The KidVegeta Anthology/A Soundless Dark

I had a nebulous idea for a Mr. Satan story from the onset of Things Were Better Then, but no clear idea for the plot at first. Like with Midnight City, I listed this story as "ready to write" as soon as I posted the TWBT page on this wiki and on my userpage. I was just excited to write for Mr. Satan; I didn't really know what the story would be about.

When I first revealed the TWBT lineup to Destructivedisk on Facebook, he thought that this story would end up being a lot like Three. While this worried him, I assured him that my plan for this story was not going to be similar to Three.







As the above pictures show, I had chosen Mr. Satan to be the protagonist of this story pretty early on. My very early list of candidates that I sent to Destructivedisk on Facebook was "OID - Mr. Satan, Chiaotzu, Krillin, Yamcha, Bardock, King Vegeta, Frieza, King Cold, Korin, Master Roshi, Cell, Android 17, Tien, Goku, Tarble, Bulma". I think this was the longest list of candidates. Only in Dreams works for quite a few characters, of course, but the song felt most useful for Mr. Satan to me. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to write about for him, but I wanted it to relate to the song in some way. The phrase "only in dreams" seems to go well with Mr. Satan's history and demeanor. That was pretty much all I did for the plot until I began working on this story.



The above picture shows the theme color list I had for this song, as do some of the pictures above that one. I had narrowed it down to purple or black very early on, as I had similarly done with story #5. I eventually chose black for this one and purple for that one based on the instrumentals each story's song. Black works well for Mr. Satan, of course, as it is the color of the devil and a color that dominates all others. It was also cool that the last story in this collection had black as its theme color when the first story had white. Mr. Satan is associated with black all the time in canon so this was one of the more straightforward theme colors out of the entire collection. Black is also a way more common color than many of the other theme colors, allowing it to be worked into far more aspects of the plot and themes of this story.

So I did very little pre-planning for this story. The only thing I had from the start of Things Were Better Then was the idea that at some point, Mr. Satan would have a dream about some regret, some failure, or about how he hasn't become all he could. That was all I had. I basically didn't do anything else for the story until Before Creation Comes Destruction was completed. At that point, I began to mentally come up with some plot ideas for the last two stories. These ideas were very vague, and I never wrote them down. I mainly focused on Midnight City in the weeks after Before Creation Comes Destruction was completed. For A Soundless Dark, I didn't develop anything I liked aside from the dream scene. Even then, I wasn't sure what he should dream about or if that should take up the entire story. Since all TWBT stories are separated into two parts, I knew this wasn't possible, so I would have to come up with a plot.

It was only a few days before I wrote this story that I came up with the idea that Hercule would be grieving about his wife's death. This is an issue that I have never seen tackled before in a Mr. Satan story, so it interested me on an originality level. It also fit well with the overarching themes of this collection. Once I had that idea, I didn't really develop it further. I felt like it would be best to just sit down and improvise a story about Mr. Satan's grief. I did minimal research on his wife and what is known about her, as well as when Videl was born and when the World Martial Arts Tournaments took place. Additionally, I refreshed my memory on Mr. Satan's role in Spindlerun: The Tale of Yajirobe in case I wanted to use anything from there.

I felt like this would be a very short story, perhaps the shortest. That is primarily why I felt like I could write both this story and Midnight City on May 31, 2015. I had procrastinated up to that day, having not written either story, and I wanted to complete Things Were Better Then before the start of June, so that left me with little choice but to write both of them that day. I started Midnight City early and finished it by 8:53 pm that day. After I finished, I took an hour or so break and thought about this story and the stuff I wanted to do for it - tone-wise, and theme-wise, etc. Then, I began to write this story at 10:51 pm. I wrote for all of two minutes (which consisted of only part of the first paragraph), until 10:53 pm, and then took another break for about an hour. I just wasn't feeling the story at the time and needed to step back and reevaluate what I was doing. When I came back with a clearer plan of what I wanted to do, I wrote from 12:07 am of June 1, 2015, to 2:18 am of the same day. Once I was finished, I published the story and went to bed shortly after.

This story was very stressful for me to write because I had a test to take (non-school related) on June 1, relatively early in the morning. I felt tremendous pressure to get this story done as quickly as possible so I could get some sleep. I remember being very tired while writing this story, but pushed on because I knew if I didn't write A Soundless Dark then, I would likely procrastinate for a few more weeks. And I didn't want that. So I pushed through. The writing process is a blur, but I remember being very hot while writing and taking a few walks outside in the dead of night to clear my mind a few times and try to gain some inspiration. I'm not sure if those walks helped or not, but I did eventually get this story done in about two hours, which was thankfully much shorter than how long it took me to write Midnight City.

When I finished this story, I was more relieved than happy. I was happy that TWBT was finally done, though, as it took me nearly three months to complete it, and about a month before that of planning out all of the stories. It was nice to have completed a project I spent so much time on, but at the time, I was too tired and too stressed out about my test the next morning to really appreciate that at the time.

I don't have very fond memories of the actual text of A Soundless Dark. I remember being disappointed by it and wanting to re-write it. However, I have not read this story since I posted it on this wiki. I don't know if it's actually any good. I have read parts of the second section and think that is some of my strongest writing ever (Destructivedisk called the second section of this story some of the most beautiful prose I've ever written, which was very nice of him). One thing I'm looking forward to most while re-reading this story for the commentary below is to see if it actually is any good, or if I actually do need to re-write it, because I really don't remember much of what happens in the first section. Anyways, onto the endnotes!

Story
This story's theme is Only in Dreams.

Blood ran down the cracks in the mirror to the tiled floor, red on black. Mr. Satan stared at the image of himself, fractured, broken, bloody, and took another drink. His face twitched when his throat began to burn, and he realized it had been a long time since he’d gone this far. He could hear his heart beating deep and slow, as if it was trying to break free from the cage that was his body.

The pill bottle was half full, which was too full for Hercule. He popped open the cap and downed four of the little blue pills and sighed, waiting for them to take effect. It was cold as bone in that room – a familiar cold, but not unwelcome; the light flickered and danced, and Hercule knew it would give out soon. The walls were unimaginably dirty, but with black tile, even the grimiest of bathrooms looked alright. It was a clever, sorry trick. Noticing his hand leaking blood all over the floor, Mr. Satan unhooked a roll of toilet paper and wrapped it around his wound. It was a good feeling, the pain. It helped him forget a little bit.

Sleep was a capricious thing, so the man decided to take a walk along the moonlit docks. The sea gave the air a soft, salty smell, and that calmed Hercule a bit. He found an old izakaya on the water’s edge and went inside. Sitting down in the dim light, Mr. Satan ordered a drink and some sushi and watched a band play old hits. The musicians were all women, young, pretty and confident, and that made Mr. Satan wistful. He was reminded of the last time he’d entered this place, but that had been many years ago, before Videl had been born, when he had been young and confident himself.

A waitress in a black dress served Hercule, and after she handed him his drink, she lingered, chewing on the nail of her little finger. “Hey… I know you, don’t I?”

Mr. Satan traded stares with her. “I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t you used to come in here all the time with a–”

Hercule slammed his glass on the table, cutting her off. Several patrons looked over at the noise before hastily turning away, lest they be caught in their spying ways. “I don’t think so,” he said gruffly.

“Oh, okay. Well, if you need anything else, just give me a holler!” she said as cheerfully as she could, but Mr. Satan noted how forced her tone was.

The man nodded and drank his black soda and wondered whether he would be able to sleep soon. The band began to play Maybe I’m Amazed and Hercule nearly began to cry. But he was a man, a warrior, so he bit his tongue and pushed his feelings deeper inside until not even he knew where they had gone. He had heard that song maybe a dozen times in here before, back when the room had been lively, lit up, full of people and vigor. And now, no more than five other patrons were eating and enjoying the music, and they were, all of them, alone.

He didn’t remember when he left. Mr. Satan found himself sitting on the concrete dock, just to the left of a large bridge. Cars danced across the land tether like coruscating shooting stars, burning red and white and then fading out into the black stretch of night. He swung his dangling legs over the dark-as-pitch water and felt the wind scream through his hair. He remembered the last time he had been here. It had been after a ferocious fight, a backstreet brawl, where his foe had broken Mr. Satan’s nose and tried to rip off one of his ears. Hercule had broken his opponent’s jaw with one of those devilish kicks of his, sending him tumbling into the water, and the crowd had gone wild. Time had been most unkind to Hercule in recent years, but even it had let him keep that one memory, that one moment of triumph, untainted and pure.

Here now was Mr. Satan, an accomplished martial artist, but by no means a champion. He wasn’t even as good as his brother had been when he had lived. Hercule was a ticking time bomb, a fading star, just waiting for the last of his light to stretch across the sky in one brilliant flash and then be gone for good. At least then, people would have something to talk about.

“I thought I’d find you out here,” the waitress said as she sat down next to Mr. Satan. “Cold night, eh? Chilly!” she shivered and laughed.

The sea breeze was the only thing cooling Hercule’s heart, the only thing from making him go mad. Maybe he already was mad. Maybe he couldn’t sleep because he didn’t want to see what awaited him in his dreams.

“Look, I know who you are. I ran your name on the receipt. You’re Hercule Satan!”

The man nodded, running a hand through his ragged beard. His eyes were hurting now. They were screaming at him to sleep, but his brain would have none of that. Mr. Satan was too weary to argue with either of them.

“You won the regional tournament in Orange Star City, didn’t you?”

He nodded again. “That was years ago,” he said hoarsely. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Everythin’ goes away, ya know. Nothin’ matters”

“Are you going to compete in the World Martial Arts Tournament?”

Emotion rippled across the man’s face for a fraction of a second. “I doubt it.”

“Well you should. I think you could do well.”

“I haven’t won a fight in half a year.”

“I heard about what happened to you in the paper. That was five months ago, right?” her voice was careful and cheerful, deceptive as honey and wine. When Mr. Satan didn’t respond and instead grabbed a nearby rock and skipped it across the obsidian-polished waters, she spoke again, this time with greater sympathy. “I… I’m sorry about what happened to you. I can’t imagine going through something like that.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Hercule said sadly.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

“No,” he replied solemnly. “But if ya wanna stay, I won’t stop ya.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“The sunrise. We used ta watch a lot of them back in the day.”

“I’ll stay then,” she said. “Hey, in the morning, what do you say we grab some coffee?”

Mr. Satan stared out over the water. The city lights and stars reflected in the dark water. A seabird flew silent and low across the unbroken surface, scanning for fish. He tried to focus on his breathing, but that wasn’t helping. He wanted to succumb; he wanted to slip away; but his body refused to fall asleep. So he stayed with the waitress and felt a small measure of comfort, for she reminded him of someone he used to know.

The morning rose in a pale pink mist, and the two watched the fog dissipate and the ships come in from longs nights at sea. The sun burst out from over the horizon, and the sky opened up. It was a light blue, with a single puffy cloud hovering in the midst of it. The sea winds carried that away with haste, and soon it was just an open blue expanse, a frontier of young joy. Mr. Satan threw up into the sea.

That woke up the waitress, who had fallen asleep on his shoulder. “H-hey, are you alright?” she yawned.

“I’m just tired,” he replied distantly. “I just need to sleep.”

“I used to have the same problem. The way I tricked myself into falling asleep was to stop thinking about anything. I know it’s hard,” she said, smiling, “but the fastest way to get to sleep is to forget everything that’s troubling you.”

“It’s not gonna happen.”

The two of them stood up, watching the city wake up around them. The early morning is not good for the tired, and Mr. Satan felt a migraine coming on. The day was bright, but it was too early to be warm; the biting cold was worse than getting punched in the face by a half-drunk lunatic.

“So what do you say about that coffee? the waitress yawned again. “I’m buying.”

“I don’t want coffee.” That was the last thing he needed.

They looked into one another’s eyes once again. Hers were so dark brown they looked almost black. Hercule knew his were bloodshot. There was something flickering in her eyes – was it pity? Sympathy? Longing? What Mr. Satan wanted more than anything else was to reach out and make things go back to how they once had been. He was too tired to stop himself.

The man lunged forward and attempted to kiss the woman. She backed off and slapped him across the face.

“Whoa, not cool! What was that for?!”

Mr. Satan’s eyes were watering. He was confused and delirious. “But…”

Her face reddened with anger. “I just wanted coffee. You’re taking things way too fast! What are you, some kind of creep?”

“I thought…”

“You thought?!” she yelled, causing a few passersby to glance over at them. “Yeah, I bet, you pervert. Only in dreams. It’s not gonna happen.”

She gave him the finger and walked off into the burgeoning day. Mr. Satan’s vision began to swim and he knew it was time to get home. The universe was out to get him, he thought. Time had not been kind to his prospects nor to his state of mind. And now he couldn’t even sleep. He had a martial arts tournament tomorrow. If he wasn’t well-rested, he would lose, and he wouldn’t get paid. He needed that money to survive. He needed that money to feed his newborn daughter.

Mr. Satan blinked furiously and shook his head. The waitress had taught him one valuable lesson, even if it wasn't the one he had hoped it would be. He didn’t have time to feel bad about messing things up with her. He needed to end the pain. He needed to fix himself. “Okay,” he said aloud. “Just clear your mind. Clear your mind! Don’t think about anythin’!”

It was so hard not to think about it, like ignoring your arm being on fire. There was pain in knowing, and even more pain in forgetting. But for his sake and his daughter’s, Mr. Satan closed his eyes and thought of nothing. How long it took him to pass out on the docks cannot be said, at least not by Mr. Satan’s own calculations. He receded into the darkness of his mind and shut off all thought. He was an animal, a series of organic processes. He was human, but it was killing him. He had to let it go.

The darkness was not total, nor was it static. Mist swirled about, great sparkling blackness erupting in plumes of stardust. Shapes of impossible distortion danced in and out of sight like leaves along an autumn path. They were there; he knew, but sight was the wrong word to describe how he knew. He felt them. He knew she was there too, lurking in the shadows, but why wouldn’t she show herself? He could smell her in the air, feel her movements as he swam into the starless veil. The shapes touched him and filled him with a sense of need. Faster, they urged, but he had not the strength. He knew what that meant. The man began to cry great drops of ink. He was freezing up. He was losing his opportunity. Reality had dissolved away, like salt into water, and all that remained were the shapes who knew him. They were hunting him, as they had hunted her. The man’s sobs echoed through nothingness.

And then through the stillness, came a figure, like broken glass, slender and deadly. Her features were so vivid, that for a moment, she seemed to radiate the only light in the whole damn miserable world. He reached out to touch her, and she reached back. Their hands touched. He felt warm and free. Unfocused, distant lights trembled across the ancient sky like candles. He took her other hand in his and felt her body press up against his. This is how it’s supposed to be, he thought. I never want to leave here. She smiled sheepishly and twirled around him, the light reflecting off her crystal form. You have to let go, she implored. Ice filled his veins. ''No, I can’t. You must. I can’t!'' She smiled again, that same smile that had won him over on their first date. That same smile that had put him beyond the point of no return. Please. But as they danced, the lights faded, the dark shapes dissolved, and even the darkness itself began to fade into a grey-bleak nothingness. It was over. No! he implored, reaching out for her again. Please, you can’t go. She danced away from him and smiled knowingly. ''Let go, Hercule. Let it go.'' The man swam forward, desperation driving him. ''Please just once more. One more dance.'' She shook her head. ''Once but never again. It’s too late.'' His wife exploded into a sea of blue crystal stars, flaming out into oblivion, the last few bits hovering in silence, and burning, burning, burning to the beat of his own heart before bursting again into nebulous streaks of white that soon encompassed everything, and he knew it was time to wake up.

Endnotes


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