Chapter 179 Fears, we all have them
He shouted at her, sternly, more than he intended but he shouted. Never before had she seen Severus this incensed with her. Scarlet thought about how much she was dragging him down, it seemed. How much her ill lacking attitude at times probably disappointed him but he patiently continued to teach her. But even then, while she was grateful to him for everything, what he said was not right and she needed to clear the air before the training could be furthered on.
"Severus," she said slowly, "You said it yourself that other female reapers eat the hell fruit because they want to reproduce so this means I am not the only one that has hope. I am not alone in this desire to have a child, thousands of female grim reapers are just like me, so do not dismiss their hope simply because to you, it's something that can be done naturally and easily whenever you please." He could decide to father a few hell hounds today and he would be successful but it was not the same for her.
"Also," she added, "if it was as dangerous as you make it sound, Lythia would not be feeding hell fruits to female reapers. Unless it's all a lie that is." She looked at him with a steely eyes gaze and asked, "Is it a lie?"?Were the female reapers being given false hope?
A few of her words made him feel quite embarrassed by his outburst. He just wanted her to prioritize and top priority should be increasing her soul strength. She was also indecisive when it came to what kind of reaper she wanted to be, whether it was warrior or guardian. At this rate she was going to be one of those reapers that belonged to no side. The ones who hovered in between factions, never belonging anywhere. Those ones leveled up their soul power slowest, they rarely existed on the leaderboard and in small words, they were preyed on the quickest and easiest. Belonging somewhere was important in the underworld because there were worse things in the world than soul eaters and there was strength in numbers. Severus however had no intention of apologizing because his beliefs were still intact.
"I could have phrased my language better." he said. "Let's just train and if you want to talk about the child thing I will take you to my mother."
Still, she didn't blink or back down. "That doesn't answer my question, are the hell fruits a dead end for female reapers?"
"I don't know." he said in an exasperated tone, "I am not a female reaper or female anything. There is no information on the hell fruit on the forum apart from it's name. I now owe my mother a favor for going to her with all these questions in an attempt to help you. Do you know when I last spoke to my mother?"
Naturally, Scarlet shook her head. Of course she did not know, he rarely spoke about his personal life to her.
"Three thousand years ago!!!!!" he blurted out. "She tried to get me to father a few pups, I refused and she kicked me out of our home. Hell hounds have three jobs, guard the gates of the underworld, hunt for whatever they tell us to hunt and reproduce because the human population grows larger every year since the deities won't stop creating unnecessary worlds which we have to help in controlling and sometimes destroying. Do you know what male hell hounds are not good at?"
Again, she shook her head.
"Being fathers!!, they will train you to be an excellent hunter and guard but not anything else. So to me, this quest of yours to have children is not the most important thing in my world and yet for your sake I returned home to speak to my mother. I am helping you, I am on your side, I am your partner. I have no plans however to babysit you so, get up and let's train."
Having heard more than she expected to from him, Scarlet felt guilty for not knowing all that he had been doing for her without letting her know.
"Thank you." she muttered.
Severus snorted, a small blame of red flames flew out from his nose and landed on the ground, scorching the tiled floor, turning it black. "Oops." he mumbled.
Scarlet resumed her training, digging deep within so as not to let down the partner that was doing his best to help her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, allowing herself to enter a state of darkness and fear.?In order to give your opponent nightmares, you had to experience them as well, fear them and then embrace them. If you did not fear what you were projecting, odds were they would not be frightened as well, teacher Severus had told her.
In her mind, she went to the scariest place she knew, on earth, when the zombie apocalypse had just started. She and a few friends had just reached the first human shelter. It was filled with all sorts of hopeless people with hunger and fear etched onto their faces.
There was a small market place, selling some weapons and clothing in exchanged for all sorts of food and water.?She was walking to the market curiously when all went still. It was if time had come to a stand still and everyone was frozen. She was standing alone, in front of them all and they?stared at her, warning her with the fear in their eyes which which were screaming out loud, 'run'. In that moment, the beating of her heart sped up, slowly at first and then it picked up speed. It was pumping so fast as if it sought to escape from her chest.
Her body was stiff and she could not move, something was coming from behind and she was trapped inside of her own body, denying her a means of escape. Her breathing increased, she could feel it in her bones, the fear, it was crawling on her skin, surrounding her like a python and then swallowing her into the darkness of it's belly. She wanted out!!!... nothing had attacked yet but she wanted out. And just as soon as the hallucination started working, she opened her eyes.
Hyperventilating, Scarlet calmed herself and mumbled, "Not real, not real." She chugged down a bottle of water so fast that it choked her, tickling her throat that she had to spit the water out.
"Son of..." Severus yelled. "It was working!!"
"Too well." she took a few deep breaths and bent over, holding her knees with her hands. "Maybe I should try a new skill because even though I know in the back of mind that I can't die, I am terrified. Are grim reapers allowed to feel fear?"
"We all have things to fear." Severus replied and he laid down and surrendered, today was not the day to excel at this skill.
"What do you fear?" She and walked down and joined him on the ground. "Aside from your mother and fatherhood."
"One, I don't fear my mother and two, I dislike fatherhood, not fear it. There is a difference between the two things." He corrected her wrong understanding. "But I fear the same thing you and every other creature that works for the deities fears, the deities themselves. Should they ever decide to have no need of us, we will all stop existing. We take our immortal abilities for granted and sometimes we find them exhausting but when faced with the decision to stop existing, we all choose to stay because the thought of simply not being alive is terrifying. I have seen thousands of humans begging gods for life on their sick beds when they know fully well that they are terminal. I always wonder why they don't beg for death, it seems like the easier option to escape all that pain. But even when they beg for death, you can see the fear and hesitation in their eyes just before they die. They don't want to go, no one ever does."
Scarlet wanted to say she did, when she died, she wanted it. Her bracelet terminal vibrated with a message informing all governors that all mecha warriors must return to the capital the next day.
She sighed and spread her arms out.
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