Thanks, spartanob06 for favoriting! It's great to have you on board! I hope you enjoy your reading of a Certain Broken Testament. Thanks, Daeths for following and favoriting! Welcome aboard! I hope that you find enjoyment in reading a Certain Broken Testament.
As we always do around this time, let's jump right into response time, shall we?
321jaz: that we are, and that we are! I'm glad to hear!
It would've been quite the spectacle to see Kamijou Touma wandering about the School Garden as a male; but our hero has enough on his plate, doesn't he? The last thing he needs are rumors following him around that proclaim him a pervert.
Romance isn't that simple of a thing as it turns out, but I'm sure we all know that. I think we can all agree that someone such as Kihara Gensei doesn't deserve a peaceful end, and arguably incarceration would do very little. Someone as influential as Gensei could likely buy his way out of a cell, or otherwise call in a favor or two.
That's an interesting inquiry to say the absolute least. What exactly does the Kamisato Faction think about what they probably see as a sort of betrayal from Karasuma Fran? I suppose we're bound to find out in the future.
If we didn't know any better, I'd proclaim Tsuchimikado Motoharu the new owner of the Imagine Breaker. Such misfortune indeed!
Your approval is something I hope to be able to consistently gain, through subsequent chapters, friend!
whwsms: not quite a DAYUM, but an IN-teresting. Believe me when I say that plenty of DAYUM-inducing chapters are on the horizon, along with hybrids of both DAYUM and IN-teresting. Expect the unexpected and keep hope alive!
Indeed. It's a good sign that Touma is troubled by these intrusive thoughts of his, and feels the need to stave them off. A true taker of lives would pay little mind to such thoughts, maybe even embrace them.
That's one intriguing way of looking at the scene that unfolded with Mitsuko, Kinuho, Maaya and Touma at its center. While I can confirm that the three young Tokiwadai students were incapable of knowing that there was an individual beneath the façade, attraction can't truly be ruled out of the picture, not yet at least. As you suggest, time will indeed tell if more will come of this meeting, or if it will be a one-hit wonder.
That's just Shirai Kuroko being herself. Her thoughts have been suggested to be anything but wholesome, at least during her frequent periods of intense lust. In regards to Ruiko and Kazari, don't think for a moment that these two are simply going to be skimmed over. Ruiko in particular is going to become a central character in Broken Testament's narrative, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Don't want to drop any spoilers!
I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed my out-of-the-box take on Misaka Mikoto and her relationship with Kamijou Touma. I wanted to stray as far away from the 'unreasonable tsundere' archetype as much as possible, which is the archetype in which Mikoto is fitted into by most. Expect more on the past interactions between Touma and Mikoto to be unveiled as time goes on, just as you predicted.
Merry old England is in some merry old trouble to say the least – and I really do have to say the absolute least in order to prevent spoilers from being revealed- and Kamijou Touma's forced involvement might just make things more complicated than they have to be. Motoharu has the right to be concerned, especially given the Archbishop's manipulation of "the Index". As you suggested, should Touma learn of this, the results will most likely not be pretty to behold at all.
I'm very glad to know that I'm able to consistently gain your stamp of approval! I hope to be able to continually do so.
Guest: while not a bad idea by any means, I'd hate to start accidentally incorrectly numbering you lovely people, or identifying one individual as another in error.
That they are; Awatsuki Maaya and Wannai Kinuho. Thanks for the catch on that one; I completely missed it!
Alph97: I can promise that it'll be anything but subdued, friend. Let's just say that Tsuchimikado Motoharu is going to be in for a surprise.
Following a dull and particularly uneventful trip, Kamijou Touma had found his way to his dormitory. He considered it a blessing that the building hadn't been blown up or surrounded by crazed magicians who either wanted to jump his bones, kill him or engage in both of those activities.
Just as it always had, the dormitory stood tall and just a bit less than proud, given that it was hardly the epicenter of Academy City's wealthier youth.
The eight-story structure was quite run-down, in fact. At the very least, the power hadn't been knocked out; many of the windows dotting the structure were awash in synthetic golden light, though in the natural waning daylight there wasn't much of the synthetic light to be seen beyond the panes themselves.
Kamijou Touma made the lengthy and unsatisfying trip into the dormitory's lobby and deep into the blackened stairwell, then up through the darkened staircase within. Along the way he encountered a number of abandoned textbooks, suggesting that someone had fallen victim to the inky blackness. He understood this unknown individual's frustration, if frustration was indeed what lead to the textbooks' abandonment. Perhaps it was garbage that'd been thrown away by someone too ignorant to place it into a dustbin.
Through the required door Kamijou Touma walked, phasing directly through and then beyond the thick, metallic blockade by shifting his form's density. His nanorobotic machine-phase matter hummed as it passed through the solid object.
Everything almost seemed to be going too well for him.
As Touma walked down the hallway that lead to the room he shared with Index and the former Magic God Othinus, within the dormitory itself, no misfortune fell upon his shoulders. A crazed gunman didn't turn a corner nor did he step on a mousetrap that'd been laid out in the hallway – though such a thing wouldn't have caused Kamijou Touma to experience pain anyways – and most importantly of all there were no magicians trying to drag him off on some insane quest.
With the paradoxical blessing and curse that'd resided within the right hand of the "old" Kamijou Touma seemingly gone forever, perhaps his misfortune well and truly had come to an end. Perhaps it was all over.
Rather than stopping before his room's door and knocking, he simply adjusted his form's density – a command which was almost becoming second nature to Kamijou Touma – and phased directly through the solid object, his form humming quietly as he did so.
Inside of the room he froze, coming to a quiet halt.
Sitting around the dorm room's table were Fukiyose Seiri, Himegami Aisa, Index and Othinus. Luckily (for Touma at least), Seiri faced away from him while Aisa sat with her legs folded beneath her posterior on the table's left side, facing Othinus who was shooting him a look that could've killed, if looks alone were truly capable of such feats. Index had evidently been captivated by something beneath the table, rendering the little nun a non-issue.
He'd have to handle the situation before him with caution, lest the entire situation in question blow up in his face, covering him in slap marks, ash, and far too many questions. It wasn't like he could beat up his own friends if they decided to assault him.
Or could he?
Of course he couldn't do such a thing. Shrugging the hypothetical subject of philosophy off, Touma placed his left hand carefully against the surface of the handle, attached to the door behind him. He pushed it downwards, causing it to click in place.
All heads turned to him; Othinus was apparently in on his game and had chosen to side with him. Index looked about as impressed as Othinus had, but she too seemed to have taken side with her guardian. Had she seen her guardian phase through the door as well? Touma could only assume so.
Great. More questions to answer. Kamijou Touma could've groaned in frustration and desperation alike right then and there.
But was that the right reaction? Wasn't coming clean the right thing to do? He wanted nothing more than to come clean; there were simply many risks that were associated with doing so.
Almost immediately, Index's pet cat who'd been laying beneath the table adjacent to the knees of Fukiyose Seiri sprung up, hissing loudly at Kamijou Touma. The creature dashed towards the tidied bed, and buried itself within the sheets.
"Oi, nice to see you too, you mangy, flea-bitten varmint."
Touma's grumbles faded into obscurity as he approached the quartet.
"Don't talk about Sphynx like that! Tooouummmaaaaa!" Index chastised, wagging, ironically enough, her right index finger as she did so.
While Himegami Asia offered Touma a smile and a polite curtsy, even from her sitting position on the floor, and while Fukiyose Seiri huffed in his direction, giving him something a dirty and unapproving look – which was ironic given that she was a guest in his home – it was Othinus who'd risen from her place on the floor.
In the end, he couldn't bring himself to be frustrated with the likes of Fukiyose Seiri for more than a few moments. Her behavior was part of her nature.
Closing the distance between herself and the one who Understood her, Othinus placed either of her hands against Touma's icy shoulders, pulling him wordlessly into the dorm's laundry room.
While Aisa and Seiri thought little of it, returning to their quiet conversation regarding the nature of Personal Realities of all things, Index could only pout as her cheeks began to glow a bright shade of red. She had no desire to join the conversation in progress. Instead, she merely rested her hand against her face, which she propped up, her right elbow pushed against the table's surface.
Obviously, those two were going off to kiss or something of the sort; while what they'd get up to would be completely innocent, which brought relief to the little nun's heart, she still felt like she was being excluded.
Then again, was she ready to kiss either of those two? Was that what Index even wanted? Was she even ready to do anything of the sort? Weren't two people supposed to be in a relationship before they did something like that? According to church doctrine, two people weren't supposed to even do anything of the sort until they were married; but that doctrine came from another time, and hardly anyone followed such strict life guidelines, save the zealous.
Index knew that much. At least she could try and convince herself that such a thing was fact and not a mere sweeping generalization. The little nun found herself with a lot to think about.
In the dorm's laundry room, Kamijou Touma found himself being pushed against the nearest wall without warning; he'd been bumped against the washing machine, though this caused him no discomfort, as he simply declined the sensation's attempt to make itself known to him.
He certainly couldn't say that he minded nor could he have said that this was out of the ordinary; post-school "sexual frustration relief therapy" sessions between Kamijou Touma and Othinus had become commonplace some time ago. The event unfolding around him, what was happening to him was part of a daily routine.
Furthermore, the former Magic God's lips aggressively pressing against his own didn't cause any discomfort, either, nor could he say that he minded the physical attention. The way she shoved herself against him, grinding her form on his icy body brought a semblance of humanity to the forefront of his changed consciousness.
Touma's hands fell upon the hips of the former Magic God and he pulled her close, wordlessly embracing what was transpiring between the two.
Othinus wasn't some unfortunate girl he'd stumbled upon in a compromising situation. She wasn't going to strike him for admiring her, and she wasn't going to bring her wrath down upon him if he chose to indulge in her finer, more private areas. They didn't have to be 'in a relationship'. They weren't an item nor did they didn't have to be. Such societal structures were insignificant and unimportant to Kamijou Touma and the once-Majin Othinus.
"Mating rituals" were nothing new to these two, two immortal beings, one who'd ascended through magic and one who'd been forcibly ascended through science. Even before his ascension, "mating rituals" were a welcomed means of shrugging off their shared frustrations.
As if it was the simplest thing in the world, Othinus' skirt had fallen to her ankles, and, soon, her panties would be joining the previous article of clothing; with her left hand's fingers she fiddled with her panties while with her right she grabbed onto her Understander's crotch, where a set of human male genitals could be found; part of this reproductive system began to rise, machine-phase matter imitating the function blood would've normally served.
"You're not gonna be able to do it," Touma whispered. "You're gonna moan. Don't Othi-chan. Don't moan. Bite if you have to, it won't hurt."
"Silence. Wanted you since we parted ways. Let me have you for a short while, I won't moan. Nobody will know what transpired here. I don't w-want to wait for our guests to leave and I've waited long enough for you, bullheaded human."
The former Magic God's command was heeded by her Understander. Frantically, Othinus pulled down her Understander's pants of machine-phase matter; soon they joined her uniform's skirt on the laundry room's floor, before they fell apart, forming into a swarming mass of nanorobotic resin that surged into their main mass, disappearing soon enough as they became one with his outer layer of flesh-like resin. Kamijou Touma lacked undergarments of his own, as they simply weren't required.
Kamijou Touma's icy cold arms were cast around her waist and Othinus managed to push the cold, curled, rock-hard and flesh-like 'utensil' inside of her. Othinus felt it gently rub against her walls, as her eyelids widened. Pleasure was known to her, and she sighed with relief. As if an itch was being scratched, Othinus' left eye rolled back into her head as she awkwardly panted like an overheating canine.
The pleasant shock was still there even after all their "mating rituals".
It wasn't quite like anything the former Magic God had ever experienced before. It was like being stabbed with a thousand knives at first before shock and pain gave way to euphoria and a swirling sense of all-consuming pleasure, something simplistic and primal, something inherently mortal and flawed in its nature.
"Big," Othinus gasped. Like a fish pulled from the water she gasped continually.
Othinus grabbed onto Kamijou Touma's shoulders, fingers curling and digging into his soft, flesh-like nanorobotic resin; it was almost like he hadn't been changed at all. Almost.
"Big… I d-don't… oh… oh, oh. Oh… I... I don't KNOW if I can take it all. Be gentle but not TOO gentle. I w-want… intercourse. With you. Now. T-this is Q-QUITE p… p-pleasurable. This p-powerless form has its… upsides."
Lifting Othinus up with either of his arms, as he placed them beneath her legs, the former Magic God cast her arms around her Understander's shoulders, only moments after she'd bitten viciously into his shoulder, using the coppery-tasting article of 'clothing' as a makeshift gag.
The actions they were engaging in came to them as naturally as breathing eating and sleeping. Even if Kamijou Touma could no longer do any of those things, it seemed his 'infused' higher mind still knew just what to do when intercourse was involved. It still knew there was nothing unnatural about the situation it'd found itself in.
"You do know how… fucking… risky this is no? Fuck, it doesn't matter. It feels really good to be inside you," Touma quietly mumbled, his lips pressed against the former Magic God's ear.
With every thrust, her trembling grew more intense.
With every thrust, Othinus bit down harder, as if she was attempting to tear chunks of nonexistent meat from her Understander's form.
"Just… tell me when you want me to blow the load. I can try to… to make it happen. I think I can go indefinitely, so it's… it's on you. Fuck that feels really good… this is pretty fucked up. We've got company. If a-anyone walks in here…"
"T-T… THAT makes it more exciting… don't care, don't care I d-do NOT CARE," Othinus babbled semi-coherently. She began to forcibly bounce up and down, her lower body generating increased moisture with each motion performed.
"N-nobody will know. Y-you're an overconfiDENT fool, I-Imagine B-BREAKER… y-you're b-bull… HEADED… a-and so… so… VERY FRUSTRATING… at times but I ADORE YOU WITH EVERY INCH OF THIS BODY… to the left go to the left yes right there. Good, good… more to the right… RIGHT THERE do NOT STOP."
Bullheaded was one way of describing him. Kamijou Touma chuckled and flicked the washing machine on, his left arm's density increased exponentially, in order to easily support Othinus' form without the aid of his right.
The machine produced a dull humming and began to clunk as it powered on. Othinus began to chuckle more to herself than to her Understander as she struggled to take air into her mortal lungs; the former Magic God's confusion gave way to admiration. That Imagine Breaker always had been skilled in the realm of on-the-fly thinking.
"Oi, you trying to cum?"
"What does it l-look LIKE? B-being t-trapped in this mortal form… has ITS advantages. Reaching c-climax is… the endgame GOAL…"
"Let me make it a little bit wider. Get those fucking walls… all of them. Ugh. Fuck. That's a girl. That's a good girl. Take all of that fucking… cock. Fucking take it, take it you love this cock... you're so tight, it's great. Take it all. Fuuuck. Ugh, Othi-chan, Othi-chan, Othi-chan…"
Either of the former Magic God's eyelids widened, while her left eye's pupil dilated. The 'utensil' did, indeed become wider; even if it was only be an inch or two, it was enough to send shivers throughout Othinus' form, and caused her to bite down upon her Understander's shoulder as hard as she could, in order to prevent herself from screaming aloud in pure, unadulterated pleasure.
The two kept this up for some fifteen minutes more; in the end, while Othinus didn't achieve the orgasm she'd sought, mostly due to a growing sense of nervousness within her that caused her to wave the proverbial white flag, she was certainly satisfied. It was as if some fix had been obtained, an intense craving temporarily staved off until its eventual and return.
It was a shame that her bravado couldn't have carried her all the way. Instead, the unreliable emotion had decided that enough was enough. It'd picked up and it'd left like a fed up and battered housewife.
The former Magic God had found herself closing the bathroom door behind her, as Touma gathered what remained of his wits. He heard the sounds of a stream of water crashing against the porcelain surface of the bathroom's tub.
After taking the liberty of folding up the discarded uniform of the one he Understood, Kamijou Touma placed each article of clothing carefully within the nearby laundry basket before he deigned to change his attire.
With a silent command Kamijou Touma's nanorobotic machine-phase matter danced around his form like a swarm of angry bees whose nest he'd disturbed. Parting from his torso, his waist and from either of his legs, the swarming mass quickly fell back into place; Touma was then suddenly adorned in a plain, short-sleeved white top and dark, simplistic jeans. His unblemished and flattened hairdo could stay as it was.
He soon found himself stepping out of the laundry room. Touma had turned off the washing machine, which he considered one of his close personal friends – it'd certainly been willing to 'help a brother out'.
"Laundry in?" Index inquired, as innocently as she could. She still didn't know what perversion had only just taken place.
Both Seiri and Aisa turned to face their host, who hadn't been aware that he was a host at all. It hardly mattered; Touma was glad to see that the being he'd come to Understand was beginning to make friends, and that she was capable of being social with others. His privacy be damned; he wasn't all that important anyways. While the dorm was 'officially' his, he shared its space with two other individuals who deserved and were entitled to have lives of their own.
Touma offered the trio a nod before he joined them at the table, taking the former Magic God's place.
"Yup. Washing machine gave us a bit of trouble. Oth… Olivia-chan's in the bath, so, that's off limits. Unless you want to spook her or something… heh. PE class must've kicked your asses, then, eh?"
"It would seem that way," Seiri remarked; before her were a collection of neatly-folded papers, stacked on the surface of the table. Next to her form, her large backpack was unzipped.
"Olivia-chan temporarily suffered from side stitches. I think she needs to watch what she eats before she runs. Are physical education classes not implemented in schools in Denmark?"
"Nope," Touma answered, not knowing or caring whether or not his answer was correct. The truth was only a little more complicated than that. Ancient, all-powerful gods didn't need to exercise, at least when they possessed godhood.
"… Kamijou-san," Aisa spoke, softly and slowly, as she always did. Before her, she held one of her own papers, collected from her own stack which wasn't quite as obsessively organized as Seiri's own. "… would you happen to know what the "core principals of pyrokinesis" are? I'd like to check and make sure the information I have written down is correct…"
"I do. A molecule's motion is forcibly raised through the use of Personal Reality-generated telekinetic force, which then results in combustion of the molecule and subsequent molecules surrounding the instance whose motion was originally raised," Touma firmly stated, like a search engine providing a procured answer to a curious searcher seated before a computer.
He might as well have been a computer. He even came packaged with the bonus of suffering from hardware crashes! Even though he'd only just engaged in sexual intercourse, Touma felt oddly synthetic. At least Tsukuyomi Komoe would've been delighted to know that her "Kamijou-chan" memorized the entirety of her most recent lesson. In reality, it was a bit more complicated than simple "memorization". It was the harvesting, analysis and storage of data, a mechanical process, far more so than the natural human brain's ability to create memories.
Then again, those same memories could be taken away as well. Kamijou Touma was suddenly reminded of the frailty of a human brain. In fact, he was quite privileged to no longer be crippled by one.
Himegami Aisa eventually nodded her head; it was as if she'd drifted off for a moment, staring down at the paper she held. Had she experienced some sort of mental latency?
"… thank you, Kamijou-san. I must have the correct information in my notes… you must also be studying even harder than we are. Are you nervous?"
Fukiyose Seiri stuck her nose up in the air, brushing her hair's fringe away from her Forehead Deluxe.
"There's hardly anything to be nervous about. As long as you've read the material you'll ace the test… Kamijou."
Index found herself stifling a giggle as she looked at her guardian, her facial expression, one of guilt mixed with the desire to break down into a giggling fit. Touma couldn't help but grin as he rose from his place at the table.
"What're you laughin' at, huh? What's so funny? I want to be in on the joke too."
"N-nothing Touma!"
As the girls seated around the table spoke, with Index curious as to what exactly was being studied in their classroom environment, Touma ended up trekking into the kitchen area.
Situated upon the nearby counter, a small but pricey and very high-end laptop was present. Its lid was closed and the computer had been plugged in to charge. A ¥130,949 purchase, the device was the first of few necessities purchased with what some would've been correct in calling 'dirty money'.
Carefully, Touma lifted the laptop's lid, exposing its sixteen-inch built-in screen, and its small keyboard. Pressing his finger down upon the device's power button, the computer left sleep mode before it roared to life, its internal fans humming and its harddrive quietly clicking.
The desktop wasn't being displayed, with its few shortcuts. Instead, there was a webpage open in a singular Qoozle Navigator tab.
Perhaps when he'd been something less and – by his own standards – someone else almost entirely, Kamijou Touma would've reeled away at the sight before him, hands clasped over his mouth in shock. His immediate concern would've drifted to being caught in such a suggestive situation, in which assumptions could easily be made about his character and motivations.
That sort of concern wasn't present.
Rather than reeling away, Kamijou Touma leaned forward, looking curiously at the webpage displayed before him. While the laptop's required security augmentations including a VPN were in place as they always were, the VPN redirecting potential dirt-seekers and information-gatherers to a small, abandoned house in a Nigerian fishing village (one which surely didn't have an Internet connection), a "Privacy Please!" tab had been opened, preventing the browser from storing browsing history, or so Qoozle Corporation claimed.
The explicit video, featured on the explicit adult website had been paused on a rather interesting frame. Two young women were pleasuring a singular man whose family jewels were shown from a top-down point of view perspective.
Frozen in time, the two young women both possessed blonde, bleached hair had their hands wrapped around the curved-shaped organ while their respective mouths seemed to be munching on it, as if they were two starving children in some destitute, foreign land who'd just been introduced to the concept of a warm meal.
"2 HOT BABES PLEASURE COLLEGE BOY (MASSIVE FACIAL CUMSHOT! MUST SEE!)"
While this was hardly a surprising find – Othinus had long been known by Kamijou Touma to be what some might've called a "freak" – it was the nature of the find which he debated. Was it an unlikely Freudian slip or a deliberate message he'd been intended to find? The speed in which Othinus had come to master modern technology continued to impress her Understander.
Maybe, rather than being some sort of unintentional slip of the mind she sought to spice up their "sexual frustration relief therapy". Maybe this was her way of communicating that fact. Yet another topic of awkward conversation presented itself.
Closing out of the "Privacy Please!" tab, Kamijou Touma pursued what he'd originally been after; in the search bar of a new Qoozle Navigator tab, he typed in the URL of that ancient, but reliable social media service just about everyone he associated continued to use despite the presence of a newer and fancier (but quite broken) network, OpenZource, which was all the rage with overtalkative and over-political 'edgy' celebrities.
In the upper right hand corner of the window, along the search and options bar, the private messaging icon had a grand total of two tiny notification markers.
Sliding his right hand's fingers over the laptop's trackpad, while his left hand laid prone and unused on the counter's surface, Touma navigated to the private messaging icon, and double tapped on the trackpad in order to bring the interface pop-out to the front.
At least one of the individuals who'd chosen to message Kamijou Touma didn't piss him off. He contemplated hunting down and killing the other simply because he was a filthy, no-good, lying, back-stabbing serpent with a flickering silver tongue.
Kamijou Touma didn't even bother opening the second private message, the subject line of which read "Kami-yan, let's talk". The first message, however, perked Touma's interest among other things; the sender was Kumokawa Seria.
Even in her profile picture, which the outdated EpiCenter social media platform butchered by crushing said picture down into a truly tiny thumbnail, Seria looked absolutely, positively divine. Without so much as a single inch of makeup upon her face or even a single hint of image manipulation, Kumokawa Seria looked like something out of a dream.
With her dark hair worn long, its tips curled delicately, Kumokawa Seria could be seen only from the waist-up (which still provided Touma with many points of interest to observe, even aside from the obvious). The excessively gorgeous woman wore a simple collared shirt, with short sleeves. A radiant, full smile adorned her perfectly-chiseled face.
The young woman's message was opened, and Touma's vision skimmed over its words.
"Hello~ just thought I'd drop you a line. I like your dp by the way, you look way too cute. Please do let me know when you'd like to set up our play date!
Kumokawa Seria
P.S I miss your lips very much."
Then, Touma was violently thrust from the moment. At the lower right hand corner of the screen a small chat box had appeared. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't a new message from his senpai. Instead it was a new message from the snake who didn't have a profile picture at all. A part of Kamijou Touma was glad for that; he didn't want to see the snake's stupid mug anyway.
"Kami-yan. If that's you on your account then stop ignoring these messages. It'll only end badly for you.
"Before you make any rash decisions let me tell you that I know what you've been up to. I don't know exactly where you've been per say but I know that you can be found wherever there're pigs in human clothing to disappear. Since we've already discussed the nature of your employment that's just another little something I have to hold over your head. Hear me out and you'll be fine. Ignore this and you're going to pay the price.
"Meet me down the street at the park. We're back in business Kami-yan. Apparently. Don't show up and you'll be hurting the nun and the other one and I do mean hurting."
Was life just trying to pile shit on him until he broke?
Kamijou Touma didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, but he wasn't going to break. There wasn't enough pressure in the world to break him.
After closing the Qoozle Navigator tab, Touma enabled the laptop's 'sleep' function, and quietly closed its lid.
Calmly and peacefully, he stepped out from the room's kitchen area and into its meager, but cleanly sitting area. Fukiyose Seiri had already packed her obsessively-stacked pile of papers, while Himegami Aisa was diligently working to return her own to her small handheld bag with little success; Index had taken to assisting her companion.
An explanation would have to wait. Touma hoped that the former Magic God would Understand the situation, even if she no longer necessarily Understood him.
"You girls heading out? Shame, it was nice seein' you," Touma stated, looming over the scene as he pressed his form against the nearby section of walling, which segregated the kitchen area from the rest of the room. "Maybe we can bring it together again another time, huh?"
"… I would like that very much," Himegami Aisa admitted, as a blush formed on either of her cheeks. She rose, gripping her handheld bag's handle with enough awkwardly-applied strength to cause the small, metallic beams to creak.
Kamijou Touma couldn't have known it, per say, even if his nanorobotic resin could passively track Aisa's brainwave activity, but Himegami Aisa wanted nothing more than to spend more time with him. Such a meeting was long overdue. Merely thinking of it brought a crimson blush to either of Aisa's cheeks.
While Fukiyose Seiri had already risen, she stood before Kamijou Touma whose arms were folded across his chest. Seiri skeptically tilted her head to one side, raising an eyebrow.
It was almost as if he was being sized up.
"Kamijou. Something's very different about you; I'm glad to see that your self-confidence is… greater… than it was before. It's about time you started making improvements to the way in which you present yourself."
It was Touma's turn to raise an eyebrow, while he struggled to keep his eyes from drifting to the south and focused on Fukiyose Seiri's own eyes. It was less of an awkward moment and more of a mechanical, unnatural grind.
"Glad you noticed," he replied, quite carefully. "What can I say, Fukiyose-sensei? There comes a time in every guy's life when he has to get a grip and pull it together."
Crossing her own arms beneath her exceedingly ample bosom, Seiri's lips curled into a frown born of skepticism, for a moment, before she produced an irritated-sounding huff. She nodded, as if Kamijou Touma's answer was satisfactory, at least satisfactory enough to prevent further interrogation.
"… Seiri-chan," Aisa spoke, as she stood by the room's front door. Index stood at her side, though she seemed to be distracted by something, as she would occasionally look about the room, seemingly concerned. "… I don't mean to rush you… but the meal I have planned might take a bit of effort to prepare, if the oven continues to malfunction… perhaps we should get a head start…? Boxed foodstuffs are such a bother."
"So long, Kamijou," Seiri remarked, as she took to the side of her perpetually-blushing friend. "You'd better be at school tomorrow. Your constant shirking of your duties as a student is disheartening. How will you hold down any sort of employment in the future if you can't even buckle down and regularly attend your classes?"
Kamijou Touma could only shrug. "Mind your own business," was the first thought that came to mind, but uttering those words could've potentially lead to explosive results.
Instead of triggering the ticking time bomb that was the overzealous Fukiyose Seiri, Touma instead decided to speak a more reasonable series of words.
"You're not wrong Fukiyose-sensei. I have been goofing off a lot and I know that. There's no excuse, there's no point in blaming the world around me for my own fuckups, but I'm changing it. My grades are a lot better now though, no? Like I said, I'm pulling it together. I… appreciate that you're looking out for me. It's sweet of you. You don't have to, but you just do. You're like the class mom."
She seemed taken aback by this. For a moment, her lips parted, and she just barely held back a gasp of surprise.
Did Kamijou Touma just take responsibility for his own shortcomings? Did he actually just say what he'd just said, or was she dreaming? Was she in some science fiction novel where she'd crossed into another universe without her knowing? Fukiyose Seiri considered pinching her own skin to find out whether she was truly dreaming or not, but quickly settled on not doing so. Surely she'd know if she was dreaming, even if only on some subconscious level.
Fukiyose Seiri was impressed. Then, a small grin appeared on her face, as Touma's own lips rose, slightly, forming his own small smile.
She and Himegami Aisa took their leave, with Index holding the door open politely for the two; the trio shared the goodbyes before Seiri exclaimed "bye, Olivia-chan! See you tomorrow! Don't be late, or there'll be trouble!"
"Begone," Othinus replied from within the bathroom, a jovial chuckle beneath her words.
There that precious creature Othinus was, just trying to live a semi-normal existence; and there she was being used as a bargaining chip by "the powers that be".
Kamijou Touma could barely bring himself to look at the little nun, Index, who'd taken to looking at him with a worried expression once she'd closed the room's door.
"Index…"
He found himself being embraced by the little nun; she'd closed the distance between herself and her guardian within the span of only a few seconds. Her arms were thrown around his icy form, and she'd buried her face in his shirt of nanorobotic resin. The carefree façade had fallen.
"I'm worried about you Touma. You can do all these things you could never do before and you won't tell anyone what happened. I don't want anything to happen to you! I want to be with you forever."
Though Kamijou Touma's arms had wrapped themselves around the nun's habit-clad form, his right hand resting upon the back of her head, protected by her habit's headpiece, there wasn't a lot he could say. The plan had been that he'd sit down with the both of them and come clean, but with the wretched, no-good snake trying to drag him into some sort of death trap, surely, that plan had been voided.
What were they capable of? Would Stiyl Magnus and Kanzaki Kaori be sent to pry her away from him as they had been so long ago? Or would less reasonable individuals be delegated to rough his beloved co-habitants up? What choice did Kamijou Touma even have in the matter? It seemed, just as they always had been, his hands were tied.
If only they'd just threaten him for a change. He'd take on the entire Magic Side by himself and come out the victor. There wasn't enough magic in the world to bring him down.
"Touma?! Why aren't you saying anything? You're not okay, Touma. Touma?"
"I love you, Index. I love you, and I want to be with you forever, too. I want you to be with me forever… but that's why I have to go away for a little while."
The words which he'd spoken before, though not quite in such a painful moment, emerged before Kamijou Touma even bothered to think too deeply about them; his semi-omniscient data believed it wasn't the best response, instead opting for something more neutral and generic, such as "I'm perfectly fine, don't worry," but he couldn't have cared any less. No amount of omniscient nanorobotic technology could replace the truth.
"No, please," Index began to quietly beg, in a truly pathetic, whimpering voice.
"Please don't go, Touma, I want to… Touma… Touma, Touma… please don't leave us. Don't run anymore! I l… lo… I don't want you to go!"
The fact that she was in emotional distress tore through Kamijou Touma's emotions, the leftovers from another being entirely, like a hot knife through a particularly warm pound of butter. Something inherently human had suddenly surfaced from within a being whose humanity had been lost.
Nanorobotic resin rather than liquid tears dripped from the corners of Kamijou Touma's eyes, twisting and swarming, retreating into its main mass before each semi-coherent stream touched down upon the room's flooring. Index felt the cold swarms dance across either of her cheeks, as she buried her face deeper and deeper into her guardian's chest.
"Maybe…"
He forcibly broke away from Index, who, much to his relief, wasn't crying. She looked like she was on the brink of doing so, however; the little nun's chin had buckled and her big, azure eyes were bloodshot. As charge and guardian looked to one another, Index couldn't help but smile. Her eyelids would repeatedly close shut only to soon re-open; she was clearly beating back liquid pain with as much force as she could muster.
"Index, I want you to hit me. As hard as you can. Show me how far you've made it with what I've been teaching you, huh? You won't hurt me, I promise, and you won't get hurt either."
Index seemed taken aback, at first. The little nun furiously shook her head from side to side, before her guardian began to step towards her, slowly, but surely, his hands curling into fists.
"Then you'll show me how you can dodge."
"T-Touma!"
"Think fast!"
His fist surged forward, crashing through the breeze generated by his arm's forceful thrust, parting it, forcing the oxygenized air to roar like a raging animal. Index could only stumble backwards, heart beating far too quickly for its own good within her chest; just as her guardian's fist was about to make contact with her nose, it was yanked backwards at speeds well beyond "human".
It had become less of a limb and more of a blurred mass of something, some sort of anomalous swarm of grey-colored, amorphous matter for a moment.
Another blow came, a right hook this time and Index just barely managed to duck beneath it. A left hook came, which the little nun parried by placing her right arm over her left in an 'X' formation, followed by an uppercut, which she instinctively sidestepped.
The lessons her guardian had only recently begun to impart upon her were taking over as the nun heard her guardian's voice reverberate in her higher mind's consciousness.
"You can learn to see a blow coming, Index; you can learn what sort of attack is what just by learning to recognize body motion and just by studying how your attacker readies themselves.
"An uppercut could easily break your jaw, depending on the momentum and the size of your attacker, but you can get out of the way ahead of time without a problem just by recognizing that the arm has to be pulled backwards and then thrust outwards. You see that? You get back and you stay back, keep your eyes on 'em and don't let 'em get the best of you. You only go back in once you know you can find an opening. No shame in staying on the defensive while you work out the kinks in the bad guy's plan."
Another one was coming. As if he was able to read her mind, Kamijou Touma had quickly wound himself up, preparing to deliver another potentially bone-shattering uppercut. As she saw it coming, from the opposite arm, and followed by a short fake-out in which Touma had initially looked like he was about to throw a right hook, Index sidestepped the true blow, and then moved in for "the kill".
Curling her right fist into a ball she reeled her arm back, her left readied to deliver "part two" of the "old one-two".
But just as she neared, just as the little nun was ready to land the blow as best as she could she found herself stumbling weakly, arms falling limply back to her sides as she allowed herself to be caught in her guardian's waiting arms.
As always she'd put her trust in him and he hadn't let her down, even if he'd changed so drastically from the Touma she'd known.
"I don't want to hurt you Touma! No, no, no! No! Why would I?! I love you!"
Kamijou Touma allowed himself to slump down on the floor, with Index clutched in his arms like a child. The nun's own arms had wrapped around her guardian's back, as she repeated her confession again and again, either unaware of or unconcerned by the fact that her tone of voice was growing louder and louder with every uttering of the three-word sentence. Touma found himself in no sort of situation in which trying to stop her could be justifiable, even if incoming bursts of information told him otherwise.
Eventually, the little nun managed to quiet down some few minutes before a confused and concerned-looking former Magic God adorned with a towel around her curvy form stepped out from the laundry room, the soles of her bare feet slapping against the floor.
"Your form is improving," Touma complimented, causing Index to look up at him, cheeks glowing crimson.
"You're looking a lot better than you were a few weeks ago, reflexes are really good. Have you been practicin' on your own, Index?"
"Actually," Othinus spoke, "the nun has taken to pestering me with her constant desire to "become strong". I can and will admit that her arm-thrusts have become less benign, even leaving lasting, throbbing sensations. You may be training your attack-nun too well, Imagine Breaker."
"Come with me, then, guys… erm, girls. We can go on a little adventure together, for the first time as equals, not with me treating you two like you're… things, like weak little objects that need to be guarded. It was fucked up of me to treat you like that.
"Hell, even if you can't use magic, Index, you're far from helpless. Othi-chan, you're… well, you can clobber miscreants with the best of them, right? Just give you a two by four and watch the bodies go flying. No more of this damsel shit. I'm sick to death of it.
"So, will you? Will you help me out here and come with me? I doubt this is going to be anything big; probably just some rogue magician in the City or something the snake is too busy or too lazy to deal with on his own."
Index and Othinus looked to one another. The former Magic God brushed her hair's fringe away from her false eye, and then turned her gaze to her Understander. Index looked back to her guardian as well.
"I know about as much as you guys do," Touma explained, shrugging his shoulders as a one-sided silence permeated the room, settling like some kind of noxious gas spilled through the dormitory's ventilation system.
"I for one find it hard to believe that you're asking for help from anyone, Imagine Breaker, especially given your recent behavior," Othinus spoke, sitting herself down upon the bed. She crossed one slender leg over the other before she tossed her head back. With either of her hands she worked her bangs and her side swept fringe.
"You're simply full of surprises, an opened Pandora's Box, if you'd indulge me a metaphor."
Index rose, a determined pout on her face. "You shouldn't be trying to deal with everything by yourself Touma."
Touma began to pace. He stuffed either of his hands into his pockets while he did so.
"I'm not disagreeing, but the thing here is, there's a new piece in the game," Touma explained, though neither the little nun nor the former Magic God knew quite what he was talking about.
"Why I've come to realize that I don't have to shelter everyone around me like they're a bunch of helpless dolls, why I can let people help me when I know I need help.
"I don't think I can die. I don't even think I can get hurt. I've got complete control over myself now, I can block out pain just by rejecting it, like… like some sort of… heh. Like some sort of fucking computer. I guess I didn't want to accept it… I'm a machine, aren't I? I'm more machine than person. But that doesn't matter. It's got to be a two-way system."
Spinning on his heel, Kamijou Touma looked to Index who stood near the table, and then to Othinus who continued to elegantly sit upon the bed. A part of him wanted to spread the former Magic God's legs right there and find those human leftovers (and the pleasure that was obtained from doing so), but that could wait. It would have to wait. The innocent and uncorrupted mind of Index couldn't bear witness to such a thing, and he knew it.
"I'm not sure how accurate some of this is. I only know for one hundred percent that what I've experienced is real and not much else. Not much more to it than that. Perk those ears up because it's story time, girls.
"Once upon a time, in a shitty City not so far away, there was a man named Kihara Amata. This fellow, this Amata, he was fucked. He had some fuckin' problems in his head; he wanted to create something that could surpass "the Accelerator", something that could essentially exist in a state beyond what defines "level five", and what defines "human". An artificial level six.
"Because Kihara Amata was a failure and a joke among his peers, for more reasons than just one, mostly because of his son from what I hear, he didn't manage to get that far before he was… shall we say, disposed of by his own creation, the monster he'd built up to be his legacy. Think Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein" but with an ending where the monster wins. Sort of. I don't think anyone in Academy City can be described as "winning".
Index knew all about that part of her guardian's macabre tale.
"Anyway, I'm getting off track. After Amata bit the dust… or, was turned to dust, from what I hear, an old, limp-dicked cocksucking son of a whore's cunt named Kihara Gensei picked up the pieces left behind by Amata. If Amata had some problems with his head, then by gosh Kihara Gensei has termites and maggots in his.
"Nanorobotic resin, something comprised of a WHOLE BUNCH of tiny, microscopic little things. Almost indestructible, this rotting corpse-walker thought that this was his ticket to achieving level six, an idea he'd been jerking his tiny, insignificant little chode to for gosh knows how long..."
Kamijou Touma stopped speaking for only a moment. While Othinus seemed more concerned than anything, Index looked genuinely terrified. She'd taken a few steps back, her eyes remaining trained on the floor beneath her trembling feet.
"P-please stop t-talking like that, T-Touma… y-you're scaring me. T-talk normally…"
Before she could move, or even consider moving, her guardian had closed the distance between them.
Then, he took either of her cheeks into the icy palms of his hands, and placed a long, passionate kiss to the nun's forehead.
"There's nothing to be scared of."
To say that Index was too stunned to fight back would be an understatement.
"So! What happens? People start dying. You think I was the first? Heeellll no. Hell to the no. They aren't… I dunno, "good" enough to survive the infusion attempts. They start melting and all this shit. Saw a failure myself, he was… half and half. Their willpower isn't enough to see them through the overwhelming, soul-crippling pain of the "infusion process". But THEN! THEN! Kihara Gensei, the limp-dicked diddling cuntmonger hatches a dirty little idea inside of his dirty little head, and not that head. Nothing's probably come out of that head in forty or fifty years.
"Then what does he do? He sets a trap up, complete with some actors, hired or coerced I'm not quite sure – this part is something I just sort of figured out for myself – and snares a charming, handsome boy named Kamijou like a goddamn rabbit in the woods! The nasty old man stuck him over and over and OVER again with all sorts of big old needles and stuffed poor Kamijou with all sorts of pills. Then poor Kamijou starts getting replaced by this "machine-phase matter" and that's when the shit hits the fan. There isn't a pain worse than having every cell, every fucking MOLECULE in your entire body destroyed and replaced, just barely keeping you away from the brink of death!"
Kamijou Touma had almost become feverish. He lurched as he spoke, gesturing with his hands, swinging his arms about like a savage, cave-dwelling proto-human. His tone of voice rose and fell, unstable and almost uncontrollable.
Either of Index's hands covered her mouth. Her eyes had widened, and she'd fallen back upon her posterior. Her trembling form couldn't even keep itself standing. Othinus had risen, and had begun to make the seemingly thousand-yard trek towards her Understander.
"But when it all came down to it… poor Kamijou, this poor Kamijou managed to survive. He survived and refused to bend his knee to the powers that be! Kamijou was better, he was improved! I'm stronger than I ever was before! I could fight the entire world! Look at progress! Look at what this City does to people who don't sit idle and let themselves get FUCKED! LOOK!"
His outer layer of nanorobotic machine-phase matter was silently commanded to fall and it loyally did so, revealing the stoic, swarming, grey and skinless form. Vaguely humanlike, 'eyes' were situated comfortably within the sockets of the skinless, swarming, abhorrent, human-shaped being that called itself Kamijou Touma, but these barely resembled eyes at all; they were two pale orbs that lacked any sort of defining features.
Index just barely held back a scream, and Othinus failed to restrain a lengthy gasp of shock. Such a sight evidently surprised even her, a being of countless years.
"Not quite so appealing, now am I?" Touma softly inquired. His voice remained the same, even as his form no longer resembled him, or any living human being in the slightest.
"Run, if you want. I won't hold it against you! Run! This is what I am now! Run and tell everyone that Kamijou's been replaced with some sort of… some sort of cyborg monster. If they want to try and kill me, they'll need to get in line and take a fuckin' number."
But as Kamijou Touma's outer layer of nanorobotic resin returned, just as he slumped forward, barely holding himself up with his own right hand, balled into a fist, neither party did what was commanded of them.
Othinus was the first to throw herself down upon Touma's form from behind, her arms wrapping around his icy shoulders. She kissed the back of her Understander's head again and again, the soft, innocuous texture of cold, icy hair brushing over her lips as she buried her face in as deeply as she could.
As Touma had done for her, Index allowed herself to crumple before him. She took either of his cheeks into the palms of her hands, tears dripping down her cheeks as she pressed a gentle kiss to her guardian's forehead.
It took her a while to speak. For some few minutes, whether five, ten or twenty the nun couldn't quite be sure, she simply tried to wrap her mind around what exactly she'd seen.
After a time she managed to speak her piece.
"No Touma. I won't run. I want to be with you forever and ever. If it wasn't for you… Touma, it doesn't matter what happened to you. You're still Touma to me even if your insides look different. Why did you hide though? What were you afraid of?"
"As hard as it might be, try not to be a buffoon, Imagine Breaker. W-with…"
Othinus broke down, and joined her co-habitant. She began to quietly weep.
"W-with this revelation I… I can finally begin to Understand you again… I-Imagine Breaker. I won't run anywhere, not unless I'm running at your side! Why must the people of this world be so cruel to you?!"
"Afraid? I guess I was. I was afraid that'd you hate me, I was afraid that you'd be afraid of me. I'm still afraid that you're going to get hurt because you know. Please don't leave me. I need you. I haven't treated the people around me fairly and I want to start righting my wrongs… please give me that chance. I have a better chance of fixing what kind of a person I was to you, to everyone around me than ever before. Give me the chance to make something good of this."
"Touma… I won't leave you behind. You selflessly followed me into the depths of Hell when no one else would have. Y-you're my best friend! I wouldn't be here without you!"
"In what manner you physically exist is irrelevant, Imagine Breaker. It's the actions you take that speak the loudest."
For a while, the being who would continue to exist as the guardian of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, she who'd memorized over one hundred thousand Grimoires and the Understander of the one who'd once been a Magic God, she who'd ended the world, was held by both of his charges, who were seemingly able to cast aside their human instincts, recently-acquired or otherwise for him, so that they could learn to cope with what he'd been forced to become.
Despite everything that demanded that he shouldn't have been, Kamijou Touma found himself smiling, and for a while the three allowed themselves to indulge in their weaknesses before reality eventually came knocking on the door of Touma's higher mind.
The snake, the catalyst for the scene that'd only just unfolded was waiting, likely impatiently.
As the former Magic God, Othinus began to massage his scalp, Touma, with the little nun Index clutched tightly in his embrace figured the snake could wait a little while longer.
"T-Touma? It's okay Touma. You don't have to be a-afraid."
"No, Imagine Breaker. The nun is correct. Cease the foolishness you've engaged in and allow us to help you."
Hypherion, high upper-class Suburb-World. Nebulus solar system.
Yundas 7th, 5004. 6052:00,00. [Approximate date, based on Japan's Earth calendar: February 7th, 2004. 6:01 PM.]
The streets of gold were broken. Hypherion's countries and continents were reduced to clumps of primordial earth.
Suburban homes with their hourglass-shaped designs, towering skyscrapers that were thin like thimbles and multistory shopping centers crumbled like they were sandcastles beneath the feet of an unaware beachgoer. Men of great power, those who held the fate of the Suburb-World in the palms of their hands were nothing when faced with the might of a god.
Landmasses shifted from one another and broke as their crusts were exposed, the primordial fires that'd forged the world raged above ground and consumed all things in their senseless, uncontrolled warpaths. Billions upon billions of human beings perished, with casualties numbering close to twenty-five billion, nearly the world's entire human population as trillions of other lifeforms, flora and fauna alike perished along with them; the seas boiled and the skies of the Suburb-World shattered like a pane of glass struck by a thrown rock.
Amidst the destruction, within the absolute dead center of the plane's surface, the coordinates immediately known by his omniscient mind was Magic God Subaru.
Shredded humans crunched beneath his footfalls. A child's shrieking was silenced as the Magic God snapped his fingers, causing the wailing existence's head to spontaneously implode, silencing it forever.
He spread either of his massive arms, causing his hulking, gargantuan torso to expand in either direction, while his monolithic legs were spread. There were no words that needed to be said, no arcane strings of text from an ancient, long-forgotten tongue that were required to be recited. Magic God Subaru silently willed the planet to split in half before him, directly down its center, and the planet obeyed.
The world wailed and thrashed in agony beyond measure, rumbling as it parted on command. Magic God Subaru leapt into the crevice, allowing chunks of the planet's innards, its last attempts at a wrathful reprisal to bounce harmlessly against his armor, leaving not even a single dent, scratch or ding.
Floating in the dark void of the "great Dark Beyond" with both halves of the planet drifting away from one another at a perpetually-quickening pace, a singular orb floated. Resembling a chunk of natural earthen material itself, the orb had many jagged, earthen protrusions which jettisoned from its surfaces.
Magic God Subaru's thick, cracked lips curled into a grin as he wrapped his right hand's fingers around the world's core. So blistering was it to the touch that it would've instantaneously evaporated a lesser being. The Majin's armored left hand was not damaged, nor was a singular streak or blemish left upon its surface.
With his quarry obtained he willed himself to Triton, where great statues bearing the likeness of the Magic God Niang-Niang in various stages of domination over lesser beings, hundreds of meters tall honored her existence, where the lesser, enslaved Venusians toiled and unwillingly worshipped him as their omniscient God King, unstoppable, ever-seeing and never incorrect in his judgment.
While there had been many ornate, sparkling Venusian city-states with many structures on Triton's surfaces, raised by the Venusian emigrants of old, there existed no more to speak of save for the crumbling ruins left behind in the wake of the Magic God's rampage, following his ascension so many millions of centuries ago, a moment that had reverberated throughout the ether of the multiverse.
Triton itself, little more than a hunk of rock to the untrained eye had been much more than a mere moon for many aeons.
It was a titanic mobile fortress of massive proportions. The humans' "Star of Bethlehem" was little more than a cheap, dinky river-raft when compared to the weaponized stronghold that was Triton, Neptune's moon.
Within, Triton had been hollowed out. Tunnels and antechambers and great halls for even greater feasts and celebrations (where only the Tritonians and those Venusians who cozied up to Magic God Subaru were permitted to even stand) were present. Of course, a grand throne room had been carved out within Triton as well.
This "room" was in fact greater than the size of some cities on some worlds. Its ceilings were hundreds of thousand of meters away from the ornate, tiled and smoothed-over flooring, while its many twisting chambers and functional living spaces numbered in the thousands.
At the pinnacle of this throne-city deep within the hollowed-out moon was the grand airborne throne of Magic God Subaru, which he'd set himself comfortably in. At the height of the throne's backrest, several orbs quite similar in shape and size to the core of Hypherion floated, held in place by the Magic God's will. Nearby the throne, willed to remain in place, the floating white mass paraded before one of man Aleister Crowleys remained accounted for.
"Basically, did you do it again?"
In response the omniscient Magic God merely grunted at first.
"Why the glare? You could kill the greatest of Triton's Sons with those hateful eyes. The insects' screams tickle my fancy. Should it improve your grim mood, Hypherion's denizens will no longer be producing noxious gasses and truly deplorable reality television programming."
The Majin's conversational partner wasn't impressed. Her arms were folded beneath her ample bosom.
"You went off to have more fun without me. Basically, do you not remember last time? I specifically asked you to take me along next time you went on one of your treasure hunts."
"Apologies, apologies. I've been a very busy body indeed. You see, I've had my eye on Hypherion's worldcore for some time. Such a pretty trinket. It's… exotic. Very well, one might not be able to see their reflection within its surfaces, but if one spends their days standing about and admiring themselves, they ought to… well, they ought to die. Vanity is a disgusting thing. A disgusting thing for disgusting little insects.
"Now, which one do you think my sugarplum would must find appealing? "Neptune's" worldcore is quite opaque, and not bright enough. Hypherion's is certainly not her cup of Yuuil…"
Frenda Seivelun, she who in another time and in another place was known as "the Accelerator" manipulated the vectors of the synthetic and oxygenized air within the hollowed-out moon, Triton, allowing her to float freely at Magic God Subaru's side, where she'd been since he'd shown her mercy.
At the very least the Majin had a sense of humor; the way he'd brought down the entire continent of Australia down upon Mugino Shizuri and Kinuhata Saiai, quipping about being "down under" had been quite the sight indeed.
This levitation of Frenda's own also allowed her to gaze down upon either of the great, silver gauntlets the 'Mad Tritonian' wore upon his hands. There was a large, round space carved out upon each of the gauntlets' individual knuckles, and in the center of the top of either gauntlet, in which a total of twelve worldcores had been set, some red, some green, some blue and some completely colorless; though serving no function, both mortal and immortal Magic God alike could agree that Triton was severely lacking in fashionistas.
One of Subaru's enormous, gauntlet-bound hands was extended over the throne-city below the Magic God, and below Frenda Seivelun, the Accelerator.
"Look at them scurry, Frenda. Trying to one-up and backstab each other to gain my favor. The purple ones have outstayed their welcome, regardless of their humorous duplicity exercised against their weak-willed "leaders." They would leap from the ends of Triton if I commanded them to do so."
"Would you?"
"For as long as it would amuse me. If it wasn't so entertaining to watch the undesirables dance the dance of desperation I'd be rid of them all sooner than later. Speaking of amusement, I think it's time for a direct Lunar Bombardment."
With a flick of his wrist, Magic God Subaru ordered a great many thousands of enormous and terrible siege weapons, built directly into the very rock of Triton's surfaces to unleash thousands of carven, ornate shells forged of the crust of the broken world, Neptune.
With a quickly-established momentum augmented by the Magic God's will, these shells surged throughout the star-ways, guided by a divine hand, soon crashing through the atmosphere and into the surface of a distant world.
Over the magically-constructed and maintained transmission systems, Triton's top engineers delivered a message of victory to their people, and to the "honorary Tritonian" Venusian whistleblowers within smouldering bellies of the hollowed-out moon.
"Lunar Bombardment successful! Direct hit on Uranus! A great and historic victory for Tritonians everywhere! Hail God-King Subaru! Hail God-Queen Niang-Niang! Glory to the Sons of Triton! Forever are we superior in mind and in form!"
"He actually said it! The absolute madman!" Magic God Subaru cried aloud, violently slapping his own knee with enough force to shake the very foundations of the hollowed-out moon; throughout many light years of distance beyond, the vibrations were felt.
An unimpressed Frenda Seivelun could only roll her eyes in response, as she accelerated away from the 'Mad Tritonian's' levitating throne.
"Very mature. Basically, you're a child in your mind."
"A child at heart, Frenda. A child at heart."
