Episode 14: Meaning We Know

"Hell's Orphanage…" a male pegasus with white hair, red fur, and a red cape said, bowing to King Nero, who was dressed like King Sombra, only wearing a purple king's robe rather than a red one, in his throne room. "That's where she took us."

The pegasus' name was Dante, and he was surrounded by his comrades, the remaining two Nightbringers, Trish and Vergil, and the Helllights (formerly known as the Jaeger Raid), Gordon, Ricard, and Vincent. Vincent was taking the place of Leo, who was oddly not present…

"That is where my comrades and I get our dark powers from…" Dante explained, as Nero had requested the Nightbringers to tell them where they got their strength from. "Ever since we were children, we have known nothing but grueling torture."

"So that's all?" Nero retorted with a smile, surprising the Nightbringers with his nonchalant attitude, save Dante. "I don't mean any insult, I was just hoping to hear something different than what I was expecting."

"That is an insult…" Vergil interjected. "You're giving no regard to how hurt we were back then."

"Yeah, you're the one who asked us!" Trish exclaimed. "If you don't care about our life story, don't ask for it!"

"Yup, I knew this how you would react if I spoke my mind." an unphased Nero replied. "Why do you think I was expecting to hear what you told me?"

"Because you've been in our shoes." Dante answered. "You've been tortured by Noimman since you were a child."

"That's only half of it." Nero said, surprising all of them. "I wasn't always a demon, or even a pony for that matter. There was a time where I was just a human boy. Raised in a human world alongside three other human boys, Oro, Enma, and Yata. Oro and Enma are now dead. Noimman told me she used their souls for a special project of hers after they got too wild. Yata, on the other hand, is still alive...depending on how you define the term. Like you guys, we were put through agonizing torture so that we would become stronger...but in our case, it was only to make Noimman stronger…"

"How did she use you to make herself stronger?" Vincent asked.

"Yin and Yang…" Nero answered. "Light and darkness. When you combine those two, overwhelming power is created, as you may have caught on from your battle with Akame. Noimman raised Yata to be strong in the light, and me to be strong in the darkness so that she could harness our powers. She absorbed energy from us into herself to make herself that much stronger than any demon god before her. The story of my strength is really only the story of her strength…"

"Awful…" Gordon said sadly. "To be used like that by your own mother…"

"What happened to Yata?" Ricard asked.

"I've never been sure of what exactly happened to him." Nero replied. "The last thing he told me when I saw him was that if I ever met him again, I wouldn't even recognize him. That he would have to sell himself to God in order to surpass Noimman's power. That he would have to become like both God and Noimman…"

Meanwhile, in the world of Adrian Bruce, Akame had finished explaining the atrocities she had committed at Hell's Orphanage, the place where they now were…

"...I don't know what to say." Adrian replied, wearing a morbid expression on her face, just as her brother was. "I really don't know how to tell you without being brutally honest about the fact that if you were anyone else, someone we did not need to get help from, I would never want to see your face again."

"You went as far as to murder and torture innocent children…" Felix bluntly said, feeling aghast. "How could you do that? I wanted to know about why Noimman is the way she is, but now I have to know how you ever ended up that way more than anything. We may have been raised in a dark world ourselves, but there's no way we can associate with you unless we fully know you and have proof that you are no longer evil."

"For starters," answered Akame, "I would never tell anyone this if I was still evil. Noimman and her children are the only other ones in this world who know the full truth about me. Not even Celes, the first demon god, is aware of the details of the horrible things I have done. And for a long time, I knew nothing about Celes. Ninja Time God Rarity and Fantasy God Discord wiped my mind clean of my memories as a human before they put me in the world of the heralds. As far as I know, I did not choose to be a demon god. That's what Rarity and Discord told me. How true that is, I don't know…"

"I'd feel more inclined to trust you…" Adrian said, feeling calmer, but shooting Akame a skeptical look. "...IF you had concrete evidence. How do we know that "Ninja Time God Rarity" and "Fantasy God Discord" aren't just characters that you made up?"

"Yeah…" Felix interjected, also feeling calmer, yet doubtful. "We're not even sure if God is real or not, and now you're telling us about gods of fantasy and...ninja time?"

"She tells me it's actually reality," replied Akame, "she just thinks that "Ninja Time" sounds cooler. And even though I can't prove to you that they exist, they can. They telepathically communicate with any character they have created who has realized the purpose of their existence. After all, this world is not actually real. It is merely a setting that they created as a part of their story."

Adrian and Felix looked almost as morbid as they had after Akame told them of her atrocities in the classroom of Hell's Orphanage.

"What. a. crock. of. SHIT." they bluntly answered, staunchly disbelieving what they had just heard. "What are you going to tell us next, that the world was actually created last Thursday?"

"I know, it's completely ridiculous." Akame said, being just as blunt. "But so is everything if you really think about it. The very fact that we exist doesn't make any sense. How did nothing become something? How did zero magically equal one? We can tell ourselves that the universe just always existed, but that doesn't make sense either, because if something exists, it must have been created by something preceding it. Even "real people" struggle to understand reality, so now that I have suggested to you that you are fictional characters, how will you prove to me that you exist?"

Adrian was still as perplexed as ever, but Felix was starting to understand better what Akame was trying to do as she smiled and winked to him.

"Oh, I get it…" Felix finally remarked. "This is a riddle of some sort. If we're to learn about Yin and Yang, we need to open our minds to a new way of thinking."

"Yup." Akame replied. "Just give me your best answer."

"I've personally thought about this many times." Felix began telling Akame his answer to her puzzle as Adrian tried to follow along. "I feel that the best answer I came up for a positive reply to this question was this. We can't prove that we exist because there's nothing to prove. We can't "not exist" because there's no such thing as nonexistence. There's no question of whether there was nothing before the universe came into existence or not because nothingness is only a concept. "Nothing" is only a word meant to explain the absence of something. That's why something can not be created out of nothing, because nothing isn't real. The absence of something has no real manifestation. There isn't anything that could've preceded something, and we don't need anything to precede something to explain the creation of the universe if it precedes, and is not limited, by time. Even the concept of The Void, the infinite abyss of darkness said to exist at the start of the universe in theory, is just that, darkness, which is something."

"...Stuff stuff complicated stuff…" Adrian said in her mind, just becoming more confused. "Something something philosophy…"

"Bingo!" Akame exclaimed happily. "You're on the right track, though you're only scratching the surface. There's much more to it than that. How do we know that the universe needed to be created at all? Creation is just transformation if you really think about it, and as a fellow chemist, you should know that one of the laws of chemistry is that matter can't be created or destroyed."

"That is very interesting, but how does that tie in with Yin and Yang?" Felix asked, as Adrian was relieved to hear him ask a question she could relate to.

"You mentioned earlier the infinite darkness known as The Void." Akame recalled. "Did you know that darkness has light to it that you can see, despite the fact that darkness is supposed to be the absence of light? So even if we're going with the whole Void theory, we can still argue that both darkness and light have always existed, even before the birth of the universe."

"Wow," replied a fascinated Felix, not noticing a frustrated Adrian feeling the exact opposite, "I can't believe I never thought of it that way. If that's true, do you think it's possible that the fusion of Yin and Yang created the universe?"

"WHO THE FUCK CARES?!" Adrian shouted. "What's the point in all this?! Why are you two jabbering on and on, exchanging outlandish hypotheses based solely on observational conjecture and no sort of empirical evidence?!"

Akame and Felix both shot her a look of confusion, surprised by her "science talk".

"W-what?!" Adrian exclaimed, blushing. "That kind of talk is contagious! And worse yet, none of it has to do with making us stronger so that we can defeat Noimman! I thought we were brought down here to be shown "why we are who we are", not for your life story followed by science class!"

"Adrian, this is part of the process!" Akame asserted in frustration. "How can you practice the technique of combining Yin and Yang if you don't understand the concept of it?!"

"My apologies, sensei." Adrian retorted sarcastically. "How could I let my faith in you grow so weak when I have no reason to have faith in you to begin with! You're a demon god! You're a child murderer! I don't care if you're not as bad as Noimman, hard as that is for me to believe! I know you have a hidden agenda, just like my parents did when they sent us here! If you really want me to trust you, why don't you just give me what I need to stop Noimman right now?! Or are you afraid to lose such a valuable tool?!"

"Adrian, don't talk to her that way!" Felix exclaimed, unhappy with his sister's attitude, and feeling the need to say something after what Akame told him in the classroom after he suspected her of using them as pawns. "Think about it! If Akame was just trying to use us, don't you think-"

Felix was surprised to find himself interrupted by the ringing of Akame's bells, as she looked over at him and shook her head. Though puzzled, Felix obeyed her signal to stop talking and relented. Akame then looked over at Adrian.

"I'll grant you your wish." Akame told her solemnly. "Not because I'm offended by anything you said, but because I realize you're a different kind of learner from Felix. You're not the kind to learn through lectures. You're the kind to learn by getting your feet wet. So I'm going to do the closest thing I can do to "just giving you the power"."

Akame held out her bells in front of Adrian before saying…

"Take them. Ring them and ask for Oro and Enma to endow you with new power. They are the spirits that inhabit these bells, and they obey my every order. They can even hear what we're saying right now. All you have to do is allow them into your body and they will oblige."

Adrian held out her right hand for Akame to drop her bells in. Grabbing them as she dropped them, Adrian told Akame…

"Thanks. Consider yourself off my black list, even if only because you're not worth my time. If Felix thinks differently, that's his life. Me on the other hand, I will never respect you or see you as a friend now that I know what you've done. Death was too good for you, along with anything else you may have gotten."

"..." Akame remained silent, maintaining a deadpan expression on her face as Adrian walked away. She didn't want to show it, but her feelings were hurt, especially by the last thing Adrian said.

"Akame, I'm sorry." Felix tried to comfort her as he put his hand on her shoulder, knowing she had to have been upset by what she heard. "Adrian didn't know that you were just testing us by telling us that you murdered and tortured children…"

"No, I was telling the truth." Akame replied, putting her hands on her face, beginning to cry. "I'm a monster...I deserve no sympathy from anyone…"

Felix was stunned, retreating his hand as Akame sank to the floor. She was down on her knees crying as she put her hands underneath her glasses to wipe the tears. Felix watched her crying with a disheartened frown on his face.

"...What am I supposed to say…?" he wondered. "...What can I do…?"

"Felix…" Akame said through the tears. "I've already given you and Adrian what you need. Just forget about me and start figuring out how to mix Yin and Yang by yourselves now."

"What?!" Felix exclaimed. "You have to be kidding me! We can't do this without your help! You're the only one who can tell us more about Noimman! More about ourselves!"

"I thought that too," replied Akame as her tears began to slow, "but I was a fool to think that I could get you and Adrian to understand everything with a lecture. The only reason you were able to follow along with me is because you already have a fundamental idea of how to mix light and darkness together. I can't teach you anything that you can't learn for yourself. Just drink the can I gave you and go from there…"

"...Okay." Felix answered ominously as he grabbed the can from his coat and opened it. "I will…"

He then drank what was inside the can before crumpling it up and tossing it across the floor in homage to Adrian.

"And then I'll go from there…" he said as he crouched down to face Akame and took her by the hands as they both stood up. "...with you…"

Akame responded by giving Felix a hug...and with that, the darkness inside of her heart began to resonate, as well as the light inside of Felix's heart...

Meanwhile, Adrian, now in a white tank top after having removed her blue sweat jacket to prepare for training more rigorously than normal, had gone to the nursery room. She was trying to figure out how the bells she got from Akame worked, for thus far, she was getting no result from following Akame's instructions.

"Oro and Enma…" she said uncomfortably as she rang the bells. "Give me new power...come into my body...ugh! It just sounds so wrong! And it's not even working! Why does there always have to be some dumb little trick to such simple, "Just Add Water" directions?! RRRAAAGGGHHH!"

Adrian gave an angry cry as she threw the bells against the wall in a fit. She had no patience to spare from her mind being burdened by both the reveal of the true intentions of her parents as well as the reveal of Akame's dark past. However, she quickly regretted throwing the bells when she watched them break right before her eyes when they hit the wall, broken shards falling to the floor, and two spirits escaping. Even the wall, despite being part of an otherworldly structure, began to show a crack.

"..." Adrian just looked at the scene, speechless. She didn't know what was more horrifying, the fact that she had just destroyed her only "fast pass" to getting the strength she needed...or her current strength.

"What's going on?" she asked herself. "Ever since I came to this school, I've been getting angrier...and more powerful to the point where I'm scaring myself. I know I need this kind of power to protect people like Felix, but...something about it just feels…"

"Sssssinister?" the voice of a dark spirit from behind interjected.

Adrian turned to face the dark spirit, who was floating next to the white-robed spirit that had stopped her from hitting Noimman. This spirit was a man with black hair and skin like a reptile's.

"Though I haven't met you before," the spirit continued, "I know you've seen my brother, Enma. I'm Oro. Oro, the snake beast of hell, and Enma, the judge of hell."

"So you're Akame's servants…" Adrian said. "What's your story?"

"Ssssstrange…" Oro answered, hissing again. "You were awfully volatile with Akame after she told you her "life story", yet you want to know more about us despite our relationship with her. Interesting. However, know this. As long as your heart continues to hate Akame, you are an enemy of ours. And we will not associate with you before you change your ways, even if it means disobeying our master. Other than that, we will happily lend you our power if you are willing to listen to what we have to say."

Adrian chuckled, putting her hand on her mouth, amused by Oro disagreeing only to reiterate what she just said.

"Sure," retorted Adrian, "even though I already understand now why you click with her. You both love to listen to yourselves talk."

"Tsk tsk…" Enma said as he shook his head and "fanned himself" with his book. "You won't be laughing after we tell you what Akame didn't share with you or Felix. You may think you're hot shit, believing that what you're doing right now is rebelling against her, but in actuality, you're playing right into her hands. As well as Noimman's…"

"How's that?" Adrian asked indignantly.

"Sssssecretly, Akame may be against Noimman, but on the surface, she is her most trusted subordinate." Oro explained. "Noimman knows she can't stop Akame from making you strong enough to defeat her, but she also knows that you can…"

"I get it…" Adrian replied with a heavy sigh. "I have no choice, I have to forgive Akame. So tell me, what's her sob story?"

"Noimman had her tortured and raped...by us." Oro answered, an answer that alarmed Adrian.

"...What?" she asked in shock.

"She told us that we would have to make her suffer for the crimes she committed as a devil god." Enma regretfully explained. "Foolishly, we obeyed Noimman's order, believing it was part of the role we had to fulfill as her children on our quest to surpass her…"

"YOU'RE SHITTING ME!" Adrian yelled. "SHE HAD HER OWN CHILDREN DO THAT?! WHAT, DID SHE MURDER YOU TWO ON TOP OF IT?!"

"Yes." Oro replied. "And it doesn't stop there. Akame used to be an ordinary student at this school, while we attended as students undercover. After Noimman had us commit our atrocity, Akame naturally went to Noimman, the principal, to seek justice. Have you guessed yet how Akame was promoted to vice principal?"

"...I get it." Adrian answered with a very heavy sigh as she knelt her head. "It was all a ploy to make Akame her pawn...while also raping her soul…"

"Exactly." Enma said with a solemn expression, bowing his head as well out of respect. "Noimman promised Akame that we would be imprisoned and reformed, and that she would receive a special gift as a reward for bringing us to justice. But Akame had no idea how Noimman intended to fulfill those promises…"

A flashback then began, showing Noimman strolling through a laboratory filled with test chambers, gazing upon all her latest experiment subjects with an evil smile. With the exception of two, every test chamber she came across either had nothing but dark energy inside of it, or light energy inside of it. The two exceptions were adjacent test chambers, one filled with dark energy and the other filled with light energy, surrounding two clones. The one filled with dark energy was holding a clone of King Sombra and was labeled "No. Uel". The other, filled with light energy, contained a clone of...Noimman, and was labeled "No. God"…

"So my two closest children are the only remaining numbers…" she said. "How boring and predictable…"

Noimman started snickering though when she looked at the clone of her beginning to become consumed by the light energy, until it could no longer be seen.

"So just like God, I can only have one son…"

Noimman then walked to the end of the laboratory, a balcony over what looked like a battle arena. Looking below, she saw Oro and Enma waiting for her, wanting to fight her.

"Because my other two children don't have what it takes to defeat me…" Noimman finished as she leaped off the perch and landed on her feet perfectly to where her children were waiting.

"Ssssso you know, this turn of events does not surprise me." Oro told Noimman. "I've sensed that you've been wanting to get rid of us for quite some time."

"We knew from the start that we couldn't trust you," interjected Enma, "and now, we are finally going to see the fruition of our foresight."

"Wow, I didn't know anyone older than three was capable of seeing that I can't be trusted." Noimman mocked them. "If you want to brag about something, why don't you brag about actually preparing for me to turn on you?"

"As a matter of fact…" Oro said ominously with an evil grin on his face.

"?!" Noimman went, looking down at her legs upon feeling a surging pain in her feet. Two poisonous snakes had bitten her heels from behind, and the venom was spreading up her legs, which were now paralyzed, trapping her.

"It's only a matter of time before that venom reaches your heart and kills you…" Oro explained.

"But no way in hell are we standing around and waiting for that to happen, unlike you..." Enma boasted as he tore two pages out of his book, and poured light energy from his aura into both of them, turning them into sharp, deadly projectiles. He threw them at Noimman's arms, decapitating both of them.

"Sssssooooo, what do you think of us now?" Oro taunted as he watched Noimman look down at her arms and legs with a look of apathy that soon turned into an unpleasant smirk.

"This is the most gruesome death you could imagine for me?" Noimman returned the taunt. "I'm beyond disappointed. You are not fit to be the tools of the greatest demon god. I could've easily intercepted this, but I wanted to at least see if you were worthy of being a lesser devil's playthings…"

"SAVE IT FOR WHEN YOU'RE DEAD!" Oro and Enma both loudly proclaimed as they lunged at Noimman, with Oro prepared to crush Noimman's head and Enma prepared to decimate her heart.

*PHWOO* *WAPOW*

All of a sudden, Noimman countered Oro and Enma by...leaping out of her legs. Two arms of pure, dark energy came out of where her legs used to be and hit Oro and Enma in their jaws with the legs she had abandoned. Stunned from the blows, Oro and Enma wobbled around as Noimman picked up her arms with two arms of dark energy that came out from where her arms of flesh used to be.

"Oh yeah, and don't ever brag to the darkness that you're going to kill it…" Noimman said as she poured dark energy into the arms of flesh to make them deadly blunt objects. "...when your target is only a puppet…"

*WHACK* *POW*

*DING* something gleamed...

"She killed us…" Enma explained as the flashback ended. "And after killing us, she imprisoned our souls in those bells. The next day, she gave the bells to Akame as a "token of friendship", wanting Akame to learn the mortifying origin of them for herself…"

"I've...heard enough." Adrian replied in a surprisingly calm and composed voice. "I know who my enemy is now. Both you guys and Akame have done some truly reprehensible shit...but the fact that a new evil can just come in and make people like you "not so bad" by comparison is what enrages me most of all. So I'll forgive both of you and Akame...in exchange for telling me one more thing…"

Adrian then began to emit a dark aura from her body before she asked Oro and Enma the question that would change everything…

"Who is pulling Noimman's strings?"

As that question was asked, everyone else experienced a sixth sense of what was going on…

"I get it now…" Felix said bluntly. "You planned this all along…"

"My teaching methods are strange, yet effective." Akame replied with a smirk and a wink.

"She's catching on already…" the Dark Sky members thought from inside Noimman. "If she can only free us, taking out Noimman will be a cakewalk…"

"For the first time, I'm actually afraid I might die…" Noimman said to herself with a creepy grin, blushing as she looked at the card again. "Oh God...this is so exciting…such pleasure…"

"Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if I ever saw Yata again, ha ha…" King Nero thought to himself.

"HUH?" Crazy Celes reacted to suddenly experiencing a sixth sense of what was happening. "WHEN DID I GET PSYCHIC POWERS?!"

And so, Oro and Enma answered the question with the last thing Adrian would ever have guessed…

"You."