M-21 and -24 when first introduced are very different from how they're characterized in the very next arc. Early Installment Weirdness? Just… try to ignore the first impression. I couldn't find M-21 likable on the first read-through because of it, but when I skipped that arc on a second read-through I found I now liked him a lot.
This chapter is fanservice. For me. I love my xenopsych and worldbuilding. There'll be a third chapter with more amusement along eventually.
"You don't need to be here, M-21," Frankenstein said, most of his attention seemingly focused on the paperwork that piled up while he was out for three days, busy elsewhere.
"You did that for me. In case it was still possible to bring him back."
"It was my own decision. Not something to thank me for." Frankenstein reached for his coffee cup, and grimaced when he found it empty. He'd wanted something to wash the memory of that taste out of his mouth.
The scent of blood in the air was back. He used to be a doctor even before he became a vampire hunter; He was used to blood, but when his master used so many blood fields he'd begun to hate the smell of it, and now it was starting to sicken him.
What if that had been the real M-24? M-24 had sacrificed himself to save the children, but for Frankenstein to do something that would affect Master for his own reasons?
He'd wiped the memories of both humans and nobles before, used the psychic abilities he'd copied from nobles to absorb languages and cultural behaviors when he moved into a new region to continue his search for Master or simply create a new identity.
This was different. This was a nauseating parody of the bond between him and Master. No wonder the Previous Lord had said they were completely different things, even if both were triggered by blood and allowed a noble's powers to be used by the human whose blood they drank.
It was a relief that Crombel and the agents Frankenstein had used to get to him and be sure he'd secured all the data were all dead, well before his master could wake up and feel their presence. Master would not be angry with him – he had not abused the weak or innocent, and it was the Noblesse's duty to probe the minds of clan leaders – but it would sorrow him to find what his bonded had done, what he had only been able to do because Master gave him what he wished by drinking his blood, and Frankenstein wished so much to spare him that.
A new coffee cup appeared on his desk, slid in front of him, and Frankenstein's nose wrinkled.
No. The smell of blood wasn't his imagination.
He restrained a sigh and hoped this wasn't how Master felt, after he'd saved the human who had moved into his house and repaid the favor by disrupting Raizel's daily routine of window-staring with meals and other gifts he didn't need. And, of course, playing the model manservant when others visited for the sake of irritating the nobles – or boggling their minds – as much as possible.
Urokai Agvain was an easy target. Finding that one of the 'superior' nobles was so easy to reduce to a frantic jealous wreck accusing him of plotting to harm someone as ridiculously powerful as Cadis Etrama di Raizel, as though the Noblesse was some damsel deceived by a suitor with foul intentions… was far less funny in hindsight. The fact that nobles couldn't handle their emotions was one of the cornerstones of his combat strategy, and instead of taking a moment to wonder why Urokai's behavior was so uncharacteristic for a noble, when he was there partially to learn how the clan leaders ticked, he'd bullied an insecure orphaned teenager, thinking that he 'deserved it' on the grounds of his species?
When the Previous Lord had explained the duties of the Noblesse, he'd given the former clan leader of Agvain, Urokai's parent, as an example of one of the nobles Raizel had spent his lifeforce to execute. Unfortunately, after being nearly devoured by Dark Spear and seeing the noble he'd looked after for ten years bleed from the mouth because Urokai pulled out Tesamu's necklace, Frankenstein was in no condition to care about what it meant that Urokai was so devoted to the Noblesse even though the Noblesse forced his father into eternal sleep.
The bonds between parent and child were even stronger among nobles than among humans, which made strong evolutionary sense when children were so rare. Urokai would not feel grateful to his father's executioner without very good reason.
Was it only the Union's slander or Frankenstein's species that made Urokai think that he was a danger to the Noblesse. or had something about him reminded Urokai of the previous clan leader?
He'd taken his cue from how Urokai's visits seemed to upset his host, but of course Cadis Etrama di Raizel was a gentle soul who was repulsed by the thought of being offered gratitude and tribute for doing his duty. For killing.
Now Urokai Agvain was one of the traitor clan leaders, and there was a chance Master would be forced to spend his life to kill two generations of that clan, because Frankenstein had thought it was funny to exploit an abuse victim's emotional vulnerabilities. It made the high school chairman want to go back in time and stab the vampire hunter. Speaking of people in need of stabbing: Ragar Kertia.
What the devil had he been thinking, leaving an emotional infant with a brain developed enough to remember the trauma of his only parent choosing to abandon him with no one to look after him but a child who couldn't have been much more than Seira's age?
Most of his feelings for Seira were pure projection of his younger self's circumstances onto her, thinking the fellow orphan needed someone older who would devote his time to her the way Rajak clearly hadn't. Probably too focused on his training because of the incomplete Kartias. However, Seira had Gejutel, and zero interest in being talked at because of Rael's failure… to deal with his own… issues…
This was going to be Urokai all over again if no one stepped in and shored up Rael's sanity before the Noblesse had to step in. Frankenstein probably owed it to Ragar, after all the help the Kertia Clan Leader gave him with Dark Spear.
Master might say he trusted Frankenstein's judgment in all things, but the fact that sometimes Frankenstein's judgment failed to see anything wrong with things like bullying emotionally fragile nobles was one of the reasons he felt… better, in the Noblesse's power. With his head already on the chopping block, if he ever abused the considerable power he'd gained. Their contract would make it easy for Master to do his duty, if it ever became necessary. If he ever went the way of the Union, he would be handled before innocent lives could be lost, at a minimal cost to his master.
There would still be a cost. It would still bring him pain. So that became another reason to hew to his principles.
That was the logical argument for giving the Noblesse his blood. Who else could be trusted to take down someone with enough power to fight noble clan leaders, someone who was still growing stronger?
There was nothing of logic in cutting his wrist open with a fingertip, deep enough to stay open long enough for a drop of blood to fall into the tea. It was not about him. Not when Frankenstein was wracked with guilt over what Master had just done for his sake, when he would do anything to stay with him. Even give a noble his blood, when Frankenstein knew that for all he had modified himself, Cadis Etrama di Raizel was the Noblesse.
There was no one more skilled at controlling blood, or controlling those with blood. Once the Noblesse drank a drop of Frankenstein's blood, he would be able to take control of Frankenstein's mind and override his free will at any time.
And that was alright.
He had tried not to expect, to dare to dream of a contract with that lonely, exquisitely pure being, to have their souls bound together for as long as they lived. But if Raizel had Frankenstein's blood, then he could be certain that Frankenstein would never abandon him. He would have someone who was his, who he could know would always stay by his side. And that was what Frankenstein had wanted, more than anything else.
Caught in memory, he raised the spiked cup to his lips and pretended to take a sip. "This tea tastes different," he remarked.
"It's… coffee."
"…Yes, coffee." Frankenstein lowered the cup and sighed. "Nice try. This is exactly how I became a vampire. I tried to trick Master into drinking it." Of course the greatest master of blood could sense it. Frankenstein might have been slightly in shock at the time he did it, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing in hindsight.
M-21 flushed, embarrassed to be caught.
"Master did me the honor of using the ability to control me granted to him by that gift of blood to create a contract between us. That is… different. It is a bond of the soul, not simply power bought with the loss of integrity." The sacrifice of the noble's honor, and the human's self. He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of it. "It is wonderful." Something exquisite held in his hands. Something so pure and kind, entrusted to him. Someone he could entrust with his own soul, when the Union's treachery and Dark Spear's whispers undermined his faith in everything. Especially himself, and his own ability to know right from wrong.
"He was born only to die: to have this chance to protect him, to give him a normal life… But," he rallied, because there was a point to this other than reminiscing, "I was well over two hundred years old," Lukedonia's age of majority, "and knew what I was getting myself into. No. I didn't know… I had no idea what it was truly like." The Previous Lord had tried to explain what Frankenstein was going without, by not seeking a contract with Master when he clearly wished to be by his side, but what were mere words to this? "But I knew the worst case scenario, and I knew Master."
"I know you," M-21 said, eyes downcast to show polite submission to one of his parents. Or one of the two 'pack alphas,' to use the popular terminology based on observations of wolves in settings far more like M-21's life in the Union than a healthy environment.
Honestly, this kid. No wonder he'd given Master such severe cuteness proximity even when he was a Union thug. There was a reason Miss Seira saw Shinwoo as an adult, or at least a young adult her own age, and M-21 and the rest of Regis' new playmates as tiny children who must be protected at all costs.
Master was the Noblesse, so of course he had seen past M-21's façade. Now the enhanced human was no longer a snarling, abused stray that tried clearly futile snaps at the hand that fed him (or gave him safehouse access) because it just hadn't occurred to M-21 that someone might feed a stray unpoisoned food.
One of the things that made it possible to forgive M-21's involvement in attacks on the students as youthful folly was how young he was. The Union certainly didn't have any interest in teaching people how to tell right from wrong, whether it be in ethics or information. Fortunately for M-21's sake, wolf, human and werewolf instincts were broadly compatible, unlike human and noble instincts. Put him in a healthy environment – an environment designed to be healthy, for Master's sake and the students' – and he sorted himself out without any need for more active measures.
M-21 was not going to trust any kind of doctor with what was going on inside his head, after the Union, and Frankenstein loathed manipulating people. His distaste for it grew worse as he gained psychic abilities and centuries worth of head start. M-21 deserved to become his own person, not have what kind of person he would become decided for him. That would be no different from what the Union tried to do to him.
Now M-24 would have been a mess even without the cellular degeneration issue. Sitting down and trying to figure out what would result from transplanting a noble's heart into a human should have made it obvious that Crombel had intended the M-series to fail so that no one else could possibly get data out of those experiments.
And Crombel clearly hadn't known a third of why it was just asking for it to implant the organ that controlled and managed blood flow and the attendant nerve cells from a species that controlled the mind via blood into a human body with a human brain. When nobles regenerated nerve cells without trouble – the reason it was so dangerous for human bodies to create new nerve cells (they did it, but sparingly) didn't apply to a species that had an external, non-physical DNA and cognitive backup.
That was part of what made it so impossible for even the Noblesse to figure out the truth about Mark by comparing their scans of him to what they'd registered from the real M-24. Mark had his own buried personality and the M-24 persona, while M-24 had an 'echo' to his sense of self that came from having the equivalent of a third brain hemisphere with signaling problems.
If they'd brought M-24 home with them back then along with M-21, Frankenstein would have had to abandon his hopes of keeping his Master secret and safe (it gave him no joy that he'd been right, and there were traitors among the clan leaders) until he recovered to travel to Lukedonia and shake down Gejutel for everything he knew about noble infant development.
He likely would have had to contract to M-24 regardless, or ideally make Gejutel do it (he seemed the go-to foster parent for noble children), in order to have any chance of stabilizing the growth of M-24's soul before his body gave out under it.
Human bodies had evolved things like the autonomic nervous system, dozens of regulatory hormones and mechanisms for regulating cell processes that were suited to the human body. Nobles were beings of unknown origin who had copied human appearances and entire swaths of their genetic code (which made Frankenstein feel a bit better about so many of his early enhancements essentially being copying noble capabilities – they borrowed humanity's evolutionary advantages first), but in computer science terms they were running humanity on an emulator. The underlying system that managed nobles' growth, health and appearance was their soul. Human souls were generated by the brain's signals: they simply didn't have the processing power to run the brain, much less the entire body.
The only helpful ingredient in the pills that served as M-21 and M-24's leash to the Union, thinking no one but the Union could make them, could be found in foxglove. They could have retired to the countryside and drank tea, and it would have done them more good than those pills. Crombel was the kind of… inelegant bastard who would get a kick out of adding that kind of insult to a legion of injuries.
All in all, Frankenstein was very glad that the modern Union's modified humans considered themselves something superior to humanity, meaning not human. That meant it wasn't his species they were making look contemptibly stupid, but their own. They were gearing up to attack Lukedonia, which would have unleashed angry refugee nobles with no one to keep them from raising vampire armies, and instead of getting their act together before the world they planned to rule was overwhelmed by something much more deadly than the zombie apocalypse of recent pop culture they encouraged this institutional cult of incompetence just to hold on to their personal power bases?
Unleashing vampire plagues on innocent people just for the sake of their own hunger for power? A thousand years and more, and they hadn't changed.
With M-21 glancing at him out of the corner of grey eyes, he couldn't let any of his disgust for the Union show on his face. M-21 would misinterpret it, and Frankenstein wasn't going trivialize this with references to 'kicked puppies.' Not when he was dealing with someone who had spent the only childhood they remembered in a lab with all bodily and mental autonomy stripped from them, watching the only people who treated them like people die, one by one, helpless to save them.
Thankfully, a werewolf's regenerative powers had protected him from the normal, physiological consequences of that kind of chronic agony. Figuring out antidepressant doses for a constantly-changing hybrid physiology would involve far more trial and error than he wanted to inflict on an experimental victim, and Frankenstein had put significant work into figuring out alternatives to giving M-21 any kind of pill to take for good reasons.
Frankenstein chuckled. "No," he said, kindly. "Your memories stretch back less than a decade. Come speak to me when you're legally old enough to make decisions like this." On Lukedonia, preferably. "The only way to make this fair to you would be to make it a contract, and that would bind you to me, body and soul. It's not something a child is able to understand well enough to consent to it."
"You're talking about it like it's marriage." M-21 looked at him, worried. Was it?
"Very like it," Frankenstein agreed, both because it was true and because that would put M-21 off the entire idea. "At least, how marriage was defined in the place and time that I was born. Not the physical aspect," not necessarily, "but I am Master's. I am able to think my own thoughts only because he has given me leave. I still breathe only because he permits it."
He saw the look of recognition in the werewolf's eyes. Recalling what the Noblesse said when he made Jake kneel?
"You are talking about putting your life, your soul, in someone else's hands, M-21," he said, voice soft, trying to make it clear that this was kindness, not rejection. "I know that you do that when you enter my lab, I know that you have done that on the battlefield, but the Union treated you as property. Like a thing." He couldn't keep the flash of fury, both his and Dark Spear's, from showing in his eyes, and he let it, because M-21 needed to see it. To truly believe that what was done to him was wrong, that he deserved better. "I want you to belong to yourself for a little longer. So that, when you find someone you wish to stay with for the rest of your life, someone you wish to belong to and with, you understand the value of the gift you are giving them. You understand how much they should value that gift, and refuse to give it to anyone who will treat it carelessly." Frankenstein frowned. "Master tends to value me… more than I wish to be."
"We're more valuable than his own life to him," M-21 agreed.
Frankenstein sighed. "And that is the reason he is more valuable than my own to me. To the nobles, he is the Symbol of Strength:" when the word Virtue meant strength, strength not merely of the body but of the unconquerable soul. "Master is my ideal, the living avatar of the principles I dedicated myself to over a thousand years ago, but he is also a person who was alone for so very long, to spare others the fear of him even as he protected them. I want to give him everything, and my soul is part of everything." His mind, his will, his thoughts, his breath: the things he'd defended to the death from so many other vampires, from the Union? They were what he wished most to give to Raizel, in the hope that they would give him especial joy. "You are welcome in my master's home always, M-21. We will do everything we can to keep you safe."
"You said you could remove Union programming from M-24's mind. Do you think you could unlock my memories?" If there was even a chance, then M-21 would be willing to pay even this price to keep his promise to his comrades.
"Even nobles don't have perfect recall, unfortunately. The Previous Lord forgot his own name over the ages of being called simply Lord." No, he couldn't search M-21's subconscious for those lost names. Hmm. Yes, that might work.
He leaned back in his chair, removing his glasses to toy with them. "Then again, perfectly obedient servants have their uses. I'm fond of the janitorial staff at this school." He was very particular about them, of course – they were caring for the place of Master's happiness. "And of course I can't allow the others to get out of doing their share of the chores, but I'm sure I could find something to do with you…"
No, no, entirely the wrong tack to take, he saw from the blushing. He had assumed that M-21's mind would leap to the threat of being experimented on, when there was a little menace in his voice. That it would remind him what it was usually like to be in someone's power.
He restrained a sigh. Well, thankfully he had a great deal of practice handling unwanted crushes even before he became a high-school Chairman and most of those crushes were from among the underage.
Then again, thanks to the Union wiping the memories of their test subjects, in terms of his understanding of ordinary human relationships, much less human kindness, M-21 was younger than all of his students.
"If you took your vial, have the others destroyed theirs?" Unless M-21 had simply cut his wrist to obtain the blood, the way Frankenstein had that day. It would be impossible to tell when M-21 healed that fast, but he hoped not. He'd been injured far too many times as it was.
"Not when I left."
Frankenstein had gone back to school early to avoid them as much as to get caught up on the paperwork. He should have taken care of the vials first… but then, they deserved to see them. To know the danger and make their own decisions.
"If they don't destroy the vials, I will." He pinched the bridge of his nose and put his glasses back on. The glasses were practical, for hiding how acute his vision really was. Reading glasses and other little things helped convince others that he was aging. It was almost time to leave Korea and found another school when Master appeared here. "I had never done that before. It was unpleasant, and I do not wish to do it again. I'm just glad Mark was an enemy already marked for death. If he was alive, if I still sensed his mind?" he shuddered. If any of them were still alive, but he wasn't going to mention that. If t'were done, t'were best done thoroughly. Once was already one too many: he had to make it not necessary a second time.
He might have been conflicted over keeping Crombel, torn between repugnance and the useful intelligence he could provide. But he took Yuri first and it became clear that no, keeping Crombel would not give him a trusted spy in the Union, so he could give a sigh of relief and just kill the bastard.
"It would be worse with any of you. It would bother me to think of any of you in a situation where you could be used and taken advantage of, and contracting to you? I can't even take proper care of Master." He winced, realizing the confession that had just slipped out of him. They hadn't wanted the children to worry.
M-21's eyes flashed around desperately before finally a hand patted his shoulder – M-21, imitating Master. He looked ready to jump back and run for the door, if that was something Frankenstein wouldn't tolerate from anyone else. It made his lips twist in a smile.
"You gave me a home," M-21 said. "For Takeo, and Tao, and M-24."
"It was Master's decision," Frankenstein told him. "Master's generosity. The same as he did for me, long before we contracted." No need to tell M-21 the whole story, although in the human world, a house like that would fall apart without servants to look after it in the blink of an eye from a noble's perspective. "Don't try to slip blood into Master's tea. If it is your will, he might drink it, and you don't have enough control over yourself and your power yet."
"Don't have enough control for what?"
"To avoid calling on his power. When a human is merely controlled by blood, they can only use whatever powers their controller permits. In a contract, our souls are bound together. The power of my soul would be his to call on… or they would be, if the Noblesse was capable of using powers other than his own life and soul, and I may call freely on his. He has so little left." He could not risk someone contracted to him using his bond to Master to call on Master's power, but he didn't want M-21 to know that he had endangered Master, trying to pledge his loyalty to them. That would be cruel. "When Tao and Takeo come in, tell them to get those vials destroyed. I'd rather not even look at blood right now. And fetch me another cup of coffee." Frankenstein gave him a stern look, holding out the cup M-21 had given him. "In a different cup, but I want this one sterilized."
M-21 took it with a quick gesture that was more of a head-bow than a nod and fled the room.
People these days were far too casual with blood. As a doctor, blood banks delighted him: as a vampire hunter, they terrified him. Thank goodness M-24 was too weak for that 'infected' he'd created to have enough power to set up secondary links to other victims, otherwise they would have had a mutant plague on their hands when Jake took that infected to a blood bank.
And the Union showed no signs of backing down from a confrontation with Lukedonia despite losing multiple elders. They simply weren't going to have the enhanced manpower to keep refugees from escaping, and most of their enhanced humans couldn't even sense nobles! How did they expect to track down shapeshifters whose psychic abilities would let them quickly imitate natives if they lost their arrogance, the way fleeing the destruction of their homeland would force them to? It was only the mutants who were vulnerable to sunlight: if any purebloods escaped that could be a dozen generations of vampires who would have to obey that noble before they started to produce mutants instead.
It was the Union's intention to supplant humanity as Earth's dominant species. Even if they failed, if they managed to destroy Lukedonia's ability to enforce its laws, it would be the nobles who ruled a world where humans were prey. Then there were the werewolves, who needed to be constantly reined in by Lukedonia's superior numbers and political unity even when the human-friendly Muzaka was the Werewolf Lord. He didn't need to see a werewolf among the Elders to know that they were involved in the Union. Almost certainly involved in sabotaging its ability to actually win for their own species' advantage.
When the powerful fought for more power, played their little games, human lives, entire cities were devoured.
And Cadis Etrama di Raizel was still convinced that the only purpose of his existence, the only reason he had any life-force to spend, was to spend it putting a stop to the powerful when they abused the weak.
There were seven billion humans on this planet, and the Noblesse knew it. Frankenstein himself was the one who had put together that overview of the current state of the world.
It would not be possible to make him sit this one out. He would protect the humans who lacked the power to protect themselves, thanks to the Union enforcing a monopoly on human enhancements to keep humans weak.
Frankenstein couldn't stop him. Couldn't save him.
He would be there doing the same, as Dark Spear devoured him.
If it was possible to stop Raizel, his beloved Master, from protecting this world, then Frankenstein would never have knelt before a noble.
So he would fight and die to protect his master and this world, humans and the nobles like Seira alike. His master would fight and die to protect both the honor of the nobles and the humans who died before reaching their third century.
He was never one to give in to fate, but he was a scientist. One first had to acknowledge reality in order to change it. Yet… above all else… These were the children they had decided to protect, no matter the cost. As long as they survived, then… then their lives had meaning. That of the Noblesse, and that of the Father of Human Enhancement.
Raizel was an entirely different species from him. Their lives had nothing in common until they met. How on earth had they ended up so perfectly, frustratingly alike?