Author's Note: So new story, and since I clearly haven't learned my lesson from the last time another Grim Tales. So instead, Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 1: A Guide to the Map of Infinite Realms
The Castle Grimskull was one of the only monuments in the waste land of the Grim Family territory, a castle with bricks composed of bone and mortar made of blood. The castle was built directly on top of a massive skull shaped mother ship that at some point in the past was hijacked, used to reduce the area to wasteland and rubble, before promptly crashing it into a particularly treacherous mountainside. Still the area was milked for all it was worth. Multiple BFG 10000 anti-air cannons was positioned around the area designed to instantly wipe out any enemy who attempts to approach the area from the air, hundreds of Slamworms from the planet Terraexcava were released into the desert, mowing down armies from land by the thousands. As they were doing now. Alien Zombies who had their brains towering a full foot out of their skulls were swarming the mountains by the millions overwhelming ground defenses through sheer numbers. Higher up on the mountain side a skeleton dressed as a mariachi band member and swinging around a ax shaped guitar as a weapon was fighting what closely resembled a skeleton coated in a layer of black demonic flesh and wearing a black cloak who was alternating between a single double ended scythe or splitting it down the middle into two smaller scythes with bony hands on the oft end.
"Any last words? ...Any words at all?" The Mariachi skeleton asked in a mocking tone of voice.
"#### ###!" The Demon Skeleton replied in a language that was impossible to either Understand nor repeat.
"Some how I expected that." The musical skeleton made a few adjustments on his ax and unleashed a fist shaped mass of green ecto energy against his opponent, who in turn screeched with a Ghostly Wail and the two attacks met in a explosive end.
Elsewhere on the mountain a olive skinned approximately eight year old girl in a school uniform of all things was fighting with a even stranger weapon, a lunch box one with a predisposition to spewing monsters from it. And yet faster then the box could spit it's nightmares out they were being cut down, a Frankenstein like girl of approximately ten years of age was using a high frequency katana blade in combination with bow and arrows to make mince meat of the creatures of the box be they Manotaur, Hydra or Harpy.
"Like Mother! Like Daughter!" The Olive skinned girl snapped as she aimed her lunch box like a bazooka and fired more creatures from it at her opponent.
"Verily!" First the zombie girl fired a single arrow into the sky, then she followed up with a slash from her blade that cut through several of the creatures before retreating again, the one arrow in the sky split into a thousand splinters, which then grew into their true form and rained down on the monsters below in a storm of arrows.
"It sounds like it's getting pretty fun out there." Manny was the youngest boy in the family at eight years old, and younger than his sister by a few seconds. He floated in the air several feet off of the ground his white hair and blue skin complimented by a set of green eyes, in the mean time he was made to wear a green one piece suit with a navy blue cape.
"Be serious Manny! Our Siblings are out there fighting that hell as we speak!" Daniela on the other hand wore a elegant black dress, as elegant as something a eight year old could wear that is. Unlike her brother she was in her human form which is to say pale colored skin and black hair with red eyes.
"I know they're so lucky!" Manny gushed prompting a face palm from her sister.
"Both of you fall in line!" The twins Mother was one Mandy Grim, at first glance the most likely word that came to mind was stripper, what clothing she did wear only covered the important areas, and what white flesh that was exposed was contrasted heavily by the red trimmed charcoal black cloth. However more often than not what attracted people's attention the most was what was above the black cloth, predatory blood red eyes framed by golden blonde hair, and the spine numbing feeling of terror which states that you would be cut down if you do not do as you are told. As such the two hastened their pace, even as the castle started to shake. Mandy led the two to her vault, where her pet guard dog and it's many heads did battle with a hydra and it's many heads.
"Daniela make us intangible." Mandy held her hands out to her children and the two twins took them, Daniela worked her power and suddenly the three of them were effectively untouchable. Thus they went through the battle field and over to the vault where Mandy entered a code to open the door the bare minimal amount and led the three of them inside before securing the door shut.
"Ah! Are we staying in here while the fighting is going on!?" Manny asked sounding sorely disappointed. "I'm arming myself." Mandy stated while she strapped on several choice fire arms and various other weapons. "You two on the other hand are escaping." Mandy stated as she pulled out one of the display items. It was a scroll, ordinary by all appearances, yet held the qualities of being both ancient and new and radiating power that could not be quantified in simple terms. "This is called the infi-map, take it and it will lead you to where you need to be." Mandy stated handing the twins the map.
"I don't understand." Daniela stated looking down at the map.
"You will soon enough. Both your brother and your sister have taken this map and gone on their own journey's, the time has come where the two of you must go on your own." Mandy stated as she cocked her weapons and readied for battle. "Go. Get stronger, then come back and help us fend off this threat." Saying that Mandy opened and closed the vault door, the sound of gunshots waved back at the twins from the other side of the door.
Either twin took a side of the scroll and pulled, the map revealed itself and in short order beamed the both of them up through the castle and out of the Vault. The two of them were punted off into the Ghost Zone, sent careening out of control before crashing down where they knew not.
"They're children?" Manny was the first to gain something resembling consciousness, still his eyes were quite slow to open, and what few visual references he could actually see had his arms and legs strapped down, and he could see that Daniela was in the same boat before he lost consciousness again.
"They fell from the sky, left a sizable welt in the ground when they landed, survived, as far as I'm concerned their age is irrelevant." Daniela opened her eyes briefly, she learned that she was in a hospital room before she closed them again, working to maintain her consciousness as she listened in on the conversation going on about her and her brother for as long as possible before she lost consciousness again.
"Ugh." Manny groaned awake, it was night time now, the lack of light coming in through the window was evidence enough of that. "Psst. Dani... Dani!"
"I can hear you Manny." Dani was the first one to get free, the ability to pass through solid objects made restraining them honestly rather pointless. In addition the instant repair ability of a immaterial body also means that a hospital was also rather pointless.
"I was waiting for you to wake up!" Annoyed Manny used a ecto beam to cut the straps off of himself as he floated up to meet his sister.
"We cannot just blast ourselves out of here Manny." Daniela stated looking distastefully at the mess her brother made.
"Why not?" Manny asked cocking his eyes suspiciously while he crossed his arms.
"Because we have to assume we're here for a reason!" Dani snapped recalling the lecture her mother gave them about the infi-map. "That magical map is designed to take us to wherever..." Then Daniela noticed something, that they no longer had the extremely powerful and important magical artifact on their person. "...We are now." There were only two possibilities, the map had been picked up by the same people who picked them up, the second is that the map was left at the site of the crash that they came down on, which opened up the additional possibility that someone or something came by and took it.
"So what do we do now?" Manny asked cocking a brow.
"In my opinion we should first determine if these people will be good allies or not." Daniela stated crossing her arms.
"And we do this... how?" Manny asked unable to comprehend how they were going to do this.
"Seeing as how you didn't bother to simply phase through those restraints I'm going to let that slide." Dani stated face palming in annoyance.
"Nurse what happened to the two who were in here last night?" A brown haired and heavily armored man asked crossing his arms and looking at the nurse suspiciously.
"I'm as confused as you are! One moment I'm coming in to change their fluids and the next they're just gone!" The Nurse snapped clearly exasperated.
"Report to me immediately if you see them." Saying that The Man at Arms left while the nurse returned to her station, her eyes turning from red to blue as Daniela left her body.
Thus Daniela's intelligence gathering efforts had begun, Jumping from body to body as she acquired whatever clearance she needed to access a area or whatever face she wanted to talk to someone. Obviously their priority was locating the Infi-map. Someone who was apart of the search party was enough of a magic caster that they were able to recognize the powerful magical artifact and took it with them now they needed to find this person and get their map back. Manny on the other hand went for combat training, possessing the body of the local prince he was easily able to secure the best trainers in the kingdom.
"Adam, I can't help but notice that you're taking your training a little more..." Serious wasn't the right word, rather the normally pacifistic prince had suddenly thrown himself into combat training with a nightmarish smile on his face. Even more disturbing he would just as frequently switch back to his old pacifistic self with a disturbed look on his face.
"Enthusiastically?" Manny in the blonde prince's body stated letting out a smile. "It's all in good fun isn't it?"
The prince's combat trainer would be even more disturbed to realize that the one that he was talking to was not a twelve year old who was only occasionally engaging in violence and was instead a eight year old who ate lived and breathed it.
"Orko have you examined that magic item we found earlier?" The Man at Arms asked cocking a suspicious brow at the resident mage/court jester.
"I'm at a complete lost for words." The person in question was short, black, covered in red robes and floated at eye level through magical means. "I've never seen magic like this on this world or my own yet I sense a connection to both worlds and many others."
"...Explain." Man at Arms ordered requiring a more detailed explanation.
"Simply put, it's a map, a map connecting the infinite realms together." Saying that Orko tried to open it but failed. "Some kind of locking mechanism keeps it from being opened." Is what Orko said but his examination revealed no physical mechanism. "If I was a guessing man, I would say that it decides when it can be opened, and if that's the case it might also decide the destination." Saying that Orko locked the scroll in a chest, which he then coated in a layer of barrier type magics.
"Based on what you said is that security really necessary?" Man At Arms asked cocking a suspicious brow.
"You say that, but just because this thing is sentient does not mean that it's necessarily benevolent." Orko replied as finished securing the locks. "For instance, there's the two that dropped into place with this thing. Even though they look to be children they still fell out of the sky leaving behind a sizable welt in the ground without even a scratch and now they've disappeared without anyone being able to find them. Rather than ordinary children, perhaps they're some kind of powerful shape shifting monsters that merely took the appearance of children to fool and then attack us."
Orko's words seemed harsh, but his assessment was accurate. As Dani recalled her brother's bed time stories she remembered that their mother was no older than they were when she took the Grim Reaper on as a slave, since then fending off every manner of horror imaginable until the time that she entered middle school and only growing more powerful since that time. Indeed the matriarch of the Grim family was a monster that only looked like she was human. Pondering that question Daniela left the Man At Arms body with the later non the wiser.
"Another thing I wanted to talk about was where they came down." Eternia, the planet they were on, was a tectonically unstable world. One half of the planet was a massive volcanic wasteland, but through powerful magics and technology the other half of the world was stabilized through sheer brute force. One of these technologies, a atmospheric stablizer that made it possible to maintain a breathable atmosphere with the help of entire continents worth of greenery, was punctured by the meteoric arrival of the twins.
"We already sent word to Avion and Andreenos, they're flying craft is already on the move to the hole and their magicians are going to use air magic to patch the hole." Orkos explained with a shrug of his shoulders.
A second purpose behind the generator was to keep out the people of Eternia's dark hemisphere, a collection of races who had no intention of living within the boarders of the peace loving people of Eternia and so choose to stay in the harsh and barren dark half of the world. Likewise to protect their lands from the raids of these unruly thugs the Eternian people made use of the Atmosphere Generator as a massive force field, hence why only half of the planet was covered in greenery. Like wise like a large hole in a shield leading directly to the heart, the people of the dark hemisphere were quick to take notice of the massive gaping hole directly over their enemies capital.