same.”

Fan-Fan bites down on her lip. A stream of blood runs down her chin- this is the price she has to pay for keeping herself alert. Right about now, her fatigue is really starting to kick in.

“At this very moment, Mary Doll should be finishing off that troublesome angel. In fact, I think I’m gonna hold off on killing you until she drags his lifeless carcass here!”

The air around Fantastasia starts getting cooler.

The puppet grabs her by the chin, looking at her with its button eyes.

“You can play pretend, thinking you are some kind of ’heroine’ who saves people…”

She really doesn’t think that. She never wanted to be a hero or anything of sorts- her dream is to just live a quiet life with some tall, slim and mysterious gentleman.

“...but you can’t protect anyone. Not now, not ever.”

The girl digs her nails into her fingers as the puppet pulls her in closer.

“So, do you have anything to say before I kill you and that loser friend of yours?”

Aaah, aaah. Thinking back, Dezechiel was always there causing problems.

Always there looking at her with those sleazy eyes.

Always there bickering with her.

Always there… when nobody else was there.

Isn’t it funny? She hates him so much, yet…

Aaah, what an insufferable idiot.

For making her feel this way.

She smiles. What an insensitive guy, making her resort to this.

Heed the snow lily,” she whispers under her breath.

“Huh? What was that?” Hans von Lederkuchen draws his ear closer so he can hear her. A fatal mistake since it instantly freezes off.

her voice that spreads permafrost: 

By the second verse, she’s alone in the park. Because of him, she hasn’t been alone for so long, it almost feels nostalgic.

seal all hell in ice.

\\

Dezechiel, running through the streets with his lungs about to give out, stops. Or rather, he’s forced to stop, unless he wants to become an elaborate ice statue.

“Be not afraid.”

He promised not to use it, but there’s no other way. Anything less and he’d be sealed in this monstrous glacier for all of eternity.

Even with his angelic flame, bright enough to burn through anything this world has to offer, he struggles to fight back the gust of frost.

All around him, behind him, everywhere, spikes of ice devour the city at a monstrous pace.

Thousands of years worth of history, generations building and reforming this place throughout the march of the ages, all of that wiped out in an instant. There was never a city here- just a frozen wasteland. After all, who would believe all this was done by a single snow lily?

His skin burns- both with the holy flame and the frigid ice at once. Is it even possible to get frostburnt and charred at the same time?

The cold embrace refuses to let go, wrapping around him like the needy girl would.

It only took a few seconds for the entirety of Buddhapest to be buried under ice. But it doesn’t stop there.

The nearby fields, forests and plains- a frosty veil laid upon all of that.

A world covered in ice; truly, a feat befitting of the girl titled The Ice Queen of Hell.

\\

Sefure Netori, carrying Lysterinn in his arms, looks back. Ah, well, that’s that.

The frost doesn’t discriminate- immortal or mortal, immoral or moral, the frost consumes all the same.

And so, both the vampire and the poor girl find themselves trapped in a block of ice.

\\

Fantastasia breathes in, tears streaming down her cheeks. She hates using her ice magic. And from all of her ice magic, she hates this spell the most.

The permafrost ceases its advance. About this much should be enough. Enough to wipe out all of those pesky puppets, enough to save him.

She looks off in the distance, her eyes hurting from the bright light the ice is reflecting. They definitely don’t hurt from crying. Definitely.

So, this does it. She’s alone again. After all, nobody would be able to withstand this frost. Again, she’s had to seal someone off to protect them. In this ice that never melts.

This is better than death, right…? Since he still lives. Even if she never gets to see him again.

Ah, she really hates the cold. Her eyes always begin to water from it.

The ice next to her starts to crack.

“Eh?”

With one more hit, Dezechiel manages to break free of the frozen prison. He drags himself out of the hole, then falls over on the frozen floor, gasping for breath.

“Eeeeeh?” Fantastasia can’t contain her surprise.

“Don’t ’Eeeeeh?’ me, you nearly killed me, you lil shit,” he bickers. For some reason, it makes her really happy though.

“Weren’t you, like, dying to the puppets?”

“Haa? Naah. That Mary Doll character, she turned out quite weak.”

A bit of awkward, yet oddly refreshing silence.

The angel slowly starts getting up. “Well, whatever, not like I have a choice when it comes to dealing with you, you little- huuuuuuuuuuuuhhh?”

“Shut up.”

“Fantastasia, you’re strangling me!”

The girl pushes her face into the angel’s shoulder. “Just let me stay like this for a bit.”

Dezechiel blushes. This is a bit of an unusual treatment.

And so, Fantastasia finally came clean with herself; and her feelings. Dezechiel stopped chasing girls, finally noticing the one in front of him. And this whole story wrapped up with an incredibly lackluster happy ever after ending- or so I wish to say.

A pillar of light descended from the sky, a heavenly choir announcing the holy arrival. An angel has set foot on Earth, right next to the worried Dezechiel and spooked Fantastasia.

“Be not afraid,” he speaks, white hair covering one of his bright orange eyes. “My name is Rentael, the 34th of 111 angels. You can call me Rent.”

Deze lightly pushes the demon girl back with his hand, putting himself between her and the holy messenger.

The white-haired angel smiles. “I stand in the presence of God, and have come to rid this world of demons.”