Hello again and welcome to chapter 16 of The Glacial Ones!
As always, to start off, reviews!
Zathol: I agree entirely. I get the feeling that the Wizarding World part of this story is going to last only as long as the triwizard tournament, and will be more for the sake of curb stomping wizards and obtaining a Philosophers stone than anything. Either way, Wizarding Britain will probably be reduced to ruin by the time they leave. As for hormonal teenagers doing stupid things, well…I wonder how Hogwarts would look if it was frozen solid… Anyway, thanks for the review!
Dragon27998: thanks for the suggestions! So far I intend to follow jonnywolf's idea at the moment and use the Beowulf gauntlets from Devil May Cry 3 with orange or gold colouring added. Look them up if you want to have a look. As for Fal learning some form of martial arts, she technically is, just off screen and it isn't really shown. But your point remains, and I agree with it. As for Luna using a bow that doesn't miss, there is actually already one that the Revolutionary Army possess'. The only reason I wouldn't use it though is that it takes all the skill out of archery. Even in canon Esdeath commented that its s kind of cheap weapon. Anyway, thanks for your ideas!
KnightOfZaku: So far I intend to have Bols follow a similar path to his canon counterpart, though it might not be identical. I would like to have had something like that between Harry and Bols family, but I only really though about it when you pointed it out, meaning that while I intend to get some interaction between them this chapter, any familial relationships will have to be built after Bols death, with Harry possible helping them come to terms with it. Sorry, I do like Bols, but this is Akame Ga Kill, it wouldn't be the same if people didn't die. Plus it would diverge from canon too much for my story plan. Thanks for the review though! Most appreciated!
Blazingkill: I can't say I wasn't tempted to make him far, far more unhinged, but this Harry is one who was abused to the point where he stopped caring. He has an EQ of zero, meaning he doesn't understand emotions, his own or others. And as you will begin to notice at times, he is far from mentally healthy and he is very much the boy Esdeath took in a trained. Thanks for your review!
As a side note, my comment about the Wizards was a foreshadowing of the fact that Esdeath now had her sights on an object that could take her and Harry to the Wizarding World. Just clearing that up.
On a final note, there is some kind of heavy stuff near the middle/end of this chapter. There isn't anything truly bad written down, it's just about a dark topic, so I thought, as this is my first time writing this, that I should warn you just in case.
And now that that is done, onwards to chapter 16!
I hope you enjoy!
I do not own, in any way, shape, or form Akame Ga Kill or Harry Potter.
-T.G.O-
Chapter 16: Laughter and Light, with a little Shadow
Groaning tiredly, Harry gazed around the training field that he, Esdeath and the three girls, Air, Fal and Luna, were currently using. They had returned to the Capital in the early morning after the gateway opened by Shambhala had deposited them all on the mountain top they had originally been on. Upon returning, Esdeath had then dug around a bit and discovered that the Prime Minister's son had returned to Capital and was also likely the owner of Shambhala.
That made obtaining it both easier and harder. On one hand, they knew where it was likely to be, with the man and his band of followers and they could be quickly removed by Esdeath. On the other hand, they couldn't just go and kill off the Prime Minister's son. The Prime Minister probably wouldn't really care, but it was the principle of the matter, really.
If the man attacked first though…
Currently though, the five were using one of Esdeath's private training grounds, with Fal, Air and Luna observing from the side-lines as the two fought against each other.
Which brings us to now.
Harry jerked his body to the right, evading a lightning fast jab from Esdeath and thrusting his left hand blade towards her apparently unprotected side. He already knew it wasn't going to hit, as though he had never made her use her full strength she was still restraining herself at a level above his own ability to defeat without considerable effort and luck.
So when she moved her body slightly to the side to dodge, Harry was already pulling back from his lung, spinning on his right heel and evading another lightning quick jab as he slashed his right hand blade in a tight arc towards her head. Esdeath leaned backwards, his blade missing her neck by centimetres even as the blade in his left hand deflected a jarring blow from her rapier off to his side.
Harry leapt backwards, disengaging from his opponent and gazing at her as she grinned an almost psychotic smile filled with a sadistic glee.
"Good, you are improving every time we fight. A few more years and we will be able to fight on the same level."
Harry practically beamed at her. He was no battle nut like Esdeath, but he did enjoy praise from his most important person as much as the next teen. Darting forward he spun his right blade in his hand so that he was grasping it backwards and slashed it towards Esdeaths chest, who leaned back and blocked it with her long rapier even as Harry stabbed forward with his left blade, aiming at her stomach.
Esdeath jerked to the side, his blade just barely grazing her clothes as it jabbed past and her own rapier came flashing up towards him. He ducked to the side, slashing his right blade back towards her, before spinning it back into a proper grip when he missed and, using his left blade to deflect another of Esdeaths jabs off to his left, he thrust the right hand blade towards he in his own lightning fast jab, only for Esdeath to lean back out of his range and slash towards him with her own sword as he desperately withdrew from his lung, jerking away from her blade.
Her blade slashed across his cheek, drawing blood. It was promptly ignored as Harry used his right blade to deflect yet another lightning fast jab over his head, his left blade slashing out towards her stomach, only for her to turn her body out of the way and pull her rapier back in for another flickering attack that Harry deflected with both blades crosses, pushing it down towards the ground to his left and running his right hand sword up her rapiers blade and up towards her neck.
A flick of her wrist deflected his attack, before Esdeath lashed out again, Harry just barely blocking it as she caught him off balance. A second slash was just barely dodged, leaving a thin cut along his chest as he struggled to deflect her following thrust towards him. He deflected the arm jarring thrust, darting forward to try regain the offensive.
Then her heeled foot slammed into his chest, picking him up off the ground and sending him flying backwards were he landed on his feet, staggered backwards and then came to a stop, standing gasping for the air Esdeath had kicked out of him.
At the side lines, Air, Fal and Luna watched in awe. This really was nothing like their training with Esdeath.
They would likely be dead if it was.
Eyeing Harry's gasping form, Esdeath flicked a little blood off her rapier before sliding it back into its sheath.
"That's enough for today. Well done, Harry."
The last words were spoken with a certain amount of affection as Harry straightened, smiling, before sliding his blades back into their sheaths and rubbing at the where her foot heeled had slammed the into the thin cut she had given him previously. A small tug at his core sent a wave of healing energy across his body, the cut on his cheek knitting itself closed, followed by the slash across his chest and the rapidly forming bruise on top of it.
He let out a sigh of relief.
"Finally…I'm not sure how much longer I could do that. It's exhausting."
Esdeath just nodded with a sadistic smirk before glancing up at the sun.
"The Prime Minister wants me to see him soon for another assignment for the Jaegers, so I need to leave now. Harry, get yourself cleaned up and then you can have the rest of the day free. Air, Fal, Luna, you three aren't part of the Jaegers do you won't be part of any mission. I want you to continue the exercises I gave you. If we can get your abilities up enough in the next few months, then we may be able to find you all a Teigu to use."
Harry nodded, the three girls following suit, Fal grinning widely at the thought of using a Teigu of her own.
"Good. Remember to take some time off, Harry."
With her final words spoken, Esdeath turned to leave the training area, Harry giving the three girls a dazzling grin as he followed her soon afterwards, heading back towards their room to remove his training clothes and get cleaned up, leaving Air, Fal and Luna to their task, which they took to with a great enthusiasm.
-T.G.O-
Grinning with his hands laced behind his back, Harry practically skipped down the corridors of the Jaegers base, heading towards the common room. While Esdeath was starting to give him a bit more time to himself, and he generally preferred his place at her side, the last few days had rather intense, and he needed a little bit of time to be, well, a kid really.
Smiling widely, he bounced into the common room, looking around and spotting Kurome and Wave playing a game of chess together, Bols off in the kitchen making tea as he so often did.
"Hey, Wave, Kurome, Bols!"
Wave startled, almost dropping the knight he was moving, much to the other Jaegers silent amusement. Kurome just nodded towards him before turning back to the chess set in front of her, crunching down on another candy as she did. In the small adjacent kitchen, Bols turned towards Harry, smiling behind his mask.
"Good morning, Harry. Would you like a tea?"
Harry grinned at Bols, giving a nod.
"That would be wonderful thanks, Bols. I just finished training with Esdeath."
Wave winced slightly as he moved his knight to take one of Kurome's rooks, before turning to face Harry, a slight look of sympathy on his face as he smiled at Esdeaths young companion. He was well aware what Harry normally looked like after a training session with Esdeath, though he seemed to be in fairly good condition today.
"How are you, Harry? She didn't go too hard on you did she?"
Harry moved over to where he was sitting, pulling out a chair beside Wave and Kurome's table before sitting down and grinning at Wave.
"Nope! Esdeath says I'm getting better, so she'll start going harder tomorrow. Today I just got a couple of nicks and scratches. The only real damage I took was when she got me across the chest. And when she kicked me."
He pouted.
"She always ends up kicking me flying. It's not fair."
Wave looked mildly perturbed by Harry's response to his question but shook it off. Harry looked fine, and even with his advanced healing he was normally at least a little more bruised up for a couple of hours after his training, so it can't have been to bad. Dismissing the thoughts, Wave turned back to the chess board in front of him, groaning softly when he realised that Kurome had taken one of his bishops and was trying to trap his queen.
He reached down to move his queen from the closing trap, instead moving it to take another of Kurome's pawns and looked up as Harry began to speak, a confused look on the young boy's face.
"Oh, yeah, Wave, I've been meaning to ask you something for a while, but I keep forgetting about it."
A terrible feeling of foreboding doom descended on Wave and he wondered briefly if he could make it out the window in time.
He doubted it.
"Does your body ever do really weird stuff down there when you see a naked woman?"
Silence sat upon his throne once more, supreme ruler of all for just a moment.
Harry just looked perplexed, as though he was trying to find the answer to life. He kind of was. Kurome just looked immensely amused, for her anyway which meant that there was a small grin on her face. Bols just grinned under his mask and decided to take a little longer making the teas. He wouldn't want to interrupt such an important conversation between Harry and Wave.
As for Wave, he adopted a look of pure misery as his head slammed into the table in front of him, narrowly missing the chess set.
He gazed up at the other occupants of the room in despair.
"Am I really going to have to do this?"
Kurome nodded seriously.
"It is your duty."
Bols somehow managed to 'accidentally' poor all the hot water down the drain, thus forcing him to re boil some more for their teas, so he was of course too busy to help Wave.
The Jaegers could be truly merciless.
Harry just looked at Wave with concern.
"Are you all right Wave? Are you feeling unwell?"
Wave briefly considered saying that he felt ill and making a bolt for it. A quick look over at Bols in the kitchen, who was somehow surrounded by a horrifying, dark aura and Kurome, who was sitting with a small smile on her face, suddenly leaking copious amounts of killing intent, told him that maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to try and escape. Harry just sat watching Wave, wondering what was wrong with his question that it got such a violent reaction from the older teen. Years in the presence of Esdeath and her army had left him completely oblivious to almost any form of killing intent or evil aura's.
Wave let out a half sight, half groan. Why were his teammates so cruel? He sat up straight looking over at Harry and taking a deep breath.
He only had to do a brief explanation to satisfy Harry's curiosity. It couldn't be that hard, right?
Right?
"May as well get it over and done with."
He took a deep breath. Another foreboding feeling descended on him.
"Okay…When does this happen to you?"
Harry tilted his head to the left.
"Whenever I wake up. I promised Esdeath I would sleep in the same bed as her in return for training Air, Fal and Luna. She always sleeps naked and is really, really clingy. Are you all right Wave?"
Coughing, Wave momentarily wondered if death by choking on his own spit would be more or less embarrassing than giving the thirteen year old companion of his commanding officer the Talk. Even Kurome looked slightly surprised.
"I'm…fine. So when you wake up in the morning, Esdeath is being…clingy and it happens? Okay…"
He stopped, a horrible thought occurring to him. He took a deep breath.
"Harry, you do know how babies are made, right?"
Harry just looked at him blankly.
"No idea. Why? What's it got to do with my question?"
Wave just sighed once more and decided to bite the bullet, looking Harry in the eye as he did.
"Well, you see Harry, a man, or woman, sometimes gets excited when they see a member of the other sex that they like, or when they see them naked. Okay? With me so far?"
Harry nodded, a look of confusion on his face. In the background, Bols struggled to contain his laughter.
"Well, when they are excited, a man's penis sometimes gets hard and then…"
He was interrupted by Harry as the boy's face lit up, before darkening a moment later, much to Wave's concern.
"So like what Esdeath's soldiers do to women with their penises when Esdeath tells them to do whatever they want with a village? Why would I want to do that? It looks cruel and evil and horrible."
By the end, Harry was sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, a dark scowl on his face.
Silence climbed back onto its throne once more, a bit peeved that it kept getting thrown off I the throne in the first place.
Wave paled, realising that this meant that Harry was a thirteen year old boy in the midst of puberty, and his only form of sexual education came from the minions of the person he was devoted to, raping people. The only good thing in this situation was the look of sheer disgust on Harry's face, despite the fact that he didn't fully understand how bad it really was.
All three of the present Jaegers were given the uncomfortable reminder that despite being a nice kid, he was also someone who had spent the last three years going everywhere with the Empire's greatest sadist who lead the Empire cruellest army force.
It was an uncomfortable reminder that Harry had seen many, many terrible things, even if he didn't fully understand what it was he was seeing.
Bols promptly finished up making the teas, aware that this was no longer a joke and was instead a problem that needed to be addressed, placing the four cups of tea on a platter and moving towards the three other occupants of the room, placing the platter down beside the chess board and pulling over a chair. He sat down heavily.
Pushing aside his disgust and indignation at what he thought Wave was suggesting, Harry suddenly became aware of the almost tense silence that had overtaken the room. Surprisingly, that same silence was broken by Kurome as she leaned over the table, her face solemn and her voice shockingly consoling as she looked Harry in the eyes.
"No. That's not what Wave meant, Harry. Your right, and you should never, ever do that, okay?"
Harry nodded uncertainly, having never seen Kurome in this kind of mood, nor understanding the context of the conversation. He just wanted to know why his body was doing weird things, that's all!
Bols took over from Kurome as she leaned back.
"Kurome is right, and so are you. What those men did was cruel and evil and a whole load of other bad things. That's not, however, what Wave was talking about."
Harry leaned his head to the right in confusion before nodding silently as he focused intently on Bols.
"What Wave was talking about was when both people are excited and both agree to have sexual intercourse and make sure that they both feel good. What those…men…"
He winced as though wishing he could call them something else, though he decided not to risk it in front of Harry.
"…did, was very much wrong. Both people should always agree. If both people don't agree, then it is rape, and that is very, very bad to say the least. But what Wave was trying to tell you is that when two people have sex together, and a male ejaculates inside the female, there is a chance that the female will get pregnant and have a child. That's what Wave was trying to tell you."
Bols spoke consolingly, well aware that some of the terminology was lost on Harry, but figured it was fine as long as he got this situation under control and out of the way. He took a breath and looked Harry dead in the eyes.
"Do you understand that?"
Harry still looked troubled, not that it was necessarily a bad thing, but nodded his understanding.
"Yes, I understand."
Bols leaned back with a sigh, the dark atmosphere dissipating slightly.
"Good. What is happening to your body is that you are becoming excited when you see or feel Esdeath naked. That is entirely understandable and completely normal, and it would be more worrying for your mental health if you didn't. There is nothing to warry about. Now, your teas are all here, so why don't we talk about something else, okay? If you have questions, Harry, just come and ask me in private, got it?"
Harry nodded, reaching out to snag a cup of tea and bringing it to his lips, sipping it as the uncomfortable atmosphere faded a little more, Kurome giving a surprisingly open look of relief that the situation had been cleared up, a feeling repeated and amplified on Wave's face.
The four sat in a semi-uncomfortable silence, sipping their tea as Kurome and Wave went back to their chess game
The silence stretched on, broken only by the soft sound of sipping warm teas and the clack of chess pieces being moved around on a wooden board.
There was a creak as the door behind them was pushed open, a gentle voice calling out accompanied by that of a child.
"Bols, dear."
"Daddy!"
Bols head shot up towards the door, his goofy smile visible through his mask as he shot to his feet, the rest of the Jaegers turning to look at the new arrivals.
Standing in the doorway was a rather stunning woman with light brown hair and purple eyes holding a little girl with blonde hair and clear blue eyes, reaching out a tiny hand towards her father as he rushed over to them, goofy grin still on.
"What are you two doing here?!"
The woman smiled sweetly and Harry could swear he could see the love hearts floating above her head.
"Dearie, you forgot the packed lunch we made for you together."
Bols smacked the top of his head, looking rather abash under his mask.
"Oh. Whoopsies."
His daughter giggled, pointing at him.
"You're so silly, daddy!"
The rest of the Jaegers watched with varying expressions. Wave was watching with a look of vague disbelief and more than a little shock, and Kurome herself was showing small amounts of shock too. Harry was just grinning at the small family, having already had access to Bols, and the rest of the Jaeger, military files that had already revealed who his wife and daughter were.
Bols laughed at his daughters comment.
"I know, I'll be more careful next time. Thanks for bringing it to me."
His daughter laughed again and reached both hands out towards him with a brilliant smile in her face.
"Hold me, Papa!"
His goofy grin grew wider under his mask as he took her from his wife, turning to the other occupants of the room.
"This is my wife, Maggie, and my daughter, Tiffany. They know everything I do and support me through it all. As long as I have them I'll be fine!"
A blazing light seemed to exude from the loving family, blinding those who saw it. Well, only Wave actually. He was weird like that.
He turned his head back to Maggie, pointing out the Jaegers in turn.
"These are some of my fellow Jaegers. Wave, Kurome and Harry."
Recovering from his brief moment of blindness, Wave grinned at the two, Kurome nodding beside he as Harry gave a little wave and a grin from where he was sitting.
The rest of the afternoon was a blur of sunshine and laughter, all earlier darkness forgotten as the group made the best of their free time.
It was a good thing they did, because storm clouds had begun to cover the land, and the Jaegers would be called to duty.
And not all of them would come back.
-T.G.O-
And there we have chapter 16 of The Glacial Ones! I really hope you enjoyed it!
This was mainly just a filler chapter to show some character interaction with the rest of the Jaegers, or part of them anyway. The whole sex talk thing started out as a joke, and turned a little darker than I intended, but I don't think it was that bad. I've never had one myself, so I wouldn't really know how they're meant to go, so some feedback on whether I did well with this chapter or not would be much appreciated!
On that note, any and all ideas, likes, dislikes, advice or constructive criticism are all welcome and appreciated as well!
So please review!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and goodbye until next time!