When I was first reading the webtoon, exactly what was up with Frankenstein calling Rai Master was one of the driving questions – mind control is a major part of Rai's skillset, and there was a strong possibility that Frankenstein used to be evil enough to justify drastic measures.
I was trying to think of how to describe how they acted and said that Frankenstein was acting much more like a doting cat owner than an actual slave.
You know, the people who say the cat is the boss even though it's the human who owns the house, etc. Rai being standoffish and dignified but coming over when Frankenstein is upset…
It's really fun to learn more about the characters and watch the characters' understandings of each other evolve in this webtoon. The trio's understanding of Rai going from 'terrifyingly powerful and WTF strange' to 'precious cinnamon roll to good for this world…. Literally? Crap, what do we do?' is that combination of hilarious, heartwarming and tragic that Noblesse pulls off so well.
After they asked Frankenstein to train them, M-21, along with Tao, Takeo and Regis had trained with him half the time, and Seira trained with him on the island the other half, because they had to take turns guarding Raizel while he slept.
It took all four of them to equal Seira? No, she was a clan leader with a soul weapon. They didn't equal her. It was enough that Frankenstein trusted them enough that he was willing to leave Raizel with only the four of them as protection.
Then they got the news that more Union Elders had arrived and started blowing up downtown in order to call out the nobles who'd taken out the 'double-digit errand boys,' as Frankenstein was calling the Elders they'd faced so far.
They'd hurried home on the helicopter, but while they were still en route, Seira had left the house to fight the Elders before they killed any more humans. Frankenstein had to hurry to join her, but before jumping out of the helicopter he'd given the rest of them strict orders to get home and stay there to guard the sleeping Raizel.
Tao had snapped off a salute and said, "Don't worry, the RK-4 won't let anyone past us, and if he wakes up and tries to leave the house we give him puppy dog eyes, got it – sorry, M-21!"
This wasn't the first time they'd been left out of a probable fight, even if this time Regis would be staying home with them.
When Frankenstein and Raizel went back to Lukedonia after Seira was summoned home by the Lord and Regis' Grandpa was probably in trouble, they'd taken Regis because the kid was worried, but the three enhanced humans were not invited along.
It made sense: when Lukedonia thought of enhanced humans, they thought of the Union – that was pretty clear from Regis, Gejutel and Rael. They'd look at M-21 and the former DA-5 agents and see scum who'd abandoned humanity for mere power.
Which was probably along the lines of 'betraying your species for the sake of really nice hair,' for nobles, since while power was the obsession of the Union, nobles were just kind of born with it and if you wanted more there was clearly something wrong with you.
Nobles saw power not as something that let you do whatever you wanted, but a reason you were stuck doing a bunch of things for other people. Volunteering for more power was probably like volunteering to do the dishes in Frankenstein's house: hope you like wearing an apron.
Tao gestured for Takeo to shut the helicopter door after Frankenstein jumped out.
"Why didn't you let me object?" Regis demanded as soon as it closed.
"It's an important duty, right?" Tao reminded him. "Protecting the Noblesse? And this is an RK-4 meeting, Regis. We need a plan."
"For if the Union defeats Frankenstein and Miss Seira?" Takeo asked, frowning.
As powerful as the two of them were, they were fighting Union Elders, and everyone in the helicopter knew that the world wasn't kind enough to let you keep people just because you loved them.
Tao shook his head. "For when he wakes up. Boss'll have to use Dark Spear to fight Union Elders, and it's trying to eat his soul. If he gets distracted, or tired, or it tastes blood or he has to summon more power than usual, he'll start to have trouble, and the contract means that if Boss' soul starts getting eaten, he'll feel it. There's no way he would have gone to sleep even for a little while if he didn't have a way to know to wake up and help us if we were in trouble, and I bet that's it. Boss has to know it, but he can't let the Elders win, or kill Seira, so he'll still have to go all-out and hope he can beat them before the Noblesse wakes up and gets there if things get rough."
Regis looked stricken for a second, then slammed down a mask of determined noble composure and nodded.
"We can leave the house to protect him if we have to," Tao said. "You know how no one's found that huge lab under the house while putting in water pipes or something? Boss showed me the thing that does it, and he says it'll make the house invisible and intangible too. People'll just walk through a vacant lot, like they can sail right through Lukedonia."
The kid noble blinked. "The Forbidden Area was always empty, but Frankenstein was looking around for something in the woods and a manor appeared. Frankenstein can use that outside Lukedonia?"
"So it's not a normal noble thing?" Tao asked.
Regis shook his head. "The clans have powers only they can use. Authority over the world is the Lord's, although they can order the world to obey others in certain ways. If he can use Blood Fields, maybe Frankenstein could do that because he has that authority?" From the way Regis' eyes narrowed, he could see that Tao was about to ask. "The unique aspect of the Landegre is not of use in combat," he said stiffly.
"Are you sure?" Tao asked. "Remember why Boss was annoyed we didn't get the lab set up first? It's not just combat abilities that are important…"
Regis shook his head as Tao kept talking, cheeks red. Impossible to tell if it was because he was embarrassed, angry, or embarrassed he was angry, or because people were asking prying questions. "Children have no place in combat!" he finally snapped. Then blushed harder, because they all knew he hadn't reached his majority yet. It was why he'd been sent out to South Korea in the first place, to prove he was capable by handling the investigation of a potential mutant before he hit two hundred.
"Children?" Takeo asked.
"It's why there are more Landegre than just Grandfather and myself," Regis said, looking grumpy. "The Landegre have an easier time creating children than other clans. The Loyard were a normal-sized clan, so Seira was the only child. Most clans don't have more than one child at a time – that way, the entire clan can focus on protecting that one child. A lot of the other clans think the Landegre are careless with the lives of children because of how many we had." That was deeply insulting for nobles. Had to be, if inelegant and noisy were fighting words. "Since Grandfather served the Lord as an advisor, there were six Landegre who remained in Lukedonia and survived the traitors' cowardly use of hostages." In the battle where the traitor clan leaders nearly wiped out the Landegre and Loyard clans. "Two of them have already reached their age of majority, but the clan still has two children to protect, and nowhere near enough adults to ensure their safety."
Adding that up, Regis definitely wasn't counting himself as one of those children.
"So you and Seira both had only one parent?" Takeo asked, since he was the only one of the three of them who knew much about ordinary families, from thinking he'd had a sister. M-21 had known theoretically that he… probably had a family once, but he couldn't find them unless he found that name, so there wasn't much point in tormenting himself with what-ifs that weren't about how to survive.
Regis looked down and to the side. Seira's posture was always perfect, and Regis' was most of the time, but his shoulders seemed a little hunched in. "We had two. They decided to make children practically at the same time so we could be 'siblings.' We were created separately so we could be pureblood clan heirs, but we both had a great deal of family. And then we did not anymore," Regis said, doing his best to seem unaffected, but the subject change gave him away. "Rael used to not be so inelegant: he was glad that there were other nobles with siblings, even if my blood isn't related to Seira's. Then Seira lost her parent and he got this ridiculous idea." Regis sniffed. "Saying that Seira was alone when she had myself and Grandfather and she is a Loyard."
"A Loyard?" Takeo was the one to ask before Tao could do so eagerly.
"They can speak to people in their dreams. It's why humans called them the gods of death," Regis said. "Even though humans die instead of going to eternal sleep."
"Dreaming… Eternal sleep?" Takeo asked, eyes widening, then he smiled. "That's good. So Seira has her parent with her."
Regis nodded. "Grandfather has said he will pass down Regasus when I reach my majority. It won't make me complete because the Previous Lord asked him not to enter Eternal Sleep, but even if I won't be able to talk to him..." Regis seemed to realize that he was telling people private things and being talkative when they had planning to do and pulled himself together. "Sleep… Yes." He told them that, "I'm certain the Noblesse already knows that the Elders are attacking: Seira would have done him the courtesy of informing him before she left."
So even though Raizel was asleep in that coffin, he might decide to start waking up? "What if he leaves before we even get there?" M-21 wanted to groan. When he pushed back his hair, he was momentarily surprised to see that his fingers weren't already clawed. Of course he wouldn't transform before a fight even started, he didn't have that kind of power to spare.
Was the werewolf heart Crombel implanted influencing his mind? Making him think that his hands shouldn't be human hands, especially not when they were talking about pack members in danger?
Regis gave him a 'did I really just hear you say that?' look. "And assume his Bonded and a clan leader couldn't win their own battles? He has far too much class to insult them like that!"
"Right," M-21 agreed, remembering the time Raizel claimed that he absolutely hadn't blocked that attack because M-21 might not be able to survive it, but because the infected had done or said something vaguely insulting to Raizel that M-21 didn't even remember. At the time, he hadn't really questioned it because Raizel was just weird, but in hindsight? Yeah right. And then he'd Awakened M-21 so M-21 could win on his own, just so that the (failure) enhanced human didn't keep thinking that he was weak or pathetic. "There's still no way he won't wake up if he knows they're in trouble."
Everyone nodded. Takeo with a small, pleased smile, and Regis with the shining eyes he got when something was so admirable! Even if it gave them a problem, when Tao's RK thing meant keeping Raizel from exhausting himself until he dropped dead was their job. If Frankenstein was trusting them with that, too?
Tao was still mission-focused. "How do we keep him inside?"
"Jam the door locks!" M-21 realized.
Everyone just stared at him for a moment, because how was a mere lock refusing to open going to stop someone who could kill people who made buildings vanish? He saw their eyes widen as they remembered Frankenstein and oh.
"That's mean," Tao said, impressed. "If we pile stuff in the hallway to the elevator, that will slow him down and we can try to convince him that Boss really wouldn't like it if he got damaged, either." Tao clapped his hands together in front of his face, bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut as he said, "Dear god, I mean Boss. Please, please have mercy on us for what we are about to do to your fine china, the champagne glasses and the silk dress shirts."
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Takeo said, a corner of his mouth turned up. M-21 himself was finding it almost impossible to keep a straight face. It wasn't that this wasn't serious, because stuff getting damaged upset Frankenstein and Raizel really might die, but just… they were talking about stopping one of the most powerful beings on the planet with nothing more than the fact that if he kept moving forward, someone, a human, might be upset?
And it would probably work, up until the point where Frankenstein really was in immediate, deadly danger.
"Have you lost every shred of class you once possessed, Rael?" Regis demanded, the pint-sized noble looking disapprovingly at the one who looked like an older teenager. "This is his home! We can't fight here! Damaging the Noblesse's property because of a personal matter is inelegant!"
Tao and the two looking over his shoulders at the security screens saw Rael's eyes widen in the cameras, but, "And I thought you couldn't get any lower than fighting alongside trash like that!"
That meant them, M-21 knew. Enhanced humans, those who abandoned humanity for power, even if they hadn't asked for this, and power? The Union certainly didn't think they'd given him any power.
Rael glared at Regis. "You're hiding behind him the way you hid behind Seira? How dare you tarnish someone else's name with your cowardice! No more excuses – we'll fight where we fought before!
That close to the school? Oh no. Oh no. They might – might – be able to clean up the obstacle course in front of the path to the elevator before Frankenstein saw it, or at least enough he could get through to check on Raizel when he came home after the fight was over, but if the school got turned into a crater? It was just fixed up after Yonsu punched M-21 into a wall!
"Do you think I am stuck here by choice?" Regis demanded. "I have been ordered to remain here on guard duty while the Bonded of the Noblesse and Seira are fighting Union Elders…"
"What!" Rael yelled, red eyes glowing beneath golden curls. "How… you… Even if he did fight my brother, how could you remain in safety while Miss Seira…"
"Because I have been ordered to remain here to guard against cowardly attacks while they do battle!" Regis told him. "How dare you stand here and pick a personal fight when you, unlike me, are at liberty to join that battle?"
True, Rael's snarl acknowledged. "I'll kill you and those vermin later, when your duty is complete and you have no more excuses!" The Kertia vanished right in front of their eyes and cameras.
"Yes!" Tao said into the microphone, punching the air. "Good job, RK-03!"
Regis sniffed. "It's only Rael, but he does have a soul weapon." So he might add some strength to their side even if he'd subtract elegance.
Raizel's poker face was normally incredible. At first M-21 thought that he was just expressionless, unless he decided to make one. What with not being human.
While Regis had a variety of 'what the fuck' expressions, ranging from the one Tao insisted on calling 'confuzzled' to the one the Union being the Union merited, Raizel really didn't seem to feel shock or confusion… ever, in M-21's experience.
Maybe it was because he was really ancient, or maybe since he'd stayed in that manor almost all the time for so long he was just used to seeing a bunch of things he'd never seen before whenever he stuck his head out the door. He'd woken up after 820 years not long before M-21 met him, so if you thought about it, wanting to take a minute to examine a new thing like automatically opening and closing doors? You'd assume he'd be doing a lot more of that.
If Frankenstein was the first human he'd spent a lot of time around, then he might just figure that massive technological advances were only to be expected of humans.
Carriages that moved around without horses? Heck, for all M-21 knew, Raizel was around before humans figured out the wheel.
Stuff all over the floor in Frankenstein's house, though? Tao had left a half-meter clear in front of the elevator, so hopefully Raizel had time to realize what he was faced with before he stepped on anything.
Tired red eyes looked at them. Raizel had to be wondering why they weren't cleaning this up, but he looked back down at the ground in front of him. Save Frankenstein first, save them from Frankenstein second?
He lifted his foot with the elegance nobles always had in their movements, and they saw him realize that no amount of grace or precision was going to get him through Tao's minefield.
Tied-together shirt tripwires – any motion could disturb a plate balanced on top of a glass and set off a cataclysm.
An ordinary minefield would have put Raizel's life in danger. Except not, given the kind of attack Raizel could casually block (at what price, though?). This one put them in danger of death by angry homeowner.
He looked back up at them.
Tao added on the puppy dog eyes. "Step away from the china and go back to sleep? Please, sir?"
"Frankenstein has given much of himself to Dark Spear, so they may fight united in their wrath." Raizel sighed. "They face Urokai Agvain and Zarga Siriana."
Two of the traitor clan leaders, M-21 guessed.
"They have become offenders I must eliminate," Raizel said, distant sadness in his eyes for a moment. "I must end the battle. A battle between clan leaders in a city…" He blinked, and glanced at Regis.
Regis looked away. "They couldn't… not in a city. And then the Union bombed it anyway, to kill everyone who saw what happened. The humans were bombing cities then, but just because humans were killing humans, that did not make it right for nobles to let humans die. Not just to avoid eternal sleep! Humans die, and we do not, so isn't it obvious that… But you will die!" he told Raizel. "That's why you don't have a soul weapon, even though you have predecessors. Your soul can't go to sleep, there won't be any of it left! I can't let you go fight while I'm still awake! Not when you'll die and I'll just go to sleep!"
"While I slept," Raizel said, "those who abandoned the honor of the nobles prospered, and those who embodied it perished. This is why I must be the Noblesse," he said, and floated over the minefield.
It wasn't a leap, although he the way he moved echoed a jump. As graceful as it looked, it didn't make any concessions to physics. M-21 would know, he'd done a lot of roof-hopping.
"You must put Frankenstein's things back," he said when he landed on the other side of them. "Their souls wish to sleep, but they will still fight. I do not think I will be too tired after the sentencing, but if I am indisposed, and Frankenstein finds all those things between him and the Sanctuary?"
That was what worried Raizel. That Frankenstein might have to break… very nice china, glassware and shirts, but still just things that wouldn't matter to him, not compared to a broken Raizel…
It would just make it even worse for him, and even though Frankenstein called Raizel master, Raizel still thought about his feelings and wanted to spare them as much as he could.
"That you wished to protect me… is more than enough." He turned his head, looking off in some direction and opened the door.
They looked at Tao: doing something about the security doors was his job. "I told you I couldn't get into the safety overrides!" he said. "It must be in there."
M-21 sighed. Yeah, it seemed to matter to Frankenstein that his master wasn't trapped anywhere. "If we're lucky he'll get lost and miss the fight," he said, even though it wasn't likely. There was more of a light show than just Dark Spear in the sky when they landed, and they'd felt the ground shaking every so often before they went down into the lab.
Regis looked downcast. "The Kertia and Sir Karias can fly, and Sir Rozaria's clan can move other things without touching them as well. If the Noblesse has the Lord's power over blood fields, then I should have considered the possibility."
Takeo patted Regis' shoulder and smiled down at the noble when red eyes stared at him. "Well, you heard him. We should get started cleaning this up. I'm sure they'll be home soon."
Spilling a bag of poppy seeds in front of them is one of those traditional anti-vampire things. It's supposed to delay them for a significant amount of time.
In Frankenstein's case, doing that on one of his floors would delay him only as long as it takes him to process that you seriously just did that.
Getting nobles to wear pink aprons and do household chores one of Frankenstein's little joys in life. The only person exempt from conscription as maid service is Rai. Rai is fine with picking up after his human friends, but the instant he does, Frankenstein starts internally screaming.
Which was much funnier before we found out that Rai's dying and Frankenstein takes the 'doctor' thing seriously – when he stole back his data from the Union, he still wanted the medical treatments he invented to spread and help people. The Union: Why We Can't Have Nice Things since (at least) 1100 AD.