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Introduction
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Vengeance — Hands That Touch a Nightmare is the thirty-seventh chapter of Jun Mochizuki's The Case Study of Vanitas.
This article contains plot and/or ending details for The Case Study of Vanitas.
Read at your own risk.
Summary[]
“I’d been thinking for ages. About how to bring this nightmare to an end.”
A memory of a young Chloé looking up at her father, her eyes filled with wonder, as he told her their duty as nobles to protect their people, and she must never forget that.
Laughter fills the air along with the still falling snow. Jeanne cloaked in black and Chloé cloaked in white, like the blizzard against the pitch black night sky. Chloé laughs with an emotion that can only be called relief. “I’m so… tired.” Her head is bowed down, tears dropping alongside the snow, and greets Jeanne for finally coming. Jeanne stares at her. Chloé tells her to hurry, as there’s no time left. Down below the cliff shining lights travel forward in a single-file line—the torches being carried by the angry mob of villagers, who continue chanting for the deaths of the Beast and the Witch. Chloé extends her bloodstained hand towards Jeanne, nothing but the falling snow separating them, and beckons her forth. Her fangs, her claws, her flames, and…
Go on—Jeanne as a child meeting Chloé. Go on—Jeanne running through the woods with Chloé and tackling her to the ground. Go on—Jeanne and Chloé lying on a bed of flowers looking up at the sky together. Jeanne recalling all these memories in this moment. Go on…!
Jeanne hesitates. Chloé looks at Jeanne and freezes. Jeanne is holding back tears. Even full grown, clad in armor, face stained with blood, here she is biting her lip with tears welling in her eyes, looking devastated. Chloé is in shock. She remembers, when they last parted and she told Jeanne not to cry, to come back to Gévaudan, and that she’d be looking forward to meeting her again when she’s grown up. Chloé, tears still falling, purses her lip and makes a decision. She takes a step backwards. Jeanne’s head snaps up in surprise. Chloé inches closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, all the while Jeanne brokenly begs her to stop and wait. Jeanne lunges forward and screams Chloé’s name. Chloé falls. Jeanne is left with her hand outstretched towards empty air, watching Chloé plummet off the cliff. Chloé looks up at Jeanne with her tears blurring her vision. She thinks mournfully how this is for the best. She tightly cradles Jean-Jacques in her arms and apologizes to him as she continues to fall.
“Are you sure that’s true?”
Chloé’s eyes snap open. Naenia is here, the smoke-like wisps of her shadowy form painting a black streak through the air as she free-falls alongside Chloé. Naenia cradles Chloé’s face in her hands. Chloé stares into her terrible smile as she bemoans how pitiful she is. Despite none of this being her fault, the family she cherished so much detested her as a “monster” and the citizens she tried so hard to protect nearly killed Jean-Jacques, who simply tried to protect her. Humans and Vampires have both abandoned her, the first Vampire she’d ever met and befriended sending a Senate-approved Bourreau to kill her, and the d’Apchiers blaming her for their destruction. Tears fill Chloé’s eyes as Naenia asks if she’s sad, if she hates them. If Chloé wants to take revenge on Gévaudan. Chloé stares up at Naenia in shock. Slowly, she bites out: she does hate them. Naenia grins as Chloé agrees that she can’t ever forgive them. Chloé screams that she will have her revenge. Naenia smiles with glee. They lean in together and their lips lock in a kiss. An explosion of light emits from their forms. Jeanne left standing at the edge of the cliff winces at the bright light. The energy bursts outwards almost like electricity running up and down the walls of the Château. Jeanne realizes with alarm that something is being rewritten at a massive scale and tremendous speed. She screams into the winter air: “Chloé!!!”
The present.
Chloé presses her fingers into the keys of the piano before her. The sound plays out and reverberates through to the machinery connected to the keys. Chloé takes a deep breath. She presses her feet on the pedals below, the knobs start to spin, the sheet music turns, the mechanical sounds of the machinery preparing itself and getting to work clangs and squeaks. Then Chloé begins to play. “Begin calculation.” Music resounds throughout the entire space. The huge empty space of the room, the books surrounding on all sides, the machinery down below, the chains high above, the light from the heavens reaching down to connect to the World Formula Alteration Device in the center. Where Chloé sits, playing her music. Every inch of this space is resonating with the song at Chloé’s fingertips. The opening act for the “vengeance” to come.
A clapping replies to her playing, catching Chloé’s attention. She looks to the doorway and finds a figure standing there. Vanitas stands there looking smug (and cold) and notes the keyboard she was playing on to be what operates all the devices surrounding her. He asks if she’s Chloé d’Apchier, and Chloé replies by asking who he is. Vanitas introduces himself the way he always does: as a doctor specializing in Vampires. He proclaims that he’s here to save her, making Chloé twitch. At least that’s what is meant to eventually happen; he recalls him telling Noé to convince him to save them. Vanitas takes a step forward and demands one thing from Chloé: return his Book of Vanitas properly and with no further trouble. Chloé stiffens. A beat of silence. Chloé is confused what he means. Vanitas clarifies with urgency, the book with black pages and a blue leather cover. At that description Chloé recognizes what he’s talking about and provides him with an answer:
“It’s in here somewhere.”
Vanitas, standing in the middle of a massive room with three stories worth of fully lined bookshelves, freezes in place.
“Quoi?” he says.
Chloé explains that the stone incorporated in the Book caught her eye, but nothing she did could get them out of the Book. So she placed it somewhere in the middle of her work, and Jean-Jacques afterwards cleared it away. Vanitas struggled with his frustration for a moment. Eventually he explodes in anger at being faced with yet another Vampire who can’t keep proper track of their belongings, harkening back to a certain pale-haired brown-skinned repeat offender. Chloé ignores this and brings up his apparently “saving” her. Eyes dark, she asks whether he’s an ally or an enemy. A dark shadow appears beside her. Hands black as night grip Chloé’s shoulders and Naenia, not smiling for once, growls that Vanitas is undoubtedly an enemy. The last time they met, Vanitas attacked Naenia and stopped her in her tracks. Naenia screams that she hates him.
Vanitas thinks it over then comes to answer—he is no one’s ally. Chloé absorbs this, then commands him to vanish. An explosion destroys the part of the bookshelves where Vanitas had been standing, but the human in question jumped out of the way just in time. He compliments the automatons Chloé has in her possession, as the imitation d’Apchiers wield mechanical claws and whirring buzzsaws at him. Chloé tells Naenia to deal with the intruder. Naenia giggles, absolutely ecstatic, and jumps in to join the fray against Vanitas with a gleeful cry. Vanitas is stuck fighting against the numerous automatons and Naenia’s expanding shadowy form. Chloé continues to play the keyboard. Vanitas swiftly and lithely dodges the attacks while yelling to Chloé. He asks what she intends to rewrite using the Alteration Device, what she means by “revenge.” Vanitas loops a wire around a railing from above and pulls himself a story higher to get out of the automatons’ reach.
Naenia reaches for Vanitas, but is shot through with bullets before she can get to him. Dante has arrived, pointing his gun and ready to back Vanitas up. Vanitas snaps at Dante for being late while spitting in the other direction, and Dante snaps back at Vanitas for running off by himself. While they bicker about the location of the Book, more automatons come to join the fight. Dante shoots to keep the automatons back and Vanitas lands on the ground beside him. Dante asks if he can track the “waves” from the Book’s stones, but Vanitas replies that his tool used to find the Book stopped working the moment he entered the room. The Alteration Device seems to use the same stones as the Book of Vanitas, so the tool can’t properly work. Naenia advances on them and Dante shoots several bullets into her shadowy form. Vanitas warns him against doing so, and Dante grows pale that Naenia can attack them but they can’t attack her in turn. Chloé listens to their fight, face impassive.
The Alteration Device shines a blinding light and whirs to life. Vanitas and Dante flinch in the wake of its activation. “Analysis complete. Coordinates set.” Chloé’s eyes are intense as she continues her machinations on the Device, and Vanitas watches her with growing unease. Naenia starts to giggle. She explains Chloé’s plan—to erase Gévaudan from the world. Vanitas and Dante are in shock. Naenia continues: from the people to the animals, the forests to the mountains, every last inch of this place she intends to pitch into oblivion. To eliminate its existence entirely. Naenia wonders what will happen, what it’ll do once she does so. She laughs in elation and cries how she can’t wait. Dante is bewildered and panicked. Vanitas is horrified to hear all this. Not even hiding or breaking it, just outright deleting Gévaudan from the World Formula would have an absolutely, intensely massive recoil for the rest of the world. Vanitas yells at Chloé to not do it. Chloé looks at Vanitas.
Vanitas stops. He stares at Chloé. He looks at the expression she’s making.
“Wrong.”
Dante is baffled and tries to ask Vanitas what he says is “wrong.” Vanitas says Naenia is, about Chloé intentions, and what Chloé actually desires is… Vanitas trails off. He grits his teeth. He sharply commands Dante to shoot Chloé and keep her from moving, to prevent her from activating the Alteration Device any further. Chloé continues playing. “Definition interference. Phenomenon alteration.” Vanitas uses his knives and wires, and Dante uses his bullets, both frantic to stop Chloé in her tracks. None of it works, all their attacks blocked by the automatons, and Chloé continues. The sheet music turns. The piano keys are pressed. The music plays. Chloé speaks: “Existence stabilized.” She presses her finger on the key. Everyone feels it. Vanitas, Dante, Jean-Jacques in Beast form, Jeanne, Astolfo, Noé. Everyone in the area flinches, feeling to their core as the Alteration Device activates. But none feel it more potently than one in particular.
Naenia, seized in place by the power of the Alteration Device activating on her.
At first she is confused. Her pitch black shadowy form inverts to a stark white. The power of the Device engulfs and devours and transforms her. The vague outline of her shape slowly, steadily shifts; from the jagged indistinct edges she once possessed to something more defined. Something more humanoid. With solid arms, solid legs, long hair splayed out into the air, sharp teeth, eyes black as night—the left one bigger than the right. All the while this process happens to her, she’s groaning and choking and screaming at the agony of being given form. Vanitas and Dante on the ground clutch their ears against Naenia’s screaming, and Dante asks what’s going on. Vanitas glares at the scene with agitation and answers: Naenia’s body has been forced into a physical form.
Chloé thinks.
“I’d been thinking for ages. About how to bring this nightmare to an end.”
Chloé steps forward. Naenia looks at her.
“This vague, drifting nightmare. Something I couldn’t even touch… what would I need to do to kill it?”
Chloé touches Naenia’s face. Her hand makes contact with the solid skin.
Vanitas and Dante stare in shock.
Chloé strokes Naenia’s face lovingly and smiles with delight. “If you’re like this, even I can kill you.”
Naenia stares at Chloé. Chloé explains to Naenia. When she was a child, her father taught her what it meant to be born a noble, the duty they had to protect the people of their domain. How that ideal was the pride of the d’Apchiers. Chloé’s look of wonder as she was told this. And so… Chloé tightly grips Naenia’s head with both hands. Fervently, desperately, she declares that no matter what they do to her. No matter how badly she wants to kill them. Chloé could never hate the d’Apchiers’ people. Chloé’s eyes are manic with how intensely she feels. She loves them, because that is her duty, because she is a d’Apchier. Vanitas looks up at her.
Chloé continues, but the thing is, that does not apply to Naenia. After all, he is Chloé’s and Chloé’s alone. He is Chloé’s “one and only” and Naenia meddled with him. Naenia defiled Jean-Jacques’s True Name. Chloé remembers her losing the d’Apchiers and Jean-Jacques clumsily embracing her to try to comfort her. Chloé will never forgive Naenia for that.
Chloé’s hands clutch around Naenia’s neck as she reminds her of what she said before.
“I am a terribly jealous woman!”
Characters[]
- Chloé d'Apchier
- Chloé d'Apchier's Father*
- Jeanne
- Beast of Gévaudan
- Jean-Jacques Chastel
- Naenia
- August Ruthven*
- Vanitas
- Noé Archiviste
- Dante
- Astolfo Granatum
(*) - Denotes that the character did not appear physically, but as a part of another character's memories.
Terms[]
Trivia[]
- Vengeance is a French word that shares the exact same spelling and definition as the English word "vengeance." Still, this is to be regarded as the French word and is meant to be pronounced in a French manner.
References[]
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| v - e - t | The Case Study of Vanitas Chapters |
|---|---|
| Parisian Excursion Arc | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 |
| Bal Masqué Arc | 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
| Hunters of the Dark Arc | 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 |
| The Beast of Gévaudan Arc | 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 34.5 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 38.5 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 |
| Amusement Park Arc | 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 54.5 • 55 • 55.5 • 56 |
| Miel Incident Arc | 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 61.5 • 62 • 62.5 • 63 • 64 • 65 |
| Intermissions | 15.5 • 46.5 • 51.5 • 60.5 |
| Volumes | 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 |
| Omake | Vanitashu no Karute • Romance is a✰LOVE MISSION • Confessional Counseling Office |
| Other | Author's Notes |