Right, new chapter and what not
Disclaimer: none of it is mine, its all hers
Chapter 2: Merlin? No, just call me Rick.
Late summer, 1987
Somewhere in the forests of Shkodër, Albania
A black, mist-like wraith glides silently above the underbrush and fallen leaves littering the forest floor. It exudes an aura of intense darkness, evil, and pure, unbridled fury. The weight of this aura has warned off all the local fauna, leaving it to silently seethe as it noiselessly glides through the forest, a trail of dead and withered flora marking it's passage.
From high above, a pair of wild, restless eyes is fixed on the wraith. Steady, unblinking, focused. The Scientist hangs by his legs from a tree branch, hands out stretched, as though reaching for the grim aura of his quarry. His tongue lolls out of his mouth in his concentration, and a single glob of saliva slides off it, tenuously dangling by a glistening thread before it snaps, and the glob plummets to the forest floor. The sound is near inaudible, but the wraith freezes as though it had been dunked in liquid nitrogen.
The faceless head of the phantom angles toward the scientist, its gaze seeming to bore into the man in such an odd position in the tree. "Hi-hi Tom-Tom! How-how are you-you?" The mad man asks in a girly, sing-song voice as his legs slack and he seems to slide off the branch he hangs from. The wraith's shriek of fury is cut off as it observes the utter grace and fluidity of the man as he seems to ooze through the branches of the tree, falling, but gaining no momentum, impacting nothing until he lithely arrives on one foot at the base of the tree, performing a perfect pirouette.
A voice, as though rasping from beyond the veil of death, comes seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at once, "Who are you, mortal? And why do you seek me out in this gods-forsaken land?" The wraith demands, floating closer. In response, the Scientist reaches out and swipes his hand through it. The wraith replies with a wordless shriek of anger as the man draws away with the smallest wisp of its form, before it vanishes, coalescing back into the whole.
"Now-now Tom-Tom! Inside voice! Inside voice!" Another wagged finger accompanies the admonishment as the man slowly walks around the creature, twiddling his wand, seemingly idly, with its point to the ground. The wraith shrieks in anger again, rotating to follow its tormentor, and not noticing the triangles and rings of runes etching themselves into the dirt around it.
After two full rotations, the Scientist gives a delighted hop and wiggles in the air, before returning to the ground, a manic look on his face, and eyes glinting maliciously, "Now, Thomas Marvolo Riddle, don't move a single nanometer, or this will much more than tickle!" His voice is so different from a moment ago, so serious, commanding, that the wraith of Tom Riddle freezes in shock. It's only for a moment, but that's all that the Scientist really needed. In a flash, the wand is back behind his ear, and a bloody red stone, something Tom Riddle had spent decades upon decades searching for and researching, takes its place.
The man drops to the ground in a squat, hands coming together to rub the stone between them. Little arcs of maroon electricity crackle over his hands before they split and slam into the ground, the philosophers stone left floating in place. "Spiritus! Et in carne, et renasci!" He cries as the runic array beneath bursts to life with crackling arcs of raw power.
Before the shade can even begin to wail, it is compressed, crushed to the size of a marble in an instant. From the circle, a tall, willowy male body is rapidly grown, skeletal structure, enveloped quickly in lean muscle, organs, wet and glistening with brand new blood, all summarily wrapped in baby-soft, fresh pink skin. A short, wiry crown of hair sprouts from the body's scalp in an instant, murky brown strands standing on end from the powerful energies at play.
For a moment, the homunculus is motionless. Then its mouth drops open and the black marble of Tom Riddle's shade drops into it. The mouth closes and the throat muscles convulse, the first twitch of movement in a cascade of jerks and spasms as the array on the forest floor dies away, the ritual complete. After a long moment, its eyes slowly drift open. Then, as the final glimmer of energy dies away and the vastly dimmer stone is plucked from the air, it collapses, a marionette bereft of its strings.
A moan, a few hacking coughs, followed by a growled out, "Bloody fucking hell." The newly reborn Tom Riddle rolls over onto his back, light brown eyes flickering back and forth until coming to a stop on the smirking Scientist leaning over him, rubbing at a non-existent stubble on his chin. "A-are you Merlin?" He stutters out, an undertone of awe clear in his voice. The Man jerks back violently, as though slapped, "What? No!" a pause, "Maybe... No, not Merlin, but..." His head cocks to the side, monochromatic eyes flicking back and forth startlingly, "I feel like a Rick today. Call me Rick!"
Tom is immensely confused by the response, then exasperated and annoyed when 'Rick' uses his finger to pull down one eyelid and sticks his tongue out at him. He sits up, slowly stretching and testing his new body with a sense of renewed awe, "H-how have you done this?!" He demands, a glint in his newfound eyes. 'Rick' cocks his head to the side, his pale, silvery purple hair, for once laid down, cascading over his shoulder.
"I just told your body to grow back." He says in a mildly childish, but mostly lecturing tone, while motioning to the runic circle with a flip of his hand. "Hardest part was finding you, why are you all the way out here anyways?" The question seems offhand, as Rick has already spun around and begun taking outrageously exaggerated 'pirate paces' in a northwesterly direction. Tom scrambled to his feet, just then realizing his lack of clothing, and dashed after the rapidly retreating figure of his resurrecter, zero collective fucks about his nudity given, despite the slight chill in the cooling evening air.
Tom quickly catches up to Rick and frowns disdainfully at his odd gait, "Never you mind that, why were you looking for me?" His eyes harbor a guarded look of curiosity and suspicion. Rick doesn't even spare him a glance, his miscolored eyes instead fixated on everything and seemingly nothing as his head pivots in one direction, then another, all around the forest. Suddenly, as though due to delayed transmission, the head of silvery hair snaps to Tom, eyes no longer empty, but boring directly into the hunculi's own.
"Ah-ah-ah, my question first Thomas!" His voice is disturbingly cheerful, but somehow filled with an iron will, not to be denied. A vein in Tom's forehead begins to pulse while one of his eyes start twitching in irritation. Grateful he may be for his rebirth, Tom is still a Dark Lord, and used to the fear and respect that that title carries with it. Being without wand or clothes, in a foreign country, in the company of someone capable of forging a homunculi with a ritual circle and force of will alone however, tempers his anger and he sighs, rubbing at his temples in an attempt to stave off the rapidly forming headache.
"I don't know what drew me here, I wasn't fully in control of as a shade, not always at least." He finally replied, looking pained to admit it. Rick made a humming sound as he continued his ridiculous pace through the forest, tapping his chin a few times. After a while of silence, just as Tom was about to pose his question again, Rick pontificated, "So, for all intents and purposes, you were a ship without a sail, cast adrift on the astral sea of this plane..."
Tom just stared at him for long moments, trying to comprehend how he had come to that conclusion. Eventually, he just sighed and rubbed at his temples a bit harder, a wasted effort as his headache developed regardless, flourishing in the mind-bending caricature of a man that called itself 'Rick'. "Will you answer my question now?" He ask/demanded, highly aware that the most dangerous opponent wasn't the trained or the experienced, it was the odd, unpredictable ones.
He received another soul-piercing gaze for his troubles, until, finally, /finally,/ the Scientist stopped his ridiculous walk and turned to face him fully. When he spoke, it was with a chillingly dark and gleeful tone that bode well for no man; "I have plans! Big, big, /big/ plans for the world! You and your motley little boy band of," he suddenly stops, snapping his fingers repeatedly while evidently searching for the correct word, "Ah, yes, Death Eaters! You and your adorable little Death Eaters would make the most perfectest distraction to cover my efforts towards them!"
Rick's hands swung violently around while he spoke, nearly clipping Tom before they drew in as the Scientist hugged himself while saying 'perfectest'. Tom stared at the mad creature before him, absolutely certain that the man was stark raving mad. But at the same time, He /had/ given him a new body, for the express purpose of returning to his life's work, and he was undoubtedly powerful, frighteningly so in fact.
All that left only two questions in his mind, for the time being anyway; "Can you conjure me a robe, its getting rather chilly." After a derisive cackle and a swish of what Tom was certain was a wand crafted from bone; "What are we doing walking through Albania? Should we not make haste and apparate back to England?" A valid question, in all honesty.
Rick merely cocked his head to the side once more, and gave another less-than-informative answer; "I have the strangest feeling that I will be missing something rather important if I merely dash away to the Isle." Further questioning merely garnered more of the same from the dodgy Scientist.