Haru was splayed out on a PRT lobby couch, sleeping in only a white t-shirt and black shorts. A small blanket covered one of his legs while the other leg was hanging over the back of the couch. The legitimate visitors to the PRT building gave the sleeping boy a wide berth.

Armsmaster was about to head out for patrol when he noticed the boy. He stood in front of the couch, looking grimly at the scene in full armor. He attempted to smack the boy with his newly repaired Halberd when Haru unconsciously slashed through the handle with a kunai in his sleep.

"WAKE UP!" Armsmaster shouted. The built-in speakers of his suit rumbled hard enough to shake the entire building.

"No. It's late," Haru replied sleepily. He pointed to an analogue alarm clock that was on the floor nearby. It was one in the afternoon.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" Armsmaster scolded. "You're a Ward, aren't you?"

"I AM at school. I can make clones of myself. Now, leave me alone. I'm tired from using a lot of chakra last night when I was at the hospital."

Armsmaster paused. It wasn't enough that the kid had several Capes worth of powers. He had to have even more that he could casually add to the list. A quick check of Arcadia's attendance records through his helmet HUD proved the boy's claim.

"I am ordering you to get up. If you have nothing better to do, you can come with me on patrol."

Haru rolled over and tied his long, crimson hair into a ponytail and waved his arms, miming the action of putting on a coat. The seals in his wrist activated and his coat appeared around him as if he had been holding it and putting it on normally. He picked up the alarm clock and it disappeared.

"Fine."

"So, do we get to blow up any badguys today?" Haru asked over his PRT headset as he bounded across rooftops and building faces.

Armsmaster's blue armor and the grappling hook built into the Halberd Mark II sped him along behind the exuberant boy. "Take this seriously. We are merely here to make our presence known and to intervene only if there is a crime being commited."

"But that's boring," Haru whined.

In an annoyed voice, Armsmaster responded, "Boring is good."

"So Asian Bad Boy gang members accosting civilians is bad?" Haru noted, landing on a rooftop above the scene. Apparently the ABB members were blocking the way of a trio of pedestrians, outnumbering them three to one. "I'm making our presence known, boss!" he announced as he landed between the two groups.

"No, wait…goddamit," Armsmaster swore into his microphone.

The pedestrians fell backward and the gang members pulled out handguns and knives in response to the black coated Ward.

"I come in peace. Take me to your leader," Zetsu requested calmly, his arms crossed over his chest.

"SHIT." "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" "IS THAT A CAPE?" the various startled ABB shouted.

"NO. I'M A GIANT RUBBER DUCKIE AND I'M GOING TO EAT YOU. QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK," Zetsu spoke, sounding more and more demonic as everyone in the vicinity saw him turn into a giant rubber duck with massive pointy teeth.

The ABB and the bystanders fled for their lives from the genjutsu. Still on the rooftop, Armsmaster watched Zetsu literally quack and scare a throng of mid-level gang members.

"Armsmaster reporting. I'm ending my patrol now. If you need me, I'm going to be in my workshop. I need to invent something to make sure I'm not dreaming." As he left, Zetsu was still chasing the gang members and quacking madly.

Coil watched the scene where one of the new Wards chased a group of ABB members while waving his hands in the air and shouting. On another screen, he viewed the file on Zetsu, which listed a menagerie of powers and ratings.

"He could be useful, if he can be controlled."

Behind Coil's swivel chair, a Zetsu clone spoke, "Yeah, but how are you going to do that?"

The villain mastermind immediately turned and shot the clone in one reality wherein the Zetsu clone poofed and Coil was again alone. In the other, he held the Ward at gunpoint. "How did you get in here?" he asked.

"I'm a fucking ninja. Did you really think I couldn't sneak into a secret underground compound?"

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Just meeting the neighbors," Zetsu answered plainly. "Also, did I just have a dream where you shot me? Do you have a déjà vu power or something?"

"Why would you think that? Zetsu, I presume?" Coil spoke calmly, knowing that he could end this reality at any moment.

The black clad boy shrugged. "No reason. Forget I mentioned it. Anyways, what's up with you? You got this great snake motif going on. Snake powers?" he asked.

"I'd rather not say," Coil answered. "I wouldn't be surprised if you could control snakes, given your laundry list of powers."

"Nah. Not snakes."

Coil leaned back casually and asked, "Do you mind if I ask how you became a Ward?"

"It kinda just happened," the congenial ninja spoke. "It's been pretty fun so far."

Coil asked his next question, "If the Wards don't work out for you, perhaps you would consider entering my own employ? I assure you, the opportunities for 'fun' abound."

"Sure, man. Give me a business card or something." Zetsu extended his hand to receive such a card.

Coil's card had a similar snake motif in the corner and fancy white lettering on black. When Coil handed it to Zetsu, the Ward inflicted a genjutsu on the man to knock him out while he read the man's memories. After doing it once, he felt less guilty about doing it again to someone far more suspicious. How else does one ensure they don't end up a minion for some supervillain?

That reality left only an impression of suspicion upon the surviving reality where Coil decided to shoot the clone and find a more secret base of operations. Between the dispersion of the clone and the nature of Coil's powers, the real Zetsu only received the vaguest sense of wrongness from the Cape, other than having been shot by Coil. Even a goddess first-class, unlimited, could only dimensionally anchor someone so well. Belldandy's work was no small effort but it was by no means perfect, given that he was in this universe in the first place.

The real Zetsu continued to chase the 'surviving' ABB to their hideout, hoping that he would get a chance to meet their leader. He could use a nice fight at the moment.