Chapter Text
On the ground, rare and unique things always are and always will be in great danger of being destroyed and broken.
In a place surrounded by trash, it's the most logical course of action for most people.
Something is despised so much that people will pay money to destroy it or something is so fascinating and beautiful that people want to have it for themselves and only themselves.
After all, neither very despised nor very unique things are common on the ground.
A Sphereite, as an example, is so despised that people pay money even for their bones or clothes just to torment them and let their anger out of them.
Or sometimes people buy them to worship them, to display to their cult a broken rip, maybe even a halfway intact eye.
They pay ten, maybe even a hundred thousand coins on them, not even caring about the condition they are in.
The part of the body or the material of the clothes does not matter at all, they will take whatever they can get.
They do not see Sphereites as Humans after all, they are either despised scum that make their life a living hell or they worship them like they are a higher deity.
Outside of Sphereites, there are also, of course, people from the ground being sold a Sphereites does not appear all that constantly after all.
But hating or worshiping people on the ground is logically not the main reason why people buy them.
Opposed to Sphereites, these people are living human beings that you can see on the streets after all, so they can not be dehumanized like Sphereites.
No, the humans on the ground are sold and bought mostly based on two things: their skills or their soulmark.
Givers are not per se a common thing on the ground, but they are well established in the daily lives of most.
Selling and buying a Giver will get you a worse punishment than selling and buying part of Sphereites.
After all, givers are part of the groundies and the people on the ground are known to protect things they consider their own.
So, even though hell guards do not particularly like Giver's, selling or buying them will give you, if caught, a punishment some consider worse than death.
The only thing worse than that is if you get caught in a transaction with a normal resident, no matter if it is because of their soulmark or not.
But while it's only an unspoken rule, criminals will be treated even harsher if it is confirmed that it happened because of a soulmark.
Soulmarks an interesting aspect of the human life that raised a lot of questions over the time of their existence, most of them left unanswered.
Like Givers, Soulmates only exist on the ground, not even a trace of them on the Sphere to be seen.
So, with this knowledge, it's most likely to assume that they share the same origin.
But even with this deduction, it seems a lot more unsystemised, and random than givers and Vital Instruments are.
You can explain the way that Vital instruments came about with anima and all that, but by Soulmates there is no reasonable explanation about how they materialized.
Soulmarks are known to appear at a random moment in your life on some part of your body.
The part of the body they appear one are mostly interpreted to be very symbolic.
Some people also interpret a lot into the color of the name, which is not totally baseless but is kinda hard to correctly interpret for most people.
The soulmarks itself are very easy to understand. At some point in your life you get two names.
One is your soulmate's name. The person you will feel the most alive with, someone who will understand your entire being seemingly wordless.
Givers and Vital instruments even share a soulmate because of how big the vital instrument absorbed the giver's soul.
Soulmates are not bound to be romantic relationships. Of course, people can take action however they want based on their own free will.
That being said, most people still end up forming a romantic bond over a Platonic one.
The other name shows you who your greatest enemy will be, the person who will make your life impossibly harder and keep you up at night, not even allowing you to sleep at peace.
You will most likely end up trying to kill your enemy, or he will end up killing you.
The only thing making this whole soulmarks thing complicated is the fact that there is no way of telling apart if someone is your soulmate or your enemy.
Most people prefer to talk with both of the names before coming to a conclusion about who is what.
Or they try to figure it out based on where the names are positioned on their body.
If one name is near your heart, most people assume that this means that it's your soulmate's name, but there have been enough cases where it turns out the name is where because your enemy stabbed through your heart.
So trying to identify your soulmate based on the position where the name is on your body is pretty stupid.
And while the ground is not greatly bound by things like tradition and norms, there are still, of course, people who follow them.
These types of people believe that soulmates have to be romantic, your life should be dedicated to killing your enemy and that if you do not have a mark or only have one you are cursed.
Not having a soulmark or only having one is something nearly unheard of, but the possibility is definitely not equal to zero.
There are cases where it was reported, so it is definitely a real thing.
These people are also the ones that are sold in human traffic together with people who have the names of celebrities.
If someone with Too Lily's name shows up as an example, the person would be hunted and sold quicker than anyone could blink.
That's why most celebrities hide both of their soulmarks most of the time.
Oh, right, there is one more possibility, but there are no documented cases of it, so it's considered impossible by most.
Having the same name for both your soulmate and your enemy.
What a cruel fate it would be to have the person who understands your entire being without judging you and making your heart beat in sheer excitement also be the person who wants to see you crumble and destroyed the most.
Zanka always hated being average.
Surrounded by geniuses his entire life, his painful inferiority was basically shoved down his throat.
But once he barely reached the age of 14, he, for the first time in his life, wished that he ended up just being average.
It was not some grand moment there. Zanka noticed the mark and his whole life was changed like some text books portrayed the moment.
No, the mark just appeared in the middle of the day while Zanka was training outside with a practicing sword in his hand.
He was frustrated after fighting and losing to Goka again, and so he swung his sword like there was no tomorrow.
He probably would not even have realized it if his hand had not started to twitch wildly suddenly, as if he had damaged some nerve.
The sword literally fell from his hand because of it and the twitch only stopped then Zanka looked down on the 'cause of it.
There, on his skin in a cool purple colour, he saw the name for the first time.
He looked at it for a long moment before deciding that it was not worth his attention and picking up his sword again.
After all, for a Nijiku, it does not matter if the name you get is your soulmate or your enemy.
You are supposed to act without letting your emotions cloud your decision-making skills.
But as much as he liked to pretend that he did not care at all about it, he was never as perfect as his family would like him to be.
So his thought lingered on the sharply written letters, wondering if the name was maybe his soulmates.
He was a Nijiku. He was not supposed to care at all about it. Logically speaking, he knew that his feelings were illogical.
But his hands still tightened around the sword's handle.
His second mark appeared some months after his first mark appeared.
It manifested the same time as when he awakened Lovely assistaff for the first time. The moment she started to change her form, his neck started to ache like crazy.
At first, he just thought that it was normal for a Giver to get a neck ache, then he first awakened his vital instrument.
To be fair, it's not like that they gave him a course at the academy about how givers feel, then they awaken their instruments.
The thoughts about the academy were not really pleasant now.
After his defeat at Hyo's hand and his family disappointed and hateful eyes once he told them that he was going to join the cleaners.
Yeah, thinking about things related to the hell guards made his stomach turn violently.
Enjin and Riyo also said nothing about how the first awakening of your vital instrument is supposed to feel.
And Zanka did have the sneaking suspicion that Enjin and Riyo would laugh their guts out if Zanka did dare to ask the question.
Well, so he took some time to notice the green ink on his neck and the somehow even sharper looking letters written on it.
He just stared at the window of the shop for a painfully long moment, his brain trying to catch up with the implication of having the same name twice on his skin.
It-It is impossible to have your soulmate also be your worst enemy, right?
It surely has to be two different people who just coincidentally share the same name.
But even in his own mind, the excuses sound rather weak and pathetic.
And so he stays frozen in his spot in front of the shop window until he can hear Enjin and Riyo's loud voices penetrate his brain and notice Enjin large hand resting on his shoulder.
Jabber is not the type of person to dwell on the whole soulmate part that everyone seems to be so down bad for.
To tell the truth, he probably could not care any less about the whole soulmate thing.
The more interesting thing was the name that belonged, according to the people he beat up, to his greatest enemy.
Someone destined to give Jabber a really good time while fighting being out there just waiting for Jabber to clash with him?
Oh, his hands are just shaking at the thought about it.
But despite his excitement, the names took some time to appear.
As a matter of fact, his first name came together with maybe the single most important moment in Jabber's life.
The names came together with the awakening of Mankira.
To be more clear, they appeared the first time Jabber did cut through someone's throat.
Maybe it was the act itself or the blood that adorned her sharp claws, but he felt a weird ache coming from the place she rested on his finger.
So it took him some time to notice it.
The Soulmark was hidden pretty good. He would have completely overlooked them if he had not taken Mankira off after they both got a little bit carried away in the rush of the game.
The second he moved the first ring, his fingers relaxed immediately.
Oh, so that pain was not coming from Mankira thought for sure that it came as a nice little bonus with the whole awakening thing.
Well, his first name appeared in dark blue ink, every finger on his left hand having one letter neatly written on it.
Z-A-N-K-A
Jabber lifted his hand up towards the sky, examining the words and trying to figure out if it is the name of his lame ass soulmate or the one from his enemy.
After an unknown time of looking at his fingers, he came to the conclusion that he should probably wait for the second name.
It was pretty unbearable for a curious mind like Jabbers to let an unsolved problem go.
He felt his skin itch not going away, no matter how hard Jabber drugged himself high of poison.
Mankira was burning uncontrolled on his fingers, her heat reflecting the inpatient of her partner.
They could only function normally again, then the second name appeared and Jabber's mind finally came to a halt, the unbearable itch stopped and Mankira burned even hotter than before.
The second name did let Jabber wait for a long moment though.
It appeared a little after he joined Zodyl in his Group what he called the raiders.
The second, he put on his new purple clothes and officially accepted to join Zodyl. His other hands also started to form the same itch as the other hand.
Jabber hurriedly pushed Mankira's rings up a little bit before stopping dead on his track. Then he saw the name written underneath it.
Z-A-N-K-A
This time they were blood red, a contrast to the dark blue name written on his other hand.
Jabber cracked a big smile, then he compared the two names, while the dark blue one looked all neat and fancy the blood red one looked a lot messier.
In someway, the red version looked a lot more loose and free. Jabber prefers the second version more.
The blue one also has its own charm. It looks more elegant and strong, but Jabber prefers the red one.
Z-A-N-K-A
Jabber pulled the rings back to their original position so that they covered the letters underneath them.
Both names only showing up when he made progress with Mankira?
Jabber cracked a grin which made his cheeks scream in protest.
So his ultimate enemy soulmate was just as much a fighter as Jabber was.
Z-A-N-K-A
Why else would his name only appear once he activated Mankira for the first time and in her true potential?
Oh, and he had no doubt in his head that his soulmate would be a man nothing against women. Some of them throw really nasty punches.
But Jabber's instincts just told him that his soulmate would be a man.
And one thing was clear when Jabber gets him, and he will for sure.
Nothing will be able to hold him back to completely bath in the violence he and his Vital instrument will bring him and Mankira.
After all, Mankira burns around the letters underneath her.
Z-A-N-K-A
Z-A-N-K-A
Jabber can't believe that he thought that his soulmate would end up being boring.
Of course, he will not be boring. After all, he is Jabber's soulmate.