AN: AAAAAAAAAAGGH, I HAVE RETURNED... From the sick-bay, spent the last 4-5 days, sick, puking, sweating like a pig and generally speaking begging for someone to grab something blunt.

Anyway, remember my first one-shot here? Y'know, the Huntik/HP one? Yeah, well, this is a Non-gamer edition that I was working on before I got sick, and this is also planned to be a crossover with Tales of the Abyss, so eeh... enjoy...

"Speech"

'Thought'

"Titan Bond"

DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything.

Blinking as he regained consciousness, Roy could barely see a worn, ancient-looking brick roof, and rising up, he could see that the, well, attic was only lit by a ray of sunshine peering from a window on the roof, which was too high up for him to even attempt climbing.

Pausing as his left hand brushed against something, Roy turned his head, and saw a laptop bag. Unzipping it, he saw… well, what looked like a thick, black, metal laptop, that sorta seemed familiar to the young man, but it was only when he looked slightly left of the laptop that an audible gulp could be heard from him.

'Ah, shite…' Roy thought, looking at the three pendants, Amulets, his mind corrected, laying on the black fabric of the bag. Two brown amulets with a ruby red gem laid into them, and a dark green one with an emerald green gem. Now, it might've been a while since he watched the show, but he did recognize that these amulets, and the black laptop, were from Huntik.

Alright, so, assuming that he wasn't dreaming, which he'd assume that he wasn't, then his current situation was likely because of a Random Omnipotent Bastard, or ROB for short. Patting himself down, Roy found that aside from his multi-tool, he had jack-shit.

Taking a deep breath, Roy hesitantly reached towards one of the amulets he recognized, a dark brown amulet that reminded Roy of a cockroach, or some other kind of insect. Which was fitting, considering the Titan within the Amulet.

As he touched the amulet, Roy flinched as he felt his entire body heat up, energy surging through it, a symbol of a glaring eye flashing in the gem before the surging feeling faded away.

"...Well, at least I have magic, it seems…" Or something else that made the Amulet react.

"Alright, let's see if this works…Heed the call, Mindrone!" Holding up the dark brown amulet, Roy watched as the red gem shone brightly, a beam of light shooting out of it a meter or so ahead of him, the light forming a humanoid silhouette before breaking apart, revealing a humanoid insect with one big red eye, which swerved around the room, inspecting it, before it turned to look at Roy, an expecting glint in its eye.

"Orders?"

… Well, that'd be something weird to get used, having a voic-well, not even a voice, more like a mental pulse that just formed a voice. Boy howdy, Roy couldn't imagine how it'd feel like with multiple Titans out and about.

As Roy was about to issue orders, he paused as he saw, well, what was basically a translucent stat sheet name tag hanging in the air in front of his Titan.

/Swara-Titan Warrior\
Mindrone

Alright, so he could see the stats of the Titans, although he was pretty damn sure that the in-show stats were just Attack and Defense. Curiously enough, no level, but still, he could worry about that later.

"Go out there and inspect the surrounding area," Roy ordered, pointing to the door as the holographic display of his Teknonomicon sparked to life, showing him what Mindrone was seeing.

The humanoid bug-like titan nodded, before it jumped towards the ceiling, before it started crawling forward, keeping its body close to the ceiling to lessen the chances of being detected, not that it would have a hard time with that, considering how poorly lit the entire place seemed to be, nothing but torches lighting the stony hallways.

As the Swara-Titan kept on crawling, the image on Roy's Teknonomicon showed him more of the same stone castle, with some paintings and suits of armor lining the halls, until the titan came to a halt as it reached a T-section. Through the Bond, Roy could feel the Mindrone's requests for direction as it looked towards both paths.

On the left, there were stairs, and on the right, there was a corner turning to the left.

"Go to the right." In the stairs, the titan would be all that easier for the inhabitants of the castle to notice it, and he'd rather not risk the castle being inhabited by people that could actually harm the titan. At this point, he was just scouting, no need to get into unnecessary fights.

Crawling forward, the Swara-Titan stopped as it spotted movement further down the hallway, the bug-like Titan's eye enlarging as the image zoomed onto a walking armor, the gaps making it clear that it wasn't just some guy in armor, in case the way the armored construct lumbered on, dragging its sword across the stone-cobbled floor.

"Engage or Evade?"

"Hmm…" Mindrone's optic blast might not be any good against the living armor, and since the golem seemed to be unaware of Mindrone, it was better to play it safe, rather than needlessly get into fights. But on the other hand, if the living suit of armor was heading towards his location, Mindrone would be too far away to help him.

"Trail it, and if it walks towards me, attack it," Roy ordered. If it came down to a fight, he'd rather have the opponent surrounded.

Nodding, Mindrone began trailing the armored construct, and is it did, Roy was able to get a better understanding of the living piece of metal. It's movements, while slow and lumbering, were done with no wasted motion. And it's sword, a beefy slab of metal about one and a half meter tall, and half a meter wide showed nothing but cosmetic damage, stains on the blade, scratches along the flat of the blade, but the edge of the blade was sturdy, and sharp, if the scratch it was leaving on the stones was any indication.

Although considering the creature's nature, it might be safe to assume that the sword was enchanted in some manner, protected from the ravages of time, either by an enchantment, or rune of some kind laid into the weapon, or something about its makeup.

With heavy, slumbering steps, the armor walked its path, and as it reached a T-junction, with Roy's own hiding place situated to the left of the construct, the creature stopped in its tracks.

And that was all that Roy needed to tell that his spot was known to the golem-like being, Mindrone blasting at the back of the armor, causing it to stumble forwards from the impact.

Roy kicked open the door he was hiding behind, gritting his teeth and hoping to any god, demon or any other being of higher power to listen.

'Please don't fuck me over.'

"Alright, Cut them down, Redcap!" Holding up the gauntlet-like amulet, Roy watched as the red light shot out of it, the pale-skinned goblin charging straight at the armored construct's back, the Swara-Titan's claws making deep gashes into the creature's back, not that the living suit of armor seemed hampered by the injury at all, swinging its buster sword towards the new attacker, the sword impacting the thick gauntlets of the visor-wearing Titan, the resulting impact of the 110,7 kilo goblin being slammed against the brick wall shaking dust and a few bricks loose.

"MOTHERFUCKER!"

With a roar and renewed vigor, Redcap dashed at the armored construct, the momentum and sudden impact toppling the living piece of armor. Seeing an opportunity, Mindrone let loose another blast, this time at the sword that was holding the massive sword, the blast turning the metal of the vambrace red-hot, said vambrace cleaved in twine by Redcap, who took relish in the current situation, emphasized by an upturning of lips.

With a roar, the pale goblin-like titan began carving into its prey with vigor and great speed, each slash gouging out a strip of metal, the armored construct helpless as it shuddered with each slash.

Looking down at his Teknonomicon, from Mindrone's perspective, he was able to see a glowing line of markings, no doubt runes of some sort, said rune situated just above where Redcap's initial attack had landed.

'Well, no time like the present to fix past mistakes,' Roy thought to himself, before he turned to address the over-enthusiastic Titan currently tearing into the armored construct like a shark into raw, bloody piece of meat.

"Oi, Redca-" Roy paused as he saw the armored construct be torn apart, the breastplate falling apart into nice, clean slices. And looking from Mindrone's POV, the sigil, or rather, the remains of the it had stopped glowing

"Well, never mind then," he said, as Redcap grabbed the helmet of his fallen foe, and held it up in the air, belting out a shrill roar of victory, before it threw the helmet aside, and both Titans looked back towards Roy, expecting orders.

/Swara-Titan Warrior\
Redcap

Picking himself up, Lyle walked towards the two Titans, keeping his Teknonomicon balanced on his left hand. "You, follow me," he said to the Redcap, which acknowledged the order, moving aside as Roy walked forward, and addressed his other Titan.

"Jump onto the ceiling, and stay 10 meters ahead of us, and act as my eyes," Since the residents of this castle seemed to have some method of knowing his location, if the way the armored construct had gone straight for his hiding place was any indication, then he shouldn't simply send Mindrone out to act as a movable camera, and instead be on the move, letting the bug-like Titan act as a scout.

It didn't take long to reach the spot where Mindrone had started tailing the armored construct, and as Mindrone reached the end of the hallway, and peeked around the corner, Roy was able to see a door at the end of the other hallway, and a flight of stairs going downwards.

No sign of anyone else, and so, Roy made his way towards the stairs, hoping that they would lead closer to the exit.

"AUGH!" Only for him to run face-first into solid air. "Freckin'barriermrrg." He grumbled incoherently, nursing his nose as he retreated from the barrier, and activated the black tome's scanning function, once more consciously ignoring the question of "how did he know how to use it?", as a cone of green light ran over the barred walkway, scribbles appearing wherever the light hit.

As the light turned off, the holographic screen of the Tome began showing some rather interesting data, which was also rather infuriating.

"Oioioioi, is this some kind of a freakin' tutorial dungeon?" Roy questioned with a twitching eyebrow as he read the data. Basically put, he needed to find a "key" for unlocking this barrier, since he didn't have the runic knowledge for even starting to tamper with the ethereal barrier preventing his descent.

Putting the Tome into the bag, Roy looked at the door to his left. In all honesty, he doubted that the key he was meant to be looking for was in there, but, it honestly wouldn't hurt to check… with a Titan being sent first, of course. Who knew what kind of nasty surprises waited behind the wooden door.

"Mindrone, open the door," Roy ordered, and watched as Mindrone rolled its eye, before dropping down from the roof, right in front of the door, and pushed lightly, the wooden door swinging ajar with a rusty creak, revealing what seemed to be a lab of some sorts, well, by lab, he didn't mean a sterile, blindingly white room with beakers and sinks, but a stone room, with metal contraptions and arcane-looking objects scattered onto tables on the left side and the very end of the room, with the right side of the room containing bookshelves, dusty, wooden bookshelves, stacked to the brim with books of different colors.

So, in essence, a medieval mage's lab.

"… Yeah, no, not going to walk in there," he shook his head, the de-summoning of Mindrone easing the small pressure he had felt at the back of his mind. If what he remembered about the Titan inside of the green amulet he had was correct, then it'd be more useful than Mindrone was, and well, he didn't know if he could control three Titans at once, and Redcap's presence at the back of his mind was pretty small, and unlike Mindrone's, the presence felt less strong-headed.

"Red Searcher," he invoked, watching with fascination as the green light faded away, revealing a rather diminutive Titan, about 60-70 centimeters tall, the titan itself being, well, to best described, an eyeball with red skin, grey leathery wings, and tentacles that ended in spiked, well, the terms "Paw" and "flipper" came to mind, as the Titans lone, huge red eye blinked at him, curiosity gleaming in its eye.

"What's the task? Where are we? It smells weird."

/Yama-Titan Scout\
Red Searcher

Unlike Redcap or Mindrone, he Yama-Titan Scout's presence at the back of his head was vivid and clear. Sure, there was a small amount of the mischievousness he felt from Mindrone's bond, but that dwarfed in comparison to the curiosity he felt from the small Titan. It honestly felt similar to that of a young child's, albeit in this case, the curiosity came from a small, red creature he was sure would've given a priest a heart-attack, followed by said priest bombarding the small, in a weird way, cute Titan with Holy Water, crosses Bibles, and any other religious items that were in grabbing distance.

"Well," Roy scratched the back of his head as he began talking. "I dunno where we are, but right now, I need you to inspect that room for any traps," he pointed behind the small Titan, the grey-winged eyeball turning around to look at the room.

The small Titan nodded, well, as much as a flying eyeball with no real distinguishable head could nod, before it flew into the room, it's eye glowing a pale red light as it peered at the contents of the room, flying around and under the table in search for any secret traps, even lifting some notes and instruments up to inspect underneath them, before setting the object it held down, and moved onto the next item of intrigue.

This went on for a while, before the small critter flew back out of the room, now holding something in its tentacles, it's eye glimmering with even more interest, it's lower lid pursed in a facsimile of a smile. "Look what I found! Try it on!" it trilled happily as it dropped it's loot into Roy's awaiting hand before the winged Titan perched itself on his left shoulder.

Looking down at the item in question, a leather glove of some sorts, with a plate of metal attached to the back of the hand, another smaller cured plate attached to the first one that would extend over the wrist, and smaller plates covering the fingers, each plate covered in small lines of runes, similar to those he had seen on the living armor. Looking at the glove, Roy had a few ideas on what it might do, although the presence of a small oval-shaped gem in the backhand plate was mildly confusing, perhaps it was meant as a focal point for a spell of some sorts?

Regardless, he wouldn't be putting it on until he was sure that there wouldn't be some sort of trap mechanism within the glove, like say, "Burn the wearer to ashes, unless X" or something else meant to harm thieves.

Taking out and opening his Teknonomicon, Roy sat onto the floor and held the glove over the tome, pinching the leather with his index and thumb fingers, as a green light passed over it, causing the whole thing to glow green as the numerous, minuscule runes covering the item were revealed.

::Analysis complete::

Item: Runic Glove (Left-hand)

Magical Potency: D+

Magical effects: Manipulation of Runes, allowing for Runes to be applied with but a touch. Gem on the back of the hand contains a shield-type spell. Auto-fitting for different hand-sizes

Material: Leather from an unknown animal, Unknown carbon mix resembling steel, Unknown gem with medium magic-sensitivity

"Well, that's interesting," Roy muttered, scratching his chin as he looked at the analysis. The fact that the Tome couldn't pin down the materials was a tad worrisome, but considering what else he had seen, the thought that he was still on Earth was a ridiculously optimistic one, and yes, he should be scared the shit out of that, and everything else going on, but fuck it, panicking wouldn't do him any good, so into the emotional bottle it goes, right alongside all the other bottled up emotions…

Looking at the barred stairway, Roy sighed, putting on the glove, ignoring how the runes lit up as his fingers entered the glove, the item re-sizing and molding itself to be a perfect fit for his hand.

"Might as well give it a shot…" closing the Teknonomicon, and putting it back in the bag, Roy rose up from the floor and walked over to the stairway, and held out his hand, focusing on tingling sensation he had come to associate with magic, and watched as the glove lit up.

Alright, so he could at least activate it, now to try out whether or not it could open the barrier. Deciding to try out the simplest answer first, Roy pushed his hand forward, until it met resistance from the barrier, the runes appearing in mid-air again, but this time, the entire left half of the barrier was glowing a bright blue, while the rest of the barrier was a dimmer blue.

"Alright, a'ight, we got something…" Roy noted, pushing his hand forward even harder, wondering if the barrier would simply swing aside like a door, or shatter like a panel of glass. However, the barrier didn't budge, although Roy did notice the barrier flickering for a few seconds, it didn't disperse.

Frowning, Roy backed away from the barrier, seeing that he was missing something. Judging by how only the left half had lit up, it was safe to assume that there was another item, most likely a right-hand glove, meant for accessing the other half of the barrier. It was like a door that needed not only a key card to open it, but also the correct password.

Or, if the magician behind the spell of this barrier was especially smart, there was also probably something akin to a bio-metrics scanner and a mind-checker, meant to serve as a last trap in case the magician was forcibly coerced into helping any felons, whether through mind control, or simple bodily harm.

Although he'd rather try the idea of using Redcap to simply dig through the stone after he was sure that there wasn't an easier method.

"Was there anything else in the room?" Roy asked, addressing the small Titan on his shoulder, who blinked, crossing a two of its tentacles together as it took on a contemplative pose, closing its eye.

"Hmm… well, there were a few locked drawers, nothing magical mind you," It replied, prompting Roy to sigh, and walk into the room, Redcap staying outside the room, as it couldn't quite fit through the door frame, not to mention that it wouldn't be of much use in the research-filled room, so better to act as a guard dog.

With each step he took into the room, waves of dust were sent flying, truly showing how long the room had been unused, causing Roy to start coughing from the dust in the air. 'Alright, this needs to go,' he thought as he charged up his glove, and drew a "ᚻ" into the air, which then pulsed and sent out a burst of cold wind at the end wall, sending the assorted dust in the room flying straight out of the door, Redcap coughing profusely as the dust flew past it.

"Alright, so viking runes work, good to know," Roy sighed, glad to no longer having to deal with the dusty air in the room. At least now he had a few spell ideas, in case he had to fight, and something got past his Titans.

Picking up some of the documents that were on the desk, Roy frowned as he saw the letters were more akin to musical notes, but clearly arranged in a manner that they were forming words, but still unreadable to him, and so, he set it back down.

Since all the other documents were in the same, music note-like language, Roy crouched down to look at the drawers of the desk that was at the end of the room, and saw the metal locks laid into the wooden drawers, and tracing his right hand along the wood, he could tell that it was the hardy sort, good quality, mahogany perhaps?

A shame that he might have to break it in order to see what's inside.

Looking around the table, he saw half a dozen thin iron rods, and he took one of them, drew a small ᚳ onto a part of it, causing the section to glow orange with heat, and pressing the smaller end of it against the stone floor, the rod bent a little, before he applied an ᛁ onto the thin iron rod, causing to cool down rapidly, steam emanating from the heated up section.

His impromptu lock-pick made, Roy took out his multi-tool's knife, took in a deep breath, and slid his knife and lock-pick into the keyhole. As he began turning the pick around in the lock slowly, he heard an occasional small click, but not the big, distinct one he was looking for.

Sweat pouring down the back of his neck, the young man strained his ear to pick out the sound of his victory, only for his lock-pick to stop, becoming jammed. Not panicking, he slowly, but surely wiggled his lock-pick, trying to un-jam it without breaking it, or the lock. He released a breath he didn't realize he was holding as he managed to get his lock-pick free, before going right back to the lock-picking.

Sure, he could just open the locks with brute force, freezing the locks with Isa runes, but that would risk destroying whatever was in the drawers, which might include the other glove, or an actual key to the barrier… assuming that neither of those were in the upper floor, but why would someone put a left-handed glove in one room, and its right-hand counterpart in another room?

Hearing a soft, yet clear "click!", Roy smiled and began turning the lock with his knife, the lock turning with a rusty creak, and as it made its turn, Roy retrieved his tools and opened the drawer up. Inside of it, laid atop a red, velvet cushion, was a round metal object, about the size of a pocket watch, with seven jewels in it, arranged in a hexagonal manner, with dark purple gem in the middle, with two red, green and blue jewels, arranged so that two gems of the same color only had the purple gem between them.

Unknowing of the item's purpose, Roy felt… uncertain of whether or not he should pick it up. For all he knew, the item might be cursed with a spell that would cause his blood to freeze, or for him to be simply shocked to death, or perhaps the moment he'd pick it up, a poisonous gas was to be released into the room.

"OOOH, Shiny! Gimme!" However, the small winged ball on his shoulder had no such scruples, the thick metal disk picked up by Red Searcher's tentacles before Roy could stop the small Yama-Titan.

Roy knew that he should be more worried, but if the Titan meant for detecting traps had no hesitation in picking the object up, then he supposed it was fine.

Deciding not to waste time just waiting for Red Searcher to finish its appraisal of the item, Roy began unlocking the remaining four drawers, albeit he wouldn't be pulling them open, in case there was a trap within the drawers themselves, triggering upon the drawers being pulled open without some sort of additional identification mechanism in place.

Oh sure, he might be a tad too paranoid, but fuck it, he had already encountered Magic here, in the form of a golem-like sentry, an active barrier, and what would've passed in the Type Moon universe as a Mystic Code, so he'd rather be overly cautious worry-wart, rather than the corpse of a reckless adventurer.

The three remaining drawers were opened in a rather quick succession, albeit not without losses, Roy losing half of his makeshift picks to the locks, the thin rods snapping when they hit a sufficiently tight snag, forcing him to pull them out, and then begin anew with a new pick, Thankfully, his multi-tool knife hadn't been damaged in the burglary attempts.

"Put it on!" Red Searcher, seemingly finished with its inspection, let out a chirping sound, presenting the metal amulet to Roy, who simply raised an inquisitional brow at the little creature. While his memory of Huntik was spotty, he remembered from the wiki that unlike most other Titan classes, Yama-Titans had something similar to an Archer's Independent Action Skill, allowing them to act outside of their Master's/Seeker's direct commands, so it wasn't out of the realms of possibility for the little critter to be possibly planning on getting rid of him, and just keep on living freely, suckling on the teat that was the ambient magical energy in this castle to sustain itself.

"Put it on! It's good for you!" Clearly not understanding its Seeker's hesitation, the leathery-winged creature grabbed Roy's hand and unceremoniously dropped the item it was holding onto his right hand.

"Hey, watc-WOAH MAMA!" Roy yelped in surprise as he felt a jolt of… well, the closest description he had to the feeling that he just felt was "vigor". Looking it over, he couldn't see that any visual tells of the trinket doing anything. The gems weren't glowing, no glowing inscription on the item, it was just the way he found it, a metal pendant with a safety pin on its back.

Opening up his hoodie, revealing the forest green turtleneck underneath it, Roy attached the item to the inside of his shirt's breast pocket, keeping the little enchanted item in place. Taking a deep breath (And ignoring the smell of musty old books) , Roy felt more vigorous, certainly not to the same levels that he had felt upon first touching the thing, but definitely more energetic than he usually did.

Drawer O-2; Lab equipment of the magical and biology sort, as in, brushes, ink bottles, needles of both the injection and the pin-prick sort, basically stuff you'd expect to find in a mages lab, although nothing that seemed to be for chemical experiments, so this might be more of an enchantment-type lab.

Alright, so drawer drei has… an honest to god key, and if that damn key actually fit into the locks of the drawers in the room… well, if Roy had a hat, then he'd fucking eat it, or rather curse Murphy, and the R.O.B who dropped him here. Of course, the key wasn't the only thing in the drawer, just the thing that caught his attention first.

No, aside from the key, the drawer had some documents, of the researching sort, he assumed, written in that same music note-like language.

The last one had more paper, albeit blank, probably in case the owner of the room had to make notes, although in that case, why wasn't the brush in the sam- ah wait, yeah, there might be a chance of ink spilling onto the blank papers if the lid on the ink bottle was faulty, or if the glass cracked.

"Well, that was a bust," Roy noted with disappointment as he set his Teknonomicon on the table, opened the magi-tech laptop and began scanning each Arcane object on the tables, including the key he found, bemusedly holding onto an optimistic belief that the key to unlocking the barrier might be one of these items.

However, there would be no rejoicing for him, as a vast majority of the enchantments on the items were of a more mundane sort, meant to protect the items from the ravages of time, from acidic properties and heat.

The tuning fork-like items were apparently some sort of stasis field generators, meant to hold specimens in place while the researcher poked and prodded at the sustained creature. The nubs at the base of the stand were essentially controls for rotating the field around, allowing for the specimen to be inspected at different angles. While interesting, these items weren't exactly the sort that he'd be easily be able to carry around, so he'd just leave them there, maybe take a few of them once he had an actual bag to carry them in.

Other than the no-rust enchantments, the knives were pretty unremarkable, just enhanced sturdiness, making the blades less likely to chip or bend. Still, good enough for him to take them, in case he ever had to cut himself loose or something. Thankfully, the sheathes for the knives were easily found.

Sadly, the key had nothing but the no-rust enchantment. No "This opens every lock in the castle" or anything that useful.

Now carrying four enchanted knives, Roy turned his attention to the other desk's drawers, and sighed as he inserted the key into the lock of the top-most drawer. Might as well test if the key worked for these locks. Hell, who knows, maybe each lock here was of the same… ah, who was he kidding, considering the nature of this place, at best, this key would only work for this room, and be completely useless outside of it.

However, at least the lock unlocked with a smooth click, as did the three other locks. Too bad that they only contained more documents, some sort of herbs he wouldn't be touching with even a three meters long stick, and more of those iron bars, 15 to be exact, which he quite happily took and stored in the side-pocket of the Teknonomicon bag.

"Well, this has been an utter disappointment..." Roy sighed as he exited the room, already hoping that the upper floor would be more generous with good loot.

AN: So...yeah, this is a half-finished chapter, y'know, to keep some things open, in case I decide to change things.

That said, I am working on the next chapter of Divergent Strife... and mulling some ideas for the next chapter of Quincy DxD over in my head.

Question of the Chapter:

Q1: So, assuming that if I were to continue this story, who would you be interested in seeing Roy hook up with? And yes, I know that Tales of the Abyss doesn't have all that many chicks to begin with, but...amuse me with what you can come up with.