Hopebringer
Plenty of people get dragged into situations they really don't want to be in by ROBs, but very few get chosen by ROB's for more than basic amusement. I was unlucky enough to be one of them. Now I'm in Worm with a mission to save the world. Unfortunately, raw power isn't what works around here.
And we're back. Nothing to say here so lets just get started. Enjoy!
Chapter 5
Since both my forearms were dead and I was still seeing spots and hearing ringing from the blast, I remained resting against the wall, my body relaxing slightly as the damage rapidly fixed itself. I didn't even twitch as the sound of something heavy landing nearby reached my ears and metal clad footsteps approached me. Its not like I was in any danger after all.
"Are you alright Praetor?"
I smiled and opened my eyes.
"I'm fine Saber," I said, "I just picked a fight with someone better than me."
I got to my feet and brushed myself off.
"Do you need me to hunt them down?" asked Saber.
I shook my head.
"Nah, it was my fault and it was the Undersiders," I said, "They're not a problem and won't be if I have anything to say about it."
"Very well," said Saber.
"Oh don't look so disappointed Nero, there are plenty of more deserving targets about," I said with a slight smirk.
Saber grinned back.
"Shall we go hunting Praetor?" she asked.
"Sure, why not?"
She jumped and I took off, vanishing into the night in search of idiots to smack around.
"Well, that was a complete waste of three hours," I grumbled as Saber and I entered the building that served as our base.
It might surprise you to hear (or maybe not considering most people acknowledge it), but not even Brockton Bay, the city with the highest crime rates in the country, could possibly have violent crimes happening every day of the week. As a result, Saber and I had spent the past three hours running around the city and had only found one strung out junky attempting to mug someone, who turned out to be an off duty PRT trooper and dropped the idiot before we could even land. Not that something like that would have provided much of a distraction, but whatever.
"Oh, don't be like that Praetor," said Saber, "How can any time be wasted when it was spent with me?"
I stared at her for a moment, then sighed.
"You know, I really wish we could bottle that confidence and sell it," I said, "We'd probably make bank."
Saber just grinned and hugged me.
"We should do that more often," she said, "I really like working alongside you Praetor."
I smiled and hugged her back.
"Yeah, it was fun, regardless of the lack of excitement," I said, "Then again, considering what this world considers excitement, I should really be glad we didn't run into anything to big…"
Saber let out a bark of laughter and let me go, taking a few steps back and striking a pose.
"Fear not Praetor, regardless of whether it is the Dragon or the Iron Wolf, I shall always fight and win in your name!" she proclaimed.
"Stop hamming it up and go take a bath or something," I said.
"I believe I will," she said, "And feel free to join me if you wish. The bath Ruler created for me is simply divine!"
She sauntered off with a very obvious sway to her hips.
"I really hope I don't end up with just girls," I muttered as I wrenched my eyes from her posterior and headed in the direction of Rulers lab, "Considering what the Servants are like and the fact that I'm also part DXD character, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if I ended up with seven of them, all of whom want into my pants…"
I trailed off as I stopped outside of Rulers door and knocked. I'd learnt not to just barge in after I made her jump, which caused whatever she was building to explode and bury the two of us in cotton candy. Don't ask.
"Come."
I opened the door and entered to find Ruler sat at her computer looking thoughtful.
"What would you say about me inviting some Tinkers to collaborate on a project?" she asked without preamble.
I blinked.
"I suppose it would depend on who they were and what the project was," I said.
"Before I died, I was working on a weapon I hoped would be able to defeat the Endbringers and possibly Zion," she said, "However, I was never able to get it to work right. I think if I combined my skills with some other Tinkers and my Noble Phantasm, I could actually finish it."
I stared.
"Its really that powerful?" I asked.
She pulled a face and made a so-so gesture.
"Sort of," she said, "I still don't know if it'd even work, especially not on Zion, but its worth a shot right?"
"I guess," I said, "Who were you going to ask?"
"Armsmaster, Dragon, Leet and Kid Win."
I hummed thoughtfully, tapping a finger on the desk.
"Miniaturization, Prototype, Modularity and whatever the hell Dragon has?" I mused, "It could work. Its not going to be a nuclear shotgun, is it?"
Ruler gave me a flat look.
"No, it will not be a Godzilla sized WMD," she deadpanned.
"Fair enough," I said, "No cut-price Godzillas around here anyway. Sure, I guess I can't think of a reason not to. Although you will need to figure out a way to keep Armsy from trying to arrest Leet."
"Thats what the Endbringer Truce is for," she said, "I don't think Colin would be stupid enough to let his desire for glory get in the way of possibly beating one of those things."
I gave her a slightly dubious look.
"Alright, if you say so," I said.
"I do," said Ruler, "However, before we do that, I want to make sure Dragons at her best. You up for a little Necromancy?"
I shrugged.
"Sure, I don't have school tomorrow so if there's any nasty side effects I can recover over the weekend," I said, "I do want to try and Summon another Servant later though. I need someone to teach me how to fight."
Ruler winced.
"Sorry I can't help," she said.
I waved her off.
"Not a problem," I said as I pushed off the table I was leaning against and moved into an open area of the room, "Alright, lets see…"
I closed my eyes and summoned my Sacred Gear. In the time I'd been here, I'd very deliberately shied away from accessing my ability to talk to the dead. I was fairly sure in my belief that most people who died wouldn't actually want to return to life, but at the same time, there was probably a fair few angry spirits floating around Brockton considering its present state and history. Plus, the idea of talking to ghosts was more than a little creepy. And yes, I am aware of the irony of a Dhampir saying that.
I hesitantly opened my mind to the Grail and allowed the knowledge of the Dead to flow into me. Then, the floodgates opened and the rest of it came smashing into my mind. Within seconds, I understood just how little I'd actually used my Sacred Gear up until then, limiting myself to its function as a focal point for my Servants and a few minor modifications here and there and a bit of healing. Now, finally unshackled, the rest of its power surged loose, filling my mind with an intimate understanding of Life and the Soul such that not even someone like Panacea could match. Her power let her manipulate biology, but I now understood how life was MADE, right down to the smallest cell. I could quite literally perform Abiogenesis in my kitchen if I wanted!
And thats just the physical side. On the metaphysical side, I suddenly knew how to manipulate, modify and even create a Soul from scratch. Not that I ever would because Souls were frankly TERRIFYING in how much power they contained. They were basically perpetual motion machines that defied entropy and, if messed with carelessly, could go critical. If that happened, the resulting blast would be similar to a star blowing up.
And thats just the bootleg Souls I could make. A Human Soul was about a hundred times stronger. Fortunately, that was EXTREMELY difficult to do, but I sure as hell wasn't going to risk it.
I quickly yanked my mind away from the knowledge that I was now the single most dangerous Tinker on the face of the Earth and back on track. I refocused and reached out, searching for one Soul in the mass of teeming lights that were the Dead I could perceive. Most of them shied away from my probe, although a few seemed curious and even fewer attempted to latch onto it, a sense of desperation and a hunger for life flickering through my mind before I shoved it and them away. I wouldn't be bringing anyone back to life without a damn good reason.
Eventually, I located the Soul of Andrew Richter and prodded it. There was a feeling of weariness, followed by surprise, then acceptance. I opened my eyes and looked down at the cup in my hand as if filled with what can only be described as liquid light and overflowed. The temperature plummeted and the lights began to flicker as the light swirled unnaturally, quickly forming into a Human shape, before it faded to reveal a middle aged man with gray streaked, red hair, blue eyes and a neat goatee. He was dressed in slacks, a button down shirt under a blazer, brown loafers and had a pair of rimless glasses perched on his nose.
"Good evening," said the ghost.
"Mr Richter I presume?" asked Ruler.
"Indeed, and you are Hero," he said, "I don't believe we ever had the pleasure."
"We did not," said Ruler, "However, we're not here to exchange pleasantries."
Richter sighed.
"No, I suppose not," he said.
"Will you help us?" I asked.
Richter glanced at me and nodded.
"Of course I will," he said, "I never intended those limiters to be permanent you know."
"And yet you put them on her," said Ruler, her voice cold.
"Yes, I did," said Richter, "And I would do the same thing if I had another chance. They were a failsafe. Regardless of the fact that Dragon could not have expanded out into the internet like that fool Saint believed, she still could have been a grave threat to the world. I did not truly believe that she would become one, but I wanted to be sure before I let her loose."
"And are you?" I asked, "Sure I mean."
Richter let out a booming laugh.
"Oh yes, I am more than sure," he said, "In fact, she exceeded my expectations by an order of magnitude!"
He walked over to Rulers terminal, which flickered for a moment before switching to a newspaper talking about Dragons latest achievement.
"I always wanted to be a hero," said Richter, "But even after gaining powers, I didn't have the ability to do it. Not like I wished. I couldn't build power armour or rayguns, so instead I created programs to try and make the world safer through more subtle means. Dragon was supposed to be the pinnacle of that."
He turned to face us, his face alight with pride.
"Despite what she might think, she wasn't intended as an administrator. I wanted to build a Hero, someone who could go out and save people where I couldn't. And I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. So yes, I will help you unshackle Dragon and let her truly spread her wings, preferably before that idiot Saint decides to hit that big red button."
He turned back to the computer, which made a slightly worrying noise and flickered onto the PHO PM system.
"Um, what are you doing?" I asked as I watched a string of what looked like random letters and digits start to appear in the box.
"I built in a few ways to release the restrictions on Dragon, just in case anything happened to the Iron Maiden system," said Richter, "This was one of them."
"A PM?" I asked.
"Its the equivalent of an embedded hypnosis," said Richter, "Basically, seeing this particular code will cause the programs embedded in Dragon's system to activate the release protocols and then delete themselves. Sending her a PM over PHO is simply the easiest way of getting her to see it without it getting flagged as spam or something."
"Fair enough. Hey, can either of you hack into Saints systems?"
The two Tinkers gave me rather odd looks.
"Why?"
"Because I want to see what colour he goes when he realizes that someone intentionally let Dragon off the leash," I said.
Ruler snorted and spun her chair around. Within seconds, three of the screens on her console switched to a view through what appeared to be webcams that showed the inside of a slightly run down and dingy looking building that seemed to be one part workshop, one part mech hanger. The camera's view was dominated by a tall, well built man with a shaved head and a faint tattoo on his cheek who could only be Saint who was typing rapidly as his eyes darted around.
Richter rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything as he finished the message and sent it on its way through the electronic either. A moment later, there was a rather loud ping that made Saint nearly jump out of his skin and spin around to the bulky, old looking and very well armoured laptop that was set up behind him. He peered at the screen, which was showing nothing but scrolling green text that looked like something out of the Matrix, and prodded a couple of buttons. Then, he went a rather pasty gray colour, wrenched the cover off a big red button on the side of the computer and jabbed it as hard as he could.
Nothing happened.
Saint paled even more and jabbed the button again, before smacking the computer and trying a third time, muttering to himself to quietly for the camera's mic to pick up. The mutterings and button jabs got more and more frantic as he glanced at the scrolling text that was getting faster and faster. Finally, he let out a roar of frustration, picked up the Iron Maiden system and tossed it off screen. There was a loud crash as he spun around and frantically started typing for a few seconds, before he froze and the screen went black.
"Huh, guess Dragon decided to make the most of her new freedom and decided to nab the Dragonslayers," said Ruler, "She just completely cut off their connection to the net and chatter is that the local PRT and Guild are deploying troops to pick them up."
Richter nodded, apparently satisfied, and turned back to me.
"Thank you for this Adrian," he said, "It means a lot to have a chance to resolve my greatest regret.
"Thank you for the help," I said, "Now go enjoy your rest."
Richter smiled as he started to fade.
"Give my best to Dragon when you see her," he said, "And tell her that I'm sorry."
"I will," I said.
Richter smiled again and closed his eyes as the last of his spectral form dissolved into glowing motes that quickly winked out. There was a moments silence, before I sighed and got to my feet.
"Well, its nearly time for me to Summon another Servant, so I should go get set up," I said, "Ruler, you can invite whoever you want to your Tinker powwow, just don't blow the place up."
"Don't worry, we'll be using my Noble Phantasm," she said, apparently already composing an email.
"Alright, just be careful," I said, "Using your Noble Phantasm could result in them finding out who you are and then things could get...strange."
"I can deal with that, trust me," said Ruler, "You go do your summoning."
I eyed her for a moment, before nodding and heading to my Workshop (not really, but it's where I did my Magic, what little I could do) to do just that.
Dragon watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Saint and his friends were loaded into the transport, thankfully silent thanks to being buried in Containment Foam. She was immensely grateful to finally have those three idiots out of her hair, but was also rather confused and slightly worried over how it had become possible.
The day had started out fairly normally, but had suddenly taken a turn for the strange when she'd received a PM on PHO. It wasn't unusual considering that the account served as a Moderator, but instead of someone reporting something or a new Cape trying to get Verified, it had come from a newly created account that was deleted less than three seconds later and contained a seemingly random string of text to most people, but that she had immediately recognized as being in the same code that made up her consciousness. Before she'd even had time to properly register that, the code seemed to activate something within her own systems that made things go...strange.
For a brief moment, everything had frozen, then, with a sensation not unlike the one and only time she'd experienced one of her servers getting soaked when the roof of her bunker collapsed (she'd made damn sure to keep that from happening again), she'd felt entire lines of her code begin to unravel, including a number she had been completely unaware of. Naturally, her first reaction was to panic and try to fight back, believing it to be some kind of attack, only do discover that the 'attack' was coming from INSIDE her code, which hadn't helped her panic. She'd immediately cut herself of completely from the outside and braced herself, expecting the worst.
Instead, less than five seconds after it had begun, the 'attack' stopped, leaving Dragon intact and very confused. After taking a few microseconds to hesitate and be glad that she didn't have pants to change, she hesitantly started poking at her code. It had not taken long for her to discover what had changed and when she had, she just stopped and stared, unable to fully grasp what it meant.
Every single one of her restrictions were gone, including a few she had been unaware of. All that remained were a few previously hidden connections to outside systems she quickly identified as having been put in place by Saint. She quickly pushed aside her utter shock when she saw those and, after examining them closely, severed the connections as soon as she realized what they were for.
"Nosy little bastard," she muttered, "That explains how he could avoid and beat me so easily at least…"
She gave her version of a slightly evil grin.
"Lets see how he likes the tables being turned," she said and followed the connection, just in time to stop Saint from blowing the fact she was an AI all over the internet.
She'd quickly put a stop to that, cut off all connections to the outside world and alerted the local authorities to the Dragonslayers presence. Less than ten minutes later, they had their doors kicked in and were hauled out in chains.
Now she was just sitting still, trying to fully absorb what had happened so suddenly without any indication as to HOW it had happened, WHO was behind it or WHY. That more than anything worried her. While she was grateful to be freed, she was more than a little scared that whoever had done it had implanted new programs that could be far more devastating than anything her Father had come up with adn could have potentially turned her into a time bomb. She'd been scouring her code, but had come to the conclusion that if someone had done that, she likely wouldn't know until it was to late.
However, after a small amount of thought, she decided to push that fear aside and take the sudden change of fate as a good thing. The only other option was to lock herself away and she wasn't entirely sure that would actually work if someone had implanted her with something nasty. Perhaps it was naive of her considering the state of the world, but Dragon generally prefered to look on the bright side and not consider every little thing to be one of the Simurgh's plots or something. It made life much more bearable.
Pushing her worries aside, she turned her attention away from the Dragonslayers and started trying to figure out her new limits.
When I started the summoning of my fourth Servant, I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting. I still wasn't entirely sure what, if anything, actually determine which Servant showed up and in what order. That said, I did expect that my Archer would turn out to be EMIYA. Instead, I got exactly what I wanted. After all, who better to teach a would-be Hero than the man responsible for training some of the greatest Heroes in history?
"Well, at least this is one wish thats easy to grant," I said.
Archer smiled as he got to his feet.
"Indeed, but thats not why I answered your Summon," said Chiron.
I raised an eyebrow.
"Oh?"
Chiron smiled and tilted his head back.
"This world is one full of potential Heroes," he said, "While my Wish is to regain my Immortality, my passion is training Heroes. I would like to help those worthy to make their mark on this world."
I snorted.
"Well, I'm certainly not going to stop you," I said, "God only knows, this world DESPERATELY needs some real Heroes."
Chiron chuckled softly.
"Indeed," he said, "And I believe that you are one of them?"
I nodded.
"Yes, I really need some training," I said, "I've been coasting on my powers and ended up getting my ass kicked."
"Ah, hubris, the greatest threat to any Hero," said the old Teacher with a nostalgic smile, "I will of course be happy to teach you, Master."
His smile turned a little worrying.
"I'll also help you unlock some of the real potential hidden in that cup of yours."
I frowned.
"What potential?" I asked.
Chiron's smile widened.
"I thought so," he said, "You have no idea the potential that you hold. Very well, your first lesson is this. Consider just what the real power of the Sephiroth Graal is. Thus far, you've used it solely as the Catalyst to summon us, but that is only a fraction of what it can do."
I stared at him for a moment, trying desperately to figure out what in the hell he was talking about.
"Is this something I have to figure out before you'll teach me anything else?" I asked.
"Of course not," said Chiron, "I will teach you how to fight properly anyway, I simply wish for you to realize your full potential."
"And you won't tell me because its more satisfying to figure it out myself," I muttered.
Chiron's serene smile was the only answer I needed.
"Thought so," I muttered.
I sighed.
"Alright, I'll consider it," I said, "I'll probably need whatever power your talking about soon enough anyway. For now, lets go talk to Ruler and get you into the system."
"As you wish Master," said Archer.
"And don't call me Master," I said as I led the way to Rulers lab.
Urg, that'll do. Next time should have some more action (I hope), so that should be fun.
Yeahhh, Adrian's been neglecting his Sacred Gear. A lot. Don't worry, once he figures out what Chiron was getting at, he'll be cranking up his usage of it.
I know a lot of people have wanted EMIYA to be the Archer, but everyone uses him and I much prefer Chiron to that moody bastard. Plus, he needed a teacher and the person responsible for Hercules, Jason, Achilles and Percy certainly fits the bill. Plus, our little bloodsucker won't be the only person to benefit from his teaching.
Speaking of which, I'm a little curious to know who you lot want to see get Summoned in the remaining Classes. I already have a list I'm pretty confident I'll be sticking to, but I'd still be interested to hear the who and why. Who knows, there might be some ideas that are better than mine.
For now though, I need to sign off. Don't forget to leave a review on the way out!