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Soul Eater Chapter 85: Sherlock Clown and the Mysterious Incident of the Bloody Balls
Yes, it is a short chapter this month.
And given the circumstances strangling supply lines for everything from food to gas to ink to paper all over Japan right now, anybody who thinks it might be a good idea to whiiiiiiiiiiiine about the length of this month's chapter in the comments on this post is officially a shit-eating over-entitled dogfood-brained self-centered small-minded Lord of Asshats.
Just getting that out of the way before we start. (Oh, and for the sake of nipping any further asshattery in the bud: YES, Not! was ten page shorter than usual this month, too.)
Okay, so, on to the fun stuff! And by "fun stuff" I mean Tezca getting repeatedly dismembered by Justin over and over again! HEY KIDS, COMICS!
We open exactly where we left off last time, in Ukraine, with a giant black blood bubble. In a forest somewhere a short distance away, Justin is staring at the blood-bubble looming over the horizon and muttering to himself, "So the wavelength that Kishin-sama felt came from this black sphere."
Oh my god, the title page. "It's so black and roooooouuuuuund."
And hey, a Clown is there, too! This is not the same Clown that was hanging out with Justin earlier, however, as this one has a different design and - as we are about to find out - a different voice, too. "So, what to you think?" Justin asks the Clown.
"That sphere is composed of black blood, isn't it," the Clown says. So I guess this Clown can talk, just like the original Clown that Maka fought. I mean, other than whistling at Giricco and Justin that one time, Justin's first Clown was pretty much silent throughout the entire Noah arc.
And now to make up for all of that silence, I guess the new Clown figures that it's his turn to wear the Captain Exposition Hat. "When Kishin-sama was sealed away, all of his blood was stolen from him as well. But when the witch Medusa injected him with the black blood that she had created, the seal was broken. Because Kishin-sama has the same black blood flowing in his veins, he was able to sense the presence of this black sphere."
"And I know of exactly two other people who are infected with the black blood..." Justin comments.
"Yes, yes," the Clown comments, very erudite and Sherlock-ish. "This is quite obviously the work of the Wielder of the Demon Sword." Duh. I mean, what, did they think that Soul did it?
I don't know if this is coming across in the translation but I am really, really amused by the Clown's new speech style. It's so delightfully pretentious and stuffy. All that he needs now is a deerstalker hat and a tobacco pipe, and the transformation will be complete.
"I read the documents about them when I was at Shibusen," Justin says. "The Demon Sword Ragnarok was melted down into the black blood and then injected into the body of a child... Now the weapon and the meister share one body." Justin stares at the sphere. "But compared to what I read in those documents, this is unbelievable. Their power must have increased exponentially." Crazy eyes! "I want to execute them." Karate-chop!
"Medusa's goal is to capture Kishin-sama..." the Clown reminds Justin. "If we leave this sphere and that child be, then surely they will become a threat to Kishin-sama."
"Shall we go after them?" Justin asks.
"Go after who?" a voice belonging to a dapperly-dressed torso says. "Didja forget that somebody else is already chasin' after you?"
The Clown, startled, turns around and sees Tezca standing right behind them.
Justin is still staring at the black sphere and listening to his music.
Clown is like, um, and taps Justin on the shoulder. Oh man, poor Tezca. Dramatic entrance officially ruined by Justin not even hearing him.
Justin finally turns around. "You are... Tezca Tlipoca..."
"How didja know it was me?!" Tezca gasps. "You cunning bastard... I changed my disguise over and over again, and yet ya still saw right through it..."
Somewhere off-panel, the Clown must be facepalming so hard at both of them right now. Or he would if he had palms.
"I have come to stop you, Justin!" Tezca declares.
"He says he came to stop you," the Clown translates for Justin.
"Strange," Tezca says. "Ya always fought alone. Even when we were students ya always studied alone. I never woulda thought that I'd see ya hangin' out with a weird guy like this. So what happened to ya, huh? Why the change?"
"I cannot read your lips so I have no idea what you just said, but..." Justin glares at Tezca. "So. You're still alive. And since you have the ability to follow any soul that is reflected in your mirror, then you must have been following me this entire time. You know where I have been." Justin leans forward creepily. "Do you know? Kishin-sama's location?"
"I was followin' your soul all this time, but there was one weird place where I lost ya for a little while," Tezca confesses. "I knew generally where ya were when I lost ya... It was just that one time... No way..."
"Tezca-san, you are a threat to the Kishin-sama's peaceful repose," Justin says, removing his headphones.
"Serious? Ya takin' those things off? So that means ya finally wanna listen to me now, right?"
"You are mistaken," Justin says. "I simply do not wish to miss the sound of your screams of agony when I kill you. For this reason alone, I am leaving my ears wide open." The Clown starts to merge with Justin. "Clown. Madness Fusion."
"Stop this!" Tezca shouts. "You can still fight this! Don't add another sin to your soul!!"
"Sin?" Justin asks. Then he launches into full-out screaming mode. "SO THEN WHAT IS A TRUE SIN?!" Justin sends his blade after Tezca. "GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY!"
And Tezca is
Tezca is
Tezca
is
S P A R K L E S
Justin grimaces angrily as Tezca sparkles at him. "Making mirror-reflection copies of yourself, are you?" Justin starts slicing apart as many Tezcas as he can. "Very well, then I'll just have to kill all of them!" He starts counting off. "1, 2, 3. And farewell."
Okay, so Justin can go nuclear now.
That leaves just one Tezca left standing. "Only one left," Justin says. And then Tezca just stands there as Justin slices him clean in half length-wise. "This is the end," Justin says, redunantly slicing Tezca's arms and legs off for good measure.
Justin looms over Tezca's dismembered corpse. "Best make sure that there truly is a corpse down there," Justin wisely comments to himself.
Aaaaand then Tezca's severed arm starts moving.
"!!" Justin exclaims. "His body parts are pulling themselves together again?!"
Well... in a sense.
Except that now Tezca has two heads, three arms, and four legs.
"What the...?" Justin looks somewhat pissed to discover that Tezca is actually A HYDRA. Kind of.
And so the chapter ends. Presumably we will see the continuation of this fight next month? Knowing Ohkubo, however, we may not.
Also, did Tezca just officially revoke his Only Competent Adult Left In The Series card, or what? I mean, I thought that the whole point of him faking his death and following Justin was to find out the location of the Kishin. And yet he blew his cover and confronted Justin before Justin could lead him to Asura (or rather, before Tezca realized that Justin already HAD been to the Kishin's location and he somehow missed it). So I guess Tezca's decision to follow Justin was never really about finding the Kishin and more about his personal business with Justin after all?
Way to blow Shibusen's best chance of locating the Kishin, dumbass.
Granted, we know now that Tezca's power doesn't actually work around Asura and therefore he wouldn't have been able to find the Kishin anyway, but still. Tezca blew his cover before he knew that, so yes, officially, it is now Tezca's turn to join his fellow Death Scythes in acting like an incompetent idiot, at least temporarily. Hopefully this won't have to last too long.
And given the circumstances strangling supply lines for everything from food to gas to ink to paper all over Japan right now, anybody who thinks it might be a good idea to whiiiiiiiiiiiine about the length of this month's chapter in the comments on this post is officially a shit-eating over-entitled dogfood-brained self-centered small-minded Lord of Asshats.
Just getting that out of the way before we start. (Oh, and for the sake of nipping any further asshattery in the bud: YES, Not! was ten page shorter than usual this month, too.)
Okay, so, on to the fun stuff! And by "fun stuff" I mean Tezca getting repeatedly dismembered by Justin over and over again! HEY KIDS, COMICS!
We open exactly where we left off last time, in Ukraine, with a giant black blood bubble. In a forest somewhere a short distance away, Justin is staring at the blood-bubble looming over the horizon and muttering to himself, "So the wavelength that Kishin-sama felt came from this black sphere."
Oh my god, the title page. "It's so black and roooooouuuuuund."
And hey, a Clown is there, too! This is not the same Clown that was hanging out with Justin earlier, however, as this one has a different design and - as we are about to find out - a different voice, too. "So, what to you think?" Justin asks the Clown.
"That sphere is composed of black blood, isn't it," the Clown says. So I guess this Clown can talk, just like the original Clown that Maka fought. I mean, other than whistling at Giricco and Justin that one time, Justin's first Clown was pretty much silent throughout the entire Noah arc.
And now to make up for all of that silence, I guess the new Clown figures that it's his turn to wear the Captain Exposition Hat. "When Kishin-sama was sealed away, all of his blood was stolen from him as well. But when the witch Medusa injected him with the black blood that she had created, the seal was broken. Because Kishin-sama has the same black blood flowing in his veins, he was able to sense the presence of this black sphere."
"And I know of exactly two other people who are infected with the black blood..." Justin comments.
"Yes, yes," the Clown comments, very erudite and Sherlock-ish. "This is quite obviously the work of the Wielder of the Demon Sword." Duh. I mean, what, did they think that Soul did it?
I don't know if this is coming across in the translation but I am really, really amused by the Clown's new speech style. It's so delightfully pretentious and stuffy. All that he needs now is a deerstalker hat and a tobacco pipe, and the transformation will be complete.
"I read the documents about them when I was at Shibusen," Justin says. "The Demon Sword Ragnarok was melted down into the black blood and then injected into the body of a child... Now the weapon and the meister share one body." Justin stares at the sphere. "But compared to what I read in those documents, this is unbelievable. Their power must have increased exponentially." Crazy eyes! "I want to execute them." Karate-chop!
"Medusa's goal is to capture Kishin-sama..." the Clown reminds Justin. "If we leave this sphere and that child be, then surely they will become a threat to Kishin-sama."
"Shall we go after them?" Justin asks.
"Go after who?" a voice belonging to a dapperly-dressed torso says. "Didja forget that somebody else is already chasin' after you?"
The Clown, startled, turns around and sees Tezca standing right behind them.
Justin is still staring at the black sphere and listening to his music.
Clown is like, um, and taps Justin on the shoulder. Oh man, poor Tezca. Dramatic entrance officially ruined by Justin not even hearing him.
Justin finally turns around. "You are... Tezca Tlipoca..."
"How didja know it was me?!" Tezca gasps. "You cunning bastard... I changed my disguise over and over again, and yet ya still saw right through it..."
Somewhere off-panel, the Clown must be facepalming so hard at both of them right now. Or he would if he had palms.
"I have come to stop you, Justin!" Tezca declares.
"He says he came to stop you," the Clown translates for Justin.
"Strange," Tezca says. "Ya always fought alone. Even when we were students ya always studied alone. I never woulda thought that I'd see ya hangin' out with a weird guy like this. So what happened to ya, huh? Why the change?"
"I cannot read your lips so I have no idea what you just said, but..." Justin glares at Tezca. "So. You're still alive. And since you have the ability to follow any soul that is reflected in your mirror, then you must have been following me this entire time. You know where I have been." Justin leans forward creepily. "Do you know? Kishin-sama's location?"
"I was followin' your soul all this time, but there was one weird place where I lost ya for a little while," Tezca confesses. "I knew generally where ya were when I lost ya... It was just that one time... No way..."
"Tezca-san, you are a threat to the Kishin-sama's peaceful repose," Justin says, removing his headphones.
"Serious? Ya takin' those things off? So that means ya finally wanna listen to me now, right?"
"You are mistaken," Justin says. "I simply do not wish to miss the sound of your screams of agony when I kill you. For this reason alone, I am leaving my ears wide open." The Clown starts to merge with Justin. "Clown. Madness Fusion."
"Stop this!" Tezca shouts. "You can still fight this! Don't add another sin to your soul!!"
"Sin?" Justin asks. Then he launches into full-out screaming mode. "SO THEN WHAT IS A TRUE SIN?!" Justin sends his blade after Tezca. "GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY!"
And Tezca is
Tezca is
Tezca
is
Justin grimaces angrily as Tezca sparkles at him. "Making mirror-reflection copies of yourself, are you?" Justin starts slicing apart as many Tezcas as he can. "Very well, then I'll just have to kill all of them!" He starts counting off. "1, 2, 3. And farewell."
Okay, so Justin can go nuclear now.
That leaves just one Tezca left standing. "Only one left," Justin says. And then Tezca just stands there as Justin slices him clean in half length-wise. "This is the end," Justin says, redunantly slicing Tezca's arms and legs off for good measure.
Justin looms over Tezca's dismembered corpse. "Best make sure that there truly is a corpse down there," Justin wisely comments to himself.
Aaaaand then Tezca's severed arm starts moving.
"!!" Justin exclaims. "His body parts are pulling themselves together again?!"
Well... in a sense.
Except that now Tezca has two heads, three arms, and four legs.
"What the...?" Justin looks somewhat pissed to discover that Tezca is actually A HYDRA. Kind of.
And so the chapter ends. Presumably we will see the continuation of this fight next month? Knowing Ohkubo, however, we may not.
Also, did Tezca just officially revoke his Only Competent Adult Left In The Series card, or what? I mean, I thought that the whole point of him faking his death and following Justin was to find out the location of the Kishin. And yet he blew his cover and confronted Justin before Justin could lead him to Asura (or rather, before Tezca realized that Justin already HAD been to the Kishin's location and he somehow missed it). So I guess Tezca's decision to follow Justin was never really about finding the Kishin and more about his personal business with Justin after all?
Way to blow Shibusen's best chance of locating the Kishin, dumbass.
Granted, we know now that Tezca's power doesn't actually work around Asura and therefore he wouldn't have been able to find the Kishin anyway, but still. Tezca blew his cover before he knew that, so yes, officially, it is now Tezca's turn to join his fellow Death Scythes in acting like an incompetent idiot, at least temporarily. Hopefully this won't have to last too long.
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