Inheritance.

Noctis(x) says: ...'Yer that girly who pissed 'erself ain'tcha?

Ariella Rosenfeld(x) says: ...

*Ariella Rosenfeld(x) reluctantly nodded.*

*Noctis(x) quirks a brow at her.

"Righ'."

Unlike his usual interaction with people, Noctis seems content just...around the little girl. Usually he had to be showboating, or pestering, engaging in a violent altercation or committing theft, but here, for whatever reason, he just sat aside her, appearing any ordinary silver-haired swordsman.

They were a lot more common than one not attuned to the anime world might think.

"Whas' it like, Ariella?" He asks, having recalled her name. But then, he rarely forgot anything at all. "Bein' 'uman."

He's never asked one before.

He, ironically enough, had never treated them like they were people.*

Noctis(x) thinks: ...I ain't never really talked to one o' these buggers.
Noctis(x) thinks: Don' even think lass -can- talk.

*Ariella Rosenfeld(x) looked away for a moment, but shifted her gaze back over to Noctis and sighed.

"It's not about being human... I can't even speak in groups. I'm different. I'm scared. I try to be brave, and learned to fake it from you that one time, but I'm no good at it. I don't think you fake it anymore though."

Yeah, she could talk, but had a series of inconvenient mental blocks that made it hard for her. It wasl ike that for a lot of things, really. In a way, she was one of the most human people around- she wasn't larger than life, she didn't like to fight, she didn't like violence. She didn't fit in. She didn't make friends, she sought protectors.

"...but I think I can overcome my limitations one day. I just need a little push, as horrifying as it'll be to me."*

*Noctis(x) stares forward listlessly.

Once she'd begun to speak, the expression on his face had shifted from one of the utmost passiveness to, well...something else entirely. He seemed almost pained to be even near her, as if, at some point, a word she'd spoken had struck his soul. The usually reserved figure spoke easy in her presence...

A revered God. A feared combatant. Notorious thief.

And he poured his heart out to her as she had him.

"I take myself by surprise the things I pull off." He admits. "I don't have as much faith in me as I should, prolly."

He'd mused on something. He'd observed something that was true about himself that perhaps no one'd known, words that trickled from him naturally as the tide.

"Me strength stems entirely from livin' up to everything they think I am."

He was horrified. He was pissing his pants whether he was fighting a giant spider that threatened to tear him apart or robbing blind one of the dangerously strong heroes now that he no longer had his crew.

But.

"I tol' a boy he'd see the light of day 'er so help me I'd be dead. I made people believe I was the strongest in the underground, so I hadda' be, for them. Things got real crazy when a woman believed in me being a God..."

He turned to Ariella and says, with the utmost seriousness, with both conviction and arrogance that could belong only to he and he alone...

"...So I became one."*

Noctis(x) says: It ain't gonna be hard for you at all to get where ya' wanna be so long as ya' play it smart.
Ariella Rosenfeld(x) says: I don't wanna hide behind people forever.
Ariella Rosenfeld(x) says: But it's hard.
Noctis(x) says: ...I ain't have a choice.
Noctis(x) says: Crew left for their own reasons one by one.
Noctis(x) says: Maybe that's what'll happen to you too, eh?
Noctis(x) says: Then we'll see how ya' do when 'yer fallin' off a cliff.
Noctis(x) says: It's hard not to stand behind people. But what'cha gonna do when ya' ain't got no choice but to stand on ya' own two? It's gotta happen, an' that's when you'll know...if you'll ever be somethin'.
Ariella Rosenfeld(x) says: I don't have any family, and I don't belong to any group. So I only have myself to fight for.
Ariella Rosenfeld(x) says: Which kinda sucks, but.
Ariella Rosenfeld(x) says: Hey, self improvement.

*Noctis(x) looks down at the girl he hardly knew.

"..'Aye. Been there."

They were kindred spirits. From similar backstory and possessing similar traits, even if she were worlds different from he in every way that counted. It was something you who reads this cannot fathom; I can no more explain to you what draws Noctis to her than I can breathe life to that which is dead or scream in the vacuum of space. To understand, you have to have bared your soul to someone you hardly knew, at an irregular hour, and formed a connection that transcended the usual requirements of time and dedicated bonding to become something utterly unlike any you'd ever before formed.

Darkness is his ally; when he is alone on some forsaken isle, or posted up and at a house with only Enko to call on, it is his only true, constant companion, the shadows that whisper in his ear and pervade his already questionable ethics even further. Ariella would feel a chill in her very bones unlike any she'd ever felt, a draft that felt as if it blew through you and tickled the tightly knit bundle of emotions and thoughts you deemed a soul; and yet it seems under Noctis's control.

Barely.

"An' that's why I know it gets better.""

Soul Eater is drawn from a distortion in reality, a nimbus composed of crimson and violet and shadow from which he manfests a sword that parallels the Kingdom Key wielded by Kozue, baring not a hint of similarity. To her he offers the blade.

Steeped in darkness.

"...Some believe in man. Some in hope. Love. I don't believe in nobody but ma' self to tell you the truth. All I'm sayin', Ariella..."

He is likely a terrifying sight; with every throb of his heart pulses the darkness that stems from it and effuses from his every pore. Noctis holds out the hilt of his sword while clutching it's serrated blade and remining unharmed from that which cleaved through bone easy as tissue. He offers it to her, to touch.

And he gives only one condition.

"...Is you gotta believe in somethin'."

He doesn't touch her chest, that'd be weird.

But he points dead toward that all-too-predictable spot, square on it. The heart. But from the familliarity, from the predictability?

That was what stemmed the comfort.

The strongest thing, and it lay within her.

"You'll find 'yerself, then. No ocean will contain you. No more borders around, or below, or above, long as ya' got sum'n that matters to ya'."*

*Ariella Rosenfeld(x) felt brave for once in her mostly miserable life, ignoring the fear of darkness to grasp the sword that was presented to her. As she grasped it, any darkness surrounding the blade was cast away. Within her weak heart existed not the capacity to hold darkness; it was not rejected by her in some righteous attempt to not fall to temptation. No, the darkness rejected -her.- Did light capable of casting the darkness away exist within her heart? No, not even that- her heart was entirely empty. It was weak. It was filled with...

"Y'know... I've been having these weird thoughts lately."

...nothing.

"Like... is any of this real, or not?"

Despite her heart being empty, grasping the blade strengthened it.  It took a moment for her to realize it, but the walls of her heart were strengthened, fortified by the blade. Nothing would contain her anymore, just as her heart contained nothing. Her eyes widened, as the area around her grew dark, with nothing around her but her own thoughts. She felt as if she was falling, but eventually landed on a platform made out of glass... but it had no pattern on it. Nothing at all.

There was a pattern here. Most could say they had hearts of light or darkness, using their desires to protect or destroy as a weapon. Ariella had nothing of that sort; she had only herself, and the people she looked up to for protection. She sought to be like them, to gain their power, and to become as -free- as them. She sought to escape the prison of the underground, and sought ways to cross over into other worlds.

So she opened her heart... to nothing.

To understand Ariella, to understand the nature of her heart, one would have to grasp the fear she felt every day. She detached herself from the world and latched onto whoever would provide her some modicum of safety, casting away her own identity to leech of of someone else's. That, however, would change now; her heart was an empty slate, carrying infinite potential for growth, constrained to neither light nor darkness.

And so she stood up in the platform and took a step forth, a sword, shield, and staff appearing before her. She had made her choice, and the nature of her choice would remain hidden until the time was right. Holding the sword in hand, she swung it a few times and inspected it, still truly unsure of what it was.

"Wh-what...?"*

Ariella Rosenfeld vanishes in a flash of light!

*Noctis(x) is gone when Ariella'd return.

She'd only hear him on the winds.

"....Believe."*