Souls in Teyvat

Keith looked at the sweating Kafka, and saw her legs trembling with the effort to keep her standing.

"What happened here?" he asked in confusion.

"Just...cover yourself" said Kafka with a sigh.

"....oh" was all Keith could say, looking down. "Welcome back."

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"Keith, for the last time, put me down" said Kafka with an icy voice.

"Why should I?!" asked Keith with a huge smile. "At long last, I can mess with you without losing an arm, and your ability doesn't affect me."

Keith, elated by his newest acquisition that should have been the first one a human had, was rising Kafka in the air by her armpits.

Kafka, too drained to kick Keith with enough strength to make him experience pain, could only order Keith to put her down, without much success.

'At least I know now why didn't my ability affect him' grumbled Kafka inwardly. 'There is no way I could influence.... 'that'.'

"Keith-"

"There is nothing you can threaten me with now" interrupted an elated Keith with a loud laugh. "Look, I am strong. I knew a fleshly body would be better, but I never expected this woman to give me a strong one on top of that!"

"Keith, I swear I-"

"Give me your blood now" Ruan Mei's order made both Keith and Kafka, still in the air, look at the soft-spoken woman with a surprised look.

Kafka was admittedly less impressed, having seen the madness consuming this woman under her calm demeanour.

"Oh, uhmm...sure, I guess" Keith was caught off-guard sensing the 'neediness' of this woman, but thinking that he now had a body thanks to her, a bit of blood couldn't hurt.

So putting Kafka down, who was already planning to make Keith suffer after she recovered a bit, Keith approached Ruan Mei.

"...are you going to stand up?" asked Keith with an inquisitive stare.

"Just give me the blood" said Ruan Mei with a fanatical look in her usually calm face.

"Chill woman, you seem like a fanatic from one of those sects" said Keith, grabbing her by the armpits and lifting her without effort.

He put her in the device he had been granted a new body in, and gave her the suitcase with all her things inside.

Ruan Mei, now sitting and with the means to advance in her life-long search, quickly drew some blood from Keith's arm using a syringe, and put it into yet another device.

"We need to go" said Kafka, remembering the amount of 'energy' Keith's soul had emitted, knowing that a LOT of powerful beings would be attracted to it. "And now."

"No, you are not leaving" said Ruan Mei with a deceptively calm face.

"Now that I think about it" said Kafka with narrowed eyes, looking at the biologist. "You have seen many things you shouldn't have."

Keith, who didn't know what they were talking about, realized that Kafka was probably going to get violent soon.

"The solution is easy then" said Keith, grabbing Ruan Mei and putting her on his shoulder. "We take her with us."

Kafka looked at the straight-faced Keith, who proposed to kidnap a member of the Genius Society just like that.

"A most sensible conclusion" said Ruan Mei on Keith's shoulder, still looking her her measurement device with a madness-filled look.

"I guess it's not kidnapping anymore" mumbled Kafka. "Whatever, we need to leave now."

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"Muahahaha, look at this!" said Keith, pointing at his body.

"For the last fucki-, for the last time, I already know it" the discombobulated voice belonging to Elio reached Keith's ears, which now consisted of a true one and not a circuit connected to his soul by means he wasn't aware of.

"And even better" continued Keith, who had been able to make an existence so bored he would probably kill himself feeling fed-up with him. "I will grow even stronger with time."

"....I certainly didn't hear about that" said Elio, who would have paled had he been a normal existence.

Keith usually made everything extremely complicated and normally created problems completely different to what he was supposed to do.

Want an ice cream from the shop? A fire would start a few streets away.

Want to drink some water from the nearby fountain? A monster outbreak would reach the city.

Want to see a meteor shower? The meteor would go to Keith.

Literally.

Elio didn't know if this was the universe's way to 'fight back' against Keith's existence, or if he was just that....special.

So now, hearing that he had a body that would grow stronger with time, Elio feared what the 'price' would be, but then, another presence entered the cosmos-like space they were in.

"I learned what that mad scientist did, just before I made her sleep using my Spirit Whisper" said Kafka, whose face made Elio fear for the fate of the universe.

"...."

"Why so grim?" asked Keith, the only person who could feel Elio's trepidation.

"She wanted to craft a body for Keith that would slow down the speed at which his soul would grow" revealed Kafka, making Keith wonder what the problem was in that marvellous sentence.

"That would have been a disaster" noted Elio, thankful that it didn't happen. "We are in a race against Fate, we can't allow Keith's effect upon the universe to be slowed."

"But after seeing Keith's soul" Kafka knew she would later need to ask Elio a few things about Keith's nature. "She changed her plan."

"...that doesn't sound good" now Elio was sure something had gone horribly wrong.

Changing plans when Keith was involved meant that something had gone, very, VERY wrong.

"She felt it was a waste to let his soul grow in a subpar body" started Kafka after taking a deep breath.

"And damn right she was" nodded Keith in approval. "I will get her a nice present for her birthday."

"But 'luckily', she had the 'perfect' material to craft a body that would grow up with his soul" continued Kafka, ignoring Keith's stupidity. "She used a fragment from an Emanator of the Abundance she got to experiment with."

….....

"....well damn" muttered Keith, knowing what this meant.

"...." Elio stood silent for a while. "I really didn't expect this."

And this came from an existence cursed to know everything, that was quite telling.

"We need Ruan Mei here" said Kafka, who had already thought about this. "We need her to check any changes that Keith might suffer, and how will such a connection with the Path of the Abundance affect his soul."

"Well, I don't think she will complain" pointed out Keith. "She didn't even let me go to the bathroom alone."

"I know how she thinks and what she wants" said Elio after thinking for a while. "All Fate had in store for her was an endless search of what an Aeon means for the world, one destined to fail, but I can't see her Fate now."

"So Keith's existence 'tainted' her" commented Kafka, ignoring Keith's weird expression upon hearing that.

Because if he ignored the most literal and somewhat NSFW meaning, he had seen Ruan Mei's calm expression before, and it had nothing to do with what she looked like after he got his body.

"And that is not all" continued Elio, whose voice was composed of thousands of other voices, belonging to children, elderly, men and woman alike. "Everything related to the Abundance is now obscured too."

"The fact that such a huge portion of the universe has been hidden from you would have been news to celebrate" said Kafka, looking at Keith with a grave expression. "In any circumstance except for this."

"Hey, why are you 2 so worried?" asked Keith with a light tone. "I get it, believe me, there is an Aeon aware of my existence based on Elio's words, but that would have come sooner or later anyway."

"You still don't understand" retorted Kafka with a chastising tone. "There is a being controlling Life out there who knows the abnormality of your soul, and we don't know how is she, based on the image mortals have of 'her', going to react. She might even try to eliminate you, and there is nothing in this world able to stop her, she is IMMORTAL after all."

"Except for IX" added Elio, but not as worried as Kafka as Keith's words gave him something to think about. "And maybe the Finality."

"And you can't get even close to those without disappearing" continued Kafka. "Not even Lan and the Hunt can defeat her, she is like a cockroach that no matter how you burn, crush, asphyxiate, stomp, poison or decapitate, it won't die."

"Again, Kafka, what is the big deal?" continued Keith, this time looking at Kafka's pink eyes with his purple ones. "Think about what Elio wants to do, and probably about your goal too. Do you think such a blatant manipulation of Fate would be looked at as a positive thing by all the Aeons? Weren't we ready to face Nanook of the Destruction? Our goal will require us to surpass Aeons in some way, we need to be ready for this. And while yes, maybe we attracted the attention of Yaoshi, you should have been ready to face this, and a lot more. That is the cost you need to pay for going against Fate."

"...." Kafka looked at Keith's admittedly beautiful eyes, before softly sighing. "What are we going to do now?"

"Keith is safe while he is here" spoke Elio. "This place doesn't exist in the same universe Yaoshi is, and even on the outside, Keith will hardly be detected. Maybe in the future, but right now his existence is still too weak."

"Are you sure?" insisted Kafka with a small frown. "That is not what I felt from his soul, and on top of that there is the possibility of a strange interaction happening between his soul and the Emanator's flesh."

"That doesn't change the magnitude of his existence" replied Elio. "But we will need to adjust our future plans."

"Do I need to do something?" asked Keith with a serene voice. "I couldn't have expected that crazy woman using an Emanator's body to 'craft' mine, but I guess this is ultimately my fault."

"Train."

And yet, Elio's response left not only Keith, but even Kafka gobsmacked.

"Train" said Kafka quietly, looking at Keith. "Him."

"Hmmm" but Keith was quite interested in the idea.

After all, he had a body now.

"I can't see Keith's future, which means I can't warn or prevent him from encountering new enemies like I used to do with you" revealed Elio. "If he stays as he is, everything, even the lowest member of the Destruction will be able to defeat him."

"So what I need is to train to protect myself" summarized Keith, liking the idea more and more by the second.

Not having a body you could walk with without fearing losing a leg tended you make you extremely careful and avoid moving all you could.

But now?

He had not only a healthy fleshly body, but an extremely powerful one at that.

And he was going to exploit the hell out of it.

"Plan training is a go!" said Keith with a hyped smile, leaving this 'space'.

Unlike the times before, running this time.

Meanwhile, Kafka was thinking about a certainly horrifying possibility. She had avoided getting closer to Keith to the maximum degree she could, setting aside their usual back and forth, all to avoid getting her own future obscured from Elio's sight.

And yet... Elio seemed to not be able to see her future any longer.

"Elio, when did you lose your ability to see my Fate?" asked Kafka, dreading the answer.

If what she was thinking about turned out to be the truth, she would probably gouge out her eyes.

"After Keith's soul was exposed to the world" replied Elio. "And after it disappeared. Whatever you thought or did in relation to him, it happened just after he gained his body."

Now Kafka knew that the possibility she had been thinking of was, indeed, the reality.

'Fuck my life...'

Because it looked like a minuscule intrusive thought made her future look grim.

With a purple tone on it.