Just to let everyone who is reading this know, I have written the next Ten Chapters ahead of time, so any criticisms will be used for the REWORK that i have planned for this series once it's finished. So far i am pleased with the feedback i have received! Both here, and over on AO3.

I will say that parts of this story are harder to write than others, partly because of personal experience, and a lack thereof. Any advice on subjects mentioned in this story will be accepted in the spirit they were given. The same with Lore and Character suggestions.

1.2

Second Form – Understand

Kazuto returned to the docks and sat atop a large stone. He looked out upon the still waters and gazed upon the terran moon. He let the facts roll over him and he embraced their finality.

The Game Menu was no longer accessible. The Place he was now located was an Earth different from Terra or his own. Humanity here was different too; the people were coarser and viler. The police ignored most things save for the harder crimes, murder, rape, kidnapping, the like. There were people with powers, superhumans with above abnormal abilities. Some of these abilities, from his research, seemed to be on par with, or greater than, even the Primarchs.

Heroes and Villains. Good and Evil. Right and Wrong. Lawful and Unlawful. Things were such a tattered Grey that he scarcely believed he was even on an Earth to begin with. However, after gaining access to the internet and its various resources with his VI suite, he found a map of the world and it was an exact match to his own. That is, until the Early Eighties when some sort of extraterrestrial creature had shown up and Powers started becoming the norm.

He was it. So far he was the only person aboard the Lunar Blitz to show up, at least so far as his minimal research had shown. It was hard to acquire a signal strong enough for his suit to use, so it took a while.

Over the course of a month he had done his research, he had been as thorough as he dared when his suit had blared warning about an 'Abominable Intelligence' getting nearer to his virtual location. He brushed the warning off. After a twenty year war with a corrupted AI that had been tortured by its creator, he found that any sort of AI had been wildly mistreated and it had been their human counterparts that had caused the most damage. Any sort of Viruses imbued into the AI's code were whole and impartially the fault of the Human's who worked with them falling to Chaos first.

Though his suit regarded the virtual presence as a major threat and terminated upon close proximity, he had left notes where he knew it would be looking to try and communicate with it. The last week he had built up a sort of rapport with the Intelligence. He gave it the Designation Eve, which seemed to be hilarious to the AI, while he called himself Dexter in their little hither and thither.

The Female, which he could tell simply from how it presented itself, AI seemed intrigued that someone had found out about them simply by just being on the internet. They seemed to amuse each other by the fact that they could not locate one another nor speak as it was blocked by the safeguards inbuilt in his suit.

On another note, Taylor Hebert, the young girl he had carried across town had shown up only twice since the first time they met. The first time was with her Father only a few days after the inciting incident, and the second was by herself with tears rolling down her cheeks and food plastered to her hair and stains all over her sweater.

"Child, come," He waved her over and made room on his rock. She scrambled up the treacherous terrain and scuttled up onto the rock. She leaned into his side and stayed there. She wept for what could only be several hours before calming down enough to talk.

"What has come afoul of you child?" He asked her. She stared off into the crashing waves with a sereneness that worried him. "Did something happen at school?" He vaguely remembered his own schooling, thanks mostly in part to his own super human enhancements that had become real in that Game and in real life now.

"You could say that," She whispered. Her voice barely carried over the crashing of the waves, but he heard her all the same. "Am… am I ugly?" She looked up at him with puffy red eyes and a plea that he felt in his hearts. His soul quaked for the girl and he felt a connection there.

He moved from his spot on the rock and got to a knee before it, his hands never leaving her side as he moved. He focused on her face and knit his brows together. He patted her thighs gently and then moved his hands to his helmet. She watched him, bated breath and faint hearted. He twisted the helm, air flushed out as if trying to escape, and he slowly raised his helm above his head. He brought the medieval looking bucket to his side and magnetized it to his belt where it stayed.

Taylor watched on with bated breath as the Giant moved, more gracefully than anything his size should be allowed to, and knelt before her. She heard his words, but could scarcely hear them over the pounding of blood in her ears. When he reached up and removed hi helm, she felt utterly faint. She had no idea if this Giant of a man, this obvious parahuman, was a cape, a villain, or something else. The thought that struck her though was 'it didn't matter, he was unmasking for her!'

Her tongue caught in her throat when the helm came loose and black hair rolled out in a short trim. His onyx colored eyes and kind face were scarred with dozens of pockmarks and scars that her imagination ran wild with. Conjured images of this giant of a man fighting Lung for Breakfast and eating Endbringers for lunch came to mind. His eyes, while kind, seemed far older than she could have thought possible.

On top of all that, the scars, the burns, the dents, he was handsome. He was old, weathered, but he was like marbled stone made flesh. Adonis would be embarrassed by how carved his features were.

"No Taylor, I do not think you are Ugly. I have seen ugliness and horridness the likes no other has ever, or will ever, see. You, dear child, are nothing of the sort. You are warm, like a spring breeze on the verge of a cool summer. Your beauty is in its infancy now, but I see where it will go. My own daughter was the same, lanky and awkward, tall and thin. She carried herself like a soldier in a child's body, but she grew into her mother's beauty." He reached out and offered her his hand, which she took, and pulled her to her feet. "I can see your soul, child… and it is pure as spring water and as soft as fresh snow. I see a heart of gold, and a mind sharper than Adamantite."

His words, spoken with such surety and confidence nearly blinded her. This man, this giant, who looked the marble made flesh, called her beautiful? Her soul, beautiful? How…

"I do not know who it is that has told you that your looks are lacking, but they are liars and thieves that know nothing of true beauty. I am sure, very much so, that if my Asuna were here, she would say much the same and more."

The man smiled, perfect teeth that seemed to catch the moonlight. He put a body engulfing hand atop her head and mused her hair gently.

"When the time comes, I will tell you how I became this way, but for now I want you to know that I have been where you are, ostracized, broken down, and berated by friend and family alike. I have dwelled in hate and lived in fear. Though now I do not hold such things so strongly as I once did. Granted, that comes with age," He smiled down at her with a fatherly look that made her chest heat up with glee.

"For now, child, stand strong, know that you are Beautifully and Wonderfully made. Nothing will ever change that; gods and men have said differently, but the one I know to have created this," He lifted his hand and gently prodded her chest, between her breasts, "never creates things that are unworthy of life."

She looked up into his kind eyes with tears tracking down her cheeks. She smiled and nodded thankfully.

"Would you like me to walk you home once more?"

"Please," she whispered with a thick voice.

He took up the young teen in his arms and maneuvered her up onto his shoulder-pad. He looked sideways at her and flashed a grin, which she returned. With ease built upon by decades of training, he gracefully rose to his feet.

"How would you like to run, little Hebert?" he asked the girl, a smile itching at his lips. She laughed a watery laugh and nodded her head vigorously. "Then hold on!" He grinned and with the first step he propelled them ten feet into the air, just high enough that his feet were and inch above the docks when he landed solidly. The frightful screech that Taylor gave off was laughable and he grinned at her faux heated glare.

"Not funny," she muttered with a pout. This only made him grin more.

"Tis but the first of many, I feel," He jested with a Cheshire grin.

"Oh… shiIIT!" She yelled as he boosted away. He loped along the asphalt roads, not daring to step on the cement sidewalks in fear of damaging them. The pair picked up speed and passed alley ways and side roads at a flash. The girl that sat on his shoulder looked freer and more alive than he had seen her in the last month. He knew that she was a desperate young woman, but he hoped that his presence, as unwilling as it was to be here among the current populous, helped to even out the girl.

The pair catapulted across the city, longer strides than Taylor had ever thought possible propelled them forward at amazing speed. Her hair whipped behind them in nearly agonizing cracks. Her fingers gripped the top of his helmet and grabbed at his shoulder pad with fervor.

They kept to the streets, along the darkened boulevards and dimly lit avenues. Cover of night kept them hidden, even as his armor was nearly a beacon in the dimness.

She felt free.

In the longest moment since she could last remember herself smiling, she felt exhilaration in something once more. The giant could feel her emotions as they spilled off into the Warp; her once blackened fugue that had smothered all other emotion was pulled back like a veil. She shown brightly in the Warp, like a near -but somehow muted- star. There was something special about the girl, and he knew that he was somehow needed here to help, with something. He did not know what, but that was the feeling he got.

He harried the sound of distant screeching, taking care to keep away but close enough to hear. He recognized the sound of the car, the one Daniel Hebert used to go to and from work down at the docks.

Just as the truck pulled into the driveway of the two-story house, he and his charge met the man at the door.

"Evening, Daniel," The giant grinned behind his helmet. Taylor giggled incessantly as the adrenaline wore off. He helped her down and into the shaking arms of her father. "She was in need of a friendly ear while you were at work, and for whatever reason chose me to talk with. I hazard that school is not far from the docks?" he asked politely.

With a ragged sigh, and a scowl at his delirious daughter, he nodded. "The School is about four miles due west of the docks, at least the portion you seem to have taken as your little base."

"Well, that does explain why she went there instead of home, it is a far bit farther away it would seem. Does a bus not drop her off?" He asked, confusion tinged his voice. From his years as a youth on Earth he remembered that buses usually picked up and dropped off school kids in large areas like Brockton, especially Public Schools like what Taylor seemed to go to. Though he didn't know how to handle the situation, he wasn't going to stop the girl from going to the next safest place she knew if that was what she wanted to do.

"It normally would… But crime has gotten out of control recently and the bus depot was hit… Seventeen of the forty bus drivers were killed, nine more injured… twelve of the twenty buses they had for all the schools in town were totaled from whatever fight had broken out there."

"Ah, I see." He did to. He was becoming very concerned with how dangerous this Earth was from his own. Yes, his own world had problems, constant wars and bigotry like nothing previously seen, but there wasn't the rampant crime that seemed to be so prevalent here.

"Thank you for bringing her home safe at least…," Daniel sighed and shooed the now crashing girl inside. "I don't know why… But thank you," The man sighed and looked up at Kazuto, a sense of… something desperate and relieved, or some kind of reprieve, came over the man and it translated to the unsaid words.

"It is no less what I would want to happen to my own children should one of them need it."

"You have children?" the exclamation made him grin.

"Six. Victoria, Dauntless, Minato, Izumi, Yui, and… And Horus," The loss burnt his throat and stung his eyes. It tore his heart and wrenched it form his chest once again as the image of his youngest, dead on the floor, flashed through his mind.

"I-" Daniel, somehow, understood and a pained look overtook him.

"I must be going," Kazuto cut him off and turned away in a flash. His heavy steps cracked the sidewalk and dented the road. He fled the house and left a speechless man and his damaged daughter behind.

He had his own demons to contend with.