When they finally opened their eyes, they were met with a confusing sight.

Their eyes were sending them two images interlaced with one another. It was hard for them to parse through the two separate images, but after a while, they manage to focus on a single one. The view was of a teenage girl. She was sitting cross-legged on a solid rock floor, her hands placed at her lap. She had long sky blue hair that pooled around her and light skin. On her body she wore a light brown worn dress that barely seemed to fit her, only helped slightly by the fact that she looked malnourished. Her gray eyes were glazed over as if she wasn’t focused on what was in front of her.

Next, they focused on the other image and this time it was the view of a teenage boy. He too was sitting cross-legged on a solid rock floor, his hands placed on his lap. He had scruffy turquoise hair and light skin, with several light green tattoos covering the majority of his left arm. He was also wearing some worn clothes- a simple T-shirt and some boxers. His grey eyes were also glazed over.

It took a second for them to choose an image to focus on, but after a while, they chose to focus on the image with the boy, with the image of the girl only visible enough that it looked like an afterimage. They placed their hand on their temples and rubbed them trying to remember the last thing they could, only to be distracted by the boy doing the exact same thing.

They paused and instead focused on the image of the girl, raising their right arm into the air. The girl copied their movements.

The differing points of view melded together. Each image coping their movements exactly.

For the final test, they placed their hands on their chest, only to receive two differing feelings on their feelings. One was the flat chest of a young man and the other was the soft pillowy mounds of a young woman.

Their arms fell to their side as they stared at each other with a dumbfounded look on both of their faces. “What the…?” The two whispered at the same time in perfect harmony, both mimicking each other's tone and facial expression at this revelation.

They desperately tried to think back. Their last memory… what was it?

“I love you, Gale.”

“I love you, Sora.”

Yet, even their memories were subject to the same discrepancies. One was of a young woman saying the name, “Gale,” and the other was of a young man saying the name, “Sora.”

Still, that gave them some information. With some noticeable effort, he managed to raise his arm to point at himself, while she didn’t move at all. It felt completely unnatural. They had double the amount of body parts to manage and only one soul to manage it all. But still, she managed to raise her own arm and point it towards the boy, without having him move.

Now came the tricky part. He made a couple of small noises with his mouth trying hard so that she didn’t make a sound. It took some practice, but after a couple of minutes, he finally managed to say, “My name is Gale,” without having her speak at all.

“Your name is Gale,” she confirmed, as Gale remained quiet.

Next, she pointed to herself, while Gale pointed at her. “My name is Sora,” she introduced herself.

“Your name is Sora,” Gale confirmed before they both let out a sigh at the same time.

They both pushed themselves up onto their feet, but nearly tripped over themselves and fell back down. Luckily they caught themselves and managed to keep standing. They had different bodies so it was hard to keep balance with both of them.

They looked around, and finally took more notice of their surroundings. They were in a small, dimly lit cell. Rusty iron bars kept the two separated from a better-lit hallway, where even more cells lined the stone walls.

Panic set in.

They ran over and gripped the bars. “Hello?” they croaked out, both voices coming off as scared and confused. “Is anyone…?” Their voices died when they realized that there was a faint sound coming from a  nearby staircase that led up.

The roar of a monster. Screams of guttural terror. Yells commanded people to stay back. And eerily the even fainter sobbing of a small child.

Gale and Sora could listen in silence, as the sounds grew fainter and fainter until the only they could hear anymore was the sobbing of the child and heavy footsteps slowly descending the staircase. A large shadow stretched farther and farther along the floor as the steps grew closer.

A sudden fear suddenly choked them and they began to look for somewhere- anywhere- to hide. Gale spotted a small bed that they could fit under together. It wasn’t much but it was something. They couldn’t explain the feeling of terror that was welling up inside of them, so all they could do was act on it.

The fit was tight, so Gale and Sora found themselves pressed up against themselves. But without nary a thought to realize of how close they were to each other, they noticed that something had reached the end of the staircase, as it stepped in front of their cell.

It was massive. It easily reached the ceiling, its body a swirl of purple and black, its arms and legs as thick as tree trunks, though its chest and waist were skinny. It had no face. Instead, there was a single pure white wedge jammed into its skin where the right eye would’ve been. The sounds of the sobbing child were louder now and seemed to emanate from the creature. Not from any mouth or hold just from… its body.

“The fuck?!” A new voice, one that they didn’t recognize, suddenly cried out. It had come from the cell opposite of them, where they could see a middle-aged man with a potbelly pressed against the bars outside the cell, an overturned plastic chair near him. “M-Monster!”

The creature turned its entire body to face the man and, in one quick motion, tore his cell's door off of its hinges. The man squealed like a pig as the creature reached into the cell and plucked him by his feet, lifting him out and into the air.

The man was screaming at the top of his lungs, trying to wrench his feet out of the creature’s grasp. The sobbing of the child grew louder as the creature just seemed to stare at the struggling man for a few moments.

Then, as if the man were a toy, the creature swung him into their cell door, breaking it in the process. Just for a moment Gale’s and Sora's eyes met the man’s and recognition dawned upon his face for just a moment, before there was a sickening crunch and his neck just snapped.

The sobbing now erupted into full-blown wails.

The monster scratched its chin and peered into the other cells, but seemingly didn’t find anything of interest, as it turned back around and began to climb back up the stairs.

It took a second for them to catch their breath and, after hearing the wails fade away until they couldn’t hear it, they crawled out from under the bed. They tried the door to their cell to find that, luckily, the lock had been destroyed by the monster’s swing.

“What was that?” Gale muttered as Sora knelt down to examine the body. He kept an eye out, while she dug around in the man’s pockets. She pulled out a small wad of money, a small ID card, and a key. She squinted trying to read the strange lettering on the card, but she didn’t recognize it. At best, Gale could it wasn’t the same language as the tattoos that graced his left arm.

However, it wasn’t hard to tell that the dead man was some sort of guard, considering his uniform and the ID card. That begged the question, though, of what he was doing within a cell. “We need to get out of here,” she whispered, before dumbly realizing there was no point in talking. He could hear her thoughts and vice versa.

Whatever that monster was it had also gone up the stairs, but it was the only way out they could see. Creeping up the stairs, doing their best to remain as quiet as possible, they could hear the sobbing falling to a simple whimpering. However, the moment that they reached the floor above, they could hear the whimpering suddenly grow rapidly louder. Thinking fast, Gale pulled his other body into a nearby room and swiftly closed the door to it, turning its lock with a quick click. He placed his ear on the wooden door, hearing the steps of the monster pass by their room and head back down to the cells.

He let out a sigh of relief and turned to check on Sora, only to find her face-down on the floor and her expression blank. Gale had prioritized controlling his male body so much at that moment that Sora had just collapsed from a lack of direction.

She pulled herself to her feet and looked around to find themselves in a small office. Their eyes lit up. If there was anywhere to find out what was going on it had to be here!

Both of them started to turn over the room for anything significant. Eventually, Gale pulled open a drawer to find a binder filled with names. Flipping through it, having Sora continued to search for anything else at the same time, he quickly located pictures of the two of them. However, that was it. There weren’t any names, addresses or even notes to indicate who they were. All it did was prove that they were there.

He tore the offending pages out of the binder and stuffed them into his pocket. Sora opened the door and crack and peered out, finding that the monster was nowhere to be seen. However, she could hear the wailing coming from down below. It was still near the cells.

They began to make their way up again, climbing up two more flights of stairs, soaked in blood and viscera, before reaching a small metal ladder that led to a trapdoor within the ceiling. Gale went first, pushing open the trapdoor, carefully, and climbing through. As Sora climbed up, he glanced around and found his eyes widening.

It wasn’t what they expected that’s for sure. They were in a museum. Exhibits lined the walls and historical artifacts were placed on shelves and hung on walls. Gale found himself drawn to a small exhibit, with wax people wearing flowing silk clothing. He read the information on the small placard. “The Noble Dynasties of Megumi,” he read aloud.

There was a large map nearby. Checking it, they learned that the country they were in was called Brigade with Megumi neighboring it to the east and a country called Roman to the north.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

As Gale scanned the information, Sora found herself drawn to a nearby exhibit with a sword held within glass cases. One of the swords seem to call to her, and only her as Gale was unable to describe the feeling. It was a single-edged curved blade with a circular guard and a long light aqua-colored grip. “The… Aozora,” she read on the placard.

Gale, in a move that he’d later call rash, pulled the glass case away from the sword. Immediately an alarm began to sound, as they were bathed in red light. The wailing coming from below grew louder and closer.

Oops.

Sora grabbed the katana from its case, having Gale back away and put their entire focus into controlling her. With the only one with the weapon, they had determined that she was the only one who could fight back.

The trapdoor was blown open. For a second, it seemed like the monster’s mass wouldn’t be able to fit through the trapdoor. But as they watched, it squeezed its body through the small opening, molding itself into a tinner and longer form until it was through. Finally, once it was through it seemed to return to normal. It let out a roar, only punctuated by quiet sobbing from it.

“Hey, what’s going on here?!” A flashlight’s beam landed on the two, startling them. They glanced over to find a tired young man, rubbing his eyes. A security guard, most likely woken up by the alarm.

“Run!” Both Gale and Sora said in unison, their voices combining to create a disconcerting effect. “Get out of here!”

The security guard blinked. “Huh? What the hell… are…” He turned his head slightly to the left and found himself speechless at the huge hulking monster that had just finished reforming itself. “Oh shit!” Without a moment's beat, he turned on his heels and booked it out of there.

The monster didn’t even seem to register the security guard’s presence. Instead, it let out a roar and bounded towards the pair, its four limbs causing the ground underneath them to shake.

Sora quickly raised her new katana and adopted a stance that she felt was right. However as the monster drew closer, she realized just how wrong she was. Her balance was off. It felt as though she was leaned a little too far forward and was about to trip over her own feet. Before she could adjust herself, the monster threw a fist at her.

She managed to twist herself around the attack and slashed upwards with her sword. The blade made a shallow cut along the monster’s wrist, as a maroon liquid splashed over Sora. She stumbled away, momentarily blinded, but the blood quickly and strangely began to dissolve the moment it left the monster’s body.

Goddammit! Sora gritted her teeth. Her skill with the sword wasn’t enough! If only she could have Gale do something. Currently, she had hidden him behind one of the exhibits, unmoving. If only they could decipher the markings along his arm…

The monster curled its hands into fists and began to slam them where Sora was standing. She managed to jump away, quick on her feet. But it was slow enough to Sora that it felt unnatural. The weight and balance on her feet weren’t analogous to how she was moving. It was a little too heavy.

In the midst of battle, she winced. Did she just call herself fat?

No? Gale blinked. It was just how her fighting felt.

…No, no. She had definitely called herself fat-!

Her eyes widened. A large fist was barreling towards her. She raised both her arms in a vain attempt to block it, but when it slammed into her, she was sent flying. Sora crashed into the wall above another exhibit, utterly destroying it and the wall. From there, she fell into a heap on the ground, blood dribbling from her mouth.

They were surprised, however. It didn’t feel as though Sora was that hurt. No broken bones or huge injuries. However, the moment she slammed into the wall, Gale doubled over feeling the same pain as Sora. Perhaps they were sharing the pain across their two bodies?

Using her weapon for balance, Sora pulled herself up, gritting her teeth, only to see the monster charging her. She stood still for a moment, before jumping to the left, letting the creature crash through the wall and outside the building.

Moonlight streamed through the large hole that had been created. It occurred to them that they didn’t even know what the time it was until now. No wonder that one security guard was so tired.

The monster turned its entire body and seemed to scowl. Sora raised her katana again, but they knew it was a losing battle. If only Gale could do something.

Gale studied the markings on his arm. They were still unfamiliar to them. However, if they had to guess, the markings were some sort of runes. Which meant…

Gale held out his hand. “Fire!”

Nothing happened.

The monster turned its head back towards Sora.

“Water! Earth!” He just realized he shouting random things now.

It raised a fist. They realized that they had neglected in controlling Sora. There wasn’t any time to move her!

In a fit of panic, they said the first thing that came to their minds. “Wind!”

A couple of the runes tattooed along his arm began to glow a pale green.

From Gale’s fingertips emanated a burst of heavy wind that slammed into the monster, throwing it off of its feet. They took advantage of Gale’s newfound magic by quickly shifting Sora’s stance and slashing upward. This time she sliced it straight through its arm, cutting it from the rest of its body.

“Yes!” Sora and Gale cheered in unison.

…Only for the monster to just regrow the arm back, tendrils of black goo curling into itself to form a new arm.

“…Great…” Sora and Gale grumbled in unison.

It held a fist over Sora’s body, ready to smash her into the ground. For a second, a thought occurred to them. What would happen if one of them died? How… How would that even feel?

“Wind!” No time to think about that for now. Another burst of heavy wind from Gale, caused the monster to stumble a bit and snap its head towards him. It opened its mouth, drawing energy around the opening, coalescing it into a small ball.

Quickly, Gale pointed his hand at the ground and shouted, “Wind!” Immediately he was thrown in the air, narrowly missing the energy beam that the monster fired at him. The beam tore through the museum, destroying the rest of the exhibits behind Gale.

Above the monster now, Gale scanned its body for anything that might hurt it.  The only he could see was the small white wedge that they had noticed before. Was that perhaps a weakness of the creature? Well, it was worth a try.

He landed, using the Wind spell again to slow his fall and land on his feet. However, the moment he landed, he stumbled, as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Already, he was feeling exhausted. His magic was draining away a lot of his energy. At best they felt he had two more spells in him before he collapsed.

The monster turned to them, its mouth opening up again, presumably to blast them again with that attack. Gale raised his left arm at the monster again, another word popping up in their minds again. “Stop!”

The monster turned a pale gray, freezing in place. Frozen in time. Both Sora and Gale ran forward, both at equal speed. They needed to do it perfectly. Gale fell to his knees and held out his hands for Sora as she, using his hands as a springboard, jumped high into the air.

“Wind!” Gale used his magic to shoot her farther into the air so that she reached the monster’s head. Sora drew the Aozora, slicing through the wedge. Only when it was destroyed did they realize what it was.

It was a mask. A marble mask of a small child. The moment it shattered, the cries from the young child also stopped.

The monster, once it returned from its stint outside time, fell to the ground, its body dissolving into an inky black smoke. Sora landed on its back, finding it soft like a pillow, and rolled off its body. She ended up near Gale and they watched as the monster disappeared.

It was over.

Gale, now thoroughly exhausted, was about to collapse onto the ground, only for Sora to catch him and hold him steady. They both were tired from the battle. And still, they didn’t even have many answers.

In the distance, they could hear sirens. The museum had thoroughly been destroyed and they could assume that the security guard from before had called for some backup. For a second they considered waiting for the police but thought better of it. The monster was gone. They had nothing to identify themselves with. And both, though they couldn’t explain why, had little trust in the governmental law enforcement.

So, with Sora helping keep Gale steady, they trudged into a nearby forest, disappearing within its leaves.

Xxx

“I-It was a monster! Giant! Reached the ceiling!” the security guard blabbed, his face pale and eyes wide.

Police Chief Groto sighed. He was already frustrated with this dumbass. Two hours ago, they had gotten a call from the man about a pair of thieves and a giant monster attacking the museum. However, when he and his police force finally arrived they had found nothing but a partially destroyed building. No thieves or monsters in sight.

Currently, the leading theory by his subordinates was that the security guards was an idiot and somehow caused a gas explosion. Not that Groto wanted to rule it out but, certainly, there was a lot more going on here.

“Could it have been a goblin?” he questioned the panicked man, impatiently. “Something that large would surely have been noticed outside the walls at the very least.”

The security guard rapidly shook his head. “No!” he insisted. “It was no goblin. It wasn’t anything like I’ve ever seen!”

“And the two thieves?”

“I-I don’t know where they went. Um… I didn’t even get a good look at them…” He sounded ashamed.

Groto jotted that down in a notebook. “They only stole one thing,” he said. “Everything else is intact or destroyed.”

“They did?” The security guard blinked. “What was it?”

“A sword,” Groto answered. “From Megumi. Price ranges between 200 to 300 tri.” The security guard’s face paled, as Groto continued, “The owners wanted me to inform you that they’ll take the costs of both it and the destruction out of your salary.”

“N-No…” The security guard comically sank to his knees. “My life… it’s over.”

Groto rolled his eyes. A failed theater major no doubt. He scratched the top of his head with his pencil. Still, this was going to be annoying to solve. There wasn’t any clue of where the two thieves had run off after disappearing into the forest and the monster… well that part of the story made little sense.

“Having a spot of trouble, Chief?” A voice said behind Groto. He whirled around in surprise and found himself facing two strange individuals.

The taller one was a young man with a thin physique, pale skin, and dark green hair. He had a shifty look to him – he rang all of Groto’s alarm bells – and was wearing a dark gray suit and tie along with a fedora atop his head.

The shorter was female with the same dark green hair, with hers tied into a ponytail. She had a more tanned appearance with a large broadsword attached to her back. She was wearing leather armor and giving him a rather pointed grin with sharp teeth lining the inside of her mouth.

“W-Who the hell’re you?!” Groto spluttered, as a couple of his officers pointed their guns at the duo.

The man reached into his pocket, causing Groto and his men to tense, but all he did was pull out a small wallet, flashing its contents in Groto’s face. “I’m Detective Maxwell. Clerk Maxwell,” he said, the passport he held in his hand confirming his identity. He then gestured to the young woman to his right. “And this is my apprentice, Johanna Ritter.”

Ms. Ritter grinned, holding up two fingers. “Yo.”

Groto motioned for everyone to relax. He had heard of two, surprisingly, he just hadn’t expected them here. Their exploits in the west were well known in this country and together they had solved many a case. He had gotten a few letters from a friend who lived in a western country about them. His friend had talked on length about Detective Maxwell and her apprentice, Ritter…

Wait. Her?

Groto narrowed his eyes. “My friend has sent me a letter telling me about one of your cases in the west. However, he made a point of telling me that Maxwell was a female.” The officers around him tensed at this revelation.

The two were quiet for a moment. “Well…” the man who claimed to be Detective Maxwell said, placing a finger to his forehead. “That discrepancy can be explained rather easily. I think your friend, simply, might just be mistaken.”

“Mistaken?” Groto repeated flatly.

“Mistaken,” Ritter said with a nod. She handed him her own passport. “During that case in the west, I took the good detective’s name so it’d be easier to catch the criminals. We didn’t tell anyone because we didn’t want the operation to fall apart.” She shrugged with a playful smile. “I think you’ll find my identification all in order, however.”

Groto checked it, finding it all correct, including a couple of papers – signed by the Brigade president no less – detailing their immunity from the law of Brigade. Groto recognized the signature. “Fine,” he said, handing back the documents. “Whatever. What are doing here?”

“Investigation,” Maxwell answered, as Ritter walked off. “I’m curious about what happened here.”

“It’s just a hoax,” grumbled Groto. “A pair of thieves and a sleep-deprived guard.”

“Now, now.” The detective waved him off. “If that’s the case, then there’s no problem with having us investigate.”

Groto was still suspicious, but it was the middle of the night. At this point, he was just too exhausted to care. There wasn’t anything left. At best they knew the two thieves were in the forest. As pricy as that one sword was it wasn’t worth organizing a manhunt at this hour. “Come on,” he said to his subordinates. “Tape off the area and let’s get home.”

Maxwell watched him walk off, a smile still playing along his face. A few minutes later, Ritter returned. “A mask, huh?” Maxwell said, rubbing his chin. “A Soulless was here then. And where there’s a Soulless there’s bound to be a Gemini.”

“The footsteps were heading to the east,” Ritter continued. “If they continued in that direction, they would probably hit the train station. Probably got on the same train I got off of.”

“And that train,” they said in unison. “Was headed for Megumi.”